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Author Archive for
24
Oct
16
In Memoriam: Go Brooklyn
29
Mar
16
On revolutionary fantasies
Noted Bernie Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon had this to say about the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency:
Let me tell you a bit about revolution.
Time for a trip in the wayback machine for some Frankie Sinatra.
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You Make Me Feel So Young
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Luck Be A Lady
The above is a real tweet by GOP frontrunner and favorite Donald J. Trump.
Il Douche seems to have a problem with geography. First, his first major campaign ad substituted Morocco for Mexico. And now he thinks that Germany’s occupation of France from World War II is still in effect.
On the one hand this is farcical. Il Douche is trying to prove the aphorism that eventually Americans will elect a President as stupid as they are. But, of course, in this case farce can easily transmute into tragedy.
Barack Obama has been the most significant president in American history. He has not only saved the economy, brought healthcare to millions, restored US prestige across the globe, and solved several intractable diplomatic issues, but, by the mere fact of being black, has undone the opposition party. Although the GOP hates the Clintons as well, I don’t think President Hillary Clinton elected and re-elected in 2008 and 2012 would have made the GOP go as apeshit as Barack Hussein Obama.
For example, this is what Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had to say in 2013 as a just-failed vice presidential candidate:
“I think we need to find out how to close these loopholes and do it in such a way that we don’t infringe upon people’s Second Amendment rights,” he said in an interview with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
“We had this issue, 2001, 1999 I think … when I first got into Congress,” Ryan continued. “At the time I remember thinking, ‘You know, there is a loophole here. We should address that.'”
Continue reading ‘Just when you thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous’
News broke this morning that Linsdey Graham, the bachelor senator from South Carolina, has exited the clown car which passes for the 2016 GOP presidential primary.
The frightening thing is that Lindsey “I Want To Be At War With Everyone” Graham is the “moderate” in the race. Normally, a man who wants to bomb anyone who so much as says “boo” to the US would be considered a war-mongering radical. But because he has come out forcefully against the Trump and Cruz lean of the modern GOP, he’s been lauded as a truth-teller in the Republican Party by the media with whom he’s so cozy.
So let that sink in. A guy who literally wants to bomb everyone is the moderate. This is an indication of how far the Republican Party has shifted to proto-fascism, if not outright fascism. And, let’s be frank: This has happened in the eight years since we elected Barack Obama. It’s gone into overdrive since we re-elected him in 2012. The GOP said it learned lessons from 2012, promising to be more inclusive and open. But, if it learned those lessons on an elite level, the lesson which the proletariat learned was that nothing but the hardest of right wing ideology would do to defeat the pernicious Obama regime and its liberal enablers. Thus, Il Douche and Punch-Me-Face Cruz are the leaders in the primary polling.
17
Dec
15
Chalk one up for the good guys
Bloomberg reports that the Feds have indicted Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli on fraud charges.
Surely you remember Martin, no? He founded Turing, bought the rights to a drug used to treat AIDS patients, and proceeded to raise the price from $13 a pill to $750 a pill, thus earning him the title to “the most hated man in America”. Even Donald Trump said he was a “spoiled brat”.
Shkreli promised to reduce the drug price cost after receiving a torrent of abuse, but then reneged on that promise. And just this week, in what can only be described as a “fuck you” to the world, he bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million. Because when you’re a sociopath, you do things like that.
As the Bloomberg article points out, when he was again prodded to reduce the drug’s price, his response was a tweet which merely said “lol”. He also said if he had to do it over again, the would have raised the price even more, as his investors expected him to “maximize profits.”
Let’s not fool ourselves. Fear is winning.
The Los Angeles Unified School District received a threat against its schools. Today it proceeded to shut them all down out of an “abundance of caution”, that term with which we’ve become so familiar. Seven hundred thousand students have been locked out of their schools based on a threat which New York City public schools also received, but which the NYPD determined to be a hoax. Hundreds of thousands of students disrupted from their routine has a ripple effect, forcing parents to stay home, affecting the economy.
I’m old enough to remember when Osama bin Laden said that his strategy was to bankrupt America by making it do stupid things. Although he sleeps with the fishes, his successors seem to be sticking to that strategy.
It doesn’t help that fear isn’t being stoked solely by jihadists. Our politicians on the Right are quite content to go along with stoking that fear, seeing it as a sure road to victory in 2016. So what if the country becomes a shell of what it was? So what if hate crimes spike as a terrified populace searches for scapegoats? None of that matters. All that matters is that they terrify the electorate into voting for a party which thrives on nothing but fear, as it has no other program on which to run.
10
Dec
15
Stop making us be racists!
I found this picture on the Twitter box yesterday. I shook my head and pursed my lips and moved on. Saved it for future use, however.
I had no idea that the future is today.
Over on the National Review (no link, as I don’t wish to give them clicks directly), there’s an article blaming Il Douche’s rise to—wait for it—that damned Obama! Yes, see, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault that a large swathe of white America has lost its puny little minds. If only someone not as black were inhabiting the White House the country would be a paradise of racial comity.
That’s the lie right there. This country has never been a paradise of racial comity. As the President acknowledges, things have improved. But a lot of that improvement was, I believe, cosmetic. The racial animus simmered underground, waiting for a chance to boil up, as in Yugoslavia once it was freed from Marshal Tito’s iron grip. Only in this regard is Pres. Obama “responsible” for white people losing their shit; his election and conduct as president have held up a glaring light to their prejudices, and as often happens with human beings, once a fault is revealed we tend to scream louder that it’s not us, it’s them.
Well, Il Douche went full Nazi yesterday. At a rally, he proposed banning all Muslims from entering the US. The crowd, of course, went wild.
Various GOP grandees clutched their pearls and averred that this was unconstitutional, un-American, and bad politics. Even Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney snapped back at Il Douche. (Of course, he was probably mostly concerned with his rich Saudi friends not being able to visit him at his secure, undisclosed location.)
Forgive me if I take their protestations with an ounce of salt.
The GOP, for 50 years, has covertly stoked racism among the white working class, the people who feel disenfranchised since the social justice movements of the 1960s and who form the bedrock of the Republican voting base. As a wise Republican once said, you can no longer say “nigger”, but you can say “welfare queen”, or “forced busing”. The code is understood.
Continue reading ‘The First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce’
The Obama Diary 
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