...

• I take every opportunity I can to point out that for many years now the so-called "liberal media" has been trying to create this Nikki Haley person who is some kind of non-Trumpian "reasonable" Republican. She has shown time after time that she is an opportunistic lightweight with no values or morals. The media keep re-spinning it over and over. But the Nikki Haley they try to push on us had never existed. What you see is what you get.
  
• What they say: "It is crucial to defeat Trump no matter what to save democracy in America." What I hear: "It is crucial for leftists to support the funding and tactics and genocide of Israel's Bibi Trump so that we don't get Donald Trump in the US."
• Tired of the stupid argument that goes something like: "I heard a college kid say some anti-Semitic shit at a protest so that proves that murdering 10,000 or as Palestinian kids is justified.
• Vote shaming is almost exclusively directed to progressives. How about this example? Wisconsin Democrats have pretty much swept all the state-wide elections recently. Except for the US Senate race won by Ron Johnson. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the progressives who split their ballot to vot against the Black guy.

 

 

They've Lost Me

It looks like Chuck Schumer is going to join hands with Trump sycophant Mike Johnson to invite Bibi Netanyahu (!!) to speak to a joint session of Congress. Recall that last time Netanyahu came to Congress he insulted our sitting president, with the tacit approval of the Repubs. Indeed, that was probably the exact reason the Repubs wanted him invited. It is no secret that Netanyahu and his extremist government want Donald Trump to be president. The internet is full of Democratic vote shamers telling people that not voting is a vote fror Trump. Now the top Democrat in the Senate seems ready to  invite one of Trump's biggest allies to Congress.

This is kind of it for me and the Dems. They lost me. We already knew that the Congressional Republicans work under the direction of AIPAC and the ADL Apparently the Senate Democratic leadership is admitting that they also heed to the same marching orders.

Earlier this week Antony Blinken also committed himself to working with the Republican insurrectionists to "sanction" the ICC for doing its job. Apparently the Biden/Blinken foreign policy team believes that the "rules-based international order" only applies to Russia and countries in Africa.

The dishonesty that the Democrats are willing to employ vis-a-vis Gaza is appalling and causes me to question their character and integrity. They are marching arm-in-arm with Elise Stefanik and Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and AIPAC (which supports January 6th insurrectionist election deniers with millions of dollars in campaign contributions).

Enemy of the Good?

This Adam Johnson piece, as usual, puts into words a lot of how I feel lately. (It's amazing how some people can do that--say things that pretty much sum up what you wish you could express. For me it's Bernie Sanders and Adam Johnson.)

He covers a lot of ground, and uses the Gaza genocide as the backdrop. But it really applies to so much in American life. For me it also brings to mind that old cliche, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Like all cliches, it has come about and endured because it contains at least a kernel of truth and explanation. But at its worst it is just an excuse for perpetuatong the status quo.

Maybe the best example for me is that this sentiment is why America has shit for a healthcare system. "Don't push too hard." "Don't ask for pie-in-the-sky." "Don't drive away moderates." And here we are. The worst healthcare system in the world among developed (and some not-so-developed) nations. Always settling for less.

Some of this is because of the two-pafrty structure in the US. When I was in school in the 1950s and '60s, I was taught that the American political system was superior because we didn't have the instability of the mutiple parties in a lot of other countries. I now believe just the opposite. The stability is good for the capitalist/donor class or whatever you choose to call them. Not so good for the people. Having more than two parties forces the ruling class to be more responsive to those being ruled over.

Maybe it's time to try to change that.

More Stuff

• Joe Biden slammed the ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas officials. So much for the "rules-based international order" he is so fond of.
• It seems obvious (and troubling) to me that Biden is much quicker (like, immediately) to defend Israel no matter what it does than he ever has been toward the almost universally peaceful campus protesters.
• I get a daily barrage of posts on social media on how important it is to vote for Biden no matter what, in order to defeat Trump, but then have Biden supporting Israel's version of Trump at every turn.
• Here is the press release from Senator Gillebrand's office concerning the Senate's version of the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act. One need look no further than the list of cosponsors to conclude that it's a piece of shit. 

 

 

Under the Bus

All the vote scolders aside, I am really struggling with my vote in 2024. (Full disclosure: I vote in Illinois and it's pretty certain that Biden wins the state no matter how I vote.) I am fully aware of the dangers of Donald Trump.

But Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are aware of this danger, too. So why is it only up to voters to avoid this danger? Why do Biden and the Dems get off the hook when they pursue terrible policies that alienate millions of their potential voters. So here's the thing. At my age, every presidential vote is potentially my last. I understand all the arguments--after all, I've been endlessly lectured by the centrists for all of my 50+ years of voting--but I find it difficult to vote for a guy whose actions support and fund a genocide.

Beyond that, Biden and his spokespersons have pretty much thrown the campus protesters under the bus, calling them antisemitic and showing no empathy or solidarity. The Dems also threw Rep. Tliab under the bus by voting to censure her. And now a majority of House Democrats voted for a bill that essetially labels criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

As I've said before, the left flank of the party have been reliable coalition partners with President Biden. He needs to be reminded that coalition building should go both ways. Throwing your constitiuents and Congressional partners under the bus is not the way to do it.

More Lefties

I got in a quite mild exchange on social media today where the other guy was espousing the tired old framing of how "the left" won't compromise and only want things to go "their way". I don't see how anyone paying attention during the Biden administration hasn't seen that the left have been Biden's most reliable coalition partners, especially on his domestic agenda. To the extent that Biden has been stymied, it has been by the centrist and conservative Dems.

All of Biden's domestic initiatives would have been a hundred times better except for the obstruction by the right flank of the party. A few excellent nominees for the courts and executive positions were defeated by the likes of Warner, Tester, et al (yeah, you can't blame everything on Manchin and Sinema, the neolib centrists are lined up behind them).

So the long and short of it is that you'd get more stuff and better stuff done if you had more lefties and fewer righties.

Some Thoughts

• The faux controversy about the debates has no interest for me. I don't watch them. They give me nothing.
• The Hamas attack on October 7 was a terrible thing. The ensuing "war" has the US and the world talking about Palestinian rights in a way that I can hardly remember in my lifetime. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
• If this bullshit "antisemitism" law passes the Senate and is signed by Biden, it will be the straw that broke the camel's back as far as my voting for Biden.
• I grew up and went to school in the 1950s and '60s. We weren't really taught this, but underlying a lot of things was the idea that certain people in certain positions were smarter and more billiant than the rest of us. A good example was the Supreme Court, full of Ivy Leaguers and brilliant jurists. Then came a bunch of desisions and theories from these people for which one didn't need an Ivy League education to call "bullshit" (sorry, had to use that word again). Money is "speech"; regulation is "taking"; racist gerrymandering is just "politics"; et al. Anyway, the good part of this--if you want to call it that--is that it gives ordinary people the confidence to know that these brilliant people can be just as ordinary as the rest of us, they just know how to use bigger and more arcane words to mask their biases and bigotry.
• Some asshole NFL kicker is a mysogenist. Why is this even news?

 

 

Wokeness? Not...

 I think I depart with even a lot of liberals in that I don't think "woke" is a thing. Just like I never thought "poliitical correctness" was a thing; nor that "cancel culture" was a thing. And I think it's a mistake to take the position that these really were "things",  just different "things" than the grievance-soaked right-wingers would have you believe. That angle simply plays into their victimhood. It's all a myth, much like the "liberal media".

To wit: I used to read Ross Douthat (back before I canceled my New York Times subsctiption}. I also heard him a few years ago on the "Know Your Enemy" podcast. I thought, "This is a dying breed, a conservative who actually engages in thoughtful, good-faith discussion and argument." A few years later it seemed like he never writes a column anymore that didn't contain some form of the word "woke". To me it's a red flag of intellectual laziness. I don't read him anymore.

This whole right-wing grievance thing is pretty comical in a black-comedy sort of way. America since the Gaza genocide started is very instructive on this. Musk and Ackman and Trump and the ADL would have you believe that American Unversities are run my a woke mob of communists. What we've seen at Columbia, USC, UCLA, and the rest is that, rather, the typical American university is controlled by the same capitalist oligarchs who control the media, Wall Street, and every other aspect of American life.

Woke? No such thing.