Agent of Change

My political observations for today

-Donald Trump will not drop out and anyone who says he will shouldn’t be listened to. Trump is loving this, and his “The system is rigged” is how he will explain his loss.

-Boy, the Clintons are always blessed with incompetent adversaries, aren’t they?

-Local races will be interesting as people try to attack Congresspeople and Senators to the Presidential candidates and they try to run from the association.

-Anyone who says “It’s never been this bad before” should not be listened to. History shows that we have had elections like this in the past, even with the beloved “Founding Fathers”. You want to see a TRUE nightmare, look at the election of 1856, which brought us the disastrous Presidency of James Buchanan.

-I like lists, how about you? They’re fun right? Think I could make this a Buzzfeed article if I titled it “Political Stuff that 90’s kids understand but Baby Boomers will be confused by”?

-Quite bluntly, I have struggled with remaining on social media due to the endless stream of people losing their fucking minds over Donald Trump. I have already dumped Instgram and Tumblr, and if not for my podcasts, I would just get rid of all of it and go into “splendid isolation” mode. I still might. CM Punk was asked about his wrestling career about 6 months before he quit that he would retire sooner than people think and never look back. I understand that feeling.

-Any stats the goes for Trump in November should immediately be given huge Education block grants, because they will obviously need some help.

-On a serious note, with Trump stating that “The system is rigged” already to explain the beating he’s gonna get in November, we should actually be concerned about his followers. There is a reason that, when a candidate loses, he concedes and then talks about how the system works and the peaceful transition of power. In the 80’s, I heard that Reagan would institute Martial Law in order to stay in power, then Bush, then Clinton, then Bush and now Obama. People already feel that the President is a heartbeat away from making themselves King.

People have been whipped into a frenzy by Trump’s rallies, and if you think people who show up screaming about building a wall and locking up their opponents will quietly accept the results of the election, you haven’t talked to any of them. They believe that Trump will show up, burn the place down and give them the country they have always wanted within days.

It’s not like the Obama folks who were shocked that he didn’t do the same thing and got upset that he was a moderate centrist (even though that is how he campaigned). They just stayed home and opted out of the political process. No, it’s more like the Tea Party on Meth and Steroids. I can see them pulling Clive Bundy like stunts to “show the government they won’t be pushed around anymore.” The right wing media has filled their heads with visions of FEMA camps, troops taking away their guns and hordes of non-white people taking all the jobs that are left.

Trump will not go quietly into that good night. He will throw a fit, as he has every step of the way, and continue to incite his followers.

-I don’t have a good closing joke here. Sorry.

Today’s political thought

If you had Bernie Sanders in your Presidential Deadpool, it’s time to head to the pay window.  He stated today that he does not believe he will be the nominee, he’s laid off over half of his staff and others are taking jobs with Hillary’s campaign.  Take the L out of LOVER and it’s OVER.

As proof that none of these have been malicious, I supported Sanders.  To a point.  I agreed with his platform, I loved how he ran.  Up to a point.  Which I will discuss later.

Sanders was an unlikely candidate.  A 74 year old Jewish socialist who has been a strong left leaning voice in Congress, but has little to show as being accomplished there.  He would have been this year’s Dennis Kucinich except for the fact that the Democrats really didn’t have a solid left candidate (no matter what the media tells you, Clinton has always been a centrist) in a national climate that discourages the left.  A person on the right who is as extreme as Sanders is on the left is thought of as mainstream, which shows just how far the country has been pulled to the right side of the equation.

Sanders would have been mainstream in 1976, but now, he is as close as we get to a true Liberal candidate, and he inspired fervor among his followers, but he was never quite mainstream enough.  He won in low turnout caucuses and smaller states, but no matter what the mainstream narrative is, there is a large, solid group of Democratic Party loyalists, and Hillary has spent 25 years working that base.  In the end, it was that older party base that put her over the top in California, as well as Black and Latino voters, who will be critical in the fall.

Sanders also alienated that base by going into Conspiracyland, claiming that the media was out to get him, that the system was rigged and other statements that made your mainstream Democratic Party loyalists sour on him.  I was turned off after the New York primary when he guaranteed he would win, despite the polls all showing an easy victory for Hillary, then blaming the media and “a corrupt system” for his loss.  The same thing is now coming forward from his supporters, even though Hillary was a lock according to poll after poll after poll…the only thing the poll didn’t catch is how wide Hillary’s victory would be.

The number of votes for her vs him is a higher percentage than the 1988 Bush over Dukakis election.

He also was hurt by years of right wing media telling us how the budget worked and why we can’t have nice things that don’t blow up brown people.  I personally knew that Sanders was done when my Father (who is a moderate with some left leaning tendencies) told me about how there was no way to pay for Sanders’s plans.

And no matter how many position papers you put out, no matter how workable your plan is, if you can’t convince people your plan works, they aren’t going to vote for you.

His ideas will be put in the Democratic Platform, and if his supporters don’t pull the “I’ll just stay home” that they claim to do, he can be a Goldwater type figure, where he loses, but his ideas eventually win by his supporters staying and working the party.  Or, he can be like Dennis Kucinich, giving up after his run and taking the easy media gigs.   I am hoping for the former.

The Panama Papers: They Aren’t By Van Halen

I have not been surprised at all by the reaction to the Panama papers.

The idea that rich people get governments to do their bidding in order to protect their wealth is something that I think everyone knows, and the differences is how people react. Some people react with populist fervor, wanting to storm the castles and redistribute the money they are hoarding. Some say that that is how the system SHOULD work, but cloak it in more acceptable terms by deriding those who disagree was wanting to redistribute wealth or start class warfare.

Those reactions don’t bother me, as they are what you can expect in our current media driven political polarization. Liberals want to change things, conservatives want to keep things in place. That’s how the mindsets work.

What baffles me are the poor people who defend the uber rich with more passion than they try to make their own lives better.

I have a co-worker at one of my jobs who has to take whatever open hours are left, and makes so little money that for 4 years, she had 3 – 4 roommates in her crappy apartment in order to make rent and have enough money to go get wasted in the small town bar. She often yelled and ranted about how the Dem-i-crats were raising taxes, and when it was pointed out to her than they raised taxes on people making over $250K and had cut her taxes, she was still upset. When I asked why she was upset over rich people having to pay taxes, she said, “Because when I am rich, I don’t want the government taking my money.”

When she is rich.

A woman in her mid 50’s with a work record so poor she has to work fill-in hours at a group home believes she is still going to be rich and wants the tax code written in such a way so that when she DOES become rich, she doesn’t have to pay taxes on that.

And I cannot understand that way of thinking at all.

First, I am not going to be rich. I work at management level at best, podcasts are not a way to wealth, fiction doesn’t pay well and I don’t gamble.

Second, if I DID become rich, I wouldn’t mind paying my fair share. That’s part of the cost of civilization, and people who have more money can afford it better. If I were rich, I doubt that 60% of my income would go toward housing and utilities unless I spend like a moron.

Lastly, this is another person who has to struggle to merely have a roof over her head and enough to eat, trapped in a system that gives lower income people tiring, backbreaking work and then says that the reason you are poor is that you just don’t work hard enough, so work harder for the people who own the businesses and pay you wages Just Below what you would need to live comfortably.

We have been taught that we need to protect the overlords because we just might become one, so when we see that the overlords get special breaks and rules, we don’t scream “Off with their heads”, we scream, “Protect them from the evil bastards trying to tax them!”

So, when the Panama Papers show how the government protects the rich, I don’t get mad. I just shrug and say, “So what else is new.”

And that should be the worst part of the whole thing.

Historical note:

The Native American Party was started in response to the collapse of the Whig party as well as the large influx of German and Italian immigrants, especially the fact that they were primarily Catholic and didn’t know English. It has grown to have the nickname of the Know Nothing party, not because the followers were stupid and “knew nothing”, but because they were instructed when confronted about their bigotry, they said that they Know Nothing about what the speaker in asking or implying.

The members of the party were generally middle class Protestants who hated Catholics and felt they were “Native Americans”. The American Party fell apart over internal battles over slavery, and while they claimed Millard Fillmore as a candidate, Fillmore himself disavowed membership.

After the party’s dissolution, the term “Know Nothing” party became a political insult used by both political parties to paint the other as filled with people who didn’t know anything, rather than the secret and bigoted nature of the original term.

However, the tactic of “I don’t know about that” is still used by politicians in order to appeal to specific groups, especially when confronted about connections with Racism. In fact, it was on full display this weekend.

The more you know.

Trump ain’t no dummy, dummy.

Say what you want about Trump, he’s not a moron. He turned the last debate before Iowa into a PURE drama, pitting himself against the Republican establishment. Trump is making a play for the people who moved over to the Republican Party during the “southern strategy” realignment and have been kept there by Talk Radio, Gingrich style anger and promises that never get fulfilled because if they get fulfilled, they can’t be used as wedge issues again.
Trump won’t give specifics, but reads his crowds, reflects their anger and panders better than any politician I have ever seen. Now that he has made himself the ultimate outsider, he is holding a big rally he says will raise money for veterans, and hit ALL of the media outlets he can saying that Fox will make huge money and isn’t giving any to veterans.
Outstanding!
His people, who get all of their new from Fox, have now turned against it because THEY DON’T HELP THE TROOPS. Of course, he gives no specifics, has held events like this and offers no proof that any money went to veteran’s organizations and is well known for having the cops remove homeless vets from in front of his buildings. But, in the end he knows it doesn’t matter. No one cares what he does, it’s what he says.
He has been able to crush Fox News, something the Democratic Party was never able to do because they have no credibility with the viewers of Fox. Trump is a cartoonish figure, his businesses outside of being a landlord have all failed, and yet he had the ability to switch parties and positions and completely dominate a field that had governors, senators and a member of the omnipresent Bush family.
His speeches are more rock show than political rally. He has given no specifics to any of his plans other than “I’ll hire good people.” He has a level of Teflon that Reagan would have envied. And he has effectively neutered all criticism by blustering and bullying, making his critics buffoons he mocks at his unscripted events.
The man is a lot of things. Dumb is not one of them.

Today’s political thought

I preface this by stating that I am just a little to the left of the late Paul Wellstone, so my observations may be a bit skewed.

Too many times, people on the left side of the aisle have dismissed Ted Cruz as “stupid”. I will reiterate that the man is a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. He can say outlandish things, tell big whopping lies and say calculated things that appeal to his base, but stupid? The last two months should put that to bed. Cruz knows his audience. What WE think is stupid, speaks to a group of voters he is counting on and last night shows just how skilled he is.

Look at his “wacky” statements not through your eyes but through the eyes of someone who hates the government, life revolves around “Guns and God” and thinks that Obama is the most evil, liberal, Muslim to walk the face of the Earth…and you’ll see he is talking directly to them.

He HAS to win in Iowa. His strategy is to sew up the evangelical vote and bring along that people who hate Government for the ride. He also needs to attack Trump, but he knows that other people have tried it and failed, so…he went for the dog whistle. He said Trump is from New York City. To his target market, New York City means: Liberal, not Christian, not REAL Americans…and the ones who sent your job away. Sarah Palin used to say the same thing for a cheap applause line. It’s like blaming all of your problem on the Media, a quick way to tell the base that Liberals Did It To Me AND YOU again.

And last night, Cruz went into the final debate before Iowa, on Fox’s “Business” Channel. Fox Business has become where people who aren’t mainstream enough for Fox News show up. If you think Hannity is fratboy smug, Stuart Verney makes him look like Al Franken. So, he hits all of his talking points and then, with Trump, goes in for the kill. He taken the Birther stuff Trump has been flinging and turns it into a rousing “god Bless America” minute where Trump is, for the first time, at a loss for words.

Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree. He ran the Harvard Law Review and edited Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. This is not some goober who spouts goofy stuff for no reason. This is a man who planned everything he has done so that he can run for President as an outsider, hated by Washington with a record of throwing sand in the gears and breaking things. His father is a prominent Dominionist, a movement that believes that the Book of Genesis mandates that ‘men of faith’ seize control of public institutions and govern by biblical principle.

Dismissing him would be a big mistake.

A few quick thoughts on Sarah Palin

I’ve been watching the utter meltdown of Sarah Palin over the weekend with fascination.  And, before people jump on me about it, I’m not reading ANYTHING about the speech from the left.  The right has had enough, and her speech at Steve King’s fundraiser/rally weekend seems to have finally gotten the mainstream right to quit fearing her.

There is a lot of anger about how she worked in 2012 to derail Romney with her “bus tour”, her fundraising that never seems to go to candidates, her backing of Tea Party candidates who force more mainstream candidates to tack much further right than they would like and other stunts she pulls when she wants attention.  One person I know who is about a Republican as you can be said, “If she’d just get a reality show, she would just leave us alone.”

So, I fully expect to start hearing stories about her fundraising not going anywhere but a bank, her husband’s business deals and some of the other more unsavory things…not on Liberal websites and such, but more of the right-leaning and Big Business backed sites.  They see her incoherent speech before an audience who looked for confused than adoring as a chance to put her away before they have to try and win the Big One in 2016.

Then again, never count her out.  Her fans are as devoted as a 14 year old girl at the height of Beatlemania.