This week’s The Commons, out of Brattleboro, Vermont, dedicates its “Voices” section to “The Supreme Court Hearings and the Trauma of Sexual Assault”, asking “What do the Kavanaugh hearings say about our politics and how our society treats survivors who have suffered in silence?”
Although there are 5 “Viewpoints”, 1 regular column, and 3 letters, only one viewpoint is presented, however. There is no questioning of the assumptions behind their theme. For example, maybe the Supreme Court hearing had nothing at all to do with the trauma of sexual assault except in the minds of those forcing the issue in to derail it. And maybe that’s what speaks more about our politics and how our society treats survivors, such as cynically using them to achieve a political end – or mere campaign event – that has nothing to do with actually helping victims of sexual assault.
Of course, in this atmosphere, who would dare to raise such views, such a voice, and incur the wrath of the whipped-up mob?
October 6, 2018
Viewpoints
September 8, 2018
Unhinged
From Karli Thompson, Democracy for America, 7 September:
URGENT: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski need to hear from you IMMEDIATELY about Kavanaugh's dishonesty on Roe v. Wade. Will you take a minute to make an emergency call to their offices now?
An email leaked to the New York Times yesterday confirmed what we already suspected: Brett Kavanaugh lied when he told Susan Collins that he believes Roe v. Wade is settled law.
Not only that, but during questioning yesterday, he referred to birth control medication as "abortion-inducing drugs" -- a construction used by the far right to demonize birth control and pave the way for severe restrictions on a woman's right to regulate her own body. ...
A vote for Kavanaugh is a vote to strip women of their bodily autonomy. Period. ...
From Zephyr Teachout, 7 September:
At last night's final debate, one of our opponents took the personal and petty attacks to a new level. He took a page out of the Republican playbook and used a gendered attack against Zephyr — calling her "unhinged."
Why? Because Zephyr correctly pointed out that he voted with Wall Street lobbyists to roll back key provisions of Dodd-Frank. ...
From Ben Jealous, Democracy for America, 8 September:
On Thursday night, at his rally in Montana, Donald Trump finally did it -- he attacked me personally:
"In Maryland, the Democrat candidate for governor wants to give illegal aliens free college tuition, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Come on in, free college!"
He attacked my plan to extend tuition-free community college to all Maryland residents, including DREAMers. And he attacked it with the same hateful language he always uses -- rhetoric meant to divide us. ...
Almost all of such e-mails from these and other campaigns have this tone of desperate import and apocalyptic battle. Granted, they are to people who have already expressed support for the causes, or at least the people and organizations promulgating them, but frankly, they should be a complete turn-off to anyone who has any self-respect.
The first example about Kavanaugh is a baldfaced lie. Twenty years ago, Kavanaugh wrote, as legal vetter of an opinion piece in support of one of Bush's appeals court nominees, that the statement “It is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land” may not be accurate. He did not say that he himself does not accept it as such. And he told Collins that he does.
Similarly, regarding his reference to "abortion-inducing drugs": In the case in question he recognized that the general requirement of the ACA to provide contraception included, indeed, "abortion-inducing drugs" (such as RU-486), which some religious groups could not accept. He also stated in the same opinion "that the government has a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception for the employees of these religious organizations".
Regarding the second example, I have not seen or even read about the debate in question, but in fact, Dodd-Frank protected potential home-owners only by severely limiting their access to credit. Instead of facilitating families to buy homes on fair terms, Dodd-Frank turned the market over to landlord/investors. The "rollback" that was made was actually good, raising the threshold of assets for a bank to be subject to the severe restrictions of Dodd-Frank. To criticize voting for that change simply because "Wall Street lobbyists" supported it does seem rather unhinged. And it is certainly unhinged to think the adjective is "gendered". Omarosa Manigault Newman's book Unhinged is just one major example of the term's frequent use in reference to Trump.
Finally, Ben Jealous: You weren't attacked personally. Your plan to provide free community college to illegal aliens was. And it was not done with hateful language, but simply mocked on its face.
Almost all "rhetoric meant to divide us" is coming from the Democrats like this. They mischaracterize, lie, and hide behind identity politics in an obvious inability to defend their own policies or honestly criticize policies they oppose. Anything that some of them might have to offer is getting overwhelmed by their continuing derangement over Trump's election. And as long as that dominates (persecution of Trump is in fact Teachout's primary campaign promise), they can not overcome their implicit disdain for voters.
(I am sure that fundraising e-mails from other campaigns are just as bad — I get only these "progressive" ones because I donated to Bernie Sanders's primary campaign. And they rather underscore that they aren't actually very progressive, but little more than politics as usual.)
September 30, 2016
Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words.
In this coming election, Donald Trump is only the tip of the iceberg.
The bigger problem we face in this election are all the Donald Trumps, who collectively tanked the economy in 2007 by behaviors that (as the presidential candidate Trump said) represented a good way to make money. In his words, it was “good business.”
It sure says something when trashing the world economy is thought of selfishly as “good business.”
[But who is the candidate of Wall Street, as reflected in her close – and personally very lucrative – relationship with Goldman Sachs and others?]
Similarly, it is all the Donald Trumps who use war and the military-industrial complex as the biggest drain on our economy and sense of safety.
[But who is the candidate of Endless War, as reflected by her overwhelming support by imperialist neocons? Which candidate is demonizing Russia in a throwback to McCarthyist jingoism?]
It is all the Donald Trumps of this country (and world) who are the real welfare cheats. If you look at tax breaks or tax expenditures for the wealthy, what just one of them withholds from tax and hides offshore would probably cover any aid to needy families for this whole state.
[But what candidate’s campaign does not depend on the riches available from those (legal) arrangements? And which candidate runs a “charity” (with its tax benefits) as a bribe-laundering service?]
It is all the Donald Trumps of the world who maintain the current medical system that profits on those who can afford it least and, in essence, creates rationing of health care and a two-tiered system of care: one for the wealthy and the other for those who can’t quite afford insurance, co-pays, deductibles, or medicines.
[But which candidate consistently mocks the idea of single-payer (while Trump has expressed support)?]
And it is all the Donald Trumps of the world who reinforce the current status quo of economic, social, and environmental injustice. In that way, they maintain their oligarchic, neo-Calvinist stranglehold on the inequities that allow them to hold the power of the pocketbook and keep the system as is.
[But which candidate is running precisely on continuing that status quo, on expanding those injustices, who defends NAFTA and praises the TPP and similar trade treaties, who promotes fracking, who (after promoting welfare and crime and bankruptcy “reforms” that particularly harmed minorities and women) exploits identity politics to divide people from each other, whose supporters attack and demean everyone who doesn't fall into step behind her?]
When now-Sen. Bernie Sanders started his Vermont campaign for justice back in the 1980s, he spoke of the same inequities and injustices that he carried forth into his presidential campaign this year.
His influence on changing and growing the Democratic platform has moved the mainstream to recognize those injustices. He is keeping the effort moving toward real progress on these issues that all the Donald Trumps are fighting against.
[Along with his supporters, Sanders was smeared and mocked and derided by the Clinton campaign. Whereas Trump is squarely against NAFTA-like trade deals that harm the middle class, and is squarely against imperialist military escapades that squander our common wealth to benefit only the military industry (and their investors [see Wall Street]). There was more in common between Trump and Sanders than between Sanders and Clinton, but Sanders, too, derided Trump and betrayed a shameful snobbery.]
I will be voting for those issues of social, economic, and environmental justice as I cast a vote for Hillary Clinton and down-ticket Democrats. ...
[With every election cycle since Bill Clinton’s first year as President, the Democrats provide more reason not to vote for them. Any of them. Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words. And the actions of Democrats betray them. (See Obama and whistleblowers, drones, pipelines, arctic drilling.)]
[How would Mike Mrowicki respond to this Justin Raimondo piece at antiwar.com, “Trump’s Three Points for Peace”?]
[The iceberg of deplorable government includes Democrats as well as Republicans.]
September 2, 2016
A comment about a comment about Trump supporters
This vile comment from Nancy in Corinth, Kentucky: a real mental giant and portrait of human compassion: managing in every single sentence to lie, distort, sneer, caricature and demean; she is the very face of the Clintonian Democrats. This irresponsible nonstop hate-fest from the Democrats is a real phenomenon which may be studied in years to come; they are infected by an ugly mass hysteria, a cult, so many comments deeply unhinged and it's the same thing day after day – they have become creepily threatening and have been so since Bernie came on the scene to challenge their gruesome idol. Charles Blow has written his daily "be afraid!" column on how evil Trump is, as if we didn't already get his boring one-note message about 500 columns ago. He goes on about how Trump is a bully, yet it's the Dems who are the raging bullies. It's like the Salem witch trials. The Dems are fatally infected with an illusion of their own superiority ("how DARE they accuse us of elitism; we can't help it if we're just better than they are!"), spitting on anyone who refuses to go along with their stunted neoliberal/neocon visions, and openly reviling those they consider beneath them, namely, white poor rural southern people and, weirdly, those without a college degree, since their so-worshiped college degrees did not impart the ability to think critically; to discern truth from propaganda.
Just as Reagan made unfettered Darwinian greed acceptable, the spineless Dems have made self-serving peace with that, and now tout their own raging classism, racism, McCarthyism, and war-loving jingoism as de rigueur. Will they, when Clinton is "elected" and predictably makes a massive, terrifying mess of everything, look back at their bloody feeding frenzy in shame, or have they always longed to tear off the mask and just come out of the closet as the fascists they really are? Outrageously elitist comments are coming along fast and furious on the pages of The Times, and have been for months on end. These prissy, pushy Dems are unwittingly offering their own smug throats to be slit, with their relentless taunting, stereotyping, and shaming of millions of their fellow Americans. You can only push people so far, and these types like ole Nancy in Kentucky are so delusional, and brainwashed, they can't see what's coming down the road. If Clinton is pushed onto the throne, the peasants they so look down upon aren't just going to disappear; they are going to be very, very angry.
July 31, 2016
A selection of the DNC e-mails
email ID: 578
Fwd: State Dinner Countdown [donor whines to get state dinner invitation]
email ID: 2946
RE: Credit for HVF [demand for credit securing $200K to attend private dinner]
email ID: 17287
Re: $50,000 - Lawrence Benenson [desperation for money, contempt for donors]
email ID: 14700
Flag: AP: Eyeing Senate, Clinton directing money to 2016 battlegrounds [concern about story re Clinton campaign funds]
email ID: 7784
RE: Gloria Allred blast language for lawyers approval [thinking of ways to violate Hatch Act]
email ID: 20148
Re: FW: DNC LGBT Event [making fun of black woman’s name]
email ID: 17942
“I love you too. no homo.”
email ID: 425
Re: No shit [raising rumor that Sanders is atheist]
email ID: 11508
Flag: Bernie FR email on Politico / JFA story [DNC/Clinton vs Sanders campaign]
email ID: 6230
Video Request: msnbc right now [concern re MSNBC commentary on DNC-Clinton collusion]
email ID: 6107
“Fucking Joe claiming the system is rigged, party against him, we need to complain to their producer.”
email ID: 8806
Re: Chuck, this must stop [coordinating with Chuck Todd to counter Mika Brzezinski’s call for DNC chair to resign]
email ID: 8379
RE: Getting on same page [releasing story to cooperative reporter]
email ID: 12450
RE: Interview request [controlling Spanish-language news with “Preferred Bilinguals”]
email ID: 7102
“Off the Record Meeting with Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC”
email ID: 13762
Fwd: per agreement ... any thoughts appreciated [Politico writer Ken Vogel runs story by DNC before own editors]
email ID: 10808
Re: BuzzFeed and DNC connection [coordinating convention coverage]
email ID: 10933
Re: WaPo Party [secret (illegal) DNC party hosted by Washington Post]
email ID: 2699
Re: Washington Examiner delegate inquiry [DNC rejects request from “right wing rag”]
email ID: 5304
RE: FNS 4-24-16 [Clinton’s problems due to Sanders liberals, SOS email server, Clinton Foundation]
email ID: 8351
RE: need comms approval - craigslist job post [fake sexist ad for Trump business].
email ID: 12803
RE: For Your Review: Weekly Update [“LOT'S of Trump. For this week I think its ok, I don't want to touch what's happening on our side because its engendering negative feedback from Members …”]
email ID: 7586
RE: Action on DNC tomorrow (Immigration Raids) [conflicted messaging re White House actions]
email ID: 9736
Megyn Kelly is a bimbo [very conflicted DNC consultant]
email ID: 6087
Surrogate TPs from HFA [Clinton campaign providing DNC talking points]
email ID: 5254
Re: Alaska "Counter" Event [DNC spies in Sanders campaign]
email ID: 4776
email ID: 7793
RE: Bernie narrative [effort to blame Bernie for DNC conspiracy against him]
email ID: 14295
June 29, 2016
Letter from Bakari Sellers to Democratic National Committee, June 21, 2016
Excerpts (emphases added). Complete PDF available at: http://d1u7i8c4jvis7m.cloudfront.net/Bakari-Sellers-Letter-to-DNC-on-Israel-Platform-Statement.pdf
Every four years we come together as a collective and give our most thoughtful consideration to the ideals and values that define what it means to be a Democrat. In 2016, we do so at an especially critical time in our nation. Never before have the differences between the major parties been perceived to be so stark; so clearly a choice between hope and fear. ...
United States foreign policy in the Middle East is a critical issue our Party must address. Instability is mounting in that already volatile region. Repressive ideologies are on the rise. If the tide is to be reversed cooperation with our allies is imperative. We have no better ally than the state of Israel. ...
When it comes to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, our platforms and our candidates have always been clear. The 2012 platform rightly supported “peace between Israelis and Palestinians ... producing two states for two peoples,” while reiterating that there could be “no lasting peace unless Israel’s security concerns are met.” ... As the Secretary has said, “... America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts and as president, ... I would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution. including by the U.N. Security Council.” And, as the Party supports a negotiated peace settlement. it has long included, as it did in the 2012 Platform, a long established policy and reality, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.”
On Iran, ... we must do all we can to ensure Iran lives up to its obligations while confronting Iran’s malign activities in the region. As Secretary Clinton recently stated, “Tehran’s fingerprints are on every conflict across the Middle East from Syria to Lebanon to Yemen ...” She has been clear, that the U.S. “must also continue to enforce existing sanctions and impose additional sanctions as needed on Iran ... for their sponsorship of terrorism, illegal arms transfers, human rights violations and other illicit behaviors ...”
[A]nti-Semitism has been on the rise and it has taken a new form — the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. ...
It is for all the aforementioned reasons, best stated by Secretary Clinton herself, that I join the attached signatories [60 as yet unrevealed African-American politicians], all lifelong Democrats, in asking that unwavering support of the state of Israel be clearly articulated in the 2016 Democratic Party platform.
Again, thank you for your service and leadership. It is an inspiration to us all.
Sincerely,
Bakari Sellers
June 11, 2016
How to steal an election, Democratic Party edition
“Election Fraud Watch 2016” has been documenting the reports of “irregularities” throughout the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses.
This information is not about the schedule and various rules established by the Democratic National Committee seemingly meant to reduce the chances of an outsider gaining ground. It is about how even with those inherent advantages, Hillary Clinton had to cheat to fend off the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders.
February’s posts are dominated by Nevada, where Harry Reid instructed casino union bosses the night before the caucus to make sure their members were given time to vote for Hillary. And Nevada arises again during its state convention in May, where Bernie now had more delegates, so the Party decertified more than enough of them to give Hillary the edge and then, just to make sure, made their count while people were still in line to get in and ignored motions for a recount, increasingly shredding Robert’s rules of order throughout the day until the chair, Roberta Lange, closed the convention on her own, fled, and called on law enforcement to clear the hall.
March’s posts are dominated by Arizona.
April brings in reports about Massachusetts (where former President Bill Clinton literally blocked people from voting at two precincts in Boston), Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois.
May’s reports include Maryland and Kentucky and more about Illinois and Nevada.
And June’s posts add reports about Puerto Rico and California.
Common “problems”: severe reduction of polling places, missing and incorrect voter registrations, and incorrect recording of votes. In California, 30% of the votes (>2.5 million) have yet to be counted at all.
There are several articles about the pattern of discrepancy between the usually fairly accurate exit polls and the official results in several states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.
The writer also links to many other general reports, including:
- “Voters report suspicious irregularities in three different primary states” (April 26, by Nathan Wellman)
- “Election fraud mega edition” (May 7, by Nina Illingworth)
- “Hillary wins the lottery” (May 12, by Richard Charnin)
April 25, 2016
Why Bernie Sanders is the best bet for winning the Presidency
Remember that the Presidency is determined by winner-takes-all electors from each state and the District of Columbia. (Only Maine and Nebraska choose electors more proportionally.) (Also remember, regarding the results reported below, that the DNC and the Clinton machine cheated – superdelegate bullying, lying, voter suppression, limiting voting sites, disrupting voting, not counting votes, the drastic differences between exit polls and reported results, especially in districts with electronic voting machings – which got increasingly worse as Sanders’ effort to overwhelm the odds with honesty and turnout continued to succeed.)
In the 10 “blue” states that have voted so far, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 60–40. All 5 states in tomorrow’s primary are “blue”. [Update: With Clinton winning 4 of those 5 states, Sanders’ average is now 55%–45%.] The remaining “blue” states are Oregon (May 17 [update: still 55%–45%]) and California and New Jersey. The District of Columbia, also “blue”, votes on June 14 (update, July 7: 52%–48%).
In the 2 “light blue” states (where the Republican presidential candidate won 1 of the last 4 elections) that have voted so far, Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has won the votes by an average of 56–44. Adding them to the above, Sanders has won 59%–42% (pardon the rounding errors) of the votes [update: 55%–45%]. The only “light blue” state yet to vote is New Mexico (June 7 [update: 52%–48%]).
In the 6 “purple” states (which went for the Republican and Democrat twice each) that have voted so far, Clinton has won the votes by an average of 57–41. Adding them to the above, Sanders has still won an average of 53%–46% of each state’s votes [update: 50%–50%].
Only 1 of the 2 “light red” states (where the Republican candidate won 3 of the last 4 elections) has voted so far, North Carolina, where Clinton won the votes 55%–41%. Adding it to the above, Sanders has still won the votes in each state by an average of 51–48. The “light red” state yet to vote is Indiana (May 3). [Update: With Sanders winning Indiana 53%–48%, he has still won the votes in all of the above states by an average of 51–48 (update: 49%–50%).]
In the “red” states, Clinton has won the votes in each so far by an average of only 52–46 [update, May 11: 51–46]. Taking out the Dixie (former Confederacy) states, Sanders has won an average of 62%–36% of each “red” state’s votes [update, May 11: 61%–36%; June 7: 58%–38%], suggesting the possibility of a nascent “prairie populism” that could give Democrats a chance to win some of those states. All of the Dixie states have voted, and the “red” ones — the only block where Clinton has been consistently strong, and the source of her delegate lead — are very unlikely to go “blue”. The remaining “red” states are West Virginia (May 10 [update: Sanders won 51%–35% (local candidate Paul Farrell got 9%)]), Kentucky (May 17 [update: 46%–47%), and Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota (June 7 [update: 51%–45%, 64%–26%, and 49%–51%, respectively).
At the Democratic Party Convention (July 25–28), 2,384 delegates are required for nomination as the party’s candidate. With 715 “super” delegates available, who are not bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses, a minimum of 1,669 “pledged” delegates (those assigned by the results of the primaries and caucuses) is needed to be a viable candidate for the nomination. Sanders crossed that threshold on June 7.
Unfortunately, not just for the Party but more importantly for the country as a whole, the Democratic establishment (ie, those superdelegates), long in the thrall of the Reaganite DLC, would probably rather lose than turn the Party over to a progressive populist who might actually steer the country into a better direction than they have done.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016#Schedule_and_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/media/File:Red_state,_blue_state.svg
