Coup D'etat 2017

There we were on that dreaded day.  The founding fathers would say, "We did everything possible to prevent the situation in which we find ourselves."  My take was that this was the worst constitutional crisis in our history.  However I realized that these would be dictators have got nothing on the Civil War. We survived that.

The grief and despair of the Great Depression hurt us (and the rest of the world) deeply and we survived.  The nightmare of the Nazis and Japanese, a two front war, was eventually overcome by two great men:  Churchill and Roosevelt and the sacrifices of our incredible armed forces who faced the monster maniacs and won a war that had to be won for the sake of freedom in the world.
Too bad it didn't last.

Many European and other modern countries carried on where Roosevelt left off in creating Social Democracies, guaranteeing a safety net, universal health care, and higher education for those who wanted it.  What happened and how did it happen that the USA went the route of military industrial complex, war profiteers, and crooked medicine show hawkers more interested in marketing than researching cures?  Don't forget crooked banksters and insurance companies. It seems that the USA and Russia have an inordinate number of billionaires.

As the weasel said, "You knew I was a weasel when you let me into the chicken house."

So here we are.  To be honest I am sick to death of the moaning and groaning and also the same lame jokes. Tell me something I don't know. I may not be able to do much, but I am marched in Montpelier, Vermont on January 21.  Bernie Sanders spoke and we all listened.

These rich bitches masquerade in the cloak of fear and racism to achieve their true goal:  more money.  Why is it we elected an unscrupulous billionaire businessman and expected anything else?
Why are people so gullible?  Tell them what they want to hear and they would vote for Putin for which they may have already done.

What to do, what to do, what to do?  Organize and elect progressives from school boards to national legislators.  Hear this progressives:  unite, strategize, and never give up.  WE'RE STILL HERE! Let's summon the fire in our belly and fight back as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard and other prominent progressives do.  Take back America in 2018 and 2020.  These idiots are leaving the door open in their arrogant hubris.  Nothing is forever if we are willing to stand up and fight, not only for ourselves but for the families they seek to destroy, the poor who will die without the safety
net of health insurance and the scapegoated ethnic groups.  My advice:  provide safely zones for those in the greatest peril. It is deplorable to do less.

I refuse to watch the lies and misrepresentations of the corporate news sources.  Were they not the same swindlers who gave Trump billions of dollars in free publicity while ignoring the real story: the remarkable and positive campaign of the unlikely Bernie Sanders.  Bernie promised to carry on where Roosevelt left off.  What was in that for the corporations and rich guys?  Nothing at all.

You pay's your money and you takes your chance.  This time there are no return or exchanges.
To quote a famous teacher, "Throw the money changers out."  We must seize the opportunity today, in 2018, 2020 and beyond.  We will live through this and emerge stronger.  Hopefully we will learn from history this time.

Fight on, Carry on, Bern on.  Our Revolution must do no less.

We Must Do What We Must Do

Did you hear President Obama's speech last night? 
Wow! 
We needed to hear that. 
Thank you my friend.

There are those who would crucify me, oops, gas chamber me for saying that.  We must do what we must do.

On a personal note I am getting a knee replacement at the end of the month.  That might make me the world's first bionic atheist Jew. We must do what we must do.

Keep Democracy alive.  Keep Hope alive. We must do what we must do.

Do you hear me President, I mean Senator Warren?

The Chinese May Save Our Bacon

When the war comes, Trump and Pence will make a deal with Putin as the beastly monster did with Stalin.  These operatives are smarter than Hitler and will not attack Russia.  They know that a coalition of the Muslim world and the neo soviets are not beatable without a nuclear winter resulting.  They want dominance, not self-destruction.  What would be the point?  These guys are evil and smart unlike the previous most hideous person on the poor pathetic planet.  His minions were too scared and at the same time too indoctrinated to see the certain destruction.  After all Berlin was leveled.  When he knew defeat was inevitable, he turned his forces to the purpose of destroying unthinkably a people he despised.  Our guys would fight on and if loss was unavoidable then and only then would they contemplate the nuclear option.  Putin will turn on them, the reverse of Hitler attacking Stalin, a move which ultimately lost his war.

I discussed this with a smart progressive friend.  His take was that the world would say the hell with you and stand by while the United States destroyed itself.  I disagree.

The nations of the world would not entertain the prospect of annihalation.  Before that brink is reached it will be economic devastation that would drive the sane powers to intervene.  After all, a GREAT DEPRESSION would bring them down too.  It is not possible to isolate yourself from yet the most powerful economy.  They need that economy to remain buoyant even with the corrupt money changers.

The Chinese have a powerful economy as well.  Their chief trading partner is still the USA.  We are joined at the hip and they know it.

Trump hates the Chinese as he does the Muslim world.  The Saudis will partner militarily with the new USA as they do with the current American incarnation.  We arm them and they provide the western world with oil.  The Russians have an abundance of this foul substance and do not need anybody, economically or militarily.  However, it is not in their interest to save anybody’s bacon.  The have enough of their own.

That is the set - up, what is the answer if any? When history is reviewed, we know there is no love lost between the Chinese and the Russians.  George Orwell understood this dynamic when he wrote 1984 at the cusp between the end of the second world war and the onset of the cold war.  The three way shifting of alliances defined the cold war.  At this time, we see the Chinese partnering with the west because it is their economic benefit to do so.  That dynamic will be written in stone if the USA sinks into isolation and tacit neutrality with Putin or his successor.  The Chinese will have to ally with the floundering former American friends.  These Western nations have bacon to save as well.

No, the Chinese are not responsible for the “myth of global warming.”  The destruction of the environment would take them down with the rest of the planet and they are all too aware of that “inconvenient truth.”  After all, are they not manufacturing solar panels as if their life depended on this technology?  It does and they know it.  The Russians would be a poison partner and they know this reality as well.  The remaining sane western powers are their only hope and they ours.

Would England, Canada, and Australia along with weaker yet stable well intentioned countries be enough?  I doubt it.  The West needs the Chinese as the Chinese needs the West.  The only hope of standing off the neo America is this coalition.   Even then the odds are uncertain.

There are also wild cards such as India and Pakistan who could initiate the dreaded final demise all by themselves.  What will they do?  Who knows.  Also, the Russians will have their hands full when the southern Muslim provinces seize the opportunity for autonomy.  Orwell's premise will be thwarted.  He did not count on Russian solitary survival strategy.  Only if certain American suicide ensues would they be willing to intervene.

Perhaps I am full of cheese.    I could be wrong and I hope so.  I am paranoid and perhaps somebody has to be. If I am even close to the dreadful premise we will all be dead.  I don’t desire that grim outcome and neither, I believe do you.  Watch, listen and act.  What else is there?  Vigilance could be our only way out.  We best take 2018 then 2020 seriously before it is too late.  The constitution is still here. Jefferson, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and Kennedy are still here.  We are still here. We are still here. We are still here.

A Joker in the Deck

There's a joker in poker I think

His eyeballs are blue and they’re pink

He never works hard

He’s the wild card

He sneers and he gives you a wink

Fifty-three and I think fifty-four

He’s never a stiff or a bore

He comes at no cost

Replacing the lost

Neglected rejected and sore

The joker is happy and sad

He’s useless and that makes him mad

A trickster deluxe

He steals your bucks

He knows he is kingly and bad

You don’t know his place or his way

He plays hide and seek every day

His stock and his trade

And where he was made

Are mysteries so dealers say

He’s naughty and haughty and cruel

An ace and an eight and a fool

His appetite grows

And so does his nose

He swims in a crazy whirlpool

He laughs and he cries out in pain

He’s timeless and sometimes insane

He’s short and he’s tall

He lives in us all

Deny him defy him in vain

  

Buyer's Remorse

What a Long Strange Trip Its Been.

Never in my lifetime or in the history of the United States in my opinion has there been such a weird election.  The contrast between Bernie and Chumpy is greater than day and night.  To me, in a celestial sense it is like a bright and beautiful nebula and sucking black hole:  one compassionate and hopeful and the other a mean greedy gross ghoulish foolish dangerous nightmare. Unfortunately this is happening and we are awake.

Sump pump will have trouble with the Republicans even more than the Democrats. Neither dumplestiltskin nor the wall street greedsters like to be told what to do or simply to go to hell. This Clash is anything but musical. It is more like the scratching of fingernails on a blackboard or the grinding of brakes with no pads.  The sound of crises is in the air and it hurts to even think about it.

I have tried to take the ostrich approach but you hear it and smell it through the sand.

Bernie would tell us to consider the fate of those of color, Muslims, Mexicans, the old, the young, women, men, and the unfortunate poor. The plight and number of the homeless will grow exponentially. Broken families, broken people and broken hearts will be the legacy of these malicious minions. They appear to be thriving at our ex pence.

I know a guy I used to call a friend.  Sure Joe is conservative and I am a proud progressive. We used to marvel and congratulate each other about our friendship despite our bipolar political relationship. The last time we spoke on the phone he would not let me speak.  He yelled at me like a banshee completely out of control. I tried to be respectful and entitle him to his opinion.  However, his tirade was replete with hatred, false information, and absolutely no reason or compromise.  His conservatism had morphed into a screaming maniac hate. Just like someone else we know, too terrible to consider. The ostrich is  diminished to death.  As painful as it is, I have to yank my head out of the comforting sand and confront the cold wind, ostracized in this blithering unreality. Nevertheless, I refuse to watch or listen to these heartless hangmen.  The sound will reach me anyway, an evil echo death rattle.

What these mad morons fail to realize is that when you consume the consumers their bubble economy will not survive. We all suffer. We may have buyer’s remorse sooner than you think. Even people like Joe will eventually feel the pain. When that hits home, how long will they revel in the gutter?  That is the horrible question.

Enough of this banal banter. We came within a hair of the exact opposite with the clean, honest, optimistic compassion of Bernie Sanders. Those who could see could “Feel the Bern.”  Our hearts sank as the political parties committed suicide and tried to take us down with them. We felt hope slipping away. Even the demon Democrat machine rejected the best shot of a Great America since Franklin Roosevelt declared the Economic Bill of Rights. He was a rich man helping the poor. Bernie has been in the congress and senate for twenty- five years and he is not rich. We came so far without pacs, corporations and cash dispensing lobbyists. We all gave a little and it added up to a lot. We awakened the dream and lost anyway. Go figure. Bernie lit the candle and we cannot allow it to be snuffed out.  Who else can protect the unprotected? I wonder what will happen when buyer’s remorse haunts the foolish.  I hope the light at the end of the tunnel is not a raging locomotive.  We’ll see. 

Fire in the Belly

Hillary Clinton, the anointed one, in the public eye since 1992, First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State was the least effective candidate.  Why?

Bernie Sanders never saw a podium he didn’t like.  Whether speaking to two or twenty thousand people he stayed true and positive:  The billionaires are denying the people a decent life.  A life of hope and promise.  He suggested a living wage, affordable college, universal accessible health care, a fair and compassionate society where hope and opportunity flourished. He made us aware that we could prosper in a nation of well fed and housed educated people.  He ranted and raved honestly and always stayed on message.  He implored people to “Feel the Bern."  He endorsed the political revolution and let us know with certainty that it would take millions of people working their beliefs to create change. This was not a cult of personality.  He stood for principals and ran a clean campaign.  He had fire in the belly.

Donald Trump has an ego as big as his self-proclaimed financial empire.  He ran a negative, racist campaign and appealed to angry hateful people. Everyone’s problems were the fault of a bloated ineffective government according to his version of just ass. He neglected to address the role of rich guys like himself who righteously kill opportunity for the sake of more money. The motivations were not altogether money. Poor discouraged people are suppressed and downtrodden. It is hard to find the the strength to fight when the battle is to survive with no home and inadequate food. He never missed an opportunity to tell us that he was smart. Intelligent people do not need to proclaim it. We can tell.  He preyed on the vulnerable and mocked the injured. He scapegoated people of ethnicity that he did not approve.  He stoked the flames of those who felt bypassed by the billionaire bastard's economic suppression. He incited, derided and recited his brand of invective.  He yelled and screamed. He had fire in the belly.

Hillary was a lukewarm Trump. She pretended to care and we saw through the lies.  She failed to campaign enough.  She was immersed in her inevitability.  Look up hubris in the dictionary and you will see a faded picture of Hillary.  She believed in herself but not in the people.  She limped along believing notoriety alone was enough.  She expected to win and avoided the possibility of loss.  She had no fire in the belly.

I’d like to be funny but laughter eludes me tonight. Perhaps I am tired of the futility of fanning the smoldering embers.

Progressives listen:  We need more people than Bernie alone to wake up the masses.  There must be fire in our bellies.  If there is not, we will forever live the dictates of a megalomaniac or just plain maniac.  We need a corps of believers in a better life.  We need a hotter flame in more bellies.  Persecution will not last forever.  As the hat says, “We’re still here!”  We need fire on the mountain and in the belly.

Hairy Plotter

Hairy Plotter

He who’s name must not be spoken:

Chump, lump, bump, stump, slump, sump pump, rump, dump, hump, clump, frump, jump plump grump.  Thump goes the weasel.

Oh hell, Voldemort it is; or as my wife likes to say:  Trumpelstiltskin the evil.

And let us not forget Shillary, the only Democrat in the world who could lose to the gruesome game show ghost.

She rose from the primordial ooze to break the grass ceiling.

Love trumps hate and laughter beats tears.  

Better to Bern than to cry.