Well here we are again... Why is it every four years Americans lose their shit and
charge to the polls to elect complete nut cases to our highest public
offices? Unqualified people who know
nothing of policy, foreign relations, but are very good at assigning blame and
telling us what the other side is doing wrong?
Are the Dems doing things “wrong”? Of course they are – but nothing on the
scale of a) Invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a move that effectively destabilized the
middle east for generations to come and may lead to the final all-incinerating
conflict that WWIII promises to be or b) deregulation of banks that lead to the
fiscal crash of 2007; a crisis from which the entire world is still struggling
to survive. Just a reminder these two
cataclysmic events are what happened the last time we threw the car keys to the
GOP and let them drive for eight years.
(Oh yeah – and never mind about 9/11!)
So now in 2016 people are rallying behind a petty,
tyrannical, sociopathic madman – a huckster whose single greatest appeal lies
in his push to blame all our problems on savage brown hordes allegedly flooding
our borders from the south… a scenario that simply is not borne out by
facts. What percentage of crimes in the US are
perpetrated by Syrian refugees or “illegals” from Mexico? Most immigrants don’t enter the country by
scooting across the border – there’s already a fence there now (a border fence
built by “W” Bush in 2006? Hello? http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-mexico-fence-idUSN1524259520100915
). Most of them they come through the
established entries with legally granted VISA’s to work or attend school in the
U.S. After their VISA’s expire many of
them don’t leave. Many of them do pay
into the system, however – which ostensibly helps strengthen the working class
in the US – while being unable to receive those benefits themselves.
How many of these people are rapists and
murderers? Not very many. The tendency of immigrants whose VISA status
is shaky is to not do anything to draw attention to themselves and this
includes NOT COMMITTING CRIMES. Even
more interesting is the fact that a lot of the anger about “illegals” is coming
from towns and cities all across the US that are mostly white and actually
don’t have a big problem with illegal aliens.
Where is the hysteria coming from?
http://mediamattersaction.org/reports/fearandloathing/online_version
So why is all this rhetoric about savage illegal immigrants
so popular? Well it beats hell out of
trying to solve the problems you really have, doesn’t it? We
could use better trade deals that’s true.
Is Trump the guy to renegotiate
them? The guy whose campaign gear is
“made in China”? Somehow I doubt it.
People – ordinarily rational, thinking people – are now
recoil from voting for Hillary because “she
lied”. About what exactly? She never ran a scam “university” that defrauded
potential students. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432010/trump-university-scam
She never used money from charitable donations to pay for a
portrait of herself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-retooled-his-charity-to-spend-other-peoples-money/2016/09/10/da8cce64-75df-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
And Hillary Clinton sure as hell was not responsible for the
bombing of the embassy in Benghazi although, inexplicably, this seems to be
what I’m expected to believe. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/10/30/is-hllary-clinton-a-liar-on-benghazi/
She also doesn’t invent (completely fictional) racially
charged events to diddle angry crowds.
Remember all the “Muslims” Trump insisted were celebrating in New Jersey
on 9/11? Then when no evidence was
found that this took place he actually defended his own lies by saying “Why
wouldn’t it have taken place?” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_us_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326
Trump denies saying things – after he says them - but wants
to take credit for the things he “never said” that were “right”. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/06/15/Trump-I-Never-Said-I-Was-Right
But in all the fog of lies from the Right about all the bad
things Hillary Clinton actually has NOT done is the important work she might be
able to do once elected.
Perhaps most important of all, Clinton has said she will appoint
a Supreme Court judge who would help overturn “Citizen’s United” – one of the
worst Supreme Court decisions since Dred Scott.
Dred Scott famously denied the human rights of African Americans and
lead to the Civil War and “Citizens” pretty much guaranteed that only wealthy “elites”,
friendly to corporate interests, could run for public office in the US. (Ever wonder why we wound up with such a lame
line-up for the election? Look no further.)
Money scraped together by
grassroots groups are chump change compared to the billions filling the coffers
of the super PACs – particularly those of GOP candidates. If your campaign isn't funded by some billionaire like Sheldon Adelson, chances are no one's ever heard of you.
Trump has dodged the subject of “Citizen’s United” by simply
stating he wants to nominate another justice like Scalia – one of the guys
responsible for “Citizen’s United”.
Indeed the decision itself was pushed through by a cabal of justices
appointed by Republican Presidents; Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Justices appointed by Bill Clinton and Barack
Obama wrote the dissenting opinions. How
much clearer could the choice be?
In the field where Trump is seen as the “fuck you” vote –
the vote for people tired of the establishment – nothing could be more
“establishment” than Trump himself; a rich man (spoiled son of another rich
man) who wants to keep the power in the US restricted to wealthy “elites” like
himself. (A real protest vote would be
for Jill Stein.)
Probably the worst failure of the Obama administration was
not to go after the big banks after the crash of ’07 – or regulate Wall
Street. The people who created legal
loopholes so mortgages could be sold for profit should never have been rewarded
with jobs and buyouts. Larry Summers
should have gone to jail instead of DC.
Disappointingly, Clinton has a lot of the same friends – but then so
does Trump. Does anyone really believe
Trump is interested in going after big banks?
In all his reckless hyperbolic attacks
on “nasty women” has he said anything about this?
Trump claims Hillary wants to “attack” the Second
Amendment. Really? Haven’t we been through this twice already
with Barack Obama? Did Barack Obama
ever take any kind of action to attack or undermine our right to bear
arms? (Free answer: NO!) But every time an election comes around the
NRA raises this same tired mantra – and Americans run out and buy more guns
(before it’s too late!) and maybe someone can try to regulate the ownership of
assault rifles – which is about the level of gun control we’re looking at and
what, after years of mass shootings, is exactly what we need. Does anyone need an assault rifle to hunt
deer? Sadly they’re really handy taking
down large numbers of people by lone gunmen.
Trump also isn’t interested in doing anything to whip the
healthcare industry into shape or improving on what Obama laid out. He just wants to “repeal” Obamacare. Then what?
“Obamacare” was a temporary solution to the healthcare crisis but a very
clever one in that it opened the door to Medicaid expansion (and then
Republican governors refused to accept the Medicaid money that their states
were entitled to – but that’s a whole other story). Obamacare also brought about some very
badly needed regulations on the out of control health insurance industry – pre-existing
conditions could no longer exclude you from coverage and women could not be
charged more for healthcare. But it
wasn’t enough of course. For all those
millions of people who can’t afford to pay for health insurance – and whom the
plans don’t want to insure anyway because they’re “too sick” and can’t afford
the big premiums – a public option would have been best. Now commercial managed plans complain that
insuring all these poor people will make them go out of business. So why block a public option that might be a
real option for these folks in the first place?
And then of course there’s Wikileaks (thanks so very much Julian
Assange for waiting until Bernie Sanders was out of the picture before you
started in on Clinton – good show!) disclosing private emails of John Podesta
which prove that (gasp) politicians sometimes change their minds on policy and
(double gasp) don’t always fill in the public on all their private thought
processes. Oh horrors! As
Clinton astutely pointed out in the second debate the movie “Lincoln” was less
a bio-pic than a focused study on the shell-games one of our greatest
Presidents played to get the 13th amendment passed and abolish
slavery in the US. If we had had
Wikileaks revelations about the motives of our officials back in 1865 – would
it have even happened?
And now the news is breaking – they have to look at
Clinton’s “damn emails” again because the FBI needs to proceed in the (gasp)
case against tweet happy Anthony Weiner; a former public official whose only
link to Clinton is that his wife, Huma Abedin has worked for many years as
Clinton’s aide.
Right now I want nothing more than anesthesia – Ether, Propofol,
Morphine, something, anything to put me under until November 8th
when I can finally vote. Nothing can
change my mind that Hillary Clinton, flawed as she may be, is the only rational
choice for the Presidency. This is not a
drill, folks. We need all hands on
deck! Trump is the most dangerous
“protest vote” to come down the pike yet.
It’s not “fuck you” as much as “fuck me” and “fuck my life”.
