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Billy_TParticipantMedicare for all definitely covers catastrophic. If Pelosi said that, she should be ashamed of herself. And Maher is an idiot for repeating it.
Sanders actually makes Medicare waaaaay better. His plan all but eliminates out of pocket costs, which Medicare currently has, because lobbyists managed to privatize it to some degree. Sanders gets rid of the privatization.
The host makes the point I’ve been trying to make with Dems for a long, long time. The GOP wins elections with extremist positions that the country hates. Its agenda is never “popular.” The nation is never “with” its agenda. But it wins elections anyway. Primarily, because it’s excellent at sales, marketing and fearmongering. It’s excellent at stirring up the lizard brain in Americans.
Logically, if the GOP can win elections with a very UNpopular agenda, the Dems don’t need to constantly rush to the center or further right. They actually have popular policies they could run on if they chose to, and win handily, if they wanted to. And that includes the stuff pushed by the Squad, whom I love.
Yeah. Maher’s lost.
Billy_TParticipantTrump handed them the impeachment issue on a silver platter, and they’re screwing it up already. .
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Well we disagree on this one, comrad. The country is divided. I promise you, at least half the electorate thinks this is all bullshit. Just Dems playing politics. Rightly or wrongly those are the facts we have to deal with. On top of that we have a Rep-Senate that will not vote to impeach Trump, so any proceeding is going to fail. And the American people will get very tired of the whole thing. They will want to decide who is the next Prez, themselves. They wont want the Dem-politicians deciding things.
It just seems to me you are looking at this like a Lawyer. You are arguing ‘law’ and ‘rules’ end such.
See, I look at more like its…oh… Lord of the Flies…or Animal Farm 🙂
We both agree Trump is a vile, corrupt, dangerous, unqualified, narcissistic, lying, biosphere-killing piece of shit. But…my mom loves him. As does about half the electorate. Amerika.
w
vIronic, aint it? You’re the lawyer!!
;>)
In my own defense, I’m actually thinking of this in terms of morals and ethics. To be honest, “laws” are secondary to me. In fact, if Trump has shown us anything, he’s shown that our laws are far too vague about things we never thought would come up. Same with “norms and traditions.” He’s shown us that when those are ignored, there isn’t much else holding things together.
Our political system is a teetering, precarious house of cards in many ways. And, my bugaboo is that capitalism has corrupted it to the point where it’s pretty close to falling down — perhaps forever. Trump is giving it a push, and he seems to like doing it.
Billy_TParticipantSorry for three in a row posts . . .
Anyway, again, I’m not reasonable, so . . . I think Gabbard is absolutely wrong when she says most people who read the White House summary won’t see it as a big deal. To me, I honestly can’t fathom someone reading that and NOT seeing it as a smoking gun, quid pro quo, lawless, corrupt display.
True, the stakes aren’t as big as lying us into a war, like Bush did. Not even close. Obviously. But it’s still a blatant attempt at extortion, by a sitting president, using tax dollars dollars as the bait. It’s still in the service of Trump’s reelection effort . . . . and it includes the very real possibility that the Ukrainian president would invent dirt, and invent a DNC server, to support Trump’s crackpot conspiracy theories about where they actually ended up.
Something I think the media are missing: This isn’t just about Trump asking the Ukraine for actually existing material on the Bidens. This is open season for them to manufacture it. If anyone thinks Trump is above that, they’re . . . well, sadly naive.
Rams 99
Tampa Bay 1;>)
Billy_TParticipantAlso, quick note on Hunter Biden. I don’t see the Dems trying to protect him. That hasn’t been their focus. And he doesn’t need any protection. Yes, it looks bad when the sons and daughters of the rich get good jobs. But that’s the nature of capitalism, and that’s the American Dream, really. As long as we have the former, we’re gonna have a virtual aristocracy. It comes with the mechanics of the system itself.
Speaking of hypocrisy, Trump making a huge deal about Biden’s son, when he was given 400 million dollars by his father, and he hired his own kids to work on the public dime?
At least Hunter Biden was being paid by a private company in the Ukraine. That didn’t come from American taxpayers, etc.
Billy_TParticipantAlso, I watched part of the hearing this morning, and the Dems were pissing me off. I was thinking, they’re botching a major gift. Trump handed them the impeachment issue on a silver platter, and they’re screwing it up already.
How? Most everyone who asked Maguire questions concentrated on process. They seemed most upset that he had broken the statute by not sending the whistleblower report to Congress right away. And while they’re correct about this — Maguire should have done so — it was stupid, IMO, to make him the focus and not Trump. They should have read straight from the White House’s summary, over and over again, and from the whistleblower’s letter, and that would have been damning. Instead, it came across, to me, at least, that they were more upset by his screwing with the process than with Trump’s obvious abuse of power and skulduggery.
(Admittedly, the whistleblower stuff was released minutes before the hearing started, so they didn’t exactly have a lot of time to deal with it. But, still . . .)
I hope they do better in the future.
Billy_TParticipantWell, of course, I’m not reasonable, but I disagree with most of her take.
;>)
First off, Trump put 400 million dollars on hold, secretly, without a stated rationale, that was already appropriated by Congress for the Ukraine. He pursues the newly elected president, to get him to invent dirt on the Bidens. On the rough summary of the phone call in question, provided by the White House — which means it’s as good as it’s going to get for them — he asks for a favor, after Zelensky talks about necessary military help. He says he needs him to talk to his personal lawyer, Giuliani, and his AG, Barr, to go after the Bidens. Quid, meet quo.
The Whistleblower’s report, backed up by the IG — a Trump appointee — says Trump administration personnel moved the word for word, electronic transcript of the call, secretly, to a special server reserved for top secret, national security issues, which is evidence of their consciousness of guilt. No one would have found out about any of this if not for the whistleblower. Oh, and he says this has been done many times when it comes to Trump’s phone calls.
Yes, it’s impeachable, and yes, it’s a smoking gun. You can’t use the office of the presidency, and taxpayer monies, to try to take down your political opponents, especially by way of foreign nationals.
As for her comment about Bush and the lack of impeachment. I agree with her take there, absolutely. The things that presidents should be impeached on — coups, torture, environmental destruction, kids in cages, mass incarceration, etc. etc. . . . the US has no history of taking that step, and we should. But that doesn’t mean that Trump’s action in this case falls short of the needed threshold. And to me, if he goes down for this, it will be a stand-in for the lack of action on bigger crimes.
Al Capone was sent to jail for tax evasion, not murder, extortion, torture, etc. etc. In the larger scheme of things, it served the country well.
Billy_TParticipantThis is kind of interesting, and not very Pelosi-like:
Excerpt:
Trump tried to negotiate with Pelosi on the whistleblower complaint after she announced an impeachment inquiry. Pelosi told him to take a hike.
President Donald Trump reportedly reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to negotiate about releasing a whistleblower complaint after she announced an impeachment inquiry into him on Tuesday.
Trump told the California Democrat he’d like to “figure this out,” NBC News’ Heidi Przybyla reported: “Hey, can we do something about this whistleblower complaint, can we work something out?”
Pelosi apparently swatted him down with a curt response: “Tell your people to obey the law.”
Billy_TParticipantIt was. I agree with the “it’s culture, not policy or ideology.” Shouldn’t be that way at all. But I think that’s how Americans vote.
First off, the vast majority of people who do vote — and our turnout rates are abysmal — choose their team early in their adult lives and stay with them, through thick or thin. Team D or Team R. Then you have a much, much smaller group that can be persuaded one way or another . . . and that group is mostly impacted by culture signalling, but some do think in terms of policy.
Lastly, you have a group of no-voters who could be persuaded by great policies and an inspiring vision, but neither party risks those, typically. Instead, they keep things dumbed down and lizard-brained. The Dems, at times, will trot out a wonky candidate, without the vision thing, or any charisma, and they inevitably lose to the usual scare tactics of the GOP. I may be forgetting a candidate here or there, but I think RFK was the last Dem who hit the trifecta: policies, vision and charisma. I have no doubt that if he hadn’t been shot, he would have won the presidency.
Warren? She’s the best of the bunch after Sanders, IMO — relative to the other candidates. The DNC will do everything it can to stop Bernie, so if they hitch their wagon to Warren, it will at least be an improvement over the usual centrist. But I differ from Ball in this. I think she’ll defeat Trump, unless the Dems botch the Impeachment hearings. Counter to the conventional wisdom, impeachment didn’t hurt the GOP last time. People forget that they won the next election and held Congress for most of the next eight years.
If that was the “price” paid for impeaching Clinton, I think any party would take that.
Billy_TParticipantAfter the Senate voted unanimously to release the Whistleblower report, it looks like the White House changed its mind a bit. The transcript of the call is out now.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript/index.html
It’s beyond damning. It’s quite clearly a quid pro quo ask for help inventing dirt on Trump’s political opponent. And Barr is a part of it too. Giuliani and Barr.
Also, today, we learned that the Intel IG — a Trump appointee — lodged a criminal complaint that the DoJ stuffed. Conflict of interest, anyone? Barr is named as a part of the ask in the Trump phone call, and he gets to decide if the complaint goes forward?
Also of note: It looks like the new Ukrainian president was very willing to help Trump. If this call had remained secret — and it would have without the whistleblower — I’m betting he would have helped Trump invent dirt on Biden. Which leads to this question: How many other times has Trump done this? How many other nations are involved in his machinations?
Billy_TParticipantI’m pretty sure that book was fiction for the story itself. I tried to find it too.
Your take is interesting, and I agree with a lot of it. I think Powers should have trimmed the book a bit, to borrow some of his own metaphors. Lopped off a branch or two. I would have gotten rid of the couple introduced a bit later in the story, for instance. Had to jog my memory via wikipedia, but I think it was Dorothy and Ray. To me, they were the least integrated into the story, the least “organic.” I was also just so so about the computer whiz kid.
Arboretums. We have a pretty nice one in a nearby town, fairly new, and I like to go there to hike, think, than find one of its wooden benches to read a bit. Might do so today. But nothing compares to the Blue Ridge for me. It’s a longer drive, but the views are stunning and nature is the star all on its own, with nothing to prove. No cages. We’re the guests, etc.
Billy_TParticipantThis was also a gendered critique in many cases. Novels were considered fluff for women, that stuffed their heads with (supposed) nonsense. Which was likely a big factor in women writers sometimes taking male pseudonyms when they tried to publish. Women writing fluff for women . . . was adding insult to injury, in the minds of the conservative establishment, including the pedant class, which was pretty stuffy itself.
Trying to boil a complex thing down into soundbite form . . . It really wasn’t until the latter half of the 19th century — at least in the English speaking world — that these attitudes began to change. In cultures with a longer history of the novel, it happened much sooner than that.
Ironically, today, women dominate the field of the novel, and in my opinion — again, to generalize — produce the most great works. They innovate more. They go deeper. They take on social critique better, etc. Again, in general.
Billy_TParticipantDid you finish The Overstory, WV?
Powers uses that term, if memory serves, and talks about the same things.
He drew a great deal from Peter Wohlleben’s work, especially his The Hidden Life of Trees, which also uses the term. Worth a read. It’s short, too.
Billy_TParticipantGood points, Zooey and WV.
The sword of Damocles has hung over my head for nearly 17 years now. So the likelihood of me witnessing the changes we so desperately need . . . the kinds of changes that oh so brave Greta Thunberg talks about . . . isn’t all that great. But I do hope her generation sees it happen. And she and people like her do give me hope that will happen.
Btw, Pelosi apparently will be meeting with the Dem Caucus at 4pm today. The topic is Impeachment. The emerging narrative is that she will go forward with the inquiry stage, due to the recent Ukrainian incident. She may have no more wiggle room to protect Trump or the status quo.
And a sidebar about “better messaging”: I don’t think the Dems should lead with Trump blocking their oversight attempts. Congress is incredibly unpopular with America right now, and this can come across as whining and looks very weak. Better, IMO, to talk about Trump and the GOP hiding their actions from “the American people,” keeping what they do secret, behind closed doors, preventing Americans from knowing what those in power are doing with their tax dollars, etc. Make it about corruption in the dark, and how Americans deserve all of this to be out in the open.
Again, Congress is too unpopular for it to be about the horse race between the two parties.
Billy_TParticipantNo I don’t think it’s a psych thing.
And Gurley has never had animated body language etc.
I just think it’s harder to run with 3 inexperienced interior linemen.
I can see that view as well. At the very least, wouldn’t you say his body-language shows a bit of frustration? Either with himself or some external factors . . . both/and?
The O-line is a concern as well, as we discussed before. I think you’re right about Kromer and company thinking they didn’t need to go after FA help, and that their “redshirt” system would do just fine. Again, the sample size is too small to tell yet, but at the moment . . . I’d say he was wrong about that. I wish they could have kept Saffold, especially. Starting Saffold and Noteboom at guards would have been interesting, for instance. Allen may end up being an upgrade over Sully. We’ll see.
Billy_TParticipantAbout that additional sophistication. Basically, the US government has always been all about protecting, promoting, bailing out, supplementing business. More than any other nation on earth, in fact. Prior to the Keynesian era, industry and the super rich didn’t have to do much at all to get the government to help them. It was understood. It was abnormal for them not to help them. Consequently, they didn’t need lobbyists and think tanks and major marketing sprees to get the government to listen. That was assumed.
But the Keynesian era, the Great Depression and WWII put a lot of those assumptions in doubt . . . at least from the point of view of the financial elite. So they became aggressively proactive in their own interests, starting in the 1960s, roughly, built up new infrastructures for protection and expansion, sent wave after wave of lobbyists to DC — again, they hadn’t needed them in the past, etc.
Conservatives and the further right led the charge. The center-right and the center followed with their own lite version. People to the left of center tried to fight back, failed and are still failing.
Boiled down, the GOP is the party of aggressive “hard” neoliberalism. The Dems are the party of “soft” neoliberalism. Americans should be able to boot both these parties out of power, as they don’t represent us. At all. But between the two? If we can only choose one wing of the War/Money Party? The least destructive of the two is the Dem wing. But our choices should include a thousand options beyond both of those wings.
Billy_TParticipantTo me, the problem with “neoliberalism” usage is that it implies, or states directly, that this was something brand new on the scene, starting roughly in the early 70s. In reality, it was just a restoration of the previous regime, the one in effect before the Keynesian era. Sure, it was more sophisticated. Much more. And, yes, it added all kinds of “technocratic” methods and expertise, especially via an unprecedented onslaught of lobbyists, marketing, media.
But the big mistake “progressives” make when they use this term, is that they seem to be saying all was beautiful and wonderful and fair prior to neoliberalism’s rise, and that’s simply not true.
The Keynesian era was a brief pause of sorts, not some established norm for capitalism. And it happened due primarily to an unprecedented series of global events. And even it couldn’t have done the work of “democracy” without accepting a large group of “losers” as well . . . . Capitalism simply can’t operate without them. So, in the lower 48, it was minorities and women. In our colonies, it was everyone there but the 1%. Same thing via overseas labor in nations we didn’t control.
“Neoliberalism” was like the various restorations of monarchies in Europe, after brief “Republics.” It wasn’t new. And there’s a hard and a soft version. The two money parties represent each, respectively, at the moment.
Billy_TParticipantQuick thought or two, WV, on the WaPo:
I know you know this already . . . but it hasn’t been in the “liberal” range since Watergate. It’s pretty comfortable as the centrist paper of record. As in, center-right. And since they were oh so quick to hire several refugees from Dubya’s administration, I’m betting it will do the same for Trump’s, once he leaves town.
Also, like most of the MSM, when they go out of their way to find partisan righties, they tend to go after seriously aggressive partisan righties . . . like Hewitt, Thiessen and Gerson . . . though the latter has transformed himself into an anti-Trumper, as has Jennifer Rubin.
The MSM seems to virtually never find confident, aggressive voices left of center, preferring “measured” voices instead. And, as you know, they pretty much never hire to the left of liberal either. The only exception I can think of for the Post is Elizabeth Bruenig, whom I like. She’s married to Matt Bruenig, another lefty. By no means are they “far left.” But I’d say they’re left of liberal.
Billy_TParticipantYeah. It’s over. Capitalism is in Stage 4 cancer right now, and we are basically looking at palliative care. I’m kinda curious how these completely self-sufficient billionaire bunkers are going to work out, but I won’t be around to watch that part of the story.
Yeah, to beat a horse that’s been dead for a long, long time . . . I don’t see the problem as a matter of the type of capitalism we have in place at any given time. I see capitalism itself as the death-knell for the earth. At least as far as it being habitable for most of Nature and we humans. Its root motives are simply in direct opposition to sustainable life here . . . or, any possibility of half-way decent distribution of resources, etc.
Half of all wildlife gone in the last 40 years or so. Even birds down by 40%. Etc.
Thanks for the article by Naomi Klein, too, Zooey. She’s great. I wish she were American so she could run for the presidency. If memory serves, she’s Canadian, unfortunately.
Billy_TParticipantI’m rambling, darkly. Again 🙂
None of this means I believe in ‘apathy’ or silence or not-bashing-on-relentlessly. It just means i believe in bashing-on-relentlessly with no hope. Itz a skill 🙂
Rams 99
Browns 1w
vAt least you can find humor in that darkness. Rams 99? You’re such a homer. I can see 77 or 84. But 99!!
;>)
Billy_TParticipantWhitworth and Hav haven’t been doing great these last 2 games.
So. This game is a challenge.
Yes. I am the first to say that.
Greedy fan, speaking: I wanted the Rams to sign at least one really good FA lineman before this year. Preferably two. They probably tried really hard to do so . . . but ended up relying on rooks and second-year guys for the changeover. Easy for me to say, but I think they needed to try harder.
Whit/Age and Havenstein/speed rushers . . . Even their vet starters worry me a bit. I realize the cap/draft positioning makes it virtually impossible for any team to be loaded across the board . . . especially teams that draft late. But I’m not so sure they couldn’t have done a better job with the O-line in the offseason, despite those obstacles.
Oh, well. We’re gonna find out soon. As you say, this game really will be a test. Cleveland has a very good D-line, and Garrett is already playing at Pro Bowl level. Five sacks in two games this year, and 13.5 last year.
It should be an excellent game overall. Looking forward to it.
Billy_TParticipantbrooks:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Brooks
6’3″ 258 Lbs. He’d be kindof a tweener in today’s game.
Anyway, what that article left out was his acting ability. Much like Jim Brown, and unlike Chris Massey, the man could act:
“He made a cameo appearance as a substitute teacher in the ABC sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter”.
w
vDo you remember The Undefeated? Gabe and Merlin were in it. John Wayne was the lead. I think it came out in 1969, the same year Gabriel won the MVP. Loved that movie as a kid. It holds up less well when you see it as an adult, but it’s still enjoyable as nostalgia, etc.
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I remember it. Gabe was no Fred Dryer.
w
vYes, Dryer, the Olivier of his generation!!
I remembered him being pretty funny on Cheers, but didn’t know he was under consideration for the part of Same Malone at one time (until just now):
Billy_TParticipantAnd another clean up on aisle 21, just in case:
I love dialogue about political matters, especially with my fellow lefties. In no way do I advocate holding back on that, or “being careful what we say.” Quite the contrary. I say let it all out, etc. In fact, personally, just speaking for myself, I’d rather discuss what the people here think about things, in their own words, than the stuff in the media . . . though it’s often useful to include that in the mix.
And even with the folks who have the megaphones, I don’t want them to curtail their views either, or try to shape them according to their potential effects, necessarily. In fact, that’s part of my own critique of some of their pleas. That their criticism of public discussions about Russiagate, for instance, was largely based on their own predictions of dire consequences, should we continue to debate the issue.
In short, I haven’t expressed myself very well on this topic. Sorry.
:>(
I guess what I’m trying to see is this: We need well-informed conversation about the issues now more than ever, and that conversation should be as broad and deep as possible. There are all kinds of ways to truncate this, flatten it, drive it into little pens like sheep. We should do our best to avoid this, and push others to avoid this as well, when possible.
Rams 31, Browns 20.
Billy_TParticipantOn the Ukraine. I know next to nothing about it. But what I do know is I don’t know what to believe about that country. So many conflicting reports, and that definitely helps Trump and company stir up the mud.
Here’s a recent Op Ed by a Ukrainian (Serhiy Leshchenko) under attack from Trump, trying to set the record straight:
And a New Yorker piece about Hunter Biden and his father:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/will-hunter-biden-jeopardize-his-fathers-campaign
The latter author was just on the Teebee trying to explain his more recent findings. That article apparently isn’t up on the New Yorker website yet. I posted an earlier report.
Trying to boil this down: The reporter, Adam Entous, points out the obvious error of Hunter Biden taking a job with a Ukrainian company while his father was VP and dealing with that nation, often directly. But he finds no evidence of malpractice by the Obama administration. In fact, he says they actually went after Hunter Biden’s company, and that Joe Biden pushed to fire the guy who was protecting the oligarch/owner of said company . . . which led to replacing him with someone who pursued the investigation instead. The reporter basically said they did the opposite of the Trump/Giuliani charge.
Anyway . . . to me, none of the above changes the fact that Biden is a terrible candidate, and the Dems would be foolish to nominate him. Another centrist, corporatist Dem, with some dicey baggage to boot, including the Ukraine. He needs to drop out, in my view. Trump and Giuliani are wrong about what happened, no doubt, and using the power of the presidency to go after one’s political opponents like this is impeachable and removable. But Biden should drop out regardless . . .
Billy_TParticipantThis frustrates me as well: That small group of public-figure lefties seems to ignore the fact that Trump has managed to…
===========================
What ‘lefties’ are you thinking of?
There’s very very few public figures I’d call ‘lefties,’ myself.
99-1
w
vThat may be a poor term to use. Probably is. I just want to distinguish between them and rank and file citizens without megaphones. I’m thinking of people who have access to electronic and print media, as writers, hosts and guests. Like Greenwald, Mate, Dore. To a far lesser degree, people like Wolff who rarely discuss the topic. Those who have the ability to shape the narrative for the public to some degree at least.
As for that 99 to 1. It all depends upon what their deeds are within that structure of legal corruption. What are their deeds? They’re obviously all not doing the same things, or doing the same amount of harm, or hurting the same people, etc. etc.
Trump and the Republicans, OTOH, are bought and paid for AND they do things like the recent rollback of 85 important regulations protecting the environment. They do things like gut protections for endangered species, and go out of their way to block California from reducing pollution in that state.
While we’re in this system — which I despise and want replaced (100%) — it actually does matter who holds power. Even between the two Money Parties, the two War parties, it matters. The Dems simply wouldn’t be eviscerating those environmental standards, or handing over two million acres of protected wilderness to the fossil fuel industry. Obama, for all his faults, set them aside, which was a great thing. They wouldn’t transfer funding from Puerto Rico to try to build a racist wall, and they wouldn’t turn pretty much every government department into its darkside opposite.
They’d still suck. They’d still do the bidding of their donors. They’d still put corporations and capitalism first. But they wouldn’t be nearly as destructive or corrupt as Trump and the Republicans. To me, it’s not close.
Until we actually grow up and create the kind of society Martin Hagglund talks about in his This Life, we’re going to have to work with the two-party/Money/War party system. And it matters to the earth and the masses who sits on top.
Billy_TParticipantThis frustrates me as well: That small group of public-figure lefties seems to ignore the fact that Trump has managed to pretty much purge all the people who investigated him . . . . most of whom were Republicans, btw . . . and some of whom were Trump’s own appointees. He’s either fired them, hounded them out of office, forced resignations, or they just quit after Trump’s endless tweets, etc. Comey, Sally Yates, McCabe, Rosenstein, Strzok and Page, etc. The list is lengthy and hard to keep up with. I think it’s safe to say that no president has ever been this successful in getting rid of threats to his presidency. It’s not close.
The above is the backdrop to this latest outrage, and it really makes me wonder: Why does that small group ignore all of this? Why do they seem to think it’s far more important to talk about Clinton, the Dems, the media overhyping Russiagate (perhaps)? Reading them, one gets the feeling they think Rachel Maddow is a bigger threat to the country than Trump and his white nationalist base.
Compare and contrast. On the one hand, we have a president known for his sleazy, criminal behavior, long before he was elected, which included serious connections with Russian oligarchs. He later hires well-known grifters like Manafort, fanatics like Eric Prince and Flynn, works with dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, and seemingly everyone he adds to his campaign staff has Russian ties and lied about them. He’s investigated. He surrounds himself with protection by his own DoJ, the entire Republican party protects him, Fox News protects him, as does the entire right-wing media complex, and he basically skates. On the other, we have some Dems who blamed Putin for Clinton’s loss, and media who covered an actually existing scandal.
Why on earth would any leftist lift one finger to help this crook, in any way, shape or form, directly or indirectly? And it’s not as if he’s some kind of champion for the poor, the oppressed, or for any leftist ideal. Quite the opposite. He’s made life significantly worse for the very people leftists traditionally champion.
I. Don’t. Get. It.
Billy_TParticipantTrump is an entirely new level of corrupt. He has moved the country from a state of polite corruption into a state of corruption in broad daylight. The really discouraging thing to me is that a significant minority of the country is perfectly okay with that. Not “Trump? Whatever.” There are 50-60 million people in this country who are “Trump? Fuck, yeah!”
That aside…if this whistle-blower thing is what it appears to be…Pelosi cannot sit on her hands any longer. This is treason. This isn’t just run of the mill malfeasance, obstruction, lying, embezzlement whatever. It’s flat out treason.
Good post, Zooey.
I agree with all of it. And, yes, Trump’s corruption is unique, as far as I’m concerned. He’s broken all previous records for hiring foxes to guard the henhouses, for instance. Pretty much every department of the government is headed now by people who once fought against those departments on behalf of corporate America . . . CEOs and lobbyists with direct conflicts of interest are now the norm . . . . the most worrisome to me being the EPA and the Interior, headed up now by fossil fuel guys. He’s cut out all the middle men, basically. It’s a direct line to the oligarchs now.
As far as the whistle blower thing. Apparently, this is about a “series” of events, not just one. Not just that one phone call to Ukraine. The event we’ve heard about is impeachable itself, and Trump compounds this by breaking the law when it comes to blocking disclosure to Congress.
As you say, if this goes nowhere . . . it’s game over.
Billy_TParticipantI’m re-reading 1984 by Orwell right now. About 90 pages to go. He talks a bit about the above.
Orwell was a unique cat, as they used to say. A life-long socialist, a diehard leftist, he spent most of his adult life being critical of “the left.” He said this was important, because he basically saw the right as unreachable. But his side of the aisle, actual leftists, could be pushed into living up to their principles.
Camus was similar in that vein.
In no way am I comparing myself to either writer, but I see the importance of pushing our own side to be true to its principles as well. Extremely important. In my view, Trump has screwed with the heads of a small group of public figure lefties, created a blind spot for them, and they’ve lost their way in the process. If for no other reason that this: Trump and his movement are hard right. Public figure lefties shouldn’t be in the business of even indirectly aiding and abetting the right.
Billy_TParticipant“Everyone and everything is corrupt. I don’t care what Trump does. It’s just more of the same old same old. In some ways, I even find him refreshing. We have bigger things to worry about.”
=================Hmmmm. Well, thats purty close to where I’m at.
I dont think ‘everything’ is corrupt, but I think at the National level the American Government is almost-totally-corrupt. Remember the Senate scorecard — 99-1.
99 to 1.
99 owned by big-money. 1 not.
Its a dark, unsettling, ugly, un-hopeful view. I admit that. Not a fun view to hold.
I would like to have a different view. But….
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vIt’s not easy to articulate this . . . but, to me, it’s not necessarily a problem for us to think that way, in our heart of hearts. Rank and file citizens. But I do see a major problem when that’s the public narrative. I think it encourages even worse behavior at the top. Much worse. They, in fact, count on the belief that the populace simply doesn’t care. Indifference and apathy are tools of statecraft, going back millennia.
And I also think everyone is kidding themselves if they think it can’t get worse. Much, much worse. As rotten as things are now, if the powers that be think we don’t give a shit, about anything, they’re going to tighten the screws in proportion to that sense of indifference and apathy.
Yes, folks should choose their battles wisely, and not sweat the small stuff. But the fastest way to an actual fascist society is open, obvious indifference, etc.
Just my take, of course.
Billy_TParticipantOn the other thread about Donald and the triple teaming. Apologies if this was already mentioned. That says bad things about the rest of the Rams’ D, in my view. If one guy is getting tripled, no excuse for others on the D not to get to the QB, and often.
Is it scheme? Or player production? Both? Regardless, the Rams need to figure out how to exploit that craziness. It’s like if a D tripled Jordan, someone else on the Bulls was going to be open for a dunk or a layup. That’s just numbers. Two guys to defend four? etc. etc.
Billy_TParticipantbrooks:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Brooks
6’3″ 258 Lbs. He’d be kindof a tweener in today’s game.
Anyway, what that article left out was his acting ability. Much like Jim Brown, and unlike Chris Massey, the man could act:
“He made a cameo appearance as a substitute teacher in the ABC sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter”.
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vDo you remember The Undefeated? Gabe and Merlin were in it. John Wayne was the lead. I think it came out in 1969, the same year Gabriel won the MVP. Loved that movie as a kid. It holds up less well when you see it as an adult, but it’s still enjoyable as nostalgia, etc.
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