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A rancid Democrat bites the dust

Thursday, September 13, 2018

One of the many positive effects of the Trump backlash is that it is cleansing the Democratic Party of some of its DINO elements, though I must pause to admit that the DCCC is still recruiting them. But stuff like thisis sort of satisfying.

In New Hampshire, of all places, a 27 year old refugee, Safiya Wazir, from Afghanistan has won a primary against an entrenched Democrat.

Wazir’s unlikely path to New Hampshire politics began when she was 6, and her family fled the Taliban in Afghanistan and moved to Uzbekistan, where she was taunted by classmates who called her “terrorist” and “Taliban kid.”

She lived in Uzbekistan until 2007, when she was 16 and moved with her parents to Concord. She graduated from Concord High School and became an American citizen in 2013. Three years later, after juggling jobs at Walmart and the campus library, she received a degree in business from NHTI, the local community college.

Married with two daughters, ages 5 and 2, and pregnant with a third child due in January, she said she never considered running for office until earlier this year, when a friend who works for the New Hampshire Children’s Trust suggested she consider challenging Patten

Her opponent, Dick Patten, represented a district which had a substantial refugee population. Naturally, you might think, he would do what he could to support those constituents and would express admiration, if nothing else, for Wazir’s ascent from those horrific beginnings. But you’d be wrong. He ran a hateful campaign against immigrants, with a giant heaping scoop of misogyny added.

“It used to be the Heights would support a Heights person,” said Patten, her opponent, a former police dispatcher first elected to the New Hampshire House in 2010. “But the Heights has changed, basically, from what it used to be. We have many immigrants in there now, and she’s from Afghanistan so she was treated like the princess.”

…

Patten accused immigrants of taking welfare benefits from longtime residents and questioned how Wazir can be a legislator and a mother.

“She’s got two kids with a third on the way,” Patten said. “How are you going to be in the State House with two kids and one on the way?”

Patten said he is now planning to support Wazir’s Republican opponent, Dennis Soucy, in the November election because Soucy and his wife “have been on the Heights for over 50 years.”

She crushed him, 329 to 143. Those couldn’t have been all immigrant votes, so maybe the people of the Heights are more human than Patten.

I’ll give the New Hampshire establishment Democrats credit. They don’t seem terribly upset that their long time compatriot has been shown the door:

Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said Wazir represented an important generational, gender, and ethnic shift in the district, and her voice would be particularly significant for the state’s growing refugee community, who can now turn to someone with “experiences and challenges like them.”

He called her win “very exciting news” and said she ran a “real campaign” while Patten “misunderstood the mood of the electorate this year and believed he could win without making a significant effort.”

If Trump manages to cleanse this sort of filth out of the Democratic Party, he will have accomplished some good in his lifetime.

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Only the Trump Administration could make Iran look good

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

I am not partial to theocracies, no matter the creed pushed by the state in question. So I have no use for Iran. But I’m a fair minded guy, and even I can see when the Iranians have right on their side. Consider this one of the Trump Administration’s most awesome feats. They have managed to make Iran look good, or at least in the right:

Amid the Trump administration’s almost weekly lash outs against Iran — mostly on its presence in its own region and on the nuclear agreement the United States is now violating — comes a particularly stunning demand: That Iran do more to protect U.S. interests in Iraq.

Here’s what’s going on:

On Friday, three mortar bombs landed inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, a fortified area where the U.S. embassy is located. There were no casualties.

That same day, Iran’s consulate in Basra (around 330 miles southeast of Baghdad), was attacked and torched by demonstrators, who have been protesting massive corruption and the cuts to their basic services there for weeks.

And on Saturday, the U.S. Consulate there was attacked by rockets. Again, no real damage, no casualties.

Totally ignoring the fact that Iran’s own consulate was destroyed — along with Iraqi government offices — the White House on Tuesday released a statement holding Iran accountable for an attack on the U.S. consulate office there:

Over the past few days, we have seen life-threatening attacks in Iraq, including on the United States consulate in Basra and against the American embassy compound in Baghdad. Iran did not act to stop these attacks by its proxies in Iraq, which it has supported with funding, training, and weapons.

Holding Tehran directly responsible for the attack, the statement promised retaliation. Iran, meanwhile, has resettled its consular staff at a new location in Basra, striking back at the White House by calling its statement, “shocking, provocative, and irresponsible.”

It somewhat strains belief that as part of some deep (Iranian) state conspiracy, the Iranians would have plotted to utterly destroy their own consulate as cover for a relatively harmless attack on an American consulate. Perhaps the Trumpers have been spoiled by Fox News. They seem to think that they can get away with any lie on the broader world stage because they can get away with any lie to the braid dead Americans who watch Fox.

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Friday Night Music: channeling Trump

Friday, September 7, 2018

This song has an odd history. This video is not, I’m sure, by the actual artist, whose name may be lost to history.

When it first came out, sometime in my high school years, it shot to the top of the Big D Swinging 60 survey. It was getting plenty of air time until, all of a sudden, they just stopped playing it, as if it had never been released. One suspects the realization dawned that it might be considered offensive to some.

It’s not great music, of course. It just occurred to me that with a few modifications to the lyrics it could easily pass for what must be going through the mind of a certain very stable genius right now.

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I didn’t do it

Friday, September 7, 2018

The following letter was provided to CTBlue anonymously by a highly placed person in the White House who removed it from the desk of the person currently holding the office of the President of the United States, before that person could read it

Most Highly Exalted Extremely Stable Genius:

In case you would prefer not to read this whole letter (I know you don’t like to concentrate for long periods) you might want to skip to the last paragraph.

I am writing to add my voice to the other ultra-loyal members of your staff who have assured you that they had nothing to do with the anonymous op-ed in the failing New York Times. It simply boggles my mind that anyone would think that you are a petulant, clueless ignoramous from whom the world must be protected. I can’t conceive that anyone would compare your intellect to that of a fifth or sixth grader. That’s so unfair to fifth graders! And by that, I mean, of course, that no fifth or sixth grader could be expected to have as sure a grasp of complicated issues as do you. It would take at least a seventh grader, for sure!

I also want to assure you that in no way do I think your mental illness has affected your ability to function as president. We all have our days when we can’t do anything but fly into twitter rages at our enemies. It’s only to be expected.

I know that things don’t look good for me and that the finger of suspicion has been pointed at me by multiple people, but the truth is, I only want to continue to serve our nation by advancing your agenda of packing the courts with corporate whores, gutting our health care system, screwing American workers, lowering taxes on the rich, imprisoning children, and destroying our environment, to name just a few! I am deeply grateful that you gave me the opportunity to help you achieve these objectives, so why would I go running to the New York Times and tell them that you’re an intellectual basket case, mentally unstable, totally ignorant, with the attention span of a three year old? No one needs to be told these things anyway, because it is so obvious that you are exactly the very stable genius you told us you were.

So, please ignore those whispering in your ear that I’m the one who wrote that piece. The last thing you want to do is give the failing New York Times the satisfaction of seeing the wrong person get fired just because it looks like he wrote that op-ed.

To summarize, I didn’t have a thing to do with that op-ed. Let Bart Simpson explain it in detail.

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A hypothesis on the sudden appearance of Democratic spines

Friday, September 7, 2018

I started blogging back in 2005. The site was hosted on an apple Mobile Me page, which (I checked just now) has disappeared into the internet ether, which means I can’t link to one of the first, if not the first, things I posted: a rant against “wuss Democrats”. I believe that from time to time I have repeated my complaints about such Democrats. In fact, I know I have.

So, it is somewhat gratifying to read about the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee fighting the good fight against Kavanaugh. It may be quixotic, but over time the windmills will come down. Maybe not this time, but at some point in the future. It is not lost on me that some of those making the most noise have presidential ambitions.

I would humbly submit that one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that the Democrats, or at least some of them, have started to grow spines is that they have become aware that their sinecures and/or aspirations for higher office are endangered by the restiveness of the base they have taken for granted for so long. Not only has corporate Democrat, and Speaker in waiting, Joe Crowley, been pushed aside, but Ayanna Pressley took out Michael Capuano in Massachusetts. The latter case is possibly the most interesting. On a policy level, there was not much to separate the two, but Pressley made the case that Capuano was simply not an aggressive enough advocate. It’s all well and good if a legislator votes the right way, but more is required these days. It wasn’t good behavior that led to the current Republican lock on all three branches of government.

Our own congressman here in the Second might learn a lesson from all this. Joe’s a great guy, but he’s in the Capuano mold. I get his tweets. I know he doesn’t actually send them, but they speak to his priorities and his perception of how he should function in his job. What I see is a stream of announcements about jobs being created here or job training there. All well and good, but the Republic is in mortal danger, and it would behoove him to get out in front of his base. We need more rock throwers, and those rocks should be thrown in many directions, including at the media. We should be accusing them of bias born of both siderism. As things stand now, we are defending the press while it continues to blame “both sides” for our current troubles.

Anyway, it’s good to see the first faint stirrings of fighting spirit among the Democrats. If we want more of that, and assuming we win the House and or the Senate, we have to think long and hard about replacing the geriatrics currently at the helm with new people oriented toward open warfare against the Republicans. It may be our only hope.

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Dems getting in shape to lose in 2020

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Okay, this post will assume a couple of things that are by no means a sure thing, considering we’re talking about the Democrats. Still, I’m assuming that even the Democrats can’t blow the election this year, since Trump is doing such a good job of handing the election to them.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to do their damndest to lose in 2020. Bear in mind that they have a hallowed tradition of losing big in years ending in zero, so they can enable Republican gerrymandering. But that’s just the start of it.

Check out this articlefor a rundown of Democratic priorities should they win the House. Nancy Pelosi will be the speaker yet again, and she will pursue, as per usual, Democratic priorities that will strike a chord with no voters anywhere. Why pursue policies with broad public support when you can artificially restrain yourself in the name of fiscal responsibility, even though you know you’re just legislating for show since the genius will veto everything anyway. Why give the public a glimpse of what they could get if they had a progressive government, when you can assure them that the Democrats are committed to giving you more of the same pallid policies if they regain the majority. This is especially discouraging:

Allen also points out that “Pelosi, despite opposition from some progressives, is committed to reviving the ‘pay-go’ (or pay as you go) rule she had during her previous run as speaker, requiring that new spending be paid for by budget cuts or revenue offsets. It’s almost as if she’s hoping to build up a surplus for the next Republican Congress to squander instead of doing anything useful for the American people. This is why more and more people are calling them Democraps instead of Democrats. Except for the hatred of Trump, this plan would keep people from bothering to even get out to vote in November.

So what happened to that “We’re the party that isn’t afraid to think big” thing? No transformative policy agenda here. What do progressives want that Pelosi and her team are ignoring? Obviously, Medicare-For-All, but also free state colleges and universities, spending real money to tackle the opioid crisis, passing a paid medical and family leave program, job guarantee, incentivizing veteran hiring, a massive investment in green infrastructure, moving towards 100% renewable energy, student loan debt relief. Not a hint of any of that in the Pelosi Plan. For one perspective, her plan is more conservative than the Republicans’. They both sing from the same hymnal but the GOP is always ready to abandon fiscal responsibility for their priorities– tax cuts, corporate subsidies, the military– while Democratic leadership is too scared to. Pelosi is sending a message that makes the Democratic Party sound like the GOP of the 1950’s– “We’re the party of responsible budgets. Elect us if you’re mad about Trump and his congressional enablers racking up trillion-dollar deficits with his gigantic tax cut.”

It was just a few weeks ago that Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) told NBC that “The instinct that some Democrats have, which is born out of a sense of responsibility as the ‘governing’ party, is to explain exactly how you’re going to pay for everything and how it all adds up. It puts you at a total disadvantage because you’re already constraining your priorities.” Schatz also said that “the GOP is skillful about never talking about paying for what they want and Dems are always trying to satisfy the 13 people who are doing Third Way work on K Street. It’s a game that disadvantages Democrats. I don’t want to play it anymore.”

It’s nice that Schatz doesn’t want to play that game, but it will be the only game in town if the Democrats win, and it’s the game most Democrats want to play. It boggles the mind that Democrats haven’t figured out the Republican balanced budget con, when it’s plain as day to everyone with an ounce of brains. This approach is a sure fire way to dampen turnout in 2020. Here’s hoping that the new blood being injected into the party will stage a coup and get rid of Pelosi and her geriatric entourage. But I’m not holding my breath.

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The Impeachment Issue

Monday, September 3, 2018

There’s been a lot of back and forth lately about whether Democrats should campaign on impeachment this fall. It’s something the media brings up quite a bit, implying as they do that Democrats can’t stop talking about it. Democratic consultants meanwhile, are urging Democrats to stay away from it and concentrate solely on economic issues. Of course, those same consultants would advise staying away from Medicare for All, because …. well, because despite the fact that about 70% of everybodyis for it, it is our bounden duty as Democrats to speak in numbing generalities that excite absolutely no one. If there is a more overpaid, underperforming group than Democratic consultants, I would like to know about it. On the other hand, of course, the DCCC will continue to recruit DINOs in their endless quest to get some of those NRA votes.

The correct approach seems fairly obvious. The fact is that the Trump Administration is already the most corrupt administration in American history. It has also done the most to increase inequality in this country, while destroying the environment, our health care system, voting rights, etc., in the process. The grounds for Trump’s impeachment and the political abuses of his administration are inextricably intertwined. It is his chronic criminality that got Trump involved with Russia in the first place. A candidate need not talk about impeachment explicitly; all he or she need do is connect the dots that proceed from his criminality, and that of his cabinet officersand assorted hangers on, to the economic situation in which we find ourselves. A candidate need not stop there, the recent travails of Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins are Exhibits A and B for the proposition that the Republican Party is rife with corruption. The Republicans are not just enabling Trump, they are enabling each other. 

Almost half the country wants Trump impeached, and that includes almost half of all independents. As the evidence mounts, those numbers will increase. You don’t have to use the word, but you can still deplore the criminality and corruption, and strike a chord with the voters that you need to turn out to win.

The question still remains: should the Democrats impeach Trump if they take over the House? I think they should, but only if they can agree on the correct messaging. They should concede in advance that the Republican Party is too corrupt to provide any votes in the Senate, no matter the nature of the evidence. In fact, they should repeatedly use that as evidence of the rank corruption and degeneracy of the Republican Party as a whole. They should gather the evidence, which will be massive, present it to the nation clearly and comprehensively, and impeach the man as a statement of principle, as a sort of “sense of the House”, and, at that point, sense of the nation. They should make it clear that’s what they’re doing, and they should time it so that it happens at the most opportune moment. The Senate Trial, properly conducted, would be great theater and could be a great propaganda exercise. The optimum result would be a fatally wounded, but still president, Very Stable Genius limping to the finish line in 2020, with Pence politically dead and the country ready to throw the bums out.

Do I think the Democrats have the capacity to pull this off? No, nor do they have the vision.

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More of this please

Monday, September 3, 2018

Everyone in Washington knows it. Indeed, every thinking person in the country knows it, but there is among many an unspoken conspiracy to avoid talking about the fact that the man who occupies the office of the president of the United States is seriously mentally ill. We don’t need no doctor to tell us this, but it can’t hurt to have one chime in and confirm it. So, it’s refreshing that Howard Dean, who is a doctor, is willing to state the obvious, who had this to say in the course of a discussion about Saint John McCain:

“I’ve long believed the president is mentally ill,” Dean replied, “and I believe narcissism overcomes his ability to know, A, what’s good for the country, and B, what’s good for him.”

“He’s not going to change after 70-odd years,” the former Vermont governor continued. “I don’t see this as just Washington elite. I see this as a matter of a statement of decency about the whole country. It’s not coincidence that Donald Trump is at the lowest percentage rating he’s ever been at, which is 36 percent.”

I wonder if it’s lost on Dean that Trump’s obvious mental illness goes so often unmentioned, while his own mental soundness was questioned repeatedly after the media stripped loud background noises and cheering from a video of him in order to make it look like he was screaming in a quiet room. 

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Friday Night Music

Friday, August 31, 2018

This is Labor Day Weekend. I can’t claim to know the details of exactly how it became a holiday, but it’s always been my impression that it had something to do with…you know…labor. Working people. Unions. Nowadays, of course, no one cares about working people, except the ones who go to diners in the Midwest and vote against their own interests to piss off the liberals. Anyway, I thought I’d try to find something about those working people, and this song seems somewhat appropriate, though I’m not so sure about the stay at home voter.

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A rant

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Inasmuch as this is my blog, and I have now reached the age at which I can officially be deemed a curmudgeon, I am going to vent my spleen regarding a certain matter that has little if anything to do with politics, but quite a lot about why certain corporations are having their clocks cleaned by Amazon, from whom I avoid purchasing anything if I possibly can.

Last week I decided to buy a dehumidifier. Lowe’s had none in stock and the salesman expressed no interest in getting one, so I went to Sears. They had three on display, but the one I wanted was not in stock. I bought it anyway, and was told it would be in the store today for me to pick up. Or, more exactly, it would probablybe in the store today, but I should certainly not count on that. Delivery to my home (about 10 miles from the store) since the delivery charge would be $69.00 more than the free that Amazon would charge me.

So, today I tried calling the local store at the number on my sales slip to see if the dehumidifier was in. I got a recorded voice who told me to tell her which department I wanted to talk to. She told me that if I wasn’t sure which department I could say “Department List”, but when I said that she insisted she couldn’t hear me. She hung up on me a couple of times before she finally heard me, and I got: yet another recorded voice, this time a male voice, who told me he could certainly help me. However, I told him I wanted to speak to a human being. He tried to reason with me, but I insisted, and finally I was switched to a human being. It quickly became clear that this human being had never been near Waterford. He eventually was able to find my order and tell me, with absolute certainty, that my purchase was scheduled to be in the store today. Not that it was in the store, but that it was scheduled to be there. That was the best he could do for me, but he was trying to be helpful, so he gave me the telephone number for my local Sears: the exact same number I had called in the first place. Needless to say, I declined to start the process all over. The curmudgeon in me asks: is it really too much to expect that I should be able to talk to a real human being at the local store? The thinking brain in me wonders how Sears expects to survive with customer service like that.

I often wish I could have been a fly on the wall at Sears board meetings in the early 1990s, where, I like to think, there was at least one person saying that Sears should take advantage of its nationwide scope and distribution system to sell things on the internet and deliver the next day. They could have done it, and had they, Amazon would be just a not so fond memory that Jeff Bezos would nurture as he asked for spare change somewhere in Seattle. But I’m sure that lonely voice in the boardroom was overruled by the majority, which insisted that, like digital photography, the internet was just an unimportant fad. Now Sears occupies a large and mostly empty (of people) space in our local mall, which itself is mostly empty. Sears will no doubt declare bankruptcy in the near future. Meanwhile Amazon continues to suck the life out of retail everywhere, and the loathsome Bezos (but then, Sears and Roebuck were probably loathsome too) is the world’s richest man.

I have to go now. As it turns out, I could have gotten a quicker answer to my question by taking a trip to my local Sears instead of calling them. So, off I go.

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