Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Lock X Up.

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It’s full fledged campaign season again, folks – my very favorite time of every four year cycle … not. Elections are necessary but painful, essential but insufficient, and so on. I acknowledge all of that and will participate, as well as encourage others to do so, but god don’t they make it a pain in the ass? I don’t watch that much television, but I’m nevertheless being bombarded by ads for one candidate or the other. This week there was a Biden ad with a voiceover by Sam Elliott. (I was waiting for him to recommend a visit to Kinney Drugs. ) Then there’s the Trump ad that has Biden saying he’s going to raise taxes, cutting him off before he gets to the “on people making more than $400,000 a year” part. I guess when all else fails, Trump – like every other Republican – goes for pappy tax cut. Low hanging fruit.

Most of the GOP ads in my local Congressional district race (NY 22) are being pushed out either by the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee or third party, dark-money groups hoping for a return of my old high school classmate, Claudia Tenney, to the House of Representatives. Some of these ads are hilarious, calling out Rep. Anthony Brindisi, the incumbent, for not being a “centrist” as he claimed he would be. What’s particularly funny about that is the fact that Claudia is the farthest thing from a centrist that has ever represented this district, at least in living memory. She so closely clings to the fading shadow of Donald Trump that she (or, perhaps more likely, someone on her behalf) has distributed lawn signs that read “TRUMP / TENNEY”, as if she were running for Vice President. (Pro tip: she’s not.) A few of her own ads have shown up now that we’re in the closing weeks of the campaign, but they’re not all that memorable.

Of course, home-stretch Trump is worth ten Claudia Tenneys in terms of bombast and crazy-ass proclamations. As has been reported practically everywhere (on the basis of simple observation), the president is desperately trying to recreate the conditions of his 2016 electoral upset. The FBI probe into Hillary Clinton was a help, so he’s trying to get them to investigate Joe Biden. Actually, he’s calling on Bill Barr to arrest Joe Biden for crimes against the internet, I imagine, and has been leading his unprotected, non-socially distanced rally crowds in chants of “Lock Him Up” or “Lock Her Up”, which I assume is referencing VP candidate Kamala Harris, but which could also be Hillary, given the president’s and his followers’ obsession with the former Secretary of State. I’m not sure if what I hear rattling in Trump’s voice is COVID or extreme frustration at his attorney general for not following his autocratic directions. Either way, he’s riding the crazy train to election day, and we’re all in the passenger cars, chugging along right behind him all the way.

This can’t be over soon enough. Just don’t try to reach me on November 4 – I think one way or the other i’m going to be out for the count.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Handmaid’s tale.

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Probably the most amazing thing about the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process is the degree to which she and all of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee insist that there’s no underlying agenda behind her nomination, even though that agenda has been the most consistently central motivating force in GOP politics for the last four decades. That’s no exaggeration – this has been their core mission since the dawn of the Regan era. It’s been a relentless push over the course of forty years on the part of conservative politicians, political action groups, and the obscenely rich funders who back them, quietly and not so quietly. And yet they all sit in that Senate committee room and attempt to gaslight the American public, making stirring speeches about the roles of the coordinate branches of government and the crucial distinction between politics and civics, assuring us that they’re only interested in applying constitutional principles in a fair and measured way.

If you believe that, then you might be interested in this nice bridge I have for sale. Make no mistake: Barrett is an extremist, and a relatively young one at that – if she is confirmed, which seems more than likely, she will probably serve on that court for forty years or more. That means bloodcurdlingly reactionary decisions on a range of issues, from reproductive rights to same-sex marriage to the constitutionality of the ACA to the outcome of elections. Judge Barrett could not even acknowledge long settled statutory prohibitions on voter intimidation, nor her thoughts on the peaceful transfer of power following a national election. There are issues that she does have an opinion on; she has made that very clear in the form of open letters in publications, speeches, and other means. But we’re expected to believe that those opinions will not play a role in her jurisprudence. My. Smoking. Ass.

We’ve been here before, folks, right? Republican nominees being tight lipped about the very things that put them in front of that committee in the first place. We know that she was chosen by the Federalist Society and others, who pushed her forward for Trump, and our insane clown president of course signed off on the appointment. She has the votes … I’m certain that’s partly why Mitch McConnell is moving forward with this now. So why the hell not just say what you think, expound on the depredations of available abortion services (and birth control), and then flip everyone off? She should then do a little dance out of the room – when McConnell calls the vote, it will be all over. Sure, other things can happen …. but will they? The GOP has the power, and they will use it. It’s to the point where we’re placing a Taliban-like religious extremist on the court – one whose secret society group, People of Praise, had her referring to herself as a handmaid. Seriously, people? We can’t do better than this?

We’re facing a 6-3 Supreme Court, and we have to encourage leaders on the center-left to do the right things to counteract their antidemocratic powers. I’ll talk about some specifics on Strange Sound, so be sure to tune in.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Sick Mother.

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This week felt so much like insult upon injury. I sometimes think back four years and wonder if I would have believed then that times like these were even possible. This country is being ruled by a narcissistic proto-autocrat that doesn’t care how many people suffer as the result of his enormous selfishness. Because of his massive incompetence and carelessness, more than 210,000 people have died of COVID-19, including people within his own circle of acquaintance; he himself has caught the virus and spent several days in the hospital. And I’m sure the Fareed Zacharias of the world were expecting that he would emerge from that experience a newly sober and serious man, a president at last, ready to take this disaster seriously. They were, of course, grievously disappointed – Trump never changes, and like honey badger before him, he doesn’t give a fuck.

Not sure how Trump thinks people will react to him saying that COVID is nothing to be afraid of and that we shouldn’t let it “dominate us.” There are very few Americans who don’t know someone who’s been affected by this virus. It’s hard to imagine how I would feel if I had lost a family member to COVID and then had to listen to him bloviating in this way. Now he’s claiming that he is not only cured, but no longer infectious – that his therapies were, in fact, “cures” for COVID – this as he staggers around the White House, likely infecting everyone he comes into contact with … a super spreader POTUS. We’ve finally discovered his true super power (and you thought it was making cheeseburgers disappear).

A lot has been said about White House staffers and what a difficult spot this puts them in. Now, I have a great deal of sympathy for the domestic workers, the food service people, the support staff that keep that place running from day to day – they don’t deserve this. But the president’s senior staff; people who have chosen to work with this mad man, to develop and support his policies, to glom onto his celebrity in hopes of furthering their own careers – those people can cheerfully suck my ass. This is the dilemma that their president has bestowed upon all of us. Many of them, in their supreme arrogance, may have thought themselves immune or exempt from the dangers they exposed the rest of us to. Well, it turns out not to be the case. Trump’s irresponsibility and lack of concern for the health and safety of the American people apparently extends to his senior advisors as well. He’s like the gangster who keeps shooting his lieutenants in the middle of a heist. Hey folks … you fucked up. You trusted him.

The White House is literally a major node in the propagation of this disease locally as well as nationally. That’s all you need to know about this administration.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Joe’s Lunch.

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China ate Joe Biden’s lunch – that’s one of the many incoherent things Trump said during Tuesday night’s debate. The fact is, though, that Biden kind of ate his own lunch in Cleveland this past week, and it probably didn’t taste all that good. I don’t claim to be an expert on debates … and I don’t think anyone is an expert on whatever that Tuesday night clusterfuck was supposed to be … but Joe left a whole lot on the table in that exchange. Like most mainstream Democrats with their heads stuck in the “I’m not a liberal” nineties, he gave away the store to Trump on a number of points, particularly having to do with police conduct, health care, and so-called law and order.

So, okay, I’m not affiliated with the Biden/Harris campaign, but here are a few suggestions for the team on what Big Joe might say in response to some crazy shit coming from our president:

Health Care – At one point, Trump bragged about killing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. That was a great opportunity for Biden to point out exactly how the administration is trying to kill the whole bill in a case that will come before the Supreme Court right after the election. That’s when Joe should look at the camera and say, “Folks, Trump’s using that to get the Supreme Court to strike down all of Obamacare. He’s trying to cancel your health insurance and take away your protections for pre-existing conditions!”

COVID-19 – Trump was happily calling COVID the “China Virus”. Biden’s rejoinder (again, to the television audience) should be, “Look, folks. More than 200,000 people died while he was saying the virus would just go away, or that it was just a hoax. For that reason alone, it should always be referred to as the Trump Virus. He likes to put his name on things, so he should be fine with that!”

Extremism – Trump was accusing Biden of not being in favor of law and order, talking about how dangerous movements like ANTIFA are in his imagination. At that point, Biden should have talked about the posse of heavily armed right-wing thugs that took over the streets of Louisville, KY, in recent days, or the right-wing teen who killed two protesters in Kenosha, WI a few weeks ago. Joe should say something like, “How is it law and order when your followers start intimidating and killing people with semi-automatic weapons? Why do you defend killers and thugs?”

The Environment – As he often does, Trump claims to want “clean air and clean water.” There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, and Biden shouuld be loaded for bear on this. But he should also say to the audience, “Folks, this is how much he cares about clean air and clean water. He appointed a coal industry lobbyist to run the EPA. And as a result, [INSERT FACT HERE]”

Hey, Biden … dig in, man. No charge. (Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?) No, you don’t have to thank me. And there’s plenty more where that came from.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Old faithful.

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You know what’s really hilarious about American politics? It’s when news people, commentators, and even politicians themselves expect someone like Mitt Romney to act like someone who totally isn’t Mitt Romney – that is, someone who has an ounce of integrity or any impulse beyond self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. That was the spectacle this week, in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s not-wholly-unanticipated passing. Almost immediately the speculation started bubbling up through cable television and the internet …. what will Romney do? Will he stand up to Trump and McConnell? Will he insist on fairness and a single standard that applies to both major political parties? I mean, it’s a regular laugh riot. Sure … Mitt Romney is going to stand between the GOP and the fulfillment of one of its most cherished goals: a radical transformation of the judiciary from top to bottom. Really, people?

As someone who has spent a good deal of time online doing bad imitations of Romney, I have to say that he has done his best to conform with my distorted caricature of him as a cluelessly greedy maladroit who spouts almost as much nonsense as his president. Today Romney described America as a “center-right” country. I suppose from his perspective it is, as the tiny number of people who own and run America probably fit that description, and those are the only people he interacts with. A little harder to grasp was his claim that his liberal “friends” had grown used to the idea of having a liberal Supreme Court, but that that is “not in the stars.” Not sure what he’s getting at – the Court has been majority conservative for almost fifty years, since the Nixon era. No one on the left who’s under the age of seventy has ever had the opportunity to get used to the idea of a liberal SC. I’m starting to wonder if maybe Mitt doesn’t allow himself a little pull off of a snifter once in a long while.

A couple of days later, Romney put himself back into relatively good graces with the never-Trump squad by tweeting his disapproval of Trump’s comments about not committing to a peaceful transfer of power. Pretty low hanging fruit, that – Hey, everybody! Romney’s nominally against a coup d’etat, at least on Twitter! Give him a freaking medal!

Okay, well … now that I’ve ripped him a new asshole (no charge, Mitt – now you can shit over your help twice as much ), I should get to the larger point that I wanted to make. Simply, don’t watch Republicans for signs of integrity or commitment to institutional norms, etc. Let me see if I can put this simply for the credulous media that incessantly speculate about these things: Republicans only care about winning. That’s it. The country can go straight to hell – and right now, it most certainly is. They don’t give a flying fuck. If the price of continuing a Republican presidency is democracy itself, then apparently that’s fine with them. They are a death cult, yes, but just as bad, they are comfortable with the notion of authoritarianism and an end to any pretense of electoral accountability. Just the fact that the Trump campaign has spoken with GOP state legislators about subverting the will of the voters should be enough to convince anyone of that.

Make your plans, people. This could be the fight of our lives.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Fearmongering.

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There’s a passage in the Bob Woodward recordings of Donald Trump that I’ve no doubt you’ve heard about a million times by now; the one in which our president claims that his decision to downplay the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic was all about avoiding a panic. That’s right – Donald Trump would have you believe that he is trying to prevent mass hysteria, or at least that’s what it sounds like on this tape. Either that or he was worried about a panicked stock market. (Given his conviction that the stock market is the only economic indicator worth consulting, perhaps that’s more like it.) I think it was Chris Hayes who commented that Trump’s campaign slogan is panic. This is the guy that brought us MS13 living next door, rapists and murderers coming over the border, killer caravans heading north towards Laredo, antifa threatening the peace, Cory Booker threatening the suburbs, and so on. Really?

Probably the only thing really surprising about these Woodward recordings is how halfway normal the president sounds. Interesting how when there’s no television or live audience he starts to act almost human, even chummy. Listening to this, you start to see why Joe Scarborough and Mika were so enamored of him for a while prior to his presidential run. He was a T.V. star, after all, and totally in on the joke, right? Not right. In all honesty, it’s no surprise that Trump was aware of how deadly and contagious the novel Coronavirus is. We’ve long known that he was briefed on it, and it only made sense that he would be. I mean, the man has a glass head – it’s not hard to see what his motivations might lead him to. The virus was not his fault, right? So why should he have to pay a political price for it. Just pretend it’s not there …. that trick works with everything else.

Unfortunately for the Donald, viruses – much like facts – are stubborn things. They don’t yield to our hopes and desires. They aren’t scared away by a little off-hand blow-hardiness. You can see Trump getting as frustrated as a five-year-old over how this thing is unfolding, grasping for anything that will help him put the scourge behind him. As usual, he’s working overtime to change the subject and focus the public’s mind on anything other than COVID. Typically, for Trump, that means playing the fear card, warning of an attack on the suburbs by some dark army of his imagination. So he’s saying the quiet parts out loud again, which is how he started in politics and likely how he will end.

Despite what their own domestic intelligence agencies tell them, Trump and Barr continue to insist that “antifa” and Black Lives Matter are somehow potent threats against the republic, NOT heavily armed, white militias. That’s the narrative they hope will carry them to victory this fall. Let’s prove them wrong.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Slow progress.

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The election is less than sixty days away, and already I’m sick of thinking about it. More than likely, that’s the predictable result of a news media that is hyper-focused on elections to the point where they literally begin reporting on the next big race before the votes in the current one are even counted. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I think the press likes the horse race aspect of elections – it’s an easy story to report, there are opposing sides, melodrama, jockeying for position, etc. I haven’t done the analysis, but I’m confident that horse-race stories far outnumber more substantive reporting. Whatever the proportion may be, it’s a silly thing to report on, particularly when there are such titanic issues facing the nation and the world, issues that are on the ballot this fall, in some respects.

To be clear, I don’t think electing Joe Biden will be enough to, say, turn the tide back on climate change, or expand affordable health care to everyone, or stop COVID in its tracks. The project of making Joe Number One is more about avoiding bad things than promoting good ones. He still seems married to the concept of employer-provided health care, just as Nancy Pelosi is, and his campaign was positively ecstatic over its endorsement by former Michigan governor Rick Snyder, who condemned a generation of young people in Flint to the depredations of lead poisoning. So yes, we have a lot of hard fights ahead of us, even with a Biden victory. But I think it’s fairly easy to see the writing on the wall this time. Look at the skies over San Francisco. Look at the legions out of work and on the edge of eviction. Look at the kleptocratic travesty that is Wall Street, gorging itself on public dollars like almost never before. This obviously needs to stop, as Trump said, right here and right now.

Still, I feel like the two opposing sides are playing different board games. It kind of amazes me to hear the reporting around Trump’s comments to Bob Woodward, the shock of his admission that he downplayed the virus, etc. Is it shocking? Really? The man’s public statements since the beginning of the year tell you everything you need to know. Did we really need to hear his conversations with Woodward to surmise that he wasn’t taking COVID seriously, or that he wasn’t leveling with the American people? Did we really need that Atlantic article to imagine that Trump would hold uniform military, veterans, or any group of people in utter contempt? While our representatives in the mainstream media project shock and surprise, the Trumpists just continue along their merry way, deconstructing the administrative state stick by stick.

I know the institutional Democratic party wants to make this an election about manners and integrity. But this election, like all elections, is about policy, and we have to drive the distinctions home if we have any hope of getting this loser out of the White House.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Rematch.

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Not all politics is local, but a lot of what people actually experience about politics is. I say this as someone who has spent much of my life being represented in city hall, Albany, and Washington by people who do not even remotely reflect my views. Such is the lot of a leftist in upstate New York, right? Still, when it came to some major issues, like acid rain or aid to the Nicaraguan “Contra” terror army, there was some alignment between myself and our longtime Congressmember, Sherwood Boehlert, an old-style Republican who represented our district for about 24 years. Boehlert was perhaps the most liberal member of the GOP caucus in the House towards the end of his tenure, and he was replaced by a Democrat who was almost indistinguishable from him ideologically.

I had come by that point to think of my hometown as Centerville – the town in the middle. And that held true for a short while thereafter – Democrat Michael Arcuri was replaced by Republican Richard Hanna in 2010, and Hanna proved to be a centrist as well, by the standard of his day. A deficit hawk, yes, and a little more circumspect than Boehlert; still, far from the worst in his tea party-driven GOP House caucus, and really about as far to the center as they got. He was primaried from the right by Claudia Tenney back in 2014, I believe, and survived that. I think at the time we all thought that the district was too centrist for someone like Tenney. Of course, two years later, that turned out to be wrong, as Tenney took the Congressional seat in a three-way race between her, a Binghamton-area Democrat, and a tech millionaire Independent who disappeared as soon as he lost.

Claudia got washed out by the Democratic blue wave in 2018, replaced by our current Congressmember Anthony Brindisi, who has restored the seat to being a bastion of centrism. I think he won mainly because Tenney was such a massive embarrassment to the region, earning national media fame as a crackpot Trump worshipper. Trump took a shine to her, campaigned for her in Utica, and boosted her in a number of different ways, as she dutifully supported Trump’s massive tax cut, bogus health care repeal plan, and so on. Well, now Claudia is back, running for her old seat against Brindisi, the GOP footing the bill for ads depicting the current Congressman as a puppet of Pelosi, to the left of AOC, best friend of the radical Joe Biden, etc., etc. Like her mentor Trump, she’s kind of playing the crazy card – not sure it works when you yourself are a crazy-ass mofo. We shall see. Upstate New York, as I’ve said many times, is a bit like Alabama, Confederate battle flags and all.

I’m encouraging people to vote for Brindisi, as lackluster as his stint in Congress has been, just because Claudia is truly a right-wing nut job, spawned in a toxic, stagnant backwater that is very, very familiar to me. Trust me … you don’t want that one back in Congress.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Empty room.

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You may recall from last week that I skipped most of the Democratic National Convention. Well, I gave equal time to the Republicans, though the thing they were broadcasting this week didn’t even pretend to be a nominating convention in the true sense. That process took place during the day on Monday in North Carolina, where the RNC was originally going to happen. I believe it consisted of a vote to not have a party platform, to simply endorse Herr Trump in all his glory, then to nominate him formally before getting to the main event: Trump giving a rally speech, full of the usual wild claims, distortions, and outright lies. The man should have a laugh track.

What was billed as the RNC is a long infomercial to white aggrievement that kicked off with Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA calling Trump the “body guard of Western Civilization” – i.e. white people. It always amazes me to watch these grifters attack the Democratic party from the left on trade, as it Trump represents any departure from globalized neoliberal capitalism. Of course, as soon as they’re done decrying outsourcing, they start in on socialism, communism, Marxism, whatever they’re calling it at any given time. Kind of a contradiction for those of you keeping score at home, but that won’t slow them down. If Republican conventions are mostly about owning the libs with nasty quips and jabs, they’re having a great week.

Many of the speakers – both pre-recorded and live – are speaking in a large, ornate, empty hall in Washington D.C. Watching them talk as if the Coronavirus has subsided, I thought of all those who have died as a result of Trump’s historic incompetence, and pictured their spirits populating those empty seats, bearing witness to this pathetic spectacle. Of course, so many things in the actual world seem to evade their notice. Police brutality, global warming, wealth inequality, exploitation of labor, etc., etc. … none of it made its way into the various remarks. Pence articulated a vision of law and order, channeling his Nixonian forebears, in hopes that they might repeat the 37th president’s landslide re-elect. That seems a tall order, though they still might squeak by.

Lord know … if we had a decent opposition party, this race would be over by now.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The loudest voice.

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I haven’t been watching the Democratic National Convention in its entirety, just pieces here and there. It’s no surprise that this thing is unlike any political convention we’ve ever seen before. What’s kind of astonishing is the degree to which it looks like a long political ad, with some variations in production values. A lot of it is just a crap show, putting a spotlight on some never-Trump Republicans and various center-right figures. I keep expecting some kind of technicolor tribute to Ronald Reagan, or a cameo by George W. Bush. Stuff like that makes it a bit more like drinking urine than it should be, but then I am a leftist, which means I’m just supposed to suck it up and offer my unqualified support. Still, being asked to sit through Colin Powell is a bit beyond ridiculous, in my humble opinion.

I have talked about this on my podcast, Strange Sound, so I won’t go into great detail, but my decision to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket is rooted in the notion of harm reduction, some of the contours of which have been highlighted throughout the virtual DNC. The fate of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “dreamers”, as well as refugees from both state sponsored or tolerated violence and economic hardship, hangs in the balance – a second Trump term would spell disaster for them, and very likely for so-called legal immigrants as well. It would not surprise me to see a second-term Trump move to strip legal residents of their rights, then perhaps naturalized citizens, particularly if they are members of the communities he most despises. (I can picture an Ilhan Omar-focused executive action revoking citizenship from those who escaped Trump-dubbed “shit hole” countries.)

Then there are those who depend on their health insurance … like just about everybody at some point in their lives. A second Trump term would mean a death sentence for many of those people. Hell, the first Trump term was enough to dispatch more than 170,000 unnecessarily. Single-payer advocate Ady Barkan made this case quite eloquently at the DNC in one of the better speeches. For as little effort as is involved in casting a ballot, it seems to me that we should listen to the voices of people on the edge of disaster, for whom four more years of this might amount to a death sentence. As I said on Strange Sound, we don’t need to invest in the new administration – quite the opposite. We need to be ready to push them from day one. And they will need to be pushed. The lobbyists always have the loudest voice, but we have the numbers. We can flip the tables of the moneylenders if we all do it together, but we need to have an administration that will respond to pressure. Trump won’t. Biden will.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave a comment or a question. Excoriate me. Shake your cyber fist! Always glad to hear from you.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.