Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Iraq 3.0.

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Despite the occasional bleat that no one wants war and that we are not seeking conflict in the Gulf, the United States continues to move closer and closer to some kind of clash with Iran. Administration officials are blaming the Iranian government for attacks against tankers owned by nations who still do business with Iran, citing non-existent evidence of sabotage by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – evidence contradicted by the owners of the Japanese ship that was attacked. Right wing blowhards like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas are advocating for strikes against Iran, and this is treated as a serious policy proposal. Various spokespeople for the administration’s ever-emerging policy even raised the possibility of the U.S. providing naval escorts for commercial ships in the Gulf, modeling it on the tanker war phase of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Who says I'm blowing smoke out of my ass? It's the ship, damn it, the ship!

This last bit fascinated me. It’s so unusual for our leaders to even mention the Iran-Iraq war, I suspect largely because we had a dog in that fight … and the dog was named Saddam Hussein. (Also, one of the ships we sent to the Gulf on that particular mission was the U.S.S. Vincennes, which on July 3, 1988 shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 passengers on board, 60 of whom were children.) If this is the mark of a successful policy to be imitated, god help us. Few Americans will recall that Saddam Hussein started that war, in 1980, using chemical weapons liberally against the Iranians – weapons whose primary components were purchased from (West) Germany, I believe. One of the principal outcomes of the Iran-Iraq war was the invasion of Kuwait, subsequent Gulf War, then the 12-year strangulation and ultimate invasion of Iraq by the U.S.

This is to say that war can sometimes sound a lot simpler than it actually turns out to be. People like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, of course, are driven by ideology and really don’t care if their war with Iran turns out to be a disaster. But aside from the very crucial questions of whether the policy is right or legal, I think it’s fair to say that this administration’s deliberate push from functional diplomacy to the brink of armed conflict is reckless and potentially catastrophic, given the current state of international affairs. We are desperately in need of action on the ensuing climate crisis, and these nutjobs are driving us into another pointless war, damn the consequences.

I strongly suggest you contact your congressional representatives and urge them to oppose this policy. The switchboard is 202-224-3121. You may also want to use the Stance app, which is very easy to use when phoning your house member and senators. Right now, it’s our best chance at heading off this madness.

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jp

Political Rants

Rundown.

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The first Democratic debates will take place in less than two weeks, so I thought it might be appropriate for me to do a rundown on the various contenders. No, I’m not going to comment on all 24 (or is it 25?) – just the ones that rise to the top of my tiny mind. I am not using any polling or fundraising criteria to make this determination. My standard is a simple one: if I know nothing about you, I will not express an opinion; if I do know something about you, I may not express an opinion. Sound fair? Great … here goes.

Joe Biden. I’m not a huge fan of the former vice president, though I will admit that in 1988 I was more than ready to vote for him over some of the other flaccid contenders. His record in the Senate is worse than patchy, with odious votes on the crime bill, the Iraq war, the bankruptcy bill, and so on, though it was worse than mere voting, as he presided over committees with jurisdiction over various pieces of destructive legislation. In spite of his cultivated “regular Joe” image, he’s quite cozy with Wall Street and high tech, and is kind of a gaffe machine besides. My biggest hope for him is that he is made to debate either Sanders or Warren.

Bernie Sanders. Clearly my favorite in this field, both from a policy standpoint and from a consistency / trustworthiness perspective. Bernie has fought the good fight for decades and would make a great president. (He even came out in support of Lula this past week – extra points!)

Elizabeth Warren. She is certainly among the smartest, most considered candidates in this group, and has very well articulated policies. Haven’t heard much out of her on foreign policy, but all will be revealed, I suspect.

Shake your fist all you want, Joe. I ain't buying.

Kamala Harris. Says some okay things and has proposed one or two serviceable policies, but at present there isn’t a lot of there there, and aspects of her record are troubling – particularly her failure to prosecute Steve Mnuchin’s mortgage bank when she was California attorney general. A bit Obama-like in that people tend to project progressivism onto her.

Cory Booker. Problematic on education privatization and financial services. Okay on criminal justice reform and reparations.

Pete Buttigieg. Smooth talker, that mayor Pete. Has said some good, vague things, and some not so good. His record as mayor is not so hot, but let’s see what he says.

What about Frackenlooper and the others? That’s what next week is for. Assuming we’re not at war with Iran by then. Lord help us.

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jp

Political Rants

Uniformly unjust.

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Our president – who should really think twice before putting on that tux (one word, Mr. President: cumberbund) has been contemplating a pre-emptive pardon for former Navy Seal Edward R. Gallagher, who faces court martial for premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice, and more. Gallagher’s fellow Seals have called him out for some pretty heinous acts, including stabbing to death a young ISIS fighter who was in custody, wounded, and basically helpless, then parading the body in photos and conducting a re-enlistment ceremony over it. For Trump, of course, this makes Gallagher a hero, because he fits the First Man-baby’s warped notion of toughness – I expect nothing more from the likes of him.

Gallagher has another defender in congressman and Iraq war veteran Duncan Hunter, who sees nothing wrong in killing people in custody and using old men, young girls, etc. for target practice. Hunter’s position is basically that Gallagher’s crimes are no different from what he, Hunter, did in Fallujah, where he credibly claims to have killed hundreds of civilians. Of course, the military leadership disagrees – there is a thing called the Uniform Code of Military Justice and, more generally, accepted laws and norms of warfare, and for a variety of reasons the generals want to keep good order and discipline in the ranks. Granted, the laws of war tend to be loose enough to drive a tank through, but they do exist and they exist for specific reasons having to do with maintaining good order and discipline and perpetuating the myth that our mission is always the betterment of the peoples we invade and subdue. (Abusive practices also open our own captured service members to similar abuses.)

Our instrument in the levant

Strangely, Hunter almost stumbles onto an uncomfortable truth here. In a certain respect, there isn’t a lot of difference between firing artillery rounds into civilian neighborhoods in Fallujah and shooting civilians like turkeys in Syria. Both are predictable outcomes of the criminal decision to send our massive military into these countries in the first place. That decision is not made by the service members who fight the wars – it is ultimately made by us. Nowadays almost no one wants to own the war in Iraq (aside from crackpots like Bolton), but by not restraining our own government from proceeding with it back in 2003, we are all responsible for what has resulted from that decision. Hunter and Gallagher were the instruments of that policy, and as such, in a sense are less culpable than we are … or, as citizens themselves, certainly no more so. With respect to killing young prisoners in cold blood, Gallagher probably bears a higher level of responsibility than someone just mechanically pulling the lanyard, trigger, or whatever to destroy a distant “enemy”.

It’s hard for me to argue with Gallagher’s prosecution. But if justice were to be served, we should all be up there with him.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Toxic inertia.

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On May 7 of this year, Secretary of State Pompeo made some public remarks in Finland that certainly rank as among the most craven  ever delivered by a high government official since our founding:

“The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses thirteen percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, thirty percent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore. Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as twenty days. Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”

This is emblematic of the prevailing take on climate change. A catastrophic collapse of arctic ice, caused in large measure by our profit-driven obsession with fossil fuels, is seen as just another opportunity to extend the same neoliberal practices and extract the same resources that are bringing about the collapse in the first place. Nothing about consequent sea level rise, increasing atmospheric CO2, etc. Pompeo’s longtime sponsors, the Koch Brothers, must be very proud of their plump little protege.

Titanic douche ... brought to you by Koch Industries

When they’re not actively working to make things worse, the Trump administration seems bound and determined to ignore, mischaracterize, and deflect any and all evidence of the unfolding climate catastrophe we are now facing. Over the past month, we have seen a record-breaking number of tornadoes tearing through the midwest, the south, and the northeast – thirteen straight days of them as of this writing. Flooding in the midwest is out of control. Fires have ravaged California, with more to come. And still the administration continues to push its version of denialism, both rhetorically and as a mater of policy. Trump is constantly pushing out his idiotic messages about global warming being a hoax, etc. They are doubling down on deregulating particulate pollution from coal plants, limiting the time horizon on climate change research (per the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, a petroleum geologist), opening new areas to drilling and mining, and so on. It is, in many ways, a full court press.

Beyond the administration, our political culture still appears unable to rise to the level of this challenge. It is a bit like the proverbial frog in the pot of water on the stove. The water’s just lukewarm, what are you worried about? My house hasn’t been blown down by a tornado … yet.  We need a million Greta Thunbergs … as V.S. Naipaul put it in an entirely different context, a million mutinies now. It is the hard problem, but we must solve it if we are to survive as a species.

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jp

Political Rants

Grifting.

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I’ve been reading the Washington Post edition of the Mueller Report, basically the same as all of the other versions, and I have to say that it is both an interesting and a sickening document. Much as it has been discussed on cable news, you never get the full story without reading it yourself, and there’s a lot in there that never makes it to your television. I’m taking it slow, splitting time with another book that I can’t put down (Visions of Freedom by Piero Gleijeses), but my biggest take away is, well, just what a grifter Donald Trump is, and the same goes for the people he surrounds himself with.

I haven’t written about this scandal very much on this blog, as not to superfluously comment on material that is being handled much more competently elsewhere, but I basically fall into the non Russia-obsessed segment. Sure, there’s a lot in the report about Russian hacking and influence campaigns, but that is something states do in their efforts to advance their perceived national interest. I’m not saying it’s right – I’m saying it’s common practice. If it were up to me, we would regulate campaigns a lot more tightly than we do now. I’m also of the opinion that there isn’t enough brain power in the Trump clown car to effectively pull off any sophisticated kind of collusion with a foreign power. I think the Russians and other foreign governments – UAE, Saudi, Israel – inserted themselves into the 2016 election in hopes of affecting the outcome in some way. And clearly, the Trump team was glad for the help. So there was a confluence of interests, that’s probably about it.

Not a three-dimensional chess master

Something tells me Trump’s biggest problem coming out of this scandal will be his own financial misconduct over the years and that of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Again, they’re not the brightest bulbs on the porch, so they would have been very poor at concealing, say, money laundering in any sophisticated way, resorting to clumsy attempts at stonewalling. The Democrats should move forward with the investigation if only to keep the president on his back foot. And no, I don’t think Trump is playing three-dimensional chess. I think he’s a dunce, and it pains me to see people ascribing more wits to Donald Trump than is indicated by what comes out of his festering gob. This phenomenon is not limited to Trump. People tend to think of creatures like Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and Henry Kissinger as mad geniuses; the fact is, they are massive fuck-ups whose policies invariably result in catastrophic failure, even when viewed through the distorted lens of their own harebrained objectives.

God help us if (or when) we get reactionary leaders that are actually competent at what they attempt to do. Up to now, the only thing that has saved us has been their ignorance and ineptitude.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Roe v. Squee.

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As I write this, we are witnessing a shameful pissing match between the state legislators and governors of Republican-dominated states to see which group of Christian Taliban can pass the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation and spawn the lawsuit that will result in the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Ohio and Georgia were taking the lead last week, the latter passing a “fetal heartbeat” bill that would make the procedure a felony after six weeks, no exceptions other than saving the life of the mother. (The bill was signed by Georgia’s illegitimate governor, Brian Kemp.) Not to be outdone, Alabama this week sent to its Nazi governor (Kay Ivey) a very near to total, outright abortion ban, again, criminalizing the procedure. Texas, not surprisingly, is working on making abortion a capital crime.

Probably the only good thing that can be said about this orgy of ignorance is that we don’t have to listen to these right-wing boneheads claim disingenuously that they care about the health and safety of pregnant women – a trope we frequently heard in defense of TRAP laws that required hospital-grade specifications in women’s health clinics and hospital admitting privileges for providers. Cold comfort, to be sure. Based on some of the comments I’ve heard from these “pro-life” legislators, I have no confidence that they have any inkling of what the consequences of this legislation will be, and I’m sure they don’t care. And these are far from simple questions. For instance, if you live in Georgia and you travel to New York for an abortion, I understand that you will be subject to prosecution under the new law. What if you live in New York, get an abortion in New York, then move to Atlanta? What sanctions will that carry?

What would Squee do?

I have heard a lot of speculation on whether any of these recent bills will be the trigger for Roe’s demise at the Supreme Court, now fully constituted with the illegitimate justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (i.e. Squee’s buddy). Some have suggested that the Roberts court prefers a more gradualist approach to sending women back to the middle ages; that the reactionary majority is more likely to sign off on something like the Louisiana TRAP legislation than these more recent, far more draconian measures. I will believe this when I see it. I know Roberts is reputed to care deeply about the reputation and public perception of the high court, but will he resist reversal of Roe when it is served up to him and the pressure from the right is at full volume? Again … we’ll see. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Moral of the story? Simply this: we didn’t get to this place by doing the right thing. By letting the GOP win race after race, in 2010, 2014, 2016, and yes, 2018 (in the Senate), the attack on women’s reproductive rights was practically guaranteed. Whatever else we do as activists and citizens, WE NEED TO VOTE IN OVERWHELMING NUMBERS. That is our last hope for women, for the environment, for sane public policy.

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jp

Political Rants

Say what?

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The more I watch TV talk shows, the more I realize that they live and die by a simple maxim: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That’s the principle that puts John Brennan, Norman Podhoretz, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and others of their ilk on centrist-liberal shows on MSNBC. I suppose it’s not all that surprising that the election of Donald Trump would result in the rise of a lowest common denominator resistance, such that open-throated advocates of the Iraq War and other disasters have spent the last three years nursing their reputations back to health, hour by hour, on Morning Joe and other platforms. I’m not the first, certainly, to point out that the left suffers under reactionary presidents as the broad opposition tends to focus all their energy on defense of existing policies under attack, at the expense of breaking new ground. That’s understandable … but do we really have to make common cause with Bill Kristol? Really?

This is the hashtag resistance on MSNBC.

Well, it’s worse than that. Because the corollary of this guiding principle is the notion that the friend of my enemy is also my enemy, and so, too, is the friend of that friend. We’re seeing that play out on the foreign policy front. This week, Rachel Maddow and others on MSNBC, in their desire to paint Vladimir Putin as this master manipulator, appear to have swallowed whole the ridiculous claim made by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo that Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro was set to flee his country, his plane idling on the runway, when Vladimir Putin told him to stay put. Maddow was chiding Trump for allowing himself to be duped by Putin; she almost sounded sympathetic to Bolton’s plight as yet another Trump administration principal who has been outflanked by his boss in public. I realize the whole bit is half played for laughs, but I fear irony is lost on today’s viewing public.

The same dynamic is playing out over North Korea. Bolton and Pompeo are obviously throwing a monkey wrench into the Korean peace process, while simultaneously trying to gin up conflicts and regime change in Iran, Venezuela, and ultimately Nicaragua and Cuba. Everyone on MSNBC, from commentators like Maddow down to newsreaders, are playing up claims that Kim Jong Un appears to be stepping away from any informal agreements regarding arms testing, suggesting that he’s taking Trump for a ride. So, in essence, they are advocating for returning to something like the confrontation of 2017, when we came within a whisker of war. That is insanity. Regardless of your opinion of Trump, we need to encourage a peaceful end to that confrontation and follow the lead of the South Korean president.

One can only hope that we can unseat Trump next year. If we fail, at the current rate, the hashtag opposition will likely go full-on neocon before 2022.

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jp

Political Rants

Like old times.

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I don’t know if it was at the start of this week or at the end of last week, but at some point recently I wondered aloud what became of the Trump administration’s coup plan in Venezuela. It seemed to have fizzled rather badly, despite their best efforts … but then this week it sprang back to life like Frankenstein’s monster. Washington’s hand-picked maximum leader of that unfortunate country, Juan Guaido, appeared in a cell-phone video surrounded by what appears to be a handful of soldiers, declaring himself president once again. This is, of course, not a coup, we’re told, because officials of the United States government have decided that Guaido is the legitimate president of Venezuela. Nothing screams freedom more than leaders selected by the regional hegemon.

Worse than neocons. Old-school imperialists.

Naturally, our execrable National Security Advisor John Bolton and our equally fragrant Secretary of State Michael Pompeo are behaving as if whatever they say randomly just has to be true. Pompeo claimed to CNN that Maduro had a plane ready to fly to Havana, but was talked out of it by the Russians. This doesn’t appear to be anything near the truth, it will surprise you to hear. Let’s just say these gentlemen have some serious credibility issues. As ham-fisted as they are, though, it’s hard to overstate the pressure that the United States can apply to a country like Venezuela. We basically control the international financial system, and Caracas has been cut off from the banking, loans, etc., since Trump applied sanctions in 2017. They are making the economy scream, as Nixon/Kissinger did with Chile in 1973, and this could bring the roof down eventually. (See the Center for Economic and Policy Research paper on these sanctions for more.)

We know from the Iraq debacle, and other comparable debacles before and since, that craven policy makers like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams can break a country in half, if we let them. What they’re not so good at is putting it back together (not that possessing that particular skill would make it in any way a worthy enterprise). There’s a better than fair chance that they will succeed in crushing the Maduro government, but very likely that will not be the end of it. Venezuela may be plunged into a bloody civil conflict that could last for years, perhaps decades. Not that such an outcome would be any skin off of Bolton’s ample nose, nor Abrams’. They’ve come through their previous disasters without a scratch. That’s more than I can say for their targets.

The only thing that can stop them is us. We need to raise our voices on this now, before it’s too late.

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jp

Political Rants

That thing that matters.

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While you were looking over there, this week the Trump administration set the wheels in motion to lock-in a structural electoral advantage for white people and conservatives for the next generation. They argued before the Supreme Court in favor of including a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, challenges to which have been upheld by lower courts, and it looks pretty promising for them, based on comments from the bench. A decision in favor of the administration would be very bad news for any hope of not only electoral and policy victories in the short term, but also equitable distribution of services and resources in the years and decades to come, so this is probably literally the most important story in the country this week, and the coverage has been relatively cursory.

The fact is, there is already a slanted playing field, tilted toward the Republican party’s core constituencies, regardless of what Trump claims. Just look at what happened in 2016. For the second time in four presidential election cycles, a GOP candidate won the presidency with an electoral majority and a popular vote minority, only this time, the discrepancy between the two results was far greater than it was in 2000. The 2016 election was 304 Trump to 227 Clinton in the electoral college, but 48.2% Clinton to 46.1% Trump in the popular vote – a nearly 3 million vote plurality. Gore’s popular vote margin of victory in 2000 was one-tenth the size, but he only lost the electoral college by 4 votes (271 Bush to 266 Gore). Not a positive trend, and the story in the Senate is very similar – outsized influence on the part of white voters in more rural regions has us gradually drifting towards a persistent GOP majority. (Don’t even get me started on gerrymandering.)

Elections have consequences. This is one.

The Census case before the Supreme Court is potentially the final nail in the coffin of progressive hopes for some recovery from the losses we’ve suffered over the past decade. As I’ve said previously, elections have consequences – namely, a solid reactionary majority on the Supreme Court, an increasingly reactionary bench in the lower courts, the undermining of voting rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, environmental policy, you name it. Activism is vital, crucial, particularly as it relates to ground-level organizing, but we cannot neglect a progressive electoral strategy – one that both strives to move the country in a more leftward direction, while at minimum reducing harm to the most vulnerable populations.

We failed in the latter respect in 2016, particularly, losing our last chance to steer the Supreme Court in a new direction. We must fight on, but the road ahead is steeper than it was before.

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jp

Political Rants

Standing upright.

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This one is for Ilhan Omar, who is currently bearing more than her share of attention from Donald Trump’s racist, xenophobic campaign to re-elect his sorry ass on the bodies of brown people everywhere. It’s hard to know where to begin, but I think it needs to be said first that Trump appears to be deliberately inciting violence with his various ignorant statements and tweets regarding this first-term congressmember. He may be an ignoramus, but I suspect he knows what effect his words can have on the disturbed, the deranged, and the prone to violence among his supporters and admirers. We have seen the results in Pittsburgh, in Florida, and elsewhere. Targets of Trump’s tirades are descended upon by legions of social media trolls, including some trigger-happy bottom-dwellers like would-be pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc.

Rep. Omar is an ideal target for Trump, as many have pointed out. She’s (1) a Muslim, (2) black, (3) an immigrant / refugee, (4) someone from “a shithole country”, (5) a woman, and (6) defiant, outspoken, and unafraid. He is on a hyper-tear regarding Israel-Palestine, probably owing to the recent election campaign in Israel, so Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC – nothing the likes of which hasn’t been said by Thomas Friedman, without sanction – become a source of joyous rebuke for the orange-faced menace. When he hits Rep. Omar, he’s hitting all of these things at the same time. The fact that his venomous denunciations are further amplified by Murdock-owned media should come as no surprise. Neither should the pusillanimous behavior of many of Ilhan’s colleagues in the Democratic party.

The bigot-in-chief and his principal target

Seriously, people like Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Max Rose, and to some extent even my own recently elected representative, Anthony Brindisi, act as enablers in this hate campaign against Omar. They roundly criticized her over the AIPAC comments, and went so far as to draft a resolution condemning antisemitism that was clearly aimed at her. Even now, as she receives credible death threats from crackpots worked up by Trump and his allies, they say little or nothing. Max Rose complained about the CAIR speech on MSNBC, sounding as though he roughly agrees with the president that Ilhan was somehow being disrespectful of those lost on 9/11, a claim based literally on nothing. When they do this shit, they open the door to demonization and death threats.

This isn’t about politics in the narrow sense. This is about standing up for what’s right. And in that sense, #IStandWithIlhan all the way.

luv u,

jp