The Nightmare Realized: Trump Is Taking Us To War

We stand on the brink of a major conflict with Russia. How did we get to this perilous point? What happened to America? Here’s a brief overview of the past year to help understand how things went so horribly wrong.

May 2016 – Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the last Republican candidates for president standing, ended their campaigns, making Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee to the shock of almost everyone.

July 2016 – Despite numerous polls showing Bernie Sanders had the best chance of beating Trump in the general election, and with the overt help of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton received Sanders’ endorsement and became the Democratic nominee for president.

November 16, 2016 – Despite endorsements by every major newspaper in the country, despite being declared the winner of the presidential debates, despite numerous revelations exposing her opponent’s racist and misogynistic background, despite her opponent’s refusal to release his tax returns, despite reports of Russian influence within the Trump campaign, despite spending almost twice as much money during her campaign as Trump, despite the polls and despite winning the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, Hillary Clinton loses the election by 77 Electoral College votes to wealthy TV personality Donald Trump. White Americans in the Mountain, Midwest and Southern states expressed their anger at “the establishment” by voting in a true outsider.

January 20, 2017 – Donald Trump is inaugurated 45^th President of the United States.  Trump spends his first few days in office arguing that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama’s (it wasn’t) and that he would have won the popular vote if it wasn’t for millions of illegal voters (no evidence has been found to support this claim). Using his Twitter account, Trump establishes a pattern of outrageous, insulting and often fabricated comments to communicate his views and reach his constituents.

January 2017 to May 2017 –

Trump nominates scores of uniquely unqualified alt-right ideologues and family members to cabinet posts and positions as advisors. With the help of Mitch McConnell and a lapdog congress, nominations are rammed through the approval process with virtually no vetting. This pattern continued to include the April appointment of rabidly right-wing judge Neil Gorsuch to a seat on the Supreme Court.

Accusations of Russian involvement in the recent U.S. election rise to the surface as it is revealed numerous Trump administration officials met with top Russian politicians and oligarchs before and after the election. Trump’s ties to Russian oligarchs going back years are exposed. Investigations are started, but Congress continues to run interference for Trump and block any serious probe into the accusations.

The Trump administration approaches government spending with a chainsaw, proposing drastic cuts in every area except military spending. Many new appointees as cabinet heads are avowed enemies of the agencies they now oversee and have no problems with slashing their own budgets or eliminating the agency altogether. Threats are made to privatize Social Security and Medicare. Environmental and safety regulations are decimated.

Trump wages war on undocumented citizens, ordering the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants, tearing families apart and deporting many people who have been productive, contributing Americans for decades.

Intrigue and internecine warfare escalates within the White House, as various factions fall in and out of favor with Trump. Family members are given positions of enormous influence within the administration and resentment has escalated. Once Trump’s most influential advisor, white nationalist Steve Bannon appears to be on the way out as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner accumulates more and more power.

April 2017 – As the conflicts within Syria continued to simmer, reports reached the west that chemical weapons were used on citizens of a Syrian village and that men, women and children died horrible deaths as a result. The attack was blamed on Syrian President Assad. Despite the fact that Donald Trump had criticized President Obama for similar actions in Syria on many occasions in the past, Trump ordered the bombing of a Syrian airstrip on April 6. Details of the attack have since emerged, and we now know the Trump administration communicated with Russia before the attack and, coincidentally, Syrians at the airport were given a heads-up hours before the attack and were able to evacuate the facility before the bombs fell. The Russians were notified of the attack before congress.

The Syrian attack appears to have angered Russia, and some type of response is expected. Additionally, there have been no reports of whether the bombing destroyed any chemical facilities or accomplished anything substantial. There are suspicions being voiced that the attack was an attempt to divert attention away from the Russian investigations in Washington.

Today – The situation in which American finds itself is frightening. We have an unqualified, unhinged narcissistic president who may be wittingly or unwittingly instigating a war with Russia to take the heat off of his administration’s collusion with Russia to sway our presidential election. We cannot count on the other two branches of government to help us, as congress and the Supreme Court are under the influence of right-wing radicals who have no allegiance to democracy or even what most of us consider reality.

Trump is taking America down a very dark and dangerous path at a rapid pace. The question is, how will we stop him before it is too late?

The Political Conventions Are Over, But Not Forgotten

Some convention highlights you might have missed:

“Censorship police” wearing yellow vests covered up signs they didn’t agree with and started patriotic chants to drown out protesters.

Signs criticizing the party’s nominee were covered over with huge American flags.

A delegate who hoisted a flag deemed politically inappropriate was thrown out of the convention.

“They tried to bully us, under the assumption that we would all just fall in line,” said one delegate. “We were called crazy, and some of us, including myself, were physically attacked. They tried to intimidate us, but their attempts only fired us up more.”

There you have it. The Republican Convention was an Orwellian nightmare…wait, what? That wasn’t from the Republican Convention? That happened at the Democratic National Convention? Yes, indeed.

Sanders supporters at the convention who did not experience an immediate epiphany and turn their enthusiastic support in the direction of Hillary were harassed, belittled, bullied and, in a few cases, physically assaulted. It was an attempt by the Clinton juggernaut to convey a united Democratic front to the media covering the event, in ways that were as undemocratic as one could possibly get. The Clintonites at the convention went so far as to pay actors to fill up empty seats and cheer for Hillary.

As you might guess, many Sanders supporters went home from the Democratic convention defeated and dismayed by the Trump-like tactics used to shut down protests from the party many thought represented minority voices and the underdogs. That’s so 1960s. Today’s Democratic Party is as beholden to money and special interests as the Republican Party, and is just as ready to stifle descent and discord. Hillary Clinton, with her vast network of rich and famous donors, is the perfect figurehead for a political party that has sold its soul for a shot at the Oval Office, where loyal members can make millions from their experiences.

Luckily for the Democratic Party and Hillary, Trump is the perfect opposition candidate, drawing media attention away from the sleazy tactics and heavy-handed suppression of Sanders with The Donald's daily gaffes and buffoonery. However, the Sanders delegates will remember their treatment at the convention and how the DNC betrayed them, and, with any luck, will take the energy they had for Bernie and build momentum for a new progressive coalition in America.

If Trump Wins, the Democratic Establishment Will Have Only Itself to Blame

The daily trove of evidence coming from Wikileaks and other sources make it abundantly clear that the DNC, the Hillary campaign and the mainstream media colluded to steal the Democratic primary from Bernie Sanders. Without missing a beat, the media, including some left-leaning outlets, is portraying Bernie supporters at the Democratic convention as spoiled brats who can’t let go of their Quixotic dream, instead of the patriots they are fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party.

Hillary supporters, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim to believe in the democratic process and fair elections and then stand behind a candidate who condoned dirty tricks, under-the-table support from the establishment and who accepted money from anyone with an open checkbook. Democrats love to tsk tsk shady Republican tactics that circumvent the democratic process, but refuse to look in the mirror when one of their own commits the same sins.

The irony of ironies of course, is that polls consistently showed that Sanders had the better chance of beating Trump in the general election than did Clinton. So the Democratic establishment, in its myopic quest to ordain the elite-approved candidate, may have cut off its nose to spite its face.

Believe me, the last thing in the world I want to see is Donald Trump taking the Presidential oath of office next January, but if that happens, the Democratic establishment will have only itself to blame. When you play in the same muck and mire as Republicans, you’re not any less dirty because you support a different candidate, and perhaps you’re even a bit more so after decades of claiming the moral high ground.

Anatomy of a Primary: Sanders Got Screwed

To the surprise of no one who supported Bernie Sanders during his primary run, analysis of the voting results by researchers (including a paper by Axel Geijsel of Tilburg University, The Netherlands and Rudolfo Cortes Barragan of Stanford University) show clearly that Sanders was the victim of a rigged system. From our corporate media that virtually ignored Sanders during the early months of his campaign to the Democratic National Committee’s shameless crowning of Clinton long before the votes were counted to the shady dealings of state democratic parties (such as California’s) that aggressively worked to disenfranchise Sanders voters, the deck was stacked against Bernie from the moment he made his announcement to run for the nomination.

While the press was giving the buffoon Donald Trump billions of dollars in free media exposure, it was ignoring Sanders and the huge, enthusiastic crowds he was drawing all across America. My friends, no one has to tell you that this is not how a democracy works.

Related to this is a documentary I just watched this morning called “Spin.” It was made in 1995, but the theme of how the media manipulates the message is as relevant as ever. The filmmaker who made Spin took a very interesting and revealing approach to his subject matter. I didn’t know this, and I don’t know if it’s still true today, but in 1995, you could use a satellite dish to download feeds of raw video taken during television broadcasts of breaks and downtime not edited for broadcast. For example, the Larry King Show was huge in the nineties, and there are numerous clips of Larry talking to guests during commercial breaks.

Anyway, these off-air segments are very revealing in several ways. They clearly show how our news is both overtly and subtly managed, slanted and sanitized for consumption, often not by outright propaganda, but by what’s omitted. The news we see on television is the news the networks and cable companies want us to see to be good little zombie consumers. Spin also shows how political handlers help politicians “spin” uncomfortable topics or questions as they are coached during breaks. And the documentary exposes the sycophantic relationship between television personalities and politicians. Larry King practically polished George HW Bush’s shoes during an interview.

In the twenty years since Spin was released, the news has gone from bad to worse, democracy in America has died and the possibility exists that Donald Trump could become President of the United States. Have a nice day.

Windmills 1, Democracy 0

A note about yesterday’s primary vote here in California that seems to exemplify the shady nature of the Democratic nomination process. Both Katharine and I are registered to vote in California. We both received confirmation of this, and we were sent a card notifying us of where to vote. Despite this, when we went to our polling place, surprise, we weren’t on the list. We were given “provisional” ballots that, instead of going through the machine and being counted, were stuffed in an envelope and ended up god knows where.

Of course, I can’t say if this was the result of any shenanigans on the part of the Democratic Party, but the result is our votes for Sanders were not counted yesterday. Since the beginning of the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nominee, the process has been compromised, controlled and co-opted by the DNC in conjunction with national media outlets to anoint Hillary Clinton the Party’s champion in November.

It’s a no-win situation for Sander’s supporters. Despite the obvious collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, Sander’s supporters who complain will be labeled as sore losers and conspiracy theorists by the corporate media. Using every dirty trick at their disposal, the establishment has won, as it was ordained long ago by America’s elites.

This ugly coronation called a campaign only serves to reinforce the sad reality that America is an oligarchy, a country governed by the rich for the rich, and Clinton is a bona fide, card-carrying member of the ruling class. So far have we fallen that the choice given to us on election day will be between a narcissistic, racist dictator-in-waiting and a morally bankrupt, money-worshipping tool of the elites.

I thank Bernie Sanders for taking on the hapless job of attacking the windmills. Though the odds were always against you, you fought courageously and for all the right reasons.

I Understand the Futility of Voting in a Rigged System

So this morning I went through the motions of voting.  I say, “went through the motions” because yesterday, one of the major news services made the announcement that, based on information from the nefarious and undemocratic Superdelegates, Hillary Clinton had wrapped up the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. The announcement, timed conveniently the Monday night before the California and other primaries, is one more example of the political establishment hijacking the democratic process to essentially install their candidate as the nominee.

This Presidential campaign cycle has already shown a glaring light on our broken electoral system. Yes there’s Donald Trump, but the problems I’m talking about are systemic issues that run across party lines to rig the election in favor of America’s elites, whatever their party. This campaign season the DNC has pulled out all the stops to assure Wall Street, K Street and every street lined with multi-million dollar homes that they will have one of their own sitting in the White House come January.  The one percent can let out a sigh of relief knowing it will be business as usual for the next four years under Clinton, that greed will be rewarded and short-term profits over long-term stability will still be the order of the day.

The only hope is that the Sanders revolution will continue rolling on past the election, and that it will have energized young people to stay in the trenches and fight for progressive ideals and candidates. We need to cultivate younger candidates to run for offices at all levels of government around the country and start making inroads into the old boy’s network that has a stranglehold on our democratic institutions. Had this been a truly democratic election, Sanders would have won, but the fight can’t stop here in defeat, but must move on and grow stronger and smarter for the next battle.

The Democratic Party: Fighting For More of the Same

For all of the articles about the turmoil in the Republican Party over Trump’s successes in the primaries so far, I am much more concerned about what’s going on in the Democratic Party between Clinton and Sanders. The Party (the DNC, celebrity Democrats, the Whitehouse, the media, etc.) has already put the crown on Clinton’s head and is working overtime to make sure it stays there. From shady shenanigans at polling places to national headlines blaring Clinton’s inevitable victory to the Democratic National Committee’s unabashed support for Hillary, the Dem establishment is doing everything it can to make Bernie Sanders go away.

I find this all very troubling. Sanders truly represents what the Democratic Party should be about, but our leaders have been brainwashed over the years by Republicans into believing that only centrist, “realistic” (tough on crime, militaristic, fiscally conservative) Democrats can win elections. Sanders is already proving them wrong, and that’s making them very uncomfortable.

Since Ronald Reagan won the presidency 36 years ago, the Democratic Party has shifted to the right, believing wrongly that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Yes, we’ve won four Presidential elections since then, but look at the state of our nation. George Bush took this country down a dark and dangerous road after 9/11, and instead of trying to clean up the mess as he said he would, Obama has embraced it. Ever since he’s been on the national stage, Obama has talked like a liberal, but acted like a centrist Republican. Sanders is the only candidate who sounds and acts like a Democrat.

The Democratic establishment should be 100 percent behind Sanders, instead they are repeating the strategy that Bill Clinton and Obama used to win their elections: talk like a liberal until elected, then play it down the middle.  Hillary is the establishment choice, the “safe” choice, the choice that Wall Street and K Street can live with. With its actions this election cycle, the Democratic Party continues to willingly disenfranchises not only the left wing of the party, but other Democrats who simply want real change instead of Clinton II, with the attitude of, “Where else you gonna go?” The two major political parties have way too much say about who sits in the White House and it will take a major public upheaval to break their stranglehold.

Random “After-the-Iowa-caucus” thoughts:

Very happy to see that Bernie Sanders did as well as he did against Hillary in Iowa. It’s especially gratifying to watch someone fight against the Goliath Democratic election machine backing Hillary and pull out a David-like win (with a virtual tie).  Historically, Iowa hasn’t been a good barometer for who will actually win the nomination, but it seems to me that if Bernie can generate the kind of enthusiasm and involvement he had in Iowa, he can do that in other states as well.

Cruz, Rubio and Trump come out on top on the Republican ticket, in that order.  Alternate media is having a field day with Trump’s loss to Cruz, but again, what happens in Iowa is not a reliable predictor of who will eventually win the nomination. Trump is still very much in the race, but we can relish his “loser” status for a bit.

Speaking of the despicable Ted Cruz, just today he sent out a mailer to his supporters that is so far over the op it’s not even visible by the human eye. Claiming America is “under assault” from Islamic fanatics, it has an image of the Lincoln Memorial with old Abe dressed up like an ISIS terrorist strapped with an AK47, scarf-covered face and large hunting knife in one hand. The fear mongering here is off the charts, with absolutely no facts to support his wild assertions. The copy is all sixth-grade bluster about killing the terrorists and restoring America’s greatness. Trump is a narcissistic blowhard, but Cruz is something even more evil and diabolical. His religious values are medieval and he seems to take them very seriously, and you know if he were elected President he would do everything in his power to turn America into a theocracy.  With Trump we’d at least get some entertainment value watching Richie Rich convert the White House into a casino.

Do Those Who Endorse Hillary Realize How Broken America Is?

It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising, to read that people and organizations you respect are endorsing Hillary Clinton for President, like Al Franken, Paul Krugman, LGBT Group, Human Rights Campaign and even Barack Obama. Krugman, Obama and others are arguing that real change (which Obama promised, but failed to deliver) requires strategic, incremental steps, and won’t be accomplished by someone as radical as Bernie Sanders. In other words, Hillary is the safe, establishment Democrat who won’t upset the oligarchs who actually run America.

There is a sense of hopelessness in all of this. Establishment Democrats seem to be throwing in the towel and admitting that we have a broken system that is beyond repair, and Hillary won’t rock the boat by trying. Everyone is afraid of Sanders except a huge chunk of the American people, who are trying to make change happen before our streets ignite in protests, and perhaps violence, over our unresponsive, undemocratic government. 

While the establishment Democrats endorse one of their own to take the helm of our sinking ship America, Republicans continue their assault on democracy. Senator Mitch “Yurtle the Turtle” McConnell introduced a resolution for the authorization of military force that gives the President more unilateral power to wage war across the globe, essentially cutting Congress out of the process and giving the President the powers of a dictator. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy calls it “…a total rewrite of the War Powers Clause in the U.S. Constitution.” 

The radical right in this country does not believe in democracy, and, with its numbers quickly dwindling, it is using what power it has left to bring about their preferred form of government, a fascist dictatorship. They have already succeeded in creating an oligarchy, but that’s not enough. If they ever get another one of their own in the White House, they want him to have Putin-like powers to force their deluded ideology onto the American people and crush dissent quickly and violently. Sounds like a Trump rally, doesn’t it?

As President, Hillary Clinton will not stand up to the oligarchs because she is one of them. Her husband did their bidding in the 1990s and she will continue to do it as President. The Democratic Hillary endorsers are the true political cynics of the day, weak-need enablers who, for a variety of reasons (none of them good), feel it is preferred to “work within the system” instead of fighting it. The problem with this is that the system is far beyond the point of a few tweaks here and there to set things right. Washington has become a façade like an Old West movie set, a cover for the dark forces to work behind for their own agenda, and Bernie Sanders is the only candidate willing to take on these puppet masters. It’s a Quixotic effort to be sure, but to do nothing, or elect someone President who will do nothing,  is not an option.

The Corporate Media And Their Biased Coverage of Bernie Sanders

Fingers can point in many directions to explain the relatively rapid descent of America into a political morass where an egomaniacal fascist like Donald Trump can be considered a serious candidate for the Presidency — income inequality, the death of the Middle Class, Wall Street greed, the rise of the surveillance state, constant war — but at the top of my list is the corporate media.

President Eisenhower’s warning about the rise of the “military/industrial complex” is heavily cited as a forecast that unfortunately came true, but there arose a third force that Ike did not see at the time that now forms a triumvirate of nightmarish influence over this country, the corporate media.

Owned by a handful of extremely wealthy elitists, the corporate media is the one percent’s propaganda tool used to keep Americans distracted, uninformed and good little consumers. A most recent example of this is the skewed coverage of the candidates running for President by the major news outlets.

According to the Tyndall Report, which tracks stories on the network news programs, between January 1, 2015 and the end of November, ABC “World News Tonight” devoted 81 minutes of coverage to Donald Trump and less than one minute to Bernie Sanders. The report found that all of the major news programs were guilty of Trump overkill with a total of 234 total network minutes for the Donald compared to just 10 minutes of reporting on Sanders. That’s over almost a year period.

There are two reasons for this obvious bias on the part of the mainstream corporate media. First there’s entertainment value. Trump is outrageous, monstrous and a born entertainer. He shocks every time he opens his mouth and that makes for great entertainment (under the guise of news) that viewers eat up, whether their Republicans or Democrats. Sanders, on the other hand, is seen as a crotchety old man and too much of a scold. Boooring.

But there’s a stealthier effort going on here as well. Of all the candidates running for President, none of them represent as big a threat to the elites as Sanders. For all of his insane statements, Trump is one of them, and Sanders is definitely not. Sanders and his Democratic Socialist agenda represent a threat to the status quo, the deep state the ruling elite, and because of this, they want him on television, and exposed to the public, as little as possible.

Just like Time magazine’s failure to make Sanders “Person of the Year” despite his win in the popularity poll, the corporate press will do everything in its power to keep the progressive Democrat in the wings, while giving the howling fascist demagogue Trump center stage.

I'm going to scare some people tonight

I'm going to dress up tonight as Bernie Sanders and scare the crap out of my conservative neighbors.

"For God's sake don't open the door, Sharon. It's a...a...SOCIALIST!

Happy Halloween!

The Morning After

Perhaps even more interesting than the Democratic debate itself is the reaction of the mainstream press on this morning after. The media has quickly declared Hillary Clinton the winner, but polls taken after the debate (CNN among others) indicate those watching it felt that Bernie Sanders won. What’s going on?

Let’s start with the obvious. CNN is owned by TBS, aka Time Warner who is Hillary’s seventh largest donor. In addition, Anderson Cooper, the debate moderator, works for the Clinton Initiative. Only six or seven mega-corporations own virtually all of the media and entertainment in America, and they are, of course, run by the 1%. Do you think they want a democratic socialist to sit in the Oval Office? Of course not.

One glaring example I came across this morning was on Yahoo’s landing page. There were three featured stories on the debates. None of these teasers included a photo of Sanders or mentioned Sanders in their leads. They all focused exclusively on Clinton, with one dual image of Clinton and Joe Biden, who wasn’t even in the debate. The mainstream media’s agenda couldn’t be any clearer than that.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe this country’s elites are stacking the deck against Sanders, and today’s reaction to the debate is living proof. America’s wealthiest citizens fear a Sander’s win, and for good reason. The question I and others have is how far will they go to keep him out of the White House?

We can’t trust Hillary to make meaningful changes in Washington

It’s obvious that over the past 15 to 20 years, as the Republican Party has slipped into the final stages of conservative madness, that it has pulled many in the Democratic Party with it. Like a dark star capturing other planets in its spinning vortex, the Republicans have pulled the political debate so far to the right that it makes people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem like they’re to the left of Marx. It also has the result of making centrist, corporate Democrats like the Clintons and Obama seem ultra-liberal, particularly in the minds of the mainstream corporate media.

Just look at how the New York Times is treating Bernie Sanders. When it’s not ignoring him, which is most of the time, it is writing about him in a condescending tone reserved for outliers on the lunatic fringe. And no one should fall for Hillary’s current populist tone.  This is a tried and true campaign tactic used to great success by her husband and Obama. As with the President, should Hillary win there would be no significant changes to how things are done in Washington.

Sinister corporatists like the Koch brothers are laughing all the way to the bank at these developments, because it means that even if the Democrats win, Washington will have the elite’s backs. Bill Clinton has been on an apology tour recently, trying to make amends for all of the lousy policies he supported as President, especially deregulating the banks. But why should we believe Hillary will be any different?

Bernie Sanders is the only hope this country has of at least trying to loosen the stranglehold Wall Street has on Washington.

My new favorite bumper sticker

David Brooks is an Ass

New York Times columnist David Brooks is an ass in both senses of the word; a hole through which noxious waste is routinely emitted and a braying donkey, offending the ears every time he opens his mouth. He is the Washington beltway’s babble-master, wrapping his never-ending defense of elite white men with the eloquence of a Victorian era English professor.

It is no surprise that Brooks detests Bernie Sanders. On Friday night’s PBS NewsHour, Brooks said that Sanders doesn’t understand America’s working class, suburban voters, blacks or Latinos. This from a man so cloistered in his world of white privilege he routinely blames the poor (code for minorities) for being poor, as if they are a subspecies that lacks the correct set of genes to hold down a job that pays more than seven dollars an hour.

Brooks is America’s mouthpiece for the status quo. Sanders is a threat to the status quo. Ergo, Brooks hates Sanders. Not to mention that Sanders is a democratic socialist where Brooks is the champion of laissez-faire capitalism. But for the defender of this country’s rich and powerful to say Sanders doesn’t understand the working class, blacks or Latinos is like Rush Limbaugh saying Obama doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an African American. It’s a claim that is so divorced from reality, and comes from the mouth of a man who routinely characterizes the working class as lazy whiners and blacks or Latinos as moral and intellectual inferiors, that it should make everybody’s head explode.

David Brooks is an ass. In a just world he would be editing recipes for the Daily Shopper, not writing opinion pieces for the New York Times.

If you liked Bill and Barack, you're gonna love Hillary

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is shifting into high gear as she prepares to make a major speech on economic policies this Monday.  There’s no question Clinton is running her campaign following the blueprint her husband and Obama used to reach the White House: Tack left through the primaries, shift slightly right during the campaign then, after inauguration day, jump swiftly back to the middle. It worked for Bill and Barack, so why not?

The one wild card that Hillary faces which the other Democrats did not is Bernie Sanders. His presence in the campaign and his surging popularity are going to force the Clinton camp to grapple with difficult policy issues that normally they would not need to if the competitor were another neoliberal Democrat. And that is the best part about Bernie’s presence in the race. Bernie wants to talk about raising the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy, not letting banks off the hook when they commit crimes, more financial regulations, clamping down on Wall Street, all topics that Clinton would merely tip-toe around if Bernie wasn’t poking the hornet’s nest.

Hillary is the establishment Democrat, the candidate Wall Street and the corporate elite know they can reason with when push comes to shove. Like Obama, she’ll appoint a host of Washington and Wall Street veterans (former BC people) as advisors and in cabinet positions. She is, ultimately, not going to rock the boat. Sanders, on the other hand, is a threat to the status quo and for that reason, will not be allowed into the White House.

If you like what we got with Bill and Barack, then you should support Hillary. I do not, and will not.

How far will they let Sanders go?

I enthusiastically support Bernie Sanders in his bid for the White House and I’m thrilled that his campaign is picking up traction across the country. I’m also fearful.

We live in very troubling times where internal threats to the American hegemony from whistleblowers, investigative reporters and overly vocal citizens are met with the utmost legal force the government can muster, and in some cases, illegal force as well. As ridiculous as it is to say, Bernie Sanders, unlike Hillary Clinton, represents a threat to the Dark Government that really runs things. This is not something entirely new (think JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King), but the reach and power of the surveillance state has grown considerably in the past forty years, and exposing the truth is more dangerous than ever.

As Sanders’ star ascends while Hillary’s campaign is mired in controversy and attacks from the Right, it begs the question: How far will the Shadow Government allow the Vermont socialist to go? He stands for everything they despise: Higher taxes on the elites, drastically reducing income inequality, stronger social programs to help the poor and low income workers, strengthening social security and Medicare, a reduction in military spending, more support for unions, and finally, dismantling the surveillance state currently in charge of this country.

With views so utterly at odds with the ruling elites, would they ever allow him to become President of the United State? This is a question that was once reserved for third world countries where assassinations and coups have historically been common occurrences, but the United States of America? Sadly, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable concern anymore.

Bernie Sanders takes on America’s corporate media

In his Salon article today, “The media’s sickening Sander’s double standard: How the socialist brings out their true colors,” Simon Maloy analyzes how the media reacts to Bernie Sanders' positions as opposed to his Tea Party counterparts in the Republican party. On the subject of income inequality, one of Sanders’ top priorities, he has suggested we return to the Eisenhower-era tax structure when the marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was around 90 percent. The interviewer was taken aback.

“When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” he asked.

“No,” Bernie shot back.

As Maloy points out, we have been so brainwashed over the past thirty years by the corporate media that the idea of taxing the wealthiest Americans to this extent seems like a crazy idea, although the American economy has historically prospered when taxes on the rich were high and floundered when they were low, as they are now.

Conservatives are given a very long leash by the mainstream media when it comes to calling their craziness to account, but when a progressive utters anything even remotely “leftist” it is met with incredulity and eye-rolling. Sander’s has a large mountain to scale in his run for the presidency, not so much from Hillary, but from the internal biases of America’s corporate media.

Should progressives form their own political party?

Is it time for progressives to start their own political party? As author Frank Rich pointed out in yesterday’s Salon, Democrats will likely do what they always do after a political drubbing and that is to run toward the ideological center. The flawed thinking goes like this: Republicans won big. That must mean that voters want more conservative candidates. No. That isn’t what it means. Republicans won because a lot of old white guys voted and whole lot of younger, more liberal adults didn’t. Why? There are lots of reasons, but a major one is that today’s Democrats don’t sound all that different than Republicans. What’s the distinction, young voters ask?

There are distinctions, but instead of using those points of difference to their advantage in campaigns, Democrats run screaming from them and hide behind squishy rhetoric and cautious pronouncements. Please, whatever you do, don’t call me a “liberal.” Obama? Who’s Obama? Why don’t Democrats take their lesson from Minnesota? Al Franken is an unapologetic liberal, and he’s won two elections. Voters had a distinct choice in the mid-term between a true conservative and a true liberal, and they chose Franken. Isn’t there something that can be learned here?

I like the idea of a new progressive political party. It doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s agenda, and third parties do have a history of failure, but there are a lot of progressives who feel that the Democratic Party has already written them off, so why not have our own soapbox? We could start by supporting and funding Bernie Sanders’ or Elizabeth Warren’s run for the White House in 2016.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

President Bernie Sanders?

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says he may decide to run for president in 2016. He would get my vote. Wow. It would be an extremely interesting presidential race if Sanders were to jump in the fray, because he would be opposed not merely by the Republican and Democratic candidates, but by the entire military/industrial/media complex. Nobody in “the establishment” will want to see Sanders win, because he is too much of a threat to the status quo. Despite some liberal rhetoric during his two campaigns, Obama has proven to be highly malleable, and you know Hillary will fall in line should she win the White House, but not Bernie.

As much as I would like to see him run, Bernie is too far to the left to win the presidency at this point in America’s history. The shadow government will not allow it. Big money will flow to his two opponents, and Bernie will have to rely on small donations from people like me. The mainstream media will marginalize him and his “socialist” ideas. The surveillance agencies will be looking to dig up dirt from his past. Bernie would truly be playing David to the elites Goliath.

All of that being said, there are still many unknown factors that could work in his favor. Who the Republicans and Democrats choose to run will matter. If it’s Hillary for the Dems, his chances grow even dimmer. How the economy is doing will matter. Whether or not we are at war with somebody will matter. The country’s mood for real as opposed to cosmetic change will matter.

Even if Sanders has no chance of winning, it would be a refreshing change to have someone presenting progressive ideas to a national audience in between the psychotic ranting of the right and the disingenuous hyperbole of the establishment Dems.