INTERESTING TIMES

 Seems like neither side will take the other side's point.  Dems, it makes sense to discourage people from using their children as a way to get into the US.  Reps, it's not fair to treat every desperate person who illegally crosses the border as a vicious criminal.  Let's talk about this, and Dems stop harping on "inflicting harm on the children" (one of the oldest lines in the book of politicians), at least until you address the issue more deeply than that.  I'm tired of it too.  And I pretty much despise both parties and their talking points.  And our asinine prez.  Ugh.

Listening to the media reports about Trump and Clinton, I understand the frustration of the majority of voters.  Most of us know that the "establishment" politicians, like Clinton, are part and parcel with the corporatocracy that has made our two party system a joke.  The two parties are simply different faces of the same government which is beholden to big business and rich investors.  While the Democrats make more of an effort to care for the most impoverished, neither side is actually effective at reducing poverty.  The Republicans assert that the poor are not helped by a free ride, and this may be true.  It is true that during the Great Depression here in the US, people got healthier.

Trump, on the other hand, is not part of the "establishment" except in so far as he is rich, and he is stupid enough to become their tool, just as Shrub did.  His daily empty statements, like what I just heard that he "will win" 95% of the black American vote, are lunacy.  There is no way that he is getting 95% of any vote, except perhaps of those white male voters who are angry and desperate enough to commit suicide but would rather have someone else do it for them.  I understand the line of thought that says "crash this train", that is to say, destroying our corporatocracy is the first step toward building something new.  This is more the approach of libertarians who understand that big business will not be dethroned by small measures.  Electing Trump would be a drastic measure that could crash this train, except for the fact that the corporate Republican powers will feed his ego and narcissism and keep him busy and distracted by giving him televised glory while they run things.  In other words, it won't work.  Electing Trump will not derail the corporate train.

The Libertarian and Green candidates are relatively attractive in this election.  Unfortunately the Libertarians appear to be almost as "estalishment" as Clinton, see Gary Johnson's positions here.  Jill Stein of the Green party is a physician and one smart cookie, and she actually makes the most sense to me of any of the candidates.  She knows that our two-party system is broken, and she addresses that question and others with a raft of information instead of party lines or defund-it-all ideology.

I do not know what it would take to persuade a majority of voters to choose third-party candidates, but I pray that I live to see it.  At this moment it appears to me that Clinton will win because so many people are terrified of the specter of a Trump presidency.  His racism, bogus claims and impetuous thin-skinned personality are enough to disqualify him for all but the most blindered of voters.  It is true that if he were elected the Republican party would attempt to control him, but we all know that he would be more likely to push the nuclear button than any other president in living memory.  While it bears discussing why we refrain from using nukes, just as it bears discussing why we can't as a society afford freeloaders, we might want to discuss it very well before we hand any control to a tool such as Trump.

I am sure I've mentioned it before, but it is my belief that in order to build a majority that can beat both established parties, we need to build a bridge between the far right Libertarians and the far left Greens.  When this happens we might actually wrest our democracy back from its service to business.  It would be heralded as a great crisis, just like the Brexit vote, but don't believe everything you hear in the news.  A reduction in our GDP might be good for us.  More unemployment is not an entirely bad thing.  We Americans need to get back to the project of taking good care of ourselves and our dear ones, building community, and being real people face to face with other real people.  This wealthy life of internet and automobiles has created a Great Satan that is making us sad.

** first use of tag: green party

This state is so delightfully progressive it curls my toes. Much as I liked Kitzhaber, I think I am going to like our new governor Kate Brown more! She was sworn in yesterday. On Monday this week (when she was still Secretary of State) she made the announcement that the Independent Party of Oregon qualifies to be a MAJOR PARTY claiming as members more than 5% of registered voters as of the 2014 gubernatorial election. The total membership of the Independent Party as of 2/2/15 was 108,742, which is three voters over the minimum to become a major party. I suspect that with the publicity incurred by this landmark change, more people will change their voter registration from Dem or Rep to INDY.

SOURCES
http://www.indparty.com/node/25
http://time.com/3709837/oregon-kate-brown-governor/

I'm reading an article in New York magazine (April 7-20, 2014) about the color of Obama's presidency, and the first thing mentioned is the Bill Maher show in which Bill Kristol was frankly upset at him for saying that the rise of the Tea Party was due to racism. My liberal friends here in Oregon, and the ones that live in the Rockies and the South for the most part agree with this assessment. They are certain that's the reason that some who call themselves Tea Party are in stark opposition to every single thing that Obama says or does, apparently without consideration of the details. It is reasonable to assume that this oppositional defiance is based in that base instinct that Obama is brown and different and must be wrong and evil. But this assumption is simpleminded too; there is more to the Tea Party than simple racism.

Those who hate Obama for his skin are not political creatures. They do vote, and host radio shows, but in they do not make sense or generate policy. All they do is upset everybody, stop policy and new ideas from being developed. We need to shut them up by ignoring them, instead of trying to beat them in rational argument. There is no point arguing with racism or insanity.

There are Tea Party libertarians who are political, intelligent and curious, and interested in shades of meaning without regard for shades of skin tone. These are the Tea Party core that most liberals haven't met, and won't meet, because their experience has been so bad trying to negotiate with the angry racists. There is a rational case for small government, for making the government operate according to the constitution, for the separation of church and state and for making corporations behave like responsible businesses instead of being "persons" with rights but no responsibilities under the law. These concerns need to be discussed and rationally balanced with our desire to take care of the less fortunate among us, instead of dismissed as rantings.

So I beg of you, Americans, to do your best to listen to and respect the other side, whoever they are. I beg liberals to consider that there might be real concerns about the longterm viability of large government. And I beg Tea Party conservatives to offer reasons, to be specific and soften your words when you despise something that Obama has done. It is my conviction that Obama is sympathetic to the libertarian position, but because he is a politician and elected as a Democrat, he must play the game within the parameters of his position or be removed. It has cost him dearly. It will be interesting to see what our first brown-skinned president does after his 2nd term ends and he is free to act on his real inclinations.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/10/28/a_scandal_free_white_house.html

Jonathan Alter says that while President Obama goes into his re-election campaign with a weak economy, he still has one asset that hasn't received much attention: He's honest.

"How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? ... For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions (Tim Geithner's tax problems in 2009) his administration tends to fire first and ask questions later. The best known example is Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was mistakenly fired by her boss over a miscommunication that led higher-ups to believe -- wrongly -- that she had made inappropriate racially tinged remarks. In several other cases, the decision to give staffers accused of wrongdoing the boot was made within hours, taking the air out of any possible uproar."

SOURCE
Found via grail76 friend of rick_day
Post: http://grail76.livejournal.com/1821136.html

I know that burning fossil fuels has changed the gas content of the atmosphere such that polar ice is melting and sea levels are rising faster than they would have because more of the sun's rays are trapped. I know this. It isn't just some theory to me, it is something backed up by so many streams of evidence that I can't argue against it any more than I can argue against evolution. And unfortunately I totally forgot all the specific factoids that I assimilated to arrive at that view. I'm sure there were bajillions of them. Now my mouth is to a different firehose.
( more )

He's gone, dead at the age of 92. We will miss him. While it is impossible to agree with every decision, his work revealed a man of great integrity, strength and resolve. May we soon begin to elect more senators and congressmen with spines and morals, in his honor.

The news is saying that he cast more votes than anybody, ever, in the senate, perhaps because he was elected in the 60's and served until today. He carried a copy of the constitution in his pocket and brandished it at people. He was a democrat, but the party did not rule him.

SOURCE
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-byrd-20100628,0,3523904.story

There's a lot of hate directed at him out there on the internet right now. Only one in four Connecticut voters approves of him. Among Democrats, 81% disapprove. Chris Murphy is getting ready to run against him. And he is being treated with disrespect on the floor of the house. What I find interesting is that it's really hard to find out what he is actually supporting, because everybody is so mad at him that he's being shut down like Ron Paul usually is. What if he's right? It's not popular to stand against a gang of politicians who think they are going to get their way.
( more )

There's a simple way to know when we're getting close to decent healthcare reform. The more insurance hates it, the better it is. Insurance companies are getting desperate. They are worried that their stop is coming up, they will have to get off the gravy train. For a while they were bargaining to stay on the train, but now they are cornered. They are focused on our pocket books, which they've been robbing for decades. The recent insurance-commissioned "study" that says health care costs will soar is the desperate threat of a gigantic moneymaker feeling the possibility of its own demise.
( thoughts )