Received this in the email from cousin and friend Michael K.
More stuff without comment
The Right Way to Resist Trump from NYT
J.D. Vance, the False Prophet of Blue America from New Republic.
We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump from The Correspondent.
I will follow his example – no comment. You, on the other hand, can make the comments.
YouTube has the video Ralph Nader, “Democrats Have Lost Their Identity”
Big Picture Interview: Ralph Nader, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, has a plan for progressives that could really shake things up.
I noticed that there have only been 16,914 views of this on YouTube as I write this. The challenge I posed to those viewers and anybody viewing this post is:
What are you going to do to get this number higher? I am going to blog it and Facebook it. If we all do that, then we get some visibility for this.
Another comment on YouTube was that the Green Party will take over from the Democrats. To that Idea I commented:
Nice dream. I voted for Jill Stein and volunteered for her after Bernie dropped out. I have suggested that name recognition is her biggest and top priority problem. She needs to concentrate on getting the world to know about her and the Green Party. I suggested she write a book and go on a national book tour to promote it. I see that Bernie Sanders has beaten her to the punch. He has already written the book and is drawing crowds on his book tour. If the Green Party and Jill Stein snooze, they lose.
Ok, I think it is time to elevate my response to a comment on a previous post on Facebook. A person quoted the ignorant meme that a vote for Stein was a vote for Trump. My response was:
A vote for Hillary in the primary was a vote for Trump. We told you that, but you refused to listen. When are you people going to own the mess you made, and stop trying to blame us who warned you that this is exactly what was going to happen? If you thought that anybody but a blue dog democrat would vote for the most hated woman in politics, then I just don’t think you realize that there are non-Democcrats who vote. How can you be so blind?
If you have to rig a primary to win, don’t you think that is a sign that you have a problem? If you have to sell yourself as the antidote to fear of the other guy, rather than sell your platform proposals, then shouldn’t you realize you have a problem? When you have to tell working people that the economy is just doing great while they are drowning in debt, low wage jobs, and the fear of homelessness, don’t you think you might have a problem?
When the “low-information” voter knows full well that your description of life in these united states at this time is just a bunch of malarkey, do you think you may have a problem?
When voters see you disrespect them by hoping they are ignorant enough to trust you instead of their own lying eyes, do you expect them to respect you back? How are they supposed to respond when you keep saying “I get it” when you clearly don’t get it?
Even in hind-sight you don’t get it. What are we supposed to do other than keep you as far out of the politics of this country as we possibly can? Are we supposed to give you bunch of losers another chance to wreck the Democratic Party? Do you think blaming us for the mess you caused is the way to win friends and influence people? No wonder you couldn’t win against Donald Trump.
We may all be singing this if there are any of us left to sing after the next 4 years.
I have been reading a lot of charges about George Soros that claim to be based on documents from WikiLeaks.
I think I have found a thread into what WikiLeaks has to say. Here is one example that popped up when I searched what I presume is the WikiLeaks web site. This article is China Now Runs the World, Soros Says.
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
I don’t find this article particularly damaging to George Soros, but perhaps there are such emails related to Soros and John Podesta. I post this entry point so that you or I can do more research if we feel like it.
YouTube has the video Trump Explains The Syria Conflict.
On February 10, 2016, Trump gave an interview on ‘CBS This Morning’ and nailed the question he was asked regarding the Syrian Conflict.
Of course Trump has a lot of policies on which he and I disagree, but on this one we are in close agreement.
I was thinking that Clinton’s constant negativity about Trump didn’t work for her and to some extent it didn’t work for Jill Stein either. I liken this effect to trying to tell your daughter (or son) that you don’t like their boyfriend or girlfriend. Anything negative you can say only makes the daughter (or son) defend her or his choice more strongly.
The only thing that stumped me about this line of reasoning was that the negativity against Clinton seemed to work for Trump. I think I finally figured out the difference. There were enough people who started out with a strong dislike of Clinton, that Trump’s negativity just reinforced their natural inclinations.
I think the strong negative ratings for Trump were not so much dislike as it was mistrust and thinking of him as a buffoon. Judging from the popularity of his TV shows, there must have been plenty of people who liked to watch his performance especially when they never considered that he would run for President.
My trying to convince Democrats not to support Hillary was more like the daughter and her boyfriend situation.
The Forward has the article Leonard Cohen, ‘Master of Erotic Despair’ Takes His Leave.
Rock-poet Leonard Cohen, the “master of erotic despair” and the writer of dozens of modern classics that have been performed and recorded by everyone from John Cale to Judy Collins, Willie Nelson, U2 and Rufus Wainwright, died on November 10 at age 82.
The biography in this paean to Cohen is something I never realized nor appreciated.
I’ll leave you with this video that was included in the article.
The Daily Kos has the article I’m Sorry I Couldn’t Make Enough People Listen which was recommended to me by William Kilmer.
Last December I was knocking on doors in western Pennsylvania communities that I might characterize as the rust on the rust belt. As part of a “front porch focus group” I was tasked with talking to voters about the presidential election, finding out what issues they cared about and what they thought of candidates. A number of things became clear to me very quickly.
Voters were fed up. They saw both government and big business as part of a rigged game that was leaving them behind. They believed, quite rightly, that the majority of politicians don’t respond to the people when big donors tell them to do otherwise. They were desperate to smash that system and find a leader who would stand up for them. They no longer trusted “the system” and longed for someone outside of it to break through and make real, fundamental change.
The final paragraph of the article says the following:
But will the liberal elites listen? Will we be able to wrest control of our party and our progressive institutions away from Washington and Wall Street insiders who have destroyed our credibility with working class people across so much of the country? Will you help me make them listen this time?
This is a great, great article. I had similar frustrations talking to the Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee of which I am no longer a member. I have long ago stopped reading the Daily Kos. Is this their attempt to make amends?
On the article on The Daily Kos, I made the following comment:
Is this article a sign that it is safe to read The Daily Kos again? I stopped reading the Daily Kos when they stopped allowing any dissent on Hillary Clinton. While this is a great article, I will not be a regular reader of Daily Kos again. The only reason for my seeing this article is that it was recommended to me by a friend whose judgment I trust.
Washington’s Blog has the article Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year by Michael Snyder. Here are the numbers that Jimmy Dore quoted from the article.
-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
Being a stickler for not misusing statistics, I immediately saw the flaw in these numbers. The following sentences that Jimmy Dore did not quote may give you a hint at what I knew.
That first number is truly staggering. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.
The first set of numbers are about what an individual worker makes. The poverty level number is for a family of five. There is no simple and straightforward translation between what a single worker makes and the total income of a family of five.
I made the following comment on this blog article:
Did you forget that most families these days have 2 workers, by necessity? Yes the numbers are bad for the USA, it is just unfortunate that you have to use numbers in a slightly misleading way to make your point.
Let us always try to stick to the unadorned truth as we make our arguments for how to make the country better. It may be easier to make a point when we embellish, but in the long run it hurts your credibility. Part of this country’s problem is that people have lost sight of the fact that there is a long run. Well, at least there always has been a long run. That may not be true of the future. However, it is best to base your behavior on the possibility that there will be a long run. If there isn’t one, then why worry?