2016 archive
Days of Passed Future 0
Tony Norman looks in the Trump cards to see what the future holds.
It defies excerpt or summary. Just read it.
Aside:
He’s more optimistic than I. My life experiences have convinced me that Mencken was right.
The Next Looming Scamdal 0
Prepare for the coming scamdal about the fact that there is no there, there in yet another Clinton scamdal.
The fact that the mud has not stuck will not keep Republicans, Fox News, and their dupes, symps, and fellow travelers, from continuing to throw the mud.
After all, it’s their mud. They created it out of lies and innuendo, they sustain it, it’s all they got.
Class Acts 0
Nancy Isenberg examines three myths about class in America, myths that permeate and distort what passes as “political commentary” in the corporate media. Here’s one (emphasis in the original):
The working class is white and male
Trump is often credited with engaging the working class. He “won with the working class voters the GOP forgot,” blared one Breitbart column. Meanwhile, “Hillary is losing white working Joes,” proclaimed the Toronto Star. Even Sanders argued that Democrats had allowed Republicans “to capture the votes of the majority of working people in this country.”
Of course, that’s true only if you ignore Asians, Latinos and African Americans. “Factor them into the population of ‘working people,’ ” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie writes, “and Democrats win that group, handily.”
Follow the link for the others.
Afterthought:
Do not think too hard about the knee-jerk automatic exclusion of Not White persons from the “working class.” Doing so will lead to depressing realizations about the punditocracy, its vision of society, and its inability to look about itself and see who’s doing the “work.”
The Berned-Over District 2
From the Bangor Daily News, William M. Daley poses a question for Bernie Sanders. I’ll paraphrase it:
I’m a member of the Democratic Party for a very practical reason; I even volunteer in my own small way.
I realized that, after decades of voting, I had only ever voted for two Republicans (Larry Coughlin when I lived in Pennsylvania and Bill Roth when I lived in Delaware, both of them good and decent men, though Roth was in his dotage when he ultimately left political life); neither would be welcome in Today’s Republican Party(TM).
As I try to live in the real world, whatever the details of my ideology might be (trust me, it’s much farther left than you might think-I might even be willing to voter for Franklin Roosevelt, were he on the ticket), I decided that I had to cast my lot in the real world. I joined the party that better represented me, as there are only two realistic alternatives in the USA. (If you have a pipe dream of a third party* in the United States, all I can say is that I want a drag on that pipe, because it must be some really kick-ass stuff . . . .)
Parties are organized and have rules; it’s part of what makes them “organized” “parties.”
You just joined the Party, Bernie, solely so you could run for the nomination and for no other reason. Hell, I’ve been a Democrat longer than you have, and I’m nobody who is younger than you and who officially joined the Party just a few years ago.
You knew the rules going in, and now you want to dictate new rules because your grapes turned sour.
If you lose according to the rules, you have lost. The rules didn’t beat you.
You lost.
Forget the Corvair; Ralph Nader’s legacy will forever be President George the Worst. It would be a damned shame if Bernie Sanders’s legacy is President Ronald McDonald Trump.
Give it up, Bernie; you’ve worn out your welcome. Don’t be another Nader.
Grill of My Dreams 0
I never have quite gotten this notion that a grill is somehow a man’s domain (probably some notion propagated by men who think a big grill makes up fo–never mind).
My father’s mother cooked on a wood-fired stove. It don’t get much grillier than that.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Parents, be polite to your children.
(snip)
“After firing a round, the spent shell casing struck the wall causing it to deflect and fall into the back of (the elder) Mr. Brumby’s shirt. Brumby then used his right hand, which was holding the handgun, in an attempt to remove the casing. While doing so, he inadvertently pointed the firearm directly behind him and accidently fired,” a police statement reads.
“Accidentally”: the new negligently.
The Elusive Butterfly of Happiness 0
Timothy J. Shannon, writing at the Inky, muses on the meaning of one of the most nebulous phrases in America’s mythology: “the pursuit of happiness.” He looks to historical concept to extrapolate what Thomas Jefferson may have meant when he wrote the phrase and how the Continental Congress may have interpreted it when they accepted Jefferson’s draft. Here’s just a bit:
With that context in mind, Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness” becomes much more than a pleasing turn of phrase. It was a remarkably succinct expression of the American dream, a confident look to the future rather than a backward nod to Locke. As such, it remains foundational to how we define ourselves as a nation.
In this election year, the pursuit of happiness sometimes appears to be in full retreat. Donald Trump has ridden a tide of fearmongering to his party’s nomination, and his campaign promise to “make America great again” cynically swaps hope for nostalgia. By many measures, Americans have lost their faith in the pursuit of happiness . . . .
Patriotism and Citizenship 0
Herb Rothschild, Jr., muses on the meaning of patriotism in the Ashland, Oregon, Daily Tidings. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the rest:
You Get What You Vote For* (subtitles) 0
Spain’s comedian, yclept** “Giggles,” on Brexit:
Via The Local.
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*Remember that come November, dammit.
**Hehe. I used “yclept” in a blog post.