Cyrano
Cyrano's JournalAnother week of hate-spew and Trump still leads
Ain't America great? There's room for everyone. Even a unique sideshow freak named Trump whose whole act consists of anger, hatred and peddling raw sewage.
When guys stood on wagons selling snake oil, they usually sold some and went away, or they were tarred, feathered, and run out of town. But so far The Donald seems immune. The suckers are still standing there buying the snake oil and they're begging for more.
There's nothing new about Trump other than the number of people he's gotten to pay attention to him, and the inexplicable number of people he's gotten to buy his extremely toxic poison. I guess the formula is "The more you drink, the more you want".
Let me state this as clearly as possible: Trump is a dope peddler. And he's selling his customer's the deadliet drug in the world. HATE.
Yeah, I know, a “President Trump” can’t happen.
The same thing was said about Reagan and George W. Bush. But Reagan got elected twice and W. served one appointed term and one stolen term.
So do you really believe we couldn’t end up with a “President Trump?”
Face it. There are many millions of ignorant people (and too many who should know better) who are buying into Trump’s P.T. Barnum act of the 21st century.
At some point, America ran off the rails. I don’t know whether it was the Sarah Palin craziness, or the fact that a black man named Obama was elected president twice, or the 24/7 propaganda of the right wing, or the hate, ignorance and fear that has always existed in the ugly underside of America, or a combination of all of them.
We are living in a country in which:
O Racial profiling and police brutality are the norm
O Voter suppression is out of the closet and in full bloom
O One political party talks about killing Social Security and Medicare
O Planned Parenthood is under siege by religious fanatics
O Shooting massacres have become a weekly norm
O The middle class has been destroyed with barely a whimper
O Virtually every U.S. Senator is a millionaire
O Democrats bitch, but don’t turn out for mid-term elections
O Women are still second class citizens in hundreds of ways
O “Privatization” has replaced responsible government
O More people are imprisoned than in any other country in the world
O Congress is bought, paid for, and won’t regulate air, water or food
O Our infrastructure is crumbling beneath us, over us and under us
O “Is our children learning?” Spoken by George W. Bush, Jan. 11, 2000
O “We’re not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people.” Paul Ryan March 12, 2013
Do you really believe America couldn’t/wouldn’t elect a boorish, ignorant, narcissist named Donald Trump? -- Not to mention someone like Carson, Cruz, or virtually any other member of their very strange group of candidates who actually believe the garbage they are saying, or are playing to the lowest common denominator.
Which woman's face should be on a $10 bill
Here's a list of women, all of which I believe are great candidates. I also believe that more than one bill should have a woman's face on it.
Trump shreds the facade
We all know that the Republicans hate Trump because he is shouting out GOP positions that are always sold with a "dog whistle."
You can just hear their private conversations: "How dare Trump broadcast our hatreds in plain english?" "Who is he to shriek 'the truth' about immigrants?" "Next thing you know, he'll be talking about 'uppity people.'"
Trump is really scaring the shit out of the Republican "establishment," (whatever the hell that means today). But, in truth, the Republican "establishment" has been a disease on democracy ever since Nixon, (and for the past couple of centuries). Over the past 200 some odd years their different factions have gone under various names from "Democrats," to "Know Nothings," to "Republicans," to "wingnuts," to KKK, to Citizens Councils. But don't be fooled. They're always the same people. They are the haters/bigots/morons/fools/ignorant/frightened. Today, they are calling themselves "conservatives/Republicans/patriots/'real Americans.'"
Some believe in "white supremacy." Some believe in a version of Jesus that makes them superior to the rest of humanity, some of them need to see people further down the ladder than they are. And some of them don't or can't think.
All of this is what today's Republican Party is. And that is why they are so pissed off at Trump. He's showing (sane) Americans who and what the Republican Party really is.
Maybe Trump needs some kind of "thanks" for blowing the Republican Party cover.
Or maybe we Dems need to get our act together, and somehow find a cure for the disease of ignorance that currently infects our society.
I've had a Spaketh: Sherrod Brown will be our next president
I love Bernie. I love Elizabeth. And I'll vote for Hillary if she's nominated.
Being a devout agnostic, I have no idea where this "revelation," "spaketh," "message from the universe," or whatever else you want to label it, came from. But I am certain that Sherrod Brown will be our next president.
Please save your "sober up," of "what are you smoking?" or, "snap out of it" comments. I'm going to put this post in my journal and you can check it in November of 2016.
All I ask is that when this comes about, please don't send me messages asking for a winning lottery number.
For Hillary's running mate -- Sherrod Brown
Of course, Hillary does not yet have the nomination, so it's a bit early to speculate. But what the hell. I'm going to get in my two cents right now and say that the Democratic Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, is perhaps the best running mate she could pick. (Hell, I'd like to see him at the top of the ticket.)
I won't put his full background here, but he's really smart, charismatic, liberal, soft spoken, physically attractive, (more people than you can imagine are swayed by "attractive"
, and a Democrat with a capital D.
So what do you think? Too early for a HILLARY/BROWN bumper sticker?
Paul Krugman on more GOP dickishness
Republicans just can't seem to find a sewer deep enough. Here's an excerpt from Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times.
snip
The modern G.O.P.’s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And that’s telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.
snip
(B)oth (budgets) claim drastic reductions in federal spending. Some of those spending reductions are specified: There would be savage cuts in food stamps, similarly savage cuts in Medicaid over and above reversing the recent expansion, and an end to Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies. Rough estimates suggest that either plan would roughly double the number of Americans without health insurance. But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security. What form would these further cuts take? We get no hint.
snip
... Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but they’re afraid that the public won’t find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.
But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.
snip
Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-fraudsters.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&W
Are cops on the front line of American racism?
Yesterday, many, many cops turned their backs on NY Mayor de Blasio at the funeral for slain NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu. (And many other cops didn’t.) The police were specifically asked to respect the day as a funeral, not an opportunity to protest. Yet the answer of far too many of them was a gigantic “Fuck You.”
It seems that their complaint is that they’re “not being supported.” And those who supposedly are “not supporting” them include NY Mayor de Blasio who has a black son, Erik Holder, the head of the DOJ, President Obama, and Rev. Al Sharpton, to name a few. Hmmm, seems to be a common thread there.
And what is it that’s “not being supported?” I guess it’s a series of killings of black people that are being publicly protested by blacks, whites and many others, countrywide. The protests are due to no apparent police accountability, and the fact that no grand jury has seen fit to bring forward indictments.
As an aside, down here in Palm Beach County, FL, a crowd of retired cops came together the other day in the town of Wellington to “Support the police.” It was covered in The Palm Beach Post and although they didn’t say exactly what it was they were "supporting,” you can draw your own conclusion.
IMO, the underlying theme of this entire police “moment of discontent” is blatant, thinly disguised racism. They may not be members of the KKK, but it sure as hell seems to me that they want the general public, and the powers that be, to condone the practice of killing people who are guilty of breathing while black. And yes, they do have a dangerous job. But no one’s forcing them to keep it and most would rather be cops than anything else. (It should also be noted that many cops turned their backs because of peer pressure. It takes real courage to stand alone amid a tsunami of bigotry.)
So what do you think? Police racism, or just a police union tactic to get “support” (whatever the hell “support” means)?
Has North Korea shown the way?
North Korea, a backward, barbaric relic of the dark ages, has scared the living shit out of Sony, Hollywood and, perhaps, “The Men In Charge.” They did it the 21st century way. They hacked into a treasure trove of information and they killed a major Hollywood production.
As much as I despise the fact that Hollywood/Sony has caved in on freedom of speech, there’s an incredibly powerful lesson to be learned here. For years now, we’ve been decrying the power of the haves over the have nots, the power of the Koch brothers, the Walton (Walmart) family, and a handful of others, to buy and own everyone and everything. Not to mention the power of government to gather up everything we say and write, and to track our physical location at any instant.
Perhaps there are hackers out there who are capable of breaking into anything and everything that the powers that be don’t want anyone breaking into. Perhaps such hackers might decide that wealth and power can’t keep screwing the people and creatures of the earth with impunity. Perhaps they’ve decided they can’t keep polluting the water we drink and the air we breathe. Perhaps such hackers have decided that there really is a way to fight back against a stacked deck and a system drowning in corruption.
Military might has always been the path to power throughout recorded history. However, … I’m willing to bet that, at this very moment, governments, and the handful of people who buy and own governments, are in deep discussions with McAfee, Norton, and every other organization or entity that has even an iota of an idea as to how to protect themselves in today's cyberspace universe. After all, they are all as vulnerable as Sony/Hollywood. It seems that the “Masters of the Universe” have an Achilles Heel.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
Thoughts on Ferguson
There are concepts which most of us can’t verbalize. But we do recognize them when someone else speaks them aloud. They are a verbalization of our hopes and dreams. They are words like “I’ve been to the mountain,” or, “Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.”
Very few people are as articulate as Martin Luther King. For many hundreds of years, white people have oppressed, enslaved, abused, degraded, raped, tortured, murdered and done everything possible to tear the very soul out of people of color. But it hasn’t succeeded. The instinct for fairness, justness, and the sense of a shared humanity, cannot be suppressed through threats, bribery, pain, or “the rule of law.”
And now we have Ferguson, Missouri. Nothing is new here. Nothing is surprising. Nothing is any fairer than it has ever been. And nothing is as infuriating as the current inability to sweep away the injustice.
So let’s say it plainly. Ferguson, Missouri is nothing more than ongoing American racism. It sucks as much as it ever has. And only a fool would believe that this will be the end of it.
Okay, call me a fool, but I believe that the younger generation places little stock in the racism, religiosity, regionalism, nationalism, or any other remnants of ignorance out of the past. But that doesn’t mean that those who harbor hatred are going to go away tomorrow. It will take a while longer. But the future is upon us, (if we can survive the current rape of planet Earth and somehow fix it).
And I also believe that the future holds much for humanity. We are just coming out of our adolescence. That which is to come, we can only imagine. But one thing we can be sure of. The future does not belong to the bigots, the haters, and the unimaginative. It belongs to those who know of reason, humanity, tolerance and even the love of one's fellow human beings.
We must believe that the victims who have paid the price with their very lives have not done so in vain. The alternative is far too unthinkable.
So decide for yourself. Are we on the threshhold of a world about to drown in the muck of intolerance? Or are we about to enter a world made brighter by the sacrifice of so, so many.
My hope is that we are emeging from the darkness and ignorance of the past
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Gender: MaleHometown: Palm Beach County, Florida
Member since: Fri Apr 16, 2004, 02:36 PM
Number of posts: 15,077
