DEMOCRATS: WANT TO WIN IN 2024? HERE’S THE PATH FORWARD!

“We Choose Truth Over Facts” –Joe Biden

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― President John Adams

“Uncork the champagne! Break out the caviar! Bernie’s “Socialist” candidacy is dead!” That, or something approaching it, resounded through the canyons of Wall Street and the cloistered halls of the Democratic Party establishment in early April of 2020. But 2021 is a whole different scene: despite having the Corporate media propping them up on almost every front, the Biden/Harris Administration reels from one blunder to another, alienating their democratic base by forcing experimental vaccines in order to further enrich Big Pharma. Whispers of what to do about the Biden Problem have been growing behind the scenes in the establishment. Overseas, talk about replacing Biden for the 2024 Presidential Election is more overt: Australian Media on replacing Biden in the next election.

Neo-Liberals and their one percent Lords and Masters since then have been celebrating their victory over Progressives from the comfort of their penthouses and wine-caves ever since. But before the Party elite and their mindless media minions become too intoxicated with their triumph, they should take heed of the old Chinese adage about being careful what you wish for.

The Establishment may still be gloating over their complete defeat of Sanders, but anyone concerned over the fate of our Nation should first consider a few obvious facts. What was in truth merely a mild version of FDR New Deal Progressivism, was defeated through media manipulation, massive vote fraud, and assorted knavery that the DNC has become so skilled at. Yes, Ex-President Mr. Nice Guy, the Banksters Friend, and other Corporatists foisted their Anointed One on the Democratic Party in an almost exact replay of the 2016 primaries. The “I’m not Trump” voters were enough to squeak out an insipid victory over the Insane Klown, but in the process, Dems LOST house seats rather than gained them! That doesn’t happen when you have a genuinely popular candidate; normally, the “Coattails Effect” will carry a number of House and Senate seats with the Presidential win. That should have the first warning sign to the Democratic Party. Granted, there is a hard core “never Trump” electorate who will vote for the Democratic Party no matter how awful their candidate is; but that constituency is more vocal than numerous. And, as we have learned by now, Mainstream Corporate Media polls about Biden’s popularity are works of creative fiction, not science, and certainly not destiny.

Meanwhile, as America flounders in its own delusional bubble on both the Corporatist left and right, around the world the Globalist/NeoLiberal agenda has proved a massive disaster, with whole nations in open revolt against its local proponents. Apparently Neo-Liberals in the Democratic Party haven’t gotten the memo and are still partying like its 1999, glutted as they are with donations given them by the Banksters and others of the donor class.

With no core values in the 21st century other than keeping those billionaire contributions flowing into their pockets, defeating substantive economic and political reform has become far more important to the Democratic Party elite than actually winning elections. Enjoy your Jeni’s Ice Cream while you may, the Deplorables are coming with their pitchforks to take you down and you won’t have to wait for 2024: the mid-term elections could be a bloodbath for the Democratic Party.

In their desperate effort to stave off systemic reform, the Democratic Establishment has painted itself, and the Party, into a corner. With every incoherent sentence that comes out of his palsied lips, Dementia Joe shows how utterly unfit he is for any office, least of all the highest one in the land.

But worse still, there is a closet-full of skeletons in Joe Biden’s past and the shill media can keep them from tumbling out into the light of day for only so long.

Even forgetting the allegation of rape–barely contained by the Corporatist media–there exists abundant footage of Beloved Uncle Joe behaving creepily towards young girls, to the point of molesting them on camera. Joe Biden’s pedophilia towards young girls is as apparent as Michael Jackson’s was towards young boys and equally whitewashed by the Mainstream Media–but won’t be by the GOP.

CREEPY JOE: THE PEDOPHILE PRESIDENT

Creepy Joe has been getting away with his sexual predation for so long he doesn’t even try to conceal it anymore. His “inappropriate” behavior is on full display in public, where he brazenly gropes grown women. There is enough video and photo evidence to fill hundreds of Republican attack ads. Don’t expect the GOP to go so easy on Creepy Joe and the Dems as the media has.

“Creepy Joe” doesn’t begin to describe Joe Biden’s long history of sexual predation. In addition to the rape allegations, there is abundant photographic evidence of him assaulting women, young and old. But, as with Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein, Glass Ceiling Feminists have looked the other way as long as they got what they want politically. from these power-brokers

In this regard, “Uncle Joe” Biden reminds one of “Uncle Charlie,” the main character in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt. In the film, “lovable” Uncle Charlie turns out to be a demented serial killer who murdered dozens of women. Of course, our good ole’ Uncle Joe never did that. No, instead, Uncle Joe and his Neo-Liberal cronies are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians with their regime change wars and coup d’états, not to mention the harm they’ve done to countless thousands of Americans through the privatization of prisons, education, defense and just about any other piece of prize pork that isn’t nailed down.

If Biden is bold enough to grope women in public, imagine what he is doing in private.

Add to that, there is Banksters Friend Biden’s long history of playing footsy with big banks, his forty-plus year history of trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, counting notorious Segregationists among his friends, his well-known opposition to integration in Congress, plus Law n’ Order Joe Biden championing crime bills to put Blacks and other minorities behind bars in record numbers—all recorded on video for the world to see and the GOP to use. But wait, there’s more!

Does anyone in the DNC and other Corporatist Democrat strongholds actually believe that with both Ukrainegate and Chinagate in their quiver, GOP attack ads in 2024 won’t also use those revelations? Once the Republicans and the Insane Clown get through with the Dems in their attack ads, not only will Biden lose spectacularly, but the whole party’s down ballot candidacy promises to go down in flames with him.

By the time the Repugnicans are finished, no amount of media spin or DNC conspiracy theory hoaxes–like the now thoroughly debunked Russiagate farce–will be able to put all the shattered pieces of the Humpty-Dumpty Biden Administration back together again. And when the billionaire donors, whom Neo-Liberal politicians hold so dear, abandon the proverbial sinking ship of the Democratic Party, do they really think working class voters and donors, that they’ve screwed over for years, will suddenly rush to their aid?

Despite nearly forty years of lies, alienation and wage stagnation, Neo-Liberals succeeded at some things: they have succeeded in shunning the American working class and they have alienated a majority of the electorate under 35. Even tried and true identity politics ploys are failing; a majority of younger minority voters have come to realize that, beyond a symbolic gesture, eight years of Obama did nothing for them either and that his “Republican Light” Neo-Liberalism has resulted only in more of the same economic desolation and endemic racism as before.

In addition, Glass Ceiling identity politics is also unlikely to deliver its true believers to the Democrats this time around, since the Tara Reade Scandal, while it has been swept under the rug by the six corporations that control 90% of the media, it is still simmering below the surface, waiting for the right moment to bubble over into full view.

Bernie Sanders, for all his pseudo-radical rhetoric, has simply refurbished New Deal Liberalism and labelled it “Democratic Socialism.” Nevertheless, even Sanders’ tepid version of Socialism offers an economic agenda which could provide American workers with real change for the better. It has already proven to energize large swaths of potential voters from a broad spectrum of backgrounds. Sanders’ quite moderate reform agenda shows that policies similar to what got Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected, updated for the 21st century, are still tremendously popular in the U.S. and can win elections.

Neo-Liberal Globalization has failed the American people. Repackaging the same “malarkey” that Neo-Liberals have spoon fed the rank and file for thirty-five years simply won’t work.

Bernie Sanders’ candidacy had held hope that he could save the party from its own folly. That hope was dashed; but not all the blame for Sanders’ failure can be laid at the feet of the Neo-Libs and their electoral rigging. Sanders’ own failure to prosecute his case forcefully against, “My Good Friend” Joe, plus his refusal to call out the massive cheating and vote theft in the primaries were fatal flaws too. They are failings by Sanders and his top advisors that has left a bitter taste among many former followers, even as it exposed Sanders’ own weakness as a candidate for the general election.

Now a catastrophe of the worst magnitude is looming, not just for the Democratic Party, but the Nation. The Petro-dollar is on the verge of collapse and with it falls fifty years of American economic and political Hegemony. And with that collapse also collapses the whole Globalist house of cards as well.

Fundamental economic and political reforms are long overdue and the current mass demonstrations and pent-up rage spilling out onto the streets of America’s cities are but a taste of things to come.

The hour is late; the need is great. As the headline indicates, there is a way forward.

The path to victory for Democrats?

–if they act quickly and decisively the answer is:

DUMP DEMENTIA JOE, DRAFT AL GORE, AND ADOPT BERNIE SANDERS’ POPULIST ECONOMIC AGENDA. DO THAT AND YOU WILL WIN!

In the back alleys of DC and in the cloak-rooms of the Old Boy network, whispered discussions of what to do about “The Biden Problem” were already buzzing well before they forced Sanders to bend the knee in 2020. The “I’m not Trump” strategy worked–barely–in 2020, but it just won’t fly in 2024.

Surely, any sane person in the DNC or other centers of Corporatism knew that Biden is a lost cause for election in 2024. Joe Biden’s mental disability is no longer a funny meme, even for Republicans.

The solution is simple: Uncle Joe’s puppet masters must convince him not to run in 2024. It would be the best for the Party, for the nation and for a mentally impaired geriatric politician who should never have been nominated in the first place, much less elected. But who to replace him with, and as importantly, what to do to appeal to all the alienated working-class voters whom the Neo’s have driven out of the Party? Forty percent of the American electorate are now independent voters; most of those used to be stalwart working-class Democrats. How do we win them back into the fold?

But the Party establishment first has to decide: do you really want to win the 2024 election? If so, as FDR told his millionaire peers in the 1930’s in a similar situation, you will need to promise working people something substantial in return for their votes.

Business as usual won’t work; identity politics can con some voters, but not enough. Above all, the Neo-Liberal failed Republican Lite bushwah BS won’t work anymore. The Democratic Party, the party of Jefferson, Jackson, FDR and Kennedy, needs to get back to its roots, adapted to the current crisis, otherwise it is doomed to fail, and fail BIG.

Al Gore is the man to deliver this new promise to the American worker!

Granted, the younger generations of voters may not know who Al Gore is; older voters may remember the controversy surrounding his election but likely forgot what Gore stood for. Moreover, Neo-Liberal elites long ago shunned him for not bending the knee and paying proper homage to the Clinton Machine. But The 2016 Election sent the Dems a message loud and clear from the voters: they would rather vote for a lying, cheating, ignorant bigot, with the IQ of a cumquat, than vote for another “lesser evil” Neo-Liberal candidate. And after four years of broken promises by the Neo-Lib Democratic bosses, the Insane Klown–or someone equally as evil–will not look so bad to workers whose lives have been savaged by Neo-Liberalism and Globalist economics. Just remember, they laughed at Hitler until economic despair drove German voters to elect him Chanceller of Germany.

It’s not rocket science! You need someone who is 1. Electable, 2. Honest, and has 3. Policies, concrete policies, not vague high-sounding nostrums–especially policies grounded in economic reform–that resonate with a majority of Americans.

I propose that Vice President Al Gore, at this juncture in time, is the ideal candidate, not only to beat Donald Trump or his MAGA Klown Clone, but to restore and reunite the Democratic Party nationally and rebuild the old coalition that made it so popular.

Here’s why Gore is the Man:

Electability.

Contrary to what you may have read in the Corporatist Media, Al Gore WON THE 2000 ELECTION. It was a close race, granted, but if the Repugnicans had not controlled the governorship and attorney general’s office of Florida, the fact of Gore’s victory would never have been in dispute. Vote tampering, ballot box manipulation and voter suppression is nothing new in Florida for either party, but the GOP pulled out all the stops in 2000. But what topped it all off was the Republican-packed Supreme Court, in what has been called a “Judicial Coup D’Etat,” illicitly prevented a full and accurate count of all the ballots from being carried out. In consequence the Republicans prematurely declared their boy Bubba as President and a spineless Democratic Party establishment rolled over and played dead.

Al Gore has won four elections in the House of Representatives; he has twice won elections as a Democratic Senator in a Southern state; he has twice helped win the White House as Vice President, and in 2000 he won the Presidential election against a far more popular, far more likeable–albeit equally illiterate–candidate than Trump. AL GORE HAS PROVEN HIS ELECTABILITY.

Honesty.

To some, Al Gore’s honesty is a drawback.

In the 21st century, where the Clinton Crime Family’s egregious graft, influence peddling, fraud and embezzlement are ignored and they are lionized by high society and the Corporate media alike, not having created a $100 Billion faux Charity as an international slush fund, as the Clinton’s did, is regarded as a failing by the DNC and the Party elite.

However, a large number of average Americans feel quite differently on the matter. To the best of our knowledge, there are no Wikileaks skeletons hanging in “dull” Al Gore’s closet.

At the very least, Gore’s squeaky-clean record gives the GOP very little ammunition to smear him with. It is true, the Washington Press Corps decried how dull Al was as Vice-President. The Corporate media looked the other way at Slick Willie’s many notorious sexual escapades and only with reluctance reported his dubious financial dealings due to relentless Republican hearings.

However, the general electorate, sick of Washington graft and nepotism, may regard honesty and integrity as a refreshing change from what has become the standard operating procedure in DC.

Winning Policies.

Universal Healthcare:  While Al Gore is less well known for his advocacy of Universal Healthcare than Bernie Sanders, the fact is that he has been an advocate for it  since 2002. In 2017, Gore came out strongly for the Medicare for All version of Universal Healthcare, in stark contrast to Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

National Healthcare, in one form or another, has been advocated by Progressives since at least 1912. It is long overdue. As a long-standing party member, Gore has sufficient clout to strongarm the Old Guard in Congress that an outsider like Bernie Sanders would never be able to do.

As Presidential candidate, there is no question Gore will do more than any other Democratic insider could possibly do to get universal healthcare passed into law.

Climate Change: If there is any policy defines Al Gore’s political career it is his long-standing concern for the Climate and the urgent need to reverse decades of regressive and destructive governmental policies regarding the environment.

The Green Party in 2016 and Sanders candidacy in 2020 made a “Green New Deal” the centerpiece not only of their climate policy but of jobs creation as well. For decades before them, Al Gore has been sounding the alarm about global warming and the need to wean away from fossil fuel, and has long advocated for full employment with jobs that pay a living wage

Al Gore has been involved with environmental issues since 1976, when as a freshman Congressman he led the first Congressional hearings on climate change and global warming.  In 1990, as Senator, Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries in which he tried to hammer out a Global Marshall Plan, whereby developed countries would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment. In the late 90’s, as VP, he urged Congress (unsuccessfully) to approve the Kyoto Protocol, to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

After being cheated out of the Presidency, Gore became even more involved in combating climate change and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of environmentalism. Most notably, Gore won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film An Inconvenient Truth, as well as an Oscar for the same documentary. He also produced a sequel to it in 2017. Al Gore’s dedication to protecting the environment is ongoing and deeply felt, and clearly not based on either political convenience or infatuation with a passing fashions in the media.

Gore’s efforts to sound the alarm about the dangers of climate change have frequently caused to him being ridiculed by a well-funded right wing media and he has often met with strong opposition from politicians of both parties aligned with Big Oil and the fossil fuel industry. Decades of obstructionism and climate denial have only worsened the crisis and increased the urgency to take strong action.

Al Gore is uniquely qualified to lead the charge for a Green New Deal. He has not just paid lip service to this pressing cause, he has been a leader in it for virtually his entire career. If elected, there’s no doubt about him making it a centerpiece of his Presidency.

For his foresight on this issue, Al Gore stands head and shoulders above any other potential candidate for President of any party. On this issue alone, Al Gore is more qualified than any other person to lead the country.

Free University Education and Erasing Student Debt. While Al Gore has not made education reform as much of a priority as the environment, since leaving office he has been involved with academia on a number of occasions. He has served as a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University, Columbia University, Fisk University, and UCLA. as well as making numerous campus appearances promoting environmental causes, such as the “24 Hours of Reality” at Vanderbilt in 2019, which not only raised awareness about the climate but also climate change’s adverse effects on human health. While Gore has not focused on these specific issues, certainly his ongoing involvement with higher education and frequent meetings with college students indicate that Gore would eagerly champion these and other education related causes with little urging.

Raising the Minimum Wage, Equal Pay, and other Labor and Domestic Issues. Since Gore has been out of day-to-day politics for a number of years, his precise stand on these issues is not known. We can say that in his last run for the Presidency, Gore was in favor of raising the minimum wage, was for equal pay for women, and was strongly in favor of repealing anti-union laws, strengthening worker safety rules and new laws for hazardous industries. Gore was also for welfare reform to help people out of poverty and uniquely proposed a three to one government subsidy for low income workers to put into a Social Security savings fund similar to a 401K, but which people could also withdraw from to buy a home or for college education. To combat homelessness he also proposed funding more new low income homes, subsidizing existing housing, and he set as a goal to raise median family income in America by at least a third over ten years.

Of course, since 2000, instead of all these domestic improvements and raising America’s standard of living, under President Bush what we got was a Dubya-cross: we got the Iraq War (which Gore opposed); The Patriot Act legalizing domestic spying and lying, as well as the militarization of police; tax breaks for billionaires; torture of prisoners; the mass murder of civilians and other war crimes. Dubya presided over a series of Oil Wars to benefit the Bush family’s Oil Oligarchy cronies; and above all he enabled the unrestrained theft of America’s wealth and health by Banksters and the One Percent. Trump is the natural result of two decades of Globalism, Trickle Down impoverishment and the New Imperialism.

NOT ME, US!

All Berniecrats out there, especially those still grieving over his campaign’s premature demise, need to realize that Sanders’ candidacy is dead and can’t be revived.

Unspoken, but a definite subtext of Party opposition to his run for the nomination, was the fact that Sanders was an outsider. He may have voted with the Democrats on many issues, but he was never a member of the Party and even among reformers was regarded with disdain. This was made apparent when, as soon as Sanders bent the knee, many party stalwarts began to parrot many of Sanders proposals as if they were their own.

However, Sanders’ policies, his concrete program of economic reform, are not dead. They continue to resonate with a vast majority of the American public, not just among his hard core supporters. Those policies are more popular, more relevant, than they were just six months ago, and more needed than at any time in history.

Adopting all or part of Sanders’ Progressive agenda is a sine qua non for any Democratic candidate serious about winning in November. Packaging Neo-Liberal turd in a glossy new package, as it did in 2016, won’t even get the party the plurality Hillary Clinton got in that election.

Things are so much worse now, and not just because the Insane Clown has bungled things so badly. Forty years of trickle down economics has brought ruination on the nation and on the world at large. Time for something completely different.

Bernie Sanders did not invent the policies he was espousing; most of them have been proposed by earlier Democratic Party leaders and earlier Progressives on and off for a century or more. Sanders labelling these long-standing goals as “Democratic Socialism” was counter-productive, regardless of the veracity of the term or not. So, to make it more palatable to older voters and old-school party stalwarts, as well as those people brain-washed by fifty years of red-baiting bushwah, re-labelling it to something like “The Green New Deal,” or “New Deal for the 21st Century” is only sound political strategy. It also truthfully reflects what it’s really about.

In truth, State Socialism is nothing new in America: the Republicans first introduced it in the United States during the Civil War. But like the classic Abbott & Costello skit about “Meatball!,” where Costello freaked at the mere mention of something he actually liked, many working class Americans have been taught to regard Socialism as Costello did meatballs. The Democrats will have a much better chance of this reform agenda proving palatable to the Heartland by giving it a different label. Remember, great swaths of honest, earnest, working class folk have been brainwashed to vote against their own economic self-interests by the Oligarchy for generations.

At least half of the Democratic rank and file are already on board with these policies and certainly the overwhelming majority of independent voters are too, and Independents now stand at around 40% of the electorate. These are the voters the Democratic Party needs to win over before November.

As far as those imaginary “Centrist” Democrats the DNC keeps pandering to, if they were willing to vote for Dementia Joe simply to get rid of Trump, they’d vote for JoJo the Dog Faced Boy or anything in between. You don’t need to pander to them, unless your goal is to lose the election.

If the Dems want to win back working class America, they will need to at least make a good faith effort to restore this bedrock of economic stability. It is way past due to do make fundamental and lasting reforms.

One thing is certain: Globalism and the NeoLiberal/NeoCon “Trickle Down” policies of the last forty years have proven disastrous for all but the very few. Their  failure is about to bring the entire country to the verge of widespread revolution because of it. Those very few who prospered continue to fund these failed economic policies out of pure greed, but America–the World–is fast approaching a crisis point where we can no longer indulge in such failed theories.

The alternative will soon be widespread violence in the streets on a level that this Nation has never seen. As President Kennedy observed, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Pseudo-Progressives and Corporatist Neo-Liberals successfully stone-walled the Sanders candidacy. But the economic forces that are driving Sanders economic reforms cannot be undone so easily as his candidacy was.

Unless the Democratic Party wishes to go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs, it has only a few months to come up with a viable alternative to Biden’s hollow “Nothing Will Change” and “Anyone But Trump” campaign strategies that it has painted itself into a corner with.

As the title of this little diatribe indicates, the Democratic Party has had the perfect candidate all along: Al Gore.

For the ideologues of the left and right, undoubtedly Vice President Al Gore does not pass the purity test. He comes from a Southern Democrat political dynasty and in the past billed himself as a Southern Liberal. To many in the North being a Southern Liberal is worse than being a Northern Conservative. In many minds, Gore is also tied to the “Double Bubba” candidacy, which in turn is synonymous to Bill Clinton and Neo-Liberalism’s betrayal of the American worker.

But Al Gore was never part of the Clinton inner circle, much less part of its Neo-Liberal economic agenda. Gore was not connected to the Arkansas Mafia that helped get Clinton elected and cashed in after his election, nor was he in any way associated with Clinton’s sex scandals.

As we noted above, not only has Al Gore run for the Presidency, he WON that election. We needn’t recite the sad history of how his victory in the 2000 election was stolen from him. But it is worth noting that his electoral victory would have been far stronger, and not have hinge on Florida’s crooked vote counting,  had Gore not rejected the assistance of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. Honesty has its costs.

While at the time his motives for rejecting the Clinton machine’s help was not explained, in retrospect it is clear that Gore was aware of Clinton’s crooked dealings and, wanting to wash his hands of dirty politics, didn’t wish to be beholden to Clinton, lest Slick Willie’s corrosive brand of politics taint his own presidency.

For those who consider Al Gore not Progressive enough, consider this: even if there still had been a 9-11 event on his watch, would a Vietnam Vet (not a draft dodger like Clinton and Trump, or playboy evader like Dubya) have listened to the Chicken Hawk Neo-Cons? Would President Gore have allowed himself to be talked into invading Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, not to mention torturing prisoners and other war crimes? Would President Gore have enshrined police-state legislation and the Nazification of police departments as enshrined in the Patriot Act, and all those similarly unconstitutional innovations we saw under the Cheney/Bush regime and then whitewashed and added to by the Obama-nation?

Even for those party loyalists who don’t want to reform their highly profitable system of graft, there is this to consider: do establishment Democrats really prefer the near certainty of a crushing defeat in November led by Dementia Joe?

Another crushing defeat may well convince your wealthy donors and lobbyists that you are no longer a good investment and their money will certainly flow into the already engorged bank accounts of the Republican Party. Creepy Joe’s candidacy is a lose-lose proposition no matter how you look at it.

Whatever else one may say about Al Gore, none can deny that he has been sounding the alarm about climate change for more than fifteen years. If anyone can sell the Green New Deal with credibility and conviction, it certainly is Al Gore.

If you think that the Coronavirus Crisis is a big deal, just wait a few years, when massive crop failures not only spawn worldwide famine but massive pandemics also ensue, as they always do on the heels of famines. Only this time the pandemics will be on a scale not seen since the Dark Ages. The question is no longer if, but when this will happen. And If you think Dementia Joe will do anything more than the Insane Clown would, you are truly delusional.

Al Gore may not be the Left’s ideal candidate, but neither does he have a record of forty years of trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, as Bankers Friend Joe Biden does.

DNC hacks and other Democrat Corporatists have been hinting that Hillary Clinton would be the perfect choice to replace Rapist Joe should he choose to step down from his Divine Right throne—as if 2016 didn’t already give them the answer to that selection. Whomever Creepy Joe would appoint Vice President on his ticket would not automatically be the replacement candidate, since they have not won any primaries nor even come in second. In any case, does anyone seriously think an insipid hack the likes of Amy Klobuchar would have any better chance than Hillary? Perhaps to Dementia Joe, but no one else.

In one sense, the Coronavirus Pandemic has been a blessing for Joe Biden, allowing him to hide in his basement and not be out in public putting his advanced mental deterioration on daily display. But even with his wife reading the teleprompter for him, Biden’s weakness is apparent to all. Dementia Joe Biden will lose and take the entire party with him—and as it is, many on the left as well as the right will cheer when that happens.

Dementia Joe needs to be replaced and the Democratic Party has until the Convention to do it in as painless a manner as possible. Biden’s reason for stepping down doesn’t need to be due to Tara Reade or the next rape allegation that is bound to surface, much less his long history of creepy sexual behavior towards little girls. Similarly, the Dems can short circuit both Ukrainegate and Chinagate as potential political scandals related to Biden’s egregious Nepotism. Biden’s mental deterioration is sufficiently advanced that it would be widely accepted without question—and with a sigh of relief by all democrats.

Unless the Democrats immediately put up a credible replacement, someone with broad appeal to reformers as well as old guard party loyalists, they will still be doomed in November. Simply nominating an honest candidate who is mentally sound is not enough: the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and the other economic reforms are doable programs that can and will motivate a broad swath of the electorate.

An honest candidate, coupled with a solid platform of concrete reforms, will give American voters motivation to venture out on election day and effect a change.

Bernie’s candidacy is dead; Joe Biden is brain dead; all the other corporatist shills presented in the primaries are worse than useless.

Al Gore, and Al Gore alone, is the man that fits that bill.

You Might Be A Socialist If…

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With the defeat of Bernie Sanders’ FDR-Style “Democratic Socialist” candidacy and the modest reforms he proposed complete, all the affluent  Silicon Valley sycophants, Latté Liberals, NeoLib Corporatists and others posing as Progressives or Liberals can now breathe a collective sigh of relief in their wine caves now.

We can all relax, confident in the knowledge the right-wing “Centrist” candidacy of Uncle Joe has safely been propped up by the DNC’s creative vote counting in all the Super Tuesday States and with the remaining primaries halted only halfway through.

And what does it matter if #DementiaJoe can’t tell his wife from his sister, occasionally gropes other men’s wives, gets really creepy around pre-pubescent girls and occasionally rapes naïve young female staffers, why “Joe Biden is Joe Biden,” as Nancy Pelosi cryptically reassures us.

“Nothing Will Change” is the one campaign promise we can count on with MBNAJoe, as he surrounds himself with only the fattest of the fat-cat lobbyists and banksters in his proposed dream team cabinet. Yes, rest assured that not one iota of genuine reform will ever see the light of day should Big Bank Biden be elected come November. Of course, no matter how crooked, how demented, how much of a sexual predator he is, who ya gonna vote for–the Insane Clown President? The Duopoly again presents us with two evils and asks us to choose the lesser. There IS a better way and they know it.

However, even should The Not Trump candidate not win in November, hey, that’s OK too. ‘Cause Chuck, “I’m Helpless to Stop Them,” Schumer and Nancy, “Let Them Eat Jeni’s,” Pelosi will continue to have cover for giving the Republicans everything they want, all the while railing against The Insane Clown’s boorish behavior and his retarded rants. Meanwhile, both vote for bloated giveaways to billionaires, approve trillions for foreign wars, and write blank checks for fatally flawed war machines.

It would be good at this juncture, however, for us to do a brief self-assessment from the safety of our collective wine-cave quarantine, just to make sure no genuine progressive ideas have somehow insinuated themselves into our psyche. Of course, identity politics and virtue signaling are fine, providing those vague affirmations of moral superiority never result in real change. 

With all this in mind, following is a checklist of Progressive-Socialist ideas that have somehow managed to seep into the Corporatist bubble that has been carefully constructed around the American public over the past half century.

Much of it was originally introduced by those vile class traitors, the Roosevelts, both Teddy and Franklin Delano. Thankfully, Neo-Liberals, working on behalf of their Billionaires benefactors, have managed to expunge most of these dread reformers’ legacy since the 1990’s, even as they pretended to be carrying forward their ideals.

Review this list, and if you don’t say nay to most of it, there is a very real danger that you might be a closet Socialist without even realizing it!

So here goes, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST IF:

1)   You believe that healthcare is a basic human right or, worse still, that Medicare For All is somehow a viable alternative to the For-Profit Healthcare Industry, whose main goal is not to provide affordable health insurance but to maximize profitability for shareholders. 

No, our venerable employer-based healthcare was good enough for grandpa, (who died at the age of 55) and so it damn well better be good for your grand-children, whether they have a corporate job or not. And recession, what recession? Never happen! Cough once if you agree, cough twice or more and collapse in a high fever if you disagree.

2)   You might be a Socialist if you believe all people should be paid a living wage. This is one of those insidious ideas, like Unions, that really should have been stamped out by now.

For years, our Good Friends in the GOP—the Grand Ole Plutocrats—tried to sneak in a “sub-minimum” wage as a way of getting people used to starving, after working their butts off in dangerous working conditions, or be glad to work overtime just to be able to pay the rent.

The way the Clinton and Dubya Administrations handled the demand for higher wages (ya know, that good ole law of supply & demand) was to CHEAT. Without changing any laws, both presidential NEO’s chose not to enforce immigration rules and opened the floodgates to illegal immigration.

In truth, immigration had already been boosted manifold by the United States’ own awful “free” trade deals, which hurt workers in poor countries as much as it hurt workers in the US. That, combined with our never-ending regime change coups and wars, had made life a living hell in Third World countries.

In the late 90’s and into the Oh-Oh! Decade, where a skilled Union tradesman might have gotten thirty dollars an hour, unskilled  illegal immigrants, desperate for work, were glad to do the same labor for thirty dollars a day, although not as well. And if the roof of a million-dollar home suddenly came off in high winds because a construction crew of unskilled illegals hadn’t nailed it properly to the beams, well, after all, you get what you pay for—and the developer made his profit, didn’t he?

Of course, once Dubya left office, suddenly illegal immigrants became demonized and refugees became convenient scape-goats for the, by now, obvious de-industrialization of America. Jobs that paid high wages became fewer and farther between, regime-change wars remain a boom industry (or I should say KA-BOOM!) and Globalist George Soros’ billions quietly subsidizes worldwide floods of desperate immigrants, enabling them to travel thousands of miles in search of work.

And what did Mr. NICE GUY Barack Obama do? Why, more awful trade deals and more regime change wars, even as he upped deportation’s for those who were fleeing devastation, death, disease and famine. Having turned a blind eye for years, the Republicans did a 180 and now immigrants became the villains, not multi-national corporations. How better to keep people in line than by setting one group of underpaid workers against another, even more destitute group?

Trump may gloat over putting children behind bars, but let’s not forget that MR. CLEAN, Barack Obama, was the one who first came up with that idea and despite the Insane Clown’s bluster and BS, Obama still reigns supreme as “Deporter in Chief” of Illegals.

Now Wall Street and Silicon Valley have had another great idea: why have employees at all? The growth of the “independent contractor” model, which Silicon Valley loves so much, frees Capitalists from any worries about being forced to pay $15 an hour, or $12 and hour or even the beloved good ol’ $7.25. Hell, in some cities, Uber drivers are lucky to net $3.00 a hour in real income! But that’s the American Way, ain’t it? And if you don’t think so, you MUST be a Socialist!

Unions, a living wage, affordable housing: all dread Socialist traps for the unwary! Begone, I say! Let them eat Jeni’s ice-cream!—providing you can get past the security guards of Nancy Pelosi’s gated community, or the electrified wire and the attack dogs.

3)   You might be a Socialist, for sure, if believe we should have Free College Education.

For those too young to remember the bad old days, this Dread Red idea had actually been a reality in the USA once upon a time, but fortunately, since the beloved advent of St. Ronald Reagan and Trickle Down Everything, state universities and colleges have been charging ever-increasing tuition, assuring the huddled masses remain in blissful ignorance—and low paying jobs. Then came the for-profit colleges that provided expensive educations in fields for which there was absolutely no demand. And, thanks in large part to Creepy Uncle Joe, the DINO who is currently being beatified as the patron saint of child molesters, the NEO’s made it impossible for anyone burdened by huge student debts to declare bankruptcy, even if you’d been scammed by these for-profit shyster schools.

Oh, did I forget to mention that free public college education was originally put into law in 1862 by a political party founded by Socialists? Today we call it the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans have changed a bit since they were founded.

4)   In a similar vein, mainly the jugular, you might be a Socialist if think the US could and should forgive all student debt.

Since the Federal Government subsidizes almost all student loans, this is one of the more do-able Socialist programs. Unfortunately, the mantra used against this and other Socialist reforms of “how ya gonna pay for it” which had served as a bulwark against any and all humane proposals to make life in America better, was made inoperable by the Congress’ transfer this spring of TRILLIONS of dollars to the big banks and other big businesses with no strings attached. Not that Congress has ever worried about funding bloated defense budgets and regime change Oil Wars.

5)   You might be a Socialist if you believe the government should subsidize rail transportation, both locally and nationally.

In Europe, citizens and tourists can ride comfortably and cheaply from city to city by train, while mass transit within cities have long been a given of modern civilized society. Not only do all modern nations have national rail systems, fully funded by their governments, the United States of America actually paid to rebuild western Europe’s railroads after World War II, which was only fair, since we bombed the crap out of them during the war. Still, what we could afford to do for Europe was NEVER done for our own passenger rails, which have withered on the vine since the 1940’s. Thank GM and the Laissez Fairies for that.

The argument against this Socialistic subsidized rail system one commonly hears is that if passenger trains can’t pay their own way, the government has no business subsidizing them. Which leads us to:

6)   You might be a Socialist if you believe the government should provide a free transportation systems in the form of Federal, state and local highways, not to mention more pedestrian Socialist conveyances such as sidewalks.

Depending on where you live, you might know roads with names like Gallatin Pike, Hillsboro Pike, Murfreesboro Pike, and the like. Or, say, do you favor Tollhouse Cookies? All these are vestiges of a time when the main roads in the nation were for-profit ventures, organized by private stock companies to enrich their investors, and tollhouses were where the fares to travel those roads were collected.

Before that, the only way to get long distances was on The King’s Highway, which was actually owned by the king (or queen) and mainly reserved for sovereign lords to transport armies from one place to another to bash disloyal subjects. Only as a secondary benefit were ordinary folk allowed to travel those roads. So, no, the government building and maintaining roads, highways and interstate freeways was not always a given and are definitely socialistic in their very conception.

7)   You also might be a Socialist if you believe the government should provide fire and police protection, water and sewer services and assorted other public utilities most Americans now take for granted.

Recently Joe Rogan had a dufus of a politician on his show who, when confronted with the fact that such things are inherently Socialistic in nature, tried to counter that no, they were a “public service.” When Joe pointed out that, as a public service, they were paid for by the government, Congressman Dufus countered that no, they were a “public good.” Rogan kept pressing him on his obtuse illogic, but, as the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid.

In the early Republic there was no organized police or fire services in the cities and as far as drinking water went, people dug their own individual wells, often within feet of public latrines. Then they wondered why Typhus, Diphtheria, Yellow Fever, Smallpox and a host of other deadly diseases broke out so often! The glaring defects of Laissez Faire policies in running modern cities soon became apparent to many people.

In the late nineteenth century, “Sewer Socialists” and other reformers increasingly replaced corrupt graft-ridden city governments staffed by cronyism and not only instituted honest governments run with an apolitical civil service, but promoted government-funded (that is Socialistic) public water and sewer systems as a way to combat the deadly pandemics that beset the burgeoning American urban landscape.

There were volunteer fire-fighting companies in early American cities, to be sure, but these were often for-profit entities, being paid by insurance companies to only put out fires on homes that were insured, and as often as not the volunteer companies were more interested in fighting each other than fighting the fires . These volunteer groups, like the early street gangs, also served as political organizations. Boss Tweed got his start as Captain of one such volunteer fire-fighting company: Americus Engine Company Number 6 (“The Big Six”). The idea that professional full-time firemen, dedicated to fighting fires no matter who owned the property, may seem common sense today, but it took a number of devastating city fires in nineteenth century American for this Socialistic institution to take hold.

Likewise, in the early Republic, there were no organized police forces. In New England, town Constables existed, but they were unarmed and generally more concerned with public drunkenness or making sure citizens attended church than fighting crime. The true first police force wasn’t formed until 1838, with other cities following suit soon after. These early police forces were less than stellar institutions, with graft and corruption endemic, and in any case their main job was to protect the private property of the wealthy elite, not  to keep the peace or protect citizens from harm.

In the rural South, the situation was worse, since the county sheriff’s departments had their origins in the ante-bellum “slave patrols” whose main job was to keep slaves from running away or rebelling. Members of slave patrols were often far more violent and sadistic than the slave owners themselves, being drawn from poor whites, who as a class tended to be resentful of having to compete for employment with an unpaid Black workforce.

In post-war era, Progressives and Socialists, including leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, pushed to “clean up” the police and have them serve the general good, not just the needs of the affluent. 

8)   You might be a Socialist If you have ever recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

OK, this is a trick question. But ever since the NEO’s have brought back the McCarthy-Era smear tactic of  “guilt by association” so that anyone, left or right, can be tarred as a Russian “bot” who dares to point out the simple truth that the Russians didn’t “hack” the DNC emails in 2016, we can safely include anyone who recites a pledge written by a Socialist to be also tainted with Socialism. 

The Pledge of Allegiance in its present form was created by a Christian Socialist.   Francis Bellamy, was a devout Christian, but also a dedicated Socialist and also quite patriotic. He wanted to inculcate a greater sense of loyalty, especially among children and recent immigrants.

Bellamy had considered using the slogan of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité as a basis for the national pledge, but he thought that fraternity was “too remote of realization.” Likewise with equality; while he was for equality in principle, he was aware that, at that point, neither women nor blacks were treated equally in America, so that it would be a “dubious” word in a national pledge. Finally, Bellamy concluded, “Liberty and justice were surely basic, were undebatable, and were all that any one Nation could handle. If they were exercised for all. They involved the spirit of equality and fraternity.”

The Pledge was first published on Sept. 8, 1892 and quickly became universally accepted, although it would still be decades before it was made official. Although Bellamy was a Protestant minister as well as a dedicated Socialist, the pledge as he composed it did not include the phrase “under God.” That wasn’t added until the 1950’s during the “Red Scare” to weed out lefties, ‘cause, don’t ya know, all them Socialists is Godless.

in fact, a previous pledge had included God in it, but Bellamy, although a devout Christian, deliberately excluded it because he wanted the pledge to be as inclusive as possible. Well, that’s a “godless socialist” for you!

9)   You might be a Socialist if you have ever sung “America the Beautiful.”

Yup, here again, we have a beloved patriotic song—which many would prefer as the National Anthem to the racist and bellicose Star Spangled Banner—that was penned by a Socialist. In fact, the author was Christian Socialist and, many say, a Lesbian. We should also add that not only was the author a Socialist, but an ardent foe of American imperialism as well, plus she was an activist for immigrants, minorities, the poor, unions, women’s rights, and education among other causes. A dangerous foe of Capitalism if ever there was one!

The author of this almost-the-national-anthem paean to American patriotism was Katherine Lee Bates—no relation to actress Kathy Bates of “Misery” fame. Katherine was inspired to write a song that virtually every schoolchild knows and which is sung in many churches as a hymn, during a train trip to Colorado to teach a summer college class.

Bates, unusual for her day, was a highly educated professional woman, a Professor of English at Wellesley College, and her trip was something of a busman’s holiday. A number of the sights on her trip inspired her, including a visit to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the so-called “White City,” and traveling farther west she viewed the vast wheat fields of Kansas growing and blowing in the wind. Above all she was inspired viewing the “fruited plains” from high atop Pikes Peak, where the words of the poem began to flood into her mind. All that natural beauty is apparent in the opening lyrics of “America the Beautiful.” But a closer reading of the stanzas also reveals her distinctly Socialist and Progressive ideas about how our nation should be.

There are no “rockets red glare” in “America the Beautiful.” Rather, we hear of “amber waves of grain” and “the enameled plain,” as well as “thine alabaster cities gleam” (that White City she saw in Chicago). But Ms. Bates also asked God to bless the country with moral reform, end injustice and to avoid Imperialism: “God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law,” that those Alabaster cities should not only gleam, but “gleam/Undimmed by human tears!” Bates’ poem also calls out the greed of the Robber Barons Capitalists and asks that God shed His grace, “Till selfish gain no longer stain/The banner of the free!” Nor did the Professor shy from summoning the image of fraternity as well as equality: “And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea.”

For Christian Socialist Bates, America being great was not enough; observing that “countries such as England failed because, while they may have been ‘great’ they had not been “good.” She asserted that, “unless we are willing to crown our greatness with goodness, and our bounty with brotherhood, our beloved America may go the same way.” The Socialist’s poem was first published in the religious journal, The Congregationalist, in 1895, but it wasn’t married to its current melody until 1910. It’s been a patriotic staple ever since.

10)   Finally, you might be a Socialist if you believe either of these statements: 

1. “The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” Or, that: “Labor alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations)
2. “… value can, does and should increase in relation to the amount of labor which has been expended in the improvement of commodities” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae)
3. “all goods, considered economically, are only the product of labor and cost nothing except labor” (Karl Marx, Das Kapital)

 

If this list has issues or institutions you find congenial, DON’T PANIC! There is still time to purge yourself of the double-speak that infects your psyche. While I don’t advocate taking a Chloroquine enema or swallowing UV light-bulbs, you might consider a double shot of Grey Goose as antiseptic, coupled with a massive dose of Bloomberg News, followed by an eye-wash of fresh copies of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Then read back issues of WAPO or the NYT and let their “unnamed high placed sources” in the Intelligence Community (probably the reporter’s local bartender) reassure you that’s it’s all a plot by the Ruskies to rig the elections, or the economy, or the alt right/alt left media or whatever con they currently have running. Because the Military Industrial Complex NEVER lies, right?

And before you return to watching Rachel Maddow, or Loveable Ellen, or pseudo-Liberal Joy, don’t forget to go to your 25k freezer and consume several pints of Jeni’s artisanal ice cream to clear the palate of any lingering bad taste that these Socialist ideas may leave in your mouth.

 

 

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PLAN. JOE BIDEN HAS DEMENTIA.

It is, perhaps, an exercise in futility to put forth a pragmatic plan that can begin to begin to deal with our present crisis.

The media is owned by the 1% and continually colludes with the Military Industrial Complex to hide the truth about the state of the nation and the world from the American people. the Democratic Party is so corrupt it would rather artificially prop up a sexual predator, whose nepotism and corruption are well documented and who continually lies about his history of regressive, pro-corporate legislation. Nevertheless, Bernie Sanders put forward a six-point plan to deal with the crisis. NOW.

I am no Bernie Bro; in fact, there are no “Bernie Bros”—it is a false narrative invented to discredit the men and women of all ages and races who have responded to Sanders’ call for radical reform of the American economy.

Nor is Sanders himself above criticism by his followers. Bernie Sanders  refuses to tell the truth about his “Good Friend” Joe Biden—aka Creepy Joe, Dementia Joe, Nepotism Joe, HSBC Joe, etc.—or call out the egregious hacking of the primaries that have been proved by the hard facts of raw exit poll data.

There is evidence to show that as much as 13% of the primary results were electronically transferred from Sanders to his crooked “Good Friend” and this doesn’t take into account various other DNC dirty tricks, such as closing or moving polling stations without warning, putting defective machines in others, magically unregistering progressive democrats from the rolls on primary day, etc., etc.

The Democratic Primary system hasn’t changed much since the days of Boss Tweed–except it’s become even more dishonest.

But the stark truth is that all the alternatives to Sanders available right now are much, much worse. Forty years of trickle down economics, combined with a medical crisis that political hacks of both parties have known was coming for years, have put our Nation–and the World–on the brink of the Abyss.

Bernie Sanders, like the mythic Greek hero Sisyphus, keeps rolling the ponderous stone of reform up the mountain of corruption that is modern American politics. It may seem absurd to even attempt to right the wrongs of forty years of the “NEO” con-job foisted on us by the pseudo-right and the pseudo-left, so far down the wrong path have they led us. Yet Sanders still endures. And make no mistake, Sanders has made tactical and strategic mistakes, have trusted in bad advice from persons who were, at best, fifth columnists, and has put personal loyalties to former colleagues above his duty to the people of his movement and the people of this nation, all with tragic consequences.

Right now we, as a nation, face total system collapse not only due to the present pandemic and ensuing economic meltdown that will surely follow, but even due even to a Corporatist political establishment that continues to play the same old political con game with am American public rapidly running out of options or patience.

In the face of this immanent crisis, as Cheeto Man lies, bullies and blusters his way through daily press briefings, and Creepy Uncle Joe displays his advanced dementia and incapacity to lead in video after pathetic video interviews from home, Bernie Sanders despite being cheated, shunned and disrespected by the Corporate Media and the party that used to be for the people, has put forth a six-point program that is pragmatic and achievable within months of it being implemented.

Though we know it may well be futile, we owe it to our neighbors, our fellow citizens and the nation to show them a way forward, for certainly the Corporate Media and the oligarchs that pay them to lie to us will continue to ignore Sanders and his solutions to the mess they created.

Here, is what Bernie Sanders has proposed, to deal with the crisis:

1. Addressing the Employment Crisis and Providing Immediate Financial Relief
There is little doubt in my mind that we are facing an economic crisis that could be even worse than the Great Depression. The St. Louis Federal Reserve has projected that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32 percent. In my view, we must make sure that every worker in America continues to receive their paycheck during this crisis and we must provide immediate financial relief to everyone in this country.
An important precedent for that approach was taken in the recent stimulus package in which grants were provided to the airlines for the sole purpose of maintaining the paychecks and benefits of some 2 million workers in that industry through September 30. We must expand that program to cover every worker in America and we must make it retroactive to the beginning of this crisis. This is not a radical idea. Other countries, such as the UK, Norway, Denmark, France, and others have all come up with similar approaches to sustain their economy and prevent workers from losing their jobs.
Our primary goal during this crisis must be to prevent the disintegration of the American economy. It will be much easier and less expensive to prevent the collapse of the economy than trying to put it back together after it collapses.
To do this, we must also begin monthly payments of $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in our country, and guarantee paid family leave throughout this crisis so that people who are sick do not face the choice of infecting others or losing their job.

2. We Must Guarantee Health Care to All
Let’s be clear: we were facing a catastrophic health care crisis before the pandemic, and now that crisis has become much, much worse. Already, 87 million people are uninsured or underinsured. Layoffs will mean tens of millions of people more will lose their current insurance — which will result in countless deaths and bankruptcies. Already in the last two weeks, an estimated 3.5 million people have lost their employer-sponsored insurance.
And as the pandemic grows, we are seeing more and more reports of people who have delayed treatment due to concerns about cost. In this pandemic, uninsurance will lead to deaths and more COVID-19 transmissions.
Therefore, during this crisis, Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one in America who is sick, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this national pandemic. Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future. But, for the moment, we must act boldly to make sure everyone can get the health care they need in the coming months.

3. Use the Defense Production Act to Produce the Equipment and Testing We Need
Unbelievably, in the United States right now, doctors and nurses are unnecessarily putting their lives on the line treating people suffering from the coronavirus because they lack personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, and surgical gowns. The CDC has directed health professionals to use homemade gear like bandanas or scarves and some workers at the VA are being told to re-use one surgical mask for a week at a time. HHS estimated that our country needs 3.5 billion masks in response to this crisis.
President Trump has utilized the Defense Production Act thousands of times for the military and for enforcement of his immigration policies, yet he has resisted using its power to save lives during the pandemic. That is unacceptable. We must immediately and forcefully use the Defense Production Act to direct the production of all of the personal protective equipment, ventilators and other medical supplies needed.
We must also utilize this power to produce antibody tests so we can begin figuring out who has already contracted the virus and has developed some immunity to COVID-19.
In addition, OSHA must adopt a strong emergency standard to protect health care workers, patients, and the public during this crisis. We must crack down aggressively on price gougers and hoarders, and use any means necessary to secure supplies.

4. Make Sure No One Goes Hungry
Even before this crisis hit, one in every seven kids in America was going hungry and nearly 5.5 million seniors in our country struggled with hunger. Already in this crisis we see lines at food banks and growing concern that our most vulnerable communities and those recently unemployed may struggle to feed their families.
As communities face record levels of food insecurity, we must increase SNAP benefits, expand the WIC program for pregnant mothers, infants, and children, double funding for the Emergency Food Program (TEFAP) to ensure food banks have food to distribute, and expand Meals on Wheels and School Meals programs. When necessary, we must also develop new approaches to deliver food to vulnerable populations — including door-to-door drop offs.

5. Provide Emergency Aid to States and Cities
Even as state and local employees like police officers, firefighters and paramedics work on the front lines of this pandemic, states and cities that pay their salaries are facing enormous budgetary pressures.
Congress must provide $600 billion in direct fiscal aid to states and cities to ensure they have the personnel and funding necessary to respond to this crisis. In addition, the Federal Reserve must establish programs to provide direct fiscal support and budgetary relief to states and municipalities.

6. Suspend Monthly Payments
Even before this crisis, half of the people in our country were living paycheck to paycheck. In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Now, with growing unemployment, families are facing financial ruin if we do not act quickly and boldly.
That’s why we must suspend monthly expenses like rent, mortgages, medical debt and consumer debt collection for 4 months. We must cancel all student loan payments for the duration of this crisis, and place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs.

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”           ——Thomas Paine, early American Socialist

Add your name to say you support these ideas to support the working people of this country during the coronavirus crisis.

AMERICA NEEDS A MULTI-PARTY DEMOCRACY

TO ANYONE WITH EARS TO HEAR AND EYES TO SEE, THE 2016 PSEUDO-ELECTION DEMONSTRATED THAT FOR OUR REPUBLIC TO REMAIN FREE AND A DEMOCRACY, WE NEED MORE THAN TWO PARTIES TO CHOOSE FROM IN ELECTIONS.

 

In the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, the level of vote-rigging, voter fraud and general hacking of machines and votes reached an unprecedented level that would have put even Boss Tweed to shame. It was not the Russians, as the CIA and the Corporate Media would have you believe who did it–it was the corrupt Neo-Liberals of the DNC who were guilty.

There were numerous online bloggers and a few remaining honest journalists present to document that fact, if one were willing to hunt these sources down online. Of course, if your source of news is the Corporate Media–the so-called Mainstream Media–you would have heard or seen none of this primary fraud. Thanks to Bill Clinton’s “reform” of the laws governing media ownership in the ’90’s, the United States went from about fifty different news and media sources down to five. The information highway, so-called, is controlled by a handful of Corporate conglomerates, who in turn have the fingers in the military-industrial government pie.

Case in point: the Washington Post, currently being lionized in the movies for releasing the Pentagon Papers in the 70’s, (which exposed the lies, collusion and fraud which the Pentagon and CIA engaged in to gin up the Vietnam War), was bought by Jeff Bezos with money obtained from a lucrative contract with the CIA. The WaPo then proceeded to shill for Hill and when Bernie Sanders became a serious threat to her coronation, began churning out attack pieces on Sanders, propaganda disguised as news, at a furious pace. In one day alone they vomited 18 attacks. Hillary, Wall Street’s choice for Democratic Party candidate, had the money, the power and the media behind her, as well as the CIA pulling propaganda strings behind the scenes. Yet still she lost to what is generally agreed as the worst POTUS in US history (sorry Millard Fillmore & James Buchanan you were bad, just not this awful). With the WaPo in the back pocket of the CIA, don’t look for it to ever do an expose such as they did with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers in the ’70’s.

As the DNC and Podesta emails proved beyond a reasonable doubt, not only was the Democratic primary rigged in advance, the Clinton machine–with Mainstream Media collusion–actually promoted the Trump candidacy in the GOP primaries. They called it “the Pied Piper” strategy: engineer the worst possible candidate into the role of GOP presidential candidate and the voters of the United States will be forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils.”

Pervs of a feather fly the Lolita Express together to Jeff Epstein’s Under-Age Fantasy Island. The one with the hidden video cameras to use to blackmail the rich and famous later.

Despite many non Clinton dems urging for HER to go out and campaign in the contested states, Hillary and her acolytes were so sure she would win by a landslide they not only did not actively campaign in the field where it was most needed, they went out of their way to insult and degrade the Sanders wing of the party, which arguably was more than 50% of Democratic Party stalwarts. Well, as we know too well, the American electorate, given the choice of two evils, chose what they perceived was the lesser evil–Trump!

 

Two sexual predators compare notes and gloats.

I would like to gloat over the monstrous hubris of the Clintonites, but unfortunately the entire country–the entire world–is having to suffer the consequences. The Clintons, with their billions of graft and “donations” extorted from third world strongmen and dictators (including Vladimir Putin), can sit back and roll in their ill gotten money; most Americans however will suffer from the dangerous incompetency, the meanness and arrogance of Bill Clinton’s golfing buddy and fellow sex perv, Donald, “grab pussy” Trump.

There are many causes of how the American political system became so dysfunctional and in future articles I will delve into some aspects of the decline of Democracy and death spiral our Republic seems to be in. But for the present, let me just state the obvious: had the American public been presented with viable alternatives to the Hillary-Trump axis–or Wall Street Blue vs Wall Street Red as one pundit framed it–we would certainly be far better off for the next four to eight years.

Third parties have arisen, but generally they have never attempted to build a party infrastructure county by county that can deliver votes in congressional elections. Once every four years for a charismatic candidate is not enough to turn the Republic’s death spiral around.

What America needs to restore democracy is not three, but at least four and perhaps even six legitimate parties, each of which would appeal to a broad swath of the American electorate. Most issues today are framed in a left vs right duopoly, as if there were no middle ground between either camp.

How many right to life advocates would argue that, if a woman’s life were in immanent danger due to a pregnancy, that she should be made to die rather than to save her life? Conversely, it is estimated that as many as 80% of all gun owners are for reasonable restrictions to keep guns out of the mentally ill, career criminals and terrorists. What they are not for is to have their constitutional rights taken away.

Most Americans, no matter what their declared party affiliation is, often take a variety of stands on a variety of issues: yet the two oligarchic parties restrict our choice to Column A and Column B. Bernie Sanders, a self avowed Socialist, was able to work with Ron Paul, a Libertarian, to force the Federal Reserve to do an audit of its holdings, revealing millions of dollars unaccounted for. That is an example of how independent politicians with different political philosophies can work together for the common good.

politics makes for strange bedfellow, but at least they’re not underage.

It may be hard to fathom today, but the Republican Party started as a party whose rank and file were composed of Socialists of one ilk or another.

The Republicans of the 1850’s and 1860’s not only abolished slavery, but redistributed millions of acres of land to the landless, set up a system of FREE higher education, had government intervene in building a transcontinental transportation system (a socialistic program if ever there was one) and many other reforms we now take for granted and don’t even recognize their socialistic origins.

 

 

The Democratic Party used to be the party of the working man and woman and under FDR and the New Deal, farmers, laborers and common folk in all parts of the country looked to the party of Jefferson and Jackson to defend their rights and expand democracy.

Since the mid-eighties, however, that party has been taken over by plutocrats disguised as liberals–the so-called Neo-Liberals–who are definitely NOT Liberals but who are basically Wall Street operatives in sheep’s clothing. More and more, Neo-Liberals’ main goal is to maintain control of the party–and the flood of money coming in from lobbyists and special interests–and less and less with actually winning elections. After all, their logic goes, who are union workers and minorities going to vote for–the Republicans?  With at least 40% of the electorate now identifying themselves as independent, clearly the answer is: NONE OF THE ABOVE

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We desperately need more than these two old and corrupt parties to choose from.  If comic book heroes can dwell in a multiverse, so too can the American voter. The electorate can handle more than two choices for not just the Presidency, but the House and Senate and, especially, for state and local offices. The Duopoly–that cabal of rich plutocrats who pretend to be for democracy but who really wish to keep American voters in the thrall of Wall Street–don’t want to give the voters a real choice at the polls. To be sure, those Americans who remain brainwashed by the Left-Right delusion, may think they are voting “Conservative” or “Liberal” when they go to the polls, but how often do they find that what they thought they were voting for never comes to pass?

THE WORLD THAT HAS BEEN PULLED OVER YOUR EYES TO BLIND YOU FROM THE TRUTH

Wall Street Red and Wall Street Blue will continue to function for a long time to come, but many of the people now part of either party are not happy with their masters and if they were presented with viable alternatives, gladly bolt the failed duopoly that serves neither their needs nor their values.

In future articles I will go into detail as to what these parties should look like. Bear in mind, I do not necessarily subscribe to the values of such parties; but there are large numbers of Americans who would and whose voices would be best heard outside of the stifling political strait-jacket that now exists of Democratic v. Republican tickets. In a true democracy we do not always get what we want; but we are given clear and honest alternatives to choose from.

DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?

In the past, America has had other parties than the Democrats and the Republicans and in some cases we had a genuine multi-party Presidential election. The one time we had a four-way Presidential election, the choice of the voting was arguably one of the country’s greatest Presidents: Abraham Lincoln.  We need more politicians like him today–and a multi-party system is the way to do it.

 

 

 In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt left the corruption of the Republican Party to form the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party, the best expressions of the Progressive political movement in the 20th century. He beat the GOP candidate in the popular vote, but lost to Woodrow Wilson, a virulently racist Democrat, who pretended to be Progressive but was anything but, and who later dragged America into a war to defend Wall Street & London Bankers’ financial investments.