the blog at etoma think.wonder.dream

You’re upset about guns. You’re upset about abortion. The only way to fix the problem is to vote for Democrats, and only Democrats. There is no point in voting for Republicans, since they created the problems in the first place.

Posted under General

Many Americans were surprised and shocked when Donald Trump was elected President last November, not least of them the candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, principally. Trump seemed to take the victory as his due, while Hillary has tried to explain her unexpected loss by blaming everyone else–the Russians, James Comey, Bernie Sanders. 

But the problem with this is, in my opinion, that all the blame she casts on Comey, for example, rests on one statement he made a week before the vote regarding her emails. I think the election should never have been so close that one statement could shift the vote enough to cost her the election. The reason the election was close was because Hillary, in my opinion, was the worst candidate the Democrats could have nominated. 

Two charts from 538 demonstrate that “Trump and Clinton were the No. 1 and No. 2 least-popular nominees on record, and it wasn’t particularly close. It seems very likely that if Clinton had been as well-liked as John Kerry, Al Gore, or Michael Dukakis that she would be president today, and that if Trump had been as well-liked as Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Bob Dole he’d have won the popular vote.” The quote is from Vox. 

Most supporters of either candidate will need no education about why the opponent is so unpopular. Trump is a lying egomaniac with the attention span of a hummingbird. He never keeps his promises, doesn’t pay his bills, and thinks the Presidency is his personal cash register. Clinton cheated to get the nomination, destroyed 30,000 emails that she says were personal, ran an inept campaign highlighted by a series of blunders, and gave fawning speeches to Goldman Sachs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is it any wonder these two are the least popular candidates we know about?

During the campaign, Trump promised a lot of popular things. But he was lying, and he hasn’t done much to get them done since he was elected. But Clinton based her campaign on continuing what Obama had done. But Obama disappointed a lot of people. He ran on a platform of “the change you can believe in.” Remember?

He said he would fight for universal health care. As someone said, “I don’t mind that Obama couldn’t get single-payer health care. I mind that he didn’t try.” That was my own issue, and why I didn’t vote for Obama’s re-election, although I did the first time. He also bailed out the big banks, but no homeowners who were duped into loans they could not pay. He did not prosecute any of the bankers, who should all be in jail for lengthy terms. 

Obama did issue some usefully progressive executive orders, but he made no effort to cultivate any Republican legislators, as far as I can tell. He gave none of them rides on Air Force One, a popular perk for congressmen in the past; didn’t invite them to join him in a round of golf; rarely invited Republicans to White House dinners. And he did nothing to build the Democratic Party, which resulted in more than 1,000 legislative seats being lost to Republicans. You could, I think, say that Obama brought about Trump’s election.

For my money, Clinton’s pledge to continue Obama’s policies probably doomed her with Sanders supporters. In addition, Clinton took pains to stress that she would only promise what she could accomplish. Politicians traditionally try to present their ideas of what America should be. That’s what other presidential candidates have done. She complained that she and Sanders had similar progressive views, but Sanders supporters vociferously disagreed. Sanders offered a picture of his ideal programs, not what he felt he could achieve. That made Clinton’s ideas look incrementally small, which they were. 

A far better guide to what happened in the 2016 election is not Clinton’s self-serving memoir, but Shattered, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

Posted under General

I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party. Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly –Teddy Roosevelt

Posted under General

The Consumer Products Safety Commission runs a database to which anyone can submit information about being harmed by a product. Before anything gets entered into the actual database, it is vetted by CPSC staff and the manufacturer is given ten days to respond. Apparently Republicans do not want the public to know about defective or dangerous products, because the Republican House of Representatives approved a Republican (Mike Pompeo, Kansas) bill last week to deny funding for the database. Pompeo is concerned for the financial health of manufacturers and other businesses, who might be harmed by “false information.” He doesn’t have any examples of false information, mind you, but this is such a danger to commercial interests that immediate action is essential. Meanwhile babies will be injured in defective cribs and toasters will start fires in empty homes. But businesses will be saved! Next time you vote, remember which politicians protect consumers and which protect businesses.

Posted under Class Warfare, General, Republicans

The 2010 Winter Olympics kicked off Friday night in Canada with what I thought was the worst opening ceremony I’ve ever seen. Read More…

Posted under General

Sacramento woke up today to its first measurable snowfall in 33 years.

Posted under General

People who complain about the threat of socialism remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran’s hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment insurance and then got an SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. When he retired he went on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, parked in the public lot, took Amtrak to Washington, and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman to get the government off his back.

Posted under General

On May Day in 2007, immigrants and their supporters around the US rallied in major cities to announce their support for immigrant rights. In Los Angeles, police said protesters threw “plastic bottles and other projectiles,” according to Democracy Now! Police decided to clear the park of protesters, and in the process used rubber bullets, tear gas, and batons (cubs).

Many nonviolent, non-resisting participants were assaulted, along with news crews from local TV stations and an observer from the National Lawyers’ Guild. Police Chief William Bratton said (in 2008) he planned to discipline 11 officers and terminate four others. The city this year agreed to pay $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the melee.

Now the district attorney’s office says it can’t prove any police officer broke the law, so no charges will be filed against any officers.

This is not a surprise, since police are rarely punished for violence against non-prominent, and especially non-white, protesters. But the failure to hold police offices to the standards they claim to enforce is a major flaw in our legal system. It leads many to the conclusion that laws are intended to control the general population. Except for that purpose, they seem not to be taken seriously by the authorities.

Posted under America, General, Immigration, Police, Power

Let America be America again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

Posted under America, General

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

Posted under General