I have been meaning to start a column with this for weeks but every time I came close, it seemed that Bernie Sanders would abandon reality and refuse to retire from a field on which he had won great victories but was no longer in the fight. I’m a big Bernie fan. Not big enough to think he should be president, but big enough to recognize that he has something vitally important to say about America’s economy. His campaign has stated those points over and over; some say to the lack of recognition of anything else of importance, but it appears he has succeeded in making the American public aware of what he is trying to sell.
Now its time to step back and make the deals that will help him get those plans implemented. Now it’s time to stop with the childish refusal to grasp reality, concede and move forward supporting Hillary.
It’s easy to understand why Bernie is so reluctant. He came from nowhere and at times actually looked like he was going to achieve his goal. After all, it’s the damn Presidency! It’s hard to let it go. But the reality is that this race is over and for the benefit of everyone who isn’t Donald Trump it’s time to get on with the next battle. It’s time to bury the orangutan in the swamp from which he has emerged.
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The need for reform of our criminal justice system is self-evident and reformers across the country are proposing legislation aimed at that end. But there are always idiots in every crowd. Right now one of the leaders in that category is among the GOP’s least intelligent clowns, the infamous Tom Cotton, the infantile lummox who fought so hard against an Iran nuclear treaty he had not yet read. He has emerged again, like a plague carrying mosquito, from the swamps of Arkansas, to fight against reason and experience, and to announce; we have an under incarceration problem.
Now it’s always good to hear fresh voices and new approaches to problems, but this is neither a fresh voice nor a new approach. It is a many times discounted voice, muttering already disproven nonsense for a local audience of bigots and racists.
We already have over 2.2 million people in jail, more then 25% of the world’s inmates. I’m not saying that Cotton belongs behind bars with them for his criminally stupid theories, but he certainly could use a little restraint. Maybe a lot more than a little! We must cut the incarceration rate. We have to stop putting people in jail for silly shit. We have to take the prison systems back from the private, for profit, businesses that are using them to screw the taxpayers.
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As previously stated in this blog our news media takes up far too much time andenergy in speculation over the answers to questions about stuff that will, when all the evidence is in, be self-evident. So it is with all plane crashes these days. Every network was on air practically 24/7 with suppositions and contentions but damned little knowledge or facts about the Egyptian airline that crashed into the Mediterranean. Why do they do this? Mainly because it sells soap! But what it also does is give outsiders an excuse to project their agendas onto various world events before anyone can factually refute them.
So it was with Donald “The Mouth” Trump last week when he came on TV and pronounced, before any facts were in evidence, that the Egyptian plane had been blown from the air by terrorists.
hy did Trump do this, I mean other than the obvious fact that he likes to hear himself talk? Well, it’s crystal clear that Trump is in need of serious backup in his declaration that this country is in dire danger from Muslim terrorists. All he does is blabber about how he is going to protect us from everyone who isn’t orange like him. In fact, he will instantly grasp at any terrorist act, anywhere in the world, to support his invective against every Muslim that wants to come here. The fat orangutan standing on a platform screaming that anyone who doesn’t think the plane went down because of a bomb is just wrong makes a hell of a campaign poster. It will be interesting to see whose campaign will end of using it once we find out what really happened.
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Republican Senator Ron Johnson has come out very loudly about how Hilary’s use of her email was reckless and put the nation in grave danger. Really? And what facts does he have to back up that outrageous statement? Not one! The only allegations have come from loose cannons and GOP shills like Johnson. What has really put the nation in danger is Homeland Security of which Johnson is Senate Chairman, and the complete mess that organization has made of airport security. Johnson comes on Face the Nation and claims that the problem with Homeland Security is terrorists. Wow, how did he ever figure that out? And he did it all by himself. He goes on like a scattergun about any and everything that comes to his fractured mind, finally settling on Bernie Sanders and socialism and like must of the undereducated clowns that voted for him, not understanding the difference between socialism and communism, calling Russia, Cuba and North Korea socialist nations and blaming their failures, not on dysfunctional bureaucracies, but on the system.
When asked about his operation of the TSA he tells us yet again, that the problem with the TSA is Islamic terrorism. This is an idiot that overseas our Homeland Security and he doesn’t understand that without terrorism we wouldn’t need Homeland Security, that terrorism isn’t the problem with our dysfunctional TSA it is the reason for its existence. The problem is stupidity and incompetence, especially at the top and more especially with idiots like Johnson. With simpletons like this in charge it’s no wonder we’re in danger. This lump is so gratuitously clueless that he should be taken out to one of our airports and made to stand on a security line for the remainder of his term in office.
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I watched a discussion on This Week, between substitute host Jonathan Karl and Diane Feinstein in which Karl tripled down on Hillary’s problems with her email. Now we all know about the email situation, it has been front and center of every GOP discussion for the last two years and now after all that calendar time and all that air time, it is still pretty much where is was when it started. All thinking persons regard Hillary’s email, like her involvement in Benghazi, with the same weight as your average college snipe hunt; seriously lightweight.
It’s unfortunate that Feinstein isn’t a stronger debater or a more secure party leader; one who is able to take on the media for the sake of her candidate. If she were, instead of defensivly wasting important airtime trying to defend something of only political significance, she should have counter-attacked, demanding by her actions, that Karl put his questioning in perspective. She should have said;
“Do you think that ABC News’ embracing of Secretary Clinton’s email is anywhere near as important as discussing her stated foreign policy or her published positions on our business or financial situation? Do you think that the American people care about the chances of her being able to create much needed jobs a much as they care about GOP based allegations on how she used her email? Don’t you realize that this investigation isn’t going any further? If it were it would already have done so two years ago? Don’t you realize it is now nothing but another GOP fantasy, supported by Right leaning fanatics who seem to unable to discern what is really important about those we would elect and what is just the kind of flashy news that sells soap?”
This, of course, would elicit the standard GOP response; it isn’t them but the FBI that is conducting this investigation. The simple answer is that the FBI has for years been regarded as middle to far right in its philosophical leanings and as such is going as far as any Right Wing organization can without a serious cause. If J. Edgar Hoover were alive today and able to get out of his bra and panties long enough to appear in public he would probably be leading this phony assault on this insignificant subject.
Look, it was a dumb thing to do for someone who was going to run for president. It reeked of hubris and personal privilege. But not one soul has been able to point to one single instance where it, in any way, endangered our security or gave any kind of help to our enemy. It is basically, as William Shakespeare was wont to say, “much ado about nothing” Now it’s time for Hillary to be smart enough to stop denying the stuff about it that’s true and to hardline any questions until all the branches of the government that want a little face time get their fill. If this were really going anyplace seriously legal, it would have arrived there a long time ago. Now it’s just GOP hype.
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This column doesn’t often wander off into sports but this weekend it seems necessary because the death of Muhammad Ali was not just the death of a champion of sports but of a man who stood up for his beliefs against the storm. When Ali rightly stood up and said he would not serve in a war that ran contrary to his moral principles he rose above his sport and became an American icon. He will be missed.