Impeach This Imbecile Immediately

Try to forget the kind words for dictators. Try to ignore the deranged moral equivalency calculus between the United States and the vile ringleader of mafia states Putin.  Never mind the predilection for conspiracy theories that favor the Putin regime at the expense of the West.  Scoff at the mention of corruption even when the FBI director is fired for doing his job. Shrug off the herculean gymnastics done to kiss Russian keister.  It doesn't bother you when the President invites top chekist spies into the Oval Office as a personal favor to our biggest enemy, brags and shares state secrets which jeopardize our allies and assets, with western media barred but Russian state media, cameras and who knows what other recording devices welcomed.  When the campaign manager had to resign because it became known that he worked for Putin and Putin's stooge in the Ukraine, when the campaign is oozing with GRU, FSB and other spooks of the Putinist Cheka, when the Russian version of an NGO; wikileaks is pumping out materials stolen from the Democratic opponent, when the campaign and then the White House regurgitates Russian state talking points on the stump attacking NATO, when the sole change to the Republican party's platform upon receiving the nomination favors Putin regarding Ukraine, when he is forced to fire his National Security Adviser because he worked for Russia and Turkey and lied about meeting with Russian spies, when he still hasn't released his tax returns and he has lied about the millions of Gazprombank dollars he's received.... when each day passes without Trump's legs in motherfucking shackles and I want to scream, that's when I sigh in relief that at least he didn't send a bunch of work emails on his personal computer.

What Happened? Obama: Legacy of Mediocrity

Comrade Communique:
 by Kieran Sprunk

President Obama has delivered his farewell address and it is never too soon to judge a legacy even as the unknowns consume. I'll start with the successes. It is too easy to forget just how good Obama has been when he has been successful. When I first saw him giving the keynote address at the Democratic Convention in 2004, I knew this guy was going to be something special. He transcended political boundaries in a way that I'd never seen any public official do before.

Goodness where do I start? 20 million more people with health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Does it have flaws? Sure. But the good it has done has vastly outweighed the bad. He has brought America closer to universal coverage than anyone since LBJ introduced Medicare and Medicaid. I am confident that even with a repeal, Republicans will not be so stupid as to abandon every part of the ACA.

Then of course there's steering the economy back from the brink in 2009. Unemployment was in double digits back then, now it's around 5%, which is pretty close to full employment. True one could come back and say that this doesn't count people that have given up on work, but even accounting for that there's still been a massive net gain in employment. America's car companies are thriving thanks to a bailout many were skeptical about. To quote Joe Biden, "GM is alive and Bin Laden is dead."

That of course brings me to al Qaeda. While it's far from dead, Obama did something that his predecessor would not do: attack them anywhere. It took serious balls to order a strike force not just into Pakistan, but into a military town harboring Bin Laden. We still regularly make drone strikes anyplace we can find al Qaeda. Feel free to knock the drone program, but it has killed many more combatants than civilians and I quite like the idea of vaporizing men who throw acid in girls' faces, throw gays off rooftops, and strap suicide vests onto people with Down's Syndrome.

And of course there's a cause near and dear to my heart: marriage equality. When Obama first ran, he only supported civil unions. This puts him in the oh so rare category of politicians who deliver MORE than they promise in a very good way. He put two pro equality justices on the Supreme Court, both of whom sided with the plaintiffs in Obergefell v Hodges, a precedent that will go down in the history books right along side Loving v Virginia, which struck down bans on interracial marriage. Thanks to this man, I can eventually marry a man I love, whoever he may be.

I wish I could be all puppies and sunshine in this post, but I can't. Much as I think the good Obama has done still outweighs the bad, there have been failures which will haunt us for years to come.

Those of you who remember the 2012 election will remember a moment when Mitt Romney declared that Russia was the primary geopolitical foe to the United States. This was met with derision and laughter, mostly from the left. By God he was right. If Vladimir Putin can invade and annex Crimea, launch cyber-attacks on NATO countries in an effort to destabilize them, and even influence an American election (didn't clinch it for Trump, but he definitely helped), then yes: Russia is an enemy and a very serious one at that. Obama's failure to understand this and respond appropriately is going to cost us (and his legacy) dearly.

Then of course there is Syria. The most notable disaster came in Obama drawing a red line for Bashar al Assad and then walking away from it when Assad crossed it. It is NEVER a good idea to make threats you're not willing to follow through on. True, getting us involved in Syria would carry its own problems, but clearly not getting involved also had some problems, not least of all a refugee crisis unlike any since World War II. It also allowed ISIS to fulfill the wish of jihadists everywhere: the creation of a Caliphate, a place of misery and mental/physical degradation. Remember that ISIS got its big break in Syria, not Iraq. And of course refusing to get involved allowed Russia to intervene on Assad's behalf, granting victory to a despot who deserved to be thrown from the tallest building in Damascus.

Then there is the persistent problem of refusing to acknowledge that terrorism, in today's context, is far and away perpetrated more often by Muslim hands than non-Muslim. Feel free to read the Koran and you will find plenty of verses very specifically devoted to ordering the deaths of infidels. It is not bigoted to say that those who follow this particular holy book would be more likely to behave this way than those that don't. Denying this is akin to saying that someone who supports the works of Karl Marx is no more likely to be a Communist than someone who doesn't.

It is also wrong to say that those who commit these acts are not true Muslims. Actually jihadists nowadays follow a long Islamic tradition of holy war stretching all the way back to the prophet Mohammed. Just as European witch hunts were committed by true Christians (trust me, they believed in the saving power of Christ), the attacks on Kurds, Yezidis, gays, women, Christians, Jews, etc are being committed by true Muslims.

If you are wondering why this is consequential, I have two words for you: Donald Trump. Refusing to recognize the problem posed by jihadists as a uniquely Islamic problem makes someone who attacks all Muslims (unjustly) appear more reasonable than they actually are. It leaves a void in political rhetoric that can be filled by hatemongers and idiots. This in no way excuses Trump, but it does explain a large segment of his support. Democrats would do well to remember this in 2018 and 2020, or we could very well be looking at 8 years of this orange-faced buffoon.

I don't want to end on a sad note, so I will say this. President Obama will go down in history as one of the greats, even with the flaws I just mentioned, especially compared with the human dumpster fire that is soon to succeed him. In fact, all the great presidents had terrible flaws. FDR unjustly interned millions of Americans simply for their Japanese ancestry and tried court-packing. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus. Jefferson owned slaves. I would say that Obama's failures don't come anywhere close to any of those, but they do need to be mentioned. They need to be mentioned because we need to confront our own problems and adapt, just as those who came before us had to do.

Somewhere there is a young and upcoming Democrat who is serious about defending the values of the Enlightenment (with force if necessary), is willing to honestly confront the problems within Islamic culture, and is still willing to embrace many of those great domestic policies that have been so good for this country (healthcare, women's rights, gay rights, campaign finance reform). Just as the president indicated tonight, I live in hope.

Good night :)

Homegrown Demagogues and Theocratic Fascists

"Anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA 7-27-16

There are encouraging signs of madness at play here, indeed the entire world seems to be coming into contrast with the Donald openly declaring himself in league with the enemies of freedom and Erdogan making zoo noises of a similar hue:
The Donald has crossed yet another line.  It is a line I would not have guessed was even in play for a major party nominee.  It is 2016 and Olympian swimmers will lap in sewage, the most despicable of our NATO allies briefly experience a sketchy coup and the GOP invites the Russian theocratic dictatorship into our political process.

Tighten up folks.

Your Other Left: Caligulan Populism: Deep Tedium 2016

The Grand Old Party has allowed their message and indeed every ounce of their base's energy to be transformed by the most reactionary and noisome con artists. They eagerly acquiesced and surrendered to their previously exiled mutants in order to rile up the hordes with rage, victimhood and paranoia. William F. Buckley purged the Klan and Birchers from the conservative coalition and the Republican Party.Now Buckley is gone and the benighted brutes are back and they're pissed.

The cynical GOP leadership gleefully staffed out the entire conservative platform to the personalities who could take them where the energy was.This makes some sense from a strategic marketing perspective, and the Democrats have had their own fringe message coup in an effort to compete.However attractive this enterprise must have appeared with each passing panic, the GOP establishment wishes they could hop in a delorean and stop themselves from engineering their own destruction.Examine the candidacy of Donald Trump from the perspective of the ordinary American citizens who have been told by our politicians that they can do things they simply cannot do.Resist the urge to revel in political schadenfreude because we need those establishment Republicans who the Trumpkins are so angry with if Western society is to right itself.The Bernie Sanders supporters are a different story.We never needed them before.They should return to the right wing pseudo-liberal Occupy tent with their poppers and wait for the next asinine fascist rally against free trade.

As much sense as this chorus of mouthbreathers operation may have made to the Republican country club set and Democratic consultant class who set it in motion, there doesn't seem to have been any doubt as to the wisdom or responsibility of this strategy on their part. It must have been irresistible if you consider the free messaging and organizing muscle that came with anger radio, and all the disciplined recruitment performed by televangelists, assorted Christian right media, and tabloid cable news that could tap into emotions, define issues and develop mass acceptance of political narratives for an audience who tend to vote without having to be begged or persuaded, unlike their liberal counterparts who incessantly vomit trite syllables approximating the deeply tedious half thought "lesser of two evils" sonnet. The right has a natural constituency of frightened and angry people who are quite good at following a routine.These lowest hanging denominators and the millions of indoctrinated Evangelicals make up the right wing coalition along with the young libertarian dudes and credulous conspiracy theory cultists that exploded onto the scene of a once silent reactionary counterculture. These are the people who suddenly dominate much of the national political conversation with more power than they merit and there is nowhere near enough sedative on hand to dull their malignant rage.Where there was once an establishment party of patriotic deal makers there is now flash, blustery belligerence and magnificently unapologetic hatred.

The working class and middle class, weakened and deluded by constant demagoguery, are feeling alien to their culture.They feel as though they are taboo in their country and they've been told to blame it on multiculturalism.These people are not stupid.They just have few alternatives to the sensory overload of clickbait media culture.This tabloid Saturnalia of sensationalism seems to have produced a psychotic political movement of paranoiacs at whose pleasure we now live.They're mostly in Congress.

The grown-up party of conservative, responsible, middle of the road, Alex Keaton type young Republicans, the unabashedly stuffy exclusive country club party of Poppy Bush and the Cold Warrior party that sheltered spooky Roy Cohn or E. Howard Hunt types is long gone.Those very stalwarts torched their reasonably successful moderate conservative brand of the "grown up" or "daddy party" and auctioned off their message to unscrupulous fiends who prey on credulous hordes.They now more resemble the party of your creepy uncle who still insists Ike was a pinko.

The old Republican establishment had such a reputation by the New century that Democrats were paralyzed and perpetually rattled by President Bush's popularity after September of 2001. They too fed their energy and enthusiasm deficit wherever they could.The progressive left, as it likes to be called, has an insatiable appetite for wish thinking and thought sanitation that is dwarfed by their compulsive cognitive dissonance and delusional dogmatism. The Democratic Party was infiltrated by naive pseudo-liberal progressives, 60's drop out nostalgists, failed spiritual seekers and social justice goose steppers who share the fundamentalist Chomskyite belief that motive can be discerned without evidence. When this crunchy lot of conspiracy theorists discovered that the mass media used populist white victimhood claiming hysterics to turn working men and homemaker women into diehard conservatives they saw diabolical sophistication where there was none. That mindset made for fertile ground for antisemitic mythology and it didn't take long to turn excessive white guilt and unfettered paranoia into mind reading.Did you know you're a racist? Now you know, and so does everybody else.

Welcome to 2016. After years of repetition, the phrase "lesser of two evils" is beginning to resonate, and the similarities, not between two parties as has been claimed for years, but between two mirrored edges of the ideological horseshoe are becoming rote, menacing and depressing.

The nation is divided between the two reactionary conservative factions of frightened and stubborn amnesiacs who are unaware of their similarities.The left and right are of one mind.They simply follow different politicians.Each day it becomes more and more difficult for liberals to align with the reactionary tattered edges of the horseshoe as they shout in unison what becomes a chant of "make free stuff great again."

"A republic, if you can keep it," Benjamin Franklin once said in the early days of the nation founded on Thomas Paine's radical liberalism and Thomas Jefferson's pen, but can we keep it away from ourselves? 

Your Other Left: Magna Carta Liberalism VS Regressive Left & Reactionary Right

The phenomenon of Donald Trump is the product of the way both the left and right in this country have obsessively placed tribal identity ahead of principles.  When ideological orthodoxy trumps intellectual honesty, when social justice trumps personal liberty, when ideas no longer matter because our minds are already made up that's when our fringe elements become mainstream. That's when we get Trump.

 Fascism and Stalinism won't appear waving copies of mein kampf or pravda.  They'll seep into the mainstream through the eyes of regular people who are frightened and angry at a political rally for a populist celebrity stoking fear and arousing bigotry, and they'll be young college students snapping their fingers and hysterically shouting about their need for a "safe space."  We have to start countering this sinister folderol now by promoting our principles.  If we don't promote our enlightenment values: democracy, pluralism, freedom of expression, the rule of law, then the definitions get confusing for people and they will gravitate to the charismatic angry people who are speaking to them.

Dogmatism and orthodoxy stifles debate and leads to a bleak place.  Fascism comes in many flavors, but whether it's Nazism, Stalinism, Klanism, Nationalism, or Theocracy, it has these constants: it promises answers that cannot be questioned and a perfect society or paradise that cannot be achieved, and it provides people with enemies both inside and outside to keep the paranoia and barbarism perpetually boiling.  These ideologies are sadistic and suicidal.  The enlightenment revolutionaries did not promise utopia.  All they promised they demanded for themselves: freedom under law.  The open societies that adopted the enlightenment principles are not paradise.  They are not intended to be perfect, because people and ideas are not perfect.  The promise of the open society is only that my freedom and your freedom are one and the same and as long as we demand this, we have a chance at justice and we have a chance at a functional society where equality is inherent.  It is this delicate balance of freedom under law that holds up the center and keeps the radical fringe at bay.

 The progressive movement, the regressive left, the libertarians, modern conservatism and academia have failed us.  Today we have allowed the fringes in to our homes and they got drunk and won't leave.  The right is drunk on xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theory and idiotic tribal rage. The left is drunk on their own sense of superiority and their concept inherent injustice. They're both redefining words to suit their philosophy and insisting that only they may debate issues on their terms and by casting everyone who disagrees with them into one group of "racists" or "socialists" they devalue the meaning of words.

All across the political spectrum, there are true liberals who care about liberal principles and intellectual diversity.  Some if them call themselves conservative, some call themselves liberal or progressive.  Some are atheists and some are religious.  It matters that these people do not agree on everything because what they agree on is made stronger by their differences.  In the months since Ben Affleck appeared on Bill Maher's show calling both Maher and writer Sam Harris gross and racist for criticizing ideas like female genital mutilation, and since the privileged students at universities across the US and Europe have begun attacking free speech, there has been an awakening of sorts.  We who reject the regressive left and the reactionary right are not going to be silent.  It is time to defend our principles.  It is time for Magna Carta Liberalism.

  Magna Carta Liberals who value enlightenment principles must challenge and ridicule this shit every single day.  Freedom under the rule of law and intellectual pluralism  is necessary for humans to have dignity, equality and justice.  What matters is not your tribal identity, but your ideas.  We should not apply different principles to different people.  We must begin with principle.