You may think I wish to speak about JFK's assassination 56 years ago today. Nope. Been there, done that in my old blog, at least I think. Let's get up to speed on drive bys for today:
* I was unable to access the NYT due to the subscription wall. However, this Common Dreams summary tells us what we need to know about how corporate Democratic Party leaders feel about the base. The first response was contempt, voiced against an immigration activist, to go vote for Trump. One may ask, What is that about? It's a Bidenian shorthand for, "You'll lose the election to Trump, you dark skinned radical!" The other was to tell a person concerned with Biden's funding sources, that the person was "listening to Bernie too much" and "it's not true." Well, technically, Biden may be correct as corporations cannot give directly to Biden, but they can have executives and industry associations bundle money into PACs and to Biden personally. And "listening to Bernie too much" is the pat-on-the-head, saying, "You silly, naive ninny. You need to listen to an adult like me."
Yup. That is the way in which corporate Democratic Party leaders express themselves when they have to deal with activists and members of the base. Never Trumper David Frum's dictum holds, "The Republican Party leadership fears its base. The Democratic Party leadership hates its base."
* And now this appears in The Atlantic after another poor debate performance from Biden. I read it thinking, Oh my God. We are now going to call Joe Biden a Stutterer-American? Really? Now he tells us? After his gaffe about the "only" African-American woman in the senate endorsing his candidacy, referring to now former, and largely disgraced Carol Mosley Braun of Illinois, when black female senator Kamala Harris is a primary opponent on the same stage with him? That is not a stutter. That is an error in recollection and maybe we can say a brain fart. But again that is not a stutter. Not knowing what state you are in when speaking to a crowd is not a stutter. This article is clearly a controlled leak to a sympathetic reporter and it gets written and reported as if there is some amazing insight. Typical. The Atlantic is so often a disappointment, though, when it is on, it is definitely a moment.
*And, meanwhile, despite the Bernie Black Out, and the often carping dismissal of Bernie as a candidate with a low ceiling, and no basis for improvement, this new national Emerson poll shows Bernie now tied with Biden and several points ahead of Warren--while Mayor Pete is lagging in a dismal fourth place at 7%. This poll is interesting poll because I continue to believe how a poll is conducted is going to be far more important than a poll's results. I am not sure how pollsters poll for a caucus in a place such as Iowa, and I am not sure if the polling data showing Mayor Pete in the lead in Iowa includes many young people in that polling. I also think we should be cautious at this point about national polling data because Trump is still in an excellent position to win re-election by virtue of the Electoral College, and white Baby Boomer and Oldster support in the Rust Belt. It is why I scream with frustration more often than not that only Bernie is in a position to peel away that support, excite young people's activism and voting, and bring back the black voter to the polls with the type of hope they have not had since RFK was gunned down over 50 years ago. As many who know me know, I consider the greater tragedy in American history the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 than Jack's in 1963. Jack's death gave LBJ an opening to pass legislation JFK was never going to get passed in the Congress, starting with the Civil Rights laws in 1964 and 1965, and Medicare in 1965. As for polls, my advice is to stay with your presidential preference among the top four candidates, at least, as the voting in the Iowa caucus is not for three more months, and the first primary almost four months away. If you change, it should be for substantive reasons, not strategic in the sense corporate media wants you to change--especially when, for me, the clear choice remains Bernie. I mean that from as much strategy in this anti-Establishment time as for public policy reasons.
* Chomsky is essentially correct in this interview at Truthout.org, but I depart from his analysis, well, really drive by, comment about Watergate. I agree with him that historian Henry Steele Commager was wrong to say Nixon's resignation "vindicated the system." However, the scandals under the heading "Watergate" were far more than the break-in at the Watergate hotel. The Plumbers had already broken into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to try and find personal information on Ellsberg to discredit him through friendly sources in the corporate media. There were taps on phones without FBI approval of various people in and outside the administration. There were plans to kidnap student leaders, including veterans of the peace movement, and take them to a concentration camp in Mexico (The Huston Plan, which was making its way toward final approval by Nixon). Nixon had bypassed the FBI--which was a pretty amazing thing to do considering Hoover was still in charge, and ready to pounce on unarmed dissenters to American domestic and foreign policies--and even sidetracked the CIA. Behind it all was the illegal bombings in Cambodia, which led to the creation of the Plumbers, who were to plug "leaks" in the administration to news reporters. And, as several commentators have analyzed over the years, there were multiple reasons to break into the DNC headquarters at the hotel, namely: (1) DNC char Larry O'Brien's friendship with a Greek dissident, who Nixon and Agnew believed provided information to the Democrats of the Greek military junta having giving money to the Nixon-Agnew campaign in 1968, money that was originally from the CIA to the junta (Agnew being a Greek-American may have inspired this). I wish The Nation would reprint the Christopher Hitchens essays on the topic (written in the 1980s and early 1990s), based upon Hitchens' own discussions with the dissident. Also, let's recall the main outside guy to put up bail money for the break-in defendants in court was Tony Pappas, a Greek-American rich guy who had dealings with the military junta in Greece. Pappas is mentioned in the linked to article; (2) O'Brien had information on Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in 1968 from Clark Clifford, LBD's last Defense Department Secretary, and Nixon wanted to know how much Clifford had given O'Brien; and (3) There is also perhaps reason to believe John Dean, the Nixon WH lawyer who went rogue, may have been interested in finding out what O'Brien knew about a ring of "escorts," which may or may not have included Dean's wife before Dean and she were engaged. I always found the last one involving Dean to be really far-fetched, but let's recall how humans in a conspiracy have their own peculiar motives, sometimes. I am surprised Chomsky did not seem to recall any of that, and fell for the right wing line that the Watergate scandals were a "third rate burglary," and nothing more.
*Speaking of sports, I mean, really, the Lakers have the best record in basketball at 12-2. Oh, wait. Not that. It's time for another look at Colin Kaepernick, who continues to be the obsession of white citizens who are in love with the NFL, and hack sports guys in television, like Stephen Smith, who should have known better. This article provides the background, including how the waiver the NFL wanted CK to sign was probably designed to stop CK from criticizing the NFL ever again, or even bringing another suit against the NFL. And Max Kellerman (starting at about 3 minutes it) reaches back into his Jewish-American roots, and shows his father taught him about how important it was to challenge power--and not talk about how "uppity" Jackie Robinson was behaving after Robinson's first year and reporters, such as the overrated and odious Jim Murray of the LA Times, and Dick Young of the NY Daily News, treated Robinson as a "boy." I wish one could find links on the Internet about Young and especially Murray. Murray is deified in death (even Rachel Robinson joins in that chorus, when the Arnold Rampersad bio of Robinson gives us a strong whiff of Murray's attitude toward Robinson in the latter's playing days, though it does not show how Murray waxed eloquent and tearfully supported Zola Budd, a South African Olympic runner, during the boycott movement against South Africa), while Young has had his reputation clipped for decades after Young's death due to more generalized racism toward other black and Latin American players such as Roberto Clemente and others.
