Trump's ultimate plan for himself was to own a news network so as to herd and fleece his marks

What was always clear to me, even before Trump''s Electoral College selection in 2016, was Trump had not prepared to win, or even expected to win. He was really planning to start a news network and sell swag, books, and eventually products to his faithful marks. It shows the level of megalomania for Trump to not feel FoxNews is enough in his corner, and to have Don, Jr. investing in AONN is designed to ensure more perfect fealty from his marks in a second term.  Don, Jr.'s purchase of an interest in AONN is also insurance for Trump to continue to fleece his marks in case he does not win Electoral College re-selection.

Are you a Vonnegutian? I am.

This wonderful essay in Common Dreams, which website should be bookmarked by any caring and thinking person, is spot on in connecting Kurt Vonnegut, the romance of socialism, and where are society promotes brutality in the name of markets. Vonnegut longed for a return of socialism as an aesthetic, not an ideology, and bringing socialist thinking more in line with 19th iterations, based within American philosophical pragmatism--where the default question is, Are we being nice to people, and particularly those in need?

Ammon Bundy and Israelis have something very dark in common

The headline of this article at the Huffington Post says: Ammon Bundy Blames Jews for the Holocaust at Idaho Anti-Lockdown Rally.

The headline is accurate, but the headline is misleading without context. Ammon Bundy was not speaking as some sort of Holocaust denier, nor was he saying something only an anti-Semite would say. In fact, Bundy was repeating what Orthodox Jewish rabbis and right wingers in Israel are often still fond of saying to Israeli Jews of European heritage, which is the following: German, and later European, Jews were too passive in allowing the Nazis to get into a position where the Jews were easily taken away and killed. Better to be martyrs than sheep to the slaughter.  In the first decade or so after WWII, one heard this viewpoint among Israelis across the political spectrum, essentially calling Holocaust survivors wimps. 

I am definitely not at all defending what Bundy said. In fact, it is time to completely knock down the analogy, no matter who makes it. The analogy fails at every level. Every single level. First, it was better for Germany's Jews to run in the period of 1933-1939. In fact, nearly 70% of Germany's Jews escaped from Germany during that period--and survived. Second, once Germany began its invasion of Poland in August 1939, it became impossible for Jews in Poland, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic States to stop the German Army. And this was because the German army overwhelmed those nations, but also something worse: Lots of the locals in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were eager to join in finding and killing Jews, so that even if the Jews had arms, even more would have been killed by the overwhelming forces of the German army and locals who were enabling the killing of entire families of Jews. Even when Jews in Warsaw, Poland were able to procure lots of guns and ammunition, the Jews there were overpowered by superior arms and ammo. The Warsaw Ghetto Jews were far more like the Israeli martyrs around 70 AD/CE., who died on the mountaintop at Masada after being surrounded by Rome's far superior armies. Contrast the plight of Jews in Europe with how Israeli Jews, in 1947-1948, had equal or superior arms to the Arab nations, and were gathered in a small enough place where the numbers of Israeli soldiers were sufficiently equal against the number of disorganized and infighting Arab soldiers from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. See here for a summary of Benny Morris' book on the 1947-1948 war.  And dammit, Bundy, we are talking about sheltering in place during a pandemic, not Nazis intentionally targeting and killing Jews. 

So, maybe now that a right wing nut like Bundy has used this disgustingly wrong analogy, it is time for American Jews to verbally pulverize anyone, including any Israeli Jew, who uses that analogy. The analogy is factually wrong at every level, and is a cruelly immoral insult to Holocaust victims. But, please mark my words. This analogy is still uttered in dark corners of Israeli society, and too many Israeli Jews are afraid to admit they find the analogy appealing. For the analogy also speaks to Israeli society's justification for the continued oppression of Palestinians. It is part of the whole Magneto "Let's get them before they get us, and before it's too late" mindset. In short, too many Israeli Jews these days think more like Ammon Bundy, and have left behind the philosophies of Martin Buber (and yeah, I know Buber's limits, too).

You don't need no stinkin' links: Drive bys on May 4, 2020

* The Kent State killings were 50 years ago today. And yes, it's a nephew's birthday today, but the Kent State killings is what I recall over the many years of my life as occurring on this date. It was a moment where the misnamed Greatest Generation showed again its true nature, which is why I call them the Obedient Generation. The Greatest Generation who obediently went off to fight WWII without questioning (not that there was much questioning needed, yes), but who then came home, and were told to turn in their neighbors, particularly the union members, for being "Reds." And, obediently, they turned in those neighbors. Then, when the Military-Industrial American Empire decided to pulverize Vietnamese peasants, and the smartest of their generation's children said this is wrong and we should not do this, the Obedient Generation punched their children, spit at their children, yelled at their children, and eventually, at Jackson State College in Mississippi, and at Kent State, shot down their children. That'll teach 'em, those smart ass kids. And then, when the Owners of the nation said to the Obedient Generation, you don't need a union at all, and you don't need anything but that Big Gulp we invented to get you to become overweight from excess sugar, the Obedient Generation obeyed once again. But this time, the Boomers, the children of the Obedient Generation, said, Yeah, gimme some of that Big Gulp. And yeah, what's a union for anyway? And the Boomers and Obedient Generation made peace with each other, deciding, Yeah, let's put the next generation in debt and just party down the place. We're all consumers and individuals. Free to be you and me. Do your own thing. Ya know? Woodstock was not the culmination of the Sixties. It was the start of the Me Decade of the 1970s. Great music, though. 

So anyway, here we are, 50 years on from the Kent State killings. And to my Boomer generations' children, the Millennials and Gen-Zers? All I can say for a start is I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. Tin soldiers and Nixon came and went. Some days, I wish we Boomers and the doddering Oldsters were not here, and you were on your own. I think you would have more sense than your parents and grandparents have had in most instances.

* This link to an op-ed in USA Today is necessary, as it is an ex-prosecutor making a case why Tara Reade's story of Biden's sexual assault is hard to sustain for credibility in Reade and believability of her story of Biden's alleged sexual assault of her in 1993, when she worked for him in the senate.  I have wondered from the start about this accusation because it is of a very different nature than how Biden has been shown to behave. Biden putting his hand up Reade's skirt, and under her underpants to finger her is way different than Biden's kissing a woman on the head, or touching or rubbing a woman's shoulder.  Trump?  There are at least four instances of sexual assaults Reade speaks of regarding Biden, and of course Trump's famous "Access: Hollywood" tape admission of that pattern.  But, and this is the point here, if you want to believe the prosecutor's arguments, a person must reject--and I mean, reject--the "believe women" standard, which includes saying it is fine to wait as long as Reade did, saying it is fine if the woman is flaky, has not told the truth before in private dealings with people, or maybe not so easily believable, and to know--just know!--men are always in the wrong and have the burden of proof, when there are no live witnesses. 

Now, if only the majority of big corporate media punditry and political figures would have applied the same analysis for Kobe Bryant, Woody Allen, and Brett Kavanaugh, we'd see something that isn't cynicism on the part of the corporate media pundit and politician classes. And for the record, I believe Dr. Ford, who had no corroborating witnesses in the years after the incident (despite saying a close friend would back her, but which friend said she recalled nothing of the sort), because of the way Kavanaugh behaved in denying truths he should have admitted about what was written in his class yearbook, and his binge drinking/blackouts. As for Kobe and Woody, I don't believe the accusers--and anyone can do a search for "Kobe" in my blog to see the many links I included to support that conclusion regarding Kobe Bryant.

Oh, to Nancy Pelosi and the other cynics now demanding due process? Well, someone tell that to Al Franken, who asked for a formal investigation, but who was essentially kicked out of the senate to ensure women are always believed.  And here, I am not saying Franken was not a practical joker, who loved to pinch a woman's behind, as if he was always on the set of Saturday Night Live circa 1977.  But he was contrite, and it was clear he was deeply remorseful, sorry, and just wanting to clear the air to show the context--and if some were in fact exaggerating.  Nope.  No due process.  No context.  No evaluation of circumstances for you, Al.  

As I have said from the time I first read the allegations nearly two months ago, the story is really about the hypocrisy and cynicism of the corporate owned media punditry class, particularly the professional feminist writers, and the abject cynicism of the corporate Democrats. I also remain certain if, Bernie was in Biden's current electoral campaign position, and Reade made the allegation about Bernie, the media and politician (I mean you Kirsten Gillibrand and Stacey Abrams) calls for Bernie to quit the race would be 24/7 on the cable news and outlets like Salon and The Nation--and I mean you, Amanda Marcotte and Joan Walsh. These same voices now counseling doubt would have been using the language they used during the Kavanaugh hearings, and the language used against Al Franken--and if that prosecutor made the arguments in those instances, he would be called out as a sexist pig.

Yeah, I know. We men are pigs, well, that is an insult to pigs. But you get the idea. And I know men often abused, and still abuse, our power to touch women we are hot about. I get all that. I am saying, however, there must be room for doubt of a particular woman's story, and context and circumstances must be evaluated. Every time. Every. Time. I want to be clear.  I am for hashtag-MeToo. I am for TimesUp. However, I am also for GrowingUp.

Waiting for Thanos

Here are Krystal and Saagar interviewing the filmmakers (including Michael Moore, as executive producer) of Planet of the Humans, and then more testily interviewing Josh Fox, who is critical of the film.

I tried watching the film, but found the narrator's voice too grating.  I know.  Bad reason, but I am familiar with the book which animates the film, Green Illusions, by Ozzie Zehner.  If one performs a word search in the book for the word, "Malthus," or the full name, "Paul Ehrlich," the neo-Malthusian from the late 1960s and early 1970s (Ehrlich wrote the famous/infamous book, The Population Bomb), one sees Zehner's agenda: The agenda is cutting down population. The Hill: Rising's interview with the filmmakers, which includes Zehner on the left side of the screen, is telling because Zehner and the director, Jeff Gibbs, dodge the question about whether they are primarily interested in population control, and did so in a way I found dishonest.  Worse, did anyone catch, in the later part of the interview, how Gibbs made a gutteralish sound as he was dismissing climate change as the single greatest environmental global threat?  That was also very telling about his agenda, which again is population control more than controlling consumption.  Oh, he can deny that and say, "No, I mean just as much to control consumption."  But, really, we live in the US in the Trump era, and we know far less people lets rich people consume at their usual ridiculous levels.

Fox also hits Gibbs and Zehner for promoting what I see as a lazy argument that somehow, we use up too much energy to "make" renewable energy. Josh Fox is correct to respond how there are major advances since Green Illusions was published in 2012, which makes the error in overstatement of the lack of effectiveness in renewable energy another reason to push viewers and readers to...population control. See this Vox article for a primer, which supports Fox's position for the most part.

Even if we take Zehner and Gibbs at their word, and agree we humans, starting with we Americans (the biggest carbon footprinters) should be cutting consumption, that is something Josh Fox would agree with. However, in terms of our oil/gas usage, maybe we should be trying to develop and expand mass transit instead of pushing individual electric cars that need lithium-ion at huge rates.  To think Josh Fox is against that is to purposefully not hear Josh Fox's message. 

As I have long said, Karl Marx was a most trenchant contemporary critic of Malthus, essentially replying to Malthus, "Hey, capitalist-boot-licker posing as a clergyman, the problem is not more humans than food, but the distribution of food and resources." The question I have for Zehner, Gibbs, and even Moore is, Okay, guys, who are we willing to let die?  To begin to execute on the proposal to limit population is where environmentalists fall into a human death cult.* Yes, I get the point E.O. Wilson has made, which is if the planet lost the ants, the planet suffers and maybe to a point where life itself is imperiled; while, if the planet lost humans, the planet would become far more livable for the remaining creatures, including plants and insects. I also get Alan Weisman's point in The World Without Us.

What worries Josh Fox, though maybe not expressly stated in the interview, is the context of the timing of this film's release, where we are seeing, in real time, how the right wing, and parts of the corporate owned media, are already convincing millions of Americans to see the current coronavirus crisis as a political hoax designed to undermine the current economic system--and how we have to cull the herd, or seek "herd immunity."  In short, anything to divert from the fact the first big "Stimulus Package" was designed more for rich people and big corporations than regular people or even small businesses.

Josh Fox is saying climate change policies are a matter of political will--which I think Gibbs and and Zehner will claim they agree with Fox. However, their solution, whether intended or not, is nihilistic. Some have wondered why Michael Moore was promoting this film. I think the reason Michael Moore appears to have been interested is Moore's cogent scent of the Elon Musk-style hype around renewable energy, and, there, I think Fox agrees with at least a portion of that critique. At best, perhaps the argument Fox and others are having with Gibbs, Zehner, and Moore is over the extent to which a renewable energy world is preferred over a more drastic solution--and what that drastic solution ought to be.  

Richard Heinberg, a leading environmental scientist, has weighed in with this article largely praising Planet of the Humans. As with the film director Gibbs, Heinberg does not want to dwell on the implications of what Heinberg describes as a process where "population and resource consumption shrink..."  He would blanch at a comparison to Thanos, but I would say to Heinberg and Gibbs, unless you tell us the policy execution for the shrinkage, you are being reckless in a world where we already see how people are behaving during this pandemic, and the quickness in which we are talking "herd immunity" (when there is no evidence of "herd immunity" with the coronavirus, at least not yet). I find it pathetic how Heinberg's work with the fellow researcher at Lawrence Livermore never caused Heinberg to say, Wait a minute. Didn't we throw yachtloads of money at speeding up the process to harness atomic energy eighty years ago, and aren't we at least as close in developing renewable energy as we were to nuclear fission--when we began throwing money for the Manhattan Project, and then, after World War II, throwing money to the Lawrence Livermore lab?  There is no dispute among physicists and historians that we went from not knowing how to harness nuclear energy in 1940 to hydrogen bombs in less than fifteen years. Heinberg is a particularly sad example of a guy who knows his stuff in his specialized field, but lacks vision and understanding of political-economy, and its effects on technological development.  

As I surveyed the controversy in the past two days, I began to remember the film, Waiting for Superman, from a decade ago.  The film was made by a bunch of supposedly "well-meaning" liberals about the state of public education. It had the same Debbie Downer view of public education which Planet of the Humans has for renewable energy.  Its effect played into the hands of the pro-charter school movement, just as we will see this film be trotted out by concern trolls whenever anyone talks about promoting renewable energy. Director Gibbs, in the interview, just wants people to talk about population control, as does Heinberg in his defense of the film in the linked to article above. They won't take responsibility for their Malthusian ethos. However, Gibbs, at least, should have just called his film, Waiting for Thanos.

Overall, my take on the issues behind the controversy remains with Naomi Klein, who proposes a just-as-radical, but far more humane approach. In my view, Klein calls into question the profit motive and calls into question the owners of this nation and our planet. With that perspective, it becomes fairly easy, and correct, to see Planet of the Humans as an unnecessary, and unhelpful, diversion in the Trumpian era. The only thing the film may be good for is showing the more humane elements within the environmental movement that it needs to face the Malthusian human death cult elements within the movement.  

*It was always a joke to me to hear conservatives and right wingers, starting with George Will and the now late William Buckley, refer to Paul Ehrlich as a "liberal" and even "leftist," as Ehrlich's book is so Malthusian, which is to say, privileged, in its ultimate interest.  Too many people, as Paul McCartney, another Malthusian, sang. Malthus, as with NIMBYism, has been embedded within elements of the environmental movement from the start, as also said in the main text of this post.  But, we should disabuse ourselves in thinking Ehrlich and Zehner have much in common, in terms of ultimate causation and solutions, with the late Barry Commoner (a left leaning contemporary critic of Ehrlich), Naomi Klein or Bill McKibben.  UPDATE May 3, 2020: Here is Bill McKibben's response in Rolling Stone magazine to what is apparently the dishonest way in which the film personally attacked him. Knowing McKibben's work for years, I am stunned they would imply he is a pro-corporate or capitalist oriented guy.

UPDATE: May 11, 2020:  Oh my.  It gets worse.  Not really about the film, other than indirectly, to the extent it gives any succor to the nuclear energy industry, but about how Moore behaved with respect to a long-standing anti-nuclear plant movement in Midland, Michigan.

Joe Biden: Glass half-full or glass nearly empty?

This op-ed about Joe Biden from yesterday's Washington Post is a sly one. The op-ed wants us to believe Biden will be the most progressive president because the times demand it, and we who are progressive, and the progressive organizations we support, will be able to push Biden to do the right thing.

We see the slyness of this op-ed, however, in the very first sentence, where the writer says Biden was the "first national leader" in 2012 to merely say he was "absolutely comfortable" with two gay guys getting married, as if national power brokers-leaders, who appeared at least as often on the television talk show circuit, and known to most American viewers paying attention, never existed. The Senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, and who supported gay marriage at a time Biden most definitely did not, included Senators Teddy Kennedy, Diane Feinstein, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Daniel Inouye, John Kerry, neo-liberal favorite Bob Kerry of Nebraska (a big time talk show appearance person in the 1990s), and House Democratic Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Howard Berman, Henry Waxman, Pat Schroeder. And of course, the corporate media erased at the time, Bernie Sanders, an "independent" House representative from Vermont. Thus, from the first sentence, we are invited to be spun.

From that first sentence forward, the thesis is set forth, which may be summarized as follows: Joe is always wrong in his gut and in his initial positions on important topics of public policy. However, eventually, when public opinion turns or is turning, Biden can be pushed to a liberal position, though rarely to a New Deal position. The examples the WaPo op-ed writer provides are largely cultural issues, which, of course, are telling in their own way, as the examples define the professional-managerial class bias the WaPo has long promoted, since before the Jeff Bezos ownership era.

Also, the drive-bys in the article are acutely pathetic: The writer admits how Biden supported the 1994 Crime bill, when Biden was the main Senate Democrat pushing the most draconian version of that bill, which met with vociferous opposition from, oops, Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Black Caucus.  Sanders and the CBC did a great job of amending language in the bill, adding various pro-minority rights elements, an innovative programs such as "midnight basketball" for otherwise wayward urban (mostly minority) youths to go, rather than fall into gangs. The writer, again, slyly states in parentheses "so did Sanders" support the ultimately passed 1994 Crime Bill, without saying a word about what I just did. Then the writer says Biden was one of the "few" senators to treat Sanders with respect. However, the one link around the word "few" is merely an article discussing in part about why Bernie would not go hard against his "friend" Joe Biden--with no showing Biden stood out as a friend compared to any other person in the entire Congress. Truth is, Biden treated him with no more respect than most congresspeople, and there were Republicans such as the late John McCain who worked well with, and had high esteem, for Bernie Sanders. See here and here.  The writer is merely repeating, in again a sly form, the "nobody likes him" lie from Hillary Clinton. Yes, the campaign-strategist class, which hangs around with, enable, and control the DNC, hate Sanders. However, many senators and congresspeople respect Bernie by and large, as they are often cajoled into supporting his amendments to their bills.  And what voters, including those who don't vote for him for policy reasons, or media-driven fear campaigns, like about Sanders is precisely how Bernie doesn't  "tolerate bullshit" well.

What is most ridiculous about this WaPo spin piece is that, just last week, Biden's campaign disclosed how Biden had begun talking again with the neo-liberal architect, Larry Summers, for economic advice.  You cannot pick a worse villain among progressives and even many who call themselves liberals than Larry Summers, though many are as bad.

It is interesting to compare the WaPo writer's take on Biden to this Salon magazine interview with Chris Hedges. Hedges' view is Biden is potentially worse than Trump's second term because he is a politician more likely to further divide, and, therefore, undermine, the liberal and progressive forces. Here is Hedges in the interview:

Let's take Biden. What does it mean to vote for Joe Biden? He has this kind of goofy persona which some people find charming. What is Biden's record? What is a person voting for if they back Biden on Election Day 2020?

The humiliation of courageous women like Anita Hill who confronted her abuser. You vote for the architects of endless war. You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. Biden supports those things. With Biden you are voting for wholesale surveillance by the government, including the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You vote for austerity programs. You vote for the destruction of welfare. That was Biden. You vote for cuts to Social Security, which he has repeatedly called for cutting, along with Medicaid. You vote for NAFTA, you vote for "free trade" deals. If you vote for Biden, you are voting for a real decline in wages and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

With Biden you are also voting for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds to Christian "charter schools." With Biden you are voting for more than a doubling of the prison population. With Biden you are voting for the militarized police and against the Green New Deal.

You are also voting to limit a woman's right to abortion and reproductive rights. You are voting for a segregated public school system. With Biden you are voting for punitive levels of student debt and the inability of people to free themselves of that debt through bankruptcy. A vote for Biden is a vote for deregulating banking and finance. Biden also supports for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

A vote for Biden is also a vote against the possibility of universal health care. You vote for Biden and you are supporting huge, wasteful and bloated defense budgets. Biden also supports unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy the elections.

That's what you're voting for.

A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for more of the same. The ruling elites would prefer Joe Biden, just like they preferred Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is vulgar and an embarrassment. But the ruling elites also made it abundantly clear about their interests: Many of these people were quoted by name saying that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee.

What is interesting to me is I can say Hedges is overstating the case against Biden, as he largely talking about Biden's cultural and foreign policy stances in a mirror image of the WaPo writer.  Biden has come around on most of the cultural issues, following the crowd for the most part.  But where the rubber meets the road, to use a car-tire analogy, is on the economic policies, and there, Biden continues to show a fealty to international corporate power. My take here, however, is let's just see how these proposed six task forces end up proposing in terms of public policies. Right now, I find it telling how Sanders has already submitted his people for the task force more than a week ago, and Biden has not.  I have said on FB how we can likely expect to see Biden choose corporate lobbyists and executives for his "side" of the task forces, which would show us, once again, Biden's true "base." However, if the task forces end up proposing progressive policies, and I can see how some task forces may do so (not others, such as the one for medical care/insurance), it allows Biden to pivot to those positions during this virus crisis.  But does Biden mean it when he pivots?  That is where Chris Hedges could be far more right than wrong, which is why I most shake my head in abject despair.

Meanwhile, the corporate broadcast and most print media executives and pundits continue to ignore the Biden accuser's sexual assault accusation, notwithstanding how the accuser now has much more real time corroboration from others with whom she spoke than Dr. Ford ever had with now-Justice Kavanaugh. I remain concerned this sexual assault allegation is of a different level than anyone has ever accused Biden before, and the accuser's flakiness.  Trump has multiple claims against him for sexual assault, which constitute a pattern. However, there is no longer any real doubt Biden's accuser spoke to this allegation with various people at and not long after the time it occurred in 1993, and simply refused to talk publicly about it until the start of this year.  But, sure, just close your ears and eyes, Democratic Party stalwarts--and be ready to blame yours truly and Bernie supporters in general for Biden's eventually probable Rust Belt state losses to Trump, which will re-elect Trump under the Electoral College system for choosing presidents. The media will gladly blame the progressives, as we are the media's truly favorite punching bags.

Must reading regarding the continuing herding function of corporate media

Joshua Cho, in Salon, makes the case I have tried to make, but with many more links.