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Friday, July 27, 2018

PILING ON

I think Trump is on the ropes, and now is the time for us to pile on.  I will keep working for young Ryan Watts here in the NC 6th CD, a long shot to be sure.  If you are lucky enough to live in the district of one of the new progressive Democrats or Democratic Socialists popping up, get out there and work your tail off.  If you live in a safe district, as I did until last year, try to donate something to any one of many good candidates.  In Midterms, enthusiasm is what matters most, since turnout is so low.  

The Trump administration is doing constant and immeasurable harm to any victim it can find, from immigrant families to bald eagles.  It will take a long time simply to repair the damage, let alone move forward.

But look on the bright side.  Some vandal unmoored one of the DeVos family's ten yachts, and it suffered some damage before they could corral it. 

As I was walking this morning at 4:50 a.m. under a glorious full moon, a vagrant thought crossed my mind:  Why couldn't the sixties have happened in my eighties rather than my thirties?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This helpful site may enable you to find contested congressional elections near you: http://www.machlis.com/elections/CongressionalDistricts/. I don’t know how to create a proper link, so you will have to cut-and-paste that URL into your browser. -cy

Robert Paul Wolff said...

That is splendid. Thank you.

s. wallerstein said...

The 60's was a great time to be young for a heterosexual male.

There was a new sexual freedom and a heterosexual male could exercise it with a clean conscience.

The feminists were correct in their criticism of 60's male sexual liberation and the whole Playboy mentality, but it's hard to deny that we enjoyed it a lot while it lasted.

Jerry Fresia said...

Keep in mind that this vulnerability raises the stakes for a "wag the dog" military strike to not only distract attention but to create a hot war scenario come Nov. Rumors suggest a US strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming weeks.


Just sayin!

David Palmeter said...

Thanks, Anonymous, for the link to the map. Since I live in DC and have no representative (the slogan on our license plates is "Taxation without Representation") I decided to take a look at the 2nd district in Maine. We've gone there for a couple of weeks in the summer over the years, and I feel some connection to the place.

The incumbent Republican, Bruce Poliquin is a very wealthy right-winger. His Democratic challenger, Jared Golden, is liberal for the district, somewhat in the mold of the Democrat who won a by-election earlier this year in Western Pennsylvania. He's not as left as I would like, but he is a vast improvement over the incumbent. The Hill and others say it's a toss-up. So I've adopted him and signed up for a small monthly hit on my credit card for the duration of the campaign.

MS said...

To Jerry Fresia

Or worse - a false flag terrorist attack that would give Trump the excuse to impose national martial law and suspend the writ of habeas corpus. I don't believe this is beyond the realm of possibility.

Jerry Fresia said...

Here we go:

"Donald Trump could be ready to order a strike against Iran, Australian Government figures say"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-27/donald-trump-may-be-prepared-to-strike-iran-sources-say/10037728

s. wallerstein said...

What Jerry Fresia says seems quite possible to me and is a good argument against supporting mainstream Democrats, who will back a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. You need Democrats in Congress who are capable of criticizing U.S. imperialism (even though they may use another term to refer to it).

David Palmeter said...

Mattis denies the Australian report:

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/policy-strategy/399241-mattis-denies-report-us-is-prepared-for-iran-strike

David Palmeter said...

S. Wallerstein,

There may be mainstream Democrats who would support a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but off the top of my head I can't name one. There certainly wasn't any clamoring for it during the Obama administration nor is there now, so far as I can see. Rather, there's widespread deploring of Trump's pulling us out of the agreement.

s. wallerstein said...

David Palmeter,

I hope that you're right. Remember that Hillary Clinton once threatened to "obliterate Iran." In any case, I think that those who campaign for mainstream Democrats should ask them what their position will be in case that Trump attacks Iran. As always, a pretext will be invented for the attack: maybe a build-up by both Iran backed Hizbollah troops (and a few Iranian special forces) and Israeli troops on the border between Syria and Israel. You can imagine the declarations on both sides, the threats, and then a preemptive or preventive (I'm not sure of the difference) strike by the U.S. to save "the only democracy in the Middle East."

MS said...

Having a pathological liar in the White House is a security threat on several levels. Like the boy who cried wolf, even if Trump had valid CIA or Defense Dept. intelligence that, for example, North Korea was about to launch a military invasion of South Korea, and he used this intelligence to make a preemptive conventional arms attack on North Korea, we would not believe him and would assume he had concocted the invasion in order to divert attention from the Mueller probe. (Of course, a nuclear response against North Korea, even in the face of an actual conventional arms invasion by North Korea, would be irresponsible and properly condemned.)