Month: January 2017

January 30, 2017

Celebrating Dr. King In A Time Of Growing Fear

One more time the authorities led a couple of hundred marchers from the State Plaza to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King statue and monument in my neighborhood, practically to my own doorstep. The mood was subdued, we all know why. What was noteworthy was the lack of resignation and the lack of despair among the crowd and among the politicians.

But there wasn’t much joyful celebration. The people who come out to march for Dr. King every year are patriotic Americans, and all of us have been watching in horror as a fringe minority supported by decadent greedy elites have seized control of our country… and are proceeding to destroy it. It’s hard to hold to on to hope for the future under such circumstances. But in the subdued and frightened atmosphere of the day hope was still in evidence. That, at least, is the good news.

Congressman Paul Tonko listens as
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan Speaks

For the first time that I can remember there was only one speech delivered at the monument after everyone assembled, by Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan. There were a load of local politicians this year, so many that the mayor declined to name them all. But all the speaking was done by the mayor, not even congressman Paul Tonko, who stood close to the mayor and lingered long after the ceremony spoke to the crowd.

It wasn’t the weather that made the speeches short, it was a fairly mild day with the temperature well above freezing thanks to Global Warming. There have been years when the temperature in Lincoln Park was cold enough to freeze your gizzard, but that didn’t stop the politicians from talking. Those years when this day was cold kept them from talking too much and for too long but it sure didn’t stop them from talking.

Standing Gazing At Dr. King While Waiting For The Marchers

Perhaps I’m reading too much into that, but I wonder if because of the recent national electoral coup and the all too visible disintegration of our federal government the politicians present were reluctant to speak. Our elected officials know perhaps better than most of us voters what could possibly happen these next couple of years to all of us. There is too much to say right now and not enough room to say any of it, so maybe at this moment they don’t want to speak at all.

Our elected leaders must surely feel the expectations of the voters, particularly by this crowd that had come out to honor the martyred great patriot, so perhaps they were reluctant to fail to meet the expectations of their audience. It is also very possible that our elected officials can clearly see the rapidly approaching day when prominent people are persecuted and arrested for the crime of criticizing the illegitimate regime in Washington DC. Perhaps they didn’t want to go on record as having made politically incorrect statements about the brat occupying the White House or about the anti-American ruling party. I can’t say that I blame them.

The City Of Albany Cops On Horses Lead The March

For whatever reason mayor Sheehan took on the job of doing all the talking. She gave a good speech about standing up for what we believe in, and reiterated the City of Albany’s commitment to being a Sanctuary City for Americans who are being persecuted for their ethnic and religious origins by… well, she didn’t precisely name America’s enemies. The very attentive audience clapped and cheered but it was a rather unsatisfying thing to hear, and you could see that in the faces of the listeners.

Indeed the politicians standing up on the monument put on a good show of displaying themselves confidently. But again, there was something subdued about their manner this year, that maybe what they were doing had already become dangerous. It was not like other years when they casually stood around the monument grinning for the cameras, it was more like they were dutifully presenting themselves, stiff and formal as politicians do in a repressive dictatorship.

Front Line Of The March

Otherwise the march and ceremony was much like other years. The main elements of our society were represented in the not very punishing downhill march from the State Plaza that began, as always, at the gathering point across Madison Avenue from the State Museum. This always is the aftermath of a ceremony full of boring speeches in the dark auditorium underneath The Egg, an event I’ve attended in the past but intend to avoid if I can.

As usual the elements of society were represented in the march, the politicians representing the government, the military and police, and of course the only element that really matters, The People trailing behind. There were I would guess a couple of hundred marchers, about the usual number. There was an attempt by some of them to sing We Shall Overcome, but it was weak and as the line approached the monument the march fell eerily silent. To me the silence felt disturbing.

Assembling At The Monument

And of course the Corporate Media was waiting at the monument, the content providers waiting inside their SUVs. Their was a fair number of them this year. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were present this time to record any political incorrectness that might offend the elite ruling party, recordings that could be used in future political purges and kangaroo trials. Hopefully that’s just me thinking dreadful thoughts.

In the past this march and ceremony in honor of Dr. King was treated as a kind of reflexive ritual, a necessary political gesture almost devoid of relevancy. Despite lingering problems and speedbumps our society seemed to be humming along the path of better opportunities and greater equality for all. Back then the mood was almost nostalgic, and the message in the politician’s speeches was mostly self-congratulatory.

Crowded On The Monument

In past years the State actually distributed placards on sticks for the marchers that said things like Equal Housing or End Segregation Now which were then put back into a closet off the main part of the State plaza (I’ve seen that closet!) to be used next year. But in recent years those signs disappeared as we all began to feel a growing unease at the national situation, and more people began to take the march seriously.

Now we have to wonder if there will be a ceremonial march to my neighborhood next year, will there still be a national holiday in honor of Dr. King. It’s well known how the ruling party detests Dr. King and particularly despises his message of freedom and equality for all Americans. It is also now well known that the bratty boy occupying the presidency along with his close supporters are openly racist, and that the brat in chief himself made a special point of dishonoring Dr. King on this day.

Reverend Miller Gives The Invocation,
The Only Other Dignitary To Speak

There may not be a national Martin Luther King holiday next year, and there may not be too many more of these ceremonies in his honor in the City of Albany. If celebrating his life and his work in the cause of American freedom becomes too politically untenable then our State and local politicians may feel compelled to give in to the demand that it be suppressed. Honoring Dr. King during times of fear and oppression may be more than our elected officials may be willing to risk.

If this happens it will be up to us, We The People, to continue the celebration of Dr. King. As astounding as it seems, we may be facing truncheons and fire hoses and attack dogs when we march, or rather this time around tasers and MRAPS and automatic weapons. We will all have to decide how much we want to sacrifice in Dr. King’s honor, we may end up learning first hand the price that Dr. King himself paid in the cause of freedom.

In The End, Will It Be All For Nothing?

 

January 14, 2017

The Electoral Coup of 2016 means we are all screwed

The so-called Republican Party is a cancer upon the body of our American society. For decades this social disease has been kept more or less in check by institutions and prevailing attitudes that have allowed our country to live well and thrive. But the more a cancer spreads and replaces the healthy parts of the body the less likely that cancer can be removed without killing the entire body.

It appears all too likely that we have reached the point where the cancer has metastasized beyond the point of no return. Beginning with the opening of the gerrymandered Congress after New Year’s the United States is a body waiting to die, messily and painfully, the individual cells of our body turned into greedy death machines. Most of us will be trapped inside the body as it falls apart.

And a happy new year to you. Enjoy these final days of peace and prosperity.

Donald Pussygrabber Trump

Since the Electoral Coup this past November I’ve had this notion of trying to catalogue and explain how this coup was carried out, and why the vast majority of Americans have passively accepted the stripping away of their American freedoms. But damn that’s an enormous task. And damn it, how do you explain the obvious to people who are in denial, who not only don’t want to acknowledge the obvious but are being carefully distracted from thinking about it by the corrupt Corporate Media that controls so much of our thinking?

Yes, this was a coup. If you can’t see that for yourself then you will never see it, at least not until it is far too late to do anything about it. Oh, there is a scattering of informed people here and there who see it all too clearly and can see what is coming. However, there probably isn’t a writer or commentator on this planet that can counter the haze of deeply planted propaganda that is making the vast majority of Americans passively accept the end of elected government and the subsequent ruination of our security and prosperity.

So I’ll run through this quick. To start, please consider that the polls were way off from the official vote counts everywhere, not just a little bit but massively off. Exit polls were way off too. There’s always a margin for error but not like that. But you probably haven’t given that much thought because the Corporate Media hasn’t made any mention of that since shortly after election day. That in itself, this silence about a key issue, is a red flag.

Traitors Love Pussygrabber

You may have heard about voter suppression. The problem is so widespread that it has actually been occasionally mentioned by the Corporate Media, a sure sign that it is pervasive and out of control. Along with disenfranchisement of voters it is well known that there are vast regions of gerrymandered congressional districts and election districts particularly throughout the Midwest. This assures that the radical right minority can continue to be grossly overrepresented.

But the biggest problem was not voter suppression, it was suppression of votes. Just before the election journalist Greg Palast discovered that the audit function on electronic voting machines in Ohio (and in other states) had been turned off on the machines. This meant that there was and is no hard record of how individuals voted other than one electronic blip each. And almost no one complained. The easy vulnerability of these machines is an old problem, one that Barack Obama could have dealt with during his eight years in office but chose to ignore.

During the attempts at vote recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin we saw local Republican Party operatives throwing out enormous batches of votes for ridiculous reasons. These perversions of the right to vote were automatically upheld by, you guessed it, judges appointed by the Re-pub Party. One thing I can say about the Re-pubs, a sort of grudging admiration, is that the apparatchiks in the party are quite obedient and work together as one unit. The party comrades know how to work together under their chiefs.

Donald Pussygrabber Welcomes Reince Preibus Into The Bedchamber

No one thinks it strange that the head of the Republican Party, that elitist with the bizarre name Reince Preibus, was given the powerful post of White House chief of staff. Now, why would Donald Pussygrabber reward the party head with such a prize, especially when it was reported during the campaign that Preibus was at most lukewarm with the candidate? Could there have been a deal, fix the election in return for a key post at the door of the bedchamber? That would be very hard to prove without a lot of investigation. But isn’t that rather odd that there are no inquiries.

This is how a fascistic minority has seized control of our society. It was this obedient coordination by the party comrades that took advantage of the disarray by the American voters, most of whom behaved as if this was just another election. If you’ve seen that Donald Pussygrabber is going into his January 20 inauguration with a disapproval rate that is well over 50% then you can see that the electoral process was indeed perverted by Re-pub Party perverts.

Bored Already? Not Enough Diet Pills?

No, the election wasn’t stolen because of the Electoral College, although careful manipulation of that institution was at the center of the theft. The College is actually designed to prevent thefts like this, isn’t it ironic that it turned into the instrument of a stolen election. Eliminating the College will not change a thing, not as long as it is against the law to monitor e-voting machines for fraud. Yes, by law.

No, the election wasn’t ruined because Vladimir Putin of Russia hacked into email servers and revealed tidbits of information to the Corporate Media which ran with it. Foreign governments have been hacking onto US servers for decades and this country has been hacking into theirs. Anyone who wastes time arguing about this one way or the other is obediently allowing themselves to be distracted from the real problems.

No, the election wasn’t stolen because the capo of the FBI, James Comey, spread a bunch of lies about the Democratic candidate a week before the election. Comey’s behavior did reveal to one and all what some of us have known for a while, that the FBI is a partisan political organization that routinely commits perjury, a secretive militia with a political agenda. Of course Comey’s statements, like the Putin hacks, would have had no meaning except that the Corporate Media amplified this garbage and presented it as fact.

Senator Bernie Sanders, The President We Don’t Deserve

No, the election wasn’t stolen because of a poor candidate put up by the Democrats after the party insiders rejected a candidate who was almost guaranteed to win. It is indeed true that the Old Boy Corporatists inside the Democratic Party manipulated the Primaries so that the Old Boy Corporatist candidate Hillary Clinton got the nomination. True Conservative Senator Bernie Sanders would have openly swept across the electorate as powerfully as Barack Obama did in 2008 and carried both houses of Congress with him.

Oh yes he would have. Consider this. Donald Pussygrabber, who was heavily promoted by the Corporate Media, put on a phony show of defying the Corporate Media, to which a large swath of voters responded enthusiastically. Bernie Sanders, who until late in the game was totally censored and was constantly downgraded by the Corporate Media, emerged as a much more sincere direct critic of the Corporate Media and thus became a major viable candidate. If Bernie had secured the Democratic nomination as a platform he would have been able to savage the Corporate Media without mercy, and thus demonstrate the obvious insincerity of Pussygrabber’s media posturings for all to see.

The Phony Brat-Man Vs. The Girl

Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton acted every inch the Old Boy Corporatist and refused to confront the Corporate Media. It’s as if she put her trust and faith in the Corporate Media! Instead, her campaign was centered around well produced TV ads that said, in effect, “Vote for me because I’m not Trump” and not much else.

Even splattered with three decades of mostly unjustified negatives by the Corporate Media Ms. Clinton still could have won the election merely by openly confronting the Corporate Media like Mr. Sanders and Pussygrabber did. In fact, had she done that she would have not only have instantly shed those decades of negatives, she would have picked up millions of admirers and won the election handily.

Donald Pussygrabber’s Favorite Modifier

Instead, on what could plausibly called a subliminal level, we were treated during the TV debates to the spectacle of Pussygrabber acting the defiant manly man while The Girl passively accepted the feces thrown at her. In that sense Ms. Clinton decisively lost the TV debates to the experienced TV actor. She misread the landscape just like that big pack of Re-pub Primary candidates did last Autumn, and now she has been left behind among them.

Because yes, this past election was a referendum on the Corporate Media. A growing number of Americans, particularly those who are under 40 years of age, have figured out that the Corporate Media is a coordinated tool of the Corporatist political agenda. Unfortunately, too many people who realize this are unaware that despite this suspicion, they too are being manipulated by the Corporate Media. They are sure they are too smart to be manipulated like everyone else is.

Delete This Noisy Garbage

Enough of that. I can go on and on about what happened, I can engage in research to back up every one of my statements with supporting arguments and citations. But what’s the use? Most people won’t pay the slightest attention no matter how hard any expert or public figure works at trying to get them to understand, let alone some blogger like me. All most people listen to is the Corporate Media distractions and nothing beyond. If it’s not being endlessly repeated by the Corporate Media, then it didn’t happen.

This 2016 Electoral Coup is the Corporate Media’s greatest triumph, the final undermining of elected government in America. This is the beginning of the end, the negating of the gains for our people made by the Liberal Revolution of 1776. This is the Sunset of America that began with Ronnie Reagan. This is the dawn of the Corporate Dictatorship, the inauguration of the crumbling decadent empire that exists for the benefit of a select group of insiders who are needed to prop up the regime and for no one else.

And of course, it is the triumph of the so-called Republican Party. The symbol of the Re-pub Party, you may recall, is the elephant. That’s because of the idea that elephants “never forget.” Have you ever asked yourself what the Re-pub elephant has never forgotten? That elephant has never forgotten what America was like before 1776, when we the people deferred to wealthy aristocrats and we knew our place beneath them. That subservient past is the future we have before us. It will not be pleasant.