The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Boxing Day and the Laments of 2016

    By tmccarthy0 on Mon, 12/26/2016 - 12:18pm |

    Could this year have been any shittier? Prince, George Michael, Carrie Fisher's massive heart attack, Trump. PSN's stupid coffee table book and it's failure to activate politically with a Four Million member power! WTF, can 2017 be worse than this?  Increasingly that orange freak is scaring the hell out of every normal person on the face of the earth with his loose tweets about nuclear arms races, so yeah, 2017 can turn out to be so much worse. I'm sure many of you feel the same bewildering disappointment as me and millions around the world. 

    I also want to write this; I am fairly shaken by the apparent weakness of leadership in the closing days of the Obama Presidency.  His closing days will be marked by extreme failures, failure to reign in a rogue FBI, (yes Bill Clinton has some culpability in this), a failure to rebuke Republican leadership by chickening out and doing nothing about serious attacks on our electoral system. 

    I won't just knock the President for his apparent failures but also the DCCC, after reading about their extreme do-nothing attitude for recruiting new candidates for congressional races, they too have blame in the 2016 epic failure of an election, and yet the Democrats still remain frozen in place, with no real plans to take back anything, their only goals are to remain in their current positions. This attitude has allowed Republicans to take over. 

    Let me ask a question to everyone, who are the up-and-coming new Democrats? Bernie and Biden are terrible answers! How do we harvest the obvious energy out there to do something about this debacle, to challenge the other side to defend not just Medicare and Social Security but Medicaid and PPACA and subsidies! 

    Here is hoping 2017 is better than 2016.

    Comments

    I feel the same disappointment in Obama lately.  He didn't make a big deal out of the hacking because of OPTICS?  Comey got a free pass and will no doubt get a free room at Trump Towers for life as repayment for his Hatch Act violation once d gets in office.  But the worst is rolling over about the Supreme Court. He should have screamed bloody hell about that. I know it's not his nature, but when a normally calm person goes ballistic it gets peoples' attention.  This was an outrage but was treated like just another pricky thing that the GOP does (gets away with). All things considered it is a real travesty with great implications.  Sad.


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 11:56am

    I feel  felt the same disappointment in Obama lately  since 2010

     

    One small case in point--there are 100 judges whose appointments will go "poof".

     

    How many were pending when the Dems lost the Senate?  Remember that lame duck session where Harry Reid rammed through all pending appointments, brandishing the nuclear option like he was a repugnant (ie, someone who wants to win...)?  Me neither.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 2:05pm

    And you are laying that on Obama?


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 4:43pm

    Yes.   By way of thought experiment, reverse the parties, make it Trump who has a bunch of pending appointments and who has just lost the senate, but by the miracle of the lame made to walk,  fly has the chance at one more burst of confirmations.  All he needs is the agreement of his (soon to become minority leader) majority leader.

     

    He can whip up the populace every day by showing up with the scorned appointees, or visiting a clogged court, or who gives a fuck what, wherever he goes a phalanx of cameras follow.

     

    Tell me what that president would do?  And then tell me it's not ultimately Obama's failure of nerve and imagination that has left us facing ruin--that, and a piss poor campaign and candidate, but we've gone round 'bout that, have we not?

     

    EDIT TO ADD:  AND YES, Y'ALL CAN APOLOGIZE FOR HILLARY ANY TIME NOW...


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 7:15pm

    Hillary's the bomb. If your support for the party winner hadn't been so half-assed, maybe things would've been better. Once Obama won in 2008 I didn't sit around grousing into November. When do *you* apologize? You said she was too damaged to win and there she took in 3 million votes more than Trump - the same margin she beat Bernie by - 65 million votes in all. Same as Fred, but backwards in heels - still not enough.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 9:36am

     Once Obama won in 2008 I didn't sit around grousing into November. 

     

    So let me understand this, the former Obama voters who flipped 200 plus counties by rejecting Hillary would have been persuaded if only my legion of Trotskyites for Bernie had gone door-to-door in Wisconsin et al?


    by jollyroger on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 12:16pm

    By not mindlessly bitching about everything from the stupid fucking transcripts to the Clinton Foundation to her cackle/cankles to the supposed horror of DNC staff preferring 1 candidate but not doing anything, along with "superpredator" and warmonger and stealing/rigging the vote in California and elsewhere and "voting your vagina and "polls say Bernie would do better", those legions of Trotskyites wouldn't have had to do fuck all, just vote.

    Note that Russ Feingold lost Wisconsin worse than Hillary, and he'd gone door-to-door in 70 counties.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 12:42pm

    "Y'ALL CAN APOLOGIZE FOR HILLARY ANY TIME NOW"

    NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH HER. That is the problem with you jolly, and why it is so hard to ever agree with you, you are offensive and mostly wrong about everything. Obama's failure is also ours,  liberals, progressives, and non-voters aren't active enough to make our politicians change at all. When are all the folks who voted third party or for that OrangeTerror going to apologize? When the country isn't what you recognize as American anymore? All I see are a bunch of people who voted 3rd party give excuses for why they screwed the country over again? Idiot Bros.  I just want to know if it was worth it, oh the Clintons so corrupt, LOLOLOLOL, but at least keeping ACA would have been a given, they wouldn't rip off the treasury, and their charity is a real foundation, it doesn't buy personal gifts for the Clintons. Trump is the most corrupt person on the face of the earth other than Putin, seriously, and a bunch of individuals like you either voted for him or didn't vote.  We complain about TBags and yet they get shit done, and we shrink in run away and hide! They call us traitors and treasonous, and we do nothing about it.

    FYI: let me put this out there, in case you don't know, My boarding school roommate was Paddy McGahn's daughter. Paddy McGahn was Trump's lawyer way back then, and his nephew is Trump's lawyer now. We haven't seen anyone this corrupt since well we've never seen it, they saw it in the Gilded Age. Hold on tight, because there will be no one to save us, we have to be committed to save us.


    by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 11:10am

    mostly wrong about everything. Obama's failure is also ours

     

    Gee, I thought you had come around to an approximation of my oft expressed (and condemned by you...) criticisms of Obama...was I wrong after all? (I will concede that the Dem party failed along with Obama--do you raise that point to excuse his utterly inadequate performance as party builder?)

     


    by jollyroger on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 12:19pm

    Would be more impressive and believable if it hadn't been a year when someone *did* try to build the party, gathering support from most incumbents, unions, business groups, women, African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, LGBT, et al with a largely progressive platform expected to go to 50 states, only to have an "insurgency" of non-party independents decide this was the year to destroy the "corrupt" party and start over. For all my criticisms, Obama more than anyone understands no good deed goes unpunished, so splitting the baby at every turn keeps everyone equally unhappy, quelling the revolution.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 1:38pm

    I don't like it because that is all you have. Nothing else jolly. Everything sux to the max, nothing is good, everyone is equally bad, (not Bernie) everyone else, everyone else is tainted, no one else can do what he can do, all of Bernie's candidates lost. Bernie Lost.

    Let me ask you this, when was the last time you and your progressives buddies got together in-real-life and went to a town hall meeting to push for what your community needed?

    That is what the other side does, they try to take over, they have claimed the public sphere and formed their messaging and have convinced an apathetic public to make no efforts it won't matter. They even support their most radical, untested candidates 150%. 

    So when we lose, while leadership definitely has a large responsibility, but we also have personal responsibility, to quote Flash Gordon, umm they teamed up and took over State and local governments all over America. Democrats have professional politicians, people who do this for a living, Republicans seem to cycle through Republicans, they challenge each other, we tend not to do that. We should do that more often. 

    Sadly, we keep arguing with each other about who was more wrong, than in making a plan to take over.

    Think about this, we don't even have anybody to challenge Trump in four years, don't tell me, Bernie! He is too fucking old.  It also needs to be someone who recognized the need to continue to build the party, change the party, support up and coming candidates at all levels, not just try to preserve the few seats we have left.

    You still want to talk about how some people were wrong about the candidate, guess what dude, we were wrong about everything and that includes you! If we want to win again, we have to try to take over local government everywhere. If we don't we are screwed. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 6:16pm

    Ah, it's easier just to complain when someone donates to *our own party* - blech, ew, too much money in politics.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 9:09pm

    Yes, this.


    by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 9:23pm

    I posted something about this the other day but got little interest:

    When conservatives don't like the way things are going they vote.

    When progressives/democrats/liberals don't like the way things are going they stay home or vote third party.

    I think it is a pretty interesting phenomenon, and it is effing pathetic!  Brava to you, Terry!  You are doing the right thing!


    by CVille Dem on Wed, 12/28/2016 - 11:32pm

    I read the news today oh boy...


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 1:47pm

    Oh.  Wow.

     

    That is so fucked up

     

    I keep looking for the extras, but all I see are the stars.

     

    About the only good news--Chomsky lives! (ordinarily, we don't frame mortality that way, but after a year like this, I check the obits every morning to make sure he's not on the list!)

     

     


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 1:54pm

    Speaking of Chomsky, and our disappointing punk of a paladin President, here is a call for audacity (where have I heard that word before...?

     


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 2:29pm

    Obama set his limit at the audacity of hope. The audacity of action was just too far for him to go.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 5:03pm

    Just Oy.

     

    ETA: I guess that's why they call it the courage of one's convictions...


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 7:07pm

    On the substance, and granting the controversy as to legality, impact, blah blah blah,

    " what (Like that fellow said) the fuck do they have to lose?"  Especially the DACA's who, (thanks, Obama...) are registered.

     

    Worse comes to worse, they will have something to litigate when the "you are eligible for deportation under the person who committed a crime clause" is used against them


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 7:12pm

    The salient sentence from Thomas Mills, for convenience:

    "In Texas, Hillary Clinton won in a congressional district where Democrats didn’t even field a challenger."

     

    "


    by jollyroger on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 2:12pm

    Oh, TMac, I wish I could be optimistic about 2017 being a better year, but I just don't see how it can. I feel like we're going to have to spiral way down before enough people insist that the repubs knock off their efforts to completely dismantle the social safety net Dems have painstakingly woven over the decades.

    I am torn between sticking my head in the sand to protect my mental health, or going full on militant to protect my country.


    by stillidealistic on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 3:16pm

    I know, I feel the same way, I hope it's better, but will it be? I don't know. I have my doubts, Democrats aren't making me feel like they have a handle on this at all or that they can do better. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 8:26pm