The Cause

Over the years I have donated small amounts of money to various causes, mostly environmental, human rights and some indigenous groups. When a candidate for public office seems worthy, I have sent a few dollars, such as to Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin for U.S. Senate. Unfortunately, when you give money they sell your address to other causes and candidates in a relentless and unending onslaught of money appeals. The causes may be good, the politician may be worthy, but they all have fundraising departments, and their purpose in life is to panhandle, to beg for money.

A perfect example is that in 2000 I started getting emails from Joe Biden. He was running for president. The emails didn't say from the Biden for President Campaign, but from Joe Biden personally, though he no doubt wasn't personally sending me a money appeal. The content was typical Joe Biden blah, blah blah, forgettable stuff that meant nothing, but I remember the essence was that he among all people on Planet Earth was the savior of mankind. Or some such.

Biden referred to his campaign as "The Cause." There were never any ideas expressed, no policies or proposals, just "The Cause." No mention of just what the cause was, except by implication. The cause was Joe Biden. Rally around Joe Biden because, well, just because.

It was clear then and it is clearer now that Joe Biden is nothing more than a hack politician, a handsome guy with a wide smile. The hair on top of his head is transplanted from elsewhere on his body, a vanity move to improve his electoral prospects, he having gone bald somewhere along the long line of "The Cause." He has perfect teeth.

Joe Biden has never had an idea of his own about anything. His "Build Back Better" program was inspired by Bernie Sanders, concocted by subordinates with Biden as the pitch man, the front man who took credit. It worked, and he was supposedly on his way to reelection. The Cause Part 2.

Unfortunately for Joe Biden, reality intervened. The onslaught on Gaza by the government of Israel showed Biden for who he really is, an empty suit, a hack with no moral or ethical principles, and a threat to world peace. Some cause. He continues to this day to send money and weapons to Israel with no meaningful restrictions, no limits.

Then came the debate. It has to be the humiliation of eons, of epochs, to be defeated by Donald Trump in a debate. Defeated resoundingly by what may be the worst human being in human history. It wasn’t because of any skill or superior policies that Trump "won." It was because Joe Biden wasn't just a terrible debater, but he exhibited a serious decline in mental capacity. He showed himself to be not just unfit to run for reelection, but unfit for office in the present tense. He should be removed from office through the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

Biden has continued to show himself unfit for office on a daily basis. His latest effort, a "letter" to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel military command, "strongly" criticizing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, is a big nothing, just window dressing, a fake effort to give some public relations cover for U.S. support for whatever Israel does. And, I suppose, to give some plausible deniability should they be charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Dumb guys. It is all a bullshit game. It is the downfall of dumb guys in politics from time immemorial. Do what you do to serve power, and when doubt arises, just create a pattern of bullshit. Lies upon lies upon lies. Deflect. Undermine. Quash dissent. Buy people, governments off. Bribe. Blackmail. Threaten. Kill if it suits you.>

Kamala Harris, now the leading candidate for president, supports Biden totally, seeing it to her advantage to ruffle no feathers. She supports the genocide in Gaza fully, as well as for whatever pending genocide Israel might have up its metaphorical sleeve for the rest of the Mideast – as long as Joe Biden remains complicit. As such, she is just another hack politician, another empty suit, in this case a pantsuit. Her trademark appeal is her unending smile, but not as good as Joe Biden's.

Meanwhile, the planet is getting hotter, we are getting closer to global thermonuclear war by the day, and our unsustainable infinite-growth economic system is about to unsustain. Anything unsustainable eventually unsustains. The illusion of "The Cause" of Joe Biden, carefully crafted for decades, unsustained. It was nothing, and now it is seen as nothing. In terms of Christianity it is ashes to ashes, dust to dust. From here on out for Joe Biden every day is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a time of penitence. From dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. Good riddance.
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Here's a song. Here's another. This song is for the U.S. and Israel. Good luck with this one. A lost cause song. A song for Donald Trump. We shouldn't have to feel this way.

No Surprise

In what should come as no surprise, the independent investigative organization Pro Publica has revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lied to Congress and the president about how Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza - food and medicine - including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.

This is nothing new. We, the uninstructed around the world, could see with our own eyes what has been going on in Gaza since last October 8. Genocide. Blinken has been lying about the genocide from the beginning, as has been his boss Genocide Joe. And, it should be noted, almost all of both houses of Congress.  Lying among political actors is as easy as breathing, in many cases easier, and is only different by matter of degree. Our news media have been stenographers, supporting the lies with active and passive propaganda. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which authored the report, likely knew that their findings would be ignored, but submitted it anyway, choosing integrity over conformity and career.

Even our leading candidate for president, Kamala Harris, is genocide compliant, parroting the party line that "Israel has the right to self-defense" and trotting out the phony slogan about a two-state solution. Genocide, in the calculus of our nation's leadership, is a legitimate tool of self-defense. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is a totally evil human being, and would jump at the chance of engaging in genocide. If he is "elected" he would have impunity, thanks to our corrupt supreme court.

Given our mindless and unhesitating ease with genocide, we might pause and wonder how we pick victims. Who gets to be the target of genocide? It has to be someone. In order to kill an entire population there has to be a killor and a kilee. It could have been the reverse. We could have picked the Palestinians as the killors, and the Israelis as the kilees. Israel is a created state, granted by the Western powers through the U.N. in 1948. There is no rhyme or reason why we chose one over the other, except imperial prerogative. It was largely the British ruling elite that made this choice, and after World War II we went along, fresh from victory and needing to cement "the Allies" in the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in which I "served" from 1969 to 1971, the greatest ugh! of my life.

So here we are, stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place. We have a thoroughly corrupt political system, an election in little over a month, and a non-choice of continuing genocide in Gaza or something worse in every respect. Meanwhile, Israel has embarked on a new genocide: Lebanon. With our help. For now. It won't last. Nothing lasts.
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Here's some traveling music for the journey ahead. An interview with Roger Waters.

Update, September 30: Here's some news.

R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson. His best-known song. He gave the song to Janis Joplin for her last hit, posthumous. Others have done it, such as the Grateful Dead.

Delta Mike Foxtrot

Israel is still at it with genocide, still supported with U.S. weapons, money, diplomatic cover and propaganda. A new U.N. report accuses Israel of waging a starvation campaign in Gaza. 

Joe Biden, President of the United States, is the chief facilitator of this genocide. It couldn't happen without U.S. sponsorship, and the sponsorship couldn't happen without the full approval and cooperation of Joe Biden.

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I sent a message to Joe Biden last Friday:

From: Me
To: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/share/
Subject: Foreign Policy
Date: September 13, 2024

Greetings

POTUS. POS. GJ. WC. SP. SF. SHB. GR.
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I forgot one. Delta Mike Foxtrot.
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Here's a song. Here's another. John Prine. A song for the Delta Mike Foxtrot.

An Ethical Choice

It would seem that the election is over. Donald Trump, confident in his prospects of defeating Joe Biden, suddenly has to face a younger, smarter and more exciting candidate in Vice President Kamala Harris. She also has the advantage of newness, being female and the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. This would give her an automatic boost among Asians, African Americans and immigrant citizens. Her choice of running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz added to her momentum, giving a plain-spoken common man sensibility to her campaign. Trump immediately fell in the polls, and now faces an uphill battle for the presidency.

The excitement has died down a bit since the convention. Harris is a pretty boring speaker, and is annoyingly vague on what she will do as president, her economic plan so far something like the age old promises of a chicken in every pot and happy days are here again. She says she wants to incentivize entrepreneurship, a good crowd-pleaser, even has a slogan: Opportunity Economy. She also promises to crack down harder on illegal immigration, a non-answer that does nothing to address the problem, just making life harder for the many who are fleeing violence and poverty. Conspicuous in its absence is any meaningful mention of climate change.

Worst of all, though, is that she stands firm with Joe Biden in supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is the systematic, planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political or ethnic group. This is exactly what the government of the state of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, first in Gaza, but now extending to the West Bank of the Jordan River. This campaign is done with funding, weapons, including 2000 pound bombs, and diplomatic support from the government of the United States, presided over by Joseph Biden, and now fully supported by his vice president Kamala Harris.

At last month’s Democratic Convention Palestinians were denied the opportunity to present their case for ending this support, in spite of having many elected delegates being told they would be able to speak. Instead, the event’s choreographers chose to keep them off the stage, but paraded the parents of Hamas hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin in front of the crowd, effectively playing to their support from AIPAC. I wonder how these manipulators feel now that Hersh has been killed. They likely don’t care. It worked when they needed it to work, and now it’s on to other things.

This presents a quandary for me, and likely for millions of others. Should I vote for a candidate who supports genocide, or find some third party or independent candidate to give my meaningless vote to? I don’t like any of the alternate candidates, and won’t vote for genocide, so my only real option is to cast my meaningless vote creatively.

Earlier this year I called Wisconsin U.S. senator Tammy Baldwin’s local office to implore her to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. She of course was not there, and the phone person I talked to said he would pass my comments on to the senator. I told him I was going to vote for Alfred E. Neuman for senator in the upcoming election. Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad Magazine character known for saying only "What, me Worry?," doesn’t exist, but I prefer someone imaginary and therefore incapable of supporting genocide to someone who does exist and supports genocide. In the recent primary election I did write-in Alfred E. Neuman for Senate.

I can vote for Alfred E. Neuman for president too. The first time I voted for president was 1968, for Hubert Humphrey, Democrat. It was either him or Richard Nixon. I chose the lesser of two evils. I had been in Army basic training during the Democratic Convention in Chicago that summer, and was not happy with what happened there, and the choice I was faced with on my first time voting for president. Since then I have voted for the lesser of two evils numerous times, though not always. I voted for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000. I actually campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, covering a complete "turf" for her by myself, double-debasing myself by working to elect and voting for the lesser of two evils. I forgive myself. The alternative was Donald Trump.

I won’t make that mistake this time. Kamala Harris cynically chose to deny a Palestinian voice at the convention, making the arrogant assumption that those who voted uncommitted or uninstructed in primaries would fall into line in November, having no choice but her or Trump. I don’t like being played. I still believe Donald Trump won’t be the “Republican” candidate by November 5, exiting due to health problems, so his flunkies will have to come up with another sociopath. Hmm. Who might that be? Who could be more diabolical than Trump? Arkansas senator Tom Cotton.
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Here's a song. Here's another. Bob Marley. Bob Dylan. The Beatles. Little Village. Peter Tosh.

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Since the Hamas attacks of last October 7, many in the world have become aware of the control the government of Israel has over U.S. politics, eliciting endless arms shipments and money, silencing critics, offering primary election opponents to those who dare to dissent, influencing members of Congress, bullying university presidents into cracking down on student and faculty protesters, and, of course, creating propaganda for our ever-compliant corporate news media. This is done primarily through the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Read more here.

The collusion between the governments of Israel and the U.S. to commit genocide against the Palestinian people is a form of organized crime. done on an international scale in a so far brutal and effective manner. It works because of corruption, and not just in the U.S. and Israel, but among all the major powers except Russia and China, which have their own priorities and preoccupations. A counter-movement is beginning, and is building momentum. Read about it here. Knowledge is power, and though Israel has killed 134 journalists so far since October 7, word is still getting out. 

Over 41,664 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attacks, including at least 15,000 children, not including the more than 20,000 buried, trapped, detained and lost. Over 500 health care workers have been killed. Of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, 32 have been attacked or destroyed. The basic necessities of life - food, water, electricity, sewage treatment, health care - are all being attacked and denied.

This madness won't last, and it will ultimately fail, for several reasons. One of course is that the world is waking up. More important, though, is sustainability. Israel needs to be able to feed at the trough of American largesse, and that largesse is about to turn into parsimony. The unsustainable infinite-growth U.S. economy is about to experience finitude. It has been running on fumes for decades, but just as you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip, you can only squeeze resources out of Planet Earth for so long, and then no more.

Finitude of resources in tandem with climate change means it is all over now, baby blue, just in time for the presidential election. It may take a while longer, but all the king's AIPACs and all the king's guns will not put the Humpty Dumpty of this evil crime syndicate together again.

This calls for a song. Of course, when you are God's chosen people, no worry. "He" is on your side. We'll see.
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For edification on any number of topics, Letters and Politics from KPFA in Berkeley is indispensable. A recent interview with Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, veteran of the Israeli Defense Force, can be heard here. He is the author of the book "An Army Like No Other," a stunning revelation of Israel's history of terrorism, mass murder, land theft and apartheid in its zeal to secure a Jewish state on land that had people already living on it. A YouTube video of the interview seems to be unavailable, but this interview oof the author from 2020 on An Army Like No Other is plenty good.

Worthy of mention is that the established order of the United States government and its political apparatus know all this very well.

And, putting it in the broadest context, this madness is happening in the context of ever-worsening climate change. Practicing genocide when planetary civilization is under existential threat is beyond stupidity, and is a luxury that is doomed to failure. Genocide transforms to suicide.

Here's an opinion piece about Kamala Harris from the University of Wisconsin's Badger Herald.

Colleges and universities across the country are instituting new policies to limit dissent. This includes the University of Wisconsin. The Daily Cardinal, UW's legacy newspaper, has this analysis. On August 29, writer and educator Henry Giroux was interviewed on Madison's WORT about the crackdown on dissent. 

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Update, September 15:

I went to see a concert by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin a few days ago. They encored with this song. It was much better live, pretty incredible. This is what it was like. This song was their second encore. This was their third encore. Here's Jimmie Dale Gilmore in The Big Lebowski. Here's the original of Get Together. The first time I ever heard Jimmie Dale Gilmore was in 1994, when this cover of a Johnny Cash song was played on the radio. Bob Dylan did a version of Train of Love in 1999. And, of course, the Johnny Cash original. Here's Jimmie Dale Gilmore doing my favorite Grateful Dead song. I think I might be right where I belong.
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Update, September 21: California university professors are starting to fight back against suppression of free speech. Maybe we'll find out who the thugs were who attacked students with clubs and pipes at UCLA last May. Former members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have become students at American Universities. In a Venn diagram sense, I wonder what the intersect is of IDF and violence at U.S. campuses might be.

You can get Alfred E. Neuman for president T-shirts. The campaign is growing. Who knows? Maybe he'll win. It would be great.

The GOAT

The spectacle of the Olympics, invented by Adolf Hitler, ended today, all 329 events of them (or it, depending on your grammar preference). News media are giddy, telling us the U.S. has "medal supremacy." In this calculus, supremacy is determined by total medals - gold (first place), silver (second place) and bronze (third place). If you count only gold, "we" are tied with China at 40. We, though, being us, count all medals, giving them equal value. 

So we are supreme, in our calculus of what constitutes supremacy. I have a different calculus - still counting all medals as equal, but comparing the U.S. medal total with all other countries who won medals. With 329 events the total of medals awarded is 987. The U.S., with 40 gold, 44 silver and 42 bronze, won 126 medals. Out of 987, "America" won 126, a supremacy of 12.7659%. The medals were won by 84 countries, with Ireland winning 4 gold, and Grenada, the tiny island so triumphally invaded by Ronald Reagan in 1983, won two bronze medals - in the decathlon and javelin throw. No one from the supreme U.S. won a medal of any kind in these two manly events.

Not so supreme, it would seem, unless you figure it our way, or at least what the news media say, even NPR. One might wonder why it is so important for the U.S. to be supreme in anything, a position of unquestioned authority, dominance or influence. I suppose, in linear, Western, material superficial calculus supremacy is the meaning of life. Be the greatest, maybe greatest of all time. We now have an acronym for greatest of all time. GOAT. Kinda dumb, but it's the meme of the moment.

But supremacy is what we need, and by God we have it! That is, if God exists. If we are supreme in the Olympics, then we are supreme in all ways.

We are supreme in sponsoring genocide in Gaza. We are supreme in melting the Polar ice caps. We are supreme in overthrowing democratically elected governments. We are supreme in polluting the Earth with plastic. We are supreme in corporate corruption. We are supreme in weapons manufacture and its accompanying supremacy in gun-running. We are supreme in mass shooting. We are supreme in homelessness. We are supreme in nuclear warfare. We are supreme in demagogues, grandstanders, charlatans, crackpots and crooks. We are, er, tied for supremacy in religious fanaticism. We are supreme in garbage. We are supreme in debt. We are supreme in the color white, especially "white" skin.

So, as we celebrate our supremacy, let us not forget the many ways in which we are supreme. We are truly the GOAT. I wonder for how long. 

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Here's a song. Here's another. Neil Young. Supposedly the greatest band of all time. Or is it this band? Or this? Maybe this band.

Here's the PBS story about the 1936 Olympics. A selection of books on the topic can be found here.

Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

Eric Hovde, California real estate developer, is running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. He is losing, and now is posing as an "American" Olympic something or other. Curiously, he chose to pose in front of a blonde, "white" Olympic gymnast. Maybe this will garner him a few "white" votes. More likely it will earn him even more derision. In this dismal election season his silly campaign for Senate is one of the few fun things to watch. I can hardly wait for his next commercial.
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Eric Hovde does have history in Wisconsin, having grown up in Madison. His grandfather and father made a lot of money in real estate. He moved to California and apparently used family money to get into real estate and banking. That is, easy money banking. He came back in 2012 to run for Senate, but didn't make it out of the primary election. He went back to Laguna Beach, but also has a home in Washington, D.C. Here's a bio of sorts.
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This calls for a song. Here's another. Original version. Here's the origin of the scoundrel paraphrase.

Bullied Former Student Shoots Lifelong Bully

It has to be one of the greatest ironies in modern times. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the "neutralized" person who shot Donald Trump in the right ear, was relentlessly bullied in school, according to classmates. Television news, needful of viewers, pumped the story for every possible nuance, teaching the word breathless to those who might not be aware of its meaning. So far none have noticed the irony of a bullied former student shooting the most notorious bully in human history. 

As well as ironic, it seems kind of inevitable in the U.S.A., awash in guns, a violent, narcissistic culture and a political candidate who foments violence, incited the attempted overthrow of a presidential election, and is a tiresome presence on the national scene. He is doing all he can to overthrow the next election, which takes place this November 5. I watched the nonstop coverage Saturday, found it much ado about something we should have expected.

Crooks somehow escaped scrutiny from Secret Service agents and local police, climbed atop a nearby building wearing "camouflage" clothing, though to be truly camouflaged he would have needed to look like a metal building. He used an AR-15, a weapon not meant for distance accuracy, but accurate enough, apparently, to zing Trump in the ear and hit three people in the audience, killing one of them.

"Republicans" seem ubiquitous on TV, repeating the newly created mantra "Trump is unbeatable now!" If they say it enough it becomes true, so they think. The reasoning is that Trump, blood on his face, yelled "Fight, fight, fight!" as he was being whisked off the stage by his Secret Service detail. By comparison, it is assumed, bumbling, weak, doddering Joe Biden will lose in a landslide.

Maybe, maybe not. Biden does look weak. Even better, maybe he will drop out. The Intercept has a great article about what the all-knowing knowers in various establishment capacities call political violence. Israel's genocidal siege of Gaza doesn't count as political violence in establishment calculus. Police attacking demonstrators of various kinds - climate activists, antiwar marchers, pro-Palestinian tent encampments, civil rights advocates, Occupy Wall Street advocates, etc. - doesn't count in official narratives.

I have an even attitude about the shooting. Climate change is far more serious that Donald Trump, Joe Biden (Genocide Joe), the "Republican" convention, the November 5 election, and especially the all-knowing punditocracy. Donald Trump, a deranged criminal sociopath, seems unscathed by what would be a very traumatic experience to a normal person. I'm no expert on sociopathy, but I believe a façade of fearlessness and unperturbedness masks a deeply buried disturbance. 

It will manifest in other ways. I wasn't planning on watching the convention, but Trump's nomination acceptance speech might be worth seeing. A lifelong bully, he will be hard-pressed to speak in a manner that is critical of violence, especially political violence. A sociopath is free of cognitive dissonance, but Trump, a free-floating pathological liar, will find it daunting to thread the needle of advocating both violence and nonviolence in the same speech.

It should be noted that Trump, survivor of an assassination attempt, is himself an assassin. In 2020 he ordered the assassination of a foreign leader, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general. He feared assassination by Iran as revenge, according to authors Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

The whole situation is very dirty. In the presidential election we have Genocide Joe versus deranged criminal sociopath Trump, the assassin who survived an assassination attempt. It has always been dirty, though not this dirty. I am still optimistic, though struggling. Everything implies its opposite, and total crap implies at least a significant countervail, maybe even a complete transformation.

I have had the belief for a long time that neither Trump nor Biden would be their party's candidate by election day, and though that seems less likely now, I still believe it. The more likely is that Biden will drop out, and it seems more likely every day. The only reason he remains in the "race" is ego, vanity, pride and hubris all rolled into one. In every day that passes it becomes clearer that he will lose if he continues with his pathetic campaign.

With Trump, he likely is suffering from dementia, and between now and November 5 it can only get worse. If the "Democrats" offer a non-genocidal choice (Is that asking too much?), Trump's ethical, moral and mental defects will become clearer each succeeding day. He will be sentenced September 18 for his 34 state felonies in New York. His trials on other felony charges are still pending, and the one in Georgia may commence by election day. He will have momentum from the convention, but momentum has a funny way of changing. If he suffers a health crisis between now and election day his electoral chances are toast. 

So cheer up. Things aren't as dire as they seem. The lifelong bully isn't as powerful and relentless as he seems. His day of reckoning may finally be upon us. As he soweth, so also must he reapeth. ____________________________________

Here's a song. Here's another John Prine. Warren Zevon. Another from Warren Zevon. The Beatles. John Lennon. The Waterboys. Bob Marley. The Beatles. The rain is coming. A hard rain. Hard indeed. The Grateful Dead. For good measure, this.