Month: August 2016

by William Skink

For expressing my concern about a world war breaking out and disruptions in our food supply if something major occurs, a new label was used to mock my concerns: drama lizard.

Here is the full comment from Pete Talbot (link):

World War III! No food on the shelves! All is lost! So says the drama lizard. No point in trying to change the system. Time to buy a handgun and hunker down.

And a Clinton presidency is scarier than Chief Executive Trump? The guy wants to “hit people in the face so hard,” and says “the fact is that we need unpredictability” when it comes to nuclear weapons, and “women who seek abortions should be punished … ”

Anyway, I’ll keep plugging away with a good number of other folks to pull the party to the left. I don’t know any other way, realistically, of bringing about progressive change.

Apparently progressive sadomasochists who revel in the humiliating loss delivered by the DNC can’t imagine a scenario in which their pathologically lying president (who has referred to Putin as Hitler and questioned whether he has a soul) provokes nuclear armageddon. Luckily not everyone has stunted imaginations. For those folks, I recommend reading John Pilger’s latest article, Silencing America as it prepares for war. From the link:

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter… “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Hypnosis is a better explanation for what Democrats seem to experience as they do their best to avoid the cognitive dissonance that occurs when reality intrudes and the hypnosis doesn’t work. How else to understand this comment from Talbot:

” … the only thing your party has to motivate voters is fear this election cycle,” says lizard. Did you not watch any of the Republican convention? Crime, Negroes, Mexicans, Muslims — time to circle the wagons.

The Democratic message was uplifting in comparison, except for the real fear that a madman like Trump could become president.

Instead of taking the word of a victim of DNC hypnosis, let’s actually take a look at the uplifting warmongering the Democrats offered in contrast to the orange demon spawn that has singlehandedly short-circuited the brain functioning of Democrats:

In Philadelphia, the former Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, retired Gen. John Allen, delivered a bombastic lecture in which he endorsed Hillary Clinton on the grounds that she alone was capable of opposing tyranny and evil via military interventions around the world.

“With Hillary Clinton as our commander-in-chief,” he shouted in language that doubtless warmed the hearts of interventionists of both major parties, “the United States will continue to be that indispensable, transformational power in the world.” Not only that, but the Pentagon would be able to relax, knowing that the military-industrial complex would never have to pinch pennies: “Our armed forces will be stronger. They will have the finest weapons, the greatest equipment.”

Amazingly, such balls-out hawkishness, delivered loudly at the highest-decibel level possible, garnered relatively little in the way of commentary or protest except in the Wells Fargo Arena itself. Anti-war activists started chants of “No More Wars,” but were quickly muffled by other attendees—and Allen himself from the podium—counter-chanting “USA! USA! USA!” (fearing pro-Bernie Sanders protests, the DNC had actually handed out directions to Clinton delegates on how to silence commotion).

As an antidote to this jingoistic American exceptionlism, here is more from Pilger:

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to “make America great again”, Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

“Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,” wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States “everywhere on the globe”? What is NATO’s true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of “free and open debate” and “democracy at work”. His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

My emphasis, in order to break the hypnosis: yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal to the world. And the rest of the quote is, imho, right on, especially the part about American liberalism seeing itself as modern and superior and the one true way. That belief reminds me of the Vox article regarding the smug style of American liberalism:

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Financial incentive compounded this tendency — there is money, after all, in reassuring the bitter. Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style. It began in humor, and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid. The smug liberal found relief in ridiculing them.

The internet only made it worse. Today, a liberal who finds himself troubled by the currents of contemporary political life need look no further than his Facebook newsfeed to find the explanation:

Study finds Daily Show viewers more informed than viewers of Fox News.

They’re beating CNN watchers too.

NPR listeners are best informed of all. He likes that.

You’re better off watching nothing than watching Fox. He likes that even more.

The good news doesn’t stop.

Liberals aren’t just better informed. They’re smarter.

They’ve got better grammar. They know more words.

Smart kids grow up to be liberals, while conservatives reason like drunks.

Liberals are better able to process new information; they’re less biased like that. They’ve got different brains. Better ones. Why? Evolution. They’ve got better brains, top-notch amygdalae, science finds.

The smug style created a feedback loop. If the trouble with conservatives was ignorance, then the liberal impulse was to correct it. When such corrections failed, disdain followed after it.

This important and accurate description of liberal smugness is helpful in understanding our current political predicament.

by William Skink

I don’t think all progressives are sadomasochists, but let’s look at the wikipedia definition and then examine a brewing story mentioned at ID. First, the definition:

Sadomasochism, a subset of BDSM, is the giving or receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity.

And here’s to what’s brewing in MT politics:

Brewing but not yet in the news, is the formation of the Montana Progressive Democrats. Mostly made up of Bernie supporters, some of them recent delegates to the Democratic National Convention, it hopes to become a chartered organization within the Montana Democratic Party.

After being lied to, cheated, intimidated, maligned by “objective” media, conspired against by DNC brass, put in the back of the arena and strategically shouted out of having a voice–after all that, and Hillary picking Tim Kaine, and then giving Debbie Wasserman Shultz a top job in her campaign, and then lying some more about being truthful to the FBI because she clearly is incapable of being honest. After all this (and whatever comes in the next 90 days) some progressives in Montana want to go hat-in-hand to become a chartered organization WITHIN the stinking political apparatus that pulled every dirty trick in the book to disenfranchise their candidate?

I don’t think there’s any sexual gratification to be had by asking for more betrayal and abuse from these bastards, but there has to be something I’m missing to keep people going back to a party that has established decades of well-proven service to all the things progressives claim to abhor.

And Hillary Clinton is the vile embodiment of all those decades of triangulation, capitulation and well-paid service to the plutocrats and terrorist-funding foreigners salivating to call in those favors once she hits the oval office.

I don’t know why it’s so dumbfounding that one can make an argument (a compelling one, I think, but of course I’m biased) that Hillary Clinton is a bigger threat than Donald Trump, and that the Democratic Party has been more effective at pushing war and protecting corporations than Republicans.

The reactions I get when I put forth this assertion (including from people in meat space) vary from pointing out I’m a white, heterosexual male (which I agree means I don’t see the same degree of threat represented by statements made by the bloviating puss hole that is Donald’s mouth) to suggesting I am merely influenced by Russian propaganda.

None of these reactions account for the actual substance of what Hillary has actually done to make the world a less safe place for people across the world, and even for the demographics that will turn out to vote for her because fear of Trump is a powerful motivator.

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party that serves her can’t overtly defend her terrible votes, past policy positions, endemic corruption and chronic dependence on destruction over diplomacy during her reign of chaos at the State Department because those things are not palatable to the progressive base that must turn out to put her in the White House.

But will the progressive base, if they are aware of this reality (many of them are) choose to defend what Hillary Clinton represents out of fear-driven, lesser-evil defeatism, or will they choose instead to redirect their energies into replacing the party that replaced their voice with corporate cash decades ago?

At the end of last month, James Conner put up some information about local efforts to get Jill Stein on the ballot in Montana. Here is some of that info:

Green Party members in Montana are collecting signatures to put Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in November. According to the GP’s ballot access page for Montana, the signature gatherers have until 17 August to collect 5,000 signatures of registered voters.

Ryan Moore of Bozeman is the Green’s statewide coordinator. There are regional coordinators in Helena, Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, and the Flathead. The email address for Missoula coordinator Dani Breck is missoula4bernie@gmail.com, which suggests that the resurgence of the Greens is in part a consequence of Bernie Sanders’ losing the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. Paul Daughtry is the coordinator for the Flathead.

I haven’t made the effort yet, but a certain smug partisan has inspired me to do this one, small little thing–futile as I think it ultimately is–to emphasize my sincere belief that the Democratic Party needs to be replaced, not reformed from within.

by William Skink

Donald Trump should be commended for bringing some much needed clarity to America’s political charade. By shoving his thumb in the eye of the GOP on two key issues that have nothing to do with racism or narcissism, Donald Trump has exposed the one party that pretends its two wings are not run by the same operating system.

The corporate war party wants to enshrine corporate supremacy with trade deals while ensuring the lucrative war racket expands into new markets, like the South China sea. The media fervor over Trump’s latest self-inflicted scandal is just window dressing. It will be fascinating to see the full array of coercive tactics now being deployed by the corporate war party against Trump.

Trump has become so exceedingly self-destructive, conspiracy theories I was floating to friends months ago are getting new traction, thanks to a tweet by Jeb Bush that states:

Maybe Donald negotiated a deal with his buddy @HillaryClinton. Continuing this path will put her in the White House.

Here’s more from the link:

There are so many Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories circulating, there isn’t room enough for all of them in one article. The earliest conspiracy theory to surface regarding the 2016 election, is that Donald Trump isn’t a genuine candidate, but a stooge to get Hillary elected also referred to as a Clinton plant. At first the idea seems absurd, but once you think about the statements Trump has made and the way he hasn’t attacked Hillary when it would be in his best interest to do so, you must wonder why. Why does Donald Trump say the things he says and do the things he does? The theory isn’t that far off and it’s not just people wearing aluminum foil hats hiding in their soundproof basements thinking about it.

I love how media sources that wouldn’t hesitate to use the pejorative conspiracy smear when it suits their corporate overlords agenda dance around their conspiratorial speculation when it suits their corporate overlords agenda.

Amidst this heady stew of paranoia, more and more Republicans are proving the sky is red and water isn’t wet by supporting the once vilified demon spawn in a pantsuit:

When lifelong Republican and former Ronald Reagan aide Doug Elmets publicly declared his support for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, backlash was swift. A longtime mentor called him up to ask: “‘Have you lost your goddamn mind?’” Elmets recalled. There have damaged friendships, even death threats. But there has been an outpouring of enthusiasm as well. “I’ve heard from a lot of Republicans who appreciate that I’m speaking out,” Elmets said. “Many people feel the way I do, that Donald Trump is unhinged and totally unfit to be president.”

A small, but growing, number of Republicans are turning their back on the party’s presidential nominee and rallying around Clinton as the days tick down to the general election. Earlier this week, Representative Richard Hanna of New York broke with his party to become the first sitting Republican member of Congress to announce that he will vote for Clinton over Trump. Republican fundraiser Meg Whitman came forward to say that she too will support Clinton—personally and monetarily—in order to defeat Trump.

On this long drive to Crazytown, I can’t help but reflect on the madness of it all. The most irritating aspect of the Trump phenomenon is the part where he makes sense, but because of the sewage that pours forth from his bloviating meat face, anything sensible is drowned by the obscene and the absurd.

For those paying attention to what gets put forth under the misnomer “free trade”, Trump’s opposition to deals like the TPP is not just sensible, but essential. Anyone who for a second believes Hillary won’t immediately triangulate in support of this top priority on the global hegemony wish list is kidding themselves.

And for those paying attention to foreign policy, questioning NATO is similarly essential, if avoiding WWIII is something that matters to you.

After that war, says Einstein, we’ll be hitting each other with sticks. Unstated is any future world where we evolve beyond the hitting stage of our collective toddlerdum.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, for who?) anything sensible Trump may represent is buried in the escalating antics of someone who either doesn’t really want to be president (for whatever reason), or who maybe is pathologically narcissistic and just can’t help himself. I hate to see the mental health argument developing, but it’s better than the military coup being floated.

However the political Frankenstein that is Trump in America in 2016 plays out, I think we are witnessing a discernible shift of the political weight that in all honesty should sink the Democratic party (but probably won’t).

With Hillary’s VP pick, and the affable climate amongst war-crazed Neocons for another round of Clinton, there is nothing left but fear of Trump to get out the vote for more war and corporate control over our lives.

And make no mistake, that is what a vote for Hillary is.

While the entire US media goes apoplectic over the latest Trump story, there is a quietly growing body count conveniently benefiting Hillary. The latest corpse is the lead attorney in the DNC fraud case, Shawn Lucas, who was allegedly found dead on his bathroom floor. That makes five conveniently dead people who won’t be bothering the Clinton campaign any time soon:

1) Shawn Lucas, Sanders supporter who served papers to DNC on the Fraud Case (DOD August 2, 2016)

2) Victor Thorn, Clinton author (and Holocaust denier, probably the least credible on this list) shot himself in an apparent suicide. Conspiracy theorists at Mystery Writers of America said some guys will do anything to sell books. (DOD August, 2016)

3) Seth Conrad Rich, Democratic staffer, aged 27, apparently on his way to speak to the FBI about a case possibly involving the Clintons. The D.C. murder was not a robbery. (DOD July 8, 2016)

4) John Ashe, UN official who allegedly crushed his own throat while lifting weights, because he watched too many James Bond films and wanted to try the move where the bad guy tries to…oh, never mind. “He was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and the Democrat Party.” (DOD June 22, 2016)

5) Mike Flynn, the Big Government Editor for Breitbart News. Mike Flynn’s final article was published the day he died, “Clinton Cash: Bill, Hillary Created Their Own Chinese Foundation in 2014.” (DOD June 23, 2016)

I think all this shows is how much Hillary is ready to be president. She has the bloodlust for the job, a total lack of a moral compass, a pathological ability to lie, and the growing acknowledgment by Republicans that war and corporate fealty is coded in her DNA.

With the terrifying boogeyman Donald Trump doing everything he can to implode the GOP while impotent powerbrokers like Jeb Bush tweet conspiracy theories, Hillary is closer than ever to ascending to her throne.

by William Skink

At the end of the movie The Big Short the main characters of the movie get little blurbs about how they made out and what they are doing since the implosion of the housing bubble. The man who initially shorted the housing market, Michael Burry, we are told, invests in one commodity: water.

Here is an article from earlier this year about Saudi Arabia following Burry’s lead:

Almarai Co., Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company, recently purchased land and water rights in California’s Palo Verde Valley, an area that has preferential access to water from the Colorado River. The Saudi company was reported to have acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona, a region known for fewer well-pumping restrictions than other parts of the state. The purchase of nearly 14,000 acres enable the Saudis to take advantage of weakened water rules and the move is not sitting well.

Another article from a few years ago examines how other big banks have invested in a commodity human need in order to survive:

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.

Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.

The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective:

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land.

I’m writing about water today because the big news in Missoula is the Montana Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for Missoula to purchase its water system. This is a big deal. Mayor Engen took a huge risk (after naively believing the word of an evil equity behemoth like the Carlyle Group) in using the courts to pry Missoula’s water infrastructure from these evil bastards, and Missoula won:

In a 5-2 decision issued Aug. 2., the Montana Supreme Court upheld the condemnation of the Mountain Water utility. The city of Missoula wins a years-long legal fight that’s cost it more than $6 million so far in legal bills.

This is one issue where the detractors and critics lacked the long-term vision of why this fight was so important. No matter how much disdain one has for local government, there simply isn’t any credible argument that an out-of-state, for-profit entity would be better stewards of Missoula’s water system for captive rate-payers than a local government subject to voter approval.

So congratulations, Missoula. Enjoy this hard-fought victory. It was worth it.

by William Skink

In its yearly best-of popularity contest, the Missoula Independent regularly declares that State Rep. Ellie Hill is most likely to lead the revolution. What the Indy fails to acknowledge is this: for who? Those who don’t know this local politician like I do assume it’s for the poor and disadvantaged. Yeah, right. I think it’s more likely that Rep. Hill will lead the revolution for the new sharing economy’s silicon exploiters, as yesterdays Uber celebration at a fancy downtown wine bar clearly indicates.

Enabling tech-sector billionaire disruptors with deregulation comes with some nice rhetorical window-dressing. Uber will help rural communities and cut down on drunk driving, right? Here is a statement from “passenger zero” from the link:

Boldman Hill-Smith, who represents the University district and portions of downtown, said her major impetus for sponsoring the bill was to cut down on drunk driving by giving people another option to get home at night.

“A lot of bar owners and restaurant owners heard from customers who have to wait two to three hours to get a cab ride from downtown Missoula,” she said. “The Missoula City-County DUI Taskforce supported the bill, and from a pure economic standpoint, a free enterprise standpoint, it had a lot of bipartisan support.”

While that sounds great and all, a new study counters the assertion that Uber has had much of an impact on drunk driving in the many places it is already up and running:

Kirk and his coauthor Noli Brazil looked at drunk driving statistics in the 100 most populated metro areas in the United States for 2009 through 2014. It found that the rise of Uber didn’t correspond to any decrease in fatalities, overall or during peak drinking times like weekend nights.

Earlier this year, smelling something stinky from the Republican end of this effort get Uber in Montana, Don Pogreba made a big show of his request for emails about the legislation to deregulate Montana’s economy for Uber:

Two months ago, on January 16, I made a request to Representative Zolnikov and Montana Legislative Services for all of his e-mails about the UBER bill he helped guide through the Legislature, because I was curious about who had influenced the legislation and how they had managed to not foresee the insurance problem that has kept UBER from running in the state. My request is posted below.

I received a phone call from Legislative Services on January 18, when I was informed that Representative Zolniknov had been contacted by Legislative Services and that my records request would be processed shortly, “within a few days.” I’m still waiting for that request to be honored, and my e-mails to Legislative Services and the Representative have not been responded to since February 18, when I asked for an e-mail copy of a “giant spreadsheet for me to review” because “The email grab was way bigger than anticipated.”

Since then, I have sent four e-mails to Legislative Services asking for access to this spreadsheet, and have not received the courtesy of a response. I reached out to Representative Zolnikov to ask for comment on the apparently stonewalling on this records request, but he has not responded to that e-mail request, just as he never responded to my e-mail request for the e-mails in the first place.

I was eager to see if Pogreba would be successful, and if that success would shed any sunlight on the interesting bipartisan cooperation this legislation received from Democrat Representative Hill and the Republicans she usually bashes. Alas, there has been no follow up from Pogreba about this topic, so either he didn’t find anything, or maybe he did find something, and since it implicates a member of the party he shills for, he dropped it to free up more time photoshopping Zinke faces onto cowardly lions and puppets.

Anyway, Uber is now operating in Montana, so hooray for Rep. Hill and her Republican cohorts for getting this done. I hope the next time any Montanan, including our political representatives, consume too much alcohol, the added option of a Uber ride will make our streets safer.