Another Right Winger, Another "2nd Amendment Remedy"

Trump COULD'VE said, "Values Voters" or "constitutionalists" could stop Clinton but he didn't. He dog-whistled the 2nd Amendment gun nuts.

— MikeFlannigan (@MikeFlannigan78) August 9, 2016

     In one of the very few times he's actually resorted to dog whistling, Donald Trump today told a rally in North Carolina, that bastion of liberal tolerance, that "2nd Amendment people" would have to stop Hillary Clinton. You may recall a little over six years ago, Sharron Angle, the Teabagger darling turned Republican primary winner in Nevada, used the phrase "2nd Amendment remedies" while campaigning against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. 
     And it was just the year before that Sarah Palin posted something online that showed Democratic districts marked by crosshairs, including that of then Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the victim of a horrendous assassination attempt that claimed the lives of six innocents. Palin's caption's meaning was unmistakable: "Don't retreat, instead- RELOAD!"
     And yet, despite that, right wingers are still using the same tactics when they know they can't legitimately win an election.
     Now, God knows I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton. Everyone who's read this blog for more than two minutes this year can plainly see that. I will never, EVER stand down from my belief that if Clinton gets elected, she won't just be our next president, she'll be our last.
     But this eliminationist rhetoric bullshit has to go. If we start assassinating, or calling for the assassination, of political candidates no matter how unfit they are, then we're no better than a Third World banana republic in which assassins and death squads routinely play a part in the political process.
     Trump has already gone down on record as saying that Clinton was working in cahoots with the Russians and that Russian agents have infiltrated her campaign (strange charge to make, since the official narrative is that Russian agents were responsible for the DNC leaks that came out on the eve of their convention). Yet by not so subtly telling Americans that Hillary's the enemy and that she's fair game is a new low for Republican tactics which for decades has been sliding into a steady decline of new lows.
     This slimy tactic, of getting your garden variety George Zimmermans up in arms only to throw your hands up and say, "Hey, I didn't tell him to pull the trigger!" is a tried-and-true right wing tactic that one of these days will result in fatal, history-changing consequences.

     Yes, Donald Trump could've called on Values voters or constitutional literalists or just plain ole abstract conservative voters to defeat Hillary in November. Instead, he singled out 2nd amendment fanatics, that foaming at the mouth faction that literally prize their firearms more than their own children, those lunatics who only see, read or remember the 2nd amendment while piously raving about their Constitution (well, all but the "well-regulated" part).
     It was a slimy loophole in the making, literally a call to arms because Trump's barely smart enough to read the polls and know that he's losing to Hillary big time and has now begun his end game. Don't forget that at a rally, when a protester was being rudely ejected, Trump exhorted his brownshirts to do whatever they wanted and that he would pay their legal bills.
     Perhaps, under that vague promise made long ago to someone else, some deranged individual with an agenda will remember and take that to heart and fully expect Trump to pay his legal bills.

He Can't Stop Doing the Hand Thing

     During his internet travels yesterday for his epic Donald Trump quote post, Mike Flannigan came across an article telling a bizarre story and passed it on to me: For at least a quarter of a century, Donald Trump has been sending pictures of his hands, always circled with a gold Sharpie, to a certain guy at Vanity Fair. Apparently, the Donald has a certain perception problem with the size of his hands, something almost surely tied to the old trope about a man's hand size being an indicator of the size of his, er, Little Donny.
     Frankly, this strikes me something that a serial killer would do only with the body parts of his victims but, hey, who am I to judge? So when Mikey passed on the link, this legendary and super creepy Youtube video almost immediately came to mind.
     I wonder if Donald Trump is still doing the hand thing? What do you think?

The 50 Least Presidential Things Donald Trump Has Ever Said

(By American Zen's @mikeflannigan59, on loan from Ari)

On Fatherhood

If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." - 2006

"We don't know whether she's got this part yet, but time will tell." Referring to then infant daughter Tiffany's breasts, 1994

“The hardest thing for me about raising kids has been finding the time. I know friends who leave their business so they can spend more time with their children, and I say, ‘Gimme a break!’” -2004

"I won't do anything to take care of them. I'll supply funds and she'll take care of the kids. It's not like I'm gonna be walking the kids down Central Park. " -2005

"Right, I'm gonna be walking down Fifth Avenue with a baby in a carriage. It just didn't work." -2005

On People of Color

“I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” -2015

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” -2015

"Look at my African American over here!"-  2016

“I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it. The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.” -1991

“Laziness is a trait in blacks” -1991

“Who the fuck knows? I mean, really, who knows how much the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days?” -1989

“Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.” -2015

"They don't look like Indians to me." - Testifying before Congress, 1993

On Women

“Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”-2012

“If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’” -2006

“Rosie O’Donnell’s disgusting. I mean, both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob.” -2006

“I have really given a lot of women great opportunity. Unfortunately, after they are a star, the fun is over for me.” - 1994

“I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.” -1994

"(W)hen I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof." -1994

“There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever."- Trump on Megyn Kelly, 2015

“When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one!— there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left.” -1990

“I’ve known Paris Hilton from the time she’s 12. Her parents are friends of mine, and, you know, the first time I saw her, she walked into the room and I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ … Well, at 12, I wasn’t interested. I’ve never been into that. They’re sort of always stuck around that 25 category.” -2003

“You have to treat ’em like shit.” -1992

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” -1991

“I was bored when she was walking down the aisle. I kept thinking: What the hell am I doing here? I was so deep into my business stuff. I couldn’t think of anything else.” - On wife #2 Marla, 2005

"Number one, I have great respect for women. I was the one that really broke the glass ceiling on behalf of women, more than anybody in the construction industry."-2016

On Himself

“Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’” -2008

“I want a very good-looking guy to play me.” - 2005

“I have a total net worth and now with the increase it will be well over $10 billion, but here total net worth of $8 billion. Net worth—not assets, not liabilities—a net worth. … I’m not doing that to brag. Because you know what? I don’t have to brag. I don’t have to. Believe it or not.” -June 16, 2015, on announcing his candidacy for president

"I'm really rich." - At the same event

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” -2016

“I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge.” - 2011

“It’s none of your business. You’ll see it when I release, but I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.” - 2016

“People say the ’80s are dead, all the luxury, the extravagance. I say, ‘What?’ Am I supposed to change my taste because it’s a new decade? That’s bullshit.” - 1997

“I really value my reputation and I don’t hesitate to sue.” - says the man involved in 3500 lawsuits, 1979

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”- 2011

“I do whine because I want to win, and I'm not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I keep whining and whining until I win.” - 2015

“The mind can overcome any obstacle. I never think of the negative.” - 1983

“It’s been said that I believe in the power of positive thinking. In fact, I believe in the power of negative thinking.” -The Art of the Deal, 1987

“Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest — and you all know it!” -Twitter, 2013

“I was always very much accepted by my father. He adored Donald Trump … ” -1990

On Politics

“It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” -2000

“Karl Rove is a total loser.” -Twitter, 2013

"John McCain is “not a war hero. … He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, OK?” -2015

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible." - 2016

“I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” -1999

Miscellania

“I like the challenge and tell the story of the coal miner’s son. The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination—or whatever—to leave their mine. They don’t have ‘it.’” -1990

“…I’m married to my business. It’s been a marriage of love. So, for a woman, frankly, it’s not easy in terms of relationships. But there are a lot of assets.” - 2004

“I don’t do it for the money.” - 1987

“… the same assets that excite me in the chase, often, once they are acquired, leave me bored. For me, you see, the important thing is the getting, not the having.” -1990

Buy My Book or I'll Waterboard You

(Recycled from last March 28th)    
     Just kidding.
     As some of you may know, my newest novel, Gods of Our Fathers, got two nibbles on St. Patrick's Day. One is an agent in N. Hollywood and the other a New York-based agency. The former asked for the entire manuscript. The latter, the first three chapters. Maybe I'm just Charlie Brown about to finally kick that football but I'm letting myself get cautiously optimistic that this book will get some competent representation and it'll finally put me on the map. After all, if Lyndsay Faye can get a trilogy of novels about the early NYPD published and a high-powered agent in William Morris Endeavor to rep her, then my new novel about the start of the Boston PD should get some respect, too, especially as I'm a better novelist than Faye.
     In the meantime, I still have to pretend as if I have an actual marketing platform and to try to sell my paperbacks (I'm no longer pushing my Kindle titles since Amazon went with that despicable pay-by-the-page bullshit last July 1st). What follows is a list of the titles I wish to sell through Createspace's estore. It's an Amazon affiliate, but at least the royalties aren't conditional.
     Gods of Our Fathers, a fictionalized account of the beginning of the Boston Police Dept. When fugitive slave Anthony Burns is arrested, it literally sets Boston in flames. Then former escaped slave Constable "Vesey" Van Zant of the Boston PD must also contend with a series of murders getting closer to his house.
     Tatterdemalion, a sweeping historical epic on a par with Caleb Carr's The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness. What happens when Scott Carson, a young genius, teams with Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Arthur Conan-Doyle and Sigmund Freud to catch Jack the Ripper?
     You've seen his byline here for going on eight years. Now read American Zen, Mike Flannigan's account of a wild trip up and down the northeast seaboard in the first days after Barack Obama's election to solve the most nagging mystery of his life: Who broke up the band in 1978?
     Tatterdemalion's narrator Scott Carson comes back in The Kid, a short story recounting his first adventure in 1873 New York with one of the most notorious figures in American history.
     The Misanthrope's Manual is a liberal-oriented rejoinder to Ambrose Bierce's justly famous satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. Written in the 90's, it offers over 1000 definitions to common words, phrases and historical events told as only a true misanthrope can.
     I'll tell you what I'll even do: Since offering a free Amazon gift card for the 10th purchase of a specific title is a little too unrealistic, considering how anemic my sales are, I'll send at random to whoever says they bought one of my novels a $25 Amazon gift card. My email address is Crawman2@yahoo.com.

Is it A Rabbit Hole or a Sewer Storm Drain?

The corpses in the wake of the #DNCleak are piling up faster than after the Kennedy assassination. #ShawnLucas

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) August 4, 2016

     Either way, I dare you to follow this story. The fourth dead body linked to Hillary Clinton and the crime family known as the DNC has popped up. Good luck in that endeavor, though. There are no MSM articles about it, no blog posts except for this one and just a couple of scattered mentions on Facebook or Reddit. Or it could be Google's in on the conspiracy of silence. You may remember on July 1st, Lucas was the attorney who served Debbie Wasserman Schultz (by proxy) with papers at DNC HQ and he was also the lead attorney in the lawsuit against them.
     This brings the body count to four, if you include Seth Rich, a 27 year-old DNC staffer who was shot dead in DC last month with his cell phone and wallet still on his person, former UN General Assembly President John Ashe, who was found with a bar bell on his neck the very day he was to testify against a Chinese billionaire Clinton crony and fundraiser and Victor Thorn, an anti-Clinton researcher, prolific author and AFP journalist, who shot himself on his 54th birthday just three days ago.
     I know that people die of natural causes, are randomly murdered and suffer fatal accidents all the time. And you may pass this off as conspiracy theory if you wish but most people, even those who aren't conspiratorial-minded, would think that four men, all of whom capable of doing damage to Hillary's presidential scheme, dying within a month and a half of each other is a tad much. And even though I've been saying for years that I don't traffic in conspiracy theories, that's just too much of a coincidence for me to ignore. So believe you me I'll be following this like a bloodhound on the scent of an escaped prisoner.

Let's Do The Wave

     In possibly a bellwether primary in Kansas last night, Tim Huelskamp, a man who loves taking pictures with his adopted black family, lost his bid for a fourth term in Congress by a landslide (57-43). Not only that, he lost to a Chamber of Commerce and GOP-backed obstetrician with no political experience. This is huge for a number of reasons:
     Huelskamp surfed into Congress six years ago during the Teabagger revolution of 2010 that pretty much put the kibosh on whatever little good the Obama administration planned to do (and, admittedly, it was very little indeed). But when exit pollers were making the rounds of Kansas last night, one Marshall voter said, "I don’t mind the independent voice, but you’ve got to figure out how to work with people."
     Now, the article doesn't state if this particular voter was a Teabagger but one fact is clear: Either even the Teabaggers think this guy is too extreme or they simply didn't come out in large enough numbers to vote for this clown. And he was abandoned by the RNC establishment for a reason- Four years ago, former House Speaker John Boehner, who'd been the target of Huelskamp's barbs, finally got sick and tired of him and kicked him off the House Agriculture Committee, which is pretty much a no no for a guy from a farm state.
     Secondly, Huelskamp, who was considered one of the most ultra conservative members of Congress, waged a never-ending war against the LGBT community and even tried to pass an amendment to the Constitution banning same sex marriages (so much for states' rights and smaller, less intrusive government).
     He'd also put Planned Parenthood in his crosshairs, calling abortion "slavery" and the organization itself "racist" (because, look, I have black adopted kids. Look at my blacks!). This guy is such a prick, he refused to even call Dr. Roger Marshall's campaign to concede and to congratulate him on winning the primary. He's that mean-spirited a prick and a sore loser.
     So, just like one termers Allen West and Joe Walsh, Huelskamp had to go. Let's just hope this turns into a plague that races through the Freedom Caucus, that pack of wild assclowns that has stalled whatever little progressive legislation that Congress had tried to make over the last several years. So let's hope this indeed becomes a bellwether of change to come, continuing with Debbie Wasserman Schultz's and Paul Ryan's own downfalls. Don't forget, Renee Ellmers lost her own primary bid (she's the one Clay Aiken ran against two years ago).

So, in One Week...

     Donald Trump repeatedly insulted a Muslim family that had lost a son in battle, took a Purple Heart that he'd always wanted then said the way he took it was "a lot simpler," kicked a baby out of one of his rallies, demanded that Russia hack Hillary Clinton's campaign, insulted the very fire department that had rescued him from a trapped elevator and claimed his daughter, that he'd felt up at the RNC convention, wouldn't have stood for sexual harassment.  Then, as a coup de grace, refuses to support either McCain or Paul Ryan in their upcoming primaries.
     Why can't we now conclude Donald Trump is the stupidest human alive who has no intention of winning the presidency and crown Clinton Queen Hillary the 1st & spare us the needless misery of tens of millions of dollars in attack ads?

Why You Should Vote

(By American Zen's @mikeflannigan59, on loan from Ari)

Q: Talk about the role of the opposition party, the Democrats.

Vidal: It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. Gore Vidal, Aug  2006

W.E.B. DuBois, the leading African American activist and reformer of his generation, was born at a crucial crossroads in history: Technically a contemporary of abolitionist Frederick Douglass (DuBois was 27 when Douglass died in 1895), DuBois lived long enough to witness the horrifying nuclear age and beyond, nearly seeing the end of the Kennedy administration at his own death at 95 in 1963.

     He passed away just five days before the famous March on Washington of August 28th and his name, of course, was invoked by some of the speakers. A year later, many of the reforms for which DuBois had tirelessly advocated for decades finally saw fruition with the passage of the Civil Rights Act a year later.

     But perhaps "tirelessly" is a misleading word.

     By 1956, when Eisenhower was up for re-election, DuBois was by then a tired, used up man of 87 or 88 and he wrote a pessimistic article for The Nation  simply entitled, "I Won't Vote." In equally plain language, he argued his case by saying that Democracy no longer existed, which was the thrust of another piece he'd written for the oldest liberal publication in the country. Reprinted on its online edition 14 years ago, the power of the article rests not in its prescience because what DuBois observed in his own country are dysfunctions of Democracy that are still prevalent today. And, in some cases, they're even worse.

     In fact, with the switching of some names, adjusting the dollar figures and updating the language for a 21st century readership, this piece could've been written by any Sanders backer today. I'll even go one bit further-It's so nearly perfectly descriptive of America 60 years after its composition, The Nation would be remiss if it didn't reissue it again during this election cycle.

     He begins the article by writing,

Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils.

     Now, it ought to be shocking to anyone reading this today that DuBois continues,

Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration.

     Of course, DuBois had the legal right to vote. So said the 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870 just before DuBois turned two. But he reports disenfranchisement and it took nearly a century of Jim Crow laws comprised of poll taxes, tests and so forth before the 15th Amendment finally got some teeth in the form of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As I said, this should be shocking that the pre-eminent African American scholar of his day couldn't even vote without serious challenges and obstacles thrown his way by white men.

     But, sadly, it isn't.

The Two-Headed Monster

      The frustration over lack of a choice at a party level is certainly not a new one. Six decades ago in this very article, DuBois wrote,

I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist”...

     This is where the shadow of Sanders looms large indeed. How many times have we heard during this very election cycle sneers over Sanders' platform composed entirely of "dreams", as if dreams were suddenly too hard to attain? How many times have we heard in this byline and in that of independent journalist Michael Collins of how there is only one party and that it ought to be called "the Money Party"?

     And when had Jill Stein ever been invited to a debate? The two party system we've set up is so entrenched we've been conditioned to believe that no candidate of a third party should even be invited to a corporately-sponsored debate and that a third choice would be tantamount to foolishness at best, heresy at worst. But we do not live in a two party system and I would urge you to remember that with the insistence of grim death.

     In DuBois' youth, there were several political parties represented in Congress. And in the 19th century, we still had the Whigs, the nativist Know Nothings and many others. Granted, many of them were mere tails to kites, as DuBois had derisively described so-called liberal parties in his day, but the party variegation in Congress consisted of far more than the very occasional Independent such as Sanders.

     And even for members of one monolithic party of another, certain fund-raising goals have to met before being given a chair at the grown up table. Those who underperform are literally barred from the front door. That is how crooked the election process is: It's literally pay-to-play.

     But what if an insurgent candidate such as Bernie Sanders exceeds all fundraising goals and earns enough votes, states and delegates to keep sitting at the grownup table? Well, that's where party insiders like the disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz come in, As we all now know (and we have Wikileaks to thank for proving it), Schultz valiently sacrified her political career in part by scheduling fewer debates and at times when she was assured fewer people would be watching. She knew Hillary didn't need a debate megaphone- Her last name and Debbie's crazed, brazen cheerleading alone would conspicuously keep Clinton in the public eye like a splinter and if that didn't somehow work, there was always the endlessly compliant and supine stenographers of the MSM.

Disenfranchisement is an Art

     As a friend of this blogmaster used to sign off her emails, disenfranchisement is an art and the Democratic convention in the sarcastically-selected city of Philadelphia, the birth of democracy, was the perfect delineation of that. And, as in DuBois' day, the government and its usual dependable stooges of party insiders, appointed and elected officials and the media lapdogs faithfully played their part to ensure that proud Tammany-era tradition of voter suppression would continue.

     Time and again, we'd seen voter rolls purged to unprecedented levels that would make Republicans Green Party green with envy (126,000 in Brooklyn alone, about 40,000 greater than Katherine Harris and Choicepoint had struck from the rolls for the entire state of Florida in 2000). We'd witnessed on video state party rules changed heedless of voice votes, polling places getting shut down in droves, producing longer lines at the polls. We'd heard of hackable voting machines being used and always, coincidentally enough, the results always benefiting Clinton. We'd heard of Republican exit polls perfectly aligning across the board with actual balloting while in many, many states on the Democratic side, exit polls were suddenly off by double digits.

     Eyewitness accounts, cell phone and periscope videos live-streamed (until they were censored, shades of Tehran and Pyongyang) proved democratically-elected state delegates in Philly had their seats given away to paid actors, others having their credentials threatened for holding up Sanders signs, whips and security literally strong-arming people from their seats, white noise machines set up to suppress protests, collusion with the TV media to use tight shots and to not show the protesters, the empty seats and to seat the Clinton delegates closer to the stage to manufacture the image of party unity and consensus.

     Then they had the nerve to demand of Sanders delegates and voters, "Stick with us. We're stronger together!" And that's just the beginning. God only knows what the American voter doesn't know (Julian Assange has promised us more disclosures will come).

     And, the Democrats being the crime family it is, it will never allow two sperm cells to enter the big egg of the White House. Orthodoxy, no matter how vastly inferior to the "Other" message, will be enforced no matter how corrupt or unsuitable the candidate. As DuBois complained six decades ago,

This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing...

We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

"The People Should Not be Afraid of its Government. The Government Should be Afraid of its People."

     Of course, DuBois was absolutely correct. But nowadays things have gotten much worse. Remember, DuBois was writing this 54 years before Citizen's United that opened the spigots for corporate payola and graft to flood the electoral process without restriction. He'd probably have a coronary if he were told it would cost a cool billion to mount even a marginally viable presidential candidacy and that any Senate candidate spending only three times a lawmakers' $174,000 salary to get elected would be considered a responsible fiscal conservative.

     So, understandably, an 88 year-old man, hammered flat by corruption, racism and the disenfranchisement in which it inevitably results would be too disspirited to vote. Repeated disappointment going back nearly seven decades will do that. But is not voting really the answer? DuBois never actually exhorted people to adopt his new stance of non-involvement. However, his dream was that 25,000,000 withheld votes would finally awaken the progressive political establishment and they would finally begin to court the black vote that it still is loath to do today. 

     It was certainly fair of DuBois to ask his contemporaries in 1956 why they were voting Republican or Democrat. But he was very irresponsible in 1) aligning himself with the repressive and genocidal Communist leaders in China and the USSR and 2) espousing non-involvement with the political process. That's akin to being discouraged by crime in your neighborhood and not locking your door in protest and waiting for the police to notice your house has been burgled.

     Amendments such as the 13th and 15th were won by votes of our elected officials, not the absence of them. And those officials earned their public office by the same process. No revolution was ever won by people sitting on their asses.

     Consider why corporations and our governments lie to us. They would not do that if they didn't think we were worth the time and effort to spin and disseminate these lies. They lie because they fear us and rightfully so. They may have superior weaponry and money but we have sheer force of numbers. Without our spending power, our votes, our obedient, unquestioning compliance, they have nothing and would be in no better position than Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

     So remember that next time the Democratic National Committee is caught lying to you, the next time you see a Wikileaks or Guccifer disclosure proving yet again the subterranean depths of its duplicity, depravity and utter lack of transparency. They need you more than you need them. And they fear public opinion, and reaction, far more than we should fear them and their incipiently fascist legislation and agenda.

"We're going to turn this country around together"

(Actual response to an actual beg I just got from Donald Trump.)

     Boy, did you ask the wrong guy for help. How the fuck did I get on your noxious begging list? Did you buy it from some liberal organization like Moveon or a charity such as the MSPCA or from an old magazine subscription such as The Nation? I would expect that kind of casual hypocrisy from the Orange Man.
     And even if I were a Republican, I would still find it repugnant to give any amount of money to a multibillionaire who'd earlier in his village roadshow of a campaign pledged to fund it entirely from his vast fortune gotten through dodging hundreds of millions in taxes and stiffing his workers left and right.
     And I certainly wouldn't expect him to honor his pledge of matching my donations dollar for dollar considering Trump never actually raised that $6,000,000 for those veterans and had to be shamed into giving another veteran's organization the million bucks he claimed to give them but hadn't until the media sniffed it out. And where are the tax returns? He wanted the birth certificate fours years ago, he got it. Where are the 1040 long forms?
     While I certainly am no Hillary backer, I think helping even one iota a belligerent, noxious inflatable waving man such as Donald Trump get into the White House would be tantamount to helping to nudge us ever closer to that wonderfully prescient movie, IDIOCRACY. Yes, I can perfectly see Ted Nugent acting as Master at Arms, AR15 in hand, as Trump's about to deliver his State of the Union Address via Twitter.
     Yeah, I'm sure Trump would turn this country around, alright. He'd give us whiplash just before doing a U turn and driving us over the cliff, plunging the entire planet into warfare and poverty while he builds Trump Casinos on the National Mall and the KKK opens up recruiting centers.where the Vietnam Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier used to be.
     Go fuck yourselves, you shameless douchebags. Consider yourselves blocked.

The Stupidest Tweet of All Time

Am I the only one who thinks Clinton-Kaine are reminiscent of a nice midwestern couple who move in next door and borrow a cup of sugar?

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) July 30, 2016

     ...to which yours truly responds.

.@JoyAnnReid Yeah, if that couple then drops the cup & breaks out the duct tape & French knives before cutting your phone lines. Sure.

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 30, 2016

     However, that didn't satisfy me, since this election cycle, more than ever, makes me want to go over the top. So when I read Joy Reid's incredibly stupid and insipid tweet about Hill & Tim being the nice white Midwestern couple from next door who come by to borrow a cup of sugar, this is what I actually thought of:

     That's a clip of Surveillance, the David Lynch-produced movie in which a pair of spree killers enter a small southwestern sheriff's department to investigate a mass shooting in which they were actually involved. They pose as nice, normal, respectable FBI agents until finally, the shit hits the fan. Spoiler: Assuming you've already seen this old movie, the bad guys win in the end.
     This is essentially what it would be like except Hillary and not Tim would be the ringleader.
     And the blonde between them in the chair? That's essentially what they did to Bernie and his supporters- Pretended to seduce us then when they were done, they put us down for the long dirt nap.
     I always knew that Joy Reid was in the tank for Hillary but man, when I read that, I couldn't not respond to it. That tweet actually made me physically nauseous.

Piss Poor Priorities

The Potemkin Candidacy

     When filming Cinderella Man, the movie about James J. Braddock starring Russell Crowe, the filmmakers were faced with a problem- they'd already torn through most of their budget and there was still the final fight scene between Braddock and Max Baer to film. And that required a crowd.
     Unable to hire extras, they came up with an ingenious solution- They had inflatable mannequins made, installed them in the seats then filmed stock footage of them. They then vectorized the dummy images, multiplied and spliced them into the finished product then did quick cutaways so no one would know they were actually looking at rubber mannequins full of hot air. It's all in the special features section of the DVD. Go check it out, if you don't believe me.
     This is essentially what the DNC did last night at the frenzied climax of their Clinton orgy. The only difference was they used paid actors, perhaps even getting their shills from the same casting company Trump used ("I can prolly getcha a discount, since ya went to my latest weddin' an' all, I dunno...") the day he announced his candidacy June 16th of last year.
     So, sure, the DNC didn't use artificial humans full of hot air but they might as well have. And if I know my alleged readership as well as I think I do, even if you had seen the post below this one, I'm willing to bet you didn't click on the video's play button. So I'll give you the abstracts:
     By early last night, many of the state delegations were prepared to take their seats and found a rude surprise awaiting them- Countless thousands, literally thousands, of their seats had plastered on the backs "Reserved" signs. Essentially, the democratically-elected delegates, especially the ones who were Sanders delegates (Yes, they were identified and targeted by the DNC) were pushed out in favor of shills, paid actors who, in defiance of DNC rules, didn't have lanyards, let alone the credentials they needed to be on the floor. All that was missing was the Sanders delegates being shoved into a soccer stadium then machine gunned to death as we saw in Chile with Pinochet in '73.
     If you did what I'd asked you and played the video below, you also would've noted that for the first time during the convention, these suspicious-looking Kroger's white board things were bracketed just above what used to be the California delegation's seats. These were actually white noise machines specifically designed to suppress any protests from the Sanders' delegates. Elsewhere in the PA Convention Center, Sanders delegates were bullied and harassed by Hillarybots who were telling them to go back to where they came from. In case there were any noncompliant comrades, security and floor whips (whose presence had significantly increased by Day Four) were there to ensure the new rules, which had to be planned months in advance, were being enforced and obeyed.
     The intent behind this is clear: Between the Sanders delegates leaving the convention early and literally walking away from the Democratic Party and those who'd been literally muscled out of the seats that they'd been elected and had paid good money to fill, the DNC had a big problem akin to those filmmakers who made Cinderella Man- Empty seats. What you can't count on from the MSM and even some trusted bloggers to tell you is that by the time Slick Willie took the stage to vicariously live through his wife's historic theft of the nomination, he was addressing a mostly empty house. It was the final day of Woodstock for ugly people, with their version of Jimi Hendrix playing to a fraction of the crowd of the three previous days.
     That means that when the Democratic mafia heavy hitters came up to speak on the third and fourth days, they were essentially preaching to a choir and paid actors who were instructed to scream (somehow, over the white noise machines) and hold up signs placed in their hands by DNC goons to hide as many Bernie supporters and their signage as possible.
     And while I refused to listen to even a single syllable of the speeches of either Clinton, Biden, Obama, etc (especially as two of the speakers were Republican, for fuck's sake), I know how to read and I know how to appraise what I read. The Rude Pundit in his hideyhole in Ireland be Goddamned, I'm going to need a better reason to vote for a Wall Street whore like Hillary Clinton than, "Donald Trump is horrible."
     And that's essentially all Obama, Biden, etc could say and I'm sure that's all Hillary said when she mentioned Trump's name 22 times- "I'm not Trump. I'm not as horrible as him."
     And I don't listen to these speeches anymore because they inevitably do two things- bash the other guy and tout a record by trotting out falsehoods, massaged numbers and statistics and half truths. Long forgotten were those words that have been yipping at Hillary's expensive heels like an irritating chihuahua- "She'll say anything to get elected." That sound familiar? That's because Obama said that of her on the campaign trail eight years ago.
     And what the MSM also didn't show you was this wonderful bit of amateur signage hanging just above Joe Biden's hair plugs:

     This is why technical directors love tight shots, people, so you don't see shit like this and empty seats from disgusted Democratic delegates.
     And, should anyone take a picture and try to put it on the internet, the fascist cunts that run Facebook and Twitter will suspend and censor the account of anyone who has the temerity to put it up, such as the image above.
     This was the year the Democratic Party could no longer resist the call of the wild and finally gave a giant, red, white and blue, 100 story-high foam rubber middle finger to the American electorate who wouldn't toe the line and fall in line with their diktats. At no time did we hear during this tightly-controlled convention even a mention of, let alone an apology for, the Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 disclosures, the twin 800 ton elephants in the convention center. It was, collectively speaking, akin to seeing Carrie White, drenched in pig's blood, still fully expecting to be elected prom queen even as she's burning the gymnasium down and killing people.
     The entire Potemkin candidacy of Hillary Clinton has been bottomless in its superficiality, with its dirty tricks so commonplace duped Hillarybots have been led to believe they were all conspiracy theories cooked up by foaming-at-the-mouth Bernie bros. And, yes, even after they were proven to be all true and then some. In no time in my 57 years on this planet had a Democratic candidate and nominee for president begun the last leg of the election under so many clouds of scandal and so much loathing from such a significant percentage of the party's electorate all the way up to its delegates (also strenuously ignored and unacknowledged, making a third 800 ton elephant). When the consensus isn't there, suppress as much dissent as possible and manufacture it. Josef Stalin must be beaming with pride as he lies next to Lenin in Red Square.
     And the new right wing that supports her, both those who are avowed Clinton Republicans and those who arrogantly and bitterly refuse and reject the label, are so blind to this woman's endless misdeeds that they've been brainwashed into believing they're all lies advanced by sexists or just an example of "getting things done." Corruption, in Camp Clinton, has actually been synonymized with pragmatism.
     Trump is an idiot who, if elected, and it's looking likelier he will, if the latest polls are to be believed, will be like a chimp with a machine gun. Clinton will be infinitely more dangerous because she's devious, cunning and crafty and no Middle Easterner will be safe from this warhawk psychopath who will gladly inherit Obama's drone strike and assassination program and do with it whatever will satisfy the dictators that have done so well by the fake Clinton Foundation and Initiative. Based on the damage this woman can do as President, one almost hopes Trump does win so we can see a reprise on Election Night of the downcast faces of Romney and his supporters of four years ago.
     So, sorry guys but I won't do it. Once again, I'll vote Jill Stein in her pathetically Quixotic quest for the presidency. I am tired of opting for the smaller monster under the bed to keep the bigger monster in the closet. And I'm tired of an increasingly fascist and nasty and corrupt Democratic Party putting me, and us, in the same fucking position every four years.

Paid Asses in Seats is Not Consensus

     I'll just put this up without comment. It was sent to me last night from faithful reader CC (Original page is here). I strongly urge you to watch the entire video from the last night of the "Democratic" convention.

The Call

(By American Zen's @mikeflannigan59, on loan from Ari)

 35,000 feet above, appropriately, the Jersey pine barrens---

"Mike? Where are you?"

     "I'm on my way home, Ari. I just left Philly. I should be at Logan in a few hours."

     "Wha--? The convention's only half over!"

     "No, Ari, it is over. O-V-A, ov-ah."

     "Uh uh. Not according to my calendar."

     "Ari, look. There's nothing left to write about. Yesterday, 2838 of the stupidest people on the planet just nominated for President a person dogged by more scandals than the Nixon and Harding White Houses combined."

     "Oh, don't tell me you're all butt-hurt about Clinton's nomination. C'mon, Mike, you're a journalist, for fuck's sake. You're supposed to be objective."

     "Ari, that's not the kind of journalism you hired me over 20 years ago to write and you know that. But last night..."

     "Last night what?"

     "Last night just took the wind out of our sails. The Democratic Party's finally grown up, boss- They learned from Republicans how to steal a presidential election."

     "Mike, deal with it. The delegates made their choice. That's called democracy."

     "No, Ari, that's called a coronation. The headline of today's New York Times should read, 'Wealthy Dowager Finally Comes into Inheritance, Peasants Rejoice.'"

     "Mike, what happened last night is the way we've been doing politics since 1824."

     "Yeah, especially during the heyday of Tammany Hall. You want to know what I saw on the floor just last night?"

     "That'd be nice since you didn't think enough of me to send some copy."

     "OK, lemme start by what I didn't see on the convention floor- The delegate roll call vote. Since when the fuck is that ever held during a breakfast, behind closed doors? And I heard several people say the machine Democrats were deliberately giving the Sanders delegates the wrong time and place.

     "Here's something else I didn't see from the floor- Nina Turner. You know why? Because those selfsame machine Democrats barred her from introducing Bernie Sanders. It was like Stalinist Russia, Ari, and all the dissidents needed were a blindfold and a last cigarette."

     "Don't you think you're resorting to hyperbole?"

     "Listen, boss- I personally saw a Sanders delegate asked to put down her sign. Some DNC goon told her that signs weren't allowed on the convention floor. There were more signs there than at a WWE event. Then he threatened to take away her delegate credentials. I hadn't seen her again. She's probably at a Siberian gulag pick-axing scree right now."

     "What else did you see since you don't write any more and like phoning it in?"

     "I can't get any corroboration for this since the press wasn't allowed in to the delegate roll call count. Christ, whoever heard of such a thing? Dick Cheney's energy task force meeting was more transparent."

     "Mike, what did you hear?"

     "I heard from some of the delegates afterward that Sanders actually won the roll call count. Again, I can't confirm it so I can't even write about it."

     "You better not unless you can triple source it."

     "Ari, with all the other shit going on, with Wasserman Schultz getting booted off the stage and replaced by another DNC crony, the Wikileaks data dump, the allegations of stolen election results, Cleveland was a smoothly-running, well-oiled machine by comparison. Last night was the moment the Democratic National Committee served divorce papers to the progressive wing."

     "Well, Mike, corruption during a convention is still news. Would you consider flying back to Philly after you land at Logan?"

     "Not a chance, boss. Sorry. Look, I know you're the guy who signs my checks but there's only so much you can ask of a man."

      "If you think you're bad off, think of poor Bernie Sanders and what they made him do."

     "Yeah, it was kind of like watching Comrade Rutherford confessing to crimes he didn't commit and pledging fealty to Big Brother just before they shot him behind the ear."

     "Alright, Mike, exaggeration won't get us anywhere. We still have copy to put out on the online edition. Do you at least have anything in the can besides a handful of stupid tweets?"

     "No, I put those on Pottersville. Crawford's too disgusted to write anything, either. I'll have something, don't worry."

     "OK, you realize you're speaking in future tense, right? As if you don't have something in the can."

     "I'll have something for you by the time I land in Boston, don't worry. Yes, miss, I'll take another Bushmill's."

     "You're drinking whiskey? You don't drink whiskey."

     "After last night, I do now."

     "Mike?"

     "Yeah?"

     "Is it really getting that tough for you, doing these conventions?"

     "Not nearly as tough as watching the events unfold, watching the Democrats, especially, eating their own and treating those who don't agree with the elite as political dissidents. What happened last night almost made me nostalgic for Chicago in '68."

     "I was there with Hoffman and the Yippies. That was when I ripped up my draft card and pissed on the flaming pieces."

     "I heard your prostate issues won't allow you to do that, anymore."

     "You're a real prick, Flannigan, you know that?"

     "Boy, I can just imagine Hillary's inauguration now: 'Do you solemnly swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic?' 'Uh, on the advice of counsel, Mr. Chief Justice, I'll have to take the 5th...' She'll be the first President to deliver her inaugural address with a lawyer standing next to her."

     "Goodbye, Mike. Have a safe trip."

     "I'll say one thing- I looked up at Bernie Sanders' face the moment Hillary clinched the nomination."

     "And...?"

     "He looked like, I don't know... he looked like a man recognizing his own martyrdom for the first time and accepting it with grace."

And so it begins...

RIP US Democracy: Born July 1776, Philadelphia- Died July 2016, Philadelphia.  #RollCallVote #DemsInPhilly #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/Yd2YKVMnjA

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 26, 2016

     The fucking monsters won again tonight in a corporate and lobbyist-backed convention that just nominated a multimillionaire who pledges for the next few months to get big money out of politics.

Promises to Keep

     About the only promise Hillary Clinton has made in her whole life that's got a chance of coming true is her unspoken mantra of, "I'm not Trump." And even that's veracious only in the most general and abstract of ways. Beyond that, I'd run my hand under the tap and check for myself if Clinton announced that water was wet.
     One of the many, many unspoken narratives during this convention, indeed this entire shambles of an election cycle, is that Hillary Clinton owes a lot of people. And by "people", I don't mean those artificial collective entities known as Wall Street banks and corporations. We all know how much she owes them for their unstinting and freakishly generous support made possible by, ironically, the SCOTUS's Citizen's United ruling. We all know Hillary Clinton's in more pockets than 1964 nickels. The only thing dividing those at the DNC convention is whether or not you care.
     No, I'm talking about the Sanders delegates who were promised quite a few things by Clinton in her never-ending quest for cheap, easy, momentary and wholly disingenuous populism in exchange for their short-term support. Those who've believed the bullshit and have been cowed by Tammany Hall 2.0 and the air of inevitability are what I call "Fair Weather Berners."
     These concessions and promises were only grudgingly made when Clinton realized she wasn't getting as much right wing support as she'd counted on (Billionaires like Bloomberg and the Kochs notwithstanding), Clinton was savvy enough to know that, going into the convention, she did not have the number of delegates to win the nomination and, as Barack Obama said of her eight years ago, "she will say anything to get elected."
     But there's the much greater number of us embittered clingers and hangers on who are rightly enraged that the primary, caucus and nomination process has been bowdlerized to the point of parody. That would be those of us who were sneered at by crooks like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and called "conspiracy theorists" for daring to suggest the MSM were managed and told what to say and not say and that the DNC was all in for Clinton, that the primaries and caucuses were rigged and that election fraud was rampant. That Bernie was hamstrung at every opportunity and in virtually every way.
     We're watching her, too, just as surely as Teabaggers watch the psychopaths they help put into office. And teabaggers are a merciless sort. In one of his first votes as a new senator, Scott Brown sided with the Democrats on an issue and the tricorner hat-wearing psychos who put him in the Senate were immediately calling for impeachment and for him to be primaried.
     Scott Brown was a senator for less than a two and a half years. Enter Elizabeth Warren.
     While we shouldn't be as reactionary as the most mentally and emotionally unstable elements of our society, we could take a lesson from the unforgiving Teabaggers and be just as stringent in our expectations from our leaders. And this segues into what I mean when I speak of unspoken narratives.
     What the diehard Bernie faction essentially is is something between a mere moment and an actual movement: Right now in our evolution, we're a loosely-connected watchdog group, dogging Clinton's every step and parsing her every word. We are that part of the 99% (or perhaps the 43% to whom Romney had derisively referred at a GOP fundraiser in 2012) who are tired of being preached to, sneered at, vilified and insulted by having our votes and the entire electoral process stolen from us by machine Democrats who are more crooked than an ebola cell.
     Those of us who are smart and aware enough to know what's going on know that, exactly like the Republicans, the scumbags that run the party (and the DNC email leak proves Wasserman Schultz is just the tip of the iceberg that will surely crack up and sink this ship of state) hold in utter contempt anyone who gets in their way or openly criticizes them.
     To show their complete lack of transparency, refer to my tweet from last night showing a Facebook post bringing us the news the delegate roll call vote would be done behind closed doors at a breakfast today instead of on the floor. They will, however, magnanimously announce the results on the floor later tonight. If Trump's speeches are inspired by Hitler then the DNC's warped idea of democracy must be inspired by Stalin.
     And I have to give the Devil his due: The teabaggers are certainly politically engaged and we are finally learning that lesson on our side of the tracks. Clinton will in all likelihood crowned The Queen Apparent at the convention tonight but it will not be the end of the revolution that Bernie's been calling for. And we will be dogging her every step if, God forbid, she actually gets elected President.

Live-tweeting the Death of Democracy

#WhatFunnyMeansToMe A multimillionaire wearing a $12,495 jacket masquerading as a woman of the people. #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/pnuNCzDK6Q

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

If you hear organ music coming from the rafters at the #DemsInPhilly convention, it's just Debbie Wasserman Schultz. pic.twitter.com/JLSuQqhGzo

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Only known photograph of the Democratic Rules Committee with Hillary Rotten Clinton. #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/mVpOYqmS9w

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 25, 2016

What to expect on Thursday night from the #DemsInPhilly. pic.twitter.com/CNbSgZpXm5

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

.@SarahKSilverman Yes, the way to unify the party is to tell Bernie backers they're being ridiculous. Go piss & moan with DWS. #DemsInPhilly

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Watching the #DemsInPhilly, I'm starting to wonder how many Clinton super delegates got their Poli Sci degrees from Trump University.

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Clinton's acceptance speech at the #DNCinPHL will be brief on account of all the times she'll taking the 5th. #DemsInPhilly

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Frankly, I'm surprised the #DemsInPhilly aren't holding it in an abandoned factory. pic.twitter.com/4Sk2EGanKH

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Bridge Over Troubled Water? Seriously? They should've picked Beware of Darkness. #DemsInPhilly

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

Watch, the #RWNJs will accuse Michelle Obama of plagiarizing Melania Trump's speech. #DemsInPhilly

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

#Breaking: #DemsInPhilly to hold nominee roll call vote in a series of dead drops in the Jersey pine barrens. pic.twitter.com/AbUzzz1kV4

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

I would've laughed my ass off if the @FLOTUS had delivered her speech in a halting Slovenian accent. #DemsInPhilly

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) July 26, 2016

     (At this point, Twitter censored me yet again, forcing me to switch to my one remaining account.)

You don't like Sanders backers protesting the rigged results? Well, in the words of a REAL Democrat... #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/KJqEHXgfmB

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 25, 2016

Fact: All the party insiders know where Hoffa's buried. #DemsInPhilly #DemsInDisarray pic.twitter.com/WeHZ1cFuKo

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 26, 2016

The only thing that makes Elizabeth Warren endorsing Hillary Clinton tolerable is my belief she's throwing up in her mouth. #DemsInPhilly

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 26, 2016

I wonder how long it'll take Sarah Silverman to accuse us of throwing chairs at her. #DemsInPhilly

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 26, 2016

Before the #DNCinPHL tonight I strongly suggest the #DNC have the Philly archdiocese do a cleansing of the convention center before & after.

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 25, 2016

#DNCchecklist #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/nTKpiBtIEb

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 25, 2016

#DNCchecklist pic.twitter.com/0jytErKfkd

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 25, 2016

To recap: Debbie Wasserman Schultz hasn't officially resigned, still has duties at the #DNCinPHL & is working for Clinton. #DemsInPhilly

— Mike Flannigan (@MikeFlannigan59) July 26, 2016

All Things Considered, I'd Rather Not Be in Philadelphia

(By American Zen's @mikeflannigan59, on loan from Ari)

 Pennsylvania Convention Center, PA---

I admit it, I'm getting too old for this shit. No, it's not so much the air travel and living out of a suitcase every four years. It's the sensation that with every quadrennial national party convention I go to, I get this uneasy sense that that things are worse than they were four years ago.

     The 2016 Democratic Convention unofficially kicked off yesterday with a sound vaguely akin to a starter not quite engaging and the teeth grinding. The double whammy of the Guccifer 2.0 (that implicated Nancy Pelosi, who's already been booed today) and the Wikipedia #DNCleaks, as it's known on Twitter, were too much for even snarling, delusional crooks like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Sopranos leadership of the DNC to ignore. Schultz was swiftly demoted to strictly gavel duty, her spot as Chairperson of the convention hastily given to her heir apparent, nonentity Marcia Fudge of Ohio. An hour or two later, as I'd predicted, Schultz announced she was resigning as chair of the DNC after the convention.

     Seemingly seconds after that, the Clinton junta announced they'd hired Schultz to be the "honorary" chair of Clinton's campaign, marking Debbie Wasserman Schultz's coming out party (as if her political orientation was ever held in serious doubt). And the entire party is so corrupt and so in the tank for Hillary, the person they temporarily replaced her as DNC Chair, Obama and Clinton head cheerleader, Donna Brazile, was also implicated in the Wikileaks data dump, resulting in her working for free for CNN (reports originally stated she was booted from the network during the convention, as they should have).

     If the Democratic National Committee was smart, they'd keep Schultz in the attic of the PA Convention Center, if it has one, and relegate her to Phantom of the Opera status. To show how clueless she is, this morning she had the nerve to show her face at the Florida delegation breakfast and was roundly booed. And it wasn't even the first time today- She also got booed when she gaveled the convention open. It probably hasn't been lost on the delegates that Wasserman Schultz still has official duties at the DNC convention, is still the DNC Chairperson yet is now officially working for the Clinton campaign.

     This is one of the reasons why I walked into the convention center this afternoon with a sense of dread and that things have gotten worse since four years ago during this glorious back half of the Age of Obama: Conflict of interest and recognizing the appearance of impropriety are now merely quaint notions of a bygone age.

She Had One Job...

     In a rare foray into meme-making (which got a "like" from Rosario Dawson on Twitter. Aw shucks), I hit the nail on the head while getting to the heart of the matter. Schultz's astoundingly rapid fall from grace (sinecure or no) was almost pre-ordained as if it was something out of a Greek tragedy, with well-informed and well-aware Bernie supporters providing the Greek chorus.

     A party leader's primary remit, whether Democratic or Republican, is to unify that party regardless of how unpopular or controversial a presumptive presidential nominee. Schultz did the exact opposite with divisive and perhaps even illegal tactics that were hardly more publicly civil than they were in the leaked emails in which she called Sanders campaign chair Jeff Weaver "scummy" and "an ass."

     One cannot escape the realization that with every initiative Wasserman Schultz had taken whether it be changing rules, installing members for the three important committees determining the tone and direction of the party's convention or scheduling debates, 100% of the results always benefited Hillary Clinton, whom DWS had served as campaign co-chair in 2008. 

     The conspiracy theory of the Sanders campaign illegally accessing a voter data base was just that, a discredited conspiracy theory. Even at the state level (especially the now-notorious Democratic imbroglio in Nevada), rules were abruptly changed while voice votes were ignored, lies spread about violence in the Sanders delegation, delegates getting ignored and stripped of credentials and other crimes too multitudinous to enumerate.

     Then there was a plainly illegal if not prosecutable scheme to coordinate a joint fund-raising venture that just happened to exclude the Sanders campaign. Wasserman Schultz scheduling a handful of debates near holidays or weekends to ensure lower visibility for Sanders. In short, she'd hamstrung the Sanders campaign and his delegates in every conceivable way and she wasn't even smart enough to be subtle about it. 

     Then, the inevitable happened: In the age of Anonymous, three Guccifers and other hackers, the emails came out. So what did the DNC do about this on the eve of the convention? Apologize to Camp Sanders, put oil on the waters?

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!

     You got it. This accusation could've come screaming out of the sweat-soaked pages of Alex Jones' Prison Planet. It's the fault of the Russians and Donald Trump and Vlad Putin and everyone who's ever said the words vodka or caviar for the DNC leak. On Twitter, Trump publicly ridiculed this conspiracy theory and I hate it when he says something with which I have to agree.

     Yet what the Democratic National Committee, aka Tammany Hall 2.0, fails to address is the still obvious fact that, whether or not Putin was influencing the election to make Trump his puppet, the emails are still genuine and the scandals still very real. Wasserman Schultz was justifiably toppled like Saddam's statue, not once but twice, and is being booed everywhere she goes.

     Still, the Russian conspiracy theory lives on like we're back in 1955 and Joe McCarthy still holding sway. And still Hillary backers are using Trump as this cycle's bogeyman, hoarsely screaming for party unity (In other words, "All ye who enter this convention center, abandon hope and Bernie Sanders and vote for Hillary"). Which, with Hillary's tanking poll numbers against Trump, is like locking every passenger in steerage just as the ship begins to sink. And look how well that worked for the folks onboard the Titanic.

     Hillary backers insist the Republican convention and nomination of Donald J. Trump was a cult of personality but that's only half the story. Trump wound up at the top of the pile because of conservative voters, racist or no, finally growing disillusioned, disenfranchised and disaffected by the Republican Party. As with Schultz, it was such a sudden turn of events for Ted Cruz, former Tea Party darling, being thrust into the grown up table and being forced into the now dysfunctional mainstream Republican Party.

     Democrats should see an object lesson in that but they won't because their brainless, bellowing support of Hillary Clinton, possibly the most spectacularly corrupt politician since Huey Long, makes them insensible to irony. Or a Greek chorus.

     Tonight, the super delegates will at last vote for the candidate of their choice. And while their choice is preordained, it'll still be interesting to see how many super delegates who'd already pledged their votes for Hillary will change to Sanders in light of the party leadership's shake up and proof of its own corrosive corruption.