Brexit Aftermath Thoughts

Now that the world has had a few days to come to grips with Brexit and how to react to it, figured it was time to add my thoughts to the fray.

For one, this is a disaster that both the Leave campaign leaders and the people who voted for it arguably didn't want to happen. There have been multiple stories and articles where Leave voters repeatedly say they didn't think they were going to win and they just wanted to register a protest vote against the European Union. Apparently none of them stopped to think that if a majority of the country voted to leave the EU in protest, than that would mean that they would be leaving the fucking EU.  

This is what happens when you have a population that largely disregards the power of their vote and just expects everyone else to solve the problem with theirs. The parallels between voting for Clinton over Trump were swift and immediate, and not entirely wrong. If the Brexit vote proves anything, you can't trust the logic and rationality of your fellow citizens to save you from calamity when you casually toss your vote to whatever side makes you feel better in that moment alone.

But, the deed is done, and we're now looking down the barrel of the dissolution of the United Kingdom. Scotland will undoubtedly be leaving, given that the only reason their previous independence vote failed is England threatened to block an independent Scotland's EU membership. With that leverage tossed by the wayside, and given Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain, it's only a matter of time before another independence referendum is called and a country that's existed for over 300 years will suddenly be no more.  

Adding to this rosy picture is the reemergence of the Irish Question, an outcome so stupidly reckless it questions how well or how far anyone involved in the Leave campaign bothered to think this through. The EU helped keep the peace between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and made any dispute between the two unthinkable. Northern Ireland understood this wasn't something to be casually tossed aside, and voted to remain in the highest number second only to... Scotland. 

The fact that the UK will have to renegotiate one of the most contentious relationships in its history will probably not go all that well, considering that the Leave campaign seems to have been blindsided by this development and is wholly unprepared to answer it. Factor in the rampant nativism the Leave campaign has brought out and it's not too hard to imagine the general feeling on the British Isle is that the Irish are a problem for the Irish to solve and in a few years we'll also have a unified Ireland.

Seeing all that happen, I'm wondering what it's like to be David Cameron right now and how it feels to have single-handedly started the process that will most likely be the end of the country you were elected to govern. I'm sure we'll find out later when he publishes his tell-all memoir about how he isn't a stupid twat for calling this referendum in the first place and how he really thought it wouldn't go this way, okay? Really, my only hope for that book is that it is large and hefty enough to knock him unconscious when people pelt him with it whenever he walks down the fucking street.

In other happy news, the economy is crashing. The pound has dropped to a 31-year low, Morgan Stanley is moving thousands of jobs away from London since the City of London can't be the financial hub of the EU anymore, and the stock market is face planting as well. All of this was completely predictable, and plenty did predict it, but what the hell do they know? (A bit, as it turns out.) 

Normally, a plunging currency would be an opportunity for a country's manufacturing and export business to boom since all their goods will be dirt-fucking-cheap now. But Britain isn't really in a position to capitalize on that since most of its manufacturing and trade sectors were completely decimated by Margaret Thatcher back in the 80's. And Morgan Stanley won't be the last financial firm to jump ship to other shores, because it's apparently a little difficult to facilitate trades and other business deals from around the world and the EU when you stop going to the party. Since those financial services were also the backbone of your economy, all the jobs that those services needed for support won't be there any more either. Whoops. It's almost as if the only weight the U.K. had to throw around in the EU came from being in the EU. Weird.

Of course, the Tories will save Britain with some brilliant economic plan, right? Right? Well, most likely no, not at all. See, a primary reason for Britain's economic woes is their continued pursuit of austerity plans and budget cuts. Less government spending in a time of low private spending only makes the economy worse, and there's likely going to be even more austerity as the U.K. finds itself unable to match things like the 60 million pounds Cornwall was getting every year from the EU with its current tax base.  Add to that the shocks that will come when Scotland leaves and a probable Irish exit too, and it looks like all the people who voted to leave because of the EU's supposed burden on their economy will pray for the day where they can claw their way back to where they are now.

Or, probably, they won't. Since the majority of the Leave vote was made by people over 65, they'll have the benefit of dying before things turn really nasty for everyone. It's mostly just their children and grandchildren who will have to live with their terrible, stupid decision for decades and decades to come.

All that good stuff is just what's waiting for Britain, but there's plenty of misery to go around, so let's shift focus to what happens on the continent in the wake of this blunder.  For one, the far-right and anti-EU parties are going to be even more emboldened and confident in their moves going forward. The first crack in the EU's structure has appeared and you can guarantee they're going to exploit that for all its worth. On top of that, they just have to let the EU be the EU. 

The EU has a really horrendous habit of being insanely vindictive and punitive to anything that questions the governing bodies competence or authority.  Look at Greece, which is going to stay in an economic depression for the foreseeable future by the EU's explicit design, for all the proof of that.  So now that the U.K. has voted to leave all together, you can expect the EU to punish it and make withdrawal from the Union as painful an option as possible that no one else will ever think to attempt it.

The problem with this line of thinking, though, is that it has no concern for what the consequences will be for real, living people.  Immigration, economic and environmental regulations, wages, healthcare and medicine trades, all of these things affect real people and make real decisions for how they live and what the quality of that life will be. But, the EU's governing bodies have traditionally not given two-shits about any of that since they have done nothing to stop the 25% unemployment and 50% youth unemployment rates that Greece and Spain have had for years now.  

Any governing body that not only allows those problems to continue but visibly sneers at the thought that its responsible for solving will only be seen as illegitimate and deservedly so. And since the EU leadership has already signaled that they plan to go 100% total dick in the Article 50 negotiations, all any anti-EU party will have to do is point and say "See, see, they don't care about the people, only their own power. Let's be brave like our British friends and cast these monsters out!"

On some level, I understand Brexit, and the motives of the protest voters who brought it about.  The EU is supposed to function as a body that brings peace and prosperity to all of Europe, and it has quite frankly been a complete and utter failure in that regard for a very long time now. Income inequality and unemployment have run rampant in the continent ever since the 2007 recession started, and the EU's insistence on austerity among all its members whether they have the Euro or not has only cemented that recession and economic malaise that is driving the nationalistic parties in practically every member state in the EU.  

The Brexit vote is a wake up call that the EU's governing bodies have lost all legitimacy and people are going to start finding their own way forward without them. The sad thing is, I don't think the EU is an organization that is even capable of hearing that call, because if they were, they would have responded to all the calls before this to stop world from coming to the brink in the first place. But they didn't, and here we are, standing on the edge of the cliff hoping that if there is a plunge, it won't be too long and the bottom won't be so hard that we break to bits when we hit it.

Scott Adams Isn't Very Persuasive

If you didn't know, Scott Adams spends most of his time these days talking about his interest in persuasion. Which makes his post about how to "un-hypnotize" anti-Trumpers so hilariously bad. I mean, for a guy who is so obviously proud about being "studied in the arts of persuasion" you'd think he'd realize the the points that he makes are uniformly awful and not be so proud of them, so lets go through them one-by-one.

Adams lists the four main arguments he's heard from anti-Trumpers, they are:

"Objection 1: Trump is a loose cannon who might offend other countries and maybe even start a nuclear war.
Objection 2: Trump is terrible at business because he has several bankruptcies.
Objection 3: Trump is a racist.
Objection 4: Trump is anti-women and anti-LGBT"

Those are all pretty solid objections to have against Trump, so let's see what brilliance Adams unleashes to convince people who can't see the The Donald's competence behind that exquisite Day-Glo sheen of his.  Adams counters the first point by saying this:

 "How risky is Trump? Consider that Trump has never had an alcoholic beverage. He was against the Iraq war. He doesn’t want boots on the ground in Syria. He wants a strong military to discourage war. Trump personally gains nothing from war, but he has a lot to lose, including every building with his name on it."

Um, alright then. I mean, you don't need alcohol to be an asshole who makes terrible decisions. Reverend Billy Sunday thought by banning the sale and consumption of alcohol the country would become a more moral place with less crime and degeneracy since they wouldn't be driven by evil spirits in a bottle.  That didn't really work out so well, but hey, he didn't drink so it must of a good idea.  And Trump, like John Kerry, was for the war before he was against it. And the no ground troops bit is complete and utter bullshit, too.  Out of four sentences, we have two that are totally false, and two that are utterly irrelevant. Not exactly a great start.

Adams next counterpoint is how some global leaders already like Trump, namely, Putin:

"Putin already seems to like Trump. They are similar characters in terms of their persuasion talents. And it wouldn’t hurt to be on good terms with Russia while we go after ISIS. Trump seems to have that relationship covered."

Here's the thing though, Putin doesn't like Trump because they're long lost BFF's bonding over hair-care and which own can take down the biggest bear. Rather, Putin wants Trump because he can so clearly see that Trump is a vainglorious fool who can be played almost on auto-pilot. Putin knows Russia doesn't have the same clout or power to influence global events as the U.S. does, so instead of trying to meet his enemy on a level playing field, he facilitates his enemy to make mistakes which he can then profit from. And a Trump Presidency is quite easily the biggest mistake the U.S. could ever make, so Putin will do all he can to make that idea more enticing to as many fools as he can.  It's almost like Putin is manipulating or persuading people to his position without them realizing. Curious, that.

Moving on, this is Adams' defense of Trump and all his bankruptcies:

"Ask how many bankruptcies Trump has had. Most people say between 5-10. Then ask how many entities Trump has his name on. The answer is about 500... Trump puts his name on various products and he gets paid even if the product or company does poorly in the end. That’s an example of Trump taking the LEAST risk in a deal. The other parties take larger risks and frequently fail."

Conveniently left out of this persuasion is how all of those bankruptcies were the companies Trump had a direct role in managing. Also, there is no licensing option when it comes to the Presidency; Trump can't just stick his fucking name across the White House and then leave all the risk and decision-making to other people. And, if I may point this out, trying to sell the "Fuck you, I got mine" strategy Trump as had regarding business as a solid plan to govern multiple disparate and conflicting groups of people is perhaps not the smartest move to make.

Next up is Trump's racism, which is, well, see for yourself:

"Trump has never mentioned race beyond pointing how how many African-Americans and Latinos support him. Ask your anti-Trumper to offer evidence otherwise. Then point out…
Mexico is a country, not a race.
Islam is open to all races.
If the topic of Judge Curiel comes up, point out that all human beings are biased by their life experiences. Ask anti-Trumpers if they think Curiel would be comfortable at his next family gathering if his verdict favors Trump. (Notice the question form of persuasion again.)
Acknowledge that Trump was offensive when he attacked the judge’s parental connections to Mexico. But note that it is also good persuasion and good legal strategy. It puts the judge in the tough spot of either siding with Trump or appearing biased if he does not.
Then point out that only the Democrats are talking about race. And all of that race talk has been divisive. Trump has literally never said a negative thing about race during this election."

 I mean, wow. For a guy who makes his living crafting words to form double-entendres and puns, Adams is being pretty obtuse about how language works and what words mean when we use them.  Yes, of course Mexico is a country, but when people say Mexicans, what they mean is people of Hispanic descent and use Mexicans the same way we say someone is White.  And yes, Islam is open to all races and ethnicity's, but when people say "Islamic", especially in the U.S., they are using it to signify that the person is an Arab.  There is no way Adams doesn't know these things, this argument seems more to be built on having a reason to hate anyone stupid enough to actually believe it than sound logic.

But, apparently he does think it's a good argument since he keeps it up with his discussion of Judge Curiel.  Adams is again trying to make a point by hiding what actually happened; Trump never said that Curiel was biased because of his life experience; he said specifically and repeatedly that Curiel was unqualified because of his ethnic background and only his ethnic background.  When even Paul fucking Ryan can't escape the fact that what you said is racist as hell, it's pretty fair to say Trump is racist and the people arguing otherwise either don't care or fully agree with him.  As far as it being good legal strategy, you might want to ask his lawyers how they feel about that since they patently refused to ask for the recusal and all but begged their client to shut his mouth in public.

Finally, we get to women and the LGBT community, which is another thing that has to be seen in full to be appreciated:

"Trump is the only candidate calling out Islam for its followers’ views on women and the LGBT community.
Trump wants women to have the right to own guns to protect themselves.
Trump is the only candidate concerned about crimes against women that are perpetrated by illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Trump has a long business record of promoting women to executive positions in his company. He was doing it years before it was fashionable.
The women in his personal life – including his ex-wives – seem to like him.
Trump is offensive in the way he has talked about women. But keep in mind that Trump has offended nearly everyone at some point."

It's at this point that I really wish I could say Adams is just a troll, but there is such an obvious pride in how intelligent and genius these points that just make it impossible.  There's no courage in how Islam treats women and LGBT people half a world away when he is silent on how women and LGBT people are treated by Christians here at home.  It's not Muslims clerics or Muslims calling for Leviticus laws in regards to gay people, it's not Muslims who have spent decades stripping away the Constitutional protections of Roe vs. Wade and it sure as shit hasn't been Muslims who have fought the Equal Rights Amendment since the day it started. Women already have the right to buy as many guns as they want, so, again, nothing special here.  Remind me again why Trump isn't racist when he talks about the illegal Mexicans coming to rape the white women and how he's the only one who can stop them?  Notably, only one point actually addresses the things that Trump has said about women, but Adams dismisses it so quickly and so abruptly it really gives the impression that he doesn't see anything wrong with Trump's comments and that women reactions are just you know, the usual hysterical women shit.

The only thing Adams gets right about Trump is that he has a talent for making people believe in him and that he was able to correctly read the Republican base. The political class has for a long time been in complete denial that Republican policy positions were based in anything other than flat out bigotry and xenophobia, so Trump recognized that he if he tapped into that he would be pretty much golden. As for his ability to make people believe, of course he has that, all con men from snake-oil salesmen to televangelists have that ability, it's literally the only way they can make a living. The point, however, isn't just to sit there and gawk about how amazing they are at bullshitting but to peak behind the curtain and see if there's actually any substance to the person. And really, if your favorite thing about a candidate is how good they are at manipulation, that's a sign to stop and ask yourself why you've been stocking up on so much Kool-Aid lately.

The Getaway: Album Review

My brother and I have a joke that nothing quite makes us appreciate an older Red Hot Chili Peppers album like a brand new Chili Peppers album. When Stadium Arcadium came out, the lush harmonies and pop song structures on By the Way were a testament to a band that had gained it's focus after so many years being wild, funk sex machines. Similarly, when I'm With You hit the shelves five years ago with new guitarists Josh Klinghoffer, we suddenly noticed that there weren't as many valleys to skip over to hit all the peaks on Arcadium as we remembered there to be. And while The Getaway doesn't have me waxing nostalgic for I'm With You, it does help crystallize the band RHCP used to be, and what they've become.

The main difference between these two Klinghoffer efforts is that I'm With You was an album made by a band trying to realize the ambitions of its golden era and continue the boundary pushing trends it had set for itself with the California Trilogy (Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium). That record's flaws came about because a new guitar player meant a brand new band dynamic, and that band just wasn't capable of reaching the heights they hit with John Frusciante. The Getaway, on the other hand, is the sound of a band that has settled, in all senses of the word. Klinghoffer is a perfectly fine guitar player, but his playing lacks the sheer force of personality that Frusciante, Hillel Slovak, and even Dave Navarro brought to the table that could pull the core Anthony Kiedis/Flea duo out of their comfort zones. That's not to say that the band has regressed - those two have grown leaps and bounds as both people and musicians and it shows - but there's also the inescapable sense that the record is just the two of them making a Chili Pepper album because that's what they love to do and making the record was the only ambition they were interested in meeting.

Admittingly, that sense of joy helps the record immensely.  All the songs here are exactly what you would expect the Chili Pepper's to be.  For all my complaints about him, Klinghoffer is a solid support player that delivers guitar lines and riffs that slide in pretty well with Flea's bass lines, Anthony's melodies, and Chad Smith's perfect pocket grooves.  This isn't the band trying to break open new musical and spiritual ground for it to walk on, but this a band who wants to make a record for those midnight beach parties or sunset drives down lonely highways.  I guess there are worse things to become in old age.

Album Rating: B

Let's Kill the Two-Party System

So now we're looking down the barrel of a Clinton/Trump general election. Going by every poll there is on the issue, people are less than happy with this situation. This is going to be the first election where people aren't so much going to be voting for someone as they going to be voting against whoever they happen to hate less.  Well, I just want to let those people who despise Hillary and Donald in on a little secret: You don't have to vote for either of those people.

Seriously, you don't have to.  There's no law or compulsion that says you do.  If you think the Democratic or Republican candidate is an awful piece of shit that you can barely stomach voting for, than don't.  It's that simple.  Every year, there are there are third-party candidates on your ballot (in most states, anyway), find out who they are, and if their policy positions match your values, vote for them instead.  The Democratic-Republican hegemony has held for too fucking long, and all it's doing now is strangling us with politicians whose only real differences amount to one trying to create an Ayn Randian Christian theocracy and the other wanting moderately better outcomes for minorities so they won't be crushed under student loan, mortgage, and credit card debt to the point where they can't buy shit anymore  It's basically the choice of getting boned dry, or having some spit applied first.

Now, usually, when you bring up the idea of voting third-party it's usually met with a scoff and something along the lines of "Nobody votes for them, they don't have a chance of winning anything." Here's the problem with that though, nobody votes for them because of how conditioned the American public is to the idea that the only "real" political parties are the Democrats and Republicans.  Also, there'll usually be some barb in there about how not voting for one of the Big Two even though you don't agree with anything the candidate will do is akin to throwing your vote away.  This point, above all else, is bullshit.  If you knowingly and willingly vote for people who don't represent you, than those officials never will.  Because why would they?  If they know for a fact that you're going to vote for them no matter what they do against your interests, what's the point of doing anything to help you?  If you, as a voter, are going to throw away the only leverage you have, than you can't really complain when your elected government runs roughshod over you and yours and leaves you with absolutely nothing.

In 2014, there were 142 million registered voters in the country.  Working off that and the voter turnout rate in of 57.5% in 2012, that leaves us with 81.7 million votes to work with.  If, say, 20% of those possible voters went the third-party route, that would take little over 16 million votes away from the two mainstream candidates.  You think that wouldn't go unnoticed?

Obviously, this only works for Presidential races.  Third-parties have neither the membership or the money to support Congressional or state-level candidates, so for now, we're stuck with just the two parties in our backyard elections.  But right now, with Hillary at 55% unfavorable's and Donald Trump at 60%, this is the one and only time that the majority of the country has so hated both of its primary presidential nominations.  That majority can actually be translated into actual action, so don't let anyone tell you that if you don't like the two bigs that you're just part of some small, disgruntled minority that has no influence.

America, you've never really given me a reason to have faith in your ability to make good decisions.  But please, for once in your life, especially now that you have a real chance to do it, please try to at least make your anger and discontent do something for you instead of just tossing it into the garbage dump of whichever "lesser evil" is on the ballot.

RT

About Elizabeth Warren

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when Elizabeth Warren came out on Rachel Maddow's show and endorsed Hillary Clinton for President and confirmed that she'd be willing to be her Vice President.  There were a lot of posts out exorcising her for abandoning her principles and not being a real progressive and on and on it went.  My main question to all of those people is "What were you really expecting?"

It was obvious to me that Warren's adamant refusal to endorse either Sanders or Clinton during the primary was a sign that she had made a calculation to sit out the mess and side with whoever ended up winning in the end.  As Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism put it

"She has always been focused on her agenda of the welfare of middle class families, and she has been willing to go to war only where she has a mastery of the terrain from a technocratic standpoint, which further narrows her focus."

So, it should really come as no surprise that she decided to sit out a bitter and highly contested primary that played out more as a referendum on what kind of goals and priorities the Democratic party should have instead of who was  the most capable candidate to win a general election.  From my perspective, getting involved in the race did not show any clear long-term benefits for Warren.  If she came out and endorsed Sanders, she probably could've on him the Massachusetts primary, but one more state does not an primary victory make.  Anyone who argues that had Sanders won the primary of a highly progressive state would've then translated to momentum he could've leveraged to win other close primary races are doing nothing more than reading goat entrails that never got cast.

Plus, if she had endorsed Sanders and been on the losing side, she would've gone back to the Senate with the probable President Clinton as an enemy at worst, or a disgruntled emperor who would extract policy concessions on Warrens part in return for not being an active hindrance to her activities in the Senate at best.  If she endorsed Clinton, on the other hand, all that would've happened is that we'd be having the same conversation around her that we're having now, and the senses of betrayal and resentment towards her in the progressive wing of the party would only have longer to grow and fester, which again, would only damage her agenda in the long run since she wouldn't enjoy the popular support to carry it out.

If Sanders had pulled off the miracle and won more delegates, Warren would now be attached to him and would be heralding a new movement for the forgotten middle class along with Sanders, of that I have no doubt.  But, Hillary won, so she went the path of least resistance and since she is firmly in the Democratic Party infrastructure, it does her no good to be butting heads with the leader of said party.  So, she basically looked at the situation and chose the path that, in her mind, put her in a "Win-Win" outcome instead of risking her favor from both sides of the fight.  All that does is make her a politician who bases their decisions on what will benefit their agendas over what puts that agenda at risk .  That people are disappointed in that because they had cast her as the Great New Hope isn't really her fault, since that mold was cast for her by the legions of voters looking for the bare-minimum effort from the Democrats to actually stand for working people like they, you know, are supposed to.

That being said, I don't agree that being VP is the best move for her.  The vice presidency is by design the most useless position in government, their only real job is to just sit around waiting for the President to die so there can be a smooth transition of power.  As far as policy goes, they're only as effective as their President allows them to be, and there is no way in hell a President Clinton going to allow a subordinate to run around attacking the very financial institutions that form the seat of her political power.  The legislative path is the only realistic avenue Warren as to further her policy goals buy introducing and lobbying for Wall Street legislation in Congress and forcing Clinton to make public stances on it.  If, in the end, Clinton does tap her for the VP position, Warren will hopefully  realized that as VP, she would only be a prop with no actual power or ability to sway her boss into doing some good for the world.  If not, then, well, she would've had a good run at least.

Orlando

There are 49* dead in Orlando today, along with 53 more injured. They were killed by a man named Omar Mateen, an American Muslim who pledged his allegiance to ISIS in a call to 911 before the massacre.  It's the worst mass shooting in history; the air is thick with grief and a general despondency that yet again dozens of families will have to bury people they loved because of some asshole with a gun. And then, somewhere in the back of our heads, a little prayer to whatever could be listening: "Please, don't let the next one be this bad."

We all know what's going to happen in the weeks and months ahead; liberals will advocate for gun control measures, conservatives will rail about Islam being a death cult hell-bent on destroying America, all the political factions will scramble to plant their flags and make the most principled stands they can on the backs of the dead. There will mentions of this atrocity all the way to November, I doubt there will be any debate where this doesn't get brought up as justification for Drumpf's Muslim immigration ban (that Mateen is an American citizen will I imagine be tossed into whatever pit inconvenient facts go into when they don't serve a political narrative.)

And then, once all the political juice has been wrung from their corpses, we will all move on.  It isn't out of callousness, it's just that, well, we only have so much anger and outrage and remorse to give out over these things. We have to conserve what we have because we never how much we're going to need for the next one. And there will be a next one. Because for all the brinkmanship, for all the bluster, for all the self-serving espousing about what our core values are as a country, nothing will change. Whatever his reasons for the attack, there was nothing stopping Mateen from gathering the tools to carry it out. There's no need for homicidal assholes to turn to the black market when the legal one poses no obstacle to amassing your own personal murder arsenal. So since that part of the equation isn't going to change anytime soon, then, well, at least all those prayers and condolences people send out won't get dusty or go unused anytime soon.

In the immediate aftermath, blood banks are asking for and receiving a massive influx of donations to cover the transfusion needs of the surviving victims; charities and crowdfunding pages have also been set up to cover their medical expenses.  All this is honorable,  it speaks to a basic human decency to help those who have gone through such a horrific event.  But I worry that setting up infrastructures for crisis management in the wake of a mass shootings, if there is a concentrated and committed list of actions after these things happen, speaks to a spirit of resignation and defeat, that the only real hope for change is how we well we can mop up the carnage that's left in the wake.  All of these shootings and massacres should hurt, they should make us question who are we as a people that we decide to live like this and it shouldn't get easier to cope with as time goes on.  It should always be a fresh hell that we have to walk through, no matter how many times we go through it.  But if we change that, if we give ourselves a way to cope and box up the shock and the grief in a clean and orderly fashion the same way we clear away the viscera and the shell casings, than the dead will matter less and less until they no longer matter at all.  And if that happens, we'll know we can stop trying, because there won't be anything left of us worth saving.

*Edit: The 50 dead figure originally in the post included Mateen, the figure's been updated to only reflect the victims.


RT

Going Forward

Now that the primaries are all over and done with, here are some of my scattered thoughts on where this circus has been and where it goes from here:

Obviously, the emails.  If she's indicted, that spells doom for the Clinton campaign. For some reason, 71% of Democratic voters want her to keep running even if the indictment comes through which just boggles my fucking mind.  Less boggling, but still just laughably stupid, is that every article I've read about how to best handle that potential situation all involve the party taking control to find someone to take the helm.  Not Bernie Sanders, of course, but someone.  Maybe Biden, because why not?  If the Democrats only response to a Hillary indictment is to through a name of someone who didn't even run for President over Bernie Sanders, what I guarantee will happen is the party will be abandoned by the resurgent progressive wing and all the young Sanders supporters, which will all but guarantee a Drumpf victory in November

Speaking of, no matter who the nominee is the best front to attack The Donald on will be his alleged wealth and net worth.  There has been new reporting that he has filed for and received a New York property tax credit for those making less than $500k a year in federal income over the course of several years.  That, combined with the cash flow problems his campaign has and his general refusal to release his tax returns and settle the issue pretty easily, gives plenty of ammunition to cast doubt over his success.  Really, all he has is his image as a rich, master-of-the-universe thing going for him, puncture that and his whole facade crumbles with it.

Also, now would be the time for the DNC to start digging up Trump University alum and start putting them in front of cameras to say how badly they've been ripped off by Drumpf.  Start that now and keep running those ads until November.

The most important take away of Sanders' campaign is that it proved to normal citizens that they can credibly fund a national campaign for President.  The fact that regular people, through engagement, donations, and just sheer determination, drove the campaign of a no-name Socialists Senator from Vermont into a credible threat against one of the most powerful people in politics is not a lesson those people will soon forget.

The Republican party is only steps from becoming a full-fledged fascist party.  Drumpf himself isn't a fascist, but fascists sure do love him.  And that they were able to blend in so easily with "regular" Republican voters should, you know, be worthy of some discussion.  Also, when foreign and explicit Neo-Nazi parties (National Front in France and Golden Dawn in Greece) endorse your party's candidate because he fights for what they fight for, you should really take a look in the mirror and figure out just what the fuck your beliefs actually mean in the real world.

Even if all goes well and Hillary wins in the general, I still don't see her as more than a one-term President.  The rabid Republican hatred for her will only increase, and more likely than not, the progressive wing of the party will only continue to chafe at everything she does, not to mention the general public's dislike of her will keep going up since she's unlikely to do anything to turn the economy around and get people working again,  So, way I see it, she gets voted out by whoever Republicans vomit out on stage, she faces a primary challenge that she either loses or does significant damage to her prospects that she loses, or finally, no primary, no real republican threat, but enough people ditch Republicans/Democrats for third-party options that she wins, but with a very damaged coalition that doesn't give her a clear mandate for power.

This is really the year that third parties need to strike and mobilize effectively.  There's enough disenchantment and just flat out hatred with both candidates that they've never had a better chance to convince people that the two-party system is a strangle hold on their vote

Last thing, these next few months will see Hillary Clinton and her ilk will be pressuring the Sanders supporters to fall in line.  They'll do the usual "Don't let Republicans win!"especially since it's a Trump candidacy.  But the thing is, there is a fundamental difference of policy and politics between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns.  I don't think Hillary realizes the amount of work she'll have to do to win those supporters over, or what that work entails.  She will have to put actual progressives in powerful positions in her cabinet and put real, concrete work into progressive policy goals like heavy regulation of the financial industry and universal healthcare.  She is unlikely to do so, and the harder she fights against doing those things and loses the supporters as result, will probably be the biggest risk factor in her losing the elections.

RT

How not to win over your opposition

Yesterday, the AP, the New York Times, and other outlets declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president.  This presents something of a problem since that declaration was made before the final primaries took place and also before the pledged super-delegates had actually voted as well.  But mostly, this is just another example of why the mainstream media and establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton are losing their credibility in the eyes of more and more people.

For one thing, a prime narrative of the Sanders campaign for a long time now has been that the media has buoyed and promoted Clinton's campaign at the expense of his own.  The argument goes that by denying to cover his own campaign, the media has essentially played an active role in anointing Clinton as the nominee instead of standing by and letting the democratic process play out.  When two of the most influential papers in the country call the race settled and done with on the eve of the last primaries, effectively saying those votes don't matter, it only cements that narrative in the eyes of Sanders supporters and further legitimatizes the more mainstream news sources and establishment institutions overall. (As an aside, Chris Matthews gave the game away week ago, when he told Sanders' campaign manager what time the press would call the race for Hillary)

More damaging in the long run, though, is that these declarations ignore the blatant and near fatal weaknesses of Hillary's campaign.  Don't worry about the polls showing she's tied or losing to Drumpf, don't worry about the FBI investigation into her emails, and certainly, above all, don't mention that she's almost literally the most hated presidential candidate in history to make you think twice about her viability in the general election.  The flippancy and outright dismissive attitude from the Democratic party and the press regarding these issues just gives the impression that the Clinton campaign doesn't know how to handle these issues and would rather you just pay attention to whatever racist bullshit is coming out of Drumpf's mouth instead.  It's not a facade that will withstand any scrutiny, but hey, she has a vagina, so I'm sure that will completely erase the conversations over those issues or her possible indictment.

Last thing I want to touch on is how this whole business affects the race going forward.  Hillary has been out and about the last few weeks calling on Sanders follow her oh-so-noble example and drop out the race and support her campaign, like she did with Obama in '08.  That she pledged that support for a Cabinet position is a detail that seems to slip her mind when recounting her tale of political sportsmanship, which, I think, is not going to go well for her in the long run.  Hillary does not do well with independents, at all, so in order to win the election she is going to need to retain as many of Sanders supporters as she can. In order to do this, she is going to have to make concessions to the Sanders campaign and the general movement behind it.  In my mind, this doesn't mean making Bernie VP, it means forming a cabinet largely composed of progressives who will fight to alter the status quo.  In no way do I see that happening, let alone Hillary seeing the need to do so, given how condescending she's been to Sanders supporters in the past. So in all probability, Hillary will throw some token bone out which the Sanders supporters will see as a naked political sham and well, who knows what they'll do?

Depending on how the California primary goes, if it's subject to the 6-hour wait times or voters being mysteriously purged (sorry, dropped) from the registration logs like they were in Arizona, Nevada, and New York, or if there's another "too close to call" vote that Hillary suddenly wins like in Iowa or Kentucky, then those early pronouncements that she's the winner are going to leave a bitter taste in a lot of people's mouths.  The Democratic party is much more fractured and contentious than a lot of people are realizing.  If the only step Hillary takes to bind those fractures together is "bow down and kiss the fucking ring already", then, well, America swearing in its first orange President becomes much, much more likely.

RT