Tonight the phony debate brought to you by beer.

Tonight when you see the presidential debate, there will be a picture worth 10,000 words: THE MOST SUCESSFUL PRODUCT PLACEMENT by LOGO ever conceived in naitonal politics and the Presidential debates.. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private corporation and the two co-chairs are both ex-party functionaries and are both corporate lobbyists in their day jobs. 

Please watch the important story by Democracy Now! about how the two-party dictatorship has hijacked our democracy by allowing the Republican and Democratic Parties to contol the presidential debates.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/3/ahead_of_first_obama_romney_debate

George Farah, Founder and Executive Director of Open Debate, and author of the book, "No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates." lays it all out for us that Anheuser Busch is the corporation paying the most and the chief funder of our Presidential Debates.

During the interview you can see the stage being setup in Denver.  What they didn't mention is that if you look behind the candidates' podiums prominently displayed on the stage you will see the Anheuser Busch eagle logo. 

 

So when you watch the debate tonight just remember that it was brought to you by beer.

 

I ask all "big D" Democrats: if you truely beleive in "small d" democracy, why don't you demand that your party (1) turn over the Presidential Debates to a public commission and (2) allow any candidate on the ballot in enough states to win 270 electoral college votes to participate?  If you are a Democrat, how can you say you support democracy yet don't allow a true competition in the political marketplace? The American Brand of Fascism is based on the two-party tyranny of our democratic institutions. The single most important first step to fixing the institutional system of democracy in the USA is to take the control of the presidential debates out of the hands of this private corporation controlled by the two parties themselves and return the presidential debates back to the people.

Join the Green Party to challenge the anti-democratic farce of our so-called Presidential debates.
http://occupythecpd.org/

 

Heroes Don't Vote for Criminals.

Rebecca Solnit has written a diatribe in the form of a letter that is being passed around under the title of "We could be heroes."

Yes, we could be heroes, if we were to challenge the two-party dictatorship of the American Brand of Fascism that controls our semi-democratic institutions.

Here is my response.

 

LOL! Poor Rebecca, having to whine about whiners whining about whiners. Where does all the whining begin? Must be the big bang that whines through the ages.

Poor Rebecca says, “I have a grand goal, and that is to counter the Republican right with its deep desire to annihilate everything I love and to move toward far more radical goals than the Democrats ever truly support.”  Now, I’m all for ambiguity as the natural state of reality, for complexity in goals, for aiming at goals that are actually in different directions, for conundrum and paradox in political positions, but the idea that the road to achieving these two goals of Rebecca’s leads through the town of supporting the Democratic Party is just plain wrong.  It is a misreading of the map so fundamentally upside down that it is like driving to Seattle to see the manatees and gators.

Rebecca can call me “rancid” and I could come up with a few choice adjectives for her, but I will just stick with “poor Rachel” as her letter presents both a poor grasp of politics and of human nature.  Poor Rachel can’t see the cosmology of the radical left because she closes her eyes and ears to it, not because it is not presented.

So, Poor Rebecca admits that she does not deplore with a lot of fuss the “bad things” that Obama does because she expects him to do those bad things.  In other words, she expects him to assassinate people as the stated foreign policy and to kill US citizens and to torture and to pay off his Wall Street buddies while foreclosures burn, and the list goes on and on.  She just doesn’t deplore the leader who fiddles while America burns because she expects the fiddling.  That is the attitude of poverty of thought.

STRAW MAN:  Then Rebecca wheels out the straw man argument that she couldn’t talk to her leftist friends about our ex-Governor Schwarzenegger’s positive respects. That is a straw man argument which has nothing to do with the actual positive and negative aspects of the current president.  Basically, all Rebecca presents in her rant is variations on the logical fallacy of the straw man. 

Next, Rebecca tells us as if we are children in kindergarten that “There are bad things and they are bad. There are good things and they are good, even though the bad things are bad.”  Yes, Rebecca we know this truism. We also know where the wild things are.

Rebecca wants to know, what purpose does it serve to point out that a person who claims to be anti-death penalty is condoning the illegal purchase of lethal injection drugs?  Dear Rebecca, the purpose is to point out the blanket label of “anti-death penalty” is qualified not absolute.  You can celebrate the coolness of Kamala Harris; just don’t claim that her coolness gives her a free pass to escape criticism for where she is not so cool. Rebecca acts as if Obama’s saying he is for peace should not be countered with all the examples of his pro-war mongering including drones killing wedding participants and assassination of US citizens. What Rebecca is blind to is the insanity of a man accepting the Nobel Peace Prize and in his acceptance speech talking about how he is a better warrior. 

Rebecca claims she wants to focus on fixing problems or being compassionate, yet her rant is just as uncompassionate as those she rants against.  Her rant is also just as void of focus on fixing problems as she moans about others.  There is not one fix suggested for our democratic system presented.

Poor Rebecca calls unconstitutional and impeachable acts by the president “dimples on the imperial derriere” and says they are not worth discussing.  Yes, Poor Rebecca doesn’t want to discuss such dirty and troubling things; she wants to talk about the things that look good.

If Rebecca votes for Obama with the belief that fewer people will suffer, then that is her choice based on her calculation. If I vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, with the belief that fewer people will suffer then why doesn’t she grant me this choice, but instead says that my belief is wrong and my vote is just “choosing the greater of two evils”?  See? Rebecca is as guilty of left voter suppression as anyone.   The “evils” slogan in this context comes from the Democrats, not from the leftists, but Rebecca adds another straw man argument claiming that it is leftists who coined and push the “evils” meme.

Another straw man argument made by Rebecca is the one that rants against the left for saying “that there’s no difference” between the two parties.  But there is no leftist who makes that argument.  When people say the choice between the Republican and Democratic candidates for president is a choice between Pepsi and Coke, they are not saying “there is no difference.” Everyone knows that Pepsi and Coke taste different.  What is being said is that when it comes to the things of most importance to the voter the differences in taste are not as significant as the similarity in sugar content.  

Yes, Rebecca, we are facing a right wing that has abandoned all interest in truth and fact.  I call them the American Taliban. And yes, to oppose them requires that we be different from them.  They support and reelect their president no matter what crimes he commits, so we must be different and not support and not reelect our president because of the crimes he commits. Calling Obama’s crimes “minor differences” of opinion is just plain disgusting.  Overlooking Obama’s crimes insures that there is no possibility of changing the conditions that allows him to continue committing those crimes. 

Rebecca’s form of defeatism is the fetishism of the politics of hope that blinds her to the actual crimes being committed in her name.  People need hope. But they need hope that is real not just the false promise of hope by a con game played on the voters using the two-party tyranny that keeps the Republicans and Democrats in power switching back and forth.  Rebecca says she want to achieve the goal of countering the Republican right, but that goal can’t be achieved by supporting the very same Democrats who depend on the Republican right for their reason for existence.  Democrats could have countered the Republican right many years ago but have failed to do so becauseit is not in their interests to do so. 

If we want to talk about fixing the problem, about compassion for democracy, let’s talk about fixing the system.  I ask all "big D" Democrats: if you truly believe in "small d" democracy, then why don't you demand that your party (1) turn over the Presidential Debates to a public commission and (2) allow any candidate on the ballot in enough states to win 270 electoral college votes to participate?  If you are a Democrat, how can you say you support democracy yet don't allow a true competition in the political marketplace? The American Brand of Fascism is based on the two-party tyranny of our democratic institutions. The single most important first step to fixing the institutional system of democracy in the USA is for the people to take the control of the presidential debates out of the hands of the private corporation that runs them and is controlled by the two parties themselves and return thepresidential debates back to the people.

 

 

 

 

Iran, the Mirror of America.

My conclusion of the recent Iranian election is that it shows that the health and progress of Iranian democracy is on a par with USA democracy.

Beyond the foolishness of the fantasy of CIA involvement or the wishful thinking that the Iranian people are in the streets supporting some kind of "Islamic green revolution," the truth is that the Iranian people are demonstrating on their own behalf, not for revolution but for something much more basic to human society, and that is, the people primarily want honesty from their government leaders.

The Iranian Constitution is a document with democratic checks and balances that does allow for somewhat reasonably free elections. The demonstrators are not asking for a revolution or any other kind of fundamental change to the Constitution; they are asking that their Constitution be upheld and enforced. However, to the extent (1) that the Supreme Leader doesn't honestly exercise his role as a check and balance to the system, (2) that the Guardian Council doesn't exercise its role as a check and balance over the election process, and (3) that the Council of Experts doesn't exercise its role as a check and balance on the Supreme Leader, then these three bodies may by their failure to function effectively in the support of Iranian democracy then steer the people exactly in the direction of Constitutional change.

The election was patently fraudulent. The case itemizing the fraud doesn't need to be restated in depth. From the beginning when the results were announced within without any attempt to even pretend to give enough time to count the votes, from the way the counting process was changed to prevent the routine and legal observations, from the stuffing of ballot boxes up to 140% of the registered voters, etc. it is clear that the election result was a sham. By supporting the result with illogical argument and violent repression of the demonstrations, the Supreme Leader has shown that he is no better, and fundamentally no different than, the Shah when it comes to upholding the democratic principles of the Iranian Constitution. There are two bodies, the Guardian Council and the Council of Experts, that could provide checks and balances to the Supreme Leader's bias for the fraud, but they have so fa refused to act.

Now, let's be clear. The current situation is no better or worse than the situation in the USA in the elections of 2000 and 2004 which were both fraudulently stolen (albeit with more finesse) by George Bush. It does us no good to be on a high horse and look down on the people of Iran for having to live with a failure of their democracy. At least the people of Iran were demonstrating in the streets in large numbers. The people of the USA live with the failure of our democracy far more meekly by comparison. Our system of checks and balances failed and no one called for constitutional reform.

We have a system of Congressional legislation, Judicial review, and Presidential executive execution of the laws in which the Congress, the Justice system, and the Presidency are controlled by corporate elites every bit as much as the Iranian system is controlled by Islamic elites. We have a majority of the population that supports universal health care whether by a "public option" or by a Medicare-for-all (single payer) plan, yet neither the Congress nor the President has fought for what the public wants in the health care debate.

The people of the USA want the Clean Air act to be strengthened yet the Congress has just passed a phony clean energy bill that sells out to coal and nuclear energy and reduces the power of the Clean Air act. This is no fluke, it is the systemic failure of USA democracy that is accepted meekly by the majority of the public whose very preferences are ignored.

President Obama received his highest levels of campaign support from Wall Street interests, so is it any wonder that in the first six months of office that Obama has rewarded those same Wall Street interests with payoffs greater than any previous such looting of the US treasury in our history, all the while virtually ignoring the plight of the individual homeowners?

What we in the USA have in solidarity with out fellow humans in Iran is that we want honesty from our system of democracy. What we share in our systems is a fundamental lack of honesty by those people elected and appointed to run the system. I wish that we in the USA had the motivation to march in the streets in the numbers that they did in Iran to protest that lack of honesty. And if we did, I have no doubts that we would see the violence of the USA elites come out against the protesters every bit as much as it has in Iran, just has it has come out against the USA protesters at the Democratic and Republican Party conventions every year.

The bottom line is that we in the USA are in no position to brag that our democracy is any more vibrant or successful than the Iranian democracy, and when we look at the protests in Iran we can share in the dream of an honest upholding of the Constitution both in Iran and here as well.