Bill Nye Tries to Beam Light in Great Darkness

It seems like, for about a decade or so, Bill Nye has been on a lonely crusade. I've seen him popping up in random places on TV like CNN and National Geographic, trying to maintain energy, patience, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness with an unmistakable undercurrent of exhaustion at the aggressive persistence of scientific illiteracy among the public and the powerful.

Like many people my age, I remember him initially as Bill Nye the Science Guy, a quirky bow-tied entertainer in the 1990s with an engineering background trying to make science fascinating and fun for then-young people like me. I was not an avid viewer of his show, I seem to remember an episode or two being shown in my high school science classes and finding them entertaining to the extent I could given that I was sitting in a high school science classroom.

Bill has been doing more or less the same thing for the last decade or so, except he is more serious, as the problems he is addressing are incredibly serious, and he is trying to reach a broader and different audience, though due to the passage of time that audience includes many of the same people that it did in the 90s: pretty much everyone with the right to vote, Americans in particular. Yet, while the problems are very serious, he knows that engaging the voting layperson to care about and understand it all is hard. He continues to use his skills as a scientist and entertainer/public figure to spread scientific literacy about controversial issues.

His newest effort states its intention plainly: Bill Nye Saves the World. It barrels on the scene via Netflix, the massively popular medium of streaming entertainment, delivering ~25-minute episodes devoted to the big public issues in modern science. Episode 1 comes right out swinging on the biggest issue: climate change. The show sets Herculean goals: distill confoundingly complex problems into digestible, entertaining bits that fairly reflect the state of modern science.

The show, its host and his guests and sidekicks are at turns or simultaneously thoughtful (as is his panel discussing GMOs), whimsical (as is the guest-appearance by Zach Braff in the first episode devoted to climate change), odd (as is the song about panspermia), funny (as is the show's writer who comes out to speak "to my fellow Asians" about their proclivity for promoting alternative medicine, and report filed by a correspondent who visits a looney-tunes "sound therapy" office in San Francisco), confusing (as are a lot of explanations about what exactly NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is trying to do on Mars- especially when they try to explain what exactly it would mean to "find life" and what even might define "life"- and its connection to panspermia), profound (when discussing the possibility of finding life on other planets), illuminating (the whole episode on GMOs), impassioned (nearly everything Bill says), awkward (some of the attempts at humor), awe-inspiring (the expert panel discussing climate change and the solutions that exist right now), and more.

Coming out in the same year that a poster boy for scientific illiteracy has taken the oath of office for President of the United States and is naming like-minded illiterates to the highest posts in the land, we need all the help we can get- and Bill Nye and Co.'s latest effort is most heartily welcome.

A Step Back From the Abyss

For several reasons I stepped away from this blog for most of April. I have been a rather obsessive consumer of the news since the November election and that and a number of more personal matters contributed to a deteriorating mental and emotional state with me.

I changed the name of the blog from Drumpf Diaries, inspired by a good suggestion from a friend which resonated with me. Drumpf is the focus of so much and it is nauseating. His place in the world and his personality seem to make the obsessive media focus on him inescapable. But the world and what is going on with it is way more than just Drumpf. I wanted to acknowledge that and the blog name change is in that spirit.

The new blog title is a feeble attempt at irony, in that the spirit of this blog has been an attempt to move away from strong opinions. It's the oldest Washington D.C. trope that we need get past bickering and listen to each other, reach across the aisle, whatever. Well, it might be true. The end of bipartisanship, and the end of intra-party factions and division is almost certainly an impossible utopia. Perhaps it is not to be a destination, but a journey. Getting past divisions is never something we arrive at permanently, but a constant direction to go.

I've found that those divisions, for me, feel like the most dispiriting and personally hurtful aspects of being an "activist," or at least someone who pays close attention to world affairs, invests in them emotionally, and wants to make a real positive difference. I have unfriended people I really like on facebook. I have gotten in angry text exchanges with family and friends- those exchanges (so common on social media) where it doesn't really feel like either of us are listening to each other, only enough to try to one-up each other as if it were a boxing match. I once said something that (unexpectedly, in my defense) made my normally very-level-headed and even-keeled wife cry and storm out of the room.

I have also had extremely cordial and respectful conversations on political issues with people who share almost none of my opinions. These are among the best moments of activism, where it feels like a real human connection is made across divides that are supposed to be impassable. Even when you don't change someone's mind, just humanizing yourself to the other person and humanizing them to you is fulfilling, which is a wonderful end in itself. It also often opens the door to "your side" which maybe someday they will then walk through, and you will have guided them there.

Or maybe you are wrong, will realize it, and can now walk through the door to join them.

So, anyway, while having opinions will persist, the new blog title is meant to inspire me to walk in the direction of thoughtfulness as much as possible, and hopefully encourage readers, if I ever have any, to do the same. It's also lifted from a line in Pulp Fiction.

My Heart is Full

My heart is full. For the last four days I have been paying about as little attention to the news as possible. I spent a lot of time with family and friends, I went out to eat, I saw a movie, I went to a concert, I watched a lot of sports on TV. My favorite sport, baseball, began its regular season today. Instead of reading deeply into the epic tragedies of today's world, in what spare time I had I immersed myself in preparing a fantasy baseball team. I had fun with my kids.

The emotional and psychological impact of staying informed and aware of the tragedies constantly befouling the earth sneaks up on me in ways I can't see until I am able to step away from it. I feel guilty stepping away from it. Stepping away is a privilege. The people of South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Somaliland, and elsewhere... they can not step away from it. It is their existence. They need people to not step away or to look away.

But this is our reality. It has been created for us. Reading and listening to Noam Chomsky for almost two decades now has me aware that the distractions are all there because the American populace, and any world populace, is a powerful force when it awakens. It needs to be tamed and the constant distractions are good to tame us, to keep us from exercising our strength to change things for the better.

But this is the challenge. Psychologically, emotionally... it is so much easier to forget, to look away from the starving black child or the traumatized (or dead) Syrian child. To look towards them is to stare into the pit of a sense of individual powerlessness. Individually I can do nothing. Collectively, we could save them. We could take our minds, our creative energies, our dollars, our time... away from the concerts, the ballgames, the fantasy sports teams, the tv shows, the movies... we could redirect them towards food and shelter for the least of our brothers and sisters. Or we could redirect them towards creating an economic system that does not embed such criminal disparities in wealth.

To varying degrees, Americans and westerners in general choose to look away. Maybe it is not such a conscious decision, but we do. In this way we are complicit in the destruction.

So often when I try to speak out about important issues it feels like I am calling out into the darkness. Maybe this is a skewed perception created by social media, where my posts about climate change are met with crickets and tumbleweed, but a post about attending concerts with my daughter receives 70 likes and 20+ comments.  People talk about all kinds of personal problems among friends and at work, but we don't much talk about the 6th mass extinction in the world, or the civilization-threatening spectre of climate change, or what the U.N. is calling the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II, all things that are part of the world right now. They are not part of polite conversation at the office. I can be having an emotionally difficult day as a result of reading about these things but I won't even tell my wife I am having those feelings, let alone my co-workers or my friends.

I don't know how to begin overcoming the stigma. I don't know how you psychologically prime people to turn away from the glitz and glamor and stare meaningfully at the abyss. When an earthquake destroyed Haiti, or a tsunami destroyed Indonesia, mass media gave the story to the west and we opened up our wallets to help. People are capable of helping. I guess it just seems like the right alarms are not sounding. I watched the NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship Game tonight and there was an ad for the local news- the stories it advertised were a turkey that somehow got into a family's house, and it was captured on home video, and how people are chosen to sing the national anthem at baseball games. This is supposed to the fucking news. There is a humanitarian crisis in Africa right now. Millions of children are at risk of starvation.

I don't know. My heart grows empty.

Drumpf Diary 3/27/17 - Medicare for All

With the AHCA defeated, progressive legislators and organizations are setting their sights on a push for Medicare-for-all, single-payer universal health insurance. The Huffington Post article linked notes that it is a non-starter in a Republican-controlled congress, "[b]ut the proactive strategy speaks to increasing confidence among progressives that if they stick to their ideals and build a grassroots movement around them, they will ultimately move the political spectrum in their direction."

It may also open a window for meaningful, positive steps in that direction to be enacted, such as allowing older Americans to buy into Medicare, which could have positive impacts on the ACA health exchanges because the costliest clients may leave the insurance pools.

Michael Moore observed on MSNBC that it is not time for Democrats to be complacent because Republicans and health insurance companies are now essentially counting on the ACA imploding, eating itself, and they will do what they can to essentially make it happen. "These people are out to make your lives a living hell," he tells Drumpf supporters in Michigan. "Democrats, you have to get this fixed."

Bernie Sanders, of course, will introduce a Medicare-for-all bill in the Senate. He previously introduced similar legislation in 2009 and 2011, to no avail.

Drumpf Diary 3/24/17 - The Fart of the Deal (RIP AHCA)

The American Health Care Act suffered a dramatic defeat today. House Republicans failed to finagle enough support among members of their own party to pass the legislation, and Drumpf had it tabled. The bill came up against opposition from extreme conservatives such as those in the House Freedom Caucus, and even powerful Republican donors led by the Koch brothers, who felt it didn't go nearly far enough in Obamacare repeal, and also from moderate Republicans concerned about the new bill's impacts on their constituents. This came after the vote was initially slated for yesterday, March 23rd, and Drumpf issued an ultimatum to Republicans: vote to pass the bill today, March 24th, or he would move on. When it became apparent that the Republicans didn't have the votes, instead of voting on the bill, the legislation was tabled.

My Facebook news feed was fairly alight with celebration.

"Obamacare is the law of the land... we're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." Those are the words of Paul Ryan after the bill was tabled.

Drumpf and Ryan have both said they are done with health care reform for the time-being and moving on to tax reform. It's damaging to Drumpf's image as a successful deal-maker, and to Ryan's as the Speaker of the House, whose job is to whip up support to get bills like this passed.

Matthew Yglesias over at Vox thinks Democrats should now propose their own alternative Obamacare replacement. He stops short of saying go for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all type of plan even though his last line in the 3rd paragraph suggests he might see it as the best plan in the long run, he certainly thinks Democrats feel that way. He thinks a replacement could be drafted which echoes things Drumpf himself claimed to support on the campaign trail, in that way, offering such a replacement would be holding Drumpf's feet to his own fire.

Ryan Cooper over at The Week goes you one better and says now is the time for Democrats to push for Medicare-for-all. Unlike Yglesias, he offers almost no practical advice on how exactly to get such a thing passed when Republicans control Congress and the Presidency. The piece is otherwise sound enough that I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows it is not going to happen. He mostly argues that it Medicare for all is the way to go based on its relative simplicity to understand. He compares it to the 2010 attempt to pass the Affordable Care Act and how the ACA was so convoluted that the idea that it was laced with "death panels" and other such horrible fantasies was an easy sell. Trying to find such a boogie-man with a simpler-to-understand concept like Medicare for All would not be so easy. Medicare is already a functioning and relatively popular method of health insurance delivery in the United States. As Cooper observes, most people know someone who is on Medicare or who is counting down the years until they can get on it. It is only for people 65 and older right now, though.

One unique thing about Cooper's piece is that it makes an attempt to address the one major criticism that Democrats have used as a defense against pursuing Medicare-for-All: it would be "too disruptive." Exactly how the disruption it would cause would be worse than the current system which allows people to be priced out of pursuing important medical care or go bankrupt pursuing it, not clear to me, but Cooper suggests it be passed in a package with some kind of labor market support to ease transition for people who may lose their jobs when insurance companies go out of business.

Again, exactly how this is to pass in a Republican-controlled federal government is very unclear. But it seems like there would be plenty of reason for Democrats to pursue it, anyway. It is a popular proposal that would help a lot of people. Making the Democrats the face for it and making it one of the tenets of the party could help (or, at least, couldn't hurt) in future elections.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 part 2: Notes on the American Health Care Act

1.) LOOKING AT THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT (AHCA)

The Kaiser Family Foundation, an excellent source of information about healthcare in the United States, offers interactive maps detailing the changes in costs expected for people under the AHCA (the new Republican plan) vs. the ACA ("Obamacare").

Quartz details how ACA repeal may specifically hurt transgender people, who "rely on the Obama administration's specific, trans-friendly guidelines for hormones and other transition-related care. These crucial services save lives..." This sounds like another example of people who live on the margins and for whom the difference between Republicans and Democrats is very real and life-altering. These are the kinds of people put at risk when one does not vote to block the worst of two likely candidates to win an office. It sounds like trans advocates are specifically concerned about the loss of section 1557 in the ACA, which provides for trans health care rights.

Jason Cianciotto, vice president of policy, advocacy and communications for the HIV advocacy group Harlem United, says the elimination of Section 1557 is a real concern. 

“It would ultimately kick millions of people off their health insurance,” Cianciotto says, “targeting vulnerable communities like transgender people, people of color, and those living with HIV/AIDS. It would be devastating for populations who are already underinsured under the current system and often go without health-care treatment.”

But will the AHCA even pass the House of Representatives? Since the House is GOP-controlled, one would think so. But, as Vox details in this article, "[o]ver the past two weeks, multiple health industry groups and Republicans had come out against the bill." Drumpf has apparently told many in his party that they will lose their seats in 2018 if this doesn't get done. Unclear whether that is meant as a threat to not support them, or simply a prediction of GOP fortunes if they fail to deliver on this key promise of the last 9 years. I find it hard to believe the GOP isn't going to fall sufficiently in line and get behind the AHCA. I guess we will see tomorrow.

Dr. Charles R. Peterson, a retired cardiologist, wrote an informed defense of expanding Obamacare and/or transitioning to a Medicare-for-all healthcare system, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Dr. Peterson's piece was a rebutal to an articulate and well-argued defense of the AHCA by MN GOP Rep. Jason Lewis (my congressman). This is not to say I now favor the AHCA, simply to say that Rep. Lewis argues his point well.

The NY Times' Upshot column makes a surprising point: that if the ACA were simply repealed, rather than replaced by the AHCA, 1 million *fewer* people would lose insurance coverage. Again, that means simply wiping out the ACA would result in fewer people losing insurance than implementing the AHCA. This is based on different CBO estimates of each circumstance.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 - Much Ado About Budgeting

1. Much has been made of the Drumpf budget proposal. It has made headlines for proposals to dramatically cut the EPA budget by 31%, as well as cuts to National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, Public Broadcasting, and other programs that aid the poor, disadvantaged, and sciences. Defense and the military are the big winners, with proposed spending increases. It's also been noted that Drumpf is wasting millions in government funds with his frequent visits to his Mar-a-Logo resort and allowing his wife to remain living in New York City, two actions that cost taxpayers millions. Vox provides some gory details specific to cuts to science.

Sources usually observe that the budget is unlikely to pass as proposed, there are cuts which both Republicans and Democrats find unpopular. It is useful as a reflection of Drumpf's priorities, however. In that respect, it is ugly. It is almost certain that, with congress under Republican control, many unsavory cuts to science and aid programs will pass.

Mother Jones observes, hopefully:

Thanks to the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, the EPA is obligated by law to come up with a way to regulate greenhouse gasses from vehicles, power plants, and other sources. The decision stated: "Under the Act’s clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."

Snopes reviews some details on the budget, clarifying that the budget calls for complete elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. What the federal government spends on those programs is incredibly small. It makes an almost completely imperceptible dent in the debt, especially compared to the tens of billions to be spent on Drumpf's wall. The Snopes article points out that the budget is inspired deeply by a Heritage Foundation 2016 budget proposal which also called for elimination of these programs. The Heritage Foundation didn't necessarily promote the cuts based on the grounds that it would solve debt problems, moreso on philosophical grounds that "actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them."

Drumpf budget director Mike Mulvaney has taken flak from opponents for saying that it's OK to cut funds to Meals on Wheels and after-school lunch programs because "there's no evidence they're helping results."

Drumpf Diary 3/17/17 - War Zones: Rex Tillerson in Korea and U.S. and Israeli attacks in Syria

1. Travel Ban 2 has been stopped hours before implementation by a federal judge in Hawaii.

2. Rex Tillerson is in Asia. The BBC reports on his statement that 20 years of U.S. patience with North Korea over its nuclear weapon ambitions is "at an end." In my non-expert opinion, the BBC is just a bit sensational in reporting on the fact that Tillerson has stated that pre-emptive military action is "on the table," a statement noted in its headline and Facebook posting, but the article itself notes that the U.S. policy change so far is not noticeably different than that under Obama.

The Associated Press offers a good analysis of U.S./North Korea relations (or lack thereof), including historical context. An excerpt:

attention-demanding problems are increasing: 

—The U.S. and South Korea are currently holding their biggest-ever annual joint military exercises, which are seen by the North as a dress rehearsal for invasion. Washington and Seoul claim the maneuvers are purely defensive, but they bring a rise in tensions that increases the possibility of a clash, either intentional or in response to an accident or misjudgment in the field. 

—North Korea just last week fired four ballistic missiles into the Japan Sea, reportedly coming to within just 200 kilometers (120 miles) of Japan's shoreline. 

—The U.S. and South Korea are planning to set up the state-of-the-art missile defense system known as THAAD, which along with the predictable opposition from Pyongyang has antagonized Beijing because it can monitor activity in China as well. 

—North Korea says it is in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland, and fit it with a nuclear warhead. More tests of both nuclear devices and long-range missiles are almost a certainly on the near future, though no one can predict when. 

For Tillerson and Trump — and for America's nervous Asian allies looking to them for leadership — acknowledging past failures will without doubt be a lot easier than finding future successes.

Reuters reports on a Japanese fishing town holding new civilian evacuation drills in response to recent saber-rattling by North Korea.

3. The U.S. bombed what it called an Al Qaeda target in Syria, killing human beings it conveniently labels "suspected terrorists." Initial reports were much more devastating, claiming that a mosque had been hit during prayers. That was claimed initially by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and reported by Al Jazeera. The SOHR had stated that it did not know who was behind the airstrikes, only that they occurred, as hours went by and it got near and past midnight in most parts of the U.S., the U.S. claimed responsibility for the air strike. Now in the U.S. morning hours, latest reports suggest the U.S. is stating that the mosque was not struck. There is some suggestion that there may have been a raid on the mosque after the bombing. Who carried out the raid is unknown. This will probably be an episode puzzled over for a while. Here is a recent Al Jazeera report. It includes video from Bilal Abdul Kareem, who has posted videos straight from Aleppo for some time now.

4. Israel has carried out air strikes in Syria. A Haaretz article declares it "the most serious incident between the two countries since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war six years ago." Syrian army high command called it an act of aggression and Syria retaliated with anti-aircraft missiles, one of which was intercepted by Israel. It sounds like Israel may have been targeting shipments of weapons it believed were headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Haaretz article suggests that Israel has taken action like this in the recent past, this is the first time they seem to have acknowledged doing so, and Syria has responded.

Watching Bojack Horseman at the End of the World

Bojack Horseman is a good animated show on Netflix. I watched it at 4am while food was going to waste in my fridge and pantry. Meanwhile, the Associated Press and the International Rescue Committee were splashing headlines across my news feed like, “UN says world faces largest humanitarian crisis since 1945,” and detailing how millions of children are malnourished and at serious risk of starvation and death, especially in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Kenya.

It’s surreal to be conscious of this and be lying on my couch watching Bojack Horseman. I donated $100 to the International Rescue Committee last week. What else can one person do? It is the constant conscientious citizen’s conundrum. No one can solve the world’s problems alone. There is no use in constantly monitoring your own every move and gauging whether or not what you are doing is contributing to making the world a better place. At the same time, South Sudanese children do not have the luxury of letting food rot, drinking Diet Sierra Mist and eating pretzels on the couch at 4am. They are counting on people in more privileged positions to take action to help. But what action? What organization can I meet with tomorrow that will bring about the change that will save the cholera-stricken South Sudanese child? There is no such organization. But some organizations are actively trying to help, so I donate money to them. I can also share stories on social media and encourage others to donate.

As far as how the comfortable westerner should regard the starving African child, the YouTube series Crash Course once wrestled with the quandary in its series on Philosophy. It used a thought experiment comfortably analogous to how most westerners probably regard the problem. If you walk by a lake and see a child drowning in the middle of the lake, do you have a moral obligation to help the child? It seems just about anyone made of remotely moral fiber would try to do their best to immediately save the child, whether that means swimming out to save them, or yelling for help, calling 911, something. It is an emergency and any moral person would try to help.

There is a crucial angle missing to the moral thought experiment, though: what if we bear some responsibility for the drowning child being in their predicament in the first place? Modern Africa is the product of a centuries-long history of colonial exploitation, plunder, and inexplicable boundary-drawing. I may not be actively trying to bring violence or starvation to the African children, but I am the beneficiary of an economic system that favors me and provides me with my position of comfort at the expense of the African. It is a manmade economic system. Each individual one of us may not be capable of changing it, but collectively we could. Every little failure to partake in the effort to change that system is a failure of the people who will be perpetually harmed by it.

International Women's Day, Post 1

1.) It is International Women's Day and a Women's Strike was organized and carried out in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Women were encouraged to refrain as much as possible from any and all paid and unpaid labor, including child care and housework. The march was criticized as an action for privileged (read: mostly white) women only. Jia Tolentino argues in the New Yorker, however:

...privileged women are uniquely positioned to use their surfeit of cultural leverage to clear space for the causes of everyone else. And that seems to be the fundamental idea of the Women’s Strike: that it could help to forge solidarity between women with favorable working conditions and women who have no such thing.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein issued a statement that progress for women has been real, but also slow, uneven, and has brought about its own challenges.

There have been roll-backs of women's rights worldwide:

Among examples he gave, he pointed to recent legislation in Bangladesh, Burundi and the Russian Federation, which weakens women’s rights to fight against child marriage, marital rape and domestic violence, respectively. 

He noted also the “fierce resistance” in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to political and civil society efforts to open up access to sexual and reproductive rights.

 The IPS article linked-to above goes on:

In Africa, women continue to be denied full enjoyment of their rights in every country, according to a new report released on Mach 7 entitled Women’s Rights in Africa. Statistics show that some African countries have no legal protection for women against domestic violence, and they are forced to undergo female genital mutilation, and to marry while still children.

According to the report, however, in Africa – as around the globe – when women exercise their rights to access to education, skills, and jobs, there is a surge in prosperity, positive health outcomes, and greater freedom and well-being, not only of women but of the whole society.

Some other key facts highlighted about the problems still facing women worldwide:

1. Up to 23 per cent global pay gap between men and women according to the International Labour Organization’s ‘Women at Work: Trends 2016’. 

2. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2016 estimates it will now take 170 years to close the 23 per cent global pay gap between men and women and gender inequality in the economy is now back to where it stood in 2008.

3. The global value of women’s unpaid care work each year is estimated at 10 trillion dollars according to McKinsey Global Institute report 2015.

4. The Global GDP in 2015 is estimated by the CIA World Factbook as 75.73 trillion dollars at the official exchange rate.

5. Up to 9 trillion dollars – annual cost of economic inequality to women in developing countries according to Action Aid’s Close the gap! The cost of inequality in women’s work report.

6. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) estimates that women still carry out between two to 10 times more unpaid care work than men: OECD stat Employment: ‘Time spent in paid and unpaid work, by sex.

7. On average in Asia women earn between 70 to 90 per cent of what men earn and carry out around 2.5 times the amount of unpaid care work that men do.

"Despair is a Way of Living," Heartbreaking Homelessness in America.

"I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, drop off my kids at school, then I go to work from 8 to 5... I go pick up my kids... then I go to my other job at night."

The above is a quote from a woman in Santa Barbara, CA. Sounds like a normal, hard-working life... except she and her two sons sleep in a car every night. She works two jobs and she and her family are homeless. She and people like her are profiled in an article originally posted in The Nation and also to Bill Moyers' website.



My news feed has had a small bump in stories about homelessness in America, for some reason I don't understand. It is not a new problem. It is always worth attention, though.

I think first about the debate over supporting Democrats. I have a lot of feelings about it and generally I condone the strategy of voting Democrat if it will help prevent a worse candidate from being elected- so voting for a Democratic presidential candidate if you live in a swing state. I have encountered a mentality among hardcore supporters of Democrats that change happens incrementally. The old "you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good," argument. You can't vote for Ralph Nader if the outcome will be a George W. Bush presidency.

To me, the argument is sound. However, this homelessness persisted through the Obama administration. The Nation article specifically talks about homeless people in deep-blue state California. Massive amounts of people are left behind in America, even under Democrats. They can't wait for incremental change. What are we to do? Everything we can to provide a salve- non-profit charity- while we quietly await incremental change to improve everyone's life? The lives of people working two jobs while still sleeping in cars with their kids... are we to celebrate incremental progress in this case? That this is their reality rather than a life of early death from cholera that might've befallen them in a previous time and place? Obviously not. This is wholly unacceptable at a time of such fabulous wealth. It is unconscionable. What are we to do? While we are voting for Democrats, we do not seem to have an answer about what to do for those desperate and marginalized. This is what drives a lot of opposition to Democrats from the left, the idea that there are marginalized people in desperate situations who cannot wait for incremental change. The Democrats do not have an answer for them.

Coincidentally, the BBC released an article about "The US poverty challenge facing [Drumpf]." "In this economy, there is no trickle-down. Gun crime is surging here." The report focuses on Baltimore, where 25% of residents live in poverty. One resident interviewed sums it up articulately and starkly: "The neighborhoods are falling apart not because the people are bad people. They're underpaid, undereducated, and so many of us have been living like this for 2nd or 3rd generations... we don't know how to change. Despair is a way of living."

"For so many... this is no longer a land of opportunity.... The children... have no American dream."

Dennis Kucinich writes in The Nation that this poverty exists by the design of our economic and political system:

In America today there are tens of millions of people with a hard-luck story. Tens of millions out of work, in ill health, in search of affordable rent, having neither a place nor a home to call their own; millions of people for whom, as Langston Hughes put it, life “ain’t been no crystal stair.” 

No one who escapes such an environment physically or economically does it alone. There are teachers, coaches, doctors, lawyers, aunts, uncles, neighbors who appear as angels in our lives, who catch us when we are about to fall, who lift us up at the right moment, who show us a different path, who guide us in a new direction, who transport us to new possibilities, new futures. 

But for every person upon whom fortune smiles, opportunity calls, and destiny stirs, there are many others for whom the future is obscured, for whom society is harsh, punitive, and unwelcoming.

...
Nineteen of every 20 dollars of new wealth created goes to the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
This cataclysm for our democracy was accelerated with the subprime meltdown of a decade ago.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, as many as 10 million families lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing crisis, and as a result had to move, in some cases resulting in a resegregation of city neighborhoods.

During this period, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars and gave them to banks, while Congress authorized $700 billion to bail out banks, without passing a program to make sure that the masses of people underwater in their mortgages or those caught up in no-doc low-doc schemes would have a chance to hold onto their homes.

Meanwhile, one of the few investments held by the middle class, home equity, plummeted as housing values sank in many city neighborhoods.

Much of America has not recovered from the carnival of financial corruption of a decade ago—except for the finance economy, of course.

For those barely holding on to middle-class status, the median income for a four-person family is just over $54,000. Yet the average US household owes more than $16,000 to credit card companies, $172,806 on its mortgage, $28,535 on its car and $49,042 in student loans.

Health-care consumes about 17.8 percent of America’s GDP, or three trillion two hundred billion dollars. The Kaiser Foundation reports that the average month premiums for family coverage in 2016 is $1,511 a month, or $18,132 a year.

It is heartbreaking that this is our country.

Drumpf Diary 3/6/17 - Obamacare 2.0, Muslim Ban 2.0

1.) House Republicans have released their replacement for the ACA/Obamacare, the American Health Care Act. Ezra Klein writes:

what I think we’re seeing here is Republicans trying desperately to come up with something that would allow them to repeal and replace Obamacare; this is a compromise of a compromise of a compromise aimed at fulfilling that promise.

The bill sounds so far kinda like Obamacare Lite, which makes almost no one happy. It keeps a somewhat surprising amount of things from Obamacare intact, like mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents' healthcare plans until age 26, and it maintains Medicare expansion until 2020. These Obamacare provisions leave it open to criticism from anyone who wants Obamacare radically rolled back. However, it reduces or eliminates Obamacare provisions which controlled costs, such as the "individual mandate" that forced everyone to either purchase insurance or pay a penalty, and Medicare subsidies.

Regarding elimination of the individual mandate, the Los Angeles Times states:

Without a requirement that individuals carry health insurance, the insurance markets are almost certain to collapse. The repeal is retroactive back to the beginning of 2016, but the real problem is in the market starting this year. Individuals would be able to drop their coverage immediately, which will wreak havoc with the market starting right now. Aetna’s chairman and chief executive, Mark Bertolini, said recently that the individual market was entering a “death spiral” in which healthier customers dropped coverage, leaving sicker customers who know they need insurance facing an ever-increasing rates. 

Naturally the bill will be a tax-cut boondoggle for the rich.


2.) While the GOP House has unveiled Obamacare 2.0, Drumpf has unveiled Muslim Ban 2.0. After his first ban was struck down by the courts, he is now trying again, this time with a ban that restricts Muslims from 6 countries, rather than the previous 7 (he's taken Iraq off the list). Residents of Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya will be barred from entering the United States for 90 days. Ironically, Drumpf has discussed wanting to get tough on ISIS, yet removing Iraq from the list removes one of the two countries from which ISIS operates. 60,000 people who had their visas revoked would have them reinstated. The new travel restriction is more limited in scope and this is intended to help it withstand legal challenges.

Drumpf Diary 3/5/17 - A Most Colorful Cabinet

1. Bloomberg asks if Drumpf has sidelined his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. I am currently reading Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices, her memoirs about her time as U.S. Secretary of State under Barak Obama. The Bloomberg article's 2nd paragraph relays the words of Secretary Tillerson upon his arrival to the State Department, and the remarks quoted sound like they could've been uttered by Clinton herself: “You have accumulated knowledge and experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else... Your wisdom, your work ethic and patriotism, is as important as ever.” So there was perhaps reason to believe Tillerson would have a "moderating" effect on Drumpf's foreign policy.

It hasn’t happened. Far from curbing [Drumpf]’s excesses, Tillerson has been blindsided by them: a travel ban that alienated much of the Muslim world and originally barred the entry of Iraqis who’d fought alongside U.S. troops; a crackdown on immigrants that’s poisoned relations with America’s third-largest trading partner, Mexico; [Drumpf]’s suggestion that the U.S. could live with a permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, so long as everyone else is cool with it. Tillerson was absent from White House meetings with the leaders of Canada, Japan, and Israel. His pick for deputy secretary, Elliott Abrams, was rejected after [Drumpf] learned Abrams had criticized him during the 2016 campaign.

...

Senior State Department officials are livid at the White House’s proposal to cut by a third the $50 billion base budget for the department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham declared the Trump plan “a disaster” and “dead on arrival” in Congress. So far, Tillerson has remained characteristically impassive, but protecting the State Department’s resources will require him to step outside his comfort zone and send clear, vigorous, and public messages about the value of diplomacy as a tool of U.S. power.

2. Embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he intends to have the Dept. of Justice "pull back" on Obama-era federal scrutiny of police department civil rights violations, examples of which include its investigations of the Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD police departments after the high profile killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, respectively.

Sessions has also reversed an Obama order to phase out government contracting with private prisons.

The federal Bureau of Prisons currently holds 12 private prison contracts, housing nearly 21,000 inmates across the country. 

The Justice Department began issuing contracts with private prisons when the prison population boosted up to 800 percent between 1980 and 2013.

 Now, with President Trump’s strict immigration policies on the horizon, private prisons could make major profits in the coming years.

 3. The Intercept claims that Defense Secretary James Mattis nearly brought us to war with Iran.

Defense Secretary James Mattis... had wanted the U.S. Navy to “intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen. … But the ship was in international waters in the Arabian Sea, according to two officials. Mr. Mattis ultimately decided to set the operation aside, at least for now. White House officials said that was because news of the impending operation leaked.” 

Get that? It was only thanks to what Mattis’s commander in chief has called “illegal leaks” that the operation was (at least temporarily) set aside and military action between the United States and Iran was averted. 

Am I exaggerating? Ask the Iranians. “Boarding an Iranian ship is a shortcut” to confrontation, says Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, former member of Iran’s National Security Council and a close ally of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Even if a firefight in international waters were avoided, the Islamic Republic, Mousavian tells me, “would retaliate” and has “many other options for retaliation.” 

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and author of the forthcoming book “Losing an Enemy — Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy,” agrees. Such acts of “escalation” by the Trump administration, he tells me, “significantly increases the risk of war.”

Keith Ellison vs. Tom Perez

On Saturday, February 25, the continuing drama of leftists vs. Democrats played out in the election for new chairperson of the Democratic National Commmittee, where the frontrunners were Keith Ellison, congressman of Minnesota's 5th district, which includes Minneapolis, and former Secretary of Labor under Obama, Tom Perez. The battle became sort of a proxy fight between Hillary and Bernie supporters with Bernie supporters backing Ellison and Hillary supporters backing Hillary, although the divide was not that clear-cut as many more establishment Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, former minority leader Harry Reid, and Minnesota senator Al Franken, supported Ellison from early on.

Ellison announced his candidacy less than a week after the November election. He had a lot of momentum, but, apparently, many of President Obama's closest advisers took issue with the prospects of Ellison's candidacy and actively sought an alternative:

Mr. Obama’s advisers, some of whom discussed the party leadership race at a White House meeting last week, have talked about whether Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would be willing to run for the post. Mr. Perez met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week and had lunch Tuesday in the White House Mess with Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, while also visiting with David Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director.

The Intercept and Matt Bruenig over at Medium both document how, essentially, a smear campaign was mounted to take down Ellison and get Perez elected to DNC chair.

The election played out like a mini re-hash of the Clinton/Sanders primary. When Perez won the election on the 2nd ballot, Ellison activists were furious.

You could take the bright angle, articulated by Karl Sandstrom in this Vox news article:

“You see these signs out here? Never has there been a DNC race like this. We’ve never had this much energy, this many volunteers, this much debate, this much chanting, this much stuff,” said Sandstrom, an attorney for Democratic state parties attending his 10th chair election. “The DNC chair is normally a relatively obscure figure.”

Former South Carolina party chairman Jaime Harrison voted for Perez, stating:

“I love Keith (Ellison) like a brother. Over the last year I’ve come to love Tom like a brother. But it comes down to who has a better Southern strategy. Who’s got a red state strategy for the Democratic Party? Tom has it.”

My Facebook feed lit up with posts expressing much less optimistic readings of the outcome. The Democratic Party is certainly tossing away a degree of enthusiasm among potential activists, and thus tossing away their potential contributions. It is probably losing votes, too. The article quoted immediately above, from The Root, takes an optimistic tack based on Perez himself and Perez's gesture of creating a role of Deputy Chair and giving the role to Ellison.  I knew a few dedicated leftist activists who generally eschew party politics as a whole, but who were inspired by Bernie Sanders' campaign. It was a rare window to bring those activists at least momentarily into the ballot box for Democrats, and the party blew it. I don't think Ellison's election to party chair would've brought them back, though it's possible given the people I know are his constituents. But there may be other, younger activists for whom this loss, coupled with Bernie's defeat, who will see this as confirmation that the party doesn't want them and they will act accordingly going forward.

Personally, I think there has to be a political alternative to Drumpf in 2020, and the Republican party in every election-year, and the Democrats are it for the next two to four years, there is no other choice. It is possible I could be wrong, but I just find the idea that a whole new party can be built and foisted upon the electorate in 2-4 years a joke, so the political opposition is the Democrats or no one, so the party has to be infiltrated and made as leftist as possible.

A lot of questions linger. How will Perez and Ellison function as party chair and deputy chair? Will Ellison's role be meaningful or window-dressing? What kind of strategy will Perez implement to rebuild the party? How dispirited is the leftist/Sanders wing of the party? Will there be a serious movement to build a new party?

I've heard it said among some anti-party-politics activists that the Democratic Party is where social movements go to die. The party "co-opts" certain causes to empower itself. I would be curious to hear examples of this. I've heard the civil rights movement touted as one such example. But did the party "co-opt" the movement, or did the movement make such a strong case that it had a base of support that it was wise for the party to adopt its concerns as issues it would fight for, resulting in legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Is that kind of thing "co-opting" for selfish gain, or is it a serious positive outcome of dedicated activism with material benefits to a sector of people?

I remember partaking in demonstrations at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, protesting anti-union measures being foisted upon public workers by Republican governor Scott Walker. The capitol building was occupied for weeks, as I recall, and the demonstrations grew to tens of thousands of people, at some times possibly hundreds of thousands. It was a strong, disruptive, sustained protest. After a few weeks, Walker's anti-union measures passed, and demonstrators followed the lead of major unions and the Democratic Party and shut down the protests and occupations. They moved their efforts to the ballot box and an attempt to recall Governor Walker. The recall effort lost. A good friend of mine took this as an instance where powerful unions and a powerful political party, the Democrats, didn't support the cause, they tried to co-opt it to their benefit. The movement may have seen more success if the massive demonstrations and capitol occupation had continued or escalated. Instead, the "fight" went exclusively to the ballot box and we lost, that was it. Maybe there was no victory to be had, but a major philosophy of activism is to raise the "cost of doing business" for your opponent. If Republicans in power had to encounter the sustained occupations and protests every day they showed up for work as a result of their attempt to peddle the anti-union measure... they are humans with finite amounts of stress tolerance and energy, soooo... maybe they give up? I don't know.

Depression and Dread Triggered by the News

"I read the news today, oh boy..."

-John Lennon

I read a news article last night which was so depressing I do not really care to share it at the moment because I don't care to trigger the same reaction in anyone who might one day read this. 

Then again, I am not sure how to proceed in writing about it, and, then again, as of right now this whole blog is meant to function mostly as a diary anyway. So perhaps I will, but, I guess: trigger warning for existential dread.

Yesterday exciting news swept the internets courtesy of NASA. Earth-like planets have been discovered a "mere" 39 light-years away. Bill Nye posted on Facebook about it and hailed "the joy of discovery." Then one of my preferred news sites took the most depressing angle possible: Why the discovery of Earth-like planets could spell doom for humanity. The gist: it seems increasingly likely that there may be "tens of thousands" or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. That seems exciting, what would be so depressing about it? Well, if it is so, why haven't we made contact with any of them? Here is the depressing possibility: the reason we haven't made contact is because life fails to evolve to a point where such contact is possible. No matter how advanced civilizations can become, they never make it to a point of such advanced space communication and travel. It raises the possibility that, in getting close to such a point, civilizations instead collapse. In the context of the state of civilization today, given the real risk to the human species faced by various threats, chiefly climate change and nuclear war, it may be that we are at the later stages of human civilization, and we don't have long to go.

A lot of people with knowledge about climate change worry that such a threat is real. If you want to argue that human civilization, and even the entire species, is at real risk this century, you don't have to look hard for evidence to support it. 

How does one think about such topics and go on with life? I have to leave for work in 30 minutes. These are the times. Drink your morning coffee, read the news, contemplate human extinction. 

In some ways it is nothing new. Malthus thought we'd all be dead by now, the world would be incapable of holding a billion people or so. One of my U.S. History professors talked about living through the Cold War and how you just carried on with a belief that your own life would end, as would humanity, in a nuclear blast. For about 25 years we were given a small reprieve from such dread, but any reasonable assessment of the state of the world today has to bring it back. 

In some ways it is something new, climate change is a wholly new problem and humanity seems to be falling behind in the race to contain it. I monitor news on the issue daily and it is a one-step-up, two-steps-back kind of affair. For every story that sounds like we may have taken a promising turn for the better, two stories crop up suggesting we are in deep trouble. In short, we seem to be at least 20 years behind where we want to be in transitioning to a sustainable civilization. 

The challenge always is to remain aware of what is happening without feeling defeated and giving up. It is a major challenge, but, checking out and not participating in trying to build the better world is a small contribution to hastening the worst possible outcomes. We are our only hope and we have to be the people we've been waiting for.

Appealing to Drumpf Supporters

“I help my own family first, and by extension, the nation and the people. Then I can start helping people from other parts of the world, but not right now: Right now I have to help my own people of Sweden. Swedes are too naive and always pity others, but you can’t help the entire world right now.” 

-Robin Hammarström, 26, of Sweden.

The easy way of dealing with people who support Drumpf, and similar people the world over, is to ignore them, mock them. The harsh truth is that they are winning. Prior to the 2016 U.S. election, my sister rather giddily shared the demographic information that was supposed to be Hillary's key to winning. The emerging majority in America is non-white. The white people who aren't happy about it, we will just drag them along kicking and screaming. There is some valid mentality here. Progress always marches with reactionary opponents. But once it arrives, people largely let it in and move on. In 2004, people around the U.S. flocked to the ballot box in opposition to gay marriage. In 2017, gay marriage is the law of the land. Ten years ago... hell, probably five years ago, it felt unthinkable that it would be legal throughout the United States. The belief is that people are slowly going to realize that living in a world where gay people can legally marry is not the end of the world, life will go on just fine. The belief prior to the election seemed to be that we can approach the increasing non-white population the same way. They will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and the progressive march forward would carry on, leaving the angry whites increasingly crying on the margins until they join the 21st century or die out.

Well, the results are in, and the angry whites aren't content to go quietly into that good night. The Republican party now dominates U.S. politics and things do not look any better elsewhere in the world. Years of ignoring them, mocking them on The Daily Show and other TV shows, and, now, sucker-punching and "no-platforming" them has lead them to all the levers of power. It might be time to try a different tactic:

"The right response is to ask ourselves, why are we failing to organize these people?" 

-Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's point is that a lot of working class people have legitimate grievances, but they are being given the wrong answers about why those grievances exist. It is our fault for failing to hoist a movement that offers them better answers.

Sadly, exactly how to build such a movement is a difficult question. I think the Bernie Sanders campaign offered some glimpse that a "socialist" (or "new deal") platform can resonate deeply with a lot of people. I took part in an attempt to unionize my workplace a couple years ago and was surprised to find how many people who favored unionization would otherwise espouse right-wing, tea-party-esque political views. It is sad that a union campaign wasn't enough to reach them on a political level, but it at least showed that a populist, working-class-oriented organization (which should be left-wing) could resonate with right-wing, working-class people.

In general, just finding ways to talk to people is important. I take this from my own personal experience- I've had productive conversations with many people who have opposing political views. Admittedly, I do not believe I've ever actually changed anyone's minds, but I've repeatedly heard people tell me I make good points, or I've made a particular point and gotten them to say, "I agree with that," I once had a long conversation at an Iraq War protest with a counter-protester (someone who supported the war so much that he was motivated to show up at the protest to mock the protesters), and we actually had a friendly conversation and he told me I was a smart guy who would do just fine. I debated the existence of God once on the air with a Christian radio talk-show host. It was at the the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, outdoors, and at the end of our discussion, we shook hands and received a round of applause from listeners who had gathered throughout the discussion, most of them wearing Bush/Cheney stickers.

I feel self-aggrandizing in discussing these things, but my point is that productive discussion is very much possible, and people do change.

The best way to win people to your cause is to give them a warm place to come to, derision, punching, ignoring, unfriending, and otherwise trying to shut people down doesn't do that. I understand there are particular times and contexts in which pacifist action is not in one's self-interest. Chomsky himself, who advocates listening to most tea-partiers, wrote that "[i]t is very difficult to retain a faith in the “essential humanity” of the SS trooper or the commissar or the racist blinded with hate and fear." What he was saying, though, was that in an extreme condition where one is so blinded by hate that they pose an immediate, present threat to your physical well-being, perhaps your life, you should not remain a pacifist in that moment. It is nearly certain that Chomsky would not oppose the victims of Dylan Roof's massacre if they started shooting back, for example. But that is an extreme circumstance where the physical threat is immediate.

The left in 2017 has been cheering its success in punching Richard Spencer in January and "no-platforming" Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkley. It should be noted, though, that Spencer's profile has in no way diminished since receiving his sucker-punch, nor has his movement, and Milo was profiled on Tucker Carlson's TV show and Bill Maher's, and in publications like Bloomberg news, after being "no-platformed" in Berkley. Meanwhile, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and, more recently, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and SNL, and other shows have been popular mainstays of comedy mocking the right-wing for well over a decade now, and here we are with the right-wing firmly in power in the United States and the world.

Our team needs to grow, and we need people from other side to succeed. In summarizing the message he received from talking with 100 Drumpf supporters, Sam Altman wrote:

“You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out. It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who will take Trump down.”

Drumpf Diary 2/17/17 - The 2nd Head Rolls

Labor Secretary nominee Andrew Puzder has withdrawn his nomination under the weight of heavy public scrutiny. While in my circles the talk has been on the sexist ads run approvingly by Puzder's fast food restaurants, his record of domestic violence, and his opposition to increasing the minimum wage, the Washington Post report on his resignation claims that it was ultimately his support for undocumented immigration, unacceptable to some senate Republicans, that forced him to buckle.

The new nominee is Alexander Acosta. I've never heard of him.

In the debate about whether to approve or oppose Drumpf cabinet nominees, one question had been whether, in defeating one nominee, we would only get a worse nominee. Here is one situation where we sorta get our answer. We are just being introduced to Acosta, I am sure we will learn more about him, my guess is that no definite answer will arise. The Heavy.com article about Acosta, linked above, states that he actually has a good record of defending Muslim American civil rights. He also served on the National Labor Relations Board. His record of service on that board is not really popular knowledge. It seems like an at-least marginally better background than being CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Jr.

It seems like at least a small victory that a public record of domestic violence became a prominent liability. It's kind of sad that someone with such a record can rise to places of prominence in the first place, but, it's something. It seems noted that he has denied wrongdoing and his ex-wife has rescinded her claim that violence occurred. As Shaun King notes, though, such backpedaling among victims is sadly common. It doesn't mean nothing happened. King further notes that the Drumpf team is riddled with men plagued by such accusations.

2/16/17 - Democrats & Snowden, Manning, Wikileaks, Greenwald, and Sanders

Without seeking it, more fodder for the Question of the Democrats has come to my attention.

1.) Yesterday I listened to the latest Pod Save the World podcast, hosted by Tommy Vietor, his guest for the entire 1-hour episode was Ben Rhodes. Vietor and Rhodes worked together in the Obama administration. A clear line of distinction between "Democrats" and "leftists" was highlighted in their discussions of Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. They hold largely unsympathetic views of all three, though all were sympathetic to Obama's commuting of Chelsea Manning's prison sentence.

Chelsea manning was an Army intelligence analyst who leaked a trove of information to Wikileaks, intending to make the American public aware of terrible things its military was doing in its name. The main thing I recall from the leak was a recording of a raid where the Army killed multiple civilians, including children.

Snowden leaked information about extensive NSA spying on Americans.

Snowden, Manning, and, to a slightly lesser extend Wikileaks, have been largely heralded as heroes among leftists. Snowden, notably, is hailed a champion whistleblower by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization now prominently regarded as part of "the resistance" to Drumpf. Both have been hailed as champions by Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, whom Rhodes and Vietor seemed to regard as a "good whistleblower." Rhodes and Vietor, being more mainstream Democrats and Obama White House insiders, regard Manning, Snowden, and Wikileaks with various levels of suspicion and contempt. Interestingly, Rhodes still acknowledges that Snowden's revelations led to good reforms. He still thinks Snowden went about the leaks the wrong way and showed that he was not committed to openness or democratic values by hiding in Russia, compared to Ellsberg who "faced the music."

Rhodes claims Wikileaks has been "outed" as a tool of Russian propaganda. Again, these are prominent Democratic insiders.

Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalist to whom Snowden made his revelations, became aware of the podcast and made some quick comments on Twitter, stating that there was misinformation in it which Greenwald would be happy to have a conversation about. I am eagerly hoping Vietor has Greenwald on the podcast for a lengthy discussion as I think it would illuminate some thinking behind this divide on the left.

---

2.) The Hill posted a report stating that Senate Democratic Minority leader Chuck Schumer held a meeting between Bernie Sanders and some Senate Democrats to deal with issues raised since 13 Democrats voted against an amendment put forth by Sanders and MN Senator Amy Klobuchar that would support importing prescription drugs from Canada. I explored the issue a little bit in an entry about Cory Booker. The details of the meeting don't seem particularly consequential. It just seems noteworthy that Schumer is trying to balance many interests, notably "keeping the base happy" as demonstrated by addressing the concerns of Sanders, and simultaneously making sure the Democrats don't jeopardize their standing in areas where they might be electorally at risk:

Democrats are running for reelection in 10 states that [Drumpf] carried in last year’s election — five of them by double digits.

Schumer wants to give lawmakers in those states flexibility to vote their conscience without upsetting the party’s liberal base, which wants to see Democrats in Washington fight Trump over just about everything.

The assumption that underlies that statement, of course, is that the Sanders way would put them at risk in Drumpf territory. That would be an interesting assumption to explore. Here in Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan won election as a Democrat in a district that voted for Drumpf. Sanders campaigned for Nolan barely a month before the election. 

Drumpf Diary 2/15/17 - The Question of the Democrats, continued

1.) The Question of the Democrats is something I will likely return to regularly here. Today it popped up first in the form of a very good Vox article about little Timmy (seriously) and how new rules implemented by Obamacare helped make insurance affordable for him. Due to a genetic condition, he had to receive repeated medical care which cost over $1 million. Thanks to Obamacare, insurance companies no longer drop people from coverage after their healthcare costs have reached this threshold. Timmy's parents were able to keep Timmy insured and Timmy's care remained affordable. The message of the article is there are thousands of people like Timmy for whom Obamacare may well have been life-saving, certainly life-altering for the better. Timmy, his parents, and those like him can be considered people "living on the margins," an important concept. It may seem like most people don't see much difference in their lives based on the actions of governmental policies, thus it is easy for people to claim that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. But for people on the margins, there is a big difference. Timmy's parents might have had to bankrupt themselves paying for his healthcare. Who knows. For them, it made a big difference that Obama was in office versus John McCain.

It's also noteworthy that the part of the Obamacare bill that made it illegal for insurance companies to cap coverage at $1 million in healthcare expenses was in there because one woman, a private citizen, aggressively lobbied her senator to put that wording in the legislation. She called, showed up at events, formed a relationship with him, and he came to care about the issue personally. It seems noteworthy that the senator is a Democrat (Byron Dorgan). Would a Republican senator have listened and gotten the language in the Affordable Care Act? Seems difficult to assume given the strong Republican opposition to the bill.

I am not necessarily advocating that we must back Democrats, and fall back on them vigorously as our "opposition."  I am not necessarily advocating the Democrat/compromise position, as I defined it in my original entry on the question. I am just exploring something I see as supporting that position. I feel like it should be grappled with when advocating abandonment of the party. I don't feel that advocates of abandoning the Democrats have a sufficient answer for what to do for marginalized people if you are going to put them at risk by not supporting Democrats against a worse option.

2.) Politico reports that the electorate would currently support "a generic Democrat" over Drumpf in 2020, about 43-33. Sadly, though, one specific Democrat would not beat Drumpf: the poll states that Elizabeth Warren trails him 42-36 in current polling. My sister informed me of this and noted, "This country hates women in power." That and/or, as the Politico story claims, "Democrats could be in trouble- and (Drumpf) could triumph- if they continue their lurch to the left."

3.) Jacobin transcribes an hour-long interview on The Katie Halper Show with writer Doug Henwood (the link also includes embedded audio of the interview) where he discusses how he thinks the Democrats should move forward. He suggests moving away from "elite funding," and campaign based on grassroots funding. He thinks the party is stuck in that it is a "business party" which has to pretend to be a left-wing, populist party to get elected, but it can't actually deliver on those promises on a grand scale because of its necessary ties to big business, whose interests contradict those of working people. He thinks Bernie showed the way forward with his campaign: grassroots funding, and a targeted, simple populist message.

Drumpf Diary 2/14/17 - The First Head Rolls

1.) Less than one month into the era of Drumpf, the first head rolls. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has resigned. Anonymous officials familiar with intelligence investigations say Flynn discussed sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador before Drumpf took office. Because Flynn was a civilian at the time, this would have been in violation of a little-known rule called the Logan Act which forbids civilians from conducting diplomacy in situations related to national security, or something like that. Flynn then apparently lied to then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence, claiming he hadn't discussed the sanctions with the ambassador. Top-level officials, including acting Attorney General Sally Yates, had investigated the whole affair before and after Drumpf took office. It is a rather convoluted thing, and it led to Flynn's resignation late last night.

The fallout is multi-faceted. Drumpf and Co. appear to be in complete disarray, this comes amid a number of setbacks and public relations fiascos which have marked Drumpf's first month in office. Even congressional Republicans have stated that they want to investigate the matter. Dan Rather has told his 1 million+ Facebook followers that he thinks this looks like a potential Watergate level scandal. Others have made similar observations.

Glenn Greenwald railed in defense of whistle-blowers throughout the Obama Administration. He points out that all this information about Flynn appears to be public due to leaks similar to those made by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, yet there is no such call to charge the leakers/whistle-blowers. This angle touches a little bit on my previous entry about the question of the Democrats. In the case of Snowden and Manning, the leaks were made to inform the American public about serious wrongdoing by the NSA and the U.S. military. Manning served several torturous years imprisoned for her leaks, including a long time in solitary confinement. Snowden is exiled in (ironically) Russia. Greenwald:

Given the extreme secrecy powers that have arisen under the war on terror, one of the very few ways that the public has left for learning about what its government officials do is illegal leaking. As Trevor Timm notes, numerous leaks have already achieved great good in the three short weeks that Trump has been president. 

Leaks are illegal and hated by those in power (and their followers) precisely because political officials want to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing, and want to be able to lie to the public with impunity and without detection. That’s the same reason the rest of us should celebrate such illegal leaks and protect those who undertake them, often at great risk to their own interests, so that we can be informed about the real actions of those who wield the greatest power.

1a.) The Trevor Timm piece noted above by Greenwald is noteworthy on its own. It states that leaks to the press have been essential in stopping several Drumpf actions, including possibly an act of war against Iran.

1b.) Drumpf apparently expects Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine.


2.) North Korea tested a ballistic missile. Drumpf's response, according to a Reuters report, was rather subdued and measured, especially by Drumpf's standards.

The Question of the Democrats

I am trying to figure out how to regard the Democratic Party. That is a tough question in itself because it is not a uniform entity. I may regard Chuck Schumer different from how I regard Elizabeth Warren. But among left-wing opposition to Drumpf there is a vast chasm over what the Democratic Party is and what role they should play in opposing Drumpf. I know people who share fairly similar values... they favor environmental protections, strong social safety nets, equal rights for women and racial minorities, that kind of stuff, but they have dramatically different regards for the Democratic Party. Some view the party as fighting the good fight, a collection of politicians who have an array of different responsibilities, powers, and who are forced the juggle competing interests and do the best they can given institutional limitations. Others see them as just another version of the "bad guys," a slightly "kinder, gentler" imperial force, although some aren't even that forgiving, some call them just as bad... maybe even worse cause they put a phony face on equally vicious policies.

The question manifests in so many different ways. I discussed it in a post about Cory Booker. It arose in discussions of how to treat Drumpf's cabinet nominees, where many people complained that the Democrats were not being oppositional enough, while others pointed out that the opposition raised was rather unusual for recent history. Cabinet nominees generally receive little more than a rubber stamp. The question rages in election years, especially presidential election years. There is still an argument over whether Ralph Nader cost Al Gore an election victory in 2000, and a similar resentment is brewing over 2016 and Hillary Clinton's loss. Both losses are blamed on people who voted for third party candidates or who stayed home, failing to protect us from a victory for the "worse" candidate (George W. Bush in 2000 and Drumpf in 2016).

There is a belief among left-wing critics that not enough changes under Democratic governance, or they compromise or are too weak or don't care about left-wing values, they are often criticized as "Republican Lite," I know at least a few people who go so far as to say there is zero difference between Democrats and Republicans, "two sides of the same coin," the argument goes.

Defenders of the Democratic Party will quickly point to what they see as positive changes from Democratic policy, such as the Affordabale Care Act (ACA/Obamacare), protections for the rights of LGBTQ people, Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, positive actions towards combatting climate change, etc.

I think it is a much more challenging debate than many people recognize, and at times I feel capable of switching consciousness from one side to the other. Right now as I think about the war in Yemen, I see that a recent disastrous U.S. Navy Seal raid which killed about 20+ civilians (including 9 children) there was approved by Drumpf after Obama refused to order it due to risks. It seems easy to put the blood on Drumpf's hands given that contrast. Yet it was the Obama administration which has sold millions, possibly billions, of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia, perpetuating the war there which is now killing, displacing, or putting at risk of famine and major health crisis millions of Yemenis.

I can be a Democratic Party sympathizer when I think about electoral strategy. I believe we still need to vote for them because they do make a difference. It may be marginal, but people's lives hang on those margins.

But I feel like leftists who oppose voting for Democrats raise important points. Consider that Obama deported almost 3 million people during his presidency. Maybe a GOP administration would've deported more people, but for those 3 million deported, either administration is unacceptable. The Democrat sympathizers don't have a sufficient answer for what to do for those 3 million people, how do we make systemic change to help them. I argue with my sister a lot and she is a rabid defender of the Democrats, and her argument amounts to "change happens slowly, there is no other way, we have to accept what we can get." Well, that leaves those 3 million deported with nowhere to go. It leaves millions of Yemenis dead, sick, or starving. It leaves those who still couldn't afford healthcare under Obamacare in the lurch. It is easy for those of us in a privileged position to be content with incremental progress when we are not sick, Yemeni, or living undocumented in America.

"The system" leaves those marginalized people behind and thus it needs to be brought down and a new system built. If the tens of millions of people who vote Democrat would get on board with more dramatic change, it could happen.

Or could it? I am trying to imagine the Democratic counter-argument. Well, yeah, that would be nice, but the left-wing movement hasn't reached those tens of millions of Democratic voters. They're not all living with the awareness we on the far left are, so we have to keep doing the hard work of building our movement and, in the meantime, recognize where we are at and act accordingly (strategically) and vote Democrat when it is the only way to prevent worse outcomes for people who would be negatively impacted by the Republicans being in power instead.

These are banal thoughts on profound questions/problems. It is a question I will try to explore in various ways as I proceed with this diary and life under Drumpf.

Drumpf Diary 2/9/17 - A Monstrous Catastrophe

1.) The Bureau of Investigative Journalism released an article detailing the Drumpf-approved raid in Yemen which turned into a debacle, killing nine young children among others.  Drumpf's press secretary Sean Spicer has declared the operation "successful... by all standards," while former U.S. ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche has said it "turned out to be as bad as anyone can imagine." The youngest victim was 3 months-old.

“It is true they were targeting al Qaeda but why did they have to kill children and women and elderly people?” said Zabnallah Saif al Ameri, who lost nine members of his extended family, five of whom were children. “If such slaughter happened in their country, there would be a lot of shouting about human rights. When our children are killed, they are quiet.”

The article is really worth reading in whole. It lists the names and ages of the 9 child victims. It is horrific to contemplate, but it is being done in our name. "No one thought that marines would descend on our homes to kill us, kill our children and kill our women."

The article offers so many disturbing details. As I read it I feel overcome. It's horrid. I think about whether or not to share it to Facebook. I want everyone to read it. I am not sure the purpose of sharing. Part of me wants to observe that this was a raid that was initially presented to Obama and he did not approve it because he thought it was too risky. Drumpf, rather famously now, approved it "over dinner." It's speculated that he may have approved it specifically to differentiate himself and his own approach to Obama's. In that respect, the blood is on Drumpf's hands and those of his supporters. I know I saw a Vox article semi-excusing Drumpf, though, and placing the blame at the hands of military planners. Both seem like plausible finger-pointing. At the same time it all feels so small and petty. The deaths of all these people, especially the children, feel reduced if we try to point fingers and blame. I don't know. The report suggests that some of the adults killed were affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. One of the dead is 8-year-old Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, a daughter of a killed American who had been a radical Islamic preacher. She had been staying with her uncle. Perhaps the uncle was a "legitimate" target?? I don't know. It all seems so pathetic. Al Qaeda, no Al Qaeda (it seems worth noting that several survivors interviewed for the report maintain that none of the villagers were Al Qaeda-affiliated).

It is a monstrous catastrophe. 9 children are dead. A pregnant woman is dead.

The Pentagon attempted to justify it in a way that would be cartoonish if it weren't so fucking monstrously inhumane:

...the Pentagon released a video showing a man building bombs which it said had been discovered in the raid. Within hours it was removed from the Pentagon’s website’s after people pointed out the same video had been published online in 2007.

Also:

The White House, however, continues to insist that the raid was “highly successful.” 

“It achieved the purpose it was going to get – save the loss of life that we suffered and the injuries that occurred,” Spicer said in a press briefing on February 7. “The goal of the raid was intelligence-gathering. And that’s what we received, and that’s what we got.”

2.) In the broader picture, Yemen is amidst a crushing food crisis. "Almost 3.3 million people, including 2.1 million children, are suffering from acute malnutrition."

3.) Jeff Sessions is confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, by a 52-47 vote in the Senate. The vote was marred by silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as she was reading a 1986 letter written by Corretta Scott King opposing Sessions's appointment as a federal judge. The silencing of Warren became a powerful story of its own, further elevating Warren's iconic status.

From the New York Times:

Mr. Sessions’s path to confirmation hit another snag that riled Democrats and energized opponents of his nomination: Mr. Trump’s dramatic firing of the acting leader of the Justice Department. 

Last week, Mr. Trump abruptly dismissed Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, setting off a fierce backlash from Democrats against Mr. Sessions’s nomination to fill her job permanently. Ms. Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, had refused to defend Mr. Trump’s controversial order barring travel by some foreigners, which is now tied up in litigation in federal courts. Democrats seized on her firing to say that Mr. Sessions is too close to the president to be independent or stand up to him.

VICE details 5 things Attorney General Jeff Sessions could do immediately upon his assumption of office.  It suggests he could pursue rollbacks of progress in marijuana legalization, LGBTQ rights, immigration, police brutality, and he could launch investigations into the voter-fraud which Drumpf claims occurred in the 2016 election, which could lead to further rollbacks of minority voting rights.

Another VICE article details a case where Sessions, as Alabama Attorney General, tried to prosecute three civil rights activists for voter fraud. The activists were acquitted and NAACP lawyer Deval Patrick (later Massachusetts governor) stated that he felt Sessions did not have the acumen to serve as a federal judge.