"This Country Does Not Love Us Back"
Larry, "Doc" Rivers addressed reporters yesterday. He is the Coach of the LA Clippers and was the Coach back when the Clippers managed to shake loose from their racist owner, Don Stirling.
Doc Rivers also played for the NY Knicks, a long time ago, when we had a team our City loved.
Voice cracking, here's what the Coach had to say yesterday:
"All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear."
"We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones who were kept from living in certain communities. We've been shot. We've been hung. And all you do is keep hearing about fear."
"It's amazing to me why we keep loving this country. And this country does not love us back."
The USA cannot last much longer on our present course. This center cannot hold. Too many of us are wising up and waking up and rising up.
Corporate Convention # 1 was last week and tonight Corporate Convention # 2 draws to a close. Both bread and circus presentations proved that neither party has any use for most of our country. Not Progressives. Not people facing evictions and foreclosures. Not citizens dying for lack of decent reliable healthcare. Not union leaders or members. Not minorities. This country doesn't love us back either, Coach.
All that seems to matter to the DNC/GOP Oligarchy is reaching the PMC--Professional Managerial Class and White Nationalists. The PTB seem to think that that's where the battle will be fought and won. I don't know if they are right or they are wrong.
But I do know that cracks are appearing. Nobody believes that we are all in this together anymore. Even the rabid right wing anti-semites and white nationalists in Zero Hedge's
putrid comment stream seem to be waking up. They appear to be understanding that all the positive Wall Street spin is absurd.
For example, the reporting of dire news spun as better than expected isn't convincing most of us anymore. A million unemployment claims is a lot of hurting families even if 1.3 million claims is less than last weeks 1.4 million claims.
The cracks in the corporate narrative will widen. Change will come. Maybe. I don't know, do you?
Comments
What's amazing --
is that basketball locker rooms are becoming politicized. These are people who are going to be doing rather well because their collective employer is the NBA. So they are no doubt feeling in portions of their heads that they don't have to do this. But they're doing it.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
@Cassiodorus absolutely.
absolutely.
They are protesting with their hearts.
NYCVG
Another million people added to unemployment and yet congress
is on vacation until Sept 8. This should outrage every person who is watching their lives implode and yet I am still seeing one side blaming the other side. Voters I mean. Who was it that said, "I can get one half of the working class to fight with the other half"? Well that is what we are seeing. Protesters with a legitimate beef are told to sit down, shut up and do what cops tell them to do. Those who are upset with the protests were absolutely pissed when Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Lots of people said that 'there is a time and place to protest, but on the job is not that time and place because they are on the job and they would get fired if they protested during their work hours.' And once again they are saying that they will not watch any sport until sanity returns to them. How people can be so blinded to the police brutality is mind boggling. Even when someone does everything a cop tells them to do they still get murdered. I watched 3 or more cops play with their suspect for over 20 minutes before they killed him when they could have placed in handcuffs when he laid down, put his leg over the other one and put his arms over his head. Then another cop told him to do something different so the guy did only to get yelled at by the first cop. Then they had him walk toward them on his knees with one hand up.... and then they killed him for pulling up his shorts that were coming down.
Well fast forward a few years and yesterday the Milwaukee Bucks said that they would not play their game because of the new police killing and it snowballed from there where many different leagues have joined them. I saw lots of Utahns calling the athletes privileged that they can do this while ignoring again the reasons they did it.
- Jacob Blake shouldn't have kept walking and minded the cops and he'd be alive today.
- And all the rest of the bullsh*t sayings for why it was okay that Jacob was shot in the back 7 times.
I am tired of rehashing the BS that 'privileged whites' don't get. It's not just the police violence that have pushed people to protests, but the social and environmental racism that has been overlooked and ignored going back to the beginning of this great union.I don't think it is so much that the country doesn't love us back, but it is more that the government and those who give them their orders don't give a rat's ass about anyone but those in their class. What we are seeing is the results of 4 decades of class war being driven by the donor class.
More people are seeing that elections at the national level don't matter because no matter who wins the donor class comes out on top. Austerity will continue as well as our resource wars while millions will stay unemployed because jobs are not coming back. Millions will be evicted from their homes because the government shut down the economy. Sane countries got financial help to their people right off the back. Our government got financial help to the donor class even though most of them did not need it or had other ways to help their businesses. Think the BLM protests are bad now? Wait until millions join them or start their own protests to tell congress to get off their asses, return to congress and get them some help.
This Biden ad is getting lots of kudos, but it doesn't say anything about what he will do to help people. Poor Joe has suffered so much in his life so he has all this empathy.......
Bullshit. If he did we know what he would be saying he will do if he wins. It's another Rorschach's video where people can interpret it any way. I see it as feel good identity crap that won't do anything for me or the millions who are in the same boat I am in.
I AM NOT TRUMP
Cornel West on the People's Party
"A vote for Biden is not a vote for the democratic party"
DKmitch has it right:
"Bernie was the compromise"
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Howard Zinn
wrote that the Praetorian Guard propped up the powerful and the wealth in Roman times. Without them the powerful and wealthy were nothing more than easy targets for rabble. His description suggested their like are the enablers, professionals, and the experts who get the tasty crumbs from the wealthy. Of course, there were plenty enough people further down the food chain, they tend to be those who prop up the modern Guard, who get just enough to not be willing to risk biting the hand of the master. That line has always, until the past 15-20 years, been pretty low. A crap job that paid enough to get by with some left over to make quitting too scary or demanding their due is enough to maintain loyalty. Heaven forbid they band together. Unions are even more evil, amiright? Making life more difficult by taking away any chance of a pension, health benefits, lowering standards for working conditions, and all the systemic cancers invented to keep people in their place and make profits, boosting bonuses, was, as has been observed here many times, the profitable side effect if not an actual plan that worked. Those higher in the food chain benefitted with bonuses by screwing everyone under them.
That cushion below is getting mighty thin. All those big titles for shitty jobs that pay squat all are being done by the once far more comfortable. It's the blood of circulatory system that enables a consumer economy. Every job loss pulls money out of the economy. Gut the consumers and eventually the companies suffer enough they have to cut more muscle. It's self reinforcing cycle. This pandemic is ripping out stuffing hand over fist. How thin does the cushion need to get before enough people notice? Millions are getting the message right now. With all the boogie men that have been erected in service to the wealthy it's hard to tell what they'll do with the knowledge. Serve their actual interests isn't on my top ten list. They would need to risk more.
The actual Praetorian Guard, the PMC, will continue to do OK. Special categories like the pro sports players Cassiodorus commented on may hang on awhile but entertainment is one of those things that gets cut out of a budget when people lose jobs. So does overpriced logo clothing and cool shoes. We can be sure that when the team owners start coming up short they'll be eyeballing the huge salaries of the players straight away. Until, if, that ever happens they'll act like they're special by STFU and playing for a check just like the little guys and gals.
The elite of the Praetorian Guard, the financial industry enablers, will continue doing well. The extremely wealthy will continue defrauding and cheating each other in the markets until the average investor has been picked clean. 401(k)s and the few remaining pension plans will let that game continue to keep the enablers working. That's the reason Social Security needs privatized. The pool of plunderable wealth is getting smaller. It may take decades to pick all of these clean.
I have no idea if this pandemic is enough to ignite torches and pitchforks. I think that even a deep depression is not enough to get a sufficient number of people to support what needs done to fix the system. How bad does it need to get in America to force people to stop the madness? In our dog eat dog country I don't see anything good coming from all the pain except more pain.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Pelosi wants Biden to not debate Trump
‘Skulduggery’: Pelosi says Biden should NOT ‘dignify’ Trump with a debate as president ‘disrespects’ office
Pretty much as Krystal explains how congress is not worried at all about the millions who are unemployed and congress sits on the asses.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
@snoopydawg The Ice Cream (Nazi)
The Ice Cream (Nazi) Queen rules, "No debates for you."
NYCVG
This isn't our grandparents' racism.
A little after 1980 America went from the nation with the most social mobility to the least. Now where you start is where you're stuck. (And who starts lowest? The people whose grandparents weren't allowed to get out of the slums, who were disproportionately black and therefore remain so)
Now the ruling class has to enforce this state of affairs. Enter the police militant. They are trained not to enforce justice, but to enforce "street crime" (where the perpetrators are disproportionately black) They are trained to demand not just respect but servility, and if they don't get it they are trained to respond with rage and violence. (skin color is not the operative factor, but it is a multiplier, and remember, to multiply something means at least to double it)
But people aren't stupid. All this has to be obscured. People who see this have to be made invisible, marginalized, demonized. It's not class, it's straight white man - they're all evil, they're born evil.
Enter Obama. Ultimately it was his responsibility to see to it that justice is observed. What does he do? He refuses to enforce justice. He sends a clear signal to America's authoritarians, "You will not be prosecuted, no matter what you do, no matter how you do it." Enter Trump.
Next?
On to Biden since 1973
Baseball is considered the most conservative major sport
so I was most surprised when the Milwaukee Brewers, the Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Pdres, LA Dodgers,SF Giants and Toronto Blue Jays joined the boycott.
Maybe more have joined them since yesterday, I don't know right at this moment but I hope the rest soon join them but for some that is a mighty big step and with a lot of personal repercussions from owners.
In the chat room yesterday during the NY Yankees vs Atlanta Braves a regular columnist and commentator spoke about why the Brewers were boycotting their game and I waited for the usual cascade of comments reminding everyone this is a baseball site and political comments were forbidden, but just the opposite occurred.
One person stipulated he wasn't anti-cop, his brother is one, but shooting a guy in the back seven times?
Others started praising what the Brewer players were doing and asking now what were the Yankees gonna do? Good question.
An example of how conservative the Yankees are, the late owner George Steinbrenner once got suspended from baseball for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon, and now his four children: Hank, Jessica, Jennifer, Hal (deceased) all four serve as general partners for the Yankees. Safe to say those apples didn't fall far from the tree.
The Yankees have a tightly run conservative management in charge, and it literally shows, with a ban on long hair,beards,sideburns,and even mustaches no matter how small. But star players that can't be punished by being demoted to their minor league teams, have started to mumble.
So I expect more is actually going on in the clubhouse, and I believe if the staunchly conservative NY Yankee team joins the boycott the floodgates are open for the rest of the teams.
(all emphasis mine)
Of course Obama isn't gonna miss a chance to grab a spotlight on twitter, and expect everyone to forget what he said when SF Giant's quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee over police brutality ..
This is Obama yesterday.."I commend the players on the @Bucks for standing up for what they believe in..."
This when Colin Kaepernick took a knee...
"Obama asks Kaepernick to think about pain he's causing military families"
"President Barack Obama wants Colin Kaepernick to think about the pain he’s causing military families the next time he takes a knee during the national anthem"
He did add that Colin had the Constitutional right to do it, then continued condemning it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/obama-colin-kaepernick-anthem-228880
I wasn't surprised by either stance by Obama trying to capitalize on both events, but I was surprised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Colin Kaepernick's protest is 'dumb and
disrespectful'
The US supreme court justice in an interview with Katie Couric said sitting out national anthem is a ‘terrible thing’ for the NFL quarterback to do but not illegal
"...Ginsburg went to some lengths to say that the protest was legal but that she disagreed with Kaepernick and other athletes’ stance.
“If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/oct/10/ruth-bader-ginsburg-colin-...
My son's response to BLM
is "all lives matter".
My response to him;
"To the 1%, nobodys life matters, but theirs. You are so small."
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
You might want to listen to your son
He may well know that his life doesn't matter to the 1%, so when he sees their weird, sudden, inconsistency-ridden fawning over black people, he sees it for what it is: A kind of cruel Hunger Games, a superscale "bum-fight" for the 1%. You can't give if you don't have.
It was different in 2014, but "All Lives Matter" may well be the more revolutionary statement now.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Doc's given name is Glenn
I have no quarrel with Doc Rivers. It is easy to denigrate a millionaire who complains about how people like him are mistreated, but I respect and understand where he is coming from. Yeah, he was able to go to college, play pro sports and then continue to make a 1% living as an NBA Coach. That is his point -- because he is good at basketball, the system takes care of HIM, but nothing EVER changes for the millions of African Americans who live in our racist culture.
His extremely emotional comments on the Republicans and Trump were very effective because the emotion he was feeling was shared by a huge portion of the people who heard them -- starting with his fellow professional athletes and extending to the public at large. Just three months ago, we saw that obnoxious face on the cop with his knee of the last's guy's neck and a wave of disruption swept the country for weeks. Then boom! This asshole shoots a guy in the back seven times?!?
So what do we have to do to make something change?
Although I both understand and respect where Rivers is coming from, this won't change anything, either. Even with the corporate backing of the NBA, its broadcasting partners and its advertisers, there is nothing that any of those parties can do to prevent paranoia and racism from inhabiting the consciousness of police officers.
The culture within law enforcement will have to change, but that change is not going to stem from corporate sloganeering or cancelled sporting events. We can hope, with some realistic basis for it, that the waves of protests will have the effect of altering the toxic culture of 21st century American law enforcement. But there is no quick fix.
This is very frustrating because we all live in a culture that presumes that all problems have solutions -- the American Can Do Spirit. Unfortunately, humans have harbored irrational fear and loathing of The Other since before we learned to read and write.
Doc and millions of other earnest Americans can see Trump, specifically, and the Republicans, in general, as being The Problem. It follows logically then that getting them out of office is The Solution. Virtually everybody I know in West Hollywood and in my professional world thinks that.
I disagree with them, but I understand why they feel that way. I was a Lesser Evil voter myself until 2016. Unfortunately, getting rid of Trump will accomplish exactly nothing, while jacking up his loony supporters. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton just stoked the fires on the opposite side of the political fence -- urging Biden to refuse to concede the election if the vote count goes against him. Both parties are pretty well promising to create a Constitutional Crisis when this surreal election is over.
When both parties accuse each other of fundamental illegitimacy, it is really hard for most people to see the obvious answer to that conundrum -- they are both right and the entire show is illegitimate. Doc Rivers and the other passionate leaders of the NBA "boycott" are raising the most important questions of our day -- but not really supplying anything in the way of answers.
With corporate sponsorship, you can have your voice heard, but you will not change anything of significance.
Another step toward Revolutionary Consciousness. Just a step, though.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Meanwhile Obama meets with everyone and the boycott ends.
That's right, folks. We're screwed again, because everyone loves them some Obama.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama