caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

The Evening Blues - 1-1-18

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a symbolic “red alert” warning for 2018 instead of the usual appeal (to the United States of Perpetual Warmongers) for world peace.

Maybe you remember a little oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico called the Deep Water Horizon Disaster. It was the Failure of the Blowout Preventer (the last line of defense for oil drilling explosions) that ultimately caused the disaster to spin out of control.

1. Do campaign stuff YOU like the most / hate the least. Given that campaign stuff is phonebank, or doorbell, or rah-rah sign wave, or write letters, or ...

Make up your mind and do it.

2. You must get to know your neighbors. In my home city of Seattle, WA. & in many states, the smallest political unit is the precinct. Work with neighbors on campaign stuff who like what you like / hate the least what you hate the least.

December 28, 2017. Cleveland is in a deep freeze. It seems to have come about a month early this winter. The weather service forecasts the cold spell to run for at least another week. I am driving through icy, slushy streets. But it's mostly sunny, though by the rays of a low-arching winter sun. I see one car that looks like it has just been washed. The rest have a road salt glaze.

Let's face it, 2017 has been another year most of us are just as happy to see gone as was 2016--and many others--were. We have had our cases of murder. Murder by racists. Murder by thieves. Murder by Arkancide. Murder by war. Murder by starvation. Murder by indifference. Lots of ways to kill. Now, before 2017 is officially ended, at least here on the west coast, comes another method of murder.

Death by "swatting".

h/t FThumb

2017 in the rear view mirror
2018 to unfold

We began the year with the blatant take over of the government by oligarchs without the use of the usual front men. It is a government Sachs and the generals (sounds like a band name). We end the year with the greatest shift of wealth to the upper class in history. Welcome to the era of neofuedalism. No need to panic, some serfs had it pretty good. Time to put those lights on bright and try to look out there into the future. Onward through the fog!..... Oops, better dim those lights in the fog and look as far as we can.

This is the pope's sixth trip to the region with which he is most familiar. But this one is different. This is the first time he will face a populace aware of both his indifference, at best, to victims of sexual abuse and, at worse, his efforts to shield the perpetrators. In addition, there is a consistent pattern of issues, as well as an alliance of powerful elites from church and state, in both countries.

I think most people here are already familiar with Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (available online as a large pdf file), and Chris Hedges, the New York Times reporter who covered the revolutions in East Europe, and was forced out of the Times because of his opposition to the Gulf War.