caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

My grandfather grew up poor, and got poorer during the Depression. He and my grandmother went hungry on more than one occasion, and I've wondered, over the years, whether malnutrition was one reason that their first child, my uncle, was born mentally handicapped. It's not good to go hungry while you're pregnant. My grandfather, Bob, got his first real break in the forties working as a salesman for Colgate (he had been rejected from military service because of his flat feet).

Chris Hedges: Papering Over the Rot

The staggering concentration of wealth at the top has deformed our governing institutions — new window dressing will not end oligarchy.

My wife spent a ton of time and effort trying to get us both vaccinated before mid March so we could go on vacation. It was so maddening and screwed up and frustrating that she almost lost it several times.

Digresion: She was, in her time, a team leader leading teams who did audits of the largest US and US headquartered multinational corporations.

This is a reprint from The Progressive Wing.

COVID-19 Edition.

My true story:

I’d been attempting to get a Covid Vaccine vaccination appointment on the New York City Vaccine Signup Portal since it was announced. No luck whatsoever. No appointments. No vaccines. Facilities closed.

After discussing it with family and friends, I gave up. The stress wasn’t healthy.

O, what a train wreck this is bound to be!  What this nation absolutely needs just now is further divisiveness, as AOC calls for more funding to deprogram white supremacists and other D-related woke McCarthyite blacklists, MAGA-voters re-education camps and such.  Never mind Joe Biden’s supremely dubious record on Black Civil Rights resembles…white supremacy. But hey, he’s assembled a most diverse cabinet of neo-cons and warmongers, and desires to Unify the Nation!  Sure, he and Ms. Pelosi want help from Republicans to further their own stated agendas, but Trump must be held accountable!

Will it further piss off the 74,000,000+ Trump voters, some 9 million of whom had voted for President Wall Street and War, Inc. Obomba in 2012?  No, the working class was sold out wholesale by that Nobel Peace Prize recipient weren’t we?

Will those of us who’d like to make Common Cause with some MAGA voters be able to after this already Domed to Fail debacle?  I’d needed to Bingle for what’s been up with the Impeachment and had found these facts at a couple different sites:

Wall St seems a bit too comfortable with “the Redditors did it” narrative. Somewhat, but on a much smaller scale, like the '08-'09 narrative that ordinary scofflaws took out mortgages they couldn't possibly afford and that tanked the housing market and by extension banks and Wall St. It wasn't that their was no truth in over-extended housing buyers, but they were the bit players and had been played as suckers.

The Others

I think we are purposefully set up to fight against our own interests...red/blue, gay/straight, libertarian/socialist, BLM/Boogaloos and an array of other divides. As a result we fail to see the real impediment to a functioning society benefiting most people and protecting the planet is the oligarchs. This week the rigging of the market by the elites to limit the people's investment was made obvious with the Gamestop fiasco. I suspect that soon, designed distractions will insure we're pitted against other working people while the oligarchs laugh all the way to the banks they own. This became plain to me this week when Jimmy was attacked (45 min) for daring to speak to a boogaloo boy (40 min). There are many views we hold in common with this person. The idea we should not even talk with people who have different ideas is absurd. For my perspective we must learn to focus on policy issues NOT identity politics designed to keep us apart. TPTB assassinated MLK when he dared to try to unite blacks and whites in a working class coalition. Since that time, we've failed again and again to rebuild that working class movement...in part because we are divided or thwarted whenever that becomes a possibility (OWS and the 2016 Bernie campaign come to mind).