Almost anyone who has heard of Machiavelli associates him with the sly deceit supposedly recommended in The Prince. It is a grievously erroneous way to think of Machiavelli, whose far more important book was The Discourses on Livy, a multi-volume work some ten times the length of The Prince.

We know that one of the reasons Hillary lost was that she had no positive positions - she was not "for" anything. Just "Trump, Trump, Trump, Russia, Russia, Russia!" Are we for anything? Or are we falling into Hillary's McCarthy-ite pattern? Here's an important three paragraphs, but there's a lot more worth reading in the article.

Obama's press secretary said yesterday that the president will not do anything to help the water protectors. He wants the pipeline project completed. I'm not surprised, but I am disgusted. Video is less than a minute.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzRqd3Xic9I]

So is Bernie responsible for Hillary's defeat?

Hello, friends.

First, a reminder that November is Native American Heritage Month. Here's how the United States "honors" its first peoples.

This essay will be a conglomeration of links and info from the last week or so, since I've been away. Thank you to those who posted on NoDAPL in my absence. Let's start with a quote and image from LaDonna BraveBull Allard, one of the leaders, which puts the presidential election into some perspective.

Election fever season seems to be heating up to a level unprecedented in recent cycles and the hype is getting pretty thick relative to the significance of the election.

Not that you asked for my opinion, but, this is probably the least important election of my lifetime. That is not to say that other events are not consequential, we live in precarious times with the sands of change shifting under our feet. The thing is, it's quite unlikely that this election will make any difference in addressing the urgent situations that humankind is facing.

We have gotten to the point in the cycle where we can say that (excluding the occurance of a miracle) the winner of the election will either be an unhinged, deeply corrupt, war-mongering, McCarthyite, racist, austerity and globalization-promoting, fracking queen - or it will be an unhinged, austerity-promoting, tax-chopping, racist, ego-driven, narcissistic, climate-change-denying, loose cannon, con-man.

In other words, the Democrat or the Republican will probably win.