Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Booing Bernie

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I am not surprised that Bernie was booed by his own true believers. If you have been looking at any of the Bernie or Bust pages you would have already seen comments from people who think he’s a traitor or a sell out, and lots more comments that were convinced he was still running and would win the nomination. People have been trying to contact superdelegates all week long, thinking they could be convinced to turn this around.

A lot of these delegates have had to spend everything they had just to get to Philadelphia, and a lot of the posts on FB are for crowdfunding Bernie delegates to get to the convention. No effort was made by Bernie’s campaign to help at all, even though he is sitting on millions. So the connection between Bernie Sanders and many of his delegates has gotten tenuous…they came there to support Bernie Sanders the presidential candidate, and not Bernie Sanders the Democratic Senator. His speech to the DNC will be his biggest challenge. He might well be booed by his own people as he is cheered by Hillary’s. Embarrassing….

I’ve been figuring there would be a lot of excitement on the floor for a week now, even before Julian Assange dumped all those DNC emails. Since then, though, the Bernie or Bust pages have gone ballistic, with loud demands that Bernie withdraw his endorsement. I suspect that a lot of people in that crowd of delegates today were expecting to hear just that, Bernie withdrawing his endorsement and announcing he was still in it to win. The boos were by people hearing what they had refused to believe all along, that Bernie Sanders had no attention of contesting Hillary Clinton for the nomination on the floor. The chants of Lock Her Up are no surprise either, as the Bernie of Bust pages are rife with crazy conservative propaganda lately. Breitbart was everywhere. Not every Berniecrat is a democratic socialist. Don’t forget he got all those Rand Paul people, H.A. Goodman being the most famous. Libertarian one week, socialist the next, and then back again. Far more Sanders people have switched to Johnson than to Stein so far. More have switched to Trump than to Stein so far. Maybe this will change now, but some of those booing Bernie today will be voting for Trump, guaranteed. And while the vast majority of Bernie Sanders supporters in the country switched their support to Hillary weeks ago, they are not the ones in Philadelphia booing and chanting in front of television cameras.

It will also be interesting watching how angry Bernie delegates, nearly all of them white, interact with Hillary delegates, a great many of them African American and Hispanic. Progressives might discover a racial divide they did not was even there, one they exacerbated every time they claimed that Hillary’s victory margins–propelled as they were by black and Hispanic voters–were fraudulent. White people angry that their votes did not mean more than black and brown votes. It wasn’t meant that way, but it was often heard that way.

Fun times ahead, maybe. Like I said before, the Democrat in me wants a smooth running convention, but the political junkie in me is thrilled at the prospect for so much excitement….

Tweets

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Donald Trump has tweeted Bernie Sanders supporters eight times in 24 hours, more than Bernie has tweeted Bernie Sanders supporters. Donald is tweeting new messages to them, Bernie is tweeting old slogans. I haven’t seen any Bernie supporters mentioning anything that Bernie has tweeted them (“If this country stands for anything, we have to stand with those people who came home from war injured in body and soul”), but they sure are talking about the same things Trump is tweeting them (“Tim Kaine is, and always has been, owned by the banks. Bernie supporters are outraged, was their last choice. Bernie fought for nothing!”). Perhaps it is a coincidence. Perhaps not.

Dollar Shave Club

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Dollar Shave Club sold for a billion dollars. Hard to fathom how that could possibly be worth a billion dollars. I suppose the buyer thinks he can use their model to create dollar whatever clubs? Still, even then I can’t figure on the billion dollar tag. A microbrewery in San Diego went for a cool billion too. I know start ups in Silicon Valley have been going for ridiculous prices. Perhaps it’s flowing over into other consumer goods? Definitely a sign of just how much cash there is up there in the 2% that throwing a billion at a place that sells razor blades cheap is not considered a ridiculous expenditure. I recall the early 2000’s and this kind of madness sweeping the internet industry–as it was called then–till everything came crashing down in a cloud of dust and worthless stocks. People dreaming of millions of dollars looking for a few thousand to make the mortgage. I knew literally hundreds of people who were put of work in a matter of months.
Anyway, this essay can be bought for considerably less than a billion dollars. As can I.

Boos

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The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson just remarked that Ted Cruz not only “did not endorse Donald Trump, he unendorsed him”. Cruz had told people to “vote your conscience up and down the ballot.” The New York delegation, stage front, booed loudly and kept booing. I appreciate the enthusiasm of the New York delegation said Cruz, who then droned on without a word about Donald Trump. Cruz supporters–in Texas, in Colorado–applauded, but most other delegations, full of Trump delegates, joined in booing, and then the galleries joined in. The boos grew louder and almost drowned out Cruz. With perfect timing Donald Trump entered the hall to take his seat among the New Yorkers amid this chorus of boos. All of which was carefully noted by every reporter watching the scene. It has not been a good week for The Donald.

Hating electrons

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So much hate speech from Trump supporters at the RNC, and then seeing so much of it echoed by Bernie or Busters…. It is all so alien to me. I was a genuine left wing activist, and helped out in political campaigns later, and have such a different approach to politics now than you see on social media. Maybe because we dealt with people and not electrons, I don’t know. It was different. I could never get myself to hate people automatically. I hated Nazis, I hated teamster thugs who beat up farmworkers, but hating someone because he is a Republican or because he likes a candidate I am against, I can’t even imagine. The verbal violence you hear on the left and right nowadays still startles me. People I know exploding in blind fury over memes. I don’t get it.

The martyrdom of Micah Johnson has begun

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From Facebook:

POTUS assured the American public that no drone kills would happen here nor to American citizens. The police have become local Military Centers with some powerful lethal force on hand at a second’s notice. As my wife asked, why was non-lethal force not used with Micah Johnson? He’d kill a robot? Come on, tasers, sedatives, turns out there was no hurry. The NRA is probably happy. 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This is the state and feds going WAY over the line. Hellcome To The New World Order.

The martyrdom of Micah Johnson has begun. Constitutional issues. Due process. That weird netherworld where the fringes of the Left and Right meet and intertwine, spouting each other’s rhetoric and worse. I first saw this when Khadafi was killed by Libyan rebels. The anti-Obama right went nuts on due process, blaming Obama for denying Khadafi his right to a fair trial. Now you can hear that from the left. Hillary killed Khadafi.

Today there is talk on the far left about the execution of Micah Johnson. He should have been taken alive, they say. True, but he executed the first cop who came near him. Irrelevant point, I suppose. Depending on one’s point of view, cops are as disposable as black men, and mass murderers are martyrs no different from an innocent man with a burnt out tail light. I suppose if you live your life in the either/or world of the internet, your real world values get pretty warped.

In real life, of course, most of these fearsome Facebook radicals were terrified of 4th of July fireworks just a few days ago. On Wednesday they demanded revolution, while the day before they were livid that the cops wouldn’t arrest the street corner pyrotechnicians scaring their cats.

Ya gotta love the discreet charm of the Facebook bourgeoise.

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, these Faroes.

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Britain has become positively Shakespearian this week. Gove plunges in the knife, Boris falls, and Theresa May pops in not to praise him. Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell if Jeremy Corbyn is acting out Macbeth or Richard III. Then there was Nigel Farage shouting in Brussels like a bad cop in one of those Angry Young Man movies, unfortunately giving a handsome, bearded, manly Scotsman right out of Jane Austen a brilliant, passionate speech–Scotland has not let you doon, he said, and please don’t let Scotland doon–that instantly made Scotland the darling of Europe while England, well, there will always be an England. That same day the president of Iceland said that now that Great Britain has left the EU it can join Iceland, Norway, Greenland and the Faroe Islands in the European Economic Area (EEA). Though actually Britain can’t because it would mean that Faroese would be able to move to England and skinheads can’t spell Faroese, let alone Kalaallit Nunaat.

Meanwhile, Iceland 2, Britain 1.

I don’t think the anchors at BBC have had this much monotonal fun since the Suez Crisis.

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2005 Faroe Islands stamp commemorating the friendly wartime relations between British soldiers and the Faroese population.

 

Fighting them on the beaches

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Wow…the UK Labour Party–the flagship of all labor parties and the first to experiment in large scale democratic socialism–is at its nadir and might just be self-destructing entirely as a political party capable of being in power. Jeremy Corbyn, the light of the Left on social media at his ascent in what seems like only yesterday–has proven to be one of the worst leaders in the long and storied history of the Labour Party. Amazing that you can have simultaneous power vacuums in both the Tories and the loyal opposition. Both right wing populism and democratic socialism have disgraced themselves these past few months in the United Kingdom. Let’s see what emerges out of this. An independent Scotland, for one thing. But also probably a moderate Conservative Party and the annoying UK Independence Party on its right reduced to nothingness after all its Brexit lies, and a truncated Labour Party that kisses its far left goodbye. Everyone heading back to the safety of the moderate center. Dull, true, but maybe they can straighten things out. This chaos before the storm of revolution from either end of the British political spectrum is just too scary anymore. Brexit is probably more the result of stunning British political incompetence than anything else. Then again, the Brits do this periodically, muddling through and mucking up until things get so bad–think 1940–that a Churchill has to be dug up. Indeed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne delivered up a thoroughly Churchillian we shall fight them on the beaches speech today:

“It will not be plain sailing in the days ahead.
But let me be clear. You should not underestimate our resolve.
We were prepared for the unexpected.
We are equipped for whatever happens.”
As if Brexit were a new Dunkirk, and England, once again denuded of defenses, stood alone against, well, England.
6359826906053186532094949596_dunkirk

The British unexpectedly exiting Europe in 1940.