Bernie Sanders Archives - Page 2 of 4

Where is the revolution?

Huge outbreak of civil disobedience. The cause?

Actress Susan Sarandon has said “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in. Then things will really, you know, explode.” She made similar comments on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

Then last week, on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, “Sarandon took her argument a step further, all but encouraging [Bernie] Sanders supporters to sit out in November should Clinton become the Democratic nominee.”

I know other people willing to vote for DJT rather than HRC, because Trump will either make things better or so much worse that people will get off their duffs and have mass protests. Whereas Hillary will be an incrementalist, picking off a couple of Sanders issues to placate the left. More than one person has suggested that Hillary would make a good Republican from the era before many of them (Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina) went guano crazy.

I keep vacillating between expecting the revolution, the political one that Bernie Sanders keeps talking about, or perhaps worse, and… almost nothing.

In response to a comment from an old acquaintance of mine, a fellow named Max Dee wrote:

At one point, I thought riots would be breaking out all over. I figure the American people had finally been pushed to their limit and they would take to the street to express their displeasure at being treated like garbage by their elected leaders. Didn’t happen. I wanted to find out why.

Then there was a huge demonstration in Chicago. People were coming from all over to protest. But what the cause? Macy’s was removing the name Marshall Field from the store. And in looking, I see it again and again.

Huge outbreak of civil disobedience. The cause? Sporting events. Black Friday. Lotto Fever. What would really upset the masses? Dropping the Super Bowl coverage. What would get people riled up and shouting? Delay shipping in the latest smart phone. At one point I didn’t think we could have a president as bad as Dubya Bush. Now I don’t think we’ll have one any better. You get the government you deserve.

Now rioting does happen when the social contract gets broken. But it’s usually in marginalized communities, and onlookers scratch their heads and say, “What’s wrong with THOSE people? They’re burning down their own neighborhoods!”

Given the continuing inequality that Occupy Wall Street began addressing a half-decade ago, where do you think we’re going as a country:
1) If Trump wins (which many people dismiss as a possibility, but I’m not one of them)
2) If Clinton wins

A bunch of religious leaders has issued a Call to Resist Bigotry — A Statement of Faithful Obedience. DJT is the target.

Oh, a note to you rabid Clinton supporters: these belligerent calls for Bernie to drop out of the race, since he has no likely path to the nomination, are not helpful. He maintains leverage going to the convention as a candidate, to formulate the party platform. Of course, NO ONE EVER remembers much what’s on the platform. Frankly, Hillary’s folk cannot fathom the depth of the true left’s contempt for her family.

Those Bernie supporters are not Bernie’s just to hand over. They’re committed to HIM, not the Democratic party, which he only recently joined. His supporters are grieving his, and their, probable loss and you’re over there hectoring, “Get over it!” Please Stop It.

In time, some will vote for Clinton; I will, even though she’s more of a war hawk than I’d like. I know I’m reacting, in part, as a response to some blatant sexism. What IS the “woman card” that Drump has accused Clinton of playing? Is it like the race card, only with estrogen instead of melanin?

A few Bernie supporters will vote for Trump. A bunch of them will cast their ballot for Jill Stein from the Green Party. A fair number will stay home in November. Hill fans: your nagging WILL NOT HELP your cause; give it time.

The Lydster: Feeling the Bern

I swear I saw Joe Bruno.

On Monday, April 11, not one but THREE Presidential candidates were going to be in the Capital District of New York State: John Kasich (R), Bernie Sanders (D), and Donald Drumpf (R). A day or two before, The Daughter started wheedling me – why didn’t she bug her mother? – to see one of them, the one alphabetically last.

I said no. I said no because I was afraid she might get hurt. She said that no one was going to hurt a little girl, but I noted that she is taller than most adult women. She should watch him on television. (I was also afraid I might get hurt, but I didn’t bring that up.)

Her counter-proposal was to see Bernie Sanders. I noted that he too would be on TV, and he was speaking during the school day.

“But it would be educational!”

She wanted ME to contact her teacher to ask if she could go, but I said she could go if SHE asked her teacher and she said yes; she can be shy in these matters.

Monday morning, I had to get a blood test, which I ended up going to TWICE because I forgot my insurance card the first time. I kept checking my email to see if her teacher contacted me. The Wife came home early – she had an eye test in the early afternoon – and she checked HER email, where she received a positive response from the teacher to MY inquiry.

By this time, it was already noon. The Washington Armory opened at 11 a.m., and the rally was at 2 p.m. I got the Daughter out of school. The Wife dropped us a block from the Armory, because I figure the traffic at Washington and Lark would be crazy, and so it was.

We went to the end of the line, which was down Washington Avenue, across Dove Street, up Elk Street to behind the armory; had we realized, we would have gone the shorter route.

I engaged a young man, 33, behind us in conversation. We decided that this was very educational for the Daughter, because it addressed sociology (the nature of the crowd), history, political science, meteorology (it was very windy, raining briefly; his girlfriend was freezing), and undoubtedly other disciplines.

A green car drove by a couple times, with Drumpf USA, etc. painted in splotchy white, as though he’d used a huge bottle of Wite-Out. It had two huge American flags.

Even as the Armory was in sight, I knew the capacity of the Washington Armory was 3000 for basketball games, maybe 1000 more for something like this, and that we probably wouldn’t get in. This turned out to be the case.

Still, we stuck around. I ran into my friends Dan and Lynne. I bought The Daughter a Feel the Bern T-shirt and a couple buttons.

She started taking notes, as we listened to the activities inside via a couple speakers that kept cutting out. The audio in front stopped playing music, and we heard, “I’m sorry the venue wasn’t big enough.”

BERNIE CAME OUT!

He gave a seven-minute speech on his main topics: end fracking, Medicare for all, free college, climate change is real. “We can’t spend trillions in Iraq while we leave our cities at home.” Some families are spending 50-60% on housing each month. There’s too much police violence. We need a $15 per hour minimum wage.

He noted that movements develop from the bottom up: trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights.

After that, we caught a bus and went home, and watched the last 50 minutes of the speech on TV. We also saw Kasich speak in Troy.

The Wife took us out to dinner; it was quite good. In another room, I swear I saw Joe Bruno, the former state Senate Majority Leader, surrounded by a dozen others.

The Daughter was trying to rush The Wife home, because she (and I) wanted to watch The Donald. He didn’t say anything in that way he generally does: read some reviews. All in all, an excellent day.

The next day, The Daughter confessed that she didn’t REALLY wanted to see Donald, she wanted to see Bernie, but used the DJT request as an opening salvo in what she REALLY wanted. Well played, Daughter, but I would have said yes to Bernie, eventually, even without the chicanery.

How God wants us to vote

“Any talk of using the Bible should start with a few acknowledgments, the first of which is that the Bible is not a book, rather it is a collection of books.”

A little over a year ago, a few of the bloggers of the Times Union newspaper met at the home of retired television news reporter Ken Screven, in the foreground of this picture. All the other bloggers I knew: historian/environmental activist Don Rittner; photographer Chuck Miller, and Unitarian minister Sam Trumbore.

The person I did not know was Liz Lemery Joy. She was a very charming and articulate woman. Her blog focus is “A Biblical stance on political/legislative issues.”

In March, she first promised to write about Christians and voting. “We’re going to go to the Word of God, and I’m going to show you what God says about the political and legislative issues we’re facing as a state and a nation.”

Later that month, she declared that It’s the Christians fault our country is in such a mess, because they do not vote in sufficient numbers.

Finally, she described Ted Cruz, a breath of fresh air in Upstate! He is, she describes, a “level headed candidate, who actually respects the Constitution, come and address voters in our area. People in upstate are hurting economically and the power-hungry Albany machine has done nothing to help.”

Her chief issue, though, is his opposition to abortion: “How a person values other people’s lives absolutely determines how they will govern in office. Why? Because how they regard the worth of another human life, determines where their moral compass is and how they will carry out everything they do in political office… If a leader doesn’t value life, they will also disregard and be callous to other matters of governing and legislating that require principle and virtue.”

This, unsurprisingly, generated lots of comments, many of them unrepeatable. TU blogger Heather Fazio, who disagrees with Liz, solicited, then summarized some comments about Liz’s posts here and here.

A TU blogger named Michael Rivest declared The Bible does not tell us how to vote, pointing to the scriptural inconsistencies in the arguments of people from both sides of the political fence.

While I certainly would not come to the same conclusion as Ms. Joy did, I tend to agree with her premise, so I don’t think Mr. Rivest is correct either. Cherry-picking Scripture, one can “prove” anything, or nothing, about how God wants us to vote, or anything else.

Walter Ayres addresses this point quite well.

Any talk of using the Bible should start with a few acknowledgments, the first of which is that the Bible is not a book, rather it is a collection of books. It is more like a library and, just as libraries do not all contain the same books, neither do Bibles… These books vary in nature; e.g., some are historical, some are legalistic, some are poetry.

Many times, when people claim that the Bible says something, what they really mean is that a particular book of the Bible says something. Another book of the Bible may say something else.

This brings us to the issue of proof-texting, a method of claiming Biblical support for a position by choosing selected texts, often out of context, to support a particular position. One example is using select verses to support or oppose to the death penalty without regard to the original intent of the author. Proof-texting does not lead to good theology.

And it gets more complicated…

In other words, interpreting the Bible in not always as easy as it might seem. People of good will can reach different conclusions. And we all should be very careful before we claim to speak for God.

What he said.

In a follow-up post, Ayres, who is a self-described Roman Catholic, quotes Pope Francis when he wrote: “An authentic faith… always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” He also writes about four principles of Catholic social teaching in the document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.

In the New York Times magazine article Donald Drumpf, American Preacher, Dartmouth professor Jeff Sharlet writes:

Drumpf…returns [faith] to the roots of Christian business conservatism, which is where he has been all along: Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 best seller, “The Power of Positive Thinking”…

“Positive Thinking” isn’t about serving God; it’s about “applied Christianity,” using God to achieve “a perfected and amazing method of successful living.” The method is like a closed loop, a winners’ circle of the soul. “The man who assumes success tends already to have success,” Peale writes, a tautological spirituality as instantly recognizable in Trumpism as the drumbeat of his words: “success,” “amazing.” Peale’s message resonated most with the upper middle class — those, like Drumpf himself, who saw themselves as winners. The prosperity gospel recasts the same promise to those, like Drumpf’s followers, who feel lost.

On the surface, the prosperity gospel is a simple transaction. The preacher is blessed, and you can be, too. All you have to do is invest. How? The usual way: You give him your money. Only, your money is just a metaphor. The good news is that faith will be repaid in kind. The deal — belief in return for relief, belief as a form of relief — is as old as religion, too fundamental to human consciousness to dismiss simply as a con. Pray for rain, sacrifice to the gods, keep kosher — you needn’t believe to recognize the power of trading devotion for the hope of well-being.

My fortnightly church group has been slowly reading Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. They write: “Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal and powerful.”

It’s no secret that on Tuesday, I’ll be supporting Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Presidential primary, who is the gold standard in presidential politics “on matters of economic equality, social justice, combatting poverty and human rights that Pope Francis has placed before the world and at the center of his papacy.” For ME – no, I’m NOT telling you how to vote – he is my clear theological choice.

Or maybe the “Ted Cruz” in this parody article is right, that Jesus IS too liberal to follow:

The most disturbing thing about Jesus, said Cruz, “is his obsession with caring for and hanging out with a bunch of losers, like poor people and homeless beggars, sick and unemployed people, strangers and immigrants (some of them undocumented!), and even prisoners.”

“I’m not making this up,” Cruz continued. “He — the real Jesus — is as radical as any longhaired punk camping out with street people in Boston or Philadelphia. If you don’t believe me, you can go read it for yourself, in the Gospel of Matthew, 25:31-46. Check it out. And don’t miss the part where Jesus says that showing kindness and generosity toward the least fortunate is the same as showing kindness and generosity toward Jesus himself. Now that’s just dangerous left-wing nonsense, worse than Obamacare.”

April snow

Lion King

The first time I wore boots in the winter of 2015-2016: April 5, 2016.
The first time I SHOULD have worn boots in that period: April 4, 2016, which ended up generating four inches, about 10 cm. I should have worn them mostly because people seem to have forgotten how to shovel snow. This includes, BTW, the building I work in. With temperatures hitting 70F (21C) in the past couple of weeks, temperatures in the 20s F (just below zero C) are a shock to some.

But it was a non-event winter here, so I’m not complaining about a little April snow. It has snowed in Albany in April before, in 1982 and 2000, two times I specifically recalled. It snowed on May 18, 2002, the year The Wife graduated from grad school, and they had to bring the ceremony inside.

Invasion of the vote seekers

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, stands with Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., after speaking at a rally at Cohoes High School on Monday, April 4, 2016, in Cohoes, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Uncharacteristically, New York State matters this year in both parties’ presidential primaries on April 19.

I managed to have gotten invited to see Hillary Clinton when she stopped in Albany County on April 4. I opted against it, in part because The Wife had been home with a sick child all day, and I wasn’t that feeling great myself, certainly not well enough to wait out in the cold to get into the event.

Also, I wasn’t planning on voting for her in the primary. Still, she’s a former First Lady, former Secretary of State, and twice elected U.S. Senator from my state, when I DID vote for her.

Later that evening, I tuned into the CBS Evening News, which I had recorded, and discovered WRGB Channel 6 had pre-empted it to show the intros by Tonko and Gillibrand, plus the first 13 minutes of HRC’s speech, then presumably cut away to a game show. I reckon the Time Warner news probably covered it more thoroughly.

Ted Cruz was in Scotia in nearby Schenectady County yesterday. John Kasich (rhymes with basic) and Bernie Sanders may be in the area soon as well.

Speaking of Bernie: I read about the Message Requests function on Facebook from Mark Evanier this week. Turns out I had five messages there. Four seemed spammy. The fifth, from February 9 asked me to promote a march for Bernie on February 27. I probably would have.

The cringeworthy Donald was looking for an Albany venue for a rally next week. I mentioned to my spouse that maybe I’d stop by, not to participate or to protest, but merely to observe. She, uncharacteristically, scowled, “Be careful. I MEAN it!”

Culcha

Last month, the family caught The Lion King at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady (near Albany) Maundy Thursday evening; there’s a story about the timing, but it involves someone else. The Wife and I had seen it before, maybe five years ago, but The Daughter had not.

Since then, she played young Nala at church, so we knew she’d enjoy the spectacle, and she did. She could sing along with several songs, notably Chow Down, which she never sang, but heard often as the hyenas practiced their threats to eat Simba and Nala.

Good Friday, our church choir performed Charles Gounod’s Seven Last Words, which was very moving. Even more so, Ah, Holy Jesus, an arrangement by Ferguson, featuring the viola.

I’ve been to the Massry Center at the College of Saint Rose twice in recent weeks, which is within walking distance of our house. Before Easter, I listened to the Mozart requiem, a piece of music I’ve sung thrice in my life and truly love.

This past Sunday, I attended the senior recital of Maria Rabbia, a CSR senior who has been singing at our church choir. There was a large First Presbyterian contingent in the audience.

She performed pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Chopin. Scanning the program beforehand, I wondered why she hadn’t put the Chopin before the Debussy, which would have put the music in both alphabetical and chronological order. But Chopin is a barn burner, and thus a more suitable ending.

Maria has been studying piano since she was five. the and organ – she played the postlude at church once, quite well – since she was 12. Mark my words: Maria Rabbia will be a notable musician someday.

College, and a LOT of politics (ARA)

Do I say to him what he ought to do in order to try to save the relationship OR assume those facts to be immutable. and advise him how to survive it better?

My friend Mary wrote:

Hi Roger- Re: “Ask Roger Anything” – I’m helping [my son] plan his courses for next semester, and so these questions come to mind: What was your very favorite course taken as an undergrad? Most useful later in life (for any reason)? One you struggled to get through but was worth it? Etcetera…

Favorite course: American Government and Politics, the intro course, which has also been quite useful for me as a librarian in ascertaining which federal department might have jurisdiction over different issues. Given his proclivity for politics – I follow his Facebook page – it might be a good fit.

I also liked a music intro course where I got a little music theory, composed some little ditties, and had a lot of fun.

Most useful later: intro to psychology, and logic. Understanding how the human mind works.

Struggled with, but was worth it: intro to anthropology, which I must confess was a struggle because it was at 8 a.m. Understanding where we as a species came from.

Struggled with, worth it as an exercise: intro to calculus. I was failing, going into the final, crammed for two days, passed the final. Looked at the book two weeks later but didn’t understand a thing.

In general, I believe a broad liberal arts education can serve one well, especially with someone as bright as your son clearly is.

A whole bunch of questions about our political election year

Best described in this parody: Finnish News Team Reports On U.S. Elections

The evil Amy from Sharp Little Pencil muses:

Why is Donald Drumpf? (That’s the whole question, hee hee hee)

After I started writing this, my friend Dan wrote The Presidential Distraction Examined, which touches on all the candidates, and which you should read. Or The rise of American authoritarianism. Heck, you answered your own question with Greedy Bastard.

We Americans have always been attracted to the carnival barker. We know that he’s probably giving us a bunch of hooey, but we’ll still spend the quarter to see the half-boy/half-alligator, or the bearded lady.

Drumpf is a master of self-promotion. The fact that his businesses, his brands are probably not as successful as he would have you believe is irrelevant. In a society where facts are at a premium, and celebrity is king – is Robert Downey Jr. moving to Albany? Er, no – a guy with an unconvincing combover of an unnatural color can be perceived as “genuine”, the fact that he contradicts himself regularly notwithstanding.

His birther attack on President Obama, I’ve come to see, was a trial run. Without a shred of evidence, Drumpf kept alive the notion that Obama was born in Nigeria. Or Indonesia.

Now he runs for President, and right out of the gate, he insults Mexican immigrants, and John McCain, and Muslims, and intelligent women. The punditry is SURE that his campaign will be over before it begins. But he gains support, not IN SPITE of those remarks, but BECAUSE of them. “He’s unfiltered! He’s not politically correct!”

And people watch. The ratings of the summer 2015 GOP debates were at least FOUR TIMES as large as the ones in 2011. As Les Moonves said about CBS News’ overabundant coverage of the man: “Who would’ve thought this circus would come to town?… It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah likened Moonves’ and the news media’s, attitude to that of a doctor who says, ‘I hate to see all these patients coming in with cancer, but I have to admit, it’s been really good for my practice.'”

Let me say a word in defense of political correctness. Saying whatever comes to mind is not the sign of maturity or bravery, but of the mindset of children, who used to say the darndest things to Art Linkletter on his daytime talk show many years ago. When grownups do the same things, they are often a$$@#^%! The fact that his speeches have been targeted to third- or fourth-graders intellect is, sadly, effective. Even when it’s crazy.

Maybe that comes from talking too much to himself. On Morning Joe (MSNBC), he said recently: “I know what I’m doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself.” To that end, here he is, consulting his campaign advisers.

And something else: none of his opponents are nearly as good as being contemptible as The Donald is. Marco Rubio started a riff suggesting the inferior size of Drumpf’s…er, genitalia. But Marco, not Donald, seemed the lesser person for this, as he admitted shortly before he dropped out of the race. The late-night comics had started referring to Rubio as Little Marco, just as the tycoon does.

Some ex-Jeb Bush operative said a Drumpf presidency would be like a chimp driving a tractor. Seems petty. Whereas The Donald is an EXCELLENT mudslinger.

One cannot underestimate, though, how much Americans HAVE been ripped off by the rich and powerful, the stuff that Bernie Sanders has been talking about. That anger and frustration are real, but Drumpf as the solution is surreal.

This, naturally, leads to Buffalo-area book scribe Jaquandor

Do you think Bernie Sanders would be an effective President, in terms of furthering a liberal agenda?

I chose to believe that, on the off chance Bernie Sanders gets elected – hey, he won the overseas vote – that his win would represent such a seminal shift in the body electoral that he would have actually a chance to enact some of his reforms. This would be especially true if some of those Senate seats in marginal states go to the Democrats.

And if he DOESN’T win, perhaps he’s started a movement that will prevail in 2020, when, presumably the country will, by then, realize that supporting a Nordic-style approach is not an act of altruism but of self-promotion.

Of course, I can only see this happening if, in addition to him making a miraculous comeback on the Democratic side against Hillary Clinton, that either 1) Drumpf gets the GOP nomination or 2) he is denied the nomination by some GOP machinations and goes third party.

BTW, I find it hysterical that the Republican establishment is now largely supporting Ted Cruz since they pretty much HATE Ted Cruz. Naturally, Cruz has called on US police to patrol Muslim neighborhoods in the wake of the Brussels attack.

You may have seen former GOP Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham say, less than a month ago, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” And now Graham is fundraising for Cruz.

It’s not that they’ve changed their minds about the obstructionist who is Rafael Cruz. Samantha Bee illustrates how unlikeable Ted Cruz really is—his whole life. It’s that the GOP establishment finds Drumpf the greater existential threat to the party, and perhaps the nation. Ruth Marcus, in the Washington Post back in December 2015, said that Drumpf was a better choice than Cruz because one could work with the former, but three months later, she changed her mind.

Both GOP candidates were criticized, though not by name, in this CBS Sunday Morning piece by a combat veteran this past week. “For too many Americans in 2016, war isn’t a dire act turned to once all other options have been exhausted. It’s a narcotic, a quick fix, something that happens in strange, faraway lands, where other people’s sons and daughters do violent things for country.”

The most eclectic Dustbury wonders:

What would be the one change you’d most like to see in the governance of the State of New York?

It appears that the sense of entitlement has brought forth all those indictments of our state legislators, including, in the last year or so, the Speaker of the Assembly AND the head of the State Senate, continues to run rampant.

Generally, I disdain term limits, because I believe philosophically the people should be able to elect who they want. But I also recognize that the state legislature gets to pick the gerrymandered boundaries of the state legislature.

I like the idea of a truly independent board that would redraw the lines every ten years, pretty much ignoring the previous boundaries, and primarily paying attention to finding the population balance, still with some consideration of neighborhoods, would be nice. I just don’t know what that looks like.

Coincidentally there will be a seminar this Friday at the Albany Law School, “Can a NYS Constitutional Convention Strengthen Government Ethics?”

“With so much talk about the erosion of integrity in government, can the problems with elected officials that so frequently dominate our headlines be fixed statutorily or are they more appropriately addressed through constitutional change? As November 2017 and a statewide referendum on whether or not to call a constitutional convention near, this and other questions will be increasingly on the minds of the voters. This forum will address these important issues.”

Jaquandor:

How is Andrew Cuomo doing, six years in?

He’s a strange egg. He’s been pushing the $15/hour minimum wage, and much of the literature shows him with his late father, the former governor Mario Cuomo. Mario, I liked; Andrew, not so much.

I remain convinced, with the fall of Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, both on corruption charges, that Andrew could be next. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.