They’re planning another run to Canada this month to stock up on insulin — and to call attention to their cause. This time, they’ll be taking the scenic route, driving from Minnesota through Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan en route to London, Ontario, where Frederick Banting began the work that led to the discovery of insulin nearly a century ago.
Like millions of Americans, Greenseid and Nystrom are stressed and outraged by the rising costs of prescription drugs in the United States — a problem Republicans and Democrats alike have promised to fix.
Insulin is a big part of the challenge. More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. About 7.5 million, including 1.5 million with Type 1 diabetes, rely on insulin.
Some pharmaceutical companies, under pressure from U.S. lawmakers, have tried to reduce the cost for some patients. But many who rely on insulin still struggle. Large numbers resort to rationing — a dangerous and sometimes deadly practice.
Some diabetics and their families are taking matters into their own hands. They meet in coffee shops and strip mall parking lots to exchange emergency supplies. An unknown number travel outside the country to buy the lifesaving drug for less.
None of this is recommended by U.S. officials, and some of it might be illegal under Food and Drug Administration guidelines. But the organizers of the caravan — their word, a nod to the migrants traveling in groups through Mexico to the U.S. border — are speaking out about their trip because they want Americans to see how drug prices push ordinary people to extremes.
“When you have a bad health-care system, it makes good people feel like outlaws,” Greenseid said.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
What did you think of the bunch of socialists you just saw debating on stage?
Wait, you may protest, you didn’t see any socialists up there. And you’d be right. The Democratic Party has clearly moved left in recent years, but none of the presidential candidates are anything close to being actual socialists — no, not even Bernie Sanders, whose embrace of the label is really more about branding (“I’m anti-establishment!”) than substance.
Nobody in these debates wants government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean. Most of the candidates are, instead, what Europeans would call “social democrats”: advocates of a private-sector-driven economy, but with a stronger social safety net, enhanced bargaining power for workers and tighter regulation of corporate malfeasance. They want America to be more like Denmark, not more like Venezuela.
Leading Republicans, however, routinely describe Democrats, even those on the right of their party, as socialists. Indeed, all indications are that denunciations of Democrats’ “socialist” agenda will be front and center in the general election campaign. And everyone in the news media accepts this as the normal state of affairs.
Which goes to show the extent to which Republican extremism has been accepted simply as a fact of life, barely worth mentioning.
Ignoring the racial redistricting problem won’t make it go away.
The Supreme Court decision on Thursday in Rucho v. Common Cause purports to take federal courts out of the business of policing partisan gerrymanders and leave the issue for states to handle. But the decision will instead push federal courts further into the political thicket, and, in states with substantial minority voter populations, force courts to make logically impossible determinations about whether racial reasons or partisan motives predominate when a party gerrymanders for political advantage. It didn’t have to be this way.
For more than a decade, federal courts have struggled with the question of whether there are standards for separating permissible from impermissible partisan considerations in drawing district lines. They struggled because Justice Anthony Kennedy had kept the door open to having federal courts hold some districting plans unconstitutional.
With Justice Kennedy’s retirement, a solid five-justice conservative majority firmly shut the door in the Rucho case, saying that there were no judicially manageable standards to apply. For a court that regularly uses court-created standards — such as those determining when someone has acted with racially discriminatory intent or when a monopolist created “substantially anticompetitive effects” — the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts is disingenuous.
Look, it’s not that I think Joe Biden is the anti-Christ any more than I believe Bernie Sanders is the reincarnation of Karl Marx, but he does have a public record and it was troubling when he made it and it’s troubling today. Last time I checked repealing the Hyde Amendment (which he whipped in the Senate ladies) was not on his action agenda despite being quite a popular idea among Democrats as recently as last week, and indeed his entire Legislative history is pro-Life and anti-Abortion.
It’s ground Gillibrand could have confronted him on and tried to a bit but she was kind of a feminist black hole, ignoring her opponents (and the questions) entirely. Still, if you are a feminist and you have the patriarchal personification of the status quo standing next to you, wouldn’t you feel compelled to remind him? Biden is no Al Franken, he’s just creepy in that same bad touches clown/actor clueless kind of way that some people have. Me? I did politics for a while, I have a “personal space” zone of about a meter and I remember and resent every intrusion. You may be more comfortable with the hugging thing than I am.
On the other hand Kamala Harris kneecapped him without hesitation- “As the only African-American on this stage, may I address that?”
Come back here. I’ll bite your legs off.
And then she crushed him with the Busing story. I, of course, remember all that and Joe Biden too. He’s a disappointing Democrat for sale to the highest bidder, a reliable vote only for Majority Leader and otherwise an accident waiting to happen. He likes Trains, probably puppies too.
There is no question who lost, and Kamala shot to the top of my maybe list, however experience shows the one who actually carries out the hit usually takes a hit themselves.
And The Rest
Russell and Dawn just hated that.
It will surprise none of you that my opinion of Sanders has changed not a bit. I think at the end it will be Biden Neo Libs, Bernie and Warren, and Harris. Harris is at least better than Biden and probably better than Barack. Were it just Bernie and Joe I think Biden would get ground down, he’s on the wrong side of history. With the ladies it’s possible that the men’s support will leach away and one of them is left standing.
The rest are running for Vice and other Cabinet offices, though some are interesting.
Tied for wierdest are Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang, Self Help Author and Tech Entrepreneur respectively. Williamson seems remarkably grounded given her profession (yes, I have been to a Tony Robbins Training, have you?) and Yang no more crazy than average- his guaranteed income program makes perfect economic sense even given Keynes/Samuelson models and assumptions. Shame he’s a kook actually.
Pick an Office? Sure, Secretary of Education and Treasury Secretary.
Michael Bennet? John Hickenlooper? Kindly, absent minded, and clueless Uncle Joe is stepping on your ConservaDem Oxygen line and strangling you. Also you are bad Democrats and dull, dull, dull.
Eric Swalwell has a lot of things happening for him, including the Impeachment of Unindicted Co-Conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio. He’s also open to the re-election option so I’m not sure he’ll last until California.
Pete Buttigieg looks like Tom Holland growed up a mite and there is no denial of youthful appeal. He’s a 2019 Moderate and I think Joe will suck him dry like a Vampire ultimately, though don’t get me wrong- he’s still better than Joe, Bennet, or Hickenlooper. He is badly wounded by the shooting in South Bend but otherwise would have been impressive.
Mostly Stephen and Seth got it too, but they weren’t as good as Trevor was in less time to prepare.
The Vikings are coming for all of us and they will end this village
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
An assassination in Europe sparks World War I; Elian Gonzalez and his father leave for Cuba; Boxer Mike Tyson disqualified for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear; Richard Rodgers and Mel Brooks born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.
The world’s second-most populous country is running out of water.
About 100 million people across India are on the front lines of a nationwide water crisis. A total of 21 major cities are poised to run out of groundwater next year, according to a 2018 report by government-run think tank NITI Aayog.
Much-needed monsoon rains have only just arrived in some places, running weeks late, amid a heatwave that has killed at least 137 people this summer.
French city shuts down public pools after two women wear burkinis
Grenoble authorities say shutdown was requested by lifeguards at the pool
Agence France-Presse in Grenoble
Despite the unprecedented heatwave sweeping across western Europe, lifeguards in Grenoble have shut down the city’s two municipal swimming pools after Muslim women went swimming in burkinis.
The women went to the pools twice at the initiative of the Alliance Citoyenne rights group to challenge a city ban on the full-body swimwear.
According to a statement from the town hall, the lifeguards at the pools asked for the shutdown because “they are there to maintain safety and they can’t do that when they have to worry about the crowds”. It added: “We are working towards a positive solution.”
Father, Neighbor, KillerGermany’s Chilling New Far-Right Terror
The recent politically motivated assassination of a prominent local leader in Germany has raised concern about the growing threat of far-right extremism in the country. As investigators search for possible accomplices, politicians are struggling to find answers to the escalating violence. By DER SPIEGEL Staff
Looking back, it was almost as if the group of high-ranking officials tasked with protecting Germany had had some dark premonition about what would soon transpire.
As the interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states convened in a hotel in the northern city of Kiel, the first item on the agenda was a “security report.” Sinan Selen, the vice president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which is responsible for monitoring all forms of extremism, began enumerating the gravest threats to the country.
Why United Nations failed to save Rohingya
Insiders say UN sought to downplay criticism of Myanmar and was hamstrung by China, Russia opposition to firm response.
When Liam Mahony travelled to Myanmar to advise the United Nations on its handling of the Rohingya crisis, the dozens of aid workers he spoke to were almost unanimous in their appraisal of the organisation’s approach.
Their view, the researcher recalls, was “this was all screwed up… this was not going to help the Rohingya population”.
An aid worker who was helping to manage the detention camps in the western state of Rakhine – where the UN and others provide food and other basic necessities to tens of thousands of Rohingya who were forcibly relocated after riots in 2012 – offered Mahony a grim assessment of her role there.
Trump jokes to Putin: ‘Don’t meddle in the election, please’
By Jonathan Lemire
U.S. President Donald Trump met Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Friday for the first time since the special counsel found extensive evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. When asked if he would warn Russia not to meddle in the next election, Trump wore a bit of a smile, pointed his finger at Putin and dryly said: “Don’t meddle in the election, please.”
The tone of the president’s comments were immediately open to interpretation but would seem to do little to silence questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that his campaign did not collude with Russia in 2016. Their meeting in Japan was the first time the two sat together publicly since their summit in Helsinki nearly a year ago in which Trump pointedly did not admonish Putin over election interference and did not side with U.S. intelligence services over his Russian counterpart.
India arrests after women’s heads shaved for resisting rape
Two people have been arrested in India’s Bihar state after a group of men shaved the heads of two women as “punishment” for resisting rape.
The group, which included a local official, ambushed the mother and daughter in their home with the intent of raping them, police said.
When the women resisted, they assaulted them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village.
Police say they are searching for five others involved in the incident.
“We were beaten with sticks very badly. I have injuries all over my body and my daughter also has some injuries,” the mother told the ANI news agency.
Warren had a great night, could hardly been better if you scripted it and by “luck of the draw” (if you believe in such things and not my Completely True QAnon Conspiracy Theories) got a chance to be all Presidential and Front-Runnerish which can only help. She’s got MoMo (as in Momentum Movement) working and this can only reinforce it. It’s a great wakeup call for Left Democrats who are looking for Bernie without Bernie’s Baggage.
Beto took a beating but was at least noticeable, Castro crushed him in the Great Texas Pissing Contest and looks a lot better than he has though Julián’s still doomed (so is Beto). One of them should be running against Cornyn. de Blasio did much better than I expected but the bar was low and there’s no reason anyone should love him any more than New York City does (according to my biased polls the general reaction is- “Thank goodness for a real, Bloomberg doesn’t count, Democrat. Too bad he’s an idiot.”).
Booker had great comic reaction shots in the background but otherwise did little to improve his position which mostly seems to be “Hey! I’m just as articulate as Obama.” which even if true, and it might be, does not recommend his candidacy to me. Where’s Cory on Single Payer? No where, that’s where, even de Blasio had no hesitancy.
Klobuchar was mostly notable for running over time. John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tim Ryan did nothing that should change their hard to measure polling, Jay Inslee had a good one liner but not about his signature Global Warming Policy.
Of course they rated live recaps on Trevor and Stephen and Seth, but Sam Bee also got her shot-
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
America needs to give these women, and the accusations they’ve brought forth, the full attention they deserve.
I am simply disgusted by what’s happening in America.
My political differences with this president and his accomplices in Congress — and now on the Supreme Court — are only part of the reason. Indeed, those differences may not be the lesser reason, and that, for me, says a lot.
For me, the reason is that the country, or large segments of it, seems to be acquiescing to a particular form of evil, one that is pernicious and even playful, one in which the means of chipping away at our values and morals grow even stronger, graduating from tack hammer to standard hammer to sledgehammer.
America, it seems to me, is drifting toward catastrophe. Donald Trump is leading us there. And all the while, our politicians plot about political outcomes and leverage. Republican politicians are afraid to upset him; Democratic politicians are afraid to impeach him.
One thing that should never be underestimated is a politician’s clawing instinct toward self-preservation. These disciples of flexibility have learned well that the trees that remain standing are those that bend best in the storm.
Trump is to them a storm. But, to many of us, he is desolation, or the possibility thereof.
But, because nothing changes, because he is never truly held accountable, too many Americans are settling into a functional numbness, a just-let-me-survive-it form of sedation. But, that is where the edge of death is marked. That is where the rot begins. That is where a society loses itself.
It was election night at La Boom, a Queens nightclub, and Tiffany Cabán’s supporters had something to say.
“Black Lives Matter!” they shouted, an extraordinary cry at the victory party for a district attorney candidate. “Black Lives Matter!”
Such was the scene as the night’s tally ended with Ms. Cabán 1,090 votes ahead of Borough President Melinda Katz in the Democratic primary. The final toll won’t be known until at least next week, when absentee and other paper ballots are counted.
If Ms. Cabán’s lead holds, New York is likely to be added to the list of cities that have elected district attorneys who want to remake the criminal justice system to undo two decades of policies that led to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of black and Latino Americans, too often for minor crimes and drug-related offenses.
The election also affirms the growing power of a fairly new force in New York politics: a millennial-based coalition pulling the Democratic Party to the left, and challenging its leadership machine.
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joseph Crowley, the Queens Democratic chairman and fourth-ranking House member, last June, she gained star power more akin to Beyoncé’s than that of a freshman member of Congress. The city’s political establishment thought it was a fluke.
Victories by reform Democrats in the New York State Senate primary elections in September threw shade on those doubts. This election should put to rest the idea that the coalition isn’t a sustainable force.
Apparently the Sexual Predator-in-Chief’s protocol chief will not be on Air Force One accompanying him to the G-20 in Osaka, Japan. It seems that SeanLawler abruptly resigned after it was reported in the press that he was intimidating the White House Staff:
Sean Lawler, who holds the rank of ambassador within the State Department, has been Trump’s chief of protocol since December 2017. He was suspended indefinitely pending an investigation into his alleged harassment and discrimination of staff, NBC News reported.
One of the complaints against Lawler was that he would carry a whip around the office in an apparent attempt to intimidate co-workers, unnamed officials told NBC and Bloomberg.
The investigation is being conducted by the State Department and Lawler was told on Monday that he would have to leave pending the outcome, CNN reported. The network also reported that State Department officials told the office of protocol staff that Lawler had to leave over personnel issues.
Just when you think that some of the hires by this regime could get any worse, they never cease to surprise to the point where we aren’t surprised any more.
“Sticks and Stones may break my bones,
but whips and chains excite me.
So throw me down, tie me up,
and show me how you like me.”
― Skye Eagleday
Apparently, the whip had no effect on Sexual Predator-in-Chief’s buffoonery.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
U.S. air and naval forces ordered into the Korean War; John Dean testifies about the Nixon White House’s ‘enemies list’; Stonewall riots spark the modern gay rights movement; Actor Jack Lemmon dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
The Dalai Lama has said Donald Trump lacks moral principle and that he is open to the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists being a woman, but only if she is “attractive”.
In an interview with the BBC, the Dalai Lama also said that while he was a supporter of the EU and thought it would be better for the UK to remain part of it, he did not want to see Europe become “Muslim” or “African”.
Asked about the US president, whom the Tibetan spiritual leader has previously unflatteringly impersonated, he said: “His emotions [are] also a little bit,” and made a gesture waggling his finger near his temple. “One day he says something, another day he says something. But I think [there is a] lack of moral principle. When he became president, he expressed America first. That is wrong. America, they should take the global responsibility.”
China’s destination of choice
by Christine Chaumeau
For Sale and For Rent signs in Chinese are prominently displayed on buildings and construction sites in Sihanoukville, a Cambodian port city on the Gulf of Thailand that has become a destination of choice for Chinese investors in just a few months. On Independence Beach, two 38-storey towers are going up as part of the Blue Bay development, dwarfing everything around them. In the sales office, there’s a model of the development and brochures in Chinese and English. ‘We’ve already sold all the apartments in the first tower and 65% in the second. Our clientele is Chinese, Cambodian and Singaporean,’ the saleswoman told me. Bungalows on stilts and a swimming pool will be built on the beach. A casino and shopping centre will go on the mezzanine. The 1,450 apartments are due for release in 2019 and priced at $2,500-3,500 per square metre, a rate previously unheard of in this city.
Migrant rescue boat reaches Lampedusa, defying Italy’s orders to stay out
The charity ship Sea-Watch entered Italian waters on Wednesday with 42 migrants aboard, defying an order from Rome to stay away and provoking a furious response from Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
The captain of the German-owned boat, which flies the Dutch flag, had decided to head to the island of Lampedusa because the situation on board was “now more desperate than ever”, the group said in a statement.
It said captain Carola Rackete felt that maritime emergency law permitted the ship to enter Italian waters.
In his first reaction, Salvini, of the far-right League party, did not mince his words.
Australian student detained in North Korea was preparing to return home
He was interviewed by North Korea’s official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, and praised the country, in a report published this week, around the time he is believed to have been detained in Pyongyang.
Sigley complete the degree at Kim Il-sung University, where he had been studying literature, and was in good spirits in recent days, says his friend, the Australian National University North Korea expert Leonid Petrov.
‘Big loss’: Libya’s UN-recognised government ‘retakes’ key town
Government of National Accord claims it has wrested Gharyan from Khalifa Haftar’s forces who say fighting is ongoing.
Forces allied to Libya‘s UN-recognised government say they have retaken Gharyan, a strategic town south of the capital, Tripoli, although forces loyal to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar denied the claims.
Gharyan is the main forward base for the eastern-based Libya National Army (LNA) under Haftar which has been fighting to take control of Tripoli for almost three months.
Mustafa al-Mejii, a spokesman for forces loyal to the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord, told AFP news agency: “Gharyan is under our total control.”
Trump Criticizes Megan Rapinoe Over Refusal to Visit White House
The American soccer star had used an obscenity to dismiss the idea of a White House visit if her team won the Women’s World Cup.
Megan Rapinoe was still sweating through her uniform on Monday night, moments after scoring two goals for the United States women’s soccer team, when she was asked what the atmosphere around the Americans’ next World Cup match, an elimination game against France on Friday in Paris, might be like.
“Hopefully a complete spectacle, just an absolute media circus,” she said, with the blend of sarcasm and sincerity that has made her one of the most popular women’s soccer players in the world. “I hope it’s huge and crazy.”
Her wish has begun to come true — though perhaps not in the way she imagined.
DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette rarely make an endorsement of an individual candidate as our orientation is primarily policy and not personality. Hey, if you’re in favor of confiscatory wealth taxes (not as way out a Lefty idea as when I started talking about it) I’ll praise you for that and ignore your appalling ignorance of the finer points of Modern Monetary Theory (of course money is fake, been that way forever; the question is does it have utility as a medium of exchange?).
We do make exceptions for members who have contributed content like Mike Gravel.
Now if you remember Mike Gravel at all, it’s probably as the crusading Senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record so they would be declassified and publically available. In case you forgot those were all about how JFK, LBJ, the CIA, and the DoD lied us into a military defeat (don’t forget that, doesn’t happen often, we usually win) that killed slightly over 58,000 U.S. Soldiers (a conservative estimate not including ARVN and Allies).
The National Initiative is very different from the initiative process that we have in the twenty four states around the country. Those states – you just qualify, everybody throws money at it, and the people vote. That is not a good way to make law. Law requires a deliberative process where you have hearings, markups, proper communications, and the like. And in that way, the people can make laws and properly deliberate the policy issues that affect their lives. And that’s what the National Initiative will be – it’s a meta-tool which we put in the hands of the people, so they will be able to then have an affect on how they are governed. It will be the first time that people will have a government “by the people,” because the people will become lawmakers.
The definition of freedom is the participation in power. Power in representative government is lawmaking. If you don’t make the laws, all you can do is obey the law or go to jail. And so if you really want to have freedom, what we have to do is to make ourselves lawmakers. And the only tool available to do that is the National Initiative. And this is a tool that will not be enacted by representative government, because it dilutes their power and they’re not about to empower the people.
And that’s the reason why we have been struggling with an organization called The National Initiative for Democracy, sponsored by The Democracy Foundation. And so that’s the reason why we’re making an appeal now for your help, to donate whatever you can afford so that we can pay for this documentary and then use this documentary as a device to inform people so that they’ll be aware of the potential of the National Initiative as a tool to empower them to have a more meaningful role in the governing of their lives.
I’m standing in front of the Iwo Jima Memorial, and I’m blessed to live a block away, in fact, from my balcony I can look down at the Iwo Jima Memorial.
What this memorial represents is a sacrifice our young men have given for the safety of this country. Today we are visited with threats to our safety, but they’re of a different kind. They’re not of the kind of the Second World War, nor are they of the kind of the Cold War. What we have today is global terrorism.
Terrorism is not addressed with large armies, large military expenditures. It is addressed with a global intelligence effort where countries share their knowledge of the terrorists regardless of where they are. And then, with that kind of arrangement, we can prosecute and bring to justice these terrorists after they’ve committed a crime, and even before, when they’re plotting to commit a crime.
Now, that’s what we need more of, not what we presently have, which of course, is expenditures for jet fighters, for all kinds of hardware that was relevant in the Cold War, but is not relevant today. We spend more on defense, or war-making capability, than the rest of the world put together. And we now involve ourselves with two wars. One in Iraq, which was a fraudulent undertaking, and one in Afghanistan that need not be persued. We’re fighting for a country that is rampant with corruption.
And the same thing in Iraq: rampant with corruption. But they’ve taken our precious tax dollars and put it out in these countries so that these warlords, so that these people can be bribed and go out to the Arabian Peninsula and buy expensive homes and live off of the tax dollars that Americans have put forth. This is not a foreign policy that will lead to success. It will lead to the bankruptcy of the American people.
Now, keep in mind what we have is a situation where we spend more on defense than all the rest of the world put together. And the American people don’t even act as if they care. Now, that is a reflection, not only on the brainwashing that’s taken place, but it’s a reflection on the perceptions that Americans have about their role in the world.
I am endorsing Marcy Winograd in her race to represent California’s 36th District in Congress. She is a true progressive who will stand up to the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, and other corporate interests in Washington. Marcy is genuine in her concern for the people.
Marcy particularly understands the damage war profiteers and others who want to keep the war economy do to our country. As my friend Dan Ellsberg said in an earlier endorsement of Marcy, she was personally involved in the release of the Pentagon Papers. When I released the Pentagon Papers into the Senate record, I directly challenged the warmongers who benefit from the killing. Marcy Winograd would bring that spirit to the House. She can stand up against powerful special interests and for the poor, the veterans, the civilians, and others that war hurts.
Marcy Winograd represents the best the Democratic Party has to offer. Her opponent Jane Harman is just another Washington hawk disconnected from the real consequences of her Congressional votes. In 2007, during the Democratic presidential debates, I said that someone who made the political decision of voting to approve the Iraq War was not qualified to be President. I can comfortably extend that sentiment to the House of Representatives, and Harman did vote for the Iraq War. Keeping Harman in office strengthens war profiteers like Halliburton, General Electric, and others in their unhealthy quest for power.
Therefore, I urge the voters of California’s 36th district to cast their vote, and volunteer, for Democrat Marcy Winograd in tomorrow’s primary. If you do not live in California, a donation is still a worthwhile investment.
So as you can see this National Referendum/Direct Democracy deal is a big thing for him, I don’t necessarily agree (Prop 13) but certainly in the range of acceptable opinion on these pages (what would be unacceptable? We could start with “Jews Will Not Replace Us,” and descend into moderation hell one step at a time, I used to write tomes about this you know).
Today, at 89 years of age, Mike Gravel is still as sharp as a tack and still causing trouble.
Your average centrist politician is an amoral, soulless husk who wouldn’t be fit to babysit. Do people think Bill Clinton – who watched a mentally disabled man die so that he could get racists’ votes – could care less about them? Is Hillary any different? Booker? Harris? Biden?
Their plan was to trade the standard Democratic playbook for the equally peculiar norms of far-left Twitter. They angled for donors with tweets like, “The neoliberal dream is someone who is smooth and cool and looks dignified in all the official photos and also crushes Arabs’ skulls on the weekend,” or, “Pete Buttigieg is what you get when Patrick Bateman decides to pursue politics instead of banking.” Where most politicians were likely to sense danger, the Teens saw only retweets and likes. When one detractor suggested that people donate to him instead of to Mike Gravel, the Teens sent him $20 of their own money via PayPal. (He was freaked out, but onlookers loved it.) When another skeptic joked, “I’m going to get Mike Gravel to post ‘Trans Rights uwu,’ ” @MikeGravel replied, “Trans Rights uwu.” The extent to which the octogenarian appreciated “uwu” — an emoticon signifying superprecious joy — was unclear. In any case, it received more than 3,500 likes.
Through this kind of haphazard interaction, @MikeGravel began to find fans. Beyond the comic incongruity of an old man’s tweeting like a teenager, fans seemed to revel in the overarching strangeness of a candidate’s commenting directly on an issue, or a candidate’s replying to any tweet at all. Followers named themselves #GravelGang or #Gravelanche — a portmanteau that relies on mispronouncing the candidate’s name, which rhymes with lapel, not gavel. (Gravel himself prefers #Gravelistas.) Out of this new constituency, Williams and Oks assembled a volunteer campaign staff. Some of these staff members, who now number 80, work from their day jobs, sending out campaign missives on the clock with a free version of the email service MailChimp.
Gravel’s platform, the most detailed of any Democratic candidate’s, includes a vast slate of issues that poll well with young voters: immigration reform, student-debt forgiveness, a Green New Deal, military-spending cuts, a policy of nonaggression abroad. Oks and Williams call Gravel a few times a week to approve any additions to the slate. Because Gravel isn’t really trying to be president, he can also afford to openly support reparations, the decriminalization of sex work and the end of “Israeli apartheid” — policies considered urgent on the far left but largely ignored or rejected by the Democratic Party. His website, MikeGravel.org, hosts discrete pages for 47 issues. Pete Buttigieg, by contrast, introduced his own website with zero. (Buttigieg has since added his own issues page.) On Instagram, the Mike Gravel page taunted, “Good morning @pete.buttigieg did you finish your policy page yet it’s due today you can copy mine dude just hurry.”
Broadly speaking, the Mike Gravel campaign is part of the same Democratic Socialist moment that elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 and nearly nominated Bernie Sanders in 2016. If Gravel seemed like a sideshow in 2008, then today — post-recession, post-Occupy, post-Trump — his campaign represents the most absurd form of a legitimate movement on the left that feels little obligation to the Democratic Party. Among this young, emergent class of leftists, change is enacted through local organizing efforts, and discourse tends to play out on Twitter, where news, and the organizations that produce it, are subject to daily systemic critique. The rise of leftist discourse on Twitter has helped to hone a new political humor that undergirds the @MikeGravel campaign. The target of this humor is not President Trump but rather what the far left sees as a defeatist and servile center-left that values compromise over belief and denigrates the social reforms beloved by the very same voters it seeks.
These values are ingrained in the center-left’s own humor, exemplified by late-night hosts’ trying to outreason Trump by fact-checking his tweets or calling him names like a lying orange Cheeto. If center-left humor says that Trump can be outwitted — despite what the overwhelming evidence suggests — then far-left humor is much more concerned with mocking the kind of political system that says you have to argue with someone like him at all. Williams describes this strain of humor as “a kind of postmodern ironic detachment, coupled with real earnestness.” Often this particular earnestness is vulgar, using bluntness as an antidote to self-regard. When I asked one #Gravelanche supporter what he thought of the candidate Kamala Harris, a former attorney general of California, he suggested that she “would be a good secret-police chief.” When I asked him what he thought of older voters, he said: “Older people are going to be dead in 10 years, so they just want their tax money and [expletive] to buy kangaroo-skin dildos.”
Oks and Williams have permission to use the twitter feed, but “Don’t tweet anything I wouldn’t say.” It’s like TMC giving the same warning to me. A lot of people don’t understand I’m the voice of moderation around these parts, a relative “centrist” myself because of my support of the Connecticut Compromise.
Still, I’ve been here since, well, ever, and I’m allowed a certain amount of latitude for my eccentricities including my 18th Century Conservatism.
Gravel’s campaign is no joke at all and I’m interested to see how much traction it actually gains. Had you told me 4 years ago that the 2020 Democratic Field would be fighting on Sanders plowed ground I would have accused you of cock-eyed optimism, but here we are.
The Democratic presidential campaign so far has been preoccupied with the idea of electability. The whole premise of Joe Biden’s campaign is that he can beat Donald Trump. Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and other candidates have predicated their White House bids on a generational contrast with Trump. Elizabeth Warren is hoping that the candidate with a detailed plan for what they’d do as president can break through with the primary voters.
But Gravel is distinct. When he entered the race, winning wasn’t even on the agenda. He (and his industrious young assistants) wanted to leave a mark on the debate. And while the infrastructure of his campaign might sound like the set-up for a late-night monologue joke, the point Gravel wants to make is deadly serious.
Gravel is the anti-war, anti-“American foreign policy for the last 50 years” candidate. Some of his priorities are the same as every other Democrat: He wants to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. But he also wants to end unilateral sanctions against other sovereign nations. He wants to close every American base in a foreign territory and cut US military spending by 50 percent.
He wants to end American aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Mike Gravel, it is safe to say, says things you won’t see almost any other candidate say.
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Gravel has bona fides, dating back to his 12 years in the Senate from 1969 to 1981. He filibustered to try to end the draft during the Vietnam War. He read the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record. He opposed nuclear testing. After leaving office, he was an opponent of the Iraq war and criticized Barack Obama for his drone strike campaign.
Look, he is a character. Gravel oddly campaigned for the vice presidential nomination in 1972. He ran for president in 2008 after nearly 30 years out of office, getting a viral moment for his troubles, and then pursued the Libertarian Party’s nomination when he quickly fell out of the Democratic running. He has talked about putting every piece of legislation up for a nationwide ballot referendum. Then a couple of teenagers convinced him to quote-unquote run for president again.
But, as an uncompromising anti-war candidate, he’s still an interesting voice in the debate. Bernie Sanders didn’t formulate much of a foreign policy message in 2016 and, while he has worked to flesh out his platform, the left still really hasn’t pulled together a cohesive foreign policy message.
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Mike Gravel almost certainly isn’t going to be the next president. But he could give a voice to the anti-war left in a primary hurting for bigger and bolder ideas about how to reorient American foreign policy.
Now Mike won’t be on the stage tonight, but that puts him in the same boat as Steve Bullock and Seth Moulton who both get more Press than they deserve by being “Centrist” though they’re no more likely to be the next President than our contributor.
I count that another sin by the Democratic National Committee and it’s cast of Neo Liberal DLC Blue Dog Third Way Not Really a Democrat nor interested in a positive agenda for anyone who’s not a product of the current corrupt system or “democratic” institutions at all actually, thieves and liars.
