Roaming Charges: Conventional Weapons at the DNC – CounterPunch

The politics of the lesser evil has always had a nasty tendency to hold to the great old evil and thus to prepare the way for even greater new evils.

HannahArendt

Day One

+ Quite a symbolic way to kick off the DNC convention: The DNC quietly excised a call to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies from its platform, saying including the language in the first place was an error.

+ This news was swiftly followed by an announcement that the Pipe Fitters Union was endorsing Biden, despite his pledge to stop the completion of the KXL Pipeline. Pretty sure the pipe fitters union knows something about Bidens real intentions that the Sierra Club refuses to believe

+ Last month, a new study found that flaring of natural gas wells, from the fracking operations Biden has vowed not to end, was directly linked to an increase in preterm births in South Texas. Pregnant Latina women were more likely than white women to give birth prematurely.

+ The backlash to Trumps flirtation with pardoning Edward Snowden has been swift and rabid, with Democrats like Susan Rice leading the assault. There are certain people the State will never forgive and will persecute to their last days and beyond: Malcolm, the late Philip Agee, Daniel Ellsberg, Leonard Peltier, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, among them.

+ What would a Democratic Convention be without an altercation involving Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was accused of shoving a high school student volunteer for her Democratic primary challenger Jen Perelman, outside of a polling place in Broward County.

+ It was revealed earlier today that Bernie Sanders personal favorite for Bidens VP was not Liz Warren. Not Barbara Lee. Not Karen Bass. Not ButKamala Harris.

+ Michael Bloomberg dropped $18 million into the DNCs coffers and was rewarded with a speaking slot, an echo of Ronald Reagans quip, Im paying for this microphone!

+ In a bid to win the desperate housewives of suburbia, the opening night of the DNC Zoom Convention is being hosted by the peoples tribune Eva Longoria, who could have held the entire event inside her $15 million Beverly Hills palazzo

+ There are more American flags on display tonight than at Kerrys 2004 Reporting for Duty convention. I hope everyone takes a knee during this playing of the national anthem

+ Its only been 8 minutes and theyve already dropped a needle on Bruce Springsteen.

+ Springsteens 9/11 threnody, The Rising, is being put into service tonight to aid the election of a candidate who exploited 9/11 as an excuse to go to war in Iraq. As cynical as Reagan appropriating Born in the USA on the campaign trail

+ Democrats are presenting a rare message of unity tonightby silencing those in their own party who disagree with the leadership.

+ I hope the kids were sent to their rooms before Andrew Cuomo came on to give them nightmares by bragging about overseeing the deaths of 32,500 New Yorkers

+ Not one of these deeply admirable & courageous health care workers have been allowed to mention Medicare for All in their testimonials about being on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic.

+ Medicare for All and the Green New Deal have been replaced as rallying cries byGive Us Vote by Mail or Death!

+ Most of these speeches have the bland and dreary quality of a state of the union response, without the comedy of Marco Rubios frantic rehydrations

+ Kasich: I know Joe. He wont turn hard left!

+ Hes right about that.

+ Will Bernie dare to venture to left of Doug Jones?

+ Theres nothing quite as jarring as listening to a lecture byKlobocop on racial justice night!

+ If this is the kind of timid middle of the road pablum theyre dishing out on racial justice night, how many countries will they threaten to sanction, drone and overthrow on foreign policy night?

+ If everyone is welcome in the Democratic Party can it really stand for anything?

+ In this merry-go-round of former candidates, they feature Seth Moulton but not Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, or Marianne Williamson? Some are forgiven their apostasies, some arent.

+ Looking at his bookshelves,Id have thought Beto would have had a better vinyl collection

+ One gets the sense that if the Democrats take the senate back 51-49, Biden will offer to give one senator back in the name of unity.

+ Bernies standing in front of a huge stockpile of firewood as he pontificates about climate change

+ Bernie spent 10 awkward minutes avoiding any mentionof the ideas he supposedly made mainstream but couldnt even get into the Democratic platform.

+ Bernie is now a pitchman for Medicare-for-All-Above-60!

+ The intensity ofMichelle Obamas speech backfired to this extent at least: it vividly highlighted all of Bidens weaknesses as an orator.

+ Was Melania taking notes, cutting-and-pasting?

+ Fighting fascism from Barack and Michelles new digs in Marthas Vineyard

Day Two

+ Just in time for Bills big speech tonight at the DNC, the New York Post has released photos of Clinton getting a neck massage from Epstein accuser, Chauntae Davies.

+ Last nights soul reclamation project has been replaced with a plan to upgrade Americas moral compass.

+ Breaking on MSNBC: Colin Powell will be a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention tonight. Will he announce that hes finally found the aluminum nuclear rods and the mobile BW labs?

+ Colin Powell will tell the DNC that the country needs a commander in chief who takes care of the troops like family and Biden knows that: It comes from the experience he shares with millions of military families sending his beloved son off tour and praying to God he would come home safe.

+ 4500 US troops KIA in Iraq, 32,000 US troops WIA in Iraq. (Iraqi dead and wounded cant be mentioned)

+ Robert Drapers book, To Start a War, exposes Powell for the total fraud that he is. He never once directly told Bush he had even the slightest doubts about invading Iraq. How he became a hero of the antiwar Democrats is one of the great political mysteries.

+ What surprise GOP figure will speak tomorrow night? George or Laura? John Boehner or Paul Ryan? A hologram of Reagan?

+ Permission structure (ie, making the Democratic Party safe for neocons) is a grotesque new political catch-phrases. It needs to be sent right to the guillotine

+ I enjoyed hearing Jimmy and Roslyn Carters voices, though I cant quite recall anything specific they said, which is probably intentional. But it did remind me that Joe Biden had already been in the Senate for four years before Carter was elected president

+ Is this last gasp of Bill Clinton? He sounds and looks enfeebled, perhaps weighed down by flashbacks to his flights on Epsteins Air Lolita. If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, hes your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if youre trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses.

+ Van Jones: Unlike Trump, Bill Clinton apologizes for his mistakes. Did Clinton apologize to Sistah Souljah? The family of Ricky Ray Rector? The mothers and children he kicked off of welfare? Jocelyn Elders? Lani Guinier?

+ Hey,heres Tom Perez, the Democrats chief vote suppressor (against other Democrats), talking about the evils of voter suppression.

+ When Julian Castro, inexplicably exiled from the festivities, inveighed against the lack of Latinx speakers at the DNC convention, Perez humbly noted that he was speaking for many of them. Did they try calling Alberto Gonzales?

+ Everything Jonathan Chait knows about how working class people express themselves he learned from watching one episode of The Family Guy.

+ Its been said that AOC was given a 60 second slot by the DNC. Thats not quite true. She was picked by Sanders to nominate him. If her restrained remarks were vetted and edited, it was likely done by Sanders, not Biden, to reflect his own tempered and deflated rhetoric.

+ AOC and the four flags

+ Even that bridled performance by AOCwhere she avoided mentioning single-payer, free college, forgiving student debt, slashing the Pentagons budget, ending the Afghan war, abolishing ICE, or defunding the policewill be playing on FoxNews for the next three months

+ AOC herself is dismissing reports of divisiveness inside the party, saying November is about stopping fascism within the United States.Of course, divisiveness is vital now more than ever, especially when the alternative is cooperating with systemic fascism to drive a fascist figurehead from office

+ The roll call speakers are so much better than any of the politicians theyve given speaking gigs to

+ Joe will bring the calamari back

+ So strange to see Barbara Lee speaking, ever so briefly, on Iraq War night

+ Right on cue heres John Kerry, reporting for duty again.

+ Kerry lost with this same argument of competent management of the the Empire to George W. Bush. When will the Democrats give up on the imperial project all together?

+ Colin Powell, who helped cover up the My Lai massacre and lied about WMDs to invade Iraq, sermonizing on values is both appalling and ridiculous.

+ Kerry, Powell, then McCainit could be 2003 all over again.

+ How to raise a McCain up when its in defeatthe night they dropped the Nalpalm down and all the Democrats were singing

Day Three

+ In order to protect the sales of hats made in China, Trump is launching a boycott of tires made in Akron, OhioMAGA!

+ The big story in the New York Times this morning is that Trump may have had a romantic relationship with a former Miss Moscow. Romantic relationship. That doesnt sound like Trump to me

+ The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, where the Moscow honey trap story originated, also fingers former congressman Dana Rohrabacher for having received sensitive documents from Russian officials in 2016. If Rohrabacher, long one of the most clownish and inconsequential members on the Hill, was really Putins favorite congressman, then hes much dumber than we thought he was

+ Navarro is right for once. Now, how does he explain Trumps continuing affection for Mike Pence, Elliot Abrams and Rudy Giuliani?

+ Obama speaks tonight. Will he set an example for the youth of the nation by taking responsibility for any of his lethal escapades? The Afghan surge? Deepwater Horizon? The Honduran Coup? Bailing out banks while forsaking the foreclosed? The destruction of Libya? Drone killings.

+ Aide: Harris wants people to see themselves in her speech. See themselves where? Behind bars?

+ Hillary Clinton is returning to the Democratic National Convention to cement her legacy as a champion of women in politics. Shell speak Wednesday night as Kamala Harris becomes the first Black woman to accept a spot on a major presidential ticket. I thought that HRCs legacy had already been cemented and was only waiting to be deposited in Long Island Sound

+ HRC, dressed like an apparition from a Wilkie Collins novel, began her rant with a lie: Iwish Donald Trump had been a better president. No, she doesnt. Her post-2016 political existence is predicated on Trump being a disaster, regardless of the number of bodies left in his wake. In fact, the higher the death count rises, the more smug she gets.

+ Hillary recounts more imaginary conversations than Trump does: For four years, people have said to me, I didnt realize how dangerous he was. I wish I could go back and do it over. I should have voted.' HRC has never associated with such people, which is a big reason she lost.

+ Sacrifice and service two words not normally associated with the Clintons.

+ Those ravens and gulls swirling around the Bay Bridge and sweeping behind Pelosis head gave the whole presentation a Hitchockian mise-en-scene, which it probably merits.

+ Pelosi: Joes, faith in god Where was it when his crime bill expanded the death penalty and he voted to invade Iraq?

+ And they cant understand why people might want to defect from the Democrats and vote for the Greens, Libertarians or Kanye West

+ For some reason, Anita Hill wasnt included in this segment on Bidens tenacious work on behalf of women victims of sex crimes.But the DNC did bring out Mariska Hargitay to defend his crime bill, an actress whos role model for her character on Law & Order SVU was Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor who led the fallacious prosecution of the Central Park Five.

+ Remember when organized labor used dominate these conventions. Now their chief champion in the Senate, Sherrod Brown, is reduced to a subliminal moment

+ In the background of Elizabeth Warrens live shot at an early childhood center, multi-colored block letters spelled out BLM.

+ Where was this Warren 8 months ago? Plotting the undermining of Sanders, I guess, and blowing up her own campaign in the process.

+ So Obama comes to us from the History of the American Revolution Museum, standing next to an exhibit on the US Constitution featuring a portrait of little Jimmy Madison, who took his slaves with him when he moved to the White House with his wife Dolly. When Madison died, he still owned more than 100 slaves, none of whom were freed after his death.

+ Did Obama preserve and defend or ignore, erode and assault the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, & seventh amendments?

+ Obama didnt call the press the enemy of the people, but treated many reporters as the enemy of his administration and jailed them.

+ Obama ignored Bidens one sound piece of advice, which was not to pursue a troop surge in Afghanistan

+ Obama gave a real American carnage speech. Too bad he didnt give it to himself 10 years ago.

+ He may go AWOL for weeks, even months, at a time, but Michael Moore always comes home to roost

+ The metaphor of America as family, which the Democrats and Harris, in particular, have been pushing all week as a symbol of unity will fall flat for most people who recall the fraught dynamics of last years Thanksgiving Day meal.

+ Being born in Oakland is one of the best things Harris has going for her

+ Is Willie Brown part of Harris extended family?

+ How is this rhetorical notion of national unity and togetherness relentlessly pushed by Biden and Harris functionally different than Trumps claims after Charlottesville that theres good people on both sides? Will the Democrats ever draw a line they wont cross? Where is it?

+ God knows, Id never have the nerve to speak before 320 million people, even on Zoom, but Harris is not an inspiring orator. Like most prosecutors, she has a mechanical and rigid, almost relentless, speaking style, that sounds even harsher after listening to Obama for 20 minutes.

+ Tonight, only Warren even hinted at a structural enemy beyond the current depraved administration, the corporations, banks & financial predators that have been looting the nation before Trump came on the scene & will be there after hes gone, perhaps even more deeply entrenched.

+ Theres still one night to go, and it may all blow up spectacularly, but theres been much less Russiagating and China-bashing from the Democrats than Id anticipated and feared. One would like to think its been purged from their system. Then again

+ Melina Abdullah: Were not in the streets to get out the vote. Were in the streets to upend this system of oppression.

Day Four

+ I awoke on Thursday morning to the news that Steve Bannon had been arrested while on board a 150-foot yacht by US Postal Service inspectors for his role in a fraudulent scheme to build a private border wall, in which some of his co-conspirators had embezzled money to buy a 40-foot boat that would later make an appearance in a Boaters for Trump flotilla.

+ Trump on Bannons arrest: I havent had anything to do with him in years.

Trump on FoxNews in July: He says greatest president ever. I said, Lets keep Steve out there, hes doing a good job. But theyre all involved.

+ Geoffrey Bennett, NBCNews: Respectfully, sir, its not just Steve Bannon, its Roger Stone, its Michael Flynn, its Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen. Whats it say about your judgment

Trump: Well, I have no idea.

+ Trey Gowdy throws Steve Bannon under the bus on FoxNews, reverses, plows over him again: Hes the same guy who claimed credit for the presidents victory..the only person on the planet, literally..that can elect a Democrat, because he backed Roy Moore.

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Roaming Charges: Conventional Weapons at the DNC - CounterPunch