The Bobbsey Twins* Reincarnated —Hubert Humphrey & Kamala Harris[*Bobbsey Twins, fictional character featured in a series of children’s books] On November 5,1968 President Lyndon Johnson departed the White House leaving his vice-president Hubert Humphrey to run for president as the democratic candidate. On November 5, 2024, fifty-six years later, President Joe Biden departed the White […]
In this upside-down world, change only happens when there’s a demand for it. Getting rid of President Trump doesn’t qualify. Nothing changes when he’s gone — income inequality will continue its upward trajectory, the bellicosity characterizing U.S. foreign policy will persist along with endless war, and the planet will continue to die. Will Joe Biden turn things around? Not without a big push from the voters. Remember when candidates Clinton and Obama rolled to victory claiming they would make the world a better place. Maybe we should have gotten it in writing. Millionaire and billionaire campaign contributors didn’t make the same mistake. Their donations were contingent on a (generous) return on their investment. Clinton was quick to relieve Wall Street moguls of those burdensome regulations that protected the people but stood in the way of the obscene profits the Street was accustomed to. Obama paid up by making the too-big-to fail banks even bigger and more failure-proof. There’s more of course, but you get the picture. It’s Biden’s turn now. While big donors will see a huge return on their investment, a different fate awaits the people. On all the issues they favor by large margins— Medicare-for-all, Green New Deal, free college, student debt jubilee, ending fracking —he’s already turned thumbs down. Trump may go but in the absence of substantive demands, business as usual will prevail. Let’s be clear, some promises Joe dare not leave on the table— the ones he made to his multi-million dollar donors (the pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, and finance industries and Wall Street). Read “Lost in Bidenland” for more of the ways the people lose when the oligarchs win.
The U.S. is running out of time to find its way out of the wilderness of perpetual war and domestic discord into a new paradigm of peace and harmony. As the social order crumbles, a pandemic rages and income inequality takes a huge bite out of the American dream, it’s time for people to step up and make their voices heard. Let’s stop being the bathmat savvy politicians wipe their feet on. They preach that our vote is critical to their success. Then let’s start demanding a quid pro quo —Joe’s endorsement of policies to staunch the bleeding of money and jobs and livelihoods in exchange for our vote. Even a Washington insider agrees: If you want to pull the major party that is closest to the way you’re thinking to what you’re thinking, you MUST show them that you’re capable of not voting for them. If you don’t show them you’re not capable of voting for them, they don’t have to listen to you [and they won’t].” Check out “Joe Biden Can Be Brought to Heel” then join a strike or street demonstration.
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? (Macbeth Act 2, Scene 2) Sorry, Joe, it won’t. In his whole 47-year career, Joe was on the wrong side of almost every issue. In his first term as Senator in 1972, he was a fervent opponent of busing, a ploy to keep on the good side of Delaware bigots, part of his base. If it’s true that people can be judged by the company they keep, Joe has a lot of ‘splaining’ to do. For two of his closest buddies—the arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond and the hawkish John McCain Joe was faithful to the end eulogizing their bad deeds at their funerals (“I’m a Democrat and I love John McCain”). Throughout his career, Joe’s labors on behalf of the global moneyed elite never wavered. He went into the tank for banks eliminating bankruptcy protection for student debtors, gave whole hearted approval to junking Glass-Steagall, the law standing between the plunder and pillage of financial institutions and their victims, the people. He wrote the infamous crime bill that kicked off an era of mass incarceration, made an unfair distinction between crimes committed by whites and blacks, and supported “three strikes and you’re out” legislation which transformed petty criminals into lifers. He voted for the biggest blunder in American foreign policy, the destruction of Iraq and carried the water for Obama’s wrong-headed policies – the Libyan invasion, the drone war, the incarceration of whistle blowers and the methodical selection of assassination targets on Terror Tuesdays. If you have the stomach for it, we’ve laid it out in living color in “Joe Biden: Time to Exit Stage Right”
“Is this a dagger which I see before me… a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain…” it’s not really Macbeth’s preternatural visions that keep us awake at night, is it? It’s the real-life vision of the leadership crisis in the U.S. As the 2020 presidential sweepstakes begin in earnest on November 7, and democratic hopefuls dash to the microphones to parse bad behavior with excuses, defenses, and lies, Joe Biden, fresh off his vice-presidential labors, resurfaces for yet another presidential run (he hasn’t made it to the finish line two times before). In the tradition of the last few crappy presidents, his inauguration would guarantee four more years of “same old, same old. The oligarchs would have another friend in high places. What has Joe been doing since his first election 46-years ago? Let’s see —for openers, screwing tens of millions of indebted young Americans out of millions of dollars in order to land a cushy job for his son with a grateful bank, insuring that an unqualified, right wing nominee got a seat on the Supreme Court, using his political muscle to further enrich his already fabulously wealthy major donors, the big banks — that’s the real Joe Biden. Not the charlatan who rewrote history: “there are some things worth losing over” while he did his best to ban busing as a federal remedy for segregated public schools. His home boys, the likes of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, couldn’t have found themselves in better company. The clay feet of this “leader” are easy to spot. If you want to know why people like Joe Biden (and there are numerous Biden clones roaming the halls of Congress) should not apply for the job of president of the exceptional nation, don’t wait too long to read “Joe Biden: The Kind of Leader the U.S. Doesn’t Need.”
“I am 30 years old. I went to college to get a better job. But now I regret going. I originally owed $70,000, have been paying for nine years and now owe $157,000. I can barely afford to go to the dentist or doctor. If there’s an emergency, I have to rely on credit cards or retired parents. I am living at poverty level and would have been better off not going to college. I’m never going to be able to buy a house or save money. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to enjoy life again.” (Kristina M.)
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