Is the NY Times is a Right Wing Front Organization?

The NY Times is running a partisan campaign to attack Joe Biden and destroy the Democrats by creating the fiction that Joe Biden is too old to run.  Aside from being ageist, who gave the NY Times the right to decide who the Democrats will nominate to run for election?  They run their front page articles every damn day, an editorial masquerading as a news article.   

They run this same article, with small variations, every day.  

And of course the NY Times could not care less about reporting on Trump's 34 felony convictions, about how he is unqualified and dangerous as president, about how he will murder Ukraine, about how he has always been corrupt all these years in NY, about his racism, his sexism, his abuse of women.  No.  None of these things matter to the NY Times.  Nor does the NY Times care to report on the illegitimacy of the legal system which is failing to try Donald Trump for his crimes during the January 6 attack on our government.  Nor does the NY Times care one bit about the delays of the case in Florida.  Nor does the NY Times care about women bleeding out from miscarriages that the doctors and hospitals will not treat in a Red State.

I remember when SCOTUS threw the 2000 election to their right wing nut, W. Bush, which caused a trillion dollar war in Iraq and put Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court.   Not one word of protest from this right-wing rag.  From the day the SCOTUS pissed on the constitution in public, not one word was said about the illegitimacy of the W. Bush administration, its wars, or its judiciary.

There are several mysteries here.  Why do people continue to think and to say that the NY Times is in some way a bastion of progressive thought, the primary outlet for the so called "liberal media"?  That is as obviously false as saying that the Jews control the media, a joke if I ever heard one.  The second mystery is why are they doing this?  Who is telling them to do this?  Well one obvious suspect is that it is the elites of Wall Street and possibly just the elites who run our government, or think they do.  I have heard that Wall Street is all in support of Trump, just like Silicon Valley hates Biden for daring to talk about regulating AI.  

I dont think I know why the NY Times wants to destroy Biden.  I am certainly cancelling my subscription and I am sure the NY Times will not care that I do so, not even a little bit.

A Midjourney impression of unused newspaper printing machinery

The State of the Midterms and War

draft

All sorts of things are going on and most of you who read my blog know this as well as I do.  You dont need me to tell you this stuff, and I am really averse to repeating myself which I tend to do.  But its also the case that most of us forget what happened when so there is some utility in writing some of these things down.  So a few notes for the future about the state of politics and about war.

The 2022 midterms are weeks away and you can read many analysis and predictions.  The Senate is up for grabs and could go either way.  The Republicans are expected to win the House of Representatives but it could be by a very small margin.  But whoever wins, everyone will be looking closely to see how the Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade affected things, if at all. Will people vote who might not have voted before?   Furthermore, the pollsters have covered their ass by pointing out that they have consistently underestimated the right wing Republican vote and they have every reason to think that is the case this time.

This disturbs and disappoints me a lot.  The stakes of the midterms are very high.  If the Republicans win then all progress of legislation must stop and they will make life hell for America.  At this point, there can be no lukewarm feelings about politics in this country.  Whatever the long term prognosis for the Republican party, and for the conservative forces in this country, as they are currently represented they seem to want to destroy the country.  I know I can never forgive them.

And then of course the Supreme Court is about to let loose.  Anyone who thinks this court has any legitimacy and is not completely partisan and reactionary will find out shortly how deluded their beliefs are.

 

We have Trump, the theft of classified material, and slave judges and special masters.  Its alternately horrifying and disgusting.  Do we have a functional legal system left?  Prove it.

We have war in Europe.  We have Russia threatening to use nukes if they dont get to do whatever they want.  We have war crimes to make the SS proud.  We have the vindication of initiative and morale and precision weapons.  We have anonymous destruction of energy infrastructure to punish those who would not obey Putin. We have drones galore.  Oh brave new world to have such munitions in it.

An Argument in Favor of Emailing Your Congressman in Spite of Everything

draft

Those who read this blog are not naive. Neither you nor I believe that merely emailing our Congressional representative has much chance of making a difference. We know what makes a difference which is to say, money, and lots of it. Not protests, not petitions, not emails, and it is up in the air at this point in time whether there is such a thing as free and fair elections as well.

The Russians have apparently been completely successful, successful beyond their wildest expectations, in convincing many if not most Americans that their elections are rigged in favor of established interests. In the same way that the judicial system and economy are rigged.

What the established powers of this country have failed to understand, is that you can not lie and steal the money over and over again, abuse the constitution, and fail to act responsibly without there being long term damage to the Republic. You can kick the can down the road only so far before you run out of road. You can put your right wing thugs on the Supreme Court to steal elections and kill minorities only so often before people judge that Democracy is an empty fraud and probably always has been.

But I am going to encourage everyone I know to naively look beyond this reality and play a game with me, that has only an infinitesimal chance of making a difference. In my heart, I doubt that anything a citizen without a lot of money can do will matter. That dream is over. And it has been over for a very long time.

But just for fun, why not try to scare them.

The House completely turns over every two years. Although the Republicans have done a very good job at destroying any chance of a fair election, they still only have a slight majority in the House. So lets scare them. The last thing any Congressman, Republican or Democrat, wants is an informed and active electorate. An electorate that knows what bills are in front of Congress and tells their Congressman what is expected of them.

If you email or call your representative once a week, and leave a very nice message asking them to do something honest in order to help this country, you can be quite sure they will ignore you.  They will act responsibly only over their dead body. But they also know that for every citizen who emails or calls them, that this individual will probably vote and that means they have to have at least one and preferably two voters on their side to hold onto power. 

The more who call, the more votes they know they have to get.  Uneasy lies the head, etc. 

So I volunteer to do all the startup work for you.  If you will send me your zip code, I will do the research necessary to find out your district, your representative, how to send email, and where to call. I will make this effortless for you. No, it probably wont make a difference, but since we are fucked anyway, and we are, why not?

For what it is worth, I am up to three emails and left one telephone message for my Representative of the 60^th California district. It is possible that his office even tried to call me back once.

My First Email to my "Representative"

draft

This was my first “email to my elected representative”, Duncan Hunter, a Republican who represents the CA-50 Congressional District. I am making it my goal to make them hate me by 2018.

My Letter to the President of the United States Requesting a Bailout

As a few of you know, I have been working with my representatives in Washington in order to prepare the way for a government bailout of one area of computer animation, research and production, in this country.  The particular bailout that I have been working for is, of course, for myself, but I have no doubt that once this first effort is approved, that others will be able to apply as well.  The following is the letter that was mailed to President Obama.

_____________________________________________________________________

Michael Wahrman

Rancho Rincon del Diablo, California 92026

michael.wahrman@gmail.com

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW

Washington, DC

December 9, 2013

Dear President Obama,

I have hesitated writing this letter for many years now but recent events have forced my hand. I hope you will understand.

Not to beat around the bush, so to speak, I have decided to request a government bailout.

My circumstances are that having done many years service, and having helped to create a billion dollar industry, computer animation, I find myself unemployed due in part to government policies (policies of globalization and of other government subsidies which our government does not protest). There are other reasons as well, but the impact of government action and inaction is certainly significant. Because of this, my financial well being has been severely damaged.

But I have hope. The US Government had no problems bailing out the malignant and incompetent financial industry in their time of need a few years ago, and I am neither malignant nor incompetent, merely guilty of misplaced enthusiasm and incorrectly assessing risk, just like Wall Street.

And lets be honest here, the US Government and society encourages people to be entrepreneurial without emphasizing the terrible risk of failure and the financial implications thereof. It seems only fair that the Government should therefore pick up some of the costs of risk just like they do for large corporations when it is convenient.

I know that times are tight in Washington these days, what with Sequester and the right wing Republicans out of control and on the warpath, but I feel certain that my request is so just and reasonable that you can find the money out of one of your discretionary funds. I feel certain of it.

So shall we say ten to twenty million $US? Too little and we might have to come back a second time which would be annoying.    Too much and people would think we were being extravagant. Lets split the difference and go for a clean $15M US. What do you think?

I know you are very busy, so feel free to assign the details of this request to one of your assistants for the details of the money transfer and other paperwork issues.

Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Probably email is the best way to reach me.

Congratulations on your reelection, keep up the good work.   By the way,  my family has been loyal Democrats for at least three generations.

                                                    Sincerely,

                                                   Michael Wahrman

Voting Irregularities in Virginia and the Byrd Organization

When the Republican putsch put the Bush administration into power in this country in 2000, thus ending democracy and destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court in many people's eyes, there were some of us who were, and are, adamant that the issues of voting procedure had gone on far too long and needed to be dealt with now, completely, fairly across districts, and as comprehensively as possible.

To a Southerner who is tired of being bashed by ignorant Westerners and Northerners for being from a "racist part of the world", this was a particularly low moment.   "Fix the fucking voting machines, ok?" we thought to ourselves. This has been going on long enough.

But there have always been voting irregularities in American politics and some elections are more famous for this than others. Important political dynasties were created out of creative control of voting procedures, one need only think of the Daley machine in Chicago to pick one notable example.  The South had their political machines as well of course, and the one in Virginia from the mid 1920's through most of the 1960's was called the "Byrd Organization" led by former governor and US Senator Harry Byrd. These were Southern Democrats of the old school.

Governor and US Senator Harry F Byrd

So one day, sometime in the 1930's, my dad and his first wife went to vote in Virginia Beach, Virginia where they lived. All polling places have publicaly posted a list of who is registered to vote in that precinct and whether they have voted that day or not. This is all to reduce fraud and to increase confidence that the people who vote are eligible to vote and have only voted once.

The father of my dad's first wife had died many years before. But since he was a good democrat, he not only continued to be registered in his precinct, he had also voted that day, demonstrating excellent party loyalty.

I am sure nothing like that happens today, of course.

The Wikipedia page for the Byrd Organization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Organization