New Poem: CALIFORNIA GERRYMANDER REFERENDUM RAMBLE

 can’t get around the California referendum system where the issues aren’t decided by actual study of the issues instead we’re going to have right wing consultants crank out commercials that will scare no information voters into believing their voting rights will be taken away and of course Gavin Newsom will fundraise off this and perhaps rasp his way through a few public announcements about the Importance of 2026 maybe selling the notion that this will check some of Donald and J.D.’s worst behavior 

then if it passes and it likely will, Gavin and the Democrats who love holding power will resume triangulation making trans and homeless demonized like Bill Clinton doing this to Sister Souljah in 1992

and we’ll return to Oh What Will The Republicans Think. No Social Programs and Can We Get The Joe Rogan vote

Bill Clinton in 1996 Equals Joe Biden in 2020.

This is what fearful, non ambitious centrist triangulation once gave us—and, after last night, gives again. Turning the floor over to Bill Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union address, excerpt here:

The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both.

I believe our new, smaller government must work in an old-fashioned American way, together with all of our citizens through state and local governments, in the workplace, in religious, charitable and civic associations.

NEW YORK’s Sarah Jones on Nancy Pelosi’s allergies to holding the powerful accountable

Excerpted from a column in NEW YORK:
[Nancy Pelosi’s] intransigence does encourage some unsavory speculation: that Pelosi might want to protect prominent Democrats. Before he went to jail in 2008, Epstein was friendly with powerful members of both parties, including former president Bill Clinton. But there’s no evidence that Clinton abused underage girls while in Epstein’s company, and right now, the federal case in New York against Epstein seems focused on Epstein alone. Her evident willingness to allow a wide-ranging investigation suggests she’s not afraid of what supervisorial spadework might turn up. But there’s a likelier explanation for Pelosi ruling out, even prior to an investigation, impeaching Acosta. She’s clinging to an outdated view of the world, which makes her unfit for the challenges of the moment. Pelosi is willing to confront Trump, or his officials, but only to a point. She not only believes the center will hold; she seems to think that it will, once some unspecified red line is crossed, topple Trump and his administration without any direct intervention on her part.

From GUARDIAN coverage of George H.W. Bush funeral

The 41st president has been remembered fondly in the media – particularly in the American media – over the past few days. Many have praised Bush Sr’s warmth and diplomacy, comparisons which seem particularly pertinent given Donald Trump’s convention-defying approach to the presidency.

While Bush undoubtedly deserves praise for his decades of public service, and he has been credited with steering the US and aiding Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed.

But the eulogizing has struck a discordant tone with many. While respecting Bush and his family, it would be remiss to ignore the [racist] dog whistling of Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign and his inaction in the midst of the Aids crisis.

*****

Here’s Donald Trump arriving at Bush’s funeral. He and Hillary Clinton – and Bill Clinton – fail to acknowledge one another, while Melania Trump shook Bill Clinton’s hand and waved to the former first-lady.

Maureen Dowd on Monica Lewinsky--again.

Here's the sum total of relatively snark-free content from Maureen Dowd's op-Ed column in THE NEW YORK TIMES on former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's re-engagement with the public:   "there’s something poignant about a 40-year-old frozen like a fly in amber for something reckless she did in her 20s, while the unbreakable Clintons bulldoze ahead..."

Bill/Hillary 1992 and Anthony/Huma in 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwXE52e9JFg--Bill and Hillary Clinton on 60 MINUTES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vmicJ35wWw--excerpt from Anthony Weiner's press conference statement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBagSsP7RVk--Huma Abedin speaks at husband Anthony Weiner's press conference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCzdpkokwCQ--full press conference feed as aired on CNN.

Justin Bieber's entourage-enabled behavior--and a similar incident I once witnessed.

http://www.nme.com/news/justin-bieber/71375?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=crowdsurfers

What the Justin Bieber urination incident (topped with a chaser of Bill Clinton abuse) teaches:
if you're a young male star with a young male entourage in tow, everything you do is cool.

About 23 years ago, I was an extra (hired, but not used that day) on a critically-acclaimed film noir partially shot at an old, ornate apartment building in L.A.'s Wilshire District.  Nearby was a storage area, where the Young Male Star and friends practiced throwing a football at a glass window.  Presumably it was a game to see how to throw the football at the window without causing breakage.

Eventually, an older man came out and told the Young Male Star and his friends to stop.  They stopped.

I saw this and kept silent; I didn't want to lose a day's pay and be blackballed from the casting agency who sent me on the job.

And, in retrospect, the Young Male Star (now middle-aged and still active in films) was blessed with living in a time where cell phones were few and primitive--and tabloid TV hadn't evolved (or devolved) into the TMZ era.

Oprah, Lance and coming OWN attractions.

Watched the first part of the Lance Armstrong summit meeting with Oprah Winfrey, and my heart hasn't softened as a result; he's still a jerk, but one who now carefully weighs words and parses some of them in the best Bill Clinton how-do-you-define-what-the-word-"is"-is fashion.

I don't intend to endure Part Two--where Lance goes into up-to-a-point detail about how his behavior impacted on family, Livestrong and what seemed to be infinite endorsement deals.

Now, let's proceed to the OWN program commercials.

Oprah's still trying to find the right mixture of high-minded and lowbrow: I saw ads for a Dallas policewomen show (intended to evoke Fox's COPS), an IYANLA promo which features her verbally taking down past-his-prime hip-hop star DMX, a commercial for a LEAN ON ME-esque reality series with a more--youthful-and-telegenic-than-Joe Clark protagonist and--finally--a special on S&M/bondage being packaged as suitably middle-of-the-road for America thanks to the mainstream success of the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY novels.

Not to mention a plug for a future Oprah exclusive with Drew Barrymore on the latter's new child--with the promo having Oprah ask Drew about past bisexuality in a clear context of "wild behavior you later have to explain to your kids."

Considering the alleged more-than-friends relationship between Oprah and Gayle King, this sort of inquiry dives into the deep end of the moral hypocrisy swimming pool.

What most people don't want to hear about Bill Clinton.

"Bill Clinton offers essentially the same belief system as both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, one in which private industry runs the government through payoffs to ex-officials, and government returns the favor through bailouts. If Americans are ever going to grapple with the power of banks over their lives, they are going to have to come to grips with the real track record of their leaders, including Bill Clinton. And it isn’t pretty. And until people like Bill Clinton can be compensated in ways that aren’t obviously corrupting, and their track records honestly assessed, elections will continue to be unimportant, simple popular ratification of an increasingly authoritarian creditor state."

The above quote is from Matt Stoller's article "Clinton's no liberal hero":
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/clintons_no_liberal_hero/

Brief thoughts on Bill Clinton's marathon DNC speech.

Re Bill Clinton's 48-minute reprise of his Number One spoken-word hit from 1992, PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST:

I thought Clinton's too-long speech had its effective moments in making case for Obama's re-election--though it's too much to expect either Clinton or Al Gore (who touted his friendship with JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon on Current TV) to apologize for NAFTA and repealing Glass-Steagal, helping create the mess Obama has tried (albeit mildly) to clean up and Romney/Ryan would only make worse.

Doubting we've seen the last of Rick Perry as Presidential candidate.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/rick-perry-commits-suicide-on-stage-at-debate.html

Perhaps Rick Perry may be both pundit toast and even voter toast after last night's GOP debate performance.

But I'm guessing Perry will go on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO and do his best to humorously spin lead into at least brass--making himself safe for 2016.

This reminds me of a Democrat who gaffed by making a too-long convention speech in 1988, appeared on Johnny Carson's TONIGHT SHOW and ran for President in 1992.

The Democrat's name was Bill Clinton.

[UPDATE 11/11/11] I was wrong; Perry appeared on LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN--now, by default, Dave's the new Johnny Carson and will probably stay a few years past Carson's retirement age.

Wisdom from Matt Taibbi that won't be listened to/heeded by most people on the Left.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/obama-doesnt-want-a-progressive-deficit-deal-20110711

Two key passages from Taibbi's blog post:
 "The blindness of the DLC-era [the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council] "Third Way" Democratic Party continues to be an astounding thing. For more than a decade now they have been clinging to the idea that the path to electoral success is social liberalism plus... laissez-faire economics – in other words, get Wall Street and corporate America to fund your campaigns, and get minorities, pro-choice and gay marriage activists (who will always frightened into loyalty by the Tea Party/Christian loonies on the other side) to march at your rallies and vote every November."
and
"I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch."

Nick Lowe - "All Men Are Liars"--sharing this in the wake of Anthony Weiner's resignation.

SALON's Joan Walsh still feels the need to defend Bill Clinton.

Perhaps the perpetual-wiseacre writer Tom Carson said it best about Bill Clinton when describing Clinton as an "a--hole" likely to go on and on crying over "his thwarted greatness."

Certainly the Bay Area-based webzine Salon.com has felt the need to keep throwing roses towards Clinton on occasion--even to the point of employing Clinton hagiographer Joe Conason.

Here's Joan Walsh recently praising Bill for Salon:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/10/23/bill_clinton/?source=newsletter

I still don't understand the need to prop up an ex-President who couldn't stand up to Sam Nunn on gays in the military, who shredded the Safety Net for millions of Americans, who helped bring on the go-go greed that eventually sunk our economy (and, no, I'm not forgetting George Butch, Jr.'s role in that process)--and who wasted a year of his second term determined to "win this thing" re the revelations of his private affairs (even the Republican-leaning David Letterman handled le affaire Stephanie Burkitt better than Bill with Monica Lewinsky).

And, remember, Clinton (the alleged First Black President) shamefully played the Race Card last year to ensure that his wife would receive the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

David Letterman outs himself re workplace affairs.

I just watched David Letterman confess having workplace affairs with female LATE SHOW staffers (and a producer of CBS' 48 HOURS trying to blackmail him for $2 million regarding this subject was arrested yesterday).

Having found this out before tuning into the show, the monologue--which included jokes about Roman Polanski, Mark Sanford and businessmen bringing their wives on business trips (relating somehow to Barack and Michelle Obama working together to bring the Olympics to Chicago)--was a bit creepy.

And so was the Paul Shaffer choice for play-in, play-out-of-commercial music:
The Rolling Stones' "Bitch."

A key lyric of the above song: "Love...is a bitch."

[Guessing that Bill Carter, who wrote THE LATE SHIFT (about Letterman and Leno jockeying to be The One to sit in Johnny Carson's vacant TONIGHT SHOW host's chair), won't have any trouble pitching a LATE SHIFT II to publishers.]
UPDATE as of October 6th:
Dave tried a second pass at an apology/explanation, and he's still upset about the extortion attempt. One fairly deft joke about how he can no longer do Bill Clinton/Mark Sanford material. Some contrition towards wife Regina. And, sort-of reversing a "they're welcome to come forward" comment the first time around, expressing worry for the staffers receiving attention from the media.

Short of any smoking guns related to sexual harassment and/or hush money (although it's being revealed that Letterman's involvement with assistant/occasional on-air foil Stephanie Birkitt continued after his marriage to Regina), I'm guessing this is the last on-the-show statement before Robert Joe Halderman's trial.

Disappointments big and small.

The insurance companies, lobbyists, conservative Blue Dog Democrats and take-down obstructionist Republicans are likely cheering President Obama's failure of nerve (as first signaled over the weekend) in dropping the "public option" from health care reform:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-healthcare17-2009aug17,0,2687148.story

At this writing, it's safe to say that Obama has whiffed in the same way that Bill Clinton did when he failed to stand up to bullies like Sam Nunn on gays-in-the-military in 1993. And it may be not that much of a stretch to presume that Dick Morris is currently faxing his resume to the White House in hopes of offering more pander-to-the-Right advice to another sitting President.

Now, on to the "what the hell was The Walt Disney Company/ABC thinking" topic of the day re the decision to add maestro of corruption Tom DeLay to the fall cast of DANCING WITH THE STARS: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/tom-delay-brings-his-twostep-to-dancing-with-the-stars.html

Guessing that Glenn Beck may be considering an offer for the Spring 2010 season.

Joe Conason: advocating Bush officials pardon for telling "truth" about torture.

Joe Conason's been a reliable water-carrier for the Clintons over the past two decades--as well as a megaphone for whatever the centrist Democratic Leadership Council is espousing. Here's a link to Conason's recent Salon.com column where he expresses disdain for Patrick Leahy's concept of a "truth and reconciliation" commission where Bush officials would speak openly about the culture of rendition/torture/aggressive "interrogations" of the past eight years; Conason would rather see President Obama emulate Gerald Ford and offer pardons to the Bushies--provided they'll tell the truth: http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/02/13/leahy_commission/

Barack Obama: Bill Clinton without the sex?

For those who have some ambivalence about Barack Obama's likely-to-be-centrist Presidency, here's a Glenn Greenwald SALON column, with links to other columnists with their points of view on the four years to come : http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/23/obama/index.html?source=newsletter

And here's a poem I wrote regarding this subject. The first half was written last summer, the second half more recently:
without the sex

one--before
once a famous former governor of New York
said something about campaigning in poetry
and governing in prose
obama campaigned in poetry in the primaries
and has now switched to prose
before the convention
it’s moving to the “center”
it’s turning hard right
it means that tough opinionated michelle
has to go on The View and fist bump
(and I can guess how much that hurt her pride)
and that the two daughters
have to be trotted out on Access Hollywood
because someone in a room in Chicagot
hinks that people are rubes who only speak tabloid
backpedal on Iraq
cave in on FISA
wear the flag pin all the time
make people think that he’ll make it all better
after he gets into the white house
by not scaring the supposed rubes
triangulate triangulate triangulate
like bill clinton in 92but without the sex
but the possibility of playing an instrument
on a talk show still remains
your move, axelrod

two--after
yes, I voted for obama
I was tired of my country
being told to drink a mild brand of hemlock
laced with dictatorial arrogance
and incompetent cronyism
and I was tired of Democrats
passively accepting Republican misrule
because the towers of Jello
known as nancy and harry
didn't want to be
considered unpatriotic
and I hope in some way
obama can lead us partway out of
the abyss we're in
but obama's triangulating again
rahm's going to be chief of staff
hillary may be secretary of state
hank paulson wants his financial friends
to keep being bailed out
with as little oversight as possible
and the mainstream media
and nonmainstreamers like marc cooper
keep saying obama can't run from the left
but must come to the mythical center
instead, obama ought to be lbj in 1964
getting civil rights act and medicare passed
and build a new center
instead of becoming bill clinton without the sex
and we don't need a repeat of the time
when clinton licked sam nunn's boots
and gave us "don't ask don't tell"
regarding gays in the military

and I know there will be people saying
you can't criticize
because you'll only tear down
and they'll act like the landslide victory
is far more fragile than it is
and they'll remind us of the characters in Dreamgirls
singing "have a little patience"

I know obama can't do everything in four years
and I want to have faith
but my faith won't be blind faith
because if it is,
then we'll wind up with sarah in 2012
and we'll fall all the way
down the abyss again

and it'll hurt like hell

Bill Clinton just can't let go: re Bill Richardson's support of Obama.

I have enough of a memory to recall a ROLLING STONE cover story from the spring of 1980 about Ted Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The article's subtitle was: His fight to dump Carter and restore hope.

Seeing this article about Bill Clinton's continuing anger at New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for the latter's support of Barack Obama, it's safe to imagine a 2012 Hillary-vs.-Barack rematch, no matter how Obama's first term works out: http://news.aol.com/elections/article/clinton-still-angry-at-richardson