The Stein/Baraka campaign has issued a press release rebutting John Oliver's recent Last Week Tonight segment on Third Parties. Not only did Oliver and his writers and fact-checkers get some details wrong, they also deliberately ignored some points that the campaign had provided them. Phooey. After watching the segment Monday morning on the LWT YouTube channel, I thought that Oliver had examined the Stein/Baraka campaign with a high degree of fairness for a comedy current events program. I didn't know the whole story. I am embarrassed, but I am not surprised, having said in my post yesterday that Jill Stein certainly blood does know what quantitative easing is, because it was one of the tools that made the bank bailouts possible in 2009. By now, millions of voters already have seen Oliver's hit-piece, while only thousands will see the rebuttal. We don't need to worry about too many of the true believers, but an awful lot of progressives teeter-tottering between Stein and Hillary Clinton will be convinced and will never see the press release. The clickbait websites that provide millions of voters with most of their news almost certainly will not report on the rebuttal. In real time, this is a case Mark Twain's famous dictum about a lie traveling around the world while the truth is still putting on its trousers. Chronicle Miscovers Stein's LCC Visit Equally worrisome is the article in Sunday's Houston Chronicle on Jill Stein's appearance at the Last Concert Café Saturday afternoon. It was nice to get an article on page 4 of the front section of a newspaper that almost never prints the words "Jill" and "Stein" together. However, it was not so nice to see these two paragraphs in it: Taking the stage after a speaker who extolled the virtues of drug legalization that would make heroin available at the corner store, Stein called for a change in drug policy. Way to make the Greens look even more disconnected from reality than the major media already have, assholes. Jill took the stage after her field director Adrián Boutureiro, who, I'm pretty sure, said nothing about making heroin so easily available. If I can find video of what he actually said, I'll post a link to it here. Likewise, if you find it, let me know in Comments—better yet, tell Keri Blakinger. State House candidate Brian Harrison did advocate legalizing heroin and other substances, but also stated emphatically that addicts need treatment, not incarceration. Even residential treatment is less expensive to society than incarceration, as studies have shown for, oh, decades now. The Stein campaign, just as in 2012, favors treating addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal issue. More as it emerges. "I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress" — Frederick Douglass Kayleen and I live in the 18th Congressional District of Texas, where I have resided for the past five years. I will be voting for Tom Kleven, the Green candidate, a professor of law at Texas Southern University, the same school that produced Representatives Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland.
I have no major complaints about the representation that Sheila Jackson Lee has provided in her 22 years in Congress. Nobody has represented TX-18 longer in its 44 years of existence, and voters in her district keep sending her back with huge majorities. After all, the district that Rep. Jordan created in 1971 to assure black representation in Congress has now been gerrymandered to assure a Democratic supermajority. All narcissists lack emotional empathy and are, to some extent, anti-social. Many narcissists are somewhat psychopathic and, therefore, sadistically prone to violence. They get a high and derive an almost sexual gratification from wielding power and inflicting pain and humiliation on others. It sustains their grandiose fantasy of omnipotence (that they are Godlike, all-powerful). That's why many narcissists are litigious, threaten "their enemies" incessantly, seek to embarrass and humiliate them in public, stalk them, and harass them recurrently. Narcissists have a black and white view of the world: if you are not 100% with me, you are 110% the enemy (this is known as "splitting" in the psychological jargon). Trump strikes me as this type of narcissist. Saturday afternoon, as a fellow Green was excoriating Donald Trump from the stage of the Last Concert Café, another fellow Green leaned over and said something like, "Trump is sick, you know. He has a mental illness, and he needs treatment."
She didn't specify Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but that's where my brain went. That's what of thought about Trump for years. I nodded and kept listening to the speech. We all need mental health care, even those of us who suffer from no recognized mental illness. We need to break the stigma surrounding mental illness and seeking treatment. We need to make mental health care affordable for everyone, or society will continue to pay the price (e.g., in mass shootings). We also need to recognize when someone like Donald Trump is manipulating the public for his own self-aggrandizement, or when the Democratic Party and its operatives are gaslighting voters. It's been a Texas-size weekend for the Stein/Baraka campaign. Dr. Jill Stein and her mini-entourage appeared in El Paso Friday for a crowd of about 300, nearly as many in Houston Saturday, moved on to San Antonio yesterday, and will scoot up I-35 into Austin today. (I extend my sympathies to my comrades in Greater Dallas–Fort Worth, who will not get a visit from Jill this time around. Laredo and the Valley got to see her last year.)
In addition, Sunday night, John Oliver actually deigned not only to mention Jill Stein and the Greens, but to take Stein's candidacy seriously—as seriously as a comedy news analysis program should, anyway. He also took Gary Johnson's Libertarian candidacy seriously for a few seconds...and then totally didn't. The crowd at Last Concert Café Saturday (pictures here and here and on Brains & Eggs) was large and enthusiastic. However, not everyone in attendance came in as Stein supporters, and not everyone left as Stein supporters. Some came just out of curiosity, to find out whether Jill would be a better choice than the abhorrent major-party nominees. A couple of friends, progressive but not hardcore Greens like me, accepted my invitation to the campaign event at LCC. They reported afterward on Facebook that the event gave them a bitter taste, partly from what Jill or the other speakers said from the stage, but more due to what they heard from the crowd. Somebody busted out with a cry to put Hillary Clinton in prison, a line more befitting a Trump rally, and another referred to Secretary Clinton as "Shitlary." I had to assure my friends that longtime Greens try to eschew that kind of talk, especially in public, not that we're always successful in that effort. Trash talk of that sort comes mostly, though not exclusively, from people who are new to the movement and don't understand the importance we place on civil discourse. Another friend commented that you see and hear a lot worse at rallies for major-party candidates. These are the venues and times for Jill Stein's actual appearances in Texas over the next few days. The events may start earlier than the times indicated: For example, the Houston event begins at 2 pm and ends at 7, with Jill expected to arrive about 4 after flying in from El Paso.
Last night I watched most of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka's one-hour appearance on C-SPAN with Steve Scully. As I mentioned in the preceding post, I am 100% behind the Green Party's presidential ticket, and not just because I find the other parties and candidates abhorrent. Stein's Power to the People Plan, and the Green Party's national platform, are the blueprints for the world I want for my extended family, friends, and descendants.
This does not mean that I refrain from criticizing my preferred candidates' performance in the rare media opportunities they receive. Jill does not do media as well as a presidential candidate ought to. She has improved with practice, but she's not where she needs to be. In the way she educates interviewers with hardball questions, she's literally awesome, as a recent video demonstrates. But she has some habits that are irritating to someone like me who watches her regularly and has a background in public speaking. UPDATE: Jill Stein has posted a reply on jill2016.com to Al Gore's remarks. ***** Former Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., is quite correct about one thing: Florida's votes really, really, really count. But his campaigning with Hillary Clinton has gravely disappointed my ladyfriend, who got to meet her longtime crush during Climate Reality Training this past August. At a campaign appearance with Hillary Clinton at Miami Dade College, the Sun-Sentinel notes, Gore recalled how much Floridians' votes counted in 2000, and the crowd responded with an enthusiastic chant of "You won! You won!" Considering the evidence that, if the recount had been allowed to proceed, he would have won Florida, the crowd was also correct about that. The Supreme Court and the Brooks Brothers Brownshirts stole the election from Gore and his running mate Joseph Lieberman. Perhaps if Gore had won the presidential race in 2000, we humans would be well on our way to achieving international goals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the levels necessary to prevent the dreaded two-degree rise in global temperatures. Perhaps the United States would not have invaded Afghanistan and, subsequently, Iraq, because perhaps there would not have been a 9/11. Perhaps. This week, somebody on one of the Green Party Facebook pages posted a link to this little item (content warning: Language) from Yale University's not-as-famous-as-the-Harvard-Lampoon satire magazine. It is worth a giggle or two. However, I disagree with "James fucking Madison" regarding the utility of the Electoral College. Unfortunately, the real James Madison was too busy protecting the Republic from the excesses of the majority to see the wisdom of the Ranked Choice or Approval Voting methods. In his time, Madison had no reason to fear that the majority of the population would pick some raving yahoo to be president. It was left to the several States to determine who was allowed to vote, and they mostly limited the franchise to white male property-owning US citizens 21 or older. As it was, the white landed gentry chose plenty of racists, misogynists, xenophobes, and Indian-killers to be their leaders and representatives. Speaking of raving yahoos, the NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released yesterday contains some a few interesting questions regarding "Pussygate." Sorry the print is so tiny. [Insert clever joke about Donald Trump's fingers here.] To sum it up, only 3% of the likely voters polls are now more likely to support Trump following the release of the 2005 conversation with Billy Bush; 39% are less likely, and 56% say it makes no difference (as it would in my case, since the chance of my supporting Trump was already zero).
As to whether Trump should drop out of the race because of his comments, 39% said Yes, 59% said No. This question has more nuance than you would think: You can't just drop out of the race when millions have voted for you, your name is already on all the states' ballots, and early voting has already begun in some states. So I wouldn't mind seeing Trump drop off the face of the earth, but I would answer that question No, I don't think he should drop out of the race. For the moment, I will enjoy the Schadenfreude of watching Republicans squirming with buyer's remorse—especially Ted Cruz, who, just two weeks before, very reluctantly drank the red Kool-Aid and endorsed Trump. Maybe after the election I will begin to feel sorry for them for being so thoroughly duped. One of the exasperating aspects of reading poll results is seeing how professional pollsters leave ambiguous questions in their surveys—sometimes intentionally, mostly because they genuinely don't know. It's amazing, and a little disturbing, how a slight change of wording can produce a different result. It would have been more precise to ask if Trump should concede the race. Rep. Paul Ryan has already disinvited Trump and his running mate Gov. Mike Pence from campaign events in Wisconsin. It won't be the last place where influential Republicans will tell Trump and Pence that they are not fucking welcome. Now that I have my Samantha Bee post out of the way, let's move on to some major excitement.
Jill Stein will be swinging through Texas next week! Two weekends later, running mate Ajamu Baraka will grace Dallas (28th) and Houston (29th). Stein's Houston appearance will be at the Last Concert Café, 1403 Nance Street in the Warehouse District. The fun starts at noon. The Green presidential nominee will likely address the crowd somewhere around 4 pm. We can't say what time she will arrive, but she'll be flying in from El Paso that morning. Here's the Facebook event. Get on it. Invite others. Let's make this a campaign appearance to remember for generations. We do not have venue information or times for Baraka's appearance. Stay tuned. Despite her habit of taking gratuitous swipes at third parties and third-party voters, I like watching Samantha Bee and her 30-minute soapbox Full Frontal. She also has a problem with independent candidates and voters. Sam Be like, "Two parties and two candidates max, dammit! Americans aren't smart enough for more than two! If Kang is demonstrably less evil and stupid than Kodos, then vote for Kang!" This morning, reflecting on this Wednesday's broadcast, I have three wishes:
By now, Wednesday's installment of Full Frontal is already old news, but not as old as the thoroughly debunked "spoiler" argument. So I'm going to respond to the LePage segment with a bit of a spoiler here: The end of the segment illustrates how independent candidates supposedly peeled votes away from the Democratic nominees in both 2010 and 2014, enabling LePage to be elected with less than a majority both times. There were three such independents in 2010, the Year of the Tea Party Insurgency. One of them, Eliot Cutler, came close to winning, with Democrat Libby Mitchell polling at a dismal 19%. If anything, Mitchell spoiled the race for Cutler. Cutler tried again in 2014, but managed only 8.4%. Sam, why do you think independents were queuing up to run for governor in 2010? Maybe because neither major party was doing jack to help the working people of Maine? Was Mitchell really the best candidate that Maine's Democratic Party could offer that year? Was Mike Michaud really the best available in 2014? Were all the independent candidates disgruntled lefties, or was at least one of them a conservative appalled at the prospect of LePage getting elected? Can you guarantee that all of Cutler's 51,518 voters have voted for Democrat Michaud in 2014, landing Michaud in the mansion instead of Governor Worldwide Embarrassment? Also, Sam, you completely ignored Maine's Ranked Choice Voting referendum on the ballot this year, which seeks specifically to negate any "spoiler" issues. Here is the ballot language as quoted in Ballotpedia: Do you want to allow voters to rank their choices of candidates in elections for U.S. Senate, Congress, Governor, State Senate, and State Representative, and to have ballots counted at the state level in multiple rounds in which last-place candidates are eliminated until a candidate wins by majority? My only beef with the referendum is that it does not include President and Vice President. Apart from that, it's a long overdue, people-powered solution for a state where independents and the Green Party have a strong presence. As a longtime Green, I am biased toward Instant Runoff Voting, but I will link you to arguments both in favor of the referendum and opposed to it.
The old expression "As Maine goes, so goes the nation" may not be true, but I'm hopeful that Maine will pass Ranked Choice, that it will produce a governor in 2018 more reflective of the state's population, and that other states will follow suit. Also, agreeing with what Bee said in her first segment Wednesday night, I'm hopeful that she will be able to take a nice, long break from jokes about presidential politics after this year's bizarre-reality-TV election is finally in the can. |
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