The 2016 presidential campaign drags on and on. As we grit our teeth at the prospect of six more months of Donald Trump tweets, it’s useful to look back on the past 12 months and consider what we’ve learned about Republicans.

1. Each of their candidates is deeply flawed. In April of 2015, according to an CNN/ORC poll, the ranking of Republican presidential candidates was former Florida governor Jeb Bush (17 percent), Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (12 percent), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (11 percent), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (11 percent), former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (9 percent), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (7 percent), followed by surgeon Ben Carson (4 percent) and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (4 percent). At the time, pollster Nate Silver observed that most of these candidates had approval ratings that are “net-negative,” unfavorability ratings greater than favorable.

Back in 2007, President George W. Bush honored 50 “presidential scholars” at the White House, one of myriad ceremonial acts performed by heads of state. The Presidential Scholars recognition is an annual ritual for high performing high school kids. Mostly, such events are given very little attention by anyone except family and friends of honorees. But in that episode back in 2007, those kids presented Bush with a hand written letter that read, in part: “as members of the presidential scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and the brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe that we have a responsibility to voice our convictions…We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Conventions to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.”

This was, of course, at the height of the Bush/Cheney torture regime, that betrayal of American values epitomized by Abu Ghraib, the covert handing over of prisoners to regimes that did our dirty work for us, and the affront to human rights represented by that cheesy euphemism known as “enhanced interrogation.”

This morning, I ran the flatness of St Simons Island and wrote an article in my head.

Two hours later, after a shower, several phone calls, and interactions with Laura and Erma, I sat at the keyboard, fingers poised. All those words and images flowing during the endorphin rush had blurred, gone astray. This means that article in my head may not be what you’re reading, but I’ll close my eyes and try to retrieve the thoughts. If I can’t, this is a message from and to my private, emergency broadcasting system.

Easiest recall is this poem:

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

You may find it difficult to believe the content of a speech by US President George W Bush in November 2001 when he met with President Putin in Texas and, among other things, declared that “a lot of people never really dreamt that an American president and a Russian president could have established the friendship that we [have].”

He went on to say that “When I was in high school, Russia was an enemy. Now the high school students can know Russia as a friend, that we’re working together to break the old ties, to establish a new spirit of cooperation and trust so that we can work together to make the world more peaceful.”

How sensible. How optimistic.

But, regrettably, how wrong. Because the United States administration, at the urging of the Pentagon and its sub-office in Brussels, the HQ of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, had already embarked on a policy of confrontation with Russia, encouraging and subsidizing expansion of that expressly anti-Russia military alliance from 16 to its present 28 countries.

The push to make Sanders the Green Party’s candidate

Philadelphia -- Bernie Sanders, to the consternation of critics in the Democratic Party, pundits in the corporate media, and purists on the hard left, has accomplished an amazing thing. Up against Hillary Clinton, surely the biggest, best-funded corporate-backed candidate the Democratic leadership has run since Walter Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984 over three decades ago, the once obscure independent Vermont senator has battled Clinton to almost a draw, down by only some 319 delegates with nearly 900 to go (not counting the corrupt “super delegates” chosen for their fealty to party leaders, not by primary or caucus voting.)

By doing this well, as a proudly declared “democratic socialist” who on the stump has been denouncing the corruption of both the US political and economic systems, and as a candidate who has refused to take corporate money or money from big, powerful donors, instead successfully funding his campaign with only small two and three-digit donations from his supporters, Sanders has exposed not just his opponent, Hillary Clinton, but the entire Democratic Party leadership and most of its elected officials as nothing but hired corporate tools posing as progressive advocates of the people.

"Workers shouldn't strike and go out and starve, but strike and remain in, and take possession, said Lucy parsons. Lifelong partner of Albert parsons, one of the American Labor Leaders, most associated with the founding of the American May Day tradition.

Lucy Parsons was of Mexican American, African American, and Native american Descent. She was born into slavery and she was an intersectional thinker and activist a century before the term was coined.

Her work after emancipation led her directly into conflict with the Ku Klux Clan and into a lifelong partnership with radical typographer and organizer Albert Parsons.

Lucy never ceased advocating for racial, gender, and labor justice, all at once, and she's part of the movement that won us the 8-hour day.

— from Moyers & Company

Note: This interview is part one of a two-part series. Look for the second installment on Monday, May 2.

I’m holding in my hand what has been called “one of the most daring books of the 21st century,” a “book for the ages,” “bracing,” “unrelenting.” The title is Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and it breathes with prophetic fire.

Its power comes because the author does not begin with “pristine principles or with assumptions about our inherent goodness.” Rather, its view of democracy, as he writes, “emerges out of an unflinching encounter with lynching trees, prison cells, foreclosed homes, young men and women gunned down by police and places where ‘hope, unborn, had died.’”

— from Down With Tyranny!

Is it unfair to Clinton that I put this picture here? Does it question her character to show it?

I had something else lined up for today, but I wanted to follow up briefly on a recent piece I did — "HillaryWon New York, But Her Image Is Underwater" — which looked at the Washington Post's evaluation of the state of the Clinton campaign following her New York win.

That piece contained this paragraph, which we quoted (my emphasis):

The headline, from the Los Angeles Times, hit me like a sucker punch: “Voters’ ‘Bernie or Bust’ efforts persist despite Sanders’ vow not to be another Ralph Nader.”

Actually, it was worse than that. When my brain cleared, I realized I was, once again, caught in a media straitjacket.

In just over a dozen words, the paper managed not only to trivialize everything two presidential candidates stood for, and not only to reference the myth that Nader caused Al Gore to lose an election he didn’t in fact lose, but also, my God, to obliterate the last six months of a presidential campaign that had permanently shaken up the political status quo and return progressive voters to a place of permanent irrelevance to the national future.

A Bloomberg story reports that the cellular phone company T-Mobile is being accused of creating a fake union as a way to fight off gains by the real union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

The company is accused of pretending to have a system that represents workers to management as a way of making employees think they do not need a union. In fact the representation system is the company itself.

According to the story, “T-Mobile Accused of Fighting a Real Union by Creating a Fake One“:

For more than a decade, the Communications Workers of America has been trying to unionize T-Mobile, the U.S. subsidiary of German giant Deutsche Telekom, which is now the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier. The campaign has so far won only two union contracts, covering about 30 of T-Mobile’s roughly 45,000 employees. Now CWA is alleging to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that T-Mobile has adopted an anti-union tactic that’s been illegal since 1935: creating a company-controlled union to drain support for an independent one.

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

No matter what you think of him, journalist Robert Kaplan is always worth reading. In a piece at the National Interest, he writes that empires, despite their evil, provided “stability and order to vast tracts of land occupied by different peoples, particularly in Europe.” In their absence, “what then?”

We are entering an age of what I call comparative anarchy, that is, a much higher level of anarchy compared to that of the Cold War and post–Cold War periods.

He explains that “globalization and the communications revolution have reinforced, rather than negated, geopolitics. The world map is now smaller and more claustrophobic, so that territory is more ferociously contested, and every regional conflict interacts with every other as never before. A war in Syria is inextricable from a terrorist outrage in Europe, even as Russia’s intervention in Syria affects Europe’s and America’s policy toward Ukraine.”

[click image to enlarge]

First Hillary Clinton told a newspaper that Bernie Sanders wasn’t qualified to be president. When he shot back that her judgement made her unqualified, she pretended he’d attacked her out of nowhere. Such are the dynamics of a media narrative: it’s impossible to tell the true truth, only their truth.

Folks,

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a picture of where we're at.

I'm not being dramatic when I say we can't pay our bills. So if you have a couple of extra dollars that it won't hurt for you to part with, please consider clicking that "donate" button at the top of the page.

Thanks!

-- Jeff T.

Tuesday night didn't go that well for Bernie Sanders. Despite high hopes for a strong showing in the so-called "Acela primaries," he managed to win just one of the five states at play -- Rhode Island. As a result, his path to the Democratic nomination, although still open, just got a lot slimmer.

But contrary to what you might hear on the mainstream corporate media, Bernie's win in tiny Rhode Island is actually a pretty big deal. It wasn't the last gasp from a candidate who's well past his sell-by date that establishment types are making it out to be. It was a wake-up call to Democrats everywhere about what they need to do to expand their party.

You see, there's a reason why Bernie Sanders did so well in Rhode Island: it has an open primary, and Bernie Sanders often does really, really well in open primaries. Including Rhode Island, most of the actual primaries he's won this election season have been open contests or virtually open contests.

There’s no end of stuff to worry about, not the least of which is the end of the world, a prospect made much more likely by the press of human overpopulation. There are way too many of us, and more all the time. We’re procreating ourselves toward oblivion, and though there are enough bummers on our experiential radar each day to take the lead out of millions of pencils, there are still enough horny guys and solid erectile functions to ensure a constant increase in our numbers around the globe, all those hungry new people imposing ever increasing demands on the resources of the planet. There are nearly 7.5 billion of us right now, and it's predicted that we'll almost double that number by the end of this century if we keep quite literally fucking around the way we are now.

Global warming is tightly bound up with the environmental stress caused by too many human beings ravaging a finite planet. We’re filling our oceans with trash, and over-fishing the seas to the point of collapsing the world's fisheries. We're fouling our air, killing off countless species each year, and drawing down our potable drinking water wherever we’re not just polluting it. In short, it's a case of too many people busy making a big mess of our living quarters.

— from Robert Reich's Blog

Wealth inequality is even more of a problem than income inequality. That’s because you have to have enough savings from income to begin to accumulate wealth – buying a house or investing in stocks and bonds, or saving up to send a child to college.

But many Americans have almost no savings, so they have barely any wealth. Two-thirds live paycheck to paycheck.

Once you have wealth, it generates its own income as the value of that wealth increases over time, generating dividends and interest, and then even more when those assets are sold.

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

An extreme weather event hits Norway. Finally shocked into doing something radical about climate change, Norwegian citizens propel the Green Party into government, where it declares an immediate suspension of oil and gas production. The new prime minister promises to provide Europe instead with electricity from the next generation of “clean” nuclear power.

The European Union, heavily dependent on Norwegian hydrocarbons, isn’t happy. At the behest of Brussels, Russian commandos kidnap the Green prime minister and force him to restart the flow of oil and gas. To ensure compliance, the Russians become a shadow occupation force. The prime minister is desperate to avoid bloodshed and so tries to accommodate his new “partners.” Most Norwegians don’t see much change in their everyday lives. Some citizens, however, prepare to fight back.

— from Black Agenda Report

STOP THE RUNAWAY. FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD.
The above reward will be given any person that will take him and deliver him to me or secure him in jail so that I can get him. If taken out of the state, the above reward, and all reasonable expenses paid – and ten dollars extra for every hundred lashes any person will give him to the amount of three hundred.
— Andrew Jackson, Tennessee Gazette, November 7, 1804

The history of American presidents is one long tale of criminality and Andrew Jackson was one of the worst of the lot. Jackson grew rich on his Tennessee plantation made profitable by the unpaid labor of 200 enslaved people. There are southern cities with names like Jacksonville, Florida and Jackson, Mississippi in honor of a man who practiced the genocide that made white conquest possible.

Jackson was perhaps more responsible than any other person for driving indigenous people out of the southern states. The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears were his handiwork. After Indians were conquered in war and sent to far off Oklahoma white settlers swept in to make cotton king through the labor of chattel slaves.

— from Truthout

The surrealist painting that is this election season came into grim focus last night as the two big-money front-runners blew the doors off their respective rivals and came many steps closer to giving the "news" media the general election race they've been craving. Donald Trump won everything by margins so wide you could sail an aircraft carrier through them. Hillary Clinton took four out of five contests, with Bernie Sanders picking up Rhode Island. It was near-comprehensive domination, and unless Trump bursts into flames or Clinton starts eating live wombats during a press conference, we're all staring the general election contest dead in the face.

Last night for Donald Trump: 58 percent in Connecticut, 61 percent in Delaware, 54 percent in Maryland, 56 percent in Pennsylvania and a whopping 64 percent in Rhode Island. Last night for Clinton: 52 percent in Connecticut, 60 percent in Delaware, 63 percent in Maryland and 56 percent in Pennsylvania. It wasn't close.

— from Media Matters

The unfolding Republican primary season, which often resembles a soap opera with its endless drama and plot twists, saw a new media chapter when Fox News announced Megyn Kelly had landed her first interview with Donald Trump since the start of their public feud last year.

Scheduled to be included in Kelly’s first prime-time Fox TV special on May 17, the sit-down came after Kelly, the target of relentless Trump insults, made a hush-hush visit to candidate’s New York City office to ask for an interview. (Kelly also reportedly asked Trump stop personally insulting her.)

The Fox News green room commotions just never end. Recall that in March, after going on a Twitter tirade in which he denounced Kelly as “crazy,” Trump announced he was skipping another Fox News debate, which led to the event being canceled. Fox News headquarters answered back, claiming the GOP frontrunner had a “sick obsession” with Kelly. But that was awkward because Fox showered Trump with nearly $30 million in free TV time from May through December of 2015. So who’s obsessed with whom?

— from TomDispatch

In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent on air power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback.

— from Down With Tyranny!

I don't want this point to get lost. It was made in a longer piece I recently did, but it's important as a stand-alone.

After the New York primary, Bernie Sanders took a day off and appeared, to me at least, to take a moment to get his feet back under him (I like the athlete metaphor since he is one). Then he came back strong with these two messages:

• I'm fighting until the last vote is cast (so don't keep asking me).
• I'll back Clinton if she's the nominee, but she has to earn my supporters on her own.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have incredibly high negatives. Most people don’t agree with, like or trust either. In a political system responsive to the public, an alternative with broad support would emerge if they become the nominees, as seems increasingly likely.

Unfortunately, in our system — which enshrines the dominance of the two establishment parties — the negatives of each end up perversely being the basis of support for the other. Voters end up being trapped by the very unpopularity of the candidates. The main things holding the system together are fear and hate — even as the candidates claim to be bringing people together.

That is, most people supporting Clinton are not doing so because they view her as upstanding, wise or just. They support her because they fear and despise Trump and his misogyny, racism and temperament.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) went dormant in Congress after election season began. It became clear that the public despises our country’s corporate-dominated “trade deals” that let companies just lay people off and close factories here to take advantage of conditions in countries that allow people and the environment to be exploited. Candidates who could sense which way the wind was blowing told voters they oppose TPP, and Congress dropped it — for now.

But now people who follow these things are hearing more and more talk behind the scenes that indicate corporate America is going to try to push TPP through in the “lame duck” Congressional session after the elections. This is a session in which the old Congress consisting of the ones who might have gotten voted out minus new ones who just got voted in, and the re-elected incumbents who won’t be up for re-election for two more years can sneak things past the public with little or no accountability.

On April 27th, NATO member-state Turkey, which on 24 November 2015 had shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter jet near the Syria-Turkey border, refused Russia’s request to investigate Turkey’s having murdered the surviving Russian pilot. (The plane’s weapons-systems officer was rescued, but the pilot was shot dead while parachuting down from the plane.) Turkey admits having in custody the man, Alparslan Celik, who murdered the parachuting pilot. On April 25th, Turkish authorities had said that they might try Celik for murder; but, now, the Turkish Ambassador in Moscow says Turkey won't. 

Also related to the step-up to war, Russia has reported on April 25th, that it's responding to America’s recently announced quadrupling of its troops and armaments in the Baltic republics on and near Russia’s northwestern Black Sea borders, by Russia's sending “more than ten” warships of its own to coastal waters there, for “training exercises,” just as the U.S. troops and weapons are likewise there for “training exercises”, as both sides prepare for an increasingly likely war between NATO and Russia.