TRUMP VISITS MURPHYS.

Imagine my surprise when I found out my best friend Jim is related to Donald Trump. The resemblance is pretty startling. And he has gone gung ho, preaching the merits of a Trump presidency.


Personally, I think Trump decided to run as a lark and now he can't insult enough people to get himself out of the election. He's sort of stuck. This trumper doesn't agree.


Jim is quite an actor himself. He's convinced the Trump hairstyle will become the rage as his popularity grows, so he did a pretty good imitation of the hair, the scowl, the whole persona. I get all these emails asking to sign petitions against Trump. I refuse to sign because I think Trump and Sanders have shaken up our corrupt establishment and I'm just cheering on the sidelines.  I hope he wins the Republican nomination since Kaisch doesn't have a chance. Then the party of obstruction can hold their noses to vote Republican.
Meanwhile, I'll vote for a sensible, sincere, non billionaire, Sanders, who has the heart of the people and started this whole revolution. Go Sanders. I hate the vilification of Hillary that is going on. She is no worse than most of the beltway wheelers and dealers, but they vilified her when she was a First Lady and they continue to do so now. It is ugly. We need someone clean, like Sanders.

And, just for the record, Jim is not really related to Donald Trump, but he is a supporter.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS DEAD?

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., founder and editor of the American Spectator, claims liberalism is dead. It looks to me like the Republican Party is in disarray, befuddled and crying out for help. Asking Mitt Romney to step in and diss Trump. They have two presidential candidates who have the lowest voting records and attendance in Congress, Rubio has produced NO legislation and missed 35 per cent of the votes on bills in congress and Cruz has the third worst attendance and missed 24 per cent of votes in congress. (Republican Lindsay Graham, is in second place, having missed 28 per cent of the votes.)  And, their leading candidate continually has a problem with the truth?
The party hopefuls are confessing to hold their nose if they have to support Cruz. Tyrrell sizes up President Bill Clinton saying "He did little to resuscitate liberalism."   He may not have resuscitated liberalism, but he turned the party progressive. He got the country moving. Jobs were soaring, the biggest national debt in history, at that point, left by Reagan, was paid off. Clinton poured surplus money into social programs that conservatives had "borrowed"from like Social Security. And he left us with a balanced budget, and a huge surplus.
Then G.W. Bush spent it all on a war started with a lie. His Vice President, Cheney claimed, "...deficits don't matter." Huh!
 And, now Tyrrell for the second time is declaring that the Democratic Party is a relic?  In his words, "It is astonishing that so few Americans-even conservatives-recognize it." Maybe it is the Republican Party that needs an autopsy.
 People are tired of a do-nothing congress controlled by conservatives. People are tired of conservatives starving institutions like the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and The United States Forest Service so they can't do their jobs. People are tired of a party that denies the very existence of science. Looks to me like revolution in the country and we have Trump and Sanders to thank for that.

MEET AGITATOR JIM HIGHTOWER.

 

Jim Hightower writes the Hightower Lowdown, a national newsletter that exposes injustice in America, only he calls it exposing bushwackers, bullshitters, gooberheads, plasticized morons, moon howling...well, the adjectives, some invented by him, are numerous and humorous. He says he is an agitator..."the center post of the washing machine that gets out all the dirt." And, right now, he doesn't like the hucksters running a Democracy where 4 people, all of them hedge fund managers, each earned 10 Billion dollars last year, where 108 Kindergarten teachers split 1 million. The hedge fund managers pay taxes at a rate of 15% and the teachers pay at a rate of 35%. Democracy works best from the bottom up and includes everybody. That's you and me folks. Its revolution time for people tired of being the fire hydrants for all of those top dogs. And, the chorus sang, Hallelujah.



They did, but it wasn't quite in that order. First, the Mother Lode Martin Luther King Jr. Chapter, active in our area for 23 years, drew over 500 people to hear Hightower speak. Amazing because this is a very white, rural community.

The program began with Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speech on a movie screen. I had forgotten what a powerful and passionate speaker he was. It was an emotional moment to turn back the pages of time and remember, the women who died in a baptist church, Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus, little girls being escorted to all white schools by the National Guard in the fight for equal rights for black Americans;  a fight that is on going to this day, 48 years after his death.  Hightower reminded us that Katie Stanton, and the jailed and punished suffragettes didn't get the right to vote that they fought for either, but WE got it because of them.

And, that my friends is his point. Money now flows upward and the rich have so much money they can air condition hell while the poor and middle class struggles to make ends meet.

"We don't want charity, we want economic justice. And Congress, the House and the President is stealing from us with a fountain pen." He pointed to the current NAFTA agreement where 500 corporations and that included the Koch Brothers, met in secret, and hammered out an agreement and stuffed it down our throats without one member of a Union or anyone from the middle class and small business sitting at the table.

Hightower believes that people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who don't accept money from the big super pacs can overcome the moneyed elites who have corrupted our politics and rigged our economy to squeeze the life out of the middle class.

Bernie's average donation is $23. Hightower says, you can't buy a presidency with $23. His campaign is about We The People. Hightower convinced me that, with Bernie, its time to rock the boat.

No one addresses him as Senator Sanders, he is just Bernie, and one of the poorest Senators in the pack. He hasn't parlayed his position to great wealth like most national office holders have.
He came from a low-income working class family in Brooklyn. He first worked as a carpenter, then film maker, writer and agitator. An agitator in college during the 60's, he moved to Vermont and began exposing Burlington money boys who ran the town for their own fun and profit. Then he stunned everyone by winning an election for Mayor in Burlington. Bernie has never abandoned his working class roots. I've changed my position to clearly stand with the candidate who says: "I can't do this, but WE can."


The program ended with everyone singing the song:  We Shall Overcome. Hightower was available to talk to people at a reception after the program.
wecanpetition.moveon.org.

OCCUPYING WALL STREET

Occupying Wall Street for me is tomorrow, on Earth Revolution day, October 15th, at Sonora, a small community in Tuolumne County.
This movement is really the first major grassroots revolution going on in America since the Viet Nam protests.  Its been a peaceful revolution and I expect it has put our legislators on notice, maybe…  Maybe not. Did they pass a jobs bill?  No.

Keeping Millions Out of Work to put One Man Out of a Job.
Republicans have turned into a fringe element as in you have to refuse any compromise with Democrats, especially any budget compromise. You have to question Science, because all those environmentalists are a bunch of crazies. You have to think  you can  run a country without any taxes, or regulation, nor listen to any sensible tax plans; you can’t support any muslim citizens of the United States, nor allow women to have control over their bodies.  And, if you are a candidate, you have to PLEDGE to hew to the party line, don’t even think of having an independent thought.  And, while Republicans sympathize with alternative lifestyles, maybe, well, some do, they start to shake when it comes to the word marriage as in same-sex marriage.  The word scares hell out of them. And, you have to deny  environmental holocaust and climate change exists because those pesky environmentalists want to phase out coal and dependence on oil where the $$$$$$ comes from.   And, you can’t be friendly to anyone who ever worked with or compromised with a Democrat.  And gun control, cannot be touched, even for a child safety lock, or for assault guns that can kill an elephant.  And you can’t associate with the “wrong” people,  as in Democrats or anyone who thinks a Union has any merit. Lock our borders, don’t let anyone in, but let cheap goods flow freely across the borders. Why make anything in the U.S?
So, I’m going to put my legislators on notice,  that this movement is about holding Wall Street, the banks, the money grabbers pushing for legislation that benefit only a certain segment of corporations, accountable.  This is about taking back Democracy By The People For The People. This is about basic freedoms and it is just part of a global revolution.
Occupy Wall Street has websites and demonstrations in every state,  ten provinces in Canada, and Puerto Rico. This occupation has been going on for 28 days.
There are protests for PEACE, and REBIRTH of  DEMOCRACY  in Egypt, France, England, Italy, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Syria, and Tunisia. Oh, and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t surface in your local newspaper.
In Ohio, the state is bulldozing houses to keep neighborhoods from turning into slums, and our Congress can’t pass a jobs bill?  They send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread, but banks and corporations that steal billions get away without even a reprimand?
This isn’t the Democracy that I grew up with.  It may take Americans a long time to wake up, but change is in the air.  Revolution is a painful way to make change, but it works. And, it could get bloody.