The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
— Brazilian poet Martha Medieros
Janet Hook reported for the Wall Street Journal that "Voter interest in the midterm elections has surged to record highs within both parties... findings point to an energized electorate, buffeted by dynamics that bring great uncertainty to the outcome just two weeks away.
Ostensibly this ad is about the Florida gubernatorial race. But even if you've never set foot on Floridians soil, please watch it, because it's about where you live and where everyone in your family lives.
The challenge by progressives to Democratic party leaders for November’s midterms—and the 2020 presidential election—is to tone down the anti-Trump focus and play up domestic planks as did the Great Depression’s president Franklin D. Roosevelt (“FDR”) to solve the nation’s critical domestic needs. Campaigners do not want to waste time and energies in yet another party defeat because the party continues to abandon the interests of millions once under its “big tent” in catering to the interests of banks, big business, and the rich.
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That Fox News poll that came out yesterday had some interesting findings beyond just Trump's skyrocketing disapproval ratings (53%).
At a time when the American population is radicalizing, when popular movements are coalescing around “radical” demands—Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE, tuition-free college, in general the demand to make society livable for everyone—it can be useful to draw collective inspiration from the past. Irruptions of the popular will have on innumerable occasions reshaped history, remade the terrain of class struggle such that the ruling class was, at least for a moment, thrown on the defensive and forced to retreat.
Mr. Mick Mulvaney’s title seems uninterestingly bureaucratic—director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). But as Trump’s chief hatchet man extraordinaire, Mugger Mick Mulvaney is easily one of the cruelest, most vicious presidential henchman in modern American history. From his powerful perch next door to the White House, he is carving a bloody trail against tens of millions of Americans who are poor, disabled, frail, and elderly. He has gone after defenseless children and injured or sick patients with little or no access to health care.
A 2019 budget plan cooked up by House Republicans aims at cutting all federal spending that isn’t defense related in an effort to reign in the debt problem. It includes massive cuts to medicare, medicaid, Social Security, education grants, welfare, and other programs aimed and softening the blow of America’s growing poverty rate. Meanwhile, this comes about while Trump is cutting taxes on the rich, introducing a ‘Space Force’, and providing massive increases to military spending.
Events in Nicaragua over the past week are clearly modeled on the kind of U.S.-led, NATO-driven regime change that succeeded in Libya, Ivory Coast and Ukraine, but has so far failed in Thailand, Syria and Venezuela. At a national level, the protests have been led by the private sector business classes defending their rate of profit against socialist policies in defense of low-income workers and people on pensions.
