I agree with all your points. It does seem to me the candidates (Biden/Trump) reflect the end stages of the two modern political parties.
Trump began the destruction of the Republican Party in 2016 by wiping out all the establishment-approved candidates. The modern Republican Party is now near death; the party of Trump is something else - no matter who is the 2024 "Republican" candidate. The futile efforts of people like McConnell, Romney, et. al. seem to me to be an effort to bring back a Republican Party that will then get the funding that has increasingly gone to the Democrats over the last seven years. I don't see it succeeding.
Biden may be the last of the candidates of a Democratic Party that hasn't represented its traditional values or voters in over 30 years (the Clintons started its destruction with their "New Democrats"). The DNC embrace of the Deep State has led to Joe Biden being the only viable candidate of a party that is as desiccated and senile as he is. Approved others on the horizon - Harris, Newsom,Buttigieg - may use platitudes and social issues as a distraction from the same outdated politics, but it doesn't appear they can generate much enthusiasm. None will offer any change.
The Democrats insurgent candidates (RFK Jr and Marianne Williamson) will be marginalized and ignored. Even if they could gain some traction I don't believe it would change much. The forces against them within the Democratic Party are much too strong for the people's voices to matter.
Reform of either of the two traditional party at this point seems hopeless. Outright rejection of both is the right course - but what form that would take isn't clear.
Any of these insurgent/third party candidates know they can't win. What they want to get is leverage to make deals -hopefully for something meaningful. Bernie Sanders had it in 2016 and 2020 - unfortunately both times he traded it away; in 2020 for a committee chairmanship.
And if West stole votes from the Democratic candidate, and that candidate was Joe Biden, I'd be fine with it.
Wiki: "Susan Page described the Republican Party as "Trump's party" and the Democratic Party as "Bernie Sanders's party", saying that "Sanders and his more progressive stance has really taken hold."[265] Noting the increasing acceptance of his national single-payer health-care program, his $15-an-hour minimum wage stance, free college tuition and many of the other campaign platform issues he introduced."
He is currently on:
Committee on the Budget (former chair)
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on National Parks
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy
Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (chair)
Subcommittee on Children and Families
Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security
Committee on Veterans' Affairs (former chair)
How effective has he leveraged his participation in these committees to achieve a national single-payer health-care program, a $15/hour minimum wage, free college tuition, Social Security expansion, a carbon tax, Wall Street reform, abolition of the death penalty and a "reasoned pathway for future legalization" of marijuana, Tom?
Would it be out of line to say he has had zero effect you think?
I suppose Sanders is a good object lesson in not believing anything any politician says until they actually do something that isn't for political grandstanding; they all talk a good game; after capitulation they then claim they need to maintain relevance and viability by going along.
While the president is not actually in charge the way a corporate CEO is, he still is, as Dubya proclaimed, "the decider". Many horrible things that were on the planning board got nixed by various presidents in my lifetime, from JFK (before Allan Dulles got to him) to even bloodthirsty Obama. The MIC people bring actionable options to the president, and he or she decides which option to implement. So while their choices are very limited, they can even decide "none of the above" if they want to really piss off the MIC. So even though they may not be in charge, they have a great deal of leeway as to what gets done and what doesn't. Of course, that doesn't mean the CIA won't do an end run around them (or worse), it just means that when things are going along normally, the president makes the final call. So having a senile president has consequences in terms of how bad the actual implemented policies are (think going to war against Russia in Ukraine, as a good example).
I think you will find Devil's Chessboard very enlightening Bill. I read it last year. If you dig around, you can find quite a bit of interesting information on your own. I found this article in Diplomatic History from 2007 on Dulles and the Bay of Pigs. It is clear that the CIA was doing endless end runs around the president who wanted peace. They thought he was too young and naïve to make sound decisions on life and death matters, so they made them for him. If you have trouble getting the full PDF, I can email you a copy.
The "Confessions" of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs.
Advanced age does bring its limitations. It might not be a dealbreaker if, for example, the President had a joint replacement, couldn't jog 3 miles, etc. But dementia, though not necessarily a coincident part for everyone Biden's age, should be an automatic disqualifier; and Biden increasingly seems to be slipping ever further into it.
Sure- we know that Presidents yield much power and policy to others. In foreign policy, State Dep't and Security Advisers have long had way too much sway. But as you imply here, the electorate in this pretend democracy vote for 'x', (or perhaps more accurately and often, against 'y') because one more closely represents their concerns and values and vision. As it is, they only get votes for the legislative and executive branches. They want that vote to mean something. They're not voting for a figurehead- a puppet in the control of some unelected bureaucracy tied to the corporate world.
Biden is nothing more than the latter, now. If he had any functional moral compass, or was not already too cognitively impaired, he'd resign now or at the very least, retire at the end of his current term. The puppet-masters probably wouldn't like that because it's a hell of a lot easier to manipulate an incapacitated guy like Biden than, say, a figure like JFK. I think that's why the establishment Dems all jumped on the Biden bandwagon so early in the game, and why they don't really want an actual primary.
I have this nightmare of how the world will end. Biden gives a speech and says at the end "God save the Queen" or some such. On the way off the stage he trips over the attache case containing the nuclear launch codes. An ICBM is accidentally launched and nuclear war ensues. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. God save the King.
I note that people are commenting on the very informative book The Devil's Chessboard. I read that last year and found it quite eye opening ,as I assume you are. After that I read a book by Paul Williams titled "Operation Gladio : the Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia" which is equally astounding as it documents the CIA'S take over of the world drug trade and how it hides and cleans the millions (billions?) it makes in the Vatican banking system which is immune from national and international auditors. Apparently all the succeeding popes except possibly the last one (we're not sure) have agreed to this. When we talk about the deep state or dark state running things, I tend to think of the CIA since just about all the major evil events in this country and many abroad are the result of their work starting with the murders of Jack Kennedy, and his brother Robert, and the way we fought the VietNam war. I hope at some point you will write an article or two on this subject.
To be honest I always wanted the body to cease before the mind. My fave. Writer {Stephen King) when asked what was the greatest horror? And this was his answer. For him he said "it would be the loss of one's Mind." Either way its tough. A real nail- biter of a finish this life...!
15 QUESTIONS THAT ARE MORE USEFUL THAN "WHAT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SHOULD AMERICANS VOTE FOR?" by Caitlin Johnstone / Caitlin’s Newsletter 062123
People keep asking me to weigh in on the US presidential race and its candidates, which is what always happens whenever there’s a US presidential race on because media saturation makes it so central in the minds of Americans it’s often the main issue they want to talk about, even if they’re fairly aware.
I really don’t have anything to say about who Americans should vote for, other to repeat what I’ve said already about the fact that you can’t vote your way out of a mess you never voted yourself into in the first place.
But what I can do instead is offer my American friends some questions to ask that would probably be much more helpful to them and their nation than the question “Which presidential candidate should we vote for?”
Here are 15 such questions:
1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for?
2. Why does US foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president’s party or platform?
3. What keeps our voting population split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way?
4. Why does the stalemate described in #3 always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war-horny?
5. Why is it that the most consequential US government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocidal capitalism and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them?
6. If our federal government’s behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy-setting whom we did not elect, and who remain in positions of influence regardless of the comings and goings of our official elected government?
7. If the above is the case, then who is it? Who’s really calling the shots in this country?
8. Could it be that everything we’ve been told about our country, our government, our political processes and our world is untrue?
9. If so, what are the implications of the fact that our schools and our media have been feeding us lies since we were small?
10. What forces would be responsible for keeping all these lies flowing throughout our society? What might keep an ostensibly free press spinning more or less the same lies throughout the western world day after day, year after year, generation after generation?
11. Is it possible that our entire electoral system is a sham designed to give the public the illusion of control so that they’ll let oligarchs and empire managers run the country undisturbed?
12. If the electoral system is a sham, then how do we enact the changes we so desperately need?
13. Is it possible that there are other ways to effect change in the United States which don’t involve casting a pretend vote in a fake election?
14. Could it be that those other means of forcing change are precisely what the charade of casting pretend votes in fake elections is meant to divert us from?
15. Should we perhaps spend less energy bickering about who should get sworn into the White House a year and a half from now, and more energy examining other possible avenues toward advancing meaningful change?
I will never, ever forget the first time I heard Dr Payne’s Whale Songs, It was in late 1970, two years after I had returned from my second year in Vietnam; and I was still trying to sort out what I had experienced over there, what I had seen and heard, what I had learned, and what I wished I could forget. And most of all, I was seeking answers to the many questions about that War that I had brought back with me.
And it was upon hearing “Songs of the Humpback Whales” that I received the beginning of exactly the information and guidance that I was seeking: “The answers are there. All You have to do is to learn where, when, how, and from whom to ask for them. And then learn how to see and first hear and then listen to them. It’s all very simple; it's just not very easy.”
As Dr Payne put it in the “Saved by the Whales” chapter of his 1997 memoir and report on then-current research AMONG WHALES:
“What do Whales really offer Humans?...Whales offer to human beings...(the demonstration) that our ancient and ignorant belief in the inherent supremacy of our species over all others is utterly wrong. They put the appalling consequences of that view on public display in an overwhelmingly unforgettable way ~ and thus refute it forever. What Whales offer us is a lesson about tolerance.
“The challenge before us is to confederate with nature in new ways, without straddling its dead body, or claiming ownership of it, or using it for nothing but short-lived self-gratification. In this way, I believe, we will also heal ourselves.
“...(U)nless we negotiate a peace with the rest of life on earth, we will spend the rest of our existence in a world made entirely by Humans, where nature is gone, a world whose bible ~ in which the virtuosity of the creator is extolled on every page ~ is the mail-order catalog.”
And second of all, Thank You for the June 16 AP piece on the life, work, and death of Whistleblower, Truth Warrior, and Antiwar Actionist, Daniel Ellsberg. It was in the summer of 1971 and the release of “The Pentagon Papers” that I ~ and anybody in America who was looking ~ found the beginnings of the answers to all those questions I and others had about what the Vietnamese People term “The American [as opposed to the French] War.” [ https://apnews.com/article/daniel-ellsberg-vietnam-war-pentagon-papers-12f57b417c372c1b8760a21d447cb502 ]
For it was upon reading “The Pentagon Papers” that the whole ugly ~ not merely “wrong,” but totally Evil ~ Lie that America’s war against the Peoples, Lands, Countries, and Nations of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos was exposed for me and for all of America and the world to see.
And it was upon reading Dr Ellsberg’s “Pentagon Papers” that the plain, simple Promise and Truth of the message of Dr Payne’s Singing Whales was made very, very real and clear: Truth exists and can be found by the committed Truth Seeker.
Rest In Peace, Roger Payne and Daniel Ellsburg; brother Warriors For Truth.
This nation and this planet desperately need dozens more people like You. If not hundreds. If not thousands. If not tens of thousands.
Thank You for Your service and for the model and inspiration.
When you have a presidential contest between two old semi senile men who, as the saying goes, are not "all there" what you are actually doing is voting for the prime advisors. In this case, for Biden you have Victoria "fuck the UN" Nuland who is for bombing anywhere and everywhere, Blinken Blinken who seems to be in a daze, and a guy from the CIA named Jake, who appears to have absorbed Alan Dulles's hatred of anything Russian, along with assorted others at the Pentagon and State and Janet Yeltzin along with the guy at the Fed who is determined to gut the economy. These are the people
around Biden. Is that what you want ? And God only knows who the list would be if you choose Trump, but rest assured it would not be better than the Biden group. Seriously, it's time to wake up to reality and recognize that the US is being governed by too many greedy semi-senile old men in important positions and it's time to put someone younger and saner in the presidency.
I agree totally with you Bill, anyone who is 80 is too old to be president. I know what it's like to be 80 plus and it's not a cake walk even though I'm in better shape than most., but seriously folks, you don't want either of these men with their finger on the nuclear button!
BilI, I think all your readers who agree should send this essay off to someone they WOULD vote for. I'm thinking of sending it to Gov. Jay Insley of Washington, though I can think of a few more (very few) that I would also like to see in the primaries. Biden doesn't want a primary, but if enough people come forward we could have one anyway, and if Biden doesn't show up "tant pis" and the french say.
I agree with all your points. It does seem to me the candidates (Biden/Trump) reflect the end stages of the two modern political parties.
Trump began the destruction of the Republican Party in 2016 by wiping out all the establishment-approved candidates. The modern Republican Party is now near death; the party of Trump is something else - no matter who is the 2024 "Republican" candidate. The futile efforts of people like McConnell, Romney, et. al. seem to me to be an effort to bring back a Republican Party that will then get the funding that has increasingly gone to the Democrats over the last seven years. I don't see it succeeding.
Biden may be the last of the candidates of a Democratic Party that hasn't represented its traditional values or voters in over 30 years (the Clintons started its destruction with their "New Democrats"). The DNC embrace of the Deep State has led to Joe Biden being the only viable candidate of a party that is as desiccated and senile as he is. Approved others on the horizon - Harris, Newsom,Buttigieg - may use platitudes and social issues as a distraction from the same outdated politics, but it doesn't appear they can generate much enthusiasm. None will offer any change.
The Democrats insurgent candidates (RFK Jr and Marianne Williamson) will be marginalized and ignored. Even if they could gain some traction I don't believe it would change much. The forces against them within the Democratic Party are much too strong for the people's voices to matter.
Reform of either of the two traditional party at this point seems hopeless. Outright rejection of both is the right course - but what form that would take isn't clear.
I agree. Yet I'm still pressured to vote "for the lesser of two evils," allegedly Biden. Because Trump's crazy or something.
I'll be voting for Cornel West.
I could vote for Cornel. He's sincere and has integrity.
EXACTLY.
The goofy professor will get his 5-minutes of fame, Bill and Tom.
He is a side show. And will steal votes from the real Democrat candidate.
Bread and circuses' for the gullible masses. A metonymic phrase meaning superficial appeasement.
Sorry
Hi Dennis,
Any of these insurgent/third party candidates know they can't win. What they want to get is leverage to make deals -hopefully for something meaningful. Bernie Sanders had it in 2016 and 2020 - unfortunately both times he traded it away; in 2020 for a committee chairmanship.
And if West stole votes from the Democratic candidate, and that candidate was Joe Biden, I'd be fine with it.
Wiki: "Susan Page described the Republican Party as "Trump's party" and the Democratic Party as "Bernie Sanders's party", saying that "Sanders and his more progressive stance has really taken hold."[265] Noting the increasing acceptance of his national single-payer health-care program, his $15-an-hour minimum wage stance, free college tuition and many of the other campaign platform issues he introduced."
He is currently on:
Committee on the Budget (former chair)
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on National Parks
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy
Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (chair)
Subcommittee on Children and Families
Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security
Committee on Veterans' Affairs (former chair)
How effective has he leveraged his participation in these committees to achieve a national single-payer health-care program, a $15/hour minimum wage, free college tuition, Social Security expansion, a carbon tax, Wall Street reform, abolition of the death penalty and a "reasoned pathway for future legalization" of marijuana, Tom?
Would it be out of line to say he has had zero effect you think?
I suppose Sanders is a good object lesson in not believing anything any politician says until they actually do something that isn't for political grandstanding; they all talk a good game; after capitulation they then claim they need to maintain relevance and viability by going along.
Dennis, so I'd agree zero effect from Sanders.
While the president is not actually in charge the way a corporate CEO is, he still is, as Dubya proclaimed, "the decider". Many horrible things that were on the planning board got nixed by various presidents in my lifetime, from JFK (before Allan Dulles got to him) to even bloodthirsty Obama. The MIC people bring actionable options to the president, and he or she decides which option to implement. So while their choices are very limited, they can even decide "none of the above" if they want to really piss off the MIC. So even though they may not be in charge, they have a great deal of leeway as to what gets done and what doesn't. Of course, that doesn't mean the CIA won't do an end run around them (or worse), it just means that when things are going along normally, the president makes the final call. So having a senile president has consequences in terms of how bad the actual implemented policies are (think going to war against Russia in Ukraine, as a good example).
Yes. Well said. I'm reading "The Devil's Chessboard" now. You need a determined leader to constrain fanatics like Allen Dulles.
Determined--and clearheaded. At this point, Biden is less than resolute at the Resolute Desk and decidedly fuzzy-headed.
I think you will find Devil's Chessboard very enlightening Bill. I read it last year. If you dig around, you can find quite a bit of interesting information on your own. I found this article in Diplomatic History from 2007 on Dulles and the Bay of Pigs. It is clear that the CIA was doing endless end runs around the president who wanted peace. They thought he was too young and naïve to make sound decisions on life and death matters, so they made them for him. If you have trouble getting the full PDF, I can email you a copy.
The "Confessions" of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs.
Lucien S. Vandenbroucke
Diplomatic History, Volume 8, Issue 4, October 1984, Pages 365–375, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1984.tb00417.x
Published: 01 June 2007
I'm not so sure the president decides anything.
Advanced age does bring its limitations. It might not be a dealbreaker if, for example, the President had a joint replacement, couldn't jog 3 miles, etc. But dementia, though not necessarily a coincident part for everyone Biden's age, should be an automatic disqualifier; and Biden increasingly seems to be slipping ever further into it.
Sure- we know that Presidents yield much power and policy to others. In foreign policy, State Dep't and Security Advisers have long had way too much sway. But as you imply here, the electorate in this pretend democracy vote for 'x', (or perhaps more accurately and often, against 'y') because one more closely represents their concerns and values and vision. As it is, they only get votes for the legislative and executive branches. They want that vote to mean something. They're not voting for a figurehead- a puppet in the control of some unelected bureaucracy tied to the corporate world.
Biden is nothing more than the latter, now. If he had any functional moral compass, or was not already too cognitively impaired, he'd resign now or at the very least, retire at the end of his current term. The puppet-masters probably wouldn't like that because it's a hell of a lot easier to manipulate an incapacitated guy like Biden than, say, a figure like JFK. I think that's why the establishment Dems all jumped on the Biden bandwagon so early in the game, and why they don't really want an actual primary.
The most corrupt US administration ever
"Doolally Biden destroyed the China peace initiative before his envoy Blinker had even unpacked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY6IAX21IT8
I have this nightmare of how the world will end. Biden gives a speech and says at the end "God save the Queen" or some such. On the way off the stage he trips over the attache case containing the nuclear launch codes. An ICBM is accidentally launched and nuclear war ensues. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. God save the King.
Don't punt the (nuclear) football, Joe! :-)
I note that people are commenting on the very informative book The Devil's Chessboard. I read that last year and found it quite eye opening ,as I assume you are. After that I read a book by Paul Williams titled "Operation Gladio : the Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia" which is equally astounding as it documents the CIA'S take over of the world drug trade and how it hides and cleans the millions (billions?) it makes in the Vatican banking system which is immune from national and international auditors. Apparently all the succeeding popes except possibly the last one (we're not sure) have agreed to this. When we talk about the deep state or dark state running things, I tend to think of the CIA since just about all the major evil events in this country and many abroad are the result of their work starting with the murders of Jack Kennedy, and his brother Robert, and the way we fought the VietNam war. I hope at some point you will write an article or two on this subject.
So true so honest and so sad that's our choices. Maybe a hail Mary 3rd party candidate if given the stage can persuade the American public otherwise.
Cheers
To be honest I always wanted the body to cease before the mind. My fave. Writer {Stephen King) when asked what was the greatest horror? And this was his answer. For him he said "it would be the loss of one's Mind." Either way its tough. A real nail- biter of a finish this life...!
15 QUESTIONS THAT ARE MORE USEFUL THAN "WHAT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SHOULD AMERICANS VOTE FOR?" by Caitlin Johnstone / Caitlin’s Newsletter 062123
People keep asking me to weigh in on the US presidential race and its candidates, which is what always happens whenever there’s a US presidential race on because media saturation makes it so central in the minds of Americans it’s often the main issue they want to talk about, even if they’re fairly aware.
I really don’t have anything to say about who Americans should vote for, other to repeat what I’ve said already about the fact that you can’t vote your way out of a mess you never voted yourself into in the first place.
But what I can do instead is offer my American friends some questions to ask that would probably be much more helpful to them and their nation than the question “Which presidential candidate should we vote for?”
Here are 15 such questions:
1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for?
2. Why does US foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president’s party or platform?
3. What keeps our voting population split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way?
4. Why does the stalemate described in #3 always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war-horny?
5. Why is it that the most consequential US government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocidal capitalism and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them?
6. If our federal government’s behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy-setting whom we did not elect, and who remain in positions of influence regardless of the comings and goings of our official elected government?
7. If the above is the case, then who is it? Who’s really calling the shots in this country?
8. Could it be that everything we’ve been told about our country, our government, our political processes and our world is untrue?
9. If so, what are the implications of the fact that our schools and our media have been feeding us lies since we were small?
10. What forces would be responsible for keeping all these lies flowing throughout our society? What might keep an ostensibly free press spinning more or less the same lies throughout the western world day after day, year after year, generation after generation?
11. Is it possible that our entire electoral system is a sham designed to give the public the illusion of control so that they’ll let oligarchs and empire managers run the country undisturbed?
12. If the electoral system is a sham, then how do we enact the changes we so desperately need?
13. Is it possible that there are other ways to effect change in the United States which don’t involve casting a pretend vote in a fake election?
14. Could it be that those other means of forcing change are precisely what the charade of casting pretend votes in fake elections is meant to divert us from?
15. Should we perhaps spend less energy bickering about who should get sworn into the White House a year and a half from now, and more energy examining other possible avenues toward advancing meaningful change?
Source: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/15-questions-that-are-more-useful
A Letter to an Editor…:
TWO THANK YOUS
First of all, Thank You for the June 14 AP article about the life, work, and death of Whale Scientist, Philosopher, and Activist, Roger Payne. [ https://apnews.com/article/whale-song-scientist-roger-payne-obituary-8f5e73d223619e10e564138ff0eeb09e ]
I will never, ever forget the first time I heard Dr Payne’s Whale Songs, It was in late 1970, two years after I had returned from my second year in Vietnam; and I was still trying to sort out what I had experienced over there, what I had seen and heard, what I had learned, and what I wished I could forget. And most of all, I was seeking answers to the many questions about that War that I had brought back with me.
And it was upon hearing “Songs of the Humpback Whales” that I received the beginning of exactly the information and guidance that I was seeking: “The answers are there. All You have to do is to learn where, when, how, and from whom to ask for them. And then learn how to see and first hear and then listen to them. It’s all very simple; it's just not very easy.”
As Dr Payne put it in the “Saved by the Whales” chapter of his 1997 memoir and report on then-current research AMONG WHALES:
“What do Whales really offer Humans?...Whales offer to human beings...(the demonstration) that our ancient and ignorant belief in the inherent supremacy of our species over all others is utterly wrong. They put the appalling consequences of that view on public display in an overwhelmingly unforgettable way ~ and thus refute it forever. What Whales offer us is a lesson about tolerance.
“The challenge before us is to confederate with nature in new ways, without straddling its dead body, or claiming ownership of it, or using it for nothing but short-lived self-gratification. In this way, I believe, we will also heal ourselves.
“...(U)nless we negotiate a peace with the rest of life on earth, we will spend the rest of our existence in a world made entirely by Humans, where nature is gone, a world whose bible ~ in which the virtuosity of the creator is extolled on every page ~ is the mail-order catalog.”
And second of all, Thank You for the June 16 AP piece on the life, work, and death of Whistleblower, Truth Warrior, and Antiwar Actionist, Daniel Ellsberg. It was in the summer of 1971 and the release of “The Pentagon Papers” that I ~ and anybody in America who was looking ~ found the beginnings of the answers to all those questions I and others had about what the Vietnamese People term “The American [as opposed to the French] War.” [ https://apnews.com/article/daniel-ellsberg-vietnam-war-pentagon-papers-12f57b417c372c1b8760a21d447cb502 ]
For it was upon reading “The Pentagon Papers” that the whole ugly ~ not merely “wrong,” but totally Evil ~ Lie that America’s war against the Peoples, Lands, Countries, and Nations of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos was exposed for me and for all of America and the world to see.
And it was upon reading Dr Ellsberg’s “Pentagon Papers” that the plain, simple Promise and Truth of the message of Dr Payne’s Singing Whales was made very, very real and clear: Truth exists and can be found by the committed Truth Seeker.
Rest In Peace, Roger Payne and Daniel Ellsburg; brother Warriors For Truth.
This nation and this planet desperately need dozens more people like You. If not hundreds. If not thousands. If not tens of thousands.
Thank You for Your service and for the model and inspiration.
Jeff Moebus
Master Sergeant, US Army [Retired]
Veterans Against War - Sitka Platoon
Sitka, Alaska
When you have a presidential contest between two old semi senile men who, as the saying goes, are not "all there" what you are actually doing is voting for the prime advisors. In this case, for Biden you have Victoria "fuck the UN" Nuland who is for bombing anywhere and everywhere, Blinken Blinken who seems to be in a daze, and a guy from the CIA named Jake, who appears to have absorbed Alan Dulles's hatred of anything Russian, along with assorted others at the Pentagon and State and Janet Yeltzin along with the guy at the Fed who is determined to gut the economy. These are the people
around Biden. Is that what you want ? And God only knows who the list would be if you choose Trump, but rest assured it would not be better than the Biden group. Seriously, it's time to wake up to reality and recognize that the US is being governed by too many greedy semi-senile old men in important positions and it's time to put someone younger and saner in the presidency.
I agree totally with you Bill, anyone who is 80 is too old to be president. I know what it's like to be 80 plus and it's not a cake walk even though I'm in better shape than most., but seriously folks, you don't want either of these men with their finger on the nuclear button!
BilI, I think all your readers who agree should send this essay off to someone they WOULD vote for. I'm thinking of sending it to Gov. Jay Insley of Washington, though I can think of a few more (very few) that I would also like to see in the primaries. Biden doesn't want a primary, but if enough people come forward we could have one anyway, and if Biden doesn't show up "tant pis" and the french say.
biden's handler make up for his age in evil.
We're finding out, I guess, and the answer appears to be: not much.
"You're a Damn Liar" Man! :/ :o) Where's my Foot- Fall--Football?