I think The TPP is dead. So are attempts to

2014 elections are critical. 2016, even more so.

Democrats need to win every damned seat that we can win in 2014. Winning both houses of Congress is necessary for the change we need - but it is not sufficient.

Our next chance to really shake things up via the ballot box is 2016. Only once we have a strong Liberal in the White House, with a two Democratic houses of Congress, will we see a reversal in the 99%'s descent towards oblivion.

Strong. Liberal.

We need both. Nothing less will do. And it can't happen until 2016.

The last time our country faced a situation like we have now, it took FDR and two Democratically-controlled houses of Congress to right the ship. Even then, it was damned difficult.

Here's the rub: getting a Liberal into the Oval Office requires a revolution. A revolution. And revolutions don't happen fast. They happen slow. Only the final bit happens fast. The Soviet Bloc dissolved in months, but it was decades of Western policy and years of Perestroika and Glasnost that eased it to the edge of the cliff.

Most Americans are still filled with The Stupid today, even if they're finally getting an inkling that they're getting pummeled by both flavors of our political elites. We need to start educating our country now on the virtues of Liberalism, our results-oriented political philosophy, if we're to have a prayer of getting one of ours through the Democratic primaries and through a general election in 2016.

Dropping Hillary Clinton into the nominee spot is easy. Give her the nomination, and she'll have a reasonable shot at winning. But then we'll wake up to Hillary as our President. I suppose if you like what the Clintons did to our country last time, and are Ready For Hillary™ that's OK.

But if we want honest-to-God progress for the 99%, and a reversal of our fortunes, we'll need to put a Liberal at the head of the ticket.

I happen to love Elizabeth Warren, and hope she's that person. There are a few other Democrats who are as smart, as brave, as honest, and as caring as she is; but none throws a lightning bolt like Warren. A calm, clear, righteous voice, then BANG!. Suddenly, there's a CFPB. BANG! Suddenly, bankers are getting fined a little. BANG! Suddenly the head of the NY Fed is saying that bankers need to start, you know, respecting the law.

Warren may not run, although contrary to many oddly-desperate posts on DU, she's not ruled it out. I've had my eye on her for a number of years, since she wrote The Two-Income Trap a decade ago, which chronicled how the 99% are getting @#$%ed. FWIW, I think she'll run in a heartbeat if she sees an opening. That's her nature. But it's not her nature to run for her own glory - rather, she'll do it for the greater good. This is a woman who is outraged, outraged, outraged by all the injustice and is eager to use the gifts that God and/or nature gave her to do what she can to help.

(And lest I be called a racist again, I'll explicitly point out here that I think and hope that she'll work for white men and for all other minorities - we must all be equal, but we must all be equally rising.)

So let's put all of the effort we can into winning 2014. We need to win. We need to. We must.

But we also need to set the stage for change in 2016, and we need to start that process now. We've been losing for 30 years, and many have suffered and died - time to pummel the bastards and take our country back!

CBS knew there'd be *serious* consequences when

they ran a true story about George Bush that might have contained a false artifact - so they fired Dan Rather in an instant to mitigate the damage.

When CBS ran an utterly-fraudulent story about the Obama Administration... well, you can fill in the rest.

Why are you so *angry*, Manny?

Tonight I had dinner with an old friend who's in town for a job interview. Unbelievably talented engineering manager, possibly the best I've seen at what he does.

Like most people who are roughly my age, say, 45-60, he's been getting bounced around from job to job over the past decade as companies get bought, sold, and harvested by by the 0.01%. He just started a new job a few weeks ago, then found out after he started that - surprise! - his position's only funded for a few months. So he needs to look in case funding doesn't continue. Oh, and his new company is flush with contractors from India learning everyone's jobs. You know, the normal @#$% that happens everywhere in America today.

This is the state of America in 2013.

Confession: I went to an Ivy League college (although my acceptance was likely due to a fluke - buy me a beer and I'll tell you the story). At said school, I got to meet some really smart people. Today, those folks can be lumped into three categories in terms of how they've fared economically as we navigate midlife:

1. Unemployed/underemployed for months or years.
2. Scraping by - getting bounced around by the whims of the 1%, hoping to have enough to retire on.
3. Unbelievably rich. Yachts, waterfront mansions, that whole deal.

All three groups are made, pretty much, from the same people. All smart and ambitious. When we all get together, we're all still the same schmucks we were in college, there are no class distinctions. But due to luck more than anything (as far as I can tell) a few have made out fabulously while most are just scraping by or worse. This is a group of people who came out of college at the top of the world - yet most are, financially, on swampy ground.

So what becomes of the rest of our country? What about the folks that don't go to college? Frankly, I find it mind-blowing that they get by on the insanely-low wages that we pay blue-collar workers here. Even before a private equity firm steals their meager pensions, has them train their foreign replacement, then fires them.

Retirement? Ha. Middle-aged Americans don't earn enough to save, and Social Security is being cut every year through a COLA formula that understates inflation for seniors, rather than overstating it (as billionaires and their purchased politicians and pundits claim). Of course, cutting Social Security through phoney COLA math isn't enough for the Predator Class, so every few months they take another crack at slashing it outright, or making the COLA formula even worse than it is. Ain't gonna be much money for people retiring in a decade or two.

The ship's going down, baby. A few folks are getting away in jewel-encrusted lifeboats, nibbling on foie gras and sipping Sauternes, while our political class strips the few possessions still held by us fools in steerage as still-more plunder for their predator patrons. Paul Ryan's budgets are serious proposals, we're told. We need to compromise, we're told. Let's be reasonable, we're told.

We are being attacked, brutally attacked, and we refuse to fight back. Hell, most of us haven't even figured out who the enemy is.

This used to be a great country, now it is a wreck. Needlessly. We put people on the Moon, we hauled the planet back from The Abyss in the 1940s, we created a middle class that could live a good life on a typical blue-collar salary. Now we are reduced to predators and prey, a cold and hard existence, and the spectacle of our leadership hating math, science, and facts.

WTF?

That's why I'm so angry.

We need change, and we need it fast. Don't ask me to be nice to people who only want to complete our destruction a little more slowly than the other guys. That's not a selling point, sorry.

Daily Currant: Goldman Sachs Price Gouging Typhoon Survivors

12%. That's all.

Christie beat Buono 60% to 38%.

Had just 12% of New Jersey's voters gone from Christie to Buono, she'd have hit 50% and won.

If the following Third Way cavalcade of crap hadn't happened, I think she'd have picked up much or all of that 12%:

1. Christie had the unabashed support of much of the NJ Democratic establishment
2. The DNC pretended that she didn't exist, withheld money and support
3. The President refused to endorse her, thus tacitly endorsing Christie

Way to go, Lieberdems!

As pissed off as I am about Christie... big gains for Liberals tonight

DeBlasio in NYC, Marty Walsh in Boston...

We're starting to get some traction!

Would Howard Dean have refused to back Christie's opponent?

I highly doubt it.

And Dr. Dean was the winningest DNC Chairperson in decades, by miles. Miles and miles.

So cut out the nonsense about the Democratic leadership supporting Christie because it's "good politics". It's shitty politics, and it's an utter breach of integrity.

UPDATE: No need to guess... http://www.northjersey.com/news/Group_founded_by_former_presidential_candidate_Howard_Dean_endorses_Buono_in_NJ_governors_race.html

I'd like to congratulate the Democratic Establishment on tonight's victory in NJ

Well, given that Christie was endorsed by dozens of prominent "Democrats", and that President Obama wouldn't endorse the Democratic candidate, I'm assuming that this was the result the "Democratic" Establishment wanted.

Well played!

I've kinda had it with all of the BS

From where I'm sitting right now, other than a few bright beacons such as Senators Warren and Sanders, the upper echelon of power in the US seems to be a collection of megalomaniacs, thugs, loons, knaves and grifters, unified only in the belief that the 99% should be served for dinner.

How the #%^* did we let this happen? And make no mistake, *we* did let this happen. We did this to ourselves. Yes we did. We are fools. Schmucks. Yes, me too.

Time to get up off our duffs and do something before the poo rises higher than our nostrils. Suggestions appreciated.