Posts from — December 2011

My son Ross is visiting from Canada, and we were chatting about the U.S. housing bubble as we drove to the golf course up the road.

“What bugs me, Ross, is that the government gave all those billions to the banks instead of using the money to buy up the risky mortgages and rent the houses back to the people living in them,” I grumbled.

“That’s what Lisa says,” Ross responded. Lisa is Ross’s wife and she is very smart.

“Some of the renters could buy back their houses later on when they get on their feet,” I added.

“Yes, rent to own,” Ross agreed.

“But the politicians gave the money to the banks at zero percent interest, and instead of lending the money to the homeowners as the politicians expected, the banks bought Treasury bonds with it,” I continued, oversimplifying to provide a rough idea of the scam. “In effect, they lent the money back to the government and got something like 4 percent interest on it.”

“Isn’t that theft?” Ross asked. “In Canada. the bankers and politicians would be in jail.”

“Apparently, it’s quite legal in America,” I said. “In fact, the bankers were rewarded with multimillion-dollar bonuses.”

“So why didn’t the government give the money to the homeowners instead of the banks in the first place?” Ross wondered.

“That would be Socialism,” I said.

“So?” Ross asked.

I was stuck for an answer.

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I find it difficult to comprehend, but I have to conclude that  a significant segment of the American population wants continuous war. It’s not just the Neoconservative movement, although they are the most obvious – and the most influential. And I refuse to blame “the Jews” as so many do. American commentators seem to forget that many Israelis and American Jews oppose the hawkish policies of the current Israeli government.

I have heard respected commentators suggest that Americans accept perpetual war because there is no draft. And that must be part of it. With a volunteer military, the wretches who are killed and maimed come mostly from the poor and minorities, not from families with political clout.

While I am not blaming Jews in general,  there seems to be compelling evidence that a pro-Zionist element is involved in stoking the fires of war – especially the looming conflict with Iran.

The Iranians are threatening to blockade the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions proposed by the West, and war looks frighteningly close at the moment. (Of course, you wouldn’t know it from American television, preoccupied as the boob-tube pundits are with the Republican primary circus.)

Writing in Consortium News, Robert Parry reports:

There is now a cascading of allegations regarding Iran, as there was with Iraq, with the momentum rushing toward war.

Just as with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the U.S. news media treats Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a designated villain whose every word is cast as dangerous or crazy. Even left-of-center media personalities, like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, talk tough against Ahmadinejad, just as many “liberals” did regarding Hussein.

Also, as happened with Iraq – when harsher economic sanctions merged with a U.S. troop build-up, making an escalation toward war almost inevitable – tougher and tougher Western sanctions against Iran have pushed the various sides closer to war.

In turn, Iran has threatened to retaliate against the West’s economic warfare by blocking the Straits of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, thus driving up oil prices and derailing the West’s already shaky economies. That threat has led to even more bellicose language from many U.S. political figures, especially the Republican presidential hopefuls who have denounced President Barack Obama for not being tougher on Iran.

In Salon today, Matt Duss, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, blames Neoconservative commentators for stirring up media frenzy against Iran – just as they did with Iraq.

He identifies these prominent pundits as the major warmongers among us:

• Bill Kristol,  Editor, the Weekly Standard
• Charles Krauthammer, columnist, the Washington Post
• Reule Marc Gerecht,  senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
• Danielle Pletka, vice president, the American Enterprise Institute
• Max Boot,  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies, Council on Foreign Relations
• Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent, the Atlantic
• Harold Rhode, senior advisor to Hudson Institute

The question that haunts me is why?

What do these trouble makers have to gain from more war? I realize that they make their living by writing and that they are designated “conservatives” so they are obliged to take preordained positions on the issues of the day. But that seems to be a poor excuse for warmongering.

I have this nagging feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Somewhere behind the scenes, powerful forces could be pulling the strings. There is so much money to be made from war.

So many people work for – or profit from, one way or another – the military-industrial complex.

And the Israeli hawks are so influential in America.

Somewhere a hidden explanation must be lurking.

And I suspect it might be something terribly frightening.

Click here to read Parry’s article.

Click here to read the Salon piece.

(Reuters photo above shows a U.S. naval ship during the Velayat-90 war game on the Sea of Oman, near the Straits of Hormuz in southern Iran December 29, 2011.)

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As the American general elections approach, the choices facing voters are coming into focus. It seems to me that the paths we are being asked to follow lead in entirely different directions. And how we mark those ballots will decide where we go from here.

We must be very careful because I don’t think we can turn back once we pick the path we want to follow.

Obviously, America’s available resources cannot meet all its needs.

The way we invest our scarce resources will determine our future. And the choices we make will depend on our priorities.

To Republicans, the way to solvency is through preserving a robust entrepreneurial class at any cost. If that means slashing social programs and letting children go hungry, that’s just too bad. If some old folks have to eat cat food, why, that’s what they will have to do.

If we must let the schools deteriorate and layoff thousands of teachers…

If we must turn the mentally ill loose to starve on the streets, and leave the sick to die if they cannot afford medical care…

If we must go without adequate police protection and firefighting resources…

If we must bring back child labor, eliminate trade unions, drive down wages to the level of the overseas competition…

If we must allow the entrepreneurial class to make its own rules, exploit workers, consumers and small investors, and pollute the environment at will…

If that’s what it takes, the Republicans are prepared to accept it. Apparently, they see it as the price they must pay to keep the “job creators” from abandoning America in a global economy.

The way President Obama and the Democrats see it, there is a better path to follow.

Their priorities are different. They put the American people – the 300 million-plus who are not entrepreneurs or financiers – first. They believe they can find a way to manage the nation’s debt and generate economic growth without caving in to the draconian demands of the so-called “job creators.”

They believe they can generate economic revival from the bottom up, by helping ordinary Americans with extraordinary skills and innovative ideas develop new sources of revenue, and by investing in the infrastructure that regrowth requires – new roads, new bridges, a new electric power grid, alternative energy and more efficient means of transportation, for example.

To do this, they must gamble on the American people’s ingenuity and resourcefulness because it will mean deferring action on deficit reduction. The national debt will have to go on the back burner for now – alarming as that prospect may be.

And to prime the economic pump, millionaires and billionaires will have to pay a little more taxes.

Admittedly it’s a gamble. Some of the super-rich could take their money overseas, as the Republicans fear.

But if the gamble pays off,  if the American people rise to the challenge, there would be more than enough to handle the debt. Enough to do without the defecting “job creators,” enough to ensure a vibrant and compassionate society.

If not… I don’t want to go there.

But I don’t think the Republican alternative is a better bet.

The entrepreneurial class has so far been unable or unwilling to solve America’s problems. The vast majority of the jobs they create have not been in America. The money they’ve made has gone to themselves and their friends; it has not “trickled down” to the rest of us. If we follow the Republican path and sacrifice our children, our sick, our old and our mentally ill on the altar of their greed, how do you think they will repay us?

Do you think they care about the national debt? Or the deficit? Or the welfare of this country?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

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I grew up in Jamaica and spent the first half of my adult life in Canada, and that’s probably why I am so confused by the stubborn conservatism in America. Most Americans just don’t see life the way most Jamaicans or Canadians do. I have no idea why, but the accepted standards of morality are very different here from anywhere else I’ve ever lived.

You would expect your Jamaican or Canadian friends to agree, for example, that the government is derelict in its duty when millions of a country’s children are homeless and half of its population live in or near poverty. But I have found that many Americans don’t see it that way. (You may remember that a Republican politician said a while back that “if you feed the poor they will breed.”)

I think these people want life to be a kind of casino, where you put up your chips and take your chances. The winners walk away with the pot, and the losers sleep on the street.

To me, that’s the opposite of what I learned in Sunday school, and yet America is the most religious country in the western world. And the more conservative the region, the more religious the people. I have never encountered such judgmental people as those here in “the South,” so ready to disapprove of the behavior of others, so unrelenting in exacting penalties for any perceived sexual misconduct.

The kindest construction I can put on this phenomenon is that they believe compassion is a private matter, that individuals, churches and charitable groups are morally bound to help the unfortunate but the government should not intervene.

If that is so, I can only assume they have never read the history books or any of Charles Dickens’ novels. A line from “Christmas at Sea” by Robert Louis Stevenson echoes in my memory:

All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

 As cold as charity.

Yet so many Americans are prepared to choose cold “charity” over government assistance. And they stubbornly resist any political movement that disagrees with them.

This is not true of all Americans, of course. There is a  minority that accepts the logic of government intervention to level the financial and social playing field, to arbitrate between the interests of its citizens, to protect the weak from predators and to keep the peace.

But it is a minority.

These Americas are referred to as “progressives.”

I read that many progressives are not pleased with President Obama’s performance, that they might be turning to some “third party” candidate in next year’s election.

But I would caution them against doing that. By splitting the “progressive” vote, they could help to elect a “conservative” candidate and usher in an era of unthinkable misery in America.

I would ask them to put themselves in Barack Obama’s place and imagine the obstacles he has had to deal with in this heavily conservative (and still racist) country. No, he has not been perfect. But he has done a lot. He may have done as much as anyone could do in the prevailing political environment.

A wise man once told me that petulance is a minor emotion. We must not allow pique to make us do something we would live to regret.

Let’s give President Obama a second chance.

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Listening to Rachel Maddow and other TV hosts repeat the ugly slurs and outright expressions of race hatred in Ron Paul’s newsletters, I thought the Republicans had sunk about as low as they could go. I was wrong.

Today comes news that a Republican congressman said the First Lady has a “big butt.”

I would call that a new low. It’s hard to believe – even coming from a Republican politician.

The lawmaker, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin (photo above, left), was overheard complaining on the phone in the Delta Lounge at Reagan National Airport outside Washington about Mrs. Obama’s healthy-food initiative.

He has apologized, of course, now that the insult has been made public. But I think an apology is inadequate in this case.

This trashy congressman should be ostracized by all decent Americans and abandoned by voters.

This kind of trash talk is not unusual in American politics today. And it always seems to come from Republicans.

The internet reeks of trash directed at America’s first black president and his family. One cartoon that raised eyebrows recently shows President Obama as a skunk, with the explanation that he is “black and white, and almost everything he does stinks.”

This kind of thing goes on all the time. You will recall that a Republican lawmaker yelled out “You lie!” during a speech by the president. And I am sure you have seen pictures of those “Obama” monkey dolls offered for sale on the internet.

You often hear conservative politicians bragging that they are not “politically correct.” And they certainly are not. Indeed, they are downright crude. They continuously flaunt their disrespect for women and circulate racist and obscene emails and postcards.

Obviously, the 2012 general elections will offer American voters a choice not only between starkly contrasting policies but also between civilized and uncivilized behavior.

Do Americans want their children to grow up like Congressman Sensenbrenner? Or like the unfailingly polite president and his irreproachable wife (photo above, right)?

For more on the Ron Paul newsletters, click here.

For the Sensenbrenner story, click here.

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I cannot make sense of the political scene in America, and I suspect nobody can. New groups are springing up and old groups are rising again as various factions seek to grab power in next year’s general elections. Basically, politics in America is a battle between billionaires. Election results are determined by psychological techniques and “dirty tricks” developed over many years and funded by Machiavellian power brokers.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the billionaires are fighting among themselves.

The most obvious malcontents are the Tea Party members, who were funded by the diabolical Koch brothers and organized by  former House speaker Dick Army and his ilk. Under a motley banner stained by racism and religious intolerance, and overlaid by the Confederate flag, the Tea Party is proving difficult to control and is managing to create chaos in Washington.

Power brokers like Karl Rove are struggling to put these hurry-come-ups in their place. And despite the billions at their disposal, they are finding that far from easy to do.

The disarray among the Republican following is illustrated by the defection of two former presidential candidates – Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson.  Roemer has joined a group called Americans Elect and Johnson is reportedly running as a Libertarian. Both are former Republican governors, Roemer in Louisiana and Johnson in New Mexico.

You know what the Libertarians want, of course. They want the federal government to go away and leave them alone. Ron Paul used to be the party’s standard bearer before he started trying to be the Republican candidate for president.

But nobody knows what Americans Elect stand for. They call themselves “centrist” (doesn’t everybody?) but beyond that their lips are sealed. It took determined digging by the press to flush out the billionaires behind this group. Here’s how Salon’s Alex Pereene describes their findings:

We do know that Peter Ackerman initially funded the group. Ackerman is a private investment firm executive who became extremely wealthy while working for “junk bond king” Michael Milken in the 1980s. He’s got a history of interest in “strategic nonviolent conflict” as a means of regime change, and founded an organization dedicated to promoting that cause internationally. He was, at one point, on the libertarian Cato Institute’s Board of Directors, but no longer appears to be. His basic thesis — that a successful civil resistance movement requires strong top-down leadership and meticulous planning — is interesting, and he argues it intelligently. If this group is an extension of his belief that radical political change is best achieved through elite-driven populist movements, then I think he’s doing it wrong. Unless a well-funded internet petition to put Buddy Roemer on the California ballot is just the first step in this revolution. (What it won’t be is an actual effort to get a popularly selected third-party candidate on the ballot. The group’s big pitch — lots of talk of letting THE PEOPLE have the power to pick a candidate! — is belied by the fact that a corporate board of directors is actually in charge of making all decisions, according to an arcane set of rules and bylaws.)

Of course the Americans Elect board also includes vacuous rich moron Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, and duplicitous hack Doug Schoen is involved, so maybe it’s just a standard-issue idiotic rich centrist group with no clue what the hell it’s doing.

For more, click here.

You might think nobody would vote for a crowd like that, but if they spend enough money on the right ads, who knows?

Even more bizarre is the rumor that Donald Trump is considering running as a third-party candidate – probably for Americans Elect. But Trump considers all kinds of things, so I’ll believe that when I see the announcement in the paper.

You would think that the Republican Party’s troubles would make it easy for the Democrats to win next year’s elections and usher in a period of relative sanity and fairness in Washington.

But that’s not necessarily how it goes in America.

Some of the candidates who run as Democrats are surprisingly conservative. They apparently believe in the basic Republican theory that the rich know best (or they wouldn’t be rich, perhaps?) and the government works best when it does as little as possible. So how do they get nominated to represent the Democratic Party? Well, there’s this primary system in America that… Oh, never mind, I couldn’t sort out those crazy primaries and caucuses no matter how hard I tried. In some primaries, for example, members of other parties are allowed to vote and I bet they make a point of voting for the candidate they think they can beat. Wouldn’t you?

Click here to read about the primaries, caucuses and so on.

To complicate matters, many Americans simply wouldn’t vote for a Democrat under any circumstances. They’re fans of the Republican Party, the way some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, loyal to the end, no matter what. I figure they make up about a third of U.S. voters.

I don’t know what motivates them. I hesitate to call them stupid. But what else can I call them when they insist on cutting off their nose to spite their face?

Poll after poll shows President Obama in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney, for example.

Does that tell you something or what?

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It wouldn’t be Christmas without the stories in the media about the givers among us. I found it heartwarming this morning to read about folks in our town who collected toys  – including a coveted mountain bike – for the 9-year-old who told his mother to take the money she would spend on his Christmas and buy gifts for the poor. And I was encouraged by the New York Times report that a billionaire gave hundreds of millions to create a high-tech graduate school on Roosevelt Island.

But even more encouraging – to me anyway – was Yahoo News’ revelation that 80-year-old Charles F. Feeney (photo above, left), the Cornell alumnus who is funding the university’s high-tech project, flies coach, wears a $15 watch, and doesn’t own a house or a car.

Here’s someone who understands, I thought as I read the item.

You fly in an airplane or ride in a car to get from one place to another. You own a house to shelter you from the sun and rain. You wear a watch to tell the time. Any other way of looking at it is nothing more than vanity.

So what makes so many people so rapacious? What can their money buy that is more useful than Mr. Feeney’s $15 watch?

The Koch brothers come to mind. And I wonder why they would destroy their country to accumulate more wealth than they already possess.

And what about Mitt Romney? This man, who wants to be president of the United States, owns several houses and is tearing down one of them to rebuild it even bigger. I bet his watch didn’t cost $15. But I bet Mr. Feeney can tell the time just as efficiently as he can.

What about Newt Gingrich, another pretender to the presidency, who found it necessary to have a half-million-dollar jewelry account at Tiffany’s? Might he not have felt better donating that money to some useful or humanitarian project?

Perhaps not. But Mr. Feeney did.

And what about the millionaires and billionaires who lobby Congress to block President Obama’s jobs bill? Who fight desperately to avert a minuscule tax increase that would help deliver millions of their fellow-Americans from misery? Who directed their Republican lackeys to raise the payroll tax on 160 million middle-class Americans?

What drives them?

Do they hate us? Hate us for not being rich?

Do they fly first class to thumb their noses at the other passengers, huddled in coach?

Can they enjoy their wealth only if the rest of us suffer?

Is their Christmas merrier when ours is more miserable?

Pondering these mysteries, I am prompted to wonder why the Feeneys among us don’t run for office, and why the Romneys and Gingriches do.

(Photo above, right, shows 9-year-old Tabrian Grant, 9, receiving gifts donated by Lakeland, Florida, residents from “Secret Santas” Fred Bentkowski, left, and Cynthia Grimes, as reported in The Ledger. Click here to read the story.)

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At this time of year, Christians honor the Savior, a gentle Nazarene who preached love and forgiveness, and who resisted the temptation to claim power and wealth while on earth.

I am no theologian, and my mind balks at woolly abstractions. I see what I see and I hear what I hear. My information comes from my five senses. And that is what I know.

So when I confront the activism of America’s “religious right,” I am bemused.

On what religion is their activism based, I wonder.

In this frame of mind, it was with more than passing interest that I read an article by Loren Adams in TPJ Magazine. The article (titled “Republicans Worship a Nazi Jesus”) is shocking. And I cringe at some of its conclusions. But I found the explanation of the “religious right’s” philosophy intriguing. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Republicans worship a Nazi Jesus, not the Christ of the Bible. They picture a Jesus bearing a sword riding a white horse to slay millions of unbelievers. Revelation is where they lay claim to the view, but the Gospels’ depiction must be discarded in order to arrive. A judgmental “God” justifies a judgmental following. Thus, it’s condoned to hate and kill gays, Muslims, aliens, liberals, and all others not of their belief-system.

I hesitate to compare anyone with the Nazis. To do so might diminish the horror of Hitler’s atrocities. And I admit that I do not understand the Book of Revelation. Much of it seems incoherent to me. But I have close relatives who find it enlightening and they certainly do not base a doctrine of hatred on its teachings.

Pondering the vituperative outpourings of the “religious right,” I am tempted to wonder whether Adams is on to something.

Religion is a two-edged sword. It can motivate human beings to act with incredible selflessness, but it can also be used to rationalize the most horrific atrocities. Consider the Crusades, for example… Bloody Mary’s reign… the Spanish Inquisition… Oliver Cromwell… the burning of suspected witches at Salem… the list is almost endless.

The “religious right” could well contain the same poisonous seeds as the bigoted excesses of the past.

And the same disregard for logical consistency. It is at once libertarian (for example, demanding the government stay out of their lives) and authoritarian (for example, urging government intervention to ban such private practices as abortion).

And – as with the Nazis – there is evidence of a racist element within the movement.

It is written that the name of the Lord should not be taken in vain, and it seems to me that is exactly what the “religious right” is doing.

Perhaps it is the “religious right” that should fear the vengeance of the Lord as depicted in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps it is them that the Messiah with his double-edged sword and the “great dragon, flaming red, with seven heads and ten horns” are coming for.

But as I said, I am no theologian.  And the Book of Revelation remains a mystery to me.

Click here to read Adams’ article.

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I should be trying to figure out what Kim Jong Il’s death means to the rest of the world.  That’s what a responsible blogger would do today. But I am not in the mood.

Instead, I am inclined to ponder the whereabouts of Kim Jong Il this morning. The North Korean people probably imagine him enthroned in some celestial realm, eating ambrosia and drinking nectar – or whatever gods eat and drink in the Juche religion.

We Christians would certainly not see him in Heaven.  From what I have read about Kim Jong Il, we would expect him to be burning in Hell.

He set himself up as some kind of god, lied about anything and everything, including his golf score (he claimed to have 18 holes-in-one in a single round!), ate rice grown on some holy mountainside with each grain the same shape and size, funneled all his country’s resources into developing a million-man army, and strutted about in extravagant splendor while his people starved.

And there was that matter of the nuclear weapon he was supposed to be developing, much to the dismay of Uncle Sam and other world leaders.

Now, he is dead. And someone else will become North Korea’s Dear Leader,  probably eating perfect rice grown on a holy slope and telling lurid lies while his people starve.

As Herman Cain famously said, I got all this stuff twirling around in my head… Mostly trite and threadbare cliches, of course. Death lends itself to that kind of thing.

Perhaps weirdly, among the things that Kim Jong Il’s death made me think of was Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City and the way it treated the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

After all, vanity and arrogance are the same in America as they are in North Korea, or anywhere.

The supposedly Christian people who run that church not only refused to let the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators use a vacant lot they own but set the cops on them when they climbed the fence. According to Truthout writer J.A. Myerson:

(Police) clad in riot gear despite the complete lack of threat of a riot, shoved and tossed peaceable protesters out of their way in pursuit of the lot’s occupiers. There, they arrested the clergy, the hunger strikers, the occupiers and all, including Packard. What a sight to behold: a real estate corporation/Episcopal church, sending what the 12th richest man in America calls his “army” in to bust the church’s Chief Chaplin.

I grew up in the Anglican Church, and I always thought that Episcopalians were basically American Anglicans. But the church I knew taught us that Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple. By those lights, Jesus might have been among the first protesters over that fence, as was the church’s own chief chaplain Bishop George Packard.

So what does that show us?

Power corrupts?  Human beings can’t stand a little authority without going berserk?

Once again, I got all this stuff twirling around in my head…

Click here to read the Truthout piece.

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Looking back on my life, I wonder what would have happened if I had not been prone to giving up too easily. I don’t think it was cowardice. I think it was something else that betrayed me – too much faith in logic perhaps. Time after time, I would sum up a situation and conclude that there was no way to win, so I might as well fold. But after all these years, I realize that logic does not necessarily prevail. Had I stubbornly stayed the course, I might often – or at least sometimes – have won.

Yeah, I know… Shoulda, woulda, coulda… “I coulda been a contendah”…

Today, as I try to sum up the state of the world – yours and mine – I cower in despair. I want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.

And then I come across a story about Bernie Sanders… I open the file and Bernie’s face appears, tousled hair, furrowed forehead, the scars of a thousand lost causes reflected in his eyes, yet the stubbornness of an old warhorse still holding his head high (photo above).

Battling Bernie is at it again, fighting the good fight, getting set to climb the unclimbable mountain … the ant that’s planning to move that rubber tree plant.

And he is calling on people of good will – you and me – to join yet another cause, a cause bigger than any he has espoused before, and even more daunting.

He is fighting to get money out of politics.

Yes, I know. You’ve heard that one before. It’s the latest thing. MSNBC-TV’s Dylan Ratigan has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures calling for a constitutional amendment to that effect. And I understand that there are numerous similar initiatives floating around Washington.

Does anyone really believe it can be done?

How many times must we be taught that money talks?

Logically, the forces opposing reform of the American political – and financial – system are overwhelming. Americans have fought them before – and lost. Logically, there is no way to win against such odds.

Didn’t Albert Einstein remind us that insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

Perhaps Bernie is insane.

The Vermont senator has introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in a case called Citizens United vs. FEC. You remember the case, don’t you? Basically, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are human beings and have the same rights of free speech as any American citizen. The ruling also assumes that speaking is equivalent to spending money.  It allows global corporations to spend limitless amounts in support of American political causes and candidates.

The absurdity of the ruling highlights the fact that the court is stacked with corporate stooges, that years of maneuvering by Republican administrations are bearing poison fruit.

A logical man facing the massive corporate resources aligned against him would conclude that defeat is inevitable.

But Bernie is not being logical.

(And, by the way, the same argument holds true against the Occupy Wall Street movement.)

So why am I hoping against hope that perhaps this time the outcome could be different?

Perhaps I, too, am insane.

Bernie wants us to sign a petition supporting his amendment. Logically, I would consider this a waste of time. But not today. Today, I refuse to be logical. I am signing it.

And if you want to join us insane folk, you can sign the petition too:

Click here to sign it.

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