The Dems Down and Dirty

It’s better to vote for something you want and not get it than vote for something you don’t want and get it--Eugene Debs

    What’s new about this particular presidential emulation is that Dems are fighting back, and even dirty, against the Reps.  That’s something they’re usually too timid to try.
    The Dems have little choice. They have no record to run on and no intention of doing anything for ordinary Americans besides making sure that their immiseration continues smoothly and with a minimum of protest. Dumping on Romney/Ryan and the Reps  is their only practical political ploy if they want to get reelected.
    As usual, their angst is all about sounding populist enough to draw voters but not enough to dis their bankster buddies on Wall Street. Obama’s public decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs was a message to the richies that they should ignore his campaign rhetoric and rest assured that he remained their loyal go-fer.
    If the electorate had brains, there are a couple of recent pieces of information that should be rousing it to real political reform beyond the corrupt two-party system with its pretend differences.
The first is that the middle class is shrinking: down from 61 percent to 51 percent of the population in just the last decade. The trend towards ever more moolah at the top and ever less among the lesser classes keeps advancing no matter whether Reps or Dems are in power. In the print edition of my last In These Times column, I ventured that in time 14 families would own the U.S., of which only the Kardashians would be American.
    The second item--to be inscribed in the annals of intense irony--is that Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama has become the king of what was once called merchants of death. The news below might just just stick in the craw of those Norwegian judges:
     “Overseas weapons sales by the United States totaled $66.3 billion last year, or more than three-quarters of the global arms market, valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. Russia was a distant second, with $4.8 billion in deals. The American weapons sales total was an ‘extraordinary increase’ over the $21.4 billion in deals for 2010...and was the largest single-year sales total in the history of United States arms exports.”
    Currently carrying on more wars in more places than any other president, Obama’s message to mankind is, don’t worry about having to use those complicated weapons we just sold you, we’ll even fight your battles for you at no extra charge.
    I know that some of you are now saying: Yes, but Romney’s worse. You’re probably right--though not by much.  And that’s why, in the spirit of American civic saint Gene Debs, I will again not be voting for either the greater or the lesser evil, but rather for the good.  I'm a Green and our candidate is the estimable Dr. Jill Stein.