John Pugh 3D Mural
in back of George R. R. Martin's Jean Cocteau Cinema
(no post-processing, the light was right)
SUENOSDEUOMI'S RUMINATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE
Michael Moore's To-Do Lists
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).
Let's try to get this all done by noon today.
-- Michael Moore
Day Two's To-Do List:
1. Must quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the 1960s. I will do my part to help lead this as I'm sure many others (Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, MoveOn, the hip-hop community, DFA, etc.) will, too. The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people who, as with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, don't tolerate b.s. and are relentless in their resistance to authority. They have no interest in compromising with racists and misogynists.
2. Prepare to impeach Trump. Just as the Republicans were already planning to do with President Hillary from Day One, we must organize the apparatus that will bring charges against him when he violates his oath and breaks the law -- and then we must remove him from office.
3. Must commit right now to a vigorous fight (including civil disobedience, if necessary) which will block any and all Donald Trump Supreme Court nominees who do not meet our approval. We demand the Democrats in the Senate aggressively filibuster any nominees who support Citizens United or who oppose the rights of women, immigrants and the poor. This is non-negotiable.
4. Demand the DNC apologize to Bernie Sanders for trying to fix the primaries against him, for spinning the press to ignore his historic campaign, for giving Clinton the questions in advance at the Flint debate, for its latent ageism and anti-Semitism in trying to turn voters against him because of his age or religious beliefs, and for its anti-democracy system of "superdelegates" who are elected by no one. We all know now had Bernie been given a fair shot, he probably would have been the nominee and he -- as the true outsider and "change" candidate --would have inspired and fired up the base and soundly defeated Donald Trump. If no apology is soon forthcoming from the DNC, that's ok -- when we take over the Democratic Party (see yesterday's To-Do List, #1), we will issue the apology in person.
5. Demand that President Obama establish a Special Prosecutor to investigate who and what was behind FBI Director James Comey's illegal interference into the Presidential election 11 days before the vote was held.
6. Begin a national push while it's fresh in everyone's mind for a constitutional amendment to fix our broken electoral system: 1. Eliminate the Electoral College -- popular vote only. 2. Paper ballots only -- no electronic voting. 3. Election Day must be made a holiday for all -- or held on a weekend so more people vote. 4. All citizens, regardless of any run-ins with the criminal "justice" system, must have the right to vote. (In swing states like Florida and Virginia, 30-40% of all Black men are prohibited by law from voting.)
7. Convince President Obama to immediately do what he should have done a year ago: Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to dig up and replace all the poisoned pipes. NOTHING HAS CHANGED; the water in Flint is still unusable.
Will try to get these done by sundown. More To-Do tomorrow...
--Michael Moore
Michael Moore On MSNBC's Morning Joe's.
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).
Let's try to get this all done by noon today.
-- Michael Moore
Day Two's To-Do List:
1. Must quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the 1960s. I will do my part to help lead this as I'm sure many others (Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, MoveOn, the hip-hop community, DFA, etc.) will, too. The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people who, as with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, don't tolerate b.s. and are relentless in their resistance to authority. They have no interest in compromising with racists and misogynists.
2. Prepare to impeach Trump. Just as the Republicans were already planning to do with President Hillary from Day One, we must organize the apparatus that will bring charges against him when he violates his oath and breaks the law -- and then we must remove him from office.
3. Must commit right now to a vigorous fight (including civil disobedience, if necessary) which will block any and all Donald Trump Supreme Court nominees who do not meet our approval. We demand the Democrats in the Senate aggressively filibuster any nominees who support Citizens United or who oppose the rights of women, immigrants and the poor. This is non-negotiable.
4. Demand the DNC apologize to Bernie Sanders for trying to fix the primaries against him, for spinning the press to ignore his historic campaign, for giving Clinton the questions in advance at the Flint debate, for its latent ageism and anti-Semitism in trying to turn voters against him because of his age or religious beliefs, and for its anti-democracy system of "superdelegates" who are elected by no one. We all know now had Bernie been given a fair shot, he probably would have been the nominee and he -- as the true outsider and "change" candidate --would have inspired and fired up the base and soundly defeated Donald Trump. If no apology is soon forthcoming from the DNC, that's ok -- when we take over the Democratic Party (see yesterday's To-Do List, #1), we will issue the apology in person.
5. Demand that President Obama establish a Special Prosecutor to investigate who and what was behind FBI Director James Comey's illegal interference into the Presidential election 11 days before the vote was held.
6. Begin a national push while it's fresh in everyone's mind for a constitutional amendment to fix our broken electoral system: 1. Eliminate the Electoral College -- popular vote only. 2. Paper ballots only -- no electronic voting. 3. Election Day must be made a holiday for all -- or held on a weekend so more people vote. 4. All citizens, regardless of any run-ins with the criminal "justice" system, must have the right to vote. (In swing states like Florida and Virginia, 30-40% of all Black men are prohibited by law from voting.)
7. Convince President Obama to immediately do what he should have done a year ago: Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to dig up and replace all the poisoned pipes. NOTHING HAS CHANGED; the water in Flint is still unusable.
Will try to get these done by sundown. More To-Do tomorrow...
--Michael Moore
Michael Moore On MSNBC's Morning Joe's.
2016 Presidential Election
Election Day I woke at 2 am, got up at 4 am and was at my polling station at 6 pm where I served as Election Judge until 8:30 pm. Polls were open from 7 am to 7 pm, 12 hours during which I handed out 250 ballots out of a stack of more than 800. I was the only Independent in a crew of 5 terrific senior ladies. While roughly 50% of voters in Santa Fe voted early, the turn out for such an election of such utmost importance was disappointing to me, not others, but I consider less than 80% voter participation as I believe it has been reported from Denmark and from Venezuela, less than satisfactory. By the end of the day about 10% of ballots were marked invalid, still to be determined by the County Clerk and the Secretary of State, because of creative, improper write-ins. If this were to translate nation-wide, Hillary might have been our President Elect now if voters had not carelessly used their ballots as protest votes that nobody took notice of and nobody cared about! 800,000 ballots were counted in New Mexico by 11.10.2016, about 55% of eligible votes. The silver lining, New Mexicans voted for her and they took back the House of Representatives they had lost for the first time in 40 years to repugnant republican control 2 years ago. For us, this is excellent local news.
The election outcome truly shocked me. I did not think it possible for him, the narcissist, the liar, the groper and the molester, the big mouth with the silly tweets, the grotesque orange maned one with abhorrent involvements in businesses and practices that stiffed his contractors, deprived them of their dues with the skillful, but surely unethical use of repeat bankruptcies, the one that loved to fire people for entertainment, the one that had no inhibitions on walking in on beauty contestants in their varied states of undress, the one that ought to be revolting to anyone with any sense of common decency and humanity.
He won 290, electoral votes, 20 more than the required 270 votes.
She won 60,274,974 of the popular vote, about 300,000 more votes.
His less than 60,000,000 votes make for very low voter approval.
232,556,622 eligible voters
46.9% did not vote
25.6% voted for her
25.5% voted for him
It's the economy, stupid! Trump voters were all too happy to cast all his horrible attributes aside in the hopes of him delivering the goods. Never mind the costs to women he threatened to criminalize for having abortions, to immigrants and their families he threatened to pull apart and cart off as if we were back in the thirties, or to the environment that he will hand deliver to big corporations to exploit with no regard to science and our future. The profit motive will rule. Already stocks have gone up on private prisons, eager for a boom from the holding of those lacking proper documentation.
Turns out even white women, oh the shame, participated in his having beaten her. I am with Barbara Bush in not able to fathom how a woman could ever vote for a prick like him. Yep, we got a white-lash as Van Jones put it. Rachel Maddow already blamed 3. party voters in swing states for his win. I like Cenk's break down, not sure I fully agree, but he does make some good points.
The sure loser is the Democratic Party. Will they learn? We will see soon enough by their pick of their new leader. Will it be Rep. Keith Ellison, pushed by Bernie, or will it be Howard Dean, or Tim Kaine her running mate as suggested by the NY Times? Here is Cenk's take.
How the 99% chose a 1 percenter to represent their needs will remain a mystery despite all the analysis done and yet to come. His voters will no doubt come to a rude awakening, sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, we have got to resist the fascist tendencies, the corporate take-overs and stand up for human rights and against the cruelty and meanness that already reared their ugly heads. Donate to the ACLU, locally SumosUn Pueblo Unido!
Freak-Out!
The unthinkable happened,
the unmentionable got chosen
by not just a handful of deplorables
and a rigged system of electoral votes
not a truly democratic system
and clueless media and their pundits.
Ashamed
to be an American today.
Ashamed
for every woman that cast her vote for him
despite his groping and raping,
despite his outrageous and demeaning remarks to women,
despite instigating a most vile witch hunt on Hillary.
Ashamed
for every aging, white male
educated or not
that cast his vote for him
willfully blind to the awfulness of his character
his associations with the KKK,
Russia's Putin,
and Israel's Prime right wing ass.
Ashamed
for every prior Bernie supporter that cast a vote for Jill or Gary,
unwilling to recognize the true danger of a Drumpf presidency,
therefore willing to endanger
undocumented immigrants,
documented immigrants,
women in need of abortions,
women in need of low-cost health care,
women with looks other than #10,
people with special needs,
Lesbians, Gays, Bi-sexuals, and Queers.
Unreal!
We are outta here.
Sumo Implores YOU to go VOTE - Blue!
With recent polls, Sumo is unsure if it is safe to come out from under the covers.
While I prefer purple, I already voted blue, all the way through.
Sumo implores you to go out & vote early & blue, all the way through!
President Barack Obama - Bill Maher 11.4.2016
Bill Maher got his recent birthday wish, he got his time with President Obama and posed just the right questions.
I especially appreciated the question on our bloated military (600 billion to a trillion) and the reference to Eisenhower's warning in regard to the US military-industrial complex. President Obama, in his eloquent defense, made it sound like the US military is an international force for peace. I am not buying it, and neither is Putin and too many in the Middle East and Africa. President Obama, a-glass-half-full-guy, cautioned Progressives in not fully appreciating the good the US effects around the world, even if imperfect and urged citizens to stay involved and demand change from the grounds up. Problem is we demanded change, we demanded peace, we protested against so many wars yet the ears of the powerful stay purposefully deaf.
Socialism and the issue of what should be free from the for-profit motive for the common good are other relevant topics that did not make it into the election debates but should have. President Obama stressed that we already have systems in place that deserve our support and building on, such as the health care system and I am sure the extracting oil & gas industries among others. I am still with Sanders and abhor the exploitation of our earth and people's basic needs such as health care. Retrain the workers in the extracting industries, don't use them as an excuse. Let's hope that at the very least our prisons-for-profit are on their way out.
President Obama claimed that atheists are not being persecuted, maybe, but we sure are being bombarded with ridiculous religious legislations and have to suffer through repeated, ever lengthening, archaic Christian rituals imposed on us all. Acknowledgment of a steadily growing number of citizens not identifying with a religion is surely welcome on my part and those recovering from Catholicism.
In closing, President Obama showed himself, as usual, to be eloquent, charming and cool, but not necessarily right on the issues.
Another Exquisite Keith Olbermann Rant
A shared German heritage might make me like Olbermann's rants so much. His outrage is so real, so eloquent and so very necessary. My Grandfather in the thirties recognized Hitler as being from the devil. He did not allow his kids, 2 boys and 1 girl to join the Hitler youth groups. Sure enough, each and every one of those kids, including my Mom, joined the German army voluntarily as soon as they were able to! Yep, my Mom was a Nazi, she bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker as Mom having grown up in northern Germany would say. My Mom, bless her heart, unlike so many others shared some of her experiences with me, maybe as early as my having been 10 years old. The horror of listening to those WW II accounts surely contributed to my less than perfect pacifist tendencies and an utter abhorrence of war and violence of all kinds.
So Trump is not fooling me, is not bamboozling me, as our President Obama called it today. The horror of a Drumpf presidency is so unfathomable, I have not been able to even come close to express myself on this, I am in utter disbelief that this can be happening and that this is the country I chose to escape to from the overly conservative, restraining and restrictive culture of my upbringing in Switzerland. So for now, Keith Olberman is the best I can do to join in my outrage at the American political landscape. And yes, as a Bernie-supporter, back to an Independent status, I voted on our first day of early voting and I voted blue, all the way through. I voted for Hillary Clinton for a chance of a progressive future rather than a regressive turning back to those supposed good old great times that mainly served a now dying breed of outdated, patriarchal, white men.
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