You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain.

The title of our article here is from another fictional politician.  In this case, City Attorney General Harvey Dent of Gotham City.  Or for fans of the Batman, Two-Face.  He's rather a rather tragic character.  A man of noble intent fallen to depravity and madness.  A hero turned villain.

John McCain is not a hero.  He is a survivor of war, and let's be clear, I can appreciate that sacrifice.  I would not have stood up under the torture he has endured most likely.  But I feel he has nullified his worth as a human being, and expunged any meaningful sacrifice he's contributed on behalf of his countrymen with this week's traitorous, cowardly and hypocritical act of passive violence.

In effect, he has become a failed mass murderer.

This week, in the latest of misguided attempts to repeal the healthcare of literally tens of millions of his fellow citizens, John McCain took time out from his treatment to go back to Washington DC.  This was treatment for Brain Cancer, mind you.  I mean we knew he was acting erratically over the last month or so.  And when he was diagnosed with cancer on his brain, many came out in support of the war survivor.  My very first reaction was horror.  I've known someone who developed brain cancer.  It was an ignoble and undignified end that was the unkindest sort of death I can imagine.  There were outpourings of sympathy for Mr. McCain in recognition of his service to our country.  Clearly, these must have offended his literally diseased brain.  What leads me to that conclusion, you might ask?

"I've been a bad senator..."

Well, in the face of a life threatening illness, whereupon a normal human creature might be expected to experience a moment of clarity, or even solidarity with his similarly afflicted or suffering humans, John McCain did not in fact decide that the millions of Americans paying for his brain cancer treatment might get a little bit of quid pro quo.  He did not support our people as they were expected to support our troops or the criminal in the white house whom I will not call our President.  He instead found more sympathy with our current corrupt and broken government.  I suppose that can be understood.  A diseased brain might find sympathy with the cancerous growth in our oval office instead of the people he purportedly represents.

So interrupting his publicly funded brain cancer treatment...  one that I might add runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars... he took his time out from that to fly across the country with stitches in his head and return to congress so that he might vote in favor of a repeal of legislation that protects the healthcare of more than one-hundred million people.

And make no mistake, the fellow knew that doing so would likely give the for-profit insurance industry leave to strip a quarter of those hundred million Americans of their access to medical care.  Virtually ensuring that a significant portion of them will die of preventable, diagnosable diseases and conditions.  Even if only 1% of that number actually die as a result, that still effectively kills two-hundred and fifty thousand people. 

For methods of illustration, the current population of Phoenix, Arizona is one million six-hundred thousand souls.  So to take the murderer comparison a little further, what Mr. Braincase just voted for (if indeed 1% of the population will surely die as a result of their insurance being taken away) is roughly equivalent to his being entirely okay with taking a stroll around his own state's capitol and stabbing every 6th person he meets in the guts. 

Now that doesn't make him Adolph Hitler.  Heavens no.  That particular mass murderer killed something on the order of 14 million people in the end.  But the portion of that number the nazis killed that were just people with disabilities in institutions was...  drum roll please... two-hundred and fifty thousand people.  So really... where is the point at which Senator Braincase stops being a War Hero and starts being a Mass Murderer?

They're both entirely fine with killing their own people.  McCain voted yes with the intention of the bill passing and those people becoming dead.  If you want to argue that two-hundred and fifty thousand people isn't as bad as 14 million, where's the cutoff?  How many dead people does it take?  Does that number go down significantly if it's people you love and care for being left to die?  Or is it only okay if his victims are people you don't know?  What if it was only one person, but it was your kid?  Or your spouse?  Or your mom?  Would that be better?  How many dead people is too many?  Where is your line in the sand, dear reader? 

So...  Voting to kill only a quarter million people doesn't make him a Nazi...

But goddammit, he's trying.

Let's be clear and say it again for the people in the cheap seats.  With foreknowledge that his fellow Americans would die if McConnell's repeal bill went to the creature in the oval office, he voted yes that it proceed.  And this doesn't make him unique.  It puts him, 49 of his Republican accomplices and the fundamentalist waste of flesh calling itself our Vice President in solidarity.  They know exactly what this bill will do.  And they cannot pretend they don't know how many their bill will kill.  The figures and estimates have been shouted, emailed, phoned and protested at them for the weeks and years it's been since the GOP started their repeal efforts while Mr. Obama was still in office.  At least when you can find them.  Many have stopped attending town halls and public meetings for what they say is their own safety.  Wow... really?  One might think your constituents are displeased with attempts on their lives.  I know we certainly can't get hold of Tillis (R) and Burr (R) here in NC.

So let's drop any pretense here.  Every attempt to repeal the law that safeguards the healthcare of Americans from being savaged by the insurance industry has been an attempt on human lives.  The insurance industry is paying them unheard of amounts of money to make it happen.  The personal culpability of these creatures masquerading in human skin is not negligible.  If repealed, then these monsters and their insurance industry paymasters are responsible for every untreated illness, disease and cancer that kills someone that could have been saved otherwise.  Maybe he sees himself as an agent of God.  The second horseman of the apocalypse, Pestilence.  Only instead of going out and literally striking people down with plague, he's just taking away their healthcare and racking up victims by attrition.

There's a kid with brain cancer whose picture is being bandied about on Facebook this week.  (And that'll teach me not to snag stuff like that when I see it.  2 days later and it's GONE.  My search-fu is not strong this morning.)  They've got him side by side with John McCain's picture.  The caption lets us know the only difference between him and John McCain is that McCain has health insurance.  In my head, there's no difference between taking away the kid's insurance and John McCain walking into the kid's hospital room and blowing his brains out with a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.  In both instances, the kid is just as assuredly dead.  And it makes John McCain a murderer of men, women and children.  As well as Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and every representative and senator that raised their hands and went on record that some Americans just don't deserve to live as much as others.

Yeah, fellas.  I agree.  And if we could switch your places with your intended victims, I'll count the rest of the country has having got a bargain.  

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UPDATE:  The repeal measure failed in the senate.  45 other would-be murderers also voted for it.

Something has survived...

I'm hearing low key rumblings that Mrs. Clinton is going to want to run again in 2020.  Or at least that they're looking for the next great unpenised candidate to offer that doesn't have Hillary Clinton's stink of failure all over her.  (but is still establishment enough to satisfy the donors.)  And in the general terror and horror at the actions of the criminal in the White House and all his henchmen, the dems are flailing about like kids who know what they did was wrong, but are unable to admit to it or own what they did.

Clinton herself said: : "I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off."  Sen. Chuck Schumer just chucked her under the bus according to CNN.  As though the two weren't aiding and abetting her and the DNC's theft of the 2016 Democratic primary themselves.  Softballing her and 'ramming her down our throats', to use some other sleazebag in government's unfortunate turn of phrase.

And they're hoping that we've already forgotten.  You know.  The entire time they're pointing at the human rights abuses the GOP is trying to ram into law while the rich old bastards have the opportunity, and all the 'Third Way' dems are literally saying is "Have you SEEN the other guys?" 

Yeah. 

We have. 

We're aware. 

"You ruined a perfectly good ass!  That's what!  Look at it!"

However, we're not looking for "All-New Fresh-Faced Republican-Lite with all of the Oligarchy. Now with 5% less Old White Bigots!" just because we have a literal traitor, rapist, bigot, Nazi supporter and human rights abuser in the White House.  Just because you promise not to knife us in our guts doesn't mean we'd rather you kick us in the balls as an alternative.  We'd rather you not hurt us at all.  We'd like you to speak for us.  Represent us.  Help us.  Promote the general freakin' welfare and public good here.  We're hurting.  We want you to be there for us.

I still despise Hillary Clinton.  And no it's not cos she's a woman.  (I'd take Tulsi Gabbard any day in her place.)  No it's not because of her emails, though that spoke to a larger problem that does concern me.  One very large problem that our current despot is more guilty of than she is... but not much more.  She does not believe the law should apply to her.  And that's just as dangerous for different reasons.  The establishment dems want to take our fear and loathing for Herr Drumpf and turn it into a groundswell for their brand of fascism instead of his.

And they're hoping we will forget that she is pretty much the perfect figurehead for their Third Way-ist bullshit.  Someone who can 'evolve' to be anything necessary to whatever gets them what they want.  No sincerity required.  No actual beliefs or morals necessary.  Someone who can keep the spice flowing and the great unwashed grassroots candidates out of the clubhouse.  You know.  The people who actually want to represent us.  We had someone like that.  The Dems fixed their race and primaried him.  They weren't interested.  They're hoping you're going to forget that.  Don't.

Remember.

I remember the debates where she styled herself as tough on terror by promising us and the Military Industrial Complex another war in the middle east.  I remember her name-checking her good friend and mentor, the War Criminal Dr. Henry Kissinger as though any sane person might think that was a GOOD idea.  I remember all those little whistle stops she made while she pounded the neoliberal pulpit where she tried to adopt focus grouped accents and idioms in order to 'relate and appeal' (TM DNC 2016) to the people there.  I remember how she tried to appropriate and make herself the Latino voting community's 'Abuela'.  I remember how she tried to court the black vote with one hand while taking money from the for-profit prison industry that's enslaving people of color and want the status quo maintained.

I remember how badly she treated Mr. Obama in 2008 and how sleazily she smeared and slandered him.  I remember how very vehemently she was against Mr. Obama before she  desperately tried to attach herself to his outgoing coat-tails in 2016 in hopes that some of his hard-won success would rub off.  I remember how her main supporters in 2016 were the prison industrial complex; as well as Time-Warner and Turner/CNN that abetted the media blackout of Senator Sanders' campaign.  I remember how insulted I felt by what I perceived to be a false and patronizing pseudo sincerity.  I remember seeing the ongoing jokes about her on Saturday Night Live where she had to assure us that she was an actual living breathing human creature and not a robot programmed to regurgitate badly learned accents and oligarchy talking points.  Which would have been a lot more funny had it not been actually terrifying.  I remember how she condescended to me regarding my fervent hope that I'd get to vote for someone that wasn't her.  I remember how she assumed it would be a coronation in 2016 instead of an election. 

"Don't just TELL us shit like that.  You need to learn to lie to us better!"  -Lewis Black

I remember the former DNC chair and former Clinton campaign manager from the failed 2008 election, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz, (Who knew a thing or two about fixing her own elections down in Florida as it turns out.) talking about how it was their primary and they'd fix it however they damn well pleased for whomever she pleased.  How DW-S limited the number of debates to a shameful few in 2016, as they realized the more exposure the public got to Hillary's opponent, Bernie Sanders, the worse things got for the Clinton campaign.  How they planted people with scripted questions for Hillary to answer during the debates.  How they softballed her while grilling Mr. Sanders.  And if you want an example of how hell bent the DNC was on having Mrs. Clinton elected, Consider who her vice-presidential pick was.  Tim Kaine was the FORMER DNC head.  The one that stepped down in favor of Mrs. Clinton's former campaign manager; current-former disgraced DNC Head, Debbie Wassermann Schultz.

I remember how she got a guilty child rapist exonerated during her time as a lawyer in the 70's and laughingly joking that she'd never trust a polygraph test again.  I remember how her supporters were okay with that because she was a lawyer and could have been disbarred otherwise.  (Ya know... had she chosen disbarrment to secure the rapist's conviction instead of having the child's bloody panties dismissed as incriminating evidence, I'd have found her a perfectly acceptable person to consider for office.)  As though that made what she did entirely okay because the law is broken.


I remember how the person in the New York primaries in 2016 who was mostly responsible for people's registrations getting lost or changed without their permission? I remember how that person later ended up with a house in connection with someone in the Clinton campaign.  I disremember whether that person saw jail time or not.  I remember Clintonistas in the caucuses in the flyover states getting caught in the act of losing Sanders ballots, or trying to trick people into signing for Clinton illegally or invalidating their own votes.  I remember Nancy Pelosi and DNC bigwigs during the Nevada primary changing the rules RIGHT THERE and setting up a picket line of policemen for the Berners that they'd disenfranchised on the spot in 2016.  How if they didn't put their Bernie signs away, they were threatened with arrest.

I remember how on multiple occasions, the Clintons showed up within illegal distance of the polling places at multiple primaries.  I remember that they pulled so many dirty tricks out of the republican play book that I imagined that Karl Rove was checking his own security to see if he'd been burgled or hacked.   A different 'unfortunate' circumstance went down in EVERY state so the DNC could point at them and start chanting "UNRELATED INCIDENTS.  UNRELATED INCIDENTS" in a zen state of plausible deniability.

I remember how Mrs. Clinton was for DOMA before she was against it.  I remember how she was for NAFTA before she was against it.  I remember how she was for the TPP as the 'gold standard' for trade agreements before she was against it.    I remember how she was for the Citizens' United decision in the SCOTUS that has all but destroyed our election process with the influx of money from the corporations. I remember that she sat on Wal-Mart's board of directors at the point where it started to turn into one of the biggest exploiters of the lower class in the world and destroyers of local economies.  I remember Mrs. Clinton appealing to the coal lobby and snubbing the Detroit water crisis as not being sexy enough for the news cycles at the time in 2016.  I remember how she fought so hard to keep what she said to Wall Street out of the public eye.  I remember the firsthand accounts of how she treated her secret service people and the people working for her. 

But most of all, I remember the polls during the 2016 democratic primary.  I remember how they showed her losing to Fuckface Von Clownstick the Terrible, while Mr. Sanders won by a more than 10 point spread.  I remember writing open articles and signing petitions asking that the DNC PLEASE endorse Mr. Sanders and that Mrs. Clinton step down.  I remember Sanders being an assured win, and Mrs. Clinton being an entirely likely loss not for just America, but for the world in the face of the beast she'd lose to.  I remember Mrs. Clinton having a choice.  The facts were before her.  She could've put the needs of our country and the world before her ego and conceded to the candidate America clearly wanted. 

Or she could have lied.  Cheated.  Rigged primaries.  Ignored the danger.  Blacked out her opponent.  Appropriated cultural identities.  Denied public access to her records.  Engaged in under the table DNC Nepotism.  Positioned herself as being for everything Bernie was, except not.  Attempted to steal Mr. Sanders' platform and watered it down so as to be inoffensive to the corporate interests that owned her.  Told us that our needs were unrealistic and specious.  Ignored our crises, chronic injuries and beloved dead.  Promised us war instead of general welfare.  Denied us salient and meaningful debate.  Denied and disenfranchised us of our vote.  Broke the law.  Held herself unaccountable to the law.  But aside from all that, she decided to hold human life, development and history itself hostage.  She held Herr Drumpf to all of our heads like a gun and demanded that we give her what she wanted or people would die.

And when the worst possible, yet entirely predictable thing happened... she went away.  For a while.  She receded like the plague and blamed anyone and everyone she could for her misfortune, and owned none of the responsibility for her actions.  She was indeed cheated of the presidency, just as she'd cheated Sanders of the primary.  Ironically enough, by the same methods.  And per usual, she accepted it, despite a popular lead of 3 million votes and didn't press the issue.  She didn't fight for it.  And in the end, showed herself to be the milquetoast corporate bureaucrat we knew her to be anyway. 

And after laying low...  after personally enabling one of worst possible people in history to gain the Presidency by not conceding to the better candidate...  now she's hinting she's going to try again?  After all we've been through.  After all the pain and blood and murder in the beast's wake so far, all the DNC can do is cough up or excrete more people that are acceptable to the companies instead of the people?  After all that, they're hinting that they want to do it all over again?

Fuck you.

Will no one rid me of these troublesome oligarchs?