Why It's Harder to Run As a Democrat

The most-illuminating moment of the first Democratic debate wasn't Kamala Harris' condemnation of Joe Biden's wildly-misunderstood comment about working with segregationists Herman Talmadge and James Eastland, but her response to a moderator's question.

After giving a lengthy explanation of her health care plan, I believe it was Savannah Guthrie who asked Harris how she proposed to pay for it.

Rising to the bait, Harris fired back. She pointedly questioned why no one asked the same of Donald Trump as he was giving away massive amounts of money to the wealthiest portions of our population.

Her reply shed light on a curious phenomenon in present day American politics: Entirely different things are expected of Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats need to bring actual ideas to the table and get buy-in from a bewilderingly diverse electorate. 

Republicans only need to appeal to gun totin' white guys, rich white guys and angry white guys who essentially hate anyone who isn't just like them, be it because of genitalia, country of origin, political belief, sexual orientation or religion.

Republicans need only to bellow louder than the candidate next to them to gain approval. It's a game called How conservative are you?, and the more obnoxious the answer the better.

Aided and abetted by Supreme Court-approved gerrymandering, it's no wonder defectives like Dick Cheney and Donald Trump assumed the presidency. (Oh—you thought George W. Bush was president? Awww. That's cute.) 

For a Republican, acting like the loudest drunk in the bar is a highly-effective campaign strategy.

As he works to undo the damage his feckless trade negotiations with China have wrought and publicly thumbs his nose at concern over Russia's interference in our elections, the Trump-whore tweets.

Yes, besides being the biggest dick in the room, Trump's most consistent personality trait is his Twitter addiction.

As if anyone were interested, Donald weighed-in with his thoughts on the Democratic debate. Among his profundities were “Boring!” and the incredibly ironic “How about taking care of American Citizens (sic) first!?”

Yes, the same guy who engineered the enormous giveaway to the one-percent and its corporations and routinely scales back work place, environmental and economic protections is now worried about American Citizens (sic).

Hmmm. Perhaps the error is ours that we haven't pressed Donald on his definition of Citizens (sic).

So while we tolerate things from Donald Trump even the staunchest of Democrats would have questioned had they originated with Barack Obama, we make Democrats stronger and weaken Republicans when we hold Dems to a higher standard.

Taking the high road inevitably means working at a higher elevation, and as any sentient being understands, the more-challenging the work-out environment the better the results.

We will use that muscle and kick Republican ass in 2020.

Political Science the Square Peg Way

62,985,106. Wow. That's a lot—of anything.

In this case, that would be t-shirts. Yep. T-shirts. The Square Peg is determined to cut through the acrid campaigning already infesting our nation as an election still sixteen months and change away looms like a poisonous, dark cloud.

After months of rigorous scientific research, our staff has determined that the best way to accomplish this is via humor. Mirth. T-shirts.

It is with this in mind that we have placed the largest t-shirt order in history. Too large for any one manufacturer, several firms have stepped up and offered us remarkable volume discounts.

(We would be remiss if we didn't add that without these generous discounts, this project would well nigh be impossible. Especially considering licensing fees, distribution costs, etc.)

OK. On to the project itself.

We aim to distribute over sixty-two million copies of the t-shirt pictured below to each Republican governor, Republican representative, Republican senator and each of the 62,984,828 folk who saw fit to vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

Then we propose to send the shirt pictured below to the current occupant of the White House: 

 

Lots of people think we as a nation need to lighten up. The Square Peg is the blog actually doing something about it.

The Battle of Hong Kong

I love protests. I love the idea of people leaving the comfort of their homes to peacefully congregate en masse to explicitly communicate their displeasure with the prevailing government, its leader or pending legislation.

Petitions are nice. But nothing beats the visceral impact of hundreds of thousands of people clogging the streets. It's the power of we the people, challenging those who frequently work so hard to subdue it.

Sadly, my fellow Americans rarely agree. Probably because they're jaded. Or because protesting is sweaty. And noisy. And inconvenient. I mean, have you ever tried to find a good parking place near a major demonstration?

We mostly congregate on social media, which isn't quite the same. Unless you're trying to disseminate misinformation about things like measles vaccinations. Or attempting to create panic over fake threats like pink slime or a presidential candidate running a pedophile sex ring out of a Washington DC pizza joint.

But in hi-tech Hong Kong, people understand the power of a good, old-fashioned public demonstration. They have successfully employed them twice in the last decade to beat back the oppressive hand of mainland China.

Most-recently, invasive extradition legislation was suspended after mass protests clarified citizen's feelings about China's would-be ability to pluck residents out of Hong Kong and deposit them in China for any reason the government deems appropriate.

Considering this is a government that has attempted to erase any trace of Tiananmen Square, blocks its citizens from accessing vast swaths of the Internet (aided and abetted by Google) and routinely tramples its citizen's human rights, the good people of Hong Kong decided this wasn't such a good idea and took to the streets in opposition.

Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam backed down and suspended the offending bill. But suspending is different than cancelling. Translated, it means we'll wait until this cools down and then attempt to push it through again.

The Hong Kong Chinese get it. Which is why they're continuing their protests, demanding that the extradition legislation be ripped-up and thrown away.

Hong Kong occupies a unique place within the Chinese hierarchy.

If China were a car manufacturer, Hong Kong would be its halo car; the car it likes to point to when it wants to show off its design and engineering capabilities. China likes to use Hong Kong as proof of its benign treatment of its citizens. A gesture to the world that says “See? We're not such bad guys.”

But this is essentially public relations. And with increasing evidence that China (like Trump's United States) wants to move forward on a path of strident nationalism, public relations will likely be among the first of its political victims.

I salute the bravery of Hong Kong's citizens, and wish them every success. Tyranny is the weapon of the weak. Dissent the weapon of the strong.

Godspeed, Hong Kong.

Basketball, Boy!

It's not entirely unexpected. After five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals and the long, post-season slogs that accompany them, the Golden State Warriors are breaking down. Ditto LeBron James, who after eight consecutive visits to the Finals played in the fewest games of his career in 2018/19.

For all intent and purposes, James' 239 playoff games have added three years to his career, meaning that to his body, next season will be his twentieth and not his seventeenth.

For several members of the Warriors, their seven post-season excursions have added about a season and-a-half to the wear and tear of regulation NBA seasons. And considering the intensity of playoff games, it could be argued that for James and the Warriors, an even greater toll has been extracted.

As a certified fanatic who drank in every minute of the championship-era Bulls available to him, I can attest to the price they paid, plainly evident in the third season of each of their threepeats. In contrast to the hyper-focused play of earlier seasons, both the 92/93 and 97/98 squads looked ragged and even sloppy at times. They coasted. Team statistics saw a decline across the board.

It was proof of how much harder it is to stay on top of the mountain than it is to climb it. The 57 and 62 victories those Bulls teams posted are a testament to the deep and amazing rosters cobbled together by the mostly-unappreciated Jerry Krause.

What I'm trying to say is that only boxers and interior linemen are permitted to entertain the notion that basketball is a non-contact sport.

If you're a Warriors' fan, you no doubt consider this a premature eulogy. It's not. Am I predicting a Toronto victory tonight? No. I am merely citing the enormous toll consecutive and prolonged post-seasons have taken on this team.

But they are proud—and experienced. There is no need to refer to them as the Golden State Worriers. And against a resilient but inexperienced team no doubt entertaining thoughts of hoisting a trophy in front of a jubilant home crowd, conditions couldn't be better for the Warriors to strike, sending the series back to Oakland.

It will be one helluva game.

Voodoo and the Businessman Sleight of Hand

President Petulant likes to crow about his roaring economy, even though it has its origins in Barack Obama's first term. Confronted with this fact, the Trump-whore would no doubt maintain he was in fact Obama's economic advisor.

Or something like that.

Has Hollywood has ever imagined a reboot of Forrest Gump, with dick-swinging Donald as the driving force of virtually every important moment in (revisionist) American history? You know, composing his own take on the Gettysburg Address ("A country of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy..."), leading the Confederacy to victory in the Civil War and subduing Hitler and Tojo via Twitter taunts? 

Okay. So I keep my ears peeled for the roar, but I'm having trouble hearing it. Oh, I know the one-percent are gobbling up historic amounts of global and domestic wealth, aided and abetted by the Trump-whore's tax-cut-slash-bribe.

But what of the 99%?

I'll admit we're a bunch of lazy, shiftless slobs unworthy of anything but the barest solvency, but where's the roar in our economy?

The gig economy, in which people work several jobs to make ends meet, is alive and well. Contract employee by day, Lyft operator by night. While the stagnant wages that earmarked the days of the early-recovery have technically disappeared, increases are curiously low for an economy reportedly firing on all cylinders.

In a report recently released by the Associated Press, raises for executives at Fortune 500 companies averaged seven-percent, as opposed to just three-percent for rank and file employees. Elsewhere, raises for wee folk were a bit higher—3.4%—still low for an economy with record-low levels of unemployment.

During the boom of the nineteen-nineties, desperate employers were offering raises of up to 5% (not to mention signing bonuses and other incentives) to retain and hire badly-needed employees.

Something has changed.

The business class likes to cite the incredible pressure wrought by online and international competition as the reason for these smaller raises. Strangely, those stressors don't seem to have the same effect on executive compensation.

I wonder why?

Another curious aspect of our roaring economy is that a record seven-million Americans are more than three months behind on their car payments. That is more than were behind in the dark days of 2009 and 2010.

Republicans would no doubt explain this as the unfortunate result of stupid, ignorant minorities unable to budget their money. But think about it: how critical is your car to your job? Are you telling me people voluntarily put their jobs at risk in favor of a new plasma TV?

Or is there something else going on?

With employers picking up less and less of their employee's health care costs, paychecks are stretched further still. Add the skyrocketing cost of even garden-variety prescription drugs and you can practically see them evaporate.

And if you're a contract employee, well, you don't have any healthcare benefits, do you? 

But not to worry, because Big Pharma assures us very few consumers pay list price for their prescriptions drugs, and low-cost alternatives are available everywhere. Plus Republicans continue to maintain they're working on the best healthcare package ever!

We at The Square Peg have made this point before, but none of this just "happened”. It is deliberate. On purpose. And by design. It is the result of decades of business-inspired, Republican-enabled greed.

Furious with the mounting power of labor unions and the minimum wages of American workers, business sought cheaper sources of labor. Ever-cheaper raw materials and methods of production and distribution. They wanted to make more money.

You and your job? They were standing in their way.

Did you even say you were sorry?

While we might be guilty of over-simplification, America essentially sold its soul to China in exchange for bigger profits. Our Republican-enabled corporate behemoths gave away our nation's manufacturing base so that its executives could receive bigger bonuses.

So much of what you see around you is the fallout from that shift. And now in the midst of his re-election campaign, the Trump-whore wants to put the genie back in the bottle. 

Ha. Ha.

So yes. We have a roaring economy. Sad thing is, ninety-nine percent of us have been fitted with noise-cancelling headphones.