politics

several progressive and bernie supporters gathered last night at the ward center consolidated theater to see the movie snowden, directed by oliver stone.

the movie, in case you’re not familiar, follows edward snowden through his career in intelligence until june 2013 when, working with reporters, leaked information about various spying programs by the NSA.

i’d definitely recommend it. the movie is well done and, rightly, portrays snowden as a hero who risked his career and freedom to make public the illegal spying being conducted by the NSA.

at the conclusion of the movie, i thought i should go back and read the original articles from the guardian and washington post. check them out as well.

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as i’ve been bogged down in actual work today, this will be a quick post.

one. i want to invite everyone to the fifth annual laborfest.

it’s a great event, put on by good, solid progressives and supporters of economic justice concerns and organized labor. please attend if you can and spread the word.

two. in an effort to encourage more people to read my blog, i thought it might be worth asking people what they might like to see me write about. current events, politics, personal… whatever, are just some examples. of course, if the suggestion is, for me, boring or too personal, etc. i just pass it over. but maybe there are some good ideas, interesting topics that folks might want to see written about here.

i’d really appreciate any suggestions on topics you can share.

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i’m spending the weekend on kauai, not for r&r, but to help my friend gary hooser run for reelection to the kauai county council.

the last time i was on this island for any stretch was… several years ago when i flew over for a week to spend time with family who had come for vacation. Those were the times when I used to rig a paddle board for kids and reprobates in the area and engage in a little fun. a small, sleepy island, it’s definitely a change from my normal honolulu scenery. its been good.

immediately after landing on friday afternoon, i joined a sign waving already in progress at the intersection just outside the airport. it was a great turnout, despite the occasional downpour; i arrived about an hour into it and there were still roughly 50 people there.

saturday was a canvassing day. i’m not terribly fond of canvassing, as i’m usually not comfortable knocking on doors and talking to strangers. it’s ok, though. intent on helping, despite my discomfort, i was tasked with placing campaign signs. and by placing in mean hammering into the ground! it was labor intensive, but still much preferred to the alternative. by the end of our three-hour shift, my group had planted something like 30 signs.

we returned to gary’s house for lunch, after which the afternoon group went out. having not gotten much sleep the night before, i stayed behind to do some data entry… and have a nap.

saturday night was the kauai turno ball and gary’s campaign had purchased a table. i’d never been to one and though i didn’t really know what to expect, it was a very nice evening: music, dancing (not by me), good food, and an entertaining program. i even donned some of the traditional attire. all in all a good evening.

exhausted, we came back to the house and straight to bed.

aside from a campaign meeting this afternoon, today will be relaxing and low key. a trip to the beach is in order, if the weather clears. otherwise, lounging will be fine with me too.

sorry no pictures, but i hope you enjoy your sunday.

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so, i saw this article this morning while browsing my emails: Hillary Clinton Takes Aim at Voters Drifting Toward Third Party. two thoughts immediately came to mind.

one, where is bernie sanders, who said he’s go on the campaign trail for hillary? partly, this comes to mind because of a conversation with my father (a moderate liberal) the other day in which he asked the same question. so, has he been campaigning and i’ve just missed it, or has he changed his mind, or focus?

admittedly, i’ve withdrawn my attention largely from the presidential race; it a circus with two clowns covered by media only interested in the stories in which one of the clowns are gored by a bull, or miss landing in a safety net. yes, one is clearly better than the other, but in the realm of terrible clowns, it’s not saying much.

this, in a ‘round about sort of way, brings me to my second thought; typical. just as at the democratic national convention in july, the dnc and clinton campaign is only interested in what they can get from us (though i’ll vote for clinton, i put myself with the third-party voters because i understand their passion, point of view, and anger). clinton isn’t truly interested in WHY we are so opposed to voting for her so much as she is convincing us that she’s better than trump. for the begrudging pragmatist in me, that’s enough, but for the millions of sanders and stein supporters (johnson is closer to trump on the spectrum, so i’ll ignore him here) it’s not even close to enough.

neither the dnc, the clinton campaign, or her die-hard supporters seem terribly interested in “negotiating”. they’ve made no effort, zero, to try to understand where we’re coming from. sure, clinton has made strategic compromises on certain policy positions, but even the political newbies in the sanders camp weren’t fooled by the politically motivated, half-hearted attempts to be more progressive.

you’d think, looking at national polling, which has scared the utter bejesus out of institutional democrats and clinton supporters, they’d attempt to move closer to bernie’s positions. consistently throughout the primary season national polling indicated sanders would fair far better against trump that clinton would. now that democrats are scared that might be the case, it seems to me the answer is clear. still, when living in an echo chamber, as so many democrats seem to (too many sanders supporters live in a separate, but equally dangerous echo chamber), it’s hard to see, what to me, is the most direct solution.

i’m not sure that much less than a fundamental shift in clinton’s demeanor and policy positions will do the trick. but, let’s see how clinton and the dnc approach this problem. let’s see how they plan to try get support from the very same people the shrugged off almost two months ago at the democratic national convention. they’ll almost certainly need more than millions of dollars of fancy targeted online messaging.

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i sat down at my computer, trying to get some work done and realized what today is. september 11, 2016. 15 years ago our country faced a horrible tragedy at the hands of evil madmen.

though i hadn’t planned to post anything today, instead writing for posts tomorrow and (maybe) tuesday, i thought i’d take a moment to contemplate….

here’s a look at what i wrote on the 5th anniversary.

even today, the footage is hard to watch.

a lot’s happened since that day our country changed, since we became afraid of, well, everything. 15 years later, we’re still waging a war on islamic extremism, with arguably little effect. and at least a portion of the country is intent on waging war against the whole islamic religion.

it seems to me, the world is a much scarier, much sadder place than it was before september 11,2001.

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