Tonight: Live Socialist Response to Trump's Speech

Tonight Trump addresses Congress for the first time.  You know how it will go; the polite applause from the Democrats, the raucous cheers from the Republicans, then presumably a polished Trump oratory written by the best belligerent on his WH staff--Trump praying the teleprompter doesn't fail him.

He will talk about the necessity of pumping billions more into the defense budget while cutting all else.

The Seattle Channel will present Councilwoman Kshama Sawant's rebuttal.


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Close

They say you have to win a couple of close ones in the big tourney to sniff the National Championship.

What if you're Oregon?  How many close ones do you have to win to maintain that #2 seed the experts divine for the Ducks come tourney time?

It was a hell of a weekend in the Bay Area for Oregon.  It always is. This time Oregon skated with a couple of close calls, beating Cal on a last second dagger by Dillon Brooks, and Stanford on a lucky and wild tip in by Jordan Bell.

Oregon is good, but I don't know if it can survive by playing down to the opposition.  As I've said all year, the Ducks need an athletic big man who can consistently slash the middle of the key and create his own shot.

Better rebounding is key as well.  Chris Boucher gets pushed around if a board is disputed. Sometimes Bell is lonely out there without rebounding help, and if he happens to be napping at any given moment all you can say is WTF?


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Abby and Vijay

A piece by Vijay Prashad.


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Buzzer Beater

The Oregon Ducks thrive or die with the three-point shot, and last night's game with Cal was no exception.

Their habit could cost them a shot at the NCAA title next month, but for now its all lollipops and championship dreams.

Trailing by 10 with 4 min. to play, Oregon hit four straight long balls to snatch a victory out of the Bears' jaws.  To set up the opportunities the Ducks had to play a little defense as well, employing a nasty, trapping, full-court press.

It paid off with a pair of steals, setting up four last-ditch attempts.

Ennis, Boucher and Pritchard each nailed deep shots before Dillon Brooks' game winner with .09 left sent Cal and its fans home in an even deeper funk.

Four chances, and each one critical to Oregon's desperate comeback.

"Bing, bango, bongo, Kaboom!" (Schonley and Dooley)

UCLA must beat Arizona Sat. night in the PAC "game of the season" for Oregon to win the conference regular season title.

And Oregon must win its final two against Stanford and OSU. Fingers crossed.

I've never been much of a UCLA fan until now.


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Amen

We frequently hear calls for system change, at public mobilisations, in conference halls and even in negotiation halls. The calls come as slogans, they come in anger and they come as a strong rebuke to the systemic scaffold on which our pains, our exploitation and the denial of our voices and rights are hung.

The necessity of system change is inescapable. The present system is dependent on the extreme exploitation and enslavement of nature and labour, built around an inherently unjust core. We are in the dying days of a civilisation driven by fossil fuels. This end is not coming merely because of the recorded and predicted severe species extinction, or by peak oil. Its end is being heralded by a looming climatic catastrophe and by the reawakening of social forces realising that slavery persists as long as the enslaved is unaware of his state.--NB

Right on, brother.


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Itching Forward

The New York Times is currently engaged in one of its most ambitious projects: Removing a sitting president from office. In fact, Times columnist Nicolas Kristof even said as much in a recent article titled  “How Can We Get Rid of Trump?”

Frankly, it’s an idea that I find attractive, mainly because I think Trump’s views on immigration, the environment, human rights, civil liberties and deregulation are so uniformly horrible, they could destroy the country.   But the Times objections are different from my own. The reason the Times wants Trump removed is because Trump wants to normalize relations with Russia which threatens to undermine Washington’s effort to project US power deeper into Central Asia.--DW

Hear the dogs barking yet?


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Sad Story

Native Americans and fellow activists huddled around small fires in the Oceti Sakowin Camp on Sunday night and sang songs in a nostalgic and bittersweet gathering. These demonstrators opposing the Dakota Access pipeline, who call themselves “water protectors,” feel they are making a last stand at Oceti Sakowin.

Nightly rituals of song, speech, dance and gatherings by firelight used to involve thousands at this camp, but that number has dwindled to about 50 people—many of whom have been subjected to police violence and have spent time in jail. The national media have all but vanished. Cold winds blow through the vast, empty plains.--DK

Sad, but indicative of where we are under the duopoly.


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Single-Payer Now!

But "single-payer reform could," write the co-founders of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP). "Such reform would replace the current welter of insurance plans with a single, public plan covering everyone for all medically necessary care—in essence, an expanded and upgraded version of the traditional Medicare program."

Such reform, also known as Medicare-for-all, could save $504 billion annually on healthcare bureaucracy, they say, plus an additional $113 billion "could come from adopting the negotiating strategies that most nations with national health insurance use, which pay approximately one half what we do for prescription drugs."

These savings would offset the cost of expanding insurance to the 26 million who remain uninsured despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as "plugging the gaps in existing coverage—abolishing co-payments and deductibles [and] covering such services as dental and long-term care that many policies exclude."--DF

If Trump really wanted to fuck over the corporatist liberals he would follow this plan!

The move might swing things back his way and out of the clutches of the Intelligence bureaucracies.

Obamacare lard distributed here.


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Good Stuff

Well, OK, a lot of people, apparently, because there’s been a new twist in the official narrative. It seems the capitalist ruling classes now need us to defend the corporate media from the tyrannical criticism of Donald Trump, or else, well, you know, end of democracy. Which millions of people are actually doing. Seriously, absurd as it obviously is, millions of Americans are now rushing to defend the most fearsome propaganda machine in the history of fearsome propaganda machines from one inarticulate, populist boogeyman who can’t maintain his train of thought for more than fifteen or twenty seconds.--CJH

This one is run through with rare intelligence and perception. A must read.


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Teach the Children

This was very cool to see.


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Must Read

Essay of the Day.








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Towards the Title

Oregon polished off Utah last night.  The Ducks have a noon game against Colorado on Sat., which ought to be a rout simply from the revenge angle.

Colorado beat Oregon at high altitude in Boulder last month.

But the road trip to Cal looms, a treacherous thing.

The Ducks need Arizona to lose to UCLA and then win out themselves.

Mercy!  What a great college ball season.

EDIT: Oregon smashed Colorado, got revenge!


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Message for the "Resistance"

"To be Clear:" as in wiping the cobwebs from your eyes.


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Beyond the Democrats

This reflexive defense of the recent status quo is bolstered by inertia, especially at the top of the party. The House Democratic leaders—all septuagenarians—were easily re-elected to their party posts. In the Senate, New York’s Chuck Schumer took over from Harry Reid as minority leader, as long planned. The big outside money is flowing to the same operators (Guy Cecil and David Brock) and the same big institutions (the Center for American Progress, Priorities USA) as before. If Representative Keith Ellison’s effort to head the DNC is defeated, the party structure itself will remain largely in the hands of those who eviscerated it (or their designees). Not surprisingly, these longtime party leaders are invested in what was accomplished under Obama, eager to defend it against Trump’s calumnies, and intent on returning to power under similar terms.

But this reflex ignores an uncomfortable but inescapable reality: Trump is in the White House in large part because of the establishment’s failures over the past decades. What economist Paul Krugman once called the “long depression” features a slow recovery that has not benefited working people. We remain mired in endless wars. The country’s inequality is more extreme, its insecurity more widespread, its institutional racism still entrenched. Money continues to corrupts our politics. Senator Elizabeth Warren got it exactly right when she addressed the Progressive Congress strategy summit on February 4: “Our moment of crisis didn’t begin with the election of Donald Trump. We were already in crisis…. Men like Donald Trump come to power when countries are already in deep trouble, when economies are already deeply flawed, when people in those countries begin to lose hope and look for someone else to blame.”--RB

A writer who gets it.

So rare these days.  I hear Hillary is gearing up for a last run for the Queendom.  Maybe Liz and Bernie won't endorse her next time?  Or am I dreaming, hoping against hope?


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Family Time

Ducks tonight in a big game against Utah.  Oregon is at home this weekend.

It's big, as Oregon attempts to stay within striking distance of Arizona for the regular season PAC championship.

Here's a nice story on Oregon's Chris Boucher, a Canadian by way of Jamaica, who will play in front of his family for the first time in his Eugene career.


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