One of the best things about twice Impeached former CEO/Dictator Donald Trump being out of office is not waking up every morning in a cold sweat fearing what asinine thing the petulant man child tweeted at three o’clock in the morning. Now that the social media giants have pulled their collective heads out of their asses and suspended the orange-haired doofus’ accounts, sanity can slowly return to America.
One of the things we used to do here, (back before Trump) was post photo-toons and other items which weren’t really political in nature. Now that some normalcy seems to be returning, at least on a temporary basis, we hope to return to those halcyon days when we could post funny items.
We’re big Bernie Sanders fans here at the Bucket and we loved the picture of Bernie at the inauguration that has become an Internet sensation. We’re kind of late to the party, but here’s our take on that meme as he aims to do battle with the new crazies of the alt-right like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a.k.a. MTG, a.k.a. MT Head. Yes, this new wing nut is strong with the Q but then Bernie is strong with the force and the space lasers.
Honestly, we prefer the Warren-Sanders wing of the Democrat Party. However, although we here at the Bucket are progressive independents, we are voting for whomever the Democratic nominee is, just like we have for the past twenty-eight years. Just look at the Trump administration in addition to the Bush administration (not to mention the first Bush and the Reagan administrations) and you’ll understand why we’ll never vote for another Republican as long as we live. But we’ve been around long enough to know that Joe Biden is not the perfect candidate. Let’s face it, folks; Biden likes to bullshit and he’s a big time gaffe master. If there’s a chance he’ll stick his foot in his mouth or tell embarrassing tall tales, he will. Back in 2008 when Obama named Biden his VP, we collectively slapped our foreheads and said “Oh, oh!” But thankfully, Biden turned out to be a commendable Vice President. He is a good, honorable man who will do the right thing for all Americans. But, he will also do and say some stupid things along the way, guaranteed. So, don’t let the conservative corporate media or Fox News Republican propaganda machine fool you. Yes, Biden’s having senior moments, but then again Trumpty Dumpty is outpacing Uncle Joe on that front by a country mile. Donald Trump is by the far the WORST choice for America and the world and he proves it on a daily basis.
Here’s a photo-toon from our March 7, 2009 issue, where Obama assures the American populace that Biden will not insert his foot into his mouth while Uncle Joe has some reservations about that prospect.
Well, the unthinkable has happened in America. What started out as a joke last June, has become a reality. Donald Trump has pretty much clinched the Republican Presidential nomination. Like other sane, reasonable folks, we’re completely surprised and a bit horrified at the ascendancy of this disingenuous, authoritarian megalomaniac. And naturally the blamestorming has commenced. Common scapegoats include the obvious choices like the Teabagger Republicans and corporate media. The Republicans have the gall to actually blame Obama. John Stewart has suggested it’s the Democrats. We here at the Bucket will go one better; we’re all to blame for this fiasco.
That’s right folks. Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re all responsible for Donald Trump because the orange rage monster is the epitome of capitalism run amok. We’ve commented before about the ugly predatory nature of unregulated capitalism. Upton Sinclair documented it one hundred years ago in the book The Jungle and it still is applicable today. Trump has come to represent everything that capitalism holds dear; greed, avarice, egoism, ultra-competitiveness, selfishness and materialism. Most Americans who have been raised on the belief that capitalism is the only sensible economy for this planet, look to the self-aggrandizing, megalomaniac billionaire, who has had three trophy wives and scores of material possessions like houses, cars, planes, etc… and say “Hey! I want to be like him.” That’s the American way. The rich, greedy plutocrats dangle the carrot and the rest of us salivate and go after it. We’ve mentioned John Steinbeck’s quote about the poor seeing themselves as temporarily embarrasses millionaires instead of exploited grunts. These are Trump’s trumpeters; the temporarily embarrassed millionaires; and of course the plutocrats, like Sheldon Adelson, who will naturally support his fellow billionaire.
We here at the Bucket were kind of hoping that Bernie Sanders, the self proclaimed democratic socialist would have gotten the nomination. That would have made the election a referendum of sorts between democratic socialism against unregulated capitalism. According to polls, in a head to head showdown, Sanders thumps Trump.
We think it’s time that all Americans do a bit of self-introspection, especially conservatives. Conservatives generally don’t do this because in the conservative mindset, they are always right, hence no need to look at oneself in the mirror. Questioning your actions is bad and a sign of weakness. One must do what has been traditionally done forever and ever. And don’t even think of apologizing; that is absolute weakness and worthy of death. But is Donald Trump really who were are as a nation? Are we really like Trump? Are we a SEGUMUCA nation: a nation of Selfish, Egotistical, Greedy, Ultra-Materialistic, Ultra-Competitive Assholes? (Catchy eh?…[sound of crickets chirping]…hellllooooo) Isn’t it time we put the people’s health and welfare, the public good and the environment above profits and selfish, greedy materialistic desires? Maybe if we do that, we won’t look in the mirror, see Donald Trump snarling back and say to ourselves, “Holy Shit! How did we get so fugly!”
The fallout form Arizona’s election fiasco on March 22nd is still unfolding. Maricopa County Recorder, Helen Purcell, was widely and deservedly vilified for her initial response, where she actually blamed the voters. Purcell backtracked a few days later and took full responsibility, but the damage was done. Purcell, explained that the number of polling places was cut from 200 to 60(almost 70% reduction… let us repeat that…70 FRIGGING PERCENT REDUCTION!!!) in order to save money. But the truth is that conservative Republicans have a stranglehold on this state and since they’ve gerrymandered the state legislature districts so drastically, there is virtually no way to get them out of power. They’ve clearly passed legislation and cut election funding in order to suppress voters. The office of Maricopa County Recorder is supposed to be a non-partisan position but Ms. Purcell is a staunch Republican and she has been in office since 1988. In several years, she’s run unopposed which has led to the same complacency and smug demagoguery that Joe ‘Just Call Me God’ Arpaio possesses. Let’s just say she’s a good soldier for Republican causes.
Now the federal government is investigating the voter suppression and even Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the DNC is suing Maricopa County for voting rights violations. Will Maricopa County increase the number of polling places for the elections later on this year? We’re not holding our breath here. Arizona Republicans want to remain in power come Trump or the apocalypse. Given their anti-federal government viewpoint, this will only strengthen their resolve. You see, austerity democracy works great…for corporate America backed conservative Republicans. The game is definitely rigged here in Arizona for Republicans and they’re not going to change anything any time soon.
Getting back to Ms. Purcell…we do think that she should get on the back of Sheriff Joe’s horse and ride off into the sunset. We’d expect this kind of voting rights violation in a banana republic. But this latest debacle is inexcusable in America and especially in our home state of Arizona. Ms. Purcell needs to resign!
We’re still trying to figure out the complete con being orchestrated by the Republican ‘establishment’ and their cohorts in crime, the corporate media. Their so called ‘astonishment’ of the rise of Donald Trump seems pretty disingenuous. So does their desire to stop Trump, especially when so many GOP candidates(like Rubio, Cruz and Kasich), who have stated how absolutely horrible he is, would in fact support him if he got the nomination. Now if some of the GOP ‘establishment’ came out endorsing Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton (who is basically a moderate Republican anyway), then maybe we’d believe them and they would earn our respect.
We used to think it was funny that Donald Trump was the frontrunner when this charade called Con-a-thon 2016 started last summer. We figured that all his gaffes, miscues and hateful comments would surely lead to his demise before the first primaries and one of the more seasoned ‘establishment’ GOP candidates, like Bush, Walker or Rubio, would take the lead. But Trump is clearly on track to becoming the Republican nominee and it’s becoming more scary than humorous. As a matter of fact the Economic Intelligence Unit(EIU) ranked the prospect of a Trump presidency as one of the biggest threats to global economic stability, right up there with radical jihadists.
The most perplexing thing: the supporters of Donald Trump. These are people who should be supporting the man who would really help them, socialist Bernie Sanders. But as we’ve commented here before, many lower and middle class Americans view themselves as ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ , not the exploited backbone of the nation that they truly are. Americans are overworked and underpaid but yet somehow, some of them think that Donald Trump, who is a master at manipulating people and the media, will make their lives better because of the trickle down myth which the Republicans have successfully trumpeted ever since the days of St. Ronald Reagan; Donald Trump is rich, so his riches will trickle down and he’ll make us all rich. It didn’t work in the eighties under Reagan, the aughts under Dubya and it won’t work in the future under Trump.
We’ve been hoping that the people who support Trump would have woken up by now, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, with the outbreak of violence at anybody who speaks against Trump, they seem more adamant than ever to place America into the hands of an authoritarian megalomaniac with a lust for power and a hatred for dissent. The true future for Trump supporters will more likely be as low wage slaves at his resorts and casinos.
The New Hampshire primaries were this past week and Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were the big winners on the Democratic and Republican sides respectively. Of course, it also meant that the Republican clown car just got roomier in the continuing sham that is Con-a-thon 2016.
Carly ‘Ice Queen’ Fiorina, New Jersey boss Chris Christie and some guy named Jim Gilmore decided to suspend their presidential campaigns this week. It was expected that Fiorina would go soon since she wasn’t even invited to participate in the last Republican debate. Her numbers have dropped since her support of a fraudulent video against Planned Parenthood last year. Chris Christie didn’t receive an expected bounce from his thrashing of Marco Rubio in last week’s debate, so he went back to Jersey. And as far as Jim Gilmore goes, he never really had a chance. He wasn’t even in our original photo-toon of the the Republican clown car (see above link). He’s continually polled at 0% so he finally smelled the coffee and said goodbye.
How about that Martin Shkreli, huh? What a piece of work he is. In case, you don’t know, Martin Shkreli is the wunderkind CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who recently made every sane person’s list of most hated man in the world recently by raising the price of a life saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Yes, you read that right… $750 per pill.
And now poor little rich man is mad at Bernie Sanders because Mr. Shkreli wanted to donate to Sanders campaign and Sanders wisely rejected the donation. According to Shkreli, he is so mad at Sanders that he could punch a wall. Ahhhhh! Poor wittle baby!!! Well, I think it’s safe to say that there are many Americans who would like to punch Mr. Shkreli’s greedy, smug little face into oblivion.
Shkreli could learn a lot about ethics from Dr. Jonas Salk. Salk discovered the vaccine for polio and instead of filing a patent, which could have made him a gazillionaire, famously said “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”. He had no desire to profit personally but instead wanted the vaccine distributed as widely as possible in order to cure as many people as possible of this dreaded disease. Of course, in this age of greed and profits at any and all costs, Dr. Salk’s actions are scoffed at by most modern day doctors and scientists, who seem to support the idea of putting profits before people. This way of thinking seems counter not only to the Hippocratic Oath (“I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.“) but also to basic christianity, which this nation supposedly has claimed itself to be.
Health care for humans and even our pets has become ridiculously expensive. What’s needed is regulation for the pharmaceutical and medical industry so prices remain affordable to everyAmerican, not just the rich. But people keep electing people to Congress who are against any kind of regulation (a.k.a Republicans). One thing is for certain; health care for profit is a bad idea and one that needs changing. Either that, or say hello to more assholes like Mr. Shkreli with their $750 pills.
An amazing thing happened here in Arizona recently. Self proclaimed democratic socialist and Democratic candidate for president, Bernie Sanders, drew 11,000+ people to his rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Let us repeat that. Liberal Bernie Sanders drew 11,000+ people to his rally in red state Arizona.That’s more than the 4,200 than conservative, billionaire blowhard Donald Trump drew when he was in Phoenix. (Of course, Donald Trump, being the egotistical, bombastic salesman that he is, claimed that 15,000 people attended, even though the Phoenix Fire department said it was 4,200). You’d think the so called ‘liberal’ media would be all over the Sanders rally, exclaiming 24/7 that a liberal drew record crowds in a red state. That night the local, mostly conservative media outlets gave it only a passing mention, but instead devoted several minutes to the Donald’s comments about Arizona Senator John McCain not being a war hero. We checked CNN the next day and nary a mention of Sanders amazing rally. But they sure had coverage of Donald Trump’s mouth.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the neocon media con is on! We’ll be posting more on this elaborate and concerted effort by monied interest to bamboozle the American public into voting for the Republican candidate of choice of the corporate oligarchy that runs this country. Right now Donald Trump is doing his crazy billionaire schtick to make the other Republican candidates look sane by comparison. Our corporate overlords’ hope is that by next summer, Jeb Bush or Scott Walker will be looking like the only reasonable choice, especially if the media gives little coverage to sane, responsible people like Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.