Wall Street Under Siege? About Time

 It is ironic in the most humorous way that Gamestop, the mall videogame retailer, was quite recently ridiculed by many of the same people now conducting an uprising to save it and boost the share price beyond imagining, for the ridiculously low trade-in value of games. But this is kind of the exact flip I was hoping for post-doughface, populist action against brazenly corrupt hedge funds instead of fascist takeovers of the Capitol. 

I am sure by now that everyone is up to speed (and probably more in-the-know than me) on the story. Hedge funds took a huge short position in Gamestop (GME), looking to make a killing by destroying the company. This is an incredible example of how something can be legal and yet corrupt and destructive at the same time. Day traders, that are now called "retail investors" in a twist of understanding what roles are as this makes them sound like marks to be taken by the "institutional investors" i.e. Hedge funds and other predators, with online accounts to trade stocks at home rallied on a subReddit thread called WallStreetBets to buy the stock like crazy and screwing the short sellers. Also of no surprise to readers is what short selling is, borrowing shares from a pension fund or university endowment, etc. that hold extremely long positions and selling them immediately in hopes of buying them back at a later date at a lower price and pocketing the difference. It is betting on failure, a way to make money after the top 1% tank the economy or a wildly mismanaged pandemic throws the economy in chaos.

There are all kinds of laws and regulations concerning stock and other forms of trading, they are selectively enforced and are usually written and regulated by Wall Street executives taking sabbaticals from milking the productive economy and doing their time as "public servants". This is the reason so many Goldman Sachs executives end up as Treasury Secretary and the like. Sure, they want to keep markets fair... for them, but they are throwing a fit when those rules are used by small time investors to make money. 

The last time arrogant financiers crippled the country the response from the left was Occupy Wall Street, a physical takeover of space but no real action. It was met with responses from the Obama Administration about the sanctity of contracts even if they are company killing bonuses for executives that ran it into the ground. As usual, fox news demonized the occupiers and cops did their duty for property and protection of elites. Regardless of how many connections were made, how many organizations gestated due to a bunch of people hanging out in the park, when it was all over how many dollars did the whole episode drain out of Wall Street? Did anyone get their house back because of physical activism? I hate to be a downer because I really appreciated the energy and commitment, but in the end they were all just sitting ducks. Why did we have to start at square one like that? Why did organizing against one of the top priorities of everyone born after 1964, wealth inequality, have to start almost from scratch? Well I guess I gave it away huh?

A lot of the framing around WallStreetBets has been about millennials clawing into elite boomer terrain. There are a lot of comments about how their generation has been screwed and born to fail. That is part of a much larger discussion, for now it is enough to say that yes, when it comes to wealth and opportunity the boomer generation pulled the ladder up behind them. And this episode of screwing short selling hedge funds is an attempt at revenge. Revenge, sticking it to the man, screwing Wall Street after they ate our generation's seed corn these are all much more concrete motives, and tangible rewards (enough "amateurs" are getting windfalls for their positions that it is a significant transfer of wealth downwards) than Occupy Wall Street's vague "common good" arguments for activism. 

We ended 2020 with an insurrection of fascists rampaging the Capitol and are starting 2021 by punching arrogant hedge funds in the nose and some little guys actually getting some of the filthy lucre. It remains to be seen whether even this much can be maintained, but I like the energy. 

McConnell begs to keep his vile weapon of bullying as minority leader

 The shamelessness never ends:

[#Moscow Mitch McConnell],now the minority leader, is holding up the basic organizing agreement required at the beginning of each new Senate. He’s insisting that Democrats pledge to leave the legislative filibuster intact over the next two years, or else he won’t let the resolution pass — and without it, the Senate’s work won’t get done, and the majority-party Democrats won’t even be able to take over as chairs of Senate committees. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is asking for the same deal that the parties worked out in 2001 under similar circumstances. McConnell hasn’t budged, more than two weeks after Democrats clinched the last of their 50 Senate seats in two special elections in Georgia and two days after the new senators and new Vice President Kamala Harris, the tie-breaker, took office.

The odd thing is that what McConnell is doing is, as Congress scholar Sarah Binder points out, “not a credible commitment.” That is, whatever the Democrats say now — and remember, they are not currently threatening to eliminate the filibuster — it simply won’t be binding on them over the course of the next two years. At the same time, McConnell doesn’t appear to be offering anything in return for the Democrats’ pledge, such as a reciprocal promise to limit use of the filibuster, which gives the minority the power to stop most legislation that can’t command 60 votes. He simply wants Democrats to agree to play by his rules, even if that means passing nothing for the next two years. 

While no one expected the turtle to stop threatening democracy or actually let Democrats govern and clean up his seditious party's incredible, mind-blowing mess of corruption and cruelty, this is a new low. As everyone should remember, #Moscow Mitch used the filibuster as a regular weapon of business during his last tenure as Minority Leader, stymying important measures meant to rescue the economy and the country after Dubya broke it last time. And he was utterly unapologetic and shameless in doing so. He was equally shameless in crushing the Democrats' use of the filibuster when stealing Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court. I believe the Jews call that Chutzpah but I don't think I'm qualified to use that term. 

McConnell should be in a position to demand nothing. With several members of his caucus courting expulsion for supporting and aiding a violent insurrection just over two weeks ago, logic would dictate that you sit down and shut up. But this is the most anti-democratic Senator in modern American history, who despite looking like he can barely push open a door by himself, is used to throwing around incredible power to disrupt, obstruct, and steal anything that furthers the republican agenda.

The framing in this Bloomberg article is important and does seem to indicate a shift, at least in the short term, of how mainstream media are going to react to republican BS. It only took economic collapse, a pandemic, and violent insurrection to get this news outlets off their asses to see the danger in pandering to them but we liberals and Democrats have to support it while we can. Saying "holding up the basic organizing agreement" and "insisting" that the majority bend to his will to leave the vile weapon of slavery and segregation intact is a major change in the way bullying has been written about in recent years. 

Thankfully Chuck Schumer has not caved, calling the demand "unacceptable", so we should be thankful for that. How long before he backslides is anyone's guess. But this episode shows that doughfacedonny may be gone, but the virus of authoritarianism never dies. It will take eternal vigilance to defend democracy. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Picks up the Torch

In a normal year where insurrectionary republicans weren't storming the Capitol and letting their freak flags fly with bloodthirsty bravado, this might be an interesting event, kind of like a sideshow attraction:

Marjorie Taylor Greene says she will introduce impeachment articles against Biden

So freshman congresscritter MTG, who shall be known as the chicken-biting sideshow geek on this page, is going to crassly pick up where the seditious republicans planned to go if Hillary Clinton had been inaugurated. I know, I know, that feels like 128 years have passed since everyone was so sure Clinton would win that no one felt the least compunction about bashing her ferociously to show how tough they were but it really was only 4 years ago. It all seems so quaint that republicans had already lined up a couple years worth of slander and grandstanding investigations for the second Clinton Administration. Since then we've had neo-nazi marches, beer bashes on Capitol Hill to celebrate yanking health insurance from 20 million or more Americans, babies in cages, impeachment, a pandemic raging out of control, economic collapse, and an insurrection. So thank goodness we dodged the bullet of suffering through endless republican grandstanding with investigations *snark*. 

Here however, we have a freshman member of congress who openly espoused the Qanon conspiracy theory (Nazism slightly rebranded), won her seat in a deep-red district in Georgia by virtue of being unopposed, who is now grandstanding on a threat to pass meaningless articles of impeachment on issues already investigated and based on nothing more than conspiracy theories in the first place. And against a man who has not even taken office yet.

“I would like to announce on behalf of the American people, we have to make sure our leaders are held accountable, we cannot have a president of the United States who is willing to abuse the power of the office of the presidency and be easily bought off by foreign governments, foreign Chinese energy companies, Ukrainian energy companies, so on Jan. 21, I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden,” Greene told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly. 

This really is just "Go Sportsball team Go!" Lots of observers are worried that the next doughface to threaten the nation will be smarter than Donald, but there will be mobs of really dumb ones too. And it looks like the chicken-biting circus geek is angling to be the new queen of the reprogrammable meatbags.  Hat tip to Driftglass for that one, but as he often also says, this is a right-wing monster factory that produces both the meatbag marks and the con artists who manipulate them. Sooner or later they were going to merge, as they did with Doughfacedonny, and produce what Robert Altemeyer termed "double high right wing authoritarians." These people combine the aggression and dogmatism of the followers with the sociopathic narcissism of the leaders to create true believers. Doughfacedonny was famous for being famous because he could stick his face and name into every nook and cranny to sell his fantasy of luxury and quality. While the seeds of his fascism were already apparent when he took out the full page ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five in 1989, he became hooked on fox news and hate radio the same way your grandparents or uncle Liberty did, he is gullible and loves to have his prejudices reinforced. So by the time he came down the escalator he was able to sell himself to the republican base of racists and imbeciles because he really was one of them.

And that is the impression you get from Marjorie Taylor Greene, this isn't an act, she really is that stupid and gullible to just follow the leader: Democrats impeach Doughfacedonny for inciting insurrection, so a republican moron tries to impeach their enemy over conspiracy theories. Are you ready for another round of vicious, mean-spirited obstruction, grandstanding and lies from the republican party? Because they are already coming. I hope this time it will look less like a threat to be taken seriously and more like the carnival side show that the republicans have always been. 

When republicans attack the US Capitol

Like probably most members of the left of center blogosphere, I am having a devil of a time coming up with the right words to match the emotions of seeing that mob storm the Capitol yesterday. Just about every member of that community of thinkers and writers, most of us locked out of every getting words to appear in a reputable magazine or newspaper, and certainly never going to be interviewed on TV for being right a heck of a lot more often than we are wrong were watching said screen thinking, 'yup I knew something like this was bound to happen'. 

I didn't expect the big push to look like that. Are you kidding? Storming the Capitol? I was listening to NPR coverage of counting the Electoral Collage votes in the joint session through Twitter. First it was a trickle, reporters outside talking about the protestors flocking towards them. The republican grandstanding about Arizona's votes had been getting louder when they switched to watching the maga republicans outside, waving trump flags, start to break through the barricades (they looked like bike racks, were those seriously what police use?), and ooze up the stairs. The footage was so much stranger than the still photos we're seeing now. It was like these call of duty cosplayers and assorted deplorables were moving in slow motion, just little by little getting through the doors, breaking windows, and then slowly shambling through Statuary Hall (between the rope lines too) and then breaking more windows. 

I had to stop everything else I was doing and was glued to the screen, it was so surreal. And, like everyone else watching, I had to ask; where the fck were the cops? It was not long before footage showed up of Capitol police appearing to open the barricades and wave the mob in, cops taking selfies with them, and generally just milling about as these fcking traitors busted into the People's House. Why? I guess Occam's Razor would tell you that the Capitol police in particular are utterly incompetent in the face of republican treachery because believing they were complicit would require a lot of evidence that I don't have. But it would probably only take the suspicion that some of the officers there were in league with the mob to make a lot of others who wanted to do their jobs wary of getting Serpico'ed. On top of the fact that republican mobs are always armed and have little fear of police, but there's no excuse for folding that completely.

And that made the job of Secret Service agents inside the chamber next to impossible. The mob is lucky that only one ambitious true believer was shot when they were pushing up against the barricaded doors. And breaking windows, and breaking into offices, and looting the place. Then outside, the cameras caught a little pagan ritual where the fcking animals were smashing cameras and broadcasting equipment, most of it said "AP" on it. Remember when the tea baggers were lionized in the media for "always cleaning up their trash", good times.

We should probably define what actually took place. Doughfacedonny conscripted the followers that he has been inciting to violence for four years now into a mob. They voluntarily walked to the Capitol, with no promise of compensation for their work on behalf of the wannabe dictator, after listening to him harangue reality and pretend that political violence is somehow a legitimate response to losing an election. So this is stealing an election by insurrection, not a coup d'état, it could be defined as an auto-coup where the dictator dissolves the legislature to consolidate his rule. However far-fetched the conspiracy and sedition seemed to the reality-based community. But republican base voters have nothing left to sell but their cult of violence, cruelty, and suffering. What is amazing is not that they failed ultimately, but that they even got within spitting distance of the floor of Congress in the first place. It is tired to compare republican mobs to demonstrations against injustice that sometimes get out of hand, but yeah, if this was "antifa" or BLM attempting to storm the Capitol... they'd still be sweeping up the eyeballs. Didn't stop the cult from immediately claiming that this was an antifa false flag, republican keyboard warriors are so conditioned at this point that they didn't even need signals from HQ to start the conspiracy theorizing. 

Since the insurrection began there have been a myriad of calls for action, "we need to impeach him!" "we need to do X... this has to happen!" 

And I am sorry as hell if I have ever inflicted this on you. 

I understand now that many of the advocates and activists have only slightly more power to do any of the things that need to be done than my cat has to make me pancakes. 

My goal, before this insurrection made it plain to everyone, was that we don't need to entertain republican "ideas" as legitimate when they clearly aren't. We don't have to act like republican elected officials have any moral authority when they are wholly bankrupt of morals, and we do not have to treat them with respect or deference when they clearly hold us liberals in utter contempt. A big thing to convey is also that the boomers, our elders, are so often full of shit that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Especially republican boomers, they seem to have learned absolutely nothing in their years and we owe them nothing. I have watched many people I know become interested in politics since doughfacedonny stole the election and almost all have been on the Democratic side. Now it seems I have nothing to teach them. This blog is therefore at a crossroads, do I still try to do things as I have always done or should I try to get more serious and take things up a notch?

This insurrection could be a breaking point in the fever, or it could simply be another year zero. When donny is finally dragged out of the White House is the cult going to go underground for a bit, only to reemerge as tea party 2.0. Will the political press let them get away with it again? Will the Biden administration make the same mistakes as the Obama administration and let a whole year get away before actually doing something? Will all the organizing in the last four years fray and fracture again?