The girl down the hall... (1/24/17)

If I go by just the location and the space, I'm satisfied with my apartment. But unfortunately there’s more to it than that. Some of my neighbors are real disrespectful idiots and assholes. The person who blasted the music at nightclub levels in December has been cool since I wrote that note asking them to please think of the others who live there. But now there’s a new menace; the girl down the hall. She is something straight out of Springer or Maury, who’s in her mid-20’s but speaks like a 15-year old. She has a 5 or 6 year old daughter who I’ve never seen because she doesn’t live with her mom. I also know this girl was in jail not too long ago because I overheard, through the thin walls of my building, one of her friends saying how the guy she was seeing at the time cheated on her while she was in jail. That’s a shame. All that said, things have been okay until she hooked up with this crazy dude last week. 

Every night since there's 4-6 people over at her place in the evening and partying til whenever. Now thankfully she doesn't really have a stereo so there isn't much noise from the apartment itself but do you know that feeling you have when you know bad people are nearby? It’s discomforting and you just wonder what bad thing is going to happen and it’s a question of when instead of if. The biggest problem I have is that they have to pass by my apartment to get to the stairs and door to come in or go outside and they aren't real polite about it. The first night they partied on a weeknight until well after 2. Again the noise didn't bother me until people started going in and out passing by my door having conversations at full volume or even yelling at each other like freaking high schoolers. They woke me up at least once that night. I wrote down the specifics of what happened in a journal I am keeping of incidents. The next night they smoked so much weed they set off the smoke detectors at 12:42am. Thankfully I hadn't gone to bed yet but it still startled the crap out of me and I by the time I went out into the hall to check on it, they had taken the battery out or something because it had stopped but I heard them discussing why the alarm went off. The next few days they partied at night but it wasn't anything too terrible outside of a few angry screaming matches at reasonable times and some smoking in the hall/stairway. You know how it is with the Springer/Maury crowd… one minute they love each other more than anything that ever existed, the next they are screaming bloody murder at one another and need to be pulled apart. So I’m trying to play this cool and let this thing go away on its own. 

Last night, it kinda did although it was an escalation. Apparently the boyfriend was out in front of my building trying to badger people into giving him money. He screamed at and told a fellow beggar who passed by to suck his d***. He then, from what I can tell, went to the bar a few buildings over, started some shit and could be heard out on the sidewalk, once again in front of my building telling some people from the bar to suck his **** repeatedly as well as threatening anyone who had to say anything to him or came near him. Honestly, I hoped some people from the bar would shut this guy up. Finally for a few minutes things were quiet until 4 police cars came flying up the street and parked outside my building. Turns out the douche went across the street to Walgreens. That’s why it was quiet for a few moments. A few more police cars showed up. The police went in there and arrested the belligerent fool. I have to tell you. I don’t even know if the neighbor girl knew he was arrested because my apartment is the only one facing the street. She wouldn’t have seen the lights. But let me tell you, things were so quiet after that. It was wonderful. It was kind of like how it was before the girl started seeing this guy. Because when it's just her and her usual friends/family, they're actually not bad at all. Now all I'm doing is keeping my journal of everything that's going on and trying not to get directly involved in the drama, because hey, you really don't want to get into that stuff right where you live. Besides, with this girl's dating history from what I hear in the hallway, the chances are really good that this guy won't last too long. Oh and did I mention she's 3 months pregnant too? I want to try real hard not to judge, but damn these people suck. Welcome to my nightmare. I only have 9 months left on my lease. 

the failure of Obama and the Democrats... (1-19-17)

Now that we are on the eve of the apocalypse, or Trump’s inauguration for those of you who aren’t political, can we now look at things clearly? Because we cannot continue to look at the world through rose-colored glasses or behind veils of denial any longer. The stakes have simply gotten too high. All I keep hearing lately is about how much people are going to miss President Obama. Ask the people of Yemen how much they’ll miss him between bombings. While you’re at it, ask pretty much any country in that region and you might not get the sentimental rhetoric we’re hearing from many Americans this week. Let’s be honest, a lot of that sentiment is a direct result of the stark contrast in personalities between Mr. Obama and the guy coming in next. Because of Trump and how he is, it makes Obama seem like he’s more than he is and to me he’s far less than that, politically speaking.

We can talk about Barack Obama’s wonderful exit speech last week but in reality I tuned him out a while back. I voted for him twice, one time enthusiastically (2008) and one time reluctantly (2012). The fact of the matter is I’ve never been more disappointed in a politician in my lifetime, partly because I feel like I was duped by him, since his message of hope and his many promises were never kept and partly because he himself set the bar incredibly high and failed to live up to it. He didn’t even come close. Yes he’s classy, extremely intelligent, an amazing orator, has a great temperament and he even seems like a cool dude, but as a president he’s failed miserably to deliver the hope and change he promised and had us believing he’d deliver. For the most part, he’s just delivered more of the same. Slightly better than George W. Bush wasn't what we signed up for. Why else would the nation feel like change was needed again? Think back to January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated… do you feel more hopeful now than on that day? Do you feel like the things that needed to change have changed? I feel like in some ways we are worse now because progress wasn't made. Yes I have health insurance, but since they didn’t go with a public option and kept private insurance companies involved, Obamacare hasn’t been as efficient or as effective as advertised, leaving the door open for extreme criticism from the other side and from those whose premiums keep going up. Yes it’s been a godsend for some, myself included but this year, instead of having several choices for which insurance I want, there was only 1 choice to “choose” from in the “marketplace”. The private insurance companies weren’t seeing enough profits through Obamacare so some of them took their ball and went home. There are many flaws in the ACA and now instead of fixing them and improving the imperfect but necessary program I fear the entire system will get discarded by the Republicans and IF it’s replaced at all, it will likely be replaced with some bogus voucher program that they’ve been talking about for the last 8 years that nobody but they and their business buddies want. Speaking of them, income inequality in this country is worse than it’s been since the 1920’s. This did not improve during Obama’s 2 terms. Major companies continue to merge into supercompanies and rich people still buy elections. Not a single crook who helped to destroy our economy before Obama's arrival did any jail time despite their business model being nothing more than fraud... are you kidding me?!? Civil Rights and voting rights seem to be evaporating every year in favor of increased rights and power for the corporate sector and the oligarchs. Crooked corporations were bailed out and are now stronger than they were before the recession but nearly half of Americans live in poverty. When do the people get bailed out? In a lot of ways, things are worse than they were in 2008. Why else would there be such a backlash in the form of Trump?

Fact: Obama is the first president EVER to have troops at war somewhere in the world for an entire 8-year presidency. Why? Remind me why we're doing it again? What are we fighting for? Why are we still there? Why are we constantly trying to topple regimes? Why are we so upset that other countries are trying to meddle in our elections? We’ve been doing it for decades! Perhaps the attempts to undermine our democracy have occurred as a direct consequence of our thirst for imperialism and our continued attempts to rule the world like some power hungry red, white and blue global dictator. Since the events of 9/11 and subsequent response we have been at perpetual war over in the Middle East. In 2 months we’re coming up on the 14^th anniversary of the United States having troops over there. You think all that war and fighting and arming of rebels is cheap? All those trillions used to fight abroad to protect the rich man’s lies and the rich man’s oil interests could have been used to provide public college and health care to citizens and there would have been plenty left over to modernize and repair our crumbling infrastructure. Notice I didn’t say “free” college or “free” health care. It’s time to drop that tired narrative. If you are a citizen of this country you have rights and you absolutely deserve certain things, especially from the richest country in the history of this world. Other major countries do this without issue and strangely their health care systems are more efficient and far less costly than others, hmmm. When you privatize the crap out of what should be essential systems and programs, all you are doing is creating a systemic division between haves and have nots, splitting up citizens in the name of profit. In terms of spending for the greater good, other countries see this as a moral obligation to their citizens; ours sees it as radical fantasy, a pipe dream while they dream about more pipelines. The fact of the matter is that trillions of “our” dollars have inexplicably been spent on things other than US, for terrible reasons and with many Americans dying both here and abroad as a result. Why people aren’t more up in arms over this when cities don’t have clean drinking water and several places suffer the effects of an antiquated infrastructure is beyond me. The naked truth is that our leadership has failed us, the Democrats especially. I blame the Democrats more than the Republicans because we know what we’re getting from the Republicans. They don’t hide it. Their playbook for several decades is to make the rich richer, privatize everything, worship golden idols, shrink social domestic spending, bloat military spending, tell everyone else what to do and piss on the poor. That’s trickle-down economics folks. We’ve already proven it doesn’t work. We’ve already proven that Republicans by and large do not do things with the best interests of everyone in mind, just the chosen few. Fighting for the rest of us was supposed to be the Democrats job. And don’t get me wrong, they still claim that they do this, but sadly their actions in recent years show otherwise and the results are telling. See the recent election trends for proof. Again, if Obama was so good, why have we gone in such a drastic, opposite direction? People are hurting, they're scared and they feel like no one is there for them so when a sleazy con man with no morals actually speaks to them and pretends to share the same values, the people are so happy that someone is actually speaking to them and for them that they'll overlook his historic flaws and come together in support of their new paper champion. You have to remember that values unite people while issues divide. If you speak to people's values, you can win. And win they did leaving the Democratic Party searching for answers. 

Let’s face it, the Democratic party is in trouble, big trouble. This is nothing new, but Trump may have been the coup de grace. We can talk about Gerrymandering, fake news, voter suppression, the so called liberal media and all this stuff but I saw a statistic recently that there are only 4 states in the entire country that have a democratic governor AND democratic state legislature. ONLY 4! That means in 46 states Republicans have control of one or both! That’s not winning folks. Do you remember in 2012 when Romney lost and the popular narrative was that the Republicans were out of touch with voters and regular people? That’s a half truth because BOTH parties are out of touch, clearly listening more to the money and the elites in their parties rather than the people. It’s taken a while but I think we’re starting to notice, hence the incredible popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump last year. One party establishment was just better at squashing their populist “outbreak”. While they succeeded in beating back the challenge of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement he represents the Democrats have failed in almost every other endeavor. In fact, I think it’s safe to say the Democratic party is now a joke, but they don’t get it. Don’t believe me? In 2009 when Obama took office, there were 10 more Democratic Governors, 70 more Democratic representatives in the House and several more Democratic senators. In all the Democrats have lost over 900 federal and state seats since Obama was sworn in. What we have right now is the greatest concentration of Republican power since the time of Lincoln! If you want to go even further, if you eliminate the votes of the 2 biggest coastal states, California and New York, both of which are decidedly blue, Trump beat Hillary by over 3 million votes in the popular vote of the remaining 48. They can point fingers and cast blame all they want but the reality is that the Democrats simply have lost the people. How else could you explain such results? The party’s handpicked successor represented more of the same and in a country with an enormous appetite for change, it says a lot that the people would rather choose a rich celebrity with no experience over a highly qualified but deeply flawed candidate who represented the worst of the party when it came to corporate connections and who lacked a real message. Trump and Sanders had strong messages that resonated with the people. We can debate how authentic that message was when it comes to Trump but he was smart enough to tell the people what they wanted to hear in a way that made them believe him. He spoke to the people while Democrats spoke at them. Try as the tone-deaf Democrats could, even with President Obama strongly behind Hillary Clinton, the fractured, fallen party could not beat arguably the worst candidate in history. Think about that. For something that unbelievable to happen I think it’s safe to say that the party was not and is not in tune with the people. Instead of blaming millennials, the Russians, Wikileaks, Bernie or busters, racists, white men, Faux News or whatever, just stop. Stop and think about what’s happened, be honest about why it did and fix it Democrats. If you refuse to accept this responsibility one of 2 things will happen: a grassroots fight for a 3^rd major party could be on the way that will further weaken the Dems or the Republicans will earn even more seats in the near future so that their majority will become so lopsided that the Bill of Rights and many of our other freedoms might be at risk! It's hard to swallow but what’s done is done. The Democratic establishment has no one to blame but themselves for losing their way but what we need now is a dramatic reversal before it's too late. We can't go to them, they must come back to us.

Now that we are in President Obama’s final moments it’s natural to look back, reflect, take account of what was, what is and what could have been. I’m going to look back at Barack Obama as an incredibly historic but failed president, who could have been one of the greatest of all time but instead presided over the potential death of the Democratic Party as we know it and because he and they have failed us, we are looking into the teeth of the beast.