The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, Its’ Frightening Aftermath, and the Hard Proof that Mario Cuomo and Nora Bredes Were Correct.

On the 30th Anniversary of the civilian nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, located just 70 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, the New York Times has published the most astonishing story to appear about the catastrophe over three decades.  The story is mind- boggling in it’s breadth, depth and scope and terrifying in its implications.  I only wish that Mario Cuomo and Nora Bredes, both of whom I had the honor of working with to shut down the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant 60 miles east of New York City, were alive to read this story today, to see how prescient they were.

Please read the story linked to below entitled: “Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe,” by the New York Times’ Henry Fountain.  

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html?smid=fb-share

Source of photo: What is Chernobyl?

Clinton Campaign Hints at Potential Woman Running Mate, Fueling Clinton/Warren Speculation @alternet

A spokesman for the campaign has said the short-list will include ‘a woman.’ Hmmmm.

Well, Looks like SOMEONE at the Clinton Campaign is listening to me.  Last month, I published this blog about the air-tight case for a Clinton/Warren ticket, on my website at www.socialvisionproductions.com and on medium.com.  Here’s the Medium link:   https://medium.com/@stevevillano/clinton-warren-the-revolution-has-arrived-66f970ee7c40#.fwuv4ed6k

Source: Clinton Campaign Hints at Potential Woman Running Mate, Fueling Clinton/Warren Speculation @alternet

Why the “Poorly Educated,” and the Smug, “Partially Educated,” Are Driving This Country into the Ground.

 

 

 

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Snarky liberals, late-night comedians, and Donald Trump detractors, like me, had a field day attacking Trump for saying he loved the “Poorly Educated.” We chortled with glee at the image of the bearded, pot-bellied, gun-gripping, redneck men and the Casino ladies with puffy hair and raspy cigarette voices, ranting their blind loyalty to their dear, demented Donald.

Well, we’ve missed the other half of the story.

On the other side of the political spectrum, I’ve been dumbfounded by the depths of contempt which Bernie Sanders’ proudly “Partially Educated” smug, storm troopers have for the facts, experience, qualifications, history and humanity. Trump’s “Poorly Educated” are convinced that their personal failures can seize power by electing—who else?—a YUUUUUGE failure. In the case of Bernie’s arrogant, “Partially Educated,” they know what they know in “real time” (aka, from the internet) and don’t know much about history, or real people, nor care. All they know is that they’re right, and we’re wrong.  Especially if we, like the New York Times Editorial Board, believe Hillary Clinton is the most “broadly and deeply qualified candidate for President in our time.”

This week, Bernie Sanders told the Editors of the New York Daily News that he did not favor the strict liability approach to gun manufacturers which the parents of the children slaughtered in the Sandy Hook gun massacre were testing in court.   Bernie’s words were his own, not someone else’s, not filtered through an editor, nor a columnist. They were not something his supporters could blame on “corporate media”, as they love to do, when they are unable to refute the facts presented. They were Sanders’ own words–entirely consistent with the anti-strict liability position he has held for years, and consistent with his six votes against the most famous gun-control legislation of his time in Congress, the Brady Bill. Plus, the Daily News has become a crusading, muckraking publication, unleashing a new generation of fantastic front-pages devastating to Right-Wingers and hypocrites, including Trump and Ted Cruz.  After his insensitive Sandy Hook comments, add Bernie to their list.

None of that “history” matters with Bernie’s “Partially Educated,” but fully privileged supporters, most of whom are white, progressive, well-off, and have, fortunately, never lost a child to gun violence. In a dialogue about the actual text of what Bernie said on the Sandy Hook case, one of his supporters told me that I was “letting the fly wag the ointment” by focusing on gun violence and not on the “bigger issues” Bernie was advancing.

Stunned by this Sanders’ supporter’s abject arrogance and inhumanity, I responded that “ the significance of the lives of the children of Sandy Hook parents blown apart by weapons of mass destruction is FAR more important than any political campaign.

His response? Are you sitting down?

“Oh, rubbish,” he said. “How about he slaughter of hundreds of Palestinian children in the Gaza war at the hands of Israel.”

The Bernie advocate compounded his horrendous, ignorant insult to the Sandy Hook parents whose children were ripped apart by bullets in an elementary school, not a war zone, with this screed:

“If you’re gong to blather on about the sacredness of children, as if they are the sole currency of the future, try to take a more global view and recognize that our government underwrites the slaughter as a matter of routine…To say that the Sandy Hook parents are FAR more important than ANY political campaign is just stupid.”

Yes, he actually said that.

This particular “Partially Educated” Bernie supporter, whom I later discovered lived in Montreal and posts photos of his beloved cat all over his Facebook page, then told me to “ease up on the sentimental, heterosexual, American exceptionalist claptrap,” and concluded our conversation by calling me an “idiot.”

I told him that I hoped to meet him in person someday so I could have the pleasure of punching him in the nose. At that, he folded up his pseudo-intellectual credentials and hid in his kitty’s litter box, never to be heard from again, but reeking from the odor of his own stench.

Now, I understand this inhuman piece of excrement does not respresent Bernie’s views, nor most Bernie’s supporters. However his arrogant, pseudo-intellectual, holier-than-thou, intolerant, ideologically rigid, “Partially Educated” behavior is representative of too many Bernie supporters I have encountered.

If any of Bernie’s backers care to know why there’s a backlash in this country against people with a real-world experience, a sense of history , a respect for evidence-based learning and solid education, and why Trump’s nihilistic appeal has resonance , they can stop searching for answers.   The “Poorly Educated” and the smug “Partially-Educated” are indistinguishable from each other.

 

 

Clinton/Warren: The Revolution Has Arrived.

 

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With Donald Trump’s “montage of misogyny”, as detailed by the New York Times, getting messier and more misogynistic each moment, and with Bernie Sanders support among many progressive Democrats continuing to grow, there is one, and only one, perfect candidate for Hillary Clinton to select right now, as her running mate: Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The reasons for this truly revolutionary, all-female ticket for President and Vice-President of the United States may not, at first look, be obvious. For weeks, as I’ve been floating the idea among friends and colleagues inside and out of politics, the standard retort has been that this country would never elect two women to the two highest offices in the land; that a national ticket needs to be “demographically” balanced; and, in a year when the Latino vote has been highlighted, that Hillary’s running mate must be Latino.   In fact, until the beginning of this year, I was a prisoner of that old way of thinking as well, favoring a ticket of Hillary Clinton and HHS Secretary Julian Castro of Texas. Three major developments over the past three months have changed that and pointed the way to the future.

First, a seminal early January interview on Decider—a media industry website– with NBC Universal’s EVP of Digital, Evan Shapiro, framed the issue in a way few, if any, politicians or pundits were looking at it. Here’s what Shapiro, the smartest human being on the planet when it comes to understanding all media and its applicability, had to say:

Television consumption defies demographics in ways that were the norm 25 years ago. I binge-watched Jessica Jones over Thanksgiving weekend with my wife and two daughters, ages 17 & 20. What is that demographic? That’s really a psychographic around a certain niche. It’s more about psychology than demography.”

The thing to understand about Shapiro, who now heads NBC’s comedy platform SeeSo (www.Seeso.com) and also guided the IFC network, Sundance and Participant TV before coming to NBC Universal, is that he just doesn’t pull this stuff out of his “very good brain,” the way Donald Trump makes up foreign policy. Shapiro is to media research what Nate Silver is to political data: he is the guru.   When he first arrived at NBC, Shapiro embarked upon a massive research project, interviewing 11,000 people about their on-line viewing habits. He currently has nine more media platforms in development for NBC and every decision is based upon meticulous research and analysis. So when Evan Shapiro says “It’s more about psychology than demography,” everyone would be wise to listen. The implication for media—and for society—is positively McCluhan-esque.

Secondly, while Donald Trump, trained in Reality TV, showed early signs of instinctively acting upon the Shapiro Shift away from demographics to psychographics, he has been acting like a contestant on “Survivor” over the past several weeks, eating his own skin– especially regarding his life-long Achilles High Heel: Women. From his insults to Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly and Hillary Clinton, to his adolescent spitballing of Heidi Cruz, to his bare suggestion of “some form of punishment” for women having an abortion, Trump has singlehandely put women’s rights and gender quality at the epicenter of the 2016 Presidential campaign.

Trump’s terrible tactics—clearly not the product of a very good brain, or heart, for that matter—have exacerbated the already large advantage Democrats hold with female voters. In 2012, Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney 55-44 percent among women, sealing his re-election. As of this month, in separate polls conducted by both NBC and the New York Times, the GOP front-runner has a 70% negative rating among all women—Republicans and Democrats. If the election were held today, Hillary Clinton clobbers Trump, 58% to 31% among ALL women, a towering 27-point advantage. In short, Donald Trump has wiped out any political demographic concerning women, and created his own psychotic psychographic: the crazier he gets, and makes the GOP look, the better the Democrats do with all women, especially crucial suburban women.

Finally, the more successful Bernie Sanders is, the more delegates he amasses and the more state primaries or caucuses he wins, the more likely it becomes that the Democratic Party will need to be reunited across ideological—or psychographic–lines, rather than along traditional demographic lines.   There is only one person who can do that and double down on the tectonic gender chasm between both parties: Elizabeth Warren.

Clinton’s selection of Warren would represent the triumph of psychographics as an astute—and research tested—political strategy. It would bring about the “revolution” Bernie and his surrogates have been advocating, since few things could be more revolutionary in the United States than the first all-female national ticket in history. And, Elizabeth Warren—whose “Warren Wing” of the Democratic Party made it possible for Bernie to find fertile ground in a party he wasn’t a member of until last year— gives Sanders’ supporters—including Susan Sarandon—a place their psyches and their votes can comfortably call home. No one knows more about taking on Wall Street than Elizabeth Warren.

And, just for fun, think of how Trump, Cruz or any other representative of a misogynist movement masquerading as a political party for the last half-century, would flail and fail in the face of two of the most intelligent, articulate female public figures in history, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. The Clinton/Warren revolution has arrived, and it will be televised–psychographically, of course.