American Factory | Official Trailer

First they came for the unions. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and ever since, “union” has been a dirty word, “Norma Rae” was released in 1979, during the Carter administration.

Then they lowered the taxes, telling us the wealth of those at the top would trickle down to the rest of us.

Then they told us since we had flat screens we didn’t need welfare.

Now it’s the politics of fear, all the time. And it’s not only coming from the right, but the left.

You should watch this documentary. It won the Oscar, it’s now on Netflix. If you think America can bring back manufacturing, you’re delusional. The Chinese are willing to work twelve hours a day, six days a week, with few safety precautions, while seeing their families once or twice a year. The unions established a shorter work week, the government instituted safety regulations, but now all we hear is regulations are hobbling business, and if we just relaxed them the jobs would come back and the economy would roar, even though robots do the work in the new plants, not people.

As for wages…

When GM was in Dayton, a worker made $29 an hour. The same work at Fuyao, its Chinese replacement, pays $12 and cents. Talk about changing your standard of living.

The Chinese billionaire tells Ohio he is helping the state’s economy, as he plots to replace the slow Americans with robotic arms. And, in a language almost all Americans can’t speak, the Chinese laugh that the Americans are inferior.

But it gets worse. The Chinese are trim and fit. The Americans are lumpy and out of shape. We can argue the causes all day long, but one that’s been established is the substitution of fructose for sugar. That’s right, corn syrup is cheap, sugar is not. And you’ve got to keep those farmers happy, even though despite all the hoopla about family farms, most of the growing is done by multinational conglomerates.

So, the workers at Fuyao want a union. Those who agitate for it get fired. Fuyao brings in a team that specializes in scaring employees not to organize. It’s all about fear. If you get a union, we’ll close the plant. That’s what the Chinese billionaire says. And people were out of work for years, they want to keep their jobs, even though they’re declining in number and turnover is humongous, because the work is so repetitive and back-breaking.

The politics of fear. It certainly has killed the union, but so much more.

It killed the raising of the minimum wage.

It killed Medicaid in states where the nation would pay for it. You see you cannot enable the takers, everybody must pull themselves up by the bootstraps, even though the elite in Varsity Blues are scamming their kids into college and Trump pardons his cronies. If you don’t think the system is stacked against you, you must be one of the winners.

And now it comes down to Bernie Sanders. Now it’s not only the right that is employing the politics of fear, but the left. Disgraced banker Steven Rattner is apoplectic, even though he already got his. All the opinion columnists in the “Times” are talking about how Bernie will lose and the country will continue to go in the wrong direction and if he wins, the Democrats will lose the Senate. And you wonder why Trump got elected.

The Democratic elite have seceded from the party. They stole the name, ran flawed candidate Hillary Clinton and changed the rules so Michael Bloomberg could debate. But they didn’t foresee what a bomb he would turn out to be.

Today Bernie Sanders wins handily in Nevada and the lead story in the “Times” is how his road forward is fraught with difficulties. That’s like focusing on LeBron’s theoretical injuries in the future as opposed to how well he is playing for the Lakers today. You see the “Times” is trying to mold your opinion, but the “Times” has lost touch with the public.

I hear from the public every day, all day long. That I’m a sh__head, that I’m on the right path. The idea of reporting for the “Times” and the rest of the print media is to go out and ask people on the street, they don’t live the life 24/7. As for TV…its focus groups are bogus.

So Bernie wins amongst people of color when they said he could not.

The great centrist hope Klobuchar barely registered, Buttigieg was an also-ran too. And Nevada is important, because it’s the first state that looks like the nation at large.

Either the above resonates or it does not. Either you want change or you do not.

The right doesn’t want change, it just wants a world where it’s every person for themselves and you cannot get an abortion.

But we thought the left was on the side of the people, lifting up those from the bottom, democratizing society. But no one can lose in the process of lifting others up. And the truth is the elites have contempt for the rank and file, don’t care for them, and this is one of the reasons Trump got elected.

But it is not 2016 anymore. We’ve seen the Trump movie. And most people don’t like it.

But the elites tell us unless we nominate an anointed centrist who will try and make America great like it was in 2016, the Democrats will lose the election. That’s right, these same outlets and pundits who called 2016 for Hillary.

I’m not trying to convince you if you don’t agree. Hell, there’s thirty-odd percent of the electorate that will vote for Trump even if he shoots someone in the street, as he said and certainly believes.

But there’s this idea on the left that we must look at traditional metrics to figure out the election. When the truth is they failed in 2016 and don’t apply today. It’d be like focusing on the manufacturing of cassettes in an era of streaming.

There’s something happening here. And it’s becoming ever more clear. Most Americans don’t like where the country is going, and are fearful of their future not only economically, but environmentally. Gradual change is history.

I’m enlightening you. The same people who said that MP3s would never replace CDs. The same people who decry screen time. The same people enamored of physical books. While you were doing your best to protect the past, which you decided was better, most people adopted new technologies and employed them to spread the word how things weren’t working out for them. Isn’t it funny that it’s the youth that are in the bag for Bernie.

So, don’t be afraid. The people are on your side. They’re gonna make change. And it might be wrenching, but it’s been a long time coming.

It killed Elizabeth Warren’s run for the nomination.

Warren was depicted as a true believer. Someone who knew who she was and stuck to it. Was anti-big business. Was on the little guy’s side. Even stood up for Medicare for all because it was the right thing to do.

And then she waffled.

And then she changed her opinion.

She was asked directly how she was going to pay for Medicare for all, multiple times, live on television, in a debate, and she evaded the question. This is exactly why we hate those in power…speak directly to us, give us a straight answer. And then, based on media blowback, she decided to delay the implementation of Medicare for all.

And now Senator Warren has put a stake in her heart by agreeing to take PAC support.

Now why should we believe her? She changed her take, didn’t stick to her guns, and is now taking fat cat money? WE’RE DONE!

This is a gross miscalculation. You speak to your base, you embolden your base, not the professional class. This is how news outlets and pundits make money…creating mountains out of molehills, creating controversies where there are none, being out of touch with the public.

Which is why Bernie Sanders is so successful. He doesn’t take the corporate money while railing at the rich, and his hoi polloi supporters generate more cash in contributions than the fat cats.

For twenty years we’ve been told to go for the money, that credibility doesn’t matter, that it’s fine to sell out, no one cares anymore. Maybe we had to see it played out on the main stage to reveal the fallacy in this message.

When you do a sponsorship deal, when you appear in ads, even when you start selling your own branded tchotchkes, you’re hurting your career.

Don’t confuse this with Kylie Jenner. The Kardashian/Jenner brand is business acumen, that is not the brand of a musician, an artist.

In other words, if you can’t say no, you’re rarely going to get to yes.

And the professional infrastructure of the music business is no different from the professional infrastructure of the media/pundit world. The infrastructure remains, the acts, the politicians, the players, come and go. Believe me, your agent will be in business long after you’re done, as will your label and quite possibly your manager too. They don’t need you, they just need somebody…to hype, to skim money off of. And they only get paid when you take the bait, if you say no, the agent does not get their 10%, the manager doesn’t get paid, nor does the label. They’re all telling you to do it, and the unsophisticated, those who don’t know themselves, do what they say.

They’ve been criticizing Elizabeth Warren from the get-go, she’s too harsh, she’s a schoolmarm. But with straight talk and a plan for everything she gained traction.

But she couldn’t handle being on top. This is what Bob Dylan always does best, he does not bend to how the wind blows. He confounds expectations, with cover records, he refuses to do his songs in faithful arrangements on stage, he realizes his reputation, his credibility, is all about pushing the envelope. Same deal with David Bowie. If he’d just stopped at Ziggy Stardust, he would not be a legend. But Bowie kept reinventing himself, and if he failed, he just kept on going, and then his aura, his credibility, supported him wherever he wanted to go.

Bernie Sanders has never changed his spots. This is what the media/pundit world hates most about him. You’ve got to play the game, but he hasn’t. Which is why Hillary Clinton put Bernie down. She made sausage, he should too.

And then you’ve got people like AOC. She doesn’t care that she’s excoriated, she just doubles down.

This is what those in power don’t understand.

I’m not a huge fan of Peggy Noonan, but unlike the rest of those in the “Wall Street Journal” editorial/opinion pages, she can sometimes be reasonable.

Regarding Mike Bloomberg, today Noonan said:

“Through Mr. Bloomberg’s longtime targeted philanthropy, through his relationships, quiet alliances, generosities and personal loyalties, he has a lot of leaders – mayors, other local politicians, people who run museums and civic organizations, who speak for ethnic, racial and professional groups – who support him. But those leaders don’t fully control their own followers and constituencies. Everyone who’s a leader of any kind now is in crisis: They don’t have a complete hold on their people and wind up following them as often as leading them.”

The Best Democratic Debate in Years

Bingo. Bernie Sanders is the first internet candidate. He speaks directly to his constituency, he bypasses the middleman. The other candidates don’t get it, constantly trumpeting their URLS. Your website is not a vehicle, it’s your essence, your base, your home, where your acolytes rally around you, excluding the media/pundit middlemen. Your website is a middle finger to the establishment.

And, as Noonan says, the tail wags the dog. That was the essence of Trump and now it’s the essence of Sanders.

And the media/pundit class doesn’t even get the anti-Trump furor correct. They think it’s a horse race, about statistics, when really it’s about emotions, feelings.

And we keep getting more statistics, more tea leaves read, about turnout, all the old metrics that don’t foretell the future in the new world. If you’re gonna vote for anybody but Trump, do you really have to run out to the caucus or just wait for the candidate to be decided upon and pull the lever?

And speaking of credibility, Michael Bloomberg’s Democratic bona fides dropped dramatically in the past twenty four hours as a result of his endorsement by Clint Eastwood. You remember, the loony-tune Republican who spoke to an empty chair at the convention. I mean if Bloomberg were really a Democrat, would he have gained Dirty Harry’s support?

Of course not.

Bloomberg believes if he’s got money he can pull the wool over our eyes. This is another thing the media/pundit class doesn’t understand. It no longer dictates, it can try and spin but frequently it doesn’t work, because the public can communicate online, peer to peer, generating a feeling that overwhelms the initial prognosis.

So Elizabeth Warren had a good debate. She should have doubled down on who she was. She should have mea culpaed her previous faux pas. Owned them and moved on. Instead, she dug a deeper hole for herself, all in the name of expediency, putting the end goal ahead of the process.

Everything today is a process, taking a long time. That’s why Bernie is where he is, he started long ago, and people became familiar with him in 2016.

So, the media/pundit class believes it’s business as usual. These are the same people who missed Trump, the internet, the same people who rail against technology, the same people who believe we live in a broadcast television world with advertisements as opposed to a streaming world sans commercials. Sure, Bloomberg’s millions got him name recognition, but when we finally saw the act, we wanted nothing to do with it. In the internet world, you follow the people, you don’t lead them, unless you start way ahead of them and wait for them to catch up, which was Steve Jobs’s paradigm. Jobs famously did no consumer research, he created what he wanted, what he thought people should have, and waited for them to catch up with him! As a result, Apple is the world’s most valuable company. And never forget, when Jobs came back to Apple the company was moribund. It wasn’t the iMac, that was only a start (which had no legacy ports if you remember). It was the iPod. Now Jobs was on a streak, people were listening to him. To the point where the iPhone killed BlackBerry and Palm, despite only working on a second-rate network, i.e. AT&T, and only working at EDGE speed and consuming tons of bandwidth.

You throw the long ball and you stick to your guns.

Bloomberg is a latecomer, an interloper, and that does not resonate in internet world. The media/pundit class needs an interloper to make the story more enticing, the public feels trampled and ignored.

It is not business as usual. Whether Bernie wins or not, whether a Democrat wins or not. Once the system begins to crack, it’s inevitable that change ensues. This is the story of Napster, this is the story of income inequality, this is the story of now.

The Glorious Sons are a rock band from Canada, where they have scored ten Top 5 rock tracks and have won two Junos (Canada’s Grammys) for Rock Album of the Year. They’re presently on tour north and south of the border, lighting up audiences at every stop. Listen as I talk to the band’s guitarist and lead singer, as well as their manager and label rep. They don’t believe rock is dead. After listening, you might not either!

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You might want to fast-forward to 29:30.

The night before we did this podcast, I went to see the Glorious Sons at the El Rey.

It was like the seventies. This was a rock crowd. And half the attendees were women. And when the frontman, Brett Emmons, hit the stage, he played an acoustic number, solo. And then the rest of the band emerged and were instantly firing on all cylinders and Brett became a frontman. You remember rock and roll frontmen, don’t you? Unique individuals who come alive when they’re on stage and the spotlight shines upon them. Brett was animated, exhorting the audience to sing along…and they did, RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW!

So…

Is rock dead? Certainly seems like it. But if you listen to this podcast you might be swayed otherwise.

Unfortunately, Brett and his brother Jay could not do a good job of articulating their history and success. Jay barely speaks. Brett is fully alive, but to a degree he bounces off the walls.

And the night before, when the house lights came back on, I told the manager Jason Murray and BMG representative Nick Attaway I did not want to do a post mortem right then, why don’t they both come on the podcast to explain what’s going on.

I don’t think we ever got to the bottom of the previous night’s show, but we certainly got to the bottom of Jason Murray and Nick Attaway’s perspectives on the Glorious Sons and their own personal histories.

This is not rare. Oftentimes musicians are not articulate off stage. Which is why they need business people to plot and push the buttons. They’re two different sides of the coin. And if you want to be in the music business, you’ll listen to Jason and Nick tell their stories. And they’re all the same, struggling, working hard, refusing to give up, waiting for that one big break.

Jason starts at the aforementioned 29:30.

It’s show business folks. And talent is secondary to performance, and Bloomberg performed horribly.

Now what?

Biden and Bloomberg are toast. Biden just doesn’t know it yet, Bloomberg knows it now.

Biden is so out of time, he doesn’t even appear to be at the same debate. He’s like Grandpa Simpson, yelling loudly that he was there, back in the day. Meanwhile, few remember those days and those who do see things differently and when they attack Joe he’s flummoxed. Sure, experience counts, but it’s not everything.

So anybody who knows Bloomberg knows that he’s not a dynamic speaker. Everybody who watched tonight knows Trump would cream Mike in a debate. Mike just can’t get it out. This was a rough and tumble fight, and the person who came out fighting was…

Elizabeth Warren?

Didn’t know she still had it in her. It might be too late for her, but this is the Elizabeth who dominated over the summer who so many got behind, a leader as opposed to a follower. But then she blinked, shut up, adjusted, and fell right out of the spotlight, leaving Bernie Sanders to hoover up her supporters.

Pete Buttigieg? Just plain mean and snarky. Like the kid who is too smart for the class. Furthermore, his campaign seems to be about running out the clock. Trying not to say anything of importance before the nomination process is over.

So… Just like in the music business, you’ve got to grab the audience by the throat right away, make your impression while the public is still watching.

Come on, the debates are silly. Can we stop debating health care? Everybody on stage wants more people covered whereas the Republicans want to take coverage away. Can we put this issue to rest? But no! Being show business, MSNBC and the rest of the TV outlets are looking for headlines, faux pas, anything that can garner eyeballs, sell advertising.

So what tonight was all about was making a good first impression. This is the first debate that meant anything in a long while. And Bloomberg came totally unprepared. It’s not like he was unaware of the lines of attack. Billions don’t buy you a personality, don’t make you a star.

That’s another thing about show business, the talent is different. The string-pullers have contempt for the performers. Oftentimes they’re unreliable, dumb, but when they get on stage they deliver. And the music business is peopled by those who tried to make it, got on stage and could not deliver.

Warren and Sanders delivered.

So now what? When is the DNC gonna capitulate, like the RNC did back in 2016? When is everybody gonna get behind Bernie?

Maybe Elizabeth Warren can come back after this performance, but I doubt it. Bernie owns the youth, he’s winning in all the polls, it looks like he’s gonna be the candidate, and everybody in the media hates this! They’ve been excoriating Bernie ever since Iowa, saying he can’t be the candidate, but it looks like he’s gonna be the one!

When will the DNC own democratic socialism. When will it own Bernie’s platform.

The rank and file got screwed and Bernie wants to right the table. But those who tilted it are gonna suffer, at least a little bit, and they don’t want to.

And they hate Bernie for who he is. They compromised, Bernie has been singing the same damn song for decades.

So what is the Democratic party today? One for the elites, or for those less fortunate?

The only way to win is to focus on the less fortunate, the masses, sometimes unwashed and sometimes uneducated but they’ve got a vote, and there are more of them than there are elites.

This is why you play the game. I knew Bloomberg was bad, but not this bad. Give Donald Trump credit, at least he’s a good performer, no matter how evil or full of crap he might be. You wonder if Mike was ever in a school play, or even the Halloween parade. He made billions of bucks, but he’s got the personality of a plant, how can anybody get excited about him? Who’d even want to invite him to a party?

And he can’t have a personality change, that just does not happen.

Warren got fired up and came out charging. But she’s demonstrated this ability before.

So, Bloomberg is stained with stop and frisk and sexism and he’s too meek to even fight back!

He was the Great Centrist Hope of the intelligentsia. If this is what they believe, they’re clueless, and that’s just the point, they’re out of touch, completely! Biden was a paper tiger and Bloomberg is a slug. They couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.

We can argue all day whether a centrist can win, but one thing’s for sure, no reasonable centrist candidate has shown up.

So we’ve got Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Really, just Bernie.

The DNC’s worst nightmare, the “New York Times”‘ worst nightmare. The rich’s worst nightmare.

Tonight we learned that money might change everything, but it doesn’t mean you emerge victorious.

Bloomberg bought his way on stage and got mic fright, was totally startled, like a billionaire at the Robin Hood ball who pays to play with the household name performers.

Politics is a job. And at least half of it is entertainment. You’ve got to convince people based on your personality, and Bloomberg has none.

I don’t have an agenda here, just speak to anybody who watched this conflagration, Bloomberg got torched and could not recover.

The DNC rigged it last time so Bernie couldn’t win. What are they gonna do this time?

But one thing’s for sure, the two best candidates to debate Donald Trump are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. That’s now been proven. Let them have at it.

P.S. I didn’t mention Amy Klobuchar, but she was like a Little League starter showing up to compete with the Yankees. She used her folksy b.s., the same stuff that she employed before, the Minnesota Nice, the laying out of her C.V., but homey don’t play that no more. You had to jump into the pit and go for the jugular. She just got into it with Pete, which was like fighting with the third base coach.