Hillary’s nose. I’m on the left, with partners-in-crime Marni Halasa and Elliot Crown to your right. The pink thing is the nose.

here I am telling the crowd about famous members of the Pinocchio club including Nixon, Bush II, Obama, and (now) Hillary. Photo courtesy one Destiny Mata, whose photo has reminded me I need to get back to the gym. Like, NOW.

On Saturday, I did the Pinocchio Theater production of Hillary’s nose. It was a light-hearted look at Hillary’s lies a la Pinocchio (her nose getting bigger, iow). We performed it at the Union Square rally for Bernie here in NYC. There were some 2-3,000 people out in the cold, who then marched from 14th street down to Zuccotti for another rally. 

The crowd Saturday. Probably the biggest such rally held in Union Square since Occupy’s salad days (upwards of 2,000), and almost no local coverage.

We did make it into Rolling Stone, though…

But enough of fun moments! 

Today is(are) the Iowa Caucuses, where a rural state decides on who should go forward and who should go back to the Senate. The latest Quinnipiac poll (taken late last night) shows Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary by a point or so, with O’Malley bringing up the rear at under five points.

I’m ready for anything.  I’d like this to turn out in a fairy-tale ending, where Bernie does better than Hillary by several points and has momentum going into New Hampshire. But I’m also realistic enough to know that the chances of that happening are dependent on a bunch of people playing fair. Also, as I pointed out last summer, there’s a lot that can go wrong. And even if Bernie gets to the nomination (plenty of chances for skullduggery between now and Philadelphia), there’s a lot of things that can be uncorked by the GOP. The success of the Trump candidacy has me gobsmacked because lots of acquaintances who are good Dem centrists are saying things like ‘I like The Donald because he speaks his mind’. They won’t vote for him, but there’s lots of ugliness out there, and GOPers aren’t the only ones voicing these things.

And the biggest buzz-kill. I can’t see Bernie getting his agenda passed. To be fair, I can’t see Hillary getting her agenda passed either. There’s little chance of breaking the GOP hold on both houses of Congress, and Obama can’t replace judges right now, let alone get voting on legislation that the GOP is putting forward for the wing nuts.

Remember, we ain’t a democracy. We are an empire. If people expect change, they’d better be ready to do more than show up and vote. They’d better be ready to commit real resistance in 2017.

This might be as much as 20% of the electorate right now.

UPDATE: Literally dozens more pictures were taken by our little group on Saturday. Will be posting soon.