15-11-2016, 10:17 PM
My comments in red.
Peter Lemkin Wrote:That article, above, from Newsweek is what one would/should expect from one of many propaganda mouthpieces of the Establishment Machine [which comprises both the Republicans and the Democrats]. It denigrates Sanders and Stein and posits that the Democrats can be the real answer to anything in the USA.
Tell the millions people who have benefited from the expansion of health care that Obama didn't do anything for them.
Obamacare wasn't good for everyone, but for those on the bottom of the economic scale it was a life-saver.
They saved something like 70,000 lives just by tightening regulations on hospitals, and millions of poor folks benefited from the expansion of Medicaid.
Now the GOP is planning to eliminate Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid.
Any idea how many people are going to be sentenced to an earlier death because the GOP has taken over?
I don't buy it. The Democrats are only the lesser of evils to the Republicans
What you are over-looking -- and as an ex-pat you may not be aware of -- is the influence the Democratic grass roots has on policy. Not all policies, mind you, but many.
Net neutrality, the Consumer Protection Board, same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage -- these are all issues the Democratic grass roots have influenced.
If we organize more, we can influence more.
But when the GOP has the White House and Congress it's the Republican grass roots who have influence.
You think there's no difference to someone whether they have health insurance or not?
Think again.
- but BOTH are evil and part of a pact with the 'Devil' of the Military, Intelligence, Corporate, Financial Oligarchy - which we need to get rid of before they get rid of the Planet and what LITTLE is left of our freedoms and democracy. NDAA was passed under Obama.
But Obama objected to the "indefinite detention clause" and the Democrats in the House voted against that clause.
It's only there because the Republicans in the House voted in lock-step for it.
Obama put out a signing statement saying it doesn't apply to US citizens.
Think Trump will make such a declaration?
No, and then we'll formally be in a military dictatorship.
Obama used drones to kill thousands of innocents - foreign and US Citizens. Bill Clinton and Obama both destabilized nations and waged needless wars for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence. Clinton repealed Glass-Steigall, and Obama bailed out the big banks but not the citizens they have robbed..and one can go on and on.
Indeed. It's been a constant battle. But false equivalencies must be rejected as readily as false dichotomies.
The National Security State doesn't work for the President.
The President serves the bidding of the National Security State.
We were lucky to have a guy in Obama who sometimes got around the War Party imperatives -- that's how we got the deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria and nuke material from Iran. Obama out-finessed them.
Otherwise, he did what he was forced to do. Drone wars, Ukraine, Libya, the crackdown on whistle-blowers.
But he opened relations with Cuba, and deserves credit for it.
The view that the Democrats are some life raft to the rough seas of the Republicans is at best naive, at worst the kind of dangerous thinking that has landed the USA exactly where it is now.
The analogy is hysterical.
With the Dems there is a chance -- maybe a small chance but a chance nevertheless -- that social progress can be made.
I live in San Francisco. I get health care through a Democratically installed health program (not Obamacare). I enjoy rent control -- pay 20% of current market value.
Republicans would take all of that away from me if they could.
Think we're not going to fight for the progress we've made along many issues?
As for Trump being elected there is no one to blame but the DNC itself for ignoring the will of their supporters to have Sanders,
Sanders lost by 4 million votes.
That wasn't the DNC's doing.
and not to have another big champion of things as usual and a war monger/owned-by-wallstreet - Clinton. Sanders, while far from perfect was the only mainstream person who could have defeated Trump and at the same time made some difference - he really should have run on the Green Party ticket - the Democratic machine on paper proved they didn't want his brand of Democratic Socialism. The Green party has the kind of change we need to avert disaster in the USA and the World - nothing less than that will do.
The electoral college insures a two party system.
Without a Green Senate and a Green House none of these wonderful Green things could be implemented.
It is exactly this idea that we can make change without changing from the usual choices between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum [Republican / Democrats] that American never changes [except in the smallest ways that don't 'bother' the secret ruling Mandarins],
Maybe having affordable health care and affordable housing are "the smallest things" to you, but not to me.
You don't live here, Peter, you have no idea what it's like on the ground.
and the World is on the brink of collapse on all fronts - moral, environmental, endless wars, trickle-up economics, diminution of freedoms and liberties, et al. No more business as usual; no more lesser of evils; no more doing the same old things and expecting a new outcome (the definition of defective thinking)!