Looks like the Republicans have taken contol of Congress, and also legalized marijuana in DC

[Drew Phipps]

If you liked Republican ideas before, just wait till you see what they do with legalized pot in Washington DC.

[Martin White]

Now this is what I don't understand about the American system.

Why bother electing a Democratic President, then fill the HoR and Senate with Republicans who will block all his legislation, so that come the 2016 election, they can moan that the Democrat did nothing? This is exactly what happened in 2012.

[Tracy Riddle]

I think all of us here know enough about the American political system to realize that the elected officials have little power, and both parties are owned and operated by powerful interests. Obama had a Democratic majority in both houses in his first two years, and very little good came out of it. The Democrats since LBJ's time have been in bed with corporations and Wall Street. Wars and bank bailouts and a growing national security state are what we get no matter who is in charge.

[Lauren Johnson]

Now this is what I don't understand about the American system.

Why bother electing a Democratic President, then fill the HoR and Senate with Republicans who will block all his legislation, so that come the 2016 election, they can moan that the Democrat did nothing? This is exactly what happened in 2012.

Helping people to answer questions such as yours is why in part the Deep Politics Forum exists. Whatever a complete answer to your question would be, the American political system is a result of decades of intentional shaping and manipulation by those in true power. I like to think of it as a strategy of right wing Hegelian dialectics pitting different groups against each other in the slow movement of the populace towards acceptance of their increasingly fascist regimes.

Placing Obama in the presidency was very critical in this process. IMO.

[Tracy Riddle]

Obama put the stamp of acceptability on a lot of Bush-era practices (both foreign and domestic), and a lot of partisan Democrats lined up and supported it. So now most of the post-9/11 policies have become "normalized" and "have bi-partisan support." Progressives need to stop hoping that putting Democrats in power will change anything.

Here in California they changed the rules so that none of the third parties appeared on the November ballot (only the two top vote-getters in the primaries were allowed, which means of course the Dems and Repubs). So those of us who used to cast protest votes by picking third parties can't even do that anymore.

[Albert Doyle]

Good cop Democrats and bad cop Republicans neutralize the power of the people which leaves power to those who can control both parties.

McConnell said now a Kentucky coal miner will be able to find work. McConnell doesn't give a damn about Kentucky coal miners. He works for the Koch Brothers. He also said people upset about the loss of their health care will be heard. As if Americans were happy with their corporate death panel health care. Nothing about CO2 from Kentucky coal. It's pathetic that electing these lobby-controlled losers is America's only option.

[Charles Keeble]

Good cop Democrats and bad cop Republicans neutralize the power of the people which leaves power to those who can control both parties.[...]

It's one of the forms of divide and rule.

[Lauren Johnson]

Obama put the stamp of acceptability on a lot of Bush-era practices (both foreign and domestic), and a lot of partisan Democrats lined up and supported it. So now most of the post-9/11 policies have become "normalized" and "have bi-partisan support." Progressives need to stop hoping that putting Democrats in power will change anything.

Here in California they changed the rules so that none of the third parties appeared on the November ballot (only the two top vote-getters in the primaries were allowed, which means of course the Dems and Repubs). So those of us who used to cast protest votes by picking third parties can't even do that anymore.

T, Do you know of anyone or place that has made an exhaustive listing of this normalization of the Bush era despite Barry's promises of change?

[Peter Lemkin]

Tuesday's USA Electorate - the Most Suckered, Desperate, Egoistic, Depressed, Proudly Ignorant, Dangerous People on Earth

By Jay Janson

Americans voting on Tuesday are dangerous because the grand majority of them will be voting unconsciously for continuing genocidal wars, which, as Martin Luther King cried out (one year to the day before he received a bullet to his head), "are meant to maintain unjust predatory investments on three continents." America's interests abroad' is what this overwhelming majority of those voting will understand as protecting American freedom at home.

These voters are deadly dangerous to Mankind, because they are so easily suckered into voting for widespread death and destruction, even simultaneously in many defenseless nations. Most continue to be easily fooled into not noticing the genocidal chaos that their government has intentionally created over the last few decades with secret funding of fundamentalist terror. All this death created in order to more fully exploit a divided people. "A financial element in the centers of power that has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson" has created civil war after civil war in Asia, Africa and Latin America almost always followed by American bombings, invasions and military occupation wars. [FDR in a letter to colleague in 1932]

American voters, and even alternate media's journalists, avoid giving any attention to the many laws against genocide that include those of the Nuremberg Principles and those within the US Constitution, and are so inward looking that for this half of eligible voters which do vote, the issues in mind (and kept in mind by corporate owned media), are local ones.

November 4th, 2014, another election in which 95 % of those voting will be choosing between candidates put forward, or accepted, by the bosses of the only two political parties allowed to operate by the elite of a criminal speculative interest banking industry. The indiscriminately wealthy banking industry's tool and covert para-military arm, the world-wide-in-scope CIA, through its operatives and assets feeds the media cartel of a few interwoven news and entertainment conglomerates that have a criminal monopoly on what these voters see, hear and read.

American voters are so dangerous because too many of them are depressed, despairing and unhappy for having been subjected lifelong to pysop inculcating graceless, unnatural, and self-destructive commercial values, heralding egoism, and the idea of 'making' as much money as possible and getting ahead of as many people as possible. In a violent materialist society, Americans appear to be fighting their way through existence, as if calamity could bore in at any moment. Desperate men, women and children are a danger even unto themselves, as they acquiesce, approve, support, and participate in the genocide arranged according to maximum profit for the billionaires and millionaires Americans are taught to envy.

This electorate represents a dangerous majority because it have been propagandized into believing in American exceptionalism. The Nazis taught their children that Germanic people were a superior race. How many Americans see that believing Americans are exceptional is the same as imagining Nazi-like superiority?

They accept their banks' having control of government; accept and the governing officials being financially ushered in to office and acting as puppets doing the financial elite's bidding in ordering the nations military to mass-murder 'bad guys' all over the Third World or formerly colonized and plundered vast majority of Humanity. So many ordinary Americans and citizens in NATO nations seem as comfortable with 'their' world wide military enforced hegemony as were the citizens of the empires of England, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal earlier. (Empires which were also run for and by their speculative interest banking establishments.)

In Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, Pinter explained about the death and destruction caused by the United States across the globe. The crimes of the US have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless. He went on admonishingly, "[but] It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest" Pinter cited this dumbing down of perception and compassion for what is truly 'exceptional' about Americans.

They are dangerous because their controlled sources of entertainment and information has taught them to be proud of their ignorance; taught them that all they need to know has been shown on TV, broadcasted on radio and published in the sex, violence and sports tabloids and in the equally wars-supporting New York Times.

Americans voting somewhat unknowingly and rather inconsequentially for wars on small nations past and present, is not as dangerous as their going along with media praise for their sons, and daughters in the military no matter how many millions of innocent men, women and children they slaughter in their own beloved countries, often as not, in their very own homes, and sending off more Americans to kill wantonly.

There is a new age forming as economic power in the world shifts to the emerging economies of former victim nations. It is being predicted that in twenty-five years the Colonial-Neocolonial Powers will not be able to sanction smaller nations into line with imperialist hegemony.
The BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China represent more than half the world's inhabitants, while the European nations and their spin offs USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand contain approximately one sixth of humanity.

In this space age of inexpensive and universally accessible information and personal communication technology racing forward, the formerly savagely conquered, enslaved and exploited non-Caucasian vast majority of Earthlings are awakening to the awareness of their ability to reconstitute the UN that would create a new court of Nuremberg Principles law in which citizens of the United States and NATO nations will be sued for the compensation for millions of wrongful deaths, tens of millions of injuries and birth defects, reparations for mega destruction of property and indemnification for massive theft of natural resources that will make investment in that genocide disastrously unprofitable. There is no statute of limitations on genocide, nor manslaughter of even one human being let alone millions.

The only happening that could postpone this inevitability is if the still hegemonic speculative investment banking industry leaders succeed with its US-NATO forces, with collaboration of the UN Secretariat, to bring about the major conflict with Russia, China and Iran they are presently planning while heavily investing in new weaponry.

Therefore this blind, deaf and dumb US electorate is still dangerous for the genocide and eventual WW III they mostly unconsciously continue to vote for......

[Peter Lemkin]

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What I do know is that if in fact the Republicans carry the Senate and control the Congress, as they may, I think it will be a disaster for the middle-class and working families of this country. And we're just going to have to figure out how we can fight back as effectively as we can.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what do you see as the options forin case that does turn out to be the result tonight, what do you see the options in terms of how President Obama can move forward any kind of a Democratic or progressive agenda in the remaining two years?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I think it's quite far-fetched to believe that he can move forward a progressive agenda. I think the immediate effort will be to stop to have more tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations, which the Republicans will certainly bring forward. I think under the guise of, quote-unquote, "entitlement reform," they will be making efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. They'll go after Medicaid. They'll go after education. They'll go after nutrition. They'll probably want to increase funding for the military. And my guess is, with all of the money from the Koch brothers coming in and the other fossil fuel industries, they'll continue to ignore scientific evidence about climate change. So, I think we're going to be more of a defensive mode trying to prevent bad things than having illusions at this point about doing good things.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, your state has struggled with your Obamacare website. It has caused a very major issue particularly in Vermont, because of the quest by Governor Shumlin and many others to make Vermont the first single-payer state. Can you talk about the significance of this and what it will mean?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, it's obviously a negative. I mean, I am a strong advocate of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. I think if you want to provide quality care to all people in a cost-effective way, that is the approach you have got to go. Clearly, it is not a good thing for a state government, or in fact federal government, not to be able to run a website which is accountable and works well for people. So, that's a negative. But I hope very much that despite that, we'll go forward and be the first state in the country to pass a single payer.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, one argument that even Governor Shumlin has used is that, you know, Obamacare is complicated

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: and that that is not the ultimate answer. And this, the downing of your website, proves this.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Look, what you needthe American healthcare system is enormously complicated. And when you have a system that is complicated, it becomes very, very expensive, and we end up spending approximately 30 percent of every healthcare dollar in the administration and profiteering and everything else. Clearly, in my view, and I think the view of a whole lot of Americans, healthcare should be a right. We should fund it through public funding in a progressive way, and people should be able to go to the doctor they want in the hospital they want. And it turns out that in our country we spendand people don't understand thiswe spend almost twice as much per person on healthcare as do the people of any other nation, precisely because it is a complicated, bureaucratic, confusing and profit-oriented system.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, the issue of the minimum wage, in all the states that it is being introduced, the ballot initiative being voted on in Alaska, in Arkansas, in Nebraska, in South Dakota, even if they're Republican states, it is overwhelmingly, two, three to one, being voted for. What message does this send to your Democratic colleagues?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, Amy, that's an excellent point, and it's a very important point. And it's not just the minimum wage. On economic issues, whether it's raising the minimum wage, whether it's pay equity for women workers, whether it's investing in rebuilding our infrastructure and creating millions of decent-paying jobs, whether it is making college education affordable and ending this burden of student indebtedness that so many young people have, guess what. The vast majority of the people want change.

But what I think the Republicans have done, with the support of the media, is allowis prevent us from focusing on those issues. And what the Republicans have done is made this a referendum, is: Are you satisfied with the economy? Well, you know what? Most people, including myself, are not satisfied with the economy today. But what they have done is had us forget where we were six years ago, and also had no discussionyou tell me what you've heard about Republican plans for the future on economic issues. Do you think the American people want more tax breaks for the rich and large corporations or cuts in Social Security and Medicare? Of course they don't. Do you think the Republicans talked about that one bit? Absolutely not. But let me tell you something. If they win control of the Senate, that's exactly what they will be talking about.

Last point I will make before I have to get off is, what frightens me very much is what Citizens United has done to the politics of this country and the ability of billionaires like the Koch brothers and others to put unprecedented sums of money into elections. And it frightens me very much, because I fear that we may be on the verge of becoming an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control not just the economy, but the political life of this country. And that's just something we're going to have to wrestle with.