Comments

2

The breastfeeding fetish is common in Kenya as well.

6

@1 Trump only gets four more years if the Democrats nominate Warren or Bernie.

8

@ 1,

Go ahead and gloat now; you might as well enjoy it, for this will not stand.

A year from now, after your sleazy, cruel, racist, abusive, Dicktatorapist AntiChrist is removed from office and put on trial for his crimes, good, sane, decent, moral Americans are going to embark on a campaign of deTr666pification modeled after Germany’s post-WWII deNazification program.

A day of reckoning is coming much sooner than you think.

11

Lots of reality impaired individuals this AM.

12

@9: Which means you want another term of chaos. The stream-of-consciousness, last advisor wins, impulsive decision making and unforced errors will just go on and on. It even drove Steve Bannon crazy!

So by choosing to re-elect Trump, you're place a huge amount of faith that the White House will be able to control him.

14

Now! This is it!
Now is the time to choose.
Die, and be free of pain.
Or live, and fight your sorrow!
Now is the time to shape your stories!
Your fate is in your hands!

16

Here's how Shorline Dave's team's gonna do it: "Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be in Control of Facebook: The social media company is going to get Trump re-elected — because it’s good for business." --by George Soros

“Facebook helped Trump to get elected and I am afraid that it will do the same in 2020. I explained [at a dinner last week in Davos, Switzerland] that there is a longstanding law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — that protects social media platforms from legal liability for defamation and similar claims. Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them.

I went on to say that there appears to be 'an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook' in which Facebook will help President Trump to get re-elected and Mr. Trump will, in turn, defend Facebook against attacks from regulators and the media.

Facebook’s policy not to require fact-checking in political advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements."

They gotta Lie, Cheat, and Steal to "win."

This is what happens when we allow the Rich and multi-national Corps to pump unlimited amounts of Money into our Elections: they're welcome to, and DO subvert Democracy with impunity.

Let us welcome the New Fascism, folks.
Looks like you're in Luck, Shorline Dave.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/soros-facebook-zuckerberg.html

17

I don't want Bernie. But America is an idea, more than anything else. We're the shining city on the hill. We can't let it die.

@13 is right, the chaos is the point. Reagan wouldn't vote for a Trump reelection, neither will I.

18

"We're the shining city on the hill. We can't let it die. "

Oh for fuck sake. Where is that? Or when was that? And when has it ever been alive?

Was that when we held million of humans in slavery and raped and murdered them at will? Or was that the city that attempted genocide against the indigenous populace? Or maybe it was the when the Klan was electing members to senators and governorships who allowed, nay encouraged lynching, arson, rape and massacres of free black citizens for over a century.

Was it when Reagan scapegoated poor black people so he could pass laws that locked up an entire generation of young men? Or when Reagan allowed thousands of gay men to die of AIDS? Or when he funded serial killers who raped nuns in Central America?

Reagan was a racist pile of shit and he told nothing but lies, who stepped on anybody he could to get to power. Reagan is the smiling faced template for Trump.

20

@18

What are you trying to do, remind everyone that the US has committed atrocities?
Everyone already knows, including raindrop.

In case you missed it, he doesn't want to see Trump re-elected any more than you do.
He doesn't like Bernie. That's his right.

You're not helping.

Maybe if you spent a little more time explaining how a socialist like Bernie is going to save capitalism (which he will do) you might be able to convince him that Bernie would be better than Trump.

I'm a Bernie supporter, and your constant America sucks banter is starting to wear thin.

I can guarantee you that Bernie sees America as the shining City on the hill.

21

Thanks, Adam.

22

The American Dream dies when good people stop believing in it. While we must definitely recognize the collosal fuckups we enable and passively approve of with our complacent pursuits of instant gratification and metaphorical Dilaudid drips at the push of a backlit touchscreen with holes punched in it [wowowowow], we have to hold them in check and not enable this stupid pee wee soccer team of asshats to override 8 in 10 Americans who want witnesses. But uhh, no, we are basically going to unimpeach Nixon and make sure that we don't lose our Mangochurian Candidate because fuck the Constitution, we decide whose soldiers die and when and don't ask questions or disturb the chain of command! Take this abuse and pass it down! You love it, don't you? Yeeehaw, ain't war hell?

There is such an inconceivable mindfuck of negative corruption and bad moves on the part of the government, that to lose faith in the building of an ever more perfect union and not giving in to despair but still having the courage to uphold the highest principles after entire civil wars and world wars of senseless and unspeakable atrocities, you invite even further disaster to our shores with this hopelessness and abandonment of principle in the face of an escape from freedom. This is the age of division and fear, and so stability and warmth and the courage to believe in something more than you own needs will be crucial to rise above the tyrannical hands of oppression that come to swat us away into our corners for a couple bucks each. This is wrong and everyone knows it.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

23

@19

Other people are worse, so if we have relatively higher standards, mediocrity is just fine.

24

@23
but the water heats up so Slowly
it's so hard to tell when it's too Late.
--late Frog

25

@24

Frogs in the well.

26

@ Garb -- Frog's in the Belly.

Bingo @22.

27

@20: Thanks Adam, and I suppose one could argue that Bernie would save capitalism by strengthening the purchasing power of lower incomes through higher taxes.

Among the first acts as president though, I would expect a President Sanders to jack up the corporate tax rate. Hence, fewer jobs and a depressed stock exchange.

But still better than an evolving dictatorship, Ken.

29

Capitalism isn’t worth saving. Why bother trying to?

Bernie will not be able to abolish capitalism, or implement socialism as POTUS. I wish that he could, but the Presidency just doesn’t have that kind of power. Even if the DSA rode his coattails into forming an influential caucus within the Democratic Party and/or the legislature, they wouldn’t become strong enough to transform either the party or the country’s economic basis. At best, they could steer us toward a slightly less virulent form of capitalism, perhaps one less enamoured of neoliberal economics. I don’t think Bernie could even achieve a social democracy, much less socialism itself, even under the best of circumstances.

What Bernie can do, and the reason I support him, is as follows.
1) Mitigate the harm done to working people by the system. This means offering access to preventative care and public health to those who are locked out of health care by developing a coherent system of care. The United States currently has a complicated and often counterproductive set of health care systems, and it is the cross purposes that these systems frequently act upon that inhibit the effective delivery of care. If, for example, there is no way to offer treatment to the homeless who cannot afford it or if migrant farm workers do not seek care for fear of deportation, those are populations in which the next pandemic can develop and then spread into the general population. Even if you don’t care about the lives of the poor, your own life could be lost if you do not allow the poor access to medical help when they need it.

2) Fill the gaps in those professions which require extensive education (such as medicine) by allowing people access to that education without the shackles of lifetime debt. There are shortages of nurses throughout the country right now, because nobody wants to take on the debt burden that comes with nursing. Think about that when it comes time to send your parents off to a nursing home, or the next time your baby boomer ass winds up in hospital.

3) Ensure a livable wage for those who perform the grunt work of this country. I don’t think your suburban soccer mom ass is going to pick apples in Yakima, and somebody has to, so give Mrs Lopez a break here and pay her what she’s worth. Her job sucks worse than yours does, and is much more needed than the corporate brand manager job you took on. At least she feeds people-what do you do, anyway, spend all day dreaming up advertisements? Who needs that?

4) Control crime by offering people a viable alternative. The methods we’re using now don’t work. The death penalty hasn’t stopped anyone from murdering anyone. Stop and Frisk has been shown in numerous peer reviewed journals to have had zero impact. You tried your heavy handed Discipline and Punish model, and it just doesn’t work- the drug war failed, the militarization of police has just made everyone hate and or fear the cops and thus not cooperate with them. It’s time to try something else. Let’s try looking at root causes and addressing those.

So, you can relax Raindrop, the Red Revolution isn’t coming anytime soon. Bernie is not Lenin. I know you dropped acid and watched Red Dawn a lot in college and it kinda fried you a little, but it’s time to grow up now and cut the hyperbole. The best he can do is feed some people and get some folks to a doctor. If that’s to much for you, you don’t have a soul.

30

@6

I admire your conviction to your bone divination; if you aren't religious, I admire your recitation and mindless chanting of What. Must. Be. So.

What if I told you Bernie could win...if you voted for him?? Wowowowowowow

31

"I suppose one could argue that Bernie would save capitalism by strengthening the purchasing power of lower incomes through higher taxes." --@Rainy

I suppose one could:

"FDR Met Social Needs and Saved Profit System
By James Flanigan, OCT. 25, 1999

Banks were closed in 36 of the 48 states, including New York and Illinois. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the grain pits at the Chicago Board of Trade ceased operation on March 4 out of fear and panic. The economy had ground to a halt.

Roosevelt saved capitalism and the principles of privately owned business for the U.S. economy. 

At least 25% of the work force was unemployed. In 1932, ocean liners carried tens of thousands of immigrant working people back to Europe.

But Roosevelt did not think in dictatorial or even anti-business terms.

Amid speculation that his administration would nationalize the banks, Roosevelt’s emergency banking bill extended government aid to help banks through the crisis.

The legislation stabilized the situation, depositors regained confidence and within a month, seven out of 10 banks were open across the country.

In the harrowing years of the 1930s, Roosevelt’s programs 'rested on the assumption that a just society could be secured by imposing a welfare state on a capitalist foundation,' wrote historian William E. Leuchtenberg in his 1963 book, ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.''

Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms didn’t challenge the system of private profit but sought to regulate and channel it.

Thus the Securities and Exchange Commission was set up in 1934 to correct abuses of the financial markets and the National Labor Relations Board was created in 1935 to protect workers’ rights to organize unions.

The federal government, adopting new ideas for the time, spent to create jobs in programs with alphabet names, such as the NRA (National Recovery Administration), WPA (Works Progress Administration) and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). Federal efforts reclaimed farmland from swamp and transformed an entire section of the country through the Tennessee Valley Authority."

Stimulate the Economy and it pays Dividends.

"In the New Deal there was a tug of war between those who favored a centrally planned economy and those who believed that a reliance on small business and decentralized economic power would bring about recovery. The decentralizers prevailed."

Good. And Capitalism did NOT go down the tubes.

By the way -- I know of NO Dems calling for a 'centrally planned economy.' None.

Ronald Raygun began in earnest the decimation of the so-called welfare state and Republicans, when they're not starting Wars on other peoples, or overthrowing democratically-elected foreign governments (and incurring Trillions in debt*) have worked tirelessly (and insidiously) to complete Raygun's Class war on the 'lower classes.'

*which is why WE cannot have Nice Things:

"We cannot AFFORD that Shit!"
--actual Quote

32

Source for @31:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-25-ss-26179-story.html

34

@33 -- Suppose our Blockade of Venezuela
or our Overthrow of Chile's democratically-elected
governemnt had much sway in those two piss-poor examples, Kenny?

When you think of Democratic Socialism
think: Scandinavia or Canada or Europe --
That is what we Want.

Oh and Regulaion of unhinged/unbridled winner-take-ALL capitalism.

37

@33

How did Scandinavia turn out again? If it happened anywhere, it happened everywhere forever.

38

@35

You can call FDR late for dinner. Homey couldnt walk and still took the nation out of the Depression and rose to meet the Axis, AFTER BEING ELECTED FOUR TIMES.

40

@27

The market will fluctuate. It always has.

When working class Americans have more money they spend it.
When working-class consumers start spending that extra money, the market will rise.

As a number of commenters have already mentioned, we need to look to the past and do the things that we know work to build the economy.

When we raise corporate taxes, we should also create targeted tax deductions to persuade those corporations to do what we want them to do.
Give them tax breaks for hiring employees and reinvesting in their business instead of taking the money and putting it in their pocket.

Do that and the market will take care of itself.

41

Upcoming SOTU:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhpDWYIPTfA

42

36,

The odds of the DSA getting enough candidates elected to the federal legislature to enact that platform are nil.

43

@36 - if they start out in the Middle
they can only move right of center.

Kinda like, 'dealing' with Isreal* --
'you make your concessions, first,
then we'll talk.'

*trump handing nutanyahoo his wet dream package, right straight from Jared, threee l o n g y e a r s in the damn making, 'thee Perfect Peace Plan' -- only, they didn't bother talking to Palestine. But, why should they? They all had a good laff, after, and smoked fine cigars, and toasted.

46

Obama isn't running, Kenney.
Do try and keep up.

47

45,

Yes. That’s the Senate’s role, as expressed in the Federalist Papers. The Founders envisioned the Senate as the cooler heads that would prevail, a check on both the Presidency and the House.

The thing I most object to in the modern era of American politics is the excessive power grab of the Executive Branch. The Legislature has abdicated much of its authority to the Presidency. For example, the War Powers Act, which directly contradicts Congress’s Constitutional role as the sole authority capable of declaring war.

I don’t agree with the Founders on most things, I would have gone further than they did in establishing the three branches of government as checks upon each other’s power. I would have made the Executive Branch subservient to the Legislature rather than co-equal, in a bid to distance ourselves from the monarchical system we rebelled against. The Swiss system would be even better still, establishing a council within the legislature as the head of state and head of government, with the total abolition of the executive altogether. We should not be in the business of worshipping a unitary leader, personality cults like that always end in a disaster, whether it’s the Cult of Hitler or the Cult of Stalin, I don’t want any cults in charge of anything at all. Power should be decentralized, not concentrated into any one person’s hands.

That said, until such a time as we can rewrite the Constitution (a goal I think we should all have), that is none the less the framework we have for the moment, and according to the Constitution, the POTUS is not an emperor, s/he is a co-equal partner of the Legislature. If I am to reign in my desire to devolve more power to the people and away from DC, then by god the POTUS has to reign in his and abide by the same damnable parchment we are all shackled to as well. The theory f the unitary executive is unconstitutional bullshit, and it’s time we came to terms with that.

Congress is supposed to have an adversarial role vis-a-vis the Presidency, it is supposed to confront, challenge, and oppose the power of the POTUS so as to keep absolute power and it’s corrupting influence as far away from the White House as possible.

So yes, I would indeed prefer a Senate that opposes everything the President wants. This is how our system works. It’s not 1930’s Italy, the goal isn’t to make sure the trains run on time, and government isn’t judged solely by how efficient it is. It’s goal is not to mimic a production line, but to ensure democracy and not mob rule. That is the expressed will of the Framers, stated quite bluntly in the papers left behind from when they drafted the Constitution, and until such a time as we can replace that thing, it’s what we have.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.