November 24, 2015

Rightwing repubs and dems alike wanna kill single-payer in the crib again

with their fallacious/erroneous assaults on costs and "pie in the sky" characterizations.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/186782/say-gov-ensure-healthcare-coverage.aspx

I'd like to thank Bernie for making it such a large part of our national conversation again, and condemn those who are trying once again to dampen it's promotion by piling assorted bags of garbage https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/09/15/no-bernie-sanders-is-not-going-to-bankrupt-america-to-the-tune-of-18-trillion/ on top of it. Obviously that type has no problem with the millions that will remain uninsured under whatever Hillarycare they find themselves behind, nor the human misery that will also necessarily accompany it, because they are just hapless victims of their unreasonable desire for pie in the sky, who need to suck it up and tug on their damn bootstraps. We all have them, no?

It's almost like BS is more worthy of condemnation for promoting it than the rightwing types are for obstructing it, given the huge disparity in the count of such respective efforts here on DU. But then, how can Hillarians condemn rightwingers over something their candidate opposes as well eh?

The reality is, an HC presidency insures 4-8 more years of no movement in the "right" direction of SP, and all the negative ramifications that comes with that, much as say, the relative and otherwise dem inaction on inequality and climate change have made those mountains taller and harder for the younger citizens to climb in the future. It's almost like inaction can have no consequences or something, as long as it's a Hillary-type demanding it.

Apparently they no longer believe that "change" stuff that BHO peddled, because now all they're peddling is "can't do"/AWK AWK, BUT POLITICAL REALITIES/"PIE IN THE SKY!!!, you fools and tools" stuff.

It seems that the only confidence they have is in next to no change at all with a Clinton presidency, unless of course she continues the rightward drift in DC, which will no doubt be accepted and excused under the "well, it's not as rightwingnut as it otherwise woulda been" rationale.

Sadly they seem to think it better to rinse and repeat with all this so to speak, than to engage in the Network Moment-like behavior that they find so abusive on the part of Bernie supporters, and like they have all the moral currency in this game as rightwing-liters.

November 22, 2015

Democratic Race Heats Up As Bernie Sanders Gains 10 Points On Hillary Clinton

“There is overwhelming evidence from practically every public poll that Bernie Sanders is gaining ground and making progress in the Democratic primary,” said Ben Tolchin, Sanders’ pollster. “In fact, he is doing better against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama was doing against Clinton at this stage of the campaign,” added Tolchin, citing a recent Gallup poll.

What the national polls do indicate is that the more Democrats get to know Sen. Sanders the more they like him. These polls are also good news for the national movement that Sanders is trying to build. Democratic voters like his message. Beyond the 2016 primary, Bernie Sanders has a chance to build a popular movement that could change the country.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/22/democratic-race-heats-bernie-sanders-gains-10-points-hillary-clinton.html

This can't possibly be right can it?

November 18, 2015

Oh no!!! Bernie smears Hillary

with more of that truth telling http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/17/toughest-attack-yet-bernie-sanders-accuses-hillary-clinton-healthcare-flip-flop.html

Sen. Sanders has kept his vow not to attack personally former Sec. Clinton, but he is trailing in the polls, and his campaign is getting more aggressive while trying to close the gap.

What is it about insuring everyone that HC and her supporters hate so much? Is it because it'll take money away from the next war she'll start or support, or that there'll then no longer be any insurance companies she can give speeches to?

Does anyone know how it is that 3rdway types/supporters weigh these things? MY likely flawed political calculus says that those issues, along with her Pontius Pilate act with the TPP, all individually dwarf whatever human harm comes from Bernie's gun votes.

It's almost up is down/less is more-like, ain't it?

And don't even get me started on the wisdom of his making the case that AGW is our greatest security threat. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/16/3722355/bernie-sanders-climate-change-national-security-paris-climate-talks/ I thought that the Pentagon made that clear better than a decade ago now. http://training.fema.gov/hiedu/docs/crr/catastrophe%20readiness%20and%20response%20-%20appendix%202%20-%20abrupt%20climate%20change.pdf

November 18, 2015

My HC smear of the day -- Third Way Policies Gave Us the Great Recession

More generally Third Way has supported trade policies that have been designed to redistribute income upward and cost the country millions of good-paying middle income jobs. (must we all learn to share her love of NAFTA for example?) They also have refused to support measures that would address the ongoing trade deficit by adopting serious policies on currency management. It is understandable that Third Way would justify policies designed to redistribute income upward by saying they care about opportunity ("more money for Wall Street" is not a good political slogan), but that hardly makes the claim true.

On the other hand, policies advocated by Sanders, like a financial transactions tax and universal Medicare system, could provide a solid boost to growth by eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars of waste in the financial and health care sectors. These resources could be freed up to support productive investment, leading to an enormous boost to growth. http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/news-for-ruth-marcus-third-way-policies-gave-us-the-great-recession

November 16, 2015

Hillary Clinton Does NOT Support a Financial Transactions Tax

http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/hilary-clinton-does-not-support-a-financial-transactions-tax

surely there are very good reasons why that anyone on the other/right side of where the idiological center line use to be could understand and agree to.

The taxes proposed by Sanders and O'Malley would be a huge hit to Wall Street, bringing it back to the size, relative to the economy, that it was at two or three decades ago. Secretary Clinton has explicitly chosen not to go in this direction.

It is important for the public to recognize this difference. While the other two candidates are proposing measures that would be a major hit to the financial industry, Secretary Clinton is not. Voters should recognize this distinction in their positions; the reporting almost seems designed to hide it. [The Wall Street Journal committed a similar sin, although the error was not quite as egregious.]

I don't have any idea why that "we all want HIllary destroyed!!" corporate MSM wouldn't be trumpeting such a thing, do you?

November 5, 2015

anti-hillary "liberal" media and her supporters overselling Bernie's email remark?

say it ain't so!!!!

These comments are something of a shift, but the media is also probably overselling them. It's not a gaping contradiction to say that American voters are sick of the media hype over Clinton's emails and the degree to which that hype has crowded out substantive discussion of policy and also say that a nonpartisan investigation (i.e. not the House Benghazi Committee) is reasonable and valid. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/05/1445027/-Bernie-Sanders-calls-investigation-of-Hillary-Clinton-s-emails-valid?detail=hide

they would never do anything like that, would they?

January 7, 2015

How Conservatives Exploited The Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack In Paris

it appears that the only one/thing not attacked is Glenn Greenwald. Is that because he's considered one of them by them these days or something?

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/01/07/how-conservatives-exploited-the-charlie-hebdo-t/202043

December 11, 2014

America's real patriots fought to expose and end torture

obviously. Those that did the opposite aren't patriots, even if the POTUS thinks so. Maybe the torturers are just normal patriots, whereas those that worked against them are "superpatriots"???

After more than a decade of denial and concealment on the part of our government, President Obama's recent acknowledgment that "we tortured some folks" felt like a milestone. Even in its spare, reductive phrasing, the president's statement opened up the possibility, finally, of national reflection, contrition and accountability.

But the president moved quickly to limit that conversation, painting those who authorized torture as "patriots" who were making difficult decisions under enormous pressure and urging the public not to feel "sanctimonious" because our military and intelligence leaders have "tough jobs." (the only honest deconstruction possible for his words on the matter imo as an educated used car salesman)

Obama was wrong to do this, and not only because patriotism isn't a defense to criminal conduct. The deeper problem with the president's account is that it consigned to obscurity the true heroes of the story: the courageous men and women throughout the military and intelligence services who kept faith with our values, and who fought to expose and end the torture.

Missing from Obama's remarks was any recognition that the decision to endorse torture was a contested one. In fact, that decision was challenged over and over in interrogation rooms and conference rooms and at every level of government. Soldiers intervened to protect prisoners from cruelty. FBI agents refused to participate in abusive CIA and military interrogations. Military judge advocates general decried the withholding of Geneva Convention protections and rejected the arguments of civilian lawyers justifying torture. Military prosecutors at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, resigned rather than prosecute prisoners on the basis of coerced evidence. Some CIA agents were so vocal about the abuses they saw in the field that they sparked a major agency investigation.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0814-jaffer-obama-torture-report-20140814-story.html

December 10, 2014

I roll my eyes every time I hear/read "Nation of laws/rule of law" from those

best able to make it so, whether it be a prosecutor in front of a grand jury seeking an indictment against a potentially murderous cop or the POTUS and his AG who have no substantial guilt-establishment burdens to overcome.

Which of those two is most likely to be making the "rule of law" utterance going froward, and has done so with the highest frequency in the past?

And if you're gonna give the POTUS/AG a pass in the form of a lack of condemnation for their lack of prosecuting, shouldn't the same be done for the prosecutor that never put the murdering white cop on the hook? It seems to me that their respective sins are largely the same in principle and practice -- a a willful and knowing denial of justice to the victims.

Of course both could ultimately be all my fault for not having been vociferous enough in my condemnations of the two-plus-tier criminal justice system in this country, or for not having come up with the method and means by which prosecutors can be made to eat their discretion in such matters, but I promise to keep working on both....