July 3, 2014

DLCers don't mind spoiling the election for liberal Democrats: Remember Ned Lamont?

He was the Democratic nominee for Connecticut Senate in 2006. Clinton, Obama and Kerry all campaigned against him and for non Democrat Joe Lieberman. Lieberman won and caucused with the republicans. He had particularly great fraternal love Tom Coburn and cosponsored many of his attacks on social security and medicare. Tom Coburn proposed abortion doctors be put to death.

Why are dlcers forgiven for spoiling elections and helping republicans but Nader voters are forever soiled? Also if dlcers care so much about abortion why would they help and absolute shit like Coburn?

Think about it?

Edit: Yes this was Gore's 2000 Vp pick!

July 1, 2014

I am a women too

I am disabled. Social Security is a higher priority to me than other issues. Sorry you have a problem with that.

Nader isn't running.

I have a problem with the fuck nader voters meem. Like you don't want Nader voters. Like the fact other people priortize things other than abortion is a crime that makes it so you don't want their votes.

July 1, 2014

To critics of Nader. Do you seriously think thirdway dems will challenge corporate personhood?

Remember that is the idea that this ruling is based on. I am really curious to know.

Question 2 Do you seriously think mushy middles are going to put up a fight to defend anyones rights, therefore you can say "Fuck you! to all of Nader's idealistic voters. People who fight rather than attempt to build consensus with reactionaries. The right=kill puppies. The left=don't puppies. The middle=punch puppies in the face.

June 30, 2014

I don't think you polled the typical

social democratic voter. The politicians are a different story. Many are SD in name only, like Hollande. "Countries coming together to solve a problem" is vague, not liberal. They can come together to solve problems perceived by the right, and in the case of economics this is always true since the banks control that area, not elected leaders. FDR played no role in the formation of the Eu, and was dead by the time the the IMF and the World Bank actually were created. Truman did most of it, and he was a real mixed bag. Frankly FDR could be a real mixed bag when it came to supporting right wing dictators in Latin America.

I wouldn't cry if the Eu desolved tomorrow. It is true something better wouldn't come down the pike right away but I don't think that is a catastrophe.

That right wing propaganda rag truth-out.org elaborates

The EU is designed in ways that facilitate direct catering to the needs and concerns of powerful interests instead of those of the common citizen. As for the famous "principle of subsidiarity," introduced as Article 3b in the Treaty Establishing the European Community and later incorporated in the Maastricht Treaty (see below) as Article 5 - and which many continue to treat as evidence of the democratic nature of the decision-making process in the EU - is more an optical illusion than anything else. The "principle of subsidiarity" does not assert, as is often claimed, that decisions will be made at the lowest possible level, but rather that "the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community."

What has now become abundantly clear is that all major EU decisions are made at the top level by nonelected officials while national citizens are relegated to a status equal to that enjoyed by the subjects of ancient Rome. In the current eurozone debt crisis, even the heads of indebted member-states have very little say in the decision-making process, with the German minister of finance behaving like a Caesar.

The Maastricht Treaty made Kenysianism impossible.

The Maastricht Treaty incorporated the key ideas and principles that were included in the SEA and proceeded with the formal institutionalization of a neoliberal framework for the future direction of European economies, including the setting up of a currency union and a European Central Bank (ECB). In essence, the treaty formalized the drive toward "anti-social Europe" and outlined in a specific manner the steps to be taken for the adoption of a single currency (the transition to the formation of a European Monetary Union [EMU] was to involve three stages between 1993 and 1999, when the official launching of the eurozone occurred). According to the treaty, which sought to allow only good candidates to join the EMU, any European convergence economy was eligible to adopt the euro, provided: (a) its inflation rate was not more than 1.5 percent above the average of the three-lowest inflation rates among EU countries; (b) its government debt and deficit were no more than 60 percent and 3 percent of its GDP, respectively; (c) it had joined the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System and maintained normal exchange rate fluctuation margins for two years without severe tensions arising; and (d) its long-term interest rate was no more than 2 percent above that of the three countries with the lowest inflation rate.

The nature of the Treaty the Eu is based on made austerity and privatization inevitable. This is why it can't be reformed. It was passed by lying to people about what it said and did.

In analyses of the foundations of the European Monetary System, commentators frequently make note of its flawed architectural design. However, its so-called "flawed" architecture was not the result of a "technical error." As already argued, it stemmed from the very premises of the fundamentally neoliberal economic thinking that had begun to take hold of the mindset of European policymakers in the 1980s in their apparent effort to find a way to end "eurosclerosis" and boost European corporate profits. The sudden shift from a social market economy, which took root in the 1940s and prevailed till the early 1980s, to a laissez-faire market economy was too blatant to be missed. By the time the Maastricht Treaty was signed, European policymaking circles had become obsessed with the belief that the critical variables for growth, fairness and convergence were to be found in trade openness and competition (Article 102a), deep financial integration and no restrictions on capital movements (Article 73b).

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19334-the-tragedy-of-greece-as-a-case-study-of-neo-imperial-pillage-and-the-demise-of-social-europe


The Eu was designed to do precisely what it did. Any reform of this would dissolve the Treaty and thus the Eu. There is nothing liberal in the American sense about the Eu. Nothing.

June 28, 2014

How neocon Robert Kagan is making a comeback as a Democratic "Liberal Interventionist!" Surprise

This is a good followup to the essay I posted the other day on how Robert Kagan believes Hillary is a neocon, and how their blood brothers the "liberal interventionists" in our Party have kept them relevant.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025134361

This comes from a good blogpost at Mondoweiss

The Times describes Robert Kagan as “the congenial and well-respected scion of one of America’s first families of interventionism.”…

If there is something jarring about the “first families of interventionism” moniker — just think for a moment about the families of the soldiers who actually do the “intervening” — it doesn’t seem to be meant ironically. Kagan, in fact, says he prefers to call himself a “liberal interventionist,” not a neocon….

I can see it now: A new ship of state under Hillary Clinton sailing home, carrying a crew of neocons-turned-liberal-interventionists. And The New York Times will find it all Cocoa Puffs charming.

Sharp. Maybe that’s why Chris Matthews is careful not to bash liberal interventionists; they’re Hillary’s braintrust. But Kagan was Bill Kristol’s wingman all through the Project for a New American Century days, when they pressed Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush to invade Iraq.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/liberal-interventionist-clinton.html

Seriously when are establishment mouthpieces like Matthews going to notice the link between the two groups? Are the Democrats seriously going to allow the neocons to stay in power by relabeling themselves and joining the Democrats? More importantly, does Hillary seriously think we will view her as authentically repentant for Iraq, when she makes the architects of the Iraq war her foreign policy advisers?

June 25, 2014

Cochran vs McDaniel: Maybe we should reconsider the idea far right candidates are less electable?

McDaniels supporters are so pissed they are promising not to vote, so Cochran maybe the less electable one. That is beautiful result since it no longer pays to move right for either party. Maybe we need to reconsider the vote for the crazy repuke in the primary, and vote for so-called moderate that teabaggers will reject. Then the entire political system moves left.

Unfortunately allowing the republicans to move right, also encourages the Democrats to do it, which depresses the democratic vote.

Let's face it, if we are scared shitless of teabag republicans the Democrat doesn't have to do much to appeal to those of us who are progressive in any way.

June 22, 2014

Neocon Robert Kagan believes Hillary is a neocon, though she and her suppporters won't admit it.

From the New York Times.

Both Mr. Kagan and his brother are taking considerable pains to describe their advocacy as broadly bipartisan. “The urgent priority is to unite internationalists on both sides of the spectrum,” said Fred Kagan, while his brother, Robert, mentioned his briefing of a bipartisan congressional delegation at Davos and his good relations with top White House officials, including the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice. (Their father apparently did not get the memo, calling Mr. Obama’s speech “pathetic” and saying of the president, “We should not underestimate the possibility of extraordinary ignorance.”)

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?_r=0

In other words socalled "liberal interventionist" really are neocon Democrats. Stephen Walt elaborates beautifully in an essay on the continued influence of the neocons in DC.

The final source of neoconservative persistence is the continued support they get from their close cousins: the liberal interventionists. Neoconservatives may have cooked up the whole idea of invading Iraq, but they got a lot of support from a diverse array of liberal hawks. As I've noted before, the only major issue on which these two groups disagree is the role of international institutions, which liberals view as a useful tool and neoconservatives see as a dangerous constraint on U.S. freedom of action. Neoconservatives, in short, are liberal imperialists on steroids, and liberal hawks are really just kinder, gentler neocons.

The liberal interventionists' complicity in the neoconservative project makes them reluctant to criticize the neoconservatives very much, because to do so draws attention to their own culpability in the disastrous neoconservative program. It is no surprise, therefore, that recovering liberal hawks like Peter Beinart and Jonathan Chait -- who both backed the Iraq war themselves -- have recently defended neoconservative participation in the new debate over Iraq, while taking sharp issue with some of the neocons' position.

The neoconservative-liberal alliance in effect re-legitimates the neoconservative world view, and makes their continued enthusiasm for U.S.-led wars look "normal." When the Obama administration is staffed by enthusiastic proponents of intervention like Samantha Power or Susan Rice, and when former Obama officials like Anne-Marie Slaughter are making neocon-like arguments about the need to send arms to Syria, it makes neoconservatives sound like a perfectly respectable faction within the broad U.S. policy community, instead of underscoring just how extreme and discredited their views really are....

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/20/being_a_neocon_means_never_having_to_say_you_re_sorry_dick_cheney_william_kristol

He is married to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland

Hillary lobbied Obama hard to get her appointed.

But why would Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration agree to appoint to this politically sensitive position someone who willingly served such a controversial figure in suppporting and implementing the “war on terror” and all the baggage that comes with it? Furthermore, how reliable is a Talbott reference anyway? After all, I understand that he just helped his friend Robert Kagan, Nuland’s neocon husband, get a job at Brookings and Talbott is also a friend of neocon writer Marc Gerecht, the husband of Diane Zeleny who also just latched onto a likely sweetheart deal sort of appointment as Head of External Relations and Congressional Affairs at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Whether Zeleny deserves or is qualified for the position or not.

From what I know about the Department, an FSO doesn’t just get detailed to the staff of a highly charged and ideological Vice President unless that detailee agrees to follow the boss’s dictates. Cheney’s were all too often forceful and odious. Furthermore, does anyone really think that Cheney –with his penchant for super loyalty and secrecy - would have ever accepted Nuland (or anyone else) for the position without some kind of loyalty test?
Surely the State Department under Hillary Clinton could have found equally (or likely even better) qualified career candidates who do not carry Nuland’s political baggage.

http://www.progressiverealist.org/blogpost/response-andrew-exum-curious-choice-state-department-spokesperson


I do think one of the reason the Centrist establishment is so excited about Cantor's loss is that they intend on adopting much of Bush's foreign policy and recruiting his donors and voters.

June 22, 2014

Have Bill and Hillary moved the right on the estate tax?

From CBS News

Estate tax champions Bill and Hillary Clinton are doing just about everything in their power to stave off hefty estate taxes on their own personal fortune, according to Bloomberg News.

The report out Tuesday shows that the two heads of the political dynasty have been seizing on legal but slippery loopholes to minimize taxes on inherited wealth - maneuvers not atypical of multimillionaires but which will inevitably drum up cries of hypocrisy based on the Clintons' active support for the estate tax in the past.

Bloomberg cites county property records that show the Clintons divided ownership of their New York home into separate 50 percent shares, then placed those shares into trusts. The moves ensure that any growth in the house's value will occur outside their estate and that they can claim a discounted value for the home, which could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands in estate tax avoidance.

"The goal is really be thoughtful and try to build up the nontaxable estate, and that's really what this is," David Scott Sloan, a partner at Holland & Knight LLP in Boston, explained to Bloomberg. "You're creating things that are going to be on the nontaxable side of the balance sheet when they die." ...............

http://is.gd/tupCvJ

They have moved the right on so many things. They have clearly become more dependent on wall street largess since Bill retired. They have also befriended the Bush Family and are clearly courting the neocons on foreign policy.

It isn't just the Bush girls benefiting from nepotism at MSNBC. MSNBC hired Chelsea too. None have any journalistic credentials other than who they are related to. The Clintons have always been funded by Walmart heirs. It also appears to be a trend among Southern Democrats to nominate only children of old Democrats for State wide and national candidacies, so I think the move to dismantle estate tax, and enshrine children who inherit all their money, and their positions, is becoming one of those 3rd way bipartisan screwjobs.

May 12, 2014

Having trouble with Du loading? What ISP are you using?

I asked the Admins why I could load in a proxy page and not directly and they suggested I was having problems with my isp or location.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12595802

I don't know. Maybe it is the isp that is doing it. I also know I am not the only one having the problem. I am using centurylink dsl. Which ISP do you use? Only answer if you are having trouble loading this site.

April 30, 2014

Toyota moves from Ca to Tx: When are bluestates going to actively fight job poachers?

This is basically outsourcing from one state to another and it is a race to bottom all the same.

Toyota Motor Corporation announced this week that it will be moving over 5000 jobs in sales, management, and marketing from Torrance, CA in Los Angeles County to Plano Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Toyota established a its first US relationship with Southern California in 1957 and opened its national sales and marketing headquarters in Torrance in 1982. This move to Texas follows a recent junket to California by reactionary Texas governor Rick Perry seeking to poach California industries by offering "a better business climate" in his proto-feudal plutocratic state, i.e. a climate in which social services, affordable health care, environmental protections, and women's rights have been sacrificed at the altar of lower taxes for the rich and bowing to the desires of the corporations, big oil, and the 1%.

Toyota is seeing record profits this year of around $17 billion. (Sarcasm ahead.) Of course, Toyota cannot afford the expensive environment of Los Angeles. Why in 2012, Californians actually agreed to slightly increase taxes on the top 0.1% to collect money for schools, healthcare, environmental protections, and infrastructure--the nerve. Californians actually believed in a slight move towards a balance between corporate and personal profits and the welfare of the middle class, working class, and poor. Bad for business indeed.

The United States saw its most prosperous and productive years when corporations such as IBM and GM had a covenant with their employees in the mid-20th century. CEOs and senior leaders still made reasonable bonuses and companies made reasonable profits, but workers were also provided the means for a middle class existence via solid salaries, stable pensions, and subsidized healthcare. Everyone understood the value of providing for the next generation of Americans via taxes to improve education and infrastructure. As so many have identified, the obsessive quest for unlimited wealth by corporations and the uber-rich, and the gross inequalities that have been built upon the backs of the labor and financial contributions of the middle and working classes since the 1980s, have devastated and destroyed this partnership and..........

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Won-t-Get-Fooled-Again-by-Jill-Jackson-Class_Class_Corporate_Corporations-140428-12.html?show=votes

We can't really put tariffs on them because they are technically part of the USA, but we probably can do other things to make the race to the bottoms unprofitable. Any ideas? We really need to fight. I think we will see more of this because they are in a panic over raising minimum wage. We need to be ready for it and come up with ways to counter it. Tax breaks and union busting are surrendering to economic terror. These guys aren't moving because they are unprofitable to so I don't feel bad for them at all.