Lysistrata
Everything old is new again, or "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
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To begin with, in modern history, Democrats have raised as much, if not more, money as Republicans, and the pro-corporate legislation and policies that've gotten passed and put into place under both parties' administrations should tell you that both parties are corrupt to the bone.
But more importantly, our problems (bought politicians, pro-corporate/anti-populist policies and legislation) didn't just spring up with the USSC decision in Citizens' United. Our problems can be traced back directly to Buckley vs. Valeo (1976), when the USSC declared that money is speech.
There is only one solution (public financing of campaigns), and ending corporate personhood, and anything short of that, anyone not signing on to that, is a corrupt scum-sucking bottom feeder. And it's not on the agenda for either party.
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"Obama started paying attention"
Answers to what? How to govern and legislate in the People's interests? Or how to get politicians into power who will do that?
Read this thread.
Then tell me what it is that you want. What do you expect the politicians whom you vote for to do? Do you expect them to compromise in order to get any legislation passed into law, so that they can spin it as a victory they've achieved, in order to trick you into keeping them in a paying job?
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There is one foreign policy of the US, no matter which party controls the White House.
There is nothing we've done in the past several decades around the world that both parties didn't sign on to.
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The Supreme Court is lost already. Please remember that Scalia and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate. And Democrats voted to confirm Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22),
And Obama's appointments are really nothing to defend. Elena Kagan is the Goldman-Sacks seat, not to mention that she was the 5th vote in rolling back Miranda last week.
And Sotomayor was with the Scalia-Thomas-Alito faction that boycotted the SOTU - Sotomayor was in Guam, addressing a group of students and swearing in new members of the Guam Bar Association, a first for a US Supreme Court Justice (are you kidding, Sonia, missing the most public showing of US democracy and the 3 branches of government by leaving the US for a 5 day trip to Guam?).
If who gets to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg was such a worry, don't you think she would step down now while it's assured a Democratic president would be choosing?
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Then the 100 dollar - 10 dollar donors become important since they make up the difference.
Dear Bill Maher,
I don't vote for Republicans, no matter what the initial is after their name on the ballot, nor do I give them money. Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But that is NOT going to happen under Obama or the DLC-controlled Democratic Party. It's not even on their 'To Do' list.
Democratic voters been voting for Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing for 20 years now. It's always imperative that "Republicans can't get the seat/White House", and "we'll work to purge these people from the party", or "next time we'll not vote for another DLCer; just let [today's DINO du jour] get in, to warm the seat". I've been hearing this for more than 20 years, and the only change is for the worse.
In politics, in life, there really is only now. Each day that conditions remain the same or further declines (Obama has advanced BushCheney positions that should have you marching on Washington ), a sort of stare decisis sets in, making it more difficult (if not impossible ) to turn around. We have become the proverbial boiled frogs; there's a generation that's been born and doesn't know about life pre-9/11 and 4th amendment protections.
No, putting Obama back in the White House is not the answer.
We on the left have been doing it your way, the DLC's way, for over 20 years and the government and the Democratic Party keeps moving farther to the right. That's because your way is to cave, to lie to the American people and put Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing into office. At the rate this is going, Republicans won't have to bother getting elected, or certainly not in any great numbers because Democrats are doing their work for them. Republicans won't bother having to overturn Roe, for example, for why bother outlawing abortion when Democrats have helped Republicans make it virtually impossible to obtain one?
If you and I are on the same side, as you insist, and want real Democratic policies, and going about getting them your way (protecting Obama, reelecting DLC Democrats) is getting Republican policies and NOT Democratic policies, when do you realize that maybe you don't know what you're talking about?
When do you realize that you've become that classic definition for 'insan!ty' ("Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results")?
Do you ever realize it?
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#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-controlled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensional chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppiest in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.
Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]
What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelphia, where next?
"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
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#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.
#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republicans"-plan
The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.KEEP READING
It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...
Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?
By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year.
While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.
Really, just let these frickers get what they want.
#3 - Primary Obama
Two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left:
MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).
MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what's happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.
Up until recently I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty would do it. Due to the hierarchical system of party government, it would be suicide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president.
Liberals/progressives within the DemocraticParty, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Reid's/Pelosi's tune. They vote as they're told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the CorporateMasters controlling them. The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/progressives to betray their constituents from safe districts if it needs them, accompanied by threats/promises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (AlanGrayson, DennisKucinich, 2 examples).
The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the WhiteHouse and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).
As I said, that was up until a few months ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama. But that would only happen if Obama's numbers went down, and like the idea of the Republicans having a brokered convention, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' would have to wake up and realize that he's sold the people out again and has made more deals with corporations in order to keep any 'normal', moderate Republican from getting into the election.
So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.
So what's left?
KEEP READING
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I get this question regularly so bear with me for a moment as I explain the situation as I see it, the options available, possible solutions, etc.
#1 - Sitting Out The Election
I never advise people to sit out elections because the first rule of politics is, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". It's what p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying "them that brung 'im") because by shutting out liberals, the Democratic base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, by putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, by eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government much less a seat at the table.
#2 - Getting More Liberals/Progressives Into Congress
A 'Tea Party'-like challenge from the left within the Democratic Party is the obvious next step, but IMHO, it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People. Obama and the DNC have been working their butts off to prevent real Democrats, real progressives, from getting into office - Their strategy for getting more Democrats into office has been to run Democratic candidates who believe in Republican ideology and support Republican policies and legislation.
One variation on this is if, A) Obama doesn't pull an LBJ (drop out) or, B) another Democrat or third party candidate doesn't challenge him, then take the money and shoe leather that you were planning on spending for Obama and use it to make both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly 'blue' and let the chips fall where they may (Obama sinks or swims on his own, or a Republican gets into the White House) and we go to work immediately finding a real Democrat for 2016.
Given how effective Republicans (with the smallest minority in decades) have been at stymieing Democratic legislation and policies, you would think Democrats could do the same for any Perry/Bachman/Romney/Palin/etc. administration.
KEEP READING
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Yawning is an indication that there's not enough oxygen circulating through your brain.
Move away from your keyboard and take a walk.
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If you've been paying attention, you would know that nobody ripped BushCheneyGOP more than me.
If you had problems with BushCheneyGOP, you should be having the same reaction over what ObamaBidenDemocrats are doing.
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When what exactly will happen?
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Bill Maher, who has declared frequently that his two issues are the environment and marijuana legalization, pumps money into the campaign of the most conflicted double-talking politician on those two particular issues we've ever seen.
About Barack Obama
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That's all very well and good, but this country has been governed and legislated from the right under the guise of 'compromise' for the past several decades.
And it's not compromise when it's going in the wrong direction. Not when the finances are coming from my pocket and going into yours. That's the direction it's been going for years, decades, and that pocket has been tapped out. It's empty. Your pockets, on the other hand, are DEEP and STUFFED.
And on all of this talk of compromise -- What's the compromise position on ending Bush's Obama's tax cuts? Do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' know that Obama offered in these negotiations to make those tax cuts permanent?
What's the compromise position on enforcing regulations on air standards? Not enforcing them?
What's the compromise position on a woman's right to choose? Make it impossible for her to actually obtain an abortion?
What's the compromise position on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' care and SCHIP, etc.? Empty out the trust funds to pay bond holders and war profiteers so that there's nothing left for those who paid into into the trust funds?
What's the compromise position on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen and Libya and Somalia? Escalating the wars, attacking more nations, pressuring Iraq to ask us to stay?
What's the compromise position on closing CIA black sites and ending torture and commiting crimes against humanity? Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program? Ending habeas corpus and a president indefinitely detaining anyone he believes might be thinking about committing a crime, American citizens included, and killing them with no due process, no oversight?
There is no 'center' on most issues. We're 'centered-out'. The left has done more than 30 years of compromising. You either believe in Social Security and Medicare and a woman's right to choose and gays' right to marry and clean safe food and water, and a safe workplace, and living wages, etc., or you don't.
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Do Republicans in Congress not passing his proposals then mean that his proposals aren't "Republican-like"?
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Even Stewart gets it: Obama's the best Republican president that the GOP could have wished for, but conservatives are just too stupid or stubborn to realize it.
Now when will Obama's 'most ardent supporters' get it?
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The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReagan, LeeAtwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism, and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems, nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgunned by election dirty tricks and fraud.
When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans don't want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to kiII babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your salespitch and tactics. It's not that Bush-Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush-Rove were just more ruthless doing what politicians had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans: If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.
But Obama only does that to progressives.
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What are you winning when you put DINOs into power?
When you put DINOs into office, you get Republican-like legislation.
Right after 9/11, when the PatriotAct and the DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity and all kinds of other legislation was enacted seemingly to protect us by violating our Constitutional rights and privacy, I wrote about how it was easy to keep Americans safe if you put us in isolation and monitored all of our activities and communications.
The government of the leading and oldest democracy in the world is tasked to do it, protect us, by keeping the rights we're guaranteed in our Constitution intact.
Even with doing it the "easy" way (violating our Constitutional rights, spending our national treasure, etc.), we're still not safe and live in a chronic state of imminent attack. So the "easy way" isn't working.
The same is true for putting DINOs into power.
Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans. When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare; Get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION -- But Obama doesn't do that. Obama gives ground, concedes issues, lets Republicans define the issues and set the parameters.
KEEP READING
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Obama isn't any kind of Democrat.
A Democrat who governs as a Republican, continuing just about all of the BushCheney policies and getting Republican legislation through Congress isn't "better".
With Obama, we're getting Republican policies sold to us as if they're what we wanted. Just because the Republican Party's base is too stupid to know they should be thrilled to have Obama in the White House doesn't mean the Democratic Party's base is.
Back during the campaign in 2008, Democratic voters refused to press Obama when he said this:
"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."
I'm an old, OLD liberal Democrat and the "lesser of two evils"-argument just doesn't work anymore.
How can you say (and expect to be taken seriously) that Republicans are by far worse when Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:
How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, NDAA, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? It's Pure Kafka.
I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.
And it's Obama who's put SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table.
At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Democrats are worse. BushCheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Democrats ran on knowing better.
Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse' have charted out their plans years in advance and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.
If you want to lie the country into war for oil and profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it, with DickCheney, the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.
And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.
Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).
You continue to support Obama-Democrats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporations and establishment elites.
Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
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Obama put SocialSecurity "on the table" for consideration by his DeficitCommission -- even though SocialSecurity has not contributed to creating or sustaining the deficit/debt in the first place. He kept Social Security on the table when he made a deal to delegate deficit reduction authority over entitlements to an undemocratic Super Committee. Now, in a speech reportedly about jobs, he proposed to extend and increase the ill-considered FICA tax cut he embraced last December -- a tax cut that directly undermines the financial integrity of Social Security.
According to the WhiteHouseFactSheet on "TheAmericanJobsAct" the FICA tax holiday for workers will be increased to a 50% reduction, lowering it to 3.1%. Under the 2010 tax deal, the payroll tax for workers was reduced from 6.2% to 4.2%. In addition to expanding the tax cut for workers, Obama has extended the FICA tax holiday to employers by cutting in half the employer's share of the payroll tax through the first $5 million in payroll.
Big questions about the wisdom, efficacy, and implications of a tax-based jobs strategy need to be debated. Even bigger questions about the consequences of the payroll tax holiday in particular need to be answered. These questions are not just about the relationship between payroll tax cuts and job growth. They are about the future of SocialSecurity.
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The FICA/payroll tax goes into the SocialSecurity TrustFund. This is a dedicated fund currently worth $2.6 trillion, which has been built up over time through employee and employer contributions, along with accrued interest. Current and future SocialSecurity beneficiaries receive benefits from this fund. No general revenues are involved, except for administrative and clerical costs.
Under the payroll tax cut initiated in the 2010 lame duck tax deal, the revenue loss to the TrustFund from the payroll tax holiday is made up through compensatory payments into the TrustFund from general revenues. This scheme is now continuing -- deepening a relationship between SocialSecurity and general revenues (read deficit) that did not exist until the December 2010 tax deal. This will make SocialSecurity increasingly vulnerable to demands for "reform."
In the worst case, Congress could choose to enact the payroll tax cut without actually appropriating revenue compensation for the TrustFund. This would mean that the payroll tax cut directly depletes the TrustFund, creating financial/actuarial problems far sooner than the currently anticipated shortfall date of 2036.
But even if the TrustFund receives full revenue compensation -- for both employer and employee contributions -- SocialSecurity will be jeopardized. That's because the resources in the TrustFund will be increasingly comingled with general revenue funds -- and, hence, increasingly connected to the deficit.
If the government can't pay back SocialSecurity money it has borrowed to pay for other things (through IOUs, bonds, etc), it certainly won't be shy about cutting SocialSecurity to pay itself back for funds it shared with Social Security to offset revenue losses from the payroll tax holiday.
Also worth worrying about here is contagious political cowardice about "raising taxes." The payroll tax holiday is framed as just that -- a holiday, ie, a short-lived break. But as we know from other tax cuts with built-in expiration dates, the planned end of a tax cut quickly becomes a "tax increase" in popular parlance. There hasn't been much resolve to allow the years-long tax holiday for the rich to end. When the time comes, will there be greater resolve to allow an end to the 2-year tax holiday for workers and 1-year tax holiday for employers? Even when billed as a "middle class tax increase" and a "job-killing tax on business"?
Once the payroll tax basis of SocialSecurity financing has been corrupted the future of SocialSecurity will no longer be in doubt. It won't have one.
KEEP READING
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