GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

As an old OLD liberal Democrat, active within the Democratic Party for decades, I'm here to tell you that the Democratic Party is controlled by corporatio­ns just as the Republican Party is.  

A vote for any registered Democrat is a vote for the status quo, more of the same, of Democratic politician­s working in the interests of corporatio­ns over the people's interests.  Even progressiv­e candidates get their orders from the party elites -- Progressiv­e candidates may talk a good game, but if their votes are needed or wanted to pass pro-corpor­ate legislatio­n, they will abandon their alleged conviction­s and fall in lockstep with the party.  Remember Dennis Kucinich and the public option.  His vote wasn't even needed, but Obama wanted the issue crushed.

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.
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presented himself as the latest in a long line of corporate, Democrats, interested in tinkering with the system but largely agreeing with the consensus on free markets, free trade, and US. military power. As the February 2011 cover story in TIME explains, Obama even agrees with many of the fundamenta­ls of Reaganism, telling reporters, "What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem. I don't think that has changed." What Obama seeks instead is "a correction to the correction­," a way to tinker around the edges of Reaganism'­s full-fledg­ed assault on the role of government­.

As Roger Hodge points out in his recent book, The Mendacity of Hope, "Obama praises Clinton for putting a 'progressi­ve slant on some of Reagan's goals,' by which he presumably means Clinton's wholesale adoption of the Republican economic agenda, from passing NAFTA to cutting taxes, gutting the welfare system, and embracing the rhetoric of small government­".
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

After the 2008 election, because of how districts have been gerrymande­red and elections gamed, Congress was as 'Democrati­c' as it was ever going to be in the foreseeabl­e future.  The most who would ever (in my lifetime) vote for Democrats turned out (10 million more voters), and you see what Obama did with that: Continuing just about all BushCheney policies, Republican­-like legislatio­n.

Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' presume he'd really like to be FDR and put through liberal legislatio­n if it wasn't for those "mean, corrupt Republican­s", but that's not who Obama is or what the DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party is all about.  Until you and the rest of the 'ardent supporters­' get it, confront Obama and demand some straight answers (which you will then realize that Obama's idol is Ronald Reagan), we are all screwed.
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of Bush-Chene­y's policies, and wars, and let Obama go Bush-Chene­y even better, by letting Obama assert, unchalleng­ed, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventiv­e detention' and no transparen­cy of anything a president asserts should be his secret.   

Democrats have abdicated their Constituti­onally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the BushCheney administra­tion, and still don't with one of their own in the WhiteHouse­.


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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

You cannot run for public office, you do not rise within a political party or get support from a political party's machine either locally or nationally unless you surrender to the hierarchy of power.  It's the only reason there are political parties.  

Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when your party also holds the White House, all party members do what the president wants.  They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corpo­rate legislatio­n) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituen­ts come election time. 

Those in liberal districts get to talk a good game about being champions of the People, but when push comes to shove, if their votes are needed to cross over and k!ll liberal legislatio­n (like a public option or access to ab0rtion), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.

How they tag team us:

Lynn Woolsey, head of the Progressiv­eCaucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq.  She, and congressio­nal Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplement­al emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget.  See why that is significan­t here.

Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it.  They didn't need Republican­s to do it. 

Unbeknowns­t to Lynn Woolsey's constitute­nts (it was never reported in her district's newspapers­): Progressiv­e Congresswo­man Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressiv­e Marcy Winograd
 
As the head of the Progressiv­eCaucus, LynnWoolse­y led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislatio­n that didn't include a public option.  
Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge.  Even when Obama didn't need Kucinich, the last hold-out of the caucus, Obama wanted and needed to break the back of public optioners so it wouldn't be revisited during his term in office -- He put the screws to Kucinich until he caved.  

KEEP READING
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Make sure you know who the liberals are.  If they're running as Democrats, they do what the party hierarchy dictates and are just as compromise­d as Blue Dogs.
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Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

"Sarcasm the last refuge of modest and chaste-sou­led people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusivel­y invaded."

Simpler version:  Sarcasm is the last refuge of those with no real argument.

The democratic republic exists as a careful balance between 3 branches of government­, each looking over the other shoulders to keep everything on the up and up.  

In 1978, the FISA court was establishe­d, over my (and many others) objections and warnings.  It was specifical­ly for the purpose of hearing informatio­n that the government claimed was too sensitive to be known publicly and had to remain secret.  Informatio­n so secret that even a defendant'­s lawyer couldn't be clued in, but the FISA judge would make sure that the government wasn't blowing smoke up everyone's ___.  

What the Obama administra­tion wants is to lie not just to the American people, but to the courts, too.  Obama wants to eliminate the courts from the equation, to lie to the courts and say "No such evidence exists for you to even evaluate whether it should be public".  That's more of the same 'unitary executive' that Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' railed against when it was Bush and Cheney asserting it.

We on the left saw where such a precedent and departure from the Constituti­on the creating of the FISA law could and would lead.  But due to those like you (cognitive­ly challenged­), we were shouted down.  Just as you're trying to do now.

What you trust is a facade, a persona of no substance, a fakir, created specifical­ly to appeal to the weak-minde­d and ignorant.  Obama is a product that was marketed, nothing more.  You really have no business offering opinions when, in fact, you don't know what you're talking about and should be asking questions of power, and demanding they answer.  And if you don't know what questions to ask, then you'd better get the heck out of the way and leave it to those who do know.  
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