Spintested

2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

Sunday, November 6, 2011

what are your suggestions for improving the situation, or are you saying we truly are already too far gone?

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I've laid out the options as I see them here.

We stand no chance whatsoever unless people open their eyes, become better informed, and realize that very few politicians are in it out of a sense of humanitarianism. They are there because of the opportunities to amass wealth and power.

The few who did go into it out of a sense of altruism quickly learn the futility of bucking the system and try to convince themselves that they're staying in it for "incremental change for the better" (it's only gotten worse).

Unless and until a president and bipartisan leadership agrees to real campaign finance reform (publicly financed elections), real election reform, ending corporate personhood, and outlawing the revolving door between lobbying and working in government, and all of it on a fast track, everything else they're doing is BS corruption to feather their own nests.
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2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

What the compromise position on Social Security, Medicare, a woman's right to choose, gays' right to marry, clean safe water and food, a safe workplace, living wages, etc? You either believe in those things or you don't.

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'.
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2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

The nation is circling the drain because the left has done more than 30 years of compromising.

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.

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 and 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 do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll 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 sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and 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 and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

But Obama only does that to progressives.

KEEP READING
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2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/2012-election-barack-obama_n_1077655_116668616.html
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2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

Why don't you lay out what you think it takes to fix our predicament, that takes so long?

While you're at it, why don't you describe what it is that you ultimately want to see done, and how what politicians in Washington have accomplished toward that goal. Get specific.
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Keystone XL: Thousands Gather Outside White House In Culmination Of Protests

Why can an international company sue for eminent domain over land that doesn't even rest within their own borders? ========================= That's due to NAFTA. In addition to that, if a foreign corporation wants to conduct environmentally destructive business in some US state and that state doesn't want that corporation's business in their state, that corporation is entitled to the amount of profits that corporation believes it's losing by being denied being allowed to open its business in a US state. Paid by the US government (taxpayers).
About White House
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