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Post by htmb on Jan 20, 2020 19:50:48 GMT
That Dershowitz is considered a "liberal" makes me run screaming away from being identified with that label. He's a war mongering, torture supporting, authoritarian, as well as reportedly being one of Epstein's pedophile clients. If Dersh is a liberal, I want nothing to do with liberals. Well stated. I feel the same way.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 20, 2020 20:08:29 GMT
Oh, he is nothing compared to some of the famous lawyers we have had in France, for example Jacques Vergès, who defended Klaus Barbie, Carlos the Jackal and Pol Pot. Definitely little league!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 21, 2020 4:54:17 GMT
Alan Dershowitz (a self proclaimed Liberal Democrat) -- I did not know that! I thought he was a "civil libertarian", a designation that covers a wide range of loons. Whatever label he uses, he's a miserable little whore.
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Post by mossie on Jan 21, 2020 12:10:32 GMT
I have just watched Mr Trump justifying his existence in a long speech at Davos. I have called our Boris a bullshitter, but he has much to learn from the Great Donald.
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Post by bjd on Jan 21, 2020 12:15:32 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2020 17:26:24 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 24, 2020 19:23:57 GMT
~?~ I failed to see any attempt to rein him in, much less end the interview.
What was terrifying to me were the expressions on the faces of the audience.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 1, 2020 5:56:56 GMT
Deepest fucking mourning for my fucking home country.
Can't believe this shit!
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Post by Kimby on Feb 1, 2020 14:48:43 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 1, 2020 15:07:18 GMT
Yes, it's not as though the presidential election were democratic. Funny that absolutely no presidential candidate would ever dare to campaign for the elimination of the Electoral College. France used to have this antiquated system but it was eliminated by referendum in 1962 by a vote of 62.25%. Is there any chance that an American referendum would yield a different result? Obviously, all of the little states would vote against it, but in a case like this, it is the population centres that matter.
Actually, Sanders and Warren have said that they want to get rid of it… by constitutional amendment. That would take only about 15-20 years, right?
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Post by Kimby on Feb 1, 2020 15:34:59 GMT
Amendments can get passed fairly swiftly if they are popular.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 1, 2020 15:51:56 GMT
Well, the United States Senate has a slight problem, right?
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Post by fumobici on Feb 1, 2020 16:46:08 GMT
I would be horrified if I found myself in agreement with Rahm Emanuel, he's a corrupt, authoritarian, Wall St. tool, Likudnik, right-wing nutjob that represents everything wrong with the modern Democratic Party. A Democratic Party that couldn't even beat DJT with the "most qualified candidate ever", and still blames Russian conspiracy theories for their own grievous failures. Rahm is completely in his place spewing his toxic nonsense on the famously nutty right-wing WSJ op-ed page.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 1, 2020 19:44:50 GMT
It’s a numbers game though, isn’t it?
NONE of us gets their dream candidate if they win the primary but lose big to DJT!
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Post by fumobici on Feb 1, 2020 21:25:19 GMT
The forces fracturing the Democratic Party are cleaving the political and ideological bedrock the party stands on. The corporate DNC that controls the party's executive apparatus (and hiring and spending) is far closer, ideologically and politically, to Trump than to Sanders. I don't think it's accidental that there has been very little resistance to Trump's political agenda, and even his packing the judiciary with right-wing ideologues. The GOP is an honest and relatively transparent enterprise, they take money from wealthy donors and in turn they pass business-friendly laws and regulations, and appoint business-friendly judges. They are proud of the fact, being pro-business (no matter how polluting, or exploitative, or destructive) is at the heart of their branding. The Democrats take the same bribes from almost all the same business groups (who aren't stupid enough not to cover both bases) to finance the party and campaigns, but have to project a narrative of working for interests of the working class. That narrative is breaking down now, the DP can no longer simply return to the first-term Obama status quo consensus. That ended up incubating the Trump movement, and he feeds on it and can defeat it again. Given Biden's as yet unexploited political liabilities (he's getting a free ride in the press and in the D primary campaigns), Sanders is clearly today the party's best hope to unseat Trump at the polls, but the resulting Democratic Party may not have jobs for many of the lifers and consultant class who've made a nice living and who control the party's executive levers. Look at how Perez stacked the Convention Standing Committees, this is now a scorched earth battle for the future of the DP, right now today the DNC is far more concerned about Sanders winning the nomination than they are about Trump winning in the general. And they will do anything, and I mean anything, to prevent Sanders from getting the nomination. Trump isn't the DNC's real enemy, it's Sanders. From the first link in my post above- You can read the sordid facts that the press and his primary opponents are too deferential to bring up now or you can hear them later from the Republicans if he gets the nomination. Joe Biden is unfit for the office of President, and he will lose if he is the nominee. I get that Trump is also unfit, but his base doesn't care and it's not something the Democrats should be emulating. And what would it say about the state of our political culture if the contest were down to two candidates, neither being fit for the office?
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Post by lagatta on Feb 1, 2020 21:44:09 GMT
I wouldn't call Jacques Vergès a "liberal" and not only because the term has a different meaning in France than in the US. Isn't he what was referred to as a "rouge-brun"? (a perverse sort of leftist who will defend the worst kinds of villains - not only the evil Pol Pot and Carlos the Jackal who did start out as some kind of leftists, but an actual Nazi as a way of thumbing his nose at the establishment?
I loved the expression face like a cow's udder...
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 2, 2020 4:55:53 GMT
Both Jacques Vergès and his senator brother Paul Vergès were members of the communist party.
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 2, 2020 7:32:51 GMT
The forces fracturing the Democratic Party are cleaving the political and ideological bedrock the party stands on. The corporate DNC that controls the party's executive apparatus (and hiring and spending) is far closer, ideologically and politically, to Trump than to Sanders. To go off at a tangent, what are the mechanisms by which rank-and-file Democrats could change that executive apparatus if they wanted to? I've never quite understood how US political parties manage themselves (as distinct from selecting election candidates).
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 2, 2020 15:32:20 GMT
Same here, Patrick, but I assume that all of the political parties of the democratic countries work the same way -- you join the party, you attend meetings, you become a representative, and you work your way up the party structure little by little. And then you have complete power to basically ignore the rank and file, except when they stop voting for your party in an election. And even then some parties don't understand.
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Post by patricklondon on Feb 2, 2020 18:43:19 GMT
Same here, Patrick, but I assume that all of the political parties of the democratic countries work the same way -- you join the party, you attend meetings, you become a representative, and you work your way up the party structure little by little. That's what I would have thought, but there seems to be some sort of disconnect in the US between identifying yourself with a party (and even working for campaigns), and actually having any sort of formal say in managing the party. Here joining the party and paying your membership subscription means you get a vote for representatives in the various levels of party management and policy development committees (even if they often take the rank-and-file members for granted). In the US, it appears from the outside to be a much more diffuse arrangement.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 2, 2020 18:51:08 GMT
In the US, the political parties are private enterprises upon which as far as i am aware no rules or regulations regarding their fairness or accountability to the electorate exist. If the bigwigs in the Democratic Party simply ignore the results primary elections and put their own choice in instead, that would be perfectly legal to do. And they are shameless in admitting it to be the case. Democratic input is only welcome when it confirms the choices already made in the smoke-filled rooms where the bribes get spread around. The system is completely corrupt, rotten, and not only undemocratic, but sneeringly hostile to democracy.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 2, 2020 19:12:11 GMT
In the US people tend to identify with the party their parents voted for, without questioning their allegiance until something happens that wakes them up to how wrong their party is.
There are no membership fees, many states don’t even require you to register to vote as a member of a party. Others do but it only matters in primary elections.
The problem in the US is that the Tea Party infiltrated the Republican Party and moved it WAY far right. The Democratic Party of today more closely resembles the Republican Party pre Reagan, but you could not force most R’s at gunpoint to vote for a D. Today’s D’s are splintering into 2 factions, Moderates and Progressives.
With the need to get Trump out, all D’s say “Vote Blue, No Matter Who!”, but in reality, many will get their noses bent out of joint and stay home rather than vote for the other faction’s nominee.
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! Unless we’re OK with Trump being President For Life, followed by Ivanka, Donald Jr, Eric and Barron.....ad nauseum.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 2, 2020 19:46:06 GMT
NYT: www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/does-it-matter-who-the-democrats-choose.html?fbclid=IwAR1ZzlQqV0APPFJfxjqNXNVwbvjN_rQ7bgj4ZRvl3diGVTCDMV2mj0FNXJIDoes It Matter Who the Democrats Choose? By Paul KrugmanJan. 31, 2020 At this point, the Democratic presidential nomination is very much up in the air. Not only is it unclear who will be the nominee; it’s unclear whether the nominee will be a centrist like Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar, or a representative of the party’s left like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Whoever wins, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the other side. So I’d like to offer an opinion that will probably anger everyone: In terms of actual policy, it probably doesn’t matter much who the Democrats nominate — as long as he or she wins, and Democrats take the Senate too. If you’re a centrist worried about the gigantic spending increases Sanders has proposed, calm down, because they won’t happen. If you’re a progressive worried that Biden might govern like a Republican, you should also calm down, because he wouldn’t. In practice, any Democrat would probably preside over a significant increase in taxes on the wealthy and a significant but not huge expansion of the social safety net. Given a Democratic victory, a much-enhanced version of Obamacare would almost certainly be enacted; Medicare for All, not so much. Given a Democratic victory, Social Security and Medicare would be protected and expanded; Paul Ryan-type cuts wouldn’t be on the table. Why do I say this? Consider first the lessons from three years of Donald Trump. In 2016 Trump ran as a different kind of Republican, promising that unlike other candidates, he wouldn’t slash social programs and cut taxes on the rich. But it was all a lie. Aside from his trade war, Trump’s economic policies have been straight right-wing orthodoxy: huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, attempts to take health care away from tens of millions of Americans. And lately he has been talking about possible cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The point is that even though Trump commands humiliating personal subservience from his party, he hasn’t caused any significant shift in its policy priorities. Now, the Democratic Party is very different from the G.O.P. — it’s a loose coalition of interest groups, not a monolithic entity answering to a handful of billionaires allied with white nationalists. But this if anything makes it even harder for a Democratic president to lead his or her party very far from its political center of gravity, which is currently one of moderate progressivism. It’s still far from clear who will come out on top in the primary, but it’s enough to think about what would happen if either of the two current front-runners, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, were to become president — and also have strong enough coattails to produce a Democratic Senate, because otherwise nothing will happen. Sanders has a hugely ambitious agenda; Medicare for All is just part of it. Paying for that agenda would be difficult — no, Modern Monetary Theory wouldn’t actually do away with the fiscal constraint. So turning Sanders’s vision into reality would require large tax increases, not just on the wealthy, but on the middle class; without those tax increases it would be highly inflationary. But not to worry: it won’t happen. Even if he made it to the White House, Sanders would have to deal with a Congress (and a public) considerably less radical than he is, and would be obliged to settle for a more modest progressive agenda. It’s true that Sanders enthusiasts believe that they can rally a hidden majority of Americans around an aggressively populist agenda, and in so doing also push Congress into going along. But we had a test in the midterm elections: Progressives ran a number of candidates in Trump districts, and if even one of them had won they would have claimed vindication for their faith in transformative populism. But none did; the sweeping Democratic victory came entirely from moderates running conventional campaigns. The usual take on this progressive setback is that it raises questions about Sanders’s electability. But it also has a very different implication: Moderates worried about a radical presidency should cool it. A President Sanders wouldn’t be especially radical in practice. What about Joe Biden? The Sanders campaign has claimed that Biden endorsed Paul Ryan’s plans for sharp cuts in Social Security and Medicare; that claim is false. What is true is that in the past Biden has often been a Very Serious Person going along with the Beltway consensus that we need “adjustments” — a euphemism for at least modest cuts — in Social Security. (Actually, if you go back a ways, Sanders turns out to have said similar things.) But the Democratic Party as a whole has moved left on these issues, and Biden has moved with it. Even if he has a lingering desire to strike a Grand Bargain with Republicans — which I doubt — he would face such a huge intraparty backlash that he would be forced to back off. So in terms of policy, here’s what I think would happen if Sanders wins: we’ll get a significant but not gigantic expansion of the social safety net, paid for by significant new taxes on the rich. On the other hand, if Biden wins, we’ll get a significant but not gigantic expansion of the social safety net, paid for by significant new taxes on the rich. One implication, if I’m right, is that electability should play a very important role in your current preferences. It matters hugely whether a Democrat wins, it matters much less which Democrat wins. But my main point is that Democrats should unify, enthusiastically, behind whoever gets the nomination. Any moderate tempted to become a Never Bernie type should realize that even if you find Sanders too radical, his actual policies would be far more tempered. Any Sanders enthusiast tempted to become a Bernie or Bust type should realize that these days even centrist Dems are pretty progressive, and that there’s a huge gap between them and Trump’s G.O.P. Oh, and all the Democrats believe in democracy and rule of law, which is kind of important these days. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@nytopinion) and Instagram.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 2, 2020 20:05:45 GMT
Not a word about gun control, I see. Nothing is more sacred than the second amendment.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 2, 2020 21:22:15 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 3, 2020 2:42:29 GMT
Yes! Super powerful and moving. I wanted to share this elsewhere, but didn't care for the captions. I looked & found this version in 4k, if anyone wants to copy & paste the url for sharing without captions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnWTB5MCMPk
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Post by Kimby on Feb 5, 2020 2:19:29 GMT
Listening to Trump’s SOTU. Makes me want to say STFU.
He claims credit for America’s good economy by his REVERSING the previous administration’s “failed policies”. That one got some dissenting rumbles from the assembled Senators and Representatives.
No, Donald. Obama created the turnaround. You just haven’t blown it completely. Yet.
I can’t wait for a fact checker to tear into this speech.
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Post by lagatta on Feb 5, 2020 2:37:30 GMT
I loved Bernie as a young civil rights worker (remember his Polish Jewish family was more than decimated in the Nazi genocide, and fortunately, he drew the right lessons from that, unlike the Likudists).
And the brown immigrants in the clip are Indigenous Americans, like little Jakuelin (sp?) I don't even know if she spoke Spanish; her mother didn't. Her father must have spoken Spanish, and perhaps English if he sought work north of the Rio Bravo, but there was no school in her Guatemalan village.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 5, 2020 2:55:54 GMT
I cannot believe Trump just awarded Rush Frickin Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his SOTU address. I’m gonna puke.
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Post by htmb on Feb 5, 2020 3:33:32 GMT
It was like watching one of his campaign events. Repulsive in every way. Lies, lies, and more lies. The best part of the night was Nancy Pelosi tearing up her copy of his speech at the end.
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