Jack Rabbit
Jack Rabbit's JournalMild dissent
I don't believe that Al Gore would have prevented the 911 attacks. I do, on the other hand, believe he would have responded in a very different way and not have used the attacks as a lame excuse to start an unrelated resource war in Iraq.
Please bear in mind that we are talking about what Al Gore would have done. Hilary Clinton is not Al Gore. She has taken a much more hawkish posture during her political career than either Gore or President Obama. In fact, it was her hawkish instincts that cost her the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008 as Obama ran as an opponent of going to war in Iraq while Mrs. Clinton stubbornly refused to admit a lapse in judgment for voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
I was one of those who, even before the start of 2008, recommended to my fellow DUers Mr. Obama for having more of what it takes to be President than Mrs. Clinton. While I have often been disappointed in Obama, even to the point of feeling betrayed, I will give him credit for the faith he places in diplomacy before a use of force. In that respect, I still feel my decision to support Obama over Mrs. Clinton in 2008 was a good one.
I still don't trust Mrs. Clinton. She's still a war hawk in the Middle East while I feel more than ever that US military involvement in that region is rooted in an imperialist lust for oil, not in a desire to democratize the Arabs or preserve a Jewish state with its own imperialist desire for land. This is at a time when our national priorities would appear wiser if we moved to first supplement with an aim to completely supplant fossil fuels as a source of energy with renewable energy sources. All we are accomplishing by fighting resource wars in the Middle East is keeping fossil fuels industries on life support. No amount of oil is worth one more drop of a young American fighter's blood.
Moreover, Mrs. Clinton background is that of a corporate lawyer. As her husband's political career took him from Arkansas to Washington, D. C., she became cozy with large corporate interests which are too ofter at odds with public interests. Again, I do not trust Mrs. Clinton not to side with Wall Street and other corporate power centers against the rest of us. Income inequality will tear America apart, and I see Hilary Clinton as one who will exacerbate rather than remedy this problem.
Yes, Hilary Clinton is better than any Republican on the horizon. That's not saying much, is it? I think she's on the right side of many issues, but still wrong on war and trade. She's not going to compromise away any of the hard won victories made in recent years by gay and lesbian Americans not make lame excuses for bad cops who use the color law to murder or manhandle young blacks. But I don't trust her not to put Social Security on the table to get Republican votes. I don't trust her not to further fray the social safety net in a deal with congressional Republicans. I don't trust her to do whatever it takes regrow the American middle class if that is too much of an inconvenience to corporate interests. And I don't trust he to do any more than the Obama administration did to bring order back to our lawless banking industry.
If Hilary is the nominee, I'll hold my nose and vote for her. When she's president, I will work to undermine her pro-corporate agenda.
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Some people seem to have defective Bullshit meters
The BSMs in their PCs are behaving like they were infected by a well-known virus that entered some PCs as early as 1993, known as the Rubin Virus, named for the scam artist who developed it. The Rubin Virus attacks your PC's BSM by skewing the data filtered through it by a critical 1%. When combined with the infamous Florida microchip, introduced in 2000 by a scamster named Katherine Harris, it can have very bizarre results.
Symptoms of the Florida microchip is data which shows that Bush the Frat Boy actually won the election of 2000. Of course, what the Florida microchip does is cause your PC's calculator to stop counting.
When the Rubin Virus is combined with the Florida microchip, your PC will yield results to the effect that free trade deals like NAFTA were beneficial to the US economy and even that it actually created well-paying jobs in the US, in spite of declining union membership and rising income inequality. This sounds counter-intuitive, but don't be fooled. It's actually just complete and utter bullshit.
Stand up for American workers: Defeat the trade package and overthrow the oligarchs
If there is no trade deal that will displace more American jobs, then there should be no need for trade adjustment assistance.
So what is trade adjustment assistance supposed to do for displaced American workers? Retrain rocket scientists to flip burgers or greet customers at WalMart?
Of course, I'm oversimplifying. There's a bigger problem here than bad trade deals. One DUer is hitting the meme that jobs are being shipped to India and China, with which the US has no trade treaty. I think that poster may be on to something in identifying the problem, but his solution is more bad trade deals and that doesn't impress me as a good solution.
The neoliberal social paradigm is unsustainable. Large corporations cannot direct a race to the bottom without destroying the middle class, leaving them without consumers to purchase the products they manufacture. When that happens, they go broke, too. At some point we come after the bastards with torches and pitchforks, but after that, then what?
That is a conversation we need to start having. The then may be fast approaching, so we'll need the what sooner than we think.
In this case, we'll have to meet behind the proverbial closed doors, as much as it is possible for 99% to meet behind closed doors, to discuss the matter, because the captains of industry and their pet politicians are not invited. They'll only try to sell us on their neoliberal paradigm (you know, the one that is unsustainable), and we don't have any more time to waste listening to their pitch. We can listen to more enlightened 1%ers like George Soros, Warren Buffet or Nick Hanauer. They might have something to contribute to the discussion, but Legs Dimon, Pretty Boy Lloyd and the Koch kingpins are going to be left behind as we forge our own path the other world that is possible.
I'd like not to agree that we are documenting the last gasp of democracy, but . . .
. . . a couple of weeks ago, I posted the opinion that passage of the TPP would be the death of democracy and caused quite a stir mainly form HRC supporters.
Yes, the passage of the TPP will be the death of democracy. The reason I say that is because the TPP provides for a a platform to sue elected governments that is not available to actual citizens, who are made of flesh and blood and only of flesh and blood. The United States of America is formally a representative democracy. If the voters elect representatives who go to the capital to pass laws abating air and water pollution, who then pass such legislation only to be sued by ExxonMoble or the local coal company because such legislation will prevent them from realizing "expected profits," then democracy is indeed dead. The TPP creates corporations not as people, which is a silly enough idea, to creating corporations as a legal entity with more rights to citizens. It makes the realization of expected profits a right and with it the right to befoul the planet in pursuit of those profits.
We can elect whoever we please and pass whatever laws are appropriate, but ExxonMoble need not obey them and may even punish the citizens (who are also taxpayers, last time I checked, which is more than can be said for General Electric) by making us pay them for unrealized expected profits, awarded them by an unelected panel of corporate shysters in secret proceedings.
If that isn't the destruction of democracy, then what is?
I not only say that the TPP would be the end of American democracy, but that the only proper way for the public to respond to the passage of such a vile outrage is a mass campaign of civil disobedience aimed at making the TPP and similar "free" trade deal unenforceable. Our goal is victory. Our terms is unconditional surrender of the enemy. And when I say the enemy, Dave and Charlie Koch, I mean you, among other oligarchs.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Sacramento Valley, California
Member since: 2001
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