Thread win

Bernie stayed on what he sees as important to the American people, after respectfully expressing sympathy for the French.

This is the game the MSM and establishment MIC-funded politicians always plays. Hijack any attempt to address why it is that we, supposedly the richest nation on earth, can't afford to support our people the way countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and much of Europe manage to do.

It's because the MIC has got us all by the balls, paying for the corporate resource extraction protection militia from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers, while the only reason we're under any threat whatsoever is because of blowback from our troops being used for that exact purpose.

I for one am glad there is a candidate who understands this and does not allow himself to be drawn into the neocon agenda.

Yes, I've seen that sentiment raging around here

I think many people are just not all that evolved in their thinking, and their views are reactive and derivative, put in place by the MSM zeitgeist.

I may well be a dreamer, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Sometimes, when you're been walking the wrong path for a long time, you need to re-evaluate what got you into a situation, rather than doubling down. I've been dealing with this in my own life. I think that's where we are as a nation and as a society. Usually there are external signs that such change is needed.

The fires of hate need fuel and oxygen to burn. The fuel is of course the hatred that emerges from other acts of violence and oppression, and the interests of those who profit from war and from the resource extraction industries. The oxygen is all of the attention and hair-on-fire focus given to the latest outrage.

This fire serves the interests of many, from the MIC to the MSM to the politicians they support, and on the other side the extremists who would love to blow our whole system to pieces. And I have to say they have some very valid reasons for that sentiment, which is why I work so hard for us to reform it through the political process. It must change, one way or another.

It's in the interests of the average person, most all of us, to withdraw from the whole war mentality.

We have to radically retool our energy approach anyway because of climate change.

Our troops in their lands will endlessly create more radical terrorists. There is no winning that war, the wars themselves by definition create more enemies.

The ordinary people in those countries are no more our enemy than the ordinary people in our own country. I spent a year as a child in Iran, I have some actual experience with the people there, they're people like us, living in a different context, with the same human needs we have, mostly good-hearted with the usual variance you find in any population.

Before the U.S. was fully captured by corporate interests, we were one of the most loved nations on this earth. Since we've been waging resource wars, and smaller acts of interference (coups, assassination of labor leaders, meddling in elections) in many more nations, all to support corporate interests, we are now hated by literally billions. There is no way to fight our way out of that, it only makes it worse.

Mind our own business when possible, when we have to act, do so as a police action, rather than as a military. Work as hard on restoring positive relations with the people in the middle east as we have worked to secure access to their resources. The vast majority of them don't want endless violence and war, especially not in their lands. And we don't need their resources anymore. With the money we spend on our military, we can retool our energy use to renewables, and we must, because climate change.

Terrorism is, for the most part, the last resort of people who have been completely disempowered in their own lives and nations, and who have no armies to fight for their interests.

We have a serious lack of external perspective in this country. How would it feel to have other countries' troops all over our country? To live in the shadow of drones? To live under governments set up and propped up by a foreign nation?

I can't imagine living in the shadow of drones overhead that can strike out of nowhere at anytime, extinguishing life with massive explosions, killing innocents as well as the people they rightly or wrongly target, where the targeting criteria is entirely in the hands of a foreign power.

If that were happening in our own country, I don't think many of us would see the people resisting it as evil-doers.

Restoring that perspective is the way out of this. In the meantime, some precise anti-terrorist actions will be necessary, but will only help if they are limited to targeting the actual terrorists. Otherwise, we're just adding fuel to the fire.

I think she's a hawk, not a chump

I'm certain she's no chump. It's for you to decide which is worse, being fooled or being aligned with the greater agenda which badly wanted multiple regime changes in the middle east.

If they had gone after the Saudis they could have claimed at least a whiff of moral high ground, that's one regime that is in desperate need of change.

No, they went after Afghanistan (Taliban, so there's that, but mostly just a host country for the terrorist training grounds, whereas the source was Saudi Arabia). They went after Iraq. Their hands were all over the regimes being toppled in Egypt, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, the current mess in Yemen, and they can't wait to "do" Iran.

Hillary dd more than approve the IWR, she and her State Department had their fingers in all of the above.

PNAC anyone?

DLC's PNAC Document - Hillary Clinton On America's Strategy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251495072

There is a frightening amount of overlap between neocon policies and the DLC/New Dem foreign policies.

Calling Hillary a chump, IMHO, for being duped by the right-wing into supporting the Iraq War, misses the mark. Perhaps you were being kind, and suggested the more innocent of reasons she could have supported it.

I have no doubts about Hillary's intelligence, she is nobody's fool. What we're dealing with here is someone that is a true believer in the U.S. as global police and as the military arm of global corporate resource extraction and a permanent state of warfare and foreign interventions.

I think the public deserves a choice in this matter. We have the Republican Party to push this agenda. The Democratic Party needs to offer an alternative foreign policy, one that respects the sovereignty of other nations, values peace over profits, and that doesn't rob the U.S. Treasury of the funds we need to care for our people from birth to death in a dignified manner.

The question is, are we even allowed a choice in this, or are we so far down the foxhole that only candidates who support the war machine have a chance? Scary question.

Bernie's a large step in the right direction. He'll have limited control over the machine, but he's no war hawk, and can make a difference.

Here you go

Seems a conservative like yourself wouldn't want U.S. taxpayers to pay for it

Why, exactly, are we spending all of this money when the only attacks against our country are blowback against our troops being in everyone's country?

Mexico and Canada have got us surrounded, better have the world's largest military to defend us.

I disagree on principle that we should be projecting our "influence" militarily all over the planet. It's wrong, plain and simple. It's also not our citizens' interests, nor our planet's, that are being furthered by our militarism, it's the interests and profits of the world's largest and most corrupt corporations, who require "stable business environments" to guarantee them extraction rights to natural resources independent of the wishes of the people that live in those countries. That's wrong, plain and simple.

But a conservative analysis (which I personally have no interest in but would think you would) would have to acknowledge that we are literally taking wealth from our children's mouths to pay for most of the planet's military expenditures, running massive budget deficits in the process. That seems entirely unsupportable.

Everyone needs to see this:

Everyone needs to see this:

That is a great statement by Sanders, I agree with it 100%

and thank him for making it.

I very much wanted someone from the left to run against Obama in 2012. Many of the people who voted for Obama in '08 were disappointed with how he governed. He punched down instead of up, and he did it consistently. Not at all what he campaigned as.

The truth is we actually turned in massive numbers in '08 to elect a change candidate, after rejecting the primary candidate we perceived as being more corporatist and hawkish, Hillary. As it turned out, IMO, he governed much the same as Hillary would have governed, business as usual but better than Republicans on issues where it didn't require challenging powerful interests.

I realize not everyone sees it that way, but a lot of us do. Those of us that see it that way were hoping for a primary challenger to reassert our demands for actual change.

I don't have the words to express how thrilled I am to have someone like Sanders standing up for what I believe in. Our party has left people like me without representation for pretty much my entire adult life, though they claim to be all for us at election time, then ignore our issues because the power lies with big money, and that's who they represent.

I would have given up on this party if they had run Hillary without a serious challenge from the left. We'll see how it all plays out, but the way Hillary supporters are attempting to use this well-stated stance by Sanders against him gives me little hope that the party is even worth saving. It certainly isn't if people like the ones making these attacks are the ones running the party.

We have a big business party, it's the Republican party. We need a party that represents the interests of the people who can't write the huge campaign checks. If that isn't us, we have no legitimacy.

In present circumstances, establishment IS a dirty word

Multiple, perpetual wars.

Raging income inequality.

The world's largest prison population.

Global climate change that threatens everything we know and love.

Republicans in control of both congressional houses, the result of years of establishment, corporate-funded Democratic strategies.

Mandated corporate health insurance.

A brutal police state to keep the lid on the blowback of poverty and disaffected citizens.

A vast and unprecented surveillance system that monitors prety much anything and everything an of us do, and records it for eternity, with access restricted to police and intelligence operatives.

Recent studies showing the complete uncoupling of what the public wants, and what legislation gets enacted, in a supposedly democratic nation.

I'm pretty sure I've left out some of the most egregious examples, just riffing off the top of my head.

In this context, establishment is the problem, and that establishment is the representation of corporate interests over populist interests, in both major parties.

We need a true "underground" political movement, not just victories for the corrporate wing of our party.

I wish it were not so and that I could just cheerlead for the team, it would be so much easier, but that is not even close to right action given our current context.

Yes, they have become what they have long been fighting against

In order to do battle with Republicans, using the same corporate-funded campaign model as the Republicans (adopted for Democrats by the third way/DLC/new dem types), they can no longer stand on the issues, as their donors won't allow them to work for the issues the people need.

So they've spent the last 30 years engaged in a blood match with Republicans for electoral victories, fighting on Republican terms, taking positions slightly better than Republicans but from the exact same intellectual premises the Republicans start with, rather than fighting honestly for a Democratic agenda that has nothing to do with the bogus world-view that comes out of entities like Heritage, AEI, PPI, or even Brookings for the most part.

Sometimes they win elections, sometimes they lose, and either way, we lose, with probably 90% of the population rightly recognizing that both sides are entirely corrupt and that their arguments are disingenuous manipulative political games rather than policies designed to make anyone's lives better.

The massive disaffection is our opportunity. This is not the time to compromise, it's the time to double down on grass-roots truth-telling and oganizing for real change.

We have to learn to defeat corporate-funded candidates

with candidates who are willing to run using only small clean public donations. That's not an excuse, that''s the reality. Everything else is just a diversion. The first victories will be the most difficult, then momentum will buld.

What you describe is the existing model, where issues aren't what matter. Corporate-funded ad buys, slick mailers, bogus policy positions and wedge politics. It gets us nowhere even when we win.

Honest, genuine and plain-spoken truth-telling about what Americans are up against, how we are being used by the powers that be, and what the candidate will work to do about it, coupled with grass-roots funding and activism, is the way out of this.

Enough people are sick and tired of the old politics, and hurting in their own lives, plus we have issues driving abandonment of the old ways, such as climate change and perpetual resource wars, police and surveillance states with massive prison populations, people retiring into poverty, kids in huge debt out of college, the times have changed to bring about conditions for doing things the right way, and to win by doing so. Social media and a less consolidated information backbone on the internet enable people-based campaigns to compete.

Now what we have to do is convince people who are still entrenched in the old ways of machine politics to get on board. Hence these emails.

Sanders is a good example, but we need a lot of candidates like him, at all levels of government. It's a process where we have to literally learn to win elections this way. I sincerely believe that the conditions presently exist to allow this to happen, and it's imperative that it does happen.