EdwardBernays
EdwardBernays's JournalCNN ORC: Clinton losing to Cruz, Rubio
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/23/politics/cnn-orc-poll-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/"The poll, however, suggests Clinton faces a stiff challenge from each of three Republicans at the top of the field. She narrowly tops Donald Trump within the poll's margin of sampling error, 49% to 47%, in a hypothetical general election matchup. But she falls behind Ted Cruz by 2 points (Cruz 48% to Clinton 46%, a shift since last month when Cruz trailed Clinton 50% to 47%) and 3 points behind Marco Rubio (49% Rubio to 46% Clinton). Among independent voters, Clinton trails Rubio and Cruz by 12 points each, while running even with Trump."
A suggestion for Bernie supporters
Heres a real suggestion for Bernie supporters.
Pledge to stay at home on ekection day unless the DNC plays fair with Bernie.
Simple.
If they REALLY care more about beating the GOP than backing a specific candidate then they'll back down and let the primary play out relatively fairly.
Because honestly if this is how the DNC is going to behave, I want NO part of their chosen candidates.
The Power of Nightmares
More relevant than it has been in years.
Remember when Americans used to take pride in this idea?
Now if a politician refuses to discuss international terrorism at every single event he or she is seen to be weak...
What's actually become weak is the public... we're petrified by generalised fear, terrorised by nightmarish visions of death sold by politicians and the media and worst of all, we assume this is what is the best for our nation...
You know who needs to carpet bomb Syria? A coward. You know who needs a gun to feel safe? A coward. You know who bases their vote on a candidates terrorism policies? A coward.
Toughen up America, or else you're gonna be fucked.
Base your vote on for what you want for your future, not what you're scared of. Don't let the cowards around you control you with fear.
Trump - what his supporters REALLY think
People love living in a echo chamber. DU is ours. It's not AS monolithic as many, but much more than others.
Part of the problem woth echo chambers is that you aren't exposed to new ideas. Another part is that you really don't know what people with contradictory opinions believe - except on a high level.
I try and counter my own echo chambering instincts by visiting places full of people I disagree with. It's refreshing and enlightening. And infuriating.
With all the talk of Trump's anti-Muslim immigration ideas it's probably good to see just exactly what his "base" thinks about his ideas. Maybe they too think he's gone to far.
If you want to know, click this link:
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message3028820/pg1
At 3% in the polls, Jeb Bush in free-fall
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/04/politics/jeb-bush-campaign-free-fall-3-percent/
America is weak.
America is weak, but not because of Obama or Trump or ISIS or even because of the Iraq war...
America is weak because it is so easily scared and manipulated.
And until Americans realise that - like some guy once said -"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" America is at risk...from itself.
Those of us with a brain in our heads and a willingness to fight for America need to start pushing back - hard - at the fear mongering, and the racism and xenophobia, and - most importantly - the fear.
All of those things are being pushed around by two sorts of people:
- cynics who want to manipulate Americans
- cowards
You know that old saying, when you see a guy with a sports car, that, "he's compensating"? Well the same is true about soooo many Americans that project hatred and bigotry and xenophobia and intolerance: They compensate. They act incredibly aggressive and puff out their chests, BECAUSE they're scared.
Stand up to them and make your country strong by pushing back against fear and the cowards and cynics who are foisting it on our society.
Our ability to survive - and thrive - is contingent on our ability to look at the future without fear.
9/11 - uncommon sense
On 9/11, 2001, 2,977 people died.
Bush, who was - if anything - barely elected and a President with no mandate, siezed on 9/11 - like any President would - and went to work trying to do what he thought was appropriate as a response.
The two wars it spawned dragged on and largely helped him be re-elected. It also largely dismantled US citizen's civil liberties and rights to due process, and wreaked god only knows how much damage on the country via tax cuts for the 1%.
Those wars were predicted to top out at about 6 Trillion dollars, but that was before ISIS. Now - who knows.
The implementation of the Patriot Act was supposed to "only" cost, 1 Trillion up through 2006, but again, that's got to be a very low estimate in 2015.
Between all of this, and the endless other chicanery involved when a country goes to war, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 9/11 cost the country close to 10 Trillion dollars, if not more.
And when I say 9/11 I really mean: the reaction to 9/11.
But what of the human cost of the reaction to 9/11?
Well, as far as Americans are concerned, 6866 troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many thousands more have been wounded irreparably - including many that are homeless or who have committed suicide.
So, 9/11 killed less that half - 44% - as many people as the reaction to 9/11 has.
Have we accomplished our goals? Is Iraq no longer a "threat" to American interests? Is Afghanistan now free from the tranny of the Taliban?
Have Islamic extremists been stopped from committing brutal acts of mass terror around the world?
And now, after Paris, we are seeing the same sort of talk, the same sorts of planning to over react and curb freedoms, the same swing to the right and the same nonsensical march towards war.
Apparently we just can't be taught as a species to avoid making the same mistakes time and time again.
And btw: we lose as many Americans at the end of a gun every 33 days as we did on 9/11. We lose as many Americans to cars every 5 weeks as we did on 9/11.
Ask yourself why those deaths are totally fine, and just the cost of doing business, but 9/11 required 10 Trillion dollars, a loss of many freedoms and many thousands more human deaths. The answers aren't great, because they reflect the fragility of humanity.
Wise up folks. Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
The Deep State, Hillary Clinton and fake democracy - NYTimes
Examining Who Runs the United StatesA former C.I.A. officer with experience in Turkey wrote a provocative essay this summer about the “deep state.” The phrase refers to a parallel “secret government” embedded in the military and intelligence services, whose purpose is to provide a check on electoral democracy.
But Turkey wasn’t the target of the essay, written by Philip Giraldi. He was aiming, as his headline declared, at “Deep State America.”
Mr. Giraldi, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, a foreign-policy advocacy group in Washington, called the American deep state of today an “unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes.”
In contrast to Turkey, where Mr. Giraldi said a covert “deep state” had taken root in the security realm, the American deep state of his description consists of visible people like the Clintons and the former C.I.A. director David H. Petraeus, concentrated around New York and Washington, who live at the fertile nexus of government and corporate power: Capitol Hill aides and legislators who cash in as lobbyists; former politicians who earn millions speaking to banks, or landing sinecures with them; technocrats who ricochet between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury Department; billionaire kingmakers dangling political donations; thinkers whose tanks are financed by corporations with a financial stake in their research.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/us/examining-who-runs-the-united-states.html?_r=3&referer=http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2962478/pg1
Deep State America
Democracy is often subverted by special interests operating behind the scenes.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/deep-state-america/
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
Now might be a good time to revisit the idea of 'freedom fries'
Just sayin' like.
Considering the amount that Americans love to bash France. And considering that the worst offenders are politicians who will now be publicly brown-nosing the French in an attempt to make Obama do more militarily in Syria... considering all of that maybe it's time the US permanently renamed French fries, freedom fries. Because if Americans are allowed to show their support for France by eating fast food, well...watch out Syria here we come.
After 9/11... aka Déjà vu
A lot of people are calling the recent Paris terror attacks, "France's 9/11," or even, "Europe's 911," so I think it makes a lot of sense to go back and have a look at how we responded after 9/11 and see what can be learned/avoided/done differently this time around.
The first thing we did is declare war on the perpetuator. Depending on how you look at it, Bush declared war sometime between Sept 12 and Sept 20.
France declared war within 24 hours.
We declared that we'd have to work with some bad people to get the results we wanted.
Today Putin and Assad are being reformed in the media and embraced - again - by the west.
We suspended or discarded many of our civil liberties.
France is already in a state of siege, and god knows what the intelligence and police are doing. Certainly they raided over 100 homes already, installed a curfew and want to extend there "emergency powers" for up to three months... so far.
The rightwing and hyper-militaristic amongst us gained power - and deep public support in America, after 9/11.
The same is happening across Europe today.
----
I could go on, but I think my point is clear: we have learned NOTHING from the mistakes we made after 9/11, have we?
Even on DU people are openly telling the NSA that they can take away their freedom to communicate privately.
I had an Irishman tell me today that, "we need another Bush/Rumsfeld...another strongman" to solve our problems, oblivious to the fact a huge chunk of today's problems were caused by the actions of the neocons in response to 9/11. And that 9/11 was itself largely in response to the behaviour of right-wing hawks in the ME.
We are slipping right back into the militaristic mindset, that we can bomb or kill our way out of these issues, which were themselves caused by trying to bomb and kill our way out of other problems. We can't.
NOW - not in 10 years - is when we need to stop a repeat what happened after 9/11.
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Member since: Mon Oct 5, 2015, 04:03 AMNumber of posts: 3,343