Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Endorses Bernie Sanders

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The Morality of a $15 Minimum ... A Living Wage!

Tweet from Robert Reich:
I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. He’s leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization – a “political revolution,” as he puts it — is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy.

This extraordinary concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the very top imperils all else – our economy, our democracy, the revival of the American middle class, the prospects for the poor and for people of color, the necessity of slowing and reversing climate change, and a sensible foreign policy not influenced by the “military-industrial complex,” as President Dwight Eisenhower once called it. It is the fundamental prerequisite: We have little hope of achieving positive change on any front unless the American people are once again in control.

I have the deepest respect and admiration for Hillary Clinton, and if she wins the Democratic primary I’ll work my heart out to help her become president. But I believe Bernie Sanders is the agent of change this nation so desperately needs.

○ From BooMan’s fp story – Re: Clinton Now on Glide Path to the Nomination

I’ve always been grateful to hold a minority opinion, even in the Democratic Party: from the Vietnam War till today. No anomosity towards Bill or Hillary, just making an honest assessment.

DNC vice chair resigns, endorses Bernie Sanders

Representative Tulsi Gabbard has resigned from her post as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee in order to support Bernie Sanders. She made the announcement on the NBC show Meet the Press.

“I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander in chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment,” she said.

Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran and representative for Hawaii, is the fourth member of Congress to endorse Sanders. She elaborated on her decision on the show: “As a veteran and as a soldier I’ve seen firsthand the true cost of war.

    “I served in a medical unit during my first deployment, where every single day I saw firsthand the very high human cost of that war. I see it in my friends who now, a decade after we’ve come home, are still struggling to get out of a black hole.

    “I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander in chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, exercises good judgment, who looks beyond the consequences, looks at the consequences of the actions they’re looking to take, before they take those actions, so we don’t continue to find ourselves in these failures that have resulted in chaos in the Middle East and so much loss of life.”

Veteran congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard says police should not act like military | UPI – 2014 |

Prophetic words from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967:
“Choice between War and Fighting Poverty at Home”

More below the fold …

Let’s no forget MLK, Jr. … and lonely struggle

Let’s no forget MLK, Jr’s popularity within the AA community when he shifted from pure civil rights
to anti-war and a class based economic critique. The Black Panthers did some of that as well.

by Marie3 on Sun Feb 28th, 2016 at 12:27:02 PM PDT

Who knew that an old VT/NY democratic socialist Jew wouldn’t be popular with SC AA voters?
But with 13% of the SC AA vote, that’s not too shabby considering that:

    A Harris poll conducted after King’s Vietnam speech found that only 25 percent of even
    African Americans supported him in his antiwar turn — “only 9 percent of the public
    at large agreed with his objections to the war.”

    Did anyone else here at the Pond watch the live broadcast of MLK, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech?
    As a kid it was a stretch for me to understand it fully, but it was clear to me that it was important
    and it thrilled me on a deep and profound level.

Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence

Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

by Marie3 on Sun Feb 28th, 2016 at 01:08:16 PM PDT

This speech of MLK has been in my signature line for a number of years:

His eloquent speech ended thus:

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

    Once to every man and nation
    Comes the moment to decide,
    In the strife of truth and falsehood,
    For the good or evil side;
    Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
    Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
    And the choice goes by forever
    Twixt that darkness and that light.

    Though the cause of evil prosper,
    Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
    Though her portion be the scaffold,
    And upon the throne be wrong:
    Yet that scaffold sways the future,
    And behind the dim unknown,
    Standeth God within the shadow
    Keeping watch above his own.
    .

MLK – a visionary with prophetic words. Had the courage to go against the mainstream America. Had wrestled with this decision between loyalty to the president and his conscience. Bullits kill more than just a man: MLK and RFK in 1968. In the 1960s US government inserted fear of the red wave in the America’s, Africa and Southeast Asia: domino theory. Since 9/11 Bush/Cheney/Sharon inserted fear of the black-flag Islam into US foreign policy for self-interest. Creating the movement of another right-wing fascism across the Western world.

Society doesn’t react with mass protest. Why?? There is no place for solidarity on such a large scale. People need to hang on in their lives, family, jobs and low income. High incarceration rates and lacking of universal health care for all. Don’t rock the boat, leave us the status quo. Law enforcement is well equipped to quell protest, subdue the underprivileged and keep the powerful 1% on top. Bill and HRC have done well financially, but can and will they represent the 1% or 47%?

Equal opportunity starts before birth, but quality of primary education is crucial in people’s lives with opportunity to develop one’s talent at college or university level. A lot has changed since MLK, but the “white folks” are always pushing back to reverse equal rights. Wall Street, the banking crisis and the trillion plus expensive march into Baghdad has cost Mainstreet dearly.

○ I Have A Dream- Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. by refinish69 on April 4, 2008

The dream of MLK was shortly relived in the person of senator BHO. He drew the crowds, inserted enthusiasm and hope and the appreciation of AA in America showed on Election and Inauguration Day. Hillary is no Barack!