In a recent dust-up on the post Dems clean up in Virginia, I wrote:
The question is…which Dems won? The centrist Dems or the real ones?
We shall see…
If the centrists won, what we have here is a continuing pendulum swing, nothing more. On every level of government, at least since Bush I, what we are seeing is layers of bipartisan illusion. This inevitably leads to voter disillusionment, which then leads to voting for the only other game in town, the other illusion. On the largest…and thus slowest…scale, Bush I led to the Clinton I illusion, which then led to Bush II. The Bush II illusion led to Obama, and and then the Obama illusion led to Trump.
The only difference now? The pace is picking up. Why? How? Because the strength of the bipartisan, centrist duopoly illusion is fraying. As Bush II…a man whose mind in closer in its weakness to the average voter’s than any other president we have had for a very long time…famously said:
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
Even the most innocent, slow-witted marks eventually wise up to a con game, especially when the con man overplays his hand as seriously as Trump has overplayed it.
Trickle-down economics?
No, trickle-down wising up.
But how deep is that wising up?
Like I said…we’ll see.
Won’t we.
If the left wing of the Dem party can maintain some real traction through 2018/2019…not the best bet in the world, especially if Trump is impeached, resigns or is at least somehow rendered totally powerless, because if that happens the TweedleDeeDems will crow “See??? We won!!!”…but if they do maintain some traction up into the real primary season, maybe I’ll start to believe that things are getting better.
Until then? It’s “TweedleDeeDem and TweedleDeeRatPub,” that long-running situation comedy where the bad guys regularly morph into the good guys and vice-versa.
WWF politics at its best.
Or at its worst, depending on how you look at it.
This occasioned the usual panicked responses from a number of our resident leftinesses, including this exchange:
Lol “real dems.” Two words next to each other that mean nothing. “Real dems” is shorthand for “dems I deem sufficiently pure.” And bullshit. I have two goals when voting: 1. More Democrats 2. Better Democrats. I’m not going to let pursuit of the latter distract from the former.
MaureenDowdsLudes
My response:
So far, the non-pursuit of “sufficiently pure” Dems…in fact, the active DNC discouragement of their success as evidenced by so many sources over the last year or two…has led to the failure of your two professed goals.
1. More Democrats 2. Better Democrats
You also write:
I’m not going to let pursuit of the latter distract from the former.
Great.
Joe Biden…the former Senator from the great state of MBNA…thanks you.
And he’s not alone.
When the DNC’s anti-progressive hustle starts again in earnest with whatever non-centrist Dems dare to raise their heads in search of 2020…if the recent housecleaning of the DNC by getting rid of all Sanders reps with any clout isn’t earnest enough…go ahead.
Vote your conscience.
AG
P.S. The word “conscience” has nothing whatsoever to do with the word “consciousness.”
WTFU.
AG
Which was then answered by MDL:
WTF does Biden have to do with anything?
Not in the Senate, never my senator.
My conscience is clean, mother fucker. Always vote D, NEVER R. NEVER third party.
What did you do in 2016? Sit out and snipe?
GTFU
To which I responded:
Biden is being run as a 2020 possibility by the neocentrist Dems.
What?
You didn’t notice?
You gonna vote Biden?
Feel free.
Never ever vote third party?
Enjoy the swamp.
After the swamp?
The tarpits.
Enjoy.
AG
MLD then kept flailing on about the unlikelihood of Biden running, etc. I guess she doesn’t keep up with the real false news.
Read on for my take about the recent efforts of the neocentrist Dems regarding Biden’s candidacy.
There appears to be some “Run Biden Up the Flagpole and See If Anybody Salutes” action going on from the DNC Dems.
Biden: ‘I regret that I am not president’ but ‘it was the right decision’ for family
Just over two years ago, then-Vice President Joe Biden announced that he would not run to succeed President Barack Obama in the 2016 presidential election. This week, he admitted he regrets that he doesn’t currently occupy the Oval Office given the potential he sees in the United States.
“I regret that I am not president because I think there is so much opportunity,” Biden told Oprah Winfrey in a clip from an OWN Network interview aired exclusively by “Good Morning America” on Thursday. “I think America is so incredibly well-positioned.”
Biden, who served eight years as Obama’s vice president after 36 years in the U.S. Senate, said he did not have second thoughts, however, about the reason why he passed up the opportunity to enter the race.
“I don’t regret the decision I made because it was the right decision for my family,” he said.
When Biden announced in October 2015 that he would not be a candidate in the following year’s Democratic presidential primary, he was less than five months removed from the death of his son Beau, a former Delaware attorney general, due to brain cancer at the age of 46. Only six weeks after Biden’s election to the Senate in 1972, his wife Neila and daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile accident that seriously injured Beau and son Hunter.
The former vice president explained that in order for one to decide to announce whether he or she is running for president, they need to be able to answer two questions.
“One: Do they truly believe they are the most qualified person for that moment? I believed I was,” Biden said. “But, was I prepared to be able to give my whole heart, my whole soul and all my attention to the endeavor?
“I knew I wasn’t.”
Reflecting on the tragedies that have befallen him personally as he wrote his forthcoming book, “Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,” Biden said he recalled a conversation he had with his mother Catherine “Jean” Finnegan Biden just after the deaths of his wife and daughter in which she encouraged him to persevere.
“She said, ‘Joey grab my hand. … Out of everything horrible, something good will come if you look hard enough for it,'” he told Winfrey. “That was my mother’s notion. We were taught just to get up. When you get knocked down, just get up and move forward.”
Many of those early lessons came during Biden’s childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the blue-collar northeastern Pennsylvania city he would reference with frequency while on the campaign trail in 2008 and 2012. Winfrey noted that in those days, Biden was known as “a boy with a vision” who knew from a young age the kind of person he wanted to grow up to be. Asked if he fulfilled his vision, Biden said yes, but said it wasn’t a matter of his professional achievements.
“I wanted to live up to my parent’s expectations and I wanted to be that person that met my mother’s standard, being defined by my courage,” he said. “I wanted to be that person who, no matter what happened, just got back up and kept going. I wanted to be that person who was there and loyal to people who were loyal to him.”
—snip—
Since leaving the vice president’s office, Biden has not shied away from criticizing President Donald Trump, in particular his handling of the aftermath of a white nationalist rally in Virginia in August and his efforts at diplomacy. In the final month of last year’s presidential campaign, Biden remarked that he wished he “could take Trump behind the gym,” insinuating he wanted to fight the real estate mogul over then-recently revealed comments from 2005 in which he boasted of sexually assaulting women.
—snip—
I particularly note the phrase “In the final month of last year’s presidential campaign, Biden remarked that he wished he “could take Trump behind the gym,” insinuating he wanted to fight the real estate mogul over then-recently revealed comments from 2005 in which he boasted of sexually assaulting women.”
The pros know what works. The good ones do, anyway.
As I wrote in an earlier comment here:
…in a contest with a testosterone-poisoned freak like Trump, a strong man who looks quite capable of smacking Trump in the mouth if he overstepped his boundaries would have a better chance than did HRC.
Combine this with Donna Brazile’s recent claim that she considered replacing HRC with a Biden/Booker slate when HRC’s health became a real issue…true or false, it doesn’t matter because it’s all a clickbait experiment at this point… and I think Biden’s seriously considering running in 2020
Watch…
AG
He has a book to sell. (Who buys and who reads these self-serving historical distortions?) First time in forty-four years that he hasn’t had a Senate/VP government paycheck.
Saw where Joe and Hillary are independently trying to take credit for Tuesday’s election results. Odd — don’t recall Gore doing that in 2001 when the wins were slightly better as that year Republicans were ousted in NJ, NY, and VA., but Gore was handicapped because the party (then Clinton BFF McAuliffe as DNC chair) made it clear that Gore was persona non grata. (A rematch — Gore v. Bush — in 2004 was possibly the only time in over a hundred years when it wasn’t a dumb idea. Good thing that enough insider Democrats blocked that dumb idea in 1932.)
This little bit from Joe seems to confirm my guess that Obama didn’t share his ’08 deal with him: if Hillary ran in ’16, Obama would support her.
Could 2020 end up being more bizarre than ’16 with two septuagenarians, peas in a pod mud-wrestling for the nomination crown? That would leave a huge opening for a young and well-qualified successor to Sanders.
Max Blumenthal does history a la Ken Burns:
Who in their right mind dismisses and makes fun of foreign efforts to subvert our elections? In what sense is such a stand progressive or in any way helpful. No one is claiming we don’t have a history of racism or injustice. That’s completely separate and apart from the Russian government’s clear efforts to sew divisions and get Trump elected. If you think that’s a good thing, there’s no possible conversation we can have because I think you’re either insane or not very bright.
The same people that scoffed at the WMD hoax. The ones that have been around long enough to have been impacted by the Vietnam War that was based on the hoax of the Gulf of Tonkin alleged attack and the domino theory hoax which was part of the overall Cold War and the propaganda we were subjected to. The ones that learned from that. The ones that observed in real time the revelation evolution of a real political scandal — Watergate. The ones that weren’t suckered by Reagan’s “Contra freedom fighters.” The ones that had no use for Poppy’s Iraq adventure. The ones that know our history and that of other countries that have been on the world stage for the past hundred years. That’s who.
Why are you just fine with overt and indisputable US interference in the elections of too many countries to bother naming them? (That’s when we’re not overthrowing their governments and installing US puppet regimes.) Yet you’re outraged over allegations of 2016 US election interference without being able to 1) cite actual evidence of Russia activities and 2) how that something, something that could possibly have been done by Russia effected any change in the election outcome. How is it possible that a $100,000 in Facebook ads — few had any political content at all and near half of which never ran before the election — overwhelmed a billion dollar campaign that also near 90% of the MSM on board.
Ms. Electible got one of her preferred Mr. Unelectibles to run against in the general. And she lost because in three states she sucked worse than Mr. Unelectible. And you’re pissed at the world instead of facing the truth neither was fit for the office.
You have no idea what I’m outraged by. Just finished posting a comment in response to another in Booman’s latest front-page article in which I call out the U.S. for its hypocrisy in backing countless tin horn dictators and fascists throughout the world.
As I see it, Marie, your problem is a failure to distinguish. Yes, there’s blood on the hands of all who have held power. But some have been far worse than others. Plus, the Russian efforts to place a stooge in the White House succeeded, rendering us not all that much different the banana republics we’ve controlled and manipulated since the Monroe Doctrine. If you don’t think that makes the world a more dangerous place, then there’s nothing for us to talk about.
I suffer no illusions about our country. I get that our foreign policy has been cynical and self serving pretty much always. But I believe it was worse under, say, Nixon and Reagan than it was under Carter. Yes, there are degrees of evil. I’ve also witnessed Obama’s unsuccessful and inconsistent efforts to turn a corner. And I know that the decisions Donald Trump makes are both unethical and uninformed. If it were up to him, our foreign policy would be written in Moscow.
I’ve no patience for those so cynical they’re ready to pull the chain on the American experiment which, for all its flaws, which are certainly numerous, has nevertheless carried forward an ideal which has had a positive impact on the world. The self governance we’ve seen in many places throughout the world began here. We’ve made a hash of foreign policy but we’ve done well in terms of creating a far more just society here at home than existed when our nation was founded. In other words, I’m not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s much that’s wrong with our country but there’s also much that has been right. We need to work to increase the good and diminish the bad.
The cynicism you espouse is what prevented us from getting a President Hillary and the first liberal Supreme Court in 50 years. Would that have been perfect? Not even close. But, yes, far better than what we have now.
Marie:
Good summary. True a year ago, true today. Still no evidence. Just constant repetitions here and in the msm of the truth of the unsubstantiated IC assertions. Dems and libs used to be rightly skeptical of MSM and IC pronouncements. No longer. They swallow it whole w/o reservation, much as unsophisticated conservatives sit passively and swallow the constant bilge offered by Fox.
Outstanding skeptics like Rbt Parry, Stephen Cohen, Max Blumenthal and others — they are ignored, lightly dismissed as somehow “mistaken”, with no specific rebuttals offered.
That would be a definite improvement. For a long time, our FP has largely been driven by the Deep State — and how has that worked out? One regime change foreign venture after another. US military all over the world, in the dangerous ME and even in Africa (ferchrissakes, in 53 of the 54 countries there!). Meanwhile Putin has been trying for years to get us to work with them on fighting terrorism ISIS/AQ in a full partnership as with WW2. He extends a hopeful hand, we give back the clenched fist. And we act in eastern Europe w Nato and in the Ukraine and with the intel-driven Russiagate as if we want to go to war with them. Simply crazy.
And don’t fool yourself about Hillary: had she won, she likely would have moved quickly to implement that no-fly zone in Syria she often vigorously promoted in the campaign. We would have created a Cuban Missile Crisis situation in her first 6 months. The world at the brink.
Of course, under Donald’s erratic and inconsistent FP, things are mostly getting worse, following 8 yrs of Obama’s mostly caving in to the Deep State and badly deteriorated relations with the Russians, which he didn’t seem too concerned about. We had our guy for 8 yrs in the Oval, with little in FP progress to show for it as the world situation went south. Thanks for that, Barack. Enjoy your vacationing and golfing and counting the millions from your book deal and speeches.
You need to believe that our IC and the news reported about Russian hacking in the election was all a lie – and continuously so since at least 2015. I am not sure what you want for proof? Maybe leave a picture of Putin behind? I understand your aversion to joining the tribe, but this is my country too and it strikes me as offensive that after a years of alleged hacking that you choose to ignore it. Maybe we will one day discover it was all a lie but that is increasingly unlikely. Maybe Hillary simply hacked herself. I choose to believe our IC community over Russian denials and will behave accordingly until proven otherwise.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie too, and it took decades before that was revealed for the lie it always was. Iraq and Saddarn with alleged wmd — another lie, though it took a few years for the non-existence of wmd’s to be fully acknowledged to the satisfaction of most. It just takes a willing, lazy, penetrated and corrupted MSM to keep the secret intact for years. And maybe a public, including suddenly unskeptical libs and Dems, to consciously not look outside of the suspect MSM to find the truth.
Proof? I’ve consistently said here for the past year: show me the friggin evidence so it can be evaluated, especially by independent tech experts. Kennedy showed the world the evidence in 1962 despite the fact it came from top secret CIA sources. Today, suddenly “our IC” (no- it’s really the IC’s IC … I never voted for them) must be believed w/o evidence because to actually show it might compromise sensitive blah blah blah and methods. Sure. What a convenient excuse.
As to whom to believe, it’s not quite as simplistically either Us the Good Guys or the Bad Russkies. How about the ex-intel experts at VIPS (published at ConsortiumNews) who have said for months it’s most likely an insider leak not a hack? In depth and often technical analysis rebutting the Deep State unsubstantiated stuff which you swallow whole.
“Our” IC was, is and probably always will be involved heavily in deception and in furthering their own malign agenda. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.
I choose not to wear that tin foil hat of yours unless there is something more substantial. It is too lonely believing everything is a conspiracy committed by our own government. So, for now, the Ruskies done it, just like they took Crimea or was that little green men? I will join in when I can make sense of anything else.
True, if you ignore, or leave out what I actually said in response, which you so courageously did here.
I’ll paraphrase: “Name one “neocentrist” Dem pushing Biden 2020.” “I dare you. I double dare you.”
The best you could burp up was “Donna Brazile.”
Even here you can’t name a single “neocentrist dem” pushing Biden for 2020. Mainly because “neocentrist” isn’t really a thing, but whatever.
The only “neo-anything” I see pushing Biden for 2020 are you, and Joe Biden.
Second hit for neocentrism that comes up in Google is for a fandom site that is set sometime in the future. Otherwise there is an editorial advocating for a neo-centrist foreign policy in Politico (it’s four years old), and then the Wikipedia entry for radical centrism is at the top of the list. In old opinion piece from back in 2004 also pops up. Pickings are fairly slim. Smart money is on neocentrism not being a thing except in the world of potentially bad fanfic.
the Obama adminn which iirc Biden was #2 –
The Guardian – UK prosecutors admit destroying key emails in Julian Assange case
So much for all the claims that Assange was paranoid.
Paranoid? Maybe, maybe not. Asshole? Most definitely.
Let’s add this here as well:
Perhaps the DNC, Obama, and Clinton “analytics” should calculate how many votes the money from the rich dudes buy them and compare it with how many votes they lose for taking that money.
Chantal and Stephen J. Cloobeck
Stephen Cloobeck, the chair and founder of Las Vegas-based Diamond Resorts International, played a round of golf with President Barack Obama, Yankees legend Derek Jeter and Las Vegas businessman Brian Greenspun at Shadow Creek Golf Course. Stephen, a Democratic political donor, met with the president last spring to talk about reducing wait times at U.S. airports to boost the tourism industry.
Cloobeck got rich off timeshares. Seriously. Check it out. So he’s as scummy as they come. Good riddance to that dirtbag.
This is clearly the kind of dick wad we need to repudiate. If he puts his money on the other side, so be it. Democrats need to go with small donations over fat cats while working to change the Supreme Court and the laws of the land so that money can be removed from politics.
Tragically we had our chance to get a liberal court for the first time in 50 years and we allowed inter-party rivalry to divide us and let it slip away. Talk about losing sight of the big picture!
Tragically we had our chance to get a liberal court for the first time in 50 years and we allowed inter-party rivalry to divide us and let it slip away.
You forget something. Hillary won the popular vote and that still didn’t help flip the Senate back to the Democrats. So even if HRC had won, I doubt Yertle the Turtle would have stopped obstructing judicial nominations.
I wouldn’t doubt he’s now seriously leaning towards running, and if so probably will run fairly strong in the primaries, ahead of conspiracist Cory Booker and Big Banking’s friend Kamala Harris. In fact, as I contemplate the ObamaLite candidacy of the latter two, Biden in comparison doesn’t look too bad. He would probably be far more forceful and credible in aggressively taking it to Trump, especially in basic middle/working-class economic issues vs Trump tax cuts for the rich and powerful.
He would still likely have to get past top-tier candidates Bernie, Liz Warren and/or Kirsten Gillibrand. Frankly, if KG can add some more courageous votes in the next few years, like her recent vote against the NDAA budget, I might prefer her, assuming Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t run.
If you think Biden’s policy record and ideologies are superior to Booker and Harris, you don’t know his record and ideologies very well.
And your optimism on how strongly he would run flies in the face of the two POTUS campaigns Joe did run, which were each miserable failures.
It is highly noticeable that you, a Putin/Russia apologist, go out of your way to attack the two most frequently mentioned potential Democratic Party POTUS candidates who are African-American, though.
You may not get paid by Russian Federation interests, but you behave as if you do.
And you may not get paid by the corporate interests that control the centrist DNC, but you behave as if you do.
I don’t know much about Harris yet, but I have worked in Newark quite a bit over the last 6 years or so…mostly teaching jazz playing to primarily African-American kids from Newark, just to dislodge your “You’re a racist” kneejerk bullshit before it careens out of whatever you use to think with…and Booker is a political analogue to the perennial ambulance chasing lawyer. That’s why he fits in so well with the current rulers of the DNC. He will do anything to promote himself. No class whatsoever. He makes Obama look like Gandhi.
AG
Well put. Slick and not to be trusted as I see him. Not so much a politician’s politician as he is a little too politician-y in his slickness and seeming insincerity. Obama scored much better in the style/sincerity depts and so was probably far more of a natural politician than the Bookster.
Though I do hope he runs on his bizarre “Conspiracy of Love” theme, if only so I can have an occasional good laugh during the never-ending primary season.
what does teaching jazz have to do with being racist or not?
Not a damn thing. Been my experience that people who name check all the “insert identity here” they know/serve/work with, before launching into a take down of an individual of said identity, are racist. May not be the case here tho, but usually.
Who said anything about their records? A candidate can be superior, if just ever so slightly, for other reasons. I suggested one. But records — the ObamaLite twins have a rather thin one, at least at the national level, so not much to comment on at this point.
As for Biden’s prior runs, I was there and am quite familiar with them. Even cited his first run in another post as an embarrassing blot on his resume that could potentially be recycled against him. But even with that, and some signs of age, he still looks stronger, and the failed runs if learned from can strengthen his candidacy.
As to attacking the ObamaLite entries, my tagline clearly indicates I’m rather skeptical of nearly all pols, especially these days in the era of bought-and-paid-for corporate centrist Dems and McCartyite red-baiting Dems, people you are clearly quite comfortable with. But I wasn’t aware that a couple of potentials are automatically immune from criticism just because of the color of their skin. That sounds rather racist in itself. Congratulations.
Ideologies? All 3 occupy the corporate center-left, like most Dems these days, though to his credit as a pol, Biden, having mostly overcome his unfortunate MBNA past, has managed to become a far more credible voice for the working class, a group which will be important for Dem chances for the WH in 2020.
Now re Putin/Russia, if you think you’ve sussed out in your red-hunting an actual Kremlin paid tool, I suggest you run along and contact your handler at the Centrist Intelligence Agency, or call your fellow corporatists at the Democratic National Centrist committee, or perhaps call Jake Tapper’s special toll-free-for-informants line at Corporatist News Network.
Wank away, Putin acolyte.
Really? Is that all you’ve got!!!???
And we waste time wondering why the Democratic Party is the shambling wreck that it is.
It’s its centrist constituency.
Weak.
AG
I’d add that you and your associates are keeping some very questionable company on today of all days:
“TRUMP/BRODIE/AG/MARIE3: He said he didn’t meddle. He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. But I just asked him again, and he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they’re saying he did. And he said —
REPORTER/BOOMAN TRIBUNE COMMUNITY MEMBER: Do you believe him?
TRUMP/BRODIE/AG/MARIE3: Well, look, I can’t stand there and argue with him. I’d rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I’d rather have him — you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing about whether or not — because that whole thing was set up by the Democrats.
I mean, they ought to look at Podesta. They ought to look at all of the things that they’ve done with the phony dossier. Those are the big events. Those are the big events.
But Putin said he did not do what they said he did. And, you know, there are those that say, if he did do it, he wouldn’t have gotten caught, all right? Which is a very interesting statement. But we have a — you know, we have a good feeling toward getting things done.
…
TRUMP/BRODIE/AG/MARIE3: He just — every time he sees me, he says, “I didn’t do that.” And I believe — I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, “I didn’t do that.” I think he’s very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth.
Don’t forget, all he said is he never did that, he didn’t do that. I think he’s very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country. Because again, if we had a relationship with Russia, North Korea — which is our single biggest problem right now — North Korea, it would be helped a lot. I think I’m doing very well with respect to China. They’ve cut off financing; they’ve cut off bank lines; they’ve cut off lots of oil and lots of other things, lots of trade. And it’s having a big impact. But Russia, on the other hand, may be making up the difference. And if they are, that’s not a good thing.
So having a relationship with Russia would be a great thing — not a good thing — it would be a great thing, especially as it relates to North Korea.
And I’ll say this, Hillary had her stupid reset button that she spelled the word wrong, but she doesn’t have what it takes to have that kind of a relationship where you could call or you could do something and they would pull back from North Korea, or they’d pull back from Syria, or maybe pull back from Ukraine. I mean, if we could solve the Ukraine problem —
But this is really an artificial barrier that’s put in front of us for solving problems with Russia, and he says that very strongly. He really seems to be insulted by it, and he says he didn’t do it. So —
REPORTER/BOOMAN TRIBUNE COMMUNITY MEMBER: (Inaudible) do you believe him —
TRUMP/BRODIE/AG/MARIE3: Excuse me?
REPORTER/BOOMAN TRIBUNE COMMUNITY MEMBER: Even if he (inaudible) one-on-one, do you believe him?
TRUMP/BRODIE/AG/MARIE3: I think that he is very, very strong in the fact that he didn’t do it. And then you look, and you look at what’s going on with Podesta, and you look at what’s going on with the server from the D.N.C. and why didn’t the F.B.I. take it, why did they leave it, why did a third party look at the server and not the FBI — if you look at all of this stuff, and you say, what’s going on here?
And then you hear it’s 17 agencies. Well, it’s three. And one is Brennan and one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks.
So you look at it — I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.
So you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that. Now, you’re not going to get into an argument. You’re going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.”
Scott’s initial response to this transcript is worth noting:
“The most charitable interpretation of these remarks is that Trump understands that there are areas where US-Russian cooperation is desirable, but is also an complete idiot. What is the least charitable interpretation? Trump remains frustrated that domestic pressures preclude him from pursuing a grand bargain with Moscow–of the kind that his campaign suggested would be forthcoming in return for Russian election assistance.”
It’s remarkable that you all want to present yourself as The Last Honest Liberals while you associate yourself with two of the most notorious illiberal political leaders in the world on an issue where the foundations of your positions are remarkably weak. Yet you persist oh so angrily.
When you don’t have the facts on your side, pound the table.
That’s much better, CFDJ. Thank you. I just knew you had it in you!!!
Yes, because a number of us do not agree with your version of the world, we are pro-Putin, pro-Trump apologists.
A good measure of how far right the Democratic Party has drifted is that many of its howling so-called centrist adherents use arguments that…with a slight change of names…could very easily be attributed to Joe McCarthy.
Nice.
This is how the Party ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Y’all have convinced me.
I am out of NYC at the moment, but as soon as I get back I am going to find a way to work for Bernie Sanders. You people are beyond belief.
Read this and weep, if you still remember how to cry:
There it is.
Deal with it….and not by throwing ridiculous aspersions of pro-Putin, pro-Trump sentiments around.
As I said, I am going to work for Sanders, even if it means that eventually he will be forced to split from the party and start a new one…an action that would most likely doom the Democratic Party to total defeat. If that happens, so be it. I am through dealing with yellow dogs. (Google “yellow dog democrat definition” for the link to the definition below).) I do not want that to happen, but if it is the only way to tear the blinders from the eyes of so many well-meaning Democrats and other U.S. citizens, so be it. We need some sort of revolution here, not another bout of weak-kneed moderates getting their asses kicked by the vicious corporate interests that now control both parties..
Look in the mirror, neocentrists. And then wake the fuck up before your beloved party is so far ’round the coporate bend that it is totally unsalvageable.
If of course that hasn’t happened already.
How will we know if it’s aleady too late?
We’ll know by the treatment that Bernie Sanders and his supporters get over the next year or so.
So far? After the recent DNC centrist putsch?
Things aren’t looking very good.
Are they.
AG
You’ve become a right wing nut. You stink of bad faith.
Yes. I must be a right-wing nut because I am so disgusted with what the Democratic Party has become that i am going to go work for Bernie Sanders.
I guess Sanders must be some kind of right-wing plant in your twisted little world.
Go away.
AG
No.
You’re a right wing nut because you have frequently come to this community to state your opposition to Federal civil rights and voting rights protections.
You’re a right wing nut because you’ve said explicitly that you don’t support unemployment insurance.
You’re a right wing nut because your support for the other Federal social welfare programs is very much in doubt given that you are an evangelist for Ron Paul, who said as recently as 2011 that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are unconstitutional and associated the Supreme Court’s declaration that they are constitutional to the Court’s pre-Civil War declarations defending slavery.
You’re a right wing nut because you have expressed broad support for the statements and positions of Cliven Bundy.
You’re a right wing nut because you post photographs and videos which are posted nearly exclusively on right wing nutcase websites.
You’re a right wing nut because you posted a garish photograph here of a lynching which in no way supported a progressive/liberal rhetorical point. It’s the sort of thing a right wing nut does on social media when they have the desire to offend people who are not right wing nuts.
You’re a right wing nut because you came to this progressive community over and over again to organize voters against Clinton from August to November 2016, which given the binary choice the voters had in the general election displayed your approval for the candidate who ran on a pure sexist, racist, right wing nut platform.
You’re a right wing nut because you express contempt for the vast majority of liberals and progressives.
If you consider people like yourself and the other kneejerkers on this site to be to “the vast majority of liberals and progressives,” then I am certainly in total disagreement with you. You and your representatives have for the last 25+ years totally sold the Democratic Party down the river to corporate interests that do not have the welfare of the country or its citizens as their primary goal.
I am to the left of you, not the right. At the very least, in terms of antiwar foreign policy the Pauls were to the left of you as well. They also were anti-multinational corporations. If you need to believe that they were racist in order to further demonize them, that’s your business, not mine. The absolutely loathsome thread of comments here on Rand Paul’s recent injuries proves that you have many compatriots on this site.
Enjoy them now.
You are all soon to be old news no matter in which direction the ship of state sails.
AG
We note that you effectively admit to the many regressive policy positions and offers of rhetorical support you have declared here that I summarize in my previous post. Thanks for accepting that these are indeed your domestic policy views.
I’m afraid that these positions of yours place you far, far, far to the right of me, and to the right of every single person in this community.
I have a problem believing that you will actually go out to organize in public to achieve the domestic policy goals of the Bernie movement. I think you’re an online braggart, not an effective political organizer.
At the best, if you do go out in public to organize for Our Revolution and against the Democratic Party, you will be doing so with dishonest motives. By your own declarations and admissions, you stand forthrightly in opposition to the Federal government power and policies that Bernie and his movement wish to achieve.
At the worst, if you do go out in public to organize for Our Revolution and against the Democratic Party, you will be doing so with the motive to hurt the liberal/progressive movement in the United States. But that’s exactly what your hero Ron Paul has openly tried to do for many decades; you would be doing his bidding if this were your motivation for organizing progressive against progressive.
Yep. And the latest McCarthyite adventuring was when the Dems on the senate committee grilled execs from Facebook, Twitter and Google over allegedly allowing Russian propaganda on their sites, especially from RT and Sputnik. Mere assertions w/o evidence, and in the case of Facebook, ridiculous charges over $100k spent on ads, most of which didn’t run until after the election, most of the rest probably scrolled past or seen by very few. Most congressional Dems and GOPers, and Jeff Sessions are now in the business of censorship. Among other censorship endeavors, RT is now being forced to register as a foreign agent. There will be payback from abroad soon.
And guilt by association was also a tactic Tailgunner Joe excelled at. Our own Centerfieldgunner Joe seems to want to play that game too, but doesn’t seem to recognize that in the current context it could easily be flipped against his side. As with the many GOP RWers and neocon nuts, including William “Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts or Billy” Kristol, the McCain Twins John and Lindsay, former KS RWNJ congressman and current DCI Mike Pompeo, warmonger neonut Max Boot, and nearly all the corrupted and stupid Beltway Establishment who vigorously repeat the Russiagate nonsense.
Meanwhile I take solace in not being entirely alone on this one, with a couple of good posters here, and one or two dozen courageous reporters, bloggers and scholars, among them Green Glennwald, Max Blumenthal, Patrick Lawrence, Rbt Parry, the VIPS group of ex-intel specialists, Stephen Cohen, and others at ConsortiumNews, Counterpunch, and other indie sites.
How many times do I have to state that IMO Trump is a loathsome, ignorant, fat fuck for you to get that into your wee noggin?
On this matter, I’m completely in line with Duncan:
And like GG, am astounded by the simplistic, black and white, ten year old thinking of people like you:
Adults not blinded by partisan rot, either Democratic or Republican, can rationally see that both sides of that coin are ersatz.
Having one side of a coin like this be ersatz and the other side not ersatz is impossible. In the case of an ersatz coin, one is forever trapped in a two dimensional world, much as are the vast majority of the U.S. voters and any number of kneejerk Dems on this site. Plus of course , when one tries to use it as currency, it will bounce.
Only a three sided coin will do.
We need a new party.
AG
Or maybe just a second party. Looks like the Dems have merged with the GOP to form one Deep State Party with two wings for a few domestic matters.
Long gone are the days of Frank Church, Gary Hart and even GOPer Richard Schweiker who were courageous enough to at least try to hold our precious honorable IC to account.
Bollocks!
We simply don’t share your paranoia of Russia/Russians and recognize that such paranoia has been promulgated through USG/capitalists for most of the past hundred years since Russia tossed out it monarchy.
Here are four more Democrats that you can label as racist, misogynist, Trump/Putin dupes as your little Dem-mobile continues throwing the rationalists under the bus:
RoseAnn DeMoro is not a leader to bring the progressive movement together. Heck, she’s proving unable to hold California’s best single payer activists together in coalition this year.
And there’s also this gem of a political judgment from January:
“As Washington grapples with health care policy again, the head of the 185,000-member National Nurses United is turning her attention to a seemingly unlikely advocate for a single-payer system. “The one I’m counting on the most is Trump,” RoseAnn DeMoro said…
…DeMoro says that while Democrats like Schumer and Pelosi continue to pound Trump, they have abandoned the possibility of a single-payer system as a means of meeting the needs of working class Americans. And that’s why, she says, it would be “the greatest embarrassment to both of those parties” if Trump achieved single-payer. “I would love to see that one,” she said.
“People say he agrees with the last person he listens to,” DeMoro said of Trump. On the issue of health care, she said, “I’m hoping I’m the last person he listens to.”
RoseAnn was extraordinarily naive and self-absorbed to believe the President would bring in an ultra-strident female Labor leader and allow her to write and lead his health care reform policies. It was in line with the flawed observations and judgments she has held for quite a while now. And she is often fast and loose with the facts as well.
Her strategies and rhetoric are not succeeding. White hot hatred and openly expressed hostility for people in your own movement fails to inspire large groups of people to work together in durable coalitions which succeed in meeting their stated goals.
We need to work together to beat this horrible President and his movement.
>>We need to work together to beat this horrible President and his movement.
you’ve said something here that I agree with.
How does “we need to work together” mesh with your hatred for everyone to your left? Who are you willing to work together with? Those of us who you spend every day here insulting?
I’m plenty to the left. I’ll dispute you all day on that claim.
The disputes I’m engaging in with some community members are not about levels of liberalism. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that the most divisive community member here has a large number of policy beliefs which are very right wing.
What I’m concerning myself with here are community members who appear to me to be divisive in ways which are enormously counterproductive to their claimed policy aims.
We’re much worse off with Trump and the Republican Congress than we would have been had the last election gone the other way. As disappointing as the Democratic Party leadership can be at times, it’s far, far superior to the Republicans. Incredibly, a few community members wish to dispute that fact, even with the manifest horrors of this Administration and movement. It’s false, it’s dispiriting, and it’s hurting our ability to win elections when people make factual claims which are not true and make personal characterizations which attempt to convince voters that Democratic Party candidates are broadly unworthy of support.
Because let’s face it, that’s the case some community members are making here. And, again, it’s harmful to their own claimed policy preferences.
Well, you and Duncan and Glenn and others are quite effectively evading the point which is staring us in the face this weekend.
The President of the United States is choosing, at the least, to place Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation on equal footing with the internal and external security agencies of the United States. In the transcript of the press conference. he’s doing more than placing Putin/Russia on equal footing; he’s delusionally taking their side in the dispute! That’s remarkable, and terrifically destructive to our internal and external security.
The level of dishonest evasion you’re all displaying in your attempts to obscure this important subject is problematic. Do you want to support the work of regressive foreign governments and regressive foreign interests to divide the progressive community in the United States? Are you willing to entertain the notion that it is in the interest of illiberals in other nations to specifically divide the liberal movement in the most powerful liberal democracy in the world?
There is no identified massive social media movement which is clearly intended to divide the United States’ conservative/illiberal movement and Republican Party. That’s worth noting.
And I believe you are honestly expressing your view that Trump is “a loathsome, ignorant fat fuck”, but in your previous comments here you have supported nearly every idea he expressed in that transcript. That’s also worth noting.
Among the things propaganda does to people is that it prevents the building of powerful coalitions by getting people to feel personal animus for each other and our governments by mixing fact and fiction to prevent people from working in coalition to gain the electoral power to achieve liberal/progressive policies.
Sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
Sleep with yellow dogs, you wake up with…flaws, at the very least.
WTFU folks.
You are being had!!!
AG
Man, this tread turned dark in a hurry.
A few things:
I’m a dude. If you must mis-characterize my comments, at least get my gender right.
The premise of your post is “DNC dems are kicking the tires on Biden.” You’ve yet to provide any evidence of this.
Referring to anything going on now as “McCarthyism” is an insult to the many people who actually suffered during the time of actual McCarthyism.
Referring to anything going on now as “red-baiting” is just fucking stupid. Who are the “reds?” Vietnam? Cuba? China? Who?
Good on AG for going to “work” for Sanders. I am sure Bernie is thrilled.
Sanders can’t break from the party as he isn’t a member of the party.
Again, Fucking Biden. Dude ran (sort of) in 88. Ran again in 2008. Didn’t appear to learn shit in those 20 years. I’m sure another decade isn’t going to help him any. Maybe he can hang around at least thru New Hampshire.
Blind worship of Glenn isn’t so smart.
Bob Parry is bad ass, his reporting on Iran-Contra was flawless.