America Won't Vote For A Socialist But Accepts Fascism

[Yallow]

Our government is in bed with powerful corporations, everywhere you turn.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/20/1452457/-Time-to-pull-out-again-The-14-Points-of-Fascism

We are already a fascist nation 100%. Our vote is almost meaningless. Just ask Don Siegelman, Kathleen Harris, Al Gore, or Ken Blackwell.

Try the Fascist 5 on the Supreme Court.

Why have an election when the loser can sue, and the Supreme Court can just appoint a different winner.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Al Gore fucked that election up.

He made so many missteps in that election, from choosing Lieberman as his running mate, to losing his home state. He could have carried TN, I think, if he had tried harder. That alone would have won the election. But the worst thing he did was accept the SCOTUS verdict. He should have loudly proclaimed that the Court had no business being involved in the election in the first place. The SCOTUS now has a precedent for deciding Presidential elections, thanks to Al Gore, and it's totally unconstitutional.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

4. Actually, the SCOTUS stated it will never do what it did....

.....in 2000 again. Which in a way shows how even more fucked up and shady it was.

But I don't care. We know Gore really won Florida. Lieberman did help him carry Florida, although he could have done that with Bob Graham instead.

[former9thward]

7. The SC never said that.

An urban legend at best. A group of newspapers, including those who endorsed Gore such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, looked at all the ballots cast in FL in 2000. They determined Bush won.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-04-03-floridamain.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/04/florida.recount.01/

Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?pagewanted=all

[JanMichael]

19. without including the purge it is meaningless. then add in chads and whammy the fix was on. nt

[former9thward]

30. Right the newspapers who endorsed Gore were part of the "fix".

Ok. whatever gets you thru the day...

[JanMichael]

45. making up shit must be your way to get a chubby. no the fix was the purge.

try reading battleground florida by lance de haven smith. maybe your fantasy will deflate some.

[former9thward]

46. I linked to facts.

You linked to nothing.

[KingCharlemagne]

20. You are distorting or only partially presenting the truth. The

NY Times article spells out that a statewide recount of ALL disputed ballots might have gone to Gore. Alas, the principle of one person, one vote was overthrown by a band of Brooks Brothers Brownshirts with an assist from SCOTUS and Gore's unwillingness to trigger a constitutional crisis by refusing to concede.

[former9thward]

29. The only person denying reality is you.

The newspapers looked at all the ballots. You looked at none. It was Gore who did not want a recount of all the ballots. He just wanted a recount of ballots in counties where he thought he could pick up votes. Forget that?

[KingCharlemagne]

37. Did you read the FULL NY Times article from which you

Selectively excerpt? About 2-3 paragraphs beneath your excerpt, the article says exactly what I represent here.

[former9thward]

41. Gore never asked for a full state recount.

He did not want one. Only in countries where he was getting a large amount of votes. I notice you did not excerpt anything. Because a full reading of that article and the other ones I linked to disprove your speculative theories about how Gore "might have won" FL.

Any election observer, who is not ultra partisan, knows that a 534 vote victory in a state the size of FL could be recounted endlessly and different results would occur every time. No one can ever know who really won FL. But the idea the SC stole the election was disproved by the newspaper count.

[KingCharlemagne]

43. sorry, I am on a tablet without a detachable keyboard or mouse. It makes copying and pasting a real

PITA. I actually agree with you that Gore to his discredit did nor ask for a full statewide recount. Had he done so from the get-go, the entire results might have changed, not to mention the argument before SCOTUS, which hinged on some iteration of 'due process,' IIRC. Bush could hardly object on due process grounds to a full statewide recount.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. What was the other choice? Oh yes, taking up arms

were you willing to die?

Yes, I mean it in exactly that way.

Al Gore even hinted at that in his concession speech. I suggest you read it very slowly and carefully.

By the way, if the felon list was not shall we say cleansed by Harris, Al Gore would have carried Florida. In fact he did. according to the News Consortion review of the data. This came out on a certain September morning. If you have no idea what I am taking about, well two towers came down in NYC that morning. Another plane crashed against the Pentagon and a third one crashed in a field.

Have you ever wondered why that outfit is gone and exit polls are a joke anymore?

I know, this requires more than just taking things at face value.

[LuvNewcastle]

15. You think it was a total coup?

I've considered that, but didn't really believe it. I think that if Gore hadn't conceded, the count would have went on. It's possible that we had a coup in that election; anything's possible. However, I could never say so for sure. If you're sure, please share the reason(s) why.

I know about Harris's purging of the voter rolls as well. Greg Palast explained it all years ago, although his book was largely ignored. I don't think Gore would have needed FL if he had won TN, however. TN would have gotten him the 270 he needed without winning FL, even though he did legitimately win FL.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Yes (qualified), and Gore did what he needed to do to avoid bloodshed

Yes, this piece appeared on Sep 12, and it shows several scenarios

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?pagewanted=all

It is kind of a fluffy thing. Consortium News was owned by MEDIA organizations, and it went away after 2002 when it again fell off script, They were also responsible for the polling that showed Gore should have won florida. They had never been wrong.

in 2004 media hired Mitofsky, that also showed Kerry winning in OH. Mitofsky does a lot of the polling in Mexico by the way. The study that Conyers did in 2004 appeared in full of all places in excelsior, a Mexico city paper, not the NYT. That was the last time Mitofsky was hired and after that all exit polls are suspect.

We have been seeing quite a bit of manipulation of the vote at the very least. Can it legally be called a coup? Nope, but it is technical, but it gets close enough where when historians look back at this period. this election of 2000 will have the same reputation as that of Rutherford B Hayes, and 2004 should join it.

here

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_election.html

[LuvNewcastle]

17. This country might never recover from

the evil that was unchained in 2000. This 9/11 Era that we're in now mirrors the Gilded Age in a lot of ways. I wonder if the reformers of that period felt as hopeless about the situation as many of us feel today. We have someone now who is trying to lead a revolution, and we need nothing less than that. I hope that if he wins an election that he'll dig in his heels and insist on being declared the winner. Bernie has always said that it's not about him, after all. It's about all of us.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. It does, and Hayes election did equal damage

if you read some contemporary writing the only reason people were not as despondent is that they could always go West. which served a s pressure relief valve

[LuvNewcastle]

21. You know, I think that explains a lot

of this fascination with guns. Americans, some of them unconsciously, associate their guns with the Wild West, which means freedom to them. They don't see a way to escape all of the shit we're facing today like they did in those days, and face it, Americans are all about escapism, whether it's movies, drugs, or whatever. People often talk about wanting to leave America, but then they realize that there's nowhere else to go. People are now forced to look at America instead of being able to hide from America, and they hate what they see. It's just a reflection of themselves, in many cases.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Yup, and if you point out that in the real wild west there was real gun control

they go nuts.

[PowerToThePeople]

2. I agree that we are currently a fascist state

and that is why you see the uproar against a highly popular anti-fascist such as Sanders from tptb.

[Populist_Prole]

13. Bingo

The negative reactions to him are more telling than the positive ones.

[KingCharlemagne]

23. Oy vey - we are NOT a fascist state. Saying so degrades language and demeans the victims

of real fascism.

[PowerToThePeople]

25. We disagree then.

[SusanCalvin]

27. AFAIK, it means when government and corporations are joined at the hip.

'Nuff said....

[KingCharlemagne]

34. As logicians might say, such joinage is necessary but not

sufficient. Fascist states are usually one-party affairs.

[SusanCalvin]

36. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the corporate party.

Yes, the Dems are the better half of the corporate party, I hasten to add.

[KingCharlemagne]

39. Why the needlessly confusing and obscurantist 'corporate'? The Repubs

and Dems are both 'capitalist' parties, with Repubs now shading to outright fascism.

[SusanCalvin]

44. OK. nt

[NYCButterfinger]

3. Gore should have picked Kerry

If Al Gore had won Tennessee or West Virginia, he won't have needed Florida.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

5. How would John Kerry have helped him in those states?

Don't really see it. Maybe Jay Rockerfeller would have in West VA....

[NYCButterfinger]

9. Kerry would have brought Gore the "credibility gap".

Kerry would have destroyed Cheney in that veep debate in Danville, Ky. Lieberman did not fight against Cheney and it looked weak.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. See post 11

[KingCharlemagne]

24. At the risk of heresy, a Gore-Nader ticket would have gone a long way to unify the party's factions

to present a united front against the fascists.

[Zynx]

28. A veep has to be seen as a credible president.

Nader was not seen as a credible president by anyone, even the people who voted for him.

[KingCharlemagne]

35. Absurd and not based on any hard data about Nader supporters. - nt

[VOX]

42. Actually, Rhode Island was key...

Forget Florida, forget Tennessee...In RI, Nader voters siphoned enough votes away from Gore to tip the state to Bush. Had Gore carried RI, Florida becomes inconsequential.

[leftyladyfrommo]

6. I know. Isn't that crazy? nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Not just accepts fascism but embraces it.

[Boomerproud]

10. Correct.

[Rex]

14. I think it will go both ways and that has the teabaggers shitting bricks.

It goes both ways.

[BainsBane]

26. It's called the capitalist state

not fascism. Corporatist, in its traditional meaning and as used in fascist political theory, refers to a collective body--eg. unions, the church, the military, the agrarian sector, and business as one sector. The term doesn't refer to corporations as in big business interests. That is a 21st century use of the term, and not its meaning for Mussolini in writing about fascism or earlier writers like Adam Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_statism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

[ronnie624]

31. I don't know...

with the current preoccupation with masculinity and violence, the hatred of liberalism, Muslims and Latinos, the strong US tendencies toward imperialism, the pervasive propaganda that convinces everyone we're in danger of being attacked, and the ever-increasing influence of corporations over US policy and legislation, the defining elements in your second link, seem a better fit. I don't consider your opinion definitive.

[BainsBane]

33. That isn't how Mussolini conceived of fascism

and he originated the concept and the term.

The second link talks about the corporatist state, which is defined in the first.

All of what you mention has characterized the US nation for more than a century (simply substitute different groups for Muslims). As for increasing control of corporations--meaning capital--over legislation, that is not what fascism was about. That is the nature of capitalism. Fascism sought to find a way between capitalism and socialism, to ward off the threat of socialist revolution by incorporating workers and peasants into the state through an appeal to nationalism. For the US to be a corporatist state in that same way, business--the corporations you mention--would need to be an official part of the state, a sector on par but not more powerful than labor, the military, or the peasantry. Clearly capital is far more powerful than any other sector of US society. Under fascism, the state controlled business, not the other way around.

The problem, again, is imposing 21st century language onto the historical past, which will always cause problems. You have to understand the terms as they were used at the time.

[KingCharlemagne]

40. Bravo! You are the only other person I know who

Has pointed out this linguistic 'intervention' between Italian and English.

N.B. 'Corporation' derives from the Latin 'corpus' (body).

[Starry Messenger]

32. Oh brother.

[MohRokTah]

38. .