June 2, 2016

Could be that that's some of it. But we cannot escape the fact that Hillary...

...has Kagan, and Henry Kissinger, as advisors. These are monstrous warmongers! They are the architects of devastation for millions of people! And, as Clinton's actions on Libya and Honduras illustrate, she is with them. She now thinks like them. Have you seen the vid of Hillary's jolly laugh at the torture and murder of Gadaffi? How could anybody laugh at that? How could anybody make a joke of it? ("We came, we saw, he died! Har-har-har!" --Hillary Clinton).

The first word that sprang to my mind, watching that vid, was "psychosis." A break with reality. Not that I think Clinton is crazy or psychotic. I think the psychosis is social--a sort of catchable disease that roams among the people who hold great power or seek great power, in the most powerful country in the world, and some people get infected with this disease. The effects may be temporary, or may lead to slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people, if the victim of the disease is in a position to do so. (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.)

I'll venture a diagnosis that John Kerry has never been infected with this disease, nor Barack Obama. Kerry might have gotten immunized by his service in Vietnam. Obama just doesn't seem to have the kind of personality that would be vulnerable to it. I can't imagine him ever laughing at the torture and murder of another person, no matter who it was. Nor do I think he considers the disaster of "Hillary's War" (as I've heard it's called in DC) to be a triumph of any kind, worthy of celebration.

Maybe a better word for it is "war fever" but I do think it's catching, and I think Hillary "caught" this illness from Kagan, Kissinger and others of that ilk whom she pals around with and wants to impress. Her joking remark and her laughter at Gadaffi's murder--it seems without a thought of the horrible chaos that that act unleashed--is naked and open (for those moments in the vid), whereas her mentors mask the sense of power they get from commanding others to kill and inflicting mass death. They are colder and more practiced at it. Hillary is more like a raw recruit.

This worries me a lot about Hillary. I fear that she's they're tool, and that they do, indeed, intend to ride her back into the White House for another round of U.S. war on the Middle East and another go at "The Project For A New American Century." I'm talking about the Neo-Cons who brought us the war on Iraq. I think she has too much of a need to be accepted by these militarists.

Well, enough of my amateur psychoanalysis! I'm an old lady myself and have endured my country inflicting unjust war after unjust war upon other people in the world, while our soldiers come home crippled and broken, or in body bags. And I remember, like it was yesterday, who Henry Kissinger is and what he did, in the heyday of his mass murder binges. His name is anathema to most people of my age. When I learned that Hillary Clinton is close with Kissinger, vacations with him, is friends with that bastard, is advised by him, I knew what direction she was headed in, and I cringed, as if a car wreck was coming.

You could say that she's being very clever, wrapping all these men around her little finger, and that we probably need a president who is clever and is able to move around in all the circles of the rich and powerful. There is an argument to be made for that view (--although I don't think she's clever, leaving herself wide open to attack, as she did, with the private email server). But I don't read her that way--as a master manipulator of the imperial dons. I think it's the other way around--that she is being manipulated. That vid of her laughing at torture and murder tells me that she has caught their disease. She is, in a sense, "ill," and she doesn't hide it very well--and, in that vid, is unable to hide it at all.

June 1, 2016

Thank you, LiberalLoveLug! Your analysis is right on!

" pro-corporate...

"pro military intervention...

"pro-Wall Street...

"pro-TPP...

"pro-old energy and fracking...

"anti-universal health care...

"anti-$15 minimum wage...

"anti-free college."

Where is the difference between Clinton and Trump?

Gay rights and women's rights--and Clinton was very late on gay rights (supported DOMA, for godssakes!) and is clearly going to ally with RW's who are out to control women's bodies, by compromising on 3rd trimester abortions. I'd say gay rights and women's rights are in peril from Clinton as well. They are merely political cannon fodder to her. She has no deep commitment to anything except making money and gaining power to cover her money-making tracks.

There couldn't be a worse Democratic nominee! This is why she's losing to Trump in the polls. She's not only disliked and profoundly distrusted, but also, when people penetrate even the first level of Clinton policy, they don't find a progressive or a woman of the people, they find fracking and Wall Street!

Most Americans want progressive policies and elected representatives who are pro-people, and they turn away from Clinton in confusion and even fright, when they see she isn't who she says she is. She is not a liberal, except for her manipulation of women's issues and gay issues into political capital (and even with that, poor women's rights to a living wage, to child care, to affordable health care, to education are not included--it's feminism for the elite). She is not even a Democrat, in my opinion.

And here you really nail it, LiberalLovinLug!

The Clintons "just can't forsake their crowning achievement, almost completed, a lifelong plan to transform the Democratic party from a workers/people's party to a Third Way corporatist run business."

She even ran the State Department as a private business--with the scumbag Saudis on one line, getting U.S. weapons with which to acquire Yemen, and Bill on the other line, raking in billions to the Clinton Foundation from the same parties. A private email server, indeed!

If we're going to have devious Third Way Democrats in the White House again, who might throw some crumbs to the peasants, the least we can ask for is the competence to erase their private email server completely. I mean, I just stop there. This is Nixonian incompetence! And we think we're going to get a $12/hr minimum wage from four years of RW moronic impeachment hearings?!

The last time this happened to the Clintons, we ordinary people not only gained no ground, we saw Glass-Steagall repealed followed by the inevitable bankster crash, with an interim of trillion dollar war debt and piles of dead bodies.

The Clintons are going to collapse all these things together--deregulation, banksterism, privatization, war and the mind-boggling Nixonian incompetence of leaving a trail a mile wide back to their devious deeds.

Spare me, Lord! Please spare me this GE campaign, if Clinton is the nominee! Spare me the next four years if either them, Clinton or Trump, becomes president! I don't think our democracy and our Mother Earth can survive it. We are all too battered by this kabuki theatre at the top. Not a shred of honor or sincerity anywhere we look! Oh, wait....

Wait! Can you hear it? A song...a dream...from surfer country...

"California dreamin' ...on a winter's day..."!

Honor and sincerity in abundance to warm our wintry souls! Honor and sincerity offered--will we take it?

June 1, 2016

Jerry Brown went corporate when he was mayor of Oakland.

The result was the gentrification of Oakland where it's now nearly impossible to find a 1 bedroom apartment for under $3,000 a month!

Gentrification is a terrible phenomenon whereby the poor and the middle class--the people who do the actual work of an economy--are shoved out of their local communities, while a few people get very, very rich from skyrocketing rents and house prices and land prices, and from our tax dollars in development ("gentrification&quot projects. It is also a phenomenon that destroys small local businesses, and local manufacturing, when glitzy chains like Starbucks and the Gap move in. (--Gap, which manufactures Gap clothing with slave labor in the Mariana Islands and further points east, using cotton from poisoned land and waters in Asia; Gap, whose family is poisoning vast tracks of redwood forest, as we speak, in northern California, by deliberately poisoning native oaks and then leaving the dead trees standing, a fire, poison and global warming hazard**).

Jerry Brown, whose father I canvassed for in 1960, and whom members of my family worked for, as early as Jerry's first election (to the L.A. Community College Board) through his first term as governor, has become a weathervane like Clinton. He has not, as far as I know, pocketed half a billion dollars from Wall Street, nor destroyed other countries leaving ISIS in charge, and laughing about it, like Clinton--he is not that kind of corrupt, nor is he a warmonger--he is a corporatist, in other words, a "trickle-down" Reaganite.

So I am not surprised that he endorsed Clinton. I was hoping he would stay neutral, at least, because his original instincts in politics, through his first term as governor, were very positive for us ordinary people, and I find it hard to believe that he doesn't loathe Clinton's corruption and her Neo-Con foreign policy. He did seem to be holding his nose when he endorsed, and spoke words of praise for Bernie Sanders as he did so. But for him to pile on to the mound of Corporate Democrats who are skeert of Clinton and her punitive ways, or worse, who buy her "trickle down" bullshit, was pretty disgusting of him.

This is how Corporate Democrats operate in California: They declare a $15/hr minimum wage by executive order, in order to preempt the campaign of a genuine populist (Bernie Sanders), and, on the other hand, enable and encourage "gentrification," or an outrage like fracking, or an outrage like poisoning redwood forests. $15/hr won't mean very much when the planet goes down. It will mean nothing at all when our overlords bring in their next horror: the automation of all blue collar jobs, even service jobs. Meanwhile, the uber rich get uber richer, and virtually nobody among the leaders our once great Democratic Party gives a crap. They're all sheep following the corporate money.

The good news is that TWO MILLION people have become newly registered voters in California, most of them young, most of them registering Democratic. The young, who inherit our wounded Mother Earth, may have their say yet!


__________________________________________

**(Measure V, on the Mendocino County ballot will put a stop to this. The Gap owners are mailing out fancy brochures every other day, to try to convince people that poisoning Mendocino forests is okay. The trees that are being poisoned are native tanoaks, which spring up and heal the land after decades of clearcutting. Poisoning these trees is as bad as clearcutting, as to ecological crime. And it is a serious fire hazard.)

June 1, 2016

Imagine this...

Bernie Sanders demolishes Hillary Clinton in California (and, frankly, with TWO MILLION new registered voters in California, most of them young, most registered Democratic, it IS more than possible), throwing the convention into tumult, whatever sour old New Jersey does, and DOUBT prevails at the convention, and Clinton keeps plummeting in match-ups with Trump (which she is now losing) and Bernie keeps demolishing Trump in all polls, like he's been doing since January, and some of our benighted Democratic leaders who endorsed Clinton before they knew there was a Bern...hesitate, stop, look around, think about 20,000+ people cheering at rally after rally, think about downticket races, think...

...and one cracks, and then another, and, not even counting the FBI investigation, just thinking about Trump quoting the John Kerry State Department OIG report, the flood begins...

...and Bernie wins the nomination!

Now, think about DU and what it would be like with Bernie Sanders as the nominee. No Heathers, no bullies, no idiots, nobody paid by the comment, all heartful volunteers, researching, informing people, thrashing out the election issues with abandon, working on all the public policy details of all the things that will make peoples' lives better, criticizing Bernie openly (he can take it!), open-minded, open-hearted, well-informed, vigorous discussion of everything that's on the minds of the American people but never gets covered by the Corrupt Media, with organizing threads of how to get things done in Washington DC, furious activity to elect all the downticket Bernie people who are running, and everyone else who shows any sign of wanting to turn away from corporatism and war...

Oh, my, my, my would we have fun being the liveliest place on the political internet, being a genuine democratic underground, where the rumbles of the people start and new ideas and policies get formulated, and campaigns of reform are initiated and spurred on!

Imagine it! First imagine it! DU as it could be. The General Election as it could be. Our government as it could be. Our democracy as it could be. Our country as it could be, full of hope and positive energy. Mother Earth as she could be, once we learn how to take care of the malefactors who are poisoning her and start restoring her to health.

Hold the image. Think what DU would be like, with Bernie as the nominee. Think how the downtrodden people in the Great Depression felt when Seabiscuit--that funny little horse scorned by the racing establishment--beat War Admiral!

May 26, 2016

Clinton CANNOT clinch the nomination before the convention. Feel "the math"!

I stumbled across this astonishing MSNBC political analyst's examination of Clinton's numbers, as to the pledged delegates she needs in the remaining primary states to clinch the nomination before the convention. I first saw it linked by amborin, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512046916

The MSNBC vid is here**:

https://www.facebook.com/susan.sanders.35325/videos/636912853123585/

The political analyst, Steve Kornacki, is generous in his guestimates of what Clinton could win in the coming weeks, for instance, he gives her 50% of the vote in "Bernie states" not counting California.

He establishes, beyond any doubt, that she CANNOT make it. It is mathematically impossible.

The ONLY way she could win the nomination before the convention is, a) if Bernie Sanders drops out (which he isn't going to do), or b) if the non-stop lying about Clinton's numbers by her campaign and her supporters, and most of the Corrupt Media, sufficiently suppresses Sanders' votes in the remaining states--which is not likely to happen (sufficiently) because Sanders voters are ISSUE voters and are passionate about the issues. They want their issues HEARD!

The most stunning stat that this political analyst produces is that, given his analysis of what Clinton could conceivably win apart from California in the coming weeks, when it does come to California, she must win 90% to 95% of the vote! And that is, literally, impossible--and probably wouldn't happen even if Sanders dropped out.

About Sanders dropping out: I'm sure he's fully aware of this situation. He. Will. NOT. Drop. Out. In fact, he can still win it!

Feel "the math"!

Feel the Berne!

Stop the lies!

https://www.facebook.com/susan.sanders.35325/videos/636912853123585/

From:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512046916

------------------

(Note: Amborin says that MSNBC has taken this vid down from its site. It was captured on Facebook before it was taken down.)

-------------------------------------------------------------

I AM ADDING SENZ'S COMMENT TO THIS OP BECAUSE SENZ LAYS OUT "THE MATH" SO CLEARLY, AS KORNACKI (MSNBC) DOES IN HIS BROADCAST ANALYSIS...

senz (10,648 posts)
83. Here are my notes from Steve Kornacki's video explanation

It's really not that difficult.

Bernie says, correctly, that Hillary cannot reach the required number of pledged delegates before the convention and therefore would need super delegates to win. If he does well, he could end up with more pledged delegates than Hillary. Either way, Hillary cannot get enough pledged delegates to win without super delegates.

Here are the numbers:

Hillary has 1771 pledged delegates. Bernie has 1487 pledged delegates (284 fewer than Hill).

Hillary needs 612 more pledged delegates to get to 2383.

There are only 781 pledged delegates left in the remaining nine primaries:

Virgin Islands, PR, CA Mont NJ, NM, ND SD, DC

Even if Hill does well in several states, she is extremely unlikely to reach 2383.

Therefore she will need super delegates to get over the top, and there is a possibility Bernie will have done well enough (as well as polling far better against Trump) that super delegates may choose him.

May 22, 2016

I'm very impressed by the young woman who speaks in Link #1.

I tried to catch her name but couldn't. Dark hair swirled up into a little ponytail. She makes very telling points, for instance, that the thing that the Establishment most underestimates about Bernie activists is "our patience"! I think by "our" she was speaking of the young Bernie supporters like herself. What an extraordinary thing to say! And what a hopeful thing, from the point of view of this 71 year old Democrat. This is no flash movement. It is here to stay. And its purposes go way beyond this election year!

Actually, I'm blown away by the young peoples' fervent participation, and extraordinarily hard work--canvassing, phoning, organizing, putting these amazing rallies together--in the Bernie Sanders campaign. I have not seen anything like it in 50 years! And I think it reaches back even further, to the 1930s and the New Dealers--the deepest wave of fundamental change that ever surged up among our people to sweep away the old order, in that case, "organized money," as FDR called it, whose "hatred" he "welcomed."

One further thought: The hopes and dreams of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s were largely crushed by Reaganism, and Democratic Party complicity with Reaganism. The initial crushing occurred with the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The "military-industrial complex" only got bigger and more dangerous. And, while some African Americans got rich and got accepted, most were left behind. And Reagan then empowered the wealthy to become the uber-wealthy and they, in turn, took over the Democratic Party via the Clinton's. Soon the protections against bank failure put in place by the New Deal were gone, masses of poor people were imprisoned, using the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and the military machine geared up for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people with "shock and awe" bombing, with one clusterfuck after another in the Middle East, with far worse consequences than the slaughter in Vietnam.

MY generation failed to solve the fundamental problems of our society and our country. Many of us understood what the problems were and are, but were overwhelmed by the forces against us.

THIS generation--now, at the other end of that long crushing and failure--seems more organized and more determined to rip the masks off our failed leadership and get at the heart of things: economic injustice on a massive scale, and the wars of the rich to control the resources of the world.

I am so heartened by them! I see so many new leaders arising, young people who can't be fooled and won't be stopped. Credit the internet. Credit the corruption and cluelessness of our leadership. Credit the ominous catastrophe of global warming. Credit the historic inevitability of rebellion in these circumstances--although, with global warming, these circumstances are unprecedented. Whatever you credit it to is probably inadequate to describe what is happening among the young. Their hearts and souls are on fire...and yet, and yet, they speak of patience! These extraordinarily wise youngsters!

May 20, 2016

Thoughts of an old California Democratic woman on Sanders vs. Clinton

I've been asked to post several of my comments in threads as OPs. Here they are, re-tooled as one long OP, with identifications at the end of each one, if you want to read the original threads. I've edited to make them more readable and understandable outside of the discussions they were part of.

-----------------------------

It's hard to figure Barbara Boxer's action in Nevada as anything but deliberate provocation.

Of course the Clintonites should have let it go! Only a couple of delegates were at issue. But they didn't. And guess where it went next? All over the Corrupt Media for the edification of the voters voting in KY and OR on May 17!

It was a Rovian-Brockian dirty trick, much like the one that John Lewis is implicated in (--the false caption of the Bernie Sanders civil rights photo, peddled to Time magazine, which had to print a retraction; meanwhile, Lewis is saying he never met Bernie in the civil rights movement; Bernie's activism is in fact very well-documented, as it turns out--and all this happening in the midst of the southern state primaries!). Same type of "swift-boating" operation, this time with Barbara Boxer as the establishment "name" to legitimize the crap that is going down.

No, I don't believe it was innocent on Boxer's part. Nor was John Lewis innocent. It is pathetic to see former heroes stoop to such depths. And I don't know where they fit into the web of Clinton money that has gotten sucked into the Clinton Foundation from sources like the woman-hating Saudis, and then spewed out over the land to net endorsers and super-delegates and surrogates and shills and Clintonbots on the internet, but it would not surprise me in the least if money was the heart of the matter.

We'd have to be super-sleuths numbering in the thousands, to track down every thread of the Clinton money web. It reaches into Haiti, into Honduras, into Russia, throughout the Middle East, and in many other places, as well as throughout this country. So we just have to pick up trends, you know, to figure out who we can trust. Trend no. 1, with the Clintons, is seeking money, laundering money and distributing money for the purposes of gaining more power. Boxer and Lewis are now suspects in the Clinton money game. We already know that Dolores Huerta is bought and paid for ($100,000 from the Clinton Foundation), to pay for her phony shit-fit at the NV caucus, where she LIED that Sanders' supporters shouted her down with "English only!" (It's on vid. She LIED.) She's also been peddling Clinton bullshit in media interviews. Bought. And. Paid. For.

Who else?

And I don't care who they are--nor how much I may have admired them in the past. If they do shit like this, they are heroes no more.

---
Based on my comment in
silvershadow's OP
"Barbara Boxer's actions both during the Nevada convention"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511998857
Comment #15
Wed May 18, 2016, 07:10 PM

-------------------------------------------------------

Some people don't seem to realize what's happened to the Democratic Party...

...over the last couple of decades (and with roots back to the Reagan junta). We've been bleeding working class Democrats, leftists of all kinds, environmentalists, professionals, Vietnam vets and others to the "independent" non-party, which now comprises over 40% of the electorate.

Democratic Party "closed" primaries measure only what remains, not the full demographic of progressives. Clinton has an even narrower constituency, the half of the reduced party that buys into her worthless, lying bullshit, unthinkingly, in my opinion.

The other half of the current Democratic base are either young and new voters drawn in by Sanders, some returning leftists and others drawn in by Sanders, and old Democrats like me, who remain Democrats only out of loyalty to ideals that this corporatized party has long since abandoned, or out of nostalgia or family feeling. I'm an o-o-o-o-old Democrat who feels loyalty and nostalgia. I remember my mother making all her kids get down on our knees, on election night 1954, to pray the Rosary for Adlai Stevenson to defeat Dwight Eisenhower!

That's the kind of Democrat that the Clintonites have spat upon with virtually every word and action, along with their spitting upon the young.

Our party is NOT "just fine." It is losing Democrats like me, "born" Democrats, people whose parents and grandparents were New Dealers, people who canvassed for JFK, people who joined the civil rights movement though they were white and relatively privileged, people who did things because they were RIGHT and ETHICAL and MORAL, not because of self-interest and greed, but because they belonged to a "big tent" party and, by God, they were going to expand that "tent"!

I don't think Clinton has any clue what the Democratic Party is about. She doesn't want people like me in it, and many of her supporters seem to have the same attitude (unless they are bots, which we've seen some of here, and for those I feel the same compassion I would feel for any workers who have to do things they know are wrong, in order to keep body and soul together).

Clinton has contempt, also, for the young. She is rigid that way. Dissent annoys her. She wants to stamp it out. She likes controlled venues with small audiences of vetted people. And when she happens to meet a hard question or opposition, you can see her eyes harden with hatred. She is no kind of Democrat, who relishes discussion and new ideas and grants people leave to oppose her, as anyone who believes in democracy ought to. She reminds me of Nixon. She has a lot of his flaws.

She is no leader for the Democratic Party I was born into. Money and ambition are okay, especially for women who have been denied money and access to power, but they are not everything, or even a tenth of everything, or anything at all, if you don't have a base of ethical principles and generosity.

Clinton does not qualify. She has nothing inside of her but desire for money and power. That is not a leader. That is a cypher, whom our financial overlords and war profiteers will use for their own purposes. I've known a lot of strong, ambitious and even well-heeled women in my lifetime, many of whom were or are real leaders due to their ethics and their generosity. They went far, and I'm very proud of them, but they never regarded power as an end itself. Those are the kinds of women who would make great presidents. Clinton is not one of them. She is already a disgrace to feminism, with her actions in Honduras, Libya, Syria and Iraq, and hers and Bill's policies that have greatly increased poverty here. She's hanging out with Henry Kissinger these days. Jeez.

That's not my Democratic Party. And that is not "just fine." It's awful.

---
Based on my comment in
Cali's OP
"No, I don't think Hillary and the dem establishment can put the party back together" againhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/12511999445
Comment #35
Wed May 18, 2016, 08:33 PM

----------------------------------------------------

I respect the long history of an old Democrat. I think it's time to throw Big Money back into...

...the Republican Party where it belongs. But that is not my only objection to Hillary Clinton--the half a billion dollars she took from the financial industry for "speeches."

You say Clinton's "policies are aligned with my beliefs." I would ask, do you really know what Clinton's policies are? She whirls around like one of the old toy tops we used to play with. And just when you think you have her pinned down, she jumps out of the jumping jack box with a surprise, like she did with the Colombia/U.S. "free trade" agreement, and will do with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)--both really, really bad trade agreements that will decimate this country while not doing any good for the poor in the other countries. These agreements are "free trade for the rich."

Or like she did with Honduras and Libya, after apologizing for her vote for Bush's Iraq War. She's done this on "free trade for the rich" agreements, on abortion rights, on gay rights, on the minimum wage, on single payer health care, on almost any issue you can name. For it, then against; against it, then for it, depending on how the wind is blowing, and probably on donations to the Clinton Foundation.

And some of these matters are heartbreakers and tragedies--Honduras, for instance, where Clinton, as Secretary of State, supported a fascist coup that destroyed Honduran democracy (she admits it in one of her emails), and where the women leading the pro-democracy and environmental movements there are being systematically raped and murdered by fascist death squads.

One of these women was murdered in her bed just this March. Her name was Berta Caceras, an indigenous woman activist on the environment, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, and an anti-coup activist, who named Hillary Clinton as the one responsible for the fascist coup in her country before she was murdered. Clinton's strong support for the fascist government, including funding them with our tax dollars, has encouraged and enabled them to commit these atrocities.

Clinton is all apologies over Iraq, then she turns around and does this to Honduras, and then, in an even worse way, to Libya, where we can be sure that thousands of women are being brutalized, raped and murdered in the chaos there, and with the rise of the IS jihadists in the vacuum of power that Clinton helped to create.

Like a spinning top, she wants credit for apologizing for Bush-Cheney's "shock and awe" bombing of tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq--as if her apologies could erase that horror--but she keeps doing it, inflicting chaos on other lands.

Honduras and Libya are among my main objections to Hillary Clinton. She engineered these disasters. The latter is called "Hillary's War" in Washington DC. But nobody much mentions Honduras. No oil, I guess.

That's why I ask, do you really know what her policies are? I admit it's hard to know, with all her happy talk. But I've gone to some trouble to find out, and it's not good. She now has Henry Kissinger as a friend and advisor (Henry Kissinger!) and Robert Kagan, designer of Cheney-Rumsfeld's blueprint for world domination ("The Project For A New American Century"--the infamous bible of the Neo-Cons).

It may be that you formed your opinion of Clinton early on, before there was much known about her activities as Secretary of State, or about the Clinton Foundation. And I suspect that, whatever you thought Hillary Clinton was, when you first formed an opinion about her, she has changed and changed in a very bad direction. She is a Neo-Con now, a war advocate. And she is basically a Republican now, funded by Big Money and beholden to Big Money.

I presume that you have a good heart and an open mind since you are a "born" Democrat. That's almost my definition of a Democrat, born or otherwise. So I just ask that you do some research, and ask yourself if you really know what Clinton's policies are, and whether or not you really agree with them.

Based on my comment in
Cali's OP
"No, I don't think Hillary and the dem establishment can put the party back together" again
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511999445
Comment #87
Thu May 19, 2016, 11:24 PM


---------------------------------------------------

The desperation of the Clinton campaign is obvious. Its cause? I'm not sure.

It could be a number of things. FBI interviews and whatever the hell is going on in the backrooms of Washington DC about it (CIA/NSA pissed off? Obama ambivalent?), and Sanders big win (by a 12 pt margin) in Oregon ('Didn't we say that guy was toast?'). And maybe some other things as well. Wall Street getting nervous about their big investment? Neo-Cons disappointed? (They were assured a ride back into the White House.)

The latter forces gotta be worried about Trump. He may be a billionaire but he is unpredictable, and the one thing Wall Street and banksters hate is an unpredictable and uncontrollable president. As for the Neo-Cons and their plans, Trump may well be an old-fashioned Republican "isolationist" who wants to seal the borders, stay out of trouble in foreign lands and BE the business of "the business of America is business." Too late for that, but Trump is not Bush-Cheney (nor Hillary Clinton) as to Mideast wars, and he may cast a cold eye on "free trade," especially regarding jobs here--the most interesting grievance of many Trump supporters, and probably the most fundamental. Economic hardship has hit us all, including many Trump supporters. They see building "a wall" as the answer. We Sanders supporters see creating a new New Deal as the answer, and that's a much, much better answer. Walls are made to be broken down. But New Deal policies are made to spread the wealth, not to mention spreading good will around the world--the inspiration of rising expectations, the inspiration that democracy can really work for all.

And Clinton does not offer any believable hope in a new New Deal. Only Sanders offers that.

And that is probably why she barely wins and even loses in polls against Trump--while Sanders demolishes Trump. That has got to be aggravating to Camp Hillary, and a cause of desperation. She can't close the nomination deal; and it's a big question whether or not she can beat Trump, and this has to be very worrying to her donors.

It may even be the reason for Clinton's haggard looks and long absences, while Sanders, who is older, is still bouncing around from rally to rally, here, there and everywhere, like he was 25 years old, and only on occasion looks a bit beat. He doesn't look haggard, though. Haggard is different from mere tiredness after three campaign rallies in three states. Clinton looks deeply long term tired, and stiff and awkward, not flexible and resilient. Her face looks like she is constantly calculating her bank balance. Pinched, worried.

What is at the bottom of this desperation, which is so on display here at DU today, so obvious in the Corrupt Media the last couple of days, so painfully obvious in the collusive behavior of people I've previously admired, like Barbara Boxer, John Lewis and Dolores Huerta, and so visible in the malaise in Hillary's face and posture, when she shows herself?

I'm not at all convinced that the FBI will be able to do the right thing, if what they've concluded is that Hillary is indictable. I take as my lessons, 1) Patrick Fitzgerald, who said, of Dick Cheney, that "there is a cloud hanging over the vice president's office," and that THAT is a "political matter," not the venue of the Department of Justice (the issue being Cheney's outing of CIA spies); and 2) Barack Obama, who said, of the massive crimes and massive thievery of the Bush junta, "we must look forward not backward."

In short, justice is only for the little people, not for the rich and the powerful. IF the FBI thinks Clinton should be indicted, it's then up to AG Loretta Lynch, a Clinton supporter and long time ally, to start the legal proceedings and to prosecute. That may be why the FBI's report has been so long coming. Lynch may already be holding it up. (And she wouldn't be, if it exonerated Clinton.) And this may also be why President Obama called a reporter into the White House, a couple of weeks ago, for a personal one-on-one, and to every question about the FBI investigation of Clinton, Obama said, with great emphasis, "There has been NO political influence on the FBI investigation. Full stop!" Then he said it again, those exact same words, and again. NO influence. Full stop. Uh-huh.

Of course, the pressure of all this may be getting to Clinton, even if she isn't going to be indicted. That's a helluva cloud to have hanging over her campaign!

More than this, though--and especially if the CIA and NSA are in a tizzy about Clinton's national security breaches--is Clinton's fitness as President, if our chief law enforcement agency and our visible and not so visible intelligent establishment don't trust her, and would (or should) question even giving her a security clearance. She was, at minimum, cavalier with national security. And her relationship with Sydney Blumenthal, and the emails that were passing back and forth on her private server, and on his server (which we know got hacked), may well have broken national security laws and her own signed agreement with the government. How can she be President?

This question may be causing some of the haggardness in her face. Will they accept her into the inner sanctum or not? What do they want from her in exchange for accepting her as President? We most likely will never know what-all is occurring behind closed doors, but if it is all as dire as I and many others suspect, desperation in Clinton's demeanor and actions, desperation by her campaign and its adjunct, the DNC, and desperation by the Corrupt Media, which has so counted on Trump-Clinton kabuki theater, may be what we're seeing. The old edifice of Clintonism is hanging over a cliff, and ropes and pulleys are being used to try to pull it back onto its foundation: Clinton, the Inevitable.

And Sanders just keeps on keeping on. Ties one primary, wins another by 12 pts. This late in the game. Not decisive as to "the math"--yet. But oh what a show! Franklin and Eleanor must be smiling down on us from Heaven! As our benighted heroes fall off the cliff, one by one, out the windows of Clinton House, new heroes arise. And we even find ourselves to be heroes, once again. How amazing is that, in this benighted democracy?

Based on my comment in
Skwmom's OP
"The Desperation to get Bernie out of the race makes me wonder if something is expected"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511997455
Comment #55
Wed May 18, 2016, 05:09 PM

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I think we have to become a little savvier about how things are decided among the Oligarchs.

For instance, Donald Trump was nothing, politically--a clown, a joke--but the Corrupt Media gave him billions of dollars worth of free political ads from the moment he announced, with 24/7 coverage of his every sneeze for months and months. They CREATED Donald Trump, the candidate.

They meanwhile, of course, tried to bury Bernie Sanders in a black hole of no-coverage for the first six months of his campaign, and have treated him as a footnote to the 'news' that Clinton is 'winning,' even when he has blowout victories. Whatever the victory--no matter how big or surprising--'Sanders, of course, can't win.' And, for his 12 pt. victory in Oregon, they put on the "violent" Bernie show. You want this guy to beat up your grandmother?

It makes sense that the Corrupt Media DON'T WANT SANDERS' IDEAS ON TV, and of course are horrified at the idea that he could be elected. I mean, the Corrupt Media is bad. They're really very, very, very bad. They are a Stalinist-like propaganda machine for the rich. That's why they treat Sanders as they do.

But why would they create Trump?

He would not be an orderly, obedient, predictable servant to other rich people, like Hillary has promised to be. They've paid Hillary well to fill that role. But Trump? He could really fuck things up. He could crash the Stock Market by some dumb thing that he said. He might even investigate them if they annoy him. He might stumble over the "red button" as he falls into bed, drunk from an orgy in the Lincoln Bedroom. It's no end of funny, what he might do. But is that who they really want in charge of their investments?

So, why Trump?

Oh, yeah, he's starting to smell power now and he likes it. But I don't think he took it seriously at first. Now he does, or partly does. They've created a monster.

Why?

Well, if they really want Clinton as prez, to keep their billions out of the hands of the IRS, and other services (all under a "liberal" facade), they can't just declare her president. She has to run against somebody. What better foil, to make her look all "liberal" than a big baffoon who derides women and minorities and wants to build a wall around the country. That wall is a good spoof issue. Hillary can then defend "free trade for the rich." No wall.

I read somewhere that Bill encouraged Trump to run. (Was it Trump who said it? Har.) If so, this could be why. Hillary needed a foil. Someone not interested in the presidency, someone totally non-serious about public policy. Someone who would shoot his mouth off. Someone who is even more despised and distrusted than she is by the American people.

Writing this comment has got me giggling. It's so funny it may be true. They manufactured Trump to run against Hillary and lose!

But now he wants to win. Maybe. Does this partyman really want the responsibility of being president? What does the Pentagon think of this prospect? The CIA? The FBI? The NSA? Bank of America? Canada? The Saudis? Israel? Putin? (Oh, Putin might recognize a kindred spirit--they could have snarling matches.) But, really, the serious war profiteers, et al, don't want a farce, do they? They don't want to look like idiots when they bomb and invade and do their thing. They don't want the world laughing at them! Do they?

So, the Oligarchs were not serious. Trump was just a stepping stone for Queen Hillary.

Then came Bernie Sanders.

---
Based on my comment (#9) in
Jilian's OP
Interesting conversation I had yesterday at a meeting.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280198654
Comment #9
Thu May 19, 2016, 12:46 AM

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"Sanders is playing with fire"? No, he IS fire!

FEEL THE BERNE!

His fire is igniting the hearts of millions of people, whose hearts had been dead, dead, dead, killed by demoralization, disempowerment and disenfranchisement. Killed by the Corrupt Media. Killed by the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines which gave us an 8%-approval-rating Congress and really, really, really bad governors in many states. Killed by endless war. Killed by increasing poverty. Killed by the death of the American Dream, that your children will do better than you did. Killed by all the homeless misery they see all around them. Killed by the insurance companies. Killed by Big Pharma. Killed by Big Oil. Killed by "free trade for the rich." Killed by Reagan. Killed by Clinton. Killed by Bush. Maybe a heartbeat or two under Obama. Then, slam-bang, killed by the prospect of a Clinton vs. Trump kabuki show that will reduce voter participation to an even more disgraceful level than in 2012.

The dead heart of America has been touched by fire! One million people have been newly registering to vote in California!** The Sanders campaign has won amazing victories all over the country, as recently as this week in Oregon by a 12 pt. margin. With all the handicaps placed on this campaign from the outside (hostile media, hostile Democratic Party moguls, lies and dirty tricks, voter purges, David Brock)--and internal handicaps like no superpac and no corporate/billionaire money--the campaign should have withered on the vine, as a noble fringe effort to reform the unreformable.

But it didn't die. The flame grew and grew and grew until it is now a blaze in many hearts throughout the land, and an inspiration to people around the world, that U.S. democracy is still alive.

The cold panic and hysteria of those with money-soiled hands and souls couldn't be more evident than in the last few days with the "swift-boating" of Sanders as "violent" by the Corrupt Media, at the instigation of the corrupt Clinton campaign, and by cold-fingered knifings like this article, which trot out every nasty little thing that the author (or his mentor) could think of, to ridicule the best thing that has happened in our country in about 50 years: The Bern.



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**(It was 850,000 new registered voters in California as of March. It will likely reach one million by the May 23 deadline. Most of these are Democrats. Most are young voters.)

---
Based on my comment in
Albertoo's OP
Washington Post: Sanders Is Playing With Fire
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512011717
Comment #47
Fri May 20, 2016, 12:09 AM

May 12, 2016

Excellent commentary! And excellent clip of Jon Stewart!

With Clinton, there is no there there.

It was Gertrude Stein who said that--"there is no there there"--when she was on a return visit to the Bay Area, and was looking for her childhood home in Oakland, CA, a home with lots of acreage, lawns and gardens, surrounded by orchards and farms. It was now covered over with new homes. The "there" of her childhood home was gone.

Clinton is not rooted to any place. She is not OF any place or its people or its critters. She is a transglobal jet setter who now hangs with people like Bush, Kissinger and Trump. She is, like them, now, a multi-billionaire. The 1% has made her and she is a member of their global non-country with loyalty to no one but this sky-born royalty that touches down on earth for business, luxury recreation and sketching out their plans, such as "The Project For a New American Century."

No there there. There is nothing to be discovered there of high ideals, of democratic principles, of good government, though quite a bit of substance can be found there, of greed and mass murder. But evil empties the soul, in the end.

I believed for awhile, through Bill Clinton's administration anyway, that as a citizen of a country doing evil in the world, it was perhaps best to have clever, wily, corrupt people running things, so long as they had some loyalty, some minimal feeling of obligation, to the rest of us, and provided some sops to us, like little incremental raises to the minimum wage. 25 cents an hour can mean a lot to the very poor. Simple, honest people couldn't handle the "Beltway" snake pit. It took the corrupt to handle the corrupt. It's also called "the lesser of two evils." But I mean a bit more than this. I mean the "lesser evil" needs to be smart and a real maneuverer and wheel-dealer and con man. Clinton was all of those things, so I voted for him (not having any choice), thinking of that 25 cents an hour more for the poorest of the poor.

I considered this thought about Hillary Clinton. While Bernie Sanders is far from simple, as an intellect, he does like simple living and is as honest as the clear blue sky. Could he snake his way through the vipers' nest of Washington DC, to get anything done? Could he survive it, let alone reform it? Hillary Clinton has these wily, conniving qualities I'm talking about. I could even maybe (maybe!) forgive her kissing Kissinger and begging from Bush donors, or at least put my scruples aside, if I thought she could become a good ruler--a sort of Queen Elizabeth I to Bill's 25 cents an hour presidency.

But I don't think she can. I think she has the soul of a corrupt and power-hungry courtier, not of a true monarch who actually loves her people. I think the connection--the 25 cents an hour connection--has been broken. No more sops to the poor. Greed for power and money have consumed her and her associates in the sky-born kingdom. They are going to inflict their final blows to our democracy, using her as their tool. We are going to see Social Security privatized and what little social safety net we have ripped from us. Our very sovereignty as a people will be shredded by TPP.

Her soul is empty--no there there. She is only interested in her own power in that uber circle. I may be wrong. She may be wily enough to disguise her own soul. Maybe she has some home that it would break her heart not to be able to find again. But my strong sense is that there isn't.

As for Bernie, I've grown strongly to believe that he is wiliest old guy who ever sat on a House subcommittee, and has somehow kept himself rooted to a place, Vermont, and to his ideals. He is best the leader we have ever been given a chance to vote for. And he will survive it, and he will reform it, with--as he requires--our help.

May 10, 2016

That last shot of Mother Earth...

Ah, me, can we do it, lovers of Earth, lovers of humanity? Can we put an Earth-loving humanitarian in the White House to lead our country and the world to, at least, a viable future--and a great one if we solve the daunting problems that we have created for ourselves?

Looking at that shot of Mother Earth, I was reminded of my ant analogy for the human race. We are, in the Great Cosmos, like the tiniest of ants, crawling around and living in an extremely small space with almost complete ignorance of what lay over the nearby hill, let alone what lay far beyond it. As sentient ants, we couldn't see very far at all for ten thousand years, and, though we can now see much better to the far reaches of the Universe, we can't go very far at all, and we still know next to nothing about the vast context of the Universe in which we evolved, in which we became conscious on this little spec of Mother Earth--the greater, much greater, CONTEXT in which we have become active agents of change, here, within our little blue bubble.

An ant, as far as we know, has no consciousness of its context as the tiniest of bits of life on a very big bubble. We do, somehow, have that consciousness--have evolved that consciousness--which tries to wrap its brain around everything that is.

There is so-o-o-o-o-o-o-o much we don't know. Yet we have minds that stretch out to the farthest horizons of time and space, and into the deepest mysteries of subatomic particles and DNA and RNA. And who is to say that evolution is over? Who is to say that what we yearn to be will never happen?

Bernie Sanders, to me, is like one of those startling leaps of evolution, as when some sea creature somewhere first touched fin to sand and gained enough leverage to move inland, or when our most ancient forebears learned not to get burnt by fire and how to carry fire in a basket, and how to weave a basket that could contain fire. As we just start feeling our way into outer space, with our probes and our telescopes--and prior to that with the creative minds of our science fiction writers--we are also just beginning to feel the potential of what we yearn to be: Powerful, intelligent, adventurous, gentle, cooperative people, who feel happiness in the happiness of others.

Life has too often been a battle and a war for humans--or at least that is what many historians tell us. We want peace. We want to be creative. We want to be generous. We sometimes want to feel secure, and at other times are prompted to risk everything for a great or noble goal. But most of all, I think, we want others around us to be happy and whole and their great potential as human beings fulfilled.

I think this is a new development in our evolution. Some of us no longer think only of our own well-being and those close to us, and are no longer limited to our tribe, our community or our nation, in what we care about, but we think of the well-being and happiness of all human beings, and all critters, and of our planet as a whole, as a living entity.

At the same time, the political byways of our evolution have taken us down very dangerous paths, indeed--the path to destruction of the entire human race and all of Earth's critters, one way or another, by nukes or by pollution and climate catastrophe. Our intelligence and our craftiness have led us here. And we need a greater wisdom to lead us back out of this dead end. It is THE challenge of our evolution, now, to take charge of our evolution and find a better path to our true desire of happiness for all. We are following an immensely destructive byway of greed, egotism, massive pollution and mass murder. Can we transcend ourselves? Ants, so far we we know, can't ask that question. We can. Does this not imply that there is an answer in our favor and that the answer is possible and doable?

May 8, 2016

"mire the proceedings in debate and votes"? Oh horrors...

...that the Democratic Convention should be democratic!?

Oh please, spare us the mire!

Ah, it's USA Today. They would think that debates and voting are a mire.

I think debates and voting at the Democratic Convention would instead be miracle.

I remember when political conventions, especially the Democratic one, were fascinating--speeches from people all over the country, drama in the committee rooms where big fights over platform issues occurred, raucous nomination fights, inspiring and substantive speeches--all of--ALL OF IT--broadcast on TV. The 1960 convention was marvelous. I was a JFK supporter and my boyfriend, a year older and much more politically sophisticated (he came from a political family) was for Adlai Stevenson (who, I now realize, was, by far, the better leftist of the two).

There were quite a few politicians contending for the Democratic nomination--including LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Stuart Symington, as well as JFK and Adlai. Eleanor Roosevelt was still alive then, was at the convention and gave the nomination speech for Adlai, who was actually carried by the delegates to the podium when he arrived, like he was a sports hero. He was very popular--but ultimately the convention didn't nominate him, likely because he'd lost twice to Dwight Eisenhower, the even more adulated war hero. That's what Eleanor Roosevelt says. Here's her memo on the 1960 convention:
https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=jfk40

She has some interesting things to say about the level of democracy at Democratic Conventions, and as to nominating a presidential candidate, that are still relevant today. She discusses rule by party bosses--a corrupt system of patronage--rather than by the voters, and suggests reforming the nomination process. This jumped out at me:

One curious feature about political reform is that so many people feel it is "disloyal" to attempt to rectify the abuses in one's own party. And yet it is obvious that political morality is dependent upon the awakened conscience and private morality of the voters. Such "disloyalty" is simply an evidence of loyalty to principle. --Eleanor Roosevelt

I do think she underestimated JFK who, in the end, transformed himself into a believer in world peace, and likely died for that cause.**

The convention was in Los Angeles, near where I lived. My boyfriend's parents were delegates so we got to hang around. I have a snap color photo of JFK in his limousine smiling as he passed right in front of me, five or six feet away, as we stood around outside the L.A. Coliseum where he'd given his acceptance speech.

I did, though, watch most of it on TV. The platform fight over civil rights. All the speeches. Adlai being carried to the podium on the delegates' shoulders. The machinations that resulted in LBJ becoming JFK's VP. It was all so interesting, so alive, so important. TV commentators were serious, knowledgeable people who provided serious, knowledgeable insights to the public, even while they maintained strict rules of neutrality.

We can't expect that in the 21st century. The media have become partisan, bobble-headed idiots, and their bosses don't want anything that smells of democracy on their TV screens. They have NO obligation these days to provide Public Service (as they did before Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine laws), and they don't provide it. They pick and choose what it serves their profits to show us.

Even so, I do hope we have lots of "mire" at the Democratic Convention this year. Lots of debates on the issues, dissent, advocacy, votes from platform committee onto the floor, our representatives defending their positions and their candidate choices and of course I hope that the party bosses, who now run everything, change their minds about supporting Hillary Clinton, the worst candidate for the Democratic nomination that I've ever seen, and nominate the best candidate I've ever seen, Bernie Sanders.

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**(Recommended: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," by James Douglass.)