Hi Miriam,
Points all well taken here. But income inequality continues to get worse and
the number of Americans earning a living wage has not gone up.
AS with much of life, there are no easy answers here. Despite lefties like
Carl and I who don't want to vote for Hillary, I would say she is the most
likely to become our next president.
IMHO, the only ones who have a chance to beat her on the Republican side are
Rubio, Christy and Bush. I believe that the hard right positions of Trump
and cruz would force many in the middle to reluctantly pull the lever for
Hillary.
So, that could create the following scenario. Now, we have the first black
president who's not doing very much for black people. Hillary could be the
first woman president who will likely not do much for women.
Is wonderful country! No?
Cynically speaking
Bob Hachey
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 4:55 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP
Debate
Yes, Yes. But if we'd had a Republican President elected in 2012, we'd have
private medical accounts instead of Medicare. Social security would be on
the way to privatization. We'd be sending troops to Syria. We would have no
Iran deal. We would not have regularized our relationship with Cuba. We
wouldn't have had the Dream Act. The Affordable Health Care Act would have
been repealed with no Medicare For All to take its place.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 2:33 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP
Debate
Of course it matters who is elected president. I know this because of the
great efforts by Right Wingers to push a Republican into the office, despite
the grim choices. But wait just a moment. Didn't the People make it clear
in 2008 and again in 2012 that they wanted a reduction in our World-Wide
military buildup? So the People put in the Prince of Peace, Barak Obama,
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
To date Obama has cancelled no wars, cut nothing from the Military Budget,
nor has he eased back on the harsh deportation of desperate men, women and
children.
During his loving 8 years, women have seen a great reduction in health
services. Blacks and Browns are still being brutalized on the streets and
slammed into the new private prisons, where they are used as...well, as
slave labor!
The "Middle Class", those workers too good to be part of the Working Class,
are losing ground, both in numbers as well as in earning power.
Health care for all is nowhere nearly covering all Americans, and for those
of us on Medicare, our Supplemental Insurance is rising despite no increase
in the Cost of Living.
The vaunted "recovery" seems to be only at the top, and there are strong
indications that 2016 will bring in another major recession.
States such as Michigan are getting away with murder...literally, Since
Ronald Reagan began the attack on the "Middle Class", our working class as a
whole, has lost thousands of factories and millions of jobs to overseas
competition.
But yes, it does matter who is elected. The problem is that there is no way
the right person stands a chance in Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/17/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So you think it doesn't matter if one of these guys wins the Presidency?didn't invade.
You
think there's really no difference between them and the Democrats?
Miriam
Cole writes: "Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being
unfairly taxed, regulated and facing competition from Asian
businesses, which also isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to sail
into other people's waters with impunity, and our Middle East and
Asian allies are secretly screwing us over."
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL),
Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) participate in the Fox Business
Network Republican presidential debate at the North Charleston
Coliseum and Performing Arts Center on January 14, 2016 in North
Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP Debate By Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
17 January 16
The GOP presidential debate last night veered even further right on
international issues, given the absence of Ron Paul, who represents
the Libertarian wing of the party that is less interested in foreign wars.
Ted Cruz started off with a promise of war on Iran over the brief
detention of 10 US sailors who drifted into Iranian waters:
"And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or
service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that
captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the
United States of America."
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the more Neoconservative US media were
hoping to use the Iran incident to cast a pall on the nuclear deal and
the end of sanctions, and gin up war fever in the US. Why an incursion
of the US Navy into Iranian territorial waters and a brief detention
after which the sailors and their ship were released should be an
affront to the US as opposed to Iran is not clear. It is also not
clear what the US Navy was actually doing in Iran. Cruz attacked Obama
for not bringing the incident up in his State of the Union address,
but that was because Obama and John Kerry had assurances from Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif that the sailors would be released
shortly. They could get that assurance because Kerry and Zarif have a
good working relationship coming off two and a half years of intensive
diplomacy. That, Mr. Cruz, is how you resolve minor conflicts.
Not
with the "full force and fury" of your country, especially when it is
in the wrong in international law. And what the full force and fury
really means is that you intend to get US soldiers, sailors and
Marines killed for no good reason.
Then Maria Bartiromo threw this set of soft balls to Chris Christie:
"BARTIROMO: We know that recent global events have many people worried
- Iran detaining American sailors, forcing them to apologize; North
Korea and its nuclear ambitions; an aggressive China; and a Middle
East that continues to deteriorate, not to mention ISIS is getting
stronger."
As noted, the detention of American sailors was their own fault and
they did commit a wrong so if they apologized that was only right
(what do you think would happen if 10 Iranian sailors came up near the
New York shore?).
China's "aggression" seems mainly to be doing landfill in their
territorial waters. China hasn't invaded anybody recently, whereas the
US has thrashed about invading numerous countries, and droning the
ones it
Rather than strengthening, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) has lost 40% of itsintervention.
territory; and it isn't clear what she means that the Middle East is
'deteriorating'
except that Israel is stealing a lot of Palestinian land in the
Occupied West Bank and killing Palestinians when they resist.
Christie responded that he would work with US allies. As far as I can
tell, Sec. Kerry has done that very intensively. What alliances would
Christie strengthen, exactly? Then Christie said, "It's a - it's
absolutely disgraceful that Secretary Kerry and others said in their
response to what's going on in Iran that this was a good thing; it
showed how the relationship was getting better." He associated himself
with Cruz's saber-rattling and underscored that the GOP candidates saw
the diplomatic resolution of the 16-hour detention of US sailors who
came into Iranian territory to be a terrible waste of an opportunity
for a war.
JEB! took on President Obama's attempt to calm the public the eff down
about
Daesh:
"Think about it. With grandiose language, the president talks about
red lines and nothing to follow it up; talks about ISIS being the JV
team, they form a caliphate the size of Indiana with 35 (thousand) to
40,000 battle-tested terrorists. He's missing the whole point, that
America's leadership in the world is required for peace and stability. "
Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana. It
is more like Oklahoma. And they've lost a lot of it in the past year.
And 35,000 fighters isn't very many. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had a
million-man army, which the US handily defeated. We should have our
hair on fire because of 35,000 juvenile delinquents in some dusty
desert towns in countries where the government collapsed (JEB!'s
brother made one of those governments collapse, by the way).
Then Donald Trump linked the Paris and Jakarta bombings to
immigration. But those were done by locals. Trump used the San
Bernardino shootings as a reason to stop immigration. But he didn't
refer to the Planned Parenthood shooting from around the same time,
done by a white guy whose family had been here for a bit.
John Kasich then broke from the consensus that the US has to
strengthen its alliances in the Middle East, by attacking Saudi Arabia.
"In terms of Saudi Arabia, look, my biggest problem with them is
they're funding radical clerics through their madrasses. That is a bad
deal and an evil situation, and presidents have looked the other way.
And I was going to tell you, whether I'm president or not, we better
make it clear to the Saudis that we're going to support you, we're in
relation with you just like we were in the first Gulf War, but you've
got to knock off the funding and teaching of radical clerics who are
the very people who try to destroy us and will turn around and destroy
them."
Then Kasich quickly lost the Millennials by remembering that he used
to be worried about the spread of something called communism in
Central America back in the 1970s.
Then Kasich quickly backed off everything he said about Saudi Arabia:
"You see what the Saudi's - deliver them a strong message but at the
end of the day we have to keep our cool because most of the time
they're going right with us. And they must be part of our coalition to
destroy ISIS and I believe we can get that done."
So I guess the Saudis are our essential allies and generally good guys
but just have this one bad habit about which we have to stage an
Chris Christie said he wanted to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syriadidn't invade.
but also to 'rebuild' the coalition against Daesh/ ISIS.
I'm puzzled. If you weaken Daesh, you strengthen al-Assad. If you
weaken al-Assad, you strengthen Daesh. And, what about al-Qaeda, the
third force in Syria. If you weaken the other two, doesn't it take
over?
JEB! pointed out to Donald Trump that the US has Muslim Gurkhas
fighting for our empire against Daesh and we would lose them if we
were mean to all Muslims.
Kasich took the same line, recalling the Gulf War (Millennials
scratching
heads): "It was a coalition made up of Arabs and Americans and
westerners and we're going to need it again. And if we try to put
everybody in the same
- call everybody the same thing, we can't do it. And that's just not
acceptable."
Isn't it disturbing that the argument is so nakedly instrumental, and
nothing to do with the Constitution or American values?
Even Kasich was against letting in Syrian refugees. But the US has
given T.O.W. anti-tank munitions to Salafi Syrian rebels through Saudi
Arabia, prolonging and intensifying the war. Some of those weapons
have gone to Daesh and al-Qaeda. So we should displace people through
our covert intervention but then not help out the displaced?
Then Trump argued for a trade war with China.
Marco Rubio disagreed with him.
Cruz wants to abolish the IRS but will balance the budget and expand
the Pentagon.
My eyes glazed over.
Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being unfairly taxed,
regulated and facing competition from Asian businesses, which also
isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to sail into other people's
waters with impunity, and our Middle East and Asian allies are
secretly screwing us over, and there are 35,000 armed fanatics in the
desert, and nobody has sent in the US Army, and there are all these
non-white people around here and while most violence may be done by
white people but it just won't be allowed in the case of recent
immigrants, and that has to be paused even though several of the
candidates had an immigrant parent or grandparent.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL),
Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) participate in the Fox Business
Network Republican presidential debate at the North Charleston
Coliseum and Performing Arts Center on January 14, 2016 in North
Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/war-talk-jingoism-and-white-supremacy-
at-gop
-debate.htmlhttp://www.juancole.com/2016/01/war-talk-jingoism-and-whit
e-supr
emacy-at-gop-debate.html
War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP Debate By Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
17 January 16
he GOP presidential debate last night veered even further right on
international issues, given the absence of Ron Paul, who represents
the Libertarian wing of the party that is less interested in foreign wars.
Ted Cruz started off with a promise of war on Iran over the brief
detention of 10 US sailors who drifted into Iranian waters:
"And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or
service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that
captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the
United States of America."
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the more Neoconservative US media were
hoping to use the Iran incident to cast a pall on the nuclear deal and
the end of sanctions, and gin up war fever in the US. Why an incursion
of the US Navy into Iranian territorial waters and a brief detention
after which the sailors and their ship were released should be an
affront to the US as opposed to Iran is not clear. It is also not
clear what the US Navy was actually doing in Iran. Cruz attacked Obama
for not bringing the incident up in his State of the Union address,
but that was because Obama and John Kerry had assurances from Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif that the sailors would be released
shortly. They could get that assurance because Kerry and Zarif have a
good working relationship coming off two and a half years of intensive
diplomacy. That, Mr. Cruz, is how you resolve minor conflicts.
Not
with the "full force and fury" of your country, especially when it is
in the wrong in international law. And what the full force and fury
really means is that you intend to get US soldiers, sailors and
Marines killed for no good reason.
Then Maria Bartiromo threw this set of soft balls to Chris Christie:
"BARTIROMO: We know that recent global events have many people worried
- Iran detaining American sailors, forcing them to apologize; North
Korea and its nuclear ambitions; an aggressive China; and a Middle
East that continues to deteriorate, not to mention ISIS is getting
stronger."
As noted, the detention of American sailors was their own fault and
they did commit a wrong so if they apologized that was only right
(what do you think would happen if 10 Iranian sailors came up near the
New York shore?).
China's "aggression" seems mainly to be doing landfill in their
territorial waters. China hasn't invaded anybody recently, whereas the
US has thrashed about invading numerous countries, and droning the
ones it
Rather than strengthening, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) has lost 40% of itsintervention.
territory; and it isn't clear what she means that the Middle East is
'deteriorating'
except that Israel is stealing a lot of Palestinian land in the
Occupied West Bank and killing Palestinians when they resist.
Christie responded that he would work with US allies. As far as I can
tell, Sec. Kerry has done that very intensively. What alliances would
Christie strengthen, exactly? Then Christie said, "It's a - it's
absolutely disgraceful that Secretary Kerry and others said in their
response to what's going on in Iran that this was a good thing; it
showed how the relationship was getting better." He associated himself
with Cruz's saber-rattling and underscored that the GOP candidates saw
the diplomatic resolution of the 16-hour detention of US sailors who
came into Iranian territory to be a terrible waste of an opportunity
for a war.
JEB! took on President Obama's attempt to calm the public the eff down
about
Daesh:
"Think about it. With grandiose language, the president talks about
red lines and nothing to follow it up; talks about ISIS being the JV
team, they form a caliphate the size of Indiana with 35 (thousand) to
40,000 battle-tested terrorists. He's missing the whole point, that
America's leadership in the world is required for peace and stability. "
Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana. It
is more like Oklahoma. And they've lost a lot of it in the past year.
And 35,000 fighters isn't very many. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had a
million-man army, which the US handily defeated. We should have our
hair on fire because of 35,000 juvenile delinquents in some dusty
desert towns in countries where the government collapsed (JEB!'s
brother made one of those governments collapse, by the way).
Then Donald Trump linked the Paris and Jakarta bombings to
immigration. But those were done by locals. Trump used the San
Bernardino shootings as a reason to stop immigration. But he didn't
refer to the Planned Parenthood shooting from around the same time,
done by a white guy whose family had been here for a bit.
John Kasich then broke from the consensus that the US has to
strengthen its alliances in the Middle East, by attacking Saudi Arabia.
"In terms of Saudi Arabia, look, my biggest problem with them is
they're funding radical clerics through their madrasses. That is a bad
deal and an evil situation, and presidents have looked the other way.
And I was going to tell you, whether I'm president or not, we better
make it clear to the Saudis that we're going to support you, we're in
relation with you just like we were in the first Gulf War, but you've
got to knock off the funding and teaching of radical clerics who are
the very people who try to destroy us and will turn around and destroy
them."
Then Kasich quickly lost the Millennials by remembering that he used
to be worried about the spread of something called communism in
Central America back in the 1970s.
Then Kasich quickly backed off everything he said about Saudi Arabia:
"You see what the Saudi's - deliver them a strong message but at the
end of the day we have to keep our cool because most of the time
they're going right with us. And they must be part of our coalition to
destroy ISIS and I believe we can get that done."
So I guess the Saudis are our essential allies and generally good guys
but just have this one bad habit about which we have to stage an
Chris Christie said he wanted to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria
but also to 'rebuild' the coalition against Daesh/ ISIS.
I'm puzzled. If you weaken Daesh, you strengthen al-Assad. If you
weaken al-Assad, you strengthen Daesh. And, what about al-Qaeda, the
third force in Syria. If you weaken the other two, doesn't it take
over?
JEB! pointed out to Donald Trump that the US has Muslim Gurkhas
fighting for our empire against Daesh and we would lose them if we
were mean to all Muslims.
Kasich took the same line, recalling the Gulf War (Millennials
scratching
heads): "It was a coalition made up of Arabs and Americans and
westerners and we're going to need it again. And if we try to put
everybody in the same
- call everybody the same thing, we can't do it. And that's just not
acceptable."
Isn't it disturbing that the argument is so nakedly instrumental, and
nothing to do with the Constitution or American values?
Even Kasich was against letting in Syrian refugees. But the US has
given T.O.W. anti-tank munitions to Salafi Syrian rebels through Saudi
Arabia, prolonging and intensifying the war. Some of those weapons
have gone to Daesh and al-Qaeda. So we should displace people through
our covert intervention but then not help out the displaced?
Then Trump argued for a trade war with China.
Marco Rubio disagreed with him.
Cruz wants to abolish the IRS but will balance the budget and expand
the Pentagon.
My eyes glazed over.
Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being unfairly taxed,
regulated and facing competition from Asian businesses, which also
isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to sail into other people's
waters with impunity, and our Middle East and Asian allies are
secretly screwing us over, and there are 35,000 armed fanatics in the
desert, and nobody has sent in the US Army, and there are all these
non-white people around here and while most violence may be done by
white people but it just won't be allowed in the case of recent
immigrants, and that has to be paused even though several of the
candidates had an immigrant parent or grandparent.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
