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Syndicate
stop voting for poxy politicians...they infect the body politic
Vote 'No' on Obama - by Michael Brenner
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/27/vote-no-on-obama/
"...In summary, the Obama administration has been to the right of Richard Nixon. Nixon, who launched the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Clean Air Act, supported OSHA, offered a government managed and more coherent Health insurance plan than Obama's, never called into question Social Security or Medicare, upheld financial regulation, reconciled with China, did not tick off names (including Americans) on kill lists and whose Watergate crimes are juvenile pranks in comparison to the assault on constitutional rights of the past three years.
This will not change. There are two certainties about a second Obama term in the White House. He will do nothing that challenges either orthodoxy or established interests; and he will do only that which conforms to his self-defined personal political interests and image....
As Will Rogers once urged, 'don't vote, it just encourages them.' Encourages them in the mistaken belief that they have a mandate and have been legitimated.."
ps Mac's right
This is ridiculous..I'm no fan of Obama and it's true,he's not a progressive.he's a cowardly centrist that leans to the far right..But the alternative is what?
You think Romney is more moderate?
Vote Nadar and basically you're voting for Romney.
American politics is so poisoned that your 'choice' is simply far right or farther right...This debate is almost as stupid as the morons who were screaming for us all to spoil our b allots last Canadian election...Look what we got.
Well, it seems like it`ll be the same.
It'll probably be the same except,the Republicans are even worse...The U.S. will NEVER have a progressive government much less anything resembling the left but there are varying degrees of that particular fascist state.
Atleast Obama tried to give Americans universal health care..I think he tried to do a couple of things but it's impossible and will remain impossible until Americans are de-programmed and realize that the system is bought and paid for and it does NOTHING positive or anything for the population's best interests.
The U.S. is the world's biggest plutocracy,biggest corporate supremist state on the planet.
Forget about them..They're a hopeless case.
I think Canada is unique in that it has the NDP. Otherwise the Liberal/Conservative is comparable to the Democrat/Republican in that all these parties have demonstrated their corporate loyalties.
The NDP is as yet untested, and the question is is, would you continue to support them if their policies were no different then what the libs or cons would have introduced.
We can`t get into a my team right or wrong mentality with these political parties.
And the reprogramming is on hold while Obama is seeking re-election. Don't forget the hype four years ago that he was the great hope for change and he turned into the Prince of Drones. That is the problem you can't start the deprogramming with the same doctors in place that are giving you a choice between a frontal lobotomy and shock therapy. I think a frontal lobotomy would be worse but that doesn't mean I would accept shock treatments without fighting.
If push came to shove,I'd always vote for the party who protects my personal rights and civil liberties best.
The problem with the Dems/Republicans,Libs/Cons is that,especially the right wing,will always view themselves as defenders of freedom and will not interfere with your personal life except for what you can and can't consume,what you can and can't say,what you can and can't watch or listen to or what you can and can't do with your body.
As it stands,the NDP is pro-choice,pro-health care,pro-union,anti-war,they are open to cannabis decriminalization and protecting the social safety net...just to name a few things.
This is something completely alien to American politics and policies...They have Ralph Nadar and Bernie Sanders,that's it.
Why anyone would support a party that has a hard on for war and prisons and the like,is beyond me.
The punchline is these same people will be the first to tell you that they want government out of their personal lives and less taxes...They're nuts.
Agreed..Obama in reality was the Audacity of HYPE...No hope,no change....But people would be out to lunch to think it'll get better with Romney.
No, no. Your post was nice. I meant my post about the US was nasty.
A long time friend of mine in the USA writes about ObamaCare: "While I would prefer a single-payer system, what the Affordable Care Act requires of both insureds and insurers is a hell of a lot better than what we had before."
I'm sure many have seen this but to those who haven't,this sums up American politics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=share
It will cover 33 million more people, a good thing. But it still leaves 22 million without coverage and that is not acceptable in my political world. Beginning in 2018 any employees who have a plan that actually covers most medical services will see their costs either rise to unworkable levels or they will have to agree to less coverage. The Prince of Drones thinks a medical plan that actually covers medical bills, not just a minor portion of them, is a "Cadillac" and we all know working people have no right to expect a Cadillac health care plan. Obama gets it that executives receive that kind of benefit not working stiffs. Its not like they went to Harvard right?
The American Dream, "you'd have to be asleep to believe it." Great tagline.
Well, as bad as it is, it reportedly is better than what the US had before - and now the Supremes are about to kill it. So, what's your argument, again?
What’s the Deal with Health Care? 10 Questions & Answers
excerpt:
Bottom line, though, is that it's intended to get more Americans insured, and make insurance more affordable.
excerpt:
According to Mother Jones, the current Supreme Court justices*, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, is the most conservative bunch the U.S. has seen since the early 1970s. Striking down Obamacare will only solidify this reputation. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the high court's most liberal member, is actually a lot less liberal than previous lefty justices.
* I think I have this correct: the five conservative judges who likely will rule against Obama are Scalia and Kennedy (if you're counting the latter as a conservative) were appointed by Reagan, Thomas was appointed by George H.W. Bush, Roberts and Alito were appointed by George W. Bush. If you spot an error here, please correct me.
The US Supreme Court is a perversion of what its role was meant to be. It is supposed to operate as the check on the power of the legislative bodies not become another partisan body where it is easy to predict court decision based on which party made the appointment. The American system is broken I understand that but I just don't see Obama as an architect of change. I don't know how they can fix it but it can't change until someone does something different. A definition of insanity that I have always liked is, "doing the same over and over again and expecting a different outcome despite the hundred times you've tried before." That is how I see voting for the Liberals or voting for the Democrats.
Or maybe a better analogy would be Obama as Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon. Charlie (i.e. the progressive voter) knows she is going to pull the ball but still gets sucked in every time.
George really got awesome in his old age didn't he? What is it about the nearness of death that brings out our bravado. Young people look upon old people with a mixture of awe and disdain, only to realize too late the old adage never eat with your right hand while your left is holding your pecker. Or some such nonsense.
Obama has so far only appointed one judge, Sonia Sotomayor. She voted against the Citizens United Ruling to give corporations unlimited polictical spending.
If you could point to a decision where Sotomayor has voted to increase the powers of the corporate backers, then you would have a better argument.
This is an interesting discussion. For me, I try to support the best option that has a chance of having an effect. Here, that's the NDP. In the States, that would generally be the Dems.
If all you are going to do is vote (ie. not campaign), then it doesn't really matter. Safe blue state leftist voters can vote a third party candidate for president and feel good about it. But safe blue state leftist campaigners should understand that getting out the vote for a presidential candidate can have a large coat tail effect and can get real progressives elected to congress where they can make a difference (to the extent that votes in congress matter).
I supported Ralph Nader's campaign in 2000 (supported in spirit, as a non-USian not living in the US) and have never disparaged that ampaign at all. But frankly I feel like everything he's done since has been useless spinning of wheels.
I think a real third party is built through quality local campaigns with inspiring candidates, not through no-hope presidential campaign. My advice to activists seriously interested in building an alternative, leftist third party in the USA would be to run candidates for Congress and Senate seats strategically, now and in 2014, with potentially an eye on a 2016 presidential campaign. As a non-USian not living in the US, it's not like that's an appropriate channel for my own activism.
I think a Mulcair minority govt would be likely to have as much per capita leftist resistance here as what's currently being directed at Obama.
Fine. But do that at the local, state and Congressional level. The Electoral College makes it impossible to build a left altnernative by runnint third-party presidential candidates. The fact that the Nader campaigns left nothing in their wake in terms of the creation of an alternative proves this.
Bernie Sanders helped build an alternative by choosing that route. If he'd run for president on a third-party ticket, he'd now be forgotten by everyone, as Nader and Cynthia Mckinney(both people I admire for their views, btw)now are by pretty much everybody.
Oh, and "mack", I wouldn't normally do a spelling thing, but it's "Peres", not Perez(it's simply the Hebraization of the name "Persky"). Shimon Peres(whose family was from Poland, and who is, weirdly enough, a distant cousin to the film actress Betty Persky, better known to most film noir afficionados as Lauren Bacall)is Ashenazi, not Sephardi.
More like cutting off your head to spite your neck, actually.
Well, if his record turned out as bad as Obama's, he'd deserve it. Remember, it's not just about Obama not pursuing enough progressive initiatives. It's also about all the horrible initiatives he has enacted. Civil liberties have disintegrated under Obama and corporate rule has expanded. He's not even holding the line, let alone pushing back. If Mulcair became PM and then reserved the right to assassinate any Canadian citizen at whim, obviously I'd be done with the NDP for good.
Actually, Obama has appointed two justices. The other was Elena Kagan. Neither were as good as you'd like, but both were far to the left of any possible Republican SCOTUS appointment. No GOP president will ever make an accidental progressive appointment, as Eisenhower did with Earl Warren, or Ford with Justice Stevens, again. That is impossible now for the rest of eternity with the way the GOP is now set up. That party will be run by the extreme right forever.
THanks for the correction Ken, I forgot about Kagan.
Obviously. But what concenssions are you prepared to accept? For a Mulcair minority govt to stay in power?
And why did Nixon enact all those initiatives? Did he want to do that? I would suppose not, but that's neither here nor there. The reason is that there was organized political pressure at the grassroots that forced the politicians to act. Where is that organized force now? The left in the US expects "their" guy to do all the work once he's elected, and they never organize. That's one of the reasons that progressive politics in the US is not credible, because progressives are silent when the Democrats do these things on the ground that they need to "stop the Republicans," compared to the right which is always pushing its agenda regardless of who holds elected office. That's why the recall effort in Wisconsin failed, because the Democrats took up all the energy and made the recall about electing a Democrat instead of a fight for labour rights. People need to organize and mobilize and force the politicians to act. In other words, it's not about stopping Romney from being elected out of fear of what he will do, it's about creating a climate where even if Romney is elected he wouldn't dare go as far as he wants because he knows he'd suffer the political consequences.
I thought you were going to show this one
Jimmy Carter Accuses U.S. of 'Widespread Abuse of Human Rights'
Since 9/11 and wars of conquest in Afghanistan and Middle East, the rest of the world increasingly views the USA as a corrupt and lawless nation.
It IS a corrupt and lawless nation. Especially under the Law Professor President.
Very true. If there is no difference between political parties then only we can direct policy with our collective voices. BUT, they have 24/7 propaganda machines that pipe into our living rooms that have made us compliant and even fervent in our obedience. How do we defeat that?
Coupled of course with our high standard of living which includes, as George Carlin has said, cell phones that can make us pancakes, we have been fattened up to a degree that just the notion of dieting is controversial.
Ah, thank you for that information.