Post #415,162
11/4/16 4:48:07 PM
11/4/16 4:48:07 PM
|
Funny that.
If (generic) you're not voting for the Democrat in the General, don't be upset when she can't push the needle toward Progress. I've voted in every Presidential election from 1980 through 2012. That's 9 general elections. In one third of those, the person I voted for in the primary became the candidate. So, two-thirds of the time my candidate was not the nominee. In five of those six cases I held my nose and voted Party in the general and each time I was "disappointed" because what I got was increasingly Right Wing policies with every general that the "Democrat" won. Contrary to what you state, it is the act of voting for the Democrat because s/he is a Democrat that leads to disappointment. I will not be able to be disappointed with next Tuesday's results and the forthcoming next four years because unlike every other general election save one, I won't be doing anything to support either Right Wing Party. In short, none of the responsibility for the absolute mess that is sure to come in the next four years can be laid at my feet. That will be solely on the people who vote for one of these two neo-fascists. The only way to not be disappointed is to not take part in the charade. bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,164
11/4/16 6:00:45 PM
11/4/16 6:00:45 PM
|
No, it's not funny.
It's impossible to argue with a straight face that Obama's administration is more "right wing" than W's, or that WJC's was more "right wing" than GHWB's. We're just going round and round and not convincing anyone, but I'll close with a couple of things. 1) Neither you nor I are special voters who have concerns or insights greater than our fellow citizens (with some notable exceptions!!). We each get a small voice in the outcome of an election, but we can't be silly or deranged enough to think that our small voice is the only one that matters. Sometime the better candidate loses - such is life. 2) We elect a President, not a King. A President can only do so much on their own. If you want them to enact Progressive legislation, give them a Progressive Congress. All the things you're upset with the Clintons about wasn't something that they imposed upon us by fiat. Congress has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to pass substantive progressive legislation these days. It's the easiest thing in the world to cut taxes or regulations or shift everything back to the states. Keeping the GOP from doing that isn't sexy, but it's vitally important. Congress writes the laws. Congress confirms (or doesn't) judges and agency heads. Congress butts into foreign affairs by passing resolutions about who we should overthrow next. A President has to work with whatever Congress is willing to give him or her. Hillary won't be able to do everything that she proposes on her web site and in the party platform. She'll have to compromise because Congress writes and passes the legislation. We all, I would hope, recognize that. Being petulant because a President doesn't do all they campaigned on is silly. Refusing to take a stand and choose between the only two people who have a chance to be elected President this time doesn't make you somehow free of the taint of the result. You're an American and a citizen and have as much responsibility as any other. Our national government is created and controlled by us. If we don't like what it's doing, we have a responsibility to work effectively to see that it is changed. In an election, that means choosing people who advocate for, and work toward, progress, even if they're flawed, even if they have baggage. Even if they have a screechy laugh and didn't leave a tip 25 years ago... Sitting it out, or voting 3rd party, doesn't change anything for the better. Listen to Bernie: Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Sunday discouraged voters from picking a third-party nominee, saying the issues facing the U.S. are too dire for a "protest vote."
"This moment in history for a presidential election is not the time for a protest vote," the Vermont senator said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"It's time to look at which candidate will work best for the middle class and working families." FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #415,234
11/7/16 8:21:00 AM
11/7/16 8:21:00 AM
|
I'm not completely unsympathetic to your argument. I bought Moore's Trumpland this week-end.
I bought it because I was a gigantic Hillary fan in 1992/3 and through her husband's first term. My dad and I agreed that the country would be better off if she were president instead of her husband. She was savaged by nearly everyone: Big insurance, Reagan Era Republicans, the Meedja and not least of all her own husband and the great unwashed at large. I bought and watched Trumpland because I thought if anyone could give me a good reason to vote for HRC, it would be as likely to be Michael Moore as anyone. He almost had me. During his act, he makes people recall the savagery Hillary had to endure during the 1990's, how she at least tried to get us universal healthcare, but the health insurance industry was able to convince the majority of Murican Morons that was a bad thing. It famously failed and has never been attempted since, Moore rightly points out. He said the people abandoned her back then, and he's largely correct. He focused on her early days (that time when I was a fan) and basically said to look at the changes she'd made to promote her husband. He said he was hoping that the past 12 years or so she'd been laying back in the weeds, waiting for her opportunity when she had real power. That after she was elected it would be up to all of us to keep her honest and on the Progressive track.
He almost had me. But upon further reflection, I realized what he was saying is akin to what you've been saying, "Vote for her in the hope that she isn't really what she appears to be." I've done that sort of voting for most of my adult life and I'm finished doing that. I will henceforth cease to ever again vote for the evil of two lessers. If no one on the ballot represents the policies I support, then I will abstain from voting. You may differ, but refusing to support someone who does not share your values and does not support the policies you support is the only sane approach to the solemn duty of voting. bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,238
11/7/16 9:07:21 AM
11/7/16 9:07:21 AM
|
So you were OK with Bernie?
His waffling on gun legislation? His support of the "$1T" F-35? Where are his federal tax returns, anyway? Why is it you give Bernie a pass on things like this, but Hillary is a "lesser evil" that you cannot actually support now - when a know-nothing brain-damaged fascist bully has the GOP nomination - under (seemingly) any circumstance? Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #415,240
11/7/16 9:55:17 AM
11/7/16 9:55:17 AM
|
He supports airplanes and guns and that's supposed to make him a bad guy with me? :-)
I admit Bernie is not great on War issues. But to say he is as hawkish as Hillary is a bit much, don't you think? Also, despite what you may think, I am not looking for the perfect candidate. I'm looking for a candidate who, on the whole, holds positions I support and does not support any positions I am adamantly against. Like, for instance, the USA Patriot Act, the bank bailout (I love how capitalists are all about capitalism until they need socialism to save them), the Iraq War, allowing banks to "capitalize education" for the benefit of their shareholders, and so on. Hillary has embraced the contrary view to mine on many of the issues that are most important to me. I also do not care much for the way she (and some of her supporters) have run the Clinton campaign. From collusion with the DNC to the "He spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union! He's a Commie!", to the invention of the mythic "BernieBros" and on and on. Let's just take one example of the dripping propaganda that spewed from HRC's campaign: Senator Bernie Sanders's long-ago "honeymoon" in the Soviet Union is held up by his opponents as evidence of dubious judgment, and even Communist sympathies or anti-American tendencies. The self-described socialist was questioned about the visit during a debate of Democratic presidential candidates in October as a way to raise doubts about his electability.
Those descriptions and concerns are based on distortions and exaggerations: The trip, which began the day after his wedding with his second wife, Jane, in May 1988, was undertaken as part of Sanders' official duties as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. And in any case, most of his critics seem to have forgotten that the Soviet Union at the time was hardly the place for an admirer of communism to find comfort.
Under Sanders, Burlington developed sister-city programs with places that reflected his sympathies, notably Puerta Cabezas, Nicaragua. That pairing was in keeping with Sanders' opposition to President Ronald Reagan's attempts to undermine the leftist Sandinista government. Sanders and the Burlington Board of Aldermen even wrote angry letters demanding that the president "stop killing the innocent people of Nicaragua."
Burlington also had a link-up with the city of Yaroslavl, in Russia. But as Sanders wrote in his 1998 political memoir, "Outsider in the White House," the motivations were quite different:
Like the Puerto Cabezas project, the sister-city program with Yaroslavl has been very successful. Each has different constituencies of support. Puerto Cabezas mostly attracted the energy of left-wing activists who were initially involved because of their support for the Sandinista Revolution and opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America. The Yaroslavl project received more broad-based backing, including from a number of business people in the city. http://origin-www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-11/how-bernie-sanders-spent-his-soviet-honeymoonIn the end, I think Hillary was beaten down in the 1990's and came to, essentially, give up hope for progress and instead (and here I am being pretty charitable) focus on incrementally decreasing the rate of damage. Moore wants me to believe that's not the real her and vote for her based upon what she once was, not what all the evidence suggests she is today. I think that is a fool's errand. bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,254
11/7/16 8:39:24 PM
11/7/16 8:39:24 PM
|
I am
The core of his message has been the same since I first encountered him around '92: things are not going to get better, and will continue to get worse, if we do not rein in the greed that is now running unchecked. Events since then pretty much have borne that out. No one I know here has ever considered Sanders a saint (we knew he was Jewish ;) Politicians will end up with dirty hands but of anyone in this campaign, he is the one that has devolved the least. That is why I voted for Sanders in the primaries. And I put my vote against Trump in the mail two days ago. And from there, it went left all the way down ballot. Although, quite a few here are intrigued to see what would happen to a certain policy if the GOP wins the Governor's race... [The one where the Governor is always driven by a state trooper: http://speed51.com/phil-scott-racing-to-win-the-milk-bowl-and-the-state-house/] And as I'm writing this, one of the Bernie for Unicorn wranglers is bouncing off the answering machine. Aye...
|
Post #415,256
11/8/16 7:43:20 AM
11/8/16 7:43:20 AM
|
Good post. Thanks.
|
Post #415,258
11/8/16 9:05:50 AM
11/8/16 9:05:50 AM
|
I just reread a part of your post and you COULD NOT be more wrong.
t's impossible to argue with a straight face that ... WJC's was more "right wing" than GHWB's. You couldn't be more wrong. GHWB tried his entire first term to get NAFTA passed and failed. It took Eisenhower Republican WJC to do that. Republicans tried for years to destroy welfare and couldn't. It took WJC to do that. Republicans tried for years to get Glass-Stegall repealed and couldn't. It took WJC to do that. Those successes of WJC were not only more Right Wing than anything we'd seen out of Republicans, but were in fact fascist pieces of legislation. HTH. bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,265
11/8/16 11:09:25 AM
11/8/16 11:09:25 AM
|
Yeah, Bill was just a Taft Republican
Or something. Contemporary history, from 1995: Consider the role of California liberals in health care reform. Last summer Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein abandoned employer mandates and universal coverage and fatally wounded Senator George Mitchell's effort to build a majority for a revised version of Clinton's plan. At no point did California's highly articulate liberals apply pressure on Feinstein to support Clinton and Mitchell. Instead, many health care advocates and liberal groups campaigned for a single-payer ballot initiative. Thousands of enthusiastic volunteers collected signatures. Most proponents knew that this radical proposal had little chance of adoption (it garnered only 27 percent of the vote). But progressives defended their approach with claims that they were "really" helping the president, though they harshly criticized Clinton's plan for retaining private insurance. By mobilizing to demand a pure measure, activists explained, they would counter conservative attacks on all reform and create "space" in the center for Clinton's efforts.
Yet if this energy had been mobilized directly for the Clinton plan (with those volunteers organizing rallies or circulating petitions), Feinstein might not have dared abandon it, and it might have survived. The "space" that progressives created was the running room for Feinstein to abandon Clinton and universal coverage. A President is constrained by his/her times and his/her Congress (and the Courts). Going Lefty McLeftish on a Democratic president too often gets us no loaf at all. Key Events for GHWB: GHWB gave us Clarence Thomas. He gave us a stepped-up drug war. He vetoed a raise to the minimum wage (and signed a smaller increase months later). He invaded Panama. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990. Yeah Bubba was worse than Bush. (groucho-roll-eyes.gif) Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #415,267
11/8/16 11:23:52 AM
11/8/16 11:23:52 AM
|
Riddle me this. If "A President is constrained by his/her times ..."
How is that Clinton got NAFTA through when GHWB couldn't? bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,272
11/8/16 11:56:11 AM
11/8/16 11:56:11 AM
|
NAFTA wasn't just one person pushing/stopping it.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-12-18/news/1992353055_1_treaty-renegotiate-clintonBush signs North American trade pact Clinton says he won't renegotiate
December 18, 1992|By Gilbert A. Lewthwaite | Gilbert A. Lewthwaite,Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement yesterday, and his successor-in-waiting Bill Clinton immediately announced that he would not seek the treaty's renegotiation.
Mr. Clinton, in a statement issued in Little Rock, Ark., said the signing represented "an important step" toward the economic integration of North America. He repeated his campaign assertion that there would have to be new job and environmental protections, and safeguards against sudden trade "surges," but these could be settled without renegotiating the treaty with Mexico and Canada before he submitted implementing legislation.
"I will pursue those other things that I think need to be done in the public interest, then I will prepare implementing legislation and try to pass it in Congress," he said.
His new administration would also take domestic action on assisting workers, protecting the U.S. environment, helping farmers, encouraging public participation in consideration of the agreement and closing loopholes for foreign workers, he said.
"I believe these steps do not require renegotiation of NAFTA," said Mr. Clinton, promising to work closely with the two neighboring governments and with congress to "move this process forward."
[...]
Mr. Bush's action yesterday fulfilled the requirements of the "fast-track" legislative process, under which Congress can now only vote the agreement up or down. It cannot change the signed document.
Mr. Bush had to allow Congress 90 days to consider the agreement before signing. Yesterday was the first possible day for his signature. The clock will start ticking again when Mr. Clinton submits implementing legislation to make the necessary changes in U.S. law and tariffs required by the treaty. There is no deadline for Mr. Clinton to take this action, but once he does Congress will have up to 90 legislative days to vote up or down on the implementing legislation or change it.
The vote on the implementing legislation will ratify the treaty, which is due to go into effect Jan. 1, 1994. Clinton signed the enabling legislation in December 1993: When I affix my signature to the NAFTA legislation a few moments from now, I do so with this pledge: To the men and women of our country who were afraid of these changes and found in their opposition to NAFTA an expression of that fear—what I thought was a wrong expression and what I know was a wrong expression but nonetheless represented legitimate fears—the gains from this agreement will be your gains, too.
I ask those who opposed NAFTA to work with us to guarantee that the labor and side agreements are enforced, and I call on all of us who believe in NAFTA to join with me to urge the Congress to create the world's best worker training and retraining system. We owe it to the business community as well as to the working men and women of this country. It means greater productivity, lower unemployment, greater worker efficiency, and higher wages and greater security for our people. We have to do that.
We seek a new and more open global trading system not for its own sake but for our own sake. Good jobs, rewarding careers, broadened horizons for the middle class Americans can only be secured by expanding exports and global growth. For too long our step has been unsteady as the ground has shifted beneath our feet. Today, as I sign the North American Free Trade Agreement into law and call for further progress on GATT, I believe we have found our footing. And I ask all of you to be steady, to recognize that there is no turning back from the world of today and tomorrow. We must face the challenges, embrace them with confidence, deal with the problems honestly and openly, and make this world work for all of us. America is where it should be, in the lead, setting the pace, showing the confidence that all of us need to face tomorrow. We are ready to compete, and we can win. (Emphasis added.) Did Congress do that? Not that I recall. NAFTA was a GOP idea. GHWB signed it - it's kinda hard for him to see it enacted when he signed it, as a lame duck a few weeks before he left office. Bill seemed to try to use it to help people who were already being affected by increased global trade - not a bad idea. Was there insufficient followup? Maybe. Did NAFTA destroy the US economy? No. Was it a boon for the US? No. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #415,275
11/8/16 1:19:07 PM
11/8/16 1:19:07 PM
|
700,000 of your countrymen would disagree about the destruction.
The historic agreement, signed just three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, tore down trade barriers between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, making trade and investment easier for businesses without allowing for the cross-border movement of labor. Despite the agreement being considered a boon for Mexico, the country’s economy grew only 1.6 percent per capita on average between 1992 and 2007, The New York Times reported in 2009.
The EPI’s calculation of 682,900 jobs lost to NAFTA takes into account jobs created as a result, too. Last year, for example, U.S. exports to Mexico supported 791,900 jobs. It’s just that those jobs created pale in comparison to the 1.47 million U.S. jobs that would be necessary without the imports resulting from NAFTA, the report found. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/nafta-job-loss-trade-deficit-epi_n_859983.htmlbcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,278
11/8/16 1:29:08 PM
11/8/16 1:29:08 PM
|
"without allowing for the cross-border movement of labor" that is what was wrong with it
a truly capitalist society would allow capital to move freely. Those of us who are poor the only capital is their labor always look out for number one and don't step in number two
|
Post #415,279
11/8/16 1:32:15 PM
11/8/16 1:32:15 PM
|
It, like everything else in this country, wasn't written for labor.
bcnu,
Mikem
I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.
Christopher Hitchens.
|
Post #415,280
11/8/16 2:36:15 PM
11/8/16 2:47:41 PM
|
Dunno.
How about a dispassionate look at the manufacturing employment numbers over a long period of time? Isn't manufacturing the thing that was "decimated" in the US by NAFTA? http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001[edit: Here's the graph - dunno how long it will last]  If you look at the BLS data for Manufacturing Employment from, say, 1970 - 2016 you see a three obvious features: 1) lots of oscillations around a level of about 17.5 M (oscillations apparently due to the business cycle) 2) a dramatic fall from 2001 - 2010 3) a rise from 2010 - 2015 It's hard for me to see that you can tie the changes in manufacturing employment from 2001 on to NAFTA. NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994. It took 7 years for it to have a big impact on manufacturing employment? Really? And manufacturing employment did go up from 1994 - 1998 according to those numbers. Maybe electing W, and the bursting of the Tech Bubble, and the freakout over 9/11 and the rise in oil prices, and a bunch of other things, had much more to do with fall in manufacturing employment than NAFTA. Maybe. (I haven't read your link yet, but I'm suspicious of too much precision in numbers like "682,900 jobs lost to NAFTA".) FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
|
