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If one listens to media (seriously, why would they) or looks at opinion pieces on the Democratic contest for the Presidency, one sees a lot of people talking about the race… yet no one expressing any vision of what the landscape would look like if either of them won.
So in plain language, here it is…
If you think the rich have too much and the poor have too little, nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries on June 7th.
If you think there is something inherently wrong with 1/10th of one percent owning more than the bottom 90% (you), recognize nothing will ever change unless enough of you vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries on June 7th.
If you think there is something wrong with 58% of all new income generated going to the top 1%, (they get raises; you don’t) then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries on June 7th.
If you think there is something wrong with America having the highest child poverty rate (32.2%) of any developed nation, and we continue to cut back on programs designed to alleviate poverty just so billionaires can keep more of their money, then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie in the primaries of June 7th.
If you think that the wealthy and large corporation should at least pay the same rate as you and even more on their inordinately high incomes, then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie in the primaries of June 7th.
If you think that no one who works 40+ hours a week should live in poverty and that by 2020 minimum wages across America should be at $15 an hour, then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you get up, go out, and vote for Bernie in the primaries of June 7th.
If you believe we should put Obama’s original idea of investing 1 Trillion towards rebuilding our infrastructure and create 13 million jobs for those in our inner cities, then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie in the primaries of June 7th…
If you believe we should make tuition free at public colleges and universities across the US, then you must realize nothing will change unless enough of you vote for Bernie in those primaries taking place on June 7th.
If you think we should expand the social security cap above $250,000, so those billionaires and large corporations earning most of America’s new income, continue to pay the same rate as you and your employer, helping to keep Social Security solvent far into the future, then you must realize that nothing positive will happen, unless enough of you vote for Bernie in Tuesday’s primaries.
If you think it is time for the US to join the rest of the civilized world and make healthcare a right, guaranteeing every American the right to a Medicare-for-ALL single plan health care, then you must realize it can never happen, unless enough of you vote for Bernie in Tuesday’s primaries….
If you think that all human beings are important enough that employers should pay up to 12 weeks of family or medical leave, should have 2 weeks of vacation, and 7 sick days a year, please realize this will never happen, unless enough of you vote for it by choosing Bernie Sanders on June 7th….
If you think we should have a universal childcare and early childhood healthcare program for all children ages 0-3, then you must realize this will never happen unless enough of you vote for it by choosing Bernie Sanders on June 7th….
If you think we should have more unions instead of less, to increase our clout when bargaining for a share of the new profits being made hand over fist by our record productive work, then you need to realize only one person is capable of changing the status quo and making that happening, and he is on the ballot in the Democratic Primaries on June 7th..
If you think Big Banks who call themselves “Too Big To Fail” and count on Federal Taxpayers bailing out their bad investments, should be broken up into a lot of smaller banks which then can be allowed to fail, putting the financial responsibility on their investors, then you must realize the candidate who did not receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from these banks, is the only one who is able to make this happening, and he needs your vote on June 7th to prove to America that most of us want positive change…..
If you feel any of these are important, and even if you dream of how much better your life could be “if only” these things were in effect instead of the corporate driven economy we find ourselves…. then you must realize that no matter what anyone else besides you says… whether on TV, magazines, opinion pages, or blogs, that your job or even duty to your children, is to vote for the America you want to see happen in your lifetime….
It is revealing that in the week leading up to California and New Jersey and other final states, that Hillary and Trump are calling each other names and attacking personalities while Bernie is still running on his (and your) dream…
Here is the kicker. Even if Bernie doesn’t ultimately win the nomination, if enough of you still vote for him in this final push, it is very likely that the winner will have to bow to popular appeal and incorporate his platform as part of her plan…That is what has happened in many of the past 58 presidential elections in our history. Your stronger than expected showing on June 7th is not just an affirmation for the courage and vision of the man you love and trust, it is an affirmative vote, a big YES for all the policies he has proposed, which we as a nation can easily afford, just haven’t because we’ve all been too scared of the blustering rich guys…
Well the rich guys are Donald Trump. We see how they act and don’t have to be scared of them anymore.
When they come after the nominee and say: you can’t implement Bernie’s Plan on us, she can point to your votes for Sanders and say, “that is not what large numbers of the American People say” and you have given her the cover to stand up to the oligarchs.
America is a nation of ideas. We worship a document, not a charismatic founder… Our basis of government is little ink scrawls on parchment or more importantly, the ideas those little cursive letters express. Although our media has done its best to put faces in front of us (often in contorted poses), most of us accept the reality that those faces are interchangeable; it is the ideas being expressed by those faces that are important… Another face putting forth the same ideas will be just as effective implementing them if voted in office, as the face running right now…
This is Bernie’s revolution, a return to the dominance of ideas. And his is being fueled differently than the other two campaigns, both of which for lack of a better word, are personality cults:.. “I” will build a wall and “I” will make Mexico pay for it/ “I” am the most experienced executive of all the candidates” Against which Bernie is saying: “We” need this now; “We” need that now; and with your votes, “We” can really do this now/ now is the time….
And that is why every vote for Bernie on June 7th is an affirmation for the ideas he has personified. That is why if you want real change, you will still need to vote for the ideas that appeal to you and not be swayed by political noise which primarily I believe, is aimed at you to confuse you and distract you from following your agenda….
Voting for people supported by the status quo and bankrolled by interests opposite of yours, will do nothing to change your predicament, no matter how much you love them… By them I’m sure you will be offered new programs, but those offerings really benefit the investors who are providing them, not help those needing help. But if you are in the camp who thinks that all it takes for America to be great again is to get a little more income into your pocket, to not worry about affording college, to not worry over having medical bills, not worrying about what happens to you when you retire, to actually be able to make more money when your companies profits rise solely because of your collective hard work, then there is only one candidate worthy of your vote, for real.
The last great hope in anyones lifetime like this was JFK (by November 2008 most of us knew Obama’s campaign agenda would be bogged down by the economy). We’ve been waiting 56 years for this new breath of fresh air. If you don’t show this guy your support, based on how things work, it becomes very hard for those ideas to ever become reality… The rich will say: “See? Even poorest of the masses don’t want his dreams passed into law….”
It’s your vote; making it collectively, your call. Same way it has always has been in America for 58 presidential elections and despite multiple ups and downs, by miracles and close votes we will have survived 240 years from our conception this upcoming July 4th.
Forget all noises in your ear (including this one). Vote for the America YOU want to see. Don’t throw your one great opportunity away…..
Photo courtesy of the EPA.
That would be my advice. Truth is, we quickly make Russia into a demon. They do the same to us. If there is anything we have learned over 100 years since the Great War started in August 1914, it is that going to war, should be the last resort…
Back in the early ’90’s upon being given the privilege to look over the Soviet’s intelligence when Communism fell, we were shocked that all their aggressive actions were seen in their eyes as defensive moves against possible aggression being planned by us….It is best represented by a young officers story from the cold war. I’ve long forgotten the source, if it comes up later I’ll tag it in…
But a young officer was in charge of a section of the German fence, and on his first shift, received a request for orders and told the reconnaissance brigade to go 5 more miles along the fence past where they usually turned around. They called back to say they’d stumbled on fresh movement of troops being maneuvered to that gap on front line we never had bothered to inspect.. After finding our troops were now outnumbered by their new response, this young officer ordered another brigade to move up from the south. That brigade also discovered another large number of troops moving in from the eastern reserves to that same point… The officer began to sweat. Was he witnessing on his watch, in his territory, the beginning of the long-feared invasion of Western Europe by the Soviets? He called up two more brigades and ordered them to dig in around that point. The Soviets brought up tanks, and lined them up for an invasion… The young officer then picked up the phone… Far away, the head of command looked over all the evidence… Finally he gave this advice… Pull your troops out, by ten miles…. he did, and the Soviets pulled theirs back as well. Ok, came the next order. Resume normalcy. And soon, everything again was routine….
For those that don’t understand war, the point of the story was, that the young officer caused the crises. The whole Russian buildup, was because of him. He made a move the Russians didn’t understand, and since they didn’t understand, they prepared for an attack. As we brought up more, so did they. They were simply matching our moves… Fortunately someone wise enough to understand that he Russians really didn’t want to go to war, stepped in and averted a possible WWIII start-up incident…
As if on cue, already dumb John McCain is rattling swords and demanding we nuke Moscow. Soon Lindsey Graham will follow as Tweedle Dumb always follows Tweedle Dee… Likewise, Putin will also have his exact same crowd (probably riding Harleys), his group of idiots, clamoring for war as well…
The Western press has already begin its war talk, leading with the condemnation of the Russian Government… But really, isn’t that a bit premature? No one has died. Far less than anything that happened in Kiev earlier this week….
Let’s wear Putin’s shoes for moment….
What if the predominantly Mexican population of San Diego wanted to be aligned with Mexico instead of the USA, all because we couldn’t get Republicans to pass immigration laws.. What if they gathered en masse in San Diego to protest, stayed, burned down government and private buildings. What if we tried to make them stand down, and it roused up even more Mexicans to their defense. What if the Mayor fled to Yuma, and camped out in a sanatorium. … …
What would the US do. OUR entire Pacific Fleet rests in San Diego… We would probably act prudently. and move outward to expand our perimeter. We would probably commander all airports and ship docks in that area in order to be able to land reinforcements if necessary. We would probably park a couple of gunboats facing the city as an intimidating force reminding the Mexicans we had forces they couldn’t get to, so their behavior should keep that in mind. We’d probably block access roads leading into the port, so an invasion army wouldn’t be able to charge in unannounced…
Just to play devils advocate, what might happen if we took no action to defend ourselves? As most Americans are asking the Russians to do? We saw the Mexicans had little respect in town for law and order. There are a lot more of them than there are of us… What if 10,000 of them just walked on to the base, armed with shotguns, hunting rifles, and a few semi automatics. What if they boarded all our ships, our subs, and put our sailors at gunpoint into the brig, and announced they were in charge of the Baja Mexican Navy… Now the 2nd largest navy in the world. What would the US do? Would we sail into our own harbor as did the Free French and blow what used to be our own ships up out of the water?
Of course the Mexicans would say we are invading their new country. Of course every Spanish tonged nation South of our border would be condemning us for invading Mexican California… despite the fact that a lot of gringos, maybe even a majority, live around San Diego and support our American troops being there and keeping the masses of Mexicans from turning on them….
Point is, we would ourselves, do what Russia just did...
So how can we condemn them, when we have contingency plans to do exactly the same thing?
There is further evidence this is not like Sudetenland, . One, no one has died. It was a smooth peaceful quiet takeover, textbook by American Standards. Two, action is isolated to the port and Crimea. Three, all evidence points to these actions solely for the purpose of controlling access to the base.
As Americans we would laugh at Europe, Russia, and China telling us to abandon San Diego. There are a lot of similarities between that and the Russian base. The number one move now appears to be: for the Kiev Ukraine government to insist that the base will forever stay Russian, and guarantee the safety of all Russians living on Crimea… Second, it should state that the current administration insists there will be no change for those who like having Russians close by. For that select group, there will be only two options. Life goes either goes on the same; or it gets better. The third option that it may get worse, is forever off the table.. .
It would be the equivalent of that American young officer calling off his men, and telling them to retreat backwards 10 miles.. it would be the opposite of what happened 100 years ago, where threats begot threats and soon rigid plans took effect and not one leader had the chutzpah to stop it from going forward. 6 million soldiers died, 15 million civilians died, and a whole generation of young men was wiped out. Girls had to marry men their father’s age.. and in the end Western Europe’s borders were right back where they were before the whole event started.
Cool heads must prevail. Of course the McCains will spout off. They don’t matter. What matters is that we treat the Russians with respect just as we would like them to do for us, if the shoe were on the other foot and we were fighting the battle of San Diego…..
If two volcanos go as did Krakatoa at both ends of the San Andreas fault close to the same time, could it be enough for the Big One?
Kilroy thinks so and I am inclined to agree. Call it a sixth sense. I’ll be looking forward to seeing if this mystical sense of certainty is indeed as real as old philosophers have impuned, or if it alas is just a figment of my imagination, which my rational side has insisted all along…
🙂
But one can’t be a seer without making a prediction…
In case you didn’t see a previous post, I stumbled into this controversy by accident. Since then, I have found that common core is striking a lot of nerves. In fact there is a divide splitting America’s educational system in two. I’m being blunt and non political. It is split between those who love children, and those who love a cause….
What I’ve found is that those who love children, primarily teachers, parents, and some administrators, are finding the new Common Core Standards are confusing, dumbing down, and making our kids hate learning. Those who are lost in this cause, call these damages collateral, and point to the theoretical good that could occur if this trend is pursued more harshly…. To this those who love children are saying “stop”; you are hurting them. Those in love with the cause, are saying, “hurt is good; no pain, no gain.”
And that is the overview of the common core controversy as I see it right now. That pretty well sums it up, right?
In no order here is stuff going on right now. Keep in mind, what you here is between those who love children, and those who love a cause.
Aspen Colorado, a Gate’s supported school written in the WSJ, can’t keep teacher more than 4 years, and scores once touted as rising, are now falling.
Alabama last week announced it was withdrawing from the two consortia developing tests aligned with the common core.
Utah withdrew from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium last year,
In Indiana, a Republican member of the Senate education committee, introduced legislation that would require the state to drop the common standards. Mr. Schneider said that the standards are inferior to Indiana’s prior academic-content standards, and that the common core has frustrated legislators because it was adopted behind a “veil of secrecy” and without good estimates of its financial costs.
Legislators previously desperate for federal cash attached to the standards, he said, are “just becoming alerted to what’s going on.
Seattle Teachers boycott the state testing.
And in Texas was recently formed. The Mothers Against Drunk Testing.
There you go. Just some. As you can see, it is not overpaid union teachers who are the only ones up in arms against Common Core…. It is parents, mostly leading the charge….
So why are these parents getting in the way of the cause to make our education world class? What is wrong with them?
Perhaps they love their kids a little more than they love the cause?
Republican Issa, who is making an unprecedented foray into classified territory to try to indict the sitting president before the election, released documents that named every informer we had working for us in Libya.
When asked in private, Issa is reportedly to have said. “It won’t matter as long as we get him (Obama) out of office.” The Republicans in the room all churned up their approval.
Once again, Republicans show they don’t care about human lives. In this case, the only reason for this release was for political gain.
The documents are intended to show what the US knew before Benghazi. They could have simply been processed with black marks over the names of those informers. However, for it to hit the news cycle before the debate, it had to leave the room by 2:30 that afternoon. The redaction would have taken two hours for the 4 staffers available.
Representative Issa made the call to send the documents out without redaction. There was a discussion over the morality of doing so, and Issa, made the call that those on the ground in Libya, were expendable for this chance at the President.
The documents prove that Obama was not in the loop. Although Issa is apparently too dumb to understand this?…
It reminds everyone of the quickness with which Romney himself tried to use Benghazi as a political tool, well before any facts had emerged over the death of the Ambassador.
These Republicans for lack of any better word, are fools. They are far more damaging to America’s security than any Soviet spy…
No, Meg.. Meg Whitman… You remember her?
No?
She got clobbered (53/40)by Jerry Brown in California after she spent more of her own money on the race than any other political candidate spent on a single election in American history, spending $144 million total of her own fortune and $178.5 million including donors.
Facts:
She ran similar to Romney’s Run now.
The former eBay CEO told voters that her business background made her the right choice to boost job creation in a state troubled by high unemployment. Sound familiar? It’s the same spiel we hear from Mitt Romney every single day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
As a consolation prize for getting clobbered by Jerry Brown in the gubernatorial election, Whitman landed a plum job of her own — CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a company that, like California, has been going through some tough times. But this week Whitman made clear that as a business leader, her approach to job creation doesn’t quite mesh with her political promises. Multiple media outlets are reporting that HP is planning to cut its workforce by around 30,000 jobs — a number that accounts for 7-8 percent of HP’s total workforce.
So you see? Mitt’s plan doesn’t work in the real world. No Republican’s plan works in the real world… You can’t even find a Republican who will privately say they endorse their parties financial plan….
What we have is an Alf Landon running against Franklin D. Roosevelt… ( I think he carried Vermont and Maine and no one knows why?) Except this Franklin Roosevelt is half black…..
If you haven’t gotten it into your head since the elections of 2000, TWELVE YEARS AGO! …. republicans are a joke… nothing they do works.
Oh, yeah? Name one……
Silence…….
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal
i first saw him as a pig.
That was because the author who was telling me this story, was trying rather hard to portray him as just that…
Jauntily waving around a cannister of pepper spray, then without any visible remorse, spraying the poison down the line of tiny little students.
Another author, provides a video showing him patting a student on the back, joking with him and his mates, just two minutes before spraying that same student, arm locked with his peers, with the orange tainted poison….
That bothered me. That was unusual. The hillbilly in Deliverance didn’t show any camaraderie. The militia’s at Selma, didn’t show camaraderie before going on the attack. The police attacking in Berkley, didn’t have a jocular attitude upon swinging their batons.
No, this is different….
If you analyze the scene where the comes up to the student, pats him on the back, you can see the Lieutenant is a person enjoying being swept up in the moment. It is very hard to feel that Lieutenant Pike has gross animosity to students in general… He does not have any characteristics of a thug.
What most likely happened is that Lieutenant Pike, figured on his own, that since pepper spray is relatively harmless (which is why it is so often used; it has no long lasting effectual damage), the students who were locked arm in arm, would then be easier to remove, if they left on their own power. He also figured out that clubbing the students with batons, was not a viable option, especially when being streamed over so many cameras.
if you watch the video you can see that the officer in charge, later identified as Lieutenant Pike, seem to stand for a moment, head out, as if he knows what is about to happen. His life is about to change forever. He seems to be enjoying his time on stage.. pepper Sprays do not need to be shaken that much. The shaking serves as a relief of nervous tension, as well as an intimidatory warning; as if saying as one often does to one’s children: “are you sure you want to go through with this? This is your last chance.”
The other contingent of police officers then comes up to attempt arrests without pepper spray, (they don’t try very hard; pulling gently on only one females arm) but he waves them off.
He wslks to the center of the line, begings sprahing students until reaching he end .He returns back, still spraying crossing the center and spartying the other half, returning to the center wehre he stops spraying. Each Student only got sprayed two times.
Lieutenant Pike stops at a student, waves the contingent to come forward, and pulls a male student out of line, using no force he squats beside the student, and we can see other officers taking the student who go patted on the back, off the concrete in to the grass where he is turned over, bound and arrested. We can see the officer beside that student take out his baton, and later we see him re-sheath it. It does not get used. Instead we see officer Pike keep a reassuring hand on one student and a knee lightly pinning down another. He gets up, leaves those two students unattended, and goes back to the center of the corps.
Officer Pike then does no more arrests. We see him in the crowd still holding the cannister, and we see he doesn’t make any attempt to arrest any student. many of the students are turned over to into the custody of their friends who were watching from the sidelines.
Officer Pike comes across as more of a David Anderson than a Don Ayotte.
This is not someone who shouts “commie, pinko, fag.”…
My theory is that he’s simply enjoying his hour upon the stage. The theatricality of patting a former adversary on the back, establishing a rapport, of shaking the cannister abnormally long, (they’re made for pointing and firing at a moments notice under attack), of waving off the other contingent with broad motions, of then walking half a length before pressing the trigger, of then returning so the dose is even on all the students, of then when all the actors move in, knowing that his part is over, and pulling back and letting the others handle the arrest.
This is behavior from someone who has been a hero before, someone who knows fame is fleeting, and who knows that just doing what you have to do, is how you answer it…
I would conclude that there does not seem to be any driving hatred underlying Lieutenant Pike’s actions. I would conclude that Lieutenant Pike most likely thought the less damaging option presented to the police, the one with the least likely consequences, was the one he performed: using pepper spray to break up the line. Long term damage from pepper spray is by far less severe than even one billy club to the head. Damage from pepper spray is far less severe than even one billy club into the uterus. Both which were performed just days earlier on University of Berkley Students. Any smart person studying the videos of Berkley, trying to figure out the best possible way to break up such an action would quite rationally conclude, that first using pepper spray would be better for all those involved., including of course those officers who had to do the arresting.
I find this very disturbing.
I find that I, were I in Mr. Pike’s (now a civilian) shoes, would probably thought along the same lines.
This video shows authority cracking down on its own citizens protesting politely. It does not speak kindly of the former Lieutenant, Mr. Pike. Fortunately there was other evidence, which I hope, in the name of truth, sees the light of day……
We need to see Mr. Pike, not as a bad man, but as a very good man forced by a very bad society, to do something he can not afford to refuse. Just as every boss who gets told to lay of 20% of hie workforce, who knows it is wrong, who knows it is bad for society, who knows it is bad for the Bank of America, but who, by being tied to a paycheck, has no recourse but to follow through. must do what is ordered…. The good ones try to do it in a way that is least damaging upon those receiving it.
Originally I thought Lieutenant Pike was a pig. The real pigs are those who put him in that position….
If the wealthy had paid their fair share of taxes in the first place, this incident would never have occurred.
kavips 