I'm continually texted by Dem party organizations and candidates telling me how bad things are and what they are going to stand for, if only I will send money. No organized action, no history of same. Their collective inability seems a feature and not a bug.
I think Mamdani ran on the root principle of every residents right to an affordable city, which opens the door to discussing needs and priorities: rent freeze, food price subsidies, free buses. The Democratic Party has no end of specifics, many of them sound, some of them highly irritating to many Americans What it doesn't have is any principles -- literally.
My husband said the same thing. He convinced me to vote for Harris instead of throwing my ballot in the trash, and now he's the one saying he can't vote for these people.
Good job, Ken, a very good job, thank you. But in addition to housing, in addition to health care, where is there mention of that utterly obscene $1+ trillion dollar "defense" budget, that $4+ billion US TAXPAYERS give to that fornicating Israel each year to kill Palestinian children, exterminate them all? Start talkin' that kind of language, Ken Martin, and maybe I and a few others will bother listening to you.
This is why the Democratic Party has lost so many of us for the past few decades. They can’t seem to articulate the needs of the people or even really represent the people. The current Democratic Party leadership needs to go and let people,like Mr. Mamdani, take the helm. Frankly, I believe that the Democratic Party is culpable for letting Trump get in The White House. They are completely out of touch and drunk on themselves.
I don't think so much "drunk on themselves" as shaking in their boots that after Reagan they could see the tide going out, then Clinton came along and set the Dems on the course to Big Money (nights in the Lincoln bedroom, anyone?). So they began playing the Republican game, which helped with a second Clinton term, two Obamas. It was starting to run thin with Hillary, the Dems barely pulled it off with Biden x1 but not x2, and Kamala Harris x0.
The Republicans can bank on their game, the Dems in mimicking it could only go so far. Now they're at the end of the road, and they still can't figure out the game is up, at least from the way they've been playing it.
To be a bit smug about it, I remember when Obama was first running, and I was trying to figure out what his message was. Eventually he (and no doubt DNC consultants) came up with the "post-partisan politics" alliterative line. And that's when I said uh-uh, he be not for me, I don't want any over-and-done-with, get-over-it, time-to-move-on, what's-done-is-done malarkey, I want you to get back everything that's been taken from us by all those bastards from Reagan onward, PLUS INTEREST, to give a chance of setting things more or less on an even keel.
And they also remain clueless and unconcerned about the fact that over 75% of democrats hate the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As put ever so aptly by Harold Myerson of TAP:
"Meyerson on TAP
The idiocy (both moral and strategic) of the Democratic National Committee
At its meeting this week, the DNC opposed a ban on U.S. provision of offensive weapons to Israel."
And this party of dolts expects my enthusiastic support? We’re in this mess because of the Democrats, and it didn’t just start with the 2024 election. I want no part of either major party. We can’t vote our way out of rank, systemic corruption. These clowns can’t even condemn a live-streamed genocide. We are screwed.
Dems would rather support NATO than a ban on Citizens United or stock buybacks or trading stocks in Congress. Everyone knows they are completely full of shit.
If the democratic Party looks at the votes they didn't get in these few past elections, it is the blue collar worker. They used to have good jobs that paid good money on which they could send their kids to college, make ends meet and have a good life. The old guard of the democratic Party has left its base: The UNION guy, gal.
Until they get real with what the base wants, they aren't getting a penny from me.
Why have we been giving billions to Israel, BILLIONS, since its inception in 1948. and now, much worse, to Bibi. WHY? Are we getting a discount on grapefruit? No.
I have nothing against the *people* of Israel. but Bibi has to go.
The guy has an arrest warrant against him for his war crimes against Palestinian children. There used to be a time when we were allied with what was good, not what was bad.
Same thing in Ukraine: Why are we allied to the former head of the KGB?
The guy stole land from his neighbors, kidnapped their children, and still, the Felon isn't doing squat! worse, he fails to support President Zelensky, who alone is fighting so that Putin doesn't eventually get into Europe. Putin also has an arrest warrant against him from the International crime Court. Why are we only supporting villains?
82 percent of the Israeli population approves of genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing, according to a poll cited by Haaretz. So I have a lot against the Israeli people.
Ditto that, Susan. To be more precise, 82% want to see Gaza ethnically cleaned of Palestinians. 47% believe all of them should be killed. One can't even ask the question, "What kind of people are they?" because they are not people. I use the word "existents."
If anyone is still naive enough to retain even an iota of regard for the Israelis, i.e. beyond the staff of Haaretz, +972 magazine, and a few others, then see the estimable Norman Findkelstein here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu4OMmoo5mw as he lays out why Israeli society is a death cult, a lunatic society.
And they've got the gall - the chutzpah? - to insist others recognize their (baseless) right to exist? Sure, welcome murderers into the club of nations. Not that others are sinless, but Israel is setting new (sub)standards for depravity.
This is the reason I explode when Sanders, for example, insists on calling the genocide “Netanyahu’s war”. It’s neither a war, nor does it belong to Netanyahu. He could disappear today, and nothing would change. If it’s even possible, it might get worse under someone like Ben-Gvir.
"It’s neither a war, nor does it belong to Netanyahu."
Very much agree with you, Netanyahu was typically, extremely, shrewd in labeling Israel's onslaught as a war, which then gave him the latitude to adopt the "all is fair in..." cover to do whatever he wanted, which of course was to use the breakout - after 75 years of repression, humiliation, dehumanization - as pretext to accelerate the expulsion, extermination of the Palestinians from their own land.
And the bastard has largely gotten away with it, the "war" narrative had been picked up and repeated by the lazy, ignorant, cowardly, a**-kissing mainstream media. And you're also right, the juggernaut would continue if he were to disappear today.
Not sure if I had previously posted here or elsewhere, but I posed the question: What's the wager, when Netanyahu dies - for the sake of Palestine, for the region, for the world in general, soon - will his remains be treated like other manure for fertilizer, or will they be cordoned off as hazardous waste?
Don’t even get me started on the complicity of the media. My r/l friends get all their “news” from the NYT and WaPo. They look at me as a radicalized nut job because all I care about right now is a live-streamed genocide. They imply that I’m incapable of evaluating the validity of information I get from Twitter and independent journalists. I’m 82 years old, and this is the worst thing that’s happened in my life. Why doesn’t everyone agree with me?
Nine years behind you in life's - inexplicable, to me anyway - journey. We're in the same boat. I scarcely read the NYT or Boston Globe anymore, actually more to find out what they omit or mess up than actually report on accurately. Thank goodness for the so-called independent or alternative sources available, wish I could could fund them more than I do for the work that they do, in many cases exceptional.
I keep harking back to when CBS had its regular program with Edward R. Murrow ("Harvest of Shame" on migrant farm workers, remember that one?), that's when the broadcast media were doing what they're supposed to be doing. How long has that been gone now? "60 Minutes" but a weak, hand-me-down imitation, and of course that applies to the rest.
Now I'm building up a head of steam, "Bill Moyers' Journal," I think even PBS backed away from it in its later years, nothing in its stead. They say a free, open press (media) is essential to an informed electorate and a functioning democracy. We ain't got either.
What I see from here is that the Israeli government has been taken over by a Trump like extreme right cult, and also starving children in Gaza. I fault mainly Bibi's regime but what I'm hearing from you will make me take a second look.
Being systematically ethnically cleansed themselves out of Germany does not give them the right to do it to others.
I'm looking primarily at the Waste, Fraud and Abuse perpetrated on the American Taxpayers to support a country... and why in the world are we supporting them with weapons?
A LOT to respond to here, Cecile, here are some very quick responses that you may wish to use as launch points for further investigation. In no particular order:
1) Satanyahu represents an Israeli government that has moved increasingly to far Right since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, ironically at a peace rally in support of the Oslo Accords by a nationalist Israeli law student.
2) None of the Israeli prime ministers since the first one Ben-Gurion have been prize packages, so far as diplomacy goes.
3) Modern Zionism began with Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century, when he was looking to establish an all-Jewish state as a result of the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. He was looking for a place, even went so far as to appeal to the British for a piece of Uganda, I believe it was. They turned him down. He then changed strategies and came up with Palestine as the homeland of the Jews, a lot of baloney, but it sold.
4) In his diaries Herzl states that the native population of Palestine will have to be pushed out. I forget the term he used to describe them.
5) Jews indigenous to Palestine and Palestinians co-existed peacefully for centuries, if not millennia, but the arrival of the Ashkenzi Jews from Europe were something different, they started to aggrandize land and political protection by schmoozing with the governing British.
6) As early as 1929 the Palestinians could see what was going on, resulting in riots in that year, and others, up to 1938-1939, viciously put down by the British, as the arriving Zionists were given more favor over the native Palestinians.
7) Conflict and tensions continued post-war, in 1947 the UN set up its Special Committee on Palestine, UNSCOP, consisting of eleven countries, only one of which, Iran, were from the region and had any knowledge of the Middle East.
8) This committee was heavily lobbied by Zionists to devise the Partition Plan which divvied up the land so that 56% of it - and the better land at that - went to the smaller one-third of the population, the Jews, and 44% went to the larger two-thirds population, the Arabs. The Arabs/Palestinians refused to sign on to this - I mean, what would Jesus do? - and have been blamed for their obstinacy in seeking peace, while all along suffering from the Nakba of May 1948 right up to the present day, and fighting for their dignity, their right to their own land.
9) The Israelis live in a self-constructed fantasyland, wholly ignorant of history except their own fabrications, and playing the victim card, including the murder of the European Jews during WWII - as the wickedly incisive line goes, "The Shoah must go on!" - which served as pretext for establishing Israel, but in reality the Zionist game had been in place well before then.
10) Bear in mind that despite all their protestations over Satanyahu, the Israelis STILL vote for him when the security card is played, and there is NO ONE of any political stature who stands in opposition to him comes election time.
11) By all means, spend the time watching the Norman Finkelstein video.
I think that by now most observant people understand that Zelensky's regime is a corrupt dictatorship acting as a proxy for the U.S. in its failed and dangerous neocon effort to promote regime change in Russia, even at the risk of provoking a nuclear war. No friend of the Ukrainian people would be urging its government to continue this cynical, disastrous and costly proxy war.
Add to that, a majority of the Ukrainian population wants the war, which never should have started, to end. I recently read a boastful tweet about pregnant Ukrainian women on the battlefield and just shook my head. Old men are being kidnapped off the streets and taken to their probable death on the frontlines. And speaking of corruption, 87 percent of the Ukrainian people believe that corruption is rampant throughout the government.
But who cares what the people want? Fight we must. Change regime in Iran. Now do Mexico and Venezuela.
Your comment is off topic and wrong. They are in an existential war: if they wave the white flag, as you suggest, they stop existing and all their riches will be pillaged by Putin, who seeks to recreate the Soviet Union and has made no bones about it.
We've had a few proxy wars against Russia, but suggesting that Ukraine is our proxy against Russia is a thought from La-La Land: If we really wanted to remove Putin, who is a corrupt dictator, we would give Ukrainians all the money, support and ammunition they have been asking for ever since their DEFENSIVE war started. Come on!
Actually a correction is in order here, VERY BRIEFLY the origins of the present mess go back to 1990 when, in an exchange for a guarantee of acknowledgement of Russian security concerns - which had been invaded by Napoleon in the 19th century and twice by Germany in the 20th, all at horrific cost - he would agree to the reunification of Germany.
Then Secy of State James Baker assured him NATO would not move "one inch to the east." That held for about 2-3 years, until Clinton sought to finesse a new arrangement, allowing for NATO expansion, claiming the Baker agreement no longer held.
Yeltsin at the time, and Gorbachev too, as well as Putin later all said, with each encroachment eastward, "You bastards, we had a deal!" But the US persisted in needlessly pressuring Russia, dismissing peace initiatives, including the 2014 coup against the Russia-leaning, democratically elected Victor Yanukovich (sp?) led by star diplomat and Right-wing neoliberal nut case Asst. Secy of State "Toria" Nuland.
All this nonsense at the behest of the United States continued with the near incorporation of Ukraine, right at Russia's doorstop, into NATO, when in February of 2022 Putin said, "Идите на хуй, ублюдки, вы не слушаете, так послушайте это!" ("Fornicate yourselves, you bastards, you won't listen, then now listen to this!"). Incidentally, on more than one occasion Putin and Zelensky came to terms on a peace deal, only to be vetoed by this country, one of the more notorious occasions being when Washington dispatched Boorish Johnson to Kyiv to strongarm Zelensky into not going ahead with the deal with the Russians.
To paraphrase Chomsky, the United States is the most violent, warmongering, terrorist country on earth. Hard to prove him wrong given this example.
Zelensky refused Putin's offer to end the war shortly after it started if Ukraine would only agree to neutrality, not to seek NATO membership and stop bombing the Russian speakers in the Donbas region and allow them to speak Russian. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators reached a peace deal on roughly those terms in Bagdad in April 2022, but the U.S. and Great Britain convinced Zelensky to turn down the deal and continue fighting to the last Ukrainian, which he is now doing against the wishes and interest of the majority of Ukrainians. Cheer leaders in the West ought to be ashamed of themselves.
D'you ever wonder what goes on in Israel's health professionals' heads when they treat Israeli kids in a hospital for whatever ailment, while the country revels in the latest reports on the number of Palestinians killed that day, including children? On the bombing of hospitals? Do they have any moral sense about them, in the least to issue an open letter that the slaughter must stop? I'm not aware of anything.
The lowest of acceptable low bars was raising the federal poverty wage which the Dems refused to do when they had the power to do so. Then they provoked a war with a nuclear armed power and armed and supported a mass murder and starvation campaign against an entire people who have suffered grievously for generations under a vicious, illegal foreign occupation. These actions are not pencils. They are grotesque policies embraced by a leadership that hopes to distract us with clever anti-Trump posts from Newsom's team. Clinton turned the party against labor and the poor with Reagan's neoliberalism, Obama handed us over to Wall Street, and Biden (and those who covered for his dementia) did the rest.
The Democratic Party and DNC suck. We need to clean out consultants and those that take corporate PAC money. It is telling when 8% of base support funding Israel while 92% of legislators support continued Israeli support. We need to confront the corruption vocally and with primaries. These corrupt officials have to go. When a progressive wins a race these corrupt officials learn nothing, they should learn from Zorhan but choose not to. Running against Trump is a losing strategy as 2024 proved, voters want to know what you are planning on doing for them. The corrupt chase the money, dump these dickheads.
This country is so fucked! What ever happened to AOC and Bernie's cross country tour where they had huge turnouts and appeared to be catering to the working class? The democratic party will not receive one dime from me. They are dead to me and I will only vote for someone who acknowledges the Gaza genocide and commits to policies that address this and policies that advance improving our climate. Otherwise, they can go fuck themselves? I hope it's okay to swear on here!
The progressives in the party is where the Democrats soul is. Universal healthcare (Medicare without age restrictions), save and bolster Social Security and fight for equal protections under the law for Every American. This is what the Democrats have fought Republicans over for forever. That has not changed. What needs to change are all the old familiar faces with the same old tropes grovelling at the same old blue blood fundraising dinners. The real people machinery is intact just needs a general. AOC 4 me!!
The Dems are trapped in a dual trap: You have charismatic far left candidates like AOC and Mamdani, which can win landslides in Dem strongholds but it's hard to imagine them succeeding nationally (at least just yet) and you have centrist candidates with the charisma of a home depot pipe aisle.
They need someone who can run on actual popular centrist policies like Ezra Klein's abundance who can stop droning on and on about how dictatorial Trump is. Who can actually run an a vague but good platform. Obama ran on hope. Trump ran on making America great. We need someone with charisma to make America affordable.
Nope, disagree. Ezra Klein's "Abundance" is a slick sellout, and as for the center, Tariq Ali laid out the dangers of that in 2015's "The Extreme Centre: A Second Warning." Wholly new party(ies) is(are) needed. To hell with charisma. Obama had it, was quite the orator, but even he admitted he ran on nothing, and demonstrated that since getting in office. Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act? A glorified market-based plan copied off Romney's stint as governor of Mass. Obama only meekly pushed for the so-called "public option" in that plan, but gave it up when the hootin' and the hollerin' over "government interference in the market" and "creeping socialized medicine" came out from the Republicans and the commentariat.
So the hell with the center. Stake a claim to fundamental human dignity, rights, entitlements, and opportunity in life and establish "The Great Society" (yes, I still have high regard for LBJ's aspiration). Oh, "truth has a decidedly leftist bias"? Yeah, it does, so be it.
I agree 💯. Same ole, same ole. I feel powerless to change it. I’m active in the local Democratic Party in Minnesota. But there doesn’t seem to be ears to invest in real change aka what the people want. I want real healthcare, gun intolerance (ironically the dem committee meeting was cut short due to another school shooting just down the road from the meeting), addressing climate change, but mostly to allow people who are working their asses off to get some relief. Well, the whole damn thing has to collapse.
The Democratic Party is irrelevant and has been for nearly 40 years. Until they learn that opposition party bashing doesn't resonate with voters who want healthcare, housing, good and affordable education, equal opportunities, clean energy and environmental protection, they will continue to be irrelevant.
I'm continually texted by Dem party organizations and candidates telling me how bad things are and what they are going to stand for, if only I will send money. No organized action, no history of same. Their collective inability seems a feature and not a bug.
It's amazing how few specifics there are. Vs. Mamdani who ran on a rent freeze
I think Mamdani ran on the root principle of every residents right to an affordable city, which opens the door to discussing needs and priorities: rent freeze, food price subsidies, free buses. The Democratic Party has no end of specifics, many of them sound, some of them highly irritating to many Americans What it doesn't have is any principles -- literally.
My husband said the same thing. He convinced me to vote for Harris instead of throwing my ballot in the trash, and now he's the one saying he can't vote for these people.
Good job, Ken, a very good job, thank you. But in addition to housing, in addition to health care, where is there mention of that utterly obscene $1+ trillion dollar "defense" budget, that $4+ billion US TAXPAYERS give to that fornicating Israel each year to kill Palestinian children, exterminate them all? Start talkin' that kind of language, Ken Martin, and maybe I and a few others will bother listening to you.
This is why the Democratic Party has lost so many of us for the past few decades. They can’t seem to articulate the needs of the people or even really represent the people. The current Democratic Party leadership needs to go and let people,like Mr. Mamdani, take the helm. Frankly, I believe that the Democratic Party is culpable for letting Trump get in The White House. They are completely out of touch and drunk on themselves.
so much this
I don't think so much "drunk on themselves" as shaking in their boots that after Reagan they could see the tide going out, then Clinton came along and set the Dems on the course to Big Money (nights in the Lincoln bedroom, anyone?). So they began playing the Republican game, which helped with a second Clinton term, two Obamas. It was starting to run thin with Hillary, the Dems barely pulled it off with Biden x1 but not x2, and Kamala Harris x0.
The Republicans can bank on their game, the Dems in mimicking it could only go so far. Now they're at the end of the road, and they still can't figure out the game is up, at least from the way they've been playing it.
To be a bit smug about it, I remember when Obama was first running, and I was trying to figure out what his message was. Eventually he (and no doubt DNC consultants) came up with the "post-partisan politics" alliterative line. And that's when I said uh-uh, he be not for me, I don't want any over-and-done-with, get-over-it, time-to-move-on, what's-done-is-done malarkey, I want you to get back everything that's been taken from us by all those bastards from Reagan onward, PLUS INTEREST, to give a chance of setting things more or less on an even keel.
Didn't happen. Only gotten worse. And will.
And they also remain clueless and unconcerned about the fact that over 75% of democrats hate the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As put ever so aptly by Harold Myerson of TAP:
"Meyerson on TAP
The idiocy (both moral and strategic) of the Democratic National Committee
At its meeting this week, the DNC opposed a ban on U.S. provision of offensive weapons to Israel."
"At its meeting this week, the DNC opposed a ban on U.S. provision of offensive weapons to Israel."
Jee-zuss Khee-rhyste...!
And this party of dolts expects my enthusiastic support? We’re in this mess because of the Democrats, and it didn’t just start with the 2024 election. I want no part of either major party. We can’t vote our way out of rank, systemic corruption. These clowns can’t even condemn a live-streamed genocide. We are screwed.
Dems would rather support NATO than a ban on Citizens United or stock buybacks or trading stocks in Congress. Everyone knows they are completely full of shit.
If the democratic Party looks at the votes they didn't get in these few past elections, it is the blue collar worker. They used to have good jobs that paid good money on which they could send their kids to college, make ends meet and have a good life. The old guard of the democratic Party has left its base: The UNION guy, gal.
Until they get real with what the base wants, they aren't getting a penny from me.
Why have we been giving billions to Israel, BILLIONS, since its inception in 1948. and now, much worse, to Bibi. WHY? Are we getting a discount on grapefruit? No.
I have nothing against the *people* of Israel. but Bibi has to go.
The guy has an arrest warrant against him for his war crimes against Palestinian children. There used to be a time when we were allied with what was good, not what was bad.
Same thing in Ukraine: Why are we allied to the former head of the KGB?
The guy stole land from his neighbors, kidnapped their children, and still, the Felon isn't doing squat! worse, he fails to support President Zelensky, who alone is fighting so that Putin doesn't eventually get into Europe. Putin also has an arrest warrant against him from the International crime Court. Why are we only supporting villains?
82 percent of the Israeli population approves of genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing, according to a poll cited by Haaretz. So I have a lot against the Israeli people.
"So I have a lot against the Israeli people."
Ditto that, Susan. To be more precise, 82% want to see Gaza ethnically cleaned of Palestinians. 47% believe all of them should be killed. One can't even ask the question, "What kind of people are they?" because they are not people. I use the word "existents."
If anyone is still naive enough to retain even an iota of regard for the Israelis, i.e. beyond the staff of Haaretz, +972 magazine, and a few others, then see the estimable Norman Findkelstein here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu4OMmoo5mw as he lays out why Israeli society is a death cult, a lunatic society.
And they've got the gall - the chutzpah? - to insist others recognize their (baseless) right to exist? Sure, welcome murderers into the club of nations. Not that others are sinless, but Israel is setting new (sub)standards for depravity.
This is the reason I explode when Sanders, for example, insists on calling the genocide “Netanyahu’s war”. It’s neither a war, nor does it belong to Netanyahu. He could disappear today, and nothing would change. If it’s even possible, it might get worse under someone like Ben-Gvir.
"It’s neither a war, nor does it belong to Netanyahu."
Very much agree with you, Netanyahu was typically, extremely, shrewd in labeling Israel's onslaught as a war, which then gave him the latitude to adopt the "all is fair in..." cover to do whatever he wanted, which of course was to use the breakout - after 75 years of repression, humiliation, dehumanization - as pretext to accelerate the expulsion, extermination of the Palestinians from their own land.
And the bastard has largely gotten away with it, the "war" narrative had been picked up and repeated by the lazy, ignorant, cowardly, a**-kissing mainstream media. And you're also right, the juggernaut would continue if he were to disappear today.
Not sure if I had previously posted here or elsewhere, but I posed the question: What's the wager, when Netanyahu dies - for the sake of Palestine, for the region, for the world in general, soon - will his remains be treated like other manure for fertilizer, or will they be cordoned off as hazardous waste?
Don’t even get me started on the complicity of the media. My r/l friends get all their “news” from the NYT and WaPo. They look at me as a radicalized nut job because all I care about right now is a live-streamed genocide. They imply that I’m incapable of evaluating the validity of information I get from Twitter and independent journalists. I’m 82 years old, and this is the worst thing that’s happened in my life. Why doesn’t everyone agree with me?
Nine years behind you in life's - inexplicable, to me anyway - journey. We're in the same boat. I scarcely read the NYT or Boston Globe anymore, actually more to find out what they omit or mess up than actually report on accurately. Thank goodness for the so-called independent or alternative sources available, wish I could could fund them more than I do for the work that they do, in many cases exceptional.
I keep harking back to when CBS had its regular program with Edward R. Murrow ("Harvest of Shame" on migrant farm workers, remember that one?), that's when the broadcast media were doing what they're supposed to be doing. How long has that been gone now? "60 Minutes" but a weak, hand-me-down imitation, and of course that applies to the rest.
Now I'm building up a head of steam, "Bill Moyers' Journal," I think even PBS backed away from it in its later years, nothing in its stead. They say a free, open press (media) is essential to an informed electorate and a functioning democracy. We ain't got either.
What I see from here is that the Israeli government has been taken over by a Trump like extreme right cult, and also starving children in Gaza. I fault mainly Bibi's regime but what I'm hearing from you will make me take a second look.
Being systematically ethnically cleansed themselves out of Germany does not give them the right to do it to others.
I'm looking primarily at the Waste, Fraud and Abuse perpetrated on the American Taxpayers to support a country... and why in the world are we supporting them with weapons?
A LOT to respond to here, Cecile, here are some very quick responses that you may wish to use as launch points for further investigation. In no particular order:
1) Satanyahu represents an Israeli government that has moved increasingly to far Right since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, ironically at a peace rally in support of the Oslo Accords by a nationalist Israeli law student.
2) None of the Israeli prime ministers since the first one Ben-Gurion have been prize packages, so far as diplomacy goes.
3) Modern Zionism began with Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century, when he was looking to establish an all-Jewish state as a result of the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. He was looking for a place, even went so far as to appeal to the British for a piece of Uganda, I believe it was. They turned him down. He then changed strategies and came up with Palestine as the homeland of the Jews, a lot of baloney, but it sold.
4) In his diaries Herzl states that the native population of Palestine will have to be pushed out. I forget the term he used to describe them.
5) Jews indigenous to Palestine and Palestinians co-existed peacefully for centuries, if not millennia, but the arrival of the Ashkenzi Jews from Europe were something different, they started to aggrandize land and political protection by schmoozing with the governing British.
6) As early as 1929 the Palestinians could see what was going on, resulting in riots in that year, and others, up to 1938-1939, viciously put down by the British, as the arriving Zionists were given more favor over the native Palestinians.
7) Conflict and tensions continued post-war, in 1947 the UN set up its Special Committee on Palestine, UNSCOP, consisting of eleven countries, only one of which, Iran, were from the region and had any knowledge of the Middle East.
8) This committee was heavily lobbied by Zionists to devise the Partition Plan which divvied up the land so that 56% of it - and the better land at that - went to the smaller one-third of the population, the Jews, and 44% went to the larger two-thirds population, the Arabs. The Arabs/Palestinians refused to sign on to this - I mean, what would Jesus do? - and have been blamed for their obstinacy in seeking peace, while all along suffering from the Nakba of May 1948 right up to the present day, and fighting for their dignity, their right to their own land.
9) The Israelis live in a self-constructed fantasyland, wholly ignorant of history except their own fabrications, and playing the victim card, including the murder of the European Jews during WWII - as the wickedly incisive line goes, "The Shoah must go on!" - which served as pretext for establishing Israel, but in reality the Zionist game had been in place well before then.
10) Bear in mind that despite all their protestations over Satanyahu, the Israelis STILL vote for him when the security card is played, and there is NO ONE of any political stature who stands in opposition to him comes election time.
11) By all means, spend the time watching the Norman Finkelstein video.
12) Hope that does it for the time being.
Thanks for the deeper insight. I'll be sharing a good part of your comment with my friends here.
I think that by now most observant people understand that Zelensky's regime is a corrupt dictatorship acting as a proxy for the U.S. in its failed and dangerous neocon effort to promote regime change in Russia, even at the risk of provoking a nuclear war. No friend of the Ukrainian people would be urging its government to continue this cynical, disastrous and costly proxy war.
Add to that, a majority of the Ukrainian population wants the war, which never should have started, to end. I recently read a boastful tweet about pregnant Ukrainian women on the battlefield and just shook my head. Old men are being kidnapped off the streets and taken to their probable death on the frontlines. And speaking of corruption, 87 percent of the Ukrainian people believe that corruption is rampant throughout the government.
But who cares what the people want? Fight we must. Change regime in Iran. Now do Mexico and Venezuela.
Your comment is off topic and wrong. They are in an existential war: if they wave the white flag, as you suggest, they stop existing and all their riches will be pillaged by Putin, who seeks to recreate the Soviet Union and has made no bones about it.
We've had a few proxy wars against Russia, but suggesting that Ukraine is our proxy against Russia is a thought from La-La Land: If we really wanted to remove Putin, who is a corrupt dictator, we would give Ukrainians all the money, support and ammunition they have been asking for ever since their DEFENSIVE war started. Come on!
Actually a correction is in order here, VERY BRIEFLY the origins of the present mess go back to 1990 when, in an exchange for a guarantee of acknowledgement of Russian security concerns - which had been invaded by Napoleon in the 19th century and twice by Germany in the 20th, all at horrific cost - he would agree to the reunification of Germany.
Then Secy of State James Baker assured him NATO would not move "one inch to the east." That held for about 2-3 years, until Clinton sought to finesse a new arrangement, allowing for NATO expansion, claiming the Baker agreement no longer held.
Yeltsin at the time, and Gorbachev too, as well as Putin later all said, with each encroachment eastward, "You bastards, we had a deal!" But the US persisted in needlessly pressuring Russia, dismissing peace initiatives, including the 2014 coup against the Russia-leaning, democratically elected Victor Yanukovich (sp?) led by star diplomat and Right-wing neoliberal nut case Asst. Secy of State "Toria" Nuland.
All this nonsense at the behest of the United States continued with the near incorporation of Ukraine, right at Russia's doorstop, into NATO, when in February of 2022 Putin said, "Идите на хуй, ублюдки, вы не слушаете, так послушайте это!" ("Fornicate yourselves, you bastards, you won't listen, then now listen to this!"). Incidentally, on more than one occasion Putin and Zelensky came to terms on a peace deal, only to be vetoed by this country, one of the more notorious occasions being when Washington dispatched Boorish Johnson to Kyiv to strongarm Zelensky into not going ahead with the deal with the Russians.
To paraphrase Chomsky, the United States is the most violent, warmongering, terrorist country on earth. Hard to prove him wrong given this example.
Every single word you wrote is spot on.
Thank you, I try...
Zelensky refused Putin's offer to end the war shortly after it started if Ukraine would only agree to neutrality, not to seek NATO membership and stop bombing the Russian speakers in the Donbas region and allow them to speak Russian. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators reached a peace deal on roughly those terms in Bagdad in April 2022, but the U.S. and Great Britain convinced Zelensky to turn down the deal and continue fighting to the last Ukrainian, which he is now doing against the wishes and interest of the majority of Ukrainians. Cheer leaders in the West ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Israel gets billions every year. They have Healthcare for All!
D'you ever wonder what goes on in Israel's health professionals' heads when they treat Israeli kids in a hospital for whatever ailment, while the country revels in the latest reports on the number of Palestinians killed that day, including children? On the bombing of hospitals? Do they have any moral sense about them, in the least to issue an open letter that the slaughter must stop? I'm not aware of anything.
The lowest of acceptable low bars was raising the federal poverty wage which the Dems refused to do when they had the power to do so. Then they provoked a war with a nuclear armed power and armed and supported a mass murder and starvation campaign against an entire people who have suffered grievously for generations under a vicious, illegal foreign occupation. These actions are not pencils. They are grotesque policies embraced by a leadership that hopes to distract us with clever anti-Trump posts from Newsom's team. Clinton turned the party against labor and the poor with Reagan's neoliberalism, Obama handed us over to Wall Street, and Biden (and those who covered for his dementia) did the rest.
The Democratic Party is a disgrace.
The Democratic Party and DNC suck. We need to clean out consultants and those that take corporate PAC money. It is telling when 8% of base support funding Israel while 92% of legislators support continued Israeli support. We need to confront the corruption vocally and with primaries. These corrupt officials have to go. When a progressive wins a race these corrupt officials learn nothing, they should learn from Zorhan but choose not to. Running against Trump is a losing strategy as 2024 proved, voters want to know what you are planning on doing for them. The corrupt chase the money, dump these dickheads.
This country is so fucked! What ever happened to AOC and Bernie's cross country tour where they had huge turnouts and appeared to be catering to the working class? The democratic party will not receive one dime from me. They are dead to me and I will only vote for someone who acknowledges the Gaza genocide and commits to policies that address this and policies that advance improving our climate. Otherwise, they can go fuck themselves? I hope it's okay to swear on here!
The idea that they would respond to the demands of their base seems lost on them. Unless, of course, voters aren’t the “base.”
The progressives in the party is where the Democrats soul is. Universal healthcare (Medicare without age restrictions), save and bolster Social Security and fight for equal protections under the law for Every American. This is what the Democrats have fought Republicans over for forever. That has not changed. What needs to change are all the old familiar faces with the same old tropes grovelling at the same old blue blood fundraising dinners. The real people machinery is intact just needs a general. AOC 4 me!!
The Dems are trapped in a dual trap: You have charismatic far left candidates like AOC and Mamdani, which can win landslides in Dem strongholds but it's hard to imagine them succeeding nationally (at least just yet) and you have centrist candidates with the charisma of a home depot pipe aisle.
They need someone who can run on actual popular centrist policies like Ezra Klein's abundance who can stop droning on and on about how dictatorial Trump is. Who can actually run an a vague but good platform. Obama ran on hope. Trump ran on making America great. We need someone with charisma to make America affordable.
Nope, disagree. Ezra Klein's "Abundance" is a slick sellout, and as for the center, Tariq Ali laid out the dangers of that in 2015's "The Extreme Centre: A Second Warning." Wholly new party(ies) is(are) needed. To hell with charisma. Obama had it, was quite the orator, but even he admitted he ran on nothing, and demonstrated that since getting in office. Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act? A glorified market-based plan copied off Romney's stint as governor of Mass. Obama only meekly pushed for the so-called "public option" in that plan, but gave it up when the hootin' and the hollerin' over "government interference in the market" and "creeping socialized medicine" came out from the Republicans and the commentariat.
So the hell with the center. Stake a claim to fundamental human dignity, rights, entitlements, and opportunity in life and establish "The Great Society" (yes, I still have high regard for LBJ's aspiration). Oh, "truth has a decidedly leftist bias"? Yeah, it does, so be it.
I agree 💯. Same ole, same ole. I feel powerless to change it. I’m active in the local Democratic Party in Minnesota. But there doesn’t seem to be ears to invest in real change aka what the people want. I want real healthcare, gun intolerance (ironically the dem committee meeting was cut short due to another school shooting just down the road from the meeting), addressing climate change, but mostly to allow people who are working their asses off to get some relief. Well, the whole damn thing has to collapse.
The Democratic Party is irrelevant and has been for nearly 40 years. Until they learn that opposition party bashing doesn't resonate with voters who want healthcare, housing, good and affordable education, equal opportunities, clean energy and environmental protection, they will continue to be irrelevant.