Monday, February 29, 2016

Is 2016 against Sanders a rerun of the smears and dirty tactics of 2008 against Obama?





Turns out Hillary, her campaign, her husband and her surrogates have been recycling and reusing the smears, lies, false rumors and nasty campaign tactics they employed against Obama. Follow if you will some pages of the playbook.

I know I am but so are you, When cornered on an issue / argument that she couldn’t win,


She tried to blunt her greatest weaknesses by smearing them both on her toxic issues by implying they shared her bad record. The smears were factless, but when you have the media in your pocket, it doesn’t have to be true for them to repeat it.


With Obama she smeared him on taking corporate money. Seriously she ran ads, brought it up in debate and sent her surrogates out to spread the word accusing someone else of being in the pocket of wall street… now isn’t that rich? With Bernie she had her surrogates spread rumors about Bernie having a super PAC (which it turns out was the nurses union stumping for Universal healthcare) and that he had taken corporate money too… not millions, but he took it when he accepted money from the DNC in his last Senatorial run and the DNC while it had taken a lot of small donor contributions (much on a fundraising letter Bernie wrote for them), but also had taken from many of the same corporate donors who had written huge checks to Hillary, her family, her campaign and her foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb5AQpShLrI
Obama hits back on Hillary’s smear ad about taking corporate money
Hillary Clinton lies about Bernie and healthcare - The Young Turks
More I know I am but so are you
Seriously this is her go to, to justify her bad record on issues, she and her surrogates claim Bernie and Obama have been bad on the same or similar issues… This has played out on a bunch of topics with each but I'll highlight the more memorable ones. Obama who had been against the Iraq war like Bernie was accused of flipping on the issue. With Bernie she has pointed out Bernie voting for the 94 crime bill to excuse her and Bill’s role in decimating the poor and communities of color. What she ignores is that while she and Bill were bragging about the bad aspects of the bill like big increases in incarceration and were touting the bill to deal with the problem of young black youth as super predators. Bernie in voting for the bill touted the violence against women act and ban on assault weapons which were included in the bill. You won’t find him ever bragging about it, but you will find a couple speeches he gave during the debate of the bill and the vote on the bill where he implores the congress not to devastate communities that are already challenged and lead to mass incarceration.


Bill Clinton claims Obama was for the Iraq war like Hillary, Obama corrects the record
Bernie Sanders derides the congress over foreseen consequences of the 94 crime bill
Sanders calls the crime prevention bill a punishment bill, a retribution bill, a vengeance bill


Create a Rumor and then Pretend to be outraged over the subject


She race baited Obama with the 3am ad and had her surrogates spread a rumor that he was a muslim spreading a picture of Obama in Kenyan attire. For Bernie she sent out surrogates to to a red scare implying that socialism is a problem because you know, Russia. There were plain and simple smears on the core of who they are or have been for decades. he has attacked his 50 years of activism and advocacy for civil rights… she sent out surrogates like John Lewis to say he never saw Bernie as though everyone in the civil rights movement knew each other and implied he knew the Clintons. Well turns out he didn’t meet the Clintons until 1991. Not only was it shameful to do that, but more shameful to sully the pristine reputation of a civil rights legend like Lewis for her petty political gain. But it didn’t even stop there, she got one of her pundit lackeys Jonathan Capehart to then spread the rumor that Bernie was not the man in the picture from the segregation sit in… Well the photographer got upset, said it was Bernie and oh btw, I have a whole bunch more of Bernie protesting and getting arrested.




Setting the record straight about Bernie Sanders involvement in Civil RIghts


Hillary Clinton Lies, smears and dirty campaign against Obama


Clinton Horrified by Obama rumors that her campaign helped create
What I do makes is pragmatic, but you… well that’s unrealistic fantasy
She mocked Obama’s plans about being unrealistic, fantasy, dreams that will never happen, even mocked hope and change.. Sound familiar? all the same things she is saying about Bernie Sanders plans even though some of the nation’s top economists and nearly 200 noted economists have touted his plan as the best one being offered in this campaign and detailed what they saw as growth and savings they saw it bringing about.


Hillary talks about Obama waving a magic wand and the skies open, angels sing.
Sanders responds to what Clinton calls his pie in the sky plans
Howard Dean, Clinton surrogate attacks Bernie as merely visionary while Hillary is pragmatist that gets things done
Foreign Policy - Clearly a war hawk is better at Foreign policy than a diplomat
She mocked their ability to lead on foreign policy or as commander in chief. She mocked Obama as a one term Senator and community organizer and then mocked Bernie as not having announced his advisors and someone who only focuses on domestic issues. She couldnt attack him on experience since he has been in the congress far far longer than most anybody to have ever run for President.




Obama calls Hillary out on lying about him at a debate
Hillary establishment shills attack Bernie on foreign policy


He’s Not Ready, I am
With both she has at times made the claim that she is ready on day one, while he isn’t. Played this card hard with both


Desperate Hillary attacks Obama as her polls sink
Obama Ready on Day 1 and Questions Hillary’s judgment on foreign policy
Obama calls Hillary out on lying about him at a debate
The Gender Card

Hillary has used the gender card to play the victim against Obama while she and her surrogates present it to the American people as reason why it’s her turn to be president and to shame women who don’t vote for he. With Obama he told her to stop playing the victim, while with Sanders she said that she couldn’t take a strong position without being accused of shouting because she is a woman… the thing is, nobody ever said she was shouting. Lest we forget the Bernie Bros and Obama Boys who a Hillary surrogate create and coined to imply Sanders and Obama were masogonists because they had an army of sexist followers bullying the Hillary supporters. Of course this was debunked and then pinned back to the same person associated with her campaign who wrote both stories to plant and feed off the false narrative and turn the focus back to poor Hillary and her supporters.


Hillary plays the gender card, Obama tells her to stop playing the victim

Bernie Bros and Obama Boy - Daily Kos


Dont look over here, look over there
Finds Petty issues to fabricate to take focus off and argument she lost or is getting beat up on. With Bernie she painted him as a one issue candidate although he has been championing many causes for decades and takes about dozens of policy  She made the claim that he attacked her as a woman. Attacked his healthcare as tearing apart the existing affordable care act, claimed he was sexist, and basically had a new lie coming his way nearly every week, some mentioned elsewhere in this article. It was all about misdirection. With Obama she made a big fuss about him using some of the language of his surrogate in speeches, spread the muslim lie, claimed he was for the Iraq war before he was against it… again an ongoing string of lies and smears released every time she was in trouble to take the focus off of her and create doubt about her opponent.


Hillary accuses Obama of plagiarizing (note how petty she came off looking)
Hillary Smears and misdirection


Hillary spreads lies and teams with right wing media to smear Obama - Keith Olbermann show.
Attacks on Guns
She attacked Obama from the right on guns, this time attacking Bernie from the left. But is she? In order to attack Bernie from the left she is misrepresenting his positions. Sure the Brady Bill was a famous piece of background check legislation that Bernie voted against, that part is true… but the lie is that Bernie doesn’t support background checks. He has voted in favor of a bunch of other bills for instant background checks… so why against the Brady Bill? well maybe because the Brady Bill unlike the others wrote two massive loopholes into the law. Both the gun show loophole and the straw man purchase loophole became law and the two primary ways people who shouldn’t have guns get them thanks to the Brady Bill


Obama scolds Hillary for attacking him on guns
Gun Show Loophole and Straw Man Purchase Loopholes written into Brady Bill
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Sunday, February 21, 2016

F the establishment and never settle for the lesser of two evils ever again


image from Crooksandliars.com

 As I watch the establishment panic and rig the primaries at every turn it makes me wonder what our government would be like if we actually voted for candidates that represented our issues and not simply fall in line with the candidates the people who broke our government have picked for us.


Time and again I hear people who I thought had the strength of conviction say, I like Bernie and what he wants to do for us, but I don’t think he can win. Or I like Bernie and his agenda but he won’t ever be able to get any of it done. Or the worst yet, I hear them parrot establishment talking points about why someone who fights for us is unrealistic or even rage against populist ideas. There is nothing outrageous or unattainable about anything he is advocating for, but the mainstream corporate media, the establishment corporate party and the corporately owned politicians spend a lot of energy convincing us to aim low and to accept failure and whatever crumbs they feel like giving us. They give us the illusion of change without actual change, the appearance of working for us, while their hollow words turn out to be little more than pandering for votes.


https://www.facebook.com/westernjournalismvideo/videos/671608726275750/
Hillary makes claim that she cant be establishment because she is a woman, MSNBC cant believe young women found that offensive
After decades of two corrupt parties pushing corrupt politicians owned by the same corporate masters we have become used to completely avoidable man made disasters like the flint water poisoning, collapsing bridges, massive oil spills, natural gas leaks and New Orleans levee breach. Other greatest hits of the establishment include the destruction of our environment, mass incarceration, systemic racism, class warfare where the rich always win and the rest of us see our wages fall, our standard of living fall and a country/ planet left to the next generation that will be infinitely worse than the one we were left. Our healthcare is expensive and unattainable for many, even many with insurance who can’t handle the co pays, deductibles and drug prices. Our nation’s infrastructure once the envy of the world is crumbling. The middle class was strong and growing now working harder and longer hours and still losing ground against the cost of living. Our workforce was skilled and educated now an entire generation gets out of school with huge debt and very few good jobs. And then when we have an opportunity for real change we let the media and our corrupt two party system talk us into yet another political tool who wants us to give them the power to keep us fighting for crumbs.




Often we get an agent of actual change who actually cares about us with real plans to even the playing field and we let the establishment convince us that all of those things we truly need are unattainable and that anybody who says we can get some or all of it again is delusional or selling fantasy. We see their media propaganda arm spring into action by dismissing the candidate, mocking the agenda, lying about their record and viewing the entire race through the lens of how everything affects the establishment candidate. We see piles of the corporate money fill their war chest to overwhelm opposition.
Then there is the actual party rigging. This year we saw the DNC limit debate so that the lesser known candidates would be denied a platform to introduce themselves and then when those debates or townhalls actually do happen they pack the room with people friendly to the establishment candidate and no matter how things go down the media reports the establishment candidate won the debate and strengthened her hold on the lead.  In the field the party hosts the establishment candidate in their state offices.  the party has cut the populist candidate off from his own voter list when the company linked to the establishment candidate charged with securing everyone’s voter lists repeatedly failed to do so. At caucuses the party has been charged with countless irregularities to flip districts from the populist to the establishment and then refuse to investigate any let alone recount. And lest we forget the super delegates which the party chair even described this way “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grass-roots activists”



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5llLIKM9Yc

DWS explains that super delegates are there to protect insiders from grassroots campaigns
I for one am ready for that real change and have been since ‘92 when we had the opportunity to elect Jerry Brown instead of Bill Clinton who gave us wall street deregulation that crashed the economy in 08 while he also rigged the system against the poor and middle class, deregulated the media so that the establishment voices could drown out all others, Pushed for the free trade agreements that have led to the outsourcing of tens of millions of good paying jobs to slave labor countries not only crushing the middle class, but stagnating wages of those still with jobs and crushing the labor movement. He pushed for and got policies that crushed the poor and communities of color with an escalation of the war on drugs, elimination of welfare as we know it, privatization of prisons and mass incarceration and a draconian crime bill that not only put mostly poor people into prison but then saw to it that they were adversely affected forever once they got out assuring that most would be unable to rebuild their lives and end up back in prison. But that’s not how the establishment tells any of it and thusly not how most people remember it. People remember the short term prosperity,  but none of the long term consequences. Then they give his wife a false legacy to run on.






And where all of this is heading is an eventual choice where the candidates who actually represented the wants and needs of the American people have been defeated and we get to choose between the lesser of two evils. We get to vote not for someone but against the much worse candidate from the other side. They tell us we need to protect the Supreme court from the other party, but never a thought to protecting it from the establishment who have an economic agenda shared by both parties bought by the same corporate interests. They tell us that their candidate represents many of the same issues that ours did, so suck it up and just vote for her… oh yeah and forget about the fact that her campaign pandering on the issues put her on the opposite side of her record on most of those important issues. So why should we believe that the person who has always supported free trade will suddenly fight for us to reject or reverse them? why should we believe that the person who has always supported offshore drilling, fracking and tax subsidies for big oil is suddenly on our side in fighting against fossil fuels for the good of our planet? Why should we believe that the person who bragged about the crime bill that destroyed poor people and communities of color will be their champion on a black lives matter platform or to push for more sensible drug laws or fairness in policing? Why should we believe that the candidate who was a part of breaking our campaign finance laws and ushered in an era of both parties selling out to corporations and is on the receiving end of more corporate money into campaigns, super PACs, foundations and personal speaking fees for her and her family than anyone in history has any interest in fixing it? And on the rigged economy where youth unemployment is off the charts and nearly everyone is working harder, longer hours and still struggling to survive let alone a decent quality of life, she has been on the wrong side of nearly every issue that rigs it.



So at the end of this rigged process, they will want us to believe that they know better what’s best for us. They want us to believe that among these last two candidates standing is the one who will champion issues important to us even when all the facts they have carefully hidden and dismissed seem to suggest that they will be anything but our champion, merely our panderer in chief who keeps everything the same.



I reject this premise and have for decades. What is most heartening is that it seems the people are also starting to reject in large enough numbers to buck the establishment and bring about actual change. We know the media won’t treat our causes and candidates fairly. We know the party will do all they can to steal the election for their chosen one. We know that lies and false narratives used to confuse or discourage people will come at us weekly if not daily… and yet now is the time we seem ready to finally take on this challenge and fight this fight. We are willing to use social media to correct the record and say everything their media doesn’t want us talking about. We are ready to donate and volunteer to offset their huge financial and organizational advantages. And we are willing to call liars liars. Now if we can just get good people who have gotten used to following the party line to set their sights higher and stop settling for yet another establishment candidate who will make all sorts of promises and deliver on few if any. Independent voters now outnumber both parties combined but generally fail to vote in large enough numbers to beat the system that drove them away from politics and voting to begin with. We need millennials who have only known a system rigged against them to show up in large enough numbers to bring about a new system. A system that our democracy has promised from the beginning but fails to deliver way more often than not.




It’s time to reject the concept of the lesser of two evils because even the lesser of two evils is still evil. We can do better and we are on the precipice of doing so. Let’s keep pushing back until we break them and get a government back that serves the people, not just the power structure and money.


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Saturday, February 20, 2016

Clean Air Diesel... Ya Right.



So the latest on the clean air diesel vehicles is that they don’t really exist. First Volkswagen was caught making claims to emissions that weren’t even close to the toxic waste that left their tailpipe and now we find out that Mercedes version of the clean diesel is even worse. Should this be a surprise to anybody?

This blogger gives a nice breakdown and history of tailpipe gate.

In a world where nobody but oil and coal executives and the politicians they own think that fossil fuels can be clean, it’s just the latest reminder that if we want real change we need to force it upon the powers that be… they won’t get their on their own. They will deceive us until we stop believing their lies and hold them to account.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Hillary is the single issue candidate not Bernie - Her issue, taking her turn at being President



As a jumping off point let me point out that there is overlap between many of these policies/ issues. As you make improvements on one, it can and often does have a positive domino effect of others. But since Hillary’s latest smear/ disinformation talking point is that Bernie is a single issue candidate, let’s break down issues
Racial and Criminal Justice
Bernie has been fighting for racial and criminal justice. He has a comprehensive criminal justice platform that has been embraced by many leaders of the black community and many in the BLM movement. He has been railing on the floor of the house since the 90’s that without education and without economic opportunity people are more likely to fall into acts of desperation. But his platform and vision goes much further than that. He talks about demilitarization of the police force, police departments that match the diversity of the communities they serve, body cameras and other things that will create law enforcement that doesn’t disproportionately victimize communities of color. The economic aspects of this issue will be addressed later.
The Huffington Post’s August 11,2015 article BLM helps with Bernie Sanders’ Racial Justice Agenda states:
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has unveiled a comprehensive racial justice agenda aimed at "addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic." The agenda includes, among other policy proposals, a call for police demilitarization, community policing, aggressive prosecution of police officers who break the law, the re-enfranchisement of those with criminal records, banning for-profit prisons, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, automatic voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, youth employment programs, free college and pay equity legislation. Sanders also has an excellent record on racial justice issues, much better than any other candidate running for president.
Universal Healthcare
Bernie is fighting for Universal healthcare for every individual as a right. He wants every American covered with insurance that they can afford (small tax increase on individuals with large savings on healthcare costs). We have the most inefficient healthcare system in the world, He isn’t fighting for a pie in the sky plan, merely one that is already being used by nearly every industrialized country in the world. One that will not only expand complete healthcare coverage to every American but also save our economy $5 trillion over 10 years according to a group of noted economists. One that will save families between $2,000 and $5,000 per year depending on what group of independent analysts you’re listening to. And save businesses on their share of healthcare costs as well.


Daily Kos: WSJ cited economist says Bernie’s plan saves the US $5.081 trillion on healthcare


Education: Free Public College and reduced interest rates on existing Student Loans
Bernie Sanders wants free public colleges to better educate the American workers to be more competitive on the global market. Along the way this will disproportionately uplift the poorest amongst us, who don’t even think that is a possibility for them. Helping people choking with existing student loan debt is also a part of this program helping the people who already got their education only to find that the jobs open to them were mostly ones that wouldn’t cover any quality of life and pay down that debt. If banks can borrow from the Fed at near zero interest then why cant we extend that to student loans to unwind what has been a bad/ toxic system of banks making big profits on education.


Equality


Bernie wants equality for women and has been advocating this for decades, getting a perfect score from Planned Parenthood and NARAL for his work on the issue important to them. He also advocates for equal pay for women and paid family/ medical leave for women after giving birth.
He has been a lifetime advocate for LGBTQ rights getting a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign for his record on gay issues and advocacy. This was a fight he was on the front lines for when his opponents in both parties were fighting on the other side of the LGBTQ issues because the polling made it politically advantageous to do so.



He has been a lifetime advocate for Immigration reform, keeping families together and not allowing our current immigration policies to create a slave labor with either the under the table employment market or the guest workers programs.

Climate Change
Bernie is right to consider this one of the great threats not only to the sustainability of the planet long term, but also to quality of life and even homeland security. As resources like energy and water become scarce not only do costs go up, but the fight for those resources leads to instability.


Legalization of Marijuana
He is fighting logical drug policies and the legalization of marijuana on the federal level along with its removal from the controlled substance act. The current war on drugs has led to massive incarceration of Americans often disproportionately communities of color for non violent drug charges.


Economic Equality


Economic inequality of course feels real to anybody who graduates with a college degree and finds no jobs, or the people who have seen their wages stagnate or even go down during the recovery which finds most of the gains skipping the working class and going to the top.. The Free Trade agreements which were championed by the Clintons have outsourced tens of millions of good paying American jobs, Many whole industries have been crushed whether it’s the loss of manufacturing or the support jobs like customer support, data entry, accounting, etc.  Along the way they have ripped the heart out of the labor movement as employers rather than negotiate wages in good faith draw unreasonable lines in the sand and threaten to ship the jobs overseas if they don’t agree to bad deals/ contracts.
The economic policy is far reaching and includes things like increasing the minimum wage to catch up with the 25 years of stagnation that have left not only minimum wage employees behind but a majority of wage earners who have been left behind by cost of living. When you increase the minimum wage, you are in fact increasing wages for many levels up the ladder as more skilled, experienced, have more responsibility or harder jobs will always be paid more… every time minimum wage has gone up in the past or even regionally we have found that people generally maintain their gap from the minimum and businesses don’t lay workers off (another common lie), they hire more as business expands when consumers have more money to spend. Consumers are the actual job creators.


Another way Bernie’s economic equality agenda impacts poor and disproportionately communities of color is that as you lift people up out of extreme poverty and desperation we find that not only does quality of life go up, but crime and other violent acts go down. So from a criminal justice standpoint you can greatly reduce crime without some of the more aggressive enforcement techniques we see rise in usage with crime rates  like racial profiling, militarization of the police force. Of course this economic platform also overlaps with education as people crushed by student debt are lifted and have more disposable income while families who are currently saving for college for their kids can route that money elsewhere, while the poorest communities where college generally isn’t even on their radar can start thinking about a much bigger world of opportunity for themselves and their children. Universal healthcare is another area of intersection as our healthcare system is currently the most expensive and wasteful in the industrialized world. If we provide healthcare to everyone and at the same time save thousands of dollars in healthcare costs while only raising the taxes a fraction of those savings we again find that people’s budgets are healthier while quality of life again is elevated.


http://reverbpress.com/politics/economics/economist-says-median-income-and-jobs-would-soar-under-a-president-sanders/
Under Sanders, income and jobs would soar economist says
Campaign Finance Reform and voting rights.
A rigged political system in which money gets what it wants at the expense of the people. We see this play out in two ways, In the first scenario we see positions move after a large donation or paid speech. The other way the corporate interests stack the deck  is by putting their money with people they know will vote with them and workers or consumers. Either way this money threatens the very idea of democracy and a government for the people.


Voting rights have a long time history of being under attack as the establishment tries to make it more difficult for poor people to vote, creating obstacles. These laws disproportionately affect communities of color.


How everything in Bernie’s agenda is paid for
Foreign Policy
This is the one area where Bernie admits his opponent has more experience. But that said its important to remember that experience and good judgement arent necessarily held by the same people. Dick Cheney went into office with more experience than nearly anyone in the modern error and arguments could be made that he was one of the worst ever in the area of foreign policy. By contrast many of our Presidents have gone into office as a former Governor where they only focus on domestic policy. Senators have more experience on foreign policy since they get some of the briefings and are ultimately the ones who need to pay for war and other foreign policy programs. Bernie has been deeply involved with the Veterans where he has always argued that if we cant afford to take care of our veterans when they get home, we cant afford to send them to war. He is not one to rush into military conflict and never run into war for economic reasons. Often the toughest players on the global theater are the ones who make the biggest mistakes. The middle east and the rise of terror organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS can be directly linked to the destabilization of the region caused by our hawkish policies. Final note, the state department is only as strong as the intelligence community and career diplomats and strategists. Who the President surrounds his or herself with is ½ the battle and judgement is the other ½.
Foreign Policy and National Security
Hillary’s single issue: Becoming President
So that brings us to Secretary Clinton and her quest to become President. Bernie fights for people Hillary fights for Hillary. Bernie says us, she says me. She will lie to become President. She will claim to hold positions that are the opposite of her lifetime record and the videotape that shows her words in the past don’t match the words she utters on the stump. Her words today come closer to matching Bernie’s record, not her own and every day more and more people are coming to realize this truth.

Bernie is fighting for the people on many levels. He didn’t get into this to become President, he did because his lifetime record and issues needed a leader with a louder voice and the ability to bring about more change for the people. Hillary just wants to be President because somewhere in the bubble she has convinced herself and the establishment that it’s her turn.




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