Progressives (Liberals)

@blatham,

This is an example of why you and I can't see eye to eye.

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@blatham,

Dude, you are being accused of not being able to “see eye to eye” with someone who constantly argues using purity tests, conspiracy plots, and rigid, all or nothing scenarios.

That has to be a blow - here’s hoping you can weather it.

1 Reply

@snood,

I am, I can assure you, finely weathered. Another five or so years and I'll look like a Disney forest witch.

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Here's an interesting corner of the Ukraine story from Josh Marshall. Note the embedded link in paragraph three to an earlier piece on John Solomon who writes at The Hill and who serves as a mouthpiece for the Trump crowd (worth reading on its own).

Quote:

Chris Wallace reported this morning on Fox News that two other names you’ll know have been working with Rudy Giuliani on his mission to strong-arm Ukraine into intervening in the 2020 election and help exonerate Paul Manafort: the husband and wife team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The two are frequent Hannity guests and at various points have been reported to be either joining or working with the President’s legal team. In this sense, working with Giuliani – the President’s so-called “private lawyer” – makes a fair amount of sense.

But there’s a bit more to this.

As I noted yesterday, material that has been surfacing from The Hill’s ‘opinion’ reporter John Solomon and then echoed by Giuliani seems to originate with one of Ukraine’s richest and most powerful oligarchs who is a former business partner of Paul Manafort and had to flee Ukraine after the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He is in Austria, fighting extradition to the United States to face bribery charges.

His name is Dimtry Firtash.

Viktor Shokin is the ‘fired prosecutor’ at the center of all these stories. As part of Firtash’s effort to avoid extradition from Austria to the United States, he asked Shokin to swear out the affidavit in which Shokin accuses Biden of getting him fired to protect his son Hunter. (There is no evidence any of this happened. There was no investigation of Hunter Biden or the company on whose board he sat at the time Shokin was fired.)

So to review, former Manafort business partner Firtash asks Shokin to swear out an affidavit in which he accuses Biden. The affidavit quickly gets into the hands of Giuliani and Solomon. And who just recently went to work for Firtash’s legal team? None other than diGenova and Toensing, as reported just this week by the Kyiv Post and other publications.

So the duo who we now learned has been working on behalf of the President with Rudy Giuliani to extort the Ukrainian government just signed on to represent the oligarch behind the affidavit in which the disgraced prosecutor says Joe Biden got him fired. And yes, the oligarch who got booted from Ukraine in 2014 and is a former business partner of Paul Manafort.

LINK HERE

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While you people aw Bush over his paintings and making nice with the Obamas, giving him a pass for destabilizing the middle east, I see him as the asshole making fun of Carla Faye Tucker the day she was executed and the shirker of duty while in the military.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

You could add much else far worse than those two bits, edgar. But if you imagine that Molly Ivins would assign Bush to the same region of hell as Trump, you are out to lunch, my man.

Quote:

Trump Told Russian Officials He Didn’t Care About 2016 Election Meddling: Report
...according to the Washington Post, during a 2017 meeting in the Oval Office with two top Russian officials, Trump said he was “unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries.”

Trump reportedly said this to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the already infamous May 10, 2017 meeting where he remarked that he’d relieved “great pressure” by firing his “nut job” FBI director James Comey a day earlier, and shared highly classified information that exposed an Israeli counterterrorist operation.(Earlier this month, CNN reported that this prompted U.S. intelligence to extract a high-level intelligence asset from Russia over concerns that Trump’s mishandling of intelligence would expose the spy.)...

NYMag

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I did not say he was Trump. I said his elevation to the presidency opened the door.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe, you might find this article interesting — the author, Sean Wilentz, pretty much concurs with your feeling that the presidency of Bush II pretty much set the stage for Trump.

The Culmination of Republican Decay

1 Reply

@hightor,

Thanks. That covers it very well.

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If Bernie continues to lose ground to Warren and Biden, that will prove a real test of his character. He could turn vicious or he could join in the greater effort towards his stated goals. I don't think he'll choose the latter but the test appears to be coming.

Of course, the same applies to the other two candidates.

1 Reply

@blatham,

Bernie has not turned vicious before and has no need to now.

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There are concerted efforts to establish that Bernie has disqualifying character flaws. His well-rounded humanity and willingness to do the work are considered in these quarters to not be enough.

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I guess it’s just impossible to simply make an assessment of the Dem candidates and choose someone other than Bernie. Seems that everyone that makes that assessment and choice stands accused of participating in some kind of malevolence.

1 Reply

@snood,

As I wrote, I don't think Sanders will behave destructively. As I also said, the same character tests applies to the others.

But our attention on this falls to Sanders most particularly given the behavior of some of his supporters during the last convention. As Sarah Silverman (who'd been a Bernie supporter) said to those yelling disparagements, "Hey Bernie Bros, you're making fools of yourselves".

Also, it is clearly the pro-Sanders camp which has been targeted by Russian trolls out to cause chaos and disaffection, so that's where we can expect a lot of agitprop over the next while.

We should differentiate Sanders from his "supporters" though. But if he continues to slide, it will fall to him to toss those bad agents overboard and to do so vigorously.

2 Replies

Are Warren and Sanders ‘100% grassroots-funded’?

The gist of the piece is that both are 100% grass roots funded this election cycle in the sense that:

Quote:

from Sanders doesn’t hold closed-door fundraisers to solicit high-dollar contributions and doesn’t accept money from corporate PACs or super PACs, or from fossil fuel, drug or insurance companies. Warren doesn’t hold closed-door fundraisers to solicit high-dollar contributions and doesn’t accept money from federal lobbyists or PACs.

The trouble in is the details, they both have money from previous campaigns when they didn't put such strict restrictions on themselves. Warren's adds up a little more transferrable money and Sanders is a little less.

Fact check from the Washington Post; read more at the link.

1 Reply

@revelette1,

Perhaps making a virtue out of necessity.

Neither candidate has much support from Labor Unions, mostly as a result of their proposals to shut down their treasured union Medical coverage. Beyond that diluted versions 0f socialism and a government managed economy aren't very popular with either corporations or the people who work for them.

1 Reply

@blatham,

When you are getting royally screwed you can get annoyed and react in a vigorous fashion.

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@georgeob1,

I respect your views on Bernie and Warren's ideology as I come to know from your post, you are coming from a conservative ideology. You view things, to put simply, the top down. A democrat/liberal/progressive (whatever you want to call it nowadays) views the economy in a bottom up fashion. We've had it too long under the top down perspective even under Obama. To help the middle class I think it is way past time to go for middle class thus all around perspective so to speak. The middle class is what supports the higher wealthy owners in this country (we buy the products...) and it has been disappearing. We have to have wealthy in this country doing more of their fair share rather than merely profiting off the backs of workers like they have doing. If they do and the middle class becomes more wealthy as well, both will be supporting the country and will be in position to help the bottom of the scale. With all top, middle and lower classes doing well and our country doing well as whole, chances are we would be more self supporting as a country. Instead we have greedy gut corporations keeping us all down.

On the unions and Medicare for All, I think Bernie has done a good job there at reassuring them. I would have to go back to read it to remember the particulars.

1 Reply

@blatham,

Yeah, I seem to remember this from the last election as well; people calling on Bernie to reel in his more rabid supporters and encourage them to support the Dem nominee.

My memory might be faulty, but I don’t remember him being very forceful in denouncing their antics OR in encouraging their transfer of support.

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@revelette1,

Thank you. I also accept the sincerity of your views on these matters.

The irony of history is evident in the complete absence of any "bottom up" focus in the reality ( as opposed to rhetoric) of authoritarian Socialism, or any of its principal elements. It, like the political prescriptions of both Sanders and Warren, involves removing direct control of economic behavior from the hands of those directly involved in producing, selling, and buying goods and services, and transferring it to bureaucrats who presume to know better what's really good for the unwashed masses that they presume to guide and control.

This prescription, whether applied in full measure as in the Former Soviet Empire, or merely partially as in the pre 1980 Labor governments of the UK and other Western European powers, or the post colonial governments of African nations yielded only poor economic performance, shoddy infrastructure and services and mild poverty for all - except the ruling class of bureaucrats.

1 Reply

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