Bloggers From The United States

"Personal opinion: I think it would be good for there to be a presidential debate in which the questions don’t come only from millionaires paid by billionaires."

"So far in the #DemocraticDebate, there is @BernieSanders who says the wealthiest country in human history can afford to make sure its people don't die for lack of health insurance and can get a debt-free education, and then there are others who insist that's not possible."

"Here’s Joe Biden. Note: this is not a speech from a long time ago. This is a speech from mid-2018. This seems very important... Biden explicitly says "Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code...the first thing we have to go after, [w:Social Security|SS]] and Medicare... It's the only way to find room to pay for it""

"Health care premiums are a huge, regressive corporate-controlled tax that enriches insurance CEOs. @BernieSanders' Medicare for All proposal would eliminate that tax, lowering the medical expense burden that is crushing the 99%"

"Politicians often talk about “workers” but many of them do not actually say the word “union.” Bernie has been saying that word for decades and Warren in her opening video also said it. We will see if any other 2020 candidates are EXPLICIT in their support for the labor movement."

"For weeks, Beto [O'Rourke] fans have attacked our reporting in an effort to intimidate journalists into not looking into his record. But now the Houston Chronicle is citing our reporting for having prompted a much needed debate about climate policy & his record."

"It would be nice if our political discourse could be rational enough to actually accept the science that says Obama’s historic oil production increases are bad for the planet, instead of looking at that science and just screaming “but Obama is popular among voters!”"

"Lots of progressives have legit criticism of Obama’s policy record. Much of the response to that criticism has been “Democratic voters love Obama, so anyone criticizing him is politically dumb!”"

"If an asteroid was headed toward Earth, I’d hope the presidential campaign narrative would revolve around who voted to accelerate the asteroid, who voted to slow the asteroid, and who has the best policy to divert the asteroid. In 2020, climate change is the asteroid."

"It would help if television shows elucidate the public policy records of the politicians running, so that voters can make policy-based — rather than personality-based — decisions on who to be passionate about. This seems particularly critical in the era of climate change."

"We... were slammed for publishing a deep-dive into the legislative record of Beto O'Rourke. That’s being courageously followed up by a Washington Post story touting Beto’s height, because apparently nothing matters.."

"It’s almost as if much of the media has a mission to studiously avoid any serious discussion of policies that affect millions of people."

"When a country goes socialist and it craters, it is laughed off as a harmless and forgettable cautionary tale about the perils of command economics. When, by contrast, a country goes socialist and its economy does what Venezuela's did, it is not perceived to be a laughing matter - and it is not so easy to write off or to ignore. It suddenly looks like a threat to the corporate capitalism, especially when said country has valuable oil resources that global powerhouses like the United States rely on. For a flamboyant ideologue like Chavez, that meant him being seen by the transnational elite as much more than an insignificant rogue leader of a relatively small country. He came to be seen as a serious threat to the global system of corporate capitalism. That, of course, is considered a high crime by the American political illuminati - a high crime prompting a special punishment."

"According to data compiled by the UK Guardian, Chavez's first decade in office saw Venezuelan GDP more than double and both infant mortality and unemployment almost halved. Then there is a remarkable graph from the World Bank that shows that under Chavez's brand of socialism, poverty in Venezuela plummeted (the Guardian reports that its "extreme poverty" rate fell from 23.4 percent in 1999 to 8.5 percent just a decade later). In all, that left the country with the third lowest poverty rate in Latin America."

"No doubt, there are few absolutely clear answers to those uncomfortable questions, if those questions are assessed honestly. Most likely, in fact, the answers are murky. But such questions need to be asked."

"At the moment Chavez's name is invoked, the conversation is inevitably terminated, ending any possibility of discourse. That is by design - it is what the longtime caricaturing and marginalizing of Chavez was always supposed to do. But maybe now that the iconoclast is dead, the cartoon will end. Maybe now Chavez's easily ridiculed bombast can no longer be used to distract from Venezuela's record - and, thus, a more constructive, honest and critical economic conversation can finally begin."

"Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results. Indeed, as shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving."

"Beto voted against his own party to pass GOP bills for business tax cuts, Wall St dereg, Trump’s deportation force, and chipping away at the ACA. It’s your right to argue thats totally OK — but let’s not use vague averages to obscure what his specific votes were about."

"Something I didn’t know: Beto O'Rourke is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress."

"a lot of affluent liberals... hate Bernie & Warren hate them because Bernie/Warren basically reject the idea that we can just go back to the pre-Trump corporate status quo — a status quo that was great for affluent folks, and a crushing dystopia for millions of other people."

"There’s an entire media & political industry whose entire mission is to pretend politics is always super complicated. But often times it’s pretty simple & straightforward: wealthy people like the status quo and like politicians who won’t change that status quo...."

"Prysner suggested it [shortages of essentials] is clear it is the result of a targeted campaign because specific things are missing from shelves... The Venezuelan opposition would like to plunge the country further into chaos, win power, and then allow financial corporations to take over."

"According to Martin, opposition figures mobbed them and gave instructions to film what the government does but not what is done by the opposition. They pressured Martin and Prysner to film what is done by the government and in return the opposition would protect them..."

"Gabbard has persistently called attention to the war in Syria. She traveled to Aleppo and Damascus in January 2017 to see some of the devastation Syrians have endured since 2011. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad invited her to a meeting, and she accepted. “Originally, I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it. I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering,” Gabbard declared. Supporters of the Syrian war—the same people who do not want President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. troops—seized upon Gabbard’s meeting with Assad to discredit her, and it has fueled the backlash among Western media pundits to her decision to run for president. Yet, in spite of a smear campaign encouraged by the political establishment, Gabbard has not backed down from protesting U.S. support for terrorists in Syria."

"Gabbard opposes what she calls a “genocidal war” in Yemen, and she is one of the few representatives, who has worked to pass a war powers resolution in the House to end U.S. military involvement since Congress never authorized the war."

"Establishment Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort to smear and undermine journalism that examines any of their preferred 2020 presidential candidates. The effort aims to enforce conformity in the same manner that Democratic Party leaders coerced supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders into lining up behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. The most egregious example is the targeting of award-winning investigative journalist David Sirota, who produced a comprehensive report on former Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke’s congressional voting record. Four articles were published on January 3 by liberal pundits... specifically singled out Sirota’s journalism, despite the fact that the second largest newspaper in Texas, the Houston Chronicle, published an editorial recognizing he had raised valid questions about the state’s oil economy."

"Gabbard’s rhetoric infuriates Rogin, Keilar, and Bash because it strays from their script for what is acceptable debate on U.S. foreign policy. Their questions, and Rogin’s statements, are designed to shame her for her disloyalty to the foreign policy establishment. However, the reality is while these pundits engage in theoretical discussion on television—and use real Syrian people as props to attack dissenting politicians— Gabbard’s reservations toward war are based on actual experience and a recognition of the many times in which the U.S. meddled in countries only to face serious blowback later."

"Most progressives are not as outspoken against U.S. military interventions or what she (Tulsi Gabbard) refers to as “regime change wars.” She witnessed the impact of regime change on the people of Iraq, as well as U.S. troops, and that inspired her to talk more about the human cost of war and challenge the military industrial-complex."

"Abby Martin and Michael Prysner... produce the weekly show, “The Empire Files.” During the interview, they highlight the make-up of the opposition in Venezuela. They share details about the violence they witnessed while on the ground. Both talk about the left-wing Chavism movement’s ability to withstand the opposition...[and] speak about the engagement of Venezuelans, especially lower class citizens, in participatory democracy. They outline what is truly going on with private media companies in Venezuela that are sowing chaos. They also address what they believed about the Venezuelan government under President Nicolás Maduro prior to their trip and how their perspectives shifted."

"Representative Tulsi Gabbard has made reforming United States foreign policy, particularly ending what she calls “regime change wars” and the “new Cold War and nuclear arms race,” central to her 2020 presidential campaign. She is virtually the only presidential candidate warning of the specter of nuclear war. At a CNN town hall at South By Southwest on March 10, Gabbard contended, “We are in a situation today where we, here in the United States and the world, are at a greater risk of nuclear catastrophe than ever before in history.”"

"Yet, the establishment news media is largely uninterested in listening to Gabbard attempt to persuade voters that the U.S. should quit waging wars to overthrow governments."

"Authorities have named the 11 people killed Saturday when a man armed with three pistols and a semiautomatic assault-style rifle attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh — the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the United States. The dead include a 97-year-old woman, a husband and wife, and two brothers — all of whom were at services inside the Tree of Life synagogue when Robert Bowers allegedly burst in through an open door, screaming anti-Semitic slurs and shooting. The 46-year-old Pittsburgh resident is also accused of wounding six other people, including three police officers shot during a firefight, and faces a raft of assault, homicide and hate crime charges.... He allegedly walked through an unlocked door at about 9:45 a.m., armed with a Colt AR-15 rifle and three Glock .357 pistols — all four of which fired, police said, as he moved around the large building, screaming about Jews."

"Einstein cuts an appealing figure as a humanist and pacificist, but biographers describe him as rakish, sexist, and cold to many of his closest relations, including his wives and children. Fame did not protect him from criticism, and as he weighed in on social and political issues, he often incited controversy and tension among his friends and fellow scientists. In 1921 he was still getting his footing as a celebrity scientist, and after he returned to Europe, he wrote an article criticizing Americans for being money-obsessed, among other failings. That did not go well back in the United States. He also gave an instantly notorious interview with a newspaper reporter in which he described American men as “toy dogs” of their women, whom he derided as superficial spendthrifts. That drew a rebuke in The New York Times, which suggested that Einstein stick to physics."

"If not in life, certainly in this administration."

"requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture."

"Now, in our hour of existential horror, Kushner is making life-or-death decisions for all Americans, showing all the wisdom we’ve come to expect from him. [...] It was apparently at Kushner’s urging that Trump announced, falsely, that Google was about to launch a website that would link Americans with coronavirus testing. [...] The president was reportedly furious over the website debacle, but Kushner’s authority hasn’t been curbed."

"Competing power centers are a motif of this administration, and its approach to the pandemic is no exception. [...] Nor does his operation appear to be internally coherent."

"Therapeutic abortion is increasingly accepted as a human right in international law - a remarkable, little understood development. That puts countries such as Nicaragua on a potential collision course with the United Nations and other multinational bodies tasked with upholding global agreement on women's rights."

"Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures. Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees."

"It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this confidence is unearned. Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard. Taking over the family real estate company after his father was sent to prison, Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (Kushner was able to restructure the debt in 2011, and in 2018 the project was bailed out by a Canadian asset management company with links to the government of Qatar.) He gutted the once-great ', then made a failed attempt to create a national network of local politics websites. His forays into the — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a on life support."

"The problem of unsafe abortion has been seriously exacerbated by contraceptive shortages caused by American policies hostile to birth control, as well as by the understandable diversion of scarce sexual health resources to fight HIV. All over the planet, conflicts between tradition and modernity are being fought on the terrain of women's bodies. Globalization is challenging traditional social arrangements. It is upsetting economic stability, bringing women into the workforce, and beaming images of Western individualism into the remotest villages while drawing more and more people into ever growing cities. All this spurs conservative backlash, as right-wingers promise anxious, disoriented people that the chaos an be contained if only the old sexual order is enforced. Yet the subjugation of women is just making things worse, creating all manner of demographic, economic, and public health problems."

"I've always felt like something of an outsider. I've always had friends, but I've always come from an outside point of view. I think that's important. If you grow up gay, or in a household that's agnostic, when most people are religious, then from the get-go, you are saying that there are things that the majority of society believes that I don't believe."

"I'd say I am somewhere in between being a libertarian and a liberal. So if I were to vote it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision, I suppose."

"There are entire disciplines in which predictions have been failing, often at great cost to society. Consider something like biomedical research. In 2005, an Athens-raised medical researcher named John P. Ioannidis published a controversial paper titled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." ... The paper studied positive findings documented in peer-reviewed journals: descriptions of successful predictions of medical hypotheses carried out in laboratory experiments. It concluded that most of these findings were likely to fail when applied in the real world. Bayer Laboratories recently confirmed Ioannidis's hypothesis. They could not replicate about two-thirds of the positive findings in medical journals when they attempted the experiments themselves. ..."

"Given the failure of the two party establishments, it’s not entirely surprising that young people are looking elsewhere. Their votes are up for grabs, for those who are willing and able to offer something different. For the sake of the country, let’s hope those votes are won by people who are able to offer something different, and constructive, at the same time."

"Want real socialism? Look at Venezuela, an oil-exporting nation that is now dead broke even as the family of its socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez, reportedly somehow inherited billions at his death in 2013. Redistribution of wealth often seems to involve redistributing most of it to the people on top of the socialist pyramid."

"Think of the press as a psychological warfare operation aimed at normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong."

"GOP are so all-in on an "all base mobilization, all the time" strategy that people just take for granted it must be smart politics when it's far from obvious that's the case."

"A socialist is someone who wants politicians to decide who gets what; a "democratic socialist" wants the politicians to at least stand for election first."

"[D]rivers who feel their lives are in danger from a violent mob should not stop their vehicles. I remember Reginald Denny, a truck driver who was beaten nearly to death by a mob during the 1992 Los Angeles riots... I have always supported peaceful protests, speaking out against police militarization and excessive police violence."