Apsu

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

Apsu uses alt right sources to back up his critiques of the DNC. That would be like you using whatever the Left version is to attack the GOP/Trump. And at least half of it is clearly made up bulls#!t. There is plenty to criticize the DNC for, there's no need to use made up things and use trash sources to do so.

I call bulls#!t on your post... what alt-right sources?

Do you only accept links from CNN and MSNBC?

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

I find it interesting that Apsu has spelled out very clearly his political leanings. He is very liberal. He does not like Trump but feels the Dem party does not represent him. 
 

when he criticizes the Dems, he gets attacked by liberals on the board. 
 

I feel the same way he does but about the Republican parry. I’m conservative but they don’t represent me. 
 

for that, I understand where he is coming from. I’m much more critical of the republicans because they are who SHOULD be representing me. 

Thank you very much.

When the party that you believe should represent you values does not, you vote to change them, not the other guys.

3 hours ago, Redux said:

This is a lot of words when you could just flat out say "I don't think 3rd parties should be able to run, I like the broken system."

I was following the recent Israeli election between Netanyahu and Ganz, plus a bunch of third parties.

I would be interesting to see how an election would happen here in the US if we had multiple parties with the same media access, and a coalition government had to be formed.

3 hours ago, Frott Scost said:

 

What is the extreme left? Giving folks healthcare, making prisons non-profit so there is no profit motive to incarcerating people, legalizing marijuana, saving the planet, making education a priority? What part do you disagree with?

Labeling progressives as "the extreme left" is the ultimate Republican talking point... borrowed and now owned by the centrist Democrats.

4 hours ago, knapplc said:

Can we please not rehash this now? If anyone regrets their decision they can make amends in 2020. If not, well, elections have consequences.

Primary elections have consequences too, as 2016 showed us.

This can't be buried under the rug, lessons need to be learned. But which lesson?

Lesson #1) Trump is bad, we should have voted for Hillary.

Lesson #2) Hillary was bad, we should have voted for Sanders.

5 hours ago, funhusker said:

I don’t think it’s a straw man. Trump and Hillary were the only choices.  You didn’t want HRC, that’s your choice.  But that means by default that you preferred Trump. 

If you read my post, I stated that my choice was that Hillary was not the incumbent in 2020.

So yeah, I guess that means that I "preferred' to suffer through four years of the orange anal wart.

At least we have a choice in 2020, no TPP or TTIP, no No Fly Zones in Syria or Ukraine, and (as of yet) no hot war with Iran or Russia.

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

Meanwhile, back in New York, the mob boss walks into a small business and tells them,  “I’ll protect you....for a price”

 

 

Great job Trump, he's turned our armed forces into a mercenary business.

12 minutes ago, funhusker said:

I don’t mean to sound dismissive with this analogy, but I’m really trying to understand your thought process. 

 

It’s as if you believe McDonalds needs to have the McRib year round to finally put Burger King out of business. But until McDonald’s makes that decision, you are perfectly fine eating a Whopper?  

The error in your analysis, is that I and other people like me would learn to make McRibs [a progressive candidate] ourselves and not rely on McDonalds [the DNC controlled Democrats] to supply them for us.

In doing so, the fate of Burger King [the Republicans] would not be relevant, and McDonalds [the DNC] would go out of business.

7 minutes ago, funhusker said:

So you’re happy with “Trumps” until a progressive wins?

That is a strawman assumption.

I would be less happy knowing that after four years of Hillary, that our choice was between more Hillary and another Republican.

What does make me happy, is the chance to support a progressive candidate in 2020.

7 hours ago, LumberJackSker said:

The U.S. Military gave Turkey the exact coordinates of all the places American troops were stationed. It's no accident, Turkey and their militias have also targeted the prisons the sdf is holding Isis fighters. 

War creates dynamic situations, things do not always go as planned. I can see how this mistake was made, but we should never have been in a position to allow it to happen.

ISIS is not a homogeneous group. Different state actors support (especially the Turks and Saudis) and oppose different groups within it. Some accuse the US and our Kurdish allies of claiming military victories over friendly ISIS while allowing them to escape and redeploy elsewhere. Some of those prison camps are real prison camps, others are military bases being readied to spring into action when liberated by their Turkish allies.

14 minutes ago, funhusker said:

Let the primaries work themselves out. But damn! Whoever it is, support them over Trump if you claim to be “liberal” (or just a decent and thoughtful person) in any shape or form.

One of the principal reasons progressives did not vote for Hillary in 2016, was that if she won she would be the incumbent in 2020. And if the was the incumbent right now, we would not be having a spirited primary with the chance to vote for someone like Sanders.

The same goes for the 2020 cycle, we don't want centrist garbage.

7 hours ago, Danny Bateman said:

No, it's because they resort to them sometimes, because some progressives seem content to demonize Republicans and their moderate allies alike. My experience has been that these progressives seem more interested in criticizing everything and loudly proclaiming how much better and smarter they are than everyone else than getting things done.

 

Which is obviously not productive.

If Trump did not exist, progressives would still be criticizing Biden and other neoliberals.

We called CNN and MSNBC fake news long before he was running.

Two people can look at a situation and see a problem, and criticize it for completely different reasons.

If you think that we are smug, we have the same opinion of corporate Democrats.

Is there a common ground between progressives and neoliberals?

Unfortunately I do not belirve so, mostly because of the donor base.

That is why progressives want to see the DNC destroyed. Progress cannot be made until Trump and the Republicans are opposed by good candidates.

7 hours ago, Danny Bateman said:

I firmly disagree about the Democrats being as pressing a problem as Trump's GOP. I just don't get that logic. The former is clearly the lesser of two evils right now. Not that I'm all that invested in defending the Democratic establishment - but it's clear to me they're at worst generally just incompetent while the GOP is malicious.

 

It's fine to dislike the Dems. They deserve criticism when it's due. I just think we should render the same unto the GOP when it's due as well.

Let me explain this again for the umpteenth time...

The DNC has very significant control over who runs as a Democrat. They have admitted in court to legally cheating in the 2016 primary to favor Clinton over Sanders. Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate who alienated progressives, and a significant number of us did not VBNMW. We believe that Sanders would have easily beaten Trump in 2016, and can do so again in 2020. Trump cannot stop a progressive from becoming the president, and in our two party system only the DNC can stop him. That is why I oppose the DMC and corporate Democrats, and not the Republicans.

Regarding the Democrats; in my opinion they should be the party on the left that represents the people. They aren't, and I am fighting to change that. While the current DNC is in power, that change won't happen.

Regarding the Republicans; I have friggin' zero expectations that they will ever represent the people. Their goal is to represent the oligarchy, and their base is beyond hope. All the fighting to change that will not fix something that is rotten to the core by design. They cannot win unless the DNC f#&%s up with really terrible candidates like it did in 2016. Trump is a truly horrid human being with no redeeming values, but he would not have won without a major assist from the DNC. All the complaining about Trump one can do will not fix anytrhing, if the DNC is allowed to continue to control the opposition that Dems offer in elections.

7 hours ago, Danny Bateman said:

The reason you've been accused of having Republican sensitivities is because of things like this. It seems you're willing to bend over backwards to use logic sympathetic to Trump and the GOP, while heavily criticizing the Democratic establishment.

How is being sympathetic to the plight of our individual soldiers stuck in a bad situation, being sympathetic to Trump?

How was my statement in any way critical of the Democrat establishment?

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Mistakes can be made by our military too.
Perhaps after that Turkey will not make any more mistakes.

5 hours ago, LumberJackSker said:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30361/u-s-troops-reportedly-caught-up-in-turkish-artillery-attack-in-syria

Turkey has now fired on American forces in Syria. 

Mistakes can be made by our military too.
Perhaps after that Turkey will not make any more mistakes.

Ryan Grim is a very progressive journalist from the Intercept.

Democrats (the corporate neoliberal type) are not at all progressive.

That is why news outlets like the Intercept will criticize Biden on Ukraine, while doing so is blasphemy on CNN and MSNBC.

And the neoliberal Democrats will blindly accuse progressives of repeating Republican talking points.

13 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

How has he lasted so long there?

Shep was great when he mocked Bill O'Reilly on the air.

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

I have no problem with her being in favor of these and then changing her mind.

Fair enough.

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

I would really need to know more about this.  This seems like something you could pin on just about any prosecutor in the country.

I'm sure more will come out on this, and if your interested you can investigate more with sites you have come to trust.

More Republican talking points from Ryan Grim.

On 10/9/2019 at 10:44 PM, commando said:

lol....your republican leanings are showing.   better cover up your nothingberder.

Everything I have posted indicates that I oppose the DNC and corporate Democrats, believe in progressive values, and despise Trump and the Republicans. Most progressives have learned that the DNC would rather lose to Trump than win with a progressive. Neoliberal Democrats like yourself cannot fathom that their are more than two sides, and that anyone who is not a fan of establishment Democrats must by default be a Republican.

23 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

Last paragraph is something I think about whenever someone goes after Harris’s record in California. She had to make a lot of tough decisions in that job. Of course some of them were wrong but it’s the overall picture that matters. It’s kind of a Catch 22. Take a great, important job that gets you good experience and looks good on the resume but people comb through it for anything you did wrong. Or don’t get good experience so your resume looks s#!tty but there’s no negative decisions to find.

That's why I posted...

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I do think that she would make a good Attorney General under a progressive president.

However she is not very progressive, and has abandoned M4A. Her foreign policy is too supportive of our current conflicts for my comfort.

6 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Well, I don't see anything in the clip that was posted that would disqualify Harris for me.

I found two items from that video to be very troubling, and then there was her failure to prosecute fraudulent banker Steve Mnuchin (now trump's Secretary of the Treasury).

1) Although she says she opposes them now, Harris had been a supporter of private prisons. She did keep people in prison (a taxpayer expense) longer than necessary to take advantage of forced low cost labor.

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After California failed to fully implement the court’s order to reduce crowding, and was ordered to implement new parole programs, the State of California appealed the decision, and in court filings the AG’s office argued that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important source of labor^, such as for fighting wildfires Prisoners in California earn between 8 and 37 cents per hour in maintenance and kitchen jobs; prisoner firefighters receive higher pay, at $1 per hour^. She later backed away from her office’s argument in the prison-litigation case...

https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/08/01/opinion-why-kamala-harris-is-unfit-to-be-president/

2) Harris knowing withheld evidence that would have exonerated someone on death row.

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

I actually like both of those women.

As someone on the progressive side, I found Harrris' fundraisers at Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons to be troubling, along with her strategy meetings with Hillary Clinton. Despite being an early supporter (post 2016) of M4A, Harris has changed her position on it. I would have a difficult time voting for Kamala for POTUS or on a ticket with her as VP, but I do think that she would make a good Attorney General under a progressive president.

This is what happened to Kamala Harris' campaign.

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

On 10/9/2019 at 10:52 PM, Danny Bateman said:

Ahhh yes.

So you dislike Trump & Republicans...

But somehow 95% of what you perceive as problems and complain about relates to Democrats.

Thank you for proving my point.

One can only assume that you did not read the post of mine that you quoted and hastily replied to.

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So yes, I am more critical of Democrats, because I expect more from the party that should represent the left. There is not much to gain by criticizing Trump, because no sane person should have positive expectations of the Republicans. If the DNC did not cheat in 2016, we would not have a President Trump. And it appears that the DNC is hell bent on cheating again in 2020.