But give us your money and vote for us because we're on your side.
How long have we known that most of the people in congress are useless? Their approval hovers around 15% and it's no wonder. They take the big money while talking out of both sides of their mouths, making secret deals behind closed doors, hiding shameful shit in needed legislation, voting on bills written by industry lobbyists which they have never read, and lying to us all about everything on the national TV. They feed the Military Industrial Complex, they feed the corporate greed, all while selling the public, the nation and the ecosystem down the river at every opportunity.
HRC paraphrased: No we can't! Don't think for one moment that you little people stand a chance at changing things. Big Insurance, Big Pharma and Big Capitalism are going to run over your puny asses and there's nothing you can do about it. That's the political reality. Big Money owns it all. You little guys are just too late. Get over your silly notions of revolution. You just don't realize how contentious those debates would be. I mean, Universal healthcare? Come on. Get real. We'd never have 60 votes for that. Change anything real to any measurable degree? No Way. Can't be done. Change is too hard. Take your half-a-loaf, embrace the suck, eat your shit sandwich and STFU!
Nothing is possible so don't even try. (by yours truly) Sanders, Clinton, and the Big Lie of the “Possible” (BY DAVID DAYEN) Pushing big ideas can lead to tangible results, in ways that cautious centrism cannot.snip
Lately, several mainstream liberal commentators have taken to siding with the pragmatist, painstakingly explaining to their readers the importance of preserving existing gains in a time of partisan warfare, and dismissing Sanders’s ambitious platform as misplaced and foolish. Incrementalism is a reasonable ideological preference. But the hot rhetoric and the need for Manichean imperatives that characterizes campaign season has intensified the attacks on Sanders, painting him as a political dilettante who doesn’t understand how Washington works—and, by extension, suggesting that anyone in government with big ideas is doomed to failure and would be better off going along to get along.
That’s where this otherwise typical campaign back-and-forth strays into dangerous territory. When you saw off every policy to what falls into the immediate range of possibility at the present moment, you give supporters little reason to organize behind your ideas. More important, you neglect the creative ways in which those seemingly unrealizable goals can be realized, no matter the situation in Congress.
snip
There’s a point at which you can manage the base into oblivion, and jump from dismissing Bernie Sanders to dismissing the largest wing of the Democratic Party. What’s more, telling a new crop of progressive legislators, from Zephyr Teachout to Elizabeth Warren, that they must content themselves with the art of the possible, and back off big ideas, is not only bad politics. It’s bad policy.
DAVID DAYENAll the no-can-doers, incrementalists, excuse-makers and back-stabbers have had one purpose: to stall change and kill hope. 'No we can't,' is their battle cry.
Elizabeth Warren's AWESOME Speech Against Citizens United and Oligarch Control of Politics x YouTube Video Here she is again speaking up for US!It’s obvious whose side she’s on.
OURS!Robert Reich is on our side too. Elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich are rare exceptions in the DC constellation, insiders on the people’s side. They are on the right side of history, which, if we are lucky enough to have that in the future, will remember them well and kindly. (History could end, you know. It’s our job not to let that happen.)
Published on Thursday, January 28, 2016 by RobertReich.org The Most Pragmatic Way to Fix American Democracy: Elect Bernie Sanders by Robert ReichThe Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism” and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism” – with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism. But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and power at the very top, combined with declining real incomes for most and persistent poverty for the bottom fifth.
The real choice isn’t “pragmatism” or “idealism.” It’s either allowing these trends to worsen, or reversing them. Inequality has reached levels last seen in the era of the “robber barons” in the 1890s. The only truly pragmatic way of reversing this state of affairs is through a “political revolution” that mobilizes millions of Americans.
Is such a mobilization possible? One pundit recently warned Democrats that change happens incrementally, by accepting half loaves as being better than none. That may be true, but the full loaf has to be large and bold enough in the first place to make the half loaf meaningful. And not even a half loaf is possible unless or until America wrests back power from the executives of large corporations, Wall Street bankers and billionaires who now control the bakery.
Cheers to a Washington Insider!This is unusual for me, to say the least. Words of praise for a cog in that fucked up wheel. I generally despise these people for their arrogance, hypocrisy, imperiousness and insular, inside-the-bubble, one-percenter points of view, but Robert Reich seems to be a rare exception. For an insider (former Secretary of Labor) he has a refreshingly sane world view, an awesome intellect and is doing yeoman's work as an activist. Much respect, Sec. Reich. I live for the day when all politicians and insiders are more like you and less like the present deplorable reality.
Want to reverse sky-high inequality? Bernie Sanders is the pragmatic choiceThe other day Bill Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer health plan as unfeasible and a “recipe for gridlock.”
Yet these days, nothing of any significance is feasible and every bold idea is a recipe for gridlock.
This election is about changing the parameters of what’s feasible and ending the choke hold of big money on our political system.
I’ve known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have.
But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.
The Volcanic Core Fueling the 2016 Election by Robert Reich
“I don’t work for big corporations and I don’t want their money.” ~ Bernie Sanders, 2016 As Clinton Attends Investor Gala, Sanders Tells Iowans, "I'd Rather Be Here With You"Bernie Sanders struck a blow against Hillary Clinton's campaign priorities on Wednesday night, noting that while she was attending a fundraising event hosted by a $17 billion investment fund, he was revving up an overflow crowd in Iowa, which holds it primary caucus in just four days.
"My opponent is not in Iowa tonight. She is raising money from a Philadelphia investment firm," Sanders told a crowd of about 1,000 people at the Music Man Square in Mason City, Iowa. "Frankly, I would rather be here with you."
According to local station KIMT, "the topic of the night for Sanders: money, money, money. Most of the conversation centered on Wall Street and how he would change issues like health care, student debt and minimum wage for the better. He also made a point to note how he’s unaffiliated with super PACs — something none of the other candidates can claim."
"We do not represent Wall Street, we don’t represent corporate America, we don't want their money," Sanders said following an introduction by actress Susan Sarandon.
This is an awesome video. At least watch Susan Sarandon’s moving introduction. But it’s worth watching the whole thing.
x YouTube VideoResponding to the Washington Post’s editorial board after they accused him of peddling fictions, Bernie Sanders said, “check out where all the geniuses on the editorial page were with regard to the invasion of Iraq.”
Too damned funny, Bernie.
Bern Notice!
This shit is getting old. Time to throw the bums out. This is our chance.
Not advocating violence, just thought this was too funny.This is no time for politics as usual.
“Brothers and sisters, this is no time for thinking small.” ~ Bernie Sanders
Go big or go home!Please consider our present circumstances and do the right thing. Get behind Bernie and the American people who are standing up together in all out effort to finally effect some meaningful change — for the love of us all.
Bernie for the little people.
Two and a half Make that 2.9 million contributions (updated from the comments. h/t leu2500) — the most of any campaign in history.
We have to win this thing and we intend to.1st we elect Bernie
2nd we clean house in Congress — throw the bums out
We will settle for nothing less than government of, by and for the people.This song once sustained me through some difficult years. It gave me hope.
x YouTube VideoAny day now, I shall be released.
