After a hard-fought primary campaign, Bernie Sanders capitulated and endorsed his rival Hillary Clinton for the presidency. In the final analysis, Clinton gave up little more than lip service to Bernie’s agenda of a $15 minimum wage, free college tuition at public universities, and universal healthcare. To the contrary, Clinton is now moving to the right, considering a general as vice president and asking the platform committee not to oppose the TPP free trade agreement.
The Leftie Who Came In From The Cold
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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I think Bernie’s endorsement was the ultimate fuck you to the Democratic Party and to Hillary Clinton because he knew that his supporters won’t buy into it.
The Sanders supporters see what Clinton is and is not doing. Her latest scheming idiocy (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clintons-plan-student-debt-equals-130000289.html) presents refinancing of student loans as some sort of huge lifesaver. A typical Honest Bubba’s Used Car Emporium gimmick. The last part of the article spells out what’s really going on: “Clinton’s proposal, for example, estimates that borrowers refinancing into new loans at current rates would save the typical borrower $2,000 over the life of their loan.” Over 10 years? As the article points out, that’s $16 — the cost of a pizza — a month.
As Ted himself pointed out at one of his book signings, the people who are left in Afghanistan after all the wars and invasions and incursions and police actions and so forth are the furthest thing from naive. All of that has been washed away because the only way to have survived is to be able to see through all the bullshit. The young people in America now? All the naivety is gone there too. They simply say that they are screwed. They aren’t even buying in to the notion of the American model: job, car, house, spouse, kids. There’s no sense of maybe getting a seat at the table so they aren’t even interested in trying. The expectation is that they will not come out ahead, so why bother playing a rigged game? And everything Hillary is doing and not doing tells them that she isn’t worth their time and effort to bother voting for.
I think a lot of people who are horrified of Trump are started to come around to the thinking that having him in office will still be better than having Hillary. She will ruin everything for four years, and then there’ll be a Republican in office. But Trump will break everything so badly that, finally, some real changes might have to be put in place to fix the system. Sanders might get universal coverage thanks to Trump fucking so much up. The people who check the smoke detector batteries most faithfully are the ones who’ve had house fires. And Trump is a fire.
+1. Perceptive observation. The game is clearly rigged, so there are two options: 1) don’t play 2) push self-destruct. The mess will be horrible, but the mess that exists and will come anyway…will come anyway, so why not get it overwith?
I considered Trump along these lines, but he is such an odious gasbag that I can’t stomach voting for him. If I’m voting my conscience, Green is the way to go. The Hillbots will be enraged, but so what? They just might get what they want anyway.
Does a pizza in the US really cost 16USD now, alex_the_tired ?!! The country’s going to the dogs !…
Henri
Hot dogs are five dollars. 😉
«Hot dogs are five dollars.» Hope the mustard’s included ! But more seriously, that certainly puts Mr Sanders’ outrageous call for a minimum wage of 15USD/hour into perspective – 3 hot dogs an hour. Hot diggety dog !…
Henri
A good pizza? about $15 to $20. The kind of pizza you’d eat drunk? 99 cents a slice. The frozen crap at the supermarket? About 8 bucks.
Swedish Pizza is made with lutefisk. But it is less expensive than the American variety.
😀
«[L]utefix», CrazyH ? That must be Norwegian pizza – everybody knows that in genuine Swedish pizza, only lutfix is used….
Henri
That should, of course, be «lutefisk» and «lutfisk», respectively….
Henri
Interesting – that’s the spelling I’ve always known, shows up in [English] Wikipedia where lutefix doesn’t.
It’s also the pronunciation I’ve always known, but I must bow to those who’ve actually been to Scandinavia..
So, when speaking Swedish, do you say lute-FIKS (as English speakers pronounce ‘X’) or lute-FISK like an English speaker would say RISK?
I tried above to clarify my orthographic faux pas, CrazyH – the word för English «fish» in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish (the Scandinavian languages with which I’m most familiar) is, of course, fisk, ; fix was my typing error, for which I alone must bear responsibility. What I was trying to do when I was hoist by my own petard was to correct your spelling of lutfisk (Swedish) ; lutefisk is Norwegian (bokmÃ¥l). I shan’t bore you with a diskussion of how it is written in the innumerable dialects of Norway’s west coast…. 😉
Henri
Ha! Turns out I’m also dyslexic. Didn’t catch all the subtleties whilst reading over the variations.
I did stumble across this along the way. (But upon closer examination it appears to be Deutsch.)
Something fishy is going on with this thread …
I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. I’ve been to the finest headshrinkers in the land …
I’d bet a fin that this line would smell fishy on anyone’s scale. Salmon should reel us in before we start rocking the boat, otherwise those who are trolling might rise to the bait.
(Father forgive me for I have sinned)
Father forgive you, CrazyH, for you have finned ?… 😉
Henri
Random thoughts vaguely on topic …
Bernie said some time ago that if his bid failed he’d endorse Killary. I don’t really like it, but I can respect him for following through on what he said.
If we get Trump, then we deserve Trump. “We” collectively – certainly not those of us who can count to twenty with our shoes on – but we’re evidently in the minority.
Interesting to see those deriding Justice Ginsburg for flaming Hair Furor mit dem kleine Schwanzstucker. The biggest complaint, “She politicized the Supreme Court” WTF? Roberts, Alito, and Scalia pretty much destroyed any remaining shreds of nonpartisanship long ago.
Romney won more than 60% of the white vote. Not enough. Not only did almost all African-Americans and Hispanics support Obama, they voted in much higher numbers than usual. And Trump has alienated almost all African-Americans, Hispanics, and most women, and today he proved that he’s not really serious about winning the election by picking a cypher as vice-president.
Meanwhile, the New York Times columnists and all the faux left cartoonists are condemning Sanders for a) running against the only person qualified to be president of the United States, and b) not being much more apologetic and obsequious in dropping out and endorsing Billary.
To have had a real chance, Trump needed a senior person from the Bush, jr administration who would appeal to African-Americans, Hispanics, and women, but he didn’t pick her, so he’s really running just as a favour to Bill.
Had the Republicans put up anyone else…
African-Americans, Hispanics, and women would still have turned out for Billary.
And Billary won’t be another Chamberlain at Munich. Billary have sworn to remove the evil Syrian dictator, the one strongly supported by Putin, so she’ll have to also remove the evil dictator Putin, not to mention the Chinese who said they’ll ignore the International Court and the Iranians and the North Koreans. She’ll liberate all of those countries from their evil dictators and make them all as peaceful and prosperous and democratic as Iraq and Libya are today, and I’m sure they’ll all be very grateful to America’s Greatest President Ever.
IOW she will be remembered as the President who solved global overpopulation AND global warming in one swell foop.
No, really, one technological fix for global warming is nuclear winter. And without all those inconvenient foreigners burning fossil fuels global warming won’t be near so big a problem.
In four or five short centuries, the climate will be back to new normal. And Homo Sap will be back to killing each other off.
I used to read the Manchester Guardian. Silly me. They called Snowden a brave whistle-blower. Silly them. The UK government sent in the constabulary and smashed their hard drives, and now they say the evil Syrian government created the Daesh by releasing violent jihadists from the Syrian Prisons, like Camp Bucca, which is Arabic for Syrian Government Prison.
Now I read the Independent, a propaganda sheet for the evil Soviets. And I really like the Irish write Cockburn (not pronounced as it’s spelled).
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-hillary-clinton-presidency-could-end-up-letting-isis-and-al-qaeda-off-the-hook-a7138266 dot html
(A lot of sites don’t allow URLs, and I can’t remember if this is one of them.)
It does. Here’s a fixed up link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-hillary-clinton-presidency-could-end-up-letting-isis-and-al-qaeda-off-the-hook-a7138266.html
Great article. Leaves me wondering, even more now than before, who exactly would be dumb enough to sign on to the Clinton ticket as the veep.
The Cockburn’s are a very interesting family. Three brother’s, Alexander, Andrew, and Patrick. All writers. Their dad was Claude Cockburn, a communist journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War. Alex, who died in 2012, was as close to a real communist as you could find in the American press. He did a column for the Village Voice for years, and also for the Nation. He started CounterPunch. Andrew writes books about foreign affairs, and Patrick has been covering the middle east for decades. Patrick has a son with schizophrenia, they wrote a book together. Andrew is Olivia Wilde’s father.
Thanks, Michael, for your reference to Patrick Cockburn’s article ; it was of the quality that one expects from this particular journalist, who as Suetonius pointed out above, comes from a family background which inspires confidence. (On the other hand, one need only look at Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn’s son Hilary (nota bene : a single «l» !) James Wedgwood Benn to realise that not all scions of radicals keep the faith….)
Henri
PS : The journal to which you refer hasn’t been known as the Manchester Guardian since the move to London in 1959, which, I suggest antedates its praise for Mr Snowden. It has lately become more and more reactionary, as any one who’s followed its coverage of Mr Sanders’ campaign can confirm, and will no doubt be happy to support Ms Clinton’s war after 20 January 2017. The paper still has publishes the work of great cartoonists like Steve Bell and Martin Rowson (and many others), but the editors are gradually – or perhaps not so gradually – restricting the number of cartoons (and other articles) on which readers can comment. In other words, it is, alas, well on the way to becoming a neocon rag – think New York Times or Washington Post, which helps to explain its consistent support, not merely editorial, but also in what are supposed to be news articles, for Ms Clinton’s campaign….
Henri
Ted, is the hatch under Mr Sanders’ feet going to open and he to plunge to a fiery demise when Ms Clinton presses that button ? If so, I suggest that she will probably wait to 9 November before pressing it….
Henri