John Kerry Serves Up a Reality Check
John Kerry gave a speech last week at the Center for American Progress that should become the marching song for every liberal in this country. He was clear: The last 10 years have cost us too much, and if the hyper-partisan tone doesn't change to one of true concern for the direction of this country, we will cede any chance to lead to others.
He hits it all: Infrastructure, energy, debt, climate change. Every point. The one that hit home for me was when he talked about where we might have been, had Bush and the Republicans not unwound progress made during the Clinton administration.
Here's an example. We talk about how the Clinton tax rates generated a surplus, but we stop there. We don't talk about the fact that if the Clinton tax rates had remained in effect, the entire national debt would have been paid off by 2012. Imagine what a difference that would have made in today's dialogue. And more importantly, why aren't we hammering this home every single time one of those self-righteous Republican buffoons stands up and talks about how our national debt is killing the country?
Kerry points out that we would be at a point where our financial position would be at it's strongest point ever. What would that have meant when (or if) the bottom fell out of the economy? Most assuredly, we wouldn't have to be speaking of debt retirement and austerity.
We need to start going there. This shouldn't be swept under the rug. I can't recommend this highly enough. Take an hour out of your day and watch Kerry's speech. He really hits hard on the cost of NOT investing in the country and how it puts us behind on a global basis every single day.
Check out this headline from January 26, 2000, just 11 years ago:
Consumer Confidence Hits an All-Time High; Jobs Called 'Plentiful' : Clinton Sees An Early Payoff of U.S. Debt
Compare it to today's headlines (this one, from the Wall Street Journal, one of the biggest tax-cut pimps):
U.S. Ran $80 Billion Budget Deficit in December
I think we need to give Republicans full credit for everything they did for to us. We should be at least as loud as the anti-hcr folks are, and we should repeat it every single day in public, especially to anyone who still thinks Republicans are fiscally responsible.
(Aside: Here's a giggle for you...check out the names on the Sunday news shows at the bottom of this Google news clipping. Even then, McCain was front and center.)
"We should be at least as loud as the anti-hcr folks are"
We are and we are much larger in numbers but it does no good because the M$M has another narrative - case in point - this is from C-span - what would it be like if all the cable infotainment ran with this?
Great piece (as always)
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
Yeah, the national debt could have been retired, but the banks and rich folk would be less rich. Where's the sense in that?
agreed, couple this with Bush's dismal job creation numbers after all those tax cuts, and you've got a great strategy for revealing Republican fiscal dishonesty.
Post-dated?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
When the headline includes the phrase "Kerry serves up" my thinking goes straight to the topic of catsup.
Ketchup.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
was out of that stuff that comes from the bottle, capsup, ketchup, elite Dem bullshit, whatever.
I've been making what I consider an Italian omelet for years.
3 eggs
Milk
Plenty of chopped up garlic and onion
Chopped up pepperoni
Spaghetti sauce
Italian seasonings
And either a sprinkling of store bought shredded Italian cheeses, or Parmesan
Pepto Bismol
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Oops...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
This is just absurdly silly. John Kerry's "reality check" is simply an attempt to pin all that is wrong with America on the Republican Party, and to mostly absolve his own party. Now, I wholeheartedly agree that Bush and the Republicans played a huge role in creating our present mess, but so did the Democrats.
Clinton pushed through NAFTA. Clinton pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and effectively repealed key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act (both of which paved the way for our present financial crisis). Clinton enforced strict sanctions upon the Iraqi people that killed - by most accounts - upwards of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children. And the Democratic Party almost unanimously fell in line behind Dictator Bush after the attacks of 9/11. Invade and occupy Afghanistan? What a swell idea! Bomb Iraq back to the Stone Ages over non-existent WMD? Where do I sign up? Strip civil liberties via the USA Patriot Act? You don't have to ask twice!
Now, I'm not arguing that the Democrats did nothing at all right, or that they are equally responsible for our present-day woes, but all I know is that John Kerry's revisionist over-extrapolation is patently absurd. Our economy was heading for a recession as Clinton was packing his presidential bags, and the forces of globalization and "free" trade were already hollowing out our manufacturing sector and destroying the middle class. Wall Street was already capturing an outsized portion of total U.S. profits and revenues, and the military-industrial complex was already running amok in a number of small nations and provinces that most Americans couldn't even locate on a map.
Kerry does not present a "reality check," but an un-reality check for the rabidly partisan Democrats (such as C&L's own Karoli) who will latch onto any official pronouncement or factoid so long as it absolves/beatifies the Democrats and blames/demonizes Republicans/conservatives.
Both parties have been complicit in our nation's unquestionable demise, and both have stood on the sidelines as the military-industrial complex (i.e., the national security state) have taken the reins of our government and driven the general public's well-being into the ground. The fact that Barack Obama, our so-called "hope-filled" and "change-oriented" savior, has done very little to roll back the national security state, and, in fact, has done quite a bit to entrench and expand this state (e.g., due-process free assassinations, preemptive and indefinite detentions, constant remote-controlled murders in Pakistan, an absolute unwillingness to prosecute known war criminals, etc.) is extremely telling to those of us willing to think outside of the left-right bubble.
Then again, what would the internet (and this country) be without mindless partisan drivel such as this?
A much better place!
Paragraph breaks are your friend...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I apologize for not abiding by the "internet etiquette" that requires all ideas to presented in a single sentence and immediately followed by an "LOL," "HAHA," "GRR," or an unnecessary ellipsis.
I also apologize for putting more than three sentences into a paragraph. I know how taxing that must be on your already over-exerted mental faculties.
Oh, I do apologize! In this age of Twitter, I will try my best to limit my responses to a handful of buzzwords and pointless emotional outbursts.
Let me try this again;
"Democrats BAD 2! Republicans bad, but so R dems!! NAFTA! CMFA, lol!!! Partisanship no good. GRRRR!"
Both the George W. Bush tax cuts, and the George W. Bush war in Iraq (use of Force Resolution, pre-midterm GOP partisan jujitsu move from October, 2002-failed in the House on the Democratic side) PASSED ONLY ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE OF THE AISLE!
These two GOP disasters brought to us by The War President and his GOP rubber stampers were the two biggest budget busters of the last 10 years, and they were unnecessary and were sold with a bunch of bald faced lies and political bombast.
Both are lying sacks of sh**, both have only run up our national debt, both have had their hand in fudging the numbers to the point where they are completely disingenuous and unreliable such as the hedonic adjusted CPI, unemployment, GDP, and on and on.
I'm tired of voting for which pile of sh** smells less.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
Yes and both sides have whored them selves out to the corporate greed
The man who says he knows god is a liar, The man who say he knows himself is a fool,
So go forth be a fool and lie your ass off.
LOL!
Thumbs up.
Every year the deficit is added to the national debt, here is the table from the US treasury's website showing annual historical debt outstanding for Clinton's term.
Where exactly did the national debt go down during his term? Where did the deficit surplus go?
The answer is the surplus never went to reducing the debt, the debt has only ever gone up. There was no surplus. They used aggressive accounting practices to give the illusion of a surplus. The Democrats lie just like the Republicans.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
There are two kinds of debt instruments: public debt and debt held by the federal govt; eg special-issue treasury bonds for social security. As illustrated on the charts in this report, the public debt was, in fact, being paid down. (PDF) http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_zPmwvQFaM
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I like Kerry (generally), I voted for him, but the day I have to get my "liberal" marching orders from him is the day I check myself in to the nursing home.
It's a pity he doesn't work as hard on righting the wrongs of the right as he does in trying to pin the blame on them. Hey John, when was the last time you introduced a "liberal" bill? How are your votes on war funding? Wall Street bailouts? Just curious.
and Kerry, the former war protester, just blew him off. Interview on Democracy Now!
Bacevich is well worth paying attention to. Kerry......not so much. Try it Karoli.
Until that paradigm changes NOTHING Kerry said will matter or help.
I wish Kerry showed a little more fight when he was investigated the BCCI Bank, or when he was waiting for the vote count in Ohio, or when he was being smeared by the Bush/Rove machine during the 2004 election. Or when he was investigating the crimes of the Bush Crime Family including the torture and anthrax. We need more fighters willing to put it on the line.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I would take him a lot more seriously if he hadn't thrown the election away. I still can't get over him wind surfing, skiing in aspen and his high fashion bicycling garb on a $3,000 bike.
more like $4-6K.
Boston Chamber of Commerce on WGBH radio. And he stressed the importance of WORKING WITH REPUBLICANS on important issues.
It was a total sell out speech. But it was Kerry, who capitulated in 2004 before there was a chance to protest the vote fraud in Ohio and other places. I believe he actually won, but like Gore, he is a spineless Dem. And not to be taken seriously. If you doubt me, look up and listen to that speech, given in Dec 2009 I believe.
could have put an end to all that Republican destruction by challenging the Ohio vote but who conceded without a fight and threw us all into four more years of Bush hell? Yeah, I'll listen to that guy about how to fight back...
I was just watching the NFL game and Faux has a moniker on the right hand side of the screen that says "DIVISIONAL FOX". Someone needs to take a screenshot of it when halftime is over. I got a kick out of it. Do you think it's a gaffe or do they intentionally put stuff like that up on the screen?
was what they did to health care. Every damn thing the insurance companies made us fear with Health care reform they did to us when we shied away from it. Health insurance companies have made billions in the time health care reform was shot down with Clinton and a the CEO's have made hundreds of millions. Meanwhile Americans go without health care. Hard working Americans are going without health care. Teachers, carpenters, day laborers, ex military.... anyone can end up without insurance. You don't have to be poor just unable to afford the costs of an industry that has lost sight of it's true mission.
Jeanne
Focusing on the next election is like focusing on the next quarterly report, it's long-term suicide.
Yeah, thanks for the "reality" check, John. Your local and national constituency already lives in this reality. Don't tell this to us as though you're teaching it to us. We've been trying to teach it to you guys for the last ten years!
But, oh no! You can't get up and say this shit when your seat is at stake. You can't say it when it matters. You say it safely from your incumbency after the damage is done. Hell, you even ran for president against all of this when it was happening, and didn't have half the gusto you're attempting to exude here. So, you'll have to forgive me if I don't leap to applaud. Your talk means little to me.
When the Bushevik Adminstration lied us into a war, where the hell were you guys? You were too afraid to stand up and say what you're saying now. Those among the party who stood up when it counted (Howard Dean, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, etc.), were marginalized as kooks, and you aided and abetted the marginalization. And now you want to talk about all the damage that the Democrats neglected to prevent?
Besides, even though what you say about Republicans is correct, I have to co-opt the criticism of the Party of No. Tell, me, John, I know what you're against -- you're against all the shit you either allowed or were too cowardly to stand up to. But what are you for? What does the Democratic Party actually want to do? What won't it compromise away?
I'll tell you what I'm for: I'm for human values. I want my government to fulfill its Constitutional duty to protect our equal rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want a government that understands that the best way to promote the collective well being of all of us is to protect equally the individual well being of each of us. I want liberty, equality and rationality.
The Democratic Party is the lesser of the evils, but you're becoming less and less lesser by the minute. Do something to prove me wrong, but please don't preach to us the words we've been preaching to you for so long we've lost our voices.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
The Democratic Party is the lesser of the evils, but you're becoming less and less lesser by the minute.
Words of wisdom for our Manchurian, republican Trojan Horse president to live by. I too see little (if any) difference between the two wings of our one corporate fascist party.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
That be the dilemma alright and WTF is our alternative to the
DemocraticDemocrat party ? We are SOL .The Right's sole concern is destroying the Left. They don't give a Flying Fuck if they level the country doing it. It's scorched earth all the way and heaven help those who get in the way.
Show me where I'm wrong. I dare you. Any good they do is entirely inadvertent.
...I CRAP bigger than you.
Billy Boy did not help us ( just a slight understatement ) with NAFTA and WTO , the negative consequences were not felt until he was long out of office . The average American , the workers in this country really got F'd . Ross Perot's prediction was dead on , the giant flushing sound ... our jobs being flushed down the toilet . It did not take any sort of a genius to figure that out , if I knew it Clinton sure as hell knew it and he did , it was a no brainer if there ever was one .
Rather than simply bashing, how about selling your alternative? Seems like it's counter-productive to grumble about everything all the time, with no ideas or suggestions for what path to take. Carry on.
Thank you for that public service announcement. "Above the fray" Karoli swoops in, doing her best to avoid the actual substance of our dissenting opinions, while implying that her strategy of pinning most/all blame on the Republican Party/conservatives and essentially exonerating the Democratic Party is a "productive" strategy for "what path to take."
I have presented the framework of my strategy at C&L a number of times (quite a few times in Karoli's posts, in fact), but, as she has done now when I pointed out that her beloved Democrats are also very much to blame for our present-day woes, Karoli replies with nothing more than a Twitter-length morsel of snark. Introspection? Forget about it! Any strategy based on overt hostility toward the Democratic Party is not even to be considered by the likes of Karoli. That would be far too damaging to the Democratic Party, and...hey, the Democrats are the lesser of the two evils, didn't you know? So, even if Barack Obama is actively trying to murder American citizens without observing due process of law, and even if he continues to name Wall Street insiders to his inner circle, and even if he does his absolute best to antagonize an overt war with a third nation, Pakistan...well, at least he hasn't nuked Iran like that goober McCain and his barely literate sidekick (and object of the Democratic left's unhealthy obsession) Sarah Palin. All hail our Nobel Prize-winning president!
So, Karoli, if you want ideas and suggestions, try the following on for size;
1) Boycott Barack Obama. No more campaign donations, no more water-carrying, no more endless apologetics. You, in particular, can use your platform at C&L to spearhead this movement.
2) Boycott all Democratic politicians who do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Again; no more campaign donations, no more water-carrying, and no more endless apologetics for these folks. Yes, I completely agree; many of these folks are not bad people and they hold many very legitimate and commendable positions on other issues, but unless they are willing to truly do what it takes to end the daily slaughter of innocent human beings, then they do not deserve our support. Period.
3) Create the infrastructure for a national anti-war movement. It shouldn't be extraordinarily difficult to convince Americans that the trillion-plus dollars we spend annually on war, weaponry, and surveillance are one of the primary reasons for our present economic woes. Wall Street certainly played its part, but the trillion or so we spend on death each year greatly limited our fiscal options.
4) Line up in support of a new constitutional convention. The issues we face are enormous in scope and our outdated and highly corrupted systems of governance have not kept pace (e.g., electoral college, filibusters). We aren't in need of a violent revolution - in fact, that option would likely be extremely counterproductive - but we absolutely need to reform our present system. Should corporate personhood be abolished? Should extraordinarily strict requirements be placed on the government's war-making powers? Should certain industries - such as the oil industry - be nationalized so that our nation's mineral and energy resources can be used to promote the welfare of the general public? These are all questions that would take decades, or perhaps centuries, worth of unrelenting public action in order to achieve; in which time all that we know and love about this country may be forever lost. We need immediate action, and a constitutional convention would grant us that opportunity.
But then again, mainstream pundits would probably scoff at those "silly" ideas and the Democratic Party would undoubtedly be weakened as a result (though the liberal/progressive movement would likely be strengthened in the long run). That, however, is no reason to discount the ideas and it is certainly no reason to cling to our present course. Bill Clinton was immeasurably harmful to the liberal/progressive agenda, and it looks like Barack Obama will be even more so. If we are not willing to turn our back on someone who openly advocates/adheres to global war without end and absolute corporate dominance of our government, then we don't deserve to be considered liberals.
Ultimately, everything comes down to the following choice; will you abide by the positions and potential courses of action presented by the Democratic Party/mainstream media establishment, or will you forge a new path because the aforementioned positions are nothing more than political kabuki theater (i.e., "Support the official course of action and the government will mandate that all individuals buy private health insurance and then subsidize those - with taxpayer dollars - who cannot afford it. And then we can pretend this is a liberal/progressive piece of legislation - because a Democrat signed it into law - even though villainous healthcare corporations walk away with multiple billions in ensured future profit. Hooray!")
If we don't turn our back on the Democratic establishment, then we are not liberals. We are, instead, weak political cronies who would rather settle for crumbs than risk putting our neck on the line for what we believe in. And if this is the case, we are cowards. Plain and simple.
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