August 31, 2015

For anyone wishing to donate to help victims of wildfires in Washington:

The fires in Okanogan County are already by far the largest in state history. The Tunk Block fire is only 30% contained as of 4 hrs ago. The devastation, to quote a member of my family who lives there, is "epic".
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Both the Tunk Block fire of the Okanogan Complex, and the North Star fire are burning on the Colville Rez, and have burned about 175,000 to 200,000 acres or more on the rez. Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to donate online to the tribal disaster relief fund

North Cascades Bank
Colville Confederated Tribes Disaster Relief Fund
NESPELEM
—
The Colville Tribal Emergency Operations Center
and Northstar Fire
Donation Center are
accepting monetary donations to their North Cascades Bank Colville
Confederated Tribes Disaster Relief Fund.

Also, donations can be mailed to:

Colville Confederated Tribes
Attn: Central Accounting/Disaster Relief Fund
P.O. Box 150
Nespelem, WA
99155

http://www.colvilletribes.com/colville_confederated_tribes_disaster_relief_fund.php

Not sure if the Tunk Block and North Star fires have joined yet. The total amount of land burned so far in these two fires, which are in close proximity to each other, is at least, I believe, 370,00 acres, roughly about 570 sq miles.



http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/4534/

August 30, 2015

Debbi Wasserman Schulz, former national co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President,

dictatorially decides that she has the absolute right to rig the Democratic primary process, so that her BFF Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for POTUS in 2016.

Paraphrased, Little Debbie says fuck democracy, and says Democrats can go fuck off if we don't like it. Little Debbie says this ain't Burger King, and Democrats get it her way, or we don't get it at all.

So, just how many millions of Democratic votes will this cost Clinton in the GE after Debbie
crowns her Hillary, Queen of the Democrats?

August 28, 2015

Bernie is correct. We are spread too thin. Our own people suffer while

we spend billions of our tax dollars protecting the profit interests of transnational corporations all over the world. Neoliberals pretend that they have the noble goal of curtailing human rights violations in those countries with our presence and influence, and use this pretense to try to justify our imperialist capitalist "presence for profit" abroad.

We have already done everything we could to destabilize the Middle East in the name of imperial capitalist neoliberalism. Time to let the region deal with its own issues, the issues it lives every day. The US cannot be the World Police for several reasons, one of which is that we have proven that we totally suck at doing it, another of which are that it is sucking up half our tax revenue, revenue that could be used to improve the conditions of everyone in the US and maybe even our neighbors in the Americas as well.

Our home is a tragically dysfunctional home, and we all know the ways in which it is dysfunctional. We're definitely not going to be able to help anyone else if we can't even help ourselves.

Neoliberalism is nothing but imperialist capitalism. Neoliberalism is a disease that is killing the planet, and the US is the main host/carrier of neoliberalism and is spreading the disease of neoliberalism throughout the world. Neoliberals claim they spread democracy, but democracy to neoliberals means subjugation of other cultures for profit. Neoliberal imperialists have displaced and dispossessed billions of indigenous people by stealing their land, taking away their means of sustenance/resources, and then forcing them to bow before the self-righteous imperial neoliberal throne, often forcing them to become refugees in order to survive, under the most meager of circumstances.

Virtually every non-white culture on the planet has been infected, exploited, disrupted, and impoverished by murderous neoliberal white supremacist profiteers with delusions of racial superiority.

Let other regions of the world deal with their own issues, which they understand better than anyone. Yes, Saudi Arabia is a nasty, rotten, oppressive neoliberal monarchy. Maybe if they are forced to deal with major threats to their wealth and sovereignty, the people will get a shot at overthrowing the monarchy. The people of Saudi Arabia are not benefiting significantly by neoliberal appeasement and partnership with the rotten regime that oppresses them.

We have proven, over and over that we simply are not capable of effectively dealing with the issues of cultures we cannot understand because we do not live the issues, and we, like so many imperialist European nations before us, have created and perpetuated the enormous clusterfuck that is the Mideast.

We desperately need to break the neoliberal stranglehold on all of our lives, and work on fixing ourselves. If we are not in the Mideast committing mass genocide and blowing the destabilizing unholy fuck out of sovereign nations with unjustifiable wars (for neoliberal profit!) in the Mideast, it may actually give the people of the Mideast the chance to eventually fix themselves.



From Fire to Autonomy: Zapatistas, 20 Years of Walking Slowly
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21427-from-fire-to-autonomy-zapatistas-20-years-of-walking-slowly

http://www.schoolsforchiapas.org/teach-chiapas/library/

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html

August 27, 2015

What I intuit most deeply about Bernie is that he clearly understands the fact

that he is simply just one of us, just another person, sovereign and equal.

I feel that he fully understands that he is our collective democratic representative, our servant, and accepts the burden of this responsibility with humility, and respect for everyone and everything.

Surf's up, y'all.

August 27, 2015

Everyone, please, pay attention. This is one of the most important OPs ever on DU.

Please...please.

"Pick up your head, open your eyes, and look around. There's a real world out there, with real people experiencing real misery because a small group of sociopathic oligarchs always want more stuff no matter how much stuff they already have. Unless we all pull together to fight the good fight, the honest fight, we are done for."

It is way past time we evolved beyond the lies, the deception, the corruption, the greed, the destruction,...beyond hate, beyond war.

Join us. Please, help us stop the madness. We can do this. We really can. We need you, all of you, sisters and brothers.

Please.

August 25, 2015

Looks like some folks have a big sad about you peeing in the royal caviar.

"The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success." ~ John Steinbeck

August 23, 2015

Gossip has it that Sanders supporters of all ages and colors particularly like

"Think this through with me,
let me know your mind,
Wo, oh, what I want to know,
Is are you kind?

Come hear Uncle Bernie's Band by the riverside,
Got some things to talk about, here beside the rising tide."

Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait,
Wo, oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?

I live in a silver mine and I call it Beggar's Tomb;
I got me a violin and I beg you call the tune,
anybody's choice, I can hear your voice.
Wo, oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?

Come hear Uncle Bernie's Band by the riverside,
Got some things to talk about, here beside the rising tide."

August 23, 2015

*snort* Check it out, the author of the OP, Sarah Jones, can't even get critical facts straight.

We all make mistakes. But she's a journalist, and the co-publisher of polticusUSA, shamelessly pulling another filthy bullshit race card out of her sleeve in order to smear Bernie Sanders supporters...

Not good enough, Sarah...

Here she plainly states, (third paragraph at the link in the OP), that a Social Security Works event in Seattle was a Bernie Sanders event, and implies that people in the crowd purportedly expressing racial slurs were Bernie Sanders supporters:

Not true. It was not even a Bernie Sanders event. Once again, the facts prove that a desperate Clinton supporter attempting to smear Bernie and/or Bernie supporters is lying gravely uninformed and mistaken.




Shameless. So who you gonna believe, the author of yet another desperate hit piece from a Clinton supporter, or what you see with your own eyes?


While Bernie, and Bernie supporters, have been in the streets struggling and protesting for civil rights, and against Wall Street, Wall St. wars, and the WTO, from the early 60's through Occupy Wall St., struggling for economic and social justice, center right yuppies (many/most of whom are now Clinton supporters) and RW republicans have been getting rich working for Wall St. and companies who start wars for profit, and sipping wine or lattes while sitting on their expensive leather sofas, watching TV and cheering on the cops while they watched us (us meaning those who are now Bernie supporters) get beaten with batons, get pepper sprayed, and thrown in jail. Trust me on this, no Bernie supporters were cheering the cops on while we were getting attacked by them.

It's not Bernie supporters who were tearing down and hating on Occupy Wall St. day after day on DU, the rest of the internet, and in IRL, it was right leaning centrists (many/most of whom are now supporting Clinton) and their free market global capitalism Wall St. loving republican political kin.


And I have the search function to prove it, over and over and over.

Once again. a Clinton supporter proves that their candidate has so few positives that they have to make shit up about others, in order to have anything at all to campaign for her candidate with.

Facts:





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Have a truly wonderful, beautiful day!

August 21, 2015

A Clinton presidency, like a republican presidency, means business as usual.

Wealthy private interests will continue to exploit human beings all over the world, and there will be little or no regulation of corporations as they continue to destroy our environment with impunity. Privatization will accelerate. Hillary will implement Third Way plans to cut social security and other social programs.

The polarization of wealth will continue to accelerate exponentially. Unions will continue to decline as more international trade agreements that enslave working people are put into effect. Drilling, mining, fracking, etc will continue unabated and unregulated, as poisons are released into our air, and get dumped into our water supply. The abuse of minorities will continue unobstructed. Private prisons will continue to expand. Defense spending will increase, as money for social programs and education decreases. Health insurance companies and health care providers will continue to jack up the prices of their services, rendering Obamacare basically useless to everyone but those on Medicaid.

And on, and on, and on. Oligarchy will expand and become more powerful. Business as usual.

Status quo.

With the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, we finally have the opportunity to elect a president who is not owned by wealthy private interests, who will make a genuine attempt to tackle the systemic problems in the political, economic, and social compartments of our society which desperately need to be addressed.

No President can solve all our myriad problems. Most of that depends on us. A Sanders presidency will give us some of the support we need to begin to solve the problems.

A Hillary Clinton presidency, like a republican presidency, will be nothing but business as usual, and the world will continue to go to hell in a hand basket as life becomes more and more hopeless for billions and billions of people of the earth, and future generations as well.

August 20, 2015

Thanks. You make some good points. Unfortunately, the alternatives to

"tricked", or "wrong", in the scenario you have described, in terms of the (ostensible at least) cultural mores of US society, are descriptors like "morally corrupt", or "deliberately evil".

Some would argue that there are gray areas. But there are no gray areas in taking deliberate, informed action to commit unjustified acts of mass destruction and genocide. You either do the right thing, or the wrong thing. There is no in between, no wiggle room, no 'splainin it away.

What kind of human being would deliberately help initiate mass destruction and genocide? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are two examples of this type of human being.


What kind of human being do we, as responsible and informed citizens, want to elect to be POTUS and Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces? Who do we want to trust the lives of our children, grandchildren, family, friends, neighbors, and communities with?

I will posit here that it is not someone who takes deliberate action to engage in unjustifiable acts of mass destruction and genocide. And even if we run with scenarios like "tricked", or "wrong", there is still the stark reality of poor judgment leading to mass destruction and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and the tragic, senseless waste of the lives of US soldiers, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not taking any chances. I'm going with the clearly ethical choice here, the candidate who clearly demonstrated moral integrity and sound judgment, who advocated against, and acted against, deliberately committing unjustified acts of mass destruction and genocide.

The good guy. The smart one.