Donald trump. what is your take on him?

dmp said:

As much entertainment you get from the anti-Democrat propoganda, they are the only ones standing up for the middle & lower class.
When you're looking back in a decade or so and things in this country are much worse off, remember you were fighting for the wrong side when it mattered.

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Obama never marched with union picketers

By Amy Sherman on Wednesday, December 14th, 2016 at 10:58 a.m.

While running for president in 2007, Barack Obama promised that he would protect unions' collective bargain rights.

"If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States," then Illinois Sen. Obama said in Spartanburg, S.C., on Nov. 3, 2007.

We checked in with multiple unions and the White House and found no evidence that Obama physically walked with picketers.

;;;

In short, Obama did more to support collective bargaining than any president in recent decades, but the bar had not been set high by his recent predecessors," McCartin said. "Ultimately his support for collective bargaining was never full-throated or unstinting." 

Obama's administration took some pro-labor steps. But when Obama had the chance to show up and "walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States" — which would have been a powerful symbol — he did not take it when he had the chance in Wisconsin, going through with a pre-arranged interview instead.

We rate this Promise Broken."

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Please pass this on through facebook & twitter so we can reach our goal of 100,000 signatures!

“If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk that picket line with you as President of the United States.” - Obama, 2007

That time is now, and instead of seeing Obama put on his "comfortable shoes", we are told that "such events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message..." http://www.thenation.com/blog/158999/white-house-odds-obama-supporters-over-wisconsin-protests Let Obama know we want to see him do exactly what he described in '07 and "walk that picket line" with the public workers in Wisconsin!

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Barack Obama seems determined to avoid Wisconsin.

On Friday, he visited Minneapolis, Minn., for a midday speech and three fundraisers. He departed late afternoon for Chicago and three more fundraisers that evening. The president stayed overnight in his hometown and spent Saturday morning at his old home before flying back to Washington, D.C., for a brief stop before heading to Camp David for some downtime.

So just four days before the recall elections in Wisconsin that the state's Democrats have worked 16 months to win, with potential implications for November 2012, the leader of their party did six fundraisers for himself in surrounding states but couldn't find time for even a quick stop? Think about it: As Wisconsin Democrats were busy getting voters to cast early ballots Friday and organizing for Tuesday, Air Force One flew overhead twice–from Washington to Minnesota and Minnesota to Chicago.

I'm no political strategist, but I don't get it.

Conventional wisdom is that Obama is avoiding a trip to Wisconsin because internal Democratic polling, like several recent public polls, shows Governor Scott Walker with an insurmountable lead over Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. Obama, this thinking goes, risks looking impotent if he makes an appearance for a losing candidate. I suppose that's correct, and there are certainly downsides to a visit.

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dmp said:

You can always find things to criticize politicians about. Obama and the Democrats could have done far better, especially if voters had supported them and checked the Republicans for their obstruction.
I'm pointing out Republicans and Trump are far worse, and labeling you a shill because all you do is post straw man arguments against Democrats & liberals.  I wish this thread had an auto delete of all the reposts from twitter and fringe propaganda websites you've done.  It's just served to obfuscate.

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JohnRoberts said:

It's not that hard to just ignore him, I do.  Unless he posts his own words, and sometimes then too. 

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NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option
By Miles Mogulescu

For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I've been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

    "That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product."

Kirkpatrick also reported in his original New York Times article that White House was standing behind the deal with the for-profit hospitals: "Not to worry, Jim Messina, the deputy White House chief of staff, told the hospital lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal".

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

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dmp said:

Are you talking about trump or tands?  ;D

In all seriousness, the situation with NK is escalating and getting worse. Probably would be good to have a real leader in place, not an insecure, whiny, ignorant narcissist. Oh well.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the U.S.,” the president said. “They will be met with the fire and the fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state,”

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dmp said:

Are you talking about trump or tands?  ;D

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In all seriousness, the situation with NK is escalating and getting worse. Probably would be good to have a real leader in place, not an insecure, whiny, ignorant narcissist. Oh well.

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“North Korea best not make any more threats to the U.S.,” the president said. “They will be met with the fire and the fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state,”

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JohnRoberts said:

What about all the real leaders we had for the last several decades that punted NK down the road for later?
JR

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hodad said:

I was reading an interesting revisit of our recent history with North Korea.  Interestingly, as the author points out, NK gained nukes during the "get tough" era of GWB, not during the "appeasement" years.  As the author points out, that might have happened anyway, but the process was most likely speeded along by the saber-rattling tough-guy approach of the Bush team. 

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And Trump is the same only sillier/stupider/insaner. 

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Also of note:  a similar "appeasement" approach kept Iraq from using/developing WMD (though it didn't stop Bush from lying us into a war.)  And it's also working in Iran (though Trump is trying to screw that one up too.) 

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A link:  http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-president-bushs-north-korea-failure-is-important-to-remember

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Yet progressive critiques of Harris were met with swift and unyielding hostility. After a Mic article documented the lack of left-wing enthusiasm for a Harris candidacy, investigative journalist Victoria A. Brownsworth suggested that a better headline for the article would be: “Kamala Harris, biracial senator and former Attorney General of the most populous state, faces misogynist white men defaming her.” (This despite the fact that every critic quoted in the piece was female, and one was a woman of color.) Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, a close Clinton ally and frequent defender of the Democratic Party, declared she found it “odd” that “these folks” (meaning Bernie Sanders supporters) “have [it] in for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker” in particular. “Hmmmm,” she said, implying that criticisms of Harris and Booker were racially motivated. MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid said the Mic article simply reported the opinions of “3 alt-left activists,” “alt-left” being a term used to brand leftists as racist analogues of the neo-Nazi alt-right. In Cosmopolitan, Brittney Cooper wrote that the left in general, but in particular the “Sanders Left,” “has a black-woman problem,” a charge I’ve addressed elsewhere. Cooper said that those criticizing Harris “think that black women who care about establishment politics lack vision” and that the debate “isn’t about Harris, but about the emotional and political labor that black women are expected to do to save America’s soul.” “Angry white Sanders voters,” she said, must “get off [Harris’s] back.” In large part, responses to skepticism about Harris have simply dismissed the substance of the analysis, instead suggesting a “targeting” of Harris because of her gender and/or race.

...

It’s strange that we’re at the point where this needs to be said: a black politician is not necessarily the best politician to promote black interests, and a female politician will not necessarily serve women’s interests better than a man would. Race produces a set of lived experiences that inform our political perspective, but identity cannot be used as a mitigating factor for political shortcomings. A glance at the unusually diverse 2016 Republican primary field illustrates as much. If we believe that a political candidate’s identity overrides their substantive beliefs and policy prescriptions, then a Ben Carson/Carly Fiorina ticket would have been a progressive dream. Brittney Cooper of Cosmopolitan, in her defense of Harris, makes a good point here: Cooper says that, despite a history of performing the role, black people should not be cast as “the conscience of the nation.” The burden is too heavy for any group, and it certainly exceeds the capacity of any single politician. Belonging to a protected class does not immunize a politician from error, nor should it insulate her from criticism. 

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So let's examine these three white male neoliberals in turn. Mark Zuckerberg (who has hired Hillary Clinton's pollster) is a flatly ridiculous option for leftists. He's the fifth-richest person in the world. He personifies the opposite of what leftists want. Moreover, there is no reason to think business expertise makes for a good president (see: Trump, Donald).

Andrew Cuomo is a more serious option. He is the governor of New York, and he is an ultra-cynical political snake. He has betrayed left-wing organizations like the Working Families Party, worked behind the scenes to keep Republicans in power of the New York state Senate, and created a public transit crisis in New York City by starving the subway of funding and attention, among many other things.

Joe Biden is unquestionably the most popular politician among this group, cruising on his reputation as America's cool uncle in the Obama White House. But Biden's long record as a United States senator is quite bad in the eyes of leftists. He championed the war on drugs and crime and voted for the Iraq War. Delaware is notorious for serving as basically a corporate tax shelter, and it therefore has gobs of banks and credit card companies. Biden has close ties to both, and therefore sponsored the gruesome 2005 bankruptcy reform bill and 1999 financial deregulation.

In short, there is every reason to think that these men will serve more or less as representatives of the ruling class — just as Harris, Booker, Patrick, and any number of other Democratic politicians, of any race or gender, would if they were installed by the establishment. They would have neither the inclination nor the necessary political backing to put through the left-wing policy that would actually get the really excellent social justice goods. Like ObamaCare, any new policy they propose will almost certainly be punched through with so many compromises and handouts to existing stakeholders that it would leave tens of millions of Americans — many if not most of them minorities — out in the cold.

So as we discuss which vision is to predominate the future of the Democratic Party, remember that without a sweeping left-wing program, much bigotry and oppression will remain. White neoliberal men are the last people to trust to understand this. People like Harris and Booker are no doubt more likely to understand, but neither should they be blindly trusted. The history of Democratic Party sellout-ery is simply too long.

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