Dem leaders like Pelosi dragged their feet on immediate, real substantive aid while the economy was in free fall, routinely centered “small businesses ”, leaned on confusing UI (and barely took credit for it) and are now blaming BLM activists and “socialism” for tanking the House
Austerity obsessed Dem leadership bumbled around for weeks, never messaged the response clearly, pushed for a lockdown with minimal material support (but a heavy dose of scolding!) and offered zero universal solutions. Right out of the gate it was a mess-> jacobinmag.com/2020/03/corona…
There was never any urgency, universal programs offered, rent or mortgage freezes, no sense of the human stakes. Just preemptive concessions, “deficit” concerns and perfunctory Republican blaming. And it was clear in March this is how it would play out m.soundcloud.com/citationsneede…
In the face of a mass trauma, economy in free fall, Dems had a chance to offer bold solutions, to assert themselves as the champion of those left behind but offered no such messaging, went weeks without a press conference and banked on a UI system no one understood.
But now their electoral failures are blamed on “defund the police” and the “socialism” label? It can never be leadership’s fault, they cannot fail they can only be failed
Recall: For the first 10 days of the crisis—while the economy was crashing and the Dow Jones had 2 of its worst 5 days in history—the primary mode of relief Pelosi offered was govt subsidized paid sick leave for companies w/ under 500 employees which only covered 20% of workers
There was supplemental SNAP funds and paltry UI thrown in but the whole relief package was a joke without any sense of the scale of human suffering, from the get-go it was nickel and dime and reactive to the scope of the crisis.
So yeah this is probably one of the reasons house democrats had a big fat dud last Tuesday, no one has any indication democrats are forceful advocates of the working class because Pelosi routinely does everything possible to give people the opposite impression
First week of the crisis. Can’t imagine why people wouldn’t get excited about a party whose leadership starts negotiating from a position of rote austerity dogma.
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Ok promise this is this last time I’ll point this out because it’s very trite at this point but Trump’s argument is literally the same the NYT and others said about Bolivia election fraud, namely the past about alleged discrepancy in the polling
We’ve had lots of A+ content this election cycle but at the 11th hour the absolute greatest thing ever produced emerges to take the crown as undisputed funniest thing of 2020
Incidentally is it just me or does what the “mark of the beast” involves change a lot over time. If I recall correctly at Hagee’s church in the mid-late 1990s it was going to be an international UN currency, now it’s a vaccine chip. Anyone have a spreadsheet going on this?
The way the bipartisan “foreign policy wonk” world builds up its own elaborate, totally fictitious, moral ecology that always presents the US as bumbling democracy-promoters is truly something. This Vox “explainer” video is just promotional collateral for weapons contractors
Don’t have time to do a complete breakdown because there’s so many lies, omissions and bullshit but off the top of my head
1. Totally ignores extortion racket NATO, LatAm “alliances” are based on 2. Totally ignores scores of informal (but very obviously real) dictator allies
3. Totally sanitizes and glosses over US aggression in the Middle East 4. Erases millions of Palestinians living in open air prisons 5. Ignores the 4-7 million dead Laotians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Koreans needed to create this “liberal world order”
reason there was so much hostility to Sanders campaign was ideological but it was also not. There’s a gentlemen’s agreement of silence around the revolving door of dem politics and corporate consultancy/PR/think tank world and Sanders surrogates we’re sometimes softly critical of
this, which is the single biggest taboo in that world. There has to be a general cultural acceptability of being “progressive” while working with, for, being funded by, and going in and out of Amazon, Lockheed, Walmart, Uber, etc. to call this out is to undermine the gravy train
Which is central to professional democratic politics. Warren FP advisors came from Cohen Group and Brunswick Group both of which work for Saudi butcher regime. It’s so baked in even “anti-corruption” progressives don’t care. Sanders sometimes gently poke at this which implicitly
A truly amazing piece of US govt stenography from the NYT. 1900 words on how the Evil Chinese and Russians are trying to steal US vaccine research then when they address the obvious follow up “is the US stealing vaccine research?” they say, uh, maybe but it’s totally on accident!
Reminder that the most fundamental axiom of American “foreign policy” and “national security” reporting is the US can never be an aggressor. Ever. They must always been RESPONDING to aggression. They are perpetually bumbling around trying to keep up with primary mover bad actors.
All missile systems are defensive missile systems, all propaganda is counter propaganda, all war budgets are presented as being in response to “emerging aggression”. We can never draw first blood by definition