@FreeSociety It will either come from us, or from the 1%. I guess it could come from overseas, but that's inadvisable if planning an insurgent party. (What's the oldest complaint about insurgents ever?--they're not from around here! Our people are fine with all this! They just shipped in these malcontents!)

I wonder sometimes about the 1%. Some of them must understand we're on a suicide course. Surprising if they were all in favor of this insanity. But the ones who aren't (hypothetically) don't seem willing or able to oppose their crazy brethren.

So, failing part of the 1% coming to its senses, it would be up to us to build the infrastructure.

#1

Agree...she's great.

Voices of integrity are always marginalized by the Corporate Media, and marginalized by colleagues in Congress (e.g., John McCain, etc.).

We need to build a 3rdParty, but....it will take more than just one leader. It will require a political Infrastructure. A combination of insiders breaking away .. together with the grassroots.

It's amazing how far Sanders got essentially on his own (with the grassroots). But the reason he has waffled around is because he knows there is no political structure supporting him....so he feebly clings on to the adversarial D-Party (even though they despise him).

Gabbard is young enough to be a force for a long time. She needs a support structure.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Obama has done more to damage the Democratic Party in his eight years than the Republicans accomplished in twelve! Let's hope that Trump does the same, but four years is a long time with this nut case!

#1 Where the rubber meets the road. Nina Turner isn't in office currently. Nor are Grayson and Canova. Gabbard and Merkeley are basically the only two progressive Democrats left in office, and I'm not sure about Merkeley (if you can't oppose war in Syria for reasons other than checks and balances--as important as those are--you're either not a progressive or you're uninformed, and federal officials have no excuse for being uninformed). My best guess is that Merkeley knows damned well how dangerous this war in Syria is, and what's at stake, but doesn't dare speak up, because party discipline, in this age, is a bitch.

Bernie doesn't count, since he's not a Democrat. It's pretty ridiculous that the Democratic party has to turn to a lifelong independent for its progressive cred. Even if you count him as a Democrat, that's, at most, three progressive Democrats holding federal office, after 8 years of the highest-profile Democratic president since, probably, FDR--one who started off with immense popularity and resources. It's also after the American people gave the Democrats massive majorities in both chambers of Congress in 2009.

Massive success for the Democratic party, driven, in large part, by the unpaid labor of progressives, resulted in, eight years later, progressives having less political power than they've ever had in my memory. So Nina and Bernie and Jeff and Tulsi and Alan and Tim are probably fine people, but they need to find a new party, or build one.

@gjohnsit

But then they hate independent thinking these days.

While there have been some stances of Gabbard's that I have not always agreed with, I give her major credit for having the courage to stand behind her beliefs even when they are not popular. We need a lot more courage from our political representatives, instead of just being party sheep.

#3
But then they hate independent thinking these days.

@native calm, rational, and centered when you really believe in what you are saying. Tulsi stands behind her words all the way.

#3
I swear that guy is no journalist, he's a propagandist for the MIC. Tulsi is a very impressive advocate in that clip. She's calm, cool, rational, centered... and persuasive. In the side by side comparison, Blitzer comes across as the empty-headed blowhard that he is. He's got his script and his megaphone, but not much in the way of brains.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal can lead the new party.

#3 Which probably means Tulsi's time as a Democrat is limited. Really, I'm surprised she survived endorsing Bernie.

@native Dems have been talking that now is the time to unite.

We can't primary anyone. We can't have purity tests. Everyone must be hands on deck, to fight against Trump. You progressives can't do that, cause hey we're progressives too. All Democrats are needed...

Unless they oppose war in Syria, then they have to go.
Especially if they stepped down as they should have at the DNC, you know, to support a candidate instead of steering the ship into Collusion Ocean.

#4

And TOP, having sworn undying allegiance to that corrupted institution, has gone down the toilet along with it. They've been propagandized and corporatized right down into the foul plumbing of the MIC, while remaining blissfully unaware of their actual location.

It's as if they've completely forgotten about what US war-making has done to the peoples of both Iraq and Libya. It's as if those disastrous interventions had never really happened, for them. And now they have set their sights on destroying what remains of Syria as well -- making it a trifecta so to speak, by carving yet another notch on America's infamous, but always self-righteous gun. Once again, we have the proverbial "Evil Dictator" who must be summarily disposed of -- with the most noble of intentions of course -- but regardless of the cost, and regardless of our several previous, and very bloody failures at "regime changing". The USA, including nearly all the Democrats, remains willfully ignorant of all the horrific consequences that are likely to ensue from another attempt at enforced magnanimity.

So then, one lone voice, Tulsi Gabbard, is courageously raised in Congress objecting to all this continuing, bloodthirsty insanity -- and what happens? Together, they shout her down. Call her a traitor. Call for her expulsion. Because she does not waver, they all hate her. Of course they would. She is exposing their collective hypocrisy.

@native

1983 CIA document reveals plan to destroy Syria; foreshadows current crisis

#4

And TOP, having sworn undying allegiance to that corrupted institution, has gone down the toilet along with it. They've been propagandized and corporatized right down into the foul plumbing of the MIC, while remaining blissfully unaware of their actual location.

It's as if they've completely forgotten about what US war-making has done to the peoples of both Iraq and Libya. It's as if those disastrous interventions had never really happened, for them. And now they have set their sights on destroying what remains of Syria as well -- making it a trifecta so to speak, by carving yet another notch on America's infamous, but always self-righteous gun. Once again, we have the proverbial "Evil Dictator" who must be summarily disposed of -- with the most noble of intentions of course -- but regardless of the cost, and regardless of our several previous, and very bloody failures at "regime changing". The USA, including nearly all the Democrats, remains willfully ignorant of all the horrific consequences that are likely to ensue from another attempt at enforced magnanimity.

So then, one lone voice, Tulsi Gabbard, is courageously raised in Congress objecting to all this continuing, bloodthirsty insanity -- and what happens? Together, they shout her down. Call her a traitor. Call for her expulsion. Because she does not waver, they all hate her. Of course they would. She is exposing their collective hypocrisy.

@native

propagandized and corporatized

#4

And TOP, having sworn undying allegiance to that corrupted institution, has gone down the toilet along with it. They've been propagandized and corporatized right down into the foul plumbing of the MIC, while remaining blissfully unaware of their actual location.

It's as if they've completely forgotten about what US war-making has done to the peoples of both Iraq and Libya. It's as if those disastrous interventions had never really happened, for them. And now they have set their sights on destroying what remains of Syria as well -- making it a trifecta so to speak, by carving yet another notch on America's infamous, but always self-righteous gun. Once again, we have the proverbial "Evil Dictator" who must be summarily disposed of -- with the most noble of intentions of course -- but regardless of the cost, and regardless of our several previous, and very bloody failures at "regime changing". The USA, including nearly all the Democrats, remains willfully ignorant of all the horrific consequences that are likely to ensue from another attempt at enforced magnanimity.

So then, one lone voice, Tulsi Gabbard, is courageously raised in Congress objecting to all this continuing, bloodthirsty insanity -- and what happens? Together, they shout her down. Call her a traitor. Call for her expulsion. Because she does not waver, they all hate her. Of course they would. She is exposing their collective hypocrisy.

@The Voice In the Wilderness

Vietnam was called, even more ambiguously, the Vietnam Era.

I guess Americans still gave a crap then who decided whether the nation was going to war, the body that had the Constitutional power to do so, or the Unitary Executive.

Thank heaven we don't care. What were the Framers thinking, anyway--requiring that more than one person commit the nation to war? /sarcasm

#5 It was a "police action". The last time Congress declared war was in December 1941.

Coincidentally, that was the last war that large numbers of Americans didn't consider a mistake.

@native
of that we don't have to think! Just leave it to the prez to do our thinking for us!

#5

We can bomb the shit out of anybody we want & we can even invade them, without all the hassle of making war declarations.