@Pluto's Republic

southern white evangelical slave owners. They feed them pie in the sky promises (heaven/social welfare programs)), salvation (Jesus/Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and effectly convert them into submission. At that point they become tools and another form of slaves.

The result? Black evangelicals who discriminate against LGBTQ people, and who never venture outside their churches to hear other points of view, except when Hillary comes to their churches to talk the "good jesus talk".

The younger generation of blacks, however, are breaking that mold, and not a moment too soon. There is now a growing group of black atheists/progressives who are flexing their muscles against the slave/Jesus mentality of their parents. These are the people who are turning up at Bernie's rallies. We can see them, but the main stream media and the DNC look right through them.

...Bernie's dilemma is an easily-exploited structural distortion that occurs because the Left is forced to share a Political Party with the Centrists and Center-Right in order for their voice to be heard. That's not going to change until the Left changes it.

Democratic operatives and the Democratic party elite can easily push this attitude from the inside, in subtle ways. When Bernie brings up marching with MLK (because the Democratic Party is not about to tout his bio and lend credence to Bernie's story), the Dems simply roll their eyes and mumble, "Here we go again." Or, "That story never gets old... to Bernie."

The Democrats have a long history of bamboozling Blacks. Contemplate the breathtaking betrayal of Blacks by the Clinton administration. Black lives and families were destroyed by heinous, unjust laws and by Democratic policies that weaponized the criminal justice against them. This has shattered and traumatized Black families for generations.

In the end, the Clintons ushered in anti-New Deal Neoliberalism — economics based on the Right Wing principles of 'greed is good' and 'monopolies are good for America' because they are good for Empire's global hegemony. At the end of his term, President Clinton signed a bill that revoked the last of the New Deal regulations that once protected the People from predatory capitalism. No sooner did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette leave the White House for good, than the capitalists swooped into the "free market" and began asset-stripping and wage-stripping the American people — beginning with the working poor and Black homeowners. Personal debt took off on a parabolic climb and it continues today, clouding everyone's future.

But returning to Democratic operatives for a moment, do you know why Black leaders completely defaulted to the Clinton Administration, and why they went on to plant the seed of Democratic Party bamboozlement in their followers? It was in this cauldron that the current DC shitshow was made:

In the early years, following Martin Luther King's death, progressive social programs were slowly put into place to convey onto Blacks some of the same Liberties that white population enjoyed in the US. Public institutions were rendered color blind, by law. Blacks who wanted a good education found it easier to gain admittance and to find government grants to help pay for it. For Blacks who wanted to start their own businesses, there were advisors who offered them support and small business loans. Buying a home suddenly became a real option in Black communities. New mortgage banks opened that helped millions of Black residents take ownership. Labor unions continued to lift many out of poverty, and lifted more into the Middle Class for the first time.

Behind the scenes, however, there was obstruction. The Reagan and Bush I administrations did not make it easy for Black leaders to access the funding that had been earmarked for these programs. The bureaucracy put up walls and slow-walked the processes, deadlines were frequently missed, documents were misplaced, and there was a general indifference to their requests. But the arrival of the Clinton administration changed all that. A group of Democrats opened a special 'window' where Black Leaders could finally get the money to run the programs — with none the hassle. This was enormously helpful and strong bonds developed between the Democratic Party and Black community activists.

The Democratic Party assumed that they had corralled the Black Vote — as if Blacks were vending machines. Put in the right platitudes and out would come the expected votes. But I wonder about that.... The rising generation Black journalists I've been reading since the 2016 election, paint a different picture of this political relationship. They are skeptical of the words that politicians use. To them, 'MLK' is just another public holiday. Invoking the name Martin Luther King does not put food on the table, or pay for college, or protect them from daily government abuses. I think they know exactly who Joe Biden is and they are aware that the Democratic Party feels entitled to their votes — even when the Party isn't fighting for economic justice and basic human rights, like universal healthcare. Perhaps it is it's their turn to triangulate for awhile — and see if the Neoliberal Party leadership is going to respect their needs.

@dkmich

Thanks. Especially after reading aliasalias' comment. I knew Obama wanted to cut social security, but not as early as he did.

"I made you guys rich" he said not too long ago to the bank CEOs. And now he's getting rewarded for doing that.

Biden too has made speeches about cutting it and they are making the rounds on Twitter, but too many people aren't hearing about it and think that he's just a lovable ole Joe who sometimes talks funny and sticks his foot in his mouth. He is not. He was a ruthless during his tenure in congress and not enough of those videos are getting out.

As too his not having a racist bone in his body just listen to his speech on busing. Sure sounded racist to me. Of all the people he could have talked about back when congress was sane why did he choose one of the biggest racists to bring up? Because even though he was racist he could work with him? Nah..

to me that Lewis the civil rights leader was now sated and fat and had been replaced by Lewis the toadying politician who would screw anyone including his own if it suited him. Whoopi the same. When people get fat and comfortable for too long, they forget who they are and don't care who they've become. As long as it involves more for them, whatever it is, is fine with them.

When Lewis was called out for endorsing Clinton over Bernie, Whoopi for criticizing AOC as not respectful of her betters, of course their critics were called racists. A lament that never seems to get too old to the folks using it. While the old folks, white racists, and black militants wallow in and continue to argue over the past, the kids are moving way beyond them. Interracial relationships and biracial people are leaving it all behind. Soon no one will know what race or ethnicity anyone is.

I really don't know how Bernie stands it. I couldn't do it, certainly not at age 77. How many years now has he dragged his old and sorry ass around the country trying to improve peoples lives? In return all he gets some dumb ass in the audience chastising him for having fought for her equality. Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck them all. From the Clintons and the media to the whiny people with their shorts in a knot over this or that ONE thing he failed to make better that they can't cope with or overcome - ever.

Divide and conquer is exactly what it is all about. Those that have theirs vs those that don't and making sure it stays that way. I am so tired of them, their game, and the victims. At what point does a victim wise up and quit being a victim or willingly become a willing participant in the game?

This story really pisses me off. Can you tell?

@dkmich

Interracial relationships and biracial people are leaving it all behind.

My daughter lives in Alabama, not that far from our c99's Lookout.
She tells me she sees more interracial couples there than she did while growing up in the Chicago suburbs. And very surprising to me because I visited the South in the '60s (Biloxi Mississippi), usually it is the woman who is white.

to me that Lewis the civil rights leader was now sated and fat and had been replaced by Lewis the toadying politician who would screw anyone including his own if it suited him. Whoopi the same. When people get fat and comfortable for too long, they forget who they are and don't care who they've become. As long as it involves more for them, whatever it is, is fine with them.

When Lewis was called out for endorsing Clinton over Bernie, Whoopi for criticizing AOC as not respectful of her betters, of course their critics were called racists. A lament that never seems to get too old to the folks using it. While the old folks, white racists, and black militants wallow in and continue to argue over the past, the kids are moving way beyond them. Interracial relationships and biracial people are leaving it all behind. Soon no one will know what race or ethnicity anyone is.

I really don't know how Bernie stands it. I couldn't do it, certainly not at age 77. How many years now has he dragged his old and sorry ass around the country trying to improve peoples lives? In return all he gets some dumb ass in the audience chastising him for having fought for her equality. Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck them all. From the Clintons and the media to the whiny people with their shorts in a knot over this or that ONE thing he failed to make better that they can't cope with or overcome - ever.

Divide and conquer is exactly what it is all about. Those that have theirs vs those that don't and making sure it stays that way. I am so tired of them, their game, and the victims. At what point does a victim wise up and quit being a victim or willingly become a willing participant in the game?

This story really pisses me off. Can you tell?

@gjohnsit pissed off workers while leaving the empire and capitalist power structure intact. That's why Sanders and his ilk will ultimately fail.

third way

Days later, at a gathering of nearly 250 political moderates convened by the centrist thinktank Third Way in South Carolina, some of the party’s most prominent center-left voices took the bait.

“I believe a gay midwestern mayor can beat [Donald] Trump. I believe an African American senator can beat Trump. I believe a western governor, a female senator, a member of Congress, a Latino Texan or a former vice-president can beat Trump,” said Jon Cowan, president of Third Way, hours before Donald Trump formally launched his re-election campaign with a rally in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday.

“But I don’t believe a self-described democratic socialist can win.”

In speeches and on panels over the course of two sticky days in Charleston earlier this week, moderate lawmakers, strategists and donors inveighed against the Vermont senator’s populist economic vision. The approach elevated a conversation that has largely taken place behind closed doors about how to thwart Sanders, who moderates believe would alienate crucial voting blocs in a general election.

“He has made it his mission to either get the nomination or to remake the party in his image as a democratic socialist,” Cowan told the Guardian. “That is an existential threat to the future of the Democratic party for the next generation.”

“The cat is out of the bag,” Sanders tweeted on Wednesday, sharing a Politico story about how mainstream Democrats are warming to Elizabeth Warren, his closest ideological ally. “The corporate wing of the Democratic party is publicly ‘anybody but Bernie’.”

His campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, said in a statement that the party’s moderate faction had effectively “declared war on Senator Sanders” and denounced Third Way as a “Washington thinktank that takes Wall Street money.”

@ggersh I'm impressed that Biden could work with Eastland...to pass racist legislation.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/21/roaming-charges-ask-your-local-d...

Biden should rot in hell along with his buddies

+ If you want to know who Biden’s pal, Sen. James Eastland, really was, read Robert Sherrill’s Gothic Politics in the Deep South, one of the most fearless books ever written on American politics.

+ Here’s a taste of the rhetorical stylings of James Eastland :

“In every stage of the [Montgomery] bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers…African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives…All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.” (James O. Eastland at a rally of the White Citizens Council in the Montgomery Agricultural Coliseum, 1956, as quoted in Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate.)

+ Here’s Biden writing a love letter to Eastland, on June 30, 1977:

“I want you [i.e., Eastland] to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s Committee meeting in attempting to bring my ANTIBUSING legislation to a vote.”

+ Biden on Strom Thurmond:

“Long before he was a committee chairman; indeed long before he came to the Senate so many years ago, Strom Thurmond was the consummate public servant. Though he holds the record for the Senate’s longest filibuster, Strom Thurmond is a doer rather than a talker.”

In his tribute to Strom, Biden neglected to mention that Thurmond’s “filibuster” was against the Civil Rights Act.

Strom was a “doer” alright. He shared Biden’s sexual appetite, though perhaps not Creepy Joe’s trichophilia (hair fetish). Strom famously boasted that when he died they’d have to “whack my pecker down with an axe to get the coffin closed.”

@wendy davis

Resting on his laurels while he turned his back on people who need him so the rich white folk in Washington would like him.

As far as Malcolm X goes, he probably thought the old Black Panthers were too soft and cuddly to matter.

Where Bernie marched doesn't matter. He did, which is more than 90% of others did. Guess he should have washed their clothes, cooked their dinners, and toileted their behinds.

The older I get, the more impatient and less tolerant I am of weak, selfish, and stupid. There's always a reason, always an excuse.

'blacks love biden'. is that because some of the black misleadership defends him?

but no, bernie hadn't 'marched with MLK', he'd attended the 1963 'March on Washington for jobs and freedom' that malcolm X had labeled 'the farce on washington' rather pointedly, and as he'd explained it in terms of who was out, who was in, partially the rules laid out by JFK, he made his case imo.

but some thought he'd claimed to have joined the selma marches, and it got pretty silly as to who in the crowds may have looked like a young bern, kinda like that tweet in your original link.

but i'd wondered if the young uns have been wanting him to come out for back reparations; nope, according to your original link. but he would vote for a congressional study on the issue: he just wants to lift all boats, etc.

i cut john lewis a lotta slack, given his age now, but biden?