New meme alert
I heard this a couple of times on different networks with different talking heads so I gather it's on the latest talking points release:
Americans don't care how insane/narcissistic/racist one candidate may be or how much poor judgement, indenture to entrenched interests or possible corruption the other displays - they ONLY CARE about which candidate will help them and their pocketbook the most.
This really bothers me. The people who abrogated historical standards of integrity and trustworthiness in political candidates has been by and large the media and the two major political parties. The Democrats tilted their playing field to vertigo levels and the Republicans abrogated any notion that some political discourse was officially beyond the pale and unacceptable in order to bear the Party's standard. The media ignored Bernie and downplayed Hillary's issues. They also provided a soapbox for Trump to spew his sociopathic inanities without much if any pushback. And so here we are, in proud possession of two candidates almost equally loathed by the broad swath of the population for the general election
But to say that the American people as a whole don't care about the personal qualities of the candidates they elect to represent them and alter their lives for better or worse, is about the worse canard I have ever heard passed. It is effectively a new standard, which is no standard.
The media and the parties may chose to have low or no standards for their own comportment, but I reject their invitation to a limbo dance to lower by declaration the standards of every living American who can vote.
Comments
We've been fed that line...
"It's the economy stupid!" So many cycles I can't brain bleach myself enough to get Chris Matthews image hyperventilatingly exclaiming this line, though I'm sure he didn't coin it or anything, really...
When they say "Americans", they mean the .01%
The rest of us aren't "real people", you know, because we don't have BIG MONEY.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
that explains why the press kept calling W "popular"
even when W's ratings were in the low 30s the press must have thrown out all the people who hated him, thinking "well of course they would so we won't count them. We'll only count the people who matter....like the ones we see at cocktail parties".
Bullshit Americans don't care
that's why "Mainstream Media" will keep repeating that shit like the stenographing sellout ass-covering LIARS that they are--because they desperately need to convince us all that we don't care.
Well, they're wasting their fucking time. People are pissed about this stuff. That dumbass going to the airport. What sheer arrogance. THAT pisses people off more than anything.
"It is said that the people are revolting!"
"You said it! They stink on ice!"
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk47saogI8o]
I want my two dollars!
Yessssssss, ou oui!!!!!!!!!!
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
In France this is certainly the case
http://yournewswire.com/france-protestors-rise-up-in-their-millions-agai...
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. - e.e.cummings
This is nothing short of the same Voter Shaming shit TOP was
always pulling. (well a bunch of their users anyway)
The problem with shaming people is it will work on some, but if you try to use that tactic on someone that is already disgusted/pissed at you it tends to backfire.
The Clinton News Cabal is really starting to panic now that they are seeing signs that the Anointed One's pantsuit doesn't seem to be made out of Teflon after all.
Asbestos might be a better choice...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
And yet as many times as we have been fed that line
"the economy" for rank and file Americans has been one of erosion of wages and living standards for decades - the only exception being when middle class wealth was propped up by inflated housing equity during the real estate bubble.
The person whose prognostication has been borne out by history was Ross Perot and his "giant sucking sound" of NAFTA. Aside from that, we've mostly been played as fools by both parties in the giant facilitated wealth of nations transfer to the 1%.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
No, it's not a new meme
But the way it's presented is propagandistic in its own way. The way this is framed, it implies that voters are selfish and bad to care about candidates who might work in their economic interest. The framing furthers the social wedge issue branding that the parties use, which camouflages their essential agreement about all the issues of concern to the oligarchs and the Deep State.
Damn right voters should care about their pocketbooks. And the parties should both be held accountable for their joint failure to do anything to help the voters on that score.
Please help support caucus99percent!
Excellent comment, Dallasdoc.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
The way it was presented
Was that there was no such thing as a candidate who could violate standards of conduct enough to turn off voters if they thought there was something in it for them. This is a new twist in my opinion.
Sure, it's one thing to say that Americans care more about butter than guns or their domestic welfare over military interventions, but it's another thing entirely to imply that they are willing to forgive literally anything in a voting booth for the sake of winning.
Yes, we have been willing in the past to hold our noses and vote, but never before have we been asked to amputate our noses. Perhaps you had to hear what I heard, but what I heard is that there is now no such thing as an unacceptable candidate, period. I personally don't believe that.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
There are many ways to be morally bankrupt
What the meme (and I hate that term too) seems to be saying is that only certain moral failings are worth noting - or even that only certain ones even exist. The thing that is tricky here is that you end up comparing racism with economic deprivation with corruption. Which is the choice they want us to have to make in order to control the narrative.
Some people understandably react to this Hobson's Choice by thumbing their noses at TPTB and making the "wrong" choice. Personally, I want to make positive choices, so I'm trying/hoping for another option.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Yes and no.
In part, I agree that, at some point, Americans can be repelled. In part, though, I think the Clintons seem to be able to have it both ways--or as many ways as they want. This is the President who looked directly into a television camera, wagged his finger and said he did not have sex "with that woman, Ms. Lewinski."
Then, he told the same lie to a grand jury under oath. Then, it came out that said woman had blown him in the Oval Office a number of times. Then, he was impeached for lying to a grand jury under oath. You would think all that would have turned off Americans. However, his popularity increased and his wife just got nominated to said Oval Office, despite her Iraq War vote, her anti-gay stance , story after story of voting irregularities during the primary and so much more.
Nor do I! n/t
The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.
Agreed
It's an attempt to take the character issue off the table- ie, to erase the public's exceedingly high negative view of Clinton. It's a subtle attempt to convince the voters that they should focus on which candidate will benefit them monetarily. They want to remove Clinton's character from consideration. Of course, they will continue to hit trump on his character nevertheless.
Exactly
The problem for the 1% is that people are coming to realize that indenture to entrenched interests and corruption beyond any reasonable doubt are the CAUSE of the economic problems creating fear in their lives and destroying their dreams for their children.
The narcissistic racist benefited from free media throughout the primary season. It's still all Trump all the time. But now it's a continual listing of his flaws, the flaws that were minimized during the primary season.
The remaining question is whether the PTB and the MSM can pry open the jaws of working people and shove the candidate of entrenched interests and corruption down their throats without provoking regurgitation. They've done their best to limit the alternative to a person of questionable sanity.
Could this be an earlier version by
Woodrow Wilson?
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Really good piece by Bill Black on the betrayal of the working
class:
"The New Democrats cannot claim to be shocked that many members of the working class and labor eventually responded to the New Democrats’ contempt and policy betrayals and the terrible harms those policies inflicted upon the working class by increasingly refusing to support such Democratic candidates. Frank’s books show that the contempt of the New Democrats for the New Deal, labor, and the working class was and is palpable."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/bill-black-the-terrible-cost-to-d...
Ross Perot
at the time was made fun of because of his ears (MSM doing their thing) instead of the content of what he said. Then he had death threats to family members from what I read which he dropped out of the race for a time and the synergy of his candidacy was dissolved ... 'mission accomplished'. Not all members of the 1 or .01% are f'g globalists... like my sister ... as shitty as the overall economy and job market is, I may end up being a ranch hand on my sisters' ranch which is actually just a get away location for her and her hubby and dog from San Francisco. I'd likely be the most educated and experienced engineer working as a ranch hand in northern california if more globalism is shoved down our throats by a clinton administration. I'd prefer to have an engineering job but they are getting harder and harder to find that AREN'T temporary jobs... I'm treading water in a temp job now that overworks me constantly ... same story for the last 12 f'g years in our so-called 'recovery'
What kind of engineering?
We have some the plant for electrical engineers.
And the causes of that real estate bubble--and the 2008 crash?
Repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999 and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which left mortgage derivatives unregulated, both lobbied for hard by Greenspan and the Clinton White House. The White House lobbied Democrats so that Clinton could later claim a veto-proof majority, which he has since claimed. And now, we're promised he'll play a large role in the economy because it supposedly did so well under President Clinton. Sure, if a great economy is a "modest budget surplus" after tax and fee increases by Reagan and Bush, followed by Clinton gutting welfare. And, "after me, the deluge" (and the bailout), legislation. Apparently, Goldman Sachs and others were very appreciative, though!
A New Meme it is not.
And I officially hate "memes"
Bumper sticker slogans for those who can't read well. Is that better? Sorry to diss those who can't read quickly. Today is wonderfully exciting: are we going to get shut down soon as the peasant class?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I try to be diplomatic but,
I fail miserably, as it is clear to me that memes are for those who eschew critical thinking and honest dialogue. Wow, did I just escalate that to warp speed?
Neoliberals told us there is no society
Then they proved it by destroying society.
Just as they told us that government doesn't work...
...then they got elected and proved it...
I want my two dollars!
Government doesn't work...for you..and you...and you
But it works well for the financial interests; international capital; and the others of the well-connected 1%
Government doesn't work too well for the planet either.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
As with most people, our government only works for those
that pay it to do so...
Unfortunately for us, we can't afford it's salary.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
The top 160,000 families - 0.01% of the population - owns
as much wealth as 90% of the nation as as a whole. 536 people had a net worth of $2.6Trillion, according to Pew.
Buying the services of the Clintons, Obamas, senators, representatives is pocket change to them - the political class is for sale but I think the Wealthers find it cheaper to rent them.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
The unsustainable mathematics of capitalism:
If those plutocrats demand a real return on their wealth of "only" 7% per year, then in the course of a single century, that 2.6 trillion becomes $2.6 quadrillion 2016 dollars.
The corresponding annual vigorish would be about 180 trillion dollars. Comparing numbers across economies is a fuzzy and murky business, but that's about twice the current annual global economic output. And that's just for the top 536 folks in the US. As of 2015, the 1800ish wealthiest folks in the world have an estimated wealth of 7T+ (and that number excludes various kleptocratic autocrats whose wealth "technically" doesn't belong to them); a century from now, their crime families will be demanding $500 trillion dollars per year in vigorish. Assuming a population stabilized at 10,000,000,000, that represents (2016)$50K in annual vig extracted from every man, woman and child on the planet. Posit one further century of such "growth", and the numbers become undeniably ludicrous (pinkie finger poised archly at corner of mouth): 50 million dollars for every man, woman and child on the planet.
Capitalism simply cannot be sustained for much longer. It is not a question of ideology.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Financial capital has become the axis of economic & political
power. Monopoly capital produces low growth, or stagnation, and this has led to a financialization of world's neoliberal economy. The coalition of huge corporations and very wealthy individuals has resulted in what James Galbraith calls the Predator State which, in his view, guarantees a total failure of the economic/political state in the not too distant future. Until then, we are living in a corporate republic, which shows once again, that democracy and unregulated capitalism are not compatible.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Actually, while I agree with you
in all your comments, I must take exception on this one.
Sanders has proven that grassroots donors CAN match if not exceed Corporate or Billionaire class money. If ordinary citizens all contributed we could "buy" back our government. Our biggest hurdle is our division.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
This!
This this this this this!
We have to mobilize and build the momentum Bernie has so wonderfully begun with his candidacy. Or we may well be lost forever.
The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.
People support Sanders only because they want "free stuff." bull
First, very few men have pocketbooks, so I don't even know what that bit is about.
Second, sure, men and women want jobs and a living wage, so they can feed, shelter and clothe themselves and their families. Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a new thing?
Third, a living wage is not all people want. They want things like clean water, cures for chronic illnesses, privacy, freedom, affordable child care for working parents, etc., but, yes, they probably want enough food more than they want privacy.
Fourth, surprise, surprise, surprise: People want their fellow humans to be okay, too. Hollywood celebrities who supported Sanders were not doing so because they wanted free tuition for their own kids.
the free shit army
meme is so old and tired ... I'm am sick to death of it and people who keep shooting it out like it is the absolute truth. There is only a small element of the truth to it which is used as a huge broad brush. Like most memes of all types. The most simple use of math can show the amount of money wasted on profit drive healthcare system that the amount of money spent lining middle men (insurers) EVERY YEAR is more than enough build thousands of well equipped hospitals and care clinics around the country... EVERY YEAR and pay for the tuition for more well qualified doctors, specialists and nurses to join the ranks. Few even know that CONGRESS controls how many doctors are entered into the market because, in order to be a doctor, one must do a residency and those salaries are paid by the federal government not the hospitals that get the free labor. Artificial scarcity causes real scarcity of resources and ramps up cost and reduces availability to people .... the American Medical Association has really done a number of the nation. Corruption rules this country not leaders.
Just read a story about someone who got a broken leg in two places and a broken arm and their medical expenses were $106k. It should be
And single payer
healthcare could be a jobs engine - people have to build all the new clinics and hospitals and labs and then people have to staff them and other people would have to maintain them and then other people would need to build restaurants and hotels and stores around them, etc. etc.
I've always felt it's fine to transition to a mostly service economy as long as those service jobs are well-paid. Giving all the healthcare dollars to a few at the top of the industries is bad for people, nations and economies. The 1% hoards their massive accumulations of the world's money with the goal of dynastic wealth while the 99% would spend and distribute their dollars throughout the economy.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
I was only at TMMMT for 10 months but I remember this
arising and there was more concern voiced for those in the insurance industry losing their jobs than for the millions of Americans without access to health care. When I pointed out that unemployment and retraining benefits would be available to those displaced the sympathy was still with those in this parasite sector.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
We may mock Ayn Rand, but it looks like
she's won. Her Objectivism dominates the MSM and the political parties. Only Bernie rejects it. So the MSM works to reinforce her destructive philosophy.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
I disagree
the problem with memes taken from various authors in the past including Ayn Rand, Keynes, Milton Friedman, Leo Strauss and the plethora of others is that a couple things they may have written are taken either too far or utterly ignored when it doesn't suit the corporate or bankers' agenda such as the globalist meme today. No one person has a lock on 'the truth' in anything they write but I found this quote of Rand's very interesting, real and frightening:
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'" ~ Ayn Rand
The stated national debt of the US is now very close to $20 trillion and yet some are not concerned "because we can print more" however our cost of living has skyrocketed. Jobs keep fleeing the country under the free trade meme. That national debt has quadrupled in the last 16 years. In all of history no fiat money system has ever lasted more than 47 years (the number is irrelevant) and there have been more than 600 fiat currencies that have come and gone... NONE have every survived without a radical change based on something other than "Faith and Credit". The US dollar has been fiat since 1971... 45 years. 47 years is the longest stretch.. I guess the fiat masters of the universe just want to break their own record in unsound monetary practices.
If one looks at worker savings rates and wages in a long term chart after Nixon took the US off the Bretton Woods gold standard in 1971 for settlement of international trade payments (deficits) in gold because he wanted to accelerate vietnam... our standard of living started to go down. This was essentially a monetary default by the US government issued by executive order by the f'g president.
When gold and silver started skyrocketing in 1979 and 1980 after years of what they called stagflation under Carter (republicans continue to blame Carter they are so stupid about Nixon its unbelievable ... led no doubt by a corrupt MSM blathering nonsense as they do today)... the federal reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, raised the interest rates to 21% to get people back into dollars, at the same time, the COMEX stopped honoring futures contracts for delivery of gold and silver bars and would settle only with cash (essentially a default) ... because they were being depleted of all stores of physical metals. Hunt Brothers will villanized for cornering the silver market when, in fact, they were simply billionaires loading up on physical metals because their interests in the oil fields in Libya were nationalized by Gadaffi (due to fiat currency regime that NIXON initiated!).
The 'free trade' meme CANNOT exist under a sound monetary regime as goods cannot be exchanged across borders in deficit fashion without the loss of something real like gold or silver that is real money not printed out of thin air (database entry) and is hard work to extract and refine but is a compact form of real value and accepted around the world without question EXCEPT only by government decree that it is NOT legal money for private or public debts. I see absolutely nothing wrong and the quote a very profound statement about the corruption of government and money Ayn Rand's quote epitomizes. It does not mean I would ever promote Ayn Rand as the shining light at the end of the dark tunnel we are living in... EVER! To do so is nuts in my opinion. No one person holds a lock on the truth. I have similar sentiments of Keynes writings that have also been misconstrued continuously by the economists, bankers and politicians of today... they just use what they want, where they want, to justify their piss poor and criminal behaviours and line their pockets with.
The power of deception lies within not just what is said for the convenience of the moment but what is NOT said for convenience of some other moment. The biggest crime Nixon committed was not watergate as many believe and he was ultimately impeached for but was defaulting on the Bretton Woods agreement for the gold standard to send more our youth at the time to war in a harebrained vietnam war agenda. Now government bonds are paying negative yields in europe and next to nothing in the US. We'll see how this fiat monetary system fares in such an environment, monetary history is filled with the results of such activity ... none of it is a happy story until sound policies are returned.
I disagree
There is nothing particularly "real" about gold or silver as tokens of credit. The supply of each represents nothing more nor less than the quantity of labor and energy expended extracting them from the earth -- labor and energy that would have been better expended on something other than the purification of an arbitrary pair of metals for subsequent storage in a hoard, public or private.
Even now, we continue to despoil the land, and the dignity of the laborers, in order to transfer yet more gold from its natural situation into fortified vaults, where it will fruitlessly sit, serving no material function.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The Love in Your Smile
What the meme makers will never understand that many of us older voters were prepared for a Bernie Sanders by our Grandfathers. This was my Grandfather Hiram Hughes. A man of the land.
The Love In Your Smile
They say you're not beautiful.
They say you're not grand.
They say you're just
An ordinary man.
They say you won't set
The world on fire
Or make the angels sing.
They say you aren't special
And won't amount to anything.
But they have never seen
The love in your smile.
They never felt
Your arms encircling.
They have never listened to
Your heart beat with joy.
Or known the happiness you bring.
There is a beauty about you
That words can not express.
A gentle touch,
A warm caress,
A love more grand
Than poets can express
Is the love that you gave to us.
Rest peaceful in the love
Of God's embrace.
And know that we remember you still.
The beauty of your life,
The warmth of your touch,
In our hearts always will
Live and grow
As always we will know
The love in your smile.
And this is why we will not abandon Bernie Sanders because he understands real goodness and the wish to help others comes from inside.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. Oscar Wilde
that goes to the heart, beautifully said /nt
And just to be snarky, that has hardly
been seen to be true out of the Tea Party, who'll vote away their own SS and Medicare for more high end tax cuts. It's a shitty manipulative ploy that is lame on its face. Nothing new here out of these crooked slimy bastards.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Actually, it is the corporatist Dems--including 'O,' Reid &
Pelosi who are on record saying that they are willing to cut entitlements, in exchange for increased revenue, or tax increases.
(Rep Jan Schakowsky wrote about this in her Reuters Op-Ed, several years ago. She was a member of the Fiscal Commission.)
The only reason that a Grand Bargain was not struck, was the resistence of the Tea Party lawmakers, who would not agree to raise taxes.
Of course, some corporatist/business-friendly Repugs, such as Senators Corker, McCain, Graham, and Alexander, were more than willing to work with Dems to slash corporate tax rates, and the marginal tax rates of the wealthiest folks, in exchange for slashing Social Security and Medicare. They simply could not get up enough votes to overturn the will of the Tea Party lawmakers.
Remember, since the Bowles-Simpson proposal was offered up by the Fiscal Commission, the bulk of the Bowles-Simpson recommendations have passed, piecemeal.
Republican Senator Rob Portman (OH ?) boasted about this at the Pete Peterson Fiscal Summit 2-3 years ago--saying that (at that time) over 85% of the Bowles-Simpson recommendations had already been passed.
We discussed a lot of these at Joe's EB (at DKos) as they happened.
Apparently, is FSC is elected, she is pledging to strike a 'GB,' in exchange for a infrastructure bank legislation--which will further privatize our interstate highways, making most of them toll roads.
IOW, FSC is willing to give Repubs 'offsets'--in the form of further slashing our entitlement programs--in exchange for the infrastructure bank money.
Mollie
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."--Lao Tzu
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Flipping the script
When did American voters start picking the candidates they get to vote for? Did I miss something?
The voters in both parties are sick and tired of the ridiculous choices we are hand fed as choices to vote for.
The political parties don't car how narcissistic, insane and corrupt the candidates we are "allowed"to vote for are. The media loves narcissistic, insane, corrupt politicians. Look how much free media exposure they gave and continue to give to Trump.
Ok. Flip the script and blame it on the poor saps who are the victims of media/political manipulation.
Mission accomplished.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Ah, material determinism. Not new.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
Don't these, ah, citizens
realize how much they are throwing away by voting for one or the other of the two "accepted" candidates?
It just boggles the mind, unless you are part of (at least) the upper 10%.
The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.
Ah! This explains why the NRA is unable to get the
attention of anyone in washington ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.