Michelle Obama as Biden's VP?

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Saturday March 28, 2020 · 1:11 PM PDT

2020/03/28 · 13:11

A short diary in the midst of catastrophe, but I just wanted to post something that would be a natural net positive: we are at a threshhold of American history where we need someone who could embody Lincoln’s Second Innaugural Adress’s spirit of ”binding the nation’s wounds.” I realize Michelle Obama would be giving up a tremendous amount of freedom and relative happiness to enter such a bleak and dismal political and economic environment, but she could rally the world at a time when it is needed more than perhaps any other. These may be the only qualifiers for a leader right now: empathy, competence and integrity.

I favor a special prosecutor and an injunction to examine Russian interference in democracy

sparko

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Thursday November 10, 2016 · 8:00 PM PST

2016/11/10 · 20:00

To me, the biggest issue has always been the quid pro quo that must have informed their cyber attacks, financial support, collusion, coordination and targeted propaganda to interfere in Trump’s favor. Trump needs to come clean right now. We have never had a more clear breach of security in American history, All stop IMHO. Relief would be a new election, but I don’t see any other remedy for what has happened. And we don’t even have the classified version of the above. This isn’t a partisan complaint—it is national security. The Russians have altered our faith in the system by interfering in it. Why? I’m sure we’ll find a raft of reasons, from undermining democracy to killing NATO.

The electoral college needs to go

sparko

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Wednesday November 09, 2016 · 4:19 PM PST

2016/11/09 · 16:19

If the electoral college works as intended, Hillary will be president because it was designed to protect the public from a candidate who is patently unqualified and dangerous to liberty such as in the present election. But we all know that despite the dangers, Trump will be certified in a strange ritual that defies democracy by ghettoizing it.

National elections should require 50-state emphasis—and a background investigation!!--and be decided by a majority of the national vote. There could local feuds, certainly, but a national character which would smooth the campaigns and cool regional infernos. With no electoral college, we could better protect the apparatus of national voting with a single standard for tabulation and machines. A single approved method of national election registration. And majority rule. I dare the electoral college system to work as intended this year. If it does not, for the second time in my adulthood, majority rule actually means voter suppression in battle ground states; intimidation where it is allowed, and marginalization of the needs of the very voters who seemed enamored with empty promises and shrill bombast.

Now back to the regularly scheduled organizing process!

A Country Reeling from Right Wing Intimidation Finally Fights Back

sparko

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Friday January 10, 2014 · 8:48 PM PST

2014/01/10 · 20:48

Maybe Chris Christie's Bridge to Chaos is finally that metaphorical stone fence of right wing belligerence; the high tide of decades of Right Wing intimidation before it was routed by a stalwart, belatedly competent, defense pushing back on all sides. The Christie politics of dangerous bullying, which has a contemporary origin with the made-to-order fake outrages roiling since 1992, but really stretches back to the Ku Klux Klan, Bleeding Kansas, and, before that, to the Tories who threatened the United States even before its turbulent birth, has started--ever so slightly, but perceptibly--to come crashing down amidst righteous outrage, competent prosecution and persistent inquiry of Christie's revenge politics. This new offensive is occurring from the remnants of a press corps that was, by and large, willing to abet the miserable failures of the Christie Administration. They delighted in his rages and retaliation while never fully reporting his abject failure as chief administrator in the state. For those who want to trumpet the successes of Boss Christie, let me invite you to downtown Camden for tea and crumpets. Their complicity and passivity made for an interesting horse race, but it hurt countless citizens. Here's hoping we can reclaim our national soul.

More after the Fold

sparko

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Wednesday March 09, 2011 · 6:28 PM PST

2011/03/09 · 18:28

Looking at what happened in Madison this evening, and what is happening in Michigan, Idaho, and nationwide--wherever the hidden cabal of corporate masters of the GOP have minions in control, democracy is in question. The power of peaceable assembly, dissent, and the rights of the people are threatened by a particularly mean-spirited and authoritarian Republican onslaught. It is time to call this authoritarian and anti-democratic movement what it is: Neo-Nazism.

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If Corporations are persons, they should pay the same taxes

sparko

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Saturday March 05, 2011 · 9:20 PM PST

2011/03/05 · 21:20

As we stumble further into the nether Randian regions of amoral behavior pushed by the apathetic rich, given such "voice" by the Citizens United outrage, it should be noted that corporations are persons only when it benefits them.

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The Egregious 2011 Republican Tax Hikes

sparko

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Thursday February 17, 2011 · 6:31 PM PST

2011/02/17 · 18:31

Let's call the enduring Bush era and Republican state tax cuts what they are: a massive redistribution of wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful. If you are a public servant, state worker, civil servant and scores of other professionals indirectly tied to government (and that would be all of us), the continuation of the irresponsible tax policies of the Republicans have nearly ruined your family's purchasing power already in 2011. Every cut in wages is money out of the larger economy. Every bit of decaying infrastructure, gutted educational institutions, and unregulated safety measures is a tax--one that the middle class, the poor and the retired among us cannot afford to pay.
These wage and benefit cuts are tax hikes for all but the wealthiest Americans.

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The Insidious Message Behind Keith's Departure

sparko

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Saturday January 22, 2011 · 12:01 PM PST

2011/01/22 · 12:01

Silence.

Keith Olbermann leaves at the top of his game; the face of MSNBC and its most profitable newscaster. He leaves as a part of the hastily arranged corporate take-over by COMCAST of MSNBC and its subsidiaries--an outcome that might even have been a prerequisite of the merger. The most galling part of this--they took off their top earner and best product simply to silence him. As part of the arrangement, he cannot even defend himself in the mass-media or work at a competitor's microphone for years to come. So, damn the costs. COMCAST has other reasons for taking over the news business, and it has nothing to do with profits.

sparko

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Sunday January 02, 2011 · 9:19 PM PST

2011/01/02 · 21:19

I call attention to a small natural disaster that is as puzzling as it is depressing. At least several hundred Red Winged Blackbirds and some close kin have dropped from the sky in Arkansas:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...

And there are also thousands of dead Drum fish, a normally hardy species, also in Arkansas, on the Arkansas River near Ozark:

http://www.cnn.com/...

sparko

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Friday June 27, 2008 · 9:08 PM PDT

2008/06/27 · 21:08

The GOP "loves" America so much that they have used the Constitution as a ready-made wedge issue for the last 30-years or so. Gun ownership. Marriage protection amendments. God in the classroom. You get the drift. The latest wedge issue, the Fourth Amendment attack in the FISA "compromise" bill has worked like a charm. Nothing brings the progressive netroots community to such a fevered debate as killing constitutional rights. I had hoped we would be wise enough to avoid this; but with Zell Miller Hoyer and company--this latest attack came from within the party. As evidenced by the war of words by two progressives I love--Olbermann and Greenwald--it is clear we must step back a tad and remove the red meat from the grizzly pit we have created here.
Update: When did defending the Constitution become a loser issue for us? When the corporate media ignores the truth and attacks the security angle 24-7. The story becomes one of in-fighting and cynical calculation.

sparko

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Thursday June 12, 2008 · 8:07 PM PDT

2008/06/12 · 20:07

In a belated epiphany, the Supreme Court's Habeas Corpus decision of 12 June is recognition of what was the Bush Administration's greatest fraud: terrorists were everywhere, and they were dealing with them.

sparko

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Wednesday March 05, 2008 · 5:15 PM PST

2008/03/05 · 17:15

Note: this was published near Super Tuesday. I felt that there was a danger to the whole netroots movement by the counter-attacking old media and their poster child Hillary Clinton. I also felt that a loss by Obama would doom the vitality of the Democratic Party as young people moved to disengage again as in 1968--or worse, fragmented into a truly Third Class political movement. In sum, we did rally. And Obama's strength came in his numbers of donors more than our meager offerings. As well, I did not create a tip jar. And this quickly evaporated into ether(!): In spite of all the punditry loosed forth from the great bowel that is Mainstream Media and conventional wisdom--namely, that this extended and divisive primary fight is between two people of incredibly similar agendas and possibilities--the fight between Obama and Clinton is actually a generational one. It is a false conflict between some Boomers and their prejudices and petty selfish impulses; the frightened and mostly still contented versus the instruments of change. In this respect, 2008 is not so unlike other times. The main difference is that, while fortune favors the bold, demographics favor the old. Older voters must embrace change and extend their hands, not their twisted metaphors.

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Michelle Obama as Biden's VP?

I favor a special prosecutor and an injunction to examine Russian interference in democracy

The electoral college needs to go

A Country Reeling from Right Wing Intimidation Finally Fights Back

When can they be called Neo-Nazis?

If Corporations are persons, they should pay the same taxes

The Egregious 2011 Republican Tax Hikes

The Insidious Message Behind Keith's Departure

Blackbird/Drum Fish Mass Die-Off in Arkansas

The Constitution as a Wedge Issue

The Great Deception

One More Gate to Crash Before Doomsday