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(photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr)
This list seems reasonably well researched – there’s lots of reference links – but I leave it to others to examine closely.
3 items I found particularly interesting:
55. Mitt Romney supports the Obama Administration’s policy of unmanned aerial warfare via predator drone in Pakistan.
56. Tim Pawlenty– on Romney’s short list for a VP– has suggested that Mitt Romney would expand Barack Obama’s already unprecedented use of drone warfare.
67. Mitt Romney says that like Barack Obama did, he would sign the controversial NDAA, including its provisions for the arrest and indefinite detainment of US citizens on US soil.
IMNSHO, if activists don’t collectively utilize the 2012 Presidential election to delegitimize both the D and R parties, they’re fools*. Both delegitimizing the legacy parties, as well as advocating for a 3rd party (of either the left, right, or center), are not only legitimate activities for citizens who care about the future of their country, but IMO, they are obviously synergistic.
I think it’d also be good for the mental health of not just the activists, but the non-activists who know that, on their current trajectories, the D and R parties are net negatives, dragging the country downward. Breaking the bonds of mental slavery – the depressing conviction that we will always be stuck with unreconstructed, 1% serving conmen, of either the D or R flavor – would contribute to the public’s well being.
I mean this literally. During the dark days of Bush 2, a lot of callers into the Randi Rhodes show would start out by saying something like, “Listening to your show keeps me from going crazy.” That’s because the ‘ambient propaganda’ was one of flimsy lies, successfully terrorizing the public and psyching them for war against “those who hate our freedom”, and other Bushian BS.
* Of course, I mean doing this by taking facts and arguments to the unblogged masses. Blogging to the choir amounts to a tempest in a teacup.
12 Comments
A picture is worth a thousand words:
Obamitt.
Go Third Party.
Vote for anyone but those two pieces of shit.
Doesn’t really matter anyway – the decision has already been made by the Real Powers inside our nation. Just as it was already made in 2000, and in 2004.
And we thought we could make a difference in 2008, but we were played. (Though some astute people were smart enough to see through the facade.)
One of the best photoshops I’ve ever seen.
OTOH…. Philip Giraldi has compared Obama with Romney, and concludes that Obama is probably less toxic.
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Depressing….
Thank you, metamars.
Recommended as true bipartisan truth.
DW
Amazing … and creepy … yet one of the absolute best photoshops, ever.
PhilK’S “comment” is recommended to everyone at FDL … one picture is … indeed … worth “the look”.
DW
Item #101: Both Obama and Romney wear the US flag lapel pin. This tells me all I need to know about the”difference” between them.
Item #102: Neither Obama nor Romney give a fuck about you and me beyond what we can do for them. No, actually there is no sense qualifying the statement. Neither give a fuck about you and me, period.
Item #103: Both Obama and Romney will serve the interests of those who gave them the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary for them to get the job as President. 1) Those people are not us. 2) Those people back both candidates.
Item #104: Both Obama and Romney look good on television, which is the number one criterion to getting the job as President.
Item #104: Both Obama and Romney are, for all practical purposes, sociopaths.
“Both delegitimizing the legacy parties, as well as advocating for a 3rd party (of either the left, right, or center), are not only legitimate activities for citizens who care about the future of their country, but IMO, they are obviously synergistic.”
Why would a third party candidate make a difference? Do we imagine that they would behave differently once in office? Could they even get there without corporate bankrolling?
A few things I have learned about politics in the US: 1) The dynamics of the institution throw trump against the efforts of the individual. 2) The politician serves the interests of those who gave them the money to get the job, and those somebodies are not the electorate. 3) The television tells the vast majority of citizens who to vote for, hence the need for corporate bankrolling. 4) Voting is the least effective action that a citizen can take.
Perhaps some better solutions: 1) Change the institutions. 2) Change oneself first, following the adage that, “Everybody wants to change the world. Nobody wants to change themselves.” 3) Stop watching the television.
3rd parties that are strong can/will force the legacy parties to adapt to them by embracing some of their agenda.
I am looking at this as a continuing process, not something that will have a resolution, or (necessarily) large quantum jumps of steps to a resolution, episodically, every 2 years. We have a systemic problem, and strong 3rd parties are part of a systemic solution. Did the progressives achieve so many of their goals, during the progressive era, by becoming one of the major parties?
3rd parties losing elections, along the way to significant power, is nothing to be feared. What I would fear is the collective stupidity that would prevent reformist-minded citizens from throwing D/R candidates under the bus, as best they can, in their climb to power. Both fearing a lesser evil D/R, irrationally, as well as getting fixated on 3rd party losses, assuming nothing valuable can be gained if a loss is endured (as losses certainly will be endured; overcoming the D/R inertia of the electorate is a non-trivial task) is stupid and/or cowardly.
I’m not suggesting that supporting 3rd parties is a be-all, end-all strategy. I have many times supported the idea of citizens both aggressively intervening in the legacy parties to try to reform them, as well as forming voting blocs that can strategically engage in both voting 3rd party, as well as voting D/R. (See “Dump Corporate Dems” – Going Green at the State Level, to “make Dems do it” at the Federal level and Recommended Short and Long Term Voting Strategies for the Dump Obama Movement).
The weak spot of the electoral system, ito of reform and applying pressure on the D’s and R’s, are the primaries. (Which, I suspect, is precisely why you see so little about consciously organizing to affect them, as a group.) Even for people who are convinced that the D’s and R’s are terminally corrupt, what excuse do they have for not collectively voting against D/R incumbents during primaries (yes, even if they have to register as D’s and R’s), and then voting 3rd party during the general election?
Can you imagine a guerrilla force saying, “We can only attack the invaders at their bases, and where they have large armies amassed?” Isn’t “denying assets to your enemy” a valid strategy (both for guerrilla forces and regular military forces), when your own forces can’t possess them? Why did the Allies bomb the oil fields in Romania during WW2? Boredom?
Waiting until general elections to start twisting the arms of the D’s and R’s is stupid. Nevertheless, for us in July of 2012, it is too late in the election cycle to do anything other than intervening in the general election. However, I still look at this as an opportunity to set up more aggressive, organized, reformist voting behavior for the next election cycle. Of course, one doesn’t do that by focusing on who will win the general elections – the next victor of the Presidential election is sure to be a D or R – but rather by teaching people how screwed they are by accepting the D/R framing, and how better days can come if they start organizing and voting intelligently and aggressively.
The meme I believe we should be pushing now is that we have to dump the D’s and R’s, and no matter which D’s or R’s prevail in November, “we the people” are screwed. And frankly, it’s our own damn fault, as much as that of the political fixers. Voting third party, even in a losing effort, is one step along the road to reform.
Yes and no. Compromise is part of the essence of democracy. However, the degree of compromise, and whose interest a politician is primarily concerned with, are things the public could influence if they organized, acted intelligently, and acted aggressively. I don’t want to get into it now, but there are ways that the public could exert discipline on their representatives if they were either a) collectively smarter or b) had smarter and/or less coopted leaders. (Am tentatively planning to write a diary on this subject, next month, which I hope to deliver as a talk and paper.)
Nobody’s ever paid me a dime for my vote, and that’s generally true. The answer is “yes”, but it’s a conditional “yes”. Without crowd sourcing, movement building, strategic thinking (at least by reformist leaders), aggressiveness, teaching of the public, resourcefullness, and ‘democratic infrastructure and tool building’, the answer is “no”.
The fact that Obama was trying to play both sides of the street has caught up with him. Too many of his very own colleagues are sick of him. The closer we get to the election, the more this will be revealed.
I don’t understand all of it, metamars, but as I was admittedly causally listening to Jill Stein speaking at a DC Statehood group, I understood her to say that her campaign had already qualified for federal matching funds, by which I assumed she meant Public Funding.
We all keep batting around the issues like: third-party candidate to support, too-bad-Stein-and-Anderson-unite-on-one-ticket, votes for which candidate would send the strongest anti-uniparty message, which candidate’s party would have true longevity, which candidate has the most cross-over appeal among the pissed of 99%…all worthy considerations.
But in the end, it’s important to urge friends and acquaintances not to give into fear; that, and Big Party Money to shut down populist candidates for federal office, have gotten us where we are now.
It may be our last chance to even attempt to throw off Rule by Corporatocracy, and if votes were concentrated on one candidate, who knows come November how expected economic and other conditions might focus more people’s attention toward alternative candidates?
But it seems to late for that at this point, unless the Greens and Justice Parties could really get how dire a time this is for them to unite…that more people might actually live, not to mention the planet.
Rec’d; sorry for honking on so.
“Waiting until general elections to start twisting the arms of the D’s and R’s is stupid.”
Too true.
Because of the impact of money and the crushing influence of television, I’m in no way convinced that voting in the US is a useful activity. However, one thing that does seem to work in favor of influencing politicians (and those who pay for them) is shame, which is to say negatively impacting the abstract aspects of their status–plus this is an example that not every relationship is a function of economics. Apart from what I have seen, I remember reading some research on this years ago but can’t remember where that info is now (sorry). And the risk of international shame for the folks in D.C. was part of the reason for the success of the Civil Rights movement.
I’d rather just behave responsibly myself rather than elect a leader and defer to their power and judgement. But the US is supposed to be a representative democracy, not a direct one.
For what voting is worth, candidates from outside the one major party are always more worth a vote if for no other reason than to challenge the status quo. I’m with you on “how screwed [we] are by accepting the D/R framing.”