Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Jerry Brown and Barney Frank: Just a couple of Establishment shills


Jerry Brown just endorsed Hillary. It's not what I would call a full-throated endorsement, but still: It's an endorsement. Is he sincerely for Hillary (as opposed to being against Trump)? Yes, I think so. Brown has reached the age where one does not bullshit.

Naturally, the BernieBullies are calling Jerry Brown an Establishment shill. Actual statement from a Sandernista to Brown (addressed rhetorically): "on your way out of the California sunset, you should have never shit on your Liberal friends. Fuck off, asshole."

The BernieBots simply cannot understand why so many people are coming to despise them. If Jerry Brown is an Establishment shill, then let's have more Establishment shills!

In answer to this BernieBilge, a Kos writer offered some wise words:
The big secret is that Hillary is actually proposing increasingly and impressively liberal policies which, if the Bernie Crowd would actually take a breath and read/consider, they might recognize as huge improvements over any major Dem proposals since FDR.

Free national child care?? That’s pretty radical and would have a HUGE impact on helping the poor out of poverty. It’s also a doable legislative event if we take the senate and flip the house in 2018 or 2020.

Against TPP? Same as Bernie.

The disagreements seem to come down to Bernie’s $15 national minimum wage and Hillary’s tiered national minimum wage increase.

I have no idea what their differences are on foreign policy since Bernie hasn’t really made any concrete foreign policy statements.

25 comments:

PQ77 said...

Eli Verschleiser is interesting. (See comments section here re Multigroups.com).

joseph said...

Yeah, but where do you stand on the race? By the way, what does moonofalabama.org think of the race?

Anonymous said...

B has been quite negative regarding HRC in my opinion.

Stephen Morgan said...

If your argument for being progressive is "hey, we've got a woman, a black AND a Jew", then you might be the reason Clinton loses.

Joseph Cannon said...

Stephen, you have a point. Many of us are sick of identity politics. And yet we remain fixated on the topic -- I guess because racism remains the foundational sin of this country.

But it could be worse. We could be like the folks in Britain, where the foundational sin is their abominable treatment of the Irish. From what I understand, the Brits deal with this sin by not discussing it.

b said...

In the British case, not just the Irish, but Africans, Indians, etc. too.

It is remarkable that to be "progressive" in the US still sometimes seems to mean (not just to imply) not to discriminate against women and minorities and not to favour ethnic separation.

Which reminds me of a 1958 article by the Situationists, in which they poured scorn on the British "Angry Young Men" for thinking they were "daringly scandalous by declaring themselves antimonarchists".

Phil Ebersole said...

In response to the Barney Frank quote, Bernie Sanders has a consistent record of sticking up for the rights of African-Americans, women, gays and others, and not just when it was cool.

However, African-Americans, women and gays need good jobs and decent wages the same as everybody else, and Hillary Clinton's war policies hurt African-Americans, women and gays as much as anybody else.

Joseph, nobody has done a better job than you in documenting the harm done by Clinton and her protege Victoria Nuland in Ukraine and Syria. We can expect more and worse if Clinton is elected President.

It's true that Donald Trump is worse, but, as my other used to say, two wrongs don't make a right.

Anonymous said...

It's a little more complicated than that Joseph. It's not like the English singled the Irish out for worse treatment. The Scots, Welsh and of course colonies were treated just as bad if not worse. The Irish are now fully integrated into English life, like curry or unhealthy breakfasts. Now we can all get together and protest the wave of polish immigration.

I get a bit irritated when I'm stopped in New York by people hear my accent and then complain about how the Brits treated the Irish. One look at my skin color will tell you that my ancestors were cutting sugar cane (and were probably being forced to do it by Scots or Irish oversers) when the supposed bad treatment was taking place. The English were equal opportunity oppressors, and I'm sure Mr. Morgan's welsh ancestors would also have plenty to complain about.

Harry

prowlerzee said...

Thanks for mansplaining your opinion of diversity, Stephen. What would we do without the butthurt white male view of including others? You left out "a homo." Yes, if Trump gets the butthurt vote, "we" indeed might be the "reason Clinton loses." Not sexist at all.

Anonymous said...

Yes Hil is for the Wimmens, then comes the other gender. Can we double-down on the Nanny-Statism and PC geldings?

I want Gavin Newsome.

Ben

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

[snark] B-B-But Prowlerzee, you donnnn't understannnnnnnd! Pale-skinned pecker-toters are the REAAAAALLLLL victims theeeeeze dayzzzz! [/snark]

Steverino, speaking as another pale-skinned pecker-toter, would you like some cheese with that whine?

I don't know if Steverino is a Bernie Bro or not, but he, and the Bernie Bros, and the Obama Bros before them, have taught me a valuable lesson. I once thought whiny misogynists were confined to the political Right, and maybe the Center. I see now, to my disgust, that many of them can be found on the Left as well.

(Though, as always, many of the Bros, especially the more obnoxious ones, may actually be GOP rat molesters.)

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

@PZee: I'm hoping the non-white (especially Latino) vote and the GOP and Independent female crossover vote will be big enough to squelch the Whiny Butthurt White Male vote this year.

Too many of my fellow non-affluent white male Americans consistently choose the intangible "wages", the feelings of unearned superiority, which they get from white supremacism and male supremacism, over the tangible wages of social democracy. [The GOP would have gone the way of the (U. S.) Whig Party if not for this phenomenon.] I despise them as the vacuum-skulled knuckle-walkers which they are.

Stephen Morgan said...

Yeah, no-one listens to the Irish because nothing can be heard over the incessant whining from north of Hadrian's Wall. As for the rest of the world: you're welcome. Apologies to America for not keeping you under the heel long enough to get rid of your slavery.

I am a white man, or at least I play one on the internet, and that doesn't have any effect on whether I'm more or less progressive than the black man who lives in the flat downstairs, or the Polish lesbians next door. The same goes for Sanders. He's probably more progressive than Obama, despite being a cracker-ass honky, and Clinton is just going to irritate people by saying "one of my merits is that I'm a woman", as she has done. I mean, people who agree with her are going to vote for the woman anyway, people who don't see innate merit in being female will be alienated.

I did like her printing literal woman-cards, though. Nice bit of tongue-in-cheek humour.

Is that Brown fellow the one called "Governor Moonbeam"? I have read of him, if so, and he was recently brought to mind by the posts on this blog about Al Sharpton, Something Anderson and the other puppets of the right, in that I had read that he had neglected his duties while pursuing a career in national politics and had thereby allowed his right-wing deputy free-reign to run roughshod over the people of California.

Anonymous said...

Her war polices,as you put it,isn't different from Sanders. The difference is she had a chance to be in a place to actually do something even if her role was basically advisory. As a president those views may take a different path. On the other hand some people think foreign polices forms in a vacuum, other players just sit on their collective asses just waiting for America to give it to them. They are not, but that's a different topic. My point you don't know what would Sanders do neither does he judging by his recent interview when he declared that he has no idea what presidents do.for the life of me I couldn't not get it WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE.

Bob Harrison said...

Of all the candidates who is the least likely to do something catastrophically stupid in terms of foreign affairs? You know, the area where real Americans get killed real fast, as opposed to slow poisoning (like Flint MI). With Sanders taking advice from the minions he employs, I'd put him second most likely to do something stupid in foreign affairs, like pulling out of NATO to win creds with his bros in the former USSR. I suspect Clinton-In-Charge will be less likely to do dumb stuff because she's not worried what the GOP and its fluffers think. Obama, up until very recently, always worried if he was tough enough for GOP approval.

Gus said...

Sanders is an interventionist. Even if he wasn't, do you really think he'd have a choice? Do you really think Presidents determine such policy? Kudos to Obama for keeping us out of Syria, though I think it wasn't just down to him. Not to mention trying to get a single one of his proposals through congress (maybe if the Dems take back the majority......but even then, Sanders isn't a Dem and I suspect they will be more than a little resentful of him.....petty, sure, but we're talking politics here, not adult behavior). No, I don't see any President, even Trump, changing things very much. As has been noted here before, they don't make laws. I question whether they have any real power anymore at all.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

"Apologies to America for not keeping you under the heel long enough to get rid of your slavery."

You maybe could have managed to keep us if your soldiers had not been so poorly nourished, seeing as how you lot never learned to cook. Good thing we had the blacks and the mestizos and the non-British whites to teach us how. (Though you did give the world Worcestershire sauce. Thank you for that, at least.)

OTOH, what would you eat good food with, anyway? You lot never learned dentistry, either. (IIRC, John Lydon got the nickname "Johnny Rotten" because of his teeth.) ;)

prowlerzee said...

"However, African-Americans, women and gays need good jobs and decent wages the same as everybody else, and Hillary Clinton's war policies hurt African-Americans, women and gays as much as anybody else..."

Phil-splaining translated: "...but them ladies, homos, blacks, Latinos and whatnot are either ignorant of or ungrateful for all Bernie's do-gooding for them! And they're too stupid to understand voting for Hillary is gonna hurt them."

Ivory Bill, have you considered writing an insult book? I'd buy it. Delightful!



Anonymous said...

1. Worcestershire sauce you can thank the Indians for. Why would you imagine tamerinds to be native to the British Isles. Thank brits for English mustard if you are looking for something.

John Lydon is a great hero, and I will have nothing bad said about him. He outed Jimmy Saville before anyone else, and was banned from the bbc for "not being consistent with family values". Turns out he was and the bbc wasnt. Ffing hypocrites and scumbags.

harry

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Some of the ingredients of Worcestershire sauce may come from India, but it appears they were put together in jolly old England.

Actually, PZee, I don't think I have the makings of a Don Rickles, but thanks.

OTOH, the Brits did give us Worc. sauce, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, and the Beatles.

Stephen Morgan said...

We maybe could have kept you if you hadn't sold your souls to the French and given Florida back to Spain, being too cowardly to fight your own battles.

The Woodpecker is right that there are sexists and racists claiming to be on the left, and he is one, so he'd know. So is prowlerzee's taking the "homos" and other identity groups for granted. You know, we had a female head of government, and she was the scum of the earth. Policy is the only thing that matters and income groups are the only groups with any meaning.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

I'm racist and sexist? I do not think those words mean what you think they mean...

Steverino invokes the classic White Male Leftist whitesplaining and mansplaining how everything is 100% about social class and income and the Class System is the ONLY source of inequality and injustice in the world and so those uppity wimminfolks and those "lesser breeds without the Law" should STFU and get behind Big Brother and the Party.

Stevie boy, that old nag's dead. It's not getting back up, however diligently you beat it.

Uh, France and Spain did not take over the former colonies after giving us crucial assistance in breaking away from your silly king and his aristocracy of decadent cross-dressing fops (I fart in their general direction. Their mothers were hamsters, and their fathers smelt of elderberries--BTW, genuine thanks for Monty Python), so I don't see how that constituted selling even our land, never mind our souls. Florida seemed no more than a hideous realm of pestilential swamps and predatory reptiles at the time; I'm not sure why the Spaniards wanted it, but hell, why not give it to them for their help? (After the 2000 election, many non-Floridian USAmericans would probably have been happy to give it back to Spain THEN.)

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

BTW, where do you think Uncle Sam learned everything he knows about slavery, inequality, racism, imperialism, and all other foul and predatory behaviors, if not from his father, John Bull?

As the old joke goes, the sun never set on the British Empire because the Deity was too wise to trust an Englishman in the dark.

Stephen Morgan said...

Yes, Woodpecker, obviously the real racism and sexism is treating different races and sexes as if they were equal.

You see, I'm getting old. When I was young we thought race was only skin deep and people ought to be judged on their character. If you'd told me we would have something like Black Lives Matter campaigning for segregation or the NUS denouncing gays as too privileged to represent the LGBT community, I would have thought that an unlikely turn of events. We didn't have intersectionality or kyriarchy to light the way back then. We used to think the parable of the Good Samaritan was about how your brother is the one who helps you, not the one who happens to be ethnically closer to you. Now I know it was about how the Samaritan should have been made to pay reparations and check his Assyrian-heritage privilege.

I probably watched too much Quantum Leap. Very idealistic, bad influence.

I know those days are gone, I know we won't be getting back reasonable attitudes any more than we'll be getting back affordable housing or proper workplace protections and wages, or an equitable distribution of wealth. We lost. The right won. History is over, and people are to spend their time bickering over nonsense like feminism while the farmers reap. We're still right.

As for where America got slavery, probably a bad influence from one of your little friends. Certainly the Somersett case had ended slavery in common-law jurisdictions before the declaration of independence. Just before. Like, suspiciously, right before.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Slavery was established in what were then the colonies, while they were still under British law. Slavery was an ugly bastard, but it clearly shows the DNA of John Bull.

As for Mr. Morgan's old-fashioned and thoroughly inadequate notions of equality, a society can't simply declare legal equality, and then expect the effects of centuries of legal and financial and ethnic and gender inequality to be reset magically. The effects persist, and must be addressed.