Archive for the ‘Bernie Sanders’ Category
American Biden-Democrat “Hostility” to Trump – Not the same as “Opposition” – A Highly Recommended Article
At times readers of online political commentary despair going through useless drudge that can be found on the internet. But if you keep at it, watch for sources you know are usually solid and reliable, you find excellent material. This article came to the attention of the Tomás Ó Flatharta blog via an FB friend Suzi Weissman.
https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/suzi-weissman/
It is a devastating, withering, attack on the Biden-Democrat “hostility” to the Trump administration – which is not the same as opposition. A stunning catastrophe looms now in the USA as the Trump Government “opens up” this land to the Covid-19 Monster at the Door of New York. Now, more than ever, the USA radical left must look towards the November 2020 General Election, and attempt to offer a credible alternative to the Evil Biden-Trump Tweedledee Monster. Shame on Bernie Sanders. The article concludes :
Bernie’s consistent criticism falls flat these days as he loyally signs on to the party consensus while trying to push additions and improvements. AOC is a lone voice in the wilderness daring to cast the occasional no vote.
What’s left are endangered and desperate people daring to walk off the job and appealing to their peers for support. We the people are on our own and must find our own way forward without waiting for leadership that doesn’t exist. By shedding illusions to the contrary, we open up new possibilities.
An internal government document circulating in the United States projects a surge in coronavirus cases and a sharp rise in daily deaths by June 1, the New York Times reported, even as President Donald Trump urged states to lift restrictions in place to quell the pandemic.
The document, based on modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, projects that COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, will kill 3,000 Americans a day by the end of May, the Times said on Monday, up from a current daily toll about 2,000. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/model-projects-fold-increase-coronavirus-cases-200504185028572.html
Hostility Is Not the Same As Opposition – Resistance is Needed
There is hostility, which is not the same thing.
Opposition implies a critical analysis and an alternative program, that is, an examination of what is being done wrong, why this is so, and what should change. On all three points, the loudest non-Trump voices offer confusion, distraction, and hypocrisy, not leadership around which a movement could cohere.
What is wrong? Read the rest of this entry »
Debate: How Can We Continue the Bernie Revolution and Build a New Political Party?
The Bernie Sanders Campaign to win the Democratic Party Nomination for President in the November 2020 General Election is Dead. Over. Extinct.
Radical left activists in the USA are debating where to go next. Let’s hope they achieve something worthwhile – the Biden V Trump contest is a miserable dead-end – unfortunately Bernie Sanders is choosing TweedleBiden instead of TweedleTrump.
While the COVID-19 crisis might throw the Democratic primary election into turmoil, it appears very likely that Bernie Sanders will not be able to win the Democratic nomination. This poses a question starkly to Sanders supporters — how can we best continue the momentum of Bernie’s historic campaign? Two petitions were initiated recently to address this question — one by Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant and another petition by some DSA activists. Both petitions argue for Sanders supporters to build a new political party but present different strategies for the steps needed to form a new party.
In response, socialist activist Jacob Smith wrote the following critique of the petition by DSA activists. Bobby Lambertz, one of the initial signers of the petition of DSA activists, replies below. We are pleased to publish this exchange as part of our commitment to facilitating constructive debate on important questions facing the socialist and working-class movements.
The Case for a New Party
— Read on reformandrevolution.org/articles/debate-how-can-we-continue-the-bernie-revolution-and-build-a-new-political-party/
Sanders-Corbyn: a consolatory daydream of a small begining rather than a not-so-big end.
The Corbyn-Sanders phenomena has reached its conclusion. The road to socialism is not a short cut through the softer alternative ruling party firmly in the grip of well-connected politicians and apparatchiks.
But, you might say, what is the difference between these adventures outside the revolutionary stockade and Syriza’s in Greece, which I supported? This: the battle between those who wanted real change and those who didn’t was not decided in Syriza until Tsipras consolidated his capitulation to Brussels; the defeat of Corbyn in the blood-soaked and knighted British Labour Party and of Sanders in the blood-and-money-soaked Democratic Party was a forgone and foreseeable conclusion.
Corbyn and Sanders (good men and true) could begin in the autumn of their lives their great new historical contribution of founding and nursing new and groundbreaking independent socialist political parties. Could.
Des Derwin
Biden: “We Have To Take Care Of The Cure That Will Make The Problem Worse No Matter What” | Video | RealClearPolitics
Joe Biden is almost certain to be the American Democratic Party Presidential Candidate in November 2020.
Tariq Ali Brilliantly Translates a Baffling Biden Statement About the CoronaVirus into the English Language ;
People are puzzled by this one, but in fact, it’s Biden at his most lucid. What he’s saying is that he needs to be taken into care because even though he is the cure to the Trump virus he will make all the problems worse no matter what.
Comeback Kid 🧒 In Evil 👿 of Two Lessers Saloon
Trump Is Toast? Comeback Kid Biden Staggering Into Evil of Two Lessers Saloon?
The Coronavirus crisis will destroy any chance Donald Trump has of retaining the US presidency this November, for one very simple reason. Driven by …
Trump Is Toast
Ed Moloney thinks he has spotted a silver lining in the CoronaVirus Cloud Haunting the USA.
Trump’s USA Rejects WHO Covid-19 Test Kit – Increases Likely Death and Infection Rate
Not a great deal wrong with that on first view except the Trump-dominated bureaucracy proved incapable of putting that wish into action and so there are not enough US-made test kits to meet the predicted demand. Elsewhere in the world, by sharp contrast, there is no shortage of WHO testing kits, a tribute to the power of international co-operation.
Driven by Trump’s ultra nationalist political world view, the US rejected an international plan for a COVID test kit proposed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and decided to plough its own furrow.
The consequence of that will be a huge spike in undiagnosed Coronavirus victims in the USA who will not be treated or even put into quarantine and the numbers of those stricken with the virus, and the deaths that will follow will be proportionately higher. The US, thanks to Trump, will not come out of the Covid crisis unscarred.
A Climbing American Death Rate in the Summer Months?
Read the rest of this entry »COVID-19: The monster is finally at the door
Hurricane Katrina was a climatic disaster for the great city of New Orleans, USA in 2005.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/reference/hurricane-katrina/
Mike Davis argues that Covid-19 could in 2020 provoke a social and medical collapse of the privately-owned nursing home industry -A Medical Katrina – in the land of Donald Trump.
We are in the early stages of a medical Katrina. Despite years of warnings about avian flu and other pandemics, inventories of basic emergency equipment such as respirators aren’t sufficient to deal with the expected flood of critical cases. Militant nurses unions in California and other states are making sure that we all understand the grave dangers created by inadequate stockpiles of essential protective supplies like N95 face masks. Even more vulnerable because invisible are the hundreds of thousands of low-wage and overworked homecare workers and nursing home staff.
The nursing home and assisted care industry, which warehouses 2.5 million elderly Americans—most of them on Medicare—has long been a national scandal. According to The New York Times, an incredible 380,000 nursing home patients die every year from facilities’ neglect of basic infection control procedures. Many homes—particularly in Southern states—find it cheaper to pay fines for sanitary violations than to hire additional staff and provide them with proper training. Now, as the Seattle example warns, dozens, perhaps hundreds more nursing homes will become coronavirus hotspots and their minimum-wage employees will rationally choose to protect their own families by staying home. In such a case the system could collapse, and we shouldn’t expect the National Guard to empty bedpans.
The outbreak has instantly exposed the stark class divide in healthcare: those with good health plans who can also work or teach from home are comfortably isolated provided they follow prudent safeguards. Public employees and other groups of unionized workers with decent coverage will have to make difficult choices between income and protection. Meanwhil, millions of low wage service workers, farm employees, uncovered contingent workers, the unemployed and the homeless will be thrown to the wolves. Even if Washington ultimately resolves the testing fiasco and provides adequate numbers of kits, the uninsured will still have to pay doctors or hospitals for administrating the tests. Overall family medical bills will soar at the same time that millions of workers are losing their jobs and their employer-provided insurance. Could there possibly be a stronger, more urgent case in favor of Medicare for All?
— Read on socialistresurgence.org/2020/03/12/covid-19-the-monster-is-finally-at-the-door/
Bernie Sanders Chooses Lesser-Evil Politics in the USA – Joe Biden Versus Donald Trump is The Evil of Two Lessers
A dimwitted comeback kid staggers into a saloon called “The Evil of Two Lessers”
The Twilight of the Political Revolution
The Twilight of the Political Revolution
— Read on louisproyect.org/2020/03/09/the-twilight-of-the-political-revolution/
Lesser-Evil Politics from a defeated Democratic Party Candidate Bernie Sanders :
Just as was the case in 2016, Sanders will stump for Biden like he did for Clinton. Yesterday, he told Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd, “Look, Joe Biden is a friend of mine. He has indicated that if he wins the nomination I will be there for him. Together, we are going to beat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country, but you can’t — we live in a democracy, and we have to contrast his — our records and our ideas, our vision for the future.”
The dogged investigative journalist Ed Moloney adds extra toxicity :
Now that Joe Biden is the favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, expect to see his failing mental powers – his increasingly hard-to-ignore senility to be blunt – assume centre stage.
Democrat bosses would not be human if they were not concerned about how he will fare against Trump in the back and forth of debates. Biden’s mental confusion is now so obvious and embarrassing, even if much of the US media don’t want to go there, that it is enough to make you wonder whether the Ukrainian scandal was really staged to make it appear that Trump was scared of Biden when in fact he wanted him to be his opponent.
This piece in Commonweal magazine mercilessly examines Biden’s mental problem.
The question for the radical left in the USA becomes : is there a credible third-Party campaign which can be supported?
This is one option :
https://solidarity-us.org/every-state-is-a-battleground/
https://howiehawkins.us/whats-wrong-with-capitalism-and-why-we-need-ecosocialism/
Tomás Ó Flatharta 