Are you trying to figure out who to vote for but having trouble? One thing you can do is figure out who not to vote for. To help you out with that, from NPR's "Former Colorado Governor And 2020 Candidate Urges Distance From 'Socialism':"
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper warned his party of straying too far to the left as it selects a nominee to face President Trump in next year's election.
Hickenlooper, one of the 23 candidates running for the Democratic Party's nomination, told NPR why he doesn't believe in some of the party's major policy proposals, such as the Green New Deal and "Medicare for All."
"If we don't stand up and say that we Democrats don't stand for socialism, we're going to end up reelecting the worst president this country's ever had," Hickenlooper said.
Hickenlooper is a reactionary who would have fit in during the Eisenhower 50s.
A whole world has passed him by and he can't even grasp that basic fact.
He's someone who is very easy to cross off the list of potential candidates.
Really interesting story on NPR's All Things Considered on Monday, "'American Soil' Is Increasingly Foreign Owned:"
American soil.
Those are two words that are commonly used to stir up patriotic feelings. They are also words that can't be taken for granted, because today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities.
When the stock market tanked during the past recession, foreign investors began buying up big swaths of U.S. farmland. And because there are no federal restrictions on the amount of land that can be foreign owned, it's been left up to individual states to decide on any limitations.
It's likely that even more American land will end up in foreign hands, especially in states with no restrictions on ownership. With the median age of U.S. farmers at 55, many face retirement with no prospect of family members willing to take over. The National Young Farmers Coalition anticipates that two-thirds of the nation's farmland will change hands in the next few decades.
"Texas is kind of a free-for-all, so they don't have a limit on how much land can be owned," say's Ohio Farm Bureau's Ty Higgins. "You look at Iowa and they restrict it — no land in Iowa is owned by a foreign entity."
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Tuesday:
Tuesday, May 28, 2019. Some people are demonstrating they are not fit to be president. We look at one of them.
Let's start with fat Seth Moulton, the US member of Congress so filled with self-loathing that, like Donald Trump, he keeps eating hoping something will fill the void. Nothing does. But both men get fatter and fatter.
Let's start with fat Seth Moulton, the US member of Congress so filled with self-loathing that, like Donald Trump, he keeps eating hoping something will fill the void. Nothing does. But both men get fatter and fatter.
Seth Moulton Retweeted
.@Kasie: Do you think that Donald Trump is a patriotic man?
@SethMoulton: “No... It's not like there was just some empty seat in Vietnam. Someone had to go in his place. I'd like to meet the American hero who went in Donald Trump's place to Vietnam. I hope he is still alive.”
Someone had to go in his place?
Actually, you stupid idiot, no one had to go in his place. No one should have gone to Vietnam. How stupid are you? Do you really believe the crap that comes out of your mouth? Is it all just an act to try to present yourself as manly? You're a mental midget and you're exactly the same as Donald Trump.
Now they say the war is over
But I think it's just begun
-- "Penny Evans," written by Steve Goodman
Melanie often used to open with the first verse of "Penny Evans" and then transition into her own "Peace Will Come (According To Plan)" such as in the video above..
There's a chance peace will come, in your life please buy one
There's a chance peace will come, in your life please buy one
For sometimes when I am feeling as big as the land
With the velvet hill in the small of my back
And my hands are playing the sand
And my feet are swimming in all of the waters
All of the rivers are givers to the ocean
According to plan, according to man
Well sometimes when I am feeling so grand
And I become the world
And the world becomes a man
And my song becomes a part of the river
I cry out to keep me just the way I am
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan
Seth wants to attack Donald Trump. For sitting out the Vietnam War. That's what he wants to attack him for. Will he attack Bruce Springsteen next? Bill Clinton? Muhammad Ali? Jim Morrison? Where does it end for angry little boy Seth, looking for something to suck besides his thumb?
I guess I missed the Memorial Day interview where Seth called out Lyndon B. Johnson or Richard Nixon for sending so many boys to their deaths, for sending so many American children to kill Vietnamese peasants? I guess I missed that.
Oh, wait. S**t Moulton never calls out the real criminals. In fact, if Donald had started two or three new wars by now, Seth would probably be wetting himself in joy.
Seth has buried his nose in the crotch of the military and mistaken the stank for reality.
He doesn't know a damn thing and probably never will. Seth is not fit to be president. He really shouldn't be serving in Congress either but hopefully his desperate bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination will awaken his current constituents and they'll end up replacing him. They should. He's a mental midget who has no awareness and an inability to learn.
Seth thinks he knows about war when he doesn't know a damn thing.
No where in his Tweets or comments was there any real awareness.
I remember Patty, the type of person Seth would ignore. I remember she was from Colorado. I remember she and her boyfriend got engaged before he shipped off to Vietnam. I remember her joy when she found out she was pregnant. I remember how quickly that vanished when she learned her boyfriend had died in Vietnam. She miscarried right after. (A mutual friend, in the 80s, writing for a TV drama, would make it an abortion to add more drama to an already tragic story.) A few years later, in 1978, she finally tried to restart her life. She fell in lover. I remember the hideous woman who would have been her mother-in-law. Finding out that Patty had been engaged, she told her namby pamby son -- so many men are namby pamby, Seth included -- that Patty was "promised" to another and he broke it off with her. I remember Patty took her own life (didn't happen on the TV drama because the character was one of the leads).
Where's her Memorial Day, Seth?
Stank ass pig boy Seth thinks he knows war. But he clearly doesn't. He doesn't acknowledge the children who grew up without a father (now they can grow up without a mother as well) because of wars of choice, criminal enterprises.
Stank ass Seth can't call out the government that betrayed so many and destroyed so many.
In his limited view of 'patriotism,' whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden aren't patriots.
In Seth's stunted mind, a patriot is just a pawn which goes wherever it is moved by the government. It never questions and it certainly never learns.
The Vietnam War began in the 60s (for the US, the Indochina Wars go back much further for France, as far back as 1945). Yet all these decades later, Seth can't call out any of the War Criminals who sent people to kill and be killed for lies.
Little boy Seth would rather attack those who did not go to Vietnam. That's a hell of a lot of people. Yes, it does include those who went to Canada. It also includes those who get education deferments and those who had children. It also includes those who did something other than combat. Al Gore anyone? It includes those who went underground in any variety of ways.
The criminal war is not called out by Seth. His 'bravery' only allows him to call out those who did not ship off to combat.
This is what we need as a president?
A stunted child whose vision of the world is that of a small child? He has demonstrated that he is incapable of learning, that he cannot identify with anyone whose life was not just like his.
Don't we already have that in the White House?
In what world do we need more of it?
And, excuse me, but in what world are so many in our country allowed to be silent about this reality?
"Maybe celebrate truth on Memorial Day as opposed to waiving your dick around?" went up last night in response to Seth's garbage. I can't read all the e-mails this morning but a number of you are wondering why this site is the only one responding to Seth's garbage?
You're right to wonder. I'm one person. Where's THE NATION? Or THE PROGRESSIVE? Or IN THESE TIMES? Or COUNTERPUNCH? Or ANTIWAR.COM? Go down the list.
Seth celebrates empire and those blindly loyal to it.
There are far better arguments that could be made than the humanist one I offered. And those arguments need to be made and made often.
Don't whine to me about how militarism is creeping into our daily lives or how are cities are being militarized if you're not calling out the garbage of the likes of Seth. When you stay silent, you allow him to define the terms.
A friend called this morning. In her book (memoir) she called out this nonsense. Should she say something today? Is she going to develop a Twitter presence? Because, like many friends of mine, they're not doing social media.
Why does she, a singer and actress, have to call it out again? Honestly, haven't we already done enough?
Apparently not.
Apparently, corporate whores like Anderson Cooper (why are so many men linked to the CIA closeted gays or closeted bisexuals, by the way?) (notice also the 'intel' candidates who got married real quick in order to run for Congress -- hey, Seth, when did you get married?) will always make way for people to preach blind allegiance (a belief that is the enemy of a free press)? When will he offer up those who have the guts to call out criminal wars? Never. Bravery is not a concept Anderson embraces -- which is why he came out as dyslexic in 2007 but couldn't come out as gay until 2012.
Where is the press that says, "Enough!" It's got to be a bunch of aging entertainers every time to refute this garbage? I think we've done our part and then some. Aging entertainers? Yes, as Stevie sang, "I'm getting older too."
At WSWS, George Marlowe contributes to the discussion:
The United States Army did not get the response it intended when it asked in a tweet last week, “How has serving impacted you?” Instead of paeans to the military, the horrific reality of war on a world scale broke through the annual celebration of American militarism over the Memorial Day weekend.
By Monday night, there were over 11,000 comments in response to the US Army’s question. The official lies and platitudes employed by the ruling elite and the media to exalt war were shattered by stories detailing the living hell that has been imposed on millions of lives.
So massive was the outpouring of sentiment on social media that the response was covered by the mainstream news Monday night, a singular rarity on a day usually devoted to mindless jingoism. The incident even made headlines around the world, an expression of the vast global impact of US militarism.
Veteran suicides, depression, violence, recurring nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug abuse, addiction, alcoholism, rape and sexual assault by commanding officers, inadequate health care, generational trauma, exposure to chemical agents, war crimes. These were just some of the nightmarish tales that emerged.
Heartbreaking stories of veteran suicides were all too common. Shane Burley’s story was repeated in various forms by numerous people. “My best friend from high school was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function,” Shane wrote. “He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”
Sean described what he called “the ‘Combat Cocktail’: PTSD, severe depression, anxiety. Isolation. Suicide attempts. Never ending rage. It cost me my relationship with my eldest son and my grandson. It cost some of my men so much more. How did serving impact me? Ask my family.”
Lies used to manufacture public consent for war were also opposed. “Don’t fabricate enemies and shove innocent Americans into wars that kill innocent civilians,” wrote one person. “You’ve gained nothing from all the wars combined. It’s been hell for the world.”
For all the nauseating glorification of the military by the media and the political establishment, those that serve in the military as cannon fodder are generally economic conscripts looking for a way out of poverty and the chance for a college degree. The reality is that they end up maimed, broken and scarred, with generations of families and friends affected by the trauma.
When you allow Seth Moulton and his fat ass to define what is and isn't patriotism, you throw in the towel and might as well just celebrate empire. You dishonor those who stood against empire, you dishonor those who were sacrificed on battlefields for empire, you dishonor all the lives destroyed on the homefront -- the real battle field and the last one that a Seth Moulton will ever acknowledge.
I am #cannonfodder for the Empire...
It's amazing our divorce from reality. We can study past empires and ignore the real comparisons between those and our own. We can study past empires and see governments that did not serve the people but used the people to maintain an empire. We look at them and think, "How could they have not seen?" We ask how others could not see reality in the past when we refuse reality in the present.
Memorial Day? It should have been a day to call out the senseless deaths and destruction and to have remembered humanity. A Seth Moulton will never let that happen. He wasn't trained to think and, in the end, all he can ever be is a discarded tool of empire. He puffs out his chest and pretends he accomplished something.
Chelsea Manning? She accomplished something. She told the truth, she spread the truth.
This overdue statement puts the other top Democratic candidates on the spot.
Buttigieg is already on record opposing Chelsea Manning’s clemency. Biden called Assange a “high-tech terrorist.”
Will they now openly side with the national security state over the First Amendment?
What does “real” resistance look like?
Chelsea Manning just showed us.
On May 16th, the famous whistleblower was put in federal prison. Her offense? Refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.
Chelsea Manning is this generation's greatest conscientious objector.
Her staunch and principled refusal to participate in a manifestly unjust secret Grand Jury process against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks - even at a cost to her own physical and mental well-being - is historic.
It's telling that @EDVAnews appears to have obtained an indictment *before* my contempt hearing last week.
Chelsea demonstrates more bravery than Seth could ever manage.
All a Seth does is justify killing and call for more killing. How would him in the White House be any better than Donald Trump? Or is 2020 supposed to play out like 2016 with the unofficial slogan being 'vote for me because he's worse'? I think we all saw that slogan fail last go round.
There are real choices running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Here are two:
- Bernie Sanders Retweeted
Thank you to Democratic Presidential candidate @BernieSanders for signing our veterans’ #EndForeverWar pledge!
Veterans overwhelmingly say it’s time to bring our troops home.
Anyone who wants to be Commander-in-Chief should follow his lead. #MemorialDay
NowThis
#MemorialDay is a time to remember: war must only be waged as a very last resort to keep the American people safe. As Commander-in-Chief, I will honor our troops who’ve sacrificed their lives for our country by working to prevent unnecessary costly wars. tulsi.to/honor
The following sites updated:
