When traveling internationally government agencies like the US State Department or the UK Foreign Office can offer valuable advice. The basics – shots, visas, potential complications – are all in one place and up to date. Their travel "advice," however, must always be taken with grains of salt. Let's just say they tend toward extreme caution. I think the State Department in particular imagines the would-be US traveler as an 18 year old college freshman who has never been outside Paramus, NJ and will be unable to handle the slightest "non-Americanness."
Come to think of it, that's a great approach. That is the modal American tourist.
El Salvador is listed by the State Department in Category 3 (Reconsider Need to Travel) which is one stage short of "Do Not Travel Here." The Embassy warns that the crime threat in El Salvador is "critical" and notes, as it does for many countries, that law enforcement is corrupt and as likely to rob you as help you. Poor rural sanitation, Zika outbreaks, and political unrest due to government corruption are also noted. Again, they tend to overdo it a bit, but suffice it to say that El Salvador is a place with many problems.
Despite warning Americans not to go there, the White House announced recently that 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants to the US are about to be given the heave-ho and, presumably, forced to return. Makes sense, right?
What is the point of this? What is the point of any of these targeted attempts to legislate immigrant-bashing? This accomplishes absolutely nothing and benefits no one. Like the "travel ban" countries, we declare these places chaotic shit holes and then actively move to ship people there. I guess borderline failed states are good enough for SOME kinds of people, amirite.
It's worth noting that without being overly dramatic or self-critical, a good portion of the responsibility for the corruption, brutality, and poverty of Central American states belongs squarely in Washington. I mean, what do you think paramilitary death squads do after they've overthrown a duly elected leader, disband and go home to read magazines?
The irony of explicitly calling a country too dangerous to visit and then deporting people to it is almost too much to bear, but I suppose we're all getting used to bearing it.
mago says:
". . .I suppose we're all getting used to bearing it."
Suppose so. Enlightenment remains elusive.
HoosierPoli says:
The underlying theory is pretty straightforward: El Salvador is a shitty violent place because Salvadoreans are shitty violent people. Putting the shitty violent people back in the shitty violent place is, in that perspective, utterly reasonable.
RosiesDad says:
Ed: I can't believe that you don't recognize the importance of "we dislike brown (and black) people" the Republican platform. Without it, they barely have a leg to stand on.
@HoosierPoli: I think if the GOP could figure out a way to send large numbers of inner city minorities to what they consider "shitty violent places" they would try to do that too.
democommie says:
"@HoosierPoli: I think if the GOP could figure out a way to send large numbers of inner city minorities to what they consider "shitty violent places" they would try to do that too."
AL, LA, FL, TX…
All failed border states, imo.
Procopius says:
I think El Salvador used to be a pretty nice place until our State Department decided there were Communists there and supported a coup followed by a civil way. I really should take time to find which huge American company made a lot of money from that. I don't think it was United Fruit or Cosa Nostra. Maybe some group of sugar wholesalers got together? Since Andrew Jackson our State Department's sole purpose is to enrich powerful American interests. That's why the embargo of Cuba persists. Because there's no way the current Cuban regime is going to allow the Mob back in, nor the sugar companies, and they, like North Korea, can survive our sanction regimes.
MR Bill says:
This move has little to do with El Salvador per se, and everything to do with red meat for the base: if you assume “hordes”;of illegal immigrants are “flooding” the country and changing it in some undefined but scary way (the words in quotes are from a Joe Arpaio supporting letter to the NYTimes, any of these scary immigrants Not being in the US is a good thing. The administration is ratifying the fears of the Base, and seeming to act decisively.
Greg says:
The best part is that the immigration courts have been denying asylum on the grounds of “I fear I’ll be murdered by the gangs that murdered my [family member]” for decades. Oh wait, did I say the “best” part? Because I meant “the part that makes me grind my teeth with rage”
Greg says:
OT but Ed, Loomis of Lawyersgunsmoney is speaking at Bradley soon and sweetjesus I hope you two cranky bastards are going to get drunk and record the greatest podcast of you two just arguing about everything. Or, maybe just have a nice time sharing a misanthropic worldview of annihilating tartness.
BubbaDave says:
I hate podcasts, but I'd listen to that one over and over and over. While wearing my "Punch Nazis" G&T shirt.
BLOZAR says:
"What is the point of this? What is the point of any of these targeted attempts to legislate immigrant-bashing? This accomplishes absolutely nothing and benefits no one."
The point is to prove to their base that Trump and the GOP are FOR REALZIES the hate-filled racist assholes they voted for. Every cruelty inflicted on brown-people/black/poor people is a blow struck on behalf of the people interviewed those Cletus Safari articles you love so much. The accomplishment is that the hated people will be visibly outraged and THAT is a PR/political victory for the Pepe the Frog crowd ('make the libtards cry'/'taste their own blood in their mouths').
Trump and the GOP benefit, for now, by reinforcing the enthusiasm of racists for team Trump. I expect they would run into diminishing political returns with every one of these actions. They had the Nazi and Neo-Confederate vote locked down already, by actually following through with more racist policy actions they are pumping energy into their opposition. The audience for this blog probably can't remember a time when they weren't full-up on outrage over the Orange shit-show but I imagine each new shitty move by the GOP provokes some more folks to get off the sidelines and start doing more than twitter liking and retweeting the outrage.
I have a job, family, and a very tenuous grip on middle-class existence that makes me loathe to take to the street and risk the consequences of arrest. I can comment on blog posts, like & re-tweet, and sometimes donate a few bucks to encourage the voices and people I would like to succeed. If the policy actions of a GOP dominated USA motivates more people to start contributing what they can to oppose GOP awfulness, then that is a kind of 'benefit'.
democommie says:
@ BLOZAR:
Yep.
FDChief says:
It's pure political theater. What ridiculously tiny impact would 200K Salvadorans have in a nation of millions? Obviously none. The social, political, and economic effect of tossing every one of these poor suckers into the fires of Mt. Doom would be zero outside of their own misery.
But. That's the point. It pleases the Trumpanzees to know that some quantity of the untermenschen are miserable and suffering.
Brutus says:
FDChief sez, The social, political, and economic effect of tossing every one of these poor suckers into the fires of Mt. Doom would be zero outside of their own misery. There is already a rhetorical effect (not unlike a terror campaign) proven by the fact it’s a contentious issue being bandied about right here and now. It’s also a way to get the ball rolling toward larger numbers that will have wider social, political, and economic impacts. It was widely reported that as a result of the 2017 travel ban by executive order, more than a few Americans of color, resident aliens, and illegal aliens found themselves in an existential dilemma, fearing that some agency hacks merely executing orders would come knocking at their doors and simply wave away bureaucratic errors as something to be sorted out later (or not at all). What could stir unrest and violence in the streets better and faster than people being carted off without recourse by an unfeeling government authority? Some folks would go meekly, no doubt; others would fight like hell. I’m in no hurry to get this party started, but conservative ideologues certainly appear to be.
seniorscrub says:
Come on, Ed.
Its to stop those damned brown people from stealing the jobs of Proud Muricans.
A man with a wooden head can see that…
(how does one 'steal' another's job?? I'd like to steal Bill Gates' for a couple of hours….I'd be set for life.)
Brian M says:
Totally agree with this post and most of the comments here.
This is a little ahistorical, though:
"I think El Salvador used to be a pretty nice place until our State Department decided there were Communists there and supported a coup followed by a civil way."
The reason there WERE communists there is because El Salvador was a brutal feudal state in which the 14 families owned everything.
We poured gasoline on the fire for all the usual reasons, rational and irrational, but there were…and are…serious problems there.
quixote says:
What Brian M pointed out. There's complicity to go around. But re more US complicity: it's not just the government. I remember reading (in the LATimes?) that after the crackdown on gangs in LA some 10? years ago, many gang members were deported "home."
They'd learned a lot in LA, so the viciousness of the gangs in Central American and Caribbean countries went way up, together with the murder rate, terror, corruption, targeting of kids, and the whole usual pile of offal. (That, of course, led to more of the victims' families fleeing North.)
I think the article was actually about the Dominican Republic, not El Salvador, but what I'm trying to say is that the US can contribute to problems elsewhere in more ways than government or megacorps.
democommie says:
@ Brian M & Quixote:
Indeed. The Americas' indigenous peoples were doomed from the moment that the first conquistadors found out that dogs, guns and horses gave them the ability to slaughter their opponents by the thousands. If only those filthy, benighted savages had had any concept of gummint, organized religions, property ownership, a legal system and other markers of a civilized people the Spaniards and later visitors would have simply asked for some technology exchanges, commercial agreements and non-aggression pacts instead of invading their lands, murdering millions of them, starving millions more and subjugating the rest.
The U.S. has bloody hands here and abroad on that issue.
geoff says:
I read this in the LA Times this morning: "The U.S. tells citizens not to travel to five Mexican states".
http://beta.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-travel-20180110-story.html#nt=oft07a-12gp1
Maybe this Salvador thing is just a warmup for the Big Show?
geoff says:
And, @RosiesDad, "I think if the GOP could figure out a way to send large numbers of inner city minorities to what they consider "shitty violent places" they would try to do that too." Uh, I think that's largely Mission Accomplished? Though I should add that it's been a bipartisan project since I'd say the failure of Reconstruction, or at least the Great Migration.
geoff says:
ALSO, "…The full-fledged [Salvadoran]civil war lasted for more than 12 [1979-1992] years and saw extreme violence from both sides. It also included the deliberate terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers and other violations of human rights, mostly by the military.[23] An unknown number of people disappeared during the conflict, and the UN reports that more than 75,000 were killed.[24] The United States contributed to the conflict by providing large amounts of military aid [and training] to the government [and military and extrajudicial death squads] of El Salvador during the Carter[25] and Reagan administrations. The Salvadoran government was considered "friendly" by the U.S. in the context of the Cold War.[26]
The United Nations has estimated that the FMLN guerrillas were responsible for 5% of the murders of civilians during the civil war, while approximately 85% of all killings of civilians were committed by the Salvadoran armed forces and death squads.[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War
Scout says:
Before we know it, brown people will be required to sew stars on their clothing.
Camembert says:
I just can't get over how awful a person you have to be to be a Republican and how many of my fellow white folks take on that challenge successfully.
Davis X. Machina says:
I'm so old I remember a time when they were full-up on outrage over the Obama shit-show. The one where Obama disassembled our otherwise fully-functioning social democracy because banksters.
quixote says:
Re my comment earlier, El Salvador was one of the three countries who got the most deportees. Ref here.)
Brian M says:
"I'm so old I remember a time when they were full-up on outrage over the Obama shit-show. The one where Obama disassembled our otherwise fully-functioning social democracy because banksters."
All dembot snideness aside, The Great Empath, our First Black President Billy C largely accomplished that. All Obama did was ignore the bankster crimes. Because they all occurred in the past, dontcha know?
Bernard says:
The Monroe doctrine says the whole Western Hemisphere is part of the US's control. America owns Latin America in everything but name.
One main reason the Latins are here in America is the wars and Corporate run for American extraction. Profit over people, the American Way. Just like the Syrians left en masse for Germany, the Latins came to America to get away from the Terror funded Wars in Latin America.
America makes war to hoover up all the goodies and leave the natives in poverty, feudalism and indirect slavery.
just the Corporate Way, the American Way, the Republican Way which Democrats are copying.
Isn't America Great or what? Make America Great Again. The Rich have never had it better. The rest of us, not so much.
Republicans like Obama saved the Bankers so he could get his share. The American Way. lol. Profit over Color, too.
Major Kong says:
"Shithole countries"
Because Kansas is such a fucking garden spot?
BLOZAR says:
@Davis X. Machina and @Brian M.
re: whuddabout the bloody-handed moral paucity of Obama, Clinton, and the Dems?
Congrats on being aware that even regimes we may have voted for/liked supported some morally questionable things that had regrettable consequences. Going straight to 'whuddaboutism' in a discussion of nakedly racist policy being set by the openly racist GOP happening right now makes me suspicious of what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to throw a cynical wet blanket over the discussion with a message of all your past/present/future choices (dem voters) have been bad, have hurt people, and fail to meet an undefined snowflake standard for moral purity … so you should curl up in a ball on the floor and cry, forever? If discouraging anyone who reads your comment is your goal I'd say you could have worked harder and linked out to some source documentation for your assertion "…Obama disassembled our otherwise fully-functioning social democracy… ". It comes off as trolling to make the introspective liberals go chase their tails with self-recrimination – i.e.; trick your enemies into wasting their resources, one step better is to get your enemies to attack each other.
If your goal was ONLY to be right in pointing out Bill and Barack did not-so-great things, congrats, you may right but I don't give a shit about Bill and Barack's mistakes/complicity right now. My comment was about how the non-stop outrage provoked by Trump is beyond exhausting for people who have been paying attention but as the awfulness keeps getting ratcheted up more people might start paying attention.
Have past Dem administrations done bad things, supported bad ideas, sure – so what? Are you trolling?
Are Trump and the GOP currently in power and promoting an agenda that seems to be catastrophically unraveling the institutions, traditions, functions, and basic values of the USA? – yeah, it sure looks that way to me. I like to read Ed's (and the commenters) thoughts about that.
If you
Major Kong says:
Obama or Clinton could have been running an actual drug cartel on the side and still been a better President than what we're dealing with today.
Brian M says:
BLOZAR: Of course Trump (and W and Reagan were "worse") (I'll reserve judgment on the foreign policy horrors of the Holy Peanut Farmer who STARTED many of the disasters).
I was merely responding to David X's Dembot "How dare we complain about Obama" talking point.
Carry on with the main topic, which I did participate in and comment on.
jcdenton says:
@BLOZAR and others
I think the issue that some here have raised is that it's a little self-serving to bitch about Trump's racism and deportations when just the previous guy had quietly deported millions of "bad immigrants" without nary a peep from the center left.
I don't equate Obama and Trump. At the very least they have radically different attitudes on social issues. But one problem with being angry exclusively at Trump is that he's currently being used to Trumpwash the entirety of American history.
Trump is a symptom of American racism, sexism and class war, not a cause. He has, if nothing else, bared forth the deepest essence of the American spirit. He is the Monroe Doctrine, the Trail of Tears, the Southern Doctrine, the Red Scare, the Vietnam War, Fox News, capitalism, lynchings, ignorance-worship, warmongering, paranoia and blind imperialism all rolled into one neat package.
He's the culmination of all the shit that's been terrible about the US since its founding. He is the country not as it sees itself, but as its actually behaved. Be angry at that, at the underlying rot and disease, instead of one particularly egregious pus-filled boil.
Mo says:
oooo, JC. Stealing this:
Trump is a symptom of American racism, sexism and class war, not a cause. He has, if nothing else, bared forth the deepest essence of the American spirit. He is the Monroe Doctrine, the Trail of Tears, the Southern Doctrine, the Red Scare, the Vietnam War, Fox News, capitalism, lynchings, ignorance-worship, warmongering, paranoia and blind imperialism all rolled into one neat package.
He's the culmination of all the shit that's been terrible about the US since its founding. He is the country not as it sees itself, but as its actually behaved. Be angry at that, at the underlying rot and disease, instead of one particularly egregious pus-filled boil.
StrokeCity FC says:
“we declare these places chaotic shit holes and then actively move to ship people there.”
Man, this is some impressive clairvoyance!
Brian M says:
jcdenton: Bravo! Amazing and bracing reality!
Brian M says:
Major Kong: Maybe. But addicts would still be overdosing and kids being killed in drug wars. Clinton and Obama were NOT heroic w/r/t policy at all, overall.
Trump is the symptom, not the cause. America is the problem. More broadly speaking, humanity is the problem except for rare cases when groups of people have been able to curb our worst impulses and create more humane societies. Generally speaking, temporarily.
Skepticism towards all leaders is the only proper attitude. Tribal "our guy is still better" arguments are ultimately pointless when "our guy" is still beholden to fundamentally messed up policies and classes of people (the owners).
Major Kong says:
@jcdenton
I am totally stealing that. Consider this fair notice.
jcdenton says:
@Mo, Brian M, Major Kong
Steal away. Trump is the current sin-eater of the "adults in the room" center, and that may be a worse long-term outcome than any damage his policies do (barring nuclear war and a few other species-ending events).
Major Kong says:
@Brian M
My point was that Clinton and Obama, regardless of whether you liked their policies, were at least sane and competent.
I realize that's setting the bar pretty damn low, but that's where we are now as a country.
Mark from NJ says:
Hey Ed…an 18 year old from Paramus NJ lives 11 miles from the Bronx and probably has more street smarts than half the country. Lay off my neck of the woods! Jersey rocks! Thanks for the great site. You are indispensable.
Dice says:
It's ethnic cleansing. Throw' em out, keep 'em out. Doesn't matter if they're killed when they get back "home."
A discussion of this here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/12/1732235/-Trump-s-ethnic-cleansing-of-America#read-more
Brian M says:
"My point was that Clinton and Obama, regardless of whether you liked their policies, were at least sane and competent."
The architects (over several "sane and competent" administrations) of the Vietnam War were the cream of the crop, the vetted experts, the smartest men in the room, graduates of the Ivy League….yet we still killed or injured millions of Southeast Asians in some weird attempt to preserve French colonial power and tweak "the commies". Carter was a decorated Submarine commander, a deeply sane "Christian" man, yet he armed the Indonesian generals as they slaughtered 1/3 of the East Timorese, began the latest phase of American skullduggery in Central America, and helped create what became the Taliban and eventually Al Qaeda.
Riffing off JC above, saneness and competence have limited value when the world view and underlying multigenerational, bipartisan policy consensus is…questionable.
"Sane and competent" doesn't matter much when
Luke says:
Did Ed write this before the whole ‘shithole’ episode?
jcdenton says:
Some people who were "sane and competent":
– Robert McNamara, SecDef and architect of the "scientific war" in Vietnam.
– Allen Dulles, CIA director and one of the architects of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
– Henry Kissinger, SecState and orchestrator of Pinochet's overthrow of Allende in Chile.
– J Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, Red Scare perpetuator and underminer of the Civil Rights movement.
Behind every imperialist atrocity and blunder lies someone who is "sane and competent". We should not be fine with "sane and competent" people making horrific and immoral decisions.
@Luke
"This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2018 at 11:20 pm…"
democommie says:
@ jcdenton:
All of that is true. I will still take sane and competent over batshit and imcompetent, all day, every day.
BLOZAR says:
@JCDenton, @Brian M, and others
Ok – I think I get it, US history is not a story with morally pure good guys (D) at one end of the government control see-saw with pure evil bad guys (R) at the other end. Blame for all the morally objectionable events of history can not reasonably be laid at the feet of one political party. To do so while firing off rhetorical exhortations is disingenuous.
Questions:
A) How much of a priority is it to make sure people are reminded of the above when discussing #PresidentShithole?
B) Is it VITAL to you that anyone expressing judgment towards the racist-in-chief, his gang of enablers, and his voter base be sure to include a 'both sides do it' or 'whuddabout the Ds' caveat in the same breath/sentence? If so, why?
Once the villainy of the USA has been attributed to BOTH SIDES and the fortress of moral purity on top of mount slippery-slope has had a NO ADMITTANCE sign nailed across the entrance, what are we supposed to do?
1) Disappear up into the purity vortex inside our own ass on election day with a protest vote or remain unsullied and stay home?
2) Preach cynical paralysis on the internets by equivocating, qualifying, and painting everyone as complicit in the great cycle of atrocity?
Is the goal to make 'progressive' people so discouraged that they turn away from politics because that is what a relentless message of 'they're all bad, there are no good choices, voting makes you complicit in EVIL' does. Who benefits from that?
I think the D's camp on mount slippery-slope is located a lot closer to the top than the R's. I think a history of support for social safety nets, consumer, labor, environmental, and civil rights counts for something especially when looking at the R's steady history of being opposed to those things. I think the R's have an awesomely shitty moral track record on just about everything for the last 40+ years, and when anything like 'progress' happened it happened in spite of them.
I have no problem noticing that by voting straight ticket D I haven't voted for knights in shining armor who do no wrong. I vote D because the alternative is being dominated by R's who are clearly and always FAR worse. At a fundamental level, I believe the R's to be a truly malevolent party that has ripped off their 'libertarian/tea party/principled conservative/evangelical christian' bullshit costumes they have been hiding beneath for 40+ years to reveal the white supremacist/oligarch bootlicking monsters they have always been (fuck that both-sides shit).
Did BO and BC lick some oligarch boots and advance some awful agenda elements – yep, they sure did and it was painful to watch (wall street should have been decorated with banking and insurance executives hanging from lamp posts in 2009) – but compared to Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, #PresidentShithole, or any fucking Republican besides Lincoln they were a FAR BETTER choice. IMO that should always be the lede but instead we get a bunch of bothsiderist whuddaboutism from some quarters.
Bernard says:
the lesser of 2 evils is still evil!
do we choose a slow death by the lesser evils/Obama type Democrats or choose a quick death by Republicans?
Choices choices !!!
RosiesDad says:
@major kong: The sad thing is that to Trump supporters, sane and competent are not even part of the equation. Hillary certainly would have been sane and competent but to those who hate her with the core of their being, she is a corrupt, war mongering bitch. Makes it really difficult to have a calm, reasoned discussion with those on the other side.
democommie says:
@ Bernard:
Why wait. Go now.
Mo says:
Has anyone here actually read Halberstam's The Best and The Brightest?
OK, how about Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites?
When we can all review our personal lives and recall examples of when it took the equivalent of a 2×4 to the skull to get us to see something differently, when "experts" dig in on bad ideas and refuse to change their minds [lookin' at you, Fama], who ya gonna call?
Foxes, that's who.
Free The TrumpCucked! says:
"[El Salvador is a] shitty violent place"
also Guatemala, and Honduras – thanks to Mullah Ronald Wilson Reagan's Death Squads.
However the USSR was also a sh1t0le, and Mullah Reagan invited the Brighton Beach mafia into the USA… to the advantage of the budding Trump Crime Family.
Katydid says:
I'm with you, Rosie's Dad. It's impossible to have a conversation with people whose minds have been so warped by irrational hatred that there's just no talking with them.
On another site, someone posted about Chelsea Manning (you know, the military person who stole classified information and gave it to Wikilinks) filing to run for Senate against a well-liked and effective sitting senator (ratings in the high 90s by various Democratic groups).
You'd think this would be a non-issue; a convicted felon against an effective senator, but the "Purity Progressives" are howling and screaming (in an otherwise-sane site). The lies are flowing about his record and they refuse to be set straight by, you know, ACTUAL facts (as opposed to alternative ones) and it all reminds me very much about the anti-Clintonistas.
democommie says:
@ Katydid:
More Putain inspired mischief, perhaps?
Katydid says:
@Demo; well, Assange was funded by the Russians, and Manning leaked documents to Assange, so….probably?
Manning is being aided by the Purity Snowflakes. It's highly unlikely she'd win, but between the Facebook bot-addled Snowflakes and Russia, she'd cause a lot of damage on her way to a loss.
Stay warm, my friend–I caught the national temps this morning and your neck of the woods is freezing!!!
jcdenton says:
@democommie
What choices you leave for the rest of us! I feel so motivated to go vote for the "sane and competent" imperialist, over the "insane and incompetent" one. If this is the best you've got… well… I guess that's it for the country then. If this is the extent of your political vision, then you may as well start voting for anyone who can string together a coherent sentence.
@BLOZAR and others
The issue isn't to depress the progressive vote. The issue is that this fucking less-evil narrative leaves no room for anyone actually semi-good. If you look at our political system, a worse foe always seems to present itself, requiring you to vote for the lesser of two evils (or shall we say the "sane and competent" evil).
If you keep voting for the lesser evil (and in fact promoting the process of voting for the lesser evil), you're letting the bar slip down by default. All that's required is for some political shitbag to act worse than last time, and suddenly you've got a justification to vote for someone less worse than that, who may also be worse than the people you voted for last time.
In the less-worse race, no on is required to be "good", just marginally more acceptable than the other guy. Where is the incentive to actually field candidates with less shitty policies? Where is the incentive for introspection? For radical policies and reform? If the next guy is worse than DJT, are you suddenly going to start fondly reminiscing about DJT in the same manner as corporate Dems are now reminiscing about Reagan and W and applauding sacks of shit like Bill Kristol and David Frum?
The ratchet of "less-evil" always winds towards one side constantly moving further and further into the shit, while the other just plays catchup. This is epitomized by corporate Dems screaming "We shouldn't have to offer you any substantive material policies. We're not Nazis!". Great.
@Katydid
I'm completely in support of Chelsea Manning running for something (although she won't win the Senate seat). Lets remember that Manning exposed a number of US war crimes to the public, which is really a hell of a lot more than most Dems have done recently (except for voting to give DJT even more power to conduct illegal surveillance against the US public). Illegal is not the same thing as immoral. We need more people willing to break the shitty, garbage laws in this country for the sake of some actual justice.
Ten Bears says:
Although the retards are complicit in Our Tea Pot Dictator’s utter rendering of the social fabric, the weasel democrats are just as culpable. Had the democrats not chosen to disregard the tens of millions of voices yelling from the tops of their lungs DON’T DO IT! and run a candidate because “it’s her turn” that couldn’t beat the friend of the family who was actively campaigning to get her elected we wouldn’t be in this situation. If they hadn’t run Clinton, Trump wouldn’t have made it past the first debate, if he were in it at all. This is on the democrats too.
Katydid says:
@JC Denton; let's not forget that Chelsea Manning while still a man slugged her female boss and threw a temper tantrum for being reprimanded for being late, so she scraped up a whole lot of data and gave it to a Russian conspirator, thus put many, many non-American lives in danger as well as revealing a whole lot of information that had nothing to do with whatever point she was trying to make. She was a useful idiot who was easily manipulated by a foreign power; she is no hero. Making her current quest even more stupid; senators have security cleareances. Because Chelsea Manning's clearance was revoked for wantonly and treasonously providing that information to a foreign country, she is no longer eligible to hold it. Her narcissism is breath-taking, but I guess on the same level as the Purity Snowflakes.
@Ten Bears: it appears to escape your notice that Sanders failed to win over the Democratic Party. He simply didn't get the votes–likely because it was obvious to everyone that he wasn't actually a Democrat, but someone hoping to suck off the Democratic Party money teat. If he couldn't even win over the Democratic Party, it's a guarantee he wouldn't have won over the rest of the country. Hillary Clinton actually got more votes than Trump, which is rather amazing when you consider the petulant, narcissistic "burn-it-all-to-ground-because-waaaaaaaah-my-preferred-candidate-wasn't-on-the-ticket crowd.
Robert V Walker-Smith says:
That there are still people who believe that Sanders would have defeated Trump would amaze me if my amazer hadn't broken a few months ago. It's almost as baffling as people who believe that we'd be worse off right now if Clinton had won.
Katydid says:
Robert V Walker-Smith, I feel the same, and before last Saturday, I would never have believed that anyone would want someone who assaulted people, in their first job ever blindly stole random classified data they had sworn to protect and hand it off to a foreign nation to run as a Democrat for Senator–a job that requires access to classified information (which she can no longer get, because she showed us exactly what she does when given access). It's astounding to me that some people believe that someone who lied, stole and violated oaths, and is quick to assault people is a *better* choice than a man who's served a couple of terms and worked effectively in the senate with people of both sides, to a very high rating from the Democrats.
Don't we already have sufficient proof of what a thin-skinned, no-nothing-politicl, proven liar and thief can do?!?
Mike D says:
Chaotic shit hole.
Wow. You are getting really good at getting ahead of the news!
democommie says:
@jcdenton:
I didn't get us into the hole we're in. People who voted for refucKKKliKKKlansmen or pulled the lever for non-entitities 'cuz reasons got us into this hole.
I don't donate money, I'm an independent who has never joined the democratic party or the GOP. I'm one of the millions of voices that they haven't listened to, ever.
I don't vote for democrats because I love them. I vote for democrats because they don't and haven't fucked me as much as the other side has. I don't vote for people who I know can't win unless the GOP.O.S. has a candidate running who has no dem opposition.
Vote for whoever you like–watch the GOP gain firmer control of the courts.