Barackface

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

The Major Religions

Bernie Is Leading

And taking AOC around the country like she were his running mate!

Sen. @BernieSanders challenged Trump to release his tax returns and made a strong case for Medicare for All on *checks notes* Fox News pic.twitter.com/jBd2ehaaGA
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 17, 2019

Ronald Reagan also ran and lost one time. Then he ran again four years later.

Bernie is in better physical shape than Ronald. Because Bernie runs. Not run for president, which he does. But run as in jogging.

Bernie also has some other parallels with Ronald Reagan. He is very, very clear about a few basic things that also happen to be fundamental. That clarity comes from deep conviction.

He is a breath of fresh air.

It was Bernie who put Medicare For All on the national map. Now every Democrat running is for it. That is an achievement. It just makes sense. Medicare For All is arithmetic.

So right now it is looking like:

President: Bernie Sanders
Vice President: Kamala Harris
Fall 2020 Campaigner: AOC
UN Ambassador: Tulsi Gabbard
Secretary Of Labor: Andrew Yang
Texas Governor: Beto
Senate Majority Leader: Elizabeth Warren
Secretary Of Urban Affairs: Pete

Bernie Is Leading https://t.co/75AUd7jlUs @BernieSanders @SenSanders @AOC @KamalaHarris @PeteButtigieg
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) April 17, 2019

Trump predicts 'Crazy Bernie Sanders,' 'Sleepy Joe Biden' will be 2 Dem 'finalists' in 2020 race
The 2020 Race Is Going Just Like Bernie Sanders Wanted The senator from Vermont is starting to think he will not only win the Democratic nomination, but beat Trump and become president...... The campaign is moving toward its internal $280 million target and savoring polls that have Sanders just behind Joe Biden, whom Sanders and his team expect will only go down once he gets in the race. The number of candidates keeps growing, lowering how many people it would take to come in first, beyond the 15 percent to 20 percent of primary voters who will stick with him no matter what...... Americans want Medicare for All, but are just anxious that Sanders wouldn’t be able to manage that or any of the other big changes that he’s promising. They believe a tightly-run campaign would demonstrate that he could run the country, too. .... he’s the only candidate with a sizable chunk of the electorate that won’t waver, no matter what, so a field that keeps growing and splitting support keeps making it easier...... Medicare for All has become a litmus test for many progressives, as has free public college tuition. ...... there was a band of young white guys in hockey jerseys playing a song about “cosmic dust” ahead of the Pittsburgh rally and staffing tables of merchandise with Sanders as a Sesame Street character and “Let it FUCKING Bern” written over a picture of a marijuana leaf

When Trump is calling Bernie "crazy," he is talking about Bernie's Einstein hair.

Bernie Sanders Imagines a Progressive New Approach to Foreign Policy Sanders had scarcely talked about foreign affairs in his 2016 campaign, but his framework had a natural extensibility. Under way in the world was a simple fight, Sanders said. On one side were oligarchs and the right-wing parties they had managed to corrupt. On the other were the people. ....... He begins the 2020 Presidential campaign not as a gadfly but as a favorite, which requires a comprehensive vision among voters of how he would lead the free world. ..... “reconceptualize a global order based on human solidarity.” ..... In 2016, he had asked voters to imagine how the principles of democratic socialism could transform the Democratic Party. Now he was suggesting that they could also transform how America aligns itself in the world..... Basic impression: same guy. ....... “How many people in the United States understand that we overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran to put in the Shah? ...... One condition that Americans had not digested was the bottomlessness of inequality. ....... “Twenty-six of the wealthiest people on earth own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. Did you know that? ..... “twenty-six people, 3.6 billion people. How grotesque is that?” ...... “When I talk about income inequality and talk about right-wing authoritarianism, you can’t separate the two.” ....... his thesis had always been that money corrupted politics, and now he was tracing the money back overseas ...... as emergencies in Libya, Syria, and Yemen have deepened, the reputation of Obama’s foreign policy, and of the foreign-policy establishment more broadly, has diminished ....... She and others now see in Sanders something that they didn’t in 2016: a clear progressive theory of what the U.S. is after in the world. “I think he’s bringing those views on the importance of tackling economic inequality into foreign policy ........There has been, he went on, “a bipartisan assumption that we’re supposed to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran. And yet, if you look at young people in Iran, they are probably a lot more pro-American than Saudis. ...... But they also have more democracy, as a matter of fact, more women’s rights, than does Saudi Arabia...... Sanders seemed to oscillate between proposing a characteristically transformational reimagining of American policy at the grandest scale and, in specific cases, more complicated approaches ...... In Sanders’s account of global affairs, Americans have been as likely to be villains as heroes. Six trillion dollars had now been spent on the war on terror since 2001. “It’s an unbelievable amount of money,” he said. “Is this going to go on forever?” Seven hundred billion dollars was being sent annually to the military, he noted. “Do we really need to spend more than the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids can’t afford to go to college?” ......... whether the most powerful nation on earth is excessively capitalist or sufficiently democratic....... whether the existential challenges of climate change create a moral imperative for deep structural reforms, including the abolition of the filibuster and the Electoral College ....... it was hard to see much evidence for the global popular movement against the right that he hoped to ignite. ...... That is the optimistic scenario: that climate change will bring about a new spirit of international coöperation........ Power revealed steeliness in Obama, and an instinct for the consensus, and caution. ..... he has bent the Party’s policies and priorities so that they largely match his. ...... the fiery-sermonizer figure is in retreat, and he is sounding notes of caution. Most of the other Democrats running for President have embraced broad structural reforms: the Electoral College must go, and perhaps the filibuster. Not Sanders. On Palestine, he now invokes the tradition of Carter and Clinton. If the newer candidates must demonstrate and defend their beliefs, then Sanders is undertaking a more subtle task, in trying to accomplish a turn in his public character as he nears eighty: to extricate the person from the ideology, and to suggest that he is not just a revolutionary but also a safe pair of hands.
Bernie Sanders acknowledges 'serious problem' at the border, demands 'sensible immigration reform'
This is how Bernie Sanders thinks about foreign policy The senator wants to create a global democratic movement to end oligarchy and authoritarianism..... has a consistent foreign policy thesis: income inequality and authoritarianism are intricately linked. .......... Create a global democratic movement that counters authoritarian leaders from Russia to Saudi Arabia as a way to improve the lives of billions around the world....... “The United States must seek partnerships not just between governments, but between peoples” ...... the senator explained that the US shouldn’t pick sides in ongoing geopolitical feuds, like Saudi Arabia vs. Iran or Israelis vs. Palestinians. ..... Musgrave had the same concern. “Financial firms in London, Geneva, and New York, including their intermediaries in places like the Caymans and the Channel Islands, play a big role in helping to preserve international oligarchs’ wealth,” he told me. “Presumably a President Sanders could deal with New York’s role in domestic politics — but how would he seek to shut down other countries’ financial networks?” ...... Sanders seems to think authoritarianism and oligarchy cause most of the world’s problems. “It comes a little close to a ‘Theory of Everything’” ...... When he was in the House of Representatives in 1998, Sanders famously grilled then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on IMF loans to repressive governments. And in 2015, he blasted the IMF for imposing austerity measures on Greece as a condition to receive economic aid during its financial crisis. ...... “At a time of grotesque wealth inequality, the pensions of the people in Greece should not be cut even further to pay back some of the largest banks and wealthiest financiers in the world.” ...... “It’s a vision in which international economics would be subordinated to a vision of political relations and human rights that would be as big a departure from Clintonism as Trumpism, just in a different direction,” Musgrave said.
Bernie faces voters in the heart of Trump country

Imran Khan Could Bring Peace

The formula for peace in South Asia is simple. And the case for it is compelling. And Modi might find in Imran a partner that he sought in Nawaz but did not get. Nawaz simply did not command respect from the Pakistan Army. Imran does.

It was not realistic for Imran to expect Modi to play game before the elections in India. But once the elections are over, and Pakistan bashing has delivered the votes, Modi might want to finally reach out. It might start with an accidental bumping into Imran at some summit where the two might find themselves. And then things could snowball.

The attack in Kashmir that brought the subcontinent to the brink of war, ably defused by Imran by the simple release of an Indian pilot, might also be the event that pushed Modi to a renewed mandate. Looks like Modi will win and come back as Prime Minister. But nobody knows. Predicting elections in India is not a science.

Modi's BJP might be able to strike peace with Pakistan in ways the more socially moderate Congress Party might not. It often takes the hard right to make the compromises. Because there is no one to the right warning the people you might sell out.

The case is that it has been long enough. The solution is to accept the Line Of Control as the permanent border which, by the way, might also be the formula for the longest disputed border in the world, that between India and China.

Before the British came along there was no clear border between India and China. There was no line. The idea of the border as a line is a modern invention. Back then the border was a frontier. Nobody who crossed the frontier ever knew where India ended and China began. You trekked for hours through uninhabited land. Until you came to a settlement, it did not really matter what country you were in.

Recognizing the LOC as the permanent border would normalize relations between India and Pakistan. Kashmir might remain two, but then, hey, so does Punjab. But with a normal border, there might be trade, travel, and tourism between the two Kashmirs and the Kashmiris might experience normalcy after long decades. The two countries might be able to pull their armies from the border.

The tension is a political sinkhole. Political capital that should be going to issues like poverty go to a war that never happens, can not happen. It is stupid.

That India will get Pakistan occupied Kashmir is fiction. That Pakistan will get India occupied Kashmir is fiction. That Kashmir will become an independent country is fiction.

If Modi and Imran can bring permanent peace, they will win the Nobel Peace Prize. Modi wondered why he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after he settled the border between India and Bangladesh. Well, nobody really knew there was a dispute there. But the whole world knows about the border dispute on the other side. Figure that out and win the Nobel.

Imran is on the Time 100 List this year. If he can work with Modi and bring peace, he will be Time Person Of The Year. Might as well. And 2019 will be 1992 all over again when he put Pakistan on the world map by winning the Cricket World Cup.

But the cover of Time magazine is less important. Even the Nobel is less important. What is truly important is peace will allow the two countries to truly tackle poverty.

Imran Khan Could Bring Peace https://t.co/e9sgWyArDr @ImranKhanPTI @narendramodi @BJP4India
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) April 17, 2019

Pages

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

The Major Religions

Bernie Is Leading

Imran Khan Could Bring Peace