U.S. Politics

[norwegianvillain]

The political system in the US was created to make presidents have as little power as possible, which is why congress is blocking Obama all the time. In order to radically change politics you need overwhelming support of the people. It's a VERY good thing that 51.2% (Obama's votes vs Romney) of the voters are unable to impose dramatic laws on the other half. People in Europe that shun congress because it stops Obama's semi-socialist policies doesn't seem to understand this.

Edited August 12, 2015 by norwegianvillain

[El Zen]

Something which I find mysterious about American politics is how the Democrats became the party for black folk.

It was the Republicans who were anti-slavery and it was the Democrats who were pro-slavery and white supremacists.

Even as late as 1912 the Democrat president was implementing segregation in the Civil Service.

So how did the change happen?

Our resident Yanks must correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there was a massive realignment at the time of the civil rights movement. Wasn't it LBJ who was fairly supportive of the CRM and African Americans began voting overwhelmingly Democratic while Southern conservatives shifted to the Republicans for good?

[El Zen]

The political system in the US was created to make presidents have as little power as possible, which is why congress is blocking Obama all the time. In order to radically change politics you need overwhelming support of the people. It's a VERY good thing that 51.2% (Obama's votes vs Romney) of the voters are unable to impose dramatic laws on the other half. People in Europe that shun congress because it stops Obama's semi-socialist policies doesn't seem to understand this.

It's a fair point about checks and balances and that it in principle is a good thing they exist. That doesn't mean you can't think the Republican majority are ***holes.

And Obama a semi-socialist? If only that were true.

[norwegianvillain]

 

The political system in the US was created to make presidents have as little power as possible, which is why congress is blocking Obama all the time. In order to radically change politics you need overwhelming support of the people. It's a VERY good thing that 51.2% (Obama's votes vs Romney) of the voters are unable to impose dramatic laws on the other half. People in Europe that shun congress because it stops Obama's semi-socialist policies doesn't seem to understand this.

It's a fair point about checks and balances and that it in principle is a good thing they exist. That doesn't mean you can't think the Republican majority are ***holes.

And Obama a semi-socialist? If only that were true. 

I do think both GOP and democrat politicians are 455h0le5.

 

If socialised healtcare isn't socialism, I don't know what is. I'm not saying Obama is an outright socialist, but some of his policies are.

 

Besides that, he's a f**** terrible president. He's bombed more coutries than both Bushes combined, as well as f***** over several coming generations with his insane spending. 

Edited August 12, 2015 by norwegianvillain

[El Zen]

Is socialised medicine (if only that were true!) any more socialist than, say, 'socialised' education or 'socialised' roads for that matter? I guess Mr Obama would ideally have liked to be a bit more radical, but on a scale from dead flaccid to massively erect, Mr Obama's socialist score is about as semi as Rantin Rob watching gay porn.

Not that I think his presidency is a complete disaster, but he hasn't quite delivered the change we all wanted to believe in.

[norwegianvillain]

Bombing seven countries and increasing national debt (which in simple terms is a tax put on future generations) by $7.5 trillion in six years is pretty disastrous imo. To put it into perspective, Norway's, ''one of the richest countries in the world'', total GDP was $512 billion in 2013.

 

He has done some good, like improving relations with Cuba and Iran, which never would have happened under a GOP nutjob, but his failures far outweigh his successes. 

[maqroll]

 

Something which I find mysterious about American politics is how the Democrats became the party for black folk.

It was the Republicans who were anti-slavery and it was the Democrats who were pro-slavery and white supremacists.

Even as late as 1912 the Democrat president was implementing segregation in the Civil Service.

So how did the change happen?

Our resident Yanks must correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there was a massive realignment at the time of the civil rights movement. Wasn't it LBJ who was fairly supportive of the CRM and African Americans began voting overwhelmingly Democratic while Southern conservatives shifted to the Republicans for good?

 

That's correct, but the seeds were sown during 16 years of FDR and New Deal policies which helped many blacks enter the middle class (until banks and municipal governments squeezed them into ghettos.) 

[Awol]

It will be interesting to see if the FBI's investigation into Hilary emailing highly classified material through her private account while Sec' of State derails her bid. If so it could be a more open race than people currently expect.

[MakemineVanilla]

It will be interesting to see if the FBI's investigation into Hilary emailing highly classified material through her private account while Sec' of State derails her bid. If so it could be a more open race than people currently expect.

 

I always like Bill Hicks's joke that after every president is elected some guys in suits lead them into a back room, hit the lights, and show the real footage of the Kennedy assassination.

 

Then when the film ends they ask: 'Any questions?'. 

[leviramsey]

Sanders is the only half sane one of all the candidates. But because he's a Socialist, the typical Amero-Pavlovian response is that he is the insane one.

We'll end up with what we deserve and then export the byproduct to the rest of the world. Sorry about that.

Sanders is a nationalist, who effectively (by not believing in either free trade or open borders) believes that non-US citizens aren't fully human.

[leviramsey]

Something which I find mysterious about American politics is how the Democrats became the party for black folk.

It was the Republicans who were anti-slavery and it was the Democrats who were pro-slavery and white supremacists.

Even as late as 1912 the Democrat president was implementing segregation in the Civil Service.

So how did the change happen?

Our resident Yanks must correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there was a massive realignment at the time of the civil rights movement. Wasn't it LBJ who was fairly supportive of the CRM and African Americans began voting overwhelmingly Democratic while Southern conservatives shifted to the Republicans for good?

Basically the size of it.

Southern strategy

Strangely enough, Richard Nixon, who was the first Republican to really use the strategy (the short time between the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the election to some extent makes Goldwater's actual use of the strategy questionable), is arguably the most left-wing post-Roosevelt President:

* price controls

* formed the EPA, pushed for the Clean Air Act, requiring environmental impact statements, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act

* proposed a variety of healthcare reforms ranging from a Romney/Obamacare style insurance mandate to single-payer with income-based premiums

* did more than any other administration to integrate Southern schools (the backlash against school integration came when it was time for schools in Northern cities (most famously Boston) to integrate)

* implemented affirmative action, endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment

[norwegianvillain]

 

Sanders is the only half sane one of all the candidates. But because he's a Socialist, the typical Amero-Pavlovian response is that he is the insane one.

We'll end up with what we deserve and then export the byproduct to the rest of the world. Sorry about that.

Sanders is a nationalist, who effectively (by not believing in either free trade or open borders) believes that non-US citizens aren't fully human.

 

I guess Gary Johnson is the only candidate that doesn't want to shut Mexicans out. Even the ''libertarian'' Rand Paul want strict border control. Immigration has never, and will never work when you have a welfare state.

Edited August 13, 2015 by norwegianvillain

[leviramsey]

That's correct, but the seeds were sown during 16 years of FDR and New Deal policies which helped many blacks enter the middle class (until banks and municipal governments squeezed them into ghettos.)

Not exactly.

On housing segregation

 

No doubt, private prejudice and suburbanites’ desire for homogenous middle-class environments contributed to segregation in St. Louis and other metropolitan areas. But these explanations are too partial, and too conveniently excuse public policy from responsibility. A more powerful cause of metropolitan segregation nationwide was the explicit intents of federal, state, and local governments to create racially segregated metropolises. In the case of St. Louis, these intents were expressed in mutually reinforcing federal, state, and local policies that included:

* Segregated public housing projects that separated blacks and whites who had previously lived in more integrated urban areas

* Government subsidies for white suburban developments that excluded blacks, depriving African Americans of the 20th century home-equity driven wealth gains reaped by whites

Those subsidies in the 20 years or so after World War II account for the majority of the discrepancy in median wealth between whites and blacks.

 

* Urban renewal and redevelopment programs to shift ghetto locations, in the guise of cleaning up those slums

* Government regulators’ tacit (and sometimes open) support for real estate and financial sector policies and practices that explicitly promoted residential segregation

* A government-sponsored dual labor market that made suburban housing less affordable for African Americans by preventing them from accumulating wealth needed to participate in homeownership

At the beginning of the New Deal, Congress adopted a public housing program to simultaneously put Americans back to work and address a national housing shortage. Part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Public Works Administration (PWA) housing efforts were headed by a confidante of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, who specified a “neighborhood composition rule”: Public housing projects could not alter the racial composition of neighborhoods in which they were located. Projects located in white areas could house only white tenants, those in black areas could house only black tenants, and projects in integrated neighborhoods could be integrated. Going further, the PWA segregated projects even in neighborhoods where there was no such previous pattern. As Roosevelt’s biographer James MacGregor Burns concluded, cities “in which prewar segregation was virtually unknown … received segregated housing, starting a new ‘local custom’ still in force many years later.” In its segregation policy, the PWA was consistent with other New Deal agencies. The Works Progress Administration, for example, segregated its work crews in St. Louis and elsewhere in the nation.

Restrictive covenants also became an expression of public policy when, in the early New Deal, the Federal Housing Administration subsidized suburbanization and made the existence of racial covenants an important condition of mortgage insurance. Beginning in 1934, and continuing thereafter, FHA underwriting manuals stated that “protection against some adverse influences is obtained by the proper zoning and deed restrictions that prevail in a neighborhood” and elaborated that “the more important among the adverse influential factors are the ingress of undesirable racial or nationality groups.” As public housing helped define the north side of St. Louis as black, and the south side as white, this FHA policy began a half-century of federal government effort to move St. Louis’s white families to newly growing exclusively white suburbs.

For those without a background in the history of finance, from the 1930s to the 1960s, if the FHA was unwilling to underwrite a mortgage, the loan generally didn't happen: if a the property wasn't bound by a covenant prohibiting black people from living there, no mortgage would be written.

 

The FHA not only insured individual mortgages of white homeowners. Perhaps even more important, it effectively financed the construction of entire segregated subdivisions by making advance commitments to builders who met FHA construction standards for materials used, lot size, setback from street, and location in a properly zoned neighborhood that prohibited industry or commercial development threatening home values. Aware that the Supreme Court had prohibited explicit racial zoning, the FHA took the position that the presence of African Americans in nearby neighborhoods was nonetheless a consideration that could threaten FHA insurability and that racial exclusion in the insured subdivision itself could be accomplished if deeds in the subdivision included mutually obligatory clauses prohibiting African Americans from residence.

Subdivision developers who obtained such commitments could use them to persuade bankers to issue low-interest construction loans. Developers could then also assure potential (white) buyers that their homes were FHA-approved and that FHA (and later VA) mortgages would be available at low interest rates and with no or limited down payments. The FHA’s policy was to prefer homebuilding priced for lower-middle- to middle-class buyers.

At its peak in 1943 when civilian construction was limited, the FHA financed 80 percent of all private home construction nationwide. During the postwar period, it dropped to one-third.

But even when subdivisions were not built with advance FHA commitments, individual homebuyers needed access to FHA or VA insured mortgages, so similar standards for new construction pertained. Subdivisions throughout St. Louis County were developed in this way, with FHA advance commitments for the builders and a resulting whites-only sale policy.

The FHA’s suburban whites-only policy continued through the postwar housing boom that lasted through the mid-1960s. In 1947, the FHA sanitized its manual, removing literal race references but still demanding “compatibility among neighborhood occupants” for mortgage guarantees. “Neighborhoods constituted of families that are congenial,” the FHA manual explained, “…generally exhibit strong appeal and stability.” This very slightly sanitized language suggested no change in policy, and the FHA continued to finance builders with open policies of racial exclusion for another 15 years.

These practices of the FHA were once well known, but have now mostly been forgotten, although their effects persist. In 1959, the United States Commission on Civil Rights’ annual report summarized how the suburban landscape, by then firmly established, was created:

 

Nonwhite home buyers and renters have not, however enjoyed the benefits of FHA mortgage insurance to the same extent as whites. According to testimony given before this Commission, less than 2 percent of the total number of new homes insured by FHA since 1946 have been available to minorities. Most of this housing has been all-Negro developments in the South.…

Although the relatively low participation [of] nonwhites has in part been due to their lower incomes, FHA bears some responsibility. Of great significance in this respect are FHA’s policies with regard to the discriminatory practices toward Negroes of real estate boards, home builders and lending institutions.

For the first 16 years of its life, FHA itself actually encouraged the use of racially restrictive covenants. It not only acquiesced in their use but in fact contributed to perfecting them. The 1938 FHA Underwriting Manual, which contained the criteria used in determining eligibility for receipt of FHA benefits, warned against insuring property that would be used by “inharmonious racial groups,” and declared that for stability of a neighborhood, “properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” The Manual contained a model restrictive covenant which FHA strongly recommended for inclusion in all sales contracts. Furthermore, FHA instructed land valuators that among their considerations should be a determination as to whether “effective restrictive covenants are recorded against the entire tract, since these provide the surest protection against undesirable encroachment and inharmonious use. To be most effective, deed restrictions should be imposed upon all land in the immediate environment of the subject location.” [Footnote: …Many housing experts believe that while FHA did not invent the restrictive covenant its official sanction played a large role in the spread of racial restrictions, particularly in newly developed areas.]

FHA continued this practice of encouraging racially restricted housing developments until 1950, despite mounting pressure from civic organizations, State and local antidiscrimination commissions and other groups to abandon the practice. The only change made by FHA during this period was a softening of the wording in the Underwriting Manual in 1947. This change in language amounted to no real change in policy, however….

While the unenforceability of racial restrictive covenants [following the Supreme Court’s 1948 Shelley ruling] has undoubtedly increased Negro participation in FHA’s insurance programs by making available to them additional existing housing, it has done little in the way of new housing or of apartment units in suburban and outlying areas. There the discriminatory practices of the real estate business, home building industry, and financial institutions continue for the most part unabated. FHA insurance remains available to builders with known policies of discrimination. With the help of FHA financing, all-white suburbs have been constructed in recent years around almost every large city. Huge FHA-insured projects that become whole new residential towns have been built with an acknowledged policy of excluding Negroes.

In the St. Louis metropolitan area as well as elsewhere, the FHA and VA continued to promote racial restrictions in their loan insurance programs until the 1960s.

The FHA seal of approval guaranteed that a subdivision was for whites only. Advertisements for suburban subdivisions like those from 1952 featured here were commonplace in St. Louis (and nationwide). The two advertisements were among those collected in a booklet for home seekers, published and distributed by the Home Builders Association of Greater St. Louis. By marketing an “FHA Financed” subdivision in Ferguson, and an “FHA approved” Peaseway subdivision in Kirkwood, these ads signal the development’s whites-only character. Other advertisements in the booklet tout a “Veterans’ Preference” subdivision called Woodson, located in Overland (a few towns south of Ferguson); and “FHA terms” for houses in Webster Groves.

This governmental policy of segregation, though now more than a half-century distant, has had enduring consequences. It contributed mightily not only to our present-day residential segregation, but to all aspects of black-white economic inequality. For example, as shown in the Kirkwood subdivision advertisement, homes were marketed as selling to white FHA buyers for “$8,100 up” in 1952. In that year, such home prices were about twice the national median family income of $3,890, and easily affordable to lower-middle or middle-class African Americans, especially to veterans if they could have benefitted from VA mortgage guarantees. A decade later, when assistant principal Larman Williams and engineer Adel Allen were looking for homes in integrated middle-class suburban neighborhoods, those homes were still affordable. Today, however, houses in Kirkwood sell for about $400,000, more than six times national median family income, and mostly unaffordable to working- and middle-class families. But for whites permitted to buy in Kirkwood 50 years ago, the advantages they’ve been able to bequeath to their children have been considerable, relative to those of blacks who were denied similar opportunities.

Even accounting for home improvement investments that owners of these homes have made since 1952, the capital gain for white homeowners, and their heirs, endures. The federal government’s support for residential segregation in the mid-20th century is largely responsible for the fact that while the median family income of African Americans is now about 60 percent of whites’ income, the median household wealth of African Americans is only about 5 percent of whites’ wealth. This enormous difference translates into differences between blacks and whites in the security and comfort of retirement (and in the obligations of adult children to divert their incomes to support elderly parents), in the ability of young people to attend college, and in the selectivity of the colleges they can afford to attend.

During World War II, St. Louis was the site of a large arms and ammunition industry. The St. Louis Small Arms Ammunition Plant alone employed 40,000 workers. At first, this federally controlled plant would not hire African Americans except as janitors, landscape gardeners, or other service workers, but after civil rights demonstrations at the plant in 1942, the plant agreed to hire blacks for production work – but only on a separate, segregated production line. In 1944, the plant finally agreed to integrate its production lines, but by then, the war was nearly over.

The federal government also had a role in other industries’ treatment of black workers. For example, while the United Auto Workers union at the Chrysler plant in the St. Louis suburb of Fenton was unusually hospitable to black workers, unions in other industries denied membership and thus jobs to African Americans. In St. Louis (and elsewhere) these whites-only unions nonetheless were recognized as exclusive bargaining agents by the federal government. This had an especially big impact in the construction trades, which offered numerous jobs during the suburban housing boom but excluded African American workers. Eventually the National Labor Relations Board concluded that it was violating the Constitution when it certified unions that denied membership to black workers, but it did not make such a ruling until the suburban housing boom was mostly complete.

I'm fully willing to support reparations, but not for slavery (which has had basically no effect on the economic situation today). I'm willing to support reparations for the New Deal.

Edited August 13, 2015 by leviramsey

[maqroll]

[HanoiVillan]

 

Sanders is the only half sane one of all the candidates. But because he's a Socialist, the typical Amero-Pavlovian response is that he is the insane one.

We'll end up with what we deserve and then export the byproduct to the rest of the world. Sorry about that.

Sanders is a nationalist, who effectively (by not believing in either free trade or open borders) believes that non-US citizens aren't fully human.

 

 

Please tell me this was a joke. Because honestly that's one of the dumbest things I've ever read if you're being serious. I mean, no offence, but Jesus. 

[leviramsey]

Sanders is the only half sane one of all the candidates. But because he's a Socialist, the typical Amero-Pavlovian response is that he is the insane one.

We'll end up with what we deserve and then export the byproduct to the rest of the world. Sorry about that.

Sanders is a nationalist, who effectively (by not believing in either free trade or open borders) believes that non-US citizens aren't fully human.

 

Please tell me this was a joke. Because honestly that's one of the dumbest things I've ever read if you're being serious. I mean, no offence, but Jesus.

Trotskyists

Sanders combines his populist appeals with economic nationalism. Far from pursuing genuinely socialist politics, which is based on revolutionary internationalism, he opposes the international unity of the working class, calling instead for American workers to rally in defense of “their” national state against foreign capital.

The general thrust of Sanders’ argument can be summed up as the following: global trade undermines the sovereignty of the United States and results in the off-shoring of American jobs overseas to authoritarian regimes, resulting in declining living standards for American workers. As an alternative, Sanders proposes various protectionist measures.

This is the content of his stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he has joined congressional Democrats and trade union officials in opposing. A statement released by Sanders declared that the TPP would “undermine US sovereignty,” eliminate protectionist “Buy American” laws, and “reward authoritarian regimes like Vietnam.”

“We need to regroup and come up with a trade policy which demands that corporate America start investing in this country rather than in countries all over the world,” Sanders said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program.

Virtually unmentioned in Sanders' numerous statements against the TPP is the basic geopolitical agenda that underlies the proposed trade bloc. The TPP is the economic component of the Obama administration’s anti-Chinese “pivot to Asia.” Sanders does not want to raise this issue because he, along with his congressional colleagues in both parties, supports such an aggressive policy towards China.

His interest in opposing the trade deal is to divert popular anger over unemployment, wage cuts and austerity along reactionary nationalist lines.

Since his election to Congress in 1991, Sanders has repeatedly attacked the extension to China of “most favored” trade status, called Normal Trade Relations in the parlance of the federal government. His very first piece of legislation as a congressman was a 1992 bill he co-sponsored with the current Democratic House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, attacking the extension of most favored status to China, which was later vetoed by George H. W. Bush.

Since then, Sanders has sought repeatedly to repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China on protectionist and nationalist grounds. During one such initiative in 2005, he declared that “Corporate America—with the active support of the president of the United States and the congressional leadership-is selling out the American people and making China the economic superpower of the 21st century.”

On the basis of this political line, Sanders has aligned himself with openly right-wing figures. One Republican congressman, in supporting Sanders’ 2005 effort, denounced the production of American flags in China. Echoing this sentiment, Sanders in 2011 attacked the Smithsonian Institute, on the occasion of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington, for selling Chinese-made busts of American presidents in its gift shop, calling on the museum to sell only American-made products.

Sanders, alongside Ron Paul, the right-wing libertarian Republican, sponsored another bill in 2005 calling for the US to withdraw from the World Trade Organization (WTO). A spokesman for Paul claimed that thanks to the WTO, which China joined in 2001, “Our trade competitors now have a bureaucratic means to gang up on us.”

Admittedly one can oppose the WTO on grounds that it opposes free trade.

Following the favored propaganda line of American imperialism, Sanders’ attacks on Chinese trade are often couched in “human rights” rhetoric. In 1998, he co-sponsored a resolution, which passed unanimously, criticizing China’s human rights record and calling on the president to make Chinese diplomatic missions in the US contingent on the inflammatory demand that the US be allowed to establish a diplomatic office in Lhasa, Tibet.

Sanders has, under the guise of “human rights,” supported numerous imperialist interventions, including the NATO war in former Yugoslavia and the current war against ISIS. Sanders’ use of this line with respect to China has an unmistakable political significance.

While he attacks China for its mistreatment of minorities, Sanders has for many years distinguished himself by a nativist stance on immigration. He has sought to scapegoat immigrants in the US for the declining living standards of the American working class. This has won Sanders plaudits from right-wing layers, such as the TV host and anti-immigrant racist Lou Dobbs, who called Sanders “one of the few straight talkers in Congress.”

For years, Sanders has attacked the federal visa program, blaming guest workers for high unemployment and low wages. “You have massively high unemployment for young people, yet we’re talking about expanding visas so that young people from abroad can serve as life guards, become ski instructors, become front desk people, when young people in this country desperately need jobs to pay for a college education,” Sanders told the Washington Post in 2013.

In 2007, Sanders and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley pushed for the suspension of visas for any company announcing layoffs. Sanders has focused particularly on the H-1B visa program, through which American corporations are able to hire highly skilled workers from abroad. Though the program is relatively small, with a cap of 65,000 visas per year, Sanders claims that it has caused a flood of foreign workers pushing Americans out of their jobs.

In 2009, he co-sponsored an amendment, also with Grassley, suspending the use of H-1B visas for banks that accepted federal bailout money. The American Immigration Lawyers Association denounced the amendment as “[creating] a climate of jingoistic divisiveness.”

Sanders has publicly backed Obama's reactionary immigration policy. The administration’s miserly immigration “reforms,” such as the DREAM Act, provide temporary relief from deportation in exchange for paying back taxes and providing the government with detailed personal information, which could be used in future proceedings. Meanwhile, Obama has deported more immigrants than any other president in history and has bragged that under his presidency there are more “boots on the ground” along the US-Mexico border than ever before.

Sanders’ brand of nationalist populism is a phenomenon with deep historical roots in the US. In the 1980s, jingoistic “Buy America” campaigns were utilized by the trade union bureaucracy to disorient and demobilize workers in the face of a plant-closing and wage-cutting offensive by American capitalism. This found its most noxious expression in the racist anti-Japanese campaigns of the United Auto Workers, in which Japanese-made cars were smashed with sledgehammers, and which culminated in the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American worker, in Highland Park, Michigan.

It is no accident that sections of the trade union bureaucracy have come out in support of Sanders’ campaign. They share not only Sanders’ nationalist outlook, but his political goal of disorienting the working class.

While populists such as Sanders claim to be on the side of the American worker, they are in reality working to enforce the continued domination of bourgeois politics over the working class. They promote the line that American workers should seek the protection of “their” national state from the world economy and foreign governments and corporations (as well as “treasonous” American corporations doing business overseas).

Sanders’ overriding political concern is to head off a challenge to American capitalism from the working class by propping up the Democratic Party. This is what accounts for his nationalist politics and his decision to run in the Democratic primaries.

Sanders professes to care about inequality, but he's basically only talking about inequality among a portion of the top 10% or so of the global income distribution: his policies are more or less guaranteed to increase global inequality overall. He can only claim to be opposed to inequality if roughly 90% of the human race somehow doesn't count.

[Ikantcpell]

Atleast it would not be boring if Trump won it.

[El Zen]

Sorry, Levi, but that is a load of absolute nonsense. The article states, amongst a barrage of deeply flawed logic, that the NATO intervention in the Balkans was 'imperialist'. I wonder if they'd call it that to a widow of Srebrenica?

[HanoiVillan]

Sanders is standing to be elected Democrat nominee for the Presidency, not to be elected God. He cannot cure all human suffering, nor should he attempt to try. 

[norwegianvillain]

This popped up on my internet the other day. Good thing we have the US gubment to fund entrepreneurs all over the world.