Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, in a recent article entitled "Closer Than You Think: Top 15 Things Romney and Obama Agree On" provided a list of the SIMILARITIES between Obama and Romney policies.
A distillation of Mr. Dixon's list:
15. Obama and Romney maintain that only the private sector can or should create jobs.
14. Medicare, Medicaid and social security need to be cut to relieve the “deficit”.
13. Climate change treaties and negotiations are to be avoided at all costs.
12. NAFTA-like “free trade” corporate rights agreements should continue to be established.
11. Banks and Wall Street speculators deserve bailouts and protection from criminal liability. Underwater and foreclosed homeowners deserve no moratoriums or help.
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10. Palestinians should be occupied and dispossessed, Iran should be starved with sanctions and threatened with war, Cuba embargoed, and foreign policy should consist of bombing black and brown populations to expand global empire.
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10. Palestinians should be occupied and dispossessed, Iran should be starved with sanctions and threatened with war, Cuba embargoed, and foreign policy should consist of bombing black and brown populations to expand global empire.
9. Africa should be militarized, destabilized, plundered, invaded by proxy armies or Western power aggression under the guise of “humanitarianism".
8. A US president can kidnap citizens of the US or any nation on the face of the earth and torture and indefinitely detain them or even murder them without trial.
7. Oil and energy companies and other mega-polluters may drill freely offshore almost everywhere, may be allowed to poison land and watersheds with fracking, etc.
6. The FCC should not regulate telecoms to ensure access to the poor or to guarantee network neutrality.
5. “Clean coal” and “safe nuclear energy” are to be promoted despite cancer epidemics and other environmental and medically devastating consequences.
4. Immigrants must be jailed and deported in record numbers, or locked up with little or no due process in atrocious privatized immigration prisons.
3. Private health care must benefit corporate vendors to obscene degrees at the sacrifice of accessible health care for all Americans.
2. There must be no minimum wage increases, no right to form unions, no right to negotiate or strike, no enforcement or reform of existing labor laws.
1. We must escalate the disastrous 40 year war on drugs and keep the prison industrial complex housing a shameful 2.3 million plus people continuing on.
This is what Mr. Dixon came up with but, as he admitted in his comments section, there are additional (equally chilling) similarities to be added to the list.
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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Libby, what amazes me most, is that there are so many essays of academics, analyzing that the dipolism in politics is a dead end structure, which derives democracy of its essence, but still...Thank you for sharing!!
Once you get beneath public personalities, style, preferred rhetoric, and image, it is amazing how similar their positions on essential issues really are. As a crucial consequence, these become non-issues and are ignored since they are not in dispute between the two major candidates. [r]
There is no doubt black (or biracial) people have been crapped on for centuries and their feeling that one of their members has made it to the top in the USA is a fantastic victory. But unfortunately this is a very false victory since Obama, although he is well aware of this automatic support by fellow blacks, has done nothing to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the blacks imprisoned on trumped up charges (and there are lots of them). Obama is what they call an Oreo, a black person with a white center. And as much as I admire Morgan Freeman as an actor, the point about bi-racialism is irrelevant since I doubt the racial purity of anyone, black or white.
It's the same problem with labor and the Democrats. Labor organizations automatically support the Democrats since the Republicans are overwhelmingly anti-labor but Obama in particular and the Democrats in general do nothing for labor and consistently ignore the general anti-labor atmosphere in the country.
It's the same problem with labor and the Democrats. Labor organizations automatically support the Democrats since the Republicans are overwhelmingly anti-labor but Obama in particular and the Democrats in general do nothing for labor and consistently ignore the general anti-labor atmosphere in the country.
The other thing they have in common is that all their political similarities are naked pandering for campaign donations where Romney is consistently out raising Obama by about 25%.
Libby
There is a basic flaw in the whole perception of "personhood" that allows corporations to become "Immortal Beings" of immense power, who, by mass media, then create composite caricatures of what polls tell them "we" want as Leaders, and then sell these soulless "Immoral Beings" back to us as "Real People" of varying conscience, but unwavering loyalty only to their creators.
There is a basic flaw in the whole perception of "personhood" that allows corporations to become "Immortal Beings" of immense power, who, by mass media, then create composite caricatures of what polls tell them "we" want as Leaders, and then sell these soulless "Immoral Beings" back to us as "Real People" of varying conscience, but unwavering loyalty only to their creators.
any national organism tends to calcify with age, as privileged agencies use their power to get and retain more power. it's the political equivalent of the 'rich get richer' truism.
the most powerful man in the world is in fact just the wizard of oz- shiny clothes, but walked by the levers of the bureaucracy.
while you worry about personalities you are wasting your time. the system must be changed, and that will only happen when enough americans see the need and agree on a basic plan. my own experience suggests this will not happen, so if you don't like what is going on in the usa, leave. while you stay, you are supporting murderers.
the most powerful man in the world is in fact just the wizard of oz- shiny clothes, but walked by the levers of the bureaucracy.
while you worry about personalities you are wasting your time. the system must be changed, and that will only happen when enough americans see the need and agree on a basic plan. my own experience suggests this will not happen, so if you don't like what is going on in the usa, leave. while you stay, you are supporting murderers.
What you are describing in your post is, in essence, a fascist state - at least according to Mussolini's definition of a corporate controlled government.
Wow. I wonder if that means they'd appoint the same Supreme Court justices, cut the top tax rate just the same, and be equally as obsequious to Israel. Not that those questions matter since you're voting for neither.
One of your dreaded “Nazi’s” actually has a very good analogy. He compares the elections to one of those write in contests on a box of fruit loops; vote for what Olympic star should be on the front of our box. Everybody votes giving personnel information, like emails and home address’s, then fruit loops ignores the results of the “election” and puts whatever Olympic star was going to be on the box in the first place, the one that will sell the most fruit loops. Then they go about happily mining all the personnel information they have received in the contest and sell it to the highest bidder. The only difference between Obama and Romney is color. Vote for the psychopath of your preferred color!
Tweedledi or Tweedledum. A sad state of affairs and the reason why so many don't bother to vote. R
Jeez, Libby! Can't you just lie to us? You are always destroying my hope! Good one. R
Jan Sand wrote:
"Obama, although he is well aware of this automatic support by fellow blacks, has done nothing to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the blacks imprisoned on trumped up charges (and there are lots of them). Obama is what they call an Oreo, a black person with a white center. "
I think that Jan is right.
I think that the problem is with the whole system. I just wrote as a comment to MarkinJapan's post:
I think that the problem lies with the whole system. In all modern societies war technologies have got much too much power. With powerful machineries the commanders can kill large numbers of people. The technology is sophisticated and long trainings are needed to use it. So we need big number of specialists to build weapons and to use them.
Often we cannot change these specialists at all by elections. So in reality heads of weapon companies, heads of state offices responsible for the security issues and heads of armies have got more and more lasting power than politicians as elected by people's votes?
And the President can just follow the advices he/she gets from the state offices?
"Obama, although he is well aware of this automatic support by fellow blacks, has done nothing to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the blacks imprisoned on trumped up charges (and there are lots of them). Obama is what they call an Oreo, a black person with a white center. "
I think that Jan is right.
I think that the problem is with the whole system. I just wrote as a comment to MarkinJapan's post:
I think that the problem lies with the whole system. In all modern societies war technologies have got much too much power. With powerful machineries the commanders can kill large numbers of people. The technology is sophisticated and long trainings are needed to use it. So we need big number of specialists to build weapons and to use them.
Often we cannot change these specialists at all by elections. So in reality heads of weapon companies, heads of state offices responsible for the security issues and heads of armies have got more and more lasting power than politicians as elected by people's votes?
And the President can just follow the advices he/she gets from the state offices?
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