A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 258 of 725
Eliminate The Debt Ceiling
Several days ago, Catherine Rampell published a reasonable column calling for eliminating the century-old US debt ceiling, something no other nation has ever had. The issue is hot again as once again the debt ceiling is being rapidly approached.
www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/07/16/catherine-rampell-abolish/
The latest story is that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. This is what used to be known as “good government,” but in the current environment, even this apparently reasonable deal, which also has no non-economic sideshows involving abortion or whatever, may yet not pass. Pelosi says it must be agreed to by Monday evening if it will get passed properly by Congress before they all go on leave. Otherwise, the government might run out of money in early September (corporate tax payments have been way down due to Trump tax law). Eliminating the ceiling would avoid all this bs.
When the WH and Congress have been controlled by the same party, it has been no big deal raising the debt ceiling. However, when there has been split partisan control the game has been the WH pushing raising the ceiling while the opposition party in Congress has made lots of complaining noises and often made demands before raising it. The problem this time is the WH, not Congress. Acting WH Chief of Staff Mulvaney was part of the tea party fanatics in the House who when Obama was prez tried to block raising the ceiling. Mulvaney and Trump have indulged in fantasies that if there is a debt default, Trump could personally control which agencies get funded and which do not. This is not true, and maybe they are figuring it out, but Mulvaney has said nothing.
If Trump messes up the deal, it will be all his fault, as his own Treasury Secretary has cut a deal with Pelosi and the GOP-controlled Senate is ready to go along. He may not have figured out that triggering a shutdown did not help him last year. Triggering a debt default this year will be worse.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Sure... Fuck it. Spend that credit up like there's no tomorrow.
Because according to most Democrats in 2019, there is no tomorrow.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans want to protect the statues of Robert E. Lee. They describe this man as an American hero, but that requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.
It also requires ignoring the immense suffering for which Robert E. Lee was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield.
Lee's own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that it often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of an abolitionist. The argument Lee made was that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most importantly, it is better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention.
Lee’s heavy hand on his Arlington plantation nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.
During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved freemen and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” with the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”
Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander A.P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”
The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth the South’s slave empire was built on: the happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with whites. As Pryor writes, “fighting against brave and competent African Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society.” The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.
As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. “Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged ‘the same as white soldiers.’” Lee’s response was that “negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.” Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that blacks could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that “Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers.” Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lee’s surrender.
Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing “that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.”
Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and “could not vote intelligently,” and that granting them suffrage would “excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.” Lee explained that “the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of pNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:What is fascinating is who didn't get statues honoring them in the South and why modern Republicans do not admire these generals nor raise statues to them:
Originally posted by THG:
All these years posting here and kiki, while attacking you, shows she still doesn't know how to do it. Sad second, it's very sad.
There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves — one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white supremacist paramilitaries. But the only statue of Longstreet in the American South is one in his hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey hidden in the Pennsylvania woods of Gettysburg. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.
The white supremacists who have protested on Lee’s behalf are not betraying his legacy. In fact, they have every reason to admire him. Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for. Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience.
The question is why anyone else would.
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/monuments-to-individuals/james-lo
ngstreet/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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lol
Democrats have a long standing tradition of being the racist party in America.
2019 Democrats are no exception. They're more focused on race than they ever were.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Only 3 Liberal Ideas Are Popular Enough to become law
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/liberal-ideas-are-not-as-popula
r-as-you-think/
A new PBS/Marist poll is out, and it shows that Americans are generally in love with liberal ideas. Hooray!
But don’t get too excited yet. Americans say they like lots of things when they’re asked out of the blue, but in the real world the other side gets to weigh in before opinions become solidified. Because of this, there’s a rule of thumb that a political proposition doesn’t truly have majority support until it polls at about two-thirds or better. This is a pretty good rule of thumb, and with that in mind here are the results of the poll:
Background checks for gun owners are popular enough to become law. An optional version of Medicare for All is a strong contender, and government control of prescription drug prices is a close call, but probably pretty popular.
And that’s it. There are a few more ideas on the list that might be good campaign fodder depending on how they’re presented, but they aren’t likely to be hugely popular selling points. As for the rest, just forget it.
Only 3 Liberal Ideas are popular enough to become law:
1) Background checks for gun purchases at gun shows or other private sales
2) Medicare for all that want it, that is allow all Americans to choose between a national health insurance program or their own private health insurance (This is NOT Medicare-for-all, which is unpopular because it ends insurance for 180 million people who already have insurance)
3) Government regulation of prescription drug prices
Then there are the Liberal Ideas that would be difficult to sell:
A) A pathway to citizenship for immigrants who are in the US illegally
B) Legalizing marijuana nationally
C) A Green New Deal to address climate change by investing government money in green jobs and energy efficient infrastructure
D) A Wealth Tax, that is a higher tax rate on income above one million dollars
Then there are the Liberal Ideas that are too far ahead of their time, ranked from most popular to least:
A ban on the sale of semi-automatic assault guns such as the AK-47 or the AR-15
A national minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour
Having the United States rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement
Free college tuition at public colleges or universities
A tax on emissions of carbon based fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas
Repealing Obamacare (** Not Really a Liberal Idea, but people were asked **)
Getting rid of the electoral college as part of the presidential election process
Medicare for all, that is a national health insurance program for all Americans that replaces private health insurance
Abolishing the death penalty
A national health insurance program available for immigrants who are in the US illegally
Decriminalizing illegal border crossings
Providing reparations for slavery
A Universal Basic Income of $1,000 per month for each American 18 or older
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND
The FOUNDING FATHERS ON POPULISM
The Founding Fathers were intitally populist. BEFORE the American revolution, they were rabble-rousers and demagaogues. Think of it SECOND! The Founding Fathers were advocating TREASON ... a violent revolt ... like, with guns and cannons and ships of war, even ... in a civil war against the British monarchy. And they needed "the people" on their side!
PATRICK HENRY "Give me liberty or give me death!"
“Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.”
THOMAS JEFFERSON "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
SAMUEL ADAMS founder of the Sons of Liberty, "It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
The best decription of the Founding Fathers and their use of, and views about, populism can be found here: https://www.quora.com/Why-were-the-founding-fathers-so-concerned-about
-populism Unfortunately, it won't let me copy the text, but the writer says that the FF knew that their revolt wouldn't work unless their army was supported by "the people" because their army needed to "live off the land" - given food and shelter by farmers and other colonists. However, some of the FF themselves were out to profit from their newly-gained (economic) freedom (no British taxes, no East India Company monopoly, no restrictions on westward expansion) and so once the colonies were freed from British rule, the wealthier among them quickly sought to establish their own rule. Hence, the quick turnaround on the topic of populism.
(SOME OF) THE FOUNDING FATHERS ON POLITICAL PARTIES (FACTIONS)
GEORGE WASHINGTON The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
JOHN ADAMS "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Mostly, they were concerned about one party or another gaining such a strong majority that it could oppress the minority, so the construction of a "republic" plus the separation of powers made it less likely that any one party would gain the upper hand it all three branches of government.
ON GENERAL LEE, AND GENERAL SHERMAN
On balance the only differences that I can see between General Lee and General Sherman were that
1) General ("total war" "March to the Sea") Sherman was on the winning side and
2) General Sherman's actions led to the freeing up slaves, altho that was not his purpose for joining the north
3) General Sherman was just as brutal against the native Americans, using his "total war" tactics in the "pacification" of the Plains Indians by eliminating their source of food: the buffalo, and forcing them into reservations
Before the Civil War (1859), General Sherman lived in Louisianna. He was NOT an ardent opponent of slavery,apparently renting one out for a year in Moultrie and POSSIBLY owning one or
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Before I went chasing free money for reparations for slavery of people who are long dead, by people who are long dead, I'd be looking for reparations for Clinton's policies that see more black kids being raised my single mothers than ever in history because their fathers are locked up for 25 to life.
I'd also be looking into Kamala Harris' professional career before casting a vote her way.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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I'd never vote for Harris because she caved to Obama's Federal "settlement" with the too big to fail banks, letting them off the hook with no prosecutions and a slap on the wrist. She's a toady in black skin, like Obama and Booker.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Health care was a key factor in Democrats’ victory in the 2018 midterm elections, and it should be a big plus in 2020 as well. The shared Democratic position — that every legal resident should have access to affordable care, regardless of income or health status — is popular.
But right now, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are having an ugly argument about health care. There are important differences between the two men’s policy proposals, and it’s fine to point that out. What’s not fine is the name-calling and false assertions. Both men are behaving badly. And for their country’s sake, they need to stop it.
You can think of the Center for American Progress’s Medicare Extra plan as simultaneously trying to answer Bernie’s leftist critique of Obamacare and Biden’s centrist critique of Bernie’s Medicare-for-all.
Like Medicare-for-all — and unlike Obamacare — it’s universal, it uses Medicare’s pricing power to hold down costs, and it rebuilds the entire health system around public insurance. But like Obamacare, it’s designed to minimize middle-class tax increases while stepping gingerly around people’s fear of change and mistrust of the government. And so, unlike Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill, it holds on to much of the employer-based private insurance market and includes means-tested premiums and cost sharing for all but the poorest Americans.
According to an analysis the Center for American Progress commissioned from the independent health care consulting firm Avalere and provided exclusively to Vox, Medicare Extra would achieve universal coverage — adding 35 million people to the insurance rolls — while cutting national health expenditures by more than $300 billion annually.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/23/20699958/medicare-extra-cent
er-american-progress-single-payer-health-reform
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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