Recent Comments

1. 1 day ago on Jack Ohman

   I see several comments from conservatives that were repeating common conservative factual misrepresentations about George Soros have been deleted and therefore I have also deleted my responses to them since those responses are now irrelevant. But I saved them elsewhere to again include for the next person who repeats those defamatory distortions.

2. 1 day ago on Jack Ohman

   — Nothing in my comment contradicts what you said. But my reference was to George Soros, who comes as close as humanly possible to the ideal of a “self-made man” starting with nothing and building it into a success worth billions, and contrasting it with specifically-named wealthy conservative donors who started with a huge advantage in terms of INHERITED wealth, connections and privilege and support candidates and causes that help the rich get richer because they think they are entitled by birth.

   Yes, there are some who are born to more modest means and rise to success through their own grit and hard work and become conservative, and there are others, such as the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Kerrys, born to wealth and privilege who promote causes that try to provide the same opportunities that they enjoyed. But that isn’t who I was talking about.

   And I absolutely agree with you that the solution all around is to get money out of politics along with other reforms such as ranked choice voting, ending the filibuster, ending the Electoral College, outlawing gerrymandering and making senate representation proportional to population, but those are different subjects for other threads, and very difficult to enact against the tide of all that billionaire largess being spread around.

3. 2 days ago on Jack Ohman

   — I don’t think the reference is to parking meters literally. I think the reference is a metaphor for the fact that the amounts Soros contributes to candidates and causes that help those less fortunate, is a relatively small amount, like putting quarters into a parking meter, compared to the massive amounts that wealthy elitist donors pour into the coffers of those who will grant them special access and write legislation to REDISTRIBUTE wealth from middle-class working people who produce it to the few richest elites who already have the most.

4. 2 days ago on Jack Ohman

   Oh, and by the way, the amount that George Soros contributes to various Democratic candidates and liberal causes is a teensy fraction of the amount that the Koch brothers, Walton heirs, Mercer heirs, DeVos family or Steve Forbes donate to Republican candidates and conservative causes.

   And I don’t mean Soros compared to all of them combined; I mean that every one of the wealthy elitist donors I listed, every one of which inherited their wealth and networking connections and legacy affirmative action entrance into elite schools and none of which is truly self made, every one of those donors alone dwarfs the amounts that Soros contributes.

   So it is OK for wealthy elitist heirs who inherit their wealth to donate to fellow elitists in exchange for access, but not OK for a truly self-made Holocaust survivor to help those less fortunate, as he himself once was.

5. 2 days ago on Jack Ohman

   George Soros is the closest thing we have to a true “self-made billionaire,” so of course he is the one they vilify and demonize.

   As soon as I see someone throw out the name, “George Soros,” I know we are truly in the la-la-la cult extremist wacko zone. George Soros a Marxist?

   George Soros came to the U.S. at age 15 as a Holocaust survivor with NOTHING and became a multi-billionaire INVESTMENT CAPITALIST. He comes as close as anything to representing a self-made CAPITALIST success story. He played their game and beat them at it.

   Soros’ real crime? He had the NERVE to remember where he came from and seek to retain a system that helps those with less advantage, that helped him when he needed it, so as a result, this most successful INVESTMENT CAPITALIST gets labelled as a communist.

   The difference between George Soros and the Koch brothers, Walton heirs, Mercer heirs, Mitt R-money, DeVos family, Steve Forbes, Bush family, and of course Donald Trump and his kids is that NONE OF THEM got rich by working hard — they inherited wealth and connections from Daddy.

   SOROS is the only TRUE CAPITALIST among them. The rich elite TrumpubliCONs, who support tax giveaways for the few richest elites and massive corporate welfare, want SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, and brutal market capitalism for everyone else.

   Oh, and Holocaust survivor Soros is Jewish. All the more reason for the bigots to use him as they wallow in the mindless hatred of their anti-Semitism.

   Anyone who supports corporate Republican socialists and spits in the face of a true SELF-MADE CAPITALIST … that is the real MARXIST.

6. 4 days ago on Rob Rogers

   — Oh, I understand exactly why we don’t have reforms such as ranked choice voting, real campaign finance reform, outlawing gerrymandering and (in my dreams) elimination of the electoral college and the disproportionate allocation of senate representation.

   The people who benefit from the current status quo are very rich and very powerful and they don’t want it to change. And they know that there are more of us than there are of them, that they have lost the actual vote of the people in seven of the last eight presidential elections, that 20 million more people voted for Democrats for senate than Republicans, and 10 million more in the House.

7. 4 days ago on Rob Rogers

   — I totally agree about ranked choice voting (and other solutions to democratize voting), but I would not characterize the choice between Biden and any of the Republican options as between “horrible and horribler.” Biden is a good, decent, empathetic man who supports good policies and actually gets them enacted even with the slimmest of margins. Perfect? No. He has learned how to play the system, is much more conservative than I am (and ran on that) and, yes, has his flaws.

   I would rather have the choice between good and better, but in a choice between an imperfect good man with the occasional deep disappointment, as this is, and which deserves to be called out, and “horribler,” I’ll take the imperfect good every time.

   But yes, I would prefer more states to go with ranked choice. It enables possibilities for those outside the party system, weakens party control, and encourages greater civility as candidates try to avoid offending other candidates’ voters who might vote for them as the backup.

8. 5 days ago on Rob Rogers

   — Yep. The solution is to get money out of politics. McCain-Feingold made a feeble attempt in that direction, but even that very tepid law got struck down by a Supreme Court majority appointed by Republican presidents who look office despite losing the actual vote of the people, and they were funded by extremely wealthy donors who like being able to buy politicians.

   And yes, the Supreme Court is bought and paid for by wealthy donors through the Federalist Society. I strongly recommend the excellent and well-researched, well-documented book The Scheme, by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who names names, cites dates and specifics and documents sources and explains exactly what happened.

9. 5 days ago on Rob Rogers

   Let’s face it, on this issue, Biden made a solemn promise and betrayed us. Let’s not be like the Trumpers who look the other way when he lies, cheats and commits egregious crimes and they give him a free pass.

   Overall, Biden is doing a great job. But he made a promise, broke that promise and a liberal cartoonist is rightly calling him out for it. There is a time and place for dealing with Trump’s lies and crimes, but playing “whataboutism” is a Trumper game, not ours.

   Sure, in a head-to-head match between Biden and any of the lying, sycophantic Republican cult worshippers, I would vote for Biden without hesitation. But it is right to call him out for what is clearly a betrayal on an important issue.

10. 7 days ago on Clay Jones

    There were far more attacks on our diplomatic corps, and far more deaths (though not of an actual ambassador), under George W Bush than under Obama. The reason you didn’t hear about them is because, unlike treasonous Republicans (who forget that the real coverup was over WMD and their own numerous security lapses), the Democrats did not PLAY POLITICS with the deaths of our brave heroes.

    Here are just a few of the terror attacks at DIPLOMATIC outposts that killed Americans under Bush for which we still have had no hearings:

    6-14-2002 — U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan (12 killed; 51 injured)

    2-28-2003 — U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan (2 killed; 5 injured)

    7-30-2004 — U.S. Embassy in Taskkent, Uzbekistan (2 killed; 9 injured)

    3-2-2006 — U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan (4 killed; 50 injured)

    9-11-2006 — U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria (1 killed; 13 injured)

    1-12-2007 — RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fired on U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece; early morning, vacant building, no deaths or injuries)

    7-9-2008 — U.S. Consulate, Istanbul, Turkey (3 killed).

    And that is just Dubya Bush. That does not even include the 307 Americans killed in Beirut when Reagan was president which, again, the Democrats did not politicize.

    Despite the many ways in which Bush ignored warnings about 9/11, Democrats did not politicize it (though, in my opinion, they should have, to hold Bush accountable for his incompetence).

    We did not politicize the diplomatic outpost deaths under Reagan, Bush I or Bush Jr, but when Republicans rejected funding for diplomatic security that caused Benghazi, they had the NERVE to try to turn their failure back on Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.