Very Glad Bernie is Running for President

What's tough listening to right wing radio is when they get upset about Hillary's supposed progressive positions.  Hillary wants to raise the minimum wage to $15.  Hillary is a pacifist, she'll gut the defense budget.  She'll regulate Wall St.  When both sides of the debate agree on something it's tough to break through and get people to recognize that no, that's not who she is.  She has a long track record of support for and from Wall St.  Support for war, hostility to unions.  Yet she's trying to pass herself off as a person that actually subscribes to progressive opinions.  In fact she's owned by various corporate boards just as Republicans are controlled by corporate boards (though in a lot of cases it's different corporate boards).

With Bernie you do get a guy that genuinely does care about people first, not the Chamber of Commerce and Wall St.  Even Ann Coulter understands that.  Take a look at where the monetary support for Bernie comes from as contrasted with Hillary.

Can he win?  I don't know.  Can the devastating effects of global warming be stopped?  I don't know.  But what else can you do but push forward based on the assumption that good things can happen?  If you sit back and assume you can't overcome these challenges that you definitely won't.

Here's a really good interview with Bernie that covers a lot of ground.  Maybe prior to 2008 you would expect more people to call his opinions crazy, but it's more getting to the point where you have to call it common sense.  Corruption is legal in the US, and the result is that the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy.  So though even the IMF, despite it's long history of imposing trickle down economics throughout the world, is now admitting that trickle down economics doesn't work, our politicians continue to act on the assumption that it does work.  The US system of for profit health care sucks.  Global warming is real, is caused by man, and needs to be mitigated if we're going to avoid devastating consequences.

Bernie isn't perfect, but he admits these obvious things and really does want to address them.  Hillary will admit them but probably has no intention of dealing with them.  She's Obama 2.0.  Even that is better than the Republicans, who are off the reservation chasing Koch money rather than facing reality.  So I'll prefer a Hillary victory to a Republican one.  But it would be so nice to have an honest progressive rather than a fake one.

The Degree of US Responsibility for Islamic Extremism

When the socialist government in Afghanistan asked the Soviet Union to intervene to help repel the Islamic extremists, we all know the response from the US.  Military support for the Islamists.


The elected government in Iran in 1953 was secular.  The CIA overthrew that government for profit.  The current theocracy there is a direct reaction to that.

It's pretty well understood among the most respected sources that ISIS was created by the US.  Not that it was created intentionally, but it was a direct consequence of the US invasion of Iraq and the way the occupation was managed.  ISIS was also provided with military armaments from the US.  The theological roots of ISIS stem from elements in Saudi Arabia, which exist thanks to critical US military support of that regime, which enforces the ultra conservative Wahhabi form of Islam.

Hamas was funded by Israel.  The PLO was regarded as too powerful, so Israel helped nurture the Islamic extremist elements in the Palestinian territories as a divide and conquer strategy.  Hezbollah likewise is a result of Israeli action.  It was formed by Muslim clerics in response to the invasion and occupation of Lebanon in an effort to repel them.

This is what is frustrating to me about complaints from conservatives about radical Islam.  Every major radical Islamist presence has it's roots in policies supported by the very conservatives that decry radical Islam.  If we really have a problem with Islamic extremism we should ask ourselves why we allow our government to foster, nurture, and support it.

Bob Dutko and I talk about Saed Abedeeni

I often see items in my Facebook feed from conservative friends decrying the treatment of Saed Abedeeni, a Christian pastor that's currently being held in prison in Iran.  I find it frustrating.  Sure, it would be great if Saed was released.  I'm all for it.  But for an American war monger like Bob Dutko, who supports imprisoning people indefinitely even though they've not been charged with a crime, and in fact in some cases have been cleared for release, for him to lecture Iran and pretend to tell them that they are morally wrong in imprisoning someone, well it's ridiculous, and I called him up to explain why.  Audio below.