“Democrats are harassing the President to distract from their radical agenda of making America a socialist country, killing babies after they’re born and pushing a ‘green new deal’ that would destroy jobs and bankrupt America,” cried a statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
Could you imagine this coming out of our parliament?
Yes I could
ScoMo, Abbott, Andrews, and a host of other Liberals
Ahaha.
Got me there, wasn’t thinking when I asked…
Hang on a second, I initially thought that was a parody statement and you were making a joke exaggerating what was said.
Then I read the article and realised it was real. 
A good, pretty even article on the political situation around the Ilhan Omar controversy.
The Ilhan Omar anti-Semitism controversy, explained
In summary, nobody can be 100% sure if she’s being antisemitic, or just wording herself poorly. She is clearly pro-Palestinian, but that does not automatically make her antisemitic.
The real issue for the Dems, is similar to the Al Franklin one. When the Republicans are bashing you on the topic, you know they’re being hypocrites because they’ve said worse (and far more frequently), but there are certain things you don’t want said in your party, where do you draw the line? Especially when it is a grey area as to if she is being deliberately antisemitic?
(Just to be clear, the reason she is being accused of being antisemitic is that recently it seems when she says something against Israel that may be justifiable, she’s also used an antisemitic stereotypes. Deliberate, ignorant/cultural, or just lazy language use? )
This is a great post I found on another forum.
It describes what is happening in the US. The same applies to us to a lesser degree. But not for wont of trying by the Tories.
The average American is worse off than their parents were thirty years ago. The reasons are simple and demonstrable:
While the economy is 1.8 times bigger - wealthier - all the growth has gone to the rich. According the The Economist “In America the average income of the top 1% has risen by 242%.” The average (median) American has seen no growth in their income.
Well, I hear you say, that is a pity but not a disaster - at least they are no worse off. But they are worse off. Much worse off.
The biggest reason for this is the doubling in real terms of healthcare costs from about 8–9% of income to more than 17%. This is not because the inherent costs of healthcare are rising - they are, but only a little - nor because it is getting better in some other way. We can show this by comparison with other developed economies where satisfaction with heathcare is at least equal and health outcomes comparable (often better).
Note this graph only goes to 2013….
You are being ripped off in the US because you and Congress are obsessed by the financing system, not the cost: squabbling about the arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic. So that is a loss of about 9% of everyone’s income, which, as you recall, has stayed the same for the average American.
At the same time college costs have doubled in real terms - a less universal cost but and important one for many families. There seems no good reason why, Harvard, for example, which has massive endowments of wealth, has increased its costs so much, except that it can and it is greedy. It seems likely that legal costs have also risen substantially, although this is not measured overall and does not affect everyone.
So the struggle is real. Why has this happened? There appear to be three main reasons:
Your representatives have lost interest in protecting the interests of common folk. They do not raise or debate these issues. This is connected to….
Highly effective lobbying by those who profit from the system. The health lobby spends over $500m a year on lobbying and keeps the news system in check with large advertising budgets (largely for medicines the public cannot buy without prescription but that stop any media criticism).
An issue not mentioned above is that the US spends as much as the next 10 countries put together on the military. The benefit of this level of spend to the country is unclear, while to members of the armed forces and their suppliers the benefit is simple and clear. We cannot get real figures of how much lobbying they do, as it is within the system, not an external cost.
Middle America has been persuaded, somehow, that the prosperity of the wealthy is good for them. Taxes on the rich have been substantially reduced, chief executive pay has multiplied.
It was once thought that democracy would fall once people ‘realised they could vote themselves rich from the largess of the commonwealth’. It turns out that it is not, as people thought, the common folk that do this, but those who have the money and use a small part of it to persuade the government to give them more. You should not complain about them - you and I would do the same and tell ourselves it was for reasons of virtue. But we should look for ways we can change. The situation is not sustainable in the long term - people are angry enough to vote for anything that promises change, even if an elderly New York playboy is the only ‘anything’ they can find. He will fail and, when he does, it would be good to offer a better alternative than whatever chance throws up next time.
Good post. Thanks for sharing.
Good post.
Was it Bernie Sanders that did that thing?
You’re not in competition with your competitors, you’re in competition with your CEO?
It doesn’t matter how well your company does in the market. You’re getting the same pay as you did twenty years ago, however…this guy…
Really good post.
These are massive issues and hard to see how they turn many of them around.
The total distortion of ideas in the US needs to be reigned in somehow as well. Under George HW Bush they media laws changed so there was no longer a need to present balanced news. This led to the birth of Fox News which has proven to be the most destructive force in middle America.
With even a basic understanding of the issues it becomes very hard to watch because much of it is borderline insane and it’s presented as news and not opinion. If you treat it at news you wind up in a very bad place - where the US is now. Where middle America actively vote against their best interests all the time because
they hear on Fox that the Democratic Party wants to kill babies and spread socialism.
It’s a long road back
If anyone other than a Muslim woman had said the things she said no one would have batted an eye, and considering some of the things that some of the Rs have said and done in relation to Jewish people and anti-semitism, including the President, it is a disgusting slander.
I don’t think so. I think there are grounds to believe that the ferocity of the attacks on Rep. Omar are a little harsher because of her ethnicity but any other race would also be savaged over the same comments.
@Ants - there is absolutely zero, ZERO antisemitic stereotypes or tropes that Rep. Omar used. Her words are being twisted, conflated and actually being put in her mouth by those beholden to AIPAC (which is basically the entirety of both Houses).
These pathetic and predictable smears of Rep. Omar are being used to crush Palestinian rights, undermine social movements and divert attention away from real anti-semitism.
Lol
The country has become such a joke. Sensible debate has gone. Fox News on this issue ‘she wears a hijab… she is un-American… are we sure she doesn’t practice sharia law?’
I wish this was a joke but it’s not. That’s what some Fox News hosts ran with.
Fox News is to the right, what CNN is to the left.
People watch them because they want to hear what they like, you aren’t going to see any sensible debate on any MSM.
It’s not tho.
CNN is about as left as Malcolm Turnbull, and even he might be further to the left than they are
That’s literally not true. And frankly, anyone pushing that line has thoroughly fallen into the Fox News trap.
CNN (and other ‘mainstream’ outlets) bend over backwards to be fair to Trump. THey perform extraordinary contortions to avoid saying he’s ‘lying’ or ‘racist’ or when it’s as plain as the nose on your face that these things are true. Hell, CNN just hired a Trump flunky with zero journalism experience to be their frigging political editor through the 2020 election, they get that quivery when he accuses them of ‘bias’. Do you see Fox doing that, ever? Do you see Fox even pretending to be ashamed, or making even a gesture towards fairness, ever?
Fox News’s strategy is to be so far out in the looney regions of the right that everyone else starts to assume that ‘centre’ is half way between reality and wherever it is that fox lives. Making everyone who watches them believe that relatively staid boring conventional media outlets like CNN represent the hard left and that the truth lies somewhere between them and Fox. Shifting the Overton window.
The false equivalence between the sort of ■■■■ that Fox does and everything else is all part of the strategy.
Disagree. If any Federal Democrat had said the same I think the Dems would have reacted. It’s the white left fringe saying antisemitic things in the UK, they’re not getting a pass because they’re white.
Really? Because accusing Jewish people of being unpatriotic and having allegiance to their race over country has been an antisemitic slur since the early 20th century. At least. One which racists have only amped up since the creation of Israel. Which is why David Duke endorsed her comments.
Implying Jews control the world through money is another old racial stereotype. Her comments referencing Benjamin’s certainly seemed to be playing to it.
As I said. She may have been verbally lazy, or so used to hearing those sayings that she’s ignorant they’re pretty vicious slurs. Or she may have been antisemitic. It’s not clear, but she has to cut out those sayings. Especially if she wants anything she says about Israel to be taken seriously.
I make a concerted effort not to watch any of them, so it would be hard for me to fall into Fox News’s ‘trap’.
CNN is absolutely left-leaning, they were barracking for Hillary during the Democratic primaries and the election. I don’t like Fox News, nor do I watch it. But if you are trying to tell me CNN isn’t biased, then you have a very slanted view.
A Hitler avatar tells me supporting Not Trump in an election shows left wing bias.
Seems legit.