David Sirota Quotes

The first rule for every incoming freshman Democrat in Congress should be that you never work with a Cheney on war policy. The second rule for every freshman Democrat should be: re-read the first rule and make damn sure to follow it.

No doubt, there are few absolutely clear answers to those uncomfortable questions, if those questions are assessed honestly. Most likely, in fact, the answers are murky. But such questions need to be asked.

It would help if television shows elucidate the public policy records of the politicians running, so that voters can make policy-based — rather than personality-based — decisions on who to be passionate about. This seems particularly critical in the era of climate change.

Beto voted against his own party to pass GOP bills for business tax cuts, Wall St dereg, Trump’s deportation force, and chipping away at the ACA. It’s your right to argue thats totally OK — but let’s not use vague averages to obscure what his specific votes were about.

Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results. Indeed, as shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving.

According to data compiled by the UK Guardian, Chavez's first decade in office saw Venezuelan GDP more than double and both infant mortality and unemployment almost halved. Then there is a remarkable graph from the World Bank that shows that under Chavez's brand of socialism, poverty in Venezuela plummeted (the Guardian reports that its "extreme poverty" rate fell from 23.4 percent in 1999 to 8.5 percent just a decade later). In all, that left the country with the third lowest poverty rate in Latin America.

I worked for Bernie right out of college... For 20 yrs, this...has made getting any job in politics/media far more difficult.... I speak from experience when I say that the hatred of him & his ideology by the political/media class is very real.

Personal opinion: I think it would be good for there to be a presidential debate in which the questions don’t come only from millionaires paid by billionaires.

Almost everyone else on the #DemDebate stage: health care is a human right, but we won't do anything to truly guarantee that right.

So far in the #DemocraticDebate, there is @BernieSanders who says the wealthiest country in human history can afford to make sure its people don't die for lack of health insurance and can get a debt-free education, and then there are others who insist that's not possible.

Here’s Joe Biden. Note: this is not a speech from a long time ago. This is a speech from mid-2018. This seems very important... Biden explicitly says "Paul Ryan was correct when he did the tax code...the first thing we have to go after, [w:Social Security|SS]] and Medicare... It's the only way to find room to pay for it"

Politicians often talk about “workers” but many of them do not actually say the word “union.” Bernie has been saying that word for decades and Warren in her opening video also said it. We will see if any other 2020 candidates are EXPLICIT in their support for the labor movement.

Cheney initiatives that may seem superficially reasonable when calmly uttered by a Cheney usually have an insane ulterior motive. In this case, that truism applies: The Crow-Cheney legislation may sound like it includes reasonable requests, but they are designed to make the Afghanistan deployment permanent. In practice, nobody can predict with 100 percent certainty what will ensue once a nineteen-year ends. What we can know is that it’s a bad idea to continue a policy that isn’t working — and there’s plenty of evidence that it isn’t.

It’s almost as if much of the media has a mission to studiously avoid any serious discussion of policies that affect millions of people.

Half of America lives paycheck to paycheck
Millions can't afford medical care
Fossil fuel execs make bank while creating a climate crisis
While pundits demand candidates look "not angry" at the #DemDebate, the fact is: if you aren't angry, you're probably super wealthy.