Sen. Bernie Sanders just wrapped up his filibuster. Good for him. I listened from 4:30 till now and could have gone on for hours. He was riveting.
Hey Republicans, that’s a real filibuster.
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“Rivited” by a socialist? Gawd, why am I not surprised.
Sander is not just an admited socialist, but a stark raving lunatic. It seems the Congress is full of them. Reps. and Dems. alike.
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Right – Sanders is the only avowed Socialist in the Congress and honest about it. Nothing wrong with that, anymore than it’s wrong to be a Libertarian. It’s a belief, not something one has to hide.
He’s angry. He’s passionate. He has a deep moral sense as to how we treat each other.
By the way, as Mayor of Burlington VT (which people jokingly referred to ‘the people’s republic of Burlington’) he pulled the city out of bankruptcy, got IBM to open a major facility in the city employing hundreds of people, updated the infrastructure and left a very happy populace. He was one terrific mayor and made Burlington a much healthier city.
A lunatic? I don’t htink so. Just good at government, which I wish I saw more of.
(hi, Steve)
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I just listened to his rant against “rich” people. Geez, this guy and his ilk sure live in the wrong country. It’s amazing that 10% of Americans pay 70% of all income taxes … and still that’s not good enough. Just gotta take it all …
another amazing thing I’m wondering if the U.S. is the only country that actually pays people not to work … right now to the tune of 3 years straight. No wonder the U.S. is bankrupt. Bankrupting the U.S. isn’t being “good at government”.
But really, I’m glad he did what he did. I hope the “bill” fails.
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Steve, let me ask you something: do you think it matters if people think only of themselves or think of something more? Like, if a rich company came to your neighborhood and opened a chemical plant that poisons your water – until the Feds catch them – would you say ‘well, hey, okay – that’s the capitalist way and they’re creating all those jobs! Would you?
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Admited? Public roads are socialist. You should protest by only driving on private roads. That will show them.
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Ms. Holland,
Politics makes strange bedfellows. A few on our side believe we can do better in January if your guys kill this thing. So, Go Bernie, Go Bernie, Go Bernie.
🙂
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Now if only we had Sarah Palin in the Senate, it wouold be advantage Dems.
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By the way guys – in fiibustering on the floor of the Senate, he showed us what it’s supposed to look like instead of a ‘procedural’ filibuster the two lazy, cowardly parties have been using in recent decades.
When Strom Thurmond set the record in ’57, he read the phone book. Bernie gave an 8-hour lecture on our national identity, economic policies and what he hopes for in civic life.
He’s the goods, not a lunatic, Steve. A stand up Senator. And, by the way, the poorest in the Senate. He’s very very principled and honest.
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Ms. Holland,
” And, by the way, the poorest in the Senate. ”
Not that I would ever doubt you, but I had to check it out. According to Forbes in 06 the Senator had a Burlington condominium valued at $100,000 to $250,000, and $31,000 to $115,000 in a credit union and a retirement account. Well he still has more than me, but he is a pauper by Washington standards. You’d think ole Charlie Wrangle could give him pointers on how to make public service pay.
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Wrangle? Listening to right wing radio rather than reading things for yourself makes you susceptible to this kind of error.
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What error? They are both in Washington and both Democrats. It’s not that far from the House to the Senate. Actually you may have one point . Senator Sanders is a self described Socialist. He seems to have taken a vow of relative poverty. Charlie in his personal life is actually a pretty good capitalist. He has amassed a fairly good size chunk of wealth and scrupulously avoids paying taxes. If he were honest, he could almost be a Republican.
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If you read the story, you would know him as Rangel, if you only heard it from your favorite right-wing radio blowhard, you would know him as Wrangle.
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Sock it to ’em!
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Alan, that’s one bizarre definition of socialist/capitalist – a plain measure of a person’s wealth. Even more to actually define a person’s value based on their wealth – and that’s what I hear all the time from the right. While I’m pretty much an atheist, I was raised Catholic and that deeply informs my belief about extreme wealth. Admiring someone just because they’ve made hundreds of millions is delusional. I admire the guy down the street who made a few million by working his butt off, but I have nothing but scorn for the crony capitalist world where with their interlocking directorates they make sure they all make hundreds of millions each year – AND they spend plenty to get the US Congress to do their bidding. (Yeah, yeah, so do unions – on behalf of MILLIONS of people.)
Rangle is richer than Sanders, but in fact he’s not a rich man either. He’s 143rd from the top with a net worth between 800K and 2mil depending on how things are valued at any given moment I guess. Now to me, that would be rich, but we’re talking Congress here.
I admire the hell out of Sanders’ belief in the primacy of a commn good.
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desertscope,
Oh, I made a spelling error. It’s funny how I misspelled Congressman Rangle’s name ‘listening’ to talk radio. Wrangle does not activate the spell checker, while Rangle does. And I used to win the spelling bees in elementary school. I really went downhill once I switched to the Republicans during Carter.
Ms. Holland,
” While I’m pretty much an atheist, I was raised Catholic and that deeply informs my belief about extreme wealth. ”
You will have to enlighten me about that. I was raised in multiple Protestant Churches . Do you hate Warren Buffet or George Soros?
What is a pretty much atheist ? Agnostic? Hedging your bets ? For me the older I get the less sure I am that there is not a God. I rejected religion because of having it shoved down my throat, along with bars of soap while growing up. Now I seem to have more in common with the sinners who show up in Church every week than the Atheists who have absolute certainty that we are soulless animals whose only real purpose for being on this Earth is to pass our genes onto the next generation. We baby boomers have not done as good a job at that as our parents. No wonder SS is in trouble.
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I’m all ready to get into an interesting conversation here, but you stop me dead with the old canard about SS is in trouble. No it isn’t. Medicare/Medicaid are in trouble – SS is just fine so long as we make the necessary adjustments and don’t raid it. But the R party has been trying to take it down for decades, and one way to do that is to refuse to do the fixes so it goes into a hole. I am deeply suspicious of this 2-year payroll tax holiday – that is a GOP wet dream – step one of ending SS.
Anyway, I don’t hate Buffet at all and consider him to be a very good example for the rich. He doesn’t build houses all over the world! And he still lives in Omaha.
Soros – even if I agree with his politics, I don’t admire him personally, in fact I have a low opiinon of how he made his money and how many people were hurt by his journey to wealth.
As for being an atheist, that is an acknowledgement that there is absolutely no way of knowing if there is or is not a god. An atheist says I don’t know, as opposed to beleivers who don’t know either but accept a god on faith alone. Neither of us knows – an atheist admits that.
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Ms. Holland,
Your comment of Buffet is instructive. Amazing how you Liberals and we Conservatives like to judge other Americans private behavior. We tend to tell private citizens what substances they can put into their bodies, what sexual practices are acceptable in and out of marriage and the military, and and I just lost my train of thought. By contrast you Liberals only tell private citizens what to do with their own money. I guess we are worse. 🙂
Soros is a puzzle to me. He got rich in currency speculation by hurting a lot of people. The worst kind of a capitalist who is not actually a criminal. Yet he seems to want to screw every capitalist behind him. He got his and nobody after him should get theirs’.
I believe your more agnostic than atheist, but I guess we should wait for an expert like the Arbourist to weigh in.
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Where is Arborist? Haven’t been over there lately.
You are correct re atheist, agnostic – an outright atheist claims to know there is NOT a god; an agnostic is the one who says there is no way to know if there is or isn’t. I got my definitions screwed up, don’t know how – but it’s not something I need to say very often. Anyway, I am an agnostic!
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