everennui Posted July 25, 2016 Jill Stein's speech: This is what Democracy looks like. thank you so much. thank you for being here. Thank you for being a people's convention out here in the streets. Democracy is not at the Democratic Convention. Democracy is what you have started and Democracy is what we continue together all the way to November 8th of 2016. This movement is a movement and not one man. We are grateful to Bernie Sanders for having lifted up this movement. We are grateful to you, for being this movement. This movement with Bernie. It came up the mountain, but together it will go on to the promised land. Crow chants, "Jill not Hill." Right here, we see the power of what you created. This movement for Democracy and justice which you have unleashed to Bernie's campaign, you have lifted up what so many of us have been working in the social movement. In so long o fight for 15 dollar minimum. In the fight to make sure that every black life matters. In the fight to stop the pipelines all over this country. In the fight to cancel student debt like we did []. In the fight to create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights - not a regime change and []. We can have an America and a world that works for all of us. We can not just create a world for the United States of America. We are one world, one people together and we can have an economy here that respects working people, that respects labor unions, that respects economic justice, that respects racial justice and that stops these rigged corporate trade deals given to us by the democratic party. We say no []. The fact that Hillary has adopted this position against the TPP, but the Democratic platform would not even pretend to stop the TPP tells us how far we would get under a Hillary Clinton administration - nowhere. The fact that Hillary Clinton saw fit and the DNC saw fit to relegate Bernie Sanders to a footnote on an opening Monday evening instead of the night of the nomination is an outrage against this movement. The future of this movement is not inside the Democratic Party it's with independent political politics. The fact that the e-mails were released this weekend it confirms our worst fears and suspicions about the sabotage from the DNC against Bernie's campaign. Your campaign did not lose in some level playing field. Your campaign lost in a rigged primary system rigged by the DNC and the corporate media in collusion with Hillary's campaign. So we say, "Do not go back into that campaign that has betrayed this movement. Do not go into that party. We are going forward together." What we learn in this last year is the very hard lesson that some of us have been observing for decades which is that you can not have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counter revolutionary Bernie. This campaign - the Bernie movement - our movement - it's future is with independent politics in the form of the Green Party that will support the movement all the way until we prevail. This is a movement that brinmgs us together for people, planet and peace over profit, together. What we have in Philidelphia right now is a microcosm of this global crisis. We are seeing a crisis of poverty, of unemployment, of schools that have been shut down and privatized, a crisis of health care that people can not afford. We have a crisis of the climate which we are feeling today - in record heat. A heatwave of today of 98 degrees is a heatwave of 120 degrees not so long from now - perhaps 20 years from now that we are also hearing as soon as 2050 we are on track of a devastating sea level rise of 9 feet, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). If we stay on this course, but we say, "no" to this course of death and destruction - we say, "yes" to a course of justice, sustainability, peace and democracy. This crisis of the economy and of our climate can be fixed and we can start fixing it right now, starting on a ban on all new fossil fuel infrastructure. No fracking. No oil. No public lands. No arctic extraction. We must shut it down now while we []! We can do that at the same time we create a green, "New Deal" like the New Deal that got us out of the great depression. Why don't we have that now? We should, it works. We don't have to lie hear in a terrible depression. They say it's a recovery it's not a recovery, it's an emergency. We can create a green New Deal right now to get us out of this crashed, this unjust economy by creating 20 million good wage jobs right now so every one has the right to a good job, creating a healthy community, a health energy system, a healthy food system, a healthy mass transportation system and we can do that now at the same time that we make the wars for freakin' wars for oil obsolete. ...and... We stop this crisis, this catastrophic crisis of climate by calling this the emergency that it is and resolving that we will achieve 100% clean renewable energy by 2030. We can solve these emergencies of the climate, of the economy, of global peace and security at the same time we massively improve our health, in fact we save so much money by getting rid of the pollution, by creating a healthy food system - not this industrail, GMO, Franenfood and poisoned food that we are subsidizing and inflicting on our communities. Instead we get rid of these food deserts and we start gardens and community gardens and small farms all over this country. When we do that, we get so much healthier so quickly, the savings alone in our health expenditures are enough to pay the costs of the Emergency Green Energy Transition . This is a win win win and it pays for it self. There is not a reason not to go there now. The last thing I wanna mention, because I know it impacts many people who are here today and many people we are related to and that it is time to bail out the millenials, the young people, the not so young people, trapped in student loan debt. We bailed out the bankers, who crashed their economy with waste fraud and abuse, it's time to bail out the victims of that abuse, a younger generation that held hostage in student debt. Here's the best news, we saved 42 million people getting new lease on life when we cancel that student debt and 42 million - take this home with you - is enough to win a 3 way presidential race. So just by getting the word out - believe me - you don't have to work to hard to persuade people who are swamped in student debt that they should come out and vote green - to cancel their student debt and if we get the word out and friends tell friends, there is no stopping us. WE come out and we take over this election and we win it. We have been coming up in the polls from 2% a couple of weeks ago to 6 and 7% without any help from teh corporate media and what we learned in this e-mail revelations is that the corporate media is - guess what, surprise surprise - also in bed with Hillary Clinton and the DNC. We don't need their help we have a thing called, "social medial" and the internet. Thanks to you we protected that Internet from privatization so we can still get that word out through the people's media, through our networks, through our social movements we can get the word out and assure people that this movement will go on. The lesser evil is not lesser enough to save your job, to save your life or to save the planet. The lesser evil is a propaganda campaign intended to intimidate you out of your power, because the lesser evil does not work. Just look at the results of the last 15-16 years. We were told we have to use the politics of fear and vote against our fears rather than for what you believe in and what did we get? All those reasons we were told to vote for the lesser evil's because you didn't want the expanding wars, because you didn't want the melt down of the climate because you didn't want the massive wall street bail outs or the expanding security state, or the massive industrial complex or the attack on immigrants or on our civil liberties and the right of the free press. That's exactly what we got by allowing our selves to be silenced. When we silence our selves with this lesser evil thing, we create a moral vacuum if our voices aren't there as the public interest, it's the corporate predator politicians that are there. They fill this moral vacuum and it's all downward from there and further more, people stop coming out to vote for lesser evil politicians that are throwing them under the bus. So it's a losing proposition. The lesser evil merely paves teh way to the greater evil and that's exactly what we've seen happen after the election of a lesser evil president. We saw, first one house of congress flip from blue to red and then another house of congress - not because it was a victory - it was not a victory for republicans, it was a loss for democrats because the base couldn't bring themselves to come out and vote. Laborers stayed home, women stayed home, immigrants and Latinos stayed home and you stayed home. The answer here, the answer at the end of the day is very simple: forget the lesser evil, fight for the greater good, like our lives depend on it - because they do. In this election we are not just deciding what kind of world we will have, but whether we will have a world or not going forward. The day of reckoning is coming closer whether you're looking at the crash of the climate, the expanding police state, the expanding prison complex, the next crash of the economy, the new nuclear arms race created by none other than Barack Obama whose created a trillion dollar program for new nuclear weapons and modes of delivery. So we say, this is not a time to silence ourselves. You are the moral conscious of this nation. together we have the power to create an America and a world that works for all of us. we can create that world with a Green New Deal with a foreign policy based on international law and human rights. No more hundred billion dollar deal to give the Saudis terrible weapons to distribute to every reckless, terrorist in the Middle East, we're saying, "no" to selling weapons, we're saying, "no" to providing subsidies to countries, like the country of Israel which is violating human rights. We say to our allies, in all humility, because we have been leading the charge in violating international law and human rights. So in all humility, we say it's time to turn the page from a crisis for people, planet and peace, to a new day for all of us on a small planet for which we are all going to sail together or we are all going to sink together. The words of Martin Luther King have come home with incredible power, "The threat to justice anywhere [injustice anywhere] is a threat to Justice everywhere." We need an America and a world that works for all of us. The power to create that world is not just in our hopes, it's not just in our dreams - right here and now, it's in our hands. Together we are unstoppable. 0 Share this post Link to post
Netherstorm Posted July 25, 2016 There's no way she'll win, but I think it would be good to at least let her into the debates along with Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party. 0 Share this post Link to post
Doomkid Posted July 25, 2016 If only, if only. I'm sad to say we're guaranteed to end up with one of the two loonies. 0 Share this post Link to post
june gloom Posted July 25, 2016 She praised Brexit. If we're playing the ideological purity game she's worthless. Not that voting for her will do anything in a first-past-the-post system anyway. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted July 26, 2016 Netherstorm said:There's no way she'll win, but I think it would be good to at least let her into the debates along with Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party. Let's throw the libertarians into the mix too. So we'll have the Dem and Repubs debating, Libertarians tearing their shirts off and speeding around the stage, and the Greens sitting in a drum circle chanting Kumbaya. Stein is an anti-science idiot, a Bernie asskisser, and has no business running a New Age gift store, much less a country. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 It's too late, the damage is done. We live in a world in which populism dominates reason. Once again it is proven that mankind is likely to become a self-solving issue. 0 Share this post Link to post
⇛Marnetmar⇛ Posted July 26, 2016 I wasn't expecting the first election that I could vote in to be such a disaster. Both Stein and Johnson are cranks, Trump doesn't belong anywhere near the White House, and I can't bring myself to vote for Hillary. I legitimately wish Obama was allowed to run for a third term at this point. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 Obama should not have gotten a second term to begin with. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted July 26, 2016 Stapler said:and I can't bring myself to vote for Hillary. So you are comfortable with Trump winning then? 0 Share this post Link to post
Saturn Posted July 26, 2016 Mr. Freeze said:So you are comfortable with Trump winning then? I would be. 0 Share this post Link to post
⇛Marnetmar⇛ Posted July 26, 2016 Mr. Freeze said:So you are comfortable with Trump winning then? Absolutely not, I suppose my fingers were moving faster than my mind when I was writing that post. In the end my vote most likely will end up going to Hillary, but I'm certainly not going to feel good about it. 0 Share this post Link to post
Netherstorm Posted July 26, 2016 Mr. Freeze said:Let's throw the libertarians into the mix too. So we'll have the Dem and Repubs debating, Libertarians tearing their shirts off and speeding around the stage, and the Greens sitting in a drum circle chanting Kumbaya. Stein is an anti-science idiot, a Bernie asskisser, and has no business running a New Age gift store, much less a country. Well, it's more about letting the people know there's other options. It doesn't have to be just the Republicans and Democrats debating each time. 0 Share this post Link to post
june gloom Posted July 26, 2016 Fuck your feelings. Do what's right, which is keep Trump out. Everyone KNOWS there's other options. That's not a problem. Every fucking election there's a zillion goons talking about how OH YOU KNOW YOU CAN VOTE LIBERTARIAN PARTY. We know, alright? The problem is, third party votes are a vote for Trump. Period. If you want third parties to matter, then we have to ditch the first-past-the-post system. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 Mr. Freeze said:So you are comfortable with Trump winning then? Stapler said:Absolutely not. In the end my vote most likely will end up going to Hillary, but I'm certainly not going to feel good about it. Do whatever you want, both will ruin the USA. Not even Obama managed to repair the damage George W. Bush has caused, so abandon your hope while you still have a choice. If anything, I'd rather want to see Trump win this farce. With the current geopolitical situation in mind, we don't need a militaristic mass-murderer like Clinton anywhere near "high-office". Trump may be slightly stupid, but he is less dangerous to the rest of the world, when compared to Clinton. Eventhough I feel bad for saying this, there's no denying that it is time America learned from its mistakes by feeling the pain itself. Those idiots who supported Trump or Clinton have to reap what they sow, and learn the error of their ways by suffering. Common sense didn't fail you people, the majority of your fellow citizens failed at common sense. Now, what are you going to do about it? 0 Share this post Link to post
Netherstorm Posted July 26, 2016 Sure Bowb said:Do whatever you want, both will ruin the USA. Not even Obama managed to repair the damage George W. Bush has caused, so abandon your hope while you still have a choice. If anything, I'd rather want to see Trump win this farce. With the current geopolitical situation in mind, we don't need a militaristic mass-murderer like Clinton anywhere near "high-office". Trump may be slightly stupid, but he is less dangerous to the rest of the world, when compared to Clinton. Yeah but, haven't you heard some of the stuff Trump is advocating? To take out the families of ISIS (intentionally targeting civilians basically, think about that) (http://bcove.me/2fx4qpha), and using torture 'even if it doesn't work'? (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/24/donald-trump-on-waterboarding-even-if-it-doesnt-work-they-deserve-it) That's pretty fucking dangerous if you ask me. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 Netherstorm said:Yeah but, haven't you heard some of the stuff Trump is advocating? To take out the families of ISIS (http://bcove.me/2fx4qpha), and using torture 'even if it doesn't work'? (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/24/donald-trump-on-waterboarding-even-if-it-doesnt-work-they-deserve-it) That's pretty fucking dangerous if you ask me. Up until this point it's all bark, no bite. Besides, Hillary won't just let the IS do what they want to either. 0 Share this post Link to post
Tracer Posted July 26, 2016 I am okay with as many Left Wing candidates as possible. That way votes will be taken away from Hillary, making a Trump presidency a certainty. Fuck yeah. And Christ...the cringe factor on that video is off the charts. 0 Share this post Link to post
everennui Posted July 26, 2016 I like Jill Stein until she talks about guns. 0 Share this post Link to post
Blastfrog Posted July 26, 2016 As unfortunate as it is, a third party vote or a write-in is a null vote, you may as well not vote at all. As much as I loath to, I'm voting Hillary only because I don't want Trump, and they are the only two who have any chance of taking office whatsoever. I'd totally write in Sanders or pick a 3rd party candidate, but it would do more harm than good. 0 Share this post Link to post
Tracer Posted July 26, 2016 Thankfully not many are going to think like you, even though you're making perfect sense, actually. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted July 26, 2016 TraceOfSpades said:Thankfully not many are going to think like you The Bernie or Bust idiots are a vocal minority, albeit a loud one. Less than 10% of his voter base 0 Share this post Link to post
Tracer Posted July 26, 2016 Where are you getting that figure? Also...what I was getting at are people who thi k that their "independent votes" actually matter. They're voting on principle instead of voting on what is realistically available; and I don't care what anybody says, but realistically that is a vote that only serves to take away a vote from each party...rendering it useless. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted July 26, 2016 TraceOfSpades said:Where are you getting that figure? Obama's speechwriter 0 Share this post Link to post
Tracer Posted July 26, 2016 It's nice to know that not all Bernie Sanders supporters are pipedreaming idiots. 0 Share this post Link to post
PureSlime Posted July 26, 2016 Important thing: don't split the dang vote. Coming from a Canadian, where we have a multi-party system. I mean, hey, it's nice for some things, but more often than not, unless it looks likely that your team has a decent chance, don't split the vote on some stubborn principle. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 PureSlime said:Important thing: don't split the dang vote. Coming from a Canadian, where we have a multi-party system. I mean, hey, it's nice for some things, but more often than not, unless it looks likely that your team has a decent chance, don't split the vote on some stubborn principle. That thoughtprocess leads to only one thing: A two-party-system. If you want your multi-party-system to stay intact and be any good, at all, vote for the party you are in-line with the most. Otherwise you'll end up pretty much like the USA, with "democrats" and "republicans" and "stuff that does not matter at all". 0 Share this post Link to post
PureSlime Posted July 26, 2016 Sure Bowb said:That thoughtprocess leads to only one thing: A two-party-system. If you want your multi-party-system to stay intact and be any good, at all, vote for the party you are in-line with the most. Otherwise you'll end up pretty much like the USA, with "democrats" and "republicans" and "stuff that does not matter at all". Well yes, but if your preferred party does not have the overall ability or likelihood to succeed, and you really don't want to see that "other guy" win, you gotta pick the one that is closest to your beliefs and hold your nose. Otherwise, you're really just throwing your vote away. Weigh the options, is what I'm saying. Of course, in primaries and such, vote for your preferred candidate. But when it comes to the big decision, strategic voting is the only thing that makes sense. 0 Share this post Link to post
june gloom Posted July 26, 2016 I'm just going to start responding to "duh if you don't vote third party third party won't win!" with FIRST PAST THE POST 0 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted July 26, 2016 dethtoll said:I'm just going to start responding to "duh if you don't vote third party third party won't win!" with FIRST PAST THE POST Well, that surely depends on the system by which goverments are formed. In some cases the actual government is comprised of more than a single party. That may not apply to the US, but since I was referring to someone from Canada, I sort of hoped it would not be that misunderstandable. It wasn't even about having a third winning, because that's obviously not what would be going to happen, if only one party will be able to form a government at a time. Yet things work differently in countries like Greece, or Germany, for example. 0 Share this post Link to post
Phml Posted July 26, 2016 Not even Obama managed to repair the damage George W. Bush has caused So... We get told race relations are worse than ever. LGBT are persecuted. The economy is still bad. Bush seems quite the mastermind to have engineered all of this 8+ years ago, while looking like an idiot. Not only 2 mandates of Obama couldn't make the slightest dent in this nightmare scenario, things only got worse. Good thing there was Obama at all, else we might already see a starving America where people fight for scraps mad max style. 0 Share this post Link to post