October 25, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

What IS “Democratic Socialism” anyway?

Many people are criticizing Bernie Sanders for being a “democratic socialist” without having the slightest idea what that term means.

cartoon by Matt Weurker

Let’s try to simplify things.

There are two sets of terms to know: economic and political. A government has both.

Economic

Capitalism. This is where the market decides and government stays out of it. No minimum wage, no health inspections, no laws against discrimination, no regulations on business at all. This doesn’t work, because you end up with the powerful running everything, destroying the economy, and keeping people in poverty.

Communism. This is where the government runs business. The idea is that we should all live together in peace and harmony and share everything, and the President earns the same amount as the guy who sweeps the street. This also doesn’t work, because it completely destroys initiative and any reason to try to improve yourself.

Socialism. This is where most countries are, somewhere between the two extremes. Here, the government regulates business to prevent the abuses capitalism can bring, and provides many services (libraries, hospitals, parks, fire departments, social security, unemployment, etc.) that pure capitalism would have private businesses provide (if they felt like it; pure capitalism would never require a business to provide something it doesn’t want).

This is the tough balance to meet. You don’t want to go too far in either direction, and most of the debate in the US is over how far to go — but honestly, even the most conservative politician agrees with some socialism (they’ll never admit that, though).

Political

Democracy. This is where the people decide, usually through representative democracy or republicanism.

Totalitarianism. This is a dictatorship, whether individually controlled (North Korea) or committee controlled (China). Once more, there are degrees here as well as various types (monarchy, fascism, oligarchy). But the key thing they all have in common is that the decision-making power is not with the people.

What usually happens is that people confuse the economic with the political. The Soviet Union was a communist country but was also a totalitarian country, and people started associating the two. This is wrong. You could have a democratic communist country. And despite what the Soviet Union would have had you believe with their propaganda, Karl Marx supported democracy.

It’s even more confusing when countries lie about themselves. Just because you call yourself “the Democratic Republic of Vietnam” doesn’t mean you are a democratic republic, any more than China is the “people’s republic.” The Soviet Union was indeed a communist country, but it was a corrupt one because you know perfectly well that not everyone shared equally in that society.

So when Bernie Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist” he is making it clear that politically, he agrees with democracy (the people decide) and economically, he agrees with socialism (government works for the people).

Disclaimer: This is a really quick and simple explanation and is meant to be a guideline and a start for conversation. And it’s also mostly from an old post I did about two years ago, so if you have a long memory, it may be familiar.

October 23, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Editorial cartoon: Hillary and the Benghazi Committee

Clay Bennett

October 22, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Republicans proud of their dishonesty

It’s one thing to be a dishonest person; it’s quite another to be proud of that fact.

For many Republicans, they revel in their dishonesty, partially because they think they’re so clever for getting away with their evil schemes.

I’m serious here. Forget about all the “death panel” lies and other crap they’ve said in the past about Obamacare — just look at a few examples from the last few months.

Take Kevin McCarthy, who admitted that the Benghazi hearings were indeed not meant to find out the truth, but were just partisan attacks on Hillary Clinton in an attempt to knock her approval ratings down. Oops! He lost his chance to be Speaker of the House not because Republicans were upset that he said this, but instead that he admitted that their stated reason for the hearings was a lie.

Then there’s all those movements to make it harder for Democrats to vote. “It’s to prevent fraud!’ they say, despite the fact that your chance of finding voter fraud is less than your chance of being hit by lightning. Every once in a while, a Republican will slip and admit the real reason. The Republicans don’t then come out and say, “Okay, you caught us, our bad, we really were lying all the time.” Nope, they double down and hope that everyone forgets the Man Behind the Curtain.

Even the Planned Parenthood attacks aren’t just about abortion — sometimes it’s just plain old Christian puritan ethics. There have been plenty of Republicans who blame the problem on “loose women” (it’s never the men’s fault in these situations; apparently the women are getting pregnant all by themselves). They lie by fabricating fake videos (and then double down and repeat the lie when the truth is exposed) and at a recent anti-abortion rally, the guest speaker admitted that they were fighting against sin: “The kind of sexual ethic that Planned Parenthood promotes is sex for recreation, sex for mere pleasure.”

And that’s what it’s about. At today’s Benghazi hearings — one of many that have produced absolutely nothing yet spent millions of taxpayer dollars — we’re seeing more of it.

The good news is that the public knows this. 75% of Americans know this is just a Republican witch hunt. People can see through the lies.

But the Republicans don’t care.

October 20, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Editorial cartoon: Color blinded

Darrin Bell

October 20, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

It’s all over! Hillary is ahead in the polls!

Hillary currently has 48% nationally and Sanders has 25%! Might as well name her as the Democratic nominee now and save us all some time! Or so the articles on the major news sites seem to say.

This, of course, ignores a few major things:

First, according to most polls, Sanders is ahead in New Hampshire — a very important state since it holds the first primary. A win there can change the landscape tremendously, as we have seen in previous elections.

Second, it’s 2015! There’s not even a primary for months.

Let’s look back at the last time Hillary ran. On October 20, 2007, she was at 47.5% in the polls. Way, way behind was this upstart Barack Obama guy, with only 21.7%. What a loser! That’s even lower than where Bernie Sanders is now!

A month is a lifetime in politics. Polls can change and waver hugely within a week.

So maybe we should stop declaring winners and losers before a single vote has been cast.

October 19, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Editorial cartoon: Gun logic

Tim Eagan

October 19, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

If we’re attacked while a Republican is in office, it’s not his fault

Obama and Hillary are so responsible for the attack on Benghazi wherein four people died. Pay no attention to the fact that Republicans gutted the budget for security at the embassy — the people at the top are responsible!

Just for comparison

Unless they’re Republicans, of course. When 3000 people died on 9/11 under Bush’s watch (even though he had been warned by both outgoing President Clinton and his own internal memos that this was bin Laden’s plan), clearly he can not be held responsible for such a thing.

At least Trump, for all his many faults, understands this basic concept. He’s caused another rift in the Republican campaign by pointing this out, and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb!* isn’t going to take this lying down!

But geez, don’t you dare ask him why then Obama and Hillary are responsible for the Benghazi attack, because then he’ll stare at the camera for a very long period, like a deer in the headlights, before rambling on for a few minutes about how security is important.

Seriously, watch this and look at his body language, because he’s being forced to say something that he knows in his soul isn’t true — that it is completely hypocritical to absolve blame for one incident while foisting blame in the other.

Squirm, baby, squirm.

*I believe he has added the ! to his name in much of the same way Prince changed his name into a symbol.

October 15, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Editorial cartoon: Media scales

Darrin Bell

October 14, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Nobody Won the Democratic Debate

The media loves a winner, and after the Democratic debate, pundits leaped over each other to declare their choices for who “won” the debate. Most, unsurprisingly, chose Clinton, because that’s what everyone expected.

But I say no one won.

Debates aren’t elections. They’re not sporting events. In some ways, the candidates aren’t competing against each other but instead are using the debate to promote themselves in a forum that allows voters to compare.

You “win” the debate by outperforming expectations. You “lose” by making mistakes or coming across as unlikable and untrustworthy.

I still remember Gerald Ford in a debate with Jimmy Carter claiming that there was no Soviet presence in Poland. (Hint: there was.) The press and the Democrats pounded on him for being ill-informed and he just sunk lower in the polls. George Bush looked at his watch during a debate with Bill Clinton, as if to say he was bored and this wasn’t really important to him, and that allowed the press to label him as aloof and uncaring. Al Gore’s sighs during his debate with George W. Bush made him look arrogant instead of making Bush look stupid and that didn’t help his campaign (even though he was right about Bush saying idiotic things that deserved sighs).

No one made those kinds of errors last night, although there were some comments that didn’t stand up to scrutiny when fact-checked (although nothing like the kind of lying and outright dishonesty we have seen during the Republican debates).

Hillary “won” yesterday’s debate in that she answered the questions, seemed knowledgeable, and didn’t make any mistakes. But the bar was low for her — she is a good debater, she’s been doing it for years, and she’s always well prepared. We knew what to expect from her, and she met expectations, so pundits claimed her the winner.

Bernie Sanders, however, had everything to gain. Most people knew very little about him. He didn’t make any mistakes, and he pounded his issue concerning income equality, which is a winning topic that any Democrat should push. At the same time, he gave the GOP a lot of clips they can use against him in a general election to portray him as a crazy socialist who hates capitalism, so that doesn’t really help (although in this election year, being “anti-capitalism” may help bring in more young voters).

Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley, and Jim Webb merely had to show to their supporters that they were viable candidates, and of the three, O’Malley came out the best. Webb just seemed angry and many of his positions are just too moderate for the kind of Democratic activists who get involved in elections this early. Chafee had lame excuses for much of his previous votes, and really doesn’t have a chance. These three are probably just jockeying for a Vice Presidential nod.

Based on most unscientific polling, voters said Bernie Sanders won, and if you look at the fact that he took in another $2 million in donations within 24 hours of the debate, I’d say that makes it easier to say he “won” by the standards I set. He outperformed expectations. Again.