So one candidate gives a speech about economic fairness and another about fighting terrorists...

[Bread and Circus]

If that's not the symbol of what this primary is all about and what our priorities are about then I don't know what is.

I am not minimizing the brutality or lethality of terrorism but ultimately the amount of death and loss we suffer from it does not even approach a sizeable percentage of the death and suffering caused by poverty, income and wealth inequality, and economic insecurity in this country. Not to mention the world.

The infant mortality rates and other forms of premature death in this country are directly linked in multiple studies due to poverty and other forms of economic disparity noted above. Coupling that with barriers to education you have a large amount of preventable death and disability we face.

Poverty maims, kills, and disables everyday. All around you. In big cities and small towns.

Economic and educational desparation leads to despair and addiction. Despair and addiction lead to suicide, homicide, violent crime, heart disease, stroke, severe tooth decay, lung cancer, depression, chronic anxiety, sleeplessness, cirrhosis, hiv, hypertension, diabetes, breast cancer, fetal demise, infant mortality, and on and on.

I bet everyone on this board knows someone who, as a result of chronic despair at least partly due to economic stress, has spiraled down and perhaps even died.

How many do you know have personally been injured or killed by a terrorists bomb or gun?

I would wager many more in the first scenario.

I can name more direct family members who have spiraled down as a result of economic insecurity than I can name victims of terrorism.

The measureable impact of poverty and economic disparity is massive compared to the measureable impact of terrorism.

You can even include mass shootings and McVeigh style right wing bombings and the numbers do not remotely compare.

These are real facts anyone can research very easily.

[peacebird]

1. Totally agree...

[brooklynite]

2. I know someone who died on 9/11...

It doesn't matter how many or few die from terrorism vs "social" causes. It has an impact on the public psyche that a politician needs to be cognizant of.

[Bread and Circus]

4. I know 2 people who died in the Iraq war Clinton voted for...

One had his head sawn off on video. The other was shot by a sniper. Both were from a small town in the midwest.

However in my family alone, not to mention the small city I hail from, I have seen way more suffering and death from economic insecurity and stress.

I don't doubt your situation is the same unless you only know and are with wealthy people.

But what you are talking about is a narrow and distorted lens. To say that the volume of death and suffering doesn't matter but only the political ramifications do is to be very far removed from reality and is the height of cynicism.

[cui bono]

13. Not to mention, with the right leadership and policies towards terrorism

we wouldn't be exacerbating that situation.

If we hadn't turned OBL into such a big boogeyman with all the "terra terra terra" talk and military action, things wouldn't be as they are today. THAT'S what REALLY affects the psyche of the public.

[Dragonfli]

14. The poster you are responding to has boasted in the past the he is quite

comfortable financially, and socializes with a circle of high level donors within the party.

No doubt, the view is much more rosy from the penthouse than the poorhouse.
I live in poverty and I know my view is far different than his.

It is a matter of perspective, but I gather his perspective is one viewed by a very small portion of the population, while our perspective is a very common one shared by a large and diverse crowd.

It is hard for the comfortable to feel empathy having known such comforts for so long they simply cannot understand our discomfort. There have been studies that prove this.

[leftofcool]

22. Yea, because us Democrats who have a little bit of savings have no empathy.

Sheesh!

[Dragonfli]

25. That is not what I said, but the well off do not empathize with the rest of us.

I have known poor people all of my life and have worked in the homes of the more "comfortable" for a great deal of that life as a contracted skilled laborer.

The one thing I learned that had few exceptions was, that when I needed help it was given freely from those with little, and seldom if ever offered by those with much.

It is a simple fact, if you need help, you are more likely to receive it from the struggling members of your own class than the entitled members of a higher class. The same holds when the bill is due after work is completed. Working families that had to save and scrounge and suffer to afford a needed repair usually pay their bill, without begrudging it, recognizing the labor put forth and appreciating it. The same could not be said of my wealthy clients whom nearly to a one paid begrudgingly, tried to pay only a portion, or paid not at all.

I was simply relaying a class reality as it reflects on empathy, nothing more, nothing less.

[Thinkingabout]

3. Unfortunately we have to be on top of both games, finanical and our security. I have listened to

Those who lived during the depression, times was really hard, my mother said they would make biscuits and gravy for their one meal a day, it would keep their guts from slapping together. They survived and lived in in age, always working hard, never easy.Thanks to those two hard working people I never had those experiences. They were different, always frugal, had to be, a choice they had to make.

[BootinUp]

5. Presidents agendas are often changed by world events.

Hillary addressing terrorism today is an appropriate response to a world event and is a demonstration of her qualifications in this area. She is also qualified to tackle domestic issues and will undoubtedly spend more time talking about that than about terrorism.

[daleanime]

15. Qualifications?

How many wars has she even tried to avoid?

[jeff47]

6. They aren't all that separate.

The strongest recruiting tool for terrorists is poverty.

[Bread and Circus]

9. Aye... suffering breeds contempt and hatred

I cannot condone terrorism or terrorists but one of the weapons to subvert the ideology and the method is to give people a sense of hope and a sense of betterment. If not would-be terrorists directly then those around them

It is harder to hate when around yourself you see people are doing well. This would not eliminate terrorism or terrrorists but it takes away a plank in their grievances.

[zalinda]

16. You are correct.

An ISIS defector explained a key reason people continue joining the group

"Instead, people are joining the organization because they are desperate for money and are struggling to find a way to survive in Syria, where four years of civil war have decimated the economy."


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141265072


Z

[Hydra]

7. Poverty is a much bigger issue, but it is dealt with by blaming the victims

Terrorism, meanwhile, is an overplayed card to make people jump and do things/support things they never would.

I guess both are an example of how careful messaging has obscured the reality of both situations to the advantage of the people who rule us.

[JaneyVee]

8. Yes, Hillary acted like a President. Bernie gave a stump speech.

[Bread and Circus]

10. I feel sorry for you.

[JaneyVee]

11. Don't.

My life is full of love, peace, and joy.

[840high]

12. I'm glad it is. Why don't

you want the same for others.

[Fairgo]

17. That's the pity

I have no doubt she fills her life with comfort and distractions.

[leftofcool]

23. Peace, love and joy are distractions?

[eridani]

18. Only if Margaret Thatcher is your ideal n/t

[NCTraveler]

20. Seems a little different than a stump speech.

Pretty close though. I would say it was more of a lecture that is heard on college campuses thousands of times a year.

[NCTraveler]

19. One gave a lecture heard on the college campus....

Thousands of times every year. The other was discussing their thoughts on foreign policy.

[Major Hogwash]

21. Hillary never talks of peace. She doesn't even use the word "peace" in any of her speeches.

About all she talks about in her speeches lately is fear, death, killing, bombing, war, terrorism, or the possibility of invading another country.
Her constant talk of war stands out like a naked man stranded on a small ice floe floating out in the middle of the Artic Ocean . . there is never any talk of peace from her.

The stark contrast cannot be missed.
The void cannot be ignored.

The word I want to hear from her never comes.

She never utters the word "peace".

She doesn't even sound like she is from her own generation.
She never says anything about her being a hippy when she was in college.
She never says anything about her smoking pot when she was in college.
She never says anything about how or why she protested the Vietnam War when she was in college.

Instead, she sounds like the people she referred to back then as "members of the establishment", when she was in college.
Yet now, she sounds like the people she protested against!
She sounds like the very people she despised!

And that's because, deep down, buried deep beneath the shiny, shimmering, polished, ever changing façade of pretending to be a liberal, Hillary is still very, very much a Goldwater girl.

[LWolf]

24. K & R

[UglyGreed]

26. K/R