March 2, 2020

Biden himself said people trust Bernie. It insults

and angers Bernie people. It would feel like gaslighting to Bernie people.

Here is Biden at the town hall.

"SNIP.....

CHARLESTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. came out swinging at one of his chief rivals, Bernie Sanders, at a televised town hall event on Wednesday, swiping at him over everything from his record on guns to the damage that he suggested Mr. Sanders would do to Democrats running in down-ballot races.

Mr. Sanders identifies as a democratic socialist, and Mr. Biden was asked on the CNN program if he “would support a socialist at the top of the ticket.”

“We have moved in a direction that in fact, the progressive — now ‘progressive’ means ‘Bernie,’” said Mr. Biden, who is a relative centrist but added that throughout his career he had been considered a “liberal liberal.”

“It means democratic socialism or whatever the phrase is,” Mr. Biden said. “I think Bernie is a decent, honorable man who means what he says.”

......SNIP"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/live/2020/south-carolina-debate-primary-02-26

I think Biden is trying to reach out to Bernie voters and that is important. It is Biden's 'healing' message.

February 24, 2020

Makes you go hmmmm?

https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1232089105862995968

Why were so many Trumpies throwing a wrench into any hope of extraditing Assange? Could it be Trump cannot get away with pardoning him and they do not want him testifying in the US?

February 24, 2020

The country is of two separate worlds. It is as if we speak separate

languages. Trump and the GOP have so put such a false narrative (and narratives) in their base's minds that when Democrats talk to Republicans they hear something different than was said - they laugh or get angry. Every discussian is a trump loyalty test. There is suddenly meaning in the narrative and it is compelling of all sort of behaviour. The geography inside both sides' heads is totally different. We picture things differently. When republicans talk to Democrats, Democrats are appauled at the lack of discernable reality.

When i fell for the conman's shit in Nov. 1995, i stopped writing in my diary pretty much. It was really weird that i did that because it was such an emotional and bewildering time when he fooled me fot 6 weeks straight and sent me on a 'trip'. I didn't write in my diary for almost a month after that as i got over the trip and bewildered some more. When i began to really figure it out, I was attacked and went into shock i started writing again. I guess i mean that when you are in a cult you are floating. You are not reality testing judiciously yourself like normal. The conman is generating the bullshit that compells you and directing it your way. It becomes a wave that lifts you up and carries you.

So these Trump voters are not self reflecting. They are riding the Trump narrative like it is a wave and they are surfers. Nothing else going on but staying on that wave and bonding and sharing with like people to make it so. Who can knock them off so they start looking around and start discerning judiciously again?

Russia is a hoax they say. I bet Russia will help Trump by not interfering in any way that can be proven. Then 'russia is a hoax' will seem doubly true. Do we write catchy memes that give the stats on what middle class life is like under Putin? A list of stats might work. We could make 'what will life be like under Putin/Trump?' an ongoing soap opera. Maybe anonymous russians could make statements.

February 24, 2020

Maybe Putin helping Bernie will translate into Putin 'helping' Democrats

into the GE and not Trump the Trump propaganda will say? So Trump will turn the Russia thing into a hoax in the minds of the independants because Russia will not be helping Trump this time around? Then Trump will say Mueller was a hoax. And by not helping Trump this time around Russia will be actually helping Trump's narrative in the 2020 general election. Maybe that is the plan. Because in 2016 Trump asked for Russia to find Hillary's emails into a microphone on the TV. This week he became enraged that his former Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire didn't stop, in the question section the House briefing, the naming of the Trump campaign as a beneficiary of Putin actions during the election this year. There was no direct proof and Trump fired him. So he knew there was no direct evidence as his minions are saying publicly in the last few days. It is his whole game. Why they can't seem to let the loss, of another accusation of Russia helping Trump, stick. It didn't matter to them in 2016. It matters to them now.

February 23, 2020

Creepy world we live in when the president doesn't want to stop any possible

attack on Democracy in his own country when the information is ambiguous. I can see it now: Trump will say during the GE that Putin is helping democrats (Bernie) and that they never helped him. It is opposite world. Almost like Trump was enraged that his former Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire didn't stop it - the naming of the Trump campaign as a beneficiary of Putin actions during the election this year. Almost like he had assurances Trump would not be obviously targetted by Putin. And then it got back to him by Nunes that the House had been briefed to the contrary of their hoped narrative for the election.

February 23, 2020

O'Brien Says 'No Intelligence Behind' Meddling Claims

O’Brien Says ‘No Intelligence Behind’ Meddling Claims

February 22, 2020 at 7:40 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 22 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2020/02/22/obrien-says-no-intelligence-behind-meddling-claims/

"SNIP.....

National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CBS News he disputed reports of what was presented during a House Intelligence Committee that Russian are interfering to help President Trump in the presidential election.

Said O’Brien: “I haven’t seen any intelligence to support the reports that were leaked out of the House. But it’s just hard to comment on that because, again, I wasn’t there. And these are leaks that were coming from a House Intel Committee hearing. I haven’t seen any intelligence that would back up what I’m reading in the papers.” 

.......SNIP"

Interesting that Trump and republicans seem to be out of the loop. I mean Nunes had to tell Trump. Maybe he roars at anyone who gives him intel on russia interference that makes it hard to tell him things.

Update: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/02/22/politics/nsa-robert-obrien-intelligence-russia-help-sanders-trump/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

February 19, 2020

Are the republicans costing medicare for all to include the increased

costs to current medicare that will occur when 68,00 a year don't die young due to bad or no insurance and make it to 65? If they are doing that then they should ad the tax revenue forgone by someone dying young to their internal Republican costing aswell. All in all a single payer like we have in canada keeps costs down by preventive medicine, less admin costs and bargaining power. That doesn't mean that you can't get a second opinion at the MAYO Clinic if you have the extra private insurance or $. Or treatment at specialized research hospitals if your local healthcare providers are stumped. The research doesn't stop just because you have medicare for all. The quality of care is excellent.

I think with the republicans it is really about power and cleaving the country in two while something like an improved healthcare for all would bring the country together. It would also mean more lower middle class or poor to vote. So they can'y have that.

Here is where i get the 68,000 annual deaths number.

https://www.newsweek.com/medicare-all-would-save-450-billion-annually-while-preventing-68000-deaths-new-study-shows-1487862

February 16, 2020

Like when the Chinese said of the subprime mortgage crisis and why they didn't "

do it themselves: "why would we take our smartest people, people who would otherwise have been engineers, and teach them finance so that they could develop tools to take money from regular people and give it to the rich????" (or something to that effect).

February 16, 2020

I'm not saying alabama will vote dem in the electoral college. Think of

political votes as a disease. Alabama and the south have herd immunity to democrats. Right now so many are innoculated against democrats. What happens is if bernie is right and he gets through. Alabama would be part of that change and it would result in better electoral college votes for democrats in the north or say Georgia. But if alabama retains its hate of all things democrat then it stops the spread in the north or Georgia a bit as people are talking to each other from anywhere these days. And acting as a group. Trump knows that. Democrats should too.

February 16, 2020

Do businesses like Wayfair know that inequality is killing their business?

That where Trump is heading only a third of the country will have disposable cash to spend? US economy will soon be like Mexico where Wayfair doesn't sell.



Never Mind the Internet. Here’s What’s Killing Malls.

Yes, the internet has changed the way we shop. But taken together, other factors have caused greater harm to traditional retail stores, an economist says.

By Austan Goolsbee at the NY Times

Published Feb. 13, 2020Updated Feb. 14, 2020

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/business/not-internet-really-killing-malls.amp.html

"SNIP.....

It has been a tough decade for brick-and-mortar retailers, and matters seem only to be getting worse.

Despite a strong consumer economy, physical retailers closed more than 9,000 stores in 2019 — more than the total in 2018, which surpassed the record of 2017. Already this year, retailers have announced more than 1,200 more intended closings, including 125 Macy’s stores.

......


Income Inequality: Rising income inequality has left less of the nation’s money in the hands of the middle class, and the traditional retail stores that cater to them have suffered. The Pew Research Center estimates that since 1970, the share of the nation’s income earned by families in the middle class has fallen from almost two-thirds to around 40 percent. Small wonder, then, that retailers aiming at the ends of the income distribution — high-income people and lower-income people — have accounted for virtually all the revenue growth in retail while stores aimed at the middle have barely grown at all, according to a report by Deloitte.

As the concentration of income at the top rises, overall retail suffers simply because high-income people save a much larger share of their money. The government reports spending for different income levels in the official Consumer Expenditure Survey. In the latest data, people in the top 10 percent of income saved almost a third of their income after taxes. People in the middle of the income distribution spent 100 percent of their income. So as the middle class has been squeezed and more has gone to the top, it has meant higher saving rates overall.


......SNIP"