May 24, 2016

Here is the postcard request for a CA ballot that the people who filed the lawsuit

argue is too hard for Bernie voters to figure out.

Do they really think non-affiliated Bernie voters can't figure out that they need to check the box in the upper-left corner indicating that they want a Democratic ballot?

Or is the lawsuit a way of getting free publicity because Bernie's running out of money?'


http://voteforbernie.org/state/california/

May 19, 2016

At NV, why didn't the Bernie campaign explain to their delegates

that the rules in place since at least 2008 required a 2/3 vote of all the delegates for any amendments? In other words, a super-majority was required for any amendments.

Why didn't they explain to them that since only about half of the delegates were Bernie people, they wouldn't be able to shove through any changes opposed by the Hillary delegates? And that a voice vote, which was also called for in the rules, was sufficient to discern that there wasn't the required 2/3 approval?

Why did the Bernie campaign instead choose to whip the delegates up into a lather?

http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/

May 19, 2016

Trump's simple method of appearing richer than he really is:

He licenses his name -- even to other real estate developers. So when you see a "Trump Tower," maybe he owns it -- maybe he doesn't.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-figure-describes-association-with-trump/2016/05/17/cec6c2c6-16d3-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html?postshare=8261463505936319&tid=ss_tw

Sater arrived in Trump’s orbit as the mogul was shifting his business model. Seizing on the success of his television reality show, “The Apprentice,” he focused on licensing his name to developers constructing high-rise hotels and condominium projects.

SNIP

When one of the firm’s most ambitious projects, the oceanfront Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., became embroiled in disputes after construction stalled in 2009, aggrieved condo buyers filed suit, claiming, among other things, that Trump and others had failed to tell them about the criminal past of a key member of the development team.

Trump walked away from the failing project, saying he held no responsibility since he had merely licensed his name to the effort.

May 19, 2016

538: Hillary exceeded her target # of delegates for both KY and OR. Bernie slipped farther behind.

Though Bernie collected more delegates than Hillary, he needed even more to put him on track to winning the majority of the pledged delegates. Because he didn't meet his target in OR and KY, he needs an even higher percentage of the remaining pledged delegates.

She needs only about a third of all the remaining pledged delegates to win the majority.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/delegate-targets/democrats/

Methodology

These interactive charts show which candidate is on target to win the Democratic nomination and which one is falling behind. They are based on our estimate of how many delegates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would need in each primary and caucus to win a simple majority of the 4,051 pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

We reached these estimates by developing benchmarks for each state based on its demographics. In particular, we used exit polls to determine the racial composition of the Democratic electorate in each state, how each state lines up on a liberal-conservative scale, and whether Democratic voters live in rural or conservative areas. Sanders does better in whiter, more liberal and more rural states. Clinton does better in states with more nonwhite voters — especially African-Americans. For more detail about these procedures, see this article.

After we arrived at baseline estimates of candidate support, we adjusted their support proportionally in each state until both candidates were tied nationally. Finally, we multiplied each candidate’s adjusted share of support by the number of pledged delegates available in each state to arrive at delegate targets (unlike Republicans, Democrats award all of their pledged delegates proportionally). Because there is limited data available to model the 99 pledged delegates from six delegations — American Samoa, Democrats Abroad, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands — we set both Clinton’s and Sanders’s targets in those contests at half of the delegates available.

May 19, 2016

Samantha Bee's takedown of sexism from Seattle sports fans

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11689472/samantha-bee-full-frontal-seattle-sonics-sexism-council

It's been a rough month for the women of the Seattle City Council. They've gotten vicious online abuse from trolls inviting "those BITCHES" to "BURN IN HELL," or speculating that their "cycles must have synced up."

What did they do to deserve this, asked Samantha Bee on Monday night's Full Frontal? They dared to vote down a proposal for a new sports arena in Seattle.

The vote against the proposed arena was 5 to 4, split down the gender line. The women council members had good reasons for voting against the arena, Bee said. It would be built right on the Port of Seattle, which would threaten industrial and maritime jobs. But that didn't stop Sonics fans and other haters from bombarding the women with misogynistic abuse online.

SNIP

May 18, 2016

Thanks to NV, Wonkette has jumped off the fence and into the Hillary camp.

If you have time, click on the link and read the whole piece. It's worth the effort.

You Say You Want A Revolution?
Nice Grandpa Bernie Sanders Gonna BURN YOUR SH*T DOWWWWWN

Read more at http://wonkette.com/601971/nice-grandpa-bernie-sanders-gonna-burn-your-sht-dowwwwwn#xfwtyaL8CO1LbihQ.99

If you were waiting for Bernie Sanders to release a statement on the clusterfuck that was the Nevada state Democratic convention, hooray! He has done so! If you were waiting for Bernie Sanders to release a statement telling his supporters “hey maybe don’t drown out and scream at Barbara Boxer that she’s a fucking bitch for having a different preference in the Democratic primary than you do,” you are going to have to wait a little bit longer.

No, Bernie Sanders is going down swinging, and doubling down, and other metaphors from baseball and/or gambling (or both if you are Pete Rose or Shoeless Joe Jackson). See, his supporters wouldn’t have had to fling chimpanzee shit all over Las Vegas’s Paris hotel if they hadn’t been robbed, by which we mean they lost.

Wonkette has been officially neutral in the Democratic primary, until now. (We know, angry commenters; Wonkette says it has been neutral but has been a reliable source of bought-and-paid-for neoliberal corporate piece of shit one-percenter shilling for a mass murderer who will be arrested for “emails” any day now. Fair enough!)

SNIP

No, VERY ANGRY FOLK making your videos, the rules were not “changed” and did not require a two-thirds vote. They required a majority. Hillary Clinton had a narrow majority of supporters attending because almost 500 Bernie Sanders delegates didn’t show up. Even if the olds and gyno-Americans in the room weren’t as loud as the young men in their 20s and 30s, and even if they didn’t take an hour to do a head count to verify the voice vote, nothing was stolen here.

* The chair allowed its Credentials Committee to en mass rule that 64 delegates were ineligible without offering an opportunity for 58 of them to be heard. That decision enabled the Clinton campaign to end up with a 30-vote majority.

According to the Nevada Democrats, after the Dems attempted to contact the missing delegates to resolve the problems with their registrations (which were either “not Democrat” or were missing addresses, etc., to make sure they were actually Nevada residents) those 58 people literally never showed up to the convention. Why would I believe the Nevada Democrats over Bernie Sanders? Because I have seen the rest of the disinformation in Bernie Sanders’s statement, and he has now lost his reputation with me of being an honest broker.

SNIP

May 18, 2016

I wonder how many of her attackers realized Roberta Lange is a Bernie endorser?

And I wonder if her experience at the caucus has given her pause.

http://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-get-control-get-out-race-461195

From Newsweek:

The unseemly tirade of Sanders supporters was a marvel, the kind of behavior more likely to be seen among British soccer hooligans than people claiming to be interested in politics. A chair was thrown. People screamed “bitch!” at Senator Barbara Boxer, a staunch liberal from California. Even the Nevada state Democratic chairwoman, Roberta Lange, who had endorsed Sanders, needed a security detail just to go to the bathroom in order to protect her from the hypocritical “humanity lovers” who seem to hate everyone but themselves and their idol.

Afterwards, the goons kept up their hostile hysterics. Protesters vandalized the offices of the state Democratic Party. Lange’s personal contact information, including her cellphone number, were posted online, and she has since received thousands of death threats, according to state party officials. One of the text messages to Lange said, “Praying to god someone shoots you in the FACE and blows your democracy-stealing head off!” (Only in the delusions of Bernie-land could democracy be stolen when the winner of the popular vote was winning.) Voicemails obtained by Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada political reporters, contain such delightful statements as “people like you should be hung in a public execution…you are a sick, twisted piece of sh*t and I hope you burn for this!” And, “You f**king stupid bitch! What the hell are you doing? You’re a f**king corrupt bitch!” And, “You’re a c*nt. F**k you!” And, “You probably just guaranteed fire is in Philadelphia.”

Yeah, these are exactly the kind of people who Americans want to have as the next president’s base—vicious, sociopathic misogynists. And their threats of violence at the convention is just another sign that Sanders could go down as one of the most destructive forces in American history. Riots and flames at the convention—a repeat of the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention—would help open the White House doors for Donald Trump when compared to a nose-holding coronation by Republicans at their gathering in Cleveland.

Meanwhile, Sanders reacts with mealy-mouthed mumbles, saying he doesn’t support violence while doing literally nothing about it, and claiming that—contrary to the statements of witnesses, reporters and video recordings—his violent supporters aren’t violent. Trump would be proud of the disingenuous delusions vomited up by the candidate.

May 18, 2016

Amanda Knox: European Court of Human Rights has just accepted her appeal.

She appealed the 4 year sentence she got for lying during and about her interrogation. She appealed to the European Court because she wasn't given a lawyer or an independent translator during the interrogation, both of which are rights guaranteed by the European Convention. If the ECHR rules in her favor she will be able to have her conviction overturned and will be able to sue Italy for her ordeal.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/amanda-knox-taking-italy-european-7997082

Amanda Knox - the American woman who spent almost four years in an Italian jail for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher - is taking the Italian government to the European Court of Human Rights.

The 28-year-old from Seattle claims she was subjected to maltreatment and an unfair trial by Italian officials.

May 18, 2016

Bernie just equated working voters with white voters, again.

**** Posted to the AFRICAN AMERICAN GROUP ****

He just doesn't get it.

No, Bernie, African American and Hispanic people aren't being tempted by Trump and his nonsense. And they do work. And vote. Trump hasn't captured the votes of "the majority of working people" because he hasn't captured PoC.

http://fortune.com/2016/05/18/democrats-pressuring-bernie-sanders/

Sanders also warned of “a very sad and tragic option” for the party: “to choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy. And a party which incredibly is allowing a right-wing extremist Republican Party to capture the votes of the majority of working people in this country.”

May 17, 2016

The NV caucus credentials committee had EQUAL NUMBERS of Sanders and Clinton supporters,

and a Sanders co-chair.

In other words, the committee that had made the decisions about credentials in the recent Nevada caucus was split evenly between Sanders and Clinton people. This is the hard-working committee whose decisions were violently disputed by some Sanders supporters.

Here is an excerpt from a letter the caucus organizers have sent to the DNC, warning of future disruptions.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/312844982/160516-Letter-DNC-RBC-NVDemsConvention

The most egregious instance of the Sanders Campaign inciting disruption—and yes, violence—came as the State Convention’s Credentials Committee completed its work. Adam Gillette, part of National Delegate Operations Team for the official Sanders Campaign, drafted and arranged for a member of that committee to attempt to deliver an incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized “minority report” charging that the Credentials Committee had fraudulently denied 64 Sanders delegates their eligibility. The final delegate count had provided the Clinton Campaign with a 33 delegate advantage in the hall; one can imagine the rage occasioned by this inflammatory charge, tossed into the tinderbox of a tense convention hall. Not only did this discredit the work of the Credentials Committee—which featured five Sanders delegates and five Clinton delegates and a Sanders co-chair, and who worked all day under extremely trying conditions to be fair and diligent in their duties—it called into question the entirety of the proceedings because it indicated to an irrational minority that the proceedings had been rigged against them. Forcing their way onto the dais to deliver this paranoid fantasy of fraud and delegate theft was clearly intended to throw the proceedings into disarray. It succeeded. From that moment on, there was little hope for any peace or mutual understanding and respect between Sanders delegates and the NSDP; the mantra became simply that the convention had been stolen from the Sanders Campaign.

Never mind that six of the 64 potential Sanders delegates referenced had been seated after investigation, or that most of the remaining 58 potential delegates had been disqualified—appropriately, and by a panel evenly split between the campaigns—for not being registered Democratic voters in Nevada. Never mind that the same Credentials Committee had disqualified Clinton delegates for various reasons as well. Never mind, further, that just eight of those 64 potential Sanders delegates even attempted to register for the State Convention. All that mattered was the creation of a narrative of fraud and dispossession, which the Sanders Campaign fomented intentionally for its own political gain. This was an unconscionable act by an official Sanders Campaign representative, with full knowledge of its likely impact on the convention.