pnwmom
pnwmom's JournalBernie's blooper: his 90% joke about Ike and taxes.
Unfortunately, dry, sarcastic humor only works if the listener is in on the joke:
Yes, it was a funny joke -- if you knew
1) who Ike was (a Republican and a General who by no means considered himself a socialist)
2) if you understand how tax tables work (and that top rates only apply to people at the highest levels) and
3) if you were confident that the top rate wouldn't be raised close to 90%, with all the intervening rates (including yours) taking a similar hike.
Unfortunately, his sarcastic comment required an intelligence and knowledge of percentages and tax tables that too many potential voters might not have.
Especially if he is our candidate in the General Election. A crack like this in the general election debates would go completely over the heads of the majority of viewers. Almost all the Rethugs plus a good fraction of Democrats.
Congrats to everyone here who got the joke. Too many others would not.
Maybe it's time for us to adopt the word the French use, "Daesh," instead of calling the terrorists
by their preferred name. (ISIS or ISIL or IS or The Islamic State)
They do not represent Islam. They just want everyone else to think so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/world/europe/paris-terrorist-attacks.html?_r=0
Mr. Hollande vowed to “be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh,” adding that France would act within the law but with “all the necessary means, and on all terrains, inside and outside, in coordination with our allies, who are, themselves, targeted by this terrorist threat.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-vs-islamic-state-vs-isil-vs-daesh-what-do-the-different-names-mean-9750629.html
Isis vs Islamic State vs Isil vs Daesh: What do the different names mean – and why does it matter?
If it were up to the terrorists themselves, the world would be calling them the “Islamic State” in recognition of the caliphate they have declared.
The rebrand launched in June year has spread, despite pleas from leading Muslims and other groups not to legitimise their status.
The British and US Governments are among those using the acronym Isil, while the name Isis is more commonly seen.
Adding to the confusion last week, the French announced they would use the Arabic-derived term “Daesh” to replace their previous name, EIIL ( L'Etat islamique en Irak et en Syrie).
The four competing names are only a handful of those used by Isis, which emerged in 1999 when it was established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who allegedly ran a terror training camp and orchestrated bombings and beheadings in Iraq.
Amanda Knox: I am resolved to clear the names of the wrongfully convicted.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/7/71/1095973/amanda-knox-resolved-clear-names-wrongfully-convictedIo lo so che non sono sola anche quando sono sola.
I know I’m not alone, even when I’m alone.
Over the past eight years, I must have written this line thousands of times. It was the way I closed every letter to my loved ones from prison. It meant to me that although none of my loved ones could hold my hand through imprisonment, they were with me in every other way possible. I repeated that line to myself throughout this Labor Day. For me, my experience was an experience shared with many people — family, friends and strangers — who believed in my innocence and who worked and advocated for it relentlessly. I was never alone. I will always be tremendously thankful for that.
I realized again on Labor Day that if my experience is going to have meaning beyond my own false imprisonment, it must be a catalyst for continued and increased public attention to the ways our criminal justice system can be improved to prevent injustices. The Italian Supreme Court recognized in its opinion that prosecutors and police detectives are not infallible. They can, as the Italian Supreme Court found in my case, make “glaring errors” and negligent “omissions.” They can fall prey to media pressure, putting speed above thorough analysis. They can, we know, wrongfully accuse, prosecute and imprison innocent people. The consequences can be staggering. People sentenced to life imprisonment, even death, have later been exonerated as a result of DNA evidence.
Throughout my own ordeal, I was sustained on hundreds of days and in countless ways by the resolve – and the hope, the kindness, the work – of others. At the end of my contemplation, I found my own resolve again. In the early days of November 2007, and for almost eight years more, I felt resolve to clear my name, but in tremendous need of help to do so. My name now cleared — by Italy’s highest court and directly as a result of tireless efforts on my behalf — my resolve turns outward. I am resolved to help others who have been wrongfully convicted to clear their names, and to help those who have finally been released from prison to re-adjust to their lives outside of four grey walls.
This coming Dec. 3, I will be speaking at Loyola University Chicago’s Sixth Annual Life After Innocence Luncheon. Like many other local and regional innocence groups, Loyola’s Life After Innocence program advocates for innocent people released from prison, helping them reenter society, clear their records and start their lives over. The luncheon will be my first public opportunity to direct the conversation away from my past, and towards our shared goal of ensuring that other innocents may be freed and, better yet, not accused in the first place. I very much look forward to turning that page.
CBS Rethinks Democratic Debate to Reflect Paris Attacks
Source: New York Times
DES MOINES — In the hours after the deadly attacks in Paris, CBS News significantly reworked its plans for the Democratic presidential debate it is hosting here on Saturday night to focus more on issues of terrorism, national security and foreign relations.
Steve Capus, the executive editor of CBS News and the executive producer of “CBS Evening News,” said in an interview late Friday that he was in the middle of a rehearsal for the debate when news broke about the slaughter in Paris.
The CBS News team immediately shifted gears and reformulated questions to make them more directly related to the attacks. Mr. Capus said it was important for the debate to go on because the world looks to the American president for leadership during international crises.
“American leadership is put to the test,” Mr. Capus said. “The entire world is looking to the White House. These people are vying to take over this office.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/us/politics/democratic-debate-to-get-new-terrorism-focus-after-paris-attacks-cbs-says.html
This will be a significant change of focus from the topics the candidates have been preparing to address.
Why do people here so easily fall for anti-Obama stories? Like the one now about
the nominations for the Security Exchange Commission?
How come so many people read and recommended this article -- from a minor source -- without ANYONE checking to see if it were true?
It is FALSE that Obama chose an anti-regulatory person to the Security Exchange commission. There were two open seats, and the process is partisan. Obama got to pick one, and the Rethugs got to pick the other. The Rethug appointment is the one that DUers are all up in arms about, and blaming Obama for.
I understand why people were misled by the article, but think, people, think. When something doesn't pass the smell test, then do some research before posting. Or before joining the Obama lynch mob with all your hasty recs.
ON EDIT: Some have asked why Obama didn't just choose another Republican -- one the Republicans in Clongress didn't want but Democrats might like better (as if there were such people). For one thing, that person would then have to be approved by the Repubs. What would the likelihood of that be?
So the suggestion was made that he could let them veto his Repub nomination and leave the seat empty. That would mean he ALSO couldn't get his Democratic nominee, the liberal law professor Lisa Fairfax, appointed. It would accomplish nothing.
Obama was in a box. He can either get both parties nominees appointed, or neither. That was his choice. It's completely unfair to pretend that he favored having Hester Peirce on the SEC.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21677672-misleading-numbers-and-confused-mission-hallmarks-troubled-financial
TWO of the five seats on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the main Wall Street regulator, are about to be filled. The process is a partisan one, with Barack Obama, a Democrat, picking one new commissioner and the Republican leadership of the Senate the other. That, naturally, is a recipe for discord at an already bruised agency. Its clout has diminished thanks to its poor oversight of investment banks before the financial crisis, to say nothing of its failure to spot the Ponzi scheme of one Bernard Madoff. Now new research suggests that the SEC is doing less well at its main job—policing firms that list shares or issue bonds, among other investments—than its own data suggest.
SNIP
Mr Obama has nominated Lisa Fairfax, a professor of law at George Washington University and an advocate of shareholder activism. In 2011 she published a paper on the gender and ethnicity of corporate boards, which argued that calls for greater diversity on business grounds had been unsuccessful, so “social and moral justifications” should be used instead. That is important because Dodd-Frank requires the SEC to create an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion which “shall develop standards for…assessing the diversity policies and practices of entities regulated by the agency”.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have put forward Hester Peirce, a former Senate staffer who is now a research fellow at the Mercatus Centre, a free-market think-tank. She co-edited a book, “Dodd-Frank, What It Does and Why It’s Flawed”, which asserts that “the underlying assumption that regulators can effectively micromanage the market is flawed. Giving regulators more levers to pull and buttons to push with respect to the financial system only creates a false sense of security.”
WA Post: They are terrified that Hillary will get the nomination and win.
Or even worse, that one of their looney-tunes might succeed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/time-for-gop-panic-establishment-worried-carson-and-trump-might-win/2015/11/12/38ea88a6-895b-11e5-be8b-1ae2e4f50f76_story.html
Less than three months before the kick-off Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them.
Party leaders and donors fear nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands.
The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.
SNIP
The concern among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the worries.
“We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?”
Paul Krugman: Since 2010, Wall Street donations almost all going to GOP.
So their influence on Democratic candidates will be very limited.
Krugman also points out that if any Democrat is elected, that person's actions are going to be limited by Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/opinion/democrats-republicans-and-wall-street-tycoons.html?_r=1
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had an argument about financial regulation during Tuesday’s debate — but it wasn’t about whether to crack down on banks. Instead, it was about whose plan was tougher. The contrast with Republicans like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, who have pledged to reverse even the moderate financial reforms enacted in 2010, couldn’t be stronger.
For what it’s worth, Mrs. Clinton had the better case. Mr. Sanders has been focused on restoring Glass-Steagall, the rule that separated deposit-taking banks from riskier wheeling and dealing. And repealing Glass-Steagall was indeed a mistake. But it’s not what caused the financial crisis, which arose instead from “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers, which don’t take deposits but can nonetheless wreak havoc when they fail. Mrs. Clinton has laid out a plan to rein in shadow banks; so far, Mr. Sanders hasn’t.
But is Mrs. Clinton’s promise to take a tough line on the financial industry credible? Or would she, once in the White House, return to the finance-friendly, deregulatory policies of the 1990s?
Well, if Wall Street’s attitude and its political giving are any indication, financiers themselves believe that any Democrat, Mrs. Clinton very much included, would be serious about policing their industry’s excesses. And that’s why they’re doing all they can to elect a Republican.
SNIP
Post debate, Sanders net-favorability with black people dropped; Clinton's substantially increased.
Clinton is also doing better with self-identified liberals.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/11/11/hillary-clintons-favorable-rating-soars-bernie-sanders-is-stagnant
The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination has seen her net favorable rating jump 14 points among Democrats and those who lean to the left since the first Democratic debate in October, while her top competitor – Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – has seen his own rating stay fairly stagnant, according to Gallup polling released this week. Both candidates, along with former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, will take the stage again Saturday in Iowa for the second official debate of the Democratic primary.
SNIP
According to Gallup, Clinton now has a 63 percent net favorable rating among those on the left, up from 49 percent just before the debate. Her current tally is her highest since Gallup began tracking views of the candidates in July.
SNIP
Clinton has a nearly 90 percent net favorable rating among non-Hispanic blacks, according to Gallup, compared with Sanders' meager rating of 21 percent. That gap has gotten even worse since before the last debate, when the difference was a lower – but still substantial – 55 percentage points.
SNIP
Still, the Gallup polling showed Clinton is even more well-liked among liberals than Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, with Clinton holding an 11-point lead in favorability among the sector.
Beware of "Hillary not electable" pieces written by supporters of Rand Paul and other Rethugs,
like H. A. Goodman.
H. A. Goodman is a Rand Paul supporter who poses as a "liberal Democrat." And he says that if you're worried about Rand Paul's economic policies, you shouldn't, because Congress can rein him in.
Yeah, right.
Paul, who considers himself a tea party member, opposes abortion, opposes Federal LGBT rights (because he didn’t “believe in rights based on your behavior”), voted against the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, opposes all gun control legislation, thinks vaccines should be voluntary, opposes the ACA, opposes campaign finance reform. Among other things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Rand_Paul
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/im-a-liberal-democrat-im_b_6169542.html
Rand Paul is my candidate in 2016, even though the Tea Party would consider me Joseph Stalin's love child. I'm for immigration reform and believe that illegal immigrants benefit this country. I've written many articles criticizing Tea Party paranoia. I'm against demagoguery from people like Paul Ryan who unfairly target inner city citizens and I'm for the federal legalization of gay marriage and marijuana. I think Ted Cruz is a buffoon and that we should listen to Stephen Hawking over Senator "Green Eggs and Ham" on climate change. Finally, I've also written two novels about the evils of religious fundamentalism and political demagoguery.
On all these possible points of contention with Rand Paul, the reality is that he isn't Ted Cruz or Lou Dobbs on these matters. Sen. Paul is a self-described "moderate" on immigration, much to the dismay of Tea Party Republicans. Paul's recent Bill Maher interview shows he's open to cleaner energy alternatives. Most importantly, Paul doesn't abide by the right-wing rhetoric blaming poor people for their predicament, or claiming God wants people to do this or that. Congress at the end of the day has the power of the purse, so if President Rand Paul scares you on economic matters, simply remember that only Congress can repeal or alter government programs and decide on budgets.
Meet the gay couple who were first ever to be featured in a Presidential campaign ad.
Except for the lesbian couple who were featured in the same ad of Hillary's.
http://www.out.com/popnography/2015/4/13/meet-gay-couple-hillary-campaign-video
On Sunday, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her candidacy for president in 2016 via a 2-plus minute video that featured a montage of middle-class Americans, including a same-sex couple holding hands with a voiceover about getting married this summer as a centerpiece — what one Times reporter wrote "would have been unimaginable even in the President Obama re-elect in 2012."
That gay Chicago couple, Jared Milrad (31) and Nathan Johnson (30), told the Washington Blade that they didn't know exactly what they were getting involved with three weeks ago when they agreed to participate in a video for the HRC campaign. As Johnson told the Blade on Sunday during a telephone interview:
SNIP
"We were really excited to see that our interview was featured in the campaign announcement. It was particularly moving to see Secretary Clinton feature a gay couple engaged to be legally married, the first of any major presidential candidate. To us, this decision demonstrates Secretary Clinton’s commitment to LGBT equality and the type of inclusive leader she would be as president.”
SNIP
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