October 27, 2015

Hillary Clinton Smearing Bernie Sanders as "Sexist" is Both Ridiculous & Dishonest

Hillary Clinton Is Smearing Bernie Sanders as a Sexist
It’s ridiculous. Bernie’s record as a feminist is as good as Hillary’s.
By William Saletan * Slate * October 26, 2015

Hillary Clinton has found a new wedge issue against Sen. Bernie Sanders. The topic is gun control, but the angle is gender. Clinton is framing Sanders as a "sexist" who accuses women of shouting when they try to speak up. It’s a lie. She’s manipulating women and abusing feminist anger for her own advantage.

It’s great that we’re more aware of bigotry than we used to be. But we should also beware false claims of bigotry: the race card, the sex card, the homophobia card. In 1991, Clarence Thomas, a well-connected federal judge, evaded sexual harassment allegations and won confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court by accusing his interrogators of a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, says anyone who advocates a boycott of his country “should be treated exactly as we treat any anti-Semite or bigot.” Sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism are real. But sometimes they’re fabricated.

That’s what Clinton is doing. She’s misrepresenting an exchange that took place at the Oct. 13 Democratic presidential debate. During the exchange, Clinton accused Sanders of voting with the gun lobby. Sanders replied: “All the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence.” Sanders argued that people on both sides of the gun debate should agree to “strengthen and expand instant background checks, do away with this gun show loophole,” “deal with the straw-man purchasing issue,” and “address the issue of mental health.”

The man standing to Clinton’s left during this exchange, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, joined in the attack on Sanders. To this, the Vermont senator answered with the same message: “Here is the point, governor. We can raise our voices. But I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not. Our job is to bring people together around strong, common-sense gun legislation.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/hillary_clinton_is_smearing_bernie_sanders_as_a_sexist_it_s_an_insult_to.html

October 26, 2015

As Bad as You Think Inequality Is, It's Worse!

Good read, illustrating how our perceptions about income-inequality tend to differ starkly from its reality,
and are more akin to what it was in 1970 than it is today.

As Bad as You Think Inequality Is, It's Worse!
How much do you think the CEO of a large corporation makes in a year, on average?
By Les Leopold * AlterNet * October 19, 2015

Please take a moment to write down the answers to two basic questions:

How much do you think the CEO of a large corporation makes in a year, on average?
How much do you think an entry-level factory worker earns in a year, on average?
Your answers allow for the construction of an important statistic about inequality – the wage-gap ratio.

For example, let's say your answer is that the typical CEO makes about $500,000 per year, while the factory worker earns about $25,000 per year. That gives us a wage-gap ratio of 20 to 1 – that is, for every one dollar earned by the worker, the CEO earns $20 (500,000/25,000 = 20/1).

If you said $1 million for the CEO and $25,000 for the factory worker, then the ratio jumps to 40 to 1.

What ratio did you come up with?

How Americans view the wage gap

These same two questions were asked of more than 50,000 people around the world, of whom 1,581 were Americans of all stripes. (The data comes from the International Social Survey Programme: Social Inequality IV-ISSP 2009 on the website Gesis.)

It turns out that the median American response – that is, the response that is exactly in the middle of survey results from Americans – estimated that a CEO of a large company earned about $900,000 per year and that the average factory worker earned about $25,000. That makes for a wage-gap ratio of 36 to 1.

But how close are these estimates to reality? Not very.

The chart below gives us a pretty good estimate of the growing gap between total compensation for the top 100 CEOs and the pay of a typical worker. (The number for workers’ pay was derived by using the average wages of production or nonsupervisory workers, which includes workers in the service sector as well as other private industry sectors.)

In 1970, for every dollar earned by the average worker, the top 100 CEOs earned on average $45. By 2013 the ratio had jumped to $829 to $1, which is 20 times greater that what the typical American in the survey guessed.

More amazing still is that on average Americans think CEOs of large companies receive about $900,000 per year in compensation, when in reality they receive nearly $30,000,000.

It's as if our perception of the income gap was frozen in 1970. We just have not caught up with the realities of runaway inequality.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/bad-you-think-inequality-its-worse

October 25, 2015

The Hill: "Clinton camp: Sanders engaging in negative attacks"

This article accuses Bernie of "reneging on his pledge not to engage in negative political attacks";
but what Bernie said he wouldn't do is engage in "personal" attacks, not that he would never
point out their differences on issues, so voters are not left completely in the dark about them.

On the gun thing, seems to me Bernie was actually talking about how too few candidates and people in general,
are rolling up their sleeves to do the hard work of engaging in constructive dialogue to cultivate a sufficient
consensus on a set of policies to reduce gun violence in ways that both sides agree will help.

And for that he gets personally attacked by Hillary for being "a misogynist", which is patently absurd
and over-the-top ugly. But hey, Hills gets a pass on that, while Bernie's accused of doing the very thing Hillary
is doing.
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Clinton camp: Sanders engaging in negative attacks
By Bradford Richardson * The Hill * 10/25/15

The chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign says Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has reneged on his pledge not to engage in negative political attacks.

John Podesta said Sanders went on the offensive against Clinton in his speech at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson dinner on Saturday.
“I think Bernie Sanders seemed to have a course correction in the [Jefferson Jackson] dinner from one in which he said he wasn’t going to go negative to – to obviously focusing his, you know, his fire on her,” Podesta said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Podesta said Clinton, on the other hand, refrained from partisanship and focused on painting a positive vision for the future of America in her speech.

“I think she’s looking to the future,” he said. “I think her speech last night really put forward a positive vision of where the country can be.”

Clinton appeared to accuse Sanders of sexism in her speech at the dinner.

She said she was told to stop “shouting about gun violence,” quoting Sanders.

“Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just when women talk some people think we’re shouting,” Clinton said.

Sanders is disputing that allegation.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/258044-clinton-camp-sanders-engaging-in-negative-attacks

October 24, 2015

CNN reporting Russia pivots 180, now says it supports the Free Syrian forces.

Is Putin blinking to oust Assad, or doing a 3-dyminsional chess fake-out?

October 21, 2015

"New Rules" Rigged To Elect Darlings of the Billionaire Class

Tell me again, how Hillary is not in the pocket of the Billionaire Class"..
Her BIG-donor list looks like a "Who's Who" of the Wall St./MIC/Private Prison corporatist
greed-heads, and it's frankly pathetic that she gets away with saying she's going to "fight
Wall St" or "undo Citizens United" .. give me a break.

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New Rules Help Hillary Clinton Tap Big Donors For Democrats
Individual donors are already giving more than $300,000 to special Clinton committee.
by Paul Blumenthal * 10/21/15 * HuffPo

WASHINGTON -- The Democratic National Committee is benefiting from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's fundraising prowess even before she wraps up the nomination thanks to loosened campaign finance rules.

Hillary Victory Fund -- a super joint fundraising committee that distributes money to the Clinton campaign, the DNC and 33 state party committees -- sent $600,000 to the central party committee in September, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The Clinton campaign’s super joint fundraising committee is out of the ordinary for two reasons. First, presidential candidates do not normally enter into fundraising agreements with their party’s committees until after they actually win the nomination. Second, Clinton’s fundraising committee is the first since the Supreme Court’s 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC decision eliminated aggregate contribution limits and Congress increased party contribution limits in the 2014 omnibus budget bill.

Thanks to the combination of the court ruling and congressional action, donors will be able to make an annual donation of $666,700 to the Hillary Victory Fund. (Previously, donors were limited to giving $123,200 to candidates, parties and political action committees per election cycle.) And some are already giving large sums.

Philanthropist Laure Woods gave $334,400, wealthy Chicagoan Fred Eychaner gave $353,400, Esprit co-founder Susie Tompkins Buell gave $320,000 and real estate billionaires J.B. and M.K. Pritzker each gave $320,000. Integrated Archive Systems CEO Amy Rao also gave $100,000.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-donors_5627a946e4b02f6a900ed79a

October 21, 2015

WHEW!! Thank you Joe for making a wise decision, for everyone. nt

October 21, 2015

WTF is going on here? --> "Obama Officials Resurrect George W. Bush Deregulation Plan"

Obama Officials Resurrect George W. Bush Deregulation Plan
A subtle change could have major consequences.
by Zach Carter * HuffPo * 10/21/15

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has quietly resurrected a deregulation project from the George W. Bush administration, one with the potential to shift the American economic landscape in favor of big companies.

The initiative was originally launched in 2008 by then-SEC Director of Corporate Finance John White, but had to be abandoned as the festering financial crisis embarrassed deregulation proponents. It is now being spearheaded by White's wife, SEC Chair Mary Jo White, who has been the target of heated criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and liberal groups for backing Wall Street-friendly policies.

"This is bullshit," said former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn E. Turner, referring to the agency's latest moves. "This is just absolute bullshit. It reeks."

The deregulation agenda makes subtle changes to obscure rules with potentially dramatic ramifications. By tweaking a few definitions, the SEC could curtail how much information the public receives about the internal operations of corporate conglomerates and their tax-avoidance efforts, while simultaneously shielding big firms from shareholder lawsuits.

The recent push has infuriated investor advocates. Last week, members of the agency's Investor Advisory Committee grilled SEC Chief Accountant James Schnurr over potential changes to what constitutes a "material" corporate event that must be disclosed in public filings. Schnurr has authority over the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which proposed the changes in late September. A day after the plan was released, the SEC announced it would also be rethinking disclosures on corporate mergers, alerting financial watchdogs to the prospect of significantly curtailed information on major deals.

"The feeling of this body is that more disclosure is better than less, in general," Investor Advisory Committee member Damon Silvers said at the meeting. "The clear drift of this is in the other direction." Silvers is a top attorney for the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of labor unions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-bush-deregulation_5626b26de4b08589ef49896a

October 20, 2015

Listen up Bernistas! I think this is Canada's message to US

October 20, 2015

MEMO to M$M: NON-candidate Biden is still a NON-candidate so it's NOT "News" until he announces, so STFU

about it. In case you haven't noticed there are already FIVE ANNOUNCED CANDIDATES in the Democratic Primary.
Can your "coverage of the Democratic Primary" please cover THEM and not NON-candidate Biden?

That is all.

October 19, 2015

Former BBC Journalist Mysteriously Found Dead At Istanbul Airport

Wow. This story is so full of weird claims. 'didn't have money' for another ticket'? really? she didn't have a visa card?
'hung herself with a shoestring from bathroom door hook' .. quite a feat, since those hooks are only about 4-1/2 feet from the floor.

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Former BBC Journalist Mysteriously Found Dead At Istanbul Airport
Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said Jacqueline Sutton took her own life inside a washroom at the airport after missing her connecting flight.
by Associated Press * 10/19/15 (1 hour ago)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The Iraq director of an organization promoting journalism in conflict zones has been found dead in unexplained circumstances at Istanbul's main airport, colleagues and British officials said Monday.

Friends and co-workers of Jacqueline Sutton called for an urgent investigation into her death, which comes months after her predecessor was killed in a bombing.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting said Sutton, its country director for Iraq, was found dead at Ataturk Airport on Saturday. It said the former journalist had been on her way to her base in Irbil, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was "providing assistance to the family of Jacqueline Sutton at this difficult time." It said British officials were in close contact with Turkish authorities.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said Sutton took her own life inside a washroom at the airport after missing her connecting flight. The agency reported, without citing a source, that she became distraught because she didn't have money to buy a new ticket to Iraq.

Turkey's private Dogan news agency said Sutton hanged herself with shoelaces from the hook of the bathroom door, also without citing a source. Her body was discovered by three Russian tourists who alerted police, Dogan said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/former-bbc-journalist-mysteriously-found-dead-at-istanbul-airport_5624ddfee4b08589ef47edd1