January 26, 2016

M$M is getting weirder and weirder, as Iowa approaches.

This morning on MSNBC there's been a string of Hillary "campaign strategists" and surrogates
appearing to "comment" on last night's forum and to denigrate Bernie and his chances
of winning. All lobbed softball questions to fluff-up Hillary as "the experienced inevitable
candidate" in the Primary.

NO Bernie staff or supporters at all, to counter any of it, just Hillary people pilling-on
with their anti-Bernie tripe. .. or at least none that I've seen yet today.

It's weird when shit like this happens because .. well if I notice stuff like this and then
SAY anything about it, point out the imbalance, I get all the "CT" "oh you Bernie people
always the victim" crap; and so I'm damned if I do notice and comment, and I'm damned
if I don't, because I'm basically rolling-over and playing dead and ceding to complete
bullshit and bias that's masquerading as 'balanced journalism".

Clearly the "fix" is in, and all the PTB's long knives are out to get Bernie today.. and likely
will stay that way the rest of the week. Maybe I need to just turn it all off, and focus
instead on social media, where there's still two sides being represented, because it feels
like pissing into the wind to try to email CNN and MSNBC to point out their blatant bias.

It's not like they don't know what they are doing. Any thoughts?

January 26, 2016

Does ANYone remember exactly what Cuomo's comment/question was to whom, when the whole audience

groaned, and some booed ... it 'was a fleeting moment of audience dis-belief and shock,
that passed right by as he pivoted to something else, but a very telling one.

I can't for the life of me remember what he said, to invoke that response from the audience,
but do recall it was pretty odious and obnoxious.

I think it was during Hillary's time slot.

Anyone?

January 26, 2016

To the Chagrin of the Establishment, Bernie Sanders Refused to Melt at Hillary's Forum

Bernie Sanders Refuses to Melt
by Bill McKibben * 1/26/2016 * HuffPo

Bernie Sanders keeps refusing to run the way that the pundits think he should -- that's what makes this primary so interesting and perhaps a turning point in American politics.

You could see it last night in the Democratic town hall. Before they let, you know, sensible people ask questions, there was CNN moderator Chris Cuomo. Cuomo, of course, wanted to know if Bernie Sanders was going to "bring back the era of big government." This is exactly the kind of frame that pundits have been trying to put on American politics for about as long as I can remember, which is at least back to the Carter era.

This question is supposed to be a kind of kryptonite that causes Democratic politicians to sweat and turn pallid and immediately explain that no, they're for efficient government or some such. It's the kind of question that turned Bill Clinton into a triangulating centrist who cut welfare to the bone and elevated corporate power with a series of disastrous trade agreements. Everyone in Washington knows that "big government" is always bad. Bernie wasted no time in saying that he was going to bring back the era when government helped care for people. ... people who have spent their lives working might deserve the chance to relax and be grandparents at the end of the day.

This kind of stuff makes the keepers of our political order crazy. In the last few days, we've seen folks such as Paul Krugman in the New York Times and Paul Starr in Politico patiently explain that Bernie is too far to the left to be president. It's like they're dumping water on the Wicked Witch of the West and waiting for her to shriek, "I'm melting!" But actually, he's just shrugging it off, like a duck. As Cuomo tried to get him to confess to his socialism, his team just tweeted out a list of "socialist" accomplishments: Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, the 40-hour workweek.

The Beltway polls don't quite get how much America has changed -- how unequal and desperate it's become. Sanders has spent his career on the back roads of Vermont, which is America's second-most rural state. That means he's met a lot of poor people and a lot of desperate people -- a lot of people like the woman who started crying at his event in Iowa earlier in the day. The Washington Post reporter described it as "a remarkably moving thing," which it was. But since Post political reporters only meet actual people during those rare moments in a four-year cycle when they happen to intersect with presidential candidates, he perhaps imagined it as rare. This is what life is like.

~snip~

A leader is someone who figures out where the future is going, not someone who joins the party once it's underway. That is why, he added, it is relevant that he opposed the Iraq War when she supported it. And he opposed the Keystone pipeline when she supported it. He could have gone on for a long time with that list: why did she set up a wing of the State Department to spread fracking around the planet, for instance? Why was she against gay marriage for years? But the point is clear. A leader is someone who figures out where the future is going, not someone who joins the party once it's underway. A canny politician, by contrast, is precisely someone who waits until it's safe and then runs up to lead the parade.

If it was a year for canny politicians, then Hillary would be a shoo-in. She's spent decades perfecting that approach.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/bernie-sanders-town-hall_b_9077552.html

January 26, 2016

Is anyone going to shut Hillary up? Isn't she going on and on way longer than Bernie or O'M?

or does it just seem that way?

Is anyone keeping time on this, as to whether they are spending EQUAL time
with each candidate?

January 26, 2016

Could Cuomo be any bigger of an asshole, buttonholing O'M on how to caucus???

This guy is a disgraceful excuse for a "journalist" .. un-believablely biased and not even
trying to hide it or pretend otherwise ..

WHY in the fuck was he chosen for this role.

wait, don't tell me .. I already know who put this forum together and why .. to damage
Sanders as much as possible, no holds barred.

January 26, 2016

Why is Cuomo taking digs at Bernie in his question to O'M??????????

Asshole.

repeated Obama's "bright & shiny new object"

January 25, 2016

Bernie lights fire of Doors drummer

Bernie lights fire of Doors drummer
John Densmore * Jan. 21, 2016 * The Des Moines Register

This wasn’t an acid flashback, although to my ears it sounded like one. Several months ago, I was with 27,000 people screaming for a disheveled, 74-year-old senator from Vermont. We were in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, where The Doors played in the 1960s. I remember the mass adulation, but that was for our lead singer in leather pants. Even though the white-haired politician has no colorful wardrobe, after he speaks, you want to hug him. Why? Because what Bernie Sanders says feels like the unbridled truth. And he says it loud!

Backstage I said, “It’s so refreshing, almost shocking to hear words that ring true ... out of a politician! You’re like the pope!” That’s why the mass appeal (pun intended).

Let’s not forget that just a couple years ago, in thousands of cities, across 82 countries, on every continent except Antarctica, the mantra that 1 percent owns the 99 percent got embedded in the world’s psyche. Gosh, that’s Bernie Sanders' main theme.

More: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/caucus/2016/01/21/bernie-lights-fire-doors-drummer/79118130/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=

January 25, 2016

Bundyland Security Chief Ryan Payne: It’s Legal To Kill A Cop Who’s “Unlawfully Trying to Arrest You

Bundyland Security Chief Ryan Payne: It’s Legal To Kill A Cop Who’s “Unlawfully Trying to Arrest You”
Missoula Independent profile offers fullest picture of Bundyland security chief
By Aaron Mesh * January 23, 2016 * Willamette Week

Want to know more about the armed seditionists holding the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge?

Look to their hometown papers.

As the anti-government standoff in Harney County, Ore. rounds into its fourth week, media outlets are looking more closely at some of the men running the takeover of federal wildlife buildings—militants who have 58

Both WW and The Oregonian have singled out a key figure running security: a 31-year-old man from Anaconda, Mont. named Ryan Payne.

The closest and best examination of Payne was reported nearly two years ago by the Missoula Independent. Reporter Ted McDermott visited Payne at his family's log cabin outside Anaconda, not long after Payne took a leading role defying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management at Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada.

The Independent found in Payne an Army veteran who had become disillusioned and saw his former superiors in the U.S. military as an "oppressor" across the globe. He became further radicalized when his Southern California dune buggy company was put out of business by the costs of emissions tests—an example, he felt, of government regulators trying to control citizens.

http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/23/montana-militant-ryan-payne-its-legal-to-kill-a-cop-whos-unlawfully-trying-to-arrest-you/

January 24, 2016

LOL - Just stumbled upon this in my PhotoBucket. My how things change

January 22, 2016

Nasty New Wrinkle in Bundy Gang Oregon Stand-off. Death Threats Come to Light...

Death threats to Federal employees and their families.

Oregon ranchers who sparked standoff threatened to wrap official’s son in barbed wire and drown him
by Arun Gupta * 21 JAN 2016 * Raw Story

With the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge almost three weeks old and tempers fraying at a community meeting in the nearby town of Burns, Oregon, one voice has been absent from the drama: the Fish and Wildlife Service employees whose work has been disrupted and offices turned into an armed camp by anti-government militants. ~snip~

Leading up to the 1994 incident were the death threats. Cameron says, “My wife would take these phone calls, it was terribly vulgar language. They said they were going to wrap my son in barbed wire and throw him down a well. They said they knew exactly which rooms my kids slept in, in Burns. There were death threats to my wife and two other staff members and their wives. My family went to Bend rather than be in the community because it was so volatile at the time. The families of my biologist and my deputy manager family had to relocate as well for a short time.”

“At the refuge headquarters, one of the Hammonds said they would tear my head off and shit down the hole. One of the Hammonds told my Deputy Manager, Dan Walsworth, they were going to ‘put a chain around his neck and drag him behind a pickup.’” Cameron says it became practice “never to meet with the Hammonds alone and usually to have a law enforcement officer present.” ~snip~

One current employee at Malheur refuge, who asked to be identified as “Steven,” says, “It is a really frightening time for workers on the refuge. They are demoralized and afraid. Workers have asked to be transferred out of Harney County.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/oregon-ranchers-who-sparked-standoff-threatened-to-wrap-officials-son-in-barbed-wire-and-drown-him/#.VqHGS40IDi4.facebook