March 26, 2016

Bernie rally in Madison, WI, coverage starts at 5:30 EDT

Here is a link.

http://www.inquisitr.com/2929803/watch-bernie-sanders-rally-in-madison-wisconsin-live-online-streaming-video-full-replay-of-saturdays-rally/

March 26, 2016

About that "but....the Supreme Court!" argument

I have seen this argument many times, including earlier today, as to why Bernie supporters must hold their nose and vote for Hillary even if we find her abhorrent on just about everything. It is the argument the Democratic Party has been counting on to hold progressives in line as the party moves further and further to the right.

So about the Supreme Court. I didn't notice until I saw it on Samantha Bee's "Full Frontal" show that I had recorded earlier this week that the justice recommended to fill Scalia's vacancy by Orrin Hatch, conservative Republican Senator from Utah, was.....Merrick Garland!

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/16/3760727/who-is-merrick-garland/

<Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the longest serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered his own thoughts on who President Obama should nominate to fill the seat left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last week. “Obama could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man,” Hatch told the conservative news site Newsmax, before adding that “he probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the liberal Democratic base wants.”>

The article goes on to say that Garland, at age 63, is the oldest nominee to the Supreme Court since 1971. And the article mentions "his reputation for moderation" and that "he has a relatively conservative record on criminal justice".

March 25, 2016

I'm guessing Matt Taibbi isn't feeling the Hillary endorsement from his boss Jann Wenner

Here's a sampling of Taibbi's work on Hillary. I sure wish I could write like this. I would not have expected anything less from the writer who described Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

From 2008: "Hillary Clinton: The New Nixon?"

http://www.alternet.org/story/75233/hillary_clinton%3A_the_new_nixon

<Afterward, the first flack to waddle into the spin cave is Mark Penn, Clinton's chief mouthpiece, one of Washington's most depraved and expensive lobbyist-whores.

Penn is the Democratic version of Karl Rove. He even looks like Rove, only he's fatter and more disgusting. Up close in a forum like this, his eyes bulge out of his fat, blood-flushed head; his neck spills out of his too-tight shirt collar; and he generally looks like Jabba the Hutt, his suit bursting at the seams, with only the bowl of snackable live toads suspended at arm's length missing from the picture.>

From March, 2015: "Hillary Clinton is Turning Into Richard Nixon and Bill Belichick"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/hillary-clinton-is-turning-into-richard-nixon-and-bill-belichick-20150314

<But the emotional tenor of the performance was off by just enough to wonder if, after all those years of fighting, Hillary Clinton is ready to come up smiling for another two-year vitriol-storm. Forget Nixon: she's beginning to rival Bill Belichick in the oozing-contempt department.

Much of her 21-minute address over this e-mail issue recalled the eye-rolling, "I can't believe I have to answer questions about this horseshit" display Belichick put on in his epic "Mona Lisa Vito" DeflateGate presser, a landmark in the annals of unspoken hostility.

Hillary wasn't quite as openly contemptuous of her questioners as the legendary coach, who carries around his own bitter media baggage (reporters chased him out of his first head coaching job in Cleveland). But it was close.

Matt Bai put it this way: "It wasn't that she couldn't answer the questions coming at her; it was that she didn't think she should have to.">

From April, 2015: "Campaign 2016: Hillary Clinton's Fake Populism is a Hit"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/campaign-2016-hillary-clintons-fake-populism-is-a-hit-20150416

<Hillary Clinton ran onto the playing field this week, Rock and Roll Part 2 blaring in the background, and started lying within minutes of announcing her entry into the presidential election campaign.

"There's something wrong," she told a crowd of Iowans, "when hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80 when I was driving here over the last two days."

Oh, right, that. The infamous carried interest tax break, the one that allows private equity vampires like Mitt Romney and Stephen Schwartzman to pay a top tax rate of 15 percent while all of the rest of us (including the truckers Hillary "saw" – note she didn't say "hung out with Bill and me over chilled shrimp at the Water Club&quot pay income taxes.

The carried interest loophole is an absurd, completely unjustifiable handout to the not merely well-off but filthy rich, and it's been law in this country for about three decades.

Raise your hand if you really think that Hillary Clinton is going to repeal the carried interest tax break.>

March 24, 2016

Bernie's campaign just sent a mass email on the disgrace in Arizona

The email blamed it on the Voting Rights Act being gutted by the Supreme Court. It asked me to sign an online petition to reinstate the Voting Rights Act. I did, but it only contained my first name and zip code and the email said nothing about where the petition would be going or what if any other action would be taken. And then it bounced me into a solicitation to make another campaign contribution with Act Blue, which I chose not to do.

March 23, 2016

I just sent a response to this morning's email from the Sanders campaign

I sent them a link to this video from the Sane Progressive about the election fraud we witnessed yesterday in Arizona and asked them to protest yesterday's election by pursuing every possible course of action.

I let them know that while I still support Bernie Sanders and his platform, I am not going to continue to make financial contributions so he can play out a rigged primary process to the end. I would rather wait until November and see what becomes of this movement after the election, then determine if it is worth supporting financially.

March 22, 2016

The Clintons lift another part of Bernie's platform

http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/clinton-touts-hillarys-leadership-during-spokane-campaign-stop/38624896

<For the crowd gathered at SFCC one topic clearly resonated was the issue of prescription drug and heroin abuse in America, with Pres. Clinton offering that we need to "treat it like a public health problem, with more mental health and more treatment.">

How long before Hillary is going to be giving Bernie's stump speech?

March 22, 2016

Income inequality chart, why older people support Hillary and younger people support Bernie

<America's explosion of income inequality, in one amazing animated chart>

<Defenders of the economic status quo in America continue to assert that economic inequality (1) doesn't exist, (2) isn't as bad as you think, or (3) is actually good for everybody.

That's despite empirical evidence that the gap between the rich and the middle class is wide and growing and that the trend is hollowing out the middle class, as well as sociological findings of its corrosive effect on society and politics. Among the "grave moral consequences of widening inequality in an environment of modest growth" identified by political economist Benjamin M. Friedman in 2009, for instance, are "racial and religious discrimination, antipathy toward immigrants, [and] lack of generosity toward the poor"--all features of our current campaign landscape.>

<"The distribution of adults by income is thinning in the middle and bulking up at the edges," Pew reported. The percentage of adults in the highest-income segments grew from 14% in 1971 to 21% in 2015, while those in the lowest two income categories grew from 25% to 29%. Middle income households as a percentage shrank from 61% to 50% in that time. No wonder that those considering themselves middle-income feel as if they're a diminishing breed.

The Financial Times further noted that Pew found a demographic divergence, too: "Older Americans were the biggest gainers by far in terms of their progression up the income tiers during the current century, and also when compared with the start of the 1970s....The group aged 18-29 has seen the biggest slide.">

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-ft-graphic-20160320-snap-htmlstory.html

March 21, 2016

"Hillary Clinton: She'll say anything and change nothing. It's time to turn the page."

2008 campaign ad by Barack Obama.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/12/1500138/-Obama-2008-Campaign-Ad-She-ll-say-anything-and-change-nothing

March 20, 2016

Bernie rally in Vancouver, WA has just started: 4:25 PM EDT

Bernie should be speaking in the next 5-10 minutes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280152884

March 20, 2016

Joan Baez endorses Bernie, says "he speaks to the human condition"

She calls Trump supporters "troglodytes" and says she has been disappointed with Obama, who she endorsed in 2008.

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/03/joan_baez_supports_bernie_sand.html#incart_river_home