2016 Presidential Election: what's the deal?

If your only source of information was my personal Facebook feed, you'd think that Bernie Sanders would be the next U.S. president in a landslide. I know a couple of people who like Hillary Clinton, but not many at all. But I know a lot of people who are just like me, and I know it's not reflecting America as a whole.

I consider this forum a decent source of people who don't agree with me politically but manage to not be completely unhinged (for the most part). I'd like to ask...do any of these yahoos running for the Republican nomination appeal to you at all? I'm having a hard time seeing any of them win the election. Is there someone LibraryThing conservatives are legitimately rooting for, or do you feel you are choosing the least-terrible candidate from a cesspool of nincompoops?

Here's a piece on the Democrats that assesses the challenges faced by Sanders and Webb vis-a-vis Clinton. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/jim-webb-is-searching-for-a-bygone-democratic...

538 also talks about the the Invisible Primary where the party elites pick who they want to run for president. Jeb Bush is moderately in the lead on that Republican side, and Hillary Clinton is massively in the lead on that on the Democrat side.

"a cesspool of nincompoops"? As a liberal, naturally they aren't targeting me. Most of them don't really seem to stand out as bad though; Jeb Bush doesn't seem to be that bad, for example, except for the Bush name.

>3 prosfilaes: 'Jeb Bush doesn't seem to be that bad, for example, except for the Bush name.' You'll probably retract that pretty soon.

ETA: for example: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/jeb-bush-defends-george-w-bush-iraq-legacy...

ETA: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/14/jeb-bush-refuses-to-rule-out-use-...

Interesting developments on the Democrat side. This may be premature analysis, but I am guessing that the establishment Dems are nervous now about Sanders, as not only has a Biden run been tossed out there, now a resuscitation of Al Gore (I typed Bore at first, which should please Herr Freud) is discussed in the Guardian today.

>1 weener:

If everyone over thirty could be banned from voting, Sanders would win.

Which makes me think people ought to lose voting privileges in mid-life. Nobody improves, we age and turn into crocodiles. (Apologies, REAL crocodiles. Of course you are infinitely better than humans any time.)

>6 LolaWalser: Sanders is 73 ...

>7 theoria:

I know, so what? He wouldn't vote.

Is this real? Either way, I love it:

It's cool that Jeb Bush is bilingual, and... I ran out of nice things to say about him.

Trump sucks pretty bad and would make us the laughingstock of the world, but I imagine if he actually got elected, he'd pull a Sarah Palin and just quit when it got too hard, leaving whatever basket case he can get as a vice president in charge.

Nobody laughs at the US without simultaneously shitting their pants--sort of how a spoiled brat with a live grenade in his hands is at least as terrifying as he is funny.

Besides, after Dubya there's little new to laugh about.

Drone attacks, for example, aren't funny.
Guantanamo detainees aren't funny.

Trump as POTUS isn't in the least funny, but it does seem fitting.

HE IS AMERICA... AND SO CAN YOU.

"A spoiled brat with a live grenade in his hands..." I haven't heard a better metaphor for Trump / America.

Every time I hear his name I'm irresistibly reminded of a villain in the Alan Ford comic, Mister Tromb:



He too was a rich bastard and wanted to blow up the world. Even ran for president once!



(The poster says "Vote for Tromb", to which a character is adding something that can be loosely translated as "...and you'll be TRUMPED"--ha!

Go trump yourself! Where are my trumping keys??? Trump your mama and the horse you rode in!

Etc.

We should do for Trump what Dan Savage did for Santorum.

>10 weener: whatever basket case (Trump) can get as a vice president

I read somewhere that Jesse Ventura was interested(!)

#18--Ventura's endorsed Sanders. He is the only governor/former governor to have done so. If you look at the wikipedia endorsements page. Clinton has/had 31 US Senators and several former Senators endorsing her candidacy. She's got at least 8-9 current governors and several former governors and she's got a shitload of current US Congressmen/women. Bernie's got none of that--he's got Ventura--several unions--he's got a lot of Vermont and New Hampshire state legislators. He's got Noam Chomsky and Tom Hayden and Michael Moore. He's got Occupy Wall St. It's pretty much a David vs. Goliath deal. Much as many of Sanders colleagues in the Senate say they really like him--their endorsements have gone to Hilary. We can pretty much see the demarcation between what is establishment and what is not.

FWIW Ventura's and Sanders' paths to elective office are fairly similar. Both originally running insurgent campaigns very much against the odds to get to where they got. I can't speak for Ventura's time as Minnesota governor very much. Was he some kind of crank? Could he have been worse than a Scott Walker, Chris Christie or a Bobby Jindal?--or any number of others who got vetted by the established in their states and have been shaking hands with money all the way? I don't really scoff at Ventura.

Donald Trump OTOH is a bombastic show business personality with endlessly deep pockets--born with the proverbial spoon in his mouth. He's also an arrogant jerk. His is not IMO an insurgent campaign--and as far as any kind of political agenda, policy making and/or ideology it's mostly pick and choose as you go for him. I particularly don't like his racist take on the Mexican border. With all that though I don't think he is even close to being the worst of the Republican field--for instance if I were to guess he'd probably refrain from getting us into another war in the Ukraine or from chasing ISIL from pillar to post all over the North African deserts. I can't say that about a good part of the Republican field. I'm not sure that Trump would actually outlaw abortion like some of the current batch of nuts would do either.

Delete. Double post.

Sounds like Sanders might have positions Ventura likes, but Trump's bluster is appreciated by the former MN Governor?

http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_28630881/ventura-says-hes-rooting-trump-op...

Trump is a wild card. I'm not sure most people know where he stands on much--other than the immigrant issue. Saying for instance he's going to bring lost manufacturing jobs back from China---what does that exactly mean? To me it's something that a politically naive person might say--or on the other end another politically naive person might believe. Or maybe he doesn't believe it at all--he just says shit like that as an appeal for voters. The way forward to new manufacturing/industrial jobs is to create the conditions for new job creation here--the old jobs are not coming back--not in any numbers anyway. I supposed if the US began relying on trade tariffs but getting that kind of legislation through congress would be near impossible and it wouldn't address other issues that could negate any positive effect such as trade debt. Much as I hate to say it the US needs China as much as China needs the US. They need our debt and we need the production of cheap goods that we use to do for ourselves.

What if Trump is merely pointing out how off the rails the Republican Party really is ? The wilder and more obnoxious he is the higher he rates in the polls. He doesn't have to have any plans or ideas and if he does, they don't have to be based in any type of reality. He just yammers and they love it. He is unlikeable for so many reasons, yet when he appeals to the nasty side of things....when he spouts nonsense....he finds himself number one candidate for one of the two big political parties. America the beautiful !!!!
What if he IS just screwing with their heads ? Historically he has been more democratic than republican. One big reality TV show, starring the American public, news media and various lawmakers.

If Trump somehow managed to win a general election without the intense support of his own party--his ability to govern is going to be severely compromised IMO. There's a good chance that lots of Republican legislators would not be pleased with him as their nominee.

Personally I'm not sure he has the attention span or the will/drive to sit in the White House for four years even with the support of his party. What happens if the job becomes a bore? He has the ambition and all the money he needs--but I have doubts about his psychology.

When he is busy sucking all of the air out of the room, no other Republican's are making much head way. Like I said....may be a ploy. A game. He won't be President and I don't think he wants to be President.

Yeah, I think he knows that being President isn't going to be getting paid millions of dollars to stand around being an asshole. He just likes being the center of attention.

I can't help but notice that no LT conservatives have popped in here to answer my question... Anyone you really like, or are you dismayed by your options this time around?

>24 lriley: If Trump somehow managed to win a general election without the intense support of his own party

That's one of those scenarios I find so unlikely that speculating about what would happen if is hard. If Trump won the election, it would be because he has enough support. In reality, the Democrats could run just anyone against Trump and gain a significant chunk of the Republicans plus the swing vote.

#27--it's interesting. There is phenomenon that has been changing politics as we have come to know it. First the unlikelihood of a black man winning a POTUS general election--followed closely by a reactionary anti republican establishment tea party movement (at least somewhat co-opted by the Koch brothers and their like)--followed then by an insurgent anti-establishment everything Occupy Wall St.--in the meantime outside the beltway candidacies like Ron Paul (in 2012), Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders have shown growth and momentum. Under the radar third parties like the libertarians and the Greens seem to be getting stronger with every election though they're still both well out of in the being taken seriously category. Taken in totality I think it squares with polls that show that tons of people are sick and tired of both major parties--particularly the establishment of those two parties.

In any case to your comment about Trump--one of the things going in his favor right now is that there are so many republicans that have announced. IMO--that party is not going to start actually getting behind a nominee until the field is whittled down considerably. This is really the time--he has to make hay while the sun shines--win some primaries and become the guy to beat--because if he's neck and neck with 4 or 5 other guys he's not going to get the support of the party. I expect he's going to say some really stupid shit between now and primary time though. He doesn't have a lot of self control--seems to get defensive when he's called on something--oftentimes losing self control all over again and the media and his competition are going to spin that for all it's worth. Again I'm not sure he even has the necessary commitment to run all the way, win and then govern.

FWIW though--there are people that really like Trump. A lot of them are old duffers like my mom. He's telling them what they want to hear.

>19 lriley:

Bernie's got none of that--he's got Ventura--several unions--he's got a lot of Vermont and New Hampshire state legislators. He's got Noam Chomsky and Tom Hayden and Michael Moore. He's got Occupy Wall St.

That's really interesting. I don't think Chomsky has ever supported a Democratic candidate for president before - he's always gotten behind the Greens, iirc.

>26 weener: What LT conservatives? Do you mean the ones on UK immigration thread? I haven't seen them post about any other topics. Tim is more conservative than most of us, but he doesn't comment often.

>28 lriley: He's already said a bunch of stupid shit. I thought that after he called POWs losers for getting captured that he would lose all support for Republicans but he just got more popular. But I don't think his popularity in polls will translate into many people actually voting for him.

>29 artturnerjr: But Bernies not a Democrat, he only caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

>32 jjwilson61:

Yeah, but he's running as a Democrat in his presidential bid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates,_2016

>30 jjwilson61:

There's some commentary from Tim (as well as some other (presumably) conservative LTers) on the 2016 presidential election here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/193902

Wikipedia thinks Lawrence Lessig might be making a presidential run. Him I'd vote for.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9132665/lawrence-lessig-presidential-campaign-...

Wonder how many of his supports whined about single-issue voters in the past ?

>36 Kuiperdolin:
"Wonder how many of his supports whined about single-issue voters in the past ?"

Hmmm. Is that anything like single issue governing ? "My main job is to make Obama a one term President"

There's a difference between main and single. But yes, it's on the same axis.

Was thinking about Trump this morning.....listening to some clips on television.
Sadly, I was forced to come to the conclusion that Mr. Trump is really the only candidate on the Right who is all about American values.
He is not anyone's puppet. He is all about the climb to wealth and fame. When asked about his bankruptcies he said "I used American law to file them" "I was within the law" (and hasn't our legal system turned into a tool to be used by those who have the most money, the best lawyers and the time to manipulate the system ?) When asked about Heidi he claims she is no longer a 10. Obviously, to him, this is somehow reflective of her worth as a woman. He is all about excess, money, ego, Vegas, giant golf courses....what ever he does is over the top.
How American is this ?

While not all American's subscribe to this plenty of them do. It is not all that hard to figure out why Trump is doing well. There are now claims that the Christian Right is starting to embrace him as well.

Down the road from my home is a church "Northbrook Church" not far from the little tiny country church my dad preached at. Northbrook was BIG by all standards out in these parts. They drew people in like crazy....one of my friends told me she never missed the Sunday "show". They have since built on.....addition is bigger than the original building. They have also put up a neon sign....flashing the times of worship and the special events. There are no other neon signs on the country highway they built on. It is glitzy and flashy.....very Vegas like. Very American.

I won't even go into the battle women start at a tender age to be someone of value......especially if they aren't at least a 6 or 7 on the "looks" scale. American values. They really are American values.

Trump is honest about who he is and what he represents and plenty of people would love to be in his shoes. Not my value system at all and I think there are plenty who would feel the same as I do but obviously there are many Americans who find him somewhat of a hero.

IMO, those who like Trump are those who are finally given a license to voice what the really feel and how they would accomplish things if they could. It is a very selfish outlook since everything Trump does is about Trump. (he may donate or what ever but I bet his accountants are involved in that....not so sure that it would come from the heart...I don't know the man but he presents as a walking ego)

He seems to get some respect because he never apologizes for even the crudest, meanest, or most blatantly false thing he says. Other candidates backtrack and beg for forgiveness when they make a misstep that tarnishes their image, but Trump just tells his critics to go fuck themselves. It would be respectable if he weren't such an atrocious person.

For the most part the republican field is a clown show anyway--so might as well have the best clown win.

It's very much the silly season but I don't think the Republican antics should distract from the fact that in the larger picture the Democrats are in trouble. Clinton is still very likely to get the nomination. But enthusiasm on her own "side" broadly speaking is not very high, verging on tepid, while on the other side she is truly loathed and this will be a huge mobilizing factor for the camp of Republican Mr. X (and it will be a Mr.) running against her.

Getting less funny by the minute.

>43 LolaWalser:

The rise of Donald Trump makes me even more concerned about the future welfare of the American people than I already was, at a time when I was unsure that such a thing was possible.

The Tea Party Republican base is more mentally unhinged than it has ever been. Mr Trump knows how to tap into its corroded synapses, with bluster and nonsense, a dollop of misogyny and the hint of ethnic cleansing.

Y'all should worry especially that they are calling him "Lord President". ;)

That's just telling it like it is, at least half what it is so far.

Okay, here's a question: I recently heard Michael Gerson compare Trump's politics to those of the British National Front (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_(UK)), and even the conservative Daily Caller has compared him to Adolf Hitler (while stringently denying, of course, that the are comparing him to Adolf Hitler). Is this alarmist, or just telling it like it is?

>48 artturnerjr: The question has two tiers. First, Trump is considered unelectable, so he is still a mere gasbag. Second is positing an elected Trump. The current wisdom is that he is spouting off randomly as a base swine, which would suggest that comparisons with Hitler are absurd. But as to both, I recall that Reagan was considered both a dolt and a lunatic by astute political thinkers, and the US not has not recovered from him, in a sense he ultimately made Trump possible in more ways than one. (The celebrity as power figure was not a novelty even in Reagan's era.) Reagan's policies undermined what coherence the US political system had, dissolved borders between the fixed limits of domestic economic cruelty and the infinite possibilities for oligarchic plunder. Democrats are still on the run or muddling about trying to stay abreast of the mythical basic US conservative mind. The Republicans are still groping savagely about for ways to please enough utterly lost people and maintain the financial support of more oligarchs than the other gal or fellow. All this to say that nothing good is possible, while nothing horrific is not.

(Sanders is the only perhaps electable connection to that more coherent US, but an actual victory by a real Sanders would be such a catastrophe for the power elite it seems he is doomed. And, ugly irony, the bizarre shit the Republican candidates are coming out with is trumping Sanders as a news story.

Sounds like Sanders might have positions Ventura likes, but Trump's bluster is appreciated by the former MN Governor?

I think that sums up the Trump and Sanders situations rather well. A lot of Americans feel angry and powerless about politics.
"Outsider" populists with big answers win. There are some hard-core ideological believers. But the core isn't that. Rather, for many, it almost doesn't matter if their answers are Trump's, Sanders or—in a previous cycle—Ventura's.

Now, mind you, I think Sanders is head-and-shoulders above Trump in many ways. Sanders is just a lefty, not a mean-spirited, egotistical opportunist. If Sanders won I'd welcome a few thing he'd do, and put my hope in the reasonableness of the American people and the three-part structure of government to save us from the worst. If Trump won I think I might lose my mind. But I don't see either happening.

But Trumps staying power does raise the very real possibility that, when he's denied the Republican nomination, he ends up running third party, and Republicans get destroyed in the general.

>43 LolaWalser:

I'm pretty certain I've seen pictures of that sign in completely different settings. May have just been a post-rally interview, but...

>43 LolaWalser:

There's a version of that where every single person in the crowd's face has been replaced by that woman's. It's terrifying. I can't find it :(

The Times had a story on Trump this weekend.
Why Donald Trump Won’t Fold: Polls and People Speak http://nyti.ms/1JCtcXn

Basically Sanders main problem as of now is the democratic nominee is not going to win without the black vote and Hilary has a stranglehold on that. I don't think he can steal nearly enough of those votes with his economic justice message to turn the tide. For him to have a real shot she is going to have to self destruct--which might happen but might not. The main issue with her though is she is not left--not even close. And I don't think she really gives a rat's ass about Sanders main agenda which is unfortunate because I think Sanders might actually be the person who brings those at the bottom end of the economic ladder up a couple rungs. Hilary is an elite and she is going to kowtow to the same economic interests that pretty much every POTUS has since Truman. One way or another as I see it there's a significant section of the democratic party that is tired of the bullshit of its centrists. One could say the same about the republican party--it's tea party trying to drive it further and further towards the right but to me the leftism of Warren and Sanders is by a great great margin a lot more rational and coherent than the arguments of Jim Demint and Ted Cruz.

If I were betting for real money at this point--I would bet that Mrs. Clinton will be the next POTUS. It's by far the easiest assumption. I wouldn't vote for her but it's her game to lose.

Again with Trump. If he were to somehow manage to become the Republican nominee--I could easily see one of those contending with him now taking a third party run and getting a lot of support from congressional and senate republicans. Trump has already said he would think of doing the same if he didn't get the republican nomination. If that happens the road becomes even easier for the democratic nominee.

Like a lot of us here on LT, I suspect, I pride myself on making logical, dispassionate decisions when it comes to politics; so no one is more surprised than me at how visceral my reactions have been to some of the current presidential candidates. Bernie Sanders, who's a far-left guy like me, appeals to me perhaps less because of his politics than because he just seems like a deeply decent and principled man. Trump, notwithstanding what many find to be a charismatic demeanor, just seems like seven different kinds of asshole. Can you imagine a President Trump sitting down for sensitive negotiations with Vladimir Putin? Benjamin Netanyahu? Angela Merkel, ffs?!? Makes my flesh crawl just thinking about it.

>54 lriley:

The main issue with her though is she is not left--not even close. And I don't think she really gives a rat's ass about Sanders main agenda which is unfortunate because I think Sanders might actually be the person who brings those at the bottom end of the economic ladder up a couple rungs. Hilary is an elite and she is going to kowtow to the same economic interests that pretty much every POTUS has since Truman. One way or another as I see it there's a significant section of the democratic party that is tired of the bullshit of its centrists. One could say the same about the republican party--it's tea party trying to drive it further and further towards the right but to me the leftism of Warren and Sanders is by a great great margin a lot more rational and coherent than the arguments of Jim Demint and Ted Cruz.

Well said; very close to my read on things, too.

Can you imagine a President Trump sitting down for sensitive negotiations with Vladimir Putin? Benjamin Netanyahu? Angela Merkel, ffs?!? Makes my flesh crawl just thinking about it.

I think Trump and Putin share a gene. But, yeah.

Still, won't happen.

>52 timspalding:
every single person in the crowd's face has been replaced by that woman's. It's terrifying.

Yes, That's one scary picture.

Thanks for finding that. Now destroy every copy in existence and wipe my brain.

>55 artturnerjr: It may be ugly, but watch how Sanders is handled in the media. I would not have called him far left, but if you consider yourself that then fair enough. He is far left of most of what is out there, I suppose. But I have already seen an article lumping him with Clinton sort of by the way as someone who does not connect with voters. Yet the passion of his supporters is greater than all except perhaps Trump, whose supporters' passion is freak show news.

>57 Taphophile13: I'm sure Terry Gilliam could do an even scarier animated version of that.

#55--with respect to Merkel who I don't care for but she's not quite in the same league with Putin and Netanyahu. To be honest if it were me I'd be a bit cold to both of those guys--not that I'd be belligerent but to me they are both hard line right wingers with lots of blood on their hands. As far as Israel and the middle eastern states I'm sick and tired of that whole region of the world. If Israel continued to not compromise on anything I'd pretty much let them sink or swim on their own. No more saving them in the UN. Whatever military subsidies they've relied on from us in the past would be getting pulled in any case.

Russia and Ukraine?--I can tell you it's not worth in my eyes getting in another war over. Economic sanctions--diplomatic pressure--fine. If Putin's determined to call our bluff--the other European nations are going to have to stand up and do a lot more or I'd be leaving the table.

Generally I'd like to see the US scale back its foreign presence drastically. Post WWII we've taken over the role of world policeman. 70 years on the beat. It's time to retire. It's cost us trillions of $'s. No other country in the world is spending those kinds of $'s protecting this state from that state and trying to run it's economy with that kind of economic handicap.

Perhaps the best thing about the rise of Trump is that Rand Paul is now an afterthought.

>59 RickHarsch:

It may be ugly, but watch how Sanders is handled in the media.

Ugly (and moronic) it is, but I think he's handled it pretty well. For example:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-hillary-hair_55d20573e4b07add...

He is far left of most of what is out there, I suppose.

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. He's described himself as a socialist - that's pretty far left for someone that's running as a Democrat in the US.*

>61 lriley:

With Merkel I was thinking more in terms of her gender than her politics; The Donald seems to have some pretty serious issues with women. In regards to US-Israeli relations, agreed that it has been made to seem like a much more complicated issue than it actually is. America simply tells Israel that either they start treating the Palestinians a lot better or America ceases all of its military funding of Israel immediately. End of problem.

ETA: *FWIW, The Huffington Post ranks Sanders as the most liberal/leftist of all the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, as does The Daily Signal:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/findthebest-/every-2016-candidate-from_b_7562176.h...

http://dailysignal.com/2015/01/15/political-startup-ranks-conservative-liberal-2...

America simply tells Israel that either they start treating the Palestinians a lot better or America ceases all of its military funding of Israel immediately. End of problem.

US aid (about $3b annually) amounts to around 5% of the Israeli budget, and 20-25% of its military budget. That's a sizable help, but Israel is by no means dependent on US aid. At one point the aid and the prospect of support in the event of war might have tipped the military balance, but that day is long gone. Israel's military is more than sufficient to defeat the conventional forces of its hostile neighbors, even if its strongest neighbor, Syria, were not imploding. So, it's useful to them, but it's not decisive. It's not, for example, enough to shut down asymmetric warfare completely. And it's not enough to give Israel an option against a nuclear Iran short of threatening to use, or using, it's own nuclear weapons. As for that, no external action will ever get the Israelis to abandon their nuclear weapons; a second strike is Israel's only defense as they enter a future middle east of multiple enemies with nuclear weapons.

As for treating the Palestinians better, I'm all for it. From a national security standpoint, however, Israel looks on a pretty bleak situation. Withholding US aid is not going to be enough for Israel to risk turning the West bank into another terrorist mini-state, as Gaza has become. And an Israel that finds itself bereft of allies is not going to be an Israel more comfortable with taking military risks.

> 64 'Withholding US aid is not going to be enough for Israel to risk turning the West bank into another terrorist mini-state, as Gaza has become.' The funny part of this I will share with friends is not the opening part, rather '...another terrorist mini-state, as Gaza has become.' What a way to describe Gaza.

Gaza's government is run by Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization not only by Israel and the United States but by the EU, Japan and so forth. As a terrorist organization they accept the intentional murder of innocent civilians. Their leaders and official documents are explicitly anti-semitic, and call for the annihilation of Jews. Last year, after seven years of complete control, they agreed to share power with Fatah across the territories, and stepped back slightly.

I share your conviction that Gaza would be better off if it were free, and that Israeli actions create extremism to some degree, but Israel is rightly suspicious that withdrawing from the West Bank will result in a similar situation there too.

>56 timspalding: I think Trump and Putin share a gene.

Ouch! You poke a nagging fear--Trump's mother and my paternal grandmother's family both hail from the same island in the Hebrides, current population 60,000.

:-0

Ha!

Trump/Putin? No. Seems to "misunderestimate" (as a certain man once said) both individuals.

Trump/Berlusconi? Yes.

Donald Trump versus Fox News? Pass the popcorn, please.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/08/roger-ailes-donald-trump-should-apol...

Mr Trump is the lead clown, tormenting the Fox News ringmaster.

FWIW Trump has struck a nerve with a lot of people who call themselves conservative. Just how conservative this guy is I'm trying to figure out. I know he wants to build a wall the length of the Mexican border and force the 'illegal' back over on the Mexican side of it including children born in the USA who at least 'til now would be considered legal US citizens which is extremely draconian. On other things I really don't know--he seems to me to be all over the map and as I said he blusters and ad libs off the cuff----a lot. Apart from Mexico what his foreign policy has come down to is to bluster about how he would talk/deal with foreign leaders. There doesn't seem to be anything that concrete apart from his potential shooting war with the Mexican army. Abortion? Gun rights? Pollution/environment--I imagine he could care less about. He seems to think he's going bring lost manufacturing jobs back from China. How that is going to happen isn't very clear.

Anyway listening to my family/in-laws etc. who are practically all right wingers--they are very excited about him. I really don't get it but.......it's early......and it matters but it doesn't matter nearly as much as who is leading in March after some of the bigger primaries are out of the way--and then even mores so in April, May, June and July when we'll pretty much know for sure who the nominee is.

If he does somehow manage to wrangle the elephant's official nominee---I would expect that some established politician currently in the race will take a run as a third party candidate--someone say like Rubio. The reason I think this is I don't think he is the guy the party wants at all. He's never been vetted and he's not really one of them. He has almost no major political names endorsing him except maybe Palin who is about as loose a cannon as it gets--a looser cannon even than he is.

>72 lriley:

Just how conservative this guy is I'm trying to figure out.

Insidegov.com places him pretty far to the right on individual rights and domestic issues, less so on economic, defense, and international issues:

http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/70/Donald-Trump

The reason I think this is I don't think he is the guy the party wants at all.

I concur. I'm reasonably sure that the GOP establishment can't stand him.

Ready for barcode tattoos?

"Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages.

Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/us/politics/christie-proposes-immigrant-tracke...

I'd feel a lot angrier if the party and president actually in power were not engaged in a massive, illegal program to identify, track and spy on not only foreigners, but citizens. (That said, Christie's argument with Paul indicates he'd continue the Bush/Obama policy in that regard too.)

>74 theoria:

Christie is trying to do the same thing Huckabee did a little while back, saying something outrageous to get attention and trying to out-Trump Trump. Good luck with that one, guys.

>74 theoria: Ready for barcode tattoos?

Or those RFID chips that stories keep appearing around the web saying they're being secretly injected into us already during health checkups

The Republican field as of now:

Donald Trump--super rich guy
Marco Rubio--US Senator Florida
Rand Paul--US Senator Kentucky
Lindsay Graham--US Senator South Carolina
Ted Cruz--US Senator Texas
Scott Walker--Wisconsin Governor
Bobby Jindal--Louisiana Governor
Chris Christie--New Jersey Governor
John Kasich--Ohio Governor
Jeb Bush--former Florida Governor--brother of George W. (former POTUS) son of George H. W. (former POTUS)
Rick Perry--former Texas Governor
George Pataki--former New York Governor
Mike Huckabee--former Arkansas Governor
Jim Gilmore--former Virginia Governor
Rick Santorum--former US Senator Pennsylvania
Carly Fiorina--former CEO Hewlett Packard
Dr. Ben Carson

Some noise that former Governor Bob Ehrlich jumps in as well---and then there are these also declared republican candidates---Brooks Cullison, Brian Russell, Eric Cavanagh, Michael Petyo, Kerry Bowers, Chris Hill, Jack Fellure, Bartholomew James Lower, Jim Hayden, Jefferson Sherman, George Bailey, Mark Everson, Andy Martin, John Dummett Jr., Michael Bickelmeyer, Dale Christensen, Shawna Sterling, Esteban (be careful that Trump doesn't deport you) Oliverez, James C. Mitchell Jr. and K. Ross Newland.

FWIW Donald Trump has more money and media savvy/connections than practically the entire field. Maybe Bush can come up with the cash on his own and Walker could hit up his sugar daddies--the Koch brothers but nobody else can keep up with the pay as you go. Such a large field of candidates really plays to Trump's advantage. He runs media attention circles around two thirds of the field of candidates that even a good number of republicans have never heard of. If it were three or four or five candidates such as Rubio, Paul, Walker, Kasich and Bush IMO it would not nearly be as easy for his campaign to build up all the momentum that it has.

>75 timspalding: Would you consider this a non-partisan issue? And what do you think causes it? I mean, what's 'in it' for the one person who will be historically tied to these years, Obama? My own conclusions are too easily reached, that central governmental decisions and actions such as this are a-partisan, so to speak, and that, in a case like this the technology is leading the men.

In distant relation, given that it is that time when the word legacy gets tossed about increasingly, why do you think Obama has so spectacularly failed with Guantanamo? And what an irony that one of his 'legacy moves' is the normalization of relations with Cuba.

>76 artturnerjr: And it continues ...

"The Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said on Sunday that building a wall on the US northern border with Canada was “a legitimate issue for us to look at”.

Asked in an interview on NBC if he wanted to build a wall on the Canadian border, the Wisconsin governor cited his experience talking to voters “including some law enforcement folks” in New Hampshire, an early voting state. Such people, he said, were concerned about terrorists potentially crossing over from Canada.

“They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago,” Walker said. “So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/30/scott-walker-canada-border-wall-i...

>80 theoria:

Wow. You can't make this stuff up, as the saying goes.

#80--Actually I'm glad Walker said all that. It's exponentially more idiotic than Trump's Mexican wall. We'd be all walled in with some of these guys. Anyway the land mass covering the southern border with Mexico from California to Texas is enormous but nothing remotely close to the land madd between Maine and the State of Washington---though there are the Great Lakes in the middle.

>78 lriley:

On paper, at least, it's a fairly impressive field. Governors and Senators in abundance.

Would you consider this a non-partisan issue?

It should be. In point of fact, both parties have a wing that favors privacy and opposes government spying, with some differences in their reasons and desired outcome. I hope that, in time, these grow and put a stop to it. And, yeah, that has to be a bipartisan thing, since neither side's privacy advocates are strong enough on their own.

why do you think Obama has so spectacularly failed with Guantanamo

He pays no real penalty for it, especially as he's made promises and dribbled his failure out over time; there's no moment to proclaim "He's failed!" Action would take political will and capital, to little real gain.

And what an irony that one of his 'legacy moves' is the normalization of relations with Cuba.

Two cheers for Obama on that, and one for the Pope.

building a wall on the US northern border with Canada

With special moose-gates.

Sadly, they've all lost their collective marbles. Not talking solutions or progress at all, just us against them. It didn't work during the Bush years and it won't work now.

So seriously, how long does everyone think it will be before a Republican is president ?

>84 faceinbook:

If the Republicans get trounced again this time, I think there'll be a post-failure adjustment. Parties are not suicide pacts. They eventually align themselves with electoral realities. Also, the other party generally over-reaches, giving the other party space.

>85 timspalding:

I'm not so sure about that. Unless my memory has completely failed me, Republicans considered it really, really important to court Hispanic voters in the post-2012 election fallout. And what are they doing in 2015, pretty much right out of the gate? Alienating Hispanic voters. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but I think the GOP is looking more and more moribund by the day.

Yeah. There's a tension between winning locally and winning across the country. Both parties have largely decoupled themselves from local-race pressures. Their seats are safe. This makes it hard to field national candidates, or make a national change.

The continued growth of the Hispanic Voter dynamic in the past decade has cost the Republican party a lot in the southwest--particularly New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. If Arizona ever goes democratic things get even dicier for Republican POTUS hopes. Trump's rhetoric feeds into the angry concerns of the caucasian right but that wall of his is not a very realistic way to deal with the problem. Armed guards and walls/towers on the border?---like Mexico is our North Korea?--we're going to have a demilitarized zone? Once in a while fire some shots at each other?

Who then is going to pick our fruit and vegetables?--spend 14 hours in the sun all day long 24/7 and for half the minimum wage? and definitely no health care program---and the truth is we didn't lose our manufacturing jobs to Mexican workers because they were Mexican and their economy sucked--we lost the jobs because our politicians sold us out to their big business buddies who wanted unconditional (don't have to worry about child labor or what is dumped in the nearest river) and cheap labor and thought they could make large amounts of $'s on the other side of the border. Those big business buddies belong to the same camp as Trump himself. They're unrepentant plutocrat capitalists who know how to make money for themselves but that doesn't mean they know how to run an economy or even how to create wealth for others--especially create wealth for others on a massive nationwide scale. The fact that they have so much of the country's wealth in their own hands means that so many will have so much less--increasing income inequality which only tells me that capitalism as we know it in this country of ours is failing abysmally. Some people design and/or game the system. Trump is one of them. He falls into the category of the corrupt.

>82 lriley: ...though there are the Great Lakes in the middle

What a legacy that would be--a wall on the longest undefended border in the world. Would it run through the Great Lakes (incl. Niagara Falls?) or on the US coast of GLs (homeowners wouldn't like that)?

OTOH, there's a lot goes on across that aqueous border. Excellent DVD "Frozen River" dramatizes some of the current action on the St Lawrence River.

Will the wall be continued along the Alaskan-Canadian border as well? And has anyone mentioned exactly how we are going to finance all these walls?

>90 Taphophile13: Isn't it obvious? Bring cheap Mexican labor in to build it. ;)

It's very simple. All we need is one rabid beaver every 1/4 mile. Problem solved.

>83 timspalding: In point of fact, both parties have a wing that favors privacy and opposes government spying,

Yeah. There's no reason why it's split like that, but the voting blocks doesn't seem to correlate to the blocks formed around the issues the parties are making noise about.

He pays no real penalty for it,

That's connected to the fact that he's had huge pushback on it. There's no large group in American politics that really wants the prison at Guantanamo closed, so it's not a political win for Obama. I'll give you that I'm probably being nicer on Obama then I would on Bush, but there's always a question of where you spend your political capital, and that apparently was not where he wanted to spend it.

Two cheers for Obama on that, and one for the Pope.

Cuba is frustrating because it's so clear that our Cuba policy had failed. We could wait until the Castro regime collapsed and declare victory, but nobody (particularly not in retrospect) would buy it, and I don't believe it would buy us any love from the new government in Cuba. Sometimes the political need to not accept that something didn't work is incredibly painful.

>82 lriley: though there are the Great Lakes in the middle.

And what, you're implying that Americans aren't smart enough to figure out how to build a wall across the Great Lakes? We can build it! As long as none of those anti-American Democrats ask stupid questions like "why?" and "how much will it cost?" and "what good would it do?".{/sarcasm}

I might almost be for a wall if they would accept the reality that a wall with no one for 50 miles in either direction is pointless. Guards to patrol the thing would be a huge flow of money into the pockets of people poor enough to want the job. It might also move us North, which is good for global warming.

#89--It would be interesting to see how they'd separate houses along the St. Lawrence river and all the little islands between New York State and Ontario. Maybe some creative use of mines? Walker apparently has a problem separating the average voter from complete kooks. When he becomes their mouthpiece--it is so much worse. If somehow he became the republican nominee you can expect to see ads by his democratic opponent on this.

#94--maybe we should pull all our troops back home--then invade Canada--try to conquer it and then we won't need a wall. It might be less expensive doing that.

You kidding? you know how many armed people live there?

I live a pebble's throw away from the original Fort York and I can tell you even the beavers are armed.

#96--I was responding facetiously to #93.

I know.

>94 lriley: It would be interesting to see how they'd separate houses along the St. Lawrence river

There actually is at least one town--and even a building or two--south of the St Lawrence River that are dissected by the border. Somehow residents made it work, though I wonder how it goes in the days since 911.

At least one Mohawk/Akwesasne reserve in the St Lawrence R issues its own passports, adding another level of complexity for construction of Gov Walker's wall. (On the Cdn side, opposition to armed border guards, forced Cdn authorities to move their inspection from the island reserve to the mainland!)

The Rockies? How would expensive would it be to build a wall in the ROCKIES??

I don't know how property owners feel about such things on the southern border, but a northern wall would be such a non-starter with the Republican base. A decade or so ago in the northwest, property owners--we assume Republican donors--actually forced resignation of Pres. GW Bush's appointee, who insisted on clearing land (20'?) from border, a legal requirement!

Technically, boaters (in Laurentian Great Lakes at least) are expected to call in if they stray across the border. Before 911, they only needed to call if they anchored out or otherwise touched bottom or shore. Tough in places such as the Thousand Islands, especially since your boat can be seized--unpopular on both sides of border, but I think especially on US side? (At least one US fishing boat has been seized--by Cdn border authority a few years ago.)

Ah, beaversplaining...

#100---it's been a while since I've been up in the Thousand Islands region. Not that I know anyone personally there up but I can only imagine that the people who live on either side do a lot of interacting together. Northern upstate New Yorkers and southern Ontarioans (I think I just made up a word) IMO have plenty of things in common and it would be a great shame and at the same time a really stupid thing to do to separate us with border guards and walls. Only a complete fucking nincompoop would contemplate it. Those 'law enforcement folks' that Walker talked to in New Hampshire seem to fit that definition.

On a side note. I retired from USPS at the end of Feb. 2013. I used to sit around listening to people planning their retirements with the idea of becoming snow birds and heading towards states like Florida at least for the winter. I never liked the idea. I used to tell anyone who cared I'd rather go North--my theory being that the further south into the United States you went the bat shit crazier you could expect people to be. That's a prejudice I suppose but my experience has always been that despite Mr. Harper Canadiens tend to be a lot more tolerant people than the majority of Americans.

Scott Walker on the auction block:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/cutting-losses-kochs-to-sell-scot...

>103 lriley:
How I wish that someone would buy him and cart him away. Weasel .......

The Huffington Post makes a bold prediction:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/polls-show-bernie-sanders-winning-the-...

I haven't been watching the polls or the news. What do they say about Sanders winning the general election ? I would think that it may be more difficult for him than for Hillary.

FiveThirtyEight is less sanguine about Sanders. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/this-is-how-bernie-sanders-could-win/

>106 faceinbook:

Basically, that Hillary has descending in the polls, Sanders has been ascending, and that the trend is likely to continue (particularly when one takes into account that the controversy surrounding Hill's email use will continue to dog her for quite a while to come), and therefore there is a strong possibility that he will get the Democratic nomination and will likely triumph over Trump, who is looking like the GOP nominee at this point. I found it a bit overly optimistic re: Sanders, but then again he's been consistently underestimated in the past, so who knows?

>107 theoria:

Yeah, I hate to say it, but that's probably a more realistic assessment of the situation. I have an enormous amount of respect for Nate Silver - he can't see into the future any more than any of the rest of us can, but he comes eerily close more often than not. In spite of all this, though, I'll still be rooting for Bernie.

Sanders needs to win the early primaries--but still it will come down to whether he can get the black vote to come out for him--which IMO is going to be kind of iffy as long as Hilary is still in the race and/or hasn't completely self destructed.

The Democratic establishment is firmly behind her candidacy. For Sanders that's not necessarily a bad thing. He's been in Washington a long time but his politics are definitely outsider politics and this appears at least at this point in time to be an outsider friendly election. At the same time Sanders has pretty good rapport with a large % of Hilary's political endorsers so I can see them getting behind Sanders if her campaign blows up. It's not likely to turn into this angry sore loser thing. Not with him anyway.

I would be happy to see Bernie get this. It's early though--too early to get your hopes too far out of whack.

I don't want to see Sanders win the primaries; then the Republican candidate uses the word "socialism" in every sentence until he's elected.

us(ing) the word "Socialism in every
until HE'S ElECTED
(emphasis added)

If he IS elected, then use of the word
"Socialism" was not effective.
And, all Democratic candidates are
routinely called socialists. In the matter of the GOP's name-calling, the only difference between an Obama candidacy and a Sanders
candidacy is that with Sanders they can't attach
the word "crypto-Muslim" for good measure.

Are you kidding, Roland, OF COURSE THEY CAN! Bernie would be as crypto as a crypto-Muslim can get. I agree, though: socialist has been slapped on Obama the Drone Master and Lord of Eternal Guantanamo innumerable times.

>122 madpoet: Naturally, I meant until the Republican candidate is elected. Sure, Obama has got called a socialist a lot, but Sanders self-labels as a socialist; that'll make a difference to a lot of the people in the middle.

Conservatives have kids, too--how could they vote for a party that so blatantly opposes progress on climate change? Especially agreement that has other countries acting, while Republicans can scuttle US action later, thereby giving US a competitive advantage, if one is a climate-change-denier.

What happened to "politics stops at the water's edge"? Unbelievable.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/gop-congress-climate-pact-paris-213382

>115 margd:

Yes, that is indeed puzzling. Even more so, in my view, is why so many people in the States vote against their own economic self-interest. That is to say - if you're wealthy - fine, vote for whoever you want to. I am a leftist/progressive, so obviously I am going to advocate for candidates that I feel share my views, and I would prefer it if others voted for them, too. But if you're wealthy, it at least makes sense to vote Republican (I am not saying I would vote Republican if I was wealthy, just that it makes sense to me). But why on earth, if you are middle class or working class (especially if you're working class), would you vote for a GOP candidate when one can demonstrate that that party's policies have been consistently damaging to those who are not wealthy? Does this sort of thing happen in other countries? (That's not a rhetorical question, BTW - I'm assuming it does, but I would actually find it somewhat reassuring to know that this sort of thing happens elsewhere (i.e., that Americans aren't the only ones who fall for this crap)).

From the Things Could Be Worse Dept.:

>117 artturnerjr:

Since Kanye has also announced—Kim and Kanye!

>118 timspalding:

:-O

Well, their egos are the right size, anyway. :)

#116--to me politics revolves around economics. And the idea should be to bring masses of people up the economic ladder--not keep them down it. That's what economic justice is about and having multibillionaires at the very tippytop of the ladder defeats the very idea of economic justice. Not that I don't think there shouldn't be any wealthy people but there is a point where things get obscene. And we're seeing a lot of people at the bottom end of the ladder making no progress at all.

You're asking why people vote against their own economic interests though--the thing is not everyone sees as much value in economic justice as we do and I know people who get by on very little money--and think almost nothing of it. It's like they've become use to it. For some people the idea is not this life here in this world of the living--it's the next life after they moved on that matters and there all kinds of tangents to run in every direction for those who are believers. As well you have always voted for a certain party and are not interested in parsing out what any particular candidate has to say--on anything. And there are other things.

You know, the one thing - ONE THING - I can actually respect about that piece-of-shit Donald Trump, is that unlike the rest of the piece-of-shit Republican candidates, he doesn't claim that his shitty behavior is a direct order from God and backed up by the gospel of the Bible.

I think that it would be nice if, if Sanders won the primary and Repubs try to attack him with the word "socialist," he embraces it rather than giving them more power by trying to distance himself from it.
Sort of like blowing middle-school bullies' minds by saying yes, I am a "dyke," what's it to ya?

Y'know, it's getting harder and harder to argue with a straight face that 'democracy is the best system' when it produces such absolutely unsuited-to-govern candidates. Buffoons like Donald Trump would never be allowed anywhere near the Chairmanship or Presidency in China. Sarah Palin? She wouldn't even be mayor of a tiny village in Inner Mongolia.

>122 madpoet:
"Y'know, it's getting harder and harder to argue with a straight face that 'democracy is the best system' "

Democracy is a fallacy......it is simply impossible to live in a society where everyone has their "personal" rights. Doesn't work. Many people tramp all over the rights of others and think nothing of it. It is my belief that one's rights are a responsibility not only to themselves but to those around them. There are times when one has to "give up" what they feel is a right so as to protect the rights of others (kids and guns) There are also things people do to others that would warrant the loss of rights.....our prisons are a place for these individuals. It just can not work exactly the same for everyone.
We've pushed the envelope on almost every democratic system we have to the point where most of them are totally unfair. Unfortunately, the Trumps and the Palins are representative of the values of many Americans who feel they have lost their rights.....as well they should. Trump represents all the money they could earn if we were not giving it away to welfare queens and immigrants (most people know nothing about the waste in our defense system or the huge redundancy that are our Home Land Security groups.) And Sarah Palin is combative....she opens her mouth and out comes nasty......some people enjoy nasty. Rush Limbaugh was popular for years......Ann Coulter sells books......people like nasty. There are LTers who enjoy nasty. If the rules weren't in place LT would look like Yahoo comments.....usually as nasty place.

So freedom when extended to all equally becomes something less than what it was meant to be.

Democracy is a crock. The best laws are the best laws. That's just logic. I'm sure we all agree.

So, I get to pick the laws, right?

>122 madpoet: it's getting harder and harder to argue with a straight face that 'democracy is the best system'

The inability of democracy to be "the best system" is also fairly good insurance that it won't be "the worst system."

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Never gets old, even after nearly 70 years.

When I was in high school I read an essay.....long ago and I do not remember who wrote it but the premise was that all forms of government in their purist forms were good but that societies tend to turn most governments into something they were not intended to be and most of them morphed into systems that were quite the similar.
We do not have a dictator but money does dictate our government and the social systems we have in place.

Any system needs addressing now and then, that is why the idea of American exceptionalism is so dangerous (IMO) There is no where to go once has achieved "the best". It is my opinion we are seeing the results of standing by, assuming we are "the best" while some other countries have adapted better to the changing world. Can't fix what isn't broken I guess.

>124 timspalding:
"Democracy is a crock. The best laws are the best laws. That's just logic. I'm sure we all agree."

The best laws are those that benefit the whole. If money is running the show than our current lawmakers are not working for the majority, they are working for the moneyed.......I do not believe that this is what democracy was meant to be.

"So, I get to pick the laws, right?"

No you do not, but as part of the 98% you should have a voice. The only voice we've seen for several decades is the 2%. Again, not a democracy at all.

No you do not, but as part of the 98% you should have a voice. The only voice we've seen for several decades is the 2%. Again, not a democracy at all.

Meh. Hyperbole. A long argument wouldn't go anywhere, but just look at the current field.

Trump has a lot of personal money, but he hasn't actually used it. His campaign gets its media for free. Meanwhile, he's opposed by all the monied forces in the Republican party—hated, even. Fox News hates him. The Koch Brothers hate him. The big superpacs treat him like a disease. (Correctly.) Yet he's number one in the race. Who else has risen recently—Carson! He's hardly the 2%-ers choice, is he?

Or take eight years ago, Obama brought in more primary campaign money than Clinton—even counting the money Obama got after things were clearly going his way. If money (and past power) were the hidden factor determining elections, she'd have become president. And on the Republican side? Giuliani was the big recipient, not Romney.

Money is, of course, critical. But it's necessary rather than sufficient.

Well, let's hope democracy 'works' and Trump does not become the next President of the United States. But I guess the world survived eight years of Bush Jr., somehow.

We have yet to survive 8 years of Reagan, though.

And millions did not survive the 8 years of Bush and the man who took his baton. Guantanamo holidays are eternal.

>130 RickHarsch:

We have yet to survive 8 years of Reagan, though.

Excellent point. Vapidheads have a notion of history totally emptied of history. It's all discrete little dates to them, as if they only ever saw a timechart somewhere.

And to think that this is a site for book people--Reagan hurt the publishing industry a great deal, and authors and presses great and small still pay the damage.

>134 RickHarsch:

You're right. I skipped threads.

>133 timspalding: I am doubly puzzled by that post. First, where did the assassin's bullet come into the discussion? (Or: What?) Second, the use of 'coextensive' is improper, so obviously you aren't familiar enough with its usage, but there were so many ways of saying what you seem to have meant without sounding obtuse or bland, so you didn't need the word and I thus wonder why you chose that particular word...Never mind....

>120 lriley:

Matt Taibbi's take on the situation:

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it.

Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they're about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates' charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching bands, those people have concrete needs.

They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, antitrust waivers and dozens of other things.

They mostly don't care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It's about money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation.

They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything.

They get everything from the Republicans because you don't have to make a single concession to a Republican voter.

All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. Call it the "Rove 1-2."

That's literally all it's taken to secure decades of Republican votes, a few patriotic words and a little over-the-pants rubbing. Policywise, a typical Republican voter never even asks a politician to go to second base.

While we always got free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn't get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in schools or balanced budgets or censorship of movies and video games or any of a dozen other things Republican voters said they wanted.

While it's certainly been fun laughing about the lunacies of people like Bachmann and John Ashcroft and Ted Cruz, who see the face of Jesus in every tree stump and believe the globalist left is planning to abolish golf courses and force country-dwellers to live in city apartments lit by energy-efficient light bulbs, the truth is that the voters they represented have been irrelevant for decades.

At least on the Democratic side there was that 5-10 percent of industry policy demands that voters occasionally rejected, putting a tiny dent in what otherwise has been a pretty smoothly running oligarchy.

Now that's over. Trump has pulled all of those previously irrelevant voters completely out of pocket. In a development that has to horrify the donors who run the GOP, the candidate Trump espouses some truly populist policy beliefs, including stern warnings about the dire consequences companies will face under a Trump presidency if they ship American jobs to Mexico and China.

All that energy the party devoted for decades telling middle American voters that protectionism was invented by Satan and Karl Marx during a poker game in Brussels in the mid-1840s, that just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

And all that money the Republican kingmakers funneled into Fox and Clear Channel over the years, making sure that their voters stayed focused on ACORN and immigrant-transmitted measles and the New Black Panthers (has anyone ever actually seen a New Black Panther? Ever?) instead of, say, the complete disappearance of the manufacturing sector or the mass theft of their retirement income, all of that's now backing up on them.

The party worked the cattle in their pen into such a dither that now they won't rest until they get the giant wall that real-life, as-seen-on-TV billionaire Donald Trump promises will save them from all those measles-infected rapists pouring over the border.

Not far under the surface of Trump's candidacy lurks a powerful current of Internet conspiracy theory that's a good two or three degrees loonier than even the most far-out Tea Party paranoia. Gone are the salad days when red-staters merely worried about Barack Obama inviting UN tanks to mass on the borders of Lubbock.

Trump supporters have gone next-level, obsessed with gooney-bird fantasies about "white genocide," a global plan to exterminate white people by sending waves of third-world immigrants across American and European borders to settle and intermarry.

The white-power nerds pushing this stuff don't like the term RINO (Republican In Name Only) and prefer "cuckservative," a term that's a mix of "cuckold" and "conservative." Cuck is also a porn term that refers to a white guy who gets off on watching his wife take it from (usually) a black man. A cuck is therefore a kind of desexualized race traitor.

So you can see why the Internet lights up when Donald Trump tosses Jorge Ramos from a presser and tells him "mine's bigger than yours" (Trump was referring to his heart, but again, whatever). All of Trump's constant bragging about his money and his poll numbers and his virility speak directly to this surprisingly vibrant middle American fantasy about a castrated white America struggling to re-grow its mojo.

Republicans won middle American votes for years by taking advantage of the fact that their voters didn't know the difference between an elitist and the actual elite, between a snob and an oligarch. They made sure their voters' idea of an elitist was Sean Penn hanging out with Hugo Chavez, instead of a Wall Street bank financing the construction of Chinese factories.

Trump similarly is scoring points with voters who don't know the difference between feeling sorry for themselves and actually being victims. We live in a society that is changing for a lot of reasons, and some of those changes feel annoying to certain kinds of people, particularly older white folks who don't like language-policing and other aspects of political correctness.

But as basketball star turned pundit Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pointed out earlier this week, PC isn't a new thing, or even a thing at all. It's just an "emotional challenge every generation has had to go through." We get older, our kids correct our bad habits, it happens.

Not to Trump's supporters. They've turned some minor cultural changes into a vast conspiracy of white victimhood. They're eating up Trump's "Make America Great Again" theme (which one supporter hilariously explained must be his true goal, because "it's on his hat"), because it's a fantasy tale of a once-great culture ruined by an invasion of mongrel criminals.

For reasons that are, again, obvious to everyone but Republican voters, this "woe is us" narrative is never to fly with the rest of the country, including especially (one imagines) the nonwhite population. Few sane people are going to waste a vote on a sob story about how rough things have gotten for white people. But Trump supporters are clinging to this fantasy far more fiercely than red-state voters were ever clinging to guns or religion.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-is-now-officially-the-party-of...

For the record, I do want to end golf.

:)

Interesting article, art. Also scary.

>136 LolaWalser: For the record, I do want to end golf.

Instead of ending it, I think they should just disallow mowers and hedge trimmers on the course.

Scarier yet, to me, is that even here among mostly educated folk, referring to the US as an oligarchy makes one 'far left', pejoratively speaking (for the truth is, if they only knew), when it has not really been arguable for over 50 years--and worse, viewed by some as 'conspiratorial'. I am happy to read that Taibbi uses the term as casually as it ought to be used.

Golf in farmland Iowa was great, cheap and a new pastime for retired farmers. There is a quiet, poorly dressed golf culture in out of the way places...Slovenia is not one of them...

>138 RickHarsch:

the US as an oligarchy

In a capitalist country where the wealth distribution looks like this, it's a difficult argument to refute:

As a former golfer, I feel persecuted. Where's Mike Huckabee when I need him ...

>"Golf in farmland Iowa was great"

Goddamn carpetbagger.

I'll have you know, Dr. Krolik, that the town I moved to in Iowa, Oskaloosa, turned out to be the town my grandfather's mother was driven from in scandal in the early part of the 20th century. I may be the legitimate (or illegitimate) heir to carpetbaggery, but I am old carpetbagger, not nouveau.

>142 RickHarsch:

She of the famous corn tassels? People are still talking about it.

I KNOW they are, I am in Slovenia, could cause and effect be more obvious?

Of interest:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-comparing-donald-trump-and-bernie-sande...

Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values?

http://nyti.ms/1iyg9KQ

Bush-Fiorina, when the dust settles?

No. Trump is right about Fiorina. Men judge women quite a bit more than women judge men in terms of looks, especially in the US. No Angela Merkel could ever get elected. Fiorina? First, who the fuck is she, most will ask, and then they will think or say, why does she looks so sour? Maybe if the electorate is used to a face, like Clinton's, a woman would have a chance. I do think we are back to Bush as the most likely possibility, but probably too many will be able to see that he cannot win a campaign of this magnitude...so then who? Ben Carson is interesting because he keeps coming across as the one nice guy in the bunch. But who the fuck is he? A neurosurgeon, a black neurosurgeon who will not get the black vote?

Why am I doing this? The country is pathetic and in a pathetic state. Where oh where is John Glenn?

>148 RickHarsch:

Fiorina is not qualified. She's just not. Ditto Carson. You can't go from having never held office, especially elective office, to holding the highest elective office in the country. It's just not appropriate or wise. It's unseemly. Being nice or smart or capable in some other line of work is great. But, sheesh, go run for Congress, or something.

Good grief, Glenn didn't run for president until he had served his country in multiple ways, lost two runs for Senate, finally got into the senate, served in the senate, etc.

Glenn was the guy who was always there who people seemed to know was not bonkers, that's the meaning of my reference...

Carson came across as the only candidate who actually used his brain.......maybe Rand Paul a little bit....spot on about the mess in the Middle East and our responsibility in the current uptick in messiness over there. Fiorina had my attention (mostly I suspect because she was enraged towards Trump) until she mentioned Benghazi......please...four or five investigations have found nothing. Please do not insult my intelligence. I think they have a problem.

Trump looked like a little kid....making faces....talking back....just unruly. His claim to fame is that America's wealth will grow. Who cares ? Like Christy said...the guy in the hard hat isn't getting rich. Trump and his ilk will find ways to raise their bottom lines.
They needed a better moderator.....horrible control over the bickering bunch.

Benghazi

Well, it's morphed somewhat into the email server investigation. And that has found something.

If you want to look at this way--after Obama won the first time--disaffection comes along among some outraged white middle class/upper middle class/some times somewhat christian voters and all of a sudden there was this thing called a tea party movement---so then Karl Rove is looking for a new gig because W. ain't POTUS no more and he kind of sells the billionaire Koch brothers on the idea that he can kind of subvert that tea party movement to their (the Koch's) ends if they just bankroll him a shit ton of ready cash--which the Koch's decide to do and Rove kind of does---and then we get Ted Cruz and a bunch of other idiots elected as tea party congressmen/women and Senators but they're largely ineffective but even so here is an electoral apparatus that the Koch's through Mr. Rove have bought and can make a lot of noise with and cause a lot more disaffection with and maybe some day maybe? maybe they can? maybe they can be a contender? I mean maybe-- but even if those elected officials don't or never accomplish a whole lot they do become a kind of a boogeyman to shitloads of moderate and conservative democrats and then..............along comes Trump like a fucking crow or scavenger seagull swooping in to steal 2/3rds or more of the tea party rank and file and people like Ted Cruz and Scott Walker are yesterday's news and the Koch brothers are left with an apparatus but not a rank and file.

If you look at this way---it's kind of hilarious.

>152 timspalding: Found what exactly? I'm not sure why she opted to go with a private server but there doesn't seem to be anything illegal about it.

>152 timspalding:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/china-hacked-pentagon-contractors-s...

NOTHING on line is secure any way. It is a fallacy to believe it is. Clinton's server was not hacked.

"Well, it's morphed somewhat into the email server investigation. And that has found something."

It will morph until the woman is dead and gone, I'm pretty sure about that.

>153 lriley:

If you look at this way---it's kind of hilarious.

It certainly is.

The one thing that makes me kinda like Trump a little sometimes (or at least not hate him quite so much) is knowing that that he makes guys like Rove and the Koch brothers absolutely furious. :D

>154 jjwilson61:

Well, it found that our Secretary of State conducted a fair amount of her business, including sending and receiving large numbers of emails with classified information, using a server with considerably less system security than this half-assed website, LibraryThing, has.

Look, the server was originally purchased by her campaign, and managed by people with no IT experience. Later, she contracted with a former aide who did have real computer experience—although scarcely a security expert. But he was very part time--he was paid very little and staffers say the system broke down repeatedly under his care. When called to testify about his work, he refused to answer questions, pleading his right to avoid self-incrimination (!). It almost doesn't matter that all along the server resided in private locations with no significant physical security, since we now know it was running all manner of out-of-date, unpatched software.

This is the sort of thing computer people read about and talk about, and I haven't met anyone who didn't shake their heads at this. Security of even a LibraryThing-level site is a full-time job—that's why we pay a guy full-time, with four other programmers as backup. (And even SO we got hacked a few years ago.) Security of the Secretary of State's ONLY email account—an account which clearly had secret data—simply can't be handled by a part-time guy with no special experience, with the server at some medium-grade consumer colo in New Jersey. It's appalling.

Clinton keeps saying there were no security incidents. Well, there can be no doubt people tried. Anything on the web gets scanned and attempts are made to hack it all the time. (Not only was it "on" the web, but domain itself was publicly known, on account of the hack of Sidney Blumenthal's email.) If a scan turns up an unpatched version of some software, it can get hacked in earnest. (This is how LibraryThing got hacked.) Did any get through? We don't know. Any decent hacker can enter and leave a server without leaving traces. For real traceability you need a lot more than one 2008 server box in a colo! The details coming out support what computer people would expect—that she had a web portal set up to read emails by browser (security holes galore), that the server was and is using an old version of Microsoft Outlook Web Application, that her domain registration was totally hackable, that her SSL certificate was invalid, etc. Again, these are things lots of servers get right, and STILL get hacked.

Don't believe me. Read any of the articles on this in the technical press or by security experts. If she didn't get hacked, she was very lucky. She was wide open.

Now, it may be true that Clinton did not receive any emails marked secret. But it's incontrovertible that hundreds, at least, of her emails contain classified information.

Look, I don't think this means she can't be president. But it's bad. And just because it becomes a political issue doesn't mean that the simple facts of the situation go away. We can no more silence the computer security people on this than we can tell the climate scientists to shut up when we don't like what they say. These facts are clear: The Secretary of State did a lot of classified official business on a private server with security that could be hacked by some random bot, and could never, ever have stood up to determined foreign operatives.

That's scary.

Clinton's server was not hacked.

We have no idea whatsoever whether it was hacked, and never will. That is the simple, technical fact.

>147 margd:

The respectable media and FiveThirtyEight are calling Carly Fiorina the winner of the debate. I suppose this is based on the fact that she stood her ground against Donald Trump. Aside from this single moment of facing down the spectre of misogyny, Ms Fiorina did not distinguish herself from the pack. Her evening turned sour when Mr Trump rehashed her failed CEO tenures at Lucent and HP. The camera showed her face falling a few inches as he noted HP has never recovered from her disastrous leadership. When she said she wouldn’t talk to Mr Putin, and that such a refusal was a sign of strength, a rival to Amy Schumer was born.

I assume the misplaced praise of Ms Fiorina is an effort to find someone who can lead the Republican Party out of the Trump fiasco it created for itself. Unfortunately for the GOP, Mr Trump is the best antidote to a Fiorina nomination. Mr Trump is the logical next step after Ms Palin. He captures the cartoonish nature of the contemporary Republican Party better than any other candidate.

The only thing one needs to know about the dire state of American conservatism is the fact that vaccinations are a political talking point.

The only thing one needs to know about the dire state of American conservatism is the fact that vaccinations are a political talking point.

Meh. Both Obama and Clinton were formerly on record questioning the science.

Clinton emails. I see no reason to doubt the account above (157) or read further into it, but it's unlikely to affect the election much. It's boring. Her supporters aren't going to be swayed by anything short of a revelation, cause and effect, of some consequence. Likely it will rebound against those who oppose her. Where some see it dogging her, it will actually create some sympathy ('THAT bullshit again?'). Soon she will probably put an end to her side of it be revealing whatever needs to be revealed (she's usually too wary to be savvy)...That said, I would like to see her go away as soon as possible.

>157 timspalding:

No, I agree. I wouldn't rule out a revelation. And there are revelations that could sink her. For example, if careless hackers got in at some point, they may have left traces; I don't see that story being kept under wraps, and it would be pretty bad. Worse, if any of her secret emails were taken and are released on the web, yowch.(1)

But absent that, the drip-drip-drip of it weakens her in the short term, but may strengthen her in the long term, since--as we learned with Whitewater, and whatever the justice of the issue there or now--incessant attacks from the other side produce a sort of "immune response."

I would say this, however: I really hope this country and government really wakes up to the overall issue of cybersecurity.

---

1. This was recently threatened. But time proved that the Clinton emails in question, despite being from her email address, came from the Blumenthal hack.

If something is released on the web I sure hope it is of Monica Lewinsky caliber fun.

>157 timspalding: When called to testify about his work, he refused to answer questions, pleading his right to avoid self-incrimination (!).

I'm not surprised; it's what any lawyer would have advised. What's more interesting is that it stood; I would have thought they'd give him enough immunity to override the 4th.

But yeah, if I found my bank ran an important server that way, I'd switch banks. If I were someone in the State Department forced to deal with the non-political consequences, I'd consider the contents of that server to be in the hands of someone not loyal to the US and respond appropriately. Maybe it wasn't hacked, but I wouldn't trust anymore than I'd trust the data on a lost laptop that some random person returned.

David Brooks (NYT) thinks campaign is headed toward ticket like Rubio-Fiorina, but Chris Christie "maybe". With all Christie's bridge baggage??

...Instead (of establishment candidate like Bush), the party will veer on a course midway between outsider and establishment. It will probably end up with some hybrid candidate — sharp of tongue, gifted in self-expression and yet still anchored in the world of reality.

That’s where Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio come in. So far, Fiorina has looked like the most impressive candidate. She has a genius for creating signature moments. (“If you want to stump a Democrat, ask them to name an accomplishment of Mrs. Clinton’s.”) But her spotty record at Hewlett-Packard probably means she can’t start at the top of the ticket.

Rubio is young and thus uncorrupted, and he is a genius at relating policy depth in a way that is personal. He has clarity of mind and can sum up a complex subject — Russia, the Middle East — in a way that is comprehensible but not oversimplified.

This debate was one moment in time, but you can see the vectors of where this campaign is headed. This is no longer Bob Dole’s or George H.W. Bush’s G.O.P. But it’s not going to completely lose its mind, either.

It’s going to be somewhat the same, but edgier and more renegade. Right now, Rubio, Fiorina and maybe Chris Christie are best positioned to occupy that space.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/opinion/david-brooks-the-marco-rubio-carly-fio...

>161 timspalding:
"I would say this, however: I really hope this country and government really wakes up to the overall issue of cybersecurity."

There are a couple of issues at play in so far as the Clinton computer. Ms Clinton is older than I am. I know nothing about IT speak.....not a thing. A great deal of people using computers today are not computer smart. Many people above a certain age are pretty clueless as to how it all works. There is a false sense of security people seem to feel about anything on the internet and perhaps more so for those of us whose main form of communication, for a good part of their lives, was either verbal or paper and pen. Though I am not an IT person and I know next to nothing about the technology of servers, computers and security measures, it would seem to me that if someone can come up with a security method, there is a mind out there that can work around it. Security is an illusion when it comes to online information. It will always be a race as to who is the fastest coming up with measures to secure info against those who want to get at that info.

To a great deal of the population, attacking Ms. Clinton based on a situation where the rules changed, while she was serving and technology that is changing almost daily, looks pretty petty. It looks like they can not come up with anything really good so they are going to hammer her and hammer her on something she can not change and will not do again. Hmmmmm Someone said it this way : "At this point, what does it matter ?"

Mr Christie has no reason to continue. All roads to the nomination are blocked by an orange traffic cone.

>165 faceinbook: I agree. I think it's hard if you really work with technology and security issues every day to put yourself in the mind of a person who doesn't. There is a certain amount of magical thinking going on there. I saw it all the time when I worked in IT. Also, there is no conception of how insecure everything is. My husband was complaining today because in order to use the wallet function on his phone, he has to put on a 4-digit pin code. I'm like, you're using your phone like money, this is the absolute least you can do, and it's probably only effective against the dumber thieves. What is more likely to go walking off than your phone?

Where I fault Ms. Clinton is that when she doesn't know something, she should hire someone who does and who will tell her. She should have had a full-time real IT guy working for her. It's not like she can't afford it. However, is that enough of a crime to keep her out of the white house? Especially when you consider what the alternatives are? She's not my favorite candidate either, but I'm pretty sure she's not going to go start another cold war with Russia.

I'm not surprised; it's what any lawyer would have advised.

Three other aids who were involved in it did not. I'm not saying that he's guilty, but it doesn't look good. Since surely nobody wants to prosecute him, the committee should give him full immunity, compelling him to testify. (Would you support that?)

Mr Christie has no reason to continue. All roads to the nomination are blocked by an orange traffic cone.

He didn't distinguish himself in the debate either.

However, is that enough of a crime to keep her out of the white house?

I don't think so. I'd change my mind if thee's evidence she knew of the danger, if she deleted emails she didn't want to go public, or that the emails she was sending were a serious national security risk to have exposed.

>168 timspalding: Since surely nobody wants to prosecute him, the committee should give him full immunity, compelling him to testify. (Would you support that?)

I'm surprised they didn't. There's a possibility there's a reason; suspicion that he was trafficking in drugs or ABBA* via the server, or someone figures they can take him down on some computer security/classified material charges and hurt or help Clinton. If the interest is the truth about Clinton, they should immunize him.

* Insert Nickleback or band of your choice here.

One odd thing I've noticed about Trump: apart from his talk about building a wall at the Mexican border, his policies are actually not as extreme right wing as some other Republicans: he's for a progressive tax (not a flat tax which would benefit the rich), and on many other issues, such as abortion, gun 'rights', gay marriage, etc., he has not said much at all. He has said that the Iraq war was a mistake, and that Bush Jr.'s presidency was a disaster. It just shows how extreme the Republican field is when Trump is the moderate!

I guess you haven't seen this: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/09/18/3703319/trump-concealed-carry/.

I can't figure Trump out. Why does he want to be president?

Why do you want to be president? Why does everyone want to be president? Why did Reagan strangle Bonzo to death to clear HIS way?

>172 sturlington:

Bruce Springsteen may have said it best: "Poor man wanna be rich/Rich man wanna be king/And a king ain't satisfied/Till he rules everything":

https://youtu.be/TF1jH6Cv0tk

>171 jjwilson61:
"I guess you haven't seen this: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/09/18/3703319/trump-concealed-carry/."

Based on some of the stuff that keeps flying out of Trump's mouth, he will be lucky if someone doesn't make a target out of him. Thought of that a couple of times now.

Hahahaha

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/19/9353865/republican-poll-debate-fiorina?ref=yfp

>171 jjwilson61: Nope, hadn't seen that. So much for the theory that he might not be as nuts as he pretends.

Poll: Fiorina rockets to No. 2 behind Trump in GOP field:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/20/politics/carly-fiorina-donald-trump-republican-201...

Bernie Sanders gets some Republican love:

http://www.wcax.com/story/30064232/poll-bernie-sanders-popular-in-vt-even-among-...

Walker out…

#180---I'm glad. IMO he was at least close to the worst.

>181 lriley:
He is a frickin weasel !

Claim to fame ? Taking on the teachers union. He thought everyone hated teachers as much as the hicks in Wisconsin. Turns out he was wrong. He also voted against a light rail through Wis. (Minnesota and Illinois now have a light rail with a Wisconsin hole in it) but just OK'd a huge arena for the Bucks basketball team. Guess who's pocket he's all cozy in ?

>180 timspalding:

What? Mr. Charisma? ;)

I recently helped to unionize my workplace (in Illinois, just south of Governor Walker's home state of Wisconsin), so if you're guessing that I'm not terribly saddened to see him go, you'd be correct.

>183 artturnerjr: Seeing as how he was the party favorite for a while, it's a relief to see him go. Perry and Walker, who's next? It's like an Agatha Christie novel, although not as much fun.

It's like an Agatha Christie novel, although not as much fun.

It's like an Agatha Christie novel in which you want all of the characters eliminated.

>185 StormRaven: And Then There Were None

#182--you have no argument with me on that. I'm very much in favor of worker's bargaining rights. Most of my working life I was a union member.

Snowden: No way Hillary’s private server was secure
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/edward-snowden-hillary-clinton-personal-se...

Blistering.

I think if you're voting for a Clinton you have to accept a certain amount of corruption and scandal. And one can say the same about the Bush family. The main thing keeping some of these people out of prison is their high office---and it's like they know they have a get out of jail card and they can be brazen about it. But a lot of connected rich people it's the same--they can do practically anything and get away with it. The law isn't the same for them as it is for some middle class type person and the law isn't the same again if you're poor and black and living in a ghetto.

>188 timspalding: "Snowden: No way Hillary’s private server was secure"

"Blistering."

"Oh for god's sake !

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pentagon-hacked-24-000-files-stolen-for...

Hell fire !!

>189 lriley:
" The law isn't the same for them as it is for some middle class type person and the law isn't the same again if you're poor and black and living in a ghetto"

Now THAT is a "Blistering" truth. A truth that turns the very idea of justice into a blistering joke.

AP+Mashable: Russia-linked hackers tried to access Clinton's email server 5 times
http://mashable.com/2015/09/30/russia-hackers-clinton-emails/#LCC.5kfUJEqs

Russia-linked hackers tried at least five times to pry into Hillary Clinton's private email account while she was secretary of state, emails released Wednesday show. It is unclear if she clicked on any attachment and exposed her account.

And

The new revelation only deepens the controversy surrounding Clinton's email server. It was recently revealed that the server had not been properly "wiped" meaning previously deleted emails may be recoverable.

The latter links to Mashable+AP: "Server company: Clinton email server not 'wiped,' deleted emails might be recoverable"
http://mashable.com/2015/09/13/clinton-email-server/#6vvAZPeFqgq2
Apparently she deleted emails, but was unaware—as many non-computer people are unaware—that deleting a file does not in fact remove it completely from your hard drive. To be really safe, you need to write over it multiple times—I gather excellent hardware can read seven levels down, so you gotta write ones and zeroes over and over and over.

Speaking of Wikileaks, see
Mashable: Clinton email release shows humor and despair around Wikileaks diplomacy breach
http://mashable.com/2015/09/01/clinton-email-wikileaks/#SIIaQFDP3Sq8

This is now unintentionally very funny.

One of the most pointed emails came from Mark Penn, who was chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Penny wrote that the Obama administration's response to Wikileaks "seems quite weak to me."

"This is not like the Pentagon Papers or even the videos of the bombings, this is a wholesale capturing of the diplomatic material of the country," he wrote. "And if this is what wikileaks can get, what can the Chinese or other be able to secure?"

He also urged action from Clinton.

"For what it is worth, I think you need to order a full scale review and upgrading of the cyber security of the state department immediately. To offer a bounty for the capture of those responsible. And as I see you doing, take an aggressive position on Wikileaks," he wrote. "Just being seen as apologizing for the content is weak compared to reacting and acting to shore up the key principles behind security and aggressively dealing with the problem directly.

>192 timspalding: Apparently she deleted emails, but was unaware—as many non-computer people are unaware—that deleting a file does not in fact remove it completely from your hard drive. To be really safe, you need to write over it multiple times—I gather excellent hardware can read seven levels down, so you gotta write ones and zeroes over and over and over.

Deleting a file rarely does anything but mark the space as not available, so it's trivially recoverable by anyone with the least bit of computer knowledge. Wiping the file may be effective but (a) systems love making temporary copies for whatever reason, so it may be stored on the harddrive anyway and (b) operating systems hate saving files to disk, because disk is slow and memory is fast. Maybe Windows has the right syscalls to get Windows to actually wipe a file, but there's serious concern about Linux wipers.

Anyway, if you really want the data gone, wipe the hard disk. And if you're serious about it, do what major businesses do and wipe then physically shred the disk. If you're the Secretary of State, do what the military does, which is then store the shreds in a secure dump.

This topic bores me so I have read very little, but intrigued by 'unintentionally funny' I delved in. My understanding of big shots, you know, like secretaries of state and such, is that they have peons who take care of things like this because who could blame a 70 year old lady for having no idea of computer hijinks? Others should know, do know...Tell me, what if HClinton had at the beginning thrown up her hands and said, 'Frankly, I have no idea what's going in in this sphere. Did I do something wrong?'

People in line for presidency don't need to know everything, but they should know enough to ask the right people... What was she thinking?? Did she fear Republican wingnuts more than Russia and China?

>196 margd:
"What was she thinking?? Did she fear Republican wingnuts more than Russia and China?"

She wasn't thinking any further than the dipshits who had their name on the Ashley Madison website ?
Many people have a false notion as to what the internet actually is. Security online is an illusion anyway. If you don't want stuff traced, online security should be a 24/7 job of leaving no trail....which in many cases is not practical at all. Our pursuit of online is going to be highly expensive and not what we want to think technology has done for us. It has made things faster, cheaper and more concise but it certainly hasn't made us more secure. In my opinion, it never will.

I am bit younger than Ms. Clinton but one thing I have learned that in today's society one has to be a good lawyer to find a good lawyer, a competent doctor to find themselves a good doctor and an IT specialist to trust anyone else to protect and care for your computer issues. (It does not hurt to be a mechanic as well so as not to get ripped off by an auto "specialist".) Ms Clinton made a mistake but it was not a calculated mistake. She trusted someone to be doing the right thing. She probably didn't even think much about it......not her wheel house. Younger people are going to be thinking about this stuff constantly....they will need insurance against hacking and ways to keep their computers safe that we have yet to hear of. Blaming a 70 yr old woman for not knowing this BEFORE the fact makes the finger pointers look rather foolish.

This is such a stupid issue to hang one's hat on. So was Benghazi....and now look :

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-mccarthy-puts-political-spin-on-benghazi-and-h...

Comments from Republicans are all about Mr McCarthy not being "ready" for the job. Well, all you Republicans, I would like to hear a definition of what you think the "job" entails and just who you are going to trust to do this. The past 15 years have left so many skeletons piled up in your closets that you need a "mute" to take this job or most likely you will find yourself in hot water. Watch them self destruct......after trying to destroy one man.

It looks like Bernie Sanders nearly equaled Clinton in fundraising this quarter, 26 million to her 28 million.

Indeed, and she fell quarter-over-quarter.

>197 faceinbook:

David Brooks was amusing on the topic of the Kevin McCarthy imbroglio tonight:

...he said something true and stupid... that the attack, the investigation into the Democratic nominee...is a political act and they’re trying to bring her down. Of course. But you’re not supposed to say that.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/brooks-dionne-mass-shooting-frustration-kevin-mcc...

(There's some discussion of Clinton's and Sanders' fundraising there, too.)

It's not helping McCarthy that he's not the most well-spoken fella, either:

www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachel-maddow-kevin-mccarthy-speech-english-language_560d5a35e4b0af3706dfc389

> 200

"...It's not helping McCarthy that he's not the most well-spoken fella, either..."

I understand the actual Kevin McCarthy was well spoken but the pod replacement is less than a perfect replica. (However the Obama replacement is spot on - I don't even think Michelle knows.)

http://gawker.com/source-kevin-mccarthy-affair-rumors-have-been-circulat-1735519...

I think Democrats can take a very long breather.....we can rest and watch as the Right accuses the Right of everything they formerly accused the Dems of doing. My belief is that we can pretty much skate into the oval office no matter who we run. The Right is dismantling itself, no Dems needed.

Maybe this is what the politics of total self interest looks like ?

The Republican Party has allowed itself to be overrun by cartoon Christians and cartoon conservatives, whose images have been exquisitely drawn by Fox News's Looney Tunes version of journalism. Members of the Tea Party Republican House have been playing the coyote role to the POTUS's roadrunner since 2010: the anvil is always falling on them.

#202--I don't agree. I think what the coming election has trended towards is showing that the American voting public whether they identify as left, right or somewhere in the middle are not happy in any respect with the elite/established politicians of either major party. I don't see Hilary Clinton as a shoo-in by any means. She's dogged by scandal--if she manages the nomination she's a good 6-9 months of attack ads waiting to happen--and they will and some may even have real substance.

Speaking of Hillary...



Aw, don't get worked up, it's the Onion: http://www.theonion.com/article/sight-400-war-elephants-horizon-marks-hillary-cl...

Who plays Legolas for the Democrats?

Clinton emails so secret some lawmakers can't read them
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/21/clinton-emails-so-secret-some-lawmake...

"Some of Hillary Clinton’s emails on her private server contained information so secret that senior lawmakers who oversee the State Department cannot read them without fulfilling additional security requirements, Fox News has learned.

The emails in question, as Fox News first reported earlier this week, contained intelligence classified at a level beyond “top secret.” Because of this designation, not all the lawmakers on key committees reviewing the case have high enough clearances.

A source with knowledge of the intelligence review told Fox News that senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite having high-level clearances, are among those not authorized to read the intelligence from so-called “special access programs” without taking additional security steps -- like signing new non-disclosure agreements."

>208 timspalding: Given all the choice in the world, I wouldn't elect Clinton. Given the choices of her, trying to run Sanders against the Republicans, or taking whoever the Republicans finally choose, I have a hard time seeing much of anything that could be revealed that would make me change my mind.

(A) All voting systems are mathematically proven to not work; (b) winner takes all is one of the worst; (c) theory aside, voting wisely is hard, and even or especially with the Internet, trying to figure out how each contender is going to preside (based on the words of a politician) and how to optimally weigh issues is incredibly hard and would take more time to do right then all but a few voters are going to give it.

>208 timspalding:
I know I'm being pedantic but there is no clearance above Top Secret. Folks with a Top Secret clearance can't access Top Secret info without a need to know. If the Senate committee members need to know then it's fairly simple administrative process. "Special access programs" sounds like media jargon

>208 timspalding:
"The emails in question, as Fox News first reported earlier this week, contained intelligence classified at a level beyond “top secret"

The only reporting that is claiming Clinton's emails to be "beyond top secret" is coming from Fox News. A "News" station that goes beyond lying.

>211 faceinbook: "The only reporting that is claiming Clinton's emails to be 'beyond top secret' is coming from Fox News."

ABC News, The Washington Post, and many others are carrying an item from Deb Riechmann at the Associated Press saying: "Some of the classified emails found on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s home server were even more sensitive than top secret, according to an inspector general for the intelligence community."

NBC News's Ken Dilanian writes: "Emails from Hillary Clinton's home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News. In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community's internal watchdog says some of Clinton's emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters."

ETA:

CBS News's Nancy Cordes and Rebecca Kaplan write: "Hillary Clinton's private email server contained information that was classified at a higher level than 'top secret,' the inspector general of the intelligence community told members of Congress in a letter obtained by CBS News."

"Special access programs" sounds like media jargon

Sigh. No, actually, it's the term used in creating the designation, in Executive Order 13526 "Classified National Security Information" (see §4.3. entitled "Special Access Programs"). Here's the text on the White House's website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-...

The only reporting that is claiming Clinton's emails to be "beyond top secret" is coming from Fox News. A "News" station that goes beyond lying.

Actually, the phrase, or at least the concept, comes from the Inspector General. Fox News was the first to report on it, but it has be confirmed and reported generally. You can read about in that right-wing rag, the Washington Post (AP):

IG: Some emails on Clinton’s server were beyond top secret
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ig-some-emails-on-clintons-server-were-b...

If I may say, the reaction here is really dispiriting—automatic distrust and rubbishing of anything that goes against your party affiliation, whether it's terms in an executive order or a leak from the Inspector General. The difference between being a leftist and a hack lies in the difference between a principle stance on substance and a prejudice in favor of your people.

>213 timspalding: What principles? Classified materials should be treated securely. Had this been another Secretary of State in a less turbulent political time, it would have barely got a mention, maybe a short-lived congress committee would have given recommendations about how better to handle secure materials and it would have passed with little notice among the average people.

The only reason this has been so dragged out is because Hilary Clinton is running for president. At which point it is not longer a question of political philosophy, it is a matter of politics. We do favor Clinton, therefore we therefore should politically disfavor this drawn out discussion.

Since I'm apparently not getting to sleep...

The NTSB investigates some very important things, like the plane crash of American Airlines Flight 587. If you look at the report, they explain it by the actions of one person: the first officer. Whose name you will not find in the report, because the point of the NTSB report is not about blame, it's about improving things going on. The subject of how to appropriately handle classified materials is not really a "Pro and Con" topic, nor does it fall under the subject heading of "2016 Presidential Election: what's the deal?".

Do you think that after this Hilary Clinton is especially likely to have problems with classified material as president? That given what we know about the candidates that this is a deciding factor?

Does anyone actually think that Ms. Clinton is going to repeat this mistake ? Has the security at the Pentagon be compromised ? Who believes that at the time, Ms. Clinton was a prime target for cyber attacks ? Was her server hacked ?

Maybe she will be more sensitive to this issue in the future which is a good thing. Actually we ALL learn from our mistakes and hers seems to have cost us nothing except a rush of hot air from those who do not like her.

I see this as a plus. She will be vigilant regarding security. Let us not forget the number of idiots working in the Whitehouse who have been caught watching kiddy porn, texting naked pictures, scheduling sessions with prostitutes and what not.....not only with government equipment but also on our dime. If Clinton's emails were sensitive at least we can be assured she was actually WORKING !

>213 timspalding:
"If I may say, the reaction here is really dispiriting—automatic distrust and rubbishing of anything that goes against your party affiliation, whether it's terms in an executive order or a leak from the Inspector General. The difference between being a leftist and a hack lies in the difference between a principle stance on substance and a prejudice in favor of your people."

I would highly suggest that you not quote Fox News as a source. Since Obama has taken office the entire Fox network has lost an ability to know the difference between principle and prejudice. When a major event takes place I tend to float between BBC, MSNBC, CNN and FOX. Fox is horrible....just horrible. If it wasn't a major primary news source for many Americans (many, if not most ,who refuse to watch any news source BUT Fox) it would be pure humor. They twist, spin, spit and then eventually come out with these three words "Barack HUSSAIN Obama, coupled with a few sprinkles of other utterings such as "fear" "threat" "unconstitutional" , a lot of head shaking and a fair amount of negative facial ticks thrown in as extra entertainment.

"a prejudice in favor of your people.""

No not so much.....a desire to separate news from propaganda and a prejudice in favor of trying to discern the truth perhaps.....but not as you say.

(admittedly the truth is very elusive today but one thing is sure....it doesn't come from Fox)

> 217
I will vote for HRC when and IF she becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee for POTUS.

That being said, right now I am just looking to support the best candidate on offer for the most powerful political job in the world. I have concluded that that candidate is Senator Bernie Sanders.

It's just that simple. And there are perhaps tens of millions of people at this juncture in time who agree with me. And we are not just going to roll over and give up because we MIGHT be outnumbered - at this particular juncture. Things change. I refer you to the Democratic Presidential nomination race in late January of 2008.

I have exposed myself as much as possible to the issue of HRC's email problem over the last months. I have considered all sides in their take on this, partisan and non-partisan. I have tried my honest best to understand this issue and not jump to any emotionally-based conclusion.

I personally have at this time concluded that she acted recklessly at best and for some personal selfish reason at worse. She should have known better. Was any real harm done to our nation? - Apparently not. We dodged the bullet. One can argue that the importance of Sec. of State's position is second only to the President. The S. of S. is our representative to the world. Thus, the competency and honesty of the sitting S. of S. is of paramount importance. Politics is not just some fun game, regardless of the apparent attitudes of the millions of the republican base base. (lol.)

Because of this and many other actions throughout her career I do not trust Hillary Rodham Clinton. But at least she is not insane and thus I will vote for her if my other choice is one of the maniacs of the republican party, but that is as far as I can go with her. Dishonesty beats insanity. Fine.

One last consideration: why do people assume she is more competent or more electable or just a better candidate than Bernie Sanders? She has been elected to public office ONE TIME. In contrast, similar to Barack Obama, Bernie has been elected something like ten times - mainly returned to office because the voters overwhelming preferred them - apparently viewing both Obama and Sanders as competent, trustworthy, and the best candidates on offer.

HRC has been elected to public office just one more time than Trump - that’s One vs. Zero. Not that big a difference.

Bernie 2016.

Everyone have a nice day.

Fox News -- the network that lives to be discredited every day.

I'm a proud supporter of Hillary Clinton for the same reasons her endorsers, Superdelegates, former SoSes (regardless of party affiliation), and international contacts support her, admire her lifelong service and accomplishments, and shower accolades on her intelligence and judgment.

I think Sanders is a needed gadfly and goad to the Democratic Party that too long has ill-advisedly drifted to the center right. He is not fit to be president, though, being unqualified in political leadership, knowledge, preparedness, or demeanor. He's more of the Democratic version of John McCain -- another angry old white guy who suffers from poor judgment and for all his years of political acumen, completely lacks the necessary political influence and reputation among leaders of both parties necessary in a president.

The Republican slate is so tragic that the Founding Fathers are probably spinning in their graves. None of them are worth serious consideration except as dangerous disaffected and disgruntled losers in the future.

>218 JGL53: HRC has been elected to public office just one more time than Trump - that’s One vs. Zero. Not that big a difference.

The question being why is that an important number?

why do people assume she is more competent or more electable or just a better candidate than Bernie Sanders?

She's more electable because he's a self-declared socialist, because he's further left of the average American than her, because she's got better support among people besides white liberals. This election may swing on whether the Democrats can get the African-American and Hispanic voters to the polls, and Clinton has a better chance of doing so.

I don't know about that. I think that Hillary is kind of the Mitt Romney of Democrats: she has no idea how to interact with people less fortunate than she is. Bernie may be a grumpy old Jew who doesn't comb his hair, but he comes across as someone who actually cares.

It's been long time since I started this thread. I want to reiterate my original question: LibraryThing Republicans, do any of these yahoos do it for you? Marco Rubio? Ted Cruz? Ben Carson? I'm genuinely curious.

>222 weener:

I'm still officially listed as a Republican, although it's getting harder and harder to be one today. In fact, I find myself rather adrift. I like smaller government, but see social services as the last thing you cut. I hate the culture-war mentality, climate denialism and, now, anti-immigrant and anti-muslim sentiment of many, if not most, Republicans today.

Of those who remain, my first choice would probably be Bush. After that, things get murky. I think I'd vote for Rubio, Christie or Kasich. The latter two I probably don't need to research further, since they'll be long gone before it matters. I'm of two minds about Rubio—he strikes me as a Republican Bill Clinton—but he's not a monster.

I would not vote for any of the others still around, and especially not for Cruz, Carson or Trump, no matter who ran against them—even Sanders. Cruz scares me. But I'd cross over and give money, wave signs and vote for their opponent if I thought it might prevent Trump from becoming president. I'd be willing to do almost anything to keep him out of the office.

I would vote for Bloomberg. But I worry his entry in the race could do for America what Eliot Cutler did for Maine's gubernatorial race—split the moderate-and-left such that the horrific bigot (LePage, Trump) won office.

As another sign of my adrift-ness, I see no party or leader, with the partial exception of Rand, who is otherwise unattractive, committed to reversing the recent, massive change to privacy. I had some hopes that Obama might fulfilled his campaign promises there, but in fact the contemporary surveillance state is now far more his doing than any predecessor. With majorities now in favor of the government spying on ordinary citizens by default, I feel like I'm living in some other America than the one I was proud of.

> 220

Your analysis could turn out to be dead right. As the cliché goes, only time will tell.

I will only advise we all just try to remember just where the Democratic nomination for President stood in late January of 2008. Remember? Some foolish young guy who was a first term Senator, who was Black (or mixed race) and had a funny sounding Arab/Muslim name thought he could defeat the Clinton machine. He turned out to be just another Jessie Jackson, just like Bill Clinton thought, didn't he? lol.

Your average horse race is much more predictable than Presidential races. Bet your two dollars on the nags and avoid betting your life savings on who's gonna be elected in November and you'll do just fine.

>223 timspalding:
Thank you for this honest post Tim ! I empathize completely.....the only thing I can add by way of insight to where we are is my age and experience.

I grew up in a Republican household. I was taught that my decisions and actions were my responsibility. (you made your bed now lay in it). Having said that I was also taught that morally I was responsible to serve others in some manner, not all were given the opportunities and comforts I enjoyed. Often this was due to pure circumstance and had nothing to do with choices or lack there of. I was taught to study on these things and decide who indeed was in need and who may want to take advantage of my help. Tough lessons and I wasn't always correct in my decisions. But....live and learn.

My father's world was very black and white...there was no room for grey. We disagreed often but I have come to understand that black and white is far easier to deal with than the grey. As this country has grown, as technology has advanced and our priorities have tilted to an attitude of acquiring things rather than merely surviving ( I would even add that in many cases we've given up enjoying life so as to acquire what we think we have to acquire to enjoy it) our entire society has become a giant hamster wheel. Impossible to get off..... we need to keep the thing going at all costs. Society has become a giant grey area.

There is no Left or Right. There are those who need to keep going and going and going and those who have acquired enough to sit back and watch. Those who can afford others to run the wheel. They take enough benefits from the efforts of others to ensure that there are always plenty of individuals to run that wheel for them.

Can this be fixed ? Don't have any answers for that. This country is far too big and diverse to impose only one way of doing things. Yet, it is also to big not to experience the affects of allowing everyone to think that their own rights are the only thing that matters. We need citizens with a strong sense of individualism and self responsibility, who understand the importance of a social consciousness. Society is really only as strong as the weakest amongst them. History has proven this over and over. THAT muddies the waters in today's political climate.

I am not religious but I believe in a moral compass.....and I strongly feel that a moral compass is no longer a household bench mark. Money....competition ...... material possessions ....... all first and foremost. Sadly it almost has to be so as to survive. So we keep spinning. Not a Left / Right issue.

Who to vote for ? I think maybe this time it is a coin toss and the coin is the same on both sides. Doesn't matter much.....when "we the people" start treating each other differently, better candidates will surface. Until then it is my opinion that we are SOL

>225 faceinbook:
"He turned out to be just another Jessie Jackson"

What on earth would make you say something like this ?

Like me saying that Bush turned out to be just another Dwight D. Eisenhower.

>221 weener: "I think that Hillary is kind of the Mitt Romney of Democrats: she has no idea how to interact with people less fortunate than she is."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/10/22/the-mitt-romney-you-dont-know-ye...

> 226

In 2008 Bill Clinton did in fact refer to Barack Obama as a kind of Jessie Jackson figure. I believe it was right after the S. Carolina primary wherein Obama had handed HRC her head and Bill was sort of emoting, him lusting after that sweet, sweet First Lady job and all.

But in any case I was being facetious by the way. How come you didn't pick up on that? I thought it was as obvious as the nose on your face.

Having said that I was also taught that morally I was responsible to serve others in some manner, not all were given the opportunities and comforts I enjoyed.

I believe this very deeply. And, as noted, I'm in favor of (smart) government efforts to help the poor and disadvantaged. (I say "smart," because, historically, many attempts to help the poor have done little good or even actual ill.)

But this is not really the issue. For some reason both left and right talk about big government as being about the poor—about helping the poor, or refusing to subsidize "takers." But in fact the big money goes to certain favored middle-class people and powerful businesses, not the poor.

I'd be happy as a clam if this country actually committed to fighting poverty, spending lots of money. But that's not actually on offer. Instead, we get business and agriculture subsidies. We get tax advantages for people who own their own home. And we get government loans for college students, which, again and again, just cause colleges to raise the prices, and saddle graduates with impossibly large debt.

But I digress…

>229 timspalding:
" But in fact the big money goes to certain favored middle-class people and powerful businesses, not the poor. "

Actually, it is my belief that the big money goes to defense spending while American's are being pitted against each other on issues such as food stamps, tax breaks, subsidies and what not.
It would seem that the only thing America remains on the top of the list (of developed nations) for is military might.
There has to be a reason for this. I don't care much about food stamps, or agriculture subsidies or tax advantages when I am wondering how much the nearly 4 trillion dollars spewed into the Middle East could have done for our youth in health care, education and opportunities. We are not supposed to think of that.....we are supposed to resent the "takers" , the "free loaders", or the "wealthy" .

The situation is just perfect for the abuser's to take advantage....both on the bottom "takers" and on the top "big banks" "corporate America" of a system that has it's priorities in the wrong place entirely.

From the original post: "LibraryThing conservatives"

No such thing.

I'd like to see some admission that Republicans are just as sincere as Democrats in making America better, or at least in keeping it from sinking further. There's enough to do that no one ought to get bored. Of course, a cynic would say none of them is sincere, they're all corrupt, throw the bums out, a revolutionary attitude I don't share.

I mentioned in another thread how the person with the most money usually or always gets elected. That has to change, otherwise I doubt anything will change. The geniuses here couldn't offer a way out of that problem.

If you read about Apple on Wikipedia, you'll see how sucessful the company has been at shielding its income from taxes by locating it in other countries. This from a company led by, first, an alleged hippie liberal, and now an alleged homosexual liberal. Hypocrisy aside, this a subject both parties and its voters ought to address. I suppose you stop buying iPads and iPhones, but I don't see that happening and it probably wouldn't solve the problem. As wealthy as Apple is now, it can almost act as a sovereign government and make up its own rules. Again, that ought to make everyone ponder.

More to the point, perhaps, I doubt that I will vote this time. A first for me.

>232 barney67: Oh, well, if it involves a homosexual individual. What the hell?

The big government/small government subject is sort of a red herring.

America has something like 320 million people and growing rapidly due to immigration. America is big in population, geography, and weath. There hasn't really been a small government since the thirteen colonies of the late 1700s. American government will always be big.

From the beginning, moreover, government rather than the private sector provided some services, which doesn't mean that we're socialists, so the choice has never been all or nothing. Today the choice is between bigger and much bigger government. That's just the way things are, however anyone feels about it. But I would like to see Democrats answer the question: How are we going to pay for "X" service? And if you think it's all going to come through taxation, you're dreaming.

I notice there's been little talk by candidates about the debt. Where are we now? Nineteen trillion? I don't know much about economics, but I don't understand how a country in that position doesn't collapse. And I don't know how the problem is going to be solved. You're not going to get $19 trillion from raising taxes.

Maybe America's bigness is its biggest problem. Maybe we could slice it up into parts. Mississippi River a dividing line. Divide northern from southern California, northern from southern Texas. New England. West Coast. Deep South.

I don't see how you can govern a country this big, this wealthy, other than by decentralizing power, wealth, and responsibility.

Why is raising taxes a non-starter? If Republicans hadn't irresponsibly lowered taxes without finding something to cut at the same time the national debt wouldn't be as high as it is.

Look at what I just wrote about Apple. Companies like find a way around paying taxes, no matter how high you raise them.

I'm not one of those people who think there's a necessary connection between low taxes and a wealthier economy. During the booming Eisenhower years, the highest income tax rate was 90%. Excessive, I think, if only for psychological reasons. The higher taxes are, the more you discourage people from spending and saving. And you give companies one more reason, not that they need many, to produce in other countries.

It's all very complicated. I don't have any answers.

We had a top tax rate of 90 per cent in the Eisenhower years - and a booming economy and increasing tax revenues. Those are facts.

So - it looks like someone here is very good at arguing against himself. That seems counterproductive to me.

During the booming Eisenhower years, the highest income tax rate was 90%.

The highest marginal rate was 90%. That means people only paid that rate on the portion of their income that was over $200,000 per year ($400,000 for married couples) in 1953-1961 dollars, in an era when the median income was less than $10,000.

The highest marginal rate was 90%. That means people only paid that rate on the portion of their income that was over $200,000 per year ($400,000 for married couples) in 1953-1961 dollars, in an era when the median income was less than $10,000.

$400,000 in 1958 is, in 2015 dollars, anywhere between $3.2 million (real value) and $7.85 million (income value). And the rate was marginal.

Further, as everyone knows, the "ordinary" rich did not and do not have very high incomes. Then and now, rich people have a thousand ways of hiding it, deferring it, offsetting it and so forth. You don't need to make $13m dollars, when you own the company and the company pays for everything. Fake companies, trusts, Switzerland—there are a lot of ways of hiding income. Most simply, then as now, rich people take their money not as income but as capital gains.

Capital gains? Sorry, but the top marginal rate for capital gains in 1950 was not 90%, but 25%. And the rules for "capital gains" were in many ways looser then. Today, an author's earnings are taxed as income. When Eisenhower published his memoir, its proceeds were classed as capital gains (see http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1948/06/02/page/16/article/revenue-bureau-con..., saving him $500,000. The huge difference in rates led to extensive manipulation, with even entertainers, such as Amos and Andy and Jack Benny, converting their income into capital gains by "selling" their shows. Many such loopholes were subsequently eliminated.

But, of course "1950s, when the rates were high and nobody paid them" doesn't have quite the same ring.

So you think that taxing the rich at any percentage is a waste of time?

>240 barney67:

I think tax policy is hard. Whatever you do will warp the economy in some way. And avoidance is the most prominent way. That is, if rich people can spend a million on lawyers or outsourcers or investment professions to save a million and a dollar, they will.

So you need to be careful and deliberate. You probably need to be simple. And you can't rely on simplistic notions of how business and the economy work.

> 241

Yeah, Ok. But I say the time has come to UNLEASH THE HOUNDS OF HELL! The army of Bernie is AT THE GATE. The barbarians who rule must be ......... well, voted out of office.

Fuckit. Let's just elect Bernie and see if he CAN do any good, or if it is too late and he will beaten into a political bloody pulp.

His idea is to mobilize MILLIONS to get off their collective asses to use all legal means to support his policies - which are to be sure revolutionary policies - for the U.S. that is - hardly so in all the other advanced countries on earth, not to mention the non-advanced ones too in the majority.

Bernie is a non-evil populist. Those are as rare as hen's teeth in U.S. history.

We have absolutely nothing to lose except the paralyzing and depression-engendering cynicism that nearly all Americans seem to suffering under. Not me, brothers and sisters. Let's get it on. If the fucking world is going to end then let's blow the muther up REAL GOOD.

Let's beat those christian evangelicals to the punch and preempt the goddam LastDaysArmageddonRaptureMoonTurnsToBlood bullshit they are always yammering about. Let's throw a progressive/liberal-led battle to end evil for all time.

The sun will burn out in about 5 billions years. In the meantime what are we to do? Try and be the best pragmatists that we can be? F.T.S.

It is nut-cutting time. Those who can't stand the sight of blood on the cowpies need to S.T.F.U. and/or get the fuck out of the barn. The time for whining is over, the time for action is NOW.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/ann-coulter-calls-arrogant-fox-news-163041009.html

It's become a toxic snake pit.....they are turning on each other.

NYT/AP: APNewsBreak: US Declares 22 Clinton Emails 'Top Secret'
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/01/29/us/politics/ap-us-clinton-emails.html...

>244 timspalding:
Tim......on another thread you have expressed dismay and disbelief over the fact that Trump is in the running....you have gone so far as to question your parties direction.

THIS is a perfect example of WHY Trump is in front and why your party is in the shitter. Do you really think that Ms. Clinton put our country at risk on purpose......were her emails hacked......do you think she would do it again ? Do you really believe a woman in her late 50's is technologically savey enough to have fully understand the change from using a dial phone to understanding the entire consequences behind the whole using specific server's thing, secure or not ?

What is the forward looking, progress related issue at stake here ?

What is the point of this ? To discredit Ms. Clinton so as to elect Trump ?

What exactly is forward looking about any of the accusations leveled at Clinton for that matter ?

At least my husband thinks that Clinton was paid off by our enemies for using an unsecure line. She hid all of the money and is going to reap the benefits later. This is HIS truth and you will not sway him from such thoughts......Trump is making purple smoke come out of his head and he can not figure out what the problem is.

#245--The question isn't whether she understands the technological aspects of her server. The question is why is all this top secret stuff on her server when it's not supposed to be?--and it is at least somewhat likely depending on the seriousness of the material that she has/had on her server that she has committed a very serious criminal act.

As is--it's all kind of vague. One might wonder how much is smoke and how much is actual fire? and we're probably never going to really know. We do know that there are people/political rivals (mostly on the republican side) who are very much out to get Hillary---and by extension her husband. We also well know however much it sometimes may seem like a vendetta on their part that both the Clinton's have done and continue to do things that they shouldn't--a reason why this soap opera never ends--there always seems to be some new scandal or some new twist on something old and almost always inadequately explained away.

Anyway Obama's justice department is probably going to do as much as they can to rein in this investigation. I can't imagine that Barack would like Bernie to put out to pasture the most significant accomplishment of his presidency--the Affordable Care Act and turn it into a much improvement single payer health care system. If they manage however to indict her--she and her campaign are in serious trouble.

Personally you break the law you should face the music. It shouldn't matter who you are. Justice should be equal for all.

> 246

Yes, a thinking person who is trying his or her best to be fair and objective would have to agree with you.

However, firstly, the chance that she will be indicted is almost nil. That is the political reality - as we know now, the right thing is rarely done in politics. E.g., the sins of G. Bush and company are infinitely more egregious than anything H. Clinton ever dreamed of doing much less actually did.

Secondly, and most importantly, her use of a private email server for All government business when the proper and obviously correct action would have been to use the government email server for All government business - this action shows a recklessness on her part that does not bode well for a serious candidate for the most powerful political office on earth. This is my opinion. Others who are hot for Hillary will disagree, of course. But my standards are high and I do not apologize for that fact.

The recklessness was engendered, IMO, by the flawed psychological make-up of H. Clinton in that she is, in layman’s parlance, a control freak. Perhaps even a little paranoid. Perhaps this is the result of what she has undergone in her decades in the public eye. No matter - I personally feel very UNCOMFORTABLE in having such a person as President, i.e., it's all just too Nixonesque for my taste.

I prefer Bernie Sanders. I have investigated his long political career now, not having known that much about him prior to his announced run for President. Sure, none of us are perfect but Bernie seems as normal as a person can be expected to be - maybe even better than that. IOW, I see no question of "trust" with Bernie.

Many people, and not just republican fools, have severe trust issues with Hillary. That is what poll after pool reveals. Where there is smoke there is fire. There are more than a few good reasons for this. E.g., would anyone like a chance to vote for Brian Williams for President? No? Why? Well he can't be trusted now as he has a little problem with lying for the purpose of self-aggrandizement. Ditto H. Clinton - e.g., her lying about landing under sniper fire while in a helicopter in Bosnia back during the war there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4

People who do such things are, as is said, "just not right." I cannot image Bernie acting in that manner.

Next e.g. - this video reveals that H. Clinton will sell out to the higher bidder if given the opportunity, i.e., she has no core values except the lust for wealth and power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL8T18zwRpg

And, finally, check out this video showing H. Clinton to be of such flawed character that I have concluded I myself do not wish her anywhere near the Whitehouse, except on visitation day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLNFsl130_Y&feature=youtu.be

The truth sometimes hurts but when the truth is recorded on video tape then anyone who denies it or tries to "argue it away" or tries to downplay it for political reasons MIGHT just be a scumbag. I don't know - I'll have to check with Jeff Foxworthy on that.

>246 lriley:
"Personally you break the law you should face the music. It shouldn't matter who you are. Justice should be equal for all."

I agree...however the very first thing that needs to happen if one wants "equal justice for all" is a cleaning of one's own house. Other wise the cry for justice is a hypocritical joke. Do as I say, not as I do. It doesn't work. Won't happen.

#247--I wouldn't say the odds against her being indicted are absolutely nil--I'd say not very likely--maybe a 15% chance. There would have to be a lot more pressure on Obama's White House though for that to happen.

I'm on board with taking the likes of GW Bush, Dick Cheney and a whole bunch of their pals to an international court of justice to have them tried on war crimes. This is a grievance I have with Obama and the majority of democrats. The Republicans never try to work with them but the Democrats when in power are always falling all over themselves to offer Republican lawmakers an olive branch. 'We can work together' when the other side is dead set against anything other than unconditional surrender. Obama etal. should never have defended the Bush administration over the Iraq debacle that they created pardoning/shielding them from any future prosecution. The only one who ever paid any kind of price was Scooter Libby.

As far as the Clinton's--I think they're pretty much capable of anything to gain and maintain power. IMO they pretty much seem to have a sense pretty much like an investment banks that they are too big to fail. It is reckless what Hillary has done with the classified--top secret? material. It's hard for me to believe that she was unaware of what she was doing. She is not a stupid person. The pair of them are as Obama characterized her 'wicked smart'.

Anyway I don't like her at all. I'm hoping very much that somehow Sanders pulls it off. He's been among a handful of favorite elected politicians of mine for going on three decades.

#248---you either have standards or you have excuses. There's a right way to do things. Again to look at Sanders--doesn't take Wall St. money--doesn't set up a SuperPac. He's not a billionaire like Trump or Bloomberg. His net worth is in the neighborhood of my net worth and I'm doing okay but I ain't rich. He's been able to fund a very competitive campaign largely by holding to his standards and having tons of supporters giving small donations. That should be a model for other politicians for now and into the future--that and to at least try to say and do the things they mean.

> 250

Right now I am getting more pessimistic about Bernie winning Iowa. It will hurt my feelings greatly if he does lose but I'm just going to have to get over it and look forward to New Hampshire.

The radical feminists who are Hillary fanatics are out there I droves. Upsetting her apple cart is really going to take an out-and-out successful revolution.

But I will not throw in the towel until I am forced to do so. Pray Jebus that will not happen this coming Monday.

#251--it's best not to take these things to heart. As one person out of potential 170-180 million? voters there's only so much anyone can do and unless they happen to be a billionaire or at least a multimillionaire they're not going to be able to buy the politician of their choice--maybe even have the opponent in pocket just in case.

I actually look at the Hillary wing of the democratic party as moderate pragmatist--complacent and not really interested in changing the status quo. Whatever idealism they ever had has been sucked out of their souls. Somewhat open minded on social issues--otherwise closet conservatives.

All in all I think things are moving towards the better. The majority of young people are feeling betrayed by party politics and are in great majority in Sanders camp and even if worse case scenario Trump were to win they'll be in Warren's camp in I suspect even greater numbers next time around. This looks to me to be a real trend>>>Young people don't like the bank/corporate happy and/or religious fanatic republicans and they want real change--not more of the same moderation from the Democrats. Occupy if nothing else was a political awakening for many many of them.

If it comes to it, remember those who said no diff between Gore and Bush, and those who voted for Nader, and cast your vote for HRC.

>245 faceinbook:

a woman in her late 50's

Late sixties, actually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton

>249 lriley: I wouldn't say the odds against her being indicted are absolutely nil--I'd say not very likely--maybe a 15% chance. There would have to be a lot more pressure on Obama's White House though for that to happen.

How many people have ever been indicted on such charges? Wen Ho Lee was, but that's a combination of him taking a plea bargain and the FBI wanting to save face. It's simply inconcievable that Obama would permit her being charged with that... and I don't think most wise Congressional seat holders would want that, given that many of them could be charged with the same thing. Mike Gravel, when entering the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, invoked the Speech and Debate Clause in his defense, but that says nothing about handling the material outside that.

THIS is a perfect example of WHY Trump is in front and why your party is in the shitter. Do you really think that Ms. Clinton put our country at risk on purpose......were her emails hacked......do you think she would do it again ? Do you really believe a woman in her late 50's is technologically savey enough to have fully understand the change from using a dial phone to understanding the entire consequences behind the whole using specific server's thing, secure or not ?

As I have said, I don't think the email issue alone is sufficient to doom her candidacy.

To your questions—no, I don't think she'd put our country at risk on purpose. But while intention may be sufficient for salvation, it is not sufficient for competence or a claim to leadership. If it were, Bush would be a great president.

Do I think she was savvy enough to appreciate the ins and outs? No. I suspect she was not. But she was very well aware of secrecy and security issues generally. She knew perfectly well how much interest foreign governments attach to US secrets and specifically to the State Department's secrets. She was no doubt hip deep in US efforts to compromise foreign diplomatic secrets. She was no naif here.

Even if she did not know, she ought also to have been leader enough to seek competent advice on this topic, and to realize that a part-time former campaign techie was not enough. She was no doubt aware of how much money and how many people the State Department has on just such security issues.

Do I think her emails were hacked? Well, we know with certainty that the servers suffered repeated hacking attempts. (It's unclear if these were automated attempts without knowledge of just what was there, or actual espionage.) And we know they were running old unpatched software that could be hacked—and not by geniuses either. There were known —Googleable!—exploits available. So, did she get hacked? It's unclear. My guess would be yes, frankly. But, again, because of how it was set up, it's very possible skilled hackers could have entered and extracted all the data, without leaving any trace.

Lapses in judgement matter. Should we treat any lapse in judgment as fatal? Surely not. But they matter, and we shouldn't dismiss them or minimize them just because we approve of the officeholders politics.

#255--Just read an article yesterday and I'm not sure where but according to that the FBI have quite a number of people on the investigation and that it's expected they will push for an indictment and if that happens and the Obama administration moves to block it that the FBI director James Comey for one but also a great number of other FBI personnel involved in the case will resign which according to the article could create a whole new maybe even larger problem--that it will at the least become a major news story and a huge black eye for the Obama Administration.

I don't know how true all that is-- though again according to that article apparently Comey has leveraged at least one outcome to his favor in the past using that same tactic. Also apparently he's considered to be a very independent guy and not so much a careerist. Such a thing happening the 24-7 news channels are going to run with that for a touchdown and that would bode ill for not only the Obama administration but for Clinton's presidential ambitions.

As I mentioned somewhere up above practically the last thing that the Obama Administration wants is for Bernie Sanders to be the democratic party nominee for POTUS. Overall the Obama Administration does not have all that many significant accomplishments to show for 7 years work and is in lame duck status right now. The Obama Administration did a decent job of hemorrhaging the job losses that the previous administration set up for it when it tanked the economy. The Obama Administration did a good job cutting into the deficit. And then there's the Affordable Care Act--the signature accomplishment of his years in power which would be in danger if Sanders were actually to win. IMO the Affordable Care Act is something good however single payer would be a hell of a lot better. Deep in his heart of hearts I expect Obama even realizes that--it's just that it leaves so much less legacy to hang his hat on.

Oh---and I like the Cuba thing.

If the FBI moves ahead with an indictment and pulls all out the stops though as the article I read suggested it sounds to me that Barack is going to be caught between a rock and a hard place. I don't know how much credence to put into this article--that article but the preponderance of different news articles coming out almost every day now leads me to believe that this thing is rapidly coming to a head.

>254 artturnerjr:
"Late sixties, actually:"

Typo.....sorry

>256 timspalding:
"Lapses in judgement matter. Should we treat any lapse in judgment as fatal? Surely not. But they matter, and we shouldn't dismiss them or minimize them just because we approve of the officeholders politics."

I agree. It just seems that, at this point in time, there are more important matters at hand. I did not like the fact that Obama didn't do anything about the misconduct surrounding the Bush administration. However, he made it clear that he was looking forward and not backwards. Whether he was right or wrong, has little to do with politics but everything to do with progress....at least in my estimation. He had a lot on his plate. Who ever inherits the debacle that is the state of this country today will also have plenty of concerns.....continuing down the path of emails (long past and not to be repeated) looks petty. The fine points you made are true but no matter how one feels about Ms Clinton, I don't believe her to be a stupid person. Arrogant....yes. Stupid no. If arrogance were a disqualifying attribute for a politician, I fear we wouldn't have many lawmakers at all.

I guess my point is this, one should be careful about which hill one chooses to die on. If one can not do this they will start to appear to be somewhat foolish and will lose credibility. I firmly believe that the Republican party chose all kinds of silly hills since 2008 and the current state of party is ,in part, a testament to that fact.

>258 faceinbook:

No worries.

>259 faceinbook:

If arrogance were a disqualifying attribute for a politician, I fear we wouldn't have many lawmakers at all.

Indeed! :)

> 260

We wouldn't still have Bernie Sanders? Really?

>261 JGL53:

I think Sanders is kind of the exception that proves the rule.

Let's keep in mind what I shouldn't have to remind people, that Mrs. Clinton is a very bright woman, a Yale lawyer who has used every bit of cunning and cleverness to get where she is.

Even if she doesn't understand the details of computer security and email, she knows people who do, and they call tell her what to do, show her, or do it for her. She often pleads ignorance, but by now she raises skepticism even among those who plan to vote for her.

Mrs. Clinton often tries to have it both ways -- smart and dumb, innocent and calculating, insider and outsider, hawk and pacifist, Yale Lawyer and Arkansas girl, co-president and First Lady, career woman and mother.

>263 barney67: "Mrs. Clinton often tries to have it both ways ... career woman and mother."

So it's impossible to be a career woman and a mother. 57% of US women participate in the labor force ( http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/stats_data.htm ). Soon, there'll be no mothers left.

Soon? How do you know? Half isn't a big number or a small number. It's half. Don't draw the wrong conclusions from numbers.

What? Sanders can't escape being seen as an opportunistic demagogue. He ran to the embrace of the Democratic Party to give him the benefit of its election-winning infrastructure, none of which he gave a dime to develop. Yet his supporters claim the Democratic Party is corrupt 'establishment.' Sanders wants the benefit of the association (and so far has got it) but none of the responsibilities (monetary support), while trying to dissociate himself from the label. He gladly and rapidly shed the correct label "Independent" in order to pursue his WH ambition. What hypocrisy! How corrupt! Typical establishment political maneuvering!

Frankly, I can't bear the thought of having an angry old white man shaking his finger in my face and glaring frowningly out of my TV screen while whining about endless conspiracies by 'establishment' politicians that keep him from accomplishing anything. Sanders jumped the shark when he bad-mouthed Planned Parenthood for endorsing his opponent. He's the Democratic John McCain, "Get off my lawn!"

Sanders is a good gadfly and a goad, but he's a lousy politician with no understanding or experience with Realpolitik that allows a president to get things done. He's uncomfortably closely tied to Israel -- the very "sin" Clinton was accused of while SoS. Let's serve the same sauce for the gander, please. About the only political capital he has to spend is what he's gained from his states' veterans - a very small state with relatively few veterans. He has none at all with Republicans; and slightly more than zero with Democrats. Presidents need political capital, or at least the chops that come with being charismatic and able to persuade people to do what you want them to do. Sanders is no Obama; he's a loser out of the gate.

56% of Democrats want a president about as liberal as Obama. Sure a greater minority would like one more liberal than POTUS than less liberal. But there is great satisfaction among Dems with the status quo when it comes to the left/right scale.

The mood of America is not revolutionary on the Democratic side; it's suicidally extreme on the Republican side. The chances of a rebel or a crazy fascist bigot becoming the next POTUS are blessedly dim. Which leaves the field to Clinton, a bona fide leader ready to hit the ground running on day one.

>266 Limelite: "He ran to the embrace of the Democratic Party to give him the benefit of its election-winning infrastructure, none of which he gave a dime to develop. Yet his supporters claim the Democratic Party is corrupt 'establishment.' Sanders wants the benefit of the association (and so far has got it) but none of the responsibilities (monetary support), while trying to dissociate himself from the label."

I don't know that he's an "opportunistic demagogue," but there's irony in this. The test will come if Mr Sanders wins the nomination. Will he accept endorsements from "Establishment" Democrats? Also, will he eschew public financing and seek to raise funds privately (as did Obama, who raised $778 million in 2008 and $1.1 billion in 2012)? Or will he only accept public financing and place himself at a massive disadvantage vis-a-vis his Republican opponent. If he chooses public financing, would he distance himself from Democratic PACs seeking to make up the difference?

> 266

So - your ramblings engender this question for us: Can there be an "opportunistic demagogue" of high moral integrity, proven competence, principled consistency, and courage to always stand up for what is right, no matter the political ramifications?

That is an interesting question. I might hazard an initial answer off the top of my head: Yes?

LOL.

#266---You do realize that Bernie Sanders has been caucusing with the Democrats for a long time? You probably don't realize that when he first came to congress he was treated as a pariah by both major parties but that's kind of water under the bridge now.

Maybe you do--maybe you don't realize the razor thin margins sometimes that gives one party the majority in the Senate and the ramifications of the 51-49 or 51-50 thing. I'll explain to you anyway because I'm not certain after reading your above tirade that you do. The majority party controls committees, controls hearings, does the schedule making, controls legislation. If you don't think that is crucially important to how things work or what legislation gets passed or not--then you really need to catch up on your civics. So here is something for you to consider. The Democrats very much want Bernie Sanders caucusing with them. Yes--that's right. They do. That he's more to the left than all of them with maybe the exception of Elizabeth Warren only means to me that the rest of your Democratic Senators are to far to the right. Well they are making their deals with Wall St. firms and corporations every time their re-elections come around so it's not surprising.

>263 barney67:
"Mrs. Clinton often tries to have it both ways -- smart and dumb, innocent and calculating, insider and outsider, hawk and pacifist, Yale Lawyer and Arkansas girl, co-president and First Lady, career woman and mother."

I am close to Clinton's age and most women of our generation have been forced to wear more than one hat. Two, three or four hats in fact. Women have had to be everything for everyone, so as to be accepted in the professional setting, while taking all kinds of flack from most men and many of her woman counterparts for what she is trying to do.
Actually, in many ways, she is just doing what her successful male counterparts have done for ever, only more of it. (a man can not have a career and be a father as well ?)
Sadly, I don't see that it has changed all that much. Certainly not as much as I would have hoped.

If Clinton wins.....I think we are going to witness just how much some things stay the same.

It's easy to appear to occupy the moral high ground when you've ever been a politician whose legislation either dies in committee or never makes it to the floor. One can point the finger at those who get things done in the manner democracy requires -- compromise and bipartisanship.

Sanders is largely the bully at the pulpit, the Senate scold, the man of principle who has never tested his principles in the political arena where coalition building is the measure of success, and whose courage is a figment of his supporters' imagination because he's never been confronted.

As an 'Independent,' there are no ramifications; there is no party leadership to rein him in, or slap him back into place, or withhold powerful chairmanships. As far as his constituency is concerned, a WASPy state simply re-elects a man who looks and sounds just like them. He represents one of the most homogeneous portions of the electorate than any other senator.

He is an example of the Peter Principle, unelectable to the governor's chair because no one thinks he can actually govern and shuffled off to the senate where the body's philosophy is to do as little as possible, and when you do something, it's to dampen down the craziness that comes out of the House. Unless you are a real leader and opinion molder, that is.

His biggest margin of victory to the House was due to VT having a conservative reaction to Howard Dean. When among the poor he makes big business their enemy; when among the loggers, he says nothing about the environment; when among the hunters, he is silent as the tomb about gun control; when among the straight-laced and insular "off the grid" citizens, he says nothing about same-sex marriage or women's unfettered access to medical care.

Don't talk to me about courage and Sanders in the same breath. Or principles when the subject is opportunistic turn-coat flip-flopping. Or high moral integrity when his mouth is shut, except to take false credit for being an author of ACA, and his legislation attempts are laughable. His consistency is restricted to his angry lecturing and inability to work with his peers to get any of his climate bills passed. Anything he's done in the Senate has been strictly as a coat-tail riding co-sponsor of bills introduced by Clinton, Warren, and Schumer.

Sanders is just a socialist version of John McCain, another do-nothing senator who looks just like his constituency and behaves like a snarly old curmudgeon.

#271--You're ranting.

It's okay. I do it sometimes myself. Even when I rant though I try to keep some kind of perspective--some aim in mind.

I don't know exactly what it is you can't stand about Mr. Sanders but look at this:

http://www.yahoo.com/politics/at-a-star-studded-coachella-esque-rally-bernie-170...

Look at the crowd. it's fucking huge. See the enthusiasm. As well--that is a young crowd. There you have the future voters of America. Donald Trump wishes he could be locking up these kids instead of the over 50 over 60 brigades of old farts but at least he has that. Hillary Clinton can only wish for crowds like that herself to give her own campaign a serious shot of adrenaline. She's still the favorite to win everything in my eyes but there's no denying there's something missing. Obama was doing crowds kind of like this in 2008. Bernie gets these all over the country and yeah not everybody is locked into this--I'm a republican--I'm a democrat thing. Not that I'm ever going to vote for a republican but that doesn't mean I'm going to vote for the democrat either. C'est la vie---and I don't care.

I believe in the politics of the possible. I don't like for instance being told that we can't have fully funded govt. health care. That it's impossible when every other western democracy has had that for a good 30-40-50 years. Here it's impossible because we've just implemented the very compromised ACA--when at least here it's in part because health insurance conglomerates make huge fucking political donations to politicians so they continue to rip us off. Other countries a college educations are subsidized. This country no--college students are victims instead of predatory lenders in league with those huge banking conglomerates that are too big to fail. Kids coming out of college or university with huge debt and dim prospects for the degrees they have.

Those young kids in Sanders camp. A political party interested in its future viability needs them. They represent the future and if a party can lock them up---that party will have a lot of sunshine in its future. Anyway it's almost as if Sanders has become for them a major major rock star.

>272 lriley:

No, I'm speaking truth to folks who just want to talk apparent popularity.

Everything I have posted is from the Sanders record. You can look it up just as I did when his candidacy appealed to me. Until I realized it was the appeal of an empty suit with a spiel designed to make the ears of his listeners glow with pleasure at words that reflected their emotions.

Famously, snake oil salesmen in the Old West were also known for their ability to draw crowds. But the product they hawked as the best and most effective elixir to cure whatever ailed you proved to be mostly alcoholic, and not always potable alcohol at that.

I wanted Sanders to have substance, but I couldn't make him have it. It's not enough to agree with ideas from a presidential candidate; one has to hold his feet to the fire about how he's going to turn idealism into reality. Sanders' feet melted.

His greatest asset is what you mistakenly accuse me of doing -- ranting. I have facts, Sanders has illusions. Whenever anyone disagrees with him, doesn't endorse him, it's an establishment conspiracy against him. When his campaign staff proves to be unethical, it's a conspiracy against him. When Planned Parenthood turns its back on his candidacy, it's an establishment conspiracy.

Most telling, when Clinton instructed her caucus goers to support O'Malley when it would block Sanders without endangering her, it's another corrupt establishment conspiracy. So says Sanders; so say his fans.

Only they're too ignorant of Realpolitik or too drunk on Kool0Aid to either know or remember that that is exactly the same strategy Obama employed in Iowa in '08 to secure the state and defeat Clinton. Strange silence. No condemnation of Obama, just Clinton.

Sanders' biggest demographic is younger white males. Their assault on Clinton supporters shows they more hate Hillary than know anything factual about the candidate they back.

Look up the complete dictionary definition of demagogue. You'll see Sanders' picture as the illustrative example.

Crazy.

>266 Limelite: Sanders did not 'badmouth' planned parenthood. I saw the interview. He was asked about Planned Parenthood supporting Clinton and he said without the least malice that PP was connected to the Democratic establishment and it was natural they would support Clinton. And that's exactly right. Planned Parenthood owes its survival to the Democratic establishment and is right to support the establishment candidate.

income inequality: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/want-to-reverse-sky-high-in...

> 275

I interpreted Sanders comment about Planned Parenthood being the "Establishment" as making the point that its leaders are in the pocket of HRC, as are the leaders in many if not most Democratic "establishment" organizations - but I am not considering the unions or Moveon.org as establishment. I think Sanders has indicated that he has reason to believe that the rank and file of many Democratic "establishment" organization support him to a similar if not greater degree as they do HRC. He has explained to media that such is what he meant and such was clear to me from the start. Obviously Sanders was not "attacking" Planned Parenthood as HRC says right out in some of her ads. I don't consider this to be disingenuousness on her part - I would instead label it lying - as in telling an untruth on purpose.

As to Limelite, I am familiar with his kind. No one, including Jesus Christ, Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, Mahatma Gandi, MLK, FDR, or any-fucking-body, including Jehovah himself, is up to Limelite's high personal standards. One assumes Limelite himself is up to his own personal standards but maybe not. Maybe he is totally consistent, i.e., no entity in the universe can ever be trusted to do the right thing. All are evil. All must be condemned. Utterly.

Mr. Limelite is a professional-level contrarian. He has nothing good to say about anything and is happy to criticize anyone or anything as long as his fingers still work and he thinks there is someone who is reading his dreck.

I for one will not comment on any of his posted "thoughts" in the future which he attempts to share with the world. I think I know precisely what the deal is. And it is not pretty.

#277--actually I think Mr. Limelite is a Ms.---though apologies if I'm mistaken.

As far as someone living up to her standards--I'm thinking Hillary might be the one. If I'm parsing through that last post correctly it would seem that Obama was somehow unfair to her in Iowa in 2008 and Sanders is doing the same in 2016. So.....anyway......

FWIW Warren would have been the best candidate the Dems could have put up this year. If Warren were running I doubt very much that Sanders would have run at all. Too much similarity in themes and issues. If I'm remembering correctly Sanders didn't announce he was running until after Warren announced she wasn't going to run. Warren would have gone just as aggressively after the big banks and Wall St. as Sanders has done. She would have been able to raise lots of money as Sanders has from small donors. Likely even more--and likely her campaign would be generating ever more excitement. IMO if she had run--Hillary's numbers would be looking like Ted Cruz's. This entire rigmarole would be all but over at this point.

Warren would be a great option as VP for Sanders as Sanders would be a great option as VP for Warren. Just an opinion.

>256 timspalding:: Lapses in judgement matter. Should we treat any lapse in judgment as fatal? Surely not. But they matter, and we shouldn't dismiss them or minimize them just because we approve of the officeholders politics.

I'm not sure how not wanting to spend weeks repeating one lapse of judgment is minimizing it. We got the news about the email server.

>257 lriley: Should Mike Gravel have been indicted? Should the FBI go ahead chasing down all the Congressional leaks to the Washington Post? Making this a precedent is dangerous to politicians of all stripes.

#280--They could release the content of the emails. It would be alright with me. I'm not a big fan of the CIA anyway. According to a former NSA agent some of that content mentions the true names of CIA agents working undercover overseas and also a number of their foreign agents. As well that she's shared some of it with unauthorized political pals of hers. And there's strong suspicion its already been hacked by other governments. A case being made that she's put lives in danger--so why not let everyone here see too?

True? Not true? Political enemies making a mountain out of a molehill? IMO--either is possible. Let's see.

What's more important to you prosfilaes? The safety of a few overseas operatives or the potential presidency of someone who may (or may not) have recklessly put their lives in danger? If it were up to me--I'd say let's find out whether it's all shit or whether it's not.

>281 lriley: The safety of a few overseas operatives or the potential presidency of someone who may (or may not) have recklessly put their lives in danger?

How exactly does releasing the content of the emails protect the safety of overseas operatives? If that's the primary concern, then nothing should be released.

We're talking about the odds on favorite to be the next POTUS are we not? How important is that position to foreign diplomacy and national security? The Clinton camp are claiming that these e-mails are more than less irrelevant. So to me if you believe she'd be a good POTUS then I would think anyway that releasing the content of this material that some of her critics are claiming would damage national security and that her camp more or less dismisses as of little importance would solve the whole problem of whether or not these critics of hers are right or just a bunch of corpse eating jackals.

I'm just wondering how you feel about that?--is all. Or would you rather have these kinds of insinuations following her around her entire time if she does become POTUS?

For those of you who would like to follow the Iowa caucuses live but are cable-deprived (as I am):

http://www.cbsnews.com/live/

Anyway Iowa---the big winner last night was Rubio. More than any other candidate of either party his % of the GOP vote was better than expected and even though he ultimately finished third--it puts him front and center as the Republican establishment candidate. When other candidates start dropping out he's the most likely to pick up their leavings. Cruz is the right winger--tea party/evangelical christian right. Trump--the unfocused and angry and Rubio--the Wall St. people, the party aparatchik people, the country club people and the moderates. There's only so far that Cruz can go with his message. I see Rubio gaining in strength from this. Trump--last night has got to be disappointed. It struck me that as media savvy as he is--he's not nearly as politically savvy when it comes to running a campaign. That his grass roots support system is not nearly as strong as it needs to be.

It's harder to decide with the Democrats who the winner is---ultimately Hlllary squeaked it out by the narrowest of margins so I'd give her a razor thin edge. On the one hand---Iowa because of its voter dynamics is the kind of state that Sanders cannot afford to lose if he is going to be around in November. There are states particularly in the south where Hillary has a distinct advantage over him. The states (like Iowa) that Sanders can win he needs to win. No doubt that he is going to raise a lot of money off of last night from his donors but IMO money is not something that is going to be a real problem for him. Winning is what he needs to do most. On the other hand this is not a statement win for Hillary. As the presumptive democratic POTUS candidate this November it's an underwhelming performance all in all. Not a clear victory by any stretch.

>285 lriley:

I think Sanders had to win Iowa to have any shot of winning. Without that, New Hampshire gets tougher, and after New Hampshire states get a lot harder for him. He had do well on early, favorable ground to move things later on.

As for Trump, God be praised he didn't win. And that Rubio did so well. Maybe there'll be a sane option in the race after all.

Rubio only seems sane by comparison. In terms of actual policy positions, he's not much different from Cruz.

>287 StormRaven:

I'll take sane.

#286--Sanders should easily win New Hampshire and by a large margin. South Carolina he's expected to lose big. If he can narrow the gap and make it at least competitive that's good for him. He has a path still--it just got a little bit harder. It's really early--no need to overreact over this. For Clinton it was a win but not really a good win. That was hardly convincing. She's vulnerable.

After last night Rubio looks to me to be the guy that the establishment will get behind. When guys like Bush, Christie, Kasich for instance drop out of the race--Rubio will be the one to pick up the pieces. Trump is very very much media savvy--campaign smart maybe not so much. He can cut corners with a checkbook but winning primaries you need lots and lots of people on the ground to help you get there. I'm thinking that was an issue last night. Cruz has burned a lot of bridges in his own party. He's got the tea party/evangelical christians and no one else.

#287--from the bits and pieces I've heard from Rubio I'd agree with you.

Florida is almost always a swing state and if I'm not mistaken Obama has won it both times. That also plays in Rubio's favor--being a Senator and being Cuban--though if he unnormalizes what Barack has normalized in respect to Cuba he could kind of fuck himself over.

But everyone knew that the establishment wannabe's wouldn't do well in Iowa and that their plan was to dominate the establishment lane in New Hampshire. So, I don't think you're going to see any of them dropping out before NH.

Regarding Sanders, I guess that his virtual tie with Clinton will serve to bring him more voters. It is not the loss that 285, 286 seem to think.

#291--Sanders can call it tie. It's about as close to a dead heat as you can get. They apparently split the delegates and Hilary only won 4 more and she won 2-0 on coin flips. Sanders I'm sure will raise a ton more of money from his 3 million + small donors. They can keep giving to him until the cows come home. I don't think money is going be an issue at all for him in this campaign.

It's perception. To me if you get even one more voter you can claim victory. I don't like Hillary at all--I like Bernard--even so. It's just the way I analyzed it--so it's subjective--nobody has to own it except me. Most primaries whoever gets the vote counts gets all the delegates. Neither Clinton or Sanders got what they wanted here.

>291 RickHarsch: I agree. Remember that in the last poll before the caucuses Hillary was up 5 points and the conventional wisdom was that with he superior organization that she would win by more than that. And organization counts for relatively more in primaries than caucuses so it may be less of a factor in the future.

Can we just take a moment to pause? Trump lost.

A beer for all!

#294--it might have been more interesting if he'd won. It certainly would have made my mother happy.

I'm still rooting for Trump as he'd guarantee a Democratic victory.

#296--it's at least somewhat amusing to me the dilemma that some of the less vociferous GOP'ers feared was coming their way. Now they have someone to hope for--they can stick posters on their walls and put signs on their front lawns and talk politics with their neighbors again.

I'm thinking though that if it's Rubio that there may be a lot of really disappointed Trump fans in November and when I say really disappointed--I mean REALLY DISAPPOINTED--FUCK this world--this universe disappointed. There might be a good number of disappointed Ted Cruz people. And when you've gotten a taste for those two clowns Marco Rubio is going to taste blander than oatmeal.

>285 lriley: ff.

Personally, I was very impressed with Sanders' performance in Iowa. To paraphrase the man himself*, he went toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful and well-recognized political machines in America and ended the contest in what was basically a stalemate. Not bad for starters.

>294 timspalding:

Hear, hear! High point of my evening. :)

* http://www.vox.com/2016/2/2/10892752/bernie-sanders-iowa-speech

Trump's candidacy is just the most naked grab for power by a billionaire (in the United States) yet. Now we have Michael Bloomberg thinking about it too. So there you go. Message to everybody---money buys power. Anyway I'll say it again there should be limits to personal wealth. There's no real reason in the world why any person should be a billionaire--should have that kind of wealth. It's obscene.

Trump at least though is more honest about it than the Koch brothers or the people running Goldman Sach's who want to control the levers of powers through bought and paid for surrogates they help to elect whilst hiding in the shadows. Trump at least parades himself before the people asking them to accept him as their leader. It's like the ultimate episode of his apprentice program.

Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York—the largest city in the US—and then twice re-elected by large margins.

Trump has never held any office, let alone been elected to one.

#300---good for him.

So anyway Bloomberg won three terms as mayor of NYC. So how qualified to be mayor of NYC was he when he decided to run for that the first time?

Anyway you fail to mention how Bloomberg leveraged the NYC city council into extending the term limits law just for him--so he could run for and win a third term. Perhaps if Trump prevails he can buy off some influential people and run for a third term too.

I said in a previous thread that the pro-Sanders vote is more of an anti-Clinton vote, a sign of voter's disgust with Mrs. Clinton, a disgust so vast that some voters would back even a nutcase like Bernie Sanders.

So how qualified to be mayor of NYC was he when he decided to run for that the first time?

Being mayor of New York is not the US. It's a jump from nothing, but it's not going from nothing to believing one should be president. As for his experience, he had run a large, complex corporation and done incredibly well. While government experience is also great, he has real experience doing what a mayor does, and more in some ways than a state senator might.

Trump has nothing like that. He didn't run a large, complex and growing company. He mostly speculated in property. And, indeed, if judged against his starting point, he never even made any money.

>303 timspalding:

I don't know. I think the many young people voting for Sanders are actually enthused about him. He's channeling Obama here.

I comment on Bloomberg in a different thread.

The globe tilts as humanity lurches to a different thread.

>302 barney67: The negative opinions about Ms Clinton that have been expressed for the last twenty-five years are largely the projection of feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, don't you think?

#303--Running a corporation is not the same as running a government. It's not a qualification at all. If Bloomberg were to become POTUS the population aren't going to become his employees. If any of Bloomberg,Trump and Fiorina thinks being business people gives them some special qualification they suffer from the same delusion.

>299 lriley: "There's no real reason in the world why any person should be a billionaire--should have that kind of wealth. It's obscene."

I think that's setting the bar way too high. Anyone who has more wealth than I do ought to have it confiscated.

> 306

I'm under the impression that "theoria" has me blocked and I'm super down with that.

But perhaps someone else here, without referring to me, might want to share the videos listed below with her, in the interest of spreading knowledge and destroying ignorance - just as a general good practice. "theoria" doesn't seem to appreciate that many people hate Hillary Clinton for extremely good reasons - and not because of some sort of Freudian hatred of the vagina or whatever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWrlZ_WbjF8

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbnKGopT0Uc

Does Juanita Broaddrick strike anyone here as being a liar? How about the two other women who have told similar stories about rapist Bill Clinton? This is not about philandering. This is about rape. Apparently HRC knew that Bill raped J. Broaddrick and confronted her in a public place and attempted to intimidate Broaddrick into keeping her mouth shut.

HRC is a filthy animal, ethically-speaking, being something like a 21st century Ma Barker or member of the de Borgia family. This kind of stuff is not happy fun time. It is sick shit. If people don't know it then they fucking need to know it. We're in the process of elected a President of the most powerful country on earth, not the Capo de Capos on the fucking island of Sicily.

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KZ8ICvutc0

Hillary Clinton is a proven public liar. She goes on television and lies to millions of people at once. When caught she then tries to mealy-mouth her way out of admitting the truth - that she is a god damn liar - but THAT lie just never cuts it. A god damn liar is forever and a day a god damn liar. Unless that person has a come to Jesus experience. Does HRC claim that? Because I haven't heard of such.

I'm not sure there is evidence that Bernie Sanders has ever lied like a dog in the media. Maybe he has - does anyone know? Right now I am going to guess No.

306 -- Whose insecurity and inadequacy? Voters have elected other female politicans. Now even the Democrats have grown weary of defending a woman who is not only corrupt but who has too much blood on her hands. Hence the candidacy of Sanders, the socialist governor of Vermont, a state so small it can probably afford to be socialist.

>310 barney67: That's certainly why I joined the Sanders campaign--have I forgotten to thank you?

>310 barney67: I said nothing about Ms Clinton's gender.

Something I wrote before the 2008 primary campaign remains true (at least to me):

If she were to win the Democratic Party nomination, I wonder how the Right will "swiftboat" Hillary? Not that it would necessarily succeed: the Right has thrown everything at her over the last 16 years, but she's still around. Her very existence seems to agitate a subset of American conservatives like nothing else. Maybe they'll pull quotes from a samizdat copy of her B.A. thesis at Wellesley (or maybe they'll just make them up), which will prove who the "real Hillary" really, really, really is. Ironically, what is actually revealed in the Right's Hillary obsession is the unconscious of this group of conservatives: their recurrent fears, deepest anxieties, and secret pleasures.

I really don't like this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-johnson/on-eve-of-caucuses-clinto_b_9117712.h...

To me this is another example of how and why her so-called progressivism lacks any real credibility. She don't give a rat's ass where she gets her money from. These fracking companies put profit before safety, health and environment. Natural gas drillers and the republican party have been holding hands forever and here she is--she wants some too.

Are people watching the debate?

> 313

HRC's sellout to the credit card companies predates all that and is just as nasty a situation - see the youtube of Bill Moyers interviewing Elizabeth Warren.

And will somebody tell "theoria" to S.T.F.U. about the evil right-wingers out to get poor Hillary - it is the left that has the actual goods on Hillary. They don't have to make up or misrepresent anything. Hillary's putrid records of lies stacked on lies speaks quite eloquently by itself. Blaming all of HRC's various problems on right-wingers is getting REAL old and ridiculous.

#315--she's certainly not mending her ways. On the issue of hydrofracking which is banned in only two of our 50 states--New York and as it happens Bernie's state of Vermont. Living in what's called the Southern Tier of NYS I know these gas companies wanted in here really really bad. They got stopped because of the huge numbers of people here who thought clean water was a better idea than a bit of extra money in their bank accounts. She would have been our Senator around that time when reps from the oil and drilling companies were running all over the place here promising the moon and the stars to anyone who would give them the time of day. I've listened to enough horror stories from people in Pennsylvania about what's going on in that state. Health hazards galore and many more coming in their future. These companies and their reps are about as low as it gets. They will say any fucking thing to persuade people---they will lowball and cheat people and prey on the elderly. The kind of people who if they pull up into your driveway you get the shotgun out. If they fuck up your water supply and you try to sue them they'll do their best to retain your lawyer and if not they have shitloads of fancy law firms that will make sure your lawsuit goes nowhere.

It's unconscionable that any politician that truly cared about the people they represent would take money from these fucks--which is pretty much why the republicans have been all over it for so long.

It is so not about Right and/or Left. Not about progressive or conservative. It is about fear and money. Those with money instill fear into those who allow themselves to be scared. We would not be dealing with gun control issues if this were not the case. American's would change a healthcare system that has become a cut throat business at the cost of all of our citizens who can possibly pay up. Our infrastructure would be fixed and we would be seeing progress rather than a continuous decline.

But, these are social issues and much like the great communism scare during the 50's, when my neighbors were building bomb shelters and pointing fingers at each other (rather be dead than Red), socialism has become a nasty word, let alone an idea, an idea that may be of benefit to the majority.

Does ANYONE really believe that Bernie Sanders will get anything done in our f78c*d up Congress. Really ? Are the Koch brother's going somewhere else ? Is the gun lobby going to disappear.....are the big PHARMA businesses going to stop making sick people bend over so as to afford their drugs ? Most importantly.....are American's ever going to be over what ever it is that refuses to allow them to see that a country is only as strong as it's majority ? American's like to see them selves as the "brave" and the "free". Sorry....we are neither...slapping a bumper sticker on your car with a picture of a machine gun and the words "We don't call 911" may SEEM like a freedom....until YOU yourself need 911. You may fool yourself into thinking you look all kinds of brave but really ? You look like an asshole. Too many of those around these days.

If you need a weapon to be brave.....you are not.
If you need money to be "someone".......you are no one.
If you need to discredit others to make your accomplishments look good...you haven't accomplished a damn thing.
If you are living to acquire....you will never have enough.

Hillary Clinton is no better or worse than any other hypocritical person out there. Look into Bernie's past...he had his moments. We all do, the difference between people is that some try to hold others to standards they either can not or will not hold themselves to. I do not believe that Mr. Sanders is quite as guilty as the rest on this.

In all reality. I don't think anyone can govern this country. We are all "Free" to do as we please. We are born with this enablable right. This only works in theory ...... a moral compass is an imperative.....because the idea that everyone should be free to do whatever, say whatever....act however, is not feasible. Just isn't. In no way shape or form. It may have worked on the Great Plains, where the closest neighbor was 20 or 30 miles away but this is the year 2016 and we are all interconnected. No matter how much we wish it wasn't so.

#317--is there anyone who believes that the republican party is going to work with Hillary?---any more than it has worked with Barack or that it will work with Bernie? This idea that Hillary is the only democrat that can get things done---what is it really based on? IMO--it's not based on any kind of past reality or realistic future expectation. The republicans are not going to work with any democrat and if anything the republicans despise Hillary Clinton even more than they do Barack Obama and/or Bernie Sanders. This notion trumpeted out by Hillary and parroted by her campaign that she'll get things done and others won't is bullshit.

An interesting article:

http://www.theweek.com/articles/602653/how-class-could-eventually-remake-democra...

Anyway Barack has tried to work with the republicans all along. Just a waste of time and energy. Mitch McConnell pretty much told his whole party from the get go to sabotage anything Obama had in mind. The democrats need to get over this pretense that they can work seriously with the other side--they need to take what they can and no point to thank you's to the other side. It stopped being a we can work together thing a long time ago. Republicans are talking about taking away Hillary's national security clearance privileges right now. Not that she probably doesn't deserve it but that's hardly a friendly gesture. There's a message in that and you'd have to be a moron not to see it--they're not going to work with her--they're going to work against her. The idea that if she becomes president congress is going to turn into some happy family takes fantasy into unchartered territory. Not going to happen.

If she becomes the democratic nominee--the Republican nominee and that entire party is going to go full bore on her. People think Sanders has been taking shots at her. He's been very restrained. This national security thing faux pas of hers is going to get pushed to the limit amongst other things. The Swift Boat thing that Kerry had to deal with had a lot less substantial to work with than just this one little email scandal.

My point was this : Nobody is going to work with anyone. Everyone has the right to be right. All are correct in their way of thinking and thus, nobody has to compromise. Compromise is weak......American's are strong.

We have become ungovernable. We can not protect grade school age children from bullets. We can not afford healthcare if we don't make enough money. Keeping families above poverty level is becoming harder and harder. We are unable to do the simplest most common sense things. The puppeteers at the top are getting richer and we are pointing at each other like monkey's at the zoo.....no visible fence really....just the fence of certainty, certainty that what we individually feel and think must be the right way to handle things and be damned if I am going to give up anything so as to change a thing. This attitude was the ruination of the Republican party and yet....on it goes. Politicians /lobbists/corporate gurus/Wall Street feed us our own certainties, declare us owners of "rights" and then quietly slip off to join the puppeteers.

Jeez - I too love pessimism and cynicism and all that we-are-doomed-let's-just-lie-down-and-die shit. Up to a point. Then the repetition begins to bore me, frankly, and I start looking around for some shiny object to inspect.

Somebody is going to be elected President. Regardless of the uselessness of it all I think most here can agree, as we hope the majority of voters in November will agree, that that person should be a Democrat, for at least two very good reasons: 1. It is hard to see how the Democrats can take back the Senate in an election wherein the republican candidate for President wins. And we really need a Democratic-majority Senate and 2. SCOTUS nominees - do I need to explain that? Only to people who are dumbasses, right?

Either Bernie or Hillary will win the nomination, and then we can go from there. I for one am bored as hell with both Clintons. They are like the Bushes. They have overstayed their welcome.

To compare Bernie to the Clintons as just some other politician who will lie if need be and so forth - that is a filthy insult to Bernie analogous to accusing him of multiple rapes and accusing his wife of covering up his rapes using strong arm tactics. Sorry - that would be a load of fucking shit.

Plus, I am sure Bernie has made mistakes in his professional life, but I have no knowledge of him being dishonest or lying. Can anyone give me a good example of that - proving that Bernie is "just another lying politician"?

Lastly, my analysis of past Presidential races have been far from perfect. E.g., early on in each race I picked Kerry to beat Bush in 2004, Hillary to beat Obama in 2008, and then McCain to beat Obama in 2008. So, my stock is low regarding selling myself to anyone as an accomplished political pundit.

However, I will question the common wisdom that Hillary is the most electable candidate for the Democrats. She more baggage than the King of Brunei on an extended vacation. And she has trouble hiding her inherent meanness and narcissism from the discerning eye. Plus there is that ongoing trust factor. Plus I suspect a very large per cent of the fanatical Bernie supporters have taken the time, as I certainly have, to look back on Hillary's career. A deep analysis of same should make a normal person feel very VERY queasy about tapping the square next to her name on any voting precinct computer screen.

Something like two and a half million republicans who voted in 2008 did not vote in 2012. Various reasons have been proffered as explanation but surely it was mainly because they really did not like their party's nominee. I think Hillary would have the same problem in 2016. Maybe the same thing would occur if Bernie were the nominee but I doubt it.

I still believe that either Hillary or Bernie would win, and handily, but I look back at my prediction record and it does give me some concern.

Recurrent fears? Deepest anxieties? Secret pleasures?

informational:

http://www.yahoo.com/politics/hillarys-financial-armada-233033648.html

> 324

It is the truth. And the truth sucks ass.

#325--some spelling/grammatical errors here and there in it. Not that that matters a lot. It was thrown together pretty quickly I think after the debate a couple nights ago.

Anyway I noted in the Evan Bayh profile that Clinton scored $225K for a speech at the behest of Apollo Management and in the Nides profile another $225K for a speech for Wall St. giant Morgan Stanley---so that when questioned by Anderson Cooper about her $675K in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and when Hillary tells him 'that's what they offered' it appears she's being a bit disingenuous--it's more that's her standardized fee.

Anyway it's not hard to figure why Clinton is no longer the universal health care person she once was. What Sanders is proposing with his plan would cost control the big pharmaceutical companies--and virtually put blue cross/blue shield and other health insurance companies out of business altogether. These entities like the big banks (Goldman Sachs--Morgan Stanley) that Sanders would bust up have and still are sources of cash that keep the Clinton political machine very well funded.

When Clinton responded in last nights debate to a question about her taking all that money she said something to the effect that the money didn't influence her and no one can point to an instance where it did.

Sander's response should have been, "that's what they all say." That whether the money you took influenced you is impossible to know, but just the you and most of the rest of the political took it at all is at the root of the problem in politics in this country.

> 327

That is the downside to universal or single payer (gov'mint) health insurance - if and when it could be instituted. And the downside effect gets larger the more its implementation is delayed.

Tens of thousands of private insurance company employees, top to bottom, not to mention whole divisions of pharmaceutical companies, e.g., lobbyists, salesmen, advertising, etc., would be out on the streets because their jobs would no longer exist.

All those assholes would have to be retrained to have useful skills - otherwise the unemployment compensation system would be overloaded for quite a while, not to mention the foods stamps program, etc.

Back in the early nineties Hillary was sure-fire for universal health care when Bill put her in charge of making it happen. She did not have the proper leadership skills and only just pissed people off, mainly, and got nowhere in a giant hurry. Or so the history of that sorry situation seems to read.

I personally have become utterly disgusted with both Clintons from all that has been revealed about them in the last six months. Memory is short for everyone, including me, regards politics, but this same stuff was known about them back in 2008, and even before that.

People - and by people I mainly mean Democratic voters - are slowly but surely coming around to understanding that Hillary is more arrogant and sleazy than she is progressive and liberal. She seems to think the following bill of goods can be sold to the majority of voters:

1. Entity A receives over a hundred million dollars from entity B - over a period of decades, mainly in drips and drabs of $250,000 to $500,000 for 45 minutes speeches.

2. Entity A now swears that all that money has no effect on its ability to avoid a quid pro quo situation. In fact, entity A now says it is against the influence of Entity B and thinks they have too much power and money and that something should be done about it.

3. Entity A's attitude toward its benefactors has really been expressed forcefully ONLY by Entity A in the last year or so, obviously in response to be found out, due to Entity C outing Entity A as a money-grubbing money-grubber who grubs money, and thus cannot be trusted not to favor Entity B over Entity D.

4. Entity A actually thinks, apparently, that it can just wave it's hands, say "This is not the droid that you are looking for.", and then can get Entity D to vote for it when Entity A owes Entity D a big fat NOTHNG and owns Entity B a VERY GREAT DEAL.

5. Why would Entity D vote for Entity A unless Entity D is a bunch of stupid ignorant moronic FOOLS?

6. Entity A is apparently banking on Entity D being exactly that - a bunch of stupid ignorant moronic FOOLS.

(Entity A = HRC, entity B = giant moneyed corporations, entity C = Bernie, entity D = the middle class)

>329 JGL53:

Why would Entity D vote for Entity A unless Entity D is a bunch of stupid ignorant moronic FOOLS?

Because Entity D has a choice between voting for Entity A and Entity E (Ted Cruz) or Entity A and Entity F (Donald Trump)? :D

> 330

I am talking about the present situation - early February 2016. In November if the choice is only Entity A vs. Entity E or F then the only non-moronic vote at that time would be for Entity A. The situation is generally referred to as the choice of the lesser of evils. We are not facing that dilemma yet and let us hope we won't have to do so.

IOW, nowhere did I indicate in my post #329 that any Entity labeled "republican" would be preferable to Entity A, given only that choice.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, shall we?

more informational:

http://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/goldman-sachs-helped-hillary-clinton-get-rich-...

The talking heads on the video part of the link here are a little bit out to lunch IMO. Well they probably are super well enumerated for the shit they do. 'Who wouldn't take all that money?'--one of them says. Let me just say if it was someone from the coal lobby or a pharmaceutical or health insurance firm giving that kind of money to one of the current republican wannabes for POTUS none of all our Hillary supporters here would think that those politicians were in the pockets of those respective lobbies? Of course they would but I guess that's different. If Charles and h'is brother David--our favorite two Midwestern billionaires through some lobbying group they more or less own were to give Marco Rubio like $10 million dollars tomorrow and Marco Rubio could then say---'they're just pals of mine and if I don't agree with them on something that's okay it won't change my mind an iota'--would any of our Hillary fans believe him? I don't think so but...So it appears to me that there are standards and then there are some double standards.

Anyway if you scroll down the above story it's plain to see that Mrs. Clinton's answer to Anderson Cooper was a bit disingenuous as I suggested yesterday. It's not something that Goldman Sachs offered so much as her standard fee for such. There's a whole list of other speeches and fees as can be seen.

Just one other thing. These Wall St. banks she gives speeches to are the very same that helped to tank the economy in 2008. The very same that got bailed out and are even bigger now than they were then. They continue to lobby for deregulation. They continue to play their real estate games. They've been active creating a whole another problem with their predatory lending to prospective college students which is having a harmful effect on our society turning millions of young people into debtors many of whom have bleak future outlooks as far as job prospects and won't be able to pay their debt off. How all that plays out in the future if it continues remains to be seen but it's not going to be good---you can bet on that.

An analogous situation arose in 2008. Republicans questioned Mr Obama's "character" by raising his "association" with Bill Ayers ("paling around with terrorists") and his membership in the church of the firebrand Reverend Wright. In the end, the strategy of character assassination failed. In the present circumstances, Mr Sanders would do better to stick to substance (differences in policy).

>322 JGL53: &
>325 JGL53:

My point exactly. Find your shiny object......enjoy. The rest of us are trying to deal with the truth....sucks ass !

>329 JGL53:
"Back in the early nineties Hillary was sure-fire for universal health care when Bill put her in charge of making it happen. She did not have the proper leadership skills and only just pissed people off, mainly, and got nowhere in a giant hurry. Or so the history of that sorry situation seems to read."

I beg to differ........The fact that Hillary didn't get anywhere with a universal health care plan remains intact today and it has little to do with Hillary, Obama or any other Democrat in office. Two things keep America from instituting a system that is more cost efficient and generally better for all concerned.....Greed and Fear.

>331 JGL53:

Fair enough. :)

> 334

That's it? That is your best contribution to the discussion? I suggest you try and stick to the substantive argument - if that is possible. Ad hominem and "light-hearted" word play are obviously not your forte.

> 335

Non sequiturs at worse - besides the point, or avoidance of the subject, at best.

The history shows Hillary just tried to control everything - her modus operandi it seems - and got nowhere because most everyone involved got shut out of the decision-making process, even dismissed as lesser in intelligence and knowledge than the great Hillary. That is the history. It was a failure of leadership based in her personal psychological problems relating to narcissistic personality disorder.

Character counts. Leadership skills count. Empathy with other human beings must be present or something bad will come our way.

Scare quotes? Why? It isn't character assasination for the press to question the friendship between a presidential candidate and guys like Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. It would be irreponsible not to. From Wikpedia:

Bill Ayers:
"American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the counterculture movement who opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s radical activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group with the intent to overthrow imperialism, t hat conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.3 During the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with candidate Barack Obama. He is married to Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather Underground."

Jeremiah Wright:
"The Jeremiah Wright controversy gained national attention in the United States in March 2008 when ABC News, after reviewing dozens of U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright's sermons,1 excerpted parts which were subject to intense media scrutiny.23 Wright is a retired senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and former pastor of President Obama.4 Obama denounced the statements in question, but critics continued to press the issue of his relationship with Wright. In response to this, he gave a speech titled "A More Perfect Union", in which he sought to place Wright's comments in a historical and sociological context. In the speech, Obama again denounced Wright's remarks, but did not disown him as a person. The controversy began to fade, but was renewed in late April when Wright made a series of media appearances, including an interview on Bill Moyers Journal, a speech at the NAACP, and a speech at the National Press Club.5 After the last of these, Obama spoke more forcefully against his former pastor, saying that he was "outraged" and "saddened" by his behavior, and in May he resigned his membership in the church."

>338 barney67: "It isn't character assasination for the press to question the friendship between a presidential candidate and guys like Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright."

McCain associated Obama with Bill Ayers. Obama associated McCain with G. W. Bush. It turned out that the latter association was the more damaging one.

My point is that such an assault on character (also known as the "politics of personal destruction") is not automatically to the advantage of the one making the assault. The Republicans have made the character assassination of their own kind an art form.

Regarding the Democrats: it is worth noting that the demand for ideological purity is why the Republicans are a risible circus today. Mr Sanders should be wary of taking the Democratic Party (of which he’s never been a member) down this road to political perdition. It will only end in tears.

#339---ultimately not all that many people cared about Bill Ayers and really Ayers had minimal impact on American history in the 20th century.

Bush got us into a war that should never have happened. The preemptive attack on Iraq IMO was a criminal act and IMO he and Cheney and at least several more of that administration should be sitting behind bars in a federal penitentiary. That criminal act haunts us to this very day--and it led directly to the creation of ISIS. ISIS has many officers from Saddam's disbanded Iraqi Army in positions of power. It's a main reason why they were able to roll over a lot of their opposition at the start---take cities and gain territory.

So being associated with a (former) radical like Ayers was and is a lot less worse than being associated with Bush.

"McCain associated Obama with Bill Ayers"
Obama associated with Bill Ayers. He had to answer for that. It's a legitimate question to say the least. An important one. Calling it character assination is foolishness If you weren't so partisan you'd see that. It wasn't Republicans who brought up these subjects. Read Wikipedia again. ABC news, among others, was looking up the facts.

"Obama associated McCain with G. W. Bush. It turned out that the latter association was the more damaging one. "
-- That's your opinion. I happen to think it was Sarah Palin who sank the nomination.

Obama turned out to be a liar because he repeated Bush's foreign policy to some degree. Being president turns out to be very different than running for president.

#341--Obama was very disappointing in some respects to me. IMO we needed some separation from both the Afghan and Iraq wars. Candidate Obama implied that both were going to end and to a degree the Iraq thing did but..........anyway these wars are our longest running ever. They have not only led to much much needless loss of life and innumerable lifelong injuries but the economic costs have hurt our economy a lot as well.

The United States has over 900 overseas military bases. The Russians--the Chinese don't have anything like that. Who are we protecting? and from what? The United States is the most belligerent and warlike nation on the planet and it's costing us trillions and trillions of dollars. To me it's a what the fuck? thing. Of our two parties the Republicans are quite a bit more bloodthirsty. It's time to stop all this nonsense---to be happy to be a nation like other nations and start to emphasize the actual people that live inside our borders and try to accentuate their lives as well as stop worrying about whether we're a superpower or not.

Remember the days when you had to people to go back and review their sources, like books, journal articles, quality periodicals and newspapers? Now we have to go back to wikipedia.

In other news, I would love to spend an evening drinking with Bill Ayers.

> 342

Agree with all. And that is why I would like to see Sanders elected as the next President. I'd like to see how much the system corrupts him. Will he turn out to be another Obama? I am thinking probably not. I am thinking he would be better. And if President Sanders just gets beaten down and maybe even croaks from all the pressure, then Vice President Warren will take over.

With all the system against him - all the forces of evil on all sides - and I don't think I have to give the list everyone here already knows - his main tactic as President would be the bully pulpit. He would be in the spotlight - you know, the most powerful political office in the entire world? - and would attempt to rally millions of people to become involved. Would they? I for one would like to see what would happen.

If millions of Americans actually were to engage in all legal and non-violent means to push "the progressive agenda" - with a real leader to lead them - I'm thinking something good may happen.

People love the "Give Peace a Chance" thing. Let's just give progressive politics a chance - in America - and the only way left to us right now is a Sanders' Presidency. This could be our last chance - otherwise we will all go back to being complacent and/or just complaining now and then - or in the case of some of us, complaining all the time.

Here's a movie recommendation: Rollerball (the original starring James Caan). I think something like this movie may be our future unless people start giving a shit - right now, in the year 2016. I don't know how many times we can all come back from the brink. Always electing people President who are for sale - that just sucks ass. Let's stop it NOW.

Agreed!

Superpac contriubtions.

I'm much more interested in someone who focuses more on domestic and economic rather than foreign policy. Foreign policy sometimes is just a tool or a way that some politicians--particularly from the GOP can shift focus away from how they've mishandled things on the home front. GWB is a great example of someone absolutely clueless about the needs of his own people and fooling the bulk of his own base into thinking he's accomplishing shit overseas making our country stronger and what he actually accomplished was to create a much more dangerous world.

Foreign policy cred is overrated. The Chinese put a lot more of their mental energy into building their economy.

Yea, it's pretty hard to ignore that the entire American housing collapse happened under GWB's watch while he was so eagerly pursuing an unmanageable, unsustainable two-headed war in the Middle East.

It is a little ironic though that these candidates (and especially those from the GOP side) focus so much on fighting foreign wars to protect Americans when they can't even properly handle the domestic aspects of the Americans they claim so desperately need protection.

>340 lriley: "ultimately not all that many people cared about Bill Ayers and really Ayers had minimal impact on American history in the 20th century."

Ayers and the Weathermen/Weather Underground have had a profound impact on the political imagination of subsequent armed insurrectionists in the US context. Based on the belief that the normal means of politics (elections, petitions, protests) were fruitless in the face of an apparently unstoppable moral disaster (in 1969, the Vietnam War), the WU turned to direct action. The same pattern of thought that justified the use of violence appears a few decades later in the militia movement that inspired Tim McVeigh, in Operation Rescue's clinic bombings and assassination lists, and, currently, in Cliven Bundy's banditry.

>344 JGL53:

Here's a movie recommendation: Rollerball (the original starring James Caan).

Which, interestingly, takes place in the year 2018:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film)#Premise

Here's another one: Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop (1987). As the shit hits the fan in Michigan once again, it's hard not to reflect upon how alarmingly prescient that film was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboCop
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/25/business/robocop-neumeier-detroit-bankruptcy/i...

I think Bush came across as measured and knowledgeable in last night's Republican debate. Kasich, too, though he stumbled over his words in the short amount of time allowed him. His lack of edge made me wonder if he's now running for VP.

Bush and Kasich (and Christie) are fighting for the same voters (Rubio's), who are a minority share of the Republican electorate so far. If the pitchfork vote coalesces around a single candidate (Trump or Cruz), it's all over.

Bush: knowledgeable, measured

Carson: transparent attention-grab during entrance

Christie: obvious court experience. great at snow removal? (I can't forget Bridgegate.)

Cruz: smart, articulate, smooth, "will say/do anything", beginning to dial back? (Famous for govt shutdown, no way can lead executive.)

Kasich: competent, mis-spoke, though that's lesser crime than others committed last night

Rubio: shaken by Christie attacks, reduced to repetition re Obama.

Trump: not only would bring back waterboarding, but far worse?? nice that he wouldn't allow people to die in streets...

I went to bed ~ 2nd intermission...

(Per Arthur, I'll also post this to Part Two.)

Carson: transparent attention-grab during entrance

I dislike Carson intensely, but three of them missed their cues—they couldn't hear them back there.

I see where Hillary got 39.1 per cent of the vote in the 2008 N. Hampshire primary and won.
Now in 2016 she got 39.1 percent of the N. Hampshire primary vote and lost.

Is there some sort of message from god in that?

Tim?

>354 JGL53:

The message is from God's right-hand man, John Edwards. In other words, 39.1% is better when you're in a three-person race.

> 355

I can't argue with your unaided human logic, Tim - but only up to a point.

The question remains - whether it was one - or two opponents - the appeal of Hillary, nevertheless, seems stuck on one number - 39.1 percent.

Whatever happened to christian numerology? Isn't four still the perfect number - and 12 even more perfect as its multiple? Aren't 3 and 7 still divine numbers (trinity and days of creation), while 6 is the traditional number of man and 666 the number of the Antichrist?

Many fundamentalist preachers make a good living on this stuff. I myself would have never realized that the numerical value of Henry Kissinger's name was 666 without their help.

If nothing adds up, and it is all just random (numbers) then whence god? There is X number (a REALLY big number) of particles/entities/relationships in the Universe but there is no combination or ratio of any of them that point to the presence of a divine realm, i.e., some supernature above or transcendent to nature/the mundane?

If not then that leaves us nothing but Tebowing. That is just humiliating and totally no fun.