In your honest opinion, who do you think has the best chance of becoming POTUS?

[ReijiTabibito]

Part of me hopes that Bernie continues his strategy of espousing his policies and forcefully dragging Clinton in with them.  A couple of analysis videos I watched that have broken down speeches Bernie has given on Clinton's behalf have basically noted that he's setting the party - the videos said Hillary, but I would argue that it's the party, not the candidate - for political 'betrayal.'  That is, with the support they're gaining from Bernie's populist movement, they're in danger of losing that support if they don't stand up for the policies that Bernie believes in, that his people (which should really just be the people) believe in.

So either the Democrats keep their promises about enacting policies like his - which they won't, they're just as bought, it just happens that not all Democrats are bought by corporate interests, because it will mean the end of the gravy train for corrupt Congressmen - or Bernie's movement gains momentum to break from the party.

I think a certain line about dying a hero or becoming a villain would be appropriate here.

[CuriousEyes]

I think a certain line about dying a hero or becoming a villain would be appropriate here.

Funny you should paraphrase a Batman quote Reiji. One in particular has been coming to mind the last few days when I read your comments.



/jokingnotjoking?

I hope last night helped towards unity. However a voter gets there, if you're a Sanders supporter on issues, your viable path forward is Clinton. If the man himself has the pragmatism to accept that, its hard to understand a throaty defense otherwise.

I mean, you'd think the whole thing would be clear already with the Supreme Court. There's already 1 vacancy. Three other justices are 77 or older. Specifically 2 of the 3 are reliably liberal and the 3rd is at least a swing vote.

The next President has seriously strong odds of nominating 44% of the Supreme Court. And we should expect that Court to be relatively stable for the next 20 years after they're set.

Here is an article about a Donald Trump shortlist of Justice candidates. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees.html

Pretty much the entire list is a copy/paste he was handed by conservative think tanks. And set the Republican Party's head askew in a Homer Simpson mouth drool.

You care about money influencing elections? What are these people going to do about Citizens United as Supreme Court justices? Voter protections? Second Amendment issues? Abortion rights? LGBT protections?

[Beguile's Mistress]

The one thing you need to keep in mind is that no matter how hard Sanders sells his personal agenda and how much work Hillary does to get his ideas across the Republican party is going to do all they can to stop everything.  Voters who believe in the Sanders point of view need to get Democrats or sympathetic non-Democrats elected to any seats coming up for election.  The Republicans are trying to hold the Supreme Court hostage in order to pressure the Oval Office to give it up.  They have consistently gone against any bill proposed by the Democrats and wasted time and money doing it, thereby cheating the citizens of their taxes and rights.

Sanders is going to go after his pound of flesh.  It's what he does and who he is.  But in the end he's smart enough and pragmatic enough to know that if he doesn't swing all of his energy and support behind Clinton there is an extremely good chance we'll end up with TrumPence.  Famous quote time:  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

[Cassandra LeMay]

...yes.  Because stacking SCOTUS with a bunch of Republican-nominated justices is bad, but stacking it with Democrat-nominated justices is good!  Never mind the fact that some of the most progressive SCOTUS justices in history were nominated by Republicans...

It's not "good" per se. But I think on many social issues the Democrat-nominated judges more closely reflect the majority opinion of the American people. If that makes them "better" than their Republican-nominated counterparts is something everyone will have to decide for themselves, but it may be worth thinking about.

[TheGlyphstone]

538's coverage of the DNC is interesting as always. Hopefully the Democrats haven't frontloaded all their best speaking talent into Monday's speeches.

[ReijiTabibito]

The one thing you need to keep in mind is that no matter how hard Sanders sells his personal agenda and how much work Hillary does to get his ideas across the Republican party is going to do all they can to stop everything.  Voters who believe in the Sanders point of view need to get Democrats or sympathetic non-Democrats elected to any seats coming up for election.  The Republicans are trying to hold the Supreme Court hostage in order to pressure the Oval Office to give it up.  They have consistently gone against any bill proposed by the Democrats and wasted time and money doing it, thereby cheating the citizens of their taxes and rights.

It's not just the Republicans.  The Republicans have been the focus of Congressional inaction for pretty much this entire decade because they opposed things like gay marriage, Obamacare, even routine stuff like budget bills (though that was mostly the fault of Ted Cruz and his Freedom Bloc).  But the Democrats can be - and frequently are - just as bad.  The recently-released DNC e-mails showed that the Democrats were considering things like outing Bernie as an 'atheist' (he is Jewish, but how much of that is cultural and how much of that is truly religious, I don't know, but frankly it shouldn't matter a damn) in the Southern states in order to erode Bernie's support down there (since that's part of the Bible Belt).  Why?  Because Bernie represents an active threat to corrupt Congressmen, regardless of their party affiliation.

And even though the GOP tag has become synonymous with government inaction, keep in mind that not all Republicans are of the same stripe - most of the blame for political action can be laid at the feet of the Freedom Bloc, Ted Cruz, and the Tea Partiers.  These are people who really believe the conservative line; most Republicans will compromise on principle if it means good political maneuvering or coming out ahead personally - but not these guys.  Most of the recent budget and debt ceiling crises can be heavily attributed to the Freedom Bloc and Tea Party trying to essentially crash the federal government to prove that 'people don't need big government.'

This is, of course, like trying to demonstrate you can kill bees with a hammer.  You can technically do it, but you're getting how many people caught up in the collateral damage?  (At least in this case, you have a dead bee.  In the case of the Tea Party argument, you might end up proving that no, people actually do need it, and in the worst way possible.)

Something to keep in mind - between the Freedom Bloc (House only), and the Tea Party, they constitute 80 of the House's 435 delegates (approximately 18%).  In order for a bill to pass in the House, it needs the signatures of 290 representatives.  The Democrats alone have 187, which means they need 103 of the House Republicans in order to pass a bill - if you exclude the Tea Party and Freedom Bloc, that means that approximately 60% of the Republicans remaining have to vote in favor of the bill.  (Math can be demonstrated if requested.)

It's not much better in the Senate - while officially, only 4 Senators belong to the Tea Party (as the Freedom Bloc does not exist there), a number of Senators have been identified as having 'Tea Party-like' principles.  The official rolls and 'allies' of the Senatorial Tea Party brings the numbers up to 16.  Math done similarly in the House shows that Democrats (and Bernie, the single Independent) would need to persuade about 55% of the remaining Republican Senators to pass a bill, approve an appointment, etc.

Quite simply, the far-right groups in Congress could be described with a variant of the old gay march saw - they're there, they're a pain in our derriere, get used to it.

Sanders is going to go after his pound of flesh.  It's what he does and who he is.  But in the end he's smart enough and pragmatic enough to know that if he doesn't swing all of his energy and support behind Clinton there is an extremely good chance we'll end up with TrumPence.  Famous quote time:  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Most people remember this part - but they forget the part that comes after.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing, or all the other.

My particular worry is that by aligning with Clinton, it will give legitimacy to her particular political ethos (if she can be said to have one other than 'I must win').  Like Lincoln, I don't expect that to happen, but I expect that it will be a great battle for Bernie's political viewpoint to finally triumph.

It's not "good" per se. But I think on many social issues the Democrat-nominated judges more closely reflect the majority opinion of the American people. If that makes them "better" than their Republican-nominated counterparts is something everyone will have to decide for themselves, but it may be worth thinking about.

Three ex-SCOTUS justices are still alive today; John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, and David Souter.  Of the three, two - Stevens and Souter - are considered liberal justices of the modern era.  Stevens was nominated by Gerald Ford; Souter by Bush Sr.  Stevens' appointment was barely contentious - approved with a 98-0 vote.  Souter's appointment was approved with a 90-9 vote.  Slightly more contested, but still not a nail-biter.

The key - which is the thing I keep telling my Democrat friends - is the Senate.  During both appointments, the Senate was controlled by the Democrats.  It doesn't freaking matter who the President is, the President's only job is to find people to nominate for the position - whether or not that person gets approved is dependent on the makeup of the Senate.  Trump & Pence can nominate David Duke for SCOTUS, but it won't matter a damn if the Republicans don't have the votes to approve him.

That general political sentiment of mine carries to the rest of Congress - it's why I'm voting for Jill Stein for President but largely voting Democrat for Congressional seats (and ones who have been confirmed as sharing Bernie's politics in particular).  The political gridlock in Congress are part of why the executive order has been expanded and abused so much, and why SCOTUS is playing an increasingly important role.

[Mithlomwen]

I watched a little bit of the DNC last night, and one of the moments that irritated me, was when comedian Sarah Silverman chastised Bernie fans by telling them they were being ridiculous (for shouting Bernie or Bust). 

Bernie fans are pissed off.  They're mad because something they long suspected was happening, actually did, in that the election was rigged against him.  They are mad because their voices, and their votes had no real chance of making a difference.  And now...they are being force fed a candidate they don't want, or trust (especially since the email hack), and are expected to overlook all of that, and automatically jump on the Hillary bandwagon....and when they voice their opinions against that, they get called ridiculous. 

I don't blame them for being angry. 

[Oniya]

A rant that I've written on the subject.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about frozen dinners.

Anyone who has ever seen a frozen dinner in the supermarket is familiar with the packaging: a mouthwatering closeup of brightly colored vegetables and meat, usually with a forkful raised to show how enticing the contents are.

Anyone who has ever *made* a frozen dinner is familiar with the reality.  A morass of muddied colors, bearing little to no resemblance to the picture on the box, either in appearance or expected flavor.  However, it is generally something that can be eaten.

Anyone with a dog, cat, small child or drunk friend is likely to be familiar with the appearance of puke.  Given the choice between puke and a frozen dinner, the choice goes to the frozen dinner.

Now, neither puke nor frozen dinner compare to properly prepared food.

So, imagine that you have spent all of your life eating frozen dinners.  The alternative is puke, which some people mysteriously like, but you can't stomach it.  Then, one day, someone tells you about this thing called 'cooking'.  You look at pictures of this 'cooking', and it looks like the delectable pictures on the frozen dinners - only it's real!  But there's only one place where this 'cooking' is a thing, and that's far away.

Then, you hear that there's a chance that 'cooking' can happen where you are!  It'll take some work, and it won't be easy - the first thing you have to do is convince the local stores to carry it.  So, you start talking to the local stores.  And your friends start talking to the local stores.  And there's lots of people talking to the stores.  And the stores say 'tell you what.  We'll give this "cooking" thing a chance, but you need to make a reservation.  If we get enough reservations, then we can bring in this "cooking".  If people say they prefer the frozen dinners, we're just going to keep stocking those.'

So, you and your friends make reservations.  And you hear that a lot of people are making reservations.  But when you go down to the store, a funny thing happens.  They've lost your reservation.  They say you've never shopped there.  They say that you put in a reservation for puke instead.  They laugh at you.  'How crazy to want "cooking".  It'll never catch on.  You'll end up burning your house down.  Frozen dinners are fine.  You don't really want to end up with puke, do you?'

And yes, the frozen dinners are better than puke - but they aren't really that great for you.  And you keep seeing how many people say they would like 'cooking', and how excited people get about it - and how people are getting less and less impressed with frozen dinners.  But strangely, this doesn't seem to show up on the reservation lists.

Wouldn't you be a little upset as well?

[Kuroneko]

I watched a little bit of the DNC last night, and one of the moments that irritated me, was when comedian Sarah Silverman chastised Bernie fans by telling them they were being ridiculous (for shouting Bernie or Bust). 

Bernie fans are pissed off. They're mad because something they long suspected was happening, actually did, in that the election was rigged against him.  They are mad because their voices, and their votes had no real chance of making a difference.  And now...they are being force fed a candidate they don't want, or trust (especially since the email hack), and are expected to overlook all of that, and automatically jump on the Hillary bandwagon....and when they voice their opinions against that, they get called ridiculous. 

I don't blame them for being angry. 

I don't usually post in PROC, but I thought Symone D. Sanders' tweets on this subject were insightful, calm and did an excellent job of acknowledging the feelings of supporters.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/tweetstorm-bernie-sanders-former-press-secretary-amazing

[gaggedLouise]

Back in the day, when men were men, wore the pants and...

I just saw somebody retweeting this news item from a mere twenty years ago. Amazing that just two decades back that kind of tee print was deemed to be "against family values".

[ReijiTabibito]

I watched a little bit of the DNC last night, and one of the moments that irritated me, was when comedian Sarah Silverman chastised Bernie fans by telling them they were being ridiculous (for shouting Bernie or Bust). 

Bernie fans are pissed off.  They're mad because something they long suspected was happening, actually did, in that the election was rigged against him.  They are mad because their voices, and their votes had no real chance of making a difference.  And now...they are being force fed a candidate they don't want, or trust (especially since the email hack), and are expected to overlook all of that, and automatically jump on the Hillary bandwagon....and when they voice their opinions against that, they get called ridiculous. 

I don't blame them for being angry.

I remember back when Jon was on TDS - they covered a news story about various right-wing groups aligned with the Tea Party movement, and about how it was discovered that the IRS had been ordered to target these groups.  Now, these groups had been alleging government conspiracy, the Obama administration was out to get them, and it was all dismissed as the usual crackpot theories of angry right-wingers...

...and then, to quote a friend of mine, "YOU GAVE THEM A SEED OF TRUTH!"

The push by people like Silverman (really?  The RNC got fucking Clint Eastwood last time!  I know Susan Saradon said no, but you're telling me you can't get Clooney or DiCaprio?  You have the pick the person whose TV show is remembered by only six of the people who actually watched it and plays as herself half the time these days?) to downplay Bernie supporters as being 'ridiculous' is a calculated political effort.

I'll tap into Oniya's analogy in the below section, but I'll quickly sum it up here for those who don't want to spend the time: both parties want to convince the American public into political apathy in order to continue the train of benefits they have accrued for themselves via corruption.

Hopefully people can follow me on this.  I think I might have lost MYSELF.

The American people have been eating frozen dinners for a long time, and as one who has experience eating them quite a bit, they're not usually very filling - a couple of hours later and you're hungry again - when you compare eating them to cooked, really prepared food.

These frozen dinners are sold to us from both political parties, but you hear that a long, long time ago, that they did this 'cooking' thing, and it actually worked out really well for America - enough that it became one of the most powerful nations on the face of the planet.

There came a time, though, when those 'cooks' realized something.  When you go into the kitchen, and you cook a meal, then serve it to the table, after the people are finished with it, your job is done, so now you go on to something else.  It was a shame, too - the kitchen is one of the nicest places in all the house.  You get all these nice tools and nifty things to use and perks as you do your job.  Those, though, don't really help outside of the kitchen, so you have to turn in your spatulas and mixers and pots and pans when you leave.

But what if you never had to leave the kitchen?  What if you could stay there, and make use of all these nice things for you, forever?

They couldn't do that, though - there was no reason for them to stay in the kitchen, and they would probably get yelled at for not doing their fair share around the house by the rest of the people living there.

Until a nice salesman showed up at the door one day, selling frozen dinners.  It was interesting, it was different, it was novel, so they convinced their housemates to try it.  Most people disliked it and said it was just bland and that they preferred real food, a cooked meal, like always.   But, the cooks got a promise out of their housemates - for all the hard work they did, keeping up with the house and cooking six days a week, they would eat frozen dinners one day a week.

Everything would have been fine at that point - except the salesman came by the next day, when only the cooks were around: "I'll pay you - on the side - for every frozen dinner you buy from me," he stated with a nod and a wink.  So from that time on, the officials waited, watching for their opportunity to sell frozen dinners to their housemates.

Everything would have been fine at that point - except that a couple of people had to move out (something about moving to a foreign country and never coming home), others lost their job...money was tight.  And those frozen dinners were a lot cheaper than preparing an actual cooked meal...so they agreed.  For the time being, until people could get back on their feet.

Problem was, by the time that that happened, the house was hooked on frozen dinners.  Not in the sense that they were better-tasting than their old home food, no.  It was because...A: they were hungry.  All the damn time.  And they were too impatient to wait for a real meal, so they yelled at the people in the kitchen to MAKE THEM MORE.  Who were only too happy to oblige, since it meant they got to spend time in the kitchen, and never leave.  B: a new generation, an impressionable generation, grew up eating them - a whole generation of people in the house who had never known what it was like, eating real food.  C: nobody questioned whether or not the house could afford real food again, because everyone was too busy going here and doing this thing or that thing.  As it turned out, the only people who knew, the people who handled the checkbook...

...were the people in the kitchen.

And they liked the extra money they were being paid by the food company.  In fact, a lot of them grew rich off that money; they used it to buy houses and go on beach vacations and erect statues of themselves.

Most importantly - all they had to do was prepare the frozen food for the house - and as anyone who has done this can tell you, it involves a lot less effort than an actual meal.

Then, one day, an old man in the town square started talking about cooking again, about how great it was when people sat down and shared a meal together, and about how healthy and delicious the food was, compared to the stuff people bought prepackaged in stores, and about how it was this that made the house, the country, the world, a better place.

People listened - young who had never heard of it before, and old who had forgotten such things existed.  And then people started to follow the old man, declaring that they wanted a return to cooked food, instead of frozen dinners.

The reaction of the people in the kitchen?

Abject panic.  Their whole existence, the lives they enjoyed leading, hung upon being able to convince people to eat frozen dinners.  If they stopped preparing frozen dinners, and went back to cooking...

...all the money that they got from the food company would disappear.  That meant no more houses, no more beach vacations, no more statues erected in their honor.

...then, just like before, when the food was served and the meal was done, they would have to leave the kitchen, they would have to work somewhere else in the house.

...that they would have to work at it again.  They would have to spend hours, afternoons, days of their life actually working, instead of pretending to work by cooking frozen dinners.

"We can't do THAT!"  They confided in each other.  So there was only one option - keep the people on frozen dinners.  Now, this would be harder than you would expect.  Oh, the old man was just one man, but his message was powerful.  And the generation that had never tasted real food before wanted to try it for themselves.  Not only that, there was another guy in town - the local landlord - who was a lot louder and more aggressive and a bit more...shall we say old-fashioned than the old man.    The landlord started speaking parts of the old man's message - but he mixed it in with some bad stuff.  Mainly about how the people in the bad part of town were really responsible for the suffering of the people in the good part of town.  It was a corrupted message...

...but it was still the message.

The head chef came out and declared to the crowd, to the house, that they were all bastards.  They were ungrateful for all the hard work that they put in for the house day in and day out, that they didn't understand the complexities of cooking and the precise timing needed in order to do their job.

Of course, their whole self-serving speech fell apart when it was revealed that not only were they being paid by the food company for selling frozen dinners, but what they had done with that money, as well as the fact that all the cooks in town had paid off the booksellers to keep cookbooks off their shelves, and the local cable company to keep cooking programs off TV.  Because the only thing that was a bigger threat than the old man or the landlord was some idiot deciding to try and learn to cook themselves, without being taught how by the cooks in town.

Well...I should be honest.  Their speech mostly fell apart.  See, at the end of the speech, the head chef had stated that if they didn't get back in that house and earn the money they were being paid by the food company, the house would default on the mortgage.  Which meant the landlord (who was also the local real estate broker) would come by and repossess the house.  And see, the local...let's just say Orange because that was the nickname people used behind his back to mock him, Orange had made it clear that he wanted that house, not to sell it to someone else, no, but to burn it down, because he could make a lot more money with the land another way.

Some people believe this threat - that if the chefs don't get back in the house, then the landlord will just come and burn it all to the ground.

And some are calling it BS - that the chefs would say anything at this point just to preserve the nice, cushy life they 'built' for themselves.

Me?  I think one way or another, I want a new house.

[Cassandra LeMay]

The following emphais is mine.

The key - which is the thing I keep telling my Democrat friends - is the Senate.  During both appointments, the Senate was controlled by the Democrats.  It doesn't freaking matter who the President is, the President's only job is to find people to nominate for the position - whether or not that person gets approved is dependent on the makeup of the Senate.  Trump & Pence can nominate David Duke for SCOTUS, but it won't matter a damn if the Republicans don't have the votes to approve him.

Not quite. This may be a bit too technical for a general discussion like this, but there is also the role the President plays in the actual appointment. Unless the President makes the actual appointment the confirmation by the Senate means nothing.

That aside, in the case of Garland I am actually glad that the Senate is dragging its feet and nothing has happened yet. Garland was part of the DC Appeals Court decision that brought us SpeechNow. Everyone talks about how Citizens United changed the whole donations game, but the consequences of Citizens United were not really that big; Corporations don't make that many large campaign contributions in their corporate identity. It's the wealthy CEOs and company owners acting as individuals who make the more important difference. That they can make that difference in contributions is thanks to SpeechNow vs. FEC opening the door to unlimited SuperPAC contributions.

[gaggedLouise]

The push by people like Silverman (really?  The RNC got fucking Clint Eastwood last time!  I know Susan Saradon said no, but you're telling me you can't get Clooney or DiCaprio?  You have the pick the person whose TV show is remembered by only six of the people who actually watched it and plays as herself half the time these days?) to downplay Bernie supporters as being 'ridiculous' is a calculated political effort.

Isn't Clint Eastwood known to be a long-term Democrat supporter?  ???

I'll tap into Oniya's analogy in the below section, but I'll quickly sum it up here for those who don't want to spend the time: both parties want to convince the American public into political apathy in order to continue the train of benefits they have accrued for themselves via corruption.

Hopefully people can follow me on this.  I think I might have lost MYSELF.

Yep, it does sound that's what's been happening to a large degree. Though like most people I would prefer Hillary - or Bernie - to Trump at once, every day of the week.

I'd agree with Mith by the way. The tow-kowing to Hillary being confirmed by those e-mail leaks, that's really embarrassing for the integrity of the DNC and the campaign. Bernie has been waking up many millions to political awareness anew, through a long, dogged race, and it's an insult to those people to expect that they should just quietly file up behind Hillary when their suspicions of a rigged procedure have been confirmed.

[Cassandra LeMay]

Isn't Clint Eastwood known to be a long-term Democrat supporter?  ???

Sounds like you missed the empty chair speech.

I'd agree with Mith by the way. The tow-kowing to Hillary being confirmed by those e-mail leaks, that's really embarrassing for the integrity of the DNC and the campaign. Bernie has been waking up many millions to political awareness anew, through a long, dogged race, and it's an insult to those people to expect that they should just quietly file up behind Hillary when their suspicions of a rigged procedure have been confirmed.

Can we please agree on what exactly is a "rigged" or "stolen" election? I don't really see it. No one has stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes. No one has forced people not to participate in the elections or carted people to the polling stations by the busloads to cast multiple votes, for all I know.

Bernie lost. Period. He did not do all that well among black or latino voters. If not for him doing fairly well in caucuses - were only a small segment of the party supporters bother to vote - he would have lost by a wider margin. He had strong support, but it wasn't strong enough

There is nothing in the actions of the DNC that I can see that shows any clear causal link between DNC actions and the votes cast for Clinton or Sanders. Until such a causal link can be clearly show I find it ... questionable to speak of a stolen or rigged election. Sanders had surprisingly strong support, but he did not have the numbers to win. That's it. Doesn't mean any Sanders supporter should automatically vote for Clinton but I don't think the numbers add up to show that Sanders could have won if only for the DNC.

And still Bernie managed to get many of his policies on the Democrat party platform. He won major concessions from the party he only joined in time for the primaries. He's an experienced politician. He knew the kitchen would get hot and still he didn't stay out of it. That was his choice and he has managed to come away from this with some serious changes to the Democrat's platform.

If the system really were so rigged against him, would the DNC have agreed to any of his demands?

[Beguile's Mistress]

Back in the day, when men were men, wore the pants and...

I just saw somebody retweeting this news item from a mere twenty years ago. Amazing that just two decades back that kind of tee print was deemed to be "against family values".

The sad thing is that there are still people today who feel threatened by a woman holding any sort of office let alone one as powerful as Senator, Secretary of State, Prime Minister or President.  Women are still held to a higher standard than men, almost as if men are excused for their mistakes and ineptitude because it is expected of them.  Even as a woman I require a standard of honesty, integrity, grace and professionalism from women in the public sector that I seldom even look for in men.  I'm happy if I find it there but hardly ever disappointed when it is missing.  I put it down to the conditioning I've received in over 20 years of watching the various participants in the political arena.

While I read and listen to as much as I can regarding the campaigns I tune out at the more vituperative nonsense that is spouted and nearly anything based on personal opinion or that sounds like a repeat of sound bites or tweets and I scrupulously screen the media sources I visit. 


“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” ― Charlotte Whitton

[Mithlomwen]

Can we please agree on what exactly is a "rigged" or "stolen" election? I don't really see it. No one has stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes. No one has forced people not to participate in the elections or carted people to the polling stations by the busloads to cast multiple votes, for all I know.

This article gives a good rundown on the misconduct against Sanders.

[Valerian]

The Observer is probably not a good source for that sort of analysis, since the paper is owned by Trump's son-in-law.  The lack of neutrality on anything these days is quite depressing.  :/

As for Wikileaks, apparently lately they've been acting pretty strangely.  They doxxed millions of women in Turkey and have been making anti-Semitic tweets.  And Assange is known to dislike Clinton.  I can't speak for the truth of any of this stuff, because it gets pretty confusing, to say the least, but all I know I'm trusting less and less of what I hear about anything.  :P

[Cassandra LeMay]

This article gives a good rundown on the misconduct against Sanders.

That article is also an insult against anyone who voted for Clinton:

More votes were cast for Clinton, but they were cast at the behest of a Democratic Party that downplayed her shortfalls to the extent that Sanders not only had to run against Clinton but also against the entire Democratic Establishment.

"At the behest of"?

So the people who voted for Clinton voted for her only because the party urged them to? That paints people who voted for Clinton as mindless party stooges who voted the way they did because they were urged to do so and not because they might maybe have made up their own mind about their voting choice.

As far as journalism goes that's not exactly gold star standard.

I still agree with most of Sanders' policy ideas, but I can not agree with a statement that paints everyone who voted against him as a party puppet. I also strongly suspect neither would Bernie.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Rigged election definitions

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/3073/election+rigging(n)

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/british/ballot-rigging

Rigging an election takes place after the voting is concluded or causing votes to be cast by fraudulently registering voters or causing votes to be cast in the name of registered voters who are no longer eligible because they moved or died.

Influencing voters one way or another through campaigning - which is something almost all campaigns do - is not rigging an election.  It may not be ethical to lie about your opponent, such as casting aspersions on their abilities, but it is not illegal.

It's nearly impossible to rig a series of statewide elections and caucuses since interference with the votes would have to be wide spread.



One reason most of the people I know who did not vote for Sanders even though they though his platform was a good one was the lack of a clear way he was going to actually be able to pay for his programs without raising taxes for everyone and the fact that his programs would cost the country an estimated 18 trillion dollars and increase our national debt by one third.  Those were facts that had nothing to do with his beliefs.  He appealed more to a demographic that liked what he had to say and less to one that has been footing the bills all along - at least in my area.

We have a state university in Pittsburgh with an enrollment of nearly 35,000 students and an average cost for yearly tuition alone of around $18,000.  That works out to a total tuition bill of $630,000,000 for one school alone.  That scared the crap out of everyone.

[Mithlomwen]

The Observer is probably not a good source for that sort of analysis, since the paper is owned by Trump's son-in-law.  The lack of neutrality on anything these days is quite depressing.  :/

And....this is why I normally refrain from posting in P&R threads.  I really have no idea which news sites are reliable info, and which ones are garbage.   

That article is also an insult against anyone who voted for Clinton:

"At the behest of"?

So the people who voted for Clinton voted for her only because the party urged them to? That paints people who voted for Clinton as mindless party stooges who voted the way they did because they were urged to do so and not because they might maybe have made up their own mind about their voting choice.

As far as journalism goes that's not exactly gold star standard.

I still agree with most of Sanders' policy ideas, but I can not agree with a statement that paints everyone who voted against him as a party puppet. I also strongly suspect neither would Bernie.

So I shall apologize for the crappy reference....and go back to lurking and reading instead.  :-)

[TheGlyphstone]

Thats why I only link to the Onion. I can always trust it to be fake. ;D

[Beguile's Mistress]

Thats why I only link to the Onion. I can always trust it to be fake. ;D

*snickers*

It's hard to find objective journalism these days since even when an outlet prints only the facts they can still word the report in such a way as to influence the readers/viewers to favor their agenda.  Also, most people who have already made up their minds don't look at the facts.  They look for remarks that support their preconceived ideas.

That is why I watched the speeches last week and this week and watched the interaction on the floor.  There are Sanders supporters who are not going to let it go and, frankly, their dog-in-the-manger attitudes are an insult to the man.  I saw an interview with one of them with tape over her mouth because her voice had been taken away from her.  She talked around the tape. ???

[gaggedLouise]

It seems there are two news outlets/web sites called The Observer, the UK one (now affiliated with the Guardian) and a US one. I don't see the Guardian letting a member of the Donald Trump clan onto the command bridge of one of their papers.  ;)

The Brit paper is the one I knew about before, and it has a solid rep for quality journalism.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I get feeds from the Washington Post and New York Times and go scrounging around some of the Midwest papers, those in the Southwest and those in the Northwest states.  I weed through a lot of garbage to find something worthwhile and try to ignore opinion pieces.  I somehow can't trust someone who feels they have the right to interpret things and use that to tell me how I should think. 

[Valerian]

And....this is why I normally refrain from posting in P&R threads.  I really have no idea which news sites are reliable info, and which ones are garbage.   

It seems there are two news outlets/web sites called The Observer, the UK one (now affiliated with the Guardian) and a US one. I don't see the Guardian letting a member of the Donald Trump clan onto the command bridge of one of their papers.  ;)

The Brit paper is the one I knew about before, and it has a solid rep for quality journalism.

I hadn't heard of either Observer before myself, which was the only reason I went digging to see which side that particular one was on (because these days it seems like everyone is forced to pick a side, unfortunately).  And apparently Ivanka Trump's husband owns it.  ::)