Wow - Go Bernie

The case against Hillary Clinton: This is the disaster Democrats must avoid - Salon.com:

"..the fact that Clinton, far from “getting things done” for those who need it most, instead seems primarily to be about “getting things done” for the corporate elite, for vassal states like Saudi Arabia, and indeed for herself."

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Why Support Sanders?

It annoys the Media.

Media Blackout As Thousands of Bernie Sanders Supporters March in 45 Cities:

And the War Party.

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The Friedman Debate

James Galbraith: The Friedman v. Romers Growth Debate on the Sanders Plan – A Summing Up | naked capitalism:

"1) The growth projections have no bearing on the desirability of Sanders’ program, which consists of major structural reforms in health care, education, and public investment, in public governance and in the distribution of the tax burden."

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Stealing Palestinian Land

Behind a paywall but this is all you really need.

Jordan Valley Settlers Took 150 Acres From Palestinians in 2015 - Israel News - Haaretz:

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Drugs in United States

What McDonald's and Walmart Can Teach Drug Cartels | VICE | United States:

"In the past couple of decades, the number of people worldwide taking cannabis and coke has risen by 50 percent, and the number taking opiates has tripled. All that in return for billions of dollars spent and tens of thousands of lives lost. That's not what a successful policy looks like."

Well, it doesn't look like successful policy if your trying to stop drug abuse but if you're trying to get elected, make money in law enforcement, a CEO in Big Pharma or Big Alcohol, or selling military equipment,.. well,  it'll look pretty successful to you.


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Stopping Trump

Josh Marshall on the Trump takeover of GOP's crazy base.

Inside the GOP Implosion and the War to Stop Trump:

"The truth is virtually Trump's entire campaign is built on stuff just like this, whether it's about mass deportation, race, the persecution of Christians, Obamacare, the coming debt crisis and a million other things. At the last debate, Trump got pressed on his completely ludicrous tax cut plan. He eventually said growth (which if you calculate it would need to be something like 20% on average) would take care of the huge budget shortfall created by his tax plan. But Republicans can't really dispute this point since all of Republican campaign economics is based on precisely the same argument. What about Obamacare? Can Marco "Establishment" Rubio really get traction attacking Trump for having no specific plan to replace Obamacare when Republicans have spent the last five years repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare without ever specifying a plan to replace it with? On each of these fronts, the slow accumulation of nonsense and paranoia - 'debt' to use our metaphor - built into a massive trap door under the notional GOP leadership with a lever that a canny huckster like Trump could come in and pull pretty much whenever. This is the downside of building party identity around a package of calculated nonsense and comically unrealizable goals. 

On other fronts, Republican party leaders have sanctioned repeated government shutdowns, threats to default on the national debt and various other totally crazy things. But if you notice, it's always in the outyears - not in election years and never during presidential election years when more is at stake and the electorate leans more Democratic."

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Trump's Downfall

You can't be saying this stuff and win big elections in the US. We don't allow that even-handed crap when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

Rubio's 7 Fallacies on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:

".. Donald Trump, usually a resident of Mars, briefly came back to earth long enough to suggest he could broker a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians by being even-handed. It is not a matter, he said, of good guys and bad guys."

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Opinions are like...

The Death Of Expertise:

 "..having a strong opinion about something isn’t the same as knowing something."

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Electability - Bernie and Hillary

GG on electability:

With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?:

The D's do have a problem.

Hillary has soooooo much baggage. The Wall St connection, email scandal, trust issues, and general phony-ness are hurting her now but once she's the nominee LOOK OUT,..., The Wall St issue will probably fade but the email scandal will explode, Benghazi, Vince Foster, the Whitewater Scandal, the cattle futures scam, and Bill's past will come back around. The R's and Fox Propaganda will have a new scandal headline every day. The R's in congress will hold more Benghazi hearings, maybe investigate the email thing again, maybe dig something else up.  She'll be under investigation the entire campaign.

I just don't see masses of the American people pulling the lever for an already untrustworthy, phony candidate who's in the middle of a multiple corruption scandals, real or imagined. The roaring economy of the Clinton days is too far in the past. Her only hope will be Wall St, The US Media and Israel.

Sanders has an electability issue too. the Socialism tag may not scare the young people but it scares the hell out of the R base and a lot of old D's. The R's and Fox Propaganda will have a new Socialist, Communist, or Age/health headline every day.

So,... either could lose but I think it will depend on the match-up and how the media and the behind-the-scenes money goes.

TNB Predictions...

Hillary vs Trump - the money and the media get behind Hillary and she wins a close one, scandals and all. We know the big money is behind her. The big Corporate elite would be more likely to get behind her than the mouthy, racist-sounding, loose-cannon Trump, who may piss off large groups of Corporate customers around the world. They know what they have with Hillary. The media, while not overly-friendly, still like her more than Trump. Hillary is in the Club while Trump still mostly an outside except for the Fox News crowd. So Hillary wins a close one, even though many D's (including me) set this one out or vote Green.

Sanders vs Trump - The Socialist thing scares the hell out of the money and the media so they'll side with Trump. He is closer to them than Sanders is. I think it's too much think that one, over 70, semi-socialist can change Americans minds on big government at this point so I think Trump has a better chance against Bernie. Still, a close race that could go either way.

Bernies best chance,... stay on message....hammer on the corporate elite, and ....after beating Hillary,...  come out as pro-gun to take some of NRA pressure out of the picture. We need socialized medicine at this point more than we need to lose an election over gun control and a lot of old-school Union D's now vote R because they loves-them-Guns.


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The March of Folly

Hey R's,... its not government that's the root of all evil.

And D's.... it's not just the big-business, corporate elite, that are the root of all evil.

It's the "establishment", the intersection of government and the big-business, corporate elite, who've been running this place for many years. They are writing our own chapter in the "March of Folly"

Here's very good, short post on the establishment's lock on the US.

Failure as a Way of Life | The American Conservative:

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Breaking Our system

Unprecedented by Nancy LeTourneau | Political Animal | The Washington Monthly:

When the people have spoken and elected someone to lead this country - but they are thwarted in carrying out their Constitutional duties to do so by attempts from the opposing Party to undermine them - it is not merely an affront to that leader. It is a challenge to all of us who participated in that electoral process. And it eats away at our confidence is doing so going forward. It is also a recipe for chaos. 

Our democracy is not based on all of us agreeing with each other. The founders gave us a process for voicing those disagreements and doing the hard work of taking care of the country’s business in the midst of them. These unprecedented actions by the Republicans to undermine and delegitimize one of the three branches of our government place their side of the argument above those processes and thereby pose a threat to its very survival. 

It is not up to President Obama to challenge this threat alone. As citizens, we need to recognize what is happening and use our voices to call it out…be that via words or ultimately in the voting booth.

Yep.... we, the people, need to throw the bastards out.

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Privacy vs Guns

A good rant on the "US vs. Everyone's privacy"

The logic is outrageous: “People got shot. So we need a backdoor into your phone.”

Take Back America

Wow. I can't find the date on this but most think its 15 to 20 years old but damn,.. it nails our current Republican group, especially the Tea-Bagger wing

The Crazy Train

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Oil.......

Three good articles on the oil market.    (found at the always good Naked Capitalism)

Opec has failed to stop US shale revolution admits energy watchdog

Why crude oil prices keep defying all predictions

and

Who Will Be Left Standing At The End Of The Oil War

which includes this.....

...though Iranian officials say they will eventually be able to produce for as low as $1 per barrel from their central fields.

Which might explain why a lot of people didn't want the sanctions on Iran lifted.

Corporate Media - MSNBC Version

Our corporate media doing its job.

MSNBC Cuts Away From Bernie Sanders as He Condemns Trans-Pacific Partnership:

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Our Corporate Media

The deeper truths journalists are blind to | Jonathan Cook's Blog:

.. the corporate media is designed to reflect the interests of power – and the corporations that control our media are power. They select journalists through a long filtering process (school, university, journalism training, apprenticeships) precisely designed to weed out dissidents and those who think too critically. Only journalists whose worldview aligns closely with those in power reach the top.

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Election - Line of the Day

History Lessons: “Ultra-Radical” Reflections on Hillary, Bernie and U.S. Politics:

"For Hillary as for her NAFTA-signing husband and Trans Pacific Obama, there’s a useful translation for “a progressive who knows how to get things done”: a corporate neoliberal who manipulates populist and liberal sentiments in dutiful service to the unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire."

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Bernie vs HIllary

Another good reason NOT to vote for Hillary.

Hillary Clinton, With Little Notice, Vows to Embrace an Extremist Agenda on Israel:

"In November, she published an op-ed in The Forward in which she vowed to strengthen relations not only with Israel, but also with its extremist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu."

Also includes this great line from GG...

... is it even physically possible to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” beyond what it already entails: billions of dollars in American taxpayer money transferred every year, sophisticated weapons fed to Israel as it bombs its defenseless neighbors, blind, loyal diplomatic support and protection for everything it does?

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Bernie vs The Establishment

A good read on the dishonesty of journalists on the HRC side.

The Jonathan Capehart Saga, Or Why Progressives Have Stopped Trusting the Corporate Media :: Politics :: Features :: Paste:

"When you hear Sanders supporters insist that they won’t vote for her when the time comes, don’t make the mistake of thinking these people are naive, or spiteful, or ignorant of the consequences. It’s a simple case of feeling disenfranchised, and refusing to participate in a corrupt system that screws you with one hand and expects your support with the other. It’s too insulting—too utterly demeaning—to play along.

 

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Go Bernie

Scalia's Replacement

How the politics of the next nomination will play out : SCOTUSblog:

It ain't gonna be pretty......

It probably benefits Hillary in the D's nomination process. Bernie is so focused on economics, inequality, and the oligarchy this country has become that anything the diverts attention from that, like Scalia's replacement or Middle  East wars, helps Hillary.

Overall, I think the best plan for the D's is along the lines presented here. Obama should appoint a younger, moderate, minority D and keep the pressure on the R's to act. Moderate is the key to keeping the media on the D side. Minority is the key to getting D voters behind the party.

If the Rs don't act, or just stall, they look more and more like the obstructionists they are which give the D's an edge for the swing-voters in the election.  If they do approve, well, the court is moved to the left.

A true R nightmare. They prevent Obama from seating someone but Hillary wins the election and appoints Obama to replace Scalia. R heads explode.

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How America Was Lost

How America Was Lost - The New York Times:

I agree with most of what Mr K says but this is just flat wrong.

"Democrats don’t routinely deny the legitimacy of presidents from the other party; Republicans did it to both Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama."

The D's used the Florida-vote-count/Supreme-court-decision of 2000 to deny the legitimacy of W on a regular basis.

So yes, today's Republicans are fucking crazy but they don't have a monopoly on denying the legitimacy of the other party's president.


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Propaganda

The Republican establishment packed the debate audience with Donald Trump haters - Vox:

The next step will be a "Boooo" track, like a laugh track, that can just be played as needed. Controlled by the party leaders of course. Our system is inching toward professional wrestling.


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Why they Hate us.

W said they hate us for our "freedoms". W was an idiot. They hate us because we do crap like this.

Obama to sign AIPAC-promoted trade bill that legitimizes Israeli occupation and fights BDS – Mondoweiss:

"The legislation references “any territory controlled by Israel” or “Israeli-controlled territories” seven separate times, making it the first U.S. legislation effectively defining Israel as including occupied Palestine, essentially recognizing the territory of Palestine and Israel as one entity."

International law says that nations aren't supposed to take other nation's lands by military force, occupy, and incorporate them into their own. When they do, the rest of the world is supposed to shun them and apply pressure like economic boycotts to make them act like civilized people.

Israel took Palestinian land by military force force, is occupying (with military force) and slowly incorporating them into Israel. The rest of the world basically agrees that Israel is wrong and should pull out of Palestine but the US, due to lots AIPAC money paid to our politicians, simply ignores Israel's land theft and blocks all UN attempts at remediation. The US, Israel, and sometimes the UK are really the only countries in the world on this side of this argument.

Now, in the legislation above, we've basically made it harder for US people and businesses to shun the international law breaking Israel, in effect, legitimizing their military occupation.

We're on the wrong side of history on this one.


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Memories of the 90's

A young guy looks back at the good-old days.

Noahpinion: The Dream of the 90s:

Even More on the 90s



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3d Printing with sound added.

Could we play these like an LP?

Election - Line of the day

Informed Citizens and the Mob: 

"While Bernie Sanders seeks a politically-engaged citizenry, what Donald Trump seeks is a mob."


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Election - line of the day

Best line of the election coverage to this point

... it’s hard to report on a peasant revolt from inside the castle. 

From:  It’s almost over for Hillary: This election is a mass insurrection against a rigged system - Salon.com:



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