Delegate Count Reporting

Clinton Benefits From Media's Misreporting Of Delegate Counts:

True and accurate numbers are the following: after “Super Saturday,” Clinton has 663 pledged delegates. Sanders has 459 pledged delegates. Clinton needs 1,720 delegates to win. Sanders needs 1,924 delegates to win.

RealClear Politics shows HRC at 658 and Sanders at 471 After March 6 (includes Maine.)







The New York Times shows it like this.

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results (image from 3/7/2016)

Protest Votes

Economist's View: 'Forecasting Elections':

People often vote against someone or something rather than for someone or something, the classic protest vote.

Currently both parties are seeing this, with the anti-R's, Trump and Cruz, winning while the R candidates struggle and the anti-D, Mr. Sanders running surprisingly strong against the D candidate, HillaryC.  The media's mostly focused on the R-side with lot's of talk about how the R voters are angry but in reality, the D's have the same issue. People are voting against each party's chosen candidate.

Why? The anti-party votes are protest votes against the system as a whole rather than the parties themselves.

From the voters perspective, D or R,  the government of the last 30-40 years just doesn't work very well for them, incomes continue to fall, jobs are shipped over seas, the infrastructure is crumbling, our schools suck, drugs and crime seem to be everywhere, the level of debt is crushing. The people have very little power and their future seems bleak.

On the other hand, If you're part of the corporate-political elite, government works pretty well for you. Low taxes allow you pile up wealth, low wages for your workers help the bottom line, trade policies can be changed in your favor, bankruptcy laws can be changed to protect the creditors, the unions have been broken, usury and truth-in-advertising laws are gone, debtors prisons are back, you're making a lot of cash and have power to get your way. You are in control.

Trump, Cruz, and Sanders supporters are the first group. Hillary, Bush, Rubio, Kasich, etc. supporters are the second. So what we really have at this point is about  55-60% of the votes cast in the primaries going against the establishment. (Trump, Cruz at about 60% of the R vote and Sanders at about 45-50% of the larger over-all D vote.)

The people are pissed and lashing out at a captured system.

Those in control are scrambling to hold on to power.

The establishment will probably survive this time. It's hard to see how an establishment candidate doesn't win but if the system doesn't respond to the people this time, look out the next time.



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on Drugs

This from "RawStory"

and this.....

Lord of Evil – Adhesive Comics

From one of my favorite's,.. Shannon Wheeler of "Too Much Coffee Man" fame

Lord of Evil – Adhesive Comics:

Super-Tuesday and Super-Delegates

Super Tuesday—Clinton and Trump Win As Expected | Ian Welsh:

"The non super-delegate delegate count after Super Tuesday is 543 for Clinton, and 349 for Sanders. "

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Open Air Prison

Israel's Netanyahu wants to use the Gaza Strip, what many consider an open-air prison, as,... you-guessed-it,.. an open air-prison by moving the families of terrorists there. His Attorney General noted that it would be against Israeli and International law.

Surely no US presidential candidate would support this?

Netanyahu Seeks Attorney General's Authorization to Deport Terrorists' Families From West Bank to Gaza - Israel News - Haaretz:



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Both parties are the same.

Democrats always prove the commies right | Fredrik deBoer:

All of that stuff happened and has continued to happen. The Democrats prove the commies right. Every time.

I think the D's are about as close to a split as the R's.  Read the post above for a list of "All of that stuff happened and has continued to happen".

We may end up with three parties. The D-Socialists on the left. The CorpoRats (Elite-Owned Ds and Rs), the Tea-baggers on the right.



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The Oil War

Propaganda from the Oil price war.

Oil – The bond market is getting scary – the US is about to break

 But no,…. The US Shale folks are really OK.

And the Saudi’s are about to break..

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The Graveyard of the Elites

You Reap What You Sow....

Truthdig - The Graveyard of the Elites:

"Corporations control the three branches of government. Corporations write the laws. Corporations determine the media narrative and public debate. Corporations are turning public education into a system of indoctrination. Corporations profit from permanent war, mass incarceration, suppressed wages and poor health care. Corporations have organized a tax boycott. Corporations demand “austerity.” Corporate power is unassailable, and it rolls forward like a stream of lava.

The seeds of destruction of corporate power, however, are embedded within its own structure. The elites have no internal or external constraints. They will exploit, manipulate, lie and oppress until they create an ideological vacuum. No one but the most obtuse, including the courtiers who have severed themselves from reality, will sputter out the inanities of neoliberal ideology. And at that point the system will implode.

 The revolt may be right-wing. It may have heavy overtones of fascism. It may cement into place a frightening police state. But that a revolt is coming is incontrovertible. The absurdity of the election proves it."

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Medicare for All

The best way to piss-off the establishment (D or R) is to push for Medicare for all.

See below from  The Post-Hope Democrats | Jacobin:

Here’s an interesting graph based on data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based quasi-official think tank for the world’s rich countries. It shows the share of GDP devoted to health care for a subset of the OECD’s thirty-four members, divided into public and private. (Put them together and you get the total.)There are several striking features in this graph:

• Most striking of all is how far ahead of the pack the US is: we spend 16.4 percent of GDP on health care, compared to a 10.1 percent average for all the other countries shown. (That’s the dotted vertical line on the right.) And recall that all those other countries cover almost their entire populations, unlike the US, where a tenth of the population is uninsured(and many of the insured have terrible coverage), with little change since the drop when Obamacare first took effect. (Gallup has 12 percent of the population uninsured, slightly higher than the Census Bureau, though with a similar trajectory of initial decline followed by flatlining.)

• Another striking, though less obvious, thing is that US public spending alone, 7.9 percent of GDP, is just 0.1 point below the average of 8 percent. In other words, the government already spends as much as many other countries do while accomplishing far less. That 7.9 percent is also not much less than the entire health bill for Italy, Australia, and Britain, public and private combined.

• Yet another striking thing is the outlandishly large share of private spending on health care: 8.5 percent of GDP, more than four times the average of the other countries and almost three times Canada’s private share.

• Does all that spending produce better outcomes? Seems not: our life expectancy, 78.8 years, is three years shorter than the average of all the other countries.

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