.
Kevin Trahan, at SBNation — “I tailgated with drunk Donald Trump fans at Iowa-Iowa State so you don’t have to“:
… “Tell that scrub to get to the side. We’ve got Trump coming!” said one guy when Wisconsin governor Scott Walker appeared. Another yelled at the balding candidate about Rogaine. One woman, a self-described Republican, had no idea who Walker was, and the only semi-excited person was a drunk man who told his daughter to shake “Mike Walker’s” hand.
If there’s anyone who had to really hate this tailgate (booze wasn’t provided by the GOP, of course, so it’s only a tailgate because of its surroundings), it was the campaign workers. They’re unpaid, mostly college students, and live in constant fear that whatever they say will ruin their candidate’s campaign.
Like the two guys in Jeb! shirts. A curious Hawkeye fan made the mistake of asking about Bush, and after listening for a good five minutes, the fan thought he’d figured it out.
“So he’s the anti-Trump,” he said.
“NOOOOOOOOOO,” the campaigners screamed in horror…
The drunk crowd showed up later, but at the beginning, there was actually a number of Trump supporters milling about — “all dudes,” much to one reporter’s chagrin — and defending their renegade leader. Tyler Steiner and Jake Rudeen, both ISU students, wore blue Trump shirts.
“I’m a big fan of his one-liners,” Steiner said…
The mob was more akin to a group of fans ready to rush the field after a big win than it was to any political setting. Drunk fans stumbled over each other, moving around in hope of getting in front of the one small audio speaker. I asked one veteran political reporter from Washington, DC., whether she had ever seen a rally with supporters this drunk.
“Not this early,” she said….
Trump is remarkably petty & touchy. If other GOP candidates weren't afraid of him, they could easily unnerve him.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) September 14, 2015
Antithesis — Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker, on “Trump and Obama: A Night to Remember“:
Once, and only once, in 2011, have I attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C…. Not only, as we did not know then, was President Obama in the midst of the operation that would lead shortly to Osama bin Laden’s killing; it was also the night when, despite that preoccupation, the President took apart Donald Trump, plastic piece by orange part, and then refused to put him back together again…
What was really memorable about the event, though, was Trump’s response. Seated a few tables away from us magazine scribes, Trump’s humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man in a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him. There was not a trace of feigning good humor about him, not an ounce of the normal politician’s, or American regular guy’s “Hey, good one on me!” attitude—that thick-skinned cheerfulness that almost all American public people learn, however painfully, to cultivate. No head bobbing or hand-clapping or chin-shaking or sheepish grinning—he sat perfectly still, chin tight, in locked, unmovable rage. If he had not just embarked on so ugly an exercise in pure racism, one might almost have felt sorry for him…
… The micro-history of that night yet to be written might be devoted largely to the double life of Barack Obama as cool comedian and quiet commander—or it might be devoted to the moment when new life was fed into an old ideology, when Trump’s ambitions suddenly turned over to the potent politics of shame and vengeance. His even partial triumph in the primary still seems unlikely—but stranger jokes have been played on American philosophers over the centuries.
***********
Apart from meditating upon the weirder excrescences of the Republican Party, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Another Holocene Human
Ted Rall sucks.
Gimlet
The WSJ – Fair and Balanced. Thinks Jebs tax plan needs no critical review. “Even many Democrats”…
By Laura Meckler
Sept. 14, 2015
WASHINGTON—Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose liberal call to action has propelled his long-shot presidential campaign, is proposing an array of new programs that would amount to the largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history.
In all, he backs at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal, a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause. Mr. Sanders sees the money as going to essential government services at a time of increasing strain on the middle class.
His agenda includes an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.
To pay for it, Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent running for the Democratic nomination, has so far detailed tax increases that could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years, according to his staff.
BillinGlendaleCA
It’s raining in LA, thank FSM.
Thoughtful Today
:-o
Implosion!
♫
OzarkHillbilly
Enjoying the low humidity weather again: presently 55 with a predicted high of 83. Supposed to reach upper 80s Thursday and Friday and then drop back into the 70s for the wkend.
Sucks to be me, :-)
amk
@Gimlet:
15 trillion for 300 million murkans over a decade works out to 5,000 bucks per year per murkan.
Damn cheap health plan, if you ask me.
Baud
Trump supporters at the voting booth: “Hold my beer and watch this!”
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: “peacetime expansion”
All the expansion of the federal gov’t that W did doesn’t count. Neener neener.
eta: hold on, did Bern! promise to recall all troops on day one and let the chips fall where they may, or is this more fucking bullshit “mission accomplished” our troops are just “advisors” etc?
Another Holocene Human
@amk: No fucking shit. I cry over how much our health insurance at our employer goes up annually. We are so totally fucked.
Another Holocene Human
wtf, my much vaunted Command hook just got defeated by a jar of beets. I hang garbage from the hook and the jar expired in 2010 and looked nasty so in the garbage it went. Woke up, trash is on the floor. Da fuck?
Gimlet
@Another Holocene Human:
$18 trillion in new spending over a decade
“over ten years…”
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank god and el niño.
Kay
It’s so gross when campaigns don’t pay interns. For God’s sake. They have tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. Pay them something. Cut the consultants and “top strategists” fees by 10% and pass that down the line. How are any of these people credible on wages or income inequality when the organizations they run have such a skewed compensation scheme where it starts at ZERO?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Hey, that’s my line. Well it was 5 years ago.
Gimlet
Krugman
Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time leftist dissident, has won a stunning victory in the contest for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Political pundits say that this means doom for Labour’s electoral prospects; they could be right, although I’m not the only person wondering why commentators who completely failed to predict the Corbyn phenomenon have so much confidence in their analyses of what it means.
the false accusations against Labour involve fiscal policy, specifically claims that the Labour governments that ruled Britain from 1997 to 2010 spent far beyond their means, creating a deficit and debt crisis that caused the broader economic crisis. The fiscal crisis, in turn, supposedly left no alternative to severe cuts in spending, especially spending that helps the poor.
These claims have, one must admit, been picked up and echoed by almost all British news media. It’s not just that the media have failed to subject Conservative claims to hard scrutiny, they have reported them as facts. It has been an amazing thing to watch — because every piece of this conventional narrative is completely false.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Actually this is due to a dying hurricane.
Mustang Bobby
I watched Trump last night on MSNBC until it became obvious that they were going to carry the whole damn thing. It looked like a Nuremberg rally organized by WWE Raw. All that was missing was Leni Riefenstahl in a leather bustier.
Baud
@Kay:
That money is used to pay their online trolls.
OzarkHillbilly
A district attorney in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, has formally overturned the indictment of a man who served 34 years in prison for murder after DNA evidence ruled out his participation.
He was originally convicted after testimony from Earl Elderkin, a man with what the Innocence Project – the group which represented Fogle and fought for his release – termed “severe psychiatric disabilities”. Elderkin implicated Fogle after being placed under hypnosis by an amateur with no formal training, according to a press release.
Fogle was convicted on the basis of testimony from three informants who claimed Fogle had confessed to them while in prison, with no physical evidence.
Yes but the District Attorney,
“I still believe [Fogle] was involved [in the murder],” Dougherty said. “It’s simply a matter of we don’t have the evidence.”
doesn’t have any evidence but somehow someway he just knows Fogle did it. Richard Glossip is so screwed.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think Dougherty was involved in the murder, but like Dougherty, I don’t have the evidence to prove it.
Kay
@Baud:
One candidate could shame the rest of them into doing it. It would be one thing if we had publicly-funded elections and there wasn’t all this money washing around but in our campaign “system” the top people make hundreds of thousands of dollars. They don’t have a penny to spare for the lowest level? Please. They could pay all of them with one less ad buy in one early primary state.
EconWatcher
@Baud:
When an airliner crashes, we conduct a careful investigation into what went wrong, to make sure we can prevent it in other cases. The same should apply when we learn of wrongful convictions, especially for murder. One thing I’m sure we’d see is a pattern of how “jailhouse snitches” have led to wrongful convictions.
Baud
@Kay:
Since when have Republicans been shamed to helping out the people in the bottom?
But I bet Trump could do it if he wanted to.
Baud
@EconWatcher:
As soon as we have the same desire to prevent wrongful convictions, we should try that.
forked tongue
Is that Ted Rall cartoon meant to say something sharp? Be funny? Are any of them ever?
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: This is so typical.
Remember, when DNA first came out, few areas jumped on it. Most of them fought it. DA’s had made their careers, lawnorder, putting innocent people away.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: I’m a cousin to Doherty’s, or as my Midwestern relations put it, Dority’s, so fuck this Dougherty for besmirching the good name Dougherty. Also, too.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Prosecutors are worse cynics than judges and judges think everyone is lying, all the time. I think the job self-selects for people who believe everyone has an angle and there’s danger around every corner- they would maybe believe the informants are lying or self-interested but they would also think the defendant is lying and self-interested so it becomes “who is a bigger liar/worse person?” There’s often a real pride in being considered ultra-savvy and impossible to play and that becomes rigid and knee-jerk. Those are the people who seem to stay in it. People who aren’t like that do a stint and get out.
Another Holocene Human
Hmm, if I see my aunt at Christmas, I know how I shall amuse her:
“If you ain’t got the Do-ri-tee, boys, you ain’t got the do-ri-tee
You will never be a cowboy, if you ain’t got the do-ri-tee.”
GxB
@Baud: As long as it results in something worthy of a Darwin award.
Cermet
President Obama will, in time, be considered a top ten President. Maybe a bit higher and hit the top five. People in this country – read repub-a-thugs – are unbelievably stupid to not realize how lucky they were this man was elected when our country’s economy was in free fall. But then, the media has failed to properly give him credit, either.
Baud
@Cermet:
Include liberals in that group.
@GxB:
I wonder if electing their own version of Donald Trump is what killed off the dinosaurs.
OzarkHillbilly
Speaking of flawed convictions:
A drastic overhaul of policing and the criminal justice system in Ferguson, Missouri, and the surrounding region is needed to address the unfair treatment of black residents, according to a panel established by the state’s governor after last year’s civil unrest.
The Ferguson Commission on Monday blamed sharp racial disparities, which it said also extended through “housing, health, education, and income”, for turning the St Louis region into a tinder box that was ignited by the fatal shooting by police of an unarmed 18-year-old.
…
Among dozens of other recommendations, the panel called for the consolidation of St Louis County’s fragmented police and courts system, under which 60 separate police departments and 81 different courts oversee a little more than 1 million people.
No way 81 different little fiefdoms are going to be consolidated into 6 or 7 slightly larger fiefdoms without one HELL of a fight. This is going to get ugly.
Many of the reforms would require new laws by state legislators, the panel stressed.
From a Tea Party legislature in an election year… When pigs fly.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m impressed that Nixon’s panel came up with substantive suggestions. He did not handle that situation very well.
PaulW
Good thing our colleges turn out such insightful alumni across this great land of ours.
Yeah, that’s been pretty much everyone’s response to Jeb!’s campaign so far.
Just in time for the GOP Debate Drinking Game!
Kay
@Cermet:
I think he’ll be well-regarded too, although the ranking is somewhat discredited for me by the Reagan worship, quite frankly. This is a conservative area and my 13 year old admires Obama and he hears a lot of “worst President” from kids mimicking what they hear at home, so he asked me that recently- “is he a good President?” and I told him he’ll be well-regarded although I don’t know where he’ll rank, specifically. Obviously I’m biased but I think that’s an honest answer. The nuttiest, most dramatic friend in his little social circle is also the most vehemently anti-Obama so maybe that kid’s endorsement means less. The anti-Obama kid is also the kid who is constantly stomping off angry because someone has insulted him or otherwise upset him. He’s exhausting. He spends more time coming to me complaining about the other boys when he’s here than he does hanging out with them.
Baud
@Kay:
Holy cow. 13?! I wonder if the GOP has an in vitro indoctrination program.
Has he discovers Ayn Rand yet?
bystander
Speaking of prosecutors, Law and Order seems to always portray defense attorneys as sleazy shysters. Never (or hardly ever) do they feature a sympathetic defense lawyer who is doing the right thing. I get that they can’t show inept klutzes as prosecutors, and I can even accept that the program has to imply that the prosecutors always hone in on the genuinely guilty party, but this sort of rightwing lens gets a little tiresome. Or it could just be me.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kay: The perfect job for Chris Christie, then? Oh wait… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@forked tongue: I know.
Cuz if there’s anyone who’s a Trump supporter, it’s an urban white woman on a yoga mat.
Wrong demographic, rall.
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet: You’re assuming all the historians and people who consider such things won’t be murdered in Year Zero.
Gimlet
The Guardian
The United States is heading for another catastrophe in its voting system equivalent to the notorious “hanging chad” affair that shook the country in 2000 and propelled George W Bush into the White House, experts on electoral procedures are warning.
The extent of decay in America’s electoral infrastructure is laid bare in a new report from the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan institute at the New York University School of Law specializing in democracy and justice. Having consulted more than 100 voting specialists in all 50 states, the center concludes that the country is facing an impending crisis in the way it conducts elections.
The Brennan Center study found several ways in which the machines were already ceasing to function properly. Some are simply crashing as their memory cards fail; others are recording inaccurate votes as the glue comes unstuck between the screen of the voting machine and the computer wiring behind it, putting the touch technology out of sync.
In a further alarming problem, the security protections on many of the older machines are inadequate, leaving them vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Remarkably, such difficulties are now cropping up again in Florida, where 30 out of the state’s 67 counties have been reported to have voting equipment in need of replacing by next year’s presidential election. The voting systems manager in Leon County, Florida, for example, had to look on eBay for a replacement analog modem for its machines that is no longer produced by the manufacturer.
Whatever the cause of the failures, equipment breakdown invariably has the same end result – it leads to delays and thus long lines at the polling stations. An authoritative study of the last presidential election in 2012 estimated that, as a result of long lines, up to 700,000 Americans were unable to cast their vote.
Sherparick
@Gimlet: This is a nice example of double counting. They don’t subtract from it the cost of programs he would be replacing including the Affordable Care Act, CHIPS, and Medicaid. Also, let’s face it, even with a 60 vote Democratic Senate and and 240 vote Democratic House, Bernie Sanders chances of getting a “Medicare For All” plan through Congress would be slim and none, and frankly, unless the Democrats get busy doing the “50 State” thing again and get regain State Legislatures in the 2016 and particularly 2020 elections, we have a Republican House for the next 16 years.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That’s probably about 15, either Ayn Rand or girls, probably the former.
Cermet
@Baud: You are very correct considering that glaring error on my part …
Sherparick
@Gimlet: Whatever the cause? Ha, ha, ha, ha. It is because Republicans, and to some extent Democrats in thrall to the .01% want to make voting as difficult and apparently meaningless as possible.
Tom
from WHCD, Obama on Trump
video
Botsplainer
@Kay:
So in other words, the anti-Obama kid already has plans to rush Sigma Nu and join Project Veritas…
David Koch
@amk: it’s actually expensive. Japan, an industrial first-world country spends $3,200 per person. UK spends 3,400. Australia spends 3,800. Canada and Germany spends 4,500.
But it does save money when compared to the “free market”: Currently in the private market, U.S. invisible hand spends $8,500 per person.
So Sanders will have to explain that while $15,000,000,000,000 is a sticker shock, it will ultimately save 41%. The problem is too many low information voters won’t get beyond the shock and scare of the FUD and Harry&Louise ads.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s fine. 13 year olds mimic what they hear at home. I used to do volunteer recess monitoring and I had an eight year old girl tell me “I’m surrounded by idiots!” meaning the other 8 year old girls. That is EXACTLY how her mother talks. It was funny in such a small person.
This kid knows about Obamaphones so it must be wingnut central over at his house. My son was laughing, insisting such a thing doesn’t exist. He had never heard “Obamaphone”.
debbie
@Kay:
Next thing you know, the little brats will want to unionize.
debbie
@Baud:
Bet it would help him with younger voters too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Nixon was an absolute coward during the whole Ferguson fiasco and to be honest, I feel this is more of the same. Yeah, he set up a commission that took at least a somewhat honest look at the fractured STL area governance. But nearly all of their recommendations are already dead and the remaining few are on life support. Nothing will change.
It’s kind of hard to explain outside of saying everyone has a turf to defend and they will defend it because it is better to be a big fish in a little pond than a middling fish in a large pond. The politics of the entire STL area is built upon the foundation of a 100+ municipalities on both sides of the river, 6 different counties and 2 state gov’ts. STL city isn’t even in a county (a residual of the Civil War)(that war was never settled in this border state) For decades there has been talk of bringing the city into the county so that the city can stop spending money on county functions but that will never happen because 90% of the people who live in the county live there for the express purpose of having nothing to do with the city, the sentiment being born in the white flight of the ’60s, and that undercurrent of racism poisons all of the STL area dynamics. It is …. way too fwcked up to adequately explain in a brief blog post.
Nixon will introduce a couple token bills in the state leg and do nothing to push for their passage saying he can’t do anything because the legislature is 70% Tea Party and 80% rural (which is even more of a problem) and it’s an election year.
All that is true. He is term limited, and there is no place for him to go, so his political career is over, he’s just riding out the string.
Some guy
With all the excellent leftwing cartoonists available why does Anne Laurie always choose the shittiest shit produced by the odious Ted Rall ?
PurpleGirl
@Elizabelle: I think that Rall is being very snarky here. The one woman is giving the typical media ideas of why women like Trump and the other woman is being very crazy philosophical… Loki? really, how many people can name Loki?
I’ll agree it’s not funny but it has a nudge, nudge quality to it. The MSM has no idea of what real people think.
debbie
@Kay:
Back in Obama’s first year, my 9-year-old niece told me during lunch that she hated Obama. I told her to get back to me when she was able to think for herself. I figure I’ll have to wait for her to leave home and go out on her own.
Baud
@Kay:
Doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Hildebrand
Still haven’t figured out why one of the Republican candidates haven’t studied the White House Correspondents Dinner in order to plan their attack on Trump. Granted, none of them have Obama’s timing, but surely they see that mocking Trump is the best way to get under his skin. Outrage will never work, purity will never work – you simply and effectively make fun of the man. This isn’t hard, nor does it need to be spontaneous, hire some good writers, practice the lines, and then lower the boom. And it will work, Trump has the thinnest skin ever.
Chyron HR
@PurpleGirl:
The guy from the 4th highest-grossing movie of all time?
amk
@David Koch:
That’s a small price differential to pay for being the bestest nation under the sun and apparently the only one the god blesseth.
bystander
@Hildebrand: I’m guessing here but I think the part that stings the most for Trump is being the object of humiliating comments by a ni-clang who’s impervious to Trumps’ needling. Just a guess, but if I’m right he can stare at almost all the others and see LOSER written on every other forehead.
OzarkHillbilly
@Hildebrand: What would really be funny is if 10 heads all hit the podiums at once.
Elizabelle
@PurpleGirl: Yeah, I’m not really sure who Loki is, myself ….
ah: wily trickster god of Norse mythology. Male. Another white male. Great.
Dang. Always thought Loki was female. Prob mixed up with some Hindu deity … Even less interesting now ….
FlipYrWhig
Christ almighty, Ted Rall is just the worst. Appallingly bad art, not funny, not insightful, unduly proud of himself.
Elizabelle
Richard is asking for road trip music suggestions on the next thread. Help keep him out of the clutches of Christian music and rightwing talk radio.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: Loki likes to spread chaos. That’s the “joke.” I think Rall is doing a “people are so outraged with business as usual they just want to play in the wreckage” thing. It may be true of Republicans. It’s not true of Democrats and it’s aggravating to have to hear this insider-outsider, establishment-insurgent bullshit every damn day. Republicans like bullies and liberal Democrats have doubts about Hillary Clinton. There’s no grand narrative required to explain these phenomena.
neil.
I’m not sure Adam Gopnik saw the same WHCD that was broadcast on TV. Trump laughs, nods, and even waves to the audience during his shellacking. He clearly isn’t enjoying himself, but he is not standing stock still. I wonder if he even went to the replay before writing this fairy tale.
wuzzat
@PurpleGirl: Are you serious? Google “Tom Hiddleston.” White, twenty-something females are Loki’s new fanbase.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: Obviously you never saw Dogma.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: He should be told to call them by their proper name, not Obamaphones, Reaganphones.
Amir Khalid
Since when does Donald Trump have orange hair?
Hildebrand
@bystander: You are probably right. I would still give it a go. At the very least it would be more fun than engaging him on the ‘issues’. Maybe just laugh and shake your head every time Trump said something (not unlike what Joe Biden did to Ryan during their debate).
rikyrah
Uh Huh.
Uh Huh.
zizi2
@zizii2
Amazing how #Berniebots luv it when #Bernie went to Liberty U, yet same Emoprogs trashed @POTUS when he attended Rick Warren’s forum. SMH
wuzzat
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, if it was 2008 instead of 2015, Rall would have gone for the Joker reference and had her say that they just want to watch the world burn. It’s not exactly profound, and I don’t even think it’s that accurate. Most of Trump’s supporters that I’ve seen are thinking more along the lines of “cleansing fire” than “burn it down and salt the earth.”
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: I was depressed about this yesterday when their recommendations were described as a “wish list”. Wish List?
Hey, it would be really nice if you would stop killing people. Hope you’ll think about it. Thanks for your consideration.
NCSteve
That Gopnik piece is indispensable. First thing I’ve read that makes sense of what’s going on.
And thanks, Obama!
Germy Shoemangler
Headline:
GOP Pres. Candidate Pataki Tweets He Will Not Vote Republican if Trump is the Candidate
And nobody noticed.
WaterGirl
wrong thread
boatboy_srq
@Kay:
The Left can’t really afford to without genuflecting to Wall St, and the Right spends all its money on
hookers and blowexpensive campaign consultants.wuzzat
Hungary has closed its borders. Telegraph article
Steeplejack
@Cermet:
The tragedy of the Obama era is that we elected a race-car driver and he spent his first six years getting the Bush/GOP mom-van out of a ditch. Lately he has been making up for lost time.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Could part of Trump’s appeal be that he is the Anti-Obama? Loud, emotional, visceral, anti-intellectual, while Obama is reserved, calculated, intellectual.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning to you!
shell
Yesterday I made a joke about CNN, in their giddy delirium about tomorrows debate, having a count-down clock in the corner. But sure enough, today they did!
RobertB
@bystander: re: Law & Order – IMO, the defense lawyers are more on the ‘zealous defense’ side, more so than the totally sleazy side. There’ve been a few episodes where ‘defense crossed into illegality’ was what the story was about. But since the L&O cops generally catch the defendant red-handed, the defense lawyers usually don’t have a lot of options beyond, ‘Argue the law’.
OzarkHillbilly
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: You could have just said, “Is part of Trumps appeal be that he is a Republican where Obama was a Democrat?”
Tom
@Gimlet:
I would argue with the use of the word ‘remarkably’ in this instance when it comes to Florida.
magurakurin
@Sherparick: I think most people who think about this stuff can agree that, in a perfect world, single payer is cheaper and more efficient. But the United States is stuck with a system that was born out of Eisenhower’s original sin of encouraging employer sponsored health care with incentive of not counting those benefits as taxable towards Social Security. An employer base system is shitty, but how exactly does Sanders think he can unravel it in one swoop? There are 149 million people covered by their employer, it isn’t realistic to expect that they will accept getting a letter one day that says, “hey, you’re on Medicaid/Medicare now.”
The PPACA is really the only way to unravel it. I would prefer to hear Sanders, or Clinton for that matter, talk about the possibility of taking a second look at a “public option.” And couple this with doing away with the tax incentives to hide wages in “benefits.” Workers get screwed out of their SSI benefits by this practice anyway. These two things together would go a lot further to establishing single payer than some grand proposal to just sprinkle pixie dust and put everyone on Medicaid. And even these changes to the health care system are probably impossible in this environment.
Same for free college for all. Yeah, sounds great, but does that mean people with straight D’s in high school get to go to college for free too? Not everyone can or even should go to college. Somebody has to do the blue collar work. I would rather hear Sanders or Clinton talk more about expanding vocational and technical training schools and programs and policies which lead to higher wages and much greater respect for blue collar work.
so, you know, I’m just not feelin the Bern. I don’t see him as all that “radical” or even all that different. And I DO see him as George McGovern…ouch.
bjacques
@Gimlet:
If you want to get people’s attention, do what they did here in the Netherlands a few years ago. There are 17 million people here, about half of them voters, with provincial and municipal elections every five years, likewise national ones unless the government falls. Paper ballots and red pencil have always done the job, enabling reasonably accurate projections by around midnight and exact final results within a day or two.
Despite this, the national government, without any real public consultation, decided to buy, test and deploy electronic voting machines a year or so before the following election, and to buy them from one company. They dismissed any concerns about security–there was no paper trail–or even whether the changeover would really save any money. This was after the Diebold mess in the 2004 Presidential election, so would have been 2005, I think.
The local ad-hoc advocacy group “WeDon’tTrustVotingMachines,” somewhat related to Bits Of Freedom, included some white-hat hackers and a co-founder of the biggest Dutch ISP, XS4ALL. They bought a machine that a small village was selling off, then held a public demonstration where they made it dance. They showed how you could watch people vote then change their vote immediately afterward, and change the final total.
The government decided not to buy the machines, and the company CEO angrily called the hackers a bunch of terrorists.
I figure a similar demonstration of a few reverse-engineered American machines, showing President Obama unanimously re-elected to a third term on a write-in vote, for example, could do the trick.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Why are these people surprised about a bunch of drunks at a college football tailgate? Drinking early and often is kind of the whole point.
Rand Careaga
@Gimlet: Time to trot out the Diebold Variations again for a new generation of victims.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: Actually, I’m pretty sure Loki was sometimes female when she felt like it.
edit: in fact, a female horse, who got it on with a stallion and gave birth to Odin’s steed Sleipnir.
Just One More Canuck
@OzarkHillbilly: 60 police departments for 1 million people? That’s nuts Around Toronto, we have about 5.5 million people, and 4 police departments – the City of Toronto has it’s own, and the three regional municipalities (counties) around the city have one police force for the entire area
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: The epitome of wily tricks.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Baud: The most dangerous phrase in English, even worse than “new and improved!”
Sherparick
I see the Club of Growth and Bill Kristol are going all in on calling Trump a “liberal.” (Apparently, even being a full neocon on Iran and threatening to go back into Iraq and Syria to “take ISIS/ISIL/DASH’s oil” and use the money to compensate the veterans, wounded, and family of dead soldiers doing the taking is not enough for Kristol to accept Trump’s heresy on taxes.) I don’t think it is going to work because at the next debate he is going to say “build a wall and deport them all” and that is all his fans will hear, who actually don’t really give a rat fuck’s about Kristol’s or the Club of Growth plutocrats tax rate.
lol
@Matt McIrvin:
The Marvel Comics version of Loki has switched genders a couples times I think.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sounds like a return to the Middle Ages.
catclub
@magurakurin:
Lower the eligibility age for Medicare one year, every year. Any newborn and family, is eligible for Medicare as well.
In ten years it has every child under 10 and everyone over 55. I think at that point it could swap over.
VincentN
@Elizabelle:
In Norse mythology, Loki had the ability to change gender that he used as part of his trickster persona. But I imagine most gods could change gender if they really wanted to.
Paul in KY
@Steeplejack: Excellent analogy.
J R in WV
@VincentN:
Why be a god if you can’t do what you want to? Isn’t that the whole point of godhood, after all? The supreme being in charge!!
jhentai
that speech by obama was hilarious! and may have ironically caused trump to run, so he could do that (safe from reciminations!). or maybe i’m reading too much into it!
groucho48
@bystander:
And, they often are completely sure that an innocent person is the guilty one before the defense attorney pulls some technicality, like their violation of constitutional rights, before they let them go and go after the real guilty party.
mclaren
@Kay:
So if what everyone is saying about prosecutors is true, it should be a slam-dunk for a prosecutor to convict those wall street white collar criminals responsible for the 2009 financial crash.