Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I really should read my own blog.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Infrastructure week. at last.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

No one could have predicted…

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Another Day of the Sanders Campaign, Another Sad Trombone

Another Day of the Sanders Campaign, Another Sad Trombone

by | 245 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Hilbot though I be, I seriously doubt there’s anything revelatory in the Sanders campaign finances beyond their embarrassing amateurism. The Senator has been puttering happily along in his Green Mountain fiefdom for many years, from the evidence so far on the record-keeping equivalent of a three-ring binder ledger and a cigar box marked Petty Cash. It’s never been a big deal for his staff to back-reconcile a bunch of line items for Misc and Other at the end of the financial year. And a government salary that seems paltry to Congressfolk from states like New York or California is comparative wealth in poor underpopulated Vermont — unless he’s made some spectacularly bad investments or nursed some unsuspected high-dollar addiction, Bernie’s no doubt set aside a tidy sum for his retirement and his kids. Knowledgeable numbers people have speculated he might even be a millionaire, on paper… no crime, even for a politician, but an embarrassing reveal for someone running as The Populist Peoples’ Candidate.

Bernie never expected his campaign to go beyond drawing attention to his favorite issues; he certainly didn’t prepare in advance for the scrutiny that comes with a real presidential campaign. His troops were heavy on enthusiasm, light on experience / expertise. There’s bound to be a certain amount of under-documentation, some questionable overspending, maybe even a little of the impulsive hand-in-the-cash-drawer minor splurges that drew so much attention to the Palin family in the summer of 2008. Nothing — up till now — that would draw more than a stern rebuke and maybe some fines from the FEC…

In today’s Washington Post, an op-ed from William M. Daley, “former commerce secretary [under Bill Clinton] and White House chief of staff [to President Obama]”, “Bernie Sanders’s stubbornness is a big mistake” —

Bernie Sanders is making a big and potentially dangerous mistake with his continuing insistence on changes to the Democratic Party’s rules and platform. I should know. As chairman of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, I understand too well where such ideological stubbornness can lead.

Back then, many progressives insisted on backing third-party candidate Ralph Nader despite warnings it would undercut the Democratic nominee. Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida, which Gore lost by 537 votes. The result? President George W. Bush, who championed ill-advised tax cuts, the invasion of Iraq and other actions we now deeply regret.

Sanders made an energetic bid for the Democratic nomination, drawing big crowds and fueling debates on important topics such as income disparity. Although he lost to Hillary Clinton, Sanders is pushing his agenda to the party convention and insisting on “reforms” in a Democratic nominating process he describes as seriously defective.

Sanders is wrong to suggest the Democratic Party’s nominating system is seriously defective. It isn’t. It’s eminently fair to let party members (i.e., registered Democrats) select the nominee, and to give party loyalists and elected officials (superdelegates) a modestly bigger say…

Key Democratic constituencies, including the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus, strongly support superdelegates. “Our delegate selection process is not rigged,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), a senior leader of the Black Caucus, wrote in a letter to colleagues. “It is transparent to the public and open for participation.”

Clinton beat Sanders fair and square. She won more states, more delegates (pledged and super), and 3.7 million more votes than he did…

… Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. In 2008, after losing a hard-fought primary to Barack Obama, Clinton promptly endorsed him and campaigned for him. In contrast, Sanders — who refused to even call himself a Democrat until this election — has yet to endorse Clinton. He says she, not he, is responsible for persuading his supporters to back her.

Every vote counts. Sanders should accept the primary outcome and enthusiastically rally his supporters to Clinton’s side to avoid a catastrophic Donald Trump presidency.

Your suppporters have moved on, Senator Sanders. It’s time for you to do the same.

Reader Interactions

245Comments

  3. 3.

    different-church-lady

    So, basically 79% of Sanders supporters didn’t think Hillary was history’s greatest pre-monster, they just liked Sanders better; 5% are “true progressives”; and 7% are simply incoherent.

  5. 5.

    Poopyman

    Hilbot though I be, I seriously doubt there’s anything revelatory in the Sanders campaign finances beyond their embarrassing amateurism. The Senator has been puttering happily along in his Green Mountain fiefdom for many years, …

    Trolling there, AL? Waiting to hook everyone who’s going to comment about Jane, no doubt.

  6. 6.

    different-church-lady

    Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute… a $2.70 contribution? Is Bernie having a fire sale?

  8. 8.

    Baud

    BREAKING: @BernieSanders camp asks for (and gets) another 45-day extension on filing personal financial disclosure

    Has Trump filed his? I’d be curious about that.

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    I think I may have finally raised a doubt in the mind of the last remaining BernieOrBuster on my Facebook by pointing out that the meme she liked is incorrect and neither Dick Cheney nor Bush I (or II) has endorsed Hillary. We’ll see how it goes, but I have hopes that the fever is burning itself out.

    And, yes, I’m already tired of the Hillary must be bad if Republicans are supporting her over Trump! meme. Yes, because when given the choice of boiled Brussells sprouts or anthrax and burning tires for dinner, it’s so weird that some longtime Republicans are finally breaking down and saying, “Fuck it, I’ll choke down the Brussells sprouts since I have no other choice.”

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    Among their many other faults, neither Bernie nor Jeff Weaver nor anyone else in their campaign can read a fucking email, nor does their unsubscribe tool work.
    Fucking wankers.
    I am so fucking tired of this asshole.

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne: You don’t understand: all this does is prove that Clinton is TIRE RIMS AND ANTHRAX!!! because a republican would never choose anything else.

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @Baud: For Sanders? I think you have to update the form every year or something like that, and he’s now on his second requested extension.

  22. 22.

    mike in dc

    So, basically, Clinton already has 8 out of 10 Sanders supporters, and it looks like only half of the remainder are actually persuadable.

  26. 26.

    magurakurin

    Whatever. I imagine at some point Sanders will endorse Clinton and then we can clap and pretend to be proud like when a toddler takes a dump by himself in the potty and shows his mommy.

    Whatever. Bernie can do what he likes. I don’t care about him, his wife, or his money (excess or lack of.)

  27. 27.

    JPL

    @JPL: When Trump announced he did release financial disclosures forms.

    I assume Bernie wants to hide his Wall Street holdings, so he doesn’t upset his supporters.

  28. 28.

    Ruckus

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    If you didn’t get your phone fixed and are still going to purchase a new one, I picked up a Motorola Moto X pure edition not very long ago and it seems to be a pretty good phone. I’d recommend it to anyone who doesn’t feel the need for an iphone. The 16g one is fine as you can put a memory card in up to 128g and I’m betting that’s plenty.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ruckus:

    It took me forfuckingever, but I finally managed to unsubscribe to Bernie emails. Be strong, hang in there, have faith, excelsior!!

  31. 31.

    greennotGreen

    At this point Bernie’s intransigence is frittering away any chance his movement has of gaining real power…just like Nader did in 2000. Nader could have said to Gore, “I will pull out of the race and back you and encourage all of my supporters to back you, but in exchange I want___________” a cabinet seat for a Green, or Green positions reflected in the platform, whatever. Instead, Greens got nada and the country got screwed. Only this time it would be way worse.

    Yep, Nader blew it for the Greens, and that’s why I will always be

    greennotGreen

  33. 33.

    magurakurin

    @JPL:

    I assume Bernie wants to hide his Wall Street holdings, so he doesn’t upset his supporters.

    Maybe he has managed mutual funds with a high expense ratio. Then I would really laugh at his dumb ass. Why anyone would be ashamed to be holding say a Vanguard index fund or a Vanguard ETF is beyond me. But, you could be right.

  35. 35.

    Gin & Tonic

    @schrodinger’s cat: His latest available disclosure form, for CY 2014, indicates less than that. All assets are in his wife’s name, but that is a tax-avoidance strategy – since she is “only” 65, assets in her name can be (and almost all are) in tax-deferred (i.e. IRA or 401(k)-type) accounts. As he is 74, if he were the owner of the assets, he’d have to be taking annual distributions. Anyway, that’s consistent with what we saw of his 1040, where there is essentially no interest/dividend income.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @schrodinger’s cat: We have to wait for the Bernie-signal to be projected into the night sky (a silhouette of a bird, of course) before they show up. But have faith, they will come.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    Or, as a wise man said recently:

    Guests were asked to check whether they wanted steak or fish, but instead, a whole bunch of you wrote in Paul Ryan. That’s not an option, people. Steak or fish. You may not like steak or fish — but that’s your choice.

  38. 38.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud:

    Then why isn’t there one already on file?

    It’s annual. There are plenty on file if you want to review them.

  41. 41.

    NonyNony

    @mike in dc: Even if Sanders comes out and makes a full-throated all-out endorsement and push for Clinton, I doubt that number gets higher than 87%. The rest will declare Sanders a traitor or were Republican ratfuckers all along anyway.

    BTW: I strongly suspect that the true Bernie Bros responsible for the worst ugly misogyny spread in Sanders name on the Internet for the past few months belong to that 9% who say they’re voting for Trump/Johnson. That’s where the support of the guys who can’t possibly vote for a woman will go – and some of the undecideds will probably break that way too.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @Gin & Tonic: No. But then I’m curious about the delay. Is it just laziness? What could have happened in the last year that would be embarrassing to him?

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @Baud:

    I keep hoping it’s going to be like in the original “Star Wars” where Han Solo walks away refusing to help, and then shows up at the critical moment to blast Darth Vader and clear the way for Luke to destroy the Death Star.

    I would even accept the subsequent photoshopped images of Bernie as Han as the price I had to pay.

  48. 48.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ruckus: I had my Sanders emails going straight to one of my Spam folders, so I didn’t see them for a long time. Then, finally, something caught my eye that was so egregious – I think it was a post-California “we’re going to keep on fighting” piece of bs – that I sent them an invective-flecked “take me off your damn list” unsubscribe notice.

    Nothing since. Evidently, I got lucky!

  50. 50.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud:

    But then I’m curious about the delay.

    He’s a very busy man. Running for President is time-consuming.

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: The remaining Busters I know are beyond hope. One is actively hoping for a Trump win and trying to convince the rest of us we should too: the American system has to be smashed irreparably and only Donald Trump can do that. Also, Hillary voted for Iraq in the Senate and Donald Trump didn’t.

  52. 52.

    jl

    Thanks for a balanced post on Sanders.
    I think it should be clear to everyone now that Sanders has conceded the nomination, he just is afraid to, or uncertain how, to concede and get on with the general election campaign in a way that will not result in a good fraction of his die-hard supporters bolting, sitting out the election, and losing interest in his political revolution.

    Sanders also thinks what he is doing is the best way to bargain for his positions. Whether he is thinking clearly about that question is another matter. But he is not running for president anymore, on Dem ticket or any other. And I don’t think he gives a damn about what influence he may or may not be squandering with the Dem establishment. He is thinking about what he can do as Senator in the majority who heads some independent power base, both people and $, namely, his ‘revolution’.

    Anyway, hope the HRC/Sanders fight club has a fun evening.

  56. 56.

    Schlemazel Khan

    I’d be really more than OK if we speak no more of this Sanders fellow. He really has no bearing on this election as the polling shows. The GOP and Fox have their boiler room operation with sock puppets pretending to be dems trying to incite discord on out side and we do not need to add to that. In addition I am just tired of hearing from both sides on the Senator. He is not going to make a difference in the Clinton Administration though I appreciate his efforts to focus on economic issues Hillary was already mostly there. He does not deserve and will not get any changes to the Democratic Party process because he is not going to stick around & do the hard work and he is not grabbing an oar right now to help get our ship across the finish line. He did that to himself. I hope many of the young and inspired do stick around the Party. We need their energy, their heart and their ideas to build the party and lead it in the direction it needs to go. But the old man is toast and all the bits sent about him now are wasted. Lets just move on.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Schlemazel Khan: I’m mostly with you. But I do believe there is a high risk that a small number of his supporters will make a scene at the convention. I won’t be completely at ease until that’s over.

  58. 58.

    hovercraft

    Who cares Obama will campaign with Hillary in North Carolina on Tuesday, and Uncle Joe will campaign with her in Scranton PA on I believe Thursday. So Bernie can go take a flying fuck with the diehards who still believe a meteor is going to come from the sky, take out Hillary and make him the nominee. And no I don’t think he wishes she would die, but a meteor hitting the earth is as likely as him still becoming the nominee. He had earned himself a great deal of positive feelings and admiration from a lot of democrats ( me not so much what with all his talk about conservative uninformed voters). And then he turned into that guy at the bar who doesn’t know when to accept that you’re not interested, I don’t want you to buy me a drink, I don’t want to just get to know you better, I won’t give you my number, I don’t want your fucking number, just leave me the fuck alone.
    Flashback to the bad old days, sorry. He lost and won’t go away, yes losing is tough but you know going in that there is a chance you can lose, you state your case and accept the voters verdict. Being an asshole and yelling “you’ll regret this” makes you that asshole at the bar, and I have no patience for you. I don’t owe you anything. Now fuck off.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Anyway, hope the HRC/Sanders fight club has a fun evening.

    FWIW, I think we’re all still standing around waiting for the festivities to begin. How was your day?

  61. 61.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud:

    Has Trump filed his? I’d be curious about that.

    Last I read, only through May, and that release led to all those ’embarrassing’ questions about big sums going out to line items like DraperSterling Media, not to mention how much ‘donated’ Trump money was going straight back to Trump enterprises. Trump’s financial records will no doubt continue to be a source of great merriment news stories, but like any long-running professional grifter, his bookkeepers were prepared to exploit every grey area and obfuscate/delay/mislead investigation.

    Bernie’s a professional politician, not a professional grifter; his campaign is proving how much of difference there is between the two. As a long-time officeholder, he’s had to fill out financial forms and swear to their veracity for years & years… but since he was a back-bencher from a crappy little state who never attracted attention outside the crunchy-granola press, there wasn’t a lot of time or effort devoted to combing through every line of every declaration. That changed, now that he’s taking serious money from people all of the country, under the much stricter rules that apply to presidential candidates. And now it’s not just low-level bureaucrats or affiliated Democrats that want to see where every $27 donation has gone — there’s Republican oppo researchers, but more immediately dangerous, there’s lots of internet-enabled wannabe-Woodwards hungry for a line-by-line, sub-clause-by-sub-clause search.

    IMO, Bernie’s “tight-knit inner circle” (all four or five of them) figure that stalling is their best & only chance to avoid the harsh media spotlight at this sensitive point in his campaign. Once the Philadelphia convention is over & done — that’s less than 45 days away — they can start dribbling out the minimum boilerplate required, and hope that reporters will no longer be interested enough to agitate for more. And if there’s anything potentially ‘explosive’, well… no harm, no foul, amirite?

  63. 63.

    Technocrat

    @NonyNony:

    For real. I expected it, sort of, but I was still shocked at how quickly and completely Warren was un-personed. I mean, she went under the bus retroactively, as in “I never liked her!”.

  64. 64.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Baud: @Aimai:

    I understand what you are saying but I don’t see what goes on here as having any influence one way or the other on what happens at the convention. I’ll take the folks as they come; if they come to grab an oar all is good, if they come to set the place on fire they will not be warmly welcomed. But till that happens I am tired of discussing that candidates merits and demerits

  66. 66.

    trollhattan

    I thought I’d seen peak Bernsanity and then I saw this. There’s a cohort that’s gone full mental and dollars to donuts half vote for the orange peril.

  67. 67.

    agorabum

    For some strange reason, he decided that he would be more relevant by “taking it to the convention” to “contest” a vote he will clearly lose. And this would give him more influence.
    What did this? My guess is finishing in California. Giant crowds. Huge rallies. Which is what happens in the most populous state in the Union which has dozens of cities with more people than the entire population of Vermont. He loved the spotlight. And he’d keep it by going to the convention!
    But it was a dumb strategy. Because it counted on pretending that math doesn’t exist.

  69. 69.

    magurakurin

    @Baud:

    But I do believe there is a high risk that a small number of his supporters will make a scene at the convention.

    If they do they do. It will mostly reflect poorly on them. Clinton will soldier on even if the Bernbros ruin her party. She’s a professional and bigger than they are. It’s not personal, Sonny, it’s business.

  70. 70.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    I’d be really more than OK if we speak no more of this Sanders fellow.

    I’ve already put up one pro-Hillary, one anti-GOP, and one anti-Trump post today. Sanders’ limp ‘still too busy campaigning to find my financial records’ is actually news… if not big news, any more.

  71. 71.

    Emma

    Just as I start to think Aimai is going over the top, something happens to make me realize she’s right on the money.

  72. 72.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Baud:

    Has Trump filed his? I’d be curious about that.

    But that would be off track, given that there’s still a partial, semi-powdery horse skeleton to beat. How do we stop caring until it’s dust is strewn to all four corners of the earth by tradewinds?

    Jeez, you act like you’re bored with punching the dumb fucking juvenile hippies or something.

    Trump later. For now, we dine on BERNIE!!!!

  76. 76.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Aimai:
    When the “bullies” are gnats they don’t really pose a threat

    They have already been beaten into submission & only come out now when we talk about him

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I did it almost a month ago. He took it across the line with several comments basically attacking the other commenters.

  80. 80.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @greennotGreen: Um, since Nader wanted Bush to win in 2000, I don’t think that conversation would have ever happened:

    From August 2000:

    If California tips Green enough, Bush could win the state and the whole damn election.

    Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn’t be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.” Not that he actually thinks the man he calls “Bush Inc.” deserves to be elected: “He’ll do whatever industry wants done.” The rumpled crusader clearly prefers to sink his righteous teeth into Al Gore, however: “He’s totally betrayed his 1992 book,” Nader says. “It’s all rhetoric.” Gore “groveled openly” to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: “If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Anne Laurie:

    Sanders’ limp ‘still too busy campaigning to find my financial records’ is actually news… if not big news, any more.

    Uh, no. It’s no more news than what Ted Cruz thinks about “radical Islam”… oh wait, Ted Cruz is actually still a Senator who grilled the Homeland Security Secretary about bullshit today and remains steadfast in his desire to destroy Obama, assume a Republican trifecta, and turn this country into a theocratic oligarchy by being acclaimed the Republican replacement for Trump in November.

    Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination for President, believes in everything most of us here do and is basically just a 74 year-old idealist trying to get some progressive reforms in our platform….

    Yeah, keep fucking that chicken Anne Laurie. Till it can’t be fucked no more.

  85. 85.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
    I have posted that exact quote here, on FB and 2-3 other blogs. I think it helps, like smelling salts to those who have been ‘dinged’ but some are too far gone – they are sure it will be different THIS time

  87. 87.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Chyron HR:

    You sure do talk a lot of shit for someone so comically deranged that they think their LIFE IS AT RISK every time they post here.

    Oh, pitiful. Did you have one of those weird dreams where you think you had conversations with other people that you never really had, but you wake up still feeling mad at them? And they’re all like “Dude,WTF are you fucking talking about?”

    It’s ok, we’ve all been there.

  91. 91.

    Ian

    Green Mountain fiefdom

    I thought the disdain was for the people of New Hampshire? Or is it for the Kingdom of Massholes? I get so confused about how you New Englanders decide to place your pity tribal loyalties amongst yourselfs.

  100. 100.

    planetjanet

    @schrodinger’s cat: Of course, he is a millionaire. He is well past retirement age and it takes at least a million or two for a decent retirement income on your own. With both he and his wife in good paying jobs for so long, they are certain to have a nice nest egg that would make most Bernie fans have fits.

  102. 102.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @planetjanet:

    He is well past retirement age and it takes at least a million or two for a decent retirement income on your own.

    Quioi? At so many levels.

  104. 104.

    magurakurin

    @Major Major Major Major:

    You’re thinking of Hillary and her Palestinian baby blood baths.

    Yeah, my bad. It’s all so confusing.

    “Programs! Programs! Can’t keep the players straight without Programs!”

  105. 105.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: Funny, I’ve had more than my share of back-and-forth with him in years past, but I didn’t see anything terribly out of line recently. But you have the hammer, not me.

  109. 109.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: BiP? I’m glad he’s gone, personally. He backed down on attacking me after I forgot my usual fucking ladylike composure and let him have it, but he was getting really spittle-flecked unloading on some others.

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @magurakurin: Nope Carson’s mom has Alzheimer’s. So we can establish neurological disease in his family. It would explain a lot.

  117. 117.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Finally, all those Saturday nights spent watching PBS in my teenage years have paid off!

    ETA: I miss mcl, oddly, too – but *not* BiP. I’ll never miss him.

  120. 120.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Aimai: Said Obama’s birth certificate was fake and pretended he had PI’s who’d found the proof?

    Oh, wait, that was Trump. Who’s the actual nominee running against our candidate?

  121. 121.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: It was a weekend afternoon and he finally lost it and started personally attacking several commenters who were actually trying to honestly engage with him. He started making more and more frenzied, and frankly nuts, accusations and aspersions. In trying to honestly engage with him, I politely told him where the line was, asked him to dial it down, and then he tripled down and decided to direct it at me.

  125. 125.

    Luthe

    @schrodinger’s cat: How often do you clear your cache/clear the cache of individual apps? I find large cache sizes eat battery at a rapid clip. Cleaning them up really helps extend battery life.

  126. 126.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Aimai: Do you know what’s really fucked up? Hillary didn’t destroy Bernie Sanders’ once-valued reputation as a progressive icon; the GOP didn’t do it; Donald Trump didn’t do it; the obedient sock puppets of the news media didn’t do it. Bernie did this to himself, ironically enough. Now if he was a better man, it would almost be a tragedy, but Sanders isn’t, so it’s not.

  129. 129.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @planetjanet:

    Of course, he is a millionaire. He is well past retirement age and it takes at least a million or two for a decent retirement income on your own.

    Seriously. It’s no longer that difficult to become a millionaire.

    if I had listened to, oh, ANYBODY and had just save $50 bucks a paycheck in a nice mutual fund since I was 25, I’d be a millionaire, too, right now.

  134. 134.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @NotMax: Late night music threads seem to have died since he went away, but I had already told him he was a non-person to me before he got hammered.

  135. 135.

    trollhattan

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Totally O/T, do you have any post-Saab plans? Discovered none of the local indy shops are accepting “new patients” so I think it’s time, but am waaaay outta da loop. Want to retain my Eurotrash card if possible.

  138. 138.

    dmsilev

    @The Thin Black Duke: Yep. And the space he opened up is being taken up by better people. Elizabeth Warren, for one. She’ll probably end this year being much more of a “leader of the Progressive movement” than Sanders will.

  140. 140.

    burnspbesq

    What Sanders is trying to do to Murray is both shameful and shameless.

    Not even Cornwallis or Lee got to dictate the terms of his surrender. Why should Bernie?

  141. 141.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: Must have missed it, as I haven’t been around much on the weekends in June. Whatevs, your call, I guess. I usually have a pretty wide tolerance for the give-and-take. In the end it’s just pixels on a screen with pseudonymous weirdos and misfits.

  142. 142.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)

    @jl:

    No, he’s just trying to get his supporters to pay off his campaign debt before that debt starts coming out of his own pocket.

  143. 143.

    aimai

    I get that Bernie Sanders supporters are pissed, and hurt, that their candidate lost and that, in addition, he (and they) are not getting any respect and have turned into laughingstocks. But that is not the fault of people pointing out that Bernie is committing political malpractice and social suicide by being a massive jerk to everyone: Hillary’s voters, Hillary herself, and the entire Democratic Party. That’s the natural outcome of a guy who decided to run a vanity campaign aimed, supposedly, at “pushing the party left” and then thought he could play out the entire season without acting like a real candidate. Like a real candidate? Like someone who had to publish his tax records, account for all his donations, or take the heat with hostile questions from voters or the press.

    I am sick and tired of Bernie (and his supporters) Schroedinger’s Cat of a campaign. When they thought they were going to win then any bad behavior was excused because they thought they were in the majority of voters and deserved to win, then when they began realizing they were losing any bad behavior was excused because Bernie still had a point to make ideologically and anyone getting in the way of that point or platform or series of demands was accused of being a spoiler, anti unity, unfair to Bernie’s enthusiastic crowd, a corporate shill, a bourgeouis lover of capitalism, a stooge for the Clintons, etc…etc…etc… Now that Bernie is persisting in making a public fool of himself there are still Bernie dead enders who pretend that Bernie isn’t entirely responsible for the shambles his campaign has become–that its all somehow everyone else’s fault, anyone else’s fault, if they point and comment on the train wreck that is Bernie and his revolutionary bona fides.
    I get why people think that–if you loved Bernie you think he deserves special, kid glove, treatment.

    And I get why some members of my party wish we would all just avert our eyes and look away until Bernie has finished his temper tantrum. Because its embarrassing and annoying and lots of people were raised to duck when daddy gets angry and pisses himself after a prolonged drinking session. Or were raised to think it was their job to make everyone happy and comfortable and, after all, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and Bernie is just squeaking because he’s in need, or pitiful, or at any rate unoiled.

    But that’s not what I think–I think Bernie is behaving shamefully and he isn’t going to stop until enough people make it plain that they are sick of him,will not support him, and will actively turn on him. I don’t think its ok to run a fake political campaign where you demand other people behave like politicians and you excuse yourself and your unprofessional behavior on the grounds that you care more, or are more perfect, or more ideologically rigid. Its bad for the political system and its bad for the voters.

    Bernie ran as a democrat, in the democratic nominating primary. And he should be held accountable by the democrats for doing a piss poor job of it. If we don’t we risk having another asshole come in as spoiler in another four years.

  144. 144.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ella in New Mexico: As I think I said upthread, the Sanders disclosure form for 2014 does not seem to indicate that he’s close to a million.

    But then again he’s got that sweet, sweet government pension and free healthcare, so his retirement will be more comfortable than mine no matter what.

  146. 146.

    dogwood

    @Aimai:
    I’m with you 100%. The Sanders campaign has scared me a bit. For democrats there have always been written and unwritten rules about what is expected from a presidential candidate. Releasing tax returns, demonstrating sophisticated and broad knowledge about domestic and foreign policy, following the rules that are established, conceding when it’s over. Bernie broke every one of those rules, and likeTrump voters, his voters didn’t care. They demanded so little from him. In a year and a half he was too lazy to even change his stump speech. Demicrats have always had high standards for their presidential candidate. I don’t want to see us jettison something that I thought was at the core of who we are.

  147. 147.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @trollhattan: I have to put in a used left tail light assembly. New ones are back ordered. I think mine is newer than yours so parts should be around for a while – I hope. Volvo S60 T6 R-design AWD?

  148. 148.

    magurakurin

    @burnspbesq:

    What Sanders is trying to do to Murray is both shameful and shameless.

    You mean Patty Murray’s chair on HELP? Yeah. On that….HELL NO! Bernie can fuck right off on that. There is NO reason whatsoever that she should give up that position unless she wants to.

  151. 151.

    magurakurin

    @redshirt:

    Don’t you know the Ten Easy Steps to Become a Millionaire!?

    I didn’t go to any of Sanders’ rallies. Maybe there were booths there on that?

  153. 153.

    eclare

    @aimai: Regarding your last paragraph, have you heard anything about Democrats changing the rules to make sure any future candidates *are* Democrats? I’m all for that.

  154. 154.

    aimai

    @Ella in New Mexico: Bernie is actually running against OUR CANDIDATE. He is still running for the nomination even though he’s trying to have it both ways. I don’t see how you think that is ok–I mean, I do see why you think that is ok but I really, really, don’t. Bernie needs to suck it up and behave like a mensch and graciously concede and even more graciously endorse Hillary and campaign for her. Until he does that he is really behaving badly by any modern standard. Its inexcusable. I see you want to excuse it and you are always going to see Bernie as a poor, pitiful, victim of circumstance but he’s really not. He’s a grown man and I have the temerity to hold him to the same standards that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been held to during their political tenure. Run for office, handle your dissapointments like a grownup, commit to working with other people for the betterment of the country.

  156. 156.

    gwangung

    @Ella in New Mexico:

    Seriously. It’s no longer that difficult to become a millionaire.

    Seriously, if he didn’t have an asset base of at least $3 million, you’d have to conclude he’s so bad with his money that he really shouldn’t be president.

    (Which makes me curious why the hell is he not releasing the tax returns….)

  158. 158.

    magurakurin

    @Gin & Tonic:

    so his retirement will be more comfortable than mine no matter what.

    And mine for sure. I’m 8 years away from a $519 check a month from SSI and 11 years away from about 400 from the Japanese Pension system (still paying in). The portfolio is gonna have to really outperform in the next decade….

    so, yeah, fuck Bernie. Just for laughs. Just because.

  161. 161.

    J R in WV

    I miss Tommy, who caught a ton of shit from people who didn’t understand what was going on as he, Cole and others tried to upgrade the software this site runs on. After he did a good job to start with.

    I also miss McClaren. BiP is an ass whom no one should miss…

  162. 162.

    aimai

    @dogwood: Absolutely. Your point about unwritten rules is also very apt. I tell you–after watching Jeremy Corbyn refuse to work with his own Labour PMs, and then reject their expressed desire for him to step down, I have gone from being OK with Bernie as a presidential candidate (one for whom I would happilly have voted) to being utterly relieved he won’t be our nominee. Because you can see what an intransigent, incompetent, proudly iconoclastic politician can accomplish in office when he can’t get along with his own party: exactly nothing but the destruction of his party and, ultimately, his country and his voters. The thought of Bernie in the Oval Office, pissing all over the Democratic Senators and House Members who are not pure enough for him, gives me the shakes. And ditto for Bernie in charge of a Committee like the one he’s trying to take from Patty Murray. He simply can’t work for or with anyone else at this point and didn’t we have enough of the egomaniacs in the Democratic Senate who spent their time backstabbing Obama?

  163. 163.

    northquirk

    @aimai:

    Delurking just to say I wholeheartedly agree! On another thread, someone made a point that I also think is really accurate – BS saw Obama get elected as a young senator and become a great president. Because BS is chock full of white male privilege, he assumed that he too could become president, but only better that Obama b/c BS still has progressive purity!

  166. 166.

    aimai

    @gwangung: The simple answer is: because he has something to hide. That’s all. It doesn’t matter what–if he didn’t he’d have released them. Its either that he has more money than he feels looks good to his followers, or Jane’s dealings with Burlington College are murky and possibly criminal, or he never gave any money to charity, or something petty. But whatever it is we can say for certain that Bernie is ashamed of it. Or he would have released them.

  167. 167.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Ella in New Mexico: Bored, mostly. And no, I can’t really tell what you’re saying. I get that your opinion is that we shouldn’t be talking about Sanders because we can be talking about Trump, but we’re just commenters on a blog. We’re a dime a dozen and you can find plenty of us talking about Trump elsewhere, or even these exact same people (myself included) talking about Trump, on this blog, right now!

    Now, given that I know all that, and I know that you know all that, the mystery to me is why you’re hanging around in this thread.

  168. 168.

    Jeffro

    @Mnemosyne: I am going to miss that wise man.

    On a slightly related noted, relatives from Montana are visiting us and much to my surprise (given past political discussions) they are very much against Trump. As my 40-something cousin put it, “Trump says things even my kid knows are unacceptable…he’s for one thing one minute, and for the opposite the next minute…he’s really only looking out for himself.”

    Oh and my cousin also says Hillary sounds rational and at least would know what she’s doing. I nearly fell over.

    So it’s not “data”, but hey, a good anecdote beats “data” anytime!

  170. 170.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J R in WV: We will have agree to disagree about Tommy. I found him to be racist, sexist, and anti-Semitc. He did take shit over the site upgrade that he did not deserve, and I put a lot of that on Cole. A regular commenter here should never have been given the role of intermediary. Alain the site fixer has handled that job quite well and should have had it from the get-go.

  171. 171.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jeffro:

    So it’s not “data”, but hey, a good anecdote beats “data” anytime!

    Hello, fellow liberal arts major.

  172. 172.

    aimai

    @Jeffro: I think the most interesting thing about this election is going to be seeing what it means when a political figure who is 100 percent “known” by the public, and hated by half the public, suddenly get the chance to reintroduce herself against the backdrop of a character like Trump who is unselling himself and the Republican party every second.

    I have a sister in law who voted for Bush once (lifelong Republican) and I believe she ended up voting for Kerry and then Obama. Midway through the Bush years she came to me and said “you were right and I was wrong about Bush.” People do learn, and unlearn their old beliefs, when certain choices become stark enough. And I’m wondering whether the very virulence of the anti Hillary attacks (that she’s a murderer, a closeted lesbian, a deliberate abandoner of the people in Benghazi) are going to crumble when desperate Republican moderates are forced to take a hard look at her as a candidate? Not a lot of them, but just enough.

  175. 175.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He did take shit over the site upgrade that he did not deserve

    He greatly oversold his skill level and then made the fundamental mistake of not listening to (and sometimes actively belittling) the desires of the user base.

  176. 176.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes, the “we are internetting wrong” thing. That is one of the reasons he was not the best front man. The “god mode” thing was another.

  178. 178.

    Mnemosyne

    @aimai:

    Or he thinks he shouldn’t have to follow the rules that everyone else does and is indignant that he’s being treated like just another politician and not the special snowflake he knows he is.

  181. 181.

    FlyingToaster

    @Ian: Clearly you’re missing the scorecard:

    People’s Republic of Massachusetts (Bay State, Massholes)
    New Hamsters Free State
    Green Mountain Fiefdom of Vermont
    Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
    ConneCt – i -cut, goddamit (Nutmeggers)
    Downeast Kingdom of Maine (governed by a walking bowling jacket, alas)

    @Major Major Major Major: Hostile, much? You could fit all of us, and NY and NJ, in your state.

  184. 184.

    Jeffro

    @aimai: I was just floored that my cousin put it so clearly: Trump’s constant stream of hateful, mocking, doofus statements would get him in hot water if he was 10 – why on earth would we accept that in our President? The comment about Hillary knowing what she’s doing, that was just the cherry on the sundae.

  187. 187.

    burnspbesq

    @FlyingToaster:

    governed by a walking bowling jacket, alas

    You get what you pay for, and Maine pays its Guv less than the IRS pays a GS-13 revenue agent.

  188. 188.

    gwangung

    @Mnemosyne: If he feels that way, tough. He should be treated like any other politician, because he acted like very other politician, ethical lapses and all.

  189. 189.

    NotMax

    @redshirt

    That neither Data nor Lore could not flip open a fingertip and interface directly, like a USB, with the ship computer always stood out like a sore thumb as a major deficiency in design.

  191. 191.

    Jeffro

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Hello, fellow liberal arts major.

    And yet, some sort of “data” pointed you to that very nearly correct conclusion…O the irony…

  192. 192.

    Ruckus

    @aimai:
    Perfectly stated.
    I’ve reached my limit with him as well. He’s just begging for table scraps now. It unbecoming for someone who should know better. I get that this is his last hurrah, at his age he could stay in the senate for another decade but he’d be as effective as he’s been for the last 25 yrs, but if he had any chance of being noticed, a run for president was it. And he lost, and rather significantly. He’s damaging his brand, such as it ever was and making himself look rather small and insignificant. Which I suppose is his calling in life, given all the evidence.

  193. 193.

    Felonius Monk

    @burnspbesq:

    You get what you pay for, and Maine pays its Guv less than the IRS pays a GS-13 revenue agent.

    However, in the case of the Inhuman Carbuncle that currently holds that office, he is overpaid by at least a factor of 10.

  194. 194.

    FlyingToaster

    @redshirt: Tee Hee Hee Hee.

    (Actually, I really did laugh; I haven’t been up to Maine in about 10 years, but I do remember what a Mardens is).

  195. 195.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jeffro:

    I strongly suspect that my Reagan-worshipping older brother will be inking his vote for Hillary this year — at worst, he’ll go for Johnson. Because he’s conservative, but he’s not a fookin’ idjit.

  196. 196.

    glory b

    @different-church-lady: Waved away racism and sexism as “distractions?”

    Said that black voters in the south were meaningless?

    Put on the platform committee the only person to call Obama the “n” word in public, to the media?

  198. 198.

    Mnemosyne

    @Gin & Tonic:

    He greatly oversold his skill level and then made the fundamental mistake of not listening to (and sometimes actively belittling) the desires of the user base.

    C’mon, man, when are you going to quit with the Bernie-bashing?!

  199. 199.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @agorabum:

    My guess is finishing in California. Giant crowds. Huge rallies.

    This. We’re seeing this in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn, who is not a terrible person, but has terrible back-office people, and he sees crowds show up for him and thinks it’s okay to plough on even though outside the bubble it’s really not helping at a time when effectiveness triumphs over ideology.

    “Support” is a weirdly deceptive beast. It’s an orders-of-magnitude thing: A 10,000-person crowd feels like you rule the fucking planet, when in a cohort of millions it’s change down the back of the sofa.

  202. 202.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @northquirk:

    That was my comment. Note that Bernie refuses to even say President Obama’s name, or give him any credit. Erasure and dismissiveness of our great president. That’s why I never felt the Bern. That’s the tell of what’s driving Bernie, and his 50 year old belief system just happened to catch on with a bunch of kids and older folks who want to COSplay the 60s, and why the worst of the Berniebros are racist and sexist assholes too. Now, we see him like his colleagues have seen him the past 30 years – an obstructionist full of shit pain in the ass with no class or grace. I’d enjoy seeing him humiliated in some meaningful way.

  204. 204.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @pseudonymous in nc: Corbyn does seem to have support at the party member level. With Labour, that matters. I have no idea how it will shake out, but his lack of support in the PLP does not equal lack of support in the Party.

  205. 205.

    smith

    @Omnes Omnibus: I saw in the Guardian that Labour has gained 60,000 new members just in the last week. Apparently there are a lot of Brits wanting to participate in that particular leadership fight.

  207. 207.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Omnes Omnibus: I just re-joined Labour as a full party member after a relatively long absence in order to make a sliver of a difference there. I know that I’m not alone there. Politics is the art of the fucking possible, and the UK needs an effective centre-left opposition.

    As a friend said today, both major parties are reverting to the stereotypical versions of themselves right now: politics with its bare arse hanging out. The Tories are plotting against one another in panelled drawing rooms on the basis of personality and favours, as if it’s an Oxford Union election; Labour is having a massive kerfuffle in public about ideological purity and entryism and oh ffs.

  208. 208.

    NonyNony

    @Omnes Omnibus: Reports are that a whole lot of Labour voters who previously didn’t care to join the party and become members have changed their minds and are joining now specifically to get rid of Corbyn.

    UK politics is weird. Corbyn won the leadership with a tiny percentage of overall Labour votes because only paid-up members of the Party can vote in leadership elections and the UK far left apparently organized to join the party and stuff the ballot box. If a significant portion of more moderate Labour voters do the same thing to get rid of him then he’ll be out. I don’t envy the Brits their politics at the moment.

  209. 209.

    Miss Bianca

    @aimai: Weird how Corbyn and Sanders seem to be cut from the same piece of cloth, ain’t it? They’re both backbenchers who weren’t ready for prime time, they got unexpectedly elevated to prominence, and they’ve both bought their own hype – based on accolades for their rhetoric, not their actual deeds – they refuse to get the hell out of the way *or* follow, even tho’ they’ve demonstrated that they *can’t lead*. And they’re dragging the causes they say they believe in *backwards*.

  210. 210.

    Aleta

    @aimai: Here’s a little murk, especially by the end: (Dec. 23 2015) Catholic church takes loss in loan settlement with Burlington College. http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/december/catholic-church-takes-loss-loan-settlement-burlington-college
    However, no apparent relation to Bernie Sander’s financial disclosure forms.

    Unrelated, but I wonder if Sanders was lying when she described her $200,000 severance pay from Burlington in 2011 as sabbatical pay that she was owed after 7 years. I don’t know about all colleges, but from the little I know, and assuming administrators at BU are non-union, administrators wouldn’t get sabbatical pay. (Except for ex,. professors who move to dean and then back again.) I haven’t seen anything about her ever teaching– just one year as interim president at Goddard in 1996 and then president at BU beginning 2004. (And no lower level university administrator jobs before landing either presidency, which also seems unusual.) Maybe I’m wrong though.

    From the above article, after paying Sanders $200,000 severance in 2011, BU was unable to ever pay any interest or principal at all on its loan from the Diocese.

  211. 211.

    trollhattan

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Funny you should mention, local dealer has a V60 T5 sport wagon in Swedish flag blue that looks pretty sweet. Not much inventory overall, don’t think the brand has much traction here.

  212. 212.

    FlyingToaster

    @redshirt: Of all the levels and permutations of wrong to take place…

    Our Building 19 (the Masshole’s Mardens equivalent) went away years ago. So did Goodmans. Squeezed out by Ocean State Job Lots and Christmas Tree Stores.

    And I remember the three-way-mishegas that let to both his first and second elections.

    If Trump wins, LePage is going to DC.

  213. 213.

    dogwood

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    If labor wants ideological purity then Corbyn will continue to stumble on. If they decide they want to win elections, they’ll eventually vote him out. There’s always a segment of the ideological purists who really don’t want to win. It’s their own form of elitism. There’s probably a segment who are afraid of winning too because then they’d have to govern.

  214. 214.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @pseudonymous in nc: When I was in London in 1984, the SDP seemed so hopeful. As a politics student, i got to visit each party’s HQ. The Tories were appalling. The Liberals were nice but their HQ was like a threadbare club. Labour was buzzing but too much. The SDP seemed to bet it right. OTOH, were I were a Brit then, I would have been sympatico with the SDP but I would have stayed Labour.

  216. 216.

    Miss Bianca

    @J R in WV: I know, right? Now I’ll never get called a “pygmy skink”, which I thought was one of mcl’s more inventive invectives…

  217. 217.

    northquirk

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yes! It was your comment and thank you for writing it! I agree with you and think it’s both really insightful and too overlooked with BS. He’s mediocre in so many ways…mediocre white folks prefer to erase and dismiss achievements of people of color (and women, and other people who are discriminated against) because they can’t understand how ‘those people’ could be successful. But obviously, you already know that! Thank you again for your insight!

  220. 220.

    Mnemosyne

    @NonyNony:

    UK politics is weird. Corbyn won the leadership with a tiny percentage of overall Labour votes because only paid-up members of the Party can vote in leadership elections and the UK far left apparently organized to join the party and stuff the ballot box.

    Funny, here in the US we just spent several months being told it was unfair and undemocratic to say that people should sign a piece of paper declaring themselves party members in order to choose the leader of the Democratic Party, and here you guys were making people pay for the same privilege!

  222. 222.

    NonyNony

    @Mnemosyne: For the record I’m ‘merican – Ohio to be exact. I’ve got friends in the UK that like to talk about how ridiculous their politics are though. I always thought ours were worse, but with the ongoing Brexit shit show I’ve had to admit that they win – at least for now.

  223. 223.

    trollhattan

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Kid is now 14 and weighing in on what the/her (as if) next ride should be. I may take her shopping this weekend to experience the ghoulish joy that is the world of car salesdrones. Maybe the Mini dealership, they should have at least a couple manuals.

  224. 224.

    dogwood

    @NonyNony:
    Rupert Murdoch is responsible for a lot of the nonsense in British politics. His control of media is overwhelming in many ways. Here his minions control the Republican Party, but democrats don’t have to kowtow to him to get elected.

  225. 225.

    Susan K of the tech support

    I so want to step back from it all and remove the Junior Senator from my mind. I say to myself, Nope, not going to think about him. And then I do. I have, over the last few days, used this twitter search: (bernie OR sanders) endorse but it mostly makes me mad. So I came here to share it with you (because why? Now I think of it, it’s not a way to spread the joy).

    I confess to liking the way that Joe “BFD” Biden is spilling the beans, boxing in the Bern, caging the bird and putting stones on the Go board (or the stop board).

  227. 227.

    trollhattan

    @Susan K of the tech support:
    Much (deserved ) lamentation about how much we’ll miss our Kenyan and not nearly enough about losing Handsome Joe. Can’t recollect a more effective second chair, in no small part because the two seen to genuinely connect.

  228. 228.

    Aleta

    I’m still grateful that Bernie chose not to run as an Independent from the start. I give him the benefit of the doubt that he wanted to avoid doing as Nader did. (He may regret that now, but if he does he’s pretending away the DP’s huge contribution to his success.)

  230. 230.

    Anne Laurie

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Picky pedant note, since Major+ brought it up: Cosplay is short for costume play, it’s a portmanteau word not an acronym. From what I understand, the Japanese language uses packed-together contractions like this as often as us native English-speakers use homonym/homophone jokes, and they’ve kept the habit for English-language borrowings as well, because dropping random English words into the conversation is as chic as dropping French words into English used to be!

    Ganguru style, for instance — there was a fashion fad, some years ago, for young women to get deep tans (still exotic in Japan) and then wear tons of very pale eye makeup & frosted lipstick, because that’s how they interpreted ‘gangster girls’ (Yakuzu molls) would look. That’s exactly what Trump’s weird tanning-bed makeup always reminds me of; there was a sarcastic Japanese term meaning ‘reverse panda’ but I haven’t been able to track it down!

  231. 231.

    Anne Laurie

    @FlyingToaster:

    If Trump wins, LePage is going to DC.

    But if (when) Trump loses, has LePage gotten enough of his stink on him to put off the low-info Maine voters in the next gubernatorial election?

    My one great positive hope about Trump’s campaign is that its implosion will expose some of his scummier political “associates” badly enough to turf them out of office, at least for a while. Christie had already written his own political death sentence, but if watching them hang too assiduously off Trump’s sleeve can scare some previous LePage or Scott Walker voters into taking a harder look at their guy, maybe Trump’s run won’t have been an unmitigated negative.

  234. 234.

    WarMunchkin

    @Anne Laurie: Not familiar with reverse panda, maybe gyaku-gyaaru? (reverse gal)? Anyway, pasokon (personal computer) and the brand famimart (family mart) are good examples of the contraction pattern in loanwords.

  235. 235.

    Donut

    @magurakurin:

    Uh, sometimes that’s not pretend pride. Some kids have a bit more trouble getting there than others, and it’s a genuine accomplishment to get them to shit in the right place. My oldest was what my wife and I called a “saver.” Once she figured out that we wanted her to stop shitting her pants, she simply decided that she didn’t want to shit in the toilet. And then that morphed into not shitting at all. She was capable of withholding completely for days until we gave her milk of magnesia. This went on for months of potty-training, while our son was a newborn, which was not coincidental. Duh. In my case this is a kid with a near-genius IQ. So, I’m not bragging, just saying it ain’t about smarts. Bernie is a saver and he is jealous of his rival, just like my kid was.

  243. 243.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @aimai:

    Bernie is actually running against OUR CANDIDATE.

    Just because he says he is doesn’t mean he is an actual candidate anymore.

    And my beef is not with Sanders because SANDERS DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE. My criticism here is of the people who simply cannot let go of this obsessive fixation, this grudge against him and even though it’s time we focus on the real enemies can spend 12 hours and 242 posts on saying the same, exact things, over and over and over and over about a guy show DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE. Like I said, he’s a powdery skeleton of a dead horse who has all but stated he’s toast himself. I don’t need to hold his head under the water ONE MORE TIME until he cries uncle. He’s a sad chariacature of himself at this point, and while it would be cool if he had done the past few weeks differently, I don’t need his complete and total submission–hell, his annihilation to know HE’S OVER.

    Meanwhile, I’m really afraid the fucking Republican running the FBI is going to try and destroy someone who could be one of the best Presidents this country has had in a long time. That we still have MaCarthyites in Congress who are working 24/7 to try and ruin her chances by abusing REAL POWER. I’m concerned the monied powers that be in the Republican Darkness will find a way to sink Trump’s ship and place a plausible candidate in to replace him, pulling this close vote in their direction.

    I want her to win, and I can’t waste my energy on a thrice daily, circular back-pat “Sander’s is SCUM” hate fest. It’s boring and it’s petty and everything that could be said has been said and beneath me or anyone of quality here at this point.

    So THAT’s why I mock people like you in these threads. Just trying to keep it real.

Comments are closed.