Beginning to think Trump won't release his tax returns because Putin claims him as a dependent.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) July 22, 2016
Josh Marshall, who has been on fire during this primary season, IMO, has a must-read piece up at TPM on the ties between Trump and Putin. An excerpt that summarizes the case for closer scrutiny:
To put this all into perspective, if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump’s direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin’s policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. And yet Putin is not the CEO of an American corporation. He’s the autocrat who rules a foreign state, with an increasingly hostile posture towards the United States and a substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons. The stakes involved in finding out ‘what’s going on’ as Trump might put it are quite a bit higher.
There is something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence for a financial relationship between Trump and Putin or a non-tacit alliance between the two men. Even if you draw no adverse conclusions, Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin. That’s simply not something that can be waved off or ignored.
Marshall explores the strong circumstantial evidence that suggests a Putin-Trump connection, including the fact that Trump owes his recovery from multiple bankruptcies to infusions of cash from Putin-connected oligarchs, Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort’s strong connection to the Kremlin and the fact that the Trump people’s sole involvement in the GOP platform was a pro-Putin intervention.
Marshall is sticking to publicly available facts, so he doesn’t address in depth the suspiciously timed Wikileaks DNC doc dump, which exposed emails that were obtained by a Russia-connected hacker and emphasize Democratic discord that Trump is playing to the hilt. But that’s one of the clearest signs yet that Putin is trying to manipulate the U.S. election, just as he supports right-wing nationalist movements in Europe to weaken the Western alliance that keeps his revanchist ambitions in check.
It remains to be seen whether the hardcore Sandersites will play the useful idiots here; I don’t think there are enough of them to swing the election, but it’s clear that is the aim of the wingnuts who are playing up the “Bernie wuz robbed!” aspect of the Wikileaks story, including Trump, who has been tweeting like a madman about it.
And maybe this is just me being paranoid, but this latest blatant attempt to divide the Democrats and advance Trump’s prospects explains a longer-term trend I used to find puzzling but no longer do: a weird affinity for the autocrat Putin among the fringier left in the U.S. I’ve seen it in the crackpot corners of the web for far longer than Trump has been a credible candidate: a drive to paint Putin as a victim of U.S. aggression. I used to write it off as individual crackpottery, but maybe Putin has been playing a long game.
FWIW, I don’t think Trump is directly taking orders from Putin. I think Trump is a vain and silly man, and Putin is playing him for a fool. But while Trump is certainly a clown, Putin’s interference in U.S. politics is serious shit. It would be swell if the Very Serious Persons in the Beltway would spend 1/100th of the effort they’ve expended on Secretary Clinton’s email server on the ongoing attempts of a hostile foreign government to manipulate a U.S. election.
amk
murkan idol
electedselected by a russian. ironic.Shalimar
I don’t think Putin has to give Trump orders. All he has to do is tell Trump how wonderful he is and then ask if there is anything Trump can do to help out with X little problem.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Good for Josh – the media is sniffing around this now. Manafort had to go on defense this morning and call the Putin connection “absurd”, so given what we know about his and Trump’s credibility, it’s whatever the opposite of absurd is. Plus, Melania sounds like Natasha Fatale, making the whole thing seem entirely plausible. This reminds me of when Josh did the groundbreaking work around the US attorney firings. Too bad the Berners are being useful idiots.
Kwame
Progressives, who once stood against McCarthysim, are now engaging it by slandering anybody associated with WikiLeaks, Snowden, Assange or Greenwald as Russian agents.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kwame:
Yet, the dump came right before the DNC convention. How conveeeeeeeeeeenient.
Kwame
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Are you now, or have you ever been, opposed to the party establishment?
amk
oh boy, the troll is back.
BC, AL has been pretty useless on this front. How about you?
Brett
I don’t think Trump is “taking orders” as well, but it would not even slightly surprise me if he was deliberately down-playing any attacks on Putin or Russia because his business might need more Russian capital down the line. Trump’s mixed business and politics the whole time, and this would be no exception – and given that Trump’s “business model” has been finding ever more elusive sources of cash to bail out his business incompetence, this would fit to a T.
OzarkHillbilly
So now we know who told the Donald to run, and it wasn’t Bill after all.
D58826
The media/Starr spent 100 million bucks on investigating Whitewater and it’s related ‘scandals’. Even if there had been illegal activity on the Clintons part in the Whitewater deal it was far less consequential than a possible link between ‘old little hands’ and Putin.
And lets not even get started on Benghazi and the e-mails.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kwame:
Nothing says McCarthyism quite like not wanting Putin to have his preferred candidate withdrawing from NATO.
Hunter Gathers
Righties love Putin ’cause he wrestles bears while shirtless. A certian percentage of the left loves him because he gave asylum to the Hero/Traitor/Douchebag Snowden.
D58826
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: First wife was named Ivana and daughter is Ivanka. Seems to have a liking for the ‘Ivans’ i.e. a nick name for Russians from at least WWII.
Kwame
@Hunter Gathers:
As George Orwell said, in a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Snowden revealed the truth.
OzarkHillbilly
@D58826: I thought ‘Boris’ was the preferred generic Russian name.
D58826
@Kwame: Really really simple way for ‘old little hands’ to shut the story/speculation down – release all of his financial records for the past 30 years. If there is nothing to the story then his records will be clean (well relatively speaking since financial wheelers and deals probably have a few iffy things out there)
Shalimar
@Hunter Gathers: Plenty of people on the left still love Snowden. I would bet that none of them love Putin, asylum or not.
BudP
I’m old enough to remember when the Bushies claimed Bill spent a week in Moscow during a college trip and that should invalidate him.
Betty Cracker
@Kwame: I haven’t called Wikileaks Russian agents, but the hacker they got the info from almost certainly was. I do think Wikileaks, like you, quite frequently falls into the “useful idiots” category.
@amk: I’m afraid I’ll have to be “useless” if “useful” is defined as banning assholes for having stupid opinions.
Shalimar
@Kwame: So you’re a black man upset Democrats keep picking non-POC leaders, but also a big defender of Russia. Nice combination.
Kwame
@Shalimar:
I am against American Empire.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker
Good.
OzarkHillbilly
@D58826: Marshall said Trump started getting attached to the Russians about 10 years ago when he found he could no longer get loans from any US banks.
msdc
As luck would have it, a couple of days ago I was poking around on Lawyers, Guns & Money and I stumbled across this comment, in one of the first posts they ever wrote:
Or to stop “appropriating” Chinese food and the noble cultural legacy of twerking. But of course, the stakes are much higher than that.
I don’t think it rises to the level of actual propaganda or ratfucking (a certain local troll excepted). Most of them don’t need the added incentive. There is a fringe of the left that is just as desperate for their own Dear Leader to put things right and purge the unbelievers. They’re our Tea Party, and we need to beat them every time or else go the way of the GOP.
D58826
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve seen that also but ‘Ivan’ sticks in my mind from WWII usage. Google search says it was a German usage
MomSense
Franklin Foer is also doing good work on the ties between Trump and the Oligarchs. That sounds like the worst boy band ever.
Lit3Bolt
Wait, Balloon Juice is important enough to have Putinbots? Who knew?
msdc
@Shalimar:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Bupalos
Hi fellow liberals, my name is demetrius jackson-schwartsman and I am concerned about various emails. I feel like I should just vote for trump, at least he’s very honest and I suppose we do have to admit he’ll support israel.
amk
@Betty Cracker: Yes, it is, especially if more than half the thread is hijacked. For the troll, it’s #missionaccomplished.
karen marie
@Kwame: So where is the RNC or Trump dump?
Hunter Gathers
@Shalimar: Then why do the hardcore leftists that I know watch Russia Today so damned much? It’s not like it’s Russian produced propaganda, right?
D58826
@Bupalos:
aimai
@Shalimar: Right.
I think people are forgetting just what politics really is, and how it gets done, in the world of the Tsars and the Politburo and the KGB. In the real world you don’t have to give orders to a political figure directly. You just arrange it so that the advice he is given is given by people you control, or that the information he is given is the informatio you want him to have. In Memoirs of a Revolutionary Prince Kropotkin, remembering his early childhood as a page in the court of the then Tsar, remembers that everyone knew who to bribe (the Tsar’s valet) to get special requests approved. Not an important official. Not a man of high birth. Just the first and last man the Tsar saw on a daily basis, while dressing and undressing.
This is not, in fact, a huge and unlikely conspiracy theory. Its quite simple and direct, really. The only question we should ask ourselves is why it hasn’t happened so blatantly before. Because Putin and Russia have the money to do this–its chump change. And its clearly in their interest to do it.
Iowa Old Lady
The pie filter is a wonderful thing.
Either that or ignore it .
Or, third option, engage if it amuses you.
Poopyman
No, Betty, you’re not being paranoid. Since it’s likely that Trump is leveraged to his eyeballs with the Russians, I’m betting that Putin is just waiting for the right moment to call in his chips.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hunter Gathers: is Ed Schultz stil on RT? I was always ambivalent about him. I think his heart’s in the right place, but his head is in seven or eight of the wrong ones at once.
Tripod
@Lit3Bolt:
Low barrier to posting makes it less of a headache than trying to manage astroturf accounts at the GOS.
The Other Chuck
Hey guys, the troll only takes over the thread because of your righteous insistence on responding to them. If you want to keep BJ useful, maybe just fucking stop it? Let me put it in perspective: When you enable the trolls, YOU ARE TROLLING.
gogol's wife
“It would be swell if the Very Serious Persons in the Beltway would spend 1/100th of the effort they’ve expended on Secretary Clinton’s email server on the ongoing attempts of a hostile foreign government to manipulate a U.S. election.”
Right on, Betty.
MattF
One other thing to note is that Putin is, by any standard, extremely wealthy. This means that Trump will admire him, just because.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
Whew! Thought I was about to go the way of the Dodo bird.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: If a quick glance at DailyKos is any proof then, yes, they are going to go the full useful idiot. Some of them are already attacking former associates, like hardcore Bernie supporters, for being insufficiently wound up about the supposed DNC perfidy. Nice to see people who were horrible to me get a taste of what it feels like when their own side turns against them and starts attacking them as compromised dnc lovers.
lgerard
Retired General Michael T. Flynn, who spoke at the RNC, has also been accused of being Putin curious as well
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: You’ve been posting here long enough that you should be aware of Cole’s philosophy on banning. Agree with it or not (I tend to agree), it’s still Cole’s blog and his rules.
debbie
@amk:
What, you can’t ignore them?
Betty Cracker
@amk: Actual hate speech and aggressive harassment of fellow commenters are ban-worthy offenses, IMO, whereas vigorously championing stupid political opinions is not. But feel free to contact Cole. Ultimately, it is up to him.
MomSense
@Hunter Gathers:
I think righties like Putin because he is homophobic and persecuted the LGBT community.
Also too this whole anti establishment thing is fucking idiotic. It is just as idiotic as the Repubkucans who hate government so much they want to be part of it. If you support a candidate for President, that person is running to be the head of the establishment.
I just don’t have time for this kind of idiocy. We have a megalomaniac sociopath with Russian mob/oligarch backing who wants to round people up and deport them.
Iowa Old Lady
@gogol’s wife: The Putin/Trump connection is just so bizarre that when I talk about it, I feel like a conspiracy theorist. It’ll be interesting to see if the story has legs.
debbie
In regard to Putin, this Frontline documentary is very enlightening. The man’s a monster.
bystander
@Bupalos: Welcome! You’re just what the site needs. What a breath of fresh air.
Mike Adamson
While Russian mischief is deplorable the fact remains that the leaked emails weren’t authored in Russia. The desire to unify against Trump is commendable, indeed necessary, but primary shenanigans should be acknowledged and rectified for next time. Just because the Republicans are warped beyond reason doesn’t mean that the Democrats shouldn’t work toward a tidy ship IMO.
Fair Economist
The ONLY platform issue Trump got involved in was insisting Putin be allowed free rein to intervene in adjacent countries – notably greatly at odds with Republican orthodoxy. He didn’t get involved in immigration issues, didn’t care about trade issues, and didn’t do squat about entitlements. On not one issue that he’s talked about in the campaign did he get involved. Only in permitting Putin to intervene to suppress democratic government.
You are wrong, Betty. He’s taking orders.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lgerard: Rudi Giuliani also admires/envies the way Vladimir is always standing on some metaphorical balcony. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere he keeps a picture of his saggy head photoshopped onto that shirtless horseback picture
dr. luba
@Shalimar:
Perhaps not love him, as such (unlike the right), but swallow his propaganda hook, line and sinker. Putin has spent many years and millions or dollars suborning the far right and left in Europe and North America. Thus you end up with The Nation spewing the Putin party line on Ukraine when the revolution came. (Of course, they also loved Stalin back in the day, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch.)
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
There aren’t.
Ninety to ninety-five percent of the people who voted for Bernie in the primary are people like me, people who now fully intend to vote for Hillary in the general – many of us enthusiastically. The Sanders dead-enders will be no more of a factor this November than the so-called PUMA’s were in 2008.
MomSense
@Fair Economist:
Well Trump is probably too stupid to know the issues but Manafort isn’t.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, it is. I am just pointing out the blind and rigid ‘policy’ of all. Pretty much useless if your blog is a trollfest.
@debbie: I normally do. Except with srv, the blog’s permanent idiot. mea culpa.
gf120581
@JGabriel: Precisely. Their volume vastly exceeds their numbers.
Betty Cracker
@Mike Adamson: I agree, but so far, I haven’t seen anything actionable in those emails. Some officials were speculating about underhanded strategies, but were they doing so in their official capacity or just shooting the shit with fellow Clinton supporters? Were any tactics mentioned actually carried out via DNC resources? Honest questions: I really don’t know. If yes, certainly, that should be addressed.
amk
@JGabriel: ^5. them is the reality.
Fair Economist
@Lit3Bolt:
Lefty blogs are the left’s version of thinktanks. Remember the whole “strengthen social security” business started with Atrios. Yes, we’re important enough. Also remember Putin has a LOT of money; it’s hardly a serious burden for him.
msdc
@aimai:
Because no major political figure has ever been so bankrupt, intellectually or financially, as to depend on Putin for information.
Until…
John
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Ugh, don’t bring Melania into it. That’s disgustingly xenophobic. The Trump/Russia links are a serious issue that should be investigated. But they have nothing to do with Trump’s wife.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: The shenanigans seem to be limited to an exchange of emails in which one person suggested ratfvcking Sanders and the other said “good idea but the boss says no.” What am I missing?
gogol's wife
Oh, but the NYTimes Sunday Review section has on its cover “Hillary behind the mask” or something like that, written by the “liberal” columnist Gail Collins.
Let’s unmask the Putin guy before we worry about Hillary, okay?
amk
@Betty Cracker: You should see a few threads down below on that front.
Cole’s blog mebbe, but then, as regulars, can we kick his stupid butt on this?
gogol's wife
@dr. luba:
You make a good point. If the Nation endorses Trump, we have our smoking Kalashnikov.
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly:
Makes you wonder how so many voters could consider him trustworthy when US lenders don’t consider him creditworthy. But then looking at the GOTea field for 2016 and there’s not so much difference between them on that point.
gogol's wife
@amk:
My strategy is to ignore troll and post as many on-topic comments as I can, even if they’re vacuous. At least they keep the conversation on point.
Hunter Gathers
@MomSense:
None of the people he wants to deport are Republican voters. Therefore, it’s not beyond the pale. Republican voters are the only ‘Real’ Americans that exist. I know that because the press tells me so. Black people are frightening, Hispanics, Asians and people from India are job stealers and Muslims want to kill all of us. The only True Americans are barely literate White people who wallow in their own ignorance and hate anyone who doesn’t attend their church.
Shawn in Showme
@The Other Chuck:
Trolls are the only posters that are willing to argue on a regular basis. And there are always going to be personality types on message boards that gravitate to argument. Fights can be entertaining. And message board fights are a lot safer than fights in real life.
scottinnj
To use Trump’s favorite phrasing it would be awesome if someone like Elizabeth Warren got onto the Russian connections not to accuse, but ‘just asking questions I hear people are asking’.
Dog Dawg Damn
@The Other Chuck: MAKE BALLON JUICE USEFUL AGAIN!
Fair Economist
@Emma:
The need to discredit Hillary so Putin gets a good return on his investment in Trump.
gogol's wife
@scottinnj:
There is so much more evidence for this than for birtherism — and they covered that, didn’t they?
MomSense
@Hunter Gathers:
I kept hearing the pundits talk about how his speech “worked in the room” but they conveniently left out the fact that the people in the room are fine with rounding up anyone who isn’t white and faux Christian like them.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk:
No. We are his guests. We abide by his rules.
Fair Economist
@boatboy_srq:
This is especially shocking as he has a lot of real estate that should be available as collateral. They won’t even make collateralized loans to him! How many homeowners are such terrible credit risks they can’t take out a mortgage?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike Adamson:
You mean Democrats should take the politics out of politics? Bernie Sanders, who was never a Democrat, was the most unvetted candidate in history, and was handled with kid gloves by both Hillary and the media.
debbie
@scottinnj:
I think she’ll get to that. She’s already covering so much ground.
and
I’m sorry the CFPB’s 5-year anniversary passed without notice on July 21st. Major kudos to both Elizabeth Warren and Richard Cordray!
Emma
@Fair Economist: I understood that part. I wonder about the absolute conviction of the Bernie dead-enders that those emails are absolute proof of nefarious doings.
debbie
@Emma:
Not nefarious doings so much as nefarioius intentions. Anyway, DWS is out after the convention, which is good news regardless.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Emma:
Special snowflake fee fee butthurt.
Mike Adamson
@Emma: I don’t think a reasonable person can say that the party was scrupulously fair to Sanders’ candidacy although I doubt he would have won even if it were. I’m Canadian so I didn’t have a stake in the outcome but the principle that politics in liberal democracies have to change led me to cheer Sanders’ success.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
Good for you, anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the troll should use a filter to drop it.
If said troll wants to strut around with his ass hanging out, we’ll just point and laugh.
dmsilev
@aimai: Fortunately, the hard core of nitwits seems to be a fairly small population. Vocal, but small.
Emma
@debbie: Intentions and five bucks gets you a latte at my local Starbucks. There’s no proof that anything was done. Interestingly, if “the boss” referred to is Schultz, she played it properly by the rules.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: Give me a for instance. What did the party do to obstruct Sanders?
Hal
@Emma:
When Ben Jealous was on msnbc yesterday he kept mentioning the ceo and cfo of the DNC. They should be fired for their actions and that the DNC should have remained neutral.
I mentioned yesterday that he also kept talking about wanting to get rid of super delegates, so maybe this is about the Sander’s campaign using leverage from this hacker release to dump super delegates?
El Caganer
What? The Russians are interfering with our elections? Why, as an American, I’m…I’m flabbergasted! This great nation of ours would never stoop to such tactics!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike Adamson:
He called to primary Obama, the most successful Democratic president in our lifetimes who had put together a winning coalition never seen before, and is/was a notoriously unpopular member of Congress who deliberately and consistently refused to join the party until he decided he needed its structure for his own self-aggrandizement and to shit talk it and whine about it. So, fuck him and the horse he borrowed to ride in on, which is what those emails basically all said.
Mai.naem.mobile
Maybe Kwame is Kwame Kilpatrick posting from prison using a contraband smartphone. He seems to be interested in prison reform. Maybe hes trying to get out earlier.
Mike Adamson
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: No but if the rules allowed him to run then he should have gotten a fair shake and I’m not sure that he did. It probably didn’t affect the outcome but it does feed the cynicism and contempt that too many have for the political process.
Renie
So Bernie falls right into the trap and starts sqwaking about the leaked emails this morning and about DWS. So DWS is out as a speaker. I really dislike him and hope he doesn’t screw things up tomorrow with his speech.
So why is our media not exploring the Russian connection with Trump? I can’t believe corporate America really wants Trump to be elected. I know investigative journalism is almost completely dead but they don’t have to dig that far to talk about the connection.
Gin & Tonic
@dr. luba: Stephen Cohen has been a useful idiot for half a century, if not a fellow traveler. He was an apologist for the USSR back in the 70’s.
Brachiator
@MomSense:
No, righties really get off on displays of strength, no matter how empty. It’s like when a Romney surrogate stated that it would take a mighty whitey Anglo-Saxon like Mittens to stand up to the world and make our opponents tremble.
Ironically, this stuff, including many of Putin’s buff appearances, more homoerotic than homophobic.
amk
@Mike Adamson:
not really. the primary results prove the contrary.
aimai
@debbie: Don’t worry–they will quickly find another enemy of the people, and swarm that person and try to force them out of whatever position they hold. They hate, hate, hate, Terry Mac and Tim Kaine for ever having been associated with the DNC. The idea that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the greatest evil to ever come down the pike is absurd. The fact of the matter is that the people who have spent the most time attacking her have literally no idea why they are angry at her, or what it is the DNC does (did, or didn’t do). They simply respond to a stimulus that they are given over and over again by Bernie’s staff, or the Russians, or whoever needs them to join in a quick two minutes hate of the newest representative of the hated Democratic Party. There are people over at dKos right now explaining that they can never trust or support Tim Kaine because he was head of the DNC when we lost some midterms. That all of his work in civil rights or government generally means nothing because they think he wants to “deregulate banks” (outright lie) or that he headed the DNC and is therefore a D-L-C’er and a Clintonite.
Mandalay
@Mike Adamson:
Well there has been some progress since the leak:
– DWS has been dumped as a speaker at the convention.
– The odious CFO who wrote the email advocating going after Sanders for his religious beliefs has issued a (non) apology.
– The DRC voted to reduce the impact of superdelegates.
Of course the Clinton camp is trying to make the issue all about Trump and Putin instead, but the worthless DNC leadership is under real scrutiny now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike Adamson:
In my POV, the DEM party was far far far more than fair to Bernie. When Bernie asked if he could run as a Dem after 30 + years as not a DEM, fair would have been to say, “No.”
He had every right to run, but as an independent, not as a DEM.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
does “tidy ship” mean any sailor who suggests a bad idea that isn’t followed up on should be keel-hauled? Or the boat scuttled?
the focus on Wasserman-Schultz and Superdelegates, and now some kind of floor fight over Kaine* is to me a symptom of what I like least about Sanders and his loudest followers, a knee-jerk instinct for identifying the wrong cause to focus on, the wrong enemy to fight.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ed suffers from that terrible malady that afflicts converts, in order to justify their admittance into the new club they become the most fervent, the most pure. He advocated democrats staying home in 2010, because Obama sold us out, no public option. He is more anti TPP and trade than Bernie. In other words he is Nader.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike Adamson: The guy regularly attacked the two party system as crooked and undemocratic. To be fair maybe he had some valid points there. But it’s a bit much to expect one of those parties to accept his last minute conversion of convenience and treat him with the same consideration as a lifetime member.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike Adamson:
Maybe he should have become an actual Democrat instead of Bernie Sanders, party of one (until I need yours to mount my third party run against yours).
Mike in NC
It would be nice to see some “journalists” take a closer look at Trump’s shady relationship with Putin, not to mention his ties to good old fashioned American organized crime. This clown has spent decades operating in NYC, Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere without being cozy with the mob?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I agree. On net, Bernie was treated better than the average Dem would have been.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god. If I hadn’t seen how unhinged you’ve become over the last few months, I’d think you were spoofing Berniebots.
aimai
@Hal: You say “leverage” but I see extortion. I am so fucking sick of Bernie and his followers. I can’t wait for his speech at the convention to be over so I can mentally kick him back to Vermont where he can sulk in his hidey hole, next to the smoking crater of Burlington College, and let the rest of us get on with the work of preventing Trump from getting in the White House. How much more damage can the petulant old fart accomplish in the next few days? I guess we will find out.
Gvg
Liberals did stand against McCarthyism mostly and we could go to far because this fits our bias’s, however there could be something to it because it really is in other countries interest to influence our elections. Especially Russia, but really every single other country. So it’s important to look into it factually but not get carried away if real evidence isn’t there. Because there is always the next election or another thing that needs to be investigated and we don’t want to cry wolf nor be fooled nor discredit investigations. Benghazi and whitewater and other such nonsense have almost done it here.
Anyway it’s a concern, we need to look into it fast but not go nuts. Like a lot of things moderation and nuance matter.
Brachiator
@Renie:
Why not? Trump’s sketchy tax plan would massively benefit wealthy individuals and businesses.
Emma
@Hal: I still say actions are more important than words. I don’t care what they said, I want to know what they did. Schultz stands convicted of some nebulous crime when she seems to have actually behaved with propriety. That pisses me off, though in general I have no use for her.
debbie
@aimai:
This is why I stopped reading dKos a long time ago.
Baud
@Brachiator: You need income to pay high taxes.
aimai
@debbie: I do it to keep my bloodpressure high. I am hoping that angry rage turns out to be a weight loss program, but so far it doesn’t seem likely.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: No offense but feelings shouldn’t be enough to convict people. I still would like a for instance.
amk
bs deadenders (the small. not so silent, minority at this point) do realize the inherent hypocrisy of whining about the ‘corrupt party establishment’ and then joining the same party (as a matter of convenience, not principles) and campaigning on that party’s platform, right?
Shawn in Showme
@Renie:
Because they don’t believe there’s any way in hell Trump will get elected. Their corporate masters don’t want him to be elected — follow the waves of money fleeing the Trump campaign. They do, however, want the ratings from a contrived horse race.
kindness
Yep. Moar of this.
D58826
@Emma: If I understand it right, the DNC had to give Bernie permission to run as a democrat. If they wanted to rig it against Bernie they would have told him to go independent. As to trying to rig it after Bernie became popular that was kinda locking the barn door level of thinking.
But most of the comments on twitter are that terrible DWS, who isn’t running for President. The Bernie bros are now floating the idea of a convention challenge to Kaine.
I mean why didn’t these folks just go to Cleveland last week and swear allegiance to old little fingers.
Jibeaux
@Bupalos:
That’s pretty epic.
Feathers
@Mike Adamson: I like a lot of Bernie’s politics, but he has a well earned reputation for being really obnoxious, even among his allies in Congress. Behaving badly and then using the fact that people are upset by it as proof of their unworthiness is a really shitty way to live.
Every office has people like this. If you tried to create a workplace without them, it would be a whole ‘nother kind of ugly. Those “best places to work” can be really horrible, especially for the support staff. When you are only allowed to be upbeat and positive, it creates a huge potential for abuse to creep in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: I think it was Norquist who said in 2012 it didn’t matter what, if anything, Romney believed, all they needed was both chambers of Congress and a pen. I think a lot of GOOPers think they can control Trump enough to get the Ryan agenda passed and signed, and the Supreme Court, and others, packed for a generation. I always figured that was why Newtie and Christie latched on to Trump, thinking they could be the power behind vulgar throne.
I thought the same was true, albeit with a different dynamic, of McCain. I think there were even some Republicans who said Lieberman would run foreign policy and Graham domestic, while the old man gave gravelly voiced speeches about Something Larger Than Ourselves.
rikyrah
Follow the money. Ferret Head can’t get financial help from American banks. So, who is giving him money? The Russians.
Just One More Canuck
@gogol’s wife: what was the problem with the article?
Fair Economist
@Mandalay:
The “worthless” DNC leadership that forbade the proposed ratfvucking in the email responses? Even though said ratfvcking absolutely would have happened by the RNC if Sanders had won?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Emma: Pierce stressed that unfair tactics against Bernie were discussed but not acted on. Shady but not actionable. Carrying water for the payday vampires is enough reason for me to want to stop rewarding DWS with an exalted position but she’s blameless of unfair tactics against Bernie apparently.
aimai
@Gvg: As a country we have real enemies–just like large corporations have competitors. The problem with McCarthyism isn’t that it acknowledged that the Soviet Union was, in fact, our enemy but that it identified individual people’s excercise of their political rights in this country as enemies of the people, blacklisted people for their political beliefs, and destroyed people’s lives with accusations of things that were not, in fact, illegal at all. My great uncle was a lawyer for many small, unimportant, people who were blacklisted and lost their livelihoods (like an elevator attendant) for being members of a political party.
Just like the Bernie people are doing, by the way, to Debbie Wasserman Schulz. They have been attacking her and the people working at the DNC from day one with the accusation that she isn’t a Bernie supporter or that she is bad at her job. They have literally just forced her out of the convention for not having done anything wrong. If anyone is engaging in McCarthyite tactics it is the Bernie crowd.
Miss Bianca
@Mai.naem.mobile: I confess that I thought of Kwame Kilpatrick myself. Ex-Detroiter and all.
geg6
@Mike Adamson:
Please enumerate the ways that the Dems were unfair to Sanders and no one was made to pay a consequence. From this lifetime Democrat’s view, they bent over backwards to accommodate a guy who only became a Dem at the last second and in order to take advantage of a massive infrastructure that he had no hand in building. They are still bending over backwards to accommodate him and his whiny minions. I was against giving him a set of keys to our beautiful house from the beginning and the idea that other activist, party apparatus Dems shouldn’t feel the same way and vent about it in some email conversations is simply ridiculous and shows a complete lack of understanding of human nature. Fuck this noise. Let’s concentrate on real and importan issues, such as keeping Putin’s poodle with the bad grooming job and nasty, bitey disposition from taking down my country.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ll confess to genuine ignorance (because I really don’t care) but has St Bernard or any of his acolytes addressed the question of caucuses? Washington and Nebraska (binding caucus and a non-binding primary) pretty clearly illustrated how His Holiness benefitted from a system that favored those with a lot of free time.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There’s going to be a commission to look at the primary process, including what to do about caucuses. But I think the caucus issue came from Hillary’s camp, not Bernie’s.
daves09
If they criticize everything she says and condemn her for what she doesn’t say, you have to wonder if they really support the nominee
Over at Kos all the people who left *forever* are oozing back through cracks in the sidewalk to express their outrage and shock, yes, shock, at the wickedness of politics. And of course the behavior of the DNC means that HRC must go-sheesh.
That said, Obama could have done good by asking for Debbie’s resignation a while back.
Emma
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Thank you. That was also my understanding. I do not believe in thought crimes or unfair accusations, no matter how “pure” the intentions of the accusers.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
caucuses are gooood. primaries (the closed ones) baaaad.
/sd bs deadenders
Mike Adamson
@Emma: The obvious example was the shady scheduling of the debates.
Baud
@Mike Adamson: Using the word “shady” doesn’t in fact make it shady.
Brachiator
@Mike Adamson:
The reasonable solution would be for Sanders supporters to join the Democratic Party and reform it.
Or start their own party and see how many people they can attract to it.
Anything else is pretty much petty whining.
Emma
@daves09: So punish someone for something she didn’t do?
Jesus. I thought we were the good guys.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: What was shady about it? They picked some dates, the campaigns agreed to them. IIRC that’s how it works. Bernie could have balked.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@gogol’s wife: +1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
geg6
@Mike Adamson:
Which was rectified in favor of Bernie’s whiny preference. Again, show me on the doll where the party touched Bernie.
Feathers
@Fair Economist: The real problems came for the Republicans with Grover Norquist’s fantastic notion that it doesn’t matter who the president is, as long as he’s breathing and has an R after his name. After all, the advocacy groups will be pulling the strings, they just need a willing puppet. This is a large part of why they’ve gotten to Trump. And Palin. And Shrub. Anyone egotistical enough to want the job, yet stupid enough not to realize that they are being played is truly dangerous. And the Republicans don’t care.
So… Putin is not giving orders to Trump, but there are enough people surrounding Trump who want to make Putin happy that it just sort of happens. Read somewhere on the twitters that Manafort isn’t being paid, but instead “volunteering” his time to the Trump campaign. Does that make any sort of sense?
ThresherK
@Brachiator: I think there’s a tipping point. In a world without government corporations are basically up the creek, as no government= no law to enforce contracts.
Didn’t the last gummint shutdown mean that, in Minnesota, state parks were not open and certain liquor licenses were not renewed? In the middle of summer, that means no swimming and no beer.
Think of that on a grand scale.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Oh fer fuck sake attention whore Jill Stein given attention now on MSNBC.
ETA, what a fucking moron she is.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Adam Silverman was on to the Russian connection since the primaries. Way before JM.
Also too, tired of Bernie supporters and their whining against DWS. Putin meanwhile plays the fringy right and the loony left like a fiddle.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
.
It’s been rumored for years that Obama dislikes her personally and professionally, and I figure she must be plugged in with donors and Conserva-Dems (who exist) to have gotten the job in the first place. And I imagine since her term is the last two years of his presidency, there is some issue of letting people who aren’t retiring take over the infrastructure. Other “people say” level rumor is that no one wants the job, and who would want it?
amk
@Mike Adamson: you throw around a lot of allegations and when asked for proof/explanations or when presented with facts, zilch.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’ve now been yammering on these threads for 8 straight hours.
Time for brunch. Hold the barricades comrades.
Mike Adamson
@Emma: No offence taken and I’m not trying to establish a case. That has been done elsewhere and the bottom line is that Sanders probably wouldn’t have won anyway. My point is that today’s political parties are obliged to ensure that the races are clean and fair, particularly when the party establishment itself becomes part of the campaign. The world changes and the politics have to change with it or it risks becoming irrelevant which isn’t good for any of us.
amk
@geg6: LOL.
Baud
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Thankfully, viewers aren’t paying attention to MSNBC. Did they interview the Libertarian candidates during the RNC?
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Happy birthday!
Tripod
@aimai:
What’s not to love about weak public institutions, recurrent rumors of cancer, and no succession plan?
Putin’s actions are consistent with keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House. Maybe his motivation doesn’t come from a risk map and the great game. Maybe he has some outstanding chits that will get called in if Clinton elected.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat:
sides of the same coin. easypeasy.
Technocrat
@Mike Adamson:
I think it’s fair to say that there are at least two interpretations of the debate scheduling:
1) The DNC wants to minimize the chance of our debates turning into the sort of clown show the GOP has mounted in the last two cycles. Under this interpretation, more exposure can only produce media “gotchas”. This isn’t particularly biased against either candidate,
2) The DNC wants to minimize the chance of Sanders expressing his message. Under this interpretation, more exposure benefits Sanders disproportionately, and so fewer debates are a direct suppression tactic.
I have never seen a slam-dunk case that proves one of those is more true than the other. Maybe it’s in the emails, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Fair Economist
@Feathers:
You really think Trump has no interest whatsoever in at least pretending to care about even one thing he’s talked about in the last year? But he does care about Russia being able to invade the Baltics at will (remember he said that HIMSELF in an interview)? And this has nothing to do with the hundreds of millions he owes Putin cronies?
Edit: yes, they’ve got his entourage. But they’ve got him, personally, as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emma: was there ever any evidence that the debates helped Bernie? As I recall the only strength it gave him was when Chuck Todd fed him the idea of focusing on the speeches and Himself Who Never Ran A Negative Ad decided to sell demented halfwits like @Mandalay: and dilettante millionaires like Sarandon and Moore on the idea that Hillary Clinton was the real obstacle to Revolution!
@Baud: thanks. I for one am simply shocked that Bernie! isn’t speaking up for the working people excluded from the primary process. Maybe Jeff Weaver told him their not real progressives.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Does Adam have a media profile? The thing about Josh is that he actually now has media credibility, and a high profile.
Yes, you’d think Berniebots would be ashamed to be such push over idiots, but they’re part of the Intercept/Paul/Nader “it’s all about my priorities!!!eleventy!one11!! me me me” whinebag contingent.
Baud
@Technocrat: If it had been in the emails released so far, it would be all over the news, as that is a legitimate gripe. But supposedly there are more emails coming.
aimai
@Mike Adamson: Do you seriously think that more debates would have made more people love Bernie? I was sick of him from the get go. Six debates was more than enough. As for the scheduling time most people either don’t watch or prefer to watch on their own schedule which they can do through youtube. I just watched the Kaine nomination that way.
But at any rate the more people were exposed to Bernie the less they liked him–that’s pretty clear from the trend of the election. More exposure wouldn’t have helped Bernie at all. But you can think what you like.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kwame: And we have the tell that “Kwame” is unquestionably an agent of the fascist GOP.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike Adamson: What was shady about the debate schedule?
Mike Adamson
@amk: The primary results derive from a small subset of Americans eligible to vote. I used to be active in party politics and no one loves the game more than me but we have to look at the big picture. There’s too many folks who don’t care and that number is increasing every year. This leads to a certain detachment between the active electoral process and players and those who aren’t involved and most need a government that cares about their concerns.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: But the point is that nobody has proven the Democratic primaries weren’t clean and fair. And unless you have evidence, it’s rather unfair to keep insisting they were.
amk
@Baud: the debate about debates is an eternal one in us politics.
Bess
@Iowa Old Lady:
I’d like Pie Filter v2.0. A filter that posts comments by tagged people but puts them in very small font. That way I can scan on past them but still read them if a reply is interesting and makes me want to see what triggered it.
Let me pick the font size and have the ability to enlarge that specific comment with a button push.
Sometimes wishes are granted….
Davis X. Machina
@gogol’s wife: The story is out there, isn’t it?
gogol's wife
@Just One More Canuck:
I haven’t read the article. I was struck by the negativity of the headline, the subhead, and the picture. Nobody’s going to read the article.
Emma
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed.
gogol's wife
I note that what was supposed to be a thread about Trump’s ties to Putin has turned into Bernie laments.
Baud
@gogol’s wife: Just as Putin intended.
ThresherK
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: At my suburban shopping parking lot someone with a clipboard asked if I was a registered voter.
“Yes.”
“Will you sign a petition to get Jill Stein on the ballot?”
I said “no thank you.”
What should I say to the next jamoke with a clipboard?
amk
@Baud: LOL.
Amanda in the South Bay
@ThresherK: “Go fuck yourself?”
Technocrat
@Baud:
It would be a legitimate gripe, and I think most Clinton supporters would agree. What’s frustrating is that no one feels they have to make the case, it’s just assumed to be true.
Not referring to @Mike Adamson btw, who is in the unenviable position of having 5 people quiz him at once ;=).
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Omnes Omnibus:
At least Kwame has a point, unlike the turds that surfaced in the punch bowl of discussion last night.
Bess
@Betty Cracker:
What’s your opinion on children who constantly interrupt the adult’s conversation? Especially when it is totally intended to disrupt?
Baud
@Technocrat: When you’re criticizing the Democratic Party, evidence is optional.
Betty Cracker
@Technocrat: As you said, there’s no evidence of it, but I’ve always suspected option two. Establishment Dems didn’t trust Sanders, and with good reason. However, the debate schedule was expanded, so problem solved / perfidy averted. Looks like the BernieBros managed to get DWS expelled from the convention altogether, but that won’t make them happy.
Baud
@Bess: Mine is that we should ignore or pie them. I tend to ignore.
El Caganer
If I had needed any convincing that the leaked-email ‘scandal’ was horseshit (and I didn’t), I got to sit with my Fox-News-Listening buddy at the bar last night listening to some creature advertised as ‘Judge Jeanine’ go on and on and on about how the emails revealed a horrible, terrible, colossal, evil, anti-democratic, etc., etc. attack on poor Bernie Sanders.
Tripod
@Mike Adamson:
Wha? They are a private political organization, they aren’t “obliged” to do jack shit. If they wanted to pick the nominee with a dart board, they could.
Doug R
@Kwame: He revealed old news and techniques for monitoring jihadists and the Russians. Didn’t reveal anything about Russian techniques for some strange reason. Maybe it rhymes with reason.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
There’s no situation in which (1) Sanders loses and (2) the process is deemed fair by the Bros. It reminds me of people who lament that Obama should have socialized with the Republicans more.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: From the talks of changing the system to fixating on a minor party functionary. Bernie supporters sure have their priorities straight.
Betty Cracker
@Bess: I think one person’s childish interruption is another’s valid argument and that I’d rather err on the side of freewheeling debate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shalimar: BiP loved him some Vlad, back in the day. Vlad could do no wrong. Slaughter Ukranian children? Yay Vlad!
amk
@Mike Adamson: But isn’t bernie’s mantra/usp that how he is bringing in yuuuge no. of voters never heard of before?
Snark aside, yes, voter apathy is a major problem across western countries but somehow it works to the benefit of rw’ers and rw govts everywhere. Who is to blame here? Think about it.
Paul
Time to bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee?
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Oh, you mean my pet whipping kids, the vermin of the Village!
Baud
@Paul: Looking for the next Robert Kennedy?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@gf120581: @amk:
Yes, a thread or two last night were rank with juvenile, homophobic nonsense. Felt like we all time travelled back to 7th grade. Ugh.
scav
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Still, points are better made without dancing in cod blackface and constantly interrupting any and all conversations like an already sugar-high toddler asking for more candy in a slow check-out line. All that is really doing is blunting the impact of any real point by anchoring it to annoyance in the minds of the general populace. It’s not an action of good will nor intent.
Technocrat
@Betty Cracker:
Personally, I don’t think the DNC felt Sanders was enough of a threat to jigger a schedule around him. But I could be wrong, and that’s the point. I’ll never know.
Anyway, the Putin thing is so much more important than this. I was just hoping for some additional perspective from someone who seems like a new and rational pro-Bernie viewpoint.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t get the reference.
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
She knows that this conspiracy is going to bring Bernie supporters over to her, and Bernie to withdraw his endorsement, and this will draw enough support to put her in the White House. She is not trying to make a statement. Donald has a record of saying horrific things, but Hillary has a record of doing horrific things.
EDIT :Hillary has blood on her hands.
amk
@Betty Cracker: The same ‘fair & balanced’ lame reason msm gives public platform to idiots and stupids, for which they are mocked (roundly and rightly) by all the fp’ers all the time.
Betty Cracker
@Paul: Nope. Time for journalists to question Trump and his campaign about their ties with Putin as vigorously as they’ve pursued the Clinton campaign on, well, everything. The U.S. government has meddled in other countries’ elections with disastrous results. I appreciate journalism that exposes that. I’d also appreciate an investigation of a hostile foreign power’s attempt to meddle in our internal affairs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Nope. From a small subset of Americans who choose to participate. I’m in favor of later registration, the NY state rules were particularly ridiculous, and I’m ambivalent about open primaries, but primaries were/are mostly open to anyone who took the time (assuming they had it) and interest to take part.
Tripod
@Betty Cracker:
They’ve jiggered the super-delegate rules as well. Retro-fitting rules for a preferred outcome is moronic, doubly so that it wouldn’t have changed the results, and won’t matter going forward.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
She is more delusional than the last Bernie dead ender in my FB feed. With that fixed grin on her face, she looks animatronic. She’s dipping into her stash.
Baud
@amk: Poor analogy. Paid reporters are not the same as blog commenters.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Well, who here is as vehement about the position of various “personalities” being listed on tumbrel manifests? Admittedly, the Broder Bunnies earn and deserve every bit of disdain we collectively heap on them around here, but my nym makes it clear who my whipping kids are! (I use “kids” instead of “boys” because it’s not just Chuckles the Toddler, Tweety, and the rest of the he-man Hillary haters club on the bus, it’s Mrs. Greenspan, and Cokie the Clown, and Gwen Ifill, too)
Just One More Canuck
@gogol’s wife: I did read the article (after I replied to you) – it was pretty innocuous – I don’t think she writes the headline, so it’s not really fair to criticise her for the tone or things she has no control over
scav
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Nah, dancing about in cod blackface while rarely joining in conversations but constantly interjecting repetitive points like an already sugar-high toddler wanting more sweets in the checkout line are not the actions of someone actually wanting to improve the situation. All that’s about is anchoring the valid point constantly reiterated to the emotion “irritation” in the minds of the general populace.
Davis X. Machina
@amk:
In the general election, not in the primaries. That’s why it was imperative that he got the nomination.
Mandalay
@Fair Economist:
It is the RNC’s role to go after the Democratic presidential nominee, just as it is the DNC’s role to go after the the Republican presidential nominee.
But it is not the role of the DNC to “ratvck” its own candidates for the nomination. And spare me the claim “but nothing happened” so it’s OK; this was proposed in writing by the CFO of the DNC to the CEO of the DNC. Even the author of the email has (reluctantly) admitted that it was wrong.
If this story was about a similar RNC leak the folks here would be pounding the keyboard in outrage, but when it’s close to home it’s a different story.
Barb2
Trumped by John R. O’Donnelly and James Rutherford is about the Donald, during his casino days of the late 80s, before his first bankruptcy.
O’Donnelly worked his way up the organization at Trump Towers, to the position of President.
All the recklessness we see today was on display back in the 80s. His management style was chaos, just like it is today. He loved hanging around with the rich, famous and powerful. He had no friends. He dispised the middle class and was rude when he was forced to be in the same room.
My guess is that he is thrilled that Putin has taken an interest in him. that feeds his narcissistic ego. He has no awareness that he is playing with fire.
I am thinking Hillary is aware of Trump’s connection to Putin. In one of her early July or late June rallies, probably on foreign relations she remarked that Trump was clueless about world leaders and the complex world of diplomacy. She said – Putin will eat Trump alive, he has no idea. Something like that.
Her statement caught my attention. I had no idea that Trump was somehow in Putin sphere of influence.
My point is that there is a high probability that Clinton is aware of Trump’s foreign entanglements.
I am so glad that she will be the next President. Bernie would be so out of his depth – I hope that he can get his bots under control. Or – perhaps one of Putin’s agents has the real control of the bots? Group dynamics wise – someone is pulling the bot’s strings. The mob isn’t spontaneous. The hacked email dump is aimed at the Bernie bots.
Thanks for this thread Betty. There are deep thinkers here who will see the patterns and perhaps some truth.
Personality this Putin and Trump connection scares the hell out of me. Trump scares me. Trump’s reality isn’t the same as our reality. Trump really dislikes his fan base, they are merely useful to reach his goal.
Trumped is well worth the time to read. His management style has not changed. He ran three casinos into the ground. O’Donnelly is a people person, an observer of human behavior. He knew the beast the Donald.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: Got it. I mistakenly thought it was related to Bernie somehow.
burnspbesq
@Kwame:
It’s not slander if it’s true, dumbfuck.
amk
@Baud: Stupidity is the same, either on msm or in blogs. At least the msm minions have a reason – paycheck from their overlords.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Hunter Gathers:
Unless they’re lying about whatever news stories put the U.S. in a bad light (not hard to do, admittedly), I’d be careful about using the loaded term ‘propaganda’.
Baud
@Mandalay: While I disagree with most of that, the notion that we would be outraged rather than eating popcorn if this had happened to Republicans is particularly silly.
Barb2
Oops I used a bad word c a s – n o.
Trump and that bad word -is part of who he is.
Thank you Betty
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: You want to ban people for being stupid?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bess: Cleek’s Pie Filter has a little double-arrow thingy at the bottom of pied comments. All you have to do is click on that thingy to see the original version.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@amk: Stupidity is the same — how it should be dealt with is not.
amk
@Davis X. Machina: Really? he couldn’t swing it in a smaller ‘left wing’ subsect, but he would have wrought miracles, in a larger, more right wing subsect?
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think she was always a Clinton supporter, and was probably put in assuming that Hillary would run. Not in a conspiratorial way, just putting your ducks in a row. Party’s make plans for various outcomes, Scott Walker are his allies I’m sure were very supportive of Rear Probus ascending to RNC Chairman in the hope that he would be the nominee. That is not a conspiracy, it’s laying the groundworks so that when you get to a certain position you already have a team in place that will be rowing in the same direction.
Betty Cracker
@amk: Okay, last word on this: Balloon Juice isn’t a profit-making media outlet, and I am not paid for my contributions here. So I try to keep it simple since it’s a hobby, not a fucking job. That means I don’t police every thread, and I adhere to the basic standards outlined by the blog owner for what constitutes banning behavior rather than closely scrutinizing every commenter’s utterances in every thread and trying to discern on a case-by-case basis what constitutes fair debate and derailing behavior. If you have a problem with that, take it up with John. Or continue to whine about the operation of a free blog run by volunteers — no one is gonna ban you for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: as is the idea that the RNC and Republican power-brokers in general, whether communicating by email, over drinks, or on a park bench while wearing wigs and carefully staring off into the middle distance as they spoke, didn’t do everything they could to derails Trump.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: It would help in stopping the derailing of the topic. Or what we deem as topic.
scav
@scav: Not to be interpreted as being in favor of banning all trolls, and certainly not the well-meaning with the conversational acumen of toddlers. More just a comment on a single instance of whiners probably being type I and not type II.
Fair Economist
@Mandalay:
Sorry, “nothing happened” is the correct response. We don’t send people to jail for thinking about robbing a bank.
Edit: and the *Democratic* National Committee’s job is to make sure an electable democrat gets nominated. They were in a dilemma, because Sanders getting nominated with that kind of baggage (unfair, but that’s the society we live in) would have been a disaster for the Democratic Party *and* the country. At the same time it would have been unethical to actually do the ratfvcking. This is that old dilemma of “would you kill a carload of innocent people to stop Hitler”. They chose the noninterventionist path.
burnspbesq
Isn’t it interesting that our newest troll chooses to name himself/herself after a former winner of the Lenin Peace Prize?
Big Picture Pathologist
@dr. luba:
I think you need to prove that they loved him even after knowing of his murderous ways. Remember, the Internet/TV wasn’t around then, so they had every right to assume he was innocent until proven guilty.
Frankly, considering the anticommunism/antisocialism of the era, if I were a liberal back in the day I would be very skeptical of any right wing criticisms of allegedly leftist leaders*.
*I do not consider Stalin a communist or a leftist.
schrodinger's cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I don’t know. All I know is that he was there before JM and he deserves credit.
Davis X. Machina
@amk: Well, you see, the mass of non-voters out there are natural social democrats, but the Democratic primary electorate is mostly neoliberal corporate tools.. So the inevitable tsunami that is the progressive ‘dark vote’ is prevented from ever making itself manifest
Runt
Patrick L. Smith at Salon is pretty much patient zero for this. These days he mixes his regular columns about how the US has wronged poor Putin’s Russia with columns about why Hillary is History’s Greatest Monster.
Villago Delenda Est
@ThresherK: I’d go with C. Just to make it obvious what Stein is doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: I think that idea is idiotic. YMMV.
amk
@Davis X. Machina: LOL. Missed the original snark.
Fair Economist
@amk: Recalibrate your snark detector.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: Obvious it does.
@Betty Cracker: Rest assured, I shall continue to ‘whine’.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t know where Cole found him, but having Adam’s knowledge and insight gives us a tremendous leg up on the average joe.
Mr. Mack
I voted for and contributed to Barack Obama in 08 and was glad to do it. I’ll do the same for HRC. Again, happy to do it, regardless of who she was running against. I have some concerns, none of which are her fault…In my line of work, I deal with lots of small business owners, and every single one of them HATES the ACA. Most people I know, (including myself, but I am fine with it) have seen significant premium increases since its implementation. I forget who said it, (and I am probably paraphrasing) but conventional wisdom is like concrete, it hardens over time. So…I wondering if there is a merit to the idea of a campaign to champion it’s accomplishments? Bear in mind I live in Tennessee, a state that once killed people for trying to bring them electricity.
Baud
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: And the morning joe as well.
ThresherK
@Villago Delenda Est: Local reaction (Spousal ThresherK) suggests [C] as well.
Technocrat
@Davis X. Machina:
Bingo! Let’s call them…how about “The Silent Majority”.
…what?
Renie
@Brachiator: Because his opinion on trade deals would hurt them.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Baud:
Those joes are paid not to know things.
Baud
@Technocrat: Actually, I was thinking of using the New and Improved Silent Majority for Hillary voters. If she wins (God please), it’ll be because voters rose above the din rather than participated in it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Runt: Patrick Smith (of Ask the Pilot, formerly at Salon) must pull his hair out having such a similar name to Patrick L. Smith (of Salon)…
Cheers,
Scott.
burnspbesq
@Mr. Mack:
I botched about the premium increases, too, but when you’re diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, expensive insurance is somewhat better than no insurance.
Shalimar
@Villago Delenda Est: I noticed that BiP/Russian connection too, after everyone trying to figure out yesterday which old troll Kwame was.
hovercraft
So Bernistas like Nina Turner don’t care that Putin probably released the e-mail dump to rat-fuck Clinton, the e-mails prove sabotage and conspiracy, ipso facto the primary was rigged and unfair and they should/would have won. The proof could have come from Martians, all that matters is that it proves their persecution theory was right dammit.
Technocrat
@Baud:
The Silent Neomajority? Et tu, Baud?
Renie
@geg6: Putin’s poodle – LOL – I like that one!!!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
Nina Turner has completely lost the plot. Have they put anyone on that is there to talk about Hillary and her accomplishments and policy proposals? I switched over to golf.
Baud
@Technocrat: Heh. “neo-” is getting to be my favorite prefix. Or should I say . . . “neofix”?
D58826
@Betty Cracker:
Isn’t that the same kind of censorship that they are complaining the Clinton camp used on Bernie?
daves09
@gogol’s wife: Just read the Collin’s article. Very positive for HRC-and the headline has absolutely nothing to do with the article. Shameless clickbait, and of course people who don’t read it will think it’s a slam.
Headline editors-the unknown rulers of the media.
Shalimar
@Big Picture Pathologist: If Stalin isn’t a communist, then communism isn’t a political philosophy that can be implemented in the real world without being corrupted.
Fwiw, I don’t think Stalin was a communist, either. Just a label on that particular form of dictatorship.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
re Michael Moore’s “reasons why Trump will win”:
white guy hearing other white guy’s opinions all the time seem to lead into a dead end.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
But you have to admit it’s a hugely important step on winning back both houses of Congress and getting people to care about climate change.
Mike Adamson
@Mandalay: Nothing wrong with keeping one’s own house in order I always say. The bottom line is that the majority of Americans probably don’t care about the Democratic party’s nomination process nor about a leak of Democratic party officials’ emails and this discussion is taking place between folks who are active in the electoral process and thus invested in the outcome.
Mr. Mack
@burnspbesq: I completely agree. Our premium increase hurt a bit, but if it means someone else can have insurance as a result…money well spent, me thinks.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
They deserve the deluxe tumbrel ride for their failure to call out Trump for what he is.
hovercraft
Elise Jordan republican foreign policy ‘expert’ says that the wiki-Putin-Trump connection is plausible and should be investigated. If more republicans say this then it may cause him more of a problem for him than for Hillary. The timing makes it a story for today, but by tomorrow the story will be the convention, and Bernie’s speech. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he gives a positive speech and doesn’t pull a Ted Cruz (which was probably the intent of the e-mail dump).
Mike Adamson
@OzarkHillbilly: True enough but he was permitted to run so the process shouldn’t have been stacked against him. The Canadian system is quite different from yours and I haven’t really thought it all through to a definitive conclusion but I wouldn’t have seen a problem with denying his entry to the race in terms of fairness.
gogol's wife
@Just One More Canuck:
It’s fair to criticize the NYTimes for the way they frame the election. Their headlines, illustrations, and placement of articles are relentlessly negative about Clinton.
D58826
@Mr. Mack: Premiums went up, often by a lot, before Obamacare .
daves09
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Large scale participation is very, very, new. To get an appreciation of the old system read the history of FDR’s 1932 campaign or JFK’s 1960 campaign.
Supposedly in 1960 Adlai Stevenson asked Mayor Daley if he thought he had enough support to contest the nomination. Daley replied that only his backroom efforts had gotten him the nom. in 1956. That is how nominations used to be made. The last one that used those old methods was Ford in 1976.
Iowa Old Lady
In reaction to my car radio news, reporters who refer to Clinton as “Hillary” should refer to Trump as “Donald.” The asymmetrical naming is a subtle refusal to offer the same respect to her that they do to him.
Big Picture Pathologist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Disagree. Probably had the least media exposure of all the candidates, easily because of his progressive stances in which discussion is verboten per MSM rules.
Technocrat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Passion makes for great advocates and shitty analysts.
Chris
@Shalimar:
Even if it were happening, I don’t think Trump would see it as “taking orders” from Putin. He’s just working a deal. And it’s going to be a great deal. Huge. The best. Believe me.
karen marie
@aimai: I was queasy about Kaine precisely because of his shit job during the 2010 mid terms, but I was also queasy about Biden given the work he did on the bankruptcy law in … was it 2005? Anyway, I trust that most will, like me, get past that quickly because of the more numerous obviously good things Kaine has done, and because he is obviously not an idiot or cravenly ambitious. He seems like a solidly smart guy. I like HRC even better for having chosen such a person for governing in the long term, rather than simply appeasing the loudest whiners for short-term gain.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: I also prefer each news unit to have a consistent style, but I’ll give the media a little slack here, due to how the candidates themselves have marketed their campaigns.
Mike Adamson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think that a tactic like the VP one is a waste of time, indeed counter-productive, that superdelegates aren’t really a problem and that DWS should have been sent packing long ago. I think all parties need to run clean and fair contests and that their long term survival depends on constantly bringing in new people and new ideas.
amk
folks can relax. bloomberg ain’t going rogue. will endorse the evul woman.
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Of course not, Howard Dean was on but he mostly talked about the DNC, saying they must be neutral and Tulsi Gabbard as a positive example. It’s such a good example of dems in disarray just like the repubs. The only poisitive story is Bloomberg endorsing Hillary at the convention in prime time.
amk
test.
Dismayed by Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg Will Endorse Hillary Clinton @alexburnsNYT
sukabi
@Poopyman: someone, can’t remember where I saw it was “joking” that maybe the reason drumpf won’t release his tax returns is that Putin has declared him a dependent.
burnspbesq
@hovercraft:
All Americans have blood on their hands. Everything our government does is done in our name and with our approval.
Mike Adamson
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Then he shouldn’t have been accepted. The flip side is that it’s a bit much for the party to allow his candidacy then work against his victory. I’m suggesting that processes and rules should be fair, not that there shouldn’t be any at all. Why did the party allow him to run?
hovercraft
@D58826:
An exorcism can only be seen as a positive.
Baud
@hovercraft: I hadn’t heard the news on Bloomberg.
Villago Delenda Est
@OzarkHillbilly: This is what happens when you act in bad faith with your financial backers. Eventually Drumpf will run out of marks for his schemes…or in the case of the Russians, his marks will take direct action that US bankers can only dream of.
Baud
@Mike Adamson: I don’t think people are disputing the need for fairness, just the strength of the evidence presented about lack of fairness.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: What pisses me off is I told the motherfuckers NOT TO DO IT, and they did it anyway. Blood still on my hands, though.
hovercraft
@burnspbesq:
But since she’s Lady Macbeth, the blood on her hands cannot be cleansed. Her votes condemn her.
daves09
@hovercraft: Watched a few minutes of the peoples convention-who knew there were so few people? The saddest of the sad and Stein and Turner up front being pathetic.
Does Turner ever wake up in the middle of the night and ask* maybe I have really copulated my political future?*
Fair Economist
@hovercraft:
I don’t think they’ll be able to suppress this. If nothing else the neocons are going to have a panic attack about this and they still have some clout even though they’ve been shut out of government for Obama’s term, and anticipate being shut out for Hillary’s. Still, for them, that’s vastly, vastly superior to a Russian puppet taking over, because they might end up against the wall literally in that case.
karen marie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The GOP never (to my memory) has people running the RNC when they are actively serving in an elected capacity. Why don’t Dems do that? I think it makes a big difference in terms of what kind of time and attention the chair gives to running the organization.
Mike Adamson
@Feathers: Fair enough. I’m more comfortable speaking at the general level anyway and my interest in this discussion lays with the notion that electoral processes should be fair rather than Sanders’ suitability as a candidate.
Aimai
@Mandalay: wait–democrats werent supposed to talk about the candidates weaknesses? or the right wing attacks on them? Because we are all democrats? What explains the bernie camp continually attacking hillary over the supposed fbi charges, or her income as a speaker? I understood from reading reddit and dkos that bernie was OBLIGED to attack hillary because those were weaknesses the RNC would exploit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think you’re grossly overstating the case.
Because they didn’t know he’d develop a messiah complex and decide to run a scorched-earth campaign against his new party? the fruits of which are now to be seen in his dumbass followers saying things like “Donald Trump is a distraction from the real enemy, Hillary Clinton and the DNC!” (that would be our resident idiot @Mandalay: )
sukabi
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: since Sanders has officially endorsed Clinton, and has stated that he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure drumpf is not elected, he or his campaign will most likely try and stamp this nonsense out.
It’s also very likely that these Bernie delegates are professional disrupters, and it wouldn’t matter who was the pick, because the goal is to just sow chaos.
Eta, it’s also very likely these same delegates wouldn’t have been happy with, if Bernie had secured the nom, anyone he chose as his running mate.
Oldgold
Yikes!
CHUCK TODD: Finally, Roger Ailes. Is he helping you? Is he advising you?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to comment. But he’s been a friend of mine for a long time. And I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he’s helped them. And even recently. And when they write books that are fairly recently released, and they say wonderful things about him.
And now all of a sudden they’re saying these horrible things about him. It’s very sad. Because he’s a very good person. I’ve always found him to be just a very, very good person. And by the way, a very, very talented person. Look what he’s done. So I feel very badly.
Baud
@karen marie: Completely agree. That’s my biggest issue with DWS. No more elected officials in charge.
Sebastian
Then we should introduce the new head of the DNC: Elizabeth Warren!
Problem solved. Thanks for the prime time slot.
karen marie
@Bess: You’re just trolling at this point. Which makes me a troll trolling a troll trolling the thread because of a troll.
hovercraft
@Baud:
It’s just proof of her sellout corporatist ties. It’s in the NY Times.
Feathers
@Fair Economist: Sorry, I was interpreting the “pulling strings” as requests being made. I think Trump has an extremely favorable impression of the Russians, but is too much of a narcissist to see himself as beholden to them. They flatter him and give him money, so they are “good guys.” This leads to the sort of impromptu comments on the Baltics, which are probably things he’s heard over dinner or drinks with Manafort et al. Trump didn’t give a shit about the platform. But somebody noticed the Ukraine plank and had it changed. Whether they asked Trump first, or were confident they could finesse it afterwards I don’t know.
What this shows is how dangerous the clown-ass Clinton “scandals” are. Republicans preemptively smear Dems, just to be able to hold the press to bothsidesdoitism. Clinton scandals tend to be simple human error or simply being human, which the press can attack without consequence. Republican scandals are deeply political and highly planned and motivated. The fact that they also inevitably involve illegal actions means that the press is wary of probing too deeply. Hence Clinton and Trump are both “controversial.”
Mike Adamson
@Brachiator: I think you’re right. In Canada we pay a membership fee to join a party and we get to participate in the selection of candidates and leaders. The American system seems a weird hybrid of party interests and mass participation which I have to confess I’ve never thought all the way through but I suspect is inferior. IMO of course.
Betty Cracker
@Oldgold: This is going to help with Trump’s outreach to women enormously because, if there’s one thing professional women know, it’s that they never have to make nice with powerful assholes. So the only possible explanation for women who publicly praised Ailes now accusing him of harassment is that they are man-hating sluts, and that’s very sad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Oldgold: Donald Drumpf, lecherous caresser of his daughter’s hip on national TV in front of the entire fucking country, cannot believe that these bitches are accusing the Right Honorable Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.
Oh, my stars and garters, the vapors are coming on! Get me Ms. Lindsey’s fainting couch! No, not that one, the one with the new springs!
Aimai
@Mr. Mack: people, in general, are very stupid. Its very hard for them to grasp that their premiums would have gone up more without the aca. But they would have to be able to read real data, not anecdata, to know it. And of course, their comparison isn’t really to status quo ante but to a fantasy where they can choose not to ensure all their workers, or just by catastrophic care, or deny insurance to someone with a preexisting condition.
Emma
@karen marie: That’s very meta. I like it.
Technocrat
@Mike Adamson:
It could be you guys are simply smarter than us. I can just imagine if Americans had to pay to join a political party, considering we bitch about doing it for free. Actually, it would probably be unconstitutional (a poll tax) so there’s that too.
Our system is a mess, and we’re messier.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@Kwame:
Wikileaks, Assange, Snowden and Griftwald are all acting as Russian agents.
You can kindly fuck off and die, now.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Big Picture Pathologist:
He wasn’t taken seriously until he started getting traction in the polls, at which point his “progressive stances” revealed themselves to be based on fantasy numbers that would never happen in the real world, at which point the media used him and his supporters disaffection to bash Democrats and Hillary, and not focus on his policies or his personal life, which is sketchy. The first media spotlight on him proved he was as massively uninformed as Trump, and equally unable to describe or explain how he’d implement his own pet issues. The media ignored what his proposals would mean to the economy – the massive expansion of the government into entire sectors of the economy like health, energy and finance – in favor of focusing on the Berniebro tantrums about DWS and the corrupt Democrats. IOW, the media had a bunch of useful idiots to support their Clinton Rules reporting narrative.
D58826
@Iowa Old Lady: They referred to Mr. Clinton as Bill, Carter as Jimmy. Others were referred to by their initials – JFK and LBJ. Doesn’t seem to be any pattern. As the first woman candidate for POTUS how she is referred to is going to stand out. Of course then we have the problem, if she wins, of what to call the Big Dog?
karen marie
@Davis X. Machina: They could register and vote, but then they would no longer be special snowflakes.
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It’s gotten a little better, they’ve had Gov. Jack Markell, and Bob Casey on to give push back, and Anne Guerin of the Washington Post actually defended the DNC and Hillary.
japa21
@Mike Adamson:
The only problem with this statement is the claim the process was stacked against hi. There is no evidence to support that claim. If anything, he was probably given more leeway and deference than he deserved.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just clicked around long enough to see the most nefarious emails which led to no action are both dated from May, when Sanders had been mathematically eliminated but was clinging to demented fantasies about indictments and a rolling wave of super delegate support based on an upset in California. So he had already fucking lost when the E-Villlll Debbie Wasserman Schultz told her staff not to attempt to kneecap him,
mike in dc
There will be zero business conducted in prime time. Maybe the official vote, but that’s it. That limits the degree of disruption possible. If they act up at any time after Bernie’s speech, it’s a tremendous loss of face for him(he can’t control his own people).
karen marie
@amk: That was snark?
Mike Adamson
@Technocrat: I can’t imagine any party’s debates reaching the Republicans’ level of clownshowiness so I never considered your 1) as an option. Do you really think it’s viable as an explanation? I don’t know but it seems hard to believe.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
Joy Reid and her panel were doing a much better job, at least discussing the comparisons to the RNC. Then they switched to the Bernie whinebags.
amk
russians let off the hook. wonder how much putin bribed the ioc.
hovercraft
@Oldgold:
There was talk on Friday that they had spoken several times last week, and the talking heads were speculating that he may join the campaign either officially or as an advisor.
scav
@japa21: I’m sure if there was a FOIA dump of all the e-mails of all rank and file democrats, many nay more would be found to have expressed unfair characterizations of him. The conspiracy runs deep.
ETA: None of such people should be allowed to attend the convention.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Applejinx
@ThresherK: I told a thread on Facebook and a guy ranting and raving about how Bernie should nay must run third party,
“Bernie is working with Hillary. I worked for Bernie in New Hampshire and I trust him more than I trust you.”
All the more if facebook dude is taking Russian checks under the table. I get that people have to earn a living but shit’s getting kind of ridiculous.
D58826
@gogol’s wife: Here is the link. It is actually rather positive. It makes the same point that I’ve seen in other articles that off-camera she is a much warmer more engaging person.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/campaign-stops/behind-hillarys-mask.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Matt McIrvin
@scav: Yes, Putin’s hackers should dig into the personal files of all Democratic voters posthaste, so that disloyalty to Bernie Sanders can be extirpated root and branch!
Captain C
@ThresherK: D) No thanks, I’m voting Socialist Workers Party. You guys are pikers.
gogol's wife
@amk:
Woot!
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
And I don’t even know what “Woot!” means.
Mike Adamson
@aimai: Sanders’ ideas are much closer to my own than are Clinton’s and I think that the more exposure they had the better of America would be. I never thought he’d win and I don’t think he’d have won even had the party leadership not had its thumb on the scales. I’m also disappointed that he’s not rallying his supporters to back Clinton against Trump because a Trump victory would be catastrophic. My political interest lays in party renewal and a willingness to address problems that every nation’s citizens face. I never saw Sanders as a messiah, I think that Clinton will make a fine president and that political systems everywhere have to do more to engage society’s most vulnerable.
hovercraft
@mike in dc:
Some of his supporters have already declared him a sellout.
Hillary has proven this year that she is running tight ship. There is no reason to waste free prime time airtime on the procedural stuff. Her team actually know what they are doing because they’ve done it before. Uday, Qusay and Ivanka winged it for their Dear Father, and the results speak for themselves.
Barb2
@mike in dc:
Ah – that is a good plan.
Hillary has said that Putin will eat Trump alive. So if there are agitators among the Bern bots – her people are on it.
I might even watch this convention.
I’m up for some good, uplifting speeches. Perhaps one will be a future president of the US?
If this plot was in a novel – would you read it?
ThresherK
@Captain C: E) “What have the Socialist Workers Party ever done for us? Splitters!”
gogol's wife
@Feathers:
So why is one of his advisers also a former adviser to Putin’s puppet Yanukovych?
This is not casual.
KS in MA
@gogol’s wife: It’s a very positive article, in spite of the peculiar headline and artwork. Gail Collins has been a big fan of Hillary’s forever.
Applejinx
@burnspbesq:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kwame+lenin+peace+prize
Dude. NICE catch! :)
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
I should have said “his campaign manager”
bupalos
@Mike Adamson: What are the supposed “shenanigans” supposed to be? This is pretty similar to the Hillary server issues, it’s a critique of theoretical process purity with no actual resultant harm. Obviously OBVIOUSLY the entire Dem establishment backed Hillary from very early on, like way before Bernie even made his announcement to 2 yawning local reporters. Were all the individuals in the structure supposed to resign or recuse themselves because they had a candidate preference? It seems like the ultimate critique here is that they shouldn’t have been discussing some of these things on this particular email domain. Is there any actual unjustified action on the part of the DNC that cost Bernie votes or money or anything? It seems to me this is just “SEE, THEY DIDN’T LIKE ME JUST LIKE THEY SAID AND I SAID THE WHOLE TIME.”
karen marie
@gogol’s wife: Actually, it’s w00t!
Villago Delenda Est
@japa21: The voters stacked the process against him. Those ungrateful bastards!
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Joy is a democrat, non declared, but a journalist who doesn’t approach every story with the question, how can I make this sound as terrible as possible for the democrats? She’ll be back on at 3 if you want to switch back from the golf.
gogol's wife
@D58826:
The paper copy of the NYTimes Sunday Review has an unflattering portrait of Hillary spread all across it with the headline, “Behind Hillary’s Mask. How is it possible that we still don’t really know the most famous woman in America?”
It’s negative, and it’s b–lsh–t. I don’t care what the article says, I’m talking about the framing.
bk
@burnspbesq:
As you and I both know, (s)he also should have said “defamed”, since slander is oral.
Ruviana
@sukabi: Check out the top of the OP.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
LOL
scav
@karen marie: Should we not pause and acknowledge that it’s now possible to have mainstream Oxford comma-like moments for L33t?
PsiFighter37
Bernie calling on DWS to resign. Seriously – because she had the temerity to point out in emails dated in May that he wasn’t going to be president?
What a fucking loser. Having to coddle that asshole, his grifting wife, and his asshole supporters who don’t know any better is a complete waste of time. They should also take the superdelegate measure and shove it – it needs to be in there so jackasses like Bernie who try to hijack the party around a cult of personality don’t take control. Just look at how well that is going for the RNC.
Smiling Mortician
@Mike Adamson:
Could you provide, say, three such ideas and briefly explain the difference between Sanders & Clinton?
Joey Giraud
@Barb2:
.
RandomMonster
@Mike Adamson: Sanders said today on Meet the Press that the leaked emails don’t change his support for Clinton, and that Trump must be defeated.
D58826
@Mike Adamson:
I agree that America would be a better place if more of Bernie’s ideas were enacted into law. It’s that ‘enacted’ part that is the problem. The progressive side of the electorate is just not that large, Bernie’s fans not withstanding.
If you remember the Obamacare fight, it passed pretty much on a wing and a prayer, with a bit of help from Arlan Spector flipping his party affiliation. Single payer was never going to happen. They could not even get the public option included in the bill. Hillarycare crashed and burned in 1993. Bernie and his supporters seem to want the whole loaf at once when it comes to change. Hillary and Obama are willing to settle for progress one slice at a time. If you have studied our system, with its multiple veto points, change does not come easily. For really big changes you need a major disruption like the Civil War (13th, 14th, 15th amendments) or the great depression (FDR’s new deal. and even he didn’t campaign in 1932 on much of what he did in later years.)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@hovercraft:
Thanks. The Canadian kid is in the hunt for the lead at the Canadian open, so it’s fairly compelling.
lgerard
I’ll bet Reince Priebus wished the RNC had pushed back against an outsider taking over their party the way the DNC did.
No one is more looking forward to November 9th then he is.
Doug R
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I don’t hear ANY of the Bernistas mention the fact that Hillary won about 52% of about 680,000 votes vs Bernie winning about 72% of 250,000 caucus goers in Washington state. Washington state must be unimportant like those other states that voteed 80% or so for Hillary. Or maybe something about the voters makes them unimportant. Hmmmm… what could that be…..?
Smiling Mortician
@gogol’s wife:
But you probably should, given that you slammed its author without having read it. Collins doesn’t control the headline, placement or marketing of her NYT pieces.
bupalos
I’m trying to develop some bumper stickers to distribute to my active local D’s here, I want to do one that is like the summation of the whole trump “I’m so good at this, it’s going to be so unbelievably great, you won’t believe it, believe me” thing, accompanied by a shouting trump head, so I want to boil that down into the purest shortest most apt form possible and I’d love input from the folks here.
different-church-lady
@Fair Economist:
Shouldn’t there be some think in the tanks?
Perhaps you meant this in the past tense?
Applejinx
@Mike Adamson:
Bear in mind please that HE IS. I am one such supporter and understand what he’s doing (now that he has lost, failing to support Hillary is just pissing his power/influence away, he has everything to gain by backing her 1000%).
I have seen the press releases he’s given. I’m following him on Facebook which you’re apparently not. What’s happening is this: he puts out statements and is mobbed by ‘his own supporters’ (read: probably Trump or Putin astroturfers) demanding he go with Stein, run third party, do various things: to which he doesn’t respond.
If you say something like ‘I trust Bernie and go with his decision’, normal humans come out of the woodwork upthumbing you, and you get mobbed in turn by the astroturfers (and/or hysterical berniebros of both genders who’ve decided Clinton is the Antichrist)
So basically Bernie IS rallying his supporters to back Clinton, because he’s not a complete idiot. Those of us who trust him and are still with him, are maybe not being as visible as we could because it’s ugly out there, but we still vote (and some of us know how to GOTV and volunteer, too).
Just don’t expect the appearance of a unified Bernie supporter for Clinton front, when you know there are Republican and even Russian sockpuppets making sure you’ll never, ever see anything like that. OK?
WaterGirl
@Oldgold: Those comments by Trump are gonna go over great with every woman who has ever been sexually harassed. By which I mean just about every female who has ever lived.
D58826
@gogol’s wife: True. Problem is with the bumper sticker type coverage that is the impression that to many people will come away with. Not sure who is more at fault – Collins, clickbait editors who wrote the headline or voters that don’t take the time to read the bloody article.
Mike Adamson
@Emma: Then I’ll pull a fast one by withdrawing “the existence of primary shenanigans” and substituting “media accounts and opinions that suggest that primary shenanigans occurred.” My investment is not that of an active participant in the American political process but that of a member of a liberal democratic society who believes that the current system isn’t focussed properly on interests and concerns of the average Jo and Joe. Sanders’ campaign was largely based on this belief and I think the western world needs more of it. Clinton may make a fine president and Sanders may be a jerk and many of his supporters too but I can applaud his efforts at publicizing these concerns and wish for party establishments that look at the bigger picture.
D58826
@Applejinx: I’ve seen comments that Warren is a sellout also. Nothing worse than a disappoint true believer.
Baud
You all still here?
Tehanu
If I may say so, Betty, so have you. In a just world you’d have MoDo’s job, salary, and prestige and she’d be scrubbing toilets.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There you go with your stupid “facts”, again.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mike Adamson:
Until Sanders and his followers acknowledge – really acknowledge – the role racism plays in the ability to get anything he “proposed” passed, and the role of Republicans and Congress generally – it’s all just a bunch of happy horseshit. The ahistoricity of his followers, coupled with Bernie’s own blind spot when it comes to his analysis of the problem, will continue to lead us nowhere. The world has not been waiting for Bernie Sanders’ unique take.
Mike Adamson
@Tripod: Obliged in the sense that they’ve established rules and procedures and should follow them. Parties can indeed use dart boards but they should include that as a rule.
different-church-lady
@srv: Man, it’s a shame the Democrats won’t be having a convention this year.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It was Sander’s own statements that changed me from “Bernie curious” to “This gentleman does not understand how the real world works.”
scav
@different-church-lady: That 2% though, such a yuuuge, never before precedented, never considered even theoretically possible convention bump . . . gonna be tough.
Emma
@Mike Adamson: Actually, Sanders campaign was predicated on two things: (1)income redistribution should be a priority for the country, and taxing the 1% to fund social problems is the way to go (absolutely true) and (2)we don’t need to pay attention to other social problems because one the economics are taken care of, everything else will work itself out (no, really not).
Mike Adamson
@amk: I suspect that apathy is largely the result of unresponsive political systems. Conservatives do benefit from voter apathy which is all the more reason for liberals to work for governments which respond more to problems and concerns of the apathetic.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike Adamson: to take just health care as an issue of interest and concern to Jo and Joe, Clinton and Sanders have both spent a significant part of the last 30 plus years trying to improve Americans’ access to health care, introducing plans of varying ambition and seeing them thwarted by a system complicated by everything from big money to racist and regional hostilities to the belief of the majority of Americans that their employer-sponsored health insurance is “free” because they don’t write a monthly check for it, and even a lot of people with shitty coverage don’t want their leaky boat rocked. About eight months ago, Bernie Sanders decided to start telling people that the greatest obstacle between them and single payer health care (and free college, and an easy solution to climate change, and an easy solution to income inequality) was Hillary Clinton, because she gave a pablum laden speech to executives from Goldman Sachs. I don’t think that’s an accurate representation of the bigger picture.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
Me too – and his idiot followers locked it down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: yeah, you’ve been out doing my yard work, right?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Bess:
Troll-B-Gone hides the comments instead of pieing them, and you can click on the header to reveal the comment.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t even do my yard work.
amk
@Mike Adamson: Nope, reaching the wrong conclusion. The rw’ers almost always turn out on their own, despite being pissed on 24×7 by their party and told it’s rain, to grab the power at all levels of govt since they value their vote.
It’s the prima donna left that needs 24×7 coddling, gotv and all such bs. Look around and see how many rw govts are there around the world at this moment. brexit is the latest example.
scav
@Baud: Well no wonder no one could ever read your yard signs!
D58826
@srv: lol. It’s gibberish like this that make me leave the pie filter off and applaud Cole’s decision to let the free speech roll.
Mike Adamson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am likely overstating the case but hopefully you get the point.
karen marie
@scav: Ha!
Captain C
@ThresherK: F) Avakian Thought is the only truth! Down with Capitalist Roader Running Dogs!
D58826
@amk: And to amplify that, if the Obama coalition had turned out in 2010 and 2014 like the tea party did, we would be a lot closer to Bernie world than we are now. We are one election away from all of the progress of the past 120 years, painfully slow as it may have been, being reversed. If the idea of Trump packing SCOTUS with Scalia mini-me’s doesn’t clarify the issues in the mind of a Bernie supporter then nothing will. And all of the party reform and firing DWS that he is still harping on won’t make one bit of difference.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@bupalos:
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think you’ll get an answer since he’s been asked that question about eleventy-seven times already.
But my goodness, he certainly is so earnestly concerned isn’t he? Honestly, wouldn’t you be concerned, too, if the DNC was running a prison camp for Bernie supporters. It’s so concerning, all of the things that DWS and the DNC might have done given the chance.
(roll-eyes)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who blames the heat.)
KS in MA
@different-church-lady: Yep.
amk
@D58826: Yup. Left lacks both short term goals as well as long term goals. And they blame the pols.
Baud
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I blame Obama.
ericblair
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:
Also remember that Wikileaks was one of the few media organizations that had no interest in publicizing the Panama Papers. Wonder why. Wikileaks was also the bunch who managed to get that fool Snowden on a plane to Moscow, where he seemed to be unable to do anything about the law mandating complete destruction of privacy in Russia that just passed. Oh yes, “he” put out a tweet disapproving of it and went back into his hole.
My understanding, which may be off, is that Wikileaks started off reasonably nonpartisan, and then was about to publish some Russian leaks. They were told that very unpleasant things would happen to key people if they did, so they never quite got around to it. They’ve been willingly or unwillingly carrying water for the Kremlin since.
Mike Adamson
@bupalos: I think you’re right insofar as I doubt Sanders would have won under the best of conditions. I’m concerned about the role that leaderships of parties play in preventing new people and new ideas from rejuvenating the process and the Democratic party happened to be the example at hand.
amk
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: release the
krakensuper delegates.Baud
@amk: Most of the left will vote for Clinton. Despite people like Cornell, Ben, and Nina, this is about splintering along racial lines IMHO.
Mike Adamson
@RandomMonster: So his eye is on the prize if some of his supporters’ aren’t. Gotta beat Trump.
gogol's wife
@Smiling Mortician:
Okay, let me explain in more detail. The NYTimes is relentlessly negative in its presentation of Clinton. Even for an article by the “liberal” Gail Collins, they present it as a smear. Is it clear what I’m complaining about now?
gVOR08
I don’t see why we should care that Trump was bailed out by Putin. We never cared that the Saudis kept bailing out W.
Mike Adamson
@D58826: Nobody said it would be easy but if the ideas aren’t put forward then there is zero chance of implementation.
Aimai
@Smiling Mortician: yeah. My response to MA would have been far less polite. You are a very nice person. His belief that his/bernies supposed positions would be widely shared if only people listened more was roundly disproved by a spirited primary campaign. Trumps part of the electorate doesnt want bernies economic policies because they dont include enough overt racism, misogyny, smd xenophobic militarism. The majority of practicing democrats rejected Bernie because his policies were either not clearly thought out, not responsive to their concerns about racism, misogyny, and xenophobic militarism or they didnt think bernie was a good candidate. Either way there is no remaining untapped well of voters who really, existentially, would prefer Bernies policies–outside of MA’s head and late night dofm room style bullshit sessions.
Mandalay
They’re preparing the noose….
OzarkHillbilly
@srv:
I hear he has dead babies for breakfast every day. He likes them ‘over easy’.
SiubhanDuinne
@sukabi:
LOLGOP
Up at the very top of this thread, posted by Betty Cracker.
It’s a funny line. I hope it becomes a meme.
Mike Adamson
@Applejinx: You’re right. You can lead a horse to water etc. etc.
amk
@Mandalay: Congrats, you have finally gone around the bend.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Well Duh!!
Bernie won more caucuses than Hillary did!! And raised stink in others to boot.
Aimai
@Mandalay: so you are cheering on bernie’s delegates lynch mob behaviour towards a woman who did nothing wrong by cheering it as a symbolic hanging? Nice!
Mike Adamson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Fair enough.
Iowa Old Lady
@D58826: Yeah, to me this is like the house being on fire, and with flames around their ears, these folks are still complaining that the rest of us chose a wallpaper different than the one they wanted.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kwame:
It was mighty damn convenient when Snowden showed up and saved Putin all that Olympic embarrassment over Putin’s gay bashing, wasn’t it?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I just stopped in to do some drive by napalming.
amk
@Aimai: Nah, it’s just ‘stupidity’, never mind the violent imagery of racism and misogyny.
Mike Adamson
@amk: I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. ;)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I love how that smells in the morning.
Mike Adamson
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The DNC is not running such a camp. ;)
amk
@Mike Adamson: which part do you disagree on ? cause? or the effect? …. never mind.
Mandalay
@Aimai:
No – I am cheering on Axelrod’s call for DWS to resign. And he is hardly a member of “bernie’s delegates lynch mob”. I have been calling for DWS to be ousted for a long time. She is a disloyal, incompetent, self-serving piece of shit who is a huge liability to the party.
J R in WV
@Baud:
And another thing. I’ve noticed that people on this blog frequently express concern and opposition to Libertarian viewpoints and Libertarians themselves, and I just don’t understand this at all ~!!
They manage large supplies of data in their libraries, supply books and music and reference publications – even research published by universities and the government! Why, without libraries we would be forced to pay to read magazines and newspapers from around the nation, and would have to pay from $20-$50 for a good Mickey Spillane murder mystery!!!
And furthermore, Libertarians don’t seem all that political to me, and…. wait, what?
OH!! LiberTarians, not Librarians?
Never mind!
Libertarians are crazy assholes, and Librarians are valuable members of society which Libertarians would put out of business. Much like Republicans.
Sorry for the confustion! ;-)
Mike Adamson
Thanks for the chat everyone. I apologise for the role I played in distracting the thread but I enjoyed the exchanges which were surely more enjoyable than cutting the lawn like I was supposed to be doing. Beat Trump and win the Senate too!
amk
Well, I have done my part to drag this damn thing to 4/5th tbogg unit. Rest, I will leave it to you know who.
Baud
@J R in WV: Don’t even get me started on librarians.
I’m looking at you, 4xMajor.
patrick II
If you are the renegade outsider who wants to change the establishment, almost by definition the establishment will work against you. I don’t know what else one would expect — Bernie bros shock and horror seems naive and entitled.
OzarkHillbilly
@gogol’s wife: I’m sorry. I saw the headline: no smear. Saw the art work: Thought it a nice portrait. Read the article: Thought it largely positive.
Smiling Mortician
@gogol’s wife: It was already clear. I was basically pointing out that putting the scare quotes around “liberal” was unfair since Collins actually is a liberal, regardless of how her employer presents her work to the public.
different-church-lady
@Mike Adamson: You didn’t distract it so much as scuff it up a bit.
Smiling Mortician
@Aimai:
Not really. But I teach argumentation, so my first instinct when presented with bullshit is to ask for examples and analysis. Like so many unthinking students, MA didn’t provide any — which is exactly what I expected.
WaterGirl
@Baud: The Librarians I love that show!
NR
The fact that you guys are spending so much energy saying over and over again that the leaked DNC emails aren’t a big deal is all the proof anyone should need that they are, in fact, a big deal, and are going to damage an already weak Democratic candidate even more heading into the convention.
Yutsano
@Mandalay: @Aimai: Her term is up January 2017. She’s already said she’s not going to be the chair again. JFC. Cross. Off. Wood. Need. Now.
@NR: Bernie lost. Get the fuck over it. And show your work on how Trump can win.
And no the e-mails don’t matter for shit other than to sow discord before the DNC convention.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Me too. They don’t make enough of them.
@NR: That’s silly.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Not too bad in the afternoon either. Gonna do up some babyback ribs today but I just use up the last of my napalm here so I’ll have to make do with charcoal and lighter fluid. Sucks to be me.
different-church-lady
@NR: But doesn’t the fact that everyone else keeps saying they’re a big deal prove they’re not a big deal?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Berners are idiots for wanting to be played like this.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: That’s because they don’t have e-mail in Russia yet.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Uggh. Librarians. Scum of the earth.
NR
@Yutsano:
I love this response. Someone points out how terrible a candidate Hillary is, bring up Bernie. Just more proof that you guys have nothing.
And Trump is ahead in the polls right now, so it looks to me like you’re the one who needs to show your work on how Hillary can win.
bupalos
@Mike Adamson: I just think it’s a bit extreme to expect the establishment not to act establishmenty, but be truly neutral between the player they’ve been grooming and establishing relationships with and the insurgent that wants to spill the apple cart. Insurgents must surge against something. And they are allowed a lot more leeway in the specifics of their policy positions (like free college, or his bogus budget numbers) because it’s understood to some extent that they are “standing for something” and “pushing the envelope” in a positive and visionary way.
I honesty believe that a lot of bernie’s support was actually DUE to the (correct) perception of establishment opposition, I think he got a lot more leeway and a ton more votes than he would have just as a policy candidate.
As a disclaimer, both the wife and I tapped the screen for Bernie here in Ohio, and mostly still don’t regret it. But I sure as heck wouldn’t trade candidates now. Bernie really just isn’t ready for primetime, but he made a nice challenge from the left that should help the Democratic party in the long run.
scav
@Baud: You mean you don’t agree that the strongest Proof! that climate change is a hoax is that some people refuse to believe in it and others mock them?
Villago Delenda Est
@NR: Oh, please. If I wanted wishful thinking fiction, I’d be over at FreeRepublic right now.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Your comment sent me searching for the article. Just started reading it, but I noticed two things. First, the headlines of the top NYT articles that came up from my search were pretty much all negative. Wow, they really have a negative bias toward Hillary at the NTY. I recently learned that I can get NTY articles using the Private Browser, but before that I couldn’t get the articles.
Also, I think the caricature looks more like Margaret Thatcher than Hillary. Off to read the article.
Mandalay
@Yutsano:
Axelrod’s point was that her continuing to lead the DNC during the convention would be an unwelcome distraction, and that is why she should resign.
I’m not holding my breath; DWS has her list of priorities, and DWS is always number one on that list.
J R in WV
@Big Picture Pathologist:
As a person who grew up with [Drew Pearson once napped on my bed when I was a little boy!] and has lived my whole life surrounded by high-end professional journalists, we live in a sea of propaganda, and have done so our whole lives.
Telling the difference between propaganda and news is a tricky thing that adults should work hard to learn.
Good luck on that task!
Yutsano
@Mandalay: Not his decision. And to be honest I hope she doesn’t resign. Yeah she sucked at the job but it had more to do with the mid-terms and lackadaisical fundraising over the way she handled the DNC primary. And again what’s the point other than to get some kind of a scalp at this point? Bernie’s army already forced her off the convention floor.
@NR: Which polls? Show crosstabs. Show how Trump can win while pulling almost zero black votes and only 12% of Hispanic votes. I’m patient.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: Like the ouster of DWS will placate the mob baying for her head! I’ve criticized her in the past for doing a lousy job as DNC chair and, before that, being inexcusably chummy with the wingnut S FL delegation to the detriment of local Democrats. But damned if the non-stop freak-out of the Sanders dead-enders hasn’t tempted me to contribute to her reelection campaign.
SWMBO
Just chiming in here on the Democratic Presidential Primary in Florida. The day before early voting started, the Broward County Democratic Party called me to ask me to vote. Did I know where my polling place for early voting was? Did I need a ride to get there? Did I need any special assistance in any way? Was there anything they could do to help make it easier to vote? Early voting ended on a Sunday (I voted that day) and the BCDP called me on Monday to ask if I had voted early and if not, did I know where my voting place was, etc? I wish to FSM that they were in charge of the state party. They know how to get out the vote. Also, in the days leading up to the primary, Hillary’s campaign called and asked if I would vote for her. (This was in addition to the BCDP calling.) There were 2 or 3 calls on Hillary’s behalf and they also mentioned other local issues and candidates. I got crickets from Bernie’s side. I loved that Bernie (in the beginning) pulled the message to the left. And folks here all said it was a good thing for Hillary so she could practice before the general and polish her style. She has done that and Bernie was useful for that. But it’s time to pivot to the general and start the final run to the home stretch. It is a clear cut race and we know who we want to win. I think if Hillary’s people gear this up, they will get out the vote. She is not stupid and has clearly learned from 2008 what she needs to do and how to get it done. She will, during the general, be campaigning for the down ticket folks as well. Bernie did not help the down ticket candidates during the primaries and just wanted the party to be there to enable him. He got more oxygen and air time that was positive from the media when Clinton was getting Benghazied and emailed most of the time. His supporters don’t want to organize and run a viable party, they just want it handed to them because he said he was a democratic socialist and that made him a Democrat. Politics ain’t beanball and they need to get a grip.
Brachiator
@ThresherK:
I think that there would always be some form of government; it seems a natural extension of social organization. But in a theoretical world without government, I think that a form of corporate feudalism would arise. Where there are no contracts, there is the naked application of power.
NR
@Yutsano: This article might help you figure it out.
geg6
@Mandalay:
Though I believe Axelrod is probably right in that a DWS resignation is probably the only way to make this doesn’t become a giant distraction during the DNC kickoff, it’s extremely unfair to her. In this case, she did absolutely nothing wrong and, in fact, seems to have been the one telling people that no, there will be no ratfucking. As for her calling Weaver an asshole, well…he is, so facts are often inconvenient but not really a firing offense IMHO. I have plenty, shit…hundreds, of reasons to criticize her. In this particular case, however, she is getting a raw deal and this is just another reason for me to continue despising Bernie’s useless idiots.
Emma
\@Baud: Hey, buddy. Librarians are the secret masters of the Universe. We control information. Don’t piss us off. (credit: Spider Robinson)
Betty Cracker
@NR: My offer still stands. Let me know when you’re ready to put your money where your mouth is.
Yutsano
@NR: That article is full of so many caveats that it doesn’t even come close to saying what you think it does.
SWMBO
@geg6: And if she does quit, it becomes Dems in Disarry before convention. This smells like ratfucking her and the convention before it starts so that the RNC dumpster fire looks good by comparison.
sukabi
@SiubhanDuinne: been distracted, have seen it a couple of places actually. And with trying to get thru the threads the last couple of days has been interesting, tp say the least.
New disrupters having quie a bit of success derailing things.
Emma
@Betty Cracker: Me too. Jesus. I’m actually defending DWS.
ETA: the thing that amuses me the most is the “and then.” After we defenestrate DWS, do the dead-enders think the party is going to turn over her job to one of them? Because I would absolutely refuse to accept anyone from Bernie’s camp as head of the DNC.
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
Thank you, Burns! I get so tired of that BS about H. Clinton. Unless you have solid physical evidence of hands-on murder of someone in particular, STFU about the blood, which we share, even if unwillingly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Emma: Whatever you do, though, don’t call them “monkeys”.
It would be bad.
Elie
I’ve been off line on a little R&R in the beautiful British Columbia wilderness, so just came back to this shit. sigh — here we are again hearing about Bernie and his non-stop whiners… Lord, no one has been a sorer loser than this asshole and just when I was almost forgetting about how much I despise him, he’s back again with more poison. It of course, was not an accident that Wiki-leaks does this right in front of the Dem convention. I actually think that there may be three-some between Bernie the socialist, Putin the — uhh — whatever and Putin lover, Trump. Putin and Bernie helpin ol Trump get to be the Americana President. Do I think that he wouldn’t do that? Nope, not for an instant. Bernie is #1 Ratfucker working in cahoots with Putin to make Trump president. All Bernie’s dead enders are saying that they won’t vote for Hillary and some will even vote for Trump, so there is that too.
socraticsilence
@PsiFighter37:
I mean, Its hard to get more Clinton-insider than McAuliffe and he’s called for everyone involved to resign. Hell, Axelrod has also called for DWS to go, I think at this point having her fired is a fair trade off for Bernie Bro support especially considering that aside from this stuff she always seems a bit scummy and loose with the rules anyway– from repealing the Obama mandated transparency rules to shilling for the payday loan industry.
cckids
@Mike in NC:
Hey! Not in Vegas, baby. Thanks to the NV Gaming Commission (who HAVE seen Trump’s tax returns), Der Trump can’t get a gaming license in Vegas. That’s why his stupid Pez dispenser of a hotel doesn’t have a cas1no.
scav
@sukabi: Well, there’s a tendency for some to confuse controlling the blahblah space with controlling actual outcomes. If they can dominate the conversation in the media / letters to the editor / twitter / around the coffee-table by sheer volume and persistency, they inevitably get their way. As threads on BJ go, so goes all of space-time reality.
Mike Adamson
@Smiling Mortician: You’ve sucked me back in for a moment. :) I’m a Canadian who has followed the Democratic nomination contest with interest although not nearly to the extent that those who have a real investment in the outcome have. My premise of something short of party neutrality vis a vis the candidates is based on media accounts of events and occasions and of reading analysts and opinion givers whose output has seemed reasonable to me in the past. I have assumed that the party’s interest in seeing Clinton win and that some corners were cut and some i’s and t’s left undotted and uncrossed was kind of an open secret but clearly this is a minority position here, which is fine. I’ve never investigated the claims in any detail so the debate example is the only one I could advance. Perhaps next time I’ll come better prepared but since I’m not up on the minutiae of Democratic party politics, I’m afraid my contributions today can only be be based on public perceptions and a belief that our political systems are not working in the interest of our citizenries. Don’t consider me unthinking so much as a person outside of his normal element. Good luck in November.
Matt McIrvin
@gVOR08: Hence, W got elected and reelected and was given free rein to ruin everything.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Black and Latino voters are not equally distributed across all states.
Here is what would help Trump. A low voter turnout and a massive defection of white votes to the GOP in swing states, especially white male votes.
Trump’s best hope is to convince frightened white people that he can deliver on jobs and that he can protect them from terrorists and Mexicans trying to invade the US, and from angry black cop killers here at home.
Tripod
So did Vlad pay off the IOC to avoid Olympic Games banishment? Is water wet? His doping and cheating regime at the Sochi Games was so blatant and ham-fisted…. of course he’s a perfect fit for Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In Russia, email have you!
Too late?
sukabi
@scav: I know, it’s just exhausting, and I guess that’s the point. Keeping people’s panties twisted about old, trivial nonsense, instead of focused on the fucking fire that’s threatening to burn down the house. It’s a win for the arsonists.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
That’s a shame since Tim Canova is an excellent alternative.
Well she has allowed the CFO to keep his job, she has been silent on the leaks, and she has been hiding from the media. I guess if you view that as doing “absolutely nothing wrong” then you have a point, but it does not speak well of her leadership.
Tripod
@Brachiator:
To your second point, the Kaine pick blows the bottom out of that boat. Which is why they’re blabbering on about DNC emails.
burnspbesq
@Applejinx:
We are Jem Hadar. We live to serve.
I have no idea why the name Kwame Nkrumah popped into my head, but one thing led to another and … did you know that like Trump, Nkrumah had a degree from Penn? Everything is so neatly tied together …
Shalimar
@srv: Objectively, Laura Bush is a boyfriend killer. People can disagree about the degree of her responsibility.
Which baby did Hillary objectively kill?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t like DWS and I don’t care if she resigns. If all the Underpants Gnomes calling for her head could explain to me:
1) who takes her place?
and, more importantly
2) then what?
Just One More Canuck
@Elie: Where in BC? I grew up there, and always like hearing about it
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not everyone shares your indignation about nothing, you fucking head case.
I think you have actually lapped NR in the marble-headed stupe sweepstakes.
Shawn in Showme
@SWMBO:
The narrative will be Dems in Disarray whether DWS resigns or not. First rule of Horse Race Narrative: Both sides do it.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Really? Robert Reich does. Joy Reid does. David Axelrod does. Fucking head cases all of them?
DWS is toast, and deservedly so.
Ian
@Mandalay:
Not true at all. If the RNC had managed to fatf*ck Trump with some bullshit rule I would be thrilled.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: I don’t know about Reich or Reid, but according to your quotes, Axelrod called for her to resign because of the “distraction”, i.e. whiny-ass piss-ants like you who can’t shut up and are too fucking stupid to focus on things that matter. To wit, Witless, witness:
You pathetic fuckwit.
ETA:
again: That’s nice. Then what? Dumbass
Percysowner
@ThresherK:
I’d go with “Who the Hell is Jill Stein? Then, if they tell her say you can’t decide until you hear her position on vaccinations. Then if/when they tell you tell them you can’t vouch for someone who is willing to put our nation’s health at risk. But I’m mean that way.
Elie
@Just One More Canuck:
Nairn Falls! Beautiful area… Lots of scenic splendor and about 20 min from Whistler.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: FYI, you’ve replied to the wrong person in the second part of your post.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hey creepy stalker….now even Clinton insiders are calling for DWS to go away….
I suspect that Carville is saying that with Hillary Clinton’s blessing. But keep on hurling abuse and insisting that I’m a lone crank, and your views are the only ones worth having.
Jackass.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker: You are correct – my apologies.
scav
@sukabi: Indeed. But there’s hope in that this is essentially a garden shed with few singed corners and it’s not as though strongly- or rapidly-worded letters to the editor have proven electorally decisive in the past. This is all just a self-generated distraction kinetoscope.
Brachiator
@Tripod:
The idiotic selection of Sarah Palin is the only VP choice that I think had a tangible (and negative) impact on the presidential election.
I think that Clinton is in a good position to kick Trump butt. However, she must campaign strongly and convince people that she has concrete ideas to get the economy running again for everyone.
Terrorist attacks and domestic disturbances are wild cards that benefit the GOP appeal to fear.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
She’d have to do that no matter who her opponent was.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Heh. Figured out how fucking stupid the thing you typed was and that’s your backtrack? You really are pathetic (unless this is all, in fact, a sign of some diagnosed or un-diagnosed condition, in which case: Get help, and good luck with it)
Like I said, I have no brief for Debbie Wassherman Schultz, you and your fellow Berniebots attribute her with great and malevolent power. So I’ll ask you again, dumbass, the wicked and E-VILL DWS, who told the people who typed the two nefarious emails that have you wailing and rending your Feel the Bern! tee-shirts and gnashing your tooth to knock it off, she resigns: Then what? What’s the next butterfly of purity you dimwits will chase around the Elysian Fields of Bernie! Land in order not to be distracted by the trivial matter of Donald Trump and the Republican Party?
Just One More Canuck
@Elie: I live in Ontario now, but try to get back home every few years. I was in Tofino a couple of years ago – just walked on the beach and stared at the ocean for about a week
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Suck on this creepy stalker:
Sanity prevailed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: so you, at least, will stop whining now, and read up on this Trump fella and Republicans? Welcome to the waking world, Berniebot.
and maybe read your own posts before you hit publish so you don’t have to be so embarrassed by them when someone reposts your brain dead bullshit and you realize you’ve made a fool of yourself?
I’m just trying to help
burnspbesq
@Mandalay:
DWS is toast if, and only if, a majority of the Democratic National Committee, decides she is. Process matters.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
On the contrary, you have made a complete fool of yourself, stalking me, hurling gratuitous abuse at me, and claiming I was a crank, because I was calling for consequences over the content of the leaked emails.
Well the Democratic Party agrees with me, DWS is gone, and you are the one who is out of step. Deal with it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
by responding to a thing you said on a (more-or-less) public forum?
I think “stalking” is one of many concepts you can’t quite grasp, for whatever reason.
Best of luck.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Holy shit. So the Republicans held their giant dog-and-pony show to “introduce” Trump to the general election voters, and the best bump they could get was 2 PERCENT?
That’s not a bump, that’s a margin of error.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No. By almost always responding to what I post, and constantly hurling gratuitous abuse at me, is what makes you a creepy stalker.
It makes your complete humiliation on this issue all the more exquisite. You couldn’t have been more wrong.
Barb2
Trump has borrowed several life times of fortunes from Russian sources with ties to Putin.
That would show up on the IRS forms. There is in fact a special form for foreign accounts.
So we have one reason why Trump refuses to release his tax returns. He may have loans from other foreign sources. He has been playing this game since at least the 80s.
I wonder how bankruptcy is handled in Russia?
How will the corporate media explain this to their audience?
How much does the NSA, CIA know?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
If you’re shitting your pants because Trump got a two (2) percent bump in the polls after four days of nonstop media coverage, you should probably set up a recurring supply of Depends to be delivered directly to your doorstep, because you’re gonna need ’em.
Smiling Mortician
@Mike Adamson: I’m sure you’re long gone from this dead thread by now, but I wasn’t asking you for evidence of Democratic Party shenanigans. I was asking you for three specific examples of where Bernie’s policy is better than Hillary’s. It’s all good though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You have a curious idea of how discussion works. But if you don’t want people to notice the blazing, blinding light of your stupidity, might I suggest keeping it under a bushel?
So you and your fellow muppets are gonna shut the fuck up about Bernie! now? I guess I was wrong about one aspect of this, and I’m glad to hear you’re going to stop posting your breathtakingly stupid brain turds, like comparing Nothing Emails to the Iraq War, and saying Donald Trump is a distraction from the important issue of the DNC leadership, cause that was some really stupid shit.
Good luck.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Personally, I’m wondering which piece of Russian ratfucking you’re going to fall for next.
When a foreign government presents you with the thing you want most — in this case, DWS’s resignation — it’s probably a good idea to check that package for strings rather than eagerly fling it open, ignoring any possible consequences.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
…aaaaand TBOGG!
Uncle Cosmo
@Renie: More like Putin’s pit bull, innit? (YMMV I guess.)
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay:
Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ. Because never mind Trump and Putin…the REAL enemies of truth, justice, and the American Way are…Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC??
I’m starting to wonder if some people ARE getting paid to ratfuck with gibberish like this. Because anyone who could actually espouse the above and *believe it* is just plain too stupid to live.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not yet, but I’m doing my part. Interesting that a thread about Trump’s ties to Putin degenerates into a discussion about DWS.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Miss Bianca: Having DWS’s head on a platter is more important than having someone elected President who’s quite possibly literally in debt to Vlad Putin. I see the BernieBros have their priorities in order.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Here ya go.
dogwood
@Miss Bianca:
It’s actually sad to see how a campaign that was initially about big ideas, even if they weren’t pragmatically articulated, devolved into something so small and petty.
Mandalay
@Miss Bianca:
I have long viewed DWS as an enemy of the Democratic Party, and the DNC being crippled by her worthless leadership. And while Trump and Putin are hardly supporters of the Democratic Party, they are not the enemy within. DWS is. Good riddance to her.
At present there is no credible evidence that Putin is responsible for the email leak, but some Democrats were desperately trying to make that the spin, in order to divert attention the content of the leaked emails.
dogwood
@Mandalay:
And there’s no evidence from the emails that DWS condoned, sanctioned or encouraged what was said, but that doesn’t matter to you. Trump, Putin, Snowden, and Manafort all deserve the benefit of the doubt, but DWS must be purged. That says a lot about you as an honest broker.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mandalay:
There is credible evidence that it was Russian, that the groups involved have specifically gone after Putin’s opponents, and that Putin-affiliated groups launder documents through Wikileaks.
“Enemy within”? Fuck off and look for the rare Pokémon named Perspective.
J R in WV
@gVOR08:
This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen here – wait? Am I being trolled?
Sorry!
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV: Believe it or not, some librarians are Libertarians, too. And vice versa. Strong Civil Libertarians, that is.
dogwood
@pseudonymous in nc:
You are right, but it makes no difference. Anyone who could say “I have long viewed DWS as an enemy of the Democratic Party . . .” has lost all perspective. Hell, that kind of thinking has made Trump the Republican nominee. He named all the enemies and spewed hatred. Weak people always fall for that stuff.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: And quick as a flash, she riposted: Fuck you, clown. There’s enough evidence, both hard and circumstantial, to raise serious concerns about the connection between Trump and Putin, and if you truly believe that ousting DWS from the DNC is somehow a bigger threat to American political life than that, then your head is honestly too far up your ass to bother to argue with you.
In Germany you would have been one of the Communists in the death camps still arguing that Democratic Socialists and liberals were the REAL enemy in 1932, so OF COURSE you couldn’t have sullied yourself to ally with them!
ETA: SO how much do ratfuckers get paid to hang out at joints like this, anyway? Do you get paid by the post? By the hour? Is it lucrative, or is it more like a hobby that makes you a little money?
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
“…get the economy running again for everyone.”
But the economy is doing very well, unemployment is the lowest it has been in, well, ever. I will grant that wages could be better, and I must admit I’m really glad inflation is low as I’m on a fixed income for the rest of my retired life.
I really think helping perceptions align with reality will do as much as any changes in the economy. And proposing ways to improve wages by implementing specific policies…
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
.
.
Well, being strong in support of civil liberties is one thing, and opposing the existence of government is something else. It would be wonderful if humans evolved beyond the requirement for a government keeping score and enforcing the rules, but not likely anytime soon.
Applejinx
@dogwood: It devolved because the people worth a damn, INCLUDING BERNIE, went over to support Hillary Clinton and make the most out of the Democratic Party (even if it involves being strict with payday-lending-friendly, wingnut-buddying deadwood that happens to be besties with the Clintons.
And then the only ones left serious about electing Bernie were people too dumb to listen when he TOLD them to lay off.
I am pleased to see Clinton will tolerate tightening up her ship, rather than just giving personal loyalists free rides to do whatever. She can set up ol’ Debbie with whatever sort of cushy retirement she likes, she’s rich enough to, but Hillary needs to be tougher with her nepotistic buddies, they have to pull their weight and not cause problems or it reflects badly on her.
Applejinx
@J R in WV: No it ain’t. Firstly, you’re retired, how would you know? Secondly, even if you ignore the classification games over what constitutes being ‘unemployed’, global financial markets are NUTS: stocks are bubbling to impossible highs even while bond rates are dropping into negative territory all over the world. Nobody knows what the fuck is happening.
Standard & Poors is talking of ‘Crexit’, an impending global financial collapse in which quote “A worst-case scenario would be a series of major negative surprises sparking a crisis of confidence around the globe. These unforeseen events could quickly destabilize the market, pushing investors and lenders to exit riskier positions (a ’crexit’ scenario). If mishandled, this could result in credit growth collapsing as it did during the global financial crisis.”
How about acknowledge the economy is not doing very well, nor was it in the UK when popular uprising (crossed with racism) produced Brexit against all expectations of everybody who was saying ‘the economy is doing very well’. Ya gotta listen or it will come here too, and everybody loses.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Whoa a TBU post.