.
First, his NYTimes column, “Learning from Obama”:
… At the end of 2015 Mr. Obama was still underwater, with significantly more Americans disapproving than approving. Since then, however, his approval has risen sharply while disapproval has plunged. He’s still only in modestly positive territory, but the net movement in polling averages has been about 11 percentage points, which is a lot…
I know that it’s hard for many people on both sides to wrap their minds around the notion of Obama-as-success. On the left, those caught up in the enthusiasms of 2008 feel let down by the prosaic reality of governing in a deeply polarized political system. Meanwhile, conservative ideology predicts disaster from any attempt to tax the rich, help the less fortunate and rein in the excesses of the market; and what are you going to believe, the ideology or your own lying eyes?
But the successes are there for all to see…
The 2008 election didn’t bring the political transformation Obama enthusiasts expected, nor did it destroy the power of the vested interests: Wall Street, the medical-industrial complex and the fossil fuel lobby are all still out there, using their money to buy influence. But they have been pushed back in ways that have made American lives better and more secure.
The lesson of the Obama years, in other words, is that success doesn’t have to be complete to be very real. You say you want a revolution? Well, you can’t always get what you want — but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
And then on his blog, “Feel the Math”:
… Now, as the bumper stickers don’t quite say, stuff happens. But at this point it’s something like a 90 percent probability that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Anyone denying that arithmetic is basically pulling a con job on Sanders supporters.
So what does that say about appropriate behavior on the part of her rival? Two things, I’d argue.
First, the Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC. If Sanders really believes, as he says, that it’s all-important to keep the White House out of Republican hands, he should stop all that – and tell his staff to stop it too.
Second, it’s time for Sanders to engage in some citizenship. The presidency isn’t the only office on the line; down-ballot races for the Senate and even the House are going to be crucial. Clinton has been raising money for other races; Sanders hasn’t, and is still being evasive on whether he will ever do so. Not acceptable….
Sanders doesn’t need to drop out, but he needs to start acting responsibly.
***********
Apart from applauding truth in punditing, what’s on the agenda for the day?
swiftfox
I can go long periods without reading Krugman. His political instincts are not that great and too many pats on the back for himself. He is, along with Booman and LeTourneau, correct about Obama.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
*
I hate to say it. but…. (photo)
*
Gindy51
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: No kidding.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’m concerned that Clinton will decide she needs to go negative to wrap this thing up.
And by concerned, I mean hopeful, because I’m next after Hillary and Bernie are revealed to be typical Washington politicians.
prob50
Krugman’s point about Obama’s accomplishments are well made. Unicorns and ponies were not going to flying out of DC with the type of obstreperous, obstructionist opposition this President has had to face. I really don’t see how anyone could have done better. Without a drastic change in the composition of Congress I doubt the next occupant will even do as well. We need to do better in the down-ticket contests this time around.
prob50
Oh, they’re showing a rerun of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” musical episode so I’m gonna duck out and enjoy that delicious little fantasy.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: You ever see Gore Vidal’s masterpiece “The Best Man” on film or stage. (clip). It’s got the perfect ending. One that can be used to complete the Baud Odyssey.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I had not seen that movie.
I am Merwin!
Nelle
The Krugman column is swarmed by outraged Sanders supporters in the comments. That kind of intensity and passion would be welcome in many down ticket and off year elections. My son and son-in-law are kindly telling me that I don’t understand the young. They aren’t asking questions about what it has been like to be female here for 65 years.
geg6
The comments on that are a cesspool. I am more convinced than ever that the most vocal and vitriolic of the Berners are all former Paulistas. Just vile and stupid fantasists. I’ve never felt more enthusiastic about Hillary. Congratulations Berners!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Bernie is doing his best to make sure that she does.
BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: …and maybe folk that hear “Free College” and then ‘feel the bern’*.
*They make medications for that.
geg6
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes, she definitely has some catching up to do. Tit for tat, so to speak.
BillinGlendaleCA
And now for something completely different…
I went on a hike on Thursday with the kid(aka The Nursing Student), which I’m still recovering from. It was about 14-15 miles in the San Gabriels. I was Seeking Inspiration, I think I found it.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: Ending is cool. Merwin enters the underground garage and the delegates swarm him, while Russell stand all by himself in back, deserted, forgotten. Merwin gets on an escalator to go up to the convention floor, and as he climbs he sees Russell and he stares at him silently, reaching out with a face full emotions, grateful for his gain, anguish for his friend’s loss, in awe at the courageous decision, unsure if he deserved the reversal of fortune.
BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: I watched a clip of a speech Bernie gave in NYC on Morning Joe yesterday, he was talking about Hillary’s paid speeches. I was muttering to myself(as I often do), “What a sanctimonious prick”.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice. Like the flowers and the IR shot of the city.
Baud
@geg6: But then Cole would get mad.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I missed getting some pics of some CA and golden poppies as well as a lupin.
ETA: Also one of the things about IR is it can see though haze really well(as well as mirrored sunglasses).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Would get?
Applejinx
I’d say look at it as a window into the electorate.
People wouldn’t be as obnoxious if they weren’t desperate. Krugman’s point about Obama is well taken, however: as for the rest of it I’d remember the Overton Window. Every bit of it is political shade for NOT being a complete corporate whore, NOT being a pushover for ‘centrism’, NOT being so focused on little political quid pro quo that you completely lose sight of how it looks to an outsider not privy to your special knowledge.
If the only way to get incremental change done is to wallow in sleaze, appeasing entrenched politicians and lobbyists who all ‘know the game’ and are way worse than you, that’s fine as it goes but you cannot simply deny that you end up looking like another pig (and the pig enjoyed it).
And that’s why people are prepared to burn the whole thing down: it’s just gone too far. It’s wonderful that Obama got so much done in spite of (and in collusion with) the system, but nobody cares about the wonky details even when they matter, when the big stuff is so fucking bonkers.
Think about it. The Republicans are a disgrace. Hillary is going to be better at working cooperatively with them? (also: how?)
Wall Street is literally as disgusting as it can be, at any given moment, because free market capitalism is a failed ideology that survives only when pruned to not choke off its host organism. It’s a pet cancer. Keep it around, fine, but who cares if it’s happy? People across the political spectrum have figured out that market forces have wrecked everything they care about, with a dwindling number of mostly olds who can still con themselves that the world’s good (and a dwindling elite, who are increasingly killing themselves to kill everybody else and fling them off the steepening pyramid). Is it even honest to make noises about investing money in manufacturing jobs in the USA? That’s kind of insane, that’s not how it works. It’s pandering.
When Sanders voters flip out, they’re showing you that these are revolutionary times and NOW is the time to deal with it, before all hell breaks loose. You can muzzle the Sanders voters by appeals to conscience, and the Trump voters will still bite your legs off. Bernie’s doing you folks a favor by campaigning somewhat aggressively. (nominate Hillary if you want to see ‘aggressively’, you have no idea how gently your candidate is being treated)
Raven
@Applejinx: who has no idea?
Loviatar
In 2016 Sanders promises “Revolution” and is criticized as unrealistic. However, in 2008 Obama promised
“Revolution”“Hope and Change” and was praised as the better choice. Obama went on to govern as a pragmatic moderate and is considered by his supporters to be an excellent president.In 2008 Clinton promised pragmatism and was criticized as a centrist stooge. However, in 2016 she again promises pragmatism and is praised as the better choice.
If I was a Sanders supporter I’d feel gipped by the Obots.
Raven
@Loviatar: It’s good training for a life of political dissaspoinment.
bystander
A few more sweeping assumptions in here and AL won’t have to show up with a broom.
I am now officially at the I’ve had enough of Sanders point. The nonsense is impeding my enjoyment of the slow train wreck the repubs have on offering.
Micheline
@Loviatar: Your argument about Obama would make sense if you didn’t go beyond phrases like “Yes We Can” and “Hope and Change”, but Obama’s views on change were far more nuanced than Sanders.
JPL
@Loviatar: When I look at the opposition that Obama has faced, yes count me in as thinking he is doing an excellent job. At the time he was elected, we were on the verge of a great depression. He was able to pass a stimulus program, although with flaws, to prevent that. You need only to look at European countries, who took a different approach, to see how it working out for them.
Aimai
@Applejinx: the problem with the (bad faith) argument that bernies attacks ate just love taps compared to trumps future attacks is that we are not talking about a single electorate. Bernie is the one arguing that he can grab the independent vote. Hrc is just trying to hang onto the onama coalition. And bernies hate filled attacks on her and every other democrat are aimed at splitting the democratic coalition so it can never be rebuilt.
JPL
I will support the democratic nominee.
Chyron HR
@Loviatar:
In 2008 Clinton ran an incompetent campaign that became increasingly delusional and belligerent as her chances of victory waned and was criticized for it. In 2016 Sanders is running an incompetent campaign that’s becoming increasingly delusional and belligerent as his chances of victory wane and is being criticized for it.
BLATANT OBOT DOUBLE STANDARDS AMIRITE?
JMG
There is a huge difference between arguing “the system is corrupt and we are all trapped in it” and “the system is corrupt and therefore everyone in it is corrupt.” The former allows for alliance building, the latter prevents it.
PS: Go back and read Obama’s first inaugural. There have been few more sober, even discouraging words on the difficulty of change said by any President on their hour in office.
Baud
@JPL: I appreciate that.
Betty Cracker
I read the original post and was going to say something like “one man’s innuendo is another person’s legitimate point of differentiation” and declare my support for Cole’s “Overton window” statement from last night. But then I read Applejinx‘s comment, and that made me think, eh, fuck it, Krugman’s right.
Loviatar
@Chyron HR:
You know why I don’t consider Stephen Curry one of the greatest of all time. The game was changed for him. So while he has adapted faster than his peers to become one of the best of his era, he still isn’t a great.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll be perfectly honest, whenever liberals talk about moving the Overton Window, I get really scared.
Iowa Old Lady
@Loviatar: I still don’t know what Sanders and his supporters mean by revolution. I thought it was just a strong word for change, but then I heard Sanders say he’d get Mitch McConnell to do what Sanders thought was right by saying “look out the window at the millions of people gathered on the lawn, Mitch.” Should I take that literally? Will there be constant million-person demonstrations in DC (I assume peaceful ones)? If so, somebody better get organizing. Or should I take that metaphorically and believe McConnell will bow to the will of the electorate that voted for Sanders? Because I see no hope of that, given that Obama was elected twice.
When I heard Sanders say that was how his revolution would happen, I realized his notion of how governing works was worse than I thought.
PsiFighter37
@Micheline: +1 to this. Compare the substance and detail of the Democratic debates in 2008 to this year. Bernie would have looked like someone with their head in the clouds (or in the sand) given the complete lack of details surrounding the positions he is pushing.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Krugman is selling out progressives! As a pundit, he’s worse than Ann Coulter!
liberal
Obama’s been a great president, certainly in the relative sense, but the notion that Wall Street has been substantially pushed back is ludicrous.
geg6
@Baud:
Fuck Cole. He’s a drama queen. Plus, he called Lovey fat. She has been sulking ever since. Fuck Cole.
Nelle
My father survived the Russian Revolution and the violence where the Civil War dragged on, managing to get out of Russia in 1924. A calm man by day, he had nightmares all his life and I grew up hearing screams in the night.
My brother-in-law grew up in Congo during the 60’s and the violence that followed Lumumba’s assassination. He says that children learn to be very quiet during war. My sister and nieces fled Kinshasa on the last ferry before the overthrow of Mobutu.
My husband, a Vietnam vet, has thrown himself over me in his sleep, screaming “Incoming, Incoming!”
What kind of revolution do you want and who are you offering as collateral damage?
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Did that homeless guy in the UCLA cap bother your daughter much?
HRA
In the heat of the previous elections that I was able to watch, there was nothing more vile than the 2008 campaign from Clinton and their supporters. This is nothing in comparison.
OMG the Bernie supporters are [fill in the blank] ! I do a lot of reading online in many other blogs and sites. Hillbots are not exactly saintly either. The solution is to stop reading them and go elsewhere to read. BTW I go to all that interest me and not just liberal ones.
I also stopped reading Krugman years ago.
debbie
@JPL:
I will also, but the sniping, gloating, and demonization is rapidly becoming demoralizing. Frankly, you could replace Dem names with GOP names and there would be no difference.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Why?
@Chyron HR: Maybe the takeaway should be that this is how this shit works, so it doesn’t make much sense to freak out about it.
liberal
@Chyron HR: incompetent? LOL. He’s far exceeded expectations.
Amir Khalid
@Iowa Old Lady:
If Mitch McConnell were ever going to be moved to act by the masses gathered at his window, it would have happened by now. I’m as surprised and disappointed as you by Bernie’s apparent naivete; it doesn’t sound like it comes from someone who’s been in politics for over three decades.
debbie
@Nelle:
Have you asked them what it’s felt like for them to grow up in such turbulence as this world’s become?
Retr2327
I like the cartoon, but shouldn’t the caption be “the make America great grate”?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I find it’s usually a prelude to, and attempted justification for, engaging in some counterproductive shit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx:
You don’t get around people much, do you? Obnoxious is the human condition.
liberal
@Micheline: LOL. Were you breathing in 2008? Obama’s discussion of change had the intellectual depth of an eight yo’s essay.
And as for now, is using OFA push TPP the kind of change we need?
Marc
@Betty Cracker: A lot of people here don’t seem to get that the folks they’re pissing on are folks who basically agree with them on things and whose votes they need. You don’t use the same tactics on friends and allies that you do on opponents, at least if you have any minimal common sense.
Annie had a habit of repeatedly dissing Obama during the 2008 primaries and this is her daily hit piece on Sanders. It’d be lovely to have something other than this sort of divisive crap at the top of the page…
Princess
As Bernie’s campaign goes negative, his own favourability rating is going down — this is a normal consequence of negative campaigning, but it is damaging his electability argument.
JMG
Way back in the 1950s in one of his monologues, Lenny Bruce said this of politics. “I grew up in New York (city) and it was all understood. You’re corrupt, I’m corrupt and that’s the way it is.”
It would be a fine thing if people on either side of the Clinton-Sanders debate acknowledged that to participate in politics is to accept moral failures and ethical compromises as an inescapable part of participating in our political system, and to cut each other some slack in that regard.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Nah, he’s not homeless. He lives in a van down by the river. Really a cool guy and very smart.
Baud
@Marc:
You know you are engaging in the same thing. Criticizing one side and not the other.
ThresherK
I never correct Krugman, but:
Also, let’s not forget the math involved. Specifically, the Dems’ Dozen means that a Democrat has to get 53% favorability ratings to achieve the kind of press narrative a Republican has at 41%.
Kay
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, rich Republicans are really obnoxious, and they are not desperate at all.
Baud
@ThresherK:
Yep.
@Kay:
“I’m not with stupid.”
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I don’t think progress is possible without it.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Oh, well, if you know him…
debbie
@Kay:
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy! Unless, of course, we’re talking Kasich. Or maybe Husted. My list grows and grows…
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: He has a nice camera.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Here’s the reality – Bernie Sanders is a fucking moron, and what he claims to want aren’t delivered with the honesty that those sorts of society molding sweeping change and the concomitant economic dislocation of millions would require – a promise that all the effects, good AND bad would be dealt with, that the proposals are investments in the future and that the negative effects will be mitigated. That he doesn’t say it is either dishonest or fuck-all stupid, or a combination thereof. For that, I say “fuck him”.
His campaign is the mirror image of Trump’s, his appeals are sheer demagoguery and his most strident supporters are as stupid and tone deaf as Trump’s.
That’s what populism gets you EVERY time.
I can now see what Bloomberg apparently saw about a Sanders nomination. He’s dangerously stupid, and if the election comes down to Trump and Sanders, I would probably have to expatriate because there aren’t enough antidepressants in global inventory to keep me going.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@BillinGlendaleCA: Got another Jeff Weaver fundraising e-mail this morning on the Hillary/Greenpeace clip:
1) Hillary is the same as Republicans, check.
2) Hillary is bought by the oil companies, check.
3) Pledges are more important than policies, check.
4) Hillary stands with Trump – a climate change denier, check.
5) Hillary is corrupt, check.
6) Easy simple symbols are more important than policies and the ability to implement those policies, check.
7) Campaign contributions mean that donors are corrupt, not that they want a person to win, check.
8) Give us your money now, because money given to us shows that you’re virtuous, not corrupt, check.
Yet Bernie and his campaign are pure and have never been negative. Check.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Some of the most obnoxious people I know are rich. So are some of the nicest people I know. I have found that the main enabler of obnoxiousness is the certainty that one’s personal experiences are the only ones that count.
The rich man who says, “Well, I made it!” is just as obnoxious as the poor man who says, “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor!”
ETA and I can do it too
Kay
@debbie:
When they start saying they will “localize” the Congressional elections we know they’re panicking. That’s the kiss of death.
He’s almost there!
Nelle
@debbie: Actually, I’ve walked it with them, listening, watching, advising, offering help. Both of my children are aware of good fortune, having the two generations before them save so that they could graduate college without debt, but both have married into the college debt of their partners. Having taught the 18-22 age crowd for 30 years, I don’t think I’m totally out of touch. I see the young me in them, though I hope they don’t get the tear-gassing I got. I was likely as impatient with my parent’s perspective as they are with mine. And they are courteous. But I still wish they had a better sense of collateral damage.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not opposed to moving the Overton Window to the left. I’m just don’t trust attempts to deliberately do so. I’m jaded by my GOS experience, I admit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nelle: Children have a hard time seeing their parents as people.
debbie
@Nelle:
In politics, collateral damage only comes with age. Think about the 1960s. Who could have told you anything? Hell, I even joined SDS (for 10 minutes, but still).
D58826
some additional thoughts by the Professor. There also is a link to a Jonathan Capehart piece about how Bernie has criticized Hillary’s fund raising but will need to use those funds in the general. Capehart also mentioned that Bernie doesn’t seem interested in raising money for down ballot candidates whereas much of the fund raising that Hillary is doing will benefit just those candidates. Unless the democrats can control congress and regain control of state governments then neither Hillary or Bernie will get much done.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/feel-the-math/?_r=0
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: My wife, the LCSW, has mentioned some study revealing that the poor and the rich act the same.
If someone’s rich, nothing they do or say can take away the fact that they’re rich. If poor, at some point no matter how good a person they are, no insignificant number of folk will look down or assume bad things about them because they’re poor. The reward/reinforcement cycle is obvious.
It’s only the likes of me in the middle class who worriy about what neighbors think, becuase this is no longer Edwardian England. I have to make sure rich people recognize that I’m not one of those poor folk.
(PS I am almost not kidding. Geographically, all I can say is: I’m on my second old Volvo station wagon, by choice (even though there are no kids), and I live in an area where it blends in with a lot of newer Volvos.)
D58826
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: If Bernie loses, is Weaver auditing for a job with the GOP candidate. I realize you want to highlight the differences between Hillary and Bernie but no need to write the GOP attack ads. Another point that Professor K. made in hiks post.
Immanentize
Good morning folks! I see the regularly scheduled game already started. I have to get up earlier these days…
@Loviatar: please, just a personal request, don’t use the term ‘gipped’ (gypped). Please? It’s really rather insulting/racist like saying ‘jewed.’ I know, a small thing but it always makes me cringe. Thank you.
Amir Khalid
A question à propos Bernie’s free-college proposal: Nearly all public universities in the US are state institutions, aren’t they? As I understand, the only federal academic institutions are the military service academies.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?.
Off to swim ? and run errands.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: I know some fairly obnoxious middle class people too. ;-)
mike in dc
Clinton 08 didn’t concede until 3 days after the last primary, and ran negative ads throughout the campaign. Bernie has a small but meaningful chance of winning, which will increase if he wins big Tuesday, and will increase greatly if he pulls off the upset in NY. As far as undermining the probable nominee, the GOP primary race has provided the eventual Dem nominee with so many lines of attack I don’t think it’s going to be that significant that Bernie criticized her fundraising practices. I also expect that when and if he loses he will campaign for her and for Democrats down ticket. At the moment he is focused on winning the nomination, and as he is far behind her in delegates he doesn’t have the bandwidth to do anything else.
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: that is true, but the concept a I understand it would be a federal amount for each student — probably a reimbursement to the state — equal to tuition which would supposedly then force a single national rate across the country for tuition (which could be arm twisted through title IV student financial aid regulations).
Of course this completely leaves out room and board and fees. Already in some state schools, fees outstrip tuition 2 to 1.
msdc
@Baud: Amen. All the liberal/progressive talk about moving the Overton Window has yet to yield one substantive achievement. It’s typically used to justify Firebagger sniping at elected officials who actually have to bear the responsibilities of office. It should be banned from the lexicon of any organizer or activist who actually wants to get shit done.
See also: any mention of George Lakoff, ever.
Micheline
@liberal: Yes I was around and Obama’s ideas of change is still more nuanced than Sanders. Sanders still thinks that once economic inequality goes away then racism, sexism and homophobia will disappear. For me Sanders’ stance is very simplistic. It reminds me white male leftists back in the sixties. Additionally, Obama understood the importance down ticket races that’s why he inverted time and money in helping other candidates. So far Bernie Sanders has failed to do that.
AnonPhenom
I think Krugman’s take on the primary being a done deal is likely correct.
So why isn’t Clinton playing to Sander’s base to win them over? What’s with the ‘Bernie has to stop lying about me” crap? You want these people to respond to your GOTV program, right? Why are the Clintons making this ‘personal’?
Terminal foot in mouth disease.
dogwood
@D58826:
Absolutely. Bernie won’t do any fundraising if he’s the nominee; he’ll expect Clinton and Obama to do that. The unpleasant work usually falls to the women and the black folks as usual.
Baud
@AnonPhenom:
Um, cuz they are still competing for the nomination.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Scott, the Clinton Bubble cannot be pierced. Yesterday I pointed out the Clinton’s connections with the oil business. Connections like “You get the oil interests here, I get money.” Not just speaking fees, but friends who seem to benefit from sitting close to them on the dais and who in turn send money the Clintons’ way.
It doesn’t require much gray matter to figure out that our wars in lands where petrol is produced or where pipelines full of gas or oil cross have to do with making money on the black bubbly.
That Clinton is so gungho about the war in Syria and BJers sit patiently and swallow the propaganda is pathetic.
So this pure crap is, well, crap. Sanders is not pure. He’s not as bad and Clinton, by far.
So your little exercise this a.m. is essentially singing the same song to the choir here.
Frank Giustra. A good place to start. Just like the Russ Bellant interview in The Nation is a good place to educate yourself on what the US was doing in Ukraine.
But, no, you guys are the best censors because you censor yourself. You won’t let information that contradicts your world your bubble inside. Clinton has always been a cold warrior. There was no change when she switched from Republican to Democrat. The fact that she attended both the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1968 strongly suggests that she was weighing her political options.
Is she better than Republicans? Sure. Democrats have heavy hearts when they screw the underclass, Republicans shout Jesus and blame the underclass. The Clinton 90s were where the Clintons laid the groundwork for the aughts, and the aughts have not been good to the underclass.
1. Hillary’s foreign policy is essentially the same as the Republicans, to expand corporate control over resources.
2. Hillary and Bill are up to their necks in oil, both in foreign policy and in private deals in which they accrue money.
3. Policies and pledges, when not accomplished are equally failures.
4. No, Hillary doesn’t deny climate change. She denies that she accepts money from the energy corporations that deny climate change.
5. It depends on your definition of corrupt. I would think that getting kickbacks from arms sales to the people who have been supplying ISIS is corrupt, but you may have a more kindly view of it.
6. This is sort of a repeat of #3, but no, if Sanders wins the White House he’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning the stables. But that’s how you start.
7. When you receive lots of money from Goldman Sachs and GS has to pay a half-billion in fines for violation of federal law, you can call it whatever you want.
8. I don’t know what you’re talking about here. All political candidates accept donations. Hillary accepts donations from Wall Streeters (and many, many others) who violate US law. Sanders doesn’t.
You guys don’t get it because you don’t want to get it. If my candidate had lost six of the last seven primaries, almost all by lopsided margins, I would be curious to know why. Here, in the House of HIllary, you have remained in the dark.
Cheers.
Immanentize
@AnonPhenom: you know what, I wasn’t there but my guess is that Hillary, seeing emails like the one Scott shared above for weeks, got frustrated and popped off. I rather like her more for being a human.
Mike J
@AnonPhenom:
Because then they say she’s “pandering.”
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: But obnoxious to who? Other middle-classers, or their “betters”?
Your observation lines up nicely with the idea that one can be “trash” at any income level.
I must admit that at some point the “old knowledge” I posted runs into to self-assessment I’ve noticed for at least 20 years that everyone is middle class. The poor are, because they can’t call themselves poor; it’s an admission of fault or defeat. Most of the rich are, because they’re delusional about how far up the scale they are, or they know how rich they are but when the revolution comes they want to be behind the pitchforks rather than in front of them.
Amir Khalid
@AnonPhenom:
Should she just turn the other cheek, and allow Bernie’s campaign to paint her as weak? There is no response that can’t be cast in a negative light. She might as well respond however she sees fit. It’s not like Bernie is politely ignoring whatever comes his way.
D58826
@dogwood: or the less pure of heart
Loviatar
@Immanentize:
wow, did the research and you’re correct. did not know it was a racist term. I will try not to use it in the future. thanks for the knowledge.
WarMunchkin
This thread is weird and angsty, so here’s a fun twitter picture of Bernie wearing Beats that some of my friends are passing around to balance things out.
Chris
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Oh, isn’t that nice. Normally, I’d be worried, but I’ve been assured by every possible source that it’s the Bernie supporters who have no understanding of party unity and are going to throw a shit fit and stay home if their pony doesn’t win and that we really need to watch out for their attempts to Ralph Nader the party.
Immanentize
By the way, just wondering, has anyone asked Bernie whether he would take federal matching in the election or is he going to reject that constraint like every candidate for uptrend years? If he is going to reject matching, where is his general campaign funding coming from? The party yes, but the Democratic Party has to tap big ugly corporate cash to compete…. There is no other source with the billion needed is there?
Immanentize
@Loviatar: no, thank you for considering my pet peeve request.
Chris
@Micheline:
I’d even say thirties.
Loviatar
@Bob In Portland:
Thank you for your long soliloquy on the Clinton bubble, but you still haven’t answered this question from yesterday
Can you explain why Sanders won’t commit to supporting Down-Ballot Democrats?
Sanders: ‘We’ll See’ If I Will Fundraise For Down-Ballot Democrats
—–
P.S.
Also, you wouldn’t happen to be mclaren would you?
msdc
@Bob In Portland:
Is that how you felt on March 16? Or how you will feel come April 27?
I realize there’s no point engaging with a troll, so I’ll just point out to other Sanders supporters here that it’s this tendency to cherry-pick dates and contests, dismiss or fabricate numbers, make up rules, move goalposts, discount voters, and disregard math in general that has really put me off your candidate. The magical thinking is getting almost as bad as what we see on the Republican side, and it’s just as urgent that we stop it before it drags us down too.
Chyron HR
@Bob In Portland:
If I sincerely believed that my candidate was winning in a landslide I wouldn’t be as agitated about the primary as you seem to be.
msdc
@Mike J: And then complain that she’s stealing his message… which you’d think they would recognize as the victory condition for a message campaign.
WarMunchkin
@Chris: He’s just moving the Overton window, so I hear.
You know, come to think of it, I’m ready to retire the phrase “overton window”.
Also, historical perspective is amazing. This stuff was all several orders of magnitude worse in 2008, and we’ll get through it.
Betty Cracker
@msdc:
Is marriage equality a significant achievement? If so, do you think it would have happened without activists raising hell and putting political pressure on elected officials, or do you think officials would have found it within their noble hearts to address the issue in a timely manner without outside pressure?
FDR once listened to a group of activists and said, “You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.” He meant move the Overton window. You can call it something else if the term bothers you, but it’s the same concept.
Chris
@WarMunchkin:
Oh, absolutely.
Both Sanders and Clinton are far more liked than not among Democratic voters, as I recall from the polls. That’s still the central fact of the campaign, and absent a third party candidate who could pull off one or two percentage points (just enough to make a difference), I see no real need to worry about the party coming together.
As you say, 2008 showed the way – I spent that summer studying abroad, and I swear to God it was like the Democrats were an entirely different party when I came back to America in the fall, as opposed to how it had been when I left in the spring. The supposed mass defection of Hillary supporters never happened.
ETA: but no, I’m not ready to retire the term Overton Window. It’s a useful description for the phenomenon, and Betty Cracker in the post just above mine offers a nice illustration of where it’s moved drastically to the left.
Djchefron
@Loviatar: Revolutions don’t always turn out the way one hopes
dogwood
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup. You don’t have to be desperate to be obnoxious. But the real problem with the Bernie campaign and the attitude of his followers is that the majority of people who will vote in this election aren’t desperate for change. The one young obnoxious Bernie supporter know is the son of two teachers. He’s attending college without taking on debt, just spent a semester in Europe, and like his older brother will probably graduate university and get a decent job. But the pain he has suffered under Obama and will continue to suffer under Clinton is just unacceptable. He refused to caucus for Bernie because the system is corrupt. I get a kick out of him because he’s as likely to to be voting republican in 30 years as he is to be a democrat.
AnonPhenom
@Amir Khalid:
yes she should turn the other cheek. it’s called being a gracious winner. save the other crap for the Republicans. the more of the Bernie crowd she wins over now, the less influence he has at the convention. it’s simply smart politics.
Bob In Portland
@Loviatar: This comes up every election cycle to a degree. It’s more so this time. First, it’s an admission of the possibility that you are going to lose. When you’re the underdog you can’t admit that you’re going to lose.
Second, which down ticket candidates should he support? Wasserman? I can see him campaigning for Tim Canova, but no way in hell should he or will he support Wasserman.
msdc
@Betty Cracker: But those activists were working to gain marriage equality, not to “shift the discussion” or “move the Overton Window.”
Activism in service of a clearly-defined goal can be incredibly productive. “Activism” in service of empty symbolic gestures and linguistic games is not. Claims about moving the Overton Window – especially those that treat it as a goal in and of itself – are almost always the latter.
magurakurin
Fuck Bernie. He’s gonna lose. Then he’ll do whatever it is he is gonna do. But the rest of us will have to do what we can to help Clinton with or without the bitter old crank. Life sucks. We’ll just have to play the hand we’re dealt.
but…fuck Bernie.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Reality exists independent of your picture of it, Bob.
Oil is becoming less important by the day. The price collapsed recently, remember? There’s still a huge global glut of supply, and Iran will be adding to it shortly.
Bernie’s wrong that Hillary is bought by the oil companies, the banksters, etc. His campaign is a continuing slow-moving disaster if the goal is to actually create conditions to get things like policies he advocates enacted. Everyone who disagrees with him isn’t corrupt or an idiot that needs Shouty Slogans™ yelled out them so that they understand.
We’re not electing a Benevolent Despot who will fix everything all by himself. Putin’s not available, fortunately, though I’m sure you’re disappointed. ;-)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Chris:
I dislike him intensely, I dislike his supporters worse. His “revolution” would blow up the economic worlds of me and tens of millions of retirees and those soon to retire, and not achieve the results he claims to want. In fact, his single payer health care would usher in a depression that would make the Great Recession seem like boom times.
He’s thoughtless, reckless and a demagogue who whips up the passions of assholes who never had to engage in the mundane, non-revolutionary implementation of policies that arise by consensus.
Fuck him. The real democrats were out there achieving what they could in the face of a nasty white underclass propagandized by racism and the notion that they might get rich someday, Christianist theocracy fanatics, a mostly hostile business class and an implacably oppositional media, all while Bernie marched along by himself to the tune of “The Internationale”.
Ironically, the more I hear from him, the more I despise him.
Betty Cracker
@msdc: I’ve never heard of a single person who said their goal was just to shift the terms of acceptable discourse as an objective in and of itself, substantive change be damned. Maybe such a creature exists, but I detect a whiff of straw.
magurakurin
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I hear ya, I hear ya.
Fuck Bernie.
Bob In Portland
@Chyron HR: But, again, another misdirection. He’s behind because he lost a lot of early races. He’s coming on strong now. All the demographic areas with the exception of rich old white men and women, Hillary is now losing. As a matter of intellectual interest you might wonder, “Gee whiz, what happened?” I know I was wondering why African Americans voted in such strong numbers for Clinton in February. Now that things have changed I think I’ve got a better handle on this demographic switch.
The very fact that the Clinton Bubblers use the art of misdirection as a science does not resolve the problem. If Clinton limps into the convention with further erosion to her base, especially with under 30s saying that they will not vote for her, then she’s got a problem. You may not want to admit she’s got a problem, but she’s got a problem.
So slice it however you want. But don’t panic.
rikyrah
From DON at TOD:
Bob In Portland
@magurakurin: Oh wait, but you’ll vote for him when he wins the nomination, right?
magurakurin
@Bob In Portland:
he.is.going.to.lose.
fucking putz.
SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer
@Immanentize:
@Loviatar:
This exchange is incredibly refreshing. Immanentize didn’t point accusing fingers and call names; (s)he made a polite request and explained why. In turn, Loviatar refrained from getting all huffy and insulted; rather, (s)he took the comment seriously, checked it out, admitted previous ignorance, and pledged to change.
The entire conversation, though brief, is a model for How It Should Be Done.
JMG
Despise seems very strong. I respect Sanders. I just don’t think he’s expanded his message and vision to the point needed to a) win the election, b) be any sort of effective President if elected.
Right now, this primary campaign reminds me as much of 1992 as 2008. At this point then, it was clear Bill Clinton was going to be the nominee, yet there was so much resistance to this idea among Democratic voters he actually lost some primaries to Jerry Brown, who had yet to begin his electoral comeback in California.
Sanders is gaining strength not just because of his core of support, but because Democratic voters who will accept Clinton as nominee still don’t want to give her a blank check. They want her looking over that left shoulder. That’s OK.
magurakurin
@Bob In Portland:
he’s not winning shit.
She wins, you lose, asshole. Vote for Trump, write in Bernie, go for Jill Stein. I don’t give a fuck. putz.
msdc
@Betty Cracker: You can see one example in this very thread. Cole’s post last night is a pretty good one, too – it’s all about “pushing the issues” regardless of consequence, regardless of whether the claims are even true. And it uses the right as a model, despite the fact that they have pushed their own Overton window right off the fucking cliff. No thank you.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Exactly. Yesterday I pointed out the Clinton energy deals set up for Frank Giustra in Kazakhstan and Colombia. No matter the brushing aside of oil’s value in the future, people are still willing to make backroom deals for controlling it. People are still willing to have regime changes or all-out war for it. People are willing to lie about it.
Today you Balloon Bubblers already have forgotten about it.
Bob In Portland
@magurakurin: Gave enough of a fuck to write a comment which did not advance your argument. When the fucks come dripping off your mouths like honey you’ve lost the argument.
Amir Khalid
@AnonPhenom:
Are Bernie and his people saving their ire for the Republicans? Let her give as good as she gets. This is a campaign, after all.
dogwood
@Bob In Portland:
The reality is Bernie is winning most of the same the contests Obama won outside of the South. Obama won Wisconsin by 18 points and it didn’t change the momentum enough for him to win Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Obama people knew the states they would win before the voting began, and it played out pretty much as they predicted. The Sander’s campaign isn’t as skilled as the Obama campaign, and I don’t believe he is on the same level as Obama as a campaigner, so I imagine things will likely play out as predicted.
Bob In Portland
@magurakurin: If Hillary wins, the state of the lower classes of America will lose. That’s pretty much been the case since the 70s. Your point? That my ego will suffer? I guess that’s the game you’re playing.
Chris
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
The Internationale. Okay, Bot. Whatever.
magurakurin
@Bob In Portland:
okay, chief. Got it. Do what you need to do. Make us all proud.
Cleos
I’ve been a Clinton supporter since 2008 but did like Sanders. Will still vote for him in November if he gets the nomination but in view of his dismissive reaction to raise funds for other Democratic candidates I’ll be thinking my party made a fatal mistake. He’s crafted a recipe for one term of even worse gridlock we’ve got now. The last thing we need is a POTUS who makes enemies unnecessarily.
yellowdog
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Come on, don’t be so meal-mouthed. Tell us how you really feel.
Betty Cracker
@msdc: If that’s what you think Cole meant, you misunderstood his post completely, IMO. Here’s an excerpt:
Emphasis mine to highlight the substantive change Cole believes moving the OW can support. It’s not just about yapping for the sake of yapping. It’s about expanding the universe of possible outcomes.
I find Applejinx mostly incoherent, but I’m sure he’s sincere about wanting things to change; his endless screeds aren’t just about dominating the conversation. IMO, neither is concerned with “empty symbolic gestures and linguistic games” as you claim some folks are.
Davebo
@Bob In Portland:
Well isn’t that precious! I’d call you a Libtard but I really don’t want to sink, as you have, to the level of your averaged commenter on RedState.
ruemara
@Nelle: Women. People of color. LGBTQ people. When we want to know the “how” of a Sanders platform, we’re told that’s attacking. When we want to know what he’ll do for our issues, we’re told that’s not necessary. When people who have fought for those issues say they just can’t back that executive order and Occupy DC every month governing strategy, we’re told people with a track record are corrupt. Our gains can be sacrificed because Sanders works from the principle that everything else is resolved, except economic justice. And all those other things are not as important.
Which is why everyone Democratic is worse than every Republican. We’re not seeing the economic forest for our “identity politics” trees.
Bob In Portland
@dogwood: I don’t predict as well as you, and quite honestly it doesn’t matter. You support the candidate who you think best represents your interests. If Hillary represents your interests, then you go right ahead and vote for her. Old rich white men and women are still in her camp.
I believe it was Mnem who several days ago pleaded poverty (making only 20 or 40k in some years). Then yesterday I do believe she said she can’t get out of a hair salon for under 200 bucks. And she mentions her husband, whom I presume she didn’t take into consideration when she was poormouthing a few days ago. That’s fine. I think I reached 40k my last year of working before I retired. Maybe 39k. That puts us in different tax brackets. It puts me with the less advantaged. You may think you’re worth 80k or a 100k, but pretending to be of the people does not erase the difference of money and resources. One thing I’ve learned over my life is the less you earn the harder you work. It still holds true.
So I understand that from where you folks dispense your wisdom is not the same territory as where I am. And if a couple of you Hillary supporters just say, I think she’ll protect me from the poor folk, then at least that’s an honest answer. But the hoops you jump through to justify Clinton’s candidacy are embarrassing.
yellowdog
@Bob In Portland: “Lower classes”!!! Really? Well I can see where your privileged ass is coming from.
Bob In Portland
@ruemara: I guess you didn’t go to his website, did you? No one will attack you there.
Now point me to where Clinton explains how she’ll clean up Wall Street better than Sanders.
chelsea530
@Bob In Portland:
Why don’t you explain how Sanders is going to “clean up Wall Street”? All by himself.
Come on, I know you can do it. Then when you figure it out, would you please let Bernie know?
Also, the harder you work, the less you make? It’s too bad that in your experience, that’s the case. It isn’t for many others who work their butts off and make a decent living.
Good grief. So much bitterness in your screeds.
Bob In Portland
@yellowdog: Lower classes. Yes. I came from working a blue collar job all my life except when I was a union officer. How much do you make, dog? Class in America involves money and prestige. There’s not much prestige in being a letter carrier or picking fruit or cleaning hotel rooms. Or money.
So are you upset that I mention class here? Of course, you are. But, really, I suspect that’s what most BJers are arguing here.
Bob In Portland
@chelsea530: First step, putting someone in the Justice Department who will prosecute them. And if the Repubs and Repub-lites don’t approve that person, that person to be temporary head. And remind people every day who is defending Wall Street. Hopefully, DWS will be gone, but I’d call her out every day if necessary.
If you are saying that cleaning up Wall Street is impossible, then that’s a comment on your imagination. And before you go on the tired riff of imagination versus reality, at least admit the current reality and how most Americans are fucked by Wall Street.
Bill Arnold
Glad that P. Krugman wrote those pieces.
I believe that he is partially incorrect about the immutability of US “conservative” dogma. True, there are immutable parts, notably the parts of the dogma in direct service of the open conspiracy to make rich people richer. The rest of the dogma is pretty fragile right now, and could be shifted in some areas, e.g. climate change, especially if the shifts are integrated into the core dogma, e.g. recognizing (or even protecting) the large profits to potentially be made by addressing climate change. (New moneyed interests will (need to) emerge.) Example shift; the national shift in attitudes about same-sex marriage; there are die-hard holdouts e.g. some southern states and some voting blocks, but overall the shift was sufficiently obvious for the 9-member conservative-dominated Supreme Court to rule in favor.
The mental trick conservatives do is basically to shift positions then deny that the shift even happened. That’s fine, as long as the shifts (away from falsehoods) happen.
chelsea530
@Bob In Portland: @Bob In Portland:
First step, putting someone in the Justice Department who will prosecute them.
If what they’re doing is against the law, I’m sure that will happen.
And some regulations have been put in place already, but more are needed. Not going to happen with Congress controlled by Republicans now, is it, Bob.
Bob In Portland
@chelsea530: Let them eat cake. Nowadays there are people who work multiple jobs and can’t feed their kids. That’s reality in America. I know, we’d rather they sing happy songs while they work for nothing.
God, when I first posted on this site Cole was still a Republican. He seems to have moved from those depths, but, Chelsea, if you don’t think that there are people unhappy with their lot and not seeing a way out of it, then you might as well be a Republican for all you can see.
Kathleen
@Kay: It scares me when a Republican uses the term “interesting things”. Then again, everything Republicans say scares me so there’s that.
I need to throw some love to Strickland. I’ve always liked him (though I know you and some other BJ Buckeyes have expressed some concerns about him).
ruemara
@Bob In Portland: I’ve read his platform several times in the hopes that something substantive will be added. So, fuck yourself.
With regard to your lies about big oil. Yep, lie.
The win with YUUGE margins? Only if you comprehend the problems with caucuses, least democratic method possible. But if disenfranchising people is a win for you, who cares, right? Revolution!
RSA
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I believe that Sanders would be better than any of the Republican candidates (that part is easy), but I’ve recently come around to your way of thinking, too. Reading up on Sanders’s health care plan, I can see its appeal if it could be put in place. For me, though, I have huge medical expenses, and his plan seems clear about what it will cost (it would double my federal income tax) but very vague about the benefits. I don’t want to chance impoverishment for me and my family.
Bob In Portland
@chelsea530: How many Goldman Sachs execs are serving time?
msdc
@Betty Cracker: Personally, I would have highlighted the part where he said they aren’t doing any damage to Clinton (debatable, but repeating right-wing smears against your party’s eventual nominee is never a good idea). Or the entire previous paragraph, where he describes what this kind of rhetorical escalation did to the right and then wonders why Democrats don’t like it.
I would also suggest that the last eight years ought to serve as an object lesson that progressives attacking liberals for insufficient purity does nothing to advance progressive politics. “A million people out there screaming” is not a strategy. People screaming for single-payer health care didn’t give Obama any more maneuvering room on the ACA, they gave him less. And when Obama fell short of their impossible goal, that certainly didn’t do anything to mollify the Firebaggers.
There’s a certain strain of progressivism that thinks that if we just drop the right vocabulary or the right name then the argument is won. The Overton window is the name people drop when they look to justify their purity trolling.
Mandalay
Jesus. Like Clinton herself, Krugman plays at being willfully blind, and chooses not to see the forest for the trees. Accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street for a few speeches is INHERENTLY corrupt. However squeaky clean your personal conduct may be, the practice itself is corrupt regardless of legality. It stinks to high heaven.
And so Krugman and Clinton both engage in this farce about how it is all perfectly legal, and if you don’t have hard evidence of corruption you must STFU.
You wanna accept money for nothing from Wall Street? Fine. But there is a price to pay for that free money: many voters will see you as corrupt.
Bob In Portland
@RSA: How much do you make? How much is your federal income? How much is your medical insurance? Since the biggest jump at the top of the federal income tax goes from 39 to 52 percent I don’t follow your math.
But at least you’re giving a good reason for not voting for Sanders. You make too much money. There we have it. Finally, an honest voice here.
Bob In Portland
@Mandalay: Thank you.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@rikyrah:
Donald Trump is the exemplar of American meritocracy, the sine qua non display of how American success stories arise. Be born to great wealth and privilege while being dumb as a stump, and you can still use zombie leverage to increase that wealth through connections and stupid rich people trusting you because you’re rich. Fuck up mightily, and constantly invoke the protection of law to insulate you from the consequences of your mistakes, leaving a trail of miserable vendors and creditors while escaping with your assets intact.
That is what passes as success here – the guy is truly fucking stupid. If he didn’t inherit money, he’d be selling cars on a “buy here, pay here” lot, or working as a collection manager at a payday lender.
Applejinx
Thanks, Betty, I’ll take that in the spirit in which it’s given. When I say things like
This would seem incoherent if you’re not down with the underlying assumptions. For instance, if you thought market forces brought good things and sorted through them for the consumer, it’d seem a weird statement to call ’em a cancer. We don’t all agree on underlying concepts, and that causes most of the instances where debate switches off and pure hate kicks in.
I think when you’re say a Millenial and everybody you know is desperate and embattled, and rich people (and upper-middle, and retirees) seem like the unreachable Other, hate kicks in. It’s honestly better for that hate to be redirected to corporations and lobbying organzations and loopholes in laws. Those can be ‘killed’ bloodlessly. If you let the hate be directed towards humans that’s dangerous, and if it’s justifiably directed towards a CLASS of people who are reachable and within driving distance, that’s playing with fire. I don’t like seeing Hilbots full of hate and defending their pension plans against the Bros by painting them as young-rich dilettantes, callow and misguided versions of themselves that must be slapped sensible.
That’s a really horrible and dangerous misreading of the situation.
As far as endless screeds, I’m not a big copy/paster: I’m a fiction writer, so I spend most of my time putting myself in the mind of wildly varying characters with disparate motivations. I can’t help but apply this to what I see in politics. Could be worse, if I hadn’t given up drugs and drink more than 20 years ago, I might be Hunter S Thompsoning :)
I was expressing myself through creativity and not just trollery/debate as far back as 2012 under this name, and even got a song into an Artists In Our Midst open thread though the song’s got unlatched from the thread: it was this song, Discord Welcome Home. I notice that even then Sarah Proud And Tall had difficulties bridging the gap between her reality and mine :)
chelsea530
@Bob In Portland:
I’m sure there are unhappy people who want their lives to get a little easier. Feeding their anger and making promises that have little or no chance of being kept is an awfully unfair and evil thing to do to them.
maryQ
@Loviatar: I think Obama’s temperament and policy fluency mixed well with his soaring hope and change rhetoric to convince people older than 25 that he is serious about governing. Sanders, not so much. Clinton got excessively divisive and negative in 2008, and she paid a price. She also came around gracefully in the end, and learned her lesson. The so-called parallels to 2008 are not.
Bob In Portland
@msdc: RIght-wing memes. The Republicans can’t criticize her for her actually destroying Libya. They criticize her because the ambassador died. Two different things altogether. Regime change in order to make money is different from not protecting your ambassador, and anyone who sees that the Republicans have repeatedly voted for smaller and smaller budgets for embassy protection knows that.
If you are saying that Hillary accepts money to do the bidding of the rich, well, that’s a left-wing meme. The left is a region where you might have visited as an idealistic youth.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Mandalay:
Of course! They’re all corrupt, throw the bums out! Except my guy/gal. He/she’s independent, he/she tells it like it is, he’/shes not bought and paid for. Don’t confuse me with your ‘facts’, everyone else is worse.
He/she’s fucking right, you’re fucking wrong, you hear me? I AM FUCKING RIGHT!
This message was brought to you by the Politics That Make You Feel Better Council: “Fuck ’em, you got yours.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland:
Prosecute the banksters for what, Bob?
Seriously. What criminal laws did they break?
I thought the problem with the Corrupt Campaign Finance System™ is that donations buy lawmakers and politicians who write rules and laws that let the banksters and assorted other nefarious people do what they want. Right?
If so, then what laws did the banksters break that will get them thrown in jail?
AFAIK, changing the laws now can’t make previous actions illegal. post-facto and all that. Is that wrong?
So how is, I dunno, Bernie appointing Daniel Ellsburg as AG going to get the banksters at G-S or Citi or AIG or … thrown in jail for their actions before January 2017?
Maybe, just maybe, reality intrudes yet again.
Maybe the things that the big banksters did were immoral and venal and violated civil securities rules and laws, but maybe they weren’t criminal. Maybe billion dollar settlements are the best that could be achieved (and maybe the Teabaggers wouldn’t do even that) under the laws that applied at the time.
So, how’s Bernie going to fix it by appointing an AG who can only enforce the laws as they existed, not as Bob in Portlandia (and maybe some others) might wish them to be?
If the system is broken to such an extent that the lawmakers are bought and they write the laws to let their patrons do what they want, then just electing Bernie won’t fix it. See? Bernie won’t write the laws – that’s not how our system works.
See the problem with just having Shouty Slogans™ and accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being Corrupt™ ? I’m guessing not, but I thought I’d try… :-/
FWIW.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cleos
@debbie:
You think she’d have to ask them? That’s like the joke about how can you tell if someone is a vegan.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
I thought that was LBJ talking to some Civil Rights Movement folks? In any event, your larger point stands.
Kathleen
@Mike J: Not to paint too broad a brush, but I see two basic categories of Bernie supporters. This is based on reading blog comments on 3-4 political blogs and my friends and family, so it’s obviously very anecdotal. But what I’m reading and seeing is that many Sanders supporters like both Sanders and Clinton and have contributed money to both campaigns. Their expectation is that Clinton will be the nominee but they feel that the Sanders campaign is expanding the conversation about economic issues and they want to support that as well. Then there are the Sanders supporters who say they will never vote for Hillary. Why would Hillary want to put her energy into trying to win over people who hate her? I think all she needs to do is run her own race. Her current supporters who also like Sanders are already on board and the voters who haven’t made up their minds yet can continue to evaluate both candidates and make their choices.
Mike J
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I never actually ran the numbers myself, but there was a claim that had he put his inheritance in an S&P500 index fund, he would have made more. It’s a great story, but I have a hard time trusting those, especially when they confirm my biases.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@RSA:
Here’s my thing – healthcare stocks account for just shy of 30% of the blue chip stock indices. EVERY index mutual fund has these shares, and even non-index investment products are heavily invested in health care stocks. This means that every pension, 401K and private or public invested is heavily into the healthcare industry. Further, a million people are employed as low to middle income earners for health insurance companies and providers’ insurance clerks.
Bernie’s single payer plan threatens massive dislocation of those workers, as well as making that 30% of shares worthless. Neither he nor his supporters have offered up anything on plans to mitigate economic dislocation.
chelsea530
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Thank you, Scott.
Sigh.
Bob In Portland
@chelsea530: That’s just the way it is. Okay. Hope and change becomes hope for change. Spare change.
Thank you, you’re absolutely right. Let’s not get the natives restless. My god, do you live in houses without mirrors? Figuring for inflation most Americans are making less than they did in the 70s. It’s too bad nothing will change. It will just keep getting worse for the bottom 80%. So vote for Hillary, who’s managed to have worked her way up from her middle-class existence of the sixties to having billions of dollars at her disposal. Maybe if we try hard enough we can all pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.
Sorry, most people know what’s happening here. You either don’t or don’t mind, or at least can live with it. A lot of people can’t live with it.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Scott, were laws broken in the crash? Were any of the laws punishable by jail time?
Thank you. If you say that the current situation of income inequality cannot be changed, then fine, say it. If it doesn’t change people will continue to die.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
This message also brought to you by the Vladimir Putin Is The Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known In My Life Foundation: “Ты получаешь то, за что платишь.”
J R in WV
@BillinGlendaleCA:
As to photos, they look good. A suggestion on composition: when you have a single point of interest in a photo, like a bloom or an old chimney, or a cute girl, it is usually best to NOT center that item in the photo, but to place the point of interest at either the 1/3 or 2/3 position in the frame, assuming that you are shooting a traditional horizontal 35mm frame. IIRC this involves the golden rectangle, perhaps? I forget, it was a long time ago I studied composition.
But if you look at great art, they rarely center the point of greatest interest in the photo, or even paintings.
Just my $0.02, of course. YMMV and no rule is always applicable to everything. You can do this in post-processing by cropping the piece, and then compare the subject matter in both formats.
dogwood
@Bob In Portland:
My comment to you said nothing about my voting preferences, income or anything else. It was just a statement about the nuts and bolts of things. I could very well be wrong. Bernie has won a string of impressive victories, yes. But I can’t overlook the fact that in ’08 700 voters turned out to caucus in my county, and this year only 50 showed up. I’ll believe in this great enthusiasm when I see it, and will vote for him if he wins the nomination. And as far as voting for my self- interest, I have no self- interest in this contest. I’m essentially on the low end of the middle class in America. I’m luckier than most because despite how crazy my red state can be, it has arguably the top public employees retirement system in the nation. That’s why I see state government as crucial to providing better outcomes for its citizens.
Kathleen
@chelsea530: I’m sure he blames Obama.
Applejinx
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’m not sure where you get the ‘if’, here. It was my impression that there’s decades of documentation to establish that’s literally how it’s done. It appears the Bernie argument there is ‘so elect someone who will not stop yelling about that and MAYBE eventually we can do something about it, at least we’ll have indicated a preference’.
If all the other options look like either collusion (Reps) or blind po-faced denial (some but not all of the Clintonistas), it’s difficult to go along with that stuff once you know. Especially if you see that reality as contributing to the sharp decline of your living standards and all your hopes for the future. We CAN deteriorate further. This is one reason why fracking is a hot-button issue where people want a dramatic repudiation from Hillary: that’s a relatively new development that literally leaves our land in fucking ruins, with poisoned flammable water. You don’t need to be Flint, Michigan to have poison water. We could end up with it all over the place, while corporations suck money out of the very rocks.
Cleos
@dogwood:
Another reminder of the male “revolutionaries” of the 1960s. It wasn’t any coincidence that the feminist movement saw a revival just a few years later.
And here I thought I couldn’t possibly have become more sick of hearing the word “establishment” during that era. Worse: it’s now been joined by “bankster” as one of the most. overused. words. ever.
Bob In Portland
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Actually, a good point. I would presume a lot of the lessers of Big Medicine will find jobs with the government. After all, the government will need people to handle single-payer. The guys who pull in millions and billions will lose out. Sigh.
As far as 401ks, I presume the money will flow out of the insurance companies and into other areas of the economy. But I wouldn’t argue about our pensions too much because the same people who defraud their workers are the wealthy.
Dislocation? Sure, there’s always dislocation when you move money from the 1% to the rest of us.
Bob In Portland
@Cleos: Which is why women under 30 are supporting Sanders. Better real change than a figurehead who represents the wealthy.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
Healthcare != health insurance.
To be a little less glib: everyone knows that implementing a single-payer system would be massively destabilizing. That’s the point. However, it just makes no economic sense to say that, because the for-profit health payments industry currently sees revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars and profits in the tens of billions, somehow redirecting that revenue to a not-for-profit stream would result in the net loss to the economy of those hundreds of billions of dollars.
Bottom line: as soon as health insurance no longer looks like it will be a money-making affair, those companies’ stock will be de-listed on the indices and all the index funds and mutual funds will rebalance.
Cleos
@Amir Khalid: It’s an old expectation: the girl is supposed to let the boy win, and be sweet about it.
Applejinx
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Are you aware that those types of clerical white-collar jobs are the very ones which, through the natural operation of the market and current trends in automation, computerization, and expert systems design, are already doomed?
If we must have a nation of clerks with their jobs guaranteed by the government to protect employment, I would not have them be the ones serving as middlemen and care-deniers for the health insurance industry. I think you’ll find that computers can shuffle numbers and deny claims more efficiently than human clerks, and automated phone answering systems can do their thing more efficiently than human representatives.
Those jobs are already going to go away regardless. That industry should be awarded the Most Likely To Be Automated pin, with CEOs presiding over enormous computer systems to manage the sprawl of it all. Until even the CEO is automated… first one to do that is liable to clean up and corner the market. Efficiency.
starscream
There is no comparison to 2008. Clinton was never as far behind as Bernie is now.
I legitimately don’t understand how the “revolution” will play out without down-ballot support. Why would Mitch McConnell care about kids marching outside if he still controls the Senate? Although, it would explain a lot if after all these years, Sanders still doesn’t really understand how Congress works.
Yutsano
@RSA: I’ve been kind of quiet about the Sanders universal health care plan, but the lack of details just bugs me. Cover everything. Okay, are we talking alternative medicine? Treatments not approved by the FDA? What’s the standard here? Does endless life care in the last 3 months of life always get covered? Does an expensive treatment at the very last stages of cancer get covered?
Sanders also conveniently ignores that no single UHC scheme in the world covers everything. Canadian health care doesn’t cover physiotherapy. It also doesn’t cover most medications, which is why there actually is a tax deduction for medical on Canadian tax forms. In fact a lot of them are modeled on Medicare with an 80/20 expense split with private companies covering the rest. There are definitely ways we can do it that are much simpler than throwing everything out and starting over. Single payer is nice, but it’s not the only solution.
Applejinx
@J R in WV: Yep, that’s the Rule Of Thirds, you had it right. Well spotted :)
It’s a well known compositional tip: divide horizontal and vertical into thirds, and images look more appealing when there are points of interest at those intersection points. Not a uniform rule, but a very common guideline. When you position things dead center (the Coen brothers like filming that way, quite a lot) it should be for a good reason, not just because ‘this is the subject of the image’.
Glidwrith
@Bob In Portland: Sorry, Bernie has been weighed, measured and found wanting. He simply has not addressed the holes in his policies. Ruemara is right that all of the not-white, non-economic issues have gone unanswered. Just the other day he dismissed the issues over abortion and however much you ignore it, he said he isn’t helping to fund the down ticket races.
I was Bernie-curious, but the campaign is done for me. Clinton will get my vote in the primary.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Applejinx: The problem with Bernie’s approach (thus far at least) is that he wants a Political Revolution™ that just elects him. He won’t write the laws as President, the Congress does that.
Of course there are lots of problems with the existing laws. But they are what they are. Railing against Corruption™ and implicitly calling Hillary Corrupt™ isn’t the way to build a Political Revolution™ that will actually have enough power in the Congress to get the laws changed.
It would be different if he was winning the nomination race by 500 votes, if turnout was up 50% compared to 2008, if Bernie had endorsements of his colleagues in the Senate, in the House, in the states. He doesn’t. Change is going to be incremental, nor Revolutionary™ and he needs to recognize that.
He’s trashing the brand, he’s setting his supporters up for huge disillusionment, and he’s doing nothing to help his Political Revolution™ outlast this failed campaign.
IOW, He’s Dong it Wrong if he wants to be more than a symbol (and actually get things done).
Perhaps he’ll get with the program after he loses the DC primary on June 14. Perhaps, but based on his tack record (see the old Google cache of the Bangor Daily News post about him and Barney Frank), I’m not optimistic. And that saddens me.
But we’ll see.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@msdc: We’ll have to agree to disagree on the utility of expanding the range of ideas that are acceptable, i.e., moving the Overton window. To me, the necessity is self-evident. I would also note there’s a fine line between “purity trolling” and “clap harder.”
Davebo
@Mike J:
I’d say the S&P 500 claim re: Trump is correct.
Brachiator
@Bob In Portland:
I know!! Remember the US invasion of Canada to control their oil fields and tar sands. Yep, orchestrated by Hillary.
Oh, wait…
Bernie does the bidding of the gun lobby even if he does not take their money. Which meme is that?
Iowa Old Lady
I assume the reason Clinton is campaigning and financing down ballot races is that her theory of how things get done includes having more Democrats in congress. That seems realistic to me.
dogwood
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Exactly. As I said to Bob, my state retirement system has been so well managed that it is the gold standard, yet blow up health care and good management by the state won’t mean a thing. Nonetheless, I don’t worry too much about that because he wouldn’t even get democrats to go along with it. There is too much job growth in the healthcare sector right now to get dems to sign on to Bernie’s plan.
Bob In Portland
@Kathleen:
Thomas Frank, from his new book, LISTEN, LIBERAL:
There is a difference between criticizing Obama because you think he’s a commie Muslim from Kenya in an underground sleeper cell to destroy America and criticizing him for Larry Summers. When you confuse the two you are only deluding yourself. You may need that to feel self-righteous, but you remain in the dark.
You BJers love to worship your idols, and accuse people who don’t worship them as sexists or racists, or whatever. At day’s end, nothing much changed. Get it? Nothing much changed.
Larry Summers.
msdc
@Betty Cracker: After thinking about it some more, I realized why I find claims about the power of the Overton window so unpersuasive – and why I find the comparison to marriage equality in particular to be inaccurate bordering on offensive.
I played a very, very small part in the fight for marriage equality in Maryland, working with an activist organization to mobilize support for a successful voter referendum in 2012. If “moving the Overton window” means, in its most charitable interpretation, asking for more than you think you can get so that you stand a better chance of getting something, then I can tell you that nobody in that project was trying to move the Overton window. We were asking for the absolute limits of what we could achieve at that time, and then going out and achieving it through the unglamorous work of political organizing. That is what real activists do.
Anyway, it occurred to me that that’s why I took the comparison so poorly – because it’s completely contradicted by my experiences (slight though they were) doing real activism for marriage equality, not the pseudo-activism of defending Rosario Dawson on the internet. When we tell ourselves that passes for political work, we let ourselves off the hook too easily.
tastytone
@Micheline:
Obama’s “Hope and Change” message referred to taking the country in a vastly different direction than that of the previous administration. He ran as a pragmatist from the very beginning: vowing to hear both sides and to gain common ground where it could be had. He also acknowledged the legislative hurdles to come and emphasized the huge importance of down-ticket elections. I’ve been reading these comments, and listening to some Sanders supporters and their profound disappointment in Obama’s supposed “selling-out”, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that there were more people on the left that thought he was a “magic negro” sent to save the world than those on the right.
Bob In Portland
@dogwood: Reminds me of Keynes’ facetious idea of planting jars of money in mines to stimulate the economy.
There are ways to address investments in industries that aren’t very competitive (with the rest of the world), but it requires a government concerned with its citizens. As opposed to throwing people out of jobs and onto the streets when you move your factory to India.
Has anyone here noticed that there’s a homeless problem?
RSA
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Much bigger issues than I’ve worried about, but definitely important.
@Yutsano:
That’s it exactly. For another example, Sanders’s plan is sometimes described as Medicare for All, occasionally Medicaid for All, but of course they’re different programs. On the latter, there’s little in the way of explanation about how 50 different state plans will be combined at the federal level.
Yutsano
@Brachiator: Sigh. How quickly people forget where our oil actually comes from. Number 1 and number 2 suppliers without Googling it? Can’t answer that, I refuse to take you seriously.
(Protip: neither is Saudi Arabia.)
Mike J
@Yutsano:
And this brings us back to negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. If you can’t walk away from the deal, you’re not negotiating. As Mayhew points out, the VA gets better prices because their formulary is smaller.
Many people believe the answer is we’ll just tell the drug companies what to do, and they’ll do it. And then Mexico will pay for a wall.
Bob In Portland
@tastytone: It’s satisfying when I write a criticism of the Hillary/Obama supporters and then they immediately demonstrate it.
I remember sitting in a bar and drinking whiskey with a friend of mine from the union, the day after the 2008 election. No magic negro stuff. We talked about the very real possibility that Obama wasn’t going to accomplish what he’d promised. So I guess I guess you must be talking about someone else.
Mike J
@Davebo:
Now I can cite it guilt free. Thanks!
Bob In Portland
@Mike J: Not where OUR oil comes from. It’s about making money. It’s where money comes from. You make money from controlling the resources. You make money from taking those resources away from others. Sorry you didn’t understand that.
Betty Cracker
@msdc: Okay, I tried to agree to disagree, but you’ve dragged me back in! :)
I’ve had some personal experience with activism of my own, gay rights being one of the issues I’ve tried to play a small part in moving forward since the 1980s. Back then, the general public’s acceptable range of ideas did not include the idea that gay people could be legally married in the United States or even that gay people were fully human.
It took people with courage and imagination to widen the range of what was acceptable, i.e., move the Overton window. First by coming out and demonstrating that they were human beings just like everyone else. Then by refusing to stay in the back of the bus and fighting for their rights, inch by inch.
I submit that your voter referendum (and dog bless you for your efforts on its behalf!) wouldn’t have been possible if generations of brave people hadn’t expanded the range of what was acceptable. And now I really am done with this topic.
smintheus
So Sanders is suggesting “without evidence” that Clinton is corrupt?! When is he doing that? There’s all too much evidence over the years of Clinton doing favors for big donors. How is it Sanders’ responsibility to shield Clinton from obvious charges? And whose fault is it that the charges are obvious?
Loviatar
@maryQ:
No I think after 30+ years of anti-Clinton and anti-Hillary propaganda the American people were willing to elect a black man with a Muslim sounding name to be president. Unlike you I don’t give the American people the undeserved credit of believing they considered his temperament or his policy views.
Think about that, and understand and realize the power of propaganda. America elected a black man with a Muslim name within 7 years of a terrorist attack committed by Muslims all because they had been trained to hate the word Clinton.
dogwood
@Betty Cracker:
You are correct.
Amaranthine RBG
@smintheus:
Yes, the one thing the right wing is not doing is attacking Clinton for being a corporate tool for her funders — that is the right wing American dream.
Almost all of the criticism of Clinton from democrats comes from the left, and that is a good thing.
Clinton really needs to work on how she is going to attract left democrats – and yelling and finger jabbing female Greenpeace protesters is not the way to do it.
Brachiator
@Applejinx:
To the contrary, being obnoxious is all the rage now, abetted by the Internet. Relative anonymity encourages obnoxious behavior. And there is something about Americans. The most pampered among us seem to be most insistent on asserting our right to be obnoxious. The fools who took over the nature center claimed that they were desperate. And so this justified taking over government buildings and shitting all over the place, and then expecting everyone to understand and forgive them.
Which people are these? And you confuse revolution with anarchy. Again, its easy to talk about burning shit down when you have no clue, or don’t care, about the degree to which people would be harmed by your fantasies of creative destruction. Of course, your fall back position would probably be, “well, people are suffering now, so more suffering would not really be any different for them”
Feel free to burn your shit down. I will come by and check out how you are doing.
What do you have as an alternative and where has it ever been shown to work? Even Scandinavian socialism is ultimately based on capitalism.
So what do you have as an alternative? And please don’t offer Marx, who is the sillier than his brothers Groucho and Harpo.
I might be willing to take Sanders more seriously if he had spent 25 years building a party or a movement with people who had real ideas and the ability to transform institutions and build something. Instead he has spent 25 years stewing in his little purity puddle, and now pops up as a one man band shouting, “hey let’s do it like the Swedes do it.” Meanwhile, the countries he tries to push forward as progressive paradises are having problems maintaining their social welfare states. Income inequality is rising in the Netherlands for many of the same reason that it is rising in the US and wages are stagnating. There is a sharp rise in inequality with respect to the distribution of wealth (as distinct from income).
Again, you can talk about burning the whole thing down. But your vision of Bernie on a unicorn riding to the rescue is not very convincing.
Emma
@Nelle: Yes! I argued that in a previous thread, but your examples are much better at exposing the problem with revolutions. They aren’t clean, neat packages and there is always collateral damage.
gwangung
@Loviatar:
A decent point. However, part of the Hope and Change was the sheer competency demonstrated by the Obama campaign in pulling off the delegate math, and in managing his campaign.
Those competency points should not be ignored in favor of issues, particularly since Obama demonstrated his skills at management AND embodying the theme of his campaign in how he ran it.
Mandalay
@Yutsano: Even though I am a Bernie supporter I have to say that you have been way ahead of every other poster here in posting cogent arguments against him.
Amir Khalid
@smintheus:
If these charges are obvious, rather than mere innuendo, let’s have them out here where everyone can see. What actual favours did Goldman Sachs get for the “speaking fees” at a quarter million a go? What sweetheart deals has Hillary swung her friends’ way from 2009 to 2013, but especially since then? Did any inspector-general at State, or elsewhere in the Obama administration, flag them as hinky?
gwangung
@Iowa Old Lady:
Look how well it worked in WIsconsin.
(whistles)
tastytone
@Bob In Portland:
As my response literally wasn’t directed toward you–then yes, I suppose it is safe to assume it wasn’t directed at you. To be honest (and polite as possible), I now skip-over your posts as they’ve been reading less as honest debate and more as spite-filled rants, so whether or not my response applies to any of your thoughts I simply wouldn’t know.
Betty Cracker
@Loviatar: I don’t think it’s that simple. 2008 was a change election year. The country was weary of the catastrophic Bush Administration and shell-shocked by the failures of so many once-solid institutions. Obama was a shiny new thing, not a creature of the establishment.
This year, Repubs crave radical change, which is why they’re willing to catapult an arrogant blowhard with absolutely no governing chops to frontrunner status, but Democrats want to conserve the gains PBO made, which is why they’re leaning toward HRC.
Mike J
@Brachiator:
Norway’s progressive paradise was built on oil money. I can’t remember if we’re supposed to be happy or sad about that, and if we’re supposed to be happy about crashed oil prices. At least we can be sure that everything is the fault of that dried up old crone.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Oil is a global commodity. Where we get “our oil” is irrelevant. Maintaining a stable oil market is essential to every nation.
This reminds me of the BS over getting support for the Alaska pipeline. The fantasy was that it would make us energy dependent. And yet ultimately it became operated by a foreign company, British petroleum, and today accounts for less than 17 percent of US oil production, because global forces matter.
You also missed how I was just flat out mocking the original commenter and his implication of Hillary Clinton and others as the political tools of the oil lobby.
Emma
@Bob In Portland: You are amazing. Do you realize that the majority of the things banks did were legal? You can’t prosecute someone for acting within the letter of the law.
Mandalay
@smintheus:
Not that I disagree with any of that, but let’s not have have the argument on terms carefully set by Clinton and her enablers.
The very act of accepting millions from Wall Street is inherently corrupt, and gives the appearance of blatant impropriety. Clinton demands “evidence” because she knows better than anyone that what she is doing is legal in the eyes of the law, and there will be no hard evidence that can be produced in a court of law.
I have some sympathy with those who argue that they will vote for Clinton despite her being in bed with Wall Street. But those who insist that she is perfectly entitled to take money from Wall Street and deserves no criticism for doing that have completely lost the plot.
gwangung
@ruemara: Pretty much this. And it’s the same old song from white progressives and radicals I’ve been hearing from decades. Folks don’t realize that, and they’re doing nothing to convince me that they’re anything different.
dogwood
@Brachiator:
There’s this view among ideologues on the left and right that their political view demonstrate some sort of moral superiority. The right uses the Bible as a cudgel and the left romanticize Marx and our European betters as ideals to emulate. You only have to look right now at the anti- immigrant racist stuff coming out of Europe to see that socialism doesn’t change human nature. When I was young, I waited tables for a short time at a country club. Today, I work regularly in a soup kitchen. My experience in both venues are about the same. Many of the rich country clubbers were terrific, many were smug assholes. It’s the same at the soup kitchen. I adore some of the regulars and tolerate the group who behave like entitled jerks.
Kathleen
@Bob In Portland: The left loves to blame Obama, too. Your reply was Exhibit A.
Mandalay
@Emma:
You have to be kidding. Banks are constantly doing things that are highly illegal, and they are constantly getting caught. For example, Suck.On.This:
I could easily post a dozen more incidents like this. Banking is an obviously corrupt institution. You would have to be brain dead not to see that.
The problem is that when banks get caught the usual legal outcome is that they admit no wrongdoing, they pay a fine from their illicit gains, and nobody suffers on a personal level beyond damage to their career for getting caught.
And why would that be? Why would our nation have such lax banking laws? Hmmmmm…..
Kathleen
@Amaranthine RBG: Nor is yelling and finger jabbing at Clinton a good way to attract women supporters. But I’m sure women are not in the Sanders Desired Demographic, along with POC. Works both ways.
Also, it’s amazing how many Bernistas are lauding Sanders for “pulling Hillary to the left”, but are silent about Hillary forcing Bernie to acknowledge the power of the Obama coalition (women and POC). I guess we’re all not “left enough”.
msdc
@Betty Cracker: I would agree with all of that other than the label you’ve given it. The generations of activists who expanded the range of the possible didn’t do so by adopting largely symbolic and unattainable positions; they did it one fight at a time, with each tangible victory leading to new battles. Those battles were fought for equality, dignity, or basic survival, not for rhetorical positioning in some larger negotiation. I know we see this differently, but IMO “moving the Overton window” is a goal people set when none of those things are on the line for them personally.
Applejinx
@Brachiator:
Know who I’d want to ask about the alternative? Bernie, no question. I never said capitalism (or at least market forces) were to be completely removed, just pruned. Capitalist markets are like using kudzu as decorative ivy. Boy, does that get quick results! Too bad there’s a down-side.
Know who I’d want to ask about how to get it to work?
Hillary Clinton. She didn’t work for Obama for nothin’.
I am much, much less interested in her visions for the future of the country because I don’t think she has any. It’s stay the course, and in some ways the course is no good and will fail. But she will know where the ‘novel ideas’ will run into problems, and can clearly articulate them in context with what we’ve already got.
I am fine with Bernie being basically a proxy for a set of issues because that’s all he’s ever been, and you can’t help but notice he is NOT coming along with a whole third party of candidates and replacements to supplant the Democrats. It’s literally just him, his organization, and the issues: his vision of where the problem is. “There’s yer problem!”. If he is right, which I think he is, he will depend completely on Democrats to fix any of it.
That’s also okay (though kind of worrying).
The point is to establish emphatically where the problems really are, so it can’t be handwaved away. If that’s clear and the public accepts it (Overton Window, again) then the incremental Dems can work in the right direction.
I want a revolution of ideologies and ideas, with the MSM making strikingly different ideas seem ‘mainstream’, so Congress can actually work to do something worth doing. I don’t want violent marches on DC (or the burbs of the rich folks) and I don’t want civil warfare wrecking our infrastructure, tearing down our homes (even I have a nice home, barely), and reducing us to Somalia-like anarchy.
The issues we raise, the problems we’re complaining about, are already doing that to us. They don’t need help with that! There must be peaceful political reform to fix things, and the urgency is greater each day. If we don’t fix this stuff, the next Trump really will seize power and run completely amok.
Chris
@dogwood:
????????????????????????????????
dogwood
@Kathleen:
Yesterday Bernie said he’s listening to women then joked that he can’t help but listen because women are really loud. This isn’t unique to Bernie, but it gets tiresome after awhile.
Applejinx
@Kathleen:
I won’t be silent about that, Kathleen. It’s awesome. It’s the main reason I have always said Hillary is a fearfully strong opponent (compare to, say, a Martha Coakley).
Hillary has a capacity to demand practical framings of these wild ideological excursions. That is necessary. It’s fair to question her own ideological frame, but never forget that if you do elect the unicorn you absolutely have to have Hillary there making sense of it all, or you will fail.
Some of Obama’s best qualities are Hillary-like qualities.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
A very fair summary in many respects.
I think, though, that some Bernie supporters want to continue the expectation of change that they felt with Obama. Also, I think that Bernie supporters don’t trust HRC of even wanting to conserve the gains PBO made. They keep unreasonably imputing to her all kinds of malevolent motivations totally unsupported by anything that she has actually done in her political career.
Loviatar
@Betty Cracker:
I agree, however this country which has racism in its DNA would have never elected a black man with a muslim sounding name president without the benefit of 30+ years of propaganda.
Even today you have
childrenSanders’ supporters who were not even born when Bill Clinton was president repeating Republican anti-Clinton talking points.For those who want to understand real Hope: Clinton health care plan of 1993
As to what I mean by Hope; look at the date.
Applejinx
@Emma:
When the whole argument is, ‘big money has acted to neuter the laws and strip away all regulation that was once thought necessary’, and the record shows a staggering amount of that behavior, it’s completely unreasonable to bang the law (and the table). The law is there to support the facts, the reality of the world.
ENRON arranged to operate within the letter of the law in many, many ways by getting the laws changed (for instance, arranging to legally operate by mark-to-market accounting). Having done this, they launched upon a career of evil capitalist buggery that staggers the mind. They put California through rolling blackouts, repeatedly, to extort money out of the system. I think a fair amount of that, perhaps most, was technically legal by the letter of the law at the time.
We’re no better off now. The law is partially dismantled for the benefit of the very rich, on purpose, through decades of industrious lobbying and manipulation and bribery both direct and implicit.
They didn’t bust Enron on their real crimes. Much like Al Capone, the law was used as a tool, because the facts were so outrageous that something had to be done. Much like Wall Street.
The Lodger
@SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer: This. Thanks for pointing that out, and kudos to Loviatar for promising to reform their language.
dogwood
@Chris:
Probably not clear, but I separate ideologues be they left or right from the rest of political partisans. I still know some older leftist ideologues who are Soviet apologists. Watching what has happened to the Republican Party as they became an instution run by ideologues, I’m ever skeptical people on the left who advocate the same tactics. It’s not a real problem for democrats right now, but I don’t think democrats are immune to populist demagoguery.
Gwangung
@Applejinx:
Which is why (like you) I’m so uneasy about Sanders not fundraising for down ticket races. And am uneasiness with rhetoric from some Sanders supporters about smashing the Democratic machinery. You need to have an organization to carry the vision out, and centering everything on Bernie is not going to do this (It’s also makes me uneasy that when they bring up down ticket candidates, it’s for candidates for deep blue districts like in Washington—it’s a district where the winning candidate would probably support Sanders’ issues anyway).
The way the Sanders campaign is run seems to be resulting in personality-based decisions, and not as much talk (from the Sanders side, at least) about implementation, and nuts and bolts, practical things. That’s one major reason for me that I’m kinda cool about him.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@BillinGlendaleCA: Awesome pics.
If you have never done it before, check out the Upper Sunset Ridge trail. You can do one route up the cyn (with decent shade) and then come back down the fire road for some variety. It gets alot of the same views of the city. I believe the fire road goes all the way up to Inspiration Point (we didn’t get that far) and it gets WAY up there.
Micheline
@tastytone: I completely agree with your comment. You expressed everything that I was thinking.I would also add that the way Obama ran his campaign gave me an idea that he would be an effective manager.
Micheline
@Micheline: I also agree with you on the idea that some on the Left saw Obama as the magic negro.
smintheus
@Mandalay: I’m completely in agreement. And I’d add that the appearance of corruption due to taking large contributions from business interests is increasingly being discussed by ordinary voters this year, when in the past it would typically merit just a shrug. That’s the political landscape after Wall St. looted the country and paid almost no price.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not so long ago, Krugman was at the head of the pack. If I had more energy I’d google his string of posts where he was I-told-you-so-ing about Obama, “I tried to tell you he wasn’t the one”. He had a weird psychological/emotional block about the fact that the Stimulus debate was not an argument between Christina Roemer and Larry Summers, but a negotiation with Nancy Pelosi (trying to keep her Blue Dogs from bolting), Conserva-Dems in the Senate and, yes, Republicans, who actually had votes. I think it was Chait who slapped him down with an account of what actually and Krugman responded, “What? Who, me? I don’t cover politics! I’m just a bearded economist.” I lost a lot of resect for him.
But he’s right here.
and can someone point me to a sign of a shift in the Overton Window outside of the Dem presidential primary? From what I see, Portman and Ayotte, for example, are more nervous about the USSC business than the Sanders Revolution.
dogwood
@Gwangung:
I realized the same thing about Sanders during the run up to the South Carolina primary. When the racist attack occurred at Emanual AME, republicans fumbled around for a day or so claiming war on Christians stuff, but even these clowns had enough sense to pause their campaigns until Clemente Pinkney’s funeral was over. Not Bernie. He held a rally in Charleston on the day of the funeral. Not even for one day could he show some grace or class even if he thought the situation was trivial.
smintheus
@Amir Khalid: Straw man. Clinton’s ability to deliver any benefits to Wall St. firms has been constrained in recent years by her limited political role. In so far as she was in a position while SoS to help ofther financial backers, like the fuel industry, reports indicate she went way overboard in delivering for them.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Krugman knows his economics better than almost anyone, but for 6+ years he was (as you say) seemingly blind to the politics of what Obama was facing. He did eventually (mostly) come around, e.g., his big Rolling Stone piece.
And while he does get some credit for saying that the stimulus was likely too small, he never clearly said something like – “Based on the economics, and this utterly conventional simple model, and the downside risk, I think the stimulus should be around $ZT spread over N+ years with this breakdown: $XXXB in immediate tax cuts, $YYYB in infrastructure spending, $AAAB in aid to the states, …”. Saying it was “too small” wasn’t really the bold truth-telling that he wants us to accept. But that’s Ok – he has generally been on the side of the angels throughout the Great Recession and the (far too weak) recovery.
I think he’s being much more circumspect in his talking about the politics of the Hillary / Bernie race this time (but that might just be my perception).
Cheers,
Scott.
Aimai
@tastytone: so harsh but so right.
Aimai
@Applejinx: martha coakley? Did you just compare a former first lady, two term senator, serious candidat for president, secretary of state to a randim, low level, failed State AG because they both have vaginas? Really?
J R in WV
@Bob In Portland:
you say:
I don’t understand what you think Goldman Sachs got – they donated to Clinton and STILL had to pay huge fines, so what did they get for their donations?
Hillary accepts donations from many who violate US law! But where are the convictions? Even justifiable accusations will do here. I just don’t see many, especially outside the finance industry. Which has contributed some minute amount like 0.15 % of total contributions, not enough to sway a corrupt pol, much less a politician with at least some morality.
Sanders doesn’t (accept contributions from felons). Really!? How do you know this? It’s totally absurd to imagine that Sanders has some magic way to insure that none of his contributions are from felons. What are you smoking to dream this stuff up? I don’t want any, it appears to destroy your ability to cogitate. That’s a fancy word for thinking. You don’t think.
Aimai
@Amaranthine RBG: projection is not just for republicans anymore i guess. The most famously cool customer, hrc, is not known as an sngry finger jabber. At least not in this race. Isnt that, rather, bernie’s shtick?
Bob In Portland
@tastytone:
Whoops. Now you get to determine who gets to comment on what. If I comment on BJers’ stupidity and you then demonstrate it, well, you don’t want to know. Of course, putting your head in the sand is the best method.
Bob In Portland
@J R in WV: If you don’t understand the concept of a politician taking money from the wealthiest 1% then you don’t understand it.
Tehanu
@Bob In Portland:
You have got to be kidding. The fact that she did something 46 years ago “suggests” that she was alive, which since she admits she was alive back then proves that… Jesus H. Christ, go vote for St. Ralph Nader already, why don’t you?
J R in WV
@Applejinx:
My Mom was a page layout person, and a news photographer – then when she retired she became a paintbrush artist. My grandmother was a paintbrush artist too. I’m not. I learned to shoot film at a newspaper where reporters used cameras, and then worked at an educational TV station where we developed color slides. And I read books about composition back when you couldn’t take 200 shots on a weekend, you had to make a roll of 36 shots last for the trip, and you needed most of those shots to be useful.
Doing it without chemical baths and darkrooms is like going to heaven for a photog. As everyone who ever used film to any extent and still takes pictures.
The Lodger
@Brachiator: If we’d taken over Alberta, wouldn’t Ted Cruz be an American?
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Kathleen:
Yup. This election, as well as the past year or so (post-Ferguson) has shown that there’s alot of White Progressives TM that get just as irritated as Conservatives do when minority voices disrupt and complicate their Progressive agenda.
Brachiator
@dogwood:
Absolutely agree. Very well said.
I’ve had similar experiences and have come to similar conclusions as you.
J R in WV
@smintheus:
It is the job of politicians to work for and help their constituents, the voters and contributers. This is not illegal, it is what they are supposed to do. When you or I have a problem with our disability or health care or a permit issue, we can call our representative, inform them about our problem, and ask them to contact whichever agency to get them to pay attention to our problem.
My friend’s sister receives disability – her spine is shot. When the officials were going to terminate her disability, she went to her congressman, who helped her keep her disability. She IS disabled, and would have been on the street without even a car to sleep in without that small monthly payment.
That wasn’t corrupt. I didn’t contribute to that congressman before his staff helped out, but I worked for his re-election campaign after that, because he was a good congressman.
So the fact that congresspeople help corporations and rich people as well as ordinary people isn’t corruption, it’s what they are hired to do. If you need help dealing with a government agency, you too can call them for help and guidance about how to deal with government agencies. Even if all you say is “Congressman Heckler’s office told me….” before you make your case for the third time, that may help.
So while you are throwing around accusations of corruption, I am seeing government working as currently designed. Sorry.
If you need the laws changed, you need to elect legislators, not a President. Not President Obama, or President Clinton, or President Trump nor President Sanders. They don’t write laws. They administer the laws via the executive branch. And they have to work with the laws we have, not the laws you wish we had.
Ruckus
@Nelle:
What kind of revolution do you want and who are you offering as collateral damage?
Just wow.
Sorry for the reasons that you are able to make this comment on a first hand basis but it is a great question, maybe the best question ever. People through out history have made the mistake of wanting to wipe out everything and start over, as if it were a game of Monopoly and the worst that will happen is you have to stop playing to get a bite to eat.
Mandalay
@J R in WV:
It is automatically corruption when someone is paying you $5,000 per minute for three 45 minute speeches. That is an obvious distinction between the rich and the poor that you carefully decided to overlook.
Getting paid $675,000 for three 45 minute speeches is inherently corrupt. If you think otherwise, ask yourself what possible reason does GS have for paying her that kind of money if they don’t want or expect anything in return.
Linnaeus
@dogwood:
There’s a difference between using the Bible as a cudgel and arguing that other nations have certain policies that may be worth examining and emulating in one’s own country, even if the policies you do end up adopting aren’t quite the same.
And socialism doesn’t have to change human nature in order to take it seriously. You don’t have to agree with all of it (or even any of it) to recognize why it came about and why its critique(s) of capitalism have had some historical resonance.
Linnaeus
@J R in WV:
The problem – well, one of them at least – is that greater wealth can give you greater access and influence with legislators, regulators, etc. relative to others who have less wealth, even though all voters in theory are the same. A consequence of that greater access and influence is that the interests of some can disproportionately skew policy in their favor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: Prestige. How much money do you suppose a place like GS spends on office furniture? I’ve been in a couple of high end offices, nothing like what I imagine GSHQ is like, and all the wood and leather always struck me as wasteful, but law firms, investment houses, they see it as part of their image, their advertising. And no small amount of ego. When Jack Welch retired, part of his package included tickets to every home match of every major sports franchise in NY. Somebody pointed out that he couldn’t possibly attend overlapping games, but he’s Jack Welch, and he was gonna have those tickets.
Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, probably David Petraeus, and god help us Condi Rice speaking at the Goldman Sachs/Citigroup/Microsoft Leadership Forum on the Future and Being Smart is a prestige billing. Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, whoever, they like to be the one to play host to people like that. They become their peers. They see themselves as global leaders.
Linnaeus
@Ruckus:
Revolutions don’t generally start out that way, though, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. When people get pushed to a point where they realize that the political institutions and mechanisms to which they have access don’t respond to them, they will then go around those institutions and create new mechanisms for change.
Mike J
@J R in WV:
Also keep in mind that Patty Murray is one of the best liberals in the Senate, but she would shiv anybody who dared threaten Boeing. It’s not because she loves the military industrial complex or is concerned about what happens to billionaires. Boeing employs tens of thousands of voters. People pay their rent and buy food and donate to political campaigns with the salary they earn (in union jobs) at Boeing.
henqiguai
@Linnaeus(#256):
So can ‘white’ skin me bucko; what’s your plan to mitigate that corrupting attribute?
John D.
@Mandalay: OK, this isn’t just for you, but for all of the posters yammering on and on and on and on and on about the speech money, of which you are but the latest.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
You literally have zero idea of what you are talking about.
Speaking fees are set not by Clinton, but by her agent, and are set at a level to dissuade potential speeches for overfilling her schedule. If you ask any speaker-for-fees, they will tell you this. Neil Gaiman charges an arm and a leg for speaking about his writing because if he charged less he would have no time for writing. This is econ 101. If a speaker is in great demand, the price rises.
There is no “inherent corruption” involved in taking money for a speech, any more than there is in taking money for any fucking job. Repeating that this is corrupt does not prove that there is corruption. It proves that you have no clue about how speaker fees work.
Applejinx
@J R in WV: That’s true, but I will always treasure the memory of getting to take photography classes in high school, and working in a darkroom. There’s something tangible about all that stuff, the weird dry rattle of developer, all that chemistry, the projectors and lights and focusings of mechanisms.
Still fascinated by Ansel Adams, and it affected the ink-wash art I did some years back. Occasionally I still do.
I lost all the photography stuff when I became homeless at the end of the 90s. It’s pretty odd throwing most of your possessions in a dumpster. Hope I don’t have to do THAT again anytime soon.
One thing about more modern photography: the cloud! As long as somebody somewhere has a copy of your data, it’s not lost forever :)
henqiguai
@Linnaeus(#258):
And, as others here have pointed out in other threads, revolutions virtually *never* end up where their proponents want. The United States is an example of an *extremely* fortunate revolutionary outcome, and even *we* are still screwing that pooch with regards to equality, equal treatment, and equal rights (ask most non-whites, many religious minorities, and damned near any woman paying attention).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Uncle Ebeneezer: The fire road does go all the way to Eaton Saddle on the road up to Mt. Wilson. It follows the old railroad bed from the intersection of the Sunset Ridge trail to the Mt. Lowe campground just below Inspiration point and then heads around Mt. Lowe and Mt. Markham and through a tunnel on San Gabriel peak. The next hike I’m thinking of is going down from Eaton Saddle to Mt. Lowe and maybe returning to Inspiration point from that direction.
ETA: We took the old railroad bed from Echo Mountain to the Mt. Lowe campground(and Inspiration Point) and then returned via the Sam Merrill trail back to Altadena.
burnspbesq
@HRA:
Feel sorry for you. You’ve missed a lot of opportunities to become smarter.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
No kidding. I used to have to do micro photography of deep cavities using film. The items I had to shoot were in my possession for just a few days. Set up, light, shoot, get film developed, hopefully have pictures than can actually be used because most likely had to return the subjects by then. The digital revolution made that dramatically better. The massive enlargement of data cards was almost as big a deal.
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bingo! You are (inadvertently?) bang on the money. They are not paying Clinton for prestige. They are paying Clinton for access.
Linnaeus
@henqiguai:
Yes, of course power and influence springs from multiple sources. That doesn’t mean that each source can’t be addressed or mitigated in its own right.
To answer your question, though, that (and any other issue) can be addressed in a number of ways:
1. Calling attention to the problem through media, direct actions, etc.
2. Building institutions that will organize people to act on the problem.
3. Supporting policies that will mitigate or end the problem and the people who will enact said polices.
…and so forth.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Twice in the same thread!
I once needed my congressman to assist me in a matter concerning DC. He and his secretary Trish were first rate and helpful. No quid pro quo took place, he didn’t change anything or make anyone do anything, all that happened was he got people to do their job. For whatever it’s worth, he was a member of the John Birch Society. I met him once, never voted for him. Nice guy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: I used to shoot and had a darkroom back in my teens. It’s really nice with digital to see what you’ve shot, and with RAW being able to fix many issues in post. I have a 32GB card in my IR camera and a 64GB card in my regular camera so I can shoot quite a few shots. I actually feel guilty that I don’t shoot more shots, I guess I still conserve shots based on my film days.
Linnaeus
@henqiguai:
I’m not arguing that revolutions always end up where their proponents want them to. What I’m saying is that they’re complex events with multiple, often contradictory, causes and results, and hence it is, depending on one’s perspective, quite difficult to resolve them into “good” or “bad” categories. A revolution can, at the same time, harm a significant number of people and leave another significant number of people better off.
Luthe
Ah, another Hillary vs. Bernie thread, aka adding more names to the good ol’ pie filter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: Okay, you equate access with corruption and have already decided HRC is guilty of throwing you under the bus for the sake of Goldman Sachs in some unspecified way in the future. That doesn’t persuade me to the throw away the White House, the Supreme Court, probably the Senate, and thus the environment, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, Social Security…..
pseudonymous in nc
@Mike J:
Or Microsoft. See also: Amy Klobuchar & Al Franken and Medtronic. Or back in the day, Henry Waxman and the MPAA.
This is a consequence of House districts being so big that they’re no longer representing individuals, but instead, representing interest groups; and Senate seats covering states with particular industries and corporate perks that politicians will bend over backwards to preserve.
The GOP doesn’t run into this problem the same way, because it’s in hock to Bidness by definition.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
If you pay me a quarter of a mill to speak you may not like what I’ll say but I’ll sure as hell take your money. But you aren’t going to pay me to speak, because while I may be able to stand in front of an auditorium full of people and not stammer like a baboon, no one knows me and therefore no one is going to pay me. People and companies pay all kinds of people to speak for them. You may not understand why but some people are famous and get asked to speak, even though their ideals are not for sale. Not everyone is a whore.
Ruckus
@Linnaeus:
True but those people don’t start out calling for a revolution. Because revolution is messy, dirty and almost always deadly. They start out calling for a change. That happened in 2008, and for many people a revolution would have been no messier, dirtier, or deadlier. But we got a chance for it to be a change, not a revolution and that is an important distinction. Revolution, like war, which it almost always is, is a last resort, because a reasonable change in direction isn’t possible. That isn’t the case here, now, in this country. Change, and the continuation of the change President Obama has given us is possible and very likely probable.
A call for revolution, to break the back of the country and start over from scratch, who do you think will hurt the most from that? And how will that even be accomplished?
Linnaeus
@Ruckus:
In the context of this election, though, the term “revolution” is being used metaphorically to mean significant change, and it’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard it used like that.
Ruckus
@Linnaeus:
I disagree that it is being used metaphorically. Sanders has called for a revolution, to throw out the entire healthcare and financial systems and start over from scratch. And I don’t think he is kidding. Those are his goals. And while I may agree that our current healthcare and financial systems are not working as well for most/many of us as I think they should, completely ending them and having something put in place the next day is impossible. And the intervening time will break the citizens of this country and two of it’s most important segments.
You think he is being metaphorical, yet he has shown nothing of how to get from point A to point B other than metaphorically, burning it down. So I am going to take him at his word, a revolution.
ETA And FWIW I believe Sanders is far more than smart enough to know what a revolution is. And isn’t. I just don’t think he sees any other possibilities because he isn’t looking for them.
Linnaeus
@Ruckus:
It’s rhetoric intended to highlight the significance of the change that Sanders is seeking. Sanders is not, however, advocating armed insurrection, an overthrow of the government, or even a fundamental change in the structures and institutions of American governance, which he has been part of himself for many years now. His record doesn’t show him to be that much different from a New Deal Democrat in either policy or political temperament.
Brachiator
@HRA:
I know!! What the hell could anyone learn from some bum who won a Nobel prize for economics.
Genghis
On the other hand: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5ba783122da14454b5ef251c53d21f4c/clintons-frustration-grows-primary-race-drags
Best…H
Ruckus
@Linnaeus:
Problem is, even if he means it as rhetoric, many of his followers are not taking it that way. And his manner of speaking, along with the words he chooses, makes me think that he means it. You don’t see it that way. But it seems a lot of people see it my way. He is running for one of the most powerful positions anyone can run for and his words and their generally accepted meanings are important. Many people think they are ready for revolution, in the real meaning of the word. I’m not saying all of Sanders followers, as I’ve said here before I agree that changes need to be made, things need to improve for the people that have been screwed for the last 30-50 yrs. But they also need to vastly improve for the people who have been screwed for the last 400 yrs and the half of the population that has been screwed forever. If revolution was the way, why aren’t the people that have been screwed the longest getting any play? And if revolution is just a metaphor, why use a word with the connotations that this one brings? Surly in a language as rich as English there might be a better word to use to define change than one that means overthrow and upheaval? Unless he actually thinks revolution is the correct term.
Bob In Portland
@Davebo: Discourse here at Balloon Juice seems to get very down and dirty with anyone who disagrees with the mainframe.
You people are living in a bubble. To a certain extent we all do, but you folks are desperate in this bubble. You’re ready to crush anyone who thinks that accepting millions, billions from the rich might be in some way lead to corruption. I would say that odd quirk of BJers is not in harmony with how most Americans feel about corruption. In fact, if it was a Bush who was skimming you’d be howling. You certainly howled when Cheney got fat and sassy through Blackwater.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
Bob — seriously… why do you spend so much time here if we are so hopelessly in a bubble? Surely you can find sites where they will agree with your view of the world. I just hate to see you bang your head so hard over and over for people who “jes don care” or agree with your views… Its just interesting. Don’t you feel lonely? Isnt it boring to keep saying the same things and having them ignored or slapped back? Doncha wanna be popular?
mclaren
@prob50:
Here’s a clear and simple explanation for you showing how anyone could have done better, in words simple enough for even a five-year-old to understand:
[1] When Obama started negotiating about health care reform, he should have started by staking out an extreme position advocating universal health care by nationalizing all hospitals and impressing all doctors into public service by executive order under conditions of national emergency.
When the Republicans and all the doctors and nurses and medical devicemakers and hospital administrators and imaging labs and blood labs erupted in a frenzy of outrage, Obama should then have backed down slightly. As the opposition became increasingly hysterical, he should have let himself get negotiated all the way down, very reluctantly, and protesting every step of the way, to Medicare for all. The Republicans and medical parasites would then have declared a great victor for themselves and congratulated themselves on their triumph. Meanwhile, we would have a workable health care system.
[2] When the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council came to Obama to present plans for bombing and napaling and strafing and laying down white-phosphorus artillery barrages in the world’s poorest countries, Obama should have used a secret magic power of the presidency:
He should have said “NO.”
Let’s be clear about this. I want to be perfectly explicit about the exotic magical amazing powers of the presidency that would be required to implement this far-fetched policy: Obama would be required to pronounce the word: “No.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSA and the State Department came to Obama urging him to set up a “surge” in Iraq, here is what Obama should have said:
“No.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSA and the State Department came to Obama urging him to exapnd the war in Iraq, here is what Obama should have said:
“No.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSA and the State Department came to Obama urging him to put more troops into Afghanistan, here is what Obama should have said:
“No.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSA and the State Department came to Obama urging him to bomb Libya, here is what Obama should have said:
“No.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSA and the State Department came to Obama urging him to get involved militarily in Syria, here is what Obama should have said:
“No.”
That’s all. This is the sum total of the allegedly superhuman powers Obama would have needed to avoid all those foreign quagmires — the word “No.”
When the Joint Chiefs protested, he should have replied, “Which syllable of the word `No’ do you not understand?”
When the press erupted with criticism, Obama should have said “The word is spelled N and O.”
When the Republicans railed and raged at him, Obama should have “No means `no.'”
When the National Security Council howled at him and hammered their tables in blind fury, Obama should have said “Let me repeat that for you: no. Is everyone clear on what I just said?”
[3] When the SEC came in with its report using the word `fraud’ more than 100 times about the financial crisis of 2009, Obama should have said “Okay, then, go ahead and prosecute. Throw ’em all in jail.”
[4] When the Republicans demanded that Obama extend the Bush tax cuts in 2010, he should have said “No.”
[5] When the DEA suggested stepping up the war on drugs, Obama should have said, “That’s a great idea. But we need to revise our priorities. Let’s place the priority of the war on drugs about 1135 on the List of Important Things To Do, just below `scraping the mold off the bottom of the lamp on the statue of liberty.'”
[6] When the military came to Obama and told him they had a wonderful marvelous new drone technology that would blow up women and children in wedding parties halfway across the world at the touch of a button, Obama should have said: “No.”
These are the amazing and exotic things Barack Obama could have done to immensely improve America.
Any five-year-old child could have done the same by using common sense.
mclaren
@Brachiator:
This is the kind of ignorantly foolish and laughably false logic that prevails on the sinkhole of deluded folly misnamed Balloon-Juice.
Because Paul Krugman won a Nobel prize in economics, therefore Paul Krugman’s opinions on politics are sensible and insightful.
What is wrong with this picture?
Let’s try that again with someone slightly different: because Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel prize in economics, therefore Hayek’s political opinion that liberalism eventually leads to Nazi-style fascism is sensible and insightful.
Whoops.
It’s truly depressing that this is what passes for `thinking’ on a forum where most of the people apparently have advanced degrees.
Elie
@John D.:
This gets all balled up with wealth resentment. Wealth, by definition then is corruption because NOBODY should be wealthy and if they are they stole it or somehow got the money by amoral means. Any level of annual income above x is inherently corrupt and evil because it is too much money. There is also envy — which reflexively leads to being angry about being envious which makes the screams against wealth even louder…..
MBunge
@John D.: Speaking fees are set not by Clinton, but by her agent, and are set at a level to dissuade potential speeches for overfilling her schedule.
This is literally one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read and reminds me of all the incredibly stupid and ridiculous things people have had to say over the years to defend the Clintons.
If Hillary doesn’t want to give a speech, she can just say “NO.” Or she can have her agent do it. So can Gaiman and everyone else. The suggestion that the only way they can keep themselves from giving speeches is by, essentially, forcing people to stop asking them is so idiotic that it almost defies analysis.
People give paid speeches because they want money. They charge as much as they can because they want as much money as they can get. No one should be condemned for that.
But if Gaiman was paid to give a speech to a group that advocates censorship or some such thing, it would be entirely fair to ask him “What the hell,man?”
And if you want to be President of the United States and you give paid speeches to people in the industry that almost destroyed the global economy and largely got away unpunished, there’s nothing wrong with someone questioning you about it. The problem is when you cannot or will not answer.
Mike
mclaren
@Elie:
A beautiful statement of the Republican talking point “These middle class scum are engaging in CLASS WARFARE!”
Let’s turn your Republican talking-point lie around so that it actually reflects the truth:
There, fixed that for ya. Now slither back to Red State and get yourself some better talking points from Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and that asshole fraud who wrote Dow 36,000.
mclaren
@Ruckus:
Yes, the American Revolution was a really bad idea.
Those wild-eyed scumbag creeps George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin should have restricted themselves to politely petitioning King George for a slight change, you know, evolutionary change…tinkering around the edges.
That would’ve worked great.
Mandalay
@John D.:
You have to be the most clueless fucker who has ever posted here.
mclaren
@Mandalay:
Of course my rebuttal of John D.’s sophistries and canards is locked up in moderation. Naturally. Typically.
Isn’t it curious how these endless dishonest defenses of corruption never get locked up in moderation, but the instant someone in the peanut gallery dares point out the faulty logic and junkthink in those defenses of sleazy pols like the Clintons or Rahm Emanuel or corrupt thugs like Joe Biden, the comment mysteriously becomes “waiting for approval by the moderator”?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren:
I blame
DWSTommyThe IlluminatiHillary… FYWP.Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I like it when you keep your drivel short enough to read so that I can laugh at you. I know it’s mean, but still I laugh.
mclaren
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
What we’re seeing in America is that the white middle class has now become so impoverished that they are starting to get regarded the same way the black underclass is regarded by the top 20% of the American elite.
In other words, resentment and rage by he American elite that used to be directed only at blacks, using epithets like “shiftless” and “violent” and “lazy” and “dangerous” and “uneducated” and “ungrateful” and “uppity” and “scary” and “vicious,” is now starting to shift to encompass the white middle class.
So now any member of the white middle class, which has gotten so impoverished that the elites now look down on middle class whites as subhuman scum, is now getting smeared with the same language and the same marginalization and demonization tactics used to get smeared with.
If you’re white and middle class and you now dare speak out against elite corruption in govenrment or insider crony-capitalist con jobs masquerading as our financial system, or payola-fueled white collar welfare misnamed the military-industrial complex or sweetheart-contract rigged bidding and scams and chronic overbilling disguised as America’s health care system, you now get targeted with the exact same smears and trigger words that wer eformerly used to marginalize black people. If you’re white and middle class you dare criticize the corruption of the Biden family or the Clinton family or Jamie Dimon or giant corporations like CitiCorp or Chase Bank, you’re “shiftless” and “violent” and “lazy” and “dangerous” and “uneducated” and “ungrateful” and “uppity” and “scary” and “vicious.”
Just as blacks could not be allowed to vote or be permitted anywhere near the levers of power because “those people are violent” and “they are encouraging the breakdown of the rule of law” and “they will impose a law-of-the-jungle upheaval due to the inadequate development of their brains,” we are now being told about the supporters of Bernie Sanders that ‘those people are violent” and “they are encouraging the breakdown of hte rule of law.”
I’m really looking forward to the revival of phrenology. Reputable biological scientists will doubtless measure the skulls of Sanders supporters to “prove” that their brains are inadequately developed and that they have a genetic propensity for violence.
The solution seems simple — forge chains for Sanders supporters, force them to wear spiked iron collars, make it illegal for the children of Sanders supporters to read, and if they refuse to obey orders, whip them or use thumbscrews until they submit. These people are filthy slovenly animals, and they need to be kept in their place.
mclaren
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Nyuk nyuk! The decay of American democracy is just such a barrel of laughs, isn’t it? Har har har!
Source: “Hunter Biden’s new job at a Ukrainian gas company is a problem for U.S. soft power,” The Washington Post, 14 May 2014.
Keep on laughing and giggling and snickering at the evidence that America is ruled by a corrupt elite who enrich themselves by crushing the middle class.
Things will not end well for people like you.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@John D.: You’re getting beaten up on your post, so I thought I’d say I appreciated it.
Business Insider:
(There’s a buried link citing a Geithner speech.)
Of course she charged what the traffic would bear, and that rate would be the “going rate” for similarly situated people.
Why would G-S want her there? Why would they pay her $200k? Because the conference was to show G-S clients that they were connected. “Invest with us and you’ll get access to insights by famous people!!” Also, it let G-S employees rub shoulders with her. “Come to work for us at G-S and you’ll get to meet the movers and shakers in the world! Maybe even ask a question! Chuck Schwab can’t do that!”
There was nothing Corrupt™ about it. She was out of office, she hadn’t announced that she was running for office. She was a private citizen and couldn’t offer G-S a believable quid-pro-quo even if she wanted to. And she didn’t need to offer a qpq – she made nearly $9M by 2005 on one book – she’s not going to sell out for a measly $650k (or whatever it was).
But of course, if a Clinton does it it’s “obvious” that it’s Corrupt™ and evil, because, come on, are you blind?!
(roll-eyes)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
mclaren
@Bob In Portland:
Bob, you just haven’t gotten the message.
The message is simple — you are a little man and you count for nothing. Your vote is valueless, because in America, the elites control everything. Even imagining that your vote for Bernie Sanders could change anything in America is evidence of your pathetic lack of cranial capacity, your genetic inferiority as a human being, and your all-around lack of qualification to be One of the Very Influential People Who Make the Important Decisions in America.
Hillary’s nomination is Inevitable because she’s a member of the elite. And she’s a member of the elite because her nomination is Inevitable. See the logic?
Pipe down, Bob, and let those Very Important People who run things, keep on running things. After all, they gave us NAFTA and the Reagan presidency and the year 2000 Supreme Court selection of a drunk-driving frat boy as president and the 2003 Iraq Invasion and the surge in Afghanistan and the F-35 stealth fighter and the 2009 global financial meltdown. What more could you ask for?
Mandalay
@mclaren:
B-b-b-b-but….
No laws were broken!
He was perfectly entitled to take the job!
He was ideally qualified for the position!
His father had nothing to do with it!
We live in a free society!
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yet another defense of gross corruption and malfeasance. “The bribe wasn’t offered in the form of a brown bag full of cash, therefore it couldn’t possibly be a bribe!”
This may be the lowest and most bald-facedly dishonest defense of outright corruption ever offered on balloon-juice.
Fortunately, the rest of the human race disagrees with your bizarrely restrictive definition of “corruption”:
Source: Wikipedia article “revolving door (politics)”
mclaren
@Mandalay:
And don’t forget the ever popular:
That’s just the market at work! It’s the law of supply and demand!
and
It can’t possibly be corrupt because there was no direct quid pro quo! No one gave Hunter Biden a brown paper bag full of cash, so its completely incorrect to describe this as a bribe or corrupt in any way!
Boy, the Ayn Rand followers are out in force today to defend bribery and influence-peddling among America’s elites, aren’t they?
I don’t think I’ve seen a public defense of systemic corruption this shameless since the Iran-Contra scandal…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is that a threat? You and Applejax and GoBlow are gonna hang me from a lamppost when St Bernard sets you up as the Committee for Public Safety?
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I really love this rationalization attempting to argue out of existence Hillary Clinton’s sleaziness and love of revolving door influence-peddling.
“Hillary couldn’t have been influenced by that bribe from Goldman Sachs, because she took so many other bribes from so many other giant corporations and defense contractors and financial Ponzi schemers that the Goldman Sachs bribe was a mere drop in the bucket, only $650,000 compared to 9 million dollars!”
I love that argument. It’s just…so…hilariously self-destructing, like that classic case of the drug dealer who called 911 to report that he was shorted by his supplier, and to demand that his supplier be arrested for theft.
mclaren
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s a prediction. Mobs tends to form when economic inequality gets too extreme. And those who defend the thieves at the top of the economic pyramid tend to get torn apart by those mobs.
But predictably you will choose to interpret my prediction as a direct personal threat. I now quote my own post from just above:
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mclaren: Interesting “thought” process in that head of yours…
;-)
Enjoy.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And then you will go out to get some more jars to store your pee in?
Bobby Thomson
Heh. As soon as I saw there were more than 300 comments I knew the usual butthurt suspects would be whining amongst themselves. Carry on.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@BillinGlendaleCA: Ah yes, Mt. Wilson. My bad. We did the Upper Sunset past Cape Good Hope and a ways further up (until my wife grew weary of the long drop and made us stop…plus it was pretty hot) on New Years Day last year and could see the Rose Bowl blimp way DOWN BELOW us. That was pretty neat. We also went up there to view a Friends of Echo Mt. event in December where a bunch of hikers lit up the the trail up to the old hotel remains with Xmas lights. It was neat but very COLD since we were so high up and it was night time.
The other local hike we loved is the Chantry Flats/Camp Hoegee loop up off of Santa Anita in Monrovia. That’s a great one with a fair amount of shade.
Cleos
@Bob In Portland: They’ll still find themselves doing the scutwork.
Beldar
We ALL float down here!