HassleCat
HassleCat's JournalWhat about Head Start?
Where do our candidates stand on full funding for Head Start, the pre-school program aimed at giving disadvantaged kids a chance to compete with all those Montessori toddlers? "Full funding" means giving the program enough money to allow it to accept all applicants.
What about the polls?
I'm wondering about the way polls are conducted in primary elections, particularly with regard to our party. We're only two states in, so it my be too early to tell, but there seems to be something wrong with the accuracy of the polls. In Iowa, most polls had Clinton with a small but comfortable edge, somewhere around 3 to 5 points, and we know it was much closer than that. In New Hampshire, the polls failed to predict the lopsided results. What's going on? My thought is that primary election polling emphasizes voters who are registered Democrats, and fails to pick up voters who just recently switched from I to D, or even from R to D. There is also that "poll of likely voters" thing, which used to be quite accurate, but may be missing younger voters now. Any thoughts?
Slate thought Bernie won the debate.
I thought this was interesting, since Slate has not been kind to Sanders in the past.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/02/bernie_sanders_won_the_msnbc_debate_narrowly.html
I will answer
We (Sandernistas) cannot reply to these accusations when they appear in the Clinton group, so I am reproducing the post here and responding to it.
This is a question every Bernie Sanders supporter must answer (thread title)
"Bernie Sanders is currently the beneficiary of an anti-Hillary Clinton ratfucking assault that would make Donald Segretti cringe. How can you possibly say he has clean hands in this matter?"
At the risk of being labelled a rat rapist, I will reply. We (Sandernistas) do criticize Clinton. Yes we do. We think she takes too much special interest money. We think her foreign policy is too hawkish. We think her third way strategy has hurt our party for 35 years. We think her support of the death penalty is dead wrong. We think she is waffling on some Social Security issues, although we can't be sure because she's so good at waffling it sometimes sounds decisive.
Is that an attack? I suppose it is. My criticism is your attack, I guess. And you are free to counterattack, although it appears Clinton supporters are not waiting for an invitation. Some of the things said about Sanders and his supporters are just as outrageous as the things said about Clinton and her supporters. So let's just get on with it and stop taking fake offense at each other, shall we? I think we all realize things get pretty nasty during the primaries, and there are going to be some outrageous fantasies and conspiracies proposed in support of or opposition to the candidates.
Iowa means nothing!
I seem to recall when it meant a great deal, back when the Clinton campaign thought they had it all wrapped up, when the polls showed her up by a nice margin, when the prognosticators said she had an 80 percent chance of winning, and so on, and so forth. Back then, in a time that now seems like the far distant past, Iowa was going to be the time and the place where Hillary Clinton would separate the wheat from the chaff, and claim her rightful place in history. And we would see Bernie Sanders fold like a wet paper bag, and he would grudgingly make a concession speech and urge everybody to vote for Clinton, and... and... well, many other wondrous things would occur.
Now Iowa means nothing, less than nothing. South Carolina is where the primary really begins, and that is where we will see the wonders and spectacles that nobody ever claimed we would see in Iowa.
No death blow tonight
It appears Clinton will eke out a close victory over Sanders. Probably. But the close finish casts doubt on the inevitable-ness of the Clinton path to the presidency. She looks vulnerable. Going into this thing, she had lock on the nomination. Now she has to fight for it, and that means going after Sanders much more aggressively, using negative campaign ads. This will affect her general election campaign somehow, but how? Will voters look at her more unfavorably? Beating up on poor old Bernie Sanders may not go down well, and the Clinton campaign will look for a way to hurt Sanders without appearing to mirror the right wing BS about socialists, communists, etc. That's difficult because Clinton, so far, has portrayed Sanders as too far left. Once again, our favored candidate is trying to position herself not too far left and not too far right. It usually works, but it gets trickier each election for our candidate to be like the Republicans, but not too much like them.
A small lesson in comparative politics
In college, I had an interesting class in comparative politics, the study of differences and similarities among the political systems of various countries. In Japan, a cabinet minister resigned because his staff took some inappropriate gifts, amounting to about $9k, and used the money for parties and junkets. So it was not even something he did, but something his hired help did. I saw him on on TV, saying he was resigning because he had failed in his duty as a public servant by allowing this to happen.
The contrast to the way we do things in the United States is almost funny. Our politicians take free vacations paid for by lobbyists, arrange for their family members to get lucrative jobs with companies Congress is supposed to regulate, and so on. When caught, they stand in front of the TV cameras and dare prosecutors to indict them. Sometimes they even throw in that gratuitous line about "...dedicated public servant... lifetime of hard work for the people..." and blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying we should be just like Japan, and expect our politicians to fall on their swords over the slightest infraction, but it would be nice to see some evidence of a sense of obligation to the public interest.
Here is a link to the Bloomberg article on the resignation.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/japan-s-abenomics-minister-amari-to-resign-over-graft-scandal
What my yahoos are up to.
I'm sure you have the usual collection of Tea Party grumps common almost everywhere. In my area, they're fighting against the school bond. They'll probably prevail, since we have a constitutional amendment that requires 60 percent to pass a bond measure. Anyway, I found an interesting little statement on their website.
"Rather than tear down existing schools to build new ones, maintain and upgrade what’s there, add more portable classrooms if necessary, and let the kids learn how to help in the maintenance and improvement of their schools."
Why is Johnny not learning to read? Because he's been up on the school roof every day, trying patch those pesky leaks. I guess they figure the kids should empty the waste baskets, clean the bathrooms, etc. Maybe they can move the portable classrooms around once in a while, just to make life interesting.
I liked Kerry's point
I saw John Kerry on TV, and he said it would be easy to imagine how the issue of the ten US sailors would have played out three or four years ago. Diplomacy plays a crucial role, he said, in keeping our nation strong. That's an understatement, Mr. Secretary. If we had some Republican nut job in office, we would have bombed Tehran by now, the sailors would have been executed, and we would be at war. I realize that would create great joy in some sectors of our citizenry, but most of us realize a diplomatic solution that results in the release of our military personnel is better than a war that kills thousands. Most of us.
A contest
Most of us know the English came up with specific terms for flocks of various birds, where the word "flock" is replaced by a species-specific label for various kinds of birds. So we have an unkindness of ravens, a murder of crows, a deceit of lapwings, etc. They get even more specific than that. If geese are walking on the ground, they form a gaggle, but they comprise a skein if they're flying in the vee formation. I thought it would be fun if we could come up with a term for a group of Republicans, so we could describe them as a group when they assemble on a stage and try to outdo each other in describing the violent stuff they'll do to ISIS.
A bloviation of Republicans? (Thanks Molly Ivins) A frenzy of Republicans? A nightmare of Republicans? Then there are the obvious: a dungheap of Republicans, a shitpile of Republicans, a clowncar of Republicans, etc. What do you think? What term best captures the uneasy feeling that comes over you when you watch the GOP candidates all insist we need to destroy ISIS, and the candidate speaking at the moment is the person to do so? Chris Christie called the president a feckless coward, so maybe it should be a tollbridge of Republicans.
Of course, in the spirit of all things Republican, you should support your submission by explaining how it is more violent, xenophobic, etc. than other submissions, and you should criticize the other submissions and their authors with personal insults. In the spirit of good, clean, Republican fun, I propose the prohibition on name calling ad gratuitous insults be waived for this contest. An example: "HassleCat is a feckless (thanks Chris) fool if he thinks a group of Republicans should be called 'nightmare.' He must be a dweeb of the highest order. It's obvious my suggestion of 'fellation of Republicans' is far superior because it refers to sex, probably between two or more men."
Anyway, you get the idea.
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Member since: Tue Mar 17, 2015, 12:56 PMNumber of posts: 6,409