Jarqui
Jarqui's JournalThis is politics
Three and a half months or more before a vote is a long time in politics. Look at 2008. Look at Vitter-Edwards contest this year. I could provide many examples.
Saw an article this morning referring to "what if Hillary slips on a banana peel and Trump/Carson become president?" What if Hillary slips on a banana peel before March 1? If that happens, Sanders can win any state. I think Sanders chances are currently better than than relying on Clinton slipping on a banana peel. So do the prediction sites.
If somehow Sanders can win Iowa, like Obama (though they're very different candidates and I'd concede it's more unlikely for Bernie), wild stuff could happen - it could turn into a contest. Hillary's got her supporters but she's got folks who don't like her.
I don't feel like giving Clinton anything at this moment. Having said that, she's way ahead in the polls for most states and ahead in all the states polled so far except NH. According to folks like 538.com, she's in better shape this time in the polls, with endorsements, with caucuses, etc. The prediction sites say she has about a 90% chance of winning the primary with Bernie a little less than 10%. That's probably a fair sober guess at this moment in time.
If she wins Iowa, my guess is that she'll run the table. If she doesn't, we could have some fun and excitement with Bernie.
But like I said above, "Three and a half months or more before a vote is a long time in politics" and I can still hope something good happens for Bernie.
To too many, it wasn't too obvious
The media has accepted some responsibility for it. They obviously collectively blew it.
Bernie and Senator Byrd spoke out. So did someone we all know now but most didn't know he existed in 2003
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469
(I'm not sure I knew much about Sanders either at the time and wouldn't have given his opinion much weight back then because I didn't really know him)
Regardless, unless the intelligence reports (many of which no American outside of the WH administration will see for decades) are sitting in front of me, I can't really claim to know for sure in March 2003. I concede that I have to rely on others at the time because of that. Many who claim otherwise might look good to themselves in hindsight but you'd be hard pressed to produce the hard facts in March 2003 that it would take to convince me beyond political philosophical positions. Lots of stuff came out afterward - I'm talking about what was known at the time. 72% of Americans (supported the war) did not disregards the facts - they were misled on the facts by the poor media and the corrupt administration.
"Stealing an election" is not direct evidence one way or the other to justify going to war. Circumstantial at best. Two different acts.
At the time, my father had had a stroke and was dying of cancer. Like many, with jobs, families and duties, I didn't have a lot of time to roll up my sleeves and sort out the issues on the war - though I did discuss it online some (not here). And so at the time, I wasn't terribly against or for the war because I simply didn't know and had to rely on the media. The polls suggest a lot of people were in the same boat.
I don't give Hillary a complete pass on this either. Far from it. She was there. It was her job to dig deep and reflect like Obama, Sanders & Byrd. I just don't blame her entirely for her vote because deception came from an office where it shouldn't have been expected to come for much of my lifetime. She, Kerry & Biden (pretty good Dems & others) got sucked in.
All I'm saying is Hillary's wrong vote on this at the time was not 100% her fault. The folks who were lying to her deserve a hunk of the blame for misleading so many. Those who didn't get sucked in: Byrd, Obama, Sanders, etc deserve credit for that.
Roughly 216 million Americans (72%) didn't know that in early 2003
Roughly 36 million in the UK (60%) didn't know that either or see it that way. They both supported the war in March 2003 because they got duped.
It wasn't impossible to conceive Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Inspections had been on and off since 1998. Bush/Cheney spun in some stuff to create the possibility in people's minds and away they went. That was a part of the lie - producing so-called "evidence" that they were being produced clandestinely to trick folks into supporting the war. And it worked on millions - they majority in the US and UK.
Didn't work everywhere else but convince me that once Dick Cheney had the support of the US people, he wasn't going to try to kill as many Iraqis as he could.
And he did. That's what happened.
Then, after taking control of Iraq, when they couldn't produce evidence that justified the war ... that's when things started to get ugly. Millions of people started to figure out they were lied to.
I do not completely fault her
A person in her position makes decisions based upon the facts they're provided. If you cannot trust the word of your country's own intelligence and military, whose word do you take?
To me, some war criminals were in the White House putting their fingers on the scales of intelligence providing these senators and the nation with faulty facts on which to base their decision on a vote.
Something like 72% of Americans supported war against Iraq ... because they were deceived by the war criminals in the White House. As much as I like Bernie better, I will not stick the blame for that vote entirely on Hillary. She was deceived like most Americans by Dick Cheney and Company. I do not think it's fair to expect the Vice President of the United States would lie about such a thing - most of us were thoroughly disgusted by their conduct.
Having said that, Obama and Sanders didn't get sucked in by the war criminals and they do deserve considerable credit for the position they took because it certainly wasn't a popular position to take at the time. And they both spoke out against the war at the time the decision was being made. And that is one of the reasons I like Bernie better.
Seems a little early to deem her unelectable
We don't even know who she is up against - which will have an influence on that.
For example, if it's Trump, maybe a bunch of women flock to Hillary. I'm not sure. Too early for me.
But I do think she has a ceiling. We talked about that in 2008. There are a substantial number of folks who do not like her. On that basis, that could be a problem depending on who she faces. And there will be a percentage that won't vote for a woman as president. etc.
I don't think Bernie has either of those problems. He has other issues to overcome as a candidate. Contrary to Clinton's ceiling - he's kind of got a floor and he's got to get up and off it by Mar 1 in Iowa! 
It may have 'started' with this blog in 2010
University of Chicago Sit-In, 1962
APRIL 13, 2010 LADALE WINLING
http://www.urbanoasis.org/2010/04/13/university-of-chicago-sit-in-1962/
One of the items I found in the archive was this image of the sit-in, including Bernie Sanders (standing). Since I am a big supporter of the Senator, and am in DC on a research fellowship, I got two prints of the image and went down to his office on Capitol Hill. I left them with his staff with an explanatory note and a request for a signature on one (the other for him to keep in his papers if he wanted). Today I went and picked this up — his staff reported he was pleased with my gift.
And his earlier post found this picture during research in 2008
http://www.urbanoasis.org/2008/11/02/surprises-in-the-archive/
Researching university histories and campus planning I frequently come across pretty significant surprises in the archives. There was the one about Arthur Miller and Charles Walgreen. There was another where a prominent historian expressed support for limited segregation. Now, as I was preparing for a presentation of some of my research at the Urban History Association conference, I was searching for images of a student sit-in at the University of Chicago in 1962. I found a few, along with another tidbit in this image. One of the members of the steering committee for the sit-in was the student standing at the left of this image, talking — U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
So this picture was identified in 2008 and 2010 as being Sanders by this researcher who gave the picture to Bernie - long before Bernie declared his candidacy for 2016. Hardly a scam by Bernie's campaign IF this researcher was mistaken.
In those posts, he links a 2007 NY Times profile of Sanders
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/magazine/21Sanders.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=bernie%20sanders&st=cse&scp=2
that apparently used that picture that I found on Flickr (not in the article archive link)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanoasis/2996475328/in/photolist-5yMHHJ-rhpoLz-d9Umbe-9kACiB-xNBmbc-A34Xmg-nPgLg4-yHw68c-u16XM1
Quotes from people who were there
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/03/452912856/becoming-bernie-the-6-chapters-of-sanders-life
"Kaufman reported in the student newspaper that the protesters at the sit-in played bridge and ate salami and cheese sandwiches. One guy read aloud from Winnie-the-Pooh. Several wore neckties.
One of the leaders of the sit-in was a young Bernard Sanders, shown in one photo sporting a wide-necked dark sweater and horn-rimmed glasses, clutching a book in one hand and gesturing with the other as he speaks to the protesters.
"He was a great speaker," Kaufman recalls, "and he was able to convince a bunch of other 19-year-olds ... that what was going on was something that was wrong ... and we had the power and the obligation to try to create change."
Sanders has said the sit-in was the event that kick-started his political activism.
Not everyone remembers him as eloquent. Gavin MacFadyen says Sanders was no "electrifying speechmaker" but a soft-spoken, intelligent kid who was still figuring out how to lead.
"If you'd said, 'Is this guy going to run for president?' I think we all would have smiled," MacFadyen says."
http://mag.uchicago.edu/law-policy-society/political-education
Compromise was not yet to be. Backed by student government, CORE voted in a spirited mass meeting in the lounge of the New Dorm (later Woodward Court) to try a different tactic. The next day, at a noon rally at the rear steps of the Administration Building, Bernard Sanders, chairman of the social action committee of CORE, said, “We feel it is an intolerable situation, when Negro and white students of the University cannot live together in university owned apartments.” Then some 33 people, most of them white students, strode into the building, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and reclined on the floor along the walls of the reception room adjoining Beadle’s office: a sit-in.
Sanders was leading them as "chairman of the social action committee of CORE" and they quote him above.
This photo identity thing seems like nonsense to me.
I think it's a trivial complaint
a) because it hasn't been proven to not be Sanders yet
b) because others identified Sanders as being in the photo (I saw someone quote the caption in an article - don't know where)
c) he ran for high school president - campaigning to raise education money for Korean war orphans. In other words, he was an activist long before that picture was taken doing the very things like what we see going on in that picture. So even if someone messed up and identified Sanders wrongly, it doesn't materially change Sanders story.
I think Axelrod is right:
“He has no chance if he doesn’t win Iowa,” said David Axelrod, the chief strategist in both of President Obama’s campaigns. “Even if he were to win New Hampshire, it could be written off as a home-state victory because he’s from across the border.”
If he wins Iowa, he's likely to win New Hampshire. That means for the first 20 days of the primary after the voting starts, all the media would be talking about is whether Bernie is going to do what Barack did to Hillary => which legitimizes his candidacy with free media coverage (kind of like what happened with Obama). Bernie has a good message and would gain some momentum with media exposure that legitimizes him.
Look at the polls in 2008:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/democratic_presidential_nomination-191.html#charts
Clinton has a 21 point lead Jan 3rd - date of the Iowa caucus .... which Obama wins and BOOM ... he closes the gap and away his campaign goes ...
If Bernie wins Iowa, people (most people are just tuning in) and media will sit up, take notice and listen to what he's selling - which gives Bernie a shot.
But if Bernie loses Iowa, even if he wins New Hampshire, it's tough because he's behind in Nevada and South Carolina. Good chance Hillary wins 3 of the first four setting her up well with momentum as the likely winner for the super Tuesday vote in March. Game over. Stick a fork in him.
Poor guy was under house arrest
at his 8,300 square foot home ...
.... until he petitioned the court successfully to let him spend a month at a resort he owned that needed his personal attention in person.
.... Then he successfully got the court to reduce his probation down to two years.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action;jsessionid=v6l0WGQcRLctYqGNfXyTRGggJkmHrNm2v8nBp19qmQxHJGWl6TBw!-116820484!1252773383?st=07-344+-+USA+V.+COSTA&granuleId=USCOURTS-pawd-2_07-cr-00344-1&packageId=USCOURTS-pawd-2_07-cr-00344
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Member since: Sun Aug 23, 2015, 03:58 PMNumber of posts: 10,123