March 15, 2016

So does the fact that I can only...

... find predictions for Florida in FiveThirtyEight.com mean that the other four are too close to call?

tia
las

March 11, 2016

I just donated 20 $10 gifts to Hillary! nt

March 11, 2016

Good advice for Hillary, I think.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/how_hillary_clinton_should_debate_donald_trump.html

March 10, 2016

I used to eagerly look...

.... for polls showing Clinton ahead. Now they just scare me.

March 9, 2016

Watch Donald Trump morph

I'm convinced the Trump is not talking off the top of his head. I think he's scheduled outrageous comments so one appears once every week or two. And once he's won the nomination, watch him become much less outrageous, so there's a chance that he could win the presidency.

March 9, 2016

OK, what were the actual results?

I fell asleep last night. Google News had a story about Trump and Clinton and the GE. Even when I logged in to get extra Hillary stories, the one story assumed knowledge. Couldn't find anything in RealClearPolitics except articles. Can someone help me?

tia
las

March 7, 2016

Give Bernie a break (Hillary Groupl)

I would like the Democrats to forget about Bernie's Excuse me slip the way he forgets about e-mails. I don't doubt for a minute his commitment to gender and racial equality. But he's a product of his age and is not a temperamentally empathetic person. The Myers-Briggs test would probably rate him very high on the "justice" scale. But on the debate stage slips like Excuse me and white people not knowing what it's like to be poor are magnified all out of proportion to whatever deficiencies they reveal. I'm a firm Hillary supporter, but I'm a proud Democrat. Let's not spend time on "style."

LAS

March 6, 2016

I wish this would get more publicity....

... but it's not obscene or otherwise shocking in a bad way...

http://zfacts.com/2016/02/clinton-speaking-fees/

Over the negative din of politics, it can be hard to hear what’s positive. Hillary Clinton has given $17.6 million of her speaking fees to charity (see below). That’s 26 times as much as she made on her three Goldman Sachs speeches combined, or 50% more than she made on her 51 speeches in 2014 and 2015. Before presenting the details, let me summarize.

Her fees were not the least bit unusual given her stature.
Over 100 lesser known Americans are also in the $200,000+ category.
The Goldman Sachs fees were below her average fee.
She gave $17.6 million of her speaking fees to charity.
Charging G. Sachs less would have just meant more profits for them and less for charity.
There is simply no evidence, or logic, supporting the idea that she would sell out her whole career and deceive her huge base of supporters with a fake proposal to rein in Wall Street (a proposal that Elizabeth Warren supports). That she would do all this in return for three below-average fees from Goldman Sachs is beyond absurd.

Now take a quick look at a Talk at Golmand Sachs (GS), or at civil-rights-leader John Lewis talking with the CEO of GS, or the CEO of the NAACP or LGBT Professionals speaking at GS. Obviously GS hopes for good publicity and the speakers hope to influence GS. If you’re looking for conspiracies, this is a very silly place to look for them.

March 3, 2016

Cross post - It's gone beyond Democrats vs Republicans

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027657089

I'd posted earlier about wondering which to wish for, a Republican nominee like Trump whom Hillary could beat more easily, or a Republican nominee that doesn't so clearly raise the specter of demagoguery. I'm moving in the direction of thinking that it would be better to have a Rubio for 4 or 8 years than to have one of our two major parties taken over by the extreme far right anti-"other" group that is clearly threatening Europe.

I don't really know enough about how parties are organized. How much power would Trump have if he were the nominee? If he were president?

March 3, 2016

Now that the KKK is out of mothballs.

We need to move beyond the political correctness that prohibits our raising the specter of Nazism. I'm not yet ready to accuse anyone of planning mass murders in concentration camps, but remember that Hitler was voted into power, and that Trump is very specifically focussing on seducing the vulnerable segments of the population, both Democrats and Republicans. Please see both the YouTube video and the article that is below it.

this interchange of CNN. At the time, I thought it was unusual. The following story tells it well:
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
A Fiery Debate on K.K.K. in ’16. Who Figured?
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
On Super Tuesday, two commentators on CNN argued about the Ku Klux Klan. On television. In America. In 2016.
It was a singular moment in cable news. This is partly because, until this week, the K.K.K.’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue. But also because — as intense and unsettling as the argument was — it was substantive and illuminating in a way time-killing cable shouting matches rarely are.
The exchange began when the conservative commentator S. E. Cupp criticized the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, for the “dog whistle” racial implications of his comments and proposals. (He has, besides denigrating Mexican immigrants and calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country, said that he’s not sure whether he would have opposed internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.)
snip

Here’s where things got real. Van Jones, a former Obama staffer (and an African-American), turned to Mr. Lord and argued that Mr. Trump was “playing funny with the Klan” by not deploring them with the same passion he directs at other terrorist organizations. (Or for that matter, I’d say, Megyn Kelly.) Mr. Lord responded that Mr. Trump had said enough, that Democrats were “dividing people by race” and besides, the Klan was a “leftist” terror group.
Again: This is 2016. And here was a white panelist suggesting that his African-American peer should really go back and learn his history before criticizing someone about the Klan. Mr. Jones, calmly but with clear emotion, dressed Mr. Lord down: “We’re not going to play that game,” he said. “When you talk about the Klan, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know’ — that’s wrong.”
It was five minutes or so of the most stunning TV of the year. Even the body language was fascinating: Mr. Jones rested a hand on Mr. Lord’s shoulder at times, seemingly less as a dominating gesture than to keep the situation from spiraling out of control. (“I know you,” Mr. Jones said at one point. “I trust you.”) It was as if he were simultaneously battling Mr. Lord and trying to defuse a highly unstable bomb.
Cable debates typically end up with two parties yelling over trivia. The Jones-Lord argument was arresting precisely the opposite way: Two men were arguing, furiously but in control, over something dead serious.
And while I’ve criticized cable networks plenty over the years for engaging in gasbag theater for ratings, CNN was absolutely right to let this fight play out. The 2016 election has dug up ghastly things in American politics that many of us thought were long buried. But once the Klan robe is out of mothballs, it needs to be confronted under bright lights.
There is something frightening, in general, about hate groups becoming fodder for the modern cable news argument machine. Does anyone want to see TV take a “both sides have their points to make” approach to the actual Ku Klux Klan? But here, anyway, amid the usual hyperbole and Times Square graphics of an election night, CNN delivered a scene of authentic passion over real concerns: the deep schisms among Republicans, the fear that vile hatreds are being resurrected, the anxiety that the vitriol of the campaign is bleeding into the larger culture. (Mr. Jones said that he’d stopped encouraging his 7-year-old son to watch the news.)

PLEASE CLICK LINK IN FIRST REPLY TO SEE THIS WHOLE ARTICLE