The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Mr. Perfect wrote:Cleaning Lady returns.
Compliment accepted.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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manolo
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by manolo »

Mr. Perfect wrote:Cleaning Lady returns.
Folks,

It seems like only yesterday.

Alex.
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YMix
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by YMix »

Berniemaniacs Swarm Bushwick: Deep in Sanders’s Hipster Heartland

Early Wednesday evening at a sweaty loft party in Bushwick, hipster clichés sipped all-natural, hibiscus- and mint-flavored soda and admired their host’s artwork: small swaths of canvas stenciled with slogans for Bernie Sanders’s grassroots 2016 presidential campaign, from the traditional (“Go Bernie!”), to the alliterative and playful (“Bernie or Bust” and “Feel the Bern”), to the millennial (“Bernie is Bae”).

The latter was particularly popular among 70 or so young anti-establishment liberals who filed into the Bushwick loft Wednesday night, where Steve Panovich, 36, was hosting one of 3,300 “online house parties” across the country organized by Sanders’s Democratic campaign.

Panovich apologized to guests for the venue’s sauna-like temperatures, but no one seemed to mind much: For refreshments there were Tostitos, nuts, and warm beer.

“Feel the Bern! Literally!” one ebullient Bernie fanboy shouted from the crowd of hipsters-in-uniform: Converse sneakers, crop tops, tattoos, purple hair, and ironic T-shirts.

Everyone laughed, fanning themselves with fliers they’d picked up at the door, their faces shiny with sweat and optimism.

They whooped and cheered as the 73-year-old Vermont senator held forth on income inequality during a livestreamed broadcast, projected onto a white bedsheet Panovich had hung from the ceiling.

“Enough is enough!” the gravelly voiced statesman repeated again and again, reciting his campaign goals: Grow the middle class, raise the minimum wage, create jobs by rebuilding infrastructure, and raise taxes for the “millionaires and billionaires.”

The Bushwick crowd knows his spiel by heart: “It is not acceptable that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

That kind of zero-sum thinking doesn’t fly in mainstream economics, but there’s nothing mainstream about Sanders—and that’s exactly why young progressives can’t get enough of him.

One woman apologized for “frothing at the mouth” as she gushed about Sanders’s policies with a wild twinkle in her eye, as though he were Mick Jagger or Gandhi.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is too mainstream.

She doesn’t fire up the radicals gathered in Bushwick like Sanders does, though she has a significant lead on him in the latest national poll.

The Brooklyn hipsters are in the throes of what the media has dubbed “Berniemania.”

[...]
Only in the USA could a man who says "grow the middle class" be taken for a socialist.

Also:
“I don’t know what that is,” Dani Slocki, a 24-year-old sales manager for a public relations firm, said of the program. “I’ve never given a genuflect about politics until now. I got into politics because Bernie is on every single page that I am on issues like police brutality and gay marriage.”

She paused, confessed that she “smoked some very strong weed” before talking to me, then continued: “America is very sensitive right now. Everything is in real time. So the moment someone gets shot or the moment a genuflecting lion dies, everyone knows about it and everyone wants to be the first person involved. No one is thinking long term. Bernie is thinking long term!”

No loft party in Bushwick—political or otherwise—has ever been so devoid of New York cynicism and snobbery.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielleslocki

Good idea telling the reporter your name and the fact that you smoked weed. You're going to go far in PR.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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kmich
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by kmich »

Sanders is the Democratic version of Ron Paul – very unlikely to be successful in the primaries but at least will ask some important questions during the primaries. In the end though, who will be nominated in each party will be about money and media influence and that will go to the candidates who are most likely to preserve, established, vested interests.

Hillary, as lousy a candidate as she is, will likely be the Democratic nominee in that regard. Whether or not the Republicans can beat her will depend less on her dishonesty and ineptitude, and more on whether or not the GOP can emerge with a candidate who has shown the required fealty to institutional and private, entrenched interests while being credible in the general election. Credibility may be difficult to achieve if their current farcical feeding frenzy continues much longer. We shall see.
manolo
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by manolo »

YMix wrote:
Only in the USA could a man who says "grow the middle class" be taken for a socialist.
YMix,

Ain't that the truth.

Alex.
manolo
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by manolo »

kmich wrote: Credibility may be difficult to achieve if their current farcical feeding frenzy continues much longer. We shall see.
kmich,

Indeed.

Alex.
Nastarana
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nastarana »

I recall a commentator, I forgot the name, except it was Eugene somebody, the guy from Arkansas who covered Bill Clinton in the 90s, writing about the Gingrich campaign in 2012 that nobody's third wife is going to live in the White House; in the privacy of the voting booth, American women won't stand for it. American women also don't much care for foreign born socialites; John Kerry ran into trouble over that, remember.

Whatever Turmp is running for, it is bound to be about money; a permit he wants or something of the sort.

The Sanders campaign is interesting for several reasons. Apparently he is not taking PAC money. Is AIPAC a pac, and if so, does this mean what it looks like--a Jewish candidate telling AIPAC to take a hike?? A Sanders presidency would not, of course, be anti-Israel, but dare one hope for a Nixon goes to China moment, in which a Jewish president tells Bibi to back off? The second pint of interest is that he is high profile anti GMO. That, I believe, is what is swelling his crowds and poll numbers. Other candidates, counting all that lovely agribiz campaign money, refuse to understand how much people are angry about food and farming issues.

Which brings me to Mme. Clinton, yesterday's news, who is either clueless or on the wrong side of issues which people are passionate about this year and this decade, such as GMO and chemical contamination of our food supply, or TPP--apparently she still believes NAFTA was a great victory--. She can't even manage to come out in favor of banning the ivory trade, which is a no brainer, free brownie points for politicians, if there ever was one.
Mr. Perfect
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Sounds like you guys are beginning to cognate that Hillary is not inevitable. That's progress.
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Clinton has the odor of a corpse about her. The Democratic machine is keeping her alive by artificial means.

I predict her numbers will continue to slip, an apparently unrelated event will allow her to withdraw with grace, and Warren will step in and eventually claim the nomination.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Nastarana
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nastarana »

Warren does not want to be president. I suspect she sees the intrigues which have surrounded Obama and wants nothing to do with the office.

I don't know who "you guys" might be. I parted company with the Democrats some time ago.

There might be real conventions this year, with multiple ballots and actual deals and trades being made. Might it be possible that the politics of I want what I want and I want it for free have finally run their course?
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Nastarana wrote:Warren does not want to be president. I suspect she sees the intrigues which have surrounded Obama and wants nothing to do with the office.

I don't know who "you guys" might be. I parted company with the Democrats some time ago.

There might be real conventions this year, with multiple ballots and actual deals and trades being made. Might it be possible that the politics of I want what I want and I want it for free have finally run their course?
Of course I am just noodling but Jimmy Carter (D), Paul Craig Roberts (R) and David Stockman (R), all top level experienced White House executives, have all publicly stated the US is now a complete oligarchy and all three branches of government are for sale and are thoroughly corrupt.

We are going to get a pre-selected POTUS of one brand or another. Just like Bush and Obama. If the oligarchs want Warren to run, she will not be given the option of not running.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Mr. Perfect
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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This could be the last Democrat to ever run so go out with a bang.
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Nastarana
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nastarana »

Nonc Hilaire, granted about oligarchs, but why would they recruit Warren? They can't stand her. I have always thought that the Clinton's made a deal years ago that they would each get two presidential terms, in return for various betrayals and favors. The problem is that Mme. Clinton is herself a pretentious incompetent. She made headlines by shutting down half a major dept. store so she, accompanied by a large group of aids and hanger ons, all one supposes drawing substantial salaries, could get her US$600 haircut in privacy. Has this woman learned nothing? Meanwhile, the Big Dog continues his insatiable lifestyle; are we going to have Epstein's underage sex parties in the White House?

The big story in this year's elections is not 1% control, but the influence of foreign money. It is pretty much an open secret that the Republicans are being funded and kept on life support out of the People's Republic, probably funneled through Sheldon Adelson, Mitch McConnells' inlaws and likely other conduits as well. Meanwhile, the Democrats, not to be outdone in corruption, have become a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street/City of London, which for most intents and purposes can be considered the same entity, and, I would suggest, is neither American nor British, but a new kind of entity altogether.

The grand prize is not who gets to be the next puppet president, but who gets to seize what remains of the physical assets of North America.

The infamous Kochtopus is busily trying to set up its' private satrapy in the upper Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes; one fifth of the world's most valuable resource.
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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It's like professional wrestling. Warren is on the payroll. No one gets on the payroll without being controllable. If she is told to wrassle she will wrassle.

Look how quickly Obama and Bush swapped out their political personas after they were elected. Ideology was quickly forgotten by both and they both did exactly what they were told.

Somebody will have to fill in for Hillary's exit, and there has to be opposite parties in congress and the white house so the show can continue. Bernie was supposed to be controlled opposition, but he is not fully controlled.

If not Warren, then who?
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Simple Minded »

manolo wrote:
YMix wrote:
Only in the USA could a man who says "grow the middle class" be taken for a socialist.
YMix,

Ain't that the truth.

Alex.
Me thinketh "socialist" might mean something different in the US than in the UK or Romania. What are your definitions?
Simple Minded

Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Simple Minded »

Nastarana wrote:
There might be real conventions this year, with multiple ballots and actual deals and trades being made. Might it be possible that the politics of I want what I want and I want it for free have finally run their course?
Nastarana, Now that would be refreshing. Are "we" at that point now? It remains to be seen.
Simple Minded

Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Simple Minded »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:It's like professional wrestling. Warren is on the payroll. No one gets on the payroll without being controllable. If she is told to wrassle she will wrassle.

Look how quickly Obama and Bush swapped out their political personas after they were elected. Ideology was quickly forgotten by both and they both did exactly what they were told.
Nonc,

thank you. I have long been excoriated by my Dem & Repub associates for claiming that O was the third & fourth terms of W.

It is nice to know there are more loons singing in the forest....
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

RwO_q1lfIHI
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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Simple Minded wrote:Me thinketh "socialist" might mean something different in the US than in the UK or Romania. What are your definitions?
Total control of the economy by the state, near elimination of interest, nationalization and liquidation of all private banks, a change of focus away from the rich and middle class to the working class, same for consumer products versus the infrastructure that improves the lower classes' standard of living.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Simple Minded wrote:
manolo wrote:
YMix wrote:
Only in the USA could a man who says "grow the middle class" be taken for a socialist.
YMix,

Ain't that the truth.

Alex.
Me thinketh "socialist" might mean something different in the US than in the UK or Romania. What are your definitions?
The most accurate representation I have found

Image
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Mr. Perfect
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Mr. Perfect »

YMix wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:Me thinketh "socialist" might mean something different in the US than in the UK or Romania. What are your definitions?
Total control of the economy by the state, near elimination of interest, nationalization and liquidation of all private banks, a change of focus away from the rich and middle class to the working class, same for consumer products versus the infrastructure that improves the lower classes' standard of living.
Sounds like the Democrat party.
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:It's like professional wrestling. Warren is on the payroll. No one gets on the payroll without being controllable. If she is told to wrassle she will wrassle.

Look how quickly Obama and Bush swapped out their political personas after they were elected. Ideology was quickly forgotten by both and they both did exactly what they were told.

Somebody will have to fill in for Hillary's exit, and there has to be opposite parties in congress and the white house so the show can continue. Bernie was supposed to be controlled opposition, but he is not fully controlled.

If not Warren, then who?
Nobody. Hillary is going to lose then the democrats will be finished for good. As you are discovering the democrats have no national people left. The Democrat party is near its end.
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

Post by kmich »

Ridiculous. Elections are a sideshow to give people a sense that their aspirations are being represented by one paid off party hack or another. Both the Democrats and Republicans have become irrelevant to our lives other than for those groupies, right and left, who just can’t resist sitting on the respective, partisan tour bus while thumbing their nose at the other. It is all a goofy Punch and Judy show for those who have a never ending need to believe that what they have to say or how they vote makes any difference.

We have become a nation dominated by fantasy, spectacle, and our images in mirrors. It is not that just the Democrats are at the “end,” but the whole nation is in a slow, creaking decline. Toynbee was right. Civilizations decline and disintegrate when they are no longer able to respond creatively to present conditions and are, instead, preoccupied with their own, private fantasies of meaning and importance. As he put it, “the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.”
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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I forget, who/what is the opposite of pangloss.
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Re: The eternal US elections - 2016 edition

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For popcorn factor, biden Trump would be the ultimate.
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