Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts

Thursday, April 07, 2016

Bernie II?

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Is Bernie making a comeback? At this point it is true the super delegates don't count. If Bernie ends up leading among the contested delegates, it will be hard for the supers to not respect that. But I have not been following closely. What are the numbers at this point? This is the second time Bernie has surprised me, the first time was in January.
Not only has Sanders defeated Clinton in six straight contests, but he’s raised more money in three consecutive months...... Clinton’s email fiasco is the epitome of white privilege. Ultimately, Wisconsin just elected Bernie Sanders president, and the momentum from this win will lead to further landmark victories. While Bernie is raising more money than anyone, Clinton is facing potential FBI and DOJ indictment. Clinton’s excuses regarding retroactive classification won’t impress the FBI and very soon, Bernie Sanders will be the official Democratic front-runner. Wisconsin continued the momentum at a critical point and helped elect President Bernie Sanders.
Sanders ready to burn the house down? Five reasons Bernie says Hillary isn’t “qualified” to be President
Sanders swings back hard after he claimed Clinton argued he was "not qualified." Only problem - she never said that VIDEO
Paul Krugman: For wonks like me, Bernie Sanders is frankly horrifying
Sanders is just as delusional when it comes to the economics as those vying for a spot on the GOP ticket
Varieties of Voodoo
Republicans routinely engage in deep voodoo, making outlandish claims about the positive effects of tax cuts for the rich. Democrats tend to be cautious and careful about promising too much, as illustrated most recently by the way Obamacare, which conservatives insisted would be a budget-buster, actually ended up being significantly cheaper than projected. ...... On Wednesday four former Democratic chairmen and chairwomen of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — three who served under Barack Obama, one who served under Bill Clinton — released a stinging open letter to Bernie Sanders and Gerald Friedman, a University of Massachusetts professor who has been a major source of the Sanders campaign’s numbers. The economists called out the campaign for citing “extreme claims” by Mr. Friedman that “exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans” and could “undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda.” ...... Mr. Friedman outdoes the G.O.P. by claiming that the Sanders plan would produce 5.3 percent growth a year over the next decade. ......

fuzzy math from the left would make it impossible to effectively criticize conservative voodoo

Noam Chomsky: Bernie Sanders can’t save America
The famed linguist-philosopher talks neoliberalism, the future of fossil fuels and our broken political culture
Throughout his illustrious career, one of Noam Chomsky’s chief preoccupations has been questioning — and urging us to question — the assumptions and norms that govern our society. ..... For radicals, progress requires puncturing the bubble of inevitability: austerity, for instance, “is a policy decision undertaken by the designers for their own purposes.” It is not implemented, Chomsky says, “because of any economic laws.” American capitalism also benefits from ideological obfuscation: despite its association with free markets, capitalism is shot through with subsidies for some of the most powerful private actors. This bubble needs popping too. ....... “Over time there’s a kind of a general trajectory towards a more just society, with regressions and reversals of course.” ..... by now, practically the only persistent institutions are the churches. .... And not because of any economic laws. These are policies. Just as austerity in Europe is not an economic necessity — in fact, it’s economic nonsense. But it’s a policy decision undertaken by the designers for their own purposes. I think basically it’s a kind of class war, and it can be resisted, but it’s not easy. History doesn’t go in a straight line. ..... there was a recent study by the IMF which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism. ....... Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility. ..... will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.
They created this nightmare for themselves: The clueless GOP establishment is fueling hurricane Donald Trump
What aloof GOP leaders don't get is that rank-and-file, working-class voters feel betrayed by them
today’s Republican establishment now finds that it is so out of touch with regular voters that it now faces a howling, Category-5 hurricane that’s threatening to implode the Grand Old Party. ..... None of the elites saw Hurricane Donnie coming ....... They’ve single-mindedly pushed a plutocratic agenda of trade scams, tax cuts for the rich, and subsidies for runaway corporations, while constantly slashing at Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that their own non-affluent voters need. ....... Trying to knock-off Trump for Ryan is a sign of the GOP’s irreversible decline into cluelessness and political irrelevance.
“Talking out of his ass”: Stephen Colbert loses patience with Donald Trump’s ignorance
Colbert also takes down Cruz's Wisconsin win. "Even if you voted for Ted Cruz, you're still pretty upset about it"
Voters still bearish on Trump, Colbert noted, express concern over the GOP frontrunner’s lack of concrete policy proposals. ...... a clip of Trump during his Fox News town hall Monday saying he would eliminate the “Department of Environmental,” or as Trump believes the acronym to be, “the D.E.P.” ..... “We looked it up,” Colbert said. “And the Department of Environmental does not exist, meaning Trump is either talking out of his ass or he’s already eliminated it.”
It was a blowout: Bernie Sanders won a whopping 99 percent of counties in the Wisconsin primary
Sanders got more votes in 71 out of Wisconsin's 72 counties. Clinton beat him in just one, and only by 3.7 percent
The winner of the primary in Wisconsin has gone on to become the party’s nominee in nearly 94 percent of past elections. The state has been described as the “best in the nations at picking presidential nominees.” ..... Americans, who polls say are overwhelmingly sick of the political status quo, are clearly excited about the prospect of a Sanders presidency. .... Sanders says that, if he wins the New York primary, he would likely be the next president.


Donald Trump’s “days of rage”: As the GOP primary reaches its tipping point, Trump prepares for all-out war
Ted Cruz won big last night, dramatically increasing chances of a brokered convention. This is about to get ugly
,br> His most terrifying interview yet: Why Trump’s sit down with Bob Woodward should have America petrified
In a conversation with the Washington Post, Trump demonstrated exactly why he's so dangerous in 2016
he seems to have decided very early in life on a set of simple beliefs about the way the world works and has never questioned them. ..... Last week he stunned the country with his comments about punishing women for having abortions, a position he meandered into by failing to understand that the right has its own kind of political correctness. ...... But what he has been saying about nuclear policy is so reckless that President Obama was moved to comment on it, saying “the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally.” ..... Unfortunately, Trump didn’t get the message and continued to insist that Japan and South Korea either hand over more money to the United States or build their own nuclear weapons. ..... The Woodward/Costa interview spent more time trying to get him to talk about economics and, as usual, he meandered around talking about himself and his business, repeating all his stock lines. But he did say a few things that made some headlines, particularly his belief that the country is currently in a “bubble” that’s going to burst soon and throw the country into a terrible recession. ...... So he is determined to slash taxes to the bone and also pay off the 19 trillion in 8 years. Needless to say the economy will be roaring because he will have made America great again. ...... We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” How long would that take? “Well, I would say over a period of eight years.” ....... it’s downright surreal that he’s very close to winning the Republican nomination for president. How is it possible that a man with such overwhelming solipsism and titanic ego can have so little knowledge to show for it?

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Obama Wave



It is not a tie after all. Looking like a Barack Obama sweep by now.

The wave for Obama
As he tours Sandy devastation with Chris Christie, swing state polls break for the president ..... With reliable polls in Ohio and Wisconsin Wednesday showing Obama with solid leads there, Romney has almost no path to victory on Tuesday. Polls today also showed him holding smaller leads in the swing states of Virginia, Florida and Nevada, and tied in North Carolina. .... White working class voters in both Ohio and Wisconsin are key to Obama’s strength there ..... Romney was going to focus on “cultural” issues – read racial issues – to court those white voters. Romney and Paul Ryan stepped away from the welfare lies after everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich said there was no evidence for the claim. But there it is again, in ads going up in Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado and Florida, as Romney tries to tap into traditional white taxpayer association between welfare and minorities. ...... Romney’s lies about the auto industry are arguably more brazen and baseless, and they’ve drawn unprecedented rebukes from officials at GM and Chrysler. But so far they’re not working either. Even as worried Ohio Chrysler employees sought reassurance that they’d keep their jobs, polls were showing that Ohio voters believe Obama cares more about them than Romney does. Almost half of white working class voters believe the economy is getting better, which helps account for why Obama is tied among those voters while he trails by up to 30 points with the same demographic in Florida and Virginia ...... the Obama team is sounding confident while Romney’s sounds desperate. ..... The criticism by Christie, Chrysler and GM is a welcome sign that Republicans and corporate leaders may learn to cooperate with the president so many of their colleagues disrespect and deride. It also tells me something else: those three titans think Romney is likely to lose, and they don’t need to pay him any deference or worry about working with him in January.
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