Bernie II?

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?

The Obamas And Austin

Rumor is the Obamas might move to Austin after they are done with the White House. If they announce anything to that effect, Texas goes blue in November, there is a strong chance, which would be tectonic.

One Person, One Vote, One Voice Democracy And America And The Democratic Party

English: Ballot Box showing preferential voting (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not a Democrat. I am not a card carrying member of any political party on earth. But I do believe in the onward march of human progress. The democratic process, the political process is key to that. The most important thing the democratic process perhaps does is it moves the conversation. The work primarily gets done in the private sector, although government work is also very important. 

The Republican side has been so irrational, so far away from what might be called the basics of the scientific process, I think the White House part of the race is over, the Senate part is also over, and now we are moving to the Republicans possibly even losing the House, and the Democrats don't even have a nominee yet. Hillary is perhaps to benefit immensely from this amazing act of self destruction on the part of the Republicans. 

But the political benefit will not be lasting. Currently the American political system is designed to swing like a pendulum. The Dems and Hillary might sweep in 2016 but two years later the pendulum will swing even if the basic political landscape has not changed and the Republicans are still as irrational as ever. Why would that happen? It's in the design itself. 

America is a one person one vote democracy, but only half so. It is not a system designed to try to get as many people as possible to vote. And it is not a one person, one vote, one voice democracy. What has most boggled my mind in this race is, not only Hillary has not replicated the grassroots organizational structures of an Obama 2008, she has not made it 10 times better, because now that is an option due to advances in technology. She has had the option to make it 10 times better and make that structure integral to governance itself beyond victory. An attempt at one person, one vote, one voice democracy might bring lasting benefits to the Democratic Party. Instead of being a 52-48 slide between the two parties, the Republicans would keep losing ground and stay at lost ground unless they do what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to apply their core conservative principles to new set of data to come up with new policies and programs. As to what that might mean I don't know. But an utter unwillingness to face the data is something that is not the scientific process. The ideological masturbation is in full view. 

One person, one vote, one voice 24/7 democracy taken to its logical local to global conclusions: that is the goal. That also means structural reforms. For example, why is there only one day when you can vote? Why not an entire week? Why do you have to go to a voting booth? Why can't you vote from your phone? You press your thumb and you vote. Why do you have to register to vote? Does not the American state know you exist? They seem to know when you have to pay taxes. Every citizen should be automatically registered, for all elections ever after. Congressional district boundaries should be decided by a federal non partisan commission. Kill gerrymandering if you want a healthy, robust democracy in America. Voters are supposed to choose politicians, not the other way round. In the current system there is no end to gridlock. So you end up with a small government for the price of a huge government. A paralyzed government is a small government, which means those who want a small government want it so bad, they don't want even the people's approval for the idea, they don't want to have to make a case. They don't want a mandate, they just want to impose the idea. Last of all, every town where non citizens are more than 10% of the population should allow all residents to vote at least in the city elections. Ideally you would want not all citizens but all residents everywhere in the country to be able to vote at all levels. A country that wants to spread democracy should bring in people from all over the world, and get them to vote, so they know what it feels like. You do that and you don't have to invade countries. Democracy spreads itself. It is like fragrance. 

Talking about immigrants, not only America needs to legalize the 12 million who are already here, America needs to actively bring in 20 million more. How else are you going to pay for your ageing population's retirement? The social security thing is kind of like the blockchain. On the blockchain you can do business with people you don't even trust. The social security thing is so beautifully designed that young immigrants pay for the retirement of people who are not even their blood relatives. It is a good system.