August 10, 2015

Meet Symone Sanders & see her rousing speech at Bernie's Portland Rally last night

Symone Sanders is Bernie's new Press Secretary, and she is ON FIRE for
Black Lives Mattering and ending the mass incarceration of PoC. and
WOW .. I think she's feeling The BERN!!

This is a video of the entire Portland rally, because I could not find a clip
of just Symone's speech, as she introduced Bernie. But if you just want to hear
and see Symone, she starts at 1:18:20 into this video.

Note: if anyone knows how to edit this down to just be Symone's part of it,
and post it on youtube, that would be awesome. Especially because her into of
Bernie was pretty much completely ignored by the M$M, which instead kept
repeating clips of the Seattle travesty, even in their coverage of the Portland
event. So a youtube clip of just Symone's introductory speech would be very helpful,
~Thank you.

August 9, 2015

Cory Booker: Sanders has "long record of civil rights" for which I have "tremendous respect"

Booker: Sanders has 'long record of civil rights'
August 9, 2015 * By Mark Hensch * The Hill

Booker added that his Senate colleague’s record is one of deep respect for civil rights.
“Bernie has become somebody I have tremendous respect for and is an ally of mine in addressing issues in the United States Senate that affect minority communities,” he said.

“He has a long record of civil rights,” Booker told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”

Booker’s defense of Sanders follows a protest of the Vermont lawmaker’s campaign stop in Seattle the day before.

Booker argued on Sunday that the incident – orchestrated by Black Lives Matter activists – shows race relations are still troubling everyday Americans.

“This is a legitimate degree of frustration in this country, in a nation that has yet to confront what I believe are persistent civil rights issues, human rights issues,” Booker said.

“Right now, we have more African Americans under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1850,” he said. “We have a nation that has states like mine that has 14, 15 percent African Americans, but the prison population is over 60 percent black.”

More: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/250686-booker-sanders-has-long-record-of-civil-rights

August 9, 2015

Lest We Forget our own history, betraying the memories of Martin Luther King Jr. & Bobbly Kennedy

It's no coincidence that the Poor People's March on Washington -- for jobs and
economic justice -- happened just prior to Martin Luther King Jr. being gunned
down in cold blood, soon followed by RFK's assassination.








In the year leading up to their assassinations, Martin and Bobby had been forging a common cause, connecting the nexus of Racial Justice and Economic Justice,









We no longer afford to forget what led-up to these two courageous leaders being assassinated in cold blood in 1968. We can no longer afford to buy into a false either/or choice between Racial and Economic Justice, because -- as these two men well understood -- the two must stand together in order to advance meaningful change where Black Lives truly do Matter.

Anything less is unacceptable to me. Anything less would be a victory for the forces that employ 'divide & conquer' to resist the meaningful change so sorely needed in our country, more now than ever.

August 9, 2015

So exactly WHICH candidate for POTUS IS BLM supporting, over Bernie Sanders????

have they ever said? If so, I haven't heard who it is.

Is it Hillary? O'Malley? Trump? I find it odd that all this
justifiable anger is so completely misplaced, AND it's aimed
at BLM's and the AA community's best friend in this race.

August 8, 2015

White House warns Chuck Schumer: disapprove of Iran deal at your own peril

Thank you President Obama! Please keep the pressure on for peace in the ME!

White House warns Chuck Schumer: disapprove of Iran deal at your own peril
Spokesman Josh Earnest calls Democrat’s defiance on nuclear deal ‘not particularly surprising’ and says it may cost him party leadership in Senate
by Dan Roberts * The guardian * August 7, 2015

The White House fired a shot across the bows of New York senator Chuck Schumer on Friday for defying its position on Iran, warning that fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill may remember his voting record when deciding who to elect as their next leader.

Though Schumer’s announcement that he would vote in disapproval of the nuclear deal – which leaked mysteriously during the middle of the Republican debate on Thursday – is unlikely to derail the process, it represents an embarrassing rift with a senior Democrat who had once been one of Barack Obama’s staunchest allies.

Schumer is expected to take over as leader of the party’s caucus in the Senate when Harry Reid, currently the minority leader, steps down after the next presidential election.

But he has defied the president before on a critical issue, questioning last year whether it was right to expend so much political capital pushing through Obama’s signature healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.

August 6, 2015

Can we please dispense with the talking point: "Debates don't Matter?"

Of course debates matter, don't kid yourself. If debates didn't matter, why do front-runners
universally want to limit how many there are, and challengers always want as many as they can get? Duh.

Even the M$M admits debates DO matter, they matter to CNN too in terms of more advertising
and influence in the political process.

Please note that this list (by CNN) of 10 examples debates made a difference, doesn't even
include Obama famously saying "Please proceed Governor" to Mitt Romney in that 2008 debate.

1960 -- Kennedy vs. Nixon: First TV debate
Just having Kennedy on the same stage as an exerienced vice president made a difference for JFK because he could hold his own with Nixon. But then, of course, when it was listened to on the radio, it made it seem like it was pretty equal, and even some people giving an edge to Nixon. But he looked so terrible. His makeup was bad. He wasn't feeling well. He looked sallow, He looked scornful. And people just reacted to that image of a vigorous, young Kennedy, and an almost sick-looking Nixon. And from then on, somehow JFK became a figure.

1976 -- Carter vs. Ford: No Soviet domination of Eastern Europe?
Ford had done well in the first debate, but in the second debate he was asked a question about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And he answered it incomprehensibly. There was already a perception, a vulnerability, that he wasn't intelligent. And then this thing just got parodied, just got talked about, and became a huge event. When ordinary people watched that debate, they didn't feel the Ford had screwed up. But when it was pointed out, that he didn't understand what was happening in the Cold War in Eastern Europe, then suddenly they had shifted their minds, and he seemed much worse than it had seemed at that moment.

1980 -- Reagan vs. Carter: 'There you go again'
In 1980, Carter was primed to go after Reagan about his record, especially on Medicare. He was going on the offensive: 'You did this! You voted this way! You said that!' And Reagan, just with humor and subtlety, said, 'There you go again.' And it somehow relaxed Reagan and it took the offensive away from Carter. It was a brilliant answer to a really serious critique of Reagan's past that might have been troubling for him.

1980 -- Reagan vs. Carter: 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?'
There was no more brilliant closing than Reagan's 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?' What it did was to make people think, 'Yes. That's what's happened to me. My economic life, my family life, my working life, has been hurt by the economy over these last four years.' And once they realized that, it almost gave a poster to the entire campaign. It wasn't just a great moment in the debate, it became a theme encapsulated in just a few sentences. And in the end saying, 'if you are better off, then you vote for Mr. Carter. If you're not, you do have another choice. Me,' And at the same time, Carter gave a very weak closing statement.

1984 -- Mondale vs. Reagan: 'I will not exploit ... my opponent's youth and inexperience'
In the first debate between Reagan and Mondale, Reagan had appeared old. He was the oldest candidate in history at that time. He seemed confused by some of the questions, his answers had wandered, and the issue of age really became a large question among the press. So when he comes back in the second debate, and they ask him, 'Do you think age is a problem?' He had that answer prepared, and boy did he nail it. It was subtle, it was humorous, and Mondale knew, he said right then, that he had not only lost the debate, but probably the election.

1988 -- Dukakis vs. George H.W. Bush: 'If your wife, Kitty Dukakis, were raped and murdered?'
The question asked to Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a difficult one. I mean, 'What would you do, given your feelings about the death penalty, if your wife, Kitty Dukakis, were raped and murdered?' And what you would've expected might have been a home run, where Dukakis would've said, 'I would've wanted to kill that person who murdered my wife. But we have a country of laws and that would be wrong.' But instead, he answered in a policy-wonkish way about the death penalty that underscored a vulnerability that he already seemed to be without emotion and without passion.

1988 -- Bentsen vs. Quayle: 'You're no Jack Kennedy'
During the campaign, Quayle had already been saying many times that he had as much experience as Jack Kennedy did, so Bentsen was primed for that and when he mentioned it again in the debate, I'm sure Bentsen was saying 'Yay! Here comes my line!' And again, Quayle handled it OK and said it probably wasn't called for but it was such a zinger of a line that people loved it and told one another about it and it became the line of that debate.

1992 -- George H.W. Bush looks at his watch
It looked like he was bored, that he didn't care about the debate and that underscored the feeling that he wasn't connected to the problems of the people and the country. He later said when he was looking he was looking at his watch he was thinking, 'I hate these debates, I'm so glad it's almost over.' In that debate Clinton showed his empathy -- he was wandering around the stage. He talked to the people, almost wrapped their arms around them. The debate format in that year was perfect for Clinton because they could wander away from the microphones. When Bush is seen stiffly to be looking at his watch and seemed not engaged, and not connected, it underscored Clinton's enormous capacity to emotionally connect.

1992 -- Stockdale vs. Gore vs. Quayle: 'Who am I? Why am I here?'
When Perot had chosen Stockdale as his , Stockdale appeared to in that debate to be stunned; he almost didn't seem to belong there. He looked like an observer of the other two candidates and that was underlined when he said, 'Who am I, what am I doing here?' What it underscored was a problem of judgment on Perot's part -- how could he have chosen somebody who himself was wondering, 'Why am I here?' It made no sense to the audience and it hurt Perot's credibility as a presidential candidate.


2000 -- Al Gore sighs
Focus groups right after Al Gore and George W. Bush debated seemed to give a slight edge to Gore because he was more articulate, he had better answers, but once the television cameras caught that sighing, that constant look on his face where he seemed annoyed by the whole idea of having to be there with Bush, it seemed to underscore, as somebody said, as a teacher's pet who knew all the answers but was annoying and irritating. And they kept playing it over and over again and it became parodies on the comedy shows and late night TV. Then people began to project onto Gore a personality trait of just annoyance and irritation of people in general and it became devastating for him to live that down.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/politics/debate-moments-that-mattered/

August 6, 2015

How the Oligarchy is “fixing” the Democratic process to feed their greed.

As the Primaries heat up, there are a few cracks in the Oligarchs curtain of obscurity & secrecy, where we can see how "the fix is in" to make sure Citizens United delivers up the TPP, the x-on pipeline, arctic drilling, etc. on-schedule, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican wins in the General Election.

Consider the implications of these 6 recent events:
1) Bill Clinton's friendly 'advice' to Trump, to get into the race as the GOP “populist”.
2) Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s brazenly belated scheduling only 6 Democratic Presidential Debates, thus insuring that the DNC’s “presumptive” candidate continues coasting on name-familiarity alone, such that early-voting “weathervane" states’” only get to see the first 2-3 debates before voting.
3) Joe Biden suddenly “taking a new look” at jumping into the Democratic primary, just when Hillary’s email scandal is starting to grow new legs the size of Godzilla’s.
4) The M$M’s conspicuous 24/7 “coverage” of Donald Trump’s astroturf “populism”, while virtually ignoring ‘Socialist’ Bernie Sanders’ authentic populist tsunami drawing record crowds.
5) Gov. O’Malley publicly calling-out the DNC Chair on national prime-time for refusing to timely schedule an adequate number of debates.
6) Debbie Wasserman-Shultz’s bizzare suggestion that Democrats all need to watch the GOP debates tonight on FOX, insuring Trump & Co.’s maximum exposure, while boosting FOX’s ratings in the process.

Looking at these six recent developments alone, it’s clear that the Oligarchs have learned a thing or two about how to skillfully manipulate elections — democracy be damned — using their tools in the Clown Car, working in concert with the DNC, to insure that no 'political revolution' will be tolerated this time around, and that We the People will again face another sorry-ass choice in the GE between a lesser of two evils.

And yes, I am including Bill & Hillary Clinton as part of the Oligarchy. If Bill Clinton cozying-up alongside George W. Bush on the cover of Time magazine is not enough evidence of this, one needs look no further than the Clinton’s net-worth to prove it. The Clintons are literally a part of The 1%, and not just barely. Bill plays golf with Donald Trump. These things matter, or at least should matter to anyone who gives a rats ass about still salvaging any semblance of Democracy from the grips of our Ruling Cla$$.

Even in the face of all this, I'm still confident that Bernie Sanders will win several of the early primaries, and perhaps the nomination. Even in the face of this, Bernie shows NO signs of giving up, and neither will I.

GO BERNIE!!!

August 6, 2015

The best beer to drink while watching the GOP Clown Show tonight

My vote is for Burlington Beer:

August 6, 2015

Rachael BREAKs WEIRD NEWs story re: Trump's bizarre phone call to Bill Clinton

to get his advice about running, a few weeks before Trumps announcement.

Trump had a longish conversation with Bill Clinton before his announcement
to get Bill's 'advice' about getting into the GOP race, and Bill basically said "totally, I
encourage you to get into the race" <-- a paraphrase, but still, this is
pretty weird shit.

Anyone else see that?

August 6, 2015

Rachael is BREAKING NEWs story re: Trump's phone call to Bill Clinton

to get his advice about running, a few months before Trumps announcement.

Trump had a longish conversation with Bill Clinton before his announcement
to get Bill's 'advice' about getting into the GOP race, and Bill basically said "totally, I
encourage you to get into the race" <-- a paraphrase, but still, this is
pretty weird shit.

Anyone else see that?