This thread is exclusively for comments on the 2020 presidential election.
Back to Main
March 3, 2020
2020 Presidential Election Thread 02
Comments
@97 California claiming lack of poll workers. They’re trying to mess with Bernie voters in the college nexus.
Posted by: Fly | Mar 4 2020 3:20 utc | 101
Kadath #90
but Trump will NOT hold back he’ll rip him apart and then give him a new nickname, maybe “Slow Joe”, or “Brainless Joe” heck, I wouldn’t bet against Trump just calling out Biden on stage during the debates and say that he’s got Alzheimer’s and is mentally unfit for office.
My suggestions:
Shokin Joe
Arsenic Joe
Barking Burisma Joe
Boofhead Joe
Lots of fun coming up.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2020 3:21 utc | 102
I just can’t be sympathetic with Bernie and his voters tonight. Remember how Bernie came out to support Tulsi Gabbard when she was having such a hard time with the establishment? Neither do I. Remember how Bernie’s supporters made sure Bernie would speak the truth about russiagate, or they weren’t going to support him? Neither do I. Remember how Bernie made it clear in every debate and every interview that the choice is endless war or medicare for all? He didn’t. Watching someone with a few leftist atoms in him being defeated in State after State by a warmongering sociopath who belongs in a hospice with bars on the windows, is like watching what he deserves.
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 3:34 utc | 103
Biden is winning Democrats in Trump country and Bernie is winning in BLUE country and leading in Texas so far and other states too close to call, with Utah, a possible win and California a very possible win not yet in.
So Trump will win in every State Biden won tonight, therefore, Bernie is the candidate who should get the nomination.
I’m convinced Bernie can take Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the general election, whereas with Biden, they’re not a sure thing.
Biden will not defeat Trump.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 3:40 utc | 104
SharonM @103
And don’t forget how Bernie supporters rallied behind the hopium shills when valid questions about Bernie were raised.
USA is EMPIRE-FIRST. And Bernie supports the Empire.
Only independent Movements will change anything.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 4 2020 3:46 utc | 105
@ c1ue #39
Here is an article that speaks to tax payer money paying for “private” stadiums in 15 american cities, which also cost over 1 billion dollars.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/taxpayer-money-billion-dollar-stadiums.html/
There are plenty of other articles to support my claim.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnotte/2018/08/17/your-tax-dollars-at-play-how-stadium-tax-scams-pick-fans-pockets/#3a8bae556fb9
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/31/18204471/football-stadiums-cost-taxpayers-billions
Shockingly easy to find the facts and I stand behind what I said about socialism. Public money for private profit is socialism at its best. I was not asked about my county spending close to 50 million dollars for roads leading to a stadium owner by the zio racist turd Synder, but I also know that unfortunately, sports is a religion for americans. I am only waiting for the christians to face the lions in the coliseum. Nothing new under the sun. Cheers!!
Posted by: Tonymike | Mar 4 2020 3:56 utc | 106
@uncle tungsten #100:
Warren is a detestable, lying, hypocrite and probably a scumbag to boot.
“>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvdrkSUVn70
A scumbag… or a Sumerian bag?
Posted by: S | Mar 4 2020 3:56 utc | 107
Jokes aside, here’s the correct link to the latest The Jimmy Dore Show episode on Warren: Chris Hayes Calls Out Warren On Super-Pac B.S.
Posted by: S | Mar 4 2020 4:02 utc | 108
So far, Biden is doing far better than the polls had him at. Maybe he’s the Democrat equivalent of Trump?
So far: Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia – southern states more or less expected – but also Massachusetts and Minnesota, according to Business Insider.
Sanders has Colorado, Vermont and Utah so far.
Seems like Warren cratering has helped Biden.
That’s 11 of the 16 for Super Tuesday – although of course Texas and California are the big ones.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 4:02 utc | 109
@105 JackRabbit
Yes, and I think that independent movement will require an actual threat. Hands together marching with cheerleader slogans is not a threat;)
“hopium”, is a brilliant word! I have to start using it:D
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 4:04 utc | 110
@Tonymike #106
If the stadiums are private, then it isn’t socialism.
I actually think the stadiums are generally officially not privately owned, but they’re designed, built and operated as if they were – which amounts to the same thing.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 4:09 utc | 111
@chu teh @80
I agree that it is predatory capitalism, but I wanted to show capitalism in it’s most base form without all the fawning about it being the best system there is bare none. Those in finance exalt at the invisible hand of the market but that is another falsehood portrayed by the oligarchs to the serfs. Yes, predatory is good.
Also, as always, there are no good choices for president. None!! We talk about the lesser of two evils, when there is nothing but the evil of two lessers. Cheers!!
Posted by: Tonymike | Mar 4 2020 4:12 utc | 112
@ c1ue
You didn’t read any of the articles I take it? No problem and best to you. Cheers!!
Posted by: Tonymike | Mar 4 2020 4:17 utc | 113
Omg! Biden gave a terrible, TERRIBLE anemic speech tonight and read off a…
teleprompter! His audience was NOT as enthusiastic as this night calls for. It was all so depressing, so dull, even awkward and his wife and sister looked almost uncomfortable! What a hot mess!
In contrast Bernie Sanders speech was energetic, uplifting and hopeful and had punch for his opposition. His family were upbeat and his public was continuously cheering, enthusiastic and boisterous.
There is no comparison. Bernie Sanders has what it takes to defeat Trump. Bernie’s campaign is a beast and his grassroots organization unmatched while Biden is a disaster in the making!
Biden is godawful bad and if the DNC install him as the Nominee we’ll be stuck with a Trump reign of terror! If the first 4 years were bad…omg! he will be unleashed in the coming 4!
Everyone wake up, damnit! BIDEN IS THE F🤬CKING TITANIC. Jump off now, FGS!
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 4:24 utc | 114
Benjamin: Ronald Reagan famously used to be a Democrat, lots of people forget that. He went Republican in 1962.
Lots of people also don’t know or realize how extremely likeable Reagan was as a person when he was young, much more so for most people than Kennedy ever was or could ever be (the Kennedy family was/is as nasty as any).
I got this link a few US election ago, Reagan was still a Democrat at this point in time: “What’s My Line – Ronald Reagan (1953)”, it’s only three and a half minutes long.
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Mar 4 2020 4:25 utc | 115
What is sad about today is that this was entirely predictable a while ago. Trump has the goods on Biden over Burisma, but the impeachment effort by progressives pushed that out of the news…leading to today. This was predicted months ago by Pam Ho at Impeachment For Dummies: or How progressives were conned into supporting Joe Biden for President
Posted by: Kali | Mar 4 2020 4:30 utc | 116
@Tonymike #113
No, the problem here is you aren’t reading what I wrote.
Specifically: I asked if the stadiums are commissioned by the taxpayer, are designed by the taxpayer, are operated by the taxpayer, are paid for by the taxpayer and/or are owned by the taxpayer.
None of the articles actually says anything about the above except that the taxpayers paid lots of money – which addresses only 1 of the 5 areas that matter.
I furthermore noted that socialism is defined as the public and/or government owning, operating, deciding etc; if the taxpayers are only paying the money to build, that isn’t actually socialism.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 4:36 utc | 117
I’ve just watched Bernie’s speech (11:28), then Biden’s speech (12:19), and the contrast couldn’t be more striking. Sanders talks about the real issues and how he is a better candidate to take on Trump. Biden starts by mixing up his wife and sister, then delivers a rambling, boastful, inauthentic speech that goes absolutely nowhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions about Sanders. But how can anybody prefer Biden to him? I was looking into the faces of the Biden crowd, trying to understand what’s driving these people, and I just can’t.
Posted by: S | Mar 4 2020 4:49 utc | 118
Elizabeth Warren really hurt Sanders tonight and she’s getting no delegates cause her percentages are under 15% (except in her own state that she’s losing IN 3RD PLACE)! If she had gotten out of the race Bernie would be sweeping everything for Progressives!
It’s like Warren took a sledgehammer to the Progressive Movement and said: If I can’t lead it to the White House, then neither will YOU Bernie Sanders!
That’s how selfish she was this week.
Thank goodness Sanders might still be able to get a majority, because BIDEN IS THE TITANIC. Biden cannot be the Nominee, he’s a walking disaster and Trump will crush him!
Ugh. What a stupid Party.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 5:00 utc | 120
Okay, here’s a little speculative fiction.
The setup: US national politics is gang warfare. The Crips vs. the Bloods. Two criminal enterprises with roughly the same aims and tactics, fighting for turf. With minor differences of style. Trump upsets the leadership of the Bloods in 2016, but it turns out that, outrageous as he is, he is good for business, so all the Bloods but the wimps with a weak stomach fall in behind him.
The Crips are bloated and in decline. A bunch of naïve, starry eyed nobodies mount a campaign to take the Crips legit. The old Crips are irritated that they have to take time out from grifting so as to squash the upstart pests.
That is where I see us today. But let’s just suppose that the old Crips are not quite as pathetic as they look. Let’s imagine that they actually learned something in 2016. It was supposed to be easy for them in 2016, and they were surprised. So they have had four years to hone their election-stealing skills. And most of the traditional election stealing organizations in this country seem largely to hate Trump.
So let’s posit that the FBI & CIA, or whoever it is manages to prop up Biden, and succeed in stealing the election for him. Who would object to that?
Yes, exactly – all the Trump die-hards, and ‘tribal’ gang bangers would object. It could get really nasty.
And so far, I have not seen any evidence that any of the characters that would be willing to play such a gambit have any inclination to give a shit for the consequences for us little people.
Posted by: Eric in Kansas | Mar 4 2020 5:00 utc | 121
To be standing with Bernie Sanders at a rally tonight or tomorrow is to show that one opposes Empire; for implicitly it is known that repairing the fabric of the country is the direct way of standing against Empire. People who casually tell you that Bernie is for the Empire–and not for the repair of society– are people trafficking in lies. Win or lose, this struggle is not for the faint of heart, and most definitely it is not for the tragic dilletantes we hear sometimes on these threads. When the words of trolls ring hollow we instinctively know, as they do not, that these battles have meaning. The courage to continue in the face of adversity is its own reward.
The priorities of spiritual and societal improvement that Bernie fights for, will succeed, if enough people get behind them.
Biden crushed it and will be the Democratic Party nominee. That’s a done deal. He even won Massachusetts. Bernie underperformed relative to his performance in 2016 in most states.
While Bernie supporters are crying foul, the bottom line is primary voters chose Biden despite him not campaigning in any Super Tuesday states. Clearly a huge plurality of Blacks and older voters decided they didn’t want Bernie’s policies of radical change and much preferred the status quo. Team Obama won big. Obama is now the kingmaker of the Democratic Party. Setting the stage for Michelle 2024.
Team Obama now don’t have to steal the nomination as Biden will have won more delegates and more states than Bernie. The Trump vs Biden general election will be closer than many think and decided by close contests in a handful of mid-western states. Michigan and Pennsylvania being critical battleground states.
Posted by: ab initio | Mar 4 2020 5:21 utc | 123
Eric in Kansas @121: gang warfare
Not two gangs but one Deep State political mafia with two families running a protection racket (MIC), prostitution (media propaganda, psyops), drugs (industry incentives), and gambling (overseas adventurism)…
… aka “Tammany on the Potomac.”
Wikipedia describes Tammany as:
The Tammany Society emerged as the center for Democratic-Republican Party politics in the city in the early 19th century. After 1854, the Society expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city’s rapidly expanding immigrant community, which functioned as its base of political capital. The business community appreciated its readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through red tape and legislative mazes to facilitate rapid economic growth… Tammany Hall also served as an engine for graft and political corruption, perhaps most infamously under William M. “Boss” Tweed in the mid-19th century….
[Tweed’s biographer wrote:]It’s hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed’s system … The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 4 2020 5:23 utc | 124
Ab initio #123….
Unless you know something we don’t know, only about 55% of precincts are in from Texas and it’s less than 1.5% difference. Sanders will win California handily. Combined with Colorado, Maine, Nevada and the delegates he will get from Iowa (even without the latter) he still has the most delegates.
Your post is meaningless at this juncture, but thanks anyway.
P.S. Never seen you around the bar before. You new to town?
Posted by: Mr. Wiggles | Mar 4 2020 5:26 utc | 125
Okay, everyone must see this video! It’s rivetting!
Iraq vets confront Biden
SHARE!
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 5:48 utc | 126
Mr. Wiggles @125
Bernie is done. Cooked. His best shot was today. He lost Massachusetts his neighbor. He has no momentum coming out of today. Florida, Georgia and the mid-western states will put Biden over the top.
Obama was the winner. He’s the kingmaker. The left has no majority in the Democratic Party.
Posted by: ab initio | Mar 4 2020 5:57 utc | 127
Copeland @122
People who casually tell you that Bernie is for the Empire–and not for the repair of society– are people trafficking in lies.
I encourage everyone to look at Bernie with a critical eye and decide for yourself.
- Bernie has a history of deference to the Democratic Party and Democratic Party leaders. All of whom are 100% pro-Empire.
- ‘Nice guy’ Bernie doesn’t do anything that threatens the establishment. HE promises revolutionary change – but that has NEVER come just from establishment Parties via the ballot box. It has come from independent Movements.
- When Bernie talks about Empire matters, he generally obfuscates or reinforces pro-Empire narratives (like Russiagate’s McCarthyism).
Anyone in political life for any length of time (like Bernie) must know that USA is EMPIRE-FIRST. Empire priorities (military and intelligence focus; ‘weaponized’ liberalism; neoliberal graft; dollar hegemony; Jihadis as a proxy army; etc.) dictate the limits of domestic politics.
Bernie’s quixotic insurgency was doomed to fail unless Bernie attacked the Democratic Party’s connection to Empire and use of identity politics to divide and conquer. Oh, and Bernie would have to threaten to leave the Democratic Party – but then would become the independent Movement that Bernie and the Democratic Party have tried so hard to prevent!
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 4 2020 6:10 utc | 128
Bernie must not listen to cable punditry advice for the next debate. They are all against him and want him to go easy on Biden. Biden has so many weaknesses and Bernie must expose them all and prove to everyone that Trump will crush Biden from the getgo.
Bernie must tear into Biden and destroy him at the next debate like Trump will if he becomes the Nominee.
Bernie was way too easy on Clinton because she’s a woman, and he would have been raked over the coals if he dug into her. He was in a no-win situation then, but today is different. If he destroys Biden now, before DNC rush to crown him the nominee–he’s doing everyone a favor!
Better that Bernie destroys him than Trump!
Elizabeth Warren: lady, you suck! Get out tomorrow while you still have some dignity left! Not even 2nd in your own state…what a waste! Bernie could have won at least 3 more states, and more! Sick.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 6:26 utc | 129
This is proof positive that the yankee system is beyond redemption. The propaganda coup of other failed candidates coming out for the “winner” was enough to convince the ignorant plebs that they should give him another chance. The documented corruption and incompetency which had apparently eliminated him in the early going was not enough to counter the propaganda wave and the fact he had been Obama’s VP. Now that he is front-runner, the corruption stories and mental incompetency will again come to the fore, and I think the real winner will end up being Trump.
Posted by: exiled off mainstree | Mar 4 2020 6:41 utc | 130
@127 ab initio
Excuse me, do me a favor: do a split screen of Biden’s speech tonight vs Bernie’s speech, okay?
Your Biden is the Titanic. Get on board and expect to be heading on a collision course with Iceberg Trump.
Get real. Biden hasn’t been tested. He failed miserably in the first 3 states and now just because he won the black vote in South Carolina, let’s all blindly confirm him?! The media and the Superdelegates’ desperation endorsing him are giving Biden a false advantage and competency that he has not proven! We desperately need a stop Bernie candidate, doesn’t fly! There’s nothing real or authentic about this! It’s not going to work. People who got a good chance to see Biden and kick his tires in 3 states REJECTED HIM. No one got that chance in these Super Tuesday states he won. If they had the same amount of time with him that Iowa, NH, and Nevada got, they would have rejected him too, because he’s just not good enough! You think 3 states that got a good long look got it wrong and a series of states he barely flew over get it??? People in these states he just won are just following the Dem leadership bindly, that’s all!
The strongest candidate always emerges from the beginning and that’s Bernie Sanders!
This rush to crown Biden and erase Bernie is completely delusional and a HUGE BLUNDER.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 7:22 utc | 131
Tonymike | Mar 4 2020 4:12 utc | 112
And thanks for your post at Mar 3 2020 18:08 utc | 26, it made me realize that I still do not have a working definition of Socialism.
The definition in your post is helpful for me to pursue it further.
As a political amateur, my favorite reference on Socialism not only fascinates and is attractive, but it does not exactly define Socialism except to stress its natural connection to “society” and points out that there can be no individual without society.
It is the essay “Why Socialism” written by Albert Einstein about 1949.
In a way, he defines Socialism by giving its purpose, in this wise:
“[Since] the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, [economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future].”
I have read it thru maybe 4 times and am still learning. I have no argument with his essay on what I can understand, but there is much still to be digested. It is a brilliant essay that “defines” Socialism by giving examples and explaining how it relates to mankind existing simultaneously as an individual who by necessity is also part of a larger society.
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Posted by: chu teh | Mar 4 2020 7:26 utc | 132
Circe @131
Get over it. Bernie is done. Biden will be the Democratic Party nominee. He’ll have the most delegates by the convention. Obama is kingmaker.
Posted by: ab initio | Mar 4 2020 7:29 utc | 133
Bernie Sanders is now at the forefront of a transformative movement. He is not tilting at windmills like Don Quixote; therefore it is misleading to call his leadership quixotic, or to imply that his effort is doomed. It is facile to dismiss electoral politics as irrelevant, especially since it is one of the few ways, in a great moment of history, when all the problems can still be aired in such a thorough fashion, and when pretense and treachery can be unmasked for all to see. There is no clearer definition of a movement–such as we would hope to see–than the one that exposes the sycophants and courtiers who are flocking to Joe Biden.
It is intellectually dishonest to disregard the fact that Bernie Sanders is speaking to the whole range of social injustice in this country, as he also describes the connections between those problems and the abuses of military and domestic police powers in which country is ensnared. Bernie is describing a range of solutions that are necessary before the nation can begin to untangle the knots of economic inequality and address the common good.
Bernie connects the military industrial and prison industrial complex and is doing more to reveal the real problems of the country and to motivate people. He has spoken to the greater part of what has been left unsaid for far too long. There is no one else in our political scene who compares to him, and whether he succeeds or not, he has changed the political conversation for the better.
Older African Americans are making the exact same mistake they made in 2016 following the corrupt Dem leadership blindly and handing Trump the Presidency yet AGAIN, damn you!
DAMN YOU and your Obama sentimental blind spot!
Bernie Sanders must ignore this bullshet, forge ahead, destroy Biden in the debate and then go on to win the Appalachia States, Washington and Michigan.
GET OUT Warren with a shred of dignity, now!
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 7:57 utc | 135
Hard to understand a system that burns billions of dollars and all it has to offer is candidates like Hillary, Trump or Biden. There is something wrong with your democracy guys, and I’m kind of old to start learning chinese.
We have Trump for a long time,and let us pray he does not choke on a burguer cause then we’ll get Pence..
Jack Rabbit, thanks for the USA history lessons, quite revealing.
Posted by: Paco | Mar 4 2020 8:00 utc | 136
@133 ab initio
You think Obama believes Biden can defeat Trump?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
He’s not that dumb!
Bernie’s got a long way to go, and he’ll mow right over Biden.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 8:04 utc | 137
“DAMN YOU and your Obama sentimental blind spot!”
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 7:57 utc | @135
It’s not sentimentality, it’s just run-of-the-mill racial solidarity (aka racism), the kind of attitude white americans are perpetually being roasted for.
Posted by: trint | Mar 4 2020 8:29 utc | 138
Never forget what Warren did to the Progressive Movement March 3, 2020.
Yes Bernie will still come out looking good no thanks to her! But he could have cleaned up and she made it twice as hard now for him!
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 8:30 utc | 139
trailertrash @6 — Americans have been railroaded into endless squabbling about voting and democracy instead of demanding good governance. How does choosing between two similarly corrupt parties deliver good governance? Voting in the lesser evil is still choosing evil. What does it profit a nation to have voting every 4 years when excrement covers her sidewalks? and vets suicide themselves daily? and soldiers get raped daily by fellow soldiers?
Posted by: kiwiklown | Mar 4 2020 8:32 utc | 140
RoyG @22 – – – Cowardly cynical mercenary shams? But, but, but…. they work hard for their money, don’t they? Even when they “suspend their campaigns”, they end up with more wealth than when they began. And we are not necessarily talking about brown paper envelopes. Just ask Burnie 2016, and Burning 2020. And the Fake Indian. Also, the Fake Christian a.k.a. Fake Alfred E Neuman.
Posted by: kiwiklown | Mar 4 2020 8:40 utc | 141
librul @2 – – – What does it profit a woman if she gains the whole world but loses her humanity?
Hillarious must do what a vulture must do: eat or be eaten.
When she is eating well, other vultures fly to “support” her. Some eat more than her, but she doesn’t mind as long she eats her fill, and they cover her flanks. Some eat less than her, but they don’t mind long as she does the heavy lifting flying in front.
Vultures do what vultures do, no matter how despicable they appear to right-thinking people.
Posted by: kiwiklown | Mar 4 2020 8:56 utc | 142
It’s very peculiar, to say the least, that the bumbling idiot criminal Biden ‘won’ in my home state of Massachusetts. There was a huge ‘Bernie’ push. Liz Warren had a huge operation, yet still…
I voted for the 100% questionable ‘Bernie” (no better than Trump, really). Simply a speed bump on the road to failed empire.
But I have come within a tenth of an inch of being arrested by the Election Constables for protesting computer voting on the poling place floor. We were required to stick our ‘ballots’ into a very fancy MACHINE, which I did object to again.
I have also been slightly busy explaining to ‘Bernie Bots’ around here that ‘ranked choice voting’ sucks to high heaven. Because of ‘BALLOT EDITING’. This is when ranked choice voting (‘RCV/’IRV’) requires election managers to edit individual ballots. If your first choice gets ‘tossed off the island’ the managers get to edit your individual ballot to remove that candidate, and ‘transfer’ the lower votes upward to the top of the ‘stack’. Imagine that? Managers get to edit your individual ballot? Yet it is promoted and fronted by the giant corporate ‘charitable’ monster Foundations. Because it sucks.
I have been somewhat successfully advocating for a simple option. It’s still ranked choice, but its ranked simple voting (RSV). And it’s very simple. Your first rank-place choice gets 10 votes, second gets nine, tenth down, gets one vote, below that gets zero votes. Then the votes are simply added up. There is no ballot editing. No need for computers. If a majority of voters realizes that they are getting screwed by RCV, they will mark their ballots to be tabulated by the simple RSV method. (This has nothing really to do with the ‘Borda method’.)
Beware, however, that there are forces that will lie to you. Try to convince you that RCV can be counted without computers, and their arguments will be very convincing unless you understand that such arguments are based upon a degraded RCV/IRV system. Politics is and must be dirty always. So-called ‘honest voters’ are plain stupid. Don’t be fooled.
Stop calling it USA. It is USO (United States of Oligarchs). by: Nathan Mulcahy @ 62 <= no don't rename the nation state, <= controlled by foreigners, <=that governs Americans. Why, because the Constitution of the United States of America provides the frame work for a nation state designed by foreigners, instituted by America's wealthiest, in a process called ratification..
Federalism means the guy at the top controls what everyone else is allowed to do.
By analogy <=federalism exist at international level; at nation state level; at state, county, and city levels.
1. the international control system<= nation state system<= captures and controls 8 billion humans in 206 different named nation state containers.. Each nation is controlled by the same central set of beings.
2. with the USA nation state <=captures and controls 350,000,000 Americans are captured and controlled in 50 states + DC. containers.
the domestic control system exist <=at state level<=at the country level, at the city level, and at the neighborhood level.
Each of these systems is a subset of the greater in size one above them.
Just as the 206 nation states allowed to control 8 billion people by separating them into 206 nation state containers. and appointing a puppet manager to each nation state, so to does the system of control with the nation state (this time the USA) divide America and 350,000,000 Americans into 50 state containers (and overlays of 425 congressional districts) and each of the state containers divides the people again into quite a large number of counties, and the counties divide their populations into a few cities, and the cities concentrate their control points in districts and the districts divide their populations into neighborhood associations. So that from top to bottom the few at the top can control everything and everyone.
So from the International top to the homestead located within the neighborhood<= the guy at the top controls.
Federalism is a euphemism for centralized control. Federalism includes control from the top by law, by education and access to it, by use of force, by decision of war, and by allocation of resources between internal use and external use. It allows those who control the elected to remain hidden but to be able to force those in charge to do as instructed. Its like the mom who calls the teacher at her child’s school and ask that the teacher not be allowed to stop the kid from stealing. The USA divides the American people by layer.
the state, county, city layer; 425 different and distinct voting districts layer, and the electoral college layer.
The district system layer is used to control who is elected to the house, the state system layer is used to control who is elected to the Senate, and the electoral college system is used to control who is elected to President and Vice President. The USA is an island to itself, composed of 527 (425 members of the house, 100 members of the Senate, the President and and VP). and it is the best system of control money can buy.
Posted by: snake | Mar 4 2020 9:00 utc | 144
It is looking like the 2020 Presidential election will come down to a choice between two old, rich white guys…
The last thing the USA needs.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 4 2020 9:02 utc | 145
The present system is dying, and when it finally collapses (which will be rather soon), I will then take over.
I will immediately establish a ‘Hydrogen Party’ and a ‘Nitrogen Party’, and arrange to have their loyal myrmidons totally hate each other. I will also divide the population into small-minded ideological and racial camps, which will mutually despise each other as well. This will consolidate my rule!
Frankly, it didn’t take me all that long to devise this brilliant scheme. (But if you’re smart you will not repeat that!)
The great shocker of Super Tuesday is that it looks likely that there will be no need to cheat Sanders of the nomination. At this stage (the results of Super Tuesday results are not all in) it appears to me that Biden has done much better than even the most favourable prediction. The outcome of the entire Democratic nomination process is that Biden will probably win the most the delegates outright and there will be no need for super delegates to steal the nomination from Bernie.
As a non-American my immediate take-away is:
1. Americans don’t want Medicare4All – they want to continue to be health poor and bankrupted if they get ill.
2. Americans don’t want Socialism – they want to be financialised and fleeced.
3. Americans are okay with Peadophile-lite Presidential candidates.
4. After 4 change elections on the trot, American is moving back to status-quo elections.
5. America want wars.
6. Trillions of dollars will continue to be printed for the benefit of the billionaires (and trillionaires) and Banks while ordinary Americans will continue to be loaded up with debt and that’s just the way Americans want it.
7. Trump will have the biggest and bestest win ever.
8. Only a catastrophic financial collapse or major war defeat for the US may result in change.
Btw: Epstein didn’t kill himself never existed!
Posted by: ADKC | Mar 4 2020 9:12 utc | 147
Posted by: Copeland | Mar 4 2020 5:18 utc | 122
“People who casually tell you that Bernie is for the Empire–and not for the repair of society– are people trafficking in lies.”
You seem rather confused. “The repair of society” means nothing but to repair and strengthen the ecocidal-imperial system.
US society including all its institutions and ideas is based completely on imperialism and ecocide. Within the visible framework of this society there is literally zero constituency even for ideas let alone any political movement which goes against the ecocidal-imperial grain in any meaningful way. Not Gabbard, let alone Sanders, proposes any meaningful change.
Therefore “the repair of society” means trying to repair and thus strengthen the ecocidal-imperial system, trying to extend its lifespan. The original New Dealers were quite open that they were trying to save capitalism from itself, just as today Sanders represents those who want to save the empire and economic society from themselves.
In the exact same way, those who call themselves Green New Dealers are always quite explicit that they’re not trying to save the Earth and end ecocide but to save the commercial economy.
As for the 2020 fake election, we see how the imperatives of ecocide and empire are so berserk by now that even your faction which wants to repair and therefore prolong these is beyond their pale.
Meanwhile, if there are any real anti-imperialists who incongruously remain religious adherents of electoralism, the 2020 circus surely must force them to choose – are you real or fake.
I know what my money’s on – no one who’s real on any level would still have the slightest truck with US electoralism. Electoralism as such is the real fundamentalist religion which reigns supreme over literally every value which could possibly define one as truly political in the first place.
Posted by: blues | Mar 4 2020 9:10 utc | 145
“I will immediately establish a ‘Hydrogen Party’ and a ‘Nitrogen Party’, and arrange to have their loyal myrmidons totally hate each other.”
That would be a worthy successor system. The Hydrogen Party would be based on massively subsidized irrigation projects for industrial agriculture, the Nitrogen Party for massively subsidized industrial farming based on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, farming 100% dependent on massive use of fossil fuels. There would be unspoken agreement on the infinite sustainability of fossil fuels, fossil aquifers and other resources, and the infinite capacity of the environment to absorb abuse and keep providing “services” like rain to fill reservoirs.
They could flip a coin to decide which one denies the climate crisis and general ecological crisis, and which one pays lip service to it.
Yep, pretty much a Biden clean sweep. The RCP polls were actually conservative regarding Biden’s performance.
Of the 14 states caucusing on Super Tuesday, Biden wins Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia – and is leading in Maine. That’s 10.
Bernie wins his home state Vermont plus Colorado and Utah and is leading in California.
Biden beat his RCP number in 4 of 5 states; Sanders underperforms vs RCP polls in 4 of 5 states.
Biden RCP vs. actual
California: 23 vs. 22.82 (76.44% reporting)
Texas: 28 vs. 32.03 (84.70% reporting)
North Carolina: 36.7 vs. 43.70 actual
Virginia: 42 vs. 53.25 actual
Maine: 24.5 vs. 34.04 (82.88% reporting)
Bernie RCP vs. actual
California: 35 vs. 32.17 (76.44% reporting)
Texas: 29.5 vs. 29.43 (84.70% reporting)
North Carolina: 23.3 vs. 24.52 actual
Virginia: 24.5 vs. 23.09 actual
Maine: 38.5 vs. 32.96 (82.88% reporting)
It seems clear Warren is the big loser of the night: underperformed in all 5 RCP poll states with that support apparently going to Biden.
Bernie won’t end Super Tuesday with the most delegates – even with winning California.
Between PLEOs and the brokered convention – he’s done.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 9:41 utc | 150
Chu teh #132
Thanks for that link on the Einstein essay. Very interesting read!
Posted by: Carciofi | Mar 4 2020 9:42 utc | 151
S #107
A scumbag… or a Sumerian bag?
Thats a good one. The anunaki wouldn’t even shit on Warren. The ancient south american Indians would have found a fitting sacrifice for her type of lying, sleaze. I have seen that video and watch most of his posts as he has a sharp enquiring mind. Most importantly he is comfortable to be challenged. I discovered Robert Temple and the science of geopolymers through one of his references.
On Sanders etc I just read this excellent piece at Greanville Post. Dated March 2.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2020 9:51 utc | 152
Oh, and 538 (fivethirtyeight)/Nate Silver – loses again. He had Sanders leading in 9 of the 14. Oops.
Sanders winds up winning the smallest state (Vermont) with 16 delegates; the 3rd smallest (Utah) with 29 delegates; Colorado with (67 total) and the largest – California (415) but loses Arkansas (34), Alabama (52), Maine (24), Massachusetts (92), Minnesota (75), North Carolina (110), Virginia (99), Oklahoma (37), Tennessee (64), Texas (228).
527 delegates in Bernie states vs. 815 in Biden states – and Biden did proportionately better in those states that he won.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 9:55 utc | 153
Russ #147
I know what my money’s on – no one who’s real on any level would still have the slightest truck with US electoralism. Electoralism as such is the real fundamentalist religion which reigns supreme over literally every value which could possibly define one as truly political in the first place.
Thank you Russ and I appreciate that analysis but point me to an alternative that isn’t a tyranny and or ecocidal. I guess agrarian socialism and some form of syndicalist production activity is viable and provides scope for a humanist being. But have you some links to guide me.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2020 10:03 utc | 154
@chu teh #132
I’ve read Einstein’s views on socialism before; however, they are considerably less interesting given that he had already seen over 17 years of the New Deal when he wrote them.
Or in other words, the recognition that raw capitalism was destructive – as well as the implementation of at least some Progressive/socialist policies had already happened.
The main reason to admire the essay isn’t its contents – it is its context: it was written in the middle of the Red Scare.
The essay was Einstein giving the literal middle finger to McCarthy.
Posted by: c1ue | Mar 4 2020 10:08 utc | 155
@uncle tungsten #151
I’m sorry, I should’ve been more clear! In your comment #100, you’ve accidentally linked to What’s Inside the Sumerian Bag? Secret Knowledge of a Lost Ancient Civilisation instead of Chris Hayes Calls Out Warren On Super-Pac B.S., hence my stupid joke.
Posted by: S | Mar 4 2020 10:12 utc | 156
If the oligarchical Establishment that controls the DNC do manage to fairly or unfairly install “Creepy/Sleepy Joe Biden” as presidential candidate, then their minions in Twitter, Facebook, Google etc will be toiling overtime deleting, banning and shadow banning posts, memes and videos of Biden’s disturbing fondling of children and early dementia moments.
That’s not to mention the increasing exposes of his corrupt dealings in Ukraine and China that netted $Millions in kick backs to son Harper.
Gifting Trump another 4 years if the DNC and the Establishment Media don’t let Bernie campaign on level playing field.
Posted by: PJB | Mar 4 2020 10:15 utc | 157
uncle tungsten 153
Thank you Russ and I appreciate that analysis but point me to an alternative that isn’t a tyranny and or ecocidal. I guess agrarian socialism and some form of syndicalist production activity is viable and provides scope for a humanist being.
I no longer think there will be alternatives within the system. In principle it remains true that the people could change their consciousness and rise up with a great movement against the commerce-based society, not to “repair” it or save it from itself but for the sake of a truly human vision and value system, as well as for the sake of biologically saving themselves since this system promises nothing to people but mass death.
In principle that remains true, but in practice there’s zero evidence it will ever happen, or that such a movement ever even will visibly exist at all. Most Americans (as proven by their vote and other actions) remain hostile toward Medicare for All for Christ’s sake, something which can be enacted within this system at will (there are zero physical or economic obstacles to it, exclusively political and psychological ones), which would significantly improve the lives of almost all Americans, and which is an absolute necessity if the coming big pandemics are to have their impact blunted at all.
In a purely Darwinian sense, in terms of the most immediate straight physical self-preservation within this system, one’s position on Medicare for All is a litmus test. If the great majority of Americans remain hostile toward even this modest measure, what prospect is there of the much greater sea change required to take the much broader perspective against the murderous and collectively suicidal economic society as such.
Therefore I’m convinced that the US and Western societies in general will hunker in the bunker exactly like Hitler in 1945, seeking only to drag out that mode of existence and destroy as much of the Earth as possible in the time remaining, destroy as much as possible any potential for any human future. They’ll do that until they collapse out of their own physical impossibilities (finite resources, Earth’s capacity to sustain total environmental insult, an economic and mass-psychological system 100% dependent on both of these) or destroy themselves in an acute spasm, most likely a pandemic or nuclear war.
TRUTHOUT’s latest article on super Tuesday is entitled; “Centrists Will Still Be Split on Super Tuesday, Thanks to Mike Bloomberg.” That strikes me as precisely the wrong lesson. The correct one can be stated just as easily, namely: “Progressives Still Split on Super Tuesday, and thus Losing, Thanks to Elisabeth Warren.”
Just goes to show. Dumb people cant have Democracy. Its been fun, but thats my last post on this dumb election. Carry on.
Posted by: Pft | Mar 4 2020 11:42 utc | 160
A John Pilger comment on the presidential clown show and a possible President Sanders:
Kennedys, Clintons, Obama and now Sanders. The American liberal show is back on the road. Fine if you’re a homegrown fan, but not fine for the rest of us to whom America’s liberalism means more war, more bullying. Will this change under Pres. Bernie? Beware holding your breath.
Concisely.
Posted by: vato | Mar 4 2020 12:09 utc | 161
For those who think Sanders might be any different, I wouldn’t give up hope just yet. Remember that Biden is a senile psychopath. There’s a fair probability that Biden will say something unpardonable, get caught groping someone, or outright die between now and the convention.
Posted by: Timothy Hagios | Mar 4 2020 12:28 utc | 162
I see that our resident Berniescourge has gone from screaming in all caps to screaming in boldface. I see no reason to regard that as an improvement.
For me the question is: Once Bernie drops out and starts shilling for the corrupt senile warmonger, will she (I’m assuming that the username implies we’re dealing with a woman) follow suit like a good Dim Party bot?
In the end one must pity her. She seems to believe (@103) that it matters that Bernie won in — some — “liberal” states whereas Biden won in all of the states that will go for Trump anyway . . . forgetting that Bernie needs a majority of non-superdelegates going into the convention, which is now as good as mathematically impossible.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 12:38 utc | 163
oops, that should be @104. Apologies to SharonM, with whose views I concur wholeheartedly!
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 12:40 utc | 164
@ Posted by: Russ | Mar 4 2020 10:38 utc | 157
My guess is you’re either an American or a Western European.
If yes, then your reaction is completely normal. Every citizen of every empire thinks that way (“the world is ending” narrative) when they witness their empire falling.
The Romans thought the world had ended when the Western part fell. In this regard, the most elaborate document about it is Augustine’s “The City of God”.
vk @164:
There is a little difference in this case, however. Ignoring for the nonce the fact that the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire was gradual and subtle (how many people said, upon the death of Romulus Augustulus, “Our Empire is gone”?), previous empire collapses didn’t take down the biosphere with them.
It’s possible that the collapse of the American Empire will do just that, especially with people like Mike Pence who will apply just about any kind of stimulus to make Jesus come (I’m not sure I’m spelling that word correctly) a second time, and the increasing tendency among non-religious maniacs in the Empire to regard “limited” nuclear wars as winnable.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:10 utc | 166
Corvo @ 162&163
Be sure to remind us all not to listen to your screams, when it’s your turn to suffer at the hands of the US elite. Maybe you’ll be in a fema/refugee camp or just a ghetto with no health cover, opps but here comes a pandemic ! Someone will tell you to stop screaming. Like you did with Middle East refugees, palistine or 2nd world war Jews! No one will listen to you.
Bernie might not be superman but he’s all you got right now.
Bernie may or may not be the next president but he needs to be the fight back to American sanity,
If he’s a fake well own the movement . Don’t preach apathy that’s the killer.
Posted by: Mark2 | Mar 4 2020 13:12 utc | 167
> Bernie might not be superman but he’s all you got right now.
We don’t even have that, sorry.
As for screaming and audiences for it, I have no illusions. Specifically, I have no illusions about the goodness of Bernie’s heart, or the hearts of his sheeple, as you amply demonstrate.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:17 utc | 168
@ Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:10 utc | 167
The Romans knew very well their empire collapsed and, indeed, as I mentioned, The City of God literally was a Christian response to the pagans (who still existed) about the blaming for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.
Posted by: ab initio | Mar 4 2020 7:29 utc | 133
I doubt it. Biden clearly has the onset of dementia, he will have to survive a few debates where Sanders will concentrate on policies. All the policy Biden has is “feel good”. It goes a long way but I doubt it will win when people have problems with health care. Even if Elizabeth Warren remains in the race she will not be able to attack Sanders without losing the very few votes she got anyway.
She might still try to, as her funding is shady, but Sanders does not have to take the bait now.
Even if debate moderators ask stupid questions, Sanders has a great technique of talking all about health care anyway.
Mind you, Sanders is old, too, but he clearly is in full mental capacity. Anything can happen from now to November and that includes Trump. This US election is the last hooray of the boomers. The field behind them is non existent, so I assume young career politicians prefer to run the next time when there is no incumbent.
As I understand the US map – basically I don’t understand it – Sanders is well positioned after this Super Tuesday to get the majority of votes if Bloomberg and Warren get out of the race and most votes/delegates if not. With California, delegate count should be at least a draw at present. And the states with few exceptions get better for Sanders not worse.
The party “moderate” establishment has consolidated behind Biden now – they have no other choice – so that it will not get worse for Sanders. Maybe some people waited in future states but if they decide the wind is blowing for Sanders they will at least stay neutral.
And the wind in the Democratic Party is blowing towards “progressives” if you add Elizabeth Warren’s vote to Bernie Sanders’ votes the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has won – they are split on academic/class lines – but academics will go where the power and the money is.
As anywhere in Western countries Boomers are retiring. If you are a political nerd looking for long term employment where would your bets go – to the people backing Biden or the people backing Sanders? Especially if you are a political nerd who is not part of the interconnected party elites, but an outsider on class and ethnic lines? Sanders got all the outsider talent and has welcomed them.
Biden has got a lot of the black vote, because there is a black establishment in the party. Other ethnicities are not part of that.
It looks like Biden has lined up young well to do careerist “moderates”. They did not do well in the elections on their own. So will the future of the Democratic Party be with them?
It is very much a fight within the Democratic Party of people fearing to lose jobs against people wanting those jobs. Sanders’ movement will not disband even if he does not get the nomination. Their intention is to take over the party long term. No single careerist has this perspective and the movement behind it.
Posted by: somebody | Mar 4 2020 13:27 utc | 170
Cerce is right you know !! You may not like her style (I do, she’s got a pulse) but she is right it’s that simple. Take a step back from the pub brawl a step back from the pack mentality (right here) and realise she is actually telling the truth ! With a great zeal. We need a lot more of that and less ……
Russ n rabbit show (sorry guy’s nothin personal)
Posted by: Mark2 | Mar 4 2020 13:28 utc | 171
The Romans — that term belongs in several layers of irony quotes — knew their empire was collapsing, but they were in no position to say exactly when it happened. Collapse was a process, not an event.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:37 utc | 172
> a step back from the pack mentality
The irony, it berns.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:38 utc | 173
“This US election is the last hooray of the boomers.” Huh? Trump, Sanders and Biden are all from the so-called “Silent Generation” while Elisabeth Warren is an early “Boomer.” Boomers the Dems shall have amongst them a goodly longer while.
You saw this coming, right?
Bernie-Supporting Denver Councilwoman Encourages Coronavirus Patients To Attend MAGA Rallies
Posted by: librul | Mar 4 2020 13:56 utc | 175
@ Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:37 utc | 173
The City of God is from the 5th Century, so, if they didn’t know the exact date, they definitely weren’t very far off.
The Romans knew very well their dates and how to keep time. Archaeological evidence corroborates with their official foundation year (753 bc). Late emperors knew very well who was Augustus, and they knew if they were good or bad emperors based on their predecessors. The Roman elites knew, for example, that Diocletian had saved the Empire; they knew Trajan and Augustus were their best emperors ever; they knew (very short after) that the Empire immediately begun to decline after the death of Marcus Aurelius. We shouldn’t infantilize the more ancient peoples just because they didn’t have the technology and information flows we have today.
When the Western portion of the empire fell, it was immediately felt by the population. The bureaucratic institutions and devices collapsed, and the legionaries stopped receiving their salaries. Culturally wise, the difference wasn’t stark – specially in the corners of the empire. This is true both because the so-called barbarians (Ostrogoths, Visigoths) already were Christians (albeit many of them were still Aryans) and very romanized and because true Roman culture never really pertained to the vast majority of its population, being contained in Rome itself (Senate) and the local elites.
But the Romans weren’t Romans because of their “culture” (the concept didn’t even exist at the time) – Rome was always a pragmatic social pact: people wanted to be Roman because it was materially good for them.
Sunny Runny Burger | Mar 4 2020 4:25 utc | 116 The avuncular Ray-gun was indeed a affable guy. Also a paid agent of influence for the intelligence and political police. As president of his union he ratted out union brothers and sisters to the political police and covered for the blacklist. And an idiot in the view of the ladies who knew him when Nancy told the Mandeville Canyon Ladies Club that “important men want Ronnie to run for governor. At this announcement they laughed over their teacups, Nancy turned bright red – and never had anything further to do with the ladies she’d cultivated. Nancy’s Kitty Kelley bio also seems to say that in her acting days she had no objection to special service to the studio fatcats…if the used condoms are any evidence…so birds of a feather, indeed yes, very affable and friendly duo. His firing of PATCO and so forth was simply following the same regime.
I knew two of the ladies at the Club meeting…
Posted by: Walter | Mar 4 2020 14:09 utc | 177
> When the Western portion of the empire fell, it was immediately felt by the population.
> The bureaucratic institutions and devices collapsed, and the legionaries stopped receiving their salaries.
Hardly the first time any of this had happened in Rome.
> We shouldn’t infantilize the more ancient peoples just because they didn’t have the technology
> and information flows we have today.
This has nothing to do with infantilizing ancient (are you sure you didn’t mean “primitive” with irony quotes?) peoples and everything to do with the fact that even wisest and most educated people of any age have but a limited awareness of what was going on, and the consequences thereof, in their own times. Not that we are all that much wiser in retrospect.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 14:16 utc | 178
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 13:10 utc | 167
“previous empire collapses didn’t take down the biosphere with them.”
By his own testimony vk’s a reactionary old-style industrial communist that doesn’t believe in the biosphere. I’ve seen him here shilling for industrial agriculture, for example. He and Pence have vast swathes of common ground.
Walter @178:
Exactly. Ronnie’s “affability” and the Father-Knows-Best vision of American society he peddled were his Teflon coating. Proof positive that an intermittently competent acting job can be confused for competent statesmanship. (I’ll stop now before I start Gore Vidaling on you folks.)
As for Creepy Joe, all he has is Obama’s Teflon coating, which is much thinner and has begun to flake off in places.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 14:20 utc | 180
Russ @180:
Thanks for the background info. In which case the user in question should welcome nuclear conflict; I hear that radioactivity makes some plants grow really bigly. Yay.
Posted by: corvo | Mar 4 2020 14:23 utc | 181
@ Posted by: Russ | Mar 4 2020 14:19 utc | 180
The problem with the “let’s go back to the Stone Age lifestyle” green ideology is that it is simply not possible anymore.
When a new stage of development consolidates, it becomes irreversible. Either you continue to go forward or you collapse.
We simply don’t have the original biosphere to go back to the old times.
We all know that the whole point of these new paperless electronic voting machines and receitless electronic tabulators is to streamline and secure the process of frauding elections. People have been protesting these things for decades now and they still get deployed anyway. People are sometimes surprised to discover that these machines are easily rigged, but that is the whole point behind using them in the first place so it shouldn’t surprise.
All of the primaries so far have been frauded. I would be amazed if Klobuchar received more than a few dozen legitimate votes in New Hampshire, for instance, but vote riggers have to use their crude understanding of psychology when adjusting the results. If they shifted 100,000 votes from Sanders to Butt-gig in New Hampshire it would be much too obvious. Everyone would wonder where all of these Butt-gig voters came from when they don’t know a single person who was talking him up before voting day. When the voters go to the polling place and everyone is wearing Sanders paraphernalia and joking together in a festive atmosphere only to find out the next morning that most of the people voting at that location supposedly voted for one of the other candidates, people get confused. They wonder to themselves “Maybe all of the Sanders supporters somehow showed up and then left at the same time, and then later all of the Klobuchar people showed up all at once too, and then the Butt-gig people also arrived in a huddle, and then… how else to explain the results?”
“It cannot be fraud! Not in America!”
But it is.
Nobody is voting for Biden. Go out and ask random people who they voted for and you will not find more than a handful who voted for him. The only votes for Biden (and the rest of the establishment clowns) that can be found are in databases that are by design unverifiable.
This doesn’t mean that Sanders cannot win. This approach to election fraud was used against AMLO in Mexico as well, including the very same kinds of paperless electronic voting machines. People just need to stop being chumps and vocally start calling this nonsense out. The noisier the outrage, the smaller the margins that the vote riggers can manipulate. The bigger the margin that Sanders wins by, the harder it is to hide.
In any case, Sanders supporters need to begin NOW preparing and pushing Sanders to walk out of the DemocRat convention this July in Milwaukee and to run independent. Begin the preparations NOW for a Sanders write-in campaign for November.
Or you can start getting used to the idea of four more years of Trump… up to you.
Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 4 2020 14:41 utc | 183
The strongest candidate always emerges from the beginning and that’s Bernie Sanders! This rush to crown Biden and erase Bernie is completely delusional and a HUGE BLUNDER. by: Circe @ 132 and
supershocker by: ADKC @ 148 <=any chance the abolition of the need to cheat Sanders at the nomination was done in the majic of black box ballet counting? The outcome of the elections is so far afield of what is expected that the result raises a strong smell of interception, and redistribution. Oh the majic of electrons..
Gifting Trump another 4 years if the DNC and the Establishment Media don’t let Bernie campaign on level playing field.by: PJB @ 158 <= a GWB replay?
Democratic party has nailed Bernie to the cross... but the American people are creating a new religion..
Posted by: snake | Mar 4 2020 14:42 utc | 184
@183 vk
“When a new stage of development consolidates, it becomes irreversible. Either you continue to go forward or you collapse.”
Having worked in corporate environments my whole life, that quote sounds just like corporatist ideology. What are you learning from the MOA site, vk?
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 14:43 utc | 185
corvo | Mar 4 2020 14:20 utc | 181 (Joey) It’s self-evident that the old man’s senile. Both Joey the Clown and The Clown of Orange are physically in doubtful shape. Orange man is utterly incompetent. These people are really third tier apparatchiks in thrall to second tier bosses (bankers, mostly), themselves under the power of the Big Money…and this coordinated though conspiratorial secret meetings (well the transcripts are secret, they do not always keep the meeting themselves secret). So far as operational matters el presidente is at least as much a pawn as a principal, but Policy and Grand Strategy are not to be changed save according to dictate. Thus in small matters a competent president can be important. Similarly, an incompetent president…
Look up the statistical stuff on men in their category as to life-span. There’s a fair chance one or two of the putative “key men” may naturally be expected to drop off the twig in the next couple of years. That might happen at an awkward time. If so the insane nutticrister stooge Pence the Mad would, (who would doubt?), proudly pray for Rapture and Armageddon.
Posted by: Walter | Mar 4 2020 14:46 utc | 186
So after hardly any sleep I woke up today feeling like I’m fed up of fighting STUPID, CYNICAL AND EVIL (even here!). So then I landed on Marianne Williamson’s twitter and decided, this is no time to surrender.
Resist the establishment!
It’s time to FIGHT back what they’ve done 48 hrs. ago to stop Bernie Sanders.
There might be some good news in all this shitstorm. TULSI GABBARD may qualify for the next debate with the one delegate she won last night. Of course, the conniving DNC scheduled it for after next Tuesday’s primaries, but there are still some important primaries after that. Picture this: Tulsi and Bernie alone on stage on national t.v. with Biden in the middle! 😂🤣😂🤣
I WANNA SEE BERNIE SANDERS AND TULSI GABBARD DESTROY JOE BIDEN IN PRIMETIME.
I wanna see them take Biden down so bad, that from then on the whole world will see him as the TITANIC candidate he really is and he will be USELESS and unfit as a Nominee after they’re both through with him!
(Bloomberg qualifies but I hear he might drop out.)
And IF Warren disgraces herself further after her stunning, catastrophic defeat yesterday and appears at that debate, it will be A PLEASURE to watch Tulsi rip her to shreds!
I will be on fire watching Tulsi and Bernie on the same team and on a mission to:
FIGHT THE DAMN ESTABLISHMENT.
Something to look forward to on March 15th!
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 14:54 utc | 187
@ Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 14:43 utc | 186
Are you aware that the forests and rivers that enabled a hunter-gatherer mode of sociometabolical reproduction of the human species doesn’t exist anymore?
This is the scientific approach to History: every society is the contradiction between its mode of production and its relations of production. That means class struggle and development of the productive forces. The exploited classes only accept their new status when it promotes development of the productive forces, which then tend to hollow out and degenerate, erupting the contradictions of the relations of production.
It is therefore class – and not nature vs development – which is the true central conflict of every human society.
Now, it is natural that the peoples of the dominant empire of their times don’t want or can’t think that way. They are at the top of the food chain, they have the power in their hands – and the last thing they want to realize is that this power is borrowed and not genetic. Empires don’t like to think they are just another episode in History. They like to think things in as a transcendental way as they can (even their problems). But the real world doesn’t care about that.
: vk | Mar 4 2020 14:59 utc | 189 (what you wrote. Youbetcha! )
Time is a one-way function. Going back to the previous modus vivendi is not possible (circumstances have changed, and yes, classes see according to circumstance. People see, “revolution” as creating Change, (it does) and fail to see that it is Change that creates Revolution.
That’s what MacBeth’s about…trying to prevent revolution.
Posted by: Walter | Mar 4 2020 15:13 utc | 189
@189 vk
So humans are quite capable of changing what you said is “irreversible”, correct? And your line,
“Either you continue to go forward or you collapse.”
…is actually supposed to sound corporate because you were mimicking the corporate mindset, correct?
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 15:13 utc | 190
Republicans – along with Trump – are making fun of the Democratic race saying that the the Democratic Party is backing “washed up” Biden over Bernie.
But they defend the outcome of the fixed 2016 election. LOL.
Can’t see what you don’t wanna see.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 4 2020 15:18 utc | 191
vk @173
The end of the western Roman Empire is not as you imagine it to be. Power had long since moved to the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire was just a vassal of the East. The west had long experienced decline, dismemberment and settlement. It is doubtful anyone living at the time was conscious of the ‘end’ of the western Roman Empire (the period of decline too long, and no real culminating/crisis event).
Most historians mark the end of the Western Roman Empire when Odoacer established the Kingdom of Italy and forced Romulus Augustulus to abdicate. Rome then bestowed the Western Imperial Insignia on the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, and Zeno granted Obacer the legal authority to govern. So, legalistically, the Western Roman Empire did end (as only one Emperor would suffice) but there was no sudden collapse of administration of systems or land falling into chaos – everything just continued.
The Kingdom of Italy under Odoacer was much larger than modern Italy. When Odoacer got too big for his boots, Zeno authorised Theodoric to attack Odoacer and takeover. Theodoric’s Empire grew to an even greater size. As far as most people were concerned it must have been more or less a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” but it was not a sudden collapse of civilisation, no rampaging barbarians carving up the Western Empire – it was just a continuation of the way the Roman Empire had been behaving for centuries.
Perhaps, the US will cede authority to China in a similar fashion?
Posted by: ADKC | Mar 4 2020 15:22 utc | 192
Tulsi can not drop out of the race at least until that debate!
https://www.tulsi2020.com/
Tulsi’s twitter
Posted by: Circe | Mar 4 2020 15:22 utc | 193
vk 189
Yes, you and Pence shall be Raptured to the stars together, he by Jesus and you by Zero Point Energy and the Singularity.
That’s why neither of you need any food, water, air or soil. And that’s why in the meantime you can join hands hating and destroying the Earth and completing the extermination of its indigenous peoples.
Until, of course Earth says Enough. And then the lot of you orcs will be gone, done, over. And Earth shall resume as before.
Watch the DNC cancel at least one of the debates between Sanders and Biden (and I guess anyone else still running who qualifies? Warren? Maybe Tulsi?) once it becomes obvious that Biden’s mind has deteriorated and he can’t shine in the spotlight.
@196 fnord
There is a good chance that the american voter feels affinity with speech errors and seeming senility. Why cancel those moments when Joe Biden can actually connect with his voters;)
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 4 2020 15:36 utc | 196
William Gruff @184 & Snake @185
If there has been election fraud as you suggest then it is for Sanders to call-out. If there has been fraud and Sanders says nothing then he is betraying his base.
Election fraud means that the whole process has no meaning, that there is no way of the American people achieving their collective wishes democratically.
I do find it hard to accept that Biden has done so well. At least one Epstein victim has made allegations with regard to Biden. I would have thought that the merest hint of an association with Epstein would be politically career-ending.
Posted by: ADKC | Mar 4 2020 15:38 utc | 197
@ Posted by: ADKC | Mar 4 2020 15:22 utc | 193
I’m not manifesting my opinion about when the Roman Empire in the West fell; I’m just mentioning what the Romans themselves thought (what survived to us in documentation).
Most of them realized the empire was really over after Romulus Augustulus fell: there’s a letter that survived to us about a garrison somewhere in Gallia or a Danubian province (can’t remember that now) from a local elite member. The legionaries received the news the empire was no more, and their first reaction was to march back Rome in order to claim their unpaid salaries. Some days later, the writer of the letter reported the river of the village the garrison was turned red, and the bodies of those legionaries were floating back.
For some, there wasn’t really that big change. Another local elite member from Gaul wrote a letter to one of his friends in Italy, describing his new ruler (who was a Goth warlord). He described him as a very nice guy, very noble – vulgar, because he didn’t read the classics (i.e. the Greek philosophers) – but, if you abstract that, you could have a normal conversation with.
There probably was, however, significant – if not widespread – backlash against the Christians. The Romans knew their decline had begun when it turned Christian, and the argument was that the Christian God wasn’t as powerful as the old Roman Gods, and that’s why the Roman Empire fell in the West. St. Augustine “The City of God” was written precisely to fight back that argument.
For most, the sensation was that world had come to an end. The Romans knew they were the world’s greatest superpower, and they knew that, at its apex, Rome was the “known world”‘s biggest city. If (non-reliable) estimates that Rome had once 5 million inhabitants are true, then this perception was certainly precise: China’s biggest city of the time probably didn’t have much more than 500 thousand. Rome, for the Romans, was the world itself – with Rome being the capital of the world.
The fact that the Romans – and even the barbarians who bought it to an end – wept for its demise can be attested by what happened in early feudalism: two dynasties – Merovingian and Carolingian – tried their best to rebuild the Roman Empire. The ghost of the Romans would haunt Europe for five more centuries, until it was finally given up (or vanished from memory).
SharonM @186
When vk refers to a “stage of development” in this context it is about large scale organization of the economy. Not quite “Agricultural Revolution” vs “Industrial Revolution” level, but much closer to that than to stages of development of a business plan or anything trivial like that.
The point is that we (humanity) now have globally integrated, industrial scale, highly technical agricultural production. While it is fine to fantasize about growing a couple tomatoes in your yard, you will not be able to produce the quantities of grain and fiber and industrial feedstock crops necessary to support your lifestyle that way. “Back to nature” cannot work for a population of 7 billion on this planet. It is very doubtful that America could even do it with only a population of 300 million.
Basically, “back to nature” was already just silly self-delusion more than a century and a half ago when Thoreau gave it a try. It has only become more unrealistic over the years since.
Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 4 2020 15:46 utc | 199