I just want to interject something here, without pointing fingers or casting blame...

While I think discussing where she may have faltered is important and necessary, I think it is inappropriate to insult or condemn Hillary Clinton. For all of her faults, the truth is that she is the woman who put her entire life and everything she had into fighting the man we're all so afraid of in the most public and direct way possible. She has suffered countless indignities for her efforts -- she has been called a "cow," a "cunt," a "bitch" and worse by Trump's supporters and countless others, but she didn't let it phase her. She was without question the most qualified and tested candidate for the job, and I don't believe anyone should blame her for knowing that about herself, being proud of that, and fighting like hell to take this monstrosity on.

It's fine to question her methods. It's fine to think it should have been someone else. But ultimately, it wasn't someone else. It was her. And she deserves respect, if only for her commitment to keeping Trump where he belonged.

She is a human being. She has known plenty of struggle in her life, and it's disrespectful to insult her for overcoming obstacles and building a name and career for herself. And again, she deserves respect simply for fighting this fight, and being the last line of defense between us and him.

Just my two cents. Not singling anyone out. Just thinking out loud.

there was a better line of defense, who could have successfully defended. she conspired to get rid of him.

haa haaa haa haa!

he'll load them with helium, and condemn them all

Again, yeah she's full of faults, did tons of shit wrong. But I believe SHE believed she had the best chance of defeating Trump, and she fought him while the rest of the world watched.

Bernie, for all his greatness, spent far too much time fighting Hillary. And if HRC alienated working class voters with her splinter causes and rhetoric, how would Bernie have REALLY fared? The data was fucked, and could have been way back when Bernie was favored over Trump by 10 points.

All I'm saying is she tried. She is not the sole cause of this. Just by facing down that bully, and by maintaining her composure when Trump brought out three of her husband's former mistresses at a presidential debate... can you imagine? Maybe I'm thinking of my mom and grandmother here also, but it takes courage to endure what HRC has endured. And she fought the devil and lost, and I believe we should thank her for that, and be respectful.

Again, just my two cents.
Kathleen McKinnon nailed that SNL opening, and it made me think a great deal about just how nasty the world has been for his woman. I don't think it's fair to shit on her right now.

who called her what where? i haven't seen any of that here

as for bernie winning, i just can't believe it. the u.s. is a center-right country. people don't expect government to create jobs. spooking away industries and millionaires with threats of taxation would do nothing for the economy--they'd just move elsewhere.

lol i sound like a supply-side economist but no. of course companies need to be taxed, but "tax the rich" isn't a winning platform in the united states. it can be too easily countered as "an attack on job creators." already happened with obama. americans in general don't really envy the rich. so that platform is a dead end.

the way to create good jobs in today's global economy is to have highly skilled workers, not to race to the bottom on taxation and education. look at silicon valley-- it's expensive, it's in a high-tax area, but it continues to be an economic engine because it attracts and support the most capable people and it's serviced/surrounded by top-level universities. is any politician talking about worker training? improving education? matching skills with industry needs? i don't think so. a pity. a waste. foolish.

anyway the bernie/hillary discussion continues (in a way) within the democratic party and that's what matters now. who will take the reins of the DNC and in what direction will they take it? will it be an establishment person or will it be a change agent? it's a huuuuuuuuuge debate right now and that's what we should be focusing on now. picking the right leader.

some people are saying "you can't do this during a funeral" but in india people get cremated right away so let's do that & mourn the dead candidacy of what could have been our first woman president and let's consider that in 2018 the democrats will be defending a lot of house seats and they have way fewer state legislatures so let's drop the ashes into the ganges and get to work.

way back at the beginning of this thread i posted some studies from a teixeira guy talking about reconnecting the democrats with the workers-- also let's not forget the rural people and see about rebuilding the grassroots. too much liberal elitism has alienated the democratic party from huge chunks of the country. this needs to fucking change.

listen the podcast of this morning's "meet the press" for more of that-- it was a pretty good show. (or if you have good internet watch it on the nbc app)

I wasn't really specifically talking to anyone here. Just interjecting a thought, as some of the posts seemed to be leaning to a more insulting tone. I've just heard a lot of HRC shaming (one article I found yesterday actually had "Hillary Clinton is objectively terrible" as the lead. That shit pisses me off, as it's patently untrue and not cheeky or funny) and I guess I wanted to get ahead of it.

Re: grassroots organizing in rural communities.
LOVE it. Would quit my job to join up with an effort like this if it paid the bills (guy's gotta live). But how to start? Particularly in small towns where "Clinton" is a four-letter word now. Reputations explode as a result of people in small communities going against the tide. Sad... horrible, but true.

I won't deny, me, Michael specifically, don't deserve as much as other states that had 3rd party voters. Florida, for example. That said, there still are people blaming 3rd party voting for losses in some places, and I don't think it's as warranted as they want to think. So I sort of spoke for all 3rd party votes that voted for someone other than voted against someone else out of spite.

well actually if you look at the 3rd party voters they seem to have drained a lot more from trump than they did from clinton.

here in new mexico, particularly, where gary johnson was governor once upon a time, hillary got 48%, trump 40%, and johnson 9% (his highest result nationally i believe).

so if you believe that most libertarians tend to be disgruntled republicans, trump could have beaten hillary without johnson. not that all 9% would have gone his way. but yeah, likely closer. and those razor-thin margins that trump used to win could have been bigger without johnson (hypothetically anyway).

IN ANY CASE, i'm not as sore at 3rd party voters as severian was, and i think his reaction was momentarily brought by despair. i sure didn't want trump to win but always thought of it as a possibility-- i was "ready".

i do have a question for you though, because i'm curious--

you voted for johnson knowing full well he wouldn't win, so i assume that you like libertarian ideals. if that's the case-- do you stay active and follow the libertarians and support them the rest of the year, next year, etc? dor do you throw them your vote once, and then do it again 4 years? this is not a trick question btw ha ha ha-- i'm really curious. i'd like to see 3rd parties grow into more of a serious thing but don't see it happening right now. so maybe it's happening and i don't know.

Probably not good, and I know not as actively, as I could, but I try to. I want to try and get more involved in some way with local ACLU groups, or at least try and send some willingly given money their way.

wow, that's interesting. the ACLU is reputed for being such a bastion of liberalism that rush limbaugh would call his enemies "card-carrying member of the ACLU" back in the 90s. then of course democrats haven't been very big on civil liberties in recent times, with the continuation of domestic espionage, etc., so i understand the flight to libertarianism from that perspective.

so i'm guessing you're a disgruntled liberal instead of republican? or none of the above?

anyway, this got me reading reason.com and i found a bunch of interesting articles about the election-- some against hillary, some against trump, etc. fun stuff to read right now.

One of my best friends from childhood moved to Florida last year. Voted Johnson, for the weeds I'm guessing. I haven't spoken to him in a week.

Hillary's popular vote winning margin is continuing to grow in "called" states. It was already, I believe,larger than the margin Gore had over Bush in '00, but it's still increasing.

This is good for exactly fuckall of course, but interesting.

I'm not so butthurt that I'm going to sign any petitions to end the electoral college. But I do think some reform is in order. Perhaps, if a popular vote victory surpasses an electoral one by a certain margin, there should be a revote.

Prediction: Kate McKinnon will win an Emmy for her HRC/Leonard Cohen tribute.

ICYMI: https://youtu.be/BG-_ZDrypec

oh, some Malcolm X shit.

really!?! that's weird because ken ehrlich told me the same exact thing. then again I might have confused him with al goldstein. we all know the jews run everything. even down to the ads you hear on spotify. we all know jews love hip hop too....to take money from. lets ask louder about all this.;)

I consider myself socially liberal, fiscally conservative. I agree we need to have a lot of change happen, but I disagree with how we'd pay for it. I'd prefer we scaled back the foreign policy spending long before we should scale back the welfare spending. I wish we'd more effectively spend the taxes we already collect than just keep collecting more and waste it just as badly. I don't believe in "free college" or "free healthcare" and know that those get paid one way or another by taxpayers. We'd have a sticker shock at first, but over time, we'd grow used to paying for those types of things gradually and collectively.

you mean you don't want to pick squash with friends and fam and sing commune folk songs?

you can sing this land is our land while I figure out the lyrics to this machine kills fascist.

/me pats the red hot chili pepper on the head

Whatever you say, spice

you ever seen the movie short circuit?

yes, i hear you there-- in fact i'd be also fiscally conservative on paper (i definitely am in my private life, meaning, how i relate to money) but when i see it in practice i notice that with less government intervention monopolies tend to develop, i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, whereas with *some* strategic intervention the middle classes grow and the extremes are less extreme. in other words, government isn't the only oppressor-- corporate power could grow unfettered under a libertarian utopia, and that is the part that fills me with doubt about the libertarian program. though the ideals are admirable. a bit like communism i guess.

as an on-and-off business owner i do resent the burden that regulations place upon me, whereas employees have it all handed to them in a platter. this is a bad state of affairs that in my view gives incentive to job-seeking over entrepreneurship. so it actually benefits large corporations who have lawyers and accountants to deal with the regulations and taxation and an endless pool of applicants to compete for their scarce jobs and little competition from the bottom. it's the small business person who gets shafted-- not only competing with the large dinosaurs but also competing vs. the opportunity cost of "getting a job" working for a big corporate mommy/daddy. i.e., do i really need this fucking headache?

anyway i forget what i was gonna say but i try to be open minded and not overly partisan with these things. i was partisan "by contract" in favor of hillary because i truly feared the strumpet trumpet, and while rationally i still do, i have to get on with my life and live it, even in the toxic environment that has been created, like some bacteria from the bottom of the ocean that feeds on sulfur.

OTOH i have little faith in the antitrump protests because the left is an ineffectual bunch of undisciplined fools since the fall of bolshevism. i mean, i hated bolshevism, but you gotta respect that they were organized and disciplined and knew how to use their troops. the soft american liberal is none of that.

can't help to think if hillary had won the trumpites would be marching up and down mainstream with rifles on their shoulders, making second amendment claims about overthrowing tiranny, and truly scaring the beejeezus out of everyone else. so, in a way, this is better.

I know where you're coming from (nice handling of p-green by the way), and I think it's just a natural part of "growing up" to begin to take on a more fiscally conservative belief system. I mean, you get out of college and you no longer need "fee college," but you could definitely use a tax break unless you dropped right into the upper class. So I get it.

But if we look at other countries -- Symblls has mentioned Germany several times, but there's also France, Norway, Iceland, Poland -- there are a massive number of working models for government funded education in place that we could easily borrow from.

I think the real problem, even more than education, is health care. You don't physically need education to survive (yet), but you goddamn well need healthcare, and it could and should be socialized in the U.S. as it is virtually everywhere else. This is being done practically by nations all over the world who are maintaining a presence in the industrial world, and killing it with job creation. It's really not a pipe dream for the U.S.

Also, I really don't think Johnson exemplifies the libertarian platform very well. He's a libertarian because he needed to be to have any kind of shot at continued political relevance. But Jesus he's a stupid man. I'm sorry, no offense. A lot of the long-haul libertarians I know voted for him because of his affiliation, and were mortified by how he actually handled himself during all this.

I see a certain amount of promise in libertarianism, but the platform needs to evolve beyond benign a once every 4 years sleight of hand grab for votes and turn into a truly viable third option.

^^ johnson lives in taos so i think he travels to colorado waaaaay too often if you know what i mean lol (taos is right next to it).

as for higher education, cost controls are out of hand in the USA. i went to a very fine latin american university that had only a cafeteria and a cement soccer pitch... no dorms (most of us lived at home, others rented rooms), no stadiums, no gym, no student union, no movie theatre, no extensive parking facilities, no private bus system, no campus police, no dean of student affairs, no athletics department.... yet the education was top-notch, and there was great research being done on campus--and the people doing the research taught us.

the problem with college in america today, and i say this as someone who taught college extensively through 4 years of grad school (2 courser per semester plus summers, levels between 100-300), is that college is not "higher education" but a massive daycare system for overgrown children.

and people in their dumb disney ways are still nostalgically attached to giving their children "the college experience" at the tune of 1/2 million bucks per fucking brat, so that they can go get high for 5 years.

what in the living fuck, people.

we could very well have a string of barebones colleges to provide all of the education with none of the fucking pampering and time-wasting that these educational resorts provide.

part of the problem, though, see, is federal funding of debt. some spoiled horny 18 year old wants nothing to do with work or career or money-- they wanna fuck, drink, get high, fuck some more, get high again, expand their minds, sing about revolution, and do it all for free-- except it's not free, someone else is paying for it-- their parents, their future selves, the taxpayer, whoever.

and because the federal government guarantees your debt until the end of time... guess what... you can get 4 or 5 years of federally funded permanent vacation, worry about paying it back later.

and here's the kicker though... because the spice flows unrestricted, colleges have to COMPETE for that resort money. offering better dining, more luxurious facilities, greater football teams, RAs and counselors and student activities, all the while classes are being taught by GAs and adjuncts. but the debt piles on regardless.

FUCKED UP. FUCKED UP. FUCKED UP.

hmmm, I'd be willing to pay an additional 30% or so on taxes if it would be targeted towards a few things I support, like drug treatment programs, early childhood education, dental care for the poor, stuff like that. I'd even go more if I could direct that it wouldn't ever go to the military, veterans or Israel

I did some summer work at a college when I was in grad school. A state college with state of the art dorms, on-site everything, and transportation. Such a shiny school it was, but it was a non-research institution with hundreds of thousands thrown into its tiny little football program.

It's true. Many colleges are sleepaway camps.

the cost of education will not be solved until the middle classes can get a quality higher education without the upper class and aspirational "college experience" aka "adult disney".

the for-profits could quickly serve this need but they have also been encouraged to rack up the big bucks while providing a sub-par education due to federally subsidized loans which again incentivize overpaying rather than cost-cutting and optimization. plus they overwork and underpay unqualified instructors = more scam.

1200 people explain why they voted for Trump, 21 published here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...mepage%2Fstory

brilliant. simply brilliant. i don't agree with a lot of those people but i respect their reasons (so far anyway... haven't seen any KKK comment yet). the religious one is a bit funny to me (trump being who he is) but to each their own, i still respect it their motives.

we generally attribute good intentions and motives to ourselves, though, so I find that pretty self servile

which one?

how the dems can take back politics:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...mepage%2Fstory

Fundamental attribution bias FTW

i didn't know about this concept and had to look it up. was this the first time i hear about it or what? either way, new to me as a formal concept though we all have experience with it. thanks for naming it.

===

ilducio, what happened to love trumps hate? come on buddy, let's not get bitter when we need good energy the most.

here this journo says what is obama smiling about but i think obama is right and not in denial-- he's leaving the country in pretty good shape.

“Unemployment rate is as low as it has been in eight, nine years, incomes and wages have both gone up over the last year faster than they have in a decade or two. . . . The financial systems are stable. The stock market is hovering around its all-time high and 401(k)s have been restored. The housing market has recovered. . . . We are seeing significant progress in Iraq . . . Our alliances are in strong shape. . . . And gas is two bucks a gallon.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c35_story.html

obama has more rastaman vibrations than that journo (journos drink a lot, as severian can likelly witness/attest), and should keep his high mind intact. no drama obama!

as for the republican monopoly we face today, remember that a climax is also the beginning of decline. the moment gas prices begin to rise (e.g. saudi arabia gets pissed at trump and cuts production) republicans are gonna shit bloodclots ha ha ha.

which reminds me i need to fix this old little VW we have unused. lololol. good mileage.

WELL. FRIENDS. DESPAIR NOT.

let's learn from the people who voted trump this way around. a lot of them were obama voters in the past! let's figure out how to persuade them for THE GLORIOUS MIDTERMS OF 2018.

(and WARREN 2020)

but first instead of seeking salvation in the future let's deal with today today.

It didn't take Shrub very long to change the USA and I don't think it will take Trump long, either. I think we are a minority party in a lot of ways and marginalized for power due to gerrymandering, money, lack of fairness doctrine, etc. Hang on to your hats, it's going to blow ugly.

Trump does not have any idea what being a public servant is like, what government is like, and how things work. it is NOT like business world.

If he apoints fat fuck Christie as Attorney General and fucking asshole Guliani as Secretary of State? look out. Guliani is "ex CIA" (once cIA always CIA, there are no "EX")

but that's precisely what i'm trying to do here, right? hanging on to my hat.

i'm just trying to NOT experience the ugly before it actually happens. know what i mean? preparation yes. being trapped in the scenarios of the mind no.

like-- dying a thousand deaths. i don't wanna. i just wanna die once. i do prepare every day for my death with the expectation that it will prepare me to die well. but only once.

meantime, we live. let's do something with it and not grow embittered.

the marginalization from power is due to a lot of things. but where it's due to incompetence and wrongheadedness and ideological insularity we can do something about it. really can't blame everything on everyone else.

an internal locus of control is good for sanity and coping with stress. let's exercise it now that we need it the most.

Journalists do tend to like their booze. This is not just a stereotype. From my experience with both family members in the field and seeing kids jump righ in out of college, it's very nearly an epidemic. Remember though that many of us are on the clock 10 hours a day min. even in small towns with small beats. The national reporters must have livers of steel.

Me, I like legally prescribed anxiety meds. But I am an outsider (and a realitive newb).

Also, I'm thinking Warren 2020 too.

People want Bernie to return, but having lost once is pretty damaging from a historical perspective (and a current perspective). Fresh blood will be needed. Not to mention Bernie will be 79 by then. I know he's New Jersey tough, but that's pushing it for a prospective leader. He'd have to shatter yet another precedent, and he already has several going against him.

you wish!

have you even watched the news lately? it's much worse than this.

I'm also getting sick of the whole im "socially political and fiscally conservative" excuse. my barber told me the same thing. is this a catch phrase now?

shit, i know first-hand. bro-in-law used to be a journo. they'd have these conferences-- holy shit! quaffers. i've sat next to them a few times.

plus recently i read an article about this journalist who died young. apparently she woke up & drank-- that's what she considered "normal"

not universalizing the particular though-- her story just reminded me of the rest


bernie was already ancient and hunchback.

warren ftw.

BUT FIRST, THE MIDTERMS.

a president without a congress doesn't have a chance in hell.

the house is the most powerful entity in the government and we're stupid to neglect it with this president-worship.

WHO WRITES THE LAWS?

2018.