Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Blacklist - The Artax Network S3 E20

Reeling with grief, the task force hunts the organization behind Liz's failed abduction - who is Solomon working for and why was Liz the target? Meanwhile, Red confronts a man from his past. Brian Dennehy guest stars.


Dear Democrats: Stop Bullying Sanders Supporters Into Backing Hillary Clinton



Democrats are setting themselves up for a crushing loss in November unless Clinton backers stop bullying Bernie Sanders supporters. Here’s why.

Neither candidate will clinch the nomination before the convention

After losing four out of five primaries on Tuesday, the overwhelming question from Hillary Clinton supporters is whether or not the legions of voters backing Bernie Sanders will fall in line, accept Clinton’s inevitable coronation, and vote for her to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

This is an unfair and illegitimate question, and completely ignores why Sanders was able to activate so many people across the country and persuade nearly 9 million people thus far to vote for him.

That question of whether or not Bernie Sanders’ voters will support Clinton ignores the fact that out of the remaining 1,016 pledged delegates, neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders will reach 2,383 pledged delegates before the Democratic National Convention in July. Almost half of those delegates will come from California alone.

This is significant, as Sanders is steadily closing in on Clinton’s polling edge in the state, cutting her lead down from double digits to just two points. As such, he has a very good chance of winning the state, given that California’s primary allows independent voters to vote in the Democratic primary. In terms of pledged delegates, Sanders may very well be within two percentage points of Clinton at the DNC if he wins 60 percent of the remaining pledged delegates. This is not an unlikely scenario, given the favorable outlook of the remaining states.

In other words, Hillary Clinton will only be the Democratic nominee if super-delegates tip the scales for her on the first ballot. Assuming Clinton already has the nomination locked up, with over 1,000 pledged delegates still at play in states mostly favorable to Sanders, is unrealistic and naive. Democrats’ bullying of Sen. Sanders supporters to betray their candidate and vote for his rival is premature and divisive.

The Democratic Party desperately needs new blood

By attempting to turn the Democratic primary into a coronation for Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party leaders have shown they aren’t interested in cultivating new leaders or increasing engagement among younger voters. The fact that the Democratic establishment’s only choice to lead the party in 2016 is the candidate who lost the last contested primary eight years ago speaks volumes.

Establishment Democrats have a bad habit of running loser candidates. In Wisconsin, moderate Democrat Tom Barrett, who lost by 5 points to Scott Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial election, was the state party’s top choice to run against Gov. Walker after activists successfully triggered a recall election. Despite Barrett’s establishment endorsements from Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, he lost by an even wider margin to Walker in the recall election.

In fact, aside from re-electing President Obama in 2012, Democrats have been losing badly across the nation for six consecutive years. There are only 18 Democratic governors currently in office, the fewest in over a century. Only 43 percent of all state legislators across the United States are Democrats while 56 percent are Republicans — a trend of waning Democratic power at the state level continuing unabated since 2012. If anything, Democrats should be welcoming Sanders’ supporters and their ideas into the party if they’re interested in having any hope for future elections.

Current Democratic Party leaders are fresh out of ideas

Democrats currently holding office have shown little in the way of strategy for how to enact progressive policy victories. As US Uncut reported earlier this week, leading Democrats in Congress, like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are actually aligning with the pharmaceutical industry to fight their own president’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices. And even though they’re bending over backwards to elect Hillary Clinton, Congressional Democrats have no strategy or will to retake the House of Representatives.

Even if Hillary Clinton, who is running as a “progressive who likes to get things done” is elected, how does she plan to get things done with Republican majorities in the House and Senate? And if the Democratic Party’s leader in the House is already scheming against a Democratic president, how does Clinton plan to even rally her own party to pass meaningful legislation?

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has brought new blood and new ideas to the Democratic Party, and manages to fill arenas full of supporters and break voter turnout records in many of the states he’s won. Sanders is the first Democrat to bring New Deal policies back to the Democratic Party since the Clinton-led corporate takeover of the Democratic Party in the nineties.

These policies — like tuition-free public universities, universal healthcare as a human right, and a massive investment in millions of new public sector jobs — motivate young people and independent voters to register as Democrats and vote for Sanders. If Democrats want to keep the White House in November, they should push Hillary Clinton to adopt as many as possible.

Hillary Clinton and the DNC have no interest in bringing in new blood or new ideas

As The Hill reported on Friday, Hillary Clinton is already promising to resist the pressure to adopt Sanders’ policies as her own if she wins the nomination. This will undoubtedly turn off the millions of voters who showed up for Sen. Sanders throughout the primary process from voting for Clinton in the general election. In addition, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already stacked the deck in Clinton’s favor by rigging the party’s national convention process.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the heads of the two most important standing committees at the DNC are Clinton superdelegates. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is co-chair of the platform committee, where policies Democrats will run on for the next four years are adopted. The other co-chair is Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is a senior advisor for Ready for Hillary.

Former Congressman Barney Frank (who is very vocally anti-Sanders) is heading the rules committee, which decides the convention procedures, along with former Texas State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, who endorsed Clinton and stumped for her on the campaign trail.
Several months ago, Schultz also made sure the members of these committees were favorable to Clinton:
In January, the party chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, appointed dozens of Clinton supporters and advisers to the three standing committees of the Democratic Party convention. Of 45 potential members submitted by Mr. Sanders, she appointed just three, according to Mr. Sanders’s campaign.
Even if Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders enter the convention with a 51-49 split in pledged delegates, party bosses could rig the process to make sure Sanders won’t be the nominee. Barney Frank has the power as rules committee chairman to schedule Bernie Sanders’ speech to delegates for 10 AM on a Friday morning, or make sure the DNC’s first ballot vote, in which super-delegates can give Clinton a plurality, happens before Sanders has a chance to address delegates.

Bullying #BernieOrBust voters won’t help Hillary Clinton

Nearly one-third of Sanders’ supporters are pledging to not vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election, and some have pledged to not support her even if Sanders stumps for her.

In recent months, Sanders supporters have endured constant bullying, having been labeled sexists and “Bernie Bros” more times than can be counted; they’ve been told by Clinton herself that they don’t do their own research; they’ve been called “unrealistic” in pushing for progressive reforms despite massive victories in the fight for a higher minimum wage; they’ve even been told there’s a “special place in hell” for women not supporting Clinton. What’s unrealistic is expecting Sanders supporters to put their feelings aside and vote for the candidate who has directly insulted them.

If Clinton secures the nomination, she will lose unless Bernie Sanders and his supporters are lifted up by the party, and the ideals they uphold are taken seriously and adopted into the Democratic platform.
Anything less would ensure at least four years of Donald Trump as president.

Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at tom.v.cahill@gmail.com.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Why Bernie Will, Should And Must Stay In The Race

 
The Democratic race is closer than the mainstream media would like to admit. 
 
 
 
Surprisingly, this week's prize for Stupidest Political Comment in the Presidential Race doesn't go to Donnie Trump or Ted Cruz. Rather, the honor goes to the clueless cognoscenti of conventional political wisdom. These pundits and professional campaign operatives have made a unilateral decision that Bernie Sanders must now quit the race for the Democratic nomination. Why? Because, they say, he can't win.

Actually, he already has.

Sanders' vivid populist vision, unabashed idealism and big ideas for restoring America to its own people have jerked the presidential debate out of the hands of status quo corporatists, revitalized the class consciousness and relevance of the Democratic Party, energized millions of young people to get involved, and proven to the Democratic establishment that they don't have to sell out to big corporate donors to raise the money they need to run for office.

Bernie has substantively—even profoundly—changed American politics for the better, which is why he's gaining more and more support and keeps winning delegates. From the start, he said, "This campaign is not about me"—it's a chance for voters who have been disregarded and discarded to forge a new political revolution that will continue to grow beyond this election and create a true people's government.

From coast to coast, millions of voters have been "Feeling the Bern." That's the campaign slogan grassroots supporters created to express their passion for the unconventional presidential run being made by Bernie Sanders.

Yes, passion—an outpouring of genuine excitement that is (as we say in Texas) "hotter than high school love." All this for a 74 year old democratic socialist who is openly taking on the corporate plutocracy that's been knocking down the middle class and holding down the poor. Sanders is the oldest candidate in the race—yet politically, he's the youngest candidate, exuberantly putting forth an FDR-sized vision and agenda to lift up America's workaday majority. And guess what? It turns out that workaday Americans really value democracy over plutocracy, so that's where his passionate support comes from.

Need I mention that the moneyed powers—and the politicians hooked on their money—hate this affront to their cozy politics-as-usual/ business-as-usual system? Especially shocking to them is that Sanders' supporters have found their way around the usual Wall of Big Money that the establishment always throws us to thwart populist campaigns. This time, though, a counter-force of common folks has created a widely successful campaign fund of their own to support their Bernie rebellion. How successful? A whopping $182 million has been raised in millions of small donations that average $27 each.

That's a revolution, right there! Every revolution needs a slogan, so here's one that used to be on the marquee of a vintage, locally owned motel just down the street from where I live in Austin: "No additives, no preservatives, corporate-free since 1938." That perfectly sums up the unique people's campaign that Bernie-people have forged for themselves.

The keepers of the Established Order fear this grassroots uprising by no-name "outsiders," and they know that this year's Democratic nomination is still very much up for grabs, so they're stupidly trying to shove Sanders out before other states can vote. But Bernie and the mass movement he's fostering aren't about to quit—they'll organize in every primary still to come, be a major force at the Democratic convention, and keep pushing their ideals and policies in the general election and beyond.

As Sanders puts it: "I run not to oppose any man or woman, but to propose new and far-reaching policies to deal with the crisis of our times... It may be too late to stop the billionaire class from trying to buy the presidency and Congress... But we owe it to our children and grandchildren to try...We need to face up to the reality of where we are as a nation, and we need a mass movement of people to fight for change."

That's what real politics should be—not merely a vacuous campaign to elect a personality, but a momentous democratic movement fighting for the common good.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

How Winning The Nomination Could Be Trump’s Worst Nightmare

By Adele M. Stan

(Photo: AP/Julie Jacobson)
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a news conference Tuesday, April 26.

We had been promised something of a new candidate, one more “presidential” in demeanor than we’re accustomed to seeing in the ostentatious settings at which he stages his post-primary speeches.

But when Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front runner, stepped up to the mic in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to celebrate of his epic sweep of Tuesday night’s GOP nominating contests in all five of the states in play, what we saw was a Trump more subdued in tone but as misogynist in substance as ever.

After declaring himself to be “like, a very smart person,” Donald J. Trump made an astonishing claim: If Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton—who won four of Tuesday’s five Democratic primaries—were a man, he said, “she’d be at 5 percent” in the polls. As if being a woman granted the female politician some great advantage. Were that the case, each chamber of Congress, one might assume, would be a body in which women represented 80 percent of the membership, rather than the other way around. Surely, given such great gender privilege, the 50 states might muster more than a grand total of six female governors among them.

Trump appeared to be grasping at some explanation for why, in general election match-up polls, he trails behind a woman. (It must be because she’s a woman! The system is rigged!)

“I’ve always been very good at math,” Trump told us, though apparently that prowess ended before the probability exam began.

The only thing that Clinton had going for her, Trump said, was “the women's card,” perhaps failing to notice that in the 2012 presidential election, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, 71.4 percent of women reported voting, while only 61.6 percent of men did. Add in the fact that there are more eligible female voters than male voters, one might see that very card maligned by Trump as something of a trump in and of itself.

“Women don’t like her,” Trump said of Clinton, apparently not aware of the fact that in all but three states since the beginning of the presidential campaign season, Clinton has won the majority of the women’s vote. Meanwhile, Gallup reports, 7 in 10 women have an unfavorable view of Trump.

The ancient Greek philosophers saw misogyny as evidence of fear of women. Whatever the original roots of the showman’s misogyny, the polls would indicate he has good reason to fear women in November—those, at least, who turn up at the voting booth. Which may explain Trump’s urging, in his latest victory speech, of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s flagging Democratic challenger, to run as an independent in the general election. An independent progressive would presumably peel off votes that would have otherwise gone to the Democrat.

But then Trump went on to echo Sanders’s allegation that Clinton is “unqualified” for the presidency, an attack that many women, including this writer, heard as distinctly gendered in nature. (Sanders has since walked back that claim, which he said was based on the fact that, while serving in the Senate, Clinton had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq during the presidency of George W. Bush.) But given Trump’s free-associative invocation of that particular Sanders attack on Clinton, coupled with the Bernie Bro phenomenon and Sanders’s dismissal of Planned Parenthood as an “establishment” organization, one could wonder whether an independent Sanders candidacy might just peel off misogynist voters from Trump.

Before the night’s end, the Sanders campaign issued a statement that suggested the U.S. senator from Vermont was no longer in it to win it, but would instead stay in the contest in the hope of injecting his campaign’s driving issues—income inequality and the break-up of big banks—into the Democratic Party platform at the national convention in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, pundits were once again using such words as “unstoppable” to describe Trump’s march to his party’s nomination, what with the establishment types who had once seemed so vehemently opposed to him on moral ground now submitting, between sighs, to what suddenly seemed inevitable.

(Both U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich fared poorly in Tuesday’s contests—in the Eastern states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland—and the non-aggression pact they had forged for next week’s contests unraveled soon after it was announced.)

As Clinton’s nomination became all but sealed on Tuesday night, the pundits barely seemed to register the historic nature of it. For the first time, a woman was almost certain to be the standard-bearer of one of the two major political parties in a presidential election. But Donald Trump surely noticed.

With his male challengers falling away, Trump is now faced with two outcomes he likely once deemed improbable, if not impossible: that he could win the nomination of the Party of Lincoln, and that he could lose the biggest game of his life—to a woman.

Black woman responds to Megyn Kelly's claim that Jesus is white—and it's stunning

By kpete



“How can she says Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up, with his mother watching."



With incredible passion, poet Crystal Valentine responds to Megyn Kelly’s statement that Jesus is a white man. The Fox News anchor caused an outrage with the claim back in 2013. Holding nothing back, Valentine’s voice begins to shake from what appears to be her outrage as she rebukes Kelly.



Here is the full video/poem transcript below:
And the News Reporter Says “Jesus is White”

She says it with a smile
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world
So sure of herself
Of her privilege
Her ability to change history    
Rewrite bodies to make them look like her

She says it the same way politicians say racism no longer exists
The same way police officers call dead black boys thugs
The same way white gentrifiers call Brooklyn home

She says it with an American accent
Her voice doing that American thing
Crawling out of her throat
Reaching to clasp onto something
That does not belong to her

I laugh to myself

What makes a black man a black man?
Is it a white woman’s confirmation?
Is it her head nod?
Is it the way she’s allowed to go on national television
And auto correct the bible and God himself,
Tell him who his son really was?

What makes a black man a black man:
The way reporters retell their deaths like fairytales
The way their skulls split across pavement
The way they cannot outrun a bullet

How can she say Jesus was a white man
When he died the blackest way possible?

With his hands up
With his mother watching,
Crying at his feet
Her tears nothing more than gossip
For the news reporters or prophets to document
With his body left to sour in the sun
With his human stripped from his black

Remember that?
How the whole world was saved by a black man
By a man so loved by God,
He called him kin
He called him black

Now ain’t that suspicious?
Ain’t that news worthy?
Ain’t that something worth being killed over?
Thank you, Crystal Valentine. There is nothing more for more to say other than thank you.
 

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/26/1520269/-Black-woman-responds-to-Megyn-Kelly-s-claim-that-Jesus-is-white-and-it-s-stunning

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/megyn-kelly-jesus-and-santa-were-white-179491

Voters Report Suspicious Irregularities In Three Different Primary States

By Nathan Wellman

In what is becoming an outrageously predictable trend, Hillary Clinton supporters have been caught breaking election laws again and other voting irregularities have been reported across three of today’s five primary states.

Pennsylvania voters have reported on Reddit that the following campaign advertisements for Clinton were being distributed inside polling locations in clear violation of electioneering law.

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Pennsylvania’s electioneering laws clearly state that “No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room… ”

The law then goes on to specifically mention that solicitations “must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting.”

And yet, the following video shows these Hillary Clinton slips inside the North Temple Baptist Church polling location on 1628 Master Street in Philadelphia, with the poll worker refusing to throw them away even after being confronted.

The worker admits at the beginning of the video that “Whoever’s supposed to be giving these out is supposed to be outside.”

Videographer Daniel Laufer rightly points out that this is against the law, and politely asks if he can remove the offending slips from the polling station. The worker says “No you can’t have these,” blatantly admitting that “They have to hand them out as people come in.”
Again, Laufer tries to remain calm as he explains: “This is trying to sway people and you’re not supposed to do that according to the law.”

“It’s not swaying anybody,” the poll worker replies. “You have your own mind, you vote for whoever you want to.”

“The law is the law, and this is against the law.”

“I understand that, but are you a lawyer?”

“I don’t need to be a lawyer to know that.”

From here out, the poll worker just keeps repeating that voters can “vote for whoever they want to” without directly responding to the fact that these advertisements are a textbook case of electioneering, which is banned under state law within the polling place.

Laufer told US Uncut that in addition to the Clinton campaign literature inside the precinct, the polling place was plagued by other irregularities, like two broken voting machines that weren’t replaced for hours and the precinct being closed to early voters.

“Polls were supposed to open at seven,” Laufer said in a phone interview. “I got there at 7:30, and it wasn’t open yet.”

To test the reaction of poll workers, Laufer tried handing out pro-Sanders campaign literature more than ten feet away from the polling precinct, and poll workers threatened to call the police on him.

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a voting machine wasn’t allowing a voter to select Bernie Sanders.

Brooks Bell posted video of himself on Instagram trying to press Sanders’ name on an electronic voting machine, which failed continuously to record his selection. New York Daily News columnist Shaun King tweeted the video, which garnered thousands of retweets in a matter of hours — though it was later revealed that the machine simply wasn’t turned on:
In Connecticut, where 55 pledged delegates are up for grabs, one voter recorded his father’s party affiliation mysteriously changing from “Democratic” on April 23 to “Unaffiliated” on April 25. In Connecticut’s closed primary, voters not identifying as Democrats or Republicans aren’t allowed to vote.

This happened on a large scale in the Arizona primary, with the Secretary of State admitting in a public hearing that staffers in her own office had their party affiliations changed without their consent. Voters’ party affiliations were changed in New York as well, with some voters showing proof that the signatures on the documents in question were forged.

registration
registration2
Election irregularities are also being reported in Rhode Island, as voters are having to drive around for hours to find their polling place after the state closed 66 percent of voting precincts last week. Only three out of seventeen polling places in North Providence were open for Tuesday’s primary, leading to some confusion among voters.

“Someone should be making an announcement or something,” voter Nick D’Amico told the Providence Journal. “Otherwise you could be standing in line for 30 minutes before you realize you’re in the wrong place.”

This continues a string of election debacles which always seem to favor Clinton, from Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary with a megaphone well within the boundaries of the polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to 126,000 Brooklyn voters mysteriously being purged from the list of registered Democrats.

And although the fiasco in Maricopa County, Arizona, was largely the result of Republican officials, it seems to have favored Clinton’s campaign, as the early voting swayed overwhelmingly her way, while election day voting trends suggest that those disenfranchised by the mishandling of polling stations would have reduced Clinton’s margin of victory over Sanders had they been allowed to vote properly.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been amended to remove an incorrect paragraph claiming Rhode Island has closed primaries. Rhode Island’s primaries are semi-closed, meaning unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s primary.)

Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

PROBLEMS INSIDE PA POLLING STATION 4/26/16 Philadelphia Democratic Primary Bernie Sanders

Hillary Clinton Handout and Machines not working at polling place in Philadelphia PA - 4/26/2016 Democratic Primary - Bernie Sanders

At my voting location, which is a church with bibles on the voter sign-in tables in North Philadelphia (National Temple Baptist Church at 1628 Master St, Philadelphia, PA 19121), there was "Vote for Hillary Clinton" campaign advertisement at the front door as people enter, which is against the law. The voting station worker states that the "MACHINES WEREN'T WORKING" and that the person who is "SUPPOSED to be handing them out" wasn't here. This polling station is obviously not even attempting to remain unbiased, and is pressuring voters to vote Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders. I'd guess that this issue is prevalent at more Philadelphia polling locations than just one.

The PA law states:

"a) No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall
any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room, except as required by this act. All persons, except election officers,
clerks, machine inspectors, overseers, watchers, persons in the course of voting, persons lawfully giving assistance to voters, and peace
and police officers, when permitted by the provisions of this act, must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during
the progress of the voting. (Pa. Consol. Stat. Ann. § 3060 (c); (d))"

Dear Hillary Voters: It's Not Bernie's Fault She's Terrible

Instead of blaming Bernie supporters, Hillary Clinton supporters need to be honest about the flaws that plague their candidate.

Jimmy Dore breaks it down.

Southern Illinois University leader condemns racist video

CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — Racial tension on the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale campus is high after a series of recent incidents that include an anonymous video posted on YouTube that called for the lynching and beating of black students.

The video drew condemnation from the university's leader, and YouTube removed it Monday for violating the company's policies on hate speech.

In an email to students Sunday night, interim Chancellor Brad Colwell asked students to not distribute the two-minute video, which features altered dialogue from the animated film "A Bug's Life" and a speaker wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who promotes campus violence. The unidentified speaker, whose voice is distorted, attributes the "SIUC White is Right" video to the campus' Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. The fraternity denied involvement in a statement issued by its national office in Indianapolis.

"Individuals who use the power of social media to spread hate and fear must not be allowed to be the voice of our community," Colwell wrote in his email to students.

Colwell threatened unspecified legal action against the video's creator, though campus spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said the university doesn't know who is behind it.

"We have no reason to believe the fraternity is responsible," she said.

The video follows a black student's complaint that student supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used a racial slur and said black students should "go back to Africa" at a recent Carbondale campus residence hall forum. The school is investigating that incident, which prompted another open letter from Colwell, in which he called on students to uphold "values of respect for individuals, diversity and inclusion."

In between the two Colwell letters, someone drew a swastika on a residence hall chalkboard next to a message to "Build That Wall," an apparent reference to Trump's calls to curtail illegal immigration from Mexico.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment Monday.

http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/SIU-Carbondale-chancellor-condemns-racist-video-7317362.php

Monday, April 25, 2016

Trump pivots


Mike Malloy - New York Election Theft Is Just The Beginning

Buckle up, America. The voting demolition derby that was the New York primary on Tuesday was merely the crash test for the coming voting wreckage in November: a carefully planned pile up.

Voter purgeFirst, live from New York….

Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City.

“I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”

That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.



http://www.gregpalast.com/new-york-voting-fiasco-just-the-warm-up-for-the-november-game/#sthash.DLw8r7MY.dpuf

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Democratic Party spurns Joe Sestak who almost won in 2010

By MARC LEVY


FILE - In this March 28, 2015, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak passes a sign marking the Pennsylvania-Ohio state border as he completes his "Walking In Other Pennsylvanian's Shoes" walking tour across Pennsylvania in Ohioville, Pa. Sestak, 64, is one of four candidates campaigning for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania's primary on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, seeking to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's bid for re-election. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrat Joe Sestak came tantalizingly close to winning a seat in the U.S. Senate six years ago and is hoping Tuesday to secure a rematch, but the party establishment wants nothing to do with him, pouring millions into the campaign of his chief rival.

The former two-term congressman and retired Navy rear admiral is wearing his outsider status as a badge of honor as he seeks the nomination to take on Republican Sen. Pat Toomey this fall in a race that could tilt control of the Senate.

He has said that he is fighting "for the soul of the Democratic Party," and that political party leaders "aren't in it for people any longer, they're in it for power and themselves."

"I'm not a politician," he said when the candidates were asked at a Friday debate if they would represent a break with the status quo. "Four-and-a-half million dollars — half of it by my own Democratic Party — has been put in against me," he said.

Party-endorsed candidate Katie McGinty focused instead on the Republican incumbent. "I'll do something very different from what Pat Toomey has done. Pat Toomey has sold out the middle class," she said.

McGinty, a former state and federal environmental policy official, has trumpeted the broad range of support she has received, from President Barack Obama to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to former Gov. Ed Rendell. At the same time she has sought to tap anti-establishment sentiment by looking to the general election.

Sestak's frosty relationship with party leaders dates to 2009 when he was recruited to challenge then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, then was asked to step aside when Specter switched parties to the delight of Democratic Party leaders. But Sestak refused to drop out — even after former President Bill Clinton was recruited to dangle a government job offer in front of him.

Sestak went on to beat Specter in the primary and lose to Toomey by only 2 percentage points in the 2010 general election, upsetting the Democrats' plans for regaining the seat in a state where they outnumber Republicans 4-to-3.

Sestak again doesn't figure into the Democrats' plan.

The resulting tension has shaped a race in which McGinty's side has outspent Sestak's two-to-one.

She has been aided by nearly $2 million from a national party committee and $1.75 million from Washington-based Emily's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights.
Despite the fundraising disadvantage, the 64-year-old Sestak has led nearly every independent poll.

But a large bloc of undecided voters — nearly one in three, according to a new Franklin and Marshall College poll — is adding uncertainty to Tuesday's election.

Sestak spent the last six years as a regular on the local party event circuit around Pennsylvania, earning loyalty from rank-and-file activists. He also walked across the state last year to kick off his campaign.

The party's search for an alternative candidate ended last summer when it tapped McGinty, 52, a member of Gov. Tom Wolf's administration who had also worked for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and former Gov. Ed Rendell.

She has run a radio ad voiced by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a campaign stop for her in Pittsburgh. McGinty said in one TV ad that Obama endorsed her "because he knows I'm a fighter."

She has drummed out that theme in her ads, presenting herself as a champion for the middle class and women's causes, the 9th of 10 children of a Philadelphia cop and a diner waitress. In recent days, her campaign and Emily's List have also aired attack ads against Sestak.

Sestak has leaned on his military service and touted endorsements by two of the state's largest newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has also told the story of his young daughter's successful fight with brain cancer as his motivation for running for Congress in 2006 and backing Obama's signature 2010 health care law.

One wild card is how a third candidate, John Fetterman, will affect the race, even though he trails badly in the polls and fundraising.

He's best-known in western Pennsylvania, where he is the 46 year old mayor of the impoverished steel town of Braddock, about 10 miles outside Pittsburgh. He is 6-foot-8, scowling, bald and tattooed, and his liberal and unconventional campaign — he has dropped in on bars, rock music venues and hookah lounges — has won over some younger voters.

A semi-retired owner of a spring manufacturing shop, Joe Vodvarka, was also added back on the ballot in recent days after a dispute in court over whether he had submitted enough signatures. His family has run his low-profile campaign.
___
Associated Press writer Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

No, Jon Favreau: We Will Not Learn To Love Hillary Clinton

By Dan Wright

The moment has arrived. That moment when the establishment’s sniggering apologists tell those damn idealists that it is time to get with the program and settle for the latest shabby party product or risk going home empty-handed. Hear the eternal refrain: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

There has been a slew of these strident come to Jesus jeremiads from the usual suspects after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York primary. But the latest sermon on submitting to destiny from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau both perfectly encapsulates the mindless DNC Hillary Clinton Campaign talking points, while attempting to provide a how do you do fellow kids credibility because he was part of the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton.

See? Even former rivals for power with future career interests tied to the Democratic Party support Hillary Clinton, you guys.

The substance of the screed is as tired as it is tiresome. Favreau makes a number of claims that fail basic scrutiny when he counsels supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, or “Berniacs” as they are called by The Daily Beast. For instance:
“Maybe you don’t believe that she’s different from the caricature we’ve all helped perpetuate. But she is running a campaign with a policy platform that’s more progressive than her husband’s administration, her 2008 campaign, and—in a few cases—Barack Obama’s administration.”
The problem, of course, is not that Hillary Clinton is not taking progressive positions. The problem is that, given her record, the best analysis of her policy platform is that she is lying about those positions. Now, lying is a strong word and given her profession (politician) let us use a nicer word, bullshitting. Hillary Clinton is bullshitting people on what she will do in office and a large slice of the Democratic Party base knows it.

Favreau supports his previous point by claiming Sanders supporters should essentially declare victory because “Guess what? Bernie Sanders helped make that happen. He helped push Hillary Clinton to the left. And he should keep pushing her if she becomes president.”

Guess what? She’s bullshitting and even her most ardent supporters acknowledge she plans to move rightward for the general election. So, no, she has not been pushed anywhere, she is just saying what she thinks Democratic primary voters want to hear, just as she will change the tune and say what she thinks 51% of the general electorate wants to hear should she become the party’s nominee. That’s not taking a progressive position, Jon, that’s pretending to take progressive position.

But if you bought Favreau’s claim that former Secretary Clinton has really evolved in real time, maybe you will buy his larger analysis of not just this primary race, but all primary races:
“Primaries are often a clash of personalities and magnified policy differences.”
Once again, no. There is no clash of personalities. The antipathy to Hillary Clinton is based on her record. Unless Favreau means to couch Clinton’s notorious dishonesty as a personality difference, which I doubt is what he was implying.

More to the point, there are substantial policy differences between the candidates, as was pointed out in a thorough piece by Professor Matt Karp over at Jacobin, called,  “Against Fortress Liberalism.”

Karp notes that “It’s not just the policy differences that separate Sanders’s blunt social-democratic platform from Clinton’s neoliberal grab bag. The two candidates embody clashing theories of politics — alternative visions of how to achieve progressive goals within the American political system.”

Senator Sanders not only offers a progressive platform that he has a well-demonstrated commitment to, but his theory of change is vastly different than former Secretary Clinton’s. Sanders sees change as coming from social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement he participated in, which uses people power to pressure government officials into making concessions. Clinton claims that she will use her extensive experience in politics and government to personally work the gears of the state apparatus from the inside on behalf of the causes and people she states she cares for.

Say what you will about either approach, but they are far from identical. No magnifying glass necessary, Jon.

Now we move to perhaps the most insidious and oft-repeated argument of all, the trump card if you will:
“A campaign against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz won’t just be a mission to save our country from something terrible, it will be an opportunity to elect a progressive majority and a progressive president who could tip the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation.”
And here is a key point: electing Hillary Clinton as president would be something terrible for our country. To be clear, Hillary Clinton has continually proven to be both malevolent and incompetent while serving in public office (also, arguably, venal).

In her highest foreign policy related post, secretary of state, she was an unmitigated disaster, championing the cause in Libya that even President Obama laments as his biggest foreign policy mistake. The parallels between the intervention in Libya and Iraq are stunning.

If Jon Favreau should remember anything about the 2008 campaign, it is the decisive role Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War played in winning Democrats over to supporting then-Senator Barack Obama, who stood up to the DC bipartisan consensus and spoken out against the Iraq War.

That is not to take away from the innovative and disciplined campaign he ran or his virtues as a candidate, but it would be manifestly dishonest to pretend that the Iraq War issue was not responsible for his rise, and provided him both a sword and shield to use against Hillary Clinton’s (eerily familiar) attacks against him in 2008 based on his foreign policy inexperience.

What is so amazing about Libya is how little Hillary Clinton learned from Iraq, repeating some of the same exact mistakes, along with making new ones.

Ultimately, the decision was President Obama’s, but by all reports it was Secretary of State Clinton leading the charge. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told The New York Times that US involvement in the war was a 51-49 decision, and Clinton made the difference.

The analysis of former Secretary Clinton’s actions on Libya reveal another inconvenient truth: Clinton really does not regret her vote for the Iraq War outside of the political headaches it caused.

She appears, from Iraq to Libya to Honduras and beyond, to genuinely believe in regime change as a perfectly legitimate and acceptable foreign policy tool.

When former Secretary Clinton was confronted on the regime change issue on MSNBC by anchor Chris Matthews she embraced the tool citing the Rwandan genocide and Nazi Germany, where regime change could have saved lives. That she was citing counter-factual examples while Matthews offered real ones from recent history did not appear to have any impact on her reasoning or worldview.

So, yes, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, expect more Iraqs and Libyas and a doubling down on all forms of warfare (drone, cyber) across the board. She is, without question, the war candidate in the Democratic Party and in no way an alternative to a war candidate in the general. If you want four more years of the wars we have going now, plus some new faceplants thrown in, Hillary Clinton is your candidate.

In summation, for those who genuinely support a progressive platform on domestic and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is not qualified. Her record shows her approach to domestic policies is to run to the right while throwing up progressive rhetoric to cover her escape, and her foreign policy would be a return to Bush-era belligerence and incompetence.

In other words, no Jon, we won’t learn to love her, though maybe some of us will hold our noses and vote for her in November if she is the nominee to prevent an even worse candidate from taking over the empire.

Then again, maybe not.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Pat Boone Can’t Take A Joke, Thinks The FCC Should Punish Blasphemy

By Sam Reisman

patboone 

Pat Boone continues his crusade against satire that offends his sensibilities, asserting that the government should punish those who blaspheme against God.

Speaking to Alan Colmes on his radio show Friday, the 81 year old singer/actor/Obama birther was still sore about the SNL parody of the Christian movie God’s Not Dead 2, which Boone appears in.

The sketch skewers the film’s premise — that Christians in America are persecuted — by depicting an evangelical baker who is sued by a gay couple and their Jewish ACLU lawyer because she refuses to admit that “God is gay.”

Speaking to Colmes, Boone rhetorically asked SNL producer Lorne Michaels if he would be all right with a sketch that called his mother a “diseased whore.”

“I mean, that’s just his mom,” Boone said. “What about the God of all creation?”

Boone has been making the media rounds, expressing his moral outrage at the parody. He told the Hollywood Reporter that the SNL skit was “diabolical” and “outright sacrilege.”

“You can mess around with Christians and Christianity but when you start calling God names, God and the Holy Spirit are one and blasphemy is the unforgivable sin,” he said Wednesday on Fox News
On Colmes’ show, Boone went a step further and said that the sort of mockery that impugns God should be punishable by law.

COLMES: Would you like the FCC to declare a show like Saturday Night Live or any other show can’t do that kind of humor?
BOONE: You cannot do blasphemy, yes.
COLMES: You would like the FCC to make that deceleration?
BOONE: Yes!
COLMES: And be punished and fined in some way if they did that kind of humor?
BOONE: I sure do, I do. And I would say at least 90% of the American public would say “Yes, I agree.” And if the public doesn’t have any say about it, it’s the public airwaves.
COLMES: So what should be the punishment then if the FCC says we’re not going to allow this, what would be the proper punishment?
BOONE: Lose license, just like any other law. If you disobey the law, you’re punished for it. And you lose the ability to keep doing it.
COLMES: Well, the show doesn’t get a license, but broadcast stations do. So it’s the stations that would suffer.
BOONE: It’s the network, or whoever is responsible for the shows there should be regulations that prohibit blasphemy. It’s hard to determine exactly what obscenity is, what blasphemy is. But to call God by some profane name, I think that anybody with a rational mind would agree that’s blasphemy.
COLMES: So for calling God a “boob man,” there should be a punishment for that, or “God is gay.”
BOONE: I certainly do.

Friday, April 22, 2016

CNN Steps On Own Dick, Wonders If Prince’s Death Is Good News For Trump And Hillary

http://wonkette.com/600988/cnn-steps-on-own-dick-wonders-if-princes-death-is-good-news-for-trump-and-hillary

Once a thug, always a thug: Donald Trump will never (ever) be presidential

The Republican frontrunner is now getting credit for not insulting his opponents. Has our press been lobotomized?

By

Once a thug, always a thug: Donald Trump will never (ever) be presidentialDonald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)

If you noticed that the last two Sunday mornings were slightly less chaotic on the talk show circuit, that’s because Donald Trump broke with his longstanding TV tradition and did not appear. (He didn’t even call in.) For five months running, Trump had been a fixture on the Sunday shows (he’s made 70 appearances since the beginning of 2015), spouting off endlessly and often creating controversy as producers watched their Trump-fueled ratings climb.

It’s been a win-win for Trump and the press.

The blueprint looked like this: Trump played the role of reality TV star turned-carnival barker while the press cheered him on, feasting off the clicks and audience surges he constantly delivered.

Missing for too long from the equation? In-depth reporting and holding the blustery candidate responsible for his often fact-free statements. “I don’t think he’s been held accountable by the broadcast media for his erroneous statements and repeated lies,” Trump biographer Tim O’Brien tells me.

The author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being Donald, O’Brien gives the press a D- grade for its covering of Trump as a presidential hopeful. He’s especially critical of cable news’ open-door policy of Trump coverage, such as live, unfiltered broadcasts of his rallies. “They give him the backyard to run around and then train their cameras on him to see what happens,” says O’Brien.

But now, Trump is taking a step back and turning down media invitations. He’s also supposedly trying to roll out a new, more “presidential” image.

Will the press take the bait?

There’s no question that there’s been a makeover attempt within the Trump campaign in recent days. According to press reports, longtime political operative Paul Manafort has essentially taken over the campaign. The move has been widely seen as an effort to tighten up the operation. One key trait: pulling Trump out of the media spotlight where he’s been living for the last nine months.

The campaign staff shakeup and Trump’s absence from the Sunday shows “give the impression that campaign veteran Manafort has taken the reigns and directed Trump to scale back on some of the off-the-cuff behaviors that have gotten the campaign negative coverage in the past,” wrote conservative blogger Larry O’Connor.

The new-look Trump was unveiled Tuesday night after his New York primary victory when he gave an unusually succinct victory address and avoided his usual partisan insults.

Right on cue, political commentators swooned over the costume change from Trump, giving him credit for not insulting his opponents and (temporarily) dialing back the buffoonery.



“He actually called him Senator Cruz!” gushed ABC World News Tonight’s David Wright. “The consummate deal-maker changing his sales pitch to close the deal. The tone, more presidential.” (Old habits apparently die hard — within a day, Trump was back to calling Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”)

To repeat, the press gave Trump credit for not brazenly insulting people during his victory speech.

And overnight, the press is hyping as “presidential” a candidate who’s spent the last nine months wallowing in campaign bigotry. Talk about a standard that’s been invented out of whole cloth just for him.

Commentators might be playing up the new, kinder and gentler Trump, “but where’s the evidence” anything has changed, asks Trump biographer O’Brien. So far there is none.

Meanwhile, note that candidates who try to unveil a new look mid-campaign usually get called out by the media’s authenticity police. But there’s been very little of that regarding Trump this week; very little mocking of him for attempting to construct a new public persona on the fly.

We’ll soon know for sure whether Trump has any plans to abandon the thuggery that’s defined his campaign to date. But his absence from the Sunday shows the past two weeks suggests the campaign may be trying to throttle back his media availability to some extent. Instead of dashing in front of television cameras, or speed dialing into news programs, Trump has taken a step back, as witnessed by his recent Sunday show hiatus.

In doubt is whether Trump’s stepping back from his shiny-object media strategy, which the press gladly supported since last summer. “Every time he needs to raise his visibility, change the subject, or respond to an attack, he says something outrageous and the cycle starts again,” wrote Joel Simon at the Columbia Journalism Review.

We’ve seen the drill over and over. He insulted Mexicans! He insulted Sen. John McCain! He insulted Megyn Kelly! He insulted Carly Fiorina! He insulted the Pope! He insulted Ted Cruz’s wife!

Months of news cycles have been robotically handed over to the Trump shiny-object coverage.
That in turn has served as one of the media’s justifications for showering Trump with unprecedented attention: They treat Trump differently because Trump acts so differently!

Trump didn’t act like other politicians, the press claimed. He wasn’t guarded in his comments. He wasn’t surrounded by consultants. Trump was authentic and controversial. Or so goes the argument.

And best of all, Trump gave lots and lots of television interviews. His sound bites demanded unending press attention.

In the unlikely event Trump actually manages to find a softer, more “presidential” tone, and become slightly media shy, will the press dial back its obsessive, celebrity-like coverage, and apply a more critical eye to his wild claims?

Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush."

Thursday, April 21, 2016

After NY loss, Sanders campaign not a united front

Chris Hayes talks with Sanders supporter Sen. Jeff Merkley and Clinton supporter Sen. Sherrod Brown about the impact of the NY primary on the Democratic race.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Elizabeth Warren Spanks Ted Cruz For Whining About His Sacrifices

By Karoli Kuns
Elizabeth Warren Spanks Ted Cruz For Whining About His Sacrifices


Oh, this is glorious. Ted Cruz sent a whiny email out to his supporters about what a "sacrifice" he was making to run for President. So Elizabeth Warren took him to task on her Facebook page, and boy did she spank him.
Yesterday, Ted Cruz sent a campaign fundraising email whining about the “significant sacrifice” he’s made to run for President. He whined about facing constant attacks, nonexistent family time, his limited health and sleep, and having no personal time.
Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to pity him because trying to be the leader of the free world is hard?! I’ve got two words for you, Ted: Boo Hoo.
Know whose health is limited? Workers with no paid leave who can't stay at home when they fall ill or have to care for sick kids. Know whose sleep is limited? Working parents who do everything they can to save money but stay up at night worrying about how do get their kids through college without getting crushed by debt. Know who gets no personal time? People who work two minimum wage jobs to support their families. Know who gets no family time? Moms with unfair schedules who drop their kids off at daycare and drive halfway across town only to find their work hours have been cancelled.

And Ted Cruz? He opposes mandatory paid family and medical leave and calls it "free stuff." He voted against student loan refinancing. He's says the minimum wage is "bad policy" and he's done nothing to try and help workers struggling with unfair work schedules.

And know who’s facing constant attacks, Ted? Hardworking American immigrants, Muslims, LGBT folks, women. They're facing the GOP's constant attacks. They're facing YOUR constant attacks.
Working people are working more and getting paid less. They can't save. Some face mistreatment and discrimination. They can't take time off work for illnesses or to spend time with family. But they don't whine. They don't throw tantrums or try to shut down their workplace because they don't get their way - and then turn around and demand promotions.

Senator Cruz -- you chose to run for President. Working people don't get a choice. Maybe you should spend less time complaining about your "significant sacrifices" -- and more time trying to do something about theirs.

I Voted In New York’s Primary...After 5 Hours And A Court Order

By

In a perfect example of how disastrously run the New York primaries have been, one voter is reporting that his name was deleted from the list of eligible voters despite his registration six months ago. Why? Because his name shares a few of the same letters as another man who lives in a completely different borough.

Ben Gershman, a young voter from Chicago, registered at the New York Department of Motor Vehicles after moving to Ridgewood in Queens six months ago. But when he checked his voter status shortly before today’s election, he found that his name had been taken off the voter list.

“They told me I shared the same initials as a voter in the Bronx, it confused both registrations and I had become de-registered,” Gershman told DNAinfo New York.

Rather than helping Gershman fix this inexplicably frustrating problem at the polls, he was forced to spend hours at the New York City Board of Elections office on Queens Boulevard. Gershman said that by the time he jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops and returned to his poll site in Ridgewood, it took him a total of five and a half hours to cast his ballot.

“It’s insane what I have to do, and I am registered,” he said. “There’s no accountability in the election process.”

In addition to Gershwin’s ordeal, at least 126,000 registered New Yorkers were quietly purged from the voter list, and Comptroller Scott Stringer has vowed to audit the Board of Elections, saying the entire day had been “riddled with chaos and confusion.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio echoed these sentiments, calling for “major reforms” within the Board of Elections.

In a Facebook post, Gershwin urged other voters not to let the system defeat them: “NYC Voters- DON’T settle for an Affidavit Ballot if you’ve been deregistered! I went to the Queens County BOE and stood in front of a judge who gave me a court order. It is your LEGAL RIGHT to vote on a standard ballot. There’s already 126,000 voters confirmed to have been deregistered– corrupt system, corrupt party, corrupt country!”

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

A popular video game now randomizes your race and gender — and many white men are furious


Facepunch Studios


Rust is a popular first-person survival video game where you start out completely naked, left to a barren environment to build yourself tools, weapons, and a home as other players try to do the same — and potentially try to kill you and steal your stuff. It's a tense game, one in which your friends can suddenly turn against you and basically ruin everything you worked for just for their own personal gain.

But it's not the betrayal and tension that has gamers upset with Rust. Instead, it's a new feature recently added to the game, which has 500,000 players each week, by developer Garry Newman:

Your character's gender and race are now randomized. So even if you're a white man in real life, you now may be forced to play a black woman.

Men, particularly white men, are not happy. Newman explained the situation in the Guardian, characterizing the reaction to the change as "extreme":
For race, this seems to be a regional thing. For example, most complaints about being black in the game have generally been from Russian players. With gender it seems to be more of a geography-free complaint.
Here's one of the many messages we've received from disgruntled male players: "Why won't you give the player base an option to choose their gender? I just want to play the game and have a connection to the character like most other games I play. Not have some political movement shoved down my throat because you make the connection we can't choose our gender in reality so let's make it like that in game too."

This is what women and minority gamers have been complaining about for decades


It's totally understandable that some people want to create their characters as they see fit. As someone who enjoys playing role-playing games, if I'm given the option I'll always create a character that I think looks cool. So I can, to some extent, sympathize with this sentiment.

Newman, for his part, says that he just didn't want to spend development resources on a character building tool. And he also sees it as valuable that people are forced to be of a certain race and gender for their entire play-through: Players "should be recognizable consistently and long-term — so anyone likely to commit a crime would be more likely to wear a balaclava or a face mask," Newman wrote.

What's odd, instead, is that these same complaints from male, white gamers would very likely fall on deaf ears if they were made by another group — by, say, a black, Hispanic, or female gamer. After all, originally, everyone on Rust was forced to play a bald white man — and there was no similar uproar.

Or worse, such complaints would fall on actively aggressive ears. Consider Gamergate: The movement began in part as a response to journalists trying to encourage more diversity in the gaming industry — not just by opening the door to more women and minority developers, but also making sure that games reflected the potentially diverse audience playing them. This was widely perceived as such a vitriolic concept to a large group of gamers that they rose up and harassed the journalists and activists pushing for this increase in diversity, which Gamergaters said was an attempt to ruin games with political correctness (which doesn't exist).

Given Gamergate, there's a bit of irony to the Rust controversy.

Take this feedback Newman received from one male gamer: "I just want to play the game and have a connection to the character like most other games I play." What this misses is that this male gamer is able to have a connection to the character he plays in most video games because he's a man.

Meanwhile, minority and women gamers have for a long time just grown to accept that they're probably going to be stuck playing white male heroes if they pick up a mainstream triple-A game.

Newman made this point in his piece for the Guardian:
It's maybe understandable why some male gamers wouldn't want to play as women. They're just not used to being forced to. You could probably count on your fingers the number of major, big-budget games where you have no choice but to play as a woman, never mind having no choice but to play as a black woman. Female gamers are obviously more forgiving — they've been playing games as men for most of their lives.
It's not that these gamers are wrong to be disappointed that they can no longer play as the character they would like in Rust. I agree that character customization is great. The issue is that many of the same people complaining now would probably be rolling their eyes if a Hispanic man or black woman asked why they aren't well-represented in Halo, Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid, The Witcher, The Legend of Zelda, or almost any other triple-A title that's come out over the years.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Still more primary phenomena


ATTENTION New York voters. DO NOT wear Bernie clothing to the polls.

By LiberalArkie



I'm not 100% certain that this is correct, but better safe than sorry. We want to make sure that everybody has the chance the vote, so spread the word.

EDIT: this has been confirmed by a couple of people in the comments. Here is a link more information:

http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4685&context=expresso

Googled, this is from the New York Civil Liberties Union in 2010: Can I wear a political t-shirt or button to the polls? The answer to this question has not been clearly resolved. But to be safe and avoid problems, we recommend that you wear a coat over your t-shirt and put political buttons in your pocket while at your polling place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4f9z50/attention_new_york_voters_do_not_wear_bernie

Saudis Warn US Of Severe Economic Consequences If Congress Passes Bill

Saudis Warn US

Author: John Lester
By
Staff Reporter
Apr. 17, 2016

Saudis warn US that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the its government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon, CNN reports. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated, The Nation noted. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.

President Obama will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and other Saudi officials. It is unclear whether the dispute over the Sept. 11 legislation will be on the agenda for the talks.

Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot, the New York Daily News reported.

Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.

The dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial American ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Last week, two senators introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on American arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama administration.

Families of the Sept. 11 victims have used the courts to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.

The Christian Broadcasting Network said the Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.