The Big Damn Pause Button

Today we have smoking gun PROOF of Trump campaign collusion with Russia to throw the Presidential election and steal the Presidency. Congress must stop. We have an illegitimate government. It appears that the corruption may also involve current members of the Senate and House. Government must pause until this is resolved.

Contact your congressperson and your senator. Tell them that you want to no bills consider, no laws passed, no votes taken, nothing done until our Democracy has been restored.

Dare to Dream

From Five Thirty Eight, placed here without comment:

No to Tim kaine

Hillary must not pick Tim Kaine as her Vice President. Kaine is too hawkish (which underscores a big problem with Clinton). Further, he is anti abortion rights. He brags about cutting taxes, including estate taxes (that was a big gift to the wealthy at the expense of the working and middle class). Kaine is a bad idea. A disaster!

It must be Biden #letjoestay

There is only one rational choice to be Hillary Clinton's Vice President: Joe Biden. Joe is the most qualified, has the best teeth and (honestly) is much too old and set in his ways to get a new job. Do you really want to make him pack? Joe Biden for VP! Join the revolution, people.

#letjoestay

Marco Rubio is a Scandal 'Bot

It seems that Marco Rubio wants to Unseat The TRUMP and become the Republican Nominee in order to face either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. I hope he does. He is an oppo researcher's wet dream. Here are a few links, just for fun!


Marco Rubio has some issues that

should hurt his whitehouse bid.

There's this

and drug lords

and such

and real estate

which isn't going away

and the credit cards

and his arest record

which does not look good for a "values" Republican.

and these are the tip of the Marco Rubio Scandal iceberg

Trump v Cruz

Vox discusses why some of the GOP elite seem to prefer Trump to Cruz. They get it dead wrong. The reason the Bob Dole wing of the Republican party prefers Donald Trump over Ted Cruz is simple. Trump can't win, Cruz possibly could.

The calculation is this: Trump on the top of the ballot guarantees that Hillary Clinton (or Berni Sanders) becomes president and likely gives control of congress back to the Democrats. Dole et al think that the Republican party can survive that over the long term.

On the other hand, a Cruz candidacy is likely to create the same effect, but there is a small chance that Cruz could win. A Cruz presidency would wreck the economy for a generation. It would be a disaster of diplomacy. The nation would almost certainly enter into at least one new war. Our allies would possibly abandon us. We would come very close to becoming a failed state. And no other Republican could be elected president in generations.
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That is their fear. It is a rational fear.

The Last Debate

At the risk of sounding tautological, Clinton lost by not winning. The trends aren't in her favor at the moment. Sanders is gaining in Iowa and is starting to be treated like a serious candidate by the press. Her attempts to attack Sanders's support for single-payer health care this week were widely perceived as backfiring, especially among liberal primary voters who might be tempted to support Clinton out of practicality. She needed to a debate in which she could show that Sanders was out of his depth, not someone you could plausibly see actually functioning as president. She didn't do that this time around.

Vox

It seems pretty clear that Sanders won this debate. Will it be enough to push him over the top in Iowa?

I agree, but still choose to argue because I'm like that.

I agree very much with this article, but I do have a bit of a quibble with this statement:

[Hillary Clinton is] the woman who has been the target of possibly the greatest amount of sexism and misogyny over the course of a single political career.

While it could be argued that that statement is true, only the length and profile of that career makes it so. In any given female politician's career she will likely suffer at least as much sexism as Ms Clinton has, if we break it down on a year by year basis. Sadly, female politicians in this country face outsize hatred from the right (and sometimes the center as well). I don't think Secretary Clinton's experience is notably worse than that of any woman in Democratic politics.

Women on the right tend to get a bit of a pass from the rightwing pundits and pols. Ann Coulter will never have it as tough as Rachel Maddow. Olympia Snowe with never suffer what Debbie Wasserman-Schultz does. That's sort of a given.