Get More Smarter on Tuesday (July 7)

6 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Tuesday (July 7)”

1. In the Aurora Sentinel story brief mention of the blackmail charge is followed by…. 

   Coffman’s wife, Cynthia Coffman, was just last year elected Colorado attorney general. She was recently drawn into a state Republican Party quagmire over allegations that she and former 6th CD Congressman Tom Tancredo sought to blackmail state party chief Steve House to force him out. Cynthia Coffman has denied the claims, saying she discussed rumors of an alleged affair with House as a way to get his attention. All sides seek to scuttle the issue now.

   That sounds kind of meh. Carroll herself doesn't mention it. Doubt her campaign will want to make much of it. Also no mention of the other alleged damaging material you guys breathlessly report from time to time, Coffman's role heading the sub committee tasked with oversight of the VA hospital construction fiasco.  Once again, wouldn't expect to see attacks based on that having much of a role in her campaign. But keep trying, I guess. Maybe somebody besides the choir will eventually share your enthusiasm?

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2. Dumb and Dumber attempts at a quaint "Red Scare"

   The outdated and impotent attempts to scare voters away from Bernie Sanders by calling him a socialist aren't having the effect the DC and Democratic establishment would like. 

   Dem Senator Claire McCaskill was first out of the block with the pro-Hillary talking point:

   In an appearance on “Morning Joe,” McCaskill likened Sanders to other “extreme” candidates of past cycles, adding that she believes the media is giving the “socialist” presidential candidate too much latitude.

   “I think the media is giving Bernie a pass right now. I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist,” McCaskill told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

   Next up is Kathleen Parker, a vicious right-winger with a feminine touch, in the Denver Post:

   Stranger things have happened in American politics, but the sudden surge of Democratic/Populist Bernie Sanders and Republican/Pompulist Donald Trump puts one in mind of alternate universes.

   And I don't mean Miss Universes.

   Both men are holding second place in some polls behind Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, respectively. And both are steadily ascending in the polls at a greater pace than anyone could have predicted — or imagined.

   Sanders, a socialist running on a platform that should send shivers up the spines of most Americans, drew the largest crowd of the season — nearly 10,000 — in Madison, Wisc., last Wednesday. The anti-establishment candidate, who wants to break up big banks and redistribute wealth, makes President Obama (and Clinton) look like robber barons by comparison.

   Although Madison is a liberal college town and Sanders' record crowd could be rationalized accordingly, poll after poll shows him closing the gap with Clinton. 

   Nice trick, lumping Sanders, who's won multiple state wide elections and who has been a dedicated public servant his entire life, in with the virulent and hypocritical Trump. And calling them both "populist" to keep that term a pejorative is another thing.

   Since we probably haven't called him a socialist enough, howzabout we get Politico in on the game?

   Politico often embodies the worst of American political journalism, but this is bad even by those standards. "The socialist surge," the headline reads, continuing with the subhed "The rise of Bernie Sanders is proving awkward for the Democratic Party." What's awkward for Politico and the four reporters who contributed to the piece is that not one actual Democrat is quoted saying that they feel awkward about the rise of Bernie Sanders.

   Well, what the reporters can't produce the headline writer can try to push. 

   But if Bernie's a Big, Bad Socialist and should be scaring away the average American, how to explain these?

   It's important to note that Sanders didn't need billions of dollars to earn the trust of voters in New Hampshire, or cut Hillary's lead to only 8 points. Since he voted againstthe Iraq War and has spent a lifetime championing progressive issues while others waivered (Hillary was against gay marriage until 2013, voted for the Iraq War, pushedfor the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and supported Keystone XL), Bernie Sanders doesn't need to prove he's a progressive. Voters know what they're getting with Vermont's Senator. In contrast, Hillary Clinton rarely offers a direct answer on why she failed to champion certain causes when they weren't popular.

   And…

   Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has raised about $15 million since it launched in late April, aides to the campaign told CNN on Thursday.

   The aides added that the 400,000 donations came from about 250,000 individual donors. The average donation was $33.51 and 99% of donations were under $250.

   And the rank idiocy of Republican Bobby Jindal:

   One need only look to Greece to see how a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders presidency would turn out, Bobby Jindal wrote Monday.

   The Republican presidential candidate and Louisiana governor, who on Sunday warned that Clinton and President Barack Obama were putting the United States “on the path toward socialism,” sees parallels between the debt-fueled economic meltdown in Greece and America’s future course under Democratic leadership.
   hh

   Maybe the fact that R's and Cons have called Obama a "socialist" for 7 years, and the sad fact that very few Dems pushed back at that oft-repeated lie, has given the term a new definition of "a moderate, willing to compromise, patient politician with a conservative economic philosophy and a liberal social philosphy, yet one who's willing to stand of for a few core principles."

   Or maybe voters are smarter than Politico and Parker and McCaskill think they are and know what Bernie is fighting for and what he's fighting against. 

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   1. Good point about GOP redefining/conditioning us to the term "Socialist".  Maybe voters are saying, "Well, if Obama is a socialist and he saved us from a depression, we sure could use more of that!"

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      1. Most of the T Party lies are biting them in the ass now…..the birther stuff, the socialist stuff,the "not a citizen" stuff, the death panel lies, the comin' for your guns lies….See the Boy who Cried Wolf….Eventually, nobody believes them anymore.

         Except for the very few that live in a conspiracy bubble, and they scare me, because they tend to be well-armed and paranoid.

         A FB "friend" is one of my ex's old buddies…he is completely convinced that Islam is a fake religion, that they are all jihadists who will cut off your head as soon as look at you. I think I convinced him that Obama wasn't wearing a secret ISIS decoder ring by showing him a photo of the ordinary ring, but for the rest of it…nope, I'm a naive liberal and all Muslims are scary, evil people.

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         1. My ex-nephew-in-law owns a .50 caliber machine gun (amazingly, you can get a permit).  As the son of Cuban refugees, he still dreams of leading an invasion to "free" Cuba.  Of course, he's comfortable in his suburban Atlanta home drawing a paycheck from the despised, oppressive government (in the water department — such a hazardous job that he also packs a pistol in his car and on his person at all times /snark).

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   2. While Bernie does call himself something like a Socialist Democrat or Democratic Socialist (I forget the exact term but he put socialist in there), the polls say his policies are very main stream and pretty close to the 1956 Ozzie and Harriet era Republican platform. Most agree that banks too big to fail are too big to succeed, that the rich should pay more taxes (guess Reagan era top tier taxes must be the kind of radical wealth redistribution Parker is frothing about) and with most of the other quite sensible positions this "extremist" takes.

      If Bernie hadn't labeled himself as socialist it would be hard for anyone to make the case that he's anything but traditional garden variety liberal. Unfortunately he did and, once again, this Jewish girl is here to tell you that the possibility that our next President, or even Dem nominee, is going to be an old Jew with the identifier "socialist" attached is less than nil. Maybe not in the future but right now, nil

      But far from doing damage, he's doing Dems a whole lot of good. Maybe our scaredy cat, please don't hate me because I'm not a conservative Republican, DLC triangulating (that worked once for Bill Clinton in a now bygone era) Dem pols will finally look at what the public has been telling them this century and realize they can stop curling up into fetal position at every Republican name calling attack, hit back hard and campaign from a position of strength as, you know, actual Dems who are proud of being Dems, proud of not believing in conservative economic nonsense theory, proud of being different from, not almost like, today's idiotic Republicans.

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