Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Once upon a time a person’s political career could be damaged, even ended, by the simplest of things; misspelling a common vegetable, looking at your watch during a debate, a stray tear after an emotional question, a roar of enthusiasm that came across sounding a bit dorky…
Not any more, apparently. Now, you can call your constituents fat and tell them they should vote for somebody else, you can totally make up endorsements, you can vote against everything your constituents want and nothing happens.
So, I don’t expect Elizabeth Warren’s latest examples of fake outrage and an outright lie to push her out of the race. On the other hand, since she’s slipping in the polls anyway, this isn’t going to help her any.
Especially since it was two incidents in one day. First, she took umbrage at the perceived fact that Bernie’s canvassers in Iowa were instructed to say “I like Warren, she’s my second choice, but since all her voters are white and college educated she brings no one new into the party.” On the one hand, I don’t see what’s so bad about saying that because it’s true.
On the other and far more important hand the whole story turned out not to be true. One canvasser posted something like that to a Bernie site and it was taken down almost immediately. So, she grabbed at something without any substance, and even that something was non-existent.

An embarrassing screw-up, but nothing totally disqualifying, I suppose.

Then, a story came out – from unnamed ‘sources’ but they were Warren staffers, that Bernie had told Warren (a couple of years ago) that he didn’t think a woman could get elected president. That is bad. That is not the kind of thing Bernie would say at all, and he says he didn’t.
So, while Warren can just say she wasn’t the source of the story, she was involved in the conversation and could admit it never happened and apologize on behalf of her overzealous staffers. Or not, because she’s desperate for anything that will help her do well in Iowa.
I hope this backfires on her big time. But I’m not holding my breath.

This is a bit tangential to my main point, but this morning I was starting to get a bit paranoid as every time I typed Bernie Sanders into Google, I kept getting the most anti-Bernie sites popping up, like the Wall St. Journal and Fox News and shit, so I tried DuckDuckGo and I think it was a bit of an improvement.
Admittedly, the experiment is not terribly scientific, less than a day old, and subject to some level of confirmation bias, but I’ll try it for a while and see how it goes.

Now to my main subject. I’ve seen a few articles saying “Bernie has a new strategy,” and “the gloves are off” which I kind of like because it sounds feisty and all and I’m all about negativity when it comes to candidates I don’t like, but it’s not really happening like that.
Bernie is still focusing on his own, very positive message and even when he lists all the bad things Joe Biden has ever voted for and says that Trump will eat his lunch, he prefaces his comments with “I like Joe, I really do, he’s a friend of mine.” It’s never a personal attack and it’s not Bernie’s fault if Biden’s record is atrocious. It’s not Bernie’s fault that Liz Warren is a corporatist tool who has financial relations/family ties with the for-profit health industry. It’s not Bernie’s fault if Pete Buttigieg has no political experience other than being the racist mayor of a mid-sized Indiana town.
Bernie tries to keep friendly with all of them. Even Andrew Yang, whose views are actually closer to Rand Paul’s than they are to anybody in the Democratic Party. Bernie said to him “I’m glad you’re in the primary, you bring some good ideas.”
Bernie is a stand up guy. He has always run a fair and decent campaign, and he is continuing to do so.

Much has been made about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step back from the spotlight a bit, maybe hide out somewhere in North America for a while, and try to not be so royal. Some people are calling it Megxit. Much has been made of it by the Queen, for sure, who’s summoned a big family meeting about how they’re going to deal with this going forward. She’s a bit hacked off, reportedly, that they made the announcement on social media first.
I don’t really care what the royals do. (which may seem a bit ironic, because I’m writing a blog about how much I don’t care about this issue, but there you have it) I don’t care what the royals do, but that was maybe a bit much. It’s like announcing online that you’ve got a new job, or are moving house, or are really sick of your mother breathing down your neck all the time, and then she reads it and gets all mad because you didn’t talk to her first, but really she’s just mad because you are a heartless son who doesn’t care about her at all.
But, really, it’s no big deal. They did say they’d always support the Queen, and charitable causes, and England and such. And Harry is nowhere near succession to the throne. I think he’s like 5th or 6th in line.
So, go forth into the real world, Harry and Meghan. Have a good time. I wish you all the luck in the world.

Just read an article from the National Review (dot com) about how Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is refusing to pay her ‘dues’ to the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) which they say amounts to $250,000.
Where is this $250,000 supposed to come from? Out of her congressional salary which is 174,000 per year? That would be a bit harsh. Is every congressperson expected to pay the same dues? If so, that would be well over 50 million dollars. Do governors, and state congresspeople have to pay dues? Must add up to a hell of a war chest, which the DCCC could just sit on until the general election, instead of trying to support one Democratic candidate over another, and we’d all be better off.
The answers to these, and many other questions, are not in the National Review article, which is just interested in ‘Democratic Leadership and AOC hate each other,’ which is what drives readership. Everybody loves to watch a fight.
My greatest question is why do the DCCC (and the DNC) insist on getting involved in the primaries, which are theoretically made up of Democratic candidates vying with each other to see who would be the best candidate to run in the general election. And the best way to choose the strongest candidate is to have an open, fair election.
The DCCC should just shut up and, perhaps, cease to exist. For the good of the party.

The Americans say the Iranians shot down the Ukrainian jet today, bound for Kiev, which exploded shortly after takeoff.
Excuse my skepticism, but after WMDs, the Kuwaiti incubator story, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and so on, I’m inclined to believe the Americans are lying. At any rate, I’m going to need a lot more than “U.S. officials are confident…” or “17 U.S. intelligence agencies agree…” Well, of course they do. Their job is to agree and I’m pretty sure at least 16 of them are totally redundant.
The Iranians have denied it completely. Ali Abedzadeh, head of the Iranian Civilian Aviation Association said it was ‘physically impossible’ and a ‘ridiculous charge.’ Well, that’s not entirely so, either. If a missile was fired and it struck the plane, that is entirely physically possible. It is the reason anti-aircraft missiles exist.
Still, I can’t see why Iran would have any motive. It looked like WWIII had been averted, cooler heads were beginning to prevail, so why?
Some people are saying it may have been an accident. Pretty tragic, but possible. If the missiles were loaded and ready, because of the state of emergency caused by Soleimani’s assassination, then all it would take is somebody setting their coffee down on the wrong button and uh-oh, international incident.
So, which ones should we believe? We should probably wait for the aircraft investigations team to finish their investigation, and stop listening to politicians.
FWIW, here’s my solution: nothing was done about it when the U.S. shot down an Iranian civilian plane a few years back. Let’s treat this incident exactly the same.