Senator Claire McCaskill sent me this email for obvious ulterior motives. See my previous post Sign the petition: Denounce Democrats who voted for Fast Track.
I responded to her in email:
Your past record does not absolve you of the crime of being one of 13 Democratic Senators who are turncoats, and TPP enablers. I have recorded your name on my blog so that my readers and I won’t forget what you did.
I also responded on her Facebook page.
The Daily Kos has a call to Sign the petition: Denounce Democrats who voted for Fast Track.
One of the most important pieces of information from the call to sign the petition is the list of Democrats who sold us all down the river.
13 Democratic Senators: Feinstein (CA), Bennet (CO), Coons (DE), Carper (DE), Nelson (FL), McCaskill (MO), Heitkamp (ND), Shaheen (NH), Wyden (OR), Warner (VA), Kaine (VA), Murray (WA) & Cantwell (WA).
28 House Democrats: Sewell (AL-07), Bera (CA-07), Costa (CA-16), Farr (CA-20), Peters (CA-52), Davis (CA-53), Polis (CO-02), Himes (CT-04), Wasserman-Schultz (FL-23), Quigley (IL-05), Delaney (MD-06), Ashford (NE-02), Rice (NY-04), Meeks (NY-05), Bonamici (OR-01), Blumenauer (OR-03), Schrader (OR-05), Cooper (TN-05), Hinojosa (TX-15), O’Rourke (TX-16), Cuellar (TX-28), Johnson (TX-30), Beyer (VA-08), Connolly (VA-11), DelBene (WA-01), Larsen (WA-02), Kilmer (WA-06) & Kind (WI-03.)
A so-called Democrat in Sturbridge thinks Mark Warner would be a good vice President for Hillary Clinton. That’s two strikes against his choices for the top offices in the land. I knew Waner was not the kind of person I would ever vote for, but I didn’t have any recent behaviors of his that I could point to. Voting for TPP is enough all by itself to keep me from ever voting for him in any capacity.
As a former resident of Oregon, I can remember how quickly I learned that voting for the “Progressive” Ron Wyden was a mistake. He took some very anti-progressive stances as soon as he got into office. I thought Earl Blumenauer was a much better replacement when Wyden moved up to the Senate. I am doubly disappointed to find out he was a turncoat, too.
I think Bernie Sanders’ record and history will protect me from having to rue the day I supported him.
Home of the Brave has a Podcast About Bernie Sanders in Iowa.
Home of the Brave is a podcast by Peabody Award winning producer Scott Carrier. Each week, new stories from the archives, the road, and the end of the world.
I found it to be an interesting podcast consisting of a Bernie Sanders speech in Iowa, and then some interviews with people who attended those speeches.
Here is one of the pictures from the web site.
Bernie Sanders supporters at the UAW union hall in Marshalltown, Iowa, July 13, 2015.
Thanks to RomoloR for sending me the link to this podcast.
PC World has the article Why big open-source projects are fleeing SourceForge’s free software hub.
SourceForge’s distasteful junkware-pushing antics have soured open-source projects on the one-time free software titan.
Distasteful is putting it mildly. I am glad I saw this article. I thought SourceForge was a brand that could be trusted. I am glad I found out about this. I have managed to pick up some junkware that I just noticed and eliminated. It’s hard to know where I got it. It’s been on my computer for quite a while. If you see stij.exe running on your computer, it is easy to get rid of without buying software removal tools that you don’t know if you can trust. The trick is to boot your computer in safe mode so that stij.exe is not running when you try to delete it.
Naked Capitalism has published the article 15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World.
But for more than a year before Hillary Clinton launched her latest presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has been selectively telling media outlets that he made some mistakes as president and might have acted otherwise. He’s even tried to recast actual events and been taken to task by fact-checkers who recall his leading role in what became major crises, such as the 2008 global financial implosion.
Here is the list of items you can read about in the article.
1. Prison-loving president.
2. Punitive welfare reform.
3. Wall Street’s Deregulator-in-Chief.
4. Gutted manufacturing via trade agreements.
5. No LGBT equality: Defense of Marriage Act.
6. Expanded the war on drugs.
7. Expanded the death penalty.
8. Returned to Cold War priorities.
9. Joycelyn Elders and the culture war.
10. Turning Lincoln Bedroom into fundraising condo.
11. Bombed Sudanese pharmaceutical plant.
12. Doubled down on Iraq sanctions.
13. Political smears: Sistah Souljah.
14. Knew about coming Rwandan genocide.
15. Escalated America’s foreign drug wars.
Just to pick one item at random, 2. Punitive welfare reform, at the time he did this, I thought that he might get away with putting lifetime limits on welfare benefits during a booming economic bubble, but what is going to happen to people when the bubble bursts? Well, now we know. This man had absolutely no ability to care about the consequences of his actions as long as the consequences were some one else’s problem.
Maybe the Clinton’s could stand to read another article that Naked Capitalism published, Bill Black: A Harvard Don is Enraged that Pope Francis is “Opposed to the World Economic Order”
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
Jesus’ answer – the answer the young man thought he wished to receive more than anything in the world – the secret of eternal life, causes the young man great distress.
But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
The young man rejects eternal life because he cannot bear the thought of giving his “great possessions” to “the poor.”
The Clinton’s seem to have done a good job of amassing great wealth since Bill Clinton left office. Do you think he is foreseeing this consequence in his afterlife? It is not that I have turned into a religious believer, it’s that the Clintons claim to be believers.
Naked Capitalism has the article A New Bank Boycott Movement Starting?
One of the county supervisors of California’s Santa Cruz County recommended that the county end, to the extent possible, its business dealings with the four banks that had admitted to criminal conduct in a settlement with the Department of Justice and paid a total of $6 billion in fines.
You might want to compare this behavior of a county in California with the behavior we get from the current leaders and media in Boston. Here are a few of my posts that you can look at for comparison.
The only way the truth about the MBTA could slip into The Boston Globe is in the opinion piece Baker exploits MBTA’s winter woes to push ill-conceived reform by Larry Hanley.
Summer is here, but Governor Baker is still exploiting Bostonians’ frustration with last winter’s blizzard breakdown of public transit to push through an MBTA reform package that will jeopardize the service, safety, and affordability of Boston’s bus and rail service.
The brief bio at the end of the piece says, “Larry Hanley is international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union.” If you hadn’t read my background comments on the Globe’s culpability, you might have just dismissed this opinion piece as biased self-interest. Maybe that is why they let it slip into the “newspaper”. Neat trick to appear fair and balanced, but actually trying to manipulate your opinion. More subtle than Faux Noise, and therefore more pernicious.
We have been amazed at how the hummingbirds can go through three feeders full of nectar every day. I think we found the explanation.
Two teaspoons of hummingbird food to the first person who correctly identifies the perpetrator. You’ll have to pick it up yourself. No deliveries.
Comedy Central has the video Charleston Church Shooting.
Jon addresses a racially motivated shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., which took the lives of nine parishioners.
Talking Points Memo has the article Why Conservatives Still Won’t Admit That Charleston Was A Racist Crime.
At this point, Roof’s bigotry has become clear in myriad ways. Yet as late as this afternoon, when cornered by a reporter and asked if the shooting was racially motivated, presidential candidate Jeb Bush said “I don’t know.” This means Bush is either incapable of basic logic, or he has willfully decided to blind and deafen himself to one of the nation’s biggest problems.
Further in the article the author, Aurin Squire, mentioned something that pokes me in the eye when I see it.
It is no secret that one of the baubles of the conservative movement is the Confederate flag, which appeared on Roof’s license plate. It is a symbol of white supremacy and slavery, and it is also a symbol that is a part of South Carolina’s official government as the flag flies in the capital. When questioned about her state’s continued support for it, Governor Haley shrugged it off.
Southerners can give a wink and a nod, or maybe a shrug, when they tell you what the flag means to them. I don’t care if they believe in their own bs or not. I know what it means to me. To Sharon, it means rescind your offer on a house in Florida when the neighborhood has too many of these flags. The Southern reaction to our decision on the house would probably be, “Good. I guess the flag served its purpose.” It is hard enough to live amongst a bunch of central Massachusetts conservatives. In the south, many of these people would be thought of as flaming liberal Yankees, but some of them would be thought of as kindred spirits.
The Ready For Warren organization sent me an email about a big announcement. The gist of the email is embodied in their CNN opinion piece.
Talking about members of the Ready For Warren campaign, the article said the following:
They are also ready to back “Warren Wing” candidates who embody Warren’s fearless brand of progressive populism. And although it isn’t just about the presidency, 58% of supporters have urged us to back Bernie Sanders as the candidate currently running for president who best embodies the values that Warren champions.
I am firmly in that 58% who urged the support of Bernie Sanders. The article explained why the creation of a new organization to back Sanders.
Why?
Because while Warren is the champion who inspired this movement, the draft effort was never just about her — it’s about her message and the values she represents.
This is pretty darn close to the exact words I used in many an email and opinion survey answers that I directed to Ready For Warren. What is left unsaid in the article is that of the 42% who did not suggest backing Bernie Sanders, how many of those just did not mention the topic of supporting another candidate. I don’t think that those who do not want to back Bernie Sanders is anywhere near that 42%