Democratic U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are scheduled to take the stage at back-to-back MSNBC-televised town halls in Philadelphia Monday evening, just a day before Pennsylvania voters head to the polls. As in past town halls, both candidates will answer questions by the moderators as well as by prospective voters in the audience. Live streams of both town hall events can be viewed by clicking here or by watching below.
Sanders’ hourlong session will be hosted by MSNBC host Chris Hayes, beginning at 8 p.m. EDT. Rachel Maddow will moderate an hourlong session with Clinton immediately afterward, starting at 9 p.m. EDT.
Pennsylvania is among five states with presidential primary elections Tuesday, along with Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. Excluding superdelegates, Clinton has a comfortable lead with 1,428 delegates, while Sanders has 1,153 delegates.
According to opinion polling, Clinton is projected to do well Tuesday. Sanders’ best chance is in Rhode Island. There are a combined 384 delegates at stake for Democrats Tuesday. Many in the party will be watching Pennsylvania, with 210 delegates, and Maryland, with 118 delegates.
Sanders has no real path to the nomination at this point but is still in the race.
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Populist insurgencies usually get ugly. We’ve got two campaigns that are pretty representative of that assertion. I’m a veteran of a lot of political shenanigans and ugliness having run against a mean ass outsider in my day. People that only see themselves and their “movements” as some savior of society are willing to do and say just about anything. That goes for the kinds of people they attract to the campaign also. I’ve seen some ugly ass comments coming from surrogates this year that really have made my stomach churn. I know this isn’t a particularly cheery topic but since New York, all I see is two campaigns resplendent with hostile, angry people, candidates, surrogates, and staff. It’s beginning to feel a lot like a Nixon campaign.
We knew it would probably get ugly when Donald Trump started surging. He’s been friends with two of the worst Nixon ratfuckers that ever lived. How could you possibly trust a guy with mentors like Roy Cohn and Roger Stone to be anything but a mean, nasty piece of work? Jeffrey Toobin scored an interview with Stone for the New Yorker. All that’s missing is Donald Segretti when it comes to the Trump Equation.
Roger Stone, the political provocateur, visited the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel on primary day last week to reminisce about his long friendship with Donald Trump. It started in 1979, when Stone was a twenty-six-year-old aide in Ronald Reagan’s Presidential campaign. Michael Deaver, a more senior campaign official, instructed Stone to start fund-raising in New York. “Mike gave me a recipe box full of index cards, supposedly Reagan’s contacts in New York,” Stone said. “Half the people on the cards were dead. A lot of the others were show-business people, but there was one name I recognized—Roy Cohn.” So Stone presented himself at the brownstone office of Cohn, the notorious lawyer and fixer.
“I go into Roy’s office,” Stone continued, “and he’s sitting there in his silk bathrobe, and he’s finishing up a meeting with Fat Tony Salerno,” the boss of the Genovese crime family. Stone went on, “So Tony says, ‘Roy here says we’re going with Ree-gun this time.’ That’s how he said it—‘Ree-gun.’ Roy told him yes, we’re with Reagan. Then I said to Roy that we needed to put together a finance committee, and Roy said, ‘You need Donald and Fred Trump.’ He said Fred, Donald’s father, had been big for Goldwater in ’64. I went to see Donald, and he helped to get us office space for the Reagan campaign, and that’s when we became friends.”
Stone is now sixty-two, and he’s allowed his hair, which used to be a kind of yellow, to evolve into a shade more suitable for an éminence grise than for an enfant terrible. He has played roles in many of his generation’s political dirty-tricks scandals. He was just nineteen when he had a bit part in Watergate; he sent campaign contributions in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance to the campaign of Pete McCloskey, who was running against Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination in 1972. Almost three decades later, he helped choreograph the so-called Brooks Brothers riot, which shut down the Bush v. Gore recount in Miami-Dade County.
This is one of the reasons I groan when a member of the Bernie cult tries to tell me that Charles Koch is “backing” Hillary Clinton. How
much we’ve forgotten of the Nixon years. How much we need to pay closer attention to the connections between the old Nixon CREEPS and Trump. Nixon evidently even had a thing for Trump when he appeared on a Phil Donahue segment back in the day.
At the time, Trump was only 41 but was already a New York media darling. The Art of the Deal had just come out, which would make him a national figure. Most of the interview isn’t about politics, but the parts that are are very Nixon-friendly. Trump defends Nixon and his father against allegations that they discriminated against black tenants, and talks admiringly of Roy Cohn, the right-wing lawyer most famous for prosecuting theRosenbergs and serving as Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel in the Senate.
“The one thing I’ll say about Roy is that he was an extremely loyal guy,” Trump says. “Loyalty is a great trait.”
The prospect of Trump running for office comes up again and again:
Donahue: You tell us also in your book that you left Queens and you left Brooklyn for Manhattan to get away from rent control! You’re honest to tell us in this book.
Trump: I’m honest. Hey, I’m not running for anything, Phil, I’m not running for office. I don’t have to lie in a book. I want to tell the facts, okay? Do you want me to say little fibs and little this and little that, and how much we all love rent control and what a great thing it’s been for New York? It’s been a disaster for New York, it’s badly hurt New York, it’s crippled New York.
Trump follows that up by engaging in the kind of political rhetoric that he’s perfected over the past year: populist while simultaneously drawing upon his own power as an elite. He condemns rent control for primarily helping the politically well-connected, bragging in the process that he has those connections (“it’s the people with the connections — somebody knows Trump, somebody knows somebody else, they call up and say, ‘Do me a favor,’ that’s what it’s all about”).
Pardon me for citing the National Review, but they see it too.
Richard Nixon might have been right at home in the bully-boy politics of today. As a young candidate, Nixon conducted what he called “rock ’em, sock ’em” campaigns. Donald Trump sometimes seems to be channeling Nixon in his pursuit of “the silent majority,” a phrase coined by Nixon. Trump would be lucky to do as well as Nixon did in attracting voters with his populist rhetoric. While winning a second term in a landslide in 1972, Nixon got the votes of 35 percent of self-described Democrats — many of them lower-middle-class blue-collar whites.
Trump also seems to suggest that he would be like Nixon in another way: as a deal maker. This side of Nixon sometimes gets overlooked, but it is worth examining as Republicans (and possible the country as a whole come November) contemplate whether Trump would be a good president. As president, Nixon was willing to compromise. Democrats controlled Congress, so Nixon worked with their leaders to pass a raft of environmental and social-welfare legislation. In part, Nixon was being politically opportunistic. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine hoped to ride the nascent environmental movement to the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House in 1972. Nixon saw a chance to outflank Muskie by creating the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon was not just posturing — he really did want to get things done. In his crafty way, Nixon was willing to outmaneuver his own subordinates. He told Chris DeMuth, a young aide assigned to write up the new environmental-law regulations (and later president of the American Enterprise Institute), to steer clear of Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, a prolific Nixon fund-raiser who was closely allied with big industry. “I’ll take care of Stans,” said Nixon, and he did, keeping him away from the rule-making process.
Nixon’s capacity to play to the emotions of voters while still governing effectively was best displayed in his approach to civil rights. In 1968 and 1972, Nixon employed what was called the GOP’s “southern strategy.” Appealing to southern Democrats (then the majority), Nixon loudly inveighed against forced busing to integrate schools. To liberals, he seemed to be pandering to racists. But with Nixon it was important, as his attorney general, John Mitchell, said, “to watch what we do, not what we say.” Working quietly behind the scenes to overcome resistance to federal court orders, Nixon set up citizens’ committees in each of the Deep South states to integrate the schools. When Nixon became president, 70 percent of black kids in the Deep South attended segregated schools. Within three years only 10 percent did.
Perhaps in today’s noisy and instantaneous media environment, Nixon could not have gotten away with such politically deft sleight of hand. Nixon, who was always muttering that “the press is the enemy,” did not have to contend with bloggers or cable-news talking heads. Nixon wrote many of his own speeches (including the “silent majority” speech) but was cunning about using the right speechwriter to set the tone he wanted in any particular moment — Pat Buchanan for red-meat populism, Ray Price for high-minded good governance. Still, sometimes he was too clever by half, especially when trying to be both a hawk and a dove on Vietnam.
Bernie Sanders’ lone Senate endorser on Monday rejected the notion that the recent comments made by one of the candidate’s celebrity surrogates represents more than an isolated, inflammatory incident.
“No. This is individuals going off track on their own,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in an interview with CNN’s “New Day,” addressing actress Rosario Dawson’s invocation of Monica Lewinsky against bullying while introducing Sanders over the weekend in Delaware.
Such remarks are “not helpful to the campaign, and it’s certainly not in keeping with what Bernie wants to see.”
“Those are complete distractions. They take away from the conversation about core policy issues. In a campaign you have many people who step forward on your behalf. They come out with some things that go off track,” Merkley said. “Hopefully everything I say will be on track, because I do believe that this is a conversation about so many important issues.”
Dawson’s comments are not the first from a Sanders surrogate to have raised eyebrows among those on the Hillary Clinton campaign and beyond. For example, when actor Tim Robbins compared Clinton’s victory in South Carolina as “about as significant” as winning the island of Guam, the territory’s lone congressional delegate and former first lady fired back, pledging her support to Clinton ahead of the May 7 primary. Robbins later apologized, saying he did not intend to make light of the territory’s lack of full voting representation.
For his part, Sanders declined to directly address Dawson’s comments about Lewinsky on Sunday, praising the actress in a CNN interview for doing a “great job” in discussing the “real issues” facing the country.
Bernie’s silence on the matter screams a lot about his intent to me. I think he’s so mad about not being the recognized savior that he doesn’t give two shits about what his people say about Clinton or the Democratic Party. The man has a mean streak as large as Richard Nixon’s paranoia.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont did his best on Sunday to avoid talking about comments made by one of his supporters, the actress Rosario Dawson, who invoked Monica Lewinsky at a rally for Mr. Sanders this weekend.
Ms. Dawson created some controversy Saturday when she referenced Ms. Lewinsky, the former White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton. Though Ms. Dawson was talking about cyberbullying and about being under pressure to support Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign has called the comment “vitriol.”
“We are literally under attack for not just supporting the other candidate,” Ms. Dawson said while introducing Mr. Sanders in Wilmington, Del. “Now, I’m with Monica Lewinsky with this. Bullying is bad. She has actually dedicated her life now to talking about that. And now, as a campaign strategy, we are being bullied, and, somehow that is O.K. and not being talked about with the richness that it needs.”
On Sunday, Jake Tapper of CNN questioned Mr. Sanders about Ms. Dawson’s comments. “One of your high-profile surrogates, actress Rosario Dawson, invoked Monica Lewinsky at one of your rallies,” Mr. Tapper said. “Do you think it’s appropriate for your surrogates to be talking about Monica Lewinsky on the campaign trail?”
Mr. Sanders, however, declined to speak about the reference to Ms. Lewinsky and instead expressed support for Ms. Dawson. “Rosario is a great actress, and she’s doing a great job for us,” he said. “And she’s been a passionate fighter to see that we increase the voter turnout, that we fight for racial, economic, environmental justice.”
He added: “What our job right now is to contrast our views compared to Secretary Clinton. That’s what a campaign is about.”
Bernie’s chances at the nomination are all but gone but he can and is destroying whatever goodwill and legacy he may have built. He’s getting a series of open letters written to him in newspapers begging him to stop self-destructing and begging him to stop doing Donald Trump’s “dirty work”. I suggest that he’s just ratfucking at this point in time. This from the op-ed by Michael Cohen at the Boston Globe.
But here’s the thing – and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but maybe a little tough love is in order — you’re not going to win the Democratic nomination. This isn’t one of these “yeah, it’s a long shot, but maybe if I get lucky and everything goes my way” things. You’re not going to overcome Hillary Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates and you’re certainly not going to convince super delegates to vote for you over her. I mean, think about it: You’re trying to convince them to vote against the person who is almost certainly going to win in pledged delegates.
And even if you could win that way, would you really want to? In fact, if we’re really being honest here, the way your campaign has gone the past six weeks isn’t the way you want to win — or even the way you want to lose. Remember back in May 2015 when you said you didn’t want this campaign to be about Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders? Remember when you said you weren’t going to engage in character assassination and personal attacks?
A Brooklyn congressman is accusing Sen. Bernie Sanders of providing “aid and comfort” to Donald Trump and the GOP after a top surrogate referenced Monica Lewinsky at a recent Sanders rally.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, said Mr. Sanders needs to “stop it” and disavow the comments made by Rosario Dawson, an actress.
“Bernie Sanders ran a scorched earth campaign in New York that personally attacked Hillary Clinton at every turn, and he was crushed by 16 points,” Mr. Jeffries said today, referring to Ms. Clinton’s triumph over Mr. Sanders in the April 19 New York primary. “Instead of learning from past failure, supporters of Bernie Sanders continue to play dirty pool in a desperate attempt to halt Hillary Clinton’s clear path to the Democratic nomination.”
A lot of us think that Charles Koch is ratfucking by joining Karl Rove and America First to turn Bernie voters against Hillary. Unfortunately, it’s working on some of them as I’ve seen from time lines and feeds. I’m going to close with this one from MSN and the Daily Beast: Trump, Sanders, and American Ignorance.
Civic participation is one of the most important responsibilities of being an American. I’m o
ld enough to remember when being selected to lead your homeroom class in the daily Pledge of Allegiance was a source of great pride. As kids, with our hands over our hearts, shoulders squared, we’d recite those venerable words, “…and to the republic, for which is stands…” with purpose. Unfortunately, the moral imperative of being a good steward of this great nation and understanding what it takes to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is an afterthought for many, if any thought at all.
Without question, the insurgent candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have jolted many Americans out of their normal political malaise. Bringing more citizens into the political fold is a good thing. But, what many of them are now realizing is that it takes more than just rolling out of bed to rage against the machine at big political rallies to select the next leader of the free world.
Surprise! There are rules involved. Rules governing the presidential election date back to our founding and the establishment of Electoral College. The Constitution also gives latitude to the states in how to structure their nominating process. Electing the president wasn’t necessarily meant to be easy. Nothing worth safeguarding usually is. The founders deliberately designed our constitutional republic that way to avoid the tyrannical pitfalls of past societies like ancient Greece or the monarchies of Europe.
The Framers wanted multi layered stakeholders invested in the best interest of the republic making it less vulnerable to the rash whims of a majority. They understood how pure democracy without checks and balances historically led to the subjugation of minority voices. It was true then and still rings true today. That’s why our constitution does not allow for direct voting to elect the president.
The best thing I’ve seen on the internet for days is this interview with Joy Reid and Sanders Reality Denier Jeff Weaver who was doing his usual Baghdad Bob routine on MSNBC. Go watch it as she makes this point to him: “You Only Win White Voters and White Caucuses”. It’s a hoot! The fact neither Trump, Nixon or Sanders can fool minority voters or most women just says something, doesn’t it?
That our country was designed to confound populist impresarios is the best thing to remember when all this craziness from populists goes down. They can scream about rules they don’t like and don’t know about. But, the rules basically come straight out of our Constitution and it’s to stop nonsense like this current round of ratfucking from creating a situation where the leader of the free world is a loud mouthed, egoist, know nothing. Oh, you can apply that label to which ever candidate you prefer or all of the above. Remember, the system eventually dealt with Richard Nixon who was everything but a know nothing. It just took some time.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Today is said to be the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. As a tribute, I’m illustrating this post with famous Shakespearean insults. Several are drawn from this 2013 Buzzfeed post: 17 Shakespearean Insults To Unleash In Everyday Life. You can take a wild guess as to whom I might like to see some of these insults directed.
April 23 is a big day in England: It’s St. George’s Day, a national holiday named for the country’s patron saint, and it’s also the day William Shakespeare is said to have been born and died. This April 23 marks the 400th anniversary of his death.
According to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director, Gregory Doran, the only account of Shakespeare’s death was written 40 years after it happened, by the vicar of the church where he’s buried. “[The vicar wrote] that Shakespeare and his friends Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton had a ‘merry meeting,’ drank too much and ‘Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted,’ ” Doran says. “So it sounds like Bill and Ben and their friend Mike went out for a birthday binge and overdid it, and he shuffled off his mortal coil.”
There was also a typhoid epidemic in 1616 and Shakespeare could have died of that — but Doran prefers the drinking story. Doran’s company is marking the 400th anniversary with four history plays, which they’re performing at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music. The plays — Richard II,Henry IV parts one and two, and Henry V— reveal much about what makes Shakespeare great: his gift for lyric poetry, bawdy comedy and depicting heroic triumphs and tragic downfalls.
Actor David Tennant (known for his appearances in the TV series Doctor Who and Broadchurch) plays the tragic King Richard II. Tennant believes that, more than 400 years ago, Shakespeare saw how history repeated itself. “I think whenever you put [his plays] on, you see political resonances,” he says. “Maybe that says more about the fact that we, as a society, never seem to learn from history, or maybe it just talks about Shakespeare’s ability to get to the kernel of human experience and to be expressing those eternal truths about how we live our lives, how we attempt to create power structures” — structures that crumble, as they do for Tennant’s character.
Yesterday, Dakinikat called my attention to some very sad news. Crime writer Michelle McNamara died in her sleep on Thursday. She was only 46, and the cause of her death is still unknown. McNamara was married to comedian and actor Patton Oswalt and had a 7-year-old daughter.
Oswalt’s publicist, Kevin McLaughlin of Main Stage Public Relations, said Friday that McNamara died in her sleep Thursday. No cause of death was given but McLaughlin said the passing “was a complete shock to her family and friends, who loved her dearly.” ….
The University of Notre Dame graduate was the founder of website True Crime Diary, which shined a light on breaking news stories and cold cases.
She once said she founded the blog due her curiosity on criminal cases.
“I’m drawn to cases that aren’t so high profile, that are maybe even a little neglected, but which have enough evidence and clues that anyone with a will and an Internet connection can try to piece together the puzzle,” she said in a 2011 interview.
“That’s exciting to me. It feels like the difference between looking forward or looking back,” she added.
For the past couple of years, McNamara had been working on a book about an unsolved serious of home invasions, rapes and murders committed over several years believed to have been the work of one perpetrator whom McNamara called “the Golden State killer.” McNamara wrote a fascinating series of articles about this cold case that are archived at Los Angeles Magazine.
During their trip to Great Britain, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama spent some time with young Prince George at Kensington Palace on Friday.
The younger generation of royals, Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry, hosted President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle for dinner Friday at Kensington Palace in London.
The Obamas arrived at Kensington Palace in rainy weather and were greeted by William, Kate and Harry who ducked under an umbrella to kiss Michelle Obama on each cheek. Dressed relatively casually, with no ties for the men, the party posed for a photo before heading inside.
Reporters caught a glimpse of William and Kate’s eldest child, Prince George, whose birth in 2013 sparked a global media frenzy. The young prince was allowed to stay up later than usual to meet the Obamas, and spent about 15 minutes with them.
In a photograph released to the media of the group chatting in a drawing room before dinner, a rocking horse could be seen, as well as a fluffy Portuguese Water Dog toy given by the Obamas to Prince George. Bo, the White House dog, is of that breed.
Read more and see adorable photos at the link.
In not-so-adorable news, the presidential nomination races drag on even though the winners are pretty much decided. On the Democratic side, party leaders and others who care about winning in November are getting sick and tired of dealing with Bernie Sanders nasty attitude, his truly repulsive campaign manager Jeff Weaver, his campaign surrogates and his dudebro supporters. The candidates’ wife isn’t winning a lot of friends either.
A couple of days ago, Josh Marshall had a few choice words for Weaver: This Dude is Toxic.
There appears to be a cleavage at the highest level of the Sanders campaign between Jeff Weaver and Tad Devine. The latter is in the more typical mode: We’re going to keep fighting and see where things are after the run of Northeast states in the next couple weeks. But Weaver, at least based on what he said last night on MSNBC is in a pretty different place. Weaver says that if Sanders is mathematically eliminated from winning the pledged delegate race, the campaign will spend June and July lobbying Super Delegates to overrule the pledged delegates and give the nomination to Sanders.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, the Super Delegate system, at least in its current form, is unjustifiable. It’s a time time bomb sitting at the heart of the nomination process. The only saving grace is that it’s just never going to be lit. History shows that the Supers always go with the pledged winner. And if they threw the race to the non-winner, it just wouldn’t get past go. Unless there was some pretty good argument that the race for pledged delegates was in effect a tie, it would blow up the party.
This is especially the case for the Sanders campaign since democratic process, transparency andnot letting the establishment choose the candidate has been at the heart of his campaign. Turning around now and asking the dreaded Super Delegates to hand Sanders the nomination is a pretty hard argument to make.
But Weaver appears to have won the argument, because Sanders has continued his vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton in his Pennsylvania appearances. Politico talked anonymously to a number of Democratic party “insiders” to get their reactions to Sanders’ continued attacks on the front-runner.
Only 1 in 10 Democratic insiders said Sanders should try to woo superdelegates to help him overtake Clinton on the convention floor in Philadelphia if he finishes the primary season trailing in pledged delegates, as campaign manager Jeff Weaver suggested Tuesday night in a televised interview.
“I think it would benefit the Democrats to have Bernie drop out sooner rather than later and ask his supporters to coalesce behind Hilary,” said a Wisconsin Democrat, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “He stands no chance of winning the nomination at this point, and the Democrats can show a united front while the Republicans are so deeply fractured.”
“Bernie made his point,” added one Colorado Democrat. “It’s time to bring the party back together. The longer he waits, the more damage he does. The question is whether or not he cares. The rest of us do.”
A Nevada Democrat suggested the Sanders camp should focus on “doing what’s necessary for a Democratic victory in November,” but said Weaver “made a fool of himself by declaring on MSNBC that Bernie would take the campaign to the convention even if they were behind in delegates and popular vote.”
“The primary is over. There is no path, and there is no math,” added one Florida Democrat. “The sooner he lands the plane, the better chance he has at building a real legacy from this.”
“If any adults actually supported Bernie, they would tell him to get out next Wednesday morning,” said a New Hampshire Democrat. “But he doesn’t have any adult supporters. So he will stay in.”
I have to agree with the person from New Hampshire. Bernie is going to do as much damage to Hillary and the Democratic Party as he possibly can.
First it was an email warning Steve House, the Colorado GOP chairman, to hide his family members and “pray you make it to Cleveland.” Then there was the angry man who called his cellphone and told him to put a gun down his throat.
“He said, ‘I’ll call back in two minutes, and if you’re still there, I’ll come over and help you,’” House recalled.
Since Donald Trump came up empty in his quest for delegates at the Republican state assembly in Colorado Springs nearly two weeks ago, his angry supporters have responded to Trump’s own claims of a “rigged” nomination process by lashing out at Republican National Committee delegates that they believe won’t support Trump at the party’s convention — including House.
The mild-mannered chairman estimates he’s gotten between 4,000 and 5,000 calls on his cellphone. Many, he says, have ended with productive conversations. He’s referred the more threatening, violent calls to police. His cellphone is still buzzing this week, as he attends the RNC quarterly meetings in Florida, and he’s not the only one.
In hotel hallways and across dinner tables, many party leaders attending this week’s meetings shared similar stories. One party chairman says a Trump supporter recently got in his face and promised “bloodshed” if Trump doesn’t win the GOP presidential nomination. An Indiana delegate who criticized Trump received a note warning against “traditional burial” that ended with, “We are watching you.”
Wow! Can this campaign get any uglier? My guess is it can.
What stories are you following today?
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I love that my favorite color–purple–is bedecking everything from this beautiful cartoon from Bloom County to the Empire State Building to the Super Dome and beyond. I really hate the reason.
Prince is another one of those artists who wrote and sang the soundtrack to the life of a younger me. I can remember dancing to his music alone in the front room of my apartment celebrating the death of disco and the return of some one who could shred like no other! Eric Clapton was once asked what it was like to be the world’s greatest guitarist. He correctly answered “I don’t know. Ask Prince.”
I loved David Bowie but he was like wise older brother or cousin. Prince was my bratty twin.
Niagara Falls
I remember seeing him ever so often in a club he owned in the mid 90s in Minneapolis which featured international music and artists. He was the type that was either on or off; over-the-top or subdued. It’s the same with his music. My favorite thing with Prince was that he used women in his rock bands when using women rockers was a joke to most male musicians and their producers. He hypersexualized everything and every one but at the heart of it all, he was probably the best journeyman musician on the planet. He could play any instrument. He could write songs that were poppy pulp hits or boundary-pushing bits of genius. He was always controversial yet oddly universally accepted. You have to admire that in an artist. He could reach millions, stay true to himself, fight for the rights of the creative, and mentor musicians that would have a difficult time finding the main stage without a force like Prince.
At the height of his stardom in the 1980s and ’90s, Prince was ubiquitous, a marquee star who sold out stadiums, stole the silver screen and slayed fans with his bare-chested sass and sexuality.
Then a dispute with his record company changed his worldview and he retreated from the public eye. Save for the occasional awards show, benefit or tour, Prince kept his private life private — no small feat in the age of social media.
As he fought to protect his brand in an industry known for its formulaic approach, he maintained a tight grip on his music, restricting it from YouTube and streaming services, and prohibiting any photos or videos from being taken at his shows.
All of which made his death Thursday that much more shocking. A look at the last few days of his life provides some clues in hindsight that all was not well, but it’s safe to assume that if Prince knew death was close, he did not want us to know.
Entertainment Tonight” co-host Kevin Frazier said on “CBS This Morning” Friday that Prince had hip replacement surgery in 2010 and also had health issues with his ankles.
“People close to Prince tell me he struggled with painkillers due to his hip and ankle issues,” Frazier said, noting that for Prince to cancel a performance “something was drastically wrong.”
“The hip and ankle issues were a problem for him for so long,” Frazier said, “and for a man who loved to move and dance so much, it really bothered him.”
Empire State Building NYC
I really wanted to put this headline up but then thought better of it given social media, but here it is. Every one to BernieBros: Kumbaya Motherfuckers!!! (I’m channeling Samuel Jackson.) Here we go with one of the Original Obama Dudes on a tear for supporting the real Hillary and not just the cardboard cutout. Oh, I still am not warming up to the damned monniker of progressive. But, stay with me here for the words of Fauvre.
Eight years later, we’re approaching the endgame of another Democratic primary. For Bernie Sanders to overtake Hillary Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates—which, at 239, is more than double Obama’s 112 delegate lead in 2008—he would have to win each of the remaining contests by about 18 points, a margin he has only reached in Vermont and New Hampshire. If he doesn’t, his only other option is to convince a few hundred superdelegates to back the candidate who has won fewer votes and fewer delegates.
Bernie faces long odds, but no good reason to drop out. And why should he? Why not keep running through the final primaries in June, just like Hillary did in 2008? Along the way, Sanders will probably win a few more states—especially in May—and continue to build a following that should hearten everyone who wants to see a bigger, bolder progressive movement.
But it’s also in the interest of the progressive moment for both candidates and their campaigns to begin healing the rifts that have deepened over the course of the primary. Neither Sanders nor Clinton seemed very compelling when they were screaming at each other for two hours at the debate in Brooklyn. And no one benefits from another three months of ridiculous lawsuits, overwrought fundraising emails, and surrogates sniping at each other on cable. Already, this friendly fire has taken a toll—in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, Bernie is viewed unfavorably by 20 percent of Clinton supporters, and Hillary is viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of Sanders supporters.
I don’t want to exaggerate the challenge. I still think this primary is less nasty and divisive than 2008, and exponentially less so than the cannibalism we may see in Cleveland. It’s also true that the percentage of Sanders and Clinton voters who say they won’t vote for the other candidate is fairly low. But a year in which Donald Trump or Ted Cruz could become president of the United States is not a year we can afford to have any pissed-off primary voters stay home in November.
I’ve been really nice to my Bernie Supporting friends and continue to be. Most of them aren’t the issue right now anyway. A lot of
Boston South Station
them see the need to break on through to the other side already. But, really, some one needs to tell Jane, Master Taddler and the other one to go back to Rome for a silent retreat. The whining, lies, and irritating right wing memes are over the top now and causing Sanders’ crazier supporters to go full metal misogyny.
The Nation‘s Joshua Holland writes that all good Democrats will realize the danger of a Trump or Cruz come November. He suggests we all relax.
But if history is any guide, a mass defection of Democrats and Dem-leaning independents is the last thing anyone should worry about. We’ve seen this before and we know how it will play out.
Ironically, in 2008 it was Clinton supporters vowing to stay home—or vote for John McCain—if Obama became the nominee. At the time, that same HuffPo columnist warned that “balkanized Democrats could give the White House to John McCain.” That May, primary exit polls found less than half of Hillary Clinton’s supporters in Indiana and North Carolina saying they’d consider voting for Obama in the general election. Even in early July, after Obama had secured the nomination, only 54 percent of Clinton backers said they planned to vote for him.
Those self-described “PUMAs”—“party unity my ass”—may have stayed home by the dozens that November, but at the end of the day nine out of 10 Democrats supported Obama in an election that featured the highest turnout in 40 years. A similar dynamic played out withHoward Dean supporters in 2004.
In the summer of 2008, George Washington University political scientist John Sides took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times to tell everyone to calm down. “Despite ugly battles and policy differences that sometimes seem intractable, the reality is that presidential campaigns tend to unify each party behind its nominee,” …
San Francisco City Hall, The Forum, Delta Airlines Flight
I have some other things you may want to read today. This one is sad. Suicide rate in this country have it a 30 year high. I wanted to link to this NYT story but also to tell you that there’s been a rash of teen suicides on the northshore the past few weeks. I won’t link to them but the recency effect really hit home for me as I read this article.
Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.
The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.
The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.
We also have a terrible problem with opiate addiction and gun violence. This is all symptomatic of the party that refuses to spend
Hard Rock Cafe Times Square
public funds on public health issues, public safety issues, and public infrastructure. This is the true heart of US class warfare. Our public Treasury is not going to the public any more.
As citizens of the United Kingdom take stock of their relationship with the EU, you should be proud that the EU has helped spread British values and practices – democracy, the rule of law, open markets – across the continent and to its periphery. The European Union doesn’t moderate British influence – it magnifies it. A strong Europe is not a threat to Britain’s global leadership; it enhances Britain’s global leadership. The United States sees how your powerful voice in Europe ensures that Europe takes a strong stance in the world, and keeps the EU open, outward looking, and closely linked to its allies on the other side of the Atlantic. So the US and the world need your outsized influence to continue – including within Europe.
In this complicated, connected world, the challenges facing the EU – migration, economic inequality, the threats of terrorism and climate change – are the same challenges facing the United States and other nations. And in today’s world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the collective action that today’s challenges demand.
So, you can see that many buildings all over the world went Purple to celebrate the life and art of Prince. It’s taken our attention away from national challenges and back to personal tragedies that characterize the human condition. It’s always these moments when we look back to where we’ve been and what we’ve come to. The most important thing is to remember that the time line most surely includes a soundtrack the encompasses love and the people in your life.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
See Prince shred. Shred Prince Shred.
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Following Hillary’s thrashing of Bernie in New York, the media is finally waking up to the fact that she is just about guaranteed to be the Democratic presidential nominee and most likely will become President of the U.S. next January.
What shock for the poor pundits! How did this happen while they were so busy ooohing and ahhing over Bernie’s giant rallies and the “enthusiasm” of all those white millennials for his shouting and finger-wagging? Why didn’t all the crowds, the $27 “grass roots” donations, the yard signs, and on-line bullying turn into votes for “the Bern?”
The cultists say it’s “voter suppression,” but other commentators are taking a page from Richard Nixon–it must be a “silent majority.” Here’s Michelle Goldberg at Slate yesterday:
Until Tuesday night, I had assumed that my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbered those for Hillary Clinton by what seemed like 20 to 1. A couple of times, I thought about putting my baby daughter in a Clinton onesie—whatever my hesitations about Clinton’s candidacy, I love the idea of my girl’s first image of an American president being female. But I always hesitated, not wanting to invite playground harangues from local dads about Goldman Sachs and the Fed.
When I looked up Cobble Hill on the nifty New York Times tool providing neighborhood-by-neighborhood results, however, it turned out that Clinton won the immediate area around my apartment by 59.4 percent. A block over, she won by 72.5 percent. She won all around me. A lot of Clinton supporters, evidently, have been keeping quiet about their allegiances.
There are a couple of explanations for this. Sanders fans seem to be more enthusiastic, though it takes a certain amount of enthusiasm to vote in a primary at all. Registered independents couldn’t vote in New York’s closed primary, particularly given the absurd, undemocratic October deadline for switching parties. But I think there might be something else at work as well: an optical illusion that the candidate with the most white male support had the most support, period. I had let myself mistake the loudest people for The People.
I’m not trying to deny that the Sanders coalition is diverse or to erase the many passionate women and men of color who supported him. But the fact remains that according to exit polls, Clinton won every racial and gender demographic except white men. And somehow, I’d become convinced that, in my own backyard, their preferences were far more widespread than they really are.
Brooklyn is full of a certain kind of archetypal Sanders voter—young, hip, highly educated, and ideological. But in Brooklyn as a whole, Hillary Clinton beat native son Bernie Sanders by 20 percent. The borough was with her, even if it didn’t always feel like it.
It’s not that Clinton voters aren’t enthusiastic, it’s just that they aren’t as loud and obnoxious at Bernie supporters. And of course, they voted. How many people at Bernie’s huge rallies were from out of state or not registered as Democrats? Probably plenty.
A few days before Bernie Sanders lost badly in the New York primary, 27,000 souls filled Washington Square Park, many wildly cheering him on. The political media consensus interpreted the scene as evidence of surging support for the senator from Vermont….
The numbers at Washington Square were dwarfed by the battalions of working-class New Yorkers juggling two children and three jobs. These mostly Clinton voters were unable to attend any rally.
This last group is the subject here. It is the silent liberal majority.
Richard Nixon popularized the term “silent majority” in 1969. He was referring to the Middle Americans appalled by the Vietnam-era protests and associated social chaos. They didn’t demonstrate, and the so-called media elite ignored them.
Today’s liberal version of the silent majority is heavy with minorities and older people. Its members tend to be more socially conservative than those on the hard left and believe President Obama is a good leader.
Harrop points out that many reporters fall into the Sanders demographics.
Many political reporters belong to the white gentry that has fueled the Sanders phenomenon. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they know where they’re coming from. But some don’t seem to know about the vast galaxies of Democratic voters beyond the university and hipster ZIP codes.
In so many races — including those of the other party — reporters confine themselves to carefully staged political events and a few interviews with conveniently placed participants. From the atmospherics, they deduce the level of support for a particular candidate.
As our country heads toward the second half of the primary season as well as the general election, the national media is doing its best to gauge the level of excitement for each of the remaining five campaigns. From rallies to political donations to online polling, our friends in the media are attempting to quantify the unquantifiable level of excitement that each campaign is generating. By using this immeasurable measure, the media feels it can then interpret its result to create an overall narrative for how each campaign is doing. Clearly the campaign with most excitement is the one where the people are excited for their candidate and are going to go all out for him and her. This campaign will be the one with all the momentum moving forward while those campaigns with less excitement are likely to fall flat as we approach the conventions.
But let us take a moment to examine this theory, particular with the Democratic primary. Based on all the metrics listed above, it should be clear that Bernie Sanders is the candidate whose campaign is engulfed in enthusiasm. His rabid army of supporters have flocked to his rallies, producing crowds of upwards of 30,000 people, causing many venues to overflow. He raised nearly $44 million last month and now has amassed over 6 million contributions and growing. His loyal followers frequent online polls and exuberantly declare Sanders the winner of each and every Democratic debate or town hall performance….All this combined with victories in five out of the last six states and it would appear that the enthusiasm and momentum are clearly on the side of Bernie Sanders.
Especially when you compare his campaign to that of Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s rallies are never raucous, overflowing events. In fact, her most recent rally was held at the Apollo Theater, a venue that seats a mere 1,500 people. Clinton raised $13 million less than Bernie Sanders last month and she only recently amassed her one-millionth campaign contribution in mid-March. She often loses online polls by 60+ points after debates regardless of how well either her supporters or the media say she fared. Her national lead in the polls has all but vanished and after having won five consecutive primaries on March 15th, she has only won a single one since. Based on all this, there would appear to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s campaign at this point in time.
But appearances can be deceiving, especially appearances falsely created by our mainstream media.
Read the rest at the link.
On Tuesday night, Sanders abandoned his campaign press corps in Pennsylvania and flew back to Burlington, Vermont to rest and reassess his situation. MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald asks “Where does Sanders go from here?”
With the Democratic presidential nomination now further out of reach after his drubbing in New York on Tuesday, the Vermont senator faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to wrest the nomination from rival Hillary Clinton? Or does he return to the message campaign, as his long-shot White House bid started out to be?
The Sanders campaign poured itself into New York, throwing a hail mary pass to try to change the delegate math while they could. They spent $5.6 million (twice what Hillary Clinton did), made 3 million phone calls in the final weekend alone, and organized the biggest rallies of a campaign defined by big rallies.
But in the end Sanders came up short – not just of winning, but of the delegate target allies had aimed to hit, which might set them up for a path through California, the campaign’s final hope.
Now, with the nomination even further out of reach, Sanders faces the difficult question about what comes next. Does he set a do-whatever-it-takes course to actually win the Democratic nomination? Or does he return to the message campaign his long-shot White House bid was originally seen as?
Seitz-Wald talked to people at Democracy For America and Move On, which support Bernie; and although they don’t explicitly say so, their representatives apparently were not happy with Sanders’ focus on attacking Clinton and complaining about the election process. Read all about it at the link. It’s an interesting article.
At The New York Times, Lara M. Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University, says that Bernie Sanders should drop out because he has already achieved his purpose of pushing the Democratic Party to the left and helped Clinton become a better candidate because of the competition.
We’ll probably see more of these kinds of reevaluations by journalists over the next couple of days. It should be interesting to see whether the messages coming out of the Sanders campaign will be modified.
It’s already clear that there’s a difference of opinion between campaign manager Jeff Weaver and senior adviser Tad Devine about going to the convention and trying to flip superdelegates. Sanders himself has suddenly announced that he will remain a Democrat for life. What brought that on? It should be an interesting day in politics.
What stories are you following?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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