Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: July 17, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: cat art, caturday, Covid-19 fourth wave, DACA, Delta variant, Missouri, Trump books 29 Comments
Cat on a Flowery Meadow, by Bruno Liljefors
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday I wrote about the latest revelations from some of the many Trump books that have been hitting the shelves, as well as an upcoming one by Susan Glasser and her husband NYT reporter Peter Baker. Yesterday Glasser spoke to CNN’s Jack Tapper. From Raw Story: ‘Most terrified I’ve ever been’: Reporter describes learning ‘extremely alarming’ details of Trump’s final days.
Reporter Susan Glasser on Friday told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she felt personally unnerved while reporting out details of former President Donald Trump’s final days.
While discussing her most recent article in the New Yorker about Trump’s fights with General Mark Milley in the waning weeks of his administration, Glasser explained to Tapper that it was unprecedented for American military leaders to view the sitting commander-in-chief as a potential national security threat.
“You know, when I first learned about the level of alarm that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had through the election and all the way into January, I have to say it was probably the most terrified I’ve ever been as a reporter in several decades,” said Glasser, who has also reported from American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
She said she was relieved to see that Milley and other top military commanders had done their best to hold Trump in check, but still found it frightening just how far the twice-impeached former president was willing to go.
The question arises: why are we just now learning about these horrific events and those reported in other books? From The Washington Post: The media scramble at the heart of Trump Book Summer.
So why is it OK for these reporters to keep shocking news to themselves so they can use it to sell their books later on? The answer is that newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times allow their reporters to go on leave while writing their books and their research is “walled off from from their daily beat responsibilities,” according to editor Sally Buzbee.
“Basically, when staffers go on unpaid book leaves, which is the case here, there is an understanding that the reporting they are doing is for the book,” she said. “The Post typically publishes the book’s first excerpt, which gives our readers the first cut at the news. This is our long-standing practice and has served readers of The Post and the reporters well.”
Painting by Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933)
New York Times editor Dean Baquet said he encourages his reporters to “keep in touch” with editors at the paper when they’re working on books, and to alert them when they come up with something worthy of daily publication.
“Sometimes we make the judgment that it is okay to hold [a big scoop], or at least to hold until we publish an excerpt,” he said. Book-writing and daily news reporting aren’t “church and state,” said Baquet, whose star White House reporter Maggie Haberman is at work on a Trump book, “and I do hope reporters break their big news in the Times.”
Rucker noted another constraint on real-time reporting of the news he and Leonnig uncovered: “Many of the officials we interviewed for ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ agreed to speak with us about these events only after Trump had left office and only for the purposes of this deeper history,” he said.
OK then. I have to admit I can’t resist reading these books, even though I’m troubled by reporters keeping these secrets.
In other news, a Texas judge ruled that DACA is illegal. The Washington Post: U.S. judge blocks new applicants to program that protects undocumented ‘dreamers’ who arrived as children.
Thanks to all the misinformation Trump and his fans have spread about the Covid-19 and vaccines that prevent infections, we now appear to be entering a fourth wave of the deadly virus. USA Today: The fourth wave of COVID-19 cases is here. Will we escape the UK’s fate? It’s too soon to know, by Karen Weintraub.
A doubling of COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks suggests the United States has entered a fourth wave of the pandemic.
Beaver Meadow, by Paul Sample
No one knows what the next month or two will bring, but the example of the United Kingdom suggests the infection rate could get quite high, while hospitalizations and deaths stay relatively low.
Instead of the virus raging through entire communities, it is expected to target the unvaccinated, including children, and if rates are high enough, also the most vulnerable of the vaccinated – the elderly and the immunocompromised.
“Since the majority of our population is now immune, it’s unlikely that we’re going to return to the massive nationwide waves we saw back in January,” Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said in a Wednesday webinar with media.
But major outbreaks can still occur, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates.
“We’re going to be living in two pandemic worlds, the world that’s vaccinated and the world that’s unvaccinated,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of infectious diseases at UTHealth and an infectious disease specialist at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston.
The three vaccines authorized for use in the United States, from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson, have all been shown to be highly effective against variants of the virus, including Delta, which now accounts for most of the cases in the U.S.
It’s a long article, so click the link to learn more.
Ed Yong at The Atlantic: Delta Is Driving a Wedge Through Missouri. For America as a whole, the pandemic might be fading. For some communities, this year will be worse than last.
The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past the worst of the pandemic. Intensive-care units that once overflowed had emptied. Vaccinations were rising. Health-care workers who had been fighting the coronavirus for months felt relieved—perhaps even hopeful. Then, in late May, cases started ticking up again. By July, the surge was so pronounced that “it took the wind out of everyone,” Erik Frederick, the chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital Springfield, told me. “How did we end up back here again?”
Painting by Alice Neel
The hospital is now busier than at any previous point during the pandemic. In just five weeks, it took in as many COVID-19 patients as it did over five months last year. Ten minutes away, another big hospital, Cox Medical Center South, has been inundated just as quickly. “We only get beds available when someone dies, which happens several times a day,” Terrence Coulter, the critical-care medical director at CoxHealth, told me.
Last week, Katie Towns, the acting director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, was concerned that the county’s daily cases were topping 250. On Wednesday, the daily count hit 405. This dramatic surge is the work of the super-contagious Delta variant, which now accounts for 95 percent of Greene County’s new cases, according to Towns. It is spreading easily because people have ditched their masks, crowded into indoor spaces, resumed travel, and resisted vaccinations. Just 40 percent of people in Greene County are fully vaccinated. In some nearby counties, less than 20 percent of people are.
Many experts have argued that, even with Delta, the United States is unlikely to revisit the horrors of last winter. Even now, the country’s hospitalizations are one-seventh as high as they were in mid-January. But national optimism glosses over local reality. For many communities, this year will be worse than last. Springfield’s health-care workers and public-health specialists are experiencing the same ordeals they thought they had left behind. “But it feels worse this time because we’ve seen it before,” Amelia Montgomery, a nurse at CoxHealth, told me. “Walking back into the COVID ICU was demoralizing.”
Those ICUs are also filling with younger patients, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, including many with no underlying health problems. In part, that’s because elderly people have been more likely to get vaccinated, leaving Delta with a younger pool of vulnerable hosts. While experts are still uncertain if Delta is deadlier than the original coronavirus, every physician and nurse in Missouri whom I spoke with told me that the 30- and 40-something COVID-19 patients they’re now seeing are much sicker than those they saw last year.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
Thursday Reads: Women’s Bodies, Women’s Lives
Posted: May 16, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: abortion rights, Alabama, anti-abortion laws, Brett Kavanaugh, incest, Indiana, John Roberts, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, rape, U.S. Supreme Court, women's bodily autonomy 16 Comments
Peonies, by Claude Monet
Good Morning!!
Even as we worry about Trump and Bolton starting a war with Iran and about the Democrats refusing to follow the Impeachment road map provided by Robert Mueller, American women must face the fact that our very personhood is being attacked.
Personally, I have decided that I will not vote for any man for president. The right of women to make decisions about our own bodies is too important.
Here’s the latest on the War on Women:
NBC News: Missouri Senate passes bill to outlaw abortion at 8 weeks.
Missouri’s Senate has passed what its authors call one of the nation’s most stringent anti-abortion bills, which would outlaw nearly all abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy.
The Republican-led Senate passed the bill, dubbed Missouri Stands With The Unborn, by a margin of 24 to 10 early Thursday morning….
Missouri’s move comes hours after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that would introduce a near-total abortion ban in that state. Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia have approved bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur in about the sixth week of pregnancy.
Louisiana is following suit with its own “heartbeat” abortion ban, which was approved unopposed by the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee on Wednesday.
Abortion right activists are mobilizing in Alabama. The Washington Post: Governor signs Alabama abortion ban, which has galvanized support on both sides, setting up a lengthy fight.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — As a crop duster with a banner saying “Abortion is okay” hummed above the capitol, circling back and forth around the governor’s mansion, a group of women below let out a cheer.
Amaryllis by Piet Mondrian (1910)
“Just another day in Alabama,” said Mia Raven, director of People Organizing for Women’s Empowerment and Rights (POWER) House. “We knew this would pass and we got ready.”
Amanda Reyes, who works with an abortion fund, was wearing an “I’m on the pill” T-shirt, complete with instructions printed on the back detailing how to get a medical abortion. She also looked skyward: “Here it comes again! That’s just the coolest thing.”
Hours after the Alabama Senate voted late Tuesday to ban abortions in almost all circumstances — including in cases of rape and incest — women’s rights activists and abortion rights advocates said the decision to approve the nation’s strictest abortion measure has energized them. Knowing that the bill was designed to challenge Roe v. Wade, they are gearing up for the fight.
The Washington Post: Louisiana ‘heartbeat’ abortion ban nearing final passage.
BATON ROUGE, La. — A proposal to ban abortions in Louisiana as early as the sixth week of pregnancy continued to speed through the state legislature Wednesday, the same day Alabama’s governor signed the nation’s most restrictive law against the procedure.
Without objection, the Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee backed legislation to prohibit abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected, similar to laws passed in several conservative states that are aimed at challenging the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion. Louisiana’s ban, however, only would take effect if a federal appeals court upholds a similar law in Mississippi.
Louisiana’s so-called fetal “heartbeat bill” is sponsored by state Sen. John Milkovich, one of several measures that lawmakers are advancing to add new restrictions on abortion. Senators already have supported the bill, which will next receive full House consideration, one step from final passage. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has indicated he will sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
The New York Times sums up the current abortion landscape: ‘The Time Is Now’: States Are Rushing to Restrict Abortion, or to Protect It.
Alex Katz, Tulips 4, 2013
States across the country are passing some of the most restrictive abortion legislation in decades, deepening the growing divide between liberal and conservative states and setting up momentous court battles that could profoundly reshape abortion access in America….
The national race to pass new legislation began last fall, after President Trump chose Brett M. Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court, adding what some predicted would be a fifth vote to uphold new limits on abortion. Red states rushed to pass more restrictions and blue states to pass protections.
Now, as state legislative sessions draw to a close in many places, experts count about 30 abortion laws that have passed so far.
That is not necessarily more than in past years, said Elizabeth Nash, a legal expert at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.
What’s different is the laws themselves, which have gone further than ever to frontally challenge Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling that established federal protections for abortion.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Interestingly, these extreme laws could be interfering with right wing plans to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Flowers in a Glass Vase by John Constable (c. 1814)
Even Pat Robertson thinks the Alabama law is too “extreme.” The Washington Post: Televangelist Pat Robertson: Alabama’s abortion ban is ‘extreme’ and has ‘gone too far.’
Longtime televangelist Pat Robertson decried Alabama’s new abortion ban as “extreme,” saying on his show on Wednesday that the state legislature has “gone too far.”
Alabama’s law, which has been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, includes a penalty of up to 99 years in prison for doctors who perform abortions and has no exceptions for rape or incest, Robertson noted on his show.
“They want to challenge Roe vs. Wade, but my humble view is I don’t think that’s the case I’d want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose,” Robertson told viewers of CBN’s “The 700 Club” on Wednesday.
David G. Savage at The Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court is not eager to overturn Roe vs. Wade — at least not soon.
The Supreme Court justices will meet behind closed doors Thursday morning and are expected to debate and discuss — for the 14th time — Indiana’s appeal of court rulings that have blocked a law to prohibit certain abortions.
The high court’s action — or so far, nonaction — in Indiana’s case gives one clue as to how the court’s conservative majority will decide the fate of abortion bans recently passed by lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed her state’s ban into law on Wednesday.
Pot of Geraniums, Henri Matisse
Lawmakers in those states have said they approved the bans in an effort to force the high court to reconsider Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
The justices have many ways to avoid such a sweeping ruling, however. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his 14 years on the high court, has typically resisted moving quickly to decide major controversies or to announce abrupt, far-reaching changes in the law.
Roberts’ history, along with the court’s handling of abortion cases in recent years, suggests he will not move to overturn the right to abortion soon, or all at once, and is particularly unlikely to do so in the next year or two with a presidential election pending.
At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick makes a similar argument: Alabama’s Extremist Abortion Bill Ruins John Roberts’ Roe Plan.
One could feel sorry for Chief Justice John Roberts. He is, after all, caught in an unsightly squeeze play between anti-abortion zealots in Alabama, and slightly less wild-eyed anti-abortion zealots in Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana (the court seems unable to make a decision on whether to grant the Indiana petition it has been sitting on for months now). There’s finally a five-justice majority within striking distance of a decades-long dream to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the anti-choice activists are getting ahead of themselves like slurring drunks at a frat party and making everything more transparently nasty than it need be.
Hibiscus by Hiroshige (c. 1845)
There are easy and near invisible ways for the high court to end Roe. That has always been, and remains, the logical trajectory. As Mark Joseph Stern has shown, when Brett Kavanaugh came onto the court, with his dog whistles and signaling around reproductive rights, it became clear that he would guide the court to simply allow states to erect more and more barriers to abortion access (dolphin-skin window coverings on every clinic!). The five justices in the majority would do it all while finding ways to say that such regulations were not an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose. The courts and state legislatures could continue their lilting love songs to the need for the states to protect maternal health and to help confused mommies make good choices, and nobody need dirty their hands by acknowledging that the real goal of three decades’ worth of cumbersome clinic regulations and admitting privileges laws were just pretexts for closing clinics and ending abortion altogether.
Read the rest at Slate.
(Mostly) male legislators are ignoring the realities of actual women’s lives.
When Senator Clyde Chambliss, a Republican, for example, was asked if the law would allow for incest victims to obtain abortions, he responded: “Yes, until she knows she’s pregnant.”
He did not elaborate on how someone would have an abortion before she knows she’s pregnant, outside of claiming, “It takes time for all the chromosomes to come together.”
Flower Garden by Gustav Klimt, 1905
Women’s bodies, lives, and futures are quite literally in the hands of men who seemingly couldn’t pass a high school health class. That’s part of what’s so hard about watching these debates: It’s not just that women’s rights and autonomy are being legislated away, but that it’s being done by complete morons.
This lack of remedial understanding of women’s bodies is not limited to Alabama. Representative John Becker of Ohio, a Republican, for example, sponsored a bill to limit insurance coverage for abortions, but claimed that it would have an exception for ectopic pregnancies, when the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. “That treatment would be removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and reinserting it in the uterus,” he said, explaining a procedure that doesn’t exist and isn’t medically possible.
There is also Texas state Representative Dan Flynn, a Republican, who believes abortion requires cutting into a woman’s uterus, or Vito Barbieri, the Idaho state Representative, a Republican, who thought you could give a woman a remote gynecological exam by having her swallow a tiny camera.
Shannon Dingle at USA Today: I was 12 years old and pregnant. Alabama’s abortion ban bill would punish girls like me.
Roses and Lillies by Henri Fantin-Latour (1888)
I was that 11-year-old pregnant by rape in Ohio, except I had just turned 12 and lived in Florida….She is 11. She has experienced and is experiencing violating trauma. Maybe someday she will tell her story, but today is not that day.
I can tell my story, though. I was newly 12. I lived in a suburb of Tampa. I had gotten my period a couple years before, and it came regularly once it started. I knew to expect it every 32 days.
It was July, the summer between sixth and seventh grade, when days 33, 34, 35 and more passed with no period. I had read in one of my sister’s Seventeen magazines that periods aren’t always regular, so I figured this was my first one of those.
It wasn’t….I never chose to have sex at such a young age, but abusers in my family chose to rape me. I had lost count of the number of times by then. With a dad high ranking in the county sheriff’s office, I didn’t trust going to the police. I had tried to tell teachers and church volunteers, but that never went anywhere, either.
Please go read the rest if you haven’t already.
Women and girls in the U.S. are in real danger. For me this is the number one issue for women in the upcoming presidential election.
As always, this is an open thread.
Live Blog: Super Duper Tuesday Primary Election Returns
Posted: March 15, 2016 Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, primary election returns 186 Comments
Good Evening!!
This will be short and sweet, because I’m still feeling very under the weather.
The cable networks are starting to give hints about the exit polls in the five states that are holding primaries today. It’s all pretty general so far, and I’m not math wizard enough to get much out it. It looks like it’s closed in Ohio and Illinois, and Missouri is still a mystery.
If Hillary performs as well as expected in Florida and North Carolina, she will end the night with an increased lead in pledged delegates. Bernie would need to win one of the big Midwestern states by a landslide to gain any ground on her.
As for the Republicans, I’m assuming Trump will win at this point. I don’t really care about them, but if you’re hearing interesting things about the GOP race, feel free to share them.
We’ll find out pretty soon what will happen on both sides. Polls will be closing in all of the states pretty soon and voting will be over everywhere by 8PM ET.
I’ve enjoyed watching the vote counts at the New York Times so far. FiveThirtyEight has an excellent live blog as well.
What are you hearing? Let us know in the comment thread and enjoy yourselves. Remember that Hillary already has a huge lead in pledged delegates; so don’t freak out if Bernie wins Ohio and/or Illinois, especially if it’s close.
Tuesday Reads: Super Duper Tuesday
Posted: March 15, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Florida, Hillary Clinton, Illinois, Marco Rubio, Missouri, NEGATIVE campaigning, North Carolina, Ohio, Super Duper Tuesday March 15 47 Comments
Voting day is coming up soon oh boy, Richard Hubal
Good Day!!
Sorry to be so late in posting today. I’m really struggling with a sinus/chest cold and I don’t have much energy these days.
Today’s primary elections will actually be bigger for the Democrats than Super Tuesday was. The media is playing up the possibility that Sanders could win in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri; but even if that happens, which I think is doubtful, Clinton should win handily in Florida and North Carolina. She will most likely end the night with an expanded delegate lead.
Trump will probably sew up the Republican nomination, especially if he beats Marco Rubio in Florida, which looks likely.
The attacks on Hillary Clinton are escalating as she gets closer to becoming the first woman presidential nominee of a major political party.
It’s kind of difficult to remember now, but at the beginning of the primary campaign, Bernie Sanders promised to run a positive campaign focused on the issues. It’s been quite awhile now since he switched to attacking Hillary Clinton personally and using innuendo to question her integrity. NBC News examines his move to negative campaigning.
Election Day 1944, Norman Rockwell
A Month on Offense: How Sanders Upped His Attacks on Clinton.
The candidate who went out of his way to avoid attacking his rival throughout the summer, fall and winter has relentlessly unleashed on Clinton for three straight weeks, focusing on familiar talking points now strung together as a fixture of his stump speech.
“Now let me say a few words about some of the strong differences of opinion that I have with Secretary Clinton,” he now normally begins one portion of his speeches before hitting her on a litany of issues. The go-to critiques include trade, the Iraq War, and Clinton’s use of Super PACs.
Boos and heckles quickly arrive from his supporters as they outwardly delight in hearing the differences between their candidate and the Democratic frontrunner.
Chairing the Member, Hogarth 1755 (London)
Sanders no longer makes any effort to tone down his followers’ abuse of Clinton and her supporters–whether in rallies or on social media. Instead, he encourages it.
Depending on the day, Sanders also has dinged Clinton on her and her husband’s support of the “homophobic” Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and her support from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“I do not want Henry Kissinger to ever praise me!” he roared during a Michigan rally at Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids.
The shift in tone has been drastic. In 2015 and early 2016, even uttering Clinton’s name would draw headlines—then unwanted by the candidate himself.
“I cannot walk down the street—Secretary Clinton knows this—without being told how much I have to attack Secretary Clinton,” Sanders told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell during the NBC’s January Democratic Debate, “Want to get me on the front page of the paper? I make some vicious attack. I have avoided doing that. I am trying to run an issue-oriented campaign.”
He still emphasizes issues, but things have changed since that debate.
They certainly have. Sanders has become just another dirty politician shouting lies and half-truths about his opponent. In on-line forums, his followers have taken his behavior as encouragement for stunningly sexist and racist attacks on Clinton. The similarities between the Trump and Sanders campaign are growing as time goes on. I don’t like to think what will happen if Sanders loses in Illinois or Ohio tonight.
Go to the NBC link to read the rest. It’s a long piece.
Philadelphia Election Day 1815, John Lewis Kimmel
The media has found another gaffe to hang on Hillary. In her “town hall” with Chris Matthews on MSNBC last night, she said that “we didn’t lose a single person” in the 2011 Libyan intervention. Naturally, that is being interpreted to mean that she has forgotten the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and four others in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2012. Politico:
“Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person. We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO,” the former secretary of state said during an MSNBC town hall on Monday night.
Clinton may have been referring strictly to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, which indeed saw no loss of American lives and cost just around $1 billion. But her comments ignore the 2012 attacks at the U.S. mission and CIA outpost in Benghazi, which killed four people including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Right. After years of being attacked and blamed for the deaths of four people, Clinton has probably just forgotten all about them. Good grief.
The Sanders campaign committed a far worse gaffe yesterday.
Jane Sanders appeared with racist, anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona and actually let him lead her on a tour of his “tent city.” It’s not clear the campaign planned this meeting, but why didn’t they hustle her away immediately when Arpaio showed up?
Channel 12 News: Jane Sanders meets with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, tours Tent City.
Jane Sanders wasn’t planning a tour of Tent City on Monday, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Sanders planned to view Tent City from the fence, with the help of Puente leader Carlos Garcia. But Arpaio hustled over here from another news conference and the two of them talked policy, politics and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Sanders also asked inmates about the conditions and why they were in Tent City.
The County Election, George Caleb Bingham
And of course, we know that Sanders surrogate Ben Cohen told Fox News he didn’t know if he could vote for Hillary Clinton in November. Jane Sanders later tweeted that she wasn’t expecting Arpaio to show up, but the damage was done.
As an antidote to the Clinton bashing from Sanders and the media, I suggest reading this post by Peter Daou at Blue Nation Review: Hillary Clinton Is (By Far) the Most Trusted Candidate in 2016.
Let’s define “most trusted” in its literal — and most measurable — sense: More people trust X than anyone else.
And let’s further refine that definition to an act of trust, such as a vote or public endorsement….
Hillary has been endorsed by a greater number of respected public figures and organizations than any other candidate. And more importantly, she leads all other candidates in the popular vote….
Take Bernie Sanders. He had the opportunity to vote against Hillary’s nomination for Secretary of State. After all, he voted against Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Instead, he voted to confirm her, an affirmation of his trust in her ability to represent America to the world….
Think about the numerous political leaders, public officials, organizations, and labor unions who trust Hillary with their future. President Obama, John Lewis, Emily’s List, Lilly Ledbetter, Dolores Huerta, Jim Clyburn, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign, Julian Castro, Brady Campaign, Eric Holder, League of Conservation Voters, Tammy Baldwin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Claire McCaskill, Cory Booker, Sheila Jackson Lee, Bernice King, and countless more….
Most significantly:
NEARLY 5 MILLION VOTERS HAVE PLACED THEIR TRUST IN HILLARY.
That’s more than any other candidate in the 2016 election.
Let’s see what the media is saying about the possible outcomes of today’s primaries.
Graffiti in the central square of Tixtla, home of the rural normal school at Ayotzinapa, reads “Ayotzinapa lives. Voting causes death. Cursed government,” in Tixtla, Mexico, Saturday, June 6, 2015. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
The Guardian: From Ohio to Florida, your cheat sheet for the next crucial primaries.
Although this Tuesday will be less frantic than Super Tuesday two weeks ago, when 12 states and one territory held primary elections, it’s just as important. By 16 March, the race for the White House could look very different depending on how Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio vote.
That’s partly because the delegate numbers in those states are so high – in total, 367 Republican and 792 Democratic delegates are available on 15 March. That brings us significantly closer to the finish line of having just two presidential candidates: at the moment, 33% of Democratic delegates have been pledged but by the time the polls have closed on 15 March, that number will rise to 50%. For Republicans, pledged delegates will jump from 46% to 61%.
Those percentages just mean that playing catch-up gets harder from here. Hillary Clinton is still on track for the nomination – to change that, Bernie Sanders needs to pick up at least 326 of the pledged delegates (in the Democratic race there are also 712 “superdelegates” who are not pledged to a specific candidate based on primary results, so they’re less relevant here).
On the Republican side:
The Republican contest is also likely to change significantly. If, for example,Marco Rubio fails again to pick up a single delegate (and polling suggests that’s a real possibility), his pursuit of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination becomes futile – even if he were to win every single remaining delegate after 15 March. That’s partly because, unlike Democrats, Republicans do not always distribute delegates in proportion to votes. In fact, four states holding Republican primaries on 15 March will be the first in this election to assign delegates on a winner-takes-all basis, which is why this date is such a turning point in the 2016 political calendar.
Check out some interesting charts as well as detailed discussions of each state’s demographics at the link.
Election day graffiti in Afghanistan, 4/4/2014
The Washington Post: March 15 primaries: Will voting in 5 states cement front-runners?
Voters are casting ballots in the five states across the Midwest and Southeast holding primaries Tuesday — contests that could shore up the two front-runners or breathe new life into the lagging campaigns of their challengers.
On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) was working to pull off more come-from-behind wins in states where voters feel damaged by globalization, allowing him to claim momentum from Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state enjoys a sizable lead in delegates but has not been able to seal the nomination.
The contests are especially important on the Republican side, offering a chance for billionaire Donald Trump’s remaining rivals to finally slow his march to the nomination with two winner-take-all contests that have particularly high stakes for a pair of favorite sons, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
This one is a long and interesting read. I suggest you check out the whole thing at the link.
CNN: What’s Next if Marco Rubio Loses Florida?
Rubio, who began his White House campaign 11 months ago as a hero of Florida Republicans, now faces the prospect of defeat in his home state. For years, Republicans believed that Rubio was destined to be a presidential nominee and that even if he fell short in 2016, he would be well-positioned to run for governor in 2018.
But polls suggest Rubio might not just lose Florida — but get thumped here. A Quinnipiac survey released Monday found Rubio trailing Trump by 24 points in his home state.
A loss of that magnitude could be devastating to Rubio, and leave him in a tough spot if he ever wanted to seek public office again.
Quite a comedown. It will be interesting to see what happens when the polls close in Florida.
Florida’s polls close at 7PM ET (8PM in the Panhandle), North Carolina’s and Ohio’s at 7:30 ET, and Illinois’s and Missouri’s at 8PM ET.
So . . . what are you hearing and reading? Let us know in the comment thread, and please stick around for an exciting day! I’ll add a live blog later on for discussion of the returns.
Yes It’s a Live Blog: CNN Democratic Town Hall from Ohio State University
Posted: March 13, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic race for President 2016, Florida, Hillary Clinton, Missouri, Ohio Primaries 137 Comments
OY!! Here we go again! There are some big races coming up on Tuesday and CNN has another Town Hall scheduled tonight for the two Democratic candidates for President. I’m going to sit through another one of these things. Please don’t leave me alone to it!!!
Just two days before key votes in Ohio and Florida, the final two Democratic candidates will appear in a CNN Town Hall tonight. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is hoping for a strong showing in Ohio, where he currently trails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a fair margin.
The town hall is being co-hosted by both CNN and TV One. CNN’s Jake Tapper and TV One’s Roland Martin will be moderating the event and inviting questions from the attendees.
The broadcast will air on CNN from 8 p.m. ET – 10 p.m. ET from Ohio State University.
Florida and Ohio vote on Tuesday which are two big states. Thankfully, Florida is a closed state. Ohio has a semi-open primary. This means:
Under Ohio election law, you declare your political party affiliation by requesting the ballot of a political party in a partisan primary election.
According to Nate Silver’s Poll of Polls, Florida has a 99% chance of going to Hillary. She has a 98% chance in Ohio. Remember, voting by switching affiliations for strategy purposes is important. As we’ve seen, the NRA actively encourages its voters to cross party if necessary to vote against Hillary and for Bernie. Bernie’s voting base was 7% Republican in Michigan and he nabbed a lot of unaffiliated while losing Dems by 12%. It will be interesting to see what happens there.
Here is the list of RCP recent polls for further details of each data point. The most recent poll of Missouri has Hillary up but Missouri has not be polled a lot so one data point should not be considered the be all and end all of statistics judging the state of a race.
At last this is a town hall because I could just cut and paste any townhall or debate from any where and come up with the answers to tonight’s townhall form Sanders. Even with fact checking and corrections and complete horror about the internalized sexism and racism, it still the same stuff. I’m not looking for anything but the repeat of 70s class frame. I’ll probably faint if I hear any wee bit of modern socialist economic theory or intersectionality of sexism, racism and income differences.
I’m assuming that Hillary will have to explain when she tried to categorize the Reagan response to the AIDS crisis at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. They eventually responded but only after a lot of folks died and a lot of opportunity was wasted. Nancy did do behind the scenes work but only after Rock Hudson and Roy Cohen were seriously ill and dying. Before then, it didn’t seem to even register. But, here’s the crux of Hillary’s response in a much more appropriate format. It’s not a soundbite. It’s a short essay. It recognizes that things that went on prior to Nancy’s change of mind.
Yesterday, at Nancy Reagan’s funeral, I said something inaccurate when speaking about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS. Since then, I’ve heard from countless people who were devastated by the loss of friends and loved ones, and hurt and disappointed by what I said. As someone who has also lost friends and loved ones to AIDS, I understand why. I made a mistake, plain and simple.
I want to use this opportunity to talk not only about where we’ve come from, but where we must go in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
To be clear, the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. That distinction belongs to generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day.
The AIDS crisis in America began as a quiet, deadly epidemic. Because of discrimination and disregard, it remained that way for far too long. When many in positions of power turned a blind eye, it was groups like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and others that came forward to shatter the silence — because as they reminded us again and again, Silence = Death. They organized and marched, held die-ins on the steps of city halls and vigils in the streets. They fought alongside a few courageous voices in Washington, like U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, who spoke out from the floor of Congress.
We also will have to continue this crazy right wing induced meme that Hillary cannot be trusted. Bernie’s been fact checked so many times you’d think people
would get the idea that what he says is way far-fetched and not particularly trustworthy. Here’s the latest fact check on his tirades on job losses and NAFTA which are way exaggerated. Both Hillary and Bernie are way more honest than any of the Republicans. But why is it only Hillary has the trust issue?
Bernie Sanders wasn’t asked about his honesty or trustworthiness on Tuesday night. Instead, after that question to Clinton, he was asked, “Senator Sanders, you have demanded that Secretary Clinton release the transcripts of her paid Wall Street speeches. Why is this important? Do you have reason to believe that she says one thing in private and another in public?”
Did somebody say Wall Street? The good senator, of course, perked up immediately and happily hit the softball question out of the park, with all the now-familiar notes of righteous indignation.
No other candidate for president has been asked in debates about his perceived honesty and trustworthiness. Maybe it’s because other candidates are presumed to be honest and trustworthy, or maybe there’s a presumption voters don’t care about this trait in others.
Don’t play the woman card, right? We are sick and tired of hearing about double standards. People are not going to vote for Clinton just because she is a woman. If she loses, it’s because nobody trusts her – just look at the polls.
If you actually look at the Washington Post poll referenced on Tuesday night, it’s worth noting that only 27 percent of people found Republican front-runner Donald Trump honest and trustworthy.
And Sanders? Well, he wasn’t included in the poll questions about honesty and trustworthiness. Seriously. The honesty and trustworthiness questions were only asked about Clinton, Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Apparently we are to assume that Sanders is honest and trustworthy, or that he is unlikely to be the nominee – based, you know, on the polls.
Pollsters are either convinced by their own flawed polling that Clinton is the presumptive nominee, so they don’t even bother polling Sanders’ degree of trustworthiness, or they don’t believe Sanders’ degree of trustworthiness is relevant.
But only polling Clinton on whether she is “honest and trustworthy” and then using the answer against her in a debate against Sanders reinforces the myth that she is less trustworthy than him, and it surely helps him win one “stunning” victory after another.
I just mostly judge Bernie by the fact that everything he promises is not deliverable except with a vast revolutionary army. You continue to read that he’s not really a 
credible candidate but how does that not translate into untrustworthy?
But as appealing as Sanders may be, he is not credible as president. Elizabeth Warren would have been a credible candidate, but Sanders isn’t. The campaign he has been waging is a symbolic one. For example, the proposals he has made for free college tuition and free, single-payer health care suggest what might be done if the United States underwent radical change. Those ideas would be excellent grist for a seminar. But they are not the proposals of a candidate who is serious about getting things done as president—or one who is serious about getting elected in the country we actually live in.
I don’t find him appealing at all now. He reminds me of the cranky uncle no one wants to invite for holidays because he lectures them, finger wags, and grouses each year on the same damn things. The only difference between Sanders and the generic cranky uncle is that Sanders should’ve been able to do something about even a sliver of some of it by now. Does this have something to do with it? He’s missed a lot recently which is partially due to his campaign.
From Jan 2007 to Mar 2016, Sanders missed 136 of 2,870 roll call votes, which is 4.7%. This is much worse than the median of 1.7% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
You can look at the analysis on Leadership at the same link (GovTrack) and find out some other things too. For example, his policy emphasis actually appears to be Armed Forces and National Security. It’s almost twice as important as his second area which is health.
But, Rubio actually isn’t the one who missed the most votes.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, that data point is a bit out-of-date. So far this year, Marco Rubio’s missed 90 percent of votes — a large proportion. But it’s actually the best record among the senators still running for president. The worst? Bernie Sanders.
But what has really gotten me recently is that not only are a good deal of his supporters nasty, Bernie keeps getting nastier.
Tuesday — a day when five states hold primaries — should give a better indication of whether Sander’s tough talk is paying off.
One of those contests is in Illinois, and Sanders isn’t holding back as he campaigns here. In Chicago on Friday, Sanders even took aim at Clinton for her close association with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose approval ratings are in the tank, particularly among black Chicagoans.
“I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don’t want his endorsement!” Sanders screamed to the delight of a crowd estimated at 9,000 people. “I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor who is shutting down school after school and firing teachers.”
To drive home his point, Sanders held a news conference the next day devoted entirely to Emanuel, telling reporters that if he were Clinton, he would have refused the mayor’s support.
So, I have to admit that I expect Bernie to be nasty and I expect that Hillary will continue to be critizied and asked to apologize for everything her husband ever did, everything Barrack Obama ever did, ad infintum all while we hear how’s she’s an untrustworthy person.
The one thing I’d like to hear some one ask him about is this. He’s not really been an active pusher of any bills through congress. But, he really pushed on this one. How is this acceptable human behavior?
Sanders voted to dump Vermont’s nuclear waste in a majority Latino community in Sierra Blanca, Texas
In 1998, the House of Representatives approved a compact struck between Texas, Vermont and Maine that would allow Vermont and Maine to dump low-level nuclear waste at a designated site in Sierra Blanca, Texas. Sanders, at the time representing Vermont in the House, cosponsored the bill and actively ushered it through Congress.
Located about 16 miles from the Mexican border, Sierra Blanca’s population is predominantly of Mexican ancestry. At the time, the community was about two-thirds Latino, and its residents had an average income of $8,000, according to the an article in the Bangor Daily News.
The low-level nuclear waste would include “items such as scrap metal and worker’s gloves… as well as medical gloves used in radiation treatments at hospitals,” according to the Bangor Daily News. Clinton, then the First Lady, did not have a vote on the matter.
I can’t imagine any decent human being doing that to poor, disenfranchised people.
So, let’s see how it goes tonight. I hope she finishes him off on Tuesday. I can’t take any more of these where the nasty one isn’t Donald Trump.
My featured artist tonight is Ed Murawinski.
Grab your popcorn and join us!!!!
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