Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in the field with views which were not bought and sold months or years before the campaign. There are multiple news articles with the general theme of 'Bernie Sanders has no chance ... but ...' and all of them illustrate no more than the endemic despair over the state of democracy in the country.
Even Obama copped a few cheesy points by joking about 'another pot-smoking socialist in the White House.' My only question to him would be when was the first one. The Affordable Care Act isn't socialism as it benefits the same GOP-owned insurance companies which have dominated and marginalized American health care all along. (Washington Post: Obama Jokes That There Could Be Another 'Pot Smoking Socialist' In The White House)
The program prevents some of the abuses by insurance companies but it was vastly less than any kind of social or medical revolution. That conservatives have made so much of it shows nothing so much as how little they have to offer on anything else, particularly given Obama's military aggression is difficult to match without a real declaration of war anywhere.
He even sent that sand flea of a diplomat, Tony Blair, to Ukraine and that fool has never successfully accomplished anything. His successes in Iraq are before you to behold to this day. He and George Bush wouldn't even qualify as Marx Brothers as they have no discernible skills in anything, much less comedy.
The actual problem is as I've said previously is in the rampaging abuses of super PACs and the original PACs insofar as there is very little regulation of how they are managed or what they do and the candidates can disavow anything they do because there's not a direct connection between them. In any other environment this would be termed 'plausible deniability' but in American politics it's business as usual.
Use of 'rampaging' may seem like hyperbole but I disagree with that estimation as the general speculation is ten billion dollars will be spent on Election 2016 after one billion dollars were spent on Election 2012. Relative to accounts with this much folding money, the individual citizen has no more chance of survival than a butterfly in a hurricane. (Bloomberg View: How Record Spending Will Affect 2016 Election)
An old maxim is 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' With ten billion dollars at your disposal, you could corrupt ... (I won't write my first choice as the name would piss you off for a different and inappropriate reason). OK, so you couldn't corrupt her but damn sure anyone else.
Politicians go to political conventions for the same reason as hookers which is the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where they keep the money."
With ten billion dollars in-play in this contest, you've got every sleazebag conservative politician from here to Sleepy Hollow trying to get a piece of it. What deluded reality leads Bobby Jindal to believe he would ever be elected to any job which does not involve animals and, no, I don't mean as a shepherd. Answer: he's not that stupid; show him the money and he will come.
Yesterday, Cadillac Man and I touched briefly on the validity of the popular vote and it's not my purpose to address that specifically but I'll offer that I would eliminate the Electoral College altogether as I have no interest in the concept of states' rights. One example of the exercise of that right is in how Rick Perry has blocked the Affordable Care Act in Texas which has accomplished nothing more than wasting a great deal of money, preventing various people from getting medical care, and taking a position for no better reason than grandstanding in front of the crowd before a Presidential run.
In my view, the popular vote is irrelevant when the public has no choice over who will run and this is determined primarily by how much money they have to spend. When the majority of that money comes from corporations and exceptionally-wealthy individuals, the popular vote means almost nothing as the average citizen's only choices are between candidates the corporations present to them.
Note: there isn't a corporation anywhere in the known Universe which is run as a democracy. When the rich don't use it in structures they build for their own purposes, what fantasy leads you to believe they want it anywhere else.
Even Obama copped a few cheesy points by joking about 'another pot-smoking socialist in the White House.' My only question to him would be when was the first one. The Affordable Care Act isn't socialism as it benefits the same GOP-owned insurance companies which have dominated and marginalized American health care all along. (Washington Post: Obama Jokes That There Could Be Another 'Pot Smoking Socialist' In The White House)
The program prevents some of the abuses by insurance companies but it was vastly less than any kind of social or medical revolution. That conservatives have made so much of it shows nothing so much as how little they have to offer on anything else, particularly given Obama's military aggression is difficult to match without a real declaration of war anywhere.
He even sent that sand flea of a diplomat, Tony Blair, to Ukraine and that fool has never successfully accomplished anything. His successes in Iraq are before you to behold to this day. He and George Bush wouldn't even qualify as Marx Brothers as they have no discernible skills in anything, much less comedy.
The actual problem is as I've said previously is in the rampaging abuses of super PACs and the original PACs insofar as there is very little regulation of how they are managed or what they do and the candidates can disavow anything they do because there's not a direct connection between them. In any other environment this would be termed 'plausible deniability' but in American politics it's business as usual.
Use of 'rampaging' may seem like hyperbole but I disagree with that estimation as the general speculation is ten billion dollars will be spent on Election 2016 after one billion dollars were spent on Election 2012. Relative to accounts with this much folding money, the individual citizen has no more chance of survival than a butterfly in a hurricane. (Bloomberg View: How Record Spending Will Affect 2016 Election)
An old maxim is 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' With ten billion dollars at your disposal, you could corrupt ... (I won't write my first choice as the name would piss you off for a different and inappropriate reason). OK, so you couldn't corrupt her but damn sure anyone else.
Politicians go to political conventions for the same reason as hookers which is the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where they keep the money."
With ten billion dollars in-play in this contest, you've got every sleazebag conservative politician from here to Sleepy Hollow trying to get a piece of it. What deluded reality leads Bobby Jindal to believe he would ever be elected to any job which does not involve animals and, no, I don't mean as a shepherd. Answer: he's not that stupid; show him the money and he will come.
Yesterday, Cadillac Man and I touched briefly on the validity of the popular vote and it's not my purpose to address that specifically but I'll offer that I would eliminate the Electoral College altogether as I have no interest in the concept of states' rights. One example of the exercise of that right is in how Rick Perry has blocked the Affordable Care Act in Texas which has accomplished nothing more than wasting a great deal of money, preventing various people from getting medical care, and taking a position for no better reason than grandstanding in front of the crowd before a Presidential run.
In my view, the popular vote is irrelevant when the public has no choice over who will run and this is determined primarily by how much money they have to spend. When the majority of that money comes from corporations and exceptionally-wealthy individuals, the popular vote means almost nothing as the average citizen's only choices are between candidates the corporations present to them.
Note: there isn't a corporation anywhere in the known Universe which is run as a democracy. When the rich don't use it in structures they build for their own purposes, what fantasy leads you to believe they want it anywhere else.
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