Support Bernie Sanders, Hope Insider Dems Come to Their Senses

Hillary Clinton is hopelessly corrupt and out-of-touch

Now is the time to support Bernie Sanders and work up to the Democratic Convention, the week of July 25, to help super-delegates come to their senses. Super-delegates are unbound and cannot vote until the Convention.

The media has anointed Hillary Clinton after the corporate media conducted secret phone calls with Clinton super-delegates yesterday, which both the media and the super-delegates will not disclose in detail. Notes Gleen Greenwald:

Perfect End to Democratic Primary: Anonymous Superdelegates Declare Winner Through Media
Last night, Associated Press – on a day when nobody voted – surprised everyone by abruptly declaring the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor. The decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls show Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race, was based on the media organization’s survey of 'superdelegates': the Democratic Party’s 720 insiders, corporate donors and officials whose votes for the presidential nominee count the same as the actually elected delegates. AP claims that superdelegates who had not previously announced their intentions privately told AP reporters that they intend to vote for Clinton, bringing her over the threshold. AP is concealing the identity of the decisive superdelegates who said this.

...

This is the perfect symbolic ending to the Democratic Party primary: The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identities the media organization – incredibly – conceals. The decisive edifice of superdelegates is itself anti-democratic and inherently corrupt: designed to prevent actual voters from making choices that the party establishment dislikes. But for a party run by insiders and funded by corporate interests, it’s only fitting that their nomination process ends with such an ignominious, awkward and undemocratic sputter.

Clinton accepted the latest attempt to impose a corporate-owned subsidiary onto the United States, after feigning surprise. Typical deceitful Hillary Clinton. You don't have to settle for a Clinton.

From the Bernie Sanders campaign:

Tuesday marks the largest set of primaries and caucuses in the Democratic nomination process with six states voting for president and 694 pledged delegates up for grabs.

Pundits and the political press want to call this race early before every last person votes. That threatens to suppress voter turnout in New Jersey, California, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico. But we’re not going to let that happen. On Tuesday, we’re going to defy the pundits once more and reach for the kind of high voter turnout that will again shock the establishment.

We won’t settle for the status quo. We won’t settle for a rigged economy held in place by a corrupt system of campaign finance. We won’t settle for a fossil fuel industry hell-bent on harming our planet to pad their profits. We won’t settle for a health system that doesn’t cover everyone. In California, a high voter turnout won’t just mean a victory for our movement.

With large numbers of young people hitting the polls, we’ll boost so many Democrats in major primaries that right-wing Republicans will be locked out of general election ballots for some of the most important House and Senate races of the fall.

Members of the media and political establishment may have anointed Secretary Clinton from day one, but we know that this race is going to carry on until the delegates cast ballots at the convention in Philadelphia.

We should let the voters decide who they want the Democratic nominee to be rather than having the media decide for them. I am asking you to continue to stand with Bernie in pushing for the political revolution.

Liars and Lunatics Define 2016 Campaign

The Big Con

Scamming Our Country

Updated: Bill Clinton called Bernie Sanders voters, "toast," this weekend, a stance Clinton offers to non-Clinton-donating Americans, (Yilek, The Hill).

The corporate media continues its Hillary Clinton-poised-to-win-[if-we-add-in-super-delegates] mantra prior to its declaration Hillary Clinton wins the nomination. In fact, super-delegates are unbound and cannot vote until the Convention.

After talking "politics" by phone with Bill Clinton last year, Donald Trump persists in his loosely staged wrestling match that Trump appears to be throwing with outrageous racial taunts against the fastest growing demographic in the electorate.

Bernie Sanders maintains defiance of the corporate-Hillary-DNC axis asking questions corporate media will not touch about American society and funneling wealth to the One Percent ... then to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton laughs and refuses to answer queries asking
if Clinton will release transcripts of her paid talks to
Goldman Sachs. See the video of Hillary Clinton at The Intercept.

Some questions not being asked:

Why were Bill and Hillary Clinton talking politics with the leading birther, Donald Trump, last summer? Why would the Clintons even associate with a slime like Trump?

Why is the media including super-delegate totals, (since last year), in its reporting on the presidential primary? Why doesn't the media state the truism that super-delegates are unbound and cannot vote until the Convention?

What did Hillary Clinton say that compelled Goldman Sachs to pay her $Millions.

See

• Hillary Clinton Laughs When Asked if She Will Release Transcripts of Her Goldman Sachs Speeches (Fang, The Intercept)
• Hillary Clinton Again Declines to Disclose What She Told Big Banks in Her Paid Speeches (Fang, The Intercept)
• Hillary Clinton Won’t Say How Much Goldman Sachs CEO Invested With Her Son-in-Law (Fang, Moltke, The Intercept)

Why did the Clinton Foundation accept $Millions from human garbage in Saudi Arabia?

Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in Grand Bargain

FDR signs the Social Security Act in 1935

Time to get back to work, Mr. President. The forces of feudalism are forever busy.

Outside of the idiot caucus, and it pundits, no one wants the most successful social insurance programs in U.S. history diminished.

And no one, rational, wants the working class targeted in the coming the Grand Bargain.

Facing the elimination of public debt in 2001, the GOP under Bush-Cheney drove up the debt in the hopes that later structural deficits would force massive cuts to social insurance, education, stimulus spending and research.

Now is the time of reckoning of the lost decade.

Let's not reward what Bush-Cheney did.

In 2001, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate Budget Committee on the potential dangers of having zero federal debt, a fiscal legacy that Bush, Cheney and his rightwing ideologues were desperate to avoid.


And avoid and reverse this no-debt legacy they did.

Greenspan’s was an ambiguous and wide-ranging testimony—recounted by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil in The Price of Loyalty—that included Greenspan’s “fear that large surpluses would create a drag on the economy,” among other expressed cautions and concerns about the then-proposed Bush tax cuts (O’Neil p. 63) for the super-rich, now set to expire.

But the damage was done and Greenspan gave political cover (then and in later statements) to the reckless Bush tax cuts.

Said Greenspan in his subsequent testimony before the House Committee on the Budget (March 2, 2001):

At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses now projected under current law imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. Such an accumulation would make the federal government a significant factor in our nation’s capital markets and would risk significant distortion in the allocation of capital to its most productive uses.

A significant distortion to productive uses of capital? You mean like AIG, Citibank and Goldman Sachs?

Greenspan has since more or less apologized for his role in the train-wreck of the Bush-Cheney years that the GOP wants brought back, in part because the GOP friends in the Tea Party cannot stand the site of a black president reelected by other 'mud people.'

If President Obama takes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the table, the American people will be behind him, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson be damned.

- A version of this piece has previously appeared

Hey Wisconsin, Remember the Fear of Zero National Debt

As Gov. Doyle grapples with the giant budget deficits, it's worth recalling a time when zero national debt was feared and states argued about how much fiscal revenue they should shave off their budgets.

In 2001 Fed Chair Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate Budget Committee on the potential dangers of having no federal debt [we're at $11 trillion now], a fiscal legacy of the Clinton administration that Bush, Cheney and his rightwing ideologues were desperate to avoid.

It was an ambiguous and wide-ranging testimony, recounted by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil in The Price of Loyalty, that included Greenspan's "fear that large surpluses would create a drag on the economy," among other expressed cautions and concerns about the then-proposed Bush tax cuts (O'Neil p. 63).

But the damage was done and Greenspan gave political cover (then and in later statements) to the reckless Bush tax cuts for the super-rich.

Said Greenspan in his subsequent testimony before the House Committee on the Budget (March 2, 2001):

At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses now projected under current law imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. Such an accumulation would make the federal government a significant factor in our nation's capital markets and would risk significant distortion in the allocation of capital to its most productive uses.

A significant distortion?

The GOP commitment to make a fiscal mess of things is long-standing, notes Joe Conason in Salon today, and "and Republicans who are complaining about Barack Obama's spending are hypocrites," and avoid even addressing the arguments for stimulus spending (see Krugman, Dec. 1, 2008). Writes Conason

In our time, the Republican Party has compiled an impressive history of talking about fiscal responsibility while running up unrivaled deficits and debt. Of the roughly $11 trillion in federal debt accumulated to date, more than 90 percent can be attributed to the tenure of three presidents: Ronald Reagan, who used to complain constantly about runaway spending; George Herbert Walker Bush, reputed to be one of those old-fashioned green-eyeshade Republicans; and his spendthrift son George "Dubya" Bush, whose trillion-dollar war and irresponsible tax cuts accounted for nearly half the entire burden. Only Bill Clinton temporarily reversed the trend with surpluses and started to pay down the debt (by raising rates on the wealthiest taxpayers).

As is clear among honest observers, among the pathological programs pursued by the Bush administration was its enterprise to turn the national debt from prospects that were made in 2001 of the debt being completely paid off in 10 years to upping the debt to $10 trillion when it left office.

The wish list that the rightwingers, like Grover Norquist, desired from the future administrations dealing with the massive debt: Eliminating those awful programs like Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare which they hoped would become unsustainable because of the debt purposefully piled up by Bush and Cheney.

Bush bequeathed more than that: Millions of jobs shipped overseas, $trillions of unregulated financial products that may yet cost the dollar its role as reserve currency, states' deficits like Wisconsin's and on and on.

Obama has been scrupulously careful not to put the blame on the GOP; it's the wrong message for the guy sent in to clean up the mess. But Conason, Krugman and others should continue to further an understanding of the political-economic commitments of the GOP.

- See also Krugman: Large fiscal expansion needed (Dec. 1, 2008)

Rightwingers Set to Mock Themselves

A valuable bequest from the Clinton administration is the revealing to a wide political audience of the American rightwing as hateful whack jobs.

Decent, hard-working people no doubt, but whack jobs nonetheless who pursued the Clintons relentlessly and shamelessly, casting every aspersion imaginable upon a cautious administration.

As a result of the Clintons' devastating rebuttal of the rightwing attacks [at the height of the impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval numbers rose to 69 percent], George W. Bush was forced to run as an anti-rightwing, centrist Republican, proclaiming non-divisive moderation in the 2000 election.

Progressive groups like Move On flowered as the attacks on Clinton became utterly untenable and the American people soured on the politics of the right.

Yet, there is every indication to believe that the rightwing is ready to launch another war on Obama led by many of the same characters.

Arguably, the war has already been declared in light of the vicious attacks that Obama has already repelled, and faces in the more doctrinaire Republican Party remaining in Congress.

But the vast majority of the American people have seen enough of negativity and hate as the results of the last two national elections clearly show.

During the 2008 presidential debates even an intellectual disagreement with McCain voiced and generalized by Obama as reflecting badly on McCain would result in focus groups effectively booing the statement because it came across as bordering on the mean-spirited side of the spectrum.

'Tell what you're for; not what the other guy is,' is the effective sentiment.

The GOP Southern Strategy is on its death bed though no complete victory is ever achieved. As the Clarance Darrow-inspired character in Inherit the Wind reminds us, "...fanaticism and ignorance (are) forever busy, and (need) feeding."

The attacks will still come, the vote suppression will continue [right here in Wisconsin as J.B. Van Hollen fights to cover his political behind in his losing quest], but in today's political culture here's a bet that those rightwingers still launching their hate-tipped cultural missiles will be perceived by the American people as merely making fun of themselves.

And that goes double for Milwaukee police detective Michael Sandvick; you blow-hard whack!

- via mal contends

Big Dog Delivers

Photo of Clinton Meeting Rev. Wright

As Clinton continues her under-the-radar campaign asserting Obama is unelectable because of his pastor, it has come out that Bill Clinton met with and was photographed with Rev. Wright.

From Ben Smith:

Responding to the Times's report that Obama campaign had "provided" them a photo of Bill Clinton and Jeremiah Wright (which had surfaced a bit earlier here and elsewhere) , Clinton spokesman Jay Carson emails:

"The Obama campaign put this photo out? How pathetic," he said. "Less than 48 hours after calling for a high-minded conversation on race, the Obama campaign is peddling photos of an occasion when President Clinton shook hands with Rev. Wright. To be clear, President Clinton took tens of thousands of photos during his 8 years as president."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responds:

"After their top surrogates pushed this story line and Senator Clinton's campaign outlined this as a central strategy in her plan to overturn the will of Democratic voters, I can see why they wouldn't want a photo out there that shows the kind of hypocrisy we've all come to expect from their campaign."

Obama Win in South Carolina May Be Critical

In a rousing, pitch-perfect victory speech tonight, Barack Obama appeared every bit the transformative, promising new candidate for president that has been the message of his campaign since its inception.

Contrasting with an increasingly negative tone from the Clinton campaign, Obama said of his opponents that they are “fierce competitors who are worthy of our respect and admiration …”

Obama's overwhelming win in South Carolina may prove pivotal, not because of the voters' apparent rejection of weeks of snide comments from the Clinton campaign in an apparent effort to brand Obama as an unreliable and untested stranger in America, or even the embrace of Obama's message, but because of Bill Clinton's shocking dismissal of the significance of South Carolina's black vote propelling Obama to victory.

Said Clinton of Obama's win in response to a question that Obama faces two Clintons as Democratic primary opponents: “That’s just bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama's run a good campaign here, he’s run a good campaign everywhere.”

The significance of Clinton's remark is that Clinton diminished Obama's win by pointing out that another black man, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, won South Carolina twice, suggestive that it's no big deal another black man would win there.

This explicit attitude of failing to acknowledge Obama's character and positive qualities will feed into an existing political matrix of the Clinton campaign as ungracious and disrespectful, a dynamic that has already seen Hillary Clinton's lead over Obama among blacks evaporate.

In other developments, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama today in a New York Times op-ed entitled, "A President Like My Father".

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