This is the ultimate in delusion

I was on that other site that I will not name. Someone posted Michiko Kakutani's review of "Shattered," the book about the implosion of you know who's campaign.

This was the response about the post. Warning: this ostrich is still in the sand. This delusional is known as "still_one" (more like still_brainless):

1. What a bullshit hit piece. The media had it in for Hillary from the start, and the NY Times was

right there leading the pack

Nice of them to briefly mention the contribution of Comey, and the Russian interference.

This sure isn't a sympathetic book.

The primaries were essentially over after New York, but the media went on with the horse race

They push the line, "she never reached out to the rust belt", but hardly mention their complicity in propagating "a lie told often enough becomes the truth"

Hillary was leading in all the polls before Comey came out 11 days with the letter to the republicans in Congress, and the good ole "liberal station" MSNBC was the first network to report that the email investigation was reopened. THAT WAS A LIE. MSNBC then proceed to parade every right wing politician across their screen for the next two hours propagating that LIE. Soon every other news network followed suit with the same f**kin LIE. A few days later Bret Baier broadcast that according to "his sources in the FBI, an imminent indictment was pending on the Clinton Foundation. Another LIE, but the other news outlets picked that up quickly too. a few days later Baier came out and apologized saying that there was no pending indictment, and apologized. He was mistaken. Just peachy. The damage was pretty much done then, and the poll numbers reflected it. Hillary completely lost the lead she had.

Even with all that, she might have made it, if the self-identified progressives who refused to vote for Hillary, voted for her.

In Michigan Hillary lost by .3%. Jill Stein received 1.1% of the vote. Similar results in Wisconsin and all the other swing states, and it would have made a difference.

but the damage didn't stop there. Every Democrat running for Senate in those critical swing states lost to the incumbent, ESTABLISHMENT, republican

Interestingly, Bernie's endorsements didn't work out too well either:

Russ Feingold lost to Ron Johnson in rust belt Wisconsin. Russ Championed Bernie's platform, opposing trade deals, opposing special interests, promoting a federal minimum wage of 15 dollars, and advocating for debt-free college.

In Colorado, Amendment 69, a measure that would have created a universal healthcare system in Colorado, 80% voted no, and only 21% of Colorado voters supported it

Zephyr Teachout in the 19th district in New York was aligned on almost every issue Bernie brought up. opposed free trade, lobbyists, and campaign finance reform was a central theme of her campaign, yet she lost by 10% in her district.

In California Bernie came out to campaign for Proposition 61, that would mandate that state agencies pay no more for prescription drugs than the US Department of Veterans Affairs pay. It lost by 8%.

In Vermont Bernie endorsed Sue Minter for Governor against the republican. Unfortunately she lost by 8%.

Ted Strickland lost in Ohio by over 20%.

Sorry but everything wasn't so f**king "easy" how these "pieces came together", as the article says.

What is easy to understand is what happened.

The false equivalencies, and the legitimizing of racism, sexism, and xenophobia by the media spoke volumes.

When Chuck Todd said "It's Not the Media's Job To Correct GOP's Falsehoods", or CNN entertaining the question, "are Jews human?", the fourth estate is no longer about accuracy, it is about ratings.

This person needs medication. What do you think?

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snoopydawg's picture

Taibbi has an article on RollingStones about her book which is a great read.

This traced back to 2008, a failed run that the Clintons had concluded was due to the disloyalty and treachery of staff and other Democrats. After that race, Hillary had aides create "loyalty scores" (from one for most loyal, to seven for most treacherous) for members of Congress. Bill Clinton since 2008 had "campaigned against some of the sevens" to "help knock them out of office," apparently to purify the Dem ranks heading into 2016.

Beyond that, Hillary after 2008 conducted a unique autopsy of her failed campaign. This reportedly included personally going back and reading through the email messages of her staffers:

"She instructed a trusted aide to access the campaign's server and download the messages sent and received by top staffers. … She believed her campaign had failed her – not the other way around – and she wanted 'to see who was talking to who, who was leaking to who,' said a source familiar with the operation."

Funny isn't that she can't accept that the reason why she lost twice was because she was a horrible candidate and people didn't believe that she would represent main stream Americans.
They saw what she helped Bill do during his tenure when they passed welfare reform, the crime bill, deregulated the banks and all the other legislation that they passed that is still affecting people today.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-on-the-new-book-tha...
IMG_0993.JPG

Ostriches, indeed! Especially this one.

They push the line, "she never reached out to the rust belt", but hardly mention their complicity in propagating "a lie told often enough becomes the truth"

Didn't that actually happen? She didn't even bother with trying in the rust belt and her campaign staff was telling her that she needed to do that.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Wink's picture

@snoopydawg
this book is (not Hillary, but) a Washington political establishment that has lost the ability to explain itself or its motives to people outside the Beltway.

In fact, it shines through in the book that the voters' need to understand why this or that person is running for office is viewed in Washington as little more than an annoying problem."
Bing!
Taibbi nails it.
Why did so many NOT feel compelled to vote for the top of the ticket?
This.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@Wink

More people voted and left their vote for President blank than she lost by. 100k

Taibbi's article is short, sweet, and a good read. Dkos is a swamp full of the most ignorant and ardent, Tesla driving, Party sheep. They can't die off soon enough.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

ggersh's picture

@snoopydawg traitors both, they sold out both the people and the country

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

karl pearson's picture

Hillary Clinton should never have run for president. As First Lady, some people recognized that Hillary had grandiose political ambitions for herself and they viewed this unfavorably. The problem has always been that Hillary Clinton is not a natural politician and it shows. In fact, Clinton can sometimes be very unartful when she speaks. "Riding Bill's coattails" got her a Senate seat in New York, but Hillary's presidential campaign against Obama in 2008 was plagued with lots of problems, similar to her 2016 campaign. I believe over time, as Donald Trump morphs even more into a right-wing Republican, people will blame the Clintons, whose refusal to leave the limelight contributed to another national nightmare where Republicans control all levers of the federal government.

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@karl pearson

Obama is just like Hillary only charming and glib. Guess that makes him more like Bill. The problem they have is bigger than Hillary.

The unity tour is loudly and proudly rejecting (booing) Tom Perez and the corporate wing of the party. Perez is getting a front row seat to the popularity of Bernie and his policies.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Amanda Matthews's picture

@dkmich
yesterday. The chickenshit DNC with Sanders collision swapped him out for ELLISON after the Maine fiasco.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

bondibox's picture

@karl pearson

I believe over time, as Donald Trump morphs even more into a right-wing Republican, people will blame the Clintons

I've come to believe the Democrats will never come to terms with the failings of 2016. For starters, they will never believe she lost on her own right. They will never believe she was a shitty candidate. And so they can never properly assign blame. There are many facets to the olympic level denial going on, because at its core the real denial for the Democrats is that it is they themselves who are to blame.

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F the F'n D's

Centaurea's picture

Scratch one-s head

Poor, poor Hillary. Poor, poor Hillary supporters. Poor, poor DNC. All of this bad stuff keeps happening, and they just can't figure out why. They never do anything to cause any of it. The universe just has it in for them, and it's not fair. It's just not fair.

"Why Her? Why us? Everyone is always so mean to us. Mean Comey. Mean Bernie Bros. Mean news media. Mean Russians. Mean American people who didn't vote for Hillary. Why can't they just stop picking on us? Everything would be fine if it weren't for them." Cray 2

To me, this all has a pathological vibe. From what I've seen, so many Hillary supporters, especially the longtime ones, identify with her to the point of dysfunctional psychological enmeshment. They've projected their own life experiences and emotional issues onto her, are fighting out those issues using Hillary as the figurehead, and can't see her for who she really is.

This psychological stance is very well-defended. Any hint by anyone to the contrary is met with denial, at the least, and vicious attack with cold furiosity, at the worst, which many of us Bernie supporters have witnessed firsthand.

It's difficult if not impossible to reach someone who's in this kind of defensive posture. It's almost as if you've provoked an existential crisis inside of them.

I have empathy for people in this kind of emotional pain, but the solution for us is not to try to convince them of anything, but to go about our business. Don't give people who are that hung-up any power or say-so over the future of humanity or the planet.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

snoopydawg's picture

@Centaurea
They couldn't and wouldn't see her for what she really is. Anything we said about her was regarded as right wing talking points no matter what the sources came from. She pushed Bill to bomb Kosovo, her Iraq war vote along with repeating what Cheney said about Saddam meeting with Al Qaida members, her role in the Libya destruction, her callousness after watching Gaddafi being sodomized with a sword before he was killed, her role in the Syrian war, her support for the Ukraine and Honduras coups and every other military intervention she saw.
When we called her a warmonger because of the above, they refused to acknowledge it.
They continued to say that she was a great defender of women and children in spite of pushing millions into poverty after welfare reform. And the number of them who she was responsible for killing or making refugees and all the other things she did that hurt them. I kept asking exactly what she did that made her the defender of them and received no answers.
Let's not forget how she laughed after she got the rapist of the 12 year old girl off and laughed while describing how she did that.

. From what I've seen, so many Hillary supporters, especially the longtime ones, identify with her to the point of dysfunctional psychological enmeshment. They've projected their own life experiences and emotional issues onto her, are fighting out those issues using Hillary as the figurehead, and can't see her for who she really is.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

CB's picture

@snoopydawg

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@snoopydawg
Especially after the Clinton Foundation screwed that country up after they failed to give the financial support they needed.

I teach Haitian students and they're still angry over this.

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@nedsdag

i believe hrc actually lobbied to lower haiti minimun wage
to help foundation donors who wanted to get in there.

mills later went in partners with the one of them in ghana, where wage is more reasonable $.23/HR.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/thepoint/2016/01/19/wont-believe-clinto...
http://sentinel.ht/2016/05/12/haitian-protesters-gassed-over-hillary-cli...

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Mark from Queens's picture

@Centaurea
says progressive feminist Katie Halper.

Real feminism is taking a big hit because of the conflation of HRC's defeat to be the result of sexism.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Mark from Queens "Big hit" is one way of putting it. Mine is that feminism is dead in this country. RIP (1848-2016)

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

SnappleBC's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal And I disagree from two different angles.

First, I disagree because while the banner of feminism may be corrupted, I refuse to let go of the point. A simple viewing of "Mad Men" is enough to remind me that despite the weaponization of the term "feminism", the point is urgently valid.

Second, I disagree because I read plenty of young feminists who have not bought into the establishment line and are, in my opinion at least, thinking thoughts about actual feminist issues.

If someone asks me today if I'm a feminist I say "no". But if they ask me if I think women ultimately own the rights to their own bodies my answer is emphatically "yes".

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

@Mark from Queens I like her, I'll have to read her stuff. Loved that logical takedown of their version of "Feminism." And a righteous screed out of Jimmy.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Amanda Matthews's picture

@Centaurea
lives up in this woman so deeply that they have 'become' the Clinton Creature.

They remind me of Norman Bates in a way.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

mimi's picture

conclusion that you have to bury the Democratic Party.

You have to invest your energy to build something new and do not watch back (other for historical purposes and to put into your archives). I think the Democrats and the Republicans all came to the end of the road. They self destroy taking the world with them into the grave.

I hope the world will refuse to die with them and will not follow.

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@mimi
beautifully said. Thank you for saying it, mimi, and I will keep it close at hand in case I get distracted. A perfect statement.

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gulfgal98's picture

is one of the best I have read on the subject of Shattered and the Clinton campaign. From the very beginning, neither Clinton nor her campaign staff could give a rationale for WHY she was running. She presented no vision to sell the voters on why they should elect her.

"All of the jockeying might have been all right, but for a root problem that confounded everyone on the campaign and outside it," they wrote. "Hillary had been running for president for almost a decade and still didn't really have a rationale."

Allen and Parnes here quoted a Clinton aide who jokingly summed up Clinton's real motivation:

"I would have had a reason for running," one of her top aides said, "or I wouldn't have run."

At one point, her campaign staff considered using "It's Her Turn" to explain to the public why she was running. The campaign was all about HER and never about what she would do for the voters. It was obvious with her initial campaign slogan of "I'm With Her" which Bernie Sanders called phony. I called it egotistical.

Her lack of a defined rationale for running is exactly why Jon Favreau, Obama's speech writer quit the Clinton campaign before the initial roll out.

Even throughout the campaign, Clinton's ads were sorely lacking in policy. It is pretty pathetic that Trump's campaign ads were far more substantive than Clinton's.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran TV ads that had less to do with policy than any other presidential candidate in the past four presidential races, according to a new study published on Monday by the Wesleyan Media Project.

The picture that is emerging in the reviews of Shattered is one of a self absorbed candidate who was completely out of touch with the needs of the voters, who could not formulate a basic rationale for why she should be elected, and ran basically a vanity campaign in her drive to become the first woman President.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

She reeked of entitlement. She ran because she should be queen.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich The whole family, Her, Bill, and her daughter, Chelsea, Duchess of Manhattan.

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@dkmich I think her staff couldn't come up for reason because the real reasons had nothing to do with the public good. She was intoxicated by power and everything that bring it brings. This is why I think her TV ads were content free. What ad can explain her thirst for power when it meant aligning and supporting those having wealth and power. Same with the celebrity adoration. More than one pundit noted how much her campaign pushed her admiration by celebrities--this wasn't a political tick to used, but rather a paen to her ego and self-regard.

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@MrWebster Her sense of entitlement was front and center when she refused to get off her royal butt and campaign in the rust belt. Trump addressed their concerns, but she did not even bother to show up.
Yes, I know Trump lied, but at least he pretended to care.

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riverlover's picture

@gulfgal98 to those not caught up in identity politics. No desires stated as policy to help the Average American in any way until she sorta stole Bernie's talk with no conviction. She does come off in the Taibbi article as almost Nixonian. Is that a new adjective? I don't think so.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

gulfgal98's picture

@riverlover Yes! I totally agree with your description. Good

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

The campaign was all about HER and never about what she would do for the voters. It was obvious with her initial campaign slogan of "I'm With Her" which Bernie Sanders called phony. I called it egotistical.

I'm afraid that this is a near universal motivation for national office holders. Having just sat through as much of a town hall style Democratic Party anti Trump rally and Q&A session as I could stand, it became crystal clear that job one is getting reelected, primarily by not rocking the Party boat and by keeping the big donors and corporate co-conspirators flush, fat and happy. The last thing on their minds is bettering the condition of the serfs. Our Senator would field a difficult question asking for a pledge on his part and then speak for twenty minutes about vaguely related history of the past thirty years, all the while carefully avoiding anything that could be construed as an answer to the question. I almost went all Howard Beale from the back row shouting "Was that a YES or a NO to the question Senator?" but chickened out.

I am so done with our two party system.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49 The so called "liberal" Senator from WI, Tammy Baldwin, never had one. And Johnson just kept his voice mail on. I never spoke to a real person in any of Johnson's offices in WI. I have my doubts about her in 2018.

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O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

@ovals49 I sent my DINO state senator questions about his vote against the importation of drugs. I never heard back, but at least He is not hounding me for donations anymore. I will no longer vote for somebody just because they have a D after their name.

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CS in AZ's picture

@gulfgal98

I started reading it a couple days ago, haven't had time to read much yet, but there's a quote in there from a Clinton friend claiming "She didn't want to run for president. She just concluded she was the only one who could win." That's just funny, and wrong on so many levels. But the idea of Her thinking that about herself is easy to imagine.

The book so far details a picture of a campaign driven by directionless leadership and incompetence, stemming from the top of the campaign, the Clintons, and reflected in the people they hired and the convoluted structure and infighting that resulted. Just like 2008. They learned nothing, except the wrong lessons. How the Clintons somehow maintain their status as this political powerhouse couple, and the mythology of greatness around Hillary especially, is incredible.

The book also mentions, almost is passing, how the Clintons had taken steps to retaliate against people they pegged as disloyal in the 2008 campaign, as part of their "preparations" for 2016. Um, wow. Like they were just checking this task off the To-Do list. "Retaliation against disloyal subjects." Check. What exactly they did to them isn't mentioned. The whole idea of retaliation is not even commented on.

But to me, it says a great deal. That they had to threaten and strong-arm their way into the nomination from the very beginning, used intimidation to clear her path, tells a lot right there about how and why they lost. It also explains the ongoing Blame Bernie bleating from their camp, no matter what he did to make nice or what he does now to go along with this unity charade. Bernie was disloyal. He challenged her. Her was mildly critical of her. For this, he will be the scapegoat and never be forgiven. It's how they roll.

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orlbucfan's picture

was a front row seat for watching the stupid, corrupt machinations of the DNC and $hrill. HRC or tRump: where exactly is the lessor of two evils? Neither one was a lessor; they were/are both equally bad. I didn't vote for either one cos I saw them as 2 faces sharing the same stupid trashy head! Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@orlbucfan You mean like this?

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/demogorgon-prince-demons

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZuktUfF0nE]

Just FYI for the Hillary crowd. When you're accusing EVERYBODY of being in on a conspiracy to destroy you...

It may not be them you should be worrying about.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Strife Delivery's picture

The media was AGAINST her?!

Seriously?

Wow. I can't even...

She had the entire media apparatus firmly in her pocket. Everything and everyone was against Trump. To somehow say the media was against her...just unreal.

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gulfgal98's picture

@Strife Delivery Hillary got the majority of newspaper endorsements (57) to Trump's two. Even Gary Johnson got more than Trump with four.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Centaurea's picture

@Strife Delivery Wikileaks showed that the DNC and Hillary campaign began conniving with MSM early on (2014 or 2015) to promote Hillary and kept doing so all the way through. Not only by carrying on about Trump non-stop, but when Bernie entered the race, by marginalizing and ignoring him.

This was part of what was in the emails released by wikileaks that showed the DNC rigging the primary. No wonder MSM keeps screaming about Russians instead of looking at the contents of the emails. They themselves are implicated by the emails.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

@Centaurea
really interesting here.

No wonder MSM keeps screaming about Russians instead of looking at the contents of the emails. They themselves are implicated by the emails.

I want to say even more so, that maybe, on the other hand, the MSM doesn't even get what's wrong with what they did. And maybe their fallback at all times is to repeat information given to them by, I was going to type, "the intelligence community," but can we just say what it is: the CIA.

If the CIA says Bernie Sanders is a marginal candidate, the MSM says that. If the CIA says Russia caused Clinton's loss of the election, the MSM says that. If the CIA says nuclear weapons can't harm you and that getting into a war with Russia will teach Russia a lesson, the MSM says it. If the CIA says golf balls are falling from space, the MSM will say that because they don't think. They just repeat. And they've been doing it for so long and have been making such a good living at it for so long, that they don't understand what the emails or the power of nuclear weapons even mean.

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Centaurea's picture

@Linda Wood Earlier tonight I was thinking about the Michigan Dem primary. As the election results were coming in, Bernie led pretty much the whole time, yet the news media refused to call it for Bernie until over 90% of precincts had reported. This was a change from previous primaries, which had been called early on.

The MSM anchors and reporters looked so stunned that Bernie won Michigan. I kept thinking, why are they so surprised? Hadn't they been paying attention?

Anyone who'd been keeping up with what was going on could connect the dots. Huge crowds at Bernie's rallies, the overwhelming support by the Millennials, and the amazing energy being generated by a candidate who was previously not well-known by the American public, a message that was resonating across the US -- this was a huge news story, yet the MSM completely failed to report on it. It was right in front of them, yet they either just didn't see it or didn't understand what they were looking at.

Part of this was undoubtedly due to orders from their corporate owners (within the context confirmed by wikileaks). But for many of them, it seems like not only did they not connect the dots; they didn't even know that they're supposed to connect the dots. Maybe they don't even know how dot-connecting is done anymore.

It's ironic that MSM keeps carrying on about the "red scare" Russia-phobia stuff, because lately I've been thinking about the cold war-era Pravda and Izvestia, and seeing a lot of similarities with the US's current so-called "news" media.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

@Centaurea
summarizes the 2016 state of affairs so beautifully. And again you point out the crucial fact:

they didn't even know that they're supposed to connect the dots.

You are bringing together what so many of us are ranting and raging about, the fact that the Mainstream Media are not journalists, they are mouthpieces.

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earthling1's picture

I'm calling it now. 2020 will bring a Clinton and a Bush to choose from.
Edit: Could also include a Trump (Ivanka perhaps).

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

@earthling1 Jeb will run as the reasonable Republican (ha!) and if Hillary's health issues finally get to the point where they can't hide them anymore, it'll be Chelsea's turn for some reason. Ugh.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Do I win anything other than four years of President Trump?

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

edg's picture

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MarilynW's picture

nothing to do with age. Bernie was much more up-to-date. She was militaristic and indifferent to environmental issues. Too right-wing. But then look what the USA ended up with - the Trumps are vastly out-of-date, beginning with the way they dress.

So there appeared to be little difference between the candidates on that level.

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To thine own self be true.

Mark from Queens's picture

@MarilynW

in all the ways you said. Total cheeseball style of that worst, conservative wet dream decade, that was completely culturally vapid, gave us the worst pop music and the beginning of a serious worship of Wall St and Get Rich Quick schemes, the latter by which we're still afflicted. I just said this but I'll say it again because it applies here too - how cheesy was it, and so indicative of how out of touch she is, that Her was going to have Bon Douchi play her election night party? Just imagining those phonies getting the call that the show's been cancelled and the stage plot being torn down, while she probably sat shell-shocked in a drugged up stupor, gives me some fleeting perverse pleasure, I'm sorry to say. I really can't stand these "it's only business/it's all about me" kind of people, and how duped people are into admiring such phonies.

The whole thing is so nauseating on so many levels. Two self-absorbed, narcissistic, money-worshipping, RW authoritarian, Neoliberal assholes, presented to the world as the best we have to offer. What a complete farce.

At a distance now and soon to be even more clear to all, can we finally admit that the fealty we have to this democratic system and its vaunted institutions must be reassessed and then torn down, dismantled and burned to the ground? We're being "led" by the deaf, dumb and blind, because only rich, well-connected nepotists run the system. There has to be a better way.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Hillary and campaign.

People are not brand new. They did not form their opinions about Hillary in 2015-16 from mass media like the NYT--which btw ALL endorsed her, both in the primary and the general. Rather, people formed their opinions about Hillary from decades of watching her and her husband. Based on that, they did not like or trust her to keep a single promise. And they knew that her wanting to be President was all about her burning desire to be the first woman President and not about a vision for the nation. They also saw how she, her supporters (in office, in media and rank and file) treated Bernie and his supporters.

Her campaigning therefore consisted mostly of two categories: Things people did not believe or trust and "Trump is worse."

As far as all polls, first there is only one poll that matters and that's the one 50 states take by election day. Second, almost all polls measure only the popular vote, which is not how Presidential elections are won.

I don't think Comey did her in AT ALL. If he did, that would mean only that the Clinton obsession with secrecy did her in. Which is fine. She would have been worse than Obama on transparency and he broke records, Government should be transparent to its owners, which is us. Not that Trump will be better. Truth is, neither of them is the lesser evil.

The reason Democrats lost is they insisted on running Hillary and protecting her, knowing full well she is a very flawed candidate--which is why they ran Obama in 2008 instead of her. And now, supposedly she and Obama are setting the course of the Democratic Party for the future. Good luck with that!

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Azazello's picture

@HenryAWallace
so she had to re-introduce herself.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zrbdayJpP4 width:500 height:300]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello @Azazello

campaign had sent in advance. That shows how "awful" media was to her.

How many articles did you see about how bad Bernie's supporters behaved? How many did you see about how bad Hillary's supporters behaved? That was not because one group was any worse than the other. It was because media was reading right off her script.

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@Azazello

Lol, if Hillary has Alzheimer's, so must everyone else?

And having no memories, surely the mindless masses'll believe that she's shed her old scales and is a new and different person now?

But this can really be said with two songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oUxwSeFQtw

Siouxsie And The Banshees - New Skin

Fuck you, I win this prize

The stardom, the pardons and lies

The miles, the minutes passing by

My window

Yeah yeah yeah

Rising up from the ashes and grime

A new me on the other side

Hello, Hello, I'm breaking through

This old skin

Woo woooo woo woooo

Hello, Hello, I'm coming through my new skin

Yeah yeah yeah

So take the dips with the tricks

Gimme shimmy shimmy hip shake

Hello, Hello, let's kick our trash

A new bend

Woo woooo woo woooo

Hello, Hello, I'm coming in my new skin

...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFbjSpMoR4E

Siouxsie and the Banshees - ICON

"My eyes went up to Heaven You didn't say I'd be blind without them

Icons-feed the fires icons-falling from the spires

Thine eyes rain down from Heaven You always said I'd be blind without them

Icons-feed the fires Icons-falling from the spires

Those words hang like vicious spittle dribbling from that tongue

Close your eyes to your lies Force feed more pious meat

Those nebulous codes and disiplines Stick in that new born throat

Instill a lie-an artificial eye to view a perfect land

Icons-feed the fires Icons-falling from the spires

Can I?-Stick skewers in my skin and whirl a dervish spin Can I?-set myself on fire to prove some kind of desire

Icons-feed the fires Icons-falling from the spires

The guilt is golden

The guilt is golden

Those ageless lies

The shuttered eyes

It's the nightpiece

It's the Icon"

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

The editorial leadership at TOP is working hand-in-hand with the DNC to push the Russian/Trump connection as thee primary strategy to bash Trump. That book goes against that laying the loss on the campaign. It is a collective moment of cognitive dissonance at TOP which must be dealt with and explained.

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What an "insight."

Same for Eugene Debs, Al Smith, John Kerry, Adlai Stevenson, Russ Feingold (was a personal favorite) and everyone else who ever lost any kind of election, from town sheriff to President.

Wake up. Everyone is not still voting Republican or Democratic simply because of party or rushing to the polls to vote for someone they dislike. As far as lesser evil, guess what? Neither Trump nor Hillary was the lesser evil. They were both the greater evil. Guess what? It's not enough to carry blue states.

It's up to Democrats to choose a strong candidate, not a incurably flawed one. It's up to the candidate to make people want to vote for him or her, not up to voters, left right or center, to force themselves to vote for someone they don't want in office. (Why in hell would they?) It's also up to the candidate to figure electoral vote counts.

Notice: they never blame anyone but the left. Not Republicans, not indies, not people who voted for any of the newer parties besides Green, not people who stayed home, just always the left/Greens. Not even for party unity does tThe DLC/DNC want a thing to do with the left--until election day. And then they wonder why the left is not racing to force itself to vote for a Democratic candidate they don't want to be President--one who brags on her "conservative roots" and visibly shuddered when Matthews calls her a liberal.

They're still bashing the left, adamant that they don't need to change a thing for a minority of the party (that includes many millions of voters, including those who left the party years ago and returned only to vote for Bernie in their state's primary). Fine, it's not up to liberals to change themselves for the Democratic Party, either. Do the math, folks. Literally. (She could have won if more people voted for her. Duh.)

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Cassiodorus's picture

@HenryAWallace Clinton Two lost the Electoral College by a bigger margin than did Gore or Kerry.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

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native

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whatever.

after decades of lying Ivy'd sell out scum Dem-0-RAT$, and their noble erudite diaper pissing dilettante enablers of the Dim-0-CRAP$, bernie didn't change everything in 1 election!

Decades of pathetic sell out messaging, decades of piece of shit campaigns, decades of pissing away majorities and mandates and HOPE '92 and HOPE '08, and, boo-hoo, 70 year old Bernie didn't change it all all at once!!

LOMFG!!

WHAT really kills me about these kinds of toadies? Unless you're getting paid well north of $100,000 a year, WHAT are you getting? Your photo op with the other sell outs at the holiday parties!! asshole.

rmm.

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But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;

k9disc's picture

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu