Warren stalled? Biden about to collapse?
I haven't seen anyone mention it, but Warren has been dropping in the polls for all of October.
As for Biden, his support remains strong with old people who aren't paying attention, but the media is getting ready to drop him. Voters are tiring of him too.
Right now, 27% of likely Democratic voters would be dissatisfied with Biden. That's higher than the 21% of Democratic primary voters who would be dissatisfied with Sanders as nominee, and the 15% who would be unhappy if Warren was the nominee.
Among voters who'd be satisfied with Sanders, Biden is considered unsatisfactory by 32%. Just nine percent of Sanders supports would be dissatisfied with Warren and just over 9% dislike Mayor Pete Buttigieg, while 18% dislike Sen. Kamala Harris.
It seems like no one believes the polls when it comes to Biden. Not even big donors.
The veneer of Joe Biden for president is being slowly unraveled to the point of imminent political collapse.NYMag's Olivia Nuzzi paints a sorrowful portrait of the former vice president whose campaign is bloated by democratic establishment insiders and even a former secret service agent who follows Biden around to project what she terms "big presidential energy."
I don't know why exactly but having an employed former secret service agent to protect the aura of presidential 'electability' is just about the perfect exemplar of the Biden campaign. Nuzzi puts it best perhaps in this paragraph
Quote "for many of these staffers the campaign feels like it should be a coronation. Joe Biden 2020 isn't a labor of love or ideology. it’s about the proper order of things. it’s about who's entitled to what. it’s the vehicle by which the democratic party establishment arrives once more to power, the displaced Obama and Clinton professionals reinstalled to the levers of power."
This perhaps more than anything else I’ve ever seen boils down the Biden campaign to its essence. Biden is simply the vehicle thrust upon all us in order for the army of K street lobbyists and consultants to restore the cash cow that was the presidency under Barack Obama. A Biden campaign restores the natural order of things in which oceans of outside money groups coalesce around the white house, advisory councils, and trade meetings. He resets the clock on a multi-billion-dollar machine that has been disruptive.
And that’s what America rejected in 2016 and there is very little evidence that anybody outside of Washington wants it.
Meanwhile Bernie's support is unshakable.
Comments
Not to worry!
Clinton and Kerry are riding in on their white horses to save us all from Bernie!!!!! Everyone is tanking EXCEPT Bernie, but we absolutely. do. not. want. him. in. office! He will RUIN EVERYTHING!!!!!
Stay tuned.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
yup stay tuned
Something is going to happen. Just not sure. Could happen at the convention. I keep remember Donna B. writing that if Hillary was truly ill and could not finish her campaign that she would appoint Biden as the party's choice--even though Bernie was in the race and winning various states. Yup, and all to stop Bernie. I suspect things will get much uglier as time goes on.
Bernie in third place?
Okay so where did I put my torch and pitchfork? Got to be somewhere around here...
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
If Biden collapses
and I think his support will (a mile wide, an inch deep), then the whole field will get scrambled.
Excellent choice of idiom
Maybe I should reflect on that one more.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Latest CNN NH Poll
Just released today, and it has Tulsi and Yang each at 5%, tied for 5th, both ahead of Miss "I used to be a top-tier candidate" Kamala Harris. Biden has slipped to third, at just 15%, behind Sanders and Warren. My understanding is that this is a qualifying poll within the relevant time period for both the Nov. and Dec. debate stage.
Bernie beats Trump
It's the opportunity of our lifetime:
And that's an October 17 CNN poll which routinely skews against Bernie's demographic base.
Bernie's support is unshakable...
...Tulsi and Tulsi alone is SURGING...
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
1962
Gabbard passes Harris
This is bad news for Sanders!
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Ah, the good old days
When our enemies were only the Republicans and politicians like John McCain. God, what an election year 2008 was. Couldn't resist retrieving this little gem. While Tina Fey is still hilarious as Palin, I found it very interesting hearing Amy Poehler play Hillary as the "progressive" contrast. How far our perceptions of Hillary's positions changed from 2008, eh?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
In my Grande Finale diary at dKos, I indulged in a review of
some of my earliest history there. I observed this:
... which included a link to one of my earliest comments, from way back in December 2005. The comment itself was from a diary by his own very Kosness, reaming HRC for co-sponsoring the anti-desecration law; My comment was in response this comment (note the appearance of the dreaded word, "pragmatic"):
and here is my riposte:
See how young and naive I was? I said they weren't fascists! Oh, to be young and innocent once more ...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpSlT2BVvGc]
or perhaps ...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYgdb3Glu3M]
BTW, this is one of those songs that everybody misunderstands. The chorus isn't the narrator realizing that he was wrong to mock his granddad. The chorus is the narrator quoting his granddad's inane wish, in order to dismiss it. Everything after the first verse is him quoting the stuff his granddad used to say, and that the narrator still thinks is bollocks. The problem, of course, is that you can't help but sing along!
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Pragmatic
A politician's undercover buzzword, which is as subjective as that ever moving goal post. I'm pleased to see you were just as acerbically on target with the inmates at that insane asylum as I've seen you here
You don't have a link to your grand finale diary at DKos, do you? I'd actually click in to read it.
Rod Stewart does a nice version of that song. I also like the Corrs. I've seen them sing with a lot of different artists across different musical genres. They even sing in Italian. As a former Italian language student and admirer of the language, I was delightfully surprised with their version of this song.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
here ya go.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/4/1444113/-Ten-Years-Twenty-Tho...
I will warn you that the main essay links back to my "final four" parting shots, and they're not of the punch-pulling variety.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
My favorite part...
So how did you find this place? And why did you stay?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
This reminds me of the
...implied wisdom of the ancient Bill of Rights..
Those Rights certainly seem enlightened at first glance, especially prohibiting soldiers from moving into your home in times of war or peace. I would have never thought of it, but it sounds wise to me. Now, if only the authors had made those rights irrevocable....
Oh... and your final Diary at Daily Kos — priceless. It echos the emptiness of space and delivers that final note with precision.
I was quite surprised by PhoenixWoman's rather
irrational anger over that diary. I'm pretty sure she was the one who added a "GBCW" tag to the diary, which apparently somebody else removed.
I think she was bojo'd not long after that, she was SO angry about anybody saying anything bad about HRC, she was just going off the rails. Her remark about going off to find elfling presaged what I guess became a Tale Of Two Cities pattern of denunciation and guillotinage. Most of what I know about that is from reading the PTSD-tinged remarks of people here -- I wasn't lurking there much in the months after my self-imposed writing embargo, and then I ended up joining this place just before the great Ides of March dictat.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Gawd, PhoenixWoman.
IIRC, she was always irrational and angry.
And didn't she have a diary up that was blatantly false (I feel like it was about Bernie, though I've mostly erased my memories of GOS), that many pointed out was blatantly false, and the moderators allowed it to stand?
If memory serves correctly
She had a diary up about Bernie being a racist. I have to say, the entire experience over there during 2016 felt like some psycho-social experiment where you saw people losing their grip on reality in real time. So glad I found this place.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
We witnessed what was happening in real time
watching as people started losing touch with reality and seeing how far gone they are now has been quite the eye opener for me. I admit that I read the site daily because I try to get both sides of any story, but I have to admit that I cannot understand how they can be so one sided. If anyone posts something that just hints at the possibility that the facts are not right, boom! Big dawg pile and usually the person gets bojo'd. Watching people like emptywheel, southpaw, phoenix woman and sooooo many other women buying into Hillary's hype and now Russia Russia Russia and now Ukraine........ omg.. And now we have the plebes almost worshiping the CIA, FBI and fawning over anyone from the military. Wow, full circle.
Y'all know how I feel about hypocrisy. People there are totally freaking out about how the Ukraine-American military dude is being treated by those of Fox Snooze, but they don't seem to remember that absolutely heinous comments they have made about Tulsi. I have been giving Kos shit about this on twitter as well as posting their diaries on it and asking WTF???? lol... one person couldn't stand having eyes on their hypocrisy and after a scathing reply they blocked me... oh yeah that's Twitter's HR system.
Thanks for posting that UR. Lots of ole timers listed that I haven't heard from in many moon.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
The thing about humans is ... they migrate.
As well they should if they plan to survive.
Your's was a rather astonishing farewell note. Of course, I loved the turn of mathematical elegance your self-determination took. I had forgotten that flash of anger that the folks left behind exhibit toward the self directed. I decided to read through all the comments. It seems like oceans of time have passed since I last seriously looked at that community. I was pleased and surprised to see familiar names from here, who bid you goodbye back then with such sanity and good will.
And then there were these bitter souls who raged in the comments. I recognized those names, too; they were born miserable bastards. It's been a long time since I've seen that sort of institutional ugliness. It would take a while to get used to it again.
One Reader left a comment that made me pause. I could immediately feel the impulse that made him blurt out his story. "The Democrats weren't acting logically. The ideology had changed without prior notice." He was bewildered, and your distanced view was the first thing that made sense to him about Daily Kos. That was almost exactly four years ago, at this very same point on the election wheel, heading into Iowa. He wrote:
He was struggling with the corporate transformation of the Democratic Party into the hardcore pay-to-play mutation that it is today.
To me, the nation has always following a steady and unwavering trajectory — going back a century, at least. There have been no noticeable course corrections, and the political direction and possible destination was pretty easy to plot. The only variables are the strange and unpredictable ways that people adapt to their growing cognizance of what's taking shape around them.
I am just amazed at the fantastic things people will eagerly believe if you pay them well. I'm really glad I got to see that play out on a larger stage. It's a powerful tactic that has yet to be fully harnessed and exploited.
Hillary, telling the world that Libya is better off than Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN-lVXpBc3I
President Obama boasting that Gaddafi’s death lifts “shadow of tyranny” over Libya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swB1KfTf_uw
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hillary+qaddafi&iax=videos&ia=videos
Democrats on foreign policy: as dishonest and out of touch with reality as they like to portray Trump as being. It’s LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin (or even worse, the USS Liberty !), all the way down.
A bit later, Obama would bless strongman Al-Sisi’s takeover in Egypt.
A lot of people have changed their views since 1962.
Reagan and Bush I showed us how wrong republican dogma was.
Bush II reinforced it.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Liz Warren was only 13
When you see shit like that it just has to make you wonder whether the people who do this kind of crap have any concern for the truth or even the appearance of truth.
Harvard rescinded a high school student’s admission because of
some offensive things he said when he was 15.
It’s a crazy world. Every moment of youthful folly is now potentially public and politically damning.
did I mention I hate Buttigieg?
just wanted it on the record somewhere.
I hate him so much I even like Klobuchar better. That's how much I hate Buttigieg! I can see the DNC turning to Buttigieg if Biden collapses. Harris is done. Worst case scenario for those "centrists" (i.e. ex-Republicans) would be choosing Warren over Bernie.
Buttigieg as the Manchurian Candidate?
Remember the movie the Manchurian Candidate? (The most recent version). Buttigieg reminds me of the Leif Schreiber character, a guy who is very slick and speaks in sound bites, but substantively says nothing. A dangerous guy, IMHO. Hope the electorate is able to see through him as they apparently have been able to do with Harris, which seems to be the case based on recent polling.
I recently described him
as “the token gay republican in the field” to a Warren supporter, who cracked up.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I have to object to the Ten Commandments being
touted as any kind of wisdom.
Every single commandment flies in the face of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are simply un-democratic.
The first commandment says that you can't worship other gods. That flies in the face of the 1st amendment.
The second commandment prohibits graven images. Lots of religions allow worship of images. This commandment also flies in the face of our freedom of worship. The second commandment also states that god will visit punishments upon future generations of innocent children. Not exactly an American justice value.
The third commandment suppresses freedom of speech.
The fourth commandment calls for forced rest from life activities and the biblical penalty for breaking the sabbath is death. This violates our values of personal freedoms of choice.
The fifth commandment commands respect for your father and mother, even if those people abuse you? No category of people should be given unwarranted respect. And the inducement to following this commandment is that if you comply, you will live a long life "in the land which the Lord your God will give you". This idea that a deity can grant you land is at the heart of all the conflict in the middle east. Not exactly a value that we should adhere to.
Commandments six (no killing), eight (no stealing) and nine (no bearing false witness against neighbors) are first of all un-original, as thousands of cultures that came before the hebrews had these rules. Second, they were obviously only to be applied WITHIN Yahweh's tribes (applied to Jews only) because all of these commandments were immediately broken when the Jewish tribes attacked other tribes that worshipped other gods. In fact, right after handing down the Ten Commandments, Moses, with the council and advice of Yahweh (God) went right out and slaughtered the Midianites and several other tribes. So, no killing, no stealing and no lying.... unless it is some other people you are doing it to.
Commandment 7 is all about controlling sexual thought and actions. We don't jail people for cheating in their marriages in the US. This is an antiquated rule that was actually based upon the fact that women were property in those days, and you don't play around with another man's property.
And Commandment 10 is all about thoughtcrime. We don't punish people for THINKING about a neighbor's wife or wanting more property or being jealous of someone who has a slave or a donkey. And wanting stuff is the basis of capitalism.
So I don't find any "serious wisdom" in any of these prohibitions, and certainly don't have a very high opinion of the author of them.
The reason we don't punish people for burning a flag has to do with the concepts of political freedom and freedom of speech... neither of which are values that are expressed by the bible, the ultimate book of kings and kingdoms and autocratic rulers, both human and divine.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Now that I have a bit of time, permit me
to demolish your analysis.
My assertion was that "on the whole", and apart from interpreting them as LAW, the Commandments contain considerable wisdom. My whole point was that, regardless of whether they make good law, on the whole -- not Absolutely And Without Exception -- they contain wisdom. This means that every single one of your points about what is or isn't a Constitutional right is moot -- it's a straw man.
You dismissed three of the commandments on the grounds that they aren't original. So what? Their value as principles has nothing do with their originality. You said you took issue with the commandments being "touted as any kind of wisdom" -- what has originality got to do with it? It's a list of principles for living -- they're wise whether or not they're original. The fact that many of them are found underpinning the standard moral and/or legal codes of many different cultures supports my argument, not yours. This is just you grinding your anti-Abrahamic axe (an axe, BTW, I'm reasonably happy to wield myself, in the main). Similarly, the fact that the Commandments were meant at the time to exclude from any ethical consideration people outside of The Tribe is irrelevant to whether, as general principles they are ON THE WHOLE valid. The Bill of Rights didn't originally apply to slaves. That doesn't lessen the value of the principles it elucidates.
To itemize:
A. It is always unwise to worship physical objects. Investing mere and impermanent material objects with sanctity is foolish. For a lot of reasons.
B. Not killing other people seems like a generally good idea
C. Not stealing from other people seems like a generally good idea
D. Not lying about other people and their activities seems like a generally good idea
E. Not fucking other people's spouses seems like a generally good idea. Violating your own vows is obnoxious enough, enticing someone else to violate theirs is extra dicey.
F. Not coveting other people's stuff (house, livestock, spouse) is wise. Sitting around envying your neighbor is a program of psychological self-harm.
G. Treating your own parents with respect seems like a generally good idea. Your objection (WHAT IF HE'S AN AXE MURDERER?!?!?!?) is just silly. The commandments would take up half the Bible if they contained all of the arguable exceptions. (Similarly, BTW, our Bill of Rights turns out to be hopelessly inadequate in the face of implausible yet successful assaults by jurisprudentialists who employ this kind of reductionist thinking. If the Bill of Rights attempted to cover all of the obnoxious guardhouse-lawyering exceptions, it would be 1000 pages long and still wouldn't get the job done. It isn't, because the men who created it erroneously believed that a certain amount of level-headed judgment would be in play.) Your argument here comes perilously close to the "ticking atom bomb" justifications for torture.
H. Reserving for yourself some down time seems like a generally good idea. Sure the inanity of orthodox Jews refusing to flip a light switch on Saturday makes this seem a bit dubious -- but that's their problem. Working really hard to avoid doing any "work" is a nicely ironic violation of the very commandment they claim to be honoring. The obvious end of such a line of reasoning is that they should spend the sabbath in bed with a feeding tube. And they should fast the previous day and have an enema, to insure that they don't find themselves straining on the toilet Saturday morning. Whatever.
I. As to the whole "name in vain" matter, I believe this refers to honoring a vow that you've made. The assumption in the TC is that vows would be made in the name of Yahweh, but that isn't relevant as regards the general principle. If you swear an oath, in the name of whatever it is that you principally honor, then you should honor the oath. Seems reasonable to me.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The Atheist’s Decalogue
is something I wrote up a while back and seems to be in the same vein.
(Septuagint numbering)
1. Know what it is that gives your life meaning.
2. Do not try to obtain meaning from things that cannot provide it.
3. Respect your meaning and try to respect that of those around you.
4. Life is hard, but regularly carve out an entire day to devote to what gives your life meaning.
5. Human society is inter-generational, so respect and care for those who gave you life.
6. Our lives are finite and precious. Do not destroy them wantonly.
7. What we make is a distillation of our limited life. Stealing from another despoils that life.
8. Your relationship with your partner is the strongest you will ever have and will carry you to the shores of death. Do not abuse it for transitory pleasure.
9. Justice is for the healing of relationships and requires honesty.
10. Wanting what others have poisons your relationship with them and wastes your own precious time.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I'd say you and I have some common ground there ...
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The fact that you felt a need to "demolish" my analysis
speaks to the tone of the Ten Commandments, which is set by Commandment number one.... YOU SHALL NOT HAVE ANY OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. That was Yahweh's first thought. He's the boss. You don't question his rules. If you do, then he'll turn you into a pillar of salt or rain fire and brimstone on your whole town. This is an author of wisdom? I don't think so.
I don't know what you mean by "on the whole they contain wisdom". Lots of philosophies contain wisdom and many of them were prevalent way before Moses and his little tribes roamed that area of the world. Yet I don't see people get all indignant when those philosophies are challenged. The bible is not overall a book of wisdom. If it was, we would not have had to fight against religious prohibitions and prejudices (based directly on those stories) for years and years while people were begging for civil rights. And please (if you were thinking of it) don't tell me that the problem is not the bible, it's the people who act on it. That book specifically justifies all kinds of immoral behavior. This is why we have nasty right wing Christians. They read the book too. Nice liberal Christians unfortunately are the ones who play most fast and loose with those stories. We only have some of these rights now because secular, reasoned, enlightenment thinking dragged that book into the arena of freethought and allowed people to move past it. In fact, Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton specifically talked about how the bible was the biggest block to suffrage and women's rights. The ten commandments treat women like property. You skipped over that one too.
I spent a summer reading the bible cover to cover. The "be nice" stories were sprinkled through what is generally a very immoral story starring a rather petty tyrant. If the source of those commandments was really a god, then that god is not a purveyor of wisdom. Wisdom includes ALLOWING FREE THOUGHT AND SKEPTICISM. Those qualities are condemned in the bible and in those commandments. Jesus also spent a good portion of his lecturing time telling everyone it was his way or the highway (hell). I could also write a whole tome on the immorality of Jesus, but I'll skip that here.
You can try to take the commandments out of the context or ignore the most offensive one (1st), but that does nothing to convince me that we should drag them into any arena that has to do with our government, our politics or our civil rights. Lots of people try to use the 10 C's to make political arguments, but that always falls into interpretation wars and bogs down reasoning. They are part of a specific religious group's beliefs. In my view, that is where they should stay. And I will reserve the right to challenge them as a 'source of wisdom' no matter how many people try to demolish my POV.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
your response was silly.
doubling down on defending it doesn't improve its validity one jot.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
My clue in attempting to have a discussion with you ...
is right here....
"The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions."
Won't make that mistake again.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
You weren't attempting to have a discussion,
you were ranting, absolutely and without reservation or qualification, against the possibility that there might be any wisdom in the TC; but your "argument" was a series of straw men and non sequiturs about the constitution, motivated entirely by your contempt for the Abrahamic religions (which I mostly share, BTW). This is essentially an ad hominem. The religion is contemptible, so every statement that issues therefrom is contemptible. The NHL says hockey players should wear helmets, but the NHL is a contemptible organization, so the statement, "Hockey players should wear helmets," is stupid and contemptible. The police department says you should lock your doors even when at home because there are brazen thieves who will walk into your house in broad daylight. But you know, the police department is rife with institutional racism and authoritarian bullying, so the advice, "Lock your doors even when at home," is stupid and contemptible.
Etc. etc. etc.
Silly.
And yeah, I stand by every one of those statements in my sig.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
a good chunk of the Bill of Rights is there to protect
your freedom to be an idiot. that doesn't make being an idiot a good idea.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.