US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

John Kasich suggests women can avoid rape by forgoing drunken parties
Yahoo News
Alyssa Bereznak  National Correspondent, Technology  April 15, 2016



Another day on the campaign trail, another eyebrow-raising comment about what women should or shouldn’t do. This time the advice came from Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.


At a town hall in Watertown, N.Y., a first-year student from St. Lawrence University asked Kasich what he’d do as president to help her feel safer regarding “sexual violence, harassment and rape.”

Kasich launched into a quick speech about ensuring rape kits and other resources are available to victims of sexual assault.

“In our state, we think that when you enroll you ought to absolutely know that if something happens to you along the lines of sexual harassment or whatever, you have a place to go where there is a confidential reporting, where there is an ability for you to access a rape kit, where that is kept confidential, but where it gives you an opportunity to be able to pursue justice after you have had some time to reflect on it all,” he said. “We are in a process of making sure that all higher education in our state — and this ought to be done in the country — that our coeds know exactly what the rules are, what the opportunities are, what the confidential policies are, so that you are not vulnerable, at risk and can be preyed upon.”

Continued the student, who had not finished saying her piece, “It’s sad that it’s something that I have to worry about just walking…”

“I’d also give you one bit of advice,” Kasich interrupted. “Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol.” The room burst into applause.

With this comment, Kasich joined the ranks of those who place the onus for decreasing sexual assaults on female college students, asking them to alter their behaviors and avoid important campus social functions, while the lifestyles and habits of their male counterparts are treated as an unchangeable norm that does not need addressing. This line of thinking runs counter to recent national efforts to address sexual assault on campuses by encouraging bystander intervention and teaching men it is their responsibility not to hurt women, among other things.

It was hardly Kasich’s first time getting tripped up in response to a question by a young woman. Here are some other instances in which he has spoken to or about women awkwardly — or even, some would say, offensively.


Taylor Swift tickets

In an earlier run-in with a female college student, Kasich last October offended 18-year-old college newspaper staffer Kayla Solsbak when she raised her hand to ask a question and he reportedly said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any Taylor Swift concert tickets.” She went on to pen an op-ed that called his comments condescending.


Women in kitchens

“How did I get elected?” Kasich asked at a campaign event on February. “I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people, and many women who left their kitchens to go out and to go door to door to put up yard signs for me.” Kasich later conceded women don’t hang out so much in kitchens these days, and later apologized if he offended anyone.


Social Security surprise

At another town hall, Kasich reportedly expressed bewilderment after a young woman asked him a Social Security question, wondering whether someone had told her to inquire about the topic. “I think for myself,” she replied.


The budget slim-down diet

During a November town hall in Iowa, Kaisch chose to describe balancing a budget to a female reporter by asking her, “Have you ever been on a diet?”

So there you have it. Young women questioners, you are John Kasich’s kryptonite.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-kasich-suggests-women-can-avoid-rape-by-213154951.html


Thing is, he's right, as far as that goes - but great, big F for that.  Men, Republican men, do not get to say that in public.  If he didn't have a SERIOUS butt-clench, I-can't-believe-I-said-that, moment as he finished the sentence, he's a moron.

[Rusty Edge]

Kinda disappointing when he has a wife and two daughters.

I know it's an echo chamber in here, but I think it's time the GOP fractured. They've proven they can't work together under the "big tent."

[Buster's Uncle]

Libertarians and Statists together?  No such thing as that big a tent.

(Naturally, it's VERY MUCH a thing a man with daughters has said - to them, in private, when they were in school.  He's a dad; it's his job.)

[Rusty Edge]

But surely he still worries... He can't think that's enough.

[Buster's Uncle]

Nooo...

And how could he not know not to say that in public?

[Rusty Edge]

My wife is a great one for whodunnits on TV. I have a theory that works really well for the dramas, and she has developed one for the real life murders that seems almost as good.

One thing I've learned from watching this stuff is that first attempts at rape are sloppy, but there are a lot of repeat offenders. Simply DNA testing the backlog of collected samples would solve a lot of crimes, and prevent a lot more from occurring. If they get away with it once...

Simply committing to budget for the backlog nationally would be a great stride forward, because they can easily change states when it gets too hot for them, and just because one state or city isn't backlogged, doesn't mean there aren't others in driving distance..

That would be a political solution. If I had daughters they would be enrolled in martial arts. They would have dogs, too.

[Lorizael]

Thing is, he's right, as far as that goes - but great, big F for that.  Men, Republican men, do not get to say that in public.  If he didn't have a SERIOUS butt-clench, I-can't-believe-I-said-that, moment as he finished the sentence, he's a moron.

Well, if women who go to drunken parties tend to get raped by men, why don't we just tell men not to go drunken parties?

[Buster's Uncle]

My dad did.

[Buster's Uncle]

Clinton vs. Sanders: It’s all about the ‘judgment’
Yahoo News
Lisa Belkin  Chief National Correspondent  April 14, 2016



The first word out of the gate at the Democratic debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Thursday was the one both campaigns have been using a lot lately — “judgment.”

Bernie Sanders began by questioning whether his opponent had it. “Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and the intelligence to be our president? Of course she does,” he said, attempting to separate résumé from philosophy.

“But I do question her judgment. I question the judgment that voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country, voted for virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, and I question her judgment about super-PACs, which are collecting tens of millions of dollars from special interests… I don’t believe that is the kind of judgment we need to be the kind of president we need.”

Hillary came storming back, defending her judgment. “Sen. Sanders did call me unqualified,” she said. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. That was a first,” she continued, to laughter. “Well, the people of New York voted for me twice to be their senator … and President Obama trusted my judgment enough to ask me to be secretary of state for the United States.”

She then pivoted to the issue that everyone was anticipating, the awkward interview Sanders gave to the New York Daily News last week. “Talk about judgment,” she said, “and talk about the kinds of problems he had answering questions about even his core issue: breaking up the banks… He could not explain how that would be done. … I think you need to have the judgment on Day 1 to be both president and commander in chief.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-v-sanders-its-all-about-the-judgment-020159796.html

[Buster's Uncle]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFzb3sz2Vww" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFzb3sz2Vww</a>

[Buster's Uncle]

Bill Clinton gets himself in trouble, but he’s an asset for Hillary in New York
Yahoo News
Liz Goodwin  April 17, 2016



Former President Bill Clinton campaigns in support of his wife at the headquarters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. (Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx)



NEW YORK, NY — “Yes!” a young man cried out, clutching his smartphone with one hand and using the other to push himself out of a throng of people. “I touched him!”

None of the other people gathered in the small courtyard at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Friday seemed to notice the man’s moment of personal triumph. They continued to clutch their phones and shuffle closer to the 42nd president of the United States, his white hair gleaming in the spring sunshine.

Bill Clinton has crisscrossed New York City, stumping for his wife in the final weeks before Tuesday’s primary, meeting with Albanian-Americans in the Bronx, black churchgoers in Harlem, union workers in Midtown, and others. The former president has made a couple of high-profile mistakes here — including scolding activists for questioning his crime bill and mocking Bernie Sanders’ supporters. But Clinton’s team insists that his star power and gifted politicking will matter far more in the Empire State on Tuesday than his tendency to put his foot in his mouth.

“I think there’s what you see covered in the press and then there’s the impact he has on voters,” said Clinton strategist Jen Palmieri. “He’s effective everywhere but he’s particularly effective in New York. You’ll see how the election turns out, but there’s a reason we use him a lot here.”

Since leaving the White House, Clinton has rebranded himself as a New Yorker — basing his foundation’s offices in Harlem and befriending local politicians. Voters here feel like they know him.

“I love Bill Clinton!” said Marta Reyes, an administrator at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, who came outside to hear him speak on Friday. “I felt so hurt that he couldn’t run another time. And a lot of people felt that way.”

“I came to shake his hand,” said Margaret Gaines, a pharmacy technician at the event. “I want a selfie!”

Bill Clinton doesn’t just offer familiarity; he offers entertainment. The former president’s stump speech, in a refreshing contrast to his wife’s, can be unpredictable. “People are interested in what he says,” said Richard Socarides, a former aide in the Clinton White House who is running to be a Clinton pledged delegate in New York. “He’s still incredibly dynamic and … he’s often quite provocative.”

While Clinton generates excitement and press coverage, he also causes headaches for the much more on-message, conservative Hillary Clinton campaign. The former president has moments when he presents an argument for Hillary in a clear and folksy way that resonates with the room, when his pride in her achievements appears to charm the crowd. But other times, he gets sidetracked defending his own record or legacy, taking him off his wife’s message and occasionally even criticizing Obama. “I think it’s always going to be challenging to find the right balance between his role as a spouse and a role as former president,” Socarides said.

At an event in Philadelphia earlier this month, he shouted at two black protesters who came to speak out against his 1994 crime bill and Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for it. (Hillary Clinton referred to young people who commit violent crimes as “super predators” in 1996; she has since disavowed the term.) “You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter,” Clinton said.

He then launched into a lengthy defense of the bill, which Hillary has distanced herself from, making criminal justice reform a key part of her platform. “Because of that bill, we have a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in murder rate,” Bill Clinton said. It took him several minutes to get back to his wife. “Hillary didn’t vote for that bill, because she wasn’t in the Senate,” he finally said, adding that she was the “first candidate” who backed getting nonviolent offenders out of prison.

The Sanders campaign jumped on the exchange. “Our senior statesman should not be mistreating our young activists,” said Sanders surrogate and former head of the NAACP Ben Jealous. “I worry that he thought he was blowing his old dog whistle that day, and he should keep that dog whistle in his pocket.” (Clinton raised the ire of some African-American voters during the 2008 campaign when he referred to Obama’s candidacy as a “fairytale” and compared his presidential run to Jesse Jackson’s. When the Obama campaign objected to these remarks as racially tinged, Clinton argued that they “played the race card” on him.)

Then, on Friday, the former president joked at an event in Fort Washington that Sanders’ message to his young supporters is “just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine.“ Sanders shot back on Twitter that the president was “disparaging” the young people who backed him.

It’s not his speeches, however, but rather what comes after them that can cause the most stress for the Clinton campaign. The former president almost never misses the opportunity to greet voters who crowd around him on the rope line after events — and he’s been known to answer questions from reporters who infiltrate the line. According to one Clinton aide, the former president’s press secretary, Angel Urena, follows him closely while Bill works rope lines after his events.

“Every rope line, he’s so stressed,” the aide said of Bill Clinton’s press secretary. “If he wants to answer a question, he’s going to answer the question.”

Even with his missteps and unpredictability, the Clinton campaign is grateful to have a former and largely popular president at hand to fill up organizing rallies and motivate the base. Hillary said at a recent debate that she’s not a “natural” politician like her husband, and it does seem clear that Bill enjoys himself, especially while working the rope line after events. He has heartfelt conversations with voters as others crush in, videotaping him. By the end of his hand shaking and selfie taking and stranger hugging, he will sometimes sprint back for one more voter interaction, like a sugar addict diving back to the candy jar. At a packed event in a Long Island restaurant earlier this month, he appeared to be halfway out of the venue before he dashed back to quickly grab a pink-swaddled baby for one last photo op.

He hoisted the baby above his head as voters squealed in delight.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-clinton-gets-himself-in-trouble-but-hes-an-174525300.html?nhp=1

[Buster's Uncle]

A contested convention in the age of the smartphone
Yahoo News
Alyssa Bereznak  National Correspondent, Technology  April 15, 2016



Photo illustration: Yahoo News, photos: AP



This July, thousands of delegates, party officials, campaign staff and journalists will descend on the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland for the Republican National Convention. It is possible, or even likely, that no candidate will win the presidential nomination on the first or second ballots — something that hasn’t happened since 1952, back when the closest thing to a computer was a giant calculator, telephones required land lines, and the founder of Twitter had yet to be conceived. Though candidates were able to use broadcast television as a tool to influence results, any backdoor power brokering at the convention went relatively undocumented.

Technologically, the 2016 landscape is much different. In the era of the iPhone, the near 20,000-person crowd that will fill the Quicken Loans Arena will serve as both its own private media network and — depending on the capabilities of the venue — a bandwidth-swamping black hole. 2,472 people in that crowd will be the delegates who will vote to nominate the president. And, according to a recent report from Politico, each candidate’s team has already begun developing tech tools for tracking the faces, names, and home states of each of them. All of this political negotiating will take place as smartphone-toting supporters of Donald [Sleezebag], Ted Cruz, and John Kasich document the scene via Snapchat and Vine, producing their own real-time feeds full of rumors and disinformation.

But the precise technology that will be at play on the convention floor is still anyone’s guess. A [Sleezebag] convention strategist told Politico that his team will use some sort of “custom-built hardware” with a “closed loop” system that would allow his staff to communicate efficiently without having to rely on potentially unreliable Wi-Fi (it sounds suspiciously like a walkie-talkie). Cruz’s team, on the other hand, plans to build an iPhone app that works offline and contains strategic data about each delegate and whether they might be swayed. Kasich has yet to divulge a strategy. Ideally, each candidate’s team will need a tool that can (1) effectively record and deliver data and messages without relying on what will likely be an overwhelmed Wi-Fi network, and (2) possibly identify or track delegates on the floor.

Though some “House of Cards” buffs might think a campaign tracks delegates via a big whiteboard in a hotel room, state-specific rules make record keeping much more complicated. Depending on whether you’re a delegate from Iowa or a delegate from Hawaii, you may be bound to vote for a given candidate for one or more rounds of voting. Any data-based tracking app would need to account for this web of restrictions and send push alerts when a delegate is free to change his vote, so the managers know the best time to court him.

When it comes to battling the congested cellular network that candidates are sure to encounter during the convention, one of the most reliable options for teams to communicate may be a mesh network app like FireChat. These wireless networks can function entirely without Internet, as long as a minimum number of people in a concentrated location use them. FireChat uses Bluetooth and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections to link up nearby phones that also have the app installed. If enough people have the app, they form a distributed network and can pass messages along in one large public stream.

According to Christophe Daligault, a marketing officer at FireChat, tools like these have become popular during political events when Wi-Fi networks are overwhelmed — or when authorities shut down Internet services in order to control information. The app first took off during the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in August 2014, when half a million people used it during the span of a week. Since then, it’s been used during elections in the Congo and Venezuela, and for less formal instances on cruise ships or at Burning Man. Daligault said his team briefly met with then-Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul last year to discuss his campaign’s possible use of the app.

FireChat currently works as a type of location-based Twitter feed, where everyone in one particular location can see the messages that people are typing into the app. But within the next month, it will allow users to create their own private networks so they can invite only their acquaintances.

“The beauty of it is, it goes wherever you go,” Daligault told Yahoo News. “It’s your own social network that doesn’t need a network.”

Depending on the guidelines that the Republican National Convention rules committee sets before the event, candidates may also attempt to use tracking techniques that have traditionally been used at trade shows. Organizers can track attendees by placing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips inside their badges, each of which contains information about an individual. According to Brian Ludwig, a senior vice president of sales at the event technology company Cvent, it’s common practice to code certain categories into each attendee’s chip, such as his state or industry. This same technology could be incredibly helpful to tipping off candidates’ teams about where delegates are traveling on the convention floor.

“I want to know who’s going in on the trade show floor, how long they’re standing in front of certain booths, and the interested parties,” he told Yahoo News. “You could have someone scanning folks at the door. But that’s obtrusive, and you have to have staff. Putting mats down or RFID panels on doorways can allow less obvious tracking of folks.”

If convention organizers are unwilling to offer that kind of information to campaign staff, another option could be to use something called beacon technology. Here’s how it works: Candidates could ask delegates to download and activate an app made specifically for the convention. Strategically placed small trackers — $20 contraptions shaped like hockey pucks — at key locations in the arena would register a delegate’s presence, as long as his or her Bluetooth is on, and automatically send a push notification to that delegate’s phone.

“At the end of the day, when someone goes to that convention their inbox is a mess,” Ludwig said. “They’re going to have 500 emails by the time they leave after a couple days. Literally the best conduit to someone’s eyeballs is not by sending them an email or text, but sending them a push notification that pops no matter what, even if the app is closed down.”

According to Ludwig, Cvent is in talks with the RNC to provide preregistration, online check-in, badges, and a mobile app for an event made up of about 1,300 “major VIP donor types” at the convention. Whether [Sleezebag], Cruz, or Kasich will eventually adopt any of the company’s techniques, however, is yet to be seen.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/a-contested-convention-in-the-age-of-the-154440585.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sanders at Vatican says rich-poor gap worse than 100 years ago
Yahoo News
By Philip Pullella  April 15, 2016



VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, addressing a Vatican conference on social justice on Friday, decried the “immoral” gap between the world’s rich and poor that he said was worse than a century ago.

The Democratic hopeful from Vermont has campaigned on a vow to rein in corporate power and level the economic playing field for working and lower-income Americans who he says have been left behind, a message echoing that of Pope Francis.

The trip is inconveniently timed for 74-year-old senator, coming four days before a Democratic party primary in New York. A loss there would blunt his momentum after winning seven of the last eight state contests and give front-runner Hillary Clinton a boost in her drive to the party’s presidential nomination.

Sanders said in his speech to the Pontifical Academy of Social Science that the Roman Catholic Church’s first encyclical on social justice, written in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, lamented the enormous gap between the rich and the poor.

“That situation is worse today. In the year 2016, the top 1 percent of the people on this planet own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent,” the self-described democratic socialist said.

“At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable,” he said.

Sanders, the Brooklyn-born son of Polish Jewish immigrants, has said the trip was not a pitch for the Catholic vote but a testament to his admiration for Pope Francis, whom he is not expected to see during his flying visit.

He will be back on the campaign trail on Sunday.


CHANTS OF “BERNIE, BERNIE” AT VATICAN GATE After reading the speech in the academy building inside the Vatican grounds, Sanders walked outside one of the city-state’s gates to talk to reporters and was greeted by chants of “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie” from a vocal group of local supporters.

Pope Francis sent a message to the academy, saying he had wanted to meet the conference participants in the evening, but could not because he is leaving Rome early on Saturday to visit refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Saying he was “proud and excited to be here”, Sanders praised the pope’s visionary views about creating “a moral economy, an economy that works for all people and not just for the people on top”.

Reflecting the themes of his campaign, he said he and the pope both agreed that “we’ve got to ingrain moral principles into our economy and there is no area where that is clearer than the area of climate change. The greed of the fossil fuel industry is literally destroying our planet”.

Pope Francis wrote a major encyclical, or papal treatise, last year on the need to respect the environment.

In other parts of his speech, Sanders decried “reckless financial deregulation,” including rules on political party financing, that he said had “established a system in which billionaires can buy elections” in exchange for laws that would make them only richer.

“Rather than an economy aimed at the common good, we have been left with an economy operated for the top one percent, who get richer and richer as the working class, the young and the poor fall further and further behind,” he said.

Sanders will spend less than 24 hours in Rome before returning to the campaign trail before the New York primary on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome and John Whitesides in Washington; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sanders-heads-vatican-says-trip-not-political-105810353.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Trumphobia: The American traveler’s guide to dealing with embarrassing questions
Yahoo News
Jerry Adler  Writer  April 15, 2016



(Substitute photo)


The woman, a retired schoolteacher from San Diego, was sitting with a friend in an almost empty restaurant in Civitavecchia, a seaside town not far from Rome. She had recently left a Mediterranean cruise, a ship full of Australians and Europeans, and was happy to discover that the only other couple in the dining room that evening was American.

“At least,” she said, “I don’t have to defend Donald [Sleezebag] to you.”

You’re looking forward to your trip to Europe this summer. Thanks to an improving American economy, foreign travel by Americans is projected to increase almost 6 percent in 2016, in the face of fears about overbooked flights, terrorist attacks and exotic viruses. But those are familiar worries. The new and worrisome risk with traveling abroad in 2016 is being asked about Donald [Sleezebag]. His suspicion of foreigners is matched by their fascination with him. Whatever your own feelings about him, you will likely find yourself on the defensive.

At least since Charles Dickens visited the U.S. in 1842, Europeans have been amused, baffled and even frightened by American politics — a realm, Dickens wrote, of “despicable trickery at elections, under-handed tamperings with public officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents” and other deplorable behaviors that fill an entire chapter of “American Notes.” It’s a shame the author lived in a different century than Donald [Sleezebag], who was recently called “a great Dickensian character” by no less a literary and political critic than Sylvester Stallone. Dickens could have paid off all his debts by filling the insatiable European demand for Trumpiana.

“On the whole, the [Sleezebag] phenomenon is getting equal attention in the U.K. as in the U.S., if not more,” says Matthew Reading-Smith, 29, a native of Michigan who has been living and working in London for five years and was back home last over Thanksgiving. “Wherever I am, whenever someone notices my American accent, they ask me about Donald. I’m being asked to justify the country I come from.” [Sleezebag], he says, “strikes fear into the liberal values of Europe” and threatens, in the minds of Europeans, the special trans-Atlantic relationship that has been a cornerstone of the international order for decades.

“Even Republicans,” says Cathal Gilbert, 35, an Irish citizen who works in international human rights in London. “And I do know a few who work in human rights, even they are appalled. They bury their faces in the salad bowl if I dare bring him up.” To understand the [Sleezebag] phenomenon, Gilbert says, he went on YouTube for a few hours to watch his speeches. “When you listen to him, he makes a certain amount of sense to the audience he’s talking to. It’s not cogent, but it’s compelling.”

“For a long time, I had it easy,” says Tor Hodenfield, a 28-year-old Brooklyn native who has lived in Africa and in Switzerland and is now a graduate student at University College London. “I was an American, I was representing Barack Obama, everything was cool. Since [Sleezebag] came on the scene, all that’s changed.” In fact, Obama himself has this problem, telling reporters last week, “I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made” by [Sleezebag], and also his rival Sen. Ted Cruz, whom Obama described as “just as Draconian when it comes to immigration.” (Hillary Clinton said last month that she has been asked by the leaders of other countries whether they can endorse her to stop [Sleezebag]. She hasn’t identified the countries.)

There are no easy answers here. You might have to change tables once or twice during your cruise, or affect a British or Australian accent (best not to try this around Brits or Australians, obviously), or simply throw up your hands, as the San Diego woman did, and say, “Don’t look at me; I don’t get it either.” But as a public service, Yahoo News has a few suggestions for how to deflect questions — earnest, puzzled, well-intentioned or hostile — from citizens of other countries where candidates don’t seek office by boasting about their sexual endowments.


“So’s your old man.” This won’t actually win any arguments, but it can at least change the subject, and there’s some satisfaction in pointing out that [Sleezebag]’s eccentricities are not without precedent in Europe. Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul who was off-and-on prime minister of Italy between 1994 and 2011, was also given to extravagant displays of bad taste and sexual braggadocio. England wrote the book on this kind of ruler, admittedly in the 16th century, with King Henry VIII — if you think [Sleezebag] is hard on women, at least he hasn’t beheaded any of his wives. More seriously, the last few years have seen an upsurge in support for various nativist, nationalist, anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe, notably Marine Le Pen’s National Front, in France, and the United Kingdom Independence Party, which is pushing for Britain to leave the European Union, attracting “the same kind of Anglo-Saxon ethnic pride” that [Sleezebag] is tapping into, says Reading-Smith.


“Ever hear of Bernie Sanders?” Hodenfield likes to use this when he’s cornered on the subject of [Sleezebag], invoking the democratic socialist senator whose platform of universal health care and free college should win accolades from Western Europeans. The problem is, most of them have not heard of Sanders, whereas [Sleezebag] is an all-pervasive presence in most European media. “My landlady’s Polish housekeeper barely speaks English,” Hodenfield says. “I doubt she knows who Hillary Clinton is — but she knows all about [Sleezebag].”

“It’s all a put-up job.” Reading-Smith says he has tried to plant the idea that the [Sleezebag] candidacy is actually a stealth operation to elect a Democrat by sabotaging the Republican Party with an unelectable candidate. Early on, a few Republicans said the same thing, semiseriously. Reading-Smith means it as a joke, of course. But no one is laughing now.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumphobia-the-american-traveler-s-1407538586271798.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sanders aide says the Clintons are showing their frustration
Yahoo News
Hunter Walker  National Correspondent  April 15, 2016



Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders, at campaign headquarters in Burlington, Vt. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)



Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in the Democratic primary, believes the Vermont senator’s opponent and her husband are on edge.

Speaking to Yahoo News after the Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn, N.Y., Weaver said he believes there has been a certain “edginess” in the Clinton campaign in the last few weeks, given that Sanders has won eight of the last nine primary contests.

“I think that their campaign never believed that they would be in the position they’re in right now, having to contest New York. I mean, they clearly thought that they would have everything wrapped up by now. They clearly said it: ‘We’re going to have it wrapped up by February, we’re going to have it wrapped up by March,’” Weaver said. “And it’s not wrapped up, and I think they’re very, very frustrated about it.”

Weaver said this tension was evident in a confrontation Hillary Clinton had with a woman who questioned her at an event late last month and and a testy exchange her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had with Black Lives Matter activists on April 7.

“It was reflected in the secretary’s outburst at the young woman on the rope line. I think it was reflected in President Clinton’s outburst to Black Lives Matter activists. … There’s like an edginess to their campaign that’s sort of going all through it. And I think it’s a function of the fact that they are in a place they wish they weren’t,” Weaver said.

Despite Sanders’ recent winning streak, Clinton’s victories earlier in the primary process have given her a pledged delegate lead so large that Sanders would need to win all the remaining contests by a wide margin to be able to beat her. The RealClearPolitics poll average shows Clinton has a 13.8 point lead in the New York primary, which will be held on April 19.

Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, told Yahoo News he is comfortable about her position.

“In terms of the race to get the nomination, it’s less a question of how much does Hillary win by, than how much should Sanders be winning by, if he has any hope of catching up to her in the nomination fight,” Mook said. “The fact is, you know, he would need to win New York by 20 or more points to even be in a position to try to capture the nomination. … If he loses, that path is really diminished quite a bit.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sanders-aide-says-the-clintons-are-showing-their-051235395.html