US Presidential Contenders

[Rusty Edge]

Usually, I'm searching [Sleezebag], Clinton, Sanders, Johnson and Weld.
I thought I should check on Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party frontrunner, since I haven't lately.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/6/9/green_partys_jill_stein_what_we
Green Party's Jill Stein: What We Fear from Donald [Sleezebag], We Have Already Seen from Hillary Clinton
June 09, 2016

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein takes aim at the presumptive nominees of both major parties, Donald [Sleezebag] and Hillary Clinton. "[Sleezebag] says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and ignoring the climate. Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things," Stein says. "Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing." Stein goes on to say, "We see these draconian things that Donald [Sleezebag] is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing."

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jill Stein, what do you say to those, for instance, who criticize third-party efforts as spoiler efforts throughout the history of the country—Ross Perot running in the early ’90s with the result that Bill Clinton was able to defeat the Republican candidate, then, of course, Ralph Nader in the 2000 race, blamed by some, although others disagree that that was the result, for resulting in George Bush being elected in 2000?

DR. JILL STEIN: So, let me say first off, this is a problem that could be fixed with the stroke of a pen, this electoral system that tells you to vote against what you’re afraid of and not for what you believe. And, you know, what we’ve seen over the years, this strategy has a track record: This politics of fear has actually delivered everything we were afraid of. All the reasons you were told you had to vote for the lesser evil—because you didn’t want the massive Wall Street bailouts, the offshoring of our jobs, the meltdown of the climate, the endless expanding wars, the attack on immigrants—all that, we’ve gotten by the droves, because we allowed ourselves to be silenced. You know, silence is not what democracy needs. Right now we have an election where even the supporters of Hillary Clinton, the majority don’t support Hillary, they just oppose Donald [Sleezebag]. And the majority of Donald [Sleezebag] supporters don’t support him, they just oppose Hillary. And the majority are clamoring for another independent or several independent candidates and an independent party, and feel that they are being terribly misserved and mistreated by the current politics. So to further silence our voices is exactly the wrong thing to do. And I’ll just point out, Donald [Sleezebag] himself is lifted up by a movement which is very much the product of the Clintons’ policies. The lesser evil very much makes inevitable the greater evil, because people don’t come out to vote for a politician that’s throwing them under the bus. And so we see houses of—the houses of Congress, we have also seen statehouse after statehouse, flipping from red to blue over the years as the Democratic Party has become a lesser-evil party. And Donald [Sleezebag] is buoyed up by the policies passed by Bill Clinton, supported by Hillary—that is, deregulation of Wall Street, which led to the disappearance of 9 million jobs, 5 million people thrown out of their homes, and by NAFTA, which exported those jobs. That’s exactly the economic oppression and stress that has led to this right-wing extremism. So you can’t get where you want to go through the lesser evil. At the end of the day, you’ve got to stand up.

But we could fix this right now simply by passing ranked choice voting, which takes the fear out of voting. If you can’t put your values into your vote, we don’t have a democracy. Ranked choice voting says you can rank your first choice first, and if your first choice doesn’t make it, is eliminated and loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice. This is used in cities across the country. My campaign actually proposed this in the Massachusetts Legislature through a progressive Democratic representative back in 2002 in the first race that I ran. I was running for governor. We proposed that bill, filed it, so that there would be no splitting of the vote. The Democrats refused to let it out of committee. And that tells you something very important: They rely on fear. They don’t want you to vote your values. They need to use the scary tactic of, "Oh, the other guy is worse." Why is that? Because at the end of the day, they are not on your side. They need you to be afraid of them, because they are not for you. That alone speaks volumes about how far we are going to get.

In this race, I’ll just conclude saying, this is a unique moment now. We’ve never been here in history before. What we are facing, you know, is not just a question of what kind of world we want to be, but whether we will be a world at all, the way the nuclear arms race has been re-engaged, the way Hillary Clinton wants to create an air war over Syria through a no-fly zone against another nuclear-armed power—that is, Russia—the climate crisis, where the day of reckoning is coming closer and closer all the time. We can’t keep using this failed policy of silencing ourselves with this politics of fear. It’s time to forget the lesser evil, stand up and fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it, because they do.

AMY GOODMAN: And to those Sanders supporters who have started saying, "If it’s Hill, it’s Jill"? And this is going back to the point of what would you say to Sanders supporters worried about [Sleezebag].

DR. JILL STEIN: Yes, exactly. I’d say putting another Clinton in the White House is only going to make that right-wing extremism greater. We will see more of these neoliberal policies, like Wall Street deregulation, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Hillary has always supported. She’s changed her tune a little bit, but Hillary has walked the walk. Look at the walk and not the talk. In fact, you know, [Sleezebag] says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and, you know, ignoring the climate. Well, Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things. Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing. She basically said, "No, bar the gates, send them back." You know, so we see these draconian things that Donald [Sleezebag] is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing.

And it’s not only the militarism that [Sleezebag] talks about, it’s Hillary’s massive record of militarism: the rush into Libya, which was really—you know, she was the prime mover behind that campaign, which the military advisers were largely against; her approval for the war in Iraq and so on; you know, her threat to bomb Iran; and, you know, she—and her demonization of Russia and China, and the pivot against China. We are rushing towards war with Hillary Clinton, who has a track record.

And on climate, you know, [Sleezebag] talks terrible on climate, although in Ireland, I believe it is, he does believe in climate change: He’s trying to build a wall to protect one of his luxury golf courses in Ireland, because he’s worried about sea level rise from climate change, according to the papers that he’s filed for that permit. And on climate, Hillary Clinton established an office to promote fracking around the world, while secretary of state.

So, the terrible things that we expect from Donald [Sleezebag], we’ve actually already seen from Hillary Clinton. So I’d say, don’t be a victim of this propaganda campaign, which is being waged by people who exercise selective amnesia. They’re very quick to tell you about the terrible things that the Republicans did, but they’re very quick to forget the equally terrible things that have happened under a Democratic White House, with two Democratic houses of Congress. It’s time to forget the lesser evil, stand up and fight for the greater good. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Neither—

AMY GOODMAN: Jill Stein, we just—we just have—

DR. JILL STEIN: Neither party of the evils will do it for us.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but your unsolicited advice, unsolicited by Bernie Sanders, for what he should demand when he meets with President Obama today, and then your advice to him when he comes outside?

DR. JILL STEIN: You know, I don’t think President Obama is going to change his tune because of something that Bernie Sanders says to him. I think what’s really important—you know, in the words of Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will." This is why third parties are effective, whether they’re in power or whether they are simply pushing. Otherwise, there is no counterweight of the power of corporations, which have basically taken over the two major corporate political parties. So, I think it’s very important for Bernie to—you know, to have a teachable moment here and to take heed of his experience of the last many months, and for him to actually stand up and do what the world needs for him to do and what the world needs for this movement to do. And if Bernie is not able to overcome his experience of many decades as a loyal and faithful Democrat, I really understand that. But I think for those of us who are living in today and who are seeing what tomorrow looks like, it’s very important for us to move ahead and take back the America and the world that works for all of us, based on putting people, planet and peace over profit.

AMY GOODMAN: Jill Stein, we want to thank you for being with us, 2016 presidential candidate for the Green Party.

******

I think the Greens are worse than Sanders ( and I think he's sincere, but deluded. ). Frankly, I don't want them to become established. But constitutionalist that I am, I believe in their rights, and as a former Reform Party activist, I feel their pain.

I like Dr. Jill Stein, and I also respect her. I'm inclined to agree with her reasoning here.

[Rusty Edge]

Here's an in depth TV  interview with Gary Johnson on C-SPAN

www.c-span.org/video/?410022-5/washington-journal-libertarian-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson

[Rusty Edge]

I think I'm seeing something of a story that's not a story as yet.

Something in the recent polling, basically this- Independents who previously supported Sanders are gravitating to Hillary and Johnson, NOT [Sleezebag]. This is somewhat surprising, because a lot of Sanders and [Sleezebag] supporters cited the other as a second choice, as another outsider and agent of change. Could they be disillusioned with The Donald?

I don't know, maybe he hasn't been asking for their support. 

But it looks like he has hurt himself with the judge business. Well, it I guess it reveals him as a racist, and not simply a nationalist. Or maybe it drew more scrutiny to the class action suits against him for fraud.

But anyway, candidates normally get a bump in the polls 1) when they clinch the nomination, 2) when they have their convention. Johnson's bumps coincided. [Sleezebag]'s first is over, and Hillary's is starting.

57% of both Donald and Hillary voters are firm supporters. Of the general electorate , both of them have 57% unfavorable ratings.

Oh, with another poll out , Johnson's aggregate avg. poll number is up to 9%.

[Rusty Edge]

Gleanings-

* Mary Matalin is giving [Sleezebag] free advice.- It's not about him, it's about the voters.

* Hillary has met with/been endorsed by Biden, Obama, and Elizabeth Warren. The Queen has been anointed, next - coronation.

* Mitt says he's looking for somebody to vote for, and is examining Gary Johnson's platform. He urges fellow Republicans endorsing [Sleezebag] to admit they made a mistake and revoke their endorsement.

* Who will Hillary's VP be? Unknowns don't add much. Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have publicly criticized her, besides, she really doesn't want to remove a sitting Senator, only to have them replaced by a Republican. 

* [Sleezebag]- "Make America great again -- I'm adding, 'for everyone,' because it's really going to be for everyone, it's not going to be for a group of people."

He added, "I am the least racist person, the least racist person that you've ever seen."

* Scott Adams- "Tony Robbins (probably) influenced Donald [Sleezebag], by association. They worked together on at least one project.

When I listen to Donald [Sleezebag], I detect all of his influences back to Erickson. If you make it through this reading list, you might hear it too. I don’t know if Donald [Sleezebag] would make a good president, but he is the best persuader I have ever seen. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Steve Jobs was a 10, [Sleezebag] is a 15.

You know how the media has made fun of [Sleezebag]’s 4th-grade-level speech patterns?

The joke’s on them.

He does it intentionally.

Because it works."
--------------------------------

I came across a Rolling Stone article, but in the context of what Green Party frontrunner Dr. Jill Stein said which I shared, and ingesting some facebook fights among Sanders supporters ( Hill is the Shill, and it's time to rally behind Jill. NEVER Hillary, and a [Sleezebag] dictatorship will only hasten the revolution. Liberal poetic license on my part ),  I figured I should post the whole article about the Democratic party. 

[Rusty Edge]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/democrats-will-learn-all-the-wrong-lessons-from-brush-with-bernie-20160609
Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie

Instead of a reality check for the party, it'll be smugness redoubled

By Matt Taibbi June 9, 2016

Years ago, over many beers in a D.C. bar, a congressional aide colorfully described the House of Representatives, where he worked.

It's "435 heads up 435 asses," he said.

I thought of that person yesterday, while reading the analyses of Hillary Clinton's victories Tuesday night. The arrival of the first female presidential nominee was undoubtedly a huge moment in American history and something even the supporters of Bernie Sanders should recognize as significant and to be celebrated. But the Washington media's assessment of how we got there was convoluted and self-deceiving.

This was no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in '08 or even Gore-Bradley in '00. This was a barely quelled revolt that ought to have sent shock waves up and down the party, especially since the Vote of No Confidence overwhelmingly came from the next generation of voters. Yet editorialists mostly drew the opposite conclusion.

The classic example was James Hohmann's piece in the Washington Post, titled, "Primary wins show Hillary Clinton needs the left less than pro-Sanders liberals think."

Hohmann's thesis was that the "scope and scale" of Clinton's wins Tuesday night meant mainstream Democrats could now safely return to their traditional We won, screw you posture of "minor concessions" toward the "liberal base."

Hohmann focused on the fact that with Bernie out of the way, Hillary now had a path to victory that would involve focusing on [Sleezebag]'s negatives. Such a strategy won't require much if any acquiescence toward the huge masses of Democratic voters who just tried to derail her candidacy. And not only is the primary scare over, but Clinton and the centrist Democrats in general are in better shape than ever.

"Big picture," Hohmann wrote, "Clinton is running a much better and more organized campaign than she did in 2008." 

Then there was Jonathan Capehart, also of the Post, whose "This is how Bernie Sanders and Donald [Sleezebag] are the same person" piece describes Sanders as a "stubborn outsider" who "shares the same DNA" as Donald [Sleezebag]. Capeheart snootily seethes that both men will ultimately pay a karmic price for not knowing their places.

"In the battle of the outsider egos storming the political establishment, [Sleezebag] succeeded where Sanders failed," he wrote. "But the chaos unleashed by [Sleezebag]'s victory could spell doom for the GOP all over the ballot in November. Pardon me while I dab that single tear trickling down my cheek."

If they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support.

They should be freaked out, cowed and relieved, like the Golden State Warriors would be if they needed a big fourth quarter to pull out a win against Valdosta State.

But to read the papers in the last two days is to imagine that we didn't just spend a year witnessing the growth of a massive grassroots movement fueled by loathing of the party establishment, with some correspondingly severe numerical contractions in the turnout department (though she won, for instance, Clinton received 30 percent fewer votes in California this year versus 2008, and 13 percent fewer in New Jersey).

The twin insurgencies of [Sleezebag] and Sanders this year were equally a blistering referendum on Beltway politics. But the major-party leaders and the media mouthpieces they hang out with can't see this, because of what that friend of mine talked about over a decade ago: Washington culture is too far up its own backside to see much of anything at all.

In D.C., a kind of incestuous myopia very quickly becomes part of many political jobs. Congressional aides in particular work ridiculous hours for terrible pay and hang out almost exclusively with each other. About the only recreations they can afford are booze, shop-talk, and complaining about constituents, who in many offices are considered earth's lowest form of life, somewhere between lichens and nematodes.

It's somewhat understandable. In congressional offices in particular, people universally dread picking up the phone, because it's mostly only a certain kind of cable-addicted person with too much spare time who calls a politician's office.

"Have you ever called your congressman? No, because you have a job!" laughs Paul Thacker, a former Senate aide currently working on a book about life on the Hill. Thacker recounts tales of staffers rushing to turn on Fox News once the phones start ringing, because "the people" are usually only triggered to call Washington by some moronic TV news scare campaign.

In another case, Thacker remembers being in the office of the senator of a far-Northern state, watching an aide impatiently conduct half of a constituent phone call. "He was like, 'Uh huh, yes, I understand.' Then he'd pause and say, 'Yes, sir,' again. This went on for like five minutes," recounts Thacker.

Finally, the aide firmly hung up the phone, reared back and pointed accusingly at the receiver. "And you are from [intercourse gerund] Missouri!" he shouted. "Why are you calling me?"

These stories are funny, but they also point to a problem. Since The People is an annoying beast, young pols quickly learn to be focused entirely on each other and on their careers. They get turned on by the narrative of Beltway politics as a cool power game, and before long are way too often reaching for Game of Thrones metaphors to describe their jobs. Eventually, the only action that matters is inside the palace.

Voter concerns rapidly take a back seat to the daily grind of the job. The ideal piece of legislation in almost every case is a Frankensteinian policy concoction that allows the sponsoring pol to keep as many big-money donors in the fold as possible without offending actual human voters to the point of a ballot revolt.

This dynamic is rarely explained to the public, but voters on both sides of the aisle have lately begun guessing at the truth, and spent most of the last year letting the parties know it in the primaries. People are sick of being thought of as faraway annoyances who only get whatever policy scraps are left over after pols have finished servicing the donors they hang out with at Redskins games.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated."

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the [Sleezebag] craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. "The Democrats should be worried they're next," he says.

But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

[Buster's Uncle]

Funny thing about this-

It's customary after the nomination to have the candidate and his running mate on the bumper stickers - not an option here because of the slogan.  Can't have two names and mention a third option...

[Rusty Edge]

Funny thing about this-

It's customary after the nomination to have the candidate and his running mate on the bumper stickers - not an option here because of the slogan.  Can't have two names and mention a third option...

Good point. I love the star-spangled background.

[Rusty Edge]

Candidates using the Orlando tragedy to further their political agendas-

Obama
Stein
[Sleezebag]

Candidates deliberately refraining from politicizing the Orlando tragedy and strictly expressing compassion for the victims and their loved ones-

Clinton
Johnson
Sanders

I'm disappointed in Stein.

I'm surprised and impressed by Hillary.

[Buster's Uncle]

And what is Mr. Bakrama running for?

Funny thing about this-

It's customary after the nomination to have the candidate and his running mate on the bumper stickers - not an option here because of the slogan.  Can't have two names and mention a third option...

Good point. I love the star-spangled background.

It looks better in full color, doesn't it?  I should probably do it with the swoosh flipped - or better, find me another middle divider thingy...

[Lorizael]

Candidates using the Orlando tragedy to further their political agendas-

Obama
Stein
Drumpf

Candidates deliberately refraining from politicizing the Orlando tragedy and strictly expressing compassion for the victims and their loved ones-

Clinton
Johnson
Sanders

I'm disappointed in Stein.

I'm surprised and impressed by Hillary.

Well there's horrific gun violence in America literally every single day, so if we're only allowed to talk about gun control when there isn't a tragedy, our options are somewhat limited...

[Dale]

Australia hasn't had a massacre for over 20 years since the Port Arthur massacre.

Gun control works.  Do it.

[Rusty Edge]

Candidates using the Orlando tragedy to further their political agendas-

Obama
Stein
Drumpf

Candidates deliberately refraining from politicizing the Orlando tragedy and strictly expressing compassion for the victims and their loved ones-

Clinton
Johnson
Sanders

I'm disappointed in Stein.

I'm surprised and impressed by Hillary.

Well there's horrific gun violence in America literally every single day, so if we're only allowed to talk about gun control when there isn't a tragedy, our options are somewhat limited...

I'm just talking about the tragedies that dominate the news and interrupt regular programming, not the every day stuff.

[Rusty Edge]

And what is Mr. Bakrama running for?

Usually a place in history/ legacy at this point.

[Rusty Edge]

Weekend Gleanings-

*Johnson has been making a claim that we have agreements to defend 69 countries and most of them were presidential, and not approved by Congress. Well, it's misleading.... most likely misinformed.
Yeah, there are as many as 70 countries with which we have agreements, NATO, Organization of American States, that sort of thing. Those treaties were ratified by the Senate as per the Constitution. The House wasn't involved.   MOSTLY FALSE. I think he's relatively honest, so I expect him to drop this claim. We shall see.

* The [Sleezebag] University handbook actually included instructions for what to do if an Attorney General shows up.

* The Koch Brothers are de-funding the Republican Convention.

* [Sleezebag] was on script for a couple of days last week, but reverted to being himself.

* The FBI has leaked that Hillary was approving drone strikes on her unsecured system.
 
*Hillary's machine is raising money for the Democratic Party, [Sleezebag] agreed to do likewise, but nothing is happening, and the candidates are too busy to do it after their conventions.

* Something else I don't remember...

[Unorthodox]

* The FBI has leaked that Hillary was approving drone strikes on her unsecured system.
 

I didn't think Secretary of State had that authority in the chain of command?