Dispassionate observers today charged the Sanders campaign with changing their positions constantly in a pathetic and fundamentally dishonest attempt to be as close as possible to the overwhelming favorite Hillary Clinton. In an exclusive interview with TNN an unnamed dispassionate observer pointed out that six months ago Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were far apart on policy and today they are in almost the same place while Clinton has maintained a solid lead the entire time.

Cynically manipulating policy in order to get closer to the obvious front runner is a serious charge indeed and our panel of Very Serious and Very Dispassionate People has concluded that from a purely objective point of view Bernie Sanders is a Rovian character, a morally depraved liar who is too stupid to be President.

Americans don't spend nearly as much time at post offices as they used to, but that's not only because postcards are being replaced by Evites. For more than half a century, from 1911 until 1967, the Postal Service also served as a bank. Customers could walk down the street to the post office with their money and deposit it in a savings account there.

The system made sense back in those days, when the country was more sparsely populated and banks were harder to find, but post offices were everywhere. Over the past 50 years, though, the total number of bank branches in the United States increased from 16,000 to 83,000. What's more, people visit the bank less frequently these days, given the ubiquity of credit cards and direct deposit.

Still, there are still relatively few banks in many impoverished urban and rural neighborhoods, and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Inevitable), the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has a big idea for turning post offices back into banks. That's because she sees them as a place where the 68 million low-income Americans who currently rely on payday lenders and costly cash checking services could manage their affairs less expensively. (And banking might help the beleaguered Postal Service's bottom line as well.)

My daughter was born three years ago. I went into pre-term labor at 22 weeks gestation, and try as they might, the doctors could not keep her here with us. Her short life, just eight hours long, has marked my life and my husband’s life deeply. Margaret Hope (or Maggie, as we refer to her) continues to exist with us in her own way, but this persistence has absolutely nothing to do with god or Jesus or angels or any other specific afterworld. This is what works for us as parents. It’s what works for about two percent of the U.S. population who currently identify as atheists, and for about 20 percent who are agnostic or unaffiliated with any particular set of beliefs.

Being an atheist in a believer’s world can be difficult at times, especially when some of the more fervently religious are close family or friends. It’s even more daunting when faced with grief and death. Christians believe that when we die, we either go to heaven or hell. Many, of course, believe babies go to heaven because they are, well, babies. When our daughter died, my husband requested to have our baby baptized, fearing in some way for her soul, a remnant of his Catholic upbringing. There was no time for a traditional baptism while she was alive but her NICU doctor performed the rite for her while we held her in our arms for the first time, our tiny, frail, lifeless daughter whose eyes never even got a chance to see. It felt bizarre to me, but I allowed it because my husband was suffering and it seemed to bring him some comfort. Later, as reality hit harder, he would lose all faith as I had done.

(. . .)

The thing is, though, if you tell someone of faith that you don’t believe your child is in heaven, you’re met with confusion, or sad looks, or sometimes even a bit of anger. People don’t understand how or why you wouldn’t want to believe that your child is in a better place. Quite often, they take it as a personal attack on their belief when it’s really more about being honest about your own grief. It’s funny how inconvenient my lack of faith as a bereaved mother can be for those on the outside. (Actually, it’s not funny at all.)

I sought out support groups in my area, but could not find any that were not held within a church. I did not feel comfortable going to one of these places for fear of verbally assaulting anyone who might suggest my daughter had earned her angel wings. It made me want to shake people until they realized that maybe she died simply because people die. Maybe she died because there were errors made in the care I received at the hospital I visited twice in the week before she died, where those who saw me shrugged off that I was spotting without reason. Maybe she died because I was unable to visit a new doctor because the office refused to see me without receiving the paperwork from my previous doctor in Miami, whose office continuously forgot to fax over my records, leaving me without regular medical care for weeks. Maybe she died because I had experienced tremendous stress after being fired from my job due to early pregnancy complications that required me to miss work, causing me to go on Medicaid in the first place, resulting in the aforementioned doctor shuffle. Maybe she died because of any other reason except that it was god’s will. Maybe it was more about socio-economics and my own personal health than about imaginary lords in the sky.