May 20, 2016

If Sanders runs 3rd party, Clinton wins. Here's why:

Right now the Bernie coalition consists of disgruntled/disaffected Dems, independents, and new voters. The Dems go Hillary. The Independents split or go to Trump. New voters (20-30) either split or favor Dems. Trump gets the luntatic right, Bernie gets some Independents, and Hillary gets the Obama coalition + half or most new Dems.

It might be harder but she still wins. So bring it on.

May 20, 2016

Krugman: I don't think Sanders has gone off the rails; I think this is who he always was.

May 18, 2016

France hit by rail strike, demo by weary police

Source: Reuters

World | Wed May 18, 2016
PARIS | BY BRIAN LOVE

Strikes by French railway and port workers halved train services and prompted cancellation of ferry links to Britain on Wednesday as labor unions sought to force President Francois Hollande's government into retreat on labor law reforms.

After weeks of protests in which hundreds of their number have been hurt, police held a rally of their own to vent frustration over the stresses of near daily clashes with violent youths on the fringes of the anti-reform movement.

As they did so, a crowd chanting "police everywhere, justice nowhere" surrounded a police patrol car, which went up in flames after the police officers inside fled the scene, a few hundred meters from where their colleagues were rallying. The public prosecutor's office said after the incident it was opening an inquiry into attempted homicide.

Wednesday's rail strikes, set to run until Friday morning, reduced high-speed and inter-city services by 40 to 50 percent, also heavily disrupting local and suburban commuter lines, the SNCF state railway company said. Strike turnout, the SNCF said, was about 15 percent, lower than in previous stoppages.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics-protests-idUSKCN0Y90ZX

May 18, 2016

AP -- Clinton needs 92 delegates, Sanders needs 855 to clinch

as of 3:41 am:

link: https://interactives.ap.org/2016/delegate-tracker/

...........................
And here's the breakdown:



link: http://www.npr.org/2016/03/02/468641509/elections-2016-democratic-and-republican-delegate-tracker

Take away the superdelegates, and the gap shrinks, but Clinton has always had the lead in both counts.

May 18, 2016

Clinton Apparent Winner of Kentucky Primary

Source: NBC

Hillary Clinton was the apparent winner of the Democratic primary in Kentucky on Tuesday, NBC News reported.

Clinton hoped a strong showing would blunt Bernie Sanders' momentum ahead of a likely general election matchup against Republican Donald Trump.

Clinton entered Tuesday's primaries in Kentucky and Oregon with a commanding lead of nearly 300 pledged delegates over Sanders and a dominant advantage among party officials and elected leaders known as superdelegates.

Clinton remains on track to clinch the nomination in early June, but is trying to avoid ending the primary season with a string of losses to the Vermont senator.

Read more: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/Clinton-Aims-for-Kentucky-Win-to-Break-Sanders-Momentum--379837741.html

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May 18, 2016

A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation . . .

but I can't remember what it was . . .

May 12, 2016

email-ghazi: If there's no sex, race or terra involved, Mr & Mrs Ohio are never going to give a sh#t

Sorry to break the news to the bureaucrats trying to influence this election but the Martha Stewart ship has sailed and even if they pull an indictment out of their derrières Hillary will still be nominated and elected. It might depress the vote enough to influence a House race or two, but all the fulmination in the world is not going to move the needle nationally. It might also however create an urgent need to reform those agencies once president-elect Clinton takes office.

And now back to today's breaking news on the Socks the Cat investigation . . . .

May 7, 2016

Seems like yesterday department: Republicans call for investigation of Socks the Cat

FELINE FAN CLUB SCANDAL

http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/pdfs/secofc/20070326_RepublicansChangeTheirTune.pdf

May 7, 2016

WaPo: "Hillary Clinton is going to be exonerated on the email controversy. It won’t matter."

By Paul Waldman - May 6, 12:10 PM:

The latest news on the Hillary Clinton email controversy reinforces everything we’ve heard so far on this subject:

Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

FBI agents on the case have been joined by federal prosecutors from the same office that successfully prosecuted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui — and who would handle any Edward Snowden case, should he ever return to the country, according to the U.S. officials familiar with the matter. And in recent weeks, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia and their FBI counterparts have been interviewing top Clinton aides as they seek to bring the case to a close.

That point about her intending to break classification rules is important, because in order to have broken the law, it isn’t enough for Clinton to have had classified information in a place where it was possible for it to be hacked. She would have had to intentionally given classified information to someone without authorization to have it, like David Petraeus did when he showed classified documents to his mistress (and then lied to the FBI about it, by the way). Despite the enormous manpower and time the Justice Department has devoted to this case, there has never been even a suggestion, let alone any evidence, that Clinton did any such thing.

{snip}

As Bill and Hillary Clinton’s entire careers have proven, when you’re trying to take someone down, the next best thing to a real scandal is a phony one. Let’s not forget that when Bill was president, no alleged wrongdoing was too trivial to investigate, complete with dark insinuations about nefarious conspiracies and potential criminal behavior. You think the endless investigation of Benghazi is ridiculous? In the 1990s, congressional Republicans took 140 hours of sworn testimony on the urgent question of whether the Clintons had misused the White House Christmas card list. Seriously. That’s something that actually happened.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/06/hillary-clinton-is-going-to-be-exonerated-on-the-email-controversy-it-wont-matter/

May 6, 2016

Jonathan Franzen : "Si vous n'avez pas de problèmes, vous n'êtes pas vraiment intéressant !"

Dual-language interview on France Culture of Jonathan Franzen, American author of Purity (2015), in 2 parts, interesting mainly for the discussion of US primaries, including a consideration of Bernie Sanders' purity at the end of Part II (Franzen says he supports Clinton but not enthuiastically):



Part I: Jonathan Franzen, en quête de nos vérités
http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/13983-06.05.2016-ITEMA_20978907-1.mp3
06.05.2016 -- 16 min

A l'occasion de la publication en France de son dernier livre "Purity", l'écrivain américain est au micro de Guillaume Erner, dans un entretien enregistré dans les studios de la NPR à New York.
.............
Part II: Jonathan Franzen, en quête de nos vérités (deuxième partie)
http://media.radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/13983-06.05.2016-ITEMA_20978907-2.mp3
06.05.2016 -- 25 min