May 1, 2016

Thank you!!

That's exactly the info I was looking for.

p.s. planning to pull the trigger so to speak in the next week or two and want to get it right . . .

April 29, 2016

Biden and Pope Francis team up against cancer

Source: CBS-AP

VATICAN CITY -- Casting cancer as a scourge with no boundaries, Vice President Joe Biden came to the Vatican on Friday to call for a global commitment to fund cancer research rooted in appreciation for the real people's lives that doctors and researchers hold in their hands.

Biden, who lost a son to cancer last year, used his appearance at a Vatican conference on regenerative medicine to urge philanthropists, corporations and governments to increase funding and information-sharing in a bid to "end cancer as we know it." He said the world is on the cusp of unprecedented breakthroughs but not enough has been done.

"Cancer is a constant emergency," the vice president said. "Cancer's not a national problem, it's an international problem. It's a human problem. It affects all races, all religions."

{snip}

CBS News correspondent Seth Doane says this was the third time the conference had been held at the Vatican, bringing together doctors, patients and philanthropists with religious and government leaders. Biden called it a gathering of "some of the most brilliant minds in the world."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-pope-francis-vatican-appeal-for-cancer-research/

---

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden talks with Pope Francis in Paul VI hall at the Vatican April 29, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/world/europe/joe-biden-speaks-about-faith-and-curing-cancer-at-the-vatican.html

April 26, 2016

The Nation: African-American Voters Have an Understandable Reason to Support Hillary Clinton

Bernie Sanders has propelled economic inequality to center stage. But older African Americans have known about inequality for a long time.

By Eric Foner - TODAY 2:01 PM

Supporters wait for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.

Why have most African-American voters, especially in the Southern states, steadfastly supported Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primaries? This question has bedeviled supporters of Bernie Sanders, who has a long record of support for racial justice and whose economic policies would arguably benefit blacks more than Clinton’s. As a Sanders supporter and a scholar who has devoted much of my career to studying the African-American experience, I have wondered about this myself.

{snip}

But for black Carolinians, the challenge today seems to be holding on to gains that are under assault rather than seeking further progress. It is not surprising that voters in this situation prefer a familiar candidate who seems to promise progress, even if incremental, rather than a lesser-known insurgent from a virtually all-white state with a sweeping but seemingly utopian agenda.

Black voters, moreover, are extremely protective of President Obama. They recognize, more viscerally than many whites, how much of the invective hurled at the president has a racist tinge. No white president has been forced to produce his birth certificate to demonstrate his citizenship or been interrupted during a State of the Union address and accused of lying. When Obama is called “lazy” or a “food-stamp president,” the language, among blacks, evokes stereotypes deeply rooted in America’s racial past. To some extent, when blacks vote for Clinton they are casting one last ballot for Obama.

Given all of the above, black support for Clinton is understandable. Sanders has done a remarkable thing in propelling economic inequality to the center stage of political discourse, thereby galvanizing support among young white voters, and some young blacks. But older African Americans have known about inequality for a long, long time. Whatever the outcome of this election, one lesson of our history is clear: No progressive movement in this country can succeed without a significant base of support in the black community.

http://www.thenation.com/article/african-american-voters-have-a-good-reason-to-support-hillary-clinton/

April 26, 2016

LA Times: No evidence that Clinton has been corrupted by campaign contributions

Sanders calls Clinton's fundraising 'obscene,' but it's more nuanced -- influence isn't corruption

by Richard L. Hasen
April 25, 2016

Despite Bernie Sanders' repeated accusations, there's no real evidence that Hillary Clinton has been corrupted by large campaign contributions. But that's not to say donors haven't influenced her thinking and priorities. Lodged in the gap between Sanders' attacks and Clinton's rejoinders lies the truth about big money in politics.

Anyone who has heard two minutes of a Sanders stump speech knows he rails against a “corrupt campaign finance system” that benefits the rich and powerful, and boasts of the support he gets from millions of individuals making small donations.

Sanders and his supporters call Clinton's fundraising “obscene.” Using fuzzy math (such as counting all the donations bundled by lobbyists who have had oil companies as clients), the Sanders campaign asserted that Clinton took millions in donations from the fossil fuel industry.

More recently, the Sanders campaign's lawyer issued a letter suggesting, without evidentiary support, that Clinton or her supporters were breaking the law when they solicited six-figure donations in a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee and state political parties.

In fact, while that fundraising strategy might be troublesome, it does not appear to violate any of the many porous rules set by Congress, the Federal Election Commission, or the Supreme Court. Nor is there any evidence, despite the belief of some ardent Sanders supporters, that Clinton has somehow been bribed to do the bidding of big donors.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0425-hasen-money-in-politics-20160425-story.html
...........................

It's not nice to fib

April 25, 2016

Let it not be forgot that before the Kochs "supported" Hillary they supported Sanders:

April 24, 2016

Hillary rocks en Espagñol:

Okay it's not Hillary but it's a nice video and there's a resemblance don't you think?

April 3, 2016

Props to alerter and jury for hiding that inane Libertarian link that gets posted here constantly.

It's meaningless, misleading, and frankly ridiculous but you'd think it was the holy writ from the credibility it has here. Anyway thanks.

April 3, 2016

At rallies, Hillary Clinton’s supporters are looking for logic, not passion

April 2 at 9:07 PM:

“She’s a serious candidate, and she doesn’t have to entertain me,” said Chris Haggerty, 58, a pastor in her third hour of waiting, of moving in small increments toward the high school doors.

Elsewhere in America, Sanders was thundering about a “political revolution.” The Republican front-runner Trump was promising to “bomb the sh--” out of the Islamic State. These were the emotionally cathartic rallies that had come to define this unorthodox political season so far — angry, raucous, anti-establishment and, in Trump’s case, ­occasionally violent.

A Clinton rally was decidedly none of these things.

What was it, then? What happens at a rally for the presidential candidate who has gotten more votes than anyone else so far — nearly 9 million, which is roughly 2.5 million more than Sanders and 1 million more than Trump?

(snip)

“Trump’s angry; Bernie’s angry all the time,” said Smith, a retired elementary schoolteacher who said she was not angry other than whatever frustration she felt toward the other candidates and their followers, which she sublimated. “Just realistically, I think it’s not a matter of pumping the team up, it’s a matter of playing the game. You can’t have that kind of demeanor. I can’t imagine these men being in the room when some crisis really happens. Is emotion going to rule them, or are they going to have a level head and make calm decisions?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/at-rallies-hillary-clintons-supporters-are-looking-for-logic/2016/04/02/4098c502-f73f-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html

April 2, 2016

Yep. Bernie voted with 222 repukes to pass Sensenbrenner's odious Community Protection Act of 2006:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll465.xml

April 2, 2016

"People in the fossil fuel industry have contributed $203,885 to Sanders’s campaign,

according to OpenSecrets.org." So quoth the Intercept which I believe is very friendly to Bernie:

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/01/bernie-sanders-took-money-from-the-fossil-fuel-lobby-too-just-not-much/

I suppose we could say that Bernie's "future to believe in" looks a lot like Hillary's, only smaller.