May 28, 2016

Darletta Scruggs on Fox news.

?t=53

May 27, 2016

Democracy for America backs Canova in race against Wasserman Schultz

Democracy for America endorsed Tim Canova on Friday in his Florida primary race against Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The progressive grass-roots PAC accused Wasserman Schultz of aligning herself with wealthy special interests, noting her support for protecting the payday lending industry and her vote for trade promotion authority legislation, which was critical for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that has been panned by many liberals.

“DFA members are backing Tim Canova in this race for Congress, not for who he supports or who supports him, but because he has spent his life challenging the power of Wall Street banks, multinational corporations, and the systemic political corruption that keeps them profitable at the expense of everyone else,” DFA Chairman Jim Dean said in a statement.

“Simply put,” he continued, “if Democrats are going to be the party that confronts the wealthy and powerful who dominate our political process and enable growing income inequality, we need political revolutionaries like Tim Canova in the U.S. Congress.”






http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/democracy-for-america-endorses-tim-canova-223651

May 27, 2016

Origin of key Clinton emails from report are a mystery

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was supposed to have turned over all work-related emails to the State Department to be released to the public. But an agency audit found at least three emails never seen before — including Clinton's own explanation of why she wanted her emails kept private.

After 14 months of public scrutiny and skepticism over Clinton's motives in keeping her emails secret, new questions emerged Thursday. They centered on her apparent failure to turn over a November 2010 message in which she worried that her personal messages could become accessible to outsiders, along with two other messages a year later that divulged possible security weaknesses in the home email system she used while secretary of state.

The Clinton campaign has previously denied that her home server was breached, but newly revealed emails show an aide worried it could have been compromised.

The existence of these previously unreleased messages — which appear to have been found among electronic files of four former top Clinton State Department aides — renews concerns that Clinton was not completely forthcoming when she turned over a trove of 55,000 pages of work-related emails. And it has drawn fresh criticism from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.


On Thursday, Clinton said she had been forthcoming with her personal emails.

"I have provided all of my work-related emails, and I've asked that they be made public, and I think that demonstrates that I wanted to make sure that this information was part of the official records," Clinton said, according to an interview transcript provided by ABC News.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5a0fb59a4ea44d258877d66762cfa08f/origin-key-clinton-emails-report-are-mystery

May 26, 2016

Nothing to see here folks, keep on walking (video) keep on walking..

Edit with embedded youtube video:

May 25, 2016

The Democratic Party's Civil War Is Just Getting Started

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is gaining strength, and asserting its power.

?w=840&h=485&crop=1
When Hillary Clinton formally claims the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination this summer in Philadelphia, she will inherit a party in the throes of a revolution — one in which her side seems likely to lose in the long term.

The upheaval has been decades in the making, as the party has evolved from choosing relative centrist nominees such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry over more liberal contenders, to Barack Obama, who positioned himself to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2008. Now, even while Clinton appears set to win the Democratic nomination this year, she has faced an unexpectedly difficult challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the farthest-left Democratic candidate to seriously vie for the nomination in decades.

Around the country, signs are mounting that the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party is gaining strength, and asserting its power. Through April, Sanders, before this race a back-bench senator with little real political power, had raised more money for his presidential contest than the vaunted Clinton machine. Clinton herself has moved to the left, in an effort to head off Sanders.

http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/the-democratic-partys-civil-war-is-just-getting-started/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

May 25, 2016

Clinton cronies smearing voters she'll need

Painting DNC establishment as victims of Bernie thugs will fuel progressive insurrection, not stop it.

As Hillary Clinton declares that “there is no way I won’t be” the Democratic presidential nominee, her establishment cronies continue to try to pressure Bernie Sanders out of the race. The latest gambit casts Sanders' supporters as violent thugs.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC that she found the behavior of Sanders’ supporters, upset over what they saw as procedural shenanigans at the recent Nevada convention, “seriously disturbing” and chided them for “throwing chairs” and “engaging in violence.”

There’s a slight problem with this claim: It never happened.

Snopes.com and NPR’s ombudsman both concluded that there is no evidence a single chair was thrown at the convention meeting. It appears a person lifted a chair and put it back down. Oh, the horror. NPR’s ombudsman also concluded that use of the word “violence” by her organization was inappropriate, as no violence seems to have occurred.

It’s bad enough for reporters, pundits and Clinton supporters to repeat explosive claims about the convention, as widely occurred, but when the head of the DNC attempts to smear primary voters with false accusations, she has officially crossed the line.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/05/24/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-nevada-democratic-convention-chair-column/84789144/

May 24, 2016

Since hillary says she already won the nomination, could she please let her fans in CA know to stay

home for the upcoming primary? (sarcasm)


Edit with Sarcasm, before camp weathervane starts reporting me again.

May 23, 2016

Establishment Dems Fight to Defeat 'Medicare-for-All' in Colorado

Pro-Clinton Democrats join Big Pharma and state Republicans in fighting to defeat first-in-the-nation ballot measure for statewide single-payer plan

?itok=j_N1Y4N1

Highlighting the divisions in the Democratic party this election, Colorado's ballot measure for a universal, single-payer healthcare plan is facing unexpected resistance from the very same party that has been calling for such a healthcare plan since the 1990s.

"There is a disconnect between the powers that be and the people," said state senator Irene Aguilar, a former doctor and the chief architect of the statewide 'Medicare-for-all,' called ColoradoCare, in an interview with the Guardian. "The powers that be are incrementalists. There hasn't been a courage of conviction to try and deal with [healthcare coverage]."

If it passes, ColoradoCare would make Colorado the first state in the nation with universal healthcare.

Most Americans support replacing Obamacare with a single-payer system, and Bernie Sanders has made his support for universal healthcare a central pillar of his presidential campaign. His rival Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, continues to support the least popular position of maintaining the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with only incremental and modest changes.

Clinton's position is echoed by establishment Democrats in Colorado, including Clinton supporter and former governor Bill Ritter, who argued to the Guardian that ColoradoCare was not "practical or feasible."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/20/establishment-dems-fight-defeat-medicare-all-colorado

May 23, 2016

Democracy is OK if the votes go MY WAY 2.

Voter Suppression and Exit Poll Discrepancies in the Democratic Primaries

Voter Suppression

Insufficient polling places in Maricopa County
In this Tuesday’s Arizona Democratic primary, Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona, reduced the number of polling places open compared to 2012 from over 200 to 60. Consequently, people spent entire work days waiting in line to vote, as voting lines stretched for over half a mile. Undoubtedly, many of them had to leave before voting, in order to avoid missing work, which I’m sure many of them could ill afford. The County recorder justified this blatant incident of voter suppression by claiming that “turnout is traditionally low” in Maricopa County. CBS reporter Joe Dana put this incident in perspective: the “2012 primary had 300,000 voters and 200 polling places. 2016 primary had 800,000 voters at 60 polling places. Polling places in densely populated Latino neighborhoods were particular targets for closure.

Numerous Democrats in AZ were mistakenly listed as independents
Consequently, because independents are not allowed to vote in the AZ primary, these voters were not allowed to vote. I don’t know the details of this issue. Were these recently independent voters who joined the Democratic Party close to the date of the primary in order to cast their vote for one of the candidates? (a perfectly legal thing to do). In any event, this mistake was never rectified.

Arizona was called for Clinton while people were still waiting in line to vote
Because of all the delays, many people were still in line waiting to vote when Arizona was called early for Clinton, with 1% of the vote in. A declaration of victory while people are waiting to vote is likely to discourage many people from voting.

Why does voter suppression hurt Sanders?
One might think that voter suppression in a party primary would not necessarily favor one candidate or the other. Of course, that all depends on whether or not the suppression was targeted at one candidate or the other. At this time I know of no good evidence that shows that to be the case.

However, one thing that must be considered is that, in general, any across the board voter suppression favors Clinton over Sanders. The reason for that is that Clinton did far better than Sanders across the board, in early voting, compared to Election Day voting, which took place largely when Bernie Sanders was hardly known to voters.

Consider Arizona, where voter suppression was especially marked. The election was called for Clinton with only 1% of the vote in, when she was ahead by a margin of 61.5% to 36.1%. All of that total reflected early voting. Yet, with 17% of the vote in (I don’t have later data on this), Sanders was leading Clinton in Election Day voting, by a small amount. Thus, any voter suppression would elevate the importance of early voting in determining the final statewide results and thus affect the delegate count in favor of the candidate who did better in early voting.

Conclusion on voter suppression
We don’t know for sure that the voter suppression in Arizona (and Ohio, where many voting precincts ran out of ballots before the polls closed and caused many potential voters to lose their chance to vote) was targeted at one candidate or the other. But to think that voter suppression didn’t happen in Arizona, where the most populous county in the state reduced the number of polling places from 200 to 60 and ended up with voting lines half a mile long, sounds naïve to me. This kind of thing begs for an investigation, aimed at discovering the cause and preventing future episodes during this primary season. Therefore, please consider signing this petition to the White House requesting that these episodes be investigated promptly.


Exit poll discrepancies

Background: The great exit poll discrepancy controversy of the 2004 Presidential Election
Those of you who spent much time on DU during the 2004 Presidential election and the months and years that followed will remember the great exit poll discrepancy of 2004, in which, according to national exit polls John Kerry won the national vote, whereas George W. Bush won the national vote according to the official vote count. The difference between the exit polls and the official vote count was about 4%. The difference was particularly great in the important swing states, where slight differences in the vote count might make a difference between winning and losing. But there was only one state where it did make a difference, and that was Ohio, where the exit poll discrepancy was over 6%. Ohio would have given the election to John Kerry.

Full post and author information can be found here: Democratic Underground

May 23, 2016

'I'm not with her': why women are weary of Hillary Clinton

As a whole, women support Clinton over Trump and Sanders, but 49% of women from across the political spectrum give her an unfavorable rating



Anoa Changa is a feminist who isn’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Last July, when the 34-year-old Atlanta-based attorney began volunteering with the grassroots organization Women for Bernie Sanders, she received immediate pushback from other women. Over social media, they accused her and other Sanders volunteers of betraying their gender, and of being fake feminists. Even former professors and friends questioned how she could support the Vermont senator over the secretary of state.

“Some women I encounter act as if I’ve betrayed some kind of secret society,” says Changa. “I reject this brand of feminism. I’m not only voting for my gender, I’m voting for other issues.”

For the first time in its history, America is close to electing a female president, yet many women from across the political spectrum don’t like Clinton.

It’s true that, as a whole, women support her more than both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, but that support is not nearly as overwhelming as black voter support was for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Millennial women, for example, prefer Sanders to Clinton and 49% of American women give the secretary of state an unfavorable rating.

I’m not only voting for my gender, I’m voting for other issues
Anoa Changa
Women from across the political spectrum, who often can’t agree on basic policy, are united in their opposition to Hillary.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/23/women-female-voters-us-election-hillary-clinton