I know that the New York Post is a Rupert Murdoch tabloid but I thought the following article added an interesting twist. The article suggests that Diane Haslett-Rudiano, NYC Board of Elections top Brooklyn official, is actually the fall guy for Betty Ann Canizio, the BOE Deputy Clerk for Brooklyn. The goal in suspending Haslett-Rudiano instead of Canizio, apparently, is to protect the Democrat by shining the spotlight on the Republican. Is that just too ridiculous? Obviously better for public consumption that problems with a Democratic primary are laid at the doorstep of a Republican rather than a Democrat. Anyway, am fully prepared to hear that the source is pure BS and will be happy to delete if so!

http://nypost.com/2016/04/21/board-of-elections-official-scapegoated-for-voting-mess/

New York Daily News as a source of information. I found an interesting op-ed piece in that publication today and thought I would share it:

***
KING: Calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out after New York primary are just foolishness
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, April 20, 2016, 1:21 PM

Until Tuesday’s New York primary, Bernie Sanders had won seven states in a row (Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming) dating all the way back to March 22. Hillary then won her (latest) home state, where she was last elected and had a strong ground operation in place, and now people are saying it's time for Bernie Sanders to drop out? Bernie has won seven out of eight states, but he should drop out?

Foolishness! ...
***

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-calls-bernie-sanders-drop-foolishness-article-1.2608585

The HRC group just re-posted the tweet by TYT about the judge's decision tomorrow with regard to the disenfranchised voters and telling people who had their party affiliations switched to go vote by provisional ballot under a title exclaiming "The scum at TYT urge independents to commit vote fraud in NY state today!!" I just don't get it. Is such a post made for entertainment purposes?

Ray McGovern weighs in on one of the prominent subjects under discussion in this primary season (originally published by Consortium News):

"Hillary Clinton is clearly expecting the votes of many women who believe she is entitled to become President because “it is time.” While I agree that it is well past time for a woman to be President, I disagree that it should be Hillary Clinton. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that people should not be judged by external factors (whether the color of their skin or, in this case, their gender) “but by the content of their character.”

Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State makes it unmistakably clear that – like her hawkish predecessor Albright – she lacks the level-headedness, vision, and, yes, compassion without which the country’s top diplomat or (even more importantly) the commander in chief can be outright dangerous."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/18/hillary-clinton-and-the-gender-card/

In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/how-hillary-clinton-bought-the-loyalty-of-33-state-democratic-parties/

Sanders on breaking up the banks because they represent a real and present danger to the US economy:

Elizabeth Warren Has Basically Had It With Paul Krugman’s Big Bank Nonsense
Too Big To Fail is alive and well.

Zach Carter
Senior Political Economy Reporter, The Huffington Post

But Warren directed her sharpest words at an unnamed set of people who have recently downplayed the role of big banks in the financial crisis and questioned the value of breaking up big banks — an apparent reference to the Nobel Prize-winning Krugman...
On Friday, Krugman argued that the financial crisis wasn’t really a problem of too big to fail, but rather a failure to regulate so-called shadow banks — a broad term including just about every financial activity beyond traditional loans and deposits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-big-banks_us_570ea9d6e4b03d8b7b9f52aa

Of course Krugman's remarks were part of a scathing critique of Bernie Sanders' position on breaking up the big banks.

"The recent kerfluffle about Bernie Sanders purportedly not knowing how to bust up the big banks says far more about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing than it does about the candidate himself. Of course Sanders knows how to bust up the big banks. He’s already introduced legislation to do just that. And even without new legislation a president has the power under the Dodd-Frank reform act to initiate such a breakup. But Sanders threatens the Democratic establishment and Wall Street, not least because he’s intent on doing exactly what he says he’ll do: breaking up the biggest banks."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/bernie-and-the-big-banks_b_9657184.html

Has this been posted yet? While Bernie is speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on the global economy and environmental sustainability, Hillary will be attending a Hong Kong (global finance hotspot!) fundraiser hosted by Gary Gensler, one time partner at Goldman Sachs. I almost can't believe it. The story showed up in both US-Uncut and Daily Kos. The fundraiser is also listed on Clinton's campaign schedule.

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-clinton-fundraiser/

I guess it is true, according to Clinton campaign's list of upcoming speeches: https://hillaryspeeches.com/scheduled-events/

Apparently, the day after the NYC debate, both Sanders and Clinton will travel abroad. While Bernie speaks at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on the global economy and environmental sustainability, Clinton will attend a fundraiser in Hong Kong hosted by Gary Gensler who was a partner at Goldman Sachs before heading up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Read the article multiple times because I thought I was probably missing something - a fundraiser in the global financial capital of Hong Kong?

CORRECTION: hmm. should I delete this post? I just read that article again and revisited the speech schedule. Didn't realize that the speeches listed were for all pro-Clinton speeches no matter who was giving them. Fundraiser, yes. Clinton attendance, no. Sorry!

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-clinton-fundraiser/

Bernie's Media Critics and Hillary Clinton Are Wrong: He Knows Exactly How to Break Up The Biggest Banks
Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction.
By Mike Konczal / Roosevelt Institute April 6, 2016

Bernie Sanders gave some fairly normal answers on financial reform to the New York Daily News editorial board. Someone sent it to me, and as I read it I thought “yes, these are answers I’d expect for how Sanders approaches financial reform.”

You wouldn’t know that from the coverage of it, which has argued that the answers were an embarrassing failure. Caitlin Cruz at TPM argues that Sanders “struggles to explain how he would break up the banks” and that’s relatively kind. Chris Cillizza says it was “pretty close to a disaster” and David Graham says the answers on his core financial focus is “tentative, unprepared, or unaware.” Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair writes that Sanders “admits he isn’t sure how to break up the big banks.”

This is not correct. Sanders has a clear path on how he wants to break up the banks which he described. Breaking up the banks doesn’t require, or even benefit from, describing the specifics on how the banks would end up, neither for his plans or the baby steps Dodd-Frank has already taken...

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernies-media-critics-and-hillary-clinton-are-wrong-he-knows-exactly-how-break-biggest

I doubt anyone who is loving the MSM's lazy misrepresentation of what Sanders said in the NY Daily News interview will bother to click the link and read the article but, if you're interested, it's a worthwhile read. Mike Konczal's blog, Rortybomb, was named one of the 25 best financial blogs by Time Magazine. (I don't know how to do the "snip" thing - everything above the link is from the beginning of the article.)