Interestingly, the birther crowd is going after her!
This time, not as “She is not American” but as “She is not black.” Apparently focusing on the fact that her parents are Jamaican and Indian. This is an interesting mistake. So she is not black (race, a social construct), she is Jamaican / Indian (country of ancestral origin.) This on par with claiming I am not white, because i am English and Swedish. Or “do you walk to school or pack your lunch?” Yup, they are already afraid. Kinda digging it!
Is that really what liberals think? Granted that Wall Street donated millions to Hillary Clinton (I assume that tweet refers to her; not sure it applies to anyone in the current Democratic primary) but Russia did way more than buying “$100k of Facebook ads,” as detailed in the Mueller Report and the related indictments. Minimizing Russia’s interference plays right into Putin’s and Trump’s propaganda.
Global ecological collapse is probably the biggest problem the world is facing right now, but there are some sound political arguments against dedicating a whole debate to climate change:
I hope the DNC comes up with some kind of compromise, such as a dedicated period of N minutes at the beginning of a debate which automatically extends if the flow of discussion on the day warrants it.
I want the candidates to prove, on pain of nationwide embarrassment at the hands of their more-informed rivals, that they understand the facts of climate change in detail and that they’ve become advocates for an effective plan.
I want them to be forced to study it and face it in full, and then to be grilled on it so we can see if they get it and feel it and if they’re going to do something or turn away (and thus IMO be disqualified).
Am I wrong to want this? Maybe, and I’ll know after reading the article. Thanks for the link.
The potential POTUS doesn’t need to know, right now, whether $1 trillion or $3 trillion is the right number to spend on the problem, or what level of carbon offsets is appropriate. If Inslee of Warren have those details down but Harris or Williamson don’t, that doesn’t matter. What the POTUS needs to do is be willing to bring in something like a task force of the best climate scientists and policy analysts, have them produce a plan that the former say will solve the scientific problem and the latter say will solve the political problem, and back the plan with all the power and resources available to the office.
There are some reasonable questions you could ask candidates here: do you think oil company executives should have a seat at the table? Would you raise taxes, or cut back our defense budget, in order to raise the funds necessary for implementation? Do you support creating a federal-level initiative akin to the WPA to tackle the problems? And so on. However, these are political questions not involving the details of the problem or proposed solutions. I don’t think it will take 2 hours for all the candidates to make commit to positions on these. If I’m wrong, of course the time allotted to this discussion should be extended.
In fact, I worry a bit about candidates committing too soon to plans here rather than process and philosophy.
Incidentally, while the convention is miles away, those who haven’t been paying attention should know that there has been the usual rules change after the last convention, in this case to address the complaints from the Sanders camp in 2016. This time the superdelegates will not get a vote in the first voting round, which means that if some candidate gets over 50% on that round that candidate will win just on primary/caucus popular vote.
Now, I’ve already heard some grumbling from some Sanders supporters that this is another DNC attempt to thwart him, even though the rule changes were suggested by his representatives on the committee. Their reasoning is that the abundance of candidates, especially having more than just Bernie on the left, means that the vote will split more than 2 ways, and this guarantees a second round. Moreover, this was supposed to be intentional on the part of the (invisible, secret) reactionary cabal that really runs the DNC, who is apparently just pretending they had nothing to do with there being so many candidates. Moreover, even though there were (probably founded) complaints that in 2016 the DNC sought to keep the number of candidates low to favor HRC, now the exact opposite strategy is supposed to favor Biden.
Back to reality, I think this format favors candidates like Harris (or whoever dominates the middle at that point) over Biden, but also over Sanders and Warren unless they find a way not to split each others’ votes.
That’s one hell of a drop for Biden (and Beto, for that matter), and a hell of a boost for Warren, Harris, and Castro. What a difference a month (and a debate round) makes…
Let’s face it: anything and everything except DNC declaring Sanders as the winner and committing seppuku over 2016 will have some of his supporters grumbling he’s being robbed. Bernie is far from the worst candidate in the running, but he has some of the worst supporters…
Probably so. And, to be honest, they have a legitimate beef, in that quite a few of the policies the other candidates are supporting are only viable because he made them so in 2016; he does seem to be getting a little shafted.
However, it is not by the DNC, which has become the favorite whipping boy of people who don’t understand the difference between the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, the Mont Pelerin Society, and Nancy Pelosi.
Julián Castro got a massive bump as well although he’s still way behind - but a 12% increase for someone that’s a relative unknown is not nothing. It’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out by the time the next debates happen.
Investors are pondering where to put their money this week after the sudden decline in the assessed value of presidential candidate Joe Biden.
On Wall Street and in other corporate quarters where financiers were heavily invested in Biden, hopes have eroded in recent days amid reduced investor confidence. Some prominent donors began to openly question the wisdom of devoting more capital to the national marketing campaign for the former vice president.
After the leading blue chip closed sharply lower at the end of last week, even declaring “my time is up,” many top investors felt overexposed and looked for shelter. Gathering new topline data and considering several prospectuses that had been previously submitted, investors are now reassessing assets and liabilities as well as potential growth in market share during the next quarter and beyond.
Venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, powerful CEOs and other wealthy individuals — sensing a political emergency that may require swift and decisive action — are moving to widen financing spigots for Kamala Harris. . . .
Masters of the Universe were so self-interested that they were going to kill their golden goose. If you want to be a successful capitalist, income inequality is not your friend. A thriving economy at all levels is a far better guarantee of good returns — and it makes for a more stable society in which pitch forks are in short supply.
Anyway, it looks like some of them are seeing the light after watching Trump for two and a half years. The stock market has been fine. But they can see what he’s doing to the domestic and global economy and they know this is a very ignorant, unstable, unpredictable president and that’s not good for anyone:
There’s a new whisper on Wall Street – maybe Elizabeth Warren isn’t so bad.
Granted that Wall Street donated millions to Hillary Clinton (I assume that tweet refers to her; not sure it applies to anyone in the current Democratic primary) but Russia did way more than buying “$100k of Facebook ads,” as detailed in the 
Thanks for the link.
