Monday, June 1, 2015

Bernie Quote

Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists. 
- Bernie Sanders, via DCCC email

13 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Enfant - YES!!

      Unlikely, but I'm sure he'd be a good one, perhaps a great one. I believe Bernie understands that he will not win, but sees his best opportunity to influence the discussion... debates, campaign trips, etc. ... from inside the process. I don't expect that he can make Hillary into a liberal, but his presence may compel her to hear a few more questions from the chronically nonwealthy :-) and perhaps even voice her own response to those questions. Yes, I know; that requires some help from the debate moderator, but the smiling faces with their perfect teeth who inevitably serve as "moderators" (heh) at the so-called debates truly love the spectacle of Democrat against Democrat; they call it "chaos" and we call it "democracy"!

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    2. I suppose Sanders just lost the support of the Koch brothers and Mr. Adelson! :-)

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  2. Who is Sheldon Gary Adelson (pronounced /ˈædəlsən/; born August 4, 1933) ?
    Age 81??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Enfant, he is one of the richest people in America. He is Republican, and together with some other wealthy men (always men!) such as the Koch brothers, intend almost single-handedly to bankroll the Republican candidates in the 2016 election. This would have been against the law prior to the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, but now there are no real restrictions on how much money an individual or a corporation can give to, say, a presidential campaign, a gubernatorial campaign, etc., and the ruling also effectively prevents Congress from passing laws that would restrict the amount... the Court says it's a free-speech issue, based on an old crackpot assertion that "spending equals speech" ... i.e., if you can't restrict a person's or a corp's speech, then you can't restrict the money they spend to convey that speech. It's the biggest load of crap the Supreme Court has dumped on us all in a hundred years or so, and it would take a constitutional amendment to override it. There are serious disadvantages to having a de facto partisan judiciary!

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    2. I forgot to mention that Adelson literally held personal face-to-face interviews with serious Republican candidates for president whom he considers suitable and would be willing to fund. In essence, Adelson considers it his birthright to preselect candidates for our highest executive office, and there's nothing in the Constitution that could be used to stop him from doing exactly that.

      America is not only not much of a democracy these days compared to the days of my youth, as things stand, we have no rational hope of reclaiming such democracy as we used to have. For at least the rest of my life, I expect to be living in an increasingly unabashed oligarchy. I hate that!

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  3. Sheldon Gary Adelson (born August 4, 1933) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.

    REALLY????

    He is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and is the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited which operates The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. He also owns the Israeli daily newspaper Israel HaYom. Adelson, a lifelong donor and philanthropist to a variety of causes, founded with his wife's initiative the Adelson Foundation.
    As of June 2015, Adelson was listed by Forbes as having a fortune of $31.4 billion, and as the 18th richest person in the world.[1] Adelson is also a major contributor to Republican Party candidates, which has resulted in his gaining significant influence within the party.[3][4]

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    Replies
    1. Enfant, I'm rather busy today, but if you'll remind me, I'll follow up on your comment. You are, of course, right about all aspects of Adelson, though I would not have called what he does "philanthropy" ...

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  4. Sheldon Adelson wants to nuke Iran, GOP sucks up, 1min17sec
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=53&v=IzPxjo_SndQ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Enfant, I imposed a rule on myself long ago: I do not address issues on which I can have literally no effect. Adelson is such an issue. He's a deporable man, and it's really tempting to me to rant in opposition to everything he stands for ... but those rants, unlike, say, letters to government officials, or to the news divisions of most media outlets, fall entirely on deaf ears (in this case, Adelson's). So they are a complete waste of time. As I am 66 years old, I think about such tradeoffs...

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  5. ....He's a deporable man, and ... or He's a deplorable man, and ...

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    Replies
    1. Oops. Good thing I never made my living as a typist. Most s/w developer tools have syntax checks or other validity tests built in, and in my working years I grew to depend on them. And yes, the Blogger editor has a spelling checker, but I have learned to ignore it while I type, because it complains about so many things, e.g., "Blogger" is marked as a misspelling, and life is too short to add all the marked words to the dictionary.

      The antiquity of this keyboard doesn't help matters; I believe it's on its fifth? sixth? computer by now. I tolerate its foibles because it's soooo comfortable under the hands, and Micro$oft has stopped manufacturing this model. But when the weather first gets damp, and again when it first dries out, the keyboard sometimes omits characters. Then there's the antiquity of the fingers themselves... :-)

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  6. The Bomb Iran Lobby Gears Up for 2016
    http://firedoglake.com/2015/06/06/the-bomb-iran-lobby-gears-up-for-2016/

    ReplyDelete

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