Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Bernie Sign-on  (Real Delegate Count?)  Bernie Sanders Wins Over 70% of Votes in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii  (Managerial Burnout)  Trump Virus No Surprise



Bernie Sanders for President

Friend -

You have to see this "Wall Street Journal" headline from late last week:

"Hillary Clinton Begins Shift to the General Election"

Unfortunately for the Clinton campaign's plans, voters got in the way. We've won six of the last seven contests, and took 82% of the vote in Alaska, 73% in Washington, and 70% in Hawaii.

Here’s the truth:  the Clinton campaign and their allies in the financial and political establishment are desperately trying to write us off.

Their goal is to get you to stop fighting — to stop volunteering, to stop donating — because they know that if we continue to stand together, we can win.

Jeff Weaver
Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager




Friends, let's thank our Facebook fans for this Birdie True Vote Count video.

Watch it!

And, no, I haven't seen Bernie dance like that before.

Bernie Sanders Wins Alaska, Washington and Hawaii Caucuses in a Landslide

emocratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders easily won nominating contests in Alaska, Washington and Hawaii on Saturday, chipping away at front-runner Hillary Clinton's commanding lead in the race to pick the party's candidate for the White House.
Sanders still faces a steep climb to overtake Clinton but the big victories in the West generated more momentum for his upstart campaign and could stave off calls from Democratic leaders that he should wrap up his bid in the name of party unity.
. . . "We are making significant inroads in Secretary Clinton's lead and ... we have a path to victory," Sanders told cheering, chanting supporters in Madison, Wisconsin. "It is hard for anybody to deny that our campaign has the momentum."
Clinton, the former secretary of state, has increasingly turned her attention toward a potential Nov. 8 general election showdown against Republican front-runner Donald Trump, claiming she is on the path to wrapping up the nomination.
. . . Sanders has repeatedly said he is staying in the race until the convention, pointing to big crowds at his rallies and high turnout among young and first-time voters as proof of his viability. After raising $140 million, he has the money to fight on as long as he wants.
He has energized the party's liberal base and young voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and fight income inequality, a message that resonated in liberal Washington and other Western states.
"Don't let anybody tell you we can't win the nomination or the general election," Sanders told supporters in Wisconsin, which holds the next contest on April 5. "We are going to do both."
. . .After Wisconsin, the Democratic race moves to contests in New York on April 19 and a bloc of five states in the Northeast, led by Pennsylvania, on April 26.

Comments:
 # cmp 2016-03-27 11:21

This Presidential Primary runs for 134 days, (Feb 1st to June 14th.) It's criminal that the Dem Party would allow the Owner Media to report superdelegates who have not yet Legally Voted. .. No Election should ever be held with a Phantom Lead that serves as a Finger on the Scale..

The District of Columbia votes on June 14th. They have 672,228 total residents. Arizona has 6.83 Million residents and 917,411 Registered Democrats. The District of Columbia, was awarded by the Dem Party 26 superdelegates, and Arizona was awarded 10.

I believe, the time is more than ripe for each one of us, to have a conversation with each of our State Democratic Parties. .. And, ask them, just why Super Delegates - who can Still Legally Change Their Vote - Are Being Reported Today.

.. Also, ask them - if they would publicly state that the superdelegate votes are "Too Early To Report (Estimate)" until, the remaining States and Dems have voted, or maybe even until the Convention itself, where they can consult with their Pledged Delegates.

# DrD 2016-03-27 13:20

Here is the list of Superdelegates and who they have committed to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Party_superdelegates,_2016

Everyone who lives in a state where Bernie has won a primary by a yuuge margin should contact their state's Superdelegates and ask why they are supporting Clinton if their state is strongly for Bernie??

The voters can put pressure on them. I've noticed that no additional superdelegates have pledged support for her for about a month so I think the tide may be turning.

# Radscal 2016-03-27 09:28 In Pledged (won) delegates, HRC now has just 22% more than Sanders. (1243 to 975).

But once again, voting "irregularities " that favored HRC were legion in AZ.

There were some Exit Polls taken during the voting, and they had Sanders up 60% to 40% and 70% to 30%. But, with 1% or 2% of the precincts reported, the corporate media announced HRC the winner!

And mind you, due to the long lines (and FOUR FAKE BOMB THREATS that closed polling stations while the bomb squad checked them out), there were tens of thousands of voters still waiting in line when those "results" were announced.

Remember that Republican tactic of scrubbing eligible voters from the rolls in FL in 2000?

Well, an unknown number of thousands of registered Democrats showed up to vote, but were told they were NOT registered.

Most were given provisional ballots, but I'm not holding my breath to read the new results once all those provisionals have been verified and added to the vote tally.

And the AZ Sanders campaign reported a possible hack of their data base the week before the Primary.

If you care about election integrity, please sign the White House Petition to have the AZ primary investigated:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/investigate-voter-fraud-and-voter-suppression-arizona-3222016-democratic-party
# virtualaudio 2016-03-27 12:32

Even better, let's call for a RE-VOTE in AZ:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-revote-arizona-primary-due-voter-suppression

Considering the irregularities, maybe the UN should get involved:

http://pac.petitions.moveon.org/sign/un-review-of-us-election/

If you were wrongly denied voting in #AZPrimary contact the FEC http://www.fec.gov/fecig/contact.shtml

… and EAC

http://www.eac.gov/inspector_general/report_fraud_waste__abuse.aspx

… with your complaint!
# Inspired Citizen 2016-03-27 09:43
#BernieOrBust pledge-takers in caucus states are encouraged to hand out a flyer to people in line going into caucus. It reads:

Attention: genuine progressives across the nation are pledging to either write in Bernie Sanders or vote Green in the general election, unless he's the Party nominee. 14% in our party refuse to support another Wall Street-backed Democrat. As much as we’d would like to see a woman in the White House for a change, Hillary is not a change from the hawkish and pro-corporate government we are all weary of. We can't risk a repeat of 2000 and end up having a Republican appoint the next Supreme Court judges. If we want to win in November, we need to unite behind Bernie, not candidate Clinton who is under FBI investigation.

http://citizensagainstplutocracy.org/  
# grandlakeguy 2016-03-27 12:08 
MAINSTREAM NEWS COVERAGE IS A DISGRACE!  
Yesterday afternoon along with with millions of like minded Americans I shared the excitement and optimism of Bernie's landslide victories. Today I expected to see banner front page headlines about the amazing and important margins that demonstrate the ever growing momentum of Bernie's popularity.
I eagerly opened my SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (the main Northern California paper) looking for those headlines. 
NOTHING! 
I finally found this AP story on page 6 with a headline "Sanders wins Alaska and Washington state" nowhere in the article were the enormous margins of Bernie's victories even mentioned. 
Rather the focus was slanted with statements like this opening paragraph of the piece: 
"Bernie Sanders scored a duo of wins in Western caucus contests Saturday, giving a powerful psychological boost to his supporters but doing little to move him closer to securing the Democratic nomination."

Thank goodness we have the internet which has become the real source of information. 
Traditional media is dying and they deserve that fate as the reward for the slanted and biased propaganda that they inflict on their readers and viewers. 
WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO SINK OUR POLITICAL REVOLUTION!

 # intheEPZ 2016-03-27 17:06
List of superdelegates here. Write to those in your state and tell them to remain uncommitted or switch to Bernie!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Party_superdelegates,_2016
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Several other current sources provide even more facts worth considering:

The Clintons Have Not Changed: The Clintonian War on the IGs
Bernie Sanders Pulls Even with Hillary Clinton in a New Poll. Because It’s the Economy, Stupid.
Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton Helped Topple Gadhafi While France & UK Fought Over Libya’s Oil
Clinton bragged about the U.S. role in Moammar Gadhafi’s death, and her emails leaked by Wikileaks show the race to claim Libya’s resources in the aftermath.
An email sent on Sept. 16, 2011 to Clinton, then the U.S. Secretary of State, from journalist and family friend Sidney Blumenthal, shows that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron each traveled to Tripoli about one month after Moammar Gadhafi’s government fell in order to assert their claim on Libya’s energy reserves.
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Max and Stacy are still the most articulate reporters on the national and international economic issues that are killing us:

[KR893] Keiser Report:  Despair Fatigue

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Stacy Herbert — 120 Comments ↓
 
We ask not what corporations can do for you, they, instead, ask what you can do for your corporations. We look at how multinationals and giant corporations like Pfizer and AT&T ‘lobby’ politicians to increase costs to consumers and restrict competition. 

In the second half, Max and Stacy continue their talk with anthropologist and LSE professor, David Graeber, about his latest article, Despair Fatigue.

The Managerial/ Professional Class Is Burning Out

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Charles Hugh Smith — No Comments ↓
If you work for Corporate America in a managerial or professional capacity, you know all about burnout, because you see it all around you or are experiencing it yourself. Readers describe what they are seeing in the top ranks of S&P 500 corporations, and the stories (anonymous because everyone knows the truth will get them fired/blacklisted) are all about the high personal costs of earning big paychecks by making the numbers–not just revenue but the all-important profits that power the multi-trillion-dollar valuations of U.S. corporations and the stock market that glories in their magnificent and ever-growing profits.
Corporate America depends on this class of workers to reap its stupendous profits: the attorneys, physicians and nurses who churn out the billable work; the CPAs who either cook the books or look the other way when others rig the books to make the company look more profitable than it actually is; the managers who squeeze the line workers to produce more; the software engineers and project managers who are always under deadline and always pressured to use cheaper temps; the Wall Street work-hounds who have to use uppers and other dangerous stimulants to function for 70-80 hours a week, week in and week out; the multitudes addicted to painkillers or other prescription drugs to manage their psychological and physical pain; the working parents whose family life is imploding under the demands of their employers; social workers burdened with ever-larger case loads–the examples are endless.
Even if you don’t work in this class, you see burnout all around you: people burned out by crushingly long commutes, by juggling two jobs, or small-business owners resorting to self-exploitation, i.e. working ridiculous hours for little or no pay, just to keep their enterprise (and dream of self-employment) alive.
What no financial analyst dares confess is the corporate profits they cheer every quarter have come at a cost that many Americans will soon be unable to bear. Millions of highly experienced, essential employees of Corporate America, from physicians and nurses to top managers and technologists are either planning to quit, retire, cut their hours or file a workers compensation claim for stress related to their work.
There is a growing body of medical and business-management literature on occupational burnout:  Occupational burnout–Maslach Burnout Inventory
A growing body of evidence suggests that burnout is clinically and nosologically similar to depression. In a study that directly compared depressive symptoms in burned out workers and clinically depressed patients, no diagnostically significant differences were found between the two groups; burned out workers reported as many depressive symptoms as clinically depressed patients. 
Many people are lauding corporate efforts to ease stress at the workplace with onsite yoga classes and the like. I call B.S.–what people want is less pressure, more time with their families, and to be treated as human beings rather than interchangeable units of production. Yoga classes and the occasional corporate party don’t provide these essentials.

Check out the burnout rate in the most profitable sector of the economy, finance and financial services:

Though no one dares connect rising workloads and corporate profits, isn’t it more than coincidence that U.S. corporate profits soared not just when production was offshored and financialization took off, but when workloads increased and “work-life balance” became a buzzword for what was no longer possible?


Guess what happens when corporate profits tumble: all the wealthy people at the top of the pyramid lose a lot of money: the executives counting on huge gains from stock options, hedge funds who’d bet the farm on this corporation’s “outperformance,” and the big institutional owners of the company’s stock.
No wonder the pressure on the managerial class is so unremitting and intense: the whole rickety structure of wealth in the U.S. stock market is poised to collapse once profits crater.
There are a couple of ways out for burnouts fleeing Corporate America, but each has its own trade-offs and costs. One is early retirement, another is early retirement plus a low-paying, low-stress part-time job. Another is self-employment in the cash-only economy (One Part of the Economy Is Booming: The Underground/Cash-Only Sector October 9, 2015) or in other sectors open to self-employment.
Financial independence is the American Dream because it gives us the freedom to say Take This Job And Shove It (2:31, Johnny Paycheck).
Unfortunately, the costs of starting and operating a small business are risingdue to junk fees imposed by local government, higher taxes, soaring healthcare insurance costs, etc.:
The Troubling Decline of Financial Independence in America (August 28, 2015)
The Fading American Dream of Working for Yourself (October 2015)
Many refugees from Corporate America would love to quit tomorrow but as they explore the alternatives, they find that their income will drop from $90,000 or $100,000 to $30,000 or less outside the fortresses of Corporate America and Government.
That means completely reworking the cost structure of one’s household: paying off all debt, downsizing expenses not by hundreds of dollars but by thousands, and figuring out ways to develop multiple income streams that the household owns and controls.
It can be done, but it requires a revolution in understanding and financial arrangements. Longtime readers know this is what I have written about for ten years in the blog and in books like Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, which can also be read as a primer for those seeking self-employment.
Read the entire article for the charts and graphs.
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And the Donald Trump virus is no surprise.

Not to those of us who've been watching the onslaught of fascist Trumped world for the last two decades.

Tom Engelhardt elucidates:

Recently, U.S. Reaper drones and manned aircraft launched a set of strikes against what the Pentagon claimed was a graduation ceremony for "low-level" foot soldiers in the Somali terror group al-Shabab.  It was proudly announced that more than 150 Somalis had died in this attack.  In a country where, in recent years, U.S. drones and special ops forces had carried out a modest number of strikes against individual al-Shabab leaders, this might be thought of as a distinct escalation of Washington’s endless low-level conflict there (with a raid involving U.S. special ops forces following soon after).
Now, let me try to put this in some personal context.  Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked globes and maps.  I have a reasonable sense of where most countries on this planet are.  Still, Somalia?  I have to stop and give that one some thought to truly locate it on a mental map of eastern Africa.  Most Americans?  Honestly, I doubt they’d have a clue.  So the other day, when this news came out, I stopped a moment to take it in.  If accurate, we killed 150 more or less nobodies (except to those who knew them) and maybe even a top leader or two in a country most Americans couldn’t locate on a map.

 I mean, don’t you find that just a little odd, no matter how horrible the organization they were preparing to fight for?  150 Somalis?  Blam!

 Remind me: On just what basis was this modest massacre carried out?  After all, the U.S. isn’t at war with Somalia or with al-Shabab.  Of course, Congress no longer plays any real role in decisions about American war making.  It no longer declares war on any group or country we fight.  (Paralysis!)  War is now purely a matter of executive power or, in reality, the collective power of the national security state and the White House.  The essential explanation offered for the Somali strike, for instance, is that the U.S. had a small set of advisers stationed with African Union forces in that country and it was just faintly possible that those guerrilla graduates might soon prepare to attack some of those forces (and hence U.S. military personnel).  It seems that if the U.S. puts advisers in place anywhere on the planet -- and any day of any year they are now in scores of countries -- that’s excuse enough to validate acts of war based on the “imminent” threat of their attack.

 Or just think of it this way: a new, informal constitution is being written in these years in Washington.  No need for a convention or a new bill of rights.  It’s a constitution focused on the use of power, especially military power, and it’s being written in blood.

 These days, our government (the unparalyzed one) acts regularly on the basis of that informal constitution-in-the-making, committing Somalia-like acts across significant swathes of the planet.  In these years, we’ve been marrying the latest in wonder technology, our Hellfire-missile-armed drones, to executive power and slaughtering people we don’t much like in majority Muslim countries with a certain alacrity. By now, it’s simply accepted that any commander-in-chief is also our assassin-in-chief, and that all of this is part of a wartime-that-isn’t-wartime system, spreading the principle of chaos and dissolution to whole areas of the planet, leaving failed states and terror movements in its wake.

 When was it, by the way, that “the people” agreed that the president could appoint himself assassin-in-chief, muster his legal beagles to write new "law" that covered any future acts of his (including the killing of American citizens), and year after year dispatch what essentially is his own private fleet of killer drones to knock off thousands of people across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa?  Weirdly enough, after almost 14 years of this sort of behavior, with ample evidence that such strikes don’t suppress the movements Washington loathes (and often only fan the flames of resentment and revenge that help them spread), neither the current president and his top officials, nor any of the candidates for his office have the slightest intention of ever grounding those drones.

 And when exactly did the people say that, within the country’s vast standing military, which now garrisons much of the planet, a force of nearly 70,000 Special Operations personnel should be birthed, or that it should conduct covert missions globally, essentially accountable only to the president (if him)? And what I find strangest of all is that few in our world find such developments strange at all.

 A Planet in Decline?

 In some way, all of this could be said to work.  At the very least, it is a functioning new system-in-the-making that we have yet to truly come to grips with, just as we haven’t come to grips with a national security state that surveils the world in a way that even science fiction writers (no less totalitarian rulers) of a previous era could never have imagined, or the strange version of media overkill that we still call an election.  All of this is by now both old news and mind-bogglingly new.

 Do I understand it? Not for a second.

 This is not war as we knew it, nor government as we once understood it, nor are these elections as we once imagined them, nor is this democracy as it used to be conceived of, nor is this journalism of a kind ever taught in a journalism school. This is the definition of uncharted territory. It’s a genuine American terra incognita and yet in some fashion that unknown landscape is already part of our sense of ourselves and our world. In this “election” season, many remain shocked that a leading candidate for the presidency is a demagogue with a visible authoritarian side and what looks like an autocratic bent. All such labels are pinned on Donald Trump, but the new American system that’s been emerging from its chrysalis in these years already has just those tendencies. So don’t blame it all on Donald Trump. He should be far less of a shock to this country than he continues to be.  After all, a Trumpian world-in-formation has paved the way for him.

Posted by Cirze at 3:16 AM

2 comments:

falken751 said...

Yesterday afternoon I saw on the internet that Hillary said she would not debate with Sanders unless he changed his "tone". There were many comments on it, all teed off at Hillary and the comments were from New York. I looked on the TV news, both NBC and ABC, neither one mentioned it and both networks are owned by corporations and billionaires. It wasn't like the subject was too late to put it on the 6:30PM network news. I'm a Trump man but I cannot stand Hillary and it really is bad that corporations and billionaires control what is on the news shows. If they put on all the crooked deals Hillary and her husband were involved in no one with a little intelligence would vote for her. She makes Donald Trump look like an angel, So, that's why it was not on the network news.

March 29, 2016 at 8:26 AM
Cirze said...

I don't think she makes him look like an angel.

But the reporting on both (if it occurs truthfully) should be fatally informative to both of their candidacies.

March 29, 2016 at 12:28 PM

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