dagblog - Comments for "Never Quite Good Enough"

Oregon for one has universal

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 17 May 2016 19:18:06 +0000

In reply to If Americans could vote on

Oregon for one has universal ~~email~~ mail voting - let's see how today's election goes.

The new “Motor Voter” policy has added more than 67,000 new voters to the state’s voter rolls, andofficials are hoping Tuesday’s primary will have record turnout. The new system has especially been a boon for young voters; since September, the number of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 has increased 21 percent.

Yet thousands of voters who received ballots in the mail over the past few weeks may have been surprised to learn they can’t cast a vote in the presidential primaries. Oregon operates closed primaries, meaning that only registered Democrats can decide between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and only registered Republicans can decide between Donald Trump and the ghosts of Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who have already bowed out of the race. Under the new DMV system, voters are automatically registered as “unaffiliated,” and later receive a form in the mail giving them the option to change their party affiliation or opt out entirely. The vast majority — 76 percent — did not take that extra step by the late April deadline, and thus can’t participate in the presidential primary. They will still be able to vote in some local races.

If Americans could vote on

NCD — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:45:42 +0000

In reply to I do not know why I do this

If Americans could vote on their couches while watching TV with their remotes I am convinced voter participation would go way up. Whether that would be good or bad I have no idea.

And Donald stiffed me for that bar bill.

Including a bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru which I had no idea cost $350 bucks.... #@$$$%!

To be fair, Hillary's

Michael Wolraich — Tue, 17 May 2016 13:27:41 +0000

In reply to I was thinking of some

To be fair, Hillary's position is unique. None of those other folks are likely to become president this year, and Hillary received much less flack as a senator. That said, this is a thorough enumeration, and I agree that Hillary always seems to get less credit and more blame than the other Democrats at her level.

well, Dick, I just click the

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 17 May 2016 12:20:22 +0000

In reply to I do not know why I do this

well, Dick, I just click the remote that goes to the cortical implant in my brain. for a few moments there's lots of static like 1950's TV, and then there's.... nothing. And after a while, the images start to return, and the sounds, and the shrieking, and then someone says, "oh oh, Peracles shit himself again". so you could say it's a remote control to my poop response, and you wouldn't be completely wrong, but that silence is golden.

Uh, well, she put reforming

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 17 May 2016 11:56:29 +0000

In reply to Wha?

Uh, well, she put reforming healthcare on the front line and kept it there. Even after being hit over the head with her initial failure numerous times. Even after her go-it-slow opponent got elected instead of her. She pushed various women's equality issues to the forefront globally, including taking it to Beijing at a time when everyone was jumping over themselves to acquiesce to Beijing restrictions to get that offshore biz gold. She's campaigned for and helped fund a lot of Democrats. And then she's done lots of other stuff, and taken positions on stuff. You know, the family unit advocate, the single woman advocate, rural poverty.... Well, you can call it poo or diddly. And yeah, she sucked it up and played the Andrei Gromyko exiled-in-foreign-service bit for a 4-year-stint, one of those jobs guaranteed to keep the stink on you. But useful when the Repugs come at you with all the "make the desert glow" and "build a bigger wall" and "make America great again" crap that comes from never having held a real governmental decision position and having to actual try to fix or contain something that's broken.

As for the "anti-women" bit, I think you should be aware by now that we pretty well shit on all women - note the pretty piss-poor protection of access to abortion, for example, and there simply haven't been many that had a snowball's chance in hell of a a position of power until they're nigh ancient, except Barbara Jordan who died young, and Geraldine Ferraro who was just a congresswoman. Nancy Pelosi's 76 now. Elizabeth Warren's a spring chicken 66. McCaskill is still kicking a bit, Wasserman-Schultz is now the incarnation of evil, Blanche Lincoln is gone, and then on the far side of unlikely's Tammy Duckworth with 3 years congressional experience and then there's Tulsi Gabbard who seems as likely to become a Republican or Fox correspondent or start a native Hawaiian commune and health food business.

In the end, the Democratic farm team sucks, and especially on the female end of the bench (called the backbench typically). It wasn't too great after Bush, and Obama didn't do too much to rebuild, so we end up with 2 contenders who'll turn 75 and 70 this fall. 4 years ago I was one of those advocating primarying Obama and suggesting that the odds against Hillary keeping enough energy and edge and relevance to run in 2016 were higher than people believed (and hoped that someone with new ideas would step up). Well, I didn't get either wish, but at least Hillary got primaried so that she polished up her liberal side of the triangle even as we don't have great options on the defense side, or a bit too much hope-and-prayer for "lessons learned". Nevertheless, even with her foreign policy missteps and uncertain legacy, she's miles ahead of any other GOP or Dem contender in terms of preparing and trying to understand the issues in-depth, and 100 times more prepared than Obama or Bush or previous Clinton were going into office. So yeah, quite good enough for me.

I do not know why I do this

Richard Day — Tue, 17 May 2016 11:20:23 +0000

In reply to Crap. I was wondering why

I do not know why I do this but....

I will be reading some nothingness on the Web as it were, and I keep my remote next to me at all times so that I can mute the cable. hahahahha

And I will actually grab the remote to change the web. hahahahahah

Please do not tell anyone. hahahahah

Wha?

quinn esq — Tue, 17 May 2016 11:07:27 +0000

In reply to Yeah, OceanKat wins the

Wha?

Look. It's great that HRC is a woman. Yay. Extra points. It's great that she's hard-working, and smart. Extra extra points. It's great that she has experience too. Lots of pluses.

Minuses? Well, I don't give a damn if she started as a Republican. Even personally having money doesn't disqualify her for me.

But.

I find her singularly lacking in... ideas. And this is across almost her entire career. Whether it's in being able to come up with them or move them forward or somehow catch the public imagination with them.

People can then say "She's practical though." Ok, fine. You can say it. But what has she actually, you know, achieved? Policy-wise?

I didn't like her much in Cabinet. She didn't do well on health care. etc.

And.... we are also permitted to just have feelings about the person. We may not find them charismatic, and that can be ok, but we may not believe she has the ability to move people. A useful tool in a "leader."

So what was your argument today? [Not saying it was the sum total of all your thoughts, just the one presented.] Mostly that.... she had put in the miles.

I didn't think that was enough.

If it's her vs Trump, I vote for HRC. I maaaaaybe even vote her over Bernie, depending on what baggage I think he carries.

But the ideas that seem to have gotten brewing, that those who don't love her somehow are anti-women, or are cheating about her past, or just part of being unfair like the media, or I'm psycho and going to run a 4th party campaign, etc..... I'm not sure these all wash.

Surely there are legitimate grounds for a person in a party to not prefer a candidate?

Or is it just the poo.

And I'm willing to consider that, given the company.

There's just no hate like

ocean-kat — Tue, 17 May 2016 08:12:49 +0000

In reply to I was thinking of some

There's just no hate like Hillary hate. I've never understood it.

I was thinking of some

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 17 May 2016 07:26:36 +0000

In reply to It's both of course, sexist

I was thinking of some peculiarities - Hillary is tainted more by Obama's foreign policy than Obama himself, or Joe Biden, or John Kerry who's been in for most of the Syria effort, or any of Obama's Secretary of Defense. I recall early on as SoS, Hillary had trouble even choosing her own deputy, yet 3 1/3 years out of office it's assumed she was all-powerful in pursuing any foreign policy objective, including the military ones. The term "Arab Spring" also seems largely forgotten, including the rather stark failure in Egypt when an Islamist took power, eventually resulting in a quasi-democratic-soft-coup.

Similarly, the Iraq AUMF vote has been wrapped around Hillary's neck like no other - and there were certainly numerous others. The irony of Joe Biden coming in as a "savior" candidate to save America's soul was especially deep, considering his identical vote and his devotion to the rich Delaware insurance industry.

Even the issue of speeches, ignoring Morgan Stanley for the moment, is odd in that Bill Clinton's been the singular Democratic rockstar for 25 years - there have been very few politicians of either party in that time that anyone would care to actually listen to (certainly not either Bush, or Condi Rice, or Dick Cheney or Boehner or Mitch McConnell; maybe Ryan or Ron Paul, and on the Democratic side Gore and Kerry were a bit stiff, Bradley boring, Dukakis similar, and not until Obama and later Warren were there any contenders - and Bill got more rockstar treatment at the 2008 convention. In short, there's one speaker that stands out, yet in an age where Matt Lauer makes $25 million a year hosting TV and Kim Kardashian's saved up $77 million doing tweets and Howard Stern made $95 million in 1 year on radio we get outraged that the most gifted political speaker of our generation makes decent money speaking, or that a one-of-a-kind hugely-popular-and-hugely-hated female politician in her 3 off years also made something akin to Diane Sawyer's $12 million a year (typical star female anchor at $5-7mill/year, while Oprah makes roughly $200million/year). Especially when on the other side, we have Donald Trump's billions from failed businesses, Carly Fiorina's golden parachute from a business collapse, Ben Carson's huckster-driven wealth, Ted Cruz & Chris Christie's wives working for big Wall Street firms, loser Mike Huckabee making millions on Fox & speeches, boring Jeb Bush somehow gaining $20 million since he quit governing 8 years ago... aside from $175K speaking fees, Al Gore made $30 million sitting on Apple's board and similar with Google, flipped a failing cable channel to Al Jazeera for nearly $100million, and unexamined is his bouncing back from his Bush loss to be Vice Chairman of Metropolitan West Financial that provides rich people & companies "financial advice" - no political patronage in all of these?

Crap. I was wondering why

Michael Wolraich — Tue, 17 May 2016 05:11:57 +0000

In reply to I predict Trump will win in a

Crap. I was wondering why that button wasn't doing anything. I thought I was just pointing the remote the wrong way.