Showing posts with label desperation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desperation. Show all posts

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Desperation in Bernie-Land

photo George-Costanza-Facepalm.gif

Previous Related Posts:
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
 Bernie Camp Blames Hillary for AZ Loss
Bernie Gives Hillary the Hand of Silence
Polls and Predictions for Hillary and Bernie on Super Tuesday
Hillary Landslide in South Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bernie Sanders has won the last seven consecutive primaries and caucuses, including a big win in Wisconsin last week, and is expected to win the mostly-white Wyoming Caucus today. But the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, will probably beat him in the New York Primary of April 19th in spite of the fact that Bernie being born and raised there.

Of course his rabid followers believe Bernie can win big in New York and pull out wins from now until June, but the reality is he still lags behind in delegates, and even tying or barely beating Hillary will not help. So there is a looming sense of do-or-die for his campaign, especially for his highly-paid team of Tad Devine and Jeff Weaver who need the Bernie fans to keep sending money.

From RealClearPolitics
“With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have won seven out of the last eight caucuses and primaries, and we have won almost all of them with overwhelming, landslide numbers,” Sanders said during a victory speech so familiar to his Wyoming supporters that they shouted out lines along with the candidate.
. . . In an email to admirers, Sanders described what remained of April as “the most important three-week stretch of the campaign.”
“We’re going to win this election,” he vowed, “if we can keep our momentum going.”
. . . Clinton’s campaign team predicts that after April 26, when voters in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., participate and 631 delegates are divvied up, the nominating drama may be mathematically finished for Sanders.

Yet Bernie is his own worst enemy, sounding woefully unprepared for obvious questions in his interviews, such as the methodology of how to "break up the banks" which he mentions in every speech:

From Bernie's Interview with the New York Daily News Board:
Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I'm a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order...

Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.

Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I'm not quite...

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

Some of Sanders high-profile surrogates are not helping either. Actor Tim Robbins, long-time partner of Bernie supporter Susan Sarandon, introduced the candidate in Wisconsin by weirdly slamming both the island of Guam, which hasn't voted yet, and the state of South Carolina, an early Southern state who went for Hillary. This continues the Sanders pattern of looking at the Southern states who went mostly for Hillary Clinton as some type of "rigged" election that "stacked the deck" against them. Bernie and company don't seem to understand that for Dems in red states, the primary season is the one chance to make their voices heard to the national party. But forget that - Bernie must win! To hell with the Democratic Party base!

Via Washington Post
"After the Southern primaries," he said, "you had called the election" -- apparently referring to the media. "And who's fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?"
This is a not-uncommon argument among supporters of Sanders. Yes, Hillary Clinton is winning. But she's winning largely because she ran up big margins in Southern states. That, the argument goes, bodes poorly for the general, since those Southern states usually vote Republican.
This is a bad argument that borders on insulting.









Surrogate Nina Turner, a former state senator from Ohio and one-time Hillary supporter, made a bizarre reference to slavery while debating ex-Senator Barney Frank on the tv machine:

MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell Transcript:
NINA TURNER: There may be many people standing that are part of the elected ministry in the establishment, standing on the side of Secretary Clinton. Some of those folks I have worked with, but the bottom line is this. There are millions of Americans in this country who believe that change needs to come, that the status quo cannot continue, that people are suffering in this country.

And, Senator Bernie Sanders has a proven track record of having the good judgment and standing up for the least of these when it is not convenient. So, it is unfair. And, congress people like Keith Ellison. I would take his endorsement any day. And, he has endorsed senator Bernie Sanders and that is a big deal. There was a time in this country where the majority of folks thought slavery was OK too.

 O`DONNELL: Barney, go ahead.

 FRANK: That last comment just baffles me. It is going to take me about a
week to figure out what that was supposed to mean. But as far as Keith Ellison is concerned, I admire Keith. I just signed an e-mail for him. But, he is one of 45 members of the congressional black caucus and every other one is for Hillary Clinton.

So, you are talking about the establishment. No, I do not think John Lewis, one of the great moral leaders of my generation who is a strong Hillary Clinton supporter, is the establishment, not in a bad way – Or Luis Gutierrez who is led the fight for immigration. I understand, and
maybe this highlights in.



And things have gone downhill from there, with the Bernie camp desperately throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Hillary and hoping it will keep their momentum going, calling her "unqualified" and so "ambitious" that she is going to "destroy the party." Yeah, right. Women aren't allowed to be ambitious!















~~~~~~~~~~~
















Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Silly Tucker Carlson Still Scared of Black People ~ Updated

Photobucket



Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity on Fox, via Daily Caller
At the time there were reporters in the room. I had a show on another channel, and I covered the remarks that were released. But it turned out that most of the print reporters writing on this story were writing from the prepared remarks given them by the Obama campaign.
. . . Obama goes off-script repeatedly and ad-libs and says things that we can't find him saying to any other audience in the course of this campaign. Remarkable thing.
'They don't like you because you are black.' That is the theme of the speech from front to back, from beginning to end, they don't like you because of your skin color. That is shockingly, that is a nasty thing to say, it's a divisive thing to say, a very clear case again on the basis of his racial solidarity with this audience that they are getting shafted by a racist federal government.
. . . Let me just be totally clear for anyone who just watched it and who has seen Obama speak in public over the last ten years will note, this accent is absurd.
This is not the way Obama talks — at least it’s not the way he’s talked in the dozens, the scores of speeches I’ve watched him give, or public appearances I’ve seen him make. This is a put-on. This is phony. That’s issue one. The second issue is he is telling a predominantly black audience something very clear: The federal government doesn’t like you because you are black.
. . . This is not a dog whistle, this is a dog siren. These are appeals to racial solidarity. . . . he said 'our people, our young people should have got the construction jobs to rebuild after Katrina but instead they went to Halliburton.' Right? So look, he's making a very clear case again on the basis of his racial solidarity with this audience that they are getting shafted by the racist federal government.



Barack Obama was talking about a quiet riot today. And no, it was not a reference to a 1980s heavy metal band, unfortunately. The senator waded into the controversial waters of race during a speech Hampton University in Virginia. He said the Bush administration has done little to quell a brewing storm among some black Americans. He compared the current tension to what fueled the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.
~ Tucker Carlson on MSNBC in 2007, via Politico

In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney’s allies recirculated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time. The only thing shocking about this is that they apparently think it’s wrong to suggest that we should help returning veterans, children leaving foster care and other members of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent get training that will allow them to find the best available jobs. If the Romney campaign believes that Americans will accept these desperate attacks tomorrow night in place of specific plans for the middle class, it’s they who are in for a surprise.
~ Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, via Taylor Marsh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tucker Carlson Wants You To Enlist In Race War Against Jive-Talking President
. . . Having clearly become tired of waiting for the Romney Camp to do a GAME CHANGE its own inept self, Matt Drudge and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity took it upon themselves to release shocking never-before-seen-or-reported-on video of the “president” talking like a common negro about Katrina and poverty and the LA Riots. (We are sure the Romney campaign is just thrilled with them.) How unreported was this story? Well, here is your Wonkette’s story reporting on it at the time. And how does Tucker Carlson know it was unreported back then (in 2007)? That’s easy. He knows it wasn’t reported on then, he told Sean Hannity, because he reported on it then.
~ From Wonkette

It's old news. This is well-covered ground. There's nothing in the speech, it seems to me on the surface of it, that's going to reset anything in the race. What it will do is create a conversation in conservative media about this event - the old tape here - as opposed to the expectations game that Mitt Romney's trying to control ahead of a really high-stakes debate performance.
~ John McCain Strategist Steve Schmidt on Rachel Maddow

What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere.
~ Republican Congressman Allen West on Fox News, via Politico

Tucker Carlson Fails at Trolling
. . . Carlson's descent from reasonably credible magazine journalist to inept race hustler is well mapped territory. He has not been the same man since Jon Stewart took him down. The ethering reverberates through the years with such force that we now find its recipient slathering yesterday's nothing-burgers in weak sauce, and serving them up as the daily special.
~ Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Atlantic


Obama's black. Who knew. Next thing you know the bow tie wrapped around a stupid will have an expose that FDR was in a wheel chair.
~ comment by No_Gravity on Wonkette

Watching Tucker's long, slow, excruciating fall from his never-deserved one-time quasi-celebrity is the freude that keeps on schadening.
~ comment by prommie on Wonkette

Jive-ass dude don't got no brains, anyhow.
~ comment by TheGyrus on Wonkette

The Decline and Fall of Tucker Carlson
. . . All that Carlson did is clip it to get an "angry black man" in the minds of Americans. It's at once one of the most desperate and lame and vile plays of the race card I can remember - an obvious recognition that the 47 percent tape can only really be countered emotionally with race-baiting.
. . . Carlson used to be a brilliant writer. He's now a racist demagogue. He's a story in one person of how degenerate and disgusting much of American "conservatism" has become.
~ Andrew Sullivan on The Daily Beast

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, September 21, 2012

Romney Dumps "A" Tax Return, So . . . There, Take That!


Photobucket

Just the one for 2011. Tax Rate: 14%.

View Document Here: New York Daily News

From Bloomberg
Romney and his wife, Ann, have paid 100 percent of the taxes they owe, Brad Malt, a partner at the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston who manages the Romneys’ investments, wrote in a blog post on the campaign’s website.

Romney makes most of his income from investing an estimated $250 million fortune, and much of that income is taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the top rate of 35 percent that applies to wages. Romney, 65, is a former Massachusetts governor and co-founder of Bain Capital LLC, the Boston-based private equity firm.

. . . The campaign said it will release a letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which prepares Romney’s returns, summarizing his filings for the past 20 years.

More From Ezra Klein's Wonk Blog on Washington Post
In 2011, Romney earned $14 million, mostly from investments that are taxed at a lower, preferential rate. He also gave a very large amount of money to charity—more than $4 million. So, thanks to the charitable deduction in the tax code, he was technically allowed to reduce the amount of income subject to the income tax even further.

The trouble is, if Romney did that, he would have ended up paying less than 13 percent of his income in federal taxes (back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the amount would have likely been somewhere around 11 percent). That would have conflicted with his statement in August that he has paid at least 13 percent the past ten years. So Romney opted to limit his charitable deduction to just $2.25 million, essentially agreeing to pay the government more in taxes than he needed to. In the end, Romney had an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 percent.

There’s nothing wrong with voluntarily donating a bit more to reduce the federal deficit. Although there is this awkward quote from Romney during a primary debate in January: “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” he said. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An email to the Romney campaign account dedicated to responding to questions about tax returns, returns@mittromney.com, produced this response:
He has been clear that no American need pay more than he or she owes under the law. At the same time, he was in the unique position of having made a commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13%. In order to be consistent with that statement, the Romneys limited their deduction of charitable contributions.
~ BuzzFeed

I read the 13.66% over the 20 yr. period to be the average tax rate. If this were true there is the possibility that he could very well have not paid any taxes in certain years but higher rates in others to average it out to the 13.66%. Hisrate would have been higher when he was salaried at Bain. Harry Reid might yet have a point.
~ comment by Calibrese on WaPo Wonkblog


At first I thought this was an April Fool's Joke. But it isn't April. I can't imagine that David Axelrod will now say, I'm glad Mitt put this issue behind him. This will drag Mitt's taxes back into the debate. And there's not many days left. I just can't imagine why they would do this. There are 40 days left and you have now made more of them about Mitt's taxes....you don't serve a life sentence and then confess afterward. They've taken their beating on this (already) ... I just don't understand how a (being) 'little pregnant' strategy (works).
~ Republican Strategist Alex Castellanos via Politico.com


Mitt's Desperate Friday News Dump
In the near future, I think we might be able look back to say that this was the week the Mitt Romney campaign entered its death throes. I suppose some miracle cure is still possible, but given that his vice presidential pick is getting pelted by boos from seniors and he himself was caught on tape calling half the nation shiftless moochers, sending things so off the rails that Mitt now wants to talk about his tax returns, of all things, you know the Romney camp is in quite a panic. That's a hell of a Friday news dump.
Mind you, he's still not releasing those tax returns. He's released the much-promised 2011 version, finally, but the rest of it is not really tax returns, but an artist's interpretation of what his tax returns would look like, if he did release him. A very polite and notarized letter from his mother doctor accountant saying please excuse Mitt Romney from releasing his tax returns as other presidential candidates have. I sincerely promise everything is on the up-and-up in there and there is no reason to look any further; signed, some guys paid by Mitt Romney to say this
~ Hunter on Daily Kos

It just kills me that he pays a much lower tax rate than I do, and I actually work for a living. I am part of the 53%. I don't want my tax rate lowered. I want Mitt's raised. I like national parks, education, healthcare, veteran's benefits, etc., and I am willing to pay for them.
~ comment by blue jersey mom on Daily Kos

This was so stupid of Mitt to release today. The 47% klusterf*!k is baked in and dying down. The MSM has talked about it non-stop for the past week. The press was looking for a new shiny object to fawn over & this big dummy just added a new layer for MSM to talk about for the next few days. I think Mitt is working for the Obama campaign. I LOVE IT!!
~ comment by shevas01 on Daily Kos

if you listen closely you might be able to hear the sound of a nail going into a coffin, its the first nail but a nail none the less, more nails to follow i am sure, stay tuned america.
~ comment by PC on Daily Kos


































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)