Turning The Ballot Box Against Republicans

Quote revellette:

In the last election the independents leaned toward the right and ended voting Republican. That is because it used to be that each party started off with about 40% of the vote and they fought over the 20% in the middle. However, as the GOP moves right, many of their more moderate supporters find themselves being called RINOs, (Republicans In Name Only), and have started calling themselves Independents instead of Republicans. These Independents usually end up voting Republican, so it seems like Republicans appeal to the Independents. Actually, on Election Day it really amounts to a partial reclaiming by the Republican Party of the moderate Republicans who left the GOP and now consider themselves Independents.

That's why Democrats don't have to worry if they lose the Independent vote.

C'mon, man - overkill?

Sure, Bernie can have input to the democrat platform. Than all he has to do is get the Democrats to pay attention to him after Hillary is elected. After the last few months of him calling all the dems. crooks, good luck with that.

Sen. Reid Calls for People to 'Lay Off' Bernie Sanders
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY ERICA WERNER
AP CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that people should "lay off" Bernie Sanders, sending a message to restive Democrats increasingly anxious to see the party unite behind Hillary Clinton.

Reid is personally close with the Vermont independent senator and presidential hopeful. Last week he disclosed that he'd spoken with Sanders to voice concerns about unruly protests by Sanders supporters at the Nevada state Democratic convention, and subsequently voiced his disappointment over a defiant statement Sanders issued in response.

On Tuesday Reid had a different message, signaling to fellow Democrats that pressuring Sanders is not the way to go.

"I've had conversations with Bernie, he's a good person, he's doing his best to effectuate what he believes in, and I have no criticism of Bernie at this stage," Reid said.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_SANDERS_REID?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-05-24-16-39-57

A stark view on socialism
https://www.facebook.com/475549362567960/videos/891732817616277/

Trumps a freaking socialist???????

Let alone what your brand of socialism is:" Communist or "Social Democrat". Scandinavian socialism in four countries also produces a lot of the wealthiest people in the world and still collects a fair tax from them.


Good News for Bernie Sanders? Poll Shows 47% of Americans Would Vote for a Socialist

A sizeable chunk of Americans say they’d consider voting to send a socialist to the Oval Office.
BY Marc Daalder

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18106/americans-socialism-bernie-sanders

A new Gallup poll shows that 47 percent of Americans would consider voting for a socialist candidate. Gallup has been polling Americans on their voting preferences for candidates of different backgrounds since 1937, but this year was the first time they inquired about socialism.

When broken down on party lines, a socialist candidate would earn the consideration of 59 percent of Democrats, 49 percent of Independents, and only 26 percent of Republicans. Overall, socialism charted the lowest of all the backgrounds referenced in the poll. Atheist and Muslim candidates ranked second- and third-lowest among the American populace, at 58 and 60 percent respectively.

This poll comes less than two months after Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy, becoming the first self-described socialist (with at least a decent chance of winning) to do so in more than a decade.

Advocates for Sanders argue that the Gallup poll is misleading for a number of reasons. While Americans may disapprove of a socialist candidate, they strongly support policies that Sanders stands for. Fifty-two percent support a redistribution of wealth through heavily taxing the rich, for example—the highest number that Gallup has seen since first asking that question in 1940. And 63 percent of Americans believe that the current distribution of wealth in the US is unfair.

Part of the reason for this dissonance is confusion among the America population as to what the word “socialism” even means. Many often associate it with the authoritarian Communism of the Soviet Union instead of the social democracies of modern-day Scandinavian countries, which Sanders strongly backs.

Even though the number of voters who say they would consider voting for a socialist candidate is below an outright majority, the fact that the number of Americans who would consider voting for a socialist is at 47 percent, in a country with a long history of vicious red-baiting, seems to suggest that Americans aren’t as afraid of the word “socialist” as many on the Right would like them to be.

Meanwhile, Sanders seems to be getting through to the American people. He consistently draws the largest crowds of any candidate to his events in Iowa, and 32 percent of New Hampshire Democrats and 41 percent of Wisconsin Democrats are backing him. Sanders has more than seven months to build a solid voting bloc, before the first primaries on February 1, 2016.
Marc Daalder

Marc Daalder is a writer and student living in Massachusetts. He attends Amherst College, writes for the student publication AC Voice, and spends his spare time tweeting, blogging and writing fiction.

Socialism was around long before Karl Marx came along. How about Thomas Paine?

And before that in all sorts of communal village societies. We have a terrible fear of "Socialists" in this country.

Texan who called Obama ‘a male prostitute’ loses race for school board seat

Source: Bangor Daily News

DALLAS — Texas voters on Tuesday decided the state’s school board should not include a retired teacher who claimed President Barack Obama was a gay prostitute and said dinosaurs might still be around if Noah had more room on his biblical ark.

Mary Lou Bruner, 69, an arch-conservative with a penchant for conspiracy theories, lost by 18 percent to fellow Republican Keven Ellis in a primary race for the board that sets policies for the nation’s second-largest school system, unofficial Office of the Secretary of State results showed.

Bruner had captured national attention this year with anti-Islam comments and by saying U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s beard made him look like “a terrorist.”

She also made contentious Facebook posts in recent years that include saying: “Obama has a soft spot for homosexuals because of the years he spent as a male prostitute in his twenties. That is how he paid for his drugs.”

<more>


Read more: http://bangordailynews.com/2016/05/25/news/nation/texan-who-called-obama-a-male-prostitute-loses-race-for-school-board-seat/

Sanders to have major input in writing of Democratic Party platform
Source: Washington Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders will get highly unusual say over the drafting of the Democratic Party platform this year even if, as expected, he loses the primary contest to Hillary Clinton.

The two Democratic candidates have agreed with Democratic Party officials to a new apportionment of the 15-member committee that writes the platform, according to Democratic officials familiar with the compromise worked out this mnth.

Sanders will name five members and Clinton six, based on the number of popular votes each has received to date, one official said. Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will name four. The campaign choices were selected in consultation with the campaigns and the DNC from larger slates of 12 and 10 suggested by the campaigns.

DNC rules allow the chairman to pick the entire slate of 15 people who govern the platform that will be presented at the party convention in July.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sanders-scores-platform-concessions-from-democratic-national-committee/2016/05/23/e9ee8330-20fc-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html

Colin Powell says he’s only still a republican because “it annoys them”

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/colin-powell-says-hes-only-still-a-republican-because-it-annoys-them/22659/



Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served in several republican administrations but has endorsed a democrat in each of the past two Presidential elections and has also sided with the democratic party on the recent Iran deal, was asked today whether he still considers himself a member of the republican party. His answer aimed for humor but also may have also highlighted the future for a party in chaos: “I want to continue to be a Republican because it annoys them.”

Powell is one of the relatively few Reagan-era republicans left in public life. Although he hasn’t held office since retiring from the State Department a decade ago, he’s remained in the public eye and has routinely weighed in on political issues which he feels are important. To his mind, he’s still the same moderate conservative as ever. But he views the republican party as having moved far to the right since back when he was a key figure in it. His response suggests that he’ll remain a registered republican for life, and that others in his position may do the same even as they see their party becoming unrecognizable and find themselves forced to vote democrat instead.

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I don't know how many will vote for the Democrats, but a number of Republicans are skipping this election cycle all together.

BREAKING: Major Court Ruling Restores Early Voting Days In Ohio

Source: ThinkProgress

The U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio ruled Tuesday that the deep cuts to Ohio’s early voting days signed into law by Gov. John Kasich (R) are “unconstitutional and…accordingly unenforceable.”
Judge Michael Watson sided with the Ohio Democratic Party, which had sued the state for sharply curtailing the number of early voting days. Since President Obama won reelection in 2012, Ohio’s Republican lawmakers and Secretary of State have voted to eliminate the days and times of early voting that were most convenient for those working full time: the weekend before election day, weekday evenings, and what’s known as “Golden Week,” the time about a month before election day when the registration period and the early voting period overlap.
These cuts, the judge wrote, “results in less opportunity for African Americans to participate in the political process than other voters.”
The court ordered the Republican governor and Secretary of State to once again allow voters to begin casting ballots 35 days before November’s presidential election. Republicans may appeal Tuesday’s ruling to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/05/24/3781436/ohio-early-voting-restored/

This one counts as a half truth. While Nixon started relations with China there were no jobs going to China in the 70's or even the 80's. It wasn't until the 90's when it started to kick into high gear.

I certainly agree with that one. That's when Bill Clinton began sucking up to the Chinese, and they began pumping huge amounts of cash into his campaign coffers.

Now the funny part about this meme is the fact that there is actually differences in the face and skull structure between the different peoples of the world. Facial reconstruction experts, the ones who take a skull and make a face of clay, can tell you the difference between the races from their skulls. It says nothing else about the races other than skulls are indeed different from group to group.

Dear creepy heterosexual men guarding our bathrooms,

My entire life, I've been told to fear you in one way or another. I've been told to cover my body as to not distract you in school, to cover my body to help avoid unwanted advances or comments, to cover my body as to not tempt you to sexually assault me, to reject your unwanted advances politely as to not anger you. I've been taught to never walk alone at night, to hold my keys in my fist while walking in parking lots, to check the backseat of my car, to not drink too much because you might take advantage of me. I've been told what I should and shouldn't do with my body as to not jeopardize my relationships with you.

I've been warned not to emasculate you, to let "boys be boys", to protect your fragile ego and to not tread on your even more fragile masculinity. I've been taught to keep my emotions in check, to let you be the unit of measure for how much emotion is appropriate and to adjust my emotions accordingly. I've been taught that you're allowed to categorize women into mothers/sisters/girlfriends/wives/daughters but any woman outside of your protected categories is fair game.

So to those of you who think you're being helpful by "protecting" me and my fellow women, you're like a shark sitting in the Lifeguard chair. I wasn't uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you.

Your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and daughters don't need you to walk them to the bathroom for safety. Your fathers, brothers, friends and sons need to walk themselves away from their own double standards. Women are sexually harassed and sexually assaulted on school campuses, on the street, at their jobs, on the Internet, in their own homes, in ANY public place. And it has been excused or ignored for so long because of what you and I are taught from the first years of our interactions with each other: You, as a male, are not accountable for your own actions. It's MY responsibility, as a female, to not "provoke" you. But then you get to Knight-In-Shining-Armor your way through life for those in your protected categories and I am expected to applaud you. Why the outrage now over bathrooms? Why aren't you outraged every single day?

If you're telling me that there are high volumes of boys and men out there, in schools or in general, who are just waiting for a "loop hole" to sexually assault girls and women, we have bigger problems on our hands than bathrooms. The first problem would be your apparent lack of knowledge of how often it happens OUTSIDE of bathrooms, with no "loop holes" needed. This isn't about Transgender bathroom access. This is about you not trusting the boys and men in your communities and/or fearing that they're all secretly predators. Why do you have this fear? How many fathers have panicked when their daughters started dating because they "know how teenaged boys can be because they used to be one"? How many times have girls been warned "boys are only after one thing"? A mother can bring her young son into the women's restroom and that's fine but a father bringing his young daughter into the men's restroom is disturbing because men are assumed to be predators and "little girls" shouldn't be exposed to that.

So instead of picking up your sword and heading to Target or the girls' locker room to defend our "rights", why don't you start somewhere that could actually make a difference? Challenge your children's schools to end sexist dress codes and dress codes that sexualize girls as young as age 5. Advocate for proper (or any) sex education classes in all public schools by a certain grade level. Focus more on teaching your sons not to rape vs teaching your daughters how to avoid being raped. Stop asking "How would you feel if that was your mother or sister?" It shouldn't take the comparison to clue you in to what's right or wrong. Question why you're more worried about your daughter being around men than your son being around women in bathrooms and dressing rooms. Stop walking by Victoria's Secret with no problem but covering your son's eyes if a woman is breastfeeding in public. Stop treating your daughter's body as some fortress you're sworn to protect as if that's all she's got to offer the world.

LINK: https://www.facebook.com/anniepilbeam/posts/10154178316418839