Bernie's In

Nate Silver has jumped into bed with the Democratic establishment. The daily hit pieces against Bernie are pretty awful.

This is another reason it would be so great for us to take New York.

Thank you for all that you share. that was worth repeating.

Far as I know, Nate silver has been wrong about exactly ONE primary - Michigan. Seems to me if his opinions about Bernie aren't as flattering as you'd like, his opinion is still worth a little better characterization than "he's been bought off by the establishment, and doing hit pieces".

You berniacs need to seriously breathe into a paper bag for a long long period. Maybe your focus on the real world would return. I doubt it, but it's worth a try. Or you might pass out and STFU. Which would also be an improvement.

To even approach the number of times you've cited those frigging unemployment stats from the Clinton era, I'll only have to post the Emerson poll three thousand more times.

Show me a single Nate Silver article that is critical of Hillary Clinton? I can show you several critical articles of Bernie on his site. He has taken on the Hillary Clinton rhetoric.

Please tell me what I have to do to return to the real world.... do I just need to accept Hillary's inevitability? Do I need to state that she is the single most amazingly qualified person in the History of humankind? Do I need to like her?

It seems like you are the one who is unwilling to accept any criticism of your candidate.

Nate Silver is not about giving opinions on candidates. He looks at data and graphs, polls and facts such as exit polls and makes assessments and gives probable outcomes.

That isn't true. Read the articles on his site. He is definitely choosing articles with a pro-Hillary bent. You won't find a critical view of her candidacy there (and there are several articles critical of Bernie).

There is a lot more than just statistics on the site.

Bernie and the Big Banks
Robert Reich
SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2016
The recent kerfluffle about Bernie Sanders purportedly not knowing how to bust up the big banks says far more about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing than it does about the candidate himself.

Of course Sanders knows how to bust up the big banks. He’s already introduced legislation to do just that. And even without new legislation a president has the power under the Dodd-Frank reform act to initiate such a breakup.

But Sanders threatens the Democratic establishment and Wall Street, not least because he’s intent on doing exactly what he says he’ll do: breaking up the biggest banks.

The biggest are far larger today than they were in 2008 when they were deemed “too big to fail.” Then, the five largest held around 30 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today they have 44 percent.

According to a recent analysis by Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the assets of just four giant banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo – amount to 97 percent of our the nation’s entire gross domestic product in 2012.

Which means they’re now way too big to fail. The danger to the economy isn’t just their indebtedness. It’s their dominance over the entire financial and economic system.

Bernie Sanders isn’t the only one urging the big banks be broken up. Neel Kashkari, the new president of the Federal Reserve bank of Minneapolis – a Republican who used to be at Goldman Sachs – is also pushing to break them up, as has the former head of the Dallas Federal Reserve, among others.

Recall that just eight years ago the biggest banks were up to their ears in fraudulent practices – lending money to mortgage originators to make risky home loans laced with false claims, buying back those loans and repackaging them for investors without revealing their risks, and then participating in a wave of fraudulent foreclosures.

Dodd-Frank addressed these sorts of abuses in broad strokes but left the most important decisions to regulatory agencies.

Since then, platoons of Wall Street lobbyists, lawyers and litigators have been watering down and delaying those regulations.

For example, Dodd-Frank instructed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to reduce certain risks, but the Street has sabotaged the process.

In its first major rule under Dodd-Frank, the CFTC considered 1,500 comments, largely generated by and from the Street. After several years the commission issued a proposed rule, including some of the loopholes and exceptions the Street sought.

Wall Street still wasn’t satisfied. So the CFTC agreed to delay enforcement of the rule, allowing the Street more time to voice its objections. Even this wasn’t enough for the big banks, whose lawyers then filed a lawsuit in the federal courts, arguing that the commission’s cost-benefit analysis wasn’t adequate.

As of now, only 155 of the 398 regulations required by Dodd-Frank have been finalized. And those final versions are shot through with loopholes big enough for Wall Street’s top brass to drive their Ferrari’s through.

The biggest banks still haven’t even come up with acceptable “living wills,” required under Dodd-Frank to show how they’d maintain important functions while going through bankruptcy.

Meanwhile they continue to gamble with depositor’s money. Many of their operations are global, making it even harder for U.S. regulators to rein them in – as evidenced by JPMorgan Chase’s $6.2 billion loss in its “London Whale” operation in 2012. Citigroup alone has over 2,000 foreign subsidies.

The bottom line: Regulation won’t end the Street’s abuses. The Street has too much firepower. And because it continues to be a major source of campaign funding, no set of regulations will be tough enough.

So the biggest banks must be busted up.

When I debated former Rep. Barney Frank about this on television recently, he kept asking, rhetorically, what limit I’d put on their size.

A good rule of thumb might be to cap the assets of any bank at about 2 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product – or roughly $330 billion. (To put this in perspective, by the end of 2015, Goldman Sachs’s assets exceeded $860 billion.)

That cap wouldn’t harm America’s financial competitiveness and it wouldn’t cause bank employees to lose their jobs (at worst, they’ll just become employees of a smaller bank).

But it would ensure the safety of the American economy. Extra bonus: It would also reduce the power of Wall Street over our democracy.

Quote Lash:


Stop Lying!! I never posted the unemployment stats from the Clinton era, ever. It is your psycho need to constantly run the Clintons down that has you posting vicious lies against those who have the nerve to defend the Clintons against your constant attacks.

I demand an apology, you hallucinating lunatic.

Gave me a good laugh. I needed one today, and you gave it to me. Thanks.

Ok, I'll take a negative Bernie article from 538, it is written not by Nate Silver but David Wasserman who actually does write more articles concerning Bernie Sanders than does Nate Silvers. The following article explains from the data math why Bernie has such a tough hill to climb than he and his followers will admit. He takes real data results and explains what it means, if it is negative it is because the data results are currently negative to Sanders and will be tough to overcome. Embedded in the article is links to back up the raw data.

Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears


(There is a graph I can't figure out how post because it does not a gif in it so it does not work on image code. It is in the source to look at.)

Ok, now can you find a negative Hillary article from 538?

(I didn't think so...).

Stop wasting your time. Delusions and fantasy are all she has to offer. You've probably realised she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

There is a reasonable explanation for why there isn't a negative Hillary article from 538, she is currently winning in both the delegate math and the popular vote and in order for Bernie to overtake her, he has a tough hill to climb.

Is there a reasonable explanation for why there aren't hit pieces accusing Hillary and her allies of antisemitism in their attacks on Bernie...

Did you not see the hit pieces accusing Bernie of sexism for claiming that Hillary was taking money from Wall Street? 538 is publishing one-sided articles attacking one candidate without any criticism of the other candidate.

This is what bias looks like.

The Young Turks
1 hr ·
Hillary Clinton held a fundraiser in Denver recently, and while we’d love to tell you what was said, we can’t because she employed a static noise machine which blocked out all audio. Wouldn’t want some nosy journalists finding out what she says to wealthy donors.

Sanders campaign tries to have it both ways on superdelegates
For months, Democratic National Committee member Billi Gosh has received letters, emails and phone calls urging her to switch her vote at the Democratic National Convention from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders.


Gosh is one of 10 Democratic superdelegates from Vermont, Sanders’ home state, where 86 percent of voters chose him in the Democratic primary in March. Superdelegates — party and elected officials who make up about 15 percent of all Democratic delegates — can vote for whichever candidate they want, unlike pledged delegates, who are divvied up based on how each state’s Democrats voted.

“There’s been a lot of pressure on the four us,” Gosh said, referring to herself and the three other pro-Hillary superdelegates in her state, including former Gov. Howard Dean and the current Gov. Pete Shumlin. (Sanders is himself a superdelegate, and it seems fairly certain where his allegiances lie.)

Sanders supporters tell Gosh that fairness requires her to back Sanders, who was the overwhelming choice of Vermont voters. They are expanding upon an argument made by Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver in February, who insisted that superdelegates should not go against the “will of the people” and should back whichever candidate gets the most pledged delegates.

“If the people in the states choose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, I cannot imagine that the superdelegates would overturn the will of the people in this case,” Weaver told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.

The progressive, Sanders-backing group MoveOn.org as well as the super-PAC Progressive Kick urged idealistic Sanders supporters to take this populist fight to superdelegates. “We will not allow Democratic Party insiders to determine the outcome of this election. Democratic voters will decide the party’s nominee,” said MoveOn’s executive director in a petition against superdelegates. The supporters argue that superdelegates are not reflecting the votes of the people in their states, which they say is undemocratic and elitist.

“People think there is some sort of secret cabal going on trying to stop Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination,” said Kathy Sullivan, a New Hampshire superdelegate who received dozens of occasionally angry calls and emails.

But recently, beginning after Sanders’ landslide victories in Alaska and Washington at the end of last month, the Sanders campaign has begun singing a different tune. Even as Bernie’s supporters continue to inundate superdelegates with their anti-elitist arguments, Sanders and his top campaign officials are now arguing that superdelegates should back Bernie even in states where he didn’t win — and even if he doesn’t win a majority of the popular votes cast. The campaign also has tried to poach some Clinton-backing superdelegates.


Late last month, Sanders said on CNN that he hopes superdelegates “rethink their position with Hillary Clinton” because some polls show Sanders does better in a hypothetical matchup against Donald Trump than she does. His argument seems to be that superdelegates should back the most “electable” candidate, no matter how many votes he or she got in the state.

But in an apparent case of trying to have his cake and eat it too, in the same interview Sanders said he was entitled to the backing of superdelegates in the states he won — the populist argument of his supporters. “And then you have got superdelegates who are in states where we win by 40 or 50 points,” he added. “I think their own constituents are going to say to them, ‘Hey, why don’t you support the people of our state, vote for Sanders?’”

What’s behind this tactical shift? One possibility is that the Sanders camp realized they would need the votes of at least some superdelegates even in the states he didn’t carry. As the Washington Post points out, caucus states, where Sanders has done the best, tend to have fewer superdelegates to award, so Clinton would still lead Sanders by several hundred superdelegates, even if you gave Sanders all of them in the states he won.

Also, the Sanders campaign has emphasized the “momentum” it’s shown — Sanders has won the past seven states in a row — as a counterweight to the fact that he is still trailing Clinton in pledged delegates and in the popular vote.

Sanders strategist Tad Devine told the Washington Post that even if Sanders is behind in the popular vote and the number of pledged delegates, “We’re going to make an argument that you should nominate Bernie Sanders.”

Devine did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News.

And last week, Weaver said on an ABC News podcast that even if Clinton has won more pledged delegates and captured a larger share of the popular vote, the campaign “absolutely” plans to contest her nomination at the convention in Philadelphia.

Stuart Appelbaum, a superdelegate in New York who backs Clinton, said he believes the focus on superdelegates is a distraction from the tough math Sanders faces in the final months of the primary. He would have to gain at least 60 percent of the vote in New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania to overtake Clinton’s pledged delegate lead.

“I really look at the discussion of superdelegates now as just really being an attempt to provide a rationale for why a candidate should stay in the race when it appears that it’s going to be mathematically impossible for them to become the nominee,” he said. “I don’t know a single superdelegate who has said they’re going to switch. I don’t expect that anyone will.”

I guess that whole thing about bowing out gracefully when it's clear he's lost, and throwing his support behind Hillary is sort of quaint now.