“In this conversation, Palast explains how Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their agents will try to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American people at the ballot box. Palast also warns that the Democratic Party’s leadership will try to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders by sabotaging the vote in the upcoming California primary. He also details the connections between Roger Stone, the 2000 Florida presidential election “recount” fiasco and the rise of Donald Trump.”
Author: Dallas Taylor
Dallas Taylor is the grandson of a rum-runner, a valedictorian, a handyman, and a good Catholic girl. He lives and writes in Port Angeles, WA, and builds things for a living in his spare time.
Stephen Colbert Finds Out Just How Delightful Elizabeth Warren Is
How can you watch this and not want her to be President?
I can already hear her say ‘Bless your heart’ to Donald Trump every time he opens his mouth.
Replaying My Shame by Emily Gould
A meditation on public shame and how it resounds through the years. Highly recommended:
“When I watch the clip — me and Jimmy Kimmel, in split screen — it’s possible to see the exact moment when I realize what’s going on, that what I’d thought was a joke is in fact serious. It’s when one of the experts tells me that it’s only a matter of time before the map gets a celebrity murdered, and I’m shaking my head in disbelief, causing my stylist-fluffed barrel curls to wag from side to side. Something flips then, and you can see in my widened eyes that I know I’m completely fucked; I’ve been talking about media and they are talking about murder, seemingly meaning it. Objectively, this is the moment to laugh at me. It is funny to watch someone be humiliated. We all think, Wow, thank God it’s not me. The segment lasts about five minutes and ends with Kimmel sternly telling me that I am going to hell.
Someone must have come in and taken off my microphone; someone must have said something empty and cheerful as I exited the studio; someone must have led me to the Town Car waiting downstairs. I must have slept that night. I know that I threw the Chanel jacket in the trash when I got home.”
https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/emily-gould-gawker-shame.html
Ezra Klein on the Reality the Debates Skirt
However the current occupant of the Oval Office might feel, a President is not a king. And whatever plans our next Democratic President bring to office will depend on recognizing some fundamental institutional truths. Per Ezra Klein:
“Every Democratic debate so far has featured a lengthy argument over the details of Medicare plans that the next president will have limited power — and if there’s a Republican Senate, no power — to pass. None have featured a sustained debate over the questions that will actually decide what kind of Medicare plan — and climate plan, and gun control plan, and minimum wage bill, and infrastructure plan — will pass: which candidate is likeliest to sweep more Democrats into the Senate, and whether and how the various candidates would convince Senate Democrats to change the rules to make ambitious governance possible again.”
And of course it was Elizabeth Warren who brought the reality check, despite the moderators’ — and her fellow candidates, barring Buttigieg — attempt to hold the debate in a vacuum:
“We have to talk about what it’s really going to take to get something done. I’ve been in the Senate. What I’ve seen is gun safety legislation introduced, get a majority, and then doesn’t pass because of the filibuster. Understand this: The filibuster is giving a veto to the gun industry. It gives a veto to the oil industry. It’s going to give a veto on immigration. Until we’re willing to dig in and say that if Mitch McConnell is going to do to the next Democratic president what he did to President Obama, and that is try to block every single thing he does, that we are willing to roll back the filibuster, go with the majority vote, and do what needs to be done for the American people. Understand this: Many people on this stage do not support rolling back the filibuster. Until we’re ready to do that, we won’t have change.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/25/21153846/filibuster-south-carolina-debate-democratic-primary-2020
Charlie Pierce on Why He Voted for Elizabeth Warren
If you know me, you know this guy is not only one of my favorite writers, but my go-to guy when it comes to knowing what’s what about politics while wanting the same things:
“The basics, first. I voted for her because I know her and her husband, Bruce Mann, and I like them very much. But, besides that, I think she is so obviously the right person for this particular moment in time that it’s almost not worthy of discussion. She has the right combination of righteous anger, uncompromising vision, and policy chops to meet the times ahead.
In addition, I admire how she has resolutely refused to be the suicide bomber dispatched to blow up the Sanders campaign on behalf of some bed-wetting Republican exiles and a bunch of Democratic moderates who have proven to be inadequate to the task of running against each other, let alone Sanders. (By the way, Joe Biden is beginning to slip, visibly, and not just in the polls, either.) I respect the fact that, as we learned over the weekend, she scared the hell out of Michael Bloomberg long before she handed him his freshly extracted viscera the other night. (She also makes Mark Zuckerberg nervous, which is a very good thing.) I admire also her ability to see past the end of her nose and to recognize that, if she had managed to sink Sanders, she would be the next target of the people who hate the ideas they share and, for that matter, any progressive renaissance in the running of the country. So that’s what I did on Tuesday at noontime.”
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