2020: The Two Year Long Election

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

 

[onekidanddone]

3 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

 

Yup just saw that. I admit to not knowing enough about him or the other candidates for that matter to make a decision now. Of course I have over a year to decide, and all in all I'd be happy with any of them.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Is anyone else?

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

So she might actually win this thing 

 

[AmazonGrace]

He ran a fraudulent university so he might actually win this thing 

 

[Eponine]

On 2/5/2019 at 8:09 PM, AmazonGrace said:

So she might actually win this thing 

 

And her family are pretty high up members in what amounts to a cult. They used it to gain political influence in their area over the last decades - the Science of Identity Foundation. They pretty much worship Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (a white guy formerly known as Chris Butler), and they're kind of your standard authoritarian structure. When she says she's Hindu, this is really the "religion" she was raised in - which is very far from actual Hinduism. The cult leader was (is? not sure if he's still alive) extremely homophobic, which is why she was so virulently anti-gay until it suited her to be otherwise.

It's really hard to find info about there on the Science of Identity Foundation but dig around and there is some interesting stuff out there. I can see how the Klan would approve of that kind of organization (if they know about it, I have no clue).

[AmazonGrace]

 

[front hugs > duggs]

I love Pod Save America. 

[fraurosena]

What a good idea!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sen. Amy Klobuchar, touting herself as a bridge-builder, announces her Democratic presidential bid"

Spoiler

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota announced Sunday that she will run for president in 2020, putting a pragmatic Midwesterner into the burgeoning field of Democratic candidates.

Klobuchar entered the race during a rally at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis, where supporters endured falling snow and temperatures barely into the teens on a gray winter day.

“Today, on an island in the middle of the mighty Mississippi, in our nation’s heartland, at a time when we must heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good, I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron-ore miner, as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaperman, as the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the state of Minnesota, to announce my candidacy for president of the United States,” Klobuchar said.

She said she was running “for every worker, farmer, dreamer and builder.”

“I am running for every American,” she said. “I am running for you. I promise you this as your president: I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. And no matter what, I’ll lead from the heart.”

The announcement, made as snow pelted the bareheaded candidate and obscured views from the Mississippi River island, reinforced Klobuchar’s self-positioning as a hardy Midwesterner accustomed to pushing through obstacles.

Klobuchar took pains to portray herself as someone who, with experience at the local and federal levels, would bring competence to the White House, contrasting that with the current environment of chaos and shutdowns in Washington.

“My friends, that sense of community is fracturing across our nation right now, worn down by the petty and vicious nature of our politics,” she said. “We are tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, of the gridlock and the grandstanding. Today, on this snowy day, on this island, we say enough is enough. Our nation must be governed not from chaos, but from opportunity. Not by wallowing over what’s wrong, but by marching inexorably toward what’s right. And it has to start with all of us.”

A 58-year-old two-term senator and former prosecutor, Klobuchar has spent much of her career attempting to be a bipartisan bridge-builder, willing to go on both Fox News and MSNBC.

At a time when the Democratic Party is debating whether to hew further left or maintain some centrist appeal, she is likely to attempt to cast herself as a little bit of both. She has deep Midwestern roots, and can point to election victories that illustrate an ability to win in liberal urban areas and conservative rural ones.

Klobuchar in 2006 became the first woman from Minnesota elected to the U.S. Senate, and has continued to win as that area of the country has become more Republican. She was easily reelected in 2012 and 2018, carrying conservative areas of the state that Trump won in 2016.

Coming from a state that neighbors Iowa, she could decide to make the caucuses a centerpiece of her strategy. She has visited Iowa many times, speaking at Democratic dinners and campaigning with candidates during the 2018 elections.

“It is great to be back here,” Klobuchar said when she spoke at the Iowa Farmers Union in December. “As I’ve said many times, I can see Iowa from my porch.”

But she is relatively untested when it comes to raising the kind of money needed for a campaign, as well as appealing to minorities and winning over liberals. She has not come out in favor of Medicare-for-all, for example, or pushed to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement — two positions favored by some on the left. She has voted with Trump’s position nearly a third of the time, which is far more often than other Democratic senators running for president or considering the campaign, according to a tally maintained by FiveThirtyEight.

Several Democratic Senate colleagues have already joined the race, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Cory Booker (N.J.). Also considering the race are Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and 2016 runner-up Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

She can tout a record of productivity, with Medill News Service ranking her in 2016 as the senator who had sponsored or co-sponsored the most bills that became law. She pushed legislation on consumer protections and data privacy.

She also has earned a reputation for being a tough boss. She has the third-highest turnover rate in the Senate, with an annual turnover rate of 35 percent, according to data from 2001 to 2017 collected by LegiStorm, a nonpartisan congressional research company.

Klobuchar was born and raised in Minnesota. Her mother was a second-grade teacher and her father was a sportswriter and columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Her father was an alcoholic, which put strains on the family that she recounted in her 2015 memoir “The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland.” Klobuchar wrote of blowing out birthday candles or waiting on him to come home so they could open presents on Christmas morning. In her early teenage years, after they went to a bar following a football game, her father drove their car into a ditch.

“I was scared,” she wrote. “He told me he was sorry and that he would never do it again. I remember he cried.”

She discussed her family history when she questioned Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh in his hearing before the Senate, asking him if he had ever blacked out after drinking alcohol.

“I don’t know. Have you?” he shot back, in an exchange that drew widespread attention and for which he later apologized.

The exchange was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

“OK [Rachel Dratch], you played a good me on @nbcsnl tonight,” Klobuchar wrote on Twitter “You were so good that you even got my daughter to text me on a Saturday night (a first).”

Klobuchar was the valedictorian of her public high school, and then earned a degree in political science from Yale University while spending a summer working as a construction worker, pounding stakes into the ground for the Minnesota Highway Department. She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago, and in 1998 was elected as attorney of Hennepin County, which is Minnesota’s most populous.

Her husband, John Bessler, is an associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Their daughter, Abigail, works as a legislative director for a New York City councilman.

 

[Destiny]

On 2/8/2019 at 12:14 PM, Eponine said:

And her family are pretty high up members in what amounts to a cult. They used it to gain political influence in their area over the last decades - the Science of Identity Foundation. They pretty much worship Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (a white guy formerly known as Chris Butler), and they're kind of your standard authoritarian structure. When she says she's Hindu, this is really the "religion" she was raised in - which is very far from actual Hinduism. The cult leader was (is? not sure if he's still alive) extremely homophobic, which is why she was so virulently anti-gay until it suited her to be otherwise.

It's really hard to find info about there on the Science of Identity Foundation but dig around and there is some interesting stuff out there. I can see how the Klan would approve of that kind of organization (if they know about it, I have no clue).

@hoipolloi has a pretty decent amount of useful information on this. She and I talked about it when Ms. Gabbard first announced. For the record, I won't vote for her unless the other option is the Orange Menace. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"2020 may be historic for women in more ways than one"

Spoiler

Now comes Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, the fourth female senator to run for president in the 2020 election. From the House press gallery, I watched her watch President Trump like a hawk during his State of the Union address.

Amid the grandeur, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) also watched every word and move the president made. Harris proved adept at the polite clap cut perfected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Earlier this year, these three senators entered the circle of contenders in the Democratic primary. Given there are 25 women in the Senate, this is extraordinary.

In fact, nothing like it has happened here before. There are times when hope and history rhyme, as poet Seamus Heaney wrote. And the next presidential election beckons to female candidates and voters alike with a bit of poetry in the prose of politics. That year will mark the century milestone of U.S. women winning suffrage, the right to vote, in 1920.

The recent shift to the Senate as the proving ground for a presidential run serves women well. It was once an article of faith among pundits that governors made the best candidates. Women have more opportunities to enter political careers and rise on the national stage as as lawmakers than as governors.

Warren, 69, is slightly older than battle-scarred Hillary Clinton was when she became the Democratic standard-bearer in 2016. They share a streak of intellectual brilliance, but that didn’t help Clinton in a cycle of populist anger with a vein of misogyny.

Harris is on the Barack Obama path, as a biracial freshman senator who cut a swath through the chamber. Like Gillibrand and Klobuchar, she’s in her 50s. Harris made her name in state politics as attorney general in an era of harsh sentencing, now under revision.

Gillibrand, a senator since 2009, has a solid record confronting the military on how sexual harassment cases are handled. She led the outcry against Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) when evidence of sexual misconduct forced him to resign.

Klobuchar, the only one from the heartland, has emerged as a skilled questioner of Supreme Court nominees. Brett M. Kavanaugh’s outburst on beer came responding to her asking if he had ever blacked out. Her cheery demeanor stands out during a glum losing spell for Senate Democrats since Trump took office.

Suffrage gave us and them the passport to democracy. A hundred years ago, women were closing in on it.

The 19th Amendment vindicated a movement that began in 1848. Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass were abolitionists on the front lines of women’s rights. Suffrage was a hard journey, with victory finally won under the leadership of Alice Paul, a fearless young Quaker who believed in public scenes for all to witness. She took parades, protests, vigils and bonfires up to President Woodrow Wilson’s doorstep.

A Princeton man — student, professor and president — Wilson hated the defiant displays. His lofty slogan about keeping the world safe for democracy inspired women to demand democracy at home. He once called suffragists into his office to be scolded like schoolgirls. They were the first wave of college-educated women claiming citizenship for the new century.

Never had legions of American women mobilized for a cause of their own. In 1913, Paul invented the blueprint for nonviolent marches on Washington, as well as the elegantly simple strategy in the civil rights movement 50 years later.

In a striking sight in the first suffrage parade, lawyer Inez Milholland looked like a goddess high on a white horse along Pennsylvania Avenue. Spectators were riveted, drawn away from the arrival of President-elect Wilson. It was an opening act for the campaign that saw some arrested, jailed and force-fed. Halfway through Wilson’s second term, facing growing sympathy for suffrage and public approval of women’s contribution to the First World War home front, he finally surrendered.

Today, four Senate women running for president — and a House Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii — reveal an awakening that has occurred with nobody planning it. Pelosi points out that the 2018 midterm election meant that more women than ever will be in Congress to mark the 2020 centennial. House Democratic women celebrated by wearing white, the suffragette color, to the State of the Union ritual. The visual statement of sisterhood’s spirit was unmistakable, even for Trump.

Trump is a living insult to women, people of color, immigrants, the media, environmentalists, disabled people and the federal government. In 2020, he may meet his match in one of us.

Let us not forget three Senate men — Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — are laying the groundwork to run as well.

But, knowing how women suffered for suffrage, let’s savor the moment we’re in.

 

[hoipolloi]

Tulsi Gabbard is bad, bad news. As @Destiny said, I'd vote for her if she  were running against tRump or another R, but heaven forbid we get to that point.

Despite her protestations, dissembling, and videos in the snow, Tulsi is still very much a part of the Butler Cult, which is extremely authoritarian and very homophobic like its founder, Chris Butler (a.k.a. Sai Young, Siddhaswarupananda, Srila Prabhupada or Jagad Guru). Chris is indeed a white guy who fell in with the Hare Krishnas in the late 1960s and then split off to form what has become the Butler Cult.

Tulsi is a part of it because her parents, Mike and Carol Gabbard, are long time cult members, and Tulsi was raised in it, which included going to the cult's boarding school in the Philippines. Both of her husbands were raised in the cult as well. It has apparently been a long term goal of Butler's to have political influence on at least the national if not world stage. Tulsi is by far the Cult's most successful politician in over 40 years of trying to run people for office. For this reason, she's probably been given permission by the Cult to "evolve" or "change" -- IOW, if Tulsi is saying that she's "no longer" homophobic, it's because Chris Butler allowed her to do so. 

For years, it was very hard to find much out about them, even locally, because the Butler Cult is secretive and protective of its secrets, but since Tulsi announced her presidential run, there is a LOT more out there. Here's a partial list of some fairly recent stuff:

A November 2017 article from the New Yorker

A fall 2017 multi-part investigative series by journalist Christine Gralow

January 2019 articles from Hawaii's main newspaper, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser [Note: the link is supposed to be paywall-free.]

ETA: The Honolulu Civil Beat, an online newspaper, has had a number of articles on Tulsi Gabbard and the Butler Cult over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Count the number of women running for president. And get used to it"

Spoiler

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) whomped President Trump and then ungraciously rubbed it in. At the State of the Union — which she had forced the president to reschedule — she leaned over and clapped in his face.

Women running for president, take note. No one is asking if the speaker is likable. They don’t do that when you win. And now that there are five of you, enough to field a basketball team, you shouldn’t give it another thought. Lose the happy face unless you feel like it, raise your voice, argue a point, get called for charging the basket and, yes, persist. Each of you has policies, foreign and domestic, to attract support — or not. There are funds to be raised, campaigns to be run, debates to crush and votes to get out. There are too many of you — more of you at the moment than men — to clear a hurdle men don’t have to. Your standard male member of Congress is presumed to be qualified without the added requirement he be likable. So are you.

As the Year of the Woman gives way to the Year of Many Women, the female candidates are woke to the ways in which they are required to pass a test they shouldn’t have to take in the first place. How sexist to hammer away at Hillary Clinton’s voice, her wardrobe, her hair (as opposed to the most bizarre pile of fur atop a head anywhere). Already, the last campaign is from another era: before #MeToo and Time’s Up; before millions of women marched, organized and voted; before they knew the damage a misogynistic president could do to women’s health, pay and reproductive rights. No one thought a U.S. president would orphan children to make a point about his wall.

A USA Today/Suffolk poll published in September found that the percentage of voters who would prefer to vote for a woman as an antidote to the mess we’re in was more than twice as high as the number who would vote for a male candidate. November followed and brought the largest midterm landslide in 44 years, driven by women. More than 100 of them arrived in Congress, and, if you’ve been watching, they’re not all that worried about whether you like them.

One sign that the female body politic is rejecting the additional burden is how Minnesota Nice Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) responded to the charge that she’s a mean boss. She may well be. They’re a dime a dozen on Capitol Hill, and they’re usually called men. The criticism is partly based on a survey of staff turnover from 2001 to 2016 that placed Klobuchar first on the top-10 list , which contained six other female members. So when women composed less than a quarter of the chamber, they made up 70 percent of the “worst bosses.” Please.

That doesn’t mean Klobuchar shouldn’t have to answer valid criticism, just that she shouldn’t do it with her blueberry muffin recipe. A double standard doesn’t vanish in a day. Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the tough lawyer out of Oakland, sent out a picture of her homemade cornbread on Thanksgiving and a video of her chair-dancing to Cardi B. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), perhaps remembering that Clinton won New Hampshire after tearing up in a coffee shop, choked up when telling the story of a young woman’s death to explain her change of heart from an upstate New York gung-ho gun advocate to a blue state gung-ho gun-control advocate. The most determined L-factor prebuttal came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who announced she was announcing with a video made in her kitchen, popping a beer with her husband just a little too self-consciously for comfort.

There are reasons not to support Warren for president — if you prefer corporate rights to consumer rights, for instance — but it shouldn’t be because she wouldn’t win the Miss Congeniality portion of the contest. No one’s asking that of Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) or former vice president Joe Biden or Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). They don’t have to come across as cool, calm and confident enough to be trusted with the nuclear codes but beta enough not to threaten the male alphas. On TV, Madame Secretary always manages that hat trick. In real life, see Clinton, above.

In 2016, the nonpartisan Barbara Lee Family Foundation found that striving to be likable is a zero-sum game; it doesn’t reinforce the qualities that make you fit to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. The last vestige of it will fade when women challenge each other on issues. When we watch Gillibrand take issue with Warren on her plans to break up New York banks; when Harris, a former California attorney general and Klobuchar, the former district attorney of Hennepin County, compare crime bills; when Warren and Harris go at it over their tax reform.

One sure thing: No one can say this time “I’m fine with a woman being president, there’s just something not right about this woman being president.” In this field, there’s no “this woman.” It’s these women. Count them. Get used to it, guys. And smile while you’re at it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump ‘may not even be a free person’ in 2020, Elizabeth Warren says"

Spoiler

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told voters Sunday that President Trump might be unable to finish his term, firing back at him for the first time since his reelection campaign attacked her rollout.

“By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not be president,” Warren told an audience here. “In fact, he may not even be a free person.”

Warren had not previously hinted that the scandals surrounding the president could keep him from seeking a second term. On her previous trip to Iowa, she rarely mentioned Trump by name.

But her campaign, which has faced more direct attacks from Trump than other Democratic candidates, appears to see the question about Trump’s own viability as way to stop engaging with everything he says.

Warren formally kicked off her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before a crowd of about 3,500 supporters in Massachusetts on Saturday. She is part of a rapidly expanding Democratic White House field that includes Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.).

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is expected to announce her bid Sunday afternoon, and Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) hinted in a Sunday morning interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he, too, may pursue a run.

Warren’s remark comes as Trump’s legal woes mount and as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation on Russian election interference has closed in on several key members of the president’s orbit.

A little more than halfway into his first term, nearly every organization Trump has led over the past decade is under investigation. The challenges include civil suits against Trump’s private company and charity, as well as several looming investigations by House Democrats.

With last month’s indictment of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, 34 people have been charged in the Mueller investigation, and six Trump associates have pleaded guilty.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt,” and in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, he claimed “ridiculous partisan investigations” could hurt the country’s prosperity.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” Trump said.

The idea that scandals might force Trump from office is widespread among Democratic voters, and other candidates have hinted at it, too.

“Impeachment, prison, not reelected, runs off and hides on a Caribbean island — I don’t care,” said Andrea Taylor, a 44-year-old respiratory therapist in Cedar Rapids. “I just don’t want him to keep hurting our country.”

At a Saturday morning town hall in Marshalltown, Iowa, Booker had an exchange with a voter who said she wanted a candidate tough enough to beat Trump. The New Jersey Democrat replied that he was ready for the fight — but that he was unsure whether the president would be on the ballot.

“Should I be our nominee and Trump also be their nominee — I’m not sure that he will be — you will see the toughest person standing against him,” Booker said.

 

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump ‘may not even be a free person’ in 2020, Elizabeth Warren says"

  Reveal hidden contents

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told voters Sunday that President Trump might be unable to finish his term, firing back at him for the first time since his reelection campaign attacked her rollout.

“By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not be president,” Warren told an audience here. “In fact, he may not even be a free person.”

Warren had not previously hinted that the scandals surrounding the president could keep him from seeking a second term. On her previous trip to Iowa, she rarely mentioned Trump by name.

But her campaign, which has faced more direct attacks from Trump than other Democratic candidates, appears to see the question about Trump’s own viability as way to stop engaging with everything he says.

Warren formally kicked off her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before a crowd of about 3,500 supporters in Massachusetts on Saturday. She is part of a rapidly expanding Democratic White House field that includes Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.).

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is expected to announce her bid Sunday afternoon, and Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) hinted in a Sunday morning interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he, too, may pursue a run.

Warren’s remark comes as Trump’s legal woes mount and as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation on Russian election interference has closed in on several key members of the president’s orbit.

A little more than halfway into his first term, nearly every organization Trump has led over the past decade is under investigation. The challenges include civil suits against Trump’s private company and charity, as well as several looming investigations by House Democrats.

With last month’s indictment of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, 34 people have been charged in the Mueller investigation, and six Trump associates have pleaded guilty.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt,” and in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, he claimed “ridiculous partisan investigations” could hurt the country’s prosperity.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” Trump said.

The idea that scandals might force Trump from office is widespread among Democratic voters, and other candidates have hinted at it, too.

“Impeachment, prison, not reelected, runs off and hides on a Caribbean island — I don’t care,” said Andrea Taylor, a 44-year-old respiratory therapist in Cedar Rapids. “I just don’t want him to keep hurting our country.”

At a Saturday morning town hall in Marshalltown, Iowa, Booker had an exchange with a voter who said she wanted a candidate tough enough to beat Trump. The New Jersey Democrat replied that he was ready for the fight — but that he was unsure whether the president would be on the ballot.

“Should I be our nominee and Trump also be their nominee — I’m not sure that he will be — you will see the toughest person standing against him,” Booker said.

 

From Senator Warren's lips to the FSM's ears!!!

[fraurosena]

Oooh, I like Seth’s idea!

Threadlet:

 

[AmazonGrace]

I was Never Trump because he was a horrible candidate but after 2 years of being a bad president i'm in 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Mark Kelly has announced he's going to challenge Martha McSally for senate. His announcement video is very well done:

 

[Cartmann99]

 

For those unfamiliar with Hegar, here's a commercial from her last campaign: