Hillary Clinton only “won” Iowa because she won all six coin tosses in tied precincts. What are the odds against six successive coin toss wins? I calculate 1 in 64, or you have a 1.5% chance of pulling it off. If I am right, do we really believe it did happen? That question is posed without taking into account the indisputable bias for Clinton of the Democrat machine which was organising the vote, and other startling irregularities, including the falure of the organising committee to staff over sixty caucus meetings. It all stinks, frankly.
I have been trying to think up a word to describe the kind of society we have now, in which a tiny number of extremely wealthy people control the politicians and manipulate the public through the mass media. Then I realised we already have a perfectly adequate word for it – plutocracy.
It is a plutocracy where 85 people own the same wealth as the other 50% of the population of the entire world, and the wealth gap still grows at astonishing pace. A reaction from the people who actually create that wealth is inevitable. The extraordinary concentration of capital has only been possible because of the existence of state mechanisms designed to promote it, and a popular movement to end that state bias was bound to happen. It was also predictable that it would be dominated by the young. To see youth mobilise for Scottish independence, for Corbyn or for Sanders has been life-affirming for me.
I might wish the movement for change to be sometimes better directed. But there is now a generational shift, a desire of young people for fundamental change, resisted by their elders. This phenomenon has not been seen so strongly since the 60’s. In the battle between the growing and the dying, there is only one ultimate winner. A good time to be alive (again). Almost makes up for struggling on through Thatcher and Blair…
It is almost unthinkable that they might indict Hillary at this point in time. Imagine the screams of gender-based conspiracy, and how many blue-ball nights will ensue.
They are all a bunch of Tossers (so why not toss for it) – especially Hillary Clinton. She makes even The Duchess of Upholland look pretty – who was doing much the same job as her the EU during the US coup in Kiev (the poor girl didn’t have a clue). Ms Victoria FU Nuland and Hillary appear to both have come from the same evil Sperm. It must have been split in two.
Even Donald Trump looks like an Angel in comparison to Hillary and Vicky.
Which colour of shit would you Americans prefer?
Tony
@Ben and Lysias
Does it really matter who “gets in”?
Do you think you live in a democracy?
We sure as fuck don’t.
“This phenomenon has not been seen so strongly since the 60’s. In the battle between the growing and the dying”
Yet look at what the 60s generation gave/give us with their time of power, just how well that has worked out for us? The cold war, nuclear terror, war, after war, massive shift in the wealth inequality, globalism, federalism, neo con-ism, the rise of terrorism,legalised torture, the abandonment of the rule of law, pollution, etc etc
I’m not so sure this generation will do much better, after they’re going to be in charge as much as we were. What we have is merely an illusion of choice, the real power is in the shadows as it always has been. Bernie Saunders has no hope and if he did he will offer the same sort of ‘change’ as Obama did.
You got any spare change buddy?
“The Wall Street Shuffle” is a single by the British pop/rock band 10cc released in 1974
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gZX3Qk9Zpk
Exex; If you follow my comments you would know my ballot will have the write-in ‘none of the above’. Personally I think a Cruz win will create momentum for actual change in the process and hopefully, results. Maybe voting in the most extreme crazy has more benefits than excruciating over the efficacy of a qualified candidate.
“She makes even The Duchess of Upholland look pretty – who was doing much the same job as her the EU during the US coup in Kiev (the poor girl didn’t have a clue). Ms Victoria FU Nuland and Hillary appear to both have come from the same evil Sperm. It must have been split in two.”
You can make people smile Tony. But as you raised the US coup in Ukraine (that’s Europe for Americanophiles) people might be interested in a programme on French television that Ukraine has pleaded not to be shown.
http://eu.eot.su/2016/02/01/ukraine-asks-french-tv-to-take-film-about-mass-murder-in-odessa-off-the-air/
Yes, I am glad the filmaker is doing something about it. But to say nobody knew about this massacre is nonsense. Everybody knew about it except those who get their news from MSM. and other Noddy sources.
I have a sneaking admiration for Hillarybot. She certainly has a big, steely pair, that’s for sure. And winning 6/7 coin tosses in a primary, whilst you are still under threat of indictment, that has to be a first in US politics. Oh, she’s entirely bent, but she does appear to have a very clear understanding of how US politics actually works, which is of course the polar opposite of how it’s meant to work. And let’s face it, she’s hardly the only bent politician. The Internet has some stories about Obama that are truly disturbing, and we’re not talking about the Marxist Muslim baloney.
Still, I find it impossible to understand why so many women speak highly of Hillarybot. It’s a curious feminism which praises the likes of Hillary, a kind of misandry really, and not terribly well disguised. Feel The Bern.
Well, it would be nice to think that political reality is finally meeting actual reality.
That’s all I’ve got. Being the pessimistic type.
Insiders Predicted That Bernie Sanders Would Be No Threat to Hillary Clinton
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/02/insiders-predicted-that-bernie-sanders-would-be-no-threat-to-hillary-clinton/
She’s bent. The electoral/legislative system is bent. Mere straightening leads to metal fatigue. Time to forge a new hammer. Bernie ain’t it.
I do keep telling ’em but they all think I’m mad….and they are damn f’kin right. I can do an impersonation of the Mad as Hell bloke in the 1976 Film Network if you like…except the poor sod (Peter Finch) dropped dead almost the day after the film was completed (which was years ahead of its time – brilliant film – they wouldn’t be allowed to make it now).
Meanwhile…today ( do notice these things. Most of the rest of you seem to be asleep watching sport and Post-Reality TV)
Tony_0pmoc · 12 hours ago
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44100.htm
This article is Brilliant – especially this
“This destruction of Marxism Leninism by the Soviet and later Chinese revisionists led to a revival of Trotskyism in Western imperial countries. And it is this ‘New Left’ that constitutes the vanguard of contemporary Western imperialism. In this sense, Orban is correct in his analysis of a “leftist” conspiracy against civilization, for what we see today is the triumph of Trotskyist ideology in the form of Zionism and neo-conservativism, where proletarian internationalism has been subsumed by the ‘human rights’ international on the one hand and ‘islamist jihad’ on the other, a new ‘revolutionary’ alliance waging war against the working class.”
I’ts the best analysis and description I have read of who these neocons are, and where their ideology has come from. They are Trotskyists – and they are out to destroy everything including committing mass genocide. The vast majority of people think they are right wing capitalists. They have virtually no connection whatsover to what was American and Western European capitalism of 30+ years ago. Check out their history re what they did in the USSR before they were thrown out. They are doing exactly the same to Europe and the USA, and no one is stopping them. They are destroying us and the World.
If the US Military realised they were being controlled by Trotskyists, they might do something about it, before its too late.
Tony
The author of the piece is vague to say the least as to Neocon objectives. We could call all Progressives neocon as they use the same politically correct nonsense to justify any action by a minority, so matter how venal. I am skeptical of the suggested control over neo-con created consequences is optimal or even directed. It seems their intent is primarily chaos and that only works for psychopaths with no expectation of a future.
If Joseph Schumpeter was right about the creative destruction caused by capitalism, it eventually leads, in the long run, to the destruction of capitalism itself.
But in the meantime there is plenty of opportunity for individuals to make big profits.
“If Joseph Schumpeter was right about the creative destruction caused by capitalism, it eventually leads, in the long run, to the destruction of capitalism itself.”
Didn’t Marx say something like that?
Joseph Schumpeter got the idea of creative destruction (schöpferische Zerstörung) from Marx, but he very much elaborated on the idea.
Sanders campaign reviewing Iowa caucus totals, says actual result may never be known:
I heard him say this on CNN.
I’ve lifted this:
“The final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens. It would, as it has, increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of laborers. Industries would mechanize their workplaces. This would trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class—the bulwark of a capitalist system—that would be disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes declined or remained stagnant. Politics would in the late stages of capitalism become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content and abjectly subservient to the dictates and money of global capitalism.”
From here:
http://www.sott.net/article/297254-Karl-Marx-was-right-capitalism-seeds-its-own-destruction
Bernie didn’t give a toss, he was back on the stumps at $am in Hampshire. the man’s got guts and principles.
Shillary got swivel eyes and a bag full of secret emails from Bengahzi.
If you found Groundhog Day, the film, of interest read the Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.
To understand the Iowa process, which is quite unlike anything in other primary states, check out this story from Feb 1.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/01/the-iowa-caucus-is-a-classist-and-ageist-farce/
Hillary will be winning all coin tosses this year.
According to the WSWS, a million people are due to be thrown off food stamps this month. The gap between rich and poor is widening very quickly and the most dramatic shift is in the increasing number of very poor people and families living hand to mouth in an economy in which the social safety net is dissolving.
Sanders won in Iowa. It looks like he will win easily in New Hampshire. In South Carolina the only question is whether the pimps and ward healers can deliver the vote of the poor to their sworn enemy Hillary Clinton. If they can’t the entire Clinton house of cards is going to collapse.
On the other hand she deserves the republican nomination. Trump’s loss in Iowa doesn’t really signify, it looks worse than it is.
Good to see a decent post again – thanks Craig.
The DNC has considered the coronation of La Clinton to be a done deal from the beginning, Debbie Schultz, who runs it, is an absolute disgrace. She has played a great number of tricks against Sanders, from denying him access to the voter database on spurious grounds (trumped up charges, actually) to holding debates in the dead hours of a viewing audience, simply to deny Sanders the slightest publicity.
This resonates strongly with me Craig. I’m actually in old age but really feel strongly that we have to flatten the graph of wealth, and soon. We’ll have to, I think, to do all the things we must do to get the world straight for the coming warming. I sometimes half-jokingly say we’ll have to become `Christian’.
-just testing- I left my twitter handle in the previous post, but then it disappeared ?
US electoral ritual is crooked enough to give CIA’s candidate Hillary a resounding win. The parties are arranging squeakers to revive flagging public interest in electoral politics and divert energy from bottom-up civil society initiatives free from the built-in futility of the vote.
In Britain CIA control is easier. It’s all seen to in secret. In 2010, after Obama renounced torture, proposed to investigate it, and backed down under threat of ‘revolt,’ the UK, USA’s most servile satellite, feared complicity in disappearance in per se breach of the Convention Against Torture.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2699620/What-Is-the-Worst-That-Can-Happen-March-2010.txt
But of course GCHQ knelt down to blow their social superiors at CIA, puking up the last of their integrity and abetting a continuing crime against humanity.
England, Scotland, Wales, and Mann still have honest men. Does anyone believe that document came from Snowden?
We already had our ELEVEN pollsters all proved wrong, with the aid of that crashed van carrying 70k blank ballots and a contrived BBC exit poll. Only in the marginals but not on clegg. So whats new?
Mr Goss
““Well, I suppose the coin tossing was done openly in front of both Mrs Clinton and Mr Sanders supporters. I also suppose that the coins used all had a head and tail.”
You would say that wouldn’t you. You don’t believe the US is corrupt.”
___________________________
Well yes, I would say that because those happen to be the facts. Another fact is that the coins were allowed to fall to the floor, according to the film footage I’ve seen (which renders irrelevant the little video the Pugnacious One linked to).
Facts are facts, Mr Goss.
There have been several posts (especially from the other side of the pond) which appear to voice suspicion that the Iowa Democratic primary was rigged (in particular as regards the coin flips).
I winder if anyone could advance an cogent explanation for how the coin flips might have been “rigged”?
Mr Goss (23h59)
The quotation you supplied is from someone telling us what Marx said. It would be interesting to learn if Marx himself wrote anything specific about “massive personal debt” (or indeed any sort of personal debt) and “global capitalism” (by which your source means “globalisation”, I suppose).
He may well have done but you would be helpful to all of us if you could confirm that and perhaps indicate where.
Thank you.
Dr William Grace (aka Habbabkuk)
2 Feb, 2016 – 8:47 pm
“Well, I suppose the coin tossing was done openly in front of both Mrs Clinton and Mr Sanders supporters. I also suppose that the coins used all had a head and tail.”
“If that’s so then Clinton had a rather good streak of luck I’d say.”
………………………………………………………………………………….
As a child I was shown a coin tossing trick by my grandfather where the coin thrower can control the outcome of a call (heads or tails). The thrower catches the coin in one hand which is closed over the coin. If the caller says “heads” (or tails) the thrower can either open his hand to reveal the result he wants or can upturn the coin by slapping the coin hand onto the top of the other hand before revealing the result.
With practice it works.
I am still asking myself why every detail of another country’s electoral process has to be on UK prime time news. For months. Sure, it matters which extremely rich candidate can blag his way into the front rank of world leaders, but I’m not seeing this obsession with Chinese politics, for instance. I think the answer is, cheap journalism.
Sure, plutocracy. Near-synonym, oligarchy. Yawn. The oligarchs now have global tentacles: which of their appointees or paid political hacks do the ‘ruling’ is irrelevant. Undesirable? Extremely. But only militant Islam seems to have any real motivation or clear and functional ideas for bringing down the system*, and I would be extremely glad if someone would come up with a less brutal alternative. Christians awake? (shudder)
*Not that the system would look any different 20 years after ISIS achieved all its objectives – greed can usually trump theology.