I retain the belief that the motivations of Bernie Sanders’ voters – a fair society with decent pay, healthcare, working conditions, immigration justice and the ultra wealthy paying their share – will not be affected today by the massive media hype of the right wingers coalescing around the corrupt and inept Joe Biden. I therefore expect that in 24 hours Bernie will be well down the path to becoming the Democratic nominee.
I should like to believe that the leaked DNC emails of four years ago will yet have a vital effect. By exposing the way Hillary and the DNC rigged the primaries and cheated Bernie out of the nomination last time, they have already made people far more alert for procedural cheating this time. That background will also make it far tougher for the right to mobilise unelected superdelegates to undemocratically prevent Bernie from getting the nomination. It is not a good look to cheat him again. If people did not know about the hidden cheating last time, fixing the Convention would be a simpler sell.
I maintain the hope that the novel coronavirus will prove less virulent and less potent than generally feared. If I am wrong, the USA will shortly experience the massive difference in ability to control an epidemic when ordinary people are not covered by an adequate public health service. Similarly, we in the UK will understand that the Tory policy of running the NHS at 99% capacity as a norm is ridiculously improvident; the expense of carrying a substantial spare capacity for emergencies ought to be part of any decent planning, a principle which has been scandalously neglected.
Here is an interesting irony for you. Almost everybody on the left in the UK, and certainly anybody who has expressed the slightest concern at the appalling repression of the Palestinian people, has been slurred and falsely abused as an anti-semite these past four years. Yet every friend of mine who has been falsely slurred as an anti-semite is, like me, rooting strongly for Bernie Sanders to become the first Jewish President of the United States. Meanwhile the Guardian, which in the UK has led the charge against the left with an average of over 8 articles a week in 2019 accusing left wing figures or the left in general of anti-semitism, is pulling out all the stops to prevent Bernie becoming the first Jewish President of the United States.
The Guardian has rebranded as Joe Biden News. When Kath Viner became Editor it targeted the Clintonite identity politics right for its much needed online revenue increase. Last night its US Politics livestream ran 16 straight items gushing about Joe Biden, his rallies and his endorsements from Buttigeig, Klobuchar and a stream of other irrelevant right wing figures.
Today’s Guardian Online Front Page: The Guardian is Rebranding as Joe Biden News
I am personally pleased that the right has finally settled on the hopeless Biden as its standard bearer. I wonder if we will now be allowed to ask why Burisma paid Hunter Biden $850,000 to be non-executive director of a Ukrainian gas company which he never even visited? It is a fine example of the complete departure of rationality from political life that, even when appalling corruption is laced with geopolitical implications touching on issues of war and peace, you are not allowed to point out the stinking mess without being labeled as a supporter of Trump.
Finally, after the Russiagate 2 “Bernie is a Russian Puppet” effort fell rather flat, those united US intelligence agencies are still attacking with a message which scarcely pretends to be anything other than an attempt to damage Sanders by gross libel and insinuation. The curious involvement of Pompeo and Barr in this tells us one thing fairly plainly. Trump would much prefer to face Biden than face Sanders. He is of course right. If the Democrat establishment block Sanders in favour of another bought and paid for Wall Street puppet, they will end up with Trump until 2024 – and then Ivanka.
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“I maintain the hope that the novel coronavirus will prove less virulent and less potent than generally feared. If I am wrong, the USA will shortly experience the massive difference in ability to control an epidemic when ordinary people are not covered by an adequate public health service.” Way to go uncle Sam. Sanctions abroad, I’m sure, will help all of those working class people who you threatened (essentially) with regime change in your obscene SOTU – ‘We will not permit socialism’ – to deal with coronavirus. Not. And sanctions (austerity) on Americans, we see, are a threat, not just when faced with a coronavirus, but at all times. There’s your national security for you.
How can any progressive support sheepdogger Sanders, who agrees (probably lyingly) with his accusers on the idea that Russia interfered in American elections? I admit, I’d like to see him beat out his rivals, but I could never support him to any degree and in any fashion.
After watching Paul Joseph Watson’s video on “Creepy Joe” (you feel soiled just watching it), the Democrats would be mad to put up Biden against Trump, so you have to ask yourself why they’re doing it.
However if “something happened” to Biden is it possible that Hilary could make a comeback?
The question is: will Maggie Thatcher make a comeback..
Whether you support Bernie Sanders or not, if you are a person who values democracy, you have only a desire that the only people to reject Bernie Sanders as a Presidential candid\ate should be US voters.
The Coronavirus ‘epidemic’ has apparently peaked in China, if you believe the DT, which makes them claiming imminent epidemic in the UK to be an interesting sign of cognitive dissonance. The whole thing is about control, fearmongering and trying to stop mass travel. I have no doubt that the rich will not set an example and will continue travelling by private jet, using petrol and generally not becoming a cycling user of public transport. Especially not in the US, where such services are fairly random to be generous…….
Just remember: coronavirus appeared on the horizon in January 2020. If it has peaked within 2 months at the primary epicentre, this does not suggest Spanish Flu is about to be overtaken as the greatest mass killer of the modern era. I suspect contaminated drinking water will be a bigger killer in 2020 than CoVid19…..
People really must stop believing a word the BBC says. You do not believe the claptrap about the US Presidential election on CNN, after all. What is so truthful about the BBC that should make you trust them? On subjects too wide to mention, they are scandalously lacking in analysis, measured conclusions, freedom from political bias, openness to question the initial stated position and they are filled with media graduates utterly incapable of analysing the statements, attitudes, covert intentions etc etc of scurrilous members of the global Establishment.
Winter 2020 is an interesting case in Scotland: until 10 days ago, the global warmers would have been basking in delight about no snow in the Scottish ski resorts. Look at them now: perfect conditions, deep cover going to bring certainty to the rest of the season. I have seen seasons like that before now and they will happen again. It is just one variation of what a Scottish mountain winter can look like.
Has the BBC run anything about it? Have they hell. It would contradict their rubbish…..
Covid-19 might have peaked in China but it’s yet to do so in the rest of the world. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 also came in two waves, the first took mainly the usual victims, the sick and elderly, the second and far more virulent wave killed the young and fit. It’s too early to predict an end to the current pandemic.
The Scottish skiing season usually runs from December to April so it’s already half over. It wouldn’t be so bad if this year were a one off but it isn’t. A late heavy snowfall which doesn’t hang around for long could become the norm. For this reason two of Scotland’s biggest ski resorts have invested in million pound snow making machines and I don’t suppose they made that decision solely on the basis of anything the BBC might’ve said.
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What? Peaked in China? So what? Turn on TV, there are nearly 4000 cases of it in Italy alone:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Guess what is closer to UK, China or Italy? Not to mention 1000 more cases in Spain, Germany and France…
“we in the UK will understand that the Tory policy of running the NHS at 99% capacity as a norm is ridiculously improvident”
Switching the sanctimonious bleating from funding to capacity is disingenuous (at best).
Unless you’re prepared to accept that open borders immigration has been a disaster for UK housing/schools/roads & the NHS.
I’ll wait
“open borders immigration has been a disaster”.
For work opportunities, too.
The bigoted, so-called ‘Left’ and faux-‘Marxists’ have stigmatised the word Brexit to automatically mean ‘racist’, amongst many other distasteful epithets. They do this to cover up the dirty little secret and divert the attention from themselves, that they want ‘Free Trade’ in labour as a means of driving down wages thus increasing profits for the owners. It’s been a bonanza for agri-biz and the supermarkets. It means every native of the UK has to compete with every other worker from anywhere in the world for work, even though their living costs may be vastly different from our own. All this is falsely portrayed as ‘promoting equality’ which it obviously never can be.
The ‘Free Traders’ are the group who benefit from this corrupt employment ‘system.’ Their hero was, not only Malthus, but included David Ricardo, the millionaire stockbroker who devised the ‘Iron Law of Wages’ as follows: “the natural price of labour is the price which is necessary to enable the worker to subsist and to perpetuate their race without increase or diminution.” (Note the curious use of the word ‘race’). Economic slavery, in other words.
‘Free Trade’ in anything always hurts the worker most. Both the Tories and Labour have connived at this since the mid-90’s.
And now they’ve started to refuse to disclose where the new outbreaks are, with only a weekly uipdate on the regional breakdown.
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1235207174407802880
@ djm “Unless you’re prepared to accept that open borders immigration has been a disaster for UK housing/schools/roads & the NHS.”
Fgs, give yourself a good shake, stick a double espresso beneath your nose and breath in deeply.
It is, as anyone with two twitchy brain cell knows, 10 years of Tory policy and politically motivated austerity that “has been a disaster for UK housing/schools/roads & the NHS.”
The current desperate state of our public services is regarded by Tories as a great policy success not a great disaster.
A smaller proportion of the immigrant community is on welfare than of the native community, that is to say a greater proportion of them are in work and therefore paying taxes. Taxes are what pay for public services. The government has the money, courtesy of the immigrant community as well as the rest of us, but chooses to starve public services.
Immigrants are in no way to blame for the parlous state of our public infrastructure.
It is entirely the fault of the, so called, Conservative government.
I suggest you take your disgusting prejudice and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Austerity…… what Austerity ?
A smaller proportion of the immigrant community is on welfare than of the native community…….citation needed
The government has the money, courtesy of the immigrant community as well as the rest of us, but chooses to starve public services………..citation needed
Prejudice…….. well yours is self evident.
Re immigration and welfare claims
You may find some clarification here: https://fullfact.org/immigration/migration-and-welfare-benefits/
A few seconds search on the internet would have saved you having to ask for a citation and, indeed, obviated your need to comment in the first place.
Fulfact.org? Right – no media bias there then…
Peter, spot on.
Blaming immigration for the UK’s problems is simple minded BS. Employment rates are similar for immigrants and UK born.
The cuts to education and other services is due to “austerity”, cutting spending and taxes, nothing to do with immigration. More immigrants also means more workers and therefore taxes, the argument doesn’t fly for the situation in the UK.
For housing, the UK built 200,000-300,000 homes per year from the 50’s to 70’s. The last 2 decades the average is around 150,000. While the huge rise in prices in the south is more to do with low interest rates and the ease of getting a large mortgage. Good for the well off who own more than one house and older generations. Bad for everyone else.
Original post didn’t post, apologies if this results in a dupe.
Roads are overcrowded, but so are the roads of every city in the world which allows cars. Cars scale very badly and take up too much room for the number of people each car transports. Either we start to live to where we work or mass public transport is required.
Net immigration since 1990 is 5 million people. If the UK can’t cope with a 10% increase like that, over 30 years, then we have no hope as a “top tier” country.
Don’t use the media to inform you. Do your own research.
1951 – 500,000 beds in the NHS.
2020 – 189,000 beds in the NHS
There’s your problem bud, getting ripped off by successive Tory govts and labour doing the old PFI shennanigins. Watch Pilgers The War on The NHS documentary, it’s online somewhere, I watched it on RT last week.
It’s got nothing at all to do with immigrants, they’re not only great contributors financially but in terms of staffing. The NHS is massively understaffed at present and part of that is due to lots of Europeans going back home. Lets hope it doesn’t effect you when you get Covid19 eh?! Brexit is a joke and is the result of racist, xenophobes wishing it was still 1945. It’s going to crash the country and the tory chancers are getting their excuses in early with the panic virus.
Depressing results, albeit not entirely unexpected.
Sanders was up against: Bloomberg spending $560m on ads, Warren splitting the progressive vote; the entire MSM and Biden’s string of effusive endorsements, after the media jumped on his South Carolina victory- a victory built largely on black voter support, in turn thanks to Biden name-dropping Obama as often as possible and key State endorsements.
Sanders backer, AOC, said that in any other country she and Biden wouldn’t even be in the same party so stark are their political differences. In this vein there’s a movement called ‘Bernie or bust’ which threatened to boycott voting for any other Dem candidate in November, and I think I’d probably be in that camp were I a US citizen. It’s better the right (GoP, Conservatives) win and keep winning than settle for fake progressives who are, in reality, centre-right themselves. As in the UK, the establishment of the DNC (in the UK the PLP) need to face the fact that there is a leftish bloc of voters who will withhold their votes, votes that they can’t win without. All those politicians who endorsed Biden in this stitch-up shouldn’t get a single Bernie supporter’s vote. If Trump wins again and the Dems go backwards in the House and Senate, a long overdue reckoning will occur. There’s an element of ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’ about that, but sometimes there is no other choice.
I would make the case for “Bernie or bust” on a pragmatic basis. If Biden wins the Democratic nomination, the Dems have lost ALREADY. Trump’s dementia is early stage (relatively) Biden’s dementia is way more advanced. Months if not weeks away from requiring adult daipers.
Tulsi should break her oath and run as an independent.
Biden’s cognitive impairment is like the DNC’s version of ‘ The Emperor’s New Clothes’, everyone can see the reality, but nobody wants to speak up. Klobuchar, Buttigeig and all the others who raced to endorse Biden, merely to stop Sanders, have acted utterly shamelessly. I’d wager they have calculated and are thus confident he (Biden) won’t win, so what can their endorsements hurt?
Goose wrote:
> Biden’s cognitive impairment is like the DNC’s version of ‘ The Emperor’s New Clothes’, everyone can see the reality, but nobody wants to speak up.
That’s because it doesn’t matter if Biden has senile dementia. He doesn’t need to do a thing. Every morning during the PDB — President’s Daily Brief — the CIA will say him what nations and populations are to be sanctioned, starved, terrorized, overthrown, or bombed that day. He only has to sign the orders.
Tim Shorrock (The Nation), Mar 3, 2020:
Ah, the CIA endorsement.
> John O. Brennan, Mar 2, 2020:
> Joe Biden is one of the most honest, decent, practical, & experienced individuals with whom I have ever worked. If nominated & elected, he is capable of unifying our country & restoring America’s standing around the world.
https://twitter.com/TimothyS/status/1234708563974553600
They could present the briefings in cartoon form, like the Joint Chiefs used to do for Reagan. It helped keep him awake; it’s hard to get a signature from a sleeping man.
Senile dementia’s never been an impediment–if anything it makes it easier for the people who actually run things to get on with it. Which probably isn’t so good for the rest of us but I don’t think we matter much.
When Biden released the “overview” of his medical records last year, there was no mention of any examination of his cognitive or mental status. I think there’s more than enough reason for Biden to be given at the least a neuropsych screening. The D establishment and their media would be screaming that Bernie must have one if he had made a fraction of the gaffes Biden has.
Tucker Carlson on Joe Biden. “Running Joe Biden for President is like making your dog wear a dress”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4ytSI4PFm4
A nice little montage in the middle highlighting Bidens word salad.
Just reported, Bloomberg leaves the race saying he will focus on supporting Biden.
I think there’s a practical case to be made for that vote beyond the longer-term strategic aspects. We aren’t just electing a President, we’re electing an opposition, and while in opposition even the faux-progressive Democrats have to at least act out the faux. Trump has had to do his damage by executive fiat. It’s very difficult for him — disliked by a good portion of his own party (its political class more than its base), despised across the aisle — to get legislation passed. That will change quickly with a right-of-center Democrat eager to do business. The legislative proposals will be somewhat better than we’d see under Trump but a lot of the difference would be given away before negotations even begin…and the worst part is that they’ll actually pass.
We’ve been down this road before — Clinton’s crime bill and welfare reform, Obama’s legislative consolidation of Bush’s national security state. Who knows what they’ll decide to reform this time: Medicaid/Medicare? Social Security? but whatever it is it’ll be a lot worse than anything Trump can do signing executive orders.
I was already in the Bernie-or-bust camp — I haven’t been able to vote for either party’s candidate for more than three decades — but if I’m faced with a choice between Trump and Biden I might find myself doing the unthinkable. (And also maybe renewing the passport I’ve let expire.)
Absolutely right. I have spent the day in London, and of thousands and thousands of people, I saw only one person wearing a surgical mask. Yet the media have been publishing photos of ‘London’ with an image of someone in a surgical mask as though that is what everyone is doing. Indeed, are their pictures even of genuine members of the public? The ridiculous hype leave me to conclude that the media have been asked to stir up panic for financial speculators and/or governments.
Sorry – should have made it clear that that was intended as a reply to Rhys Jaggar.
Highly unlikely Tom. You can wish this were the case, but until you have some evidence (which you are very unlikely to ever have), you are living in cloud cuckoo land. Keep calm and carry on is just the British attitude, in the face of every kind of outrage and crime perpetrated by state and market.
In the face of what is happening, we have a government that looks more and more incompetent by the day, and when people start dying because of the way in which healthcare has been so destructively undermined in this country, the Tories will only look more like the murderous scum that they are.
At present, you have a situation where – after having idiotically accused China over and again for lack of transparency and lack of accountability – the UK government is not only not being honest with its public (quelle surprise?) but willfully misleading it. The mass panic won’t be abated for long though.
I too was sceptical, and would (like you) have liked things to not be so. However, people are dying, maybe not yet at the rate of those in this country who are starving, cold, homeless, disabled, or at the rate of the elderly with the flu; but that may soon change. The conspiracy theories about the state and market gaining something from this are horse manure.
The only benefit, if you can talk about benefits at a time like this, is that might have the potential to set in motion a much-needed albeit very involuntary kind of economic degrowth. Which should be voluntary, if human beings were smart enough to cast aside the worship of GDP. But as I said, talking about benefits here is perverted.
“At present, you have a situation where – after having idiotically accused China over and again for lack of transparency and lack of accountability – the UK government is not only not being honest with its public (quelle surprise?) but willfully misleading it. The mass panic won’t be abated for long though.”
Are you suggesting that the UK government are trying to abate the mass panic? Looks to me like they caused it and are trying to stir it up as much as possible.
I don’t know. I don’t see much panic actually. The mass media seems not to be telling the whole story. There seems to be a lot of censorship rather. Why would they tell the whole story and embarrass the government even more, since the reality is that NHS is probably one of the least well-prepared services in the world now, and there aren’t even enough hospital beds under normal circumstances? I’m just guessing (and perhaps I shouldn’t), but it seems to me that Iran’s China’s or Italy’s healthcare systems are much superior, and much less ill-equipped for these situations. If the public knew the truth, things would not look so normal in the UK right now.
“I don’t see much panic actually.”
Well not amongst us plebs – although I hear reports about the local supermarkets being raided for handwashes. By “panic” I was referring to the wall to wall interminable reporting across the media channels, all of which leads me to suspect it’s at least partly a distraction and/or it has some ulterior motive e.g. to supply some lovely profits to the pharma mob and/or provide a rationale for axing services. Anything that pushes towards the appearance of a war economy is always good for clamping down on a potentially troublesome public.
It’s much simpler than that; the media just love to sensationalise everything. Calm, measured reporting doesn’t attract attention. Screaming that we’re all going to die does. You just have to learn to see through it.
I think you will find “surgical masks” are sold out or only available at ridiculous prices. The same goes for alcohol-based disenfectant gel.
As far as I can tell, the cheaper masks are just a social reasurrance ploy. Just like “duck and cover” in the 1950s USA or the “vigipirate” troops patrolling and bag inspections in French cities They are actually useless. Only particular kinds of mask offer genuine protection and these are very expensive for private use and all supplies are already reserved.
It is likely the epidemic will burn itself out. The 1918 flu epidemic disappeared as mysteriousy as it arose. However, the American economy is running on a bubble. The disruption to supply chains and consumer spending caused by the Covid-19 epidemic will burst the bubble.
If the US economy collapses Trump is toast. Clinton might have been a philandering cigar fiend, powdered milk factory bomber and worse, but he was right when his campaign said “It’s the economy stupid.” It’s incredible how stupid many voters are. Many in the UK seem to blame Labour for the 2008 global financial crisis. The economic slump will not be Trump’s fault, but many voters will blame him for it. They might even vote for an obvious nitwit like Biden as a result.
But does this all really matter? We’re past crazy now in the US and UK.
A very informative historic overview of US politics by Sheldon Wolin, on youtube : “Chris Hedges and Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist ? Full Version ” If someone could post link please. (Hedges interviews Wolin)
Big questions now over Biden’s vote totals, an average 8.3% higher than in state exit polls. The only candidate for whom there was any discrepancy in vote tally and exit polls.
While they’re questioning Biden about his son, Craig, perhaps they could question Sanders about how a guy who has been in government jobs his whole life becomes a millionaire with three houses. Or why he appointed his wife as his campaign media buyer when she has as much experience in that gig as Hunter Biden does in the gas industry.
“government jobs”
The current salary for members of the US Senate and House of Representatives is $174,000 a year. Plus generous expensives, of course. If you make some good real estate and other investments with your surplus income you can easily accumulate some wealth.
Sander’s wife, Jane, has experience with PR and political campaigns and worked previously as a consultant. Perhaps you should have looked it up?
I did look it up, and his wife is to media buying what your football team’s physio is to brain surgery. This snotty attitude is, of course, endemic on the left and grows out of the cretinous notion that history has an arc, that it’s bending in some particular direction and that it has an end point. Leftists, naturally, are on the “right side of history”, notwithstanding that history doesn’t have sides. Consequently, they’re always waiting for the next messiah (current appointee, B Sanders) to lead them that final mile down the road to the promised land, and this entitles them to overlook little foibles on the part of the Chosen One, such as Bernie bumping Janie’s salary substantially when he was mayor of Burlington, over the objections of the city council.
What of it? Come back to his policies? They are more progressive. I couldn’t care less if he slept in a dumpster or a mansion.
Anyway, Biden and Starmer basically spell the death of anything approaching democracy in the US and UK, and the elite knows this, and that is why the elite are backing them.
I understand a substantial part of Sander’s millions came from book deals. That’s commerce not graft. Our own tousle haired leader has accumulated substantial equity from book deals. Most recently he is reported to have taken a £600k advance to write a book on Shakespeare. How spending years as a shock journo for the Telegraph fabricating guff like “the EU are going to ban prawn cocktail crisps” qualifies you as an authority on Shakespeare escapes me.
Bernie became a millionaire when some of the books he wrote became best-sellers. His wife inherited a house in Vermont from her parents. Together they bought a house in DC for when he’s busy there, and eventually they bought a vacation cabin on a lake in, if I’m remembering correctly, Vermont.
Oh the truth is so prosaic! Uniformed speculation and smearing is so much more exciting.
Today is the last day of Bernie’s race for the White House, as Elizabeth Warren finished it off by dropping out of it, and refusing to endorse Sanders. And he looks like a broken geriatric.
‘Biden’ his time.
This speaks for itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2020/mar/05/steve-bell-on
that’s brilliant!
The media will never accept even acknowledge a surprise event which upsets their long-range plans.
Biden knows much better now where he is than just a week agh.