Open Weekend

This “Open Weekend” thread is a regular thing for Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Please take this Progressives Chat to wherever you may want it to go.

Enough with Joe Biden!

There is a person who has a blog, and says he is progressive, and at whose site I used to post responses. This went on for a good five years. I recently made the decision to stop because it became very apparent the author and every respondent, expect for myself, is not actually progressive but merely a self-identified Democratic Party voter.

I find most of those who, after Election 2016 resulted in a Republican pickup of the presidency for Donald Trump, and that we get a lot of Democratic Party Loyalists playing Go Fish with trying to figure out who should be their party’s 2020 nominee, that they were [in 2016] and still are [here in 2018] out of touch.

They remain out of touch because they have no idea why the Democrats lost the White House with nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. (They lost the White House because of income inequality not being addressed by the two-term Democratic incumbent president, Barack Obama, and that they were not convinced his would-be party successor—one with a long, cozy relationship with Wall Street and who was a board member on Walmart—would effectively confront and possibly solve that crisis.) They think they can look at Donald Trump’s behavior and assume that that was disqualifying. They think that Hillary Clinton appearing to have been better behaved made her more qualified. They think the presidency of the United States calls for qualifications. It does not. It has constitutional requirements for eligibility. There are differences in their meanings between those words qualified and eligible. An example: I am eligible. I meet the requirements of eligibility to be president of the United States.

This comes from people who, given the choice between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as the two leading candidates for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, chose Hillary Clinton.  This is the same group who thinks that time didn’t move forward, and they couldn’t go wrong with the Clintons. Plenty went wrong with Bill Clinton. In addition to being a Democratic Party U.S. president who provided leadership like a Republican, he had a lot of related losses: In 1980, after one term, he was unseated as Governor of Arkansas before winning it back in 1982. In the 1994 midterm elections, and his second year in office as the 42nd U.S. president, Clinton’s Democratic Party lost majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. The Democratic Party, under Clinton, also lost the U.S. Senate and the majority number of governorships—and never won them back during the remainder of Clinton’s presidency. In 2000, Clinton’s vice president Al Gore lost his bid for the presidency to a neoconservative governor (and draft dodger) from Texas. In 2008, Clinton’s wife Hillary lost her bid to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination to a four-year U.S. senator, from her birth state Illinois, who would go on to win the general election to become the 44th U.S. president. In 2016, she lost her bid for the presidency to a series-television, reality-competition host. So, despite Bill Clinton having been a four-term governor of Arkansas and a two-term U.S. president, the Clintons have had lots of electoral losses.

These Democrats Party Loyalists—who would naturally like to believe they have their fingers on the pulse of the U.S. voters but, in reality, don’t even have that on their political party—will likely not want to consider the following.…

Joe Biden will never be president of the United States.

Joe Biden should never be president of the United States.

Joe Biden voted for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq. No one who was in Congress, and who voted to go to war in Iraq, was later elected to the presidency of the United States. The last two losing Democratic presidential nominees—John Kerry (2004) and Hillary Clinton (2016)—voted for that war. The Republican nominee from 2008, John McCain, voted for that war. They all lost.

No one who voted to go to war in Iraq was later elected to the presidency of the United States, so far in history, and it is likely to remain that way just as turned out that no member of Congress who voted to go to war in Vietnam was later elected to the presidency of the United States.

Why are there any Democratic Party Loyalists pushing for the 47th vice president? They are doing it just to toss out a name that, just as it has been the game of the rest of corporate Democratic Party Establishment, deliberately avoids Bernie Sanders.

However much of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries results one believes, the most telling sign of where this party base is going is with the youngest voting-age group: 17–29 (in primaries)/18–29 (in general elections). In general elections, there are four commonly recorded, exit-polled age groups: 18–29; 30–44; 45–64; and 65+. The youngest age group nationally carried for Bernie Sanders with at least 70 percent of their vote. In the first two contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, he received over 80 percent of their vote. (He reached that level in the third, Nevada.) In the Top 10 populous states Barack Obama carried with re-election in 2012, but with the exceptions of New York and California (which was late on the schedule and not exit-polled), Sanders won 80 percent or more of those under 30. In the closed primary state Pennsylvania, he won over 80 percent from that age group.

The significance of the 18–29 vote is this: They are the first age group to carry for Democrats. After the 1980s, the Democrats lost in the U.S. Popular Vote only once—John Kerry in 2004. The only voting-age group which nationally carried for Kerry was 18–29. (He lost in the U.S. Popular Vote by –2.46—that is, 48.27% for Kerry; 50.73% for re-elected George W. Bush—but won 18–29 voters by +9 points.)

In the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders won the two youngest age groups: 17–29 and 30–44. Hillary Clinton won the two oldest age groups: 45–64 and 65+. Hillary carried the age groups which were nationally carried by the 2012 presidential election by losing Republican nominee Mitt Romney. They voted in 2016 for Republican presidential pickup winner Donald Trump. Those 45 and older, in 2016, were born 1971 or earlier. They were there for the 1990s Clintons. To a lot of them, Bill Clinton was to Election 1992 what John Kennedy was to Election 1960—young (for a U.S. president), charming (and that was how a lot of people felt then of Hillary), and a real winner. (“In 1996, he won re-election—the first two-term Democratic Party U.S. president to do so since the four terms won, during the 1930s and 1940s, by Franklin Roosevelt.” Then again—had Kennedy not been assassinated, in 1963, he would have been re-elected in 1964.) But, we are not in the 1990s anymore. The Clintons are definitely not gold. And Joe Biden is no longer actively in political office—not as a United States senator from Delaware, and not as the 47th vice president of the United States.

For those who truly think Donald Trump will get unseated, with Election 2020, by his Democratic challenger, it helps to correctly identify specifically who offers the kind of leadership which has the ability to move people to let that person unseat an incumbent U.S. president. The following are examples why that person will, and should, not be Joe Biden.

Happy Birthday, Glenn Greenwald!

Today [Tuesday, March 6, 2018] is the 51st birthday of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald was born March 6, 1967 in New York City, New York. He is married to David Miranda.

Here is one source for more background information on Glenn Greenwald: Wikipedia — Glenn Greenwald.



I took notice of Greenwald’s writings in Salon in, if I am recalling this accurately, either 2008 or 2009.

I appreciate that he awakened me to the Democratic Party Establishment’s ways of operating. For one example: They act as if they are helpless but, in reality, are “complicit” in delivering harmful policies—and will do so, when the excuses certainly cannot fly any longer, while they are empowered. That that was certainly the case with the supermajority U.S. Senate that had when they were shaping the Affordable Care Act.

One such astute Greenwald piece was from The Democrats’ scam becomes more transparent (03.12.2010):

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats:  all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster:  sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted.  Democratic pundits used that claim to push for “filibuster reform,” arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents.  In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation — where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required — but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous. 

But all those claims were put to the test — all those bluffs were called — once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill.  That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) — including the addition of the public option — would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had.  Great news for the public option, right?  Wrong.  As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished.  Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it.  Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed — a “majority rule” system — they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

Glenn Greenwald also wrote a beautiful piece about the Democrats, while working on the policy, including the Affordable Care Act, playing a game of “Rotating Villain.” This is a contrivance in which, just when it looks like Democrats will shape a bill to their liking, in comes one spoiler who comes off as a Rotating Villain. This was appreciated by me for better focusing on the games played by the Democratic Party, when they are empowered (and they had more seats in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate during Barack Obama’s first two years than at any point during the presidency of George W. Bush and, up to this point, Donald Trump.) Unfortunately, I did not immediately find that piece. I think Salon eliminated it deliberately. But, from a list below, are some other worthwhile pieces.



Here are more recommendations, with ten [10] each from three different publications, of excellence by Glenn Greenwald:


From Salon…

09.17.2010 — Obama’s views of liberal criticisms

09.19.2010 — The perils of false equivalencies and self-proclaimed centrism

09.23.2010 — The Democratic fear-based strategy

01.12.2011 — How propaganda poisons the mind — and our discourse

05.23.2011 — The Patriot Act and bipartisanship

11.11.2011 — Why the Washington Post won’t fire Jennifer Rubin

02.18.2012 — Repulsive progressive hypocrisy

05.31.2012 — A reminder about WikiLeaks

06.11.2012 — Leon Panetta: Macho Renaissance man

07.02.2012 — Dianne Feinstein targets press freedom


From The Guardian…

02.28.2013 — Bob Woodward embodies US political culture in a single outburst

03.10.2013 — Three Democratic myths used to demean the Paul filibuster

04.08.2013 — Margaret Thatcher and misapplied death etiquette

04.27.2013 — Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced

05.11.2013 — Debating Bill Maher on Muslims, Islam and US foreign policy

06.07.2013 — NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others

06.09.2013 — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' – video

06.11.2013 — The Guardian Audio Edition: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden explains his motives - 11 June 2013

06.11.2013 — Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations



From The Intercept…

01.21.2016 — The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition

01.28.2016 — Paul Krugman Unironically Anoints Himself Arbiter of “Seriousness”: Only Clinton Supporters Eligible

01.31.2016 — The “Bernie Bros” Narrative: a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism and Social Activism

02.24.2016 — With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton?

03.04.2016 — Donald Trump’s Policies Are Not Anathema to U.S. Mainstream, but an Uncomfortable Reflection of It

04.18.2016 — After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington

05.11.2016 — Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal Is Installed

09.11.2016 — Barbara Lee’s Lone Vote on Sept. 14, 2001, Was as Prescient as It Was Brave and Heroic

10.11.2016 — In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots

11.18.2016 — The Stark Contrast Between GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and Democrats’ Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now




Here are three videos, with Glenn Greenwald, related to the 2014 Oscar winning documentary feature Citizenfour:



In 2014, Glenn Greenwald guested on Free Speech TV’s Democracy Now. He spoke with host Amy Goodman about his first meeting with Edward Snowden.

Published February 26, 2015, TimesTalk’s David Carr, a media columnist for New York Times, passed away shortly after he interviewed Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, and Glenn Greenwald.

On February 22, 2015, Citizenfour—produced by Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky—won the 2014 Oscar for best documentary feature. Here is video from that moment…

Goodbye, Oscar Weekend!

With “Oscar Weekend” now behind, I want to do a little catchup with some videos which cover important topics. (List of winners: Wikipedia — 90th Academy Awards.) That is why this is getting posted at midnight (12:00 a.m. ET on Monday, March 5, 2018).

Before posting a mix of one pic and six videos, I want to note the following: Tomorrow [Tuesday, March 6, 2018] will be a blog entry recognizing a particular person’s birthday. Thursday [March 8] will have a blog entry on a topic I had overlooked addressing. And Friday [March 9] will be the next “Open Weekend.”


This past weekend, on Saturday [March 3, 2018], I posted, as CoolBlue71, the following question live to Jimmy Dore on The Jimmy Dore Show:

I have asked that question here. But, it dawned on me it may had not been addressed on The Jimmy Dore Show. Now, I have to admit, I was dozing off during his live cast. It was me. I was tired. And my post was a good 90 minutes before his wife, Stef Zamorano, read it and Jimmy answered. So, I am little fuzzy with details. Basically, Dore summed it up as follows: Democratic primaries voters just have not awakened enough—that is, with sufficient numbers—to neoliberalism and rise up to become enough of a threat to the incumbents in the Democratic Party who really need to go. He was getting at, as well, how damaging neoliberal policies are—and that most people are just so busy with their lives that they are too busy to make the time to better inform themselves. (By the way: I think a “blue wave” midterm election, as we’re on a trajectory with getting here in 2018, is the right time to do it. The Democratic Party Establishment also knows this. It is why the DCCC is sabotaging progressives who are trying to win nominations via the primaries.)



Here are some videos to get the new week going:

Here is an interview, on Russia Today’s Crosstalk, discussing the corruption and craziness of the current Democratic Party Establishment:

Here is a—warning time!—43-minute video, and it is once again very perceptive, by Jamarl Thomas:

Here is a 55-minute video of an interview between Tim Black and Niko House:

• SPECIAL • Oscar Weekend

This Sunday [March 4, 2018] is the 90th Academy Awards on ABC.

I mentioned recently not feeling up to live-viewing awards ceremonies. And, frankly, it just has to do with me not feeling like viewing a live awards ceremony which takes up a good three hours of time.

I will present this special “Oscar Weekend” thread to given anyone interested a chance to salute some really good movies. Oscar nominations and/or wins are not required. This may be appreciated by people here at Progressives Chat.

(For those posting with a focus on politics, and other related topics, please refer to the blog thread from Thursday, March 1, 2018 here: Coming in March.)

This blog thread entry singles out my favorite winner, in a top category, from the 1980s. (I invite you to post a film clip as well.)

The nominees for best picture of 1983 were: The Big Chill; The Dresser; The Right Stuff; Tender Mercies; Terms of Endearment.

The winner: Terms of Endearment.

Terms of Endearment—the story of a complicated, mother-and-daughter relationship—won Oscars for best picture, director James L. Brooks (who also won for adapted screenplay), actress Shirley MacLaine, and supporting actor Jack Nicholson (with the second of his three wins). Major nominations also went to actress Debra Winger and supporting actor John Lithgow.

Here is a scene in which MacLaine and Nicholson, playing neighbors who seem to mix like oil and water, spark an interest in each other. It is the beginning of their courtship.

Note: I have planned, upcoming blog entries which will take the place of “Entertainment Weekend” threads during the rest of March 2018. “Open Weekend” threads, with exception of this weekend, will still appear as they normally do every Friday; so that specifically titled thread will resume next Friday, March 9, 2018. “Entertainment Weekend” will return Friday, April 6, 2018.



Update 03.04.2018 @ 10:00 a.m. ET: For people who are anxious to get back to a thread discussing politics, and do not feel fulfilled with the one from last Thursday [March 1, 2018], I will have a new one available on Monday [March 5]. But, I will actually send it to publish at 12:00 a.m. ET. So, once the Academy Awards are over…you’ll have access to a new thread. It will be titled, “Goodbye, Oscar Weekend!” More blog entries, for different reasons, come Tuesday [March 6] and Thursday [March 8].

—Candy83

Coming in March

I have some special blog entry topics coming in March which will somewhat deviate from the routine schedule.

This will be explained along the way.

This applicable just for the month of March 2018.

In the meantime, this Friday [March 2, 2018] will be a special thread and will not be titled “Open Weekend” (which will return next Friday, March 9, 2018).

You can use this blog thread, here on Thursday, March 1, 2018, for whatever springs to mind. Consider it an “Alternative Open Weekend.” And, as a reminder, I have set the period of posting comments good for seven [7] days from the date of a blog’s entry.

Happy Birthday, Ralph Nader!

Today [Tuesday, February 27, 2018] is the 84th birthday of consumer advocate and former presidential nominee Ralph Nader.

Born February 27, 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut, Ralph Nader admitted to having voted for about 20 years for “the lesser of two evils.” He was referring, of course, to the Democratic Party. He no longer does that. And Nader has me thinking I may be heading where he is now politically. My theory is, If you go enough election cycles—that is counting both midterm and presidential election years—without voting for one’s preferred of the two major political parties, especially saying no to both, then you find you have truly broken the habit.

I admire Ralph Nader. He has been correct about so many things. I laugh at Democratic Party Loyalists who have used him as a scapegoat since 2000. I welcome them, if they think Nader is so damaging, to drive their cars without safety belts—especially while they are traveling the interstates. (I am, of course, referring to his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed.)


For more information on Ralph Nader: Wikipedia.org — Ralph Nader.


Here are fifteen [15] quotes from Ralph Nader:

“Things have gotten so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia.”

“The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.”

“Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will always be there to save it.”

“Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses…in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to dis-elect them.”

“We live in a two-party tyranny that doesn’t believe in competition, can enforce it with penalties and obstructions, and they’re getting closer and closer to being both one corporate party with two heads having different labels.”

“The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That’s the only difference.”

“If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.”

“Can you imagine [Al Gore is] in a neck-and-neck race with a bumbling Republican governor [George W. Bush], from Texas, with such a horrific record? …What does that say about the Democratic Party?” 

“Gore beat Gore… He didn’t get Tennessee, his home state. That would have made him president. And he blundered in Florida and didn’t ask for a statewide recount.” (Ed. note: Bill Clinton carried Tennessee, then a bellwether state, in both of his elections. Florida carried for Clinton in 1996. A 2000 Al Gore finished with an initial electoral-vote score of 267. A faithless elector reduced it to 266.)

“This assumption that my votes only come from Democrats is simply not true…”

“We have a Democratic Party which cannot defend the people from the worst Republican Party in history because it’s a Democratic Party of war and Wall Street.”

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not followers.”

“A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and the energy to get it done.” 

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice should never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.”

“All empires eventually destroy themselves. That’s the record of history.”

Recommended interview, in print, of Ralph Nader:

The Intercept — The Democrats Are Unable to Defend the U.S. From the “Most Vicious” Republican Party in History

Recommended entries from his blog Nader.org:

Nader.org — Hillary’s Corporate Democrats Taking Down Bernie Sanders

Nader.org — Hillary’s Convention Con

Nader.org — What Does Trump Mean by “Make America Great Again”?

Recommended videos related to Ralph Nader: