The 2016 Election, One Year Later...

--- SUMMER OF 2016 ---

Berners: We want Bernie! He is going to mobilize more first time and independent voters.

DNC: Clinton is the best candidate! She's a longtime party favorite and she's been covertly stuffing our coffers with cash for a year now. (source)

Berners: No, her numbers are bad, Sanders are much better! She is going to lose against Trump.  (source)

DNC: It's our party, we know what's best.

--- ELECTION NIGHT ---

DNC: OMG!  Clinton lost against Trump! How could this happen?!?

--- ONE YEAR LATER ---

Berners: We told you, her numbers were bad, Sanders were much better. And a year later, her numbers are worse, his are even better. (source) (source)

DNC: Yes... but... He wasn't really a Democrat, anyway! There's nothing we could have done differently.

Berners: You really don't want to win these things, do you?

Clinton Cash

I just finished watching this documentary.  Based on the book by Peter Schweizer, this film essentially "follows the money" from despotic dictatorships and rapacious transnational corporations directly to the Clinton Foundation.  It identifies the incredibly high speaking fees that Bill Clinton commands in locations that coincide with important matters that Hillary Clinton considers in the State Dept.

From deforestation, fracking, and uranium mining to human rights violations and global neoliberal economics, this film makes the case that the Clintons are personally profiting from all of it.  While edited in an overly-dramatic fashion, the film cites credible sources throughout and offers a compelling argument that the Clintons are and always have been for sale to private interests - and that doing so compromises the very ideals that form the basis of their public live.

... and because this is America, the rebuttal article has already been produced!

Comparing Conventions

Alright, let's be honest.  After having watching convention coverage from Cleveland and Philadelphia, Republican and Democratic parties, I've drawn the following conclusions:

• The Democratic Party has ambition, hope, ideas, vision, optimism, and a value system of inclusion and diversity; the Republican Party has paranoia, fear, avarice, backwards-looking pessimism, and a reactionary, xenophobic worldview.
  
  
• The Democratic Party has an amazing collection of celebrities, policy makers, and engaged citizens who are young or young at heart in which dissent is a healthy function of democracy; the Republican Party has the remains of a few has-been or onetime personalities, disgraced party leaders who tediously support their nominee, and angry, uninformed voters who are headed to a nursing home within the next decade.
  
  
• For the Democrats, the future looks to be full of promise and potential; for the Republicans, the future is a frightening series of dangers and enemies to be destroyed.
  
  
• For the Democrats, leadership means working together and bringing many voices to the table to overcome common challenges; for the Republicans, leadership means a strongman who will single-handedly solve problems by virtue of his ego alone.

... But those are just my opinions, I could be wrong.

Don't Second Guess Democracy

You know, I have seen so little actual actual argumentation for/against each candidate in this election cycle.  Instead, I see editorial piece after editorial piece that plays 3D chess or some complex metagame with this election like it's 20 layers deep with all sorts of side bets and secondary assumptions.

Just get informed on the issues, view speeches and policy positions by each of the four major candidates (Clinton, Johnson, Stein, Trump), take an online quiz matching you to your candidate, review their records, and make your own decision as a participant in this democratic republic.  But whatever you do, get registered and make sure to vote.

Suffering Through This Election

Clinton Endorsed by Koch?

"In a double whammy to Republicans, billionaire industrialist Charles Koch — one half of the evil Koch Brothers duo — said in an ABC interview that will air on “This Week” on Sunday that Hillary and Bill Clinton were better presidential material than most Republicans."  (source)

This is hardly the kind of endorsement that most progressive Clinton supporters want, but certainly one that vindicates what Sanders supporters have been saying all along regarding Clinton's appeal to corporate interests rather than popular ones.

George Clooney, Enabler

"George Clooney may be helping Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raise millions for her campaign and for her party this weekend — but he agrees with her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, on one point.

Sanders has criticized such fundraisers as "obscene." When asked by "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd to respond to Sanders' criticism of the fundraisers he is holding for Clinton, the actor and activist responded, "Yes. I think it's an obscene amount of money ... The Sanders campaign, when they talk about it is absolutely right. It's ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely."

On Friday night, Clooney co-chaired an event in San Francisco to raise money for the Hilary Victory Fund. To get a seat at a roundtable with George Clooney, his wife Amal and Hillary Clinton, as well as a prime spot at the dinner, a couple would've had to pay or raise $353,400."  (source)