“My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote.

“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” he added.

Wow!!

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/20/kamala-harris-father-pot-1176805

These people never learn. Just keep on the fake fakery.

Yup. He called her out big league. Made me wonder how she plans to try to reconcile a country when there is obvious discord within her own immediate family

Hahaha.
Politicians should stick to politics and stop this extreme sport of trying to appeal to the youth. They're all trying to be Ocasio-Cortez when they somehow made it to their jobs just 2 or 4 years ago without being Ocasio-Cortez. No need to be cool. Just show the people some policies and ambition they can believe in

Trump will label her as a black Hillary Clinton and that will be that

A lot of nonsense....
And this is just the beginning of non issues being put out there.

The big issue with Harris saying she smoked pot is that she made a career of locking up poor minorities for smoking pot. That shouldn't be acceptable.

She was a prosecutor for fks sake.
Her record will be gone over with a microscope like all these former prosecutors.
The larger issue is digging for dirt on all Dem candidates.
(CA law now u can use pot if u r 21 years old or something to that effect.)

Mags, what do you mean by this: “She was a prosecutor for fks sake”

And should her record not be examined critically?

That’s what prosecutors do in general.
Listen, I thought the pot remark was stupid, not funny, but this “holier than thou” attitude by critics beats it.
I am not defending her record as a prosecutor or AG.
She can do that herself, and will have to.

And this is just the beginning.
The knives are out, and Millions of dollars, multi millions will be and are being funneled into the Trump campaign,(Parscale runs it) coffers to do what it takes to get him re-elected. Can’t remember a recent source for numbers, my mind is on overload.
How about the new appointee to the UN whose husband is a billionaire coal baron and who has donated mucho$$$ to Trump...
Every freaking day some new quasi corrupt crap from Trump and his gang.
It’s hard to keep up.

mags wrote:

How about the new appointee to the UN whose husband is a billionaire coal baron and who has donated mucho$$$ to Trump...

The one who believes "both sides of the science" when it comes to global warming!

They should lock all these people up for crimes against humanity and just throw away the key. They know exactly what they're doing at this point.

Can't help feeling that it's an indictment on the journalists too. I'm not sure if anyone has learnt about the climate science before these interviews. Nobody follows up with or asking for specifics...once they get the dumb or politically charged soundbite, they move on.

mags wrote:

She was a prosecutor for fks sake.
Her record will be gone over with a microscope like all these former prosecutors.
The larger issue is digging for dirt on all Dem candidates.
(CA law now u can use pot if u r 21  years old or something to that effect.)

Everyone runnings record will be gone over with a microscope. Its part of the process.

Of course.
Nothing new there.

Btw, casually lying about bernie being for open borders.

What a great tactic, casually lie and then distract from it by making a ridiculous analogy. People will remember (store) the open border bit, and forget/write off the rest.

9 days later

After allllll the build up, he lets know via text message. Lol.

Prolly taken in by all the celebrity he got in the senate race. Expect lot more clownish moments if he continues not to employ political consultants. The announcement video from the living room with the wife sitting idly by was cringe itself.

Beto is even more corporatist than Obama. Gotta shut him down fast. He's not going to be running against the most hated man in US politics this time (which he lost anyway).

arsedoc md wrote:

Prolly taken in by all the celebrity he got in the senate race. Expect lot more clownish moments if he continues not to employ political consultants. The announcement video from the living room with the wife sitting idly by was cringe itself.

I don’t know if that sort of video is a common thing in US politics, but if not then it looks like he ripped the he idea off the Republican guy, Conway, from House of Cards. It was like watching a bad spoof from the image, mannerisms to using family as a prop.

Klaus wrote:

Beto looks like the worst kind of candidate to me: A pointless reprobate who has made a career out of voting republican as a democrat (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/beto-orourke-congressional-votes-analysis-capital-and-main). He seems like the kind of person who gives liberals a bad name. And he looks like a 50 year old web developer.

A guy who stands for nothing. He better hope he lands on soft debate nights

He stands on counters despite being 6'2 and the audience being seated. He is engaging and energetic though.

7 days later

Am impressed with Mayor Pete Buettig so far.
He and Warren lead the field for me at this time.
On verra.

6 days later
6 days later

And another one...Tim Ryan declares his candidacy. Welll past 16 now...for sure

4 days later
mags wrote:

Am impressed with Mayor Pete Buettig so far.
He and Warren lead the field for me at this time.
On verra.

I'm a massive fan of The West Wing, and am listening to a podcast called The West Wing Weekly. They have been going for a few years now and re-watch then discuss each episode of the show. It's hosted by Josh Malina, who was in The West Wing, and Hrishy Hirway (who hosted Song Exploder).

Aaanyway, they have interviewed Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Buttizhiezh interestingly - no hard "g"). He does seem like a very thoughtful, measured guy. He discusses the West Wing episode where Santos first starts campaigning in New Hampshire. 

He seems to be raising decent funds too - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/07/cory-booker-fundraising-new-hampshire-pete-buttigieg

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/01/politics/pete-buttigieg-fundraising-2020/index.html

16 days later

Buttigieg is awful. An upper-class, humble-bragging careerist with no legitimate policy proposals who pretends to be religious and attracts the wealthy with his value-based double-speak and his covert realism-by-way-of-moderation critiques of the more progressive challengers.

Can't stand him.

Problem is that the Democratic Party as a whole prefer mainstream candidates who aren't for any real change. Don't rock the boat candidates, because at the top the Democratic Party isn't all that interested in change.

I find it mind boggling that you can have hugely popular issues among the citizens of the USA such as Medicare for all, free college, gun restrictions - and yet it seems impossible to vote for a party which will implement these policies. There are only two parties ffs!

Because its private interests lining their pockets. Do you think they'd get paid a fortune to go and talk to a room full of Wall St cunts if they'd implemented policies that favour normal people over the interests of big business?

Well, that is the problem, yes. But the electorate for some reason keep electing the same type of candidates over and over. It shouldn't really be THAT hard to be elected in the US running on 'no corporate money', 'Medicare for all', 'free college', and 'gun restrictions'. In theory. Since a majority of the American population are actually FOR those things.
I get that you can run on those issues and then do nothing, or very little, but it IS astounding how many politicians who keep doing shit like that and still get re-elected time and time again.

Is that really that special about the US? Sure American politics are especially reprehensible and blatant but people around the globe vote against their own interests, in the EU especially. Only reason it's not as bad here as it is there is historical achievements during the post war era, since the 70s at least it's one piece of shit conservative/faux progressive government fucking over the vast majority of the population after another. Whether its Thatcher or Blair, Chirac or Macron, Kohl or Schröder literally everyone of them has always backed and served the interests of industries and banks over that of the people.

Same problems and same reasons. At least in the US they have the excuse that its a closed 2 horse contest.

Rex wrote:

Well, that is the problem, yes. But the electorate for some reason keep electing the same type of candidates over and over. It shouldn't really be THAT hard to be elected in the US running on 'no corporate money', 'Medicare for all', 'free college', and 'gun restrictions'. In theory. Since a majority of the American population are actually FOR those things.
I get that you can run on those issues and then do nothing, or very little, but it IS astounding how many politicians who keep doing shit like that and still get re-elected time and time again.

I wonder if it would be different if everyone had to vote? Would parties then feel more obliged to stand for the things that the majority support?

13 days later