Thursday Open Thread | Bernie Sanders: Treating All People With Respect and Dignity

Posted on April 28, 2016 by SouthernGirl2

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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58 Responses to Thursday Open Thread | Bernie Sanders: Treating All People With Respect and Dignity

  1. eliihass says:
    April 29, 2016 at 2:17 am

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BErXBXdNwMn/

    My FLOTUS…awwww…

    She’s the original hugger…the one who started it all..the one who hugs with all of her heart…

    She started what has now become a thing with folks who always thought it was beneath them to mingle with the plebs …And now every public figure goes a-hugging to show that they are relatable and down with the people…

    But nobody will ever hug so genuinely like her…She’s the original…often imitated…never duplicated…

    Reply
  3. eliihass says:
    April 29, 2016 at 2:07 am

    There goes my FLOTUS being all spot on and brilliant and inspiring and right on as usual…

    Reply
  4. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 4:28 pm

    Trump’s Women Problems

    Married women, who turned out for Mitt Romney over Obama by 53 percent to 46 percent, have an overwhelmingly negative view of Trump. Seventy percent of them view Trump unfavorably, according to Purple Slice online poll conducted by Purple Strategies for Bloomberg Politics and released earlier this month. Married women choose Clinton over Trump 48 percent to 36 percent. (The married female vote would be split 43-to-43 percent if Clinton was facing Cruz, according to the poll.)

    “There’s a 21-point gap between where [Trump] is and where he needs to be just to match Romney, who lost,” Douglas Usher, a pollster for Purple Strategies, told TPM.

    An early April Democracy Corps poll conducted for the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund found numbers not quite as ugly but still troubling for Trump. He beat Clinton among married women, but by only 3 percentage points. Meanwhile, Clinton slaughtered him among unmarried women 73 percent to 21 percent.

    “Married women are supporting Trump by a slight margin and unmarried women are giving Hillary Clinton a 52-point advantage. That’s huge,” said Page Gardner, president of the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-clinton-women-problems

    Reply
  6. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 4:14 pm

    I love this show. Did anyone watch last night.

    here’s a snippett

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    UH HUH

    UH HUH

    found this in the POU twitter feed:

    1 Shocking Statistic Exposes Chicago’s Racial Divide

    By Tom McKay April 28, 2016

    What do 94% of the people who donated to embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign in 2015 have in common?

    They’re all white.

    Amid controversies over cuts to public services and education in disproportionately poor and minority neighborhoods, and months before suspicions over the mayor’s role in suppressing inquiries into the police killing of 17-year-old black teenager Laquan McDonald became a major controversy, Emanuel was financing his $24.4 million campaign almost exclusively via white people, a new study finds.

    About 94% of donors to Emanuel’s campaign were white, even though white people comprise just 39% of Chicago’s total population, according to the new report, from progressive think tank Demos. Emanuel’s donors almost entirely (84%) gave large contributions of $1,000 or more. A staggering 80% of his donors had an annual income of at least $100,000 or more, despite just 15% of Chicagoans making six figures.

    “What’s so extraordinary about the Chicago donor class is for such a diverse city to have such a white donor class,” study author and Demos policy analyst Sean McElwee said in an email. “Though data are still preliminary, Emanuel’s donor class does appear whiter than the other mayors of diverse cities I’ve examined.”

    Additionally, just 36% of Emanuel’s donors actually lived in the city of Chicago.

    Reply
  8. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    Had never heard about this before:

    April 27, 2016 12:30 PM

    The “Grand Bargain” That Saved Detroit

    By Robin D. Ferriby

    On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. Almost three months later, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, the chief mediator appointed to midwife a settlement between the city of Detroit and its creditors, was coming to grips with the magnitude of the city’s fiscal crisis.

    Without a massive infusion of cash or selling the city’s few assets, Detroit’s retirees faced a devastating loss of pension and health care benefits. Already the city’s emergency manager had engaged the auction firm Christie’s to appraise the most saleable masterpieces in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). None of the museum’s city-owned treasures – not even the Van Goghs and Renoirs – were off the table.

    Judge Rosen saw a global settlement of stakeholders’ claims as the only alternative to a protracted courtroom battle that would further deplete the city’s resources. But devising a settlement that would also protect the city’s art and its workers’ pensions looked unlikely, unless Rosen and his team of mediators could locate additional funding.

    On a crisp afternoon in October 2013, Rosen ran into Mariam Noland, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s president, at the nearby Gateway Deli where they were both grabbing a quick lunch. “If I can help in any way,” she said, “please let me know.”

    As a matter of fact, there was something she could do, he said, in a follow-up phone call. When Mariam arrived at his chambers in Detroit’s ornate federal courthouse, he outlined his plan.

    Later, back in our office across the street, Mariam related what Rosen needed: $500 million from foundations. “I’ve got to get a few people on the phone,” she said.

    Reply
  9. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 2:39 pm

    But but but…

    They LOVE him…right?

    ……………………

    Hispanic Voter Registration Spikes

    Registration among Hispanic voters is skyrocketing in a presidential election cycle dominated by Donald Trump and loud GOP cries to close the border.

    Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials, projects 13.1 million Hispanics will vote nationwide in 2016, compared to 11.2 million in 2012 and 9.7 million in 2008.

    Many of those new Hispanic voters are also expected to vote against Trump if he is the Republican nominee, something that appears much more likely after the front-runner’s sweeping primary victories Tuesday in five East Coast states.

    A whopping 80 percent of respondents in a poll of registered Hispanic voters in Colorado and Nevada said Trump’s views on immigration made them less likely to vote for Republicans in November. In Florida, that number was 68 percent.

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 2:27 pm

    Trailer out for the Early Obamas Movie

    https://youtu.be/erpUF2ToUls

    Reply
  12. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    4.28.16 12:00 AM ET
    U.S. Special Ops Kill 40 ISIS Operatives Responsible for Attacks From Paris to Egypt

    Delta Force and Navy SEALs have crippled the group’s ability to recruit foreign fighters and put pressure on the network responsible for striking Europe and Africa.
    As the self-proclaimed Islamic State trumpets its global terrorist campaign, U.S. special operations forces have quietly killed more than three dozen key ISIS operatives blamed for plotting deadly attacks in Europe and beyond.

    Defense officials tell The Daily Beast that U.S. special operators have killed 40 “external operations leaders, planners, and facilitators” blamed for instigating, plotting, or funding ISIS’s attacks from Brussels and Paris to Egypt and Africa.

    That’s less than half the overall number of ISIS targets that special operators have taken off the battlefield, one official explained, including top leaders like purported ISIS second-in-command Haji Imam, killed in March.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/28/u-s-kills-isis-operatives-linked-to-europe-attacks.html

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 1:49 pm

    I love these pictures:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BEvoxokL278/

    Reply
  18. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 1:44 pm

    Trump wants to take ‘the woman card’ off the table
    04/28/16 12:49 PM
    By Steve Benen
    Following this week’s primaries, the 2016 presidential general election is, after more than a year of campaigning, coming into focus. It’s not yet a done deal in either party, but odds are, Donald Trump will face Hillary Clinton in the fall. What’s less clear is what Trump intends to do about it.

    In recent months, the Republican frontrunner has prioritized insulting labels for his rivals, hoping to define them quickly in voters’ eyes. Jeb Bush was “low energy”; Ted Cruz is “Lying Ted”; Marco Rubio became “Little Marco”; and so on. Trump’s message about the Democratic frontrunner is still taking shape, but he’s clearly begun trying out some lines of attack.

    “If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump declared Tuesday night. The “only card she has is the woman’s card,” the Republican frontrunner added. On NBC this morning, Trump stuck to the line.
    A day after his chief rival picked a woman as a running mate, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump defended comments he made about Hillary Clinton playing “the woman card” saying the Democrat couldn’t even win a local election if she were a man.

    “The primary thing that she has going is that she’s a woman and she’s playing that card like I have never seen anybody play it before,” he said Thursday on TODAY.
    Co-host Savannah Guthrie noted, “But Mr. Trump, for you to say, ‘If she were not a woman, she would be getting 5 percent’ suggests the only thing she has going for her is that she’s a woman – not that she was a former senator, a former Secretary of State and a lawyer. Do you understand why people find that to be a kind of demeaning comment?”

    Trump was unfazed. “No, I find it to be a true comment,” he replied. “I think the only thing she’s got going is the fact that she’s a woman.”

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 1:31 pm

    Because, this is who they are.

    ……………………

    House Republicans Want to Diminish Number of Free and Reduced Lunches for Millions of Low-income Students
    April 28, 2016

    House Republicans are proposing legislation to increase eligibility criteria for schools with free and reduced lunch programs. Rep. Todd Rotika (R-IN), chairman of the subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, introduced The Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 on April 20. If enacted, the bill could leave millions of students who rely on the program as their only source of nutrition without a daily meal.

    Black students in low-income areas are likely to suffer the biggest impact of the legislation.

    The new bill specifically restricts community eligibility, introduced in 2010 as an option for schools in extremely impoverished areas to bypass the long application process, getting meals to needy students as quickly as possible at no cost to families.

    Students in schools previously accepted through community eligibility will now have to reapply as individuals, reinstating the loads of paperwork schools sought to avoid.

    Reply
  20. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 12:55 pm

    Is the U.S. Ready for Post-Middle-Class Politics?

    …………………………………………………..
    In one sense, what had happened was obvious. The postwar suburbs in general had been a racial fortress, their homogeneity enforced by a web of government policies and unofficial restrictions making it difficult for nonwhites to own property in them, and few more so than Detroit’s. The white ex-­Democrats whom Greenberg’s team interviewed, he later wrote, “expressed a profound distaste for black Americans, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything they thought about government and politics. Blacks constituted the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that had gone wrong in their lives; not being black was what constituted being middle class.”

    Still, Greenberg noted, Macomb voters had not defected en masse from the Democratic Party until after years of worsening economic circumstances — and until they perceived the Democrats as not only having taken up the banner of the urban poor and nonwhites but also having abandoned the white middle class. “These voters wondered why they weren’t the central drama of the Democratic Party,” Greenberg wrote. Greenberg suggested that Democrats offer a kind of grand bargain to the white middle-­class voters he called “Reagan Democrats”: The Democrats would reinstate the middle class as the gravitational center of the party’s economic policy if those voters accepted an expanded definition of who was included in the middle class.

    Among the Democrats who took Greenberg’s advice was Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who used the Macomb study as the playbook for his 1992 presidential campaign, which he built around the theme of “the forgotten middle class.” Speaking to voters in Macomb County in March 1992, he offered a near-­verbatim recitation of Greenberg’s proposal: “The one thing that it’s going to take to bring this country together is somebody’s got to come back to the so-­called Reagan Democratic area and say: ‘Look, I’ll give you your values back. I’ll restore the economic leadership, I’ll help you build the middle class back.’ But you’ve got to say, ‘O.K., let’s do it with everybody in this country.’ ”

    Reply
  23. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 10:36 am

    Because I’ve been humming this tune all morning….

    Reply
  25. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 10:16 am

    The Increasing Irrelevance of the Congressional Black Caucus
    The group has failed to connect with young voters, which is not a good sign for its future.

    On January 25, 1972, Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, announced her candidacy for president in a stump speech that sounded very much like those of today’s presidential candidates. She told the Brooklyn crowd, “I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests. I stand here now without endorsements from many big name politicians or celebrities or any other kind of prop.” She also stood there without the support of the Congressional Black Caucus, which she helped found the previous year. The reason? Some of the CBC’s members thought Chisholm’s focus on gender and outreach to other groups subverted the caucus’s mission and explicit focus on race.

    Four decades later, Representative Donna Edwards sought to become the first black senator from Maryland and only the second black woman ever elected to the body. Like Chisholm, she also did not enjoy the explicit support of the CBC. Edwards confronted CBC members, and they cited her “difficult nature” and failure to establish good relationships as reasons for not endorsing her. On Tuesday, Edwards lost her bid for the Senate seat in a close primary race that may have turned out differently if she’d received the endorsement from more members of the nation’s most powerful body of black legislators.

    Among young African Americans, there is a growing sense that there are significant generational differences with the CBC and that the organization may have lost its conscience. Hillary Clinton has taken heat for the 1994 crime bill that led to the disproportionate incarceration of black people, but the bill was only assured passage once the CBC withdrew its opposition. CBC members have clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters. And activists have criticized the CBC Political Action Committee, a separate but associated group, for the board’s ties to private prisons and big tobacco.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/congressional-black-caucus-donna-edwards-black-lives-matter/480180/?utm_content=bufferdea35&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

    Reply
  30. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:51 am

    BWA HA HA HA

    Cruz and Fiorina Hope to Steal a Few Delegates in Tanzayneeah
    Posted by: Helen Philpot | April 28, 2016

    Margaret, I am not running for President, so I have picked you to be my running mate. Don’t laugh, darling. We have a better chance of winning than Carly and Ted. And God help me, I hope we have a better chance than Trump and his running mate Huge Ego.

    If you plan to vote for a Republican this year, please consider eating glass instead. Between assaults at Trump rallies, lies about Planned Parenthood and debates about penis size, haven’t we all had enough? After all, the worst thing that happened on the Democratic side this year was when Bernie Sanders told Hillary Clinton to stay off his lawn.

    Seventeen clowns ran for the Republican nomination and although we are down to three, they all keep coming back. Chris Christie and Ben Carson went away and Trump brought them back. Carly Fiorina went away and Ted Cruz brought her back. John Kasich went away and… No. Wait. Why hasn’t John Kasich gone away?

    more here:
    https://margaretandhelen.com/2016/04/28/cruz-and-fiorina-hope-to-steal-a-few-delegates-in-tanzayneeah/

    Reply
  32. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:41 am

    Cruz & Carly

    CREEP & CREEPIER

    Reply
  33. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:20 am

    McCain fundraiser arrested in meth-lab bust in Phoenix

    A John McCain fundraiser was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of drug charges after Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies found an active meth lab and other illicit drugs while conducting a search warrant at her north-central Phoenix home.

    A woman listed as the RSVP contact for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s re-election fundraisers was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of drug charges after Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies found an active meth lab and other illicit drugs while conducting a search warrant at her north-central Phoenix home, officials said.

    The Sheriff’s Office identified one of two people arrested in the drug bust as 34-year-old Emily Pitha, a former member of the staff of retired U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who most recently worked on GOP campaign fundraising.

    McCain’s campaign manager, Ryan O’Daniel, issued this response Tuesday night:

    “We commend the hard work and dedication of our law enforcement officers in their fight to keep our community safe from illegal drugs and associated criminal activity. The campaign immediately terminated any relationship with Ms. Pitha upon learning of her alleged involvement in the operation.”

    A Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman said authorities were first alerted to possible drug activity at Pitha’s Phoenix home by a parcel in transit from the Netherlands containing over 250 grams of MDMA – raw ecstasy. Detective Doug Matteson, the MCSO spokesman, said Pitha’s boyfriend, 36-year-old Christopher Hustrulid, signed for the packaged when it arrived at their doorstep Tuesday afternoon

    http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-breaking/2016/04/27/mccain-fundraiser-arrested-meth-lab-bust-phoenix/83575352/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:15 am

    And the Democrats don’t run on this because??????

    ……………

    U.S. Jobless Claims Hover Near Lowest Level in Four Decades
    April 28, 2016 — 8:30 AM EDT

    Jobless claims last week hovered around four-decade lows, showing the labor market remains the strongest part of the U.S. economy.

    Initial applications for unemployment benefits climbed by 9,000 to 257,000 in the week ended April 23, a report from the Labor Department showed Thursday in Washington. The prior week’s revised 248,000 claims were the fewest since 1973.

    The low level of firings indicates companies are optimistic about prospects for demand after a soft first quarter. Continued progress in the labor market that’s accompanied by accelerating wage growth will be needed to help prop up consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      April 28, 2016 at 9:23 am

      C’mon, now RIk. The Dems don’t want to RUN on PBO’s record of cleaning up a mess from the Bush administration.

      They’d rather pretend like there’s sooooooo much work to do, once the BLACK GUY, leaves office., ICE WATER BEING COLDER and ALL.

      Reply
  35. Ametia says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:06 am

    Vice President Biden makes unannounced trip to Iraq, his first since 2011

    The trip comes as Iraqi forces, with the assistance of the U.S. military, are laying the groundwork for an attempt to retake the city of Mosul from the terror group ISIS.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-makes-unannounced-trip-to-iraq-his-first-since-2011/2016/04/28/7c1ea1f6-0d0f-11e6-a6b6-2e6de3695b0e_story.html

    Reply
  36. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 9:00 am

    Found at POU:

    Miranda Mod
    This is a passage from the New York Times Magazine interview with PBO that’s out today – PBO on why even though the economy is humming along, a lot of people still think its horrible:

    But the president did seem frustrated. As he tried to sum up his economic legacy in Florida, our discussion stretched to twice as long as planned, seemingly to the consternation of the Secret Service. When we got back on Air Force One, he sent an aide to ask if we could continue the conversation; when I joined him again, he looked as if he’d been stewing over something. He quickly returned to the topic of public perception. “If you ask the average person on the streets, ‘Have deficits gone down or up under Obama?’ probably 70 percent would say they’ve gone up,” Obama said, with some justifiable exasperation — the deficit has in fact declined (by roughly three-quarters) since he took office, and polls do show that a large majority of Americans believe the opposite.

    Obama is animated by a sense that, looking at the world around him, the U.S. economy is in much better shape than the public appreciates, especially when measured against the depths of the financial crisis and the possibility — now rarely even considered — that things could have been much, much worse. Over a series of conversations in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in Florida, Obama analyzed, sometimes with startling frankness, nearly every element of his economic agenda since he came into office. His economy has certainly come further than most people recognize. The private sector has added jobs for 73 consecutive months — some 14.4 million new jobs in all — the longest period of sustained job growth on record. Unemployment, which peaked at 10 percent the year Obama took office, the highest it had been since 1983, under Ronald Reagan, is now 5 percent, lower than when Reagan left office. The budget deficit has fallen by roughly $1 trillion during his two terms. And overall U.S. economic growth has significantly outpaced that of every other advanced nation.

    Gene Sperling, the former director of the National Economic Council who spent hours inside the Oval Office debating and devising the president’s economic strategy, told me, “If we were back in early 2009 — when we were coming to work every morning with clenched stomachs, with the economy losing 800,000 jobs a month and the Dow under 7,000 — and someone said that by your last year in office, unemployment would be 5 percent, the deficit would be under 3 percent, AIG would have turned a profit and we made all our money back on the banks, that would’ve been beyond anybody’s wildest expectations.”

    There are, of course, many reasons so few Americans seem to be celebrating. “How people feel about the economy,” Obama told me, giving one part of his own theory, is influenced by “what they hear.” He went on: “And if you have a political party — in this case, the Republicans — that denies any progress and is constantly channeling to their base, which is sizable, say, 40 percent of the population, that things are terrible all the time, then people will start absorbing that.”

    Reply
  37. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 8:40 am

    “Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

    — Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the Stanford Daily, on Sen. Ted Cruz.

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 8:33 am

    lips pursed.

    …………………………..

    Alabama Secretary Of State Says Confederates Fought For A ‘Special’ Way Of Life

    BY ALICE OLLSTEIN
    APR 27, 2016 4:22 PM

    Alabama is currently celebrating Confederate Heritage Month with a state-wide holiday and a series of public events aimed at remembering and honoring those who fought on the side of southern, slave-owning states during the Civil War. At one such event this week, organized by the Ladies’ Memorial Association, Alabama’s Secretary of State John Merrill lamented recent calls to remove Confederate symbols from government buildings.

    “The next question that has to be asked is so what’s the next thing you are going to do,” he asked, “are you going to take a bulldozer to the monument and forget what people fought for to preserve a way of life that makes us special and unique?”

    Civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, slammed the remark as “shameful.” But in a follow-up conversation with ThinkProgress, Merrill explained that the “way of life” he celebrates is based on Confederate soldiers’ independent spirit, not their advocacy for slavery.

    Reply
    • Liza says:
      April 28, 2016 at 9:10 am

      “…are you going to take a bulldozer to the monument and forget what people fought for to preserve a way of life that makes us special and unique?”

      Yes, that would be the right thing to do. The Nazis could say the same thing, that they fought for a “way of life” that made them special and unique. In a very bad way, of course, that’s why there aren’t any monuments in Europe that glorify them. Next question….

      Reply
  39. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 8:22 am

    Wow…
    Just Wow.

    …………………..

    Oklahoma court: oral sex is not rape if victim is unconscious from drinking

    The ruling sparked outrage among critics who argue the judicial system engaged in victim-blaming and upholding outdated notions about rape and sexual assault

    An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.

    The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state’s criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape.

    But legal experts and victims’ advocates said they viewed the ruling as a sign of something larger: the troubling gaps that still exist between the nation’s patchwork of laws and evolving ideas about rape and consent.

    Reply
  41. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 8:10 am

    My soul still hurts from last night’s Underground.

    Reply
  42. rikyrah says:
    April 28, 2016 at 6:16 am

    Good Morning 😊, Everyone 😎

    Reply

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