Elections

Four Out of Four Pollsters Lack a Clue

Thursday evening at the University of Virginia four expert pollsters performed a dramatic act of self-experimentation in which they demonstrated that, using a map and two hands, they would still be incapable of finding their ass.

The brave participants included Glenn Bolger who promotes and does polling for Republican senators, Congress members, and governors at Public Opinion Strategies; Courtney Kennedy who is director of survey research at Pew Research Center; Mark Mellman who promotes and does read more

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What Obama Did While You Were Watching Elections

Pass the popcorn! Wait till I tweet this! Did you see the look on his face?

Ain’t elections exciting? We just can’t get enough of them, which could be why we’ve stretched them out to a couple of years each, even though a small crowd of Super Delegates and a couple of state officials with computer skills could quite conceivably decide the whole thing anyway.

Through the course of this marvelous election thus far I’ve been trying to get any human being to ask any candidate read more

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Bankers, Preachers, and Fear of President Sanders

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new war in Libya, more war in Syria, permanent war in Afghanistan, climate change crashing over the cliff — these and other immediate disasters are pursued with one hand, while the magician’s other hand distracts us with caucuses, primaries, and super bowls. Remember when insiders said the TPP would die the moment it was made public? Well, what if it was made public during an election season? Bread and circuses, even in Rome, weren’t designed read more

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It's Hard Not to Be Sexist in Iowa

No, the cornfields are not full of dumb blondes (except when Fox News shows up), but it truly is hard not to be sexist in Iowa.

For example, I think it’s reprehensible to take tens of millions of dollars from murderous kingdoms and dictatorships and then waive restrictions on selling them weapons including the weapons that Saudi Arabia has been using to slaughter men, women, and children in Yemen. And this makes me a sexist, or so I’m told.

In my view, parroting every war lie of Bush read more

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Jill Stein's Platform More Viable Than Bernie's

By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

I asked Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein about her platform this week and came away believing it had a better chance of winning than Bernie Sanders’. I know that platforms don’t run, people do, and they do so within a two-party dominated system. But this already crazy presidential election could turn into a crazier five-way race. And, even if it doesn’t, or if it does but still nobody ever learns that Jill Stein exists, there read more

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Bernie v. Media

By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

Major corporate media outlets in the United States are reporting on a new viability for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, based on his rise in the polls nationally and in Iowa and New Hampshire — and possibly, though this goes largely unmentioned, based on his big new advertising purchases from major corporate media outlets. In independent progressive media as well, there’s a small flood of maybe-he-can-really-win articles.

Whether read more

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Berning Down Wall Street

I don’t know where this will end but every time I write about a book on Bernie Sanders, somebody sends me a larger one. At least my arms are getting stronger from lifting the things. One point is clear to me: if the media ever wanted to catch up on all the coverage of Bernie’s campaign that it has foregone, it could do it with a minimum-wage staffer reading aloud from books — reducing the need to find corporations opposed to oligarchy read more

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