Hillary Clinton Archives - Page 4 of 5

Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton?

I’ve signed Bernie Sanders’ petition to get on the ballot in New York State in April.

A couple of days ago, Doug Muder at the Weekly Sift said he was undecided who he’d vote for in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary next week, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. He provided a fair assessment of both candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

What I have tired of in this campaign has been the major liberal pundits’ case against Bernie Sanders, “urging citizens to ignore their conscience.” The idea of supporting Sanders is neither stupid nor unrealistic.

I think Robert Reich said it best: “Clinton would make the president for the country we have now. Sanders would make the best president for the country we want to have.” And he’s been at it for a long time. Check out this Doonesbury comic from 1981.

Someone on Facebook – sorry, I’ve forgotten who wrote:

I’m getting tired of all these “thoughtful” pundits who claim that Sanders just can’t win and that he’ll never get anything done that he wants to do, etc. If they are trying to get folks to switch to Hillary, they’re doing it all wrong. All they are doing is pissing Sanders supporters (and those who are not totally decided) off. It’s a stupid strategy, unless it’s right wing trolls who want Sanders supporters to stay home if he loses. You want people to get behind Hillary? Fine. Convince me. Don’t bash Sanders.

I like the America ad – what can I say?

Yes, there is some Hillary-bashing from some Bernie people, but it’s a different argument, and in any case, not one I’ve ever made. If the Republican candidate is Ted Cruz, winner of the Iowa caucus, or Donald Trump, likely winner of the New Hampshire primary, or Marco Rubio, waiting for those two to collapse, or actually all the remaining GOP candidates, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Democratic nominee, know that I will surely vote for her.

But the primary, I think, means voting with one’s heart. I’ve signed Bernie’s petition to get on the ballot in New York State in April. Barring some unforeseen circumstances, that’s who I’ll be voting for this spring.

July rambling #2: Northwest disasters and Taxman v. Batman

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Stadiums, a ripoff for taxpayers; bail; and poisonous mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Laci Green (no relation): Systemic Racism for Dummies.

Muslim Groups Step In To Help Black Churches Burned In Wave Of Arson.

Why it’s never ‘the right time’ to discuss gun control.

Wil Wheaton: living with depression and anxiety.

Jeff Sharlet: I went to Skid Row to report on Charly “Africa” Keunang, “an unarmed homeless man held down and shot six times by Los Angeles police. I had to get to know the people of whom I was asking these questions.”

Conquering 100 fears, one at a time.

‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen.

Of all people, Jimmy Kimmel on Cecil the lion I was also hoping it wasn’t an ugly American.

Jaquandor: Keeping Ahead of the Smiths: Random Thoughts on the Minimum Wage.

Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It. “Losing another hour of evening daylight isn’t just annoying. It’s an economically harmful policy with minimal energy savings.”

12 Lost American Slangisms From The 1800s. Slangisms?

An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when. Obviously, in response, a dildo epidemic hits Portland (OR) power lines.

Cousin Lisa discovers Finding Friends Through a Shared Vision.

Patti LuPone Offers Five Rules of Theatre Etiquette, Starting with “Respect”. 1, 2, and 5 also apply to the movies.

Ringo Starr turned 75 this month. Other drummers talk about him, from Ringo’s 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame presentation on HBO, plus Ringo Reveals The Secret Of His Distinctive Rhythm from CONAN on TBS, 2012.

“For half a century, Beach Boys songs have promised unending summers of fun in the sun — not at all like the life founding Beach Boy Brian Wilson actually led for many years.”

Woodstock 69: The Lost Performances. The Band, Canned Heat, Joan Baez, Crosby Stills Nash, Janis Joplin, Melanie.

Amy has resharpened her poetry pencil: Bossa (Getz, Gilberto, Jobim).

SamuraiFrog’s Weird Al countdown: 30-21.

The Beatles’ Taxman Vs. the Batman theme song (Mashup). Yes, The music of the Harrison piece was inspired by the theme song for the popular 1960s TV series.

God Bless America, sung by John Wayne, the cast of Bonanza, Rowan & Martin, and many others, some of them actual singers.

Evanier didn’t like the movie version of Driving Miss Daisy but linked to the new Angela Lansbury-James Earl Jones version on PBS.

“Loosen the Ties and Put Some Sweat on Them”: 12 Angry Men (1957).

Ken Levine writes a spec Dick van Dyke Show script, found in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Levine’s snarky response to the reader feedback, DVDS writer Bill Persky’s comments, and Levine’s final thoughts.

Happy 75th Birthday, Alex Trebek! His 6 Funniest Moments on Jeopardy!

Speaking of natal days, the claim that “Happy Birthday to You,” a song written in 1893, is somehow under copyright until 2030, is very likely hooey.

Chuck Miller on Reading the movie Ant-Man. It seems that ADD enjoyed the film.

The Unknown Assistant of Carl Barks.

Just Another Day at Hanna-Barbera.

Now I Know: Why Do Coupons Have a Cash Value of a Fraction of a Cent? and The Big Bang Theory, in Theory and Pop Goes the Kernel and Control-Alt-Delete.

When did I become “that” neighbor?

Muppets: Rain fall and Federal Housing Administration ads and The Muppet Show opening, in German, and, most importantly, the 10-minute pitch reel for the ABC TV show coming this fall.

This is troubling: I remember the lyrics to theme of The Real McCoys, a TV show I haven’t seen in well over 40 years.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

Arthur@AmeriNZ answers my questions about closeted gay performers, in a different era, and flags and national discussions and candidates for US President, with a specific Hillary scenario.

The Renaissance Geek was complaining about what he thought was a boring post, so I asked him a question. This turned into THE FIRST EVER ASK EDDIE ANYTHING!

SamuraiFrog likes But It’s Alright, too.

Jaquandor on Neil Simon on how to finish a day’s work. He also tells bad jokes.

The C-word and other things that bother me

I’m not a big fan of Joni Ernst, the recently-elected US Senator from Iowa, who gave the Republican response to President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. IMNSHO, she has some wacky ideas, and is a bit of a hypocrite.

Still, I got extremely irritated when I saw her referred to online as a “stupid c@#!”. The “stupid” part, frankly, didn’t bother me all that much, but the reduction of a woman to a body part, using a term not historically used in civil conversation, really got me enraged.

And I see it a lot, when some comment about women whose views they don’t share: former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK), former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY), former Presidential contender Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), or Holly Hobby Lobby, among others.

It’s not dissimilar to saying of a black person, whose ideas that you disagree with, is a “stupid n@#$%!”, suggesting the stupidity comes from his or her blackness. But the C-word infuriates me more because, while most decent people will call out obvious racism, some (comedian Bill Maher, I’m talking about YOU) seem to justify their sexism because they’re “comedians” or “commentators” or some other BS.

An obituary for COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best-selling author, was a piece of work. “Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth.”

Speaking of condescending: US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) shushes CNBC reporter Kelly Evans during an interview. If he decides to run for President, his opponents should run this clip repeatedly.

Female veteran finds a nasty note on her car after parking in ‘reserved for veterans’ spot, because only men go to war these days.

Male professors are brilliant, awesome, and knowledgeable. Women are bossy and annoying, and beautiful or ugly.

The best thing about the SONY hack – Exposing the pay gap between male and female stars.

The War On Women 2015 in the US. Of course, it could be worse: No Pardon – Young Woman To Serve 30 Years For Miscarriage in El Salvador. Oh, wait: Indiana Convicts Its First Pregnant Person of ‘Feticide’.

Helpful political observations

I shall not vote for a climate denier.

My current working theory is that people write and say amazingly silly things in the political arena, most of which I can safely ignore.

For instance, former congressman Allen West (R-FL) writes all sorts of crazy in his new book. But after listening to him long enough, I know just to tune out everything that comes from his mouth. (My friend Dan sent me this: “It’s like I always say: would you send lamb chops to recruit sheep? Then don’t send black Republicans to recruit black people.”)

There’s some silly stuff about Hillary Clinton orchestrating Vanity Fair’s article with Monica Lewinsky, the young intern who had a dalliance with Bill Clinton while he was President because she wants the piece about one of the most humiliating periods of her life dredged up again over 15 YEARS AFTER THE FACT so people can forget about it again by 2016. (Wha?)

Blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove ahave become comedy fodder for The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

Whereas I hear about the west Antarctic ice sheet’s collapse, which triggered a sea-level warning of about four meters (c. 13 feet) in the coming century or so, an “unstoppable” process. And Marco Rubio, another Florida Republican, decided that all those scientists that tell us that it is human activity that is in large part behind the rapid acceleration of the planet’s temperature. John Oliver explains, in NSFW language, why this is rubbish.

Since Rubio is running for President and has a good a chance as any of getting his party’s nod – 2014 poll numbers are meaningless – I need to pay attention to what he has to say. I must conclude, therefore that either 1) he believes that all this warming is from natural fluctuations, and he’s planet-threateningly wrong, or 2) he doesn’t but is saying he does because he wants to appeal to certain citizens who vote in the Republican primaries. In either case, this issue alone is enough to make me feel that he is not worthy of the office of President, and I shall not vote for him, or any other climate denier.

I have a daughter who will inherit this mess.

Bellowing about Blogger

I do understand the ire. My complaint with the new Blogger is not that it’s new. It’s the fact that it’s new and largely unimproved, with changes that were not at all intuitive.

Even though this blog is in WordPress, most of the other blogs I write or co-write are on Blogger. I stayed in Old Blogger as long as possible – when I briefly switched, about two months ago, I admit to being a tad confused, and switched back almost immediately – but now, all the blogs have the New Blogger board.

My intern at work was having fits. For everything she wrote, there were no page breaks. So I finally sat down and actually looked at the post settings, on the right of the screen. The bottom button gives one the option to either add page breaks – tiresome and tedious, and the default setting – or Press ENTER for line breaks, which is what I had always done. It was my major problem besides the Post Settings box seeming to jump to the left and right, opposite whatever direction I pointed the cursor; still annoying. But not enough to mention. But that Send Feedback button in the bottom right of the screen – is there any way to get RID OF IT?

Oh, and someone else was having difficulty I was not, which was getting to the editing page of the posts.

So I was humored by the fact that SamuraiFrog was complaining that people were complaining about Blogger; terribly meta. I was amused because I hadn’t seen any complaints at that point. THEN Ken Levine expressed his displease with Blogger (and Facebook, and rightly so); I did, though, solved one of his frustrations, and he thanked me in the comments. Dustbury cites Roberta X’s disdain. Demeur got so ticked off that he gave Blogger the middle finger and started a WordPress blog.

I do understand the ire. My complaint with the new Blogger is not that it’s new. It’s the fact that it’s new and largely unimproved, with changes that were not at all intuitive.

Something that REALLY annoys me on the Internet are those lists where you have to click on a dozen or more pages to get to “the Answer”. One of them Jaquandor pointed to, the ranking of Stephen King’s books. At least the slideshow goes five books at a time, but there seems to be no book at all in 2nd place.

Now this a good and proper thing to do. That Texts from Hillary page has hung it up.

“As far as memes go – it has gone as far as it can go. Is it really possible to top a submission from the Secretary herself? No. But then when you get to text with her in real life – it’s just over. At least for us. But we have no doubt it will live on with all of you on the Internet.”