US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

And arrest him for practicing medicine without a license.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm seeing a LOT of coverage of violence breaking out at Hog-calling contests allasudden, and the reporter lady who got manhandled by the campaign manager.  Does anyone know how unusual that actually is for a major polarizing presidential candidate?  I'm asking.

[Buster's Uncle]

It’s Time to Support Real Family Values
June 17, 2015 | by Bernie Sanders

 

The right has claimed the mantle of “family values” for far too long. When my Republican colleagues use the term they’re usually talking about things like opposition to contraception, denying a woman’s right to choose, opposition to gay rights, and support for abstinence-only education.


Family values: let’s talk about what those words mean.

When a mother can’t spend time with her newborn child during the first weeks and months of life, that is not a family value.

When a husband can’t get time off from work to care for his cancer-stricken wife, that is not a family value.

When a mother is forced to send her sick child to school because she can’t afford to stay home, that is not a family value.

When parents and children can’t spend any time on vacation together during the course of an entire year, that is not a family value.

In fact, these things are an attack on everything the family stands for.

When it comes to supporting real family values, the United States lags behind virtually every major country on earth. We are the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee its workers some form of paid family leave, paid sick leave or paid vacation time.

Or, to put that another way: Workers and families in every other major industrialized country in the get a better deal than we do here in the United States.

That’s wrong. It’s a travesty. And it should be an embarrassment to anyone who claims to speak for family values in this country.


Time for parents and children

It’s an outrage that millions of women in this country are forced back to work after giving birth, simply because they don’t have the income to stay home with their newborn babies.

Virtually every psychologist who has studied this issue agrees that the first weeks and months of life are enormously important to a newborn’s emotional and intellectual development. It’s understood that and fathers should spend this time bonding with the new person they have brought into the world.

The Family and Medical Leave Act we signed into law in 1993 is inadequate for the task. Today, according to the Department of Labor, nearly eight out of ten workers who are eligible to take time off under this law cannot do so because they can’t afford it. Even worse, 40 percent of American workers aren’t even eligible for this unpaid leave.

In my view, every worker in America should be guaranteed at least twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave. That’s why I am a proud cosponsor of the FAMILY Act, introduced by Senator Gillibrand, which does just that. Under this measure, every employee would receive twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave: to take care of a baby, to help a family member who has been diagnosed with cancer or another serious medical condition, or to care for themselves if they become seriously ill.

This would be funded through an insurance program, like Social Security. Workers would pay into it with every paycheck, at the price of roughly one cup of coffee per week. There is no reason not to pass this bill now.


Sick leave for all

We must also make sure that workers in this country have paid sick leave. It is insane that low-wage workers for companies like McDonald’s must work when they are sick just because they can’t afford to stay home.

That’s bad for the workers – and it’s also a public health issue.

The Healthy Families Act, introduced by Sen. Patty Murray, would fix that. It would guarantee seven days of paid sick leave per year for American workers. It would benefit 43 million Americans who don’t have access to paid sick leave today. It would also establish a minimum standard for employers who already do offer sick leave.


We need a vacation

Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. They are overworked, underpaid, and under enormous stress. Today 85 percent of working men and 66 percent of working women are working more than 40 hours a week. Millions of people are working incredible hours – some with two or three jobs – just trying to care for themselves and their families.

That is why I have introduced legislation which would require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation per year. This is already done in almost every country in the world. My proposal would allow workers to take two weeks of paid leave each year – to rest and recuperate, travel, visit loved ones, or simply spend time at home bonding with their families.

Companies like Virgin Group and Netflix have adopted generous paid vacation policies aimed at boosting productivity and increasing worker loyalty. But nearly one in four workers gets no paid vacation time at all.

Studies show that nine out of every ten Americans report that their happiest memories come from vacations. Vacations have been shown to reduce stress, strengthen family relationships, increase productivity, and even prevent illness.

American workers are being denied a benefit that workers in every other advanced economy already enjoy. Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand … we are the only nation that doesn’t require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation time.

There is no reason for that. Our country is every bit as prosperous as theirs – and it is prosperous because the men and women of this country work so hard.

I’m not asking for the most generous vacation policy in the world. This is nothing like what they get in France, Austria or Belgium. But I intend to push for a standard which befits a great nation.

There is no reason not to pass this bill. It would benefit workers while also helping employers, the economy, and society as a whole.


Real family values

Last place is no place for America. It is time to join the rest of the industrialized world and live up to our ideals by ensuring that every worker in this country has access to paid family leave, paid sick time and paid vacations – just like they do in every other wealthy country on the planet.

The next time you hear a politician talking about “family values,” you may want to ask whether they support measures which really help American families. These bills will help families spend more time together, in greater happiness and security.

Those are values every family can believe in.

https://berniesanders.com/time-to-support-real-family-values/

[Rusty Edge]

I'm seeing a LOT of coverage of violence breaking out at Hog-calling contests allasudden, and the reporter lady who got manhandled by the campaign manager.  Does anyone know how unusual that actually is for a major polarizing presidential candidate?  I'm asking.

I don't think it's the first time a reporter was manhandled. Isn't it the nature of reporters to seek access, and the nature of public figures to try to prevent it when they don't initiate it?  Those are the dynamics. The outcome was predictable in that atmosphere. The Leader sets the tone, just like the dirty tricks in the Cruz campaign. That said- the campaign manager should have been able to use his words instead of his hands to deal with a reporter. I hope he gets a criminal charge on his record/civil suit. Maybe The Leader will pull a Cruz move and fire him, and claim that's not the kind of person he is or campaign he is running. In the context of [Sleezebag]'s previous remarks to and  about women, it is the kind of campaign he is running. Same with regard to the protesters.

I was thinking about the protests. [Sleezebag] got something thrown at him at the last rally. Another was canceled. He was complaining about his right to free speech. The same guy who has a knee-jerk lawsuit threat to everybody who offers stinging public criticism. Respecting rights is a two-way street.

I don't know about comparisons with other political campaigns. I was at a Perot rally once. He didn't have Secret Service at the time. He did have private security. Texas Ranger types with hats, boots, and .45 long colts under their coats. They checked IDs and took a couple of people aside discretely. There wasn't any trouble. I take that back. There was a guy disrupting things during the speech, I forget which axe he was grinding, but it was out of context with the rally. Yelling about some third world genocide or something. Security showed him out quickly and quietly.

Certainly there were death threats, loose ammunition, etc. at Scott Walker protests, but those were essentially labor demonstrations, and get ugly by nature.

Near as I can recall, you'd have to go back to the war protests of the 1960s to find anything comparable at a series of political rallies.

[Buster's Uncle]

You know, my point is that I suspect it's a (well-deserved) sandbag on The Pig; Dr. Frankenstein chasing his monster into the arctic, the Pig-Tenders slaughtering their Hogzilla by reporting the truth, but reporting it a heck of a lot harder than they would otherwise - it's of a piece with the Hitler comparisons that have popped up lately.  I'm not criticizing them for it, having wondered aloud a few days ago what that mass media group mind was going to do to stop their creation, just pointing out that this is the current tactic and they clearly think it gets a lot more traction than previous tries.

Like, the first five articles on the Yahoo Politics page -which always leaves out more than it includes and typically adds about an article a day- today are about that same thing, as if nothing else important happened yesterday...

-After all, a substantial portion of the incidents Pig's getting smeared with is stuff his Secret Service detail does - and you know they don't take orders from him...

[Rusty Edge]

That family values speech was rather elegant.

I think it should become part of his stump speech. Maybe it is, but it's not getting news coverage. Oh, sure there are issues, ( such as Hey! maybe the reason millennials are working a couple of wait staff jobs plus another retail or service job is because Affordable care gave their employers unintentional incentives to reduce hours and hire more people, and forced them to work full time to cover their health insurance costs.) but the thrust of it is correct.

Two weeks paid vacation based upon average weekly earnings is reasonable. If they don't work very much, they won't get paid very much.

An insurance approach to medical leave? Isn't that what AFLAC offers? That should be a benchmark for the cost of the program.

Anyway, because I come from a large extended family, somebody is usually able to help out during the hospitalizations and medical recoveries. I see the value of it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yah; gub'ment, really and true, is inherently sloppy and greedy and dehumanizingly treats people as statistics instead of people - but there's things that work best collectively for all that, and it's just Christian for people to look out for each other...

[Rusty Edge]

Like this, the text in it's entirety. The actual piece has links and pictures to document some of the claims. -

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/donald-trumps-ideology-of-violence/ar-AAgHuPe?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=mailsignout


Donald [Sleezebag]'s ideology of violence   
Vox.com  by Ezra Klein  3 hrs ago

During a rally in St. Louis Friday, Donald [Sleezebag] lamented that "nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."

Yes, lamented.

The topic was protesters, and [Sleezebag]'s frustration was clear. "They're being politically correct the way they take them out," he sighed. "Protesters, they realize there are no consequences to protesting anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore."

"Our country has to toughen up folks. We have to toughen up. These people are bringing us down. They are bringing us down. These people are so bad for our country, you have no idea."

This is more than an aside; this is the core of [Sleezebag]'s ideology. The protesters who interrupted his rally, the political correctness that kept the police from cracking their skulls, the press that takes the hippies' side — this is why America has stopped being great. We were strong, and we were tough, and we didn't take this kind of s--- from anybody. And now we are weak, and we are scared, and we take this kind of s--- from everybody


How is a country that can't shut down a protester going to out-negotiate the Chinese? How is a country that that is so afraid of hurt feelings going to crush ISIS?

"We better toughen up, we better smarten up, and we better stop with this political correctness because it’s driving us down the tubes," [Sleezebag] said.

Hours after that speech, 32 people were arrested and several were injured as [Sleezebag]'s supporters clashed with anti-[Sleezebag] protesters and police. That night, [Sleezebag] had to cancel a rally in Chicago for safety reasons.

Violence is scary. But violence-as-ideology is terrifying. And that's where [Sleezebag]'s campaign has gone.

"Knock the hell out of them. I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise."

On February 1st, [Sleezebag] made a promise to an angry crowd. You protect me, he said, and I'll protect you. "If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Knock the hell out of them. I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise."

No one threw a tomato at that rally. But a few weeks later, Donald [Sleezebag] showed that he meant what he said — if you used force to protect him, he'd have your back.

[Sleezebag] was leaving a rally when Michelle Fields, a reporter for the [Sleezebag]-friendly Breitbart News, stepped forward to ask a question. Corey Lewandowski, Donald [Sleezebag]'s campaign manager, grabbed her by the arm and threw her out of the way. His grip was hard enough to leave bruises on her arm. The moment was witnessed by Ben Terris, a Washington Post reporter, and there's audio and video record of it.

There were simple ways [Sleezebag]'s campaign could have responded to this. Lewandowski could have apologized. He could have said Fields startled him, and he was protecting his candidate.


But this is the press we're talking about. "The most dishonest human beings on earth." No f------ way [Sleezebag] was going to back down to them.

"The accusation which has only been made in the media and never addressed directly with the campaign is entirely false," [Sleezebag]'s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement.

"Michelle Fields is an attention seeker," tweeted Lewandowski.

"This was, in my opinion, made up," [Sleezebag] himself said. "Everybody said nothing happened. Perhaps she made the story up. I think that's what happened."

Donald [Sleezebag] will pay your legal fees. He will believe your baldfaced lie. He is on your side against the protesters, the press, the losers who are bring America down. He knows things get rough sometimes. He's got your back.

"People who are following me are very passionate"

"The incidents are piling up," wrote Lucia Graves at the Guardian. "A Black Lives Matters protester was sucker-punched by a white bystander at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of individuals at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of men as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a [Sleezebag] supporter in Miami."

I would add another "incident" to Graves' list. Back in August, two young [Sleezebag] supporters, Scott and Steve Leader, were charged in the beating of a homeless Mexican man. They found him sleeping outside a subway station and began hitting him with a metal pole.

According to police, Scott Leader justified the assault by telling them, "Donald [Sleezebag] was right — all these illegals need to be deported."

Asked to react to the beating, [Sleezebag] said he had no knowledge of it, which would have been fine. But he didn't stop there. "I will say that people who are following me are very passionate," [Sleezebag] replied. "They love this country and they want this country to be great again."

"These are the people that are destroying our country"
The great mistake the media makes with Donald [Sleezebag] is to pretend he has no ideology — that he's just a celebrity, a carnival barker, a reality star.

As my colleague Matt Yglesias has written, [Sleezebag] does have an ideology. He does have an agenda. The core of Trumpism is "a revived and unapologetic American nationalism, which will stand for American interests abroad while defending the traditional conception of the American nation at home."

Like most nationalists, the emotional center of [Sleezebag]'s ideology is an Us vs. Them argument. "These are not the people who made our country great," [Sleezebag] told the crowd in St. Louis. "We're going to make it great again, but these are not the people. These are the people that are destroying our country."

The Us must somehow defeat the Them — and the stakes are high, the future of the greatest country the world has ever known depends on the outcome. This is why nationalistic, Us vs.Them appeals lend themselves so easily and naturally to violence.

This is what [Sleezebag] supporters hear at his rallies. They are told that America is no longer great. They are told who to blame. They are told that the reason these losers are dragging America down is we have become too politically correct, too scared, too weak, to stop them. They are told [Sleezebag] will pay their legal fees if they want to do what's necessary. "There used to be consequences," [Sleezebag] sighs. The crowd knows what he's asking. Make Consequences Real Again.

This is ugly, but it is coherent. What [Sleezebag] is offering is an explanation and a solution; an argument and an ideology. It is dangerous, and it is violent, but it is not confusing, and it is not unclear.

And this is why [Sleezebag] is something different and more dangerous in American life. He is a man with an evident appetite for suppressing dissent with violence, a man who believes America's problem is that it's too gentle to its dissidents. [Sleezebag] is making an argument for a politics backed by force, for a security service unleashed from "political correctness," for a country where protesting has consequences. The results are playing out before us, night after night, on our televisions.

If [Sleezebag] wins and this country goes down a dark path, we will never be able to say we didn't see it coming. We will never be able to say we weren't warned.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, you know it's not like I'm DEFENDING him - more like, I want it to be true so much that I doubt my judgment in the face of the Mass Media Group Mind being so motivated to make a big deal of it - and I definitely don't trust IT.

HE doesn't get to say "The most dishonest human beings on earth" about ANYone, though.

[Rusty Edge]

He who lives by the media dies by the media.

The Leader got a free pass on these sham press conferences. They should have stopped coverage, unless he was buying airtime, or holding a legitimate press conference.

But it started well before that. NBC dropped his show for his remarks about Mexicans. But as soon as he's running for president, he's the lead-off story every night on the news.  The network is having it both ways.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the first debate was held, the moderators  questioned The Leader's sincerity and loyalty as a Republican, then pressured him and the other candidates to pledge support to the eventual party nominee, precluding an end run in the fall as an independent/3rd party.

Now it's coming back to bite them. Candidates can keep their word, and remain loyal to a party who's marquee man is becoming a blatant nationalist autocrat. Or they can become oathbreakers.
They can't decide which is worse .

It's as if the candidates are crewing the Pequod, and the republicans find themselves  living on the Animal Farm.

[Buster's Uncle]

...Apparently nothing else interesting has happened, despite various candidate, no doubt, giving interviews on Sunday morning news shows.  It's up to six Hog-Calling Violence stories in a row topping the Yahoo Politics page...

[Trenacker]

[Sleezebag] supporters drive me nuts.

I can't stand all this "will of the people" talk. Yes, I'd agree that it was a subversion of popular democracy if [Sleezebag] captured a majority (not just a plurality) of delegates and yet procedural arrangements were somehow made to ensure a brokered convention. But no, it is not subverting the popular will if people choose not to vote for [Sleezebag], or if other people choose to protest him. It's as if [Sleezebag]'s supporters can't accept just how polarizing their candidate actually is. It's like they think that the only evidence of independent thought is a vote for [Sleezebag].

I'm so tired of hearing them refer to a monolithic BLM movement, then casually lump it together with the rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson. And it really shows just how much racism is right under the hood when they complain that the [Sleezebag] protesters "don't care about their own lives" and should have been addressing the Chicago murder rate and black-on-black violence.

[Sleezebag] so clearly knows his crowd. His suggestion that he will defend McGraw is so obviously red meat to his supporters -- and a clear sign to everyone else, if we needed it, that he is, in fact, taking direct action to win the vote of bigots. It's the same strategy he followed when he hesitated to reject David Duke, which also tells us that he thinks that bigots will be a significant enough component in his electoral coalition to need special outreach.

All of this now boils down to ego. [Sleezebag] supporters might have first come to his camp because he spoke to issues like immigration and fair trade that were being ignored by the Establishment. They might have come because the GOP has, for years, over-promised and under-delivered. But I think they have stayed because Donald [Sleezebag] has communicated that they can now feel okay to hold views that the rest of us think are abhorrent. And they don't want to contemplate that they might be wrong after all.

[Rusty Edge]

The Leader apparently has a safe 2 to 1 advantage over Rubio in FLA, and has moved his campaign to Ohio, where the tables have turned against him this week.

In order to get traction against Kassich again, [Sleezebag] is telling people "Believe me, Ohio is a disaster"
I don't think [Sleezebag] remembers his Dale Carnegie. I don't think people from the same party as the governor normally appreciate outsiders putting down their state. At least, not the Buckeyes I've met.

[Buster's Uncle]

It would be seven Hog-Calling Violence stories in a row today, but someone snuck in a story about Kasich watching the Golf Channel on the road third; that one, I'm going to read...

[Buster's Uncle]

Incidentally, there was a Hog-Calling 15 minutes down the road this morning, two hours ago if it started on time - I'm all "Please God; don't let my area make the national news tonight."