April 13, 2016

Nice white progressive Bernie supporter outrage over this is actually a thing?

Sorry that I'm running on CP time getting to this thread.

April 9, 2016

Here's one reason why I am glad I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the Illinois Primary

Now we are starting to have this conversation all over again

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/8/1512792/-Marc-Lamont-Hill-slaps-down-Bill-Clinton-surrogate-hard

Bill "Sister Souljah" Clinton strikes again.

I'm am glad I don't have a primary vote for Hillary Clinton on my conscience right now.

EDIT: Let me be clear.

Heather Mac Donald is in no way, shape, or form (that I know of) a surrogate for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Mac_Donald

She is regurgitating talking points very similar to what Bill Clinton said yesterday, though.

March 30, 2016

The Craving for Public Squares

This is a really good article in the NYRB.

The Craving for Public Squares
by Michael Kimmelman

The twenty-first century is the first urban century in human history, the first time more people on the planet live in cities than don’t. Experts project that some 75 percent of the booming global population will be city dwellers by 2050. Dozens of new cities are springing up in Asia, their growth hastened by political unrest, climate change, and mass relocation programs that have cleared vast swaths of the Chinese countryside. Much of the growth in countries like India and Bangladesh is chaotic and badly planned. In many growing cities across the Global South there are serious shortages of water, sanitation, and housing, along with increasing air pollution. The United States has some of the same problems on a smaller scale, while here urban development is also being stimulated by growing numbers of university graduates and empty-nesters who are rejuvenating downtowns and rejecting suburbia, the culture of commuting, sprawl, and the automobile.

Not that suburbs have stopped growing, but since the late 1990s, the share of automobiles driven by people in their twenties in America has fallen from 20.8 percent to 13.7 percent. The number of nineteen-year-olds opting out of driver’s licenses has tripled since the 1970s from 8 to 23 percent. Electric, self-driving vehicles may soon revolutionize transportation and urban land use. Meanwhile, deindustrialization, plummeting crime rates, and increasing populations of singles and complex, nontraditional families have reshaped many formerly desolate urban neighborhoods.

People are moving downtown for jobs, but also for the pleasures and benefits of cultural exchange, walkable streets, parks, and public squares. Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. The public square has always been synonymous with a society that acknowledges public life and a life in public, which is to say a society distinguishing the individual from the state. There were, strictly speaking, no public squares in ancient Egypt or India or Mesopotamia. There were courts outside temples and royal houses, and some wide processional streets.

I especially love the historical overview of the concept of a "public square."

I also think that an article like this has some applicability for our "public squares" in cyberspace, as well.

March 20, 2016

Dear Sanders supporters

I am sick and tired of reading people who justify saying out-of-pocket stuff with the "you shouldn't be listening to what supporters say" excuse.

It's very weak tea.

At bottom, the very PRACTICE of politics is about communication and discussion in a community context.

The discussions we have here at DU (and other places) are every bit as valid a criterion as the discussion that take place in the agora, an inner circle of royal courtiers, or in a public square.

If many (I didn't say "most) of a particular candidates supporters says racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise inappropriate or stupid shit, chances are that it is less likely that I will support that candidate.

I'm not saying that's the ONLY factor, only that it might BE a factor.

There are an entire range of influence on a range of decisions that are made based on what someone else says or how they say it.

Political decisions are no different.

March 17, 2016

Evanston, Illinois and Cambridge, Massachusetts must have a LOT of low-information voters

Evanston, Illinois-
Hillary Clinton 13,147 votes
Bernie Sanders 10,977 votes

http://results316.cookcountyclerk.com/Summary.aspx?eid=31516

Cambridge, Massachusetts-

Hillary Clinton- 15,758 votes
Bernie Sanders- 13,689 votes

http://www.cambridgema.gov/~/link.aspx?_id=FA7A89C229404A30AB5416ECAC6EE187&_z=z

Maybe some of you can get these poor people the internet connections that they need to be adequately informed on things.

March 16, 2016

As long as the HORRIFIC Anita Alvarez lost the Cook County State's Atty. race tonight I'm satisfied

I was indifferent as to whether Hillary or Bernie won Illinois; having said that, congratulations to Hillary Clinton for winning the Land of Lincoln.

(FTR, I voted for Martin O'Malley)

Kim Foxx kicked Alvarez's ass even in the Cook County 'burbs...Foxx won by 18 points,

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/15/politics/anita-alvarez-election/index.html

UPDATE: To put this in perspective

In Chicago, with ~98% of the vote in

Hillary Clinton has 359,877 votes.

Kim Foxx has 394,749 votes..

March 13, 2016

REMEMBER: ALL politics is local

Bernie attempting to tie Hillary Clinton to Rahm may...or may not work.

Remember that Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez is ALSO on the ballot in Cook County.

It was Anita Alvarez that held off on prosecuting Jason van Dyke for the shooting of LaQuan McDonald.

It was Anita Alvarez that received that video two weeks after that shooting.

And it might be Anita Alvarez's name that makes Cook County voters think "Rahm Emanuel" and not Hillary Clinton's.

March 11, 2016

A gay man's view on Hillary's Nancy Reagan/AIDS comments

Look.

People say nice things about others at funerals.

Hillary's Clinton's comments about Nancy Reagan and AIDS today were ill-advised, tone-deaf, and stupid.

That's not to say Nancy Reagan's son, Ron Jr. is lying about the "quiet" (and very late in the game) advocacy that his mother may have done, but if that is the case, you sure need to be very very specific about that.

And why even mention it, Hillary? Nancy Reagan activism in stem cell research and her Just say No campaign (however it is that you feel about the WOD)is well known.

Opening up this wound about the Reagan's and AIDS was just stupid on Hilary's part.

No need to even go there.

March 11, 2016

Well Sanders supporters...name one wrong vote or policy that Sanders ever made or had?

Just one.

March 7, 2016

Does anyone else get as tired of Hillary Clinton's "black church" photo ops as I do?

I mean, I get it in that black church folks do vote...

But so do some of us non-churched heathen black folks like myself.

I mean, I have my own issues with the church, and that probably colors my view of this a bit..

But damn, sometimes I think that Hillary is ready speak in tongues and do the Holy Dance at any given moment.

NOTE: Some of the people that have already recced this post (5:52pm)...I see you and I don't want to play your game. That's why I posted this specific question in the AA Group.

UPDATE: Just wanted to say thank you to the AAGroup for allowing me to "let my hair down" a bit on this topic (the joke there being, of course, that I have no hair!).

I do appreciate BOTH the feedback and the criticisms.