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Straw poll

Started by Woolly Bugger, December 04, 2015, 00:58:09 AM

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Hillary vs Trump

Hillary
16 (35.6%)
Trump
29 (64.4%)

Total Members Voted: 44

Woolly Bugger

ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

Native Fisher

You forgot the Mickey Mouse choice. He would win in a landslide over those two.

Jfey

One time at band camp I voted neither.
Yup, going fishing

flatlander

I need a "Deez Nuts" option

flatlander

Speaking of Clinton...did you all see what happened when Hillary showed up at the Laugh Factory:





sanjuanwormhatch

I'd vote for bernie sanders or write myself in before either.

Dougfish


Transylwader

I don't get a vote because I am not American and by God, I am truly thankful. p;-
My mum says Trump is an embarrasment and Hillary is a socialist Nicolas Cage looking muthafucker. Is the Irish lass on the tickey or what :P

Onslow

Found the content to be rather entertaining and on point, and writer astute.  Feel free to pick apart.

QuoteThe Clinton juggernaut is losing traction. Powered by the full weight of the Democratic Establishment, it was designed to smoothly carry its idol across America and into the White House. It still may get there. But now it must traverse a far more treacherous and uncertain route than Hillary and her entourage ever imagined. The course is lined with the pundits, operatives and analysts who will cover the spectacle with their usual attention to trivia and a faith in their own perspicacity matching that of the heroine herself.

This was all predictable. For it conforms to the parochialism and inbreeding that for so long has infirmed the Democratic Party's leadership as well as the punditocracy. Fortunes could be made betting against the "Washington consensus" whose singular talent for getting it wrong extends from the country's endless skein of foreign misadventures to electoral politics. They give the impression of all sipping out of each other's double-lattes at Starbucks in Dupont Circle. The resulting damage done to the party's traditional constituents, to the integrity of national discourse and to America's interests in the world is incalculable -- and may well be irreparable.

Still, it is worth recording the pathologies that this latest bruising encounter with reality reveal. Most obvious is the disconnect between political elites and the country they presume to know or aspire to govern. The success of Bernie Sanders makes that transparently clear. His greatest asset is simply that he ran as a "Democrat" -- that is, as representative of the party as forged in the mid-20th century and whose precepts conform to the socio-economic interests and philosophical truths typically held by most Americans today. He is the first Presidential candidate to do so since Walter Mondale in 1984. Mondale's defeat convinced many pols that the future lay with the Reagan smorgasbord of discredited nostrums and myths repackaged by skillful political craftsmen as the new Revelation. Market fundamentalist economic models, a cartoonish version of American individualism a la Ayn Rand, financial libertinism, muscle-flexing abroad in the mantle of democratic proselytizing, and anti-government demagoguery were fashioned into an intoxicating cocktail. It worked to the extent that the cheap high thereby produced tapped latent racism, jingoism, evangelical Christian passions, and a new-found greedy selfishness which was the mutant offspring of 1960s liberation.

Disoriented Democrats badly miscalculated the danger, and in the process lost sight of who they were. Most damaging, many found a comfortable niche in this new world of hallucination. Among them are the careerists, the trendy intellectuals, and the ambitious politicians who thought that they had discovered the one route to recouping power and glory. Together, they reshaped the Democratic Party into a me-too auxiliary to a waxing conservative movement. Today, it is radical reactionary Republicans who sweep elections at state and local levels, who hold an iron grip on the Congress, who have used their power to ruthlessly transform the judiciary into an active ally.
True, Democrats have won the White House twice. Bill Clinton did thanks to Ross Perot and then retained it against feeble opposition. In the process, he moved progressively to the Right in policy and philosophy ("the era of Big Government is over"). Republican ascendancy followed. Only the Bush era collapse into disaster abroad and at home made possible Barack Obama - who presented himself not as the embodiment of Democratic values but as a transcendent bipartisan healer- with just a few vermilion strokes. A prophet without message or mission. Whatever liberal ideas he had sounded were swiftly abandoned in what is surely the most shameless bait-and-switch in American political history.

This was predictable. After all, he thrice cited Ronald Reagan as the man who most influenced his view of the Presidency.

His administrations aeguably were oriented to the Right of Richard Nixon -- on civil liberties as well as on economic and social programs. Look it up. His White House actually took delight in maligning "Progressives" -- as made manifest in Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's cursing out of their representatives personally within its walls. That was the administration of which Hillary Clinton, the born-again 'progressive,' was a mainstay.

The cause already was abandoned in his first months in office when the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress. Indeed, Obama's embrace of the Wall Street barons was what allowed the Tea Party to channel popular anger and fear into a well-financed anti-government, know-nothing movement which nowadays dominates the political landscape. Hence, Obama drove the final nails into the coffin of the old Democratic Party.

This evolution of American politics in effect disenfranchised something like 25% of the electorate. They are Bernie Sanders' constituency. It's as simple as that. Personalities do play a role, but it is a secondary one. Sanders as a person stands out for his integrity, his earnestness, for his truth-telling, for his transparent decency. It is the message, though, that counts above all. An old Brooklyn Jew who advertises himself as a "Socialist" is not a compelling figure on the political stage. Intelligent and well-informed on domestic matters, he is not a phrase-maker, not verbally nimble, an incurably respectful gentleman, and largely disengaged from foreign policy where Hillary was custodian of ACT II in the pageant of American failure and fiasco in the Middle East. In addition, he feels inhibited about attacking the misdeeds of the Obama years out of a concern for estranging black voters, and turning the President from Hillary's tacit ally into an active ally. Yet, he has made history with unprecedented accomplishments in the teeth of implacable opposition from the entire political and media establishment.

Clinton's shortcomings and failures are aggravated by the widespread distrust that she engenders. That was evident a year ago. She has had higher "negatives" in polls that any serious candidate ever. So why was she coronated even before the contest began? Why did no other candidates present themselves? Why did Democratic bigwigs feel so complacent at the prospect of another electoral setback?

One common answer is that there was nobody else. Decimated at the state level, and lacking fresh blood in the Senate, they have a very thin squad. For the better part of a decade, Harry Reid has been the face of the Democratic Party outside of the White House - and during Obama's romantic non-partisanship phases, its face country-wide. Still, someone like Martin O'Malley could have been promoted as a credible candidate had the party bigwigs the will to do so. Compare him to George W. Bush in 2000. The Republicans molded that non-entity into a winner with relative ease. Democrats had much more to work with in O'Malley.

Or, they could have rallied behind Elizabeth Warren. Admittedly, she wasn't interested. Just think, though, of what could have happened had she been persuaded to run. For one thing, she quickly would have eclipsed Hillary as the front runner. Razor sharp, personable, with a blue steel edge to her words, and resolute -- she likely would have delivered the Last Rites to Clinton by Super Tuesday. And then imagine her against any of the Republicans hopefuls whose only chance of winning turns on Clinton's negatives. A Warren -- Republican X contest, moreover, would have raised the prospect of a Democratic comeback across the board that it utterly beyond Clinton's capabilities.

The principal reason the Democratic Establishment lined up behind Hillary in lockstep is their lack of conviction and a political timidity that arises from 1) capture by the big donors, and 2) past failures that have sapped self-confidence. Their uniform commitment to a flaccid orthodoxy has been evident for all to see these past few weeks as Hillary's supporters hit the panic button. It has not been a pretty performance. From the editors of The New York Times and Paul Krugman (who now sees Hillary as the heir to Obama whom he hagiographically refers to as "one of the most consequential and successful President in American history") to the feminist brigade headed by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, Democratic stalwarts have embarrassed themselves by their contrived and specious arguments for Hillary. This is not to say that there isn't a reasonable and logical case to be made for voting for her. It is the falsity of the presentation by those eminences that reveals the hollowness at the party's core. Its leaders never miss an opportunity to display their political obtuseness and fearfulness about leaving their very narrow, personal comfort zone.

The blunt truth is that the Democratic leadership has been meek and fearful for decades. They can't stand the sight of blood -- especially if it's their opponents. It took Newt Gingrich in 2012 to make an issue of predatory hedge funds and private equity. Reluctantly picked up by Obama, it resonated well -- so well that a gaggle of Wall Street operatives led by Steven Ratner called the White House to express vehemently their displeasure. Obama pulled the ads. (Jane Meyer Dark Money). Now it is Donald Trump who boldly steps forth to declare that the intervention in Iraq was based on lies, and that it is the source of our current troubles in the region. No Democrat, including Sanders, is ready to make that case with equal force. None has since 2008. One can go on and on. It's a loser's mentality.

In the end, Hillary Clinton in all likelihood will be the nominee. Equally true, she will arrive at the convention in Boston D.O.A. That is to say, D.O.A. if the Republicans somehow free themselves from their adrenaline soaked tantrum to nominate a sensible candidate. For the Democrats' one hope is that the opposition continue on its suicidal track that runs parallel to their own. Such is the state of American politics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/the-race-to-lose-the-whit_b_9237006.html

Al

Definitely one of those hold your nose and vote choices. b'; Neither would be my first or even second choice.

On the other hand if you wait for the perfect candidate, ie someone who shares 100% of your values you will never vote.  Speaking of not voting, or writing in someone as a protest vote - that would be giving your vote to the one you least agree with.

Onslow

#10
Quote
The Democratic Party's superdelegate system has come under attack this presidential election, as critics blast it as undemocratic. There are hundreds of superdelegates, unelected party elites, who can sway the primary election, undermining the candidate democratically chosen by the party's mass base.

Bernie Sanders won the primary election in New Hampshire by a landslide in early February, with 60 percent of votes to Hillary Clinton's 38 percent. Sanders won every demographic group, excluding rich voters and those aged 65 and older. Yet, although Clinton drastically lost, she ended up leaving with an equal number of delegates. This is because of the superdelegate system.

Sanders won 15 delegates in the primary; Clinton won just nine. But New Hampshire has eight superdelegates — also known as unpledged delegates — and six of these unelected party elites pledged support for Clinton. Despite the fact that Sanders had drastically more votes, therefore, both candidates got an equal number of total delegates.

Because of this system, the Washington Post points out, Sanders could technically win the primary election, earning a majority of the 1,670 delegates determined by actual voting, but still lose the Democratic Party's nomination, if Clinton gets most of the party's 712 unelected unpledged delegates.

Critics have begun to ask why this undemocratic system exists. CNN's Jake Tapper posed precisely this question to Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an ally of Hillary Clinton who co-chaired her former presidential; campaign, in a Feb. 11 interview. She responded with shockingly blunt honesty.

"What do you tell voters who are new to the process who say this makes them feel like it's all rigged?" Tapper asked the DNC chair.

"Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists," Wasserman Schultz calmly explained.

Tapper did not press her on her response. "I'm not sure that that answer would satisfy an anxious young voter, but let's move on," he said, and dropped the issue just when it was getting hot.

You can watch Wasserman Schultz's interview below, from CNN's YouTube channel.

Unelected superdelegates have been overwhelmingly backing Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. Clinton, who has received many millions of dollars from Wall Street and was long seen as the assumed Democratic candidate, is beginning to sweat, while Sanders' enormous grassroots campaign continues to grow.

In October 2015, long before the primaries even began and Americans actually started voting, Clinton's campaign boasted that it had secured the endorsements of well over 500 superdelegates.

NPR reported in November that Clinton had a 45-to-1 superdelegate advantage over Sanders. Two months before any voting even began, Clinton had 15 percent of the delegates needed to secure the Democratic Party's nomination — or, as NPR wrote, "In other words, Clinton starts with a 15 percentage point head start over Sanders."

Controversy similarly erupted around the superdelegate system in the 2008 election. The Democratic Party approached a crossroads, deliberating whether or not to get rid of superdelegates, but decided to hold on to the system.

A DNC committeeperson for Maine disappointingly told Newsweek in 2010 "The superdelegate system is an outdated and undemocratic way of doing things that's unsuited for modern times. The farther we veer away from one person, one vote, the worse it is for our party. If we let the current system stand in light of what happened in 2008, it seems pretty clear this is never going to change."

The DNC itself has been widely accused of acting in the interest of Clinton. Present Chair Wasserman Schultz served as a co-chair of Clinton's 2008 campaign for president.

More recently, the DNC has been criticized for scheduling debates at very inconvenient times — like the Saturday night before Christmas, during a football game — allegedly to reduce the number of viewers.

Sanders' campaign has accused the DNC and Wasserman Schultz of "actively attempting to undermine" his bid for president.

A transcript of Wasserman Schultz's remarks on CNN is included below, as reported by the Washington Post.

    TAPPER: Hillary Clinton lost to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire by 22 percentage points, the biggest victory in a contested Democratic primary there since John F. Kennedy, but it looks as though Clinton and Sanders are leaving the Granite State with the same number of delegates in their pockets because Clinton has the support of New Hampshire's superdelegates, these party insiders. What do you tell voters who are new to the process who say this makes them feel like it's all rigged?

    WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, let me just make sure that I can clarify exactly what was available during the primaries in Iowa and in New Hampshire. The unpledged delegates are a separate category. The only thing available on the ballot in a primary and a caucus is the pledged delegates, those that are tied to the candidate that they are pledged to support. And they receive a proportional number of delegates going into the — going into our convention.

    Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists. We are, as a Democratic Party, really highlight and emphasize inclusiveness and diversity at our convention, and so we want to give every opportunity to grass-roots activists and diverse committed Democrats to be able to participate, attend and be a delegate at the convention. And so we separate out those unpledged delegates to make sure that there isn't competition between them.

    TAPPER: I'm not sure that that would — that answer would satisfy an anxious young voter, but let's move on.


http://www.salon.com/2016/02/13/un_democratic_party_dnc_chair_says_superdelegates_ensure_elites_dont_have_to_run_against_grassroots_activists/



QuoteMysterious outside groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates, Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rule books to brush up on a process that hasn't mattered for decades.

As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz divide up the first primaries and center-right Republicans tear one another apart in a race to be the mainstream alternative, Republicans are waging a shadow primary for control of delegates in anticipation of what one senior party official called "the white whale of politics": a contested national convention.

The endgame for the most sophisticated campaigns is an inconclusive first ballot leading to a free-for-all power struggle on the floor in Cleveland.

"This is going to be a convention like I've never seen in my lifetime," said veteran operative Barry Bennett, who managed Ben Carson's campaign until December and is now advising Trump. "It's going to be contentious from Day One."

The primaries and caucuses that dot the nominating calendar and whose results drive headlines will decide whom most delegates are bound to vote for on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. Should the first ballot fail to produce a nominee, the outcome of the convention will depend on results of the parallel primary now underway for the hearts and minds of delegates.

Each state party has its own rules governing delegate selection, a process so steeped in nuance and legal ambiguity that there are multiple blogs dedicated to wading through it all.
160215_jeb_bush_george_bush_1160_ap.jpg

Bush brothers, Trump push hard in South Carolina

By Eli Stokols


In some states, campaigns select slates of their own delegates, making it relatively easy to send loyalists to Cleveland.

In many others, delegates to Cleveland will be selected at a series of conventions held at the congressional district and state levels. Candidates who are able to get supporters to show up at those conventions and elect loyal delegates would be rewarded in a multiballot Republican convention — even if those delegates are bound to vote for someone else in the first round.

"Just because you get x number of delegates, it doesn't mean that it's your people unless you go to these conventions and get people to run," said Marco Rubio's deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson. "You want to make sure that they're with you on subsequent ballots."

Rubio, who openly contemplated the possibility of a contested convention in an AP interview last week, is not the only candidate whose campaign is preparing to contest the shadow primary.

One Southern state party chairman said that the calls from campaigns seeking data — such as contact information on eligible delegates and the names of people who have served as delegates in past years — began in late 2015. The chairman said calls have also come from third-party vendors who declined to identify which campaigns are their clients. "There's a bit of skulduggery. ... I suspect some super PACs are behind some of this."

Toby Neugebauer, a Cruz super PAC megadonor who has long maintained that this nominating contest would be drawn out, said he has invested in custom delegate-tracking software but did not provide further details of his efforts on that front.

The Southern state party chairman who called an open convention "the white whale of politics" said the possibility is driving side conversations at party meetings. "We all sit around and talk about it at [Republican National Committee] meetings."

Bennett said that when he worked for Carson, whose supporters have been among the most enthusiastic and visible at activist gatherings like the Conservative Political Action Conference, the campaign knew its candidate's passionate grass-roots support would allow it to excel at the herculean organizing challenge of sending loyal representatives to a contested convention.

"We thought we could do very well at the micromechanics of getting delegates selected," said Bennett. "People like Trump, who's got a social media following of 5 million, or Cruz, who has good connections at the grass-tops level, will be fine. I don't think any of the establishment candidates are that well positioned."

Now that Bennett is advising Trump's camp, he has not stopped planning for a floor fight in Cleveland. One Trump insider said Bennett is angling to serve as the mogul's liaison to the national convention.

Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, declined to comment for this story except to write in an email: "That is not the role Barry [Bennett] serves."

After losing the Iowa caucuses to a better-organized Cruz earlier this month, Trump said he had only recently learned the meaning of the term "ground game." But according to a person involved in briefing the New York billionaire, Trump has understood the underlying mechanics of the nominating process since at least last year.

As currently written, the rules governing the national convention require a candidate to have won a majority of delegates in eight states or territories to be eligible for the nomination. A candidate will need a majority of delegates — 1,237 — to win it.

"He knows about the number, and he knows about the process. He's aware of the eight states. He's aware that it could be taken away from him. He knows about the 1,237, and he knows that they can have people stay in as long as they want just to stop him from getting over the Rubicon."

And Trump's campaign has not ignored the basics of delegate selection.

In December, his mid-Atlantic team sent out an email seeking potential delegates for the District of Columbia's March 12 delegate convention. In January, it sent out another email listing requirements for supporters seeking to run as Trump-endorsed delegates in Maryland.

Representatives of the campaigns of John Kasich and Jeb Bush did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

As a true political outsider, Trump, despite his history of business deal making, would likely find himself at a disadvantage after the first ballot in Cleveland, even if he enters with more delegates than any single rival.

"Donald Trump would get smoked at an open convention," said the Southern state party chairman, who said he had seen little evidence that Trump is courting the 150 national committee members and state chairs who will serve as automatic delegates to Cleveland and unofficial leaders of their state delegations if the convention turns into a floor fight. "If they were smart, Donald Trump would call every state chair and strike up a friendship."

A person intimately involved with Trump's political operation confirmed that the businessman's campaign is not courting RNC members and lamented that omission as a mistake. "Somebody's got to be talking to these pricks and at least taking them off the accelerator and making sure they're not working against you," the person said.

While a contested convention could be the last chance for the Republican establishment to deny the nomination to Trump or Cruz, it is far from clear that a multiballot process will hand power to an establishment-friendly candidate such as Rubio.
160209_jeb_bush_1160_ap.jpg

Bush super PAC adds veteran South Carolina strategist

By Alex Isenstadt

In an earlier era, a handful of party bosses could settle on a nominee in a back room. Now, the current rules of delegate selection in many states are set up to reward grass-roots activists with trips to the convention, making it difficult for party officials to control the process.

In New York, where party officials have greater control over delegate selection than in most states, state GOP Chairman Ed Cox said he expects party central-committee members will confer with the campaign of whichever campaign won in each congressional district when selecting delegates from that district.

(Cox predicts the convention will end on a "contested first ballot," in which a clear front-runner is able to pull in enough unpledged delegates to forestall a multiballot free-for-all.)

"It's harder to stack the delegate deck," Bennett said of the diminished influence of party power brokers. Instead, he said the RNC's best chance to affect the outcome is its power to recommend rules for governing the convention, which delegates will vote on before turning to the task of selecting the nominee. "If Carson and Trump and Cruz don't agree on something, they can splinter them."

One former RNC chairman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggested another soft power that the national party could assert over the outcome. The RNC's Committee on Arrangements controls the logistics of conventions, including the allocation of staging space for campaigns' whipping operations. In the heat of a floor fight, such details could become meaningful.

But another former chairman, Michael Steele, warned that any attempt by party insiders to nudge the nomination to a favored candidate would be disastrous. "If they want to monkey around with this process and try to fix it, they're asking for all hell to break loose," he said.

"Any inkling that state party officials or national party officials are colluding and conspiring to prevent a particular individual from getting the nomination," he said, "will basically create Armageddon with the base."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/brokered-republican-convention-cleveland-219306#ixzz40NkVUMKo

Onslow


Quote
BRUSSELS — The shock waves Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have sent through American politics this year aren't just from their unexpected popularity or their relentless table-thumping. It's because they've totally upended American ideas about what our political parties stand for. Trump's strange mix of policy ideas casually throws overboard years' worth of carefully honed Republican talking points about taxes and religion, while Sanders simply ignores the hard-won, generation-long Democratic shift to the political center with his rants against money and power.

What's going on? As confusing as this might be in the States, it looks clearer from overseas: America is getting its first big dose of European politics.

Trump's support of the social safety net coupled with unabashed xenophobia and protectionism might not be familiar to American voters, who are used to having their "conservative" politics be strictly anti-welfare, pro-trade, and low-tax. But it is immediately recognizable to supporters of the plethora of right-wing parties topping polls across Europe. Likewise, Sanders' open embrace of socialism may shock Americans—but hardly raises an eyebrow in Europe, a continent where socialist parties are either in government or constitute the main opposition.

Even the two central character types in the latest installment of America's hottest political drama are familiar to Europeans. A brash billionaire businessman with populist politics, coarse speech and a knack for self-promotion, who enters the political arena and trumps experienced rivals by pledging to make his country great again? That would be Silvio Berlusconi, a former cruise-ship crooner turned media magnate who set up his own political party in 1994 and within months was prime minister of Italy — a post he held four times.

Donald Trump, a more fully coiffed but equally vulgar American version of Berlusconi, may be contemptuous of Europe: He recently predicted the old continent was headed for "collapse," and described Brussels as a "hellhole." But his nativist politics could be lifted straight out of the playbook written by Europe's increasingly successful populist parties.

Sanders is not as easy to lampoon as Trump, but to Europeans, his elevation to leading man status in the Democratic primaries has a familiar ring about it. Last year, Jeremy Corbyn—a 65-year old, hard-left firebrand with no front-bench experience, the media skills of a Trappist monk and a political philosophy most thought had fallen with the Berlin Wall—became leader of the Labour Party, Britain's main opposition group. As with Sanders, most commentators dismissed Corbyn as "unelectable"—right until he was duly elected.



   

American voters are increasingly turning to candidates who owe scant allegiance to the parties whose nomination they are seeking. Trump was once a registered Democrat; Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, once described the Democratic Party he recently joined as "morally bankrupt." A similar phenomenon is happening in Europe, where centrist parties have either been hijacked by politicians on the fringes (like Corbyn), or squeezed by radical groups on the left, such as Syriza in Greece, and the right, like the Danish People's Party in Denmark. When populists cannot find a mainstream party to accommodate them, they simply set up their own party—such as the nationalist Finns Party currently flying high in the polls.

Populist insurgents on both sides of the pond have tapped into widespread anger at the social and economic devastation left by the recession. In Greece and Spain, almost half of young people are jobless, providing fertile ground for left-wing parties like Syriza in Athens and Podemos in Madrid. The unemployment rate in the United States is only half that in Europe, but Trump and Sanders have each succeeded in channeling the discontent and frustration of Americans who see rising growth but lower household incomes. When 70 percent of American voters tell pollsters they think the country is headed in the wrong direction, it is hardly surprising that candidates representing continuity, like Hillary Clinton, find it a tough slog to persuade electors to plump for them. To complicate matters for Clinton, she's not merely defending herself from Sanders to her left; looming in the distance is Trump, who is as protectionist as most blue-collar Democrats and a staunch defender of Medicare.

In the U.S., Sanders is considered a firebrand for supporting free higher education and public healthcare funded by tax hikes. But in Europe, these ideas would put him right in the mainstream of a Christian Democrat party. After all, it was center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel who, in 2014, introduced a minimum wage in Germany. In the same year, she abolished university tuition fees.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/2016-elections-european-politics-213674#ixzz41Eelzott

Woolly Bugger

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ex - I'm not going to live with you through one more fishing season!
me -There's a season?

Pastor explains icons to my son: you know like the fish symbol on the back of cars.
My son: My dad has two fish on his car and they're both trout!

driver

I still can't decide between Bernie or Trump..........

Big J

Quote from: driver on February 26, 2016, 10:21:59 AM
I still can't decide between Bernie or Trump..........

If you are between Bernie and Trump, your political stances on issues must be all over the place.