Saturday, February 08, 2020

Overlooking Lake Champlain


18 comments:

  1. Matthew Yglesias: Bernie Sanders showed us he’s a very skilled politician [Click] “He’s a much savvier operator than the establishment gives him credit for.”
    ————————————————
    The conclusion of another column (by a Bernie skeptic pundit) on the debate:

    “They were all pretty good. But the problem for the moderates is that they might be able to keep other moderates from winning, but that doesn’t mean they’ll win themselves. There’s a real risk they’ll keep fighting each other while Sanders keeps collecting delegates.

    And the problem will only get tougher when Mike Bloomberg formally enters the race on Super Tuesday.

    That’s why Sanders was the clear winner of tonight’s debate.”

    [emphasis added]

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    Replies
    1. What strikes me, and struck me durint the "electability" opening segment of the debate, is that Warren is no longer part of the narrative. Which may be why she is talking about how she can "bring the party together."

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    2. Yes, I am surprised that Warren's electoral fortunes seem to have taken such a sudden and significant downturn. It seemed to be roughly coincident with her attack on Bernie, but there were probably other factors at work as well. I dare say that the extreme front loading of this year's primary campaign seems to be accomplishing its objective--to decide on a candidate quickly.

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  2. Divestment Fever Spreads as 'Eco Radicals at Goldman Sachs' Downgrade Exxon Stock to 'Sell' Status [Click] "The best reason to divest fossil fuel stock is that you'd like to help preserve a livable planet. Another reason is so that you won't lose your money." Looks like Big Oil is going the way of Big Coal.

    'Which Side Are You On?': Sanders Calls Out Buttigieg for Raking in Billionaire Donations. [Click] Ayup.

    “They say in Harlan County,
    There are no neutrals there;
    You’ll either be a union man,
    Or a thug for J.H. Blair.”


    Iraqi Officials Say ISIS—Not Iran—Likely Behind Rocket Attack Trump Used to Justify Soleimani Assassination [Click]

    Interesting note from talkingpointsmemo.com:
    “An update from the New York suburbs from TPM Reader FB …
    Tonight, a Republican County Legislator in Westchester County New York, David Tubiolo from Yonkers, switched parties and became a Democrat. This left the 17-member Westchester County Board of Legislators, which as recently as 3 years ago had a Republican coalition majority and arch-conservative County Executive, with NO REPUBLICANS. The sole remaining member of the minority caucus is a registered Conservative from the town of Mt. Pleasant.”


    \The Message Joe Biden Didn’t Want to Hear [Click] “The former vice president wants working-class voters in his corner. In Iowa, they wanted someone else.”

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  3. A new CNN poll in New Hampshire finds Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic primary with 28%, followed by Pete Buttigieg 21%, Joe Biden at 11%, Elizabeth Warren at 9%, Tulsi Gabbard at 6%, and Amy Klobuchar at 5%.

    Key finding: “Buttigieg’s gains come almost entirely at Biden’s expense.”

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  4. Lately my mental meanderings have been coming back to a particular projection:
    Bernie President, Abrams VP, Warren (depending on makeup of the Senate) for a cabinet position.

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  5. NYT: Nevada Democrats Test a Caucus Plan ‘Without Something You Can Download on Your Phone’ [Click] The Nevada caucuses have an additional wrinkle: they allow early voting, using ranked choice ballots.

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  6. Today I received an e-mail message from the Sanders campaign telling me that I could vote for Bernie today. I sent them a note telling them that they were too late--I voted for Bernie three days ago. (I could have voted for him five days ago, but I was too lazy.)

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  7. A new UMass Lowell poll found that 62% of New Hampshire Democrats would rather see a giant meteor strike the earth and extinguish all human life than see President Trump get re-elected.

    Hmmmmmmm...... give me some time to think about it...

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  8. I decided to apply dormant sprays to our fruit trees starting today. I used to use a single dormant spray of horticultural oil plus lime sulphur concentrate. The lime sulphur isn't available to the general public since some damn fool young kids used it to commit suicide. (Details omitted since this is the Internet.) OK. I decided to use a simple sulphur spray to control peach leaf curl (a fungus) and have so far had good luck with it. That I did today. Tomorrow I will spray horticultural oil, but I am not sure I have enough. So I went looking in nearby stores--none of them carry it anymore. But they will gladly sell us toxic insecticides to control the insects that horticultural oil would keep from hatching (it suffocates them in their hiding places in the bark). I wasted more than an hour searching brick and mortar stores; there is one other store I could have checked, but that would be about a twenty-mile round trip. I just now spent less than a minute to find and order it on Amazon. Delivery tomorrow. Oh, well. I should have preferred to buy in a store, but if that isn't practical or possible, it isn't.

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    1. I almost always order on-line because it is hard for me to get to a physical store that might have what I want. But Amazon is now giving me two incentives to order there rather than the other on-line stores I often used to use:
      1. For some of the things I order (not, alas, e-books), Amazon will give the Disability Pride Parade 1% of the total.
      2. I now have an Amazon credit card that pays 3% cash back on purchases at Amazon.

      I'm not happy that Amazon has made itself a virtual monopoly in terms of my purchases, but there are just too many reasons to go there rather than somewhere else.

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  9. By the way, it seems to me that the folks waiting for Biden or a Biden substitute to gain traction and bring back the halcyon days of the New Democrats are going freaking hysterical. I figure that in another five weeks (perhaps less!) they will be reduced to a condition somewhere in the range of primordial ooze to Jell-O cubes. I don't see how The Mayor From McKinsey manages to do well in any state with a substantial proportion of non-Anglo voters.

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