Never Oppose a Scorpio in the Desert

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The absolute savagery of Hillary Clinton's performance tonight has me reconsidering her 2nd debate performance.

1st debate: set up scenery, optics of knowledge and confidence for her, and let him wander around looking foolish and shaky. Approach and shake hands to give initial impression of friendliness/feed into the weakness narrative in Trump's head.

2nd debate: do no harm. Look passive, look quiet. Look like she's resistant but not overly aggressive, maybe she's still recovering from being sick. Let him think he put in enough debate prep to "win". Walk toward Trump at beginning but stop short of actually touching him. She controlled the level of physicality in a debate where the huge takeaway afterward was Trump lurking behind her looking like he's stalking her or about to physically attack her.

3rd debate: crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their campaign managers. Cold, disapproving, critical, cutting responses toward her opponent, yet warm and welcoming when speaking about the American people and inviting them to participate in their country improving, and making things better for their families. Come out onstage, stop before the edge of your podium, wave to the audience, make it clear as day that you have no intention of playing nice. Cancel the pre-debate family greetings - we want nothing more to do with you.

Trump couldn't have approached her - They set it up so carefully and undeniably that he touches women inappropriately and without consent, so he couldn't ignore her body language and go over to her to shake her hand. He was forced to follow her lead. She had him where she wanted him tonight. She had set it up that he thought that he won last time and she didn't really respond to most of his nonsense, so he probably didn't want to prepare and refused to prepare much for this debate. Then. She. Savagely. Ripped. Him. Apart. The shackles were off HER, and she showed all the receipts. She went full Scorpio on him. And this is why you do not fucking push Scorpios. But Geminis can be overconfident and misread situations, assume that they can talk their way out of everything, and set themselves up for utter destruction.

Hillary was Blue Ajah channeling White Ajah channeling Rashima Kerenmosa tonight, and she is probably extremely satisfied that she at last,  at the 3rd and last time of direct confrontation, was allowed to sting her opponent, and then leave him to flounder in the Las Vegas desert, slowly dying.

Masterfully done. And that is why you study politics before you get in it. Rage against the machine by your voting base only goes so far. Knowledge and preparation complete the whole.

#ScorpioAF #savageAF #ImWithHer #MadamPresident

Ezra Klein on Hillary's Debate Performances - Vox

It Is a Woman's World Now.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSS

Politics before 2010

Allow me to explain one aspect of this. (As I understand it.)

Back in the 80s, and after the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who everyone loved as a guy but were not so complimentary of as a president, Ronald Reagan was so popular that the word "liberal" was toxic to a politician's career.

Carter was therefore a one-term president, and he was a Democrat, which is why being seen as "liberal" like Carter was the surest way to lose voters and Congressional seats.

Reagan made it "cool" to be a Republican again, after the abject failures and scandals of Nixon's presidency that caused him to resign and Gerald Ford to take up the Oval Office. People swung far left after the resignation/failure of Nixon's presidency, which is how Carter became president after Ford.

Because of Reagan's popularity and loosening of financial restrictions and lowering taxes for the wealthy, it created a LOT of powerful rich people who then further contributed to the party that set them up so nicely - they supported the GOP overwhelmingly.

During the 12 years that Republicans ran the USA after Carter (From 1980 - 1992) the left wing started to try to fight back and fix the taxes issue and some other business and financial loopholes. HOWEVER. Since this attacked the heart of the rich and powerful, their counterstrike was to try to murder the careers of everybody who claimed to be liberal and wanted to try to balance things out again between the businesses and the populace and the wealthy and the poor.

During this time, the first President Clinton ran as a Democratic governor of a Southern state. Now, before the era of Civil Rights, most of the south was "Democratic" and had been since oh, about the time of the Civil War (or, as they called it, the War of Northern Aggression - *snort*). This is why Lincoln, as a "Republican" was overwhelmingly supported by the NORTH, and his radical, "liberal" idea of abolishing the abomination of slavery was a "Republican achievement".

So during the Civil Rights era, Southern people were increasingly annoyed with Truman, who ordered the beginning of integrating the USA. Truman was a Democrat. But an "Old Democrat", not a "contemporary Democrat". Because Truman was doing all of this, which pissed off all the racist Southerners who had been "Old Democrats" for generations, the OTHER side, the conservatives on the Republican side, seized upon this anger and began pandering to their bigotry.

Eisenhower followed Truman, and though he also was in favour of integration (but possibly for different reasons than just moral high ground), he also spoke to a lot of issues that the conservatives of the day were in favour of. Nixon was his vice-president.

So here's the 90s, where it was seen that the last "effective" Democratic president was LB Johnson (after JFK was shot), from 63-69, since CARTER was seen as an ineffective president. So 30 years later, Clinton was able to run as and be seen as a "moderate" candidate. And part of the reason the first President Clinton won was that he was not "too liberal". He did everything in his power to be seen as NOT liberal, NOT too far left, yet DIFFERENT and PROGRESSIVE in a way that GHW Bush was not. Republicans voted for Clinton because he was "moderate".

The first President Clinton had to play the game, he had to do some things to keep Democrats happy and do some things to keep Republicans happy. Every time he tried to do something too "out there" he'd be yanked back up. This was when he and Hillary Clinton, as First Lady, was trying to get universal healthcare passed through Congress.

It was the 90s and the Clintons had to play the game, especially before the second election and getting him elected a second time. But the Republicans were so pissed off at Bill Clinton and how effective he was as President that they turned on him and used that stupid scandal crap to impeach him.

So, long story short (too late) - we are JUST NOW coming to the liberal revolution of the USA. The conservatives had theirs when they formed the Tea Party and those idiots began pushing ALL of the Republicans to the right. Moderate Republicans (like John McCain) were targeted every bit as much as liberals and Democrats.

So when you say Hillary Clinton is "flip-flopping" you have to put that into context. Until the Tea Party, the US Government may not have gotten along or agreed all the time, but at least they were able to WORK TOGETHER. And the way they worked together was supporting some things and opposing other issues of the opposite party, ON BOTH SIDES.

But this "fuck you" attitude is fairly new. Since 2010 elections, more or less. That's when the Conservatives and Tea Partiers took the stance that compromise was anathema and stark obstruction was the way to go.

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have both been in politics since far before this "new attitude". They HAD to be "moderate" and support some things they didn't ideologically agree with because that's how stuff GOT DONE in government before 2010.

It is ONLY NOW where people are fed up with the Republican obstructionism and the last recession from the Bush years which began in the Reagan years to say "fuck moderate - we need real liberal policies now because the Conservatives have fucked us over, and if they don't want to play nice, we don't want to either anymore".

And it is ONLY NOW that Democratic candidates, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Tea Partiers and Conservatives, are able to support the issues and policies they REALLY favour instead of fearing that skewing too liberal will kill their career and they'll be voted out by a mob of conservatives.

So Hillary Clinton has been liberal all along. She's just had to be in the closet about it, so to speak, if she wanted to be able to get into a Senate seat and get anything done. She saw in 2008 that Obama, pushing from her left, managed to out-liberal her in many ways, and she has changed strategies now. In some areas where Bernie is more conservative currently, Hillary is coming from his left because she CAN NOW. The rules have changed.

You can't do shite if you're out of the race. Hillary Clinton is an attorney, and she is a politician, and an extremely intelligent woman. She has been doing this shite for a long time. She has calculated exactly how far right or left she can reasonably go without being pulled all the way down and knocked out. Which is why she's still in the game.

But I hope you know WHY now, a little better, Hillary (and Bill too) has been forced to play the game as she has.

Problem with Sanders - there's no there, there

One article has commented on Hillary: 

"I just want to reflect for a moment on how kickass that is — that the smooth and stately Senator Brooke stands up and wags his finger at Wellesley’s graduating class, telling them to get back in their boxes and know their places, and then Clinton takes the podium and politely and eloquently tells him to go fuck himself."

Another article remarked: 

"Brooke spoke first and suggested the anti-war protests sweeping across college campuses were a poor way of exercising students' constitutional right to assemble, saying "coercive protests" would discourage support from people empathetic to their cause. Clinton, who had led demonstrations against the Vietnam War on campus, wasn't afraid to take a moment to go off script and respond to Brooke's speech.

[She said]

'We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. ... Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.' "

It does appear clear to me that Hillary Clinton had many aspects THEN what Bernie has been advocating NOW. And she has evolved, gotten wiser, more capable, versatile. And far more knowledgeable. She knows how to get things done and how the system works. For Bernie to be the exact same person in his 70s as people are saying he was in his 20s is beyond belief. Nobody does that. And if someone does, that is ABNORMAL. I don't remember who said "change or die". 

So this MLK thing here is the worst sort of twisting of facts and anecdotes. She is NOT saying this to a Black leader, she is saying this to a white guy from a nearly all-white state, with a majority of young white bros and brahs who don't appear to "get it", who she (and many, MANY others see as falling for the same old trick - politicians promising anything without reality to back it up to get what they want). I'm not saying Sanders is out to trick people - I just don't see any there, there. I don't see any evidence he can do what he is promising. All I see is him saying X has to happen, but not how, in the real world, it CAN happen. 

Hillary keeps saying she is NOT going to make any wild promises because that would be MISLEADING to people. Yet Bernie is doing the exact thing that she said young people were disillusioned by 47 years ago. She went on directly after that quote about politics being the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible, with this (caps emphasis is mine) - 

"What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction. 

How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective. 

The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago. WE ARRIVED NOT YET KNOWING WHAT WAS NOT POSSIBLE. CONSEQUENTLY, WE EXPECTED A LOT. 

Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade -- years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program -- so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn't a discouraging gap and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap."


Here's one of the articles I quoted, and it has a link to the entire speech in the text, if you want to read that. 
http://www.bustle.com/articles/76154-hillary-clintons-graduation-speech-at-wellesley-college-was-inspiring-in-1969-her-words-still-hold

How the System Works

I just have to tell you - I am continually underwhelmed, in this particular election, with how many people are trying to "rise up" without knowing how things work. How can you accomplish anything if you don't even know how the system works?

And the reason many people don't know how the system works is because they have NEVER EDUCATED THEMSELVES on it before now. Yet they see stuff and they're just outraged again and again. 

I was done being outraged when the Supreme Court gave Bush the presidency over Gore. DONE. Nothing surprises me now. And it is with that albeit jaded clarity that I am looking at this entire Presidential situation. 

I just have one thing to say to people who are continually outraged by the system - it's your fault. 

It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only just now decided to participate in the system. It is ALL YOUR FAULT if you only now decide you want to help do stuff to encourage change. WHERE WERE YOU when the Senate and House were overrun by Republicans in 2014, 2012, 2010? Where were you then? 

Don't come around on presidential years not knowing how stuff works and shouting about "listening to the people" if you did not vote in those past 3 years. (If you were too young to vote then that's one thing, but most people will have been able to vote at least once before now - but did they? Usually that answer is no.)

I'm disgusted with the system, but I have at least been standing up for YEARS, doing what I can, casting my vote, trying to make it count. 

I completely applaud those who attempt to educate and inform people. Not enough people take that responsibility onto themselves. But you have to also level with every single one of them that this is how things are, and if they're just showing up now, they helped keep alive the crappy system we have currently. If you don't participate when you can, you don't get a say, period, and you certainly don't get a say when you find out how stuff works and go "that's bullshit". Yeah we already know that. You're new here. Those are the rules. 

Well guess what? You have to work within the system in order to change the system. It's the paradox of politics. Or you could just stage a coup, but not even the Tea Party has been that radical. 

If you don't like how your delegates or superdelegates work, then VOTE THEM OUT. Simple as that. Participate. But you're not going to petition superdelegates into changing their minds. If you were a superdelegate, I'm sure you would vote what you feel is the best for the country. 

Yes, maybe the "people" are for Sanders in NH, but crowds are wrong just as often as they are right. Let's not forget that "people", when they had the chance to do the right thing, voted YES on Prop 8 and denied marriage equality to gays and lesbians in the State of California. The "people" were dead wrong, there. And it finally had to be decided by the courts. 

That kinda sucks, right? The "people" SHOULD have their say - oh, wait, unless the "people" are amazingly discriminatory and voting to strip civil rights from other people. It's never as simple a situation as people think. Nothing ever is. Otherwise, it would be fixed already. Welcome to the rest of the world. wink emoticon

The Truth About Grandpa - And Yourselves, Sheep

I am going to say this only once, so pay attention. I will not say it again, because if you do not get it now, you will never get it.

The SAME exact Sanders Sheep who are attacking Hillary for using money at her disposal to run her campaign as she likes are IGNORING that Grandpa Bernie is doing the exact same thing. Allowing money from PACs to be used to get him elected.

The SAME Sanders Sheep who are on Bernie's bandwagon because HE HAS INTEGRITY AND HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH AND WE BELIEVE HIM NO MATTER WHAT, faced with this LEGITIMATE PARADOX are self-deluding en masse.

WAIT THAT'S NOT TRUE - I MEAN THE MONEY IS STILL NOT FROM BANKS BECAUSE BANKS - EVEN THOUGH HE SAID HE DOESN'T WANT PAC MONEY IT'S OKAY EVERYTHING IS FINE.

I mean, you can see why anyone not under Sanders mass hysteria is casting massive side eye at the irrational, unreasonable, justifying, laughably amateurish attempt at political sophistry by the Sanders supporters to make everything that Grandpa Bernie does okay.

It is NOT okay.

If integrity is present, you do not need to justify it.

So all this "yeah but-ing" that people are doing in support of Sanders means that, OMG, if they have to justify his actions they are not performed with integrity. Which is the basic foundation on account of which they have latched themselves onto Bernie in the FIRST PLACE.

How do you resolve this dilemma? Open your eyes. That's how. Extricate yourself from mass hysteria and cultish fawning.

Because if you do not, if you delude yourselves into such blind, rabid enthusiasm for a candidate who has been standing on a platform of trustworthiness and integrity and truth you make YOURSELVES the dishonest ones. And then what Bernie is left with, for supporters, is a herd full of haters and liars who will stop at nothing - i.e. ENGAGE IN ESTABLISHMENT POLITICS - to get Grandpa elected.

And Grandpa Bernie will NOT tell you to stop doing all of those dishonest things on his behalf. Why? BECAUSE HE WANTS TO WIN.

QED...integrity gone.

Bernie put himself in such a terrible position, trying to inject integrity into politics. We are not there yet. That is why he is going to fail. He made that terrible, unforced error from the beginning, and it is not something that you can climb back from.

Anyone else see the problem here? I mean, it is really not hard to see...for anyone with the savvy to actually consider things with eyes wide open and not fixed on glitter unicorns in the sky.

The Audacity of Political Realism

I got into it with someone on Facebook. 

Avery always said that arguing with people on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. At the end, he concluded, quite non-politically-correctly, you're all still disabled. 

So this person is a Sanders supporter, and posted a hate video about Hillary Clinton and bashed her for a bit and bashed her supporters for being tricked by her ongoing witcheries and dishonesty. 

And of course, I thought that was quite ridiculous. He was posting things by Breitbart and the New York Times, in support of his position of engaging in the ongoing and current distemper, of which those publications have, individually, long been convicted of taking potshots at Hillary and attempting to flay her alive every chance they devised.

So, after a few responsory jabs, in which I pointed out the hypocrisy of his actions, I finally posted, to his question, "how do you rationalize all these things about Hillary Clinton?" the following response. 
_________________ 

Okay. This is a long answer. Allow me to attempt to point you in a different direction. 

So, you continue to ask how people rationalize your laundry list of Hillary's faults as, clearly, an avatar of the Elder God Cthulhu. 

The correct answer, which you should have already understood, is "we don't". 

This is not to say that we are denying she has any faults. But we are not required to rationalize, that is, make acceptable, ANY of the smear issues, true and false, that have arisen about her, to fully comprehend her raw capacity combined with decades of practical, high-level, and pertinent experience in politics, governance, and foreign relations, and determine she would be best to be President.

The reason I am bothering to explain any of this to you at this point is that you seem to think that people who support Hillary do not understand that she is flawed. I do not believe I could fully express to you what a severely naive and warped viewpoint that is. 

The difference is, my dear padawan, people who support Hillary Clinton are in no way blinded by the false notion of her perfection. Hillary Clinton is a human, therefore, QED, she is not perfect. 

That is one of the main, sustaining differences between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters. We are in no way disillusioned by her because we have never been illusioned by her. We know her very well. 

Yet the large majority of Sanders supporters seem to take any criticism of him or his ideas as blasphemy. LITERALLY. This is why the rest of us on the outside look upon Sanders followers as like a cult. 

Bernie Sanders is a human, therefore, QED, he is not perfect. BUT HIS SUPPORTERS DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THAT. 

Let me discourage you from making an essential, novice mistake of assuming there is any one candidate who might ever be perfect. Because you believe that there may be the Chosen One waiting, undiscovered, to release humanity from the falsehoods of the Matrix, you believe that you will eventually find a person like that. 

You will not. 

I love Elizabeth Warren. Love her intelligent, laser-like focus at once illuminating and tearing through the misdeeds of Wall Street. But if I dig long and hard enough, I am quite sure I will eventually find some article somewhere which, oh, say, has produced an allegedly real police report indicating that she was cited for kicking a dog when she was 14 years old. Or some such ridiculous thing. Some misstep, some fault, some error in judgment. Because nobody is perfect. 

Many, many little Sanders lambs have been so disillusioned and frustrated with the US government, state government, local government, police forces, etc. They have been doused with reality one too many times and they are steaming mad about it. About the failure, about the seeming uselessness of ever expecting anything to change. 

But this disillusionment and frustration turn very quickly, and are thwarted into incensed righteousness and self-righteousness, which is a cardinal sin of politics. It is a cardinal sin of the intarwebs, as well, but ESPECIALLY of politics. And it is also a laughable, noobish mistake. 

There IS NO Neo. Just as there IS NO spoon. 

If you all are looking to Bernie Sanders and attaching that Messiah status to him, or at least, considering him as a Moses who might lead the country out from beneath the plagues of current oppressive and dysfunctional government and into the promised land of milk and honey which we all hold in our hearts that 'Murica can actually be like some day, you have been seriously misled. Moreover, you have, quite amateurishly, and also somewhat intentionally, misled yourselves. 

You are, moreover, using your voice to publicly disparage one of the most powerful women on the planet. You might want to ask yourself why this is helpful to anyone. Is it an exercise in coercion, trying to turn people against her to vote for Sanders instead? Trying to pull people's negative feelings and resentment and fears of the Clintons to the surface? 

And in that case, are you any - even a hair - better than Trump and his supporters? 

Arguably, perhaps, THE most powerful woman in the world right now is Angela Merkel, and god knows she is far from perfect. But she is competent, and focused, and does not often shirk making difficult decisions. Does any of that sound familiar? There is a reason Hillary Clinton's latest memoir book is yclept "Hard Choices".

But few people, especially difficult to distinguish within the surging herds and crowds of Sanders supporters, want to give her credit for any of her extraordinary accomplishments in public service. ...Why? 

If everyone were judged ONLY in terms of their errors, missteps, faults, and flaws, NONE of us are good enough people to lead anyone, parent anyone, teach anyone, cure anyone, counsel anyone, and so on. 

If you are distinctly unable to successfully explain your support of Bernie Sanders in any other way than attacks on his opponent, then it is quite obvious that either you do not believe there are any truly convincing arguments to support him, or you simply have not done your homework.

Now, with that said, let me encourage you to reconsider your attacks on Hillary Clinton. I am not asking you to vote for her. But I do believe she has earned far more respect than she has been afforded by people who do not understand 1) reality, 2) politics, 3) the reality of American politics, 4) the dire straits of the US government currently. 

Sure, it is not sexy and revolutionary to be pragmatic about governance and how things work IN ACTUALITY in Congress and interconnectedly with the rest of the world. But, FFS, who else will volunteer to actually roll up her sleeves and say, we've got work to do, let's get to it. 

Bernie Sanders does not want to do it. What Bernie Sanders wants is to push his revolutionary agenda through Congress. If you approach him with anything else besides that, from what I have seen, he will simply grumpy Grandpa wave it away because he's too concerned with his main agenda. 

The problem with the Sanders campaign, as one article I read today put it, is if you are continually shouting about what is wrong and being self-righteously pissed about it, you are actually not listening to what others are saying. Most Sanders supporters do not want to listen to what others are saying, which is why they troll writers and journalists and send them death threats and so forth, who have been negative in any way in public toward Sanders or his ideas. 

I will post a few articles here, some journalistic, some opinion/bloggy, in case you would like to read them, regarding Hillary and politics, just so you might glimpse a different viewpoint than your own. I am not expecting you to. But it is what a good padawan would do. 

If you already know everything, then what is the point of still being on the planet? Learning continues, always, because everyone else knows something - at least one thing - you do not. Asking you to rethink things, as you have been pleading with others to rethink things on their end, is only fair. Who knows? You just might learn something new, or gain a deeper/different understanding of something you considered familiar.

And with that, I am out of this convo. Thanks for pretending to listen - I know full well this is tl;dr. Hopefully you, at least, have reconsidered how your voice might best be used during this long year of political discord. ...Or disregard this entirely. After all, this is 'Murica - people are fully free to be as stupid as they feel like being at any given moment in time. And that is precisely why Republicans and Conservatives love it so. 


Hillary Clinton and the Audacity of Political Realism

Fail Bern

To all you rabid Berners out there – you have already failed.

I’m sure this must come as a shock to you, but the truth is always rather shocking because you would have already realized it if you were not trying so hard to look elsewhere rather than right at it.

So let me break it down to you thusly:

All of you who have heard the grumpy clarion call to arms that Bernie Sanders has been issuing, and are rising up to join the Bern-army have already failed.

Most of you were the people in 2007 and 2008 who knocked on doors and gave money and posted vociferously about the new blood, the saviour of Washington D.C.. Barack Obama.

That was fine.

You said, we need better people, more honest people, people not already corrupted by The System {tm} to lead the march into DC and take it over, and take it back from the people.

And that was fine.

You shouted about wanting and desperately needing Hope and Change.

And that was fine.

You mobilized in droves, quite impressively, and held meetings and rallies and donated time and money.

And that was fine.

You ridiculed Sarah Palin again and again, you made John McCain look like an awkward tennis player going, “now, see here” on a field full of footballers.

And that was fine.

You helped Barack Obama, the White Knight to some and the Dark Knight (okay, no, wait, that’s Batman – um, the Black Knight) to others, become the first Black president elected in the USA, 400 years after your ancestors kidnapped Africans and forced them into slavery, lynched and beat and abused, and kept them from buying houses in your neighbourhoods in droves.

And that was fine.

Then all of you, after your celebratory glasses of rose champagne and Napa Valley Chardonnay and your victory laps in those weird individual-toe sneakers, and your journey to the Capitol lawn to witness the inauguration of your Messiah and possibly stopping into an organic smoothie and gourmet vegan burger place for lunch on the way home, went home.

And that was fine.

But then, when 2009 and 2010 came around, you were still either too busy congratulating yourselves on a job well done or concentrating again on your jobs and families as the recession still was not going away, you stayed home.

And that was NOT fine.

You stayed home and concentrated on yourselves and your families while the Tea Party rose up and mobilized the anger of the Conservative idiot base to challenge incumbents in the House.

And that was NOT fine.

You drove your carpools and garaged your SUVs and bought your brand new Priuses and switched to BPA-free everything, and went totally organic while the Conservatives seized control of dozens of state senates and unchallenged legislation seats and redrew districts so that even with a majority of minority voters (who likely wouldn’t turn out anyway except in a Presidential election year) the Republicans would still win those positions.

And that was NOT fine.

You altered your diets all the while complaining how EXPENSIVE produce is and began eating chia seeds and kale and drinking kombucha while Monsanto continued to lobby Congress and spend tons of money on defeating GMO-labelling bills in states like California, which would inform consumers exactly what is in the stuff they are eating.

And that was NOT fine.

While all of the environmentalist groups were begging and pleading and crying out for help because Big Oil and Big Fracking and Big Fossil Fuels continued to tear the country apart, setting off dozens of earthquakes in OKLAHOMA per week when it had, in the history of the existence of the Earth only experienced one or two every several YEARS, you were, what? Where were you then? Why weren’t you helping them lobby members of Congress with Al Gore trying to impress upon them that this global climate change thing is SERIOUS AS HELL, because even the damned PENTAGON issued a warning that it was a threat to USA security? You did not jump in and help then.

And that was NOT fine.

You DID NOT turn out in the numbers of 2008 and 2012 in the years of 2010 and 2014, meaning that President Obama, doing an amazing job DESPITE all of the Republican obstructionism, had to continue to fight for every millimeter of progress, every sensible bill, every reasonable law to be passed, and still lost a lot of the time.

And that was NOT fine.

You allowed the Republican district gerrymandering, the dozens of Conservative anti-abortion bills, the racist states sanctioned by the Voting Rights Act suddenly free to pass their racist election and voting laws and ever-tightening restrictions on just WHO is allowed to vote, and WHEN (as they removed early voting and weekend voting, and thousands upon thousands of names from registered voter lists) to go on, practically unchallenged except by the watchdog groups who are always the ONLY ones to challenge things like that.

And that was NOT fine.

But that’s just you voters who were around and could vote back in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014.

All you political noobz, who have never voted before – you’re idiots.

You do not know the first thing about how things work and you think that you know best? How many of you have been following politics for more than the past 1-6 months? How many of you understand anything about how things work in Washington outside of the show Veep? How many of you understand the first thing about foreign policy, and what foreign policy even is, and who the prime players are and how diplomacy works? You certainly have not seen much of it before recently because all you know is that we were in war and now we are kinda not. But do you know why? Do you know who has been out there trying to get shite done on behalf of the USA?

It has not been Bernie, that is for damned sure.

But let us give you the benefit of the doubt. Everyone is allowed to cast their vote if they are a qualifying citizen, no matter how stupid they are – even people who voted for Michele Bachmann in previous local elections. You want Bernie Sanders now, but will you actually show up a year or so from now when the 2018 mid-term elections will be held in order to vote Democrats and other liberals in who will help Sanders get his agenda through?

I doubt it.

You are the SAME PEOPLE who did NOT turn out for the mid-term elections, and then had the NERVE to whine and bitch and moan about Obama is not doing enough quickly enough to change stuff. BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T SUPPORT HIM AFTER YOU ELECTED HIM, YOU COMPLETE MORONS. Because every time you “rise up” and squeak through some victory, you then retreat to sit on your laurels and congratulate yourselves that you actually DID something, and you made the system work for YOU this time.

And then you fucking forget that it is an ONGOING BATTLE.

Consider the fate of the country like an endless civil war. Even though you went down South and places over there, and you won kinda and you did some stuff, you have to keep an eye on things lest they revert right back to the way they were before. People who oppose you are sneaky – people who want things to stay the way they are or to get back to “the good old days” NEVER stop seething and chewing their resentment cud. At every chance they get they will try to yank progress back.

People only change when they are forced to change and this goes ten times for government.

So all you Bern-ers and democratic socialists and political revolutionaries – I hope you are ready for a long fight. Because that is what it takes. That is what it takes to begin, enable, and facilitate ongoing progressive change. People will be fighting back against you tooth and nail. Are you ready to support Bernie not only in 2016 but in 2017 for 2018, 2019 for 2020, and so on? Are you ready to get out and vote in EVERY SINGLE LOCAL ELECTION IN YOUR AREA from now until whenever to make sure that the revolution is not yanked up by the nape of its neck like a new puppy and put in a box by the elder statesmen of the USA?

I do not think you are.

Which is why I am voting for Hillary.

All you people who are mobilizing and trying to rise up and start the political revolution will NOT BE AROUND after Bernie Sanders gets into office. Which means the Republicans will kick liberal arse in the mid-terms, and then Bernie Sanders will be just as impotent and frustrated as he is now. All of you Bern-ers are living fairy dreams, which means that when Republicans gain/retain control all you'll have in the White House is a guy who resents being there because nothing he wants is getting done and he has to listen to annoying Republicans, Conservatives, and yes, Democrats, in his ear all day every day about the million other things that a President has to do and Bernie does not really feel like doing because he only wants to push his agenda and nothing else.

Hillary Clinton is not a flying glitter unicorn, and she has never pretended to be.

Hillary Clinton is not a naïve optimist, and she has never pretended to be.

Hillary Clinton is not a democratic socialist, and she has never pretended to be.

Hillary Clinton is ideologically despised by Republicans and Conservatives, and she is proud of it.

Hillary Clinton is not the one that Republicans and Conservatives are helping out and trying to get elected with reverse-psychology Bernie Sanders ads aimed at gullible Democrats, and everyone knows it. If Bernie Sanders was the real threat to the Republicans and Conservatives, why aren’t they attacking HIM instead of Hillary?

Hillary Clinton has been in politics and around DC for decades, and she knows everyone, and everyone knows her. Bernie Sanders has not been in the public eye so long, which is why it seems he is “fresher and newer” than Hillary Clinton. If Bernie had been around as long and so prominently, I am MORE than sure people would be kinda tired of and soured on him, too. One can only listen to that grumpy grandpa yelling at you persona for so long before turning the channel from MSNBC to Friends.

Hillary Clinton has worked with everyone, even people she has not liked and people with opposing ideologies, to get things done for the good of the country.

Hillary Clinton is known throughout the world and has forged relationships with many other countries as Secretary of State, she is respected and well-liked, and other countries will feel safer with her in office as someone they know rather than have to restart relationships all over again because an unknown with no foreign policy or diplomatic experience has taken office.

I could go on and on, but let me end with this:

Hillary Clinton is a Scorpio. Bernie Sanders is a Virgo.

Anyone who bets on a Virgo over a Scorpio is well beyond reasoning with and should just be largely ignored.

Hey, that applies to most of you Bern-ers out there, doesn’t it? Hm, I wonder why…

Wake up and smell the coffee, Bern-ers and Bern-er noobz. If you start a revolution and abandon it, you are relegated to the level of hell occupied by people who take other people’s damp laundry out of dryers at laundromats, Starbucks orderers who substitute soy for dairy and then add whipped cream on top, and people who demand cheeseless pizza.

And then people who know better, who are supporting Hillary Clinton because they can see the real world for what it is and know that she can get stuff done regardless, will have to step in and clean up your mess anyway.

As usual. As always.

/ rant