Tag: VP Candidate

VP, The 2020 $64 Question

We have our Dem candidate (not official until fat lady sings at convention) and that candidate is Joe Biden…..a centrist in the umpth degree…..it will be telling about his character when we see who he picks as his running mate (he has already made a off-handed prediction that it would be a woman)….but as they say…”we will see”…..

For those still keeping track, chalk up another state victory for Joe Biden. The presumptive nominee won Wyoming’s mail-in Democratic primary, the party said Sunday. Biden got 72% of the vote to Bernie Sanders’ 28%, giving him 10 of the state’s pledged delegates to Sanders’ four, reports the Washington Post. The state typically holds a caucus, but it switched to an all-mail primary this year because of the coronavirus. Related coverage:

  • Interesting guest: The next guest on Biden’s “Here’s the Deal” podcast is Sen. Amy Klobuchar, seen as a leading candidate to be Biden’s running mate, reports Axios. The 20-minute episode is now available. They don’t talk about a potential 2020 ticket, but hit a wide range of other topics, including Klobuchar’s life before politics and her husband’s diagnosis with COVID-19. Over the weekend, Klobuchar declined to answer whether she would accept a VP offer, but she made a point to praise Biden as a “great vice president.”
  • The VP search: The Los Angeles Times has an overarching look at the search for a running mate, and it notes that one vocal camp is fearful Biden will repeat what it sees as Hillary Clinton’s mistake—picking a moderate, white candidate (in her case, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine) and losing black votes. That’s why the push for Sen. Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams is active. Biden has pledged to pick a woman, and, beyond that, he says his main criteria is finding someone able to step in as president.
  • Fault lines: Politico reports that Biden’s campaign has not begun any formal vetting of contenders yet. Its story is a look at how the selection process is “taking shape along familiar fault lines” for the party—should it try to win back white, working class voters or focus on the minority-led coalition that propelled Barack Obama to two terms? In the first camp, Klobuchar, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin could work. The latter camp includes Harris, Abrams, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Masto and Grisham are Latina.

My money is on either Amy or Tammy…they are from the Rust Belt and Dems need all the help they can get there.  Trump has already pissed off Latinos so they will vote against him no matter who the VP pick is to be……Biden thinks his support in the black community is above reproach after his blow away for Bernie in South Carolina…so he will not need Harris or Abrams (plus they will upstage him whenever possible)……he will go with the most center of the center……. Amy Klobuchar.

Those are my thoughts….anyone care to jump into this discussion?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–28Jun17

The Lawsuit Lotto!

Seems everybody wants to sue somebody sometime…….I guess it is easier than looking for a real job…..

Even VP candidates are not above using a lawsuit to gain fame and fortune…..

Sarah Palin “took a stand” this week against the New York Times in a lawsuit claiming defamation. CNNMoney reports that the former Alaska governor filed her complaint, which seeks upward of $75,000 in damages, against the Times on Tuesday for an editorial it published right after the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise earlier this month. In the op-ed touching on the viciousness of the current political climate, the Times editorial board had pointed a finger at Palin and cited her as a force of “political incitement” before the 2011 Gabby Giffords shooting in Arizona, claiming that an ad from Palin’s PAC had positioned “Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized [crosshairs],” per the lawsuit.

Two days later, the paper added what the New York Post deems an “embarrassing correction”—that no definitive tie had arisen between “political rhetoric” and the Giffords attack, and that the PAC ad had shown electoral districts, not actual Democrats, under the crosshairs. The NYT Opinion account also tweeted a mea culpa for getting “an important fact wrong.” The Times itself reports on Palin’s suit, which says the paper “violated the law and its own policies” and “knowingly, intentionally, willfully, wantonly and maliciously” published the piece to hurt the “devoted wife, mother, and grandmother,” or at the very least exhibited “blatant disregard” for possible harm. The Times says through a rep it will “vigorously” fight the complaint, which it notes it hasn’t reviewed yet. (Erik Wemple writes for the Washington Post that he thinks Palin has a solid case.)

Like I said….easier than actually finding a real job.

Time to be off like a dirty shirt….tomorrow is another day…..and more stuff….chuq

Are Emails Still Important?

All the back and forth during the campaign of 2016 about the emails from Sec. Clinton…..some even say that it was this issue that brought the mighty Clinton clan down……

But are they still as important now as they were during the campaigns?

(I will give a long pause to give the Right thuugs a chance to contemplate their answer)

If the election has not dampened their resolve then the subject of emails would still be of importance…..

If so, is that all email?

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has gone to court to make sure that the American people never get to see the emails that he wrote as governor of Indiana.

According to the Indianapolis Star, Mike Pence is going to court to argue that all of his emails should not be made public:

Now that the presidential campaign and most of the furor over Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are behind us, the Pence administration is going to court to argue for its own brand of email secrecy.

The administration is fighting to conceal the contents of an email sent to Gov. Mike Pence by a political ally. That email is being sought by a prominent Democratic labor lawyer who says he wants to expose waste in the Republican administration.

The Mike Pence who is going to court to argue that his emails should remain a secret is the same guy who just spent months on the presidential campaign trail campaigning against Hillary Clinton because she used a private email server. Clinton also did something that Pence is fighting not to do. She released her emails to the public.

Hypocrisy will be the norm in the Trump/Pence administration, but the bigger question is what is Mike Pence hiding? Why doesn’t Pence want the American people to see his emails?

Both Trump and Pence favor increasing spying on American citizens, and less transparency for themselves. The incoming administration is destined to be the least transparent in US history.

(politicususa.com)

Now that the shoe is on the other foot…I expect there to be some push back by the Right wing thugs…..after all who is better at hypocrisy?

VP Debate Low-Lights

If you watched the Veep debate then you will not need this synopsis….but if you we like me and decided that anything other than the debate was important then this will help you understand the night.

Moderator Elaine Quijano did her best to keep the candidates in check at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., and it was a night of plenty of interruptions, aggressive challenges, and spirited defenses as Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine finally met head to head, the AP reports. Some of the night’s highlights:

  • Both candidates came out of the gate ready to rumble, with each one playing the role of defender for their respective running mates. The AP notes that the “usually easygoing” Kaine went after Pence right from the get-go, to which the “unflappable” Pence did a lot of head-shaking, laughing, and lobbing accusations of a Kaine-Clinton “insult-driven campaign.”
  • Kaine did get in zingers (or what Pence at one point called an extension of the Democratic campaign’s “avalanche of insults), including saying that Donald Trump “loves dictators”—”He’s got like a personal Mount Rushmore: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Moammar Gadhafi, and Saddam Hussein”—and claiming that Clinton would be a “you’re hired” president, while Trump would be a “you’re fired” president, tapping into Trump’s oft-used line from The Apprentice. Pence dismissed Kaine’s lobs as “pre-done” lines, per ABC News.
  • Trump’s tax returns were broached, with Pence noting his running mate had faced some “pretty tough times” in the mid-’90s (including apparently taking a $1B loss in 1995), but that he worked the tax code “brilliantly” to his advantage. Kaine, however, said Trump should release his tax returns, audit or no audit, noting the GOP nominee should at least meet the “Nixon standard,” per CNN. (Nixon tried to keep his tax records from the public for similar auditing reasons in 1973.)
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin also entered the conversation, with Kaine accusing Trump of calling Putin a better leader than President Obama, and Pence deflecting those accusations. “Putin’s run his economy into the ground, he persecutes LGBT folks and journalists,” Kaine said, per the Los Angeles Times. “If you don’t know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you have got to go back to a fifth-grade civics class.”

But if you do not want someone’s opinion then watch the thing for yourself…….

http://nyti.ms/2dv2weu

After a week of terrible news for the Trump campaign there is now a little something for them to celebrate…..the consensus is that Pence won the debate……..

Like him or loathe him, choosing apprentices appears to be one thing Donald Trump definitely excels at. Numerous pundits are calling Trump running mate Mike Pence the winner of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, thanks in part to his calm demeanor in response to an aggressive, interrupting Tim Kaine, though Pence failed to land any knockout blows on his rival. According to a CNN poll, 48% of debate watchers consider Pence the winner, compared to 42% for the Democrat. A round-up of opinions:

  • Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post declares the “cool, calm, collected” Pence the winner over Kaine, who was “trying to load so many Trump attacks into every answer that it made it virtually impossible to grasp any one attack.” But Pence probably made a better case for Pence 2020 than he did for Trump 2016, Cillizza writes—and overall, the debate was like “watching two kids throw mashed potatoes at each other,” only less entertaining.
  • At RedState, Caleb Howe sees Pence as the clear winner and Kaine—who “tried to be an attack dog but came off more like a yipping pup nipping at the mailman’s heels”—as the clear loser. But another loser, he writes, is Trump, partly because “Pence winning only shows how truly terrible Trump was during his debate.”
  • Dan Roberts at the Guardian also says it was a bad night for Kaine. When “he should have calmly shredded the inconsistencies between Trump and the rest of planet Republican, he came across as the nervous and jittery one,” Roberts writes, calling it a missed opportunity because “so much of what the vice-presidential nominee had to say in defense of his boss did not pass the smell test.”
  • Pence succeeded in giving the Trump campaign a calm face after more than a week of turmoil, writes Errol Louis at CNN, who credits the Indiana governor’s years as a radio talk show host for the smooth performance. Pence, he writes, has “demonstrated to other Trump supporters how to defend their candidate without doubling down on his abrasive style.”
  • The big loser here was the truth, according to Politico, which notes that the facts “started taking a beating” when Pence called Longwood University “Norwood University,” and takes a look at inaccurate statements from both candidates on issues including foreign policy, taxes, and immigration.

I say good news because the Trump supporters do not have to make crap up to put a positive spin on their worthless candidate….Pence saved the day.  (the peasants may now commence to dance)

On a side note:  Pence just made the case for him to be the presumptive leader of the GOP in 4 or 8 years….maybe that was the plan all along….thoughts?

Dinner And A Debate–VP Edition

Tonight is the big night!  YAWN!

The VP candidates will have their one time only debate.  I would hope that this would be an informative session for the voter….but I feel it will be just another entertainment for pundits.

My time for caring has long since pass….this election like so many others has degraded into 5th graders behaving badly…..so nope I will not watch the debate my toenails need trimming.

But if you are a glutton for punishment then I have some views for you…….

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump aren’t just two of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history, they’re two of the oldest, adding extra importance to Tuesday night’s debate between VP candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, which the AP describes as a clash between “two low-key, middle-aged guys.” Analysts say both men will likely focus on their rival’s running mate and the debate probably won’t be packed with surprises—but there could still be some memorable moments. A round-up:

  • Politico‘s list of debate details notes that it is scheduled to start at 9pm EDT at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., and last for 90 minutes. Elaine Quijano of CBS News will be the moderator. To prepare, Pence has been debating Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, while Washington attorney Robert Barnett has been working with Kaine.
  • The two men are so overshadowed by their running mates that this will be “one of the least consequential vice-presidential debates ever staged,” according to the Guardian. With Trump’s recent stumbles, Pence is likely to be under more pressure than Kaine. “If Pence does well, he can stop the bleeding and set up Trump for Sunday night. If Pence is mediocre or is seen to have lost, it will be a long few weeks for Trump,” says Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution research fellow who helped Mitt Romney prepare for the 2012 debates.
  • The Hill lists five things to watch for, including efforts by Kaine to defend Clinton’s record and by Pence to shift the conversation away from Trump’s tax returns.
  • Politico reports that Pence blasted Kaine’s record as governor of Virginia during a speech in the state Monday, but signaled that he plans to spend most of his time targeting Clinton. “Clinton’s record on foreign affairs alone could take up the whole 90 minutes,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be a pretty picture.”
  • The Washington Post takes a look at what makes running for vice president such a “terrible job”—and it includes the “nationally televised gaffe obstacle course known as the vice-presidential debate.” Viewers won’t be casting their vote based on the debate, the Post notes, but they’ll be looking out for blunders and for moments like Lloyd Bentsen’s famous “You’re no Jack Kennedy” line to Dan Quayle.
  • Polls show that around a third of Americans either don’t know who the vice presidential candidates are or have no opinion, notes the New York Times, which has devised this quiz to help tell them apart.

Hope this helps….if not then I really do not care……just like about 40% of the population……

Mother Jones seems to think the Veep debate will be something special……

Source: 7 Reasons the Vice Presidential Debate Could Have Big Consequences | Mother Jones

If MoJo’s list is not to your liking then maybe the one by Politico will be helpful……

Source: 5 things to watch in the vice presidential debate – POLITICO

 

10 Things About Ryan

The hoopla of the Ryan VP candidacy is winding down and so am I….he is an interesting person….but it is a short lived interest, at least for me…….this will be my last post on Ryan for at least the foreseeable future and I want to leave the reader and hopefully voter with a few things to keep in mind about Rep. Paul Ryan……..

The list was compiled by MoveOn.org a liberal group that few Right wingers put any validity in their words…..but I say get creative and use your Google button and find out for yourselves…….

1. His economic plan would cost America 1 million jobs in the first year. Ryan’s proposed budget would cripple the economy. He’d slash spending deeply, which would not only slow job growth, but shock the economy and cost 1 million of us our jobs in 2013 alone and kill more than 4 million jobs by the end of 2014.[1]

2. He’d kill Medicare. He’d replace Medicare with vouchers for retirees to purchase insurance, eliminating the guarantee of health care for seniors and putting them at the mercy of the private insurance industry. That could amount to a cost increase of more than $5,900 by 2050, leaving many seniors broke or without the health care they need. He’d also raise the age of eligibility to 67.[2]

3. He’d pickpocket the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. His tax plan is Robin Hood in reverse. He wants to cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, but only for corporations and the rich, like giving families earning more than $1 million a year a $300,000 tax cut. And to pay for them, he’d raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households and butcher social service programs that help middle- and working-class Americans.[3]

4. He’s an anti-choice extremist. Ryan co-sponsored an extremist anti-choice bill, nicknamed the ‘Let Women Die Act,’ that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care even if their lives were at risk. And he co-sponsored another bill that would criminalize some forms of birth control, all abortions, and in vitro fertilization.[4]

5. He’d dismantle Social Security. Ironically, Ryan used the Social Security Survivors benefit to help pay for college, but he wants to take that possibility away from future generations. He agrees with Rick Perry’s view that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and he supported George W. Bush’s disastrous proposal to privatize Social Security.[5]

6. He’d eliminate Pell grants for more than 1 million low-income students. His budget plan cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could mean a loss of educational funding for 1 million low-income students.[6]

7. He’d give $40 billion in subsidies to Big Oil. His budget includes oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.”[7]

8. He’s another Koch-head politician. Not surprisingly, the billionaire oil-baron Koch brothers are some of Ryan’s biggest political contributors. And their company, Koch industries, is Ryan’s biggest energy-related donor. The company’s PAC and affiliated individuals have given him $65,500 in donations.[8]

9. He opposes gay rights. Ryan has an abysmal voting record on gay rights. He’s voted to ban adoption by gay couples, against same-sex marriage, and against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.[9]

10. He thinks an “I got mine, who cares if you’re okay” philosophy is admirable. For many years, Paul Ryan devoted himself to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as a virtue. It has shaped his entire ethic about whom he serves in public office. He even went as far as making his interns read her work.[10]

I do suggest that if you want to know the truth about anything then search for apolitical sites that have NO political affliation….I know that this is an uncommon way to get facts nowadays….but ….try it!  You may like it!

The First And Only VP Debate

OK, how many here watched the to see if the babbling Palin would be the one to show up?

First, I would like to say that I wish I had watched this through the bottom of a shot glass.

This debate as with the last debate as with all these things are just flippin’ boring.  A new style or format is badly needed.  If any of them are popular it is because of something other than the content.  The drinking game may be the only way to make these things interesting.

Onto the analysis–If the plan was to “do no harm” then both candidates did a pretty good job.  Biden stuck to and regurgitated the Oba stand on the wealth of issues, Israel, diplomacy, healthcrare, on and on and on……Palin did not push the McCain position so well–no real specifics.

Palin was sort of “aw shucks” style with a few cute little folksy quips.  Biden was short and to the point–that was unusual for him–but in the long run he was teetering on boring.  Biden is full of….facts, Palin is full of–talking points, she was well schooled but none of it sounded like it was something she really believed.

As always, Americans need a winner and a loser, it is part of the DNA.  I scored it a sloght win of Biden.  Why?  He was on the Obama/Biden points, he defended Obama as well as himself well.  Palin, while well schooled did not seem, to me, to defend MCCain very well and that was her job for the evening and she failed.  The good news is she did not shoot anybody in the butt with glib answers.

The Guild Is Off That Lily

As written in the Politico:

A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven — and sometimes downright awkward — performances in her limited media appearances.

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.”

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.”

“I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s—t,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.”

But there is also no doubt many Republican insiders are worried she could blow next week’s debate, based on her unexpectedly weak and unsteady media appearances, and hurt the Republican ticket if she does.