-Chronicle Herald
COGRATULATIONS
MR TRUMP- YOUR HIRED
OPINION: Requiem for a ruling elite that missed its own failures
Henry
Srebrnik
Published November 16, 2016 - 5:00am
Published November 16, 2016 - 5:00am
If
the Democratic ruling elites had allowed Bernie SAnders to win, Henry
Srebrnikwrites, is an example of willful blindness by both parties. (AP/Shawn
Gust)
Maybe the astounding result in the 2016 American
presidential election, which saw the most improbable of candidates, Donald
Trump, beat the seasoned pro, Hillary Clinton, should not have been the shock
it was.
A system that had completely failed tens of millions
of people for decades, and especially after 2008, needed a rude awakening. The
Democrats even lost the “rust belt” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin, long their bastions.
The political elites, had Hillary Clinton won, would
over the next few years have allowed the rage to continue building and 2020
would be a lot worse than today.
A really smart ruling class would have allowed Bernie
Sanders to beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries, instead of fixing it and
crowning her.
Donald Trump “overturned the table” in a fixed game.
We are in uncharted waters, for sure, but with Clinton, the establishment
seemed oblivious to the charted ones and they were heading straight for the
rocks.
“The Democratic Party’s failure to keep Donald Trump
out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of
insular arrogance,” wrote Matt Taibbi on the Rolling Stone magazine website on
Nov. 10. It bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling
them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“But the party’s willful blindness symbolized a
similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump’s election was
a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of ‘the
establishment.’ The target group included political leaders, bankers,
industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media.”
The rage was directed at institutions that people
believe have failed them and at an economy that doesn’t work for ordinary
workers. Voters saw the aftermath of a financial crisis and Great Recession in
which the gap between winners and losers just grew larger and perpetrators
escaped punishment.
“What has happened in America should not be seen as a
victory for hatefulness over decency,” contended Robert Reich, a former
Democratic Secretary of Labour, in the Guardian of London, Nov. 10. It is more
accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.
“Recent economic indicators may be up, but those
indicators don’t reflect the insecurity most Americans continue to feel, nor
the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do the major
indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power,
stagnant or declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of
democracy by big money.”
When liberal elites are unable to deal with, or even
acknowledge, major cultural and economic problems, just calling those who are
hurting names, people turn to the extremes.
After 2008, President Obama needed to be a reformer
like Franklin Roosevelt, but he wasn’t. He lost touch with his progressive side
and, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted in her Nov. 13 column,
“settled comfortably into being an Ivy League East Coast cerebral elitist who
hung out with celebrities, lectured Congress and scorned the art of political
persuasion.”
His presidency will end with Democrats in possession
of 11 fewer Senate seats, more than 60 fewer House seats, at least 14 fewer
governorships and more than 900 fewer seats in state legislatures than when it
began.
So maybe now we may have a “Huey Long” demagogue in
the White House. The Democrats asked for it.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of
Prince Edward Island.
------
Congrats Mr. Trump -UR HIRED-aft betrayal by #DNC
of #BernIeSanders
n #silentvoters
Live Blog: Choosing a president Canada watching style #FeelTheBern @TheDailyShow #NoDAPL #Keanu
kitty
Congrats Mr. Trump -UR HIRED-aft betrayal by
--------------------
#FeelTheBern #KEANU @TheDailyShow Bush Sr's fav. N millions ordinary #love - A Little Good News Anne Murray 1983 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUUQElQ8kM …
Lyrics
I rolled out this morning
Kids had the mornin' news show on
Bryant Gumbel was talkin' 'bout the fighting in Lebanon
Some senator was squawkin' 'bout the bad economy
It's gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy
Kids had the mornin' news show on
Bryant Gumbel was talkin' 'bout the fighting in Lebanon
Some senator was squawkin' 'bout the bad economy
It's gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy
There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band
One more sad story's one more than I can stand
Just once how I'd like to see the headline say
"Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say", because
One more sad story's one more than I can stand
Just once how I'd like to see the headline say
"Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say", because
Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today
I'll come home this evenin'
I'll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
How I want to hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air, how everybody learned to care
Whoa, tell me
I'll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
How I want to hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air, how everybody learned to care
Whoa, tell me
Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today
And in the streets of Ireland, all the children had to do was play
And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
We sure could use a little good news today
And in the streets of Ireland, all the children had to do was play
And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
We sure could use a little good news today
Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
FADE
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
FADE
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today
-----------------------------
#AmericanIndians are truly heartbroken that 97MILLION DID NOT VOTE....
--------------
--------------
Of 231 million eligible-97Million -DID NOT VOTE USA 2016
Election #FeelTheBern @TheDailyShow
#Keanu
Kit #NoDAPL
97 Million Eligible Voters Did Not Vote in 2016 Election
With ballots still being counted, the final certified results of voter turnout is not expected to be available for several more weeks.
The United States Elections Project is an information source for the United States electoral system. The project run by Dr. Michael P. McDonald, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, features "timely and accurate election statistics, electoral laws, research reports, and other useful information regarding the United States electoral system."
Current statistics from the project estimate that 231,556,622 Americans were eligible to vote in the 2016 presidential elections. Of those, an estimated 134,457,600 voted. Assuming these numbers are correct, the voter turnout, as the proportion of the voting eligible population (rather than voting age population) is 58.1 percent.
This means the 2016 voter turnout was about the same as the last presidential election, 2012, when it was 58.6 percent.
The highest voter turnouts in recent presidential elections were in 2004 (60.7 percent) and 2008 (62.2 percent). The lowest turnouts of the modern era (since WWII) for a presidential election occurred in 1988, 1996 and 2000, when turnout dropped below 55 percent.
Early results in some of the key states that drove President-elect Donald Trump to his win showed that more voters cast ballots in those states this year than in 2012.
In Florida, 9.5 million ballots were cast, compared to 8.5 million in 2012. Some 4.8 million voters cast ballots in Michigan compared to 4.73 million four years ago, and in North Carolina, the 4.725 million ballots cast last Tuesday was about 183,000 more than the number noted in 2012.
The voter eligible population is not the same as the number of registered voters, which Politico reported in October peaked at an historic 200 million.
An aggressive voter registration drive is said to have been the force behind the landmark number of registered voters which Democrats were hoping would benefit them.
The campaign of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton predicted record-setting turnout this fall despite widespread frustration about the tone of the presidential campaign.
"We do expect more voters to turnout in this election than any in our history," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters.
That expectation did materialize in the raw numbers, with over 134 million ballots cast. The next highest turnout in presidential election history came in 2008, when 132.6 million people voted to elect the nation's first African American president, Barack Obama. Turnout dipped to 130.3 million when he was re-elected for a second term in 2012.
On Saturday, according to The New York Times, Clinton blamed her loss to Trump on low turnout among Democrats and on F.B.I. Director James B. Comey, who just days before the election revived the inquiry into her use of a private email server.
"There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful," Clinton said, according to a donor who relayed the remarks she made on a 30-minute conference call. But, she added, "Our analysis is that Comey's letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum."
Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing discovery of additional emails that may be pertinent to the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private server on Oct. 28.
On Nov. 6, the Sunday before Election Day, he announced that the bureau would not charge Clinton with a crime after further review of the emails.
An email to senior Clinton campaign staff from the campaign's head of opinion research Navin Nayak on Thursday blamed both of Comey's letters for the loss, even though the campaign first declared that Comey's second letter showed Clinton innocent of any wrongdoing and would help her win the election.
"We believe that we lost this election in the last week," Nayak wrote in an email sent Thursday night. "Comey's letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters — particularly in the suburbs. We also think Comey's second letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump's turnout."
------------------
It's Clear By Now That the Second-Most Powerful Person in the
Federal Government Will Be Bernie Sanders. The Big Question Is, Who is the MOST
Powerful Person: Paul Ryan or Donald Trump?
I think my title [of head of outreach] is to be head of outreach and that’s
something that I take very seriously,” he said, without explaining any more
about the new role.But Sanders did pound home his remedies for the Democratic Party.
“We need major, major reforms to the Democratic Party,” Sanders said going on to say that Trump was able to tap into discontent among Americans who felt completely ignored by the rest of the American political system.
Trump, Sanders continued, “said I hear that you are hurting and I hear and understand that you’re worried about the future, about your kids, and I alone can do something about it — and people voted for him.”
Sanders went on to tick off the promises Trump made that Democrats would hold him accountable for.
“He said we will not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Now I think that we should expand Social Security,” Sanders continued. “That is what he said, and pay attention to see what he now does. The question that will be resolved pretty quickly is whether or not everything that he was saying to the working class of this country was hypocrisy, was dishonest or whether he was sincere — and we will find out soon enough.”
Sanders recalled more promises made by the president-elect: “Mr. Trump says he wants to invest a trillion dollars in our crumbling infrastructure. That is a good sum of money, that is exactly what we should be doing and we will create millions of good-paying jobs if we do that. Mr. Trump, that’s what you said on the campaign trail; that’s what we look forward to seeing from you.”
Sanders’ speech comes as Trump grapples with reports that his transition team is struggling to make the necessary preparations for when Trump formally becomes president, as well as a time when he has appeared to waver over some of his key campaign promises.
Sanders wasn’t arguing that it is only important to call out Trump for any hypocrisy; he also said he would work with the incoming president if and where their policy positions intersected.
“Mr. Trump said that Wall Street, dangerous, doing bad things, he wants to re-establish Glass-Steagall legislation. I look forward to working with him,” Sanders said.
The Vermont senator’s speech also added to the growing demand among Democrats that Trump drop Steve Bannon, his incoming White House chief strategist. Bannon, while serving as executive chairman of Breitbart News, pegged the news outlet as the “platform for the alt-right,” which is known for anti-Semitic politics and ties to white nationalism. Almost 170 House Democrats earlier in the day signed a letter demanding Trump fire Bannon.
“We will not be involved in the expansion of bigotry, racism, sexism,” Sanders said. “Mr. Trump, we are not going backwards in terms of bigotry. We are going forward in creating a nondiscriminatory society.”
– Sanders on Trump: Hold him accountable, Daniel Strauss, Politico, last night
It may be pure coincidence that only about 36 hours after it was reported that someone “close to the transition team” publicly redefined political correctness as including criticism of appointments of Wall Street, banking, fossil fuel, and healthcare insurance insiders to the regulatory bodies charged with regulating and policing them—thus claiming that Trump was just being politically correct in promising to drain the swamp of extremely wealthy or extremely highly paid influence-peddlers-as-legislation-and-regulation-drafters—Trump ditched some of the Trump-government-by-industry-lobbyist juggernaut. At least for the moment.
Or maybe Jared Kushner reads Angry Bear.
More likely, though, it was, well, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren speaking to the public in the last 48 hours. And the realization that they weren’t gonna stop.
And that the news media was paying attention.
And that that could actually matter among the Rust Belt white blue-collar voters and rural voters who put him over the top in, well, the Rust Belt.
Cuz, unlike Hillary Clinton, Sanders and Warren won’t be offering contentless platitudes while flying over fly-over country. They, unlike Clinton, will actually talk.*
Maybe they’ll even venture into, say, coal country and discuss the fact that oil and gas billionaires fighting for pipelines and to gain control of vast acreage of federal land have financial interests in further killing the coal industry, since it is the new technology of fracking and the like that, far more than the EPA, has killed the economy in Appalachia.
In any event, they as well as Sherrod Brown, who’s also speaking out (although no one outside of Ohio knows who is, but soon they very well might), do recognize that since it’s no longer actually the ‘80s or ‘90s, there’s actually little daylight on economic-policy interests between Rust Belt white blue-collar workers and the Obama coalition. And that therefore Paul Ryan’s agenda is effectively the diametric opposite of what they thought they were voting for.
Or at least what they wanted most to vote for.
As a reader noted to me this morning in the Comments thread to one of my recent posts, Trump received more votes in Wisconsin than Romney did. And indeed he did.
And as I pointed out to that reader, Bernie Sanders received fully 140,000 more votes in that state’s primary than did Clinton–140,000 more votes than Clinton, in a smallish state that is very predominantly white.
I also noted that Sanders received 17,000 more votes in Michigan than Clinton. And that he did that by keeping the African-American vote for Clinton down to 2-1–it was expected to be about 3-1–and by beating Clinton in every single county other than Wayne (Detroit) and Genesee (Flint).
And that that was an awful lot of white voters, in order to negate a 2-1 advantage for Clinton in Wayne and, probably, about that in Genesee. And that we’re talkin’ some mega-Republican-stronghold counties here.
I read those statistics–140,000-vote margin in WI and a 17,000-vote margin in MI for Sanders—just a few days ago. And I remember being shocked at the MI counties map the day after the primary.
Also telling: Sanders won the Indiana primary, as well, notwithstanding that a very sizable part of Indiana’s Democrats are African-Americans in Indianapolis and in the Gary/Hammond area.
And that although very much was made of Clinton’s large win in the Ohio primary, that primary was on the very last day of the state-primaries/caucuses season; only the DC primary came later, by a week. Ohio’s primary was on the same day as California’s, and the evening before, the AP reported that Clinton had just clinched the nomination with new commitments from super delegates. Meanwhile, in OH, Kasich, who was still on the ballot, won the Republican primary–although partly because the rest of the vote was split between Trump and Cruz.
In every one of these states, as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Republican and Dem primaries were held on the same day. Iowa and New Hampshire are not only heavily white; they also are largely blue-collar. Sanders beat Clinton by 22 points in NH and won far more votes than did Trump. And in Iowa, while Clinton the caucus count by 0.03%, it is pretty widely believed that Sanders won the popular vote–which is why the state party committee, which had supported Clinton, refused to release the popular-vote count.
The beauty of the Sanders campaign was that it actually realized that the Reagan era’s divergence of economic interests between whites, especially blue-collar whites, and African Americans is largely now just history.
And that if Trump plays Charlie McCarthy to Paul Ryan’s Edgar Bergen, or for that matter to Mitch McConnell’s, or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s, or the Heritage Foundation’s—these do mostly overlap, of course—he’s unlikely to get away with it, politically. Past is not always prologue.
At least in the Facebook and Twitter era, which can cut in ways they and others don’t expect.
____
*I go back to August, when nothing much was happening in Clinton’s campaign, and I asked her to talk with me only about what her website said was her signature plan — a $270 billion proposal for infrastructure spending. Word came back that she wasn’t going to discuss it in any detail. To my knowledge, she never did.
It must be quite a relief, a warming feeling all over, to think you
can win political campaigns without ever having to wrestle with complex
subjects or talk to anyone who doesn’t already think you’re right.
–
The Democrats’ 2016 mistake, Matt Bai, Yahoo News, today.
Throughout
the general election campaign, beginning shortly after the California and Ohio
primaries, I had this disorienting feeling that Clinton was not actually
campaigning–that she was just giving a nod to it now and then. I don’t
recall anything like that in any other presidential campaign. I kept
expecting her to begin actually campaigning. She just never really did,
until the last 10 days or so, when it was too late to matter.
---------------
Bernie Sanders to build base outside of Washington in
new Democratic post
Senator Bernie Sanders, a former
Democratic presidential candidate, said on Thursday he will help rebuild party
support outside of Washington and craft a new economic message for all
Americans.Sanders, who will become outreach chair on the Senate Democrats leadership team, will try to engage Americans who feel disconnected from the political process. Sanders is an Independent from Vermont but tends to vote with Democrats.
“The real action to transform America won’t take place on Capitol Hill, it will be in the grassroots America among millions struggling economically and young people,” Sanders said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, elected the Senate’s new minority leader on Wednesday, said Sanders will join his 10-member leadership team. He wants to harness Sanders’ popularity with young and working class voters during the hard-fought primary battle with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Democrats are regrouping after the upset victory of Republican Donald Trump and after Republicans gained control of the Senate and House and made big gains in control of state legislatures.
Sanders, who will also become the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said he will make sure the panel represents the needs of working families, not billionaires.
One problem for the Democrats is while they make the point that the economy is better off today than it was eight years ago, it has not improved for the middle class for decades, he said.
“What the Democrats I think too often have ignored is that for the last forty years … the middle class of this country has been shrinking,” Sanders told the breakfast, saying that real wages have gone down while income inequality has risen.
Sanders said he supports fresh leadership for the Democratic National Committee, the party’s organization and has endorsed Congressman Keith Ellison, of Minnesota, as the new leader of the party. Ellison, who is a progressive and a Muslim, reflects the diversity of the party, Sanders and other Democrats say.
Sanders also said that Hillary Clinton should play a key role. After her defeat last week, Sanders said he did not talk to her directly, only on a conference call.
“She ended up getting more votes that Mr. Trump and it goes without saying that she has a very important role to play about the future of the Democratic party,” he said.
(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
--------------
The punditry and post-mortems have filled the airwaves, coffee shops, and just about anywhere people gather. The talk is the shocking upset engineered by the Trump campaign.
They place too little emphasis on why Trump was able to do this. A simple answer: his supporters voted en masse; too many of his opponents stayed home.
What non-voters can’t seem to understand is that when they don’t vote, they are really voting for the opposition. If you can suppress the opposition vote, it does not take a lot of votes to win.
I find it sad so many voters need some young, charismatic, candidate like Obama or the Trudeaus to get them to the ballot box. This is the big reason why a committed minority is often able to control government. It is just as true in Canada as in the U.S.A. If you don’t vote, you forfeit the right to complain. Simple as that.
Alex MacEachern, Dartmouth
------------------------
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE — Nov. 12, 2016
OK, so Hillary Clinton has lost the election. Though the popular vote has gone her way, a decisive majority of electoral votes has gone to Trump. The North American stock markets have already made an impressive recovery and President Obama’s prediction that the sun would rise Wednesday morning, no doubt viewed at the time by many with skepticism, has proven correct.
But I nevertheless feel compelled to confess — belonging as I do to the rational Canadian majority — that I saw an international existential threat to a Trump victory, and dismissed that possibility as an absurdity.
However, my faith in the future was restored when Paul Ryan, Speaker to the venerable House of Representatives in Washington, having acknowledged the “incredible political feat” achieved by the Republican president-elect, whose name he had been heretofore unable to utter, said he had twice spoken with Trump Wednesday morning, was looking forward to working with him, all the while appearing cool, calm, collected, and betraying no sign of having suffered severe whiplash!
I now find myself in the unusual position of hesitating to condemn out of hand any suggestion that there may be some merit to seemingly duplicitous politicians keeping their powder dry until the tide of battle has turned.
Predicting this outcome had been well beyond my ken, but Ryan’s dubious strategy of neither endorsing nor rejecting the nominee, now permits his effective collaboration with the new president, perhaps allowing the first tentative steps in the difficult task of restoring international confidence in American exceptionalism.
Ray March, Halifax
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BELOVED BERNIE SANDERS...
Bernie Sanders: Donald Trump is 'a very smart person'
By
11/17/16 10:28 AM
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
revealed Thursday morning that he believes President-elect Trump is a
"very smart person" despite the differences between the two, pointing
to his win in last week's election.
Sanders made the remark
to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast when asked about Trump's
potential Cabinet and Supreme Court
nominations, which he declined to touch on specifically.
"Let me be clear —
I happen to think that Donald Trump is a very
smart person, and he would not have been elected president if he were not a
very smart person," Sanders said. "I also have no doubt that he, in
his way, loves this country. I would hope very much that given his background
and given some of the, what I consider to be, terrible, terrible things that he
has said on the campaign trail to minorities.
"I would hope that he understands he has an
extraordinary opportunity, an unbelievable opportunity to say, 'I said ...
terrible things. I apologize. I am not going to be a president leading a racist
or a sexist or a homophobic or Islamophobic administration. I want to focus on
the real issues facing the American people,' many of which he touched upon
during his campaign."
The Vermont
socialist was a fervent critic of Trump throughout the presidential campaign,
having campaigned extensively for Hillary Clinton after
the Democratic National Convention. Since last week's election, he announced
that he is backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to take over as the chairman of
the Democratic National Committee.
----------------
Hillary Clinton lost. Bernie Sanders could have won.
We chose the wrong candidate.
But that notion hides a simple fact: In an election of
immense importance, Democratic leadership and voters rejected a hugely popular
candidate in favor of a deeply unpopular one and are now paying the price. Some
of us will be asking why for years to come.
Bernie
Sanders speaks near Hillary Clinton. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump’s stunning victory is less surprising when
we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a
deeply unpopular politician. She won a hotly contested primary victory
against a
uniquely popular candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders. In her place, could he
have beaten Trump?
That Clinton has unusually high unfavorables has been
true for decades. Indeed, it has been a steady fact of her political life.
She has annually ranked among the least-liked politicians on the national stage
since
she was the first lady. In recent years, her low favorability rating was matched
only by that of her opponent, animated hate Muppet Donald Trump. In
contrast, Sanders enjoys very high popularity, ranking as the
most popular senator for two years in a row. Nationally,
his favorability rating is more
than 10 points higher than Clinton’s, and his unfavorability
rating is more than 15 points lower. This popularity would have been a real
asset on the campaign trail.
Clinton’s inability to ever capture the approval of most
Americans hurt her in a number of ways. Consider her performance in predominantly
black, working-class counties in Michigan. These are precisely the kinds of
areas that she was supposed to count on in the Rust Belt, the “blue wall” that
would supposedly secure her victory even if she lost out in Florida and North
Carolina. And she did earn the majority of their votes, easily winning among
black voters in the states, as she did with black voters nationwide. That
Democrats remain the party of the black working class is a credit to the party
and their candidate.
Hillary Clinton gave a concession speech on Nov. 9,
telling her supporters, "Being your candidate has been one of the greatest
honors of my life." (The Washington Post)
But turnout matters in a close election, and here she
suffered significantly compared with President Obama in both 2008 and
2012. In Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties in Michigan, the heart of Detroit’s
black voting bloc, Clinton won 55 percent of the vote — compared with 69
percent for Obama in 2012. Meanwhile, it was in Michigan that Sanders won his
most shocking primary victory, probably through the same forces that hurt
Clinton on Election Day: Her agenda did not seem to offer much hope to those
hurt by deindustrialization and outsourcing. We can only guess how much better
he might have performed there, or in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which
he
also won in a surprising primary upset) had he been the nominee. But there
is little doubt now that his success in the Rust Belt was a canary in the coal
mine for the Clinton campaign, a now-obvious sign that she was in trouble.
Indeed, turnout overall was a major problem for the
Clinton campaign; though not all votes are yet counted, it’s clear that Clinton
received millions fewer votes than Obama in several states, while Trump
frequently received more than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Nor did Clinton enjoy
the benefits of party crossovers. There was much talk of “Clinton Republicans” who
would, in the spirit of the Reagan Democrats, cross party lines to oppose
Trump. But according to the
exit polling of the New York Times, more Democrats crossed over and voted
for Trump than Republicans crossed over and voted for Clinton. Sanders,
notably, never
had trouble drawing crowds, and in the Democratic primary
campaign, turnout rebounded
from 2012 lows. Whether that rebound was a result of voters’ enthusiasm for
Sanders or the opposite is hard to say; what’s clear is that Clinton wasn’t
able to get out the vote herself and that she lost both Democrats and
independents to Trump, while Sanders had notorious
luck with independent
voters.
You might well say that sexism plays a large role in
Clinton’s low popularity. That’s true: She has been the victim of terrible
sexism during her entire career. But it is also irrelevant to the question that
confronted us in the Democratic primary: Which candidate was most likely to
secure the election? Critics of Sanders were quick to poke holes in his high
favorability ratings, arguing that he had never been through the bruising
Republican attacks that Clinton had and that attack ads spotlighting his
self-professed socialism would surely erode his advantage in favorability.
Perhaps this was true: Trump surely would’ve pointed out that Sanders
identified as a socialist, that he seemed at times radical, and so on. But it
fundamentally meant placing a hypothetical above the direct evidence that
Sanders was simply a far more popular politician. And the injustice that sexism
harms Clinton doesn’t change the fact of it. We knew Clinton was unpopular for
a variety of reasons going in, and mainly ignored it.
Even beyond his advantages in popularity, Sanders would
have offered the Democrats advantages in the kind of race he could have run. The Clinton campaign was an
incredibly smooth operation in a period of immense
public distrust for smooth operators. Clinton’s campaign was defined by its
slick Internet presentation and its celebrity endorsements. But neither of
these things probably helped her play in the most essential parts of the
country, where impeccable web design and Hollywood glamor don’t go as far. Her
Twitter account was often masterful, pulling in likes and retweets by the
hundreds of thousands — but it turns out retweets aren’t votes. She appeared on
the buzzworthy Comedy Central television show “Broad
City,” delighting the show’s influential and connected fan base — but
it turns out only
a couple million people regularly watch that show. She won loud support
from celebrities such as the actress and writer Lena
Dunham and the musician
Beyoncé — but it turns out that wealthy
celebrities are not equipped to garner votes in an election defined by
populist anger. Clinton’s campaign seemed fixated on appealing to precisely the
educated liberal urbanites who were never going to vote for Trump in any
scenario.
If Clinton’s campaign seemed bizarrely pitched toward the
interests of those who were always going to vote for her anyway, Sanders was
uniquely positioned to reach voters with a different sensibility. In contrast
to the millionaire polish of the Clinton camp, Sanders has a somewhat
shambolic, grandfatherly presence that conveys an unpretentious and approachable
character. Clinton struggled to use Trump’s wealth against him, in large
measure because she herself is an immensely wealthy woman. (In fact, she
frequently suggested that Trump wasn’t really
all that rich, a
ludicrous line of attack from a primary in which Sanders’s play for
Nordic-style egalitarian policies won him favor in battleground
states such as Pennsylvania.) Sanders would have been able to contrast
Trump’s ostentatious wealth with his own shabby aesthetic. The message writes
itself: Trump talks a good game about economic anxiety, but why would you trust
this New York billionaire to put your interests first?
By the end of the evening, Clinton’s biggest problem was
clear: She needed to win suburban white voters in the Rust Belt, and she could
not. Younger voters might not realize that these areas were once Democratic
strongholds, thanks to high union rates and traditional support for the party
among those working in manufacturing. But years of assaults on union rights by
Republicans — often barely opposed by Democratic lawmakers who have seemingly
lost interest in organized labor — and severe contractions
in manufacturing as an employment base have turned that strength into a
weakness. Democrats must now ask themselves: Who would have been a better
representative for the party in that region? The millionaire from New York with
an entourage of celebrities and the backing of the Democratic money machine? Or
a small-city New Deal granddad from Vermont who has spent his political life
working with unions and appealing to economic justice and populism?
There will be years of recriminations in our future. Many
Democrats will, as is their habit, conclude that the fault lies with the left
wing of the party — that progressive party activists did not sufficiently
support the candidate or that
leftward attacks weakened Clinton. But that notion hides a simple fact: In
an election of immense importance, Democratic leadership and voters rejected a
hugely popular candidate in favor of a deeply unpopular one and are now paying
the price. Some of us will be asking why for years to come.
----------------------
If anyone doubts Bernie Sanders would’ve crushed Trump, show them this
|
According
to the data, Donald Trump would have been soundly defeated by Bernie Sanders
last night had the Vermont senator been the one to face him.
When examining the 13
states Hillary Clinton lost twice — the states Trump won side-by-side with the
states Bernie Sanders won during the Democratic primary — the similarities are
striking. The GOP nominee likely saw this, and tweeted in May that he was
relieved to not have to face Sanders in the general election:
I would rather run
against Crooked Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders and that will happen
because the books are cooked against Bernie!
— Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump) May 4,
2016
In five states Sanders won where exit polling data is available —
Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — the demographics
that helped Trump hit 270 electoral college votes were also Sen. Sanders’ key
demographics that helped him defeat the former Secretary of State in multiple
primaries in different regions of the country.
The numbers suggest
that there may have been enough Sanders votes in those pivotal states to have
swung the election in Sanders’ favor if superdelegates and restrictive closed
primaries weren’t part of the Democratic primary process. Popular blog All That
Is Interesting created an electoral map assuming that Sanders won white, rural
rust belt voters in the traditionally blue states that Hillary Clinton lost on
Tuesday night in a hypothetical Trump/Sanders general election matchup, giving Sanders with a 303-235 advantage.
Determining whether
or not Sanders would have won the states Clinton lost is easy when looking at
exit poll data taken during the Democratic primary. Here’s a state-by-state
breakdown:
Indiana
Bernie Sanders beat
Hillary Clinton by 5 points in Indiana’s May 3 primary. Tuesday night, Trump
beat Clinton in the Hoosier State by 20 points. While Indiana went to Mitt Romney in 2012,
it’s worth remembering that Barack Obama won the state in 2008, meaning it
isn’t a solidly red state.
What contributed most
to Sanders’ primary win in Indiana was his dominance with white voters (57
percent support) and men (59 percent support), who collectively made up 72
percent and 42 percent of voters, respectively, according to NBC News. Sanders also excelled among poor and
lower-middle class voters, winning the majority of voters who made less than
$30,000 in 2015, and between $30,000 and $50,000. Sen. Sanders won the support
of a whopping 72 percent of independents, 54 percent of voters who said free
trade had a negative effect on jobs, and 60 percent of voters who said they
were “very worried” about the future of the U.S. economy.
Comparatively, Donald
Trump won 53 percent of white voters in the Hoosier State’s
Republican primary, and 59 percent of men — roughly the same percentages
Sanders won for those same demographics. Trump also won 54 percent of voters
who made between $30,000 and $50,000 in 2015, and 53 percent of voters who were
“very worried” about the future of the economy.
Michigan
The March 8 Michigan
primary was perhaps Bernie Sanders’ most important victory, as pollsters widely and wrongly predicted a considerable victory for
Hillary Clinton due to her strength with black voters in cities like Detroit
and Flint. Sanders’ 50-48 win was largely due to his strength with rural, white
voters disenfranchised by free trade deals backed by the Clintons, like NAFTA.
Much like Indiana,
Sanders prevailed with the help of 55 percent of male voters and 56 percent of white voters.
54 percent of voters who made less than $50,000 in 2015 supported Sanders, as
well as 71 percent of voters identifying as independent. NAFTA hate brought
Sen. Sanders over the finish line, as 56 percent of voters who said free trade
was bad for job growth in Michigan picked Sanders. The Vermont senator did very
well with voters who said they wanted an outsider in office, winning 84 percent of that demographic. Sanders’ strength
wasn’t in inner cities, but in suburbs and rural areas, capturing 50 percent
and 57 percent of voters, respectively.
Donald Trump beat all
four of his competitors in the Michigan primary along the same demographic
lines. Trump won 53 percent of men and 38 percent of white voters (13 points better than his closest competitor, Ted Cruz).
Among the $30,000 to $50,000 income demographic, Trump demolished Cruz by 21
points. Trump also won 45 percent of voters who said free trade took away
American jobs, which was 23 points higher than Cruz.
West Virginia
Voters in West
Virginia largely live in rural areas, work blue-collar jobs, and are some of
the poorest in the country. It’s no surprise Sanders won by 15 points in the May 10 primary, and that Trump beat
Ted Cruz by 68 points. Because Democrats are well-represented in the West
Virginia legislature, and because West Virginians just elected a Democrat for governor while simultaneously
rejecting Hillary Clinton, it’s very possible Sanders would have won the state
had he been the Democratic nominee.
As was the pattern
during the Democratic primary, Sanders won with white voters and men, capturing 52 percent
and 53 percent of those demographics, respectively. Sen. Sanders crushed
Hillary Clinton by 32 points in the $30,000 to $50,000 income demographic,
and also beat the former Secretary of State by 19 points among voters who made
less than $30,000 last year. Trump obliterated the competition in those same gender, race, and
income demographics.
Wisconsin
Clinton’s loss to
Trump in the Badger State was perhaps the most significant of the night, as
Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican for president in more than 30 years. Wisconsin was also a state where
Sanders notched a crushing victory over Clinton, winning by a 57-43 margin.
Bernie Sanders won
nearly two-thirds of male voters, and 59 percent of whites, who made up 83 percent of the electorate in the state’s
April 5 primary. Sen. Sanders defeated Clinton in all of the income
demographics, but did particularly well among middle class voters, capturing 54 percent of the $30,000 to $50,000 demographic, along
with 61 percent of the state’s $50,000 to $99,000 demographic,
who made up the largest percentage of primary voters. Among voters against free
trade policies, Sanders won by a 60-39 margin.
Wisconsin exit
pollsters also asked voters about their opinions on foreign policy. While Trump
made a reputation for himself as anti-interventionist, Sanders also appealed to
Wisconsin voters opposed to foreign intervention. An astounding 74 percent of Sanders backers in the primary said the
United States should take a “less active role” in foreign policy, who
collectively made up 35 percent of the electorate.
While we can’t
unfortunately travel back in time and give Bernie Sanders the nomination, one
thing to take away from this data is that the tide is shifting in America
toward a new form of politics that eschews global capitalism and yearns for
economic populism. Whoever challenges Donald Trump in 2020 should pay close
attention to these numbers.
Zach
Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing
about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at [email protected]
, and follow his work on the Public Banking
Institute blog.
-----------------
OH NOVA
SCOTIA.... we are all back mothers and
fathers and we weep for our sons of Nova Scotia...
EDITORIAL:
Gun violence is a tough challenge for us all
Published
November 16, 2016 - 5:00am
Last Updated November 16, 2016 - 5:00am
Last Updated November 16, 2016 - 5:00am
Just this week in Halifax, two more men were killed in gunfire, months after police retrieved the body of 26-year-old Tylor Donavan McInnis of Halifax from the trunk of a stolen car.
On Monday night, a 58-year-old man died in hospital after being shot. Police found the man on Cragg Avenue, off Uniacke Street, after responding to reports of shots fired shortly after 11 p.m. It was the third reported shooting and second gun-related death in Halifax since the Saturday night murder of 21-year-old Shakur Jefferies. A 29-year-old man was shot Sunday morning on Redden Court, Bedford.
These most recent deaths mark the tenth and eleventh homicides in Halifax in 2016.
The late August death of Mr. McInnis followed the murders of Kristin Johnston, Tyler Richards, Naricho Clayton, Blaine Clothier, Joseph Cameron, Frank Lampe and Daverico Downey. This is too many lives taken, too much violence on our streets.
Carvel Clayton, a rapper known for his advocacy to end the string of murders in the city, has been charged with second-degree murder of Mr. Jefferies. As he left court Monday, Mr. Clayton was met with fists and threats. He made his court appearance with a swollen black eye.
Mr. Jefferies was found dead near an apartment building on Washmill Lake Drive. He was 21 and a father.
We’ve heard time and again that immediate action is needed to stem this lethal trend. Yet we can’t afford to dull our senses to that message or to accept that routine gun violence has become a norm in our society.
Instead, we must be alive to the urgency of confronting this new, destructive threat to community safety and to young lives. We must be united in pressing political leaders to come up with effective responses and let them know this is a community priority. Doing nothing is not an option. The tragedy of lost lives is deep and getting deeper.
These are our brothers, our sons, our cousins, our uncles, our fathers. This is all happening in our neighbourhoods, our streets and our homes. Our voices and our help are needed now. If you have any information on any of these crimes, reach out to police to share it.
As a community, we also need to work in a sustained manner to find ways to stop gun violence. We must demand action from political leaders and play our parts in bringing it about. We have to truly face up to this challenge. The response must come from all of us and each of us.
----
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE-
Halifax shootings
I ran the Montreal residential system for delinquent boys for a few years.
As I read about the shootings of young men in Halifax, I have one question: Where are the fathers?
Peter McCurdy, Halifax
-------------------------
Hip hop artist Classified, Margaret Trudeau expected at Halifax WE day gathering
HERO #Classified for abused and bullied children and women
and #MargaretTrudeau for mental health.... so proud u’ll be in #NovaScotia
The inspirational event for youth on Nov. 30 at the Scotiabank Centre is also expecting speakers that include author Joseph Boyden and humanitarian Romeo Dallaire.
WE day describes itself as “a movement that brings people together and gives them the tools to change the world,” while celebrating actions on issues suchas homelessness and poverty.
The events’ co-founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, will be speaking at the Halifax event as well, along with a lineup of young Atlantic Canadians who will talk about improvements they’re bringing to their communities.
The organizers say in a news release that Syrian refugee Hani Al Moulia will describe her family’s dangerous and uncertain trek from the Syrian city of Homs to Canada.
Arriving in Canada in June 2015, Hani now shares the photographs of his family’s journey to their new home in Regina.
---------
#Classified #Anonymous #ChildrenOfTheSecret #TheBullyProject
#WhiteRibbon #OneBillionRising
Millions of us throwaway kids were horrifically abused as
WWII babies and kids
CHILD ABUSE- mind
rape /physical torture/ sexual assault..... and too many of us have lived this
hero’s story...,. we are #FredaEns and #FredaEns is us.
SEXUAL ABUSE
A disturbing reality for First Nations
Indigenous leaders speak out about the haunting truth
KRISTY KIRKUP SHERYL UBELACKER THE CANADIAN PRESS
Freda Ens says she was a baby when her birth mother
sold her for a bottle of beer.
The buyer was an unrelated man she would later call
Grandfather. Her earliest memories include being sexually molested by a number
of men in his extended family.
“I don’t ever remember being able to say, ‘No, you
can’t do that,’ or, ‘No, I don’t have to do that,’” recalled Ens, 59, who grew
up in B.C.’s Old Massett Village, a Haida community.
“I would wake up and it would be dark and I wouldn’t
know who it was . . . It could have been an uncle . . . it could have been
another cousin.
“The one I knew was my dad, who went to jail, and
then my grandfather.”
Child sexual abuse is a disturbing reality in many of
Canada’s First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities, research is beginning to
show. Extensive interviews with social scientists, indigenous leaders and
victims undertaken over the past few months by The Canadian Press show that the
prevalence of sexual abuse in some communities is shockingly high. And only now
are prominent indigenous leaders speaking out publicly for the first time about
the need for communities to take a hard look.
It’s a painful legacy connected to almost 120 years
of government- sponsored, church-run residential schools, where aboriginal leaders
say many native children were physically and sexually molested by clergy and
other staff.
The abused in turn became abusers, creating a cycle
of childhood sexual violation that has spread in ever-expanding ripples from
one generation to the next.
Within indigenous society, the knowledge that
children are being molested is often an open secret — but one to which few are
willing to give voice. Instead, they dance around the words, talking instead
about child welfare, bullying, substance abuse, intergenerational trauma and
community conflict.
While The Canadian Press has a policy of not
identifying the victims of sexual assault, Ens agreed to be identified in this
story as part of her ongoing efforts to raise awareness about the problem in
aboriginal communities.
Community health nurse Shelly Michano, who lives and
works in Biigtgong Nishnaabeg First Nation in northwestern Ontario, is on the
front lines. She sees the consequences of sexual abuse among some residents,
which can manifest as alcohol and drug abuse, chronic illness and suicide.
“I would say as First Nations people, you’re
hard-pressed to find anybody who doesn’t have personal experience with this,”
said Michano.
“But it’s never, ever quite on the surface. There’s
still lots and lots of stigma attached around that. And people don’t
necessarily openly speak about it still.”
Finally, however, some aboriginal leaders are
beginning to tear away the veil of secrecy, acknowledging that until the cycle
of sexual abuse is brought to light, it will continue, threatening the
well-being of future generations of Canada’s First Peoples.
“Sexual abuse and incest is amongst our people,
there’s no question,” Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First
Nations, said in an interview.
Caseworker for Public Safety Freda Ens. JONATHAN
HAYWARD •CP
-------------------
Increase in indigenous
girl suicides on minds of leaders
REGINA (CP) — Political and indigenous leaders
in Saskatchewan are heading to a northern community to try to understand why so
many young girls are killing themselves.
Premier Brad Wall and Bobby Cameron, chief of
Saskatchewan’s Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, are scheduled to be
in La Ronge on Wednesday.
Since the middle of October, six girls between
the ages of 10 and 14 have taken their own lives in northern Saskatchewan,
including four from the Lac La Ronge Indian band.
Cameron says one immediate step that could
help is the creation of youth centres with programs after hours and on the
weekend when young people are most vulnerable.
But he says there also needs to be long-term
political support.
Wall says there were plans in the works to
increase mental health resources in the north before the suicides, but the
premier says he’s also interested in the idea of a mental health and addictions
centre in the north.
“We’re going to be meeting with health care
professionals,” says Wall. “We’re going to be meeting with local leaders. I’m
sure we’re going to talk to families that are concerned and some of them that
have gone through these unspeakable tragedies.”
Lac La Ronge Indian Band Chief Tammy
Cook-Searson said last week that the community is working through the pain to
reach out to young people in the hope of preventing more deaths. Cook-Searson
said the First Nation is working with social agencies and the provincial and
federal governments to stabilize the situation.
The chief said the key to stopping the
suicides will be letting girls know that people want to help them, their
friends or family if they are hurting.
Last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
called the suicides in northern Saskatchewan a tragedy and said the federal
government is committed to working with indigenous communities to deal with the
problem.
Health Canada has said more mental-health
workers and other health-care professionals have been sent to communities that
have requested them.
----------
Killings spark reckoning over status of women in Israel
ARON HELLER AREEJ HAZBOUN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOD, Israel — After years of abuse and death threats,
Duaa Abu-Sharkh had finally divorced her husband, agreeing even to give up
custody of her four young children and family property to escape his violent
grip. Then, one night in late September, as the 32-year-old mother was dropping
off her kids after a rare visit, a masked gunman dragged her from her car and
shot her in the head before their eyes.
Her killing is the latest in a string of murders of
Israeli-Arab women believed to have been carried out by relatives. But after
years of silence, the recent outburst has sparked soul searching in the
community and unprecedented demonstrations against its mistreatment of women.
The killings have some similarities to the so-called
“honour killings” elsewhere in the Muslim world, where women can be murdered by
relatives for tarnishing the family name through perceived sexual
indiscretions.
But activists in Israel reject such comparisons,
saying the vast majority of the killings are the result of rampant spousal
abuse that has been ignored by police in a landscape rife with drugs, crime and
poverty.
Traumatized by the recent death of Abu-Sharkh and
other women in their communities, Arab citizens, who have long been suspicious
of Israeli authorities, are now calling for more police and social services in
their longneglected neighbourhoods.
Though just a fifth of the population, Arabs
represent half of the women killed in Israel each year.
And half of those women are killed in Arab
neighbourhoods of Ramle and Lod, cities just outside of Tel Aviv where several
large clans involved in organized crime have made weapons easily accessible and
allowed violence, particularly toward women, to go unchecked for years. “Women
in Arab society have a lower status. So, when there is violence, who pays the
price?
Women,” said Samah Salaime, a social worker who
founded the Arab Women in the Center organization to aid victims in the Lod
area. She said Israeli authorities treat the oppression of women as a value in
Arab society. “They deal with us as if the blood of the Arab woman is cheaper,”
she said.
But things are starting to change.
Abu-Sharkh’s killing, and that of another divorced
mother of four in Jaffa a month later, spurred a series of street protests that
drew hundreds of women and men, both Arabs and Jews. A parliamentary committee
heard testimony from Arab women and the national police chief said the level of
violence was “unacceptable,” and vowed to battle it.
Arabs hold full citizenship rights in Israel, but are
generally poorer and less educated than Jews and suffer from discrimination and
substandard public services. Some Israelis, including top politicians, have
questioned their loyalty to the state, contributing to their sense of being
treated as second-class citizens. Arabs often accuse the police of being
indifferent to Arab crime, so long as Jews are not harmed.
Earlier this year, after a deadly shooting in
downtown Tel Aviv and a subsequent weeklong manhunt for the Arab shooter,
Israel launched a campaign to collect illegal arms in Arab towns. Later, it
promoted an Arab police officer to deputy commissioner, making him the
highest-ranking Muslim ever to serve in the force, and putting him in charge of
the new law and order drive in Arab communities.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said families used
to tamper with crime scenes and make it difficult for police to collect
evidence and testimony in Arab areas.
But he said attitudes have changed in recent years
and cooperation is much better. The police force is currently recruiting an
additional 1,500 Arab officers and holding outreach programs to strengthen its
ties to the community, he said. “The days of the instant antipolice,
anti-government and antiestablishment sentiment are over,” he said. “The main
emphasis now is to be there and to connect with the Arab community.”
Arab lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman, who heads the
parliamentary committee on the status of women and gender equality, said that
wasn’t enough. She noted that 15 women have been killed in the Ramle-Lod area
in the past year, but only three men have been charged.
“What kind of message is given to the population and
what kind of message is given to the perpetrators?” she asked. “You can kill
and you will still go on free. And for the women it is a clear message from the
police that nobody can protect you.”
Touma-Sliman said police have been persuaded to stop
automatically referring to the deaths of Arab women as “honour killings,”
saying it was an offensive term “developed by the patriarchal society in order
to legitimize the murder itself.”
You can kill and you will still go on free. And for the women it is a
clear message from the police that nobody can protect you.
Aida Toum-Sliman Arab lawmaker
Israeli Arab Majeda Abu Sharkh left, holds a picture
of Duaa Abu Sharkh who was killed in Lod as she poses for a photograph with her
niece Alaa Khalili, in Lod, central Israel. DAN BALILTY • AP
-----------------
‘Treatment, not jail time’:
MLA
FRAM DINSHAW STAFF REPORTER
fdinshaw@herald.ca @FramDinshaw
One day after tabling a motion in legislature
calling for an expansion of mental health courts in Nova Scotia, MLA John Lohr
took a second to reflect on what it meant to him.
Two years earlier, his son Caleb, who suffered
from psychosis, was found dead on Cape Split. A month earlier he was arrested
following a break and enter. He had been due to appear in mental health court
and would have received treatment had he lived.
“Because of my experience with this I know that
it is a valuable program,” the Kings North MLA said.
He said the two current mental health courts in
Dartmouth and Kentville had proven successful, offering people a way out of the
regular court system and possible criminal records through treatment programs.
Lohr also said the government could expand
mental health courts to rural areas without any new legislation, but he tabled
his motion to help start the conversation on what to him is an important issue.
While the Kentville mental health court uses the same judges as the regular
provincial court, mental health professionals are on hand to offer guidance.
“I think this is an option that should be
available all over the province,” said Lohr.
Mental health courts were established in
November 2009, and hear cases that have been recommended by a team consisting
of medical and legal professionals.
“Treatment, not jail time, is what is needed.
Putting a mentally ill young person in jail can have disastrous results,” said
Lohr in an earlier statement on Friday.
He said jailing people is hugely expensive,
whereas mental health treatment allows those who need it, a chance to recover
and become productive members of society.
His bill has not yet been voted on and remains
before the legislature.
According to the Canadian Mental Health
Association, one in five Canadians will personally experience a mental illness
in their lifetime.
Kings North MLA John Lohr has tabled a motion
in the legislature calling for an expansion of mental health courts in Nova
Scotia.
-------------------------
November 17, 2016
Christian
Science Monitor Breakfast
with Senator Bernie Sanders Senator Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) spoke to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast about
the 2016 election results, Donald Trump’s… read
more
---------------------
Bernie Sanders Shuns Democrats: "I Will Finish This
Term As An Independent"
In yet another slap in the face of the Democratic party, The
Hill reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won’t officially join the Democratic
Party even though he was appointed to a leadership position
within the Senate Democratic caucus this week.
"I was elected as an Independent and I will finish
this term as an Independent,” Sanders said at a breakfast Thursday morning hosted by
the Christian Science Monitor.
Sanders has long
caucused with Democrats as an independent. That has annoyed some Democrats as
Sanders’s star has risen on the left. They are frustrated by his influence
within a party that he refuses to embrace.
Sanders has acknowledged that he is still foggy on what
the new role will entail, but sketched out his early thoughts on how he might
handle it.
“The real action to transform America won’t take place
on Capitol Hill, it will be in the grassroots America among millions struggling
economically and young people,” Sanders said.
“I initially
understand my role to be to get those people into the political process to
demand the U.S. congress and government and president, represent all of the
people and not just those on top. I’m excited about it, but how we go about it
I don’t know,” he added.
“Why is it that tens of millions of poor people, young
people and working people don’t get involved in the political process? One of
the goals is to bring people into politics and make them aware it’s not just
Election Day, but the other 364 days of the year are also important.”
A great disturbance in the farce just occurred, as if
millions of democrat-in-name voices cried out in terror... and were suddenly
silenced.So who will run in 2020 for the Democrats? Ellen? Tom Hanks? Oprah?
---------
QUOTE: 'Peter MacKay - we did not
send our men and women to fight for the rights and freedoms and human dignity
for the women of Afghanistan to have them come home and see those same rights
of our women eroded here in Canada !" Peter...u will always be loved and
respected by so many globally- wonder if u know how much u meant for us Nato
troops supporters of our troops in Afghanistan – all your efforts and determination.... and support... when u
could NOT find one politician of any party who gave a sheeeet..... and Justice
with the Victim’s Crime Bill and the Cyber Laws to protect our youth in vicious
sneaky cyber bullying ... and the horrific bullycides.... love u and wish u
well... and thanks for kicking Iran’s ass and their horrific treatment of women
and girls and gays and union and NEDA... AND OUR CANADIAN IRANIAN JOURNALIST...
who came home so badly beaten, raped and tortured in so many ways... that even
the most hard boiled threw up.... thank u... thank u Peter Mackay... and
Baillie- u wish- the best politicians who actually give a care for
Canadians.... are the ones we remember.... and love..... for a long time. One
Billion Rising- no more excuses or abuses #OneBillionRising
BAILLIE BRINGS THE ZINGERS – Peter MacKay’s Goodbye Party
The Progressive Conservatives held their annual leader's dinner last week and the evening included a tribute to and roast of former MP Peter MacKay.
Along with video messages from the likes of the Trailer Park Boys and a presentation from Mark Critch of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, even Tory Leader Jamie Baillie got in a few laughs at the expense of MacKay, who announced his retirement ahead of the most recent federal election campaign.
Kicking off a speech that also included some serious commentary about the new federal government, Baillie noted that everyone was gathered in Halifax for the event for a very important reason: ‟Peter MacKay needs a job." Baillie went on to laud MacKay's years of commitment to public service and his impressive resume, which includes stints as defence minister and justice minister.
‟That's an impressive resume, but you all knew that," said Baillie.
‟But maybe not as impressive as being named the sexiest male politician in Canada for six years running. Peter, if anyone knows the pressure that comes with that kind of attention, it's me."
http://
BAILLIE BRINGS THE ZINGERS – Peter MacKay’s Goodbye Party
The Progressive Conservatives held their annual leader's dinner last week and the evening included a tribute to and roast of former MP Peter MacKay.
Along with video messages from the likes of the Trailer Park Boys and a presentation from Mark Critch of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, even Tory Leader Jamie Baillie got in a few laughs at the expense of MacKay, who announced his retirement ahead of the most recent federal election campaign.
Kicking off a speech that also included some serious commentary about the new federal government, Baillie noted that everyone was gathered in Halifax for the event for a very important reason: ‟Peter MacKay needs a job." Baillie went on to laud MacKay's years of commitment to public service and his impressive resume, which includes stints as defence minister and justice minister.
‟That's an impressive resume, but you all knew that," said Baillie.
‟But maybe not as impressive as being named the sexiest male politician in Canada for six years running. Peter, if anyone knows the pressure that comes with that kind of attention, it's me."
http://
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