Okay, kittygrrl, perhaps "unfortunate" was a bit strong. We'd be in way better shape with Biden than now, and he would work well patching up our relations with our allies. He is a statesman with strong experience. I just wished for someone further left.

Mayor Pete is showing colors that bear a little closer watching. He may not turn out as much of a prized peach as he was out of the starting gate. Maybe he just needs to settle down a bit.

It is not just consumers being hurt by the tariffs:

Is This the End of Recycling?

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter.

This is disturbing for two reasons: one is that recycling has stopped happening in a lot of places.

The other reason is that we have to ship our recyclables overseas because preparing the recyclables is so labor intensive that it cannot be done in countries where labor has any rights.

Even without the tariffs, our recycling contributes to labor exploitation, possibly even child labor.

we should banish plastic from food products..the invasion of plastic into our air, water, and soil will eventually kill us all..the candidates who are sincere about climate change must include all the substances that are slowly poisoning us and our world.
https://image.shutterstock.com/image...1160143345.jpg

North American "recycling" is a blight on many economies and has wiped out manufacturing in several "poor" countries.
Why should any of these countries ( particularly African ) try to sustain a manufacturing industry when cargo containers full of used Gap tee shirts and old Nike runners cram their ports daily. Tee shirt for 5 cents, shoes for 2 cents....why bother trying to make it?

We , here, don't want to pay to dispose of it. We, here, want to feel good about being charitable. And ultimately we are chocking off "emerging economies" that find no where to grow cause we dump our "goodwill" garbage on them.

Happy Mother's Day, BTW. :beerfunnel:

B & B
 

If Biden (or Bernie) get the nomination, then Bernie (or Biden) will probably be on the ticket as the VP.

A lot can happen between now and voting day but I see this as a real possibility. This certainly isn’t a ticket I’d like to see, but I’d go for it if it meant dumping Trump’s ass out of office.

And Biden and Bernie know it.

Sounds perfect. They can do "paper, scissors, stone" for who should start and who would live long enough to succeed the other.

:yeahthat:

I remember being like ten years old and starting to see the shift from glass to plastic food packaging-- starting with soda and then moving on to mustard and ketchup, then milk.

They advertised the packaging as "shatterproof and disposable," and even as a kid i was confused: since when was plastic disposable? And i have to wonder, now, how it was that all of the adults went "yes, good" and never hesitated at all to drop those giant two-liters into the garbage?

I mean, my grandparents lived on a farm, and had no utility service-- which means they were on well and septic for water and sewage, and disposed of all trash by burning it in a barrel.

That burn pile was always visible to us, and every time you walked past it you could see the stuff that did not fall to ash. When plastic packaging hit the shelves, that burn barrel was what i thought of.

Anyway here is some history
The Guardian: Opinion-- Plastic bottles are a recycling disaster. Coca-Cola should have known better

[...]In the past several decades, Coca-Cola has fought hard to prevent communities around the world implementing deposit systems that would require drinks firms to add a charge to the price of their products, to be refunded when customers returned the packaging to the distributor or retailer.

Deposit systems began to spread in the US in the 1970s, as throwaway steel and aluminium cans replaced the returnable glass bottles that once dominated the beer and soft drink industries.
This switch to throwaways, which started with brewers in the 1930s and matured in the soft drinks industry in the 1960s, was in part driven by a consumer culture that craved convenience. It was also driven by economics, as big beverage companies sought to achieve economies of scale by consolidating their bottling networks, and realised they could save money if they didn’t have to truck returnable bottles back to factories.

But those companies did not like deposit systems because they believed government-imposed price hikes could hit sales. Coke, Pepsi and others organised to counter deposit laws. Their campaign was successful, largely because of a promise they brought to debates: kerbside recycling. In federal and state government hearings, Coca-Cola and others argued that municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies, would eliminate the need for deposits. By the mid-80s, this argument had won the day.

How did this system stack up against the alternatives, considering the full ecological impact of reclaiming returnable glass bottles, including washing them? In 1969 Coca-Cola attempted to answer that question by asking the Midwest Research Institute to conduct a life-cycle analysis of packaging. The firm looked at various types of throwaway containers, and compared them with returnable glass bottles on almost every measure: energy expenditure, waste generation, water pollution, air emissions and more

This study, which the investigators reproduced for the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1974, concluded that no throwaway “container will be improved to match or surpass that of [the 10-trip returnable glass bottle] in the near future”.

Coca-Cola nevertheless placed its future in the plastic bottle. Paul Austin, then company president, explained this was because Coca-Cola believed recycling systems would allow the company to reclaim much of the plastic it used.

The beauty of history is that we can look back and see if Austin’s bet paid off. Using the US as a case study, the message is clear: failure to offer financial incentives has resulted in a wasteful recycling system. Over 25 years since kerbside recycling began, 70% of plastic containers are never reclaimed. Just 30% end up being recycled.

Basically, we trashed our oceans to preserve one company's profit margins.

So, who failed? Was it the company who shifted half its responsibility to "municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies"?

Capitalist rhetoric says we have to blame the consumer. Governments would have better-funded and more successful recycling programs if consumers demanded them, or even used them, but they didn't and they don't.

That is a tactic for maintaining the status quo. Anytime the rhetoric can shift the blame to a million end-users of a product instead of tracing a problem back to its root and holding the original decision-makers responsible, change becomes less possible.

I mean, the lag time for my family between all products shifting to plastic and the arrival of our first curbside bin was at least a decade. Shouldn't someone have required Coke to shift their packaging gradually, market area by market area, as recycling became available in each area? We should not have had plastic on our supermarket shelves until we had bins on our curbs.

Not sure who will end up being the Democratic nominee but if it's Biden I hope he can persuade Harris to take the Vice Presidency or if not her then Klobuchar ....i hate to say this...............................but it's our turn:praying:

Let's not let our guard down. We still have to Get dt out of the White House. Not referring to the election, necessarily. Who's to say that he will give up the power without a fight. Would not be surprised if he pulls an advance Executive Order, carefully worded, to give the President additional power or he even ignores the election.

He might require force to get ejected. The US has never encountered a President who behaves this way, stomping all over the Constitution. We need to remain vigilant.

Remember, Hitler was initially elected to office.

Beto did fairly well and seemed coherent last night but anyone can seem to be for a few minutes at a time...i'm hesitate to believe power will not eventually corrupt even those who seem the most ethical choice in our minds..gosh, i think, i still have GOT dust on my thoughts:rant:

Hate to be guilty of schadenfreude, but this strikes me as funny as hell.

Not 'born to be in it': Beto O’Rourke strikes more humble tone as buzz fades

Https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...eboot-campaign

He's apologizing. He hasn't done anything wrong really. People just aren't responding to him or his middle of the road message. Apologies won't help. I can see why he's embarrassed though.

I don't know why people like Beto and Pete Buttigieg think they have the right to run for President of the United States. I don't have anything against either one of them but I don't see how either one of them has enough experience. I sure wish we had actual job requirements for the position - that would have ruled out the orange monstrosity who is obviously in no way shape or form qualified. There are stricter job requirements to be a manager at a fast food restaurant than to be president of the United States.

Joe Bidens' mishandling of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings is enough for me to disregard his candidacy. Allow me to recap for some here who do not recall or needs a jog of the memory.

What did Biden do during the hearings?

He did little to almost nothing from stopping the committee members from attacking Professor Hill. The Republicans were the most relentless. Arlen Specter asked her why she didn’t report the behavior to HR and said that discussing “large breasts” at work was common. Howell Heflin asked if she was a “scorned woman” and if she had “militant attitude relative to the area of civil rights” or a “martyr complex.” Charles Grassley accused her of lifting the pubic hair story from The Exorcist.

Second, Biden failed to call additional witnesses who could have corroborated Hill’s testimony. One of those women, Angela Wright Shannon, told Roll Call in 2016 that it was probably a good thing that she didn’t testify. “I don’t think I could have maintained the grace and dignity of Anita Hill,” she said. Hill, in 2014, said Biden declining to put the other witnesses in front of the committee was “a disservice to me” and “a disservice more importantly, to the public,” as allowing those women to testify would have “helped the public to understand sexual harassment. He failed to do that.”

You want to talk about hubris when it relates to IQ 45, I personally see similar hubris in Sanders and Biden albeit much less detrimental to society. It is time for the old white men to sit down.

Obama wasn't all that qualified, either. Or Reagan.

Reagan was governor of California for 8 years so technically he did have experience. I still don't think he was qualified necessarily and he was a horrible president but he was governor for a long time.

We have had a lot of presidents who were governors and didn't really have any experience in Washington. Personally, I want someone who has worked in DC because that place will eat people alive, but there have been plenty who haven't.

Quite frankly, my top choice, Kamala Harris, is only on her first term as senator. Before that she was Attorney General of California. She does serve on important committees like the Intelligence and Judiciary committees. From my own point of view, her experience level is a little on the light side.

Obama - yes absolutely. When he first ran I was like who is this and why is he running. He doesn't have enough experience. I supported Hillary. When he beat her I did think it was all fair and wasn't upset but I was still highly skeptical. I started to really come around on Obama when he did the foreign policy debate with McCain. Everyone said going in he would be at such a disadvantage against the seasoned statesman, but I thought Obama was really good in that debate and I was really behind him ever since.

I don't think Obama did have enough experience going in but was a good president anyway based on intelligence and strength of character.

There's a lot of people who want someone who isn't an insider or politician or whatever to be president. I'm definitely not one of them. I want someone who knows how things work in DC for the slim chance that things can get done. I think the less you know the more at a disadvantage you are. But yes there are still other factors and Obama is a good example of that. I think he is also quite the exception to the rule.

I am still annoyed about Beto and Buttigieg running. It's like hey I was an intern at a company and now the CEO is retiring so I'm going to apply for the job.

Could it be something as simple as getting your name out there so people might recognize it next time?

I think Joe Biden by far has the best chance to beat Trump and I have no objection to him either. He is also the only one who just might be able to sway a few Republicans in the Senate to get things passed. It's still a long shot because of how they tow the party line, but he is the one who possibly could do it. He has working relationships with some of them. People act like that's a bad thing. Do you want legislation to get passed or not? I don't think he is going to sell us out to some right wing agenda.

I have problems with Biden for the reasons Ace listed and more. I also remember the bussing issues in the late 1960s and 1970s—my father fretted over that for a long time and ended up sending me to a private school to avoid the haters that were stoked by politiicians like Biden. Still, I'd rather have Biden in office than Trump or any other Republican for that matter and that's what it boils down to for me.

I'm committed to voting for the Democratic nominee whether it's Bernie or Biden.

I watched the entire Anita Hill hearings and she was treated horribly by the Republicans and it's those people who treated her horribly who are at fault for that, not Biden's as far as I am concerned. I suppose as Chairman he could have done more but it's a bit Monday morning quarterbacking to me, and Senators do get to have their say and pontificate and ask their questions and I think Biden would have basically have had to have broken Senate tradition to stop them from asking their "questions" and that never happens.

I just think it's unrealistic to think he could have done a lot more to change things and he wasn't the one who treated her badly. Perhaps I am wrong.

Again, I do think it was absolutely horrible how Anita Hill was treated and I hate, hate, hate that Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court.

Now we have Kavanaugh who is even worse. Ugh.

Monday morning quarterbacking? Hardly.

For a number of us, this isnt a grudge that happened after the fact. The anger and frustration is real and is a direct result of the hearings.

Biden was an ass who, as usual, made it easy for the for republicans to shame Hill and replace Marshall with Thomas.

I did watch the entire thing but it was a long time ago.

If a bunch of Democrats treated someone badly the Republicans would never blame themselves and ensue with in-fighting. It would never happen. Another assist to the enemy.

I don't think of Biden as acting as an ass as usual and no I don't think it was Biden's fault. Anyone who wants to think that of course can.


Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48. It was mostly on party lines but 11 asshole Democrats voted for him. Biden wasn't one of them - he voted against. It could have been stopped but the Blue Dogs voted for him

There were also 2 Republicans who voted against. One was Jim Jeffords from Vermont who later became an Independent and caucused with the Democrats so not sure I would count him as a Republican really. The other Republican who voted against Thomas was Bob Packwood - who had to resign from the Senate later when multiple women came forward on sexual assault charges.

The Democrats technically had the votes. It should have been stopped. Personally I don't see it as Biden's fault. I'm sure he could have done better but the one thing he could control he did - he voted against the nomination.

52-48

Democrats who voted for Thomas


Richard Shelby (Alabama)
Dennis DeConcini (Arizona)
Sam Nunn (Georgia)
Whyche Fowler (Georgia)
Alan J. Dixon (Illinois)
J. Bennett Johnston (Louisiana)
John Breaux (Louisiana)
J.James Exon (Nebraska)
David L. Boren (Oklahoma)
Ernest Hollings (South Carolina)
Chuck Robb (Virginia)

Republicans who voted against Thomas

Jim Jeffords (Vermont)
Bob Packwood (Oregon)


Discussing politics online is just way too aggravating. I just need to stop for my own peace of mind.

The Guardian: Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals. By Martin Lukacs

Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the crisis.

The email in my inbox last week offered thirty suggestions to green my office space: use reusable pens, redecorate with light colours, stop using the elevator.

Back at home, done huffing stairs, I could get on with other options: change my lightbulbs, buy local veggies, purchase eco-appliances, put a solar panel on my roof.

And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child.

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served.

While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

The freedom of these corporations to pollute – and the fixation on a feeble lifestyle response – is no accident. It is the result of an ideological war, waged over the last 40 years, against the possibility of collective action. Devastatingly successful, it is not too late to reverse it.

The political project of neoliberalism, brought to ascendence by Thatcher and Reagan, has pursued two principal objectives. The first has been to dismantle any barriers to the exercise of unaccountable private power. The second had been to erect them to the exercise of any democratic public will.

Its trademark policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals: these have liberated corporations to accumulate enormous profits and treat the atmosphere like a sewage dump, and hamstrung our ability, through the instrument of the state, to plan for our collective welfare.

Anything resembling a collective check on corporate power has become a target of the elite: lobbying and corporate donations, hollowing out democracies, have obstructed green policies and kept fossil fuel subsidies flowing; and the rights of associations like unions, the most effective means for workers to wield power together, have been undercut whenever possible.

At the very moment when climate change demands an unprecedented collective public response, neoliberal ideology stands in the way. Which is why, if we want to bring down emissions fast, we will need to overcome all of its free-market mantras: take railways and utilities and energy grids back into public control; regulate corporations to phase out fossil fuels; and raise taxes to pay for massive investment in climate-ready infrastructure and renewable energy — so that solar panels can go on everyone’s rooftop, not just on those who can afford it.

Neoliberalism has not merely ensured this agenda is politically unrealistic: it has also tried to make it culturally unthinkable. Its celebration of competitive self-interest and hyper-individualism, its stigmatization of compassion and solidarity, has frayed our collective bonds. It has spread, like an insidious anti-social toxin, what Margaret Thatcher preached: “there is no such thing as society.”

Studies show that people who have grown up under this era have indeed become more individualistic and consumerist. Steeped in a culture telling us to think of ourselves as consumers instead of citizens, as self-reliant instead of interdependent, is it any wonder we deal with a systemic issue by turning in droves to ineffectual, individual efforts?

And in the US, it's mainstream Dems who've lead the way on this. It was all meritocracy instead of workers organize.

There's an interesting critique of yoga now as a sort of a personal empowerment while ignoring not just poor people (duh), but a dying planet. Given how many of us are suffering from lifestyle related illnesses, it's hard to fault people for trying to live and be well. Also yoga can be anti-consumerist. But if you think of the resources that were poured into it by the well educated elite while so little energy was directed at climate change at a time when it would have mattered. . . .

I think what appalls people is their belief that yoga or meditation would lead to a better world. It definitely leads to a better life, but does it turn people away from politics and social activism?

Perhaps. Certainly there is something solipsistic in these and other practices. But I don't think the ideology is the explanation. It's that in the US, it is a movement formed around the interests of the professional classes. People do not betray their class interests easily. People of all races put class interest first. People born into poverty who have entered the professional class, their political behavior is almost indistinguishable from those whose parents were from the professional classes.

Neoliberalism is the ideology of the professional class within the construct of Capitalism. It does nothing to stop the inevitable self destructive arc that is the heart of Capitalism and that will eventually take most of them down too, but for the last fifty years it has made their lives more flush and given them power. The Cheney's of the world don't die with 100 million in the bank. But they got to drive the machine that is making the wealthy wealthier. Why that feels so good I can't say.

We endlessly criticize poor white people for voting against their best interests, but the professional classes have too by supporting Clinton and others, including Republicans, who tell them they have won the meritocracy sweepstakes while the biggest transfer of wealth has been from the professional classes to the extremely wealthy.

If the working class is desperate, the professionals are showing their pathetic asses. The college cheating scandal tells you all you need to know about what they will do to keep their edge.

Declared Dem's presidential candidates...
 

I may find your efforts on your local/state/national level more appealing for the House and Senate races.

Why I ask is this...Your voting record is public for all local/state/national issues from your past to present.

IF your record can not be sustained/maintained in the current legislation: then maybe going back to your initial impact on positive policy change can/may/will impact the next. Your vote will secure your base there.

One step at a time-

Ks-

First, a caveat:

It Takes A Village To Determine The Origins Of An African Proverb

"If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together."

That was one piece of advice passed along at the just-concluded Democratic National Convention. The words were spoken by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who said he was quoting "an African saying."

The proverb got a lot of retweets. And some criticism. One Twitter user, Christiana A. Mbakwe, said, "If someone starts an aphorism with 'there's an African saying' it's probably a mythical quote misattributed to a whole continent."

That wasn't the only purportedly African proverb uttered at the DNC. Hillary Clinton referred to her 1996 book It Takes a Village, whose title is said to be part of another saying from Africa: "It takes a village to raise a child."

Second: despite that caveat, that "African Proverb" has been on my mind a lot

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

We’re here, at the end times, because we did not go together.

The patriarchs wanted to go fast, instead, and now they’re stuck. They can’t escape their fate unless they go back to the first people-- women-- they left behind and pick them up. Then the next, the next, and the next until everyone has their shoes tied and their backpack on, now we all step off in unison, one, two.

The thing is, they knew what they were doing. They knew going fast would ruin everything-- that’s why every tradition has an apocalypse narrative.

This consumption, this population-- even before the pollution, the extinctions-- they knew: this can’t go on forever. Infinite growth on a finite planet always had to end in catastrophe. The math was there before the problems manifested.

They distracted us from the math by teaching women to think beyond the planet. They told us not to be worldly, your reward is in heaven. Be fruitful and multiply!

And the patriarchs most emphatically are not going to go back and correct the mistake of choosing fast over far...
They would rather die. They have decided. They would rather all of us die than consider sharing anything at all.

Social media is prime example of going fast when you should have gone together. The men that invented social media were coders. They did not bother to ask any social scientists what the pitfalls could be or how best to proceed. Now we have bad actors poisoning our brains.

This is why it pisses me off when people act like social justice is a distraction from more important issues, that we are wasting time on it.

Clearly i am on twitter TOO MUCH, but i think about this tweet a lot:

"Conservatives: Lets round up Muslims and put them in camps. Liberals: HIRE MORE WOMEN GUARDS."

(@historyinflicks)

The implication here is that liberals can't see the forest for the trees. We are so focused on equality that we can't see that the system we're trying to make equal is already fucked up.

i get it, but "hire more female guards" is not as ridiculous as implied. The point is not that we need to hire more female anything NOW, but that EVERY job should have been half women from the beginning.

There were decisions made centuries ago that are part of what will destroy us, and those decisions were made and implemented by a very narrow slice of humanity. And now, when we are in a place where we have to try to undo those decisions, the progressive wing of that very narrow slice is insisting that worrying about gender inequality is something that should wait until the planet is not on fire.

The planet is on fire because we let it go on as long as it did. It is clear from the actions of the GOP that THEY are willing to leverage racism and misogyny to distract THEIR base long enough to finish the job of burning the planet. Whether progressive men like it or not, we're completely gridlocked by bigotry.

If we have to spend another decade fixing bigotry, we're going to be a lot closer to the abyss before we start clawing our way back from it, but when bigotry is how they did it and how they keep doing it, bigotry is what you have to fix. People are only in denial of this because it is so monumental. How do you even start?

By electing a woman President, duh.

SERIOUSLY: DUH! They're criminalizing our bodies, the GOP used our bodies and Obama's birth certificate to buy the entire South, and white male Democrats still think they might be the answer?

I felt different a week ago, but post-Alabama/Georgia? Biden, Bernie, Beto, De Blasio, Hickenlooper, Insley, Ryan, etc. ALL need to just sit their asses down.

There is no qualification they can have that we need more than we a female face in that office. It is (and it WAS, in 2016) worth nominating a woman just because she's a woman-- we have reached a point (especially post-Trump, who couldn't be less qualified) where the symbolism really does matter more than the individual's qualifications. "No more old white dudes" really is the most powerful message we can send.

Just looking at the rage that came out when we had a black President, and how that rage has led the ragers into following the shittiest person alive into global suicide, should be enough to destroy the argument that it shouldn't matter whether the Democratic candidate is a white man.

It does suck that we have to fix racism and sexism before we can fix the planet, but that is not liberals being distracted, that is us fighting the battle on the ground where our enemies pitched it. They are (very, very successfully) using racism and sexism to destroy the planet.

Thinking we can skip fixing that and fix the planet first is the exact same old "going fast instead of far" mindset that invented social media without wondering whether you could rig an election with it.

Warren 2020

Branding.

Love the "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".
Hate "Obamacare".

Love "Social Democracy".
Hate "Socialism".

Just a thought:
I think many would support "social democracy" if they really understood what it meant and it didn't have the word "social" in it to raise the spectre of "socialism". Branding seems to work in America so maybe it's time to rebrand and move ahead.

Or, just wait it out:
"The big story here is the growing enthusiasm for socialism among younger Americans. Whereas only 27 per cent of over-65s have a positive view of socialism, according to an Axios poll conducted in January, 61 per cent of those aged 18-24 do."
Which doesn't mean everyone understands the term ( some thought it meant being "sociable") but at least it's in the right direction.

Globe and Mail May 17, 2019

I would like to enter Australia's election result today into the suicidal species evidence list

For those who believe that "liberalism" is the sad slow death of us all,
I'd like to recommend reading Adam Gopnik’s " A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism".

Or, you can follow this link:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...ld-embrace-it/

If you get over the word "Canada" and read this opinion piece, maybe there is a healthy conversation for us to have here.

Adam Gopnik is Canadian/American and a staff writer for the New Yorker.

That's a very good news agency website out of Canada, C0LLETTE. I'll check up on that book recommendation for Adam Gopnik, for my summer reading adventure. Thank you! (f)

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Lately, I've been thinking, due to really shady maneuvers by the GOP (in any Republican controlled US state or even in US Congress) to upend the lives of women and case law concerning Women's Rights and upending Brown vs Board of Education, and shoving the US-Supreme Court to the far right, that maybe it might be a good idea to match the level of the insanity we see by DC Admin and, in general, the GOP (wasn't that refreshing to see a US HOR GOP representative part with party politics and call out that horrible monster in DC???), is to f*cking smash the glass-ceiling and elect not only a woman to be US President, but US Vice-President too.

Here's what came to mind, the other day:

US President: Elizabeth Warren.
US Vice President: Kamala Harris
US Attorney General: Adam Schiff
Governor Jay Inslee -- Chief of EPA.

(and the list goes on....)

While we're at it, a woman should be nominated to head the VA, The Pentagon and find a decorated staff of US Veteran Women to take positions in Foreign Affairs.

It's about time that the US throws it's weight behind a TOP heavy cabinet of women in VIP positions in Washington, DC.

I'm thinking positive by dreaming really BIG dreams and manifesting them into reality. It can happen, right? I definitely think so. The climate is perfect for the proverbial ceiling to be smashed.

I would be happy if Kamala, Warren, or Gillibrand were elected. They are qualified, tough folks. They are true liberals, one hopes not of the HIRE MORE WOMEN GUARDS type.

But I am old enough to vividly recall Margaret Thatcher, whose legacy in Great Britain is child hunger that almost matches the U.S. rate. I don't care what gender or race the person is. Or age. I just care if they can see the truth and have the strength to do something about it.

If we have to wait for racism to go away before we can fix the planet, were doomed.

I may be overthinking this but I am wondering why you feel it acceptable to call candidate Kamala Harris by her first name but address candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand by their last names.

What I like about "liberal thinkers and philosophy" is the strength to remain aspirational in the face of angry necrophilic reminders of past failures.
So what? Keep going, look ahead.

I lived in California when she was AG, and that's how people referred to her. Not the Press, but ordinary folk discussing politics. Not sure why. But that's how I think of her now. She did a lot of good work as AG and was often in the Press.

Edited to add. Just got an email from her campaign soliciting donations. A quote:

Your past support has made our campaign possible -- and we’re counting on you to stand with Kamala in the fights ahead. Can you add another donation to Kamala’s campaign today?

I'd like to get a Beto O'Rourke tee shirt. I'm starting to feel that it will be a "rare collectible " quite soon.

i have a button and a sticker from his Senate campaign. We went to a town hall

i noticed this about Hillary, too. It seemed gendered but then we call Bernie and Beto "Bernie and Beto." Also i say "Mayor Pete" and "Julian." I do say "Kamala" but i also say "Warren." I think i call everyone else by their last name

Trump has long said he'd like to have a Roy Cohn by his side but I believe he has found a Lavrenty Beria in William Barr.
If history is any lesson, Barr might want to be cautious putting all his eggs in that basket.