:(

Just so long as he makes it back to Vermont and is never heard from again, I'll be happy.

I wish I was as excited about ANYTHING as Bort is about Hillary. I have no idea what that would even feel like. I like in a perpetual gloom of underwhelming ennui.

Yes: Stars for Bort being the only person in the Universe I know of who is excited about Hillary Clinton. You are a true iconoclast, Bort. Given the alternative, I hope she makes it.

I hope Bort's case of verbal diarrhea stops once Clinton inevitably wins. If she doesn't he'll be screaming at every Jill Stein voter he can get his hands on.

"Supporting a political candidate can only mean unconditionally loving everything about them, wrapped in a state of religious fervor."

-Bernie supporters



are we suggesting that Jill Stein voters DON'T deserve to be yelled at?

Dude, that describes any fanatic in any political camp. And no, Stein voters do not deserve to be yelled at. There's little chance of Stein swinging the election in favor of Trump. It's also important to remember that Stein isn't (and can't) run to win at this point and she knows it. She's building the Green Party (most of the time, some things she does don't help, like the 9-11 thing) into a viable left alternative to the two party stranglehold on electoral politics. Anyone who thinks our two party system works is fooling themselves. But, breaking down the juggernaut that is the two party system takes time, numbers, and ballot access - all of which she's building up every election cycle. This is also accomplished by running Greens for state and national congresses, something that no one pays attention to but that's happening all over the country.

In before the "but but but NADER" meme starts and which has been proven time and again to not be true.

I think Hillary is an intelligent, hard-working, dedicated public servant who is held to standards that nobody else in politics is. She's made mistakes. She's made good calls.

And those of you who speaking in gushing tones about Bernie and Jill really ought to consider the possibility that you like them only because they have a talent for bitching, but no demonstrated ability to actually serve the public.

Also in before the notion that voting for a third party doesn't accomplish anything comes up (also not true, see above) and in before the idea that failure on the part of one of the two political parties has to do with a third party spoiler and not the deficiencies of said candidate and his or her party that drove the voter to a third party alternative.

I agree that Hillary is held to ridiculous standards. The right wing have been after her ever since she became First Lady. She's been a punching bag. That, of course, does nothing to ease my tension over her extremely close ties to Wall Street and big business.

pretty sure bernie ran over bort's cat or something at this point

OW - I'll admit that I wasn't excited about a Hillary presidency at first. But the slams against Hillary have reached a point of being so ridiculous -- like an episode of "Parks and Recreation" -- that they have inadvertently exposed positive things that Hillary has done, that make me actively like her.

Have you been following any of the Clinton Foundation "scandal"? The scandal is as follows: people have donated to the Clinton Foundation (including filthy foreigners), have tried to get favors out of Hillary, and haven't gotten any. And it turns out that the Clinton Foundation is remarkably transparent, 88% of its funds go to helping the needy, and the Clintons donate money into it rather than take any sort of salary. Holy shit, any other politician who ran an organization that tight would be celebrated up and down for their good works.

The latest spin on the scandal is that someone used Clinton Foundation connections to expedite a couple of passports ... well it turns out this was done so that a couple of Bill Clinton aides could accompany him to North Korea to help him get a couple of journalists out of jail. And people are bitching about it. What sort of fucked-up standards are the Clintons being held to?

Hillary was there for the 9/11 first responders when nobody else was:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/09/hillary-clinto n-9-11-attacks-response

Hillary was there for the families of black police shooting victims when nobody else was:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/hillary-clinton-mo ms-black-lives-matter

Hillary was there for this random guy when nobody else was:

https://www.facebook.com/james.grissom/posts/10210311889333429

Oh yeah, I'm all in for Hillary.

Perhaps Bort comes from the "Berenstein" timestream, where it was Bernie, not Hillary, who spent the last few decades sucking up to banks and ruining third world nations?

The worst thing our timestream Bernie has done is buy a house, but perhaps in Bort's timestream, that house was bought with money stolen from Haitian relief efforts?

Yes yes, because Bernie and only Bernie is pure. To hear Bernie and his fan club tell it, even Barney Frank -- one of the guys behind Dodd-Frank -- is in the pocket of banks.

Hey EvilHomer, Bernie thinks that banks should be broken up over a given size but he doesn't know what that size should be. Can you tell me what that size is? Because it sure sounds to me like Bernie is playing the demagogue's game -- making noises that get the crowd worked up but don't actually constitute solutions.

Meanwhile, Hillary's idea is to penalize RISK rather than size. Which of course is the correct idea, since 1) the Great Recession was triggered by mid-sized institutions and not large institutions, and 2) twenty small institutions engaged in risk can cause at least as much damage as a single large institution but would be completely untouched by Bernie's idiot plan.

...actually, if the conspiracy theories put forth by Hillary loyalists turn out to be true, i.e. Bernie bought that house because the establishment paid him to take a dive, then it would have been Hillary's money he used, and the house WAS INDEED bought with Haitian relief funds.

I think Bernie's campaign ought to be investigated to make sure none of that money made it into Bernie's pockets or Jane's. Why are we assuming Bernie is above reproach? Between his refusal to release his financial records and all the FEC violations he racked up for taking improper donations -- 639 pages of them -- an investigation is the least we'd expect for any other candidate.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/05/20/obscene-calls-bernie-sa nders-fec-troubles.html

And, I see you don't have an answer about TBTF. That's what's wrong with Bernie: he doesn't know either, yet he claims to be serious.

Well, I'm more concerned with her using an apparently very hackable email server as sec. of state, then lying about the extent of it to various degrees afterward than I am about the Clinton Foundation. But as they say in Washington, "what difference, at this point, does it make?"

Do I want a president Trump? No more than you. In a better America, would I be rooting for conservatives within the democratic party? Nope.

No, Bort, of course Bernie's not pure. He's demonstrably purer than Hillary - and he's got better policies - and he's not dying. But never let it be said I'm a great believer in Bernie, or anyone else who routinely appears on late-night television.

No, the only "pure" candidates are Gary Johnson and Jill Stein - or Batman and Wonder Woman, as I like to call them.

As for the banks, we're really not starved for solutions - for example, we could start by abolishing the Fed.

You've been following the stories of the various servers that have actually been hacked, right? You know which server is never part of those stories as having actually been hacked? Hillary's private server. Thus far nobody has uncovered any evidence that it was hacked, or that it even held Emails that it shouldn't have for that matter. And it's not even like she was the first Secretary of State to run a private server; she was doing what seemed to work very well for Colin Powell. So it's pretty close to a non-issue as far as I'm concerned.

"He's demonstrably purer than Hillary"

Since you didn't bother to read that Mother Jones article, I'll have to quote extensively from it now:

---

Mr. Sanders has been particularly fortunate he is running as a Democrat because what he has not had to endure is the Clinton campaign citing the various “forms of corruption” that Senator Sanders would have trumpeted if any one of them had applied to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

For example, besides the several FEC investigations into his campaign’s fundraising abnormalities, no-one has called out the Senator benefiting from NRA campaign donations and then voting according to its wishes.

As reported in the Washington Post, a few days before Election Day in 1990 the National Rifle Association bought in to the Sanders’ campaign for a House seat and sent a letter to its 12,000 members in Vermont with an urgent message about “voting for the socialist.” The NRA’s campaign mailing was written by none other than the top official at the National Rifle Association then and now, Wayne La Pierre. La Pierre wrote, “Bernie Sanders is a more honorable choice for Vermont sportsmen than (his opponent) Republican Peter Smith.”

The NRA assistance helped elect Sanders to the House and this is noteworthy because unlike Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders cannot claim the he never “did the bidding of a donor or benefactor.” Bernie’s NRA-favorable voting record on gun control speaks for itself. Still, no-one, particularly no-one in the Clinton campaign has accused him of being a corrupt gun industry shill or bought and paid for by special interests.

A couple of months ago Bernie called congressional Democrats, and Hillary Clinton, “disingenuous,” another word for deceitful, because they refused to embrace the Senator’s plan to drastically raise taxes on every American to provide the infamous “free stuff” his acolytes want so desperately. And yet, no Democrats have labeled the Senator as “disingenuous” for not being honest with his supporters that he has no plan to transform congressional Republicans into “tax and spend” liberals.

Bernie claims, and staked a major portion of his campaign on America needing a political revolution of populist protests against the banks, Wall Street, and billion-dollar corporations. Yet as Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders had protesters arrested because they challenged a major corporation working for the defense industry; General Electric.

Senator Sanders was absolutely vicious in calling Hillary Clinton’s fundraising involving Hollywood celebrities “obscene,” and yet as reported in The New York Times as early as last October he was the beneficiary of more than one “high-dollar” fundraiser in Hollywood. Not only did no-one claim Senator Sanders’ Hollywood fundraising was “obscene,” they also have not accused him of being a hypocrite; likely because Democrats are unwilling to attack the character and sully the reputation of another Democrat.

---

Behold your paragon of purity, or as I call him, a bucket of crap. Dude has done the bidding of the NRA of all groups -- if Bernie had to sell his soul to an organization, he chose one of the worst. I guess there were not tobacco growers in Vermont for him to sell out to.

And? What else have you got? I see minor links to the NRA (which, btw, I myself would actually prefer) and a single unsubstantiated link to General Electric.

For that, I'll give you, say, the lies about Benghazi, and one year's worth of Hillary's time at Wal-Mart. Still a looooong way from equalizing their respective Purity Levels, I'm afraid...!

Bort; evilhomer is evilhomer'ing, and you're falling for it.

You're probably right. Still, he's not saying anything I haven't heard from Lefties a thousand times, so who can even tell.

I went into this cycle a Bernie mocking Hillary default, and now I don' t know if I want to give Communism a chance or just go straight to anarchist. As fun as it would be to blame Bort and other Clinton imperialists/ dynists for it, it has nothing to do with them any more than blaming your cough and fever for the flu.

The DNC and their supporters have made it perfectly clear that liberals and the left will have no representation in government. This is not a country which wants them by the standards of either party. This is perfectly okay. It really is. America collapses without all hands on deck. Let it.

Meme - while I respect your descision to come and be anarchist with me, I have to ask: is it REALLY the case that Clinton imperialists "have nothing to do with" it?

Anyone who sees evil, and accepts it, is at least partially culpable in that evil. While it's true that Bort is not the enemy (he is a victim of programming and learned helplessness), he is still responsible for his own ethical choices.

It's the Bort-ality of Evil, if you will.

From comments here, Hillary supporters (a separate concept from blind worshipers) at least seem a lot less likely to shout down opposition with dick sucking accusations as the go to enlightened debate tactic.

Mr Bort, you know as well as anyone that "evilhomering" consists of listening to you, taking your arguments seriously, and responding with careful, rational criticism, if such is warranted. Mr SolRo hates that, because he operates on a purely emotional level, but *you* are a sensible, thoughtful individual. You *are* capable of thinking for yourself,

If you are hearing the same such criticism "a thousand times, from Lefties", perhaps this criticism worth looking at more carefully?

Wrong reply. Meant for Bort above.

"If you are hearing the same such criticism "a thousand times, from Lefties", perhaps this criticism worth looking at more carefully?"

Since Hillary beat Bernie in the primaries and there are apparently more Hillary supporters than Bernie supporters, wouldn't that mean it's you who needs to start listening to Hillary?

That's assuming that good sense is a matter of numbers, and if a lot of people believe a thing then it clearly has merit.

And THAT is a textbook case of "evilhomering": I honestly can't tell whether you're deliberately making bad arguments or you're just engaging in the lazy thinking that is standard fare in, say, YouTube comments.

I HAVE been listening to Hillary. She and her supporters have, thus far, always come up lacking - but that is why I'm giving you a fair hearing, trying to see if you have any arguments that are stronger than the arguments mustered by the Left. So far, you do not.

Of course "good sense" isn't a matter of numbers. I never said it was! Good sense is a matter of good sense, and the Lefties have made very strong cases, both here and elsewhere, that good sense lies (at least when considering the Democrat civil war) squarely in the camp of the Bernienators.

In other words, my suggesting that you actually listen to the Left and try to address their arguments, that is not an Appeal to Popularity, because the arguments of the Left have *already* been established, and do not *need* an Appeal to Popularity in order to trick you into conceding their truth. No, my suggestion is merely an extra point for you to consider. It is not a fallacious "bad argument", and indeed CANNOT be a fallacious "bad argument", because I am not resting the truth-value of any subsequent propositions upon it.

I *could* take this time to speculate on your own bad arguments and lazy thinking, but I will not. Like I said before, you are an intelligent individual, and are clearly at least familiar with the principles of critical thinking and rational debate (you misapply them here, of course, but we all make mistakes). *Your* lazy thinking doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. What matters here is Hillary Clinton, and whether or not you can make a case for her - a case which, OF COURSE, needs to directly and satisfactorily address all of the criticism that has been leveled against her.

We have yet to see that from you, or anyone else.

"needs to directly and satisfactorily address all of the criticism that has been leveled against her"

In the first place, no, you need that level of rebuttal to prove that she is the PERFECT candidate, not merely the best viable candidate. In the second place, your inability / refusal to consider good points doesn't mean that good points haven't been made.

There's a reason Hillary supporters bring up Supreme Court nominees as grounds to ensure a Hillary victory: because it's such a simple, unassailable point that only a fundamentally unreasonable person would respond with "NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I'm still willing to risk a Trump presidency!" Anyone who rejects that argument is beyond the reach of reason.