And now, having forsaken their long-suffering fan base in San Diego for glamorous Carson, CA, 100 miles north on I-5 / I-405, the Chargers are charging an average of $194 per ticket for a seat at their idyllic (albeit temporary) home, the 27,000-seat StubHub Center -- and not surprisingly, they can't sell the place out.

Arpaio was a man with immense  power, who used that unconstitutionally before and after he was told to cease and desist by a federal judge.

Manning committed a crime and was punished by the justice system. Arpaio spit in the eye of the rule of law, his actions were nothing short of police state tactics.

Commutation reduces sentences being served but does not change the fact of conviction. For example, President Bush commuted the 30-month prison term for the felony conviction of Scooter Libby, and aide to Cheney. Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe about the leak of the name of a CIA operative (Valerie Plame). Bush considered the sentence to be excessive.

Even if you were correct that Manning serving years in prison and Arpaio  not serving a single day were equivalent, the issue would still be whether pardoning Arpaio is supporting racism and undermining the rule of law.

All a commutation does is wipe out the balance of someone's sentence; it does not eliminate the conviction.

A pardon, on the other hand, wipes the slate clean: no conviction.

I am one of those progressive voters.  The party lost me because it made it crystal clear that it wasn't interested in listening to what I wanted, it was focused on wooing moderate Republicans and Trump voters with policies that would appeal to them.

Hillary Clinton didn't lose because she adopted the Sanders agenda and went way left: she lost because she abandoned progressive voters who wanted at least a chance at something more than warmed-over Third Way policies and a continuing nod to the corporate world.

To my everlasting chagrin and embarrassment, I voted for the apparently-loony Jill Stein - but being from a solid blue state, I could have voted for Bugs Bunny - Clinton won my state by something like 60 points, so it wasn't ever close.

Speaking for myself (I presume it is acceptable for me to do that, and not defer to Peter Daou's idea of what I wanted), I did not only want progressive policies for "certain people."  I don't even know what that means, and I'm not sure you can tell me, either.

You state rather authoritatively that every progressive voter voted for Trump, but the statistics you cited do not support that assertion - oh, but maybe it's because you meant the "so-called" progressives - which, by the way, I'd like you to define, if you can.

The strategy in the last election was to close their eyes and ears to progressive voters and target Republicans.  Just as they have in the last couple of elections, which has seen Dems getting less and less of the white, working class voters each time.  Do you think that means something isn't working?  And you want to blame that on progressives, and just keep trying to make a failed strategy work?

Okay, so good luck with that!

Do you actually read the links I post? (#34)
by vicndabx

i read the article and i read the article that article referenced with the 'overwhelming evidence,' and then i read the actual study which doesn't make any of the assertions the two authors are claiming. the actual study certainly does not make the specious claim that "young progressives voted trump."

here is the actual harvard study:
Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

The fact that the Third Way guy chooses to use the term "socialized" medicine - as do you - is also revealing, because what is being proposed is not "socialized medicine:"

By accepted definition, socialized medicine is a healthcare system in which the government owns and operates healthcare facilities, employs healthcare professionals, and also pays for healthcare services. Examples include the British National Health Service and national health systems in countries such as Finland and Spain. There are escape valves for those few who wish to pay for private care.

In the United States, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is a true example of "socialized medicine." We, among many others, have described a giant gap between the practices--even the culture--of the VHA over the past 50 years and what might be envisioned as "ideal" by many American physicians. Thus, it is not surprising that the hundreds of thousands of American physicians who received much of their training in Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals are so dead-set against any American national healthcare system.

"Universal healthcare," such as has long existed in almost the entire civilized world (except the United States), is not necessarily socialized medicine. Instead, each of the various developed countries has its own way to provide basic care to all of its people, control cost escalation, ensure quality and safety, and appropriately compensate the workers. And they do all of that more effectively and more efficiently than the United States, with proven better outcomes at much lower costs.

Countries with such universal healthcare include Australia, Austria, Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan. There are many others--even Moldova and Portugal.

They are not smarter than we are. They do not work harder than we do. They are not richer nations than ours. They don't have more or better education than we do. They don't have better equipment and supplies than we do.

Their health systems are simply framed by a different set of values. The primary purpose of their healthcare system approach is to provide decent medical care for all of their inhabitants. In contrast, our current American healthcare system is organized to transfer money from the many to the few. As W. Edward Deming described, "every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." How true.

I don't disagree that DeMoro was wrong to believe that Trump was going to bring us single payer, but the comment she made in the article wasn't in reference to health care, but to Democrats who don't seem to want to adjust their strategy in the face of electoral losses.

The Bernie voters who defected to Trump, explained by a political scientist

Here's a bit from it:

Jeff Stein

I've seen some people who are using your new finding to trumpet that "Bernie Would Have Won," because the number of Bernie-Trump voters is greater than the margin of difference between Clinton and Trump. And then there are others who say that this poll proves that Bernie voters cost Hillary the election, because his supporters stubbornly flipped to Trump in the end.

And it seems like for one claim to be correct, so does the other one.

Brian Schaffner

One piece of this that's important to keep in context is that you always see this kind of defection between a primary and a general election. In 2008, you saw a lot of Hillary Clinton voters who ended up backing John McCain -- so it's not abnormal to see this kind of thing. And more of them did so in 2008 than this time. [15 percent of Clinton's 2008 voters in the primary supported McCain in that year's general election.] Although given the candidates this time versus in 2008, it may have been surprising to see even this rate of defection.

The thing that really stood out to me is that a lot of these people who voted for Sanders -- and then Trump -- don't look like modern day Democrats. So you saw a lot fewer of them actually identify as Democrats than your normal Sanders voter; and, even more striking, they seem to have views on racial issues that are far more conservative than your typical Democrat.

It's not clear to me this necessarily if this is a Hillary Clinton problem specifically, or if this was Bernie Sanders having a special appeal to bring people into Democratic Party primaries, who would otherwise be inclined to be Republicans.

[...]

I also looked at how the Bernie-Trump voters identify themselves on the ideological scale, and very few say that they're liberal. Only about 17 to 18 percent say that they're liberal, in any kind of way, shape, or form, though they voted for Sanders.

By contrast, about 45 percent of these Bernie-Trump voters say they're `middle of the road' -- basically, a lot of them see themselves as "moderates." Meanwhile, another 35 percent of them are claiming to be either somewhat conservative or very conservative.

I think what this starts to suggest to me is that these are old holdovers from the Democratic Party that are conservative on race issues. And while Bernie wasn't campaigning on that kind of thing, Clinton was much more forthright about courting the votes of minorities -- and maybe that offended them, and then eventually pushed them out and toward Trump.

i'm perplexed more than angry. it's hard for me to get angry over a pardon for a misdemeanour. the justice department documents that arpaio was actively and repeatedly engaging in unconstitutional and unlawful actions in traffic stops, in searches and seizures, in raids of residences, in raids of work sites, in illegal detention (detaining), and in treatment of those detained.

i don't understand why there are no criminal charges. the justice department documented actual civil rights violations, human rights violations, unconstitutional actions, and illegal activities. why are there no criminal charges? who dropped the ball here?

ACLU: Five Reasons Racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio Should Not Receive a Presidential Pardon

The Justice Department discovered cases where Latina detainees were "denied basic sanitary items" and were "forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation" or were put into "solitary confinement for extended periods of time because of their inability to understand and thus follow a command given in English."

ragebot: "I am not trying to assign blame to anyone, but will note that when LEOs are called and find someone with multiple stab wounds that require medical attention and the hospital classifies the person as in serious condition it is understandable LEOs will be looking for a perp."

And as I noted above, "perp" is a loaded term because as short for "perpetrator," you're implying in this instance that the deceased was entirely at fault for the confrontation, when it's actually far too early in the investigation to arrive at that particular conclusion.

Words do matter, ragebot. Your use of "perp" suggests a clear bias on your part in favor of the injured party and law enforcement, even if that was not your initial intention. If you instead wanted to note that St. Louis Police Dept. spokespersons themselves referenced to the deceased as a "perp," then you should have used quotations as I just did, to emphasize that this was someone else's terminology and not your own.

(Did department spokespersons refer to the deceased as a "perp"? I certainly didn't get that from the linked article or subsequent accounts, so I am assuming that the use of such a loaded term was entirely of your own volition.)

There are always two (or sometime more) sides to any such stories. And in this case, if family members and friends are to be believed, Kiwi Herring was a victim of an ongoing and perhaps escalating campaign of sexual harassment by her homophobic neighbor.

Now, that sort of harassment alone certainly doesn't grant Herring carte blanche to attack her homophobic neighbor with a knife, I don't care what the provocation was. But if he was threatening her and she felt herself to be in imminent physical danger in this particular situation, then that's another matter entirely.

But again, since we still don't know all the facts, and initial accounts in the media of such incidents often contain significant inaccuracies, it's best that we refrain from conveying those initial accounts as though they're fact, if only to preclude us from then jumping to premature conclusions on that basis.