If you liked Bill and Barack, you're gonna love Hillary

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is shifting into high gear as she prepares to make a major speech on economic policies this Monday.  There’s no question Clinton is running her campaign following the blueprint her husband and Obama used to reach the White House: Tack left through the primaries, shift slightly right during the campaign then, after inauguration day, jump swiftly back to the middle. It worked for Bill and Barack, so why not?

The one wild card that Hillary faces which the other Democrats did not is Bernie Sanders. His presence in the campaign and his surging popularity are going to force the Clinton camp to grapple with difficult policy issues that normally they would not need to if the competitor were another neoliberal Democrat. And that is the best part about Bernie’s presence in the race. Bernie wants to talk about raising the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy, not letting banks off the hook when they commit crimes, more financial regulations, clamping down on Wall Street, all topics that Clinton would merely tip-toe around if Bernie wasn’t poking the hornet’s nest.

Hillary is the establishment Democrat, the candidate Wall Street and the corporate elite know they can reason with when push comes to shove. Like Obama, she’ll appoint a host of Washington and Wall Street veterans (former BC people) as advisors and in cabinet positions. She is, ultimately, not going to rock the boat. Sanders, on the other hand, is a threat to the status quo and for that reason, will not be allowed into the White House.

If you like what we got with Bill and Barack, then you should support Hillary. I do not, and will not.

Bobby Jindal Announces His Presidential Candidacy. (crickets)

Wow. I mean, wow. John Stewart, among many others, has been skewering Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindals’ presidential announcement ad, so I new I needed to see it for myself. I just watched it, and…wow.

Shot from the perspective of a Go Pro wearing cat caught in a tree, the video is a one long take of Jindal and his family sitting around a table in their backyard. Bobby, his face obscured by a tree limb, announces TO HIS CHILDREN that he’s going to run for President.  The kids respond with the same enthusiasm you might expect from a “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce” announcement, which is pretty much total silence.

From the man who once said the Republican Party should stop being the “stupid” party, this is one of the dumbest stunts I’ve ever seen from a politician in any party.  It’s wrong on so many levels you’d need a calculator to count them all.

It’s clear that this was an attempt by handlers to make Jindal look “folksy” and “genuine” within a casual family gathering. Got it. And that is the first problem with this video. Casual family gatherings are normally where people talk about very mundane, day-to-day activities, like what happened at school or work or who’s dating whom. How many family gatherings have you been to where someone announces he is running for President of the United States? That would be zero.  Okay, Jindal makes one, which is what makes this concept so preposterous and contrived.

Now, if you were taping a Presidential announcement vid, and the premise is that you are making the announcement first to your family, wouldn’t you want the children to be excited that Daddy might one day be President of the U.S.? In Jindal’s video, however, the kids sit in stunned silence, with one of the boy’s giving his Dad an awkward thumbs up.  Now you or I or anyone with an IQ over 70 would say, “Hey, let’s try that again with a little more enthusiasm.” But the geniuses in the Jindal camp must have thought the genuineness of the moment was a positive thing. How very, very wrong they were.

And what are we to make of Jindal announcing his presidential ambitions to children, and using that as his announcement to the nation at large? Is he comparing the American voters to children? Does he think he needs to make his announcement simple enough for a seven-year old to understand?

I could go on, but I’ll end with a technical issue, but a rather large one in my opinion. I don’t know how much the media buy was for Bobby’s announcement, but would you or anyone else spend tens of thousands of dollars placing a video promoting your candidate in prime time where his face is obscured by a tree limb?  Genuine moment or not, this is a major no no. It comes off as totally amateurish rather than a warm family moment. Do you think the American people are so familiar with Jindal that he doesn’t need to show his face? Bobby Jindal?

Jindal’s announcement ad deserves all of the ridicule it is getting. It’s mawkish, amateurish and displays an epic amount of poor judgment on the part of the candidate and his team. And, I’m sure, accurately reflects Bobby Jindal’s character to a T.

Koch brothers announce they are buying the 2016 elections

What do you get the billionaire who has everything? How about the United States of America? 

Charles and David Koch have announced that their political network is planning to spend nearly a billion dollars on conservative candidates for House and Senate seats and the presidency in 2016.

Thanks to their ideological soul mates on the Supreme Court, the Koch’s can now lavish money on their chosen candidates through an immense network of non-profit groups without, in many cases, having to identify donors. Koch-approved Republicans will get writer’s cramps endorsing their checks.

Does this sound like democracy to you? Me neither. America is quickly becoming an oligarchy where a small minority of elites determine who goes to Washington. The system of checks and balances instituted by our founders has clearly broken down, and voting has become an exercise in futility.

It’s a shame. America began as a brilliant experiment in democracy, but has been taken over by the insatiably greedy 1 percent whose only allegiance is to the bottom line.

Bill Maher says he might vote for Rand Paul. Huh?

HBO host Bill Maher doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. Okay. I’m not a big fan of hers either. In an interview with The Hill, Maher went on to say that he might consider voting for a Republican in 2016. Come again, Bill? He thinks Rand Paul is an interesting candidate.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

For a person who pretends to be politically savvy and informed, this is a spectacularly idiotic pronouncement (unless it was a bit of satirical theatre, but I doubt that). With the exception of his isolationist tendencies, Paul is a conservative’s conservative, the kind that Bill Maher routinely mocks on his show. Bill, if you’re reading this, here are some of Paul’s far right-wing creds for you to absorb:

Abortion: Pro-life. Abortion regulation should be left up to the states.

Education: Advocate of home schooling. Doesn’t want the federal government to regulate home schooling in any way.

Energy and the environment: Doesn’t believe in man-made global warming and opposes the EPA efforts to enforce greenhouse emissions.

Health care: Opposes Obamacare and universal healthcare. Despite the facts, he doesn’t believe there are significant numbers of Americans unable to access healthcare.

Social Security: Advocates privatizing Social Security.

Second Amendment: Strong supporter of the right to bear arms. Lifelong member of the NRA.

Economy: Believes it’s a myth that government can create jobs.

Immigration: Does not believe in amnesty for illegal immigrants and wants the government to strictly enforcement immigration laws.

Rand Paul? Seriously?

President Bernie Sanders?

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says he may decide to run for president in 2016. He would get my vote. Wow. It would be an extremely interesting presidential race if Sanders were to jump in the fray, because he would be opposed not merely by the Republican and Democratic candidates, but by the entire military/industrial/media complex. Nobody in “the establishment” will want to see Sanders win, because he is too much of a threat to the status quo. Despite some liberal rhetoric during his two campaigns, Obama has proven to be highly malleable, and you know Hillary will fall in line should she win the White House, but not Bernie.

As much as I would like to see him run, Bernie is too far to the left to win the presidency at this point in America’s history. The shadow government will not allow it. Big money will flow to his two opponents, and Bernie will have to rely on small donations from people like me. The mainstream media will marginalize him and his “socialist” ideas. The surveillance agencies will be looking to dig up dirt from his past. Bernie would truly be playing David to the elites Goliath.

All of that being said, there are still many unknown factors that could work in his favor. Who the Republicans and Democrats choose to run will matter. If it’s Hillary for the Dems, his chances grow even dimmer. How the economy is doing will matter. Whether or not we are at war with somebody will matter. The country’s mood for real as opposed to cosmetic change will matter.

Even if Sanders has no chance of winning, it would be a refreshing change to have someone presenting progressive ideas to a national audience in between the psychotic ranting of the right and the disingenuous hyperbole of the establishment Dems.