Paul Brancato

And Ron, something tells me you're on board with that.

I call it a plus. It's the people who want to live in a pluralistic multicultural country that will win this battle of ideas, and it's not a two party issue, it's a human issue.

That was great thanks Sandy.

Tulsi Gabbard could be a star. She is smart, Charismatic, and courageous. Gavin Newsom - same. Brilliant mind learning his chops.

Joe - agree. as for George Bush his name should be on the chalkboard, definitely.

Glenn - I suggest we try to look at the electoral college not from a sour grapes prospective but historically.You say the reason are perfectly sound, even though I am sure you know that the term 'popular vote' is distinctly American. Elsewhere it is simply called 'the vote'. i saw an interesting segment on this recently. It seems that Alexander Hamilton offered an amendment to abolish the electoral college, even though it was he that came up with the idea in the first place. His reasoning was interesting. He had conceived of it as a kind of check and balance against an electorate that might make a choice that the wise men in the electoral college could nullify if they found it unacceptable for some reason. He never thought it would become a robotic rubber stamp. He wanted electors to be able vote their conscience if they, from their educated elite positions they deemed it necessary. If there is an historian reading this that knows the subject and thinks I have it wrong, I'm all ears. if the electors are just robots without a shred of independence, the only thing left to look at is why it is fair or not. I saw a figure recently that illustrates why I think it is unfair. Were California to receive a proportional number of electoral votes based on population to a small state like Wyoming for instance, which I believe gets 3 electoral votes, it would get not 53, but 199 votes. So what is the perfectly sound reason you speak of? Is it to give rural states more relative say?

Clearly Trump is a perfect subject and title for a set of cards. It's been so many years now and I'm too lazy. Of course back then we didn't have the internet so research was much harder.

Guess we have something in common Cliff. Who published the cards?

That's astounding. Jack Ruby told her to be vanilla girl. She never stops. i stand by my comment that good researchers should do what they can to avoid her conference. Yes I get that they have the same publisher. No it doesn't make their research somehow worthless. I wouldn't paint them with the same brush. But to attend a conference where a self promoting xxxx is running it, and then to be polite and not confront her or say how you really feel when you get the lectern, is - what? Don't even know the right words. It's a damn shame that researchers have to make a decision to look the other way because it directly affects their income.

Ron - it's funny, but voter suppression is real and deliberate. Democrats these days just don't do the things Republicans do to limit the vote. It's a very cynical ruse.

Exactly right

Harry Reid is too late. Clinton's campaign decided it was in their best interest not to talk about the emails, rather than confront the accuser. They were wrong. Why do you think they made that strategic choice? It made them look like they were defending the indefensible. As Cliff says, the Republicans declared war a long time ago, and this move by Comey was really aggressive. Giuliani practically came in his pants thinking about it. So the response was not strong enough. Trump handled the accusations against him with flat out denials and threats. I thought the Democrats overplayed their hand on the sexual stuff, at the expense of any meaningful exploration of his businesses, including Trump University, which to me seems like the biggest scandal. So here we are. Harry Reid suddenly grows balls. The Demos seem to be reorganizing towards the progressive wing. They need a healthy transfusion of young blood. Perhaps the best thing that will come out of this mess is a new wave of political activism. Be the change and all that.

Cliff - ? - come on. Were you stuck watching Fox News?

Jim - did you exonerate Comey?

You will. Suggest you listen to her. I was open at first, and read the book you got your info from. I think you have good intuition. I've read and appreciated a lot of your posts. Haslam wrote an interesting book which he amended for his second addition after Baker interjected her personal story. The differences between the two made me think she had seen an opening and found a sucker. That's my intuition. Now she is supported by a publisher and organizes and speaks at conferences. She makes a living doing this. I am sure others with personal knowledge will post here soon, like Pamela Brown. I think she is a disaster for the research community, and if it weren't for financial ties to the same publisher I believe all of the writers would jump off her ship.

Cliff - no Fox, CNN on Sunday morning, very little MSNBC. I've been politicized since early childhood and can smell bs a mile away. My criticisms of Clinton do not come from the right wing, the witch hunt, emails, Benghazi etc. It was not the progressives fault that she lost. I think the article on fake news is very enlightening. I heard some really creepy things from a few posters on FB. I'm still debating with some well meaning relatives who got lost in the right wing bubble. But seriously, DiEugenio is not the enemy. Let me ask you - where do you live? Did you support Clinton or Sanders in the primary?

Cliff - of course Comey did something unthinkable and unforgivable. It might have swung the election her way if he hadn't but I've come to doubt that.

Like Jim I live in California. We did have the luxury here of voting our conscience. I've voted third party many times, not this time. But chewing Jim out because he didn't vote for Clinton ignores his residency. He said he didn't live in a swing state. What more neeeds to be said. If fascism comes here it's not beside of the Jim DiEugenios out there.

Why do so many of you have a problem with criticizing Clinton? I find it very surprising. I voted for Sanders, and Clinton. But I haven't been happy with the Democratic Party for a long time. DiEugenio named a lot of the things that got passed under Bill Clinton that were not good for the country. I know Hilary Clinton has been hounded for decades now. It almost made me feel she would make a good president. But defending her after the election - what's the point? When I criticize her from the left it's entirely different than from the right. I'm really sick of the Democratic Party marginalizing their progressives. I know some of it is the natural tendency, for understandable historical reason, of blacks to be afraid of the left. This goes back at least to the way NAACP dealt with Paul Robeson. He was going to quickly. But blacks also know that progressives are their true friends, not fair weather. Another point, and this is to Tommy mainly, is that I think a little empathy is called for when trying to understand Putin's Russia. They are not allowed into NATO, they are surrounded by weaponry and nukes pointing at them, and their opinions in the court of public opinion are dismissed. Didn't we all learn that JFK wanted to end the Cold War? Tommy - do you concur? Well, what are we doing now? What would JFK do? We never read anything about CIA, yet their hands are all over the Ukraine and Crimea. What would the US do in a similar situation on its border? It's so easy to vilify Putin, especially now. But to say he has no reason to be pissed off would be ignorant. Of course he does.

Paul - bearing in mind how futile it is to argue with you, your insistence that someone show even one place where Marina lied to the WC is a cop out on your part. It's immaterial whether she was under oath or not. Come on, you imagine that all the testimony taken my the WC under oath was truthful? Do you allow yourself to decide what is truthful and what is not? Do you admit that she changed her story and that commissioners were concerned about her veracity? It's a moot point Paul what you think is true or not. But you hang your hat on her testimony under oath and ignore the rest.

I have to wonder whether the uncounted votes are part of these statistics. If what I'm reading is correct, there are millions of. Votes not yet counted. In California several million votes, but also in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin. And who knows where else? Of course the uncounted votes are in the cities, as are the voting lines more or less. My mom would have said 'don't put the cart before the horse'. Counting the vote accurately and in a timely manner is the cart. My new motto - Count the Vote.

Everybody - The vote remains incomplete. Yet the nation, the media, the Democratic Party, want to do post mortems. This is a huge scandal getting very little attention, even here where I hope we would be more in tune with conspiracy. I'm not just talking about California.

Are you saying Putin is a bad guy?

Ron - I admit I have no idea what he will do despite the nasty things he has said. If I could wave my magic wand I would bring the demonstrators home. They've made their point and they are rightfully outraged. I would also get Trump to publicly condemn racial and ethnic violence, tell the kkk to put their robes back in their closets and shut the hell up. And then I would have him say to the left that he hears their concerns. We have to learn to talk, to disagree respectfully. I blame Republicans for their politics of division, and implore Democrats to take the high road and stop demonizing Trump. It's too soon. We have the moral high ground, but looking down at the deplorables destroys any possibility of constructive engagement.