Advice For Candidates, Supporters And Successors

What? A post not about my cancer or featuring disco music? WHAAAAA...? It's true, though. I start with a quote:

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need

(The Rolling Stones)

With Pennsylvania and four other states having held their primaries yesterday, Republican Donald Trump and, especially, Democrat Hillary Clinton are both closer than ever to clinching their party's nominations. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver says that Trump's sweep of all five states makes it likely that if Indiana wants Trump (whether he can go back there or not) the Cruz-Kasich tag-team, formed much, much too late, will be probably be unable to stop Trump from preventing the contested GOP convention they so desperately need.

FiveThirtyEight also says that, barring a miracle, Clinton (winning 4 of 5, including the big prize of PA) will have more total elected delegates than Bernie Sanders, and adding in the superdelegates (more on them in a bit) makes her pretty much the a certainty to win the nomination in Philadelphia in July. (Side note: if health permits I plan to volunteer at the convention here in some capacity.)

So with that, and the comments I'm reading from supporters of both Bernie and Hillary ranging from angry to smug, bitter to ecstatic, desperate for a miracle to anxious to fast-forward to the fall, and too much it nasty, I've decided to spend a few minutes dispensing some advice -- I'm a little more focused on Sanders, any progressive candidates who may come in his wake, and his supporters, many of whom are younger and idealistic -- certainly much younger than myself and somewhat more idealistic. :o . But I'm nothing if not an equal-opportunity advice giver.

A Hillary Clinton Thought

Maybe Hillary Clinton decided to say something nice about Nancy Reagan by talking about her stance on stem cell research, and had a brain fart and said "HIV/AIDS" instead? If so, that was her second mistake. Her first was wanting to pander to the right-wing nuts in the first place.

In a situation like this, where the deceased isn't worthy of adulation but you want to be respectful, all you do is offer condolences to the family. That's it. Hillary, in trying to score points with conservatives -- who will never, ever, show her the same courtesy -- offended many of her core supporters (in November, if not necessarily during the primaries) -- people of a certain age who lived through the days of the despicable Reagan administration. In case you weren't alive then, or somehow have forgotten that bastard, here's Dan Savage's rant.

Nancy supported her husband's evil, reportedly abandoned her friend Rock Hudson when AIDS was killing him, and only started advocating for stem-cell research after Ronnie was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And her puerile "Just Say No" anti-drug effort, if anything, did more harm than good.

If Donald Trump becomes our 45th President, remember this day.

I'm Feeling The Bern

So this happened over the summer when I was at the Navy Yard taking pictures of the new development (including park space) there...

And then this happened last night on my way home from work...

A few minutes later it hit me: this is why I should vote for Bernie Sanders.

All of this paranoia and the extra "security" that doesn't really protect anyone, all of this crap that began after the 9/11 attacks, annoys me more and more with each passing day. (Well, pretty much everything annoys me more every day, but that's another story.) And, as much as I like her and much of what she's done and what she wants to do, Hillary Clinton -- previously a United States Senator and Secretary of State -- is part of the political machinery that has led to this steady erosion of our freedoms. This has to change, and I don't think Clinton will be as willing to make the needed changes as Sanders.

Make no mistake: I'll vote for whichever candidate the Democrats nominate to go up against the survivor of the RepubliScum Clown Gang Wars. But when Pennsylvania holds its primary (which is so important with the number of delegates at stake, the state schedules it for the day before the first party convention begins) I'm voting for Bernie Sanders.

All he has to do is be competitive and make my vote meaningful. In 2008 I voted for Hillary even though by the time the PA primary occurred it was a foregone conclusion that she came from way ahead to lose the nomation to Barack Obama. At the time I honestly had doubts that he could win in November. Oops. So maybe I shouldn't think this way, but I see no chance one of the GOP clowns can win in November 2016. They've painted themselves and each other into the most extremist corner. None of them (not even John Kasich, who's probably the most sane of the GOP clowns) can escape this when the general election rolls around.

So do your part, America, and make my vote count!

And look up at the sky!

Cropped version:

My (Last*) Week In Comics 8-31-11

Well, today was the big day. The final issue of "Flashpoint," the end of the DC Comics Universe as we know it and the launch of the new DC Universe, or DCnU, to use the shorthand that someone came up with. (Was it DC themselves? Not sure.) The first of the 52 monthly titles, all starting with issue 1 -- even long-running Action Comics and Detective Comics -- was also released: Justice League #1. So let's get to what I bought today, and then we'll discuss this some more...

Flashpoint 5 (of 5): In this issue, the war between Wonder Woman's Amazons and Aquaman's Atlanteans has begun, and unless it's somehow stopped, will result in an earth-shattering cataclysm. The attempt by some of the heroes of this world, including the Flash and this alternate world's Batman, finally gathered in an attempt to stop it, isn't going so well. Then Eobard Thawne, a.k.a. Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, shows up to make things worse for Barry Allen by explaining exactly how the timeline was changed so drastically. The revelation is quite a twist. How things are resolved essentially boils down to one man's love for his mother, and another man's love for his son, and the sacrifices both must make in order to restore the correct timeline. The Amazon-Atlantis war itself is mostly an afterthought. Some characters from the various tie-in series show up dramatically for a couple of pages, but the whole thing is pretty much in the background of the Thawne/Flash/Batman drama. The final 9 pages feature a two-page sequence which bridges the old and new DCU, and hints at an upcoming threat, followed by Barry Allen waking up back at his police crime lab job. I guess it's kind of a spoiler but we all knew that when this was over Bruce Wayne would be Batman again, so it's no surprise when Flash rushes into the Batcave to find Bruce/Batman. There's a nice conversation and a touching moment.

MixBlog 12-8-10

So I had a thought today -- pause for wisecracks regarding my actually having thoughts. I might do another random blog post, but at some point I'd be repeating myself in the titles. Random Thoughts, Random Musings, More Randomness, Randomly Random Randomness...I needed something different. But what? Anyway, I was on the bus today and for some reason the word "mixtape" popped into my head. Suddenly, I had what I needed: MixBlog! (Please note that the date in the title corresponds to when I started typing, before midnight.) So, without further ado...

• I love some of these Twitter accounts that either impersonate celebrities or purport to be TV or movie or other famous characters. (I'd like to do one myself. I need to find a character that I know well enough to make it seem realistic, as well as one whose name hasn't been used on Twitter. I had an idea or two but the Twitter names I had in mind were already taken. One or two times the Twitter accounts were created but they're pretty much dead accounts, with no tweets at all or no tweets in a long time.) Here's something about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" from a famous newspaper reporter that I laughed at today...
  
  
  
  
  It was followed by "Oh, crap. You all weren't supposed to know that." I can't get that image to upload to the blog, though.

• Speaking of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,"
  

This Sums It Up...

Submitted for your approval, the editorial cartoon from Monday's Phila. Daily News:

Yep. And judging from the quote from this article, someone still doesn't quite get it:

"I've been willing to compromise in the past, and I'll be willing to compromise going forward," the president said.

Sigh. I knew we should've elected Hillary. Oh, and you may remember I made a prediction about the Pennsylvania governor's race in my post about Outfest a few weeks ago. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say: I told you so.

Even Jon Runyan won election to Congress. It matters not that he was an Eagle. He's now just a dirty football player-turned-dirty politician. Enjoy your tea party freaks, Jon. They're your fans now.