• That reducing class size is prominent is a good thing. So, do you have a sense of how smaller classes would be made to improve instruction? That needs to be a part of the argument and there are arguments that can be made convincing, I think, in terms of benefits for students. If the focus of instruction is going to be growth of thinking ability to make decisions and solve problems–if the public can be convinced that these are primary goals across the disciplines–then small class size can be explained as absolutely essential. What goes with that is means for bringing before the public and its representatives proof that students are achieving in regard to such outcomes. I am not sure that the case has been made or, at least, well enough to get the public to the school house door–or district office or state department of education–to strongly advocate for the changes needed to achieve such ends.

Denmark, as some on the stage has pointed out, has a kind of capitalism that is moderated by government that operates in the democratic socialist vein. Bloomberg calls democratic socialism communism and others say they want to keep capitalism, are advocates of capitalism, are the same kind of people who have helped to allow capitalism to become the monster it is.

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (full name: Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348)) was a bill discussed in the 110th United States Congress that would have provided legal status and a path to citizenship for the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States. The bill was portrayed as a compromise between providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and increased border enforcement: it included funding for 300 miles (480 km) of vehicle barriers, 105 camera and radar towers, and 20,000 more Border Patrol agents, while simultaneously restructuring visa criteria around high-skilled workers. The bill also received heated criticism from both sides of the immigration debate. The bill was introduced in the United States Senate on May 9, 2007, but was never voted on, though a series of votes on amendments and cloture took place. The last vote on cloture, on June 7, 2007, 11:59 AM, failed 34–61 effectively ending the bill’s chances. A related bill S. 1639, on June 28, 2007, 11:04 AM, also failed 46–53. Wikipedia

I decided to watch MSNBC post debate coverage and decided to make a big contribution to Bernie Sanders because of what I saw. Fair and balanced. Anyone who saw it, tell me that this is what it was. Interviews with several candidates. Biden gets free time to explain himself at length without interruption. Warren there to allow Chris Matthews to ask questions that push the anti-Bernie agenda, and NO BERNIE, the guy who almost all on the panel believe to be very well positioned to win the vote for the nomination.

I am seriously considering dropping out of the political process because it is owned by those who have a lot because of the way it operates and I am sick of watching them win no matter who gets elected. I am without a party that will willingly represent my views. There is no mainstream media channel where views such as mine are fair and reasonably aired and there is no mainstream political party that represents anything other than perpetuation of a truly asinine system where one many who hold wealth in excess of what 125 million citizen have collectively. I watched tonight as sensible ideas were made to look silly–do we need billionaires? Really? And when we have them they get a say, get to say more loudly than all of those 125 million and more what they think because can afford to buy the time. I know why some Bernie supporter are nasty. Some are because they really are tired of what happens when the game is played “fairly,” by rules that have nothing at all to do with fairness.

What is really wrong with the process and with the love shown Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC last night is that it signifies the right of center, the wealthy and corporate elements who are in control of the democratic party, realize that the vote will not be for either of their guys, Biden or Bloomberg (Pete too) and are badly in need of a viable NON BERNIE. This is not Warren’s fault. She has progressive credentials and that is good. She should not allow herself to be pushed into the anyone but Bernie camp because she will have to move right to do that and that would be wrong.

The strategy of the center now is how far to the left can we accept in order to have a viable candidate who is not Sanders. If Warren holds her ground, speaks loudly and angrily (praised for this last night–Bernie skewered for his) against government by and for the wealthy and the corporate–Chris Mathews makes 5 m a year and is worth 20 m–I can support her. If she turns Bernie basher to get the ugly love, if Bernies is cheated of nomination, I will have no candidate and no hope of ever being able to have one I can, with enthusiasm, support.

It is good to be reminded of this day. And terrible too. Good because, though somehow the tragedy lingers in many of our minds, the date coming around makes the memory more poignant. That added poignancy is going to cause me to think through again for what me, a person affected by the news and not on the ground in real time with the unimaginable loss of sons and daughters and teachers and friends, was near impossible to comprehend and accept. So, what I must do to feel enough to feel close enough to be relevant is engage enough in empathy to make the pain somewhat personal–I have two daughters. And this gives me–I can give myself–license to offer suggestions for the cause of such never again being allowed to happen. Those murdered at Stoneman were murdered by gun. Guns were the weapon but not the cause. The murderer was a troubled young person. But he was not the cause. The cause is the attitude that allowed for this troubled young person to have a gun and to be so disposed as to slaughter those he should have felt love and compassion for because they were his fellow human beings. His trouble and the troubled attitude that allowed him to perpetrate a massacre, to with his hands, before his eyes slaughter other human beings. He was without humanity. He was without empathy and his enablers, the gun sellers and the legislators who refuse to pass laws to stop there slaughter, the people who support these legislators and are so selfish with their rights as to allow for the taking from others of more important, vitally important rights, are without empathy too and are, therefore inhumane. To obliterate the attitudes that allow so many to act and vote and think in ways that are deadly to others, to our children, in fact, we need to get at root causes and act against the sources of those causes. As with most things troubling this society, the core problem is the selfishness caused by a system that makes selfishness a good, that pits the one against the other, that makes success the possession by one of more than others, competitors among whom the most ruthless usually win, those who lose left to fend for themselves with too little or nothing. It is a society that makes it so that what is good for the one is at the expense of another or many others. The gun industry is, in America, a legitimate business and the propaganda it propagates through its front organizations allowed because such is the kind of freedom those who make and enforce the law allow. Within the system, it is perfectly legal, too well accepted, that the right to sell is above the right to live decently and securely, many business enterprises selling harmful things for the profit of a relative few. Such is their right and this is wrong, wrong. wrong. IT IS TIME, FOR A LONG TIME IS HAS BEEN TIME, TO REASSESS WHAT WE ARE ABOUT AND HOW WE WANT TO PROCEED AND THE ONLY KIND OF SENSIBLE FUTURE, WE MUST COME TO BELIEVE, IS ONE IN WHICH BOTH POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS PROMOTE HUMANITY AND NOT INSANITY. The insanity that currently is THE system cannot be tolerated because it is so deadly and so unfair.Edit or delete this

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It would seem that I am over the top Sanders and it would be fair to think of me as such. This is not because I have joined a cult or been made mad by a bigger than life super hero who can do no wrong because he is super. Bernie’s appeal to me is about how real he is, how true to good ideas he has remained throughout his political career and this with a few burps–the gun thing–but not so many as to cause one who looks at his record as a human being and politician to see him as anything else than a good person. He is a good person!!!! And this is what has caused vitriol to be thrown his way by those shaking in their Gucci boots about the possibility of a democratic socialist candidate. He is not the regular kind of political, he is not the politician shaped by alliances with with greedy owners of the nation. He has lived a rather humble life, as far as I can tell. I don’t think he ever partied with Trump or the Bushes or Jeffery Epstein and not just because he wasn’t invited. He understood that that was not where he belonged, as a decent human being with the kind of values that make Sanders the kind of candidate he is, hard to stick dirt on because he really is pretty damned clean.
The alternative for sullying him is to make a monster out of a political philosophy that is actually a humane philosophy, that comes of a genuine concern for the welfare of people and a passionate disdain for those who would do harm others in order to get more for themselves, this a key to success as a capitalist. Those who hate him hate him because the is trying to disrupt a system that does not just invite but necessitates the inhumane treatment of others, one has to make others losers in order to win.
I have been looking for a good, a truly good person to run for the presidency throughout my life. I think I once found one in Jimmy Carter who, because he was a good man was chewed on by the beast all through his presidency. Here is another one of those people again, this one with maybe a bit more grit because of battles so far fought who wants to not just win to have it his way but to change the dynamic of the political system and the rather cruel society in which it operates.

The issue of black voter support for Biden is perplexing as much as it is understandable, at least from a perspective such as mine, a white life-long far left of the center of left thinker for all of my thoughtful adult life. He was Obama’s Vice President, that is true. He did things that helped the movement to beat on this racist nation to force it to make concessions to the fact, not necessarily that Black people and other people of color were people as were white people, people, but, by virtue of that Damned Constitution, beings who, it had to be recognized, equal under the law.
Concessions–yes–concessions were made by the middle of liberal but still hooked on some advantage, maybe a whole lot for white folk, because, well because they were white, obviously, but only concessions and never full bore changes in the system to reflect equality of all in the society and under the law. LOOK AT JOE’S RECORD. LOOK AT WHO HE LIKED AND WAS ABLE TO LIKE! And still be a “friend” of people of color. Why, because then he could be seen as better that most everyone else with some power in American politics because American politics and the society it served were horribly. terribly, inhumanly, and harmfully racist.
Obama was a black president. Obama was the best black president the nation had ever had. He recognized Black people and people of color to be due equal treatment and he went a little further in explaining the nature of racism in the society and its causes and its effects. But, he was still a man committed to the system, to promoting the ridiculous idea that America was really a great country WHEN IT HAD HARDLY ENOUGH BEEN GOOD ENOUGH TO LARGE, MAINLY OF COLOR, GROUPS OF PEOPLE..
Biden is trying to ride coattails he has no right to try and grasp and they are the coat tails of the first Black president who took a middle of the road–hey, we can all be friends–approach to politics, one that allowed HIM to get along (really not so well) with those who were his fellow politicians.
BIDEN, AS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE, would continue the middle of the road approach and maybe some think that he will be able to do better with the Obama approach because he is white. Part of this is a belief that he will be better able to unify a nation that showed just how viciously divided it is in terms of attitudes toward race (and many other things) because he is white and that is a concession that no sensible halfway equitable, halfway decent person should make, white or black or brown or of whatever color skin they may be. BIDEN WILL NOT TAKE ON THE CAUSES OF RACISM OR THOSE RACISTS WHO DO NOT DO PHYSICAL HARM TO PEOPLE OF COLOR BUT DO HARM BY PROMOTING AND SUPPORTING A RACIST POLITICS THAT IS DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM THAT, OF COURSE, FOR THE BENEFIT OF WHITE PEOPLE, ALLOWED FOR THE EXISTENCE AND PERPETUATION OF SLAVERY.