So, keep thinking that.

of being an uninformed Hillary supporter.

What do you think Penn's job will be if Clinton is elected... (hint: it won't be to remain as head of the Stagwell Group or SKDKnickerbock).

that being said, Mark Penn is far from just being a "fucking pollster". He was Clinton's Chief Campaign Strategist in 2008 and he's been much more than that to Bush/Cheney and others.

I would ask the same of you...?

Respectfully, why did you do it?


Thank you in advance.

Hmmm....

If I insult/disrespect somebody and he punches me in the face I am somewhat culpable for the battery. Would this be exculpatory evidence in a court of law, no, but it would be looked at as mitigating circumstances when it came to punishment.

Here:

How is confirming his own admitted behavior insulting or disrespectful? If someone wants to proudly dance that they dumped on a thread without reading it, that is their own choice.

I'd want to hire. He is VERY well regarded, and many of his friends and colleagues might disagree with some bernista-type wish to put a stake through his heart.

as well as most progressives.

Thanks for being on record about it though.

refine too much on gossip put out by alpha types jockeying for power. If she's bringing him on, she has reason and other employees of one who will probably be the our next president can accept, or not. But they will, noses out of joint or no.

It's an imperfect world, mostly due to highly imperfect people, but I can't help thinking I would want to not have people on my team who leaked complaints to the media in an attempt to shore up their positions.

I like how penn worked for big tobacco! what a guy!

The things you claim to stand for are being directly undermined by this systemic web of corporate/political inbreeding.

Not a "conspiracy" but a sign of how meaningless the notion of progressive is when applied to this.

Proceed.

In 2010, the firm merged with Knickerbocker, a public relations firm founded by Josh Isay.

With its political work, the firm focuses on Democrats and traditional progressive issues like gay rights, gun control and reproductive health.

But in recent years, SKDKnickerbocker has put its campaign tactics to use for a growing list of corporate clients, including US Airways, AT&T, Pfizer and Microsoft. This has meant defending controversial businesses, including for-profit colleges and Herbalife, the supplements company accused of being a pyramid scheme. Today the firm has offices in New York, Washington, Albany and Los Angeles

Over the years, Mr. Penn has worked closely with SKDKnickerbocker as well, including a collaboration with the firm to produce a television commercial featuring Bill Gates when antitrust regulators were pressing for the breakup of Microsoft.

and despised. There is no highly successful operative today who is not involved in some way with controversial issues.

Mark Penn has a tremendous reputation in his field. I'm frankly glad this very redoubtable man has chosen to work on the Democrat side for 2016, instead of to elect a Cruz or Rubio.

Maybe that's why her staff won't work with him.

Perhaps you should send her your thoughts. As a service to your country.

you both admit that he's working for her and that you she thinks differently than I do on this. Some people never do learn...

Believe it or not I consider myself kind of a moderate, but....

1Why are these monopolistic Big Corporations despised? It might have something with their greed, their shameful behavior, the negative impacts they are having. Being a big successful company does not mean they have to act like total shits....And if they have become too big not to be abusive snd destructive to the best interests of the majority, then they are too big to exist.

2 I would prefer to see more walking the talk aming so-called progressives, and from the Democratic party. You can't claim to stand for certain values on one hand, and be violating snd totally disregarding those standards on the other. That is why we have an impotent and corrupt political system that is totally incapable and/or unwilling to protect average people and the disadvantaged and the environment and basic Democracy

3 Ya gotta make a living, but the amount of money the elites earn for bad behavior is obscene. A society where some people have ten vacation homes while working families have to struggle to afford a crappy little apartment need a fundamental realignment....And it won't be done by that crowd.

As long as we justify, rationalize and enable this immoral plutocratic behavior we'll continue to see the hardening of a New Gilded Age....I'm expecting to see child labor return any day now. A new form of officially sanctioned slavery not far behind.

as joining Joe Scarborough in his hypocritical support of the takeover of America by libertarian and fascist oligarchic elements. This is the world we have. If we rejected all persons who are connected to corporations and accounts that are not entirely admirable, we would have no experienced leaders at all. They would all be taken out -- by us.

A sure losing move, and losing is always unacceptable -- the reason I'm in such a bad mood today.

It may seem strange to some reading my posts, but I believe I am more idealistic than many weak sisters who imagine they set their standards far higher than mine. My idealism has never been broken by awareness of just how dirty and infiltrated with corruption even the best of human systems are. I've never abandoned achievable goals to pursue worthless courses that lead to a lonely mountaintop where nothing can be accomplished but a preening of my own virtue.

Where there are people there will always be the grave faults of people, and grave imperfections in their creations. I never forget that and it has never lead me to abandon my ideals of working toward a better world. I'm often disgusted and temporarily disheartened, but they are always there in front of me to be striven for.

If the day comes when we can prosecute and fill penitentiaries with big corporate criminals, I'll be right there demanding cells be cleared for them. I'm up for stripping some of citizenship and possessions and exiling them too -- after their prison sentences are served. Heck, we can encourage thousands remove themselves off by taxing them into running. I don't expect it to be a real loss. Good people don't need bonuses in the millions to do a competent job. These current locusts are not worth a fraction of their hire, and we don't need them.

Until then, I focus on what I believe can be achieved. Like continued, real financial reform. Adjustments to the tax system designed to lessen inequality. Increases to the minimum wage. Education finance reform. Enforcement of laws already on the books; if we can't get the Kochs yet, we can make others associated with their efforts aware that they are not untouchable. Automatic voter registration. And a thousand other realistic steps that we can take now.

Like you and many people, I have always had to to reconcile a sense of idealism and optimism with the cynical realization that neither individuals nor social forces are always admirable (an understatement). That's why I'm not a conservative or libertarian.

The system has never been perfect, to say the least. But there used to be more of a balance. But since sometime around 1980, we headed into the dumpster in terms of what we accept in our economic and political institutions. Where once the CEO made maybe 7 or 8 times the salary of the average employee (and lived quite well) , it is now more like multiples of 50 or 100 times or more -- both because their salaries and paybacks have been jacked up beyond all possible sense of reason, while they either downgrade the wages of employees or ship their jobs overseas.

That would have been unthinkable until this great consolidation of wealth and power.

The US already has a party that condones and supports that -- the GOP. It should not have TWO parties that condone and support it, and the examples cited in the OP and here are evidence that they Democratic Establishment is just as bad. The diss=fference is that the Dems choose the liberal side of wedge issues as their selling point instead of the right-wing family values fundamentalism of the GOP. But with these members of the corporate elite and their lackeys steering the ship, they are endorsing the same principles of the GOP i terms of true distribution of wealth and power.

Say what you will about Sanders and those who support him, but IMO what is really at stake here is simply restoring a balanced system, even while accepting that no humans or social system are sprouting wings.

pretending that principles require trashing people through associations. Only SOME people, of course.

Applying that standard to their own darling, Bernie Sanders is dirtier than Mark Penn any day of the week. Penn's merely a pollster and PR man hired to represent people with bad-reputation problems. As a member of Congress Bernie was a PERPETRATOR and complicit by association with many highly questionable, dirty, and even evil deeds. For years he has routinely cooperated and made unsavory deals with unprincipled politicians, corporations, and other "special" interests. Like other politicians in fact.

That's what that record of voting with Democrats 98% of the time means. We were never always the good guys, and as you say even less so in the Reagan era that began in the 1980s and continues to today.

Notably, Bernie is exactly the kind of evil person who would sponsor and vote to poison the town of Sierra Blanca and area around it in Texas by shipping Vermont's nuclear waste there. Because he did just that. He and his constituents knew what it would do -- that's why the people of Vermont wanted it gone, poisoning someone else's children -- and Bernie wanted to be reelected.

I've got to go make dinner, so I'll keep this brief. Bernie voted against the Iraq War initially, but after that his record in that regard is just as dirty as the rest of the Democratic Party. WE are responsible for probably a half million deaths in Iraq and continuing; and Bernie is not only just as responsible as all the rest of US, but far more so because he was a direct perpetrator, supporting the second Iraq War many times in the Senate.

And examination of his years in Congress reveals complicity in a whole lot else Bernie and his supporter really don't want discussed.

All a way of saying that people who feel that this pollster/PR guy isn't decent enough for Hillary to associate with should absolutely appalled at the very notion of associating themselves with Bernie and HIS associates.

go make dinner, and I have to go and clear out the garage I keep ignoring.

Maybe he can fuck up yet another campaign for her.

Good. Let him fuck up another Clinton run.

But as an intelligent and aware person, you ought to at least want to know who is in charge and what they stand for and the web of connections.......If it's okay with you, fine. But don't dismiss it as tin hat.

"In 1999, when the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Serbia didn't get rid of Slobodan Milosovic, Washington changed its strategy. U.S. intelligence organized a $77 million effort to oust Milosovic through the ballot box. They sent in CIA front organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Instead of guns and bombs, these U.S. forces were armed with fax machines, computers, and perhaps most importantly, sophisticated surveys done by the Washington-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.(1) Their mission: to take down Milosovic by strengthening opposition groups."

In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work:

"Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive.&quot 4)

The U.S. is already firmly entrenched in Venezuela with "democracy promotion" organizations such as the NED, USAID, and yes, once again, Penn, Schoen & Berland. These actors have teamed up with major opposition groups to map out and execute their strategy. The objective will be to create a situation like in Ukraine in 2004: huge protests against the elections and against the government in order to cause chaos and instability. Basically, it comes in three parts."

Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales.&quot 10) With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience."

Not gonna have time today. Lots of info out there. Could be a whole post by itself if someone interested.

Penn's timing is like AMbev buying SABMiller....opportunity.

Consigliere fits appropriately.

I suspect the majority of funds raised went into acquiring SKDK.

He's been "removed from Microsoft" and Political Campaigns who know his dirty tricks are avoiding him.

But...I wouldn't "Count Out that long Clinton Affiliation" ...not to have him in the "Shadow" working for them.

We Shall See what more comes out about Penn...but his leaving Microsoft and his other involvements would seem to say he got some Money from Gates (Huge Contributor to "Clinton Foundation&quot when he left to go on and do a Big "Buy Out" of a PR Organization.

Of course the "FACTS" of this "Shadow Mark Penn Involvement" will be hidden for years if Hillary is elected.

At Least that seems to be the pattern with Both Parties and an ever more Compliant MSM as the Funds Dry Up for any "Progressive Left Media."

The fact DWS has employed him kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Sam

The crowd that is so concerned about racism now wasn't upset when Penn repeatedly brought up Obama's cocaine use.

The implication was that the black candidate was some kind of crackhead who couldn't be trusted. He could have just talked about drug use, but using "Cocaine" was a dog whistle on Penn and the Clinton campaign's part.