Thanks for the thread, cali.

Rahm Emmanuel is fucking Dick Cheney evil. Neither has gotten the grief they truly deserve. I am quite tired of people defending the indefensible

But there's another elephant in the room as well.

very poorly at their respective jobs.

Both should go.

Sooner rather than later works for me.

From our view, they are backstabbing, lying, anti-progressive shitheels.
From their view, they are doing the bidding of Wall Street and Big Corpa. In that respect, they are doing very, very well. Just look at all the new toys Rahm's police farce will buy from Big Corpa to allow slightly less than fatal interactions between his CPD and the masses.

are on which levers of power. That's his gift, if it can be considered a "gift."

As you indicate, it can be a curse as well, depending on point of view.

I'd love to see a refreshingly pro-people mayoral candidate win in Chicago. It's a brawling mess of a town politically, but I still hold hope.

Debbie makes my skin crawl. She's in the tank for the power-brokers and downright clique-ish about it. A fiercely mediocre Chair of our party. Good god let's get some new blood in there to mount a full-court press against the GOP, especially this cycle, when Trump and Cruz and all the other crazies are leading Puke primary polling.

"A fiercely mediocre Chair of our party" - The sort of passive-agressive crap that has given me fits throughout my life. Known for pretzel-logic decisions at critical moments to the detriment of the larger enterprise.

cultural backdrop against which her recent clueless and cruel remarks on cannabis are presented.

I love the language in your comment, Mopar151. Strictly top-drawer.

I can't believe the lengths people will go to in order to defend DWS.

Like comparing us to Nazis.

That was pretty bizarre. And trying to be reasonable gets you nowhere at all.

Because angry Dems wanting DWS ousted from her position due to gross incompetence and corruption is JUST like what happened in Nazi Germany.

I just saw that here yesterday and I wasn't aware of that. Pretty funny if it was. I bet he never knew he'd make that kind of impact.

but her stance on marijuana bothers me the most. I read (paraphrasing here) that she's against it because she has kids. I have kids too and I'd rather them smoke a joint/bowl/bong/blunt than get rip roaring drunk.

I also know people that could benefit from medical marijuana and keeping it from them or punishing them for using it is cruel in my opinion.

But I'm also for legalizing it so...

I think **any** Democrats with these positions are doing the party more harm than good.

I'll just leave it at that.

attempt to make marijuana legal - would just stop telling the truth about her. She is totally for sale.

He deserved most of what he got her, but then so does DWS.

He was up way too early in the morning shining Dick Cheney's shoes.

Of whomever pays him the most. A walking scumbag of the highest order.

Who are these idiots claiming sexism. I'd like to know. That is making women look bad by implying they can't judge someone on the issues. Calling someone a sexist when no facts to back up should be viewed as an insult and banned. Sorry but just because your a woman doesn't allow you to lie, corrupt or commit fraud. Debbie is a flat out liar and hypocrite and has no allegiance to OUR party. She supports her rich friends. She takes soooo much cash from the alcohol industry which demeans women and then claims harmless marijuana is a gateway drug while supporting private prisons. That's as slimey as it gets in my opinion.

. . . were called racists for opposing NSA domestic spying.

as far as I know Derpy Whatta Shmuck didn't try to bury a tape with evidence of a murder on it.

Myself and others have pointed out countless times why both of them are not good for our party.

Then you get the threads that go something like "Bernie only cares about wealth inequality."

Hmm...smells like bullshit.

Gender only goes so far.

Neither one supports democracy, as we know it.

but totally dysfunctional.

Obviously, I'm misogynistically misogynizing with misogyny-laden misogyny, by pointing that out.

And neither one because of their genitalia.

DWS was placed as leader of the DNC by those already in power to keep them in power, period. Its not what she says but what she has done. I don't even know what she sounds like but I have been watching what this shill has done in last few years and her performance is not about being a poor DNC leader, just poor for the middle class. She is doing her job great if we are in the top 1%.

I described her voice. It wasn't mean. It wasn't nasty, it wasn't derogatory. I don't see a problem with that.

Reading the reply titles, I thought you were trying to be snarky. Sorry!

Thanks for your understanding.

appointed. It's the DEMOCRATIC Party.

GYROCOPTER PILOT DOUG HUGHES CHALLENGES DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ FOR OFFICE http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/gyrocopter-pilot-doug-hughes-challenges-debbie-wasserman-schultz-for-office-7497974

The end for South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz could come this August, in a Democratic congressional primary, at the hands of a 62-year-old mail carrier who once landed a tiny helicopter on the U.S. Capitol building’s lawn.

The mail carrier, 62-year-old Douglas Hughes, who lives just outside Tampa, announced at the end of 2015 that he’s running to beat Wasserman Schultz. He already has the support of one of the nation’s most prominent academics, Harvard professor and former presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig.

“You know, with everything I’ve read that he’s sent me, everything I’ve seen him write, he’s convinced me,” Lessig told New Times, with the added caveat that the pair has never met in person. The only problem, of course, is that Hughes might end up in prison before the election.

Hughes, a thin, wiry man with a gray goatee, crash-landed into the American political scene on the wings of a one-man gyrocopter, which is little more than a folding chair with blades whirring at the top, like something Da Vinci would fly. In 2013, Hughes, who has no experience in politics, was trying to brainstorm ways in which he could get the entire country to pay attention to the corruptive power of money in politics. Hughes realized that a massive stunt could, in theory, get the entire world talking about money in politics, if only for a few hours. “We thought, how can we deliver the message in a way that’s dramatic?” he asked. “Once I saw a picture of a gyrocopter online, I thought, ‘This is great, but who are we going to get to fly it?’”

He then realized he couldn’t possibly ask someone else to get arrested on his behalf and sank around $25,000 into buying the chopper himself. He spent two years — and more cash — learning to fly it. “I absolutely raided my retirement money from the Post Office,” he says, adding that he sold an old WASR-10 rifle to raise money for the trip. So last April, he loaded the gyrocopter onto a car, drove up from Florida to Virginia, took to the skies, and landed directly outside the Capitol, letter in hand. Upon landing, the Secret Service immediately apprehended him. He is now fighting to avoid a potential ten-month stint in jail.

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“Was it worth it?” he asked. “Heck yes. Do I need to be mentioned in the history books? No.”

Lessig, who was unaware Hughes was planning on making his flight, later raised $10,000 on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe to help pay for Hughes’ legal defense.

On December 23, Hughes asked permission from the court to travel to South Florida, so he could, without warning, start a surprise run for Congress here. He says he intended to make a more formal announcement, but as people saw his candidacy in filings, word got out before he was ready. “I regret very much that this whole thing has come out the way it has,” he says.

He plans to run in District 23, a seat occupied by embattled Democratic National Committee Chair Wasserman Schultz. The decision to run in South Florida, rather than near his home in Ruskin, Florida (running in a district other than the one in which a candidate resides is legal at the federal level), appears to have little to do with the concerns of South Floridians and everything to do with the fact that Wasserman Schultz may be the most hated Democrat in Congress today.

“I have been watching, as many people have, the way the Democratic National Committee favors Clinton over anybody else,” he says, referencing the comparatively small number of presidential debates Wasserman Schultz has scheduled during this election season. Critics contend that Wasserman Schultz is a close political ally of Clinton’s and is working behind the scenes to undermine challenger Bernie Sanders by keeping him away from television. At the beginning of December, after the committee suspended the Sanders’ campaign’s access to vital voter data, critics began calling for Wasserman Schultz’s head. “I agree with the phrase, ‘They don’t want a convention; they want a coronation,’” Hughes says. “This isn’t supposed to be the role of the Democratic Party. The role of the party is supposed to be neutral.”

Hughes says he can ride the same sort of anti-establishment sentiment currently propelling Sanders toward the White House. “There’s a rebellion going on on both sides,” he says. “I don’t agree with the Tea Party on issues at all, but if you listen to those people, you hear them using a lot of the same rhetoric as progressives.” He uses former House Minority Leader Eric Cantor’s ouster as an example — after Tea Party voters became dissatisfied with Cantor’s ties to big-money politics, primary voters replaced him with a complete unknown, David Brat.

If this sounds like lunacy, it might not be — Lessig actually agrees with Hughes here. “There’s definitely a contingent of Democrats who are deeply frustrated with, particularly, how the presidential primary season has gone,” Lessig says. “I think Clinton is likely to be the nominee — if so, Debbie Wasserman Schultz becomes a very powerful person. There is a frustration among Bernie Sanders supporters, and that could easily manifest itself in a targeted response.” Once in office, Hughes plans to recruit "100 to 200" members of the House to fight to overturn Citizens United, but he does not seem to have a clear plan as to how.

For now, Hughes, who grew up in Santa Cruz, California, and moved to Florida after his first marriage collapsed around 1990, is still trying to get his head around South Florida politics. This is tough, considering he needs to clear any travel plans with the court. When stuck awaiting trial, he says he scrolls through New Times and the Sun Sentinel (which he repeatedly called “the Sun”). His next act of civil disobedience — a 400-person march from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. — appears to have virtually no ties to anything Floridian.

Plus, things may become completely impossible if he is sentenced to jail time in April. (He can still legally run for federal office as a convicted criminal.)

Somehow, he isn't worried. “If I am sent to jail in April and the max sentence is ten months, I can be out in time to be sworn in.”

For more on Hughes, see doughughes2016.com/

It's a rule on DU to avoid copyright infringement. Thanks.

Nothing else matters to those who make the decisions. Her puppeteers are very pleased with her.

People are people and will be judged as such.

remark

between the general discontent with the DNC and her perceived thumb on the scale for Clinton (the perception is likely at least partially true of course).

Rahm, of course, wasn't DNC chair but your point is well taken nonetheless. Except Rahm's problem is ethical whereas DWS is just inept, imo.

I don't think they would keep her in charge if she wasn't meeting their expectations. I my view, the system is rotten to the core. The DNC is controlled by big money and is not responsive to the Democratic grassroots.

Human sewage.

us by the big banks and Wall Street.

I wonder who pays her more. HRH or the Republicans. It all comes out of the same Goldman trough.

Or Al Gore, maybe?

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34327-populism-as-an-electoral-strategy-from-howard-dean-to-hillary-clinton

Interesting.

Thank you for this OP.

Both are corporatist pseudodems killing the party from within. Having people like this in prominent positions is one of the reasons we never convincingly win over those suffering economic and civil rights deprivation. Kind of hard to motivate people to join your party and vote by covering up wanton police criminality and championing unilateral economic disarmament via the TPP. Both must go.

Call the DNC and call for her ouster:

202 863 8000

I mean, come on! Explain why granny needs to be put in supermax.