61st Filmfare Awards 2016

Bad News For Hillary In The South

English: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg with Spider-Man at Midtown Comics Downtown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Iowa was pretty much a draw. This huge gulf that Bernie has drawn in New Hampshire is bad news for Hillary in the South. Times have changed. Bernie already pulled a giant sum of money in January. This month he might double that haul. That makes a huge difference.

Used to be, you waited to get to the South, and the South was that one place where you could go hugely negative on your opponent, and it would work. That is no longer true. The South itself has changed much. And it stays a national campaign.

Suddenly the Republican race feels much more competitive than the Democratic race.

And the winner is? Mike Bloomberg. The way the two races are shaping is making a lot of room for someone like the Mayor.

Idealism is back. Bernie is sweeping the young vote like Obama swept the black vote. After JFK-RFK-MLK, there were decades of cynicism. Looks like Barack Obama has managed to put idealism back into American politics. That is such a good thing. That is a reward in its own right. These are not young fools. These are smart, young people who do understand the political process. Precisely because they understand how things work, they are willing to take idealism up one notch. Because they feel that is how they can beat the system.

This race is shaping up to be pretty interesting.

US News (7)

Bloomberg: I'm considering 2016 bid

"I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters," Bloomberg told the Financial Times, adding that the public deserved "a lot better." ..... he was troubled by Donald Trump's success on the Republican side, and Hillary Clinton's inability to stanch Bernie Sanders' growth on the Democratic side. ..... Bloomberg would run as a moderate promising to bring compromise and business savvy to an election characterized by highly charged disputes and political partisanship....... Bloomberg is seen as a pragmatist and fiscal conservative who has taken liberal positions on issues like gun control and the environment...... With a $39 billion fortune, Bloomberg is expected to self-fund his campaign and would likely spend north of $1 billion to do it.

Donald Trump: 'I'd beat Bloomberg'

Donald Trump says he's unfazed by the prospect of running against Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is considering a possible third party bid in 2016....... "I'd beat him," the Republican presidential frontrunner told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on Monday....... The braggadocious real estate magnate also appeared to goad Bloomberg. At one point, Trump cast doubt on Bloomberg's business success, suggesting that the head of the Bloomberg media empire wasn't actually worth the $36.5 billion estimated by Forbes. ...... "I don't believe it, I don't believe it," Trump said....... Trump said that the success of Bloomberg's company could easily be undermined if someone came up with a better machine than the Bloomberg Terminal, the costly financial data hardware that accounts for the bulk of Bloomberg's revenues. ...... Bloomberg, who has long been said to harbor presidential ambitions, has taken a more serious look at the 2016 race after concluding that

Trump's victory on the right and a Bernie Sanders victory on the left could leave moderate voters without an alternative.

Michael Bloomberg has no patience for your argument that he can’t win the presidency

It is funny to think of a presidential race featuring a guy from Manhattan, a guy from Queens and a guy from Brooklyn. Granted the Manhattan guy is Bloomberg who is actually from Boston, and granted the guy from Brooklyn lives in Vermont, and granted the guy from Queens now also lives in Manhattan -- but there's something perfect about the idea. Bernie Sanders's gruff Brooklyn socialism battles Donald Trump's appropriated Queens blue-collar roughness, facing off against the polished persona of Michael Bloomberg, the guy who wouldn't move into the New York City mayor's mansion -- a freestanding house in the middle of a beautiful park -- because he would rather stay in his expansive Upper East Side townhouse. ........... More than half of the people surveyed told Quinnipiac that they hadn't heard enough about Bloomberg to have an opinion of him, a pretty staggering number for a guy who 1) owns a magazine and 2) was mayor of the largest city in the country for 12 years. But still: People don't know him. So asking how this unknown person would fare against Bernie Sanders (who is still unknown to a fifth of Americans) and Donald Trump is a bit iffy. ....... Bloomberg's motivating principle is that he knows better than you. He knew better than the people he asked to watch over the Bloomberg media empire while he was mayor, cleaning house and upending the organization's newly created politics site. He knew better than the people who opposed his various efforts to fight obesity in New York City, including the infamous ban on large sodas (which is not in effect, FYI). He knew better than the term limits placed on mayors in the city of New York, convincing the city council to allow him to run for a third term despite those limits, a third term that he won by a surprisingly narrow margin. (Why'd the city council go for it? They got another term, too.) And Michael Bloomberg knows better than to think has no shot at winning the White House.

Mike Bloomberg: American public deserves "a lot better" in 2016 race
Donald Trump rolls out the expletives at Portsmouth rally

Another less literal screw-you of sorts: Trump took the stage to strains of Adele's," Rolling in the Deep." Earlier this week, the award-winning British pop star banned Trump from playing her music at his campaign events.

Star Screen Awards 2016

Six Fall Guys

1. A black guy.
2. A Hispanic.
3. An Indian. Two Indians, one a diplomat. 
4. A Chinese. 
5. A Sri Lankan. 
6. A Jewish guy. 

In the aftermath of the Great Recession I noticed there were six most visible fall guys. When democracy and the market are at their best, I believe that does not leave room for racism. Europeans have numerous schisms. But when those same Europeans gather in America, a white identity gets formed. Perhaps the Chinese identity is a similar melting pot identity formed over a few thousand years. It has always amazed me how a billion people can be a single ethnicity. 

When Wall Street wiped out 13 trillion in wealth, there were six fall guys, the most visible ones. 

Corruption in a city like New York where there is so much power and money concentrated in one small place is like speeding on the interstate highway. You can police it, you can get people to pay fines, but you can't perhaps eliminate it. You are essentially dealing with human nature. Greed has a tendency to creep in. 

One way to look at it is, after about 70 years banks accumulate so much in bad loans, those bad loans need to be wiped out, the slate needs to get clean. So it was not bad behavior. It was just the slate getting cleaned for a fresh start. 

But then there are other complaints. America built infrastructure in Europe, and then it stopped. Why stop? Why not go on to build infrastructure in Africa? Asia? Latin America? That was racism. A country choosing to destroy or park trillions while there is such unmet need in terms of infrastructure, credit, and clean energy is racism. 

The six fall guys point at that racism that impact billions of people. 

Also, there needs to be a less painful way to wipe out bad loans. An economy should be able to wipe out bad loans without bringing itself to the knees. Maybe this should be the last Great Recession. 

US News (6)

Why Have New Hampshire Democrats Gone Gaga for Bernie Sanders?

The latest polls in New Hampshire place Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton by as much as 31 percent. .... why is Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from neighboring Vermont,

who only months ago joined the Democratic Party after decades as an independent

, clobbering the front-runner? ...... As for being a local brand name, well, Hillary Clinton is as known as any politician. The odds may be zero or below that any New Hampshire Democratic voter possesses less information about her than Sanders. And consider this: Last spring, in a series of polls in New Hampshire, Clinton trounced Sanders by between 10 and 44 points. If Sanders' next-door-enhanced name recognition did not help him at that point, there's no cause to think it's doing so now. ...... New Hampshire voters, on the Democratic side, have often bear-hugged the more establishment candidate. ..... There's a distinct pattern: New Hampshire is not friendly territory for progressive outsiders. ......

In recent decades, the only time that New Hampshire Ds fully embraced an outsider was in 1984, when Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado mounted a stunning defeat of former Vice President Walter Mondale. This result turned the race upside down.

...... twice New Hampshire has rescued a Clinton who was close to extinction. ..... New Hampshire Democrats going gaga for Sanders is out of sync with this past. ..... "He's a progressive insurgent," Scala says, "but he's doing very well among moderate Democrats." ..... in the wake of the Bush-Cheney recession, "this class of voters feels left behind"—and Sanders is addressing their worries and desires more so than Clinton. ..... Sanders has delivered a message that connected more solidly with New Hampshire Democrats of varying ideological strips than what Clinton presented.

Stay sunny, or get mean? Candidates choose their New Hampshire strategy.

Angriest of all on Thursday was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He has plunged into single digits in a state he must finish near the top. He is seeing his presidential chances disappear so it was not unexpected to see him spend the day lashing out in interviews and forums at Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). ...... Over the course of a race, there are times when the stress shows on candidates and their teams, when the prospect of losing clouds the candidates’ vision. The test, however, is to keep one’s composure, rise above the attack ads and convince voters that you have a presidential temperament. For some in the field, that appears to be asking too much.

I'm not sure why people get so horribly angry at Hillary supporters. Let's calm it down. We just like that she's qualified. Its okay.

Posted by Negin Farsad on Thursday, February 4, 2016

Tough on crime laws

Compare Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Difference on tough on crime laws.

Posted by The People For Bernie Sanders 2016 on Thursday, January 7, 2016

Wow! Bernie blasts!! Does Hilary R. Clinton has an answer? I am feeling BERN let us feel the BERN !!!

Posted by Shailesh Shrestha on Friday, February 5, 2016

Syria: Assad Is The Culprit, Putin The Enabler

Extremely tragic: Syria is a live example of how the internal differences, inept leadership and external invasions can destroy a country in no time.

Posted by Jay Nishaant on Thursday, February 4, 2016

These images are heart breaking. Assad is the culprit. Putin has been the enabler. And now looks like Putin might fall before Assad does. Not pulling a Libya in Syria might have been Obama's gift to the people of Russia. As in, you can't fight Putin inside Russia. But you can fight him in Syria. A democratically elected leader would never have bombed his own people like this. This is insane. This is criminal.