An image guaranteed to make Bernie Bro heads explode.

 

The guy that the Sanders' campaign wants kicked off of the DNC convention rules committee endorsing the woman that they simply want to fall off the edge of the earth. 

Oh yeah, this is going to leave a mark.

DNC rejects Bernie Sanders' attempt to remove Barney Frank and Gov. Dannel Malloy from convention rules panel.

Courtesy of MSNBC:

This weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders called for the DNC to remove to prominent Clinton supporters – Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank – from panels that help determine policy positions and procedures for the Democrats because both men have allegedly displayed “political and personal hostility” toward the Vermont lawmaker. 

Malloy, whose state was rocked by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, has taken Sanders to task for not being a stronger advocate for gun control. Frank has been even more frank, accusing the senator’s campaign of “McCarthyite” tactics and arguing that “Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it.” 

The DNC has rejected Sanders’ request – which may wind up prolonging an already ugly rift between Sanders and Clinton forces, which appear to be clashing more over process at this point rather than the ultimate primary result. Sanders has long been an outspoken critic of controversial DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and has endorsed her primary opponent Tim Canova.

Gee imagine that after claiming the DNC is in the tank for your opponent, and bitching to everybody who will listen that the system is rigged against you, that they are not willing to bend over backwards to accommodate your every whim.

I wonder if after Sanders burns a bridge he then bitches and moans that he cannot go back across without getting wet?

When Sanders returns to the Senate after doing everything he can to undermine this process I imagine he will receive a chilly reception from the Democrats.

It will be reminiscent of the reception that Ted Cruz received when HE returned with his tail between his legs.

Bernie Sanders just continues to make friends. Update!

Millions of gay men alive & able to vote today thanks to @peterstaley. Attack on Peter from Sanders camp appalling. pic.twitter.com/LjUyi7x2vQ

— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) May 28, 2016

Perhaps his aides neglected to tell Bernie that the Democrats are typically pro-LGBT.

In other news it appears that Sanders is still trying to stack the deck in his favor at the convention.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Sanders’ campaign requested that Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy and former Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) be removed from their respective positions on the Platform Committee and the Rules Committee. Both have endorsed Clinton. 

“Both Governor Malloy and Mr. Frank (the “Chairs”) have been harsh, vocal critics of Senator Sanders, and equally active supporters of his challenger, Hillary Clinton,” Brad Deutsch, a Sanders campaign lawyer, wrote to the DNC’s rules and bylaws committee in a letter obtained by Politico. “Governor Malloy and Mr. Frank have both been aggressive attack surrogates for the Clinton campaign. Their criticisms of Senator Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the Senator and his Campaign.” 

“The Chairs therefore cannot be relied upon to perform their Convention duties fairly and capably while laboring under such deeply held bias,” the letter says.

Yes let's remove any Democrat who might support the Democratic candidate with the most votes going into the convention, because that might be unfair to the guy losing the nomination.

Of course the point of this is to preemptively cast doubt in the minds of Bernie Bros that the system is rigged so that when Sanders fails to win the nomination they can cry foul and then stream into the streets of Philadelphia angry and pissed off at the "establishment."

What a great idea THAT is.

You know when I first heard Sanders talking about a revolution I simply thought he wanted to alter the political landscape a little, but now it appears that he means a full on, turning over cop cars in the street, storm the Bastille, off with their heads, revolution.

And that is just fucked up.

Update: So now Bernie Sanders is warning Hillary who she can and can't name as her running mate.

.@BernieSanders tells @ChuckTodd that @HillaryClinton shouldn't look to Wall Street for her VP pick #MTPhttps://t.co/8KyDrhqroM

— Meet the Press (@meetthepress) May 28, 2016

Purity tests for Democrats, so now the Sanders' movement evolving into the liberal tea party movement is finally complete.

I guess Sanders did not pay attention to what the Teabaggers did to the Republican party.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders finally agree on date for New York debate. Sanders camp still not happy. Update!

Courtesy of NBC News:

Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have finally come to terms on where and when they will have one more debate before New York's Democratic primary. 

It's going down in Brooklyn. 

The DNC-sanctioned debate will be aired on CNN and NY1, a regional cable news outlet, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET on April 14 — five days before the New York primary.

There we go. After several weeks of grousing by the Sanders camp we finally have a date, so everybody should be happy.

Right?

Wrong.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

Afterward, Sanders' campaign spokesman, Michael Briggs, released an aggressively worded statement criticizing Clinton for making the Sanders campaign change a date for a rally that it was planning to hold on the same day. 

Briggs wrote: 

"Fortunately, we were able to move a major New York City rally scheduled for April 14 to the night before. We hope the debate will be worth the inconvenience for thousands of New Yorkers who were planning to attend our rally on Thursday but will have to change their schedules to accommodate Secretary Clinton's jam-packed, high-dollar, coast-to-coast schedule of fundraisers all over the country."

I'm sorry but since the large majority of Sanders supporters are young people still in college, exactly what plans do they have to change?

Speaking of Sanders' supporters get a load of what Barney Frank had to say about them recently: 

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders are unrealistic about what the independent Vermont senator can achieve if elected president, former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) argued Monday. 

“I think it is a lack of information, to be honest,” he said on “MSNBC Live with Jose Diaz-Balart” when asked why Sanders is resonating with voters. 

“You have people, I believe, who do not understand how hard it is to make change. [It is] the importance of not just being idealistic, but being sensibly pragmatic and keeping their ideals. Sanders is getting their support.” 

Frank said some of the voters who are frustrated with the Democratic establishment have unrealistic expectations about what a president can deliver. 

“You have people who don’t understand, frankly, the nature of the American political system,” he said. "It’s the separation of powers.

This is the exact same argument I have with my daughter, who seems to think that Bernie Sanders is a Jewish version of Gandalf the Gray, with the power to wave his staff and simply change everything that he wants to change with some unspecified kind of magic.  (My daughter hates when I make this comparison by the way.)

She talks about free college, reforming Wall Street, and universal health care as policies that Bernie can put into place through sheer force of will, and with the support of everyday people with no ability to influence votes in the House or the Senate.

The reality is that winning this next election might be possible for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but Hillary wants to continue pushing forward policies put into place by President Obama, which is possible and perfectly reasonable, while Sanders wants to upend the table and start from scratch, and that is simply a non-starter.

Not only will Sanders face unrelenting opposition from the Right, but even Democrats in Congress will be wary of associating with him for fear of making themselves vulnerable in their bids for reelection.

Let's face it a Democrat in a purple state cannot afford to have a challenger with the ability to create ads showing them "palling around with a Socialist."

That label might not bother young folks today, and that is great news for our future, but it is the kiss of death in most Southern states and rural communities in this country.

Update: Okay I finally got around to reading this New York Daily News interview with Bernie Sanders.  I would suggest that any Sanders supporters do the same.

Pay close attention to his responses concerning Wall Street and "too big to fail" banks.

He literally has no idea what he is talking about.

Barney Frank and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe are teaming up in campaign to help end discrimination against the non-religious. Hey, that's me!

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe have signed on to a new campaign to end discrimination against atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious. 

Openly Secular, a coalition of more than two dozen secular organizations, seeks to debunk misconceptions about secular people by encouraging nontheists to come forward and raise awareness for the 29 percent of Americans who identify as nonreligious. 

In an Openly Secular campaign video posted Friday, Kluwe, who described himself as "cheerfully agnostic and openly secular," urged nonbelievers to advocate for their rights. 

"It's important for secularists to be vocal about who they are ... in a truly functional society, in a stable society, everyone is afforded the same freedom to be who they are no matter what that is as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of other people to be who they are," Kluwe said. "If you want to enjoy your own beliefs, then you have to fight for everyone else's beliefs just as hard, because if you don't, someday you might be on the other side of that line and you're not going to be very happy when that day comes."

Is it weird that I want to say amen to that?

Personally I am in favor of anything that will de-stigmatize Atheists and allow people to understand that we are not attacking their religious beliefs. We simply do not want them shoved down our throats.

Barney Frank legally marries his long time boyfriend, because now he CAN.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

It was perhaps fitting that Representative Barney Frank met his future husband, Jim Ready, at a political fund-raiser in 2005. 

“I told him I had a crush on him for 20 years,” said Mr. Ready, recalling that as a teenager he was inspired by Mr. Frank’s public declaration that he was gay. 

And what did Mr. Frank make of that? “That I’m being rewarded for coming to this fund-raiser,” he said with a laugh. 

Mr. Frank, 72, and Mr. Ready, 42, were married in Newton, Mass., part of Mr. Frank’s district, on Saturday in a low-key ceremony on the banks of the Charles River. Gov. Deval L. Patrick of Massachusetts officiated. The guests included Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, as well as Senator John Kerry and Representatives Dennis J. Kucinich and Steny H. Hoyer. 

Mr. Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, became, in 1987, the first sitting member of Congress to volunteer that he was gay. He is now the first to be married to a partner of the same sex. Both bridegrooms said they recognized the historical significance of the ceremony, which lasted less than five minutes. Gov. Patrick told the guests that Mr. Frank had requested that the service “be short and to the point.”

I don't know about the rest of you but this put a huge smile on my face.

Barney Frank has been one of the most courageous Congressmen that I have ever known, never afraid to take on the Right Wingers and call them out on their bullshit, so for him to finally have this special moment is just awesome in my opinion.

You know my favorite thing about this marriage equality thing, you know besides the whole equality part, is that watching these people demonstrate such joy at the idea of FINALLY being able to commit to their partners through the act of  marriage, does this twice divorced 52 year old heart good.

I guess it is never too late to be reminded of the beauty of love.

Barney Frank will not seek reelection!

Courtesy of CNN: Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, a prominent 16-term liberal Democrat and arch-enemy of political conservatives nationwide, will announce Monday he does not intend to seek re-election in 2012, according to a statement from Frank's office. 

Frank, 71, will hold a news conference in his district to discuss the decision at 1 p.m.

Frank was a favorite of progressives in this country as he always told it like it was, and was impossible for conservatives to intimidate.

He has been a great asset to the Congress, and to liberal causes, and he will absolutely be missed.

I have also read that due to redistricting Frank's district has become somewhat more conservative as of late, which seems to have contributed to his decision, so I have to imagine that the Republicans are licking their chops in anticipation of picking up this seat.

A close adviser told the Globe today that the new district in which Frank would have had to run next year was a major factor in his decision. While it retained his Newton stronghold, it was revised to encompass more conservative towns while losing New Bedford, a blue-collar city where the Democrat had invested a lot of time and become a leading figure in the region’s fisheries debate.

I certainy hope the Dems have somebody solid to put up for this seat in 2012. I would hate to see another Scott Brown worm his way into yet another important political position in Massachusetts.

Some prominent Right Wingers to skip this years Conservative Political Action Conference because it is just too "gay."

From the LA Times:

Some prominent right-wing groups say they will not attend a major Republican gathering in Washington next month, objecting to the presence of gay groups and other organizations whose aims they say are incompatible with conservatism.

An estimated 10,000 people are expected to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to hear aspiring presidential candidates and vote in one of the first straw polls of the 2012 cycle.

Among the missing will be the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group and once a sponsor of CPAC; the Heritage Foundation; and the American Family Assn., which opposes same-sex marriage.

The Family Research Council has been disenchanted for several years with CPAC, said Tom McClusky, senior vice president of the group's legislative arm. Among its complaints: A new gay conservative group has been invited for the second year in a row, and CPAC has refused to schedule a panel about traditional marriage.

"Conservatives and homosexuals cannot coexist in a movement predicated on social values," wrote the group's president, Tony Perkins, in an e-mail to supporters. "Organizations whose whole reason for existence is to promote the forced public affirmation of homosexual conduct should not be welcomed at CPAC."

Is it wrong that I am loving this so much?

Here is the country's chance to see exactly how much hate there is within the Republican party for the homosexual community, just in case there was any doubt before.

However if the GOP has any hope of surviving intact they are going to HAVE to start reaching out to the gay community, as well as to other groups they usually ignore like Hispanics, blacks, and women, much more effectively.  Which of course means that either the fundamentalists bite the bullet (Or some other phallic symbol of their choosing) and get with the program or they splinter off into their very own Jesus loving/faggot hating political group, and try to siphon off support from the newly outed Republican party.

Personally I vote for option two. 

I just don't think that most conservatives are going to be able to deal with the idea of rubbing....let's say shoulders, with the gay community without fear of getting "teh gay" on them.

Just check out how freaked out this CNS reporter is by the very idea of sharing a shower with homosexuals in the military.