elections

That’s what the first night of the republican convention was: grotesque. It was grotesque, even by republican standards and I only made it half way through.

I’m still shell shocked by what I saw, and I’m deeply saddened that Melania Trump is all anyone is going to talk about. She’s a stupid twit. She’s a Slovenian Sarah Palin, but I already knew that. I don’t give two shits about her or her plagiarism. There are more disturbing atrocities to discuss about the republican convention. STOP talking about Melania! It’s a distraction.

Let me start with the tweeked out of his mind guy on crystal meth, adderall or some other upper he was clearly self medicating with. He was a former Navy Seal who was up there to advocate for having the strongest military with the greatest equipment the world has ever seen. At the republican convention. He was at the republican convention to talk about the best equipped military in the world.

“You go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

-Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Of Defense for President George W Bush

And everyone is cheering him on instead of getting him the help he obviously needs. The man is in eighteen different kinds of pain, and at least eighteen different kinds of drugs to help with that pain, and he’s being treated like an oracle instead of someone who desperately needs help. My heard bleeds for that guy.

Then there was the tragedy porn portion of the republican convention competition. They found about a half a dozen family members of people who died tragically to stand on that stage and exploit their loved ones deaths in the most disgusting way possible.

There was the BEEEENNNNNGGGHHAAAZZZIII mom whose desire to know why her son died didn’t include reading the nine congressional reports on the events of that night. She trotted out every right wing lie that precisely none of those reports found to be true. She really put on a vomit inducing display of ignorance and exploitation.

Then there were the family members of people who were killed by someone who was undocumented. They were there to stand on their family members’ corpses to tell their anecdotal stories so that people wouldn’t notice that what they were saying is completely contradicted by the facts. The fact of the matter is that violent crime among the undocumented community is exponentially lower than violent crime among the citizenry of this country. The fact is that this president has deported more Mexicans than any other president in US history. The fact is that net immigration has been in the negative numbers for the majority of President Obama’s term.

I revile every single one of those craven people who made me sit through their ignorant tragedy porn. Someone made a comment on my Facebook page last night, suggesting that I should respect their pain. No I shouldn’t. When a family member is diagnosed with a fatal or serious disease, you become an expert on that disease. We educate ourselves to the point of having earned half of a medical degree. I had a dear friend who was diagnosed with a glioblastoma many years ago. There is literally nothing I don’t know about glioblastomas, including the fact that she was going to die within three years of the diagnosis. This was a few years after she made me an expert on the endometriosis she had that required she get a full hysterectomy at the age of thirty-six. There are hundreds of millions of people who are experts on breast cancer, Parkinson’s, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis, and a slew of other medical conditions because someone they love has been diagnosed with one of those diseases. Some of those people make curing those diseases their life’s work. You become an expert on things that are going to, or have killed someone you love.

These fucking people didn’t bother to educate themselves at all. They just seized on the opportunity to stand on their loved ones corpses to make a political point that was the opposite of the truth. I don’t need to respect anyone who doesn’t respect their loved one enough to educate themselves so that they can work to come up with fact-based solutions to the problems that killed someone they claim to love. They were all full of shit, and I’m repulsed by them. Sorry, there will be no respect coming from me

And then there was “blue lives matter”. They apparently matter to the exclusion of all other lives in America. There was cheering for the fact that another cop involved in the Freddie Gray incident was acquitted. Because obviously Freddie Gray nearly decapitated himself, and no cop who was involved did anything wrong. They stopped short of promising that all cops under a Trump presidency will be armed with machine guns and shoulder fired missile launchers, but that was implied.

It was grotesque. It was soul crushingly grotesque. This republican convention was grotesque on a much bigger scale than any before it.

They put the worst of humanity on that stage last night and claimed that was America. No it’s fucking not, and I’m not going to let anyone believe it is for a second.

Anyone who is thinking of getting cute with their vote by Bernie or busting, or Jill-not-Hilling needs to have their heads examined. I’m serious. If you’re thinking about doing either of these things and you haven’t bothered to watch what happened last night, you need to watch it immediately (it’s on CSPAN’s website). I mean it. Watch it now because more information is better than less information. Voting is about making informed decisions. Inform yourselves and then see if you still feel the same way.

Here’s the latest pile of irrational poop that Hillary supporters are putting out there. I saw some variation of this three times yesterday. Twice, my totally respectful comments were deleted (that’s pretty telling). I guess they were too threatened to allow the absurdity of this meme to be pointed out (and yet the meme stayed up in both instances, sans my comment).

I’ll get to the misogyny later, but let me first address the complete and utter ignorance displayed here. When someone takes forty-six percent of the vote in a primary, they make demands. This has been true since the beginning of time. This is how George HW Bush became Reagan’s veep even though by all accounts, the Reagans and the Bushes couldn’t ever stand each other.

On September 11, 2008, Obama came to Bill Clinton’s office (one block from my house) for what was supposed to be an hour long meeting. The Clintons hadn’t yet started campaigning for Obama. Yes Hillary endorsed him a couple of months earlier, but it was clear that the Clintons weren’t really throwing much support behind him. That meeting lasted for over two and a half hours. I know this, because a friend of mine and I were waiting out front to get a glimpse of Obama. When Bill and Barack finally came out, I looked at my friend and said, “Bill got something big out of this”. That was very likely the day that Hillary became Secretary Of State. Less than ten weeks later, Obama announced that she would be his Secretary Of State.

Here’s a picture I took that day:

Either the women posting this meme have no earthly idea how politics works, or they’re trivializing real misogyny because they have long term thinking deficiency, and believe that this kind of bullshit is going to help their cause right now. But it’s not helping you right now, because lots of people know how unelected officials get their posts. If you don’t know how literally every cabinet level nominee and veep have been chosen since the very first presidential election, it’s best you not post about politics. This is clearly not your thing, and you should stick to what you know. If you’re intentionally shitting on every woman in the world who has been a victim of real misogyny because you think this serves you well right now, it’s best you stop commenting on misogyny because you’re actually hurting women.

You are hurting the victims of GamerGate. You are hurting me, who gets private (I’ve taken to making them public and getting a little public shaming out of the deal) messages calling me a cunt, or telling me to “eat a bullet” (that was from a couple of days ago) simply for voicing my opinions on the internet. You are hurting all of us by trivializing misogyny. And you’re doing it by sounding like a bubble headed ditz who knows nothing about politics. Can you tell that I’m offended to my bitchy core by these idiotic people?

What’s worse than that, you’re advocating for misogyny. The very definition of misogyny, is treating women differently simple because they’re women. You want the guy who got forty-six percent of the democratic primary vote to be the only primary candidate in history to do that well and walk away with nothing? Why? Because Hillary is a woman. That’s what you’re saying. Treat Hillary differently because she’s a woman.

Think. Think before you post. What you’re doing here is eighteen different kinds of inane. And by the way, this looks to me like it has David Brock’s fingerprints all over it. You know David Brock; he’s the guy running Hillary’s social media. You know, he’s the guy who once very effectively labeled Anita Hill “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty”. Yeah, that’s the guy Hillary is working with now( cause she’s an awesome feminist, and you’re helping him by peddling his bullshit.

Perhaps the people posting this meme are just dazed and confused by the fact that Bernie isn’t asking for something that will further his own career. He’s not demanding to be veep, and he’s not demanding the position of Secretary Of State. He’s asking for the democratic party to adopt a more liberal platform. Quell horreur! I would very much like to ask the intellectual powerhouses who have been posting this drivel to explain something to me: which part of Bernie’s ask are you opposed to? Have you even thought about it?

Have you thought about any aspect of this kind of propaganda? Because from where I sit, there’s nothing intellectually sound or honest here. As a woman with a presence on the internet, I beg you to stop it. You’re not helping me, and you’re not helping your daughters. You’re certainly making zero difference to Hillary and her current situation as the presumptive nominee of the democratic party.

Stop. Just fucking stop.

I have a proposition to make to all of the Hillary supporters who follow this blog. To demonstrate that I’m earnest in making this proposal, I’m going to start with a proffer in the form of a decisive statement and then a confession.

First, a decisive statement: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the democratic nominee. It’s just not going to happen, but not for the reasons you think. I know you’ve all been proclaiming he’s done, even as you’ve been watching him win primary after primary over the past month. Your commitment to denying what’s happening before your very eyes is adorable. Bernie isn’t going to be the nominee because neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to get enough pledged delegates to cross the finish line. They’re both going to the convention, and they both have a strong case to make for taking it to the convention.

It is mathematically impossible for Bernie to make up the 244 delegate deficit he has against Hillary at this very moment. He can’t do it. That’s a fact. He would have to win all of the remaining states by a 20 point margin to close that gap. It’s not going to happen. The pledged delegate gap at the end of all of this is going to be between 5% – 7% of the total delegate count, so it’s not going to be a decisive enough win for Hillary to reasonably claim that Bernie shouldn’t go to the convention to fight for the seventeen percent (of the total delegate count) of unpledged (or super) delegates.

Bernie will justifiably go to the convention, and nobody who isn’t completely bias can reasonably claim that he has no right to do so.

Now for my confession: At no point in this election, did I believe that Bernie was going to be the nominee. I’m not going to say that there weren’t a few fleeting moments here and there where I got caught up in the Bernmentum and didn’t think to myself, “he may actually pull this off” but those literally never lasted more than a few minutes at a time. I’m more analytical about politics, than I am emotional. So why have I so fervently supported Bernie? Why didn’t I make this confession to my closest friends until last week? Because getting Bernie as far as possible in this race has been a great thing for all of us. And whether you realize it right at this moment or not, Hillary supporters, you want him to go as far as he can too.

There are some terrible things that Hillary supported, that she can no longer do because of Bernie. She can no longer approve Keystone. She can no longer sign TPP into law. Don’t get too excited though. The fact that Hillary can’t sign TPP into law, probably means that Obama is going to have to do it as he’s walking out the door, like a thief in the night (a la Clinton repealing Glass Steagall). There are just too many corporate interests at stake for TPP not to be inevitable. There are a half a dozen less devastating (to some) bad ideas that Bernie forced Hillary to change her positions on; she no longer supports deporting immigrant kids, she probably won’t be promoting fracking (yes, she toured the world to promote fracking) in the US, she’s will never again claim that a $15 an hour minimum wage is too much to dream of. There are several more policy changes that you can Google for yourself.

My point is that Bernie made Hillary more liberal, and he so effectively cornered her on some issues, that you (Hillary supporter) are happier with her. You are. Don’t lie to yourselves.

You, dear Hillary supporter, agree that money is corrupting our political system. I know that you do, because ten years worth of polling data tells me that over 90% of democrats believe it (70% – 80% of republicans agree). You haven’t forgotten what you know, I’m positive that you haven’t. You’re just taking a little break on the issue. That’s fine, but you want this conversation to continue for as long as possible especially since I’m telling you that there’s no chance that Hillary isn’t going to be the nominee. This conversation will definitely quiet down after the election. It’s in all of our interest to keep it going for as long as we can. You, dear Hillary supporter, want single payer health care. I know you do, because I heard you while Obamacare was being hammered out. I know that for this election, you’ve convinced yourselves that single payer is a pipe dream, but it is in your self interest to keep this conversation alive for as long as possible. You, dear Hillary supporter, want tax payer funded higher education. Those of you in New York and California remember when it was available, and you got San Francisco and Manhattan as a direct result investing in education. Silicon Valley didn’t open up shop in California because they didn’t know that there were states in this country with no corporate income taxes. They opened up shop in California because that’s where they had access to a well educated candidate pool. I know you know this, Hillary supporters.

The most important reason why you (hang in with me for 2 more paragraphs) and I need for Bernie to have a strong argument to make at the convention is superdelegates. No one thinks that superdelegates are in any way, shape, or form democratic. Yes, they may be working in your favor sometimes, but you can’t fundamentally believe that the democratic party should have them. We should all be able to agree than when one candidate wins a state by twelve points, their opponent should not walk away with four more delegates in that state. We can all all agree that’s not democracy, right? I get that a fucked up thing seems slightly less fucked up when it’s working in your favor. I totally get that, but you still know that it’s fucked up. And it will continue to be fucked up long after it stops advancing your immediate goal. Seventeen percent of the total number of delegates can do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of how their constituents or former (many of them are no longer serving in office) constituents voted for. Some of them are lobbyists now. Both Dodd and Frank are lobbyists now. They’re both superdelegates, and they both have interests that aren’t yours.

We need to blow up this superdelegate thing once and for all. Getting Bernie to the convention with the closest margin of pledged delegates that we can will help to seriously damage this anti-democratic system. Let me repeat something I said earlier in this post; neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to get enough pledged delegates to cross the finish line. Superdelegates are going to take Hillary over the finish line. The closer we can get the pledged delegate count, the brighter the light that will be shone on this superdelegate system will be. We all want this. Let me repeat something else I said earlier in this post: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the democratic nominee. There is no chance that superdelegates will make Bernie the nominee. You are going to win this primary election, Hillary supporters. Bernie’s chances are as close to zero as is possible, without taking something completely unforseen (like a sudden and severe illness) into account.

It is in all democrats and liberals self interest to vote for Bernie at this point, especially if you’re on the fence. I know that some of you think that I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes at this point. I’m not. We’re voting here in New York tomorrow. Bernie is not likely to win. He’s definitely not going to win by anything resembling enough to close the delegate gap by more than a handful of delegates. If he ties Hillary here, he’s going to have to win Pennsylvania and California by nearly 80% to close that delegate gap. It’s just not going to happen. If he loses to Hillary in New York by 5%, he’s going to have to win CA and PA by 83%. It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to be the nominee. But none of us need for him to leave the public stage before the very end.

Bernie Sanders is the first politician since Reagan started his last (of 3) bids for the white house, to reframe the public conversation in liberal terms. Bill Clinton put the final nail in coffin for liberal framing when he said, “The era of big government is over”. That’s when the left was officially shut out of the conversation. We’ve been operating under the right wing premises that taxes and government are bad ever since. Bernie has struck the only significant blow to that fucked up right wing framing that we’ve seen in thirty years. He has irrevocably changed the conversation in a way that both Hillary and Bernie supporters need. Hillary’s platform was initially based on accepting that fucked up framing, and it still is to a large extent. “We can’t afford to have the nice things that the rest of the first world has”. Bernie is literally the only candidate (on either side) who has been asked how he plans to pay for things. Ted Cruz says he wants to increase our fighter jet production by fifty percent, and no one bothers to ask him how he plans to pay for that? Hillary doesn’t have any sweeping reforms in her platform because she seems to have accepted the premise that all government spending is bad and that “big government” is bad, so she’s not going to do anything major or historic.

I know that you don’t believe that government is bad, Hillary supporters. I know you don’t, because see your non-Hillary posts.

So help me keep Bernie in this until July. You have nothing to risk and everything to gain.

I in turn, will do everything I can to get everyone to coalesce around Hillary in the general. Look, I’ve already pissed off and disappointed all of my Bernie peeps by writing this, so you know that I mean what I say.

We don’t have to wait until July to come together. We can all get what we want, and more of it if we come together now.

For months now, some of us have noticed how thoroughly rigged the democratic presidential primary process has been. Others are too blinded by the fact that the game is rigged in favor of their candidate to notice. I’m going to ask Hillary supporters to set their emotional attachment to Hillary aside and hear me out for about the next five to ten minutes, because I promise you that I have information and empirical evidence of said rigging that will disturb you.

Let’s start with the obvious debate schedule debacle. Here’s a list of both republican and democratic debates (not to be confused with town halls) for this election cycle.

Republican:                                                                      Democratic:

Thursday, August 6th

Wednesday, September 16th

Wednesday, October 28th                                                Tuesday, October 13th

Tuesday, November 10th                                                  Saturday, November 14th

Tuesday, December 15th                                                   Saturday, December 19th (weekend before Christmas)

Thursday, January 14th                                                     Sunday, January 17th (MLK holiday weekend)

Saturday, February 6th                                                      Thursday, February 4th

Saturday, February 13th                                                    Thursday, February 11th

Thursday, February 25th                                                   Sunday, March 6th

Thursday, March 10th                                                        Wednesday, March 9th

Do you notice anything (other than the fact that republicans got to have the national conversation to themselves for nearly 3 months before a single democratic debate happened)? Democrats have only debated on Five nights when a large number of people would actually be watching versus republicans’ eight. There’s a reason why you can’t get into Shondaland on Saturday nights. Larry Wilmore was spot on when he called them “top secret debates”.

Then there’s all the DNC staffers who are moonlighting on Hillary’s campaign, the fact that a lot of Hillary’s campaign headquarters are actually in DNC field offices, and that time when the DNC finance chair got caught throwing a fundraiser for Hillary (thereby breaking DNC rules), and that time back in August when the DNC helped Hillary shore up a huge number of superdelegates before the election had even started. And then there was the data breach. You know, the one where instead of quietly handling it in house, Little Debbie called a press conference to announce that Bernie was a cheater? You know, the one where she never provided the data logs so that we could all see which staffers on both campaigns accessed the two way breach.

That’s all stuff you know, and that some have managed to dismiss. Now for the new information that should infuriate all democrats who value democracy, and feel that voters should pick the party’s presidential nominee.

So apparently back in August, Hillary made deals with thirty-three state parties to create a joint fundraising entity called “The Hillary Victory Fund”.

At this point I have to step back and have a wonky moment, wherein I recap a disastrous 2014 Supreme Court ruling that decimated the few campaign finance laws that were left after Citizen’s United. The case was McCutcheon v FEC. Before the McCutcheon ruling, individuals had an aggregate limit of $123,200 that they could donate. That means that they could give the maximum $2,600 contribution to a number of candidates or federal offices, but the aggregate total of their donations had to be no more than $123,200. There are different caps for different contributions, but those aren’t relevant to this post so you can click on that link if you want that information. The McCutcheon ruling got rid of that aggregate limit, meaning that a rich donor can give the maximum allowable amount to as many candidates, state, and federal parties they want to. So if someone wants to max out their contributions to (say) thirty-three (or fifty) different state democratic party organizations, as well as the DNC, they can do that.

Now back to the The Hillary Victory Fund (although most of you can see where this is going at this point in the post). The legal limit in contributions from an individual to a state democratic party is $10,000 a year. Let’s assume that the thirty three states we know about are the only ones who entered the The Hillary Victory Fund agreement. If each of Hillary’s billionaire donors maxed out their contributions and their spouse’s, that would be $660,000 per year that they contributed to Hillary. The deal was made in 2015, so they have two years worth of caps to max out. That would be 1.3 million dollars from each donor over the course of this primary cycle. By the end of 2015 (4 months after the fund was established), the The Hillary Victory Fund had raised 26 million dollars.

This whole thing is a legal money laundering scheme to funnel money into Hillary’s campaign. According to Counterpunch, the fund is administered by Hillary’s campaign’s COO. She has complete control over the fund and decides how much should go back to the state parties. Since she’s facing a stronger primary challenger than she had originally anticipated, I promise you that most of that money is going into her primary campaign rather than flowing back out to the states. But don’t feel too bad for the state parties that made this pact with her, since she’s going to raise a ton of money for them if she becomes the nominee.

Now at this point, the die hard Hillary supporters are going to assert that I’m practicing a lot of conjecture here. Don’t worry, I’m not done. The Montana Democratic Party entered into this fundraising scheme with Hillary in August of last year. Before the year was up, they had received maximum donations from the creme de la creme of democratic big money donors including: Susie Buell of California, Imaad Zuberi of California, Fred Eychaner of Chicago, Donald Sussman hedgefund manager from New York, Chicago real estate mogul J.B Pritzker, gay rights activist Jon Stryker of NY, NRA and Viacom lobbyist Jeffrey Forbes and entertainment mogul Haim Saban. I checked, and there are no records of contributions from any of these people to the Montana Democratic Party prior to 2015. Coincidentally, many of them donated maximum contributions to the parties for the other thirty-two states involved in The Hillary Victory Fund. That Counterpunch link I posted above goes into many more details about shenanigans in several other states and how they’re playing a shell game with the cash. I highly recommend you read it.

So while Hillary claims to be opposed to Citizen’s United, she’s making deals to reap the benefits of both that ruling and the McCutcheon ruling to rig the primary. Now I understand not wanting to show up to the general election gun fight with a pocket knife, but that’s not what’s happening here. The democratic party apparatchik is deciding for you, who the democratic nominee will be.

When Bernie is asked if he will support down ticket democrats, he’s not being asked so that you have more information. He’s being asked in order to remind the superdelegates and sitting members of congress, where their bread is buttered. I don’t imagine that Bernie has any plans to help blue dog, establishment corporate democrats get elected, nor would I want him to. There have been a few endorsement flips from Hillary to Bernie. Not many, but a few. Hillary doesn’t want to allow a domino effect to happen like it did in 2008, so she needs to use the massive purse strings she holds to reign in anyone who might be thinking about jumping ship.

This whole system stinks and you should agree regardless of who you support. Hillary isn’t going to be running for president forever, so her supporters should be very concerned about who is going to be dished out to them next time.

The most disturbing thing to me about this election cycle, has been watching democrats who used to believe that corporate money is the toxin in our political system, suddenly act like all of  Hillary’s corporate contributions are swell. I imagine that a lot of those people will resume posting articles and memes about the Koch brothers corruption of our politicians after this election is over, and acting like they’ve been on the right side of this issue all along. Or maybe they’re posting them now, alongside their pro Hillary stories, in the most stunning display of cognitive dissonance I’ve even witnessed.  I earnestly don’t understand how that pivot is possible. But honestly, if alarm bells aren’t going off for you over what she’s doing to game the primary, I have no hope for you.

Corporate money in our political system is the number one issue that needs to be addressed. It’s the issue that creates virtually all of the other issues that we have. It’s the reason for climate denial and why we’re so actively participating in the destruction of the planet. It’s the reason for the record breaking income inequality we’re seeing in the US. It’s why we have so many guns with precious little information on who has them. Your kids are literally being gunned down by corporate money in politics. It’s the reason why we have 25% of the world’s prison population. I can go on with a litany of other things, but you get the point. Until we deal with the money issue, we have no hope of dealing with most of the other issues that threaten our lives and livelihoods every single day.

Do I believe a candidate who is exploiting campaign finance laws to legally launder money into her campaign when she says that she wants to get money out of politics? I laugh…… oh how I laugh. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t know why anyone else would be for any candidate. I don’t know what her supporters think they’re going to get from her in exchange for their intelligence, but I hope it’s something good. Maybe a golden unicorn? Make no mistake, you’re going to get what you’ve been getting for decades: guns, prisoners, pollution, and a shrinking paycheck.

If I believed that Hillary was going to make getting corporate money out of politics a top priority, I assure you that I would be supporting her. But that’s simply not the case. Why would you want to fuck with the system that got you in the white house? Especially when you have two generations of your offspring to set up for their time in the white house.

I’m sorry, but I like democracy too much to fall for this shit. I wish that everyone did because other than amending the constitution, Bernie is our last chance to keep the focus on this issue which makes him our last hope of changing it. Fortunately, Bernie has greatly expanded a movement that will outlive him and this election. It is a movement built on the backs of the generation who has been fucked the most by thirty years of corporate rule of government. This is the first, but not the last generation who will make less o money than their parents made. This is a generation whose kids are going to be more fucked than they are, if things don’t change. This is not a generation that’s going to shut up and take it.

The degree to which my generation (Gen X for those who are wondering) got fucked by the corporate takeover of our government is, and should be, the limit of what can be tolerated. The millennials have gotten fucked much harder than even we were. They have every right to fight back, and I’m delighted to see that they’ve correctly identified the problem. They know that Hillary is not a “friendly”.

And after the information contained in this piece, you should too.

By now you know that Hillary spectacularly stepped in it a couple of days ago when she praised Nancy Reagan for “starting a national conversation” about AIDS. Here are her exact words,

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation. When before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low key advocacy but it penetrated the public conscious and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.'”

If you already didn’t know it, you know now that what Hillary said is literally the opposite of the truth. Not only did the Reagans ignore the suffering and death of the nameless, faceless masses who were dying, but their cruelty also extended to their personal circle of friends. Rock Hudson, who was a personal friend sent a plea for help to Nancy in his final days. She refused him. The Reagans were not nice people. They were not compassionate people, and they were not intelligent people. No intelligent person would assume that this disease that’s plaguing the dreaded gays who are “getting what they deserve”, would think that the spread would be limited to those they deem to be the dregs of society. They were stupid, stupid, loathsome people.

So why did Hillary say what she said? Before I get to that, I want to share a statement she put out last night,

Yesterday, at Nancy Reagan’s funeral, I said something inaccurate when speaking about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS. Since then, I’ve heard from countless people who were devastated by the loss of friends and loved ones, and hurt and disappointed by what I said. As someone who has also lost friends and loved ones to AIDS, I understand why. I made a mistake, plain and simple.

I want to use this opportunity to talk not only about where we’ve come from, but where we must go in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

To be clear, the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. That distinction belongs to generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day.

The AIDS crisis in America began as a quiet, deadly epidemic. Because of discrimination and disregard, it remained that way for far too long. When many in positions of power turned a blind eye, it was groups like ACT UP, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and others that came forward to shatter the silence — because as they reminded us again and again, Silence = Death. They organized and marched, held die-ins on the steps of city halls and vigils in the streets. They fought alongside a few courageous voices in Washington, like U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, who spoke out from the floor of Congress.

Then there were all the people whose names we don’t often hear today — the unsung heroes who fought on the front lines of the crisis, from hospital wards and bedsides, some with their last breath. Slowly, too slowly, ignorance was crowded out by information. People who had once closed their eyes opened their hearts.

If not for those advocates, activists, and ordinary, heroic people, we would not be where we are in preventing and treating HIV and AIDS. Their courage — and their refusal to accept silence as the status quo — saved lives.

We’ve come a long way. But we still have work to do to eradicate this disease for good and to erase the stigma that is an echo of a shameful and painful period in our country’s history.
This issue matters to me deeply. And I’ve always tried to do my part in the fight against this disease, and the stigma and pain that accompanies it. At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when my husband accepted the nomination for president, we marked a break with the past by having two HIV-positive speakers — the first time that ever happened at a national convention. As First Lady, I brought together world leaders to strategize and coordinate efforts to take on HIV and AIDS around the world. In the Senate, I put forward legislation to expand global AIDS research and assistance and to increase prevention and education, and I proudly voted for the creation of PEPFAR and to defend and protect the Ryan White Act. And as secretary of state, I launched a campaign to usher in an AIDS-free generation through prevention and treatment, targeting the populations at greatest risk of contracting HIV.

The AIDS crisis looks very different today. There are more options for treatment and prevention than ever before. More people with HIV are leading full and happy lives. But HIV and AIDS are still with us. They continue to disproportionately impact communities of color, transgender people, young people and gay and bisexual men. There are still 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States today, with about 50,000 people newly diagnosed each year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 60 percent of people with HIV are women and girls. Even though the tools exist to end this epidemic once and for all, there are still far too many people dying today.

That is absolutely inexcusable.

I believe there’s even more we can — and must — do together. For starters, let’s continue to increase HIV and AIDS research and invest in the promising innovations that research is producing. Medications like PrEP are proving effective in preventing HIV infection; we should expand access to that drug for everyone, including at-risk populations. We should call on Republican governors to put people’s health and well-being ahead of politics and extend Medicaid, which would provide health care to those with HIV and AIDS.

We should call on states to reform outdated and stigmatizing HIV criminalization laws. We should increase global funding for HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment. And we should cap out-of-pocket expenses and drug costs—and hold companies like Turing and Valeant accountable when they attempt to gouge patients by jacking up the price of lifesaving medications.

We’re still surrounded by memories of loved ones lost and lives cut short. But we’re also surrounded by survivors who are fighting harder than ever. We owe it to them and to future generations to continue that fight together. For the first time, an AIDS-free generation is in sight. As president, I promise you that I will not let up until we reach that goal. We will not leave anyone behind.

That was a good apology. She unequivocally took responsibility for fucking up. “I made a mistake, plain and simple” is the kind of apology that we need to hear more often. I’m of the opinion that when someone apologizes for something in earnest, you accept the apology and move on. Not accepting this type of apology discourages people from making honest apologies. If you want good behavior from people, you have to applaud it when it happens. If there’s no positive reinforcement for good behavior, you’re just encouraging bad behavior. Moving on entails not holding this against her anymore, but it does not entail forgetting about it.

So why did she say it? She’s running for president against an insurgent candidate who is turning out to be a much bigger threat than she had ever anticipated, so why would she say something so stupid and blatantly untrue? Because she believed it when she said it. I read once that our memories are 78% inaccurate or flat out lies. You can see that’s probably true when you read multiple witness statements to a crime. People don’t see the same thing while something is happening. And then our memories take over to further embellish and rewrite what we saw differently from the guy next to us in the first place. That 78% statistic doesn’t seem unbelievable to me.

Hillary believes that Nancy Reagan was a better person than she really was because everyone who knows a terrible person believes they’re better than they really are. We’re all guilty of this. All of us. No, you’re not exempt. Trust me, you’ve done it too and so have I. These are bubbles we all live in. Hillary’s bubble is made up of politicos, lobbyists, and corporate executives so she definitely knows more terrible people than the average bear.

This bubble is what made Hillary think that bringing up Henry Kissinger at a democratic debate was a good idea. Do some of you think that Bernie brought it up first? Well, that memory would fall into that 78% statistic I cited earlier. Hillary was the first to mention Kissinger,

“I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea about what it’s going to take to make our government work more efficiently.”

Bernie didn’t actually throw that back in her face until the next debate. Being flattered at Henry Kissinger’s high opinion of you and then bragging about it to a democratic debate audience is as bubblicious as it gets. In her mind, Kissinger is beloved and respected because he’s someone she knows well. She and Bill used to spend winter vacations with the Kissingers and Oscar de la Renta.

Her opinion of Henry Kissinger, and the magnitude to which that opinion is divorced from reality is a function of the bubble. You can’t despise very many people that you routinely socialize with, and that run in your circles. Again, this isn’t a Hillary issue. This is something we all do. Just talk to the family members of any cop who shot an unarmed person. They’re all really good people who made one mistake or worse yet, didn’t make a mistake at all because they’re just that righteous. I digress.

Hillary’s bubble is full of people who have done terrible things to the middle class and the poor. That’s just par for the course when you’ve lived Hillary Clinton’s life. She didn’t choose to surround herself with terrible people. They chose her because of her position. Lloyd Blankfein, Henry Kissinger, and Nancy Reagan just come with the job. Respecting, admiring, supporting, and sharing the values of those people is just a function of human nature. It’s not a failing on Hillary’s part and I don’t blame her for it.

But I don’t like it, and I don’t like what it means for a Hillary Clinton presidency. That’s just me. When “democrats” like Diane Feinstein, Claire McCaskill, and Chris Dodd endorse Hillary, I’m moved in the opposite direction because that’s the bubble that has kept wages flat for the past 30 years. This is not a bubble that I revere or respect. This is the bubble I’m very much interested in bursting.

To be fair, Bernie doesn’t have a bubble but he does sometimes suffer from tunnel vision. He’s so focused on the macro issue of government corruption and the income inequality it’s caused, that he missed a lot of the micro (they’re not micro, but you get what I’m trying to say) issues like the concerns of black lives matter and the issues that are important to the families of mass murder victims. He understands that the corporate corruption of our politicians is the cause of the vast majority of our issues (military spending, climate change, guns, corporate tax evasion, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc), but he’s so focused on that, that he forgets that these issues need to be addressed not just from the top, but all way down to the actual victims. He gets that taking money out of politics will help to level out income inequality, which will greatly help the black community, but he can’t see the immediate issues that need addressing for that community. In his defense, he does seem to be listening and learning.

I’m much more comfortable with Bernie’s tunnel vision than I am with Hillary’s bubble. That’s just me.

Anyway, that was my very long way to say, don’t demonize Hillary for the Reagan comment. It wasn’t malicious and it wasn’t an attempt to propagandize. It was purely a product of the bubble. And she apologized, so let’s move on from attacking her for it.