Great perspective of a young feminist who supports Bernie Sanders.

There seems to be no shortage of bizarrely sexist assumptions as to why I, a Millennial feminist, am not voting for Hillary Clinton. But speaking as a Millennial feminist, let me assure you: None of them is accurate. Granted, the span of my political biography is only as long as it took Howard Dean to go from human rights crusader to insurance lobbyist. But the reason for my political disaffection is plain: I’ve spent my entire Millennial life watching the Democratic Party claw its way up the ass of corporate America. There’s no persuading me that the Democratic establishment — from where it sits now — has the capacity to represent me, or my values.

Source: Feeling the Yern: Why the Kids Are All Right About Bernie Sanders | Village Voice

An interesting look at Somalia’s recent past and current outlook.

I was a shivering in bed on my first night in Mogadishu. At 3:30 am, I killed the air conditioner. Moments later, the room felt stuffier than a London subway. I got up and paced around, wondering if it was safe to keep the balcony door open.

A few months back, al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda faction, had stormed Jazeera Palace Hotel, where I was currently staying, and sprayed a group of Chinese diplomats with lead. Now the building was secured by a street blockade, a double-gated check-in, blastproof walls, two dozen armed men and Abdullah, the small, wiry gentleman with an AK-47 outside my door.

I took a peek into the corridor and caught Abdullah dozing off. He was balancing on a tiny wooden stool, with the rifle propped between his legs.

Source: After the Black Hawks Arrived: In Somalia, a History of US Meddling Continues

Hillary Clinton spent an hour talking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper and a handful of New Hampshire voters in a town hall on Wednesday night. For 59 minutes of it, she was excellent — empathetic, engaged and decidedly human. But, then there was that other minute — really just four words — that Clinton is likely to be haunted by for some time to come.

“That’s what they offered,” Clinton said in response to Cooper’s question about her decision to accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in the period between serving as secretary of state and her decision to formally enter the 2016 presidential race.

The line is, well, bad. More on that soon. But, the line when combined with her body language when she said it makes it politically awful for her.

Source: Hillary Clinton is going to really regret saying these 4 words about Goldman Sachs – The Washington Post

Hillary Clinton’s supporters like to say that Bernie Sanders stands little chance of getting his initiatives through a Republican Congress. They overlook the fact that Clinton’s odds are just as dismal.

The funniest thing about pro-Hillary punditry is the claim that her proposals are achievable while Bernie Sanders’ proposals are not. This has been all over the punditry of late, especially in the oldsplaining get-off-my-lawn punditry aimed at the rude teens who support Sanders. For an example of it, look no further than the New York Times official endorsement:

In the end, though, Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers. His boldest proposals — to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system — have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic, while Mrs. Clinton has very good, and achievable, proposals in both areas.

This is frankly insane. Hillary Clinton’s legislative agenda has a 0% chance of passing through the GOP-controlled Congress. None. Nothing. Zilch. This is true, not only because the GOP fundamentally disagrees with her proposals, but also, crucially, because the GOP pursues obstruction for its own sake. It has been very explicit about this. The GOP has (probably correctly) determined that helping a Democratic president pass things of note benefits the Democrats and hurts the Republicans.

Source: Hillary Clinton’s Wildly Unrealistic Puppies and Rainbows Plan – MattBruenig | Politics

Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed an ambitious program of social reform, including regulatory changes to raise wages and protect workers’ rights, progressive tax reforms, and universal health insurance (Improved Medicare for All). Taken together, these policies would not only dramatically increase employment and national income, but would also raise wages, reduce poverty, and narrow the gap between rich and poor Americans.

Source: What Would Sanders Do? An Analysis of His Proposals

Bernie Sanders will never be president. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. He stands very little chance of pulling down the Democratic nomination and no chance at all of winning a general election. His rabid acolytes can argue with this all they want but they’ll be wrong for several inarguable reasons: because the “political revolution” Bernie Sanders needs to advance his campaign and agenda is pie-in-the-sky thinking that simply doesn’t occur in representative democracies like ours, where change always comes incrementally and our entire system is designed so it can’t be remade in one fell swoop; because he’s a one-note candidate who concerns himself with nothing other than his admittedly noble lifelong obsession with wealth inequality; because America isn’t evolved enough to elect an avowed socialist, democratic or otherwise, and it unfortunately won’t get near someone who openly eschews religion; and maybe most importantly because once the GOP considered Bernie a sworn enemy rather than the perfect foil it can use to destroy Hillary Clinton, it would eat him alive. Eat. Him. Alive.

Source: If You’re Liberal and You Think Hillary Clinton Is Corrupt and Untrustworthy, You’re Rewarding 25 Years of GOP Smears – The Daily Banter

Clinton’s attack on Sanders is as simple as it is untrue: Unlike Sanders, Clinton has argued, she is willing to take on “shadow banking” — a broad term for various financial activities that aren’t regulated as strictly as conventional lending.Sanders has in fact proposed attacking shadow banking in two principal ways: by breaking up big financial firms that engage in shadow banking, and by severing federal financial support for shadow banking activities by reinstating Glass-Steagall.

These would be substantive changes. A lot of shadow banking takes place at firms with traditional banking charters, like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. Some of it takes place at specialized hedge funds, or at major investment banks like Goldman Sachs. Breaking them up would not eliminate the risk shadow banking poses to the economy, but it would limit it. Risky shadow banking activities cannot bring down institutions that are too-big-to-fail if there are no too-big-to-fail institutions.

Yet the Clinton campaign has repeatedly said Sanders is wholly ignoring shadow banking, accusing Sanders of taking a “hands-off” approach to it that would not apply to firms like Lehman Brothers and AIG. This barrage has come from Clinton’s press aides, campaign CFO Gary Gensler, and Clinton surrogate Barney Frank.

Source: Hillary Clinton Is Not Telling The Truth About Wall Street