Sorry, but I just hate them all. They've been a terrible party for a while now, but this is the first year where I literally could not tolerate a single one of their nominees as president, despite there being so many of them.
You're right, it's all politics. However another thing is that the primary debates aren't about substance, it's about publicity. That's why Trump is winning them all right now. I hope and pray they never reflect policy or we are truly screwed, or at least when they do the rhetoric gets toned WAY down. Another thing that's important to note is that this isn't the first time the debates have been like this. That would have been last presidential election. A lot of republicans blame that early and often debate format for the loss. And it's not a giant leap to think that the DNC is thinking the same thing, and wants to avoid that much early in-fighting and exposure.
Still, the amount of debates seems incredibly paltry. Weren't there several times as many in 2008? And I recall last year seeing articles about the RNC making efforts to prevent as much in-fighting and make the process of coalescing around the mainstream choice faster, and reducing the amount of debates being one of those efforts. But they still have way more than the DNC does this election.
As for the chairperson being a part of Clinton's staff, I cannot comment fully on that, but that really sucks, cause I'm a Sanders supporter, and that's just one more obstacle for him to overcome. He's already a better position to win than her (I don't think nearly as many people think socialist is as dirty a word as corrupt, note: regardless of the truth of either statement), and a lot of the DNC energy has een wasted promoting her over competitors.
Well...
will this help you comment?Wasserman Schultz announced her support of Hillary Clinton for her party's 2008 presidential nomination, and in June 2007 was named one of Clinton's national campaign co-chairs.
I know it's just wikipedia, but I'm lazy and that's clear public record. I know it's possible for her to have been Clinton's co-chair back then and be impartial now. But the incredibly small number of debates she's set up which coincidentally help out Clinton makes that hard to believe.
I like Sanders, too. I'm just worried they'll bury him over stoking fears about "socialism," and that in general he'll be too nice to aggressively counter all their lies and fear-mongering about him, because like Trump, the entire RNC are essentially bullies.
Also, F*&^ Bill Maher. And F*&$ HuffPo for being incredibly forgiving to the racist bastard. First link, Bill Maher on how "for 30 year's there's been one culture attacking us" (sounds like Trump, right?). Second link, HuffPo not exactly giving the full context of his rant, lettign him come off less like a racist than he was. Third link, the racist, sexist, ____-ist bastard being praised by HuffPo for calling Trump racist. He's a supposed progressive hero, and yet he'd be a conservative dream entertainer. He hates Muslims, he's incredibly misogynistic, he's very Australian (and I mean that in the "hates immigrants" sort of way), the only issue is that he's an atheist, and people like him give me and other atheists a bad name. Dawkins and Jillette do too. I wish there was a higher profile atheist who wasn't a douchebag I could look up to and point to as a representative of my (lack of) faith.
EDIT: Also, F*#$ Bill Maher for being a shoddy "journalist" and playing the "misquote out of context" game.
Dang. I usually agree w/ Bill Maher, but he's wrong on this. (He hates all organized religions, btw, and usually is justified when he's arguing against them because...yeah... but not always)
I can sort of understand an argument of "they're teachers, not bomb experts, how are they supposed to be sure it's not a bomb?" and playing it safe, even though it's kind of silly. And schools have a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG history of being incredibly cautious about violence, and going way overboard. There's plenty of cases of kids getting in trouble for packing plastic knives in their lunch boxes, and the zero-tolerance policies for fighting are beyond ridiculous. You get suspended for being involved in a fight automatically, regardless of the circumstances. I've seen it happen personally, and this was over a decade ago, though the most outrageous case was one a friend told me in college about a HS classmate of hers who never even attacked and was just pummeled by the bully until it got broken up, and that victim STILL got suspended.
So schools have been over-reactive dimwits on issues of violence for many years now, and that transcends race. In that respect, I'm really not surprised that some teachers saw what looked even vaguely like a bomb (even if only one of the cartoonish ticking time bomb style bombs) and panicked. They, and the police, are still wrong for doing it and should apologize, but I can understand it happening. They were certainly not "justified" to do it anymore than they are for punishing a kid for daring to want to spread mustard on his sandwich, though.
EDIT:
Found a video of the discussing in full, I think.