Candidates who met the polling and fundraising requirements set by the Democratic National Committee are former Vice President Joe Biden; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; billionaire businessman and activist Tom Steyer; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
And Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick want to be in the race? Give it up, losers, it's too late.
And Deval? Good Lord. Governor Who. That's what I called him when he was my governor.
I blogged about him on Feb, 21, 2008, for example, and this was about the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debate:
Here's more of Hillary's quote, "If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words" and "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox."
He steals from Governor Who.
That's my governor. And we all bought into the pretty words and now we're suffering. We have the worst governor of my lifetime. He's so totally ineffective and we voted him in because he said pretty things. But he can't do a damn thing. He's a lousy governor. He's friends with Bambi and the same guy/thug that runs Bambi's campaign that ran Governor Who's campaign.
He was the worst and, remember, when I say he was the worst, we also had Mitt Romney as a governor. And still Deval was the worst.
September 22, 2014, Michael Levenson (BOSTON GLOBE) reported:
Governor Deval Patrick on Monday explained his decision last week to remove the top two officials at the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board, accusing them of a litany of problems, including the ...
It was one of the most brutal hits of the 2006 governor’s race: A month before the election, the Boston Herald reported that Deval Patrick’s brother-in-law was a convicted rapist who had failed to register as a sex offender.
Patrick, who had been battling accusations that he was soft on crime, was infuriated. He accused his Republican opponent of playing “dirty politics” by planting the story in the press. Then Patrick won the election, and the story became a forgotten footnote in the annals of bare-knuckled politics.
But not for Patrick. On Monday, Patrick, still seething over the story eight years later, explained his recent decision to remove the top two officials at the state Sex Offender Registry Board, saying they improperly tried to force his brother-in-law to register as a sex offender.
In his first public comments on the shakeup at the agency, Patrick blamed the officials, his own appointees, for a number of other problems, including failing to update regulations and fostering an unproductive work environment. But he made it clear, as he prepares to leave office, that he is still nursing wounds from his first political campaign.
Blaming the Herald and the Republican Party for the revelation, Patrick said the disclosure that his brother-in-law had been convicted of raping his wife, Patrick’s sister, more than a decade earlier in California “nearly destroyed their lives.”
“So it was time for them to go,” Patrick said Monday, referring to the removal of board chairwoman Saundra Edwards and executive director Jeanne Holmes.
It was an unusually blunt acknowledgment: Politicians are usually loath to admit a personal stake in public policy decisions.
In October 2006, as Patrick appeared poised to complete his rise from obscure Justice Department lawyer to the governorship, the Herald reported that his brother-in-law, Bernard Sigh, had been convicted in 1993 of raping Patrick’s sister, Rhonda, in San Diego. Sigh pleaded guilty, served a short prison sentence, and reconciled with his wife. The couple subsequently moved to Milton.
Deval kept his brother-in-law off the list, made sure he wasn't a registered sex offender.
And in 2017?
The man raped another woman. [ADDED: I was wrong -- he raped the same woman -- his wife -- again.] Deval is trash.
Because of him, his brother-in-law went on to rape again.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Thursday, November 14, 2019. A new entry in the race for the Democratic
Party's nomination and this guy doesn't want rapists registered as sex
offenders (at least now when he's related to them!), protests continue
in Iraq and a protester who had been kidnapped is released.
Starting in the US with the race for the Democratic Party's nomination. In an already crowded field, you might think the move would be to winnow down. Instead, people keep jumping in. Yesterday, another person declared they were seeking the nomination.
No, not Hillary Clinton. She continues to tease that she might run and she's noted the voices in her head are asking her to run but she's not declared yet.
No, it's Deval Patrick.
Who?
He was supposed to become what Barack Obama became. Before Barack emerged, the press would float Deval and Harold Ford Jr. as the centrist Democrat who would transform the nation when they, one day, took the White House.
Harold Ford Jr. is largely forgotten today -- despite his explosive temper ("Say it to Murtha's, face!" being only the best known example) -- and Deval wants to make sure he's not forgotten.
While floundering Joe Biden continues to insist that he's asked Barack not to endorse him, the reality is that Barack urged Deval to seek the 2020 nomination. Poor Joe. Since being governor of Massachusetts, Deval's been all about big business which, no doubt, relieves the non-objective press who have been freaking out over candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Deval's had his dirty hands in everything -- including the Ameriquest scandal. As governor, he fired the chair of the Sex Offender Registry Board (Saundra Edwards). Why? Deval's brother-in-law was convicted of raping Deval's sister. As such he was a sex offender. Edwards attempted to follow the law and see to it that the brother-in-law was registered as such. Deval hit the roof and fired her.
Deval's not really about women's rights or, for that matter, about punishing rapists.
But, hey, he's not going to push for Medicare For All so the press will just kiss ass over and over.
Starting in the US with the race for the Democratic Party's nomination. In an already crowded field, you might think the move would be to winnow down. Instead, people keep jumping in. Yesterday, another person declared they were seeking the nomination.
No, not Hillary Clinton. She continues to tease that she might run and she's noted the voices in her head are asking her to run but she's not declared yet.
No, it's Deval Patrick.
Who?
He was supposed to become what Barack Obama became. Before Barack emerged, the press would float Deval and Harold Ford Jr. as the centrist Democrat who would transform the nation when they, one day, took the White House.
Harold Ford Jr. is largely forgotten today -- despite his explosive temper ("Say it to Murtha's, face!" being only the best known example) -- and Deval wants to make sure he's not forgotten.
While floundering Joe Biden continues to insist that he's asked Barack not to endorse him, the reality is that Barack urged Deval to seek the 2020 nomination. Poor Joe. Since being governor of Massachusetts, Deval's been all about big business which, no doubt, relieves the non-objective press who have been freaking out over candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Deval's had his dirty hands in everything -- including the Ameriquest scandal. As governor, he fired the chair of the Sex Offender Registry Board (Saundra Edwards). Why? Deval's brother-in-law was convicted of raping Deval's sister. As such he was a sex offender. Edwards attempted to follow the law and see to it that the brother-in-law was registered as such. Deval hit the roof and fired her.
Deval's not really about women's rights or, for that matter, about punishing rapists.
But, hey, he's not going to push for Medicare For All so the press will just kiss ass over and over.
It’s official.
Deval Patrick is running for President.
He openly admits today that he doesn’t really have any strong policy positions, but that he just wants to nebulously bring America together for healing.
He misunderstands the moment.
In his first term as governor, Deval could still pass for dashing. The years have ground all the pretty away.
For every journalist covering @DevalPatrick, here's your Google list for today:
"Bain Capital"
"Ameriquest"
"Massachusetts Health Connector"
"Chardonnay"
and DEFINITELY..
"Justina Pelletier"
You know what this race was missing? A Wall Street bankster who busted unions. #DevalPatrick
Though the usual toadies (Jonathan Alter, ect) are giddy, not everyone sees this as a moment to celebrate.
The more I think about this #DevalPatrick run the more it pisses me off that these men just can't handle the idea of a Black woman having a shot at the WH before them. Everybody doesn't need to run for Prez & after 11 months the constructive thing to do is to back Kamala Harris.
#khive:
Pissed off at Deval Patrick Running?
She needs 75k by midnight Friday.
Do work.
In Iraq, protests continue.
Today security forces attacked the protesters near Tahrir Square in #Baghdad to disperse the protesters from the strategic square but the attempt failed. Here is a video security forces chasing protesters near Tahrir Square.
#IraqProtests #العراق
0:41
ALJAZEERA notes this morning:
On Thursday, security forces used live rounds, rubber bullets and fired tear gas canisters in a bid to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered near Baghdad's Tahrir Square, the Reuters news agency reported.
One protester died immediately after a tear gas canister hit his head and another lost his life in hospital from wounds from a stun bomb fired by security forces, reports said on Thursday, adding that at least 50 people were wounded in the latest clashes in the capital.
Al Jazeera's Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Baghdad, said the protesters were killed between 7 and 8 am local time (04:00-05:00GMT).
Natasha Turek (CNBC) offers:
Iraq is descending into its most violent days since the battle against ISIS concluded in late 2017 — and the world is completely underestimating its significance, regional experts told CNBC at the Middle East’s premier oil and gas conference this week.
The second-largest OPEC producer has seen protests every summer for the last several years over economic grievances, met time and time again with empty government promises of reform that go unfulfilled. But this year’s demonstrations are different, spilling over into demands for a full-on political overhaul and attracting elements like Iranian-backed forces and other extremists that threaten to hijack the protest movement and potentially bring the U.S. into deeper involvement.
“Because the forces that are outside, the external forces that have decades of interest (in Iraq) are not going to go away quietly. They will affect the economics of the region potentially, and they can affect the security beyond the region of Europe and eventually the United States.”
Samya Kulab (AP) asks the question everyone should be asking: Where's the money? Iraq's an oil rich nation that raises enough in oil each year to turn every Iraqi citizen into a billionaire. So why do the people suffer? Kulab notes:
Oil accounts for
roughly 85-90% of state revenue. This year’s federal budget anticipated
$79 billion in oil money based on projected exports of 3.88 million
barrels per day at a price of $56 a barrel. Iraq’s economy improved in
2019 due to an increase in oil production, and GDP growth is expected to
grow by 4.6% by the end of the year, according to the World Bank.
The
fruits of these riches are rarely seen by the average Iraqi because of
financial mismanagement, bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption,
experts and officials told The Associated Press. Overall unemployment is
around 11% while 22% of the population lives in poverty, according to
World Bank estimates. A striking one-third of Iraqi youth are without
jobs.
Corruption is one of the things the protesters are calling for an end to. A large number of Iraqis who fled Iraq decades ago have returned following the 2003 US-led invasion and the US turned them into politicians. They ended up rich far more than anyone could imagine. How so? Corruption. Nouri al-Maliki's son is seen as the poster child of corruption, in fact.
Changing topics. Two weekends ago, Sabah al Mahdawi disappeared. The activist and journalist was providing medical assistance to the protesters in Baghdad.
@SabaAlmahdawi, a protester who was kidnapped while going back home from Tahrir Square, is released.
I am so happy that she got back home safe between her family and love ones but I can’t even begin to imagine how traumatizing this must have been to her.
#IraqProtest #Iraq
Iraq's Sabah Al Mahdawi, who highlight the role of shadowy forces in the government’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators, has now returned home. But the fate of those that had gone missing since #IraqProtests began last month remains unknown.
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