Tony Brasunas

A quick test to understand your viewpoint in today’s bizarre political media landscape.

It was a political year in which up was often down, and right masqueraded frequently as left. The year 2016 then wrapped up with a steady stream of diametrically opposed media stories all clamoring for recognition as “the truth.”

The mainstream media featured incessant talk of “fake news,” and pundits propounded conspiracy theories about Russians hacking email servers. The independent media continued to analyze piles of evidence showing collusion on the part of the mainstream media and the two political parties who ran the worst presidential campaign in modern American politics.

With all this news and theory swirling around, some of which must be false, it has become difficult to know at any one time whether you’re reading the news correctly, whether you’re seeing the role of the media itself clearly, or whether there’s a Matrix-like veil obscuring your comprehension of national events.

Here’s a quick test to determine whether

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Beyond the media spin, the four reasons for this defeat.

As the aphorism goes, if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. While the corporate media continues to peddle hysteria, the most important thing right now is to rationally understand why Clinton and the Democrats lost this eminently winnable 2016 race for the White House.

Having taken some time to look back over the past six months, I list below what I believe are the four main underlying reasons for this defeat. As it turns out, none of the reasons is particularly complicated, but each will require consideration and systemic change by the party over the next two years.

1. The DNC subverted democracy. This was an anti-establishment year in politics, and there was an anti-establishment candidate running in both major parties. Trump was (barely) allowed to win the primary on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, despite Bernie’s obvious strength and the clear preference of the grassroots, the primary was rigged to put the less popular, establishment candidate forward. It was a colossal risk to take, but the party (more…)

Democracy is not an exact science. There are countless things one might wish to say with a vote, but a single vote for one candidate or another communicates with little precision. In 2016, this wild presidential election, given everything we’ve seen from leaks to gropes to voting purges to visiting Popes, examining what the candidates have done and what they verbally stand for is about all we can do in determining what our one vote will say.

To many voters, given the chicanery and the poor choices, the election is an illegitimate exercise at this point. More on that in a minute.

For now, since by all accounts the election will go forward on Tuesday, let’s consider what a vote for each candidate says to the ruling establishment and our representatives. Since there isn’t a perfect candidate for most of us, our vote says in essence what we’re OK with, what we can tolerate:

• A vote for Donald Trump says: I’m OK with racism, homophobia, and religious scapegoating, with bullying, sexism, and mocking the political system, with global corporate rule, and ignoring climate change, and with voting for a candidate who doesn’t have elective political experience, so long as the candidate has a strong chance of winning, isn’t Hillary Clinton, and is from the nominally conservative major party.

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Evidence of election fraud always starts with exit polls.

Exit polls are the most important polls the media commissions. Throughout this fifty-state 2016 Democratic primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the exit polls have shown again and again that the way people have voted, on the one hand, and the way the computerized counting machines have recorded votes, on the other hand, have differed significantly.

If you’re unfamiliar with exit polls, they are rigorous scientific instruments used throughout the world as a primary deterrent and safeguard against election fraud. While a few media pundits have written that exit polls only provide informal data for election-day media stories, that is far from their only purpose.

In Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, for instance, exit polls have been used to overturn elections. In Ukraine, when the recorded vote differed from the exit polls by more than 2%, people immediately knew something was amiss, there were protests in the streets, and the entire election was thrown out. The US State Department itself dubbed that Ukraine election fraudulent based largely on the variance from the exit polls. The State Department considers 2% to be the standard margin of error allowed for an election to be considered fair and authentic.

But for elections here in this country — even one involving a former head of the State Department itself — exit polls have been ignored by elections officials and the corporate media if they differ from the reported results. In state after state, (more…)

Mounting evidence indicates corruption and a stolen election.

Let us not mince words California. This has been a disgusting month for democracy here in our state. A massively important election was probably stolen via voter suppression and election fraud, and Hillary Clinton was prematurely named the winner. Are we going to stand for it?

Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters will all fight on, to the convention in July, and beyond. Sanders has made this clear during his speeches.

But the truth is, he shouldn’t have to fight on, at least not like this.

On June 7, Sanders not only won North Dakota and Montana, he probably also won California, as well as South Dakota and New Mexico.

It appears that the media, together with someone high up in the Democratic National Committee, conspired to, first, call the entire nomination on June 6, a day no one voted, and then to take advantage of cancelled exit polls — an essential check against fraud — to steal the election.

Worse, California seems to be another state in a string of suspicious elections.

For those of us who remain patriots, who still deeply treasure democracy, who remember the millions of people all over the world who have laid down their lives for this precious thing — the right to vote — we are at a crucial moment. (more…)

The Vermont Senator is poised to arrive at the Democratic convention as the stronger candidate to take on Trump.

Senator Bernie Sanders would defeat Donald Trump relatively easily in a general election, according to the latest polls. An average of the three most recent major polls predicts a victory of more than 14 points, which would be a landslide in modern presidential politics.

• CNN/ORC, May 1: Sanders obliterates Trump by 16 points
• IBD/TIPP, April 28: Sanders defeats Trump by 12 points
• USA Today/Suffolk, April 24: Sanders defeats Trump by 15 points

As the country adjusts to the notion that a xenophobic, racist billionaire will be the Republican candidate for the presidency in November, no doubt many hope the strongest candidate emerges from the Democratic Party to defeat him.

The polls are clear on who that candidate is.

And at this point, it isn’t just (more…)