The Washington Post is updating its ranking of 15 prospective Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Bernie Sanders maintaining his lead of the pack and Oprah Winfrey sinking to last place.



The news outlet updates its ranking quarterly, with the last tally posted in March.



(adding my horoscope scores, just for fun and reference)


Here’s the breakdown, from leader to least-likely:

1: Sanders: The independent Vermont senator will likely seek the Democratic nod in 2020 despite his refusal to run under the party banner as senator in Vermont’s August primary. (14-7)

2: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive, maintains 2nd place. (8-7)

3: California Sen. Kamala Harris, moves ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden, who held the spot in the last ranking.
(4-14)

4: Biden falls to fourth, but still maintains substantial name recognition, as recent polling showed.(13-6)

5: New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker holds onto fifth place, so far refusing to say even if he’ll toss his hat in the ring.(6-7)

6: New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand also remains in place on the listing, though her connection with the Clintons is fraught, the Post pointed out.(7-12)

7: Ex-Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick moves up two notches; he’s promised to make a decision on whether he wants to run by the end of the year, the Post reported.(9-6)

8: Ex-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe holds onto his ranking, as he works in the relatively low-profile job of trying to elect Democratic governors to prevent GOP-controlled redistricting, the Post reported.(11-2)

9: Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder moves up from March’s 12th place ranking, noting recently his nomination would pit “two guys from Queens” against each other in 2020, Fox News reported.(8-6)

10: Ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, breaks into the rankings as a billionaire who’s spending his dough on 2018 Democratic candidates so far.(8-5)

11: Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy falls from 7th place in March, keeping tabs on New York donors though he’s said he won’t run, according to The New York Times.(9-4?)

12: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sinks one notch in the ranking as he contends with a primary challenge from “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon.(11-6)

13: Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown dips from 10th place in March, though he maintains a big lead in the polls for his reelection over GOP challenger Rep. James Renacci, the Post reported.(19-8)

14: New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, in 13th place in the March listing, nevertheless “remains perhaps the most legitimate dark horse” in the race, the Post figures.(16-2)

15: Oprah Winfrey, who was in 14th place in the March ranking, comes in last in this listing, continuing to insist a run is out of the question.(10-3)

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A story I found in the online edition of In These Times presents opposing views on the arrival of self-driving cars, referred to as autonomous vehicles, or simply AVs. Following my own comments I post a link to the story for discussion purposes only. On the old forum I had a thread dedicated to whether we ever will be motivated to reduce auto dependency. Not only has not much changed since many had to wait in long lines to get gasoline nearly a half-century ago, but the expansion of what became known as the exurbs actually tended to increase auto dependency. This is something we really need to do but don't seem to have the political will to do so.

I began to feel angry and anxious as I was reading this story. Our overwhelming dependency on the automobile has in many areas made it more difficult to breathe despite the pollution saved when many of the once ubiquitous smokestacks began to disappear from the landscape during our conversion from an industrial to an information and services based economy. Less car ownership would release a lot of pent-up physical energy through physical movement, one of the things many health and wellness gurus kneel at the feet of. 

A few years ago when gas prices shot up substantially, I was beginning to explore the idea of just how high they would have to get to produce a significant drop in consumption. Most said the price would have to get to at least $7 per gallon before you would begin to see this happen. Suburban areas would need to embrace higher density housing in order to make mass transit feasible there; something they have resisted all along. We obviously can't continue to build our way out of congestion forever.


http://inthesetimes.com/features/self-dr...bolish-ice

This was a fun topic over on facebook and I thought I would bring it here as well.

Assuming that the Fourth Turning began in 2008, what are some things that belong wholly to this era? Here are some which I can think of.


Smartphones. Specifically, the large touchscreen form factor smartphone that made its famous debut with the first iPhone in the summer of 2007. I remember seeing people that summer that had one. They were few and far between, but they looked like the happiest people I had ever seen, delighted beyond belief with their shiny black rectangles. I got my black mirror in 2014 and I can’t imagine life without it.

Social media. Yes, there were social media sites back in the early 2000s. I am willing to admit that I had a MySpace page. But the big wave of near universal adoption began when Facebook became open to all adults in 2006. It was 2008 when I noticed everyone around me was joining, and I jumped right on that bandwagon. With smartphones making it ever easier to share immediate experiences, there are now multiple services in widespread use.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe. This one belongs squarely in the current era, as Iron Man was released in 2008. Only a few months later, the leaders of the free world were struggling to prevent global economic collapse. Things keep getting messier and messier in the real world, but in the MCU films the good guys always manage to avert catastrophe. At least until the after-credits sequence sets up the next plot twist.

Our Hate Mail

Are these trolls? Actual threats? How can anyone tell the difference, anyway?



Up until the moment on Thursday he allegedly murdered five Capital Gazette employees, Jarrod W. Ramos was in many ways a kind of media consumer known to every journalist in America. He hated the newspaper, and he set up a pseudonymous account on Twitter to say so, again and again. There, the surly nonsense he directed at the newspaper’s reporters sat alongside the ominous allusions to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, all of it adding up — to what, exactly? A troll campaign? An actual threat? How could anyone tell the difference, anyway?

Journalists who aren’t murdered get stuff like this in their inboxes and voicemails and Twitter mentions all the time. It was hard to know last night whether this was a reassuring thought or a terrifying one. At HuffPost, reporters have been doxed more than once. They get death threats. They’re photoshopped into gas-chamber cartoons. They receive obscene abuse in virtually every medium, many examples of which are reproduced uncensored here.

(Not in this post -- the racism, sexism, homophobia, scatology, religious bigotry, and violence to which the trolls allude
is in the source. Journalists, the people who can tell us the truth about corrupt, cruel, and dishonest leaders and shatter personality cults, are at risk).

Check the link to the Huffington Post if you wish. I will not relay the filthy language and disgusting images.

We need more of this kind of reporting.  

If this is today's society, can we change it?

Is it time for us to reassess how we've bee asserting ourselves in life? Do we know what it is we really want?

We have become more self-obsessed, more narrowly focused, as the public domain seems increasingly dangerous. This despite reports that incidents of personal violence have been decreasing. Seems like the opposite has happened as news programs are chock full of stories of mass shooting and murder-suicide incidents.

It is harder to help others than it used to be, and doing so in any structured way has become fraught with bureaucracy and barriers, so that where altruism still exists it is harder to express. Was this attitude originally fostered by the classic Smokey the Bear commercials? ONLY YOU can do it obviously applies to much more than just preventing forest fires. We have been thoroughly brainwashed to believe that we need to be constantly acting on our own behalf. We are also brainwashed to believe that we constantly need a purpose--something to strive toward. Leisurely pursuits seem to be more and more looked down upon, helping to make liars out of so many futurists who once predicted that the advanced technology most of us now kneel at the feet of would create increasing amounts of leisure time. Too much emphasis on work and productivity, however, can be aggressive and combative, and this in turn leaves us feeling weak and tired. Too little time and energy to explore what really turns you on and the higher purpose it can serve.

We increasingly devalue older people, while we live in an increasingly ageing society. Ageism still exists in employment despite laws that have been in place since the 1960s or 1970s. Employers have vast ways of getting around this so that any potential lawsuits can be very difficult. We have also devalued those who don't have high incomes despite the fact that racial or sexual slurs can cut off your livelihood as Roseanne Barr has found out along with many others.

A link to an Adobe articles which goes into greater depth can be found here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=time+to+...00&bih=749

Would love to hear some of your thoughts on all this.

Not too long ago I discovered an article concerning the homeless problem. Apparently many feel that the ravages of the tech industry, which has displaced numerous jobs over the past 25 years or so, is largely to blame. I have said for years that the nature of the job and housing markets plays a big role in creating this problem, as there are fewer jobs available which don't require higher education and/or specialized training. When there was a stronger manufacturing base you could go into a factory job right straight from high school and earn a decent living, especially in the days when labor unions were strong. Not only that, but workers seldom got fired for anything less than real serious offenses. Not so today. I am posting a link to an article I just found today for discussion purposes. In large cities including Chicago, gentrification of poor and working class districts has been rampant, and many of the new residents haven't had a call to venture into the unknown; therefore are without a doubt highly unaware of the magnitude of the problem. And I lay much of the blame at the feet of restrictive zoning ordinances which are specifically designed to keep alternative housing such as rooming houses out. The revival of rooming houses, if there ever is to be one, would go a long way toward solving much of this problem, especially acute in places such as Chicago with the harsh winters. We need a rising of consciousness of the issue, opening our minds in relating to others, allowing more room for the growth of alternative methods of solving this issue. Where do we go from here?


https://www.wired.com/story/big-tech-isn...all-of-us/

This forum is intended to show how great or near-great movies express (wittingly or otherwise) the turning theory. This can be at any stage of the cycle or within an era itself. There will be plenty of war movies, Westerns, science fiction, romantic comedies, musicals, and even horror stories may be introduced.

Please restrict yourself, though, to certifiably good or great movies. These need not be American movies or about America. Because most of us do not make a habit of watching schlock, and most of us are more familiar with great movies (like Casablanca or Cabaret) or even good ones (Superman I) than bad ones (like Gigli , Howard the Duck, or Superman III or IV)... let's stick to the ones we are more likely to have seen that we have cause to remember for reasons other than "How awful!". Or, "Oh, I remember seeing a wristwatch under the toga!"

The Fourth Turning text conceptual framework cites a catalyst as being an event which (sometimes combined with other events or things) can cause a TRIGGER within a Turning; redistributing public opinion in shocking and even revelatory ways.  Public opinion then determines mood and major public mood swing can indicate collective movement within the Turning. 

Is this a catalyst occurring right now?  Does it reveal any information or indicator concerning the what comes next?

Children Separated From Parents At The Border Heard In Heartbreaking New Audio
An eight-minute audio clip released by ProPublica features a U.S. Border Patrol agent making jokes about an “orchestra” of wailing children.

By Doha Madani

ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, published audio on Monday of children crying out for their parents at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility.

The nearly eight-minute recording is of 10 Central American children who were separated from their parents last week by immigration authorities at the border, according to ProPublica.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent can be heard in the audio clip making a joke about the wailing children.

“Well, we have an orchestra here,” the agent says. “What’s missing is a conductor.”

The person who made the recording asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, ProPublica reports. HuffPost has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

At one point in the clip, a 6-year-old Salvadoran girl begs a consulate worker to call her aunt, whose number she’d memorized in case she was separated from her family.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pro...b9e9a3d035

“My mommy says that I’ll go with my aunt and that she’ll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible,” the unidentified girl says.

President Donald Trump’s administration announced the family separation policy in May as a part of a “zero tolerance” crackdown on illegal immigration to the United States. The practice of taking children from parents who illegally enter the country has ignited bipartisan backlash.

Trump has blamed Democrats amid mounting criticism, saying the crackdown was a result of inaction on border security in Congress. However, the family separations are entirely the result of Trump administration policy.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also falsely purported the claim that the Trump administration’s tactic of taking children from their families at the border was an enforcement of the law.

There is no law requiring immigrant families to be separated, even if they are crossing the border illegally. Previous administrations allowed families to face deportation proceedings together in civil court.
 
Nielsen said at a Monday press briefing that she did not hear the recording of the children and referred reporters to the department’s “standards” in treating the kids.

New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi played the audio in the background while Nielsen defended the family separation policy. 



“I would have waited until I was called on to play it, but I was not being called on,” Nuzzi wrote on Twitter. “After another reporter’s phone began loudly ringing with a melodic jingle, I figured the briefing room could probably deal with a more important disturbance.”
Family separation ordered by the administration has resulted in nearly 2,000 children being separated from their parents in six weeks. There have been 1,995 children taken from 1,940 adults at the border from April 19 to May 31, The Associated Press reported.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially announced the change in policy in May, though some cases indicate the practice was in place for months before. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in February on behalf of a Congolese asylum-seeker who was separated from her 7-year-old daughter. The ACLU is seeking a nationwide injunction to stop the Trump administration’s policy, claiming it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process.