Area51 Board (non-moderated) at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Sounds like Fuzz will vote for Bernie if it is a Trump vs. Sanders event.

Any other Bernie supporters out there?
I'm thinking of moving back to the US in the next few years.
My calculus may very well change if Bernie takes power....

I might argue it's impossible for this NOT to be the case in politics to some extent, but it depends somewhat on what one means by "fraud".  Hillary was the largest "fraud" I've ever seen in US politics, a person devoted to gaining power by any means and with the capability to do it.  I don't know how much she was interested in money per se as opposed to power. 

Sanders appears to have been a low level fraud who gamed the System to enrich himself but he does not strike me as power hungry, and he's not THAT wealthy.  I see him as a fraud in  terms of not being who he presents himself to be.  I don't want to frame him as being a socialist though he calls himself that of course.

I'd say he has done pretty well for himself since he didn't have a paying job until he was 40 and got elected mayor.

We usually don't go out until at least 9 AM and get back by 3:30 PM, and use the side roads a fair bit, and it's not bad at all.  We also can walk anywhere we need to go, usually, except Costco of course.  

Yesterday was an exception.

In the morning I walked to a Great Clips for a haircut.  They do a decent enough job for me.

So, "democratic socialism", which Bernie very clear avows is his philosophy, in his head is about wealth redistribution.  He clearly admits to that moniker, so I see zero reason not to call him what he claims to be.

In my mind, his views are about greed, HIS greed, and capitalizing on the belief by many that some folks have a lot and they should give it up so I can have more.  The thought that I should have what someone else owns is greed and envy.

It also of course is a disastrous economic policy if taken to its logical "extremes".  It requires totalitarianism where the wealthy who earned something are replaced by the wealthy who managed to find their way into the Politburo and have their own dachas and special stores.

Sweden, which drifted Left in the 1990s corrected that and went back to a substantially free market economy today and is doing reasonably well with it.  I'm not sure the usual progression is likely to allow such a correction, in general the drift is to socialism and totalitarianism and disaster.

I'd ask Bernie if he thinks the oil companies should be nationalized.  Have his views changed over time or does he still really believe this?  I think he has just tried to soften his words and added a LOT of vague notional things to be more palatable.  To me, he is extremely vague in what he actually puts out there, including his web site "positions" which he paid someone to prepare.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html

Bernie Sanders advocated for the nationalization of most major industries, including energy companies, factories, and banks, when he was a leading member of a self-described "radical political party" in the 1970s, a CNN KFile review of his record reveals.
Sanders' past views shed light on a formative period of his political career that could become relevant as he advances in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Many of the positions he held at the time are more extreme compared to the more tempered democratic socialism the Vermont senator espouses today and could provide fodder for moderate Democrats and Republicans looking to cast the Democratic presidential candidate and his beliefs as a fringe form of socialism that would be harmful to the country.

In my OPINION, he's not at all bright or savvy.  He might be clever enough to be told "Hey, Bernie, how about we do THIS and your wife gets $$$$!" and he goes along with it.  Maybe someone suggested it to his wife, whatever.  I personally don't think Bernie would have contrived this on his own.

Apparently, we're told, he's only worth $3 million or so.  A clever person in Congress would have amassed far more than that by now.  And most of that money apparently came from book sales (same with the Obamas, there is a lot of money in this book thing).

Of course, it is possible I underestimate his IQ by a lot, but I personally see little evidence of that.

If we consider the Nordic countries as "social democracies", that isn't a fact, and Sweden and Denmark actually instituted free market reforms in the 1990s.

Macron would like to do something similar but can't.