Amy Klobuchar suspended her presidential campaign today, a day after Pete B. and two days after Tom Steyer.

"Faux-Dem" Mike B. is blanketing the airwaves in every Super Tuesday state. I wonder if we will see commercials with Barbra Streisand and Clint Eastood, both of whom are supporting him.

I think Elizabeth will be next to fold. But at 2 pm today MT, she tweeted out a request for funds saying she's in.

The question is, if Elizabeth drops tomorrow or Wednesday and throws her support to Bernie, can they and Bernie's "army of supporters" prevail against Biden and Bloomberg?

One thing to keep in mind: The millions of people who voted early in California. I think Bernie will get most of the early voters as Biden was a dying duck until South Carolina.

I finally decided who to vote for and dropped off my ballot today. I voted for one of the two candidates who most share my political agenda and whom I believe has the ability if elected to move us in a progressive direction.[More...]

I guess we're not done with primary coverage tonight after all. Pete B. has suspended his campaign, saying the math is just not there. He also threw some shade on Bernie Sanders. Bernie on the other hand had nothing but praise for him.

Back in her home state of Minnesota, Amy K. cancelled a rally because Black Lives Matter took over the stage and according to her campaign, wouldn't relinquish it after an hour as the group had promised to do. Polls now show Amy K. may get beaten by Bernie in her home state.

My advice: Instead of freaking out over Bernie, Dems should examine what his supporters believe a Bernie presidency might look like.

While I'm still deciding who to vote for Tuesday, I do believe Bernie best represents the Democratic values I grew up with and that he is trying to bring Dems together, rather than encouraging each minority faction to go its own way. People-powered politics can beat Donald Trump if we pick a candidate who makes the tent big enough to hold all Democrats - young, old, citizen or immigrant, black, brown, latino or white, college student or factory worker, and on and on, rather than favoring one group or issue over the others.

Let's make sure we all realize who the enemy is, and that he's not in here, he's outside this room.

I spent half the afternoon writing the absurdly long media open thread below, and then had two posts in a row on the primaries, so here's an open thread for all other topics, without making you scroll forever to reach the bottom.

Enough today about the Democratic primary. It's not like there's one totally desirable candidate we are all jumping up and down for.

In the TV department, here's what I've watched lately and can recommend:

"The Last Thing He Wanted", a film based on the book by my most favorite author, Joan Didion. It stars Anne Hathaway, William DaFoe, Ben Affleck and Rosie Perez. Hathaway plays a liberal journalist in the mid 1980's whose father, an arms smuggler to Central America (Nicaragua, Salavador, etc) cons her into making a trip on her own. Vague on details, she is supposed to collect $1 million for what he insists will be his last ever "deal".

I had read some reviews that said it was so fast-paced that at times it was hard to keep track of the plot. So before watching, I re-read the first three chapters of the book to remind myself what it was about (While I first read "Play it As it Lays" in 1971 and have probably re-read it every year or two since then and can probably recite large sections of it, this book I barely remembered. The Denver Public library has it instantly available to download as an E-book which I did, and then watched the movie. [More...]

I keep seeing news articles about record turnouts in South Carolina. More people may have voted but the state hardly deserves praise. The state has 3.3 million Registered Voters and only 16% (500,000 of them) voted in yesterday's primary. 256k voters picked Biden, 105K picked Bernie, 60k chose Steyer, 48k picked Pete, 27k chose Warren, and 16k chose Amy. Biden got 44% of the votes.

In 2016, 371,000 Dems voted in the S.C. primary, and Hillary got 272,000 votes (57%).So notwithstanding lower turnout in 2016, Hillary got more votes than Biden did. Bernie got 96k votes, while this year Bernie got 105k votes, showing that Bernie brought out 20% of the vote on his own.

No one is mentioning the Latino vote which overwhelmingly has gone to Sanders so far. Or that in California alone, 25 million people are eligible to vote on Super Tuesday. Texas has 15 million eligible to vote. These two states have the largest number of Latino voters. [More...]

The New York Times reports Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the South Carolina primary.

In second place right now is Tom Steyer, who spent $18.5 million on ads in the state. Then Bernie and Elizabeth. Then Amy and Pete.

More important than Biden, Sanders and Bloomberg, all of whom will be 78 by January, is who they would pick as their running mate. There is certainly no second term for any of them. [More...]

Update: 6:55 pm MT: Bloomberg is doing better thant last time so far. There are so many cheers for him I wonder whether he paid to fly them all in. Example: Bernie complains that Bloomberg and Trump are billionaires. The crowed boos!

It's Bash Bernie night. Bloomberg claims no moderate Republicans will vote for Bernie. Bloombert

Elizabeth has a plan for education. Amy is doing better than Elizabeth and Pete B. [More...]

I'm busy at work today, no time to read the news yet. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of one count of a first degree criminal sex act against Miriam "Mimi" Haley and one count of third degree rape as to Jessica Mann. He was found not guilty of the more serious predator sexual assault charges for which he could have received a life sentence. The reason for the acquittal on the top two charges: The jury did not believe Annabelle Sciorra's 30 year old account of what Weinstein did to her.

The first degree criminal sexual act charge carries a penalty of 5 to 25 years in prison. The third degree rape charge is punishable by anywhere from probation to up to 4 years.

In order to convict him on the more serious sexual predator charges, the jury would have had to have believed Annabelle Sciorra that he raped her 30 years ago and with respect to Jessica Mann, that he had committed the more serious first degree rape charge against her. That they acquitted him on all three of those charges is a testament to the work by his defense team.

[More....]

Nevada is voting today. Bernie Sanders seems to be the favorite. I'm still sitting on my mail ballot, waiting for a epithany to tell me who to vote for.

Here's a short poll.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Roger Stone today to 40 months in prison.

• COUNT 1 - 40 MONTHS
• COUNT 2 to 6 -- 12 MONTHS
• COUNTS 7 -- 18 MONTHS
  all to run concurrently*

Stone will remain free, at least for now while she still has a motion for new trial pending. (His motion for new trial based on the supposed juror misconduct issue was roundly denied by the Judge last week. Here is a copy of the Order.

The Government today seemed to back off its revised sentencing memo a bit by agreeing with the judge that some enhancements applied. Still, the sentence she imposed was inline with the Government's lower revised sentencing memo.

There's a lot of talk that Trump may pardon Stone if Judge Jackson does not grant his subsequent motions for new trial.

The Democrats and Mike Bloomberg will debate tonight in Las Vegas. Tom Steyer will not as he failed to qualify. It will air on NBC and MSNBC.

Everyone expects Bloomberg to be a major focus of the debate. I think it would be more fun if the moderators just didn't call on him so he got little air time. I'd like to see the Dems on stage ignore him as well, treating him like the interloper he is.

Of course that is not happening. Elizabeth Warren just blasted him. Amy Klobuchar is self-obsessed. She answers every question talking about herself.

Bloomberg "I can take out an arrogant con-man like Donald Trump". [More...]