Hillary Clinton LEADING Bernie Sanders 15-13 in New Hampshire Delegates (90% reporting)

Huffington Post ^ | 2/10/16

[drewh]

she's gonna steal it from Bernie with the super delegates!

Candidate

Votes

%

Delegates

Sanders ✓

138,414

60.0

13 •••••••••••••

Clinton

88,623

38.4

15 •••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

28 of 32 delegates accounted for in New Hampshire.

HuffPost counts unpledged delegates who have publicly stated their intent to vote for a candidate. More info »

[drewh]

30 of 32 delegates now awarded. its a 15-15 tie, time for the coin flips!

[Persephone Kore]

I looked up the name Persephone. The etymology isn't certain, but it seems to mean something like "thresher of grain", which makes sense considering that she's a spring goddess of vegetation, and the daughter of Demeter, goddess of grains and the harvest.

An alternative meaning that is sometimes proposed is "bringer of death" (she was kidnapped by Hades and became queen of the underworld). This doesn't appear to be right though. Even if it were, this wouldn't refer to the demise of men rather than women; it would be death in general (for both men and women).

In no uncertain terms: my FR name Persephone Kore is not a reference to Tumblrina-style social justice warrior.

[lentulusgracchus]

Yes, "kore" means girl, maiden (males were "kouroi") ..... Robert Graves, when I wasn't writing I, Claudius and Claudius the God, was interested in, and wrote about, mythology, mosty Greek, but as it turns out, mythology overspread several countries and peoples and was more a continuum of belief. Herakles Melikertes celebrated by sailors on Crete turns out to be Phoenician Melqart, hence the devotions of sailors, so many of whom were Phoenicians.

Graves did a lot of linguistic work on Greek names and published a two-volume (the paperback version) tome on mythology that featured a demystification and explanation of many Greek names. -phonos, -ctonos were "killer/destroyer" names, -mache meant battle (Hector's wife was named Andromache, "man-battle"), from which the outlines of early Greek and, behind it, pre-Greek ("Pelasgian") social history could be seen. Men fought for wives, for the right to mate with queens; and the queens destroyed their mates at the end of the lunar year, in the 13th lunar month, the "unlucky" month, as the pre-Greek calendar of the Mother Goddess was divided into lunations, the 13th being the month in which the queen/priestess's king died in a sham-up combat with the new champion (outcomes were rigged by drugging the old king and giving him dulled weapons, etc.).

After the combat, the old king was either thrown into a cleft in the earth (not hard to divine that symbolism) or, during the midsummer's night orgy, cut into thirteen parts and eaten raw by the zonked and crazy priestesses, whom later Greeks called Maenads. There was a lot of dark stuff in there, severed body parts and dead men ritually slaughtered by their sister/mothers/wives.

In fact, monogamous marriage was a countervailing defense thrown up by men, so Graves and others say, and a way to curb the violent and murderously misandristic habits of their sisters/mothers/wives.

They never quite bottled it up, though -- midsummer's night remained a dangerous time until the end of antiquity and the triumph of Judaeo-Christian ethics.

[lentulusgracchus]

The deck is stacked in her favor, and the reason is probably money and her promises to these backers.

Some FReepers may remember the Designated Loser candidates' experience with the GOP nominating process in 2012, with similar tactics being used by the e-GOP to guarantee we got Mittens shoved down our throats.

So far, I see no evidence in FReepers' postings that there is a shared general knowledge in their forebrains that we are likely to get as screwed as Bernie is, no matter who wins the primary beauty contests. It will be demanded of us, in August, that we swear fealty to Yeb! or Marco or whoever the e-GOP flatworms decide to rally around.

[lentulusgracchus]

I'm glad your screen name doesn't indicate a SJW on FR ..... actually, your screen name antedates the fungal beginnings of "social justice" by several centuries, two or three millennia even.

[Persephone Kore]

Interesting stuff....

The "bringer of death" meaning for Persephone is given in many sources, but I'm doubtful. This does seem to match her position as queen of the underworld, Hades' wife, but not so much her primary rôle as spring, or spring growth, personified.

Wikipedia says that the name Persephone probably has a pre-Greek origin, related to "thresher of grain", and the myriad Greek names she was known under was due to the difficulty Greeks had with the foreign name.

If that's right, it suggests that "bringer of death" was a folk etymology in ancient Greece, deduced after the fact (and incorrectly) based on what the name Persephone sounded like to the ancient Greeks and given impetus by her marriage to Hades.