November 14, 2015

Excellent 10-Min. on ISIS/Paris on Bill Mayer, w/ Jay Leno, Michael Steele, and Dylan Rattigan - Rec

Mayer sets-up with question: "WHY DO THEY HATE US?" .. and many great points are made by the panel and by Bill.
******HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!*****


The question was posed to panelists Jay Leno, Michael Steele, and Dylan Rattigan. Bill said:

“We don’t have every bit of information, the last body count I heard was over 150. When the Charlie Hebdo thing happened the week after everybody said ‘Je suis Charlie.’ But not really. They didn’t really stick with them… I’m gonna ask you this question that people asked after 9/11, because I don’t think we really know the answer: Why do they hate us?”

The tension was only broken when the panel said nothing to the question posed, and the host laughingly observed:

“I stumped the panel.” ... but then a great 10 minute exchange of views ensued ...

November 13, 2015

Bernie is for real

Bernie is for real
Daily Kos * Nov. 13, 2015

It's time to break out of the straight jacket of incremental progress or none at all. We are told that we must support the establishment democrat or get stuck with a crazy republican. Either way, the establishment wins. And the people lose.



What are we to do? Rise up and start fighting back, that's what. As Bernie says, he can’t do it alone. If all we do is elect him and then sit back and expect him to do it, we’re sunk. It’s the uprising, the grassroots movement to not only elect Sanders but to also fill the house and senate with politicians who will work with him and continue to be involved at the citizen activist level that’s important. This is what Bernie is exhorting us to do.



Yes, President Obama (not to take from him any of the credit he is due) said the same thing about building a permanent grassroots movement but then he turned his back on the grassroots on day one and took up the banner of the establishment 1%. We know Bernie won’t do this. In 40 years in politics, he has never turned his back on the people. Bernie and his grassroots movement are for real. Bernie is a legitimate anti-establishment candidate. The fact that he's a senator doesn't change that. He's anti-establishment because of the positions he takes, but more importantly, because he's refusing to take dirty money or corporate money. He will be the first president in my lifetime to belong to the people and the people only.

How many other presidential candidates in our times have ever explicitly rejected Big Money or corporate money? None, zip, zero – that's how many. It's unprecedented, never happened before. People laughed, people mocked, they said it was foolhardy and would doom his candidacy. But what really happened?

He has kept neck and neck with the Goldman Sachs candidate raising nearly as much as her from the American people as she has from Wall Street and the 1%. Bernie Sanders has now had more individual donations than any other candidate for president ever at this point in the race. His money is from us, the 99%. He is in no one's pocket. He will be modern history's first and only candidate to be beholden only to the American people. They keep saying it can't be done and he keeps doing it.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/13/1449506/-Bernie-is-for-real

November 12, 2015

Blue Linings on the Red Cloud: Democracy Beats Oligarchy

The headline's laughable over-statement about "democracy beating oligarch" aside, this is still encouraging to read.

Democracy Beats Oligarchy
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 * The Washington Post * by Katrina vanden Heuvel

“From coast to coast, conservatives score huge victories,” announced a Washington Post headline after last week’s elections. “Liberals Got Smoked Across the Country Last Night,” read another in Slate.

The post-election media narrative has focused on setbacks for progressives, including Democratic losses in Kentucky and Virginia, along with the failure of Houston’s equal-rights ordinance. Yet, while it was a disappointing election night for the Democratic Party, it was also a promising one for democracy, as voters across the country acted decisively to reform the electoral process and fight the corrosive influence of money in politics.

In Ohio, a purple state with a conservative Republican governor, 71 percent of voters supported a constitutional amendment to outlaw the partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts and create a bipartisan redistricting commission. The overwhelming transpartisan support for the amendment is particularly heartening considering how clearly the old rules favored Republicans, who hold commanding majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Indeed, as Nation correspondent John Nichols pointed out, “even though Democratic President Barack Obama and Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown won big statewide victories in 2012, there was no parallel shift to the Democrats when it came to state legislative races.”

Fifty-five percent of Maine voters cast their ballots to strengthen the “clean election” law passed in 1996, which established a voluntary system of public financing. For nearly two decades, the law has empowered ordinary citizens such as progressive state Rep. Diane Russell, a former cashier, to run for office, but recent court rulings and budget cuts have conspired to weaken the system. Local activists worked with national reform groups, such as Every Voice and Common Cause, to build support for the ballot initiative, which provides additional funding for public financing and stronger disclosure requirements. Notably, the measure was fiercely opposed by right-wing Gov. Paul LePage, who called it a “scam.”

And on the other side of the country, Seattle, which previously made history as the first city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, continued its trend of passing bold reforms with the potential to serve as a model for cities and states nationwide. By more than a 20-point margin, Seattle voters approved a novel public financing system in which the city’s residents will receive four “democracy vouchers” per election cycle worth $25 apiece. Voters can then “donate” their vouchers, which are funded with taxpayer money, to candidates for municipal office, who must in turn accept campaign spending limits and restrictions on private contributions.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/10/democracy-beats-oligarchy

November 12, 2015

10 Shocking Economic Facts that Power the Sanders Insurgency

Reading this list is a great reminder of why we need Bernie in the Oval Office asap.

10 Shocking Economic Facts that Power the Sanders Insurgency
These facts provide the glue for the Sanders message.
Nov. 10, 2015 * By Les Leopold * AlterNet

Why are so many drawn to the Sanders message? It's not because he's a political outsider. (He's a Senator who has spent his entire adult life in politics.) It's not because he's a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn. (Jews make up only about 2% of the American population.) And it's not because he's a self-declared socialist. (Few of us have any idea what that means in today's global economy.)

Rather, it's because so many of us want to stop our entire society from crumbling beneath the destructive power of runaway inequality.

Here are 10 crucial economic facts that provide the glue for the Sanders message. (The charts are taken from Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice.)

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/10-shocking-economic-facts-power-sanders-insurgency

November 12, 2015

We Need Weed: Veterans drop hundreds of empty pill bottles in front of the White House

Veterans drop hundreds of empty pill bottles in front of the White House
By Perry Stein * Washington Post * November 11, 2015

A couple dozen servicemen and women marched to the White House this Veterans Day and dumped a large box of empty pill containers, calling on the president and other federal officials to make medical marijuana accessible to veterans.

“Here’s what the over-medication of our veterans looks like,” they said as they spilled the canisters onto the floor. “We don’t want it.”

The veterans and protesters — affiliated with various veteran and marijuana advocacy organizations — argued that Veterans Affairs hospitals are over-medicating veterans, prescribing them a large number of psychoactive medications to treat PTSD. They marched from McPherson Square to the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters, then to the White House, some smoking joints along the way, which is illegal in D.C.

VA health-care providers can’t talk to their patients about medical marijuana options, even in states where there are legal medical marijuana programs. A bill in Congress, the Veterans Equal Access Amendment, would allow doctors to provide recommendations about participating in such state programs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/11/11/veterans-drop-hundreds-of-empty-pill-bottles-in-front-of-the-white-house/?postshare=1021447289362371

November 12, 2015

Speaking of women

Just saw this posted at the "Un-Official Brenie Sanders" Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/Sanders2016/?fref=photo

November 12, 2015

For EVERY One of these GOP Debates. The GOP & Their Candidates get 90% of 2-3 Days News Cycles.

.. of totally FREE advertising. It is absolutely dumbfounding to me that the Democratic Party
puts up with this shit. Do we WANT to lose?

Hillary people talk about how damned important it is to "KEEP THE GOP OUT of the White House in 2016!!!!!!";
so riddle me this: why is the DNC Darling candidate, Hillary Clinton, not standing up and saying "CUT IT OUT!"
to the DNC's throttle-hold on the Democratic Debate schedule, down to only 6 poorly scheduled (on weekends,
holidays, etc.) paltry debates?

I know Hillary said she "wouldn't object to more debates", or some such fluff; but that's a damn far cry from
coming into solidarity with Bernie and O'Malley and DEMANDING more debates, or get rid of DWS, so she
stops this insane obstructionism on this issue.

Sorry, but every time the GOP gets all this 100% free airtime it totally pisses me off all over again, so I had
to get this off my chest.

November 11, 2015

New McClatchy-Marist poll shows Bernie DESTROYING BOTH Bush AND Trump in Landslide Victories.

Check it out here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251795069

This looks very very good IMHO. K&R's would be most welcome.

November 11, 2015

McClatchy-Marist Poll: Bernie Sanders DESTROYS both Trump and Bush in Landslides.

Coat-tails baby.

In new shock poll, Sanders has landslides over both Trump and Bush
By Brent Budowsky, columnist * The Hill * Nov. 11, 2015

In a new McClatchy-Marist poll, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide margin of 12 percentage points, 53 to 41. In the McClatchy poll, Sanders also leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) by a landslide margin of 10 points, 51 to 41.

The huge Sanders advantage over Trump is not new. In the last four match-up polls between them reported by Real Clear Politics, Sanders defeated Trump by margins of 12, 9, 9 and 2 percentage points.

The huge Sanders advantage over Bush is new. In previous match-ups, the polling showed Sanders and Bush running virtually even, with Bush holding a 1-point lead over Sanders in most of the polls. Future polls will be needed to test whether the huge Sanders lead over Bush in the McClatchy poll will be repeated in future polling or whether the McClatchy poll is an outlier.

It is shocking that the data suggests that Sanders has a lead over Trump that could be SO HUGE that he would win a landslide victory in the presidential campaign, with margins that would almost certainly lead Democrats to regain control of the Senate and could help Democrats regain control of the House of Representative — if, of course, the three polls that show Sanders beating Trump by 9 to 12 points reflect final voting in the presidential election.

It would be equally shocking if future polling shows that the Sanders lead over Bush remains at landslide margins.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/259812-in-new-shock-poll-sanders-has-landslides-over-both

November 11, 2015

Harry Reid Joins Call For Obama To Take Action On Dark Money

I'd like to know where each of our 3 candidates in the Dem Primary stands on this.

____ * ____ * ____ * ____ * ____ * ____ * ____ * ____ *

Harry Reid Joins Call For Obama To Take Action On Dark Money
Democrats and reform groups want the president to issue an executive order on campaign finance disclosure.
Paul Blumenthal * Nov. 11, 2015 * HuffPo

WASHINGTON -- Democratic lawmakers, joined for the first time by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), have a message for President Barack Obama: Sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their political contributions, including those to groups not bound by campaign finance disclosure laws.

A video released on Wednesday by the liberal group American Family Voices shows 19 Democratic members of Congress reading a letter to the White House penned by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) back in June. Reid's appearance in the video is his first public statement urging the president to sign the executive order.

Reid’s endorsement of the movement, and the video, are part of a delivery of more than 800,000 petition signatures to the White House by groups supporting a political disclosure executive order that occurred on Tuesday. The groups include American Family Voices, Public Citizen, Every Voice, Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, MoveOn.org and Sierra Club. Supporters are encouraged to call the White House to support the disclosure order.

Proponents of the order see it as a potential piece to the president’s fourth quarter agenda of executive actions. They argue it will allow Obama's administration to put a stamp on an issue that he has largely ignored, aside from opting out of public financing for his general election run in 2008, which helped increase the amount of money in politics.

“Their legacy on this issue is something that they haven’t established yet,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.