Frankly, no one should be surprised to see Henry Cuellar or Fil Vela on this list of shameful Democrats crossing party lines to support the xenophobic anti-refugees, but reading Lloyd Doggett's name on this list is heartbreaking.

Interesting article! Here's an excerpt:

Speaking on his political philosophy at Georgetown yesterday, the Vermont senator and Democratic Presidential candidate opened with a long invocation of Franklin Roosevelt and the social protections that the New Deal created: minimum wages, retirement benefits, banking regulation, the forty-hour workweek. Roosevelt’s opponents attacked all these good things as “socialism,” Sanders reminded his listeners.... “Let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me,” Sanders said. “It builds on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans.”


This isn’t the first time Sanders has defined his position from the right flank of history. Pressed in the most recent Democratic debate to say how high he would take the marginal income tax, Sanders answered that it would be less than the ninety (actually ninety-two) per-cent level under the Eisenhower Administration. He added, to cheers and laughter, “I’m not that much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower.”... Bernie Sanders’s socialism is Eisenhower’s and F.D.R.’s world if Reagan had never happened: economic security updated by the continuing revolutions in gender, cultural pluralism, and the struggle for racial justice. In a word, Denmark... The mid-century political settlement between government and markets that Eisenhower took for granted never really had a name. ... “Welfare capitalism,” which is a pretty accurate name for a market system that redistributes for common benefit, sounds like the worst of both worlds. “Socialism” is historically inaccurate, and using it to name Eisenhower-era welfarism may come at the cost of further burying its other, more radical meanings. But some of the term’s appeal, as a name for Sanders’s program, is that it sounds more radical than it is. ... In this way, Sanders’s use of the word harkens back to pre-Soviet, even pre-Marxist socialism. Then the term named a clutch of objections to industrial capitalism: the physical toll of the jobs, the equal and opposite toll of unemployment and economic crisis, widespread poverty and insecurity in a world where some lived in almost miraculous luxury. ... Eisenhower’s world lacked a name for its settlement between government and markets partly because that settlement was the new normal, and the normal doesn’t need a name. Mature capitalism was supposed to produce only a moderate level of inequality. A strong government, staffed by public-minded experts, would iron out economic wrinkles. The remaining problems for reformers were remedial: bringing in previously excluded populations, especially African-Americans and isolated Appalachians. For those already on the inside, the challenges were those of what the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith called “the affluent society”: how to want less, enjoy life more, and help build a post-materialist paradise of humanism. It is no coincidence that L.B.J., who supported the civil-rights movement and launched the War on Poverty, also promoted the National Endowment for the Humanities to enrich the lives of those whose historical labors were over. He described his Great Society program as seeking an economy that satisfied “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community,” where “the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

That is the lost world to which Sanders’s “socialism” points back. The return of the label, though, doesn’t mean that anyone knows how to get more radical than tacking toward Scandinavian social democracy, with its socialized health care and higher education and generous family leave. Sanders isn’t much of a socialist compared to F.D.R., either. At the heart of Roosevelt’s program was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which greatly strengthened the hand of unions, essential parts of every welfare-capitalist order in the twentieth century, from Scandinavia to Canada. Sanders, astonishingly, didn’t once mention unions in his Georgetown speech. Roosevelt proposed a maximum income of twenty-five thousand dollars (the equivalent of about four hundred thousand dollars today), which we won’t be hearing from Sanders. Sander’s socialism is a national living wage, free higher education, increased taxes on the wealthy, campaign-finance reform, and strong environmental and racial-justice policies.... The heart of Sanders’s program, like F.D.R.’s, is economic security: like F.D.R., he argues that “true freedom does not occur” without it. In the same way, he sees a strong government as protecting individualism from an economy that bats people around like the gods in Greek dramas. Calling this once mainstream idea socialism is a way of saying how far it feels from where we find ourselves now, how radical a step it would be to get back to it.

Source: NBC News





Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-hillary-clinton-holds-steady-support-among-democrats-n466641

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I'm not someone who puts much faith in nationwide polling in a primary race, especially when the first votes to be cast are still months away, but I'm glad to see steady progress.

land or were they seeking promote Catholicism and Anglicanism by their bombs and bullets?

Does anyone believe ISIL's beheadings and its blowing up of the Russian passenger plane and its terrorism in Paris were an effort to promote Islam?

The current "war against Radical Islam" phony theme pushed by the Republicans and appropriately rejected by President Obama (and candidates Clinton, Sanders, and O'Malley) is addressed today by the New Republic in The GOP’s Obsession With ‘Radical Islam’:

The deadly attacks in Paris last week, followed by the second Democratic primary debate over the weekend, reignited a Republican obsession, unique to the Obama era, with the claim that U.S. leaders can’t defeat jihadi terrorism unless they identify the perpetrators with highly prescriptive language.

This obsession arose after the George W. Bush presidency precisely because Bush and his security advisers recognized the humane and strategic value in avoiding anti-Muslim incitement. As a Republican, Bush was able to mostly keep a lid on the kind of rhetoric his party now espouses unapologetically.

Republicans specifically claim, without a shred of evidence, that referring to ISIS fighters as “radical Islamic terrorists” isn’t just nomenclature, but a strategic prerequisite to vanquishing them.

Source: Huffington Post



Interviewed in February 2014, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that Syrian refugees should be permitted into the United States and argued that this could be done without jeopardizing national security.

"We have welcomed refugees -- the tired, huddled masses -- for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States," he told Fox News in a video featured on Cruz's website. "We should continue to do so." He added: "We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that."

Since last week's Paris attacks, the GOP presidential candidate has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration's policy to permit some Syrian refugees into the United States.

"It is nothing less than lunacy,” Cruz said on Saturday, citing security concerns. "It makes no sense whatsoever for us to be bringing in refugees who our intelligence cannot determine if they are terrorists here to kill us or not. Those who are fleeing persecution should be resettled in the Middle East in majority Muslim countries."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-syrian-refugees_564d279ae4b031745cefd25f?utm_hp_ref=politics

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Ted Cruz: worst person in the world

I like president Obama, and I'd take a third Obama term, but that is not an option.

Since we are going to have to replace Obama, we could either replace him with someone who is more of a pacifist or someone who is more hawkish. I prefer the former (Sanders) and not the later (Clinton).

We could replace Obama with someone who supports more regulation of the financial institutions as compared to Obama's regulatory policy or someone who supports less regulation of financial institutions as compared to Obama. I prefer the former (Sanders) and not the later (Clinton).

We could replace Obama with someone who would be less inclined than Obama to put US labor and manufacturers in unfair competition with foreign products that are cheaper because the foreign companies do not have to comply with worker rights and wages up to US standards of living and environmental protections or someone who would be more inclined than Obama to put US labor and manufacturers in unfair competition with foreign products. I prefer the former (Sanders) and not the later (Clinton).

Since Obama cannot run for a third term, we can either progress past Obama or retreat back from Obama. I prefer the former (Sanders) and not the later (Clinton).

Source: Fox News

Bernie Sanders.....45%
Hillary Clinton......44%
Martin O’Malley......5%



Donald Trump.......27%
Marco Rubio.........13%
Ted Cruz..............11%
Jeb Bush...............9%
Ben Carson...........9%
John Kasich...........7%
Chris Christie.........6%
Carly Fiorina..........3%
Rand Paul..............3%
Lindsey Graham......1%
Mike Huckabee.......1%
Rick Santorum........1%

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2015/11/18/fox-news-poll-trump-sanders-lead-respective-primaries-in-new-hampshire/

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For those who would prefer The Hill's report on the same polling conducted by Anderson Robbins Research (a Democratic pollster) and Shaw & Company Research (a Republican pollster), here's a link:

Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire poll


Also, this polling is reported by, and included within aggregate polling of, Huffington Post's pollster as well as Real Clear Politics so you can go there to get your polling if you prefer.

I like Bill Clinton; he did many great things. I like Hillary Clinton; she has also accomplished great things. But if the primary is about ideology, the Clintons fall near the mid-point between my views and Jeb Bush's views.

We are entitled to campaign for a more progressive candidate.

Also, we need not have blinders to the fact that Bill Clinton was not a particularly liberal President, and we are right to ask where Hillary Clinton stands on issues where Bill Clinton left a legacy disappointing to progressive and liberal Democrats:

1. the Defense of Marriage Act
2. the North American Free Trade Agreement
3. deregulation of the financial industries
4. a worse welfare system than under Ronald Reagan
5. harsh criminal sentencing without judicial discretion (and the explosion of the private prison industry)
6. expanded use of the death penalty
7. expanded use of drug possession criminalization

If Bill Clinton was disappointing on these issues, why should we expect Hillary Clinton to serve as our standard bearer on issues of key importance to many of us?

ratings in the polls.

Current favorable/unfavorable polling: Clinton has a 41% favorable poll rating and 52% unfavorable poll rating (for a -11% net unfavorable rating).

Historic favorable/unfavorable polling: Clinton had a 52% favorable poll rating and a 45% unfavorable poll rating (for a +7% net favorable rating) in Nov. 2007.

Meanwhile, Sanders has a net positive favorable rating (+4%) that is 15% better than Clinton's net negative (-11%) rating.

For those who keep insisting 2007 isn't 2015 -- NO SHIT; WE'VE NOTICED.

Wow! Clinton's lead is INSURMOUNTABLE! Here is a great article from November 16:

PRINCETON , NJ -- In the national standings of the Democratic presidential candidates seeking their party's nomination next year, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to hold a strong 27-point lead over second-place rival Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, according to a new Gallup Poll. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards remains further behind in third place.

Of course, this is a Gallop news article from November 16, 2007.

Why do people feel obligated to deny that Clinton was in the same position* in 2007 that she currently occupies?


*When I refer to Clinton being in the "same position" in 2007, I don't mean to imply she is in the identical position. Obviously, Clinton's favorablity polling numbers were MUCH stronger in 2007.