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As Clinton pushed Panama deal amid warnings, Sanders opposed it citing tax haven/secrecy http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-speech-by-sen-bernie-sanders-on-unfettered-free-trade …
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Published on Apr 4, 2016
"Bernie Sanders comes to us in a moment of crisis of credibility in the American political system...people feel like they have given up on the system, and that is exactly what the bad guys want us to do, they want us to give up on the system." - Mark Ruffalo

There are fine reasons to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Some of the smartest people I know are behind her, and I appreciate their enthusiasm for what would be a historic achievement. I know, too, the long history of sexism and partisan attacks she has withstood. She’s shown amazing resilience.

But time is short and the stakes are high, and I want to focus on a pattern of her claiming to be a progressive Democrat while taking positions that are too often more closely aligned with the other side of the aisle, and on a record that I worry makes her a real longshot if she’s our nominee.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/22/1489185/-The-Definitive-Encyclopedic-Case-For-Why-Hillary-Clinton-is-the-Wrong-Choice

For decades now, we liberals have been shaking our heads in wonder at the working stiffs who give the rich pashas atop the GOP their votes. There’s hardly a liberal alive who can’t recite what’s the matter with Kansas: the parable of the downtrodden whites in their double-wides, so enraged by their dwindling slice of the American pie that they vote for hucksters who vow to keep Negro hands off their lily white daughters, homosexual hands off their wedding cakes, Mexican-rapist hands off their orchards, atheist hands off their crèches, guvmint hands off their assault weapons. The hucksters, with the votes in hand, go off to D.C. and sock it to the suckers who sent them there—shipping their jobs abroad, rigging the tax code against them, gutting their schools, taking swipes at their Social Security and Medicare. It’s not that the con men don’t throw the rubes some nourishing scraps. They block a bill to register firearms here, pass a Defense of Marriage Act there, decry the War on Christmas with their fellow shriekers on Fox. Donald John Trump is just the latest in a long parade of flimflammers to adopt the Southern Strategy. His only innovations are speaking bluntly rather than in code and cranking up the volume. It’s a pitiful farce, no?

...
Ask a group of liberals what they want in a candidate, and you’ll get a sketch of a champion who will fight for income equality, rein in big banks, defeat ruinous trade agreements, restore our battered civil liberties, look to diplomacy before war, and stop the devastation of our climate. Sure enough, in every election year Democratic candidates come along peddling such wares...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/22/hillary-clinton-and-the-northern-strategy/

You ain't no African-American.
You were born right here... in St.Louis, or Brooklyn, or Oakland, ...someplace in the US anyway. Your parents were born here too most likely. You prolly don't have a family member in generations that's ever even been to Africa. It’s aight, you’re a “person of color”, but accept it, you’re a natural born American. Now my son-in-law is an African-American for real. He was born and raised in Togo, and still has a big family there. He had to carry a Green Card in Chicago for many years before officially achieving citizenship in these United States.

That's ok though, I ain't no Irish-American neither. I was born in Baltimore and my parents are from Virginia (or Appalachia I guess… twarn’t that much guvamint up in the mountains around there). I don't really know when my first ancestor arrived in America from Ireland. Anyway, about 50 years ago my older brother married a German-American girl, born and raised in Germany and now a US citizen (but still with a thick German accent). And 46 yrs ago, I married a so-called "African-American" girl from the Bronx, (who's also never been to Africa). So I say, my wife ain’t no African-American either, but all of our children and grandchildren are...

Americans
Yes we're all Americans now... although none of us should be too proud of it. Truth is, our country's history and heritage is way less "exceptional" than we've all been taught. Our national shame is layered deep with conquest and enslavement and greed and bloody senseless wars both at home and abroad. And much of that ugly heritage remains painfully evident in our societal DNA to this day. Despite our intermixing as a people, prejudice and inequality and greed and horrific imperial misdeeds abound in this “the land of the free and the home of the brave”... (poppycock). Today our legislatures and appointed government officials are largely feckless, rudderless, and the “elected” ones are mostly owned by oligarchs, not really chosen by the voters. We have not had a leader in the White House with a true courage of conviction for the Constitution, (much less "truth, justice and the American way&quot , in my lifetime.

Bernie Sanders ain't no Polish-American my friends. And he ain't no Superman, nor even a Socialist Jew. He's just an American like any of us, but he is also a long-serving United States Senator who truly wants democracy and fairness and equity and freedom for all of us. He's been striving for decades to champion those ideals and prevent their being eroded away from the foundations of our nation. I have never seen a presidential candidate with more courage and honesty and love for these United States. He might very well be our last hope to pull our "democracy" back from the brink. He wants to give us a chance for a Political revolution, to help us chart a revised course for our nation that’s more in keeping with the legendary ideals of our "founding fathers". It’s called Participatory Democracy (or Social Democracy). But the current political machine in the US which we call "the establishment", no longer suffers easily any exercise of true democracy. Indeed our “two-party” system has melded into an immovable object, which may simply not allow democracy at all anymore. Big Data, Citizens United SuperPACs, “legal” speaking fees, voting suppression and fraud in many flavors, SuperDelegates, Electoral college, Gerrymandering, and countless other devious manipulations of the electorate’s will all conspire against us.

Still, we should try with all our collective might at the ballot box, to get Bernie Sanders elected to the Presidency. And to the maximum extent possible, we must also purge the down-ticket in both parties, of all who sell their influence rather than serve their constituents, and replace them with congressmen who believe in democracy. Bernie often reminds us that we are the 99% and that if we stand together, we can accomplish anything. After all, 99% would be an irresistible force, even against the immovable machine.

We may not get another chance to save our “democratic” country from Plutocracy, without a revolution of the bloodier kind.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/15/1492040/-African-Irish-German-Americans-for-Bernie