We just have a few more days until the New York primary is over with. I hope we all survive. Honestly, I don’t know how much more of the Bernie Sanders hype I can take.
Apparently, Bernie got to meet with the Pope in Rome after all, although there are no photos. The Associated Press reports:
U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told The Associated Press that he met briefly with Pope Francis at the papal residence Saturday and said it was a “real honor” to call on “one of the extraordinary figures” in the world.
Sanders, in Rome for a Vatican conference on economic inequality and climate change, said the meeting took place before the pope left for Greece, where Francis was highlighting the plight of refugees.
The Vermont senator, in a race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, said he told the pope that he appreciated the message that Francis was sending the world about the need to inject morality and justice into the world economy. Sanders said that was a message he, too, has tried to convey.
Jeffrey Sachs must have some serious pull at the Vatican.
Sanders and his wife, Jane, stayed overnight at the pope’s residence, the Domus Santa Marta hotel in the Vatican gardens, on the same floor as the pope….Jeffrey Sachs, a Sanders foreign policy adviser, said there were no photographs taken of the meeting.
Domus Santa Marta
The Pope lives in a hotel? I did not know that.
Sanders said the meeting should not be viewed as the pope injecting himself into the campaign.
“The issues that I talked about yesterday at the conference, as you well know, are issues that I have been talking about not just throughout this campaign but throughout my political life,” Sanders said in the interview. “And I am just very much appreciated the fact that the pope in many ways has been raising these issues in a global way in the sense that I have been trying to raise them in the United States.”
Well, Sanders doesn’t get to decide how this is “viewed.” In my opinion, it will certainly be interpreted as the Pope “injecting himself” into a U.S. election campaign.
Sachs said the candidate and his wife met the pope in the foyer of the domus, and that the meeting lasted about five minutes. Sanders later joined his family, including some of his grandchildren, for a walking tour of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the holiest Catholic shrines.
In that instance, Francis “greeted” a number of people in passing as he left the Vatican Embassy in Washington DC. The Pope did not know that Davis was there.
The AP article says that Sanders “met” the pope in “the foyer of the domus” of the hotel. If Francis did actually meet and talk personally to Sanders, I think he made a big mistake. We’ll just have to wait and see what the fallout will be.
Bernie and Jane Sanders disembark from chartered Delta 767 in Rome.
A day after Bernie Sanders claimed he ‘introduced the most comprehensive climate change legislation’ and said he would tax carbon use, the Democratic presidential candidate chartered a Delta 767 to fly him to Rome and back for less than 24 hours.
After attacking rival Hillary Clinton for her stance on fossil fuels stepped on Thursday, Sanders stepped off the plane on Friday in Rome for the Vatican conference with his wife, ten family members, a group of campaign staff, Secret Service detail and members of the press.
The total group of what is believed to be below 50, flew in a chartered Delta 767 for their trip, which can seat between 211 and 261 people, depending on the model. It is unclear if Sanders’ aircraft had flatbed seats.
A 767 aircraft carries up to 23,980 gallons of fuel, which is ‘enough to fill 1,200 minivans’, according to Boeing.
Sanders’ wife, who is Catholic and ten of Sanders’ other family members joined him for the 8,870 round-trip flight, including four of his grandchildren….
With a range of 6,408 miles on a full tank of gas, it can be calculated that a 767 like Sanders’ flying 4,435 miles from New York to Rome uses approximately 16,596 gallons of fuel. The round-trip flight will use approximately 33,193 gallons.
On average, an American flies only 7,500 miles per year, according to AmericanForests.org, 1,360 fewer miles than Sanders’ round-trip Rome travel. Thus, an average American releases less carbon emissions via aircraft each year than Sanders did in 24 hours.
Hillary Clinton tours public housing building in Harlem yesterday.
Clinton traveled to East 116th Street in Harlem for a tour of the Corsi Houses, a seniors-only New York City Housing Authority building that has struggled with mold, leaks and an inadequate repair system.
“I wanted to come here to really make a very strong plea that we do more when I am president to help the people who live in developments like this,” Clinton said.
She was given access to an apartment on the second floor that was in the midst of a major repair job to fix mold issues and leaks….
“I will do everything I can as your president to remember what needs to be done here in the city that I love, that is the greatest city in the world,” she said to cheers from the crowd.
To fix NYCHA, which has suffered for years from federal disinvestment, she said she would boost funding for the section 8 program, invest $125 billion to help struggling communities like the South Bronx, and expand Low Income Housing Tax Credits to curb rental costs.
“I will fight for you,” she said.
Clinton also hobnobbed with residents and guests, at one point joining in a game of dominoes in the rec room.
Outspoken actress Sharon Stone recently told The Hollywood Reporter she worries the presidential candidate, 74, dabbled in psychedelic drugs during his younger years.
“He didn’t really work until he was 40, so I wonder, like, how much acid has this guy taken?” the “Basic Instinct” star told the magazine.
“I really do (wonder), that’s not a joke. We were so aggressive asking people, ‘Did you smoke pot?’ But in reality, how much acid has Bernie Sanders taken?” she asked again.
“There’s a certain edge to his personality and way about his behavior that makes me wonder, ‘How much LSD have you taken?'” she asked a third time during the recent interview.
Weird. IMHO, if Bernie had taken some acid trips he might not be so grumpy and negative today.
Bernie and Jane have finally released their full tax returns (except for the list of charities) from 2014. They say they will also release the 2015 return once it is filed. No word on the rest of the promised returns going back to 2007. David Cay Johnston at The National Memo:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released nearly all of his and wife Jane Sanders’ 2014 tax return Friday night, but that disclosure still remains far from his wife’s promise to release returns for the last eight years — raising more questions about the candidate’s judgment and his wife’s claims.
As expected there was nothing startling in the schedules, but the failure to fulfill their promise to release returns back to 2007 — when Sanders was first elected to the U.S. Senator from Vermont — erodes the likelihood that other Presidential candidates this cycle and in the future will release their own full returns.
A key detail withheld by Sanders until Friday night prompts yet another question: The senator and his wife have both said on national television that Jane Sanders prepares the couple’s returns using TurboTax software. But a schedule that had been withheld until now shows $204 in tax preparation fees.
The most expensive version of TurboTax sold currently — a higher grade product than needed to prepare the couple’s returns, costs $109.99 That price includes both an online download and a compact disc. And that is the price charged by Intuit, the manufacturer, with retailers offering discounts pricing the top product at under $100.
Hmmm . . . maybe Jane got a fee for filling out the forms?
Bernie bros protest high dollar fund-raiser for down-ticket Democrats in San Francisco
While Bernie was out of the country, his supporters picketed a fund-raiser hosted by Amal and George Clooney for Democratic candidates in San Francisco, where they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Hillary Clinton has got to go.” Very classy. ABC News describes the bizarre scene:
Approximately 100 Bernie Sanders supporters demonstrated outside of a George and Amal Clooney-hosted Hillary Clintonfundraiser Friday night in San Francisco’s upscale Nob Hill neighborhood.
Clinton and her aides arrived at the home of venture capitalist and Democratic donor Shervin Pishevar around 6:30 p.m. for the fundraiser, which kicked off at 7 p.m. Tickets to the event cost roughly $30,000 per person or $350,000 per table. (This is the first of two Clooney-hosted fundraisers this weekend. On Saturday night, the Clooneys are hosting another fundraiser, at his home in Los Angeles.)
The San Francisco street where the home is located was blocked off by police, but the protesters gathered at the top of the hill and then marched around the block.
Holding signs that read “Hillary: You can’t sit with us unless you have money” and “$353,000 for Dinner? And you thought SF home prices are high,” while banging pots and pans, protesters were vocal about Clinton’s ties to big money.
“Hey, hey, ho ho, Hillary Clinton has got to go!” the crowd, many of whom appeared to be in their twenties and thirties yelled out. “Bernie or Bust!”
It’s difficult to fathom why these people oppose raising money for Democrats running for Congress. Wouldn’t a President Bernie Sanders need Democrats in the House and Senate? The ways of Bernie supporters are very mysterious.
That’s all I have for you today. I didn’t even look at the Republican side of the campaign. It’s all just too crazy for me today. And now I plan to try to regain some kind of serenity before the big showdown arrives on Tuesday.
What stories are you following?
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Bernie and Jane: Fighting all those “Corporate Democratic Whores”
Good Morning!!
So . . . tonight’s debate should be interesting. In the past few weeks, Bernie Sanders has been attacking Hillary Clinton in the most insulting, sexist, and damaging ways most decent people could possibly imagine.
He has implied again and again that she is corrupt, while providing no evidence. He has denigrated her as “the establishment” candidate and attacked anyone who endorses her as “the establishment”–even groups that provide support and services to women, like Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Emily’s List. Last week, Sanders even baldly stated that Clinton is “unqualified” to be president.
Here’s the latest from a Sanders rally in NYC last night.
Dr. Paul Song: Now Secretary Clinton has said that Medicare for all will never happen. [boos] Well, I agree with Secretary Clinton that Medicare for all will never happen if we have a president who never aspires for something greater than the status quo. [cheers] Medicare for all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores[cheers] who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us.”
The next speaker, Rosario Dawson, said that Clinton is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East and elsewhere. Finally, Sanders arrived at the podium and thanked the previous speakers for their “great introductions.”
Twitter exploded. Dr. Song eventually provided a non-apology.
Not good enough. Too little, too late. Sen. Sanders and Dr. Song should apologize to Hillary Clinton and to Democrats generally. And let’s not forget that President Obama is among the “Democratic whores” too, since he failed to get single payer health care.
This kind of behavior from a presidential campaign is simply unacceptable. Sanders is no better than Trump, IMO.
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 13: Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during the Bernie Sanders rally at Washington Square Park on April 13, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mireya Acierto/FilmMagic)
According to CNN, Sanders said the following about Hillary Clinton the day after he first said she was “unqualified” and after it was explained to him that Hillary had never called him “unqualified.”
“When you voted for the war in Iraq, the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in the history of America, you might want to question your qualifications. When you voted for trade agreements that cost millions of Americans decent paying jobs, and the American people might want to wonder about your qualifications. When you’re spending an enormous amount of time raising money for your super PAC from some of the wealthiest people in this country, and from some of the most outrageous special interests … Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you’re raising millions of dollars from Wall Street whose greed and recklessness helped destroy our economy?”
This has been the theme of Sanders’ attacks on Clinton from the beginning. He has implied again and again that she is corrupt and that any campaign contributions she receives or speeches she makes involve some kind of quid pro quo. He never provides any evidence for these accusations.
Can any intelligent observer really doubt that terms like “corporate Democratic whores” come from the Sanders campaign itself? If they will say the kinds of things they have been saying in public, what must they be saying behind closed doors when the media isn’t listening? Sometimes those sneering private epithets slip out when the rest of us can hear them. That is likely what happened last night. And it was ugly.
For months, Sanders has allowed his supporters to boo and hiss Hillary’s name at his rallies and he has done nothing to stop them from trolling people on social media and even harassing superdelegates in their homes. Where will it end? Will Sanders be proud of himself when excerpts from his speeches and his surrogates’ speeches turn up in Republican campaign ads in the Fall?
Dr. Paul Y. Song
#DemocraticWhores is currently trending on Twitter, and my guess is this will continue to be a story in the build-up to tonight’s debate. After the debate, Jane and Bernie Sanders will travel to Rome where Bernie will give a 10-minute presentation at an academic conference.
Interestingly, Dr. Paul Song is married to journalist Lisa Ling, who supports Clinton. Ling’s sister Laura Ling was released from captivity in North Korea with help from former President Bill Clinton.
Jane Sanders, wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders, didn’t apologize when asked about comments a surrogate made from the stage of the presidential hopeful’s New York City rally last night.
Healthcare activist Paul Song labeled those who chose to keep the current private healthcare system intact, like Hillary Clinton, instead of advocating for a Medicare-for-all plan, like Sanders, ‘Democratic whores.’
When Jane Sanders was asked about it by CNN’s Chris Cuomo she seemed miffed.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it at all,’ Sanders said. ‘It’s a strange choice of words and I can’t imagine anybody was speaking about Secretary Clinton that way.’
Really? It’s difficult to believe that Jane is not aware of the behavior of her husband’s supporters on social media. She certainly has to have heard the catcalls when Clinton is mentioned at her husband’s rallies. How could she not?
Asked about whether the campaign should own the comments and react, Sanders said yes, but also went on the attack.
‘Well, I think all campaigns really need to take some responsibility for what surrogates said,’ Jane Sanders replied. ‘A mischoice of words is not as important as trying to carry out a strategy of trying to disqualify people or try to make them feel less-than.’
Here Jane Sanders seemed to be bringing back up a tiff between the two Democratic camps that began when Clinton refused to say whether Sanders was qualified to be president during an interview on Morning Joe….
Jane Sanders indicated she would not soon forgive those digs from Clinton in her comments this morning.
‘I think there’s a lot of that to go around,’ she said.
It might be time to stop using Jane as a surrogate. She had a very bad day yesterday too. Yesterday the New York Daily News endorsed Hillary Clinton. Jane whined to CNN yesterday that the Daily News interview that Bernie flubbed so badly was “odd” and “more of an inquisition.” The newspaper then wrote up her remarks in a prominent article.
Jane Sanders told CNN that she and her husband discussed his performance after the April 1 meeting. She attributed the Vermont senator’s curt responses, which were considered vague by a number of critics, to the meeting’s quick pace and said a reading of the transcript alone wouldn’t lend itself to a fair assessment.
“I was in that interview, listening, and it was a conversation,” Jane Sanders told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. “When you see only words down, it doesn’t quite give the flavor of it.
How embarrassing. Maybe her time would be better spent going back to Vermont to find Bernie’s tax returns so he can release them–as Hillary did with hers long ago. But first the Sanders’ will have their Roman Holiday, which reportedly will not include any meeting with the Pope, according to Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi (NYT).
Jane Sanders, wife to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), expressed concern Thursday about New York’s closed Democratic primary, noting that her husband would change the system if he won the presidency.
Sanders said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she wouldn’t go as far as calling the Democratic nominating process a rigged system, but argued that there should be same-day registration as well as open primaries and caucuses.
“We have a lot of those—probably a lot of those people out there in the crowd—hopefully a small number, comparatively, are not even able to vote in this election because they didn’t change their registration to Democrat last October when they hadn’t even heard of Bernie Sanders,” Jane Sanders said. “Those kinds of things seem silly. We’re bringing more a lot more people into the party and the party is shutting the door on them. That seems counterproductive to the long-term goals.”
If these Bernie supporters live in New York and wanted to vote, they could have checked the rules and made sure to be registered in time. The Sanders campaign could even have provided the information to supporters. What a concept!
I think every primary and caucus should be closed. Why should non-Democrats choose the party’s nominee?
Jane also said that Hillary Clinton will not have enough delegates to win the nomination outright.
“Going into the convention I think she’ll be just short and we’ll hopefully be just short and I think then we’ll have a discussion about what the best way to go,” Sanders said.
We’ll see. I’m not sure how many superdelegates (AKA “Democratic whores”) are going to support Bernie’s efforts to overthrow the popular vote.
Again, tonight’s debate should be very interesting. It will be on CNN from 9-11, and we’ll have a live blog for discussion, as usual.
I guess you can tell I’m really angry about this. I’ll leave it to you to let me know what else is happening in the world. What stories have you been following?
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On Thursday, I wrote about Bernie Sanders’ embarrassing interview with The New York Daily News. In a little-noted exchange in that interview, Sanders coldly and heartlessly dismissed the arguments of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre that they should be able to sue the manufacturer and seller of the AR-15, the gun used to kill 20 first graders and and 6 adults in Newtown CT in 2012. I mentioned that I had more to say about Sanders’ stance on guns and Vermont’s almost non-existent gun laws.
Once again, here is that exchange with the NY Daily News editorial board:
Daily News: There’s a case currently waiting to be ruled on in Connecticut. The victims of the Sandy Hook massacre are looking to have the right to sue for damages the manufacturers of the weapons. Do you think that that is something that should be expanded?
Sanders: Do I think the victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer, is that your question?
Daily News: Correct.
Sanders: No, I don’t.
Daily News: Let me ask you. I know we’re short on time. Two quick questions. Your website talks about…
Sanders: No, let me just…I’m sorry. In the same sense that if you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill him [gestures to someone in room]…. Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, “I’d like 10,000 rounds of ammunition,” you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product.
Sanders argued this case on the Thom Hartmann radio show on the afternoon of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Sanders appeared on The Thom Hartmann Program in the hours after the shooting, on Dec. 14, 2012. On the show, he was asked if the parents of the victims had “any recourse against the gun manufacturer.” Sanders suggested he would seek solutions that did not place blame on firearms makers.
“I don’t know that you hold a gun manufacturer responsible for what obviously a deranged person does. The issue is what is the best way forward to prevent these types of horrible occurrences? How do we make sure the guns do not get into the hands of people who are mentally ill? How do we make sure that people own guns which are only designed to kill people not to be used for hunting or target practices? So I mean there’s a lot to be discussed, and I think we’ve got to do something. We don’t want to read about this every month. So, it is an issue we’re going to have to address,” Sanders said.
Although Hillary Clinton did not in fact ever say that Sanders is “unqualified” to be POTUS, I personally believe that his views on guns should disqualify him from running for president as a Democrat.
The assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook massacre is a gun that is, in Bernie’s words, “designed to kill people, not to used for hunting or target practice.” Nevertheless, Bernie argues that the relatives of the Sandy Hook victims should not be able to sue the gun manufacturer for heavily promoting the popular AR-15 assault weapon that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 first graders and 6 adults on December 14, 2012.
Sanders often defends his stance on guns by talking about his largely rural home state, Vermont where hunting is valued and where the murder rate is incredibly low. This is true, but Vermont does is not an island in a bubble that has no effect on other states.
Vermont’s loose laws allow gun traffickers to easily and cheaply buy weapons in Sanders’ state and sell them in urban areas in Massachusetts, New York and other northeastern states where gun laws are much stricter. The Boston Globe has published multiple articles about this serious problem over the past several years. The problem is tied up with the drug trade as well. Here’s just one example from the Globe from April 2014:
Frank Caraballo of Holyoke settled behind the wheel of his car carrying a stash of crack cocaine, his destination a supermarket parking lot in Brattleboro, where he would trade the drugs for a Glock 9mm handgun, prosecutors said.
It was a journey — and a deal — all too familiar to law enforcement authorities who have watched with increasing alarm as narcotics from Massachusetts are ferried to Vermont and swapped for guns that are plentiful and cheap.
And as the case of Frank Caraballo showed, the drugs-for-guns trade can end with deadly consequences: A few weeks after Caraballo purchased the gun in 2011, a woman whom he suspected had stolen from him was shot dead with a Glock 9mm in rural Vermont. Last October, Caraballo was convicted in the killing.
“You don’t know which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but guns are being traded for drugs, and drug dealers are coming here with their product,” said Jim Mostyn, the Vermont agent in charge for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “Drug dealers are aware that guns are readily available here.”
It’s an excellent article, and I hope you’ll read the rest. This is why we need Federal gun laws. Why isn’t Bernie Sanders addressing this issue that is hurting people in Vermont as well as Massachusetts and other states? Why isn’t the media asking him about it?
Here’s another article from July 2015 published by In These Times, which has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Pssst. Want an unregistered semi-automatic handgun, some heroin and a way to make a 1,400 percent profit?
First, the gun. In Vermont, you can legally buy it through a “private” sale at a gun show, yard sale, online or from a dealer. Doesn’t matter if you’re a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness and a restraining order for domestic abuse. Anyone 16 or older with $600 can, for example, go to Armslist.com and arrange with a “private party” in Arlington, Vt., to pick up a “Zastava M92 PV 7.62 x 39 cal. semi auto pistol that has a 10 inch barrel, comes with 2 each 30 round clips.” The Serbian assault weapon is, the ad notes, the “very cool … pistol version of the AK-47.”
Then, if you are willing to break the law, you can drive the weapon to New York, where semi-automatic handguns are banned, and sell it for triple the Vermont price. You can invest the $1,800 in heroin. Back in Vermont, where heroin is in relatively short supply, you can resell it for five times the New York cost and garner $9,000—a quick 1,400 percent profit.
Guns a ridiculously easy to get in Vermont.
Vermont has some of the loosest gun laws in the country. You can legally buy 50-caliber sniper rifles with scopes, sawed-off shotguns, semiautomatic pistols that can kill a moose, and armor-piercing bullets. No background check, no waiting period or limit on how many guns you can buy or own. You can use a false name and need no identification or registration. The magazine size is not restricted. And you can display the new gun on your hip or stuff it in your underpants for all the state cares. All legal. And as long as you “don’t know” the firearms will be used for criminal purposes, you can immediately resell the guns to a 21-year-old with racist insignias on his jacket, two prison escapees from upstate New York, a whacked-out drug dealer, a certified paranoid with a tinfoil hat, or a drunk 16-year-old (that’s the age to own a handgun without parental consent; there’s no age restriction on possessing a rifle or shotgun)….
We have seen that, like maple syrup, firearms cross state lines. One makes your pancakes delicious, the other fuels crime and murder. “Firearm traffickers travel to Vermont for the purchase of firearms from unlicensed sources and then travel back to more restrictive states,” Massachusetts Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent Christopher J. Arone tells In These Times. Vermont exports more guns per capita than any other New England state and ranks 16th nationwide. Hundreds of crime-linked guns originally purchased there have been recovered by out-of-state law enforcement.
Again, please read the whole thing. If Sanders were truly the courageous leader he claims to be, he should be able to have some influence on this situation. Instead, he simply accepts it because Vermont’s guns aren’t killing Vermonters–they are killing people in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and other nearby states.
Sportsmen! Quick! Get your automatic weapon while you can!
Bernie’s cowardly stance on guns is beginning to get more attention as we approach the New York primary on April 19, and I hope he will be forced to answer some tough questions about they way his own state is contributing to crime in other states and his state’s absence of serious gun laws is leading to hundreds of deaths from heroin in Vermont.
At a heated press conference outside of City Hall in New York City on Friday, families of those affected by mass shootings urged the Vermont senator to apologize for his recent comments on guns, reiterating calls that some of them said were previously unanswered and dismissed….
Erica Smegielski, the 30-year-old daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary Principal Dawn Hochsprung, complained during Friday’s press conference — excerpts and audio of which the Clinton campaign emailed to reporters afterwards — that Sanders had ignored her call to admit his stance on the lawsuit is wrong and instead attacked his rival in the Democratic presidential primary.
“It is so shameful that you ignored my call for an apology and when pushed by a reporter, instead of responding to me, you attacked Hillary Clinton,” Smegielski said.
Sandy Phillips, who lost her daughter Jessica Ghawi during the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, said that Sanders had treated her family disrespectfully during a phone call.
“Bernie promised to meet with us face to face,” she said about Sanders, who has been campaigning in New York. “We did have a telephone conversation, he was 15 minutes late to that telephone conversation. The first thing he had the nerve to say to my husband was ‘I’m very busy,’” she said. “Well Senator Sanders, we had been busy too. We had been busy burying our daughter.”
“Because of Bernie Sanders and others who voted like him, I and other Sandy Hook families are waiting for justice,” said Jillian Soto, who lost her sister Victoria at Sandy Hook. “I believe Remington acted irresponsibly and should be held accountable. I deserve for a jury to determine that, not the politicians in Washington, like Bernie Sanders.”
“Remington and others designed and executed an immoral marketing campaign that specifically targets violent-prone, military-obsessed young men and the result is both predictable and deadly,” she added. “Our families want the marketers, distributors, and sellers of the AR-15 held accountable for what happened at Sandy Hook. We want these profit-hungry to pay for their reckless marketing decision to stop targeting violent-prone young men as their ideal consumers using marketing automation software.”
I know there is much more interesting news today. What stories are you following? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a relaxing weekend.
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Hubert Humphrey and John Kennedy as votes are counted in the Wisconsin Primary, 1960
Good Morning!!
I hate to keep complaining about my health issues, but I’m moving so slowly this morning that I thought I’d give you guys a quick update so you’d know why it has been taking me so to get my posts written. I have been struggling with a cold and sinus infection that just won’t go away. It’s been weeks–maybe close to 2 months. I haven’t really kept track. For about 10 days, my sinuses were so swollen that my upper and lower teeth ached on the left side.
Last Tuesday, I went to a hospital walk-in clinic. It turned out that my blood pressure was very high, and I ended up having to stay in the hospital overnight while they tried to stabilize it and figure out what was going on with my sinuses. I had every test you could imagine–a chest X-ray, EKG, blood and oxygen tests for heart function, an echocardiogram, a CAT scan of my sinuses, and I wore a heart monitor while I was there.
The doctors were reluctant to give me an antibiotic, but they finally decided to give me a Z-pack because I had been sick for so long. They also gave me some blood pressure medication. I came home on Wednesday evening and by Thursday afternoon I felt dramatically better. On Friday and Saturday I felt great–I felt like me again for the first time in a long time. But on Sunday the symptoms started coming back. It hasn’t gotten to the point that my teeth hurt yet, but I obviously need more antibiotics.
I’m seeing a physician’s assistant tomorrow, and I hope I can convince her to give me a prescription. Of course the main focus is going to be on my blood pressure, so I’m trying to prepare myself to be assertive enough to get the help I need.
On top of all that, it snowed here on Sunday and Monday! I’m just hoping the snow will melt today. The sun is out, but it isn’t going to get much above freezing. If it doesn’t melt, I plan to go out this afternoon and try to back the car out of the driveway without shoveling it.
Anyway, I hope you guys don’t mind my sharing this. It has actually made me feel a little better to put it into words. Now on to today’s reads.
George Wallace won 1/3 of the Democratic primary votes in Wisconsin in 1964.
Yesterday we got exciting news from the Supreme Court on voting rights. Here’s some background from The Atlantic: One Person, One Vote, Eight Justices.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously turned back a legal effort to reinterpret the “one person, one vote” constitutional rule Monday, ruling that states may rely on total population when drawing their legislative districts.
The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was brought by two Texas voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, who challenged the apportionment of Texas Senate districts. With the exception of the U.S. Senate, every American legislative body is apportioned by total population under the “one person, one vote” rule first outlined by the Court in the 1960s.
Evenwel and Pfenninger argued that counting non-voters—children, the mentally disabled, disenfranchised prisoners, and non-citizens—broke that rule and diluted their political power in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Cause. Many observers, including my colleague Garrett Epps, notedthat Evenwel’s interpretation would redraw the American political map in favor of a whiter, older, and more conservative electorate.
“In agreement with Texas and the United States, we reject appellants’ attempt to locate a voter-equality mandate in the Equal Protection Clause,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “As history, precedent, and practice demonstrate, it is plainly permissible for jurisdictions to measure equalization by the total population of state and local legislative districts.”
The Supreme Court first forced states to draw their legislative districts with roughly equal populations inside them in two landmark decisions: Baker v. Carr in 1962 andReynolds v. Sims in 1964. The two decisions enshrined the one-person, one-vote rule in American constitutional law.
More at the link.
Eugene McCarthy after winning the Wisconsin primary in 1968
Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the Court, and it is clear (as I had been saying) that Justice Scalia’s death did not affect the outcome of this case. It was clear from the oral argument that, despite what some said, this was not a case where the Court was likely to divide 4-4. Ed Blum’s position in this case to require voter population was not only at odds with historical practice, it was not practically possible given the data that we have, and it would have led to terrible outcomes, including making it basically impossible to also comply with Voting Rights Act requirements for districts.
Justice Ginsburg’s opinion holds that districting using total population was consistent with constitutional history, the Court’s own decisions, and longstanding practice. A long section of Justice Ginsburg’s opinion recounts constitutional history, and relies on the fact that for purposes of apportioning Congressional seats among states, total population, not total voters, must be used. Plaintiffs’ argument in Evenwel was inconsistent with this practice. As to the Court’s own precedents, Justice Ginsburg acknowledged language supporting both total voters and total population as possible bases, but Court’s practice has been to look at total population in its cases. Further, that is the practice that states uniformly use, despite the occasional case such as Burns v. Richardson, allowing Hawaii to use a registered voter level.
Finally, Justice Ginsburg gives a sound policy reason for a total population rule. In key language, she writes that “Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates—children,, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system—and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies. By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation.” A footnote following this states that even though constituents “have no constitutional right to equal access to the their elected representatives,” a state “certainly has an interest in taking reasonable, nondiscriminatory steps to facilitate access for all its residents.”
Perhaps the most important aspect of Justice Ginsburg’s opinion, and especially notable because it attracted the votes of not just the liberals but also Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy, is the Court’s refusal to give Texas the green light to use total voters if it wants in the next round of redistricting. The Court simply put the issue off for another day. It is hard to stress enough what a victory this is for liberal supporters of voting rights. Many of us thought Burns already gave Texas this power. The fact that the Court leaves that issue open will serve as a deterrent for states like Texas to try to use total voters in the next round of redistricting, because it will guarantee major litigation on the question.
Much more at the link.
George McGovern after winning the Wisconsin primary in 1972.
Today is the Wisconsin primary, and Bernie Sanders is expected to win. FiveThirtyEight gives him a 72 percent chance of winning and only a 28 percent chance for Hillary Clinton to pull an upset. Of course those are probabilities and the few polls that have been taken show a somewhat closer race. The Real Clear Politics poll average is 47.9 for Bernie, 45.3 for Hillary. Al Giordano is projecting a 16 point win for Bernie, but even if he does that well, he won’t get enough pledged delegates out of Wisconsin to cut Hillary’s lead by much.
After today, there won’t be another primary until New York votes on April 19. There is a caucus in Wyoing on April 9, and Sanders will probably win that.
Yesterday, the Clinton and Sanders campaign settled on a date for the Brooklyn debate that Bernie has been demanding since New Hampshire. It will be on April 14 on CNN with {gag} Wolf Blitzer as moderator.
As I’m sure you’re aware, there has been a silly dispute about this completely unnecessary “debate.” The Sanders campaign played games for several days, first accusing Clinton of being afraid to to debate him and then turning down four different dates and times offered by her campaign. But yesterday, NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio played the trump card (pun intended) by offering to smooth the way for Sanders to arrange his oh so busy schedule. The Daily Mail reports:
The Brooklyn debate that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been squabbling over for the last week is finally a go.
The Sanders campaign announced this evening that it had accepted an offer from CNN to debate on the evening of April 14 – a date that Clinton had been pushing for but the senator rejected.
CNN separately announced that the primetime smackdown would be held from 9-11 PM next Thursday at the Duggal Greenhouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard….
Sanders’ campaign said this morning it could not do April 14, though it originally said would be acceptable, because it was the only evening it could secure a permit for a Washington Square rally in New York City.
Clinton backer and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio then offered to wield his power to settle the boiling dispute between the Democratic presidential candidates today.
De Blasio said on Twitter: ‘Let’s make @NY1 4/14 BKLYN debate happen. @BernieSanders: I’ll help you secure any permit you need to ensure your NYC rally can happen too.’
Hahahahaha! It was an offer Bernie couldn’t refuse.
Jimmy Carter, winner of the Wisconsin primary, 1976
This particular rhetorical showdown was not a back-and-forth about issues, appropriately enough, but an argument about whether to debate — and when, and where. It began Jan. 30, when the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign challenged Hillary Clinton to debate him in Brooklyn on April 14.
Clinton suggested the Democrats instead debate in Pennsylvania, on Long Island or in Upstate New York. Sanders accused Clinton of ducking.
Clinton proposed a New York debate on the evening of April 4 — but the Sanders campaign rejected the idea as “ludicrous” because the NCAA basketball championship would be later that night and Syracuse might be playing.
Clinton proposed they debate on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on April 15, but Sanders rejected that, too.
Clinton even acquiesced to the original Sanders demand and offered to debate April 14 in Brooklyn. Sorry, Sanders said. He now had a rally scheduled for that night — and the permit, his campaign said, had been hard to get.
The Sanders campaign countered Sunday by suggesting four other nights — one of them on a weekend, which it previously had said was unacceptable. Clinton summarily rejected those days.
But then Bill de Blasio stepped in, and made Bernie look like a dope.
Sanders late Monday acquiesced to debate on the very day and in the very place he proposed two months ago. He could rally another time at his preferred venue, New York’s Washington Square Park — which, by coincidence, was the site Saturday of the International Pillow Fight, in which hundreds of strangers playfully thumped each other with feather-filled sacks.
This is oddly appropriate, because the Democratic nominating contest generally, like the Great Debate Debate, has come to resemble a pillow fight — a lot of commotion and feathers flying, but the blows don’t have much impact. Sanders long ago ceased to have a meaningful chance of winning the nomination; he would need to win 57 percent of the remaining delegates (or 67 percent, if you include uncommitted superdelegates), which, under the Democrats’ system of assigning delegates in proportion to the vote, simply isn’t going to happen.
Millbank claims that in order to win, Sanders would have to attack Clinton’s character and that Sanders “refuses” to do that. Of course he has been doing just that by insinuation for a very long time; but that doesn’t fit the media narrative, so Millbank can’t admit that Bernie’s personal attacks are not working.
Michael Dukakis, winner of the Wisconsin Primary, 1988.
The Sanders campaign is still failing badly in its choice of official surrogates. Again and again we’ve seen Bernie’s celebrity supporters put their feet in their mouths while doing their best to help win him votes. Cornell West, Killer Mike, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry, they’ve all managed to insult African American voters by minimizing their importance and attacking President Obama, and discounting all Southern Democrats as part of “the Confederacy.
After the Southern primaries,” he said, “you had called the election” — apparently referring to the media. “And who’s fooling who? Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam. No Democrat is going to win in the general election. Why do these victories have so much significance?”
This is a not-uncommon argument among supporters of Sanders. Yes, Hillary Clinton is winning. But she’s winning largely because she ran up big margins in Southern states. That, the argument goes, bodes poorly for the general, since those Southern states usually vote Republican.
This is a bad argument that borders on insulting.
First of all, South Carolina has a lot more people than Guam. Among the other bits of data one can point out about the 2016 Democratic primary is that Clinton has received far more votes than Sanders — 2.5 million more. Among those is a margin of about 175,000 more votes in the state of South Carolina, a margin that by itself is larger than the population of Guam.
Which means that Clinton came away from South Carolina with a net delegate haul of plus-25 — she earned 25 more delegates than did Sanders. In the Democrats’ proportional system, that’s a big margin. It’s a margin that Sanders has only managed once, in the Washington caucuses late last month. So in that sense, South Carolina matters a lot more than Guam.
More at the link. It’s not just a stupid and insulting argument; it’s a racist argument. There, I’ve said it. It’s what I believe.
Bill Clinton, winner of the 1990 Wisconsin primary
I have more links that I want to share; I’ll put some in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
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Bernie Sanders sure turned out to be a nasty piece of work. His campaign has devolved into non-stop character attacks on Hillary Clinton, jabs at President Obama, and endless whining about supposed unfair treatment by the media and the Democratic Party.
The latest is Sanders’ outright false claim that the the Clinton campaign has received millions in donations from “the fossil fuel industry.” He may have finally gone too far for the media to keep shielding him.
This time, instead of turning the other cheek, Hillary hit back when a Greenpeace organizer asked her a question based on Sanders’ lies. I’m sure you’ve seen the video of Hillary saying she’s “sick of it.”
The video of Hillary saying, “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me. I’m sick of it,” is embedded in news stories and is being played all over cable news and the internet. While we take absolutely no issue with the activist’s right to ask the question, we see this as an important inflection point in the 2016 campaign.
There are two ways the story is being covered. In some places, the video (or just Hillary’s quote) is being shared with little commentary beyond some description of her being angry, usually accompanied by the note that she “jabbed” her finger. This coverage treats the fact of Hillary’s demonstrable anger as the entire story.
And, in the sense that Hillary has been pressured to conceal her emotion—indeed her very humanity—by a media and commentariat who have, for decades, unscrupulously policed her every expression and every turn of phrase, the fact that she refused to abide the unwinnable rules they’ve set for her, is newsworthy all on its own.
But, of course, that is not the real story.
Other media outlets, more responsible ones, are using the incident to actually research and report on Hillary’s statement that Bernie, his staff, his surrogates, and his supporters have lied about her. Repeatedly.
These journalists are digging into the numbers, and finding that, in fact, the insinuation that she has accepted money from the “fossil fuel industry” (or any other industry for that matter) has no justification. It is a smear by innuendo.
Monica Bellucci in Dolce & Gabbana Photography by Signe Vilstrup Harper’s Bazaar Ukraine
There have been a number of stories about this, some of which McEwan cites in her post.
Who’s right in the Democratic spat over oil-industry contributions? A lot depends on what is counted –and how it is counted. Clinton made a strong accusation that the Sanders campaign is “lying” about the issue. Let’s see whether the Sanders campaign’s math hold up.
This all started when a Greenpeace activist approached Clinton on a rope line to ask her to “reject fossil-fuel money in the future” in her campaign. As a matter of law, campaigns are prohibited from taking money directly from corporations, though the Clinton campaign has not received money from oil-industry PACs either.
As Clinton noted in her angry response, she does get money from people who work at oil companies. (These calculations involve people who contribute at least $200 and provide an occupation or employer.) According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of March 21, the Clinton campaign has received nearly $308,000 for individuals in the oil and gas industry. The Sanders campaign has received nearly $54,000.
In you include contributions from outside groups supporting a candidate, Clinton’s total increases slightly to $333,000, compared to Sanders’ $54,000. Compared to Republicans, Democrats have received just a pittance from the fossil-fuel industry: 2.3 percent of oil and gas contributions in this election cycle. That should be no surprise, given that both Clinton and Sanders have been critical of the oil and gas industry — and have targeted it for higher taxes or reduced loopholes.
Painting by Meghan Howland
You can read more details at the WaPo link, but the conclusion is:
The Sanders campaign is exaggerating the contributions that Clinton has received from the oil and gas industry. In the context of her overall campaign, the contributions are hardly significant. It’s especially misleading to count all of the funds raised by lobbyists with multiple clients as money “given” by the fossil-fuel industry.
That was before the fact checker article came out. But the Clinton campaign said they weren’t about to apologize for calling out Sanders’ lies.
Sanders was also upset that Clinton criticized him for dismissing reproductive rights as a side issue when compared to income inequality, the minimum wage, and his other preferred (in an interview with Rachel Maddow). So in a speech in Wisconsin yesterday, he claimed to be listening to women.
Sanders says his campaign is listening to women. Green Bay crowd cheers. Sanders adds: "Hard not to listen to women they are very loud."
Whoops! This man is no feminist folks, no matter what he and his supporters think.
For Frida, by Sheri Howe
The Wisconsin primary is on Tuesday, and tonight both Democratic candidates will speak at the Democratic Founders Day Dinner in Milwaukee tonight at 7PM. I wonder if there will be fireworks? C-Span is going to live stream it, and maybe other cable networks will too. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that early voting in the state has been heavy.
Of course the big prize will be the New York primary on April 19. Remember when Bernie’s campaign claimed that Hillary was refusing to debate him in New York? It turns out he’s the one dodging a debate there.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Saturday that it has suggested three potential dates for an additional Democratic debate in New York, but all of those dates were rejected by Bernie Sanders and his aides….
Sanders’ campaign has been publicly challenging Clinton to agree to a debate in New York ahead of the state’s primary, which both candidates are eager to win as they compete for the Democratic nomination. According to Fallon, in the past week, the Clinton campaign offered the night of April 4, the night of April 14 and the morning of April 15 as potential dates to meet for a debate.
Past debates this cycle have been nighttime events, but Fallon said the morning option was offered after Sanders agreed to debate on that day on Good Morning America.
“That, too, was rejected,” Fallon said.
The night of April 14 and the morning of April 15 are still on the table.
“The Sanders campaign needs to stop using the New York primary as a playground for political games and negative attacks against Hillary Clinton,” Fallon said. “The voters of New York deserve better. Senator Sanders and his team should stop the delays and accept a debate on April 14 or the morning of April 15th.”
Little Green Bee Eaters of Upper Egypt, by Sushila Burgess
The Sanders campaign rejected the April 4th date because of competition from the NCAA basketball championship, but
In a tweet Saturday, Fallon said the Clinton campaign had “offered a time” that ensured the debate would end “before tipoff.”
Does Bernie want to debate or not? It’s not clear. If he does, Hillary will come out on top, so maybe he’s afraid.
Clinton has pointed to her advocacy for groundbreaking medical research, from her push for more dollars as a New York senator for the National Institutes of Health to her long support for stem cell research that could eventually lead to regenerative medicine.
Sanders, a Vermont senator, has supported stem cell research in the Senate. But advocates within the scientific community cite his voting record in the early 2000s in the House when he repeatedly supported a ban on all forms of human cloning, including one called therapeutic cloning intended to create customized cells to treat disease.
“We were looking for signs that he is going to be a supporter of what science and technology can do and I think everyone in the country ought to be worried about that,” said Dr. Harold Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning former NIH director under President Bill Clinton.
“I am quite concerned about his stance on these issues,” Varmus said. “This is a litmus test. It was 10 years ago — it’s still a test that he failed in the view of many of us….”
While serving in the House, Sanders voted to ban therapeutic cloning in 2001, 2003 and 2005 as Congress grappled with the ethics of biotechnology and scientific advances. Patient advocacy groups note that Sanders co-sponsored bans in 2003 and 2005 that included criminal penalties for conducting the research and opposed alternatives that would have allowed the cloning of embryos solely for medical research.
Clinton, meanwhile, co-sponsored legislation in 2001 and 2002 in the Senate that would have expanded stem cell research and co-sponsored a bill in 2005 that would have banned human cloning while protecting the right of scientists to conduct stem cell research.
Sanders said following a vote in 2001 that he had “very serious concerns about the long-term goals of an increasingly powerful and profit-motivated biotechnology industry.” In a later vote, he warned of the dangers of “owners of technology” who are “primarily interested in how much money they can make rather than the betterment of society.”
Oil painting by Indian artist Ilayaraja
For Sanders, it’s always about corporations not people. And guess who was on Bernie’s side on this issue?
“Sanders and (then Republican House Majority Leader Tom) DeLay…were just unyielding and they were part of the religious right’s attempt to shut down this whole critical new frontier of therapy for chronic disease,” said Robert Klein, chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
“It’s fine to say you’re for stem cell research but you vote against it and you vote against all therapeutic application, it doesn’t mean anything to say you’re for it,” Klein said. “Fine, he votes for it years later when it’s more popular and the pressure is off. We needed leadership then.”
Bernie did say in his Young Turks interview that “I’m not that big into being a “leader”… I’d much rather prefer to see a lot of leaders and a lot of grassroots activism.” Well, the President of the United States has to be a leader. He or she can’t just respond to the dictates of the “grassroots.”
Finally, here’s a good piece at The Atlantic on why voting for Hillary isn’t just about her being a woman.
At a February rally for Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, actress Emily Ratajkowski said just that when explaining her support for the Vermont senator: “I want my first female president to be more than a symbol. I want her to have politics that can revolutionize.” In a piece by my colleague Molly Ball, one woman interviewed about Sanders took this position one step further, saying Sanders is “‘more pro-woman’ than Clinton.” And in a recent Politico article, Molly Roberts lamented that, for Millennials, Clinton’s gender is “simply not enough to make her a groundbreaker.” ….
But are Millennials really being asked to support Clinton for no reason other than to shatter the glass ceiling? Unfortunately, because that message has been repeatedly linked to Clinton’s campaign—yet never directly espoused by it—its noise obscures the deeper reasons that young women should support Clinton. It’s not just that she’s a woman; it’s that she has fought for women her whole career.
For decades, Clinton has prioritized bills and policies promoting reproductive rights, equal pay, and family leave—far more so than Sanders. This is not to say that Sanders has not supported such legislation or practices. The key difference is that, for him, they simply haven’t been as much of a priority.
Read the rest at the link.
What stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great weekend!
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