Bernie's In

http://dailyjournalonline.com/news/opinion/national-columnist/donna-brazile/now-the-voters-will-decide/article_043f778a-1f4d-5056-82db-b65807af7e2d.html

Calling Hillary the most formidable is a ploy to make people doubt the other candidates.

I don't know who two of those people are, though I can make guess on one of those two.

How about a clue?

I don't get this either - who are the people depicted?

I don't get this either - who are the people depicted? Why is the cartoon interesting? I gather Clinton and Sanders, but is merely annoying if that is the idea.

It is a way of saying Hillary will walk in place as president.

I figured out that one I didn't recognize, quite, was Giuliani and the other was Bloomberg.

Just in case anyone else in the world reading this lacks instant recognition.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/hillary-v-bernie-iowa-town-highlights-gap-between-democrats/

My man draws the biggest, most energized crowds - HE is the most formidable! (I just wanna smack those guns for hire, so-called journalists)

Robert Reich
55 mins ·
The headline in today’s New York Times blares “Democratic Race Will Test Where the Left Stands,” followed by an article contrasting Bernie’s “New Deal-style liberalism” and “broad-based tax increases” with Hillary’s “mainstream Democrat” version containing a “sensible, achievable agenda.”
If you’ll permit me to say so, this framing of the contest is utter baloney. The real contrast is between Bernie’s vision of a government responsive to the vast majority, and Hillary’s vision of a government very much like the one we have now.
Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and in that time scored some important victories for working families – the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example.
But they’ve done nothing to reverse the worsening cycle of wealth and power that has rigged the economy for the benefit of those at the top, and harmed most Americans. In some respects, Democrats have been complicit in it.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements, for example, without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.
They also stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class. Clinton and Obama failed to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them, or enable workers to form unions with a simple up-or-down votes.
In addition, the Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of the Street’s gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout, but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.
Both Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated.
Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. And he never followed up on his reelection campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning “Citizens United v. FEC,” the 2010 Supreme Court opinion opening the floodgates to big money in politics.
What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate market power, and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy, and you shaft the working class.
Another Democratic administration would be far, far better than a Republican one. But unless we change the structure of power in America, the terrible trends of widening inequality, declining real wages for most, and oligarchical politics will only worsen.

Elizabeth Warren Sinks Clinton's Hopes for Endorsement
01/25/2016 10:28 am ET | Updated 6 hours ago
Liam Miller
Writer, thinker, musician.
In a speech before the Senate Thursday, on the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Elizabeth Warren made clear - for those with ears to hear - that she will not endorse Hillary Clinton.

If you have observed how closely Warren's and Bernie Sanders' messages line up, it is hard to imagine that she would endorse Clinton over him, anyway. Even so, the question has remained. But now, were there any question about whether or not Clinton is truly a Progressive, Elizabeth Warren - with her extraordinary, precise eye for the heart of an issue, and her unsurpassed clarity of expression - has answered it.

The first ten minutes of Warren's speech address corruption in campaign finance, and the impact of Citizens United. She lists seven steps we could take right now, including six actions - bills before Congress, executive action, and powers already within the purview of the FEC and the SEC; and the seventh, a Constitutional Amendment to restore federal and state authority to regulate campaign contributions.

Warren is eloquent, moving, and on topic as always. Right at the end, however, she changes gears. I almost missed it; what she had said up to that point was so compelling that my mind was ringing. It was only on the second listen that I caught them: three sentences that leapt from the specific (campaign finance reform) to the general (Progressivism itself):

A new presidential election is upon us. The first votes will be cast in Iowa in just eleven days. Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club.
It would be hard to overstate the controlled vehemence and contempt with which Warren delivers her last statement, just as there is no question who that "anyone" refers to. Clinton, unable to win over Progressives (both MoveOn.org and Democracy for America have endorsed Sanders), has attempted to reel in moderates by casting herself as the more pragmatic choice, and has painted Sanders with the broad brush of unrealistic idealism. Warren's message, so aligned with Sanders' as it has always been, is covered by those same strokes. Never one to shrink from a challenge, Warren comes out swinging.

Her riposte could not be more direct, as she reminds us of what true Progressives sound like and stand up for: broadly popular ideas, which are still somehow considered politically impractical. At the same time, she reminds us that 'politically impractical' is just code for 'wealthy donors don't like it.' The money Clinton has received from Wall Street, so much a topic of last Sunday's debate, illustrates Warren's indictment all too well.

Although the occasion for her speech was the anniversary of Citizens United, in mentioning the election and the imminent voting in Iowa Warren leaves no doubt that her closing words are meant for that greater context, even as she identifies Clinton's appeals to pragmatism as a complete betrayal of the Progressivism she had once courted. That may well be the ball game for Clinton; having failed to win over Progressives, Warren's endorsement could have shored up Clinton's eroding support long enough to survive the Iowa Caucuses. Instead, Warren has delivered a scathing rebuke.

It will be, at best, a long, drawn-out primary fight. It is likely Sanders will only pick up speed, though. Given recent extraordinarily staunch support for Sanders from powerful voices within the African American community; given Sanders' recent poll numbers, which have so astonished politics as usual, and which will lead many to reconsider his purported unelectability; and given many voters are only just now starting to pay closer attention, at a time when Sanders is surging like never before - it might well be a Bernami.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure: Warren won't be endorsing Clinton.

It's probably significant that Warren has so reduced her former ambiguity on her preference for the nomination. We can't know her thoughts or the mental calculations or expectations that might have preceded this statement, but they likely included both candidate program she favors and her expectations of the prospects of the respective candidates in the general election.

Alternatively, perhaps she just feels the Bern and wants to see a competitor eliminated.

Given the apparently growing support for Sanders and the rising intensity of his rhetoric calling for revolutionary change, I find it odd that he continues to successfuly (so far) evade explaining how he would pay for the programs he promises or how he would persuade the Congress to enact them. I believe this indicates he hasn't a clue on either point.

You're right, Sanders knows little or no economics. He does believe in taxing the middle class, tell they bleed to death!

There have been a number of articles explaining how everything is paid for and the ones I saw asserted that they would be cheaper than what we now have, after all is said and done.

I'm sure there are articles broadly outlining how it might be done, but I know of no particulars from Bernie himself, and no realistic study indicating the economic consequences of how it all might happen.

It's easy to hypothesize savings in an untested and largely unexamined plan. The track record when government is involved almost never involves real savings. Obamacare was supposed to reduce real health care costs by large margine. Instead it has increased them significantly. Only the newly added customers for Medicaid (state government financed) are seeing savings: everyone else is paying more. We'll get the feedback from the states on their added costs with widespread tax increases we'll in effect get the bill for the new Medicaid enrolees.

I think the main point here is the issue of actually passing Bernie's program in Congress. Do you really believe that is possible?

After GW Bush got elected and especially after he sold the invasion of Iraq, I believe anything is possible.

You got me there. Actually I believe the selling the first Gulf war by his father, was both the greatest reach and the greatest error.

We needed Iraq to limit the reach of Iran. Kuwait was a convenient creation of the British Empire (along with Bahrain) after the initial discoveries of oil there, and has no other legitamacy as a nation than that.

When they launched Iraq II, my gung ho brother was really excited. I told him, "You are not going to be happy with the way this war ends." I told him, too, that "They don't know what they are doing, in that part of the world." I stand by my words. They f up everything they touch over there, no matter who is the president.

Walter Scott's Lawyer Switches From Hillary Clinton To Bernie Sanders

The South Carolina state representative who also is the lawyer for the family of Walter Scott endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday, after previously offering his support to Hillary Clinton. The switch, which was originally reported by The New York Times, came after State Rep. Justin T. Bamberg spoke to Sanders for 20 minutes earlier this month.

Scott was shot and killed in April 2015 while running away from North Charleston officer Michael Slager. Scott, 50, was unarmed. Slager was subsequently arrested, indicted, denied bail for months, and then released earlier this month once a new trial date was set.

Clinton is currently leading the polls in South Carolina, though the endorsement from Bamberg, who was also prominent in the effort to take the Confederate flag down from the South Carolina Statehouse, could help Sanders secure more support from black voters in the state, the Times noted.

Bamberg told the media Monday that he didn't previously give Sanders "his fair shake," Politico reported.

In recent weeks, Clinton has picked up endorsements from Eric Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, The Des Moines Register and The Boston Globe. When Bamberg endorsed Clinton in December, he referenced her plans to reform the criminal justice system, police using body cameras and banning racial profiling.

“After the tragic incidents involving Walter Scott, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Samuel DuBose and countless others, it’s become clear that we need to restore the balance of trust between law enforcement and many communities across the country," Bamberg said in his Clinton endorsement.

"She has put forth plans," he continued. "That reinforce her commitment to fight for those persons who so often feel a sense of powerlessness on these issues.

But Bamberg said he had been watching Sanders more closely in the past few weeks. When the two met, he told the Times, they discussed criminal justice reform, implementing new policies for police departments and economic struggles beleaguering working-class Americans.

"What I got from him was not a presidential candidate talking to a state representative, or an old white man talking to a young black guy," Bamberg said. "What I got from him was a man talking to a man about things that they are passionate about, and that was the tipping point for me."

"Bernie represents bold new leadership and is not afraid to challenge the status quo," Bamberg said Monday, according to Politico.

The South Carolina Democratic primary will occur on Feb. 27.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/justin-bamberg-bernie-sanders_us_56a6447be4b076aadcc7366b?section=politics

Bernie totally killed it tonight. He left HRC swinging in the wind. So proud of him.

https://www.facebook.com/cnnpolitics/videos/1060425060665993/?theater