Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Found Dead at His West Texas Ranch

By Martin Pengelly and Ben Jacobs

The supreme court justice Antonin Scalia has died. He was 79.

Texas governor Greg Abbott issued a statement confirming the news and paying tribute to Scalia, a noted and staunch conservative.

The San Antonio Express News reported that Scalia was found dead on Saturday at a ranch in the Big Bend region of Texas, south of Marfa, and said he had been staying at a ranch, for a private party, and was discovered to have died after not attending a breakfast.

Local ABC affiliate KVIA reported that Scalia died in his sleep after a day of quail hunting.

“Justice Antonin Scalia was a man of God, a patriot, and an unswerving defender of the written constitution and the rule of law,” Abbott said.

“He was a solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution.

His fierce loyalty to the Constitution set an unmatched example, not just for judges and lawyers, but for all Americans.”

Abbott’s statement concluded: “We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the supreme court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the rule of law.

“Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”
 
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Triumph The Insult Comic Dog Talks To Young Voters

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Democratic Debate

Triumph visits the Democratic Debate in Charleston, SC as part of Triumph's Election Special 2016 premiering February 8, only on Hulu. The special follows Triumph through Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, chasing the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and many more.

Speak poop to power!

Republican N.J. Gov Christie To End White House Bid

http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20160210/NEWS0605/160219954/0/SEARCH

A Nightmare For Hillary Clinton

By Taegan Goddard

First Read: “Bernie Sanders bested Clinton by 22 points (!!!) in a state she carried in the 2008 presidential contest. And the exit poll numbers seem even worse, even among the groups Clinton is supposedly strong with: Sanders beat her among women by 11 points (55%-44%), Democrats (52%-48%), and moderates (58%-39%).

He crushed her among his core groups, winning young voters (83%-16%), independents (72%-25), and liberals (60%-39%). And then there are these terrible numbers: Clinton lost among Democrats caring the most about honest and trustworthiness by 86 points (91%-5%), and she even lost among the Dems who want their candidate to care about people like them by 65 points (82%-17%).”

“Warning sign: Caring about people like them is the Bill Clinton brand, folks!!! The silver lining for Hillary: The map is about to get a lot better for her (see below). But as we wrote yesterday, it will get worse first — Sanders is going to continue to out raise her, the Nevada caucuses (on Feb. 23) are going to be closer than anyone thought, and the outside forces are set to be unbearable (Bloomberg! Biden! Shakeup!).”

Wonk Wire: Bernie’s brand is the future of the Democratic party.

John Kasich’s Second Place Finish In New Hampshire Is A Nightmare For The GOP

By Josh Voorhees

John Kasich speaks at a town hall on Jan. 23 in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

 

In the run up to Tuesday’s Republican primary, John Kasich conceded that a poor performance in New Hampshire would mean an end to his campaign. “If we get smoked here,” the Ohio governor told reporters last week, “I’m going home.” But after finishing second place in the Granite State—ahead of Marco Rubio and his two other party-approved rivals—it’s clear Kasich isn’t going home. He’s going on to South Carolina.

The problem for the Republican Party, though, is that Kasich is unlikely to go much further than that. In the meantime, he’ll siphon off momentum, media attention, and money from his fellow party-approved rivals who are actually in a position to capitalize on a post-primary bump. Kasich’s surprise showing actually turns the GOP’s Trump-themed headache into a migraine.

There were always going to be two narratives coming out of New Hampshire: the major one about Donald Trump, who has been leading in state polls for months, and the minor one about whichever of the establishment-friendly foursome came out on top in the contest within a contest between Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Kasich.

Someone like Marco, or even Jeb, was well positioned to use the second-place spotlight to finally begin consolidating establishment-minded voters, which remains the best and perhaps only path left for any of them to pass Trump and Iowa-winner Ted Cruz later this year. Kasich, though, is almost comically ill equipped to travel that difficult path.

For starters, there’s the very real problem that his bank account is running low. He raised only $3.2 million in the final three months of last year and began 2016 with only $2.5 million on hand—about a fourth of what Rubio had in the bank and a third of what Bush did. Yes, Kasich’s performance in New Hampshire will likely come with an uptick in fundraising, but the odds are that he’s still going to have significantly less than Rubio and Bush, not to mention Trump and Cruz. Much of the money he does bring in this week, meanwhile, will be canceled out by the millions Rubio and Bush will now spend via their super PACs to torpedo Kasich’s campaign.

Kasich’s bigger problem is just how out of line his (relatively!) moderate worldview appears to be with that of the Republican voters he’ll need to unite. He doesn’t just have a history of going against the conservative line—he has a history of unapologetic conservative apostasy, often seeming to take great joy in telling conservative voters that they’re wrong. In a world where a former reality TV star can win New Hampshire, anything is possible. But in a world where Donald J. Trump does win New Hampshire, it’s hard to imagine a critical mass of Republican voters will be excited about Kasich’s positions on hot-button topics like immigration, Common Core, Medicaid expansion, and marriage equality.

The Ohio Republican’s already difficult job will get that much more so now that the race is leaving New Hampshire, a state where the candidate he’s most often compared with, Jon Huntsman, won roughly the same share of the GOP vote four years ago as Kasich did on Tuesday. (Huntsman, you probably won’t remember, dropped out shortly after.)

Next comes South Carolina and then Nevada, neither of which will be anywhere near as friendly to Kasich’s particular brand of politics. If he is still standing come March, he’ll then need to survive a Super Tuesday dominated by delegate-rich southern states like Texas, Georgia, and Alabama. In other words, Kasich will leave New Hampshire as a winner—but a winner the race will soon forget.
Additional Slate coverage of the New Hampshire primary:

• Why Bernie Sanders' Victory Is a Really Big Deal
• Donald Trump Won New Hampshire. Sad!
• Hillary to Voters After Losing: Let's Get Real, America

Read more of Slate’s coverage of the GOP primary.

Cenk Uygur blasts Wall Street Journal for attacking Sanders: ‘You committed class warfare on us’

By Arturo Garcia

Cenk Uygur defends Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) record on Feb. 9, 2016. (YouTube)

After defending Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) record against the Washington Post last month, Young Turks host Cenk Uygur ripped the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. for its criticism of the Democratic presidential candidate.

“They cry their crocodile tears: ‘Sanders is actually gonna fix the system. How dare he, class warrior?'” Uygur said. “No, you committed class warfare on the rest of us. You stole our government, then you redirected trillions of money into your pockets.”

The op-ed by Bret Stephens accused Sanders of trying to paint everyone working on Wall Street as a criminal because of his campaign’s focus on economic and campaign finance reforms.

“No political or social penalties attach, in today’s America, to the wholesale indictment of this entire industry and the people who work in it,” Stephens complained. “Had another presidential candidate made a similarly damning remark about some other profession—public-school teachers, say, or oil-rig workers—there would have been the usual outcry about false stereotypes, the decline of civility and so on. When Bernie says it about Wall Street there’s a collective shrug, if not nodding agreement.”

“That’s not what he did,” Uygur responded. “You’re lying about that. ‘Cause you don’t want him to fix [the Glass-Steagall Banking Act] ’cause that’s how you guys get rich — by gambling with our money.”

Stephens also said that one reason Sanders has connected well with younger voters is because his idea of wisdom is “to hold fast to the angry convictions of his adolescence.”

“Isn’t it kind of juvenile to go around calling a presidential candidate childish?” Uygur asked, adding that younger voters are often more informed than their elders.

“The older voters who watch TV get broad general comments about the candidates,” the host said. “They never dig into the issues. The younger voters, who get their news online, have access to all their positions on all their issues. They’re far more educated than the older knucklehead voters you guys have been brainwashing all these years.”

Watch Uygur’s commentary, as aired on Tuesday, below.

One Hundred Billionaires Who Are Trying To Buy The White House

By John Lundin



A small group of billionaires is trying very hard to buy the presidency. They want to buy the White House from it’s rightful owners – you and me.

A recent analysis of campaign finance data by Politico has found that the top 100 donors to the presidential race have spent $195 million on their preferred candidates — that’s compared to the $155 million spent by the smallest 2 million donors. In other words, 100 rich people have more purchasing power than 2 million non-rich people combined. As The New York Times found last year, just 158 mega-donors paid for half of all early campaign donations.

While these sobering figures are hardly cause for celebration, there is one silver lining: Judging from where the billionaires are putting their money, it’s not likely to get them much. The top recipient of billionaire bucks was none other than Jeb Bush, who is currently leading the field only in the race for last place. Jeb’s flailing campaign was the recipient of $49 million from donors on Politico’s list. They appear to be getting zilch in return.

In case you think this is a only a Republican problem, GOP candidates aren’t the only ones taking money from the rich: Hillary Clinton was the second largest beneficiary of billionaire bucks.

Clinton’s super PAC allies are assiduously courting wealthy liberals as they gird for a potentially protracted fight for the Democratic nomination against the unexpectedly vigorous insurgent campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has decried super PACs and has relatively little support from them. While super PACs supporting Clinton in 2015 raised $55 million ― $38 million of which came from top donors on POLITICO’s list, including $8 million from the fifth biggest donor, New York financier George Soros ― they have struggled to win support from other top Democratic donors.

And who are these billionaires who are trying to purchase our next president? It will probably come as no surprise that they are overwhelmingly white and male. The top donors, Dan Wilks and his brother Farris, made a fortune in hydraulic fracking, $15 million of which they donated to Ted Cruz. Cruz also took huge amounts from New York hedge fund tycoon Bob Mercer (No. 2 on Politico’s list), Texas energy man Toby Neugebauer (No. 4) and Illinois manufacturers Dick and Liz Uihlein (No. 6).

Oddly, the notorious Koch brothers were nowhere on Politico’s list. Although they reportedly plan to spend nearly $900 million on the presidential race — more than either the Republican or Democratic parties — the Kochs have yet to endorse a candidate for the primary. And should Donald Trump win the primary, that $900 million could go unspent: While the Kochs might not love any of the candidates, there is one they clearly loathe.

But for now, Jeb! Bush is clearly in the lead for mega-dollar donors. And when Bush drops out of the race – which he will – all that money will get refocused somewhere. Rubio? Cruz? Who knows?

What is clear is that in the race for the biggest donors, there are about 300 million other Americans who will pay the price: each and every one of us.

Why Reparations And Social Security Matter For African Americans In The Election

American history has not created wealth for most.

By Maya Rockeymoore / AlterNet

Photo Credit: Shutterstock, Copyright (c) Monkey Business Images

As Ta-Nehisi Coates and Steve Phillips become the latest in a lineage of black scholar/activists who have worked to push the boundaries of policy discourse about the feasibility of reparations for African Americans, it is important that we not lose sight of existing policies that affect the bottom line of black households.

Social Security is one such policy that has tremendous economic consequences for vulnerable families and provides a good litmus test for where the 2016 presidential candidates stand on the issue of black economic security.

It’s no secret that more than 150 years after the end of slavery, black people — along with Native Americans, Latinos and certain subgroups of Asian Americans — remain at the bottom of the economic ladder in America. 

African Americans and Latinos own only 6 and 7 cents respectively for every dollar of wealth owned by whites and earn only 67 cents for every dollar of income earned by whites (national data is not available for Native Americans and Asian American subgroups). 

These deep disparities in wealth and income are a legacy of discriminatory government policies and business practices that have benefited white households over households of color. It even marred Social Security’s beginning, which by barring coverage for agricultural and domestic workers effectively excluded approximately 65 percent of all black workers when the bill was signed into law in 1935.

This legacy of social and economic racial discrimination makes African Americans especially reliant on the program today. Social Security provides social insurance coverage to eligible individuals in the event of retirement, disability or the death of a worker with surviving dependents. It also has a progressive benefit structure that replaces a greater percentage of lower earners’ pre-Social Security wages compared to higher earners.

So, while we know African Americans are economically vulnerable, we also know that many could not make it through retirement, a disability or the death of a loved one, without Social Security. For example, 46 percent of African-American seniors ages 65 and over rely on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income, compared to 35 percent of whites.

Although the formula for determining benefit levels is seemingly neutral with respect to race and ethnicity, the program does in fact affect racial and ethnic groups in different ways because of variances in demographic factors such as life expectancy, health status, years of work, level of earnings, number of dependents, and marital status. As a result, the distributional impact of the program and proposed changes to it can be estimated by variables such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and marital status.

We know that African Americans are disadvantaged by the structure of Social Security’s retirement program because of shorter life spans. We also know that African Americans and other people of color disproportionately benefit from the disability and survivor portions of the programs, because of higher morbidity and mortality rates. The data shows that when all three parts of Social Security are taken as a whole, African Americans receive a slightly higher rate of return from the program compared to what they contribute in wages.

However, when taken alone, the retirement portion of the program is regressive for African Americans, since those who have shorter life expectancy effectively subsidize the retirement of those with longer life expectancy. Proposals to raise the retirement age, therefore, are not beneficial for African Americans since they would result in reduced benefit amounts, and depending on the specifics of the proposal, could make the benefit of Social Security to African Americans less valuable overall.

Enter the 2016 elections. While Senator Bernie Sanders’ dismissive response to the questioner who asked him about reparations at the Black and Brown debate in Iowa was both regretful and instructive about the intellectual boundaries of mainstream contemporary populism, he has taken a stand against all benefit cuts — including increasing the retirement age. He has also put forward a plan to expand benefits that has been estimated by the Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary to increase benefits and extend the solvency of Social Security through the year 2074. By placing the burden of expansion on the wealthy, who would pay more by raising the earnings cap on Social Security payroll contributions, his plan would save middle, moderate and low-income Americans from economically harmful benefit cuts. This would be good for African Americans.

Although she has not yet put forward a detailed plan for expanding Social Security, Secretary Hillary Clinton has expressed support for expanding benefits for vulnerable groups, which would be good for African Americans. However, she has not ruled out instituting benefit cuts as a means for extending Social Security’s solvency and has said she is open to considering raising the retirement age “for people whose jobs allow them to work later in life.” This approach presumably targets higher income, white-collar workers but it represents little guarantee of protection for African Americans who experience life-threatening health disparities across the income spectrum.

On the Republican side of the race, businessman and presidential contender Donald Trump has shunned traditional conservative approaches to Social Security reform by ruling out raising the retirement age. His decision taps into a wealth of polling data that shows widespread, bipartisan support for Social Security. Both senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, on the other hand, have said they would increase the retirement age. Ted Cruz would seek to destabilize the program altogether by diverting Social Security funds into private accounts exposed to Wall Street, which brings a host of additional vulnerabilites for African Americans.

In sum, Social Security is not a replacement for a policy that compensates African Americans for lost wages, discrimination, dehumanization, and pain and suffering they experienced as result of slavery, Jim Crow and a host of additional discriminatory policies and practices that have undermined their socioeconomic standing. Given that precedent has been established for reparative policies for other wronged groups in the U.S., there should be no reason to exclude African Americans from policy considerations that have been afforded to others.

Nevertheless, Social Security remains an important pillar of progress that is essential for many black households to survive and thrive. For that reason alone, it too is worth fighting for.

Maya Rockeymoore is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions LLC, a social change strategy firm, and president of the Center for Global Policy Solutions, a nonprofit think tank.

It’s almost over for Hillary: This election is a mass insurrection against a rigged system

Sanders has ended the coronation and fired up the grass roots. Now Clinton's electability argument is crumbling too.

By Bill Curry

Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, shake hands as they greet the audience before the audience before a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by MSNBC at the University of New Hampshire Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Credit: Associated Press)

It would be hard to overstate what Bernie Sanders has already achieved in his campaign for president, or the obstacles he’s had to surmount in order to achieve it. Not only has he turned a planned Hillary Clinton coronation into an exercise in grass-roots democracy, he’s reset the terms of the debate. We are edging closer to the national conversation we so desperately need to have. If we get there, all credit goes to Bernie.

Many of those obstacles were put in place by Democratic national party chair and Clinton apparatchik Deborah Wasserman Schultz. Without pretense of due process, Schultz slashed the number of 2016 debates to six, down from 26 in 2008, and scheduled as many as she could on weekends when she figured no one would be watching. To deprive would-be challengers of free exposure, Schultz robbed voters of free and open debate and ceded the spotlight to the dark vaudeville of the Republicans. That Sanders got this far in spite of her is a miracle in itself.

Sanders got bagged again in Iowa, this time by a state party chair, one Andrea McGuire. Like Schultz, McGuire’s specialty is high-dollar fundraising, and like Schultz she was deeply involved in Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Under the esoteric rules of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, and after a string of lucky coin tosses, Clinton eked out a 700.52 to 696.86 margin, not in votes cast but in a mysterious commodity known as “delegate equivalents.”

We’re electing a president, not the senior warden of a Mason’s lodge. All evidence indicates Sanders won the popular vote. It isn’t a minor point. If the public knew he won the only vote anybody understands or cares about, Clinton wouldn’t be “breathing a sigh of relief,” she’d be hyperventilating. McGuire refuses to release vote totals. She says keeping them a secret is an Iowa tradition. So what if it is? As with debates, the stakes transcend the candidates’ interests. In an editorial headlined “Something Smells in the Democratic Party,” the Des Moines Register, which endorsed Clinton prior to the caucuses, wrote:

What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period… the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.

Given that this entire election is a mass insurrection against a rigged system, one would think the national political press would share the Register’s concern, but it moved on to the next race with barely a backward glance. Throughout the campaign the press has been nearly as big an obstacle for Sanders as the party. Even jaded political junkies were startled when the Tyndall Report exposed the media blackout of Sanders. In 2015, ABC News devoted 261 minutes to the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump got 81 minutes. Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds. Nearly as harmful is the dismissive tone of the cable commentariat, and I don’t mean just Fox News.

CNN has larded up “the best political team on television” with partisans, including Bush acolyte Ana Navarro and Trump minion Jeffrey Lord. On the Democratic side, Paul Begala advises a Clinton super PAC; David Axelrod was Obama’s guru; Donna Brazile a DNC chair; Van Jones an Obama staffer; David Gergen a Clinton adviser. All are bright, honorable people, but it’s hard to report on a peasant revolt from inside the castle. (The network just added Sanders sympathizer Bill Press to the mix, but it’s far too little and too late.)

Things aren’t all that different over at MSNBC though to its credit it lets reporters do more of its analysis. One might expect its younger on-air personalities to be in sync with Sanders but our younger political journalists aren’t like our younger voters, being more attuned to the centrist politics of Clinton and Obama than to the reformist zeal now reshaping and re-energizing the Democrat left.

The whole press corps still treats politics as theater or sport. No one ever explains policy on a post-debate show. Must all talk be of the horse race? It’s a democracy, not an off-track betting parlor. We must all think less like political consultants and more like citizens, and journalists should lead the way.

That they don’t is a gift to Clinton. Sanders wants to talk about the fallen state of our politics, the fallen state of our middle class, and how the first fall caused the second. Clinton can’t have that discussion.  Exposing her differences with Sanders on such topics would sink her. So she says she and he are alike in every way except she’s practical and electable—”a progressive who likes to get things done”–and he’s a hopeless dreamer. It’s the kind of argument political reporters were born to buy, and despite being full of holes, it works even among some non-journalists.

The electability argument is all about money and polls, ground games and firewalls, though you hear less about money lately. Clinton’s campaign muddied the message of its launch by leaking a plan to raise $300 million for an “independent” super PAC. This was to be the year of the super PAC but it’s proving instead that even in politics, money isn’t everything. Among Republicans, Jeb Bush raised the most money, Trump the least. Trump rides high. Bush is on a respirator. As you may have heard, Bernie doesn’t have a super PAC. Backed by a record breaking 1.3 million small donors, he slashed 40 points off Clinton’s lead and rewrote the rules of presidential politics.

You hear even less about polls; or general election polls at least. What makes the media blackout of Sanders an even greater travesty is that it was imposed over a period of many months in which he led all 21 other candidates in both parties in nearly every general election poll. When a self-described socialist leads every poll, something historic is happening. Even horse-race reporters should have seen that a story so big, so confounding of conventional wisdom, demanded in depth coverage, but unless you read Salon or Rolling Stone, such coverage was hard to find.

In Thursday’s MSNBC debate, Rachel Maddow, having raised the specters of George McGovern and Barry Goldwater, briefly acknowledged Sanders’ general election lead (“I know you have good head to head polling numbers… right now”) before asking, “but do you have a general election strategy?”

Sanders might have referred all Goldwater questions to Hillary, who after all worked on Barry’s famed ’64 race, or asked Maddow why the guy leading every general election poll would need a new general election strategy, but he did neither.

There is no Clinton firewall. At most, 10 states are out of Sanders’ reach and public opinion is never static. Nor does she have a better “ground game.” Real grass-roots organizations like the Working Families Party, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America let members guide endorsements. (Sanders’ support in each of those groups was at or above 85 percent) Such groups are building the movement Sanders speaks of in every speech. Building a movement is like wiring a house for electricity. You can buy the most expensive lamps in the store but with no electricity, when you hit the switch the lights don’t go on. It takes real conviction to fuel grass-roots politics. In Iowa, Sanders ran 5 points ahead of late polls. It won’t be the last time it happens.
*
If you strip away all the nonsense about polls, money, firewalls and ground games, Clinton’s left with two arguments, neither one pretty. One is that Sanders is too far left. Pundits dismiss his polls by repeating her “wait till the Republicans get ahold of him” line. And they’ll say what? That he’s old? Jewish? A socialist? Everybody already knows and anyone who’d even think of voting Democratic is already down with it or soon could be. The “socialist” tag needs explaining, but so do “corrupt” and “fascist.” Both parties’ front runners carry baggage. For my money, Bernie’s is the lightest. As for the notion that voters can’t see that paying $1,000 in taxes beats paying $5,000 in health insurance premiums, it is an insult to the American people.

The core of Clinton’s realpolitik brief pertains not to electability but to governance.  Her point is that Sanders is naïve. She says none of his proposals can get though a Republican Congress. She strongly implies that he’d roll back Obamacare, a charge that is false, cynical and so nonsensical she’ll have to stop making it soon.  She says she has a plan to get to universal health care—she doesn’t—and that she’ll do it by working “in partnership” with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Who’s being naive here? A Republican Congress won’t pass any of her ideas either. The only way to get real change is to elect Democrats to Congress and have a grass-roots movement strong enough to keep the heat on them. Nor will insurers cough up a dime of profit without a fight.  Vowing to spare us a “contentious debate” over single-payer care she ignores the admonition of Frederick Douglass; “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.” There has been a lot of talk lately about what a progressive is. Here’s a hint: if you think Douglass is wrong, you might not be one.

Clinton’s last argument concerns loyalty. Throughout 2015 she sniped at Obama from the right while relegating Bill to the sidelines. Last month, seeing her lead slip away, she wrapped herself in political and family connections, as if hoping to gain the White House as a legacy admission. Analysts say Sanders drove her to the left. It’s partly but only superficially true. Lately he has driven her to the status quo, a bad place to be in 2016.

Democrats are deeply loyal to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton who didn’t so much reconcile their party’s conflicts as engross them within their protean personalities. Hillary accuses Sanders of disloyalty to them and to the modern party they held together. When Sanders suggested that some progressive groups might be part of the establishment, she ripped into him, denying there even is such a thing. There is, of course. Its main components were once grass-roots movements that traded independence for access and are now Washington lobbies with grass-roots mailing lists. They were better off when they played harder to get.

The absence of an independent, progressive movement left a vacuum that groups like The Working Families Party and MoveOn.org have begun to fill not a moment too soon. Clinton seeks to cast Sanders as the “other” by calling into question his loyalty to the establishment. It gets her nothing.  Democrats will always be loyal to Bill and Barack, but know in their hearts it’s time to move on. The debate now is over what comes next.

It’s not a debate Hillary wants. She’s a superb debater, whip smart, well prepared and a world-class verbal gymnast. I’m guessing Sanders goes a little lighter on debate prep, making him less concrete and specific. I wish he engaged more directly. But his quiet dignity serves him, and us, well. He’s the anti-Trump, doing nearly as much to elevate public discourse as Trump does to debase it.

One way to sum up the case he’s trying to make might be as follows. In the 1990s a near bipartisan consensus celebrated a new age of globalization and information technology in which technology and trade spur growth that in turn fosters a broad and inclusive prosperity. Government’s job is to deregulate finance and trade and work with business in ‘public private partnerships’ for progress.

Twenty years on, Hillary still sees the world through the rose-colored glasses of that ’90s consensus. Not Bernie. He sees that in 2016 rising tides don’t even lift most boats, that growth comes at a steep price when it comes at all, and that new technology cost more jobs than it creates. He understands that when jobs flow to countries with weak governments and low wages, the American middle class can’t get a raise. He sees that public-private partnership meant pay-to-play politics, and that the whole system runs not on innovation but corruption. My guess is the middle class sees what he sees and wants what he wants: a revolution. If he can continue to drive the debate, they may get one.

Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.

More Bill Curry.

The Super Bowl's Not Over Until Peyton Manning Kisses Papa John, Shills for Budweiser

By Elliot Hannon

Peyton Manning just had one of the nights of his life Sunday. Potentially in the top five, somewhere in the mix of getting married, the birth of his two kids, and presumably his previous Super Bowl win? We’ll never know exactly where tonight’s performance ranks on the Manning all-time list (unless he tells us), but we can make a few inferences by his post-game celebration. In the immediate jubilant aftermath of the game, Manning leaned in to kiss—Papa John? Yes, founder and owner of the pizza chain, John Schnatter, was on the sideline.

Just to recap, here are Manning’s priorities as expressed through post-game kiss preference:

(1) Papa John

(2) wife

(3) kids

(3a) Budweiser

Peyton Manning’s life through product placement.

THE WORM HAS TURNED: Barring unforeseeable events, Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic nominee

By hootch

The Clinton campaign is collapsing. Built for an outdated presidential race from the past two decades, it underestimated the changing times, a unique opponent, and increasingly savvy voters.

The campaign's first mistake was to take the traditional approach of sitting on a lead. Certainly, it would have seemed a safe bet. The party's elected politicians would rally to her as the presumptive nominee—and they did. Donors were lined up for a big haul—and they gave. The media would willingly marginalize Sanders—and they tried. And the voters could be quickly frightened with specters of Republicans into sticking with the establishment candidate—but they weren't.

Despite every institutional advantage and a made-to-order GOP horror show, voters could not be scared away from Sanders. The more intently the machine insisted upon Clinton, the more suspect Clinton became. And now her campaign is out of options.

There are no more endorsements left to get. She's squandered her financial advantage by outspending Sanders by many times in Iowa, only to tie. Her big donors must be maxing out in direct contributions, leaving Super PAC's as the only vehicle through which she can make up the losses (less than ideal optics). And the media has already stooped so low in its dismissal of Sanders that there is no credible room left to expand that endeavor. At this point, Chris Matthews would literally have to beg viewers to vote Clinton in order to outdo his current advocacy.

On unfamiliar territory and feeling desperate, the inflexible campaign made the second mistake of doubling down on its voter containment strategy, completely giving up on converting any new voters.
There is no obvious goal or governing principles coming out of her camp at this point. No lines in the sand she's promising to draw as President. All that's left is jeering smack-talk of Bernie-Bros, pie-in-the-sky aspirations, and sexism—suggesting that anyone who still likes Sanders has been cut from the target audience.

And it isn't working.

Why should it? People aren't idiots. Shirley Chisholm, Jan Schakowsky, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Elizabeth Warren and many others have shown us that women can confront our sexist culture and still refuse to submit to the male-dominated influences that have ruined our economy and democracy. And consider politicians like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, who have also battled untold sexist barriers to achieve their groundbreaking professional goals; only the most deluded Democratic voter would consider handing them high office as compensation for their troubles.

Essentially, the Clinton campaign is wrapping a sexist appeal in the veneer of feminism: because she was a woman, Clinton couldn't help but play ball with corporations, so give her a girl pass. What a slap in the face to every woman who never sold out or gave up. It's one thing to point out that a woman went through a mountain of man-shit to obtain her rightful due, or blazed a path for future women, however imperfectly; it's another thing, completely, to insist voters overlook corruption because the candidate is a woman.

And as the campaign lashes out in a panic, other wheels are starting to come off the bus.

In the last debate, Sanders addressed race on three occasions: 1) asked about the death penalty, he noted that innocent people of color are more likely to find their way to death row; 2) asked about our criminal justice system, he made sure to include in his answer the fact that we incarcerate mostly people of color; and 3) when responding to the Flint disaster, he asked a type of question rarely heard from a Presidential candidate: what would have happened if Flint's population was middle class and white?

Clinton said absolutely nothing about race. Well, almost nothing. At the debate's conclusion, with the last question answered, Clinton wondered aloud why there weren't opportunities to talk about race.

How must that have sounded to black viewers, who surely noticed not only Sanders' pointed and appropriate injection of racial concerns into his answers, but the absence of any equivalent from Clinton? I'm sure she had good sound bytes at the ready; she just lacked the inter-sectional ability to weave them into a question that didn't parade itself as race-focused.

Is it any surprise that public figures from the African American community are beginning to withdraw their endorsements of Clinton and line up behind Sanders?

It is as though the Clinton campaign was designed to last only so long; slap-dash construction with a lifespan no longer than the short time it would take to push Sanders out of the frame. When that didn't happen, there was no Plan B. The public didn't care who Congress endorsed, and they didn't care what the Chris Matthews of the world said, and they aren't buying the argument that everyone troubled by Clinton is somehow hoodwinked by Republican misogyny. They want actual representation and appreciate a candidate who shoots straight.

And this is the nail in the Clinton coffin. The American people are beginning to realize they have the ability to elect someone they're not supposed to elect. Clinton represents everything "normal" about elections that are now universally recognized as abnormal. She is a safe bet only in a fictional world that is being dismantled. She is the past, and the future has become viable.

Berine Sanders' support will continue to swell, as it should, and Democrats need the courage to call this a good thing—a great thing. No longer can we permit our values and agendas to be boxed in by the very influences that oppose them. Time is running out on our ecology, our economy, and our social fabric, and nothing less than an out-and-out champion for our future will do. 

You probably already know this. It's probably why you are voting for Sanders in your Democratic Primary. It looks like you'll have plenty of company.

President Obama: The World I Want My Daughters To Grow Up In

By Barack Obama

Feb. 3, 2016

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. 

One of America’s greatest strengths right now is the fact that our young generation—the millennials—is also the biggest, most educated, most diverse and most digitally fluent generation in our history. And one thing my daughters have taught me about their generation is that they’re not going to wait for anyone else to build a better world; they’re just going to go ahead and create that world for themselves.

We can create the circumstances that give them every chance to do that, of course—to make sure they can grow up free from debt and free to make their own choices in a world that’s not beyond their capacity to repair. That’s why my administration has reduced student loan payments to 10% of a borrower’s income, so that young people who choose college aren’t punished for that choice. We’ve reformed our health-care system so that when young people change jobs, go back to school, chase that new idea or start a family of their own, they’ll still have coverage.

We led nearly 200 nations to the most ambitious agreement in history to combat climate change. But my daughters’ generation knew long before Paris that protecting the one planet we’ve got isn’t something that’s up for debate. They knew long before the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality last June that all love is created equal. They don’t see each of us first and foremost as black or white, Asian or Latino, gay or straight, immigrant or native-born. They view our diversity as a great gift. In many ways, their generation is already pushing the rest of us toward change.

 So for the sake of our future, one thing we have to do, maybe even above all others, is to make sure they grow up knowing that their voices matter, that they have agency in our democracy. Those of us in positions of power have to set an example with the way we treat each other—not by viewing those who disagree with us as unpatriotic or motivated by malice, but with a willingness to compromise.

We have to listen to those with whom we don’t agree.We have to reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics that makes people feel like the system is rigged. We have to make voting easier, not harder, and modernize it for the way we live now. And we have to encourage our young people to stay active in our public life so that it reflects the goodness and decency and fundamental optimism that they exhibit every day.

The world we want for our kids—one with opportunity and security for our families; one with rising standards of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet; one that’s innovative and inclusive, bold and big-hearted—it’s entirely within our reach. The only constraints on America’s future are the ones we impose on ourselves.

That’s always been the case with America—our destiny isn’t decided for us, but by us. And as long as we give our young people every tool and every chance to decide the future for themselves, I have incredible faith in the choices they’ll make.

Clinton Last Night: "Name Anything (Wall Street Has) Influenced Me On" - OK, I Will

By HumanOfEarth

 http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/4/1479904/-Clinton-Last-Night-Name-Anything-Wall-Street-Has-Influenced-Me-On-OK-I-Will

Chris Christie Is an Incompetent Boob and a Goddamned Liar (Part 994 of an Endless Series)

Posted by Rude One

Now, the Rude Pundit is no big-time politician who is friends with football team owners and kings, nor is he running for president, but he's pretty damn sure that if he were governor of a state that just got face-fucked by an historic blizzard with historic floods, he'd probably think it's his responsibility to stay in his goddamn state, just to show everyone that he gives a happy monkey fuck. But not New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Oh, sure, he was shamed into leaving the campaign trail in New Hampshire for a day to hang out and drink hot chocolate with the kids back at home. But as soon as the storm was over (and it was a big fucking storm), Christie told the snow-coated Garden State to kiss his big happy ass goodbye and jetted off in a private plane. When questioned about that decision this morning on Morning Blow, Christie, as is his way, was a total cock about it: "I don't even know what critics you're talking about. There is no residual damage, there is no residual flooding damage. All the flooding receded yesterday morning. And there was no other damage."

And, sure, the southern portions of the Jersey Shore might be a little more Philadelphia, a little more Delaware, but, you know they are still part of the state that Christie allegedly runs.

That part of the state got floods that dwarfed Hurricane/Superstorm/Big Honkin' Weather Event Sandy for them. In fact, this was their Sandy, since that the south shore dodged that bullet. But this more than made up for it. The flood waters recorded were a foot higher than the previous record in some areas.

As for the aftermath, or, as Christie calls it, "residual damage," the governor must understand that if a building gets flooded, especially if it has three, four, five feet of water in it, there is damage that may involve gutting the place or condemning it. Certainly, there is a fuck load of shit messed up. And it ain't isolated to a couple of homes.

The mayor of that town up there, North Wildwood, said, "We had between four and five feet of water in the downtown. Our entire dune system was compromised, and we had a big breach on 3rd Avenue. We had whitecaps and ice flow right through town. It was surreal."

Christie is prancing around New Hampshire, calling himself "the disaster governor," and saying that makes him a good leader. Well, shit, at least he didn't just fuck off to Disney World this time. He pretended he gave a fuck for a few minutes. If deluding yourself and lying to people is leadership, then Chris Christie should be the fuckin' emperor of the world.

Ring Of Fire On Free Speech TV

GOP Establishment In Freak-Out Mode: They Can't Stop Trump Or Cruz From Grabbing Nomination

By Steven Rosenfeld

 

"The party has been hijacked," says one GOP insider.

 

The Republican Party has added a new twist to its renowned blame games. Its Washington-centric establishment is saying the race for the 2016 presidential nominee is all but over before the voting starts.

As national news organizations are reporting just days before Iowa caucuses, it looks like either Donald Trump will mount a successful hostile takeover of the GOP, or the senator most despised by its establishment, Ted Cruz, will grab the nomination. That realization has prompted a growing chorus of GOP strategists and party insiders to chime in with last-minute advice to avoid what others say is inevitable, or simply panic.

“Whoever is not named Trump and not named Cruz that looks strong out of both Iowa and New Hampshire, we should consolidate around,” Henry Barbour, a Mississippi-based strategist told the New York Times, in a piece this week emphasizing time is running out for a “credible alternative.” His uncle is ex-RNC chair and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

“This whole thing is a disaster,” Curt Anderson, ex-RNC political director and veteran operative, told Politico.com in a piece that asked who let Trump get this far. “I feel the party has been hijacked,” said RNC member Holland Redfield. “It will be a major internal fight.”

“All of the hand-wringing and alarm-sounding within the Republican establishment is sound and fury signifying nothing,” Chris Cizilla, the Washington Post’s top handicapper wrote Wednesday. “The train has left the station. The boat has left the dock. The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora’s box is open.”

And what a box it is! Before Trump hijacked the headlines by trying to bully Fox News into dumping Megyn Kelly as a moderator for Thursday night's debate, and then walked away because he didn’t get his way (his press statement said, “this takes guts”), he was drawing the worst GOP publicity hounds.

In recent days, that’s included Sarah Palin, Jerry Falwell. Jr., Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Donald Rumsfeld.

“I see someone who has touched a nerve with our country,” Rumsfeld said of Trump. But the one-two punch of Palin’s and Grassley’s support is seen as influential among Iowa Republicans, who are disproportionately right-wing and evangelical. That’s why Mike Huckabee won Iowa in 2008 and Rick Santorum won in 2012. 

No matter the reason, the finger-pointing has begun. Republicans who tried to ignite a stop-Trump movement told Politico that the super PACS and donors that lined up behind their more mainsteam candidates—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie—misspent millions by slamming each other and not attacking Trump or Cruz. “It’s not just campaigns that are coming under fire—it’s also donors, many of whom were presented with the opportunity to go after Trump but didn’t pull the trigger,” Politico wrote. “Much frustration has been directed at the RNC, which some believe has been pushed around by the party’s surprise poll-leader.”

Trump’s Fox News Gambit

Going into the week before the Iowa caucuses, polls showed the dark mood of Republicans favors Trump and Cruz. The base is in a “sour” mood, the Post reported, although that’s too genteel. Ninety percent say the country is on a wrong track. Eighty percent don’t like the way the federal government works. Sixty percent say people like them are losing influence in America. Forty percent say they are “angry” about all of this—hence Trump’s standing: he has the support of 37 percent or so of likely GOP primary voters and has been leading for months. 

Trump yet again showed how he can uniquely manipulate the media by reviving his fight with Fox News’ anchor Megyn Kelly. He deliberately picked a fight with her the way he picks fights with protesters at his rallies. The timeline of this latest attention-grabbing gambit saw Trump threaten to pull out of Thursday’s TV debate unless Fox pulled Kelly from one of three moderator slots. But Fox did not budge, forcing Trump to follow through on his threat or look weak—a cardinal sin for him.

The great negotiator might have pulled a dumb move on the eve of what was lining up to be the biggest night of his life—winning the Iowa caucuses to begin his hostile takeover of the GOP. As he will see, politics abhors a vacuum and he just gave Cruz, who’s slightly trailing, and the posse of other mainstream candidates more airtime to attack and make their case. Undecided Republicans will see other choices without Trump hogging the limelight. Whether that’s a masterful move by the master negotiator remains to be seen. The Washington Post Wednesday reported that Trump supporters are parroting his lines that Kelly is biased and Fox can’t be trusted.

What’s most notable about this latest made-for-media dustup is what it reveals about Trump’s character—how thin-skinned he is when faced with critics who don’t fawn over him. On Tuesday night, Trump held a rare press conference and clashed with reporters who repeatedly asked him to respond to charges that he should not be endorsed by evangelicals because of his past marital infidelities. Come Wednesday, the Times’ campaign blog speculated that Trump knows he will be attacked for past pro-choice stances and would not be able to monopolize the debate coverage by attending. The Times also blogged that his campaign was walking back remarks about not attending the debate.

As the Boston Globe noted, “Cruz continues to work on his Iowa ground game while Trump continues to fight with the media.”

Not Republican, But Authoritarian

Whether he shows up or not, what the country is witnessing is not just a candidate whose uncanny ability to provoke and manipulate the press has upended previous rules of presidential campaigns, rendering mainstream competition all but irrelevant. Voters are also witnessing what an extreme authoritarian looks like and how he operates. That searing conclusion comes from former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who has written many books about political authoritarians and their rise in the Republican Party.

“Trump, after decades in the glare of media attention, instinctively understands exactly how to manipulate the fourth estate better than any political figure in modern America,” he recently wrote.

“By being himself, he is taking the country to school on how to dominate public attention with his inflammatory rhetoric, which he intuitively employs through unfiltered social media.”

Dean wrote that people who know Trump say he’s not behaving any differently on the campaign trail than he does in his business life. “I spoke with an attorney who has been involved in a number of real estate disputes with Trump, over many years, who said Trump acts in a very similar fashion in his business dealings. He insults and belittles opponents, and is an extremely sore loser, whose standard operating procedure is to try to bully and bend the rules his way.”

“We are going to know a lot more about authoritarian politics when the 2016 presidential race is completed,” Dean said, referring not just to Trump but also to the vast numbers of Americans who are drawn to following extreme authoritarians. What that says about the fate of the modern Republican Party also remains to be seen, but you can be sure that its mainstream leaders see the writing on the wall and are finding it disconcerting.

Related Stories

• Dumb and Dumber: Trump, Palin and the Celebration of Stupidity in U.S. Politics
• Astounding Video Surfaces of Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Bullying, Crude Ted Cruz as a Brash Bragging Teenager
• Dear Ted Cruz: Even David Brooks Hates You

Primary Phenomena

Ed Schultz News And Commentary: Monday The 25th Of January

On Monday’s show, Ed gives commentary on President Obama weighing in on the Democratic Primary, and Michael Bloomberg floating the possibility of an independent run for President.

We are joined by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Part-Owner of the Nation, to discuss the significance of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Larry Cohen, former President of the Communications Workers of America and Sanders Campaign surrogate, joins the show to discuss the lead up to the Iowa Caucus.

Flint Residents Told That Their Children Could Be Taken Away If They Don’t Pay For City's Poison Water

By John Vibes, The Free Thought Project

Not only is the Michigan government poisoning residents, but now they are threatening to take their children for not paying for it. 

 

Flint, MI – As the water crisis in Flint deepens, it is becoming apparent that the effects of the lead-infested water are not just a health hazard, but the situation has the potential of ruining many more lives outside of the poison issue. There is no denying that the water in Flint is undrinkable and that it is contaminated with lead and other substances, and it is clear that the government of Flint is responsible for the problem.

However, the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if they refuse to pay. Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for water they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment. Activists in Flint say that some residents have already received similar threats from the government if they refuse to pay their bills.

Flint residents have recently filed two class action lawsuits calling for all water bills since April of 2014 to be considered null and void because of the fact that the water was poisonous.

“We are seeking for the court to declare that all the bills that have been issued for usage of water invalid because the water has not been fit for its intended purpose,” said Trachelle Young, one of the attorneys bringing the lawsuit said in court.

“Essentially, the residents have been getting billed for water that they cannot use. Because of that, we do not feel that is a fair way to treat the residents,” Young added.

Recent estimates have indicated that it could take up to 15 years and over $60 million to fix the problem, and the residents will be essentially forced to live there until the problem is solved. Despite the fact that the issue is obviously the government’s responsibility, they have made it illegal for people to sell their homes because of the fact that they are known to carry contaminated water.

Meanwhile, residents are still left to purchase bottled water on their own, in addition to paying their water bill.

Although this problem is finally getting national media attention in Flint, they aren’t the only city with contaminated water supplies. In fact, a recent report published by The Guardian showed that public water supplies across the country were experiencing similar issues.

This crisis highlights the many dangers of allowing the government to maintain a monopoly on the water supply and calls attention to the fact that decentralized solutions to water distribution should be a goal that we start working towards.