What You Don't Know About Hillary Clinton Can Hurt You

Posted by Rude One

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was talking to a millennial dude who will be voting in his first presidential election this year. He sure hates Donald Trump, but he doesn't like Hillary Clinton because "she's so shady." That's one of those things that trigger a gut-level reaction in the Rude Pundit because it's a belief that's based on a heaping mountain of horseshit. So he went off on the millennial.

"No," the Rude Pundit snapped, "that's completely fucking wrong. The only reason you think Clinton is shady is because 25 years of conservative media shoved it down your throat. She's been accused and accused and investigated and investigated and guess what? Not a goddamn thing has ever come of it. It's all shit made up to damage her. If you keep saying over and over that someone did something wrong, did something wrong, did something wrong, but you never prove it, then you're just an asshole."

As Henry Louis Gates more politely put it in the New Yorker, "For all we know, Hillary Clinton may be guilty of everything she’s accused of and more. You might say the point is that we don’t know.
And it’s in those dark gaps in our knowledge that the political unconscious makes itself felt: you can’t tell a gun from a cigarette by the smoke alone. Which inference you prefer depends on which story you prefer—assuming you’ve been given one."

By the way, Gates wrote that twenty fucking years ago. The article is titled "Hating Hillary," and it's fascinating to reread it now in the context of an election in the middle of our third decade of thinking that Clinton must be dirty from some scandal and worthy of hate.

And this is not about her donors or her paid speeches or whatever, although the way we think about those things are colored by one of the most successful right-wing smear campaigns ever. No, this is the Hillary Scandal Industrial Complex, the nexus of Filegate-Whitewater-Travelgate-Benghazi-EmailServerGate and more, all fantasies conjured by conservatives in order to punish her for the sin of being a First Lady who tried to get health care reform passed and didn't shut the fuck up and order drapes for the president's bedroom.

You think that's oversimplifying it? Then you didn't fucking live through it in the 1990s. You didn't watch as men in both parties tore themselves to pieces over what they viewed as Clinton's lack of decorum, her failure to merely be an adornment for her husband (see the reaction to Eleanor Roosevelt for this level of intense hatred).

The scorn that Michelle Obama gets for just saying that American fat fucks should exercise a little and stop eating piles of shit is horrible, and its racist elements are disgusting, but, to be sure, it doesn't come near the level of Hillary Clinton because no one could write an article titled "Hating Michelle" and have it be about anything more than a bunch of cranky yahoos.

This was universal. "Hillary-hating has become one of those national pastimes which unite the élite and the lumpen. Serious accusations have, of course, been leveled against the President’s wife, but it’s usually what people think of her that determines the credence and the weight they give to the accusations, rather than the reverse," Gates wrote.

Clinton herself in 1996 offered a prescient explanation of the why she was a target for such animosity: "I believe that we’re going through a significant transition—economically, politically, culturally, socially, in gender relations, all kinds of ways—and so someone as visible as I am is going to get a lot of attention. I think if the spotlight were turned on many of my friends in their own private lives somebody could make out of it what they would: ‘My goodness, she didn’t take her husband’s name,’ or ‘She’s the one who travels while her husband stays home and takes care of the children,’ or ‘She has a very traditional role—does that mean that she’s sold out her education?’ There could be questions like that raised about nearly every American woman I know."

What pissed people off about Clinton is something that still pisses them off. Sometimes, she just sickens of all the bullshit and she lets you know. In the early 1990's, when it was still unusual to see a male candidate's wife as anything other than supportive arm candy, Clinton wasn't afraid to step in it, like with her famous remark about working instead of staying home and baking chocolate chip cookies (which led to the degrading act of publishing her cookie recipe to show sexist traditionalists that they needn't be scared of the big, bad lawyer lady).

The Rude Pundit has one other theory for why conservatives have kept up their hatred of Clinton. See, when Bill's affairs started to be known beyond Arkansas, during the 1992 campaign, she famously stuck by him. That enraged the right because they hoped the feminist governor's wife would dump him and do in Clinton's pursuit of the White House. The fact that she never threw Bill under the bus when, really, who could have blamed her, undid damage to Bill every time a new sex scandal erupted. So it exacerbated their hatred because the right could never bring Hillary Clinton to heel, even when they thought her own beliefs would make her do what they wanted.

You have to understand that history in order to understand Clinton. Read the Gates article. It's all there, twenty years ago: her hatred of the press, the small circle of confidantes, the warmth that people say she has on a personal level, all the accusations of Machiavellian manipulation, and, especially, the so-called scandals that never became scandals.

"So," the Rude Pundit said to the millennial, "it's just being dumb and ill-informed to not vote for Hillary because of fake scandals. However, there are lots of reasons not to vote for her that have nothing to do with that."

And that is where we will pick up in part 2. 

Hillary Clinton and Video Games: A Cautionary Tale (Part 2 of What You Don't Know About Hillary Clinton Can Hurt You)

Back in the dark ages of the 1990's, a certain hysteria was sweeping the land. Pre-Internet, before your children could watch people slice off parts of themselves and have sex with them on YouTube, some parents' groups were falling on their fainting couches over violence and a little bit of sex in video games. This came after the fainting over dirty words in songs. When she was First Lady, and running for Senate from New York, Hillary Clinton took up the cause of stopping the kiddies from seeing digital breasts and blood.

In December 1999, campaigning in more conservative areas of Long Island, Clinton spoke out against the manufacturers of video games and called for uniform ratings across media, hinting that if it wasn't done voluntarily, she would introduce legislation for that if she became senator. She talked about visiting a video arcade: "It's a very revealing and sobering experience." As for games at home, "I couldn't help but be upset when I read about the two boys from Columbine being obsessed with the game Doom."

Her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, using a report from the Federal Trade Commission that said that media companies, including video game makers, targeted young people in their advertising of content with violence, went out on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton in September of 2000: 

"President Clinton, making a rare appearance with Hillary Rodham Clinton to support her Senate candidacy in New York at the Jewish Community Center in New Rochelle, condemned the abuses cited in the report. The Clintons suggested they would support government restraints if the industry did not curb advertising aimed at underage audiences."

While a senator in 2005, Hillary Clinton became outraged because the 2004 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a mini-game involving "graphic" sex. This is known as the "Hot Coffee" mod to the game, and if a badly-animated cartoon guy nailing a cartoon woman is your thing, you can watch videos of it. Clinton asked the FTC to investigate Rockstar games to see if this was intentional (it was), saying, "I hear from parents all the time about the frustration they feel as they try to pass their own values onto their children in a world where this type of material is readily accessible."

In a statement on her formal letter to the FTC, Clinton went further: "The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder...I am announcing these measures today because I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control."

The measures she was calling for included legislation to "prohibit the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors and put in place a $5000 penalty for those who violate the law." In December 2005, along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, Clinton announced she was sponsoring a bill, the Family Entertainment Protection Act, that included the fine and community service to the on-site manager of any business that sold or rented "a Mature, Adults-Only, or Ratings Pending game to a person who is younger than seventeen." It also imposed ratings system oversight so that the government could judge whether or not games were being marked "Adults-Only" correctly.

The bill failed to even make it out of committee, thanks to pressure from the video game industry, as well as free speech advocates who called it government censorship. Oh, and the fact that any of the connections that Clinton was making between violence and video games was utter nonsense.

The point here is not that Hillary Clinton attacked video games, although if the Rude Pundit were a gamer, it would give him pause. The reason for bringing this up deserves some context, especially for the kids reading this blog, and it connects very clearly with the 1994 crime bill that has gotten so much attention lately.
And that, sweet readers, is for Part 3. 

What You Don't Know About Hillary Clinton Can Hurt You, Part 3: The Balance Sheet

Last night's debate in Brooklyn was utterly and completely useless. It told us nothing new, and no one stumbled bad enough or soared high enough to make a difference. The Democratic audience was as boorish and annoying as any Republican debate crowd. When the 1994 crime bill was brought up, Hillary Clinton was asked if it was a mistake that she supported it (she was First Lady and could not vote on it) while Bernie Sanders was never fully asked about the fact that he really, actually voted for it. The bill didn't become law because Hillary Clinton advocated for it. It became law because members of Congress voted for it and the president signed it. So, really, the effects of the bill are more on Sanders than on Clinton. She is not completely innocent here, but a little perspective is always necessary.

But the crime bill is an interesting case. Because, see, it is of a piece of a kind of liberal self-loathing that started under Reagan and didn't end until Barack Obama was elected. Oh, gather round, dear millennials, come over to the campfire and listen to the Rude Pundit spin a tale or two.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the worst thing a politician could be called was "liberal." Saint Ronnie Reagan made liberalism into the enemy of real America, and the people bought into it. "Liberal Democrats" became a pejorative, used any time any Democrat proposed anything that smacked of government interference in "freedom," which is defined as "shit conservatives like." It worked so well that many Democrats began running away from liberalism for fear that they might be tarred with the foul epithet. That's how we got the sight of Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis riding around in a goddamned tank in the 1988 election. 

You don't want to appear like a punk-ass, bleeding heart liberal? Show how tough you are. Go shoot some shit up.

For Democrats, defensiveness about liberalism became the default setting. Sure, sure, your Ted Kennedy or your Barbara Mikulski could get away with being openly left-wing. But, especially if you wanted a national profile, you had to hedge on your ideology and demonstrate that you could be as tough and mean and violent as a Republican. And that meant you had to do some things that showed that brute strength and also showed that you weren't beholden to liberal interests. Remember, too, that we were still in thrall to the Cold War mentality, so "liberal" equaled "commie" to many people.

After 12 years of Reagan and Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton was elected president. Now Clinton was always aware of the need to not seem too liberal, as his near-psychotic support for capital punishment showed. Clinton's presidency was marked by what has been praised as his "triangulation" on Republican issues, especially when he had to deal with a Republican-led Congress for most of his terms. That meant that he would take up a conservative goal, like welfare reform, and make it his own, adding in a few progressive elements here and there. You could call it "compromise," if you like, except compromise usually entails a more even split in what each side gets. Otherwise, it's just "surrender." Many of us called it "abandonment." (The Rude Pundit stood in a voting booth in a church in Indiana in 1996 for several minutes, wondering if he could pull the lever for Clinton because of welfare reform. He did, for the sake of Supreme Court nominees, always the endgame of any discussion on whether or not to vote. Of course, Clinton didn't get a chance to nominate anyone in his second term.)

What does this have to do with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? In the first part of this series, the Rude Pundit dismissed outright the various made-up scandals that have given Clinton this undeserved aura of shadiness. That just doesn't fucking matter because it's all lies with a good publicist. And there is no reason in the world to give a frantic rodent fuck about what she did or didn't say in her speeches to Goldman Sachs. It's another fake-out that Sanders is annoyingly using to dent Clinton. And, at this point, how many fucking politicians aren't beholden to one well-funded group or another? If Hillary does Wall Street's bidding, Sanders has certainly backed off anything radical against the NRA.

The second part of this series looked at Clinton's blatant exploitation of unwarranted fears of the effects of violence and sex in video games. And that's where the rubber hits the road for this blogging voter. It's not because of video games, per se, but it's because, like her husband and like so many Democrats before and even now, she chose to demonstrate that she has conservative street-cred in the most convenient of situations.

This is where her support for the 1994 crime bill comes into play. She chose to become a strong advocate for it because she and Bill were using the threat of gangs, crack, and super-predators to show that they can be tough and right-wing, too (and were unafraid of offending African Americans). It's there in her 2002 speech supporting the Iraq war. She said, "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001." She was almost totally wrong, except for the 9/11 stuff. But it sure sounded hawkish as hell.

The Rude Pundit's discomfort with Hillary Clinton is not because she's flip-flopped on some things. It's not because she's got skeletons in her closet. Christ, Clinton's closet is must be swept clean at this point. No, it's the political expediency that bugs the shit out of him. It's the selling out of liberal goals in order to appeal to people who wouldn't vote for her anyways.

And you can argue that Clinton has done so very much for women and for the dispossessed around the world. You can do that, quite successfully. But then someone could easily counter that Clinton's vote in support of the Iraq war undid a huge amount of the good she has done. It's that inability to connect women's rights and human rights to the cataclysm of the wars and conflicts she advocates for, that great harm has been done to families because of the 1994 crime bill she supported. That balance sheet, finally, is the reason the Rude Pundit can't support her in the primary.

(Obligatory note: Yes, he will support her in the general if she's the nominee because the Rude Pundit isn't a self-righteous prick.)  

On making stuff, by someone who knows his stuff

Posted by bigbigdog

Dan Gelbart delivers an 18-part hands-on class on prototyping  (YouTube)

1. Introduction
2. Safety
3. Waterjet
4. Bending
5. Spot Welding
6. Coatings
7. Presswork
8. Enclosures
9. Materials
10. Flexures
11. Non-metals
12. Plastics Forming and Casting
13. Large Structures
14. Brazing
15. Mill and Lathe
16. Machining
17. High Accuracy
18. Design

Hundreds of New York state voters to file suit calling the closed primary 'a threat to our democratic system' after claiming their party affiliation mysteriously changed

BY Laura Bult

 

 John Moore/Getty Images

Numerous New York voters took to social media to vent about changes to their voter registrations that will bar them from voting in the state's primary on Tuesday.

More than 200 outraged New York voters have joined a lawsuit claiming the party affiliation on their voter registration changed without their consent. The voters say they are unfairly being shut out of Tuesday’s primary.

The suit, to be filed Monday in Brooklyn, calls for New York to be an open primary state, allowing anyone to vote in primaries regardless of party affiliation.
“For many of our complainants, to have the electoral process deprived of them, it’s devastating,” Shyla Nelson, an activist and spokeswoman for Election Justice U.S.A., told the Daily News.

New York is one of 11 states that has a closed primary system and, due to an obscure election law, voters must have been registered by November of the previous year for the party whose primary they plan to vote in — this is the earliest change-of-party deadline in the country.

“If the primary were open, this would be a non-issue for thousands of registered voters that have had this happen to them,” Nelson said. “By making the primary open, it eliminates one of the most vexing problems New Yorkers have dealt with in this primary season.

“It’s a threat to the democratic process,” he added

View Gallery Presidential candidates take on New York

The closed primary system is intended to prevent “party raiding,” when voters switch parties en masse to influence their rival party’s primary.

But the extra restrictions and early deadlines can leave some people out, even the children of GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s, who won’t be voting in the Republican primary because of what they called an “onerous” process.

Numerous voters involved in the suit claim they looked up their voter registrations after the deadline passed to find that their party affiliation had changed from Democratic or Republican to “Not affiliated” or “Independent,” a switch that will bar them from voting in either primary.

Joanna Viscuso, 19, from Seaford, L.I., said she registered to vote as a Democrat during her college orientation at Adelphi University in 2014.

She noticed earlier this week that now her voter registration online says she is “not affiliated” with a party.

 

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

  The Bernie Sanders campaign has publicly criticized the closed primary system because it will exclude many of his supporters from voting for him.

She called Nassau Board of Elections and they told her that she had filled out a form in September change her party affiliation and sent it in October, but she claims she never did that. She’d be a first-time voter.

“As soon as I noticed it was changed I was infuriated and then when they said there was nothing I could do I was still infuriated,” she said. “All of a sudden we can't vote? That’s ridiculous!”

Fabrizio Milito, another voter who signed up with the suit, registered as a Democrat in 2009 and voted in local elections as recent as last year.

The 25 year old construction worker from Bayville, L.I., noticed his registration now says “not affiliated.”

“I got really upset and I went to call them (the Nassau board of elections) and even the guy on the phone was pretty baffled,” Melito said. “He told me I must have changed it but I never did.”

 

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Most of the voters who joined the lawsuit originally registered as Democrats and now claim that their party affiliation has changed.

Some voters involved in the lawsuit — who are primarily Democratic — also claim they their voter registration had been canceled altogether.

“The integrity of the election process is vital to democracy,” fumed Cliff Arnebeck, an Ohio-based attorney involved with Election Justice U.S.A. who has litigated against election fraud since 2000.
Requests for comment from the New York State Board of Elections were not immediately returned.

In the Empire State, the Bernie Sanders campaign has publicly slammed the closed primary policy saying it shuts out independent voters and young voters, two groups that would tend to vote for the socialist-leaning candidate.

“We have a system here in New York where independents can’t get involved in the Democratic primary, where young people who have not previously registered and want to register today can’t do it,” Sanders said during a rally Wednesday night in Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

lbult@nydailynews.com

Bill O’Reilly Can’t Believe Polls: Bernie Crushes Republicans

General election polls almost always show Bernie Sanders beating all three of the remaining Republican candidates by very large margins. Fox News’s own polling shows the same. Bill O’Reilly can’t believe his lying eyes.

Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (ThinkTank), and Jayar Jackson, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.



"Bill O’Reilly was rather astonished by the results of Fox News’ own poll tonight and said he just bluntly doesn’t believe them.

Not the whole thing, mind you, just the part of the new poll showing that Bernie Sanders beatsJohn Kasich by 4 points, Ted Cruz by 12, and Donald Trump by 14.

O’Reilly was just incredibly floored and asked both Dana Perino and Geraldo Rivera if they believe those numbers. Rivera called it “pie in the sky.”

“I don’t believe it,” O’Reilly said. “And I have to say, with all due respect––the Fox News poll has been good––I don’t believe this. I just don’t.””

Read more here: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oreilly-refuses-to-believe-foxs-own-poll-showing-sanders-beating-all-gopers/

Street Fighter V Mod Hits The Light Switch On All Stages

 By rrkappasvoice



I converted a lot of mods every single mod to .pak so its super easy to install; you dont need to extract the .pak or use any program, just copypaste the mod into a folder. It took me a loooot of time, but hopefully it worth it.

Installation

• Go to Steam\steamapps\common\StreetFighterV\StreetFighterV\Content\Paks\ and create a folder named ~mods (the ~ is important)
• Download this, extract, and paste those two files into that folder (this is a one-time thing, you don't need to do it everytime you install a new mod)
• Put the mod you downloaded inside that folder
• To remove the mod just delete the .pak file inside ~mods or you can rename the file and remove the .pak extension at the end in case you want to keep the mod to use it later, just don't touch the 'ModReady' files, those files are there to avoid issues when using certain mods standalone. More info about this here

EDIT: Now you can also use this tool made by kardus to manage your .pak mods. You can enable/disable all of them with one click and more good stuff, so check it out.

TNA Impact Wrestling 4/12/16

‘Blackhole’ Exploit Kit Author Gets 7 Years In Jail

By Brian Krebs

A Moscow court this week convicted and sentenced seven hackers for breaking into countless online bank accounts — including “Paunch,” the nickname used by the author of the infamous “Blackhole” exploit kit.  Once an extremely popular crimeware-as-a-service offering, Blackhole was for several years responsible for a large percentage of malware infections and stolen banking credentials, and likely contributed to tens of millions of dollars stolen from small to mid-sized businesses over several years.

Fedotov, the convicted creator of the Blackhole Exploit Kit, stands in front of his Porche Cayenne in an undated photo.

According to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news network, Dmitry “Paunch” Fedotov was sentenced on April 12 to seven years in a Russian penal colony. In October 2013, the then 27-year-old Fedotov was arrested along with an entire team of other cybercriminals who worked to sell, develop and profit from Blackhole.

According to Russian security firm Group-IB, Paunch had more than 1,000 customers and was earning $50,000 per month from his illegal activity. The image above shows Paunch standing in front of his personal car, a Porsche Cayenne.

First spotted in 2010, BlackHole is commercial crimeware designed to be stitched into hacked or malicious sites and exploit a variety of Web-browser vulnerabilities for the purposes of installing malware of the customer’s choosing.

The price of renting the kit ran from $500 to $700 each month. For an extra $50 a month, Paunch also rented customers “crypting” services; cryptors are designed to obfuscate malicious software so that it remains undetectable by antivirus software.

Paunch worked with several other cybercriminals to purchase new exploits and security vulnerabilities that could be rolled into Blackhole and help increase the success of the software. He eventually sought to buy the exploits from other cybercrooks directly to fund a pricier ($10,000/month) and more exclusive exploit pack called “Cool Exploit Kit.”

The main page of the Blackhole exploit kit Web interface.

As documented on this blog in January 2013 (see Crimeware Author Funds Exploit Buying Spree), Paunch contracted with a third-party exploit broker who announced that he had a $100,000 budget for buying new, previously undocumented “zero-day” vulnerabilities.

Not long after that story, the individual with whom Paunch worked to purchase those exclusive exploits — a miscreant who uses the nickname “J.P. Morgan” — posted a message to the Darkode[dot]com crime forum, stating that he was doubling his exploit-buying budget to $200,000.


In October 2013, shortly after news of Paunch’s arrest leaked to the media, J.P. Morgan posted to Darkode again, this time more than doubling his previous budget — to $450,000.

“Dear ladies and gentlemen! In light of recent events, we look to build a new exploit kit framework. We have budgeted $450,000 to buy vulnerabilities of a browser and its plugins, which will be used only by us afterwards! ”

J.P. Morgan alludes to his former partner’s arrest, and ups his monthly exploit buying budget to $450,000.

The Russian Interior Ministry (MVD) estimates that Paunch and his gang earned more than 70 million rubles, or roughly USD $2.3 million. But this estimate is misleading because Blackhole was used as a means to perpetrate a vast array of cybercrimes. I would argue that Blackhole was perhaps the most important driving force behind an explosion of cyber fraud over the past three years. A majority of Paunch’s customers were using the kit to grow botnets powered by Zeus and Citadel, banking Trojans that are typically used in cyberheists targeting consumers and small businesses.

For more about Paunch, check out Who is Paunch?, a profile I ran in 2013 shortly after Fedotov’s arrest that examines some of the clues that connected his online criminal persona with his personal social networking profiles.

Bernie Is Still Scaring The Hell Out Of The Establishment

It’s been a year since Senator Bernie Sanders announced his plan to seek the 2016 democratic presidential nomination. That means that for 12 months, Bernie’s popular ideals have been scaring the living hell out of the democratic establishment. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.



Since Bernie Sanders extended his winning streak to seven out of the last eight states on Tuesday with a decisive victory in Wisconsin, the race has quickly turned into a grudge match reminiscent of the 2008 contest between current frontrunner Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Presidential qualifications have been debated, tragedies have been politicized, and loyalties have been questioned. Indeed, Clinton has become increasingly vocal about Sanders’ apparent lack of devotion to the Democratic Party.

“He’s a relatively new Democrat,” said Clinton in an interview with Politico magazine on Wednesday. “I’m not even sure he is one. He’s running as one. So I don’t know quite how to characterize him. I’ll leave that to him. But I know there’s a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, and I know that Senator Sanders spends a lot of time attacking my husband, attacking President Obama, you know, calling President Obama weak and disappointing, and actually making a move in 2012 to recruit somebody to run a primary against him. I rarely hear him say anything negative about George W. Bush, who I think wrecked our economy, just not to put too fine a point on it.”

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Impact Wrestling 3/29/16

Sensible Talk

TYT’s Cenk Uygur booted from American Airlines flight because pilot wasn’t ‘comfortable'

By kpete

Late Friday night and into Saturday morning, Young Turks host Cenk Uygur live-streamed an altercation at an American Airlines boarding gate in Los Angeles over a flight that was delayed 4 hours, leading the host to be kicked off the flight before he even took a seat.

On Twitter, Uygur posted: “Management at @AmericanAir just kicked me off a flight to Miami because I complained the flight was delayed for 4 hours. Never got on plane.”
https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/718729740924940288

He later added: “If you book a flight with @AmericanAir they will ruin your day, ruin your plans and then rob you. They say they won’t give me my money back.”

In a video he uploaded, he and other passengers can be heard angrily arguing with boarding agents over the fact that no plane was available after a 4 hour delay. Uygur can be heard repeatedly asking, “Who made the decision that we weren’t ever going to get a plane,” after accusing America Air supervisors of “thinking this is funny.”

According Uygur, he was told “the Captain didn’t feel comfortable” with him on the plane.



MORE:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/tyts-cenk-uygur-livestreamed-booting-from-american-airlines-flight-because-pilot-wasnt-comfortable-delay/

Ted Cruz Wishes Obama And Hillary Would Stop Forcing Him To Be A Dick All The Time

By Doktor Zoom

Also refuses to take ex-lax

Back in July, it was kind of a big deal when Ted Cruz called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a big ol’ liar from the tip of his tail to the top of his carapace. This was not only politically unwise, seeing as how you might want to get along with the leader of the legislative body you’re in (at least until you “become president” ha-ha), it was also arguably a violation of Senate Rules, which like Wonkette’s rules, insist that members not be total dicks to each other. Only they use fancy words like “impugn the integrity” of another senator, which is enough to allow for a duel reprimand.

That July incident came up again in a CNN interview Thursday, when Dana Bash noted that some senators — ones that people have heard of, not just semi-invisible ones like Idaho’s Jim Risch — might consider endorsing Cruz if he’d just man up and apologize for being an asshole to McConnell last summer. And maybe all the other times he’s treated the Senate as his personal Assholitorium, but especially that one. So hey, Ted Cruz, Bash asked, would you apologize? Instead of apologizing, Ted Cruz explained why everyone hates Washington: Because Barack Obama ruined everything.

You know what, Dana? This is why people are so frustrated with Washington. It’s the inside battles back and forth. This isn’t a game. This isn’t about Washington power brokers. This isn’t a smoke-filled room. If we want to turn the country around, let me tell you who should apologize. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should apologize to the American people.

That clarifies a lot! Ted Cruz was an asshole to Mitch McConnell, and that’s why Americans are sick of all these inside Washington games that power brokers play. When will Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton apologize?

Bash tried again, swimming upstream against the wordvomit spewing from the most punchable mouth in North America: “You called Mitch McConnell a liar, not them –” But Cruz was rolling, and damn, he’s mad at how Obama and Clinton forced him to call Mitch McConnell a backroom lie-smoker broker!

They should apologize to the American people for seven years of economic stagnation, for people seeing jobs going overseas, for wages stuck. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should apologize to all the single women who’ve been forced into part-time jobs because of Obamacare!

One might even go so far as to say he was avoiding the question altogether. But vehemently, so we’d have to say he made his point in a big way. Pity he was lying about the economy being stagnant, what with all the job growth since Obama took office:

More jobs is a GOOD thing, right?

Bash tries, gamely, to bring the topic back to maybe Ted Cruz making nice with other senators, so they might consider endorsing the friendless bastard. The hell with that, Cruz says, he wants nothing to do with Washington, except having the top job there:

Bash: No apology to Mitch McConnell? Because it could help you.
Cruz: My focus is not on Washington. That ain’t going to happen. And if Washington lobbyists want the see that happen, they can hold their breath a long, long time. My focus is on the American people and uniting Republicans behind a shared values and a shared vision.

Um. Ted. Mitch McConnell isn’t a lobbyist. You didn’t accuse lobbyists of lying to your face (and if they do, that’s their job). The senators who say they might back you if you apologized aren’t lobbyists, either. How the hell are you going to unite Republicans, who almost universally can’t stand you? Even the ones who’ve “endorsed” you? Still, while he’s not going to apologize to Mitch McConnell until Barack Obama apologizes for downgrading Pluto from a planet, while four brave Americans died at Benghazi, Cruz is willing to at least give some credit to McConnell and some of those other people in the Senate, even though he no longer bothers with Washington:

Now I will tell you this. I am happy to praise Mitch McConnell and praise him effusively for his stand, along with Chuck Grassley, saying we are not going to hold hearings on a replacement for Antonin Scalia. Mitch McConnell is doing the right thing. Chuck Grassley is doing the right thing. I’m proud to commend them. I’ve done so publicly many times. They’re saying Justice Scalia’s replacement should be made by the next president.

Also, Ted Cruz loves his wife. Will Barack Obama apologize for his endless slurs against Heidi Cruz and the American people, which have cost jobs, and left us weak in the eyes of our enemies? Also, when will Obama apologize for that thing on Cruz’s upper lip?

[CNN via Daily Kos]

Bernie Sanders Overpacks Philadelphia Arena as Pennsylvania Poll Shows Him Surging (LIVE)

By Nathan Wellman

A massive crowd of Bernie supporters has shown up in droves to attend his latest rally in Philadelphia, the largest city in the pivotal primary state of Pennsylvania. Enthusiastic voters have gathered outside the Liacouras Center at Temple University by the thousands. The below video says it all, showing a town square packed with people waiting to be let in.

The line at the Philadelphia Bernie Rally is YUGE!!! #PAprimary #FeelTheBern #WeAreBernie @PhillyForBernie pic.twitter.com/d4JLD4sxmQ

— Ryan (@navin_ryan) April 6, 2016

Reports are coming in that the line for the rally could be as large as ten blocks long, ending at the cross street of Broad and Master about half a mile away.

N line 4 the Bernie rally n Philadelphia it's 10 blocks long & counting!!! But Philly is definitely FEELING THE BERN pic.twitter.com/ePmucWHVYQ

— Cindi P (@CindiPargressiv) April 6, 2016 

End of the Bernie Sanders Rally line in Philadelphia is at Broad and Master. #feelthebern pic.twitter.com/xtQ7Htktoi

— Leon (@noirsith) April 6, 2016

#Bernie rally in #Philadelphia: jammed since 5pm.

— DrSusanna (@MJoTAtalks) April 6, 2016

This surge of support comes in the wake of a poll that gives proof to the massive momentum that Bernie has built up in the crucial state of Pennsylvania following his recent string of primary victories. A Harper Polling Survey had Bernie behind Clinton at 55% to 33% just last weekend.

But today, a Quinnipiac University poll jumped him up a full sixteen points, right on Clinton’s heels at 50% to 44%, with 6% of likely voters saying that they are still undecided, and 22% saying they may still change their minds.

For those unsure of which poll to trust, the analysts at the polling research site Five Thirty Eight dole out ratings to all major polls in the US, and they rate Quinnipiac a “B+” over Harper’s “C+” rating, signifying that Quinnipiac has historically been more accurate and also boasts more legitimate polling methodology.

Meanwhile, his recent victories showed him outperforming even the most optimistic polls, including his 13.5 point margin of victory over Clinton in Wisconsin. The average poll conducted there had him ahead by only 2.6, with the highest showing an 8-point lead for Sanders.

And what has Senator Sanders been doing in the hours leading up to his latest rally? Supporting a local union by speaking at a worker’s protest against Verizon.

it's @SenSanders out supporting @CWAUnion in its struggle against @Verizon in Philadelphia! pic.twitter.com/xOaTFg8H2F

— Gwen Snyder (@gwensnyderPHL) April 6, 2016

The entire lower deck of the stadium was already packed with multiple blocks’ worth of people still waiting to be let in.

Bernie #Sanders Rally in #Philadelphia. The line is still city blocks long! pic.twitter.com/wGZRvVE1BZ #FeelTheBERN #StillSanders #BernieStrong

— ☭ Left Juan ☭ (@SuckMyLEFTJuan) April 6, 2016

Bernie rally / drum circle wrapping around Temple's Liacouras Center via /r/philadelphia https://t.co/MhV4PLjepK pic.twitter.com/9SgcVOplyk

— Clifford H Cohen (@CliffHCohen) April 7, 2016

Even the destination for the overflow of supporters, a practice arena set aside from the main location, has been packed on both sides of the rafters.

Overflow crowd for @BernieSanders at Temple University tonight pic.twitter.com/wWyC28nP3j

— Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) April 7, 2016

The rally will begin after Sanders finishes a small town hall with members of Philadelphia’s African American community. Watch live coverage of the rally below:



Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW

Protester Disrupts Cruz NYC Event: ‘To Receive This Right-Wing Bigot Is an Insult’

Gonzalo Venegas reminds Ted Cruz, "This is an immigrant community."

 

By Marlena Fitzpatrick García / AlterNet

April 6, 2016

During a meet-and-greet at Sabrosura 2 restaurant in the Soundview neighborhood, Gonzalo Venegas, producer of the hip-hop duo Rebel Díaz, was escorted out of Ted Cruz’s campaign event in the Bronx on Wednesday. He yelled that Cruz is a “right-wing bigot” before being led out of the venue by New York City police officers.

“He cruised right behind our camera here,” NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard said. “Cruz just pulled up probably 15 minutes ago, and this man, this individual, started kind of following him all the way back to an area where Cruz is going back to talk to some people. And the man started kind of heckling him, in a low voice, but heckling him along the way. Finally when he got to the back of the room, the man started yelling. As he was walking out and being led out by the police, he continued to yell.”

“Ted Cruz has no business being in the Bronx!” exclaimed Venegas, who is also known by the name G1. “This is an immigrant community. We deal with climate change every single day, and he wants to say that it doesn’t exist. We live in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country. And to receive this right-wing bigot is an insult to the whole community."

Watch the video below.

Bernie Sanders Wins Wisconsin Primary

By Karoli Kuns

 

Bernie Sanders has won the Wisconsin primary by at least 8 points. According to projections, he should end up with 8 more delegates than Hillary Clinton.

Here's a clip of his speech from Wyoming, where he is campaigning ahead of Saturday's caucuses.

Congratulations, Senator Sanders!

UPDATE: John Amato: Politico has a new scoreboard:

Sanders is up 56.3% to 43.4% with 86% reporting..
Delegate breakdown at this time: Sanders: 45 Clinton: 36

At Sanders Rally In Wisconsin, Tim Robbins Delivers Fiery Speech Against Political Pragmatism

By Kevin Gosztola



By now, you may have read about actor Tim Robbins’ introduction of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. The headlines suggest Robbins insulted supporters of Hillary Clinton and called them “sheep” and that he erased black voters in South Carolina in his criticism of how the Democratic Party establishment saw her victory in the state as significant.

The truth is this was a speech directed at the people in the Democratic Party, who “feel Bernie with their hearts but are supporting Hillary with their pragmatic brains.” As Robbins said, “These are not bad people. They fear the Republicans’ radical and dangerous divisiveness as much as we do. We’ve all been fed a steady stream of simplistic propaganda that furthers the establishment’s narrative that Hillary is the presumptive nominee.”

It was also an indictment of the establishment news media and the leadership of the Democratic Party.

One day before the Wisconsin primary, Robbins declared, “If we were sheep, if we had gotten in line, there would be no problem now. The media and the ghosts of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] and government would carry on as it has for the last thirty years. Establishment figures would get elected and re-elected without any accountability for their bad decisions. Outsider candidates like Bernie Sanders would be marginalized and tolerated for a few primaries before falling in line with the Democratic Party structure. But the DNC and the Clintons have a big problem: times have changed.”

“Bernie is not Howard Dean. Bernie is not the obligatory progressive that will keep the left in line until the presumptive moderate nominee emerges. Bernie is not the democratic insider that will bow down to the wishes of the elite of the party. We are done with that patriarchy,” Robbins added. “We are done with compromising our ideals. We are done with triangulation and fear-based politics.”

One will notice this argument does not have gender-based or racist overtones. It is not directed at any specific demographics, which Clinton has depended upon to win the primaries she has managed to win so far. It is a political and ideological argument against tribalism within the Democratic Party, which has enabled so many of the worst and most disastrous policies in the past few decades.

Robbins stated, “Now I understand our friends’ resistance to Bernie Sanders. They’ve been told repeatedly by the mainstream media that Bernie doesn’t matter, that he’s unelectable. Well, I’m here today to encourage our Democratic friends that want big change to happen yet don’t believe that it is possible, our friends that believe that they are not worthy of dreaming big, our friends that have surrendered their ideals to political pragmatism, that somehow believe that change will happen by choosing a candidate entirely entrenched in the dysfunction of the past.”

Oh, yes, Robbins absolutely made a comment about the southern primaries and how he believed Clinton winning South Carolina was as significant as the Democratic Party winning Guam. That specific comment is trivial in the scheme of his entire speech addressing the failures of the Democratic Party. (Plus, anyone ascribing racism to Robbins’ remarks should be aware of the work Robbins has done in prisons.)

Let’s continue:

There are moments in history when political pragmatism can lead to disaster, where a politician’s future ambitions compromise their constituents’ safety and security. These are the moments that define the man or the woman. Will that individual risk their political future because of their beliefs? Will they risk being marginalized as radicals and extremists?

All of us that opposed the Iraq War were marginalized. We were called radicals. We were called extremists, terrorist supporters, for demanding evidence of weapons of mass destruction before we invaded. How radical was that? We were shouted down by the mainstream media. We were threatened and some were intimidated into silence or compliance. Not Bernie.

Bernie faced that same intimidation and remained steadfast, and those that did the politically expedient thing, that didn’t ruffle feathers in an attempt to remain within the status quo, in attempt to retain their positions of power, these people were rewarded. In the media, they were promoted. In politics, they were re-elected. Some even received medals for getting it wrong. There were no apologies. There was no reckoning. There was no accountability. This was a defining moment for our country.

The good news is that there are millions of thinking, feeling people in this country, that despite the massive propaganda that buoys up this failure, still hold on to the truth. And that truth is the Iraq War is and was a bellwether. How you voted on this truly matters because it winded us up in such a morass. This was a time in our history where political pragmatism led to a massive disaster, a disaster to our economy, a disaster to our world standing, a disaster in the lives lost in this manufactured war. We cannot afford to go down that road again.

This is no small point. It is an eloquent statement about a crime against humanity that was perpetrated by the political class in America against the people of Iraq. It set the stage for the rise of ISIS. It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Yet, the remark Robbins made comparing South Carolina to Guam is the comment played over and over again and debated ad nauseam.

Robbins attacked the media, whose editorial boards have overwhelmingly supported Clinton. He attacked the Democatic Party elites, who have acted as surrogates for the Clinton campaign in great numbers. For that, a sustained effort to kill the messenger and stain the Sanders campaign was set in motion immediately following his speech.

Let’s return to the substance of the speech from Robbins, which truly matters:

With this primary season, we are once again at a moment in history where political pragmatism can lead to disaster. This concept that Hillary is the presumptive nominee has rankled a critical mass of people. No, they are saying to this anointing. No, they do not want to be told in a free and open democracy who to for. No, they will not be intimidated by moderates in the Democratic Party, who have been on the wrong side of history.

To the Democratic Party, you take this movement of Bernie voters for granted at your own peril. These people have had every opportunity to embrace your presumptive nominee. They have received your constant stream of publicity suggesting Hillary is their anointed. They have been given the message like everyone else, and they have overwhelmingly rejected this notion. No, they say, this is not my candidate. This is the candidate of the DLC Democratic Party that has brought us moderation when we needed bold action.

This is the wing of the party that has brought us war and bank bailouts and mass incarceration. If Hillary had been on the right side of these issues, we would not be here today. We are here today because we want more out of our party. To start with, we would like an opposition party, a party that is truly for the working man and woman, a party that helps their constituents with actual policy, not just lip service every election cycle that deals more with fear of the Republicans than with any actual change.

We are the ones that marched against the Iraq War that Hillary voted for. We are the ones that have opposed for years the suicidal environmental future that politicians like Hillary have sanctioned with their support of the fossil fuel industry. We are the ones who marched against NAFTA. We are the ones that were outraged that the Democratic Party policies embraced a new strategy under Bill Clinton that demonized welfare mothers and supported legislation that disproportionately incarcerated African Americans in this war on drugs. We are the ones that opposed the tar sands pipeline that Hillary originally supported until she realized that it would be politically expedient for her to oppose.

We are supporting a candidate that stood with us, that voted against the Iraq War, that is opposed to fracking, that voted against NAFTA, that is opposed to the death penalty. We are supporting a candidate that has throughout his career stood up for the working people, stood up for veterans, for the unemployed, for the poor, for abortion rights, for LGBT rights. We are supporting a candidate that has taken principled positions when others have compromised. We are supporting a candidate that has advocated for civil rights throughout his life, a man who marched with Martin Luther King, a man that advocates for those without a voice. We are supporting a candidate that has risked his political future time and again by remaining true to a strong moral commitment to peace and justice.

And:

What a radical concept? A politician that has a moral bottom line, a politician that is not swayed by polls or reckless ambition or inner-party pragmatism. Could Bernie Sanders be leading us into a new paradigm, a paradigm where one’s previous actions actually are relevant to one’s current campaign, a time where accountability actually matters, where politicians are held responsible for their bad policy decisions, a time where the expedient and pragmatic within the political and media establishment are no longer rewarded for their compliance and subservience to corporate and party politics?

The fact that this speech Robbins gave immediately led to smears against him, and an upswell of outrage on social media, fits the playbook for the presidential election. If the Sanders campaign cannot be extinguished, it must be vilified. Unfortunately for the powers that be in the Democratic Party and its allies in establishment news media, those mobilizing for Sanders far outnumber them, and they are gradually overcoming whatever power these people still hold over millions of citizens in the United States.

Why The Panama Papers Could Catapult Bernie Sanders To The White House

By Amanda Girard

The Panama Papers may be the defining story of the 2016 Democratic Primary. And Bernie Sanders is on the right side of history.

The 11.5 million documents, which came from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), expose how the upper end of the 1 percent utilizes shell companies and gray areas in tax law to stash untold billions of dollars in overseas tax-free accounts. The leak was so massive, it took an army of 400 journalists working for an entire year to sift through the documents. At least 140 world leaders from 50 different countries were implicated in the leaks.

Bernie Sanders saw this coming from a mile away. On October 12, 2011, Sen. Sanders took the Senate floor to denounce the Panama trade pact, shooting down the conventional arguments in favor of the deal.

“Panama’s entire economic output is only $26.7 billion per year, or about two-tenths of one percent of the US economy,” Sanders said at the beginning of his speech. “No one can legitimately claim that approving this free trade agreement will significantly increase American jobs.”

Then, Sanders warned of the widespread corruption that would follow should the pact become official.

“Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade US taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. The Panama free trade agreement will make this bad situation much worse. Each and every year, the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations evade about $100 billion in taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and in other countries.”

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was on the complete opposite side of the issue. In an official statement issued by the US Department of State on October 13, 2011 (one day after Sanders’ floor address), Clinton congratulated President Obama for passing the trade pact, citing the very same job creation arguments Sen. Sanders shot down a day earlier. Clinton made no mention of Panama’s reputation as a tax haven, and even invoked “working families” in her statement:

“These initiatives are the leading edge of a job-creating trade agenda that will open markets, level the playing field for our businesses and workers, and champion America’s working families in an age of tough global competition. They deserve the historic and widespread support they received in Congress tonight. We will continue our work to rebuild an American consensus on trade.”

No Americans have been named in the current leaks, as American clients have to do their tax evasion outside of the Panamanian law firm due to a taxation clause in the 2010 free trade agreement. But the editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung, the paper that initially broke the explosive story, promised American readers that they wouldn’t be disappointed.

Editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of U.S. individuals in the documents, saying "Just wait for what is coming next"

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) April 3, 2016

And to echo that point, journalist Bobby Ghosh of Quartz said the initial leaks are only a snapshot of what is likely a massive global enterprise.

Can we just remind ourselves that the #PanamaPapers are from just ONE law firm, in just ONE tax haven. Tip of the proverbial iceberg.

— Bobby Ghosh (@ghoshworld) April 3, 2016

It’s been known since 2012 that elites in the US and around the world are sitting on a gargantuan amount of tax-free assets worth at least $21 trillion. And according to James Henry of the Tax Justice Network, that number may be as high as $31 trillion. But for the sake of argument, let’s say $21 trillion. What could we fund with that?

For starters, we could give each of the approximately 600,000 homeless people across America a $650,000 home for $400 billion, amounting to just 2 percent of those offshore assets. We could provide a basic income of $10,000 a year to all 247 million Americans over age 18 for a little over than $2 trillion a year, and do that for ten years.

Obviously, not all this sum is owned by US companies, but $21 trillion is an insane amount of money. Even a portion could easily pay for all of Bernie Sanders’ proposals, from free college ($75 billion/year) to 13 million new infrastructure jobs (one-time cost of $1 trillion), to free comprehensive healthcare for every man, woman, and child ($1.38 trillion/year), to expanding Social Security ($1.2 trillion spread out over 10 years), to a youth jobs program ($5.5 billion/year). The list goes on.

The global elite embarrassed by the Panama Papers are still counting on parroting the one mantra used to forestall all hopes of a livable future: “We simply don’t have the money.” But as the Panama Papers have shown us with just one quick glimpse, this claim is bunk.

The money already exists — and it’s our money. We can organize and pressure governments to demand its return. There’s no other one-step solution to unlock the necessary resources to save our planet and species from certain disaster.

Conservative Plan To Fix The VA Has Vets Hopping Mad

Why is a commission charged with fixing the problems hoping to close down its hospitals?

—By AJ Vicens

Veterans commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War on March 29 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Bruce R. Bennett/Zuma

 

Some members of the commission established by Congress to evaluate the Department of Veterans Health Administration have proposed drastically reducing the size of the VHA by closing its health facilities and transferring the care of the nation's millions of military veterans to the private sector.

But in a letter sent to the chair of the Commission on Care, leaders of eight of the country's most prominent veterans' advocacy organizations blasted the proposal.

"We are greatly alarmed by the content of [the proposal] that was developed and drafted outside the open Commission process by seven of the Commission's fifteen members—without the input or even knowledge of the other Commissioners," they wrote in a letter signed by senior leaders of the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

The plan—known as the "Strawman Document"—was floated in March by seven members of the 15-member Commission on Care, an oversight group that was established by Congress in 2014 in the wake of the national scandal surrounding the lengthy wait times for healthcare at VA facilities. The commission is charged with evaluating veterans' access to health care and with offering proposals for how the Veterans Health Administration should be organized over the next 20 years.

The "Strawman" report, which echoes VA privatization efforts that have been backed by the Koch brothers, says "bold transformation" is needed for the VA to address the needs of its enrolled veterans, and that the system is "seriously broken" with "no efficient path to repair it." The plan calls for closing many "obsolete" VA facilities and moving toward a model where veterans can seek taxpayer-funded care at private health care facilities. A process similar to the Base Realignment and Closure system—used by the military since the end of the Cold War to decide which bases to close—would be used to evaluate which VA medical facilities would close. Under the plan, there would be no new facilities or major renovations of the existing VA facilities.

The plan also called for private doctors to be reimbursed at 5 to 10 percent higher than the Medicare rate, so they would have a greater incentive to participate.

The authors wrote that eventually the VA would become a broad-based payer system, "though it will continue to pay for the veteran care provided by the community system."

Those who opposed the plan agree the VA needs to be improved, but they argue that essentially privatizing it would force veterans to search for care at private facilities that might not be trained or equipped to serve veterans suffering from the long-range effects of combat, such as spinal cord injuries "and the Polytrauma System of Care." The authors add that the proposal ignores recent research, some commissioned by Congress itself, that found that VA care is often better than care in the private sector.

Louis Celli, the national director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation for the American Legion, told the Arizona Republic that he was "angered and insulted" by the "strawman" plan, and that the commission is now "absolutely divided" between those who want to privatize VA care and those who don't.

The plan lines up with ideas from Concerned Veterans for America, a group that's backed by the Koch brothers. The group has called for more choice for veterans seeking health care and for the VA and its health functions to be partly privatized. Suzanne Gordon, a health care writer who has covered the VA, notes in her personal blog and in the American Prospect that the supporters and drafters of the "strawman" proposal include conservatives and several hospital executives "who stand to benefit financially from [VA medical] privatization."

Dan Caldwell, a spokesman for the Koch-backed group, told the Arizona Republic that the "Strawman" proposal has been "completely distorted by opponents," and that there is no call to abolish the VA health care system. "We are not proposing to abolish the [VA health care system] or to end government funding of veterans' health care," Caldwell said.

According to the Arizona Republic, the commission will have two public meetings before issuing a report on its proposal June 30. The report was due in February, but the commission asked for and received an extension.

Feds: Chenault-Fattah recording could expose her to 'criminal liability'

US CONGRESSMAN Chaka Fattah, right, and Renee Chenault-Fattah Crystal tea room 100 E Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA June 14,2015 Reuben Harley/Daily News

By Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer

Ten months after Renee Chenault-Fattah finalized paperwork on the sale of her 1989 Porsche convertible to a lobbyist friend of her husband's, the former NBC10 news anchor continued to insure the sports car and keep it in her garage.

Now, federal prosecutors say they have a recording that proves Chenault-Fattah still considered the car to be her own nearly a year later and knew its January 2012 sale for $18,000 was little more than a sham.

The tape - which prosecutors intend to play next month at the corruption trial of her husband, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah - could expose Chenault-Fattah to criminal liability, they said in court filings late last week.

The recording itself - of a November 2012 call Chenault-Fattah placed to change the insurance policy on the Porsche - is relatively benign.

But in describing its importance to their case, prosecutors went further than they had gone previously in suggesting that Chenault-Fattah, once one of the most recognizable faces in local TV news, was at least aware of - if not an active participant in - a complex bribery scheme involving her husband and the Porsche.

Her "statements plainly tend to expose [Chenault-Fattah] to criminal liability for the false statements and documents she provided to the financial institution about the $18,000 payment," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Paul Gray and Eric Gibson wrote, referring to the audio and describing documents Chenault-Fattah and her husband filed with their bank to register the Porsche's sale.

They added in a footnote: "The government expects [Chenault-Fattah] to be unavailable to testify at trial by virtue of her assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination."

Chenault-Fattah has not been charged in her husband's case. And prosecutors have offered no indication that they intend to seek an indictment against her. They continue to refer to her in court filings only as "Person E."

Reached on her cellphone Monday, Chenault-Fattah told a reporter, "Sorry, can't help you," before hanging up. Her lawyer, Robert Vance, did not return calls seeking comment.

But since her husband was indicted on racketeering-conspiracy charges last year, Chenault-Fattah has rebuffed any suggestion that the car deal was anything but a "legitimate sale."

In a letter to NBC10 management in July, she wrote that she kept the Porsche in one of her three garages months after she sold it. She explained that the lobbyist who bought it - former Rendell-era Deputy Mayor Herbert Vederman - lived in an apartment, and that she had more space for the car.

"For a time I continued with insuring it since it was in our garage and wanted nothing to happen to it," she wrote. "I had it towed to be serviced in the spring because I wanted it to be in good shape . . . since this transaction had happened so hastily in the dead of winter."

She maintained she did not drive it during that time.

The station later quoted portions of her letter in a news story about its decision to suspend her.

(Chenault-Fattah parted ways with NBC10 earlier this year, although the station has not said whether she agreed to leave or was fired.)

But an Aug. 22, 2012, story in the Daily News appears to contradict her claims that she never drove the car after selling it to Vederman. It noted that she was spotted the day before, fueling the Porsche at a Sunoco station in Germantown, seven months after the sale.

And in their filings last week, prosecutors said Chenault-Fattah did not sound like a woman who had no intention of ever driving the car again when she called her insurance company three months later to alter the policy.

"We have the Porsche, which we take off of insurance during the winter because we have it just in the garage," she told the company in a portion of the recording quoted in government filings.

She asked a customer-service representative to remove her collision insurance but to make sure the car was "still covered" because "it'll be in the garage."

The Porsche is at the heart of one of the many alleged schemes that prosecutors say Vederman used to hide bribes he paid to Fattah.

As federal authorities describe it, Vederman offered the $18,000 in 2012 to help cover closing costs on a $425,000 vacation home that Fattah and his wife hoped to buy in the Poconos. In exchange, Fattah hired Vederman's girlfriend for a job in his congressional office, where she performed "little to no work."

Fattah and Vederman tried to hide their exchange of cash, the indictment alleges, by falsifying documents to show that Chenault-Fattah had obtained the $18,000 by selling her Porsche to Vederman.

Both Fattah and Vederman have denied the charges. And although prosecutors now allege that Chenault-Fattah knew the sale was faked, they offered no indication in their filing last week of whether they believe she knew of the larger machinations that allegedly surrounded the deal.

Fattah's lawyers - Mark Lee, Bruce Merenstein, and Samuel Silver - have declined to discuss specifics of the case, saying only that they intend to vigorously fight the charges at a trial scheduled to begin May 2.

Their client also stands accused in four other schemes of misusing campaign cash, charitable contributions, and federal grant money under his control to pay off debts and line the pockets of his family and members of his inner circle.

jroebuck@phillynews.com
215-854-2608
@jeremyrroebuck