Washington Post Ran 16 Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours

By Adam Johnson

 

Fifteen of the 16 negative stories on the Bernie Sanders campaign that the Washington Post ran over a 16-hour period.

In what has to be some kind of record, the Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, between roughly 10:20 PM EST Sunday, March 6, to 3:54 PM EST Monday, March 7—a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin:

• March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
• March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
• March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
• March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
• March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
• March 7, 9:24 AM:  Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
• March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
• March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
• March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
• March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
• March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
• March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
• March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
• March 7,  2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
• March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
• March 7, 3:54 PM: And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!

All of these posts paint his candidacy in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women. Even the one article about Sanders beating Trump implies this is somehow a surprise—despite the fact that Sanders consistently out-polls Hillary Clinton against the New York businessman.

There were two posts in this time frame that one could consider neutral: “These Academics Say Bernie Sanders’ College Plan Will Be a Boon for African-American Students, Will It?” and “Democratic Debate: Clinton, Sanders Spar Over Fracking, Gun Control, Trade and Jobs.”

None could be read as positive.

While the headlines don’t necessarily reflect all the nuances of the text, as I’ve noted before, only 40 percent of the public reads past the headlines, so how a story is labeled is just as important, if not more so, than the substance of the story itself.

The Washington Post was sold in 2013 to libertarian Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth approximately $49.8 billion.

Despite being ideologically opposed to the Democratic Party (at least in principle), Bezos has enjoyed friendly ties with both the Obama administration and the CIA. As Michael Oman-Reagan notes, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. Amazon also has over $600 million in contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization Sanders said he wanted to abolish in 1974, and still says he “had a lot of problems with.” FAIR has previously criticized the Washington Post for failing to disclose, when reporting on tech giant Uber, that Bezos also owns more than $1 billion in Uber stock.

The Washington Post’s editorial stance has been staunchly anti-Sanders, though the paper contends that its editorial board is entirely independent of both Bezos and the paper’s news reporting.

 

© 2016 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.

Sanders Claims 'Game-Changing' Win as Revolution Revs Engine in Michigan

Supporters of Bernie Sanders upend naysayers, pundits, and polls by delivering primary win in bellwether state

By Jon Queally, staff writer

With come-from-behind victory, Bernie Sanders has won the Michigan primary. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/cc)

A potentially 'huuuuge' victory.

Though expectations were met as Hillary Clinton claimed a win by large margin in the Mississippi primary, the big story of Tuesday's two Democratic primaries is that Bernie Sanders has achieved an "upset of almost unheard of proportions" by claiming victory in the bellwether state of Michigan.

"The corporate media counted us out. The pollsters said we were way behind. The Clinton super PACs spent millions against us across the country. We were hit with a dishonest attack in the debate. 

But we won, again… and if we continue to stand together, we can win this nomination." —Sen. Bernie Sanders Just after 11:30 PM ET, NBC News declared it was "projecting" the win for Sanders as returns showed him leading Clinton by more than 26,000 votes with more than 94% of precincts reporting. Michigan has 147 delegates, which will be divided proportionally between the two candidates.

"I want to thank the people of Michigan," Sanders declared in a brief television interview just after 11 PM. "Tonight, I think the people of Michigan stood up to the pundits. They stood up to the Establishment. They stood up to the pollsters. And they said they want an economy that works for all of us, and not just the people on top."

In a campaign email shortly after, Sanders declared the victory in Michigan as significant:

The results are in and we were just declared the winner in a very important state for our campaign: Michigan. That’s a major, game-changing victory for our campaign.
The corporate media counted us out. The pollsters said we were way behind. The Clinton super PACs spent millions against us across the country. We were hit with a dishonest attack in the debate. But we won, again… and if we continue to stand together, we can win this nomination.

Appearing on MSNBC as it was becoming clear that Sanders was on the verge of victory, Nina Turner, former State Senator of Ohio and a campaign surrogate, said the win proves Bernie has a winning agenda that Democratic voters are responding to and ready to support. "It really does show that his honesty and his consistency is really taken hold in the state of Michigan," Turner said.

"He was about twenty percent down last week and in July about fifty points, so he is really closing the lead," she continued. "And the more people hear his message—his righteous indignation for the working class and poor in this nation—and the way that he fought over bad trade deals that took away manufacturing jobs both in Michigan and in Ohio, people are really starting to hear his message."

Asked about the implications of the Michigan win and moving forward, Turner said the campaign's eyes are now on other midwestern states such as her own, but also larger states like California and New York later in the primary calendar. "The more that people see he has been consistent—that he doesn't change his message based on polling, that he doesn't change his message depending on what audience he's talking to—he has been a champion of the everyday people and it is starting to resonate."

Ahead of the official call, Sanders delivered a brief statement to television cameras just before 11:00 PM ET.

"We believe our strongest areas are yet to happen," said Sanders during  "We're going to do very, very well on the West Coast and other parts of this country. What the American people are saying is that they are tired of a corrupt campaign finance system and super PAC's funded by Wall Street and the billionaire class. They are tired of a rigged economy in which people in Michigan, people in Illinois, people in Ohio are working longer hours for lower wages; are worried to death about the future of their kids, and yet all new income and wealth is going to the top one percent. And the people of America are tired of a broken criminal justice system in which we have more people in jail--largely African American, Latino, and Native American--than any other major country on Earth.

"When we started this campaign," Sanders continued, "we were sixty or seventy points down in the polls. And yet what we have seen—in poll after poll; state after state—what we have done is create the kind of momentum that we need to win. So once again, this has been a fantastic night. In Michigan we are so grateful for all the support we have gotten and we look forward to going to Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and the other upcoming states that we will be competing in next week."

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Crazy is the new normal

Daughter of Civil War vet still getting a pension

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579493830954152394

500 rare Apple II programs and games are now preserved online

By Chris O'Brien
 

In an industry that constantly lusts toward the future, the Internet Archive has once again helped retain tech’s past by announcing that it has saved more than 500 Apple II programs.

The San Francisco-based non-profit has been doing yeoman’s work for years now, maintaining everything from historical copies of webpages to archiving sound and video to digitizing out-of-copyright books. The program to preserve the catalogue of Apple II programs is yet another example of this work, and one that provides an important record of the dawn of the personal computing age.

The actual work of finding and uploading the programs is being done by a person (or possibly an anonymous collective) who goes under the name “4am.”

According to a post on the Internet Archive blog, the 4am collection now has passed the 500 program milestone. In fact, the 4am page now says it has 631 Apple II programs. These are part of a larger collection of Apple II programs that stands at 3,897 at the Internet Archive.

But the 4am set is focused on the rarest and hardest to find Apple II programs. As such, users can now experience games like Muppetville, Spy Hunter and Battlezone.

So get ready to relive your childhood or teenage years and watch hours of your adult life disappear into a black hole of nostalgic ecstasy.

Megyn Kelly Destroys Donald Trump With His Own Words At Fox News Debate

By Jason Easley



Megyn Kelly showed why Donald Trump has been so afraid of facing her by completely owning him at the Fox News Republican debate.

Video:



Before the clips rolled, Megyn Kelly said, “Mr. Trump, one of the things that voters love about you is that they believe you tell it like it is, but time and time again in this campaign, you have told voters one thing then reversed yourself in weeks or even sometimes days.”

Kelly used three sets of clips of Trump giving differing statements on troops staying in Afghanistan, George W. Bush lying about Iraq, and whether the US should accept Syrian refugees.

Trump described his flip-flopping as being flexible. It is easy to see why Trump has been avoiding Megyn Kelly. She has owned Donald Trump during this debate. As bad as the video proof of his flip-flops was, Kelly’s later destruction of Trump on the Trump University case was worse. Megyn Kelly did what Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich can’t do. She ate Donald Trump for lunch.

Kelly seems to have Trump’s number, and thanks to her position as the future of Fox News, she can go after the Republican front runner in a way that other members of the corporate media are terrified to attempt. Donald Trump is having a bad night, and Megyn Kelly is a big reason why.

OK, ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE.

A new poll shows Bernie Sanders is massively more electable than Hillary Clinton in a general election. It keeps getting better for Bernie in these national head-to-heads. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Either Democratic presidential candidate could handily defeat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in the general election, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads Trump 52 percent to 44 percent among registered voters and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Trump 55 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll.

These estimates line up with other polling data -- HuffPost Pollster's average has shown Clinton and Sanders polling higher than Trump, although prinmary poll matchups aren't predictive of what will happen once the general election campaigns start.

But if Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were nominated instead of Trump, Clinton might face more of an uphill battle, according to the poll -- Rubio tops Clinton at 50 percent to 47 percent and Cruz slightly leads 49 percent to 48 percent.

Sanders, meanwhile, holds a steady lead over all top three Republican candidates in the poll -- 57 percent to 40 percent against Cruz, 55 percent to 43 percent against Trump, and 53 percent to 45 percent against Rubio.”

Trump To Chris Christie: Get In The Plane. You Go Home.

Chris Christie has officially endorsed Donald Trump for president. A hot mic recently caught a short exchange between the two at a rally. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down.

"Donald Trump told Chris Christie to "go home" after the New Jersey governor introduced the billionaire at a campaign rally in Arkansas on Saturday.

“Get on the plane and go home,” Trump is heard saying to Christie.

Christie arrived at the rally with Trump via the real estate mogul’s plane. The two exited the plane in front of a crowd and then Christie introduced Trump.

After the short introduction, the two shook hands while Trump leaned in to say something unintelligible. Then, Trump can be heard telling Christie to get on the plane.

Christie endorsed Trump earlier this week.



http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/271074-trump-tells-christie-get-in-the-plane-and-go-home

GOP Being Torn Apart By Trump Candidacy

By Taegan Goddard

“The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year,” the Washington Post reports.

“At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.”

Chris Cillizza: Trump is remarkably dangerous to the Republican party

An Open Letter To My Friends Who Support Donald Trump

By Jeremy Nix

Michael Vadon/Flickr

I'm cool with you removing me from your friends list if you don't like this post. You can even disown me if you like. But Donald Trump isn't a good person, nor would he be a good president. I can understand a difference in politics. I can understand if you don't like a government run by Democrats.

I can understand if you don't like certain ideologies, like Socialism. But I can't understand why you would support someone as hateful, sexist, racist and ignorant as Donald Trump.

How do you support him so blindly? Ask yourself, are you a racist, sexist, hateful and ignorant person as well? I hear his supporters saying they like him because he tells the truth, because he's so rich he can say whatever he feels like with no apologies. Just because Trump is saying these things doesn't suddenly make them right. It's not okay to discriminate against an entire religion based on a small percentage of its followers who have become terrorists by twisting the words of the religion to fit their crazy ideals. It's not okay to marginalize an entire race of people, saying things like all the Mexicans are lazy, that they are all stealing our jobs and bringing drugs into our country.

White people also have bad apples. So does every race of people. We're all human. Some humans are really bad people. Some are really good. And it doesn't matter what color they are, it makes no difference whatsoever. Trump says he is just telling the truth. But whose truth? There are lazy people in every race and there are dangerous violent people in every race and every religion. Kicking all Muslims out of the country is not the answer, nor is it the acceptable behavior of a person in an extremely powerful position, like the President of the United States.

The Japanese Internment camps were wrong, Segregation was wrong, Slavery was wrong. We fought wars among ourselves to rise above racism and hatred. In WWII more than 60 million people died worldwide. Why? Because of twisted people who were whipping up the population into a frenzy and making ridiculous statements, killing innocent people simply because of their race or religion. The United States lost more than 400,000 lives fighting in that war, against the same ideas that Trump is pushing. The idea that certain religions are more dangerous than others and the idea that people should be judged based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

"They always say it's so important to make your voice heard, to get out and vote. But I'm not sure if it's ever been more important than now."

We're still healing from the damage inflicted by the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq and the War on Terror. And it isn't just ISIS or Al-Qaeda. It's our own people in this country killing their fellow countrymen over differences of opinion, like whether or not you believe abortion is okay or what kind of political ideology you support. And then there are just the plainly insane people who finally snap and go on shooting rampages for no discernible reason at all. They just went mad.

The kind of leadership Trump is displaying is irresponsible and dangerous. His virulent ideas are seeping into the brains of his supporters. Supporters who think it's okay to say things like "light the mother fucker on fire" while a protester is being dragged out of one of his rallies. Maybe the protester was wrong to be where he was at the time, but no matter what he did, there was no reason to set him on fire. In fact, there is NEVER a reason to set anyone on fire. Unless it's because they are dead and they wish to be cremated.

Trump's supporters are angry, and anger is infectious. I can tell you as a non-supporter of Trump I am just as angry. We need the kind of leader that seeks to bring us together, not tear us apart. Why do we have to fight against helping each other, against common sense, against a united Nation? The American Dream is a nightmare and we are feeding it, making it worse every day. Trump is a bully, a loud mouth, ignorant, sexist, racist, disgusting example of how horrible humans can potentially be.

He is the crazy person at your dinner table who won't stop running his mouth. The only reason he is allowed to carry on with his ugly hateful rhetoric is because you have too much respect for Grandma to get into a fist fight in her home. He's the guy you have to endure until he leaves, all the while hating every minute that you have to occupy the same space.

Lucky for us, this isn't Grandma's house, so feel free to punch him in the mouth in the form of getting out and making your vote count.

They always say it's so important to make your voice heard, to get out and vote. But I'm not sure if it's ever been more important than now. Differences of political ideals are one thing, I can agree to disagree on many matters across a wide array of topics, but racism isn't one of them, neither is hate, neither is the belittling of women or the judgment of others based on their appearance or their disability, or their sexual preference.

By supporting Trump do you think things will go back to the way they were? Back when gay people had to hide in fear, back when people of any other color than white had to worry about getting lynched, back when it was okay to openly hate? Do you think empowered women will suddenly quit their jobs and go back to the kitchen ? Because electing Trump won't make any of that come true.

We're past that as a nation, or at least I thought we were.

"I can agree to disagree on many matters across a wide array of topics, but racism isn't one of them, neither is hate, neither is the belittling of women..."

If you're not a racist, bigoted, misogynistic jerk, then voting for Trump simply because you don't like Democrats is wrong. If you are one of his supporters and you're just a racist and you don't care who knows it then vote for him, but know that the good people of America will not stand for it and he will never win a fair election. And please consider pursuing an education and work on your empathy toward your fellow human beings. Whatever led you to believe that racism is okay can be unlearned if you open your mind. I'm sorry that you were raised to believe that you deserve better treatment than the rest of the people on the planet that have different views than yours, worship different gods than you and have skin that isn't white.

To all the people, of all the races and religions that Donald Trump stands against, to all the women that don't meet his standards of beauty, to all the good Muslims, and Christians, Mormons and Catholics and Jewish, Italians, Irish and Asians, to the African-Americans and Native Americans, to anyone who has ever been persecuted, belittled, made to feel inferior or bullied based on ignorance like the kind that Trump is spewing, please, I implore you to get out and vote against him. Don't let the progress of this great nation be halted. We've come too far.

In this country we FIGHT and DIE for freedom, for Truth and Justice. We fight for what's right. And what Trump is doing and saying isn't right. Some have attributed the following statement to Abraham Lincoln*:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."

And he couldn't be more right. Trump IS the one percent, he IS working on your prejudices, and he WILL destroy the Republic if he is elected, make no doubt about it.

If you don't believe me, just look at the level of crazy coming out of his own mouth:

"[I am] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" -- Donald Trump. That's religious discrimination.

"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fraud" -- Donald Trump. That's an outright lie.

"Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man - he made a good decision." -- Donald Trump. This is sexism, and just plain rude.

"You know, it really doesn't matter what the media write as long as you've got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass." - Donald Trump. This is misogyny at its finest.

"I will build a great wall -- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me - and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." - Donald Trump. The words of an arrogant hate monger.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists... And some, I assume, are good people." - Donald Trump. Racist.

"Our great African-American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore." -- Donald Trump. Racist.

"If I were running 'The View', I'd fire Rosie O'Donnell. I mean, I'd look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I'd say 'Rosie, you're fired." -- Donald Trump. The words of an asshole.

"The beauty of me is that I'm very rich." - Donald Trump. So Vain.

"It's freezing and snowing in New York - we need global warming!" - Donald Trump. Ignorant.

"My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body." - Donald Trump. Gross.

"I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm more honest and my women are beautiful." - Donald Trump. Sexist. As if women are possessions rather than people. And also a lie. A lie about how honest he is.

How can you support this man?

*I am aware of the fact that snopes.com claims the Lincoln Capitalism Prophecy quote is false. It's a quote that has been going around for more than a hundred years. The quote has also been attributed to a letter that Lincoln supposedly wrote to Col. William F. Elkins in 1864. Scholars have cited The Lincoln Encyclopedia: The Spoken and Written Words of A. Lincoln Arranged for Ready Reference by Archer H. Shaw. Snopes still claims the letter referred to in this encyclopedia is a fraud, forged by Emanuel Hertz in his book Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. So in the interest of full disclosure, these may or may not have been Lincoln's words. Whether they were written by Hertz or Lincoln, they were still written and they still pertain to the point I was trying to make. Income inequality is a serious issue in this country, and Donald Trump is working on the prejudices of the people.

 

Follow Jeremy Nix on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thejeremynix

Al Sharpton Says He Is Making Plans To Leave U.S. If Donald Trump Becomes President, Open To Supporting Marco Rubio

By Tara West

Rev. Al Sharpton says he may be booking a one-way ticket out of the United States if businessman Donald Trump becomes president. Sharpton says he is open to supporting “anyone” with the exception of Trump, claiming that the business mogul would probably deport him anyway. Sharpton told attendees at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Thursday that he is already reserving his “ticket to get out of here.”

The Washington Examiner reports that Reverend Al Sharpton had mostly positive feedback for Republican candidates like Marco Rubio until he got to the discussion of GOP candidate Donald Trump. Once “The Donald” was mentioned the conversation turned to Al Sharpton’s admittance that he would likely “get out of here” if Trump is elected to president. Sharpton notes that he would leave on his own accord before Trump has the chance to deport him.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I’m open to support anyone [else], while I’m also reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins, only because he’d probably have me deported anyway.”

Therefore, it seems that Al Sharpton is open to supporting Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, but is refusing to show even remote support for Trump. Though Sharpton claims that Trump would likely deport him if made president, he did not explain the statement any further. However, both Trump and Sharpton have publicly shared differing opinions on political issues in the past. While Sharpton spends his time at national protests condemning police brutality, Trump has been vocal about other controversial topics such as immigration and foreign policy.

This isn’t the first time that Al Sharpton has painted an unflattering picture of Donald Trump to his followers. Prior to revealing his plans to potentially leave the U.S. if Donald Trump is made president, Sharpton likened Trump to Don King. Sharpton says that the best way he can describe Donald Trump is to say that he is “the white Don King.” In fact, Sharpton says that King and Trump are the only ones to that have left him completely speechless and unable to talk.

Sharpton remembers a time that he allegedly flew on Donald Trump’s private helicopter with Don King and described how the pair each talked relentlessly on the flight, over-talking one another with neither ceasing despite not listening to a word the other was saying.

“I think what he has said has been biased and bigoted, but I don’t know if Donald Trump is really a bigoted guy. The best way I can describe Donald Trump to friends is to say if Don King had been born white he’d be Donald Trump. Both of them are great self-promoters and great at just continuing to talk even if you’re not talking back at them.”

You can listen to Al Sharpton’s full interview below.



While Sharpton has voiced concerns over Trump becoming president, he has not revealed what presidential candidate he will be endorsing for the 2016 election. Though he is “open to support anyone” in the GOP, his endorsement will likely go to someone from within his own Democratic party. However, he says he has not decided which of the candidates, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, he will endorse as he is in the “midst of a process.”

“I have not decided who I will support for president. I think we are in the midst of a process, and that process has to be detailed policy and that process has to include collective gathering.”

Does Al Sharpton’s statement that he is “open to support” any other candidate, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz included, except for Donald Trump? What about Sharpton’s comparison of Donald Trump to Don King?

This psychic scam has raked in over 200 million

 By Contessa Gayles & Louis Foglia

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry angrily walks off show

Melissa Harris-Perry

By Jamil Smith

On Friday afternoon, media reports emerged about my friend Melissa Harris-Perry’s refusal to host her eponymous weekend program on MSNBC on Saturday. I was one of the original producers on the show when it launched in 2012, leaving for another job in 2015. Dr. Harris-Perry asked me today to publish the note she sent to her staff — most of whom are my former colleagues — informing them of her decision. You can read it in full below.

#nerdland, forever.

Jamil

—

Dearest Nerds,

As you know by now, my name appears on the weekend schedule for MSNBC programming from South Carolina this Saturday and Sunday. I appreciate that many of you responded to this development with relief and enthusiasm. To know that you have missed working with me even a fraction of how much I’ve missed working with all of you is deeply moving. However, as of this morning, I do not have any intention of hosting this weekend. Because this is a decision that affects all of you, I wanted to take a moment to explain my reasoning.

Some unknown decision-maker, presumably Andy Lack or Phil Griffin, has added my name to this spreadsheet, but nothing has changed in the posture of the MSNBC leadership team toward me or toward our show. Putting me on air seems to be a decision being made solely to save face because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage. Social media has noted the dramatic change in editorial tone and racial composition of MSNBC’s on-air coverage. In addition, Dylan Byers of CNN has made repeated inquiries with MSNBC’s leadership and with me about the show and what appears to be its cancellation. I have not responded to reporters or social media inquiries. However, I am not willing to appear on air in order to quell concerns about the disappearance of our show and our voice.

Here is the reality: our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season. After four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced. Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.

The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost. I am only willing to return when that return happens under certain terms.

Undoubtedly, television nurtures the egos of those of us who find ourselves in front of bright lights and big cameras. I am sure ego is informing my own pain in this moment, but there is a level of professional decency, respect, and communication that has been denied this show for years. And the utter insulting absurdity of the past few weeks exceeds anything I can countenance.

I have stayed in the same hotels where MSNBC has been broadcasting in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina, yet I have been shut out from coverage. I have a PhD in political science and have taught American voting and elections at some of the nation’s top universities for nearly two decades, yet I have been deemed less worthy to weigh in than relative novices and certified liars. I have hosted a weekly program on this network for four years and contributed to election coverage on this network for nearly eight years, but no one on the third floor has even returned an email, called me, or initiated or responded to any communication of any kind from me for nearly a month. It is profoundly hurtful to realize that I work for people who find my considerable expertise and editorial judgment valueless to the coverage they are creating.

While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better. I know who I am. I know why MHP Show is unique and valuable. I will not sell short myself or this show. I am not hungry for empty airtime. I care only about substantive, meaningful, and autonomous work. When we can do that, I will return — not a moment earlier. I am deeply sorry for the ways that this decision makes life harder for all of you. You mean more to me than you can imagine.

Yours always,

Melissa

Hillary Clinton has a race problem — and it’s resurfacing at a dangerous time

A brittle reaction to Black Lives Matter protester on eve of South Carolina refocuses voters on problematic record

By Eliza Webb
 

Ashley Williams, Hillary Clinton (Credit: CNN)

According to a Feb. 16 CNN/ORC poll, a whopping 65 percent of South Carolinian black voters are planning to support Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s primary, while only 28 percent are planning to support Bernie Sanders.

The furor that broke out last night, however, may just shift the political winds.

In the middle of a $500 per person Clinton fundraising event in Charleston on Wednesday evening, a young Black Lives Matter activist stepped out in front of the former secretary of state, turned toward the small audience, and held aloft a banner emblazoned with the phrase, “We need to bring them to heel.”

The protester, as she later explained, “wanted to make sure that black people are paying attention to [Clinton’s] record” by drawing attention to the racist rhetoric Clinton used in 1996, when she, as First Lady, strongly supported the “tough on crime” method of governance, and successfully lobbied for a bill based on that method to be passed into law.

“They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” Clinton warned the public at the time. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we need to bring them to heel.”

The crime bill that Clinton advocated for is now widely regarded as a “terrible mistake,” and the demonizing language that she used to describe young people who belong to gangs (a group that, because of institutionalized racism and oppression, is majority black and Latino/a) would now be political suicide.

Since the 90's, the Democratic Party — and Hillary Clinton along with it — has morphed from voicing demagogic, dangerous ideas about black children and supporting catastrophic crime policies to, today, speaking of how “we have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance,” and promising an end to the decades-long era of mass incarceration, which, of course, they hold much responsibility for creating.

But, despite Clinton’s sudden populist transformation, the memory of the American people isn’t quite so short and fleeting.

Americans remember that Hillary Clinton’s 90's policy stances punished those born into systemic racism and poverty by instituting mandatory minimums, eliminating rehabilitative programs for inmates addicted to drugs, implementing the three-strikes law (which Bill now admits “made the problem worse”), expanding the death penalty (which Hillary still supports), and building more prisons countrywide.

Indeed, the ‘94 legislation threw millions of black women and men into prison; in fact, throughout Bill Clinton’s presidency, the black prison population increased by 50 percent.

All of this spelled mass incarceration and mass disenfranchisement for the black Americans of South Carolina.

Today, due to felonies, one out of every 27 black voters in South Carolina is disenfranchised, and, although black people make up just 28 percent of the state’s population, they account for a devastating 62 percent of the prison and jail population, in no small part because of the draconian measures the Clinton administration, along with the strong support of its first lady, took in the name of being “tough on crime.”

And now, 20 years later, at the end of February 2016, Clinton finds herself being directly challenged by a young Black protester named Ashley Williams on her past rhetoric and role in creating America’s stringent criminal justice system, under which people are still being penalized today, including those in South Carolina.

With the state’s primary looming, a respectful and honest response to this confrontation was vitally important for Clinton — and she fell dismally short.

“We want you to apologize for mass incarceration,” Williams said last night, facing the former secretary of state head-on.

“OK fine, we’ll talk about it,” Clinton answered.

“I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton.”

Hisses and grumbles emanated from the audience.

“OK, fine, we’ll talk about it.”

“Can you apologize to black people for mass incarceration?”

“Well, can I talk, and then maybe you can listen to what I say?” Clinton responded.

Following Clinton’s lead, the hissing from the audience amplified.

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Williams answered.

“OK, fine, thank you very much. There are a lot of issues, a lot issues in this campaign. The very first speech that I gave back in April was about criminal justice reform—“

“You called black people ‘super-predators,’” Williams said, interrupting Clinton to bring the focus back to the words Clinton spoke and the positions she held as first lady.

“Whoa, you’re being rude,” came voices from the audience. “This is not appropriate.”

“Calling people super-predators — that’s what’s rude,” Williams shot back.

Clinton cut her off: “Do you want to hear the facts, or do you just want to talk?”

“You’re trespassing,” a man’s voice rang out.

“Please explain your record to us,” Williams asked Clinton. “You owe black people an apology. You owe people of color an apology.”

“Let her talk, let her talk.” The audience grew louder and angrier on Clinton’s behalf.

“I’ll tell you what, if you will give me a chance to talk, I’ll approach your subject — you know what, nobody’s ever asked me that before,” Clinton said, as Williams was physically removed by a white security guard.

The former secretary of state then turned to her remaining audience and said, “OK, back to the issues.”

The crowd let out a huge sigh, and one woman said, “Thank you!”

Yikes.

(Later Thursday, Clinton sent a statement to the Washington Post apologizing for her 90's remarks):

In a written response to The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart on the issue Thursday, Clinton said: “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”

“My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society, kids who never got the chance they deserved,” Clinton continued in the statement. “And unfortunately today, there are way too many of those kids, especially in African-American communities.  We haven’t done right by them.  We need to.  We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.”

And indeed, three days ago, Clinton stated that, “White Americans need to do a better job at listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers they face every day. Practice humility rather than assume that our experience is everyone’s experience.”

In South Carolina last night, Clinton blew right past that doctrine.

While the virtually all-white crowd hissed and verbally attacked Williams, Clinton did nothing to quiet them. She did not wield her privilege and position of power to demand those following her show respect to a young woman understandably and rightfully upset by racial injustice.

Instead, she repeatedly snapped at Williams — “Do you want to hear the facts, or do you just want to talk?” — and tried to quickly answer Williams’ call for an apology by discussing the speech she made 10 months ago, instead of the language she used in the 90's.

When Williams pressed her to be more specific, Clinton grew even more visibly annoyed and her tone further sharpened — a bad “job [of] listening” with “humility” and giving credit to Williams’ experiences and concerns.

It was a poor showing of Clinton’s comprehension of the severity of the issues facing black Americans. Despite the institutional racism and mass incarceration drowning black Americans today, Clinton acted as though Williams’ emotionally charged protest was completely out of line.

Then, when a white, male security guard put his hands on the young, black, female protester, and forcibly coaxed her away from Clinton, Clinton’s response was, “OK, back to the issues,” not only allowing a young activist to be physically removed from Clinton’s presence, but problematically implying that Clinton’s trustworthiness on black rights and black lives to black voters is not, somehow, one of “the issues.”

Let’s be real: Clinton helped create the mass incarceration state, period.

If she cannot swiftly and straightforwardly apologize to a young black woman for what she did in the 90's, Clinton reveals herself to have never thought about her actions, to have never unpacked her white privilege, and to be largely incapable of “practicing the humility” she is now calling upon her fellow white Americans to employ.

Williams’ concerns before her protest were in no way dispelled by Clinton’s actions, but rather intensified:

“Hillary Clinton has a pattern of throwing the Black community under the bus when it serves her politically. She called our boys ‘super-predators’ in ’96, then she race-baited when running against Obama in ‘08, now she’s a lifelong civil rights activist. I just want to know which Hillary is running for President, the one from ’96, ’08, or the new Hillary?”

Additionally, Clinton’s record and response last night do not contrast well with Bernie Sanders’, who had this to say in the 90's while Clinton was calling young black children “super-predators”:

“We have the highest percentage of people in jail per capita of any nation on earth — what do we have to do, put half the country behind bars?

Mr. Speaker, instead of talking about punishment and vengeance, let us have the courage to talk about the real issue — how do we get to the root causes of crime?

…And, Mr. Speaker, I’ve got a problem! I’ve got a problem with a president and a Congress that allows five million people to go hungry, two million people to sleep out on the street, cities to become breeding grounds for drugs and violence — and they say we’re getting tough on crime.

If you want to get tough on crime, let’s deal with the causes of crime. Let’s demand that every man, woman, and child in this country have a decent opportunity and a decent standard of living.

Let’s not keep putting more people into jail and disproportionately punishing Blacks.”

In comparison to Sanders’ positions in the 90's, and in light of how Clinton responded last night to questions about her past —over which there is already a growing controversy — South Carolinian black voters may very well shift their support to the candidate who has never depicted their children as having “no conscience, no empathy” or being “super-predators,” but called for “every man, woman, and child in this country to have a decent opportunity” since the 90's.

Either way, the entire country will find out the day after tomorrow.

Eliza Webb is a writer based in Detroit. Her work has appeared in the Hill, Truthout, CounterPunch, Alternet and the Michigan Journal of International Affairs. You can contact her at lizawebb@umich.edu and follow her on Twitter @ElizaAWebb

Harry Reid Slams Mitt Romney’s Hypocrisy on Tax Returns

By Taegan Goddard

Sen. Harry Reid told CNN that he’s stunned to see Mitt Romney demanding Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Said Reid: “All I know, I can’t imagine Romney having the gall coming after anybody’s returns. Let’s look at his. He never gave us his tax returns. Who was the brainchild who got him to do that?

Romney never gave us his tax returns. He did not — he gave us his summary, he didn’t give us our tax returns.”

US Cops Leveraging Consumer DNA Databases Ancestry.com, 23andMe

By Jay

 

Fusion – When companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe first invited people to send in their DNA for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests, privacy advocates warned about the creation of giant genetic databases that might one day be used against participants by law enforcement. DNA, after all, can be a key to solving crimes. It “has serious information about you and your family,” genetic privacy advocate Jeremy Gruber told me back in 2010 when such services were just getting popular.

Now, five years later, when 23andMe and Ancestry both have over a million customers, those warnings are looking prescient. “Your relative’s DNA could turn you into a suspect,” warns Wired, writing about a case from earlier this year, in which New Orleans filmmaker Michael Usry became a suspect in an unsolved murder case after cops did a familial genetic search using semen collected in 1996. The cops searched an Ancestry.com database and got a familial match to a saliva sample Usry’s father had given years earlier. Usry was ultimately determined to be innocent and the Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “wild goose chase” that demonstrated “the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases.”

If the idea of investigators poking through your DNA freaks you out, both Ancestry.com and 23andMe have options to delete your information with the sites. 23andMe says it will delete information within 30 days upon request.

White Supremacists Mobilize For Donald Trump

They're using robocalls and volunteers to drum up support.

 By Christina Wilkie

As the Republican presidential primary moves into the American south, white supremacist groups are working to mobilize racists to get out the vote for Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, David Duke, the white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, encouraged his radio show listeners to volunteer for Trump's campaign. "Call Donald Trump’s headquarters [and] volunteer," he said on the "David Duke Radio Program." At Trump campaign offices, he said, "you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have.”

In Minnesota and Vermont, a white supremacist super PAC called the American National Super PAC has begun circulating a robocall in support of Trump.

"The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called 'racist,' says William Johnson, the leader of the white nationalist American Freedom Party. He goes on to bemoan "gradual genocide against the white race," and how few "schools anymore have beautiful white children as the majority." He signs off by telling recipients, "Don’t vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump."

Johnson is not affiliated in any way with the Trump campaign, and Trump has distanced himself from Johnson's views. Trump also promised to return a $250 contribution Johnson made to his campaign.

But Trump's response to the white supremacists backing him is hardly enough to put them off, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors hate groups.

"Trump has 'quote unquote' repudiated these groups, but only in the most milquetoast way imaginable," Potok said in an interview. "The fact is that white nationalists are mobilizing for Trump whether he likes it or not."

Trump's habit of retweeting messages posted by white supremacists, sharing them with his 6.4 million Twitter followers, hasn't helped matters.  

Like Johnson, Duke framed the GOP primary as a contest between Trump and two people of color, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas). “Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said Wednesday. And while he doesn't agree with everything Trump says, he told listeners, "I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.”

Potok said Duke's backing carries a lot of weight in white supremacist circles. "David Duke is the most important self described white nationalist intellectual out there today, and what he says is still very influential."

The Huffington Post reached out to Trump's campaign for a response to the David Duke comments, and will update this post if they provide one.

On white nationalist websites, analysts are portraying Trump's candidacy as a rebellion by white supremacists against the mainstream conservative movement. As a writer calling himself Gregory Hood recently wrote in the national Raddix Journal, "the conservative movement is trying to keep its White serfs trapped on the conservative planation. They know if Trumpian nationalism triumphs, a more authentic form of White Identity politics can’t be far behind."

This isn't the first time white supremacists have seized on Trump's candidacy. In December, Rachel Pendergraft, the national organizer for the Knights Party, a Ku Klux Klan affiliate, said Trump's bid for the White House had opened up new ways for her group to recruit like-minded people.

“One of the things that our organization really stresses with our membership is we want them to educate themselves on issues, but we also want them to be able to learn how to open up a conversation with other people,” Pendergraft told The Washington Post. Trump, she said, was a perfect conversation starter for people to begin talking about issues like immigration and demographic changes underway in America.

But as the Republican race moves into states where Jim Crow segregation was the law of the land for more than a century, the influence of overt racism and the white nationalist movement, combined with some of Trump's rhetoric, could have the more subtle effect of making it seem more acceptable to hold aggressively anti-immigrant and xenophobic views.

"With Trump, white supremacists understand that he's not exactly a white nationalist, like them, but they applaud his hard right positions on matters that are important to them," said Potok. "From their point of view, it's almost better that he's not a full on white nationalist, because now he has a better chance at winning a major office."

To many voters, the GOP nominating contest increasingly looks like a three-way race between two Hispanic men and a white man, leaving little doubt as to which candidate is most likely to win the pro-white vote.

"White supremacists are beside themselves with joy," Potok added. 

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe,racist,misogynist,birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

The Year the Voters Took Back Politics

By Robert Kuttner

February 23, 2016

Despite Clinton's close victory in Nevada, the Democratic primary is far from over.

AP Photo/John Bazemore

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders cheer during a rally Sunday, February 21, 2016, in Greenville, South Carolina.

This article originally appeared at The Huffington Post.

For nearly 40 years, working and middle class families have been taking an economic beating at the hands of political and economic elites. Forty years! (I first wrote a major piece on these trends, titled "The Declining Middle," for The Atlantic in 1983.)

And for the same 40 years, economic elites have kept tight control of the political system, preventing those grievances from breaking through.

Instead, regular people increasingly gave up on politics. Or they embraced heroes who promised change, but didn't or couldn't deliver much (Obama), or who turned out to be total phonies (John Edwards), or who represented flash-in-the-pan moments (Howard Dean), or who were all things to all people (Bill Clinton)—deepening voter cynicism that the system was rigged.

And the economic screwing of ordinary Americans, and the Wall Street lock on policy, just kept worsening. And people kept giving up on politics.

On the Republican side, presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush used nationalism, militarism, racial backlash, and government-bashing to divert attention from the plain pocketbook frustrations of regular working Americans. Paralyzing government promoted the GOP twin project of empowering elites and discrediting liberals as instruments of believable change.

And both the screwing and the cynicism deepened.

Both parties were loose, awkward coalitions dominated by Wall Street. On the Republican side, socially liberal financial moguls made common cause with anti-abortion, anti-gay, often anti-black and anti foreign, fundamentalist conservatives.

Many of these social conservatives didn't like Wall Street. And on Wall Street, meanwhile, many of the billionaires were embracing gay rights, abortion rights, black colleagues, and were snickering at the evangelicals in the dog patch.

Yet the GOP alliance held because it served both groups. Until Donald Trump blew it to smithereens.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party was the same sort of marriage of convenience. The congressional party and the labor movement were mostly progressive. But Wall Street called the tune for the presidential party.

Bill Clinton declared that people who work for a living shouldn't be poor. But he also declared that the era of big government was over. He appointed a few good liberals, but the power positions in the economic portfolios went to Wall Streeters. Deregulation of finance and more insecurity for regular people followed.

Barack Obama followed much of the same script, embracing social liberalism but giving the power positions on the economy to the same protégés of Robert Rubin.

And then Bernie Sanders blew it up.

Remarkably, there is accidental convergence of an anti-Wall Street populist on the Republican side, and an anti-Wall Street populist on the Democratic side. This did not have to happen. It was a sheer accident of timing that Trump and Sanders, each improbable by himself, both decided to run the same year. Both are tapping the same, legitimate voter rage.

But here the symmetry ends. Trump is now the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination, while Sanders is still the underdog for the Democratic slot.

The Takeaway:

1. It Ain't Over. Pundits are now declaring the Democratic contest over based on a sliver of votes in Nevada. That's premature. Clinton is poised to win most of the Southern Super Tuesday primaries March 1. But Sanders could still gain ground as the campaign heads back north. This election is anything but linear in its trend. There will be stumbles and reversals that we can't imagine.

2. A Whiter Shade of Trump. If Clinton wins the nomination, she will risk losing a lot white working class votes to Trump. Depending on how more populist she can become on the issues, she may or may not win the enthusiasm of the Sanders base. At the MSNBC-Telemundo Las Vegas Town Hall February 18, she tried to get to Sanders’s left on bashing Wall Street, and it didn't sound convincing—it just sounded opportunistic and desperate:

I was the candidate who went to Wall Street before the crash. I was the candidate who went to them and said you are wrecking our economy. What you are doing with mortgages is going to bring us down.

I go further than Senator Sanders does because I want to go after all the other bank bad actors. The bad actors like hedge funds, the bad actors like AIG, the insurance company. Like Countrywide mortgage. I take a backseat to nobody in being very clear about what I will do to make sure Wall Street never crashes Main Street again. And, that you can count on.

Well, maybe. Clinton still won't release the transcripts of her Wall Street paid speeches.

In fairness, some presidents who were far from left wing in their prior careers became more progressive in office, because events demanded it. That describes Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson (but tragically not Barack Obama). Could Hillary Clinton rise to the occasion and become another mobilizing force for drastic change? If she doesn't, all of the economic rage that has stoked the Trump and Sanders campaigns will be that much more potent in 2020.

If Sanders does lose to Clinton, there will still very likely be upwards of 1,000 Sanders delegates at the Philadelphia convention. And if Clinton doesn't sound a lot more like Sanders, they will be booing, not cheering, the party nominee.

3. Sanders Needs to Pick Up His Game. Last week, there was a dust-up over Sanders’s economic numbers. An economist at the University of Massachusetts, Gerald Friedman, projected very high rates of economic growth for Sanders’s economic program. Several moderate liberal economists, all with ties to Clinton and Obama, pounced, arguing that that Friedman's numbers did not add up.

By week's end, Beltway economists were feeling very satisfied that they had demolished Sanders’s credibility.

Beltway budget-crunchers will not take down Sanders by challenging his arithmetic.

What these worthies don't get is that the voters are paying less attention to the words than the music.

Sanders’s song is the music of aspirational change, and he is attracting people who are tired of getting an economic screwing. Beltway budget-crunchers will not take down Sanders by challenging his arithmetic.

That said, Sanders does need a far better organized campaign. He is still relying on a pick-up team for his economic advice. The Sanders campaign was doubly embarrassed when Friedman, though a lefty economist, turned out to be a Hillary Clinton supporter. The campaign looked like amateur hour. As he becomes a higher-profile candidate, his program will get an even more intense vetting.

4. Will Elizabeth Warren be the Veep? If Sanders is the nominee, having denied the nomination to the most prominent woman in American politics, he will be under intense pressure to name a woman as his running mate. Turning to a centrist to balance the ticket would make no sense—it would deny who he is and his entire reason for running. There are other plausible women, but naming Warren would redouble the campaign's grassroots energy.

And if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she will need someone to win the excitement of the Sanders base. Sanders himself? Probably not. But Warren is a more convincing version of Sanders than Sanders.

Two women? Are you crazy? Hey, for most of our history, presidential tickets have been two men.

Just sayin' ...

5. Populist Insurgencies Usually End Badly. Ever since the days of William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long, and more recently with Fred Harris and then Ralph Nader, populists raise a lot of energy and hope, but seldom get elected. (FDR and his cousin Teddy were both accidental populists.) This is a year when economic reality cries out for populist remedy. The risk is that a right-wing populist demagogue will gain ground by blaming the wrong scapegoats, or that a candidate representing Democratic continuity will fail to take popular grievances seriously.

6. Almost Anything Could Happen. There has been talk of an independent candidacy by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. If the two parties respectively nominate Trump and Sanders, Bloomberg could well run. But the greater likelihood, if the Democrats nominate Clinton, is that Bloomberg stays out; and Republican elites, who loathe Trump, will find a traditional conservative to run as a Republican independent.

Wouldn't that be something to watch?

Why Should You And I Have To Keep Paying Mitch McConnell's Salary?

By Jim Hightower

McConnell cites non-existent precedent to prevent Obama from nominating next Supreme Court justice. 

 

Antonin Scalia is gone. The nastiest and noisiest of right-wingers on the Supreme Court is dead.

But he can't be any more brain dead than Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate. In a blatantly partisan ploy to prevent President Obama from nominating a successor to Scalia, McConnell has cited a historical precedent dictating that presidents who are in the last year of their term do not name new justices to the high court. "Therefore," he babbled, "this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

What a silly old squirrel McConnell is! Article II of the U.S. Constitution plainly states that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Judges of the Supreme Court." Note that the Constitution says the president "shall" do this -- as a duty to the nation. Nothing in the founding document suggests that this power and duty is voided in an election year.

In fact, 13 Supreme Court nominations have been made in presidential election years, and the Senate took action on 11 of them. McConnell's assertion is bogus (and silly), for history and the Constitution clearly back Obama. Ironically, one who would have nailed McConnell for such a slapstick political perversion of plain constitutional language is Scalia himself. He practiced what he called "originalism" in his official judgments, insisting that the Constitution must be interpreted only by the words in it and only by the original meaning those words had for the founders when they wrote them into the document.

McConnell's squirrelly stall tactic is as ridiculous as it is shameful. It's also totally hypocritical, since Mitch himself voted in February 1988 to confirm a Supreme Court nominee put forth by Ronald Reagan -- in the last year of his presidency.

This leads me to ask, why should you and I have to keep paying McConnell's salary? Not only is he a Senate majority leader who doesn't lead; the lazy right-wing lawmaker really doesn't do anything, refusing to pick up the legislative tools he's been given and go to work on the many things that We The People -- and America itself -- need Congress to do. Imagine if you tried doing nothing on your job -- just drawing your paycheck after ignoring your workload!

Repeatedly, this senatorial slug says no to every task at hand. Repair and replace the water pipes that leach lead and are poisoning families all across America? No, he yawns. Raise the minimum wage to help bridge the dangerous wealth gap separating the super-rich from the rest of us? Don't bother me with such stuff, Mitch snaps. Shut off that gusher of corrupt corporate money pouring into our elections and drowning the people's democratic rights? Not my problem, shrugs the lumpish ne'er-do-well.

And now a straightforward constitutional duty has been handed to McConnell: Gear up the Senate's "Advise and Consent" mechanism to approve or reject President Obama's nominee to replace Justice Scalia. We'll do it tomorrow, muttered the somnolent senator, content to put off his responsibility to our nation's system of justice until next year, long after Obama is gone.

We're paying this guy a salary of $174,000 a year, plus another $19,400 for his "service" as majority leader. It's insulting that he won't even go through the motions of doing his job. Of course, saying no to all the chores he ought to be doing for the people is exactly what the corporate sponsors of his Republican Party expect from him. They want an inert and unresponsive government, a poverty-wage economy, a plutocratic election system and a court of their own choosing.

So "Do Nothing" Mitch is their boy. But at the very least, shouldn't they pay his salary, rather than sticking us with the cost?

Why The Apple VS Govt Storyline Is A Fake Designed To Distract The Public

By Bill Blunden

 

The backdoor is already in the IPhone.

 

The media is erupting over the FBI’s demand that Apple help it decrypt an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers involved in the assault in San Bernardino this past December.

Originally Apple wanted the FBI to keep things on the down low, asking the Feds to present their application for access under seal. But for whatever reason the FBI decided to go public. Apple then put on a big show of resistance and now there are legislators threatening to change the law in favor of the FBI. Yet concealed amid this unfolding drama is a vital fact that very few outlets are paying attention to.

Tim Cook protests that Apple is being asked to create “a new version of the iPhone operating system.” This glib talking point distracts attention from the reality that there’s essentially a backdoor on every new iPhone that ships around the world: the ability to load and execute modified firmware without user intervention.

Ostensibly software patches were intended to fix bugs. But they can just as easily install code that compromises sensitive data. I repeat: without user intervention. Apple isn’t alone in this regard. Has anyone noticed that the auto-update feature deployed with certain versions of Windows 10 is impossible to turn off using existing user controls?

Update features, it would seem, are a bullseye for spies. And rightly so because they represent a novel way to quietly execute malicious software. This past September the Washington Post published a leaked memo from the White House which proposed that intelligence agencies leverage “provider-enabled remote access to encrypted devices through current update procedures.” Yep, the same update procedures that are marketed as helping to keep users safe. And it would appear that the spies are making progress. There’s news from Bloomberg of a secret memo that tasked spymasters with estimating the budgetary requirements needed to develop “encryption workarounds.”

And, finally, please notice throughout this whole ordeal how the Director of the NSA, unlike the vociferous FBI director, has been relatively silent. With a budget on the order of $10 billion at its disposal the NSA almost certainly has something equivalent to what the courts have asked Apple to create. The NSA probably doesn’t want to give its bypass tool to the FBI and blow its operational advantage. After all, the NSA is well versed in the art of firmware-level manipulation. Experts have opined that for a few million (a drop in the bucket for a spy outfit like the NSA or CIA) this capability could be implemented. NSA whistleblower William Binney tends to agree. When asked what users could do to protect themselves from the Deep State’s prying eyes Binney replied:

“Use smoke signals! With NSA’s budget of over $10 bill a year, they have more resources to acquire your data than you can ever hope to defend against.
This has to be addressed in law and legislation. Call your local governmental representative and complain, otherwise, if you sit and do nothing… you are fucked!!!”

So while Apple manufactures the perception that it’s fighting for user privacy, keep in mind that the media’s Manichean narrative of “good vs. evil” doesn’t necessarily explain what’s transpiring.

Despite cheerleading by Ed Snowden and others Apple is not the company that it would have us believe it is. Apple has a long history of helping the government crack iPhones and security researchers have already unearthed any number of hidden services lurking below the iPhones surface.

The public record over the past several decades informs that ersatz public opposition often conceals private collusion. And Apple, dear reader, is no stranger when it comes to clandestine government programs. The sad truth is that government spies and corporate data hoarders assemble in the corridors of the American Deep State protected by a veil of official secrecy and sophisticated propaganda.

Related Stories

• WATCH: Apple CEO Tim Cook Refuses to Help FBI Hack Into iPhone, Citing Global Threat to Data Security
• Are We Really Supposed to Believe That Apple's Spat Against the Govt Is a Fight to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens?
• Banking While Muslim: Hijab-Wearing Woman Forced to Remove Scarf, Gets Kicked out of Omaha Bank

Future imperfect