Reeling with grief, the task force hunts the organization behind Liz's
failed abduction - who is Solomon working for and why was Liz the
target? Meanwhile, Red confronts a man from his past. Brian Dennehy
guest stars.
Democrats are setting themselves up for a crushing loss in November
unless Clinton backers stop bullying Bernie Sanders supporters. Here’s
why.
Neither candidate will clinch the nomination before the convention
After losing four out of five primaries on Tuesday, the overwhelming
question from Hillary Clinton supporters is whether or not the legions
of voters backing Bernie Sanders will fall in line, accept Clinton’s
inevitable coronation, and vote for her to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.
This is an unfair and illegitimate question, and completely ignores why
Sanders was able to activate so many people across the country and
persuade nearly 9 million people thus far to vote for him.
That question of whether or not Bernie Sanders’ voters will support Clinton ignores the fact that out of the remaining 1,016 pledged delegates,
neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders will reach 2,383 pledged
delegates before the Democratic National Convention in July. Almost half
of those delegates will come from California alone.
This is significant, as Sanders is steadily closing in on Clinton’s polling edge in the state, cutting her lead down from double digits to just two points. As such, he has a very good chance of winning the state, given that California’s primary allows independent voters to
vote in the Democratic primary. In terms of pledged delegates, Sanders
may very well be within two percentage points of Clinton at the DNC if
he wins 60 percent of the remaining pledged delegates. This is not an unlikely scenario, given the favorable outlook of the remaining states.
In other words, Hillary Clinton will only be the Democratic nominee
if super-delegates tip the scales for her on the first ballot. Assuming
Clinton already has the nomination locked up, with over 1,000 pledged
delegates still at play in states mostly favorable to Sanders, is
unrealistic and naive. Democrats’ bullying of Sen. Sanders supporters to
betray their candidate and vote for his rival is premature and
divisive.
The Democratic Party desperately needs new blood
By attempting to turn the Democratic primary into a coronation for
Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party leaders have shown they aren’t
interested in cultivating new leaders or increasing engagement among
younger voters. The fact that the Democratic establishment’s only choice
to lead the party in 2016 is the candidate who lost the last contested
primary eight years ago speaks volumes.
Establishment Democrats have a bad habit of running loser candidates. In Wisconsin, moderate Democrat Tom Barrett, who lost by 5 points
to Scott Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial election, was the state
party’s top choice to run against Gov. Walker after activists
successfully triggered a recall election. Despite Barrett’s
establishment endorsements from Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, he lost by an even wider margin to Walker in the recall election.
In fact, aside from re-electing President Obama in 2012, Democrats
have been losing badly across the nation for six consecutive years.
There are only 18 Democratic governors currently in office, the fewest in over a century. Only 43 percent
of all state legislators across the United States are Democrats while
56 percent are Republicans — a trend of waning Democratic power at the
state level continuing unabated since 2012. If anything, Democrats
should be welcoming Sanders’ supporters and their ideas into the party
if they’re interested in having any hope for future elections.
Current Democratic Party leaders are fresh out of ideas
Democrats currently holding office have shown little in the way of
strategy for how to enact progressive policy victories. As US Uncut
reported earlier this week, leading Democrats in Congress, like Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, are actually aligning with the pharmaceutical industry
to fight their own president’s efforts to lower prescription drug
prices. And even though they’re bending over backwards to elect Hillary
Clinton, Congressional Democrats have no strategy or will to retake the House of Representatives.
Even if Hillary Clinton, who is running as a “progressive who likes to get things done”
is elected, how does she plan to get things done with Republican
majorities in the House and Senate? And if the Democratic Party’s leader
in the House is already scheming against a Democratic president, how
does Clinton plan to even rally her own party to pass meaningful
legislation?
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has brought new blood and new
ideas to the Democratic Party, and manages to fill arenas full of
supporters and break voter turnout records in many of the states he’s
won. Sanders is the first Democrat to bring New Deal policies back to
the Democratic Party since the Clinton-led corporate takeover of the
Democratic Party in the nineties.
These policies — like tuition-free public universities, universal
healthcare as a human right, and a massive investment in millions of new
public sector jobs — motivate young people and independent voters to
register as Democrats and vote for Sanders. If Democrats want to keep
the White House in November, they should push Hillary Clinton to adopt
as many as possible.
Hillary Clinton and the DNC have no interest in bringing in new blood or new ideas
As The Hill reported on Friday, Hillary Clinton is already promising to resist
the pressure to adopt Sanders’ policies as her own if she wins the
nomination. This will undoubtedly turn off the millions of voters who
showed up for Sen. Sanders throughout the primary process from voting
for Clinton in the general election. In addition, Democratic National
Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already stacked the deck in
Clinton’s favor by rigging the party’s national convention process.
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported
that the heads of the two most important standing committees at the DNC
are Clinton superdelegates. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is
co-chair of the platform committee, where policies Democrats will run on
for the next four years are adopted. The other co-chair is Atlanta
Mayor Shirley Franklin, who is a senior advisor for Ready for Hillary.
Former Congressman Barney Frank (who is very vocallyanti-Sanders)
is heading the rules committee, which decides the convention
procedures, along with former Texas State Senator Leticia Van de Putte,
who endorsed Clinton and stumped for her on the campaign trail.
Several months ago, Schultz also made sure the members of these committees were favorable to Clinton:
In January, the party chairwoman, Representative Debbie
Wasserman Schultz of Florida, appointed dozens of Clinton supporters and
advisers to the three standing committees of the Democratic Party
convention. Of 45 potential members submitted by Mr. Sanders, she
appointed just three, according to Mr. Sanders’s campaign.
Even if Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders enter the convention with a
51-49 split in pledged delegates, party bosses could rig the process to
make sure Sanders won’t be the nominee. Barney Frank has the power as
rules committee chairman to schedule Bernie Sanders’ speech to delegates
for 10 AM on a Friday morning, or make sure the DNC’s first ballot
vote, in which super-delegates can give Clinton a plurality, happens
before Sanders has a chance to address delegates.
Bullying #BernieOrBust voters won’t help Hillary Clinton
In recent months, Sanders supporters have endured constant bullying, having been labeled sexists and “Bernie Bros” more times than can be counted; they’ve been told by Clinton herself that they don’t do their own research; they’ve been called “unrealistic” in pushing for progressive reforms despite massive victories in the fight for a higher minimum wage; they’ve even been told there’s a “special place in hell”
for women not supporting Clinton. What’s unrealistic is expecting
Sanders supporters to put their feelings aside and vote for the
candidate who has directly insulted them.
If Clinton secures the nomination, she will lose unless Bernie
Sanders and his supporters are lifted up by the party, and the ideals
they uphold are taken seriously and adopted into the Democratic
platform.
Anything less would ensure at least four years of Donald Trump
as president.
Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific
Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and
environmental news. You can contact him via email at
tom.v.cahill@gmail.com.
The Democratic race is closer than the mainstream
media would like to admit.
Surprisingly, this week's prize for Stupidest Political Comment in the
Presidential Race doesn't go to Donnie Trump or Ted Cruz. Rather, the honor goes
to the clueless cognoscenti of conventional political wisdom. These pundits and
professional campaign operatives have made a unilateral decision that Bernie
Sanders must now quit the race for the Democratic nomination. Why? Because, they
say, he can't win.
Actually, he already has.
Sanders' vivid populist vision, unabashed idealism
and big ideas for restoring America to its own people have jerked the
presidential debate out of the hands of status quo corporatists, revitalized the
class consciousness and relevance of the Democratic Party, energized millions of
young people to get involved, and proven to the Democratic establishment that
they don't have to sell out to big corporate donors to raise the money they need
to run for office.
Bernie has substantively—even profoundly—changed American politics for the
better, which is why he's gaining more and more support and keeps winning
delegates. From the start, he said, "This campaign is not about me"—it's a
chance for voters who have been disregarded and discarded to forge a new
political revolution that will continue to grow beyond this election and create
a true people's government.
From coast to coast, millions of voters have been "Feeling the Bern." That's
the campaign slogan grassroots supporters created to express their passion for
the unconventional presidential run being made by Bernie Sanders.
Yes, passion—an outpouring of genuine excitement that is (as we say in Texas)
"hotter than high school love." All this for a 74 year old democratic socialist
who is openly taking on the corporate plutocracy that's been knocking down the
middle class and holding down the poor. Sanders is the oldest candidate in the
race—yet politically, he's the youngest candidate, exuberantly putting forth an
FDR-sized vision and agenda to lift up America's workaday majority. And guess
what? It turns out that workaday Americans really value democracy over
plutocracy, so that's where his passionate support comes from.
Need I mention that the moneyed powers—and the politicians hooked on their
money—hate this affront to their cozy politics-as-usual/ business-as-usual
system? Especially shocking to them is that Sanders' supporters have found their
way around the usual Wall of Big Money that the establishment always throws us
to thwart populist campaigns. This time, though, a counter-force of common folks
has created a widely successful campaign fund of their own to support their
Bernie rebellion. How successful? A whopping $182 million has been raised in
millions of small donations that average $27 each.
That's a revolution, right there! Every revolution needs a slogan, so here's
one that used to be on the marquee of a vintage, locally owned motel just down
the street from where I live in Austin: "No additives, no preservatives,
corporate-free since 1938." That perfectly sums up the unique people's campaign
that Bernie-people have forged for themselves.
The keepers of the Established Order fear this grassroots uprising by no-name
"outsiders," and they know that this year's Democratic nomination is still very
much up for grabs, so they're stupidly trying to shove Sanders out before other
states can vote. But Bernie and the mass movement he's fostering aren't about to
quit—they'll organize in every primary still to come, be a major force at the
Democratic convention, and keep pushing their ideals and policies in the general
election and beyond.
As Sanders puts it: "I run not to oppose any man or woman, but to propose new
and far-reaching policies to deal with the crisis of our times... It may be too
late to stop the billionaire class from trying to buy the presidency and
Congress... But we owe it to our children and grandchildren to try...We need to
face up to the reality of where we are as a nation, and we need a mass movement
of people to fight for change."
That's what real politics should be—not merely a vacuous campaign to
elect a personality, but a momentous democratic movement fighting for the common
good.
The blustery billionaire could lose the biggest game of his life—to a woman.
(Photo: AP/Julie Jacobson)
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a news conference Tuesday, April 26.
We had been promised something of a new
candidate, one more “presidential” in demeanor than we’re accustomed to
seeing in the ostentatious settings at which he stages his post-primary
speeches.
But when Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front runner, stepped up to the mic in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to
celebrate of his epic sweep
of Tuesday night’s GOP nominating contests in all five of the states in
play, what we saw was a Trump more subdued in tone but as misogynist in substance as ever.
After declaring himself to be “like, a very smart person,” Donald J.
Trump made an astonishing claim: If Democratic frontrunner Hillary
Clinton—who won four of Tuesday’s five Democratic primaries—were a man,
he said, “she’d be at 5 percent” in the polls. As if being a woman
granted the female politician some great advantage. Were that the case,
each chamber of Congress, one might assume, would be a body in which
women represented 80 percent of the membership, rather than the other way around. Surely, given such great gender privilege, the 50 states might muster more than a grand total of six female governors among them.
Trump appeared to be grasping at some explanation for why, in general election match-up polls, he trails behind a woman. (It must be because she’s a woman! The system is rigged!)
“I’ve always been very good at math,” Trump told us, though apparently that prowess ended before the probability exam began.
The only thing that Clinton had going for her, Trump said, was “the
women's card,” perhaps failing to notice that in the 2012 presidential
election, according to U.S. Census Bureau data,
71.4 percent of women reported voting, while only 61.6 percent of men
did. Add in the fact that there are more eligible female voters than
male voters, one might see that very card maligned by Trump as something
of a trump in and of itself.
“Women
don’t like her,” Trump said of Clinton, apparently not aware of the
fact that in all but three states since the beginning of the
presidential campaign season, Clinton has won the majority of the women’s vote. Meanwhile, Gallup reports, 7 in 10 women have an unfavorable view of Trump.
The ancient Greek philosophers saw misogyny as evidence of fear of
women. Whatever the original roots of the showman’s misogyny, the polls
would indicate he has good reason to fear women in November—those, at
least, who turn up at the voting booth. Which may explain Trump’s
urging, in his latest victory speech, of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s
flagging Democratic challenger, to run as an independent in the general
election. An independent progressive would presumably peel off votes
that would have otherwise gone to the Democrat.
But then Trump went on to echo Sanders’s allegation that Clinton is
“unqualified” for the presidency, an attack that many women, including this writer,
heard as distinctly gendered in nature. (Sanders has since walked back
that claim, which he said was based on the fact that, while serving in
the Senate, Clinton had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq
during the presidency of George W. Bush.) But given Trump’s
free-associative invocation of that particular Sanders attack on
Clinton, coupled with the Bernie Bro
phenomenon and Sanders’s dismissal of Planned Parenthood as an
“establishment” organization, one could wonder whether an independent
Sanders candidacy might just peel off misogynist voters from Trump.
Before the night’s end, the Sanders campaign issued a statement
that suggested the U.S. senator from Vermont was no longer in it to win
it, but would instead stay in the contest in the hope of injecting his
campaign’s driving issues—income inequality and the break-up of big
banks—into the Democratic Party platform at the national convention in
Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, pundits were once again using such words as “unstoppable”
to describe Trump’s march to his party’s nomination, what with the
establishment types who had once seemed so vehemently opposed to him on
moral ground now submitting, between sighs, to what suddenly seemed
inevitable.
(Both U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John
Kasich fared poorly in Tuesday’s contests—in the Eastern states of
Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland—and the non-aggression pact they had forged for next week’s contests unraveled soon after it was announced.)
As Clinton’s nomination became all but sealed on Tuesday night, the
pundits barely seemed to register the historic nature of it. For the
first time, a woman was almost certain to be the standard-bearer of one
of the two major political parties in a presidential election. But
Donald Trump surely noticed.
With his male challengers falling away, Trump is now faced with two
outcomes he likely once deemed improbable, if not impossible: that he
could win the nomination of the Party of Lincoln, and that he could lose
the biggest game of his life—to a woman.
“How can she says Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up, with his mother watching."
With incredible passion, poet Crystal Valentine responds to Megyn
Kelly’s statement that Jesus is a white man. The Fox News anchor caused
an outrage with the claim back in 2013. Holding nothing back,
Valentine’s voice begins to shake from what appears to be her outrage as
she rebukes Kelly.
Here is the full video/poem transcript below:
And the News Reporter Says “Jesus is White”
She says it with a smile
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world
So sure of herself
Of her privilege
Her ability to change history
Rewrite bodies to make them look like her
She says it the same way politicians say racism no longer exists
The same way police officers call dead black boys thugs
The same way white gentrifiers call Brooklyn home
She says it with an American accent
Her voice doing that American thing
Crawling out of her throat
Reaching to clasp onto something
That does not belong to her
I laugh to myself
What makes a black man a black man?
Is it a white woman’s confirmation?
Is it her head nod?
Is it the way she’s allowed to go on national television
And auto correct the bible and God himself,
Tell him who his son really was?
What makes a black man a black man:
The way reporters retell their deaths like fairytales
The way their skulls split across pavement
The way they cannot outrun a bullet
How can she say Jesus was a white man
When he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up
With his mother watching,
Crying at his feet
Her tears nothing more than gossip
For the news reporters or prophets to document
With his body left to sour in the sun
With his human stripped from his black
Remember that?
How the whole world was saved by a black man
By a man so loved by God,
He called him kin
He called him black
Now ain’t that suspicious?
Ain’t that news worthy?
Ain’t that something worth being killed over?
Thank you, Crystal Valentine. There is nothing more for more to say other than thank you.
In what is becoming an outrageously predictable trend, Hillary Clinton
supporters have been caught breaking election laws again and other voting
irregularities have been reported across three of today’s five primary
states.
Pennsylvania voters have reported on Reddit that the following campaign advertisements for
Clinton were being distributed inside polling locations in clear violation of
electioneering law.
Pennsylvania’s electioneering laws clearly state that “No
person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for
any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall any written or
printed matter be posted up within the said room… ”
The law then goes on to specifically mention that solicitations “must remain
at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the
voting.”
And yet, the following video shows these Hillary Clinton slips inside the
North Temple Baptist Church polling location on 1628 Master Street in
Philadelphia, with the poll worker refusing to throw them away even after being
confronted.
The worker admits at the beginning of the video that “Whoever’s supposed to
be giving these out is supposed to be outside.”
Videographer Daniel Laufer rightly points out that this is against the law,
and politely asks if he can remove the offending slips from the polling station.
The worker says “No you can’t have these,” blatantly admitting that “They have
to hand them out as people come in.”
Again, Laufer tries to remain calm as he explains: “This is trying to sway
people and you’re not supposed to do that according to the law.”
“It’s not swaying anybody,” the poll worker replies. “You have your own mind,
you vote for whoever you want to.”
“The law is the law, and this is against the law.”
“I understand that, but are you a lawyer?”
“I don’t need to be a lawyer to know that.”
From here out, the poll worker just keeps repeating that voters can “vote for
whoever they want to” without directly responding to the fact that these
advertisements are a textbook case of electioneering, which is banned under
state law within the polling place.
Laufer told US Uncut that in addition to the Clinton campaign literature
inside the precinct, the polling place was plagued by other irregularities, like
two broken voting machines that weren’t replaced for hours and the precinct
being closed to early voters.
“Polls were supposed to open at seven,” Laufer said in a phone interview. “I
got there at 7:30, and it wasn’t open yet.”
To test the reaction of poll workers, Laufer tried handing out pro-Sanders
campaign literature more than ten feet away from the polling precinct, and poll
workers threatened to call the police on him.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a voting machine wasn’t allowing a voter to select
Bernie Sanders.
Brooks Bell posted video of himself on Instagram trying to press Sanders’
name on an electronic voting machine, which failed continuously to record his
selection. New York Daily News columnist Shaun King tweeted the video, which
garnered thousands of retweets in a matter of hours — though it was later
revealed that the machine simply wasn’t turned on:
Philly voters saying polls won't let them vote for Bernie.
In Connecticut, where 55 pledged delegates are up for grabs, one voter recorded his
father’s party affiliation mysteriously changing from “Democratic” on April 23 to
“Unaffiliated” on April 25. In Connecticut’s closed primary, voters not
identifying as Democrats or Republicans aren’t allowed to vote.
This happened on a large scale in the Arizona primary, with the Secretary of
State admitting in a public hearing that staffers in her own office
had their party affiliations changed without their consent. Voters’ party
affiliations were changed in New York as well, with some voters showing proof
that the signatures on the documents in question were
forged.
Election irregularities are also being reported in Rhode Island, as voters
are having to drive around for hours to find their polling place after the state
closed 66 percent of voting precincts last week. Only three out of seventeen polling places in North Providence were
open for Tuesday’s primary, leading to some confusion among voters.
“Someone should be making an announcement or something,” voter Nick D’Amico
told the Providence Journal. “Otherwise you could be standing in line for 30
minutes before you realize you’re in the wrong place.”
This continues a string of election debacles which always seem to favor
Clinton, from Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary with a megaphone well
within the boundaries of the polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to
126,000 Brooklyn voters mysteriously being purged from the
list of registered Democrats.
And although the fiasco in Maricopa County, Arizona, was largely the result
of Republican officials, it seems to have favored Clinton’s
campaign, as the early voting swayed overwhelmingly her way, while election day voting trends suggest that those disenfranchised
by the mishandling of polling stations would have reduced Clinton’s margin of
victory over Sanders had they been allowed to vote properly.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been amended to remove an incorrect
paragraph claiming Rhode Island has closed primaries. Rhode Island’s primaries
are semi-closed, meaning unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s
primary.)
Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright.
Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW
Hillary Clinton Handout and Machines not working at polling place in
Philadelphia PA - 4/26/2016 Democratic Primary - Bernie Sanders
At
my voting location, which is a church with bibles on the voter sign-in
tables in North Philadelphia (National Temple Baptist Church at 1628
Master St, Philadelphia, PA 19121), there was "Vote for Hillary Clinton"
campaign advertisement at the front door as people enter, which is
against the law. The voting station worker states that the "MACHINES
WEREN'T WORKING" and that the person who is "SUPPOSED to be handing them
out" wasn't here. This polling station is obviously not even attempting
to remain unbiased, and is pressuring voters to vote Hillary Clinton,
not Bernie Sanders. I'd guess that this issue is prevalent at more
Philadelphia polling locations than just one.
The PA law states:
"a)
No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit
votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall any
written or printed matter be posted up within the said room, except as
required by this act. All persons, except election officers, clerks,
machine inspectors, overseers, watchers, persons in the course of
voting, persons lawfully giving assistance to voters, and peace and
police officers, when permitted by the provisions of this act, must
remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting. (Pa. Consol. Stat. Ann. § 3060 (c); (d))"
CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — Racial tension on the Southern Illinois University
in Carbondale campus is high after a series of recent incidents that
include an anonymous video posted on YouTube that called for the
lynching and beating of black students.
The
video drew condemnation from the university's leader, and YouTube
removed it Monday for violating the company's policies on hate speech.
In an email to students Sunday night, interim Chancellor Brad Colwell
asked students to not distribute the two-minute video, which features
altered dialogue from the animated film "A Bug's Life" and a speaker
wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who promotes campus violence. The unidentified
speaker, whose voice is distorted, attributes the "SIUC White is Right"
video to the campus' Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. The fraternity denied
involvement in a statement issued by its national office in
Indianapolis.
"Individuals
who use the power of social media to spread hate and fear must not be
allowed to be the voice of our community," Colwell wrote in his email to
students.
Colwell threatened unspecified legal action against the video's creator, though campus spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said the university doesn't know who is behind it.
"We have no reason to believe the fraternity is responsible," she said.
The video follows a black student's complaint that student supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
used a racial slur and said black students should "go back to Africa"
at a recent Carbondale campus residence hall forum. The school is
investigating that incident, which prompted another open letter from
Colwell, in which he called on students to uphold "values of respect for
individuals, diversity and inclusion."
In
between the two Colwell letters, someone drew a swastika on a residence
hall chalkboard next to a message to "Build That Wall," an apparent
reference to Trump's calls to curtail illegal immigration from Mexico.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment Monday.
Buckle up, America. The voting demolition derby that was the New York
primary on Tuesday was merely the crash test for the coming voting
wreckage in November: a carefully planned pile up.
Voter purgeFirst, live from New York….
Francesca
Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did
the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New
York City.
“I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election
official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39
were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in,
exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”
That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.
FILE - In this March 28, 2015, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak passes a sign marking the Pennsylvania-Ohio state border as he completes his "Walking In Other Pennsylvanian's Shoes" walking tour across Pennsylvania in Ohioville, Pa. Sestak, 64, is one of four candidates campaigning for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania's primary on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, seeking to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's bid for re-election. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)
HARRISBURG,
Pa. (AP) — Democrat Joe Sestak came tantalizingly close to winning a
seat in the U.S. Senate six years ago and is hoping Tuesday to secure a
rematch, but the party establishment wants nothing to do with him,
pouring millions into the campaign of his chief rival.
The
former two-term congressman and retired Navy rear admiral is wearing
his outsider status as a badge of honor as he seeks the nomination to
take on Republican Sen. Pat Toomey this fall in a race that could tilt
control of the Senate.
He
has said that he is fighting "for the soul of the Democratic Party,"
and that political party leaders "aren't in it for people any longer,
they're in it for power and themselves."
"I'm
not a politician," he said when the candidates were asked at a Friday
debate if they would represent a break with the status quo.
"Four-and-a-half million dollars — half of it by my own Democratic Party
— has been put in against me," he said.
Party-endorsed
candidate Katie McGinty focused instead on the Republican incumbent.
"I'll do something very different from what Pat Toomey has done. Pat
Toomey has sold out the middle class," she said.
McGinty,
a former state and federal environmental policy official, has trumpeted
the broad range of support she has received, from President Barack
Obama to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to former Gov. Ed Rendell.
At the same time she has sought to tap anti-establishment sentiment by
looking to the general election.
Sestak's
frosty relationship with party leaders dates to 2009 when he was
recruited to challenge then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, then was
asked to step aside when Specter switched parties to the delight of
Democratic Party leaders. But Sestak refused to drop out — even after
former President Bill Clinton was recruited to dangle a government job
offer in front of him.
Sestak
went on to beat Specter in the primary and lose to Toomey by only 2
percentage points in the 2010 general election, upsetting the Democrats'
plans for regaining the seat in a state where they outnumber
Republicans 4-to-3.
Sestak again doesn't figure into the Democrats' plan.
The
resulting tension has shaped a race in which McGinty's side has
outspent Sestak's two-to-one.
She has been aided by nearly $2 million
from a national party committee and $1.75 million from Washington-based
Emily's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights.
Despite
the fundraising disadvantage, the 64-year-old Sestak has led nearly
every independent poll.
But a large bloc of undecided voters — nearly
one in three, according to a new Franklin and Marshall College poll — is
adding uncertainty to Tuesday's election.
Sestak
spent the last six years as a regular on the local party event circuit
around Pennsylvania, earning loyalty from rank-and-file activists. He
also walked across the state last year to kick off his campaign.
The
party's search for an alternative candidate ended last summer when it
tapped McGinty, 52, a member of Gov. Tom Wolf's administration who had
also worked for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and former Gov. Ed Rendell.
She
has run a radio ad voiced by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a
campaign stop for her in Pittsburgh. McGinty said in one TV ad that
Obama endorsed her "because he knows I'm a fighter."
She
has drummed out that theme in her ads, presenting herself as a champion
for the middle class and women's causes, the 9th of 10 children of a
Philadelphia cop and a diner waitress. In recent days, her campaign and
Emily's List have also aired attack ads against Sestak.
Sestak
has leaned on his military service and touted endorsements by two of
the state's largest newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. He has also told the story of his young daughter's
successful fight with brain cancer as his motivation for running for
Congress in 2006 and backing Obama's signature 2010 health care law.
One
wild card is how a third candidate, John Fetterman, will affect the
race, even though he trails badly in the polls and fundraising.
He's
best-known in western Pennsylvania, where he is the 46 year old mayor
of the impoverished steel town of Braddock, about 10 miles outside
Pittsburgh. He is 6-foot-8, scowling, bald and tattooed, and his liberal
and unconventional campaign — he has dropped in on bars, rock music
venues and hookah lounges — has won over some younger voters.
A
semi-retired owner of a spring manufacturing shop, Joe Vodvarka, was
also added back on the ballot in recent days after a dispute in court
over whether he had submitted enough signatures. His family has run his
low-profile campaign.
___
Associated Press writer Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
The moment has arrived. That moment when the establishment’s
sniggering apologists tell those damn idealists that it is time to get
with the program and settle for the latest shabby party product or risk
going home empty-handed. Hear the eternal refrain: Don’t make the
perfect the enemy of the good.
There has been a slew of these strident come to Jesus jeremiads from the usual suspects after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York primary. But the latest sermon on submitting to destiny from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau both perfectly encapsulates the mindless DNC Hillary Clinton Campaign talking points, while attempting to provide a how do you do fellow kids credibility because he was part of the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton.
See? Even former rivals for power with future career interests tied to the Democratic Party support Hillary Clinton, you guys.
The substance of the screed is as tired as it is tiresome. Favreau
makes a number of claims that fail basic scrutiny when he counsels
supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, or “Berniacs” as they are called
by The Daily Beast. For instance:
“Maybe you don’t believe that she’s different from the
caricature we’ve all helped perpetuate. But she is running a campaign
with a policy platform that’s more progressive than her husband’s
administration, her 2008 campaign, and—in a few cases—Barack Obama’s
administration.”
The problem, of course, is not that Hillary Clinton is not taking
progressive positions. The problem is that, given her record, the best
analysis of her policy platform is that she is lying about those
positions. Now, lying is a strong word and given her profession
(politician) let us use a nicer word, bullshitting. Hillary Clinton is bullshitting people on what she will do in office and a large slice of the Democratic Party base knows it.
Favreau supports his previous point by claiming Sanders supporters
should essentially declare victory because “Guess what? Bernie Sanders
helped make that happen. He helped push Hillary Clinton to the left. And
he should keep pushing her if she becomes president.”
Guess what? She’s bullshitting and even her most ardent supporters
acknowledge she plans to move rightward for the general election. So,
no, she has not been pushed anywhere, she is just saying what she thinks
Democratic primary voters want to hear, just as she will change the
tune and say what she thinks 51% of the general electorate wants to hear
should she become the party’s nominee. That’s not taking a progressive
position, Jon, that’s pretending to take progressive position.
But if you bought Favreau’s claim that former Secretary Clinton has
really evolved in real time, maybe you will buy his larger analysis of
not just this primary race, but all primary races:
“Primaries are often a clash of personalities and magnified policy differences.”
Once again, no. There is no clash of personalities. The antipathy to
Hillary Clinton is based on her record. Unless Favreau means to couch Clinton’s notorious dishonesty as a personality difference, which I doubt is what he was implying.
More to the point, there are substantial policy differences between
the candidates, as was pointed out in a thorough piece by Professor Matt
Karp over at Jacobin, called, “Against Fortress Liberalism.”
Karp notes that “It’s not just the policy differences that separate
Sanders’s blunt social-democratic platform from Clinton’s neoliberal
grab bag. The two candidates embody clashing theories of politics —
alternative visions of how to achieve progressive goals within the
American political system.”
Senator Sanders not only offers a progressive platform that he has a
well-demonstrated commitment to, but his theory of change is vastly
different than former Secretary Clinton’s. Sanders sees change as
coming from social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement he
participated in, which uses people power to pressure government
officials into making concessions. Clinton claims that she will use her
extensive experience in politics and government to personally work the
gears of the state apparatus from the inside on behalf of the causes and
people she states she cares for.
Say what you will about either approach, but they are far from identical. No magnifying glass necessary, Jon.
Now we move to perhaps the most insidious and oft-repeated argument of all, the trump card if you will:
“A campaign against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz won’t just
be a mission to save our country from something terrible, it will be an
opportunity to elect a progressive majority and a progressive president
who could tip the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation.”
And here is a key point: electing Hillary Clinton as president would be something terrible for our country.
To be clear, Hillary Clinton has continually proven to be both
malevolent and incompetent while serving in public office (also,
arguably, venal).
In her highest foreign policy related post, secretary of state, she
was an unmitigated disaster, championing the cause in Libya that even President Obama laments as his biggest foreign policy mistake. The parallels between the intervention in Libya and Iraq are stunning.
If Jon Favreau should remember anything about the 2008 campaign, it
is the decisive role Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War played
in winning Democrats over to supporting then-Senator Barack Obama, who
stood up to the DC bipartisan consensus and spoken out against the Iraq
War.
That is not to take away from the innovative and disciplined
campaign he ran or his virtues as a candidate, but it would be
manifestly dishonest to pretend that the Iraq War issue was not
responsible for his rise, and provided him both a sword and shield to
use against Hillary Clinton’s (eerily familiar) attacks against him in
2008 based on his foreign policy inexperience.
What is so amazing about Libya is how little Hillary Clinton learned from Iraq, repeating some of the same exact mistakes, along with making new ones.
Ultimately, the decision was President Obama’s, but by all reports it
was Secretary of State Clinton leading the charge. Former Defense
Secretary Robert Gates told The New York Times that US involvement in
the war was a 51-49 decision, and Clinton made the difference.
The analysis of former Secretary Clinton’s actions on Libya reveal
another inconvenient truth: Clinton really does not regret her vote for
the Iraq War outside of the political headaches it caused.
She appears,
from Iraq to Libya to Honduras and beyond, to genuinely believe in regime change as a perfectly legitimate and acceptable foreign policy tool.
When former Secretary Clinton was confronted on the regime change issue on MSNBC by anchor Chris Matthews
she embraced the tool citing the Rwandan genocide and Nazi Germany,
where regime change could have saved lives. That she was citing
counter-factual examples while Matthews offered real ones from recent
history did not appear to have any impact on her reasoning or worldview.
So, yes, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, expect more Iraqs and
Libyas and a doubling down on all forms of warfare (drone, cyber) across
the board. She is, without question, the war candidate in the
Democratic Party and in no way an alternative to a war candidate in the general. If you want four more years of the wars we have going now, plus some new faceplants thrown in, Hillary Clinton is your candidate.
In summation, for those who genuinely support a progressive platform
on domestic and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is not qualified. Her
record shows her approach to domestic policies is to run to the right
while throwing up progressive rhetoric to cover her escape, and her
foreign policy would be a return to Bush-era belligerence and
incompetence.
In other words, no Jon, we won’t learn to love her, though maybe some
of us will hold our noses and vote for her in November if she is the
nominee to prevent an even worse candidate from taking over the empire.
Pat Boone
continues his crusade against satire that offends his sensibilities,
asserting that the government should punish those who blaspheme against
God.
Speaking to Alan Colmes on his radio show Friday, the 81 year old singer/actor/Obama birther was still sore about the SNL parody of the Christian movie God’s Not Dead 2,
which Boone appears in.
The sketch skewers the film’s premise — that
Christians in America are persecuted — by depicting an evangelical baker
who is sued by a gay couple and their Jewish ACLU lawyer because she
refuses to admit that “God is gay.”
Speaking to Colmes, Boone rhetorically asked SNL producer Lorne Michaels if he would be all right with a sketch that called his mother a “diseased whore.”
“I mean, that’s just his mom,” Boone said. “What about the God of all creation?”
“You can mess around with Christians and Christianity but when you
start calling God names, God and the Holy Spirit are one and blasphemy
is the unforgivable sin,” he said Wednesday on Fox News
On Colmes’ show, Boone went a step further and said that the sort of mockery that impugns God should be punishable by law.
COLMES: Would you like the FCC to declare a show like Saturday Night Live or any other show can’t do that kind of humor?
BOONE: You cannot do blasphemy, yes.
COLMES: You would like the FCC to make that deceleration?
BOONE: Yes!
COLMES: And be punished and fined in some way if they did that kind of humor?
BOONE: I sure do, I do. And I would say at least 90% of the American
public would say “Yes, I agree.” And if the public doesn’t have any say
about it, it’s the public airwaves.
COLMES: So what should be the punishment then if the FCC says we’re
not going to allow this, what would be the proper punishment?
BOONE: Lose license, just like any other law. If you disobey the law,
you’re punished for it. And you lose the ability to keep doing it.
COLMES: Well, the show doesn’t get a license, but broadcast stations do. So it’s the stations that would suffer.
BOONE: It’s the network, or whoever is responsible for the shows
there should be regulations that prohibit blasphemy. It’s hard to
determine exactly what obscenity is, what blasphemy is. But to call God
by some profane name, I think that anybody with a rational mind would
agree that’s blasphemy.
COLMES: So for calling God a “boob man,” there should be a punishment for that, or “God is gay.”
BOONE: I certainly do.
If
you noticed that the last two Sunday mornings were slightly less
chaotic on the talk show circuit, that’s because Donald Trump broke with
his longstanding
TV tradition and did not appear. (He didn’t even call in.) For five
months running, Trump had been a fixture on the Sunday shows (he’s made 70 appearances since the beginning of 2015), spouting off endlessly and often creating controversy as producers watched their Trump-fueled ratings climb.
The
blueprint looked like this: Trump played the role of reality TV star
turned-carnival barker while the press cheered him on, feasting off the
clicks and audience surges he constantly delivered.
Missing for too long
from the equation? In-depth reporting and holding the blustery
candidate responsible for his often fact-free statements. “I don’t think
he’s been held accountable by the broadcast media for his erroneous
statements and repeated lies,” Trump biographer Tim O’Brien tells me.
The author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being Donald,
O’Brien gives the press a D- grade for its covering of Trump as a
presidential hopeful. He’s especially critical of cable news’ open-door
policy of Trump coverage, such as live, unfiltered broadcasts of his
rallies. “They give him the backyard to run around and then train their
cameras on him to see what happens,” says O’Brien.
But now, Trump
is taking a step back and turning down media invitations. He’s also
supposedly trying to roll out a new, more “presidential” image.
Will the press take the bait?
There’s no question that there’s been a makeover attempt within the Trump campaign in recent days. According to press reports, longtime political operative Paul Manafort has essentially taken over the
campaign. The move has been widely seen as an effort to tighten up the
operation. One key trait: pulling Trump out of the media spotlight where
he’s been living for the last nine months.
The campaign staff
shakeup and Trump’s absence from the Sunday shows “give the impression
that campaign veteran Manafort has taken the reigns and directed Trump
to scale back on some of the off-the-cuff behaviors that have gotten the
campaign negative coverage in the past,” wrote conservative blogger Larry O’Connor.
The
new-look Trump was unveiled Tuesday night after his New York primary
victory when he gave an unusually succinct victory address and avoided
his usual partisan insults.
Right on cue, political commentators swooned
over the costume change from Trump, giving him credit for not insulting
his opponents and (temporarily) dialing back the buffoonery.
“He actually called him Senator Cruz!” gushedABC World News Tonight’s David
Wright. “The consummate deal-maker changing his sales pitch to close
the deal. The tone, more presidential.” (Old habits apparently die hard — within a day, Trump was back to calling Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”)
To repeat, the press gave Trump credit for not
brazenly insulting people during his victory speech.
And overnight, the
press is hyping as “presidential” a candidate who’s spent the last nine
months wallowing in campaign bigotry. Talk about a standard that’s been
invented out of whole cloth just for him.
Commentators might be
playing up the new, kinder and gentler Trump, “but where’s the evidence”
anything has changed, asks Trump biographer O’Brien. So far there is
none.
Meanwhile, note that candidates who try to unveil a new look
mid-campaign usually get called out by the media’s authenticity police.
But there’s been very little of that regarding Trump this week; very
little mocking of him for attempting to construct a new public persona
on the fly.
We’ll soon know for sure whether Trump has any plans to abandon
the thuggery that’s defined his campaign to date. But his absence from
the Sunday shows the past two weeks suggests the campaign may be trying
to throttle back his media availability to some extent. Instead of
dashing in front of television cameras, or speed dialing into news
programs, Trump has taken a step back, as witnessed by his recent Sunday
show hiatus.
In doubt is whether Trump’s
stepping back from his shiny-object media strategy, which the press
gladly supported since last summer. “Every time he needs to raise his
visibility, change the subject, or respond to an attack, he says
something outrageous and the cycle starts again,” wrote Joel Simon at the Columbia Journalism Review.
We’ve
seen the drill over and over. He insulted Mexicans! He insulted Sen.
John McCain! He insulted Megyn Kelly! He insulted Carly Fiorina! He
insulted the Pope! He insulted Ted Cruz’s wife!
Months of news cycles
have been robotically handed over to the Trump shiny-object coverage.
That
in turn has served as one of the media’s justifications for showering
Trump with unprecedented attention: They treat Trump differently because
Trump acts so differently!
Trump didn’t act like other
politicians, the press claimed. He wasn’t guarded in his comments. He
wasn’t surrounded by consultants. Trump was authentic and controversial.
Or so goes the argument.
And best of all, Trump gave lots and lots of
television interviews. His sound bites demanded unending press
attention.
In the unlikely event Trump actually manages to find a
softer, more “presidential” tone, and become slightly media shy, will
the press dial back its obsessive, celebrity-like coverage, and apply a more critical eye to his wild claims?
Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush."
Chris
Hayes talks with Sanders supporter Sen. Jeff Merkley and Clinton
supporter Sen. Sherrod Brown about the impact of the NY primary on the
Democratic race.
Oh, this is glorious. Ted Cruz sent a whiny email out to his
supporters about what a "sacrifice" he was making to run for President.
So Elizabeth Warren took him to task on her Facebook page, and boy did she spank him.
Yesterday, Ted Cruz sent a campaign fundraising email
whining about the “significant sacrifice” he’s made to run for
President. He whined about facing constant attacks, nonexistent family
time, his limited health and sleep, and having no personal time.
Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to pity him because trying to be
the leader of the free world is hard?! I’ve got two words for you, Ted:
Boo Hoo.
Know whose health is limited? Workers with no paid leave who can't
stay at home when they fall ill or have to care for sick kids. Know
whose sleep is limited? Working parents who do everything they can to
save money but stay up at night worrying about how do get their kids
through college without getting crushed by debt. Know who gets no
personal time? People who work two minimum wage jobs to support their
families. Know who gets no family time? Moms with unfair schedules who
drop their kids off at daycare and drive halfway across town only to
find their work hours have been cancelled.
And Ted Cruz? He opposes mandatory paid family and medical leave and
calls it "free stuff." He voted against student loan refinancing. He's
says the minimum wage is "bad policy" and he's done nothing to try and
help workers struggling with unfair work schedules.
And know who’s facing constant attacks, Ted? Hardworking American
immigrants, Muslims, LGBT folks, women. They're facing the GOP's
constant attacks. They're facing YOUR constant attacks.
Working people are working more and getting paid less. They can't
save. Some face mistreatment and discrimination. They can't take time
off work for illnesses or to spend time with family. But they don't
whine. They don't throw tantrums or try to shut down their workplace
because they don't get their way - and then turn around and demand
promotions.
Senator
Cruz -- you chose to run for President. Working people don't get a
choice. Maybe you should spend less time complaining about your
"significant sacrifices" -- and more time trying to do something about
theirs.
In a perfect example of how disastrously run the New York primaries
have been, one voter is reporting that his name was deleted from the
list of eligible voters despite his registration six months ago. Why?
Because his name shares a few of the same letters as another man who
lives in a completely different borough.
Ben Gershman, a young voter from Chicago, registered at the New York
Department of Motor Vehicles after moving to Ridgewood in Queens six
months ago. But when he checked his voter status shortly before today’s
election, he found that his name had been taken off the voter list.
“They told me I shared the same initials as a voter in the Bronx, it
confused both registrations and I had become de-registered,” Gershman told DNAinfo New York.
Rather than helping Gershman fix this inexplicably frustrating
problem at the polls, he was forced to spend hours at the New York City
Board of Elections office on Queens Boulevard. Gershman said that by the
time he jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops and returned to his
poll site in Ridgewood, it took him a total of five and a half hours to
cast his ballot.
“It’s insane what I have to do, and I am registered,” he said. “There’s no accountability in the election process.”
In a Facebook post,
Gershwin urged other voters not to let the system defeat them: “NYC
Voters- DON’T settle for an Affidavit Ballot if you’ve been
deregistered! I went to the Queens County BOE and stood in front of a
judge who gave me a court order. It is your LEGAL RIGHT to vote on a
standard ballot. There’s already 126,000 voters confirmed to have been
deregistered– corrupt system, corrupt party, corrupt country!”
Rust is a popular first-person survival video game where
you start out completely naked, left to a barren environment to build
yourself tools, weapons, and a home as other players try to do the same —
and potentially try to kill you and steal your stuff. It's a tense
game, one in which your friends can suddenly turn against you and
basically ruin everything you worked for just for their own personal
gain.
But it's not the betrayal and tension that has gamers upset with Rust.
Instead, it's a new feature recently added to the game, which has
500,000 players each week, by developer Garry Newman:
Your character's
gender and race are now randomized. So even if you're a white man in
real life, you now may be forced to play a black woman.
Men, particularly white men, are not happy. Newman explained the situation in the Guardian, characterizing the reaction to the change as "extreme":
For race, this seems to be a regional thing. For example, most
complaints about being black in the game have generally been from
Russian players. With gender it seems to be more of a geography-free
complaint.
Here's one of the many messages we've received from disgruntled male
players: "Why won't you give the player base an option to choose their
gender? I just want to play the game and have a connection to the
character like most other games I play. Not have some political movement
shoved down my throat because you make the connection we can't choose
our gender in reality so let's make it like that in game too."
This is what women and minority gamers have been complaining about for decades
It's totally understandable that some people want to create their
characters as they see fit. As someone who enjoys playing role-playing
games, if I'm given the option I'll always create a character that I
think looks cool. So I can, to some extent, sympathize with this
sentiment.
Newman, for his part, says that he just didn't want to spend
development resources on a character building tool. And he also sees it
as valuable that people are forced to be of a certain race and gender
for their entire play-through: Players "should be recognizable
consistently and long-term — so anyone likely to commit a crime would be
more likely to wear a balaclava or a face mask," Newman wrote.
What's odd, instead, is that these same complaints from male, white
gamers would very likely fall on deaf ears if they were made by another
group — by, say, a black, Hispanic, or female gamer. After all,
originally, everyone on Rust was forced to play a bald white man — and there was no similar uproar.
Or worse, such complaints would fall on actively aggressive ears.
Consider Gamergate: The movement began in part as a response to
journalists trying to encourage more diversity in the gaming industry —
not just by opening the door to more women and minority developers, but
also making sure that games reflected the potentially diverse audience
playing them. This was widely perceived as such a vitriolic concept to a
large group of gamers that they rose up and harassed the journalists
and activists pushing for this increase in diversity, which Gamergaters
said was an attempt to ruin games with political correctness (which doesn't exist).
Given Gamergate, there's a bit of irony to the Rust controversy.
Take this feedback Newman received from one male gamer: "I just want
to play the game and have a connection to the character like most other
games I play." What this misses is that this male gamer is able to have a
connection to the character he plays in most video games because he's a man.
Meanwhile, minority and women gamers have for a long time just grown to
accept that they're probably going to be stuck playing white male
heroes if they pick up a mainstream triple-A game.
Newman made this point in his piece for the Guardian:
It's maybe understandable why some male gamers wouldn't want to play
as women. They're just not used to being forced to. You could probably
count on your fingers the number of major, big-budget games where you
have no choice but to play as a woman, never mind having no choice but
to play as a black woman. Female gamers are obviously more forgiving —
they've been playing games as men for most of their lives.
It's not that these gamers are wrong to be disappointed that they can no longer play as the character they would like in Rust.
I agree that character customization is great. The issue is that many
of the same people complaining now would probably be rolling their eyes
if a Hispanic man or black woman asked why they aren't well-represented
in Halo, Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid, The Witcher, The Legend of Zelda, or almost any other triple-A title that's come out over the years.
I'm not 100% certain that this is correct, but better safe than
sorry. We want to make sure that everybody has the chance the vote, so
spread the word.
EDIT: this has been confirmed by a couple of people in the comments. Here is a link more information:
Googled, this is from the New York Civil Liberties Union in 2010:
Can I wear a political t-shirt or button to the polls? The answer to
this question has not been clearly resolved. But to be safe and avoid
problems, we recommend that you wear a coat over your t-shirt and put
political buttons in your pocket while at your polling place.
Saudis warn US that it will sell off
hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the
kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the its government to
be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks.
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s
passage and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense
discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the
State Department and the Pentagon, CNN reports. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s
message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling
lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion
in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they
could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.
Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow
through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and
would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another
sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United
States.
The administration, which argues that the legislation would put
Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against
the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are
infuriated, The Nation noted.
In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the
kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be
the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist
plot.
“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis
over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the
World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’
family members pushing for the legislation.
President Obama will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with
King Salman and other Saudi officials. It is unclear whether the dispute
over the Sept. 11 legislation will be on the agenda for the talks.
Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the
Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the
Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials
individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the
commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior
officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role.
Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002
congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that
Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in
the plot, the New York Daily News reported.
Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.
The dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress
about Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial
American ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once
received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Last week, two senators
introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on American arms
sales to Saudi Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama
administration.
Families of the Sept. 11 victims have used the courts to try to hold
members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable
because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for
terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a
1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in
American courts.
The Christian Broadcasting Network said
the Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to
foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations
are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United
States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be
signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi
government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)
