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I wish dems, especially the progressive ones will stop letting others define things for them, and would fight back against the labels as much as they fight for good issues like MFA, etc etc. From the article:

Nixon told HuffPost on Sunday that she does not support the BDS movement and never has.

“Anti-Semitism is on the rise, not just across the country but across the globe. My children are Jewish. I fear for them,” Nixon said in an interview after delivering a speech at a Harlem church. “And to have me accused in such a blatant way of something that is so completely untrue is deeply, deeply offensive to me

.”

This ties two things together that need not tied. Being a BDS supporters has nothing to do with anti-semitism or promoting ‘fear’ of any kind.

Indigenous Women Rise Against Jerry Brown’s Climate Half-Measures

This Saturday, climate organizers from around the world are coming together to embark on a week of radical action in San Francisco.

Solidarity to Solutions Week (Sol2Sol) is organized by the It Takes Roots Alliance in direct response to California Gov. Jerry Brown’s market-based approach to the climate crisis. Brown is the driving force behind the closed-door Global Climate Action Summit being held in San Francisco September 12–14.

“Nobody inside the summit wants to talk about leaving fossil fuels in the ground or reducing our energy consumption,” says Kandi Mossett, the Native energy and climate campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, a member group of the It Takes Roots Alliance. “It’s ‘how can we continue to make money while basically pacifying groups [by saying] that we’re working on the climate crisis’—and that’s through emissions trading schemes.”

The goal of Sol2Sol is to expose what they see as false solutions offered by supposed climate leaders such as Brown and to bring together a community of radical organizers to brainstorm ways to combat climate change and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“We have to be at the table,” says Mossett. “Leaders are going to be making decisions that completely impact our future and impact us now, but we’re not allowed in.” Very few organizers from the alliance have been given access to the summit, she says.

Are polls broken? Worry over ‘blind spots’ as hopes of blue wave swell

In the Gravis poll, he was fourth. In the Florida Atlantic University poll, he was tied for third. In the SurveyUSA poll, he was fourth again. And on election night, he was first, winning by tens of thousands of votes.

Andrew Gillum’s victory in the Democratic primary for Florida governor last month was enough to make pollsters look like liars. Some members of the public are already inclined to think that. Didn’t the pollsters also say Hillary Clinton was going to win in 2016 and that Britain would “remain” in Europe?

Among opponents of Donald Trump, as hopes swell that the midterm elections will send a blue wave crashing through the US Capitol, the question of whether polling is broken is an urgent one. The promise of victory can generate energy among voters and increase turnout, but in a number of primaries this year polling has underestimated the strengths of certain Democratic candidates – especially candidates of color.

The “surprise” victory of Gillum, who is African American, was preceded by a “surprise” win in New York by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Hispanic, and followed by a “surprise” win in Massachusetts by Ayanna Pressley, who is also African American. Pressley was 13 points behind until she won by 17 – a 30-point miss for the pollsters for local WBUR. Ben Jealous and Stacey Abrams, nonwhite gubernatorial nominees in Maryland and Georgia, also beat the numbers.

If comparable blind spots persist through the general elections this November, the ability of Democrats to win the 13 or so toss-up races in the Senate, the 72 or so toss-up House races and the 18 toss-up gubernatorial races could be affected. The Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to gain control of the House and two to take the Senate.

Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, said any pollster whose 2018 election model was based on voter turnout in 2014 – before Trump, before “build the wall”, before “fake news”, before “both sides” – would miss the mark.

In Single Tweet, Bernie Sanders Debunks Trump’s Lies About Social Security and Medicare

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) turned to Twitter Friday evening to call out President Donald Trump’s latest lies that he is “going to protect your Social Security” and Republicans are “saving Medicare” from Democrats’ supposed efforts to “destroy” the social safety net programs—which actually have been consistently targeted by the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers.

Debunking Trump’s remarks from two events this week, Sanders—known as a champion of Medicare for All and legislation that aims to improve the lives of low-income people—shared screenshots of several news articles detailing the Trump administration and Republican politicians’ ongoing efforts to dismantle programs which provide benefits to older and impoverished Americans.

“Trump’s budget cuts Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, breaking core campaign promise,” declares a ThinkProgress headline from February, while the title of a November Los Angeles Times article reads, “Sen. Rubio tells a secret: After giving a tax cut to the rich, GOP will cut Social Security and Medicare.”

Last night, Trump was in Montana, telling people that Democrats want to "destroy your Social Security" and are "going to ruin your Medicare."

Really? That's funny… pic.twitter.com/hFCVY8ZZbP

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 7, 2018

No, Capitalism Will Not Save the Climate

We are facing deep-rooted climate, social, and environmental crises. The current dominant economic system cannot provide solutions. It is time for system change.

For Friends of the Earth International this means creating societies based on peoples’ sovereignty and environmental, social, economic, and gender justice. We must question and deconstruct the capitalist logic of accumulation.

The climate catastrophe is interwoven with many social and environmental crises, including oppression, corporate power, hunger, water depletion, biodiversity loss and deforestation.

At its heart sits an unsustainable economic system, the sole aim of which is endless growth and profit. This system concentrates wealth, power, and obscene privilege with the few.

Corporations and national elites are empowered by that very system to exploit people and their livelihoods with impunity.

We must tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatization, financialization and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable production and consumption systems.

The magnitude of the crises we face demands system change.

Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers’ plan to starve public education

Arizona has become the hotbed for an experiment rightwing activists hope will redefine America’s schools – an experiment that has pitched the conservative billionaires the Koch brothers and Donald Trump’s controversial education secretary, Betsy DeVos, against teachers’ unions, teachers and parents. Neither side is giving up without a fight.

With groups funded by the Koch brothers and DeVos nudging things along, Arizona lawmakers enacted the nation’s broadest school vouchers law, state-funded vouchers that are supposed to give parents more school choice and can be spent on private or religiously affiliated schools. For opponents, the system is not about choice but about further weakening the public school system. A half-dozen women who had battled for months against the legislation were angry as hell.

Convinced that the law would drain money from Arizona’s underfunded public schools, these women complained that Arizona’s lawmakers had ignored the public will and instead heeded the wishes of billionaires seeking to build up private schools at the expense of public schools.

“We walked outside the Capitol Building, and we looked at each other, and said, ‘What now?” said one of the women, Dawn Penich-Thacker, a mother of two boys in public school and a former army public information officer. “We had been fighting this for four months. We realized that there’s something we can do about it. It’s called a citizens’ referendum. We said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Little did they know the challenges ahead. They would need 75,321 signatures to get their referendum on the ballot to overturn the law. They formed a group, Save Our Schools, and set out to collect the needed signatures. Opposing lobbyists sneered, saying no way could they do that.

The six women inspired a statewide movement and got hundreds of volunteers to brave Arizona’s torrid summer heat to collect signatures – in parks and parking lots, at baseball games and shopping malls. Their message was that billionaire outsiders were endangering public education by getting Arizona’s legislature – in part through campaign contributions – to create an expensive voucher program.

This happened Thursday night and the cop in question was not arrested until Saturday night I believe (and named as well). She was also allowed to sneak out the back after posting bail so she wouldnt have to face reporters… something any other suspect would not get.

Dallas Cop Shot and Killed Black Man in His Own Home After Mistaking It for Hers

The Dallas Police Department is investigating a bizarre shooting in which an off-duty police officer shot and killed a man in his own home after allegedly mistaking it for hers. The officer, identified as Amber Guyger, has been placed on administrative leave.

Guyger, 30, walked into an apartment in downtown Dallas after her shift ended on Thursday and saw Botham Shem Jean, 26. She fired her weapon. She then dialed 911 and Jean was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.

Guyger has been on the Dallas police force for five years. She was involved in 2017 shooting of a suspect who she said tried to remove her taser during a struggle. On Saturday, during a criminal justice panel with Mayor Mike Rawlings, Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall said that no arrest warrant has been issued for Guyger because the Texas Rangers have asked her department to wait so they can investigate the incident further.

“We are totally committed to getting to the bottom of this situation,” Hall said during the panel, which was livestreamed on Facebook. Hall then explained that the department was going through the process of obtaining a warrant for Guyger’s arrest but turned the investigation over to the Texas Rangers. “We truly want to be transparent,” Hall said. “We have turned this investigation over to ensure total transparency in our operations.”

Cruz gets help from Senate GOP in face of serious challenge from O’Rourke

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was the most disliked member of the Senate Republican conference for much of his first six years in Congress, but colleagues are rallying to his side in the face of a serious reelection challenge from Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D).

Polls show a tight race between Cruz and the photogenic O’Rourke, who would make history if he could pull off what would be a huge upset in the Lone Star State

A Cruz loss would also put GOP control of the Senate very much at risk, which has senators who have sometimes been at odds with the tough-talking Texan coming to his aid.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/tv/ted-cruzs-former-campaign-spox-admits-beto-orourke-could-beat-the-senator-in-texas-race/amp/

Ted Cruz‘s former strategist admitted on MSNBC on Sunday that the Republican senator does not have the race to win back his Senate seat locked up in red state Texas.

Speaking with Kasie Hunt,  Rick Tyler, who served as the national spokesperson for Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, said that it is possible Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourkecould pull out a win.

“As the former Cruz strategist, it does seem as though the signs are that Ted Cruz might actually lose this race,” Hunt said to Tyler during a discussion on the midterms.

Tyler replied: “It’s possible—people say no, it’s not possible because again you look at Texas and say ‘it’s a red state and it’s never going to happen,’ but Beto O’Rourke has consistently out-fundraised him two-to-one, and he doesn’t take PAC money.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/jail-juvenile-offenders-until-middle-age-trump-health-secretary-alex-azar-argued-in-1991-memo

Donald Trump’s health secretary, who defended the administration’s child separation policy as “charity”, once argued in a private paper that repeat juvenile offenders cannot be rehabilitated and ought to be jailed until they reach middle age, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

A 1991 legal memo written by Alex Azar, a former drug industry executive who is now secretary of health and human services (HHS), rejected the notion that a juvenile who committed a crime was a “salvageable human” who could be treated rather than punished.

Instead, the memo, written for a senior attorney at a private law practice, outlined the legal rationale for a criminal justice policy that favoured reducing and deterring crime via mass incarceration.

Azar is closely linked personally and ideologically to Brett Kavanaugh, the Trump administration’s nominee to the supreme court. The two men were among the first young prosecutors hired by Kenneth Starr when he became independent counsel and investigated the Clinton administration. In a tweet following Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court, Azar said the judge had been a “close friend for 30 years”.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/10/democrats-super-pacs-midterms-813439

Dem super PACs keep getting bigger as candidates turn on PAC money

Democratic candidates are running against money in politics. But Democratic super PACs are playing a bigger role than ever in the party.

The super PACs charged with helping Democrats take back the House and Senate are raking in record sums from donors motivated by opposition to President Donald Trump, even as a rising class of candidates — like Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke and Ayanna Pressley, who scored a primary upset over Rep. Mike Capuano in Massachusetts last week — are rejecting corporate PAC money and using campaign finance as a purity test against entrenched opponents. Meanwhile, the Democratic super PACs are using their new cash reserves to take over more and more of the party’s core functions, expanding from a focus on TV advertising to run major field programs and digital campaigns.

The current system has created an ongoing, awkward dance in which Democratic candidates are calling for change while benefiting from an increasingly large flow of outside money seeking to match Republican spending. In the recent special election in Ohio’s 12th District, Democrat Danny O’Connor rejected taking money from corporate PACs and pledged to change campaign finance laws if elected — as he benefited from more than a million dollars in outside spending praising him or attacking his opponent.

Democratic operatives have concluded their super PAC buildup is necessary, especially after searching for new strategies in the wake of the 2016 loss.

“For the last cycle leading into [this] election, every day is Groundhog Day, reliving a very tough election night,” said J.B. Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, the main super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.