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Pompeo supports the use of torture. He has longstanding relationships with anti-Muslim extremists. And his hawkish views on Iran and North Korea could very well lead us into another disastrous war. I will vote no on his nomination.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

Bernie Sanders calls for repeal of GOP tax law

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called Monday for the Republican tax law to be repealed after the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020.

The CBO projected that the budget deficit will rise to $804 billion for 2018 before hitting the $1 trillion mark in 2020 — two years earlier than anticipated. The national debt is also expected to hit $33 trillion in ten years after it hit the $21 trillion mark last month. Democrats are laying blame at the acceleration of the deficit and debt with the tax law that was passed in December.

“Over and over again, President Trump and his administration falsely claimed that their $1.5 trillion tax cut bill would pay for itself,” Sanders said in a statement. “Today’s Congressional Budget Office report puts that myth to rest.”

“According to CBO, President Trump’s massive tax break for the wealthy and large corporations is the primary reason that the federal deficit and national debt will explode over the next decade,” Sanders said. “Republicans are already using the huge increase in the debt that they caused as an excuse to make major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That is unacceptable.”

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we have got to repeal all of President Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations and rebuild the disappearing middle class,” he added.

Millions of people are raising money on GoFundMe right now to fund their health care and life-saving medication. To my mind, that is not a functioning health care system. We must pass Medicare for all. pic.twitter.com/Xz0IqFtoZA

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

We do not need more evidence to show us that pipelines are dangerous and must be stopped. We need to break our addiction to fossil fuels, create a sustainable energy system and end these disasters for good.https://t.co/cX4Mm4ePMz

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

https://youtu.be/TmRss1mAlRo

The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich -When he ran for president, he was ridiculed and dismissed. It turns out he was the future of American politics.

Almost everybody laughed at Dennis Kucinich during that race, except a fervent coalition of students and antiwar protesters who believed in him. He was the last to bow out to Kerry, right before the party convention, yet he had fewer than 100 delegates — about 3 percent of the total required to be nominated. He lost his own state of Ohio and even his congressional district.

“I feel like Johnny Appleseed,” he told the New York Times before the end. “I’m planting seeds all over this country: seeds of peace, seeds of hope. At some point, maybe years from now, there will be orchards.”

Today, Kucinich, 71, is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio, and those orchards aren’t just blooming — they are on the verge of taking over the entire landscape of American politics. It has been six years since he lost his congressional seat, but the stunning beatdown of both the Democratic and Republican establishments during the 2016 presidential campaign was Kucinich’s invitation to come in from the fringe. Populist causes that he has championed forever despite derision and dismissal — universal health care, free college tuition, rethinking trade agreements, reining in the surveillance state, bringing troops home, making huge investments in infrastructure — are now mainstream positions within his own party.

“Kucinich was ahead of his time in terms of having that progressive politics before it’s popular, before it’s cool,” says Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, the national progressive advocacy group born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. (Our Revolution has endorsed Kucinich in the governor’s race, though Sanders himself has not taken a position.)

But Kucinich didn’t just anticipate where the left was headed. He previewed elements of where the right was going, too. “I have multitudes of humanity within me,” Kucinich has said, paraphrasing Walt Whitman, and those multitudes reflect both the rainbow utopianism of Sanders and the working-class populism of President Trump’s campaign (if not always his administration). Kucinich — who spent some of his time away from elected office serving as a Fox News contributor — is a rare politician who is now occupying that sweet spot where Sandersism meets elements of Trumpism. He is not the only sentinel posted at this curious crossroads, but he may be the most prominent one currently running for office.

The future of Texas and its healthcare mean a lot to this little one. That’s why today Olivia is launching #BabiesForBeto in support of @BetoORourke’s campaign for U.S. Senate. If you are a baby looking to show your support for Beto, take a selfie and post it using #BabiesForBeto pic.twitter.com/mCgyAy2KpV

— Miguel Solis (@MiguelForDallas) April 9, 2018

Progressivism As A Brand

ow can you tell if a political candidate is sincere and will actually fight for your values? Anyone running for office is going to make promises, but the difficulty is in figuring out which individuals, if any, do mean what they say and which ones simply “figure out which way the political winds are blowing” and pander accordingly. The latter type are dangerous, because while their lack of convictions may mean you can sometimes pressure them into doing the right thing for purely self-interested reasons, they will also sell you out the moment it is politically advantageous.

As the Democrats try to retake Congress this year and the presidency in 2020, this distinction will be important in choosing nominees. The Bernie Sanders campaign has successfully “dragged the party to the left,” and previously fringe policies like single-payer healthcare and universal free college are now being embraced by mainstream Democrats. But while some Democrats have undoubtedly come to understand why single-payer could make people’s lives better, plenty of others will simply have taken note of the fact that Sanders is the most popular politician in the country and adjusted their Very Strongly Held Personal Beliefs accordingly. And while that might still be good news for the left, ultimately you still need people to hold office who are serious about following through on their promises and will be willing to expend personal political capital for the sake of the public good.

In other words, the Democratic Party needs to stay far away from candidates like Shri Thanedar. Thanedar is a leading contender in the race for Michigan governor who has compared himself with Bernie Sanders and brags in advertisements about being the “most progressive Democrat” in the race. His campaign materials criticize the “very wealthy” for hoarding too much of the nation’s income, and he has embraced the fight for a $15 minimum wage.

And yet, as Zaid Jilani recently reported in The Intercept, there is good reason to conclude that Thanedar doesn’t believe a single word he says. Before he announced his run, Thanedar, the multimillionaire CEO of a chemical analysis company, told a team of political consultants that he “didn’t care” whether he ran as a Republican or Democrat, and wanted to join “whichever side [the consultants] thought he had the best chance to win on.”

‘Horrifying’ Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Shouting With Joy After Sniping Unarmed Palestinian in Gaza

Just days after a journalist and at least eight other Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli forces during anti-occupation demonstrations in Gaza, a recent video of an Israeli sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man emerged for the first time on social media Monday, providing further evidence that the deliberate killing of civilians “is routine for Israel.”

“This video may be from months ago, Israel is claiming, which does not in any way make it less horrifying,” Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electric Intifada, wrote on Twitter Monday.

Apparently filmed by an Israeli soldier, the undated video shows what appears to be an unarmed man standing near the fence that separates Israel and Gaza.

After the sniper shoots the man, one of the soldiers yells “yes!” and “son of a bitch!” in celebration as a crowd rushes toward the body.

In response to the video, which sparked outrage as it began to spread on Twitter Monday, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights executive director Yousef Munayyer noted that “while this shows one individual soldier’s act, it is made possible by criminal orders from the top that authorized use of lethal force against unarmed protesters that has resulted in hundreds being sho