Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

PS: Do me a favor and at least click candidate diaries even if you are not going to read them! It helps in regards to search rankings if anyone happens to be googling a particular candidate, etc.

Also a big thanks to those who liveblogged the CNN ‘debate’. I was well past asleep by that point and will have to catch up later… but I’ll have plenty of articles telling us all about it before I get the chance.

CNN of course does not have the debate up on its youtube page that I can find so heres a couple bootlegs. If I missed that theres a real copy floating around somewhere… please point me in its direction!

CNN TOWN HALL DEBATE – LINDSEY GRAHAM, BILL CASSIDY VS BERNIE SANDERS, AMY KLOBUCHAR

or

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Calls for More Relief Intensify as Puerto Rico Descends Into Humanitarian Crisis

As U.S. President Donald Trump spent his weekend demeaning professional football players for peacefully protesting racial injustice, Puerto Rico continued its descent into a full-blown humanitarian crisis following a direct hit from Hurricane Maria, which last week made landfall as a Category 4 storm, devastating the island and U.S. commonwealth.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital city, described current conditions in an interview with The Washington Post: “There is horror in the streets. There is no electricity anywhere in Puerto Rico.”

“People tell us often, ‘I don’t have my medication, I don’t have my insulin, I don’t have my blood pressure medication, I don’t have food, I don’t have drinking water,'” she continued. “The aid is pouring in, but what people need to realize is…we’re an island—everything we need comes from outside.”

At least 10 Puerto Ricans have died so far because of the storm, but with dwindling resources, that number is expected to rise.

“A damaged dam is in danger of bursting. Most buildings are damaged or destroyed. Millions are without power, and the communication network is crippled,” CNN reported on Monday, after speaking with the island’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló, who warned that “we need to prevent a humanitarian crisis occurring in America.”

Though Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is sending airplanes and ships to deliver food, water, and generators to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands affected by the recent hurricanes, Rosselló said that’s not enough.

“We need something tangible, a bill that actually answers to our need right now,” he said, calling for congressional action. “Otherwise, there will be a humanitarian crisis…. There will be a massive exodus to the United States.”

Tony Blair Says Bernie Doesn’t Have the Answers (Public Opinion Says Otherwise)

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview on The Global Politico Podcast published Monday that people should not approach U.S. President Donald Trump with “flat-out opposition” and seemed to argue that Americans should be less concerned about Trump and more concerned about the platform of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—remarks that earned him immediate derision from commentators on social media.

Critics took particular umbrage at Blair’s attempt to claim that the solutions proposed by “populist right” and the “populist left” are similarly misguided, a stance some mocked as an attempt to equate those fighting for Medicare for All with neo-Nazis.

Throughout the Politico interview, Blair, a “Third Way” centrist figure who enthusiastically supported the Iraq War, characterized the demands of the left in the U.S. and the U.K.—like free public college tuition—as little more than pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

“[Y]ou can go for what are very good-sounding things like, we’re going to abolish tuition fees, or we’re going to give you this for free, or that for free,” Blair said. “Okay, so that’s one way you can go, and it definitely, in today’s world, and in particular, in the absence of a vigorous change-making center, that’s very attractive. But I don’t think it’s the answer, and I’m not sure it would win an election.”

Sanders: America must guarantee healthcare ‘as a right for all people’

In his opening remarks during tonight’s CNN healthcare debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare by highlighting major opposition to the bill.

“Every major health association in this country, whether it is the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Cancer Society, the Alzheimer’s Society, every single major medical organization in this county think this proposal is a disaster,” Sanders said.

Sanders then said “it’s our job now is to defeat this disastrous proposal” and called for a bipartisan fix to the Affordable Care Act in the short-term

“Long term, in my view, I speak only for myself, this country has to join the rest of the civilized world and guarantee healthcare as a right for all people,” he said.

Chelsea Manning says she has been barred from entering Canada

Chelsea Manning, the former US soldier who served seven years in military prison after instigating one of the biggest breaches of classified data in US history, has said she has been barred from entering Canada.

On Monday, Manning posted on Twitter a report from the Canadian government that identified her as a foreign national “who has not been authorized to enter Canada” due to prior convictions.

“So, I guess Canada has permanently banned me?” wrote Manning – one of the most prominent whistleblowers of modern times.

The letter, addressed to the country’s minister of immigration, said Manning had attempted to enter Canada at the official border crossing near Champlain, New York, late last week.

Manning had told Canadian border officials that she had been convicted in 2013 of charges associated with the United States Espionage Act and had been released from prison in May.

The letter added that if the same offence had been carried out in Canada, it “would equate to an indictable offence, namely treason”, and could result in up to 14 years in prison. For this reason, Manning was deemed inadmissible to Canada.

National park ban saved 2m plastic bottles – and still Trump reversed it

A ban on bottled water in 23 national parks prevented up to 2m plastic bottles from being used and discarded every year, a US national park service study found. That is equivalent to up to 326 barrels of oil worth of emissions, 419 cubic yards of landfill space and 111,743lb of plastic, according to the May study.

Despite that, the Trump administration reversed the bottled water ban just three months later, a decision that horrified conservationists and pleased the bottled water industry.

“The bottled water industry has led a years-long campaign against this commonsense policy, all to protect its bottom line,” said Lauren DeRusha Florez, an associate campaign director at Corporate Accountability International.

“The fact that Trump administration officials knew the benefits of this policy back in May but still decided to rescind it last month sure looks to me like the bottled water industry’s lobbying dollars at work,” she said.

The plan to curb pollution in America’s most famous wilderness areas was spurred when arguably its most famous park, the Grand Canyon, banned the sale of plastic water bottles in its gift shops, according to the report. Approximately 331 million people visit US national parks each year.