The 99 is a new show consisting ofBernie 2020 staff, where we talk with you about the issues the mainstream media too often overlooks and share the latest news from Bernie’s campaign. This is episode 1:

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When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enters a boardroom at her constituency office in Queens, New York, after a short delay which, a political aide hopes, hasn’t been caused by a constituent waylaying her in the corridor. (“They can get really excited to meet her.”) Greta Thunberg is in her home in Sweden, her father testing the technology for the video link while the teenager waits in the background. The activists have never met nor spoken but, as two of the most visible climate campaigners in the world, they are keenly aware of each other.

Thunberg, now 16, catapulted to fame last year for skipping school every Friday to stand outside the Swedish parliament, protesting against political inaction over the climate crisis and sparking an international movement, the school strike for climate, in which millions of other children followed suit. Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district is, at 29, the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, whose election over a well-funded incumbent in 2018 was a huge upset to politics-as-usual. She has been in office for less than a year, which seems extraordinary given the amount of coverage she has generated. In February, Ocasio-Cortez submitted the Green New Deal to the US House of Representatives, calling for, among other things, the achievement of “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade and “a full transition off fossil fuels”, as well as retrofitting all buildings in the US to meet new energy efficient standards.

The Green New Deal, while garnering support from Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, was mocked by speaker Nancy Pelosi (“the green dream or whatever they call it”), and defeated in the Senate by Republicans. Like Thunberg, however, Ocasio-Cortez gives every appearance of being galvanised by opposition, and has the kind of energy that has won her 4.41 million Twitter followers and makes establishment politicians in her path very nervous.

In the course of their conversation, Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg discuss what it is like to be dismissed for their age, how depressed we should be about the future, and what tactics, as an activist, really work. Ocasio-Cortez speaks with her customary snap and brilliance that, held up against the general waffle of political discourse, seems startlingly direct. Thunberg, meanwhile, is phenomenally articulate, well-informed and self-assured, holding her own in conversation with an elected official nearly twice her age and speaking in deliberate, thoughtful English. They are, in some ways, as different as two campaigners can get – the politician working the system with Washington polish, and the teenager in her socks and leggings, working from her bedroom to reach the rest of the world. There is something very moving about the conversation between these young women, a sense of generational rise that, as we know from every precedent from the Renaissance onwards, has the power to ignite movements and change history.

Hope is contagious!
I met with the inspiring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, @AOC .
Here is our discussion!#FridaysForFuture #SchoolStrike4Climate #ClimateStrike #GreenNewDeal#ClimateBreakdownhttps://t.co/gosJqAuXHW

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) June 29, 2019

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Bernie Sanders says Trump “helped create the crisis” in Iran

Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized President Trump for his handling of the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, comparing Mr. Trump’s strategy to “setting fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out.”

Mr. Trump decided not to launch a retaliatory strike after Iran shot down an American drone this week, saying he believed the casualty count of such a strike would be disproportionate to the attack from Iran. The U.S. pulled out of the nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama last year, which led to rising tensions between the two countries.

“It’s like somebody setting fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out. He helped create the crisis, and then he stopped the attacks,” Sanders said in an interview with “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Saturday. The full interview will air on “Face the Nation” this Sunday.

Sanders accused Mr. Trump of thinking “that a war with Iran is something that might be good for this country.” When Brennan pointed out that the strike considered by Mr. Trump was “limited,” Sanders responded sarcastically.

“Oh, just a limited strike. Oh, well, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know that it’s okay to simply attack another country with bombs,” Sanders said, incredulously. “Just a limited strike? That’s an act of warfare.”

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Figured I would start with a FOX link 🙂

Bernie Sanders responds to Hickenlooper with mocking video from FDR

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., seemed to mock fellow 2020 candidate John Hickenlooper after the former Colorado governor rebuked Sanders’ endorsement of Democratic socialism.

On Thursday, Sanders posted a video of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt appearing to attack politicians who acted as though they could implement his “New Deal” programs better and without the large price tag.

“Let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says ‘Of course we believe these things. We believe in Social Security, we believe in work for the unemployed, we believe in saving homes, cross our hearts and hope to die — we believe in all these things but we don’t like the way the present administration is doing them,'” Roosevelt said, apparently mocking his critics.

“‘Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them. We will do more of them, we ill do them better, and most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'”

The video seemed to imply that candidates like Hickenlooper falsely claimed they could achieve similar results through policies much different than Sanders’.

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His remarks followed Sanders’ impassioned defense of his philosophy Wednesday, when he called on progressives to ignore “massive attacks from those who attempt to use the word ‘socialism’ as a slur.”

Sanders’ response seemed to signify growing tension between centrists and the more progressive wing of the party — something that popped up in criticisms of 2020 frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden.

My response to Gov. Hickenlooper: pic.twitter.com/2kauSn4csC

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 13, 2019

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Bernie Sanders makes the case for democratic socialism as Trump attacks and moderate Democrats worry

President Donald Trump has already attacked it. Moderate Democratic candidates warn against it, too. But in a speech Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders will lean in to his democratic socialist views, defend them, and argue that Democrats must embrace his political vision if they want to reconquer the White House next year.

“There is this belief that technocratic squishiness is the way to solve problems,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN in a thinly-veiled, now familiar criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden. “Sen. Sanders is prepared to make the argument that what we need is a fighter unafraid to take on the big problems of the day and offer up real solutions to solve them.”

Sanders’ unlikely rise to the upper echelons of American politics has come with stunning speed. He began the 2016 Democratic presidential primary as a relative unknown, a Senate backbencher generally viewed — even by himself — as an outsider inside the Washington beltway. But his profile quickly rose when pitted against eventual nominee Hillary Clinton, a pragmatism-preaching liberal who was ultimately defeated, in part, by Trump’s populist appeal.

Sanders entered the 2020 race offering much the same message as four years ago, but with loftier electoral expectations and a matured operation.

In an interview, Shakir conceded that the “socialism” label is one that Sanders’ opponents — both Democrats and Republicans — will continue to use in an attempt to tar his campaign, but insisted the Vermont senator has no plans to back off his fundamental argument.

“This is a fight we are excited to have,” Shakir said, denying the speech was a response to dipping poll numbers or an attempt to reboot the campaign. “We are not going to duck this charge. We plan to take it on front and center. This has always been something that (Sanders’) political opponents have used as a way to try and bring him down and despite those attacks, he has only gotten more popular.”

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In excerpts from the speech provided by the campaign, Sanders will cast his version of democratic socialism as the “the unfinished business of the New Deal.”
“We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights,” Sanders will say. “This is what I mean by democratic socialism.”

Sanders also plans to use the speech to attack Wall Street, calling out the big banks and their allies in Washington as hypocrites who readily indulge in self-enriching “corporate socialism” — as seen during the bank bailouts that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

“While President Trump and his fellow oligarchs attack us for our support of democratic socialism, they don’t really oppose all forms of socialism,” Sanders will say. “They may hate democratic socialism because it benefits working people, but they absolutely love corporate socialism that enriches Trump and other billionaires.”

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Bernie Sanders’ campaign brought the revolution to Dubuque, Iowa:

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