Category Archives: Activism

6/30 World Pride Day; Sanders Pushes Back on DJT Jr’s Racist Comments about Harris, and OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

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https://youtu.be/m55NhaTpb1Q

(Livestream by ABC7, NY)

Today is World Pride Day in NYC, the final day of Pride month.

From the NYT:

The month long WorldPride NYC, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, is coming to an end today with the biggest event, the Pride March.

The parade is the largest N.Y.C. Pride March, with an extended 2.5 mile route, double the number of marchers and dozens more floats than last year.

The Pride March starts at noon and runs down Fifth Avenue, beginning at 26th Street. It will make a turn at Eighth Street and then will head up Seventh Avenue past the Stonewall Inn, ending at 23rd Street.

NYC is also having a Reclaim Your Pride Day. It’s about going back to the grassroots of Pride, not capitalism of what it means to be LGBTQ +. Here’s a bit a history about Stonewall:

Hours before it was to become a flash point in the modern gay rights movement and a landmark visited with awe and reverence half a century later as if a shrine, it was just a dark, dingy bar called the Stonewall Inn, just another Friday night in June.

A mobster named Fat Tony with the Genovese crime family had bought the place two years earlier for a song — it had been a restaurant damaged in a fire — and reopened it as a gay bar. The mob owned most of the city’s gay bars, running them as private clubs because they could not obtain liquor licenses. The bars were cash machines.

Fat Tony slapped black paint on the walls and windows and posted a man at the front door. A concrete wishing well, inherited from the restaurant, remained inside the front door. The new owner often boasted that he recouped his modest investment in the first few hours of opening night in March 1967.

There were two bars and rooms for dancing to the jukebox. Bartenders made drinks with cheap liquor served out of bottles bearing brand-name labels. Dirty glasses were dunked in dirty sinks. The drinking age was 18, and broke kids who couldn’t afford a drink held empty beer cans all night to fool the waiter.

“It was a bar for the people who were too young, too poor or just too much to get in anywhere else,” one patron would recall later in “Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution,” by David Carter (St. Martin’s Press, 2004), one of several books, including two new arrivals, “The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History,” by Marc Stein (New York University Press, 2019), and “The Stonewall Reader,” edited by the New York Public Library (Penguin Books, 2019), that served as sources for this account.

No one inside on the night of June 27, 1969, knew that just outside the door, as Friday night rolled over into Saturday morning, trouble was arriving across the street in the triangular wedge of Christopher Park. A police team quietly waited for the go-ahead command to raid the Stonewall. The officer in charge was Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, a World War II veteran who had fought in foxholes in Europe before he was injured by a land mine.

Inspector Pine knew the Stonewall; he had raided it just four days earlier, arresting employees and seizing liquor that Tuesday night. But as he was leaving, someone said with disdain, “We’ll be open again tomorrow.”

The ostensible reason for the raid was a crackdown on unlicensed bars selling liquor illegally. But gay New Yorkers were feeling increasing pressure and harassment in Greenwich Village and beyond, and the violent eruption at the Stonewall was a result of this mounting tension. Within days of the Stonewall uprising, the police had raided five gay bars in the Village, Mr. Carter wrote, shutting three of them — the Checkerboard, the Tel-Star and the Sewer — down for good.

“How many times can one turn the other cheek?” a then 26-year-old musician in the Stonewall that night later asked.

snip

The music stopped, and the bright lights blinked on. “I thought, ‘Here we go again,’” recalled a 26-year-old patron, Philip Eagles, who was sipping a drink when the officers arrived.

But immediately, this raid felt different, foremost in its timing. Usually, officers arrived early in the evening, before the bars got busy. After midnight was a different story.

“Stonewall was filled that night with the usual clientele,” wrote Mark Segal, then 18 and newly arrived from Philadelphia. “Drag queens, hustlers, older men who liked younger guys, and stragglers like me — the boy next door who didn’t know what he was searching for and felt he had little to offer.”

The police corralled the employees in one area and shooed most of the clientele outside into the warm night. In past raids, those men and women hurried home, relieved they’d been spared arrest and the prospect of seeing their names in the papers.

But not on this night. The Stonewall’s patrons gathered across the street in the little park. Emboldened by the late hour and their sheer number, many customers were more belligerent than usual in a raid, “giving the cops lip,” Mr. Eagles recalled.

Inspector Pine recalled decades later, “We had a couple of the transvestites who gave us a lot of flak.” It was standard procedure in these raids that cross-dressing patrons be questioned about their clothing — they had to be wearing at least three articles considered to be gender appropriate — or, worse, subjected to anatomical inspections. But nonetheless, “There was no plan to take these people.”

The crowd outside grew as the bar continued to empty out, with loud cheers for the new arrivals. The mood started out as jovial before it shifted. “The crowd began taunting the police,” Mr. Segal wrote. “The cops started to get rough, pushing and shoving.”

A woman resisted the police and was handcuffed and, despite her struggles, manhandled into the back of a police car. She managed to get out, and the officers pushed her in again. This ratcheted up the response from the crowd, and people began throwing things — pocket change clanged off the car and struck officers.

Among those throwing change was Sylvia Rivera, whose rise as a transgender activist would take hold in the hours and days to come. “I just happened to be there when it all jumped off,” Ms. Rivera recalled later. “I said, ‘Well, great, now it’s my time.’”

A reporter for the Village Voice, Howard Smith, saw the commotion from a window nearby, and he grabbed a notebook and rushed over. By chance, he fell in beside Inspector Pine. A police wagon arrived to transport the people who had been arrested and the dozens of bottles of seized liquor.

“The crowd had grown to ten times its size,” Inspector Pine said later. “It was really frightening.”

Somebody threw a beer can at the wagon. Bottles followed. “Everyone’s restless, angry and high-spirited,” the author Edmund White, who happened upon the scene, recalled later. “No one has a slogan, no one has an attitude, but something’s brewing.”

Stonewall was the watershed event that galvanized the gay community to organize for their rights.

Four years ago, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of James Obergefell and others, requiring all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.[5] This established same-sex marriage throughout the United States and its territories. In a majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court examined the nature of fundamental rights guaranteed to all by the Constitution, the harm done to individuals by delaying the implementation of such rights while the democratic process plays out,[6] and the evolving understanding of discrimination and inequality. (borrowed from Wikipedia)

As noted yesterday, Bernie Sanders marched in several Pride parades in NH.

https://youtu.be/67_PwKxJwnc

Related to equality, Donald Trump Jr tweeted that Kamala Harris was not black enough, being of Indian-Jamaican heritage.

Donald Trump Jr. was bashed on Twitter Saturday for boosting a type of “birtherism” campaign against Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) that surged in the wake of her breakout performance in one of the recent debates among Democratic presidential candidtates.

A right-wing operative attacked Harris on Twitter after the debate, claiming she had no right to represent American blacks because her father grew up in Jamaica. Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

The attack went viral thanks in part to Donald Jr.’s retweet and an assist from Twitter accounts identified as bots. The onslaught echoed the “birther” campaign against Barack Obama that falsely claiming he was born in Africa and couldn’t legally be president. Donald Trump (with wife Melania ) was a leading voice among a group of conspiracy theorists that promulgated the Obama birther lie.

Dem candidates Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders were the first to push back against the Trump family.

More news, tweets, videos in the comments section. This also serves as an open thread.

6/22 Summer’s Here: What’s Different about the Sanders Campaign; Bernie at Clyburn’s Fish Fry & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie Sanders: What’s different this time around?

New twists

Political campaigns are like blockbuster films – massive undertakings with many moving parts, whose successes are difficult to replicate. It’s never easy for a sequel to live up to the original. While the cast of characters may be the same, things that were once fresh may, after time, seem recycled and tired.

And while the backbone of Sanders’ rhetoric is the same, there are some new twists and flourishes. There’s a heavier emphasis on criminal justice reform and swipes at the “prison-industrial complex.” More talk of his own personal story, including his childhood of living “paycheque to paycheque”. His wife, Jane Sanders, has joined the list of campaign surrogates, offering a more personal look at the candidate.

It’s all part of the Sanders campaign’s attempt to expand on the successes and avoid the mistakes of 2016.

There are a number of ways this iteration of the Bernie political crusade is clearly better positioned for victory. In 2016, it was frequently a slapdash, shoestring operation ill-prepared for the scope of the national contest.

“When we began the campaign back in May of 2015, there was no way to know how quickly the campaign was going to grow and how much grass-roots support there would be,” says Jeff Weaver, who ran the Sanders campaign in 2016 and is now a senior adviser to Sanders. “So the campaign really could not keep up.”

This time around, he says, Sanders has a much more sophisticated nationwide electoral infrastructure. The Vermont senator’s Our Revolution organisation – picking up where his 2016 effort left off and developed over three years – effectively served as a turnkey national campaign, just waiting for the green light.

Sanders boasts a volunteer list of over a million people, and can turn on the money faucet from his grass-roots donor network with seeming ease. In the first quarter of 2019 fundraising, he pulled in $18.2m – easily outpacing the rest of the Democratic field (which excluded Biden at that stage).

Bernie energizes the crowd at Rep Jim Clyburn’s Fish Fry last evening:

https://youtu.be/AhxeWphPu-A

More news, tweets, and videos in the comments section. See you there birdies!

6/9 BNR: Sanders Attracts Biggest Crowd at Capital City Pride Forum; Talks Dental Care in Marshalltown and Rallies in Waterloo; Still 2nd in latest DMR Poll, & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie marched into Des Moines at the Capital City Pride Forum around 1:45. He was greeted by the largest crowd at the event

Bernie discussed Medicare for All with Iowans in Marshalltown. Dental care was raised as a huge concern because Medicare doesn’t cover it, or current Dental plans limit surgeries, still have large out of pocket costs.

From the Times-Republican:

Helping Sanders talk about health care were four panelists from different parts of the state who joined him at Dejardin Hall at Marshalltown Community College.

The high cost of prescription medicines were a key complaint.

“What is to stop a pharmaceutical company from raising the cost of your medicine, two, three or four times what they cost now?,” Sanders asked the crowd. “They do it at will. The pharmaceutical industry recently made $69 billion in profits.”

Sanders said when he is in the White House he will work to cut prescription costs by 50 percent.

He cited Canada’s health care systems as a model the U.S. should exemplify.

“I took several women from Vermont suffering from breast cancer who required a certain medication,” he said. “We drove the 50 miles from St. Albans, Vermont, a working class town, into Canada. We were able to purchase their medications for one-tenth of the cost of what some are paying in the U.S.”

While many in the crowd held Bernie signs and cheered him on during his remarks, others in the audience have not made up their minds with the Feb. 3, 2020 caucus nearly eight months away.

“I have not decided on a candidate,” former Marshall County Supervisor Denny Grabenbauer of Marshalltown said. “I am here with my granddaughter Abby. We wanted to come and see what Sanders’ campaign is all about.”

However Theresa Walton of Marshalltown is a strong Sanders supporter.

“I am for Sanders,” she said quickly. “I was for him in 2016. I supported him on caucus night and volunteered for his campaign. My husband was a Sanders delegate.”

Walton said she likes Sanders positions on health care.

“My sister lives in Vermont, and we have known of his (health care) record for quite some time. He irritates a lot of people because he has some good ideas. But health care … they have done well with that in Vermont and health care is a major issue in this country.”

DMR published results of 2nd IA poll. Graphic is courtesy of DMR.

Bernie finished his day by firing up voters in Waterloo:

From the Waterloo Courier:

The 77-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont fired up a large crowd at the National Cattle Congress Pavilion, earning huge applause for his progressive platform including single-payer health insurance and free college tuition while attacking climate change and income inequality.

“We’re going to have to take them all on,” Sanders said. “We’re talking about Wall Street; we’re talking about the fossil fuel industry and the insurance companies and the drug companies and the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex and the corporate media — all the the power that is out there trying to preserve the status quo.”

Bernie will be appearing on State of the Union this morning with Jake Tapper. He will be marching with McDonald’s employees on the Fight for $15 to the IA Dem Convention in Cedar Rapids.

More news, tweets, videos, and articles in the comments section. See you there!

6/7 Sanders at Political Party Live Tonight; TGIF Afternoon/Evening Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

C-SPAN says it is broadcasting the event at 7:00 PM CT. JD Scholten will also be at the event before Bernie. Prefer to watch it early in the AM? It will be rebroadcasted at 4:56 CT tomorrow!

More news, tweets, videos in the comments section. What’s on your mind?

UPDATE: Link to C-SPAN

Bernie will not be on until 8:00 PM (or possibly after 8):

6/2 News Roundup & Bernie at Arab American Caucus #CADem2019

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Happy Sunday everyone!!

Please feel free to use this as an open thread, I just thought this might be a good place to post this video of Bernie’s arrival at the Arab American Caucus meeting at the California Democratic convention.

 

Fair warning-I will be posting some other tweets from the CA convention down below.

But please post whatever you like on this fine Sunday!

Cheers!

 

5/20 Sanders Event at Mt Zion AME in Montgomery (livestream) & Afternoon OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie Sanders is holding a townhall at the Mt. Zion AME Church in Montgomery at 12:45 pm. After visiting Lowndes County, one of the poorest counties in America, Bernie Sanders is holding a town hall in Montgomery to discuss how we can come together in the fight for economic, racial, environmental and social justice.

We’ll be blogging here. See you in the comments!

Update: Bernie’s team is late with the stream. Go here: https://www.cbs42.com/watch/live

5/19-20 BNR – In Deep South, Sanders Campaign Crosses 100,000 in attendance in TH’s and Rallies Since Launching Campaign; Bernie’s MTP Appearance, Next Stops in AL, & More

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie in Augusta, Courtesy of Channel 12, Augusta

Bernie Sanders continued his southern state swing yesterday in Orangeburg and Denmark, SC. As reported at TPW yesterday, Sanders held a town hall in Orangeburg, SC to discuss issues surrounding education justice. Educators testified about dwindling resources for schools, as well as issues of bureaucracy and lack of reliable broadband that is affordable for low income households. From WIS news:

“Every child has a right to a quality K-12 education, regardless of your race, regardless of your income, and regardless of your zip code. For too long, we have seen devastating education funding cuts used to pay for massive tax breaks for a handful of corporations and billionaires,” Bernie Sanders said. “When we are in the White House, that greed is going to end. We will make a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools to guarantee a quality education as a human right for all children.”

He says with district-by-district disparities in education funding, he wants to add new investments in programs that serve high-poverty communities, support special needs students, and integrate school districts.

“By reducing racial and economic segregation, in our public schools, make sure we attract the best and brightest young people to become teachers reestablishes a positive learning environment for our children in our K-12 schools.” Sanders said.

Sanders says he wants to make sure taxpayers are not funding charter school, and banning those for-profit.

The plan also touched on teacher pay, proposing that the starting salary for educators is no less than $60,000.

Sanya Ahmed Mohiuddin, a teacher who attended his campaign rally said, “This is so incredible it’s so important for us to do. I’m a special education teacher myself, first year teaching and I’ve seen so many problems and issues within the school that needs to be fixed.”

“We need a president with morals and values, a president that will bring us together and not separate us.” Adeline Yon, an Orangeburg resident said.

As Sanders runs for president a second time, Jalal Hakmei, who attended rally said, “I think the first one showed that there was a lot of energy for his ideas and I’m hoping the second run will cement that.”

At the townhall, Bernie laid out am inclusive “Thurgood Marshall” Education Justice Plan (named after Thurgood Marshall who was the lead attorney in Brown vs Board of Education):

  • Build on the Strength in Diversity Act to increase, not cut, federal funding for community-driven strategies to desegregate schools.
  • Triple Title I funding to ensure at-risk schools get the funding they need and end funding penalties for schools that attempt to desegregate.
  • Execute desegregation orders and appoint federal judges who will enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act in school systems.
  • Address disciplinary practices in schools that disproportionately affect Black children.
  • Establish a dedicated fund to create and expand teacher-training programs at HBCUs, minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and tribal colleges and universities to increase educator diversity.
  • Fully fund the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and remove current protocols that allow for arbitrary dismissal of complaints.
  • Fund school transportation to help integration, ending the absurd prohibitions in place.
  • Increase access to English as a Second Language instruction.
  • End the Unaccountable Profit-Motive of Charter Schools
  • Rethink the link between property taxes and education funding.
  • Establish a national per-pupil spending floor.
  • Eliminate barriers to college-readiness exams by ensuring states cover fees for the ACT, SAT and other college preparatory exams for all students.
  • Triple Title I funding to ensure at-risk schools get the funding they need and end funding penalties for schools that attempt to desegregate.
  • Provide schools with the resources needed to shrink class sizes.
  • Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education to give our students the skills they need to thrive once they graduate.
  • Ensure schools in rural communities, indigenous communities, Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories receive equitable funding.
  • Give schools the funding needed to support arts, foreign language and music education to provide all students with important learning opportunities.
  • Strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
  • Significantly increase teacher pay by working with states to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, and other qualifications; and allowing states to go beyond that floor based on geographic cost of living.
  • End racial and gender disparities in teacher pay.
  • Ensure professional development for all teachers, including continuing education and mentorship programs.
  • Protect and expand collective bargaining rights and teacher tenure.
  • Provide year-round, free universal school meals; breakfast, lunch and snacks through our school meals programs, and offer incentives for sourcing food from local sources.
  • Expand Summer EBT across the country to ensure no student goes hungry during the summer.
  • Fully close the gap in school infrastructure funding to renovate, modernize, and green the nation’s schools.
  • Make Schools a Safe and Inclusive Place for All

One person on twitter cheered one of the ideas of the plan:

In my view, this falls along the lines of what Rep Jim Clyburn proposed, the 10|20|30 Formula to Fight Persistent Poverty.

Sanders also went to Denmark, SC, and held a townhall to hear concerns about tainted water. Residents said they had not felt comfortable in drinking the water in 10 years. Josh Fox, an environmental activist and film maker, was on the panel. A video clip about the water issue, which is not just a SC issue, Flint, MI. has been battling contaminated water for nearly 6 years.

The campaign journeyed on to Augusta, GA and Sanders was sharp in his criticism of new abortion laws in GA and AL. That wasn’t all:

“This time the democrats will have an opportunity to interview several candidates and have a robust debate about the needs of the people and I am quite confident that Senator Bernie Sanders stands light years ahead of any other candidate in this race,” said Nina Turner, national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign.

The sweltering temperatures [94 deg] didn’t stop a crowd of more than 1,000 [1576] people. Senator Sanders’ discussed hot topics from his platform like immigration, education and President Donald Trump.

“We are sick and tired of a president who demonizes undocumented people,” said Sanders.

Sanders said on prison reform,“How about instead of investing in jails and incarceration, we invest in jobs for our young people and education?”

One attendee said that Sanders had done his homework this time:

He’s done his homework this time,” said Kenneth Sullivan, a 25-year-old African-American voter. The Augusta resident said he noticed black faces everywhere behind the scenes, although there still weren’t many in the crowd of nearly 1,600 people who attended Sanders’ speech at the Jessye Norman Amphitheatre on the shore of the Savannah River.

With those events yesterday, volunteer Tom Davis posted at Reddit that Sanders campaign had at least 100,000 attendees at campaign events this year so far. In comparison to 2016, Sanders had only spoken to 1% of the 1.6 million that attended his events.

While in Atlanta, Sanders made an appearance on Meet the Press. He was questioned about health care, abortion, foreign policy, and the horse race.

https://youtu.be/N0MmfO62dig

Of course, Todd couldn’t resist the red-baiting.

Afterward being on MTP, Sanders stopped by the Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta this morning. He’s not the first pol to have made a speech there.

Sanders will be traveling to Birmingham today for a rally at 4 pm. Here’s the link:

March for Reproductive Freedom, Birmingham, although there are sister marches all over the state.

NOTE: This day was created yesterday, but we will continue to post new events here. Please add your tweets, videos, and news in the comments section1

Signs, Signs, Every Where a Sign

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Yesterday I had the bad misfortune of going over to TOP to watch the purity trolls. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment.

As reported at the Wing, Bernie Sanders eeked out a win on the Straw Poll. Not that the Straw Poll means a lot, but it does give some idea of where the energy is as far as the Democratic bloggers are in organizing for their candidates in the 2020 cycle. Unfortunately, Beat the Press thinks TOP is a progressive blog, but they don’t know because they live in the Beltway and Markos in tight with the DCCC consultants because well, they are one of many consultants for the Dem Party in general.

Markos, in the space of 3 days, penned four diaries to say about the recent poll at TOP and other polls. As you may recall, Kos has his own polling services, called Civiqs. I don’t know which candidates are using his service, but based on these headlines, I’m guessing it’s not Bernie Sanders.

Bernie wins Daily Kos Straw Poll by razor-thin margin, Warren nips at his heels

It was our highest-vote total poll yet, with 59,999 votes tallied. After trailing Elizabeth Warren most of the day, a late surge from supporters pushed Bernie over the top, barely. But those trendlines don’t bode well for him.

Let’s see what Kos means.

Oh, so Warren did a lot better and Bernie’s lot shrunk. But the problem is that Kos completely discounted this date when recalling the time-series:

That was when the most votes casted. But of course, Kos was too embarrassed to admit to Chuck Todd on MSNBC that Bernie still has a lot of support.

Each time Bernie wins now, it’s because Berners “freeped” the poll. The good denizens at TOP are just as dismissive as the blog owner because they haven’t quite figured out that purge in 2016 made a lot of folks (hence TPW, C99, r/Kossacks for Sanders, r/WoTB, etc) go and form their own communities. And they aren’t too welcoming in having the progressives disrupt their group think.

All of that was pretty small potatoes for “an analysis”. Within the next 24 hours, 3 more diaries were penned by GOS, using a poison font keyboard. I’m only going to mention 2 of the most odious ones.
If Bernie loses support among youth, what’s left?

Kos digs in and uses polling data from the Morning Consult, comparing March to April polling.

However, what happens if he can’t hold that core? This isn’t 2016, with a binary choice between Bernie and a demonized establishment Democrat. This is a rich field, with credible candidates representing just about every key party constituency. There are candidates just as liberal as Bernie, yet not as polarizing. So would Bernie’s core supporters stick with him as they became better aware of this amazing field? Apparently not, according to the latest Morning Consult primary poll.

“Sanders on the decline with 18-29 year-olds,” reads the polling memo. ”Throughout March, Bernie Sanders had 45% of the first choice vote share among America’s youngest voters. That support has steadily declined and currently sits at 33%.”

Overall, the poll pegs the race at Joe Biden 39, Sanders 19, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris at 8, Pete Buttigieg at 6, and Beto O’Rourke at 5.

snip

He can’t grow, and if he can’t hold his most important supporters? His path to the nomination, already near-zero, becomes effectively zero.

What’s funny is that Sanders isn’t even losing his supporters to some of the new, dynamic, exciting Democrats. Rather, they’re mostly going to Joe Biden. That feels a little sad. (My conjecture? Biden is a low-information-voter proxy for Barack Obama, and who doesn’t miss Obama?)

Now the question begs, what’s left if the millennials finally wake up and realize Bernie (as well as Biden) is an old man? They’ll leave him, of course.

Will Biden hold that youth vote? I’m on that limb that says “no way,” but who knows. What is clear at this point is that if Sanders can’t even stop a significant portion of his youth support from defecting to Biden, what happens when more of them become aware of other alternatives?

Kos doubles down to a new low in his next diary, which is within a couple of hours of the above one, but hey, he’s on a roll to smear Bernie and give you some alternatives better than Bernie and why.

Harris and Warren dis Fox News, because they’re the smart ones

Why of course! Bernie went on a Fox News TH a month ago and he owned it.

Kos deems it a “an asshole move”.

Moreover, Mayor Pete, Castro (not named) and Klobuchar are desperate to garner eyeballs and would also go to a Klan rally.

The Sanders appearance has its own internal logic: He likes to thumb his nose at Democrats, including those fighting the war against Fox News. And he delighted his supporters by doing battle with Fox News hosts. It wasn’t helpful to the broader movement, and reinforced the fact that he’ll never be a team player, but it definitely gave him a nice promotional boost at the time. Ratings were legit great. I’ll call it a smart move. An asshole move, for sure! But smart.

But the rest of these Democrats? Going on Fox is a desperate cry for attention, from a crew so desperate for relevance that they would apparently attend a Klan rally if it gave them a shred of a spotlight.

If GOS wasn’t bad enough with his offensive missives, the Berners got slammed when defending their candidate. Some of the comments were vile. Here’s an ice cream scoop for you, mixed with manure:

Kossack Centrist: Well, are white men threatened under Trump? Nope. He’s creating a white patriarchal utopia.

White men can see going on Fox as a political move, instead of the legitimatization of the state sanctioned terrorism against marginalized people that it is.

Any candidate, that wants to appeal to Fox News viewers, doesn’t care enough about my safety for me to consider voting for them.


Berner: Jews have been persecuted for centuries. Sanders was brave to face the enemy instead of cowering.


Kossack Centrist: Yeah, Bernie sure is under direct physical threat due to his appearance on Fox (sarcasm).

Give me a fucking break.

Rolling my eyes forever, over the new forced narrative, that somehow, an old white man from Vermont, experiences the same threats to his personhood as women, black men, black women, Muslims, Latinx, the LGBTQA community, and practicing Jews (an no, Sanders isn’t one of those).

Right now in this country, women are losing their right to bodily autonomy. Black men are murdered at will by agents of the state. Latino children are living in cages. Trans Americans are being erased from society. People are being shot in their houses of worship.

Don’t you dare try and claim, that the old white man from the whitest white state in the nation is somehow in the same amount of danger as those marginalized groups.

The martyrdom syndrome and cosplaying victimhood of Sanders supporters is sickening.

My comment:

Markos is already getting critical comments on twitter about this diary, and perhaps that is what he wants. If I were Harris and Warren, I would be disgusted by the commentary. They made their points implicitly that they differ from Bernie Sanders and others on FC appearances. But they didn’t pay someone to batter the candidates and throw insults at their supporters.

A lot of hypocrisy. Calling Bernie Sanders’ FC appearance an asshole move is not too different from the comments one makes on The Blaze. Red meat to stir up the place.

Holocaust deniers maybe? Purity indeed. That what was said about Bernie Sanders. But nope, they are purifying for a slightly center left political lot. Which is bad. Most of the American people are not where Biden or even Harris is today. They support MfA, GND, 15% cap on credit card interest, and that excessive capitalism isn’t working too well for them.

The hypocrisy is amazing. It’s a blog for Identitarians, yet, it’s OK to use borderline anti-semitic comments to smear Bernie Sanders, a Jewish candidate whose paternal family was killed by the Nazis in WWII, and grew up in a neighborhood in which people wore identification numbers on their arms.

ow

Hence, the Something Cheery Diary posted last night. I was glad to be home.

Today the Jedi came back to defend Bernie Obi Wan with this diary among others:

What are some ways Daily Kos can gin up infighting among Democrats?

1: Publish caustic conjecture on the front page about one of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination
Once they’re at the convention with his 30 percent, they presumably figure they can threaten and bully the party to nominate him. This way, he doesn’t have to work to expand support beyond his core group of supporters.

#2: Instead of following Elizabeth Warren’s model and simply presenting a reasonable case for not participating in Fox News townhalls, publish a front page article casting Democratic candidates who have a difference of opinion on this subject as being either an “asshole” or…
so desperate for relevance that they would apparently attend a Klan rally if it gave them a shred of a spotlight

#3: In that same front page article, state — without any sense of the irony of your statement — that a leading contender for the Democratic nomination (the one pictured above pitching in to save the ACA) “will never be a team player.”

No doubt there are additional examples of how Daily Kos can gin up infighting among Democrats, but I’ll stop at those two articles, which were published on the same day (May 15, 2019) on the front page, by the same author.

Of course, it goes without saying that this author has every right to publish whatever he wants here, since he’s the founder of the blog. He is of course not subject to warnings or “time outs” or whatever slaps on the wrist might apply to regular users.

I hope you will go recommend that diary.

Kos is looking into the mirror of desperation in my view. Why does he continue a circular firing squad on Democrats, yet his moderators have told Berners to quit criticizing other Dems and just support our candidate? Like the tv corporate media, DK Alexa ranking has sunk like a stone.

What I don’t know is if Elizabeth Warren’s and Kamala Harris’ campaign are feeling the bern (and Biden) because these circular attacks seemed planned, especially if Bernie had lost the straw poll and Kos didn’t get his contributing spot on MTP as a result. I hope it’s not a conspiracy.

I’m reminded of a song from the early 70’s by the 5 Man Electrical Band in which a hippy constantly has to deal with the Establishment (the Man). TOP continues to hippy punch Bernie Sanders because his democratic socialist practices are “not team” player methods. Bernie wants to create mass politics, something Kos was successful when George Bush put us into a war through lies. But now, Daily Kos, is well, withering away, just like Hillary Clinton. And Bernie threatens his neoliberal politics. If Bernie wins it all, Kos’s blog likely won’t survive.

5/14 Sanders: “We Must Not Go to War with Iran”; Afternoon/Evening OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

or

It takes about a min or so before Bernie appears. You may wish to move the bar a little so that you don’t have to wait.

Bernie Sanders was one of the original co-sponsors of Tom Udall’s S1309 bill, Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act of 2019. I don’t know why Elizabeth Warren waited until today to sign on, but we should get this bill out of the committee. It’s stuck there.

More tweets, news, and videos in the comments. Consider this an open thread.

5/10 AOC Youngest Female Member to Preside Over the House; Biden’s “Middle Ground”Climate Change Plans; TGIF Afternoon/Evening Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Someday, if she’s not president or VP first!

More Chitter chatter, news, videos and tweets in the comments. TGIF Happy Hour!

5/9 AOC on the #46 Dem Primaries: Bold with Big Ideas That Will Make People’s Lives Better & Evening OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Boom!

Only 2 seem to fit that vision….from CNN.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most popular figures on the Democratic left, are using the new bill to address an issue that many closely identify with another presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Ocasio-Cortez has not endorsed any primary candidate and has indicated she could wait until New York votes next year before making a decision.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, she named Sanders and Warren as two potential picks.

“I would like to see in a presidential candidate is one that has a coherent worldview and logic from which all these policy proposals are coming forward,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN. “I think Sen. Sanders has that. I also think Sen. Warren has that. I also want to see us centering working people in the United States to stem income inequality (and) tackle climate change.”
Asked if she would consider former Vice President Joe Biden, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I’m not sure,” adding with a laugh, “Now it’s getting a little nuts.”

More videos, tweets, (including the video of Bernie and AOC’s Loan Shark Prevention Act) and news in the comments! Consider this an open thread.

5/8 Sanders: “Unions Are My Family”- Campaign Staff Ratify Union Contract and Evening News/OT

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‘Historical Step’: Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Campaign Staffers Ratify Union Contract

The contract, says UFCW Local 400, does a number of things.

It provides:

  • field workers with paid healthcare premiums;
  • interns a $20/hour rate and medical benefits;
  • overtime pay for hourly employees;
  • coverage for mental healthcare services;
  • a pay cap on management pay;
  • pay transparency;
  • a pay equity review process; and
  • and anti-discrimination provisions.

Such protections are especially important given the nature of campaign work, said Local 400 president Mark P. Federici.

“Political campaigns are cause-driven and because there is always more work that can be done, staffers are typically worked to the bone,” said Federici, who suggested other presidential campaigns take a cue from the Sanders team.

“First, Senator Sanders walked the talk on unions, agreeing to a truly democratic process—neutrality and card check—that every responsible employer should embrace. And then, the campaign engaged in good faith bargaining, recognizing that it’s in their own interest to have well-treated employees empowered to operate at the top of their games,” he added. “I urge every other campaign to follow their lead.”

Krista Harness, a staffer who served on the bargaining committee that led negotiations on behalf of the union, said, “I am so proud to be taking this historical step of becoming the first-ever presidential campaign with a unionized workforce.”

More chitter chatter, tweets, news, and videos in the comments section. Consider this an open thread.

Medicare for All Hearing in the House Updated with Live Stream

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

First hearing for Rep Jayapal’s bill HR 1384, hosting by the House Rules committee. It’s been shown on C-SPAN.org

It’s coming to Rules first because of the sweeping changes to regulations on healthcare.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?460207-1/medicare-all-house-hearing&live It’s also on C-SPAN 1.

Update: Ady Barkan’s testimony