Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 866

February 12, 2016

Donald Trump’s white America is revolting: New numbers show just how noxious the GOP front-runner’s coalition is

Donald Trump wants more things for “us” and fewer things for “them.” The question then becomes, who gets to define and enforce those boundaries of political community. The Republicans in the New Hampshire primary responded to Trump’s message with overwhelmingly support—he won with 35 percent of the vote. As reported by CNN, exit polling data in New Hampshire shows the reach of Donald Trump’s appeal to Republican voters:

Exit poll results from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night showed deep discontent with the Republican Party and the federal government, and the candidate who railed hardest on those topics, Donald Trump, won with multiple groups of voters. Trump won New Hampshire's primary by carrying a range of demographic and ideological groups with more than 30% of the vote. He topped the rest of the field among both men and women, voters under age 64, voters without a college degree, and those who have a college degree but no postgraduate study. He won among conservatives and moderates, first-time voters and those who've voted before and registered Republicans and those who are undeclared. Trump won 6-in-10 voters who said they were looking for an outside candidate.

ABC highlighted the following important fact about Donald Trump’s base of support in New Hampshire:

Two-thirds said they support Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. He won 42 percent of their votes. Four in 10 supported deporting undocumented immigrants; Trump won 46 percent in this group.

Exit polling data in New Hampshire complements the recent findings by the Rand Corp.’s Presidential Election Panel Survey (PEPS). Political scientist Michael Tesler (one of the researchers who conducted the survey) described its findings:

The PEPS follows prior research and measures resentment toward African Americans and immigrants with statements like “blacks could be just as well off as whites if they only tried harder” and “it bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English.” It also contains a measure of ethnocentrism developed by Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam, which compares how favorably respondents rated whites to how favorably they rated minority groups. ... Most striking is how each of these measures strongly correlates with support for Trump. The graph below shows that Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups. Moreover, statistical models show that each of these three attitudes about minorities contributes independently to Trump’s vote share. So much so, in fact, that GOP primary voters who score in the top 25 percent of their party on all three measures are 44 points more likely to support Donald Trump than those who score in the bottom 25 percent... ... These findings also support the idea that Trump’s appeal mirrors Nixonian populism’s blend of racial conservatism with tacit support for the welfare state — a blend often seen in Europe’s right-wing populist parties as well as the presidential bid of George Wallace.

Donald Trump’s popularity is vexing to Republican elites (and the mainstream corporate news media) because he combines the nativism, racism, pro-big business attitude, wants more tax cuts for the wealthy, militaristic nationalism, and out-group animosity that typifies mainstream conservatism, with promises to expand healthcare, enact trade protectionism, fix the nation’s infrastructure, and improve the lives of the (white) working class. Donald Trump’s particular version of right-wing populism is a direct threat to present day Republican orthodoxy. However, “Trumpania” is not a new phenomenon. Donald Trump’s political vision is simply a 21st century version of what sociologists, historians, and others have described as right-wing producerism. Producerism is a belief that society is divided between “makers” and “takers.” Right-wing producerism tries to mobilize “real citizens” against “evil” parasites on the “bottom” of society such as the poor, people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians, “the lazy” and any other subordinate group that can be identified as the Other. Producerism also targets the enemies above, i.e., corporations, Wall Street, international bankers and finance, political “insiders,” government “bureaucrats” or “elites” who are imagined as working against the interests of “the people.” As explained by Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons in their book “Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort,” “producerism, with its baggage of prejudice, remains today the most common populist narrative on the right, and it facilitates the use of demonization and scapegoating as political tools.” In addition to right-wing producerism, Donald Trump is also channeling Herrenvolk ideology with his explicit promises to protect the white working and middle class from “those people” (be they supposedly rapine and violent immigrants; scheming Chinese; or nebulous brown Muslim terrorists in ISIS and al-Qaida) while also ensuring that there is a social welfare state, economic mobility and expanded healthcare for “real Americans.” In a Herrenvolk society, the racial in-group is fully enfranchised while the racial out-group is marked as an “anti-citizen” that is not worthy of full democratic rights. Moreover, the racial Other’s subordinate status is used as a marker for elevating the status and power for the dominant racial group. Centuries of chattel slavery and then Jim and Jane Crow were means through which white Americans defined the meaning, worth and boundaries of citizenship. Historically and to the very recent present, American democracy and the exclusive white male franchise were not contradictions in a society organized around the Herrenvolk principle. Citizenship and belonging are demarcated along racial lines in a Herrenvolk society; benefits, resources, rights and support from the state are allocated by the boundaries that separate “us” from “them." In many ways, Donald Trump’s right-wing populism is a return to an understanding of the modern American welfare state that dominated from the end of the Civil War through to the Great Society. And while the American welfare state has certainly “evolved” in an era of neoliberalism, extreme wealth and income inequality, surveillance, punishment and austerity, there are a litany of programs that disproportionately benefit the white working, middle, upper classes, and rich as compared to non-whites. This, what is now termed the “submerged state," is a de facto type of welfare for (white) America. As public policy, the submerged state is heavily protected as an “entitlement” while simultaneously being decoupled from the history of white privilege and white supremacy that birthed, and in some ways, continues to sustain it. White voters are attracted to Donald Trump because they are afraid that the benefits of the submerged state will be taken away from them. As his increasing popularity demonstrates, Trump’s supporters are largely composed of frustrated and alienated working-class white Americans who are embracing authoritarian values. Writing at the Democracy Journal, Jordan Michael Smith made the following incisive observation about this dangerous trend:

A white lower-educated supporter on the lower-income scale is not what we normally term middle-class: It’s more aptly called the working-class. Which is why William Galston of the Brookings Institution analyzed the data and wrote that “Trump is the staunchest champion of the white working class that American politics has seen in decades.” Combine their class with their self-declared conservatism and you have the people Lipset described. According to Lipset, “authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of middle and upper classes.” These were the people who formed the base of the Nazi labor unions (Lipset was writing in 1959), the White Citizen’s Councils in the segregated American south, and race rioters in England. Lipset continued, “working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population. In a number of nations, they have clearly been in the forefront of the struggle against equal rights for minority groups, and have sought to limit immigration or to impose racial standards in countries with open immigration.” This, of course, describes a Donald Trump rally almost perfectly… Now, not all of Trump’s supporters are working-class whites, and not all working-class whites are Trump supporters (mercifully). But rather than seeing most Trumpists as Middle American Radicals or even a uniquely American phenomenon, it is more accurate to see them as the latest in a long line of working-class authoritarians—people with a very scary, very dishonorable past.

Donald Trump’s right-wing producerism hustle has many ugly antecedents … and some of them are from the worst and most dark parts of American history. “Trumpmania” is a combination of the Know-Nothings, the Republican Southern Strategy and a type of right-wing populism that views people of color and non-white immigrants as toxins in the body politic. Donald Trump promises to “Make America Great Again.” Trump cannot do this without excluding millions of Americans who are not white and Christian. In practice, Donald Trump’s right-wing populism will shrink the boundaries of political community. This will make for a less vibrant, rich and productive American society. While Trump promises health, strength and vitality for his voters, the reality is that working-class authoritarianism and right-wing populism are poisons to a modern cosmopolitan society. Donald Trump wants more things for “us” and fewer things for “them.” The question then becomes, who gets to define and enforce those boundaries of political community. The Republicans in the New Hampshire primary responded to Trump’s message with overwhelmingly support—he won with 35 percent of the vote. As reported by CNN, exit polling data in New Hampshire shows the reach of Donald Trump’s appeal to Republican voters:

Exit poll results from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night showed deep discontent with the Republican Party and the federal government, and the candidate who railed hardest on those topics, Donald Trump, won with multiple groups of voters. Trump won New Hampshire's primary by carrying a range of demographic and ideological groups with more than 30% of the vote. He topped the rest of the field among both men and women, voters under age 64, voters without a college degree, and those who have a college degree but no postgraduate study. He won among conservatives and moderates, first-time voters and those who've voted before and registered Republicans and those who are undeclared. Trump won 6-in-10 voters who said they were looking for an outside candidate.

ABC highlighted the following important fact about Donald Trump’s base of support in New Hampshire:

Two-thirds said they support Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. He won 42 percent of their votes. Four in 10 supported deporting undocumented immigrants; Trump won 46 percent in this group.

The PEPS follows prior research and measures resentment toward African Americans and immigrants with statements like “blacks could be just as well off as whites if they only tried harder” and “it bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English.” It also contains a measure of ethnocentrism developed by Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam, which compares how favorably respondents rated whites to how favorably they rated minority groups. ... Most striking is how each of these measures strongly correlates with support for Trump. The graph below shows that Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups. Moreover, statistical models show that each of these three attitudes about minorities contributes independently to Trump’s vote share. So much so, in fact, that GOP primary voters who score in the top 25 percent of their party on all three measures are 44 points more likely to support Donald Trump than those who score in the bottom 25 percent... ... These findings also support the idea that Trump’s appeal mirrors Nixonian populism’s blend of racial conservatism with tacit support for the welfare state — a blend often seen in Europe’s right-wing populist parties as well as the presidential bid of George Wallace.

A white lower-educated supporter on the lower-income scale is not what we normally term middle-class: It’s more aptly called the working-class. Which is why William Galston of the Brookings Institution analyzed the data and wrote that “Trump is the staunchest champion of the white working class that American politics has seen in decades.” Combine their class with their self-declared conservatism and you have the people Lipset described. According to Lipset, “authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of middle and upper classes.” These were the people who formed the base of the Nazi labor unions (Lipset was writing in 1959), the White Citizen’s Councils in the segregated American south, and race rioters in England. Lipset continued, “working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population. In a number of nations, they have clearly been in the forefront of the struggle against equal rights for minority groups, and have sought to limit immigration or to impose racial standards in countries with open immigration.” This, of course, describes a Donald Trump rally almost perfectly… Now, not all of Trump’s supporters are working-class whites, and not all working-class whites are Trump supporters (mercifully). But rather than seeing most Trumpists as Middle American Radicals or even a uniquely American phenomenon, it is more accurate to see them as the latest in a long line of working-class authoritarians—people with a very scary, very dishonorable past.

Exit poll results from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night showed deep discontent with the Republican Party and the federal government, and the candidate who railed hardest on those topics, Donald Trump, won with multiple groups of voters. Trump won New Hampshire's primary by carrying a range of demographic and ideological groups with more than 30% of the vote. He topped the rest of the field among both men and women, voters under age 64, voters without a college degree, and those who have a college degree but no postgraduate study. He won among conservatives and moderates, first-time voters and those who've voted before and registered Republicans and those who are undeclared. Trump won 6-in-10 voters who said they were looking for an outside candidate.

ABC highlighted the following important fact about Donald Trump’s base of support in New Hampshire:

Two-thirds said they support Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. He won 42 percent of their votes. Four in 10 supported deporting undocumented immigrants; Trump won 46 percent in this group.

The PEPS follows prior research and measures resentment toward African Americans and immigrants with statements like “blacks could be just as well off as whites if they only tried harder” and “it bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English.” It also contains a measure of ethnocentrism developed by Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam, which compares how favorably respondents rated whites to how favorably they rated minority groups. ... Most striking is how each of these measures strongly correlates with support for Trump. The graph below shows that Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups. Moreover, statistical models show that each of these three attitudes about minorities contributes independently to Trump’s vote share. So much so, in fact, that GOP primary voters who score in the top 25 percent of their party on all three measures are 44 points more likely to support Donald Trump than those who score in the bottom 25 percent... ... These findings also support the idea that Trump’s appeal mirrors Nixonian populism’s blend of racial conservatism with tacit support for the welfare state — a blend often seen in Europe’s right-wing populist parties as well as the presidential bid of George Wallace.

A white lower-educated supporter on the lower-income scale is not what we normally term middle-class: It’s more aptly called the working-class. Which is why William Galston of the Brookings Institution analyzed the data and wrote that “Trump is the staunchest champion of the white working class that American politics has seen in decades.” Combine their class with their self-declared conservatism and you have the people Lipset described. According to Lipset, “authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of middle and upper classes.” These were the people who formed the base of the Nazi labor unions (Lipset was writing in 1959), the White Citizen’s Councils in the segregated American south, and race rioters in England. Lipset continued, “working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population. In a number of nations, they have clearly been in the forefront of the struggle against equal rights for minority groups, and have sought to limit immigration or to impose racial standards in countries with open immigration.” This, of course, describes a Donald Trump rally almost perfectly… Now, not all of Trump’s supporters are working-class whites, and not all working-class whites are Trump supporters (mercifully). But rather than seeing most Trumpists as Middle American Radicals or even a uniquely American phenomenon, it is more accurate to see them as the latest in a long line of working-class authoritarians—people with a very scary, very dishonorable past.

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Published on February 12, 2016 11:30

“Dominated” by the CIA: The national security state is more entrenched than ever — and leakers like Edward Snowden are its only obstacle

Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and provided an example of the national security state's tendency to respond to evidence of its own failures with demands for greater power. "We still have one of those killers' phones that we haven’t been able to open," Comey said, referring to the terrorists who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino in late-2015 before they were dispatched by law enforcement. ""It has been two months now and we are still working on it." Comey's remarks were likely intended to strengthen the government's claim that tech companies should make it easier for law enforcement to unlock their products. But regardless of the specifics of this particular case, the general dynamic of the San Bernardino attack and its aftermath — the national security industrial complex cannot fail, it can only be failed (by a civilian government that refuses to give it the necessary "tools") — is longstanding. And in the minds of many proponents of civil liberties, it is dangerous. That is by no means the sole focus of "The War on Leakers: National Security and American Democracy, from Eugene V. Debs to Edward Snowden," the new book from Lloyd C. Gardner, professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University. As the book's subtitle indicates, Gardner's treatment is far more sweeping, looking at the entire history of the national security apparatus as we know it, not just one of its defining political quirks. At the same time, though, it's that depressingly familiar process by which the national security state's failures become political assets, that makes leakers like Debs, Ellsberg, Manning, and Snowden, to name just a few, so important. Without their providing the public with invaluable — and generally inaccessible — information from within the system, the national security state's authority can go essentially unchallenged. Look no further than the past 15 years of U.S. security policy to see the results. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Gardner about the book and the national security state more generally. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length. Why did you decide to write this book? I had been writing a number of books on American policy in the Middle East in recent years and I kept running into this sort of question, particularly in terms of John Brennan and drone warfare. I think that was part of the key to writing it. Secondly, I had always been interested in this whole question of the use of the Espionage Act. Since this became such a tool of the Obama Administration in dealing with leakers, I decided to go into it and look at it very seriously and see where this all originated. Now of course I had worked on American Foreign policy in World War One and it had come up then, and it had also come up in the [Daniel] Ellsberg case. I just sort of wanted to tie these things together and see where we were headed. So how did that history of the Espionage Act lead us to how it's used today? It was the question of what Eugene Debs was arrested for. It wasn't with any indication of him dealing with a foreign agent, but in opposing the war and speaking out against the draft. By use of the Espionage Act in the case against Eugene Debs, you also have the beginning of profiling. Because by its very nature when you accuse someone under the Espionage Act you assume that that's treason - that's the implication of it. Now, they deny this. Everyone who defends the position would deny that that's the case, but in fact that is the case. And the same thing with when they came down to the Ellsberg case in the 1970s and the Pentagon Papers. There was no indication that he was dealing with enemy agents. All the indications are that Nixon was simply so furious that he ordered John Mitchell to find some way to prosecute Ellsberg, and he came upon and hit upon, almost ad hoc, the Espionage Act, which had been kind of a dead letter for many years. So then that tied in with the way the Bush and then Obama administrations began using the Espionage Act. Why has the Espionage Act been wielded so much more frequently in recent years after a long period of dormancy? The basic reason is what I tried to identify in the book: we don't have an official secrets act. The reason we don't have an official secrets act - compared to some European countries, particularly the British - is that the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. We have a written constitution, and that's unlike the situation, say, in Great Britain, where there is no written constitution. And we also have the Fourth Amendment, which defends against searches that don't have warrants. The Espionage Act, in a sense, provides a way to get around that First Amendment exemption for free speech. What's particularly devastating about it is that it places the burden upon the leaker rather than the information. The sentences which come out under the Espionage Act are much more serious and long-lasting than those under an official secrets act. So I think that's why it was adopted: it avoids the problem of the First Amendment and it gives you a very powerful deterrent tool to use against people. What is the impetus behind the national security state's war on leakers and how has that war changed over the years? I think that the national security state is as much a liberal invention as it is a conservative invention. I think Garry Wills had it right - it begins with the atomic bomb. Wills' much underappreciated book "Bomb Power" suggests that now the American people put their faith in the president and in that little football shaped thing that has the atomic codes that his aides carry around. The bomb at first was supposed to give us absolute security, in 1945 when Truman announced that this could only be done in the United States. But it turned out only four years later that that was not the case. So immediately attention turned onto foreign agents, onto spies, and so on. What had happened was that our first line of defense moved from Los Alamos and Hiroshima to Langley and Fort Meade, and we'd now placed all our faith in the intelligence agencies. That gave them a leg up in terms of their presence in the executive branch, and at the same time provided the impetus for the concern about leaking. Anything that's leaked somehow becomes equivalent to aiding the enemy, whoever the enemy is at the moment. In the Snowden case, we saw so many mainstream journalists take the side of the government in vilifying Snowden and his cause. Is this a new phenomenon, journalists being hostile to whistleblowers? If we look at the history of, say, Glenn Greenwald and Snowden or Chelsea Manning, the first line of attack by journalists has been on their personality, on their supposed character, on their eccentricities, and not focused on what the debate is really about. Particularly, that goes for liberal journalists who see the Snowden attacks - if you want to call them attacks - as attacks on the modern liberal state as it has evolved. This has made them blind to some of the key issues about what's going on here and about the tremendous expansion of the national security state and the power that it wields. I like to think of it this way: we no longer have an imperial president to worry about, but an imperial presidency. And the presidency is dominated, increasingly, by the intelligence community. How much control do you think any individual president has over the drift of the national security state? I think the dilemma was put perfectly by Eric Holder when some of the pending indictments in the Bush administration were renewed by the Obama administration. Holder said that to quash these, to do without them, would be to undermine the work of all these people who had started their loyal work, so it was very difficult to shut these off. I thought this was a very strange kind of defense, because it does exactly what your question implies: it makes it more difficult for any individual president to change something as fundamental as that when he starts out. There isn't much indication that the Obama administration really made a serious effort to examine what went wrong over the previous eight years. Obama opted right away in 2009 to say that he didn't want to do anything to undermine the strength or character of people who were charged with protecting our security. All the proposals for establishing some sort of look backwards to set up a commission to judge what was done under the previous administration, he just brushed aside and said we're going to change what the Bush administration did and there's no point in going back and trying to revisit all of those situations. So I think that's the answer, that the president, from administration to administration, is now constantly bombarded from the moment he's elected to the time he takes office with, "Well, you can't change this because of this." That's the old "if you knew what we knew" argument. And now you know, so you'll have to follow the protocol they've established. So it's very difficult for any new president to make a clean break. And in Obama's case he didn't make things any easier for himself by bonding with John Brennan, for heaven's sakes, who was involved in the very acts that were under criticism. Some have gone so far as to argue that by providing bipartisan cover for actors like Brennan, Obama did even more than his predecessor to entrench and perpetuate the national security state. Well yes, I think that's true. I think there is bipartisan agreement, with some important exceptions like Patrick Leahy and Rand Paul, and even, curiously, Ted Cruz on the NSA program. This is a very powerful driving force. It's impossible to exclude all of the things that go on in the world and some that happen at home, like the most recent one out in California. But [Richard] Clarke, the man Obama appointed to be in charge of the commission to look into this said there's no indication that the programs that were instituted have actually prevented any terrorist attacks. However well-intentioned their motive, to the government, as a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is a really serious problem, in terms of trying to blunt or change the force of this powerful thing that's only getting more powerful all the time. Do you think we're less likely to see another Snowden in the near- to medium-term because of the chilling effects of the prosecutions we've seen? Or is it possible that we might see more high profile leakers as the distance between government narrative and reality widens? I don't know. I can't predict. There seem to be signs in both directions, but as long as you have this constant stimulus of supposed contacts between Americans and ISIS - homegrown terrorists, as they're called - that's going to be a detriment in terms of anybody actually trying to change very much. That's clear. Time and time again, as we see, had there not been the NSA programs, it wouldn't have made any difference. The ways that people communicated with one another were outside this net, no matter how big they made the haystack and no matter how fine they thought they were sifting through it. I don't see that [these attacks] very likely are going to stop. There will continue to be incidents like these and they will continue to be seized upon as justification for improving the reach of the national security state whether it would have anything to do with that or not. And then the temptation is exactly as we have seen. As James Bamford has pointed out, the ability of the Five Eyes to communicate with one another and to shift evidence of wrongdoing by individual people over to Israeli intelligence, for example, for their uses in their own foreign policy - all of these things now are global in their impact. That's a very distressing thought, from a civil liberties perspective. Going back to Garry Wills' book, it seems undeniable that the rise of the national security state is inextricably linked to the rise of America's global influence after World War Two. If we go back to "Wild" Bill Donovan and the beginning of the OSS and then the CIA, I tried to point out in the book that the whole debate over the creation of the CIA is one of the more interesting ones. Obviously there were both opponents on the right and on the left. On the right, J. Edgar Hoover was afraid that it would impinge on his FBI policies, and on the left, a fear of an American gestapo. Whether you call it that or not, the rise of the CIA is no different than the famous intelligence services that the imperial powers used in the heyday of the great second wave of imperialism at the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The ability to use codes, all of these things that become the tradecraft of James Bond or John Le Carré carried over into American policy. There's absolutely no question that it has to do with the rise of America as a global power. Does that suggest that it would be impossible to reduce the influence of the national security state without an accompanying diminishment America's preeminent standing as a global power? I don't think that automatically follows. Obviously there is a role for intelligence gathering. Former President Harry Truman, in 1963, after the assassination of Kennedy, became quite concerned that the CIA had grown beyond what he had imagined. At that point Allen Dulles, who had recently been fired after the Bay of Pigs but still retained all of his contacts, came out to Independence, Missouri and argued with the former president that, "You, sir, initiated some of this with American intervention in the Greek crisis and in the Italian elections and so on, so who are you to say that this is all something that you hadn't intended?" And Truman allowed that he had done that, but he tried to draw a line between that sort of aid in elections and so on, compared to what had happened in Iran in 1953 and then Guatemala in 1954. In fact, Harry Truman's letter of 1963 to the Washington Post a few weeks after the Kennedy assassination, which appeared only briefly in the Post and then was withdrawn from other editions, was perhaps the most insightful and prophetic critique of the CIA that we have.Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and provided an example of the national security state's tendency to respond to evidence of its own failures with demands for greater power. "We still have one of those killers' phones that we haven’t been able to open," Comey said, referring to the terrorists who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino in late-2015 before they were dispatched by law enforcement. ""It has been two months now and we are still working on it." Comey's remarks were likely intended to strengthen the government's claim that tech companies should make it easier for law enforcement to unlock their products. But regardless of the specifics of this particular case, the general dynamic of the San Bernardino attack and its aftermath — the national security industrial complex cannot fail, it can only be failed (by a civilian government that refuses to give it the necessary "tools") — is longstanding. And in the minds of many proponents of civil liberties, it is dangerous. That is by no means the sole focus of "The War on Leakers: National Security and American Democracy, from Eugene V. Debs to Edward Snowden," the new book from Lloyd C. Gardner, professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University. As the book's subtitle indicates, Gardner's treatment is far more sweeping, looking at the entire history of the national security apparatus as we know it, not just one of its defining political quirks. At the same time, though, it's that depressingly familiar process by which the national security state's failures become political assets, that makes leakers like Debs, Ellsberg, Manning, and Snowden, to name just a few, so important. Without their providing the public with invaluable — and generally inaccessible — information from within the system, the national security state's authority can go essentially unchallenged. Look no further than the past 15 years of U.S. security policy to see the results. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Gardner about the book and the national security state more generally. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length. Why did you decide to write this book? I had been writing a number of books on American policy in the Middle East in recent years and I kept running into this sort of question, particularly in terms of John Brennan and drone warfare. I think that was part of the key to writing it. Secondly, I had always been interested in this whole question of the use of the Espionage Act. Since this became such a tool of the Obama Administration in dealing with leakers, I decided to go into it and look at it very seriously and see where this all originated. Now of course I had worked on American Foreign policy in World War One and it had come up then, and it had also come up in the [Daniel] Ellsberg case. I just sort of wanted to tie these things together and see where we were headed. So how did that history of the Espionage Act lead us to how it's used today? It was the question of what Eugene Debs was arrested for. It wasn't with any indication of him dealing with a foreign agent, but in opposing the war and speaking out against the draft. By use of the Espionage Act in the case against Eugene Debs, you also have the beginning of profiling. Because by its very nature when you accuse someone under the Espionage Act you assume that that's treason - that's the implication of it. Now, they deny this. Everyone who defends the position would deny that that's the case, but in fact that is the case. And the same thing with when they came down to the Ellsberg case in the 1970s and the Pentagon Papers. There was no indication that he was dealing with enemy agents. All the indications are that Nixon was simply so furious that he ordered John Mitchell to find some way to prosecute Ellsberg, and he came upon and hit upon, almost ad hoc, the Espionage Act, which had been kind of a dead letter for many years. So then that tied in with the way the Bush and then Obama administrations began using the Espionage Act. Why has the Espionage Act been wielded so much more frequently in recent years after a long period of dormancy? The basic reason is what I tried to identify in the book: we don't have an official secrets act. The reason we don't have an official secrets act - compared to some European countries, particularly the British - is that the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. We have a written constitution, and that's unlike the situation, say, in Great Britain, where there is no written constitution. And we also have the Fourth Amendment, which defends against searches that don't have warrants. The Espionage Act, in a sense, provides a way to get around that First Amendment exemption for free speech. What's particularly devastating about it is that it places the burden upon the leaker rather than the information. The sentences which come out under the Espionage Act are much more serious and long-lasting than those under an official secrets act. So I think that's why it was adopted: it avoids the problem of the First Amendment and it gives you a very powerful deterrent tool to use against people. What is the impetus behind the national security state's war on leakers and how has that war changed over the years? I think that the national security state is as much a liberal invention as it is a conservative invention. I think Garry Wills had it right - it begins with the atomic bomb. Wills' much underappreciated book "Bomb Power" suggests that now the American people put their faith in the president and in that little football shaped thing that has the atomic codes that his aides carry around. The bomb at first was supposed to give us absolute security, in 1945 when Truman announced that this could only be done in the United States. But it turned out only four years later that that was not the case. So immediately attention turned onto foreign agents, onto spies, and so on. What had happened was that our first line of defense moved from Los Alamos and Hiroshima to Langley and Fort Meade, and we'd now placed all our faith in the intelligence agencies. That gave them a leg up in terms of their presence in the executive branch, and at the same time provided the impetus for the concern about leaking. Anything that's leaked somehow becomes equivalent to aiding the enemy, whoever the enemy is at the moment. In the Snowden case, we saw so many mainstream journalists take the side of the government in vilifying Snowden and his cause. Is this a new phenomenon, journalists being hostile to whistleblowers? If we look at the history of, say, Glenn Greenwald and Snowden or Chelsea Manning, the first line of attack by journalists has been on their personality, on their supposed character, on their eccentricities, and not focused on what the debate is really about. Particularly, that goes for liberal journalists who see the Snowden attacks - if you want to call them attacks - as attacks on the modern liberal state as it has evolved. This has made them blind to some of the key issues about what's going on here and about the tremendous expansion of the national security state and the power that it wields. I like to think of it this way: we no longer have an imperial president to worry about, but an imperial presidency. And the presidency is dominated, increasingly, by the intelligence community. How much control do you think any individual president has over the drift of the national security state? I think the dilemma was put perfectly by Eric Holder when some of the pending indictments in the Bush administration were renewed by the Obama administration. Holder said that to quash these, to do without them, would be to undermine the work of all these people who had started their loyal work, so it was very difficult to shut these off. I thought this was a very strange kind of defense, because it does exactly what your question implies: it makes it more difficult for any individual president to change something as fundamental as that when he starts out. There isn't much indication that the Obama administration really made a serious effort to examine what went wrong over the previous eight years. Obama opted right away in 2009 to say that he didn't want to do anything to undermine the strength or character of people who were charged with protecting our security. All the proposals for establishing some sort of look backwards to set up a commission to judge what was done under the previous administration, he just brushed aside and said we're going to change what the Bush administration did and there's no point in going back and trying to revisit all of those situations. So I think that's the answer, that the president, from administration to administration, is now constantly bombarded from the moment he's elected to the time he takes office with, "Well, you can't change this because of this." That's the old "if you knew what we knew" argument. And now you know, so you'll have to follow the protocol they've established. So it's very difficult for any new president to make a clean break. And in Obama's case he didn't make things any easier for himself by bonding with John Brennan, for heaven's sakes, who was involved in the very acts that were under criticism. Some have gone so far as to argue that by providing bipartisan cover for actors like Brennan, Obama did even more than his predecessor to entrench and perpetuate the national security state. Well yes, I think that's true. I think there is bipartisan agreement, with some important exceptions like Patrick Leahy and Rand Paul, and even, curiously, Ted Cruz on the NSA program. This is a very powerful driving force. It's impossible to exclude all of the things that go on in the world and some that happen at home, like the most recent one out in California. But [Richard] Clarke, the man Obama appointed to be in charge of the commission to look into this said there's no indication that the programs that were instituted have actually prevented any terrorist attacks. However well-intentioned their motive, to the government, as a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is a really serious problem, in terms of trying to blunt or change the force of this powerful thing that's only getting more powerful all the time. Do you think we're less likely to see another Snowden in the near- to medium-term because of the chilling effects of the prosecutions we've seen? Or is it possible that we might see more high profile leakers as the distance between government narrative and reality widens? I don't know. I can't predict. There seem to be signs in both directions, but as long as you have this constant stimulus of supposed contacts between Americans and ISIS - homegrown terrorists, as they're called - that's going to be a detriment in terms of anybody actually trying to change very much. That's clear. Time and time again, as we see, had there not been the NSA programs, it wouldn't have made any difference. The ways that people communicated with one another were outside this net, no matter how big they made the haystack and no matter how fine they thought they were sifting through it. I don't see that [these attacks] very likely are going to stop. There will continue to be incidents like these and they will continue to be seized upon as justification for improving the reach of the national security state whether it would have anything to do with that or not. And then the temptation is exactly as we have seen. As James Bamford has pointed out, the ability of the Five Eyes to communicate with one another and to shift evidence of wrongdoing by individual people over to Israeli intelligence, for example, for their uses in their own foreign policy - all of these things now are global in their impact. That's a very distressing thought, from a civil liberties perspective. Going back to Garry Wills' book, it seems undeniable that the rise of the national security state is inextricably linked to the rise of America's global influence after World War Two. If we go back to "Wild" Bill Donovan and the beginning of the OSS and then the CIA, I tried to point out in the book that the whole debate over the creation of the CIA is one of the more interesting ones. Obviously there were both opponents on the right and on the left. On the right, J. Edgar Hoover was afraid that it would impinge on his FBI policies, and on the left, a fear of an American gestapo. Whether you call it that or not, the rise of the CIA is no different than the famous intelligence services that the imperial powers used in the heyday of the great second wave of imperialism at the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The ability to use codes, all of these things that become the tradecraft of James Bond or John Le Carré carried over into American policy. There's absolutely no question that it has to do with the rise of America as a global power. Does that suggest that it would be impossible to reduce the influence of the national security state without an accompanying diminishment America's preeminent standing as a global power? I don't think that automatically follows. Obviously there is a role for intelligence gathering. Former President Harry Truman, in 1963, after the assassination of Kennedy, became quite concerned that the CIA had grown beyond what he had imagined. At that point Allen Dulles, who had recently been fired after the Bay of Pigs but still retained all of his contacts, came out to Independence, Missouri and argued with the former president that, "You, sir, initiated some of this with American intervention in the Greek crisis and in the Italian elections and so on, so who are you to say that this is all something that you hadn't intended?" And Truman allowed that he had done that, but he tried to draw a line between that sort of aid in elections and so on, compared to what had happened in Iran in 1953 and then Guatemala in 1954. In fact, Harry Truman's letter of 1963 to the Washington Post a few weeks after the Kennedy assassination, which appeared only briefly in the Post and then was withdrawn from other editions, was perhaps the most insightful and prophetic critique of the CIA that we have.

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Published on February 12, 2016 11:12

America is 0 for the 21st century: “The finest fighting force in the history of the world” can’t win for losing

Here’s my twenty-first-century rule of thumb about this country: if you have to say it over and over, it probably ain’t so. Which is why I’d think twice every time we’re told how “exceptional” or “indispensable” the United States is. For someone like me who can still remember a moment when Americans assumed that was so, but no sitting president, presidential candidate, or politician felt you had to say the obvious, such lines reverberate with defensiveness. They seem to incorporate other voices you can almost hear whispering that we’re ever less exceptional, more dispensable, no longer (to quote the greatest of them all by his own estimate) “the greatest.” In this vein, consider a commonplace line running around Washington (as it has for years): the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in the history of the world.” Uh, folks, if that’s so, then why the hell can’t it win a damn thing 14-plus years later? If you don’t mind a little what-if history lesson, it’s just possible that events might have turned out differently and, instead of repeating that “finest fighting force” stuff endlessly, our leaders might actually believe it. After all, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it took the Bush administration only a month to let the CIA, special forces advisers, and the U.S. Air Force loose against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s supporters in Afghanistan. The results were crushing. The first moments of what that administration would grandiloquently (and ominously) bill as a “global war on terror” were, destructively speaking, glorious. If you want to get a sense of just how crushing those forces and their Afghan proxies were, read journalist Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes , the best book yet written on how (and how quickly) that war on terror went desperately, disastrously awry. One of the Afghans Gopal spent time with was a Taliban military commander nicknamed -- for his whip of choice -- Mullah Cable, who offered a riveting account of just how decisive the U.S. air assault on that movement was. In recalling his days on the front lines of what, until then, had been an Afghan civil war, he described his first look at what American bombs could do:

“He drove into the basin and turned the corner and then stepped out of the vehicle. Oh my God, he thought. There were headless torsos and torso-less arms, cooked slivers of scalp and flayed skin. The stones were crimson, the sand ocher from all the blood. Coal-black lumps of melted steel and plastic marked the remains of his friends’ vehicles. “Closing his eyes, he steadied himself. In the five years of fighting he had seen his share of death, but never lives disposed of so easily, so completely, so mercilessly, in mere seconds.”

The next day, he addressed his men. “Go home,” he said. “Get yourselves away from here. Don’t contact each other.” “Not a soul,” writes Gopal, “protested.” Mullah Cable took his own advice and headed for Kabul, the Afghan capital. “If he somehow could make it out alive, he promised himself that he would abandon politics forever.” And he was typical. As Gopal reports, the Taliban quickly broke under the strain of war with the last superpower on the planet. Its foot soldiers put down their arms and, like Mullah Cable, fled for home. Its leaders began to try to surrender. In Afghan fashion, they were ready to go back to their native villages, make peace, shuffle their allegiances, and hope for better times. Within a couple of months, in other words, it was, or at least shoulda, woulda, coulda been all over, even the shouting. The U.S. military and its Afghan proxies, if you remember, believed that they had trapped Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters somewhere in the mountainous Tora Bora region. If the U.S. had concentrated all its resources on him at that moment, it’s hard to believe that he wouldn’t have been in American custody or dead sooner rather than later. And that would have been that. The U.S. military could have gone home victorious. The Taliban, along with bin Laden, would have been history. Stop the cameras there and what a tale of triumph would surely have been told. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Keeping the Cameras Rolling There was, of course, a catch. Like their Bush administration mentors, the American military men who arrived in Afghanistan were determined to fight that global war on terror forever and a day. So, as Gopal reports, they essentially refused to let the Taliban surrender. They hounded that movement’s leaders and fighters until they had little choice but to pick up their guns again and, in the phrase of the moment, “go back to work.” It was a time of triumph and of Guantánamo, and it went to everyone’s head. Among those in power in Washington and those running the military, who didn’t believe that a set of genuine global triumphs lay in store? With such a fighting force, such awesome destructive power, how could it not? And so, in Afghanistan, the American counterterror types kept right on targeting the “terrorists” whenever their Afghan warlord allies pointed them out -- and if many of them turned out to be local enemies of those same rising warlords, who cared? It would be the first, but hardly the last time that, in killing significant numbers of people, the U.S. military had a hand in creating its own future enemies. In the process, the Americans managed to revive the very movement they had crushed and which, so many years later, is at the edge of seizing a dominant military position in the country. And keep in mind that, while producing a recipe for future disaster there, the Bush administration’s top officials had far bigger fish to fry. For them and for the finest fighting force etc., etc., Afghanistan was a hopeless backwater -- especially with Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein there in Baghdad at the crossroads of the oil heartlands of the planet with a target on his back. As they saw it, control of much of the Greater Middle East was at stake. To hell with Osama bin Laden. And so, in March 2003, less than a year and a half later, they launched the invasion of Iraq, another glorious success for that triple-F force. Saddam’s military was crushed in an instant and his capital, burning and looted, was occupied by American troops in next to no time at all. Stop the cameras there and you’re still talking about the dominant military of this, if not any other century. But of course the cameras didn’t stop. The Bush administration had no intention of shutting them off, not when it saw a Middle Eastern (and possibly even a global)Pax Americana in its future and wanted to garrison Iraq until hell froze over. It already assumed that the next stop after Baghdad on the Occident Express would be either Damascus or Tehran, that America’s enemies in the region would go down like ten pins, and that the oil heartlands of the planet would become an American dominion. (As the neocon quip of that moment had it, “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”) It was a hell of a dream, with an emphasis on hell. It would, in fact, prove a nightmare of the first order, and the cameras just kept rolling and rolling for nearly 13 years while (I think it’s time for an acronym here) the FFFIHW, also known as the Finest Fighting Force etc., etc., proved that it could not successfully: *Defeat determined, if lightly armed, minority insurgencies. *Train proxy armies to do its bidding. *Fight a war based on sectarian versions of Islam or a war of ideas. *Help reconstruct a society in the Greater Middle East, no matter how much money it pumped in. *Create much of anything but failed states and deeply corrupt ruling elites in the region. *Bomb an insurgent movement into surrender. *Drone-kill terror leaders until their groups collapsed. *Intervene anywhere in the Greater Middle East in just about any fashion, by land or air, and end up with a world in any way to its liking. Send in the... It’s probably accurate to say that in the course of one disappointment or disaster after another from Afghanistan to Libya, Somalia to Iraq, Yemen to Pakistan, the U.S. military never actually lost an encounter on the battlefield. But nowhere was it truly triumphant on the battlefield either, not in a way that turned out to mean anything. Nowhere, in fact, did a military move of any sort truly pay off in the long run. Whatever was done by the FFFIHW and the CIA (with its wildly counterproductive drone assassination campaigns across the region) only seemed to create more enemies and more problems. To sum up, the finest you-know-what in the history of you-know-where has proven to be a clumsy, largely worthless weapon of choice in Washington’s terror wars -- and increasingly its leadership seems to know it. In private, its commanders are clearly growing anxious. If you want a witness to that anxiety, go no further than Washington Post columnist and power pundit David Ignatius. In mid-January, after a visit to U.S. Central Command, which oversees Washington’s military presence in the Greater Middle East, he wrote a column grimly headlined: “The ugly truth: Defeating the Islamic State will take decades.” Its first paragraph went: “There’s a scary disconnect between the somber warnings you hear privately from military leaders about the war against the Islamic State and the glib debating points coming from Republican and Democratic politicians.” For Ignatius, channeling his high-level sources in Central Command (whom he couldn’t identify), things could hardly have been gloomier. And yet, bleak as his report was, it still qualified as an upbeat view. His sources clearly believed that, if Washington was willing to commit to a long, hard military slog and the training of proxy forces in the region not over “a few months” but a “generation,” success would follow some distant, golden day. The last 14-plus years suggest otherwise. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what those worried CENTCOM commanders, the folks at the Pentagon, and the Obama administration are planning for the FFFIHW in the near future. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that, with almost a decade and a half of grisly military lessons under their belts, they are evidently going to pursue exactly the kinds of actions that have, for some time, made the U.S. military look like neither the finest, nor the greatest anything. Here’s a little been-there-done-that rundown of what might read like past history but is evidently still to come: Afghanistan: So many years after the Bush administration loosed the U.S. Air Force and its Special Operations forces on that country and “liberated” it, the situation, according to the latest U.S. general to be put in command of the war zone, is “deteriorating.” Meanwhile, in 2015, casualties suffered by the American-built Afghan security forces reached “unsustainable” levels. The Taliban now control more territory than at any time since 2001, and the Islamic State (IS) has established itself in parts of the country. In response, more than a year after President Obama announced the ending of the U.S. “combat mission” there, the latest plans are to further slow the withdrawal of U.S. forces, while sending in the U.S. Air Force and special operations teams, particularly against the new IS fighters. Libya: Almost five years ago, the Obama administration (with its NATO allies) dispatched overwhelming air power and drones to Libyan skies to help take down that country’s autocrat, Muammar Gaddafi. In the wake of his death and the fall of his regime, his arsenals were looted and advanced weapons were dispatched to terror groups from Mali to the Sinai Peninsula. In the ensuing years, Libya has been transformed not into a thriving democracy but a desperately failed state filled with competing sectarian militias, Islamic extremist outfits, and a fast-growing Islamic State offshoot. As the situation there continues to deteriorate, the Obama administration is now reportedly considering a “new” strategy involving “decisive military action” that will be focused on... you guessed it, air and drone strikes and possibly special operations raids on Islamic State operations. Iraq: Another country in which the situation is again deteriorating as oil prices plunge -- oil money makes up 90% of the government budget -- and the Islamic State continues to hold significant territory. Meanwhile, Iraqis die monthly in prodigious numbers in bloody acts of war and terror, as Shiite-Sunni grievances seem only to sharpen. It’s almost 13 years since the U.S. loosed its air power and its army against Saddam Hussein, disbanded his military,trained another one (significant parts of which collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of Islamic State fighters in 2014 and 2015), and brought together much of the future leadership of the Islamic State in a U.S. military prison. It’s almost four years since the U.S. “ended” its war there and left. Since August 2014, however, it has again loosed its Air Force on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, while dispatching at least 3,700 (and possibly almost 4,500) military personnel to Iraq to help train up a new version of that country’s army and support it as it retakes (or in fact reduces to rubble) cities still in IS hands. In this context, the Obama administration now seems to be planning for a kind of endless mission creep in which “hundreds more trainers, advisers, and commandos” will be sent to that country and neighboring Syria in the coming months. Increasingly, some of those advisers and other personnel will officially be considered “boots on the ground” and will focus on helping “the Iraqi army mount the kind of conventional warfare operations needed to defeat Islamic State militants.” It’s even possible that American advisers will, in the end, be allowed to engage directly in combat operations, while American Apache helicopter pilots might at some point begin flying close support missions for Iraqi troops fighting in urban areas. (And if this is all beginning to sound strangely familiar, what a surprise!) Syria: Give Syria credit for one thing. It can’t be classified as a three-peat or even a repeat performance, since the FFFIHW wasn’t there the previous 14 years. Still, it’s hard not to feel as if we’ve been through all this before: the loosing of American air power on the Islamic State (with effects that devastate but somehow don’t destroy the object of Washington’s desire), disastrous attempts to train proxy forces in the American mold, the arrival of special ops forces on the scene, and so on. In other words, everything proven over the years, from Afghanistan to Libya, not to bring victory or much of anything else worthwhile will be tried yet again -- from Afghanistan to Libya. Above all, of course, a near-religious faith in the efficacy of bombing and of drone strikes will remain crucial to American efforts, even though in the past such military-first approaches have only helped to spread terror outfits, chaos, and failed states across this vast region. Will any of it work this time? I wouldn’t hold my breath. Declaring Defeat and Coming Home At some point, as the Vietnam War dragged on, Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont suggested -- so the legend goes -- that the U.S. declare victory and simply come home. (In fact, he never did such a thing, but no matter.) Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and their adviser Henry Kissinger might, however, be said to have done something similar in the end. And despite wartime fears -- no less rabid than those about the Islamic State today -- that a Vietnamese communist victory would cause “dominoes” to “fall” and communism to triumph across the Third World, remarkably little happened that displeased, no less endangered, the United States. Four decades later, in fact, Washington and Vietnam are allied increasingly closely against a rising China. In a similar fashion, our worst nightmares of the present moment -- magnified in the recent Republican debates -- are likely to have little basis in reality. The Islamic State is indeed a brutal and extreme sectarian movement, the incarnation of the whirlwind of chaos the U.S. let loose in the region. As a movement, however, it has its limits. Its appeal is far too sectarian and extreme to sweep the Greater Middle East. Its future suppression, however, is unlikely to have much to do with the efforts of the finest fighting force in the history of the world. Quite the opposite, the Islamic State and its al-Qaeda-linked doppelgangers still spreading in the region thrive on the destructive attentions of the FFFIHW. They need that force to be eternally on their trail and tail. There are (or at least should be) moments in history when ruling elites suddenly add two and two and miraculously come up with four. This doesn’t seem to be one of them or else the Obama administration wouldn’t be doubling down on a militarized version of the same-old same-old in the Greater Middle East, while its Republican and neocon opponents call formaking the sand “glow in the dark,” sending in the Marines (all of them), and bombing the hell out of everything. Under the circumstances, what politician in present-day Washington would have the nerve to suggest the obvious? Isn’t it finally time to pull the U.S. military back from the Greater Middle East and put an end to our disastrous temptation to intervene ever more destructively in ever more repetitious ways in that region? That would, of course, mean, among other things, dismantling the vast structure of military bases Washington has built up across the Persian Gulf and the rest of the Greater Middle East. Maybe it’s time to adopt some version of Senator Aiken’s mythical strategy. Maybe Washington should bluntly declare not victory, but defeat, and bring the U.S. military home. Maybe if we stopped claiming that we were the greatest, most exceptional, most indispensable nation ever and that the U.S. military was the finest fighting force in the history of the world, both we and the world might be better off and modestly more peaceful. Unfortunately, you can toss that set of thoughts in the trash can that holds all the other untested experiments of history. One thing we can be sure of, given the politics of our moment, is that we’ll never know.

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Published on February 12, 2016 00:45

Everything you need to knew about the groundbreaking gravitational waves discovery

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Published on February 12, 2016 00:30

Robert Reich: Americans are finally taking their country back

You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold. Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning. The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests. That’s the real choice ahead.You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold. Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning. The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests. That’s the real choice ahead.You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold. Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning. The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests. That’s the real choice ahead.You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold. Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning. The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests. That’s the real choice ahead.

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Published on February 12, 2016 00:15

Noam Chomsky: Bernie isn’t the socialist he proclaims

Does Noam Chomsky want to see Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in the White House come November? Of the current crop of candidates, Chomsky believes Bernie Sanders would have the best policies—even though he may not be the socialist he proclaims he is. "Bernie Sanders may call himself a socialist, but he's basically a New Dealer in the current American political system," says Chomsky. A New Dealer, he explains, is someone who is way out on the left. "Eisenhower, for example, who said anyone who questions the New Deal doesn't belong in our political system would be regarded as a raging leftist. So, Bernie Sanders is a decent, honest New Dealer." Still, Chomsky fears that with our current system, Sanders doesn't have much of a chance. While Chomsky prefers Sanders, he emphasizes the importance of putting a Democrat in the White House. "There are differences in the parties," he responds, when asked if he'd even consider a Republican over Hillary Clinton. "Small differences [coupled with] great power can have enormous consequences." To Chomsky's point, enormous consequences also apply to not voting, especially in a swing state. "Abstaining from voting is a vote for the Republican candidate [should he win]. "My vote would be against the Republican candidate in a swing state [and] I said the same thing with Obama." In Chomsky's opinion, the main difference between the two parties is Islamophobia. All Republican candidates are against the Iran deal, and Ted Cruz has actually suggested "carpet-bombing" the Middle East, something no Democrat has proposed in any debate. "Every time you hit them with a sledgehammer, you expand [the problem]. You have to deal with a situation rationally if you want to be humane but even concerned with your own security," Chomsky says. Noam Chomsky has written more than 100 books and has taught for more than half a century. Like Bernie Sanders, he has been speaking on the same ideals for over five decades. WATCH: Noam Chomsky's full conversation with Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera English:

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Published on February 12, 2016 00:00

February 11, 2016

Twitter falls in love with Sanders for outing himself as “an old” and Clinton for embracing yellow

Twitter seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu... seemed to enjoy Thursday night's Democratic debate despite it being largely substantive, as opposed to the freak show that the GOP has been putting on every week. Wonkette, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, and others went classy before the debate even began: https://twitter.com/Wonkette/status/6... https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/6... https://twitter.com/MattNaugle/status... After the opening statements, PBS cut straight to what it considers "commercials," and people weren't pleased, albeit for different reasons: https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/stat... https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status... Everyone was acutely aware that this was a PBS debate: https://twitter.com/singernews/status... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/st... Debate live-tweeting celebrity Patton Oswalt claimed he wouldn't be live-tweeting the debate: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... But couldn't help himself: https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/stat... People were very sure they knew when Sanders first stumbled: https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/stat... https://twitter.com/HowardKurtz/statu... https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status... And when he outed himself as "an old": https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/eekshecried/statu... https://twitter.com/GrahamDavidA/stat... https://twitter.com/emarsh/status/697... https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Many conservatives were very happy that the travails of white people were addressed: https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status... https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/statu... But it's difficult to see this debate making much of a difference: https://twitter.com/nataliemjb/status... The clearest difference between the two seemed to be on the fate of children immigrating from Central America: https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/st... https://twitter.com/julito77/status/6... Sanders went after Wall Street as a way to attack Clinton: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status... Clinton attempted to deflect, but to no avail: https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/statu... Which isn't to say that Sanders made no questionable assertions: https://twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/stat... His attack on Clinton for consorting with Henry Kissinger was on point however: https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/6... One of the most pressing issues of the night was noticed by conservative radio host Todd Starnes: https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... In the end, though, it was pretty clear what was wrong this debate. It: https://twitter.com/anamariecox/statu...

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Published on February 11, 2016 20:04

Sanders unloads on Clinton for seeking the approval of accused war criminal Henry Kissinger: “I am proud to say he is not my friend”

Bernie Sanders was not the least bit impressed with Hillary Clinton's decision to defend her foreign policy credentials by touting her association with former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger. "I find it rather amazing" that Clinton boasts about the support of Kissinger, "given that I happen to believe that Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger." In fact, he said, "Kissinger's actions in Cambodia...created the instability that allowed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in and butcher 3 million people -- one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as someone who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger." Clinton replied that "journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and you have yet to answer that." "It ain't Henry Kissinger!" Sanders replied. Clinton boasted that she listens to a wide variety of voices, and that with respect to China, Kissinger's relationship to China is "extremely useful." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Bernie Sanders was not the least bit impressed with Hillary Clinton's decision to defend her foreign policy credentials by touting her association with former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger. "I find it rather amazing" that Clinton boasts about the support of Kissinger, "given that I happen to believe that Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger." In fact, he said, "Kissinger's actions in Cambodia...created the instability that allowed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in and butcher 3 million people -- one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as someone who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger." Clinton replied that "journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and you have yet to answer that." "It ain't Henry Kissinger!" Sanders replied. Clinton boasted that she listens to a wide variety of voices, and that with respect to China, Kissinger's relationship to China is "extremely useful." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Bernie Sanders was not the least bit impressed with Hillary Clinton's decision to defend her foreign policy credentials by touting her association with former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger. "I find it rather amazing" that Clinton boasts about the support of Kissinger, "given that I happen to believe that Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger." In fact, he said, "Kissinger's actions in Cambodia...created the instability that allowed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in and butcher 3 million people -- one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as someone who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger." Clinton replied that "journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and you have yet to answer that." "It ain't Henry Kissinger!" Sanders replied. Clinton boasted that she listens to a wide variety of voices, and that with respect to China, Kissinger's relationship to China is "extremely useful." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour.

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Published on February 11, 2016 19:36

Sanders calls racial inequality in incarceration rates is “one of the greatest tragedies of our time”

When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. When the debate turned to queries by undecided Facebook voters, the questions became slightly more interesting, addressing first the problem of African-American male incarceration rates in Wisconsin and America. Sanders discussed the fact that whites and blacks both "do marijuana" at the same rate, but that blacks are jailed at a much higher rate than their white counterparts, in part because of systemic racism in police departments that are both militarized and fail to represent the communities in which they operate. Clinton agreed, saying that "the era of mass incarceration" needs to come to an end, but that racial inequality in housing and jobs need to be addressed as well. Sanders agreed with that sentiment as well, adding that the mass incarceration "leaves children at home without a dad or a mother." He argued that race relations would be better under a Sanders administration are because minority children would have access to jobs and education they don't currently have. Those children "will end up in the productive economy, where we want them." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour.

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Published on February 11, 2016 18:42

Clinton on the offensive: Sanders needs “to level with the people” about the cost of his programs

Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour. Hillary Clinton opened Thursday evening's Democratic debate by attacking Bernie Sanders' belief in the viability of a single-payer system. "You need to level with people," she told Sanders, "many people will be worse-off." "I don't know what economists you've spoken to," Sanders replied, but that's not what would happen if his expansion of Obamacare was accomplished. Clinton boasted that her proposals are far more specific than any of Sanders' and that he's simply frightening Americans with his socialistic policies. "We should not make promises we can't keep," she added. When host Gwen Ifall noted that she hadn't heard either candidate put a price tag on their healthcare system, to which Clinton replied hers would cost about $100 million. Sanders said that every proposal he's introduced would be paid for by the closing the same loopholes that Clinton says she will close -- what he's been calling a "Wall Street speculation tax." Watch the entire debate below via PBS NewsHour.