Anti-Bernie Smear #21: “Bernie wants to take away Americans’ CHOICE in their healthcare provider”

This is an insidious accusation that hinges on debunked ideas of “socialized medicine” and uses classic neoliberal attack strategies to promote what is essentially a massive and bold-faced LIE.

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Why I Know Trump Did Not Collude with Russia

Everyone knows Trump is corrupt, that he does dirty deals, and that he had been trying to do business in Russia since the 1990’s. I am sure he also got financing from Russians.

But none of that means that he colluded with the Russians to win the Presidency.

 

Certainly his Russian creditors did not want him to win, and I don’t believe Trump himself wanted to win – for the very reasons we are seeing now. All his dirty business dealings are coming to light.

I am sure his Russian backers are freaking out, I am sure everyone in Trump’s inner and outer circles are freaking out. And I am sure that Trump knew this day would come as soon as he was declared the winner.

Trump just wants to make money any which way he can, and we know from Michael Cohen’s testimony that he enjoys cheating people in order to do it. Being POTUS cramps his style. That is why he constantly tweets NO COLLUSION! Trump knows he is corrupt, he knows all the dirt that the Democrats will dig up on him, all the crimes they could charge him with, but he also knows that collusion is not one of them.

Now, I could go into detail about how the RussiaGate story was all just a hoax created by Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan, to deflect blame and attention away from Hillary and the Democratic Party when they were revealed to have perpetrated the greatest election fraud in US history.

I could also go into detail about how the #RussiaGate narrative was then “re-purposed” by Clinton campaign staffers Robby Mook and John Podesta to again deflect blame and attention from their own dismal failure, the incompetence of the campaign and the unpopularity of the candidate.

But we don’t need to get bogged down in all of that, because the simple fact – and one that Michael Moore mentions in his film “11/9″ – is that Trump never wanted to win and he never expected to win. His candidacy was just one giant publicity stunt to prove to NBC that he was more popular than Gwen Stefani.

Trump is not very bright, but he is certainly smart enough to know that he has tons of skeletons in his closet, any one of which could put him in jail if investigated thoroughly.

He is also smart enough to know that he could never count on a “friendly” GOP controlling both Chambers of Congress forever, and that he would be investigated as soon as he took office.

Still, the #RussiaGate hoax has been effective. It has turned otherwise thoughtful and fact-loving Liberals into ignorant hooting hogs like their counterparts on the Right.

For example, although half of Republicans think that 3 million “illegals” voted in 2016, a strong majority of Democrats actually believe that Russia changed the vote tallies in the 2016 election.

Moreover, after #RussiaGate has been promulgated in the mainstream media, MORE Democrats believe this patent falsehood than did at the end of 2016.

Thank you, Rachel Maddow, CNN, NBC, NYT and WaPo.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #4: “Bernie was not an effective legislator and he never accomplished anything in Congress”

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As explained in this article in AlterNet, and even confirmed here in PolitFact, Bernie was known as the “Amendment King” in Congress.

This is important, because actual bills passed in the US Congress are NOT progressive themselves.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #15: “Bernie and Jane are Corrupt – Look at the Burlington College Deal”

The screwy accusation of “bank fraud” started by right-wing smear merchants and now pushed by anti-Bernie Democrats and most recently, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #20: “Bernie claims to be socialist and fight climate change, but flies first class on private jets”

This is a corollary of Troll Smear #19 about Bernie’s houses and net worth. This smear also seeks to portray Bernie as a hypocrite, and tries to do so by making the following “arguments”: (1) Bernie claims to fight Climate Change but spent $300,000 on private air travel, polluting the air, and/or (2) Bernie claims to be a socialist but he insists on flying first class on private jets.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #19: “Bernie is a hypocrite, he has three houses, a net worth over $2 million, and only pays 13% in taxes”

As with all smears directed at Bernie, this is typical in that it does not attack his policies, but rather seeks to disparage him personally, by saying that he “does not practice what he preaches”. The smear seeks to portray Bernie as someone who is cynically preaching to the working class while he himself is a member of the top 1% that he rails against.

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The #NeverBernie Media Narrative Must be Stopped … Here’s How to Do It

These narratives are coming from the #NeverBernie media outlets, and they are designed to sound like “sensible” arguments against a Sanders candidacy. And they, too, must be debunked.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #18: “Bernie also voted for the 1994 Crime Bill”

Bernie speaking against a Crime Bill in 1991

This is also a very cynical and misleading smear that needs to be explained and debunked just as much as any other.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #16: “Bernie has no support among African Americans”

This is perhaps the most hurtful and outrageous attack on Bernie — and is also the one that is most easily debunked.

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Anti-Bernie Smear #17: “Bernie is not a Democrat!”

Centrist Democrats love to pillory Bernie for not being on their Team.

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15 Reasons Why Obama was a Horrible President (UPDATED)

The following are 15 reasons that I believe make Obama one of the worst Presidents in history. The reason he was so bad is that he promised hope and change and delivered the exact opposite, thereby paving the way for Donald Trump.

  1. He inherited military actions in 2 Muslim countries and extended US military campaigns to bombing 7 different Muslim countries — and then bragged about it;
  2. He promised to close Guantanamo and then didn’t — even though he could have at any time ;
  3. He promised to go after the crooks on Wall Street and then refused to prosecute them even though his DOJ had at least 11 criminal referrals from Congress to do so;
  4. He placed 30 Wall Street execs from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other banks on his cabinet — far more than Trump or any other recent President. His policies were designed to benefit Wall Street and the 1%.
  5. He cut Food Stamps by $9 billion;
  6. He took the disastrous Bush Tax Cuts which were due to expire and made them permanent;
  7. He actually pushed Republicans to cut Social Security;
  8. He suspended Habeas Corpus, allowing the US government to detain citizens at any time for as long as they want without having to charge them with a crime;
  9. He used the Espionage Act to jail journalists and whistleblowers — gifting Trump with a dangerous precedent to stifle free speech and the 1st Amendment;
  10. When gifted with a fillibuster-proof majority in Congress, he chose to deliver a Republican health care plan instead of the public option that he had campaigned on. Instead of pressuring conservative Democrats to agree, he actually campaigned against progressive Democrats who were fighting for the public option;
  11. Although he promised to “put on a pair of comfortable shoes” and march with unions on strike, he completely ignored the unions fighting for their lives in Wisconsin and Ohio;
  12. He is responsible for the greatest decline of an American political party in all of history — with Democrats losing 900 State legislative seats, 70% of State legislatures, 2/3 of all governorships.

13. Obama led a recovery that left working families in the lurch while saving his patrons and friends on Wall Street. Moreover, black Americans fared the worst under Obama.

Obama’s recovery all went to the shareholders, owners and managers.

  1. Remember DAPL? Obama was the greatest friend to domestic dirty oil and fracking producers that the oil industry has ever had. In 2015 he lifted the export ban that had prevented domestic oil producers from exporting their product outside of the US, which set off an orgy of pipeline building across North America.

Obama even bragged about this:

“Under my administration … we’ve added enough oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some.” PresidentObama, remarks on oil and gas subsidies, March 29, 2012

No wonder then, that Obama refused to come to the aid of Native American water protectors opposed to DAPL and stood by as protesters were brutalized by militarized Federal and local police.

Militarized police shot water cannons in freezing weather and used rubber bullets and tear gas on peaceful protesters. Obama did nothing.

15. Remember Occupy Wall Street? The movement that first coined the “We are the 99%” rhetorical framing. The protest that started as a result of the 2008 crisis and Obama ’s horrible handling of such. What started in NY spread throughout the country; there were Occupy protests in many cities in every state. Then Obama decided he’d had enough, he dusted off some of the fascist tools Bush had set up and used his DOJ, FBI and DHS to coordinate a brutal strike to crush what even the FBI admitted was a 100% peaceful protest.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund… shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

There was even an FBI plan to ASSASSINATE Occupy leaders “if necessary.”

And to think that Biden (Mr. Law and Order, Lock’em Up, author of the 1994 Crime Bill) would not be equally calculating, organized and vicious in crushing peaceful protests would be sheer lunacy. He would, if anything, be even more merciless than Obama in stifling dissent, and certainly much more brutal and coordinated than the incompetent Trump, who cannot get out of his own way.

Militarized police, coordinated through the FBI Anti-Terrorism force, prepare to attack peaceful protesters in Occupy Oakland.

Indeed, Obama’s coordinated use of Federal anti-terror forces to break up peaceful protests nationwide was PRAISED by Trump when he first had his call with the Governors:

“…this is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster until one day, somebody said, that’s enough and they just went in and wiped them out and that’s the last time we ever heard the name Occupy Wall Street…They were they forever it seemed on wall street. they closed up Wall Street, the financial district of the world, total domination… then after that everything was beautiful and that was the last time we heard about it.”

Whereas Obama martialed the full force of the Federal government to simultaneously attack Occupy protests in 50 cities nationwide, Trump has so far only stuck his Federal nose into 1 or 2 cities, and does not appear to want to go further.

Still, should Trump decide to use Federal force to wipe out the BLM protests in every major city, he will have a blueprint for doing so created by his predecessor, “no drama Obama.”

But the DSAC, created by George W. Bush in 2005, is what is really scary. It is described as a “public-private partnership” between the FBI and over 200 of the largest American companies. Remember, fascism was defined by Mussolini as the “marriage between state and corporate power.”

Obama’s use of the DSAC to spy on and then destroy the Occupy Movement represents a level of fascism FAR beyond anything Trump has done.  

 

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2018 Will Be a Banner Year for Blue Dogs and Conservative Democrats

Democrats are unique in their willingness to sabotage their own legislative priorities in order to win seats.

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To My Fellow Boomers: I Remember 1980, Do You?

I know what it’s like to have your world turned upside-down; soon Republicans and centrists Democrats who cling to the tenets of Reaganomics will see their world rocked by Our Revolution.

 

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Was America Ever This Polarized? Yes, but It Was an Honest Divide

The Vietnam War saw Americans divided, but at least it made sense.

 

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Democrats Must Abandon Identity Politics and Run on Actual Policies

A Return to FDR-Style Progressivism will Return Dems to Electoral Victories for Generations to Come.

 

 

 

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Why are Christian Republicans so Pro-Israel?

Hint: It’s not because they care about the fate of the Jewish people. Quite the opposite in fact …

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The Democratic “Civil War” Has a Lot to Do with Actual War

The struggle is about whether to be the Party of War or the Party of Peace.

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Yes, There is a Civil War Within the Democratic Party — it’s Just Not What You Think

The popular narrative about the Democratic Divide is all wrong and it’s important that we realize the truth — before it is too late.

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“Blue Dogs” Have Destroyed the Democratic Party and They Need to Go. NOW!

The Democratic Party can no longer afford to be held hostage by a conservative group of greedy DINOs.

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For Democrats, the Russian Investigation Is More About Politics than Patriotism

After a year of #RussiaGate, the Democrats have both their base and the entire country right where they want them.

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