"The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

This remark of Bernie Sanders' about Hillary Clinton's emails from last October will probably go down as the quotation of the 2016 election, and it's even more true today than it was a year ago as the cable media continue to give wall-to-wall coverage to the "email controversy" to give her contest with Donald Trump the appearance of closeness in these last two weeks.

The Paranoid Style in 2016 American Politics

In 1964, largely with the Goldwater campaign and the John Birch Society in mind, the Columbia history professor Richard Hofstadter published "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in that November's issue of Harper's. When I read this essay in college ten years later, with Nixon in the White House, it was already a classic that transcended its original time. I was happy to run into it in electronic form on the Harper's website  again last night.

The words "paranoid style" instinctively seem to go with "Trump" as perfectly as words like "vulgarian" and "trumpery" do, but while paranoid style is an ideal frame with which to view the celebration of fear and loathing that we just saw during Trumpapalooza in Cleveland last week, it is not necessarily a style used only by forces on the right.

Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style.

As I watch the news this morning, waiting for the first official appearance of the Clinton-Kaine ticket in advance of next week's Democratic Convention in Philadelphia and the reporters on CNN are reviewing the preparations for mass demonstrations by hardcore Bernie Sanders supporters who are suspicious of any middle-of-the-road "establishment" candidates, I just read the following paragraph worth quoting in full, to which I will add no further comment of my own.

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

Read the whole thing by clicking here. This essay and Hofstadter's book Anti-intellectualism in American Life are among our nation's essential  political documents. 

Part 2 of One Voter's History with "The Lesser of Two Evils"

Part 1, which includes the introduction and election years of 1968, 1972, and 1976 can be read by clicking here.

Now we enter a much darker era in American history...

1980

How to throw away a vote.

I couldn't find any buttons in my own collection from the year that ushered in Reaganism -- or from any of the elections in the Gordon Gekko decade -- so the buttons to the left were grabbed from Google images. (The soundtrack as I write about this year is the Clash's London Calling album.) For most of the 1980 election season I was working as a clerk at the Strand Book Store in the Village and living in Brooklyn, which -- when I see that sentence appearing in print across my screen -- I realize could describe an almost stereotypical media version of a #BernieOrBust voter in 2016. Having lived in California during the time when the right-wing host of Death Valley Days became Governor and started destroying the UC system and the rest of the state's progressive values, I already knew the dangers of Ronald Reagan. However, in the heart of  New York's hipper precincts he was nothing but a joke. We would get celebrities shopping in the Strand all the time; one day before the conventions David Brinkley was checking out and the clerk behind the register asked the anchor of NBC News who he thought would win the election. "I'm afraid it's going to be Reagan," is how I remember his answer. If those weren't the exact words, there was definitely a tone of disappointment and resignation to a fact that most of us saw as outside the realm of possibility (again, reminding me of the conventional wisdom about Donald J. Trump in 2016). Reagan was a joke. We saw him as Goldwater, heading for inevitable defeat in the summer of 1980.

So I don't know how to explain my vote. Between the boring cardigan-wearing Jimmy Carter and the genuinely scary Ronald Reagan, we were also given the choice of John Anderson, who made appearances on SNL and must have had some sort of interesting political ideas that appealed to me, because I pulled the lever for him, just as many Bernie supporters will vote for Gary Johnson this fall. I can attempt to blame the fact that I was distracted. Between September and election day I had left the Strand, got married, started grad school at Columbia, had my best man murdered, quit grad school, and was job hunting on election day, but I should have voted for the merchant of malaise, lowered expectations and cardigans, over Ronnie and John.

It's funny how this writing process election-by-election is jogging my memory, because it wasn't until I got to the last line that I remembered exactly why I didn't vote for Carter, and it has a direct relationship with 2016. I had not voted for Jimmy Carter in the primary; I had voted, of course, for Ted Kennedy! And Ted did not go quietly at the convention in August. As a matter of fact, he gave one of the most memorable speeches in the history of late-twentieth-century American liberalism.

"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Compared to the aura and eloquence of Ted Kennedy, is it any wonder that Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis failed to inspire even many in their own party in these elections of the 1980s? It still seems tragic to me that neither Bobby nor Ted ever moved into the White House. That being said, once Ted (or Bernie) was out, we should have given all our energy to electing Jimmy (or Hillary) over Reagan (or Trump), no matter how uninspiring we personally found the man from Plains (or the woman from Chicago).


1984

They were obviously trying to capture
some of that People's Party magic
with this design.

Here we are in the dark ages Orwell warned us about in 1948. (The soundtrack is Tom Waits' Heartattack and Vine.) We're also entering the darkest period in my political life. I have no buttons or stickers from this period at all. I voted for Mondale and Ferraro in 1984, but I did so with very little excitement. If the Democrats hadn't put a woman on the ticket, I might have just sat it out. I had moved out of Brooklyn and down to the Jersey Shore, largely because of crime; I was commuting to an office job in the city as a young married guy who was worried about his first mortgage; I was prime recruitment material for the GOP and people were turning into Republicans all around me. Anyone who has ever seen any zombie movie can imagine the atmosphere. When were they going to get me?

I don't remember Ronald Reagan's reelection ever being seriously in doubt and I'm convinced that Donald Trump's visceral hatred of "low energy" candidates must come from memories of Fritz Mondale and the next Democrat who followed him to the slaughter in 1988.


1988

... or not. I really can't remember.

"Maybe it is just the time of year, or maybe it's the time of man." (The soundtrack as I write this is not Joni Mitchell's 'Woodstock' but Keith Jarrett's Dark Intervals.) Maybe it was the fact that I was approaching my mid-thirties, commuting to a conventional job, and living the expected conventional life, or maybe it was the every-man-for-himself Wall Street Zeitgeist, but for whatever reason this was the most conservative period of my life. I'm trying not to avoid a very dark fact here, but once again I really can't remember if I actually flipped a lever for W's daddy when it came right down to it.

The Democratic front runners were in rough shape after Gary Hart fell to a sex scandal and  people still remembered Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" statements from 1984. The convention was a mess, with Ann Richards' "Silver Foot In His Mouth" speech being the only shining moment; it's also remembered for the worst and longest keynote speech delivered by a young Bill Clinton.

Dukakis did nothing for me on a gut level. I didn't mind his silly ride in the tank, but I hated the way he purposely fled from the word "Liberal" until a lukewarm acceptance of the label in the last days of the campaign. I wasn't a fan of his wonkiness and the fact that he proudly stated at one point that he never read fiction (which I was writing at the time). I know it's shallow, but there are a lot of people rejecting Hillary Clinton this year for shallow reasons, or voting for Trump for even shallower reasons. 1984 never struck me as a choice between the lesser of two evils; it seemed more like the lesser of two nonentities.



I'm going to end Part Two here, giving the decade of greed its own section, but I have to finish on a positive note. Any flirtations that I might have had in the 1980s with the Dark Side of American politics came to an end with the birth of my son in late 1989 and the beginning of the first George Bush's first Iraq War in early 1990. Those events snapped me back to my liberal peacenik senses for good.


Click Here for Part Three: 1992, 1996, 2000

One Voter's History with "The Lesser Of Two Evils" -- Part One

I began thinking about this blog post on the day that Bernie Sanders formally endorsed Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire earlier this week. I thought this might be a short post talking about how I supported Bernie from before his announcement last May until this April 26th when it was obvious to me that my candidate no longer had a chance. If I were younger I might be a #BernieOrBust dead ender now, so I thought it was worth trying to examine that impulse. As much as I would have hated at 18 or 25 to have been given a lecture by a 60-year-old man, I need to write this; I hope it doesn't come off as a lecture, but as more of a case history. It seems necessary because Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate I've seen in almost fifty years of closely following politics; not only does he need to lose, but he needs to lose as decisively as possible.

I thought I'd be writing a little bit about 1972 when I supported Dr. Spock of the People's Party -- because I thought him more ideologically perfect than George McGovern -- and contrast that with the very first election where my guy won the primaries and the general election, which didn't come until Barack Obama's victory in 2008. However, when I started refreshing my memory by digging through a box of old buttons this afternoon, it started to seem as if I might have something to say about lesser-than-two-evilism in every presidential election from 1968 until 2016. So I think this will be at least a two- or three-part blog post.

1968

I was in eighth grade in the San Fernando Valley during the events of 1968 (I'm listening to After Bathing At Baxter's to complete the mood as I write this). By the time the primaries reached us in California, I was definitely more of a Bobby Kennedy than Gene McCarthy supporter, so on that June primary night in Los Angeles...

It's fucking awful. After all these years it comes flooding back. We knew a young woman, our old babysitter, who was at the Ambassador Hotel during his victory celebration on the night when...

He would have been our president, you know. There's not a fucking doubt about it. I can still remember the people of Los Angeles all driving with their headlights on during daylight (a very rare thing then) on the day when he lay in the hospital dying, as a way of silently saying "Pray for Bobby." The prayers didn't work. I saw adults crying.

In retrospect I have hard feelings about the nomination being taken by the party establishment for Humphrey from the remaining peace candidates McCarthy and McGovern, but I think it's mostly in retrospect. I don't have any first-hand memories of watching the police riots in Chicago; I was camping in the High Sierras without television or radio during the convention. I had no problem wearing a Humphrey/Muskie button during the fall. I don't remember having any sense of selling out or choosing "the lesser of two evils." Hubert Humphrey would have been preferable to Richard Nixon then, almost as clearly as Hillary Clinton is preferable to Donald Trump now.

Digging through my buttons, I found two other candidates that I was more excited about than Hubert. Alan Cranston ran for Senator in 1968 with an explicitly anti-war message, as can be seen from the peace symbol on his button. I definitely wore this with more passion than any HHH button. The button next to it is from Tom Bradley's first run for mayor of Los Angeles against Sam Yorty (in a Democrat vs. Democrat non-partisan election). He didn't win that first race in 1969, but it's hard to overstate how revolutionary it felt for an African-American man to be favored to win the top job in a major American city (and it shouldn't be surprising that he lost in this first attempt).


1972

For the 1972 election I was a senior in high school with hair down my back, which I was careful to tell everyone was a political and not a fashion statement. (The soundtrack for this election year is Sticky Fingers.) I was living in New Jersey and I was the Student Mobilization Committee organizer in my school for National Peace Action Coalition anti-war marches to D.C. and New York in 1971 and '72. When George McGovern first announced his candidacy, I signed up and did canvassing for him in suburban neighborhoods (where I was shocked to find registered Democrats who told me they were actually supporting George Wallace living near me!). McGovern did what any candidate needs to when trying to get a major-party nomination, appealing to more than the party's left-most peacenik wing, and somewhere along the way he lost me.
I read an article about Benjamin Spock's presidential campaign with the People's Party in The New York Times Magazine and I wrote to the paper to see if I could get an address to contact the party (it's hard to remember how hard it was to get this type of information before the internet). The article's author Judith Viorst wrote back to me with their address and I became very involved, meeting Dr. Spock and portraying him in our school's mock election (which was won handily by Richard Nixon). I remember feeling very proud of my ideological purity as did my fellow students who represented the candidates from the Socialist Workers and Socialist Labor parties. We should have ALL been backing McGovern, of course, but we were young and not prone to compromise. Bernie Sanders, who was an adult and a new resident of Vermont at the time, belonged to a party that also supported Dr. Spock and the People's Party. He should have known better. In the choice between McGovern and Nixon, there wasn't a whiff of choosing "the lesser of two evils"; one was evil and one was George McGovern.

Having Nixon back in the White House allowed those of us with a passion for demonstrating in streets to travel to D.C. on Inauguration Day 1973 with our sense of righteous anger about the war and all of the other abuses of the Nixon White House intact. We could raise our fists and take over the area around the Washington Monument with Vietcong flags. It reminds me of Susan Sarandon's recent statement about how a Trump election might do more to hasten some sort of "revolution" than the election of Hillary would. But Sarandon's not seventeen. That was my excuse in 1972. She's even older than me and she should know better. Without sounding like an old scold, I want to tell the young #BernieOrBust voters that I know what it's like to be caught up in a "more radical than thou" frame of mind. I know what it's like not to want to compromise a single principle, but I don't feel I (or any of us) have that luxury this year.

1976
This was the first year I was old enough to vote, and as a university student I was more concerned with Japanese literature, German philosophy, and the Grateful Dead than I was with Jimmy Carter. (The current soundtrack in this room is side four of Steal Your Face.) Sadly, I honestly can't remember if I even voted in this first year of eligibility, though I did find this Eugene McCarthy button in this afternoon's treasure hunt. I have always loved Gene and I wrote here last June about his similarties to Bernie, but I honestly can't remember whether I voted for him, for Jimmy, or for no one during the Bicentennial year, though I do remember being happy that Jimmy Carter beat Jerry Ford.

As far as the lesser-of-two-evils theme applies to 1976, I don't remember thinking of either Jimmy or Jerry as evil. Ford had beaten the very evil Ronald Reagan at his convention, and the only act of Ford's I remember disagreeing with was his pardon of Nixon. I like Jimmy Carter a lot as an ex-President, but ...


Well, I might as well end part one of this on that undramatic note, so you'll all be on the edges of your seats waiting for the 1980 story of Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, and John Anderson ... oh yeah, and Jimmy Carter too.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO.

I'm With Her

I was almost ready to type this headline last week after Hillary Clinton won in New York (despite my enthusiastic vote for Bernie Sanders), but with her wins tonight in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, my first choice for president in 2016 does not have a path to the nomination, despite taking Rhode Island tonight (and keeping Connecticut close as I write this). It's also clear that Donald Trump, after easily sweeping all five Republican primaries tonight, will be the GOP nominee. Beating someone as dangerously xenophobic, egotistic, bombastic, and simplistic as Donald Trump is too important this year. And Hillary Clinton's supporters lined up behind my first choice Barack Obama in 2008, so it's time for me to return the favor.

I've been a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders on this blog and at @TrueBlueLiberal on Twitter since he announced his candidacy last May; I changed my registration to Democrat immediately, and contributed to his campaign, and voted for him in New York last Tuesday, but now I'm With Her until November.

A Primary Election Day In New York That Matters!

Around the city the polls opened at  six am, but in my county they're open at noon until nine pm, so I have to wait until after work to vote for Bernie. 

It's going to be a long day in the office. 

"People now, through this campaign I think, are sensing that they're not alone, and that's a big deal."

Take a walk through Brooklyn with Bernie Sanders and Mark Ruffalo on the eve of the New York primary:

I'm so glad that I finally get to vote tomorrow in a meaningful election (even though it required some advance planning last May to do so).

Proof that Donald Trump never meant to take his joke as far as New York.

It's obvious that Donald J. Trump grossly underestimated the stupidity of the Republican primary voters. His children made it clear this week that he never expected to be a viable candidate when the calendar reached April 19. If he had expected to be one of the survivors from the initial field of 17 GOP hopefuls when the New York primary arrived, wouldn't Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump (or someone on their father's staff) have made some effort to find out what was involved in making them eligible to vote in the Republican primary?

"They had a long time to register and they were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn't, they didn't register in time, so they feel very, very guilty...But it's fine. I mean I understand that. I think they have to register a year in advance and they didn't. So Eric and Ivanka I guess won't be voting." --Donald Trump phone interview on Fox News, April 11, 2016

When Bernie Sanders (who is not my father) announced that he was running for president on May 26th of last year, I went to the New York State Board of Elections website to start the lengthy process of changing my registration from "No Party" to "Democratic Party" almost immediately. Wouldn't the children of an actual presidential candidate have done the same? And wouldn't that actual presidential candidate have a better idea about his home state's election laws than "I think they have to register a year in advance"?

This is a publicity stunt and ego trip that got completely out of hand, and now he's trying to figure out the rules as he goes along.

~~~~~~~~~~
Update 12:32EDT, 4/14/16:
Now we find out a top Trump surrogate and attorney Michael Cohen can't vote for his boss either, due to the fact he's registered as a Democrat in New York.

Birdie Sanders

On a day in which the internet was aflame with the National Enquirer's #CruzSexScandal and Donald Trump's relentless misogyny, I got home from work to find this video from today's Bernie Sanders rally in Portland, Oregon.

"I think...I think there may be some symbolism here.
I know it doesn't look like it,
but that bird is really a dove
asking us for world peace. No more wars."
-- Bernie Sanders, 25 March 2016

While Bernie Sanders gives the little avian attention hog a loving smile, I can't help picturing Donald Trump flinching backward and letting one of his bald goons "take care" of the little feathered creature. That, of course, would never happen. Birds are far from stupid. Birds know kind people and they know to give the unkind a wide berth.

They've all come to look for America in Bernie Sanders' new ad...

For Those Of Us Who Don't Live In Iowa Or New Hampshire...

...here is the first Bernie Sanders television advertisment:

Further Proof that Polls May Tell Us NOTHING in 2016

In some ways, this post is just a follow-up to the "Political Horse Race Polling Is Officially Dead" entry from last week, but I couldn't resist bringing up the subject again after seeing this "Majority say Clinton won debate" headline on The Hill today. The debate winner has been a topic of debate on Twitter since the debate ended on Tuesday night and the CNN crowd of talking heads all declared Hillary Clinton the winner while their live online poll showed Bernie Sanders maintaining at least a 50 to 60 point lead.

My screen grab of the CNN/Facebook online poll at 10:50pm on Tuesday, just before closing statements.
Bernie Sanders' 78%  was far from the largest lead he had, and I never saw it dip below 75%.

The CNN poll was not the only poll going on during the debate, and they all showed a Sanders lead far beyond any normal margin of error; I wasn't the only one grabbing screen shots during the debate.

Polls show the people believe @BernieSanders won #DemDebate, trust the people not mainstream media! #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/raSuFm9PwN

— Obsrvtns of Dvnc (@AtBestIsKorny) October 14, 2015

@BernieArtists @BernieSanders pic.twitter.com/XSN2OM7LYQ

— Highcentered (@Highcentered) October 14, 2015

And it wasn't only instant online polls, it was focus groups as well that were uniformly leaning in Bernie's direction. Here, for example, is Frank Luntz on Fox News with a group of 28 Florida Democrats, half of whom were for Hillary before the debate began:

"Poor Jim Webb." -- Megyn Kelly

So how did the "first scientific poll" about the debate reaction manage to come up with a 53%-33% Clinton win over Sanders? Well, first of all, unlike the screen grabs up above, it took place in the two days AFTER the debate, i.e., after the corporate media's barrage of pro-Clinton spin. Second, it involved "Survey Monkey" participants, so you KNOW it's correct.

If this were going to be the only debate, it might be to Hillary Clinton's advantage to have all the official spin spun in her direction, but with five more debates to follow, it may work against her; she may be expected to dominate the next debates just as she "dominated" the first.

Bernie in the Lion's Den

In case you missed Bernie Sanders' Rosh Hashanah speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, here's the C-Span video in its entirety:


You can watch this as an antidote to the poison that will be spewed at you from tonight's CNN Debate between Donald Trump and the nine little anti-Trumps.

The Donald Trump Show Continues on CNN Tonight (this time with sidekicks)

The Fairness Doctrine may no longer be law, and the Republican Party has made a point of opposing it, but, simply to be fair to the other fifteen Republican Presidential candidates who are not on CNN 24 hours a day, Donald J. Trump should not be allowed to speak at tonight's CNN Debate at Saint Ronald Reagan of Tampico's Holy Library (and decommissioned Air Force One hangar).

I don't think I'm overstating it too much to say that CNN has become The Donald Trump Network in the past couple of months. I have not flipped over to that section of the dial in weeks without either seeing a live Trump speech, analysis of his latest inflammatory remark, or phone interview with the man himself.

So, I flip to #CNN for a second and look who's doing his Il Duce impression during yet another live speech... pic.twitter.com/rQ9bBI8OAC

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 15, 2015

It was all well and good to joke about GOP debates as clown circuses in 2008, 2012, and earlier in 2016, but now that the chief clown is driving the Republican bus, it seems a little more serious, and dangerous, than that. And with the Fairness Doctrine dead in spirit as well as law, the candidate standing in the middle of the stage tonight will continue to be the center of attention. I expect more questions about the horse race, and what the other candidates think about Donald Trump, than about today's good Obamacare news, or about the death penalty on a day when Oklahoma may be executing an innocent man.
Issues?
If CNN wanted to talk about issues, they'd be showing Bernie Sanders' speeches.

Bernie Sanders' Perfect Campaign Ad Was Already Filmed (in 1912).

Here is "The Old Way and The New." This 1912 film is the first known use of moving pictures in a political campaign. It promotes the new way of using small $1 campaign donors behind Democrat Woodrow Wilson against the old way of cartoonish oligarchs' $1,000,000 donations supporting Republican William Howard Taft and ex-Republican Teddy Roosevelt (Bullmoose).

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.


No need to adjust your sound. This is a silent film.

Oligarchy By The Numbers

With billionaires trying to buy candidates and control election results in both major US political parties with the legal support of a pro-business Supreme Court, the word "oligarchy" is getting thrown around again as we approach the 2016 election. So I found these sentences relevant when I ran across them in my morning reading...

"So the long period in which towns prospered, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was also one in which the sense of urban community was most highly developed. In some respects the notion of a community is specious, however, since the richer townspeople known as 'the better sort' created an oligarchy of power concentrated in a small network of families. In Norwich 60 per cent of the wealth had devolved into the hands of 6 per cent of the population..." --Peter Ackroyd, Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors ["page" 139 of the Kindle edition]

Yeah, you say, but that was the 1100's and 1200's. That was medieval England. Everyone knows that medieval societies were based on hierarchies of extreme inequality, not like today when the top 1% are expected to control more than half of the world's wealth by 2016 and when the top 0.1% of Americans control as much wealth as the bottom 90% and all of these numbers are trending quickly toward even greater inequality.

So if 60% of the wealth being controlled by 6% of the people was defined as 'oligarchy' back in the 12th and 13th centuries, we may actually need a new word for our extreme 21st-century phenomenon.

Let's Get 100,000 of Us Out There Tonight to #FeelTheBern

CLICK HERE if it's before 7pm EDT on July 29 to find a Bernie Sanders meeting near you tonight. 

When I signed up for mine, I was participant 50 of 50 at that location and many of my other local meetings were already full. As of 10:10am EDT this morning there are already 98,975 RSVPs to these historic meetings around the country.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE: At noon the RSVP counter was refreshed to show 100,196 RSVPs.

The TBL Sidebar Poll Is Showing a Trend

I expected that the supporters of Bernie Sanders might make a good showing when I put up my first 2016 Presidential Poll in the sidebar, but I wasn't expecting him to open up a quick 80% gap over Hillary Clinton.

Does anyone see any excitement for the "inevitable" establishment candidate for the 2016 Democratic nomination?

(NOTE: If you're looking at trueblueliberal.org on a mobile device, you'll need to scroll down and click on "View Web Version" if you want to see and vote in the sidebar poll.)

"What transpired in Charleston, South Carolina last night was not just a tragedy, it was an act of terror." --Senator Bernie Sanders

I've been raving all day on Twitter about the fact that the terrorism in Charleston needs to be called terrorism. I'm not good at checking all my email boxes though, so I just found this email from Bernie Sanders from over six hours ago. I get a lot of political emails and I've never shared one before (honestly, I don't even read the vast majority of them). If nothing else, read this for Bernie's first sentence and the last. His first sentence is the clearest statement I've seen from a major politician that this was terrorism. His final sentence contains a link for donations to the Mother Emanuel AME Church (even though he needs the money as the only major party candidate rejecting money from billionaires and SuperPACs)...

Dear ------ -

What transpired in Charleston, South Carolina last night was not just a tragedy, it was an act of terror.

Nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This senseless violence fills me with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness.

This hateful killing is a horrific reminder that, while we have made important progress in civil rights for all of our people, we are far from eradicating racism.

The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one that has been attacked, burned, and rebuilt throughout its 200 year history. While their community mourns now, they will rebuild, and they will emerge stronger than before.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and their congregation. But we can add our actions to our prayers. The families and the community that have been hurt so very badly by this brutality need our help. Let us stand with them in their time of mourning.

You can help by making a donation to the Emanuel AME Church community today.

Thank you,

Bernie Sanders

Time for Neil Young to Write a Cease and Desist Letter

I've asked this before about Paul Ryan and RATM and Chris Christie and Springsteen, but don't Republicans realize that songs have lyrics?

In the middle of this morning's meandering speech at Trump Tower, Donald Trump finished the sentence "I am officially running for President of the United States and we are going to make our country great again" and immediately looked up toward someone in the ceiling and gestured for music. The recognizable guitar riff from Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" played for a few seconds before the Donald went back to scapegoating Mexico, Mexicans, and Obamacare.

We got a thousand points of light

For the homeless man

We got a kinder, gentler,

Machine gun hand

We got department stores

and toilet paper

Got styrofoam boxes

for the ozone layer

Got a man of the people,

says keep hope alive

Got fuel to burn,

got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin' in the free world...

Does he know the song has words other than those in the chorus? These kinds of misunderstandings have a long GOP history going back at least as far as Reagan praising Springsteen's "Born in the USA," but maybe Trump really is as smart as he thinks he is; maybe he is using Neil's lyrics to indirectly attack yesterday's new candidate, Jeb!, by going after his father's kinder and gentler thousand points of light?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE @ 8pm EDT: Not only has Neil Young's manager Elliot Roberts confirmed that The Donald didn't have permission to misuse Neil's anthem this morning, but that Neil Young has endorsed the anti-Trump, Bernie Sanders.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the moment he points at the unseen minion in the ceiling to play Neil's riff: