March 10 and 11, 2017

News and Views

THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOOTAGE, AND GOOD NEWS, TOO. I THINK THE AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE TRUMP IS FORMALLY CONFRONTED AND/OR EVEN IMPEACHED IS DWINDLING. OUR MASSIVE GOVERNMENT AND THE CITIZENS TOGETHER WILL BE DIFFICULT FOR SOMEBODY LIKE TRUMP TO TOPPLE.

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/bipartisan-calls-for-evidence-if-it-exists-to-back-pres-trump-s-allegations-895316035625

VIDEO ONLY


FOR SOME REASON I CAN’T FIND A PRINT VERSION OF THIS STORY, BUT I DID FIND ONE ON SENATORS REGARDING THE ISSUE FROM TWO DAYS AGO.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/08/bipartisan-senators-demand-proof-trumps-wiretapping-allegation

Published on
Wednesday, March 08, 2017
byCommon Dreams
Bipartisan Senators Demand Proof of Trump's Wiretapping Allegation
By Andrea Germanos, staff writer


'We would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously. We would be equally alarmed to learn that a court found enough evidence of criminal activity or contact with a foreign power to legally authorize a wiretap'

Photograph -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), asked the FBI and Department of Justice to provide information to back up President Donald Trump's claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped him. (Photo: Center for American Progress/flickr/cc)

U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Wednesday sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI asking for evidence to back up President Donald Trump's allegation that President Barack Obama wiretapped him before the November election.

Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to make the claim, without providing evidence, and on Sunday the White House asked Congress to investigate.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday also presented no evidence to back up the president's allegation, but said, "there's no question that something happened."

In their letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana J. Boente and FBI Director James Comey, the senators are requesting proof.

Graham is chair and Whitehouse is ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which, they note, has oversight of the Department of Justice's criminal division, which obtains warrants for wiretaps.

"Therefore," they write,

we request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders—redacted as necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods that may be compromised by disclosure, and to protect any ongoing investigations—related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower. We will be glad to review any such applications and orders once they are disclosed, and proceed as appropriate with the oversight the President has requested.

As Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, we would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously. We would be equally alarmed to learn that a court found enough evidence of criminal activity or contact with a foreign power to legally authorize a wiretap of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower. We look forward to your response.

Graham also said to CNN Wednesday that he would subpoena the intelligence agencies for evidence.

Also on Wednesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, "the primary House committee of jurisdiction over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Wiretap Act," sent a letter (pdf) to Comey calling for a briefing on the wiretap allegation as well as Russia's alleged interference into the election.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has denied the wiretapping claim, an Obama spokesperson called it "unequivocally false," and Comey reportedly urged the DOJ to refute it.

But, Brain Barrett writes at Wired, "If federal authorities did have cause to listen in on Trump Tower, though, and they provided enough evidence for a FISA court to approve the snooping, Obama is not the one who ought to worry."

And "if the allegation is not true and is unsupported by evidence, that too should be a scandal on a major scale," argues Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University. "This is the kind of accusation that, taken as part of a broader course of conduct, could get the current president impeached."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-voters_us_58c1ac90e4b054a0ea68fa17
POLITICS 03/09/2017 03:55 pm ET | Updated 6 hours ago
Bernie Sanders Has A Plan To Win Back Trump Voters
By Sam Stein

The Vermont senator says the Democratic Party has shown “enormous neglect” resulting in “an ultimate failure.”

At a time when Congress is debating a vast overhaul of the nation’s health care system, a hardened approach to refugees and immigration in general, and links between the current president and interests in Russia, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) finds himself increasingly outside the Beltway, in states and towns won by President Donald Trump.

Since January, the Vermont senator has stopped in Mississippi, Kansas and Michigan. Early next week, he’s heading to one of the poorest counties in America, McDowell County, West Virginia, which Trump carried by a ratio of 3-to-1. There, he will tape a show with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

Sanders views these enclaves as critical for the future of the Democratic Party and, by extension, the country. They are, he argues, the places where Democrats have shown “an enormous amount of neglect.”

“The truth is, and I think anyone who objectively assesses the situation has to appreciate, that the model the Democrats have followed for the last 10 to 20 years has been an ultimate failure,” Sanders said in an interview with The Huffington Post from his Senate office in Washington.

“That’s just the objective evidence. We are taking on a right-wing extremist party whose agenda is opposed time after time and on issue after issue by the vast majority of the American people. Yet we have lost the White House, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, almost two-thirds of the governors’ chairs and close to 900 legislative seats across this country. How can anyone not conclude that the Democratic agenda and approach has been a failure?”


YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a federal contract workers rally on Feb. 16 to celebrate Andrew Puzder’s decision to withdraw from consideration to be secretary of labor. Sanders has also been speaking to crowds outside the Beltway lately.
Sanders, of course, is not a Democrat, despite caucusing with Democrats in the Senate for years and running in the party’s 2016 presidential primary. And often his diagnosis of Democrats’ failures strikes those who are in the party as tinged with condescension. But his appeal to a certain class of voters, including those who abandoned the party in favor of Trump, is undeniable, to the point that leadership moved quickly to mirror his playbook and curry his favor. This past summer, the party adopted its most progressive platform ever, with many policies echoing Sanders’ proposals. Following November’s election, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gave Sanders a spot on his leadership team and endorsed his favored candidate ― Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) ― for Democratic National Committee chairman.

But platforms are largely ceremonial. And leadership roles matter little when your party is out of power. So Sanders has adopted what he sees as an “outside strategy” to complement his new status as an inside player.

“At the end of the day, being in the minority here in the Senate, the minority in the House, having a right-wing Republican president, the only way we are going to win this ― and I think we can win this ― is when millions of people stand up, especially in states that Trump carried, and say, ‘Excuse me. We did not elect you to be president to throw us off of health care. We did not elect you to cut back on the child care we desperately need,’” he said.

As he barnstorms America, much of what Sanders is advocating has a familiar ring. It’s the pitch he’s used for decades and the one that elevated his candidacy during last year’s primary. There is talk of raising the minimum wage, making public universities tuition-free, the need to protect and expand health care access and the encouragement of unionization efforts, including at the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. There is a distinctly “What’s the matter with Kansas?” feel to it all, premised on the concept that many people who voted for Trump did so against their own self-interest.

And Sanders has a theory as to why. Part of it, he explains, is that Trump has effectively turned one set of voters (working-class whites) against another (immigrants and refugees) to the point the real culprits (bottom-line-driven CEOs) skate by without reprimand or punishment.

“That’s what demagogues have always done,” he says of Trump. “You pick on the weak and the powerless and you turn a majority against them and you deflect attention from the real causes of the problems that we face.”

But there is also a personal element motivating Sanders’ travel too. The crowds he’s drawing aren’t the stadium-sized ones of his primary campaign. But they are the same sets of voters: individuals who left the Democratic Party, may never have associated with it at all or were never politically active in the first place.

If Democrats are to regain power ― and if Sanders is to run for the White House again ― success will be predicated on getting this segment of the population engaged. That can be done from D.C., and it can take the form of resistance to Trump. But the bet the senator is making is that it’s more enduring if you go to where the people are with an impassioned, populist pitch.

“I think from a moral perspective as well as good politics that you cannot just be defensive,” he said. “You need a proactive agenda that brings people together to fight for a new America.”

Video by JM Rieger and Jessica Carro.

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http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/10/bernie-sanders-has-plan-defeat-delusional-trump
Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Defeat 'Delusional' Trump

President Donald Trump 'lies all of the time,' Sanders said in an interview with the Guardian, and does so 'to undermine the foundations of American democracy'
byAndrea Germanos, staff writer
Published on
Friday, March 10, 2017
byCommon Dreams

Photograph -- U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaking at a rally in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 16, 2016. (Photo: Lorie Shaull/flickr/cc)

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has offered a blistering critique of President Donald Trump, calling the real estate mogul "delusional" and a "pathological liar" whose goal "to undermine American democracy" can be pushed back by engaging the segments of voters that Trump's campaign capitalized on.

Speaking Thursday to CNN's "Situation Room," Sanders addressed Trump's allegation less than a week ago (which has created an ongoing "conundrum" for the White House) that former President Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower to be wiretapped. That claim, Sanders said, "just adds to the delusional statements we hear from President Trump," referencing also the "total nonsense" from Trump that 3-5 million people voted illegally in November and that he saw people in New Jersey celebrate the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11.

It's not the first time the senator has used "delusional" to describe Trump, and in a new interview, Sanders repeats another criticism of the president: that he frequently lies.

In fact, he "lies all of the time," Sanders said to the Guardian, and does so "to undermine the foundations of American democracy" by doing things like "making wild attacks against the media," saying "that virtually everything that mainstream media says is a lie," making "wild accusations" like that of millions voting illegally on Election Day, and disparaging the George W. Bush-appointed judge who blocked his first Muslim ban. With acts like this, Sanders said, Trump purports to be "the only person in America who stands for the American people, the only person in America who is telling the truth, the only person in America who gets it right."

Trump's goal, Sanders said to the Guardian, "is to end up as leader of a nation which has moved in a significant degree toward authoritarianism where the president of the United States has extraordinary powers, far more so than our constitution has provided for or the values of the American people support." To fight back, Sanders says, "very conservative Republican colleagues who believe in democracy [...] have got to join us in resistance."

But to understand how the country got to a place of having a president Trump—as well as to strategize how to boot his CEO-profiting agenda—Sanders explains to the Guardian and in a new interview with the Huffington Post, is to understand the failures of the Democratic Party (the party with which he caucuses) over the last several decades.

Huffington Post's senior politics editor Sam Stein writes:

Since January, the Vermont senator has stopped in Mississippi, Kansas, and Michigan. Monday he's heading to one of the poorest counties in America, McDowell County, West Virginia, which Trump carried by a ratio of 3-to-1. Sanders views these enclaves as critical for the future of the Democratic Party and, by extension, the country. They are, he argues, the places where Democrats have shown "an enormous amount of neglect."

Sanders argues "that Trump has effectively turned one set of voters (working-class whites) against another (immigrants and refugees) to the point the real culprits (bottom-line-driven CEOs) skate by without reprimand or punishment," Stein writes.

It's a strategy Sanders says is employed by "demagogues"—a comparison the United Nations human rights chief has noted.

To resist Trump, and bring to (and bring back to) to the Democratic Party those neglected by political elites, what's necessary is "a proactive agenda that brings people together to fight for a new America," Sanders said.

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-smashes-gops-disaster-heath-care-plan-right-pieces
Bernie Sanders Smashes GOP's 'Disaster' Heath Care Plan Right to Pieces
"It's a massive tax break for the top 2 percent."
By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet March 10, 2017

After six long years of pressing for Obamacare's repeal, Congressional Republicans finally unveiled their replacement this week. And while the bill has been heavily criticized by both parties, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is reluctant to even call it a health care bill.

"When we look at what the Republicans are doing, it should not be seen as a healthcare legislation, essentially it should be seen for what it is... a massive tax break of $275 billion for the top 2 percent," Sanders told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday night.

Sanders, a staunch advocate for universal healthcare, has spent much of the year on a red state tour, where the Obamacare repeal is set to hurt people the most.

"You have the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association saying that this will be a disaster for the American people. You have the AARP saying, 'If you are 64 years of age and you're making $25,000 a year, your premiums are going to go up by $7,000," Sanders said.

The Vermont Senator also echoed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's statement made Thursday, calling the GOP proposal "Robin Hood in Reverse."

"[House Republicans would be] throwing five to 10 million people off of health insurance, raising premiums for low-income and working-class people, defunding Planned Parenthood, denying over 2 million women the right to get health care where they want," Sanders noted. "But the good news for all of you who are watching: if you're in the top 2%, Republicans are there for you."

As late as mid-January, Donald Trump offered little insight into what his Obamacare replacement plan would look like.

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said.

"We have a Republican House, Republican Senate and a Republican president, and if they can't get their act together, they're going to be held accountable," Sanders said. "They have told us for eight years how terrible the Affordable Care Act is, and yet we have added 20 million people to the ranks of the insured."

Sanders called the GOP's plan "a disaster."

"We should remind everybody that the United States study is the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all people," Sanders added. "We spend far more per capita for the very dysfunctional system we have, and Republicans want to make that worse."

Watch: Wolf Blitzer one on one with Bernie Sanders 3/9/17

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.



THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BIOGRAPHICAL FILM. TAKE A LOOK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djsara2WXNc
The Secret Life of Bob Hope