September 9, 2017


News and Views


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-irma-track-update-florida-path-live-09-09-2017/
CBS/AP September 9, 2017, 6:00 PM
Hurricane-force wind gusts recorded in Florida Keys as Irma approaches -- live updates

Hurricane Irma's winds have started whipping Florida as the storm spins on a new track that puts Tampa -- not Miami -- in its crosshairs.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Saturday evening that Irma, a Category 3 storm, had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. Forecasters expected the storm to pick strength back up as it moves away from Cuba and toward the Florida Keys.

Irma's powerful center was located about 90 miles southeast of Key West, Florida, as of 11 p.m. The storm left at least 27 people dead across the Caribbean.

Meteorologists say damaging winds from Irma's outer bands were already arriving in South Florida. The storm was expected to reach the Florida Keys on Sunday morning before moving up the state's Gulf Coast.

"Life-threatening storm surge expected in the Florida keys and the west coast of Florida," the Hurricane Center warned in its 11 p.m. Eastern advisory.

Follow along below for live updates on the storm. All times are Eastern unless otherwise noted.

See the website for a continuing list of updates in particular locations in Florida, and for ongoing live video coverage.



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/09/07/planet-rages-fires-and-storms-ire-aimed-murderous-climate-denialism
Published on Thursday, September 07, 2017
by Common Dreams
As Planet Rages With Fires and Storms, Ire Aimed at Murderous Climate Denialism
"It is past time to call out Trump and all climate deniers for this crime against humanity. No more treating climate denial like an honest difference of opinion."
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer

Satellite Image -- Satellite image of Hurricane Irma when the island of Barbuda was in the center of the storm's eye. (Photo: NASA/NOAA/UWM-CIMSS, William Straka III)

As Houston begins its long recovery from Hurricane Harvey, epic wildfires burn throughout the western U.S., and Irma charges toward Florida after devastating several Caribbean islands, while two other storms build strength in the Atlantic basin, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is among those helping to expose the deadly consequences of climate change denialism by claiming threats posed by such global warming-related events are being exaggerated.

"One thing that the science is very clear on is that the strongest storms will get stronger because of global warming, because the oceans are warmer."
—Michael Mann, climate scientist

And so while climate activist Bill McKibben on Thursday morning warned that "we've never had anything quite like" the current fires and storms now being experienced, it was The Nation's Mark Hertsgaard who argues, in a piece titled "Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us," that those who have made it public policy to downplay the threat of man-made climate change should be held to account for the deaths that such denialism is now causing.

During his show on Tuesday, Limbaugh told his listeners: "There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it.... All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and dangerous, and it's mission accomplished, agenda advanced."

He also alleged that reporting about hurricanes results from a "symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media" that "revolves around money," adding: "The media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they're getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers."

But these comments—which arrived as people in the Caribbean made emergency preparations for landfall and officials in Florida began announcing mandatory evacuations—were immediately decried as irresponsible.

"To state the obvious, these are potentially dangerous comments from Limbaugh, who is based in Palm Beach, Fla.," writes Callum Borchers for the Washington Post. "He is encouraging listeners who might be in Irma's path not to take seriously the official guidance disseminated through the media."

With evacuations underway in southeast Florida on Thursday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Service warned that Irma will likely "maintain most of its current intensity" while it approaches the state, and "the threat of dangerous major hurricane impacts in Florida continues to increase."

"Hurricane Irma's epic size is being fueled by global warming," Michael Le Page wrote for New Scientist on Wednesday. "Hurricane Irma has the strongest winds of any hurricane to form in the open Atlantic, with sustained wind speeds of 295 kph," and "Irma could yet grow stronger."

"So why did Irma grow so strong? Most likely because climate change is making Atlantic waters ever warmer," Le Page continued. "Tropical cyclones are fueled by warm surface waters."

Climate scientists such as Michael Mann explain that "one thing that the science is very clear on is that the strongest storms will get stronger because of global warming, because the oceans are warmer."

In an interview with The Real News Network on Thursday, Mann said although there are many factors that contribute to how frequently tropical storms occur, with rising ocean temperatures, "we're going to see more of these cat 4, cat 5 monsters like Irma," as well as more extreme weather overall.

"Even though we're so focused here in the U.S. on the impacts of extreme weather events on us," Mann also noted, "in other regions, like India and Bangladesh, and Bangladesh in particular—which is already suffering from the impacts of global sea level rise—a very low-lying region, with millions of people, that has already been impacted by global sea level rise, and now you add to that these flooding record monsoonal rains, and you're talking about a far greater loss of life than we've seen here in the U.S."

"The impacts of climate change are gonna be most felt by the most vulnerable," Mann added, "and that means that there's a real sort of ethical dimension to acting to avert a climate catastrophe."

Watch: GO TO WEBSITE

"What makes this so infuriating is that it shouldn't be happening. Experts have warned for decades that global warming would increase these sorts of weather extremes, and that people would suffer and die if protective measures were not implemented," Hertsgaard writes for The Nation. "This is not to say that global warming 'caused' Harvey—a scientifically illiterate framing of the issue—but it did make the rains bigger, more intense, and more destructive."

"Experts have warned for decades that global warming would increase these sorts of weather extremes, and that people would suffer and die if protective measures were not implemented."
—Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation

Last month, Harvey broke the record for the most rainfall from any single storm in the continental U.S., and Irma is now the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane ever recorded. With scientists increasingly alarmed by this apparent new normal, many worry about climate change denialism among those with even more influence than talk radio provocateurs.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a Facebook post Thursday morning: "We have a President, an EPA Chief, and a major political party who refuse to acknowledge the threat of climate change, even as we see storms this year reaching unprecedented levels of destruction. The debate is over. Climate change is real, it is here, and it is already doing irreparable damage to our homes and communities."

But as hurricanes, intensified by global warming, continue to wreak havoc on islands and coastal communities—including the now-devastated Caribbean islands whose leaders decried President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and have recently urged developed nations to take action—the Trump administration continues its push for deregulation that benefits fossil fuel companies, and key leaders and advisors within the administration refuse to acknowledge ties between extreme weather events and climate change.

"It is past time to call out Trump and all climate deniers for this crime against humanity. No more treating climate denial like an honest difference of opinion," Hertsgaard writes. "The individuals and institutions pushing climate denial must be called out with even greater vigor: in newspaper columns, on TV and radio talk shows, in town halls, at the ballot box, and by consumer boycotts, legal investigations, shareholder resolutions, street protests, and more."

"Knowing what we know in 2017," Hertsgaard concludes, "expanding fossil-fuel production is like Big Tobacco continuing to addict people to its cancer sticks: technically legal but, in effect, premeditated murder."


THE CONVERGENCE OF TWO REPUBLICAN LED ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS HERE IN FLORIDA AS WELL AS TEXAS. LIES DON'T COVER UP REALITY.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-irma-toxic-sites-in-likely-path-of-deadly-storm/
AP September 9, 2017, 5:53 PM
Toxic waste sites in likely path of Hurricane Irma

MIAMI -- Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida while dozens of personnel from the Environmental Protection Agency worked to secure some of the nation's most contaminated toxic waste sites. The agency said its employees evacuated personnel, secured equipment and safeguarded hazardous materials in anticipation of storm surges and heavy rains.

The Associated Press surveyed six of the 54 Superfund sites in Florida before Irma's arrival, all around Miami in low-lying, flood-prone areas. There was no apparent work going on at the sites AP visited this past week.

The EPA said that if there was no activity, a site should be considered secured but would be closely monitored. The sites were in various stages of federally directed, long-term cleanup efforts.

Hurricane Irma shifts course, threatening Tampa -- live updates

At the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center on Saturday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said the EPA workers he's spoken with seem "generally positive" about the prospects for toxic sites remaining secure in the coming hurricane. But "they can't guarantee it 100 percent," he told AP.

"EPA feels they got a handle on it," he said. "They think that the risk is real but certainly not as severe as some other places. Not to minimize it - it's something to think about."

The AP was not able to fully evaluate each site's readiness for the hurricane.

"If any site in the path of the storm is found to pose an immediate threat to nearby populations, EPA will immediately alert and work with state and local officials and inform the public -- and then take any appropriate steps to address the threat," EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said Friday. "So far no sites have risen to this level that we are aware of."

Hurricane Irma Toxic Sites

In this Sept. 6, 2017, photo, the Miami Drum Services Superfund cleanup site in a fenced off area behind a rail yard. JASON DEAREN / AP

A risk analysis by EPA concluded in 2012 that flooding at such sites in South Florida could pose a risk to public health by spreading contaminated soil and groundwater. Flooding could disturb dangerous pollutants and wash it onto nearby property or contaminate groundwater, including personal wells, said Elizabeth "Betsy" Southerland, who retired last month as director of science and technology in EPA's Office of Water after 30 years at the agency.

"The agency needs to quickly respond with careful monitoring after the storm," said Southerland.

A recent analysis for the Government Accountability Office by two researchers at American University found that a storm surge in South Florida of just 1 to 4 feet could inundate the half-dozen sites visited by AP in recent days. Irma was predicted to push in a wall of water up to 12 feet high.

Of particular concern was the one-acre Miami Drum Services site. It is located over a drinking-water aquifer in a heavily industrial area of Doral, in west Miami-Dade County. The site was once home to more than 5,000 drums of various chemicals, some of which were dumped on-site after the metal containers were washed with a caustic cleaning solution. That solution, mixed with the chemical residues in the drums, leaked into the Biscayne Aquifer, a drinking water source.

The EPA's community involvement coordinator for the site, Ronald Tolliver in Atlanta, told AP he was not sure what the agency was doing to prepare the site or contact residents whose drinking water could be affected by serious flooding from Irma. Bowman said Tolliver was a new employee and may not have been familiar with the EPA's hurricane procedures for Superfund sites.

Hurricane Irma Toxic Sites
Barrels identified by stickers as IDW, or "investigation derived waste," full of soil and water sit in a field designated by the EPA as an intensely polluted Superfund site called Anodyne North Miami Beach on Sept. 6, 2017. JASON DEAREN / AP
At the Homestead Air Reserve Base Superfund site south of Miami, it would take only about a foot of storm surge to swamp the nearly 2,000-acre Superfund site. Numerous apartments and a shopping center with a supermarket are nearby.

The EPA needs to do a better job helping people who live near Superfund sites stay informed with accurate information, said Stephen Sweeney, a former graduate fellow in EPA's office of policy and one of the American University researchers who conducted the Superfund flooding study.

"These residents need to be aware of their surroundings, and what could be in their water and the floodwater," said Sweeney, now a private consultant. "There needs to be some sort of public communication. Either mass distribution of information or evacuating residents - it's up to the agency to make that call."

At the Anodyne site in North Miami Beach on Friday, the AP found three sealed steel drums labeled as being filled with "IDW" soil and water in the open, weed-covered field behind a building. IDW is the designation for "investigation derived waste." The drums were labeled, "Do not disturb." Bowman said the barrels were low-risk to human health.

A worker from a nearby building, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he saw workers putting soil and water into the drums. Soil and groundwater at the former industrial site was contaminated with a brew of toxic chemicals, including pesticides, solvents and heavy metals.

7 million asked to evacuate ahead of Irma
Play VIDEO
7 million asked to evacuate ahead of Irma

After AP inquired about the drums, the EPA said Saturday it dispatched workers to Anodyne to remove the containers. They had contained "drill cutting and purge water" produced during the installation of a new monitoring well the prior week, the agency said.

The EPA has made significant efforts over the last week to publicize its response to flooding at Superfund sites in Texas and allay concerns about similar sites in Florida. That followed an Aug. 26 report by AP that at least seven Superfund sites in the Houston region had flooded during Hurricane Harvey. AP journalists on the scene in Texas surveyed the sites by boat, vehicle and on foot.

Hours after AP's story last week, the EPA said it had reviewed aerial imagery confirming that 13 of 41 Superfund sites in areas affected by Harvey had flooded and were experiencing possible damage due to the storm. The EPA also confirmed that its own personnel had not yet visited the Houston-area sites.

Since then, EPA has been issuing daily updates about its efforts. On Monday, the agency organized a media tour of one of the Houston sites highlighted in AP's reporting, though AP was not notified about the press event and was not able to attend. After AP informed the EPA in Washington that its reporters had been surveying Superfund sites in South Florida, the agency warned in a press release that "unauthorized entry at any Superfund site, either prior to or following the storm, is prohibited as these sites can be extremely dangerous and can pose significant threats to human health."

Following his appointment by President Trump, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has repeatedly said that cleaning up Superfund sites is among his top policy priorities. He appointed a task force to study the issue quickly, adopting 42 recommendations and saying he wanted to develop a "top-10 list" of the most dangerous sites.

Pruitt, who has questioned the severity of consequences from global warming, has been largely silent on the threat posed to Superfund sites by rising seas and more powerful storms.

A nationwide assessment conducted under the Obama administration in 2012 determined that more than 500 Superfund sites are located in flood zones. Nearly 50 are in coastal areas that could also be vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surge, including several located in Florida.


GO, BERNIE, GO!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/09/politics/bernie-sanders-single-payer-bill-support/index.html
How Democrats learned to stop worrying and love 'Medicare for all'
Greg Krieg
Analysis by Gregory Krieg, CNN
Updated 6:11 PM ET, Sat September 9, 2017

Video -- Source: CNN, Sanders vows to introduce 'Medicare for All' 01:59

(CNN)First, consider this: It's the summer of 2019 and a dozen Democratic presidential candidates are gathered onstage for a debate somewhere in the Midwest. The network moderator concludes her introductions and tees up the opening question.

"Who here tonight supports moving the United States toward a single-payer, or 'Medicare for all,' taxpayer-funded health care system?"

Pause it there and rewind to January 2016 in Iowa. The caucuses are days away, and Hillary Clinton is fending off an unexpected challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders. The discussion turns to single-payer, and Clinton balks.

"People who have health emergencies can't wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass," she tells voters in Des Moines, explaining her campaign's focus on preserving and expanding Obamacare, while dismissing the progressive insurgent's more ambitious pitch.

Go back even further now to the last contested Democratic primary before that, in 2008, and recall the lone and lonely voices in favor of single-payer care. They belonged to Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel. The pair combined for a delegate haul of precisely nil.

Morning briefings with all the news & buzz people will be talking about

Back to the present -- a decade on -- and after a chaotic months-long push by Republicans to dismantle former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, the prospect of Sanders' "Medicare-for-all" program has emerged as the hot-button centerpiece of the Democratic Party's roiling public policy debate.

Ticket to ride

After a summer that has seen so many of the party's most ambitious officials and brightest prospects line up in vocal support of what was so recently a fringe cause, consider again how the single-payer question will be received on a Democratic debate stage. Here's a hint: Expect to see a lot of hands.

Still, for a party on its heels in Washington and around the country, the 2020 race is a distant star. If Democrats fail to claw back enough seats in next year's midterm elections, the health care conversation will remain in its current state: purely hypothetical.

But as Sanders prepares to unveil his new legislation next week, the broader left is beginning to coalesce around a vision that holds up universal, government-backed health care as a core Democratic party principle. The Vermont independent's forthcoming bill -- its arrival delayed on at least three occasions by Washington's unique rancor -- has Senate cosponsors in California's Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse, and could add more names in the coming days. The House companion bill, from Michigan Rep. John Conyers, has 117 cosponsors, a little more than 60% of the entire caucus.

About half of those cosponsors signed on after House Republicans introduced their first hack at Obamacare repeal, the American Health Care Act. For the better part of five months, Democrats in both chambers, along with a coalition of liberal protesters, fought to wrest defections from the GOP line. Ultimately, it was a single vote in the Senate -- delivered well after midnight on a Friday morning in late July -- that signaled an improbable rearguard victory.

Thanks, President Trump

But even before Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain angled his thumb toward the floor, the effort to unwind Obama's signature legislative feat was beginning to backfire on the GOP.

Sanders set the tone early on. About a week after House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled the AHCA in March, he tweeted a warning.

"Never lose sight of the fact that our ultimate goal is not just playing defense," Sanders wrote. "Our goal is a Medicare-for-all, single payer system."

Follow
Bernie Sanders ✔ @SenSanders
Never lose sight of the fact that our ultimate goal is not just playing defense. Our goal is a Medicare-for-all, single payer system.
4:02 PM - Mar 12, 2017
988 988 Replies 8,970 8,970 Retweets 30,539 30,539 likes

Sanders campaigned relentlessly against the Republican bills, mostly in the Midwest and Rust Belt. His criticism was lacerating. In June he told a Saturday night crowd in Pittsburgh that if the GOP plan's implementation would be "a moral outrage that this nation will never live down." After rolling into Ohio overnight, he rose in Columbus the next day as part of a joint barnstorming effort with organizers from MoveOn.org to brand the Republican proposal "the most anti-working-class legislation ever passed in the modern history of our country."

Not 24 hours later, Sanders' Democratic colleagues began amassing on the steps of the Capitol in Washington; their conversation, kicked off by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who broadcast it a Facebook Live, went viral. Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, now considering a bill of his own that would allow anyone to buy-in to Medicaid, and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand joined in early on.

"Health care should be a right, it should never be a privilege," Gillibrand said, almost in passing. "We should have Medicare-for-all in this country." One viral moment had given way to another, and Gillibrand's office confirmed to CNN the next day that, "Yes," she supports single-payer.

A changing dynamic

A few weeks on, in mid-July, Sanders returned to Des Moines, Iowa, for the first time since the 2016 election to water the grassroots.

"Our immediate test," he said, was to defeat the Republican plan. "But as soon as we accomplish that, I will be introducing legislation which has gained more and more support all across this country, legislation for a Medicare for All, single-payer system."

Robert Becker, Sanders' 2016 Iowa campaign director, was in the hall that day. (As was top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, as it happened, for an unrelated event just a few hundred feet away.) Between cigarettes, and before his old boss arrived on the scene, Becker sat back and diagnosed the bubbling dynamic.

"Every time Paul Ryan, or someone who is trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, steps to the podium and starts talking about insurance rates and premiums getting higher and higher and higher, they're actually making an argument for a single-payer system," he said. "You don't hear people on Medicare and Medicaid complaining about their co-pays."

There were other tailwinds kicking up. Public opinion polls had begun to show hardening support among Democrats for single-payer. One notable Pew survey released in mid-June found more than half of Democrats supported such a program. Among liberals, the number jumped to 64%. Looking across party lines, the poll found that a third of Americans backed the policy, up 12 points from 2014.

When it was reported Friday that Obamacare architect and former Montana Sen. Max Baucus, hardly a progressive firebrand, now supported single-payer, saying, "We're getting there, it's going to happen" -- there were some chuckles on the left, but little surprise.

The new normal

When it became apparent on July 17 that Senate Republicans did not have the votes to advance their own bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, progressive political organizations pounced.

Working Families Party national director Dan Cantor, after warning presciently that "this may well not be the last version of Trumpcare we see," all but thanked Republicans for joining the battle.

"In the end, the biggest impact of the Republicans' attack on healthcare may be this: It has strengthened the resolve of many, many Americans to fight for healthcare for all," he said.

Adam Green, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder, brushed off the prospect of "small-bore technocratic tweaks," saying it was time to offer "every American access to Medicare."

After a subsequent, last-ditch Republican push to secure enough votes for "skinny repeal" failed, Democrats on Capitol Hill began a swift public relations counteroffensive. Their weakened status in Congress has, on this front, turned out to be a sort of gift, offering freedom to test drive a variety of ideas and, should they crash, walk away relatively unharmed.

On August 3, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow launched the "Medicare at 55 Act," a limited buy-in program. Seven Democratic colleagues attached themselves immediately, and by the end of the month, Harris, whose progressive bona fides have been called into question by activists, became the first senator to go further and formally back the Sanders plan.

"Here, I'll break some news: I intend to co-sponsor the Medicare-for-all bill, because it's just the right thing to do," she said a town hall in Oakland, California, shortly after informing Sanders of her intentions. "This is about understanding, again, that health care should be a right, not a privilege. And it's also about being smart."

This past Thursday, Warren announced her decision in an email to supporters.

"I believe it's time to take a step back and ask: what is the best way to deliver high quality, low cost health care to all Americans?," she wrote. "Everything should be on the table -- and that's why I'm co-sponsoring Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill that will be introduced later this month."

By the evening, another Senate Democrat, Connecticut's Chris Murphy was making headlines of his own. According to a Politico report, Murphy is currently drafting a bill of his own that would put Medicare on the Obamacare exchanges and allow individuals and businesses an option to buy in.

The growing crop of bridge bills, though they might disappoint hardliners, is another leading indicator of where the party is headed. But if the Stabenow and Murphy plans would appeal to some Democrats in part for their abilities to shield less bullish colleagues from pressure on the left, they represent only a temporary solution given the enthusiasm of activists for a universal program.

As former Sanders campaign digital organizing director Claire Sandberg said in an email after the Harris announcement, activists are charged up -- and the pressure will be unyielding.

"The grassroots movement for universal health care will have to push Democratic leaders to not just voice support for Medicare-for-all when the party is in the minority," she said, "but also demand that Democrats commit to keep fighting and refuse to back down or water down the proposal when the party is back in power."

CNN's Eric Bradner contributed to this report


https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/09/09/democrats-to-sanders-get-your-attack-dogs-in-line-n2379123
Democrats to Sanders: Get Your Attack Dogs In Line
Matt Vespa |Posted: Sep 09, 2017 7:30 PM

So, we all know that the Democratic Party is in rough shape. They’re struggling raising money, they have no leader (Tom Perez is taking a side gig teaching, by the way), no message, and they’re 0-4 in special elections. The recent chairman race in California, which ended with the more establishment candidate winning and the Bernie Sanders-supporting insurgent refusing to concede, threatens to ignite a civil war. It’s no secret that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which adores Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has become more vocal and more active in their attempts to drag of the rest of the party to the left. They want stringent and uncompromising litmus tests on abortion and single-payer healthcare, especially when it comes to the latter. These purity tests have made the more establishment wing queasy, noting that they simply cannot retake Congress or the White House with such far left candidates.

Besides the Iraq War going terribly at the time in 2006, Democrats were able to reclaim Congress during the Bush administration because they had good candidate recruitment and they were able to pick off red districts. That's all gone now. That farm system is dead. It means a hard core San Francisco-like Democrat would probably fair poorly in a right-leaning district. This brings us to abortion and how the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said they would not withhold support from Democrats running for office who are pro-life, though they later told an anti-abortion Democratic group that they would no longer work with them on the 2018 midterms, so go figure. Needless to say, the initial reaction from the Left had them frothing at the mouth.

With 2020 already being discussed, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ name has been mentioned, though Democrats are now telling him he needs to rein in his attack dogs, with the final straw appearing to be when the Sanders wing attacked Sen. Kamala Harris. Progressives are not big fans of her, noting her ties to Wall Street. The message to Sanders is clear: get these people in line if you want to be taken seriously in 2020 (via Politico) [emphasis mine]:

Prominent Democrats are increasingly riled by attacks from Bernie Sanders' supporters, whose demands for ideological purity are hurting the party ahead of the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, they say.

But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the Vermont senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.

Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.

In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements.

The confrontations, they insist, threaten party unity ahead of a critical midterm election cycle, when Democrats have a shot at winning the House and several governor’s offices.

Oh, there’s nothing like Democratic blood sports. I think some are about to begin.



http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/08/bernie-backers-attacks-infuriate-democrats-242386
Bernie backers' attacks on Democrats infuriate the party
Demands for ideological purity are stoking divisions heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election.
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI 09/08/2017 05:06 AM EDT

Photograph -- Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. | Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

Prominent Democrats are increasingly riled by attacks from Bernie Sanders' supporters, whose demands for ideological purity are hurting the party ahead of the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, they say.

But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the Vermont senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.


Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.

In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements.

The confrontations, they insist, threaten party unity ahead of a critical midterm election cycle, when Democrats have a shot at winning the House and several governor’s offices.

“The Democratic Party has treated Sen. Sanders exceptionally well. We collectively let him run in our primaries when he declared he wasn’t a Democrat — I count that as a great favor, and an opportunity almost no one else has ever received,” said former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, who has called for the independent Sanders to formally join the party.

“I don’t know what his intentions are in terms of the future,” Fowler added, referring to the senator's willingness to corral his supporters. “Sen. Sanders has to make his own decisions about what’s responsible to do."

The mutual mistrust goes beyond the establishment vs. insurgent divide that defined 2016’s presidential primary. Some Democrats from the progressive wing of the party agree that he needs to do more to rein in his supporters.

If Sanders intends to lead the party, said one Democratic operative who’s worked with him, requesting to speak anonymously like many others for fear of reprisal from Sanders backers, “you don’t get to wash your hands of all of this.”

The complaints have largely gone unheeded by Sanders’ camp. Many of the senator’s closest allies insist such frustration simply reflects the same misunderstanding of Sanders’ “political revolution” Democrats have had since he first started running for president.

“Bernie Sanders really does lead a movement, he doesn’t run an organization. And movements are different from organizations,” said Mark Longabaugh, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser to Sanders' campaign. “A movement operates organically and moves on its own. It can have leaders, but no one directs a movement.”

Democrats' frustration about Sanders' unwillingness to confront his backers has intensified since it first emerged during the 2016 campaign.

In one of the most contentious moments, the candidate himself refused to condemn supporters in Nevada who revolted against Hillary Clinton's delegate win during that state party’s May convention.

Many Democrats are concerned that Sanders no longer has any control over the vast political network surrounding him after his 2016 campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, left the helm of Our Revolution in June. That national political organization, Sanders' post-campaign creation, is now led by former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, who was a strident supporter of the Vermonter and a Clinton critic in 2016.

Last month, Democrats across Capitol Hill were quick to circulate a BuzzFeed report in which Turner called the DNC “dictatorial” and “insulting.” They were concerned that a group with the reach of Our Revolution’s could be doing significant damage to the party’s efforts to re-engage with Sanders voters.

“It’s a huge frustration. Senators roll their eyes and acknowledge it’s one of the biggest threats to the Democratic Party, the division that they sow,” said one senior Democratic Senate aide who has worked with Sanders' office. “It would be so helpful for him to be more forceful or forthright that this isn’t the point of what his efforts were.”

Chris Murphy is pictured. | Getty Images
CONGRESS
Chris Murphy’s stealthy single-payer pitch
By ELANA SCHOR
Sanders, now a member of Senate Democrats’ leadership team, never publicly condemned or endorsed Turner’s remarks. People close to him say he views Our Revolution as a separate entity from the political team he controls. (Our Revolution’s executive director, Shannon Jackson, is a former longtime Sanders aide.)


Fellow Democrats have employed a variety of tactics to try and relay their concern to Sanders, who is still learning how to play the inside game customarily expected of a party leader.

Just as Turner was complaining about the DNC, a range of Democratic senators and their top political staffers were closely following a string of stories that quoted Sanders supporters criticizing Harris.

In one interview, the co-founder of a group called People for Bernie said Harris was being anointed as the candidate "of extremely wealthy and out-of-touch Democratic Party donors."

After a handful of such stories, Harris herself spoke with Sanders on the Senate floor about the criticism, said multiple Democrats briefed on the exchange.

Soon after, Longabaugh praised the first-term lawmaker in her home-state Sacramento Bee, leading to a de-escalation of tensions.

“Nobody part of Bernie’s inner circle had anything to do with that, or would have any part of the criticism of Sen. Harris,” he told the newspaper last month.

Other Democratic senators have nudged colleagues who they think might be useful bridges to Sanders, asking them to step in. That group includes Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a fellow progressive who was the only senator to back Sanders in 2016.

Among the concerns: how Turner — appointed to the DNC’s “unity commission” by Sanders in April — has pilloried the party messaging effort put together by Schumer in conjunction with his leadership team that includes Sanders. But their primary complaint has been that Sanders hasn’t sufficiently directed his backers to attack Republicans — not fellow Democrats — with the midterm elections looming.

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Hillary’s Message To Dems: Don’t Give Bernie The Keys
By BILL SCHER
At no point was this worry more apparent than after the leaders of the National Nurses Union refused last month to rule out supporting primary challenges for Senate Democrats who don’t support his Medicare-for-all health care bill. The group, one of Sanders' closest allies, vowed to “[hold] the Democrats accountable.”

Sanders’ own campaign pollster called the measure a litmus test in the same POLITICO report. And Turner — whose group houses the huge email list Sanders’ team built during his campaign and subsequently refused to hand over to the DNC — said “there’s something wrong” with Democrats who don’t support Sanders’ measure.

Yet it took three weeks for Sanders himself to weigh in. He told The Washington Post that his health care legislation wouldn’t serve as a litmus test for whether or not to back fellow senators. It was hardly a disavowal of his allies’ rhetoric, though, and the delay left other lawmakers sweating about primary challenges for nearly a month.

Even after he spoke up, multiple Democratic operatives who supported him in 2016 worried his statement was too little, too late. After all, the Sanders Institute — the think tank led by Sanders’ wife, whose website is plastered with pictures of the senator — published the health care proposal pushed by the same nurses union.

To Sanders and the collection of people closest to him, such discussion is further evidence that his critics will never be satisfied, multiple Sanders confidants said. They believe the divide between the senator and his backers couldn’t be clearer, and that anyone who pays attention to his stated goals and looks at his actions as a member of Democrats’ Senate leadership team should understand he finds the attacks on Harris and other sitting Democrats counterproductive.

Anyway, goes the frequent refrain from Sanders allies who paraphrase the senator’s common campaign season reminder, he can’t just snap his fingers and make his supporters fall in line. If Sanders supporters’ vehemence is anyone’s problem, they say in private, it’s the public’s problem for not understanding the divide between his words and his fans’.


And they insist that Sanders’ campaign-season elevation of figures like Turner — not to mention his creation of Our Revolution — is irrelevant now. They point out that Sanders demonstrated his support for fellow Democratic senators by organizing health care-focused rallies for several of them earlier this year.

“The left wing of the Democratic Party has a set of institutions and players that pre-dated Bernie’s campaign for president of the United States, and they still exist now that the campaign is over. They are going to pursue their own objectives as they see fit,” said Longabaugh. “I don’t think it’s a problem for him at all.”



GO TO THE WEBSITE AND LOOK AT THIS PHOTO. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ARE DRIVING UP TO IT TO SEE IT FOR THEMSELVES. I LIKE IT BECAUSE IT’S A GENTLE POKE AT THE CURRENT ANTI-IMMIGRANT/BROWN SKINNED FEAR/HATRED TREND THAT WE HAVE GOING ON THESE DAYS.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/massive-portrait-shows-toddler-peering-over-u-s-mexico-border/
CBS/AP September 9, 2017, 4:31 PM
Massive portrait shows toddler peering over U.S.-Mexico border

Photograph -- A Border Patrol vehicle drives in front of a mural in Tecate, Mexico, just beyond a border structure Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, in Tecate, Calif. GREGORY BULL / AP

TECATE, Calif. -- A portrait of a giant toddler stands in Mexico and peers over a steel wall dividing the country from the United States.

The boy appears to grip the barrier with his fingers, leaving the impression the entire thing could be toppled with a giggle.

A French artist who goes by the moniker "JR" erected the cut-out of the boy that stands nearly 65 feet tall and is meant to prompt discussion of immigration.

"Meet Kikito, he turned 1 year old last April," JR tweeted Friday. "The piece is visible close to the Tecate border for a month."

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Meet Kikito, he turned 1 year old last April. The piece is visible close to the Tecate border for a month
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On Friday, a steady stream of people drove to the remote section of wall near the Tecate border crossing, about 40 miles southeast of San Diego. Border Patrol agents warned visitors to keep the dirt road clear for their patrols and not pass anything through the fence.

Elmond Davantes, a software developer from Carlsbad, California, took photos from the U.S. side.

"It's larger than life," he said. "It just draws attention to the whole issue in a positive way."

On the Mexican side, families scrambled down a scrubby hillside to take selfies with the artwork. Children in school uniforms played tag under the scaffolding supporting the photo.

People on each side of the wall waved to each other.

Salma Montoya, 18, a student in Tecate said her town is abuzz about it.

"It's beautiful," she said.

JR has done other large-scale portraits around the world, with much of his recent work focused on immigrants.

He told reporters at Wednesday's unveiling of the portrait that he was spurred by a dream in which he imagined a kid looking over the border wall.

"And when I woke up, I wondered: 'What was he thinking?'" he said. "Like for us we know all the implications, what it represents, how it divides, but for a kid, I didn't have the answer."

US-Mexico--Peering Toddler-Border Wall
A Border Patrol vehicle drives in front of a mural in Tecate, Mexico, just beyond a border structure Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, in Tecate, Calif. GREGORY BULL / AP
A year later when JR was scouting for the perfect spot for his project, he noticed a house in Tecate near the border wall. He and a Mexican friend knocked on the door to see about the possibility of locating it around there. After they drove away, it occurred to him that the 1-year-old at the home who had been staring at them reminded him of the boy he had dreamed about.

JR and his friend immediately went back. JR asked the woman if he could photograph her son. She knew his work and agreed.

The artwork was unveiled the week President Trump said he would end a program that has allowed young immigrants who were brought to America illegally as children to remain in the country.

Trump's DACA decision puts nearly 1 million in legal limbo
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Trump's DACA decision puts nearly 1 million in legal limbo
The administration also accepted more proposals for its plans to build a continuous wall along the nearly 2,000-mile border.

JR said he did not intend for the project in Tecate to coincide with the news about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

JR has worked for years to highlight the "Ellis Islands of today," which has taken him from the shores of Italy where migrants have been arriving by boat from Africa to the California desert.

"Now as an artist I think that it's amazing that the piece arrived at a moment when it creates more dialogue," he said. "Because the idea itself is to raise more questions."

For artists and activists, the 650 miles of existing wall and fencing between the U.S. and Mexico has long been a blank canvas.

Musicians have played simultaneously on both sides. A giant wooden Trojan-style horse was once parked near a crossing in Tijuana. There have been volleyball games and church services held simultaneously on each side of the border.

Sections of wall on the Mexican side have been covered with paintings of everything from butterflies to an upside-down American flag.

JR has erected other large-scale portraits in the slums of Paris, from the top of buildings in Rio de Janeiro, and set up giant photo booths from Israel and Palestine to the United States.

The latest piece will remain in Tecate for a month. JR hopes people will view it from each side.