PROGRESSIVE IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
MARCH 15, 2018

PUNDITS THROWING OUT STORIES ABOUT HOW UNSTABLE THE DEMOCRATS ARE BECAUSE OF THEIR INFIGHTING – WELL, IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO. WE’RE DIFFERENT FROM THE REPUBLICANS BECAUSE WE HAVE DISAGREEMENTS AMONG EQUALS. THEY SET “THE PARTY LINE” BY COMMITTEE, AND THEN IF ONE OF THEIR PEOPLE DISAGREES, THEY TRY TO MAKE HIM LEAVE THE PARTY.

IF YOUR HEART TURNS OVER WHEN YOU READ THAT MEMORABLE SONG LYRIC, THEN YOU’RE MY AGE AT LEAST, AND YOU’RE VERY LIKELY SOUTHERN. IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, THEN YOU’RE PROBABLY JUST TOO YOUNG. THE STORIES THAT I’M DRAWING MY INFO FROM ABOUT THAT DEMOCRATIC VS REPUBLICAN VIEWPOINT AND STATEMENT OF VALUES, ARE PUNCHY, HUMOROUS, HARD-HITTING AND FULL OF INFORMATION. WHEN PEOPLE SLANDER SANDERS, IT REALLY TICKS ME OFF, SO I DUG INTO IT AND PUNCHED BACK.

A PRO-CLINTON, ANTI-SANDERS AND ANTI-TRUMP POLITICAL CONSULTANT NAMED SALLY ALBRIGHT, MAY HAVE PURPOSELY USED A BOT NETWORK TO HARASS THE SANDERS CAMPAIGN AND FOLLOWERS WITH A FLOOD OF HATEFUL COMMENTS. ON THE OTHER HAND, IT IS HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS AS CIRCUMSTANCES GO. THERE’S NO IMPLICATION IN THIS ARTICLE THAT CLINTON KNOWINGLY CAUSED THE 2016 DNC AND VOTER CHAOS AT A NUMBER OF LOCATIONS IN THE ELECTION. THERE ARE SEVERAL REPORTED STATES IN WHICH SIGNS OF THE INFAMOUS RUSSIAN TAMPERING WITH EITHER THE VOTE COUNT OR THE VOTER REGISTRATION LIST, SO WE HAD A CLOSE CALL ON THAT. BOTH ARE TERRIBLE PROBLEMS WHEN THEY INVALIDATE THE COUNTS.

AN ALERT BERNIE SANDERS’ WORKER, CALLED SIMPLY “TREVOR,” DISCOVERED SOME WEIRD BEHAVIOR ON HIS COMPUTER, AND BLEW THE WHISTLE, POTENTIALLY SAVING THE DAY IF A HACK WAS STOPPED EARLY. THE INTERNET WORLD IS GETTING DANGEROUS. “HE DOESN’T WANT TO GIVE HIS LAST NAME TO KEEP HIMSELF FROM BEING OPEN TO A DOXX ATTACK. SEE THE COMMENT ON “DOXX” BELOW. THAT’S A CASE OF AN ENEMY RESEARCHING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION AND POSTING IT OPENLY ALL OVER THE INTERNET OUT OF SPITE.

TREVOR IDENTIFIED SALLY ALBRIGHT BECAUSE HER ACCOUNT BEHAVED “STRANGELY,” AS IN THE MANNER OF BOTS. HE IDENTIFIED THE PROBLEM, APPARENTLY, AND HIS IDENTIFICATION SOMEHOW STOPPED THE BOTT ATTACK. I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT COMPUTERS TO EXPLAIN WHY AND HOW THAT WOULD SOLVE THE PROBLEM, BUT THE ARTICLE SAYS IT DID.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE RUSSKIES, DOESN’T IT? AT ONE POINT IN THIS ARTICLE IT SAYS THAT MS. ALBRIGHT IS “BOUND BY A NON-DISCLOSURE CLAUSE” FROM IDENTIFYING THE CLIENT FOR WHOM SHE (ALBRIGHT) WORKS.

I KNOW THAT SOUNDS OVERLY COMPLEX AS A WAY OF STRUCTURING THIS SENTENCE, BUT IT IS THE SHORTEST WAY I COULD SAY IT IN A CLEAR WAY.

READ THIS ARTICLE. IT IS SCARY IN REGARD TO THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM THAT WE WILL, PRESUMABLY, CONTINUE TO USE, AND WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO TRUST. THIS SALLY ALBRIGHT OPERATION DOESN’T LOOK TRUSTWORTHY TO ME, AND I DON’T BELIEVE HER TO BE AN HONEST BUSINESS WOMAN. BELOW THIS HUFF PO ARTICLE, I HAVE PLACED ANOTHER ONE AS WELL ON SALLY ALBRIGHT HERSELF, AND IT REALLY IS SUGGESTIVE OF A FELONY... ELECTION FRAUD IS NOT TAKEN LIGHTLY IN THE LAW. AT THE VERY LEAST IT’S DISGUSTINGLY “DIRTY POOL.” SHE SHOULD SERVE SOME TIME IN PRISON FOR THAT, I THINK. IT’S A SORT OF TREASON, I WOULD THINK.

THIS ARTICLE IS INFORMATIVE. IT IS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE WHOLE BUSINESS OF BOTS AND HOW THEY WORK, EVEN A LITTLE BIT. I WILL BE ANOTHER STEP FORWARD, TOO, IF I CAN REPLACE THE IMAGE OF A LITTLE ROUND EIGHT-LEGGED ANIMAL SCURRYING AROUND INSIDE MY COMPUTER. YOU KNOW, LIKE A CRAB, RUNNING SIDEWAYS AND IN ARCS RATHER THAN STRAIGHT COURSES.

THE IMPORTANT PROBLEM, THOUGH, IS THAT IT APPEARS TO BE AN ONGOING THREAT AGAINST SANDERS AND TRUMP. WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW IS WHO IS THE CLIENT THAT SALLY ALBRIGHT IS WORKING FOR? AND WHY IS HER ACTIVITY FOR THEM CONTINUING AFTER THE PRIMARY AND ELECTION. SHE HAS BEEN FEATURED ON A BLACK-ORIENTED, ANTI-SANDERS SITE CALLED MEDIUM – WHO ARE LINKED TO HILLARY CLINTON.

MARCUS JOHNSON, THE WRITER AT MEDIUM, SEEMS TO DISTRUST SANDERS AND WHITES IN GENERAL SO GREATLY THAT A POLITICAL MESSAGE FOCUSED ON THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF BEING A DEMOCRAT, WITHOUT SPECIFYING A BLACK/MINORITY ISSUES PLANK. HE IS FOND OF CALLING SANDERS A BROCIALIST – A MASHUP IMPLYING THAT SANDERS AND OF THOSE WHO PUT HEALING THE ECONOMIC DIVIDE FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS, IN ADDITION TO WHICH THEY HATE WOMEN. I THINK ALL THIS STARTED BECAUSE SANDERS DIDN’T VERBALLY FOCUS ON BLACK ISSUES, AND SOME FEEL SLIGHTED.

ONE THING I’VE NOTICED ABOUT SOME BLACK AND FEMINIST GROUPS WHO REFUSE TO LET ANYONE ELSE LEAD OR EVEN JUST JOIN THEIR ACTIVITIES. THEY HAVE ADOPTED HILLARY AS AN ICON OF SORTS, RATHER THAN A LEADER. AND, AS ANOTHER ARTICLE BY A SANDERS LOYALIST, STATES FORCEFULLY, THE MOVEMENT THAT MOST OF US CALL PROGRESSIVISM, IS ACTUALLY “THE FAR LEFT.” NO. COMMUNISM IS THE FAR LEFT AND SOCIALISM ISN’T COMMUNISM. HOWEVER, I DON’T THINK “COMMUNISM” IS A TERRIBLE THING, EITHER. JOHNSON ALSO CLAIMS THAT SANDERS IS TRYING TO “DESTROY” THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. NOT SO. HE’S TRY TO REFORM IT AND CAUSE IT TO ALLOW MORE LIBERAL VIEWS IN THE DOOR AND ONTO THE FLOOR FOR DEBATE AND CONSOLIDATION.

I DO AGREE WITH SANDERS THAT OUR PRIMARY STRUCTURAL PROBLEM IN THE USA IS A FINANCIALLY BASED SOCIAL DIVIDE WHICH, LIKE A BLACK HOLE, ENGULFS EVERYTHING ELSE. JOHNSON ALSO SCOFFED AT SANDERS’ FREE COLLEGE TUITION PLAN, IMPLYING THAT IT WILL ONLY HELP POOR WHITES. WHY WOULD THAT BE THE CASE. SANDERS HAS NEVER, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, SAID EVEN ONE ANTI-MINORITY STATEMENT. HE DOES BELIEVE THAT WITH A BASIC, AND REALISTIC GUARANTEED INCOME, MEDICAL AND FOOD AID, AND FREE COLLEGE TUITION AND EXPENSES, A PERSON OF ANY RACE /COLOR /GENDER /ETHNICITY WILL BE ABLE TO ADD THE INCOME THAT THEY ARE ABLE TO PRODUCE ON THEIR OWN TO THE MONTHLY INCOME FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND HAVE MORE MONEY TO USE TOWARD DEVELOPING THEIR PERSONAL SKILLS TO BE USED IN THE MARKETPLACE, AND WILL BE GUARANTEED A GREATER FREEDOM TO CLIMB THE SOCIAL LADDER. I BELIEVE THAT IF THE VISIBLE AND OTHERWISE PERCEIVABLE PERSONAL DIFFERENCES ARE REDUCED BY A GENTLE SMOOTHING PROCESS, RATHER THAN BEING GLORIFIED, (FOR INSTANCE, DON’T WALK AROUND WITH YOUR PANTS HANGING LOOSE AROUND YOUR HIPS) THEN THE MENTAL ATTITUDES AGAINST MINORITIES WILL BECOME LESS AND LESS AN PROBLEM.

TRUST ME. LIKEWISE, HAVING VERBAL AND SOCIAL POSTURES THAT INDICATE SMOLDERING HOSTILITY TOWARD WHITES WILL GUARANTEE, INSTEAD, THAT BLACK KIDS NEVER WILL BE ACCEPTED SOCIALLY IN EVERYDAY LIFE, AND IN THE COMPETITION OF AN INCREASINGLY GENTRIFIED JOB MARKET. IT’S A MATTER OF WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO GO AS A SOCIETY AND AS INDIVIDUALS – TOWARD CIVILIZATION OR TOWARD ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S WELL-KNOWN “HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.”

BUSINESSES ARE REQUIRING COLLEGE MORE OFTEN NOW FOR THINGS LIKE WORKING IN A BUSINESS OFFICE. THE CENTRAL PROBLEM IS, THAT FAMILIAR ROAD OF ANTI-WHITE ATTITUDES IS A DEAD END. RACE WAR WON’T HELP ANY OF US. WHAT SOME BLACKS EXHIBIT IS A DESIRE NOT FOR BLACK EQUALITY, BUT FOR BLACK SUPERIORITY AND, ESPECIALLY, SEPARATISM. WE DON’T HAVE ROOM IN THIS COUNTRY FOR A SEPARATE NEIGHBORHOOD FOR EVERY GROUP. WE’LL HAVE TO MOVE AWAY FROM “THE HOOD” TO MR. ROGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD OF GENTLENESS.

WE NEED TO GET THAT CHIP OFF OUR SHOULDERS AND GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER AS INDIVIDUALS. THE LONGER WE KEEP ALL RELATIONSHIPS ON THE GROUP TO GROUP BASIS RATHER THAN TRULY MAKING FRIENDS INDIVIDUALLY, SOMETHING LIKE A “RACE WAR” OF ONE SORT OR ANOTHER, WILL BE IN THE CARDS. IT’S LIKE THE “NUCLEAR ARMS RACE” OF COMPETITION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA IN THE 1950S. NOW THAT WAS A TIME OF HIGH TENSION IN THE USA.

WE REALLY DO NEED, AS A NATION OF DIFFERENCES, TO MAKE AN HONEST EFFORT TO GET ALONG. INSTEAD OF HATING DIFFERENCE, PRIZE IT IS INTERESTING AND EXCITING. THE BEHAVIOR OF THE BLM WOMEN AT THE SANDERS SPEECH, IN THAT INCIDENT THAT HIT THE NEWS, WAS NOT BASED ON ANY REASONABLE IDEA THAT SANDERS HIMSELF HAS ESPOUSED OR EXHIBITED RACISM. HE HAS DONE NOTHING AGAINST MINORITIES THAT I’VE EVER HEARD. HE JUST HASN’T MADE RACE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF HIS PLAN FOR SOCIETY. HE THINKS, CORRECTLY, THAT ACTUAL FINANCIAL DISABILITY ON ONE SIDE AND OUTRAGEOUS ECONOMIC PRIVILEGE ON THE OTHER IS A NATURAL CAUSE OF HATE FILLED SITUATIONS.

IN OTHER WORDS, HE HASN’T “COURTED” BLACK PEOPLE AS MUCH AS HILLARY DID. HE DID MARCH WITH BLACKS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS EFFORTS OF THE 1950S AND THE ‘60S. ACTIONS SPEAK MUCH MORE LOUDLY THAN WORDS. WE NEED TO “GET HONEST” ON THIS ISSUE, BECAUSE ONLY THEN WILL THERE DEVELOP A GENEROUS HEARTED GENTLENESS AND RESPECT TOWARD EACH OTHER. AS THEY USED TO SAY IN GROUP THERAPY, “DROP THE ROCK.”

A FAIR NUMBER OF BERNIE’S FOLLOWERS ARE BLACK, AND THEY APPARENTLY, DON’T FEEL DISRESPECTED. COOPERATION SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED DEBASING, AND FOR A BLACK MAN TO BE URBANE, ARTICULATE AND CLEARLY INTELLECTUAL SHOULD NOT CAUSE ANYONE TO SAY OF HIM, “HE’S NOT BLACK ENOUGH.” IT’S WALKING DOWN THE STREET WITH YOUR PANTS HANGING OFF YOUR HIPS THAT IS DEBASING.

JOHNSON ISN’T THE ONLY BLACK MALE HILLARY CLINTON DIEHARD WHO HAS VICIOUSLY ATTACKED SANDERS, BUT MOST WHO DID HAVE BEEN WOMEN. THE REAL SITUATION, WHICH IS THAT THEY ARE BUSILY HATING SANDERS; THOUGH NO SANDERS FOLLOWER, MUCH LESS THE SENATOR HIMSELF, HAS EXPRESSED A SIMILAR HATRED OF BLACKS OR HISPANICS. LET’S FACE IT, ANY ONE WHO SLANDERS BLACKS IN A PROGRESSIVE GROUP WOULD BE BOOED OUT THE ROOM. SANDERS JUST LAST WEEK CAME DOWN HARD ON DONALD TRUMP FOR BROADLY AND HARSHLY INSULTING DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATIVE MAXINE WATERS, WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO BE BLACK. IT SEEMS SHE SAID SOME BAD THINGS ABOUT TRUMP, TOO, BUT WE SHOULDN’T CARRY THOSE THINGS ON FOREVER LIKE THEY ARE DOING. I BELIEVE IN OPENLY, BUT NOT VIOLENTLY, DISAGREEING. THAT’S CALLED A DISCUSSION, AND IF DONE CORRECTLY AND WITH THE RIGHT ATTITUDE, I PRODUCES AT LEAST THE BEGINNING OF UNDERSTANDING.

MANY OF THE THINGS I SEE ON CHAT SITES ARE RUDE, CRUDE, AND UNNECESSARILY UNKIND. LET US TRY, ONE OF US AT A TIME, TO REDUCE OUR TENDENCY TO DISH OUT INSULTS AND EXPECT PACIFIC RESPONSES. THIS ANTI-BERNIE RANT IS ONE SUCH SPIEL. THIS BERNIECRAT, HOWEVER, FOUND THE SOLUTION TO A SECURITY PROBLEM WHILE LOOKING INTO THIS. I HOPE TO SEE FOLLOWUP WHICH COULD LESSEN THE POWER OF RUSSIAN CYBER BLACK HATS OVER OUR WHITE HATS.


BERNIE ON REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/26/bernie-s/reparations-for-slavery-sanders-obama-clinton/
What Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said about reparations for slavery
By Linda Qiu on Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 at 4:06 p.m.

Video -- NBC "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd questions Sen. Bernie Sanders about a recent column criticizing him for not being as bold on slavery reparations as he is on health care-for-all on Jan. 24. (NBC News video)

Photographs -- NBC "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd questions Sen. Bernie Sanders about a recent column criticizing him for not being as bold on slavery reparations as he is on health care-for-all on Jan. 24. (NBC News video)

From single-payer health care to free college tuition for all, Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals have been both dismissed and lauded as radical.

But when it comes to reparations for slavery, some fault the Vermont senator and presidential candidate for holding a more conventional view.

Sanders’ opposition to reparations has been the subject of some controversy after Ta-Nehisi Coates called him out in The Atlantic, writing, "Unfortunately, Sanders’s radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy. What he proposes in lieu of reparations — job creation, investment in cities, and free higher education — is well within the Overton window, and his platform on race echoes Democratic orthodoxy."

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd followed up with Sanders about Coates’ column Jan. 24, asking, "Why aren't you for reparations because of slavery for African-Americans when you're calling for economic justice on so many other levels? Why do you stop short on that issue?"

"Well, for the same reason that Barack Obama has and the same reason, I believe, that Hillary Clinton has," Sanders responded. "And that is, it is absolutely wrong and unacceptable that we have so much poverty in this country and it is even worse in the African-American community."

Todd chided Sanders for not answering the question, but Sanders again deflected that it was for the same reasons as Obama and Clinton.

Is it true that his position against reparations is the same as Clinton and Obama’s views?

Sanders is right that Obama’s opposition echoes his own. (Coates calls this the conventional Democratic philosophy of "a rising tide lifts all boats.") Clinton’s stance is less direct but largely follows the same rationale.

Sanders’ case against reparations

First, let’s explain why Sanders is opposed to reparations for African-Americans.

When first asked about the issue by Fusion at the Jan. 11 Iowa Brown & Black Democratic Forum, Sanders stressed the political impracticability and polarizing nature of the proposal, and suggested prioritizing current economic inequality in lieu of compensating for past injustices.

"First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African-American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African-American community, we have a lot of work to do.

"So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities, in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most, and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African-American and Latino."

On Meet the Press, Sanders pretty much dropped the pragmatism argument (though he pushed back on the notion that his economic proposals are politically impossible) and focused instead on the second part of his rationale about improving economic conditions and schools for minorities.

So how does this mirror, if at all, the approach by Obama and Clinton?

Obama’s opposition

In 2007 and 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama voiced his opposition to reparations, arguing that the best way to amend for the past is to focus on the present and future.

"I think the reparations we need right here in South Carolina is investment, for example, in our schools," Obama said in a July 2007 CNN debate.

Obama couched his opposition somewhat differently in a 2007 NAACP presidential questionnaire. He said that "nothing, including reparations, can fully compensate" for the stain of slavery before arguing that reparations could lead to negligence on other matters of racial injustices:

"I fear that reparations would be an excuse for some to say 'we’ve paid our debt' and to avoid the much harder work of enforcing our anti-discrimination laws in employment and housing; the much harder work of making sure that our schools are not separate and unequal; the much harder work of providing job training programs and rehabilitating young men coming out of prison every year; and the much harder work of lifting 37 million Americans of all races out of poverty.

"These challenges will not go away with reparations. So while I applaud and agree with the underlying sentiment of recognizing the continued legacy of slavery, I would prefer to focus on the issues that will directly address these problems – and building a consensus to do just that."

Obama explains he will not pursue reparations because the action could be used as an excuse not to work on other lingering problems for minorities. Here, Obama’s comments sound different from Sanders’.

Sanders and Obama sound more aligned in these comments by Obama from July 2008, which both Obama and the Sanders campaign pointed out:

"You know, I have said in the past — and I'll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.

"And, you know, I think that strategies that invest in lifting people out of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but that have broad applicability and allow us to build coalitions to actually get these things done, that, I think, is the best strategy.

"You know, the fact is, is that dealing with some of the — some of the legacy of discrimination is going to cost billions of dollars. And we're not going to be able to have that kind of resource allocation unless all Americans feel that they are invested in making this stuff happen.

"And so, you know, I'm much more interested in talking about, how do we get every child to learn? How do we get every person health care? How do we make sure that everybody has a job? How do we make sure that every senior citizen can retire with dignity and respect?

"And if we have a program, for example, of universal health care, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because they're disproportionately uninsured. If we've got an agenda that says every child in America should get -- should be able to go to college, regardless of income, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because it's oftentimes our children who can't afford to go to college."

Obama, as far as we can tell through searching Nexis, has not changed or revisited his stance on reparations since 2008.

Clinton’s position

Clinton’s recent and past comments suggest her ideas for helping the black community are no different from Sanders’ and Obama’s.

Clinton didn’t directly answer the question about reparations at the Iowa Brown & Black Forum, but she also suggested investing in black communities and addressing poverty:

"I think we should start studying what investments we need to make in communities to help individuals and families and communities move forward. And I am absolutely committed to that. There are some good ideas out there. There’s an idea in the Congressional Black Caucus about really targeting federal dollars to communities that have had either disinvestment or no investment, and have had years of being below the poverty level. That’s the kind of thing I’d like us to focus on and really help lift people up."

In October 2015, she provided a similar response when asked by the hosts of the BuzzFeed podcast "Another Round":

"I’ll tell you what, I think we need to make many more investments in everything from pre-school education to affordable housing, that’s my form of trying to give people the chance to be empowered, to make the most out of their God-given potential."

As Fusion pointed out, this was largely Clinton’s answer in 2000 as well. When she was asked about reparations during her Senate campaign, she said African-Americans deserve an apology for slavery before pivoting to economic conditions.

"But I think that the people I know and the people I work with want us to stay focused on the future, keep our economy going, keep providing good public education, quality affordable health care — do the things that will enable people to have the best futures for themselves, and that’s what I’m committed to doing."

Our ruling

Sanders said he opposes reparations "for the same reason that Barack Obama has and the same reason, I believe, that Hillary Clinton has."

The reason, he said, is the need to focus instead on addressing current economic problems in the black community by improving education, providing jobs and addressing poverty. That is basically what Obama and Clinton has suggested in lieu of reparations.

It’s worth noting that Sanders previously suggested that reparations were politically impractical and divisive. Obama and Clinton have not made comments to this effect. In 2007, Obama said reparations could be used an excuse not to do more for African-Americans.

We rate Sanders' claim Mostly True.


RECOMMENDED LOOKUPS -- THIS IS ONE OF TWO SWORN BERNIE ENEMIES THAT I'VE FOUND. ON THAT SUBJECT,
SEE TONIGHT'S SPECIAL SUBJECT: "PROGRESSIVE IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO"

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Marcus H. Johnson on Twitter: "Sanders voted against ...
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Marcus H. Johnson Retweeted egotiste. Sanders voted against holding gun manufacturers legally liable for mass shootings. Voted to let guns on trains and public parks. Voted against Brady Bill 5x. Voted against gun research by CDC. NRA spent $ to help him get elected. 2020 Dem voters don't want a pro gun candidate



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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-bot-network-sally-albright_us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023
POLITICS 03/14/2018 05:45 am ET
How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts
One Democratic Party consultant said an unnamed client controlled many of these accounts.
By Paul Blumenthal

Photograph -- KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS, Someone automated dozens of accounts to amplify anti-Trump, anti-Sanders and pro-Democratic Party content.


When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.

Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed*, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.


[Emergency inclusion of an important definition]

[doxxed* -- [däks]
VERB
doxxed (past tense) · doxxed (past participle)

ORIGIN
early 21st century: alteration of docs, plural of doc (short for document

DEFINITION
search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.

"hackers and online vigilantes routinely dox both public and private figures"

ORIGIN -- early 21st century: alteration of docs, plural of doc, short for document.]


But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.

Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

But like her, these accounts were all pro-Clinton, anti-Trump and anti-Sanders.


Sally Albright
@SallyAlbright
Replying to @SallyAlbright and 5 others
Does "free college" specifically benefit women and minorities? Does it benefit anyone who isn't already going to college and just doesn't want to pay? Reinforcing the status quo is racist.

9:10 PM - Jan 16, 2018
13
66 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

Twitter allows users to automate their accounts, including setting up automatic retweeting and liking of other accounts. This increases activity on the platform, something Twitter obviously wants to do, and allows busy users to promote messages or businesses that they support. Presumably Twitter did not anticipate that users would simply hand their accounts over to another person or campaign to artificially spread the latter’s tweets.

The ability to swamp a debate with automated messages is a problem for political discourse around the world. Twitter is a vital platform for political debate. Automating Twitter accounts to retweet or otherwise promote specific messages thus becomes a tactic to silence political debate and squelch free speech.

In Mexico, allies of President Enrique Peña Nieto have deployed swarms of Twitter bots to overwhelm and effectively shut down online debates. Journalists in the U.S. experienced a similar flood during the 2016 election from pro-Trump, neo-Nazi sock-puppet accounts posting anti-Semitic death threats. Often instead of suppressing speech it doesn’t like, the Chinese government these days drowns it on local social media platforms with a flood of pro-government content. University of North Carolina scholar Zeynep Tufecki has labeled this tactic a new form of censorship.

What the automated accounts deployed by Albright’s unnamed client did was similar.

Over the course of the last year or so, Albright was their favorite account to retweet ― almost always as a group. The fake accounts also retweeted people who responded to Albright’s tweets ― again, usually as a group, and often while in a debate with other users.

The writers at Shareblue, a pro-Democratic Party news site that supported Clinton in the primary and general elections, were also frequently retweeted by the network of fake accounts, particularly when the Shareblue folks had something negative to say about Sanders. A spokeswoman for Shareblue told HuffPost that the company does not create sock-puppet accounts and has never worked with Albright.

These accounts also liked #resistance celebrities like liberal conspiracy theorist Eric Garland (“Time for some game theory”) and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. And they were often deployed in intra-Democratic Party battles.

When Albright led a Twitter campaign to attack a 2017 women’s conference for inviting Sanders to speak ― after Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had turned them down ― the automated account network deployed to retweet her and any positive responses to her tweets.

Albright probably didn’t need those retweets, as there were actual people opposing the conference’s decision. Still, someone questioned her campaign to block Sanders from speaking, describing it as similar to “Russian division strategy.” She wrote back, “Nyet. I am not Russian.”

Then over a dozen fake accounts retweeted her.


INSTAGRAM/TWITTER
The original image from skater Sara Hurtado’s Instagram account (left) and the image used on the fake Twitter account named Iris Winter.
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Within this pro-Albright Twitter force, many of the accounts have taken on false personas with stolen photographs ― just like the Russian trolls that tried to interfere in the 2016 election.

The account named for Iris Winter, which is temporarily suspended, uses a picture of Spanish ice dancer Sara Hurtado. Minnie Casera’s supposed picture comes from the Facebook account of Martina Painter, an Alaskan who died on Jan. 11, 2017. The picture used by Georgia Miles is actually Deja Farrior-Quinones, a New Jersey woman who was killed in September 2016 by a car involved in a high-speed police chase. Maggie Campell’s picture is one of Deb Solsrud, a Florida woman who died in a plane crash in December 2016. Madeleine Ware’s photo is really Mary Knowlton, a retired librarian who was killed in August 2016 by a police officer in a practice drill.

Allison Rowe’s account uses the picture of Dr. Roberta Guilizzoni, an Italian physicist who works at the National Physical Laboratory in London. Baylee Allmon’s picture is actually the Bosnian model Nejla Hadzic. The account of Callie Calloway uses a picture of Kelsey Lundy, a lobbyist in Arizona for Compass Strategies. Cameron Gibson offers an image of the freelance travel writer Sarah Gordon that appeared in the Daily Mail. Francie McCormack has taken her picture from the Twitter account of Callie Maries. The photo of Lena Robinson is actually Ashlynn Sparks, an Alabama teenager who was shot to death in 2016.

The account of Gwen Barstow is temporarily restricted, probably because it used an image of Meaghan Delcourt, an Ottawa woman who was in the local news in 2015 after her apartment balcony collapsed underneath her.

Cheryl Montgomery’s account @cherry_mgm was suspended in February after Catherine Simpson, a public relations professional in Vancouver, Canada, alerted Twitter that it was using her picture. The theft of Simpson’s photo to create this fake account was previously reported by the Canadian Global News.

Albright admitted to HuffPost that she had handed over a number of accounts to that unnamed client that had been connected to previous projects of hers and that were no longer in use. She also said that she changed the pictures for some of them.

One of the Albright-linked accounts, @OvrTheBayBridge, appears to have a picture of an actual person named Kirby Manning. But the Manning photo has been taken from someone else and appropriated for this account. The real person is Brinkley Hutchings, a leadership coach and environmental activist in Alabama.

Other accounts that Albright said she provided to her client’s project included @PropagandaMnstr, @DruidCityMedia, @VotrProtection, @BucksPocket, @Sallying and @SocialCapitol. Each of these accounts was connected to a website domain that had been purchased by Albright.

SALLY ALBRIGHT/TWITTER.COM
A screenshot of Albright’s Buffer account that she tweeted showed accounts under her control, including some of the automated accounts in question.

The accounts that link directly to websites owned by Albright and those pretending to be people they are not exhibit similar patterns of behavior. They retweet Albright and other accounts with similar messages at an extremely high rate. Each account has made tens of thousands of tweets, almost all of which are retweets. And they all almost exclusively post using an application called Buffer.

Buffer, a social media management application with more than 2 million users, allows an individual to schedule tweets, retweets and likes; to schedule posts on other social media sites; and to control multiple accounts at once. It provides a limited free service for ordinary users and more extensive paid services for businesses and social media professionals.

In March 2017, Albright tweeted a complaint at Buffer about a problem she was having with a recent update. In one tweet in that conversation, she posted a screenshot of her Buffer account. That screenshot showed a number of profile pictures from Twitter accounts under her control through Buffer.

Among the pictures were those of @PropagandaMnstr, @CapWaterfront and @BucksPocket, all accounts known to be linked to her. There were also profile pictures for accounts that Trevor had listed in his original exposé of potentially fake accounts, including @FactoryofTruth, @_Stacey_Eff, @FordColvin, @GatsbyGirl, @PoliticalSavvy, @WTHisBill and @__SallyForth.

Albright told HuffPost that this screenshot was “really old” and that she no longer had access to the Buffer account controlling those accounts.

While it is still not known what organization was actually behind these automated accounts, most of them ceased operations after they were spotted by Trevor.

Meanwhile, Albright, who said she is no longer connected to the unknown project, concedes that this kind of automation may be problematic.

“I don’t really see it as the same thing as the Russian accounts, but I guess since you’re calling me about it, I guess that means that it’s something that I didn’t think that it was ― if that makes sense,” Albright said. “People seem upset by it in a way I did not anticipate.”

Paul Blumenthal
Reporter, HuffPost



THE ALMOST HIDDEN WAR OF THE 2016 ELECTION -- SALLY ALBRIGHT V BERNIE SANDERS, GOES ON. (JANUARY 17, 2017)

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/why-wont-liberals-like-sally-albright-stop-lying-a.html
Why Won't Clinton Democrats Like Sally Albright Stop Lying About Bernie Sanders?
By Shane Ryan | January 17, 2017 | 10:12am
Photo courtesy of Getty

There’s a very odd and persistent pathology in the minds of liberals and neoliberals who supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary: They hate Bernie Sanders. Sure, they hate Trump too—a lot—but man, they really, really hate Bernie. This can seem confusing, because as most of us know, the primary ended back in June. They’re a bit like that Japanese soldier who hid in the Filipino jungle for 27 years after World War Two, not realizing his country had surrendered. There’s just one key difference: They actually won!

Yet victory hasn’t dimmed their deep antipathy for Bernie, and they will do anything to discredit him, ethics be damned. Here’s why it matters: There’s a fight going on for the heart of the party, and until the fight is resolved, opposing Trump will be that much harder. To beat centrism, and bury it in the graveyard of history, it’s important to understand how it operates on the propaganda level.

Enter Sally Albright, with this tweet that you may have missed over the long weekend:


Sally Albright
@SallyAlbright
Oh, look at that! Bernie took $309,575 from Big Pharma last year (3rd in the Senate) Cory Booker took $56,678 https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H04&recipdetail=S&sortorder=A&mem=Y&cycle=2016 …

9:15 PM - Jan 14, 2017
284
382 people are talking about this
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Me, sputtering as I reach for a pitchfork: Guh-whaaaaaa!?

Other me, who bit the bullet and did some research: Stop sputtering! Put down your pitchfork! Follow me on a journey of enlightenment as I show you the hidden treachery of the neoliberal!

Let's begin with our new friend.

1. WHO IS SALLY ALBRIGHT?

Sally Albright describes herself on Twitter as a “comms strategist, political organizer, progressive activist, and rock & roll girl.” (Note to the astute reader: A good way to tell if someone is actually a progressive, and not just trying to co-opt the term, is whether said progressive spends his or her time on social media slandering actual progressive leaders.) She is, per her Facebook and LinkedIn pages—the former is a pro-bono Bernie attack page, the latter is just too long—a political strategist for hire. She worked for Hillary, but she really loves Obama. She was an elected delegate for the Democrats and Bill Clinton as far back as the 1996 party convention. But she's also worked for Newt Gingrich and various other Republicans, so her principles are flexible, in a way that it's probably impolite to point out in D.C. circles. She seems to be well-employed and well-connected. She has over 20,000 Twitter followers. “Important” mainstream media figures interact with her there. She likes to gloat about how bad progressives are at winning elections, when her own record is Donna Brazile-like. You get the picture.

As for being a “rock and roll girl,” we can only speculate. On one hand, a friend of hers once described her as “having the personality of a friendly line of cocaine.” But in 2002 there was a case in Dewey Beach, DE, where one Sally Albright sub-leased a summer rental for $3,800. The kids who rented it threw a “noisy (drinking) party,” at which time Albright got charged for a noise violation—pretty unfairly, it has to be said. She kicked the kids out, and wouldn't refund them their money even though they'd only been there for two nights.

Now, I cannot confirm that this is the same Sally Albright—though our Sally Albright has nine Pinterest pins for Dewey Beach—but if it is, I think it's fair to ask the question: Is that truly rock and roll, Sally?? Do you deserve that line in your Twitter bio?? But again: It could totally be a different Sally Albright. Presumably there are lots of Sally Albrights! Did you know that the main character from When Harry Met Sally is named Sally Albright? It's true!


2. THE TWEET

I seem to have gotten sidetracked with the “rock and roll” issue. Let's fixate instead on the events of this weekend. Why did Sally Albright tweet what she tweeted about Sanders?

Well, perhaps she was inspired by Paste. Or one of the dozens of other media outlets who wrote a story last week about how Sen. Cory Booker and some other Democrats voted against a symbolic (but potentially precedent-setting) amendment introduced by Sanders that would have allowed Americans to import prescription drugs from places like Canada, thereby saving lots of money. We, along with everyone else, also included the fact that Booker and some of the other “nay” Democrats get lots of money from the pharmaceutical industry every year. Booker later tried to claim that he was mostly concerned about safety, which seems like nonsense, and is exactly the dumb excuse the pharmaceutical industry uses—he's basically quoting from their playbook. He even did a tricky thing where he voted for a later importation amendment which supposedly included a “safety certification” clause—one which will never be implemented, and which they can use to pretend they support importation. The funny thing is, that amendment didn't say a word about safety in the first place.

AS YOU MIGHT GUESS, BERNIE DIDN'T HIDE HIS DISPLEASURE:

“The Democratic Party has got to make it very clear that they are prepared to stand up to powerful special interests like the pharmaceutical industry and like Wall Street, and they're not going to win elections and they're not going to be doing the right thing for the American people unless they have the guts to do that. That 13 Democrats did not is disappointing. I absolutely hope that in the coming weeks and months you're going to see many of them develop the courage to stand up to Pharma.”

Which brings us back to Sally. What's the best way to discredit Bernie on this one? Well, that's easy—show that he's a big ol' hypocrite who takes lots of money from Big Pharma too! So she tweeted her tweet…


Sally Albright
@SallyAlbright
Oh, look at that! Bernie took $309,575 from Big Pharma last year (3rd in the Senate) Cory Booker took $56,678 https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H04&recipdetail=S&sortorder=A&mem=Y&cycle=2016 …

9:15 PM - Jan 14, 2017
284
382 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

...and got 250 retweets and 250 likes and lots of righteous anger from other liberals, and blah blah blah it won’t matter at all in the end because the world is post-truth and Daddy Trump is going to kill us all. But it’s still worth investigating the tactic; it’s something we saw over and over again from the center-left during the primaries, and we’ll surely see it again between now and the nuclear holocaust. And in the off chance the apocalypse doesn’t come about, we need to be ready.

3. THE TRUTH

So let’s take a deeper look. Albright cites data from 2016 which seems to show that, yes, Bernie has received $309,575 from the “pharmaceutical and health products” industry in the 2016 cycle, to just $56,678 from Booker. Here’s a screenshot of the biggest earners:

Look closely, and you may notice something a little weird about Sanders’ name. Unlike the other Senators on the list, you only see his party affiliation listed, but not the state. I wonder why that is? I mean, he’s the Senator from Vermont, right? And Albright said he was third among all Senators in taking that sweet pharma cash, right? And this thing is sorted by Senators, right?

Well, let’s try something: Let’s sort by donations to all political candidates and see what our new top ten looks like:

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.01.43 PM.png

Hey, now that’s interesting! Hillary Clinton is on the list now—way out in front, actually—and she also only has a D next to her name. What gives?

It turns out, that dirty money Sanders supposedly got from Big Pharma was for his presidential election. That’s why there was no state next to his name on the first list—the money wasn’t meant for any Senate race. Right off the bat, we see that when Albright says he was “third among all Senators,” she was telling a bit of a fib. There were extraordinary circumstances at play.

But honestly, that’s the smallest of her fibs. Enjoy it, by all means, but understand it’s merely an appetizer to the appetizers. As your parents may have warned you the first time you ate at a nice restaurant, don’t fill up on the bread.

Continuing, let’s notice one other aspect of the OpenSecrets list—it’s sorted for the 2016 election cycle, and at the top of the list, it’s all Senators who are running for re-election this year. Blunt, Portman, Murray, Burr—they were all at the end of six-year terms, and they needed money. So did Hillary, and so did Bernie. You know who wasn’t up for re-election this cycle? Cory Booker. So it makes sense that he didn’t get as much money as his colleagues. But what if we look at the 2014 cycle, when Booker was actually running?

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.11.04 PM.png

There’s our guy! No. 2 on the list, and the top Democrat. Only Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, took him down—and it was close. Gee, I wonder why Albright didn’t sort for the 2014 cycle…

But hey, let’s not dodge the central issue. Senator or presidential hopeful, it’s still pretty messed up that Sanders took so much damn pharma money when he claims to be an advocate for single payer, right? When you think about it, it really doesn’t make sense that they’d give him anything, unless the guy is a double agent or something. Hillary? Sure. She’s a Big Pharma gal, and always has been. But why is Bernie getting so much from an industry he basically wants to decapitate?

To understand that, we need to look at a little disclaimer at the bottom of the list:

Screen Shot 2017-01-15 at 7.14.09 PM.png

Ahhh, okay—this money could either come from a PAC or a person who donated more than $200. For example, I gave Bernie Sanders more than $200 during the primary. I work here at Paste. So when OpenSecrets tallies up the money Bernie made during his campaign, they count my contribution, and they know my industry (because I had to fill it out). So it gets added to the industry tab titled “ultra-hip millennial journalism.” Or whatever.

Now, knowing this, you may remember that Bernie raised a good deal of money from individuals before he dropped out of the primary in 2016. In fact, he raised $228,171,330—almost a quarter of a goddam billion dollars. That’s a veritable shit ton.

Have you begun to formulate a theory about this money? I have too. It goes like this: Is it just possible that, of the $200 million-plus total, $309,575—.136 percent of the overall sum—came from individuals donating more than $200 that just so happened to have worked in the pharmaceutical industry? And that Albright’s implication that he’s some kind of hypocrite and mastermind who pulled the wool over all our eyes is bullshit, because that money came from people who might be secretaries or sales reps or, who knows, CEOs, but who were forking over their own hard-earned cash? Which added up to around $300,000 when it was all said and done? And that it makes way more sense that way, since there’s no planet on which any pharmaceutical company with half a brain would ever give money to Sanders as he crusaded around the country taking a rhetorical flamethrower to every repugnant principle they hold dear?

Well, to prove that, we’d first have to prove that Bernie didn’t take money from any PACs associated with Big Pharma, and that sounds sorta hard, so…oh…wait…all that information from his campaign is right here. And you can find the data from his entire Senate career here, which shows that he’s only ever taken $94,554 from “Health” PACs in almost 30 years, most of which probably came from party war chests that get split thinly among everyone who caucuses with the Democrats.

To verify, I called OpenSecrets, and they confirmed the obvious: If donations did not come from a PAC, they came from individuals. They also directed me to the full, giant spreadsheet of Sanders donors, which lists all the individuals who gave him money—hundreds of whom, at least, came from the pharmaceutical industry.

Well, hot damn. The man’s clean!

To summarize: Sanders only made so much money from Big Pharma because he was running for president. He was not the third amongst Senators—that was bullshit. Booker takes way more from pharma PACs, not to mention Wall Street, and is a compromised stooge. Finally, the money Sanders supposedly made was all from individual donors employed in the pharmaceutical industry, not from the companies themselves, or their PACs.


4. WHY THEY DO WHAT THEY DO

Of course, Sally Albright knew all this. Just like she knew that Cory Booker has already accepted four times the money that Sanders has from health PACs, despite the fact that Sanders first joined Congress in 1991 and Booker got there in…2013. (I’m not here to make the case that Booker is a mind-numbingly corrupt neoliberal, but if you want that case made, start here.) She’s a savvy D.C. vet, and while it’s possible that she was ignorant about how campaign finance works in this case, it would be a humiliating error for someone with so much experience.

Albright is no dope. She was hoping you were, which is why she framed the tweet the way she did, but I believe she knew exactly what she was doing, just like countless liberals knew exactly they were doing when they attacked Sanders and other progressives with these underhanded quarter-truths during the primary. It’s not a particularly profound discovery—gasp, politics is dirty!—but it can’t hurt to stay informed. This is how a losing faction that has no business holding the reins of power tries to fool you into voting against your interests, thereby preserving their place at the top of the Washington dung heap. I can’t emphasize this next part enough: They are just like Republicans.

Except unlike Republicans, they constantly lose. And they hate anyone, like Bernie, who sees through their bullshit and has the audacity to hold them accountable. So the next time somebody tells you that all this in-fighting on the left will hurt the anti-Trump cause, remember that it’s the cry of a dying establishment hoping to silence progressives, tone police a movement to death, and steer the ship of party into the same massive iceberg. Over and over and over again.

But look, even after all this, you can understand where Albright is coming from. She has a political goal, just like Bernie does. He attacks his goal one way, she attacks hers another. In the interest of extending an olive branch, I’d even be willing to call her tactic “efficient.” Just look at the evidence: It took me a whole bunch of words and research to make my argument. It only took her 140 characters. It costs time and effort to chase down the truth, but lying? That’s fucking easy.