Category: National
How the Israel Lobby Protected Ukrainian Neo-Nazis
| November 19, 2014 | 9:57 pm | Analysis, International, National | Comments closed

Rep. John Conyers wanted to block U.S. funding to neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help.

 

by Max Blumnthal

 

Alternet, November 19, 2014

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-lobby-protected-ukrainian-neo-nazis?akid=12483.52132.WojW4O&rd=1&src=newsletter1027326&t=3&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

AlterNet has learned that an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have forbidden US assistance, training and weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was kept out of the final bill by the Republican-led House Rules Committee. Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment was intended to help tamp down on violent confrontations between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists.
A USA Today/Pew poll conducted in April while the NDAA was being debated found that Americans opposed by more than 2 to 1 providing the Ukrainian government with arms or other forms of military assistance.
If passed, Conyers’ amendment would have explicitly barred those found to have offered “praise or glorification of Nazism or its collaborators, including through the use of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or other similar symbols” from receiving any form of support from the US Department of Defense.
The amendment was presented by congressional staffers to lobbyists from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, two of the country’s largest established Jewish pressure groups. Despite their stated mission to combat anti-Semitism and violent extremism, the ADL and Wiesenthal Center refused to support Jeffries and Conyers’ proposal.
According to Democratic sources in Congress, staffers from the ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center rejected the amendment on the grounds that right-wing Ukrainian parties like Svoboda with documented records of racist extremism had “moderated their rhetoric.” An ADL lobbyist insisted that “the focus should be on Russia,” while the Wiesenthal Center pointed to meetings between far-right political leaders in Ukraine and the Israeli embassy as evidence that groups like Svoboda and Right Sector had shed their extremism. The ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center did not respond to numerous requests by email and telephone for comment.

Earlier this year, the ADL’s outgoing National Director Abraham Foxman noted Svoboda’s “history of anti-Semitism and platform of ethnic nationalism” in a press release demanding the party renounce its past glorification of Stepan Bandera, a World War Two-era Nazi collaborator who has become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism.
When the Ukrainian parliament failed to pass a bill this October honoring Bandera’s Ukrainian Rebel Army, about 8000 supporters of Svoboda and the extremist Right Sector marched on the building, attacking riot police with homemade weapons while waving Banderist flags and Svoboda banners. The violent backlash was a reminder that the legend of Bandera would not die any time soon, and that Foxman’s admonitions had fallen on deaf ears.
Svobodoa’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, once called for the liberation of his country from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” In 2010, following the conviction of the Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for his supporting role in the death of nearly 30,000 people at the Sobibor camp, Tyahnybok flew to Germany to praise him as a hero who was “fighting for truth.”
Since the Euromaidan revolution, however, Svoboda has fought to rehabilitate its image. This has meant meeting with Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Reuven Din El and appealing to shared national values. “I would like to ask Israelis to also respect our patriotic feelings,” Tyahnybok has remarked. “Probably each party in the [Israeli] Knesset is nationalist. With God’s help, let it be this way for us too.”
Right Sector, the radical right-wing movement that battled riot police during the latter stages of the Euromaidan uprising, earned plaudits from the ADL’s Foxman when its leader arranged his own meeting with Din El. “[Right Sector leader] Dmitry Yarosh stressed that Right Sector will oppose all [racist] phenomena, especially anti-Semitism, with all legitimate means,” the Israeli embassy declared.
The results of this month’s Ukrainian parliamentary elections were widely portrayed as a setback for the ultra-nationalist right-wing, with Svoboda taking around 6 percent of the vote while Yarosh’s Right Sector failed to qualify for seats. The outcome cheered the American Jewish Committee, which declared that “Jews in most of Ukraine are heartened by the election results and even optimistic about the country’s future.”
But the dismal showing by the traditional ultra-nationalist parties was hardly evidence of a diminished right-wing. With President Petro Poroshenko leading the nationalists’ dream war in the East, Svoboda and Right Sector lost the protest vote they had commanded during the heady years of insurrection. As Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on Europe’s radical right, explained, “in 2012, Svoboda was also considered almost the only ‘patriotic’ party, but now all democratic parties are patriotic, so Svoboda has lost its ‘monopoly’ on patriotism.”
During the national election campaign, Ukraine’s leading party, the People’s Front of neoliberal Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was honeycombed with far-right militants. Andrei Parubiy, the co-founder of the neo-Nazi-inspired Social National Party and former chief of the Maidan defense committees, was among the extremists who won seats on the People’s Front ticket.
Besides Parubiy, the People’s Front included Andriy Biletsky, leader of the Azov militia, an overtly neo-Nazi fighting force that has been on the front lines of the battle against Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Azov deputy commander Vadym Troyan joined him on the party’s electoral list, rounding out a peculiar mix of khaki shirt clad fascists and buttoned-down neo-liberals.
Unlike Svoboda, these figures do not even feign moderation. “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival,” Biletsky recently wrote. “A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
Azov fighters are united by their nostalgia for Nazi Germany and embrace of open fascism. Sporting swastika tattoos, the battalion “flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag,” the New York Times’ Andrew Kramer recently reported.
With the government in a state of flux, Azov is filling the void in the East. As Ukrainian parliamentarian Gregory Nemira complained to reporter Anna Nemtsova in September, “The president still has not appointed a chief of staff for the armed forces. He has not admitted we are in a state of war, preferring to throw the battalions like Azov into the most dangerous combat zones, where authorities would not have the courage to send regular troops.”
Azov is precisely the sort of neo-Nazi organization that Conyers’ NDAA amendment would have deprived of US assistance. But when the congressman sought help from the ADL and the Wiesenthal Center in moving the proposal forward, he was rebuked. The amendment died a quiet death and Azov’s American supply line remains intact.

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US Corporate Giants Pay More to CEOs than in Federal Taxes
| November 19, 2014 | 8:26 pm | Analysis, National | Comments closed
Published 18 November 2014
SOURCE: TELESUR ENGLISH
 Seven of the biggest U.S. corporations received billions of dollars in tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service, while dolling out an average of US$17.3 million to CEOs.
While Congress is set to renew a slew of corporate tax breaks, new research published Tuesday found some of United States’ biggest companies pay their CEOs more than they give up in federal taxes.
The study’s authors warned the data illustrates “deep flaws in our corporate tax system.”
Published by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government, the research found that seven of the biggest U.S. corporations were refunded US$1.9 billion by the IRS, despite collectively declaring over US$74 billion in domestic pre-tax profits. On average, each company paid its CEO around US$17.3 million. The study found if the group of companies had paid the full 35 percent marginal statutory tax rate, the federal government would have enjoyed a windfall US$25.9 billion in extra taxes, instead of handing out billions of dollars in refunds to the seven corporate giants.
The companies included in the study were oil corporation Chevron, communications company Verizon, financial giants JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup and manufacturers Ford, General Motor and Boeing.
Scott Klinger, from the Center for Effective Government told CBS those billions in tax refunds and corporate profits aren’t going towards creating U.S. jobs. Instead, he argued most big corporations are using free cash to reward stockholders with dividends and stock buybacks.
“We’ve seen this narrative that corporations are being disadvantaged by the tax systems, and there are a few companies that pay pretty high rates, like retailers, but there are others that use offshore tax loopholes and other extender bills to their full advantage,” he stated.
All but one of the companies studied have responded by maintaining they adhere to the U.S. tax laws.
Only JPMorgan Chase hadn’t commented at the time of writing, but Ford and General Motors told Reuters they paid lower taxes than usual in 2013 due to financial losses in past years.
Boeing told Reuters most of its 2013 taxes were differed due to production and development investments, while Verizon denied it pays its CEO figures anywhere near its federal tax contribution.
The report was released as corporations continue to urge legislators to renew dozens of elapsed tax breaks by the end of the year.
According to Guggenheim Securities senior policy analyst Chris Krueger, Congress is likely to renew a package of 55 tax breaks during the so-called lame duck congressional session, which ends in December.
“The fate of the 55 expired special interest tax breaks … will be the marquee legislative fight of the lame duck session,” Krueger stated.
Cuban brain drain, courtesy of the USA
| November 18, 2014 | 10:19 pm | Analysis, International, Latin America, National | Comments closed
NYTimes: A Cuban Brain Drain, Courtesy of U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/opinion/a-cuban-brain-drain-courtesy-of-us.html?rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

Secretary of State John Kerry and the American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, have praised the work of Cuban doctors dispatched to treat Ebola patients in West Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently sent an official to a regional meeting the Cuban government convened in Havana to coordinate efforts to fight the disease. In Africa, Cuban doctors are working in American-built facilities. The epidemic has had the unexpected effect of injecting common sense into an unnecessarily poisonous relationship.

And yet, Cuban doctors serving in West Africa today could easily abandon their posts, take a taxi to the nearest American Embassy and apply for a little-known immigration program that has allowed thousands of them to defect. Those who are accepted can be on American soil within weeks, on track to becoming United States citizens.

There is much to criticize about Washington’s failed policies toward Cuba and the embargo it has imposed on the island for decades. But the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which in the last fiscal year enabled 1,278 Cubans to defect while on overseas assignments, a record number, is particularly hard to justify.

It is incongruous for the United States to value the contributions of Cuban doctors who are sent by their government to assist in international crises like the 2010 Haiti earthquake while working to subvert that government by making defection so easy.

American immigration policy should give priority to the world’s neediest refugees and persecuted people. It should not be used to exacerbate the brain drain of an adversarial nation at a time when improved relations between the two countries are a worthwhile, realistic goal.

The program was introduced through executive authority in August 2006, when Emilio González, a hard-line Cuban exile, was at the helm of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mr. González described the labor of Cuban doctors abroad as “state-sponsored human trafficking.” At the time, the Bush administration was trying to cripple the Cuban government. Easily enabling medical personnel posted abroad to defect represented an opportunity to strike at the core of the island’s primary diplomatic tool, while embarrassing the Castro regime.

Cuba has been using its medical corps as the nation’s main source of revenue and soft power for many years. The country has one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita in the world and offers medical scholarships to hundreds of disadvantaged international students each year, and some have been from the United States. According to Cuban government figures, more than 440,000 of the island’s 11 million citizens are employed in the health sector.

Havana gets subsidized oil from Venezuela and money from several other countries in exchange for medical services. This year, according to the state-run newspaper Granma, the government expects to make $8.2 billion from its medical workers overseas. The vast majority, just under
6,000, are posted in Latin America and the Caribbean. A few thousand are in 32 African countries.

Medical professionals, like most Cubans, earn meager wages. Earlier this year, the government raised the salaries of medical workers. Doctors now earn about $60 per month, while nurses make nearly $40. Overseas postings allows these health care workers to earn significantly more. Doctors in Brazil, for example, are making about $1,200 per month.

The 256 Cuban medical professionals treating Ebola patients in West Africa are getting daily stipends of roughly $240 from the World Health Organization. José Luis Di Fabio, the head of the W.H.O. in Havana, said he was confident the doctors and nurses dispatched to Africa have gone on their own volition. “It was voluntary,” Mr. Di Fabio, an Uruguayan whose organization has overseen their deployment, said in an interview. “Some backtracked at the last minute and there was no problem.”

Some doctors who have defected say they felt the overseas tours had an implicit element of coercion and have complained that the government pockets the bulk of the money it gets for their services. But the State Department says in its latest report on human trafficking that reported coercion of Cuban medical personnel does “not appear to reflect a uniform government policy.” Even so, the Cuban government would be wise to compensate medical personnel more generously if their work overseas is to remain the island’s economic bedrock.

Last year, the Cuban government liberalized its travel policies, allowing most citizens, including dissidents, to leave the country freely. Doctors, who in the past faced stricter travel restrictions than ordinary Cubans, no longer do. Some 20,000 Cubans are allowed to immigrate to the United States yearly. In addition, those who manage to arrive here in rafts or through border crossing points are automatically authorized to stay.


The Cuban government has long regarded the medical defection program as a symbol of American duplicity. It undermines Cuba’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises and does nothing to make the government in Havana more open or democratic. As long as this incoherent policy is in place, establishing a healthier relationship between the two nations will be harder.

Many medical professionals, like a growing number of Cubans, will continue to want to move to the United States in search of new opportunities, and they have every right to do so. But inviting them to defect while on overseas tours is going too far.
Sanders on the bourgeoisie and political struggle
| November 18, 2014 | 8:32 pm | National | Comments closed
Excerpted from Politicus USA
Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders warned on Monday that the United States may have reached a “tipping point” where the “billionaire class” could block any presidential candidates who were fighting for the working class.
Sanders explained during an interview on CNN that he had been traveling the country to determine if he would have the necessary support for a presidential run in 2016.
“I’m giving some thought to it,” he said. “Taking on the billionaire class, and Wall Street, and the Koch brothers is not an easy task.”

“How are you going to get elected president if you take on the billionaire class?” CNN host Chris Cuomo asked. “Don’t you watch the elections?”
“I’m going to be very honest with you,” Sanders replied. “We may have reached the tipping point where candidates who are fighting for the working class and the middle class of this country may not be able do it anymore because of the power of the billionaire class.”
“That’s the simple reality,” he continued. “And I have got to ascertain — if I do it, I want to do it well. If I do it, I know that I will need millions of people engaged in a real grassroots campaign to take on big money, and to fight for an agenda, a jobs program, raising the minimum wage, pay equity for women, dealing with climate change, all of these things.”
“And I have to ascertain what kind of support there is out there.”
Hillary the Warmonger
| November 18, 2014 | 8:28 pm | Analysis, International, National | Comments closed

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS      COUNTERPUNCH

Glenn Greenwald has revealed that Hillary Clinton is the presidential candidate of the banksters and warmongers.    Pam and Russ Martens note that Elizabeth Warren is the populist alternative.    I doubt that a politician who represents the people can acquire the campaign funds needed to run a campaign.  If Warren becomes a threat, the Establishment will frame her with bogus charges and move her aside.
Hillary as president would mean war with Russia.  With neocon nazis such as Robert Kagan and Max Boot running her war policy and with Hillary’s comparison of Russia’s president Putin to Adolf Hitler, war would be a certainty.   As Michel Chossudovsky and Noam Chomsky have written, the war would be nuclear.
If Hillary is elected president, the financial gangsters and profiteering war criminals would complete their takeover of the country.  It would be forever or until armageddon.
To understand what we would be getting with Hillary, recall the Clinton presidency. The Clinton presidency was transformative in ways not generally recognized.  Clinton destroyed the Democratic Party with “free trade” agreements, deregulated the financial system, launched Washington’s ongoing policy of “regime change” with illegal military attacks on Yugoslavia and Iraq, and his regime used deadly force without cause against American civilians and covered up the murders with fake investigations.  These were four big changes that set the country on its downward spiral into a militarized police state with massive income and wealth inequality.
One can understand why Republicans wanted the North American Free Trade Agreement, but it was Bill Clinton who signed it into law.  “Free trade” agreements are devices used by US corporations to offshore their production of goods and services sold in American markets.  By moving production abroad, labor cost savings increase corporate profits and share prices, bringing capital gains to shareholders and multi-million dollar performance bonuses to executives.  The rewards to capital are large, but the rewards come at the expense of US manufacturing workers and the tax base of cities and states.
When plants are closed and the work shipped overseas, middle class jobs disappear.   Industrial and manufacturing unions are eviscerated, destroying the labor unions that financed the Democrats’ election campaigns.  The countervailing power of labor against capital was lost, and Democrats had to turn to the same sources of funding as Republicans.  The result is a one party state.
The weakened tax base of cities and states has made it possible for Republicans to attack the public sector unions.  Today the Democratic Party no longer exists as a political party financed by the union dues of ordinary people.  Today both political parties represent the interests of the same powerful interest groups:  the financial sector, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the extractive industries, and agribusiness.
Neither party represents voters. Thus, the people are loaded up with the costs of financial bailouts and wars, while the extractive industries and Monsanto destroy the environment and degrade the food supply.  Elections no longer deal with real issues such as the loss of constitutional protections and a government accountable to law. Instead the parties compete on issues such as homosexual marriage and federal funding of abortion.
Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was the initiating move followed by the removal of more constraints that allowed the financial system to transform itself into a gambling casino where bets are covered by the public and the Federal Reserve. The full consequences of this remain to be seen.
The Clinton regime’s attack on the Serbs was a war crime under international law, but it was the Yugoslavian president who tried to defend his country who was put on trial as a war criminal.  When the Clinton regime murdered Randy Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge and 76 people at Waco, subjecting the few survivors to a show trial, the regime’s crimes against humanity went unpunished.  Thus did Clinton set the precedents for 14 years of Bush/Obama crimes against humanity in seven countries.  Millions of people have been killed, maimed, and displaced, and it is all acceptable.
It is easy enough for a government to stir up its population against foreigners as the successes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama demonstrate.  But the Clinton regime managed to stir up Americans against their fellows as well.  When the FBI gratuitously murdered Randy Weaver’s wife and young son, propagandistic denunciations of Randy Weaver took the place of accountability.  When the FBI attacked the Branch Davidians, a religious movement that split from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with tanks and poison gas, causing a fire that burned 76 people, mainly women and children, to death, the mass murder was justified by the Clinton regime with wild and unsubstantiated charges against the government’s murdered victims.
All efforts to bring accountability to the crimes were blocked.  These were the precedents for the executive branch’s successful drive to secure immunity from law.  This immunity has now spread to local police who routinely abuse and murder US citizens on their streets and in their homes.
Washington’s international lawlessness about which the Russian and Chinese governments increasingly complain originated with the Clinton regime.  Washington’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” originated in the Clinton regime, as did the goal of “regime change” in Iraq and Washington’s illegal bombings and embargoes that costs the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, lost lives that Clinton’s Secretary of State said were justified.
The US government had done wicked things in the past.  For example, the Spanish-American war was a grab for empire, and Washington has always protected the interests of US corporations from Latin American reformers, but the Clinton regime globalized the criminality.  Regime change has become reckless bringing with it danger of nuclear war.  It is no longer Grenada and Honduras whose governments are overthrown.  Today it is Russia and China that are targeted.
Former parts of Russia herself–Georgia and Ukraine–have been turned into Washington’s vassal states. Washington-financed NGOs organize “student protests” in Hong Kong, hoping that the protests will spread into China and destabilize the government.  The recklessness of these interventions in the internal affairs of nuclear powers is unprecedented.
Hillary Clinton is a warmonger, and so will be the Republican candidate.  The hardening anti-Russian rhetoric issuing from Washington and its punk EU puppet states places the world on the road to extinction.  The arrogant neoconservatives, with their hubristic belief that the US is the “exceptional and indispensable” country, would regard a deescalation of rhetoric and sanctions as backing down.  The more the neocons and politicians such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham escalate the rhetoric, the closer we come to war.
As the US government now embraces pre-emptive arrest and detention of those who might someday commit a crime, the entire cadre of neocon warmongers should be arrested and indefinitely detained before they destroy humanity.
The Clinton years produced a spate of books documenting the numerous crimes and coverups–the Oklahoma City bombing, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the FBI crime lab scandal, Vincent Foster’s death, CIA involvement in drug running, the militarization of law enforcement, Kosovo, you name it.  Most of these books are written from a libertarian or conservative viewpoint as no one realized while it was happening the nature of the transformation of American governance.  Those who have forgotten and those too young ever to have known owe it to themselves to acquaint or re-acquaint themselves with the Clinton years.  Recently I wrote about Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton.  Another book with substantial documentation is James Bovard’s Feeling Your Pain. Congress and the media aided and abetted the extensive coverups, focusing instead on the relatively unimportant Whitewater real estate deals and Clinton’s sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton and his corrupt regime lied about many important things, but only his lie about his affair with Monica Lewinsky caused the House of Representatives to impeach him.  By ignoring numerous substantial grounds for impeachment and selecting instead an insubstantial reason, Congress and the media were complicit in the rise of an unaccountable executive branch. This lack of accountability has brought us tyranny at home and war abroad, and these two evils are enveloping us all.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.
BERNIE SANDERS ON IMMIGRATION REFORM AND KEYSTONE PIPELINE
| November 17, 2014 | 10:24 pm | Analysis, National | Comments closed
NOV. 17, 2014
from POLITICUS USA
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CUOMO [CNN REPORTER]:…Senator, great to have you on set here at NEW DAY. Let me ask you this. What’s your answer to the basic question of should the president do this?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I) VERMONT: Look, Chris, this country faces enormous problems. Our middle class is disappearing. We have more people living in poverty almost at any other time in the history of this country, and massive wealth and income inequality. And what we’ve seen over the last six years is Republicans doing hundreds and hundreds of filibusters. We passed legislation. We got a majority vote to raise the minimum wage, to do pay equity, to do a jobs program. Republicans filibustered, filibustered, and filibustered.
I think what the president is finally saying, look, immigration is a serious problem. We have got to do something. And if you guys don’t do it — remember, the Senate last year passed a reasonably good bill. What has the House done? Absolutely nothing. So what the president is saying, this country has problems. I’m going to go forward. If you pass legislation, I’ll rescind the executive order. But do something, address problems.
CAMEROTA [CNN]: Even if it means that by acting unilaterally he threatens the relationship for any possible compromise. If election meant that there was a new beginning that now they will once again be at loggerheads, there could be a government shutdown, and all the other ripple effect.
SANDERS: Threaten, compromise. Is that what you said?
CAMEROTA: Well —
SANDERS: For six years we are trying to get the Republicans to support anything. Look, the Republicans — I have to say I’m an independent. I’m not particularly partisan. But any objective observer understands they have become a right wing party, not a center-right party. They have a right wing base. They have an agenda can which does not want to work with the president.
And I think what the president is saying, look, we’ve got problems. We have got to move. To say that we’re going to break the wonderful harmony and working relationship that we’ve had six years, that did not exist.
CAMEROTA: It’s not that. It’s that they are threatening shutdown, that they won’t work with Democrats and the president if he were to do this.
SANDERS: Then the American people have to make a choice. If they think the government shutdown is a response to the enormous problems facing this country. Look, the American people in poll after poll and on Election Day said we could raise the minimum wage. Do you hear Republicans talking about that? The American people in poll after poll say women should get paid the same amount of money as men. Do you hear the Republicans talking about that? The American are disgusted with Citizens United.
CUOMO: They heard something, though, senator, because they just voted in the Republicans in a very big way. And I think there’s a political calculation here to be made. You’re certainly right about that. But there are a lot of lives in the balance.
What I don’t understand here is there’s an absence of leadership by the party and president. And by the party I mean the Democratic Party, because you can’t play the same game the Republicans are. You don’t have the leverage. So you’re dealing with need of these families being separated. Everybody should be able to agree that’s horrible. How does the party that you caucus with and leader of the country find a way to make that salable, which should not be so difficult?
SANDERS: Chris, I agree with you. It should not be so difficult. I think the vast majority of people in this country want immigration reform. We passed it in the Senate. We have kids who are born in this country that are going to see a situation if we don’t act that their parents may be expelled.
CUOMO: It’s happened before. Presidents Bush and Reagan both did this. But here’s the difference. The difference was that the Congress had been massaged in those two situations in the direction of the ultimate reform, so that when the president signed these executive orders stopping the families from being separated, Congress undid it quickly. They were moving that way. That leadership, that compromise has not been found here.
SANDERS: I don’t think it’s leadership and I don’t think it’s compromise. The Republican Party is today a very different party than it was back then. That’s just the simple reality. And you pay attention to this every day. Have you heard Republicans talking in a serious way about immigration reform? They have not.
So the president again on all of these issues, he is sitting there and saying, we have problems. We have got to act. And what he has said over and over again is if you pass legislation, I’ll rescind executive orders. Everybody knows executive orders are not the best way to do things. We know that. But you have a party now, I have to say this, which is really recalcitrant in terms of wanting to do much.
Sen. Sanders went on to explain to the CNN hosts why the Keystone pipeline is not a good idea, with host Chris Cuomo falsely arguing that the pipeline would lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil and create commerce.
The pro-Republican talking points were obvious. The idea that President Obama and Democrats have been unwilling to compromise. The false notion that Obama’s executive orders will poison the well and make it impossible for Republicans to pass an immigration bill. The whole mentality of Democrats lost so Republicans get to do whatever they want. These Republican talking points were all reflected in the questions that Sen. Sanders was asked.
Sanders knocked down every single Republican talking points based question with facts and history. In the media’s eyes, the six years of obstruction before the 2014 never happened. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) was correct to point out that John Boehner has refused to allow a vote on the Senate passed immigration reform bill.
The CNN interview demonstrated that the left is going to be battling both a Republican majority in Congress and the a corporate run media who will be cheering them on. Bernie Sanders brought the truth to CNN, and the rest of the left could learn a valuable lesson in how to handle the blame Obama media from the Vermont Independent.
Hillary is good for the Holy Land, but not for us
| November 16, 2014 | 7:30 pm | Analysis, National | Comments closed
PROGRESO WEEKLY
It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones, she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo.
That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one, not yet this one) – makes it all the more tempting to regard #HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity - much of it speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her presidency - make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in September).
But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances. Those increasingly inspired factions include:
Wall Street
Down on Wall Street they don’t believe (Clinton’s populist rhetoric) for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.
Although Hillary Clinton has made no formal announcement of her candidacy, the consensus on Wall Street is that she is running—and running hard—and that her national organization is quickly falling into place behind the scenes. That all makes her attractive. Wall Street, above all, loves a winner, especially one who is not likely to tamper too radically with its vast money pot.
According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.”
The Israel Lobby
Should she become president, on one level, better ties with Israel are virtually guaranteed. . . . Let’s not forget that the Clintons dealt with Bibi too as prime minister. It was never easy. But clearly it was a lot more productive than what we see now. . . . To put it simply, as a more conventional politician, Hillary is good on Israel and relates to the country in a way this president doesn’t. . . .  Hillary is from a different generation and functioned in a political world in which being good on Israel was both mandatory and smart.
Let’s be clear. When it comes to Israel, there is no Bill Clinton 2.0. The former president is probably unique among presidents for the depth of his feeling for Israel and his willingness to put aside his own frustrations with certain aspects of Israel’s behavior, such as settlements. But this accommodation applies to Hillary too. Both Bill and Hillary are so enamored with the idea of Israel and its unique history that they are prone to make certain allowances for the reality of Israel’s behavior, such as the continuing construction of settlements.
Interventionists (i.e., war zealots)
But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. 
Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
Old school neocons
After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back. . . . Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy. . . .
Other neocons have followed [Robert] Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board. . . . Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing “something of a swing group between the two major parties.” Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is remarkable how very little has changed.
So take that, cynics. There are pockets of vibrant political excitement stirring in the land over a Hillary Clinton presidency. There are posters being made, buttons being appended, checks being prepared, appointments being coveted. The joint, allied, synergistic constituencies of plutocracy and endless war have their beloved candidate. And it’s really quite difficult to argue that their excitement and affection are unwarranted.
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