http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/67tlr7/bernie-sanders-pt–2
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/7vjzxb/bernie-sanders-pt–1
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.â€
“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?â€
“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.â€
“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.â€
“And I have to ascertain what kind of support there is out there.â€
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTSÂ Â Â Â Â COUNTERPUNCH
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.
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.
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| Moscow, Nov 16 (Prensa Latina) Fernando Gonzalez, vice president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), stated on Sunday that the struggle for the release of three Cuban compatriots still held in U.S. prisons is a priority for the Russians.
About to conclude his visit to Russia, Gonzalez, who is also a Hero of the Republic of Cuba, told Prensa Latina that he felt a deep sentiment of solidarity for Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino. They, as well as Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms that included several life sentences, for trying to prevent violent actions against their homeland, planned on U.S. territory. While Hernandez, Labañino and Guerrero remain in prison in the United States, Fernando and Rene returned home after completing their prison sentences of more than 15 years. The ICAP vice president thanked the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for expressing solidarity with the Cuban 5, to whom he referred as “my brothers.” From the official viewpoint, the two resolutions approved unanimously on two occasions by the State Duma (lower house of parliament) are actions for which we feel the need to thank during the visit, he added. That was the main objective of the meeting at the Duma, where we were received by Chairman Sergei Narishkin and First Deputy Chairman Ivan Melnikov. Both officials devoted more time than expected to us, despite their many occupations, Gonzalez said He stated that all meetings held by the delegation received the commitment by legislators and activists to continuing struggling with new initiatives until Gerardo, Ramon and Antonio can return to their homeland. Gonzalez is leading a delegation that attended the festivities on the 50th anniversary of the Russia-Cuba Friendship Society. Cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo, president of the Russia-Cuba Friendship Society, Doctor Aleida Guevara, founder of that solidarity association along with Yuri Gagarin on the Russian side, and Gladys Ayllon, director of ICAP’s Europe Department, accompanied Gonzalez. jg/iff/jpm |
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| Modificado el ( domingo, 16 de noviembre de 2014 ) |
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.â€
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.ÂMr. 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.â€
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.â€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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