Six on the 2020 Election(s): Bernie Sanders: Deficit hawks once again show their hypocrisy on military spending; What to watch for in the upcoming Dem debate [horse-race report]; Pete Buttigieg Is (Also) Lying About His Age; Trump Has Successfully Ga

0 views
Skip to first unread message

panaritisp

unread,
Dec 18, 2019, 6:11:18 PM12/18/19
to Six on History
If you like what you find on the "Six on History" blog, please share w/your contacts. 

And please don't forget to check out the pertinent images attached to every post
How to Search past posts/articles by topic or issue: Click here    h/t to John Elfrank-Dana
Thanks John and Gary


 


Six on the 2020 Election(s): Bernie Sanders: Deficit hawks once again show their hypocrisy on military spending; What to watch for in the upcoming Dem debate [horse-race report]; Pete Buttigieg Is (Also) Lying About His Age; Trump Has Successfully Gamed the Courts Chris Wallace SHREDS Trump; One America News’s Ukraine-Rudy Giuliani exposé is a stunning piece of propaganda




Bernie Sanders: Deficit hawks once again show their hypocrisy on military spending 

"When I talk about changing national priorities, I’m talking about the fact that the $120 billion increase in Pentagon spending — compared with the final year of the Obama administration — could have made every public college, university, trade school and apprenticeship program in the United States tuition free, eliminated homelessness and provided universal school meals to every kid in our nation’s public schools.






The time is long overdue for us to take a hard look at military spending, including the “war on terror,” and whether it makes sense to spend trillions more on endless wars, wars that often cause more problems than they solve.

Call me a radical, but maybe before funding a new space force, we should make sure no American goes bankrupt because of a medical bill or dies because they can’t afford to go to a doctor on time.

The massive unpaid-for defense bill is just one obvious example of the hypocrisy of the deficit hawks in Congress and their corporate enablers.



                               
           

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your Inbox.

The NewsHour is hosting the next Democratic debate on Thursday. You can find live coverage and all kinds of related materials on our website. 

 

WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE SIXTH DEMOCRATIC DEBATE
By Daniel Bush, @DanielBush
Senior Reporter, Digital Politics

Seven candidates will appear at the sixth Democratic debate Thursday in Los Angeles: Former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and the billionaire environmental advocate, Tom Steyer.

The PBS NewsHour/POLITICO debate comes as the impeachment battle in Congress is coming to a head -- and in a moment when the primary field remains unsettled with less than two months to go before voting begins. Here’s a guide of things to watch for Thursday. (Click here for a full preview of the debate).

Pete Buttigieg in the spotlight

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana has taken off in the polls since the last debate in November. Now he’ll take the debate stage in Los Angeles as one of the frontrunners for the first time this primary season, which will come with added scrutiny that often trips up leading candidates. 

Buttigieg, who is 37 years old, has found success on the campaign trail and in debates by focusing on his vision for moving the country forward. To succeed Thursday, he’ll need to stick to that message and demonstrate why he’s qualified for the most powerful job in the world.

Can Warren regain momentum?

For a few months in the late summer and early fall, Warren shot up in the polls as voters gravitated to her policy-driven, selfie line-powered campaign. But then she unveiled a “Medicare for All” proposal that angered progressives and moderate Democrats alike. After that, Warren quickly lost momentum, and along with it, her one-time frontrunner status. The debate Thursday is a chance for Warren to get back on track. On the progressive front, Warren will need to re-energize the party’s liberal base. On the other end of the spectrum, Warren must convince moderate Democrats that she has the best chance to beat Trump next November. Warren successfully threaded that needle in previous debates, and will be under pressure to do so again Thursday.

Will Biden (finally) deliver a standout debate performance? 

So far, Biden has not been at his best in the Democratic primary debates. And yet, his debate struggles haven’t hurt him substantially; Biden remains on top in national polls and in South Carolina and Nevada, two key early voting states. At the same time, the fact that Biden has struggled in the debates has left the door wide open for others to challenge him, raising questions about whether he can take on Trump in 2020. Biden could lay some of the criticism to rest with a strong debate in Los Angeles. 

Sanders is bouncing back

Sanders was largely written off by detractors and political pundits after suffering a heart attack in early October. The health scare raised questions about his age -- at 78 years old, Sanders is the oldest candidate in the race -- at a time when he was sinking in the polls. But Sanders bounced back and enters Thursday’s debate with more momentum than he’s had in months. 

Still, Sanders still faces the same obstacles he did at the start of the primaries. He’s viewed as too liberal by many moderate Democratic primary voters, and his age and health remain a concern for some voters. Despite these challenges, Sanders has refused to adjust his campaign -- and his supporters and online donors deeply admire his conviction. But so far his refusal to waver hasn’t been enough to put him atop the polls.

Lower-tier candidates have a big opportunity on a smaller debate stage

The debate stage will be smaller because fewer candidates met the higher thresholds of polling and fundraising needed to qualify. The format will shine a brighter spotlight on the candidates who are not in the top tier. For Yang and Steyer, who are both first-time candidates, the debate will be the most high-profile moment of their political careers. 

Thursday’s debate will also have some conspicuous absences, leading to a lack of diversity. Sen. Cory Booker won’t be on the debate stage, though he has shown no signs of dropping out of the race. Sen. Kamala Harris ended her White House bid earlier this month. They were both seen as strong contenders when they launched their campaigns. 



Pete Buttigieg Is (Also) Lying About His Age

"Still, I’ve recently made some efforts to be more engaged, and Michael Harriot’s Pete Buttigieg week inspired me to pay a bit more attention to him. I’d been so dismissive of Buttigieg’s chances that I hadn’t even learned how to pronounce his last name, so aside from the most superficial details about him (he is a mayor, was a soldier, has a husband, etc.), my only real context for him was juxtapositional. But I even got bored with that eventually, because of course, the media would mention that he’s a Rhodes Scholar seven times more often than they’d say that about Cory Booker.


He’s white and Booker isn’t. Duh.

So I started researching him. What does he really believe? (Not sure.) What has he really accomplished as a politician? (Not much.) Can he be trusted? (Depends on how you define trust.) None of this is new information to those who’ve been engaged. Buttigieg’s appeal is centered in his status as a vaguely competent amoebic cipher; he reminds you of the white neighbor you’ve never met but you’d ask to babysit a cat. But it’s new to me and it’s almost kind of exciting!

 exciting piece, however, is based on Buttigieg’s biographical info. According to multiple “sources” and perhaps even a “birth certificate,” Buttigieg is 37 years old. (He was also born Jan. 19, which makes him a Capricorn like me—a detail that matters to the people it matters to.) If he’s 37, this would mean that he’s been alive for 37 consecutive years. It also means that if he continues this streak of uninterrupted living for another five weeks, he’ll be 38, because that’s how age works. But after watching and listening to him several times in the past two weeks, I have reason to believe he’s lying about that, too, because Pete Buttigieg is actually somewhere between 65 and 72 years old.

He talks like an old—you hear him and you hear the voice that asks Target supervisors if they carry Herbie Hancock LPs. He dresses like Express launched a new store for elderly suit wear called Take Your Time. His hair is overcompensatingly mundane; timeless the way an old mailbox or the moon might be. Like he goes to barbershops and asks for “that Willy Loman cut.”

But mostly, it’s his politics. If you remove the gay marriage red herring, the only way this man is a 37-year-old Democrat is if it’s 1982, which is actually why this elaborate subterfuge makes sense for him. For (white) Democratic voters, this 73-year-old masquerading as a millennial induces nostalgia. He reminds them of what, for them, was a much simpler time. Which is quite easy for him to do because he’s also literally from that time."





Trump Has Successfully Gamed the Courts 










One America News’s Ukraine-Rudy Giuliani exposé is a stunning piece of propaganda


"President Trump has pointed Republicans who believe Fox News is too fair and balanced in the direction of a relatively new cable news destination: One America News Network.

And to see the channel’s supposed exposés on former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and Ukraine, you begin to understand why.

The reports are a mélange of innuendo, slanted language, Trumpian talking points and dramatic music, without any real pretense. It’s the kind of thing that would completely look at home if it were on low-budget state TV. A sampling from the closing segment of its investigation this week:

  • “Democrat impeachment led by failed and frustrated screenwriter turned Hollywood congressman Adam Schiff has turned into full-blown and public investigation of an international scandal involving not Donald J. Trump, but the Bidens, the Democratic Party and our U.S. State Department.”
  • “an impeachment hoax that amounts to a coup”
  • “Some will call it treason.”
  • The Russia investigation moved to “target innocent people to indulge the FBI’s personal hatred for President Trump” — as it shows images of George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.
  • A reference to the “real whistleblowers — whistleblowers not huddling in Adam Schiff’s basement” (there is no evidence the Ukraine whistleblower worked with Schiff personally)
  • Calling Hunter Biden the “drug addict son” of Joe Biden

For more on the rather remarkable presentation of this investigation, click on the video below:




front_cover Covers for Wednesday November 27, 2019 Biden 2020.jpg
Do Right by Black People 2020.jpg
Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, IN, stands for a portrait after speaking at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH on April 6, 2019.jpeg
“Obviously what Biden was doing is what the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industries, Republicans, do,” Mr. Sanders said.jpg
Bernie Sanders shooting hoops in Burlington, Vt., in an undated photo.jpg
Bernie Sanders, left, in Burlington, Vt., in an undated photo.jpg
Bernie Sanders at a recent campaign event in Iowa..jpg
Cover Trumpf impeachment.jpg
meanwhile-at-the-cia, Trumpf, surveillance.jpg
California Fires Trumpf.jpg
Biden seems to flummox Trump..jpg
The South Bend mayor was in his typical form in the Democratic debate - heavy on rhetoric and light on specifics 2020.jpg
Something funny 2020 debates.jpg
Trump McConnell.jpg
Americans Aren’t Practicing Democracy Anymore 2020.jpg
Joe Biden is too old. Pete Buttigieg is too young. And Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are too liberal. 2020.jpg
Magic trick Warren Medicare 2020.jpg
Current state of the race 2020.png
Giuliani 2020 1.jpg
The last Democratic presidential debate was hosted by CNN and The New York Times on Oct. 15. 2020.jpg
Giuliani 2020.jpg
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages