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This Was Bernie’s Year: How a Socialist Emerged as a National Political Phenomenon

there are a lot of working-class people, who have turned their backs on the political system, now getting engaged in the system.”

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Source: RSN

Author: Rolling Stone

Emphasis Mine

he rise of Bernie Sanders has no doubt been one of the more fascinating political stories of 2015 – a year that was not short on fascinating political stories. When he announced his run in the spring, few thought the self-described democratic socialist would be such a strong opponent against Hillary Clinton, but his impact in the race has been significant: He’s raised significant money, without relying on super PACs, and has pushed Clinton to the left in very real ways.

Whether you’re full-on feeling the Bern, or are just a political observer, it’s worth taking a look back at the year Bernie Sanders transformed from “that socialist from Vermont” to a national political phenomenon.

April 29, 2015: Announces Presidential Run, as a Democrat

Sanders, the longest serving Independent in Congress, jumped into the 2016 presidential race in late spring as a Democrat. Though in the coming months he proved to be a formidable challenger to frontrunner Hillary Clinton, raising significant money and pushing Clinton to the left, one of the terms most associated with his April announcement was “long shot.”

At a campaign announcement event in Vermont in May, Sanders laid out his platform and noted that “we’re going to win…by establishing a very strong grassroots campaign involving millions of people. That’s the only way to win.”

May 1, 2015: Outpaces GOP Candidates in Initial Fundraising

A day after announcing his run for president, Team Bernie announced it had raised an impressive $1.5 million in 24 hours – “a number that far outpaces what Republican presidential hopefuls posted in their first day,” CNN reported at the time.

In what has continued to be a hallmark of the Sanders campaign – which has rejected super PAC funding – those initial donations largely came from small-dollar donors, averaging about $44 each.

Soon after Sanders jumped into the race, Mother Jones published a profile of the candidate focused on his early life and career. The piece included a reproduction of a bizarre decades-old essay by Sanders called “Man – and Woman,” in which Sanders clumsily wrote about a woman’s rape fantasies.

The resurfaced essay caused a brief flurry of controversy, as political reporters and feminists alike tried to make sense of it. The Sanders camp was quick to dismiss the piece as a “dumb attempt at dark satire.”

August 8, 2015: Black Lives Matter Activists Shut Down Campaign Event

(N.B.: this was not an actual campaign event, but a rally in support of Social Security on the anniversary of its establishment. )

At a campaign event in Seattle over the summer, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement jumped on stage just after Sanders began speaking at the mic and said, “We’re shutting this event down, now.”

“I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, even with all of these progressives, but you’ve already done that for me,” activist Marissa Johnson told the booing crowd before calling for a moment of silence for Michael Brown. “The biggest grassroots movement in this country right now is Black Lives Matter,” she said, referring to Sanders’ stated love for grassroots movements.

Sanders stood by quietly while the Black Lives Matter activists spoke, and the campaign event ended. Sanders later released a statement saying he was “disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare.”

September 6, 2015: Pulls Ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire

After a summer of nipping at Clinton’s heels in the polls in critical primary states New Hampshire and Iowa, in early September Sanders found himself with a nine-point lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, and a narrowing gap between the candidates in Iowa, according to an NBC News/Marist poll.

The news of Sanders’ lead in New Hampshire was (and continues to be) welcome news to Sanders supporters, who argue the candidate is more electable than many pundits are willing to admit. FiveThirtyEight mastermind Nate Silver, however, has made the case that while Sanders could win New Hampshire and Iowa, he may well lose the rest of the primaries.

September 14, 2015: Addresses Evangelicals in Liberty University Speech

In September, Sanders gave a much discussed speech at Liberty University, an evangelical school in Lynchburg, Virginia, in large part to show his willingness to engage in respectful dialogue with conservatives. “I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse,” he said in his speech. “It is easy to go out and talk to people who agree with you.…It is is harder, but not less important, to try to communicate with those who do not agree with us on every issue.”

As MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald wrote at the time, Sanders “likely picked up few supporters with his speech,” but “he received a courteous welcome and helped all parties demonstrate their willingness to respect the other side.”

October 13, 2015: Tackles Clinton’s “Damn Emails” at First Debate

Sanders had a solid showing at the first Democratic primary debate, hosted by CNN. His performance included what was probably the top moment of the night – and, frankly, of all the debates to date: When the conversation turned to Clinton’s emailgate scandal, Sanders said, “Let me say something that may not be great politics. I think the secretary is right…the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

The crowd ate it up, applauding wildly and giving Sanders a standing ovation. Though surely no one loved the line more than Hillary Clinton, to whom Sanders gave the gift of dismissing the scandal in the eyes of countless Americans.

October 17, 2015: Gets the ‘SNL’ Treatment, With Amazing Impression by Larry David

In mid-October, fans of Bernie Sanders and Larry David alike got what they had long hoped for: Larry David, doing Bernie Sanders. The impression was part of a Saturday Night Live cold-open skit parodying the first Democratic debate; it became an instant classic, with lines like, “I don’t have a super PAC. I don’t even have a backpack! I carry my stuff around loose in my arms, like a professor between classes. I own one pair of underwear – that’s it!”

November 18, 2015: Is on Cover of ‘Rolling Stone’

Sanders appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in the fall, giving an in-depth interview to contributing editor Tim Dickinson about his chances for beating Hillary Clinton, why he’s dedicated his political career to taking on the one percent, and his plans for working with a potentially hostile Congress, if elected. “If we win this election, it will have said that the political revolution is moving forward. In other words: I will not get elected unless there is a huge increase in voter turnout. That’s a simple fact,” he said. “And I will not get elected unless there are a lot of working-class people, who have turned their backs on the political system, now getting engaged in the system.”

November 19, 2015: Gives Speech Defining Democratic Socialism

“Let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me,” Sanders said, in a highly anticipated November speech at Georgetown University. “It means what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. And it builds on what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1968 when he stated that ‘this country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.'”

In laying out his political philosophy, Sanders cited Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance and other programs that were once derided for being socialist but have since “become the fabric of our nation and the foundation of the middle class.”

November 23, 2015: Hangs Out With Killer Mike

It’s no secret that rapper Killer Mike is a Bernie Sanders fan; he endorsed Sanders over the summer, tweeting, “His call 4 the restoration of the voters rights act sealed the deal for me.”

But Killer Mike took his affection for Sanders to the next level in November, taking the candidate out for lunch at a beloved Atlanta soul food restaurant and delivering heartfelt remarks at a campaign event later in the day. “I am here as a proponent for a political revolution that says health care is a right of every citizen,” he said. “I am here because working class and poor people deserve a chance at economic freedom, and yes, if you work 40 hours a week, you should not be in poverty.”

see: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34039-focus-this-was-bernies-year-how-a-socialist-emerged-as-a-national-political-phenomenon

U.S. Leadership and the Historic Paris Agreement to Combat Climate Change

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season
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Source: White House Press Secretary

Emphasis Mine

U.S. LEADERSHIP AND THE HISTORIC PARIS AGREEMENT TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

Today, more than 190 countries came together to adopt the most ambitious climate change agreement in history. The Paris Agreement establishes a long term, durable global framework to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. For the first time, all countries commit to putting forward successive and ambitious, nationally determined climate targets and reporting on their progress towards them using a rigorous, standardized process of review.

The Agreement provides strong assurance to developing countries that they will be supported as they pursue clean and climate resilient growth.  The deal builds on the unprecedented participation of 187 countries that submitted post-2020 climate action targets in advance of the meeting, and establishes a framework to ratchet up ambition by driving down global emissions in the decades to come.

This new global framework lays the foundation for countries to work together to put the world on a path to keeping global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and sets an ambitious vision to go even farther than that. This Agreement sends a strong signal to the private sector that the global economy is moving towards clean energy, and that through innovation and ingenuity, we can achieve our climate objectives while creating new jobs, raising standards of living and lifting millions out of poverty.

The Paris Agreement is also the culmination of a broader effort by nations, businesses, cities, and citizens to reorient the global economy to a path of low-carbon growth – progress that will accelerate as a result of the Agreement’s provisions on mitigation ambition, transparency, and climate finance.

An Ambitious Agreement

The Paris Agreement sets forward an ambitious vision for tackling climate change globally. This includes:

  • Strengthening long-term ambition: The Agreement sets a goal of keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and for the first time agrees to pursue efforts to limit the increase in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also acknowledges that in order to meet that target, countries should aim to peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.
  • Establishing a universal approach for all countries: The Agreement moves beyond dividing the world into outdated categories of developed and developing countries and instead directs all parties to prepare, communicate and maintain successive and ambitious nationally determined climate targets. This approach – where countries set non-binding targets for themselves – paved the way for 187 mitigation contributions this year and will form the basis for a long-term, durable system to ratchet down emissions.
  • Locking in five year target cycles: Under the Agreement, all countries will communicate their climate targets every five years,
    • starting in 2020. Targets must be submitted 9-12 months before they are finalized, creating time for other countries and civil society to seek clarity about the targets submitted.
    • Ratcheting up ambition over time: Each target should reflect progress from the prior one, reflecting the highest possible ambition that each country can achieve. This durable, long term framework will drive greater climate ambition as technologies improve and circumstances change.
    • Rigorous assessment of global climate action: To help inform further domestic and global efforts, the Agreement puts in place a mechanism to assess collective progress on global mitigation action using the best available science. This process will begin in 2018 and occur every five years to help inform countries’ future targets and strategies.
    • Sending a market signal on innovation and technology: The mitigation components of the Agreement, combined with a broad push on innovation and technology, will help significantly scale up energy investments over the coming years – investments that will accelerate cost reductions for renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions.  This set of actions will create a mutually reinforcing cycle in which enhanced mitigation increases investment and enhanced investment allows additional mitigation by driving down costs.

    A Transparent and Accountable Agreement

    The Paris Agreement establishes a robust transparency system to help make sure that all countries are living up to their commitments

    This will send a market signal to the private sector and investors that countries are serious about meeting the targets they have set.  These steps include:

    • Putting in place an enhanced transparency system for all countries: A critical component of the Agreement, the transparency framework agreed to by parties ensures that all countries are on a level playing field with the United States with flexibility for those developing countries with less capacity.
    • Requiring countries to report on greenhouse gas inventories: For the first time, the Agreement requires all countries to report on national inventories of emissions by source. This breakthrough will give unprecedented clarity to the public’s understanding of emissions and pollution in countries throughout the world.
    • Requiring countries to report on mitigation progress: Also for the first time, countries are required to report on information necessary to track progress made in implementing and achieving the targets and strategies countries have put forward.
    • Establishing a technical review process with agreed upon standards: To help ensure countries are meeting transparency requirements, countries are subject to a comprehensive technical expert review process that analyzes whether reporting is in line with the standards adopted. Countries will also engage in a multilateral review with their peers to share their experiences and lessons learned.

    An Agreement for a Low-Carbon Future

    Tackling climate change will require shifting global investment flows towards clean energy, forest protection, and climate-resilient infrastructure.  Developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable, will need support from the global community as they pursue clean and resilient growth. The Paris Agreement makes real progress on this front by:

    • Providing a strong, long-term market signal that the world is locking in a low-carbon future: The submission of ambitious national targets in five-year cycles gives investors and technology innovators a clear signal that the world will demand clean power plants, energy efficient factories and buildings, and low-carbon transportation not just in the short-term but in the decades to come.  This will make it far easier to draw in the largest pools of capital that need long-term certainty in order to invest in clean technologies.
    • Giving confidence that existing financial commitments will be met: Many developing countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, came to Paris seeking reassurance that a global climate deal is not just about the big emitters but also supports their transition to a low-carbon growth path.  In this regard, we are already making strong progress towards meeting the existing goal to mobilize $100 billion from a wide variety of sources, including both public and private, by 2020. The Paris outcome provides further confidence that this goal will be met and that climate finance will continue to flow.  For the first time, the Agreement recognizes the reality that countries like China are already joining the base of donor countries contributing to climate finance and encourages developing countries to contribute to climate finance, while reaffirming that the United States and other developed economies should continue to take the lead.These components of the Agreement build on steps the United States took in Paris to demonstrate its commitment to mobilizing finance from public and private sources for both mitigation and adaptation activities in developing countries. These steps include:
      • Launching Mission Innovation: On the first day of the conference, President Obama joined other world leaders to launch Mission Innovation, a landmark commitment to accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation, and dramatically expand the new technologies that will define a clean, affordable, and reliable global power mix.  Twenty countries representing around 80% of global clean energy research and development (R&D) funding base committed to double their R&D investments over five years.  In addition, a coalition of 28 global investors led by Bill Gates committed to support early-stage breakthrough energy technologies in countries that have joined Mission Innovation.
      • Doubling U.S. grant-based public finance for adaptation by 2020: Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States will double its grant-based, public climate finance for adaptation by 2020. As of 2014, the United States invested more than $400 million per year of grant-based resources for climate adaptation in developing countries. These investments provide vulnerable countries with support – through both bilateral and multilateral channels – to reduce climate risks in key areas, including infrastructure, agriculture, health and water services.
        An Agreement Complemented by Subnational, Private Sector and Citizen ActionBecause the Agreement should serve as a floor for future ambitious climate action, complementary actions outside of the Agreement by sub-national governments, enterprising businesses, investors and entrepreneurs, and an enlightened global public are important complements to the Paris Agreement. As part of these global efforts, Americans have demonstrated their dedication to climate action through a wide variety of commitments.

        • Compact of Mayors: 117 United States mayors have signed onto the Compact of Mayors pledge. The Compact establishes a common platform to capture the impact of cities’ collective actions through standardized measurement of emissions and climate risk, and consistent, public reporting of their efforts.
        • Under-2 MOU: States including California, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York have signed onto the Under-2 MOU.   The MOU commits signatories to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80-95% below 1990 levels, share technology and scientific research, expand zero-emission vehicles, improve air quality by reducing short-lived climate pollutants and assess projected impacts of climate change on communities.
          • American Business Act on Climate Pledge: 154 companies have signed the White House’s American Business Act on Climate Pledge.  These companies have operations in all 50 states, employ nearly 11 million people, represent more than $4.2 trillion in annual revenue and have a combined market capitalization of over $7 trillion. As part of this initiative, each company expressed support for an ambitious Paris Agreement and announced significant pledges to reduce their emissions, increase low-carbon investments, deploy more clean energy and take other actions to build more sustainable businesses and tackle climate change.
          • American Campuses Act on Climate Pledge: 311 colleges and universities representing over 4 million students have demonstrated their commitment to climate action by joining the American Campuses Act on Climate Pledge.

See:https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/12/us-leadership-and-historic-paris-agreement-combat-climate-change

Striking Fact: Trump’s Corporate Media Coverage Outnumbers Bernie’s 81 to 1

Trump has received more network coverage than all the Democratic candidates combined.

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Source:AlterNet

Author: Eric Boehlert

Emphasis Mine

Does that ratio seem out of whack? That’s the ratio of TV airtime that ABCWorld News Tonight has devoted to Donald Trump’s campaign (81 minutes) versus the amount of TV time World News Tonight has devoted to Bernie Sanders’ campaign this year. And even that one minute for Sanders is misleading because the actual number is closer to 20 second.

For the entire year.

That’s the rather stunning revelation from the Tyndall Report, which tracks the various flagship nightly news programs on NBC, CBS and ABC. The Report’s campaign findings cover the network evening newscasts from January 1 through the end of November.

The results confirm two media extremes in play this year, and not just at ABC News. The network newscasts are wildly overplaying Trump, who regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support, while at the same time wildly underplaying Sanders, who

regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support. (Sanders’ supporters have long complained about the candidate’s lack of coverage.)

Obviously, Trump is the GOP frontrunner and its reasonable that he would get more attention than Sanders, who’s running second for the Democrats. But 234 total network minutes for Trump compared to just 10 network minutes for Sanders, as the Tyndall Report found?

Andrew Tyndall provided the breakdown by network of Sanders’ 10 minutes of coverage, via email [emphasis added]:

  1. CBS Evening News: 6.4 minutes
  2. NBC Nightly News: 2.9 minutes
  3. ABC World News Tonight: 0.3 minutes

But how can they be? ABC News, for instance, clearly devoted more than 20 seconds to covering the Democratic debates, which featured news of Sanders, right?

As Tyndall explained to me, the number “counts stories filed about the Sanders campaign or from the Sanders campaign. Obviously he is mentioned in passing in other coverage of the Democratic field overall, specifically his performance in the debates.”

So in terms of stand-alone campaign stories this year, it’s been 234 minutes for Trump, compared to 10 minutes for Sanders. And at ABC World News Tonight, it’s been 81 minutes for Trump and less than one minute for Sanders.

Other Tyndall Report findings:

  • *Trump has received more network coverage than all the Democratic candidates combined.
  • *Trump has accounted for 27 percent of all campaign coverage his year.
  • *Republican Jeb Bush received 56 minutes of coverage, followed by Ben Carson’s 54 minutes and Marco Rubio’s 22.

Did you notice the Bush figure? He’s garnered 56 minutes of network news coverage, far outpacing Sanders, even though he is currently wallowing in fifth place in the polls among Republicans. And you know who has also received 56 minutes of network news compared to Sanders’ 10? Joe Biden and his decision not to run for president.

Meanwhile, I can hear supporters of Ted Cruz complaining that based on Tyndall’s analysis, the Texas Republican has only received seven minutes of coverage this year and look where he is in the polls. That’s a fair point. But also note that Cruz has only recently risen in the primary polls, whereas Sanders has been a solid second for many, many months. (A new poll this week shows Sanders leading the New Hampshire primary.)

Close observers of trends in network news might also say ABC’s paltry Sanders coverage isn’t surprising considering the network’s flagship news program has recently backed off political coverage, as well as hard news in general.

From the Washington Post this summer:

“World News” devoted half as many minutes to Washington stories as CBS did during the first four months of the year, and about 40 percent less than did NBC, according to Andrew Tyndall, who tracks the networks’ newscasts through his eponymous newsletter.

In perhaps a first for a national newscast, “World News” no longer has a full-time correspondent reporting on Congress. Such stories are handled on an ad hoc basis by reporter Jonathan Karl, whose primary beats are the White

House and political campaign this case though, that explanation doesn’t work because while World News Tonight might be shying away from news out of Washington, D.C., Tyndall’s analysis shows ABC has produced more campaign coverage this year thanCBS Evening News; 261 minutes vs. 247 minutes for CBS.

Look at that ABC number again: 261 minutes devoted to campaign coverage this year, and less than one minute of that has specifically been for Sanders. How does that even happen?

So no, Sanders didn’t get virtually ignored this year by World News Tonight because the show’s cutting back on campaign coverage. Sanders got virtually ignored by ABC because there was a conscious decision to do so.

And before anyone suggests ABC has somehow been in the pocket of the Clinton campaign and that’s why Sanders got slighted, note that World NewsTonight has set aside roughly the same amount of time this year to cover Republican-fed controversies surrounding Clinton’s email and details about the Benghazi terror attack, as it has to cover Clinton’s actual campaign.

Any way you look at it, 81:1 is a ratio that means there’s something very wrong with the campaign coverage.

 

Eric Boehlert is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of “Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush.” He can be reached at eboehlert@aol.com.

See:http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/everything-thats-wrong-our-political-press-single-depressing-statistic?akid=13768.123424.dwQqfw&rd=1&src=newsletter1047248&t=8

Fear Not: More Americans Support Bernie Sanders Than Donald Trump — No Matter What TV Says

Sanders, who is supported by more voters than Trump, has received just 10 minutes of network airtime throughout the entire campaign — which translates to 1/23 of Trump’s campaign coverage.

chasdarwin1 Comment

Source:AlterNet

Author:Travis Gettys

Emphasis Mine

(N.B.:Rather than blame minorities for their problems those who feel left out should blame the actual culprit: capitalism, and join Unions and support Bernie). 

As the Donald Trump campaign turns from farce to tribulation, it’s worth noting that millions more Americans support Bernie Sanders than the Republican frontrunner.

Trump’s level of national support is 30.4 percent of GOP primary voters, according to the average calculated by Real Clear Politics, while Sanders remains in second place among Democratic primary voters with a 30.8 percent average level of support.

However, as the Philadelphia Daily News‘ Will Bunch points out — there are considerably more Democrats than Republicans.

The most recent Pew poll shows 32 percent of Americans identify themselves as Democrats, compared to 23 percent who describe themselves as Republicans — so that suggests far more people support Sanders than Trump, based on party identity and both candidates’ levels of national support.

Polling guru Nate Silver, who operates the 538.com website, cautioned that all the candidates’ poll numbers are misleading at this stage in the election cycle because most voters still aren’t paying attention.

Trump, the real estate tycoon and reality TV star, entered the race as a celebrity and has gobbled up a disproportionate share of media coverage that has, in turn, helped him maintain a healthy lead over his GOP rivals.

The Tyndall Report, which tracks coverage on nightly network newscasts, found that Trump has hogged more than a quarter of all presidential race coverage — and more than the entire Democratic field combined.

Hillary Clinton — who enjoys the most voter support, by far, of any candidate in either party — had received the second-most network news coverage.

Sanders, who is supported by more voters than Trump, has received just 10 minutes of network airtime throughout the entire campaign — which translates to 1/23 of Trump’s campaign coverage.

That has distorted perceptions about Trump’s true level of support, which Silver has estimated as 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate — or roughly “the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked,” the pollster said.

Trump’s continued success remains mystifying to many observers, and his anti-Muslim proposals are so alarming that his rivals and mainstream media organizations are openly comparing him to Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.

But some of those horrified observers might take comfort in realizing that Sanders, the democratic socialist, has earned more voter support than Trump — the fascist fabulist.

See:http://www.alternet.org/media/fear-not-more-americans-support-bernie-sanders-donald-trump-no-matter-what-tv-says?akid=13768.123424.dwQqfw&rd=1&src=newsletter1047248&t=10

Trump’s Anti-Muslim Proposal Puts GOP In A Bind

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Source:National Memo

Author: Mark Z.Barabak

Emphasis Mine

Donald Trump may be an imperfect candidate — he is coarse, impetuous, antagonistic — but he presents the Republican Party with a perfect dilemma.

For the second straight day, the world of politics was consumed with Trump’s latest provocation, a call for a near-blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States, underscoring the billionaire’s continued sway over his adopted party, its presidential candidates and the GOP agenda.

Many Republican were quick to denounce the proposal though, notably, not its progenitor, fearing a backlash should Trump become the party’s eventual nominee. He, is after all, the leader in opinion polls and a favorite of many voters disgusted with more guarded, standard-issue politicians.

“This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday … is not what this party stands for,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Tuesday after a meeting with GOP House members on Capitol Hill. “And more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Other members of the Republican establishment weighed in with criticism as well, including party leaders in three of the earliest-voting states, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa.

“As a conservative who truly cares about religious liberty, Donald Trump’s bad idea and rhetoric send a shiver down my spine,” Matt Moore, head of the South Carolina Republican Party, wrote on Twitter.

Jennifer Horn, leader of the New Hampshire GOP, called Trump’s proposal “un-American” and “un-Republican.”

But the condemnations went only so far, as Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans vowed to support Trump, whatever their qualms, should he emerge as the GOP’s standard-bearer.

Even Jeb Bush, who called Trump “unhinged” for proposing a religious test on newcomers as a way to fight terrorism, declined to back off an earlier pledge of support.

“Look, he’s not going to be the nominee,” the former Florida governor insisted when pressed by reporters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

What, then, was his message to Trump supporters? “I’d love for them to consider my candidacy,” Bush replied.

The exchange captured the quandary that the GOP and its presidential hopefuls have faced ever since Trump bulldozed his way into the race: How to distance themselves from his inflammatory statements without alienating Trump supporters, or provoking him into a ruinous third-party run should he fall short of the nomination.

“A new poll indicates that 68 percent of my supporters would vote for me if I departed the GOP & ran as an independent,” Trump posted on Twitter, citing a Suffolk University poll, as Tuesday’s chorus of Republican criticism grew.

The message, in characteristic Trump fashion, was as subtle as a kick in the shins.

Unabashed, he seized on the furor he created — and the wall-to-wall cable news coverage that followed — to defend his exclusionary plan and brush aside detractors.

“You’re going to have many more World Trade Centers if you don’t solve it. Many, many more and probably beyond the World Trade Center,” Trump said in a CNN interview, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On MSNBC, he said barring followers of the Islamic faith from the U.S. would be as easy as authorities asking them at entry points about their religious affiliation “They would say, ‘Are you Muslim?’” Trump explained.

He cited the precedent set during World War II when the U.S. government investigated people of German and Italian ancestry, and ordered those of Japanese descent to be locked away in internment camps.

“You certainly aren’t proposing internment camps?” asked host Joe Scarborough.

“We’re not talking about Japanese internment camp,” Trump responded. “No, not at all.”

Such distinctions aside, Democrats happily piled on the Republican front-runner and his extraordinary response to the terror attacks on Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., a counter to President Barack Obama’s call to avoid targeting all members of the Muslim faith.

Trump’s emergence comes at a critical time for the GOP, which has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.

The party’s political base of older whites is aging out of the electorate and Republicans have struggled to appeal to the growing ranks of younger and minority voters, a task that grows more difficult each time Trump gives offense to one ethnic or religious group or another.

“While entertaining for some, I and many worry about the long-term damage (among) younger voters, African-American voters, Hispanic voters, working-class voters,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican strategist and political adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “He’s managing to alienate a little bit of everybody.”

Reed, whose focus is congressional contests, expressed concern that Trump atop the presidential ticket could undermine Republicans senators facing tough races in Nevada, Ohio and New Hampshire, which could determine control of the Senate after 2016.

He is not alone.

In a private memo recently quoted in The Washington Post, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee outlined a number of strategies for candidates to follow in the event Trump — “a misguided missile” — won the party’s nomination.

“Let’s face facts,” Ward Baker, the head of the committee, wrote his senior staff. “Trump says what’s on his mind and that’s a problem. Our candidates will have to spend full time defending him if that continues. And that’s a place we never, ever want to be.”

His counsel included urging candidates to mind their campaigns and avoid attacks on Trump, lest they backfire on the GOP.

Not all, however, were given to such restraint.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a presidential hopeful who has frequently tangled with the Republican frontrunner, offered his succinct view in an interview on CNN.

“You know how you make America great again?” Graham said, appropriating his rival’s signature campaign slogan. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

(Lisa Mascaro and Christi Parsons of the Tribune Washington Bureau and Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.)

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

See:http://www.nationalmemo.com/trumps-anti-muslim-proposal-puts-gop-in-a-bind/

Donald Trump: The Islamic State’s secret weapon?

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Source:Washington Post

Author:Kathleen Parker

Emphasis Mine

Americans looking for a Snuggy Bear and a blankey to ease their anxieties about the Islamic State will have to become more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

From President Obama’s recent terrorism speech in the Oval Office to Donald Trump’s terrifying, race-baiting, religion-testing rebuke in South Carolina, there is little to console those seeking either instant gratification from Obama or sanity from the leading Republican presidential candidate.

While Trump speaks to fear with anti-Muslim rhetoric that builds a wall around our national essence, the president attempts to soothe with reason and inspirational rhetoric more befitting a nation that hasn’t just suffered a horrific terrorist slaughter.

Obama’s speech was never going to satisfy critics and those convinced they know the better route. But the fact of the speech alone — appropriately solemn in recognition of the fact that the killings in San Bernardino, Calif. , and Chattanooga, Tenn., and at Fort Hood, Tex., were terrorist attacks — spoke volumes. And though he identified the California terrorists as Islamic State-inspired, he surely disappointed those insistent in their own cultish fashion that Obama refuses to name the enemy and, therefore, can’t defeat him. An absurdity. A dead terrorist is a dead terrorist by any name.

Obama’s further reiteration of his current course left wanting those longing for the more comforting certitude of the cheerleader with a megaphone. And those hoping for a declaration of the usual sort of war — thousands of ground troops in Syria and Iraq — were doubtless disappointed, as well as affirmed in their belief that Obama doesn’t get it. Or that he’s only trying to preserve his legacy as the non-war president, a trope favored by the right.

But realistically, what president chooses to ignore a necessary war? Who wants to be remembered as the cowardly commander in chief who allowed the world to slip into darkness and despair? No one, and certainly not Obama.

The problem for the president is that the war he is waging feels like a long-term strategy without benefit of the short term. If not ground troops, then what? There is no good answer. This is a new kind of war requiring fresh approaches. The old templates don’t apply because they actually work against us. As soon as we put boots on the ground, the Islamic State is rewarded with the war it wants, with the propaganda machine it can’t otherwise replicate and with the martyrdom its members welcome. Are Americans really ready to watch their military men and women beheaded and burned alive?

Thus, Obama and his advisers have focused on alternative means of defeating a monster that feeds on atrocity and hate. Strategic hits, special operations, counterterrorism propaganda and so on. At home, Obama seems to say, fight hate with love, fear with resilience, monsters with the superior force of good.  By comparison, admittedly, Trump sounds both decisive and definitive.

But — this is no joke — Trump is also the most dangerous person to emerge on the U.S. political scene in decades. As president, he would be the most dangerous man on the planet.

I’ve often objected in my column to invoking Hitler as popular analogue because it trivializes the suffering and slaughter of the Jews. Now I’m not so sure. Remember that before there could be a Holocaust, there was the identification of the Jewish race as the enemy. Trump’s apparent identification of Muslims as “ a problem,” with his threat of a Muslim registry and a religious test at the border, sounds terribly familiar.

Two facts to consider: First, we need the help of the world’s 1.6 billion — and this nation’s 3 million — Muslims if we hope to defeat terrorists who justify their barbarism with their interpretation of Islam. Second, our best defense against radicalization of Muslim Americans is inclusiveness. By marginalizing our own Muslim community through rhetoric, we vastly increase the risk of we vastly increase the risk of radicalization and recruitment.

Obama understands this. He also understands that another ground war in the Middle East risks our becoming entrenched in endless battle against an enemy that can inspire insurgencies indefinitely.

Few doubt that we could easily take over Iraq and Syria in a replay of shock-and-awe, but then what? Invading another Muslim country feeds right into the Islamic State’s playbook and installs a Crusader vs. Caliphate narrative for millennia — or whatever foreshortened era we invent.

Again, ambiguity and uncertainty are our companions for now and probably for a while. In the meantime, our internecine squabbles about our own nation’s principles couldn’t be a better holiday gift to the butchers-in-waiting. And Trump, by dividing us from within, is the enemy’s hero.

Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-islamic-states-secret-weapon/2015/12/08/f6d5dd60-9de3-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions

Donald Trump Is No Leader—He’s the Voice of America’s Ugly Underbelly

This is how you understand Trump — he’s more of a reflection of his supporters than he is a leader.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Amanda Marcotte/Salon

Emphasis Mine

Monday night, Arianna Huffington caved and wrote an open letter, explaining that The Huffington Post would stop covering the Donald Trump campaign in the entertainment section, moving coverage to where it belongs: the politics section.

The move was long overdue. Putting Trump in the entertainment section may have been a funny stunt, but it had some rather disturbing implications about the role of journalism in the political process. It’s one thing for journalistic enterprises to share opinion and data that helps voters make better informed choices, but it’s another thing entirely for journalists to appoint themselves gatekeepers. It’s not just undemocratic, but, as the Trump campaign shows, it doesn’t work.

That’s because The Huffington Post, and many other journalistic outlets, continue to make a category error when it comes to Trump, assuming that the main reason all this is happening is Trump himself. The assumption is that he’s somehow an idiot savant of American politics, the man who cracked the code, broke all the rules and is rallying voters around his cult of personality. That Trump is a fascist pied piper, playing a beguiling racist song on his flute and leading huge numbers of Americans over the cliff.

But the Trump phenomenon isn’t really about him, as fascinating (and orange) of a character as he is. Trump is better understood not as the creator of a movement, but the expression of a popular will, a cipher through which huge numbers of Americans communicate what looks an awful lot like fascist sympathies. He is a symptom of a larger problem, not the cause of it.

When you’re working under the assumption that Trump is the creator of his own movement, it seems not unreasonable to believe that choking him off from media attention is the key to fixing this problem. While the ignore-him-and-he’ll-go-away arguments have lost some of their salience in recent months, this belief, that journalists have a certain amount of power to destroy him that they are neglecting to use, continues to have a hold in some circles.

After Trump on Monday called for banning Muslims from entering the

U.S., there was a rush of journalists pointing out that he timed his announcement perfectly to drown out reports that that Ted Cruz was beating him in the polls in Iowa. Andrew Prokop of Vox took it a step further, arguing that the round of bipartisan condemnations “is exactly what Trump wanted” and trotting out polling evidence that shows that Trump benefits from controversy.

It’s true that Trump benefits from controversy — I pointed that out myself right before the San Bernardino shooting happened —but it doesn’t necessarily follow that he is playing us all for fools when the media covers his ugly statements and politicians and pundits condemn them. Another, more likely explanation is that Trump tends to crest when proto-fascist sentiment rises up in the public. He may not be leading followers so much as he is riding a wave.

The events after the Paris attacks suggest the wave theory over the pied piper theory. Trump spiked in the polls after that event, but the polls were all taken in the days before he rolled out his Muslim database idea and before he claimed to see Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey.

All of which suggests that it’s less what Trump does that matters to his supporters than what he represents. If you’re feeling in a racist, hysterical mood, then you know Trump has got your back before he even opens his mouth.

Trump’s much-ballyhooed showmanship is just more evidence that, far from leading the troops, he’s just doing their bidding. As an entertainer, he knows the secret to playing to a crowd is finding out what they want and giving it to them. One of the things that sets him apart from the other candidates is his accessibility. Most candidates have a layer of people between themselves and the public so communicating with the candidate requires setting up carefully prearranged meetings. Trump, on the other hand, is a Twitter obsessive who sits there, no doubt personally much of the time, retweeting stuff directly from his followers. He always reading his audience and tweaking his act to meet their standards.

No doubt Trump released his Muslim travel ban plans in order to derail Ted Cruz’s big moment. That doesn’t make him some criminal mastermind, though. Timing newsworthy campaign announcements to undermine your opponent is a standard move, something nearly all politicians try to do and any campaign adviser worth his salt will tell you to do. (Remember how John McCain timed the announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate the day after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, a move clearly designed to knock Obama’s triumphant speech out of the headlines?) The timing aspect is only interesting because the campaign announcement itself is obnoxious and bigoted and is guaranteed to cause another round of wondering if Trump is officially a fascist yet.

Trump did what candidates do: Feeling the race tightening up, he increased his outreach to voters by dangling a policy idea in front of them that he thinks they will like. The fact that he thinks this gambit will work is where the story is.

This isn’t a media story. It’s a voter story.  If the only thing Trump needs to rise in the polls is media attention, he could tap dance or honk someone’s boob or get plastic surgery or something. He went this direction because he thinks, almost certainly for a good reason, that the voters who have been playing footsie with Cruz will be excited by this proposal and will go back to supporting Trump. In that sense, he’s like every other politician out there, going where the votes are.

Trump is a big, orangey object that’s fun to look at, but the real story is why there is an actual proto-fascist movement forming in this country. Trump isn’t the beginning of anything. He’s the end result of years of conservatives growing angrier and angrier — and taking pre-Trump steps like forming the Tea Party and pushing ever more radical Republicans into Congress — about the diversification of America. And if he went away tomorrow, that anger would still be there and someone, likely Cruz, would be the next guy in line to start trying to channel it into political victory.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of “It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.”

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-no-leader-hes-voice-americas-ugly-underbelly?akid=13748.123424.V_8NLj&rd=1&src=newsletter1047032&t=6

Obama lays out solution for mass shootings while right-wing gun craziness continues

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Source: Why Evolution is True

Author:whyevolutionistrue

Emphasis Mine

Last night President Obama addressed the nation in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings. If you missed his twelve-minute talk, here it is:

In general I think he did the best he could given the circumstances, though, with the exacerbated calls for gun control, it sounded a lot like “we’ll do more of the same.” It was basically a Presidential attempt to calm the country down. Here are the good and not-so-good bits:

The good stuff:

  • The call for Congress to make it harder for Americans to buy assault weapons and a call to ban those on the terrorism watch list from buying any guns (Republicans recently voted down that law)
  • A review of the relatively lax “fiancee visa” regulations that allowed the female shooter in San Bernardino to enter the U.S.
  • A review of our policy about visa waivers
  • A refusal to put American forces in a ground war
  • A call for Americans to resist the demonization of Muslims, and an emphasis on our law-abiding Muslim citizens and residents, many of whom serve in the armed forces. Obama said that this demonization is exactly what ISIS wants, though I hear the trope about “not doing what ISIS wants” all the time, and I’m not sure what they really do want. We shouldn’t demonize Muslims, but not because it plays into the hands of ISIS, but because treating Muslims as equal citizens, and avoiding personal or legal discrimination against them on the basis of their faith, are simply the right things to do
    • An implicit emphasis on maintaining Englightenment values, i.e., a refusal to abandon American principles when combating terrorism (then we should close Guantanamo, for crying out loud!)

    The not-so-good stuff:

    • Obama’s emphasis that terrorists or members ISIS instantiate a “perverted interpretation of Islam” and that ISIS “does not speak for Islam.” Well, ISIS speaks for Islam just as much as Pat Robertson speaks for Christianity. But at least Obama said the “I” word.
    • The call for Congress to declare war on ISIS by authorizing continuing military involvement. I’m not sure exactly what that means, or how it would change our present strategy. I fear that American ground troops will eventually be involved, what with a Republican Congress in place and a more hawkish President, Hillary Clinton (or any Republican) in the wings.
    • The nod to God at the end: “God bless you and God bless America” (omitted in the video). The ritual invocation of the deity at the end of Presidential speeches is a relatively new development: the first President to use the phrase was Richard Nixon, during a 1973 exculpation speech on Watergate.  

    In general, though, the only real change that will result from this talk will be is a stricter review of the U.S. visa program. Our military strategy in Syria and Iraq probably won’t change, Congress won’t pass laws tightening gun restrictions, and God won’t bless America, because he doesn’t exist.

    But against the braying and braggadocio of the right-wing gun nuts, who use mass killings as a rationale for loosening gun regulations, Obama sounds like a saint. Here, for instance, is Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of the Matchbox and his successor as President of the fundamentalist Christian Liberty University, speaking at the University convocation. Fallwell fils called for more guns, implied he was carrying one in his back pocket, urged students to carry more legal, concealed handguns (nothing that the University has free courses on this), and added, “If more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they, before they go out there and kill.”

    And listen to all those Christian students cheering Falwell on!

     

    Seriously “end those Muslims”?

    Finally, here’s Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican Presidential candidate, defending his vote allowing people on the “no fly list” to buy guns. His rationale: the majority of people on the list are there by mistake. This is of course a dismissal of President Obama’s statement, “Right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That is insane. If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun.”

    h/t: GB James, jsp

See:http://wp.me/ppUXF-FiE

Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing

The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality. They still struggle for access to the basics.

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source: AlterNet

Author: Steven W. Thrasher/The Guardian

Emphasis Mine

The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed “income inequality”, but that’s neither a strong nor accurate enough phrasing. I have never heard poor people complain about “income inequality”; poor people complain about being screwed out of housing , or about working more hours for less pay or about having to choose between medicine and food.

“Inequality” sounds like something that happens by accident and can be remedied by fiddling around the edges. It is not as if the rich are a little more equal and the poor a little less equal, and if we shift a bit we’ll all come out in the middle. What we’ve been calling “income inequality” might be better understood as a war waged by US political and economic policy on the poor.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies issued this week analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and found that “the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the United States”. That means that 100 families – most of whom are white – have as much wealth as the 41,000,000 black folks walking around the country (and the million or so locked up) combined.

Similarly, the report also stated that “the wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population” of the nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down: 186 overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding 55,000,000 Latino people.

The disparities in wealth that we term “income inequality” are no accident, and they can’t be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.

President Lyndon Johnson’s so-called War on Poverty didn’t angle to take anything from the rich so that the poor could see equality. It was designed to keep some of the poor just alive enough that they wouldn’t rebel, and designed to let other poor people perish as an object lesson to the rest of us to keep scampering.

Income inequality is better termed structural racism. White people earn more money with less education than black people and consistently have half the unemployment of black people. And, as new research has shown, “family wealth” predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back “300 to 450” years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn’t unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.

Income inequality is better viewed as structural sexism. Women earn 78 cents on the dollar overall compared to white men, but black women only earn 64 cents and Latinas 56. Women are also routinely discriminated against economically for bearing children.

Income equality is better viewed as structural child abuse. In the United States, one in five children needs government help to eat. As Aisha Sultan recently wrote in the Education Writers Association, if a 30-child classroom looked like the nation at large, seven of the children would be living in poverty, six would be victims of abuse and one would be homeless. These kids aren’t just unequal; they are never offered the opportunity to achieve equality.

Income inequality is better viewed as economic genocide, which shortens the lives of the poor. As the New York Times bluntly put it last year, “where income is higher, life spans are longer”. For one of the most jarring examples of how this plays out, look no further than the Ferguson Report, which shows how just in St Louis County, the average life expectancy ranges from 91 in the whitest neighborhood to 56 in the poorest, blackest neighborhood.

Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will choose to “give back” in a manner of their choosing – just look at Mark Zuckerberg and his much-derided plan to “give away” 99% of his Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any more than “giving away” of $100m helped children in Newark schools.

Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix “income inequality” will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more access to life. You can’t take down the master’s house with the master’s tools, even when you’re the master; but more to the point, who would tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?

See: http://www.alternet.org/economy/inequality-fundamental-us-capitalism-tweaking-edges-will-accomplish-nothing?akid=13741.123424.rHkGmA&rd=1&src=newsletter1046852&t=16

San Bernardino Killings Unleashing Right Wing Wave of Fear Mongering, Islamophobia and War Fever

No voices of reason, restraint or wisdom.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Stephen Rosenfelt

Emphasis Mine

This weekend, America’s right wing—from the 2016 GOP candidates to its media echo chambers on cable TV, online and talk radio—have unleashed what may be their most hate-filled, fear-based, war-mongering fusillade since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The attacks—from a former GOP congressman taunting the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to arrest him after threatening American Muslims on air, to RedState.com encouraging people to shoot the Saturday edition of The New York Times for its editorial calling for a ban on all militarized weapons and to post that image online—are the tip of this latest rage-filled response. Ex-New York Gov. George Pataki, a going-nowhere GOP 2016 candidate, also called for “war on radical Islam” and taunted Lynch. Fox News is berating moderate Muslims to “fix this,” while other right-wingers mock their spokesmen.

This wave of hyperbole comes in the wake of Friday’s law enforcement leak that Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistan-born wife of Syed Farook—who both carried out this week’s mass killing in San Bernardino—had pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook. Whether that’s true or not, ISIS, media manipulators themselves, on Saturday called the pair “supporters,” throwing more fuel on the right-wing firestorm.

The American public, which is legitimately shaken by yet another mass shooting, is being subjected to a bottomless season of nastiness, racist hate-mongering and war fever—where any viewpoint urging cooler heads and non-violent solutions is belittled by Republicans or their propagandists.

Hillary Clinton’s post-San Bernardino comments that new federal gun controls were needed now, and such measures have nothing to do with aggressively going after terrorists, was mocked by 2016 GOP hopeful Marco Rubio as “typical of the political left.” In the Senate, Bernie Sanders said militarized weapons should be banned and gun access restricted, adding that more attention had to be paid to treating mental illness.

The escalating right wing hyperbole is not just irresponsible but dangerous, as it promotes undue fears and offers more confrontations and violence as a solution, such as calls for all Americans to carry guns. What’s forgotten in that line of thinking is that many people won’t, or don’t want to use guns.

The GOP presidential candidates, in contrast, relish the thought of war with ISIS. One after another, at Thursday’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Washington, declared the nation was “in a time of war” (Ted Cruz), facing “terrorist attack” (Chris Christie), “they’re already here” (Lindsey Graham) and the feds should spy on anyone, anywhere, anytime: “Edward Snowden is without a doubt a traitor and should be tried for treason” (Carly Fiorina).

These trigger-happy remarks mimic their racist frontrunner, Donald Trump, who has said U.S. Muslims should be registered and tracked by federal authorities. It seems like so long ago when he grabbed the headlines with his Mexican-bashing. Other candidates, playing the juvenile game of “I’m-the-toughest,” have mocked Black Lives Matter and been xenophobic, especially with admitting Syrian War refugees. Protesters at Trump events have been ejected, spit upon, or beaten up by mostly white crowds.

What’s lost in all this deliberately fanned chaos and ugly noise is the reality that getting control of America’s epidemic of gun violence—especially the harm by militarized arms—is critically important. Last week saw another failed attempt by Senate Democrats to push for a modest expansion of federal gun laws—increased background checks and banning sales to those on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. Instead, the San Bernardino massacre is expected to drive up gun sales, arms industry officials told reporters.

There’s “fear in the air,” the Times reported Friday, echoing a national poll released Thursday finding 83 percent of Americans expect a major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, overseas, the U.S. is deepening the military response to ISIS—following the Paris attacks—and NATO allies that had limited their involvement are now sending troops, planes and ships.

In other words, contrary to what the GOP presidential candidates would have the public believe, the U.S. is very much at war in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, they and their propagandist allies are opposed to removing weapons of war from individuals at home.

Americans who don’t think the answer to violence in America is carrying a gun anytime they step outside find themselves in an escalating climate of real fears, fear-mongering, panic-driven gun sales, and an urge by many to strike real or imagined foes.

What is not happening on as large a scale is hearing enough people put these latest events and trends into perspective, historic contexts or offering wise responses—although The New York Times ran its first front-page editorial in decades on Saturday morning urging Congress to ban militarized weapons and calling the recent domestic gun-caused slaughter as terrorism.

Most of the TV news, however, is reading a different script, hyping the FBI announcement that it was investigating the San Bernardino shootings as a terrorist incident.

That trend in the news business—if it bleeds, it leads—poses a larger challenge for everyone. The southern California killings may end up as no more of a global conspiracy than the mass shooting by deluded loners at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, or at Fort Hood, Texas. What’s clear is too many in the media and political life are obsessing on threats from abroad while ignoring threats at home, namely gun violence.

That upside-down mindset fosters a public belief that such violence is normal and to be expected. The GOP is doing all it can to ignore the gun carnage, turn away from Syrian War refugees, and thwart the Obama administration’s climate change policies, even as a global conference on that real threat is unfolding in Paris and experts say it will worsen the global refugee crisis.

The White House has ignored most of the noise coming from Congress and the 2016 campaign trail, making reasonable-sounding remarks that are quickly overshadowed by hyped headlines. The lack of a stronger, clearer and wiser countervailing presence from Obama has had serious consequences, however.

It’s created a void filled by an onslaught of irresponsible GOP hyperbole and rightwing propaganda, fear mongering and war fever. Ironically, Obama is allowing the end of his presidency to be colonized by exaggerated fears and darkness, when he was elected by a majority of Americans seeking a far more hopeful future.

(Editor’s note: Late Saturday afternoon, the White House announced Obama would address the nation “on keeping the American people safe” on Sunday evening at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time.)

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/san-bernardino-killings-unleashing-right-wing-wave-fear-mongering-islamophobia-and-war?akid=13741.123424.rHkGmA&rd=1&src=newsletter1046852&t=6