Tag: clinton

Sanders’ Address on Democratic Socialism: Amazing and Blacked-Out

Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

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Source: RSN

Author: Scot Galindez

Emphasis Mine

At Georgetown University on Thursday afternoon, Bernie Sanders outlined his vision of what democratic socialism is. Earlier that morning, Hillary Clinton gave an address on fighting ISIS. MSNBC showed all of Hillary’s speech but ignored Bernie. There has been some media coverage of the speech, but nobody cut live to Sanders like they did for Clinton.

I did see more coverage of the lead carnival barker, Donald Trump, saying he would implement a registry for Muslims, while one of the most important, substantive speeches of the election cycle was almost ignored.

The media blackout of Sanders is not going away anytime soon. Bernie supporters must go around the media and use the social media to help the campaign get their message out. Share stories widely, support independent media, help Bernie 2016 TV get off the ground. If we don’t do these things, we will surely be watching Hillary Clinton win the nomination.

Luckily for those of us feeling the bern, Georgetown University streamed the speech on Ustream. I watched the stream on Bernie 2016 TV with nearly 3,000 others using Twitter and other platforms to discuss the speech as it took place. People were very excited as Bernie laid out his vision.

Bernie opened by invoking the vision of FDR:

In his inaugural remarks in January 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked out at the nation and this is what he saw.

He saw tens of millions of its citizens denied the basic necessities of life.

He saw millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hung over them day by day.

He saw millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

He saw millions lacking the means to buy the products they needed and by their poverty and lack of disposable income denying employment to many other millions.

He saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

And he acted. Against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists, Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combated cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country.

And that is what we have to do today.

A tall order for sure, but the time has come for another transformation. FDR’s “economic royalists” are today’s Wall Street ruling class that needs to be challenged before they consolidate more power. The Billionaire class owns the media and increasingly owns the government. Establishment politics will do nothing to curb their greed. It’s time to fight back.

Bernie went on to say:

And, by the way, almost everything he proposed was called “socialist.”

Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country was “socialist.” The concept of the “minimum wage” was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as “socialist.” Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as “socialist.” Yet, these programs have become the fabric of our nation and the foundation of the middle class.

Thirty years later, in the 1960s, President Johnson passed Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care to millions of senior citizens and families with children, persons with disabilities and some of the most vulnerable people in this county. Once again these vitally important programs were derided by the right wing as socialist programs that were a threat to our American way of life.

That was then. Now is now.

Prior to World War II and McCarthyism, socialism was not a dirty word. Many American icons were self-described socialists. Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and of course Martin Luther King, whom Sanders quotes further down in the speech.

In 1952, a young King wrote in a letter to Coretta Scott: “I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.” In a 1966 speech to his staff, King declared: “Something is wrong … with capitalism. Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”

Next time your conservative friends slam socialism as unpatriotic, remind them that the author of the pledge of allegiance, Francis Bellamy, was a socialist, a Christian socialist known for his fiery sermons on economic justice.

Back to Bernie:

Today, in 2015, despite the Wall Street crash of 2008, which drove this country into the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the American people are clearly better off economically than we were in 1937.

But, here is a very hard truth that we must acknowledge and address. Despite a huge increase in technology and productivity, despite major growth in the U.S. and global economy, tens of millions of American families continue to lack the basic necessities of life, while millions more struggle every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families. The reality is that for the last 40 years the great middle class of this country has been in decline and faith in our political system is now extremely low.

The rich get much richer. Almost everyone else gets poorer. Super PACs funded by billionaires buy elections. Ordinary people don’t vote. We have an economic and political crisis in this country and the same old, same old establishment politics and economics will not effectively address it.

If we are serious about transforming our country, if we are serious about rebuilding the middle class, if we are serious about reinvigorating our democracy, we need to develop a political movement which, once again, is prepared to take on and defeat a ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation. The billionaire class cannot have it all. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

Now that sums it all up. Are we ready to follow Bernie’s lead and take our country back? It’s time to get off the sidelines. Bernie needs all of us to have his back. He is fighting the bankers, today’s robber barons. They are not going to just roll over, they are fighting back and they will get dirty. We need to be prepared to take them on and defeat them.

I’m not one to say that this is our last chance; progress can help us move forward in the future. But we have not had a better chance to take on the ruling class, and it may be a long time before we have a vehicle like we have now. Let’s not blow it.

We need to create a culture which, as Pope Francis reminds us, cannot just be based on the worship of money. We must not accept a nation in which billionaires compete as to the size of their super-yachts, while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep out on the streets.

Today, in America, we are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but few Americans know that because so much of the new income and wealth goes to the people on top. In fact, over the last 30 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth – trillions of wealth – going from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent – a handful of people who have seen a doubling of the percentage of the wealth they own over that period.

Unbelievably, and grotesquely, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Today, in America, millions of our people are working two or three jobs just to survive. In fact, Americans work longer hours than do the people of any industrialized country. Despite the incredibly hard work and long hours of the American middle class, 58 percent of all new income generated today is going to the top one percent.

Today, in America, as the middle class continues to disappear, median family income, is $4,100 less than it was in 1999. The median male worker made over $700 less than he did 42 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Last year, the median female worker earned more than $1,000 less than she did in 2007.

Today, in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, more than half of older workers have no retirement savings – zero – while millions of elderly and people with disabilities are trying to survive on $12,000 or $13,000 a year. From Vermont to California, older workers are scared to death. “How will I retire with dignity?” they ask.

Today, in America, nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty and over 20 percent of our children, including 36 percent of African American children, are living in poverty — the highest rate of childhood poverty of nearly any major country on earth.

Today, in America, 29 million Americans have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with outrageously high co-payments and deductibles. Further, with the United States paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, 1 out of 5 patients cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write.

Today, in America, youth unemployment and underemployment is over 35 percent. Meanwhile, we have more people in jail than any other country and countless lives are being destroyed as we spend $80 billion a year locking up fellow Americans.

The bottom line is that today in America we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality. A handful of super-wealthy campaign contributors have enormous influence over the political process, while their lobbyists determine much of what goes on in Congress.

Amen. Now this is leadership. No empty soaring rhetoric. Bernie Sanders is speaking truth to power. The comparisons to FDR are coming into focus for me. This guy is ready to transform our country in the same way Roosevelt did with the New Deal. Leaders like this come about once in a generation.

We can’t afford to wait for another leader emerge who is ready to take on the ruling class. We need to rise up now! As Bernie regularly says, “Think big, it’s not time to play it safe.” Incremental change won’t work; we need to take bold action.

In 1944, in his State of the Union speech, President Roosevelt outlined what he called a second Bill of Rights. This is one of the most important speeches ever made by a president but, unfortunately, it has not gotten the attention that it deserves.

In that remarkable speech this is what Roosevelt stated, and I quote: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men.” End of quote. In other words, real freedom must include economic security. That was Roosevelt’s vision 70 years ago. It is my vision today. It is a vision that we have not yet achieved. It is time that we did.

In that speech, Roosevelt described the economic rights that he believed every American was entitled to: The right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, and time off from work, the right for every business, large and small, to function in an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right of all Americans to have a decent home and decent health care.

What Roosevelt was stating in 1944, what Martin Luther King Jr. stated in similar terms 20 years later, and what I believe today is that true freedom does not occur without economic security.

People are not truly free when they are unable to feed their family. People are not truly free when they are unable to retire with dignity. People are not truly free when they are unemployed or underpaid or when they are exhausted by working long hours. People are not truly free when they have no health care.

Free the people!!! I have been poor so I understand where FDR, Dr. King, and Bernie are coming from. I know what it’s like to suffer because I couldn’t afford health care. I know what it’s like to not be sure if I could find a warm place to sleep or a warm shower. I was in America, but I was not free. I was prisoner to just finding what I needed to survive. I was not happy. Life was a chore. All around me I saw great wealth. I often wondered, what did I do wrong to deserve to be punished?

I fought back. I became an activist. I worked with Mitch Snyder, Phil Berrigan, William Thomas and others who helped me get back on my feet. Then I met Marc Ash after the stolen election and decided the most effective thing I could do was help build an independent media organization.

While I am doing better, I have not forgotten what it is like to struggle, not from paycheck to paycheck but from day to day, hour to hour. We must stand up for those still struggling hour to hour. They need us to transform America into a country that puts human need above corporate greed.

So let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me. It builds on 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.” It builds on the success of many other countries around the world that have done a far better job than we have in protecting the needs of their working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.

Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.

Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt.

It is a system, for example, which during the 1990s allowed Wall Street to spend $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to get deregulated. Then, ten years later, after the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of Wall Street led to their collapse, it is a system which provided trillions in government aid to bail them out. Wall Street used their wealth and power to get Congress to do their bidding for deregulation and then, when their greed caused their collapse, they used their wealth and power to get Congress to bail them out. Quite a system!

And, then, to add insult to injury, we were told that not only were the banks too big to fail, the bankers were too big to jail. Kids who get caught possessing marijuana get police records. Wall Street CEOs who help destroy the economy get raises in their salaries. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant by socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.

In my view, it’s time we had democratic socialism for working families, not just Wall Street, billionaires and large corporations. It means that we should not be providing welfare for corporations, huge tax breaks for the very rich, or trade policies which boost corporate profits as workers lose their jobs. It means that we create a government that works for works for all of us, not just powerful special interests. It means that economic rights must be an essential part of what America stands for.

It means that health care should be a right of all people, not a privilege. This is not a radical idea. It exists in every other major country on earth. Not just Denmark, Sweden or Finland. It exists in Canada, France, Germany and Taiwan. That is why I believe in a Medicare-for-all single payer health care system. Yes. The Affordable Care Act, which I helped write and voted for, is a step forward for this country. But we must build on it and go further.

Medicare for all would not only guarantee health care for all people, not only save middle class families and our entire nation significant sums of money, it would radically improve the lives of all Americans and bring about significant improvements in our economy.

People who get sick will not have to worry about paying a deductible or making a co-payment. They could go to the doctor when they should, and not end up in the emergency room. Business owners will not have to spend enormous amounts of time worrying about how they are going to provide health care for their employees. Workers will not have to be trapped in jobs they do not like simply because their employers are offering them decent health insurance plans. Instead, they will be able to pursue the jobs and work they love, which could be an enormous boon for the economy. And by the way, moving to a Medicare for all program will end the disgrace of Americans paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

Democratic socialism means that, in the year 2015, a college degree is equivalent to what a high school degree was 50 years ago – and that public education must allow every person in this country, who has the ability, the qualifications and the desire, the right to go to a public colleges or university tuition free. This is also not a radical idea. It exists today in many countries around the world. In fact, it used to exist in the United States.

Democratic socialism means that our government does everything it can to create a full employment economy. It makes far more sense to put millions of people back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, than to have a real unemployment rate of almost 10%. It is far smarter to invest in jobs and educational opportunities for unemployed young people, than to lock them up and spend $80 billion a year through mass incarceration.

Democratic socialism means that if someone works forty hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty: that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage – $15 an hour over the next few years. It means that we join the rest of the world and pass the very strong Paid Family and Medical Leave legislation now in Congress. How can it possibly be that the United States, today, is virtually the only nation on earth, large or small, which does not guarantee that a working class woman can stay home for a reasonable period of time with her new-born baby? How absurd is that?

Democratic socialism means that we have government policy which does not allow the greed and profiteering of the fossil fuel industry to destroy our environment and our planet, and that we have a moral responsibility to combat climate change and leave this planet healthy and inhabitable for our kids and grandchildren.

Democratic socialism means, that in a democratic, civilized society the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes. Yes. Innovation, entrepreneurship and business success should be rewarded. But greed for the sake of greed is not something that public policy should support. It is not acceptable that in a rigged economy in the last two years the wealthiest 15 Americans saw their wealth increase by $170 billion, more wealth than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans. Let us not forget what Pope Francis has so elegantly stated; “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

It is not acceptable that major corporations stash their profits in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens to avoid paying $100 billion in taxes each and every year. It is not acceptable that hedge fund managers pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses or truck drivers. It is not acceptable that billionaire families are able to leave virtually all of their wealth to their families without paying a reasonable estate tax. It is not acceptable that Wall Street speculators are able to gamble trillions of dollars in the derivatives market without paying a nickel in taxes on those transactions.

I couldn’t interrupt Bernie on that roll. Democratic socialism in other words is economic and social justice. It’s my belief system. It is what William Thomas dedicated his life to when he vigiled in front of the White House for years for nuclear disarmament. Thomas, as we called him, saw that greed was destroying our country. Mitch Snyder fasted many times to draw attention to the plight of the homeless and build the largest homeless shelter in the United States within a few blocks of the Capital. He understood that he had to fight the greed of the ruling class that was neglecting those in need. Phil Berrigan was a Christian who understood that the war machine was taking resources that could be used to help the poor. They were my mentors. I know that they would be backing Bernie if they were alive today. Well, maybe not Thomas, it would have been hard to get him to trust a politician.

But Bernie is not a traditional politician, he is a public servant who wants to build a just society. If you feel burned by Obama, Bernie is no Obama. Obama ran and governed as an establishment centrist. Those terms are far from any words I would use to describe Bernie Sanders. Have faith, we can trust Bernie.

Democratic socialism, to me, does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice. It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote. It is extremely sad that the United States, one of the oldest democracies on earth, has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country, and that millions of young and working class people have given up on our political system entirely. Every American should be embarrassed that in our last national election 63% of the American people, and 80% of young people, did not vote. Clearly, despite the efforts of many Republican governors to suppress the vote, we must make it easier for people to participate in the political process, not harder. It is not too much to demand that everyone 18 years of age is registered to vote – end of discussion.

Further, it is unacceptable that we have a corrupt campaign finance system which allows millionaires, billionaires and large corporations to contribute as much as they want to Super Pacs to elect candidates who will represent their special interests. We must overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections.

If we don’t get the money out of politics, and don’t bring people back into the process, we might as well elect a king or queen and stop having elections. They are a waste of our time and money.

If we continue to sit on the sidelines, we might as well just let the oligarchy take full control. Heck, we might even get lucky and royalty will throw us some big crumbs. I’m just kidding, trying to motivate those who think the system is beyond hope. I believe, as Bernie says, that if we stand together there is nothing we can’t accomplish.

So the next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, remember this:I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.

I believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas.

I believe that most Americans can pay lower taxes – if hedge fund managers who make billions manipulating the marketplace finally pay the taxes they should.

I don’t believe in special treatment for the top 1%, but I do believe in equal treatment for African-Americans who are right to proclaim the moral principle that Black Lives Matter.

I despise appeals to nativism and prejudice, and I do believe in immigration reform that gives Hispanics and others a pathway to citizenship and a better life.

I don’t believe in some foreign “ism,” but I believe deeply in American idealism.

I’m not running for president because it’s my turn, but because it’s the turn of all of us to live in a nation of hope and opportunity not for some, not for the few, but for all.

Now that is change we can believe in. One reason we can believe it is he tells us that he can’t do it alone. Democratic socialism is not something we should fear. What we should fear is unchecked crony capitalism. If we let the billionaire class consolidate their power, America will become an oligarchy and Democracy will no longer exist. We need socialism to save America.

Author’s note: Next week I will look at the rest of the speech, which focused on ISIS and foreign policy. The transcript I used for this article was from his remarks as prepared for delivery. –SMG

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador’s slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush’s first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

See: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33596-focus-sanders-address-on-democratic-socialism-amazing-and-blacked-out.

Key Clinton emails did not contain highly classified secrets

‘The initial determination was based on a flawed process,’ a source says.

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Source:Politico

Author: Josh Gernstein

Emphasis Mine 

The U.S. intelligence community has retreated from claims that two emails in Hillary Clinton’s private account contained top-secret information, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO.

After a review, intelligence agencies concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets, the source said. Concerns about the emails’ classification helped trigger an ongoing FBI inquiry into Clinton’s private email setup.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III made the claim that two of the emails contained top-secret information; the State Department publicly stated its disagreement and asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office to referee the dispute. Now, that disagreement has been resolved in State’s favor, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for Clapper said the review of the emails has not been completed. “ODNI has made no such determination and the review is ongoing,” Clapper spokesman Brian Hale said.

However, the source said State Department officials had already received instructions from intelligence officials that they need not use the strictest standards for handling the two emails in dispute – meaning that they aren’t highly classified.

Hale declined to comment on whether any changes had been made in recent days to the handling requirements for the disputed emails.

Intelligence officials claimed one email in Clinton’s account was classified because it contained information from a top-secret intelligence community “product” or report, but a further review determined that the report was not issued until several days after the email in question was written, the source said.

“The initial determination was based on a flawed process,” the source said. “There was an intelligence product people thought [one of the emails] was based on, but that actually postdated the email in question.”

A senior intelligence official told POLITICO last month that the disputes over the classification of Clinton’s emails would take some time to adjudicate. “The process is ongoing and is likely to be a lengthy one due to the volume of material and the litigation aspects,” said the official, who asked not be named.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Friday he was unaware of any resolution of the classification issue regarding the messages McCullough’s office said had been deemed “top secret.”

“As far as I know we’ve received no final decision by the intelligence community with respect to these two emails,” Kirby said at a daily briefing for reporters. “As far as we know, that process is ongoing.”

One curious twist to the classification dispute is that it is not entirely clear who has authority to resolve it. State spokesmen have repeatedly said that the diplomatic agency has asked Clapper’s office to review the issue, but the intelligence chief’s office has never acknowledged the power to override an intelligence agency’s determination on classification or to order State not to release information it considers unclassified.

There is an interagency committee to hear appeals on declassification issues, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel. The group, run out of an office at the National Archives, usually considers disputes about historical information. Kirby said Friday he was unsure whether that panel was involved in the current dispute or why State raised its concerns with Clapper’s office instead.

A top expert in classification procedures called the reported determination about the disputed emails “an astonishing turn of events.”

“It’s not just a mistake,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said of the initial “Top Secret” claim. “It was a transformative event in the presidential campaign to this point. It had a potential to derail Clinton’s presidential candidacy.”

Aftergood said Clapper’s office should be credited for seriously reconsidering the earlier conclusions by intelligence agencies.

“Usually, when an agency commits itself to a judgment that is this consequential, the agency will tend to dig in its heels and insist — no matter what — it was right. What’s unusual here is an agency said we reconsidered and we changed our mind. That’s a difficult thing to do, and they’re liable to be attacked for doing it,” Aftergood said.

A spokesman for Clinton’s presidential campaign welcomed the reported development, while allies said the news vindicates her.

“The inspector general’s determination always seemed arbitrary and questionable, and we are grateful that it appears the DNI may be confirming that,” spokesman Brian Fallon said. “This would illustrate the subjective nature of the classification rules that are at the heart of this matter.”

“DNI Clapper’s determination is further evidence that there was no wrongdoing by Secretary Clinton,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “The classification process is complex and subjective, but this confirms Secretary Clinton did not send classified information through her email account. It’s time to put this issue behind us and move on.”

In an Aug. 11 memo to 17 lawmakers, McCullough said the two emails “include information classified up to TOP SECRET//SI/TK/NOFORN.” The subject of the emails has never been publicly confirmed, but published reports have said one refers to North Korea’s nuclear program and another to U.S. drone operations. The acronym “SI” in the classification marking refers to “signals intelligence,” and a footnote in McCullough’s memo references the work of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which oversees U.S. spy satellites.

Kirby said in September that the agency believed State officials got some of the information in the disputed emails from sources different from the highly sensitive sources used by intelligence agencies.

“One thing that’s important to remember is that very often the State Department and the intelligence community acquire information from separate channels, and thus there can be more than one report about a certain issue or an event. And some of those reports can be derived wholly through unclassified means, and some are derived through classified means,” Kirby told reporters.

Various officials have confirmed that none of the Clinton emails was marked classified, although hundreds have now been deemed as such by State, nearly all at the Confidential level — the lowest tier of classification.

McCullough’s August memo said Congress would be provided “updates” on the situation. However, it’s unclear whether any written notification of the withdrawal of the “Top Secret” classification has been shared with lawmakers. A spokeswoman had no immediate comment for this story.

State or other agencies may eventually determine that the emails in question contain classified information, but the recent action cleared State to handle the two emails in State’s standard FOIA system, which is authorized only for information classified up to the “Secret” level — the middle of the three main tiers of national security information.

The two emails are part of a set of four emails McCullough’s investigators flagged after obtaining access earlier this year to a sample of 40 emails among the 30,000 Clinton stored on a private server and provided to her former agency last December. “My office’s limited sampling of 40 of the emails revealed [that] four contained classified [intelligence community] information that should have been marked and handled at the SECRET level,” McCullough wrote to lawmakers on July 23.

Concerns about the four emails McCullough’s investigators isolated appear to have set in motion a series of critical events in the email saga. State stepped up its efforts to have Clinton’s private attorney David Kendall return thumb drives.

State decided back in May that one email in the Clinton collection contained “Secret” information about arrests possibly linked to the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. At that time, Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy asked Kendall to delete all copies of that email and return all paper copies to the department. Kendall declined to delete the electronic copies because of outstanding preservation requests from inspectors general and congressional committees.

However, the classification of that email as secret did not set off the scramble that began in late July when the intelligence inspector general flagged the set of four from the sample of 40. The flagging of those four emails by the ICIG led to a formal referral to the FBI of a potential counterintelligence breach.

Within days, the FBI contacted Kendall asking him to turn over the thumb drive, which he did in early August. On July 31, Kennedy also sent urgent letters to lawyers for two top Clinton aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, asking that all the federal records in their possession be immediately returned to the government, along with all copies.

FBI Director James Comey has since confirmed his agency is conducting a review of the matter. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment when asked what impact the classification developments would have on the agency’s ongoing probe.

While disclosures of information classified at the “Secret” level can trigger an investigation, Aftergood said the conclusion that the two emails were not “Top Secret” could have some impact on how the FBI proceeds.

“That would tend to reduce the urgency of the initial referral,” he said.

See:http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/hillary-clinton-email-no-highly-classified-215599

Bernie Won All the Focus Groups & Online Polls – So Why Is the Media Saying Hillary Won the Debate?

What the public wants out of a candidate and what the beltway press does appear to be two entirely different things.

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Source:AlterNet

Author:Adam Johnson

Emphasis Mine 

Who “won” a debate is inherently subjective. The idea of “winning” a debate necessarily entails a goal to be achieved. What this goal is, therefore, says as much about the person judging its achievement than the goal itself. Pundits are ostensibly supposed to judge whether or not a candidate said what “the voters” want to hear. But what ends up happening, invariably, is they end up judging whether or not the candidate said what they think voters wanted to hear. This, after all, is why pundits exist, to act a clergy class charged with interpreting people’s own inscrutable opinions for them. The chasm between what the pundits saw and what the public was quite big last night.

Bernie Sanders by all objective measures won the debate. Hands down. I don’t say this as a personal analysis of the debate – the very idea of “winning” a debate is silly to me. I say this because based on the only relatively objective metric we have, online polls and focus groups, he did win.  And it’s not even close.

Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group, and the Fox News focus group – in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters. He won the Slate online poll, the CNN/Time online poll, 9News Colorado, The Street online poll, Fox5 poll, the conservative Drudge online poll and the liberal Daily Kos online poll. There wasn’t, to this writer’s knowledge, a poll he didn’t win by at least an 18 point margin.  But you wouldn’t know this from reading the establishment press. The New York Times, The New Yorker, CNN,Politico, Slate, New York Magazine, and Vox all of which unanimously say Hillary Clinton cleaned house. What gives?

Firstly, it’s important to point out that online polls, and to a lesser extent focus groups, are obviously not scientific. But it’s also important to point out that the echo chamber musings of establishment liberal pundits is far, far less scientific. It wasn’t that the online polls and focus groups had Sanders winning, it’s that they had him winning by a lot. And it wasn’t just that the pundit classes has Clinton winning, it’s that they had her winning by a lot. This gap speaks to a larger gap that we’ve seen since the beginning of Sanders campaign. The mainstream media writes off Bernie and is constantly shocked when his polls numbers go up. What explains this phenomenon? Freddie DeBoer, writing about the gap between what the pundits saw and what the public saw, had this to say:

This morning, I’ve been pointing out on Twitter that the unanimity of pro-Hillary Clinton journalism coming from the mouthpieces of establishment Democratic politics — Slate, Vox, New York Magazine, etc. — is entirely predictable and has no meaningful relationship to her actual performance at the debate last night. That’s because, one, the Democrats are a centrist party that is interested in maintaining the stranglehold of the DNC establishment on their presidential politics, and these publications toe that line. And second, because Clinton has long been assumed to be the heavy favorite to win the presidency, these publications are in a heated battle to produce the most sympathetic coverage, in order to gain access. That is a tried-and-true method of career advancement in political journalism. Ezra Klein was a well-regarded blogger and journalist. He became the most influential journalist in DC (and someone, I can tell you with great confidence, that young political journalists are terrified of crossing) through his rabid defense of Obamacare, and subsequent access to the President. That people would try and play the same role with Clinton is as natural and unsurprising as I can imagine.

So many establishment journalists were in a hurry to declare Clinton not just the winner of the debate, but the election. One fairly creepy exchange between Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker and Alec MacGillis summed it up nicely: “Pretend” there’s a race? Isn’t that sort of the whole point of democracy? To have as much debate and vetting as possible before nominating a potential leader of the free world? Matt Yglesias at Vox also dismissed this entire primary process out of hand: It’s unclear what the rush is. The first primary is months away and they’re ready to call it based entirely on they and their pundit buddies ad hoc analysis of one debate. This tweet by Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe would perfectly sum up mainstream media’s cluelessness…

A “protest candidate”? If Cohen hasn’t noticed the electorate is full of piss and vinegar and rancor which is precisely why an otherwise obscure, self-described socialist has rose in the polls the way he has.

But the question still remains: why the rush to write off Sanders? Why the constant gap between how the public perceives Sanders and how the mainstream media does?  Why, most of all, would anyone listen to the very same pundit class that was wrong in ’08 and continues to be wrong in 2015? 

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter at@adamjohnsonnyc.

 

See:http://www.alternet.org/media/bernie-won-all-focus-groups-online-polls-so-why-media-saying-hillary-won-debate?akid=13575.123424.33yFJd&rd=1&src=newsletter1044066&t=2

A Psychologist Puts Trump and the GOP on the Couch

What’s going on in the Republican mind?

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Source:AlterNet

Author:Michael Bader

Emphasis Mine

Rather than simply reacting with self-righteous contempt for the current crop of GOP presidential candidates, liberals like myself should try to also understand their appeal, however much we might believe it’s not strong enough to put any of them in the White House. The pre-scripted kabuki dances on display in their debates have made them easy targets for disdain, so easy that it’s a bit like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with your eyes open. Trump is an obviously racist bloviator, the creepiest and most blatantly disturbed of the bunch, for sure, but the lot of them come across as empty suits projecting poll-driven personas that their handlers believe will resonate with their base of angry and/or older white men. Moments of “authenticity” (e.g., they love their parents, spouses and children—imagine that!) are, themselves, always wooden, overly-crafted and ginned up with phony emotion and reported breathlessly by a media itself unable to stand on its own two feet and tell truth from fiction when it comes from these conservative wind-up dolls.

The Democrats will stage manage their personalities and manipulate their messages, too. Sanders is by far the most authentic, but he had to pivot in order to re-emphasize his record on race and women’s rights. Hillary will try to “present” herself as a human being (she’s a grandmother, after all), and the other guys—whoever they are—will do something similar when they can.

All of this is politics as usual, dutifully but cynically covered by a press corps that has surrendered even the pretense of critical thinking, instead sucking up to what they see as the basest cravings of their readers and viewers for the political version of reality television.

But while all politicians pander and throw authenticity under the bus of political expediency, the current plague of high-visibility GOP candidates project two especially pathological themes that they’ve decided will resonate with the feelings of millions of voters: paranoia and grandiosity.

As a liberal and a psychologist, I think it’s important to understand the nature and meaning of this resonance. The fears and insecurities that paranoia and grandiosity seek to diminish are feelings that a liberal agenda should be better able to address. Undecided voters can be drawn to the left or the right, and the more we understand the appeal of the American Right, the better able we might be to counter it with a more progressive and healthy message and platform. But we will never know if that’s possible or how to do it if we don’t understand the psychological dynamics behind the appeal of right-wing paranoia and grandiosity.

Let’s start with grandiosity, a term familiar to psychologists in our work with patients who need to inflate their self-esteem and self-assessments in order to ward off feelings of inferiority or helplessness. But just as individuals identify with, say, a sports team, so too do individuals identify with their nation—e.g., Team America. In our case, the political or collective version of personal grandiosity is what is known as “American Exceptionalism,” namely the tapestry of stories about the specialness of the United States when it comes to personal freedom, economic opportunity and growth, and military superiority. These stories have gained mythic proportions. They’re all captured by one unquestioned assumption: We are the greatest country in the history of the world. Period. This is a core part of the relentless drumbeat we hear from the conservative echo chamber.

But this braggadocio—what former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright called “The Arrogance of Power”—requires that the ideal of American “greatness” be cleansed of any blemishes, just as a grandiose or narcissistic patient has to deny his or her human frailty and fallibility. This is where paranoia comes in handy. It’s easier to believe you are exceptional if you are comparing yourself with others and if you are proving your remarkable strength against naysayers or challengers. It helps, in other words, to have an enemy who is threatening your greatness.

Thus, the rhetoric of the current crop of Republican politicians, including, especially, the GOP clowns running for president, combines grandiosity and paranoia. Our nation’s greatness isn’t threatened by simple human fallibility but by Obama, Muslims, immigrants, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Big Government. The second Republican presidential debate was laced with echoes of these beliefs, sometimes baldly stated, other times expressed as Obama-bashing. According to Carly Fiorina, “The United States of America is back in the leadership business.” Trump coughed up this hairball:  “We’ll make our country rich again, and we’ll have a great life all together.”

In other words, we’re in danger of losing our place in the front of the line, and only a Republican president has enough sinew and muscular confidence in American greatness to make sure that doesn’t happen. Grandiosity and paranoia—we’re the greatest, but we have to vigilantly remind ourselves and everyone else of that fact because we’re also threatened. A great “us” has to be continually reinforced by invoking threats from a demeaned “them.”

The current frontrunners for a “them” that threatens our perfect national collective are immigrants and radical Islamic extremists. Like the Red scares of the 1950s, our current xenophobia is based on the same paranoid view of ourselves and the world. The first thing Ted Cruz would apparently do as president is to “shred Obama’s catastrophic Iran deal.” Trump is the poster child for paranoia with his dumb “we’ll build a wall but put in a beautiful gate” through which we’ll ostensibly let in only beautiful people, and keep out the “bad dudes.” And, of course, his racist demagoguery reached a peak recently when he appeared to welcome a statement from a man in the audience who asserted: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. You know, our President is one. You know he’s not even an American.”

What does psychology tell us about the origins of paranoia and grandiosity? It tells us that pathological attitudes and states of mind are best understood as attempts, however irrational they may seem, to feel safe and secure.

All of us seek safety and security.

Paranoia, for example, simply reflects an attempt to locate a frightening or painful thought outside the self, to get rid of threatening feelings, project them onto others, and then turn an internal struggle with bad feelings into an external struggle with bad people. For example, if I’m suffering from feelings of weakness or worthlessness, the belief, however false, that someone else is causing me to feel this way can temporarily help restore my sense of innocence and self-respect. There’s nothing wrong with me that getting rid of you won’t cure. In fact, in this paranoid version of reality, I’m a good or even great guy defending himself against an external danger. What emerges in the therapist’s consulting room is that paranoia solves an internal problem by making it an external one, even at the price of denying reality.

For example, Donald Trump is actually a balding misogynist, but he doesn’t have to feel like one if he wears a toupee (allegedly made from the hair of the critically-endangered Brown Spider Monkey) and tells himself and others that Megyn Kelly was menstruating and had it out for him.

In this sense, Trump shows us what happens when the personal becomes political. Like the United States itself, he is great and good, not declining and mean. Paranoia works pretty well when you’re feeling off your game.

Grandiosity works similarly as a defense against painful internal states. Thus, the grandiosity inherent in the axiomatic assertion that “we are the greatest nation in the history of the world” uses stories and images of American perfection, greatness and omnipotence to counteract narratives that we might be a nation in decline, or reeking on the inside from toxic inequality and a callous indifference to the welfare of the unfortunate. Combine grandiosity and paranoia and you have the current Republican talking points.

When individual psychopathology becomes a collective filter for understanding the political world, we see—as we do in the rhetoric and vision of today’s GOP—a pathological set of values guaranteed to lead to pathological policies. If I were to try to list the essential psychological dynamics underlying grandiosity and paranoia in the patients I see, and you were to simply replace the personal pronoun “I” with “America” or “the American people” and “you” and “them” with one of the scapegoats demonized by the GOP (e.g., people with darker skins, the wrong religion or different sexual orientation), the symmetry between crazy individuals and crazy politics becomes clearer. Again, to oversimplify:

“I’m not small; I’m big.” (American is not small; it’s/we’re big, etc.)

“I’m not bad; I’m the essence of goodness.”

“I’m not hurting others; I’m always helping them.”

“I’m not failing or losing; I’m a successful winner.”

“The problem isn’t in me; it’s in you.”

“If I could get rid of you; I’d be great and perfect and happy again.”

You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the adolescent tough-guy primping we see on the GOP presidential debate stages is the political manifestation of commonplace psychological mechanisms regularly seen in individuals, namely, desperate attempts to defend against dangerous and painful feelings and fears. And just as in therapy, the important challenge is to understand those feelings and fears, because when a Donald Trump wants to build a wall to protect America, he is subliminally playing to a wish in his supporters to protect themselves. But, again, the question is: protect themselves from what? What is being denied or defended against?

The answer is that the threats that grandiose and paranoid attitudes defend against involve feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and self-hatred—all of which are arguably greater now than ever in our culture. American exceptionalism and xenophobia offer symbolic antidotes in the political world to the more personal distress of millions of Americans today. Trump and the other airheads on the GOP stage today offer a distorted vision of the world that, like the Donald’s orange wig, helps to cover up genuine feelings of vulnerability and impotence.

For many people, the Great Recession of 2008 dashed the American Dream to which they had come to aspire or which they believed they were actually living. Millions of people lost their homes, their IRAs and other savings that were allocated for retirement and for their children’s education. These losses—the result of financial shenanigans far, far away—were accompanied by great feelings of helplessness that caused stress levels to go through the ceiling. Mortgages went underwater and people took on second or third jobs, reinforcing a sense of insecurity along with feelings of helplessness and depression. And while being overwhelmed and powerless to stop the feeling of losing ground, people saw hedge fund managers and bankers getting bailed out. Because we think we live in a meritocracy in which rewards are distributed according to ability, people blamed themselves for not being able to make ends meet, or hold on to their jobs, or for losing money in the stock market, or for having tapped into their home equity too much. I heard these self-criticisms and doubts in my consulting room every day—feelings of helplessness, pessimism, isolation and self-blame.

In 1990, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 50% of Americans thought their children would be better off in 20 years. In 2015, a full 76% of Americans expressed skepticism that their children’s lives would be better off than their own. Even though millions of Americans were in the same boat, feelings of isolation and self-blame became more prevalent and debilitating. The ethic of individualism in our culture invariably leads people to blame themselves for their “lot” in life, even if that lot was caused by forces beyond their control. So, as the quality of life has deteriorated, the amount of depression and self-blaming has increased.

Further, as researchers such as John Cacioppo and Robert Putnam have documented, the breakdown of community organizations and bonds has resulted in increased social isolation, especially among the elderly (an important part of the Republican base, of course). In 2009, a study by Kodak revealed that most Americans felt that “we have fewer meaningful relationships than we had five years ago.” This trend has only worsened.

So we have a social landscape in which people feel increasingly pessimistic, helpless, isolated and self-blaming—feelings perfectly addressed by GOP platitudes intended to reassure us that we’re really great, all-powerful, and that it’s someone else’s fault if we’re not.

Ultimately, the appeal to an imaginary but reassuring sense of community undergirds all of these platitudes about American greatness, strength and antipathy toward the “other.” The latent message is: there is an “us” here, a great “us” full of power and noble intentions, an “us” to which everyone can belong as long as we keep “them” away or subjugated in ways that render them non-threatening (bombing them, building walls, deportation, etc.). Who doesn’t want to belong? To be part of an “us?”

The myths of American greatness serve this purpose perfectly. What is a better tonic to the pain of isolation and helplessness brought on by our market-driven and pathological ethos of individualism than to belong to Dream Team America, the greatest and most powerful nation that ever existed in the history of the world?

That the GOP has been instrumental in creating the conditions that it then seeks to heal with its so-called “muscular” foreign and military policy and jingoistic attacks on immigrants is an inconvenient truth that isn’t mentioned, but has been thoroughly described and discussed by progressive political analysts and sociologists. The Right helped create the problems that their racist warmongering and so-called patriotism aim to remedy. Psychology can’t fix these problems, but it can hopefully help us understand the mindset behind a system in which victims support their victimizers.

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco who has written extensively on issues found at the intersection of psychology, culture, and progressive politics. His recent book, More Than Bread and Butter: A Psychologist Speaks to Progressives About What People Really Need in Order to Win an Change the World is available on Amazon.com and on his website: www.michaelbader.com

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/psychologist-puts-trump-and-gop-couch?akid=13536.123424.-bDFYQ&rd=1&src=newsletter1043311&t=2

Chilling New Poll Finds GOP Fascism Is Very Real

A shocking number of Republicans say they can conceive of a situation in which they’d sympathize with a military coup.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Heather Digby Parton

Emphasis Mine

Last week, as the nation observed the anniversary of 9/11, one could not help but look back at that time and contemplate the reaction by our fellow citizens and foreign nations. Rick Perlstein wrote a very poignant piece a couple of years back about the solidarity that horrible day inspired among all Americans and people around the world — and how it was lost.

Perlstein describes how bills such as the vote to authorize war and the Patriot Act passed nearly unanimously and without debate, which he says happened because in that moment of oneness,”it seemed unimaginable that this extraordinary grant of executive power could possibly be abused.” The man who should have been president, Al Gore, famously said, “George W. Bush is my commander in chief.”

Lefties from Ellen Willis to Barbra Streisand immediately fell into line and supported the president unequivocally. Bush memorably put this new sense of trust and good will into words when he addressed Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, and asked the American people to pull together for the sake of the nation as a whole. He also admonished them to be decent to the people of Middle Eastern descent who lived among us.

“I ask you to uphold the values of America and remember why so many have come here. We’re in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.”

Here is the notoriously fractious Congress all gathered together on 9/11 to sing God Bless America on the Capitol steps.

Sadly, as Perlstein pointed out, it didn’t take long for all of that solidarity to fall apart. One year later, conservative pundit Peggy Noonan was writing:

“So the Southerners are eyeballing the young Muslim males. Maybe these guys are bad guys. They allow themselves to think this in part because one of the things Americans regret most since Sept. 11 2001 is their lack of suspicion. We’re all very live-and-let-live. Before Sept. 11, young Muslim males could tell someone in passing that soon those towers in New York will go boom. And fearing to offend, fearing to hurt the feelings of another person, we’d let it pass. We’d mind our business, give them the benefit of the doubt. And now we wish we’d been less friendly, less trusting, less lazy or frightened. We wish we’d been skeptical. Hell, we’re the only nation on earth that is now nostalgic for paranoia.”

Noonan went on to condemn the “young Muslim males” — medical students — who inspired the column as bigots for failing to properly soothe a hysterical woman who panicked to see them eating dinner in a Georgia restaurant. (Jeb Bush, by the way, called the woman to congratulate her for her sharp observation.)

Anyone who was in America during that period also remembers the intense patriotic fervor exemplified by the anthem of the era, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (the Angry American)”:

Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty Started shakin’ her fist
And the eagle will fly
Man, it’s gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom Start ringin’ her bell
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Brought to you Courtesy of the Red White and Blue
Justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A.
‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way

As the Dixie Chicks found out, anyone who didn’t agree could expect to be met with a furious reaction from conservatives who enforced the new patriotism with near religious fervor. And their love of country was not confined to the military. When president George W. Bush donned a Navy flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier in a fighter jet to (prematurely) declare victory in Iraq, the right wing went into a major collective swoon. You could even buy a bronze bust of George W. Bush wearing the jumpsuit that was advertised with this stirring sales pitch:

“President Bush is a Leader who has the courage to lead. It is political courage. It is not poll driven it is conviction driven. It is consistent and does not change because of pressure or threats of political survival. It is reconfirmed every day. It differs from combat courage in that it is thought oriented not reaction oriented. Combat courage does not necessarily translate into political courage. Combat courage is admirable and you only know if you have it when you are in combat. President Bush has demonstrated that he has political courage and this is why he was re-elected. By owning a bust of President Bush, Commander in Chief you will be making a statement and in a politically charged environment, it takes courage.”

In those days, Republicans believed that government and military leaders were heroic protectors of all we hold dear. But even as kitschy as Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” performance was, and as overweening as the GOP’s patriotic love of men in uniform, that statement above is a remarkable validation of the American dedication to the concept of civilian control of the military. He might have been wearing a fake uniform (he liked to do that) but they acknowledged and respected him for his political leadership.

Something seems to have changed their minds. According to this new YouGov poll, these same patriotic Republicans still love the military passionately but are no longer attached to that moldy old concept of civilian control:

“Republicans (43%) are more than twice as likely as Democrats (20%) to say that they could conceive of a situation in which they would support a military coup in the United States.”

More to the point, only 32 percent of Republicans state unequivocally that they would not conceive of a situation in which they would support a military coup. One would be tempted to think this is simply a matter of partisanship, but there is no evidence that Democrats have ever entertained the notion of a military coup, no matter who was president, even one as widely loathed as George W. Bush. It’s as “un-American” as it gets.

For years the right has accused the opposition of being unpatriotic and failing to properly love America. And here they are, endorsing something that’s only seen in Banana Republics and totalitarian police states.

But there is some good news in all this. It’s likely that as soon as they get a president they like, they will once again discover that the Constitution is sacrosanct and the president is worthy once again to be the Commander in Chief. For instance, the latest Washington Post poll shows that they are not so cynical that they cannot imagine anyone having the qualities that are required for such a job:

1) Republicans say by 64-35 that Trump is “qualified to serve as president.”

2) Republicans say by 60-35 that Trump is “honest and trustworthy.”

3) Republicans say by 53-45 that Trump understands the problems of people like them.

4) Republicans say by 54-42 that Trump “has the kind of personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively as president.”

So we can all rest easy. As long as a qualified leader like Donald Trump is in charge they are unlikely to support something as radical as a military coup. But Barack Obama has clearly worn on their last nerve. And you don’t even want to think about what will happen if Hillary Clinton becomes Commander in Chief. One can easily imagine them calling for this coup and telling themselves “it’s the American way.”

For these folks the American way is whatever they want it to be including, apparently, a military dictatorship.

 

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

See: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/chilling-new-poll-finds-gop-fascism-very-real?akid=13479.123424.9YvtrN&rd=1&src=newsletter1042471&t=6

Nationwide Poll: Majority of Republicans Have Nakedly Racist Worldview—Trump Has Found the Way to Unleash It

GOPers are living in a dangerous right-wing fantasyland—and are just fine with that.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Steven Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

A new national poll released Tuesday has found that a majority of the Republican Party is living in a strange and dangerous political fantasyland.

“Our new poll finds that [Donald] Trump is benefiting from a GOP electorate that thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born in another country,” Public Policy Polling’s analysis said. “Sixty-six percent of Trump’s supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12 percent that grant he’s a Christian. Sixty-one percent think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21 percent who accept that he was.”

Not only did PPP’s analysis find that Trump’s lead was growing—it is now 29 percent—it also found that the second most popular Republican is one who has not criticized other candidates: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has 15 percent. The rest of the pack is all under 10 percent: Jeb Bush (9 percent), Carly Fiorina (8 percent), Marco Rubio (7 percent), Ted Cruz and John Kasich (6 percent), Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee (5 percent). Walker has fallen the most, compared to last winter when he was leading.

The biggest takeaway from the PPP pollis that a majority of the Republican Party’s base is living in a right-wing bubble where facts don’t matter—and it has become increasingly acceptable to publicly voice racist positions because the leading presidential candidate is modeling that behavior.

Not only did PPP find that a majority of Republicans believe the birther lie—that Obama was not actually born in Hawaii—but 51 percent of all Republicans polled want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, which is granted to any person born on U.S. soil. Of Trump’s supporters, 63 percent want to eliminate that right, and a majority said undocumented children should be deported.

“I’m not terribly surprised by the birther numbers or the numbers about Obama’s religion,” said Tom Jensen, PPP director. He said the numbers are consistent with what he’s seen in GOP polls in recent years, and matched another new poll from Iowa where about 35 percent of the state’s GOP electorate are “birthers.”

But what is surprising to Jensen is how Trump’s candidacy has made Republicans more willing to publicly admit their xenophobic or racist positions.

“Trump has sent a message that it’s okay to be racist,” he said. “So maybe some racist attitudes you previously held, or were not allowed to say in public, now one of the leading presidential candidates is saying them and not apologizing at all.”

The PPP poll also found that Trump was winning his war of words with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, the on-air host who challenged him in the GOP’s first presidential debate for his history of sexist remarks about women.

“Trump is winning his fight with Megyn Kelly,” the poll’s analysis said. “When we last polled her in December of 2013 her favorability with Republicans nationally was 44/9. Her favorability is in a similar place now at 42% but her negatives have shot up to 20 percent, largely because she’s at 20/43 with Trump’s supporters.”

The poll also found that Carly Fiorina and John Kasich have become more popular with GOP voters. Since their July survey, Fiorina, the ex-Hewlett Packard CEO, has “gone from 4 percent to 8 percent, and her 53/23 favorability rating makes her the most popular GOP candidate other than Carson and Trump,” their analysis said. “Kasich’s gone from 3 percent to 6 percent and is all the way up to double digits at 10 percent with moderate voters, putting him in third place overall with that group.”

The Republican who has fallen the furthest is Scott Walker, “who was in second place at 17 percent last month and is now down all the way to a tie for eighth place at 5 percent. There is a little bit of silver lining for Walker. He’s one of only three Republicans to hit double digits when it comes to voters’ second-place choice.”

Bush is struggling for a variety of reasons, Jensen said. He’s not passionate enough, compared to Trump. His past positions embracing federal education standards and immigration reform rankle right-wing Republicans. And in an anti-establishment year, being a Bush [or a Clinton] is as mainstream and establishment as it gets.

Bernie and Hillary

On the Democratic side, PPP found that Bernie Sanders has a very long way to go to catch up with Hillary Clinton in national polling.

“Last month Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders by 35 points and this month she leads him by 35 points again—she’s at 55 percent to 20 pecent for Bernie Sanders, 4 percent for Martin O’Malley, 3 percent for Jim Webb, and 1 percent each for Lincoln Chafee and Lawrence Lessig,” the poll’s analysis said.

This is a striking contrast with Sanders’ numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire, where another PPP poll just last week found he was ahead of Clinton by 7 points. However, looking past those first two contests to the next states, Jensen said that Sanders hasn’t yet made inroads into communities of color.

“I think it’s quite possible he may do very well in Iowa and New Hampshire and not do well anywhere else,” Jensen said. “We found Hillary down in New Hampshire but not nationally.”

However, Jensen said he was “done making predictions” about what was likely to unfold on the GOP side. “There is nothing about this presidential race that anyone has seen before. Most experts expected things to become more normal by now.”

But things have not become normal. As one respected legal blogger wrote Monday, there is a path to the GOP nomination for Trump if he maintains his current standing in the polls, because of the arcane ways Republicans will be allocating delegates in their 2016 primaries.

Meanwhile, the PPP poll confirms that the modern Republican Party has a majority of members who live in a racist political fantasyland: they believe Obama wasn’t born in America, and is a Muslim, not a Christian; and they would revoke the birthright citizenship of the children of undocumented immigrants, and deport them as well.

“Trump’s beliefs represent the consensus among the GOP electorate,” their analysis said. “Fifty-one percent overall want to eliminate birthright citizenship. Fifty-four percent think President Obama is a Muslim. And only 29 percent grant that President Obama was born in the United States. That’s less than the 40 percent who think Canadian-born Ted Cruz was born in the United States.”

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008).

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/nationwide-poll-majority-republicans-have-nakedly-racist-worldview-and-trump-has-found?utm_source=Steven+Rosenfeld%27s+Subscribers&utm_campaign=d25c3f7811-RSS_AUTHOR_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cfcfe7b54-d25c3f7811-107153921

Jeb Bush advisor admits he lied about Hillary Clinton’s emails

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Source: Daily Harris

Author: Cara Harris

Emphasis Mine 

After a rough stretch, the news on the email front continues to get better forHillary Clinton as the week goes on. First, the State Department acknowledged that she violated no laws or policies by using private email while Secretary of States, meaning this is no longer a legal issue, but rather merely one of perception. And and now a prominent Jeb Bush advisor admits he was lying when he claimed that her emails could legally disqualify her from serving as President. Michael Mukasey, who served as Attorney General under the George W Bush administration and has since signed on as an advisor to the Jeb Bush 2016 campaign, stated on MSNBC this week that Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email is a felony and would therefore disqualify her from becoming President even if she won the election. The latest polls show that Clinton is leading the democratic party primary by twenty-plus points nationally, and is also leading every potential republican candidate, meaning that the republican party needs to find a way to get the email controversy to stick if it has any chance of remaining competitive in the election. But now Mukasey is admitting that he was simply making things up about her. After being called out by various legal scholars and professors, Mukasey is now backtracking and has acknowledged to NBC that his claim about Hillary Clinton being unable to take office due to her email usage is simply gibberish. Even as the faux-controversy continues and the media increasingly (and falsely) reports that Clinton’s campaign is behind in the national polls, she’s still the clear frontrunner in 2016. But the republicans are likely to try to play the email card several more times in an attempt to cut into her lead. 

See: http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/jeb-bush-advisor-admits-he-lied-about-hillary-clintons-emails/21983/

Hillary Clinton hits back at Jeb Bush in Iraq row

Democratic presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton has hit back at one of her Republican rivals, Jeb Bush, over who is responsible for instability in Iraq.

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Source: BBC.COM

Emphasis Mine 

On Tuesday Mr Bush accused the Obama administration of a “premature withdrawal” of US forces from Iraq in 2011, with “grievous” costs.

Ms Clinton replied by saying it was Mr Bush’s brother George W Bush who, as president, negotiated a US withdrawal.

The US-led war in 2003 has been followed by years of turmoil.

Mr Bush called the withdrawal of US forces in 2011 a “fatal error”, destabilising the nation and setting the stage for the rise of Islamic State militants.

“So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers,” Mr Bush said of Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, who was Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

“Rushing away from danger can be every bit as unwise as rushing into danger,” he went on.

line

Analysis: Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter

When Jeb Bush blasted Hillary Clinton for “losing” the Iraq War earlier this week, it probably suited her just fine. The challenge for the Democratic front-runner since she first declared in April has been to generate enthusiasm from the party’s rank and file for her seemingly inevitable march to the Democratic nomination. The more she mixes it up with Republicans, however, the more her faithful are likely to close ranks behind one of their own.

That, at least, seems to be outcome for which the Clinton campaign is hoping. And so, at the Iowa State Fair the day after Mr Bush made his rounds among the fried food stands and carnival rides, Mrs Clinton loaded up and returned fire at the Republican.

A war of words with Mr Bush could end up being the best way for Mrs Clinton to move on from the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and the recent surge of fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont in some polls.

line

On Saturday Ms Clinton responded by saying Mr Bush “should present the entire picture. [That]… includes the agreement George W Bush made with the Maliki government in Iraq that set the end of 2011 as the date to withdraw American troops.”

“I can only wonder whether he either did not know that or thought that other people would not be reminded of that,” she went on.

Earlier in the campaign Jeb Bush was ridiculed for struggling to say whether he would have approved the Iraq invasion “knowing what we know now”.

At first, he said he would, then he said he wouldn’t engage in “hypotheticals” and finally he announced he would not have. 

See: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33948176?post_id=10206749398868782_10206749398748779#_=_

Myths And Facts On Hillary Clinton’s Email And Reports Of “Top Secret” Materials

Media are exploiting news that two emails Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton turned over to the State Department from her time as secretary of state may be retroactively classified as “top secret” to push myths about Clinton’s handling of government information and scandalize her email use. Here are the facts.

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Source: MediaMatters

Authors: LIS POWER & KATIE SULLIVAN

Emphasis Mine

FACT: None Of The Emails Sent To Clinton Were Labeled As “Classified” Or “Top Secret”

FACT: Emails Originated In State Dept. System, And Questions About Retroactive Classification Would Have Occurred Regardless Of Clinton’s Server Use

FACT: Experts Have Debunked Any Comparison Between Clinton’s Email Use And David Petraeus’ Crimes

FACT: IG Referral To Justice Department Was Not Criminal, And FBI Isn’t Targeting Clinton Herself

Intelligence Community IG Says Two Emails From Clinton’s Server Should Be Marked “Top Secret”

Intelligence Community Inspector General Says Two Emails From Clinton’s Server Contain “Top Secret” Information. The inspector general for the Intelligence Community (ICIG), I. Charles McCullough, reportedly informed leaders of key congressional oversight committees that two classified emails previously discovered on Clinton’s server contain top secret information. As McClatchy reported:

The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications – more sensitive than previously known.

The notice came as the State Department inspector general’s office acknowledged that it is reviewing the use of “personal communications hardware and software” by Clinton’s former top aides after requests from Congress. [McClatchy DC, 8/11/15]

State Department: It Remains Unclear Whether Material In Two Emails Should Be Retroactively Classified. NBC noted that the State Department is still working with the intelligence community to determine whether the information in the two emails should in fact be labeled as classified:

Clinton aides have maintained that nothing on her server was classified at the time she saw it, suggesting that classified messages were given the label after the fact.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department, said that was the case with two emails, adding that it remained unclear “whether, in fact, this material is actually classified.”

“Department employees circulated these emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011, and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton,” Kirby said Tuesday. “They were not marked as classified.” [NBC News, 8/12/15]

MYTH: Clinton Received Emails Marked As “Top Secret”

Fox Anchor Bret Baier: “‘Top Secret’ Was Marked On The Emails” Sent To Clinton. During the August 11 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier claimed that “‘top secret’ was marked on the emails” that Clinton received during her time as secretary of state:

MIKE EMANUEL: The breaking news of the hour is that the intelligence inspector general has told top lawmakers on Capitol Hill that two of those four classified emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal server were top secret in nature. And they’re still studying the other two to figure out what the relevant classification should be. Bret?

BRET BAIER: ‘Top secret’ marked on the emails. FBI inquiry obviously already ongoing to classified information improperly stored, they said, on her private server. And also, Mike, a thumb drive held by her attorney?

EMANUEL: Well that’s absolutely correct. All of her emails have been stored by her personal attorney. And a lot of folks on Capitol Hill have been asking, why is that still out there? Why is that not controlled by the intelligence community or by the State department, this existing in the possession of a personal attorney. And so lots more questions on Capitol Hill and throughout the intelligence community this evening. [Fox News, Special Report, 8/11/15]

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: ICIG “Contradicted Clinton’s Repeated Claim That Nothing On Those Private Emails Was Classified.” On the August 12 edition of NBC’s Today, Andrea Mitchell argued that the ICIG’s statement “contradicted” Clinton’s “repeated past denials”:

ANDREA MITCHELL: More controversy for Hillary Clinton today indeed. Despite her repeated past denials, the intelligence community’s Inspector General now says two of her emails should have been classified ‘top secret,’ the highest level of U.S. intelligence, even as the FBI is finally getting control of that private server.

VOICEOVER OF MITCHELL: Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire Tuesday, has aides confirm she has turned over her private server to the FBI. In addition, her attorney David Kendall gave the FBI two thumb drives containing her emails.  All of this, as the intelligence community’s watchdog contradicted Clinton’s repeated claim that nothing on those private emails was classified.

[CLIP OF HILLARY CLINTON: I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified materials.]

MITCHELL: Clinton has said there was no classified markings on any of her emails.

[CLIP OF CLINTON: I am confident that I have never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received.]

MITCHELL: But the Inspector General has now told Congress two of Clinton’s emails should have been classified ‘top secret,’ with code words indicating electronic eavesdropping from satellites, so sensitive it could not be shared with foreign allies. [NBC, Today, 8/12/15]

FACT: None Of The Emails Sent To Clinton Were Labeled As “Classified” Or “Top Secret”

Government Officials: None Of The Emails Were Marked As “Classified” When They Were Sent. The Washington Post reported that when the ICIG first “found information that should have been designated as classified” in four emails from Clinton’s server — two of which he now says contain “top secret” information — government officials acknowledged that the emails were not marked as classified when they were sent (emphasis added):

The Justice Department said Friday that it has been notified of a potential compromise of classified information in connection with the private e-mail account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.

A Justice official said the department had received a “referral” on the matter, which the inspector general of the intelligence agencies later acknowledged came from him.

The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough III, said in a separate statement that he had found information that should have been designated as classified in four e-mails out of a “limited sample” of 40 that his agency reviewed. As a result, he said, he made the “security referral,” acting under a federal law that requires alerting the FBI to any potential compromises of national security information.

[…]

Officials acknowledged that none of the e-mails reviewed so far contain information that was marked classified when they were sent. But a new inquiry would prolong the political controversy Clinton is facing over her un­or­tho­dox e-mail system. [The Washington Post, 7/24/15]

IG Memo On Classified Information In Emails: “None Of The Emails … Had Classification Or Dissemination Markings.” A memo from the ICIG clearly stated that “none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings”:

Since the referenced 25 June 2015 notification, we were informed by State FOIA officials that there are potentially hundreds of classified emails within the approximately 30,000 provided by former Secretary Clinton.  We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network.  Further, my office’s limited sampling of 40 of the emails revealed four contained classified IC information which should have been marked and handled at a SECRET level. [Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, 7/23/15]

MYTH: Emails Weren’t Marked As “Classified” Because Clinton Used A Private Server Instead Of State Dept. Email

Fox & Friends‘ Steve Doocy: Emails “Were Never Classified” Because Clinton Used A Private Server Rather Than The State Department’s Email System. Throughout the August 12 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy repeatedly blamed the lack of classification on Clinton’s use of a private server instead of “the State Department email system,” arguing the emails “were never classified because she never submitted it” (emphasis added):

STEVE DOOCY: The problem here is the fact that she didn’t want her bosses at the White House to know what she was writing about, it is perceived.

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: She also didn’t want her colleagues in the State Department to know.

DOOCY: Right. So she had her own server, which is, you know, against protocol. Her spokespeople, and she herself has said, you know, it wasn’t classified at the time. But that ignores how the process works. The reason you use the State Department email system is so that it is classif – it is vetted before you hit ‘send.’

NAPOLITANO: She is probably going to argue that because the phrase, boom, ‘top secret’ was not stamped on each document, it wasn’t top secret. That’s not what the law says. Before every person in the federal government, from the president to a file clerk, gets a national security clearance, they have a 30 minute in-person interview with an FBI agent who explains, if there’s doubt about whether it’s classified or not, it’s classified.

DOOCY: Let me just add this one thing. It was never classified because she never submitted it. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/12/15]

FACT: Emails Originated In State Dept. System And Questions About Retroactive Classification Would Have Occurred Regardless Of Clinton’s Server Use

Emails Originated With State Department Employees And Were Forwarded To Clinton. The State Department’s statement on the retroactive “top secret” designation made clear that the emails at issue originated with State Department employees, not Clinton herself:

The following is attributable to Spokesperson John Kirby:

“The State Department takes seriously its obligations to protect sensitive information, holding its employees to a high standard of compliance with regulations and procedures.

“The Intelligence Community has recommended that portions of two of the four emails identified by the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General should be upgraded to the Top Secret level. Department employees circulated these emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011 and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton.  They were not marked as classified.

“These emails have not been released to the public. While we work with the Director of National Intelligence to resolve whether, in fact, this material is actually classified, we are taking steps to ensure the information is protected and stored appropriately.” [Twitter.com, 8/11/15]

Clinton Campaign: Emails Originated From “Unclassified .Gov Email System.” A fact sheet released by the presidential campaign for the former secretary of state explains that the emails at issue originated on “the unclassified .gov email system”:

Would this issue not have arisen if she used a state.gov email address?

Even if Clinton’s emails had been on a government email address and government device, these questions would be raised prior to public release.

While State Department’s review of her 55,000 emails brought the issue to the Inspectors Generals’ attentions, the four emails were on the unclassified .gov email system. They were not on the separate, closed system used by State Department for handling classified communications. [hillaryclinton.com, “Updated: The Facts About Hillary Clinton’s Emails,” accessed 8/12/15]

Vox: Whether Or Not Emails Should Have Been Marked Classified Is Part Of “Bureaucratic Turf War.” Vox pointed out how the intra-agency disagreement over whether the emails were appropriately categorized “is a bureaucratic fight about how the State Department has handled the emails, not about Hillary Clinton” (emphasis added):

The State Department has been ordered by a federal judge to make public the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton turned over to the agency. So the State Department has Freedom of Information Act experts sifting through the documents to make sure that no information will be released that is either classified or sensitive (meaning not technically classified but also not covering material that the government doesn’t want in the public domain).

This has caused a bureaucratic turf war between the department and the intelligence community, which believes at least one email that’s already been released contains classified information and that hundreds of others in the full set may also have material that’s not ready for public consumption. For a couple of months, the inspectors general of the State Department and the combined intelligence community agencies have been battling Patrick Kennedy, the lead State Department official, over who has access to the documents and the authority to release or withhold them.

Now, according to the Times and other publications, the IG team is asking the Justice Department to get involved in reviewing whether State has mishandled the emails. If Clinton was sending information that was, or should have been, classified — and knew that it was, or should have been, classified — that’s a problem. But no one has accused her of that so far. Given the anodyne nature of what she sent in the emails we’ve already seen, it’s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that any sensitive information was sent to Clinton, not by her (though it’s not clear whether forwarding such emails would constitute a legal issue for her). [Vox, 7/28/15]

MYTH: Hillary Clinton’s Email Use Is Comparable To David Petraeus’ Crimes

Doocy: Clinton’s Email Use Is “The Same Thing That David Petraeus Pleaded Guilty To.” On the August 12 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Doocy hyped the debunked claim that Clinton’s email use was similar to Gen. David Petraeus’ illegal mishandling of confidential information:

DOOCY: Big question is — Will this Department of Justice go ahead and fully prosecute? Because, keep in mind, she had unauthorized, for a home server, top secret documents, which was a direct violation of the U.S. laws. It’s the same that David Petraeus pleaded guilty to. He had the same stuff at his house. She had at it at her house. He got, you know, they ran him up the flag pole, will they do the same for her? [Fox News, Fox & Friends,8/12/15]

Fox Judicial Analyst Implies Clinton’s Email Use Is Worse Than Petraeus’ Crimes. Appearing on the August 12 edition of Fox & Friends, senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano claimed “it’s a grave situation” for Hillary Clinton, arguing that Gen. Petraeus only had “the lowest level materials in a desk drawer” while Clinton “had top secret materials in the server in her barn”:

NAPOLITANO: Here’s why it’s a grave situation. A federal judge ordered the State Department to reveal — to make public — emails she had given back to the State Department. The recipients of those e-mails was the inspectors general of State Department and  of the intelligence community. They randomly sampled 40 of them. Among the 40, they found four that were classified.

[…]

They then revealed that they then sent that to FBI to commence either a criminal or a national security investigation, and they sent it to the Senate and House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. Last night they revealed that two of the four were top secret. What does top secret mean? The government has three classifications — the highest is top secret. Meaning if it’s revealed, it could cause grave harm to national security. The middle is secret, meaning if it’s revealed, it could cause serious harm to national security. The bottom is confidential, meaning if it’s revealed, it could cause some hard to national security. General Patreaus was indicted, prosecuted, and convicted for having confidential, the lowest level materials in a desk drawer in his house. Mrs. Clinton, it has now been revealed, had top secret materials in the server in her barn at Chappaqua. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/12/15]

FACT: Experts Have Debunked The Comparison — Petraeus Knowingly Mishandled Classified Documents, Whereas Clinton Had Authorization To Use Private Email, And There’s No Evidence She Knowingly Emailed Classified Information

Petraeus Pled Guilty To Violating 18 U.S.C. § 1924, “Unlawfully And Knowingly” Moving Classified Materials “With Intent To Retain Such Documents … At Unauthorized Locations.” Petraeus pled guilty to one count of violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 1924:

Between in or about August 2011 and on or about April 5, 2013, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS, being an employee of the United States, and by virtue of his employment, became possessed of documents and materials containing classified information of the United States, and did unlawfully and knowingly remove such documents and materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents and materials at unauthorized locations, aware that these locations were unauthorized for the storage and retention of such classified documents and materials;

All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1924. [U.S. v. Petraeus, Bill of Information, 3/3/15]

NY Times: “There Has Never Been Any Legal Prohibition Against” Using Personal Email Accounts. Despite having previously scandalized Clinton’s use of private emails as “alarming,” the Times later clarified that “there has never been any legal prohibition” against the practice and that “[m]embers of President Obama’s cabinet” use a “wide variety of strategies” to handle their emails:

Members of President Obama’s cabinet have a wide variety of strategies, shortcuts and tricks for handling their email, and until three months ago there was no law setting out precisely what they had to do with it, and when. And while the majority of Obama administration officials use government email to conduct their business, there has never been any legal prohibition against using a personal account. [The New York Times, 3/13/15]

State Dept: Clinton Preserved And Provided Emails In Line With 2009 Regulation And How We Handled Records At The Time. At the March 3 daily press briefing, State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf explained that Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of documents as part of the State Department’s “process of updating our records management” and emphasized that Clinton is the only former secretary of state to have done so. From Harf’s briefing:

HARF: When in the process of updating our records management – this is something that’s sort of ongoing given technology and the changes – we reached out to all of the former secretaries of state to ask them to provide any records they had. Secretary Clinton sent back 55,000 pages of documents to the State Department very shortly after we sent the letter to her. She was the only former Secretary of State who sent documents back in to this request. These 55,000 pages covered her time, the breadth of her time at the State Department. [State Department Daily Press Briefing,3/3/15]

Clinton: “I Am Confident That I Never Sent Or Received Any Information That Was Classified At The Time.” Clinton told reporters on July 26 that she never sent or received information that she knew was classified at the time:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said she never knowingly sent or received classified information using her private email server and did not know what messages were being cited by intelligence investigators as examples of emails containing classified information.

[…]

“I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received. What I think you’re seeing here is a very typical kind of discussion, to some extent disagreement among various parts of the government, over what should or should not be publicly released,” she said. [Associated Press, 7/26/15]

Director Of Project On Government Secrecy: “There’s No Comparison Between The Clinton Email Issue And The Petraeus Case.” Steven Aftergood told The Washington Times that “[e]veryone agrees that there was no information in the Clinton emails that was marked as classified,” and therefore Clinton’s actions bear no resemblance to Petraeus’s:

While officials combing tens of thousands of emails that moved through Mrs. Clinton’s server have pointed to the presence of “hundreds” of pieces of classified information — apparently none of the messages had any official classification markings on them.

It’s a situation that has triggered heated debate over the extent to which such information wasn’t necessarily classified at the time Mrs. Clinton was emailing it.

“To the best of my understanding, there is no comparison between the Clinton email issue and the Petraeus case,” says Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “Everyone agrees that there was no information in the Clinton emails that was marked as classified. So it would be difficult or impossible to show that those who sent or received the emails knowingly or negligently mishandled classified information.” [The Washington Times, 8/2/15]

Government Secrecy Expert: “There’s No Case” Against Clinton If She Didn’t Knowingly Misuse Classified Information. William Jeffress, an attorney who has handled government secrecy cases, told Time:

Legally, the question is pretty clear-cut. If Clinton knowingly used her private server to handle classified information she could have a problem. But if she didn’t know the material was classified when she sent or received it she’s safe.

[…]

Clinton has explicitly and repeatedly said she didn’t knowingly send or receive any classified information. “The facts are pretty clear,” she said last weekend in Iowa, “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, disagrees, saying some of the material was in fact classified at the time it was sent. But in his letter last week to Congressional intelligence committee leaders, McCullough reported that, “None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings.” And there has been no indication Clinton knew she was sending and receiving anything classified.

The public doesn’t yet know the content of the classified emails, and the State Department and the inspectors general have tens of thousands still to review. If evidence emerges that Clinton knew she was handling secrets on her private server, “She could have a problem,” says William Jeffress, a leading criminal trial lawyer at Baker Botts who has represented government officials in secrecy cases. Barring that, says Jeffress, “there’s no way in the world [prosecutors] could ever make a case” against her. [Time, 7/29/15]

MYTH: Clinton Is The Subject Of A Federal Criminal Investigation

Fox’s Chris Stirewalt: Clinton Might Be “The Subject Of A Federal Criminal Investigation.” On the August 12 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, digital editor Chris Stirewalt claimed that Clinton might become “the first major party nominee that is the subject of a federal criminal investigation.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/12/15]

FACT: IG Referral To Justice Department Was Not Criminal, And FBI Isn’t Targeting Clinton Herself

Reuters: Inspector General Referral Is Not Criminal. Reuters reported on July 24 that there was “no criminal referral over [the] Clinton emails”:

The Justice Department said Friday it has received a request to examine the handling of classified information related to the private emails from Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, but it is not a criminal referral. [Reuters, 7/24/15]

AP: U.S. Official Said That Request Of DOJ “Doesn’t Suggest Wrongdoing By Clinton Herself.” The Associated Press quoted an anonymous U.S. official who noted that the referral did not implicate Clinton in any wrongdoing:

The New York Times first reported the referral. The Clinton campaign said Friday that she “followed appropriate practices in dealing with classified materials.” Spokesman Nick Merrill said emails deemed classified by the administration were done so after the fact, not when they were sent.

One U.S. official said it was unclear whether classified information was mishandled and the referral doesn’t suggest wrongdoing by Clinton herself. [Associated Press, 7/24/15]

Wash. Post: Officials Say Clinton “Is Not A Target” Of FBI Probe. The Washington Post reported that government officials said Clinton is “not a target” of the FBI’s investigation:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attorney has agreed to provide the FBI with the private server that housed her e-mail during her four years as secretary of state, Clinton’s presidential campaign said Tuesday.

[…]

The inquiry by the FBI is considered preliminary and appears to be focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material. Officials have said that Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, is not a target.

The FBI’s efforts have included contacting the Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the Clintons’ unusual private ­e-mail system. [The Washington Post, 8/11/15]

See: http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/08/12/myths-and-facts-on-hillary-clintons-email-and-r/204913

Is America Undergoing a Major Political Sea Change? Inside the Shocking Rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/america-undergoing-major-political-sea-change-exploring-shocking-rise-bernie-sanders?akid=13338.123424.tn7jbS&rd=1&src=newsletter1040052&t=1

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Add MediaSource: AlterNet

Author: Stephan Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

America’s political center, if it ever really existed, appears to be shrinking.

On the left, Bernie Sanders’ issue-oriented presidential campaign of economic justice is drawing the crowds and generating the most passion, eclipsing his more moderate competitors. And on the right, Donald Trump’s loud promises to use his dealmaking moxie to fix the country, with a dose of racist comments thrown in, has pushed him to the top of the polls in 2016’s early states.

There’s no shortage of pundits writing off their surges. Surely, you’ve heard them all, which amount to saying that when the campaign gets serious, they will seriously falter. The latest analyses from this past weekend’s polling noted that both were doing well in two of the whitest states—Iowa and New Hampshire—but not in bigger, more diverse ones. So now these hallowed presidential proving grounds prove nothing?

But there is one explanation you won’t find among the politicos who are parsing the interior numbers in polls—such as the negative approval ratings, or appeal by race and gender. That explanation is that the political spectrum is changing, or stretching toward its blunter extremes, which also accounts for the muted enthusiasm for both party’s leading establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

A shifting electorate is the last thing many pundits want to confront. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, pointing to four recent polls, merely says Hillary should worry about her rising unpopularity. He does not touch the deeper question: is she out of tune with what’s engaging the public now? His colleague, Phillip Bump says she’s lagging among whites in Iowa and New Hampshire, but climbs back up in later states where she appeals to non-whites. Sanders and Trump aren’t doing that, he said.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, another go-to site for reporters to get zeitgeist quotes, the reflex is to dismiss both Trumps and Sanders for different reasons, rather than probe how the electorate may be shifting. Trump’s surge, according to associate editor Geoffrey Skelly, is because he’s well-known, loud, in a crowded field, and keeps getting press coverage. Even worse, the GOP idiotically tied participation in its upcoming presidential debate to how candidates are polling, he said, where Trump will be “attacked from all sides.”

One can go very far in political analysis by being cynical. But that does not mean you’ve got your finger on a changing pulse. Politico’s  piece on Trump’s latest rise in New Hampshire and Iowa points to the politics of anger, especially against Washington power-brokers, which includes the GOP’s congressional majority.

“Just 16 percent among all Republicans (15 percent of Republican registered voters… [and] 50 percent of Democrats (51 percent of Democratic registered voters) feel that they are [well] represented in the nation’s capital,” it reported. “Among independents, just 27 percent feel well-represented.”

What are people angry about? Who is giving voice to their problems, or offering solutions? CNN says the top concerns facing voters are the economy (44 percent), health care (20 percent) and terrorism (12 percent). If those numbers are accurate, it is not surprising that Sanders and Trump, on the left and right, have captivated voters because they are speaking outside the safe centrist political box.

Trump’s bragging that most of politics comes down to being the best negotiator has an appeal when the Republican-controlled Congress is bumbling at best. His slaps at immigrants are ugly, but there have always been racists in modern Republican ranks. Today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, nor is it Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-corporate reformers. Most of their 2016 candidates have been recycling Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric or predictable policies benefitting the upper classes.

While it remains to be seen what broad new agenda will emerge on the right, it is not surprising that the cliché-ridden remedies spouted by a field of predictable candidates isn’t creating much excitement, even as they try to out-do each other on the far right. Trump’s rise strongly suggests something in the GOP’s base is shifting.

Bernie Sanders’ surge is more easily traced, and also shows shifting voter sensibilities. His messaging has been saturated with specifics, from his speeches to e-mails. On Monday morning, he sent out a long missive seeking $3 donations that listed 12 issue areas and his solutions: jobs, jobs, jobs; raising wages; wealth and income inequality; reforming Wall St.; campaign finance reform; fighting climate change; health care for all; protecting our most vulnerable; expanding opportunity and equality; dismantling structural racism; college for all; war and peace. This is not political fundraising as usual.

It is easy to say that Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren before him, is pulling the Democrats closer to their progressive heart. But Sanders would not be as successful as he has been if Democrats in the electorate were not embracing his message. As one of Iowa’s leading pro-Democrat bloggers, BleedingHeartland.com, wrote this weekend, “Bernie Sanders continues to draw the largest crowds in Iowa–including roughly 1,200 people in West Des Moines on Friday—and polls indicate that he is cutting into Hillary Clinton’s lead among likely Democratic caucus-goers.”

Clinton still led Sanders by 29 points, 55 percent to 26 percent, with Martin O’Malley at 4 percent and Jim Webb at 2 percent, it reported, citing the latest polls. But “his message is resonating with a sizable part of the Democratic base, as anyone could see on Friday night during his town-hall meeting at West Des Moines Valley High School. I challenge any Democrat to find one substantive point to disagree with in Sanders’ stump speech. Many people who attend his events are already ‘feeling the Bern.’ My impression is that the undecideds who show up walk away giving him their serious consideration. I doubt anyone leaves a Sanders event thinking, ‘I could never caucus for that guy.’”

BleedingHeartland continued, “Listening to Sanders on Friday, I was again struck by the senator’s distinctive way of speaking. He packs a lot of facts and figures into his remarks without sounding wonky. He conveys a lot of passion without raising his voice often. Compared to many candidates, he says very little about his children and grandchildren. Still, his feelings about family come through loud and clear when he contrasts Republican ideas about ‘family values’ (a ‘woman shouldn’t be able to control her own body’) with what family values should mean (for instance, a mom and dad having paid time off from work so they can get to know their new baby). Although the Sanders stump speech is overly long—pushed well past the one-hour mark by many interruptions for applause—he keeps his listeners’ attention. Even my 12-year-old was still engaged….”

Next years’ presidential caucuses are a long way off, and the November election is even further away. It’s easy for pundits to dismiss Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for different reasons, with respect to their eventual prospects. But doing so can overlook what’s happening now, which is the assumed frames, views and mood of the electorate are shifting, or stretching, or changing, and favoring the blunt and unconventional.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008). 

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/america-undergoing-major-political-sea-change-exploring-shocking-rise-bernie-sanders?akid=13338.123424.tn7jbS&rd=1&src=newsletter1040052&t=1