It is within his right to not to interview with a tabloid newspaper.

It is an alternative paper probably liberal.

when it was painfully clear that O'Meara had nothing to do with it.

If you read up and know the history of the Toesnig family, then you'd know that Seven Days love them some fat Toensing.

why would that be off the table?

is gossip column an insult akin to fake news?

It's not as though it's evil that she's entered politics herself.

She doesn't have to be kept out of the mayor's office to stop Bernie running for president again.

I'm on a hand held which makes c&p articles awkward, so you'll have to do your own home work. IF my recollection is correct, this same stepdaughter was given hundreds of thousands in pay to set up a Woodshop course at Burlington, while her mom was still running the place. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't part of the FBI investigation. Now she's running for office. IMHO too many elected officials are laying sideways in the public trough, not for the sake of doing something good for the public good, but because they have no other income source.

Also...I'm not a "Bernie fan".

It's just that I don't want the party to be a place where the ideas his campaign was about and that his supporters still rightly fight for have no place and the supporters have no place either.

The man is problematic...the ideas(if adjusted to account for the effects of historic oppression) are not.

We won't have enough votes to win on whatever we'd be about if those ideas and those people were anathemized driven away.

I realize that you and several others insist that including Bernie and his acolytes is the right thing to do, but many other Dems see Bernie as continuing the divide, continue in the efforts to splinter the votes thereby ensuring a political loss for Dems. Why, just a few minutes ago I read on a DU thread that Bernie, rather than directing tonight's viewership to the official Dem Rebuttal, went ahead and scheduled his own rebuttal for exactly the same time slot as Kennedy's rebuttal. That hardly seems like a guy in the throws of unifying, rather a guy trying to contain his followers.

Last edited Wed Jan 31, 2018, 05:42 PM - Edit history (1)

His supporters("acolytes" is kind of an insulting way to describe them btw-they aren't a cult or anything) are a different matter.

We're not going to build a long-standing progressive majority with truly progressive policies by anathemizing his supporters AND the ideas they back.

The way to close the divide is to accept that the agenda his campaign and the movement which succeeds it are pushing should be PART(not all, but part)of where we go next. I've been arguing NOT that we should nominate the man-we shouldn't-but we SHOULD accept that the agenda associated with his campaign, so long as it is adjusted to account for the effects of historic oppression-is a natural component of any Democratic platform. We SHOULD be a party that stands with the poor(working and kept-from-working)against the rich, or at least MOST of the rich.

To exclude the supporters and the ideas, as I suspect our party bureaucracy would prefer, means going back to being a party fixated with appeasing the non-existent "center" of the political spectrum, and it's hard to see how that leaves us any better off than we were in the fall of 2015...when we were at 49% support in head-to-heads with any GOP candidate. As you may recall, that was not enough support.

The only votes we can add to our total are going to be those who want us to be more pro-worker and more distant from corporate control of the political process. If we become a party that rejects everything the Sanders movement stands for, we'll have no chance of gaining those votes, and I for one would LIKE us to gain the votes, whoever we nominate, needed to retake the White House, Congress, and state governments-and this time, to hold onto the votes we've gained.

I've said nothing in defense of Bernie's decision to schedule his address to compete with Kennedy's. I agree with you that he shouldn't have done that. I'm not an apologist for the guy-it's just that I think it harms us as a party to treat him as the enemy and it costs us the support we need. Have I finally made the distinction clear on that?

So many Pavlovian respondents here that paint this Strawman (or Strawpeople) of those that were more attracted to the more progressive platform and ideas that Bernie has and is championing, are in some kind of one-man cult, and so they, along with any 'smart ideas' they may have gotten from Sanders, are to be marginalized.

No matter how many times one pounds it into their heads that it was Bernie's principles, his ideals, taken from long standing Democratic party ideals, that we, or speaking for myself, that I, was attracted to.

Objectively, a disheveled, grumpy old man, would not typically be the candidate that one would choose as the epitome of a political cult leader. It was always more about his platform. And his history of unwavering principles gave this person the authority to speak for them.

I would love a new younger energized candidate to emerge that holds the same progressive principles based on traditional Democratic party ideals, to step forward instead of Sanders, for 2020. But for now, he is saying all the right things that I wish more Democrats would be saying. Is it that difficult to simply accept the help in the fight against Trump from an ally, even if he doesn't wear the D? Its exasperating.

It is very likely that Miro Weinberger will win re-election and, in my opinion, he should. Carena Driscoll agrees that he did a good stabilizing the town's finances. Her campaign seems mostly slogans and comments that she is not running as Sanders' step daughter. She is well spoken.

Weinberger has been a strong advocate on We're still in - the climate change movement. His administration just finished a huge project that upgraded and widened the town's incredible lakeside multi purpose path (bike path). He is very accessible. People in the north most part of the town know that he is at a local bagel place to speak to anyone along with some staff most weeks - and when he can't be there, someone from his administration is.

I wasn't in the know about any of that...was working on the assumption that people were trying to personally discredit everybody in Bernie's family.

to the FBI, more than half a year in.

To Hillary, who was investigated by the FBI for much longer with much more silence? Or is this “If a Republican reported it to the FBI it must be true” a rule that only applies to Bernie Sanders?

Also, he’s not being investigated. The FBI said they’d look into his wife’s employment history from a decade ago.

Isn't he supposed to be asked questions about his wife who was very involved, and I would guess still so, in his campaign. And, who was at the helm of a college who went bankrupt because of a land deal she made.

“Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and his wife, Jane Sanders have hired prominent defense attorneys amid an FBI investigation into a loan Jane Sanders obtained to expand Burlington College while she was its president, CBS News confirms.

Politico Magazine first reported the Sanders had hired lawyers to defend them in the probe. Sanders' top adviser Jeff Weaver told CBS News the couple has sought legal protection over federal agents' allegations from a January 2016 complaint accusing then-President of Burlington College, Ms. Sanders, of distorting donor levels in a 2010 loan application for $10 million from People's United Bank to purchase 33 acres of land for the institution.

According to Politico, prosecutors might also be looking into allegations that Sen. Sanders' office inappropriately urged the bank to approve the loan.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-and-jane-sanders-under-fbi-investigation-for-bank-fraud-hire-lawyers/

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his wife, Jane Sanders, the former president of Burlington College, have hired lawyers in the face of a federal investigation into bank fraud allegations related to a multimillion-dollar loan for the now-defunct liberal arts college.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-jane-sanders-fbi-investigation_us_594fc816e4b0da2c731c2d1d

If Bernie were elected, Jane wouldn't be administering anything or taking out loans for anything.

I agree that Bernie shouldn't run again, but it can't be progressive to go scorched-earth on his family to keep him from running.

And it isn't going all scorched earth to ask reasonable questions such as this, did he involve himself in the loan debacle and, btw where is the tax info he promised to provide...it's becoming a pattern. He has a wife who's being investigated, along w/some say him, and a step-daughter who is running for his old job. Why shouldn't questions be asked. He would/has certainly ask questions of others.

We're agreed on that.

But that can best be prevented by getting the party to adopt his approach(if not all his words) to economic issues and the role of corporations in politics, while adjusting the ideas to account for historic oppression in ways his original proposals did not.

It strikes me that the focus on trying to personally discredit the guy(which is inevitably going to be coupled with an effort to erase every idea associated with his campaign from the party, a choice that would turn us into an essentially non-progressive party and make it harder to win the votes we need, almost all of which are to our left) is the worst way to try and get him not to run.

Bernie as a person is problematic. The ideas his campaign championed and that his supporters still work for aren't and should be part of what we as Democrats stand for, along with the rest of what we are about.

as far as I can tell he's all rhetoric and no real solutions. He wants single payer but what are the details. How is it to be implemented? The move for non-profit health by Amazon, Chase Morgan and Buffett seems to me to be a real shot at being the beginning a real change in healthcare. Boom...it begins.

'Trying to discredit the guy'.....so questions will discredit him? That's such a loaded statement I will not even approach it and just leave it there.

Shaping them to include the people who didn't feel included by them.

By "discredit the guy", I mean to continually try to prove that he is somehow personally corrupt or that Jane is corrupt-or to imply that he is responsible for everything Jane may have done at the college.

As to the funds Jane allotted to her daughter for the wood shop program...if she was creating the wood shop program from scratch, wouldn't there be a considerable expense simply in acquiring the equipment? you'd need equipment of suffecient quality to withstand continuous use by a large group of people. For those familiar with such purchases, can anybody provide a realistic cost estimate for properly equipping a wood shop for teaching purposes?

I ask because it appears that a lot of people are simply assuming Jane's daughter squandered or even stole the funds.

is a lot of money to pay someone for setting up a woodworking class on a Caribbean Island. I don't think the daughter stole the money, it was handed over by her mother.

I think there a lot of questions regarding money...where did the 10 mil come from, go to, what about Old Time Media and the Burlington College loan deal for starters, that haven't been addressed or answered with transparency. We'll see what comes to light this year.

https://vtdigger.org/2016/07/15/sanders-campaign-millions-go-to-mystery-firm/

involving the woodworking course.

charges alleged by Republicans?

We all know they were purely phony, brought for purely political reasons. No genuine legal issues underlay those allegations. And Comey said right up front that the investigation he was going to carry right through the election summer would not turn anything up. He knew. And it didn't.

That's not the case in Vermont. Some Vermont conservatives have gone after Sanders' wife for mainly political reasons, but that does not obviate the reality that there genuine legal issues involved, and that that's why the federal government opened an investigation.

These attempts to pretend that Jane Sanders had nothing to do with Burlington College are beyond absurd. She was president of the College. She helped convince the board to borrow $10m to purchase waterfront land. The money she assured the board had been donated didn't come through. The College had to close. A lot of people lost their jobs.

It happens to good people, trying to do the right thing, all the time. Especially in nonprofit business, like universities. It’s a damn shame that nonprofit went out of business five years after a politician’s wife stopped working there.

But if you’re not still screaming about Whitewater and Benghazi and email servers, it’s hyprocritical.

Either way, its all bullshit attacks that liberals are all too happy to swallow hook, line, and sinker, whether it’s about Clinton, Sanders — or whoever else the GOP can use to divide us.

The lack of understanding behind Sander’s wife’s job performance details almost a decade ago — and especially how wealthy right wing families have been pushing that narrative — is almost as astounding as the sheer hypocrisy of literally the exact same accusation being leveled against Hillary. She went almost a year without making a comment about the FBI investigation, but the post I was responding to clearly implied that an FBI investigation was some sign of guilt. The Left are playing played like we were marionettes.

How can you say she had nothing to do with it?

So yeah, there's that little fact.

The actions that occurred while Sanders was president were the direct cause of the college going under.

Exactly. It's a fucking rag.

....a global award. Not sure if the winners have been chosen yet:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Finalists for the 2017 Online Journalism Awards, representing a wide range of nonprofit, public, academic, major media and emerging technology organizations from around the globe, were announced today by the Online News Association.

https://vtdigger.org/2017/08/28/vtdigger-finalist-online-news-association-award/

The prestigious ONLINE NEWS ASSOCIATION AWARD??? I stand corrected.

As in the past form of "may". As in "possible", or perhaps in this case, "expressing hope".

Sorry, no dice. The Online Journalism Awards are moderately more impressive than the Grammies, but only insofar as Bruno Mars won't be making an appearance there.

We all know better, but let's for a moment go with his attemp at branding.

This 'rag' is touted as anti establishment, as alternative. One would think, given Bernie's own submitted articles in the past, that he would be much endeared to alt news outlets. Especially one that has won awards and is very much more than a blog.

But hey, I don't like to complain.

Well all I can is that some realize politicians are multi dimensional with multiple facets at play, while others are more comfortable with linear thinking.

Btw...just noticed your vermin badge. I've seen that before.... I don't think it was from a Dem. It's been a while since I've seen it. Just can't put my finger on it.

Like you're trying to connect two points Stretch Armstrong still couldn't reach even after three hours of hot yoga.

"Alternative" is a nebulous term. Nirvana is alternative. Creed is alternative. Liking one does not necessarily endear you to the other. Refusing the interview doesn't necessarily imply hypocrisy, or make Bernie less "alternative" or more "establishment". It suggests the Senator, for whatever reason, feels the publication in question is not worth engaging. I could speculate as to why (it's a small publication with a limited audience and he has limited time to spend with the press; it's not a particularly high-caliber publication; it's keeping a running and potentially off-putting tally of how many days it has been since Bernie Sanders has granted them an interview; etc. and so on) but does it really matter? I have to assume many people of national importance refuse interviews every day. Why is this one newsworthy?

And yes, you saw the badge here.

The 'alternative' designation for the paper came from another Dem up thread.

Last edited Wed Jan 31, 2018, 11:49 AM - Edit history (1)

Here's the short version: https://www.democraticunderground.com/123043208#post4

Interesting that you're by your own admission hanging around RWNJ sites, though. You like the food or something? The homey atmosphere?

I'm very confident where I saw it. Interesting that you didn't think that someone here may have taken it there to the other site....interesting your first reaction is to greatly defend and immediately accuse and point fingers.

And as is turns out RWNJs are found on a lot of sites...including DU

Then how is it you are confident you've seen this image there? Come now. Inquiring minds want to know.

barring that possibility, I suppose you'll have to just take my word for it, and quit being so defensive

You should stop doing that.

Because it was created here, each one custom for at least 15 people.

I never discussed it's origins, just where I had seen it before.

I wonder why?

offense here, and also a vicious smear.

So yeah, 'visceral'. Pick any adjective you like, I don't care. It's offensive because it's factually wrong, AND it's a vicious smear.

I see it was posted in the Athiest/Agnostic group.

so 1st....boy that was some time ago, well before my time here and 2nd I'd heard tell that this group has some pretty militant members. While I don't subscribe to religion so have nothing to defend or refute, that reputation on a DU group seems to be a real thing.

Interesting.

As for the "smear"....how is it a smear that I've seen your VERMIN shield being used by someone you don't like?

conversation where we decided to use it as a group protest.

You clearly misunderstood me in the other post so i'll clarify; the PPR-able issue would be if we were actually using a right wing meme/identifier here on DU, we'd be eligible for locked accounts. That's part of why I'm pissed, that you'd make such a shitty, casual accusation without ANY evidence at all (while being massively wrong)

I hardly think so. Over-reaction confirmed.

That the image was being used by such a source.

AND YOU STILL HAVE NOT BACKED UP THAT CLAIM WITH A SHRED OF EVIDENCE. NOTHING. AT ALL.
'Please proceed, Governor'.

I'd already answered that question several times over. Do keep up.

perhaps you are to East of me >>>>>> haa haa haa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

haa haa haa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

haa haa haa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

It's a meme that grew out of issue that occurred right here on DU in a different group. Please do not cast shade if you don't know what you're talking about.

you chose to try and read minds. RWNJ did use it and I saw it. Try and prove my memory wrong!

Links. Now.

Other that replying to you, I would fully forget your handle or that of the other person I've been responding to, the one that you are so serious about protecting.

The VERMIN shield stands out, don't you think? Isn't t it?

I'd also have a hard time remembering someone who doesn't exist.

I hope this gaslighting session is all you hoped it would be. You need more practice, though.

you guys need more practice in the attempts to divert and insult. I know someone well versed in that...want a reference?

Welcome back, good buddy. Good to see ya' trollin' the old DU again.

You're accusing us of having had, or currently using a RWNJ logo, here on DU, which of course would get an account PPR'd.

So you go ahead and back up your fucking claim, or apologize and withdraw it.


Not to worry; you can't back it up, and when you try, I will of course post the links to the thread that inspired the incident, and the thread where the 'badges' were created and handed out to an entire community of people here at DU. If it was EVER used outside DU, it was because someone copied it from here. There was a thread at The Cave where they expressed puzzlement over our behavior and what the symbol meant. That in and of itself does NOT back up your claim that it was 'used' by or 'not from a dem'.

I know EXACTLY who made it, and I know EXACTLY why, and the cause, creation, and dissemination of the logo occurred right here on DU.

So back that bullshit up, or apologize, because you just smeared a lot more people than you realize.

why are you being so defensive? you and your buddy's visceral reaction seem to be disproportional to the "alleged crime? As for PPR offense...wasn't it one of your two that claimed I was vising RWNJ sites? seriously?

Your demands for an apology are laughable....in fact here...I'm laughing in your general direction

You also seem to misunderstand my PPR comment. *WE* would be eligible for PPR if your accusation held any water at all (Which it does not.). Because you are insinuating that symbol is used by some nebulous bullshit right wing element you STILL haven't bothered to link to or identify (because you can't).

Laugh all you want. Anyone reading this can see that all you've done is cast shade, without a pixel of evidence to back it up.

so your post continues to be laughable...haa haa haa. I hope you are West of me, because that is the direction I'm laughing.

but it's cool that you keep kicking this thread.

They only want to talk about what they want to talk about. Peripheral questions are not wanted.

Sanders is a politician, after all.

What one might call establishment.

He is literally the very definition of establishment and his entitled behavior with respect to his hometown news outlets makes that very clear, it's actually what his devotees are using to defend his actions, the very ones that the rest of us condemn when his Republican allies do it.

He didn't infiltrate anything, its who he is, believe him when he tells you this and shows you this. He's literally playing the same game that his cronies are, just in the same manner that they do, like Donnie does.

Um, it's BS to pretend that he's not there by virtue of "the machine" it's literally how he got there, what governs his votes and how he stayed there all this time despite not delivering very much progress or much else at all. He's there because the party didn't bother to run someone against him, after the NRA helped him get elected there.

Words have meanings, those are not personalized, no matter how those who are really bad at vocabulary keep insisting. Bernie is not an outsider, he is an elected official who has been an established politician for decades, there was no "infiltration' there was just another white man elected decades ago who ignores his constituents, and whose hangers on seem to profit by association with him.

Attempting to pretend that local issues are not actual issues, is evidence to the contrary, see, he has questions to answer, it's not about the outcome, it's about what the heck actually happened, and there seems to be quite a lot to delve into that does indeed involve Bernie and his office. That silence is due to the politician refusing to take an interview over 3 years. Sorry, but making assumptions about why a sleazy politician refuses to answer questions about his conduct on a local issue is not a "gossipy hit piece", it's just the state of things and the proof that integrity isn't really what's being demonstrated here. It's wrong when Republicans pull crap like this, it's also wrong when establishment politicians like Bernie Sanders do it.

Apply the same standards, no carve outs for bird blessed old dudes who need words and quotes to be massaged to make him be somehow less of a hypocrite.

connect the dots and challenge the motives for avoiding accountability -- i.e., the double standards.

are actually asking questions. Apparently those are difficult for some people. Recall all those Republicans who evade their constituents and reporters asking basic questions about their actions. Same old, same old.

Whatever hide and seek is played with the press to avoid questions you prefer not to be asked doesn't mean you are not establishment. That could just point to double standards.

Link to tweet

Solid political strategy by Sanders.

Like him or not he is a career politician and knows the moves.

after several decades of collecting government paycheck, it almost seems incredible that some would attempt to label this type of career as anything but establishment.

Not the polls including Gingrich, etc

Clearly meant to do nothing more than stop conversation. Not a word of the post you replied to, or the one they had replied to, three anyone under the bus.

to be answerable to his local press "throwing him under the bus"? Every one of these elected officials needs to understand that no matter what their ego or their devoted fans are telling them the JOB they've been elected to do is represent their constituents, and their local press, whose job it is the ask these questions and present the answers to their readers.

Act like a freaking Republican and thumb his nose at his local constituents? That's a great idea! Not something an honest politician should be doing, not transparent not open but very much inline with the likes of Nunes, Trump etc.

....and repeatedly debunked "polls". Very tight Venn Diagrams have demonstrated that.

And how the Senior citizens know Bernie loves them, and they just hug him!

Kind of what a lot of us were saying all along. At least some are being honest about it now. Points to you for that.

They all have their strategy. Sanders strategy is to yell at everything and have his name attached to as little as possible when it comes to negotiations in congress. Normally he isn't even involved except from the outside yelling in. There have been a few times he has jumped in but it doesn't amount to much considering how long he has been in politics.

Talking points gain favor. Getting the hard work done does not.

Sanders would have been able to unilaterally change the course of legislation or get people on board his own legislative offers. The reality is that his opinions used to get no press. He had no real influence beyond his vote because no attention is given to those who mean to be a wrench in the machinery. Your version of accomplishments is a very mixed and troubled bag and democrats own plenty of bad with the good. At least admit that. Taking two steps back to take one forward is not a win, and we keep taking steps backwards. If the way we have played this game and fought for our principles(weakly-but then that's in part because our goals are not unified in the first place) has lost us 1000 seats in 30 years, then that's not achievement worth championing.

As I find little of that in Sanders.

I do agree with every word you typed outside of that. You don't paint a pretty picture of him. Even if I fully agreed with the principled aspect, you simply used it as an excuse for his ineffectiveness. Literally.

Sorry you don't see how principled so many of our Democrats are who have been knee deep in the fight to write progressive legislation. Sanders isn't the only one(assuming he is principled in the first place). Being principled is not an excuse. Insinuating those who are all in as lacking principle is simply a faulty argument.

Looks like this is an ongoing thing: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/01/24/the-sound-of-silence-bernie-sanders-spurns-seven-days-for-1000-days

Doesn't bode well for a future run. Trump held daily meetings with the press to spew his drivel and answer questions.

kept refusing interviews with his LOCAL press? And no one bothered to ask why?

Last edited Tue Jan 30, 2018, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)

...if he got the nomination. I was a staunch Hillary supporter in 2008 and 2016, but I know what a binary choice is, and the 2016 General Election (GE) choice could not have been starker.

Having said that, all the Bernie supporters who want to look to polls that show how strong Bernie is as a candidate have to take into account that he has had no vibrant opposition. Hillary could not afford to trash him in the primaries and Donald praised Bernie throughout in order to confuse Bernie's supporters and keep them from uniting with Hillary.

If Bernie had to answer these difficult questions about the old book he authored or these investigations into his wife's dealings at the college she was in charge of, believe me, it would have got ugly.

Very few human beings, let alone politicians, could withstand the scrutiny or organized mud slinging the Hillary has withstood for over 30 years.

Just keep that in mind when we try to take back this country. We can't do it as a divided Democratic party.