In light of recent developments with the Democratic National Committee you cannot blame Bernie Sanders for seeing shades of 2016, when the Democratic establishment pulled the rug out from under his nomination, because it is happening again. While the Democratic voters do not see they are being played again Bernie Sanders has caught on and he is not too happy about it.
As America’s Watchtower covered here, the Democratic National Committee is in the process of changing the criteria for making the debates so that Michael Bloomberg, who appears to be the Democratic establishment’s pick, can qualify for the debate and Bernie Sanders is irate. Here is more:
Faiz Shakir, campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), ripped the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Friday for the debate requirements for future debates, which effectively open the door for Michael Bloomberg (D) to participate.
The DNC modified the requirements for upcoming Democrat debates, increasing the polling threshold but ditching the donor requirements, giving Bloomberg the chance to qualify. Until this point, that has remained an impossibility due to the existing donor requirements and the billionaire’s decision to forgo outside donations and instead self-fund his campaign.
Here is what Faiz Shakir Tweeted about these developments:
I do find it funny that a millionaire is complaining about a billionaire being coddled to, like either of them can relate to an ordinary citizen better than the other…
The Democratic National Committee is making up some lame excuse for the rule change that does not make any sense if the party was happy with its candidates: The three candidates who qualified for the debate before the rule change are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. And yet the committee has decided it wants somebody else on the stage so what does that tell you?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Gone are the days when the Democrats and the Republicans hand-pick their nominees in the cliched smoke-filled room, but one thing that 2016 showed to us is that the Democratic party still hand-picks its nominee while giving the Democratic voters the illusion they are participating in the process. The voters wanted Bernie Sanders but the party wanted Hillary Clinton so guess who got the nomination?
They say that history repeats itself and here we go again because it looks like a scenario much like 2016 is playing out before our eyes and the Democratic primary voters do not seem to have caught on yet.
Once again the voters seem to be flocking to Bernie Sanders and once again the party is going to do whatever it takes to stop him. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two of the most prominent names in the Democratic party, have already voiced concerns about the Vermont socialist winning the nomination and it is being reported that the former President is set to come out publicly against him.
And that is not all, just in case lip service alone does not work it is being reported the Democratic National Committee is working on changing the superdelegate rules for the convention once again in order to stop Bernie Sanders.
It is obvious the Democratic establishment is not nearly as enthralled with Bernie Sanders as the voters are but whom does the establishment want to see win the nomination?
For a possible answer to that question we might not need to look any further than another rule change the Democratic National Committee is reported to be working on–this time to the criteria for making it onto the debate stage. Here is more on that:
The Democratic National Committee is drastically revising its criteria to participate in primary debates after New Hampshire, doubling the polling threshold and eliminating the individual donor requirement, which could pave the way for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to make the stage beginning in mid-February.
Candidates will need to earn at least 10 percent in four polls released from Jan. 15 to Feb. 18, or 12 percent in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina, in order to participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the national convention in either the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate.
The new criteria eliminate the individual-donor threshold, which was used for the first eight debates, including next week’s debate in New Hampshire. Bloomberg, the self-funding billionaire, has refused to take donations from other individuals, which has thus far precluded his participation in any of the debates since he joined the race late last year.
According to the article linked above there are only three candidate who have met the criteria and while Michael Bloomberg is not one of them at this point we all know the polls can be manipulated to squeeze him in. (Interestingly enough, and on a side note, these rules would make the debate stage much more white, straight, and male.)
I think it is obvious the Democratic establishment is not enamored with any of the candidates to this point and it looks like they want to open the pathway for somebody else, and Bloomberg just happens to have billions of dollars at his disposal and he is not afraid to use it. The Democratic party appears ready to help him spend it and all of you Bernie Sanders supporters who did not fall in line the last time are about to be abandoned by the party yet again.
The Democrats do not care who the people want, they believe they are smarter than the voters and they are going to make the choice for the people, and in the end they know the voters have nowhere else to go.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
The DNC to consider rule changes to stop Bernie Sanders again
While Democratic caucus-goers and primary voters love Bernie Sanders he does not share the same affection with the Democratic party insiders. We all remember how the Democrats in the establishment stole the primary from him in 2016 because they preferred Hillary Clinton and they did not care whom the voters preferred.
And the disdain for the Vermont socialist has not waned in the ensuing years, earlier this year Hillary Clinton actually revealed what we had already figured out and that is that nobody in the Democratic party likes the guy and there are reports that Barack Obama is so worried about Bernie Sanders and his radical policies that he is preparing to publicly rebuke him in the hopes of trying to slow down his momentum and sway the voters to look elsewhere.
When the two biggest leaders of the Democratic party have a problem with you then you have a problem and it is now being reported that a group of committee members are going to look at changing the rules again in order to stop Bernie Sanders. Here is more:
A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention.
In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.
The decision to relegate superdelegates — now called “automatic delegates” — to the second ballot in a contested convention consumed the DNC for nearly two years after the 2016 election. Superdelegates overwhelmingly sided with Hillary Clinton, infuriating Sanders’ supporters.
The rule change was widely viewed as a major victory for the Democratic Party’s left flank. At the time, Perez called the delegate overhaul “historic,” while progressive Democrats and many moderates lauded its appeal to young voters skeptical of centralized party power.
Here come those superdelegates again! After Bernie Sanders supporters complained about the superdelegates after the 2016 election the Democrats appeased the voters by getting rid of the superdelegates by changing their name to “automatic delegates.” How hilarious is it that the Democratic voters fell for a simple name change as a solution and now it is coming back to bite them again.
The Democrats are supposedly worried about the integrity of the 2020 election and the possibility a foreign country will interfere to help them lose in November and at the same time they are working behind the scenes to take the vote away from their own primary voters because they feel they know what is better for the voters than the voters do.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Carter Page files a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee over the Russian dossier
Last week it was reported that the Department of Justice admitted two of the FISA warrants used to spy on Trump aide Carter Page were invalid and never should have been issued because there was no probable cause to continue spying on him.
Now it looks as if Carter Page is going to start fighting back, it is being reported here that he has filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and others entities which funded the discredited Russian dossier which was used as justification for the FISA warrants. Here is more:
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”
He added: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”
Hillary Clinton also helped to fund the dossier but there is no mention of her in the article linked above, one has to believe Carter Page is too smart to include her in the lawsuit…if you know what I mean.
Despite James Comey and others in the FBI claiming the IG report vindicated the agency and the individuals involved we now know this is certainly not the case and it is good to see somebody is going to start fighting back.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Moderate Democrats may vote to acquit Donald Trump
Unless something unforeseen happens–and the left had hoped the John Bolton leak would be it but that does not seem to be the case–the verdict in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is not in doubt. The President will be acquitted and the only remaining question will be the final tally. We had expected this to go along party lines but it is beginning to look like some Democrats might be wavering.
Here is more:
A trio of moderate Senate Democrats is wrestling with whether to vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial — or give the president the bipartisan acquittal he’s eagerly seeking.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Doug Jones of Alabama are undecided on whether to vote to remove the president from office and are “struggling” over where to land, said Manchin.
All three senators remain undecided after hearing arguments from the impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team. But they could end up with a creative solution.
One or more senators may end up splitting their votes, borrowing a move from Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who voted for the abuse of power charge but against the one on obstruction of Congress.
And Dianne Feinstein has said she could possibly vote to acquit the President. This is not going to change the outcome of the trial, we already know how it is going to turn out, but what it will do is this: the Democrats want to make the claim during the election cycle that corrupt Republicans protected the criminal in the White House by covering up his actions during the impeachment trial, they want to claim the fix was in and use this to arouse their base, however if enough Democrats cross over and vote for acquittal it will end being a bipartisan acquittal and will lend the legitimacy to the trial that will not allow the Democrats to make that claim.
On another note, don’t you find it funny that for the most part we already know what the final vote tally will be and the trial has not even begun? In the interest of pretending to hear the evidence, or lack thereof, you would think all Senators would state on the record they cannot make a decision before the trial, but what do I know?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Elizabeth Warren’s daughter cashed in on her mother’s position
Of course we already know how Hunter Biden was able to bankroll his father’s position into millions of dollars, as did Nancy Pelosi’s daughter and others, and now we are learning that Elizabeth Warren’s daughter was also getting in on the act. Here is more:
Amelia Warren Tyagi, daughter of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), piggybacked off her mother to cash in on corporate clients for her new company during the presidential hopeful’s time chairing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) oversight committee
Warren’s daughter, Amelia, demonstratively benefited from her mother’s position of power, using Warren’s influence to grow the company she co-founded in 2007.
BTG did not have a smooth start. As Profiles in Corruption points out, temp businesses are “largely about corporate connections” — connections which exploded after Warren landed her job as the chair of the TARP oversight committee, which “played a central role in the federal government’s bailout of financial firms”:
At the same time that Elizabeth Warren was meeting and talking with major Wall Street investment firms, her daughter’s firm BTG was adding high-profile advisors with connections to the same companies who would benefit and face possible scrutiny from TARP.
BTG went from a $4 million in revenue, with 200 people in its talent pool in 2009, to over $11 million in revenue and roughly 1,800 in its web over a three-year span.
Warren moved to establish “direct lines of communication with the executives of the most powerful financial firms in the country.” While she attempted to project a hardline, no-nonsense attitude against Wall Street giants, she struck a friendly tone behind closed doors
All of that, Schweizer noted, “occurred while her daughter Amelia was building BTG.”
This is just a sample, there is much more information if you follow the link, but suffice it to say that while Elizabeth Warren was cutting her political teeth by going after big corporations, behind the scenes she was building connections and these connections happened to benefit her daughter.
Amelia Warren Tyagi, you didn’t build that…
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
The Supreme Court rules in favor of Donald Trump’s ‘public charge’ immigration policy
Last August the Trump administration issued new rules which expanded the definition of immigrants who are considered in the “public charge.” Immigrants who are considered a public charge can be denied residency and deported so this new expansion of the rules was met with condemnation and naturally lawsuits were filed and a stay was ordered pending the outcome of the litigation.
But according to this story the Supreme Court has reversed the stay and the Trump administration is free to implement the new rules. Here is more:
A divided Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing rules that make it easier for the government to deny limited-income immigrants residency or admission to the U.S. because they use public-assistance programs or might use them in the future.
The court, in a written order Monday, granted the administration’s emergency request to start enforcing the rules for now, a move that nullifies an order by a federal appeals court that blocked the immigration restrictions while litigation was ongoing.
The court’s action came on a 5-to-4 vote, splitting the justices along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority.
Announced last August by the Department of Homeland Security, the rules effectively expand the pool of people considered likely to become a “public charge” under U.S. immigration law. The government can use the designation to deny an immigrant a green card for permanent U.S. residency, and to determine which noncitizens can be removed or barred from the U.S.
Using benefits like Medicaid, housing assistance or food stamps could render a person inadmissible.
Foreigners seeking immigration status in the U.S. generally have to show they have enough financial resources to keep them from relying on government programs that assist poor Americans. The denial of immigration visas on “public charge” grounds has increased during the Trump administration, even before the new rules.
It will not take the left long, if they have not started already, to start screaming about how Donald Trump is turning away asylum seekers and political refugees who have nowhere else to turn with no concern for what might happen to them if they are returned to their home country but that is a conflation of the issues.
This policy does not affect asylum seekers or political refugees but the left never lets the facts get in the way of a good story line.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Sunday, January 26th open thread: ‘Girl Like You’
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24 KJV)
Here is this week’s open thread. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
You can subscribe to America’s Watchtower to receive email updates and you can also follow America’s Watchtower on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the links on the right.
Here is Edwyn Collins performing “Girl Like you” live in 1995:
Barack Obama to publicly rebuke Bernie Sanders?
There have been rumors out there for a few months claiming that Barack Obama is very worried about the rise of Bernie Sanders because he believes the socialist from Vermont is too radical to win the Presidency. While he has remained mostly silent in the race to this point, the former President has already issued a warning to the candidates telling them to tone down the rhetoric and if this story is true he could be set to publicly go after Bernie Sanders as unfit to take on Donald Trump.
Former President Barack Obama has remained mostly silent through the early stages of the Democratic race to unseat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election but that may soon change, friends and associates tell FOX Business, as avowed socialist Bernie Sanders gains in national polls and seems poised to obtain front-runner status.
The people who spoke on the condition of anonymity say Obama’s preference had always been to lay low through the primaries aside from making some broad comments as he did in November of last year when, according to a report in The New York Times, the former two-term president, best known for expanding the size of government and his eponymous health care mandate, appeared genuinely worried about some of the increasingly leftist proposals being touted on the campaign trail from Sanders, the US senator from Vermont, and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren, the US senator from Massachusetts.
he has recently grown even more wary of Sanders as the Vermont senator appears to be gaining momentum in polls and the Democratic primaries begin to heat up with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary both in February.
Obama has told people in private that Sanders is both temperamentally and politically unfit to beat Trump in the 2020 general election, these people say. Among his concerns are Sanders’ strident form of politics and confrontational manners where he was known not to seek compromise during his long years in the US senate. Meanwhile, Obama is said to worry that Sanders’ far-left policies, which include massive tax increases, free college tuition and massive student debt forgiveness, would alienate even traditional Democratic voters. And may alienate them enough to re-elect Trump
With that, Obama is weighing a more forceful rebuke of Sanders as the candidate to lead the Democrats in 2020
This story is only hearsay, and there is an undeniable bias in the article, but we do know that the insiders in the Democratic party do not like Bernie Sanders. We heard it earlier this week from Hillary Clinton when she admitted nobody liked him, and of course we know how the Democratic party rigged the 2016 primary to ensure he had no chance of winning the nomination.
It looks like the Democrats are up to it again this time around because it has been speculated that Nancy Pelosi delayed transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate so the trial would coincide with the Iowa caucus in order to hurt the Senator from Vermont. If Barack Obama comes out against Bernie Sanders it could be the final nail in the coffin.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
When the Inspector General report into the FISA abuses was released James Comey and others declared the report vindicated themselves and the agency despite the fact the report found dozens of mistakes which were committed. This was laughable on its face and then Michael Horowitz rebuked James Comey, claiming nobody was vindicated.
Eventually James Comey had to admit he was wrong about the FISA process and then to top it off a judge on the always silent, secret, unconstitutional FISA court took the unusual step of rebuking the FBI.
Now the Justice Department is admitting that two of the FISA warrants taken out to spy on Carter Page were not valid, here is more:
The Justice Department now believes it should have discontinued its secret surveillance of one-time Trump campaign adviser Carter Page far earlier than it did, according to a new court filing unsealed Thursday.
The Justice Department made that determination in a December letter to the secret court that oversees surveillance of suspected foreign spies, acknowledging it may have lacked probable cause to continue wiretapping in the last two of the four surveillance applications it sought against Mr. Page.
The last two applications were submitted in April and June of 2017. It now has concluded there was “insufficient predication to establish probable cause” in the last two renewals, which authorized about six months of surveillance on the former adviser.
Probable cause is the legal standard to obtain a secret warrant against suspected agents of a foreign power from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret judicial panel that approves such warrants.
The question which begs to be asked is this, if the Justice Department did not have probably cause to continue spying on Carter Page how is it that the department was able to get the warrants? The only possible way I see is simple, unless the FISA court was in on it the Justice Department fabricated evidence and lied to the FISA court.
And having said that we are led to one last obvious question, what is going to be done about the blatant abuse of power? (Isn’t one of the charges against Donald Trump in his impeachment trial abuse of power?)
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
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