merrily
merrily's JournalTips on NY phonebanking for Senator Sanders from YOUR HOME (or from anywhere).
I saw these and thought them very useful.
NOTE: The specific links here are for calling NY state from your home state, but the main points apply to calling other states.
• You don't have to be at a phonebank to do this, do it at home!: https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/nyphonebank/
• You aren't calling to pursuade people, you're just surveying them so that NY volunteers don't waste their on-the-ground time.
• You don't do the dialing, your laptop is the dialer as well as the tool you use to record results of the call
• Here's the script and the 1-7 possible responses you record at the end of each call:
Hi, Is there? My name is , I’m a volunteer with Senator Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign.
Senator Sanders is running as a Democrat and hopes to win the party nomination in New York. I’m supporting Bernie because for over 30 years he has been standing up for regular Americans and not the billionaires.
When you vote on April 19th, can Bernie count on your support?
1 - Strong Bernie
2 - Lean Bernie
3 - Undecided
4 - Lean Clinton
5 - Strong Clinton
6 – Strong Other/GOP
7- Not Voting/Already Voted
• The script provided explains how to respond to each possible reaction.
• Many of the calls won't reach the intended voter, be prepared for that, know that it's OK, you're service is valuable for every call!
• Some voters will be pro-Bernie, others might be nasty, that's OK, you just saved a NY volunteer from wasting their time!
• JUST DO IT! Make five calls then take a break, make ten more. Numbers count, try to set a goal and beat it!
• BUDDY UP! Get a friend or three over to do together for good times and laughs and moral support.
Here are some links for use with calls to New York, where we need to BERN IT UP!
√ https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/nyphonebank/ for Phonebanking to NY State Main Page (features online live chat!)
√ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K860YkH7MdECydu4IrnTFVqx1ZdrydMY77fuNr-mKG0/edit for the Calling Script
√ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WtDORNGKC2Zk_LHEdAq112p3-CZHb7RGoCc7F2NfDO4/edit for a Step-By-Step Guide
√ http://bernie.to/login To GET YOUR CREDENTIALS!] to begin calling NY for a Sanders Win!
Let's do this!
Please thank U.S. Sen. Merkley for being the first U.S. Senator to endorse Bernie.
Please thank U.S. Senator Merkley (D-Oregon) for being the first U.S. Senator to endorse his fellow U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
As we know from Democratic politicians who have spoken out, this requires bravery and leadership (as well as discernment).
[url]https://www.facebook.com/jeffmerkley[/url]
[url]https://www.merkley.senate.gov/[/url]
ETA: BuddyBlazon made an excellent suggestion. If you can, please make a donation to Senator Merkley as well as thanking him. If it is made soon, it should be obvious that it is coming from grateful supporters of Senator Sanders, especially if the donors are outside Oregon.
Minimum donation is $1.
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/donatemerkley
Sanders and the crime bill. The Clintons were "tough on crime" politicians. Sanders was not.
IMO, Vox/Ezra Klein have not always been fair to Sanders. However, this article gives at least 1.5 sides to the story of Sanders' vote on the crime bill, if not two objective sides.
Bernie Sanders voted for the 1994 tough-on-crime law. But it's complicated.
Updated by German Lopez on April 8, 2016, 8:55 a.m. ET @germanrlopez [email protected]
Sanders was, based on his comments in Congress at the time, unhappy with mass incarceration. So why did he vote for the 1994 law that's drawn so much criticism from critics of mass incarceration, and what does that mean for Sanders today
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11116412/bernie-sanders-mass-incarceration
The article includes several videos and many direct quotes from Sanders and, in that regard, is better than most.
As I posted yesterday: When you can tell a one-sentence lie* and the rebuttal must be nuanced, lying while campaigning is a no brainer--if you don't care about the truth. IMO, people who seek to equate Sanders' vote on this bill for the Clinton's more than full-throated support of it, complete with "super predator" comment, don't care about the truth.
I add that this is an important issue for Black Lives Matter, which approved, and praised, Sanders' racial justice platform back last summer. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/08/10/3689728/after-repeated-protests-bernie-sanders-releases-racial-justice-platform/
As far as I know, BLM has not approved Hillary's racial justice platform. See also: https://shadowproof.com/2016/02/25/clinton-brushes-off-black-lives-matter-activist-who-confronts-her-over-super-predators/
*Those on the right tend to nitpick definitions and a lot of other things. So, let me be clear, by "lie," I mean anything intended to deceive others, including a statement that may be technically accurate but is nonetheless intended to deceive. When a technically true statement, such as "Sanders voted for the crime bill (nananabooboo) is used to try to convey the impression that Sanders' position on the crime bill was comparable to either of the Clintons' position on the same bill, that's a lie that is intended to deceive, even if the statement is technically true. And isn't it incredibly sad that some Democrats even see fit to debate that as to Democratic Presidential candidates? Shame on all who do that. It's disgusting and disgraceful.
About that New York - Vermont gun meme Hillary is using and MSNBC has been airing all day:
Sorry Hillary, 4 of 5 Years More New York Guns Traced to Vermont than Vice Versa
NATIONAL (VFB) — Having lost six straight primary contests (7 of the last 8) and struggling to regain her composure, Hillary Clinton today launched her most creative attack yet against Bernie Sanders, this time blaming the Senator for guns that end up in New York
.......
Unfortunately for Clinton, the federal government’s own data directly contradicts her claims.
According to ATF statistics, for four years straight not a single Vermont gun ended up in neighboring New York state. Yet during that time, a handful of New York guns made their way across the border to Vermont.
http://vetsforbernie.org/2016/04/hillarys-vermont-gun-lie/
Mrs. Greenspan just devoted her entire show to attacking Bernie.
One Hillary surrogate and defender after another attacking Bernie and defending Bubba and Hillary. If Andrea felt any of them omitted anything, she kindly volunteered it. She also played clips of Hillary attacking Bernie and his supporters and Bubba defending himself. Very fair and balanced.
Guest Rendell remarked "Bill was a regard campaign surrogate for us in 2008." Aside from the fact that Bill was almost as awful a surrogate in 2008 as he is now, ""us?" I think this goes beyond even the "commentator" standards of journalism. And that was the tenor of the entire show. What a disgrace!
If any of you watch MSNBC after this election, you'd better watch watch out! 
Yet another Big Lie: Traditional Democrats are extremists, like Tea Partiers or Trumpers.
Let's be clear: The modern Democratic Party traces its origin to New Deal and Fair Deal policies, which New Democrats want to eliminate, then leave behind. New Democrats are the innovation in the Democratic Party and the Tea Party is the innovation in the Republican Party.
Let's also be clear: Senator Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. Democratic Socialists believe in working through both capitalism and the Democratic Party. Specifically, Sanders is not advocating anything remotely like overthrow of the government, government ownership of the means of production or elimination of capitalism. However, I don't even want to get too hung up on what Senator Sanders is or is not about because this issue is even bigger than that.
Traditional Democrats want to see the Democratic Party return to its roots as the Party of people who need to work to eat and who understand that those who cannot work need to eat, too. The Tea Partiers and other extremists in the Republican Party are not seeking a return of the Party to its Lincoln roots or even to its Hoover or Eisenhower roots. Rather, the Tea Party is the novel element in the Republican Party. So are the Trumpers, which, as best I can tell, are, on so-called "cultural issues," are the closest thing to neo-Nazis "boasted" by a major political party in the United States. Comparing liberals to Trumpers is a vile smear that could not possibly be more lacking in truth, yet it is being spread broadly.
New Democrats and the Tea Party share a root ball, starting with, but not limited to, the Koch brothers and Koch Industries, one of the biggest polluters on the planet, among other things. The Tea Party was the brain child of the Koch Brothers, who began thinking about an organization like the Tea Party in the 1980s and were very involved with Americans for Prosperity. At about the same time that the Koch brothers were ruminating about something like the Tea Party, those same Koch brothers were sitting on the Executive Council of the Democratic Leadership Council, which incorporated in 1985 and Koch Industries and other mega corporations were providing the funding for it.
From an August 2000 Newsweek article, The Soul and the Steel, about Joe Lieberman's selection as Gore's running mate (Lieberman and Gore being, like the Clintons, founding members of the DLC):
His selection may also complicate Gore's efforts to depict Bush as a patsy for big business. Since 1995 Lieberman has chaired the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the centrist think tank that eschews liberal dogma and promotes market-oriented approaches to policy. Like many similar groups, the DLC (of which Gore is a founding member) has never disclosed its funding sources. But last week, in response to requests from NEWSWEEK, it turned over a list of top donors. If Gore still hopes to score populist points by bashing Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies that oppose his plan to add a prescription-drug entitlement to Medicare, he may have some explaining to do. Among the DLC's biggest benefactors last year (contributions of between $50,000 and $100,000) were ARCO, Chevron and the drug giant Merck. Other big underwriters include Du Pont, Microsoft and Philip Morris (which has kicked in $500,000 since Lieberman became DLC chairman). There is no evidence that the DLC has trimmed policies to accommodate its patrons, but some contributors say the money has helped ensure an open door to Lieberman. "We've been able to have a dialogue with the senator and his staff," said Jay Rosser, spokesman for another DLC benefactor, Koch Industries, an oil-pipeline firm that is also a big GOP donor.
IOW, the Koch brothers, Koch Industries and other mega corporations were taking the country to the right by infiltrating, first the Democratic Party and then the Republican Party. This way, no matter which Party wins, big business wins. (Big business doesn't care if you have an abortion, or with whom you have sex.)
The true mirror image of the Tea Party within the Democratic Party is not the Party's traditional New Deal wing, but its New Democrat wing; and the Big Lie is saying otherwise. Another Big Lie: that all Democrats are liberals and therefore actual liberals/traditional Democrats are extremists.
Sources
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations
http://americablog.com/2010/08/koch-industries-gave-funding-to-the-dlc-and-served-on-its-executive-council.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6211673 (Hillary, DLC/Third Way, Neocons, PNAC, Etc. and sources cited therein)
http://www.democrats.com/node/7789 https://samsmitharchives.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/6467/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Democratic_Leadership_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Labels
Morning Joe faults itself for not covering Bernie enough--should have been more critical!
Back on August 13, 2015, a DUer named merrily, who often grumbles about media, posted about how Morning Joe bent over backwards not to mention Bernie. http://www.democraticunderground.com/128036990 While Bernie could really have used media coverage to up his name recognition while he was building a war chest, media silence was maintained, interrupted by the occasional burst of a hit piece, snark and/or condescension.
Supporters of Sanders were berated for imagining that media was handling Bernie unfairly...until the Tyndall Report indicated a silence as to campaign initiated stories so widespread and so near total that a conspiracy among the networks was the only plausible explanation. Then followed a brief, semi-demi-honeymoon period in which some media pretended to have just noticed that, by gum, they had not been covering Bernie and his candidacy just might be a bit of a newsworthy blip on the way to Hillary's "inevitable" nomination. There was even a spate of news stories about how biased coverage, if any, of Bernie's run had been. I gave links to the Tyndall Report and just a few of those stories in this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280166952 I have to say that even Morning Joe said some nice things about Bernie, though always adding that, of course, he would not be the nominee.
And so, now, everything should be on an even keel, right? Well, no. Apparently, now the media mess is that media "missed" the story, when it should really have been far more critical of Bernie!!! And, as luck would have it, Morning Joe comes to this realization on the day when Bernie is about to be a guest on the show.
I remember something a bit similar around the Iraq invasion. Media was patently complicit with the Bush administration in the "run up to the Iraq invasion." After its objective was accomplished and no WMD were found, media finally acknowledged that perhaps its behavior had been, um, less than objective prior to the invasion. This self reflection lasted about a picosecond (relatively), whereupon media went back to business as usual. Will media be even that honest this time? We will seee.
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to our center right friends......
that if they will stop telling lies about us, we will stop telling the truth about them.
My deepest apologies to Adlai Stevenson--and no one else.
Hillary's not even sure Hillary's a Democrat
She's said her politics are rooted in the conservatism (Republican) in which she was raised.
She was in Republican politics from at least the age of 13 through being President of the College Republicans of Wellesley, perhaps the most liberal school in the nation at the time
Despite what she claims, I was able to find no evidence that she became a Democrat until she met Bill.
She and Bill both were founding members--she the only female founding member--of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization founded to unmoor the Democratic Party from its New Deal and Great Society roots and take to the right and she traveled abroad with Al From to spread that gospel, perhaps succeeding most with Tony Blair. The "more electible" Third Way gave us historic losses at the federal, state and local levels in both 2010 and 2014.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has never veered from traditional Democratic principles, except that his foreign policy is better than that of LBJ and probably Truman.
In name only was Bernie not a Democrat--and he is one in name as well now. http://www.democraticunderground.com/128018753
As a Democrat since the age of four, I would much rather vote for a candidate who has followed traditional Democratic principles all his life than one who tried hard to turn the Democratic Party into something other than it always was.
State Senate Special Election April 12, 2016
Has anyone looked into the candidates running for the State Senate Special Election on April 12? Does anyone know who is the most left? I've looked at a couple of the websites for the individual candidates, but they don't tell me much that I find especially useful.
[url]http://northendwaterfront.com/2016/02/state-senator-candidate-landscape/[/url]
This actually highlights an issue: Anthony Petrucelli vacated this seat to become a lobbyist, which means Massachusetts doesn't even have a waiting period prior to the revolving door. As Daschle and others have proven, the rule federal rule can be "worked around," but shouldn't Massachusetts at least have a rule?
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