Category Archives: Gandhi
Nature’s Allies – Larry Nielsen
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Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World
Genre: Nature
Price: $27.99
Publish Date: February 2, 2017
Publisher: Island Press
Seller: INscribe Digital
It's easy to feel powerless in the face of big environmental challenges—but we need inspiration more than ever. With political leaders who deny climate change, species that are fighting for their very survival, and the planet's last places of wilderness growing smaller and smaller, what can a single person do? In Nature's Allies , Larry Nielsen uses the stories of conservation pioneers to show that through passion and perseverance, we can each be a positive force for change. In eight engaging and diverse biographies—John Muir, Ding Darling,Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Chico Mendes,Billy Frank Jr., Wangari Maathai, and Gro Harlem Brundtland—we meet individuals who have little in common except that they all made a lasting mark on our world. Some famous and some little known to readers, they spoke out to protect wilderness, wildlife, fisheries, rainforests, and wetlands. They fought for social justice and exposed polluting practices. They marched, wrote books, testified before Congress, performed acts of civil disobedience, and, in one case, were martyred for their defense of nature. Nature's Allies pays tribute to them all as it rallies a new generation of conservationists to follow in their footsteps. These vivid biographies are essential reading for anyone who wants to fight for the environmagainst today's political opposition. Nature's Allies will inspire students, conservationists, and nature lovers to speak up for nature and show the power of one person to make a difference.
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How Ann Coulter and the Far Right Are Using the Lefty Playbook to Troll Berkeley
Mother Jones
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Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, published in 1971 at the height of the counterculture movement, has long been required reading for community organizers on the left. It inspired activists with the labor movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. A young Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky and fawningly corresponded with him. But recently Alinsky has drawn a less likely group of devotees: the white nationalists and other bigots who make up the so-called alt-right.
After the white nationalist figure Nathan Damigo was filmed punching a female counterprotester at a provocative “free speech” rally this month in Berkeley, California, fueling a backlash online, his fans on the fringe message board 4chan/pol/ turned to Alinsky’s playbook. “Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is like Antifa’s Quran,” one 4channer wrote. “They follow his rules explicitly and inflexibly. Why not turn them back against them?” Everyone agreed that at the next scuffle they should spray female counterprotesters with silly string—an idea inspired by Alinsky’s Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
“The Left is getting massively out-Alinskyed, and the hilarious thing is that this band of withered hippies, unemployable millennial safe-space cases, and unlovable + unshaven libfeminists don’t even know it,” wrote right-wing columnist Kurt Schlichter recently in TownHall. “Thank you, Andrew Breitbart. You yelled ‘Follow me!’ and led a movement that had previously been dominated by doofy wonks and bow-tied geeks over the top in a glorious bayonet charge against the paper tiger liberal elite.”
Begrudging respect for Alinsky and the leftist protest tactics he inspired is nothing new on the right; FreedomWorks, the Koch-funded political organization, reportedly handed out Rules for Radicals to tea party activists. But the alt-right appears to have really taken Alinsky’s strategic thinking to heart—or at least when they are not just straight-up hyping their next opportunity to beat the hell out of some antifa.
“A lot of the strategy of this site is based on it,” Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, wrote in September, urging his followers to read the book. In November, another neo-Nazi site, The Right Stuff, published a detailed analysis of Alinsky’s rules, concluding that “the Alt-Right is already in something of an unholy alliance with (((Alinsky))).” (The “echo” parenthesis are used by white supremacists to single out Jews.)
Far-right provocateur Gavin McInnes, whose “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys were among those who waged bloody fights with antifa in Berkeley, described Alinsky to me as “an immoral human being”—but nevertheless professed to be a student of his writings. “This isn’t us taking on a brilliant book because we admire the guy,” he told me. “It’s us seeing what your tactics are and using them against you.”
Nowhere has that strategy more clearly been on display than in Berkeley, where supporters of Trump-boosting media provocateurs Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter have gleefully taken their cue from the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. Although the University of California-Berkeley canceled each of their planned speeches over mounting security concerns—exacerbated by the mayhem around Yiannopoulos’ scheduled appearance in March—officials worked to reschedule Coulter’s speech. She declined. On Monday, conservative student groups filed suit against the university, arguing that canceling Coulter’s talk violated their free-speech rights. Then Coulter vowed to show up anyway. Then she vowed not to come—on Wednesday the New York Times reported she was out. “Everyone who should believe in free speech fought against it or ran away,” Coulter declared. (Alinsky’s Rule 4: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”) Then she told Fox News that she might still come: “I think I am still going to Berkeley, but there will be no speech.”
Though most of Alinsky’s devotees on the left eschew violence and laud, as he did, the passive resistance techniques of Mahatma Gandhi and the civil rights movement, his writings are not necessarily inconsistent with the alt-right’s and antifa’s embrace of street battles. “The future does not argue for making a special religion of nonviolence,” he wrote. “It will be remembered for what it was, the best tactic for its time and place.”
The alt-right’s repeated physical clashes with counterprotesters in Berkeley and elsewhere represent an evolution in tactics for what had been mostly an online movement. They also dovetail with the alt-right’s penchant for generating viral memes: An image of Kyle Chapman (a.k.a. Based Stick Man) pummeling an antifa counterprotester in Berkeley made him an alt-right celebrity and led to the birth of his own anti-antifa Proud Boys militia group, the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights. (Chapman was arrested in Berkeley in mid April on an outstanding warrant for battery.) Thanks to additional publicity whipped up by Coulter, discussion and planning for the next Berkeley showdown has consumed 4chan since last week, with more than 100 recent posts dedicated to the subject, including talk of busing people in from around the country. No one seems deterred by Coulter’s waffling. “Folks are still going to Berkeley as a protest against the Domestic Terrorist Organization known as BAMN,” began one 4chan thread on Wednesday. “Spread the word. This changes nothing.”
“She’s apparently still going,” said another 4channer, “so we’re still on to bash some Antifa.”
“Regardless of Ann Couture’s (sic) decision,” Chapman wrote on Facebook, “we will have our rally. We will go back to MLK Civic Center Park and stand against these demons.”
“The whole idea of having Trump/free speech rallies in Berkeley is the historic nature of it,” a 4channer wrote earlier this month. “In 1968 the free speech movement happened in Berkeley to support communism. Now it is happening again in 2017 to support anti-communism, in hostile territory. It’s a battle on the front lines and the lefties help us make fun memes for the ages.” (Alinsky’s Rule 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”)
Activists on the right have much less experience than leftists with turning street protests into media tools. The civil rights, anti-war, and Occupy movements rose to prominence with the spread of photographs and videos documenting police brutality against protesters, from the use of fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, to pepper spray by a police officer at the University of California-Davis. The viral video of white nationalist leader Richard Spencer getting punched is a relatively rare example of the radical left celebrating violence. Yet for the meme-makers of the far right, humiliating their rivals by presenting their street brawlers as physically dominant is the preferred theme: “We’re just braver, and that makes for better jokes,” says McInnes. “The left are the new Church ladies. They’ve been sheltered in their own bubble for so long, they don’t know fun.”
An alt-right meme based on the Damigo punching video
Few people on the far-right have done more to turn the ideas of the left against it than Yiannopoulos, who enjoyed a rising career of co-opting “identity politics” in the interest of white males, before a pedophilia scandal knocked him from his perch. On Friday, he doubled down on the strategy of appropriating leftist concepts, announcing that he will host a “free speech week” this year that may include “a tent city on UC-Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza.” The idea repurposes an approach last seen on a large scale in 2011 at UC Berkeley and other university campuses in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street—but this time, in service of the right to say nasty things about women, people of color, and Muslims.
Which points directly to another Alinskyism that the alt-right is now testing: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” As one proponent of the idea explained on the neo-Nazi site The Right Stuff: “We want to get to the point where being labeled by the establishment as a racist, sexist, or antisemite (sic) is a sign of having done something correct.”
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How Ann Coulter and the Far Right Are Using the Lefty Playbook to Troll Berkeley
Posted in bigo, Everyone, FF, Gandhi, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged antifa, berkeley, bigo, birmingham, king, organization, proud-boys, top stories
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The Disappearing Spoon – Sam Kean
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The Disappearing Spoon
And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
Sam Kean
Genre: Science & Nature
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: July 12, 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie’s reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters?* The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it’s also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. THE DISAPPEARING SPOON masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery–from the Big Bang through the end of time. *Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.
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India will jump on the bandwagon for global climate action.
Myron Ebell, a director at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, would head Trump’s EPA transition team, E&E Daily reports. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a pro-business group focused on pushing climate denial.
While Ebell generally maintains that climate change is a hoax, he’s also argued that if it does exist, it’s actually a good thing. “Life in many places would become more pleasant,” he wrote in 2006. “Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.” He has less to say about the summers in Minneapolis, which, if current emissions trends continue, will feel like summers in Mesquite, Texas, by 2100.
Ebell’s waffling is in-line with the candidate’s, who seems to have spontaneously changed his mind about climate change during the first presidential debate. When accused by Hillary Clinton of calling climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, Trump flat-out denied it, despite a notorious tweet saying just that.
Ebell joins energy lobbyist Mike McKenna, George W. Bush’s former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt, and oil tycoon Harold Hamm on Trump’s team.
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Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, Gandhi, GE, LAI, ONA, Oster, Ringer, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind power
Tagged coalition, cop21, cop22, department, enterprise, institute, saskatoon, solar, texas
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Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’
When you get on an airplane to fly across the country – or even across the ocean – you probably don’t think too much about how much fuel is actually being used by that airplane you’re sitting on. You probably also don’t think about exactly what the environmental impact of that one flight might be, not to mention the collective environmental impact of all of the flights that happen around the world each and every day. The numbers add up pretty quickly!
According to this article, one flight from New York to Phoenix consumes approximately 6,900 gallons of fuel.
It’s estimated that there are approximately 100,000 flights around the world each day. If you do the math, that’s approximately 3.7 million flights per year throughout the world.
This data adds up to a whole lot of fuel usage and contribution to the world’s pollution problem – not to mention any other environmental issues that go with the petroleum and transportation industries.
An impulse for a solar powered airplane
Swiss pioneers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg are trying to change the conversation on clean energy and the possibilities of solar powered airplane transportation. Image credit: Solar Impulse SA
If we’re looking honestly at ways to significantly reduce our impact on this earth, reducing fuel use is certainly one area worth looking at. We can buy hybrid and electric cars now, but the options aren’t so simple for flying. We have our choice of airlines, but the planes are all pretty much the same. For now, anyways.
Swiss pioneers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg are trying to change the conversation and prove that energy doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Piccard (a psychiatrist and explorer with an avant-gardist vision) and Borschberg (an engineer and entrepreneur with managerial experience) have set out to achieve something that sounds pretty much impossible with our knowledge of energy and technology today. Piccard and Borschberg are attempting the first around the world solar powered airplane flight, using no fuel with absolutely no harmful emissions.
Can you imagine if every flight around the world every day could make that claim? How would that change the world?
Be the change you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi
That famous quote is most certainly appropriate in this inspiring story. Instead of huffing and puffing about the state our planet is currently in, Piccard, Borschberg and their team are doing something about it. They are pouring everything they have into demonstrating that solar technology can do far more than power a few lightbulbs in your home – it can power the world if that’s where we set our intentions.
Solar Impulse 2
Solar Impulse 2, a completely solar powered airplane, is the result of the dreams of these two men. This airplane is powered only by the sun, with absolutely no fuel or polluting emissions. And there is no back-up to the solar powered energy.
This solar powered airplane has the wingspan of a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, the weight of a typical family car and the power of a small motorcycle. Solar Impulse 2 is the largest aircraft ever built with such a low weight. Even though the plane has a huge wingspan, the pilot is the only person that can be on the plane – so every flight is a solo flight.
A lot of work went into the design and construction of Solar Impulse 2. It took 12 years of research and development to develop this aircraft, which is powered by dozens of environmentally friendly products and processes.
Some of these features include:
Ultralight material
Solar cells
Energy dense batteries
Lightweight LEDs
Low density thermal insulation
Energy efficient electric motors
Smart energy system
Protective resins
This amazing 360 degree video below shows you what it’s like for this aircraft to take off and land – and see the inside of the cockpit.
Solar Impulse 2 sets record for solo flights
The Solar Impulse 2 took its maiden flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, Oman on March 9, 2015. They have since made it quite far along in their journey and will soon make it back to Abu Dhabi and complete their around the world flight goals.
Earlier this year, the Solar Impluse 2 team set a record for solo flights (so far, the Solar Impulse prototype has set 8 world records). The pilot flew non-stop for 5 days and 5 nights without fuel from Nagoya, Japan to Hawaii. After 117 hours and 52 minutes and approximately 8,900 km in the air, the pilot had to land the plane in Hawaii due to unforeseen battery damage due to overheating.
Image Credit: Solar Impulse SA
After many tests and repairs were completed, the Solar Impluse 2 was able to cross the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, where it landed safely. The pilots (Piccard and Borschberg both pilot the aircraft) are currently continuing on their journey around the world. This is a truly historic event to watch, as every day puts them one step closer to completing the first around-the-world trip without a drop of carbon-based fuel.
Follow along
While the Solar Impluse 2’s exact travel dates are undetermined, you can sign up to receive flash updates on the plane’s adventures here. It’s a lot of fun to keep up to date and watch where the Solar Impulse 2 is in its journey. I can’t wait to see it make its final landing in Abu Dhabi! What a great feeling that will be for Piccard and Borschberg, and what a great step forward in clean energy for our world.
A message to the world
This historic attempt to fly a solar powered airplane around the world is certainly sending all of us a clear message about our energy consumption. If we can harness the plane’s clean energy technologies on the ground in our day-to-day lives, its speculated that we could cut the world’s energy consumption in half, saving precious natural resources and improving our overall quality of life.
The pilots have made it their mission to spread this message to the general public at large, students that will shape the world’s future, key decision-makers in government and business, and entrepreneurs all around the world.
Where would you like to see solar powered airplane technology go?
Feature image credit: Solar Impulse SA
Chrystal Johnson
Chrystal, publisher of
, Founder of
and essential oil fanatic, is a mother of two sweet girls who believes in living a simple, natural lifestyle. A former corporate marketing communication manager, Chrystal spends her time researching green and eco-friendly alternatives to improve her family’s life.
Latest posts by Chrystal Johnson (see all)
Solar Powered Airplane ‘Explores The Impossible’ – July 28, 2016
Join The Live Plastic Free July Challenge – July 1, 2016
Light Up The Room By Upcycling A Glass Bottle – June 30, 2016
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Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, Gandhi, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized
Tagged chrystal, energy, Hawaii, impluse, king, ocean, piccard, solar energy, solar powered airplane, solar-impulse, twitter
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This Case Just Gave Apple Some Major Ammo in Its Fight With the FBI
Mother Jones
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A federal judge in New York denied the government’s request to make Apple help unlock the iPhone of a suspect in a drug case, potentially dealing a major blow to the FBI’s effort to compel the company to assist the bureau in accessing an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters.
In both cases, the government requested that Apple help bypass the lock screen security on an iPhone to assist a federal investigation. The New York case was one of at least 12 in which Apple has refused to give the government the technical assistance it was seeking. The government’s argument in each case rested on the All Writs Act, a law first passed in 1789 that allows the government to issue orders, or writs, that are “necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” But that power is also subject to limitation, including such orders being a last resort and not imposing an “undue burden” on the person or organization to which it applies.
Apple argued the government’s requests overstepped its ability to demand cooperation. “We’re being forced to become an agent of law enforcement,” complained Apple’s lawyer, Marc Zwillinger, in arguments in the New York case last year, and Judge James Orenstein agreed. “After reviewing the facts in the record and the parties’ arguments, I conclude that none of those factors justifies imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation,” he wrote in his decision issued on Monday evening.
Orenstein echoed points made by Apple in its challenge last week to the court order in the San Bernardino case. The company wrote that the government’s demand that Apple write new software for the FBI created a “boundless interpretation” of the All Writs Act, allowing the government to order virtually any assistance it wanted. The court filing raised the specter of “compelling a pharmaceutical company against its will to produce drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection in furtherance of a lawfully issued death warrant, or requiring a journalist to plant a false story in order to help lure out a fugitive.” Orenstein similarly wrote that he rejected “the government’s interpretation that the All Writs Act empowers a court to grant any relief not outright prohibited by law.”
The judge’s ruling in the New York case rested on another Apple-friendly premise: the notion that what the government wants “is unavailable because Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it.” Apple’s court filing argued that “Congress and the American people have withheld” the power to make companies break the security features of their own phones—for example, by expanding federal wiretapping laws to include cellphones—and thus the government should not be allowed to simply take that power through court orders. Orenstein backed that argument, saying that forcing Apple to comply would “transform the All Writs Act from a limited gap-filling statute…into a mechanism for upending the separation of powers.”
Even if the All Writs Act applied, Orenstein wrote, he found that the government’s request would still place an undue burden on the company. That’s further good news for Apple’s argument in the San Bernardino case. The company says complying with that order would take a team of 6 to 10 engineers at least two weeks to write the necessary software, and the technical assistance that Orenstein rejected in the New York case is less complicated.
Sheri Pym, the federal judge in the San Bernardino case, actually granted the FBI a court order similar to the one Orenstein rejected on Monday. But she kept her order from taking effect until Apple filed its challenge. And while the New York and San Bernardino cases aren’t identical, Orenstein’s ruling, as FBI Director James Comey put it in a congressional hearing last week, will likely be “instructive” as Pym considers Apple’s argument—and could severely dent the FBI’s hopes of getting the powers it wants.
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This Case Just Gave Apple Some Major Ammo in Its Fight With the FBI
There Are Still Politicians Who Think You Can’t Get Pregnant From Rape
Mother Jones
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During a hearing by the Idaho House of Representatives on a bill that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a fetal heart monitor, Angela Dwyer, an employee at a crisis pregnancy center who testified in support of the bill, explained that in her experience, she had seen two rape victims choose not to abort—one kept the baby and the other chose adoption. The proposed legislation does not make an exception for victims of incest or rape.
Rep. Pete Nielsen responded, “Now, I’m of the understanding that in many cases of rape it does not involve any pregnancy because of the trauma of the incident.” He then added, “That may be true with incest a little bit.”
According to the Spokesman-Review, Nielsen stood by his remarks after the hearing. He said pregnancy “doesn’t happen as often as it does with consensual sex, because of the trauma involved.” According to Scientific American, women get pregnant from rape as frequently as they get pregnant from consensual sex.
When pressed on the matter by a reporter who asked him how he knew this, Nielsen replied, “That’s information that I’ve had through the years. Whether it’s totally accurate or not, I don’t know…I’ve read a lot of information…Being the father of two girls, I’ve explored this a lot.”
Nielson’s comments echoed those of former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who once memorably said on a television interview, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.” Akin lost his Senate bid shortly thereafter in 2012 to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
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There Are Still Politicians Who Think You Can’t Get Pregnant From Rape
Posted in Anchor, FF, Gandhi, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged father, house, information, missouri, public, radius, reproductive rights, Scientific, venta
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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues
Mother Jones
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School officials sent home nearly 2,000 students after receiving a bomb threat at McLean High School in northern Virginia at approximately 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. The Washington Post reports:
The 10th largest school district in the country, Fairfax County schools face nearly daily threats. Security officials have said that threats come in frequently through the Internet and social media and that they investigate about 100 cases a year.
Earlier this year, fake bomb threats closed schools in six states, and in 2015 a threat forced school officials in Los Angeles to cancel classes for the second largest school system in the country.
Schools throughout the nation have been facing a rash of shooting and bomb threats. One study suggests that such threats are on the rise. In February 2015, Kenneth Trump, the president of the National School Safety and Security Services, released a study that reviewed 812 threats reported in the media from the first half of the 2014-15 school year. Threats had risen 158 percent since the first time he conducted the study in the previous year.
However, there is no comprehensive national data on school threats, and no mandate for schools or law enforcement to track them, so it’s diffucult to discern if the problem is in fact a rising trend. Meanwhile, also on Monday four students were reported injured in a school shooting in Ohio. Read more about the ongoing wave of threats to schools in our recent explainer here.
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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues
Meet Bernie’s Ragtag Band of Congressional Supporters
Mother Jones
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Following his decisive loss to Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, Bernie Sanders landed a mixed bag of surprise endorsements: one from a notoriously volatile hedge fund manager-turned-congressman, who is under investigation for potential ethics violations, and the other from a rising star of the Democratic party.
On Monday morning, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) announced his support online in a blog post titled “I Feel the Bern.” Grayson, a super-delegate who is serving his third term in the House, said that a recent online poll he conducted showed 86 percent support for Sanders (this number is at odds with national polls, which show Sanders down 7.5 percent against Hillary Clinton as of Monday).
I hereby endorse @BernieSanders to be our Democratic nominee for President of the United States. #FeelTheBern https://t.co/mIzcqnAMB9
— Rep. Alan Grayson (@AlanGrayson)
While the Sanders campaign thanked Grayson, his support may not be doing it any favors. Grayson has been in favor of regulating Wall Street, but raised eyebrows with his decision to continue running a hedge fund while he served in the House of Representatives. That decision prompted an ongoing House Committee on Ethics inquiry and a searing New York Times investigation published earlier this month, which alleged that during difficult economic times he paid attention to the hedge fund at the expense of his congressional duties. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has urged Grayson to drop his bid for the Florida Senate seat. Grayson denies any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on Sunday resigned as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sanders (as chairwoman, she was not allowed to support a candidate). In a filmed speech posted to her official YouTube account, Gabbard said, “I cannot remain neutral any longer. The stakes are just too high…We can elect a president who will lead us into more interventionist wars of regime change, or we can elect a president who will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.”
Gabbard’s decision follows a public squabble with DNC leadership last year after she appeared on MSNBC calling for more Democratic presidential debates. The DNC had faced criticism for limiting the number of televised debates, which was seen as a ploy to protect Hillary Clinton’s candidacy from the insurgent Sanders’ campaign.
These two unexpected endorsements nearly double the ranks of elected lawmakers supporting Sanders—he still only has 5. Clinton, meanwhile, has racked up more than 200, including 12 governors and a host of former Congressional colleagues.
Sanders thanked both Grayson and Gabbard for their endorsements.
Thank you @AlanGrayson for your endorsement!https://t.co/CURs0tfCWR
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders)
As a veteran of the Iraq War, Rep. @TulsiGabbard understands the cost of war. I am honored to have her endorsement.https://t.co/0e1BQ48eyb
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders)
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