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Sanders To Host A Town Hall For Students:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will host a late-October town hall meeting with students that will be live streamed to colleges across the country, the 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful's campaign has announced.
The national student town hall will take place on Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. EST, Sanders' campaign said. The event location has yet to be announced.
The Vermont senator, who has called for free public higher education as part of his campaign platform, is expected to discuss several issues important to students, like college affordability, climate change, income inequality and separating so-called "big money" from politics, according to his campaign.
Redefining Democratic Socialism:
"Okay," said Miller, who was born in 1995. "Well, knowing what 'democratic' means - and now, knowing again what 'socialist' means," he approved of the combination. "[Sanders] might want to see government have a heavier hand in certain policies," he said, but "he wants everyone to have a say in it."
Sanders's remarkable success this year - in spite of his label as a socialist - is due to a mix of good politics and great timing.
Twenty-four years after the end of the Cold War, many Americans no longer associate socialism with fear or missiles - or with failure, food lines or empty Soviet supermarkets. A word that their elders saw as a slur had become a blank, open for Sanders to define.
And this year, Sanders (I-Vermont) has tried to define it with an eye toward a moderate audience.
He has called for huge growth in government regulation and spending. But he has stayed away from classic socialist ideas, like government takeovers of private industry. And, in his speeches, Sanders has talked about socialism in modest, solidly American terms: It's nothing more than the pursuit of fairness in a country now rigged by the rich.
So far, it's worked - but Sanders still hasn't had to face an opponent determined to use socialism against him.
Larry David As Sanders On SNL:
Bernie Sanders IS Larry David. It’s a universal truth, sort of like how a surfeit of alcohol makes you want a grilled cheese and milkshake delivered straight into your arms. They yell, they wave their arms around in the air, they don’t necessarily comprehend—or care—about petty things like “decorum” and “manners.” They speak their mind, and it’s up to YOU to keep up.
On Saturday Night Live, Larry finally played Bernie. It was a reenactment of the first Democratic debate, and it was glorious.
“Hello, Hello, Hello…Enough with the hellos, let’s do this,” exclaimed David. “I’m good. I’m hungry, but I’m good. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to dial this up to a 10!”
Larry felt the Bern like no other, exaggerating his presidential candidate’s radicalness and lack of affinity for Washington.
The Candidate Who Is The Greatest Proponent Of BLM:
Bernie Sanders has emerged as the 2016 presidential candidate who appears to be the greatest proponent of the Black Lives Matter movement. Ahead of his participation in the first Democratic debate on Tuesday (Oct. 13), the Oval Office hopeful had a chance encounter with Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland. During their meeting, Sanders promised to say Bland’s named on the podium at the debate, Yahoo! reports.
According to Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner, a Black Lives Matter activist who was having dinner with Reed-Veal at a Washington. D.C. Thai restaurant, she spotted Sanders and asked if he would like to meet Bland’s mother. In a blog post detailing the events, Bronner commended the presidential candidate for not attempting to capitalize on their meeting.
“He did not impose upon Ms. Geneva to ask for a picture of his own. He did not use the moment as an opportunity to promote his campaign,” she wrote. “He took no record; he made no statement. He did not try to turn it into a publicity stunt.”
The Post Debate Analysis Continues:
the answers Clinton and Sanders gave, respectively, to the debate’s final question (“Which enemy are you most proud of?”) may be just as revealing as their back-and-forth over capitalism. While both candidates mentioned the pharmaceutical industry, Sanders included Wall Street whereas Clinton said “the Republicans” instead. You may think the difference is incidental, but it isn’t. Sanders is campaigning against an entire class and economic system; Clinton is campaigning against conservatives.
And, to a significant degree, the contest between the two will hinge on which group — wealthy capitalists or conservative Republicans — Democratic voters see as the bigger threat.
Rand Paul Loses What Was Left Of His Mind:
Bernie Sanders' surge in the Democratic primary race has surprised many people. Despite his popularity, one Republican presidential candidate is warning voters that if Sanders gets into the White House that his policies could bring on pure horror.
While the field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination is thin, the opposite is true for those on the opposite side of the aisle. Sen. Rand Paul has failed to gain much traction with conservative voters, and has consistently polled at the bottom of most surveys. In an attempt to change his fortune, Paul spoke with conservative radio show host Vince Coakley on Oct. 16, and had harsh words for the senator from Vermont.
"It amazes me and it actually kind of scares me," Paul admitted, in reference to Sanders and his policies as an admitted democratic socialist. I don’t want America to succumb to the notion that there’s anything good about socialism," he continued, warning that "mass genocide" could be in America's future if Sanders' policies were put in place.
Debunking Nazi Comparisons:
Caldwell said the “misleading” tweet suggesting an alignment between Sanders’ professed democratic socialism and Hitler’s party would “have Hitler turning in his grave, wherever the grave is. The Nazis loudly opposed democracy, the first and foremost thing.” Also, he said, “they were opposed to emancipating the workers, giving them the rights to vote and to organize” in unions.
Similarly, Barbara Miller Lane, a Bryn Mawr College professor and co-editor of a compilation of Nazi ideology before 1933, said by email: “The Nazis were NOT ‘democratic socialists,’ whatever that means. The Nazis were never democrats and never real socialists either.” While there was a longstanding and distinguished Social Democratic Party in Germany from the 1870 to the 1920s, Lane wrote, the Nazis fought against it, and after 1933 imprisoned its leaders.
Our ruling:
Villalba said that Sanders “admits he is a democratic socialist. … Nazis were Democratic Socialists.”
Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. The Nazis were not democratic socialists. Whether or not Villalba intended to link Sanders to the Nazis, his tweet neatly did the job.
We find this claim historically inaccurate and ridiculous. Pants on Fire!
Disspelling The Ignorance On The 'S' Word:
One thing you must admit about the Bernie Sanders campaign…it’s brought socialism out of the shadows and into the sunlight. Americans are becoming more and more curious (and more accepting) about the “s” word.
Merriam-Webster lexicographer Peter Sokolowski recently remarked that since Tuesday's Democratic debates, the search for a definition of “socialism” through M-W’s online dictionary has spiked.
Before Bernie began talking about socialism in his media interviews and even in his stump speeches, people secretly pondered an America with universal single-payer healthcare, maternal or family leave, a debt-free college education, and shoring up the Social Security system.
We may have thought about those wonderful things, but we never talked about them as a reality, lest we be mistaken for Warren Beatty or Diane Keaton in the movie, Reds.
It was a liberal fantasy to believe that a political candidate would include them in his/her campaign platform.
What Republicans Hear When Sanders Speaks:
Real Time with Bill Maher was the Bernie Sanders show on Friday night. Host Bill Maher discussed policies with Sanders, and also unveiled a Sanders translator for unhappy Republicans.
“What happens is Bernie says something, they hear something completely different,” Maher said, after playing a clip of Republican presidential candidate frontrunner Donald Trump calling Sanders a communist.
The sketch then included real clips of Sanders from the Democratic debate, and then a “translation” that was much worse. For instance, on guns, here’s what Sanders said: “Bernie Sanders has a D-minus voting rating from the NRA.” And here’s what Maher said Republicans heard: “Rifles are for men with small penises.”
Bernie Gets A Boisterous Welcome In Arlington:
Northern Virginia got a taste Thursday night of the enthusiasm buoying the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, as the senator from Vermont drew a boisterous crowd to a policy forum in Arlington and railed against the political influence of the “billionaire class.”
Sanders singled out Republican White House hopeful Jeb Bush at the event, citing the unprecedented $114 million that the former Florida governor and an allied super PAC announced Thursday they had raised during the first six months of the year.
“This money is clearly coming from the wealthiest people in the country,” said Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who has emerged as the leading rival to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. “There’s no accident that Jeb Bush and other Republican candidates who take huge amounts of money from the wealthy and the powerful come up with an agenda that represents the wealthy and the powerful.”
The event, sponsored by an array of Democratic and other left-leaning groups, was billed as a discussion of progressive policy issues and not as a campaign rally. It featured a second speaker on stage with Sanders, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
Still, the crowd of close to 500 people acted very much like the swelling audiences Sanders has seen on the trail, chanting “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie” and giving him two standing ovations before he even opened his mouth.