Bernie Sanders marked Veterans Day on Wednesday here by arguing that "patriotism or love of country" mean both protecting soldiers at war and veterans when they come home.
Sanders, the independent Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate, hopped over the state border to Lebanon to march in the town's Veterans Day parade and give a brief speech to the roughly 100 people assembled in the town's central park.
"To my mind, if patriotism or love of country means anything, it means that we do not now, or ever, turn our backs on those who defended us," Sanders said. "It means we keep our promise to those who kept their promises to us."
He added: "The bottom line is that if we are serious about our patriotism and about defending those who defended us it means that all of our veterans get the benefits and the health care they need and that they were promised and that they get that health care in a timely manner."
Sen. Bernie Sanders is the overwhelming favorite of American humanists in the 2016 presidential race, according to results of a poll released Tuesday by the Center for Freethought Equality. The CFE is a lobbying organization associated with the American Humanist Association. The AHA describes humanists as individuals who do not have theistic or other supernatural beliefs, and believe the greater good of humanity can be achieved through ethical behavior.
According to the online poll conducted by SurveyMonkey, Sanders has the backing of 73 percent of humanists surveyed. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is second with 21 percent. Donald Trump is the most-popular Republican among humanists, but he has the backing only about two percent.
The Democratic Party is the top choice of 58 percent of humanists. Humanists independent of political affiliation with 41 percent. The tiny remainder is Republican in their political orientation.
The most-important issues for humanists involve the economy and jobs. Also in the top three policy concerns are climate change and health care. The bottom three issues important to humanists are immigration reform, international relations, and gun control.
In issues relating to religion, humanists believe the top priority is to promote science education and research. Second is reform of tax-exempt status for religious organizations and religious initiatives.
Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders has scheduled two Iowa campaign stops for Sunday, the day after he and fellow Democratic presidential candidates debate in Des Moines.
Sanders will hold a "family caregiver roundtable" at 3:30 p.m. at Central Presbyterian Church in Des Moines Sunday. That event is invite-only.
He'll go on to hold a 6 p.m. campaign event at Simpson College. The town hall is slated for the Principal Black Box in the Kent Campus Center, 701 N. C Street, Indianola. Doors open at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, though RSVPs are recommended.
In a new McClatchy-Marist poll, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide margin of 12 percentage points, 53 to 41. In the McClatchy poll, Sanders also leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) by a landslide margin of 10 points, 51 to 41.
The huge Sanders advantage over Trump is not new. In the last four match-up polls between them reported by Real Clear Politics, Sanders defeated Trump by margins of 12, 9, 9 and 2 percentage points.
The huge Sanders advantage over Bush is new. In previous match-ups, the polling showed Sanders and Bush running virtually even, with Bush holding a 1-point lead over Sanders in most of the polls. Future polls will be needed to test whether the huge Sanders lead over Bush in the McClatchy poll will be repeated in future polling or whether the McClatchy poll is an outlier.
It is shocking that the data suggests that Sanders has a lead over Trump that could be so huge that he would win a landslide victory in the presidential campaign, with margins that would almost certainly lead Democrats to regain control of the Senate and could help Democrats regain control of the House of Representative — if, of course, the three polls that show Sanders beating Trump by 9 to 12 points reflect final voting in the presidential election.
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It is a fallacy argued by conservatives and, in my view, inaccurately parroted by the mainstream media, that Sanders and other liberals take positions that are far too "left." The polling shows, issue by issue, and increasingly in general election match-ups of Republicans running against Sanders, that it is the left, not the right, which has the upper hand with American voters.
The presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is expanding its footprint in Texas, setting up a statewide office and expanding its staff with just under four months until the Democratic primary.
In the next few days, the campaign plans to open a Texas headquarters in Austin — among the first known outposts of a presidential campaign in the state besides that of native U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. The office will be located on the city's east side.
The campaign's Texas effort is being overseen by Jacob Limón, a legislative staffer and former official at the state Democratic Party. Limón, who was recently named Sanders' Texas state director, is being joined by six other paid staffers in the state: David Sanchez, North Texas director; Cristina Garcia, Rio Grande Valley director; Theresa Haas, Houston director; Samantha Davis, operations director; Ananda Tomas, San Antonio director; and Sergio Feliciano Cantú, Latino outreach director.
Sanders supporters were introduced to the Texas staff during a meeting Tuesday night in Austin, where they were given a goal of 850,000 phone calls over the next three weeks to identify more Sanders backers. Zack Exley, a senior adviser to the Sanders digital team in Vermont, told the nearly 200 people who showed up to the meeting that they will have to go above and beyond to help him win the March 1 primary in Texas.
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Sanders last visited Texas in July, when he drew 8,000 and 5,200 people to rallies in Dallas and Houston, respectively. At each event, he warned Democratic candidates against writing off red states like Texas and called for a "50-state strategy" to win the White House in 2016.
Bernie Sanders will make his Ohio debut Monday with an evening rally at Cleveland State University's Wolstein Center.
The senator from Vermont, a political independent who describes himself as a socialist, is seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
Sanders, according to his campaign, "will discuss a wide range of issues, including criminal justice reform, his college affordability plan, immigration reform, income and wealth inequality and getting big money out of politics."
The event will begin at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6. The event is open to the public, and admission is free. Attendees can register on Sanders' website.
Sanders trails Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in polls nationally and in Iowa, the first caucus state. But the two are running close in New Hampshire, home of the all-important first primary, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
There is a growing crisis in the United States, created by unsustainable levels of student debt and the corporate model of higher education. Tuition at private and public universities nationwide is skyrocketing, and huge numbers of students are graduating terrified, with empty hands, wondering where to go with their new degrees. There is currently over $1.2 trillion in outstanding student debt nationwide, with 40 million borrowers and their families struggling in unison – wondering how, and whether, they’ll ever catch up to this debt.
The corporate model of higher education is evident not only in its abuse of learning persons, but in its inability to provide for its faculty and staff. Universities are pooling money at the very top, providing their highest paid administrators with unreasonable salaries while denying campus workers and adjunct faculty access to even their most basic rights. Many campus workers earn less than $15 an hour. A significant population of part-time faculty members is on some form of government assistance, and this comes at no small cost to taxpayers. The American people are subsidizing the predatory policies of corporate universities by spending half a billion dollars every year on government assistance for part-time faculty.
The student debt crisis bears eerie similarities to the housing crisis of 2008. Big banks are issuing high-risk loans to students and are getting fat off of exorbitant interest rates. In 2008, after the devastating financial collapse, people began to vent about things like wealth inequality, things like the 99% and the 1%. This anger was harnessed by a group of people who decided to Occupy Wall Street, which exploded into an international movement against the big banks and corporate immunity, calling into question the very nature of capitalism.
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Since Bernie Sanders declared his candidacy for president of the United States, he has played a crucial role in popularizing the call for free higher education. When discussing the need for a movement against student debt, Sanders said: “If a million young people march on Washington, [and] they say … you better vote to deal with student debt, you better vote to make public universities and colleges tuition free, that’s when it will happen.”
Bernie Sanders, one of the leading presidential candidates, wants the people to stop paying cable companies for a set-top box.
Well not exactly for free, but according to a report by the International Business Times, Sanders wants the American people to stop shelling out $232 a year to rent cable companies' set-top boxes. As noted, the U.S. Senator from Vermont, along with seven other U.S. senators, signed a letter Monday that urged the Federal Communications Commission to "unshackle" consumers from cable companies.
The letter was headed by Senator Edward J. Markey and called on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to address the lack of competition and innovation in the set-top box market. The other senators who signed the letter also asserted that there has been a virtual standstill in the market.
The situation was compared to the interfaces on smartphones, tablets and even desktop computers, as these devices are constantly evolving while on the other hand, the remote controls and channel guides that permeate interfaces on linear television often stifle content discovery, leaving viewers frustrated.
The senators wrote, "We believe the time has arrived for the FCC to enable millions of Americans to access an enormous amount of content in innovative, new, and less costly ways."
In 2008, Jetta Darrow cast her vote for Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. She worried that Barack Obama wasn’t experienced enough to be President, she thought Clinton had the right qualifications for the job, and the prospect of a woman in the White House excited her. But this time around, Darrow, a 63-year-old office administrator for a civil-engineering company, has changed her mind. Since 2008, she says, she has buried her husband — a Vietnam veteran — but received only a quarter of his pension, her health care costs have risen, and she hasn’t seen a pay raise. All while struggling to help take care of her sick 11-year-old grandson.
She doesn’t blame Obama or Clinton for her woes. But breaking “that highest, hardest glass ceiling” — as Clinton once described it — suddenly doesn’t seem as urgent as fighting for struggling families like hers. So she’s going with Bernie Sanders, the insurgent, self-identified socialist Senator from Vermont whose surprisingly strong challenge from Clinton’s left flank has bedeviled the front-runner for much of this year.
“He spoke exactly to my concerns, as if he were living in my house, or my neighbor’s house, or my sister’s house,” Darrow says as she spreads out snacks in the sunny kitchen of her Nashua home, which she shares with her daughter, son-in-law, grandson and a poodle mix named Sugar. “He is the most sincere candidate.”
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Even Clinton herself says women shouldn’t vote for a candidate merely because she’s a woman. “I’m always in favor of women running,” she told TIME in a recent interview when asked about the appeal of Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, the only woman in the GOP field. “But people need to hold women’s policies up to light and determine what their answers to problems would be before deciding to support them.”
For some Sanders supporters in New Hampshire, that’s exactly their reasoning. “Hillary is that polyester pant-suited lady from the ’70s who lip-speaks feminism, but doesn’t grapple with the issue of poverty,” says Sylvia Gale, a 66-year-old former state legislator and Sanders volunteer. “The best feminist for the job is Bernie Sanders.”
Dudley Dudley is as surprised as anyone by her support for Sanders. The 79-year-old broke barriers in New Hampshire as one of few female lawmakers in the 1970s, and most of her friends are backing Clinton. “I expected to support her, until I heard Bernie Sanders speak,” she says over popovers at a café in Portsmouth, N.H. “I will work very hard for her if she gets the nomination, but I’m hoping that Bernie Sanders becomes President.” Dudley, who made headlines in New Hampshire when she prevented shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis from building an oil refinery off the coast in the 1970s, is from the generation that made the first push to get women elected to office in large numbers.
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