Bernie Wants To Know What You Think Of Beltway Media Hack Amber Phillips

I don't think I've ever mentioned Amber Phillips name without noting that she's a laughable moron way out of her depth as a Washington Post writer, the very worst in their stable. Monday she made some kind of a moronic attempt to call out Bernie for remarking that Trump is a liar. How dare he or anyone else? Hunter at Daily Kos turned her into a national joke hours after she wrote it. Moron Amber: "Put another way: One side of the aisle is accusing the president straight-up of lying. In 2017, that's just another day in politics. This is the state of our political discourse right now. Political norms-- like, don't accuse the president of the United States of lying without evidence, or don't accuse the former president of the United States of wiretapping your phones without evidence-- have been eviscerated." Hunter's point was that she "left completely unmentioned... the ample evidence of Donald Trump lying."

The next day, Bernie decided to address her idiocy himself, not because anyone cares what Amber Phillips writes per se but because this is part of a very special Beltway mentality responsible for, among other things, the rise of someone as spectacularly unqualified as Donald Trump.

We face a very serious political problem in this country, and that problem is manifested in a post written yesterday by Amber Phillips of the Washington Post. In her piece, Phillips criticizes me for lowering the state of our political discourse, because I accused the president of being a “liar."

What should a United States senator, or any citizen, do if the president is a liar? Does ignoring this reality benefit the American people? Do we make a bad situation worse by disrespecting the president of the United States? Or do we have an obligation to say that he is a liar to protect America’s standing in the world and people’s trust in our institutions?

I happen to strongly believe in civil political discourse. The vast majority of people in Congress who hold views different than mine are not liars. It is critical we have strong, fact-based debates on the important issues facing our country and that we respect people who come to different conclusions. In a democracy people will always have honestly held different points of view.

But how does one respond to a president who has complete disregard for reality and who makes assertions heard by billions of people around the world that have no basis in fact?

In her post, Phillips reprints five tweets that I sent out yesterday as examples of “the sorry state of political discourse right now.”

Here they are:

One of my great concerns is that there undoubtedly will be major crises facing the United States and the global community during Trump’s tenure as president. If Trump lies over and over again what kind of credibility will he, or the United States, have when we need to bring countries around the world together to respond to those crises? How many people in our country and other countries will think that Trump is just lying one more time?

Trump said three to five million people voted illegally in the last election. This is a preposterous and dangerous allegation which intentionally opens the floodgates for an increase in voter suppression efforts. Amber Phillips herself previously wrote, “There is just no evidence of voter fraud. Why launch an investigation into something that nearly everyone in U.S. politics--  save one notable exception--  doesn’t believe warrants an investigation?”

Trump claimed that his victory “was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.” Anyone with access to Google could see that this is factually incorrect. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all had bigger electoral margins of victory than Trump.

And then there are the trivial lies. Trump stated “it looked like a million and a half people” at his inauguration. Who cares? But none of the people who are trained to estimate crowd size believe that one and a half million people attended his inauguration.

More importantly, Trump helped lead a baseless and dangerous attack against the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency by suggesting over and over again that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not eligible to become president. This was not a disagreement with Obama over policy. It was a deliberate and dishonest effort to appeal to racist sentiment in this country and deny the right of our first African-American president to serve.

Lastly, my tweet which states that the United States will not be respected or taken seriously around the world if Trump continues to shamelessly lie is self-evident. We are the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth. If we have a president who is not taken seriously by people throughout the world because of his continuous lies, our international standing will clearly suffer.

I find it interesting that Ms. Phillips did not take issue with my facts. Her complaint appears to be that it is improper for a United States senator to state the obvious. And that is that we have a president who either lies intentionally or, even more frighteningly, does not know the difference between lies and truth.

What do you think?

It is easy to know how we respond to a president with whom we disagree on many, many issues. I disagree with Trump’s support for repealing the Affordable Care Act. I disagree with Trump’s plan to give huge tax breaks to billionaires. I disagree with Trump’s appointment of an anti-environmental EPA administrator. I disagree with Trump’s appointments of major Wall Street executives to key economic positions and his plans to loosen regulations on Wall Street designed to protect consumers. And on and on and on! These strong policy disagreements are a normal part of the political process. He has his views. I have mine.

But how do we deal with a president who makes statements that reverberate around our country and the world that are not based on fact or evidence? What is the appropriate way to respond to that? And if the media and political leaders fail to call lies what they are, are they then guilty of misleading the public?

Beltway Media Hack Wants To Tell Progressives Who Their Next Leaders Shall Be

I've been mulling Amber Phillips' Washington Post piece about who the next generation of progressive leaders will be post-Bernie/Elizabeth Warren. I'm guessing it can be blamed on the lowering of pay-- and standards-- for editors that a dullard like Phillips is encouraged to write this kind of drivel that winds up being published. As I remarked the first time I realized she's one of the truly awful Beltway pseudo-journalists, "Amber, like Rev. Lovejoy of The Simpsons, graduated from Texas Christian University and maybe they have a different worldview than normal people. "Eventually," she blathered, "progressives are going to want a new leader to carry forward the momentum created in recent months and years by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). They haven't found that person yet. And indeed, there's no one person the progressive community can collectively point to and definitively agree is the next Sanders or Warren." I'd be surprised if Phillips-- like most Americans-- had even heard of Bernie Sanders before he announced he was running for president. She points out they're both old and the progressive movement is filled with young-uns. In a pale of imitation of journalism she writes she "spoke with a half-dozen people involved in various ways and levels of the progressive movement to get their thoughts on who might be their next national leader-- or one of several leaders... [I]t's perhaps more instructive to start by listing the qualities progressives want to see in their next leader. Consider this a kind of job description from the progressive community:

• Someone outside the establishment (and preferably Washington altogether): "People who have a real and deep organic connection to the voting base and are less worried about the donor class," said Daniel Cantor, the national director of the Working Families Party.

• Someone willing to stick it to the establishment: "One of the ways you demonstrate real leadership in the progressive movement is a willingness to confront power," like Wall Street, yes, says Neil Sroka, the communications director for the Howard Dean-aligned Democracy for America, "but also leaders in your own party when necessary."

• Someone with a diverse background: Or at least an understanding of various diverse backgrounds. Women and people of color are pluses.

• Someone who has a following already: It doesn't have to be Bernie Sanders big, but it does need to be someone who has proven s/he can rev up a crowd. "They become a pulled attraction," said RoseAnn DeMoro, director of National Nurses United, which was one of the first unions to endorse Sanders. DeMoro even threw out movie stars/Sanders supporters like Rosario Dawson and Mark Ruffalo as possibilities.

It's perhaps just as instructive to understand some of the qualities progressives are NOT necessarily requiring in their next leader:

• Someone who lines up perfectly on the ideological spectrum with Sanders and Warren: It's okay if the next leader is a little to the left of them, some said. And others said it'd be okay-- even ideal-- if the next leader was a little more centrist. But nearly everyone indicated that a politician's ability to draw attention to the issues-- and then govern on them-- matters more than the specific individual's beliefs. Plus, the progressive movement needs a larger bench, and when you expand outward, you naturally get different viewpoints.

• Just one leader: Yes, movements need leaders. But there doesn't have to be just one, nor does someone have to be stage left the second Sanders and Warren step off the stage. DeMoro of National Nurses United said: "If Bernie fell in line behind Clinton tomorrow, the movement continues."

And then she lists the potential leaders. Great start: Washington state Senator Pramila Jayapal, a dream leadership candidate for sure if, as is likely, she gets into Congress. The next possibility is just as spot-on: Nina Turner, a much-admired, much-respected former Ohio state Senator. Then a sour bump in the road: Kamala Harris. Um... progressive? What does progressive mean? If it means more than an establishment garden variety Democrat, Kamala Harris doesn't fit. Yes, she's better than her right-wing Blue Dog opponent, Loretta Sanchez, but she hasn't even proven herself enough yet for any self-respecting progressive to even vote for her, let alone to follow her. And next is even worse: Tulsi Gabbard, a next-to-worthless conservative Democrat, probably homophobic, who had an affair with that vile Republican Mafia guy, "Mikey Suits" Grimm before he went to prison. Yes, she endorsed Bernie and sent plenty of shade Wasserman Schultz's way, but something tells me no one taught little Amber how to look at a congressmember's voting record. It's lovely she's a Hindu and a Samoan, but Mark Pocan has the single best voting record in Congress (and he's from the LGBT community). He's #1 with a 98.85% score and Tulsi is the #143rd "most progressive" member of Congress with a ghastly 73.56 score, almost identical with the head of the New Dems, Ron Kind, with whom she almost always votes. Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer and even Loretta Sanchez have better voting records-- as do over a dozen New Dems. Too abstract for Amber Phillips, whose understanding of progressivism doesn't go beyond identity politics?

Lucy Flores is Amber's next "leader," except she didn't do a damn thing when she was in the Nevada legislature other than make one inspiring speech, and then-- somewhat opportunistically-- attached herself to Bernie's campaign and suddenly... she's a potential leader of the national progressive movement? One of her congressional opponents-- a Hillary backer, Ruben Kihuen-- has a far better record as a genuine tribune of Nevada working families and will probably win the primary and beat Republican Cresent Hardy. Somehow Amber stumbled into another reasonable choice to end her list: Zephyr Teachout, the real thing, although I would bet Amber wouldn't know the difference between a Zephyr and a Tulsi if her miserable career depended on it-- which it doesn't, of course-- nor why one would be a reasonable bet for national leadership and one... is completely improbable.

Grayson And The Establishment-- Not Exactly Like A Horse And Carriage

In this tweet yesterday, Washington Post columnist and notorious villager Aaron Blake was trying to drive traffic to an article by a colleague, Amber Phillips, about Orlando congressman Alan Grayson, who both referred to as "Congress' most bizarre member," presumably, at least in Amber's and Aaron's world, more bizarre than, for example, Louie Gohmert, or the guy equating Apple with terrorist supporters, Arkansas closet case Tom Cotton (R-AR), the guy who wants to end weekends, Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Jody Hice (R-GA), or the doctor-- now a GOP congressman-in-good-standing-- who was drugging female patients and having sex with them, Scott DesJarlais (R-TN). But Amber, like Rev. Lovejoy of The Simpsons graduated from Texas Christian University and maybe they have a different worldview than normal people.

Amber may not even be aware that she's part of Chuck Schumer's little game to crush Grayson's career... but I think she does. She noted yesterday that "[t]he liberal firebrand is challenging the preferred establishment candidate, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.), whose more-moderate record could open the door to the liberal Grayson in the primary. Congressional leaders like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seem sufficiently worried enough about Grayson's prospects that Reid has called on Grayson to resign his congressional seat, saying Grayson has "no moral compass," part of Schumer's scheme to install Wall Street fave Patrick Murphy into the Senate. Millions of progressives admire Grayson for exactly what little Establishment shill Amber from TCU derides about him:

To know Grayson is to know that he is like a lightning rod for controversy. He first came to Congress in 2008, and within a year he was making incredulous national headlines for his comments that "If you get sick, America, the Republicans’ health-care plan is this: Die quickly." Or this on Dick Cheney: "I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he’s talking." He once called Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals."

One of the few times Grayson publicly apologized for what comes out of his mouth was when he called a female adviser to a Federal Reserve chairman "a K street whore."

To Democratic leaders' relief, Grayson lost reelection in 2010. But he was elected to a different seat in 2012 after redistricting, and he's continued providing his party with headaches.

Not so much "to Democratic leaders' relief" as much as due to DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen's betrayal. TCU Amber shoveled the dirt in a way you could only expect someone who hopes to get a nice pat on the head and something to munch on from Chuck Schumer.

Last May we predicted Schumer would find sieves like Amber to spread his poison. In what passes for journalism in Washington that isn't difficult. Just look under "E" for Establishment wanna-be. (She seems good at taking stenography from Schumer's team; I wonder if she even knows that's what she's doing.) 

You know, when Donald Trump wants to build something in Florida-- especially something glitzy-but-shoddy-- he turns to Coastal Construction, Patrick Murphy's family firm. Murphy's very Republican father, who, with his friends and the Wall Street banksters, finance Patrick's career, bribes public officials to endorse his son with big "campaign contributions." You can look up nearly every Murphy endorser and cross-tab them with FEC filings and you'll find contributions from Thomas and Leslie Murphy, Patrick's mommy and daddy. But now I'm hearing something even more disturbing. Someone's building a presidential library on Chicago's South Side and the Murphys want to make a deal. Let's see what new endorsements for sonny-boy come out in the next week or two.

Let's not fill the Senate with Schumercrats. I would have said "corrupt" Schumercrats but the essence of being a Schumercrat is corruption-- so it would be redundant. No Schumercrats on this page. Schumercrats take enormous sums of money from Wall Street banksters and call their agenda in public office. #1 recipient of Finance Sector bribes among non-incumbents running for the U.S. Senate this year is, of course, little Patrick-- something an establishment shill like Amber Phillips would never mention... and probably not even understand why she should. But all the Schumercrats are raking in the big bucks from Wall Street. Oh, you thought only Republicans are corrupt scumbags? Sorry... it's Republicans plus the establishment conservaDems Chuck Schumer pushes. These are Schumer's 2016 Senate candidates, in order of how much sewer money they've gobbled up from the Finance Sector:

• Patrick Murphy (FL)- $838,500
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)- $347,557
• Ted Strickland (OH)- $292,615
• Tammy Duckworth (IL)- $267,114

The Establishment, whether crooks like Schumer and Murphy or their patsies in the media like Amber Phillips, freak out when Grayson shakes up the established order. And that's what he does. That's why we love him. That's why they hate him. Hillary, AP reported yesterday, corralled 87 more super-delegates to the Convention. Bernie has a lead in democratically elected delegates, 36-32 but once super-delegates are included in the totals, Hillary is sittin' pretty at 481-55. Because of the inherent corruption in the anti-democratic super-delegate system, Bernie has to win the rest of the primaries with 59%. Even the most Establishment purveyor of news and opinion in the country, the NY Times, is skeptical about the role of super-delegates and how that is benefitting the establishment candidate they have already endorsed.

So... what does this have to do with Grayson? As Gaius and I have been mentioning this week he's shaking up the super-delegate system by asking his constituents and supporters to vote for Bernie or Hillary and that he'll cast his own super-delegate ballot according to what they want. "Until yesterday, 'superdelegates' were simply puppets of the unDemocratic establishment," he wrote, "and their determination to snatch candidate selection away from our voters. Well, that’s no longer true. I’m a superdelegate. And I’m injecting a full dose of democracy into the superdelegate process, by letting actual Democratic voters influence who should win my superdelegate vote, at GraysonPrimary.com. Power to the People, my friend." Stuff like that makes people like Chuck Schumer and TCU Amber want to gnaw their arms off.

In just 24 hours, more people have voted at GraysonPrimary.com than for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in the Iowa Caucus. (Or Jeb Bush, but that isn’t saying much.) Our poll already has drawn well over 70,000 votes, which is . . . incredible.

Democrats are sick of feckless loser party bosses dictating to us who carries our banner in November. Who do they think they are? That’s not their decision. It’s ours.

...It’s refreshing to see unbridled democracy in action. True power in the hands of the people is multiplying as we speak, and it is electrifying.

Not for Schumer and Amber it isn't. That's why they're trying so hard to defeat Grayson and why Amber called him "Congress' most bizarre member." Please consider sending Schumer and Amber (and the Murphys and Trumps) a message by tapping on the thermometer: