Light News | Bernie Thankfully Rescinds Endorsement Of So-And-So

Bernie Rescinds Endorsement Of So-And-So | “Our movement is bigger than any one person,” he said. “I hear my grass roots supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign, and I retract my endorsement.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/us/bernie-sanders-cenk-uygur.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-rescinds-endorsement-after-womens-groups-blast-misogynist-cenk-uygur
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/474511-sanders-revokes-congressional-endorsement-for-young-turks-founder-cenk

Even without that, the first few sentences come across less as "I'm retracting my endorsement because I made the wrong choice" and more as "I'm retracting my endorsement because people complained about it."

I don't expect Bernie, or any other candidate, to know EVERYONE working for them, so hiring the racist YouTube hack (Matt Orfalea) was probably done by someone else on the campaign. But I DO expect Bernie to have a final say on who he endorses.

"I am endorsing @ChristyforCA25 to replace Katie Hill. Christy Smith lives in the district, is a proven vote getter as an assemblywoman, and is the best way to prevent a GOP pickup."
https://twitter.com/GovHowardDean/status/1205558186910068737

Bernie Sanders endorses Brent Welder over Sharice Davids, El-Sayed against Gretchen Whitmer, and now Cenk Uygur against Christy Smith. This man is a proven misogynist and is unacceptable as the dem nominee
https://twitter.com/queenmab87/status/1205542608229064704?s=21

Kentucky’s Republican Governor Pardons Hundreds, Including Convicted Murderers and Rapists, Before Leaving Office
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/kentuckys-republican-governor-bevin-pardons-hundreds-convicted-murders-rapists.html


Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Yang to boycott Democratic debate over union strike
https://theweek.com/speedreads-amp/884218/biden-sanders-warren-yang-boycott-democratic-debate-over-union-strike

ICE Destroyed Footage Of A Trans Asylum-Seeker Who Died In Custody Despite A Request To Save It
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/adolfoflores/ice-destroyed-footage-of-a-trans-asylum-seeker-who-died-in

Too Little Too Late: Jeremy Corbyn resigns as Labour party leader after election defeat
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-corbyn-resigns-as-labour-party-leader-after-election-defeat-2019-12

Pastor Who Sermonized That Jews Are Going to Hell Was Trump’s Pick to Speak at White House Hanukkah Reception
https://www.theroot.com/pastor-who-sermonized-that-jews-are-going-to-hell-was-t-1840391346

Republicans: You're going too fast!
Democrats: We aren't voting tonight.
Republicans: You're going too slow!
They have no leg to stand on. The facts are against them. The constitution is against them. So they reduce themselves to two-faced whining about any issue they think they can inflate into a false controversy.

Documents Showing Ukraine Discussions After Military Aid Freeze 'Almost Completely Redacted' by Trump Administration
https://www.newsweek.com/documents-showing-ukraine-discussions-after-military-aid-freeze-almost-completely-redacted-trump-1477104

The contrast between the images of the Democrats and Republicanss on this panel are a striking microcosm of the larger divides in the Congress and the country.

Reminder: Portion Of Military Aid At Heart Of Impeachment Still Hasn’t Gotten To Ukraine
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/military-aid-impeachment-ukraine-stalled

Republicans protected Barron Trump, why not Greta Thunberg?
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/12/13/chris-cuomo-closing-argument-donald-trump-greta-thunberg-attack-cpt-vpx.cnn

France’s left-wing leader Mélenchon blames Corbyn’s defeat on "Likud influence networks" and vows not to "genuflect before the arrogant ukases of CRIF," the Jewish community representative group. Just in case you’re wondering how left-wing anti-semitism is going.
https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1205463198939389952


Arms Expert Warns of 'Reckless and Unnecessary Escalation' After Pentagon Tests Missile Banned by INF Treaty That Trump Ditched | The move could "exacerbate tensions with Russia, China, and North Korea—all of whom would be in range of this type of missile."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/13/arms-expert-warns-reckless-and-unnecessary-escalation-after-pentagon-tests-missile

Federal authorities arrest doctors campaigning to give illegal immigrants free flu vaccinations.
https://www.newsweek.com/doctors-arrested-protest-border-patrol-flu-vaccines-detained-migrants-1476691

Volunteer firefighters battling the unprecedented mega blaze across NSW have been forced to turn to crowdfunding to raise money to buy essential safety gear. Their fundraising drive comes as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday dismissed the idea of paying volunteer firefighters.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/html/firefighters-turn-to-crowdfunding-raise-money-for-essential-equipment-053206505.html

Australia's bushfires have emitted 250m tonnes of CO2, almost half of country's annual emissions - Forest regrowth can reabsorb emissions from fires but scientists fear natural carbon ‘sinks’ have been compromised
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/13/australias-bushfires-have-emitted-250m-tonnes-of-co2-almost-half-of-countrys-annual-emissions

White House says Trump's attacks on 16-year-old Greta Thunberg are fair game because she's an 'activist,' while mentions of the first couple's 13-year-old son should be off-limits
https://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-defends-trumps-twitter-attack-on-greta-thunberg-2019-12

Cyberbullying crusader Melania Trump silent on her husband's mocking of 16-year-old Thunberg
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/13/politics/melania-trump-greta-thunberg-donald-trump-cyberbullying/index.html

Just in time for 2020, Wisconsin Republicans are trying to stop 234,000 voters statewide from voting.
https://twitter.com/swingleft/status/1205615285144870913

Wisconsin judge sides with conservatives, orders elections commission to deactivate up to 234,000 voters who may have moved | Decision expected to be appealed
https://twitter.com/sbauerAP/status/1205610258133082119

One reason non-Jews should care about antisemitism is that it tends to expose people whose minds quite literally are not operating in reality. Because they are paranoid and can't make sense of the world, they make for dangerous and incompetent political leaders.
https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/1205614970278301696

The Republican state Senate president has condemned Bevin's pardons and wants U.S. DOJ to investigate. "The Senate Republican Majority condemns his actions as a travesty and perversion of justice," Stivers said. | "From what we know of former Governor Bevin's extreme pardons and commutations, the Senate Republican Majority condemns his actions as a travesty and perversion of justice," Stivers said. "Our citizens, and especially the crime victims and their families, deserve better." Stivers' statement came hours after two Democratic legislators, Senate Democratic Floor Leader Morgan McGarvey and state Rep. Chris Harris called on Attorney General-elect Daniel Cameron to appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing involving Bevin's pardon of Patrick Brian Baker.
https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/status/1205612216432640000
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/ky-legislature/2019/12/13/bevin-pardons-robert-stivers-calls-federal-investigation/2641276001/

March 2018 email exchange between ICE official John Feere and Stephen Miller in which they appear to try to get an appointee hired at the Social Security Administration to "help with information-sharing issues."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6551940-ICE-Email-Communications-With-or-About-White.html#document/p239

Rashida Tlaib responded to the Jersey City terror attack thus: “This is heartbreaking. White Supremacy Kills.” But the anti-Semitism of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement doesn’t as well?
https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1205578932902338560

239 pages worth of implementing legislation for USMCA — the Ways and Means committee will mark it up on Tuesday and it's tentatively expected to get a full floor vote Thursday
https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/documents/USMCA%20Final.pdf

Amid impeachment, Trump and Giuliani are still coordinating on anti-Biden dirt. Giuliani actually admitted it on a phone call.
https://www.vox.com/2019/12/13/21020584/trump-impeachment-articles-rudy-giuliani-ukraine

Probably a decent number of the kids are gay or lesbian and being misdiagnosed as transgender: Or just tombiyish/effeminate: Children's transgender clinic hit by 35 resignations in three years as psychologists warn of gender dysphoria 'over-diagnoses'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/12/childrens-transgender-clinic-hit-35-resignations-three-years/

It's fucked to think a medical professional would or could let a literal child decide they want to change their gender at 10 years old, then prescribe them hormones to make irreversible changes before the child's brain to be fully developed in order to know who they are, let alone who they want to change into. If you're a 10 year old boy, you shouldn't be allowed to decide to pharmaceutically transform into a girl... a change you could very likely regret for the rest of your life, once you've matured into adult and become the actual you. I'm all good with people doing what makes them happy, but if you're changing your body's chemical makeup in some way, you shouldn't be permitted to start until you're 18. It's also scary that doctors are afraid to give a legitimate diagnosis to patients, one that might go against the patient's wishes and resigning is a better option than facing possible backlash. Even if it's just 6 out of the almost 40 people who resigned, that number is still far higher than it should be.

Most people regret their transition in their life:   A 2008 study of gender dysphoric adolescents found 61% desisted from their transgender identity before reaching the age of 29,[16] and a 2013 study found 63% desisted before age 20.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detransition

12 year olds aren't allowed to get tattoos because they're too young to make permanent changes to their bodies. Taking hormones that mess up puberty or getting surgery is a much more serious change.

Ro Khanna kicks Cenk to the curb
https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1205596802017308673

Now that Dear Leader has endorsed the Genocide Denier, here's a throwback to 2014: The Young Turks Raises $4 Million From GOP Buddy Roemer
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/the-young-turks-network-raises-4-million-from-former-republican-presidential-candidate/

So many RoseBros in the replies trying to claim an article about a grifting, carpetbagging podcaster who takes millions from venture capitalists is an attack on the middle class.
https://twitter.com/eclecticbrotha/status/1205468299653505029?s=21

On Bevin’s pardons, Mitch McConnell said “obviously, I don’t approve. It seems to me it is as completely inappropriate. He has the power to do it, but looking at the examples of people who were incarcerated because of heinous crimes, no, I don’t approve of them.”
https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1205583443591094273

Mike Bloomberg is slated to meet with several influential business executives Thursday to encourage them to back Democratic causes on a national and state level. | “He’ll encourage giving to state parties and the DNC to support efforts across the country to make sure Donald Trump does not get a second term,” Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna told CNBC in a statement. “Many donors have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the primary to play out, and Mike is making it clear we simply cannot wait.” The DNC in particular is in dire straits and needs help in the fundraising game. The organization’s latest monthly finance report shows that it raised just over $9 million during October and is $7 million in debt.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/mike-bloomberg-courts-wall-street-execs-other-megadonors-to-back-dnc.html

New York Gov. Cuomo WRONGLY AND IDIOTICALLY vetoes bill to collect demographic data on Asian American groups. | Advocates said the bill would have helped reveal disparities among Asian American communities and address challenges faced by underserved groups. | “Without the accurate measure of data and commitment from the state that the bill would bring, our community will continue to be marginalized and remain invisible,” Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, D-New York, who sponsored the bill, told NBC News. | While the “model minority myth” suggests that the community is financially well off, research shows that those from the Cambodian and Laotian communities, among others, are more economically vulnerable compared to those from the Chinese or Indian communities, a 2018 report on Asian American wealth disparity points out. Disaggregated data on Asian American and Pacific Islander median household income shows while Bangladeshi Americans make a median of $46,950, Indian Americans make $95,000.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/gov-cuomo-vetoes-bill-would-have-helped-underserved-asian-americans-n1101681?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np

An @NBCNews survey of more than 40 vulnerable House Democrats found only Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who represents the southern tip of New Jersey, plans to vote against the articles of impeachment.
https://twitter.com/NBCPolitics/status/1205643085499305985
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/one-house-democrat-goes-record-opposing-trump-impeachment-n1102011?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_np

Hundreds of thousands of children are abused or neglected in the U.S. each year, but only one federal law directly addresses this tragic reality for children not in state care. The law is routinely violated — with heartbreaking consequences.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-law-says-she-should-have-been-protected-from-birth-instead-she-was-left-in-the-care-of-her-drug-addicted-mother-who-killed-her

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump's financial records case in March 2020, decision not expected until June 2020
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1205603936817885190

For a while now, center left parties across the US and Europe have been losing white voters in non metro areas, particular those without advanced degrees. That's accelerated recently in the US and UK among other places.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586463561269253

When this trend first began to bite last decade, Thomas Frank wrote a hit book, What's The Matter with Kansas that proposed a thesis: that the New Labour/New Dem neo-liberal turn away from populist economics had left these voters with no gripping economic program to vote for.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586464337207297

And like loose electrons, they were easy to draw into the orbit of the Right, which was using culture war and identity politics to bind them to a conservative governing coalition. This has proven pretty prescient. Recently, we've seen right wing parties futher embrace this...
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586465113223174

by turning hard against the neo-liberal trade consensus (Trump and TPP/Nafta, the Tories embracing Brexit) and also railing against immigration. Now, the theory of counter-attack that comes out of this analysis is that center-left parties have to re-embrace their roots.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586465872318464

That is: center economic populism, stand up for workers, rail against the captains of industry, and give people a solid, concrete economic agenda to vote *for.* And there's some good evidence this can be effective. In fact, the reason Obama won re-election in 2012 was...
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586466711232513

largely due to his strong performance in the industrial midwest, based on the auto-rescue and a campaign against Romney that successfully painted him as vulture capitalist. Sherrod Brown has found success in Ohio with a strong, worker-first message and record.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586467449430018

But as the politics of identity grow more powerful, amidst massive global migration flows, there are real limitations here as well. You can't just offer alternate policies, you need to offer an altnerate *identity* for people to vote for, and I'm not sure campaigns can do that.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586468204400640

For decades, that's what the labor movement has done. Organizing isn't just about forming a union and fighting for better wages/working conditions, it's also about building a consciousness and an indentity.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586469034876928

For decades, western center-left parties have been, in a literal sense, the parties of "labor." Built on the backs of organized, mass institutions of working class power. But labor has been mercilessly attacked and gutted, and we're seeing the result.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586469898850305

No matter how mobilized and organized a political campaign or movement is, it's going to have severe limitations in doing the kind of identity-building that labor movements do over the long-term.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586470607699968

But the other, even trickier part of this, is a question of what that counter-identity *is.* In the US, the Trump coalition is comparatively homogenous. The non-Trump coalition is diverse & hetergenous, across lines of class, race and geography. What's the identity that binds it?
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586471454797824

I don't have any answers here, but part of the broader point, I guess, is that we are asking *campaigns* to do a lot of political work that is both necessary and vital, but not sufficent. Not a novel insight, but probably good to consider as campaign season ramps up.
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1205586472239337472

You have to replace the voters you lose. In 2018, Dems made up lost voters with suburban voters. The job, it seems to me, is not to cross pressure voters who dislike Trump’s attacks on democracy and various groups by making them feel economically scared.
https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1205608661827100672

Reminder: After losing his reelection bid, former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin issued pardons and commutations to more than 400 people — including convicted murderers and a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old child.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/13/787811560/on-his-way-out-kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-pardons-murderers-rapists-hundreds-more

Mitch McConnell's stunning and outrageous admission that he is in the tank already for Trump on the trial rules, is a flat violation of the oath he will take as a juror. If a jury foreman in a murder trial was found to have worked closely with the defense he would be prosecuted.
https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1205594159312252937

This is interesting. No one has questioned Congress’s standing to go to court in the past. And if they can’t go court to enforce their subpoenas (article III standing), what remedy does that leave Congress with when people choose to ignore them?
https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1205586955754463232

DC Circuit just ordered up a new round of court papers in House fight for access to Mueller grand jury materials /// Judges want to explore whether House has 'standing' to bring a claim to court in the first place
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6576099/Grand-Jury-Mueller-20191213.pdf

The same technology making your life easier — is being weaponized. See how A.I. you might be familiar with is changing the battlefield.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/100000006082083/lethal-autonomous-weapons.html

Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight through the predawn hours of December 14th. Up to 100 meteors will be possible per hour! #MeteorShower #Space
https://twitter.com/mark_tarello/status/1205532759411888128

1. Trump applied for trademarks in Argentina 2. Trump reached a deal with Argentina and a few other countries to permanently eliminate tariffs 3. Argentina granted two new Trump trademarks 4. Trump administration restored the tariffs Any questions?
https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1205661200190779393
https://www.citizensforethics.org/trump-argentina-trademarks/

A judge ordered the State Department on Friday to expand its search for communications between Pompeo and Giuliani, questioning why its initial search was limited in the first place.
https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article238359678.html