Bernie Sanders Defeats Trump By a Wider Margin Than Clinton in a General Election

Posted: 10/21/2015 11:01 am EDT Updated: 10/21/2015 2:59 pm EDT

H. A. Goodman Become a fan 

Columnist published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Baltimore Sun, The Hill, Salon, The Jerusalem Post www.hagoodman.com

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As a lifelong Democrat against perpetual American counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East, the prospect of a hawkish Democrat or Donald Trump as Commander in Chief isn't acceptable to me, especially when America has a candidate for president who says "I'll be damned" if we send more ground troops back to failed wars.

There are many reasons I'm voting for Bernie Sanders over Trump or Clinton, and I explain these reasons in a recent YouTube segment, however Vermont's Senator will win the Democratic nomination because he's the only chance Democrats have in 2016. I highlight why only Bernie Sanders can defeat Donald Trump in my latest YouTube segment, in addition to why Clinton would have a difficult time against the billionaire.

So why is Bernie our only hope in preventing Trump from ever having a catastrophic encounter with Putin?

First, Real Clear Politics states definitively that polls show Bernie Sanders winning by a wider margin than Clinton over Trump:

RCP Average 47.2 42.0 Sanders +5.2

CNN/ORC 53 44 Sanders +9
PPP 44 44 Tie
NBC News/Wall St. 52 36 Sanders +16
Quinnipiac 47 42 Sanders +5
SurveyUSA 40 44 Trump +4

Compared to Hillary Clinton:

RCP Average 45.7 43.2 Clinton +2.5

CNN/ORC 50 45 Clinton +5
FOX News 40 45 Trump +5
PPP (D) 44 44 Tie
NBC News/Wall St. 49 39 Clinton +10
Quinnipiac 45 43 Clinton +2
ABC News/Wash Post 46 43 Clinton +3

While the most favorable poll for both Democrats is the NBC News/Wall St. poll, Sanders beats Trump in this poll by 16 points, as opposed to Clinton's 10 point lead. CNN has Sanders beating Trump by 4 points more than Hillary Clinton and overall, the Democratic-Socialist from Vermont defeats Trump in all the polls by an average of 5.2 points, as opposed to 2.5 points for Clinton.

Most importantly, Democrats need a foil, or the opposite of the New York billionaire, not the former Senator from New York who's proud of once representing Wall Street. A recent POLITICO article titled Trump has spent years courting Hillary and other Dems explains that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have a long history with one another:

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner and former New York senator who had some say over policy that could have impacted Trump's vast business dealings, received donations from both him and son Donald Trump Jr. on separate occasions in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to state and federal disclosure records.

Trump has also been generous with the Clinton Foundation, donating at least $100,000, according to the non-profit.

...She wasn't the only Democratic beneficiary of Trump's wealth. Trump donated $5,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $20,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 cycle, effectively buoying the election prospects of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, respectively.

Just $1,000 of Trump's money in the 2006 cycle went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The last time Trump considered a White House run in 2011, reporters seized upon the fact that he has given most of his money to Democrats and Democratic causes, according to records.

While Bernie Sanders is the antithesis of the GOP and especially Trump, Clinton has received money from the billionaire. In terms of the Democratic establishment, years ago "reporters seized upon the fact" that Trump gave so much money to Democrats; a fact he could utilize to his advantage by saying he won't accept foreign donations or donations from rival political parties like Clinton.

As for why he gives to all politicians, Trump is quoted by ABC News as saying, "And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them."

Regarding the ongoing FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, rest assured that Trump would do his best to discuss the matter during the entire presidential debates if Clinton is the Democratic nominee. There are simply too many political arrows to hurl at Clinton if you're Donald Trump, and unlike a classy and gracious Bernie Sanders, the billionaire would relentlessly attack Clinton's credibility, honesty, trustworthiness, ties to billionaires like himself, and links to Wall Street.

As for Clinton's ties to investment banks and conservative views on Wall Street, the banking community would be happy with either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, according to a Washington Post article titled The long-running (and unchanging) Wall Street primary between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush:

A "Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said over lunch in midtown" for that article that, "if it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine. We could live with either one." The remarks by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein that either Bush or Clinton would be great -- remarks that Martin O'Malley is doing his current best to make famous and undercut Clinton -- are also referenced. "Those would be two very good choices and we'd be perfectly happy with them," a "person close to Blankfein" told White and Haberman.

The fact that Wall Street isn't frightened by another Clinton presidency ties into negative favorability numbers for Hillary Clinton. According to a recent CNN poll, "57 percent of Americans say she is not honest and trustworthy." Another CNN poll states55% of registered voters have an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton. As for swing states, July and August Quinnipiac Swing State polls find that swing states have negative favorability of Clinton and voters believe she is "not honest and trustworthy."

In contrast, Donald Trump is the embodiment of the "billionaire class," an arrogant and brash tycoon who thinks for some reason he's qualified to run the country. Against Sanders, Trump would be on the defensive. A recent Real Clear Politics article quotes Bernie Sanders as explaining why people like Donald Trump will be paying their share of taxes under a Sanders presidency:

What we have seen in the last 30 years, as most Americans know, is a massive redistribution of wealth, unfortunately it has gone in the wrong direction. From the middle class and working families to Donald Trump and his friends, the top one tenth of 1%.

Yes, let me be clear, if we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition free, as I believe we have to, in the 21st Century, yeah, we are going to have a tax on Wall Street speculation, yes we are going ask Trump and his billionaire friends to pay more taxes... We'll come up with a rate, but it will be a damn lot higher than it is now.

It's unimaginable that Hillary Clinton would ever speak in such terms, and since Clinton doesn't even want to reinstate Glass-Steagall, only Bernie Sanders offers Democrats a true ideological challenge to the GOP.

Can Bernie Sanders win a general election?

Well, not only can he win a general election, but he beats Donald Trump by a greater margin than Clinton.

Sanders doesn't have the scandals or honesty issues that Trump could pounce upon in a debate, and Bernie matches up nicely with Trump in a general election for numerous other reasons. Ultimately, Donald Trump embodies every single warning of Bernie Sanders pertaining to money in politics and billionaires controlling the fate of our nation.

With Hillary Clinton's FBI email investigation most likely running through Election Day, the only way U.S. nuclear launch codes get anywhere near a President Donald Trump is if the billionaire gets to debate Hillary Clinton on a national stage. Comfortable on screen and in his element, even Trump's nauseating arrogance would allow him to harp endlessly upon Clinton's email issues and prior controversies. In fact, Hillary Clinton might even lose decisively against Trump, primarily because the billionaire donated to her Foundation and the FBI investigation undermines her credibility.

With Bernie Sanders, the New York billionaire is reduced to a caricature of himself, and the personification of everything wrong in politics. Bernie Sanders is the only hope for Democrats against Trump and polls already show the Democratic-Socialist and Democratic candidate winning. In reality, only Bernie Sanders can save Democrats, and most importantly, the United States of America from a reality show in the White House. For this reason, in addition to many other advantages Sanders offers Democrats, the Vermont Senator will win the nomination and eventually the presidency.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

San Diego company slaps ‘Pharma Bro’ down by offering same cancer drug for $1 a pill

San Diego company slaps ‘Pharma Bro’ down by offering same cancer drug for $1 a pill

ARTURO GARCIA
22 OCT 2015 AT 18:18 ET                   

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Martin Shkreli (Twitter)

A San Diego-based company announced on Thursday that it would compete with Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals by offering the same drug used to help AIDS and cancer patients for $1 a pill, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, a compounding-drug firm, said it would begin selling its own version of the generic drug pyrimethamine, which Turing was marketing under the name Daraprim. Shkreli was roundly criticized last month after his company raised the price for the drug from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill after acquiring the patent.

The version Imprimis will be selling includes pyrimethamine and another generic drug, leucovorin, which is typically used to help cancer patients going through chemotherapy. The two drugs are the active ingredients in Daraprim.

Mark Baum, Imprimis’ CEO, said his company plans to offer similar compounded drugs soon.

“We are looking at all of these cases where the sole-source generic companies are jacking the price way up,” he told the Associated Press. “There’ll be many more of these.”

According to Baum, his company’s mix of the two drugs has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. However, both the ingredients themselves and the company’s compounding work have been approved. The drug can only be sold after being prescribed by a doctor to a specific individual. The company is selling a bottle of 100 pills for $99 through its website.

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Protests Planned as Police Explain Gaslamp Death

Protests Planned as Police Explain Gaslamp Death Posted: 22 Oct 2015 10:37 AM PDT By Doug Porter  As of this morning, police in the United States have killed 927 people this year. Number 925 on the Guardian’s list was Lamontez Jones, age 39, who died at Sixth and F Streets in San Diego’s Gaslamp District. He was, according to activists with United Against Police Terror (UAPTSD), the ninth person killed by law enforcement in San Diego this year. Media reports say Jones was shot by two motorcycle officers when he pulled a gun replica on them as they chased him through downtown San Diego Tuesday afternoon. The body cams worn by the policemen were not activated before or during the encounter. Department procedure is to turn them on prior to arriving on the scene. Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman defended the officers failure to activate the cameras at a press conference, saying officer- and public- safety concerns are more important than use of the devices.   [Read more...]

shared from San Diego Free Press Poor Mayor Faulconer Posted: 22 Oct 2015 07:16 AM PDT By Norma Damashek It's enough to make you cringe, the way they toy with our mayor – those brawny Chargers/ Rams/ Raiders sports team owners, our insatiable hotel magnates, those downtown real estate purveyors, our Chamber of Commerce henchmen.  So many entitled guys diddling with our small-time politicians just for the fun of it, passing the time until they clinch their publicly-subsidized, taxpayer-financed killer deals. But our mayor is a goodnatured sport.  He wears his what-me-worry grin even when he's left flapping in the breeze, flailing like wet underwear strung up on the clothesline to dry.  One minute limp and aimless.  The next minute puffed up and billowing like a hot-air facsimile of a political contender hoping to score in big-boy Republican Party politics. If presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is right about our country’s soul being captured by  mega-rich plutocrats bent on controlling the nation's politics and economy, these megalomaniacs must have done their internships in San Diego.   [Read more...]

Wonder Where San Diego’s Redevelopment Money Went? Posted: 22 Oct 2015 07:04 AM PDT ...Not to address homelessness By Jeeni Criscenzo/ Part one of a series Since the statewide dissolution of redevelopment agencies in 2011 Katheryn Rhodes, a local advocate for homeless people, has been speaking up at City Council meetings about the millions of dollars that could be used to address homelessness that the City is letting slip away. You’d think that someone suggesting that there is money available for a problem that is starved for adequate funding, would get an eager audience. Problem is, no one seemed to understand the reams of spreadsheets and data the soft-spoken Rhodes provided to support her claims. At a recent event, I told City Councilmember Gloria that I believe Rhodes claims have merit, but I’m at a loss how to explain it. He sighed, admitting no one seems to be able to figure it out. That’s actually progress because for the past five years eye-rolling has been the usual response to Rhodes’ requests to consider her findings. Reasonably smart people, myself included, assumed that since theycouldn’t make sense of the myriad of acronyms, encumbrances and legal requirements Rhodes offered to support her claims, that she is either a financial savant or a flake. No one likes to admit that something is too complex for them to comprehend.  [Read more...]

South Bay’s Future Greenbelt: An Interview with San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox Posted: 22 Oct 2015 06:45 AM PDT By Barbara Zaragoza / Part Three of Four The big new items that Supervisor Cox shared with me during his interview were three visions for the South Bay's future: A "barrio to barrio" bike path, which will link the Virginia Avenue Pedestrian entrance at the border (due to open in 2016) to the Bayshore Bikeway; The Bayshore Bikeway completion within the next 5 years. This will become the major artery through the South Bay, linking North and South, East and West, to the Pacific Ocean to Otay Ranch. It will also link into the California Coastal Trail that spans up to the Oregon border; The Sweetwater Reservoir will eventually have a completed loop for hikers, bikers and, most importantly, equestrians.   [Read more...]

Geothermal: The Other California Renewable Posted: 22 Oct 2015 06:40 AM PDT By Peg Mitchell / SanDiego350 Burning less coal, oil and gas is not only something we must do, but something we can do. Nature gives us a variety of renewable energy sources, and the technology to tap into them is getting better all the time. Climate change makes the news often for a variety of reasons, from the multiple impacts we have been witnessing locally -- drought, record-breaking temperatures, mudslides, fires -- to the President’s issuance of the “Clean Power Plan” to the Pope’s encyclical. But ultimately climate change discussions must focus on economically viable solutions. We are fortunate to live in a state that has ample natural non-fossil-fuel resources to provide electricity for our citizens. Not only do we have an abundance of sun to power solar generation, but we have a reliable steady-state resource right in our backyard: the Salton Sea Known Geothermal Resource Area in the Imperial Valley. The geothermal fields near the Salton Sea are the hottest, most prolific resource in the U.S.   [Read more...]

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

Proof That The Benghazi Investigation Is Totally Unlike Any Other, In Two Charts

It's the day of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearing, and Republicans are trying desperately to prove that their investigation isn't politically motivated. These two chartssuggest that's not true. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) demanded the support of all major House GOP caucuses as a condition for running for Speaker of the House, but hedoesn't have the numbers for a formal endorsement from the hardline Freedom Caucus. Your move, Ryan. And, new rules from the FCC will dramatically lower the cost of prison phone calls -- making it possible for these kids to talk to their parents. Proof That The Benghazi Investigation Is Totally Unlike Any Other, In Two Charts On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will testify in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, where Republicans will try to prove that the former secretary of state mishandled the events leading up to and following the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. ...(read more) Chairman Of Benghazi Committee Slams Republicans For Botching Five Previous Benghazi Investigations Ted Cruz Is Tying His Campaign To The Speaker Shake-Up And Conservative Voters Are Loving It KEOKUK, IA — As Washington continued to deal with a leadership crisis in the House of Representatives last week, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz took a campaign swing through Iowa, riding a wave of support he has received as a result of the mess in Congress....(read more) 10 Freedom Caucus Members Publicly Reject Paul Ryan, Enough To Doom His Candidacy For Speaker BREAKING: Federal Communications Agency Votes To Drastically Lower Prison Phone Rates WASHINGTON, D.C. — Twelve-year-old Kevin Reese III is one of the 2.7 million children in the U.S. with a parent in prison. On Thursday, he traveled across the country to see the Federal Communications Commission vote on a new rule that would make it much more affordable for him to call his father, who has been locked up in the Lino Lakes Correctional Facility in Minnesota since he was an infant. ...(read more) ThinkProgress | Center for American Progress Action Fund 1333 H ST NW | Washington, DC 20005 Contributions to Center for American Progress Action Fund are not tax deductible

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

LETTER FROM SACRAMENTO: Oil Money and Politics

Dear Friend, You have probably heard by now that the oil industry played hard this year - and spent untold millions of dollars - to kill or weaken legislation that would have reduced California's dependence on their most polluting products. Some of those millions were spent on the people that you voted to represent you in Sacramento. Spending money to influence legislators isn't new. Sierra Club California does that every day when our staff goes to work. Much of the money we spend on staff salaries counts as lobbying money. During election cycles, our volunteers and supporters contribute money to our political action committee and then the committee contributes money to legislative candidates that earn Club endorsement (which itself is a multi-tiered, volunteer-led process). The typical contribution isn't a lot-usually $250 or $500. But it firmly signals our support. Campaigning in this state requires candidates to become money-begging machines. Recently I met with a first-time legislative candidate who lamented that he was spending at least 3 hours a day calling people asking for money to wage a campaign - that was in addition to planning fundraisers, brushing up on policy issues, meeting with issue experts and doing his regular day job. On certain days, if you are walking near the capitol in the afternoon, you'll see legislators walking alone to any of several campaign fundraisers' offices where they spend their lunch hour -- or more -- dialing for dollars. Campaigns are expensive. An Assembly campaign costs more than a million dollars in some districts, and in most urban districts, a candidate isn't considered a serious contender in a race for an open seat unless he or she has accumulated a couple of hundred thousand before the election year starts. So it figures that many legislators will be open to money from anywhere they can find it. Or does it? Is it right, really, in an era when we know that using oil is creating serious global climate change and local air pollution, to take money from the oil industry to win elective office? Some legislators will argue that just taking the oil industry's money doesn't mean that the oil industry owns their vote. That's true for some and it plays out that way in the Capitol for some. In one of his more amusing and overtly sexist statements, the late state treasurer and political godfather Jesse Unruh said decades ago about money from lobbyists: "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money and then vote against them you've got no business being up here." That may be true, but the best way to signal that an industry has no control over you is to do as another former political presence, Nancy Reagan, urged about the appropriate response to drug dealers: "Just say no." We recently published our annual report card on legislators and their votes . Some legislators, given a chance to vote on bills that were opposed heavily by the oil industry, chose to not vote at all or to vote against the bills. Good examples of such bills are Senate Bill 32 (which would have codified strong greenhouse gas reduction goals for 2050), Senate Bill 454 and Assembly Bill 356 (both of which would have protected groundwater from oil waste injection). A friend of ours helped us use the Secretary of State's new search tool, called Power Search, to examine campaign finance records spanning the period of January 1, 2014 through September 15, 2015. What we ended up with was a nice graphic that shows which legislators received oil industry contributions during that time, and how much they received. The numbers we show probably underestimate the oil industry's giving to some campaigns. For instance, our figures don't include money that the industry gave to political parties or caucuses that would later be distributed to candidates. Of the top ten recipients of oil money in our analysis, seven are Democrats whose score on our legislative report card was 67 percent or lower. That means they would get a D or F grade on their environmental performance. These were Susan Bonilla, Jim Cooper, Adam Gray, Rudy Salas, Jr., Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Michael Gipson and Cheryl Brown. Interestingly, some of the leaders of the drive to weaken or kill environmental bills that addressed oil this year didn't make it into the top 10 recipients. Jim Frazier and Henry Perea, for instance, collected less than half the oil money that Susan Bonilla did, and ranked 16th and 17th by amount collected. But they still collected more than $15,000. Perea scored a 67 percent on our report card, and Frazier scored a 56 percent. We don't know how much the oil money influenced these legislators. However, some of these numbers alone suggest that money made a difference. But here's an idea: Don't make assumptions about your legislators. Instead, look at the report card and the oil chart. If the numbers look suspicious to you, then call your legislators and ask what difference getting that much oil money makes in their decisions on environmental issues. If they say none-and a lot will likely say none-then ask if they are willing to stop taking oil money. If you don't know who your legislators are, you can find out here. Then you can look up their phone numbers at assembly.ca.gov or senate.ca.gov. Now go make those calls. And let me know what you hear. Sincerely, Kathryn Phillips Director

The TRUTH will set you FREE.

How Bernie Sanders Should Talk About Democratic Socialism

How Bernie Sanders Should Talk About Democratic Socialism   Instead of looking to Europe, Sanders could evoke the rich heritage of American radicalism.   ERIC FONER

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