Mike Whitney — Jill Stein in the Cross-Hairs

The Russia Investigation shifts to Clinton's Political Rivals

Jumping the shark?

How long are American liberals going to put up with this nonsense? How long before they wash the mud from their eyes and acknowledge what should be as plain as the nose on their face; that their precious investigation of Donald Trump is nothing more than a witch hunt designed to intimidate or destroy political rivals?

The persecution of Jill Stein strips away the facade once and for all exposing Russia-gate as a complete fraud that is being used to exact revenge on the adversaries of Hillary Clinton and her reprobate friends. The New York Times even admits as much.
Why is there still no evidence of wrongdoing after more than a year of non-stop investigations? Why are there just accusations, allegations and baseless claims?

Take a hard look at the Stein case and you’ll understand why. The meat-puppet senators who are conducting these wretched show trials don’t give a damn about the truth. They know the case against Stein is completely fabricated. They also know they can carry on with complete impunity because the big money powerbrokers who pull their strings and order them about, are beyond the reach of the any legal accountability. That’s what’s really really going on, the fatcat honchos behind the scenes are just settling scores for Hillary’s lost election. It’s payback time for the Clinton Mafia....

The Unz Review
Jill Stein in the Cross-Hairs

Mike Whitney

Nothing new, actually.

Counterpunch (August 5, 2016)
Smearing Stein: Media as Propaganda
Peter A. Lavenia

Taylor Link — Jill Stein denies being a puppet of Russia, blames Democrats for scapegoating election loss

WTF?  How long will take for the Democratic Party to erase the blot of McCarthyism in smearing Donald Trump and Jill Stein, and conspiring to deny Bernie Sanders a fair shot at the nomination?

Unless candidates for office in upcoming elections denounce it. And start critiquing themselves in earnest for their mistakes rather than trying to foist the blame on others by smearing them.

Democratic losses in special elections recently are sending a signal that is apparently not be received, or being interpreted badly.

And it is not only the Democratic Establishment that is caught up in this folly. A lot of so-called Progressive Democrats aka Bernie Democrats are too.

Losers.

Salon
Jill Stein denies being a puppet of Russia, blames Democrats for scapegoating election loss

Taylor Link

Robert Parry — Clinton’s ‘Russia Did It’ Cop-out

The Clinton machine – running on fumes after Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid – is pulling out all remaining stops to block Donald Trump’s inauguration, even sinking into a new McCarthyism.

In joining a recount effort with slim hopes of reversing the election results, Clinton campaign counsel Marc Elias cited a scurrilous Washington Post article that relied on a shadowy anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that issued a “black list” against 200 or so Internet sites, including some of the most respected sources of independent journalism, claiming they are part of some Russian propaganda network.

In classic McCarthyistic fashion, no evidence was supplied, simply an anonymous smear....

But the Democrats risk a bleak political future if they don’t break away from the corporatist model that Bill and Hillary Clinton have personified over the past quarter century. Or maybe the Democrats can just keep on blaming the Russians.

Consortium News
Clinton’s ‘Russia Did It’ Cop-out

Robert Parry

Sophia Tesfaye — Ron Paul Suggests Support for Jill Stein, Admits He Is 'Disappointed' by Gary Johnson

As you may have noticed, I'm staying away from politics here lately since everyone seems to have had enough it, but this is a shocker I couldn't resist.

“She’s probably the best on foreign policy at the moment,” Paul said of the Green Party nominee on Monday.

AlterNet
Ron Paul Suggests Support for Jill Stein, Admits He Is 'Disappointed' by Gary Johnson
Sophia Tesfaye, Salon

Adam Johnson — Stoking Russia Panic for Partisan Gain Will Have a Long-Term Price for Peace

On Saturday’s episode of AM Joy with Joy Ann Reid, guest Malcolm Nance, a former Naval intelligence officer, summed up MSNBC’s Russia panic with this quote:

Joy Ann Reid: Because from what I’ve seen, the only people not with Hillary Clinton at this point…are people in the Jill Stein camp. Jill Stein was sitting at Putin’s table right with General Flynn.

Malcolm Nance: Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein doesn’t have a show at all, let alone on RT. She once attended a function hosted by RT, which, by our current standards of liberal discourse, makes her a Kremlin agent, but the fact that such a demonstrably false statement could be made on cable news to thousands of people without anyone bothering to correct it shows how easy Russia panic is to stoke.

Earlier in the segment, Nance made the claim that “someone” in Trump’s campaign “may” be an “agent of Russia,” citing a recent report in the Financial Times (8/19/16) alleging that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s former translator “may” have “links” to Russian intelligence.

The irony, of course, is that Nance himself has far more recent and better documented ties to US intelligence, but MSNBC feels no need to convince viewers he is not a CIA plant spreading disinformation.…

It gets even worse as it goes. Not only smearing Trump and Putin, but now Jill Stein, too. Beyond McCarthyism. Sick (psychopathological).

MSNBC the new Fox? Looking that way. I stopped watching them sometime after Keith got the boot and before Cenk resigned in protest of manipulation.

FAIR — Fairness & Accuracy in News Reporting
Stoking Russia Panic for Partisan Gain Will Have a Long-Term Price for Peace
Adam Johnson

Also

Medium
The Arizona Election Hack Story Is An Embarrassment To Everyone Involved
Jeffrey Carr

Washington Babylon
Trump, the Manchurian Candidate: One of Election 2016’s crudest smears
Paul Starobin | former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week

Anti-War
The Campaign to Blame Putin for Everything — Who’s behind it?
Justin Raimondo

Adam Johnson

Kit O'Connell — Red Scare 2016: As Green Party Power Grows, Jill Stein Accused Of Ties To Putin

Hillary turns the Joe McCarthy playbook on Jill after The Donald.

Mint Press
Red Scare 2016: As Green Party Power Grows, Jill Stein Accused Of Ties To Putin
Kit O'Connell

Sputnik — Hillary Ally Accuses Green Party’s Jill Stein of Being Trump-like Russian Agent

As was first noticed by The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald via Twitter: John Aravosis, the editor of the pro-Hillary AMERICAblog and a former colleague of the presidential candidate during his time with the Children’s Defense Fund, penned an attack editorial against Jill Stein on Saturday alleging that the anti-war Green Party candidate was somehow in league with Russia.

Not just HRC that "unhinged." Seems like it is catching in the Democratic Party this season. They have gone full Joe McCarthy.

Sputnik
Hillary Ally Accuses Green Party’s Jill Stein of Being Trump-like Russian Agent

Ellen Brown — Can Jill Carry Bernie’s Baton? A Look at the Green Candidate’s Radical Funding Solution

The platinum coin resurfaces as Plan B.

Counterpunch
Can Jill Carry Bernie’s Baton? A Look at the Green Candidate’s Radical Funding Solution

Ellen Brown

CNN — Bernie endorses Hillary — Reactions

"I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president," Sanders said at a joint rally here.CNN

Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton
MJ Lee, Dan Merica and Jeff Zeleny, CNN

Updated 2:19 PM ET, Tue July 12, 2016

What is most disappointing is that Sanders has refused invitations to speak to the Green Party, a truly democratic national party that has long championed the progressive stands that lifted the Sanders campaign to the top of national polls.

Fortunately, this November voters across America will still have the choice to cast a revolutionary vote to cancel student debt, achieve full employment and stop the climate meltdown through a Green New Deal, provide universal healthcare with Medicare for All, provide a welcoming path to citizenship, end mass incarceration and create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights. We need to commit to improving the lives of all Americans, not just the wealthy and special interests.

Counterpunch
Revolution Undermined: On Bernie Sanders’s Endorsement of Hillary Clinton

Jill Stein

Bernie Endorses Hillary.

How disgusting is that?

Not surprising. Predictable in fact. But disgusting nonetheless.

Brilliant Bernie Burns It Down

Russell Mokhiber

Andrea Germanos — Green Party's Jill Stein: Sanders Can Lead My Party's Ticket

Presumptive Green Party candidate for U.S. President Jill Stein has reiterated her offer for Bernie Sanders to head that party's ticket instead, where—unlike in the Democratic party—she says he'd be able to continue to "build a political movement."

Stein's new comments to the Guardian US come as the Vermont senator has signaled he may soon offer an endorsement of rival Hillary Clinton.

Stein, who also ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012, told the Guardian US: "If he saw that you can't have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he'd be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement," she said.

It's a suggestion she's made already this campaign season.…

According to Stein, "in many ways, the Democratic Party creates campaigns that fake left while it moves right and becomes more corporatist, more militarist, more imperialist.

This is why we say it's hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party. That's why we're here as the Green Party to build a place where a revolutionary movement can truly grow with a political voice."

Is Bernie a real revolutionary or just another bag of hot air?

Common Dreams

Green Party's Jill Stein: Sanders Can Lead My Party's Ticket
Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Kshama Sawant — Beyond Bernie: Still Not With Her

A huge debate is unfolding among millions of Bernie’s backers, providing an enormous opportunity for the left to raise the need for a political alternative to the Democratic Party. That’s why Movement4Bernie and Socialist Alternative are organizing a series of forums in dozens of cities across the country titled “Beyond Bernie: We Need a Party for the 99%.” These forums will both mobilize for the largest possible protests at the Democratic National Convention and create space for a broad-based debate on the way forward for the political revolution. My message at the events will be clear: If Bernie refuses to break from the Democratic Party, our movement should back Jill Stein as the strongest left alternative in the presidential election and use 2016 to prepare the ground for building a new movement-based political alternative.…

This lady is super-articulate and she is on fire. I sense a leader.

Having a PhD in economics and coming from a socialist POV, she seems ultimately reachable by MMT and a Lerner-Kalecki-Sraffian-Post Keynesian approach to political economy.

Counterpunch
Beyond Bernie: Still Not With Her
Kshama Sawant

Kshama Sawant is an American politician who sits on the Seattle City Council. A former software engineer, Sawant became a socialist activist and part-time economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States. Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington State House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916.…

Shocked by the level of poverty she saw [after emigrating to the US], Sawant decided to abandon the computer engineering field. She pursued studies in economics because of what she described as her own "questions of economic inequality." She entered the economics program at North Carolina State University where she earned a PhD. Her dissertation was titled Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy. Sawant moved to Seattle in 2006 and became a Socialist Alternative party member. She became a United States citizen in 2010. — Wikipedia

Green Party's Jill Stein Shares Her "Plan B" for Bernie Sanders Supporters: A Green New Deal — Candice Bernd interviews Jill Stein

As Bernie Sanders' voters begin facing the question of whether or not to support Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton if she becomes the party's nominee, many of his supporters have pledged never to support her. In fact, voters in both major parties are seeking alternatives in this year's presidential election -- and third-party candidates are seeing an explosion in social media interest in their campaigns.

Jill Stein is the presumptive nominee of the Green Party in 2016. The main planks of her presidential platform include a "Green New Deal," ending mass incarceration and police brutality, ending wars and drone attacks, a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, a single-payer health care system, universal public education and the abolition of student debt, breaking up big banks and nationalizing the Federal Reserve, initiating a global treaty to reverse climate change and ending extreme forms of extraction.

Truthout spoke with Stein before she headed out to Seattle as part of her ongoing "listening tour" of frontline communities struggling for justice. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sounds good to me.

Not clear on the financing but she mentions QE. May be thinking of overt money financing?

Truthout
Green Party's Jill Stein Shares Her "Plan B" for Bernie Sanders Supporters: A Green New Deal
Candice Bernd interviews Jill Stein

Ted Rall — Hillary to Bernie Supporters: Don’t Vote for Me!

Hey Bernie supporters: Hillary has a talking point for you.

Confident that she has the Democratic nomination pretty much locked down and turning toward a general election contest against Donald Trump, Secretary Clinton’s surrogates and paid Internet trolls are targeting Sanders devotees via email and seeding comment threads on political websites with a low-key sales pitch.

It goes like this: We’re not asking you to vote for Hillary in November. We are asking you to work for and donate to “down ticket” Democratic candidates for Congress, governor, state rep and so on. Oh, and if you could kindly hold your fire against Hillary — because those attacks help Trump — that would be awesome too, thanks.

Like all things Clinton, this tightly scripted DNC-approved don’t-vote-for-me-vote-for-other-Dems argument carries more than a whiff of triangulation, big data analytics and well-managed focus groups. 

It also reeks of desperation.…

Hillaryites are sweating the progressive #BernieorBust movement — a recent poll of Sanders voters found one out of four swearing they won’t vote for Clinton in November, no way, no how. Like Miley Cyrus’ pledge to leave the U.S. if Trump wins, these promises are more hot air than statements of serious intent. But it’s not like that 25% drops to 0 by November 8th. Some Berners will stay home on election day. Disaffected Sanderians will give Jill Stein’s Green Party the biggest surge it has ever seen. (That’s probably how I’ll roll.)

And yes — despite the opinions of the center-right pundits who have been wrong about everything all year long — a significant number of liberal Democrats will defect to Donald Trump. As a friend told me, “I always vote Democratic. In this race, Donald Trump is the Democrat and Hillary Clinton is the Republican.”

Counterpunch
Hillary to Bernie Supporters: Don’t Vote for Me!

Ted Rall

Bernie Sanders’ defeats in the East Coast primaries have triggered a flurry of conversation about what the 25 to 35% of Sanders supporters who’ve told pollsters they will not vote for Hillary Clinton will do instead. Socialist Alternative, led by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, and others have called for Sanders to found an independent left party for the 99% and run as an independent, or to appeal to Jill Stein and the Green Party to join their ticket, despite his oft repeated promise to endorse the Democrats’ nominee.

With little time left to get a new party on the ballot in most states, I looked into Green Party ballot access in the 50 states and spoke to Georgia Green Party activist and Black Agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce Dixon.…

Building the Greens Into a Mass Party: Interview with Bruce Dixon

Ann Garrison

In her campaign Stein advocates much of what Sanders is offering plus more with her Green New Deal plan, which will create millions of jobs by transitioning to 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture and conservation. This Green New Deal will also immediately get the country out of the endless wars for oil that is costing the taxpayers hundreds of trillions of dollars.…

The Story of Jill Stein: Putting People, Peace and the Planet Before Profits
Leslie Scott