Bernie Sanders

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I constantly read fawning articles and blogs about Sanders, or comments about how good he would be as President, and so on. [1] Which on one hand is fine, I really don’t care who you like or want to vote for. (Though I do feel embarrassed for the papers bad journalism). But I really only care what truths you’ll sacrifice for your agenda. And most Sanders supporters either don’t know about the guy, or think that lies of omission are OK, if you really care enough.. Here's what I found doing a little research.

Issue Lie Truth
Bernie Sanders He's a nice democratic socialist, which just means he wants us to be more like Socialist Scandinavia, but he's honest, moderate, and successful. He was a radical socialist and a failure, that has accomplished little but figuring out how to mooch off a hippie state by telling them he was their man to get the free stuff (take stuff from others). Scandinavia is far from utopia, and they are not socialist. And he’s a bit two-faced, like he plays anti-war, except for his support of the wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo, and for the F-35 or any military program in his state. He talks the working man, while he made millions off the government and has multiple homes. And so on.

Issues

Bernie : 15 items


Bernies Early Years - You could not find a more left leaning candidate: he's extreme as they come. A member of the Young Socialists League, he never met an individual liberty that he cared about (at least more than the collectives power). In Denmark they have a concept called the Law of Jante — which is basically that the individual isn't worth shit, and those that try to achieve and stand out are arrogant pricks. While he isn’t world-wise or well versed enough to comment on that, it sums up his philosophy in a nutshell. As someone joked, he'd make a good President... of Sweden: but that's not true, since they are much more pro-Business than he thinks (lower Corporate taxes than the U.S. for example), even they don't believe in killing the Golden Goose of business like he does.
  • As a College kid he was involved or had associations with the Young People’s Socialist League. I don't think the dumbest thing you did in College is relevant to who you are 50 or 100 years later, but the Democrats seem to think that what Romney did in Prep School was attack worthy. And the issue is more whether people denounce or have grown since the mistakes of youth. Bernie has shown zero evidence of maturing as he ages. He matures more like rotting meat than a fine wine.
  • Sanders was asked to leave a hippie commune for being too lazy[2]
  • Sanders joined the Vermont Liberty Union Party in 1971, which describes themselves as "a nonviolent socialist party" (and ran for Governor twice on their ticket 1972, 1976, and failed, with never more than single digit support), then he was their chairperson for a few years after that.[3]
  • He wrote in an op-ed that Congress should “institute public ownership, with worker control, of the major means of production" and told the Bennington Banner that a “sane society” required that “capital has to be controlled by the people.”[4]
  • He backed backed Benjamin Spock (Socialist Workers Party) as a presidential candidate: calling for a maximum income of $55,000.[5]
  • By 1980 he served as a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers’ Party (Trotskyists, whose platform was the total abolition of capitalism and economic freedom). And he still labels himself a Democratic Socialist (an oxymoron). [6] Reagan said, "government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem". Sanders is no Reagan, he's the anti-Reagan.
  • In 1988 he Honeymooned in the USSR, because that's where his heart was. [7]
  • Bernie plays the poor kid with "my family lived in three-and-a-half-room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn" -- but they sent him to the University of Chicago, where he got a B.A. in Political Science. Then proceeded to do nothing but be a radical and agitator, driving around in his bondo covered VW bug.
  • His first wife divorced him quickly, he had a kid out of wedlock with another woman
  • He tried to be an carpenter before failing at that
  • He tried his hand freelance writing for far left rags like the Vermont Freeman with such gems as "Man and Woman" where he said that while having sex, every woman fantasizes about being raped by 3 men simultaneously. But he failed at that.
  • Then he tried his hand at creating documentaries for public television... but even they have standards. So he failed again.
  • He was and is a hippie, and according to his friends, "The only thing he was every good at, is talking non-stop about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off", and he found an audience in the Hippie Enclaves of Vermont, but that's a long ways from being a competent or qualified Presidential Candidate.
  • He got his first real job at the age of 40 as mayor of Burlington (by a margin of 10 votes). If you call government politician a "real job".
  • To this day, despite a $200K Senator's Salary, all he has to his name is over $65K in credit card debt (virtually everything is in his wife's name). But he has managed to buy himself a multi-million home (or three) off his book deals, while he cries poor. Never since Truman have we had a Presidential Candidate that achieved less in his life. [8]
NOTE: I don't hate hippies. But there are a few kinds of hippies. The hard working kind, that wanted to be in a commune, free love, get stoned, but also could hold a job, help out around the farm, and fund their own lifestyle. Or the ones that liked parts of the lifestyle, but could admit/learn some of the shortcomings and grow. I love and respect those kinds, and don't judge their choices in life, even if they aren't mine. Then there's stoner living in his mom's basement, railing about the bitch that won't raise his allowance, and who steals other kids bikes:the hippie-ocrites that want to fix the problems with tyranny, by becoming the tyrants. Bernie isn't the adorable former kind of hippie.



NYT Kavanaugh Smear -
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Acting as a DNC's mouthpiece, the NYT published a hit-piece by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who were promoting their book attacking Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for being a sexual harasser. The shocking new allegation was about Brett having someone else put his penis in a girls hand during a party. This resulted in all the far lefties (Warren, Sanders, Harris, Booker, Buttigieg, The Squad) demanding Brett's impeachment before any conviction or evidence. The bigger problem is this scoop had already been investigated (and discounted), the woman (victim) doesn't have any memory of it happening, there are no other witnesses who corroborate it (and many that came forward to defend Brett), assuming we can imagine how some other friend can even get your penis to put it in someone else's hand. But the problem is how did a story that all other newspapers had passed on as being non-credible, make it past the times editors, after having all the exculpatory evidence get omitted from the article, get tweeted about, and get repeated on NPR. Even the other left-wing media outlets called bullshit on the NYT and said this was a big embarrassment for real journalism, while the Times has been distracting, attacking, blaming Fox for blowing this up, and changing the topic, and doing anything but sincerely apologizing and firing those responsible.

Bernie and English -
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I know english is hard, but it is his native language. He tweeted that a bunch of nouns were adjectives, showing he knows as much about the English Language as he does about economics. Then there's the fact that the tweet misses on logic and reality: it is Wall St.'s capital liquidity and investment that has enabled the U.S.'s economic growth and jobs.

A friend defended him with, “probably just one of his Interns"... to which I replied, "Agreed... Maybe if he paid them $15/hour livable wage, they'd do a better job?" (They've been suing him for demanding $15 livable wage, and not paying them that rate). But the prime

🗒️ NOTE:
The prime rebuttal was:
  • In Venezuela the socialists run out of toilet paper.
  • In the U.K. the socialists run out of hospital beds.
  • In the U.S.S.R. they ran out of housing.
  • In China they ran out of food.
  • But in the U.S.A. the socialists run out of nouns.


Bernie and Socialists Despots -
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60 Minutes did a puff piece on Bernie, and the one biting segment was when they showed a 1980s era clip of him praising Castro. Bernie defended it with, "he educated their kids, gave them health care".... true. And Hitler was great with children and dogs, as long as they weren't Jewish children or dogs. But that's lousy optics to say, "At least HItler gave Germany good schools and jobs (at Dachau)". It ignores that Bernie also said good things about Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia, China, and others communists despots that imprisoned and murdered their own dissidents as well. (A journalist might have had some follow-up examples, but the Preening Cooper did not). Either way, it was a stupid thing to defend right before going to the Florida primary. It reminds me of the time Bill Clinton tweeted he was going to celebrate Fidel Castro's life with a memorial cigar... and 20 interns at the Clinton Foundation called in sick (out of fear of being used as another humidor).

Bernie getting outplayed, twice -
A little long with all Bernie's dancing/dodging/distracting. But the basics are:
  • Bernie believes that 51% of the population can vote away others people's rights... even if they don't have the right to do that individually.
  • When he loses, you get to see a petulant little man that can't hold his own intellectually, and has a polite tantrum and leaves

You'd think that a lifelong Trotskyist would be able to defend where he's coming from, "what are the limits of government power, and why". You know he was one of those dipshit hippies that would argue with you about the evils of the proletariat and he never grew out of it. You say something he doesn't like, and he filibusters about a different point.

Q: Bernie, exactly what crime do you think the Bankers committed to cause the financial meltdown?
A: Let me tell you about the evils of Wall St…. {insert blah blah Marxist rhetoric here, without ever answering the question}

Also FWIW, Bernie is wrong on what he's thinks the Interviewer is asking. He tries to build a strawman, "is every law some sort of forceful attack on innocent people". Then Bernie tries to burn that simpler argument down, but he can’t even do that. Even his attempted false-premise is a fact that works against him: every law is a set of rules by which the government threatens life, liberty or property if you don't comply with it. That’s why they are laws, instead of suggestions or requests. Thus laws ARE the THREAT of a forceful attack on OTHERWISE innocent people. And threats only have value/traction if they'll be carried out (at least some of the time). If what they're doing warrants that attack (like they're hurting/endangering others), then that threat/action is justified. If they aren't, then it isn’t. But a law always comes with a threat of punishment.

So first he tries to make invent a short-bus version of an question that the interviewer isn’t saying, (so he can argue against it), but his own question wasn’t remedial enough for him to defend against himself. It was like watching Cybil lose an argument with herself.


Bernie on Cuba - In a Jane Fonda moment, Bernie told an American political prisoner in Cuba, "I don't know what's so wrong with Cuba", while the prisoner was rotting in Prison during the Obama Administration (circa 2014).

Bernie on Gun Control - Bernie Sanders is ipecac to high IQ voters, especially on economics or guns. His latest Gun ideas come straight from Bloombergs everytownUSA or moms demand inaccuracy. His 4 point plan of the illiterate is: (1) We have Universal background checks and they don't work. (2) gun show loophole is an imaginary thing being used as an excuse to violate the right to privacy (3) Assault weapons are a made-up term over banning cosmetic features that don't impact rate or power (4) His imagined "Straw-man" provision, which is already against the law.

Bernie on Vietnam - The hippie Marxist (Sanders), told a group of High School Students that the U.S. had committed acts in its war with Vietnam that were “almost as bad as what Hitler did.” To be fair, that was back during his 1972 gubernatorial run, but even then you have to be a special kind of idiot to think a few crazy soldiers that went rogue is the same as institutionalize mass murder and human experimentation. (Every war has a million people cycling in and out of theater, under extreme stress, and you're going to a few that snap or bad judgement -- but again, the problem is when it is institutionalized on an industrial scale). If Sanders apologizes for the stupidity of his youth, I'd give him a free pass -- but he's unlikely to do that, or mean it if he did.

Bernie on War - In War Hawk <-> Dove spectrum, he’s not the anti-War candidate the left pretends.
  • He crows about how he was against the Iraq war, and he's more isolationist than Ron Paul -- but his Code Pink buddies don't trust him because he did support the 2001 authorization of military force against terror, which was the justification for going into Afghanistan and Iraq: and Bernie will support the military industrial complex, as long as the people making the gatling-guns were unionized and in his state.
  • Yes, he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, but that was strictly to dodge the draft: if he was a consistent life-long pacifist, I’d respect that. But he’s not. He claimed the exception to being a pacifist, "when people threaten the United States or threaten our allies, or commit genocide, the United States, with other countries, should be prepared to act militarily.” If he was consistent with that, I’d respect that too, only his actions belie his words.
  • he supported the tyranny/brutality of the Communists in Vietnam
  • he was perfectly fine with the genocide in Cambodia, Laos, Kampuchea and Somalia (opposing action in those places)
  • Saddam Hussein’s brutal oppression and conquest in Iraq and Kuwait was fine with him (he opposed both wars). After the entire worlds intelligence agencies were claiming Saddam was working on WMDs. He didn’t oppose it because he didn’t believe the intelligence, but because he didn’t care if Saddam or Iran gets the bomb or not (it's not about threats to the nation or world). Then he voted in favor of a military response in Afghanistan (claiming they attacked first) -- they didn't, they were just harboring those who had.
  • He was for bombing in Kosovo/Yugoslavia in 1999... but not for troops to stop the genocide
  • He supported the F-35, as long as it is stationed in Vermont
  • He was for regime change and bombing in Libya (even though they hadn’t attacked us), because Obama wanted to destabilize the region so the muslim radicals could take over. Which they did.
  • Syria he was against no-fly zones... but he supported Obama bombing ISIS
So Bernie is a radical lefty, but mostly a partisan one, he seems to take a pretty partisan line on War — if the Democrats are for it, he’s for it. He hasn’t opposed Obama on drone strikes or anything. It’s only when it’s a Republican in office that he really opposes war... unless it brings jobs to his State. So I have troubles with that moral inconsistency. [9] So he's not as much a radical lefty as some of the furthest radical lefties would like. And to anyone near the middle, it’s hard to tell a Marxist from a Leninist or a Maoist, either way, you still end up in a re-education camp.

Bernie on the Issues - His entire Political History is being a social justice warrior, and a Socialist (actually a National Socialist wrapped in the Camouflage of Democrat Socialist[10]). But any of those mean the opposite of a civil libertarian / individualist. No private property, and without the right to own what's yours, you have no real freedom (civil liberties). Examples:
  • He believes whole heartedly in anything that empowers government and diminishes the power of the people: tax more from everyone, give to the select few, empower government.
  • He's against free trade, preferring isolationism and protectionism (nationalism)
  • Everyone should be a ward of the state/collective:
    • selectively against free speech and freedom of religion (politically correct)
    • gun rights: if you’re trying to create a police state, then only the police should have guns — he’s rated F by the NRA
  • For more intrusions on individuals and business owners with more taxes, regulations, laws
    • Rent control and housing subsidies destroys housing opportunities (you punish investment into property improvements/maintenance): he's for both.
    • he supports nationalizing most major industries and giving them “to the workers/unions”: you don't get to start/own a business.
    • We should have fewer freedoms wrt price and wage controls (pro Minimum Wage, setting prices for companies, despite evidence against both)
    • there’s never been a give-away of other people’s money that he didn’t support. Free healthcare, free schools, free university, free student loans, free paid leave...
    • Veterans, he’s for giving them far more compensation (even if he opposes almost everything else to do with the military).
  • His energy policy is simple: if it drives up cost, and down availability, he supports it:
    • He loves the Global Warming arguments (hates the science) and loves/supports environmental extremism, because it's an excuse for more government intrusion.
    • Against Oil and Coal and Nuclear and for Solar, Wind because they’re unreliable, expensive and unsustainable -- so he supports the poverty that would bring with it.
  • All that "free" money has to come from someone else's pockets. If it’s your money, he wants to spend it for you. He supports a 90% top income tax, 65%+ inheritance tax (at the federal level, more at the state) - there would be no economic liberty under Sanders. Punish work, reward sloth is his motto:
    • Greece looks like deficit hawks compared to him. So you get to buy those nice things... for other people..
    • against individuals keeping their property: he's pro-eminent domain
  • of our four most important natural rights: life, liberty, property, and the right to defend them -- he’d curtail the second, eliminate the 3rd and 4th -- on the first (life) he’s mixed but mostly against killing criminals (death penalty) but for killing full term, viable babies (for any reason) and making other people pay for it (against their religious liberty): 100% NARAL / 0% NRLC -- there's zero balance, nuance or thought in those partisan extremes
The exceptions where he's Pro-civil rights (and that's really just anti-establishment) are:
  • his support for LGBT, which he’s supported since the 70’s
  • he opposes the patriot act, probably because government spied on Unions, socialists and other radicals, and he still sympathizes with anyone that would bring the current system down (a child of the 70’s, he hates "the man", but wants to empower the man with everything except making informed decisions).
  • he's also great with minority rights (NAACP gave him 100%), of course those rights don’t extend to minority businesses owners, only the workers. (E.g. unions love him, businesses and the economy would hate him). He also hates white males (a minority), or Asians who outperform the other minorities.
  • he’s pro-criminal, with wanting to remove sentencing guidelines, amnesty for illegal aliens, no one should be held accountable for their actions, unless they succeed at life, then they should be punished.

Bernie-ethics - Like Obama and Hillary before him, he appears to be taking in many illegal donations. The media looks the other way, I mean what could he do? Put something on his site to filter by country? Oh wait, that would take no time — you have to enable foreign credit cards as an option. [11]

Bernienomics - Bernie is wrong about everything (economic).
  • He loves citing the Gini Coefficient: this is a long debunked junk-science metric invented by Corrado Gini, who literally wrote the book on The Scientific Basic of Fascism. If it's wrong and proven false, Sanders is even worse than Elizabeth Warren at regurgitating hit.
  • The falsehoods about Sexism, War on Women, Gender Wage Gap Myths, Keynesian Spending, Minimum Wage, the discredited "evaporating middle class" (because the middle class moved into the upper classes), and so on.
  • If it's dumb, disproven and untrue, then Bernie and his supporters will be repeating it.
  • If you want to know what Bernienomics would look like, just follow what of the people he celebrated:Hugo Chavez. They have the same policies. And look what happened to Venezuela. [12]
  • He claimed, "China Has Done More to Solve Poverty Than ‘Any Country in the History of Civilization’"... other than the 40M they starved to death and killed, no to mention the imprisonments, beatings, and "re-education". How did they solve it? By embracing fascism: Totalitarian Socialism-Capitalism hybrid. But other than being one of the worst human rights abusers on the planet... [13]
  • People talk about his "integrity", but you can't pay for 1/10th of his programs by just eating the rich. And once you do that, you crush investment and growth. So you have to raise taxes on the middle class, and bankrupt the nation. Everyone is equally poor... like Cuba, Venezuela, or his other idyllic places. Thus, he's either completely incompetent and can't do 8th grade math and should be disqualified -- or he's bald face lying. [14]

Is Bernie Anti-Liberty - Someone debated with me that Bernie didn't want to take anyone's liberty away and make us less free. So I pointed out:
  • 1) Income Redistribution - (less liberty)
  • 2) Socialized College - more central control = less liberty
  • 3) Less Political Free Speech - (less liberty)
  • 4) Centralized Price Controls - (less liberty)
  • 5) Centralized Wage Controls - (less liberty)
  • 6) Socialized anti-energy/economy for faux climate change agenda - more regulation (less liberty)
  • 7) Racial Injustice - more central control = less liberty
  • 8) Sexual Preferences/bigotry - more central control = less liberty
We could go on and on... more taxes (less liberty), a stronger government/regulatory environment (less liberty), and so on. You can like him because he takes away choices of people you disagree with (and you're anti-liberty). But denying he's against free will, choice, liberty and so on, is just self-delusion. Of course that person couldn't concede the truth, and called me names and went away mad without ever admitting anything. Because that's what it takes to be a good Bernie supporter: denial of uncomfortable truths.

Memes-Bernie - Bernie is highly mock-worthy, based on the number of meme's against his ridiculous socialist views. There are the memes that mock Bernie. Bonus Bernienomics section.

Project Veritas exposes Bernie Sanders campaign - Project Veritas undercover video caught Bernie operatives Kyle Jurek (Iowa Field Organizer) and Daniel Taylor, Martin Weissgerber, Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor (South Carolina Field Organizers) saying vile things about throwing their opposition in gulags (or put to death), calls for violence, and explaining that Bernie really is a far left Marxist that will demand communism once in office, but they need to lay low during the election process. The media has all but suppressed that information because it shows what a fanatic one of the top candidate for the DNC is, or at least his campaign staffers are. Can you imagine them suppressing the news if any Trump campaign staffer was a KKK member or calling for violent overthrow of the other side? Yeah, me neither.

Conclusion

But let's ignore that Sanders is not electable in a general election, and that America (at large) does not want a Jewish National Socialist failure of a man, polarizing and dividing the country by vilifying americans (for not giving up more of their freedom), attacking minorities (like the rich, gun owners, religious), and empowering the collective over individuals. So let's ignore common sense, and pretend he could win.

Even if he won, there's only two choices:

  • Impotence
  • Insurrection

The only way Sanders could be a tidal wave shift in politics, is if he won with the landslides Reagan did (and got Congress/Senate as well) to have any traction, and there doesn't appear to be any hope of that. Otherwise he'd be a lame duck from day one, as feckless and incompetent as his miserable little hippie life has been (railing against the man, while desperately trying to become the tyrant he always imagine CEO's to be): with no support from the legislative branch (or people). All air. So he stands a minuscule chance of winning, but a far far smaller chance of being transformative or even moderately accomplished.

But let's smoke some of his pot, play make-believe, and visit the delusional world of his supporters. Pretend he not only wins, but wins in a landslide (gets both houses to go with him), and they get the legislative majorities to do everything they want in their first two years (like Obama had). Even if that did happen, it still that wouldn't be a tidal shift from Obama (like Reagan was with Carter), it would just be more of the same, only worse. And all that he would do, if he did get that landslide, is divide and polarize America even more (by generation, income and geography), and probably lead to insurrection. (He's closer to being the next Lincoln than the next Reagan).

Progressive ideals (one group telling others what they should do, "for their own good") always leads to more friction and polarization. And that's the heart of Bernie's message. Some might think tolerance at gunpoint is worth it, to get what they want, but control freaks always get resistance. Thus there would be more friction, violence, and backlash -- as always happens when revolutionaries get control. Then what? Does he ignore it (and prove the incompetence of government), or more likely, crack down on it, in the name of security, and turn us into a hippie police state? I see that as a choice of bad or badder.

So the only real question is would Bernie squeak out a win (and have zero power/influence), or win in landslide (highly unlikely) and lead to a highly contentious Presidency (more than Obama), and be the straw that broke the camels back and cause 4+ years of civil unrest? I don't see a path where Bernie can transform America into anything better, and thus to me, his supporters are deluding themselves if they think otherwise. Like everything else in his life, all roads lead to failure until he learns to grow from his past, and rethinks his entire philosophy in life. But if he's made it to 74 with the philosophy of an angry teenage hippie, wanting to live in his Mommy-State's basement and have his parents give him a bigger allowance, then there's little hope in him wizening up soon. But I think his life and views are serving as a great warning to the next generations: "don't be like Bernie".

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📚 References
  1. Puff Pieces:
  2. Asked to leave a Hippie Commune for being too lazy:
  3. Vermont Liberty Union Party:
  4. Socialism, "control the means of production":
  5. Benjamin Spock support:
  6. Democratic Socialist:
  7. Back in USSR:
  8. Some greatest hits:
  9. Bernie on War:
  10. Democratic Socialism:
  11. Corruption:
  12. Venezuela: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/29/venezuela-is-on-the-brink-of-a-complete-collapse/
  13. https://freebeacon.com/politics/sanders-china-has-done-more-to-solve-poverty-than-any-country-in-the-history-of-civilization/
  14. Bernienomics:

Links to more

Written 2015.07.28 Edited: 2016.01.30, 2016.02.03