Admiral (ret.)/Senate candidate Sestak speaking at Pitt Law School/Oakland

tomorrow/Feb. 24th/ at 12 noon. Room 111

Today, I begin another 2-day 7-city tour of Pennsylvania, this time discussing my Plan for Securing America in the 21st Century, a foreign policy document that charts a course for American national security in the modern day – and a follow-on to my domestic issues tour from January.

In the plan, I explain how over the next few years, national security challenges will continue to grow, from defeating ISIS and handling Iran, to addressing China and halting Russian aggression, to the drought and famine caused by climate change that our military says will bring about intensified conflict and crises throughout the world.

As the most senior military officer ever elected to Congress, I’ve been blessed with a depth of experience that is singular among those running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and the nation – and even in the Senate. My experience has given me an awareness that, while our military can stop a problem, it cannot fix a problem (look at Iraq, today.)

I want to serve as a proponent of a strong national defense, but with an understanding that we best shape the world for our mutual betterment by leading with the other elements of our power – diplomatic, economic, and our ideals – without using our military unnecessarily, or unwisely. While our military is on the table, it is on the back of the table.

If ever I wanted to time travel, it's to see how history treats the Clintons

The doctoral theses which will be written about their lifetimes of deepening greed, grifting and self-dealing; the psychoanalyses of their respective personalities and how they fed off of and enabled each other; revelations of the intricate and exploitative connections between corporations and the Clinton Family Foundation - with Haiti being the textbook example/Harvard Business School case study; the future Shakespeare who will write a chilling tragedy/trilogy about the Clintons and Medvinskys - what a cast of complex supporting characters.

Paging Dr. Who and the Tardis!

Sanders' Flint campaign office delivering free water

New Ted Cruz ad spoofs "Office Space"in Clinton Server Attack

The ad will air during Saturday Night Live the week before the South Carolina primary.

The timing is very interesting. What motivates Cruz? I'm sure HRC boosters would argue Cruz attacks Clinton because he would rather run against Bernie in the general. But I suggest that Cruz understands that a well-timed, nationally televised attack of Hillary will boost his standing among the masses of voraciously rabid GOP Clinton-haters and motivate them, boosting turnout to the South Carolina polls to vote for him and not his Republican opponents.

And if this works in So. Carolina, we can expect the other GOP candidates to follow suit in subsequent primaries by outdoing each other in attacks on Hillary Clinton. We Sanders supporters have been warning that HRC as the primary candidate will depress voter turnout of younger voters, progressives and independents, and boost turnout of the accurately named Clinton-haters in the GOP. This move by Cruz will test that hypothesis.

The video of the ad and lyrics are available at the link.

An ad popped up on my Comcast email page

Big head and shoulders photo of Hillary in bright red jacket -

Morehouse Students Perform Electrifying Dance Routine at Sanders Rally

Video at link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/morehouse-college-bernie-sanders-rally_us_56c43a0ee4b08ffac1270dc8?utm_hp_ref=politics

The Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College on Tuesday evening was electric.

Almost 5,000 people attended the event at the historically black, all-male school in Atlanta, and many chanted “Feel the Bern, feel the Bern” as the Democratic presidential candidate addressed the crowd.

However, before the rally even began, a group of students raised the roof with a choreographed dance routine.

“Best pre-show entertainment ever,” wrote WXIA reporter Blayne Alexander on Twitter.

Her video of the performance has since gone viral on social media.

According to Juana Summers, politics editor at Mashable, the rally was an energetic affair, with the young, diverse crowd roaring with cheers when both Sanders and rapper Killer Mike, who has been campaigning for the Vermont senator, took the stage.

What? You have a problem with cluster-bombing little brown kids!

(Sarcasm, of course.)Don't hold that against Abuela Hillary! (More sarcasm!)

Here is the bill: the “Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act.”

This was a single purpose amendment to a larger defense bill so was not part of an omnibus bill where she could have had mixed goals. This was an act to limit the use and transfer of cluster munitions to those munitions that have a 99% or higher reliability rate, would prohibit use of cluster munitions in areas where civilians are known to be present and would require a cleanup plan of cluster munition remnants if the US used cluster munitions.

Historically, cluster munitions are particularly troubling because they are left in place and affect civilians ... including those women and children that Hillary expresses she is a fighter for. It is a world wide issue and is the subject of numerous diplomatic attempts to take these munitions that affect civilians off the table.

Of all her warlike votes, this may be the worst. There was no progressive or liberal reason for anyone to vote against this amendment. Her vote was either because she is a defense hawk or because she wanted to look like one and not look soft. It is one of the worst weapons in the world. Hillary joined 15 other democrats and EVERY REPUBLICAN iN voting this way. Her democratic company included most of the conservative war democrats in the senate: lieberman, nelson, landrieu, pryor, shumer. Surprisingly it was a Feinstein introduced Amendment which shows that such munitions even concern people who generally are defense hawks.

And for you Clinton lovers who want to associate her fully with Obama. Of course he voted for the Ban because he does not have the war baggage she has. Hillary voted against banning these munitions and there really is no excuse for this vote.

Author of "Undergroound Girls of Kabul" in PGH on Feb.23rd

An outstanding investigative journalist will be giving the annual Raizman Lecture at Chatham University. It's free - even free parking! Try to attend if you can. But pre-register at the link below. Seating is limited to 500 and she is nationally renowned.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
The Women’s Institute at Chatham presents The Raizman Lecture featuring Jenny Nordberg, award-winning author of The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan.

An award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent, columnist and television producer, Jenny Nordberg has worked all over the world, investigating topics such as the global financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, foreign aid, human trafficking, and aspects of “the war on terror,” as well as many human rights issues. Based on her extensive research and reporting inside a war zone, The Underground Girls of Kabul has been published in more than 10 countries and won numerous awards.

In presenting her with the 2015 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and The Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University explained that Nordberg’s work “is much more than a hard-won investigation populated with diverse characters and potent scenes. It’s also a careful surrender of assumptions about gender and patriarchy and the Western lens on a troubled country—a book through which readers emerge both challenged and changed.”
PRAISE FOR THE UNDERGROUND GIRLS OF KABUL

“Five years of intensive reporting have yielded this gritty, poignant, and provocative collage of intimate portraits… Nordberg conveys captivating nuance and complexity; just when you feel some kind of judgment or conclusive opinion is within reach, she deftly turns the tables, leaving us to reexamine our own prejudices and societal norms as we struggle with questions that are perhaps unanswerable." ~Elle

"As affecting as the stories of these women are, Nordberg's conclusion—that women's rights are essential to "building peaceful civilizations"—is the most powerful message of this compelling book. An intelligent and timely exploration into contemporary Afghanistan." ~Kirkus Reviews

"Jenny Nordberg has given us a fascinating look into a hidden phenomenon of extreme patriarchal societies: a form of gender-bending far riskier and more rewarding than Western academia's trendy, abstract gender categories. Nordberg's reporting is thorough and sensitive, her writing vivid and insightful. You will not forget this book; it will haunt you." ~Robin Morgan, author and founder of Ms. magazine

Winner of the 2015 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
A Salon 2014 Authors’ Favorite Book
One of Buzzfeed’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
A Business Insider Best Book of 2014
A Columbus Dispatch Best Book of 2014
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014
A PopMatters Best Book of 2014
An FP Interrupted Best Book of 2014

http://www.chatham.edu/newsevents/events/details.cfm?eventID=15076
Registration and Directions

Register Online

Fee : Free and open to the public
Location : Campbell Memorial Chapel
Parking is free in the Library Parking Lot which you can only enter off of Murray Hill Avenue (not to be confused with Murray Avenue).

Murray Hill Avenue can be reached from both Wilkins and Fifth Avenue and is a cobblestone street. From Fifth Ave, it is located between Maryland Ave and S. Negley Ave. From Wilkins, it is located between Murray Ave and S. Negley Ave.

Hill'$ Wall Street/banker BFFs jone$ing to privatize social security

This will be Job One for a Hillary Clinton administration. The penultimate quid for those millions in pro quos they have paid to her as a candidate, paid her as a not-yet declared private citizen for her speeches, and paid the Clinton crime family, oops, I mean Clinton Family Foundation. Have no doubt in your minds - the necessary legislation has already been drafted and co-sponsors lined up by banking/Wall Street lobbyists, awaiting the possibility of a Clinton administration, i.e., a president who will not veto it.

It's the most lucrative remaining venue for transferring wealth upward. Wall Street goes orgasmic at the prospect of privatizing tens of millions of individual social security accounts!
As one banker explained it to me, every time an adjustment/change would be made to how the funds are invested - say increasing the percentage invested in one kind of bond versus another, a fee would be charged to every single social security recipient.

With over 50 million collecting SS and SSI, not to mention the tens of millions of accounts of those actively contributing to SS, at a dollar each (for the sake of argument) per investment tweak, times several tweaks/adjustments/changes per month? My god how the money rolls upward! It will be the last great tsunami of wealth transfer to the One Percent. And it will profit them as long as social security exists. We've already achieved permanent war status; social security privatization means permanent rip-off of workers status.

Because what do we average folks have? Like so very many, I lost nearly all of my retirement savings in the 2008 debacle. We were left with our mortgages on our homes and our social security accounts.
Along came CDOs and the mortgage bubble, and having been bailed out once, Wall Street is now pushing "bespoke tranch opportunities." (See the film, The Big Short) Now the only low-hanging fruits left are our social security savings.

Social Security updates its statistics every month in the Monthly Statistical Snapshot, although the updated figures are not as precise as the numbers published in the Annual Statistical Supplement. As of December 2012, according to the Snapshot, the retirement rolls had reached approximately 39,613,000, with an average benefit of $1,193.94. Disability beneficiaries had reached approximately 10,889,000, with an average benefit of $1,130.34.

Please rec this thread on cluster bombs