After the mainstream media spent the first six months of the Bernie Sanders campaign overstating his chances in the election while consistently treating him with kid gloves, at least some of those major news outlets have finally begun admitting that Sanders is unlikely to win; he’s fallen behind by millions of votes, with the majority of the nation having already voted. As such, those “Feeling the Bern” staged a mass protest outside the CNN tower in Los Angeles for no identifiable reason.

Even as supporters of Bernie Sanders posted photos and videos of the event on Twitter and social media, it was still unclear just what they were protesting against. Some of the picket signs generically claimed that the media is showing bias against Sanders, a bizarre sentiment considering the extent to which they’ve gone to try to pretend he was “close” or had the “momentum” even as he was getting blown out in the polls and voting. Others claimed Sanders has been the victim of a “media blackout” – an ironic assertion considering just how much (nearly always positive) airtime Sanders has received on CNN and other television networks.

As has become custom for the loudest supporters of Bernie Sanders, at least some of the protesters insisted (without evidence) that cable news outlets are secretly in the tank for Hillary Clinton. But these claims ring more absurd than ever, particularly considering that CNN and others are continuing to give significant airtime to Sanders despite the fact that he’s fallen so far behind in the popular voting and delegate count, he’s effectively been eliminated from the race.

Still, now that cable news networks are finally beginning to admit that Sanders isn’t going to win, as they try to find a way to gently let down the false hopes they raised for his supporters after they spent many months falsely reporting that he was competitive, his dejected supporters have literally taken to the streets to protest the fact that CNN has begun accurately reporting on the election. Basic math says this was over a long time ago. The number of people assembled on Sunset Boulevard right now, captured on video, suggests that Bernie Sanders supporters either can’t do election math or don’t care about the facts. photo credit @zodiakkilla | Twitter

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s ongoing hustle of the Democratic Party was revealed at the very end of his interview with Rachel Maddow on Wednesday.

Lauding the Independent from Vermont’s fundraising prowess, the MSNBC anchor asked Sanders when he might start applying his considerable abilities to benefit the Democratic Party. In his response, Sanders pointed out that the average $27 contribution to his presidential campaign is “a very different way of raising money than Secretary Clinton has pursued.” So, Maddow pressed him.

MADDOW: Well, obviously your priority is the nomination, but I mean you raised Secretary Clinton there. She has been fundraising both for the nomination and for the Democratic Party. At some point, do you think — do you foresee a time during this campaign when you’ll start doing that?

SANDERS: Well, we’ll see. And, I mean right now, again, our focus is on winning the nomination. Secretary Clinton has access, uh, to kinds of money, uh, that we don’t, that we’re not even interested in. So let’s take it one step at a time. And the step that we’re in right now is to win the Democratic nomination.

“We’ll see”? “Secretary Clinton has access, uh, to kinds of money, uh, that we don’t, that we’re not even interested in”? To appreciate how those two comments expose Sanders’s hustle, you need some background.

Sanders, the self-identified Democratic Socialist, is a registered Independent who caucuses with the Senate Democrats. Not only has he been helpful in raising money for them in the past, he also has availed himself of those same funds. But in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders has done nothing. In fact, he has disparaged Clinton at every opportunity for doing so.

The most recent object of his self-righteous ire is the upcoming big-money fundraisers featuring Hollywood glamour couple George and Amal Clooney. The fundraising events set for April 15 in San Francisco and April 16 in Los Angeles will raise a ton of money. At the first fete, it’ll cost you $353,400 just for two seats at their table.

A small collection of things either Senator Sanders, his campaign or his more vocal supporters have done recently. Either way, you can tell I’m not a fan of his.

Stuff is always being posted, so…feel free to check back for updates. They’ll mostly be at the bottom, in chronological order, but every once in a while we find something new. — the Management.
Also, I left the links exposed. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. This way it’s easier to see the link beforehand, and decide if it’s worth your time or not. I tried to use hard news sources where possible. — The Management, again. February 22, 2016.

THE TIMELINE
April 6, 1981: Bernie wins a shocking victory by only 10 votes to become mayor of Vermont’s largest city, Burlington.
Sanders was elected on a socialist platform and

A group led by backers of Hillary Clinton filed three complaints Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission against Sen. Bernie Sanders and two super PACs that support him.

The American Democracy Legal Fund, established by David Brock, charges that Sanders and his campaign repeatedly accepted contributions in excess of the $2,700 legal limit for individuals per election.

Another complaint alleges a Facebook ad encouraging donations after Sanders’ New Hampshire win did not disclose who paid for the communication. Finally, the legal fund accuses the super PAC Progressive Kick of illegally using Sanders’ name and claims that group and the super PAC Nurses National Nurses United for Patient Protection are illegally coordinating with the Sanders campaign.

The Sanders campaign last month described an FEC warning about excessive contributions as “standard” and said the campaign would address the FEC’s questions. On Tuesday, the campaign dismissed the Brock group’s complaint as frivolous and noted it follows Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson call for Sanders to change his negative tone.

"Just one day after the Clinton campaign said we needed to change our tone, the leaders of their coordinated super PAC, which is funded by millions from Wall Street, filed baseless and frivolous complaints with the FEC,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement. “Tells you all you need to know."

The Clinton campaign declined to comment on the complaints.

Brock, founder of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, has targeted Sanders throughout the campaign, raising questions about his commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement and his medical records.

MSNBC reports this is the first time ADLF has filed a complaint against a Democrat.

Sanders has long denounced the unlimited money super PACs spend in support of candidates. His lack of affiliation with a super PAC is a distinction he draws with Clinton at his rallies.

Last month in Massachusetts, when Sanders was introduced at a rally by Karen Higgins, co-president of National Nurses United, the campaign said it is not coordinating with or raising money on behalf of the super PAC and highlighted the difference between that PAC and others.

"This is a PAC that is supported by nurses, one of the most respected and admired professions in the country, and to compare nurses to the billionaires and Wall Street special interests who are supporting other candidates is a preposterous stretch," Sanders' spokesman Michael Briggs said after the rally.

Bernie Sanders won Nevada Saturday after county conventions took the win from Hillary Clinton. The Clinton and Sanders campaigns clashed at Nevada county conventions, and Sanders walked away with three county wins, including Clark County where Clinton had originally won the vote. This means that although Clinton got more votes on caucus day, Sanders will likely end up with more delegates. Projections put him getting anywhere from 1 to 10, although most hover around 1 to 4. Some sources, such as Ralston Reports, said he gained two delegates over Clinton. Sanders’ campaign manager said he netted four over Clinton.

The Clark County convention was filled with drama, including rumors that Sanders delegates were told not to show up and others being threatened with arrest. In the end, more delegates voted for Sanders than Clinton, flipping the results of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. It’s unclear at this time exactly how many new delegates Sanders is picking up from Nevada, since delegates are unbound until the state convention, but he definitely won some today.

Here’s what you need to know:

Just two days ago, Hillary Clinton finally grew tired of the months of dishonest accusations and false innuendo being thrown at her by the Bernie Sanders campaign, and she made the seemingly calculated move of calling him out on it. She made a point of accusing him of “lying” about her, thus forcing the media to publicly answer the question of whether Sanders is indeed running a dirty campaign. Was it likely to work? That wasn’t yet clear. But Clinton has now been handed an automatic victory in that integrity battle, because Bernie Sanders just stole Nevada today.

We all remember two months ago when Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucus by about five percent of the vote. But today, Clark County Nevada finally held its nominating convention. Through a stunning series of antics on the part of Sanders fanatics that were so physically out of hand it involved the police, along with a caucus chairwoman who got caught feeding inappropriate details to the Sanders campaign, it appears that just enough county delegates were illegitimately flipped over to Sanders such that he may now have “won” the state. It won’t hurt Clinton, but it’s a huge problem for Sanders.

Nevada’s delegates are proportional. At best, Sanders may have picked up three four national delegates with today’s antics – and that’s if it doesn’t end up being reversed by whatever judge this matter quickly ends up in front of. He’s down by hundreds of delegates nationwide, and that’s before getting to the superdelegates, because he’s losing by more than 2.5 million votes. Mathematically, speaking, the Nevada reversal is no more than a rounding error and in no way helps him meaningfully catch up. But it just handed Clinton the blunt instrument she had been looking for with which to hit Sanders in the integrity department.

Although the past few months have seen Bernie Sanders embarking on one of the most consistently blatant and historically under-reported in the modern history of Presidential elections, he and his campaign have been smart enough to stick to the inside-baseball stuff. The average voter doesn’t care that he faked an endorsement from the AARP, or that he snuck his employees into a union cafeteria. However, all Americans understand an entire state being “stolen” from the candidate who definitely won it. Everyone remembers Florida in 2000. This is even more blatant, and even more easily understandable.

And so just two days after Hillary Clinton made the gambit of forcing the media to focus on whether “good guy underdog” Bernie Sanders has indeed turned to the dark side, and before the upcoming Monday morning newspaper headlines and talk show narratives have even been scripted, Bernie Sanders – or his supporters – went and stole an entire state whose majority had clearly voted for Clinton.

All she has to do now is point to Nevada to make her case. How can Bernie Sanders be “Mr. Integrity” if his goons are cheating their way into stealing states that were already definitively decided by the will of the voters months ago? In fact Hillary Clinton doesn’t even have to point to it. Nevada just wrote the Monday morning headlines for her. She forced the question of whether the Sanders campaign is an honest one, and now the answer will be “Clinton was right.”

There are two groups of people who, while I do believe they mean well, drive me absolutely insane. It’s the “both parties are the same” folks and the people who don’t think Republicans winning this November would be all that bad. Do both parties have flaws? Of course they do. But if you really think Democrats and Republicans are no different, or that a Republican winning this November wouldn’t be catastrophic, you might want to rethink everything you think you know about politics. In fact, here are 10 terrible things that will almost certainly happen if Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or another Republican becomes our next president.

1. Conservatives will get a super majority on the Supreme Court: We already know one Supreme Court opening is potentially up for grabs this November. Well, up to three more might be opening up over the next 4-8 years. Most notably, the liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg who’s 83 and Stephen Breyer who’s 77. Then there’s fairly moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy who’s 79. So, unless these three are serving until their mid to late 80’s, at least a couple are probably going to be replaced… very soon. Two who represent half the liberal justices on the Court. What do you think the Court looks like with a Republican potentially selecting 3-4 justices? Say goodbye to gay rights, voting rights, women’s rights and any possible dream of ever getting money out of politics. The next president may very well determine the fate of the Supreme Court for an entire generation. Which means if a Republican becomes president (especially someone like Ted Cruz) we’re likely looking at a Court with 3-4 new “Antonin Scalia-type” justices being put in place for the next 20-30 years. If that doesn’t terrify you, it should.
2. Net neutrality is likely dead: Remember when big business was trying to install a “fast lane” for the Internet? Well, thankfully, the Obama administration put an end to that – sort of. A Republican president could very well undo these protections for fair access to the Internet, allowing the free flow of information to be severely hampered, limited and restricted unless companies pay these Internet providers what essentially equates to “ransoms” for full-speed access. In other words, if you’re paying for 50 mbps speeds, you might not get those speeds to some of your favorite sites that refuse to pay these fees being charged by corporations like AT&T, Time Warner or Comcast.
3. Say goodbye to health care: It took us decades to get the modest health care reform known as the Affordable Care Act. All that work will be long gone if a Republican becomes president. Instantly, millions of Americans would lose their health insurance (most of whom are poor) and those with pre-existing conditions would go back to living a life where they could be denied coverage based on something with which they were born.
4. The Iran nuclear deal is history: For the first time in a long time we have a president who sees diplomacy as something he exhausts before taking the step toward war. While the deal with Iran may ultimately prove to be nothing – it’s a start. Of course there’s still a long way to go, but trying to work out even contentious diplomacy with an adversary is a hell of a lot better than the path that will almost certainly take us into another war. A war that will make the chaos that we’ve seen in Iraq look like child’s play. When you mess with Iran, you’re also stepping on the toes of China, Russia and threatening to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz – a seaway through which a huge chunk of the world’s oil exports travel.
5. We’ll set combating climate change back decades: Even with the advancements we’ve made, we’re already years (if not decades) behind where we need to be as it relates to battling climate change. If a Republican wins the White House in November, not only will absolutely nothing get accomplished as it relates to stepping up our effort to prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable, they will undo nearly all the progress we have made. Which means we won’t only be setting ourselves back 4-8 years – we’ll be setting ourselves back decades. Considering the dire issue of climate change at this moment, that would pretty much screw the planet beyond repair.
6. It’s very likely abortion becomes illegal: This ties in with #1, but deserves its own category. If a Republican president is allowed to replace even 2-3 Supreme Court Justices, that’s probably the end of the line for abortion rights. Or do you think someone like Ted Cruz (or any Republican for that matter) is going to nominate a justice who wouldn’t swear to them to overturn Roe v. Wade?
7. They’re going to open up a lot of our public parks and land to oil drilling: Republicans have been trying to destroy a good chunk of our public lands for years so they can hand these resource-rich areas over to big oil to destroy. If elected, huge chunks of our parks and wildlife preserves will likely be destroyed by big oil.
8. They could very well destroy Social Security and Medicare: Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have plans to expand Social Security and Medicare which would keep both programs solvent for years. Meanwhile, Republicans are doing just about everything they can to move both programs toward a “private” program, which is really just the first step they need to completely getting rid of both programs altogether.
9. Get ready for a whole lot of “Jesus”: If Ted Cruz happens to become our next president and select 2-3 Supreme Court Justices (both big ifs), that would pretty much seal up our path toward becoming a Christian theocracy. Ever heard of something called the Seven Cultural Mountains movement? Well, Cruz believes in it and it’s very… very close to becoming a reality. This should horrify anyone who doesn’t want to live in a country where nearly every aspect of society is ruled via some sort of religious control.
10. They’re going to make terrorism much worse: I’ve already written that I don’t believe Republicans are intelligent enough to handle fighting terrorism. Not only are their “plans” laughable, but their rhetoric helps create more terrorism. They’re literally giving terrorists exactly what they want by vilifying Muslims in the context of “the United States vs. Islam.” If we hand this country over to these bumbling morons, we’re going to see terrorism grow to levels that are unprecedented.

Keep in mind, not only will they likely do all of what I just listed (and more), but they’re going to put in place measures that make it much more difficult to try to undo all the damage they will most certainly cause. So, when I say this nation might not be able to recover from a Republican winning in 2016 – I’m not exaggerating. I am by no means a fear-mongerer or alarmist, but I am not at all kidding when I say that a Republican winning this November terrifies the hell out of me. Way too much is on the line to let that happen.

For the first eight months of the Bernie Sanders campaign, I joined my journalist colleagues in giving him the editorial benefit of the doubt. He didn’t put forward a single workable proposal, and he did nothing to suggest that he’d make an objectively competent President, but he swore he was only running to raise awareness on the issues. Since he was running a uniquely clean campaign of ideas, it seemed fair to report on him from that parameter. But two months ago he completely changed course almost overnight, gambling that the media wouldn’t dare call him out on it. I was one of the first, and to date one of the very few, to report on his heel turn in real time. I took a lot of heat for it. But his words today have ultimately confirmed every negative word I’ve written about him.

Two months ago Bernie Sanders came under the mistaken sudden impression that he could win. Perhaps his advisors sold him on that nonsense so he would remain in the race longer before dropping out, so they could keep getting paid. Regardless of who planted to seed, Sanders went as negative and dishonest toward Hillary Clinton as possible. He was counting on the media to ignore his hypocrisy and continue reporting on him with kid gloves, because their “underdog good guy” narrative about him has been too ratings-friendly to poke any holes in just yet.

And sure enough, the media mostly let him get away with it. Sanders and his campaign faked the endorsements of major entities, and even when those groups cried foul, the national media ignored it. He embarked on misleading claims about Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street, attacking her character after having promised he wouldn’t engage in personal attacks. He claimed that every move the Democratic Party made was a conspiracy against him, even in the instances where he was obviously cheating. Last week he even put out a press release publicly thanking Clinton for having agreed to a debate in New York, when Clinton had actually said no to the debate. But that was just the warm up act.

I dutifully documented all of this, because it felt editorially appropriate. When the “candidate of ideas” morphs into just another scheming politician, it becomes time to cover him as scrutinizingly as any other candidate. But perhaps because I was the only one willing to go there, I sure took heat for it. Even my liberal friends and journalism colleagues, many of whom have told me privately that they think Sanders is an buffoon, suggested that I shouldn’t criticize his antics. Perhaps they were understandably queasy about the idea of having to admit that he fooled us all.

Finally, after months of Bernie Sanders growing progressively dirtier, and nearly everyone in the media but me letting him get away with it, Hillary Clinton had enough of him yesterday. She said she was “sick” of the Sanders campaign lying about her. The response from Sanders today: he wants her to apologize for finally calling him out on his torrent of dishonesty. What a sick son of a you-know-what he turned out to be.

There was a part of me that wanted to be wrong all along these months. Perhaps Bernie Sanders would quickly regain his conscience, stop the dishonest antics, and get back to the clean campaign of ideas that won people over in the first place – meaning I’d have been taking him to the woodshed all this time for no reason. But as of today there’s obviously no hope of that. Confronted head on with his own dishonest tactics, Sanders has decided to make it his opponent’s fault. It confirms and justifies every negative thing I’ve reported about him over the past two months, sadly.