Alternet has the post Neighbors From Hell: Now Parents Have a Bedtime Story About How Predatory America Has Become.

It came in a vision a few years back: a book for children that approximated some of the horrors of society that everyday people face, and the monstrous qualities that many people take on as they try to earn a living. Especially since the financial crisis. Mortgage loan officers, slumlords, private prison lobbyists are the new growth industry jobs.

Fairy tales of yore had to invent fictional monsters to scare little children. Is it a sign of progress that now all we have to do is to tell the truth to scare little children?

In the article #BlackLivesMatter Cofounders Speak Out on Sandra Bland, Truthout features the Democracy Now video below.

As a Movement for Black Lives Convening is set to take place this weekend in Cleveland, we discuss the case of Sandra Bland and many others who have died in the custody of law enforcement with the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In this segment we get to hear from the organizers of the protest at the Netroots Nation Convention. It is very important to learn why this protest was staged at the time and place that it was, and what they hope to accomplish.

Amy Goodman mentioned the web site democracynow.org for further information.

The headline that Bernie Sanders gave this story when he featured it on his web site is I am a cashier at the US Capitol. I earn so little that I work two jobs.

The Guardian that has published the full story, uses the headline I work at the US Capitol and KFC. Colonel Sanders pays me more than Uncle Sam by
Sontia Bailey.

The sub-head should give you the gist.

When I had a miscarriage, I couldn’t even afford to grieve – I had to get back to work so I could pay for a decent funeral for my son.

This is the story that candidates like John Ellis Bush don’t seem to have a way of comprehending. Not only would a living wage have saved this woman’s baby by allowing her to have to work only a single job, it would also open up her second job to another worker who needs it.

Why is it so hard for some people to understand how important raising the minimum wage is to the health of our economy and to our people?

Slate has the article Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning.

The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.
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We conclude that continued high emissions will make multi-meter sea level rise practically unavoidable and likely to occur this century. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.

Bernie Sanders is calling for massive infrastructure spending. What he didn’t plan on is how much effort we need to put into building dikes. Forget the border fence to stop the “flood of Mexicans”, Donald Trump has his eyes focused on the wrong flood.

Yesterday I was watching a discussion on The Weather Channel about the disposition of various ice masses on the globe. They were saying what you would expect about the Arctic and about Greenland.

Then they commented that the sea ice of Antarctica was actually increasing. I thought, “You twits, of course it is increasing. It is dropping of the land and into the sea.” However, they were not twits. They went on to make almost the same point. The melting freshwater on land is flowing into the sea. The salty sea waters freezes at a much lower temperature than the fresh water from land. For this reason, the land water flowing into the ocean produces more ice than the sea water that melted lost in ice coverage.

I credit Michael Horan for posting this on his Facebook page.

I have shortchanged Martin O’Malley in the controversy over the protesters at the Netroots Nation Convention. My previous post O’Malley and Sanders Heckled At Netroots Nation Convention has the full video of the session.

In my rush to get to the controversial part, I completely missed the beginning and the interview with Martin O’Malley. This occurs within the first 25 minutes of the video.

What Martin O’Malley had to say was quite good. In some ways, it actually answered some of the questions that were to come from the protesters.

I don’t know enough about Martin O’Malley’s record to be able to attest to the information he gave us. However, based on the words alone, it sounded quite good.

I think I am finally getting his offhanded reference to Michael Dukakis. It seems to me that the law-enforcement initiatives that Martin O’Malley took as Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland echo what Michael Dukakis did in his first term as Governor of Massachusetts. Dukakis and O’Malley both cracked down on the repeat offenders, as these were the people responsible for most of the crime. I wonder if the people of Maryland or his detractors there frequently compared him to Michael Dukakis as a form of putdown.

Martin O’Malley might make an excellent Vice Presidential running-mate for Bernie Sanders. We would have two people with very similar ideas, but O’Malley would bring some North/South balance and some age balance. If people are afraid that because of his age, Bernie Sanders might not complete his terms, they could feel reassured that a younger person was right behind him, ready to step into his shoes, if necessary.

Eclectablog has the post White progressives get a taste of anger & frustration as #BlackLivesMatter activists upstage Bernie Sanders.

Gov. O’Malley was the first to take the stage with Vargas who jumped right into it by asking questions related to the sharp rise in arrests of black youths under O’Malley’s administration. Not long into the conversation, however, black activists, most of whom were women, began singing/chanting in the back of the room, “What side are you on, my people? What side are you on?”
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After Gov. O’Malley left the stage, Senator Sanders came out. He, too, was shouted down and interrupted repeatedly. Unlike Gov. O’Malley who allowed the protesters to be heard, Sanders was visibly irritated, saying things like, “If you don’t want me here, I will leave.” He even shushed them at one point.
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Sitting in the middle of this maelstrom was a fascinating experience. I, like many of the others there, was initially irritated by the protestors. I was there to hear the candidates and was frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Even a bit angry, in fact. “These are your allies,” I thought. “Why on earth are you attacking them? Why are you disrupting an event where the people there are sympathetic to your cause?”

Frustration. Anger. Being silenced.

Frustration.

Anger.

Silenced.

Talked over.

Ignored.

Every single one of these emotions that ran through my white privileged brain in the first few moments of the protest until I was slapped across the face with what I was being forced to confront. Every single one of these emotions are felt acutely and painfully every single day by racial minority groups in our country. But, instead of being inconvenienced by not being able to hear a politician speak, they face them in the context of being slaughtered in the streets by the police officers who are tasked to protect them, incarcerated in astonishingly disparate numbers, and blamed for not being able to escape from the prison of poverty that holds far too many of them in bondage.

I had missed the point (because I didn’t listen) about how the initial question to O’Malley played right into the planned protest. Good for the moderator.

I loved the way this blog post described the transition from anger and frustration at the protesters, to a sudden realization of the lesson they were teaching.

I hope other, privileged, white people like me get to read this blog post from Eclectablog.

Netroots Nation has the video of the Presidential Town Hall.

The timings that I discuss below may not be accurate. The video had a lot of trouble keeping up with the audio. The audio ended at 56:43, but the video went on to 1:11:21. The video at the end got its sound back, and it started playing the audio that I had heard at 56:00.

If you want to find out about the protest, go to about 29 minutes into the video.

The spokesperson for the protesters, Tia Oso, gets on the stage at 30:57. She says the protesters need to acknowledge the people who have recently been killed by the police. She also introduces the hashtag #Blackroots.

One of the black executives with the Netroots group gets on stage at about 41:48. She tries to stop the protest, but the moderator has other plans.

Patrice, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter gets to speak, and ask a question a few minutes later. Part of what she said is that she doesn’t want to hear what the candidates have done in the past. She wants to here concrete plans for what they are going to do now. She wants to hear an action plan. O’Malley gets to speak again at 46 minutes into the video. rs won’t let him speak. At 47:40, O’Malley gets forced back on track. He will release a criminal justice reform package. All lives matter derailed him again. At 48 O’Malley leaves the stage.

At 51:11 Bernie Sanders comes on stage. Moderator wants specifics, but Sanders wants to make some remarks first. At 52:17 he gets interrupted by an offstage microphone amplified voice, it was the moderator, asking about the immigration bill that was passed. Talking about free college tuition in answer to the moderators next question, low level protests continue.

The session ends at 56:43 of the audio, but the video continues on and tries to catch up.

In any event, Bernie Sanders handled the situation much better than I thought he would when he first started to talk. He wasn’t perfect, but he did answer the questions, and didn’t try to evade them.

You’ve heard the snippets and the excerpts, now you can hear the whole speech that Elizabeth Warren gave at the convention of Netroots Nation.

She didn’t say it explicitly, but we know who does and does not pass her test of what Presidential candidates ought to pledge this year. She gave a pretty big explicit endorsement of what Bernie Sanders stands for, she just didn’t name him.

Occupy Democrats has the post Watch: Bernie Sanders Obliterates John Boehner’s Absurd Smear.

The headline could just as easily been “Bernie Sanders Tames Another Pundit”. I just love the way pundits try to trip him up, but he always has a way of using stupid questions as a launching pad to score his own points. He is a master at rhetorical jujitsu.