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COMMENT: An act that speaks elo­quent­ly for itself is Karl Rove’s Amer­i­can Cross­roads orga­ni­za­tion and its sup­port for Bernie Sanders. Rove does NOT agree with Sanders’ pol­i­cy points. He knows that Sanders does­n’t stand a chance in a gen­er­al elec­tion. Recent polls show­ing Sanders doing bet­ter against Don­ald Trump that Hillary Clin­ton fail to account for the deci­sive fact that the GOP attack machine and its echo chamber/amen cho­rus in the right-wing media con­sor­tium have not focused their fire on Sanders.

If they were to do so they will note that:

• Sanders was a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tor  for the Trot­skyite Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty in 1980. If he were to get the nom­i­na­tion, you can bet that Fox News will find the hip­pie-est, Jew-iest pho­tos of Sanders and put a red ham­mer and sick­le and red ques­tion mark on the screen behind him. “. . . . There’s more. In 1980, Sanders served as an elec­tor for the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, which was found­ed on the prin­ci­ples of Leon Trot­sky. Accord­ing to the New York Times, that par­ty called for abol­ish­ing the mil­i­tary bud­get. It also called for “sol­i­dar­i­ty” with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary regimes in Iran, Nicaragua, Grena­da, and Cuba; this was in the mid­dle of the Iran­ian hostage cri­sis. . . .”
• Sanders’ wife Jane MAY have engaged in ques­tion­able con­duct result­ing in the clo­sure of Burling­ton Col­lege [Caveat: the authors of the let­ter are part of the Fox News orbit–D.E.]:  ” Dear Sen­a­tor Sanders, This firm rep­re­sents Wendy Wilton, an active Catholic and mem­ber of the Immac­u­late Heart of Mary parish in Rut­land Ver­mont. On behalf of Ms. Wilton and oth­er aggriev­ed Ver­mont parish­ioners, we request that your office pub­licly release all doc­u­ments con­cern­ing Burling­ton Col­lege and you involve­ment with a loan appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by your wife, as Pres­i­dent of Burling­ton Col­lege, to a fed­er­al­ly-insured bank for a $10 mil­lion prop­er­ty trans­ac­tion.That trans­ac­tion, which involved Burling­ton Col­lege’s pur­chase of the Roman Catholic Dio­cese head­quar­ters, not only led to the demise of the col­lege but almost $2 mil­lion in loss­es to the Burling­ton Catholic Dio­cese. The col­lege’s recent­ly announced, result­ing insol­ven­cy will no doubt lead to fur­ther loss­es to the bank and loss­es to Ver­mont small busi­ness­es that pro­vid­ed ser­vices and goods to the school. Fur­ther­more, the tax­pay­ers of Ver­mont are like­ly to lose tens of thou­sands of dol­lars as a result of an out­stand­ing, ill-advised and unse­cured loan made by the Ver­mont Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty (while your wife served as a paid mem­ber of its board) to Burling­ton Col­lege. The cur­rent pres­i­dent of Burling­ton Col­lege said the “crush­ing weight of debt” brought on by this trans­ac­tion, which was dri­ven and designed by your wife pri­or to her fir­ing, was the cause of its clo­sure. Had the school stayed in its orig­i­nal loca­tion, as hum­ble and inglo­ri­ous as that was, it would still be here today serv­ing its niche of stu­dents and the com­mu­ni­ty. Cur­rent­ly avail­able evi­dence indi­cates that Burling­ton Col­lege failed because the priv­i­leged spouse of a pow­er­ful Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor received spe­cial treat­ment for a loan she should nev­er have got­ten for a prop­er­ty pur­chase that should nev­er have been approved. Mak­ing mat­ters worse, I was recent­ly informed that your office con­tact­ed Peo­ple’s Unit­ed Bank and pres­sured them to approve the loan appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by your wife.
  
  As you are well aware, it is improp­er and against Sen­ate Ethics Rules for your office to get involved in any way with a loan trans­ac­tion that ben­e­fits a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Sen­ate Ethics R. 35(b)(1) and (b)(2)(A). Under these rules it is improp­er for a spouse to receive favor­able treat­ment for a loan “...because of the offi­cial posi­tion of the Mem­ber...” Sen­ate Ethics R. 35(b)(2)(A). Your cam­paign, which is part­ly led and orches­trat­ed by your wife, has iron­i­cal­ly and hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly made wide­spread mort­gage fraud and its rela­tion to the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse the cen­ter­piece of its cam­paign. You have also called on Sec­re­tary Hillary Clin­ton to release tran­scripts of her speech­es to Wall Street firms, which you also blame for the col­lapse. Yet you cyn­i­cal­ly refuse to release your tax returns, which will pre­sum­ably show you direct­ly ben­e­fit­ted from the $200,000 Gold­en Para­chute paid to your wife from a school that was in finan­cial trou­ble due to her appar­ent loan fraud. It is time to dis­close these and all oth­er doc­u­ments relat­ed to this trans­ac­tion, includ­ing your wife’s Gold­en Para­chute agree­ment, all com­mu­ni­ca­tions your office had with Peo­ple’s Unit­ed Bank, and all com­mu­ni­ca­tions with VEDA, so that the full sto­ry behind this finan­cial calami­ty is revealed. Ver­mont parish­ioners, Ver­mont cit­i­zens, and local ven­dors that are still owed mon­ey deserve to know the full sto­ry behind this improp­er trans­ac­tion. Although you and the rest of Con­gress have exempt­ed your­selves from hav­ing to pro­duce pub­lic records in response to Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests, it is impor­tant that you release these doc­u­ments and ful­ly dis­close your role in this trans­ac­tion. Accord­ing to news reports, this mat­ter is already the sub­ject of an active fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion. There­fore any attempt to improp­er­ly influ­ence wit­ness­es or to destroy rel­e­vant evi­dence is pro­hib­it­ed by fed­er­al law. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512, 1517, and 1519. Addi­tion­al­ly, you and mem­bers of your staff may be called as wit­ness­es and be required to pro­duce doc­u­ments in lit­i­ga­tion that will inevitably result from the col­lapse of Burling­ton Col­lege, its like bank­rupt­cy (or insol­ven­cy), and attempts to recov­er loss­es. . . . .”
• Sanders has been reluc­tant to release his tax returns, with less infor­ma­tion made pub­lic about the returns than any oth­er major can­di­date. WHY? “. . . . . In oth­er words, among the can­di­dates still in the race, Sanders’ releas­es are less exten­sive than anybody’s but Don­ald Trump. (Trump, too, has faced crit­i­cism for refus­ing to share his returns.) And Sanders’ short­com­ings are actu­al­ly big­ger than the screen­shot above would sug­gest. The 2014 fil­ings Sanders released con­sist of just the first two sum­ma­ry pages of his Form 1040 and the equiv­a­lent sum­ma­ry pages from his home-state Ver­mont tax form.Why does this mat­ter? Unlike most of the oth­er can­di­dates, Sanders has not released the suc­ceed­ing pages — the nit­ty grit­ty detail of things like char­i­ta­ble dona­tions and oth­er types of item­ized deduc­tions. For instance, Clinton’s release for tax year 2014 is 44 pages long, or more than 10 times the length of Sanders’ for the same year.It’s worth not­ing that Sanders, as a mem­ber of Con­gress, files annu­al finan­cial dis­clo­sures, which are acces­si­ble online back to 2012. And as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, he also files finan­cial dis­clo­sure doc­u­ments to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.But tax returns are much more detailed. And despite what Sanders said in the exchange with Tap­per, his cam­paign did not pro­vide Poli­ti­Fact with any ear­li­er, pub­licly avail­able tax forms. The cam­paign told the Post that it has not released any oth­er tax returns pri­or to 2014. (The cam­paign did tell Poli­ti­Fact that they would release his 2015 returns once they are filed.)Tax and dis­clo­sure experts we con­tact­ed agreed that Sanders’ cur­rent dis­clo­sures are weak by his­tor­i­cal stan­dards. . . . .”
• Even as he calls Hillary Clin­ton “cor­rupt,” Sanders has been scored by the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion no few­er than three times for fund-rais­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties.
• Sanders fathered a child out of wed­lock, and has mis-rep­re­sent­ed the child as being birthed by his first wife. While we could­n’t care less about such things, you can bet that the GOP media attack machine will rake him over the coals on this–“Why did you lie about this Sen­a­tor?”
• Sanders is extreme­ly imma­ture, polit­i­cal­ly and per­son­al­ly. His small-mind­ed, tem­pera­men­tal demeanor would not do well under the glare of pub­lic scruti­ny.
• Sanders is a con­sum­mate hyp­ocrite. Con­stant­ly rail­ing against “big banks, Wall Street, etc.,” he had pro­test­ers arrest­ed for protest­ing against Gen­er­al Elec­tric.
• Attack­ing Hillary for rais­ing mon­ey from big Hol­ly­wood con­trib­u­tors, Sanders has also received mon­ey from high-rolling Hol­ly­wood fig­ures.
• Sanders is hyp­ing the GOP meme, that Hillary Clin­ton is “crooked.” It is a lie. “. . . . The for­mer exec­u­tive edi­tor of The New York Times, a renowned inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Jill Abram­son, admit­ted­ly is no friend of either Bill or Hillary Clin­ton. In fact, Abram­son has spent the past twen­ty-plus years look­ing for some­thing, no any­thing, unto­ward about Hillary. Her con­clu­sion is that “there are no instances of where Hillary Clin­ton did the bid­ding of a donor or bene­fac­tor.” Abram­son also went on to declare “Hillary Clin­ton is fun­da­men­tal­ly hon­est and trust­wor­thy.” Pulitzer prize-win­ning Poli­ti­fact con­curred and ruled that “Clin­ton has the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in either par­ty;” includ­ing Sen­a­tor Sanders. . . .”
• None oth­er than Gra­ham E. Fuller, who was CIA sta­tion chief in Kab­ul, helped start the first Afghan war, was some­thing of a God­fa­ther for al-Qae­da and fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, is pulling for “Boinie,” as well as tout­ing Don­ald Trump as a desir­able can­di­date. “. . . . Trump has trashed the neo­con war par­ty, blamed George W. Bush for the deba­cle in Iraq and else­where, wants to throt­tle way back on for­eign wars, and has declared a readi­ness to talk to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin — oth­er­wise treat­ed in the US press as tox­ic and satan­ic. (Though even Chuck Hagel, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense, recent­ly had the temer­i­ty to sug­gest that things with Rus­sia were get­ting dan­ger­ous and that we should be in con­stant dia­log with Putin.) Like many oth­ers, I have been gal­va­nized at watch­ing the spec­ta­cle of Bernie Sanders pro­claim­ing issues in his cam­paign that had been vir­tu­al­ly off lim­its for polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion for decades: gap between rich and poor, rapa­cious inter­na­tion­al trade deals, a fair wage, free uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion, the call for US bal­ance (gasp!) in han­dling the Arab-Israeli, issue, etc. The great thing about Bernie — even if he prob­a­bly won’t get nom­i­nat­ed — is that he has pushed hawk­ish, friend-of-Wall-Street Hillary to the left. She has as much acknowl­edged that. That will be Bernie’s great­est lega­cy. I would have hoped that the issues Sanders has raised can nev­er be shoved back into the polit­i­cal tooth­paste tube again. . . . .”
• Might the CIA be pulling for “Boinie?” Com­pare Gra­ham E. Fuller “feel­ing the Bern” with his advo­ca­cy for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: “. . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . ‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

. . . . Amer­i­can Crossroads—founded by for­mer Bush advis­er Karl Rove—and sev­er­al oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive-backed super PACs have spent the last month inten­tion­al­ly fuel­ing the Bern, but their zeal has more to do with an effort to weak­en Hillary Clin­ton, whom they still see as the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee and hard­er to defeat in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

In the wake of Clinton’s close Neva­da win, Cross­roads claimed cred­it for dri­ving her num­bers down in favor of Sanders.

“Amer­i­can Cross­roads and Bernie Sanders helped Neva­da cau­cus-goers see right through Hillary Clinton’s man­u­fac­tured zeal on immi­gra­tion reform after spew­ing vir­u­lent Trump-like rhetoric—and that one-two punch shaved Clinton’s 50-point lead a year ago to a slim, sin­gle dig­it win,” Steven Law, Cross­roads CEO and pres­i­dent, said in a state­ment.

Cross­roads is one of sev­er­al groups that has released ads that have been aimed at brand­ing Sanders as the only true pro­gres­sive in the race—a strat­e­gy the Ver­mont senator’s cam­paign also embraces.

“If it helps push the nee­dle so that she los­es a state, and she comes out a weak­ened can­di­date, then fan­tas­tic,” said Ian Pri­or, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for Cross­roads.

On Mon­day, Future 45, a super PAC report­ed­ly backed by hedge fund bil­lion­aire Paul Singer, launched the lat­est in its own series of ads that seem to defend Sanders. . . .

. . . . Still, the Clin­ton cam­paign has cried foul, not­ing that Sanders’s sup­port­ers have been echo­ing Repub­li­can attacks on Clin­ton and that he cer­tain­ly has not been reject­ing the ads. . . .