Saturday, October 17, 2015

The Neo-McCarthyite Meme That Bernie Sanders And His Wife "Honeymooned" In The Former Soviet Union

Yes, folks, you heard Anderson Cooper hand it out, and Bernie Sanders did not deny it: he and his wife "honeymooned in the Soviet Union."!  He did not deny it, and unlike Bernie coming to defend Hillary against all the email charges, she did not rush forward to defend him against this ridiculous garbage. She carefully avoided supporting it, but after Bernie praised Denmark she chose to suggest that Denmark did not support small business like the US, even though data exists showing that Denmark may actually be better at that than the US.  But Bernie missed properly responding to any of this, which is probably why he will probably not be POTUS.

OK, so maybe this is a dead duck issue, but I am really offended that obvious right wing jerks who should know better are pushing this garbage meme about Bernie.  I am speaking in particular about Charles Krauthammer, who in today's (well, yesterday's) WaPo said, "Amid the playacting between today and Clinton's coronation next summer, we can joyfully savor the most delightful moment of the debate, when we were reminded by Anderson Cooper that Sanders had honeymooned in the Soviet Union."

The facts are that indeed in 1988 when perestroika was in full play Sanders was Mayor of Burlington, VT, which city had become a sister city of Yaroslavl, USSR, some distance northwest of Moscow.  It came to pass that the formal trip to establish this city-to-city relationship happened in 1988, which he had to participate in along with various with leading civic figures in Burlington, which he did with Jane. It also happened to be that they got married just before this trip, and they later joked about how this official government trip along with all these other people was their "honeymoon."  I note that at this time they would have been politically sympathetic to the reformist anti-traditional-Soviet political forces in the old USSR, although he would have been focusing on all this local government sister city sort of stuff.

Needless to say neither Anderson Cooper nor Charles Krauthammer has remotely noted this or how ridiculous and McCarthyite their lines are.  They must be called out for the disgusting scum they are, McCarthyites of the worst order.  If and or when this crap resurfaces it must be shot down and those who push these garbage lines should be unequivocally denounced in the clearest and most fervent terms.

Barkley Rosser

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