Break out the pussyhats and vuvuzelas, folks, because the neoliberal Resistance is back, and this time they're not playing around. No more impeachments and investigations. It's time to go mano-a-mano with Trump, and they've finally got just the bad hombre to do it. No, not Bernie Sanders, you commies. A battle-hardened Resistance fighter. El Caballo Pequeño! El Jefe Mínimo! Subcomandante Michael Bloomberg!

Yes, that's right, Michael Bloomberg, multi-billionaire Republicrat oligarch, has mobilized a guerilla army of overpaid PR professionals, Wall Street sociopaths, liberal racists, and anti-outdoor-smoking fanatics, and is steamrolling toward the Democratic convention to buy a brokered nomination and save America from "Putinism." He's had it with you sugary-soft-drink-drinking, chain-smoking, gun-toting, Oxy-gobbling, Hitler-loving, Putinist peasants and your infatuation with Donald Trump. So he's decided to transform the entire country into a sterile, upscale, fascist theme park where you can rent a studio for $3,000 a month and the cops keep "the darkies" in their place, like he successfully did to New York City.

Although his campaign seemed to come out of nowhere (and sort of resembles a desperate attempt to prevent a Bernie Sanders nomination), the Resistance have been planning this corporatist Tet Offensive for quite some time. Apparently, Subcomandante Bloomberg and his inner circle of sub-subcomandantes have been hiding out deep in the mountainous jungles of Manhattan's affluent Upper East Side (or in the Hamptons, or London, or in one of El Jefe's other multi-million-dollar homes) since Trump and the Russians invaded the country, waiting for the perfect moment to start inundating the American people with television commercials and social media posts informing them of his "electability."

The Russian and Syrian general staffs and their men have been doing to the Turks what no one has achieved in the Middle East since 1917.

So the Sultan has called the Tsar - three times this month so far; in January, once by telephone, twice in face-to-face meetings; and twice by telephone in December. Every time the telephone rings, it is, as the Kremlin communiqué doesn't fail to mention, "at the Turkish side's initiative."

On the battlefields of northwest Syria, the initiative at the start of each day has been the Turkish side's, too. But at the end of the day the Russians have inflicted defeat. Not often in five hundred years of communications between the Porte and the Kremlin, has the subliminal message been so clear. There is another subliminal message from the Kremlin. "We," Dmitry Peskov, the Turkish-speaking spokesman for the Russian President, said on Wednesday, "used to be satisfied with the agreements reached in Sochi more than a year ago and this satisfaction was mutual. However, we are completely dissatisfied now that militants and terrorists have begun advancing from Idlib and attacking Syrian forces and Russian military installations." This is a signal from the Moscow lobby for the Turks that it too is in retreat — from the Russian Defence Ministry and the General Staff.

Sen. Bernie Sanders ignited a feud with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this weekend, claiming the lobbying group provided a platform "for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights."

The dispute began when Sanders (I-Vt.), the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, released a statement on Twitter Sunday announcing he would not be attending the annual conference, as is customary for leading presidential candidates.

"The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference," the Democratic socialist tweeted.

"As president, I will support the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and do everything possible to bring peace and security to the region," he added.

I was fortunate enough in 2016 to play a small role in the unprecedented political juggernaut that was the Trump campaign. Against a crowded field of senators, governors and names that Americans had known for decades, then-candidate Donald Trump emerged as a force outside the GOP establishment that none of the Washington types — the Republicans' political geniuses — could have ever seen coming.

Primary after primary, caucus after caucus, Trump just kept winning. Before the Republican National Convention in July, he exceed the number of delegates needed to clinch the party's nomination by more than 200.

Becoming the nominee was inevitable — even as some in the party didn't want to accept it.

Professional losers at the convention, more concerned with tone than taxpayers, worked the few remaining country club Republicans to try to force a floor fight. If you don't remember this, that's OK: It lasted all of an hour and went basically nowhere.

The Republican base voted for Donald Trump to be the nominee. The party understood this, and that was final. It is, after all, the will of the people that matters in a democracy, right?

Ask the Democrats.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has added his voice to the network's recent anti-Bernie Sanders chorus, arguing that Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar should drop out of the race in order to "consolidate efforts" against the frontrunner.

The Morning Joe co-host said that, despite how well she has done, "people are talking" about how Minnesota senator Klobuchar, who finished third in the New Hampshire primary, should "get out of the race."

He then moved onto Warren, who "finished weak" in the Nevada primary. Scarborough said "a lot of buzz on Twitter" was suggesting she should throw in the towel too.

MI5 has rejected claims that its officials are withholding information from Priti Patel because they do not trust her.

An informed security source said the report about Patel's relationship with the agency in the Sunday Times was "simply untrue" and that she was getting the same information from the agency as any other home secretary.


The report was published after a series of stories - which have not been fully denied - claiming that Patel has had a series of difficult relationships with officials during her ministerial career, and that she is currently trying to oust the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir Philip Rutnam.

However a Home office spokesman said on Sunday: "The home secretary and permanent secretary are deeply concerned about the number of false allegations appearing in the media.

"They are focused on delivering on the Home Office's hugely important agenda, which includes creating an immigration system that works for the UK, putting more police on the streets and keeping the public safe from terrorism."

The Sunday Times quoted unnamed officials claiming that MI5 found Patel "extremely difficult to deal with" and that she "doesn't grasp the subtleties of intelligence". One told the paper that she was now receiving less intelligence from MI5 than her predecessors as a consequence of her attitude.

Patel's allies believe that officials are briefing against her because they do not like being challenged.

Former President Barack Obama "personally asked" the FBI to investigate someone at the request of billionaire progressive George Soros, according to Harvard Law School professor emeritus, Alan Dershowitz.

Speaking with Breitbart News Sunday, Dershowitz says he won't reveal the name of the targeted individual, as it will be part of a forthcoming lawsuit.

"President Obama personally asked the FBI to investigate somebody on behalf of George Soros, who was a close ally of his," said Dershowitz.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg gave advice on coming out as gay to a nine-year-old child in Denver during a campaign stop on Saturday night.

Surely this prepubescent child did this on his own, without the prompting of his parents — we're expected to believe that, anyways.

"Thank you for being so brave," the child asked in a question, which was read by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. "Would you help me tell the world I'm gay, too? I want to be brave like you."

Buttigieg told the child, Zachary Ro, that it didn't seem like he needed advice on bravery, since he said it in a room full of people.

On Sunday, Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders confirmed that he would be skipping this year's American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference and attacked the pro-Israel organization on his Twitter page.

"The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference," tweeted Sanders, "As president, I will support the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and do everything possible to bring peace and security to the region."

The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC used to pride itself on doing its business in the dark. We work most effectively as a "night flower," AIPAC operative Steve Rosen once explained to Jeffrey Goldberg.

Those days are now over, maybe forever. The rightwing group is controversial in ways that it never wanted to be.

Just in the last few days, AIPAC has made a lot of headlines. AIPAC apologized for smear ads it ran against "radical" congressional Democrats who dare to criticize Israel. "The radicals in the Democratic Party are pushing their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies down the throats of the American people," AIPAC said. "Surprisingly partisan," says Eli Clifton of Quincy Institute, who exposed the ads. One Congresswoman it targeted, Betty McCollum of MN, labeled AIPAC a "hate group" because in one of the ads it said she was worse than ISIS. J Street, the Israel lobby group in the Democratic Party, has slammed AIPAC for the ads and its ties to a partner organization, Democratic Majority for Israel or DMFI, that has run a deceptive ad campaign against Bernie Sanders in Nevada over his relatively pro-Palestinian stance. The Intercept reports that AIPAC is handing donors over to that right-wing Democratic pro-Israel group- — to try to bring down Sanders in Nevada. Elizabeth Warren has said that she will not attend the AIPAC conference next month...

The rightwing-pro-Israel position is being politicized as never before. Democrats now have political cover to attack AIPAC, and maybe even reap political rewards for doing so, something that was unimaginable even a few years ago.