Seems there’s some doubt as to who actually invited Bernie to the Vatican. It appears he pretty much invited himself, although his campaign (of course) denies it.
Bernie also claims the invitation came from the Pope, which it definitely didn’t.
This has been discussed above. Bernie did not invite himself. He even posted the invitation that he received.
Yet the Vatican official who theoretically invited him refused to answer who initiated the contact. And the host of the conference claims Bernie did. Odd, huh?
Is it somehow damaging if Bernie asked for an invitation? Economic inequality is a topic appropriate to the event, given that is Bernie’s driving topic, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for him to ask a guy in position to invite him to do so.
If Bernie actually crashed a Vatican event that would be a scandal, but he has an invitation so it isn’t.
There are certainly some unhappy people at the Vatican, those that didn’t want to get stuck in a US the middle of a US presidential race, one of their people invited Sanders. They need to take it up with the guy giving out invitations not their invited guest.
The question was who initiated the contact. Was he ‘invited’ by the Vatican (as his campaign claims, which I trust just about as much as I trust Trump, in other words, not at all) or did he ask them to invite him?
Yes, one suspects that Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, is having some difficult conversations right now.
Not sure what, if any, political impact this has. Insulting the Pope did not hurt Trump with Catholics none; I somehow doubt demonstrating respect for and talking near the Pope will change many minds in the other direction.
And leaving an active campaign to confer at a Vatican conference does risk coming off as an attempted cynical ploy. Will he get his Pope photo-op?
That said he needs to do something to shake things up. A tie in New York (which is exceeding current polling expectations by far) would mean that he needs to win 63% of the delegates from there and turning PA from its current significant Clinton advantage into that would be … hard.
The reason this smells strongly of fish to me is this: what possible reason could there be for the Vatican to all of a sudden up and decide that it’s going to invite Bernie of all people to this conference? Sanchez-Sarondo just woke up one morning and thought, “Hmmm, I think I’ll invite the secular Jewish, Democratic underdog to the Vatican for a conference.”
Maybe he’s just so much of a Bernie fan he must have him there.
Or not.
Woops missed your original question. Yes, it is, because, as DSeid pointed out, it makes it look like a grab for votes instead of a genuine interest in the conference itself. Who knows what the impact would be here, but it would certainly have an effect on relations with the Vatican in the unlikely event that Bernie got elected.
You didn’t answer my question. Why is it an issue is Sanders called up and asked for an invitation. It’s the Vatican’s choice to say yes or no, they said yes.
He was invited by a Vatican official who had the power to do so. Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo said he invited Sanders and Sanders has the written invitation on hand. What reason do you have to doubt he was invited?
Crossed in posting. ^^
He’s been a politician since the beginning of time of course anything he does is politically motivated. Maybe he can feign genuine interest. Maybe it plays out well for him, maybe it doesn’t.
I think it’s a bad idea just because the amount of time involved, he has an important election and he’s going to be out of the country on an exhausting trip. Maybe it won’t be so bad because Hillary decided to do a fundraiser in CA in the same time frame so she’ll be stuck on a plane out of the news as well.
The news gets to contrast Hillary schmoozing it up at a fundraiser charging 350k to sit with her vs Bernie going to a conference to discuss world poverty. I don’t think he looks like a bad guy in that picture.
Yeah, the politician using that conference for votes sounds a little worse to me. And I’ll bet those folks paying to sit with Hillary really aren’t going to miss that 350K.
There’s also the issue that the campaign has denied it, too. If it turned out they (or he) really did ask, it would be another problem, here.
It’s funny, I started out liking Bernie, but the further we get along, that’s lessening steadily, and not because he’s getting closer. It’s because I see him pulling all the old politician tricks as he protests strongly that the campaign should be all about issues. That, and the Daily News and ‘quote-unquote unqualified’ things really hit his credibility with me.
The Daily News “thing” was severely edited to make him look bad. There are full transcripts floating around showing what all was said. And the “unqualified thing” came about because FIRST Hillary said Bernie wasn’t qualified, and when asked about that, HE said that he didn’t think she was qualified because of her previous political positions and because of her dealing with big money investors. People are doing their best to put the worst possible spin on things.
Fish. Heh.
Anyway not sure what to read this as implying.
The encyclical mentioned is Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus annus, which is is the focus of the conference as detailed in The National Catholic Reporter
You are seriously misinformed. Hillary NEVER DID AND NEVER HAS called Bernie unqualified. The absolute worst she said was that he should have done his homework for the DN interview. That’s all. Matter of fact, reporters did everything but tie her up to get her to say it and she STILL didn’t say it. You’re either wearing such Bernie-colored glasses that you can’t see or you need to read more.
And I have read that transcript, and he still comes off as having a plan with no specifics. And, was unable to answer any deeper questions about it. He ‘believes’ he has the power to break up the banks under Dodd-Frank (by Federal Reserve fiat, yet), and that he’ll let the banks decide how they’ll be broken up. That’s it. That’s his Big Plan. Let the rats guard the cheese.
This is a completely untrue statement as has been extremely well documented.
No Hillary did NOT say that. At all. She was asked to, three times, and refused to, three times. She only said he has not done his homework and that she is better prepared to actually make change happen. I know very low blows.
He was NOT asked about it. He brought it up in a speech, not in response to any question but as a planned bit, making up a quote that she never said, verbally stating “quote, unquote”, and then calling her unqualified.
Her response? “Well, it’s kind of a silly thing to say … Look, I don’t know why he’s saying that, but I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz any time, so let’s keep our eye on what’s really at stake in this election.”
He doubled down on his lie the next day anyway.
Finally he admitted that she is qualified (“Of course.”) but never took any responsibility for having lied about what she said, blaming her team for it having been reported that they were going to start pointing out Sanders weaknesses and stop handling him with such kid gloves, and a newspaper headline that provoked them into “responding” (to something that was never said).
He walked back from his “unqualified” crap and I am more than willing to move along and not harp on his lying and his lack of owning up to fucking up. But do not persist in repeating untrue statements about what occurred.
Haha…believe it or not, unintentional, but perhaps Freudian. 
Yeah, it gets more and more complex. Again, I’m not sure what to believe, but I view things somewhat askance.
It still seems odd that, even assuming Bernie showed interest in it, it wasn’t he who asked to come.
Just got finished watching Bernie’s (as well as Hillary’s) interview on State of the Union (on CNN), and saw some interesting things.
Hillary stuck to the high road, while Bernie continued to attack her qualifications, reciting the same trope he has been at least since the ‘quote-unquote’ thing, although significantly he left out his Three-Pinocchios lie about the fossil fuel industry.
The thing that most interested me, though, was this comment he made (and I can’t wait to see what Politifact has to say about it):
(bolding mine)
I’d really like to know which given year that is, because I’ve been doing a little research and it seems that GE doesn’t (and isn’t required to) report its federal income tax, only its annual global tax total. So I’m really very curious where that came from.
On a different note, I learned that I don’t trust Bernie at all anymore. Too much of what he says, if not outright false, is toeing the line all too much, in order to portray Hillary negatively. His excuse is that her campaign said it was going to go negative, which reminds me a lot of Trump’s ‘he started it’ defense for the whole wife tweet thing. Yet Hillary has continued to focus on issues and shrug off attempts to get her to criticize Bernie.
I just hope her not directly answering in kind doesn’t end up hurting her chances. In the media age, too many things left unanswered end up being assumed as true, especially among those with the predisposition to believe it anyway (I’m looking at you, Bernheads). Part of me really wants to see her bloody Sanders’ nose with his bullshit.
Really getting tired of the 5-minute timer.
Cites:
(an article on Jake Tapper’s interview with Bernie on CNN):
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/10/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-condescending/index.html
(factcheck.org’s verdict on a commercial Elizabeth Warren aired in 2012 claiming that GE pays no federal income tax, which may be where Bernie is getting this line of attack):
He basically just went “Nuh huh!”, there was nothing there.