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Friday, January 31, 2014

Never mind that there are two more years before the GOP primaries....

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Political junkies brainstorm for 2016 as Christie scandal grows
By Jaime Fuller, January 31, 2014

A letter from former Port Authority official David Wildstein Friday that accused Gov. Chris Christie of misrepresenting his knowledge of the George Washington bridge scandal instantly sent D.C.'s electoral Sherlock Holmeses on the trail of other potential 2016 presidential candidates from the right, having declared Christie's candidacy finally dead (reminder, there is still two years left before the GOP primary starts). Here are a few of the initial predictions.

The Sunday Times: "Jeb Bush profits from Christie’s woes"
Chris Christie's decline is very good for Jeb Bush. But will Bush run? Smart piece by @fixsean @washingtonpost http://t.co/cw3NREC23G
— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) January 31, 2014
Jamelle Bouie: "Goodbye Chris Christie, and Hello Scott Walker"
I wish InTrade was still around so I could put $100 on Scott Walker 2016,
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2014
Star-Ledger editorial board: "Forget about the White House in 2016. The question now is whether Gov. Chris Christie can survive as governor."
Well, the 2016 GOP primary should be pretty interesting. — Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 31, 2014
Bottom just fell out of Christie for GOP 2016 ... wide bid/ask spread; no one wants to buy, but people still afraid to sell too low. — David Rothschild (@DavMicRot) January 31, 2014
The new developments in the Chris Christie bridge scandal clear the 2016 GOP field for future nominee & President Buddy Roemer. — Garrett Quinn (@GarrettQuinn) January 31, 2014
Hysterics: this MIGHT be the beginning of the end, but it is not the end. The man is a fighter. — Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) January 31, 2014
The BIG winner of today's Chris Christie news - Scott Walker — Mike Elk (@MikeElk) January 31, 2014
Who's the next most plausible establishment Republican if Christie goes down -- Scott Walker? Jeb Bush? — Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) January 31, 2014
Boy, I would give anything to be sitting next to Jeb Bush’s cell phone right now.
— Michael B Dougherty (@michaelbd) January 31, 2014
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Money, money, money..... who's got the money and who's getting it

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New Reports Show Big Checks Flow for Politics
By Kent Cooper, January 31, 2014

If you thought money in politics was limited, take a look at the big checks from donors being reported by Super PACs, joint fundraising committees, and Section 527 groups.

Year-End campaign finance reports of candidates and political committees are due today, and disclose financial activity for the last part of 2013. While there are limits on how much can be given directly to federal candidates and a political committees, the limits are higher when several committees set up a joint fundraising committee. For Super PACs, that do not give directly to candidates but make independent expenditures, there are no limits. For Section 527 groups, there are no limits.

A quick look at a few new reports shows the following large contributions:

The Republican Governors Association gave $1 million on 12/9 to its Super PAC, RGA Right Direction PAC.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners gave $1,925,677 to its Super PAC, Working for Working Americans. The Super PAC then gave funds to other Super PACs, including $750,000 to Funds for Jobs, Growth and Security; $250,000 to Defending Main Street Super PAC; $250,000 to House Majority PAC; $100,000 to Win Minnesota Federal PAC.

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, gave $300,000 to his Super PAC, Independence USA PAC.

Californians For a House Majority, a Republican-oriented Super PAC, received $58,000 from Carol Troesch (retired, NV); $50,000 from Steven Craig (president, Craig Realty Group, CA); $50,000 from Michelle Horowitz (investor, CA); $50,000 from Tommy Larkin (executive, Transamerica Inv. Mgmt., CA).

Cantor Leadership Fund received $42,600 from Andrew Barth (Capital Group, CA); $42,600 from Leon Black (chairman/CEO, Apollo Global Investment, NY); $25,000 from Michael Liberman (COO & chief risk officer, Blue Mountain Capital, NY).

McConnell Victory Kentucky received $25,000 from Judith & David Bronczek (president, Federal Express, TN); $25,000 from Barbara & J.R. Hyde (chairman, Pittco Management LLC, TN); $25,000 from Dina & Brad Martin (CEO, RBM Ventures, TN); $25,000 from Daniel & Christine Richards (general counsel, Federal Express, TN).

The Democratic Governors Association, a Section 527 organization, received in the last six months of the year, $250,000 from Paul Tudor Jones (CT); $250,000 from Thomas Steyer, CA); $325,000 from AFSCME; $250,000 from Aetna; $150,000 from the Sheet Metal Workers Int’l. Political Action League; $150,000 from United Healthcare Services; among many others.

Earlier Political MoneyLine postings mentioned the $5 million from the National Education Association to its Super PAC; and the Values are Vital super PAC receipts of $525,000 from Paige Kreegal, and $485,000 from Martin Burns.

To search detailed money-in-politics databases, visit Political MoneyLine.
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“... out-of-state billionaires playing politics with health care,” a reference to the Koch brothers and their dark money

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$4M in outside money coming to District 13 race
January 30, 2014

Need proof outside money is going to matter in this year’s elections? Just look at spending this week.

Republicans are sending almost $2 million into the special election for Florida’s U.S. House District 13, and Democrats are standing by with almost the same amount. A group backed by conservative billionaire oil heirs David and Charles Koch is running ads nationwide criticizing the federal health care law. And Democrats are trying to fight back against the Koch brothers’ political influence, starting with an ad of their own in a key Senate race in Iowa.

The flurry of spending illustrates the outsized role outside groups are expected to play in the midterm elections. Disclosure of the new spending comes a day before federal candidates have to report how much money they raised and spent on their own last year in the run-up to November’s elections. That’s when voters will determine the balance of power in the House and Senate. Thirty-six governors’ offices also are up for grabs.

Taken as a whole, ad spending so far shows a lopsided contest favoring Republicans and their allies. Americans for Prosperity, one of the Koch brothers’ projects, has spent more on television ads this year in seven states with competitive Senate races than all Democratic groups combined have spent on Senate races in 10 hard-fought states.

[snipped]

Americans for Prosperity, for instance, already has spent around $6 million to criticize Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina and another $1.7 million to criticize Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. The two are among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats.

This week, the group started airing a weeklong national ad buy on Fox News Channel and CNN criticizing President Barack Obama’s health insurance overhaul and highlighting Americans who saw their health care policies change, despite Obama’s promise that wouldn’t happen. More than $500,000 in airtime has been purchased.

Democrats have countered by trying to make Americans for Prosperity – and their Koch backers – a liability for GOP candidates.

[snipped]

The Senate Majority PAC ad criticizes “out-of-state billionaires playing politics with health care,” a reference to the Koch brothers. The pair, heirs to an industrial fortune who have spent heavily to back Republican candidates, have become a rallying point for some Democrats who oppose the rise of unlimited outside spending in politics.
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The unstable GOP has to convince themselves (and us) that Obama did it-- whatever it is, he did it!

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The GOP Psyche: An Explainer
By Tina Dupuy, January 31, 2014

I believe the Republican Party’s psychic break happened the moment their “compassionate conservative” economic philosophy melted the world’s economy. President George W. Bush, the champion of deregulation, bailed out the banks and then offered: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

I know when I first heard it my head exploded. It sent the Republicans reeling.

They had always believed if liberals just stepped out of the way conservative alchemy would usher in a new golden age for America. Then the opposite happened.

This was the same historical moment the Party of Lincoln saw the star of the future first half-black allegedly liberal president with the middle name of Hussein rising, while the economy—spiked on their hyperbole and bluster—had busted. This was all that was needed to crack the collective psyche of America’s right wing.

And just to pry it open even further, the new overwhelmingly popular president whom they disavowed as a Bolshevik Nazi Black Panther Kenyan Illuminati Muslim Socialist, had ideas which were actually centrist Republican policies — shooting Osama bin Laden in the face, for example. Also shrinking the size of the federal workforce and therefore shrinking the size of the government, renewing the Bush Tax Cuts, reducing the deficit and cutting spending. Basic Republican staples when they actually live up to their rhetoric.

ObamaCare’s individual mandate had been the Republican alternative to socialized medicine since the days of Nixon: Americans having private insurance instead of Medicare for all. Now the individual mandate, according to Republicans, IS socialized medicine.

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that arises when self-image conflicts with reality. This phrase was coined in the 1950s by psychologist Leon Festinger and fleshed out in his book “When Prophesy Fails.” Festinger found when believers are faced with a doomsday deadline that comes and goes, instead of disillusionment, they “often increased their enthusiasm and activity. They poured greater energy than ever before into obtaining new converts.” Hence the rise of the tea party: Basically they’re the Grand Old Party fueled by the psychological backlash from failed prophesy.

Often the way this stress is dealt with is by re-defining values. It’s commonly referred to as moving the goal posts. This explains why the GOP used to be OK with secrecy, drones, bailouts, NSA spying and deficit spending—but now, post-Bush, see these things as tyranny. It’s what Festinger called, “ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions.”

The GOP believes they’re patriots and the stewards of free markets. Once that belief collides with facts, like conservative policies asphyxiating the middle class, they have to make it the fault of an enemy. Meaning: To Republicans a Democratic twice elected (by huge margins) President has to be a foreign Muslim treasonous dictator whose economic policies are killing us all because otherwise everything they’ve ever held true is a lie.

This explains why Republicans have to be against anything proposed by the man the Heritage Foundation’s president, Jim DeMint, hilariously calls our Imperial President. Unilaterally giving federal janitors a raise doesn’t exactly make one Darth Vader unless your own sense of self is in a death grip.

In cognitive dissonance theory, proof doesn’t matter in self-perception. History can be revised to gel with belief. For example: Ted Cruz, the architect of the 2013 government shutdown blames the disaster on President Obama and the Democrats. He has to. What he did was unpatriotic. In order for him to continue to see himself as a patriot, he has to convince himself (and us) that Obama did it.

The least radical guy in the country is now dubbed the most radical guy in history according to his dissident dissonance-sufferers. Now something as ubiquitous and usual as the executive order (FDR did 3,522 of them: Bush 291: Obama so far has done a paltry 168) is unprecedented, lawless and the end of the Republic!

What does this mean? It means we’re dealing with people who are unstable. They’ve gone through a great trauma (the Bush years) and they’re still trying to piece themselves together. Their numbers are dwindling and it’s only the true believers left.

As the GOP struggles with their fractured identity Obama is making it worse by implementing their policies! He’s set to cut $9 billion from the food stamp program.

What does it mean for liberals and progressives? It means we’re defending Republican policies to Republicans who now deplore said policies as communist plots.

Yeah, it’s nuts.
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Thursday, January 30, 2014

No, Ted, not all of us are stupid.... only the Tea Partyers are

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Ted Cruz Thinks You're Stupid
By Joe McLean, January 30, 2014

Sunday, on CBS’ Face the Nation, the junior senator from the State of Oblivion said—and I’m not making this up—“I didn’t threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don’t think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted… to fund the federal government.”

What? More than any other actor in last year’s budget debacle, Ted Cruz is responsible. Just a cursory glance at the record puts the lie to his blatant blame-shifting. Beginning with his “not-really-a-filibuster” publicity stunt, Cruz whipped up the national Tea Party base, emboldened House GOP radicals, and cowed the Republican leadership. After his Green Eggs and Ham soliloquy, sanity left the building and a shutdown was almost inevitable.

Even in the face of crushing poll numbers and Wall Street panic, his constant rants bolstered the Tea Party radicals’ resolve to force a budget Armageddon. In the midst of the maelstrom, he congratulated Tea Party wing nuts for their obstructionism, telling the Values Voters Summit, “It is because of you that the House of Representatives has been standing strong.”

Not content to simply sabotage sanity in the Senate, Cruz convened a semi-secret conclave of Tea Party House members to craft a counter-attack on to any potential Senate compromise. Imagine that—a junior senator directing strategy for the back-bench insurgents in the House—a strategy every Republican leader now admits was a political and economic disaster.

Does Ted Cruz really think he can get away with re-writing history? Despite having long ago plighted his troth to the lunatic right, he is certainly trying. But why?

Because, above all things he is the consummate ambitious opportunist. With Chris Christie’s 2016 juggernaut at least temporarily in the ditch, Cruz may see an opening. If he can re-invent himself as a moderate-sounding statesman who still owns the hearts of the Tea Party loyalists, he may think he has a winning coalition in the 2016 GOP presidential nominating sweepstakes.

Could this work? He knows he’s in a tough spot as a “Tea Party darling.” The country has soured on obstructionist politicians and the Tea Party in particular. Poll after poll reveals an angry American electorate, disgusted with the “just say no” agenda. Cruz is bound to catch a lot of this hell, personally.

Worse news for Cruz, the old guard is striking back. Establishment Republicans, congressional leaders, corporate CEO’s, Wall Street poobahs, the Chamber of Commerce and the whole panoply of GOP establishment business organizations have begun to counterattack.

While it remains to be seen whether the old guard can overcome the new Koch-backed insurgency, and their byzantine labyrinth of interlocking dark-money groups, Ted Cruz isn’t taking any chances. With his “Who me?” revisionism, Cruz is looking to position himself as the standard-bearer of both camps. If he can don the toga praetexta of a statesman, Cruz may think he’s found the key to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is a breathtakingly bold gambit. Yet Cruz seems to believe he has the chops to pull it off.

Of course, while tries to play against type, he still can’t resist the old urge to kick over the furniture. When asked by Bob Schieffer in that same interview, “Will you agree to raise the debt ceiling, or will you demand something in return?” Cruz replied, “Look, of course, we should do something. We shouldn’t just write a blank check.”

Those are code words for “I’m going to demagogue, obfuscate, obstruct and bloviate about big government until the cows come home, or at least as long as I can get lots of press doing it.”

He can’t help himself. 
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Koch brothers must have been stung by Reid's remarks

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Koch brothers fire back at Reid's remark
By Megan R. Wilson, January 30, 2014

The Koch brothers fired back at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Thursday evening after he said the powerful conservative financiers were trying to “buy the country.”

“Sen. Reid’s divisive remarks were not only disrespectful and beneath the office he holds, they were indicative of what lengths he and his Democratic allies will go to eliminate and silence their political opposition,” said Philip Ellender, the president and chief operating officer at Koch Companies Public Sector, in a statement.

The public comments are a rare retort for the company, which spoke on behalf of brothers Charles and David Koch, and stem from an argument on the Senate floor between Reid and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday.

McConnell decried the Obama administration’s desire to have the Internal Revenue Service more tightly regulate 501(c)(4) non-profit groups, saying the changes incite “war not just on [the administration’s] opponents, but on free speech itself.”

Democratic politicians and campaign finance watchdogs have worried that the groups – classified as “social welfare” organizations under the tax code – are unlawfully behaving in political behavior.

“These social welfare organizations are extremely helpful, but the Koch brothers aren’t a social welfare organization,” Reid said.

Republicans, meanwhile, point to IRS officials admitting last year to giving non-profit applications with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in the title more scrutiny.

Ellender says new IRS proposals to broaden the definition of political activity would “codify the IRS’ illegal targeting of conservative and free market organizations during the 2012 election cycle” and vowed a continued effort by the Koch brothers.

“Charles Koch and David Koch will continue to exercise their First Amendment rights to advocate for their fundamental beliefs in individual liberty, limited government, and the promotion of policies that help people improve their lives,” he said.

The brothers have been known to write large political checks themselves, but they also operate a network of organizations that funneled more than $400 million into the 2012 elections, according to a report from the Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics.
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Michelle, just shut UP!

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Gotta love one of the comments:  "Republican must be Latin for retarded parrot."
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Michele Bachmann vs. Bernie Sanders CNN Debate Goes Completely Off the Rails
By Matt Wilstein, January 27, 2014

It was the type of shout-fest debate that would not have been out of place in the original Crossfire. But instead of taking place on the reboot of that show, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) went head-to-head on CNN’s The Situation Room Monday afternoon. Once they go going, all host Wolf Blitzer had to do was get out of the way as these two ideologically-opposed lawmakers went at each other’s throats for nearly fifteen minutes straight.

The presumed topic was income inequality, which is expected to be a major focus of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tomorrow night. But over the course of the segment, the conversation coverage a large variety of related topics from early childhood education to Wall Street regulations and everything in between.

For much of the debate it appeared the Bachmann and Sanders were talking simultaneously, while a seemingly helpless Blitzer sat on the sidelines choosing not to moderate in the traditional sense.

When Sanders said Republicans want to cut Social Security, Bachmann shot back with, “That is absolutely a lie. It’s brought up all the time and it’s a lie. Let’s face it, Senator Sanders. you shouldn’t be lying about what our position is.” When he asked her directly if she supports “chained CPI” and raising the minimum wage, Bachmann would not answer, choosing instead to direct the points she was trying to make straight towards Blitzer. Meanwhile, Bachmann had to pause several times throughout the conversation to tell Sanders to “calm down.”

Somehow, Bachmann and Sanders emerged from the segment without causing each other any physical harm, but the emotional damage was done. “This was an excellent discussion,” Blitzer said when the whole thing was over.

Watch the full segment in all its glory below, via CNN:


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The Koch's 501(c)(4)s are making a farce of their social welfare designation

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Harry Reid rips the Koch brothers for trying to “buy the country”

The Senate Majority Leader calls out the libertarian billionaires for their political dealings

By Elias Esquith, January 30, 2014

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got into it on Thursday with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — but it was the Koch brothers who ended up receiving most of the Nevada Democrat’s ire.

It all started with McConnell complaining about the Obama administration’s new attempt to better regulate nonprofit groups who list themselves as devoted to “social welfare” rather than partisan politics. Within politics, these groups are usually referred to as 501(c)(4) nonprofits. The administration — and many outside observers — worry that too many 501(c)(4)s are making a farce of their social welfare designation by effectively advocating for certain politicians or political parties.

Mitch McConnell disagrees. “Democrats think 2014 is shaping up to be a tough year for them politically. So instead of trying to persuade the public that they’ve got the best answers to the problems we face, they try to shut everybody else out of the political process, they try to shut them up,” McConnell said. He went on to accuse the president of wanting “to use the IRS to drive conservatives right off the playing field.”

Reid wasn’t having it, and pointed to the conservative billionaire Koch brothers — who directly and indirectly fund many of these organizations — as a prime example of how the rules are being disregarded or abused by outside political actors. “Because of a United States Supreme Court decisions called Citizens United, there’s been some really untoward stuff going on in the political world,” Reid said. “We have two brothers who are actually trying to buy the country.

“What they’re doing is spending their … dollars on governors races, and on the state level and, of course, spending huge amounts of money around the country attempting to defeat Democrats both in the House and the Senate,” Reid continued. “The Koch brothers hide all their campaign efforts. They disguise themselves with rare exception as social welfare organizations, with all these fancy names going after people who are trying to improve the country.

Reid’s got a point: A recent, in-depth story from the Washington Post looked at the Koch brothers’ political network and described it as “unrivaled” in its “complexity.” The report also found that the Kochs had spent at least $400 million on the 2012 elections.
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GOP: "Alternative" does NOT mean better!

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GOP: We're the 'alternative party'
By Michael O'Brien, January 30, 2014

House Republicans are pushing a new message:  We have ideas too.

“I think in order to maximize our year, it’s important that we show the American people we’re not just the opposition party – we’re actually the alternative party,” House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday at a press conference kicking off a GOP strategy retreat in Maryland.

“I think Republicans have to do more to talk about the better solutions we think we have that will help the American people grow their wages, have better opportunities, get a better job – and clearly, have a better shot at the American dream,” he added.

It’s a pivot for Republicans, who want to have something to show to voters (beyond last year’s government shutdown) in this fall’s midterm elections. The party is sensitive to attacks premised on the record-low productivity of Congress in 2013, and Democrats’ labeling of the GOP as simply a “Party of No.”

The shift has been reflected somewhat since that government shutdown, which bruised the GOP politically and helped Boehner reassert authority over rank-and-file lawmakers. Since then, the House has passed a compromise budget agreement and offered final approval just this week to a new Farm Bill, a massive piece of agricultural legislation.

And Republicans are expected to mull a statement of principles on immigration reform, a major priority during this Congress and a politically-sensitive issue for the long-term health of the GOP as a whole. And House Republican leaders wrote President Barack Obama on Thursday to highlight areas of common ground in the president’s State of the Union address on which they and Democrats could work together.

To get there will require GOP leaders to conquer some familiar demons.

Republican leaders’ primary challenge involves managing the Tea Party wing of their own party. The past three years have seen repeated instances in which GOP leaders’ best attempts at advancing legislation were undermined when conservatives balked and Democrats refused to offer their support. Boehner and Cantor won’t be able to transform the GOP into the party of alternatives unless they are able to rein in their conservative flank.
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The "Queen of Mean", Ann Coulter, has spewed her usual batch of crap

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Hmmmpf, despite having two college degrees, her writing leaves a lot to be desired-- words were left out, among other errors, and it's loaded with hyperbole: "... 5 million times a day, MSNBC expresses bewilderment that any Republicans oppose amnesty..."  C'mon, "5 million times a day"?  
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GOP CRAFTS PLAN TO WRECK THE COUNTRY, LOSE VOTERS
By Ann Coulter, January 29, 2014

As House Republicans prepare to sell out the country on immigration this week, Phyllis Schlafly has produced a stunning report on how immigration is changing the country. The report is still embargoed, but someone slipped me a copy, and it's too important to wait.

Leave aside the harm cheap labor being dumped on the country does to the millions of unemployed Americans. What does it mean for the Republican Party?

Citing surveys from the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute, Schlafly's report overwhelmingly demonstrates that merely continuing our current immigration policies spells doom for the Republican Party.

Immigrants -- all immigrants -- have always been the bulwark of the Democratic Party. For one thing, recent arrivals tend to be poor and in need of government assistance. Also, they're coming from societies that are far more left-wing than our own. History shows that, rather than fleeing those policies, they bring their cultures with them. (Look at what New Yorkers did to Vermont.)

This is not a secret. For at least a century, there's never been a period when a majority of immigrants weren't Democrats.

At the current accelerated rate of immigration -- 1.1 million new immigrants every year -- Republicans will be a fringe party in about a decade.

Thanks to endless polling, we have a pretty good idea of what most immigrants believe.

According to a Harris poll, 81 percent of native-born citizens think the schools should teach students to be proud of being American. Only 50 percent of naturalized U.S. citizens do.

While 67 percent of native-born Americans believe our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, only 37 percent of naturalized citizens agree.

No wonder they vote 2-1 for the Democrats.

The two largest immigrant groups, Hispanics and Asians, have little in common economically, culturally or historically. But they both overwhelmingly support big government, Obamacare, affirmative action and gun control.

[snipped]

How are Republicans going to square that circle? It's not their position on amnesty that immigrants don't like; it's Republicans' support for small government, gun rights, patriotism, the Constitution and capitalism.

Reading these statistics, does anyone wonder why Democrats think vastly increasing immigration should be the nation's No. 1 priority?

It would be one thing if the people with these views already lived here. Republicans would have no right to say, "You can't vote." But why on Earth are they bringing in people sworn to their political destruction?

Republicans have no obligation to assist the Democrats as they change the country in a way that favors them electorally, particularly when it does great harm to the people already here.

Yes, it's great for the most powerful Americans to have lots of cheap, unskilled labor. Immigration definitely solves the rich's "servant problem."

(Approximately 5 million times a day, MSNBC expresses bewilderment that any Republicans oppose amnesty when it's supported by the Chamber of Commerce. Wow! So even people who profit by flooding the country with cheap labor are in favor of flooding the country with cheap labor!)

It's terrific for ethnic lobbyists whose political clout will skyrocket the more foreign-born Americans we have.

And it's fantastic for the Democrats, who are well on their way to a permanent majority, so they can completely destroy the last remnants of what was once known as "the land of the free."

The only ones opposed to our current immigration policies are the people.

But are they going to give John Boehner a job when he's no longer House speaker, as some big business lobbyist will?

Will they help Marco Rubio run for president on the claim that, as a Cuban, he can appeal to Hispanics? (Fat chance.)

Will they bundle contributions for Eric Cantor's re-election, as well-heeled donors will?

Will they be enough to re-elect Kevin McCarthy to Congress so he can keep his gold-plated government health insurance?

Will they be the ones writing Darrell Issa's flattering New York Times obituary?

Sorry, Americans. You lose.
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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Typical Faux News s**t

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Fox News host: Women don’t want equal pay, they already get ‘exactly what they’re worth’
By David Edwards, January 29, 2014

Fox News host Martha MacCallum asserted on Wednesday that women did not want special laws ensuring equal for equal work because they already were compensated “exactly what they’re worth.”

After President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address on Tuesday to call on Congress to end workplace discrimination practices that “belong in a Mad Men episode,” Fox News asked two men, liberal radio host Alan Colmes and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, to debate equal pay for women.

Carlson argued that women actually made more than men if the time they “voluntarily” took off work to raise children was factored in.

“The numbers don’t lie,” he insisted. “The losers in the Obama economy have been men.”

MacCallum accused politicians of talking about female workers like they were victims “who we need to make sure she gets what she deserves.”

“The numbers, when you look at them, do not bear out that there is a war on women in the workplace,” the Fox News host added. “And I think it’s a question of how liberals and conservative view what needs to be done for women.”

“I disagree that there is not a war on women when they’re not making as much as men for the same jobs,” Colmes replied. “The numbers don’t lie in terms of sick leave, pregnancy and women are forced out of the workplace when they have to leave.”

MacCallum interrupted: “I think most women do not want to be treated as sort of a special class of citizen. They want to go every day, they want to get paid for being a professional for doing their job really well, and they don’t want to be treated like some special group of people who have to be given a little special handout just to make sure they’re OK.”

“Special handout?” Colmes shot back. “It’s equal pay for equal work, it’s having sick leave, it’s having pregnancy leave.”

“Women get paid exactly what they’re worth,” MacCallum declared.

“Exactly what they’re worth?” Colmes exclaimed. “Are they not worth the same amount of money for the same job as men?”

“They are worth a heck of a lot,” the Fox News host remarked.

Carlson accused Colmes of being angry at the “biological reality” that women were paid less because they had to take time off work for pregnancies.

“I wonder how that would have been different if we had two women doing it,” MacCallum said as the segment concluded.

Watch this video from Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, broadcast Jan. 29, 2013.


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Ooooh, tell it like it is: "The public needs to understand that Republicans are lazy and worthless and that they’re actually kind of proud of it."

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Lessons From SOTU: Democrats Are Mainstream, Republicans Fringe
By Amanda Marcotte, January 29, 2014

Last night’s State of the Union was pretty good. I realize a lot of people felt it was “meh”, but I liked the fact that it wasn’t dilly-dallying and President Obama laid forth a bunch of goals for himself that are achievable. And, of course, a bunch of goals for Congress that are unachievable because House Republicans are a bunch of layabouts whose sole interests are banning abortion and hoping that the one millionth time they repeal the ACA will be the one that sticks. That’s an important thing to highlight. The public needs to understand that Republicans are lazy and worthless and that they’re actually kind of proud of it.

I think the President’s points all felt very obvious and mainstream for two major reasons: 1) The country has shifted left on economic issues in recent years, largely due to the recession. That’s no big surprise, and a similar thing happened during the Great Depression. Nothing like watching the middle class wither away and economic insecurity become the mainstream for people to stop spitting on poor people, as they are in very real danger of becoming poor people themselves. It’s a real life version of John Rawls’ veil of ignorance. 2) The Republicans have become so extremist that even the most ordinary, mainstream ideas—such as the idea that a person who works full-time should not live in poverty—have become strongly identified as partisan ideas. As Brian Beutler pointed out in Salon:
Intentionally or otherwise, Obama’s speech was a reminder to Democrats that the storm clouds of Obamacare implementation have obscured their view of the popular platform the party ran on so confidently in 2012. That there are a series of issues that animate Democratic constituencies on the docket, both ahead of 2014 and beyond, and all of them are political and substantive winners for the party.
All the Republicans can do, really, is try to conceal what they really stand for. There was a lot of that going on last night, with them disingenuously applauding things like pay equity and the right to vote, even though Republicans have been pretty active in fighting both, especially the latter. Not that there’s anything new about the Republican strategy to win elections by simply lying about where you stand, of course, but it’s becoming increasingly untenable for them as their base, hyped up by their internet-enabled ability to express themselves, are increasingly demanding more public right wing posturing to go along with the right wing policy.

You saw that problem on full display with the many and varied “responses” that were given. The official one, by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, was mostly fluff with the only serious aspect being her signaling that Republicans fully intend to continue with their single-minded obsession with rolling back reproductive rights. But even that was in coded language, bland platitudes about how much she loves life that are scripted so as to imply that Republicans have nothing more serious in mind than congratulating mothers for being awesome, instead of the real plan to force childbirth on the unwilling. The fact that other Republicans felt that wasn’t enough was telling. They can’t help but undermine themselves. Pandering to the right means giving up votes, but at a certain point, they clearly don’t care anymore.
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Maddow vs the Kochs

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Rachel Maddow fends off Koch brothers’ complaints with new proof of their meddling
By Arturo Garcia, January 28, 2014

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reaffirmed her promise to keep reporting on the financial and political activities of groups connected to conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch while revealing new information backing up her story about a Koch-affiliated group that has been pitching Florida’s drug test law for welfare recipients around the country.

The Foundation for Government Accountability, Maddow reported, is among the organizations that takes Koch summer internship participants through the State Policy Network, a coalition of think tanks.

Maddow played February 2013 audio describing how students in the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program can search online for places to work, with the Florida-based foundation coming up among southern organizations.

Earlier this month, attorneys for the Kochs sent Maddow a script they wanted her to read disavowing her reporting, a missive she dismissed on-air, stating, “I don’t play requests.” When asked about this latest connection, a Koch spokesperson accused Maddow of “shifting the focus to a new line of flawed reasoning.”

Despite being struck down in court on Dec. 31, Maddow said, the law is part of Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) re-election campaign, amid a renewed push by the Kochs and their Republican backers to get more closely involved with state primaries and tightening control of their vast, opaque network to avoid “freelancing” from their operatives.

Politico also reported that the Kochs convened their annual secretive strategy meeting in Palm Springs this past weekend still reeling from both setbacks in the 2012 election season and a record $1 million fine levied against two of their allies in Arizona.

But beyond the fights with the Kochs over individual group activities, Maddow said the effort to uncover how deep their networks run is important in keeping the Kansas residents from succeeding in their attempts to influence American politics from the shadows.

“I say we [report on them] anyway,” Maddow insisted. “It’s our country, too, even if we don’t get invited to your billionaires’ party in Palm Springs every January.”

Watch Maddow’s commentary, as aired on Monday, below.

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Once again a Republican's mouth has gotten him into trouble

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Grimm Apologizes to Reporter for Threat
By Dan Friedman, January 29, 2014

Rep. Michael Grimm  has apologized for threatening throw a reporter off "a f......g balcony" Tuesday night.

Grimm threatened to assault NY1 reporter Michael Scotto for asking about a federal probe into Grimm's 2010 fundraising.

Grimm told reporters outside his office that his "Italian grandmother" would not have approved of his actions. And she would be right, he said.

“I was wrong," Grimm said in a statement Wednesday. "I shouldn’t have allowed my emotions to get the better of me and lose my cool. I have apologized to Michael Scotto, which he graciously accepted, and will be scheduling a lunch soon. In the weeks and months ahead I’ll be working hard for my constituents on issues like flood insurance that is so desperately needed in my district post Sandy.”

Scotto tweeted: @repmichaelgrimm called to apologize. He said he 'overreacted.' I accepted his apology."

"Rep. Grimm has apologized, and the Speaker believes that was appropriate," said Micheal Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Grimm apparently changed his mind after sleeping on the incident, a video of which went viral last night after President Obama's State of the Union speech.

In a statement late Tuesday night, Grimm had blamed Scotto for the spat.

"I was extremely annoyed because I was doing NY1 a favor by rushing to do their interview first in lieu of several other requests," Grimm said then. "The reporter knew that I was in a hurry and was only there to comment on the State of the Union, but insisted on taking a disrespectful and cheap shot at the end of the interview, because I did not have time to speak off-topic."

Earlier Wedneday, Grimm's Democratic opponent, New York City Councilor Domenic Recchia, had demanded Grimm apologize, not just to Scotto but to voters in Grimm's district, which includes Staten Island a slice of Brooklyn.

"Michael Grimm’s behavior last night was disgraceful, completely unacceptable, and unbefitting of a United States Congressman," Recchia said. "Using threats of physical violence to intimidate the press from doing their jobs is against everything our country-- and our government--stands for, and is a shameful abuse of power."
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Americans for Prosperity, funded in part by the Koch Brothers, is the GOP's most important outside group

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Koch Brothers Are Outspending Everyone for a GOP Senate Takeover

Americans for Prosperity has outspent all other Republican groups combined, including Karl Rove's American Crossroads.

By Alex Roarty, January 16, 2014

President Obama's health care law has reshaped the political environment for 2014, endangering Senate Democrats and expanding the field of competitive elections. But one group has brought the prospect of a Republican Senate takeover closer to reality, even before the midterm campaigns get under way.

Look no further than Americans for Prosperity, the conservative outside group funded in part by the wealthy industrialists Charles and David Koch.

AFP has spent a whopping $22 million on TV ads so far this election, part of a multistate campaign that uses Obamacare's troubled rollout to attack vulnerable Democrats. AFP's barrage has knocked several incumbents off-balance just as their reelection campaigns begin—especially senators representing Republican-leaning states. Their early efforts have helped send Democratic senators' approval ratings plumetting in the states where they've spent big bucks.

It's the kind of precise, preemptive strike normally expected from traditional GOP heavyweights like the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But while they have remained almost silent in the midterm election's early going, AFP has singlehandedly taken the fight to Democrats.

And in doing so, it's emerged as the GOP's most important outside group, a role the group's leaders don't plan on relinquishing anytime soon.

"Polling data for a lot of these Senate and House members who … we've undertaken these efforts against have clearly suffered," said Tim Phillips, AFP's president. "They've dropped, and I think that's a reflection of the public's dissatisfaction with Obamacare. And we're determined to keep this issue on the front burner."

Just this week Americans for Prosperity expanded its TV campaign to two states Obama carried in 2012: Iowa and Michigan. It's a sign of things to come.

"In a state like Michigan, where the president handily won twice, you would assume support for his signature legislative accomplishment … would be strong. It's not," Phillips said. "And the fact we're not expanding our effort here demonstrates that even a state that has supported the president over the years, there is deep dissatisfaction. And I think that's a significant sign."

Democrats have taken notice: Across numerous House and Senate races this week, campaign officials have begun pushing back against the group. A spokeswoman for Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, whose state has witnessed more than $6 million in ads from AFP, issued a statement condemning the involvement of "shadowy outside groups" in her Senate race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meanwhile, warned in a memo that the group was poised to "dump millions" into a special House race in Florida. The insulating maneuvers are on top of the millions spent by allied Democratic groups like Senate Majority PAC in response to AFP's ads.

Party operatives are raising alarm about the group, telling their donors that they need to step up or risk being run over in the fall. "Democrats need money at this early stage in order to fight back against the limitless spending from the Kochs," Guy Cecil, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's executive director told The New York Times on Wednesday.

The nonprofit organization has been a major player among Republicans in the post-Citizens United campaign finance world. It spent $140 million, $44 million of which came from Koch-backed funds, the Washington Post reported.

But what makes its efforts so significant now is that it's spending big bucks while the other major Republican outside groups are standing pat. American Crossroads has barely raised any money since the last election. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's political arm has spent relatively small sums in several GOP primaries. Even the Senate Conservatives Fund, whose PAC launched several high-profile TV ads against fellow Republicans, has spent only about $5 million in the last year, according to a source close to the group.

In fact, by one measure, AFP has bought almost as much airtime as every other outside group combined. Total spending from Republican and Democratic outside groups totaled only $5 million more than AFP's, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Not all political spending, including Americans for Prosperity's, is reported to the Federal Election Commission, so it's not an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it's nonetheless illustrative of the group's sizable investment.

But money alone doesn't explain its success; timing has been just as important. While other groups kept their powder dry for 2014, AFP's negative spots coincided with dismal reviews of Obamacare's opening months. While voters were hearing about faulty websites and canceled health plans at work and home, they were watching ads that laid the blame on Democrats on their TV. The ads themselves—which have frequently featured a lone man or woman explaining to the camera how Obamacare has hurt them and their family—have won plaudits from other GOP strategists for their personal touch.

"We knew that the rollout was coming, and that public awareness would be heightened as a result," Phillips said. "And we wanted make sure in this period of heightened awareness we were delivering our message that Obamacare was harming Americans."

Phillips said his group's goal is still to repeal Obamacare, which he acknowledges is likely impossible until Obama leaves office. But the consequences for Democrats could be dire. Phillips wouldn't reveal AFP's midterm budget but called the coming investment "significant." It's already on pace to spend more than the $65 million that it shelled out for TV ads in 2012.
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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Somebody needs to whack Huckabee over the head and give HIM a headache!

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Two members of “the Koch brothers network of dark money political nonprofit corporations” have not paid the $15 million in fines levied against them

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Much-Ballyhooed Political Penalties Probably Won't be Collected
By Ken Broder, January 23, 2014

When the state Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) announced record fines last October for two members of “the Koch brothers network of dark money political nonprofit corporations,” then FPPC Chair Ann Ravel touted the punishment as a victory for electoral transparency.

However, along with observers being able to see how millions of dollars can easily and anonymously be slipped into the political process, they also saw the shortcomings of the laws that govern it.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the campaign groups have not paid the total of $15 million they were penalized for trying to illegally influence the November 2012 California election and there are no indications they ever will.

American Future Fund and Small Business Action Committee took $15 million from two Arizona non-profit organizations and spent it in a convoluted plan that targeted Governor Jerry Brown's Proposition 30 tax hike for defeat and supported the anti-union Proposition 32. They were caught and ordered to pay penalties, which equaled the money the accepted.

The money that made its way into the California election in its waning days originated with the Center to Protect Patients Rights (CPPR), a group identified by the FPPC as being the key nonprofit in the Koch Brothers’ political network. CPPR gave money to American Future Fund, which channeled $4.08 million to California Future Fund for Free Markets, and Phoenix-based Americans for Responsible Leadership (ARL), which gave $11 million to the Laguna Nigel-based Small Business Action Committee.

The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics used tax returns to calculate that the network of 17 groups run by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch distributed $407 million in 2012, far more than any other organization, including the $325 million Karl Rove’s two Crossroads organizations. All of organized labor combined contributed around $400 million to local, state and federal campaigns.

But the Koch money, as large as it is, does not include complete revenues from eight groups that still haven’t filed tax returns for a portion of 2012.  

Three-fourths of the Koch $407 million was funneled through a group called Freedom Partners, which in turn moved most of its money through the Center to Protect Patient Rights. It is unknown how much of the Koch money actually comes from the brothers. It flows from multiple sources that are largely untraceable, thanks to U.S. election laws and the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that unleashed virtually uncontrolled financing of political campaigns.

The two groups that owe California money have indicated an unwillingness or inability to pay. The Small Business Action Committee, initially said the group wouldn’t pay its $11 million penalty because the law applies only to candidate elections and not ballot initiatives and the organization hasn’t been found in violation of any campaign finance laws. Oh, and they spent all the money on the election. Discussions with the state are still ongoing.

The California Future Fund for Free Markets, which owes $4 million, has disbanded. The Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Responsible Leadership paid a total of $1 million in fines.

To Learn More:   
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The GOP can't fool the voters-- we KNOW that they are the ones who are not willing to compromise!

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Morning Plum: In using executive authority, Obama is on solid political ground
By Greg Sargent, January 28, 2014

The big news: Obama will announce in tonight’s speech that he will use executive authority to boost the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors. So he’s serious about going around Congress to move his agenda and spur the recovery. It’s fair to ask what took Obama so long to realize he had little other recourse, but either way, we’re now heading for a major battle over use of that authority.

Republicans are already denouncing the planned executive actions, arguing it will make compromise between the two parties harder. But again, Republicans have openly confirmed they deliberately denied support for Obama’s agenda explicitly to make it harder for him to claim he’d bridged differences between the parties. Seriously, Mitch McConnell has publicly admitted this.

Few pundits have been willing to reckon directly with the fundamentals of GOP obstructionism. A real reckoning would acknowledge that implacable GOP opposition to the Obama agenda, which began when the country was facing a dire, open-ended economic emergency, has for years been rooted in a combination of deliberate strategic choices and structural factors that have created a deeply unbalanced, unconventional situation. Commentators refuse to deal seriously with all of this — even though it is the actual cause of the very paralysis and dysfunction they regularly claim consternation about — and it will probably be absent from discussions of whether Obama’s planned executive actions are defensible.

But there’s evidence the public is aware of the basic outlines of the situation. Indeed, it’s worth noting that the battle over executive authority is occurring in a political context that reflects already existing views of Obama and the GOP.

Obama’s approval is low, and the GOP response seems like a bet that this will make independents more receptive to the argument that he’s the one hostile to compromise. But voters take a dimmer view of the GOP’s willingness to compromise.

The new NBC/WSJ poll, for instance, finds that a majority of Americans, 51 percent, believe Republicans will be “too inflexible” with Obama, while only 25 percent say they have the balance right (one wonders about the faculties of the 17 percent who say Republicans have been “too quick to give in” to the president). By contrast, only 39 percent say Obama has been too inflexible with Republicans.

Yesterday’s Pew poll found that by a huge margin of 52-27, Americans say Dems are more willing than Republicans to work with the opposition. While the GOP holds a narrow lead on the economy, it also found lopsided Dem advantages on which party is viewed as extreme and which party is more concerned with ordinary people — suggesting, again, awareness of the basic imbalance.

Beyond all this, let’s remember that the minimum wage hike is popular – and Congressional Republicans aren’t. And people don’t care about process — they care about results.

[snipped]
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GOP still hasn't made any headway in its efforts to make the party more attractive to women, minorities, and gays

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Republicans meet, but losing image remains
By Taegan Goddard, January 25, 2014

After three days of winter meetings, it's clear the Republican National Committee has made little progress in rebranding a party that has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.

A quick look at the media coverage confirms the party is still struggling:

Politico: "After the 2012 election, establishment Republicans promised things would be different next time. They'd stop turning off women. They'd tamp down on rogue outside groups. And they'd get the tea party movement in line. But now that 2014 is here, those goals seem as elusive as ever and even insiders admit the party's got a long way to go — if it really wants to change."

Reuters: "At the Republican National Committee's winter meeting this week in Washington, it was clear the panic that hit the party after the 2012 elections has subsided, although polls indicate that efforts to make the party more attractive to single women, minorities and gays, groups that favor Democrats by big numbers, have not made any headway."

Associated Press: "Yet, awkward comments about contraception and women's reproductive systems and chatter over Michigan committeeman Dave Agema's derogatory comments about gays and Muslims obscured the party's attempt to feature its efforts at last week's meeting."

In fact, as National Public Radio notes, the GOP's rebranding effort "was mostly in the background this year." Instead, the party focused on procedural changes to help them with the next presidential election.

The one victory Republicans seemingly had was tightening the presidential primary process in an attempt to get an electable nominee early enough in the process that he or she can wage an effective general election campaign.

But political scientist Josh Putnam says most of the analysis of these changes so far is "overstating the changes the Republicans put in place this week."

He warns: "Let's all be careful about what has changed with these rules and what it may or may not mean for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination race."
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"... interparty tensions could have troubling consequences for Republicans this year ..." Let's hope so!

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McCain Censure the Latest Sign of GOP Fratricide
By Eric Pianin, January 27, 2014

If there were any doubts that Republicans are in the throes of ideological fratricide that could threaten their prospects for success this fall, they were dispelled over the weekend in Arizona.

In a move both bizarre and ill-timed, Arizona Republican Party members voted to censure Sen. John McCain – a highly-decorated Vietnam War hero, maverick conservative and 2008 Republican presidential nominee – for being too liberal for their taste.

[snipped]

The resolution reads like a federal indictment on espionage charges, condemning McCain “for his continued disservice to our state and nation,” and said state Republican leaders “will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. Senator.”

[snipped]

After losing to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, McCain made such a dramatic shift to the right that by 2010 he was tied with Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint of South Carolina for the title of the Senate’s most conservative member, according to a National Journal analysis.

McCain’s sins, in the eyes of state party Republicans in Arizona, include his support of the Senate-passed bipartisan immigration reform bill that would provide 11 million illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. State Republican officials are adamantly opposed to any bill that smacks of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants and their children.

Another sin committed by the often-free-wheeling, combative McCain was clashing with rising conservative Senate stars, including Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, over national security and budget policy as well as Obamacare.

[snipped]

His final misdeed was to side with Democrats last fall in deriding GOP efforts to block passage of a budget and threaten a government shutdown to force cuts in spending for the Affordable Care Act. In a Sept. 25 floor speech that drew Democratic praise and GOP hostility, McCain said that while he had vigorously opposed passage of Obamacare, “elections have consequences.”

[snipped]

Such interparty tensions could have troubling consequences for Republicans this year in their bid to retain control of the House and recapture a majority in the Senate. Seven of 12 Republican senators up for reelection – including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – are facing primary challenges from Tea Party candidates.

For now, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi appears to be the most endangered GOP incumbent. The politically potent Club for Growth has endorsed his primary challenger, state senator Chris McDaniel. The other Republicans facing primary challenges appear to be in pretty good shape.

Yet just a few Republican primary upsets – as we saw, for example, in Indiana and Missouri in 2012 – could result in a weaker general election field and costly losses for the GOP.
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Monday, January 27, 2014

Right-wingers, before you expound on slavery, you should sign off to be another person's slave-- then you will have a foundation for your hyperbole

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Watch As These Conservatives Recycle the World's Worst Talking Point
By Matthew Rosza, January 21, 2014

You'd think that conservatives, after being repeatedly humiliated for their insensitivity toward rape victims, would have learned to be careful when discussing the plight of the marginalized and oppressed.

For proof that this lesson has yet to take, let's look at one of the right wing's most obnoxious, entitled, and ill-informed rhetoric motifs: comparing liberal policies to American slavery.

Slavery is "the state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household." When used in the specific context of American politics, "slavery" generally conjures up the historical institution of African American slavery, wherein blacks were forced to work without pay for people who claimed to "own" them, bought and sold like chattel, denied all legal rights, and frequently subjected to physical and psychological torture.

Needless to say, analogies to either type of slavery should only be made in the most extreme cases, and even then only after being justified by careful study and reasoning. Certainly they should never be used to score cheap political points.

Unfortunately, right-wingers like Dr. Greg Brannon have yet to learn that. On Jan. 14, the North Carolina Tea Party member, widely considered to be a front-runner for the Republican Senate nomination in his state, was discovered to have made these comments in an October interview:

"... 80% of the farm bill was food stamps. That enslaves people. What you want to do, it's crazy but it's true, teach people to fish instead of giving them fish. When you're at the behest of somebody else, you are actually a slavery to them [sic]. That kind of charity does not make people freer."

While the platitude about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him fish is valid, it applies to situations in which people can control over how they eat, not ones in which chronic unemployment remains a social epidemic and millions of Americans rely on food stamps either because they can't find work or their jobs don't pay them enough. Franklin Roosevelt put it best 80 years ago when he observed that "necessitous men are not free men." A strong case can be made that dependence on charity diminishes individual agency and autonomy, but it's quite a leap to argue that this is inherently worse than deprivation of one's biological necessities. Until the conditions of hopeless poverty are eradicated, only those whose privileged backgrounds have led to moral callousness can honestly believe that relief through charity is more servile than regularly suffering from hunger.

Certainly Brannon isn't alone in his willful insensitivity, as his "liberal policy X = slavery" rhetoric has been echoed by right-wingers from Rand Paul and Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin to this guy — New Hampshire state Rep. Bill O'Brien:

There is nothing that people with a sense of decency can do to stop these individuals from cheapening the horrors chronicled in autobiographies like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, scholarly works like Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, and movies like the recent 12 Years a Slave to advance their polemical agenda. The fact that many of them do this as members of the party that was founded to limit the expansion of slavery is merely a cruel irony.

Indeed, you may even be one of them. In which case, I propose the following wager:

If you truly believe that a left wing program is actually as bad as literal slavery, then sign off to be another person's slave for the rest of your life. Once you are that person's property and are denied all semblance of legal human rights, you will be absolved of any kind of obligations to these so-called oppressive government programs you so vociferously detest. At that point, if you can still honestly profess your earlier opinion while languishing in literal chains, I guarantee that liberals like me will take your opinions more seriously. Of course, if you're understandably reluctant to seriously consider this offer, then maybe instead of weaving elaborate rationales to justify your moral cowardice, you should just admit that some analogies ought to be off limits, even in the realm of partisan hyperbole.
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"The clandestine influence of the Kochs ... would be much reduced if they were forced to play in the sunshine."

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The Koch Party
By the New York Times Editorial Board, January 25, 2014

Only a few weeks into this midterm election year, the right-wing political zeppelin is fully inflated with secret cash and is firing malicious falsehoods at supporters of health care reform.

As Carl Hulse of The Times reported recently, Democrats have been staggered by a $20 million advertising blitz produced by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group organized and financed by the Koch brothers, billionaire industrialists. The ads take aim at House and Senate candidates for re-election who have supported the health law, and blame them for the hyped-up problems with the law’s rollout that now seem to be the sole plank in this year’s Republican platform.

In one typical example, the group’s ad against Representative Gary Peters of Michigan, a Democrat who is running for an open Senate seat, is full of distortions and lies. It accuses Mr. Peters of lying when he said the law bars cancellations of insurance policies. Mr. Peters happened to be right, as millions of people who once faced losing all insurance after they got sick now appreciate. The 225,000 Michigan residents who the ad said received “cancellation notices” were actually told that they could change to a better policy; they were not told they could no longer have insurance, as the ad implies. And though the ad said health care costs are “skyrocketing,” national spending on health care is now growing at the slowest pace ever recorded, in part because of the reform law.

Democrats intend to counter this campaign with the facts, but few of the candidates have the money to do so now. As a result, the campaign is taking a serious political toll, increasing the chances that Republicans who support a repeal of the law will win back the Senate majority this fall.

Naturally, Democrats are using the campaign to increase their own fund-raising, begging donors to give unlimited amounts to left-leaning super PACs and advocacy groups. But it is unlikely that they will be able to match the resources or the cunning of the Kochs, who are using vast pools of money earned through corporate revenues to build a network unrivaled in complexity and secrecy. This weekend, they are bringing together some of the biggest Republican bank accounts at a resort in Palm Springs, Calif., to collect money and plan this year’s strategy.

As Politico described it on Friday, they have already set up an operation so sophisticated it rivals “even the official Republican Party in its ability to shape policy debates and elections.” Its components include a political consulting firm to recruit, train and support like-minded antigovernment candidates, which will be active in the congressional primaries. There is also a center that provides technology and administrative services to right-wing groups and candidates, an office that compiles and analyzes voter data and a youth advocacy group.

In 2012, as The Washington Post reported, the Koch network raised $407 million, which was secreted among 17 groups with cryptic names and purposes that were designed to make it impossible to figure out the names of donors the Kochs worked with. As one tax expert told The Post, “it’s designed to make it opaque as to where the money is coming from and where the money is going.”

The Democrats have smaller versions of these operations, though they are more focused on building a super PAC to collect unlimited donations supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and they lack the resources to compete with the Kochs at this stage.

The clandestine influence of the Kochs and their Palm Springs friends would be much reduced if they were forced to play in the sunshine.

The Internal Revenue Service and several lawmakers are beginning to step up their interest in preventing “social welfare” organizations and other tax-sheltered groups from being used as political conduits, but they have encountered the usual resistance from Republican lawmakers. Considering how effectively the Koch brothers are doing their job, it’s easy to see why.
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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Unfortunately ... "the politics are so polarized it has limited [Obama's and Boehner's] ability ... to reach out and make a deal."

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Obama and Boehner: A topsy-turvy relationship
By Deirdre Shesgreen, January 26, 2014

When Americans tune in to the State of the Union on Tuesday night, two men will fill their television frame, literally and figuratively.

President Obama will of course be front and center, delivering his sixth address to Congress on the nation's current condition. Just a few feet behind the president will be House Speaker John Boehner, the Ohio Republican whose leadership will go a long way toward determining the fate of the agenda Obama lays out in his speech.

For both leaders, Tuesday will kick off the fourth year of a topsy-turvy relationship — one that's taken them from political strangers to intense negotiating partners to finger-pointing combatants.

How their ever-changing relationship plays out will help frame the year's coming battles over everything from immigration reform to federal spending. More broadly, it offers a window into Washington's partisan paralysis, as well as a hint at their respective and intertwined legacies.

Right now, it seems chilly at best, nonexistent at worst.

"In public at least ... it's professional and distant, with little emotional connection," said Steven Gillon, resident historian for the History Channel and author of "The Pact," an account of the relationship between President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

Other political insiders used these words to describe their relationship: "distrustful," "sad," and even "awkward," in the words of Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

But both men insist that they get along well, despite a wide gulf in their political beliefs and their personalities.

"We get along fine," Boehner said Thursday during an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," "but you know we come at our jobs from a very different perspective."

Still, political experts say there's little question that — so far at least — the Obama-Boehner partnership has been less effective than that of other political odd couples.

Take, for example, President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill. The conservative icon and New Deal Democrat successfully crafted an agreement that extended the solvency of Social Security, and they also forged a historic tax reform deal.

[snipped]

Clinton and Gingrich had a volatile relationship, but also a productive one that resulted in a sweeping overhaul of welfare programs, a major tax cut package and a balanced budget agreement.

[snipped]

Obama and Boehner have weathered similar turmoil but without similar results. The last crisis — a 16-day government shutdown last October over funding the president's health care law — only generated fresh acrimony.

"What has frustrated the speaker (is) this president, when he wants to make a deal, he wants to there to be a winner and a loser," said Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, a close ally of Boehner's. In the shutdown standoff, "the president wanted to win and he wanted to rub our noses in it ... It created a lot more distrust."

Since that crisis, their relationship has seemed to be on "a steady, sad, flat course," said Griffin, the Clinton aide.

He and others say Obama and Boehner were unlikely to ever develop a natural chemistry because they are so different. Sure, they both love golf and smoking, although Obama says he's given up cigarettes.

But where Obama is cerebral and aloof, Boehner is more tactical and emotional. Obama has not made it a priority to build relationships with lawmakers in Congress, while Boehner thrives on his chummy political connections.

"Obama ... has a very even temperament (and) is famous for being cool," said Ron Peters, professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma and co-author of a book on Nancy Pelosi's speakership. "Boehner is much more of a people person."

But Peters and others say that even if Obama and Boehner had formed a strong kinship, they probably wouldn't be able to translate that into a sweeping record of legislative accomplishments. Their strained relationship is not just a function of the two men's political and personal differences, Peters said, but also a symptom of the hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington, where even a whisper of compromise can create a political firestorm.

That became evident in the real moment the Obama-Boehner alliance fractured: the summer of 2011, when their secret negotiations over a sweeping deficit-reduction plan collapsed. Obama said Boehner walked away from the deal after he realized he couldn't get his conservative GOP conference to go along. Boehner said Obama "moved the goal posts" with an eleventh-hour demand for more tax revenue.

Whatever the details of the disagreement, Democrats were furious with Obama for agreeing to cuts to Medicare and changes to Social Security. And Republicans were seething over reports that Boehner had put significant tax increases on the table.

"The two were pulled apart by their bases," Peters said.

Previous president-speaker relationships "aren't a realistic model," said Gillon, the History Channel historian, because the political landscape has been so transformed. House districts drawn to heavily favor one party or the other have filled Congress with arch-conservatives and super liberals. There is no longer, he said, a middle ground.

He said Boehner in particular is on a very short leash, with Tea Party lawmakers in his GOP majority deeply suspicious that he will fold in any negotiations with Obama. Gingrich could make a deal with Clinton and be confident he could muscle it through the House, Gillon said. Boehner, by contrast, is "trapped, whether willingly or not, by a hard-core conservative faction" that's likely to rebel against anything that smacks of compromise, he said.

"The political circumstances have to be appropriate for the personalities to make a difference," Gillon said. Obama and Boehner "don't have the chemistry" for political breakthroughs, and "the politics are so polarized it has limited their ability ... to reach out and make a deal."

Boehner seemed to lament that himself last week when he spoke with Leno.

"What's happened in Washington over the course of the 24 years that I've been there is that there's not as much common ground as their [sic] used to be," Boehner said. "The country's gotten more partisan. As a result, the Congress has gotten more divided."
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We need political centrism, but instead, "Party politics has degenerated into dangerous factionalism"

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Demands for "purity" destroying politics
By Kingsley Guy, January 26, 2014

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's recent fundraising foray into Florida created its share of scathing rhetoric. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz even followed Christie around the state, speaking to every media outlet that would listen about his "bullying" style, and the notorious lane closings on the George Washington Bridge concocted by Christie acolytes as retribution toward a recalcitrant Democratic mayor.

With Christie bloodied by the scandal, the Democratic pack is circling. In a poll several months ago, Christie came out as the only GOP hopeful who could beat Hillary Clinton in a presidential contest, so it behooves the Democrats to rip him apart early and kill his chances for the nomination. As the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill noted, "Politics ain't beanbag."

But it's not only Democrats who are critical of Christie. Plenty of Republicans see him as a turncoat for cozying up to President Obama, who came to New Jersey offering federal aid in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. For them, a GOP governor appearing on the same dais with Obama is tantamount to treason worse than Benedict Arnold's. Just ask former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, whose quest for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination in 2010 crashed and burned after he hugged Obama and accepted federal economic stimulus money for Florida.

Among Florida Republicans critical of Christie is Sid Dinnerstein, former head of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. He told The Wall Street Journal during the New Jersey governor's Florida trip, "If Christie becomes the Republican [presidential] nominee, a minimum of 10 million Republicans would stay home, guaranteeing that we would lose."

Dinnerstein has a point. Millions of GOP voters didn't consider Mitt Romney a pure enough Republican to warrant going to the polls to vote for him, so they sat out the 2012 election. After all, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney was the chief engineer of a health-care plan that bore striking similarities to Obamacare. He also at one time supported a woman's right to have an abortion.

It's doubtful, however, that even Ronald Reagan would qualify today as being sufficiently Republican to warrant nomination for the presidency. Remember, Reagan was a staunch advocate of immigration reform, a position considered anathema to the far right in today's GOP. He also signed an abortion bill into law as governor of California.

And what about Barry Goldwater, for decades the standard bearer for the Republican conservative movement? When gays in the military became an issue in the early 1990s, he supported the idea as a senator, noting: "You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country, you just need to shoot straight." This won him the eternal enmity of those in the GOP who derive their politics from the book of Leviticus.

The Republican Party faces a conundrum. It can nominate candidates in primary elections that generate enthusiasm among the base and get right-wing Republicans to the polls. These candidates, however, can so alienate independent voters that they drive them into the Democratic camp in the general election, and lose as a result.

This scenario has played out in several high-profile senatorial races in the past two elections, and may have cost the GOP control of the Senate. It also played out in the 2010 Florida gubernatorial race. With support of the tea party movement, novice Republican Rick Scott beat established Republican Bill McCollum in the gubernatorial primary. Scott barely eked out a victory against Democrat Alex Sink, and this year Scott stands a good chance of losing to the Democratic nominee.

Thirty years ago, Democrats faced a similar conundrum to the one Republicans face now. The party during the Vietnam era had slid to the left, and Democrats lost a series of presidential elections, including the landslide defeat in 1984 of Walter Mondale by Reagan.

Centrist Democrats, including Bill Clinton and Florida's own Bob Graham, decided to take action and bring the Democratic Party back toward the American mainstream. In 1985, they formed the Democratic Leadership Council that advocated more centrist policies for the party. The result was Clinton's election in 1992 and re-election in 1996.

The DLC has since withered away, which is too bad. Democrats again are in need of adult supervision, and a reformulation of the DLC is in order. So is the creation of a similar organization that would draw the Republican Party toward the center.

Party politics has degenerated into dangerous factionalism. The American people deserve better, and it's about time they got it.
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