...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Of course the corporatists and their adherents are creating hit pieces against Bernie...They are deathly afraid of his populist message and how folks are gravitating to it...they will do everything and anything to see him defeated...it's what the oligarchs do
* Bernie Sanders is doing something right if he's already got the corporate media hoes wailing and gnashing their teeth.
* Most Americans have a pretty good handle on what's wrong with the country, and when an honest politician and genuine people's advocate repeats what we already know, then spells out solutions to those problems, it's small wonder he's becoming more popular by the day. On the opposite side are the usual corporate porkers and their stooges in the press and congress whose interests are being threatened merely by mention of their foul deeds. Who are we going to believe and support? The usual thieves and liars or someone who wants to change things for the better?
* Deny Deny Deny. The surefire conservative strategy to deal with any fact.
* Corporate America now feels threatened by Sander's success in recent polling so they're gonna try and take him out. They don't want any changes to the status quo because they're making so much money screwing the US public. They want a Wall Street/Corporate lackey to be the next president: either Clinton or Bush.
* If we don't act now, America will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Enterprises. This country is fast becoming a dystopian nightmare out of a sci-fi novel with the Koch Brothers acting as the rich industrialists who have bought out the entire nation. And it's beyond obvious that the mainstream media is owned lock stock and barrel by these corporate overlords who are working so hard to own this entire nation. They are nothing but pure evil fascists who WILL turn America into a nation fully under their thumb. This next election spells the death of the American experiment unless we step up and stop them.
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Robert Reich destroys Washington Post’s hit piece on Bernie Sanders
By Robert Reich, October 3, 2015
The Washington Post just ran an attack on Bernie Sanders that distorts not only what he’s saying and seeking but also the basic choices that lie before the nation. Sanders, writes the Post’s David Fahrenthold, “is not just a big-spending liberal. And his agenda is not just about money. It’s also about control.”
Fahrenthold claims Sanders’s plan for paying for college with a tax on Wall Street trades would mean “colleges would run by government rules.”
Apparently Fahrenthold is unaware that three-quarters of college students today attend public universities financed largely by state governments. And even those who attend elite private universities benefit from federal tax subsidies flowing to wealthy donors. (Meg Whitman’s recent $30 million donation to Princeton, for example, is really $20 million from her plus an estimated $10 million she deducted from her taxable income.) Notwithstanding all this government largesse, colleges aren’t “run by government rules.”
The real problem is too many young people still can’t afford a college education. The move toward free public higher education that began in the 1950s with the G.I. Bill and was extended in the 1960s by leading public universities was reversed starting in the 1980s because of shrinking state budgets. Tuition has skyrocketed in recent years as states slashed education spending. It’s time to resurrect that earlier goal.
Besides, the biggest threats to academic freedom these days aren’t coming from government. They’re coming as conditions attached to funding from billionaires and big corporations that’s increasing as public funding drops.
When the Charles Koch Foundation pledged $1.5 million to Florida State University’s economics department, for example, it stipulated that a Koch-appointed advisory committee would select professors and undertake annual evaluations. The Koch brothers now fund 350 programs at over 250 colleges and universities across America. You can bet that funding doesn’t underwrite research on inequality and environmental justice.
Fahrenthold similarly claims Sanders’s plan for a single-payer system would put healthcare under the “control” of government.
But health care is already largely financed through government subsidies — only they’re flowing to private for-profit health insurers that are now busily consolidating into corporate leviathans. Anthem purchase of giant insurer Cigna will make it the largest health insurer in America; Aetna is buying Humana, creating the second-largest, with 33 million members.
Why should anyone suppose these for-profit corporate giants will be less “controlling” than government?
What we do know is they’re far more expensive than a single-payer system. Fahrenthold repeats the charge that Sanders’s healthcare plan would cost $15 trillion over ten years. But single-payer systems in other rich nations have proven cheaper than private for-profit health insurers because they don’t spend huge sums on advertising, marketing, executive pay, and billing.
So even if the Sanders single-payer plan would cost $15 trillion over ten years, Americans as a whole would save more than that.
Fahrenthold trusts the “market” more than he does the government but he overlooks the fact that government sets the rules by which the market runs (such as whether health insurers should be allowed to consolidate even further, or how much of a “charitable” tax deduction wealthy donors to private universities should receive, and whether they should get the deduction if they attach partisan conditions to their donations).
The real choice isn’t between government and the “market.” It’s between a system responsive to the needs of most Americans, or one more responsive to the demands of the super-rich, big business, and Wall Street – whose economic and political power have grown dramatically over the last three decades.
This is why the logic of Sanders’s ideas depends on the political changes he seeks. Fahrenthold says a President Sanders couldn’t get any of his ideas implemented anyway because Congress would reject them. But if Bernie Sanders is elected president, American politics will have been altered, reducing the moneyed interests’ choke hold over the public agenda.
Fahrenthold may not see the populism that’s fueling Bernie’s campaign, but it is gaining strength and conviction. Other politicians, as well as political reporters, ignore this upsurge at their peril.
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Sunday, October 4, 2015
Saturday, October 3, 2015
"... she has not produced the footage and even anti-abortion activists say it does not exist as she has described it." Well, Carly, your own kind don't even back you up!
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Carly is now trying to jump the shark and distract everyone from her dismal record at HP.
* There is a witch hunt going on against PP, and sadly, Carly is part of that witch hunt.
* The fact that she lied about such a video that was not from Planned Parenthood tells how low she will go to get a job. That video that she saw was made by a anti abortion group made to look like it was PP. I no longer call her by her last name but Carly Fullashytarina.
* Which part of Federal funds can't be used for abortions, and abortions account for only 3 % of Planned Parenthood services doesn't Carly and the conservatives understand? or do they just reject the truth and the facts because they don't support their agenda?
* She knows that if you give the right narrative that people want to believe, then facts don't matter.
* I truly enjoy watching politicians destroy themselves,it is even more enjoyable when they demonstrate a complete inability to realize they chose a fight they can not win and that would not have gained them anything if they had won it.
* Lying to damage health care rights and limit care access to her own gender. Nice.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Fiorina makes distortion of Planned Parenthood a centerpiece
By Bill Barrow, October 3, 2015
Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has spent the last two weeks repeating an erroneous description of videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists. That seems bound to continue as she makes her opposition to Planned Parenthood a centerpiece of her 2016 campaign.
Campaigning in South Carolina on Friday, Fiorina said she "absolutely" stands by her criticism of Planned Parenthood. She accused the women's health organization — it's also the nation's largest abortion provider — of pushing "propaganda" against her while being "aided and abetted by the media."
Fiorina has brushed off the facts surrounding her claim as a "technicality." Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, survived this week the latest attempt of conservatives in Congress to cut off its federal funding and accused her of lying.
The flap began at Republicans' Sept. 16 presidential debate, when Fiorina brought up widely circulated videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists and showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of fetal tissue to researchers.
"As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape -- I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes," Fiorina said. "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."
That detailed scene does not occur in the videos, produced by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress. One of the videos, still posted on the center's YouTube channel as of Friday, shows a woman identified as an "ex-procurement technician" from a firm other than Planned Parenthood discussing harvesting the brain of an aborted fetus.
As the woman talks, the video cuts away to show an image that producers have confirmed is stock footage of a stillborn baby miscarried in a hospital after 19 weeks of gestation.
After being questioned multiple times about her claims, Fiorina's campaign released an online ad that again includes the image, with the claim that "Carly Fiorina won the debate. Now come the false attacks."
This, despite the fact that the baby was miscarried, not aborted, and that the image comes from a hospital procedure unconnected with Planned Parenthood.
Fiorina has pushed back in multiple interviews. Often, the crux of her argument, beyond sticking to her incorrect description of the anti-Planned Parenthood videos, is that she has not misrepresented the group's actions and that the larger issue is about the character of the nation.
"They're trying to have a conversation about a technicality about a videotape," Fiorina said last week at Christian women's health center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The center, which does not provide abortions, has become a popular stop for Republican presidential candidates. "The character of this nation cannot be about butchery of babies for body parts," Fiorina said.
At another South Carolina stop, she linked liberals' support for abortion rights with environmental regulations. "They are perfectly prepared to destroy other people's jobs and livelihoods and communities in order to protect fish and frogs and flies," she said. "But they do not think a 17-week-old, a 20-week-old, a 24-week-old is worth saving. This, ladies and gentlemen, is hypocrisy."
Yet when asked specifically about the video, she's never budged. On NBC's Sept. 27 edition of "Meet the Press," host Chuck Todd asked Fiorina if she would admit to "exaggerating" the scene in question. "No, not at all," she said. "That scene absolutely does exist." But she has not produced the footage and even anti-abortion activists say it does not exist as she has described it.
On Friday, she asked in South Carolina, "Why is it Planned Parenthood cannot and will not deny late-term abortions are being performed for the purposes of obtaining brains and other body parts? ... It's happening."
Planned Parenthood doesn't dispute that fetal tissue is sometimes taken for research, but notes the practice is legal and payments only cover expenses of the process.
"In two states, Planned Parenthood helps patients who want to donate tissue for fetal tissue research, following clear guidance that goes well above and beyond the legal requirements in this area," said spokesman Eric Ferrero, referring to California and Washington. "This work is not about 'harvesting' or 'selling' or 'profiting' — it is about helping facilitate patients' wishes to support medical research that can help treat and cure serious diseases."
Recent polling suggests Fiorina's criticism of Planned Parenthood is out of step with the wider electorate but in line with conservatives. Pew Research Center found in a Sept. 22-27 poll that 60 percent of adults in the U.S. wanted a budget deal to maintain funding for Planned Parenthood. But among Republicans, 66 percent said any budget deal must eliminate the money — 78 percent among those who identify as "conservative Republicans."
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Carly is now trying to jump the shark and distract everyone from her dismal record at HP.
* There is a witch hunt going on against PP, and sadly, Carly is part of that witch hunt.
* The fact that she lied about such a video that was not from Planned Parenthood tells how low she will go to get a job. That video that she saw was made by a anti abortion group made to look like it was PP. I no longer call her by her last name but Carly Fullashytarina.
* Which part of Federal funds can't be used for abortions, and abortions account for only 3 % of Planned Parenthood services doesn't Carly and the conservatives understand? or do they just reject the truth and the facts because they don't support their agenda?
* She knows that if you give the right narrative that people want to believe, then facts don't matter.
* I truly enjoy watching politicians destroy themselves,it is even more enjoyable when they demonstrate a complete inability to realize they chose a fight they can not win and that would not have gained them anything if they had won it.
* Lying to damage health care rights and limit care access to her own gender. Nice.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Fiorina makes distortion of Planned Parenthood a centerpiece
By Bill Barrow, October 3, 2015
Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has spent the last two weeks repeating an erroneous description of videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists. That seems bound to continue as she makes her opposition to Planned Parenthood a centerpiece of her 2016 campaign.
Campaigning in South Carolina on Friday, Fiorina said she "absolutely" stands by her criticism of Planned Parenthood. She accused the women's health organization — it's also the nation's largest abortion provider — of pushing "propaganda" against her while being "aided and abetted by the media."
Fiorina has brushed off the facts surrounding her claim as a "technicality." Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, survived this week the latest attempt of conservatives in Congress to cut off its federal funding and accused her of lying.
The flap began at Republicans' Sept. 16 presidential debate, when Fiorina brought up widely circulated videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists and showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of fetal tissue to researchers.
"As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape -- I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes," Fiorina said. "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."
That detailed scene does not occur in the videos, produced by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress. One of the videos, still posted on the center's YouTube channel as of Friday, shows a woman identified as an "ex-procurement technician" from a firm other than Planned Parenthood discussing harvesting the brain of an aborted fetus.
As the woman talks, the video cuts away to show an image that producers have confirmed is stock footage of a stillborn baby miscarried in a hospital after 19 weeks of gestation.
After being questioned multiple times about her claims, Fiorina's campaign released an online ad that again includes the image, with the claim that "Carly Fiorina won the debate. Now come the false attacks."
This, despite the fact that the baby was miscarried, not aborted, and that the image comes from a hospital procedure unconnected with Planned Parenthood.
Fiorina has pushed back in multiple interviews. Often, the crux of her argument, beyond sticking to her incorrect description of the anti-Planned Parenthood videos, is that she has not misrepresented the group's actions and that the larger issue is about the character of the nation.
"They're trying to have a conversation about a technicality about a videotape," Fiorina said last week at Christian women's health center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The center, which does not provide abortions, has become a popular stop for Republican presidential candidates. "The character of this nation cannot be about butchery of babies for body parts," Fiorina said.
At another South Carolina stop, she linked liberals' support for abortion rights with environmental regulations. "They are perfectly prepared to destroy other people's jobs and livelihoods and communities in order to protect fish and frogs and flies," she said. "But they do not think a 17-week-old, a 20-week-old, a 24-week-old is worth saving. This, ladies and gentlemen, is hypocrisy."
Yet when asked specifically about the video, she's never budged. On NBC's Sept. 27 edition of "Meet the Press," host Chuck Todd asked Fiorina if she would admit to "exaggerating" the scene in question. "No, not at all," she said. "That scene absolutely does exist." But she has not produced the footage and even anti-abortion activists say it does not exist as she has described it.
On Friday, she asked in South Carolina, "Why is it Planned Parenthood cannot and will not deny late-term abortions are being performed for the purposes of obtaining brains and other body parts? ... It's happening."
Planned Parenthood doesn't dispute that fetal tissue is sometimes taken for research, but notes the practice is legal and payments only cover expenses of the process.
"In two states, Planned Parenthood helps patients who want to donate tissue for fetal tissue research, following clear guidance that goes well above and beyond the legal requirements in this area," said spokesman Eric Ferrero, referring to California and Washington. "This work is not about 'harvesting' or 'selling' or 'profiting' — it is about helping facilitate patients' wishes to support medical research that can help treat and cure serious diseases."
Recent polling suggests Fiorina's criticism of Planned Parenthood is out of step with the wider electorate but in line with conservatives. Pew Research Center found in a Sept. 22-27 poll that 60 percent of adults in the U.S. wanted a budget deal to maintain funding for Planned Parenthood. But among Republicans, 66 percent said any budget deal must eliminate the money — 78 percent among those who identify as "conservative Republicans."
...................................................................................................................................................................
Hey, "carpetbagger" Cathy, sounds like a lot of people have your number!
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COMMENTS:
* Kevin McCarthy's comments about the 'investigation' were the only honest thing to come out of a Republican pol's mouth in years.
* And that puts this fifth expenditure for a committee in the realm of a political ploy not a matter of governing. A misuse of citizen's money.
* Karl chided the crowd. "Show some respect for our guests here," he said..... She should show some respect for the intelligence of the audience by not bullsh!tting them ...
* The Benghazi thing is not even a dead horse anymore; its the skeleton of a dead horse. Even Fox "News'" daily coverage of it cannot convince the majority of Americans that there is any meat left on those bones.
* She is a cheap Koch Brothers Puppet. She does not even live in Washington state (which she pretends to represent). She actually lives in California. She depends on keeping the people dumbed down. I can't stand her.
* Really? I didn't know that? how can she represent Eastern WA if she doesn't live here?
* People than know her say she has an address here (probably a vacation home) but actually lives in California.
* I happen to live in Kathy's district, and, believe me, she isn't watching out for us !!!!! She only shows up in our state when it's election time, or she is trying to push some agenda. She is simply a Tea Party "clone", who votes with the base, and the rest of us "be damned". We have no use for her !!!!!!
* I have a home in her Eastern Washington district. Rampant wildfires but she didn't show up until way down the line. Locals call her Katrina Cathy.
* "The Benghazi Committee is doing important work. Trey Gowdy is an honorable man." And Karl asks the crowd to show Rodgers some respect. What about respecting the audience?
* Exactly, that audience has seen millions of their tax dollars spent on investigation after investigation where no wrong doing has been found.
* Would somebody please ask the Republicans how many investigations were involved in the 13 US Embassy attacks that happened during Bush's term.
* I think that it's good that she got booed. Republicans think that they are getting political advantage with investigation after investigation into Benghazi. One of them just found out what the public really thinks about their continuous, costly, time wasting investigations that have yet to turn up any wrong doing by anyone.
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Cathy McMorris Rodgers Booed Over GOP's Benghazi Probe
People booed and hissed at House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) on Thursday as she defended her party's ongoing Benghazi probe and its connection to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
At the Washington Ideas Forum, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked McMorris Rodgers about a recent comment by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who faced criticism this week for saying the GOP investigation into the 2012 attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has succeeded in bringing down Clinton's poll numbers.
Democrats have long accused Republicans of pushing the issue solely to hurt Clinton, who was secretary of state when the attack took place, so McCarthy's comments backed up their argument.
"I do believe that the work that we're doing in the Benghazi committee is very important," McMorris Rodgers said to boos in the audience. "We've not yet had important questions answered."
As she kept talking, the boos grew louder and people started hissing. Someone even shouted, "You're lying!"
Karl chided the crowd. "Show some respect for our guests here," he said.
McMorris Rodgers insisted that Republicans are doing the work they should be doing, and praised Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who chairs the special committee that House GOP leaders created in May 2014 to focus solely on Benghazi. Clinton is testifying before the committee on Oct. 22.
"Trey Gowdy is an honorable man. He is respected. He is a former prosecutor who knows how to go about it," she said. "He has approached it in a way where he is asking questions and he has not made it political."
Prior to creating the Benghazi committee, the GOP investigation already encompassed 13 hearings, 25,000 pages of documents and 50 briefings. But they still haven't found anything incriminating about Clinton.
[Booing and “You’re lying” at approximately 8:30 min.; further disturbance at approximately 12 min.]
COMMENTS:
* Kevin McCarthy's comments about the 'investigation' were the only honest thing to come out of a Republican pol's mouth in years.
* And that puts this fifth expenditure for a committee in the realm of a political ploy not a matter of governing. A misuse of citizen's money.
* Karl chided the crowd. "Show some respect for our guests here," he said..... She should show some respect for the intelligence of the audience by not bullsh!tting them ...
* The Benghazi thing is not even a dead horse anymore; its the skeleton of a dead horse. Even Fox "News'" daily coverage of it cannot convince the majority of Americans that there is any meat left on those bones.
* She is a cheap Koch Brothers Puppet. She does not even live in Washington state (which she pretends to represent). She actually lives in California. She depends on keeping the people dumbed down. I can't stand her.
* Really? I didn't know that? how can she represent Eastern WA if she doesn't live here?
* People than know her say she has an address here (probably a vacation home) but actually lives in California.
* I happen to live in Kathy's district, and, believe me, she isn't watching out for us !!!!! She only shows up in our state when it's election time, or she is trying to push some agenda. She is simply a Tea Party "clone", who votes with the base, and the rest of us "be damned". We have no use for her !!!!!!
* I have a home in her Eastern Washington district. Rampant wildfires but she didn't show up until way down the line. Locals call her Katrina Cathy.
* "The Benghazi Committee is doing important work. Trey Gowdy is an honorable man." And Karl asks the crowd to show Rodgers some respect. What about respecting the audience?
* Exactly, that audience has seen millions of their tax dollars spent on investigation after investigation where no wrong doing has been found.
* Would somebody please ask the Republicans how many investigations were involved in the 13 US Embassy attacks that happened during Bush's term.
* I think that it's good that she got booed. Republicans think that they are getting political advantage with investigation after investigation into Benghazi. One of them just found out what the public really thinks about their continuous, costly, time wasting investigations that have yet to turn up any wrong doing by anyone.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Cathy McMorris Rodgers Booed Over GOP's Benghazi Probe
Republican leader insists investigation isn't about Hillary Clinton.
By Jennifer Bendery, October 1, 2015People booed and hissed at House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) on Thursday as she defended her party's ongoing Benghazi probe and its connection to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
At the Washington Ideas Forum, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked McMorris Rodgers about a recent comment by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who faced criticism this week for saying the GOP investigation into the 2012 attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has succeeded in bringing down Clinton's poll numbers.
Democrats have long accused Republicans of pushing the issue solely to hurt Clinton, who was secretary of state when the attack took place, so McCarthy's comments backed up their argument.
"I do believe that the work that we're doing in the Benghazi committee is very important," McMorris Rodgers said to boos in the audience. "We've not yet had important questions answered."
As she kept talking, the boos grew louder and people started hissing. Someone even shouted, "You're lying!"
Karl chided the crowd. "Show some respect for our guests here," he said.
McMorris Rodgers insisted that Republicans are doing the work they should be doing, and praised Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who chairs the special committee that House GOP leaders created in May 2014 to focus solely on Benghazi. Clinton is testifying before the committee on Oct. 22.
"Trey Gowdy is an honorable man. He is respected. He is a former prosecutor who knows how to go about it," she said. "He has approached it in a way where he is asking questions and he has not made it political."
Prior to creating the Benghazi committee, the GOP investigation already encompassed 13 hearings, 25,000 pages of documents and 50 briefings. But they still haven't found anything incriminating about Clinton.
[Booing and “You’re lying” at approximately 8:30 min.; further disturbance at approximately 12 min.]
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According to Trump, "People are going to slip through the cracks ... that’s the way the world works."
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Donald Trump almost made a really good point about mass shootings
On Friday, during an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Donald Trump came very close to making an extremely good point about mass shootings. Asked what he would do to prevent future mass shootings as president, Trump immediately walled off the possibility of new gun laws: "First of all, you have very strong laws on the books." But having done that, he found himself with a dilemma. He tried to blame shootings on "mental illness" — the standard line gun rights supporters use in response to gun control supporters who blame shootings on guns. But that didn't actually lead him to any proposals for something that could be done. The result was (at least by Trumpian standards) a fairly nuanced point:
The prospect of targeting and stigmatizing people with mental health issues as a group, in reaction to mass shootings, is morally abhorrent. But Jesse Singal, of the Science of Us blog at New York magazine, has written an extremely good piece making a good-faith effort at working through it empirically. He sets out to figure out whether there are any mental or behavioral factors that predict who's disposed to commit mass shootings, as a way to figure out whether there's any effective policy response that focuses on controlling people rather than guns.
The answer, he finds, is no. Here's the key point from Columbia psychiatrist Dr. Paul Appelbaum, which sounds, in a weird way, like Trump's point on Morning Joe:
But Trump, whose base is ferociously opposed to gun control, doesn't have that option. As a result, he's left with the terrible dilemma: monstrously overbroad mass institutionalization, or inaction. And while he started the Morning Joe interview reasonably conflicted between the two, when the interviewer asked him, "So is your opinion that some people are going to slip through the cracks?" Trump embraced that option enthusiastically:
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Donald Trump almost made a really good point about mass shootings
But he ended up sounding like that Onion article about America's response to them.
By Dara Lind, October 2, 2015On Friday, during an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Donald Trump came very close to making an extremely good point about mass shootings. Asked what he would do to prevent future mass shootings as president, Trump immediately walled off the possibility of new gun laws: "First of all, you have very strong laws on the books." But having done that, he found himself with a dilemma. He tried to blame shootings on "mental illness" — the standard line gun rights supporters use in response to gun control supporters who blame shootings on guns. But that didn't actually lead him to any proposals for something that could be done. The result was (at least by Trumpian standards) a fairly nuanced point:
you know, oftentimes this happens and the neighborhood’s just, you know, we sort of saw that about him, it really looked like he could be a problem’ but it’s often hard to put someone in an institution for the rest of their lives based on the fact that he looks like he could be a problem.There's a real problem here. It is obviously true that many of the individuals who have committed recent mass shootings have had mental or behavioral health issues. But mental illness doesn't predict violence in the least — people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.
The prospect of targeting and stigmatizing people with mental health issues as a group, in reaction to mass shootings, is morally abhorrent. But Jesse Singal, of the Science of Us blog at New York magazine, has written an extremely good piece making a good-faith effort at working through it empirically. He sets out to figure out whether there are any mental or behavioral factors that predict who's disposed to commit mass shootings, as a way to figure out whether there's any effective policy response that focuses on controlling people rather than guns.
The answer, he finds, is no. Here's the key point from Columbia psychiatrist Dr. Paul Appelbaum, which sounds, in a weird way, like Trump's point on Morning Joe:
any attempt to predict who is most likely to commit a mass shooting — and therefore prevent it — runs up against the fact that these events are extremely rare, and as a result have only the broadest, least useful risk factors associated with them. [...]As a result, says Appelbaum, he's not talking about the "causes of violence" as a psychiatrist anymore. As Singal writes:
The risk factors that are linked to these events — basically, being an angry young man — are so widespread in the population, he explained, and so weakly predictive of an individual actually committing a mass shooting as to be practically useless. "The answer is yes, at least of the most highly publicized, most fear-inducing cases of stranger shootings, by and large they are angry young men," said Appelbaum. "But that doesn’t get you very far, because there are a lot of angry young men who are angry for all kinds of reasons, and unless one wants to lock them all up or put them all under 24-hour surveillance, it’s really impossible to build on a description that general to come up with effective preventative approaches."
Instead, he’d prepared a one-size-fits-all statement for the media that concluded, "If you tell me that there’s nothing we can do about guns, I’d say then we’re done. We’ve conceded that we are willing to tolerate periodic slaughters of the innocent. There’s nothing more to say.’"In other words, just because there's no answer to "how can we predict who will commit mass shootings?" doesn't mean there's no answer to "how can we prevent mass shootings?" To Appelbaum, there is a clear answer to the second — gun control — so it doesn't matter, from a policy perspective, whether there is an answer to the first.
But Trump, whose base is ferociously opposed to gun control, doesn't have that option. As a result, he's left with the terrible dilemma: monstrously overbroad mass institutionalization, or inaction. And while he started the Morning Joe interview reasonably conflicted between the two, when the interviewer asked him, "So is your opinion that some people are going to slip through the cracks?" Trump embraced that option enthusiastically:
You know, it’s not politically correct to say that, but you’re going to have difficulty, and that would be for the next million years you’re going to have difficulty. People are going to slip through the cracks and even if you did great mental health programs, people are going to slip through the cracks! [...] you are going to have difficulties. You’re going to have difficulties with many different things, not just this. And that’s the way the world works. And by the way, that’s the way the world always has worked.That sounds less like an actual answer than like that Onion headline: "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens." But it's very revealing. If your only option is to try to regulate people and predict what they will do, Trump is right: There really is no way to prevent mass shootings. Where one might disagree with him is whether more strictly regulating people is really easier or more acceptable than more strictly regulating guns.
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Friday, October 2, 2015
It was "not 'a real audience' -- quite an insult to Davis -- unlike some of the pope's other meetings."
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COMMENTS:
* I'm glad to hear that this was a mistake by the Pope. It does kind of flatten what good and hope I felt during his visit prior to this scandal.
* That was no mistake, the Vatican is trying to cover its tracks.
* Breaking News - The Pope's a politician - secret meetings - damage control- did you seeing the Pope shaking hands with his big donors upfront at St. Patrick's in NYC?
* What people forget is that the Catholic Church is a POLITICAL INSTITUTION - using self-justifying policies to try to cling to it's former politicial control over nations and people. It's historically far less worried about souls than about power.
* they got caught... and now they are trying to feign innocence.
* OK, so even if we agree with that narrative, the fact that the Vatican is now taking steps to distance themselves from Davis proves that upon further inspection, they find Davis's action to be so reviled that they shouldn't have met with her. That is a HUGE statement that really shows how wrong this woman's actions are. How wrong must you be if even the Pope regrets having met you?
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How the Outrage Over the Pope's Kim Davis Meeting May Have Paid Off in a Big Way
By Michelangelo Signorile, October 2, 2015
The Vatican has now spoken out publicly in response to the international outrage over Pope Francis' meeting with Kim Davis, saying it was not an endorsement of her stand. And one unnamed Vatican official even noted to the media that there is a "sense of regret." The Vatican and those close to it described the meeting in the way that some Vatican-watchers had speculated in recent days, based on their own sources: Davis' meeting was not arranged by the Vatican, and it appears she was part of a procession line of people greeting the pope.
The pope, according to the Vatican's clarification, knew little of the particulars of her story. It appears it was not a private meeting to endorse her. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi even described it as not "a real audience" -- quite an insult to Davis -- unlike some of the pope's other meetings. And Fr. Tom Rosica, who assists the Vatican press office, said Francis personally approved the clarification, so the rebuke is coming straight from the top. Whatever the case, it is very rare that the Vatican offers a clarification of any kind. So this is a slap at Davis and her lawyers for using the meeting in a political manner.
That is great, and the fact that the rebuke is coming from Pope Francis himself is huge. It was absolutely necessary and will go a long way. And there are two important points that should be taken away from this:
1. The Vatican got itself into this mess, and further exacerbated it.
The Vatican is saying it didn't organize a meeting with Davis, implying someone with an agenda brought her there. There have been various speculative accounts about this in recent days, some focusing on the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., who is described as a long-time Benedict supporter who was perhaps determined to undermine Francis. Whatever the case, someone either screwed up royally at the Vatican Embassy by even allowing Davis to get through, or the Vatican planned the meeting and this is all damage control for what it now realizes was a big mistake.
And then, the second screw up was the Vatican's issuing a "neither confirm nor deny" statement about the meeting only to later issue a "won't deny" statement. This is really what lit the torch that spread outrage around the world. The Vatican must learn that it needs to put out a fire with all the might it has before its spreads. Instead, it poured gasoline on the fire. The Vatican perhaps thought it could get away with not insulting Davis and evangelicals even after the meeting was made public and that it could just sweep this under the rug. It was wrong.
2. Contrary to those who are demanding apologies from those of us who spoke out, it is in fact the moral outrage that got the Vatican to issue its clarification.
The Vatican rarely clarifies anything, often still clinging to its worn-out image as a centuries-old mysterious institution that sits above the fray, even though it is a global empire with websites, social media accounts and sophisticated p.r. operatives who work for it in dozens of countries. Had there not been a collective sense of betrayal expressed in a forceful way by people around the world, the Vatican would have done nothing.
In that case, Liberty Counsel, the anti-gay legal firm associated with the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and which represents Kim Davis, would have gotten away with using the pope and the Catholic Church for its hateful, hideous, law-breaking agenda. So, actually, we did the pope a favor in forcing the Vatican to speak out. And more importantly, we exposed Liberty Counsel and pressured the Catholic Church, in a rare instance, to slam an anti-gay entity by exposing its lie. In its now-thwarted master plan, Liberty Counsel expected the Vatican to simply do what it has done in the past: Put out a vague comment and let it stand, thus allowing Liberty Counsel to continue to control the narrative. But the outrage -- and only the outrage, from millions of people globally -- changed that: Now the church controls the narrative while Liberty Counsel is rebuked even as it is now trying to continue a war of words with the Vatican.
The damage is still there for Pope Francis, no doubt. This was a bad incident, and not the punctuation he wanted on his trip. Hopefully he'll deal with those around him who put him in this position. The Vatican needed to issue this clarification as a first step. Maybe the pope has further plans.
To those who say that we should have given the pope the benefit of the doubt, I again say that without the outrage there would be no response.
But more importantly: This is a powerful church that still condemns homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered," attacks transgender people and allows its institutions worldwide to discriminate against LGBT people, with Catholic schools in the U.S. firing gay or lesbian teachers, for example, after finding out they're exercising their right to marry . The pope has both refused meetings with LGBT Catholics on these issues and refused to stop that discrimination.
The church surely cannot be seen as a "friend" of LGBT people even if we see a very slight -- in a centuries-long context -- overture by this new pope. It will need to be treated as a hostile institution for a long time. In the meantime, it's important to expose hypocrisies and encourage the pope -- who doesn't want this issue bogging him down and keeping him from focusing on the issues he's passionate about -- to do much, much more. The pressure got him to take control of this situation. That was big. It means that we need to keep the pressure up.
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COMMENTS:
* I'm glad to hear that this was a mistake by the Pope. It does kind of flatten what good and hope I felt during his visit prior to this scandal.
* That was no mistake, the Vatican is trying to cover its tracks.
* Breaking News - The Pope's a politician - secret meetings - damage control- did you seeing the Pope shaking hands with his big donors upfront at St. Patrick's in NYC?
* What people forget is that the Catholic Church is a POLITICAL INSTITUTION - using self-justifying policies to try to cling to it's former politicial control over nations and people. It's historically far less worried about souls than about power.
* they got caught... and now they are trying to feign innocence.
* OK, so even if we agree with that narrative, the fact that the Vatican is now taking steps to distance themselves from Davis proves that upon further inspection, they find Davis's action to be so reviled that they shouldn't have met with her. That is a HUGE statement that really shows how wrong this woman's actions are. How wrong must you be if even the Pope regrets having met you?
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How the Outrage Over the Pope's Kim Davis Meeting May Have Paid Off in a Big Way
By Michelangelo Signorile, October 2, 2015
The Vatican has now spoken out publicly in response to the international outrage over Pope Francis' meeting with Kim Davis, saying it was not an endorsement of her stand. And one unnamed Vatican official even noted to the media that there is a "sense of regret." The Vatican and those close to it described the meeting in the way that some Vatican-watchers had speculated in recent days, based on their own sources: Davis' meeting was not arranged by the Vatican, and it appears she was part of a procession line of people greeting the pope.
The pope, according to the Vatican's clarification, knew little of the particulars of her story. It appears it was not a private meeting to endorse her. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi even described it as not "a real audience" -- quite an insult to Davis -- unlike some of the pope's other meetings. And Fr. Tom Rosica, who assists the Vatican press office, said Francis personally approved the clarification, so the rebuke is coming straight from the top. Whatever the case, it is very rare that the Vatican offers a clarification of any kind. So this is a slap at Davis and her lawyers for using the meeting in a political manner.
That is great, and the fact that the rebuke is coming from Pope Francis himself is huge. It was absolutely necessary and will go a long way. And there are two important points that should be taken away from this:
1. The Vatican got itself into this mess, and further exacerbated it.
The Vatican is saying it didn't organize a meeting with Davis, implying someone with an agenda brought her there. There have been various speculative accounts about this in recent days, some focusing on the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., who is described as a long-time Benedict supporter who was perhaps determined to undermine Francis. Whatever the case, someone either screwed up royally at the Vatican Embassy by even allowing Davis to get through, or the Vatican planned the meeting and this is all damage control for what it now realizes was a big mistake.
And then, the second screw up was the Vatican's issuing a "neither confirm nor deny" statement about the meeting only to later issue a "won't deny" statement. This is really what lit the torch that spread outrage around the world. The Vatican must learn that it needs to put out a fire with all the might it has before its spreads. Instead, it poured gasoline on the fire. The Vatican perhaps thought it could get away with not insulting Davis and evangelicals even after the meeting was made public and that it could just sweep this under the rug. It was wrong.
2. Contrary to those who are demanding apologies from those of us who spoke out, it is in fact the moral outrage that got the Vatican to issue its clarification.
The Vatican rarely clarifies anything, often still clinging to its worn-out image as a centuries-old mysterious institution that sits above the fray, even though it is a global empire with websites, social media accounts and sophisticated p.r. operatives who work for it in dozens of countries. Had there not been a collective sense of betrayal expressed in a forceful way by people around the world, the Vatican would have done nothing.
In that case, Liberty Counsel, the anti-gay legal firm associated with the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and which represents Kim Davis, would have gotten away with using the pope and the Catholic Church for its hateful, hideous, law-breaking agenda. So, actually, we did the pope a favor in forcing the Vatican to speak out. And more importantly, we exposed Liberty Counsel and pressured the Catholic Church, in a rare instance, to slam an anti-gay entity by exposing its lie. In its now-thwarted master plan, Liberty Counsel expected the Vatican to simply do what it has done in the past: Put out a vague comment and let it stand, thus allowing Liberty Counsel to continue to control the narrative. But the outrage -- and only the outrage, from millions of people globally -- changed that: Now the church controls the narrative while Liberty Counsel is rebuked even as it is now trying to continue a war of words with the Vatican.
The damage is still there for Pope Francis, no doubt. This was a bad incident, and not the punctuation he wanted on his trip. Hopefully he'll deal with those around him who put him in this position. The Vatican needed to issue this clarification as a first step. Maybe the pope has further plans.
To those who say that we should have given the pope the benefit of the doubt, I again say that without the outrage there would be no response.
But more importantly: This is a powerful church that still condemns homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered," attacks transgender people and allows its institutions worldwide to discriminate against LGBT people, with Catholic schools in the U.S. firing gay or lesbian teachers, for example, after finding out they're exercising their right to marry . The pope has both refused meetings with LGBT Catholics on these issues and refused to stop that discrimination.
The church surely cannot be seen as a "friend" of LGBT people even if we see a very slight -- in a centuries-long context -- overture by this new pope. It will need to be treated as a hostile institution for a long time. In the meantime, it's important to expose hypocrisies and encourage the pope -- who doesn't want this issue bogging him down and keeping him from focusing on the issues he's passionate about -- to do much, much more. The pressure got him to take control of this situation. That was big. It means that we need to keep the pressure up.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"'Withdrawing from the Q&A can only suggest that Trump himself believes his views are indefensible before a Hispanic audience.'" You think?
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COMMENTS:
* Once again - if the Donald thinks things could get tough - he bails! Presidential? I don't think so!
* The guy was never trying to win, I said it months ago, looks like I knew...
* For a guy who likes to be loud and dish out insults, he is very thin skinned and scared.
* By "put on trial" he means he was afraid he would be asked specifics to back up his rhetoric.
* Trump wanted special treatment, but was denied. So he thinks he would be treated "unfairly" again. Seems he thinks everyone treats him unfairly. I believe he simply didn't want to get continually booed by all those hispanics that he told the nation would all vote for him.
* Smart move. If you see a punch coming, duck!
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Trump pulls out of event at US Hispanic chamber
By AFP, October 2, 2015
Republican White House frontrunner Donald Trump has backed out of an appearance at the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the group confirmed Friday.
Trump had previously agreed to participate in a question-and-answer session with the business organization on October 8 in Washington, but the chamber said the billionaire real estate tycoon was "unwilling" to abide by the terms of the format.
"Trump's decision to forfeit the Q&A session was motivated by the concern of being 'put on trial,'" the chamber's spokesperson Ammar Campa-Najjar said in a statement, adding that Trump would have been treated "no differently" than other candidates.
Several 2016 presidential hopefuls, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent seeking the Democratic nomination, have sat for public interviews with the chamber.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, have committed to appear before the chamber, as a way to make their case before an increasingly influential voting bloc.
"The Q&A series was designed to ensure that every candidate can explain in detail their political ideology, policies and campaign rhetoric in a thoughtful, deliberate and substantive fashion," Campa-Najjar said.
"Withdrawing from the Q&A can only suggest that Trump himself believes his views are indefensible before a Hispanic audience."
Trump's inflammatory rhetoric has alienated Latino voters, despite his oft-repeated claim that "Hispanics love me."
He has called for mass deportation of immigrants living illegally in the United States.
When he declared his candidacy, he called some Mexican immigrants "rapists" and murderers, and he has derided Republican rival Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail.
The Republicans' 2012 nominee Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, and poll data shows Trump would likely face an even poorer showing if the election were held today.
Trump is viewed unfavorably by 82 percent of Hispanics, with just 15 percent viewing him favorably, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last month.
"Trump's decision to withdraw from the session only deepens our community's already negative perceptions of him," Campa-Najjar said.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Once again - if the Donald thinks things could get tough - he bails! Presidential? I don't think so!
* The guy was never trying to win, I said it months ago, looks like I knew...
* For a guy who likes to be loud and dish out insults, he is very thin skinned and scared.
* By "put on trial" he means he was afraid he would be asked specifics to back up his rhetoric.
* Trump wanted special treatment, but was denied. So he thinks he would be treated "unfairly" again. Seems he thinks everyone treats him unfairly. I believe he simply didn't want to get continually booed by all those hispanics that he told the nation would all vote for him.
* Smart move. If you see a punch coming, duck!
...................................................................................................................................................................
Trump pulls out of event at US Hispanic chamber
By AFP, October 2, 2015
Republican White House frontrunner Donald Trump has backed out of an appearance at the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the group confirmed Friday.
Trump had previously agreed to participate in a question-and-answer session with the business organization on October 8 in Washington, but the chamber said the billionaire real estate tycoon was "unwilling" to abide by the terms of the format.
"Trump's decision to forfeit the Q&A session was motivated by the concern of being 'put on trial,'" the chamber's spokesperson Ammar Campa-Najjar said in a statement, adding that Trump would have been treated "no differently" than other candidates.
Several 2016 presidential hopefuls, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent seeking the Democratic nomination, have sat for public interviews with the chamber.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, have committed to appear before the chamber, as a way to make their case before an increasingly influential voting bloc.
"The Q&A series was designed to ensure that every candidate can explain in detail their political ideology, policies and campaign rhetoric in a thoughtful, deliberate and substantive fashion," Campa-Najjar said.
"Withdrawing from the Q&A can only suggest that Trump himself believes his views are indefensible before a Hispanic audience."
Trump's inflammatory rhetoric has alienated Latino voters, despite his oft-repeated claim that "Hispanics love me."
He has called for mass deportation of immigrants living illegally in the United States.
When he declared his candidacy, he called some Mexican immigrants "rapists" and murderers, and he has derided Republican rival Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail.
The Republicans' 2012 nominee Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, and poll data shows Trump would likely face an even poorer showing if the election were held today.
Trump is viewed unfavorably by 82 percent of Hispanics, with just 15 percent viewing him favorably, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last month.
"Trump's decision to withdraw from the session only deepens our community's already negative perceptions of him," Campa-Najjar said.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"Bush's 'free stuff' remarks are the latest wrong note in his flagging campaign. The last thing this country needs is a man of inherited wealth and power lecturing the rest of us about mooching."
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COMMENTS:
* Jeb Bush is just one misstep after another. He has to keep silent if he wants to progress in the primary elections.
* These are not "mis-steps", Jeb thinks he is "telling it like it is" (in his world at least) lol lol lol He just looks more foolish everyday. He has NO CHANCE of being POTUS.
* The problem with many in the GOP is that they believes in "free stuff" but do not consider it free. Our national defense is not free, federal highway systems and other infrastructure in not free that is just to name a few but Bush and others feel it is fine to give corperations and people to not pay taxes and shift money overseas to avoid taxes I submit they are the people that truly want things free even at the risk of not keeping America free.
* What about the bailout that his brother gave to the big banks with no strings attached? Would that be considred "Free Stuff"?
* The 1% likes free stuff too.
* And they get it too!
...................................................................................................................................................................
Jeb Bush Blows It on Race
By Raul A. Reyes, October 2, 2015
The Republican Party has struggled for years to attract more voters of color. In a recent campaign appearance, candidate Jeb Bush offered yet another useful case study in how not to do it.
At a campaign stop in South Carolina, the former Florida governor was asked how he would win over African-American voters. "Our message is one of hope and aspiration," he answered. So far, so good, right?
"It isn't one of division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting -- that says you can achieve earned success."
Whoops.
With just two words -- "free stuff" -- Bush managed to insult millions of black Americans, completely misread what motivates black people to vote, and falsely imply that African Americans are the predominant consumers of vital social services.
First, the facts.
Bush's suggestion that African Americans vote Democratic because of handouts is flat-out wrong. Data from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies shows that blacks have historically trended Democratic in correlation with the party's support for civil rights.
These days, blacks vote Democratic because they believe Democrats pay more attention to their concerns. Consider that in the two GOP debates, there was only one question about the "Black Lives Matter" movement. When they do comment on it, Republican politicians feel much more at home criticizing that movement against police brutality than supporting it.
Bush is also incorrect to suggest that African Americans want "free stuff" more than other Americans. A plurality of people on food stamps, for example, are white.
Moreover, government assistance programs exist because we've decided, as a country, to help our neediest fellow citizens. What Bush derides as "free stuff" -- say, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and school lunch subsidies -- are a vital safety net for millions of the elderly, the poor, and children, regardless of race or ethnicity.
How sad that Bush, himself a Catholic, made his comments during the same week that Pope Francis was encouraging Americans to live up to their ideals and help the less fortunate.
Finally, Bush's crass comment is especially ironic coming from a third-generation oligarch whose life has been defined by privilege.
Bush himself is a big fan of freebies. The New York Times has reported that, during his father's 12 years in elected national office, Bush frequently sought (and obtained) favors for himself, his friends, and his business associates. Even now, about half of the money for Bush's presidential campaign is coming from the Bush family donor network.
And what about those corporate tax breaks, oil subsidies, and payouts to big agricultural companies Bush himself supports. Don't those things count as "free stuff" handed out to some of the richest people in our country?
It's also the height of arrogance for Bush to imply that African Americans are strangers to "earned success." African Americans have been earning success for generations, despite the efforts of politicians like Bush -- who purged Florida's rolls of minority voters and abolished affirmative action at state universities.
If nothing else, this controversy shows why his candidacy has yet to take off as expected. His campaign gaffes have served up endless fodder for reporters, pundits, and comics alike, sometimes with a familiar ring.
As you may recall, Mitt Romney helped doom his own presidential aspirations by writing off the "47 percent" of the American people he said would never vote Republican because they were "dependent upon government."
In Romney's view, they're people "who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
Bush's "free stuff" remarks are the latest wrong note in his flagging campaign. The last thing this country needs is a man of inherited wealth and power lecturing the rest of us about mooching.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Jeb Bush is just one misstep after another. He has to keep silent if he wants to progress in the primary elections.
* These are not "mis-steps", Jeb thinks he is "telling it like it is" (in his world at least) lol lol lol He just looks more foolish everyday. He has NO CHANCE of being POTUS.
* The problem with many in the GOP is that they believes in "free stuff" but do not consider it free. Our national defense is not free, federal highway systems and other infrastructure in not free that is just to name a few but Bush and others feel it is fine to give corperations and people to not pay taxes and shift money overseas to avoid taxes I submit they are the people that truly want things free even at the risk of not keeping America free.
* What about the bailout that his brother gave to the big banks with no strings attached? Would that be considred "Free Stuff"?
* The 1% likes free stuff too.
* And they get it too!
...................................................................................................................................................................
Jeb Bush Blows It on Race
By Raul A. Reyes, October 2, 2015
The Republican Party has struggled for years to attract more voters of color. In a recent campaign appearance, candidate Jeb Bush offered yet another useful case study in how not to do it.
At a campaign stop in South Carolina, the former Florida governor was asked how he would win over African-American voters. "Our message is one of hope and aspiration," he answered. So far, so good, right?
"It isn't one of division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting -- that says you can achieve earned success."
Whoops.
With just two words -- "free stuff" -- Bush managed to insult millions of black Americans, completely misread what motivates black people to vote, and falsely imply that African Americans are the predominant consumers of vital social services.
First, the facts.
Bush's suggestion that African Americans vote Democratic because of handouts is flat-out wrong. Data from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies shows that blacks have historically trended Democratic in correlation with the party's support for civil rights.
These days, blacks vote Democratic because they believe Democrats pay more attention to their concerns. Consider that in the two GOP debates, there was only one question about the "Black Lives Matter" movement. When they do comment on it, Republican politicians feel much more at home criticizing that movement against police brutality than supporting it.
Bush is also incorrect to suggest that African Americans want "free stuff" more than other Americans. A plurality of people on food stamps, for example, are white.
Moreover, government assistance programs exist because we've decided, as a country, to help our neediest fellow citizens. What Bush derides as "free stuff" -- say, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and school lunch subsidies -- are a vital safety net for millions of the elderly, the poor, and children, regardless of race or ethnicity.
How sad that Bush, himself a Catholic, made his comments during the same week that Pope Francis was encouraging Americans to live up to their ideals and help the less fortunate.
Finally, Bush's crass comment is especially ironic coming from a third-generation oligarch whose life has been defined by privilege.
Bush himself is a big fan of freebies. The New York Times has reported that, during his father's 12 years in elected national office, Bush frequently sought (and obtained) favors for himself, his friends, and his business associates. Even now, about half of the money for Bush's presidential campaign is coming from the Bush family donor network.
And what about those corporate tax breaks, oil subsidies, and payouts to big agricultural companies Bush himself supports. Don't those things count as "free stuff" handed out to some of the richest people in our country?
It's also the height of arrogance for Bush to imply that African Americans are strangers to "earned success." African Americans have been earning success for generations, despite the efforts of politicians like Bush -- who purged Florida's rolls of minority voters and abolished affirmative action at state universities.
If nothing else, this controversy shows why his candidacy has yet to take off as expected. His campaign gaffes have served up endless fodder for reporters, pundits, and comics alike, sometimes with a familiar ring.
As you may recall, Mitt Romney helped doom his own presidential aspirations by writing off the "47 percent" of the American people he said would never vote Republican because they were "dependent upon government."
In Romney's view, they're people "who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."
Bush's "free stuff" remarks are the latest wrong note in his flagging campaign. The last thing this country needs is a man of inherited wealth and power lecturing the rest of us about mooching.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Let the people decide.... good response from Obama.
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COMMENTS:
* I'll bet he wouldn't shrug it off by saying "stuff happens" if it were an illegal immigrant who did the shooting, or if it were a foreign terrorist act. Bottom line - as long as guns are sacred to Republican primary voters, he, and all of the other GOP would-be presidents are not going to treat mass shootings like they're any kind of a problem. Expect all of those clowns to lay as low as possible for the next few days.
* It's just the Bush stupid gene, stupid comments are to be expected, Bush family history proves stupidity is their normal.
* Bush just announced that he will be the Do Nothing President.
* If the opinion of Americans really did matter as far as participating in politics rather than letting a bunch of carpet baggers cashing in on corruption and bribes, then the likes of Bush and the rest of that gang of charlatans, mass murderers and thieves from capitol hill to congress would all be lined against a wall and be given a free bullet in the head, courtesy of the US tax payers
* Sorry, Obama, but I'm not going to spend more than a moment thinking about anything that Bush says. Mr. Magoo is toast.
* Jeb's point would have gone down better, but he forgot to add the exclamation point again.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Obama says American people should decide about Bush comment on shooting
By Eric Beech, October 2, 2015
U.S. President Barack Obama, reacting to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's comment about a mass shooting in Oregon that "stuff happens," said on Friday the American people should make up their own minds whether the comment was appropriate.
"I don't even think I have to react to that one. I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting and ... they can decide whether they consider that stuff happening," Obama told a news conference at the White House.
Speaking earlier at an event in Greenville, South Carolina, about Thursday's Oregon shooting in which nine people were killed, Bush said: "Look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* I'll bet he wouldn't shrug it off by saying "stuff happens" if it were an illegal immigrant who did the shooting, or if it were a foreign terrorist act. Bottom line - as long as guns are sacred to Republican primary voters, he, and all of the other GOP would-be presidents are not going to treat mass shootings like they're any kind of a problem. Expect all of those clowns to lay as low as possible for the next few days.
* It's just the Bush stupid gene, stupid comments are to be expected, Bush family history proves stupidity is their normal.
* Bush just announced that he will be the Do Nothing President.
* If the opinion of Americans really did matter as far as participating in politics rather than letting a bunch of carpet baggers cashing in on corruption and bribes, then the likes of Bush and the rest of that gang of charlatans, mass murderers and thieves from capitol hill to congress would all be lined against a wall and be given a free bullet in the head, courtesy of the US tax payers
* Sorry, Obama, but I'm not going to spend more than a moment thinking about anything that Bush says. Mr. Magoo is toast.
* Jeb's point would have gone down better, but he forgot to add the exclamation point again.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Obama says American people should decide about Bush comment on shooting
By Eric Beech, October 2, 2015
U.S. President Barack Obama, reacting to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's comment about a mass shooting in Oregon that "stuff happens," said on Friday the American people should make up their own minds whether the comment was appropriate.
"I don't even think I have to react to that one. I think the American people should hear that and make their own judgments based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting and ... they can decide whether they consider that stuff happening," Obama told a news conference at the White House.
Speaking earlier at an event in Greenville, South Carolina, about Thursday's Oregon shooting in which nine people were killed, Bush said: "Look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
Gee, JEB!, "stuff happens"-- how about you getting knocked out of the presidential race, and we just say "stuff happens"? Would you like that?
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Jeb Bush: ‘Stuff happens,’ but no need for new gun regulations
By Garance Franke Ruta, October 2, 2015
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sparked a flurry of condemnations on Twitter Friday after New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza tweeted out: “In Greenville, South Carolina, Jeb Bush, arguing against calls for gun control after major tragedy, says, ‘stuff happens.’”
As soon as the 2016 hopeful’s full remarks were public, defenders also took to social media to argue that Bush was being taken out of context in the wake of Thursday’s mass murder in Oregon, which reopened the highly charged national debate over gun control laws.
Eddie Vale, vice president of Democratic political action committee American Bridge — which is known for sending trackers to Republican events in hopes of catching the candidates saying something that later can be used against them — was quick to tweet out video of the exchange.
Bush, responding to a questioner who asked about the prayer vigils that follow every mass shooting, and whether prayers would have more power if they were allowed in the schools before a tragedy rather than after, replied that action was not always the right move immediately after a tragedy.
“It’s been a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this,” Bush said. “I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It’s just, it’s very sad to see, but I resist this notion and I did — I had this challenge as governor — we had, look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”
Bush’s remarks were continuing a line of argument he’d been making in response to an earlier question about the Second Amendment and the need to not respond to tragedies by creating more regulations.
Bush, citing his support for the NRA and Florida’s concealed weapons and stand your ground laws, defended gun rights.
“Whenever you see a tragedy take place, the impulse in the political system most, more, more often at the federal level — but also at the state level — is to do something, right,” he said. “And what we end up doing lots of times is we create rules on the 99.999 percent of human activity that had nothing to do with the tragedy that forced the conversation, by doing something. And we’re taking people’s rights away each time we do that. And we’re not necessarily focusing on the real challenge.”
Lizza followed up with Bush in a gaggle after the South Carolina event to make sure he’d understood the candidate correctly, asking if it was a mistake to say what he had.
“No, it wasn’t a mistake. I said exactly what I said. Explain to me what I said wrong,” Bush said.
“You said, ‘Stuff happens,’” Lizza responded.
“Things happen all the time. Things, is that better?” Bush replied.
Asked about Bush’s comment during a question and answer session with reporters at the White House, President Obama said, “I don’t even think I have to react to that one.”
Wasting no time, American Bridge created a shareable Twitter card highlighting Bush’s comments, and Democrats began predicting that the quote would be used in general election ads against Bush, should he win the GOP nomination.
The Bush campaign decried the focus on his remark as an attempt to prosecute a political agenda.
“It is sad and beyond craven that liberal Democrats, aided and abetted by some in the national media, would dishonestly take Governor Bush’s comments out of context in a cheap attempt to advance their political agenda in the wake of a tragedy. Taking shameless advantage of a horrific tragedy is wrong and only serves to prey on people’s emotions,” said Allie Brandenburger, a spokesperson for Bush, in a statement to reporters.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Jeb Bush: ‘Stuff happens,’ but no need for new gun regulations
By Garance Franke Ruta, October 2, 2015
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sparked a flurry of condemnations on Twitter Friday after New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza tweeted out: “In Greenville, South Carolina, Jeb Bush, arguing against calls for gun control after major tragedy, says, ‘stuff happens.’”
As soon as the 2016 hopeful’s full remarks were public, defenders also took to social media to argue that Bush was being taken out of context in the wake of Thursday’s mass murder in Oregon, which reopened the highly charged national debate over gun control laws.
Eddie Vale, vice president of Democratic political action committee American Bridge — which is known for sending trackers to Republican events in hopes of catching the candidates saying something that later can be used against them — was quick to tweet out video of the exchange.
Bush, responding to a questioner who asked about the prayer vigils that follow every mass shooting, and whether prayers would have more power if they were allowed in the schools before a tragedy rather than after, replied that action was not always the right move immediately after a tragedy.
“It’s been a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this,” Bush said. “I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It’s just, it’s very sad to see, but I resist this notion and I did — I had this challenge as governor — we had, look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”
Bush’s remarks were continuing a line of argument he’d been making in response to an earlier question about the Second Amendment and the need to not respond to tragedies by creating more regulations.
Bush, citing his support for the NRA and Florida’s concealed weapons and stand your ground laws, defended gun rights.
“Whenever you see a tragedy take place, the impulse in the political system most, more, more often at the federal level — but also at the state level — is to do something, right,” he said. “And what we end up doing lots of times is we create rules on the 99.999 percent of human activity that had nothing to do with the tragedy that forced the conversation, by doing something. And we’re taking people’s rights away each time we do that. And we’re not necessarily focusing on the real challenge.”
Lizza followed up with Bush in a gaggle after the South Carolina event to make sure he’d understood the candidate correctly, asking if it was a mistake to say what he had.
“No, it wasn’t a mistake. I said exactly what I said. Explain to me what I said wrong,” Bush said.
“You said, ‘Stuff happens,’” Lizza responded.
“Things happen all the time. Things, is that better?” Bush replied.
Asked about Bush’s comment during a question and answer session with reporters at the White House, President Obama said, “I don’t even think I have to react to that one.”
Wasting no time, American Bridge created a shareable Twitter card highlighting Bush’s comments, and Democrats began predicting that the quote would be used in general election ads against Bush, should he win the GOP nomination.
The Bush campaign decried the focus on his remark as an attempt to prosecute a political agenda.
“It is sad and beyond craven that liberal Democrats, aided and abetted by some in the national media, would dishonestly take Governor Bush’s comments out of context in a cheap attempt to advance their political agenda in the wake of a tragedy. Taking shameless advantage of a horrific tragedy is wrong and only serves to prey on people’s emotions,” said Allie Brandenburger, a spokesperson for Bush, in a statement to reporters.
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"... McCarthy's comments revealed the truth about the committee ..." which means that the purpose was political and therefore a violation of ethics rules.
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COMMENTS:
* The word ethics has no meaning to politicians.
* What ethics??? There are no ethics in politics. Only liars cheaters and thieves.
* Congressional ethics rules? Can you even utter those words without hysterically laughing?
* You want ethics in government? Throw everyone of the present members out Dem and Rep. Elect members who are not beholding to special interests, just to the people who elected them, maybe then you'll get some ethics in government.
* The GOP are shameless expoiters of a horrific tragedy desperately in search of a crime.... disgusting one and all. No crime after 8 investigations.
* If for whatever reason the President and VP were unable to fulfill the duties of their office the next in line to be President is the Speaker of the House. It would be good for the nation if that person were honorable.
* An honorable American politician? How would that work?
...................................................................................................................................................................
House Benghazi panel may have broken ethics rules: Pelosi
By Susan Cornwell, October 1, 2015
A probe of the 2012 Benghazi attacks may have violated congressional ethics rules, House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday after a top Republican indicated it was aimed at hurting Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.
Angry Democrats called for the Benghazi panel to be disbanded following the remarks on Tuesday evening by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He is campaigning to be the next speaker of the House when the current speaker, John Boehner, retires on Oct. 30.
McCarthy on Thursday voiced regret for making the remarks after some House Republicans said they thought he should apologize for, or explain, them. Others expressed understanding for what they saw as a media stumble.
"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" McCarthy told Fox News on Tuesday. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her (poll) numbers today? Her numbers are dropping."
Democrats said McCarthy's comments revealed the truth about the committee and countered the long-standing Republican contention that the panel was set up to find out what happened in the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Pelosi said political efforts by the Benghazi committee could violate ethics laws that ban using taxpayers' dollars for political purposes.
"The question is, is this an ethics violation of the rules of the House?" she said. "I think he (McCarthy) clearly, gleefully claimed that this had a political purpose and had a political success."
McCarthy told Fox News on Thursday he "did not intend to imply in any way" that the committee's work was political.
Asked if he had apologized to the panel's chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, McCarthy said: "I talked to Trey and I told him I regret that this has ever taken place ... and Trey goes: 'I know it's not your intention.'"
Boehner, a Republican, said the committee would continue its work. "This investigation has never been about former Secretary of State Clinton and never will be," he said in a statement that did not mention McCarthy.
McCarthy's words were widely considered a major gaffe. They were some of his first public remarks after jumping into the race to replace Boehner as speaker. He is the leading candidate for the post.
Asked if his comments could hurt his chances, McCarthy told Fox News: "This is not what you're going to see as speaker of the House."
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COMMENTS:
* The word ethics has no meaning to politicians.
* What ethics??? There are no ethics in politics. Only liars cheaters and thieves.
* Congressional ethics rules? Can you even utter those words without hysterically laughing?
* You want ethics in government? Throw everyone of the present members out Dem and Rep. Elect members who are not beholding to special interests, just to the people who elected them, maybe then you'll get some ethics in government.
* The GOP are shameless expoiters of a horrific tragedy desperately in search of a crime.... disgusting one and all. No crime after 8 investigations.
* If for whatever reason the President and VP were unable to fulfill the duties of their office the next in line to be President is the Speaker of the House. It would be good for the nation if that person were honorable.
* An honorable American politician? How would that work?
...................................................................................................................................................................
House Benghazi panel may have broken ethics rules: Pelosi
By Susan Cornwell, October 1, 2015
A probe of the 2012 Benghazi attacks may have violated congressional ethics rules, House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday after a top Republican indicated it was aimed at hurting Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.
Angry Democrats called for the Benghazi panel to be disbanded following the remarks on Tuesday evening by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He is campaigning to be the next speaker of the House when the current speaker, John Boehner, retires on Oct. 30.
McCarthy on Thursday voiced regret for making the remarks after some House Republicans said they thought he should apologize for, or explain, them. Others expressed understanding for what they saw as a media stumble.
"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" McCarthy told Fox News on Tuesday. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her (poll) numbers today? Her numbers are dropping."
Democrats said McCarthy's comments revealed the truth about the committee and countered the long-standing Republican contention that the panel was set up to find out what happened in the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Pelosi said political efforts by the Benghazi committee could violate ethics laws that ban using taxpayers' dollars for political purposes.
"The question is, is this an ethics violation of the rules of the House?" she said. "I think he (McCarthy) clearly, gleefully claimed that this had a political purpose and had a political success."
McCarthy told Fox News on Thursday he "did not intend to imply in any way" that the committee's work was political.
Asked if he had apologized to the panel's chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, McCarthy said: "I talked to Trey and I told him I regret that this has ever taken place ... and Trey goes: 'I know it's not your intention.'"
Boehner, a Republican, said the committee would continue its work. "This investigation has never been about former Secretary of State Clinton and never will be," he said in a statement that did not mention McCarthy.
McCarthy's words were widely considered a major gaffe. They were some of his first public remarks after jumping into the race to replace Boehner as speaker. He is the leading candidate for the post.
Asked if his comments could hurt his chances, McCarthy told Fox News: "This is not what you're going to see as speaker of the House."
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Thursday, October 1, 2015
Liberty Counsel is a hate group!!
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COMMENTS:
* These religious groups are a danger to America. They have zero respect for the US Constitution
* Staver: "There’s not a hateful bone in my body”. These pseudo-Christians sure don't care much for that pesky "Thou Shalt Not Lie" commandment, do they?
* The leader of one cult met with the idol of another....and we're surprised why? This Pope has displayed a basic level of humanity that has not been readily associated with the church of late. I like Francis as a person, but as a religious leader he is still the Pope and it's best not to forget that he is the leader of an institution that has violently persecuted homosexuals for centuries.
* I commend Terrence McCoy for spelling out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has determined that the Liberty Council is a hate group. Any story that refers to this organization or to Staver as its spokesman should clearly point that fact out.
* Shame you weren't around when supporters of Jim Crow needed you. Or clerks in Virginia who didn't want to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. Or store owners who didn't want to have to serve Jews, Japanese, or Catholics. Funny how you confuse Christians having to abide by the same laws as the rest of us as "tyranny." I mean, tyranny and rule of law are pretty easy to confuse. I suggest taking a basic course on logical reasoning, American history, civics, and maybe an introductory course on the American legal system.
* Just like TV televangelists the Liberty Council is feeding off the donations of people who can least afford it. Anything for a buck.
...................................................................................................................................................................
The controversial group at the center of the Pope Francis-Kim Davis meeting
By Terrence McCoy, September 30, 2015
In the summer of 2000, Ken Sivulich was three years into his new job as the Jacksonville, Fla., library director when he had a fun idea. The fourth installment of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series had just hit the shelves, and the library had ordered scores of the book to meet demand. As a way to encourage kids to read, the library handed out certificates to those who had read the book, congratulating them on completing the “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
A harmless gimmick, he thought. Good for a chuckle.
One little-known group based two hours south in Orlando wasn’t laughing. The certificate seemed to praise the dark arts and, perhaps, disturbed the delicate equilibrium between church and state. “Witchcraft is a religion, and the certificate of witchcraft endorsed a particular religion is violation of the First Amendment establishment clause,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, then told the Florida Times-Union.
At the time, Sivulich hadn’t heard of either Staver or Liberty Counsel, which was threatening to sue the library. But over the next 15 years, the group would rise from relative obscurity and become one of the nation’s most prominent Christian legal groups on the strength of repeatedly staking out such tendentious positions on divisive issues. The most recent example of this formula — which has made the nonprofit anathema among gay rights advocates, but flooded its coffers with millions of dollars worth of donations — is Kim Davis. The legal organization represents the Kentucky clerk who was jailed last month for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and has since become the latest flashpoint in the long struggle over gay marriage.
When news broke Tuesday night that she had met with Pope Francis, it was Liberty Counsel that bore the news. “He held out his hand and she clasped his hands and held them,” Staver, who did not attend the meeting, said earlier today. He said the pope “spoke English the entire time” and that Davis said “she would pray for him. She asked the pope to pray for her, and he said he would pray.”
The news and its partnership with Davis has thrust the organization into its most visible perch to date, bringing the Liberty Counsel within proximity of a global celebrity on the most publicized trip of his papacy. “I am fully aware of the timing,” Staver said, adding later, “I understand it’s a huge event.”
But among critics, the mounting prominence of Liberty Counsel has resurrected the ghosts of past battles in which they say the group veered from religious activism to demagoguery and defamatory rhetoric against gays. This is a group that has advocated gay conversion therapy. It’s a group that fears opening up the Boy Scouts to gay scout leaders has forged a “playground for pedophiles.” A group led by a man who links promiscuity with homosexuality. “Given these staggering statistics of sexual promiscuity, the number of diseases found predominantly (and in some instances, exclusively) among practitioners comes as no surprise,” Staver wrote in his 2004 book, “Same Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk.”
“What they’re saying isn’t just unpleasant matters of opinion,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow of the Southern Law Poverty Center, which in 2010 designated Liberty Counsel a “hate group.” “These are falsehoods, and have the effect of defaming a very large group of people which has the opportunity to subject them to violence. It gives people permission to believe that gay people are insidious characters who deserve to face violence.”
Staver called such statements “ridiculous claims. I will say that the [Southern Law Poverty Center] is reckless in its classification of different people as haters or hate groups. We hate no one. It would be contrary to my faith to hate anyone. There would be no reason to hate anyone. There’s not a hateful bone in my body.”
The group, which launched in 1989 and had ties to the late televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., has long straddled the fault lines dividing American society on gay rights, endearing it to some and riling others. But now, amid historic support for gay marriage, Liberty Counsel also represents how such groups are trying to reframe the debate on terms more sympathetic to their cause. It’s no longer about marriage equality. It’s about religious freedom.
“They’re using Davis as a way to say we don’t care about gay marriage,” said Daniel Bennett, assistant professor of political science at Eastern Kentucky University. “We care about religious freedom. They’ve been taking positions and sticking with positions that have fallen out of favor with public opinion.”
And because of that, the positions Liberty Counsel has long advocated strike critics as all the more incendiary. Take one initiative in the early 2000s, said Orlando attorney Mary Meeks. The city had proposed a ban on discrimination on the basis on sexual orientation. And in response, she said, Staver declared all-out war.
“Staver was leading the thundering charge in opposition to that,” she recalled. “They were saying all kinds of terrible things about gay people, which is what they do for a living. … They exploit false and malicious propaganda about gay people. All the myths that gay people are pedophiles and suffer from high rates of mental illnesses and drug abuse — scare tactics.”
The group, which Bennett called “more extreme than other Christian legal groups,” then moved onto the gay marriage debate roiling California. There, according to Tobin Grant, a Southern Illinois University political scientist, it staked out a more ideological position than the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was litigating the case. “Liberty Counsel didn’t like Proposition 8 because it didn’t go far enough,” he said.
But in the months following the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage in June, the group has recalibrated its mission as one of religious freedom. And in Kim Davis, it has found a champion of this nascent frontier in a long struggle over gay marriage. As well as a powerful ally in Pope Francis.
“He had broad messages and broad strokes,” Staver said. “The fact that he met with … Kim Davis was very consistent with the message of religious freedom and marriage.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* These religious groups are a danger to America. They have zero respect for the US Constitution
* Staver: "There’s not a hateful bone in my body”. These pseudo-Christians sure don't care much for that pesky "Thou Shalt Not Lie" commandment, do they?
* The leader of one cult met with the idol of another....and we're surprised why? This Pope has displayed a basic level of humanity that has not been readily associated with the church of late. I like Francis as a person, but as a religious leader he is still the Pope and it's best not to forget that he is the leader of an institution that has violently persecuted homosexuals for centuries.
* I commend Terrence McCoy for spelling out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has determined that the Liberty Council is a hate group. Any story that refers to this organization or to Staver as its spokesman should clearly point that fact out.
* Shame you weren't around when supporters of Jim Crow needed you. Or clerks in Virginia who didn't want to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. Or store owners who didn't want to have to serve Jews, Japanese, or Catholics. Funny how you confuse Christians having to abide by the same laws as the rest of us as "tyranny." I mean, tyranny and rule of law are pretty easy to confuse. I suggest taking a basic course on logical reasoning, American history, civics, and maybe an introductory course on the American legal system.
* Just like TV televangelists the Liberty Council is feeding off the donations of people who can least afford it. Anything for a buck.
...................................................................................................................................................................
The controversial group at the center of the Pope Francis-Kim Davis meeting
By Terrence McCoy, September 30, 2015
In the summer of 2000, Ken Sivulich was three years into his new job as the Jacksonville, Fla., library director when he had a fun idea. The fourth installment of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series had just hit the shelves, and the library had ordered scores of the book to meet demand. As a way to encourage kids to read, the library handed out certificates to those who had read the book, congratulating them on completing the “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
A harmless gimmick, he thought. Good for a chuckle.
One little-known group based two hours south in Orlando wasn’t laughing. The certificate seemed to praise the dark arts and, perhaps, disturbed the delicate equilibrium between church and state. “Witchcraft is a religion, and the certificate of witchcraft endorsed a particular religion is violation of the First Amendment establishment clause,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, then told the Florida Times-Union.
At the time, Sivulich hadn’t heard of either Staver or Liberty Counsel, which was threatening to sue the library. But over the next 15 years, the group would rise from relative obscurity and become one of the nation’s most prominent Christian legal groups on the strength of repeatedly staking out such tendentious positions on divisive issues. The most recent example of this formula — which has made the nonprofit anathema among gay rights advocates, but flooded its coffers with millions of dollars worth of donations — is Kim Davis. The legal organization represents the Kentucky clerk who was jailed last month for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and has since become the latest flashpoint in the long struggle over gay marriage.
When news broke Tuesday night that she had met with Pope Francis, it was Liberty Counsel that bore the news. “He held out his hand and she clasped his hands and held them,” Staver, who did not attend the meeting, said earlier today. He said the pope “spoke English the entire time” and that Davis said “she would pray for him. She asked the pope to pray for her, and he said he would pray.”
The news and its partnership with Davis has thrust the organization into its most visible perch to date, bringing the Liberty Counsel within proximity of a global celebrity on the most publicized trip of his papacy. “I am fully aware of the timing,” Staver said, adding later, “I understand it’s a huge event.”
But among critics, the mounting prominence of Liberty Counsel has resurrected the ghosts of past battles in which they say the group veered from religious activism to demagoguery and defamatory rhetoric against gays. This is a group that has advocated gay conversion therapy. It’s a group that fears opening up the Boy Scouts to gay scout leaders has forged a “playground for pedophiles.” A group led by a man who links promiscuity with homosexuality. “Given these staggering statistics of sexual promiscuity, the number of diseases found predominantly (and in some instances, exclusively) among practitioners comes as no surprise,” Staver wrote in his 2004 book, “Same Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk.”
“What they’re saying isn’t just unpleasant matters of opinion,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow of the Southern Law Poverty Center, which in 2010 designated Liberty Counsel a “hate group.” “These are falsehoods, and have the effect of defaming a very large group of people which has the opportunity to subject them to violence. It gives people permission to believe that gay people are insidious characters who deserve to face violence.”
Staver called such statements “ridiculous claims. I will say that the [Southern Law Poverty Center] is reckless in its classification of different people as haters or hate groups. We hate no one. It would be contrary to my faith to hate anyone. There would be no reason to hate anyone. There’s not a hateful bone in my body.”
The group, which launched in 1989 and had ties to the late televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., has long straddled the fault lines dividing American society on gay rights, endearing it to some and riling others. But now, amid historic support for gay marriage, Liberty Counsel also represents how such groups are trying to reframe the debate on terms more sympathetic to their cause. It’s no longer about marriage equality. It’s about religious freedom.
“They’re using Davis as a way to say we don’t care about gay marriage,” said Daniel Bennett, assistant professor of political science at Eastern Kentucky University. “We care about religious freedom. They’ve been taking positions and sticking with positions that have fallen out of favor with public opinion.”
And because of that, the positions Liberty Counsel has long advocated strike critics as all the more incendiary. Take one initiative in the early 2000s, said Orlando attorney Mary Meeks. The city had proposed a ban on discrimination on the basis on sexual orientation. And in response, she said, Staver declared all-out war.
“Staver was leading the thundering charge in opposition to that,” she recalled. “They were saying all kinds of terrible things about gay people, which is what they do for a living. … They exploit false and malicious propaganda about gay people. All the myths that gay people are pedophiles and suffer from high rates of mental illnesses and drug abuse — scare tactics.”
The group, which Bennett called “more extreme than other Christian legal groups,” then moved onto the gay marriage debate roiling California. There, according to Tobin Grant, a Southern Illinois University political scientist, it staked out a more ideological position than the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was litigating the case. “Liberty Counsel didn’t like Proposition 8 because it didn’t go far enough,” he said.
But in the months following the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage in June, the group has recalibrated its mission as one of religious freedom. And in Kim Davis, it has found a champion of this nascent frontier in a long struggle over gay marriage. As well as a powerful ally in Pope Francis.
“He had broad messages and broad strokes,” Staver said. “The fact that he met with … Kim Davis was very consistent with the message of religious freedom and marriage.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
"The court need only listen to what the Republican lawmakers who benefit most from this gerrymander have conceded to the court." An unlikely outcome.
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Virginia Republicans Admit They Rigged The State’s Congressional Districts To Elect GOP Lawmakers
By Ian Millhiser, October 1, 2015
Virginia is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. During the last presidential election, President Obama won the state by three points, but Republicans still picked up 8 of the state’s 11 congressional districts under the GOP-friendly maps drawn by the state legislature.
In a court filing offered by the Republican members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, the lawmakers who benefit most from these gerrymandered maps admitted that the GOP intentionally rigged the state’s congressional districts in order to produce a lopsided delegation. The state legislature’s “overarching priorities” in drawing the maps, according to the court filing, was “incumbency protection and preservation of cores to maintain the 8-3 partisan division established in the 2010 election.”
2010 was a very good year for Republicans, enabling the GOP to capture unusually large portions of state congressional delegations. 2012, by contrast, was a strong year for Democrats which saw the reelection of President Obama. And yet, by these Republican lawmakers’ own admission, the maps drawn between the 2010 and 2012 elections were draw[n] for the explicit purpose of ensuring that the GOP’s unusually strong performance in 2010 would be replicated year after year — even in years when the electorate was more favorable to Democrats. The GOP’s goal, in other words, was to render congressional elections little more than political theater, an annual ritual that would produce the same 8-3 delegation every single time.
The lawmakers’ admission that Virginia’s maps were drawn to lock in a delegation that’s unusually favorable to the GOP came as part of ongoing litigation over the legality of the state’s maps. As a general rule, the Supreme Court does not permit lawsuits challenging partisan gerrymandering (that’s despite the fact that a majority of the Court has, at times, indicated its belief that partisan gerrymanders can violate the Constitution). Under current precedents, however, congressional maps can be struck down because they engage in an impermissible racial gerrymander. And, indeed, a federal court did strike down Virginia’s current maps because of a racially impermissible district.
Various interest groups are now fighting over how the court should redraw the Virginia’s maps in order to cure the problem with this district. The brief filed on behalf of the state’s Republican members of Congress argues that the court is obligated to draw this map in order to preserve the state’s partisan gerrymander — essentially requiring the court to maintain the same 8-3 partisan split that Republican lawmakers sought to lock in when they drew the original map. Quoting past Supreme Court decisions, the Republicans argue that “when ‘faced with the necessity of drawing district lines by judicial order,'” a court must “be guided by the legislative policies underlying” the original maps “‘to the extent those policies do not lead to violations of the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act.”
There is, indeed, some precedent supporting the idea that courts should not second-guess the decisions of state mapmakers, unless those decisions violate the Constitution or federal law. But the Republicans’ proposal confounds two distinct legal concepts and assumes, wrongly, that partisan gerrymanders are constitutional.
In the 2004 case Vieth v. Jubelirer the Supreme Court held 5-4 that a particular partisan gerrymandering suit could not proceed. Notably, however, the Court did not declare that gerrymander constitutional. Rather, it rested its opinion on the notion that courts are not often competent to determine when a partisan gerrymander has occurred or to devise a way to fix it. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a plurality of four justices, “no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged.”
The key fifth vote was supplied by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who also warned that “we have no basis on which to define clear, manageable, and politically neutral standards for measuring the particular burden a given partisan classification imposes on representational rights.” Thus, he concluded that many partisan gerrymanders would have to be tolerated — even if they violate the Constitution — because he did not believe that courts currently have the tools they need to identify and cure such gerrymanders.
Significantly, however, Kennedy also left open the possibility that a standard could emerge in a future case that would allow partisan gerrymanders to be challenged in court. He also strongly suggested that these gerrymanders violate the Constitution. “First Amendment concerns arise where a State enacts a law that has the purpose and effect of subjecting a group of voters or their party to disfavored treatment by reason of their views,” Kennedy wrote. “In the context of partisan gerrymandering, that means that First Amendment concerns arise where an apportionment has the purpose and effect of burdening a group of voters’ representational rights.”
Scalia and Kennedy’s concern that it is difficult for judges to develop a principled rule that allows them to sort unconstitutional gerrymanders from some other kind is not frivolous. Does a map become unconstitutional if Republicans make up 40 percent of a state’s voters but 45 percent of its members of Congress? What if Republicans receive 60 percent of the state’s congressional seats? What if they receive none of them? At least in marginal cases, it is not at all easy for judges to tell an intentionally gerrymandered state from a mere mathematical anomaly.
But Virginia is not a marginal case. Among other things, in most partisan gerrymandering cases, the state’s Republican delegation to the House of Representatives typically does not show up in court with a brief openly admitting that the state’s maps were drawn with the explicit purpose of rigging congressional elections in order to ensure an 8-3 delegation. This is not, in other words, a case where there are “no judicially discernible and manageable standards” that will enable a court to determine whether a particular set of districts constitutes a partisan gerrymander. The court need only listen to what the Republican lawmakers who benefit most from this gerrymander have conceded to the court.
The Republican lawmakers’ admission, in other words, should enable the courts to broaden the scope of this litigation. It is an admission that each of the state’s districts was drawn with an anti-democratic and, if Justice Kennedy is to be believed, unconstitutional purpose, and should justify tossing out the entire map. This is, admittedly, an unlikely outcome given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, but it is the correct outcome under the Constitution.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Virginia Republicans Admit They Rigged The State’s Congressional Districts To Elect GOP Lawmakers
By Ian Millhiser, October 1, 2015
Virginia is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. During the last presidential election, President Obama won the state by three points, but Republicans still picked up 8 of the state’s 11 congressional districts under the GOP-friendly maps drawn by the state legislature.
In a court filing offered by the Republican members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, the lawmakers who benefit most from these gerrymandered maps admitted that the GOP intentionally rigged the state’s congressional districts in order to produce a lopsided delegation. The state legislature’s “overarching priorities” in drawing the maps, according to the court filing, was “incumbency protection and preservation of cores to maintain the 8-3 partisan division established in the 2010 election.”
2010 was a very good year for Republicans, enabling the GOP to capture unusually large portions of state congressional delegations. 2012, by contrast, was a strong year for Democrats which saw the reelection of President Obama. And yet, by these Republican lawmakers’ own admission, the maps drawn between the 2010 and 2012 elections were draw[n] for the explicit purpose of ensuring that the GOP’s unusually strong performance in 2010 would be replicated year after year — even in years when the electorate was more favorable to Democrats. The GOP’s goal, in other words, was to render congressional elections little more than political theater, an annual ritual that would produce the same 8-3 delegation every single time.
The lawmakers’ admission that Virginia’s maps were drawn to lock in a delegation that’s unusually favorable to the GOP came as part of ongoing litigation over the legality of the state’s maps. As a general rule, the Supreme Court does not permit lawsuits challenging partisan gerrymandering (that’s despite the fact that a majority of the Court has, at times, indicated its belief that partisan gerrymanders can violate the Constitution). Under current precedents, however, congressional maps can be struck down because they engage in an impermissible racial gerrymander. And, indeed, a federal court did strike down Virginia’s current maps because of a racially impermissible district.
Various interest groups are now fighting over how the court should redraw the Virginia’s maps in order to cure the problem with this district. The brief filed on behalf of the state’s Republican members of Congress argues that the court is obligated to draw this map in order to preserve the state’s partisan gerrymander — essentially requiring the court to maintain the same 8-3 partisan split that Republican lawmakers sought to lock in when they drew the original map. Quoting past Supreme Court decisions, the Republicans argue that “when ‘faced with the necessity of drawing district lines by judicial order,'” a court must “be guided by the legislative policies underlying” the original maps “‘to the extent those policies do not lead to violations of the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act.”
There is, indeed, some precedent supporting the idea that courts should not second-guess the decisions of state mapmakers, unless those decisions violate the Constitution or federal law. But the Republicans’ proposal confounds two distinct legal concepts and assumes, wrongly, that partisan gerrymanders are constitutional.
In the 2004 case Vieth v. Jubelirer the Supreme Court held 5-4 that a particular partisan gerrymandering suit could not proceed. Notably, however, the Court did not declare that gerrymander constitutional. Rather, it rested its opinion on the notion that courts are not often competent to determine when a partisan gerrymander has occurred or to devise a way to fix it. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a plurality of four justices, “no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged.”
The key fifth vote was supplied by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who also warned that “we have no basis on which to define clear, manageable, and politically neutral standards for measuring the particular burden a given partisan classification imposes on representational rights.” Thus, he concluded that many partisan gerrymanders would have to be tolerated — even if they violate the Constitution — because he did not believe that courts currently have the tools they need to identify and cure such gerrymanders.
Significantly, however, Kennedy also left open the possibility that a standard could emerge in a future case that would allow partisan gerrymanders to be challenged in court. He also strongly suggested that these gerrymanders violate the Constitution. “First Amendment concerns arise where a State enacts a law that has the purpose and effect of subjecting a group of voters or their party to disfavored treatment by reason of their views,” Kennedy wrote. “In the context of partisan gerrymandering, that means that First Amendment concerns arise where an apportionment has the purpose and effect of burdening a group of voters’ representational rights.”
Scalia and Kennedy’s concern that it is difficult for judges to develop a principled rule that allows them to sort unconstitutional gerrymanders from some other kind is not frivolous. Does a map become unconstitutional if Republicans make up 40 percent of a state’s voters but 45 percent of its members of Congress? What if Republicans receive 60 percent of the state’s congressional seats? What if they receive none of them? At least in marginal cases, it is not at all easy for judges to tell an intentionally gerrymandered state from a mere mathematical anomaly.
But Virginia is not a marginal case. Among other things, in most partisan gerrymandering cases, the state’s Republican delegation to the House of Representatives typically does not show up in court with a brief openly admitting that the state’s maps were drawn with the explicit purpose of rigging congressional elections in order to ensure an 8-3 delegation. This is not, in other words, a case where there are “no judicially discernible and manageable standards” that will enable a court to determine whether a particular set of districts constitutes a partisan gerrymander. The court need only listen to what the Republican lawmakers who benefit most from this gerrymander have conceded to the court.
The Republican lawmakers’ admission, in other words, should enable the courts to broaden the scope of this litigation. It is an admission that each of the state’s districts was drawn with an anti-democratic and, if Justice Kennedy is to be believed, unconstitutional purpose, and should justify tossing out the entire map. This is, admittedly, an unlikely outcome given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, but it is the correct outcome under the Constitution.
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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) blamed "... the tumult in part on 'celebrity politicians' who are 'not interested in governing.'" That's more than "in part"!
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COMMENTS:
* I've just seen a unicorn - or was it a Republican elected official offering an accurate assessment of the dysfunction of his party? Both are equally rare and thus such sightings are mind-boggling.
* Finally, a man worth calling "Republican."
* I'll give the guy this: he's said something I've thought for many years. These "celebrity" types are always on TV, which leaves a sense that they're almost never actually in Congress doing their jobs. A check of their legislative record for those types always shows very, very little in the way of anything actually getting done.
* Mr. Nunn, Where were you when your party was lying about ObamaCare "Death Panels?" Where were you when your party was lying about Obama's birth certificate? What did you say when your party voted to shut down the US govt? You are not a hero. You are only now speaking up out of self-preservation.
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‘Celebrity politicians’ partly responsible for House GOP divisions, Rep. Devin Nunes says
By Jose A. DelReal, October 1, 2015
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Thursday bemoaned the sharp divisions in the House GOP that resulted in the resignation of outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, blaming the tumult in part on “celebrity politicians” who are “not interested in governing.”
“There are a few in our caucus who … are more like celebrity politicians. They don’t go to committees, they don’t participate in the things that normal members do,” Nunes said during a summit on cybersecurity hosted by The Washington Post Live. “But they’re the first ones to run to TV or to talk radio and to attack pretty much everybody in the whole institution. And I don’t think they’re interested in governing.”
Nunes, who is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, added that he believes those members represent a small number of the overall group, but that the media magnifies their influence among voters.
“There’s a whole bunch of groups that are fundraising off of being the ‘real Republicans’ or the ‘real Democrats,’ ” he said. “Most of those people work here in Washington and they are part of the establishment and they’re making money off of it, they’re making a living off of it.
“It’s unfortunate where we’re at. Clearly, with 247 members of Congress on the Republican side — it’s the largest majority — and with that there come false expectations by the base. And the base is getting a lot of their information from an ever-expanding news media and for-profit type conservatism,” Nunes said.
The congressman did not appear optimistic that Boehner’s departure from the House would change much of the internal disorder that has characterized this Congress. He said that that is in part motivated by a lack of understanding of how Congress works in conjunction with the executive branch.
“On one hand they’re pretending to be following the Constitution, but in reality there’s no understanding of the Constitution. The president of the United States is the president of the United States.
He added: “There’s just a lot of education that has to take place.”
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COMMENTS:
* I've just seen a unicorn - or was it a Republican elected official offering an accurate assessment of the dysfunction of his party? Both are equally rare and thus such sightings are mind-boggling.
* Finally, a man worth calling "Republican."
* I'll give the guy this: he's said something I've thought for many years. These "celebrity" types are always on TV, which leaves a sense that they're almost never actually in Congress doing their jobs. A check of their legislative record for those types always shows very, very little in the way of anything actually getting done.
* Mr. Nunn, Where were you when your party was lying about ObamaCare "Death Panels?" Where were you when your party was lying about Obama's birth certificate? What did you say when your party voted to shut down the US govt? You are not a hero. You are only now speaking up out of self-preservation.
...................................................................................................................................................................
‘Celebrity politicians’ partly responsible for House GOP divisions, Rep. Devin Nunes says
By Jose A. DelReal, October 1, 2015
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Thursday bemoaned the sharp divisions in the House GOP that resulted in the resignation of outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, blaming the tumult in part on “celebrity politicians” who are “not interested in governing.”
“There are a few in our caucus who … are more like celebrity politicians. They don’t go to committees, they don’t participate in the things that normal members do,” Nunes said during a summit on cybersecurity hosted by The Washington Post Live. “But they’re the first ones to run to TV or to talk radio and to attack pretty much everybody in the whole institution. And I don’t think they’re interested in governing.”
Nunes, who is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, added that he believes those members represent a small number of the overall group, but that the media magnifies their influence among voters.
“There’s a whole bunch of groups that are fundraising off of being the ‘real Republicans’ or the ‘real Democrats,’ ” he said. “Most of those people work here in Washington and they are part of the establishment and they’re making money off of it, they’re making a living off of it.
“It’s unfortunate where we’re at. Clearly, with 247 members of Congress on the Republican side — it’s the largest majority — and with that there come false expectations by the base. And the base is getting a lot of their information from an ever-expanding news media and for-profit type conservatism,” Nunes said.
The congressman did not appear optimistic that Boehner’s departure from the House would change much of the internal disorder that has characterized this Congress. He said that that is in part motivated by a lack of understanding of how Congress works in conjunction with the executive branch.
“On one hand they’re pretending to be following the Constitution, but in reality there’s no understanding of the Constitution. The president of the United States is the president of the United States.
He added: “There’s just a lot of education that has to take place.”
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"... Cruz has been ineffective by design. ... he can pivot to the private sector and make more money as a professional conservative activist ..." It's all about Cruz!
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COMMENTS:
* Great article. Cruz has also been worthless to his Texas district and all Texans. With the GOP ruling Texas and none of them agreeing with ACA, nothing has been done for rural hospitals (which got a cut with the lack of ACA) and 24 have closed due to bankruptcy. Ted - you are worthless
* Ted Cruz- an oily, toxic, malodorous little toadstool of a man- quite possibly the most loathsome and repulsive person in all of politics- never meant to be a legitimate legislator or representative of anyone- except himself. Instead, he has made a career out of being a free-lance cancer. He will grab on to whatever serves his personal interests for awhile; he'll suck out all its vital juices, and kill it. He's really nothing but a malignant tumor in lower colon of the republican body politic. And when he's done with the republican party (or vice-versa), the GOP will be gasping its last breaths. The biggest problem with Ted's political calculus is, once a malignant cancer succeeds in killing its host organism, it too will perish. So, buh-bye GOP, and good riddance to the Cruzinoma!
* Great news! Another anti-woman, anti-PP, anti-Choice misogynist off the GOP's list of clowns running for president. Reagan is flipping over in his grave!
* Don't blame the politicians, who just mirror the quality of the voters. Don't just blame the Republican voters; those Democrat voters who chose not to vote in 2010 and 2014 are the accomplices as well.
* Especially the ones that "chose" not to vote due to shortened polling hours, fewer polling places, and onerous ID restriction laws?
* Yup, the Cruzzer is nothin' but a high plains grifter lookin' to make a buck who has an ego the size of New York City. Unfortunately, the people of Texas appear to be as stupid as the people of Kansas who returned Sam Brownback to office and I expect them to return the Cruzzer to Washington in 2018.
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Ted Cruz is toast: It’s not just that he won’t be president — his days in the Senate are numbered, too
I’m not sure when it started, but at some point the Republican Party ceded the business of governance to the Democrats. Maybe it began with the Tea Party movement or Fox News or the larger conservative media-industrial complex – I honestly don’t know. But it’s clear now that the GOP is no longer a legitimate governing party. A party that allows rank neophytes like Herman Cain and Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina to run for the highest office in the country has lost its way.
If you look at how the Republican Party operates today, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that governing just isn’t a priority – or internal pressures within the party make it impossible. Instead, the GOP has become what I previously called a self-perpetuating hype machine for conservative political entrepreneurs. Particularly at the national level, Republican candidates and legislators (many of them, at least) show no interest in compromise or serious policymaking, which is what you’d expect from a party of and for purists.
While the new GOP has been bad for the country, it’s been great for political celebrities, people looking to promote their personal brands. Ted Cruz is the most recent and obvious example of this approach to politics. Cruz has been a remarkably ineffective Senator. He has done nothing but bloviate and showboat on the Senate floor. He’s accomplished zero legislatively. His only practical contribution has been to obstruct and draw attention to his martyrdom (read: presidential) campaign.
Ted Cruz will never be elected president. If he manages to win the Republican nomination, he’ll lose in a landslide to a Democrat, whoever that happens to be. And because he’s so eagerly made a spectacle of himself in the Senate, he’s alienated all but the tiniest segment of his own party. Which means he has no political capital in Congress – hardly a concern for someone uninterested in legislating, however.
Cruz’s latest squabble with Rand Paul helps to illustrate Cruz’s intentions. In an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Paul basically wrote Cruz’s political obituary:
Cruz ought to be seen as the grifter that he is. It was never about policy for him. When he leaves the Senate, he’ll be a hero to the fringe right. He’ll make a fortune on the conservative lecture circuit, telling rapturous audiences about his willingness to challenge the “Washington cartel.” It won’t matter that he accomplished nothing, changed nothing – it’ll be enough that he pretended to while he was there.
The same is true of Carson and Trump and Fiorina and even politicians like Huckabee and Jindal: None of them will be president, but their over-the-top activism will ensure them a profitable career after politics. And that, I assume, is the whole point. The Democrats have their share of bad politicians, but you don’t see this kind of faux activism and exploitation in their party.
This is a uniquely Republican problem.
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COMMENTS:
* Great article. Cruz has also been worthless to his Texas district and all Texans. With the GOP ruling Texas and none of them agreeing with ACA, nothing has been done for rural hospitals (which got a cut with the lack of ACA) and 24 have closed due to bankruptcy. Ted - you are worthless
* Ted Cruz- an oily, toxic, malodorous little toadstool of a man- quite possibly the most loathsome and repulsive person in all of politics- never meant to be a legitimate legislator or representative of anyone- except himself. Instead, he has made a career out of being a free-lance cancer. He will grab on to whatever serves his personal interests for awhile; he'll suck out all its vital juices, and kill it. He's really nothing but a malignant tumor in lower colon of the republican body politic. And when he's done with the republican party (or vice-versa), the GOP will be gasping its last breaths. The biggest problem with Ted's political calculus is, once a malignant cancer succeeds in killing its host organism, it too will perish. So, buh-bye GOP, and good riddance to the Cruzinoma!
* Great news! Another anti-woman, anti-PP, anti-Choice misogynist off the GOP's list of clowns running for president. Reagan is flipping over in his grave!
* Don't blame the politicians, who just mirror the quality of the voters. Don't just blame the Republican voters; those Democrat voters who chose not to vote in 2010 and 2014 are the accomplices as well.
* Especially the ones that "chose" not to vote due to shortened polling hours, fewer polling places, and onerous ID restriction laws?
* Yup, the Cruzzer is nothin' but a high plains grifter lookin' to make a buck who has an ego the size of New York City. Unfortunately, the people of Texas appear to be as stupid as the people of Kansas who returned Sam Brownback to office and I expect them to return the Cruzzer to Washington in 2018.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Ted Cruz is toast: It’s not just that he won’t be president — his days in the Senate are numbered, too
Rand Paul is right: Cruz's career in the Senate is "done for." Once he leaves, he can become a full-time grifter
By Sean Illing, September 30, 2015I’m not sure when it started, but at some point the Republican Party ceded the business of governance to the Democrats. Maybe it began with the Tea Party movement or Fox News or the larger conservative media-industrial complex – I honestly don’t know. But it’s clear now that the GOP is no longer a legitimate governing party. A party that allows rank neophytes like Herman Cain and Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina to run for the highest office in the country has lost its way.
If you look at how the Republican Party operates today, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that governing just isn’t a priority – or internal pressures within the party make it impossible. Instead, the GOP has become what I previously called a self-perpetuating hype machine for conservative political entrepreneurs. Particularly at the national level, Republican candidates and legislators (many of them, at least) show no interest in compromise or serious policymaking, which is what you’d expect from a party of and for purists.
While the new GOP has been bad for the country, it’s been great for political celebrities, people looking to promote their personal brands. Ted Cruz is the most recent and obvious example of this approach to politics. Cruz has been a remarkably ineffective Senator. He has done nothing but bloviate and showboat on the Senate floor. He’s accomplished zero legislatively. His only practical contribution has been to obstruct and draw attention to his martyrdom (read: presidential) campaign.
Ted Cruz will never be elected president. If he manages to win the Republican nomination, he’ll lose in a landslide to a Democrat, whoever that happens to be. And because he’s so eagerly made a spectacle of himself in the Senate, he’s alienated all but the tiniest segment of his own party. Which means he has no political capital in Congress – hardly a concern for someone uninterested in legislating, however.
Cruz’s latest squabble with Rand Paul helps to illustrate Cruz’s intentions. In an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Paul basically wrote Cruz’s political obituary:
Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the senate, and as a consequence he can’t get anything done legislatively. He is pretty much done for and stifled and it’s really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem. I approach things a little different, I am still just as hardcore in saying what we are doing , I just chose not to call people liars on the Senate floor and it’s just a matter of different perspectives on how best to get to the end result.Paul is right, of course, but he omits an essential point: Cruz has been ineffective by design. Managing relationships and respecting decorum only matter to people trying to accomplish things in the Senate – that’s not what Cruz is up to. Like the fanatical Tea Party wing of the House, Cruz is there to obstruct and self-promote. In all likelihood, Cruz will retire after a single term in the Senate. Now that he’s boosted his national profile and endeared himself to the insurgent elements of the base, he can pivot to the private sector and make more money as a professional conservative activist – as, for example, Jim DeMint did in 2012.
Cruz ought to be seen as the grifter that he is. It was never about policy for him. When he leaves the Senate, he’ll be a hero to the fringe right. He’ll make a fortune on the conservative lecture circuit, telling rapturous audiences about his willingness to challenge the “Washington cartel.” It won’t matter that he accomplished nothing, changed nothing – it’ll be enough that he pretended to while he was there.
The same is true of Carson and Trump and Fiorina and even politicians like Huckabee and Jindal: None of them will be president, but their over-the-top activism will ensure them a profitable career after politics. And that, I assume, is the whole point. The Democrats have their share of bad politicians, but you don’t see this kind of faux activism and exploitation in their party.
This is a uniquely Republican problem.
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Trump's reputation precedes him.
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