Proclaiming, “A Watched Tea Party Never Boils,” teapartytracker.org has launched. Rumored to be backed by progressive hero George Soros, the site features instances of tea baggers doing what they do best: taking stands that don’t fit with reality and making weird, disjointed statements that make no sense, or as the site says, “Monitoring racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.” Check out this video produced at the recent Million Moron March in Washington.
Net number of jobs created under Pres. George W. Bush after his tax cuts were enacted in 2001, according to the Wall St. Journal. Bush created the least jobs of any president since Hoover during the Great Depression. Pres. Bill Clinton created 22.4 million jobs, and left Bush with a $236 billion budget surplus. Historically, the economy tends to grow under Democrats, who traditionally do not cut taxes, and shrink under Republicans, who almost always do.
We welcome John Boehner’s change in position and support for the middle class tax cuts, but time will tell if his actions will be anything but continued support for the failed policies that got us into this mess.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, in a statement quoted on Politico.
Buoyed by polling and the media narrative that the GOP will win control of Congress in a wave election this November, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, the next putative speaker, and other Republicans in Congress have been caught in the act of measuring the drapes in the Capitol.
The fact that 39 percent have never heard of Boehner — who is known in the Capitol for boozing, schmoozing and playing golf with lobbyists — offers Democrats the opportunity to introduce him as what he is: the ultimate Washington insider.
If Boehner and his party win, it appears they won’t get much of a honeymoon with voters, however. A Wall St. Journal/NBC poll last month found that congressional Republicans had just a 24 percent approval rating, the lowest rating they had ever received.
Now a new CNN Opinion Research poll [PDF] finds that Boehner has a lower approval rating than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been the object of unrelenting demonization on the GOP-Fox channel and right-wing radio for years.
Boehner received a 22 percent favorable rating, with 23 percent unfavorable. Thirty-nine percent had never heard of him and 16 percent had no opinion.
Speaker Pelosi’s favorables were 33/51, with just 9 percent saying they’d never heard of her and 7 percent having no opinion.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
“They’ve invested heavily in AI labs. They’ve invested heavily in data centers. So, the first family has a financial stake in this industry, and as a result, the president of the United States is compromised.”
— “Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on Monday said President Trump will likely not heed calls from technology leaders to implement guardrails on the development of artificial intelligence because of his family’s investments in the industry,” NewsNation reports.
“Young Americans today have never witnessed Congress authorize a war, they’ve never seen a U.S. administration balance its books, they’ve never watched a well-funded and empowered state department operate, and they see only mistrust between allies. They assume the situation is normal. It is not. … The real cost of forgetting the pre-9/11 world is not a country that has changed, but one that no longer knows it could be different.”
“We’re working through some political issues in Israel. I think we agree with them on the end state. They just have a crazy election, and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards.”
— Jared Kushner, quoted by CBS News, on the lack of progress in Gaza.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
“Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures at bases across the Middle East, and caused about $184 million worth of damage at U.S. diplomatic facilities, according to a Pentagon watchdog report,” the Washington Post reports. “The inspector general’s report to Congress on Operation Epic Fury — the Trump administration’s name for the war with Iran — also details the extent of U.S. munitions shortages, in the first comprehensive public accounting of the war, which is now in its seventh month.”
Half (50%) of U.S. adults say they are either very concerned (23%) or somewhat concerned (27%) about the possibility that AI will cause the end of humanity, a new YouGov survey finds. Another 39% of Americans say they’re not very concerned (21%) or not at all concerned (17%) about an AI apocalypse, while 11% aren’t sure.
A majority of Americans ages 55 and up and a majority of Republicans of all ages support the use of Flock technologies in their communities, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from August 28 to 31. Split by age, party, education level and gender, no other demographic group had a majority of support for the cameras. Among age groups, younger Americans were the least likely to support Flock, with only 21% of respondents aged 18 to 34 in favor of the technology.
About one-third (31%) of Americans strongly or somewhat approve of how the U.S. Supreme Court is handling its job, according to the latest Economist/YouGov Survey, while 53% disapprove. Almost all Democrats disapprove of the Supreme Court’s job handling (12% approve and 79% disapprove), while most Republicans approve (63% vs. 26%). Republicans who say they’re MAGA supporters overwhelmingly approve of the Supreme Court’s job handling (73% vs. 19%), while non-MAGA Republicans are more closely divided (49% vs. 36%).