Month: July 2013

Surveillance Programs Cut President’s Approval Rating 9 Percentage Points among Californians

Jon Ponder

A new Field Poll, which is the gold standard in California polling, has found an unprecedented 9 percentage point drop in Pres. Obama’s approval ratings among Californians. Poll director Mark DiCamillo attributes the drop — from 61 percent approval in February to revelations that the government is spying on Americans by tracking phone and Internet use:

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GOP Chairman Reince Priebus Does Not Care for the Word ‘Tolerance’

Jon Ponder

I don’t know if I’ve used the word ‘tolerance,’ I don’t really care for that word myself. I don’t have a problem with it, I just think it has another meaning politically that can go the other direction.

– GOP Chairman Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, speaking to the hate-promoting Christian Broadcasting Network.

Congressional Republicans Have Devolved Into Anarchists

Buck Banks

The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses–partisanship, obstruction, gridlock–don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.

— Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine.

Majority Believes Politics Can’t Make Positive Changes in Society

Buck Banks

2 to 1

Margin by which Americans say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government, a new USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll finds. “Those younger than 30 are particularly put off by politics. They are significantly less likely than their parents to say participating in politics is an important value in their lives.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, Quietly Fires White Supremacist Aide Once Known As the ‘Southern Avenger’

Jon Ponder
From left: Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, Hunter with and without his Southern Avenger mask

Multiple media sources are confirming that Jack Hunter, the white supremacist aide to Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, has “resigned” two weeks after he was outed as the Southern Avenger, a neo-Confederate columnist and radio personality famous for hiding his identity behind a cloth mask depicting a Confederate flag. Hunter also co-authored Rand Paul’s book,”The Tea Party Goes to Washington.”

After the announcement was made public, Hunter’s former editor at a South Carolina news outlet published an editorial claiming that Hunter asked him to delete all the Avenger’s columns from the outlet’s website.

In a statement to a fellow conservative who writes for the Daily Caller, the right-wing propaganda website owned by Swanson Foods heir Tucker Carlson, Hunter said:

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