Month: November 2014
Who Knew ‘Progressive’ Meant ‘Dumb-Ass Liberals’
I get a big kick out of them using the word ‘progressive.’ My gosh, they’re just straight old dumb-ass liberals anyway.
— Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), quoted by Huffington Post.
Impeachable? Here Are 18 Immigration Executive Orders Issued by Recent Republican Presidents
Republicans claim that that Pres. Obama’s plan to establish temporary legal status for undocumented immigrants by executive order is illegal.
Read the full report from the American Immigration Council: Executive Grants of Temporary Immigration Relief, 1956-Present
They have issued a series of threats against the president if he signs the order to stand up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, including blocking the nomination of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, shutting down the government again and/or impeaching him.
According to a detailed report from the American Immigration Council, however, presidents have routinely altered immigration policies by executive order, including 18 such changes by five recent Republican presidents — Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. None of these presidents was threatened with political reprisal for signing the orders, of course.
Here is an overview based on the AIC report:
Support for Keystone Pipeline Declining
59%
Of respondents to a new Pew survey say they support construction of the Keystone XL, which would bring crude from Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries — a drop from Pew’s survey in March of 2013, when 66 percent of Americans said they favored it. Just 43 percent of Democrats currently favor construction, compared with a 54 percent majority in 2013. Among Republicans, 83 percent now support Keystone XL, a poll result that is nearly identical to the 2013 survey.
Why Republicans Don’t Need to Govern
You can’t simply assert, like it’s some sort of natural fact, that Republicans ‘must show they can govern’ when an alternative course is available. Not only is it not a secret — this other direction — but it’s being strongly urged upon the party by people who are a key part of its coalition. … The alternative to ‘show you can govern’ is to keep President Obama from governing. Right? Keep him from accomplishing what he wants to get done in his final two years and then ‘go to the country,’ as Karl Rove used to say, with a simple message: time for a change! This is not only a valid way to proceed, it’s a pretty likely outcome.
— Jay Rosen, on his PressThink blog.
On the Playground
“We won! We won!” the Republicans say,
“Now you must do things just our way!”
But Obama, he’s coy,
He’s no little boy,
And it’s a whole different ballgame he plans to play.
GOP Trots Out the Old ‘Amnesty’ Chestnut in Response to Obama Immigration Threats
This president has been floating the trial balloon on executive amnesty for a long time. Today, new details surfaced that the president plans to attempt amnesty as early as next Friday, sending us into a constitutional crisis.
— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), quoted by The Hill, on President Obama using executive action to make immigration changes.
Most Midterm Non-Voters Had Lame Excuses
67%
Of those who were registered to vote but chose not to gave reasons related to lack of time: “35% had work or school conflicts and 34% were too busy, ill, out of town or simply forgot. Two-in-ten (20%) registered non-voters say they either didn’t like the candidate choices or issues on the ballot, didn’t care about this election or didn’t have any or enough information to vote. And 10% of non-voters reported having a technical reason for not voting, either having missed the registration deadline, recently moving, or not have transportation to the polls,” according to Pew Research.
Party of ‘Death Panels’ Feigns Outrage Over Insider Claim That Obamacare Passage Relied on ‘Stupidity of the American Voter’
Four years ago, the Republican Party launched a relentless propaganda campaign to convince their low-info, Fox-befuddled followers that the coming of Obamacare was a harbinger of the Apocalypse. The motive behind the propaganda campaign had nothing to do with the substance of the reform — Pres. Obama had based the Affordable Care Act on the Republicans’ own individual mandate system that Mitt Romney had successfully rolled out when he was governor of Massachusetts — and GOPers knew that, if passed, the ACA would provide health and financial security to their own working-class and self-employed constituents, many of whom would be insured for the first time in their lives.
To Republican pols, the bankruptcies, foreclosures and untreated illnesses of their constituents were just collateral damage in their campaign to destroy Pres. Obama by killing his signature law. And so was the truth. Remember these patently ridiculous lies they floated on Fox and right-wing radio and inserted into the Congressional Record?
