Year: 2014
‘Dark Money’ Spending in 2014 Campaigns Sets New Record
$63 million
Amount of dark-money spent so far in the 2014 cycle — just shy of the $69 million in dark money spent during the ENTIRE 2008 presidential election, according to Mother Jones. This was a new record and seven times the amount of dark money spent by the same point on House and Senate elections in 2010.
Giant Chickens Influencing 2014 Campaigns
An unusually large number of campaigns this year have turned to chicken-suited men — and they’re mostly men — to distract opponents, steal press attention and, occasionally, make a point. … Behind the fowl play: Chickens make good copy, drawing attention to candidates who often are underfunded and looking for free media coverage.
— The Wall Street Journal.
GOP Senator’s Desperate Reboot Turns Out to Be Based on Votes He Took During Bush Administration
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow pointed out on Tuesday that Sen. Pat Roberts’ (R-KS) campaign “reboot” is built on an apparent misrepresentation of his stance on a federal building that was supposed to be built in his state.
Roberts’ campaign debuted an ad on Tuesday portraying the longtime incumbent as a staunch opponent of President Barack Obama’s “failed policies.” Roberts, the ad claimed, led the push for the establishment of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility on the campus of Kansas State University.
But Maddow noted that the two headlines touting Roberts’ efforts dated back to 2007 and 2008.
“That was even before Barack Obama was elected president,” she said. “That was before this term for Kansas Senator Pat Roberts in the Senate.”
In fact, Roberts voted against a bill this past January that would have provided $404 million in funding for the project, which has now stalled.
Better Terror Fodder
ISIS has pledged to never stop until the U.S. yields.
It plans to turn our country into a new battlefield.
If we see that aggression,
May we make a suggestion?
Let’s use Lindsey Graham and John McCain as human shields.
Conservatives Who Fear an Epidemic Crossing the Border Should Stop Blocking America’s First Line of Defense: Access to Healthcare
Via: The Advisory Board Company
In July, Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Georgia tea partyist, claimed in a letter to his constituents that amid the “crisis at our southern border,” there are “reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as … Ebola virus.” Even the widely discredited fact-checker Politifact labeled Gingrey’s dire assertion a “Pants on Fire” lie. Gingrey, who also happens to be a physician, should know better — and probably does.
The world has been one chicken sneeze away from a global pandemic for decades, even centuries.
Despite having been labeled a lie, Gingrey’s assertion set the right-wing propaganda machine in movtion. Fox News ran with a story headlined, “Ebola Outbreak Fuels Concerns over Health Risks along US-Mexico Border.” Breitbart.com, the website started by the late racist and notorious news-faker Andrew Breitbart, warned that “experts” claim “Ebola Could Cross Unsecured Border.” The birther site World Net Daily asked, “Could Ebola Sneak Across U.S. Border?” The lawsuit-happy Clinton-haters at Judicial Watch expanded the threat level beyond Ebola, warning that, “Illegal Alien Minors Spreading TB, Dengue, Swine Flu.”
The threat of an epidemic in the United States is not unrealistic, nor is it new. The world has been one chicken sneeze away from a global pandemic for decades, even centuries. If the worst were to occur — if the GOP’s fears were realized — it would hit the United States where it is most vulnerable, in its first line of defense: Its healthcare system.
