First, I am not opposed to the United States and other countries trying to wipe out ISIL. Whether they are an immediate threat to us is not the only concern. That Americans, including and especially journalists, can move around the world freely is a huge concern.
Second, I can’t agree more about the disgusting hypocrisy, hostility, and pettiness shown the president of the country these people claim to love. He was elected by more than half of us, and those are the rules under which your “beloved” country operates so please suck it up, like we did when the moron was in power and we were under threat from abroad. Put your country, not your hatreds, first.
Former Pres. George W. Bush on one of his many breaks, which often involved falling off a mountain bike, falling off a Segway, strumming a guitar while New Orleans drowned, and choking on pretzels.
The Obama family is on vacation. That means it’s time for Republicans and tea partiers to take a break from obstructing legislation, nomination approvals, and any other work in Congress (including suing the president for taking appropriate executive action to counter their inaction) to express ginned-up outrage that the people’s business won’t be done if the president takes a few days off.
Number of vacation days, in whole or part, enjoyed by Pres. Obama at this point in his term, which on July 20, 2014 happened to be exactly six years and seven months: 92
Number of vacation days, in whole or part, enjoyed by Pres. George W. Bush at the same point in his term: 367
If this video — from a FOX affiliate! — doesn’t explain why Florida Democrats and independents are willing to embrace the previous flip-floppin’ governor (Charlie Crist) to get rid of the current one, nothing will.
Warning: Rick Scott’s countenance will haunt your sleep.
To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.
You know what’s at stake. Only six wins this fall for Republicans leaves them to rule the Senate. If that happens, House-passed bills outlawing contraception and abortion, promoting guns, and cutting food stamps even for children will be the law of the land. And those 50 votes to defund and rescind Obamacare? Done deal.
That’s why states where Democratic senators seem at risk are drowning in dollars from those who profit if Republicans are in charge. Can you blame the Koch brothers for spending millions through their front group, Americans for Prosperity, on ads to tip these races? They’ll earn back billions if their legislation — like a bill to charge people for using solar panels instead of burning the fossil fuels that are heating our planet but lining the Kochs’ pockets — passes.
Pundits, at first stunned by a Democrat not playing by the GOP rules, are realizing the brilliance of Hagan’s move.
North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) is up for re-election, could be drawing the most outside money.
Voters in North Carolina have already been bombarded with 15,000 television political advertisements thanks to the U.S. Senate race…
The cost of those ads is a whopping $6.3 million, and nearly all of them have been paid for by outside groups, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Many of the ads criticize Hagan’s vote for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a strategy chosen by Republican consultant Karl Rove and the Kochs after the healthcare.gov website’s rocky launch last October. But the overall success of Obamacare’s first enrollment period leaves fewer one-issue voters who will go to the polls just to get rid of the ACA’s supporters.
Florida’s public servants couldn’t be blamed for feeling that someone painted targets on their foreheads after Rick Scott (GOP/Tea) took over as governor three years ago. He eliminated many of their jobs, leaving the survivors with crippling work loads. He reduced their salaries by an amount equal to the state’s contribution to their pensions, so they have less money to spend each week and only the same amount they had before for retirement.
But treating public employees as guilty of taking illegal drugs until proven innocent is one of the most overt ways Scott’s contempt for the state’s workers has been evidenced. The new governor demanded that state employees line up and pee in a cup to prove that they’re drug-free, as if being willing to work for the government places them among the criminal class.
This video from the Hank portion of the VlogBrothers doesn’t follow where the $75 billion a year goes, nor does it discuss prison privatization, which drives the spending, but maybe it’s better to start, as the video does, by describing the problem’s scope.
Punitive measures that continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society turn every prison term into a life sentence
What is covered is something a criminal justice system employee once told me: the vast majority of people in prison today will at some point get out, and we are not only doing almost nothing with that day in mind, such as preparing them to do something different, but we are helping ensure their failure with punitive measures that are designed to continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society. This turns every prison term into a life sentence. And that’s good for neither them nor society, i.e., us.
I hope someone will do a similar video on the facts behind the DUI privatization rip-off, but that’s a subject for another day.
Bad news for whoever is writing the checks at Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The Koch brothers’ political organization has spent $27 million since last August, with millions more planned, on ads attacking Senate Democrats who voted for healthcare reform and who are up for re-election this year.
A new poll shows they are likely wasting that cash.
Poll: Support for candidates who voted for the health-care law has improved dramatically
Support for candidates who voted for the health-care law has improved dramatically in recent months, a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday shows.
The survey found respondents almost exactly split on the question of whether they would be more or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supports the Affordable Care Act, with 34% saying they would be more likely to vote for the candidate and 36% saying they would be less likely to do so. Some 27% said it would not make a difference.
That’s a significant jump in support levels from November—a month after the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance exchange that serves 36 states—when just 21% said a candidate’s support for the law would make them more likely to vote for them, compared to 37% who said it would make them less likely to do so. A much larger percentage—40%—were indifferent.
AFP’s ads are termed “misleading” by neutral fact-checkers, and “absolutely false” by Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
The organization put all its eggs in the “Obamacare will be hated” basket so if the public approves of the reforms and the costs of coverage decrease, the Kochs lose. Some Republicans have sniffed the wind and moved away from criticizing Pres. Obama over the Affordable Care Act to criticizing him over every other initiative instead.
“When we researched the gun debate in America, we saw that it’s become almost impossible to have a thoughtful discussion about gun safety. What I love about Evolve is that they’re not about taking a side in that debate–they’re squarely focused on promoting personal decisions about gun safety.”
When asked whether he had ever smoked pot,
Marco Rubio wouldn’t say that he did or did not.
See, his political positions
Are political calculations,
Which means his questionable answers ain’t worth snot.
The recent news out of Kentucky was just awful,
They found the senator unconscious and horizontal.
And since his hospitalization,
There’s been little news about his condition,
But now everybody’s having a 20-minute conversation with Mitch McConnell.
“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”
An Associated Press-NORC survey found that 44% of American Jews hold a favorable opinion of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, compared with 39% who view him unfavorably. By contrast, just 32% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while 59% said they have a negative view.
“Their New Deal is socialism for the super-rich (and their own enrichment) even if it means increasing poverty, inequality, and illness at home and around the world. They also want to rewrite history to ignore and outright deny our past flaws while banning books that say otherwise from our libraries. And they select even our military leaders based on their version of political correctness over ability.”
— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by Deadline, in his July 4th message.
President Donald Trump is asking for $1,500,000 million for the military for next year. That’s close to $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) more than we were spending on the military in fiscal year 2025, before Trump took office, Alternet reports. This increase is huge by any measure. It comes to around $4,600 per household. It is around 8% of the total budget.
A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.
A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Around 40% of voters in the 2024 election said the economy was their top issue, far outstripping any other matter. And those voters favored Donald Trump by 60% to 38%. Many say they were moved by his pledges to tame inflation, rebuild U.S. infrastructure, cut red tape and trim government waste. … About a year and a half later, more voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy than approve, 61% to 35%, an average of polls by the Cook Political Report found this month.”
A Reuters analysis of Trump’s public comments from June 23 through July 6 (13 days) — when a string of left-wing Democratic candidates won their party’s primaries in New York — found he invoked communism 81 times.
