September 22, 2015

Biden insiders Feel Clinton STALKING

Joe Biden isn’t running for president yet, but Hillary Clinton’s already running against him. Clinton and her aides have their line—the vice president deserves the time and space to decide, they repeat over and over and over—and so far they’ve held off the heavy artillery. Instead, they’re firing warning shots. Tightly targeted warning shots. The hints from the campaign come in heavy: Biden would be to Clinton’s right if he ran, more out of touch with the party’s progressive base. Surrogates have sounded off, questioning his chances and his political abilities, wondering if he’d be up to the job. Clinton even leapt in herself, bringing him up out of nowhere as she spoke to a woman in a diner last week in New Hampshire to knock him for how disappointing he’d been when they were working on the bankruptcy bill in the Senate. That was followed by her campaign chair John Podesta, sprinkling a little of his own shade in front of the pro-Clinton Priorities super PAC in New York—it’s already too late for Biden to mount a real challenge, and he’s not going to decide for a few more weeks on top of that.



They’ve stepped up the roll-out of their endorsements and organization. Their operation is just so massive and well put together, they want Biden and anyone considering supporting him to think, there’s just no space left for him. So sure, take your time, is the message people in and around the campaign seem to be sending—but if you end up at yes, you’re going to get hurt. Saint on the sidelines is far different from actual candidate, they want him to realize, when they and everyone else unleash on him, raking through every gaffe and every vote in 36 years in the Senate, digging through his personal life. In the campaign headquarters and in Clinton's wider orbit, they take care to say how much they like him, how much they respect him, don't want to say a bad word about him. But “Should a man like Joe Biden run?” is going to be a very different question for them than “Should a man like Joe Biden be president?”
They haven’t engaged as much as some around the campaign expected, or as much as some Biden allies (the ones who feel affection for him and feel like he’s being goaded into a run) were hoping, so that he’d be scared off.



Inside the Brooklyn headquarters, this has become a sensitive topic. “Because of the personal tragedy and because he is beloved by the president and because he is beloved by so many staffers on both sides, they are super sensitive to doing anything that even whiffs of attacking him,” said a source close to the Clinton campaign. To Biden and the people he’s talking to most about running, this is proof, they think, of just how much of a scare they’ve put into Clinton. On top of what’s public, they say they think the spate of stories a few weeks ago digging into his record on bankruptcy and the Crime Bill came, if not straight from the headquarters in Brooklyn, from people just far enough removed to give them plausible deniability. “This is not a surprise,” said one person familiar with Biden’s thinking. “I think it’s pretty clear that they’re concerned about it.”


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/joe-biden-hillary-clinton-2016-213911

September 22, 2015

Three PROBLEMS With CNN/ORC Polls

- from DailyKos:

September 22, 2015

BEST Political Photo of the Year

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September 20, 2015

Chris Matthews Drops The F-BOMB on Real Time with Bill Maher

I got the feeling Maher was honored to hear Chris drop the F-BOMB.




Fast Forward to 46:41 of video


Bill Maher caught by surprise in mid sentence responds ".......No, the liberals......aaaah, I'm glad you said F**k.....



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September 12, 2015

Will Mike Huckabee Martyr Himself On Behalf Of Kim Davis on Monday?

Will this grifting, flim-flammer use whatever means of resetting his flailing campaign by pulling out his trusty ' persecuted Christian martyr-maneuver ' showing Christians he's willing & ready to step in front of Kim Davis and take a bullet for Team Christians?

Q: WILL HE YELL OUT 'I WILL GO TO JAIL IN PLACE OF KIM'?

Place your bets!

September 12, 2015

Bill Maher SLAMS Kim Davis And Conservatives For Wanting CHRISTIAN VERSION OF SHARIA LAW

Conservatives claim that Sharia law is sweeping the nation, but in reality, they are the ones pushing a version of Sharia law that is just as dangerous. During his HBO show on Friday night, Bill Maher blasted conservative “Christians” like Kim Davis and Mike Huckabee for claiming that the Supreme Court doesn’t get to say what laws are constitutional and what laws are unconstitutional. “This is why” other countries are “laughing at us,” Maher said. Indeed, Article III Section II of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the final say on what is constitutional or not. In addition, the Supreme Court has also ruled nine years ago that, “When a citizen enters government service, the citizen by necessity must accept certain limitations on his or her freedom.” In other words, Kim Davis’ religious freedom doesn’t matter when she is acting as an agent of the government. She must serve everyone and follow the law regardless of her personal beliefs. Even Fox News made that point very clear.

~snip~

The fact is, if the Supreme Court hadn’t taken the case, we’d have contradicting laws between the states that make the system far more complicated than it needs to be. Furthermore, it would be allowing some states to deny rights to people who would have no legal recourse to challenge their oppressor. States do not have a right to discriminate against certain groups of people, and as Maher pointed out, it was a conservative-leaning high court that struck down same-sex marriage bans. Maher then cut straight to point and compared conservative “Christians” to Saudi Arabia and Iran, both nations which have religious fundamentalism as a basis for laws.




cont'

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/09/12/bill-maher-slams-kim-davis-and-conservatives-for-wanting-christian-version-of-sharia-law-video/

September 11, 2015

Winds Of Change Blow Through South As Democrats Are WINNING SPECIAL ELECTIONS ON GOP TURF

Don't let ThirdWay shills convince you that it can't be done.



For the second time in less than a month, a Democrat has pulled off a stunning victory over a Republican candidate, by flipping a State House race in an almost hopelessly red legislative district. On Tuesday night, Democrat Cyndi Munson scored an improbable 54-46 victory in Oklahoma’s House District 85, a suburban district Northwest of Oklahoma City. Since 1965, when the district was first created, it had never been won by a Democrat. That changed on Tuesday night. The 85th District went 61-39 for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. Yet, on Tuesday night, in a traditionally low turnout special election, the district turned a surprisingly solid shade of blue. Speaking to supporters after she’d won, Munson acknowledged the magnitude of her achievement, proclaiming:



Munson lost her race for the same seat in 2014 by 13 points, but she battled back and emerged on Tuesday night a winner. She ran on a platform supporting education and women’s health, while opposing income tax cuts for top earners. In a deep red district her message resonated with voters, weary of the GOP’s extremist stranglehold on Oklahoma politics.


As astonishing as Munson’s victory was, it was not the first Democratic upset of its kind this summer. In August, Democrat Taylor Bennett pulled off a similar surprise in Georgia’s 80th House District. Despite being outspent 2 to 1 in a district Mitt Romney carried by a 56-43 margin over Barack Obama in 2012, Bennett coasted to a 55-45 surprise victory over his Republican opponent, Max Davis. Bennett won not by following the conventional wisdom of downplaying social issues in the South, but by being outspokenly liberal on social issues and standing firmly in support of LGBTQ equality. Like Munson, he won in a special election, when turnout is usually down and as a result, Republicans historically have enjoyed an advantage. Not this time.


While it may be too optimistic for Democrats to take the results of two special elections and call it a trend, it is worth pointing out that in two heavily Republican districts in the South, Democrats have overcome long odds to flip seats from red to blue. Maybe, just maybe, those two victories are a sign of more to come, as conservative voters join the rest of American in becoming fed up with the Republicans’ inability to govern.



http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/10/winds-change-blow-south-democrats-winning-special-elections-gop-turf.html

September 10, 2015

This Is What Happens When DC Insiders Recruit WRETCHED CONSERVATIVES To Run As Democrats

Do you remember when Chris Van Hollen's DCCC recruited conservative Democrat Mike McMahon to run for the Staten Island congressional seat after incumbent Republican Vito Fossella was discovered to have two families, one in NY and one in Virginia? McMahon beat Republican Robert Staniere 61-33%, promptly joined the Blue Dogs, voted with the GOP almost all the time-- including against the Affordable Care Act-- and made sure no Democratic base voters would be interested in voting for him again. Two years later, the GOP ran a low-level Mafia crook, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, who was able to beat McMahon while Democratic voters sat on their hands. Thanks, Chris Van Hollen (and Chuck Schumer, who had also pushed McMahon as a nice, safe DINO). This is what happens when the Democratic Party recruits conservatives who don't share the values and principles of Democratic voters. It happens all the time when party bosses like Schumer, Van Hollen, Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel think they know better than the voters. Today McMahon is competing-- as a Democrat-- against Republican Joan Illuzzi for the Conservative Party endorsement in the Staten Island district attorney race. He may actually win it too; after all; he is a conservative and backs the conservative agenda.


Now let's head down South to Louisiana, the ancestral home of McMahon's disgusting Blue Dogs. Mary Landrieu was a right-wing Democratic senator who finally pissed off enough Democratic voters that she lost her seat in 2014 to actual Republican Bill Cassidy. She often voted with the Republicans on crucial matters-- more than almost any other Senate Democrat, especially when it came to anything to do with her campaign donors at Big Oil (like the Keystone XL Pipeline). She voted to confirm corporate whore John Roberts to the Supreme Court, voted for wire-tapping US citizens without court orders and opposed minimum wage increases and opposed the public option in the Affordable Care Act, which she explained by saying, "When people hear 'public option' they hear 'free health care'. Everybody wants free health care. Everybody wants health care they don't have to pay for." In 2012 National Journal named her the 47th most conservative member of the Senate. After the voters of Louisiana tossed her out, she took a job as a lobbyist with one of DC's slimiest lobbying firms, Van Ness Feldman, and more recently she worked with Joe Lieberman to influence Democratic senators to vote against the Iran nuclear deal. She's on the board of Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, a front group for AIPAC and a bunch of warmongers who want to attack Iran. Landrieu and her pals-- slimy right-wing Dems like Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Shelley Berkley-- are part of the operation spending $20 million in deceitful TV ads about the Iran deal, like this one:


Meanwhile, Landrieu announced that she has $146,261 left in her campaign war chest and will hand it out to help some of her former colleagues running for reelection. "I can use that money," she said, "to help other Democratic candidates that helped Louisiana and that continue to be in a position to help Louisiana." Really? She tried persuading Ron Wyden (D-OR) to vote against the Iran deal, and failed-- he announced yesterday he's voting for it. But among the "Democratic candidates" she says she'll give money to are Republican incumbents Rob Portman (OH) and Susan Collins (ME). This is exactly what happens when conservative careerist insiders in DC call the shots for the Democratic Party. They recruit right-wing candidates like Landrieu, McMahon, Blanche Lincoln, Heath Shuler, etc., and sell Democratic voters a bill of goods. When the voters figure it out-- once the reprobates start voting-- they stay home on Election Day and the Republicans win the seat. Landrieu, McMahon, Lincoln and Shuler were all replaced by actual Republicans-- instead of by Republicans calling themselves Democrats.


Today the DSCC-- under the thumb of Schumer and his puppet Tester-- is doing the exact same thing in Florida, where they are smearing the good name of progressive icon Alan Grayson to get their Wall Street shill, "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy, into the seat, and the DCCC is doing the same thing by recruiting countless conservatives and even "ex"-Republicans like the execrable Monica Vernon (IA-01) and Mike Derrick (NY-21), while they undermine and sabotage solid progressives everywhere-- like these. It's time to say NO to Chuck Schumer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel at the ballot box. Don't vote for the Republicans and right-wing Democrats they are recruiting. Lesser-of-two-evils is not a good enough reason to throw the Democratic Party to the dogs.






cont'

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com

September 9, 2015

WATCH: Bernie Sanders Calls Out Congress For BLATANT HOMOPHOBIA In 1995 Footage (VIDEO)

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been fighting for equality long before his candidacy – and there’s a video to prove it. Footage from 20 years ago has re-emerged, capturing the then-representative of Vermont slamming then-representative Randall “Duke” Cunningham of California for making homophobic remarks. It’s definitely a moment worth revisiting and remembering as Sanders continues his presidential campaign:

The footage was recorded in 1995, just one year after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was enacted, placing a ban on gay and lesbian service members. After listening to Cunningham’s offensive rant, which used the phrase “homos in the military,” Sanders took the floor and railed against Cunningham’s comments, despite the fact that his pro-equality views were unpopular at that time. Sanders criticized the anti-gay slurs and said:

“You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line.”

Even though it’s incredibly rare for a Democrat to have anti-gay views now, that wasn’t the case two decades ago when this footage was captured. It was an incredibly courageous act for Sanders to address those attitudes during that time. Sanders has embraced equality long before it came the norm. In 1996, Sanders voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and woman. Going back even further in time to 1983, Sanders openly supported the first ever pride parade of Burlington, Vermont while he was mayor of the city. Upon hearing of the parade, many opposed the controversial event. For example, the Vermont branch of the Maranatha Christian Church wrote:

“We will express our sympathy with the sick humanity that is involved in this sin but can in no way on God’s earth and in light of His scripture condone or even sit back and not voice God’s word.”

Sanders refused to back down and the resolution was passed 6 to 5. He wrote in a memo:

“In our democratic society, it is the responsibility of government to safeguard civil liberties and civil rights — especially the freedom of speech and expression. In a free society, we must all be committed to the mutual respect of each others [sic] lifestyle.”

cont'

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/09/09/watch-bernie-sanders-calls-out-congress-for-blatant-homophobia-in-1995-footage-video/

September 9, 2015

Hillary Clinton Goes To Militaristic, Hawkish Think Tank, Gives MILITARISTIC, HAWKISH SPEECH

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this morning delivered a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. By itself, the choice of the venue was revealing. Brookings served as Ground Zero for centrist think tank advocacy of the Iraq War, which Clinton (along with potential rival Joe Biden)
notoriously and vehemently advocated. Brookings’ two leading “scholar”-stars — Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon — spent all of 2002 and 2003 insisting that invading Iraq was wise and just, and spent the years after that assuring Americans that the “victorious” war and subsequent occupation were going really well (in April 2003, O’Hanlon debated with himself over whether the strategy that led to the “victory” in his beloved war should be deemed “brilliant” or just extremely “clever,” while in June 2003, Pollack assured New York Times readers that Saddam’s WMD would be found).



Since then, O’Hanlon in particular has advocated for increased military force in more countries than one can count. That’s not surprising: Brookings is funded in part by one of the Democratic Party’s favorite billionaires, Haim Saban, who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel and once said of himself: “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Pollack advocated for the attack on Iraq while he was “Director of Research of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.” Saban became the Democratic Party’s largest fundraiser — even paying $7 million for the new DNC building — and is now a very substantial funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In exchange, she’s written a personal letter to him publicly “expressing her strong and unequivocal support for Israel in the face of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement.” So the hawkish Brookings is the prism through which Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy worldview can be best understood. The think tank is filled with former advisers to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and would certainly provide numerous top-level foreign policy officials in any Hillary Clinton administration. As she put it today at the start: “There are a lot of long-time friends and colleagues who perch here at Brookings.” And she proceeded to deliver exactly the speech one would expect, reminding everyone of just how militaristic and hawkish she is.

The context for her speech was the Iran Deal, which Clinton supports. It would be virtually impossible for her not to do so — there is no way anyone could win the Democratic nomination while opposing a key foreign policy legacy of the sitting Democratic president — but, regardless of the motives, she has the right position on that. But that deal is vehemently opposed by AIPAC and of grave concern to the hawkish foreign policy circles on which she has long depended, and so the core purpose of the speech was to assure those nervous precincts that, despite the Iran Deal support, she’s still the same aggressive, war-threatening, obsessively Israel-devoted, bellicose hawk they’ve grown to know and love.

To achieve that, Clinton repeatedly invoked the Netanyahu-cartoon image of Iran as a Grave and Evil Terrorist Menace. This was her formulation of the issue she seeks to address: “how to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and more broadly, how to protect ourselves and our allies from the full range of threats that Iran poses.” She even compared the country to the Supreme Villain of the Moment: “Iran, like ISIS, benefits from chaos and strife.” Clinton proclaimed that she “too [is] deeply concerned about Iranian aggression and the need to confront it. It’s a ruthless, brutal regime that has the blood of Americans, many others and including its own people on its hands.” Even worse, she said, “Its political rallies resound with cries of ‘Death to America.’ Its leaders talk about wiping Israel off the face of the map, most recently just yesterday, and foment terror against it. There is absolutely no reason to trust Iran.” She repeated that claim several times for emphasis: “They vow to destroy Israel. And that’s worth saying again. They vow to destroy Israel.” She vowed that in dealing with Iran, she will be tougher and more aggressive than Reagan was with the Soviet Union: “You remember President Reagan’s line about the Soviets: Trust but verify? My approach will be distrust and verify.” She also explicitly threatened Iran with war if they fail to comply: “I will not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon, and I will set up my successor to be able to credibly make the same pledge.” She even depicted the Iran Deal as making a future war with Iran easier and more powerful:



As for Israel itself, Clinton eagerly promised to shower it with a long, expensive, and dangerous list of gifts. Here’s just a part of what that country can expect from the second President Clinton:






cont'

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/09/hillary-clinton-goes-militaristic-hawkish-think-tank-gives-militaristic-hawkish-speech/