April 1, 2014

Poll: Toni Preckwinkle Leads Rahm Emanuel by 8 Points in 2015 Mayor’s Race

(Chicago) – Poll: Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s pursuit of a second term could be thwarted by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle were she to decide to run, a new survey says. In an exclusive poll commissioned by The Illinois Observer, Preckwinkle captures 40% of likely voters, while Emanuel snags 32%, leaving 28% of voters undecided in a head-to-head matchup.

The city wide survey of 724 likely voters, (margin of error = 3.49%) from March 25 to March 26, 2014 conducted by La Grange-based Strive Strategies, finds that 42% of African-American voters say they would support Preckwinkle, while only 28% say they would vote for the mayor. The remainder, 30%, are undecided.

Among women, 40% would support Preckwinkle, while 32% remain undecided. Only 29% of women indicate that Emanuel would be likely to earn their vote in this hypothetical contest.

“Overall, 53% of likely voters, those who have participated in the last two city elections, believe that the City of Chicago is headed in the wrong direction,” Illinois Observer editor David Ormsby told ABC7 TV political reporter Charles Thomas on Friday.

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http://www.illinoisobserver.net/2014/03/31/poll-toni-preckwinkle-leads-rahm-emanuel-8-points-2015-mayors-race/

April 1, 2014

Far-Right Texas Terrorist Planned Murder And Robbery Spree in the Name of ‘Liberty’

Caitlin Dickson

Recruiting militants via Facebook is an amateur move, but the arrest of a right-wing extremist is a reminder that most terror plots in the U.S. have nothing to do with al Qaeda.

Robert James Talbot, Jr. woke up on the morning of March 27 ready to carry out the plan he’d allegedly been concocting for months. He drove to a storage facility in Houston, Texas where he met the three other members of “Operation Liberty.” According to a criminal complaint filed against him, Talbot had recruited his teammates via a Facebook group called the American Insurgent Movement to help him rob armored cars; the first phase of his larger scheme to kill police officers and blow up mosques and government buildings. Talbot allegedly provided his team with detailed maps of the financial institution he wanted to target, and escape routes for best avoiding law enforcement. He put two Composition 4, or C4, plastic explosive devices in his black backpack and asked one of his team members to read a “manifesto” he’d brought with him.

“We must rebel. There is no other option,” it read, according to the complaint. “Blood and bullets are the only two things that will change this world, short of divine action.”
On his way to carry out the robbery, Talbot was arrested by an FBI SWAT team.
Unbeknownst to the 38-year-old Talbot, he’d been the subject of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation since August, 2013. The people he’d recruited to be a part of his team were a pair of undercover FBI agents and a civilian informant.

While the words “terrorism” and “insurgent” often conjure thoughts Islamic extremism, the majority of domestic terrorist attacks in the United States over the past two decades have been carried out by right-wing radicals. According to data compiled last year by the liberal website ThinkProgress from the National Counterterrorism Center, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, right-wing extremists have been responsible for 56 percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots since in the U.S. the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. 12 percent have been perpetrated by Islamic extremists.

Over the next eight months, the FBI complaint alleges, Talbot set his plan into motion: He created a Facebook group titled “American Insurgent Movement” or “AIM.” He described it as “a Pre-Constitutionalist Community that offers those who seek True patriotism and are looking for absolute Freedom by doing the Will of God. Who want to restore America Pre-Constitutionally and look forward to stopping the Regime with action by bloodshed.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/01/far-right-texas-terrorist-planned-murder-and-robbery-spree-in-the-name-of-liberty.html

April 1, 2014

100 Years of Right (And Left) Moves: the progressive truly trump the conservative

Robert Shrum

The sign-up deadline for the Affordable Care Act has arrived, and in looking back at the last century of presidential power actions on both party sides Robert Shrum has reached a bigger conclusion: the progressive truly trump the conservative.

The sign-up deadline for the Affordable Care Act has triggered a predictable series of jeremiads from the right. Perhaps the most remarkable appeared (no surprise) on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal with Daniel Henninger’s portentous, supposedly comprehensive indictment: “The political left can win elections, but it’s unable to govern.” Henninger’s ambition here vastly exceeds his actual argument.

He assails health reform with a politically shopworn cliche about a “one grand scheme fits all compulsion… out of sync with individualization” in this age of technology. That glosses with modernity the 19th century laissez fair case against economic and social justice. It also happens to be outright false. As Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robert Pear write in the New York Times, ”… six months after its troubled online exchanges opened for business, the program… looks less like a sweeping federal overhaul than a collection of individual ventures playing out unevenly, state to state, in the laboratories of democracy.” Part of this is a reflection of the shameful fact that in 19 states, ideological, tea-drenched governors and legislatures have denied

Medicaid coverage to millions. But part of it is intended: Everyone else has a choice of plans on exchanges that span the private marketplace. The only thing you can’t choose is nothing—or else you pay a fine.

Henninger shies away from the obvious, justified censure about the program’s botched rollout, perhaps because things are now “actually going well": the percentage of uninsured Americans is declining, over 3 million Americans under the age of 26 are on their parents’ policies, and millions of individuals, 6 million and counting, are choosing policies through national and state exchanges. Simply put, the website works—and it appears Obamacare does—and will—too. (Some Democrats duck the phrase Obamacare given the President’s current ratings; I suppose that decades from now, Republicans who will be forced to pledge themselves to the law will call it something else.)

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/30/100-years-of-right-and-left-moves.html

April 1, 2014

5 Reasons Why Republicans Should Say No to Jeb 2016

The newest savior of the party is more likely to split it than unite it.

With Chris Christie in deep trouble, Republican poobahs are reportedly looking to Jeb Bush to save their party in 2016. The former two-term governor of Florida speaks fluent Spanish, is a convert to Catholicism, and has high name recognition. Jeb could raise millions of dollars over night by just saying “yes” to running.

Despite all this, there are strong reasons Republicans should say no to him.

1. His last name is poison.

Let’s face it, if Jeb Bush had the last name of Something Else he would have already run for president in 2008 or 2012. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll registered voters were asked if they would definitely NOT vote for Jeb Bush and 50 percent said they would not. Among Independents the results were 49 percent and even 18 percent of Republicans said the same.

These poll results prove that the legacy of George W. Bush continues to have a negative effect on his brother’s political future.

2. Jeb would split the party

Conservative activists/Tea Party Republicans who are the majority of GOP primary voters are not lining up for Jeb 2016 due to his support for “Common Core” academic standards and his support for “amnesty” immigration legislation. Jeb, although he considers himself a “practicing conservative” is also viewed as a “moderate” establishment Republican in the mold of Mitt Romney.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/01/5-reasons-why-republicans-should-say-no-to-jeb-2016.html

April 1, 2014

Jimmy Carter Was a Lot Better President Than Almost Anyone Ever Admits

David Masciotra

In or out of the White House, Carter has been a man of principle unafraid of hard truth. In his 22nd book, he documents the plight of women around the world.

The mindless and childish hatred for President Jimmy Carter, across the right and among a surprising number of liberals, exposes the obscenity and flaccidity of American political culture, where cliché overwhelms insight and bromide mutes the truth of history.

At the CPAC circus and over the airwaves of talk radio, the mere mention of Carter’s name is sufficient to provoke self-satisfied cackles and chortles from the audience, while liberals relegate Carter to the dubious distinction of “best ex-president”—a backhanded compliment equivalent to calling someone the best “non-medalist Olympian.”

Right wingers compare President Obama to Carter, believing it is the ultimate insult, and Obama won’t invite him to speak at the Democratic National Convention or, according to Carter in a recent Meet the Press interview, seek his advice on matters relating to national security and international affairs—a first since Carter left the White House.

Meanwhile, the former president from Plains, Georgia continues, in a soft but steady voice, to recite a refrain against all the resistance—“I will not go quietly.” He maintains direction at the Carter Center—monitoring elections for fairness, reporting human rights abuses, and negotiating deals between NGOs and Third World governments. He volunteers, with leadership and labor, for Habitat for Humanity, and he relentlessly and tirelessly writes.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/01/jimmy-carter-was-a-lot-better-president-than-almost-anyone-ever-admits.html

April 1, 2014

The despicable rise of conservative pranksters: Race-baiting & conspiracy theories in the age of Oba

The despicable rise of conservative pranksters: Race-baiting & conspiracy theories in the age of Obama

How Glenn Beck and James O'Keefe perfected a bizarre — and dangerous — new brand of conservative anger

KEMBREW MCLEOD

The history of political pranks is littered with lefty characters. Conservatives, on the other hand, do not gravitate toward irreverent hijinks. One exception is James O’Keefe, a right-wing prankster who uses hidden cameras to stage encounters with his ideological enemies. At the same time that progressive organizations such as MoveOn.org were hailed for their savvy uses of online media, O’Keefe, Andrew Breitbart, and other conservatives employed similar DIY methods. O’Keefe’s provocations began in 2004 while attending Rutgers University. In a satire of political correctness, what he viewed as a pious sensitivity to ethnicity on college campuses, he launched a campaign to remove Lucky Charms from the dining hall. He secretly videotaped himself complaining to a food-service employee about the leprechaun on the cereal box. While the school official earnestly scribbled notes, O’Keefe deadpanned, “As you can see, we’re not short and green—we have our differences of height—and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish Americans.” While at Rutgers, he gained notoriety by organizing an “affirmative-action bake sale,” in which whites paid exorbitant prices and African Americans got discounts.

In developing his craft, O’Keefe read Saul Alinsky’s ”Rules for Radicals,” the bible of many liberal activists. Rule Four especially inspired him: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” He applied this directive in 2007 when he punked Planned Parenthood in an attempt to expose white liberal hypocrisies about race, abortion, and eugenics. It is certainly true, for instance, that some early-twentieth-century Progressives could be racist. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is a women’s right pioneer, but some of her projects ran hand in hand with a desire to reduce the size of “undesirable” populations. Particularly unsettling was Sanger’s “Negro Project,” which was arguably a thinly veiled eugenics scheme. This sordid history has enabled conservative commentators to take the moral high ground by claiming that white liberals are the real racists. To dramatize this claim, O’Keefe secretly taped a phone conversation with a Planned Parenthood staffer, who was asked if his donation could be used to abort black babies (so to prevent his future son from being discriminated against through affirmative action). He was told the organization would accept the money, for whatever reason. Even though Planned Parenthood dismissed the tapes as “heavily edited,” the public-relations damage was done.

An unsettling amount of racial resentment runs through O’Keefe’s stunts, from his Rutgers University “affirmative-action bake sale” to one of the pranks he is most known for: the ACORN pimp tapes. In 2009, he targeted the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which advocated for working-class citizens and minorities. Conservative talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck turned it into a political punching bag during and after the 2008 election campaign, and O’Keefe piled on. Posing as a pimp—and accompanied by his associate Hannah Giles, who played the role of the prostitute—he videotaped low-level employees who appeared to endorse his proposed tax-fraud and child-prostitution schemes. The footage contained misleading cutaway shots of the skinny, white twenty-something in a pimp costume, making it look like he dressed this way in ACORN’s offices. It was one of many manipulations in O’Keefe’s viral videos (which, to be fair, are not unlike some edits found in films by liberal documentarian Michael Moore).

The incendiary footage prompted multiple criminal investigations, though no charges were ultimately filed. A report on ACORN activities produced by the California attorney general found that the organization suffered from mismanagement, but the AG also concluded that the videos were “heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of various ACORN employees.” The report stated, “the impression of rampant illegal conduct . . . is not supported by the evidence related to the videos.” Additionally, at least one employee who seemed to play along while on camera contacted the police after the “pimp’s” visit. The District Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, where another hidden-camera sting occurred, also reported that “no criminality has been found.” O’Keefe’s tactics did not constitute investigative journalism, but as a prank—a staged provocation designed to persuade—they were very effective. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to deny federal funding to ACORN, and by 2010 it was on the verge of bankruptcy. “That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work,” a former Maryland chapter co-chairwoman lamented. In 2011, O’Keefe pulled a similar prank on National Public Radio, which prompted legislation to defund public broadcasting. This was change the right could believe in.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/the_despicable_rise_of_conservative_pranksters_race_baiting_conspiracy_theories_in_the_age_of_obama/