Month: June 2016

The GOP Website Seems To Be Missing Any Reference To A Certain HUGE Name

Posted by on June 5, 2016 at 2:17 pm. NO Comments :

Gwen Ifill of PBS recently asked President Obama “Why don’t you mention Donald Trump by name?” The President playfully answered that “You know he seems to do a good job mentioning his own name.” And while that’s a reasonable position for the leader of the Democratic Party to take, it is a wholly different matter when the Republican’s official Internet site is so ashamed of their candidate that his name can’t be found on its home page or any linked pages.

GOP.com

A visit to GOP.com reveals that Donald Trump’s name is nowhere to found. Nor can he be found by clicking on the available links. Trump may not yet be the official nominee of his party, but given the fact that all of the other candidates have dropped out, and the party refers to him as their candidate, it is somewhat curious that he’s not mentioned on the party’s website. What are they ashamed of? And for those who wonder where Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders are on the Democrats’ website, be aware that the Democratic primary is not yet over and the party cannot take sides between candidates who are still vying for the nomination.

The GOP’s aversion to Trump isn’t limited to the GOP website. The highest ranking Republican in the U.S. government, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has said only that he will vote for Donald Trump, but has not given him an explicit endorsement. The most recent Republican presidents and nominees for president (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney) have not endorsed Trump and will not even be attending the Republican National Convention. And at several state conventions the leaders of the party gave speeches on party unity that conspicuously left out any mention of Donald Trump. They include Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Sen. Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

The Republican Party website is not shy about promoting prominent members of their party when they want to. The website’s online store is offering for sale hot properties like Dick Cheney cowboy hats, Reagan/Bush ’84 coffee mugs, and my personal favorite, George H.W. Bush socks. But you can’t buy a Trump baseball cap or bumper sticker.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

If you try really hard you can find some references to Trump by using the site’s search tool. Those references mostly come in the form of news stories or press releases. There is nothing overtly promoting his candidacy or seeking support for his election. They aren’t even using him for fundraising. That speaks volumes about how the party feels about the choice made by their primary voters. In all likelihood, this should change as the campaign progresses, but the fact that the party is treating Trump like a ghost candidate now cannot be seen as anything but a rebuke.

h/t Republican Family Values

Michelle Obama’s Last Commencement Speech As First Lady Scorches Donald Trump

Posted by on June 4, 2016 at 10:50 am. 1 Comments :

This being an election year, the media is understandably consumed by political news and the wrangling of the candidates. Consequently, it’s easy for other significant events to be overlooked. For instance, this is also the last full year that Barack and Michelle Obama will reside in the White House. There will be a lot of “lasts” as the year unfolds for the first African-American to serve as President of the United State. Then, in November, a new president will be elected and she will be inaugurated in late January of 2017.

Michelle Obama

On Friday, Michelle Obama gave the last commencement speech that she will ever give as First Lady (video below, full transcript here). It took place at the City College Of New York and it was full of the inspirational vignettes that typically populate these ceremonies. What made it extraordinary was the unmistakable blows she landed on a particular political foe:

“…despite the lessons of our history and the truth of your experience here at City College, some folks out there today seem to have a very different perspective. They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped. They tell us to be afraid of those who are different, to be suspicious of those with whom we disagree. They act as if name-calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state rather than the optimism and openness that have always been the engine of our progress.”

Now which name-calling, angry, intolerant person who avoids thoughtful debate do you suppose she might be thinking about? Well, just to make sure that there is no ambiguity about it, Obama continues with some rather direct criticism of leaders who “dehumanize entire groups of people” and do so “because they have nothing else to offer.” She rejected such thinking saying…

“That is not what this country stands for. No, here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other. Because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.”

Then she winds up and delivers the knock-out blow:

“And here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home.”

Coming the day after former First Lady Hillary Clinton delivered an epic smackdown of Donald Trump, this represents a powerful one-two punch from two of America’s most prominent and accomplished women. It is worthy of noting that women, along with Latinos, African-Americans, veterans, Muslims, and the disabled, have been among the most frequent victims of Trump’s divisive and hateful rants. It’s encouraging to see them responding with such intelligence and grace.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Prophets Of Rage Will Rock Against The Machine At The Republican National Convention

Posted by on June 3, 2016 at 3:51 pm. 3 Comments :

Cleveland, Ohio is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It will also be the site of the Republican National Convention next month where the GOP will nominate Donald Trump as their candidate for President of the United States. And those two worlds are about to collide as the supergroup, Prophets of Rage, prepares to invade the city just in time for the GOP’s festivities.

Prophets of Rage

Prophets of Rage is a musical collaboration that includes Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D of Public Enemy, and B-Real of Cypress Hill. Their mission is to “Make America Rage Again.” While all of these musicians, and the bands they represent, are epic rockers, they are also committed progressive activists who fight on behalf of the poor, the homeless, victims of discrimination and abuse, and all the rest of the 99 percent who are too often forgotten by conventional politicians. As Morello told interviewers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin of Bloomberg News, “The times demand a band like Prophets of Rage to rise.” And in the spirit of that, the Prophets just announced that they will be making the pilgrimage to Cleveland to “cause a ruckus” at the GOP convention:

“Well there’s a thing called the Republican National Convention in July, and that will be a perfect place for a band like Prophets of Rage to cause a ruckus, and we will be there on the streets, in the field,” Morello said. “We have a venue and there may be venues that will be spontaneous venues, it’s hard to say. This is the kind of thing you don’t broadcast to the local authorities prior to arrival.”

The prospect of these radicals popping up unexpectedly in the streets of Cleveland might be cause for the Republican Party establishment, and the local police department, to worry. But the GOP convention has already been threatened with riots by none other than their presumptive nominee. In March Trump told CNN that if he didn’t get the nomination at the convention “I think you’d have riots…I think bad things would happen.”

Morello spoke about the group’s view that politics as usual is insufficient to meet the crises that the nation and the world faces today. He found blame enough to go around for both parties saying that staking all of your hopes on hope isn’t going to work, but that “xenophobic, fear-based racism” isn’t going to work either. He complained that the narrative in the media that portrays the electorate as angry misconstrues the message:

“It’s my contention that we can no longer stand on the sidelines of history. Dangerous times demand dangerous songs,” Morello said. “Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both constantly referred to in the media as raging against the machine. We’ve come back to remind everyone what raging against the machine really means.”

The Republican convention promises to be an entertaining affair, and not just because their pending leader is a bombastic, controversy-baiting, former reality TV star who thrives on the adoration of his glassy-eyed followers. Donald Trump has incited his supporters to violence while casting venomous insults at his perceived enemies, usually women and minorities. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted, there is “more enthusiasm” for him “among leaders of the KKK” than leaders of the GOP.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So expect the convention to reflect those values, the values of their standard bearer. While Prophets of Rage will be stirring up emotions and inspiring grassroots activism outside the convention hall, the delegates inside will be fighting among themselves for an agenda of division and hate. At least we’ll get some awesome music out of it.

A Summary Of Hillary Clinton’s Righteous Smack Down Of Donald Trump

Posted by on June 2, 2016 at 6:17 pm. 6 Comments :

Hillary Clinton was in San Diego, California, today to deliver an address on national security. And while the speech she gave enumerated her priorities for a Clinton presidency, it began with a masterful indictment of her presumptive Republican opponent Donald Trump. Anyone who is interested can read the transcript of entire speech here, but what appears below is just a portion of the speech’s opening that nailed Trump to the wall. It seems appropriate that this be documented for all voters to reference as the campaign moves forward.

[Update 6/3/2016: Trump has responded via tweet (his favorite means of communication). He said “In Crooked Hillary’s telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!” So I added links to the evidence of his actual statements. Hillary Clinton also posted annotated support for her remarks]

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump’s ‘Dangerous Incoherence’

Americans aren’t just electing a President in November. We’re choosing our next commander-in-chief – the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death. And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job.

Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different – they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.

He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.

This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America.

This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.

This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO – the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.

He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008.

He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists – even though those are war crimes.

He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors and other high officials, because he has – quote – “a very good brain.”

He also said, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” You know what? I don’t believe him.

He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and he has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.

He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope.

He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.

And to top it off, he believes America is weak. An embarrassment. He called our military a disaster. He said we are – and I quote – a “third-world country.” And he’s been saying things like that for decades.

Those are the words my friends of someone who doesn’t understand America or the world.
And they’re the words of someone who would lead us in the wrong direction. Because if you really believe America is weak – with our military, our values, our capabilities that no other country comes close to matching – then you don’t know America.

And you certainly don’t deserve to lead it.

Well said Madame Secretary.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

John Kerry Rips Donald Trump’s ‘Unbelievable Contemptuous Ignorance’ On Climate Change

Posted by on June 2, 2016 at 1:45 pm. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party long ago committed itself to a position on climate change that is at odds with reality. The question is settled with 97 percent of the scientists who study the subject agreeing that climate change is occurring and that it is caused by human activities. But that hasn’t stopped faith-based GOP politicians, with help from the Fox News propaganda machine, from rejecting the voluminous data validating the unprecedented scientific consensus.

John Kerry

Leading the brigade of science deniers is the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. In a widely ridiculed comment he called climate change a hoax that “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He advocates anti-environment policies such as eliminating regulations on energy exploration and production, opening up federal lands to oil drilling, and building the KeystoneXL pipeline. He promises to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which he thought was called the Department of Environmental (DEP?). And most recently he said that he would rip up the United Nations’ historic Paris climate agreement that currently has 177 signatories.

Responding to Trump’s attack on the Paris accords, Secretary of State John Kerry was interviewed on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes (video below). He did not mince words when asked about Trump’s hostility toward the international effort to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change:

“Ripping up the climate agreement that was reached in Paris would be reckless, counterproductive, self-destructive. It would be an act of extraordinary danger to our country because of the path it would put us on both in terms of our global leadership on the issue as well as the actual policies we need to implement and it would in the end be an act of ignorance, of utter unbelievable contemptuous ignorance to get rid of something that the world has worked for since 1992 in Rio.”

Kerry didn’t stop there. He addressed the fact that each of the past years and decades marked record highs in global warming and were each hotter than those that preceded them, poignantly noting that “Somewhere people ought to be catching on to what is happening.” Along with the obvious and harmful impact of rising temperatures and sea levels, there is an alarming threat to national security. Kerry summarized this threat saying:

“Refugees that are being created in various parts of the world as a result of lack of water, or fights over food, or the fact that they have to move from where they live today. To talk about casually, without even understanding the work that has gone into it or the rationale for it, ripping it up would be one of the most reckless irresponsible, historically wrong acts I can think of.”

Conservative opponents of environmental reforms frequently try to belittle proponents as prioritizing climate change over terrorism. Of course, there is no reason why both issues cannot be tackled simultaneously. More to the point though, climate change actually is a more ominous threat that has the potential to instigate bloody wars and wipe out billions of people. Terrorism is unquestionably a tragic reality that requires a determined effort to defeat, but it does not approach the scale of climate change for global disaster. This was realized by no less a figure of right-wing stature than former George W. Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The Rolling Stone published a comprehensive examination of “The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk,” that cited Rumsfeld:

“In 2003, under Donald Rumsfeld, former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ Commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who is sometimes jokingly referred to within the Pentagon as Yoda — and who was a favorite of Rumsfeld’s — the report warned that threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism.”

OK? So now the climate-hoaxers cannot simply blame Obama and his socialist cabal of Sharia lawyers for inventing the crisis. Sources as deeply ingrained in the rightist dregs of warhawk free-marketism as Rumsfeld and Bush warned of the very same threat. In fact, four of the past Secretaries of Defense (Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that Climate Change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And three of the four are Republicans.

That leaves Donald Trump and his ilk to be the standard bearers of an utterly delusional rejection of the dangers that face a planet that is rapidly heating up, both in terms of temperature and hostility. Kerry characterized Trump’s denialism perfectly by labeling it reckless and ignorant. Unfortunately the Republican Party is now Trump’s plaything and they can be expected to wholly embrace his ignorance with enthusiasm and obedient blindness.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.