Ready For Bibi: Republican Leaders Trying To Draft Netanyahu For President In 2016

Posted by Mark NC on April 1, 2015 at 11:25 am. 6 Comments :

The presidential electoral season is rapidly heating up with candidates for both sides jockeying for position. Most of the activity is on the Republican side as the Democrats have not yet fielded a candidate that is seriously challenging Hillary Clinton.

The list of Republican hopefuls is long and comical, including such farces as Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson. Those considered “establishment” contenders like Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham have been rejected outright by the Tea Party base. Consequently, there is a sucking vacuum of emptiness in the GOP that threatens to sink their 2016 aspirations before they even get started.

Given the lack of any candidates that can unite the party and generate the energy and passion necessary to win next November, the GOP is casting a wider net in search of a more palatable offering. The consensus among insiders in the party is that Israels’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu best fits the bill to fire up a demoralized GOP that has lost two straight elections to a black guy.

That makes the recent travels of Republican leaders to Israel a more significant news story than previously disclosed. Mitch McConnell, the GOP chieftain in the Senate was there last week and huddled with Netanyahu, taking his side against President Obama regarding the sensitive negotiations over Iran’s nuclear arms capabilities. Next up is John Boehner, the GOP Speaker of the House, who is also scheduled to fluff Netanyahu during a trip to the holy land. These trips, it turns out, were not solely excursions to attempt to embarrass Obama on an international stage. Sources in the GOP have revealed that they were arranged to recruit Netanyahu as the next Republican nominee for president of the United States.

While there would be some obstacles to a Netanyahu candidacy, there are also some distinct advantages from the Republican perspective. Netanyahu is a war hawk who gives American conservatives goose bumps when he talks about escalating hostilities in the already volatile region. He has demonstrated a total inability to manage his nation’s economy, which should also excite Republicans who have made that their trademark in the United States. And best of all, he hates President Obama with a passion that comes very close to that of the Tea Party right in America.

The question of his citizenship is expected to be buried in a campaign that emphasizes his strong personal character that has the divine power to overcome trivialities like constitutional law. Republicans are planning to flood the media with arguments of equivalency to Obama’s Kenyan nativity and even to Ted Cruz’s birth in Canada to a Cuban lieutenant of Fidel Castro.

The religious right has long been one of the most powerful and loyal constituencies in the GOP. Their influence in this can also be felt as they regard a Netanyahu presidency as a prelude to the End Times that they so fervently await. They see his ascendancy as a path to war in the Middle East and eventually to the Apocalypse.

Fox News is also on board as the network of Christian soldiers who believe that a return to the Crusades would benefit both their political goals and their ratings. With a roster heavily weighted by devout Catholics, they are the closest thing in media to a Vatican PR office. The Fox faithful include: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, Brian Kilmeade, Andrew Napolitano, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Kucinich, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Father Morris. Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox News parent News Corp was himself inducted into the “Knights of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great” by Pope John Paul II. And if that isn’t enough, the current Senior Communications Adviser in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, Greg Burke, was previously the Fox News correspondent covering the Vatican, a position he held for ten years.

No timetable has been set as to when Netanyahu would announce his candidacy. However, there doesn’t seem to be any hurry as their is only one announced candidate to date (Ted Cruz) and no one is taking him seriously. The first debate (on Fox News, of course) isn’t scheduled until August. That gives Netanyahu time to settle his affairs in Israel and make several trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. Historically, campaign announcements have not been made on or around April 1st for the obvious reason: That it is simply too early in the cycle.

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Ben Carson Running For Sarah Palin’s ‘Dumbest Tea-Publican’ Title

Posted by Mark NC on March 25, 2015 at 1:50 pm. 4 Comments :

Who would ever have thought that a potential candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States would ever seriously challenge Sarah Palin’s epic idiocy? After all, the woman who couldn’t name a magazine that she reads and thinks that Africa is a country ought to have a lock on the contest for dumbfuckery.

Enter former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Apparently the medical degree and years of laudatory practice have not proved to be obstacles to asinine blathering. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Carson demonstrated his aptitude for derangement by referring to President Obama as a psychopath because he looks great “like most psychopaths. That’s why they’re successful. That’s the way they look. They all look great.” You have to wonder if that’s his medical diagnosis or if he’s just riffing ala Glenn Beck.

However, as stupid as that was, it was not what earned him the honor of toppling Sarah Palin from her pinhead perch. No, Carson had to exceed his previous efforts that included saying that America is “very much like Nazi Germany” and advocating dumping the Geneva Conventions. So he dug deep and came up with this response to an Israeli tour guide’s impromptu lesson on Israeli politics:

“And what is the role of the Knesset?” he interjected. This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature. Carson is a tall, dignified-looking man with a placid, almost sleepy face. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. “It sounds complex,” he finally said. “Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?”

Brilliant! Why indeed? In fact, why hasn’t every nation abandoned their government processes and implemented the only ones that Dr. Carson can at least pretend to understand? After all, Israel’s parliamentary system is very much like other democracies around the world that have existed far longer than ours. So obviously it is too complex to be comprehended by a mere brain surgeon. As opposed to America’s simplistic bicameral republic that even the Supreme Court has wrestled with for a couple of centuries.

Carson’s painfully naive request that Israel scrap their government and replace it with another shows just how pitifully unqualified he is to hold any public office that might require him to make diplomatic decisions. If he thinks that parliamentary democracy is complex, imagine how much communism would confuse him. Would his foreign policy initiatives for Russia and China be that they just adopt the system we have?

While it is disturbing that an adult seeking to be elected to the highest office in the land has such an ignorant grasp of the world, it is downright depressing that there are so many Americans who regard him as qualified to hold that office. What has happened to the Republican Party that was once the home of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower?

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The World Is On Fire: Ted Cruz Ignites The GOP Presidential Primary Season

Posted by Mark NC on March 23, 2015 at 12:12 pm. 4 Comments :

Today marks the official start of the Republican Presidential primaries. First out of the Clown Car is freshman Texas senator Ted Cruz. As the first candidate to announce, Cruz is bucking the odds where electoral history records that no candidate who announced first has prevailed since 1952.

Ted Cruz

Cruz has bigger problems than a statistical curse. His popularity in a large field of contenders is decidedly weak. Coming in at eighth in the RealClear polling average, he is trailing outliers like Ben Carson and Chris Christie. And he is also near the bottom of the pack in a match-up against Hillary Clinton, losing to the prospective Democratic nominee by double digits.

The only constituency where Cruz is viewed favorably is the Glenn Beck/Tea Party crowd of dimwitted right-wing extremists. There aren’t enough of them to get Cruz to the White House. Hell, there aren’t enough of them to get Cruz to the House of Pies.

He’s a candidate without a portfolio. After all the harping by conservatives about whether President Obama was lacking experience when he ran for president, they are now being asked to support someone with even less experience. Although both were senators for only two years when they ran, Obama spent seven years in the Illinois state legislature prior to becoming a senator. What’s more, the same crackpots who insisted that Obama was not qualified to be president due to their delusional claims about his birthplace and communist upbringing, don’t seem to have any problem with Cruz, who was born in Canada to a Cuban father who fought alongside Fidel Castro.

The irascible Cruz’s tenure in the senate is fraught with controversy. Even his Republican colleagues were embarrassed by his attempt to shut down the government with a filibuster that featured a reading of “Green Eggs and Ham.” Likewise, Cruz angered his peers when his greenhorn maneuvering permitted Democratic Leader Harry Reid to get confirmations for two dozen Obama appointees that would have otherwise been bypassed.

On policy Cruz is as far to the right as one can get. He has never seen a war or military escalation he didn’t love. He is a science denier who rejects both Climate Change and evolution. He opposes immigration reform, marriage equality, raising the minimum wage, and abortion even in cases of rape or incest. He voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. He would demolish the wall of separation between church and state. He has made repealing “every word” of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) a centerpiece of his platform, despite the fact that it would explode the deficit and cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

In his public statements, Cruz has been less than credible. Aside from having an overtly hostile personality that disrespects his opponents and their offices, his track record for honesty is dismal. PolitiFact has rated two-thirds of his statements as “Mostly False” or worse. That’s a lower percentage than all of the other main GOP candidates.

The good news (or bad news depending on your appreciation of political comedy and/or absurdist performance art) is that Cruz has almost no chance of winning the Republican nomination. He may rise to the top of the heap briefly as almost all GOP contenders do (see Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump). But he cannot prevail over the more establishment oriented Jeb Bush or Scott Walker. He is the poster boy for wingnut conservatism. And he is bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, although he is not the lone Republican with that distinction. Walker, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul all appeared with Cruz at a recent Koch-fest to plead for their anointing. But it was Cruz who went the extra distance by praising his hosts becuase they “stood up for free-market principles and endured vilification.”

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In his announcement speech, Cruz hit on all of the cliche right-wing drool enhancers: America uber-alles, God-centered government, and Ayn Randian self-interest in all matters. He spun his personal biography as a child of immigrants, whom he hopes to prevent from achieving the same American dream that his family enjoyed.

He basked in the warm reception he received from the captive audience at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University where the announcement took place. [Update: The students were required to attend or be fined] It was an appropriate venue for the sanctimonious son of a fire-and-brimstone evangelical preacher who truly believes that the world is on fire already. Which may explain his campaign logo: An upside flag that is aflame. And his announcement PR continues tonight on (where else) Fox News as he canoodles with Sean Hannity for the full hour.

Donald Trump Is Running For President – Of Dumbfuckistan

Posted by Mark NC on March 18, 2015 at 2:09 pm. 13 Comments :

This is a MEDICAL ALERT. If you believe that Donald Trump is running for president, stick an ice pick in your eye to see if you can get your brain started again. Don’t worry about damaging any important grey matter because if you bought Trump’s scam there is little left in your skull to damage.

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For those paying attention, Trump has been pretending to run for president for decades. He blathers about his “intentions” for a few weeks, insists that he is the only one who can save America from ruin, gets a bunch of idiot pundits to join the speculation, then retreats to his Manhattan penthouse to restock his bar and fluff his weasel-hair toupee. In his latest fake campaign, Trump announced that…

“Americans deserve better than what they get from their politicians — who are all talk and no action.”

Didn’t he just describe himself for the past thirty years? And why Trump would think that Americans would vote for him when 74%, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, view him negatively (the lowest by far of all candidates), and his track record in business includes four bankruptcies, is a question that only Trump’s ego can answer.

Trump’s platform consists mainly of anti-Obama mythologies such as his Kenyan birth, his Muslim faith, his ghost-written books, and his fake academic credentials. Trump has bought in to every hysterical conspiracy theory that has ever been floated about Obama. But who can deny Trump’s own resume that prepares him to lead the free world? After all, he has appeared on a reality TV show alongside Gary Busey and Meatloaf. What more could you want?

The best evidence that Trump is not running for anything other than the attention of dimwitted Fox News pundits and Tea Party basket cases is the response by NBC to his announcement that he will not be returning to Celebrity Apprentice. A spokesman for the network told Politico that “NBC Entertainment is planning to go ahead with production,” and that they would not be making any further comments. Notice that nothing in their statement confirmed that Trump had quit. Generally when that occurs the network would express its gratitude for the many years working together and extend their best wishes for the future. If NBC had the slightest inkling that Trump was serious they would not be committing production budgets and personnel to business as usual.

So to those who still think that a broadly unpopular loser, whose TV bosses don’t even believe him, is actually throwing his wig in the ring, please report to the nearest mental hospital. Trump would have a better chance of winning his Miss USA beauty pageant than a ticket to the White House. Although he would need a new hairpiece and some sort of act for the talent portion of the show.

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Addendum: In the highly unlikely event that Trump goes through with this charade (delighting Democrats everywhere), NBC could still proceed with Apprentice by getting Mitt Romney to take over the show. He is another hollow multimillionaire who likes to fire people. In fact, the GOP has a deep bench in that category.

Fox News Surrenders: Domestic Recovery Forces Narrative Shift To Foreign Policy For 2016 Election

Posted by Mark NC on February 20, 2015 at 10:47 am. NO Comments :

The Republican News Network (aka Fox News) is taking a hard turn away from domestic issues in advance of the 2016 election cycle. For the past several years Fox and the rest of the Right-Wing Media Circus has focused heavily on matters that hit close to home like the economy, unemployment, immigration, marriage equality, education, and relentlessly, healthcare – or more accurately, opposition to it.

Unfortunately for the GOP, every one of those issues has been trending favorably for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The economy has grown by historic rates. The stock market has hit record highs. The deficit has declined by two-thirds. Unemployment dropped from 10.1 to 5.7 percent and wages are beginning to rise. The majority of the public support the President’s positions on immigration. Marriage equality is being affirmed by courts across the country. Both academic and financial education reforms proposed by Obama are hugely popular. And ObamaCare reached new plateaus of success signing up more than 11 million new people this year.

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Also influencing the right is a Gallup poll released this week showing that terrorism has jumped in importance to the electorate. Fox News immediately began promoting this poll as evidence that Americans are convulsed with worry about being blown up in a cafe on Main Street. What they don’t mention is that terrorism in the poll shot up to a mere 8% and is still in fifth place behind four domestic issues. Also not mentioned is that another Gallup poll released the same day shows the President’s standing is on the rise. The poll shows him making significant gains with independents and even Republicans. And those gains are seen both personally and for his stance on issues.

So what is an obsessively hostile cable TV “news” network with a mission to promote conservative policies and Republican candidates to do? Of course, they have to pivot to foreign policy in a desperate bid to find a narrative that will advance their political goals. That is what’s happening now as this exchange from Fox News yesterday demonstrates:

Charles Krauthammer: This is going to be be one of those rare presidential runs in which foreign affairs is one of the dominant issues […] That is a very ripe field for the Republicans.
Ron Fournier: Charles is right. This is going to be a foreign policy election. I think that’s going to be really tough for Hillary given her last job.

Huh? Fournier didn’t elaborate on why Hillary Clinton’s last job as Secretary of State would make things harder for her if foreign policy were to take precedence. Running the State Department for four years would ordinarily be seen as a prime resume enhancement in an environment that prized international experience. Presumably the right is hankering for an opportunity to beat the Benghazi drum some more, but since they have failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing after three years and dozens of investigations (including findings that exonerate Clinton and Obama by the GOP led House Intelligence Committee), it seems rather far-fetched that they can make an issue of it now. And when the election heats up Clinton will have a strong record of achievement about which to brag.

More to the point, the effort by Fox to divert attention away from the positive domestic news is bound to fail for three reasons. First, whatever plausible case they have to make against Obama and/or Clinton on foreign policy, they aren’t making it. Instead, they are wasting breath on such ludicrous trivialities as whether or not the word “Islamic” is appended to every mention of terrorism. Their mantra on this is that you have to “call it what it is” in order to win. They seem to believe that just changing the rhetoric all by itself would cause the bad guys to throw in the towel. That, of course, is absurd. The truth is that tarring all Muslims with an association to terrorism would only alienate the Islamic allies we need to prevail. The only parties who insist on this language are GOP/Fox News conservatives and the terrorists themselves. So why is Fox taking their side? That’s a question that Fox News will answer by shouting as loudly as possible, “Benghazi!”

The second reason that latching unto a foreign affairs campaign theme would fail is that, in addition to not making a negative case against Clinton, Republicans are also not making an affirmative case for themselves. Their fierce condemnations of Obama as being weak and incompetent (besides being somewhat unpatriotic by their own definition) imply that their alternative would be to recklessly leap back into a war footing around the world with fronts ranging from Iraq to Iran to Syria to Afghanistan to Ukraine, and even to Russia and North Korea. That would be a hard sell to the American people. What’s more, Republicans are already leaning on the same people that so profoundly wrecked the nation’s international relations as the would-be architects of the next GOP administration’s foreign policy.

Finally, after failing to make a foreign policy case against Clinton or for themselves, Fox and the GOP are forgetting the universal truth about presidential campaigns. As immortalized by James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.” No matter how much the right wants to avoid the domestic progress the nation has made in the years since George W. Bush and his cronies cratered the economy, that will always be the primary driver in voting for a national leader. And on that subject Republicans have nothing but failure to point to, while Democrats under Obama have an increasingly prosperous country and an agenda advocating on behalf of the middle-class. In addition, Clinton happens to be married to the last president to balance the budget while producing strong economic growth and job creation.

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It’s no wonder that Republicans don’t want to run on domestic issues. And as their PR division, Fox News is valiantly striving to help them to change the subject. But no matter how hard they pray their wishes will not be realized. 2016 will be decided by an economic debate, just like every other presidential election. That fact, however, won’t deter the right from trying to elevate foreign policy because it’s all they have. And in a presidential election year, when turnout is higher, demographics favor Democrats, and the GOP has more at-risk seats than their foes, the outlook for Republicans is filled with the gloom that they have been trying to project on Democrats ever since the black guy moved into the White House.

Whose Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America?

Posted by Mark NC on February 8, 2015 at 3:50 pm. NO Comments :

The headline of a current Fox Nation article just begs to be mocked. Accompanying a photo of a cackling Hillary Clinton, the headline blares “Hillary Clinton’s Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America.”

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Oh really? So which companies is the article, sourced to the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon, referring? They are indeed a collection of mostly financial institutions that have deservedly earned the enmity of the American people. Companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. All of these enterprises played a role in plunging the nation into the Great Bush Recession of 2008.

Also on the list is 21st Century Fox. It’s kinda fun to see Fox pointing out that their own corporate parent is so hated by the American people.

However, when the substance of this story is examined, there are some serious flaws to the premise. First of all, the survey (pdf) that was cited in the article was conducted by Harris Interactive. It was never intended to identify “the most hated companies in America.” What Harris was studying were 100 of the most visible companies and ranking them by what Harris called their “Reputation Quotient (RQ).” Of course there are thousands of other companies in the country that may be hated much more but were not a part of the survey. The RQ is an amalgamation of several factors including the firm’s emotional appeal, social responsibility, workplace environment, and financial performance. Not all of the criteria reflect on merely the public like or dislike of the company.

What’s more, every company in the survey scored above 50, which suggests that none of them are hated with much passion. In prior years there were some, like Halliburton, BP, AIG, and Bank of America, that did fall below the 50 threshold. Nevertheless, no company wants to be on the low end of this list even if it isn’t that low.

The big problem with the story is that it singles out Hillary Clinton as the recipient of donations from these allegedly despised outfits. But in truth, just about every candidate for political office receives donations from these corporate ogres. And for the most part, Republicans are generally the beneficiaries in much higher amounts.

So what is the point of the article. Is it to criticize Clinton for taking money from the same dirty corporate entities that Republicans take money from? If so, there is a group of Americans who would wholeheartedly agree and share in the criticism. They are called Democrats. The passion that is driving the campaign to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a challenger to Clinton is fueled by this very criticism.

Furthermore, while many in the Democratic Party have been working for years to remove this sort of tainted funding from the political process, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to continue and even expand it. A bright, flaming red, festering example of this is the pledge made recently by the Koch brothers to raise and spend nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 election cycle to buy power for their political puppets. Meanwhile, there are two Super PACS founded by well known liberals aimed at eliminating Super PACS: MIT’s Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday.US and George Soros’ son Jonathan’s Friends of Democracy.

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So if Fox News and the Free Beacon and the GOP want to get on board with the bashing of greedy, power-hungry corporations (who are not people, no matter what Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court say), and prohibiting them from corrupting American elections, they are most welcome. Unfortunately, it is more likely that the these right-wingers are just taking wild swings at Clinton and only hope to slander her, rather than to make a principled statement about the influence of corporate money.

The Republican Politburo Threatens To Censor Their Own Presidential Candidates

Posted by Mark NC on January 16, 2015 at 7:47 pm. 6 Comments :

Anyone who followed the 2012 presidential primaries for the Republican Party were treated to a circus extravaganza that featured a parade of clown-like characters humiliating themselves and their party. It included Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich. And always on the sidelines were were Sarah Palin and Donald Trump pretending that they were just about to jump in.

It’s no wonder that the Republican National Committee is so determined to prevent a repeat of that embarrassment. There were nearly two dozens debates leading up to the Republican convention in August of 2012. That was an enormous about of time for the candidates to make asses of themselves, and they used that time to good advantage.

So the RNC chairman Reince Priebus has just announced their schedule of sanctioned debates for the 2016 campaign season. There are only nine firm dates with another three penciled in as pending. That’s smart on their part because, as they learned last go around, the more people saw of their candidates, the less they liked them. And by forcing them to actually articulate their positions on issues, it made it harder for their ultimate nominee, Mitt Romney, to waver vaguely in the winds of “Etch-a-Sketchy” opportunism. But has the RNC gone too far by dictating this mandate:

“To give their push to control the debate process teeth, any candidate who participates in a non-sanctioned debate will not be allowed to participate in any more sanctioned debates.”

That is an awfully strict decree that borders on totalitarian control of what is supposed to be a democratic process. In the past, debates were sponsored by media organizations and political groups with an interest in educating the public. For instance, The League of Women Voters was a frequent sponsor of non-partisan candidate forums. And the participation of the media insured that the candidates would have access to voters.

The notion that there will be only officially sanctioned debates means that they are more likely to be propaganda affairs than contests of ideas and abilities. That outcome is even more likely since the RNC is retaining control over who the debate moderators will be, and they have signaled that they will all be GOP-friendly. So no tough questions, no adversarial jousting. And that is by design of the RNC debate architects. They have previously said that they don’t want their candidates tearing each other down during the primaries.

Consequently, whoever emerges from the Republican field (probably Bush) will not have been battle-tested for the general election. He will face his Democratic opponent unprepared for the sort of contentious discourse that is part and parcel of a national election. He will not have had an opportunity to sharpen responses to hostile questions or address his weaknesses. That’s good news for the Democrat (probably Clinton).

Another problem with limiting the debates to officially sanctioned affairs is that it’s difficult to force everyone to comply. There will be parties who will feel left out. Take for example, the Tea Party. It is hard to imagine that those notoriously antsy malcontents will be easily persuaded to sit back and let the party apparatchiks dictate who can speak and when and where.

Likewise, the media is under no obligation to refrain from offering their own candidate forums. Should they do so, the candidates would be hard-pressed not to participate and gain valuable airtime. Particularly the second tier candidates who have more trouble raising money. And if the second tier agrees to a network debate, the first tier are not going to want to let them have the stage to themselves to beat on them.

This would put the RNC in the position of having to enforce their stated punishment. Would the party actually ban viable candidates from participating in their sanctioned debates? That would anger both the candidates and their supporters. Plus, it would make them look small and unpresidential, like naughty children. That’s not a particularly flattering way to go into the convention or the general election.

In addition to the threats imposed by the RNC, they also announced that they will be partnering with Fox News for three of their sanctioned debates (two on Fox News, one on Fox Business), and another one in the pending status. CNN will get two debates, and each of the broadcast networks will get one. MSNBC was completely shut out by the good folks at the RNC. Let’s just hope that the DNC has the good sense to shut out Fox News.

The debate granted for Fox Business is unusual in that the network has no measurable audience. They do not permit Nielsen to publish their ratings, a decision generally taken when the ratings are embarrassingly low. Either the RNC feels guilty about including CNBC on their debate schedule, or they are just giving Fox a gift. Needless to say, Fox will be the favorite media outlet for the GOP for the duration of the campaign.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Republican vs. Democratic Billionaires

Posted by Mark NC on January 11, 2015 at 1:38 pm. 6 Comments :

The toxic effect of the billions of dollars in special interest donations to political candidates and causes can be seen every day in the way that politicians rewards their most generous benefactors. It is not a coincidence that the first bill brought to a vote in the Republican-dominated 114th Congress was one to advance the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline favored by wealthy oil barons like the Koch brothers.

The current corrupt state of political funding was made possible by the notorious Citizen’s United decision that freed donors to make virtually unlimited contributions without disclosing their identity. Despite the fact that Republicans defend this practice, their media mouthpiece, Fox News, tries to play both sides of the debate by accusing Democrats of being equal offenders. Or, in the case of a new item posted on Fox Nation, even worse.

According to Fox, “Dem Billionaires Donate More To Politicians Than Republicans.” The article that the Fox Nationalists cited as their source was originally published by Politico. Fox posted the first three paragraphs from the Politico story that said in part…

“Democrats spent much of the 2014 campaign castigating Republican big money, but, it turns out, their side actually finished ahead among the biggest donors of 2014 – at least among those whose contributions were disclosed.”

The key portion of that quote are the eight words at the end. It is impossible to do an analysis of political donations without taking into consideration the “dark money” made possible by Citizen’s United. In the beginning of Politico’s article they noted that donations attributed to Democrats from disclosed sources totaled $174 million in 2014. Donations from Republicans came to only $140 million. And from that data Fox declared that Democrats were the bigger donors.

However, in the fourth paragraph of the article, the one right after the point where Fox Nation cut off their excerpt, a far more relevant statistic was reported:

“Of course, that edge doesn’t take into account contributions to deep-pocketed non-profit groups that don’t disclose their donors. They heavily favored Republicans […] For instance, the network of mostly secret-money non-profit groups helmed by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers was on pace to spend $290 million in 2014.”

So the truth is that the Koch brothers all by themselves donated more money than all of the Democrats cited by Fox combined. It’s a fact that Fox left out of their excerpt and blatantly lied about in their headline.

To illustrate how dishonest it is to use numbers that only include disclosed donors, David and Charles Koch rank only 10th and 29th on the list of such contributions. But clearly they are number one by a wide margin if all of their donations are counted, including those from the dark money organizations they run like Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and Donors Trust. But don’t expect to learn about any of this from Fox News. Their mission is to disinform and to prop up the right-wing elitists, bankers, and captains of industry.

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See also this analysis of the stark differences between the Republican rich and the Democratic rich: What’s The Difference Between Wealthy (Koch) Republicans And (Soros) Democrats?

So You Thought President Obama Would Be A Lame Duck, Did You?

Posted by Mark NC on December 17, 2014 at 7:14 pm. 10 Comments :

Six weeks ago an election concluded that brought what every Republican, and many Democrats, thought was the deathblow for the Obama administration. There was no phrase that was uttered more often than “Lame Duck” as pundits rushed to write the epitaph of Obama’s presidency and agenda. They were convinced that the Obama era was dead and, with apologies to Monty Python, it had…

“…passed on. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet it’s maker. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. It’s pushing up the daisies. It’s metabolic processes are now history. It’s off the twig. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s shuffled off it’s mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. This is an ex-presidency.”

Well, in the subsequent forty-two days the President has demonstrated a stubborn resistance to complying with the conventional wisdom. He has defied his critics’ forecasts of an untimely demise, as well as their conviction that he is incapable of leadership. Here is a brief summary of some of the achievements that have come to pass since November 5, 2014, beginning with an historic announcement today:

Normalizing relations with Cuba.
Deferring deportation for certain undocumented immigrants.
Passage of a spending bill that averts another government shutdown.
Confirmation of his Surgeon General nominee.
Confirmation of twenty-seven federal judges.
Climate agreement with China.
Protection for Bristol Bay, Alaska from future oil and gas drilling.

In addition to the above, Obama has also presided over record enrollments in the second year of ObamaCare, and the deflating of Russia’s economy. And all the while the U.S. economy is performing better than any other major nation, and most indicators are firmly in positive territory.

Of course, there is still much room for improvement, but that cannot be achieved without the cooperation of Congress. There is not likely to be much of that in the next couple of years, but Obama has proven that he is able to attend to the interests of the American people even when Congress refuses to do so. And the 2016 cycle is shaping up to heavily favor Democrats.

In fact, 2016 holds decidedly bad news for Republicans and their new senate majority. The GOP will be defending 24 seats, as compared to only 10 for the Democrats. Nine of the those GOP seats are in states won by Obama in 2012. So are all of the Democratic seats. With a larger and more representative electorate it is almost a certainty that the senate will flip back to the Democrats.

It will be interesting to see where we go from here as the new congressional session begins next month. What we already know is that with Republicans in charge the Congress has set a new record for laziness. It has spent more time on vacation than working (239 total vacation days in 2014). Plus, it was the least productive session in history. It took that trophy from the session just prior.

Much of the blame has to be laid at the feet of John Boehner, the Tea Party, and the GOP’s inability and genetic aversion to governing. But if anyone is still holding onto the belief that Obama has become an irredeemable lame duck, the evidence of the past six weeks ought to shake that conviction. It is clear that Obama has no intention of being hobbled by an antagonistic Congress that cares more about their own grasp on power than they do the welfare of the people they are supposed to representing.

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Democrats And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (For Republicans)

Posted by Mark NC on November 5, 2014 at 11:31 am. 20 Comments :

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Election day 2014 sucked elephant balls. It is saddling America with a Republican senate that is notable for being unproductive and adversarial. It’s new leader is a hyper-partisan, Washington fossil whose only agenda is obstructionism. One of its new members is an Agenda 21 conspiracy nut who carries a gun to defend herself from the government she now represents. Florida and Kansas returned to office the two least popular governors in the country. And the right-wing noise machine is going to be gloating feverishly for weeks.

But the real story underlying this election is one that the media will almost certainly fail to address. Despite the election returns, America hates the Republican Party and its policies. The turnout is estimated to be about 38%. That means that the GOP victory was achieved with a majority of a little more than one-third of the electorate, or about 20%. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Republican agenda.

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The demographic makeup of the voters this year was decidedly older and whiter. It was also more concentrated in the South which accounted for 34% of all votes. The rest of the country came in a substantial nine to twelve points lower.

Just two years ago President Obama was resoundingly reelected along with increasing the number of Democrats in both houses of Congress. The turnout then was 58%, or 53% higher than 2014. Exit polls show that both parties are underwater in voter approval, but Democrats are still favored over Republicans 44% to 40%. Exit polling also gives Obama a 41% approval rating, compared to just 13% for Congress.

On the basis of this fractured and biased sliver of the electorate, Chris Wallace of Fox News declared this morning that “The Democratic Party brand is damaged.” But further examination of the exit polls says that isn’t true. On virtually every policy question, voters sided with the Democrats. That includes ObamaCare, immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, same-sex marriage, legalizing marijuana, abortion, and climate change. And when asked about preferences for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton is leading every GOP opponent (Clinton 42%, Jeb Bush 29%, Rand Paul 26%, Chris Christie 24%, and Rick Perry 24%).

2016 holds more bad news for Republicans and their new senate majority. The GOP will be defending 24 seats, as compared to only 10 for the Democrats. Nine of the those GOP seats are in states won by Obama in 2012. So are all of the Democratic seats. With a larger and more representative electorate it is almost a certainty that the senate will flip back to the Democrats. And with a popular and history-making candidate like Clinton that outcome is even more likely.

In the meantime, we can expect some epic battles to ensue. Although Mitch McConnell made some perfunctory remarks signalling bipartisan cooperation, his resume suggests a different course entirely. He told supporters last night that “Just because we have a two-party system doesn’t mean we have to be in perpetual conflict.” That coming from the man who presided over more filibusters than any senate in history.

But the battles will not be limited to those between the two parties. McConnell is going to experience some of the misery of John Boehner as he tries to herd the Tea Party contingent of his own party into some semblance of unity. Don’t expect Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Mike Lee or Joni Ernst to fall obediently in line. In fact, Cruz is already announcing his intention to prosecute the President for many of the phony scandals for which the GOP-run House failed to find any wrongdoing. He told Fox News last night that…

“I hope we begin serious, systematic, sober hearings, examining executive abuse, regulatory abuse, lawlessness, abuse of power. Whether it is IRS wrongly targeting citizens or the debacle of Benghazi and four Americans who lost their lives and why more was not done to save them, or whether it’s the lawlessness that pervaded Obamacare as the president and executive branch has tried to pick and choose which laws to follow. I hope we see serious oversight on those fronts.”

That’s a path that leads to increased animosity and the “perpetual conflict” that McConnell says he hopes to avoid. But with Cruz and Paul and Rubio amongst those in his caucus who are contemplating a presidential run, can McConnell prevent them from hijacking the senate for their own purposes? And will their purposes include attempts to impeach Obama as some Republicans and conservative pundits have already advocated?

The next two years are going to be a bumpy ride for both parties and, unfortunately, the American people. There is much that we cannot anticipate at this time. What we can safely assume is that the extremist, Tea Party wing of the GOP will deliver some histrionics and hilarity. And Fox News will cover all of it as if it were sober statesmanship. So buckle up, folks. And be glad that the ride is over in only two years.

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