Tuesday, August 13, 2013 10:16:34 AM
Obama Protesters Sing 'Bye Bye Black Sheep,' Rail Against 'Half-White Muslim' In Arizona
By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/07/2013 9:47 am EDT | Updated: 08/07/2013 6:38 pm EDT
A raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama's appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.
From the Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130806obama-phoenix-protests-outside-school.html ]:
Obama foes at one point sang, "Bye Bye Black Sheep," a derogatory reference to the president's skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, "Impeach the Half-White Muslim!"
The Republic reported that hundreds of people gathered outside Desert Vista High School as Obama unveiled a plan [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/obama-mortgage-speech_n_3714980.html ] to overhaul the nation's mortgage finance system. Some protesters came from Obama's left, urging him to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take other actions on climate change. But a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.
“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”
Others carried signs calling for Obama to be impeached, Tucson News Now reported [ http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/23063824/hundreds-protest-in-phoenix ], though despite the negativity, the majority of those in attendance were Obama fans.
Inside, Obama's speech focused primarily on the housing market, though he did at one point attempt to link his proposal to immigration reform, arguing that Congress -- which is now in recess -- could help housing prices rebound by finalizing legislation that has already been passed by the Senate.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/obama-protesters-arizona_n_3719050.html [with embedded video report, and (nearly 20,000) comments]
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Opinion: Racist taunts at Obama should worry us all
President Barack Obama arrives Tuesday at a Phoenix high school, where outside protesters used racist slogans and songs.
August 8, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/opinion/whitaker-obama-arizona-race/index.html [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Obama Protested By Birthers In Florida
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 08/10/2013 12:18 pm EDT | Updated: 08/10/2013 12:34 pm EDT
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle were met with signs saying "Obama lies" and "Kenyan Go Home" ahead of a speech in Florida on Saturday.
According to a White House pool report, the president's motorcade was pulling into the Hilton Orlando where the Disabled American Veterans [ http://www.dav.org/events/2013-national-convention/ ] are holding their convention when it passed about 50 protesters on both sides of the street. The protesters -- "many of them older and most of them white," according to the report -- were holding birther signs and signs calling to "Impeach Obama."
Obama cited progress [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/obama-veterans-convention_n_3736422.html ] in reducing the backlog of disability claims in his address Saturday. The first lady also addressed the veterans during the appearance, the Obamas' last before they go on vacation [ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/08/10/obama-family-heads-to-marthas-vineyard-for-vacation/ ].
UPDATE: Below, a photo of the "Kenyan Go Home" sign, via BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski [ https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/statuses/366235193725554688 ]:
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/obama-birthers_n_3737054.html [with (over 8,000) comments]
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Rodeo clown mocks Obama at Missouri State Fair
Video [embedded]: Rodeo clown mocks Obama
By Elwyn Lopez and Ed Payne, CNN
updated 4:06 PM EDT, Mon August 12, 2013
(CNN) -- A rodeo stunt at the Missouri State Fair has come under criticism after a clown donned a Barack Obama mask and stuck on a broom that descended from his backside.
The stunt took place during the bull riding competition on Saturday night.
Rodeo announcer Mark Ficken, president of the Missouri Cowboy Rodeo Association and a school superintendent, announced a special guest: "President Obama."
Another voice is heard over the loudspeaker working up the crowd and saying, "We're going to stomp Obama now."
"As soon as this bull comes out, Obama, don't you move," the second voice said. "He's going to getcha, getcha getcha, getcha."
"Hey, I know I'm a clown," the second voice said. "He's just running around acting like one. Doesn't know he is one."
The stunt sickened Perry Beam, who came to the fair in Sedalia with his wife and a student from Taiwan to "give him a little piece of Americana."
Beam likened the atmosphere to a Klan rally.
"It wasn't clean; it wasn't fun. It was awful; it was sickening," Beam said, "It was racist."
The student, Jameson Hsieh, recorded a video of the incident, but had little to say afterward.
"He didn't say anything. We rode all the way home in silence," said Beam, who lives 50 miles away in Higginsville. "We were just ashamed, and he didn't ask any more questions. I think he had seen enough. It is just disgusting."
Condemnation came from organizers and politicians alike. The Missouri State Fair Commission called it "unacceptable" and said the clown has been banned "from ever participating or performing at the Missouri State Fair again."
"The commission reiterated that the statements and actions Saturday night were inappropriate and not in keeping with the fair's standards," the agency said in a written statement. "The Missouri State Fair apologizes for the unconscionable stunt."
The board of directors at Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association also issued an apology.
"The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform. We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again," a statement on the group's website said. "All Members of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association are very proud of our Country and our President."
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable.
"I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "the other night," he said in a post to his official Twitter account. "We are better than this."
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder.
"The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love," she said. "But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it's ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation."
CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/ [with (approaching 9,000) comments]
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Missouri Officials Now Realize Obama Rodeo Clown Was in Poor Taste
By Margaret Hartmann
August 12, 2013 at 4:32 AM
It's easy to see why announcer Mark Ficken, president of the Missouri Cowboy Rodeo Association and Boonville School Superintendent, assumed that no one would have a problem with him taunting a clown wearing an Obama mask at a Missouri State Fair bull riding competition on Saturday night. Most of the crowd appeared to be delighted when Ficken asked if anyone wanted to see "Obama run down by a bull," and declared, "We’re going to smoke Obama, man." However, thanks to one offended spectator, Ficken has learned that joking about the president being trampled isn't considered all-American fun elsewhere in the nation.
Spectator Perry Beam posted photos [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/obama-clown-missouri-fair-95429.html ] of the event online after attending the fair with his wife and a student from Taiwan. "It wasn't clean; it wasn't fun. It was awful; it was sickening," Beam said, "It was racist." After the images went viral, State Fair officials said it was "inappropriate" and the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association issued an apology. "The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform. We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again," the group said in a statement [ http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/ (just above)]. And in addition to not wishing Obama bodily harm, "All Members of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association are very proud of our Country and our President."
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/missouri-regrets-showing-obama-as-a-rodeo-clown.html [the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSik7I3w2Ng ; with comments]
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Donald Trump, Louie Gohmert Make Great Case For Why GOP Should Keep People Like Them Off TV
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), pictured left, and Donald Trump, pictured right
(Getty Images)
By Jason Linkins
Posted: 08/11/2013 2:35 pm EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 2:48 pm EDT
This week, "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" kicked off with a question: "Why is Donald Trump stumping in Iowa [ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/donald-trump-sen-ted-cruz-perhaps-not-eligible-for-white-house-if-born-in-canada/ ]?" This answer to that question is that Trump is an orange-skinned huckster-clown who wants to pretend to be a big deal in politics and a perennial presidential contender, running on such policies as "Why do the Iraqis still have oil? We should take that for ourselves [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/04/155527/trump-iraq-oil-soldiers-died-vain/ ]." He is the sort of buffoon that the Republican Party opted to keep far, far away from their convention -- and this was in spite of the fact that they nevertheless chose to allow Clint Eastwood to do the weird things that he did.
It's a question that doesn't really ever need to be asked, let alone answered, on a Sunday show. I just took care of the matter and put it to bed in a paragraph. But "This Week" didn't just raise a dumb question and seek a trivial answer, they devoted a lot of time to a deep exploration on the matter.
[video of Trump on "This Week" embedded]
In addition, the bookers for "This Week" hit their rolodexes and decided that what the world needed was Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) on a panel. And over at "Meet The Press," producers booked Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). After all, they wanted to have a discussion about comprehensive immigration reform, and how could you do such a thing without ol' Representative Cantaloupe Calves, right? I mean, if you don't book King, who knows what might happen? Two sides could work out their differences, or come to a genial understanding!
Here is a message to the Republican Party, from me: Guys, I don't know if you've noticed this, but you are getting rooked pretty badly by the Sunday shows. Did y'all wake up today thinking that the best thing for your message was to have it carried by guys like Trump and Gohmert and King? I am guessing that's not the case. But that's who got booked, because nothing is better for ratings than a bunch of hot messes on the teevee.
Trump happily obliged himself to the task of being a hot mess, though, continuing to offer up a steady stream of rhetorical skid-marks on the lunatic "Obama birth certificate" conspiracy theory as well: "Well, I don’t know, was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know some people say that was not his birth certificate. So maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t.”
Additionally, Jonathan Karl asked Donald Trump the Important Questions, like, "Is Ted Cruz eligible to be president?" Karl knows that the answer to this question is "Yes." But Karl asked Trump because he knew it would be some Super Duper Silliness OMGZ!
“If he was born in Canada, perhaps not,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t know the circumstances. I heard somebody told me he was born in Canada. That’s really his thing.”
And Trump's "thing" is horseshit like this, which everyone at ABC News knew to be the case the second they agreed to interview him. I promise you, no one at ABC News thought that their interview with Trump would be good for America. Interviewing Trump is the political media version of the group of people who positioned pig's blood above Carrie at the prom and then laughed in anticipation of the big joke they were about to pull, only in this case, "America" is Carrie. "HAR DE HAR, THERE'S GONNA BE PIG BLOOD EVERYWHERE!" is what the people at ABC News said when they hatched the idea of airing an interview with Donald Trump.
Louis Gohmert also made things terrible for everyone. Right now, the GOP leadership is trying to tamp down the idea that they'd be willing to shut down the government unless they get an agreement from Democrats to defund Obamacare. At the end of last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor -- no weak-willed compromiser! -- was strongly signaling that everyone needed to take a chill pill [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/eric-cantor-gop-government-shutdown_n_3734298.html ]. So naturally, ABC went out and got a guy that they knew would say something like this:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think you have the votes to defund Obamacare? It doesn't appear like that's...
GOHMERT: No. Not right now. But we'll see after August after people go home.
Louis, call Eric Cantor's office!
Meanwhile, over at the Meet The Press, King was on, defending his remark, "For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds -- and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." There was never a moment that Gregory gave any suggestion that resolving this weeks-old matter was important to journalism or immigration reform or anything. King was doing so, just because David Gregory wanted him to come on "Meet The Press" so that everyone could watch King flop his gob over this matter one last time.
Ana Navarro, a GOP strategist, thankfully decided that she'd heard enough. "I think Congressman King should go get himself some therapy for his melon fixation," she said. "I think there might be medication for that. I think he's a mediocre congressman who's got no legislative record, and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undocumented or Hispanics."
Navarro went on to say that the really great thing about King is that his stupidity is "emboldening other Republicans to speak out strongly against him, people like John Boehner, like Eric Cantor, like Paul Ryan, who are not going to stand anymore for the Republican Party being defined by somebody like Steve King."
"There are other voices who are the adults in the room and who are working hard towards a reform," Navarro said, "And I think it's going to happen. I'm more optimistic than most."
Well, I appreciate the optimism, but I don't share it because it is still Steve King getting booked on Sunday Morning Teevee, not these other "adults in the room."
Republican Party, this is all stuff that makes these shows really painful for people like me to watch. I wake up in the morning and see that I'm going to have to sit through a segment with Donald Trump and my reservoir of "willingness to go on living" just evaporates.
Surely you guys feel the same way, when the guy that Meet The Press goes out and gets for their panel discussion on immigration -- strictly for the purpose of derailing it -- is the guy who recently embarrassed y'all with his discussion of illegal immigrants and their sacks-of-marijuana-based Crossfit regimen. You guys probably don't like seeing these guys get booked any more than I do. Perhaps our interests are aligned?
Hey, we called around and got some quotes about today's Sunday offering of Trump-Gohmert-King, just for fun. "Looking forward to future Sunday shows filled with Markwayne Mullin," griped one GOP operative. Another told us, "We have Fox and we use (like props) the most irritating, obscure Democratic political voices, like Bob Beckel, Susan Estrich, Pat Caddell, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. They have the major networks. We used to get Bachmann [on these shows], and now it looks like we're gonna get Gohmert. [Bob] Dole's Meet The Press appearance record could be in jeopardy."
Look, Republican Party, there is probably nothing you can do about Donald Trump, because he is a unique, sparkling gas-sack unto himself. But can you guys see about keeping Gohmert and King occupied on Sunday mornings? Maybe give them both a sack of jacks and a rubber ball to bounce, or something? It would make my life better and it might even make your jobs easier as well.
KTHXBAI.
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Related
Donald Trump Beats The Birther Drum Again: 'Was There A Birth Certificate?' (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-birther-this-week_n_3739675.html
'This Week' Criticized For Donald Trump Interview
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/this-week-donald-trump-interview_n_3739671.html
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Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-louie-gohmert-steve-king_n_3740081.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 6,000) comments]
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Ted Yoho Says He Would Support A Birther Bill
08/07/2013
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) told supporters he would back a bill to investigate the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, though he conceded the 'birther' movement was a "distraction" from more pressing issues.
Right Wing Watch posted audio [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rep-ted-yoho-praises-birther-conspiracy-calls-obamacare-racist-against-white-people ] of Yoho's comments from a Saturday town hall, in which the Florida Republican said he called his colleague Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) to pledge his support for a potential bill that would launch an investigation into whether the president's birth certificate is fake.
The audience applauded Yoho, but an attendee asked the congressman if such a bill would be an appropriate use of time. The crowd responded "no," and Yoho agreed by labeling it a "distraction."
"But I'm gonna check into that because in order to have freedom, you have to have economic freedom," he said, before pivoting back to why Stockman's bill mattered.
"But then they said, well, if [the birth certificate] is truly illegal, he shouldn't be there and we can get rid of everything and I said I agree with that," Yoho said.
[...]
During the same town hall, Yoho claimed a 10 percent tax [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/ted-yoho-tanning-tax-racist_n_3709155.html ] on tanning beds under the Affordable Care Act was "racist," because people born with darker skin don't need to tan.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/ted-yoho-birther_n_3713636.html [with embedded video report, and comments];
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rep-ted-yoho-praises-birther-conspiracy-calls-obamacare-racist-against-white-people [with embedded audios, at https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/yoho-praises-birther-bill and https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/yoho-obamacare-racist-against ]
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Tea Party Loyalty
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-danziger/teapartyloyalty_b_3722194.html [with comments]
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GOP Congressman To Birther Constituent: House Republicans Have The Votes To Impeach Obama
By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/12/2013 1:03 pm EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 6:40 pm EDT
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) answered questions from a fervent anti-Obama constituent at a town hall this weekend, telling a woman that he would take a closer look at her birther conspiracy document before claiming there were enough House Republican votes to impeach the president, albeit for an unstated reason.
In a video uploaded to YouTube [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQxp9XrH6mc (since taken private); the 3:50 original appears to be in full in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH266F3UEVM , next below, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0e3jvhKwPE ]
Farenthold told his constituent he'd examine the document -- which she said proved Obama had "committed a felony" -- though he noted he thought it was too late to topple Obama based on the eligibility issue. The congressman then connected the woman's opposition to a question of how Congress might approach impeaching the president.
“You tie into a question I get a lot: 'If everybody’s so unhappy with what the president’s done, why don’t you impeach him?’” Farenthold said. “I’ll give you a real frank answer about that: If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it. But it would go to the Senate, and he wouldn’t be convicted.”
Farenthold explained that House lawmakers are responsible for voting to bring forth Articles of Impeachment, which would in turn prompt a trial in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The congressman then argued that the nation could be damaged if Obama was ultimately found not guilty after an impeachment, though he didn't get specific on just what he thought Obama could be impeached for.
“What message do we send to America if we impeach Obama and he gets away with what he’s impeached for and he is found innocent? What then do we say is OK?” Farenthold said.
It's unclear exactly which high crimes and misdemeanors Farenthold thinks a majority of the House believe Obama has committed, but broader calls for impeachment have bubbled up in town halls as Republicans address their constituents during the August recess.
Last week, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) faced a disgruntled constituent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/andy-harris-town-hall_n_3732258.html ] who said he wanted to see House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) openly threaten Obama with impeachment if the president did not "start obeying the laws."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/gop-impeach-obama_n_3744049.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 12,000) comments]
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Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) is a birther
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by ThinkProgress TP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0jigE9u-48
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NC's McCrory approves sweeping voter-suppression measures
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/12/19992986-ncs-mccrory-approves-sweeping-voter-suppression-measures [the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykw2zre6yrQ ; with comments] [and see (linkned in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90939147 (and any future following)]
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Jackie Robinson Statue Defacement Leads To $50,000 Reward For Information
A statue of Pee Wee Reese (L) and Jackie Robinson, stands after being cleaned of racist graffiti on August 9, 2013 in the Coney Island neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Robinson broke the color barrier for Major League Baseball in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and Reese was a teammate and supporter.
Kids from the PAL at the Jackie Robinson/ PeeWee Reese statue in Coney Island two days after it was vandalized with racist graffiti.
[ http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/jackie-robinson-statue-article-1.1422892 ]
08/09/13 09:53 PM ET EDT
NEW YORK -- The reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of those responsible for defacing a statue of Jackie Robinson in New York with swastikas and hate speech is now $50,000.
The Jackie Robinson Foundation says Friday it has received two donations totaling $40,000. The Daily News has offered $10,000 for information in the case.
On Wednesday, the words "Heil Hitler," an expletive and racist epithets were discovered scrawled on the statue in black marker. The statute of Jackie Robinson and a teammate stands outside Brooklyn's minor league baseball stadium.
The New York City Parks Department removed the hate speech Thursday.
The Daily News reports ( http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/jackie-robinson-statue-article-1.1422892 [ http://nydn.us/11SAUVx ]) $20,000 of the reward money was donated by foundation board member Joe Plumeri. The other $20,000 was donated anonymously.
Police are still investigating.
Information from: Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/jackie-robinson-statue-defaced-reward-50000_n_3737129.html [with comments]
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Jones calls banana incident 'unfortunate,' Giants apologize
Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports
8:58 p.m. EDT August 12, 2013
Adam Jones is ready to move past the banana incident [ http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/08/adam-jones-fan-banana-baltimore-orioles-san-francisco/ ]. The San Francisco Giants fan who claimed responsibility for it says he wishes it had never happened.
Alexander Poulides, a Northern California resident, said Monday he was sorry for throwing a banana on the field toward the end of the Giants' 10-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday. The banana landed in Jones' vicinity, and the All-Star outfielder expressed his outrage in a tweet after the game.
Poulides, 42, said he was upset when he found out the incident had been portrayed as racially motivated, which he insisted was not his intent. Jones is African American.
"I'm embarrassed and shocked by the outcome,'' Poulides told the San Jose Mercury News, whom he contacted by e-mail and later phone. "In hindsight, I wish I didn't do it and I apologize. I'm very sorry.''
Poulides said he was disgusted with the performance of the last-place Giants, not mad at Jones for hitting a three-run homer in the ninth inning.
Jones said before Monday's road game against the Arizona Diamondbacks that he'd rather put his attention on the season.
"You never know what could be thrown towards the players," Jones said. "Our backs are turned.
"It's unfortunate that things happen like that, but it ain't going stop me, myself and the Orioles," Jones said. "We have games to win. It's mid-August. I've got a bigger concern in my head than someone's ignorance or act of whatever."
On Sunday, Jones had expressed his outrage by tweeting, "I want to thank whatever (expletive) threw that banana towards my direction in CF in the last inning. Way to show ur class u jackass.''
Staci Slaughter, the Giants' senior vice president of communications, said the club only found out about the incident after Jones sent out his tweet.
The Giants said they reviewed security video but were unable to indentify the responsible party. They issued a statement offering an apology.
"The Giants have a zero tolerance policy against this type of behavior, which results in immediate ejection from the ballpark,'' the statement said.
"We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Adam and the entire Orioles organization for this unfortunate incident. The inappropriate actions of this individual in no way reflect the values of our organization and our fans.''
Contributing: Zach Buchanan from the Arizona Republic
Copyright 2013 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2013/08/12/adam-jones-giants-issue-statement-on-disorderly-fan/2643765/ [with comments]
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Everest Hobson Lucas Born To George Lucas And Mellody Hobson
08/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/everest-hobson-lucas_n_3742950.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Reince Priebus Mocked For Hillary Clinton Stance On 'Morning Joe'
By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 08/12/2013 8:06 am EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 6:36 pm EDT
The latest twist in the neverending story of the Republican National Committee's opposition to a pair of television projects about Hillary Clinton turned RNC chair Reince Priebus into a figure of mockery by Monday morning.
Priebus vowed to ban NBC and CNN from upcoming Republican debates if they aired the two programs, even though both were being developed separately from each networks' news division. On Saturday, though, the New York Times reported [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/business/media/fox-may-produce-clinton-biopic-reviled-by-gop.html?pagewanted=all ] that the television division of Fox in talks to produce the NBC miniseries. Fox News, of course, would not be involved, but there was still a neat parallel to be drawn.
On Sunday, Priebus spoke [ http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/reince-im-boycotting-companies-that-put-clinton-films ] to CNN's Candy Crowley about the Fox involvement, and she asked the salient question about his stance.
"If we follow your logic, do you think that there then is a connection to Fox News and would they be subject to the same kind of scrutiny?" Crowley asked.
Priebus, of course, would be loath to boycott the network with the biggest connection to his voters, and he said he was only interested in the companies that aired the programs.
"The big question for me, Candy, is number one, which company is putting it on the air?" he said. "Who is doing the work?"
Unfortunatey for Priebus, it would appear that Fox could be doing much of "the work." By Monday morning, the folks at "Morning Joe," who had given him a mostly sympathetic hearing [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/07/scarborough-defends-rncs-priebus-msnbc-exactly-the-same-as-fox-news/ ] last week, were making fun of him.
"The RNC needs to understand that Fox is going to make the movie," Joe Scarborough said. "They're making it!"
"I think this little narrative is collapsing underneath him," Mika Brzezinski added.
Watch Priebus on CNN:
[video embedded]
Watch Monday's "Morning Joe" segment:
[video embedded]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/reince-priebus-fox-hillary-clinton-morning-joe_n_3742955.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and comments]
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U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind
Graphic [charts]
Off the Charts: Higher Profits, Lower Wages
Revised calculations by the government indicate that corporate profits were higher than previously estimated in 2012, while employee wages were lower. Effective tax rates on both companies and individuals were also revised downward.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/09/business/economy/Higher-Profits-Lower-Wages.html
By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: August 9, 2013
AMERICAN companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.
The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.
The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.
A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.
The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal income only when the contributions were made. Under the revision, the government estimates how much should have been contributed to meet the promises made to workers, and counts that amount, whether it is higher or lower than the amount actually put into the pension plan. That causes personal income to appear larger in years when pension contributions are lower than they should be.
The revised numbers also reflect some better information as new data becomes available. Ms. Mayerhauser said that it now appeared that in recent years the government might have overestimated the amount of income that went unreported by taxpayers, including the amounts of unreported tips received by restaurant employees. Revising those figures down meant that workers as a group appeared to be doing even worse than they had appeared to be doing.
And that was none too well. Before the figures were revised, it appeared that wages and salary income in 2012 amounted to 44 percent of G.D.P., the lowest at any time since 1929, which is as far back as the data goes.
But the revisions cut that to 42.6 percent, which matched the revised 2010 figure as the lowest ever.
The flip side of that is that corporate profits after taxes amounted to a record 9.7 percent of G.D.P. Each of the last three years has been higher than the earlier record high, of 9.1 percent, which was set in 1929.
The charts help to demonstrate how the postrecession economy differs from the one before the downturn. In the three years from 2005 through 2007, the share of G.D.P. going to corporate profits was 1.5 percentage points lower than it was during the years 2010 through 2012. The share going to workers was 1.1 percentage points higher during the earlier years.
Corporate taxes, as a proportion of corporate profits, rose to a four-year high of 21.6 percent in 2012, but remained well below the long-term average level. Personal taxes also hit a four-year high, at 14.1 percent of personal income, but were still well below the historical average.
Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at http://www.nytimes.com/economix .
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/business/economy/us-companies-thrive-as-workers-fall-behind.html
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Paul Ryan Spending Cuts Face Backlash From Moderate Republicans
08/12/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/paul-ryan-spending-cuts_n_3742687.html [with embedded video report, and (over 5,000) comments]
[in full from another source at/see also (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90941376 and preceding and following]
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Rick Santorum: GOP Must Appeal To Working Class
Former US Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum waves after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Posted: 08/10/2013 2:54 pm EDT
AMES, Iowa — The Republican Party must to do a better job reaching out to working class voters, former senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Saturday.
The Iowa caucus winner said that by focusing on business owners in the last presidential election, the GOP failed to connect with "job holders" and "marginalized" a group of voters.
"We need to reject this idea that if we build the economy, all boats will rise. We need to talk about people who have holes in their boats, because we all do," Santorum said at the Family Leadership Summit, a conference of conservative Christians.
After his remarks, Santorum said he was open to another presidential run in 2016 but has made no decision.
Other speakers at the summit include Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and reality show star Donald Trump. The daylong event will be one of many cattle calls for potential candidates in the grueling runup to the 2016 presidential election.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/rick-santorum-gop_n_3737378.html [with comments]
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Santorum: 'We Have The Truth And We Give Up'
Published on Aug 6, 2013 by RWW Blog
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-we-have-truth-and-we-give
Rick Santorum says that while conservatives have the truth, liberals want it more and fight to win.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNnSk5CEFA [Santorum's complete little speech next below, via/more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/rick-santorum-showers_n_3718618.html (with this YouTube embedded, and comments)]
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Sen. Rick Santorum Receives the 2013 SFLA William Wilberforce Leadership Award
Published on Jul 26, 2013 by studentsforlife
Students for Life of America was proud to present Sen. and Mrs. Santorum with our 2013 William Wilberforce Leadership Award at our Summer Social. Rick Santorum gave a fiery acceptance speech about the important of the pro-life generation. Let him inspire you to take action, sacrifice, and LIVE pro-life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBZvN9gRngg
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Rick Santorum at Family Leadership Summit pt1 & pt2
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
2012 Iowa Caucus winner Rick Santorum returns to the state to speak at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa [on 8/10/13].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugf33xJTu9Q and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln68psue6v0 [a different/poorer-quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qvDZmrMIxM ]
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Stephen Baldwin - The FAMiLY Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 10, 2013 by Caffeinated Thoughts
Actor Stephen Baldwin spoke at The FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Ames, IA on 8/10/13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SMWI2HcjrU
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Why the Anger?
By Robert Reich
Posted: 08/12/2013 5:06 pm
Why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it's been in 80 years? Why is there more anger, vituperation, and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war, or the Watergate scandal?
If anything, you'd think this would be an era of relative calm. The Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is over. The Civil Rights struggle continues, but at least we now have a black middle class and even a black president. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been controversial, the all-volunteer army means young Americans aren't being dragged off to war against their will. And although politicians continue to generate scandals, the transgressions don't threaten the integrity of our government as did Watergate.
And yet, by almost every measure, Americans are angrier today. They're more contemptuous of almost every major institution -- government, business, the media. They're more convinced the nation is on the wrong track [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/27/poll-80-percent-of-americans-unhappy-with-washington-30-percent-angry/ ]. And they are far more polarized [ http://robertreich.org/%20http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/tag/the_mood_of_america.html ].
Political scientists say the gap between the median Republican voter and the median Democrat is wider today [ http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/84/?utm_source=digitalcommons.uconn.edu%2Fsrhonors_theses%2F84&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages ] on a whole host of issues than it's been since the 1920s.
Undoubedly, social media play a part -- allowing people to pop off without bearing much responsibility for what they say. And most of us can cocoon within virtual or real communities whose members confirm all our biases and assumptions.
Meanwhile, cable news and yell radio compete for viewers and listeners by being ever more strident. Not long ago I debated a Republican economic advisor on a cable TV program. During the brief station-break, the show's producer told me to "be angrier." I told her I didn't want to be angrier. "You have to," she said. "Viewers are surfing through hundreds of channels and will stop for a gladiator contest."
Within this cacophony, we've lost trusted arbiters of truth -- the Edward Murrows and Walter Cronkites who could explain what was happening in ways most Americans found convincing.
We've also lost most living memory of an era in which we were all in it together -- the Great Depression and World War II -- when we succeeded or failed together. In those years we were palpably dependent on one another, and understood how much we owed each other as members of the same society.
But I think the deeper explanation for what has happened has economic roots. From the end of World War II through the late 1970s, the economy doubled in size -- as did almost everyone's income. Almost all Americans grew together. In fact, those in the bottom fifth of the income ladder saw their incomes more than double. Americans experienced upward mobility on a grand scale.
Yet for the last three and a half decades, the middle class has been losing ground. The median wage of male workers is now lower than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation.
In addition, all the mechanisms we've used over the last three decades to minimize the effects of this descent -- young mothers streaming into paid work in the late 1970s and 1980s, everyone working longer hours in the 1990s, and then borrowing against the rising values of our homes -- are now exhausted. And wages are still dropping -- the median is now 4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery.
Meanwhile, income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they've been in ninety years.
As a result, many have come to believe that the deck is stacked against them. Importantly, both the Tea Party and the Occupier movements began with the bailouts of Wall Street -- when both groups concluded that big government and big finance had plotted against the rest of us. The former blamed government; the latter blamed Wall Street.
Political scientists have also discovered a high correlation [ http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.3.103 ] between inequality and political divisiveness.
The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 1920s, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated.
When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments -- of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government.
This shouldn't be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats -- thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations.
Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/american-inequality_b_3745493.html [with comments]
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Paul LePage Fuels Spat With Portland Press Herald, Says He Wants To 'Blow It Up' In Simulator
08/09/2013
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) launched a targeted verbal strike [ http://bangordailynews.com/2013/08/09/politics/lepage-in-fighter-jet-simulator-i-want-to-find-the-press-herald-building-and-blow-it-up/ ] on a local newspaper Friday, joking that he wished he could find the office of the Portland Press Herald and "blow it up."
LePage made the comments, the latest in an ongoing tiff between the governor and area newspapers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/paul-lepage-newspapers_n_3462336.html ], before climbing into the cockpit of a F-35 Lightning II fighter jet simulator.
“I want to find the Press Herald building and blow it up,” he said.
The simulator reportedly allowed the outspoken governor to shoot at enemy planes, but he had no such luck tracking down a virtual newspaper building.
LePage has repeatedly sparred with Maine newspapers over the past year. On multiple occasions, he's denounced local outlets, suggesting that they print "lies" [ http://www.pressherald.com/news/LePage-threatens-to-blow-up-Press-Herald-building.html ] and lack objectivity.
Earlier this year, he did little to hide his disdain, telling a group of students [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/paul-lepage-newspapers_n_2614924.html ] that his "greatest fear in the state of Maine" was its newspapers.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/paul-lepage-portland-press-herald_n_3733653.html [with comments]
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Steve King: 'There's Been No Spell Cast Over Me' On Immigration Reform
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 08/13/2013 12:25 am EDT
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) delivered an anti-immigration reform speech to about 60 people in the backyard of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday night, Politico reported [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/steve-king-hits-the-road-on-immigration-95458.html ].
During a congressional recess in which most of his peers have put the immigration issue to rest, King criticized his fellow Republicans for remaining relatively quiet. He told Politico they "have had a spell cast over them."
"A year ago, almost everybody in my conference agreed with me," King said. "There's been no spell cast over me."
King also told the rally attendees that reform will only bring more violence to the United States.
“If you bring people from a violent civilization into a less-violent civilization, you’re going to have more violence right?" King asked the attendees. "It’s like pouring hot water into cold water, does it raise the temperature or not?”
King has received criticism [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/gop-steve-king_n_3642334.html ] for his outlandish comments from the very Republican leaders he's hoping to rally. In a July interview with Newsmax, he claimed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/steve-king-dreamers-marijuana_n_3640879.html ] that the majority of Dreamers engage in drug trafficking.
"For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert," King said. "Those people would be legalized with the same act."
Both Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded to those comments with general disapproval.
“I strongly disagree with his characterization of the children of immigrants and find the comments inexcusable,” Cantor said in a statement [ http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/23/19644181-king-draws-fire-from-fellow-republicans-for-comment-about-young-immigrants ].
"What he said is wrong," Boehner said in a similar statement [id.]. "There can be honest disagreements about policy without using hateful language. Everyone needs to remember that."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/steve-king-immigration-reform_n_3746834.html [with comments]
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Steve King: 'Just Go Ahead And Defy The IRS' (VIDEO)
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 08/10/2013 3:47 pm EDT | Updated: 08/10/2013 4:17 pm EDT
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) spoke out against the Internal Revenue Service on Saturday, telling attendees of the Family Leadership Summit to "just go ahead and defy the IRS."
"When we lean across our backyard fence, or when you step up to the pulpit or when you sit in the pew, when you profess the things that we believe in, and you're a 501(c)3 [i.e., religious] and you're afraid of the IRS, just go ahead and defy the IRS on that," King said, according [ http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/08/10/steve-king-to-family-leader-summit-just-go-ahead-and-defy-the-irs-on-that/article ] to the Des Moines Register. "I'll stand there with you. If we can’t preach the word in America, where can we preach it."
King received a warm reception [ https://twitter.com/michaelpfalcone/status/366222418169171969 ] at the Family Leadership Summit, organized by the nonprofit religious organization the Family Leader. Other speakers at the event included former GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/rick-santorum-gop_n_3737378.html ] and real estate mogul Donald Trump.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/steve-king-irs_n_3737440.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Gastonguay Family That Left US In Sailboat Over Religious Freedom Was Lost At Sea For Months
Hannah Gastonguay, and her baby, Rahab, are followed by her husband, Sean, and the couple's 3-year-old daughter, Ardith, as they disembark Friday, Aug. 9, in San Antonio, Chile.
[ http://news.msn.com/us/religious-family-abandons-us-gets-lost-at-sea ]
By GREG MOORE
08/10/13 09:32 PM ET EDT
PHOENIX -- A northern Arizona family that was lost at sea for weeks in an ill-fated attempt to leave the U.S. over what they consider government interference in religion will fly back home Sunday.
Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us" when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny island nation of Kiribati in May.
But just weeks into their journey, the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks, unable to make progress. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken to Chile where they are resting in a hotel in the port city of San Antonio.
Their flights home were arranged by U.S. Embassy officials, Gastonguay said. The U.S. State Department was not immediately available for comment.
The months-long journey has been "pretty exciting" and "little scary at certain points," Gastonguay told The Associated Press by telephone.
She said they wanted to go to Kiribati because "we didn't want to go anywhere big." She said they understood the island to be "one of the least developed countries in the world."
Kiribati is a group of islands just off the equator and the international date line about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The total population is just over 100,000 people of primarily Micronesian descent.
Hannah Gastonguay said her family was fed up with government control in the U.S. As Christians they don't believe in "abortion, homosexuality, in the state-controlled church," she said.
U.S. "churches aren't their own," Gastonguay said, suggesting that government regulation interfered with religious independence.
Among other differences, she said they had a problem with being "forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don't agree with."
The Gastonguays weren't members of any church, and Hannah Gastonguay said their faith came from reading the Bible and through prayer.
"The Bible is pretty clear," she said.
The family moved in November from Ash Fork, Ariz., to San Diego, where they lived on their boat as they prepared to set sail. She said she gave birth to the couple's 8-month-old girl on the boat, which was docked in a slip at the time.
In May, Hannah, her 30-year-old husband Sean, his father Mike, and the couple's daughters, 3-year-old Ardith and baby Rahab set off. They wouldn't touch land again for 91 days, she said.
She said at first, "We were cruising."
But within a couple of weeks "when we came out there, storm, storm, storm."
The boat had taken a beating, and they decided to set course for the Marquesas Islands. Instead, they found themselves in a "twilight zone," taking more and more damage, leaving them unable to make progress.
They could have used a sail called a genoa, she said, but they risked snapping off the mast and losing their radio and ability to communicate.
They had been on the ocean for about two months and were low on supplies. They were out of food and were down to "some juice and some honey." She said they were able to catch fish, but they didn't see any boats.
Still, we "didn't feel like we were going to die or anything. We believed God would see us through," she said.
At one point a fishing ship came into contact with them but left without providing assistance. A Canadian cargo ship came along and offered supplies, but when they pulled up alongside it, the vessels bumped and the smaller ship sustained even more damage.
They were getting hit by "squall after, squall, after squall."
"We were in the thick of it, but we prayed," she said. "Being out on that boat, I just knew I was going to see some miracles."
They watched the surrounding storms disperse, and "next thing you know the sun is out. It's amazing."
Eventually, their boat was spotted by a helicopter that had taken off from a nearby Venezuelan fishing vessel, which ended up saving them.
"The captain said, `Do you know where you're at? You're in the middle of nowhere,'" she said.
They were on the Venezuelan ship for about five days before transferring to the Japanese cargo ship, where they were for nearly three weeks before landing in Chile on Friday. The Chilean newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias reported the story of their arrival.
"They were looking for a kind of adventure; they wanted to live on a Polynesian island but they didn't have sufficient expertise to navigate adequately," police prefect Jose Luis Lopez, who took the family's statement at San Antonio, told the newspaper.
Sean Gastonguay's brother Jimmy, who lives in Arizona, said he had provided a description of the family's vessel to the U.S. Coast Guard and exchanged emails with them once they were picked up by the first boat.
"There was some concern, but we were hoping for the best, and they eventually popped up," he said. He was able to keep track of the family with the help of the Coast Guard as they were transferred from ship to ship.
"We're all happy. We have good peace of mind now," he said.
Hannah Gastonguay said the family will now "go back to Arizona" and "come up with a new plan."
Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/religious-family-lost-at-sea_n_3738010.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Bringing God Along For the Ride
August 8, 2013
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/bringing-god-along-for-the-ride/ [with comments]
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Ahmad Akkari, Danish Muslim Leader In Cartoon Rage Regrets Role, Apologizes To Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
By JAN M. OLSEN and KARL RITTER
08/09/13 12:35 PM ET EDT
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A Danish Muslim leader who seven years ago traveled the Muslim world fueling the uproar over newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is back in the headlines in Denmark after doing an about-face on the issue.
Once a leading critic of the Danish cartoons, which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari now says the Jyllands-Posten newspaper had the right to print them.
His unexpected change of heart has received praise from pundits and politicians in recent weeks, though some question his sincerity. It has also disappointed some in the country's Muslim minority who were deeply offended by the cartoons.
Akkari, now 35, was the spokesman for a group of imams who led the protests against the drawings in Denmark. They traveled to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria to elicit support, saying the Danish government wouldn't listen to their concerns.
Their journeys helped turn the dispute into an international crisis. Dozens were killed in weeks of protests that included violent attacks against Danish missions in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Tiny Denmark found itself on a collision course with the Muslim world – something Akkari now regrets.
"I want to be clear today about the trip: It was totally wrong," Akkari told The Associated Press this week. "At that time, I was so fascinated with this logical force in the Islamic mindset that I could not see the greater picture. I was convinced it was a fight for my faith, Islam."
He said he's still a practicing Muslim but started doubting his fundamentalist beliefs after a 2007 trip to Lebanon, where he met Islamist leaders.
"I was shocked. I realized what an oppressive mentality they have," Akkari said.
A year later, he moved to Greenland, the desolate Danish Arctic island, where he worked in a school for two years.
"I had plenty of time to read and write. And think," said Akkari, who has shaved off the patchy beard he used to wear.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable ones, for fear it could lead to idolatry. Arguing that such religious sensitivities should not limit the freedom of speech, Jyllands-Posten in 2005 invited Danish cartoonists to draw the prophet.
At the time, Akkari joined Muslim hardliners demanding an apology from the paper and action against it by the government. He appeared to advocate violence against a more moderate Danish Muslim in a secret TV recording, but later said it was just a joke.
Akkari now says printing the drawings was OK and that his reaction at the time was wrong. Last week he even apologized in person to one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, who has faced multiple death threats and murder attempts from extremists. Many Muslims consider Westergaard's drawing, which depicts Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban, as the most offensive.
"I met a man who has converted from being an Islamist to become a humanist who understands the values of our society," Westergaard said of Akkari. "To me, he is really sincere, convincing and strong in his views."
Akkari's former colleagues in the Islamic Society of Denmark are not impressed, and have reportedly accused him of being an attention-seeker trying to get back into the limelight.
Group spokesman Bilal H. Assaad declined to comment on Akkari on Thursday but said "it is still not OK to publish drawings of Muhammad. We have not changed our position."
The group is believed to represent about 10 percent of Denmark's estimated 200,000 Muslims.
Michael Ulveman, who was an adviser to then-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Ramussen during the cartoon crisis, also expressed doubts about Akkari's sincerity.
"I think Ahmad Akkari should go on al-Jazeera and tell the Arabic world about his new realization," Ulveman wrote on his Facebook page. "That would have real value for Denmark and the freedom of speech. And convince many of us about the depth and reach of his reorientation."
Ritter reported from Stockholm.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/ahmad-akkari-danish-cartoon-_n_3736359.html [with comments]
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The Most Powerful Dissent in American History
Library of Congress
A smart new book reveals precisely how and why Oliver Wendell Holmes changed his mind about the first amendment.
Andrew Cohen
Aug 10 2013, 8:00 AM ET
If there is a more relevant or powerful passage in American law, I am not aware of it. Relevant because it expressed a universal concept -- free trade in ideas -- that 125 years after the Constitution was ratified still had not yet taken hold in our democracy. Powerful because it went beyond legal precepts to a fundamental fact of human existence: We all make mistakes. We all have good opinions and bad ones. None of us are right all the time. All of us at one point or another have to respect what someone else says. And life is an experiment from the moment we wake in the morning until the moment we lay our heads down at night.
It's a passage written 94 years ago that both explains and preserves our op-ed pages and the Internet, talk-radio shows, and blogs, in the brilliant blending of two American institutions that were not always destined to go together: the free market and free speech. It's a passage that both acknowledges human weakness and strives to master it, that recognizes the roiling diversity of American thought and seeks to make something clear and profound from it. From United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his dissent in Abrams v. United States [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0250_0616_ZD.html ]:
Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises.
But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.
Of course, the story of free speech in America neither begins nor ends with Abrams [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0250_0616_ZS.html ]. But it is a clear pivot point. In that 1919 case, a dispute decided one year minus one day after the end of the first "war to end all wars," the United States Supreme Court sustained the convictions of five Russian-born men who were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, as it had been amended by the Sedition Act of 1918, for "provoking and encouraging" resistance to the government's war efforts (and its hostile maneuvers toward Russia) through a series of pamphlets.
Such prosecutions would be unthinkable today, not because modern officials embrace criticism more bravely than their predecessors but because we have come as a nation and as a people to acknowledge that the First Amendment's protections are (and ought to be) especially stout when it comes to dissent about the public workings of government. And that nearly universal acknowledgment, which has survived America's four major wars since World War I and guides the way we both conduct business and handle our own personal affairs, was born in Justice Holmes' dissent.
Just in time for your August beach reading, Thomas Healy, a former federal appeals court law clerk and reporter for The Baltimore Sun, has written an excellent book about how Justice Holmes, perhaps the most famous and influential justice of all time, came to write this passage -- and came around, at last, to a rousing defense of the First Amendment. Titled The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind-- and Changed the History of Free Speech in America [ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8050-9456-5 ; http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Dissent-Wendell-Mind/dp/0805094563 ], the book is a fascinating glimpse into an art that seems lost in law and politics today: the art of changing one's mind.
In meticulous detail, Healy tells us how the great jurist, who had staunchly upheld criminal convictions in free speech cases just months [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0249_0047_ZS.html ] before, changed his mind in Abrams. He changed it because of an intense lobbying effort by his political friends and fellow judges. He changed it because he had been reading the work of legal and political philosophers in Europe, both living and dead. He changed it because he came gradually to realize how broadly the Justice Department was relying upon federal statutes to punish even that dissent which was obviously unlikely to undermine the government's ability to function.
Healy begins his book with an anecdote about a visit Justice Holmes received at home from three of his fellow justices, after he had distributed his dissent in Abrams but before he would publicly announce it. What transpired in that meeting isn't just "a remarkable piece of constitutional history," as Healy puts it, but remarkable for what it suggests about the way the Supreme Court does (or does not) operate today. Can you imagine Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito visiting Justice Anthony Kennedy in this fashion? I cannot. From Healy's book, on the 1919 Court's initial reaction to Holmes' words:
No one else on the Court wrote like this. Only Holmes could translate the law into such stirring, unforgettable language. Yet even by his high standards this was unusually fine, and his colleagues worried about the effect it might have. Although the war had ended a year earlier, the country was still in a fragile state. There had been race riots that summer, labor strikes that fall. A bomb had exploded on the attorney general's doorstep-- the opening strike, the papers warned, in a grand Bolshevik plot. A dissent like this, from a figure as venerable as Holmes, might weaken the country's resolve and give comfort to the enemy.
The nation's security was at stake, the justices told Holmes. As an old soldier, he should close ranks and set aside his personal views. They even appealed to [Holmes' wife] Fanny, who nodded her head in agreement. The tone of their plea was friendly, even affectionate, and Holmes listened thoughtfully. He had always respected the institution of the Court and more than once had suppressed his own beliefs for the sake of unanimity. But this time he felt a duty to speak his mind. He told his colleagues he regretted he could not join them, and they left without pressing him further.
Three days later, Holmes read his dissent in Abrams v. United States from the bench. As expected, it caused a sensation. Conservatives denounced it as dangerous and extreme. Progressives hailed it as a monument to liberty. And the future of free speech was forever changed.
There have been other instances where a justice changed his mind in a case of profound constitutional import. As Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe reminded me this week, Justice Potter Stewart shifted on the issue of reproductive autonomy from dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZO.html ] in 1965 to the majority in Roe v. Wade [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZS.html ] in 1973. Justice William J. Brennan shifted on obscenity standards from Roth v. United States [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0354_0476_ZO.html ] in 1957 to Paris Adult Theatre v. Slaton [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/413/49 ] in 1973. Justice Harry Blackmun belatedly changed his mind [ http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/23/us/death-penalty-is-renounced-by-blackmun.html?pagewanted=all ] about the constitutionality of the death penalty. Then there was Justice Owen Roberts' "switch in time [ http://news.byu.edu/archive12-sep-switchintime.aspx ]" in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0300_0379_ZS.html ] in 1937. None come close to Holmes' "fighting faith" passage.
Judges, and politicians, are too often criticized for changing their minds. Are you not smarter today than you were 10 years ago? Twenty years ago? Have not life's many "experiments" given you wisdom that you did not previously have? The genius of Justice Holmes' dissent in Abrams wasn't just its eloquence it was "meta-ness." He was changing his mind about the need, the value, the glory, the benefit, of changing one's mind and of accepting the changing of other people's minds. Healy has written a magnificent book about a magnificent moment in American legal history -- and in the life of a magnificent man who was smart enough to understand just how wrong people can be.
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-most-powerful-dissent-in-american-history/278503/ [with comments]
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Judge Rules Baby Can't Be Named 'Messiah'
This photo provided by Heidi Wigdahl of WBIR-TV shows seven-month old Martin DeShawn McCullough being held by his mom Jaleesa Martin. A judge in eastern Tennessee changed the boy's first name to Martin from "Messiah.'
(Heidi Wigdahl/AP Photo)
NEWPORT, Tenn. August 12, 2013 (AP)
A judge in Tennessee changed a 7-month-old boy's name to Martin from Messiah, saying the religious name was earned by one person and "that one person is Jesus Christ."
Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew ordered the name change last week, according to WBIR-TV [ http://www.wbir.com/news/article/283997/2/Judge-orders-babys-name-be-changed-from-Messiah ( http://on.wbir.com/1cDOeTY )]. The boy's parents were in court because they could not agree on the child's last name, but when the judge heard the boy's first name, she ordered it changed, too.
"It could put him at odds with a lot of people and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is," Ballew said.
It was the first time she ordered a first name change, the judge said.
Messiah was No. 4 among the fastest-rising baby names in 2012, according to the Social Security Administration's annual list of popular baby names.
The judge in eastern Tennessee said the baby was to be named Martin DeShawn McCullough, which includes both parents' last name.
The boy's mother, Jaleesa Martin, of Newport, said she will appeal. She says Messiah is unique and she liked how it sounded alongside the boy's two siblings — Micah and Mason.
"Everybody believes what they want so I think I should be able to name my child what I want to name him, not someone else," Martin said.
Ballew said the name Messiah could cause problems if the child grows up in Cocke County, which has a large Christian population.
"The word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ," the judge said.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tenn-judge-childs-messiah-19931569 [with comments]
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ACLU says Tenn. judge can't ban 'Messiah' baby name
Judge ordered parents of a 7-month-old son to change his name to "Martin."
August 12, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/12/baby-name-messiah-tennessee-aclu/2644429/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Larry Kudlow Wonders If Pope Francis Understands Economic Freedom
08/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/larry-kudlow-pope-francis_n_3743495.html [with embedded video of the (truly exemplary) Kudlow segment, and comments] [and see in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=71561891 and preceding and following]
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For Freshmen in the House, Seats of Plenty
Representative Andy Barr, right, with Speaker John A. Boehner, has raised more money from finance industry PACs than many longtime House members have.
Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas, another [Republican] freshman on the Financial Services Committee.
Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri, a Republican freshman on the Financial Services Committee who has pulled in a large number of industry contributions.
August 10, 2013
WASHINGTON — Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky with little experience in the intricacies of Wall Street, was among the lucky House freshmen to secure a seat on the powerful Financial Services Committee.
Now, half a year into his first term, he has emerged as a telling example of why the panel is sometimes called “the cash committee” — a place, critics say, where there are big incentives for freshmen to do special favors for the industry.
Mr. Barr, 40, a first-time elected official, has raised nearly as much money this year from political action committees run by major banks, credit unions and insurance companies as longtime lawmakers like Speaker John A. Boehner and other party leaders.
The flood of financial industry cash — $150,000 in political action committee donations to Mr. Barr in just six months — is hardly an accident.
One afternoon in April, Mr. Barr hosted credit union lobbyists [ http://www.cuna.org/webassets/pages/newsnowarticle.aspx?id=57236 ] and executives in his House office just before a committee hearing, promising that he would help protect a federal tax break worth $500 million a year, the executives said. Last month, he introduced legislation [ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2673 ] to eliminate a new federal rule intended to prevent banks from issuing mortgages to customers who could not afford to repay the debt — a measure pushed by bank lobbyists who had visited his office.
“People support him because they agree with him,” Catherine Gatewood, Mr. Barr’s spokeswoman, said after he declined requests for an interview.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/us/politics/for-freshmen-in-the-house-seats-of-plenty.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/us/politics/for-freshmen-in-the-house-seats-of-plenty.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Member of Congressional Science Committee: Global Warming a ‘Fraud’ to ‘Create Global Government’
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
(Courtesy of Flickr user gage Skidmore)
Lee Fang on August 10, 2013 - 2:24 AM ET
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a senior member [ http://science.house.gov/about/membership ] of the House Science Committee, used a portion of his time at a town hall this week to launch into a rant about global warming, which he described as a plot by liberals to “create global government to control our lives.”
The congressman prefaced his remarks by noting that he wanted to respond to comments from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who said recently that ongoing wildfires in Southern California have been exacerbated by a dry season [ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/08/sen-boxer-severe-fire-season-in-southland-evidence-of-climate-change/ ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/california-climate-change_n_3725271.html ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/california-wildfire-season_n_3737175.html ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/silver-wildfire_n_3730410.html ] that is the result of climate change. Rohrabacher, speaking Thursday afternoon before the Newport Mesa Tea Party, then launched into a discussion about how the science of global warming has been promulgated by a cabal of scientists, liberal politicians and United Nation “global government” types. These forces, who would like to usurp American liberty, could even be from Nigeria, he warned (partial transcript below, emphasis added):
ROHRABACHER: Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud and it is being designed by—what you’ve got is you’ve got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions. Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives. That’s what the game plan is. It’s step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades.… Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that’s gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he’s a UN government official, not a US government official.
Watch the video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Dqi5tX-SY (next below, as embedded)] here:
Rohrabacher also argued that government-funded scientists have received “so much money” for research that “they have used it to intimidate people who disagree with their attempt to frighten all of us into changing our lives and giving up our freedoms to make choices.” The sinister role of scientists, he claimed, is akin to the military industrial complex described by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address. The conspiracy to destroy freedom is apparently very vast.
Rohrabacher has never been shy about expressing his fringe beliefs about climate change. In the past, he’s suggested that global warming has been caused by everything from dinosaur flatulence [ http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/02/10/10241/dino-flatulence/ ] to rainforests [ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/31/dana-rohrabacher-r-ca-on-climate-change-makes-wrong-even-wronger/ ; http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/republicans-climate-solution-clearcut-the-rain-forest/ ]—pretty much everything except the fossil fuel industries that provide Rohrabacher with campaign donations [ http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00007151&type=I ].
Rohrabacher is one of many lawmakers who, despite living in a state reeling from climate disasters, denies the basic science of anthropogenic global warming. Earlier this week, Representative Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told ThinkProgress’s Scott Keyes that he doubts that the climate is changing. As Keyes reported [ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/09/2441831/mullin-climate/ ], Mullin’s state has suffered from problems that have grown worse from climate change, from “massive tornadoes to widespread droughts, record-breaking heat to severe winter storms.”
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Barack Obama's proposal to slow the pace of climate change.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/174987/obama-lays-out-his-plan-slow-global-warming
*
Copyright © 2012 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175697/science-committee-congressman-global-warming-fraud-create-global-government [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90885246 and preceding and following]
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Drought damaging area trees
The drought is damaging many trees in northcentral Texas.
(Cherry Rushin)
Cherry Rushin
Posted: 08/11/2013 05:40:16 AM CDT
Young County trees have lacked necessary water for years. Even some of the extremely drought-tolerant mesquites are dying.
Young County AgriLife Extension Agent Brad Morrison has some suggestions on how to help save your trees.
“This has been going on for five years, and we’re at the point where even deep-rooted plants are having severe difficulties,” Morrison said. “It’s started showing up in our pecan trees in the thinning of the foliage and the canopy, and we’re also even seeing it in mesquite trees and cedar trees.”
The cure for this is moisture, but with little to go around, Morrison suggests putting the trees in your landscape first. “I would recommend that people really take an opportunity and do some supplemental watering of their trees even more importantly than their turf. Because we don’t want to lose these trees next spring,” he said.
Deep watering is the best for trees which is a slow watering over a prolonged period of time or lower in volume, but long in duration. Proper placement of the water is important, as well. Morrison recommends watering about midway between the trunk and the outside edge of branches or overhang.
“That’s where the primary feeder roots reside underneath the drip line of the tree,” Morrison said. “Soaker hoses and things that put out low volume but continuous amounts of water are better than short, quick waterings. It probably would not hurt during these extremely hot temperatures to water during the evening to reduce evaporation.”
Read more about helping your trees survive the drought in the Aug. 11 issue of The Graham Leader.
© Copyright 2013 Media News group
http://www.grahamleader.com/ci_23830552/drought-damaging-area-trees
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Insurance Industry, Republicans Split on Climate Change
By Mark Drajem - Jul 18, 2013 1:27 PM CT
The U.S. insurance industry [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/insurance-industry/ ] told Senators that a surge in weather-related catastrophes has forced billions of dollars in payouts, offering an assessment at odds with Republicans who have expressed doubt about global warming.
The Reinsurance Association of America [ http://www.reinsurance.org/ ], which represents companies such as Swiss Re Ltd. (SREN) and Munich Re, today urged Congress to have federal agencies consider climate risk in project reviews, and offer tax incentives to help homeowners prepare for severe hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.
“The industry is at great financial peril if it does not understand global and regional climate impacts, variability and developing scientific assessment of a changing climate,” Franklin Nutter, president of the association, said in testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. “We are committed to work with you to address the exposure of citizens and their property to extreme weather risk.”
The affect of these weather events is exacerbated by the growth in population and building in coastal and rural areas, he said.
The group was the one industry voice among a panel [ http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=cfe32378-96a4-81ed-9d0e-2618e6ddff46 ] of experts discussing global warming at the hearing. Republicans questioned whether global warming is happening, if man-made emissions of greenhouse gases [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/greenhouse-gases/ ] is causing weather changes and if the costs of trying to address carbon emissions [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/carbon-emissions/ ] is worth it.
Jobs Talks
“What we need to talk about is jobs,” said Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican. Democrats and President Barack Obama “are willing to bet the economy today on an uncertain” prediction “about the future,” he said at the hearing.
Barrasso objected to Obama’s pledge to use executive powers to develop regulations that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and eliminate U.S. support for coal projects built in poor nations. Those efforts will raise the cost of energy and could put coal producers out of business, and lead to a loss in jobs, he said.
Saying science had put to rest the question about whether the planet is warming, Obama argued that limiting emissions would spur technological advancement and new jobs.
“I don’t have much patience for anyone that denies that this challenge is real,” Obama said June 25 at Georgetown University.
Republicans took issue with that statement today. While most climate researchers say the science is settled that greenhouse-gas emissions are causing global warming, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana said the climate is always changing, and that solar flares, natural emissions of carbon dioxide or cosmic rays may be the cause of current weather patterns.
Congress’s Control
“The climate has always and will always be changing because there are influences on our climate that will always be outside Congress’s control,” Vitter said.
As a week-long heatwave pushed Washington’s temperatures today to near a high for the year, Democratic lawmakers said they weren’t sure what kind of evidence would persuade Republicans that global warming is real.
“I don’t know what it will take to convince you of what is going on outside the window,” California Democrat Barbara Boxer, the chairman of the panel, said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net
©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-18/insurance-industry-republicans-split-on-climate-change.html [with comments]
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Republican fringe surfaces in electoral off-year
The Rachel Maddow Show
August 12, 2013
Rachel Maddow rounds up some of the more unconventional Republican political figures who have moved from the political fringe to make outrageous assertions in the mainstream spotlight.
© 2013 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/52740698 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcomjhgEAEE , also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk8fbo-8qUs ( http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maddow-takes-on-gop-kooks-not-just-fringe-theyre-mainstream-now/ ); show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/13/19997508-links-for-the-812-trms (with comments)]
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Donald Trump speaks at the Family Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 11, 2013 by BreakingNews
Donald Trump speaks at the Family Leadership Summit on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013 at Stephens Auditorium in Ames, Iowa.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I--3bLaE7kY [a different/poorer quality/slightly more complete (at start and finish) capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaStcPSpE5w ]
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Congressman Steve King at Family Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Iowa Congressman Steve King fires up the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMlduYQg85A [a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mT70JcTq6g ] [and see in particular, relative to this item and others in this post above and below, (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90902398 and preceding (and any future following)]
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Ted Cruz Continues Campaign Against Obamacare
By CATHERINE LUCEY
08/10/13 10:32 PM ET EDT
AMES, Iowa -- Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday continued his call for cutting off funding for President Barack Obama's health care law and told conservative Christians that congressional lawmakers can't be counted on to do it.
The Texas Republican, a tea-party favorite and a possible presidential candidate in 2016, drew a standing ovation at the Family Leadership Summit with his denouncement of the health care initiative labeled "Obamacare" by its critics.
"That reaction right there shows how we win this fight," Cruz said. "If I was sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction would be fundamentally different. If we have to depend on Washington, it will never be done."
As he has in remarks to other conservatives, Cruz asserted that a grassroots effort would be needed. "The only way we win this fight is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable," he said.
Cruz has been part of a push by some conservative lawmakers to close the government temporarily this fall – by refusing to fund federal operations beyond Sept. 30 – if that's the only way to cut off money for Obama's health care law. Other Republicans have dismissed the tactic as counterproductive and even dangerous for Republicans seeking re-election next year.
Last Tuesday the party's most recent presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, told donors that "there are better ways to remove Obamacare" and predicted that a shutdown effort would result in the health care law being funded anyway, Republicans suffering at the polls and Americans being unhappy.
Asked about the Romney remarks, Cruz told reporters at the Iowa event: "There are lots of folks that can share their views. In my view, No. 1, there's bipartisan agreement Obamacare isn't working. No. 2, this is the single best opportunity to defund it."
Cruz demurred when asked whether he agreed with Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus' warning to NBC and CNN that airing TV programs about Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, could cost the networks any party cooperation on future GOP primary debates. NBC plans a miniseries and CNN a documentary.
"The RNC will make its own decisions," Cruz said. "I don't think anybody is surprised to discover that that the mainstream media are in love with Hillary Clinton. Indeed, I would expect both of those movies will be released on Valentine's Day."
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who sought the Republican nomination in 2012 and might again in 2016, told the group that the party must do a better job reaching out to working-class voters. The winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 said that by focusing on business owners in that election, the GOP failed to connect with "job holders" and "marginalized" a group of voters.
"We need to reject this idea that if we build the economy, all boats will rise. We need to talk about people who have holes in their boats, because we all do," Santorum said.
Reality TV star and real estate mogul Donald Trump, who flirted with a presidential run in 2012, said the GOP was struggling and would need a strong candidate in 2016, "someone who is really smart and really good."
The daylong event was one of many cattle calls for potential candidates in the grueling run-up to the next presidential election. Conservative voters will likely be critical to a victory in the Iowa caucuses, the nation's first presidential nominating event.
Iowa Republican consultant Doug Gross said conservative Christian voters could play a big role in 2016.
"Historically the people that are there (at the Family Leader summit), represent about 40 percent of the caucus-goers. That's not an insignificant portion," Gross said. "It depends how many conservatives get in the race. It's totally wide open."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/ted-cruz-obamacare_n_3738451.html [with embedded video report, and (over 23,000) comments]
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Rafael Cruz at Family Leadership Summit pt1 & pt2
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Pastor Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, speaks at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jkCC04eTJA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SWYINkftMQ [a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrEpRglQNMo ]
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Ted Cruz’s dad: Obama is ‘just like’ Castro
07/08/2013
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/08/ted-cruzs-dad-obama-is-just-like-castro/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Ted Cruz at Family Leadership Summit pt1, pt2 and pt3
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Texas Senator Ted Cruz delivers a rousing speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_skUNImMa8 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD1XMtP85GA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Pz_Suu4kA {a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2FxTiBtOx8 ]
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Ted Cruz - Press Avail - The FAMiLY Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 11, 2013 by Caffeinated Thoughts
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke to the media after speaking at The FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Ames, IA on 8/10/13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yIERU-DwI
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Ted Cruz asks Iowa evangelical activists to text him their numbers
Aug. 10, 2013
AMES, IA. — Take out your cellphones right now, Republican Ted Cruz told Christian conservatives in Iowa this afternoon.
“If you’re willing to help tell the story about how freedom works, how it produces opportunity, I ask you to text the word ‘growth’ to 33733,” he said.
Cruz, a born-again Christian who is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate, watched as the crowd of about 1,000 dutifully sent the text, connecting their cellphone numbers to what he said is a call for a grassroots uprising.
“God bless the Family Leader. God bless Bob Vander Plaats,” Cruz said, referring to the organizer of today’s Family Leadership Summit. “What a tremendous voice for life, for marriage, for returning to our founding principles.”
Cruz made the same five-digit text plea in South Carolina in May, asking GOP activists there to help protect the constitution. Republicans who did as he asked got a message from Cruz’s political action committee, the Jobs, Growth & Freedom Fund.
[...]
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130810/NEWS09/130810016/Ted-Cruz-asks-Iowa-evangelical-activists-text-him-their-numbers [with (a better than the above YouTubes) video of Cruz speaking to the Family Leadership Summit embedded]
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Analysis: Ted Cruz turning into Rick Perry’s worst nightmare in Iowa
Monday, August 12, 2013
Rick Perry can’t afford to lose any of his 2012 Iowa supporters if he is to have any chance to win the 2016 Republican presidential caucuses there.
After all, the Texas governor finished a poor fifth in 2012 — a disastrous result that led to his withdrawal from the White House race just two weeks later.
So Team Perry can’t be pleased to look at the web site TheIowaRepublican.com [ http://theiowarepublican.com/ ] and read the headline, “Cruz Garnering Excitement Across Republican Factions [ http://theiowarepublican.com/2013/cruz-garnering-excitement-across-republican-factions/ ].”
Yes, that’s fellow Texan Ted Cruz [ http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/category/ted-cruz/ ]. The freshman senator. The 42-year-old firebrand who’s young enough to be Perry’s son.
“The Republican Party is desperately in need of a leader who can bring the party together and excite the base,” the story by longtime Iowa journalist and Republican operative Kevin Hall began. “Early signs indicate that Texas Senator Ted Cruz might be that man.”
Check out the quotes from the audience that just saw Cruz in Ames, Iowa, over the weekend:
“That was the first political speech to get me excited in a very long time,” said Dane Nealson, the chair of the Story County GOP who worked on the presidential campaigns for Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry. “He’s the best shot I’ve seen so far to unite the factions.”
The Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Rick Santorum in the 2012 Iowa Caucus, gave a decidedly more enthusiastic introduction for Senator Cruz than he did for Santorum.
“Cruz is a phenomenon that I haven’t seen the like of in a long time, probably ever,” Vander Plaats told TheIowaRepublican.com.
It’s the conventional wisdom — and, we all know, conventional wisdom is often wrong — that only one Texas candidate can make the “first tier” of 2016 Republican presidential candidates. Early polling shows Cruz doing far better than Perry — even in Texas, where Perry has ruled for more than 13 years. And Cruz is proving to be far more aggressive at reaching out to conservative grassroots voters and opinion leaders.
Perry’s star has fallen so far that he’s not even included in many Republican presidential polls.
If the Texas governor is to be taken seriously, he needs to generate lines like this on TheIowaRepublican.com:
“Popular with libertarians, social conservatives and making waves with mainstream Republicans, Ted Cruz is exciting Iowa Caucus goers in ways that few candidates ever have.”
Even without the Cruz complication, Perry is piling up a new collection of “oops” moments, those self-inflicted wounds that define his national image. My Austin bureau colleague Peggy Fikac sums it up in her column this week:
Perry, in a June speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington, slammed the Obama administration by saying it “won’t make one phone call to save our men and women in an embassy in Lebanon.” He apparently meant Libya. In a July interview with the Washington Post, Perry framed his potential 2016 prospects by saying that “America’s been a country of second choices.” When reporter Dan Balz asked if he meant second chances, Perry said, “Both,” according to the story. “Second choices and second chances.” It’s hard to imagine he really meant to cast himself as a second-choice candidate, but if so, it’s less than a winning slogan.
Perry launched August by mixing up his locales during an appearance at the RedState blogger gathering — even though “New Orleans” was written on the front of the lectern. “There are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach that we’ve taken over the years. I’m in one today — in Florida. You look at South Carolina. You look at Florida,” Perry said. A voice called out, “We’re in Louisiana.”
Will Perry run for president in 2016? The governor says he’s still thinking about it and praying about it. While he’s thinking, however, Ted Cruz is winning converts.
Copyright 2013 Hearst Communications, Inc.
http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/08/analysis-ted-cruz-turning-into-rick-perrys-worst-nightmare-in-iowa/ [with comments]
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Bob Vander Plaats: Ted Cruz a 'Phenomenon'
12 Aug 2013
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/plaats-cruz-political-phenomenon/2013/08/12/id/519967 [no comments yet]
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Cruz mocks Senate GOP colleagues' commitment to defunding ObamaCare
By Alexander Bolton
08/10/13 07:36 PM ET
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired a broadside at his Senate GOP colleagues Saturday by mocking their commitment to defunding ObamaCare and calling for a grassroots army to take up the cause.
Cruz told conservative activists gathered at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, that that many Republican lawmakers are not ready to fight what he called the most important battle in Washington: stopping the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
He elicited roaring applause from the audience when he called repeal of ObamaCare the most important regulatory reform on the agenda.
Contrasting the crowd’s response to his GOP colleagues’, he quipped: “If I were sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction to that statement would be fundamentally different. I don’t know that I’m quick enough to dodge all the things that would be thrown at me.”
Other Republican senators have warned against this strategy as a dangerous gambit that could backfire.
“I can’t count the number of Republicans in Washington who say, ‘Look, we can’t defund it. No, no, no. We can pass symbolic votes against it but we can’t actually stand up and take a risk and be potentially be blamed,’” Cruz said.
He called on conservative activists to form a “grassroots army” over the next month and a half to put pressure on GOP leaders to block any stopgap spending measure to keep the government running past the end of September if it allows the controversial health reform law to go forward.
He urged them to visit the website www.Don’tFundObamaCare.com and to text the word “growth” to 33733.
“This is the most important fight this Congress will face and the only way we win this fight is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable,” he said.
He listed repealing the healthcare law and regulatory reform one of three legs of his plan to restore economic growth in the United States. The other two components are cutting spending and reforming the tax code.
He blasted the nation’s persistent budget deficit as “fundamentally immoral” because of the burden it would place on younger and future generations.
Throwing red meat to the crowd, he touted the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service as the best way to reform the tax code.
“I think the simplest and best solution is we need to abolish the IRS,” he said.
He panned Republican colleagues for lacking enough conviction to shutter the tax agency and called again for a grassroots army to take up the cause.
“If we have to depend on Washington politicians to get that done, it will never ever be done. The only way we abolish the IRS is if the American people rise up and demand it of our elected officials,” he said.
He said the potency of grassroots activism was shown earlier this year when President Obama’s proposal to expand background checks for gun sales and prohibit military-style semiautomatic weapons was soundly defeated in the Senate.
“If that dispute were decided on Washington rules, the momentum behind the president’s anti-Second Amendment proposals was unstoppable and what happened again is the American people got engaged,” he said.
Cruz’s visit to Iowa has stoked speculation that he will weigh a bid for the White House in 2016. He spoke at the Silver Elephant dinner in South Carolina, another important primary state, in May.
He also played to the crowd on the Senate’s immigration reform bill, which is unpopular among conservative voters in Iowa. He touted Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of Congress’s harshest critics of granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, as a “forceful advocate” of securing the nation’s borders.
Cruz drew a bright line between himself and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an author of the Senate bill, who is also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.
He predicted that House Republicans would not go along with the proposals championed by Senate Democrats.
“I believe because the grassroots is speaking that the House of Representatives is not going to follow [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and the Senate Democrats down the path of legalization first and not securing the borders,” he said.
© 2013 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/316511-cruz-mocks-senate-gop-colleagues-commitment-to-defunding-obamacare [with comments]
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Mitch McConnell Seeks Delay For Obamacare Insurance Exchanges
By Sharon Begley
Posted: 08/12/2013 2:03 pm EDT
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday called on the Obama administration to delay the Oct. 1 opening of exchanges where uninsured Americans will be able to buy health insurance until the U.S. government can guarantee the protection of people's personal data.
The exchanges, a key element of the president's signature 2010 healthcare law dubbed "Obamacare," will be largely online.
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency taking the lead in implementing the law, McConnell said that "Americans should not be forced into the exchanges, and certainly not without these assurances" that personal and financial data will be safe from "hackers and cyber criminals."
"If you rush to go forward without adequate safeguards in place," McConnell added, "any theft of personal information from constituents will be the result of your rush to implement a law to meet the agency's political needs and not the operational needs of the people it is supposed to serve."
The law, which aims to reduce the number of uninsured Americans and cut U.S. healthcare costs, was passed three years ago over unified Republican opposition in Congress. Congressional Republicans have sought numerous times since then to repeal it or block certain aspects of it from being implemented.
Concerns about data security arose last week after the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a report saying CMS had missed several self-imposed deadlines for testing the security of the information technology that will power the insurance exchanges being set up in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CMS is part of HHS.
As a result of the delays, a ruling by HHS's chief information officer certifying the security of the federal information technology system, which every state has to use for its own exchange, will be pushed back to Sept. 30, a day before enrollment under the measure is due to start.
The delay in testing and certifying information technology security, experts said, could allow the exchanges to open with security flaws or force them to postpone when they begin to enroll people in health insurance.
On Friday, Oregon announced that individuals seeking to purchase health insurance on that state's exchange would not be able to do so when it opens on Oct. 1 unless they use an agent or other individual who has been trained and given an account by the state. Cover Oregon, as the exchange is called, said the delay was not due to information technology issues alone but to overall concerns about the exchange's ability to meet the expected surge of customers.
In his letter, McConnell cited the inspector general's report, saying that "while I believe we ought to repeal this law and replace it with commonsense reforms that lower cost, Americans ought to be assured, at an absolute minimum, that their personal and financial data will be safe from data thieves."
In order to buy insurance on a state exchange, people must submit personal information that is then checked against data held on servers at the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies, including income history.
The concerns about data security center on the possibility that someone could access those databases through the federal data services hub, which is being created especially for Obamacare and will connect information from all the U.S. agencies needed for someone to purchase insurance.
McConnell, who is trying to fend off a challenger from the conservative Tea Party movement in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary next May, opposed Obama's healthcare measure from its inception.
But he faces pressure from some conservative Republicans who are threatening a government shutdown on Oct. 1 unless legislation is enacted by then to deny federal funding for the healthcare law.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/mitch-mcconnell-obamacare_n_3744711.html [with comments]
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A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: August 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.
The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014.
The grace period has been outlined on the Labor Department’s Web site since February, but was obscured in a maze of legal and bureaucratic language that went largely unnoticed. When asked in recent days about the language — which appeared as an answer to one of 137 “frequently asked questions about Affordable Care Act implementation [ http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-aca12.html ]” — department officials confirmed the policy.
The discovery is likely to fuel continuing Republican efforts this fall to discredit the president’s health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ].
Under the policy, many group health plans will be able to maintain separate out-of-pocket limits for benefits in 2014. As a result, a consumer may be required to pay $6,350 for doctors’ services and hospital care, and an additional $6,350 for prescription drugs under a plan administered by a pharmacy benefit manager.
Some consumers may have to pay even more, as some group health plans will not be required to impose any limit on a patient’s out-of-pocket costs for drugs next year. If a drug plan does not currently have a limit on out-of-pocket costs, it will not have to impose one for 2014, federal officials said Monday.
The health law, signed more than three years ago by Mr. Obama, clearly established a single overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for each individual or family. But federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs.
In many cases, the companies have separate computer systems that cannot communicate with one another.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said: “We knew this was an important issue. We had to balance the interests of consumers with the concerns of health plan sponsors and carriers, which told us that their computer systems were not set up to aggregate all of a person’s out-of-pocket costs. They asked for more time to comply.”
Health plans are free to set out-of-pocket limits lower than the levels allowed by the administration. But many employers and health plans sought the grace period, saying they needed time to upgrade their computer systems. “Benefit managers using different computer systems often cannot keep track of all the out-of-pocket costs incurred by a particular individual,” said Kathryn Wilber, a lawyer at the American Benefits Council, which represents many Fortune 500 companies that provide coverage to employees.
Last month the White House announced a one-year delay in enforcement of another major provision of the law, which requires larger employers to offer health coverage to full-time employees. Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said that the delay of the employer mandate showed “we are listening” to businesses, which had complained about the complexity of federal reporting requirements.
Although the two delays are unrelated, together they underscore the difficulties the Obama administration is facing as it rolls out the health care law.
Advocates for people with chronic illnesses said they were dismayed by the policy decision on out-of-pocket costs.
“The government’s unexpected interpretation of the law will disproportionately harm people with complex chronic conditions and disabilities,” said Myrl Weinberg, the chief executive of the National Health Council, which speaks for more than 50 groups representing patients.
For people with serious illnesses like cancer [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/cancer/overview.html ] and multiple sclerosis [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html ], Ms. Weinberg said, out-of-pocket costs can total tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Despite the delay, consumers in 2014 will still have many new protections. They cannot be denied health insurance [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/index.html ] or charged higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions, and many will qualify for subsidies intended to lower their costs.
In promoting his health care plan in 2009, Mr. Obama cited the limit on out-of-pocket costs as one of its chief virtues. “We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick,” Mr. Obama told a joint session of Congress in September 2009.
Advocates for patients said the promise of the law was being deferred. “We have wonderful new drugs, the biologics, to treat rheumatoid arthritis [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/rheumatoid-arthritis/overview.html ], but they are extremely expensive,” said Dr. Patience H. White, a vice president of the Arthritis Foundation. “In the past, patients had to live in constant pain, often became disabled and had to leave their jobs. The new drugs can make a huge difference, and we were hoping that the cap on out-of-pocket costs would make them affordable. But now many patients will have to wait another year.”
The American Cancer Society shares the concern and noted that some new cancer drugs cost $100,000 a year or more.
“If a prescription drug plan does not currently have a limit, then it will not have to have one in 2014,” said Molly Daniels, deputy president of the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society. “Patients who require expensive drugs could continue to have enormous financial exposure, despite the clear intent of the law to limit a patient’s total out-of-pocket exposure.”
Federal officials said they were offering transition relief to certain health plans in 2014. But, they said, by 2015, health plans must comply with the law and must have an overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for medical, drug and other benefits combined.
Theodore M. Thompson, a vice president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said: “The promise of out-of-pocket limits was one of the main reasons we supported health care reform. So we are disappointed that some plans will be allowed to have multiple out-of-pocket limits in 2014.”
The law also requires coverage of dental care for children, but these benefits can be offered in a separate health plan with its own limit on out-of-pocket costs.
Federal rules say that a free-standing dental plan must have “a reasonable annual limitation on cost-sharing.” In states where the new health insurance marketplace will be run by the federal government, the limit on out-of-pocket costs for pediatric dental benefits can be no more than $700 for coverage of one child and $1,400 for a plan covering two or more children in the same family.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a-limit-on-consumer-costs-is-delayed-in-health-care-law.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a-limit-on-consumer-costs-is-delayed-in-health-care-law.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/07/2013 9:47 am EDT | Updated: 08/07/2013 6:38 pm EDT
A raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama's appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.
From the Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130806obama-phoenix-protests-outside-school.html ]:
Obama foes at one point sang, "Bye Bye Black Sheep," a derogatory reference to the president's skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, "Impeach the Half-White Muslim!"
The Republic reported that hundreds of people gathered outside Desert Vista High School as Obama unveiled a plan [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/obama-mortgage-speech_n_3714980.html ] to overhaul the nation's mortgage finance system. Some protesters came from Obama's left, urging him to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take other actions on climate change. But a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.
“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”
Others carried signs calling for Obama to be impeached, Tucson News Now reported [ http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/23063824/hundreds-protest-in-phoenix ], though despite the negativity, the majority of those in attendance were Obama fans.
Inside, Obama's speech focused primarily on the housing market, though he did at one point attempt to link his proposal to immigration reform, arguing that Congress -- which is now in recess -- could help housing prices rebound by finalizing legislation that has already been passed by the Senate.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/obama-protesters-arizona_n_3719050.html [with embedded video report, and (nearly 20,000) comments]
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Opinion: Racist taunts at Obama should worry us all
President Barack Obama arrives Tuesday at a Phoenix high school, where outside protesters used racist slogans and songs.
August 8, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/opinion/whitaker-obama-arizona-race/index.html [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Obama Protested By Birthers In Florida
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 08/10/2013 12:18 pm EDT | Updated: 08/10/2013 12:34 pm EDT
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle were met with signs saying "Obama lies" and "Kenyan Go Home" ahead of a speech in Florida on Saturday.
According to a White House pool report, the president's motorcade was pulling into the Hilton Orlando where the Disabled American Veterans [ http://www.dav.org/events/2013-national-convention/ ] are holding their convention when it passed about 50 protesters on both sides of the street. The protesters -- "many of them older and most of them white," according to the report -- were holding birther signs and signs calling to "Impeach Obama."
Obama cited progress [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/obama-veterans-convention_n_3736422.html ] in reducing the backlog of disability claims in his address Saturday. The first lady also addressed the veterans during the appearance, the Obamas' last before they go on vacation [ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/08/10/obama-family-heads-to-marthas-vineyard-for-vacation/ ].
UPDATE: Below, a photo of the "Kenyan Go Home" sign, via BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski [ https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/statuses/366235193725554688 ]:
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/obama-birthers_n_3737054.html [with (over 8,000) comments]
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Rodeo clown mocks Obama at Missouri State Fair
Video [embedded]: Rodeo clown mocks Obama
By Elwyn Lopez and Ed Payne, CNN
updated 4:06 PM EDT, Mon August 12, 2013
(CNN) -- A rodeo stunt at the Missouri State Fair has come under criticism after a clown donned a Barack Obama mask and stuck on a broom that descended from his backside.
The stunt took place during the bull riding competition on Saturday night.
Rodeo announcer Mark Ficken, president of the Missouri Cowboy Rodeo Association and a school superintendent, announced a special guest: "President Obama."
Another voice is heard over the loudspeaker working up the crowd and saying, "We're going to stomp Obama now."
"As soon as this bull comes out, Obama, don't you move," the second voice said. "He's going to getcha, getcha getcha, getcha."
"Hey, I know I'm a clown," the second voice said. "He's just running around acting like one. Doesn't know he is one."
The stunt sickened Perry Beam, who came to the fair in Sedalia with his wife and a student from Taiwan to "give him a little piece of Americana."
Beam likened the atmosphere to a Klan rally.
"It wasn't clean; it wasn't fun. It was awful; it was sickening," Beam said, "It was racist."
The student, Jameson Hsieh, recorded a video of the incident, but had little to say afterward.
"He didn't say anything. We rode all the way home in silence," said Beam, who lives 50 miles away in Higginsville. "We were just ashamed, and he didn't ask any more questions. I think he had seen enough. It is just disgusting."
Condemnation came from organizers and politicians alike. The Missouri State Fair Commission called it "unacceptable" and said the clown has been banned "from ever participating or performing at the Missouri State Fair again."
"The commission reiterated that the statements and actions Saturday night were inappropriate and not in keeping with the fair's standards," the agency said in a written statement. "The Missouri State Fair apologizes for the unconscionable stunt."
The board of directors at Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association also issued an apology.
"The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform. We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again," a statement on the group's website said. "All Members of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association are very proud of our Country and our President."
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable.
"I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "the other night," he said in a post to his official Twitter account. "We are better than this."
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder.
"The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love," she said. "But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it's ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation."
CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/ [with (approaching 9,000) comments]
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Missouri Officials Now Realize Obama Rodeo Clown Was in Poor Taste
By Margaret Hartmann
August 12, 2013 at 4:32 AM
It's easy to see why announcer Mark Ficken, president of the Missouri Cowboy Rodeo Association and Boonville School Superintendent, assumed that no one would have a problem with him taunting a clown wearing an Obama mask at a Missouri State Fair bull riding competition on Saturday night. Most of the crowd appeared to be delighted when Ficken asked if anyone wanted to see "Obama run down by a bull," and declared, "We’re going to smoke Obama, man." However, thanks to one offended spectator, Ficken has learned that joking about the president being trampled isn't considered all-American fun elsewhere in the nation.
Spectator Perry Beam posted photos [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/obama-clown-missouri-fair-95429.html ] of the event online after attending the fair with his wife and a student from Taiwan. "It wasn't clean; it wasn't fun. It was awful; it was sickening," Beam said, "It was racist." After the images went viral, State Fair officials said it was "inappropriate" and the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association issued an apology. "The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform. We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again," the group said in a statement [ http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/ (just above)]. And in addition to not wishing Obama bodily harm, "All Members of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association are very proud of our Country and our President."
Copyright © 2013, New York Media LLC
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/missouri-regrets-showing-obama-as-a-rodeo-clown.html [the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSik7I3w2Ng ; with comments]
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Donald Trump, Louie Gohmert Make Great Case For Why GOP Should Keep People Like Them Off TV
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), pictured left, and Donald Trump, pictured right
(Getty Images)
By Jason Linkins
Posted: 08/11/2013 2:35 pm EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 2:48 pm EDT
This week, "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" kicked off with a question: "Why is Donald Trump stumping in Iowa [ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/donald-trump-sen-ted-cruz-perhaps-not-eligible-for-white-house-if-born-in-canada/ ]?" This answer to that question is that Trump is an orange-skinned huckster-clown who wants to pretend to be a big deal in politics and a perennial presidential contender, running on such policies as "Why do the Iraqis still have oil? We should take that for ourselves [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/04/155527/trump-iraq-oil-soldiers-died-vain/ ]." He is the sort of buffoon that the Republican Party opted to keep far, far away from their convention -- and this was in spite of the fact that they nevertheless chose to allow Clint Eastwood to do the weird things that he did.
It's a question that doesn't really ever need to be asked, let alone answered, on a Sunday show. I just took care of the matter and put it to bed in a paragraph. But "This Week" didn't just raise a dumb question and seek a trivial answer, they devoted a lot of time to a deep exploration on the matter.
[video of Trump on "This Week" embedded]
In addition, the bookers for "This Week" hit their rolodexes and decided that what the world needed was Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) on a panel. And over at "Meet The Press," producers booked Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). After all, they wanted to have a discussion about comprehensive immigration reform, and how could you do such a thing without ol' Representative Cantaloupe Calves, right? I mean, if you don't book King, who knows what might happen? Two sides could work out their differences, or come to a genial understanding!
Here is a message to the Republican Party, from me: Guys, I don't know if you've noticed this, but you are getting rooked pretty badly by the Sunday shows. Did y'all wake up today thinking that the best thing for your message was to have it carried by guys like Trump and Gohmert and King? I am guessing that's not the case. But that's who got booked, because nothing is better for ratings than a bunch of hot messes on the teevee.
Trump happily obliged himself to the task of being a hot mess, though, continuing to offer up a steady stream of rhetorical skid-marks on the lunatic "Obama birth certificate" conspiracy theory as well: "Well, I don’t know, was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know some people say that was not his birth certificate. So maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t.”
Additionally, Jonathan Karl asked Donald Trump the Important Questions, like, "Is Ted Cruz eligible to be president?" Karl knows that the answer to this question is "Yes." But Karl asked Trump because he knew it would be some Super Duper Silliness OMGZ!
“If he was born in Canada, perhaps not,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t know the circumstances. I heard somebody told me he was born in Canada. That’s really his thing.”
And Trump's "thing" is horseshit like this, which everyone at ABC News knew to be the case the second they agreed to interview him. I promise you, no one at ABC News thought that their interview with Trump would be good for America. Interviewing Trump is the political media version of the group of people who positioned pig's blood above Carrie at the prom and then laughed in anticipation of the big joke they were about to pull, only in this case, "America" is Carrie. "HAR DE HAR, THERE'S GONNA BE PIG BLOOD EVERYWHERE!" is what the people at ABC News said when they hatched the idea of airing an interview with Donald Trump.
Louis Gohmert also made things terrible for everyone. Right now, the GOP leadership is trying to tamp down the idea that they'd be willing to shut down the government unless they get an agreement from Democrats to defund Obamacare. At the end of last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor -- no weak-willed compromiser! -- was strongly signaling that everyone needed to take a chill pill [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/eric-cantor-gop-government-shutdown_n_3734298.html ]. So naturally, ABC went out and got a guy that they knew would say something like this:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think you have the votes to defund Obamacare? It doesn't appear like that's...
GOHMERT: No. Not right now. But we'll see after August after people go home.
Louis, call Eric Cantor's office!
Meanwhile, over at the Meet The Press, King was on, defending his remark, "For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds -- and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." There was never a moment that Gregory gave any suggestion that resolving this weeks-old matter was important to journalism or immigration reform or anything. King was doing so, just because David Gregory wanted him to come on "Meet The Press" so that everyone could watch King flop his gob over this matter one last time.
Ana Navarro, a GOP strategist, thankfully decided that she'd heard enough. "I think Congressman King should go get himself some therapy for his melon fixation," she said. "I think there might be medication for that. I think he's a mediocre congressman who's got no legislative record, and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undocumented or Hispanics."
Navarro went on to say that the really great thing about King is that his stupidity is "emboldening other Republicans to speak out strongly against him, people like John Boehner, like Eric Cantor, like Paul Ryan, who are not going to stand anymore for the Republican Party being defined by somebody like Steve King."
"There are other voices who are the adults in the room and who are working hard towards a reform," Navarro said, "And I think it's going to happen. I'm more optimistic than most."
Well, I appreciate the optimism, but I don't share it because it is still Steve King getting booked on Sunday Morning Teevee, not these other "adults in the room."
Republican Party, this is all stuff that makes these shows really painful for people like me to watch. I wake up in the morning and see that I'm going to have to sit through a segment with Donald Trump and my reservoir of "willingness to go on living" just evaporates.
Surely you guys feel the same way, when the guy that Meet The Press goes out and gets for their panel discussion on immigration -- strictly for the purpose of derailing it -- is the guy who recently embarrassed y'all with his discussion of illegal immigrants and their sacks-of-marijuana-based Crossfit regimen. You guys probably don't like seeing these guys get booked any more than I do. Perhaps our interests are aligned?
Hey, we called around and got some quotes about today's Sunday offering of Trump-Gohmert-King, just for fun. "Looking forward to future Sunday shows filled with Markwayne Mullin," griped one GOP operative. Another told us, "We have Fox and we use (like props) the most irritating, obscure Democratic political voices, like Bob Beckel, Susan Estrich, Pat Caddell, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. They have the major networks. We used to get Bachmann [on these shows], and now it looks like we're gonna get Gohmert. [Bob] Dole's Meet The Press appearance record could be in jeopardy."
Look, Republican Party, there is probably nothing you can do about Donald Trump, because he is a unique, sparkling gas-sack unto himself. But can you guys see about keeping Gohmert and King occupied on Sunday mornings? Maybe give them both a sack of jacks and a rubber ball to bounce, or something? It would make my life better and it might even make your jobs easier as well.
KTHXBAI.
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Related
Donald Trump Beats The Birther Drum Again: 'Was There A Birth Certificate?' (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-birther-this-week_n_3739675.html
'This Week' Criticized For Donald Trump Interview
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/this-week-donald-trump-interview_n_3739671.html
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Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-louie-gohmert-steve-king_n_3740081.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 6,000) comments]
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Ted Yoho Says He Would Support A Birther Bill
08/07/2013
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) told supporters he would back a bill to investigate the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, though he conceded the 'birther' movement was a "distraction" from more pressing issues.
Right Wing Watch posted audio [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rep-ted-yoho-praises-birther-conspiracy-calls-obamacare-racist-against-white-people ] of Yoho's comments from a Saturday town hall, in which the Florida Republican said he called his colleague Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) to pledge his support for a potential bill that would launch an investigation into whether the president's birth certificate is fake.
The audience applauded Yoho, but an attendee asked the congressman if such a bill would be an appropriate use of time. The crowd responded "no," and Yoho agreed by labeling it a "distraction."
"But I'm gonna check into that because in order to have freedom, you have to have economic freedom," he said, before pivoting back to why Stockman's bill mattered.
"But then they said, well, if [the birth certificate] is truly illegal, he shouldn't be there and we can get rid of everything and I said I agree with that," Yoho said.
[...]
During the same town hall, Yoho claimed a 10 percent tax [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/ted-yoho-tanning-tax-racist_n_3709155.html ] on tanning beds under the Affordable Care Act was "racist," because people born with darker skin don't need to tan.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/ted-yoho-birther_n_3713636.html [with embedded video report, and comments];
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rep-ted-yoho-praises-birther-conspiracy-calls-obamacare-racist-against-white-people [with embedded audios, at https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/yoho-praises-birther-bill and https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/yoho-obamacare-racist-against ]
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Tea Party Loyalty
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-danziger/teapartyloyalty_b_3722194.html [with comments]
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GOP Congressman To Birther Constituent: House Republicans Have The Votes To Impeach Obama
By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/12/2013 1:03 pm EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 6:40 pm EDT
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) answered questions from a fervent anti-Obama constituent at a town hall this weekend, telling a woman that he would take a closer look at her birther conspiracy document before claiming there were enough House Republican votes to impeach the president, albeit for an unstated reason.
In a video uploaded to YouTube [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQxp9XrH6mc (since taken private); the 3:50 original appears to be in full in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH266F3UEVM , next below, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0e3jvhKwPE ]
and reported on by BuzzFeed [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/republican-congressman-we-probably-have-the-votes-to-impeach ], Farenthold responded to a woman at a Saturday gathering in Luling, Texas. The woman began by asking the congressman if he'd sign on to a bill, recently discussed by a number of his Republican colleagues [ http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gop-rep-id-back-birther-bill-even-though ], based on the disproved conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii. The White House has released a long-form birth certificate for Obama, showing he was indeed born in the state.
Farenthold told his constituent he'd examine the document -- which she said proved Obama had "committed a felony" -- though he noted he thought it was too late to topple Obama based on the eligibility issue. The congressman then connected the woman's opposition to a question of how Congress might approach impeaching the president.
“You tie into a question I get a lot: 'If everybody’s so unhappy with what the president’s done, why don’t you impeach him?’” Farenthold said. “I’ll give you a real frank answer about that: If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it. But it would go to the Senate, and he wouldn’t be convicted.”
Farenthold explained that House lawmakers are responsible for voting to bring forth Articles of Impeachment, which would in turn prompt a trial in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The congressman then argued that the nation could be damaged if Obama was ultimately found not guilty after an impeachment, though he didn't get specific on just what he thought Obama could be impeached for.
“What message do we send to America if we impeach Obama and he gets away with what he’s impeached for and he is found innocent? What then do we say is OK?” Farenthold said.
It's unclear exactly which high crimes and misdemeanors Farenthold thinks a majority of the House believe Obama has committed, but broader calls for impeachment have bubbled up in town halls as Republicans address their constituents during the August recess.
Last week, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) faced a disgruntled constituent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/andy-harris-town-hall_n_3732258.html ] who said he wanted to see House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) openly threaten Obama with impeachment if the president did not "start obeying the laws."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/gop-impeach-obama_n_3744049.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 12,000) comments]
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Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) is a birther
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by ThinkProgress TP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0jigE9u-48
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NC's McCrory approves sweeping voter-suppression measures
Aug 12, 2013
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/12/19992986-ncs-mccrory-approves-sweeping-voter-suppression-measures [the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykw2zre6yrQ ; with comments] [and see (linkned in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90939147 (and any future following)]
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Jackie Robinson Statue Defacement Leads To $50,000 Reward For Information
A statue of Pee Wee Reese (L) and Jackie Robinson, stands after being cleaned of racist graffiti on August 9, 2013 in the Coney Island neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Robinson broke the color barrier for Major League Baseball in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and Reese was a teammate and supporter.
Kids from the PAL at the Jackie Robinson/ PeeWee Reese statue in Coney Island two days after it was vandalized with racist graffiti.
[ http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/jackie-robinson-statue-article-1.1422892 ]
08/09/13 09:53 PM ET EDT
NEW YORK -- The reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of those responsible for defacing a statue of Jackie Robinson in New York with swastikas and hate speech is now $50,000.
The Jackie Robinson Foundation says Friday it has received two donations totaling $40,000. The Daily News has offered $10,000 for information in the case.
On Wednesday, the words "Heil Hitler," an expletive and racist epithets were discovered scrawled on the statue in black marker. The statute of Jackie Robinson and a teammate stands outside Brooklyn's minor league baseball stadium.
The New York City Parks Department removed the hate speech Thursday.
The Daily News reports ( http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/jackie-robinson-statue-article-1.1422892 [ http://nydn.us/11SAUVx ]) $20,000 of the reward money was donated by foundation board member Joe Plumeri. The other $20,000 was donated anonymously.
Police are still investigating.
Information from: Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/jackie-robinson-statue-defaced-reward-50000_n_3737129.html [with comments]
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Jones calls banana incident 'unfortunate,' Giants apologize
Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports
8:58 p.m. EDT August 12, 2013
Adam Jones is ready to move past the banana incident [ http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/08/adam-jones-fan-banana-baltimore-orioles-san-francisco/ ]. The San Francisco Giants fan who claimed responsibility for it says he wishes it had never happened.
Alexander Poulides, a Northern California resident, said Monday he was sorry for throwing a banana on the field toward the end of the Giants' 10-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday. The banana landed in Jones' vicinity, and the All-Star outfielder expressed his outrage in a tweet after the game.
Poulides, 42, said he was upset when he found out the incident had been portrayed as racially motivated, which he insisted was not his intent. Jones is African American.
"I'm embarrassed and shocked by the outcome,'' Poulides told the San Jose Mercury News, whom he contacted by e-mail and later phone. "In hindsight, I wish I didn't do it and I apologize. I'm very sorry.''
Poulides said he was disgusted with the performance of the last-place Giants, not mad at Jones for hitting a three-run homer in the ninth inning.
Jones said before Monday's road game against the Arizona Diamondbacks that he'd rather put his attention on the season.
"You never know what could be thrown towards the players," Jones said. "Our backs are turned.
"It's unfortunate that things happen like that, but it ain't going stop me, myself and the Orioles," Jones said. "We have games to win. It's mid-August. I've got a bigger concern in my head than someone's ignorance or act of whatever."
On Sunday, Jones had expressed his outrage by tweeting, "I want to thank whatever (expletive) threw that banana towards my direction in CF in the last inning. Way to show ur class u jackass.''
Staci Slaughter, the Giants' senior vice president of communications, said the club only found out about the incident after Jones sent out his tweet.
The Giants said they reviewed security video but were unable to indentify the responsible party. They issued a statement offering an apology.
"The Giants have a zero tolerance policy against this type of behavior, which results in immediate ejection from the ballpark,'' the statement said.
"We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Adam and the entire Orioles organization for this unfortunate incident. The inappropriate actions of this individual in no way reflect the values of our organization and our fans.''
Contributing: Zach Buchanan from the Arizona Republic
Copyright 2013 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2013/08/12/adam-jones-giants-issue-statement-on-disorderly-fan/2643765/ [with comments]
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Everest Hobson Lucas Born To George Lucas And Mellody Hobson
08/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/everest-hobson-lucas_n_3742950.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Reince Priebus Mocked For Hillary Clinton Stance On 'Morning Joe'
By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 08/12/2013 8:06 am EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 6:36 pm EDT
The latest twist in the neverending story of the Republican National Committee's opposition to a pair of television projects about Hillary Clinton turned RNC chair Reince Priebus into a figure of mockery by Monday morning.
Priebus vowed to ban NBC and CNN from upcoming Republican debates if they aired the two programs, even though both were being developed separately from each networks' news division. On Saturday, though, the New York Times reported [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/business/media/fox-may-produce-clinton-biopic-reviled-by-gop.html?pagewanted=all ] that the television division of Fox in talks to produce the NBC miniseries. Fox News, of course, would not be involved, but there was still a neat parallel to be drawn.
On Sunday, Priebus spoke [ http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/reince-im-boycotting-companies-that-put-clinton-films ] to CNN's Candy Crowley about the Fox involvement, and she asked the salient question about his stance.
"If we follow your logic, do you think that there then is a connection to Fox News and would they be subject to the same kind of scrutiny?" Crowley asked.
Priebus, of course, would be loath to boycott the network with the biggest connection to his voters, and he said he was only interested in the companies that aired the programs.
"The big question for me, Candy, is number one, which company is putting it on the air?" he said. "Who is doing the work?"
Unfortunatey for Priebus, it would appear that Fox could be doing much of "the work." By Monday morning, the folks at "Morning Joe," who had given him a mostly sympathetic hearing [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/07/scarborough-defends-rncs-priebus-msnbc-exactly-the-same-as-fox-news/ ] last week, were making fun of him.
"The RNC needs to understand that Fox is going to make the movie," Joe Scarborough said. "They're making it!"
"I think this little narrative is collapsing underneath him," Mika Brzezinski added.
Watch Priebus on CNN:
[video embedded]
Watch Monday's "Morning Joe" segment:
[video embedded]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/reince-priebus-fox-hillary-clinton-morning-joe_n_3742955.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and comments]
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U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind
Graphic [charts]
Off the Charts: Higher Profits, Lower Wages
Revised calculations by the government indicate that corporate profits were higher than previously estimated in 2012, while employee wages were lower. Effective tax rates on both companies and individuals were also revised downward.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/09/business/economy/Higher-Profits-Lower-Wages.html
By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: August 9, 2013
AMERICAN companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.
The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.
The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.
A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.
The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal income only when the contributions were made. Under the revision, the government estimates how much should have been contributed to meet the promises made to workers, and counts that amount, whether it is higher or lower than the amount actually put into the pension plan. That causes personal income to appear larger in years when pension contributions are lower than they should be.
The revised numbers also reflect some better information as new data becomes available. Ms. Mayerhauser said that it now appeared that in recent years the government might have overestimated the amount of income that went unreported by taxpayers, including the amounts of unreported tips received by restaurant employees. Revising those figures down meant that workers as a group appeared to be doing even worse than they had appeared to be doing.
And that was none too well. Before the figures were revised, it appeared that wages and salary income in 2012 amounted to 44 percent of G.D.P., the lowest at any time since 1929, which is as far back as the data goes.
But the revisions cut that to 42.6 percent, which matched the revised 2010 figure as the lowest ever.
The flip side of that is that corporate profits after taxes amounted to a record 9.7 percent of G.D.P. Each of the last three years has been higher than the earlier record high, of 9.1 percent, which was set in 1929.
The charts help to demonstrate how the postrecession economy differs from the one before the downturn. In the three years from 2005 through 2007, the share of G.D.P. going to corporate profits was 1.5 percentage points lower than it was during the years 2010 through 2012. The share going to workers was 1.1 percentage points higher during the earlier years.
Corporate taxes, as a proportion of corporate profits, rose to a four-year high of 21.6 percent in 2012, but remained well below the long-term average level. Personal taxes also hit a four-year high, at 14.1 percent of personal income, but were still well below the historical average.
Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at http://www.nytimes.com/economix .
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/business/economy/us-companies-thrive-as-workers-fall-behind.html
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Paul Ryan Spending Cuts Face Backlash From Moderate Republicans
08/12/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/paul-ryan-spending-cuts_n_3742687.html [with embedded video report, and (over 5,000) comments]
[in full from another source at/see also (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90941376 and preceding and following]
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Rick Santorum: GOP Must Appeal To Working Class
Former US Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum waves after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Posted: 08/10/2013 2:54 pm EDT
AMES, Iowa — The Republican Party must to do a better job reaching out to working class voters, former senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Saturday.
The Iowa caucus winner said that by focusing on business owners in the last presidential election, the GOP failed to connect with "job holders" and "marginalized" a group of voters.
"We need to reject this idea that if we build the economy, all boats will rise. We need to talk about people who have holes in their boats, because we all do," Santorum said at the Family Leadership Summit, a conference of conservative Christians.
After his remarks, Santorum said he was open to another presidential run in 2016 but has made no decision.
Other speakers at the summit include Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and reality show star Donald Trump. The daylong event will be one of many cattle calls for potential candidates in the grueling runup to the 2016 presidential election.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/rick-santorum-gop_n_3737378.html [with comments]
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Santorum: 'We Have The Truth And We Give Up'
Published on Aug 6, 2013 by RWW Blog
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-we-have-truth-and-we-give
Rick Santorum says that while conservatives have the truth, liberals want it more and fight to win.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNnSk5CEFA [Santorum's complete little speech next below, via/more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/rick-santorum-showers_n_3718618.html (with this YouTube embedded, and comments)]
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Sen. Rick Santorum Receives the 2013 SFLA William Wilberforce Leadership Award
Published on Jul 26, 2013 by studentsforlife
Students for Life of America was proud to present Sen. and Mrs. Santorum with our 2013 William Wilberforce Leadership Award at our Summer Social. Rick Santorum gave a fiery acceptance speech about the important of the pro-life generation. Let him inspire you to take action, sacrifice, and LIVE pro-life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBZvN9gRngg
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Rick Santorum at Family Leadership Summit pt1 & pt2
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
2012 Iowa Caucus winner Rick Santorum returns to the state to speak at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa [on 8/10/13].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugf33xJTu9Q and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln68psue6v0 [a different/poorer-quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qvDZmrMIxM ]
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Stephen Baldwin - The FAMiLY Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 10, 2013 by Caffeinated Thoughts
Actor Stephen Baldwin spoke at The FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Ames, IA on 8/10/13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SMWI2HcjrU
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Why the Anger?
By Robert Reich
Posted: 08/12/2013 5:06 pm
Why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it's been in 80 years? Why is there more anger, vituperation, and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war, or the Watergate scandal?
If anything, you'd think this would be an era of relative calm. The Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is over. The Civil Rights struggle continues, but at least we now have a black middle class and even a black president. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been controversial, the all-volunteer army means young Americans aren't being dragged off to war against their will. And although politicians continue to generate scandals, the transgressions don't threaten the integrity of our government as did Watergate.
And yet, by almost every measure, Americans are angrier today. They're more contemptuous of almost every major institution -- government, business, the media. They're more convinced the nation is on the wrong track [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/27/poll-80-percent-of-americans-unhappy-with-washington-30-percent-angry/ ]. And they are far more polarized [ http://robertreich.org/%20http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/tag/the_mood_of_america.html ].
Political scientists say the gap between the median Republican voter and the median Democrat is wider today [ http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/84/?utm_source=digitalcommons.uconn.edu%2Fsrhonors_theses%2F84&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages ] on a whole host of issues than it's been since the 1920s.
Undoubedly, social media play a part -- allowing people to pop off without bearing much responsibility for what they say. And most of us can cocoon within virtual or real communities whose members confirm all our biases and assumptions.
Meanwhile, cable news and yell radio compete for viewers and listeners by being ever more strident. Not long ago I debated a Republican economic advisor on a cable TV program. During the brief station-break, the show's producer told me to "be angrier." I told her I didn't want to be angrier. "You have to," she said. "Viewers are surfing through hundreds of channels and will stop for a gladiator contest."
Within this cacophony, we've lost trusted arbiters of truth -- the Edward Murrows and Walter Cronkites who could explain what was happening in ways most Americans found convincing.
We've also lost most living memory of an era in which we were all in it together -- the Great Depression and World War II -- when we succeeded or failed together. In those years we were palpably dependent on one another, and understood how much we owed each other as members of the same society.
But I think the deeper explanation for what has happened has economic roots. From the end of World War II through the late 1970s, the economy doubled in size -- as did almost everyone's income. Almost all Americans grew together. In fact, those in the bottom fifth of the income ladder saw their incomes more than double. Americans experienced upward mobility on a grand scale.
Yet for the last three and a half decades, the middle class has been losing ground. The median wage of male workers is now lower than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation.
In addition, all the mechanisms we've used over the last three decades to minimize the effects of this descent -- young mothers streaming into paid work in the late 1970s and 1980s, everyone working longer hours in the 1990s, and then borrowing against the rising values of our homes -- are now exhausted. And wages are still dropping -- the median is now 4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery.
Meanwhile, income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they've been in ninety years.
As a result, many have come to believe that the deck is stacked against them. Importantly, both the Tea Party and the Occupier movements began with the bailouts of Wall Street -- when both groups concluded that big government and big finance had plotted against the rest of us. The former blamed government; the latter blamed Wall Street.
Political scientists have also discovered a high correlation [ http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.3.103 ] between inequality and political divisiveness.
The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 1920s, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated.
When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments -- of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government.
This shouldn't be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats -- thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations.
Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/american-inequality_b_3745493.html [with comments]
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Paul LePage Fuels Spat With Portland Press Herald, Says He Wants To 'Blow It Up' In Simulator
08/09/2013
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) launched a targeted verbal strike [ http://bangordailynews.com/2013/08/09/politics/lepage-in-fighter-jet-simulator-i-want-to-find-the-press-herald-building-and-blow-it-up/ ] on a local newspaper Friday, joking that he wished he could find the office of the Portland Press Herald and "blow it up."
LePage made the comments, the latest in an ongoing tiff between the governor and area newspapers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/paul-lepage-newspapers_n_3462336.html ], before climbing into the cockpit of a F-35 Lightning II fighter jet simulator.
“I want to find the Press Herald building and blow it up,” he said.
The simulator reportedly allowed the outspoken governor to shoot at enemy planes, but he had no such luck tracking down a virtual newspaper building.
LePage has repeatedly sparred with Maine newspapers over the past year. On multiple occasions, he's denounced local outlets, suggesting that they print "lies" [ http://www.pressherald.com/news/LePage-threatens-to-blow-up-Press-Herald-building.html ] and lack objectivity.
Earlier this year, he did little to hide his disdain, telling a group of students [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/paul-lepage-newspapers_n_2614924.html ] that his "greatest fear in the state of Maine" was its newspapers.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/paul-lepage-portland-press-herald_n_3733653.html [with comments]
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Steve King: 'There's Been No Spell Cast Over Me' On Immigration Reform
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 08/13/2013 12:25 am EDT
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) delivered an anti-immigration reform speech to about 60 people in the backyard of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday night, Politico reported [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/steve-king-hits-the-road-on-immigration-95458.html ].
During a congressional recess in which most of his peers have put the immigration issue to rest, King criticized his fellow Republicans for remaining relatively quiet. He told Politico they "have had a spell cast over them."
"A year ago, almost everybody in my conference agreed with me," King said. "There's been no spell cast over me."
King also told the rally attendees that reform will only bring more violence to the United States.
“If you bring people from a violent civilization into a less-violent civilization, you’re going to have more violence right?" King asked the attendees. "It’s like pouring hot water into cold water, does it raise the temperature or not?”
King has received criticism [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/gop-steve-king_n_3642334.html ] for his outlandish comments from the very Republican leaders he's hoping to rally. In a July interview with Newsmax, he claimed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/steve-king-dreamers-marijuana_n_3640879.html ] that the majority of Dreamers engage in drug trafficking.
"For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert," King said. "Those people would be legalized with the same act."
Both Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded to those comments with general disapproval.
“I strongly disagree with his characterization of the children of immigrants and find the comments inexcusable,” Cantor said in a statement [ http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/23/19644181-king-draws-fire-from-fellow-republicans-for-comment-about-young-immigrants ].
"What he said is wrong," Boehner said in a similar statement [id.]. "There can be honest disagreements about policy without using hateful language. Everyone needs to remember that."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/steve-king-immigration-reform_n_3746834.html [with comments]
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Steve King: 'Just Go Ahead And Defy The IRS' (VIDEO)
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 08/10/2013 3:47 pm EDT | Updated: 08/10/2013 4:17 pm EDT
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) spoke out against the Internal Revenue Service on Saturday, telling attendees of the Family Leadership Summit to "just go ahead and defy the IRS."
"When we lean across our backyard fence, or when you step up to the pulpit or when you sit in the pew, when you profess the things that we believe in, and you're a 501(c)3 [i.e., religious] and you're afraid of the IRS, just go ahead and defy the IRS on that," King said, according [ http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/08/10/steve-king-to-family-leader-summit-just-go-ahead-and-defy-the-irs-on-that/article ] to the Des Moines Register. "I'll stand there with you. If we can’t preach the word in America, where can we preach it."
King received a warm reception [ https://twitter.com/michaelpfalcone/status/366222418169171969 ] at the Family Leadership Summit, organized by the nonprofit religious organization the Family Leader. Other speakers at the event included former GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/rick-santorum-gop_n_3737378.html ] and real estate mogul Donald Trump.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/steve-king-irs_n_3737440.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Gastonguay Family That Left US In Sailboat Over Religious Freedom Was Lost At Sea For Months
Hannah Gastonguay, and her baby, Rahab, are followed by her husband, Sean, and the couple's 3-year-old daughter, Ardith, as they disembark Friday, Aug. 9, in San Antonio, Chile.
[ http://news.msn.com/us/religious-family-abandons-us-gets-lost-at-sea ]
By GREG MOORE
08/10/13 09:32 PM ET EDT
PHOENIX -- A northern Arizona family that was lost at sea for weeks in an ill-fated attempt to leave the U.S. over what they consider government interference in religion will fly back home Sunday.
Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us" when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny island nation of Kiribati in May.
But just weeks into their journey, the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks, unable to make progress. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken to Chile where they are resting in a hotel in the port city of San Antonio.
Their flights home were arranged by U.S. Embassy officials, Gastonguay said. The U.S. State Department was not immediately available for comment.
The months-long journey has been "pretty exciting" and "little scary at certain points," Gastonguay told The Associated Press by telephone.
She said they wanted to go to Kiribati because "we didn't want to go anywhere big." She said they understood the island to be "one of the least developed countries in the world."
Kiribati is a group of islands just off the equator and the international date line about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The total population is just over 100,000 people of primarily Micronesian descent.
Hannah Gastonguay said her family was fed up with government control in the U.S. As Christians they don't believe in "abortion, homosexuality, in the state-controlled church," she said.
U.S. "churches aren't their own," Gastonguay said, suggesting that government regulation interfered with religious independence.
Among other differences, she said they had a problem with being "forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don't agree with."
The Gastonguays weren't members of any church, and Hannah Gastonguay said their faith came from reading the Bible and through prayer.
"The Bible is pretty clear," she said.
The family moved in November from Ash Fork, Ariz., to San Diego, where they lived on their boat as they prepared to set sail. She said she gave birth to the couple's 8-month-old girl on the boat, which was docked in a slip at the time.
In May, Hannah, her 30-year-old husband Sean, his father Mike, and the couple's daughters, 3-year-old Ardith and baby Rahab set off. They wouldn't touch land again for 91 days, she said.
She said at first, "We were cruising."
But within a couple of weeks "when we came out there, storm, storm, storm."
The boat had taken a beating, and they decided to set course for the Marquesas Islands. Instead, they found themselves in a "twilight zone," taking more and more damage, leaving them unable to make progress.
They could have used a sail called a genoa, she said, but they risked snapping off the mast and losing their radio and ability to communicate.
They had been on the ocean for about two months and were low on supplies. They were out of food and were down to "some juice and some honey." She said they were able to catch fish, but they didn't see any boats.
Still, we "didn't feel like we were going to die or anything. We believed God would see us through," she said.
At one point a fishing ship came into contact with them but left without providing assistance. A Canadian cargo ship came along and offered supplies, but when they pulled up alongside it, the vessels bumped and the smaller ship sustained even more damage.
They were getting hit by "squall after, squall, after squall."
"We were in the thick of it, but we prayed," she said. "Being out on that boat, I just knew I was going to see some miracles."
They watched the surrounding storms disperse, and "next thing you know the sun is out. It's amazing."
Eventually, their boat was spotted by a helicopter that had taken off from a nearby Venezuelan fishing vessel, which ended up saving them.
"The captain said, `Do you know where you're at? You're in the middle of nowhere,'" she said.
They were on the Venezuelan ship for about five days before transferring to the Japanese cargo ship, where they were for nearly three weeks before landing in Chile on Friday. The Chilean newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias reported the story of their arrival.
"They were looking for a kind of adventure; they wanted to live on a Polynesian island but they didn't have sufficient expertise to navigate adequately," police prefect Jose Luis Lopez, who took the family's statement at San Antonio, told the newspaper.
Sean Gastonguay's brother Jimmy, who lives in Arizona, said he had provided a description of the family's vessel to the U.S. Coast Guard and exchanged emails with them once they were picked up by the first boat.
"There was some concern, but we were hoping for the best, and they eventually popped up," he said. He was able to keep track of the family with the help of the Coast Guard as they were transferred from ship to ship.
"We're all happy. We have good peace of mind now," he said.
Hannah Gastonguay said the family will now "go back to Arizona" and "come up with a new plan."
Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/religious-family-lost-at-sea_n_3738010.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Bringing God Along For the Ride
August 8, 2013
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/bringing-god-along-for-the-ride/ [with comments]
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Ahmad Akkari, Danish Muslim Leader In Cartoon Rage Regrets Role, Apologizes To Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
By JAN M. OLSEN and KARL RITTER
08/09/13 12:35 PM ET EDT
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A Danish Muslim leader who seven years ago traveled the Muslim world fueling the uproar over newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is back in the headlines in Denmark after doing an about-face on the issue.
Once a leading critic of the Danish cartoons, which sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari now says the Jyllands-Posten newspaper had the right to print them.
His unexpected change of heart has received praise from pundits and politicians in recent weeks, though some question his sincerity. It has also disappointed some in the country's Muslim minority who were deeply offended by the cartoons.
Akkari, now 35, was the spokesman for a group of imams who led the protests against the drawings in Denmark. They traveled to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria to elicit support, saying the Danish government wouldn't listen to their concerns.
Their journeys helped turn the dispute into an international crisis. Dozens were killed in weeks of protests that included violent attacks against Danish missions in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Tiny Denmark found itself on a collision course with the Muslim world – something Akkari now regrets.
"I want to be clear today about the trip: It was totally wrong," Akkari told The Associated Press this week. "At that time, I was so fascinated with this logical force in the Islamic mindset that I could not see the greater picture. I was convinced it was a fight for my faith, Islam."
He said he's still a practicing Muslim but started doubting his fundamentalist beliefs after a 2007 trip to Lebanon, where he met Islamist leaders.
"I was shocked. I realized what an oppressive mentality they have," Akkari said.
A year later, he moved to Greenland, the desolate Danish Arctic island, where he worked in a school for two years.
"I had plenty of time to read and write. And think," said Akkari, who has shaved off the patchy beard he used to wear.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable ones, for fear it could lead to idolatry. Arguing that such religious sensitivities should not limit the freedom of speech, Jyllands-Posten in 2005 invited Danish cartoonists to draw the prophet.
At the time, Akkari joined Muslim hardliners demanding an apology from the paper and action against it by the government. He appeared to advocate violence against a more moderate Danish Muslim in a secret TV recording, but later said it was just a joke.
Akkari now says printing the drawings was OK and that his reaction at the time was wrong. Last week he even apologized in person to one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, who has faced multiple death threats and murder attempts from extremists. Many Muslims consider Westergaard's drawing, which depicts Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban, as the most offensive.
"I met a man who has converted from being an Islamist to become a humanist who understands the values of our society," Westergaard said of Akkari. "To me, he is really sincere, convincing and strong in his views."
Akkari's former colleagues in the Islamic Society of Denmark are not impressed, and have reportedly accused him of being an attention-seeker trying to get back into the limelight.
Group spokesman Bilal H. Assaad declined to comment on Akkari on Thursday but said "it is still not OK to publish drawings of Muhammad. We have not changed our position."
The group is believed to represent about 10 percent of Denmark's estimated 200,000 Muslims.
Michael Ulveman, who was an adviser to then-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Ramussen during the cartoon crisis, also expressed doubts about Akkari's sincerity.
"I think Ahmad Akkari should go on al-Jazeera and tell the Arabic world about his new realization," Ulveman wrote on his Facebook page. "That would have real value for Denmark and the freedom of speech. And convince many of us about the depth and reach of his reorientation."
Ritter reported from Stockholm.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/ahmad-akkari-danish-cartoon-_n_3736359.html [with comments]
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The Most Powerful Dissent in American History
Library of Congress
A smart new book reveals precisely how and why Oliver Wendell Holmes changed his mind about the first amendment.
Andrew Cohen
Aug 10 2013, 8:00 AM ET
If there is a more relevant or powerful passage in American law, I am not aware of it. Relevant because it expressed a universal concept -- free trade in ideas -- that 125 years after the Constitution was ratified still had not yet taken hold in our democracy. Powerful because it went beyond legal precepts to a fundamental fact of human existence: We all make mistakes. We all have good opinions and bad ones. None of us are right all the time. All of us at one point or another have to respect what someone else says. And life is an experiment from the moment we wake in the morning until the moment we lay our heads down at night.
It's a passage written 94 years ago that both explains and preserves our op-ed pages and the Internet, talk-radio shows, and blogs, in the brilliant blending of two American institutions that were not always destined to go together: the free market and free speech. It's a passage that both acknowledges human weakness and strives to master it, that recognizes the roiling diversity of American thought and seeks to make something clear and profound from it. From United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his dissent in Abrams v. United States [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0250_0616_ZD.html ]:
Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises.
But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.
Of course, the story of free speech in America neither begins nor ends with Abrams [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0250_0616_ZS.html ]. But it is a clear pivot point. In that 1919 case, a dispute decided one year minus one day after the end of the first "war to end all wars," the United States Supreme Court sustained the convictions of five Russian-born men who were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, as it had been amended by the Sedition Act of 1918, for "provoking and encouraging" resistance to the government's war efforts (and its hostile maneuvers toward Russia) through a series of pamphlets.
Such prosecutions would be unthinkable today, not because modern officials embrace criticism more bravely than their predecessors but because we have come as a nation and as a people to acknowledge that the First Amendment's protections are (and ought to be) especially stout when it comes to dissent about the public workings of government. And that nearly universal acknowledgment, which has survived America's four major wars since World War I and guides the way we both conduct business and handle our own personal affairs, was born in Justice Holmes' dissent.
Just in time for your August beach reading, Thomas Healy, a former federal appeals court law clerk and reporter for The Baltimore Sun, has written an excellent book about how Justice Holmes, perhaps the most famous and influential justice of all time, came to write this passage -- and came around, at last, to a rousing defense of the First Amendment. Titled The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind-- and Changed the History of Free Speech in America [ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8050-9456-5 ; http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Dissent-Wendell-Mind/dp/0805094563 ], the book is a fascinating glimpse into an art that seems lost in law and politics today: the art of changing one's mind.
In meticulous detail, Healy tells us how the great jurist, who had staunchly upheld criminal convictions in free speech cases just months [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0249_0047_ZS.html ] before, changed his mind in Abrams. He changed it because of an intense lobbying effort by his political friends and fellow judges. He changed it because he had been reading the work of legal and political philosophers in Europe, both living and dead. He changed it because he came gradually to realize how broadly the Justice Department was relying upon federal statutes to punish even that dissent which was obviously unlikely to undermine the government's ability to function.
Healy begins his book with an anecdote about a visit Justice Holmes received at home from three of his fellow justices, after he had distributed his dissent in Abrams but before he would publicly announce it. What transpired in that meeting isn't just "a remarkable piece of constitutional history," as Healy puts it, but remarkable for what it suggests about the way the Supreme Court does (or does not) operate today. Can you imagine Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito visiting Justice Anthony Kennedy in this fashion? I cannot. From Healy's book, on the 1919 Court's initial reaction to Holmes' words:
No one else on the Court wrote like this. Only Holmes could translate the law into such stirring, unforgettable language. Yet even by his high standards this was unusually fine, and his colleagues worried about the effect it might have. Although the war had ended a year earlier, the country was still in a fragile state. There had been race riots that summer, labor strikes that fall. A bomb had exploded on the attorney general's doorstep-- the opening strike, the papers warned, in a grand Bolshevik plot. A dissent like this, from a figure as venerable as Holmes, might weaken the country's resolve and give comfort to the enemy.
The nation's security was at stake, the justices told Holmes. As an old soldier, he should close ranks and set aside his personal views. They even appealed to [Holmes' wife] Fanny, who nodded her head in agreement. The tone of their plea was friendly, even affectionate, and Holmes listened thoughtfully. He had always respected the institution of the Court and more than once had suppressed his own beliefs for the sake of unanimity. But this time he felt a duty to speak his mind. He told his colleagues he regretted he could not join them, and they left without pressing him further.
Three days later, Holmes read his dissent in Abrams v. United States from the bench. As expected, it caused a sensation. Conservatives denounced it as dangerous and extreme. Progressives hailed it as a monument to liberty. And the future of free speech was forever changed.
There have been other instances where a justice changed his mind in a case of profound constitutional import. As Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe reminded me this week, Justice Potter Stewart shifted on the issue of reproductive autonomy from dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZO.html ] in 1965 to the majority in Roe v. Wade [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZS.html ] in 1973. Justice William J. Brennan shifted on obscenity standards from Roth v. United States [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0354_0476_ZO.html ] in 1957 to Paris Adult Theatre v. Slaton [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/413/49 ] in 1973. Justice Harry Blackmun belatedly changed his mind [ http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/23/us/death-penalty-is-renounced-by-blackmun.html?pagewanted=all ] about the constitutionality of the death penalty. Then there was Justice Owen Roberts' "switch in time [ http://news.byu.edu/archive12-sep-switchintime.aspx ]" in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0300_0379_ZS.html ] in 1937. None come close to Holmes' "fighting faith" passage.
Judges, and politicians, are too often criticized for changing their minds. Are you not smarter today than you were 10 years ago? Twenty years ago? Have not life's many "experiments" given you wisdom that you did not previously have? The genius of Justice Holmes' dissent in Abrams wasn't just its eloquence it was "meta-ness." He was changing his mind about the need, the value, the glory, the benefit, of changing one's mind and of accepting the changing of other people's minds. Healy has written a magnificent book about a magnificent moment in American legal history -- and in the life of a magnificent man who was smart enough to understand just how wrong people can be.
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-most-powerful-dissent-in-american-history/278503/ [with comments]
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Judge Rules Baby Can't Be Named 'Messiah'
This photo provided by Heidi Wigdahl of WBIR-TV shows seven-month old Martin DeShawn McCullough being held by his mom Jaleesa Martin. A judge in eastern Tennessee changed the boy's first name to Martin from "Messiah.'
(Heidi Wigdahl/AP Photo)
NEWPORT, Tenn. August 12, 2013 (AP)
A judge in Tennessee changed a 7-month-old boy's name to Martin from Messiah, saying the religious name was earned by one person and "that one person is Jesus Christ."
Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew ordered the name change last week, according to WBIR-TV [ http://www.wbir.com/news/article/283997/2/Judge-orders-babys-name-be-changed-from-Messiah ( http://on.wbir.com/1cDOeTY )]. The boy's parents were in court because they could not agree on the child's last name, but when the judge heard the boy's first name, she ordered it changed, too.
"It could put him at odds with a lot of people and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is," Ballew said.
It was the first time she ordered a first name change, the judge said.
Messiah was No. 4 among the fastest-rising baby names in 2012, according to the Social Security Administration's annual list of popular baby names.
The judge in eastern Tennessee said the baby was to be named Martin DeShawn McCullough, which includes both parents' last name.
The boy's mother, Jaleesa Martin, of Newport, said she will appeal. She says Messiah is unique and she liked how it sounded alongside the boy's two siblings — Micah and Mason.
"Everybody believes what they want so I think I should be able to name my child what I want to name him, not someone else," Martin said.
Ballew said the name Messiah could cause problems if the child grows up in Cocke County, which has a large Christian population.
"The word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ," the judge said.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tenn-judge-childs-messiah-19931569 [with comments]
*
ACLU says Tenn. judge can't ban 'Messiah' baby name
Judge ordered parents of a 7-month-old son to change his name to "Martin."
August 12, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/12/baby-name-messiah-tennessee-aclu/2644429/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Larry Kudlow Wonders If Pope Francis Understands Economic Freedom
08/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/larry-kudlow-pope-francis_n_3743495.html [with embedded video of the (truly exemplary) Kudlow segment, and comments] [and see in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=71561891 and preceding and following]
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For Freshmen in the House, Seats of Plenty
Representative Andy Barr, right, with Speaker John A. Boehner, has raised more money from finance industry PACs than many longtime House members have.
Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas, another [Republican] freshman on the Financial Services Committee.
Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri, a Republican freshman on the Financial Services Committee who has pulled in a large number of industry contributions.
August 10, 2013
WASHINGTON — Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky with little experience in the intricacies of Wall Street, was among the lucky House freshmen to secure a seat on the powerful Financial Services Committee.
Now, half a year into his first term, he has emerged as a telling example of why the panel is sometimes called “the cash committee” — a place, critics say, where there are big incentives for freshmen to do special favors for the industry.
Mr. Barr, 40, a first-time elected official, has raised nearly as much money this year from political action committees run by major banks, credit unions and insurance companies as longtime lawmakers like Speaker John A. Boehner and other party leaders.
The flood of financial industry cash — $150,000 in political action committee donations to Mr. Barr in just six months — is hardly an accident.
One afternoon in April, Mr. Barr hosted credit union lobbyists [ http://www.cuna.org/webassets/pages/newsnowarticle.aspx?id=57236 ] and executives in his House office just before a committee hearing, promising that he would help protect a federal tax break worth $500 million a year, the executives said. Last month, he introduced legislation [ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr2673 ] to eliminate a new federal rule intended to prevent banks from issuing mortgages to customers who could not afford to repay the debt — a measure pushed by bank lobbyists who had visited his office.
“People support him because they agree with him,” Catherine Gatewood, Mr. Barr’s spokeswoman, said after he declined requests for an interview.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/us/politics/for-freshmen-in-the-house-seats-of-plenty.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/us/politics/for-freshmen-in-the-house-seats-of-plenty.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Member of Congressional Science Committee: Global Warming a ‘Fraud’ to ‘Create Global Government’
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
(Courtesy of Flickr user gage Skidmore)
Lee Fang on August 10, 2013 - 2:24 AM ET
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a senior member [ http://science.house.gov/about/membership ] of the House Science Committee, used a portion of his time at a town hall this week to launch into a rant about global warming, which he described as a plot by liberals to “create global government to control our lives.”
The congressman prefaced his remarks by noting that he wanted to respond to comments from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who said recently that ongoing wildfires in Southern California have been exacerbated by a dry season [ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/08/sen-boxer-severe-fire-season-in-southland-evidence-of-climate-change/ ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/california-climate-change_n_3725271.html ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/10/california-wildfire-season_n_3737175.html ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/silver-wildfire_n_3730410.html ] that is the result of climate change. Rohrabacher, speaking Thursday afternoon before the Newport Mesa Tea Party, then launched into a discussion about how the science of global warming has been promulgated by a cabal of scientists, liberal politicians and United Nation “global government” types. These forces, who would like to usurp American liberty, could even be from Nigeria, he warned (partial transcript below, emphasis added):
ROHRABACHER: Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud and it is being designed by—what you’ve got is you’ve got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions. Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives. That’s what the game plan is. It’s step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades.… Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that’s gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he’s a UN government official, not a US government official.
Watch the video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Dqi5tX-SY (next below, as embedded)] here:
Rohrabacher also argued that government-funded scientists have received “so much money” for research that “they have used it to intimidate people who disagree with their attempt to frighten all of us into changing our lives and giving up our freedoms to make choices.” The sinister role of scientists, he claimed, is akin to the military industrial complex described by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address. The conspiracy to destroy freedom is apparently very vast.
Rohrabacher has never been shy about expressing his fringe beliefs about climate change. In the past, he’s suggested that global warming has been caused by everything from dinosaur flatulence [ http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/02/10/10241/dino-flatulence/ ] to rainforests [ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/31/dana-rohrabacher-r-ca-on-climate-change-makes-wrong-even-wronger/ ; http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/republicans-climate-solution-clearcut-the-rain-forest/ ]—pretty much everything except the fossil fuel industries that provide Rohrabacher with campaign donations [ http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00007151&type=I ].
Rohrabacher is one of many lawmakers who, despite living in a state reeling from climate disasters, denies the basic science of anthropogenic global warming. Earlier this week, Representative Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told ThinkProgress’s Scott Keyes that he doubts that the climate is changing. As Keyes reported [ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/09/2441831/mullin-climate/ ], Mullin’s state has suffered from problems that have grown worse from climate change, from “massive tornadoes to widespread droughts, record-breaking heat to severe winter storms.”
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Barack Obama's proposal to slow the pace of climate change.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/174987/obama-lays-out-his-plan-slow-global-warming
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Copyright © 2012 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175697/science-committee-congressman-global-warming-fraud-create-global-government [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90885246 and preceding and following]
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Drought damaging area trees
The drought is damaging many trees in northcentral Texas.
(Cherry Rushin)
Cherry Rushin
Posted: 08/11/2013 05:40:16 AM CDT
Young County trees have lacked necessary water for years. Even some of the extremely drought-tolerant mesquites are dying.
Young County AgriLife Extension Agent Brad Morrison has some suggestions on how to help save your trees.
“This has been going on for five years, and we’re at the point where even deep-rooted plants are having severe difficulties,” Morrison said. “It’s started showing up in our pecan trees in the thinning of the foliage and the canopy, and we’re also even seeing it in mesquite trees and cedar trees.”
The cure for this is moisture, but with little to go around, Morrison suggests putting the trees in your landscape first. “I would recommend that people really take an opportunity and do some supplemental watering of their trees even more importantly than their turf. Because we don’t want to lose these trees next spring,” he said.
Deep watering is the best for trees which is a slow watering over a prolonged period of time or lower in volume, but long in duration. Proper placement of the water is important, as well. Morrison recommends watering about midway between the trunk and the outside edge of branches or overhang.
“That’s where the primary feeder roots reside underneath the drip line of the tree,” Morrison said. “Soaker hoses and things that put out low volume but continuous amounts of water are better than short, quick waterings. It probably would not hurt during these extremely hot temperatures to water during the evening to reduce evaporation.”
Read more about helping your trees survive the drought in the Aug. 11 issue of The Graham Leader.
© Copyright 2013 Media News group
http://www.grahamleader.com/ci_23830552/drought-damaging-area-trees
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Insurance Industry, Republicans Split on Climate Change
By Mark Drajem - Jul 18, 2013 1:27 PM CT
The U.S. insurance industry [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/insurance-industry/ ] told Senators that a surge in weather-related catastrophes has forced billions of dollars in payouts, offering an assessment at odds with Republicans who have expressed doubt about global warming.
The Reinsurance Association of America [ http://www.reinsurance.org/ ], which represents companies such as Swiss Re Ltd. (SREN) and Munich Re, today urged Congress to have federal agencies consider climate risk in project reviews, and offer tax incentives to help homeowners prepare for severe hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.
“The industry is at great financial peril if it does not understand global and regional climate impacts, variability and developing scientific assessment of a changing climate,” Franklin Nutter, president of the association, said in testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. “We are committed to work with you to address the exposure of citizens and their property to extreme weather risk.”
The affect of these weather events is exacerbated by the growth in population and building in coastal and rural areas, he said.
The group was the one industry voice among a panel [ http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=cfe32378-96a4-81ed-9d0e-2618e6ddff46 ] of experts discussing global warming at the hearing. Republicans questioned whether global warming is happening, if man-made emissions of greenhouse gases [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/greenhouse-gases/ ] is causing weather changes and if the costs of trying to address carbon emissions [ http://topics.bloomberg.com/carbon-emissions/ ] is worth it.
Jobs Talks
“What we need to talk about is jobs,” said Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican. Democrats and President Barack Obama “are willing to bet the economy today on an uncertain” prediction “about the future,” he said at the hearing.
Barrasso objected to Obama’s pledge to use executive powers to develop regulations that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and eliminate U.S. support for coal projects built in poor nations. Those efforts will raise the cost of energy and could put coal producers out of business, and lead to a loss in jobs, he said.
Saying science had put to rest the question about whether the planet is warming, Obama argued that limiting emissions would spur technological advancement and new jobs.
“I don’t have much patience for anyone that denies that this challenge is real,” Obama said June 25 at Georgetown University.
Republicans took issue with that statement today. While most climate researchers say the science is settled that greenhouse-gas emissions are causing global warming, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana said the climate is always changing, and that solar flares, natural emissions of carbon dioxide or cosmic rays may be the cause of current weather patterns.
Congress’s Control
“The climate has always and will always be changing because there are influences on our climate that will always be outside Congress’s control,” Vitter said.
As a week-long heatwave pushed Washington’s temperatures today to near a high for the year, Democratic lawmakers said they weren’t sure what kind of evidence would persuade Republicans that global warming is real.
“I don’t know what it will take to convince you of what is going on outside the window,” California Democrat Barbara Boxer, the chairman of the panel, said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net
©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-18/insurance-industry-republicans-split-on-climate-change.html [with comments]
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Republican fringe surfaces in electoral off-year
The Rachel Maddow Show
August 12, 2013
Rachel Maddow rounds up some of the more unconventional Republican political figures who have moved from the political fringe to make outrageous assertions in the mainstream spotlight.
© 2013 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/52740698 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcomjhgEAEE , also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk8fbo-8qUs ( http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maddow-takes-on-gop-kooks-not-just-fringe-theyre-mainstream-now/ ); show links at http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/13/19997508-links-for-the-812-trms (with comments)]
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Donald Trump speaks at the Family Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 11, 2013 by BreakingNews
Donald Trump speaks at the Family Leadership Summit on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013 at Stephens Auditorium in Ames, Iowa.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I--3bLaE7kY [a different/poorer quality/slightly more complete (at start and finish) capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaStcPSpE5w ]
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Congressman Steve King at Family Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Iowa Congressman Steve King fires up the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMlduYQg85A [a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mT70JcTq6g ] [and see in particular, relative to this item and others in this post above and below, (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90902398 and preceding (and any future following)]
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Ted Cruz Continues Campaign Against Obamacare
By CATHERINE LUCEY
08/10/13 10:32 PM ET EDT
AMES, Iowa -- Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday continued his call for cutting off funding for President Barack Obama's health care law and told conservative Christians that congressional lawmakers can't be counted on to do it.
The Texas Republican, a tea-party favorite and a possible presidential candidate in 2016, drew a standing ovation at the Family Leadership Summit with his denouncement of the health care initiative labeled "Obamacare" by its critics.
"That reaction right there shows how we win this fight," Cruz said. "If I was sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction would be fundamentally different. If we have to depend on Washington, it will never be done."
As he has in remarks to other conservatives, Cruz asserted that a grassroots effort would be needed. "The only way we win this fight is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable," he said.
Cruz has been part of a push by some conservative lawmakers to close the government temporarily this fall – by refusing to fund federal operations beyond Sept. 30 – if that's the only way to cut off money for Obama's health care law. Other Republicans have dismissed the tactic as counterproductive and even dangerous for Republicans seeking re-election next year.
Last Tuesday the party's most recent presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, told donors that "there are better ways to remove Obamacare" and predicted that a shutdown effort would result in the health care law being funded anyway, Republicans suffering at the polls and Americans being unhappy.
Asked about the Romney remarks, Cruz told reporters at the Iowa event: "There are lots of folks that can share their views. In my view, No. 1, there's bipartisan agreement Obamacare isn't working. No. 2, this is the single best opportunity to defund it."
Cruz demurred when asked whether he agreed with Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus' warning to NBC and CNN that airing TV programs about Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, could cost the networks any party cooperation on future GOP primary debates. NBC plans a miniseries and CNN a documentary.
"The RNC will make its own decisions," Cruz said. "I don't think anybody is surprised to discover that that the mainstream media are in love with Hillary Clinton. Indeed, I would expect both of those movies will be released on Valentine's Day."
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who sought the Republican nomination in 2012 and might again in 2016, told the group that the party must do a better job reaching out to working-class voters. The winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 said that by focusing on business owners in that election, the GOP failed to connect with "job holders" and "marginalized" a group of voters.
"We need to reject this idea that if we build the economy, all boats will rise. We need to talk about people who have holes in their boats, because we all do," Santorum said.
Reality TV star and real estate mogul Donald Trump, who flirted with a presidential run in 2012, said the GOP was struggling and would need a strong candidate in 2016, "someone who is really smart and really good."
The daylong event was one of many cattle calls for potential candidates in the grueling run-up to the next presidential election. Conservative voters will likely be critical to a victory in the Iowa caucuses, the nation's first presidential nominating event.
Iowa Republican consultant Doug Gross said conservative Christian voters could play a big role in 2016.
"Historically the people that are there (at the Family Leader summit), represent about 40 percent of the caucus-goers. That's not an insignificant portion," Gross said. "It depends how many conservatives get in the race. It's totally wide open."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/ted-cruz-obamacare_n_3738451.html [with embedded video report, and (over 23,000) comments]
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Rafael Cruz at Family Leadership Summit pt1 & pt2
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Pastor Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, speaks at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jkCC04eTJA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SWYINkftMQ [a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrEpRglQNMo ]
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Ted Cruz’s dad: Obama is ‘just like’ Castro
07/08/2013
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/08/ted-cruzs-dad-obama-is-just-like-castro/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Ted Cruz at Family Leadership Summit pt1, pt2 and pt3
Published on Aug 12, 2013 by TheIowaRepublican
Texas Senator Ted Cruz delivers a rousing speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa [on 8/10/13].
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_skUNImMa8 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD1XMtP85GA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Pz_Suu4kA {a different/poorer quality capture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2FxTiBtOx8 ]
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Ted Cruz - Press Avail - The FAMiLY Leadership Summit
Published on Aug 11, 2013 by Caffeinated Thoughts
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke to the media after speaking at The FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Ames, IA on 8/10/13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yIERU-DwI
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Ted Cruz asks Iowa evangelical activists to text him their numbers
Aug. 10, 2013
AMES, IA. — Take out your cellphones right now, Republican Ted Cruz told Christian conservatives in Iowa this afternoon.
“If you’re willing to help tell the story about how freedom works, how it produces opportunity, I ask you to text the word ‘growth’ to 33733,” he said.
Cruz, a born-again Christian who is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate, watched as the crowd of about 1,000 dutifully sent the text, connecting their cellphone numbers to what he said is a call for a grassroots uprising.
“God bless the Family Leader. God bless Bob Vander Plaats,” Cruz said, referring to the organizer of today’s Family Leadership Summit. “What a tremendous voice for life, for marriage, for returning to our founding principles.”
Cruz made the same five-digit text plea in South Carolina in May, asking GOP activists there to help protect the constitution. Republicans who did as he asked got a message from Cruz’s political action committee, the Jobs, Growth & Freedom Fund.
[...]
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130810/NEWS09/130810016/Ted-Cruz-asks-Iowa-evangelical-activists-text-him-their-numbers [with (a better than the above YouTubes) video of Cruz speaking to the Family Leadership Summit embedded]
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Analysis: Ted Cruz turning into Rick Perry’s worst nightmare in Iowa
Monday, August 12, 2013
Rick Perry can’t afford to lose any of his 2012 Iowa supporters if he is to have any chance to win the 2016 Republican presidential caucuses there.
After all, the Texas governor finished a poor fifth in 2012 — a disastrous result that led to his withdrawal from the White House race just two weeks later.
So Team Perry can’t be pleased to look at the web site TheIowaRepublican.com [ http://theiowarepublican.com/ ] and read the headline, “Cruz Garnering Excitement Across Republican Factions [ http://theiowarepublican.com/2013/cruz-garnering-excitement-across-republican-factions/ ].”
Yes, that’s fellow Texan Ted Cruz [ http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/category/ted-cruz/ ]. The freshman senator. The 42-year-old firebrand who’s young enough to be Perry’s son.
“The Republican Party is desperately in need of a leader who can bring the party together and excite the base,” the story by longtime Iowa journalist and Republican operative Kevin Hall began. “Early signs indicate that Texas Senator Ted Cruz might be that man.”
Check out the quotes from the audience that just saw Cruz in Ames, Iowa, over the weekend:
“That was the first political speech to get me excited in a very long time,” said Dane Nealson, the chair of the Story County GOP who worked on the presidential campaigns for Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry. “He’s the best shot I’ve seen so far to unite the factions.”
The Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Rick Santorum in the 2012 Iowa Caucus, gave a decidedly more enthusiastic introduction for Senator Cruz than he did for Santorum.
“Cruz is a phenomenon that I haven’t seen the like of in a long time, probably ever,” Vander Plaats told TheIowaRepublican.com.
It’s the conventional wisdom — and, we all know, conventional wisdom is often wrong — that only one Texas candidate can make the “first tier” of 2016 Republican presidential candidates. Early polling shows Cruz doing far better than Perry — even in Texas, where Perry has ruled for more than 13 years. And Cruz is proving to be far more aggressive at reaching out to conservative grassroots voters and opinion leaders.
Perry’s star has fallen so far that he’s not even included in many Republican presidential polls.
If the Texas governor is to be taken seriously, he needs to generate lines like this on TheIowaRepublican.com:
“Popular with libertarians, social conservatives and making waves with mainstream Republicans, Ted Cruz is exciting Iowa Caucus goers in ways that few candidates ever have.”
Even without the Cruz complication, Perry is piling up a new collection of “oops” moments, those self-inflicted wounds that define his national image. My Austin bureau colleague Peggy Fikac sums it up in her column this week:
Perry, in a June speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington, slammed the Obama administration by saying it “won’t make one phone call to save our men and women in an embassy in Lebanon.” He apparently meant Libya. In a July interview with the Washington Post, Perry framed his potential 2016 prospects by saying that “America’s been a country of second choices.” When reporter Dan Balz asked if he meant second chances, Perry said, “Both,” according to the story. “Second choices and second chances.” It’s hard to imagine he really meant to cast himself as a second-choice candidate, but if so, it’s less than a winning slogan.
Perry launched August by mixing up his locales during an appearance at the RedState blogger gathering — even though “New Orleans” was written on the front of the lectern. “There are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach that we’ve taken over the years. I’m in one today — in Florida. You look at South Carolina. You look at Florida,” Perry said. A voice called out, “We’re in Louisiana.”
Will Perry run for president in 2016? The governor says he’s still thinking about it and praying about it. While he’s thinking, however, Ted Cruz is winning converts.
Copyright 2013 Hearst Communications, Inc.
http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/08/analysis-ted-cruz-turning-into-rick-perrys-worst-nightmare-in-iowa/ [with comments]
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Bob Vander Plaats: Ted Cruz a 'Phenomenon'
12 Aug 2013
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/plaats-cruz-political-phenomenon/2013/08/12/id/519967 [no comments yet]
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Cruz mocks Senate GOP colleagues' commitment to defunding ObamaCare
By Alexander Bolton
08/10/13 07:36 PM ET
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired a broadside at his Senate GOP colleagues Saturday by mocking their commitment to defunding ObamaCare and calling for a grassroots army to take up the cause.
Cruz told conservative activists gathered at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, that that many Republican lawmakers are not ready to fight what he called the most important battle in Washington: stopping the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
He elicited roaring applause from the audience when he called repeal of ObamaCare the most important regulatory reform on the agenda.
Contrasting the crowd’s response to his GOP colleagues’, he quipped: “If I were sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction to that statement would be fundamentally different. I don’t know that I’m quick enough to dodge all the things that would be thrown at me.”
Other Republican senators have warned against this strategy as a dangerous gambit that could backfire.
“I can’t count the number of Republicans in Washington who say, ‘Look, we can’t defund it. No, no, no. We can pass symbolic votes against it but we can’t actually stand up and take a risk and be potentially be blamed,’” Cruz said.
He called on conservative activists to form a “grassroots army” over the next month and a half to put pressure on GOP leaders to block any stopgap spending measure to keep the government running past the end of September if it allows the controversial health reform law to go forward.
He urged them to visit the website www.Don’tFundObamaCare.com and to text the word “growth” to 33733.
“This is the most important fight this Congress will face and the only way we win this fight is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable,” he said.
He listed repealing the healthcare law and regulatory reform one of three legs of his plan to restore economic growth in the United States. The other two components are cutting spending and reforming the tax code.
He blasted the nation’s persistent budget deficit as “fundamentally immoral” because of the burden it would place on younger and future generations.
Throwing red meat to the crowd, he touted the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service as the best way to reform the tax code.
“I think the simplest and best solution is we need to abolish the IRS,” he said.
He panned Republican colleagues for lacking enough conviction to shutter the tax agency and called again for a grassroots army to take up the cause.
“If we have to depend on Washington politicians to get that done, it will never ever be done. The only way we abolish the IRS is if the American people rise up and demand it of our elected officials,” he said.
He said the potency of grassroots activism was shown earlier this year when President Obama’s proposal to expand background checks for gun sales and prohibit military-style semiautomatic weapons was soundly defeated in the Senate.
“If that dispute were decided on Washington rules, the momentum behind the president’s anti-Second Amendment proposals was unstoppable and what happened again is the American people got engaged,” he said.
Cruz’s visit to Iowa has stoked speculation that he will weigh a bid for the White House in 2016. He spoke at the Silver Elephant dinner in South Carolina, another important primary state, in May.
He also played to the crowd on the Senate’s immigration reform bill, which is unpopular among conservative voters in Iowa. He touted Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of Congress’s harshest critics of granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, as a “forceful advocate” of securing the nation’s borders.
Cruz drew a bright line between himself and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an author of the Senate bill, who is also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.
He predicted that House Republicans would not go along with the proposals championed by Senate Democrats.
“I believe because the grassroots is speaking that the House of Representatives is not going to follow [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and the Senate Democrats down the path of legalization first and not securing the borders,” he said.
© 2013 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/316511-cruz-mocks-senate-gop-colleagues-commitment-to-defunding-obamacare [with comments]
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Mitch McConnell Seeks Delay For Obamacare Insurance Exchanges
By Sharon Begley
Posted: 08/12/2013 2:03 pm EDT
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday called on the Obama administration to delay the Oct. 1 opening of exchanges where uninsured Americans will be able to buy health insurance until the U.S. government can guarantee the protection of people's personal data.
The exchanges, a key element of the president's signature 2010 healthcare law dubbed "Obamacare," will be largely online.
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency taking the lead in implementing the law, McConnell said that "Americans should not be forced into the exchanges, and certainly not without these assurances" that personal and financial data will be safe from "hackers and cyber criminals."
"If you rush to go forward without adequate safeguards in place," McConnell added, "any theft of personal information from constituents will be the result of your rush to implement a law to meet the agency's political needs and not the operational needs of the people it is supposed to serve."
The law, which aims to reduce the number of uninsured Americans and cut U.S. healthcare costs, was passed three years ago over unified Republican opposition in Congress. Congressional Republicans have sought numerous times since then to repeal it or block certain aspects of it from being implemented.
Concerns about data security arose last week after the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a report saying CMS had missed several self-imposed deadlines for testing the security of the information technology that will power the insurance exchanges being set up in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CMS is part of HHS.
As a result of the delays, a ruling by HHS's chief information officer certifying the security of the federal information technology system, which every state has to use for its own exchange, will be pushed back to Sept. 30, a day before enrollment under the measure is due to start.
The delay in testing and certifying information technology security, experts said, could allow the exchanges to open with security flaws or force them to postpone when they begin to enroll people in health insurance.
On Friday, Oregon announced that individuals seeking to purchase health insurance on that state's exchange would not be able to do so when it opens on Oct. 1 unless they use an agent or other individual who has been trained and given an account by the state. Cover Oregon, as the exchange is called, said the delay was not due to information technology issues alone but to overall concerns about the exchange's ability to meet the expected surge of customers.
In his letter, McConnell cited the inspector general's report, saying that "while I believe we ought to repeal this law and replace it with commonsense reforms that lower cost, Americans ought to be assured, at an absolute minimum, that their personal and financial data will be safe from data thieves."
In order to buy insurance on a state exchange, people must submit personal information that is then checked against data held on servers at the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies, including income history.
The concerns about data security center on the possibility that someone could access those databases through the federal data services hub, which is being created especially for Obamacare and will connect information from all the U.S. agencies needed for someone to purchase insurance.
McConnell, who is trying to fend off a challenger from the conservative Tea Party movement in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary next May, opposed Obama's healthcare measure from its inception.
But he faces pressure from some conservative Republicans who are threatening a government shutdown on Oct. 1 unless legislation is enacted by then to deny federal funding for the healthcare law.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/mitch-mcconnell-obamacare_n_3744711.html [with comments]
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A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: August 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.
The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014.
The grace period has been outlined on the Labor Department’s Web site since February, but was obscured in a maze of legal and bureaucratic language that went largely unnoticed. When asked in recent days about the language — which appeared as an answer to one of 137 “frequently asked questions about Affordable Care Act implementation [ http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-aca12.html ]” — department officials confirmed the policy.
The discovery is likely to fuel continuing Republican efforts this fall to discredit the president’s health care law [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html ].
Under the policy, many group health plans will be able to maintain separate out-of-pocket limits for benefits in 2014. As a result, a consumer may be required to pay $6,350 for doctors’ services and hospital care, and an additional $6,350 for prescription drugs under a plan administered by a pharmacy benefit manager.
Some consumers may have to pay even more, as some group health plans will not be required to impose any limit on a patient’s out-of-pocket costs for drugs next year. If a drug plan does not currently have a limit on out-of-pocket costs, it will not have to impose one for 2014, federal officials said Monday.
The health law, signed more than three years ago by Mr. Obama, clearly established a single overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for each individual or family. But federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs.
In many cases, the companies have separate computer systems that cannot communicate with one another.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said: “We knew this was an important issue. We had to balance the interests of consumers with the concerns of health plan sponsors and carriers, which told us that their computer systems were not set up to aggregate all of a person’s out-of-pocket costs. They asked for more time to comply.”
Health plans are free to set out-of-pocket limits lower than the levels allowed by the administration. But many employers and health plans sought the grace period, saying they needed time to upgrade their computer systems. “Benefit managers using different computer systems often cannot keep track of all the out-of-pocket costs incurred by a particular individual,” said Kathryn Wilber, a lawyer at the American Benefits Council, which represents many Fortune 500 companies that provide coverage to employees.
Last month the White House announced a one-year delay in enforcement of another major provision of the law, which requires larger employers to offer health coverage to full-time employees. Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said that the delay of the employer mandate showed “we are listening” to businesses, which had complained about the complexity of federal reporting requirements.
Although the two delays are unrelated, together they underscore the difficulties the Obama administration is facing as it rolls out the health care law.
Advocates for people with chronic illnesses said they were dismayed by the policy decision on out-of-pocket costs.
“The government’s unexpected interpretation of the law will disproportionately harm people with complex chronic conditions and disabilities,” said Myrl Weinberg, the chief executive of the National Health Council, which speaks for more than 50 groups representing patients.
For people with serious illnesses like cancer [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/cancer/overview.html ] and multiple sclerosis [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html ], Ms. Weinberg said, out-of-pocket costs can total tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Despite the delay, consumers in 2014 will still have many new protections. They cannot be denied health insurance [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/index.html ] or charged higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions, and many will qualify for subsidies intended to lower their costs.
In promoting his health care plan in 2009, Mr. Obama cited the limit on out-of-pocket costs as one of its chief virtues. “We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick,” Mr. Obama told a joint session of Congress in September 2009.
Advocates for patients said the promise of the law was being deferred. “We have wonderful new drugs, the biologics, to treat rheumatoid arthritis [ http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/rheumatoid-arthritis/overview.html ], but they are extremely expensive,” said Dr. Patience H. White, a vice president of the Arthritis Foundation. “In the past, patients had to live in constant pain, often became disabled and had to leave their jobs. The new drugs can make a huge difference, and we were hoping that the cap on out-of-pocket costs would make them affordable. But now many patients will have to wait another year.”
The American Cancer Society shares the concern and noted that some new cancer drugs cost $100,000 a year or more.
“If a prescription drug plan does not currently have a limit, then it will not have to have one in 2014,” said Molly Daniels, deputy president of the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society. “Patients who require expensive drugs could continue to have enormous financial exposure, despite the clear intent of the law to limit a patient’s total out-of-pocket exposure.”
Federal officials said they were offering transition relief to certain health plans in 2014. But, they said, by 2015, health plans must comply with the law and must have an overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for medical, drug and other benefits combined.
Theodore M. Thompson, a vice president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said: “The promise of out-of-pocket limits was one of the main reasons we supported health care reform. So we are disappointed that some plans will be allowed to have multiple out-of-pocket limits in 2014.”
The law also requires coverage of dental care for children, but these benefits can be offered in a separate health plan with its own limit on out-of-pocket costs.
Federal rules say that a free-standing dental plan must have “a reasonable annual limitation on cost-sharing.” In states where the new health insurance marketplace will be run by the federal government, the limit on out-of-pocket costs for pediatric dental benefits can be no more than $700 for coverage of one child and $1,400 for a plan covering two or more children in the same family.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a-limit-on-consumer-costs-is-delayed-in-health-care-law.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/a-limit-on-consumer-costs-is-delayed-in-health-care-law.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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