NationalJournal - For a party that's accustomed to nominating the next-in-line presidential candidate, 2016 promises to be a very unusual year for the Republican Party. For the first time in decades, the GOP has no clear front-runner or even an establishment favorite at this early stage.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looked poised to fill that role, but his home-state scandals are endangering any national bid before it even gets underway. Jeb Bush would be an obvious contender, but Republican officials are skeptical he'd jump into the ring—all too cognizant of the baggage his last name brings. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker might be able to transcend the gap between the tea party and the establishment, but he still faces a challenging reelection back home. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida lost some cachet after his high-profile advocacy of immigration reform foundered.
But there's one candidate who isn't generating much buzz and whose résumé compares favorably with any of the top-tier candidates. He's a battleground-state governor who's looking in strong position to win a second term. He defeated one of the more popular Democratic governors in the country, who happened to be a major Clinton ally. He's from the Midwest, likely to be the critical region in the 2016 presidential election. He entered office as a prominent fiscal conservative but compromised on Medicaid expansion. And most important, Republican officials familiar with his thinking say he's seriously considering a presidential campaign.
Enter Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the swing-state executive who's currently polling at microscopic levels nationally but who could have an outsized impact on the 2016 race.
"The presidential nominee is likely to be a governor, and, frankly, Kasich is as well situated as anybody. This is a guy who can connect with a crowd, he can emote, he's got blue-collar roots, and he identifies with average folks. He's certainly no Romney," said former NRCC Chairman Tom Davis, who served with Kasich in Congress. "In my opinion, he's the total package. And I think he's interested."
By all accounts, Kasich shouldn't be considered a sleeper. As governor, he's presided over a Rust Belt renaissance, with the state's unemployment rate dropping from one of the highest in the country in 2009 (10.6 percent) to around the national average (7.2 percent) last month. In 2013, Kasich signed a sizable tax cut thanks to the state's newfound budget surplus. Kasich was among the first Republicans to tout the party's need to reach out to the disadvantaged, and he lived up to his rhetoric by passing prison-sentencing reform with support from African-American legislators.
He ran for president before in 2000, parlaying his role passing four balanced budgets with Bill Clinton as a main selling point of the campaign. In effect, he was Paul Ryan before Ryan was elected to Congress. But he barely made a dent in a year when George W. Bush secured early support from party leaders.
"Mitt Romney's biggest problem was the perception he didn't care—that's a Republican Achilles' heel almost built into the party," said former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. "It would be constructive to have a candidate who could diminish that gap because they're cut from a different cloth, they have a proven track record of helping the poor and middle-class, and their policies show it. For people like John Kasich, he feels it as a social calling. That has the potential to be attractive so long as it's matched with conservative ideology."
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, now, just a minute. Just a minute. The government is approaching another deadline February 7, when it will run out of money unless Congress agrees to raise the debt ceiling. Will you agree to raise the debt ceiling, or will you demand something in return.
SEN. TED CRUZ: Look, of course, we should do something. We shouldn't just write a blank check. Five years ago, the national debt was ten trillion dollars. That took 43 presidents over 200 years to build up ten trillion dollars in debt. Today, it's over 17 trillion dollars. It's grown nearly 70% with one president in five years.
And if you ask any American outside of Washington, "Should we just keep raising the debt ceiling while doing nothing, to have fundamental structural controls on spending to get Washington's spending problem under control," it doesn't matter if you're talking to a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, a libertarian.
Anyone outside of Washington says, "Of course." And it's worth noting in the past, the debt ceiling has been the most effective lever point for real structural reforms, whether it was Gramm-Rudman, which did a great job of restricting government spending, getting it under control or whether it was the Budget Control Act.
Both of those came through the debt ceiling. And what the president is saying is he just wants a blank credit card to keep growing and growing the debt, and I think that's irresponsible. I think it's irresponsible to our kids and grandkids to stick that debt on them because we can't live within our means.
abcNEWS - President Barack Obama will work with Congress where he can and circumvent lawmakers where he must, his top advisers warned Sunday in previewing Tuesday's State of the Union speech.Sure seems like the battle lines have been drawn, again. It also sounds like the President is in the mood to try the Imperial Ruler route and he may actually try it this time as he and his advisers probably believe he has enough public support to pull it off. You know, to hell with the Constitution and all.
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"I think the way we have to think about this year is we have a divided government," said Dan Pfeiffer, a longtime Obama adviser. "The Republican Congress is not going to rubber-stamp the president's agenda. The president is not going to sign the Republican Congress' agenda."
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"The president sees this as a year of action to work with Congress where he can and to bypass Congress where necessary," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
"The president has sort of hung out on the left and tried to get what he wants through the bureaucracy as opposed to moving to the political center," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP Senate leader.
Added Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.: "It sounds vaguely like a threat, and I think it also has a certain amount of arrogance."
WASHINGTON — The guest list for President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union address just got more interesting.
Yesterday, Sean Hannity said he’d be attending as a guest of Rep. Louie Gohmert. Hannity is a conservative pundit for Fox News. He’s had Gohmert, an outspoken critic of Obama, on his show a number of times. The Tyler Republican has even filled in hosting Hannity’s show on a few occasions.
Turns out, Hannity may have his own political ambitions in the Lone Star state.
“The answer is yes, I’d think about it,” Hannity said when a viewer asked via Facebook about his inclination to run for office eventually. “It would either be in Texas or Florida.” Hannity, who has indicated he’s leaving what he calls “anti-conservative” New York, later contrasted the state with Texas.
WASHINGTON — An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.
The findings are laid out in a 238-page report, scheduled for release by Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, that represent the first major public statement by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which Congress made an independent agency in 2007 and only recently became fully operational.
The report is likely to inject a significant new voice into the debate over surveillance, underscoring that the issue was not settled by a high-profile speech President Obama gave last week. Mr. Obama consulted with the board, along with a separate review group that last month delivered its own report about surveillance policies. But while he said in his speech that he was tightening access to the data and declared his intention to find a way to end government collection of the bulk records, he said the program’s capabilities should be preserved.
The Obama administration has portrayed the bulk collection program as useful and lawful while at the same time acknowledging concerns about privacy and potential abuse. But in its report, the board lays out what may be the most detailed critique of the government’s once-secret legal theory behind the program: that a law known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation, can be legitimately interpreted as authorizing the N.S.A. to collect all calling records in the country.
The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.” {Emphasis Mine}
THE HILL - Target Corp. announced on Tuesday it would no longer offer healthcare coverage to its part-time employees.
In a blog post on the company’s website, Jodee Kozlak, the executive vice president of human resources, framed it as a positive development for part-time employees of the company.
“The Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for healthcare coverage that we believe our part-time members may prefer,” she wrote. “In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.”
Kozlak added that at present, fewer than 10 percent of part-time employees that are eligible have actually enrolled in the company’s healthcare plan.
“Our decision to discontinue this benefit comes after careful consideration of the impact to our stores’ part-time team members and to Target, the new options available for our part-time team, and the historically low number of team members who elected to enroll in the part-time plan,” Kozlak continued.
The company’s new policy goes into effect on April 1, 2014. Consumers have until mid-March to sign up for ObamaCare to be eligible for coverage this year.
Target said it has a transition program in place to “minimize any disruption and reduce confusion” for those who will no longer be eligible for the company’s healthcare plan.
The company will provide a $500 cash payment to employees losing coverage, as well as access to a benefits consultant.
Target stressed the company would not be reducing hours for any employees.
Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said employers have been dropping coverage for years, and that under the Affordable Care Act, employees have will have an alternative when that happens.
"Since the Affordable Care Act became law, health care costs have been slowing and premiums are increasing by the lowest rates in years," she said in a statement. "Employers have been dropping coverage for more than a decade, long preceding the Affordable Care Act. But now, unlike before, employees have the option of shopping in the Marketplace for quality, affordable coverage, where they may be able to qualify for a tax credit to help pay for the cost."
Still, the announcement could reignite criticism over President Obama’s pledge that if you like your plan, you can keep it.
Many conservatives have warned that a wave of plan cancellations by private employers would be the next shoe to drop on the healthcare law./blockquote>
Via: Memeorandum
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin seized Martin Luther King Day as an opportunity to lob vague criticism at President Barack Obama.
"Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card," Palin wrote Monday on her Facebook page, after quoting from the civil rights icon's famous "I Have A Dream" speech.
Obama said in an extensive New Yorker profile published this weekend that he believes “there’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President."
"Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President," he added.
Palin didn't point to any specific instances of the President playing the race card in the short post.
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) - SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — A famed actress is facing backlash in San Francisco’s Latino community, after she voiced support for a conservative candidate for California governor.
Maria Conchita Alonso starred in a campaign ad for Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County, a Tea Party favorite who is seeking the Republican nomination.
Donnelly has voiced strong views against illegal immigration and was once involved with the Minutemen Project, a group that patrolled the border with Mexico to catch immigrants coming across.
“Politicians and big government are killing our prosperity, pushing welfare costs through the roof and driving our schools into the ground,” Donnelly said in the ad.
Standing next to Donnelly, Alonso jokingly translated in Spanish, “We’re screwed.”
Alonso is an actress of Cuban and Venezuelan descent. She is perhaps best known for her role in the movie “Moscow on the Hudson” which also starred Robin Williams.
The actress was to perform next month at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District in a Spanish-language version of “The Vagina Monologues,” scheduled for a run from February 14th through 17th. The show is being produced by none other than Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.
“We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately,” Lopez told KPIX 5. She said Alonso abruptly resigned from the cast on Friday, given the backlash on the immigration issue.
“Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe,” Lopez said.
Alonso received an earful from listeners of Spanish-language radio station KIQI 1010 AM in San Francisco on Friday, after she said in an interview that she supported many of Donnelly’s views on illegal immigration. Several listeners took her to task after she used the term “illegal” to describe undocumented immigrants.
From NewsBusters - Conservative author Ann Coulter threw down quite the gauntlet Wednesday.
After MSNBC's Ed Schultz said on his show, "Republicans, they’re afraid of me. They don’t want to talk to me," Coulter responded via Twitter, "Invite me on your show, you lying p--sy"
These MSNBC hosts like Rachel and Ed love posing as macho Republican-slayers, with Rachel repeatedly begging Republican senators to please, please, please come on her show (because she's such a formidable debater, you see), and now Schultz boasting that Republicans are terrified of him! We quake in our boots!
I've been begging to come on their shows for years now, but they're all apparently too afraid of a 99 lb girl. (Or any conservative who can put 2 sentences together -- Hey! Somebody get Todd Harris on the line!)
Moreover, I don't care that they're all a bunch of pussies at MSNBC, but cut the B.S. posturing when you won't allow any non-retarded conservative on your airwaves.
Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, explains that, overall, this is good news for Christie.
“The numbers suggest it’s far from politically fatal for him,” he says of the scandal, adding: “This is a developing story, so the extent of the damage down the road is an open proposition.”
But the down side for Christie, according to Miringoff: Americans “are getting to know to him, and that’s maybe not the best way to introduce himself to a national audience.”
The poll – conducted Jan. 12-14 – comes after released emails showing that a top Christie aide, as well as his Port Authority appointees, conspired to close local-access lanes to the busy George Washington Bridge as retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Christie Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly emailed Christie Port Authority aide David Wildstein back in Aug. 2013, just weeks before the lane closures.
“Got it,” Wildstein replied.
In a subsequent news conference last Thursday, Christie announced that he had fired Kelly, but also said that he had no knowledge of or role in the lane closings.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Via: MemeorandumNothing in the approximately 2,000 documents released on Friday by the Assembly committee investigating the matter suggest that Christie knew of the lane-closure scheme beforehand. And they shed little new light on whether administration officials targeted the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee because he did not endorse Christie.
All socialist countries are poor, and all poor countries are, or have until recently been, socialist. All rich countries are capitalist, and all capitalist countries are rich.
I would be interested in some counterexamples or arguments against this rule. It seems to hold true as long as we are clear what we mean by "socialism". Socialism here is defined as government ownership/control of the means of production, and not in the 'European meaning' of capitalism with welfarism, or the 'original meaning' of absence of private property rights.(Emphasis mine)
Scandinavia is often used as an example of rich socialist countries. But when using unequivocal definitions they are among the most capitalist countriesin the world. What about Bangladesh, India or Haiti as capitalist countries? Nope. All of those have a strong history of government ownership of the means of production. We just didn't read about their history, so we assume they are capitalist.
Can you think of any exceptions to above stated rule? If it holds true, why don't libertarians ever state it this clearly?
"They all look upon progressing material improvement as upon a self-acting process." - Ludwig von Mises
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| Dean Heller |
The Daily Beast - Dean Heller is no big spender, yet he talked five fellow Republicans into breaking his own party’s filibuster of extended unemployment benefits.
Before the Senate voted 60 to 37 Tuesday to end a Republican filibuster on a bill to extend jobless benefits for the next three months for the long-term unemployed, just one Republican senator went out on his own to speak in favor of it, the bill’s lone Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada. Republicans Kelly Ayotte, Dan Coats, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman joined Heller to move the bill forward, along with all Senate Democrats.
“Helping those in need should not be a partisan issue. Providing a limited social net is one of the responsibilities of the federal government,” Heller said. “Unfortunately, instead of planning ahead and figuring the best way to do that, we are now forced to decide whether or not to reinstate these benefits after they’ve expired.”
Heller’s push for the emergency aid makes sense, given Nevada’s 9.3% unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. But his willingness to champion the bill put the former stockbroker on the opposite side of nearly every Republican in Washington, including powerful conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Heritage Action, which announced Monday they would “key vote” against the measure.
His unambiguous push for the aid bill also highlighted the competing visions within his own party of how, and even whether, to help people still struggling in the nation’s uneven economic recovery, even as Washington Democrats push to exploit Republican opposition to aid measures going into the 2014 elections.
On unemployment benefits specifically, most GOP senators said Tuesday they would have supported the bill if the $6.5 billion cost had be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
1) Guaranteed Work for Everybody
2) Social Security for All
3) Take Back The Land
4) Make Everything Owned by Everybody
5) A Public Bank in Every State
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) The family-owned business at the center of the hit TV show "Duck Dynasty" has launched its own line of guns.Find the complete story below the fold.
The gunmaker Mossberg has teamed with Duck Commander, the company owned by "Duck Dynasty's" Robertson clan, to release nine different shotguns, as well as two semiautomatic rifles and a semiautomatic pistol.
Duck Commander was founded 40 years ago by Phil Robertson, the family patriarch who was recently suspended -- and then reinstated -- by A&E after making controversial remarks about gay people and African-Americans.
Just in from Mediate - The controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has now taken a step beyond his comments about homosexuality and bestiality, along with his assertion that black people in the Jim Crow South were happier and equating Muslims with Nazis.
Now with yet another video that’s surfaced, we’re once again reminded that this is nothing new for Robertson, who explained to an Arkansas congregation in 2008 what would “do in the Muslims,” as well as “the Chinese,” and that Muslims are “famous for murder.”
“What will do the Muslims in?” Robertson asked in the middle of his speech before the Hillsboro Church of Christ in El Dorado.
“Violations of the law, that’s what’ll do ‘em in,” he said waving his bible in the air.
