tagged w/ GOP
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There are 36 black delegates at the Republican convention here — fewer than 2% of the total and a sharp drop-off from 2004, a think tank reports.
The GOP record was set with 6.7% black delegates in 2004.
The Democratic Party, which has targets for minority representation, said a record 24.5% of delegates at its convention last week were black. That's about twice the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.
Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the GOP convention, said 13% of delegates this year are minorities. She said that's double the total in 1996, and "we look forward to continuing and expanding these relationships."
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which specializes in black issues and released the report, said Republican John McCain likely will end up with a historically low share of the black vote despite his outreach to groups such as the NAACP.
The chief reasons, the group said, are Democratic nominee Barack Obama's enormous appeal to black voters and McCain's "association with President Bush, an exceptionally unpopular figure" among blacks.
The report said McCain also is hurt because his home state of Arizona has few blacks and there are no well-known black elected officials to make his case.
GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele, whose group helps elect Republicans to state and local office, said the black community "has to get out of the mind-set that anything the Republican Party says is bad for them." But Steele, who is black, also said that "black folks aren't going to flock to the GOP unless they have something to flock to." He said his party should build coalitions and relationships with black voters.
One black convention delegate, Robert Smith of Little Rock, said he was amused but not surprised at the tiny number of blacks. He said he is on a personal mission to win back blacks he says are "voting for Barack Obama out of ethnicity rather than principle." If he's successful, he said, "this will be the last time you see so few" blacks at a GOP convention.There are 36 black delegates at the Republican convention here — fewer than 2%... more
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If anyone was thinking about the political repercussions of Hurricane Gustav — not that anyone at the Republican National Convention would admit to doing that — the bad news was that the GOP lost at least one night of national television programming.
The good news was that the decision to curtail Monday's activities was a chance to show candidate John McCain looking as though he was already in the Oval Office.
"It's time to take our Republican hats off and put our American hats on," McCain told reporters here Sunday by video hook-up from St. Louis. He had just visited Mississippi and toured preparations for the coming storm. He assessed the coordination among government agencies as "excellent" and discussed the search-and-rescue operations.
He even managed to distance himself from the Bush administration's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina three years ago. "I have every expectation that we will not see the mistakes of Katrina repeated," he said sternly.
Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, brushed off a question about the political impact of the convention changes. "We don't have the luxury (of thinking about) the politics of this situation," he said. Instead, the campaign helped a dozen Louisiana delegates get home to evacuate their families and urged the corporate interests planning lavish parties here to turn them into fundraising operations to help Gulf Coast charities.
House Republican leader John Boehner took a similar tack. Asked whether the roiled convention helped or hurt politically, he called the question "irrelevant" and added, "I'm a big believer in what is, is." He spoke at a luncheon with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.
Pressed by whether the chance to deliver the GOP message was a lost opportunity, he replied, "There's no knowable answer to that."
The hurricane upended plans by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to address the convention Monday night. Their appearances might have rallied conventioneers but also would have linked McCain to the current president, whose job approval rating in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll was a dismal 29%.
The Republicans were forced to respond in some way to avoid having scenes of partisans celebrating paired with footage of hurricane destruction. Decisions about the next three days of the convention schedule would be made "on a day-by-day basis," Davis said.
Still, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said the decision to all but cancel Monday's programming was "audacious," with the possibility of a big payoff — or big problems. It was the latest in a week full of gambles, including McCain's pick of first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
"They're giving up a major opportunity," Lake said. "At the same time, they're playing for an audacious credentialing."
If anyone was thinking about the political repercussions of Hurricane Gustav —... more
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John McCain may not be George Bush's twin on everything, but when it comes to hurricanes, the rivals turned friends are inextricably linked.
Three years ago this week, Bush was in Arizona, celebrating McCain's 69th birthday, when Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and nearly destroyed New Orleans. Now Gustav threatens to finish the job, just as McCain's Republican convention gets under way. But Republicans appear to have learned their lessons from 2005.
First Bush's appearance in the convention hall Monday, and then the entire Monday program, was canceled Sunday afternoon. Some legally required business will be conducted, but there won't be the kind of fire-breathing speeches that were expected to open the week.
McCain aides are taking the rest of the week one day at a time, depending on how hard the storm hits. Both the White House and the rest of the GOP are taking pains to show the kind of concern for the people in the storm's path that the Bush administration couldn't be bothered with the last time around.
The federal response to Katrina was a tipping point for many people around the country. Bush, and the Republican Party, saw their approval ratings slide with each day FEMA dithered in the face of the disaster.
The state and local governments (both controlled by Democrats at the time) didn't cover themselves with glory in 2005 either, but what voters from coast to coast remember is the "heckuva job" the Bush administration did. Federal officials seemed to be oblivious to the situation, and that is still hurting McCain now.
Even before Barack Obama arrived at Mile High Stadium to accept his party's nomination last week, the early five-day tracks had turned Gustav into a problematic metaphor for McCain. Having the unpopular Bush show up at the convention at all was going to be dicey anyway; having him speak literally at the moment another hurricane tore through New Orleans was inconceivable. (You might as well just cancel the election and have Obama take the oath of office now.)
Small wonder that the first change to the schedule in response to the storm was to scrub Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney from the speakers' roster. Even if the storm weren't forecast to be a monster, they might have felt called to supervise the response if it meant getting away from McCain's show for the night.
"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster," McCain told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. "So, we're monitoring it from day to day, and I'm saying a few prayers, too." He and his running mate, Sarah Palin -- whose appointment he announced on the anniversary of Katrina's landfall -- headed off to Jackson, Miss., for a photo op with Gov. Haley Barbour to show how concerned they were.
But McCain can hardly afford to let Gustav wash away his entire convention like just another underfunded Army Corps of Engineers levee. His "maverick" brand was damaged by his own efforts to unite his party behind him during the GOP primaries and by the Democrats' insistence that he represents an extra term for Bush.
It's also hard to go for Obama's jugular while people are losing their homes for the second time since the last election. If banners and bunting look out of place during a tragedy, so do political attacks. The new theme -- a call for national service -- still fits McCain's broad campaign message. GOP strategists believe McCain, and not Obama, has already dedicated his life to his country.
"I pledge that tomorrow night, and if necessary throughout our convention, we will act as Americans, not as Republicans," McCain told reporters in Jackson. "We have to change" the schedule, a McCain advisor said. Of course, for McCain, taking the high-minded approach of canceling partisan events carries some benefit (even if he didn't have much choice) -- it helps reinforce his narrative that he puts principles over politics. John McCain may not be George Bush's twin on everything, but when it comes to... more
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On the eve of the Republican National Convention, uncertainty is blowing through the host city at Category 5.
Not only are people wondering how Sen. John McCain and the GOP will have to alter the convention’s messages because of Hurricane Gustav and the painful reminders of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, but there now are big questions about how the expected street protests will play out.
Local and national media outlets have reported that there have been multiple raids on places where anti-war protesters are gearing up for a massive rally Monday, just before the convention’s opening.
The Hill newspaper, citing the National Lawyer Guild (NLG), reports that the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office, which leads the local law enforcement effort, has raided at least three homes and made several arrests.
Minnesota Public Radio reported that authorities had seized gallons of urine, wrist rockets and kerosene – just the sort of unconventional weapons that were feared, but never emerged, during the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Protesters have vowed to go forward with a rally of tens of thousands of people on Monday, when President Bush had been scheduled to speak. (Bush's appearance reportedly is in doubt due to the response to the hurricane.)
The RNC Welcoming Committee, an “anarchist/anti-authoritarian” group planning to “crash the convention,” has been giving regular updates on the protests – including names of those it says have been detained -- through its web site, www.nornc.org,
The group’s web site promotes a whole host of protest activities planned for Sept. 1 to Sept. 4, saying: “the Republican Party is coming to Minnesota to celebrate their latest conquests in global domination and exploitation. We of the RNC Welcoming Committee want to make sure that this time the fear-mongers will be met with their own biggest fear: people mobilized, organized, and taking the future back into their own hands.”
Similar rhetoric was used by protest planners before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where there were some high-profile confrontations between demonstrators and police but fewer arrests, conflicts and incidents than in past national party conventions.
Will higher tensions translate into more trouble during the RNC? Stay tuned
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, uncertainty is blowing through the... more
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Moopak
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It is cruel timing for Republicans that hurricane Gustav is forecast to reach the Gulf Coast on the opening day of the GOP convention.
Hobbled by an unpopular president, a disillusioned and divided base, and low poll ratings on almost every domestic issue, the party of Nixon and Reagan and Bush may well be at the end of a historic 40-year grasp on power, say conservative thinkers and political historians.
Republicans lost both houses of Congress in 2006. They were defeated in special elections this year in congressional districts that in some cases hadn’t elected a Democrat since the days of Lyndon Johnson. And they are at risk of deeper losses on Capitol Hill in November.
Republican leaders in some states have struggled to recruit candidates for local office. GOP voter registrations are down. And there are signs of a generational shift that could play out over several election cycles: Nearly 60 percent of voters under 30 now identify themselves as Democrats, more than tripling the party’s edge over the GOP in that age group since 2000, according to the Pew Research Center.
The man set to accept his party’s nomination Thursday, John McCain, is a maverick disdained by the conservatives who turned Barry Goldwater’s lonely cry against big government into a shrewd, sprawling, and well-funded movement. Whether Mr. McCain is the future of the party or a placeholder during a time of soul-searching hinges on the November election.
Cause for both hope and some hand-wringing among Republicans this year is that Americans like McCain far more than they do the party itself.
He distanced himself even further from the GOP establishment Friday with his vice-presidential pick. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a young, outside-the-beltway choice with a record of taking on entrenched interests.
Even so, many Republicans are bracing for a period of exile. A debate is already under way over its future, with conservative visionaries from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on down arguing about what it will take for the Grand Old Party, its best ideas now spent, to stage a comeback.
“The party’s in pretty bad shape – it’s gone wrong in so many areas,” says Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma and the author of the new book “Reclaiming Conservatism.”
“If the Republican Party is not thoroughly repudiated in this coming election it will only be to the extent that John McCain and some of the other Republican candidates have managed to distance themselves from what’s happened over the last eight years,” he says.
Their gathering in this Midwestern city offers a fresh chance for Republicans to make their case to a skeptical nation.
The GOP convention begins just four days after Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at a Denver football stadium thronged by some 84,000 cheering supporters, some of whom waited in a line six miles long to hear his speech.
But if the Republican convention here goes as planned, the spotlight will, for a change, be all McCain’s. And that is both a risk and an opportunity.
“The peril is trying to compete with Obama, because they can’t Out-Obama Obama,” says Nancy Beck Young, an American political historian at the University of Houston.
“McCain needs to focus on his own compelling story” as a decorated war hero, she says. “He needs to remind people why they liked him in 2000. The maverick, bipartisan McCain needs to come out, and the Bush-loving McCain needs to take a vacation between now and November.”It is cruel timing for Republicans that hurricane Gustav is forecast to reach the Gulf... more
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Click the link and check these two paragraphs.
QUOTE:
"The candidates were pressed on their stances on abortion and were even asked what they would do if their own daughters were raped and became pregnant.
Palin said she would support abortion only if the mother's life was in danger. When it came to her daughter, she said, 'I would choose life.'"
So a woman is raped, but if the pregnancy is viable, no abortion permitted, no matter how soon after conception. No thanks, Ms. Palin!
Thanks to The Jed Report for pointing this one out. http://jedreport.com/
Click the link and check these two paragraphs.
QUOTE:
"The candidates were... more
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DENVER - John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate, two senior campaign officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
A formal announcement was expected within a few hours at a campaign rally in swing-state Ohio.
Palin, 44, is a self-styled hockey mom and political reformer who has been governor of her state less than two years.
Palin's selection was a stunning surprise, as McCain passed over many other better known prospects, some of whom had been the subject of intense speculation for weeks or months.
At 44, she is a generation younger that Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, who is Barack Obama's running mate on the Democratic ticket.
She is three years Obama's junior, as well — and McCain has made much in recent weeks of Obama's relative lack of experience in foreign policy and defense matters.
DENVER - John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice... more
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How's this for another kick to working Americans who are struggling to get by? According to the guy that helped develop McCain's health care plan, no Americans should be considered uninsured.
His logic? Anyone who can get into a hospital emergency room is able to access health care, and therefore shouldn't be considered uninsured. His solution to the health insurance crisis is simply to define the problem away.
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
So the bottom line is this: McCain's "health care reform" proposal was developed by someone who doesn't think there is any problem with people not being able to get health care. In his world, everything is hunky dory and the only thing that reform needs to do is to lower costs.
That certainly explains why McCain is giving us "health care reform" that would dramatically increase the number of uninsured.
How's this for another kick to working Americans who are struggling to get by?... more
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Senator Ted Stevens’s easy victory in Alaska’s Republican primary on Tuesday sets him up for two more fights this fall that are likely to be much tougher: one in the general election and the other in the courtroom.
The senator received 63 percent of the primary vote against six challengers, even as he faces a trial in September on charges that he concealed $250,000 in home renovations and gifts provided by an oil services company, VECO.
If the trial goes forward on schedule, Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years and is revered in Alaska for bringing home billions of dollars in federal spending, will be defending himself in court while he also tries to hold off a strong general election challenge from a popular and well-financed Democrat, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage.
Mr. Begich led the senator by double digits in some polls before the primary, and he has received strong support from national Democrats who hope to strengthen the party’s Senate majority. Yet Mr. Stevens, who has long asserted that he alone has the seniority and effectiveness to keep projects coming to Alaska, is not expected to go down easily.
“We’ve got enough Democrats down there already,” Mr. Stevens said in a sometimes combative interview on KTUU television late Tuesday. “If we give them 60 votes, Alaska will never win anything again. I’m in this race to win, and I’m going to win.”
The senator said that Mr. Begich would ally himself with Senate Democrats like Barbara Boxer of California, Maria Cantwell of Washington and Charles E. Schumer of New York and that “they’re all against Alaska.”
Mr. Begich, who easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, called that assertion “outrageous” in a phone interview on Wednesday.
“He has an old style of politics, which is divide and conquer, negative,” Mr. Begich said of the senator. “That’s not how I have served.” The mayor noted that he disagrees with national Democrats on issues like gun control and that he favors opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production.
Mr. Begich has cast his differences with Mr. Stevens mostly as a matter of style, and he has not tried to use the senator’s legal troubles against him. He said he did not plan on changing tactics now.
“Just the media coverage alone, that’s going to create its own sphere of activity, and how Ted Stevens responds to that,” Mr. Begich said. “There will be times when I’ll be pulled in that direction, but I’m going to avoid it if I can.”Senator Ted Stevens’s easy victory in Alaska’s Republican primary on... more
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The Los Angeles Times notes today that “the practice of corporations and unions making big convention donations has a long tradition and is criticized by groups that want to limit the role of money in politics.” While both the Democratic and Republican party conventions feature lavish corporate-sponsored receptions, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) — the host of the Republican convention — is making an explicit pitch to corporate CEOs that he’s willing to sell access:
On the GOP side, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s written “talking points” at a fundraising luncheon for corporate CEOs promised “contact with influential government officials (Cabinet, President, next President)” during the convention in St. Paul.
“This is a real problem,” said Mr. [Stephen] Weissman [of the Campaign Finance Institute]. “It’s access, with gratitude.”
Many corporations are willing to buy the access to John McCain, in exchange for the “gratitude” McCain is promising them in the future. McCain’s tax plan gives America’s 200 largest corporations $45 billion in tax breaks, including $4 billion to the top five oil companies and $2 billion to the top 10 health insurance companies.
The Dallas Morning News reports that the GOP convention is offering “golfing with the Republican leadership.” Roll Call reports that Democratic and Republican lobbyists are taking a turn “at the time-honored tradition of volunteering at the national conventions.” For John McCain, who frequently complains that “there are too many lobbyists,” his convention is creating awkward challenges:
One Republican lobbyist, who is headed to Minneapolis/St. Paul to volunteer, would speak about his role only under the condition of anonymity. “I’ve heard that McCain doesn’t like reading in print about lobbyists who are helping,” said this K Streeter, who plans to help with advance work in the Twin Cities.
The anonymous GOP official shouldn’t be so sensitive. After all, there are at least 159 lobbyists running the McCain campaign, fundraising, and shaping his policies. And at least 20 McCain staffers came “from a lobby shop or joined one after leaving the congressional payroll.”
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originally posted on thinkprogressThe Los Angeles Times notes today that “the practice of corporations and unions... more
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ANP: Republicans are blaming Democrats' resistance to expanded domestic oil drilling for high gas prices.
American News Project: Energy is currently the most debated issue on Capitol Hill, and Republicans in Congress have seized the moment to stage a political coup, blaming Democratic resistance to expanded domestic oil drilling for high gas prices. Democrats have started to cave to some of the pressure. But would more drilling help anytime soon?ANP: Republicans are blaming Democrats' resistance to expanded domestic oil... more
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Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention next month and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman also will take center stage at the GOP gathering.Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican... more
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The elephant, long the familiar symbol of the GOP, has followed the Marlboro Man into the dustbin of retired icons.
A special committee appointed by the RNC, headed by Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter, has chosen a new emblem, which will be unveiled at the 2008 Republican convention. The logo, a graphically designed mound of human excrement adorned with horizontal red and white stripes, with an elegant fountain of streaming white stars emerging from the center, was selected from over ten thousand entries from artists around the world.
"We wanted a symbol that stood for the real essence of what it is to be Republican," said the former Speaker of the House. "For many years now, people have associated the old GOP elephant with being fat and self-indulgent. So we went in a new direction, showing Americans from all walks of life that ours is the party of Waste. The hard part was deciding from which animal it would come."
The committee members initially considered elephant droppings, but retracted this idea because it "seemed a bit too obvious," laughed Gingrich. The idea to use a graphic depiction of human feces was born after attending a fifty-thousand dollar a plate Republican dinner.
"That's when Ann Coulter plopped out the design," said Gingrich. "The escargot was particularly fatty. Suddenly, Ann comes running out of the ladies' room, and she's all, 'Newt, you gotta see this.' It was an amazing turd -- curved, gnarled and twisted -- and we just looked at each other and new immediately that we found our feces. And it's that very feces that will be depicted on bumper stickers and campaign posters for the next hundred years. This feces will forever be associated with the Republican party, and Ann Coulter, in particular."
--TheSkunk.orgThe elephant, long the familiar symbol of the GOP, has followed the Marlboro Man into... more
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Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention next month and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman also will take center stage at the GOP gathering.
When asked about the RNC lineup, McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis said:
'the senator wanted the list of speakers to showcase the "diversity" of the Republican Party.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican... more
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention next month and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman also will take center stage at the GOP gathering.
John McCain's vanquished Republican primary rivals - and a slew of potential McCain running mates - also have speaking roles at the four-day gathering in St. Paul, Minn.
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lieberman, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 and is said to be under consideration for the same role with McCain, will open the convention on Monday, Sept. 1, with speeches that focus on service.
The subsequent days will focus on reform, prosperity and peace.
Giuliani, the two-term mayor who led New York through the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will deliver his spotlight speech on Tuesday night. He ran for president this year but failed to win even one delegate, much less a state. He withdrew after a crushing loss in Florida, endorsed McCain the next day and has since campaigned for McCain.
Most of McCain's other former primary rivals will speak, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, ex-Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who also is mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidates.
At least eight others whose names have been mentioned as potential running mates also are to address the convention, including governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Charlie Crist of Florida, Sarah Palin of Alaska, Jon Huntsman of Utah, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana; former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge; Meg Whitman, the former chief executive and president of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, the former chairwoman and chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co.
McCain's vice presidential candidate is scheduled to speak on the third night of the convention, the same night McCain's wife, Cindy, will give her address. McCain will accept the nomination on the final night.WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will give the keynote address... more
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ivxx
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Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate in 2000 and now an independent who is one of John McCain's strongest supporters, will speak at the Republican National Convention, an official said.Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party's vice presidential... more
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DES MOINES, Iowa - State records show that a $50,000 judgment has been awarded to two retired school teachers who were strip-searched during a 2004 campaign stop by President Bush.
The State Appeal Board recently approved the out-of-court settlement for Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson.
They brought a claim against the Iowa Department of Public Safety after two state troopers arrested them at a rally in Cedar Rapids in September 2004. The charges were later dropped.
In June, a federal jury awarded the women $750,000 on their claim that their constitutional rights were violated.
Authorities have said the women were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions at the rally, but the women claimed they were taken into custody because they had a dissenting opinion from the Bush administration. McCabe and Nelson argued successfully that their constitutional rights to free speech, assembly and freedom from unreasonable arrest and search were violated during the 2004 incident.
The settlement payout was included in a State Appeal Board preliminary report that detailed more than $9.1 million in settlements and judgments the panel approved during fiscal 2008.
DES MOINES, Iowa - State records show that a $50,000 judgment has been awarded to two... more
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"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain" - Anatole France
PROUD OF WHAT ONE IGNORES ?
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/proud-what-one-ignores
PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS & SOCIALIZE THE LOSS * Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Mussolini said that fascism is quite simply the corporate state. This story ends all speculation that we are living in a fascist empire where it is impossible to determine where corporations end and government begins and vice-versa. Disaster Capitalism triumphant !
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." - Ian Williams Goddard
NATION OF WHINERS GOES ON SUICIDE BINGE !
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/nation-whiners-goes-suicide-binge
Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had. - Chris Hedges
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis." - Umberto Eco
"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to... more
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"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell
SUCH AS...
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky
OR...
"It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people" - Gore Vidal
For the first time in 14 years, weapons manufacturers are donating more to Democrats than to Republicans. The Dems have received 52 percent of the defense industry's political donations in this election cycle--up from a low of 32 per cent in 1996. That money is about shaping foreign policy, and so far, it appears to be well spent. Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill * PLAYERS NOT CHEER LEADERS
Everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being. - Ellen Key
Let alone the fact that most of the voting will be done on Diebold & friends machines, exposing American democracy as the sinister & cynical farce it has become under the proto-fascism Bush/Cheney junta.
LYNCHING BY LAPTOP 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCR6IdTQTeE
ELECTION INTEGRITY ?
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/election-integrity
80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
When will the American people actually vote to give to the world more than bombs and missiles, sweatshops, dubious science, frankenfood, poverty and misery?; - Cynthia McKinney
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
GOING UP !
Top 1% share of total income
Income gap between rich and poor
Foreign debt as a percent of GDP
Age at which one can receive Social Security
Hunger
Consumer credit debt
Housing foreclosures
Severe poverty rate
GOING DOWN !
Real income
Real manufacturing wages
Percent of single women and mothers in the workforce
The bottom 40%'s share of national wealth
Older families with pensions.
Workers covered by defined benefit pensions.
The savings rate
US manufacturing jobs
ALL THE WHILE...
Protest restricted/ignored
Dissenter labeled terrorist/traitor
False-flags
Elections suspect
Leaders benefit from wars/disasters
Use of propaganda/lies & partisan mass-media
Claims that War is needed for everchanging false reasons
Secret/extrajudicial/torture camps
Curtailed/suspended civil rights/liberties
Wiretap/intercept/surveillance net
Stealthily expands int'nl influence/power
Judiciary/Opposition ineffective/ignored
Legislation to defy Constitution
Education or catastrophe said H.G. Wells. Mindfuck Inc. has created a nation of over 50% of functional analphabetes where lies and credulity marries to generate opinion.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/90161/
Millions of Americans are embarrassingly ill-informed and they do not care that they are.
Ignorance is the downfall of all cultures and we are about to hit bottom.
" We need to lay siege to empire with everything we've got. You know? Deprive it of oxygen, shame it, mock it, tell our own stories. This corporatist revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they're selling ... their ideas, their wars, their notion of inevitability." - Arundhati Roy
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do... more
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