tagged w/ Debbie Wasserman Schultz
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At the second Presidential debate at Hofstra University, Luke Rudkowski got a chance to talk to Obama’s representative congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
http://youtu.be/zFh0nIYNAyYAt the second Presidential debate at Hofstra University, Luke Rudkowski got a chance... more
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Obama Rep. Schultz on The NDAA and Secret Kill List
This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.Obama Rep. Schultz on The NDAA and Secret Kill List
This was the enemy, served up in... more
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On 29 May 2012, the New York Times published a remarkable 6,000-word story on its front page about what it termed President Obama's "kill list". It detailed the president's personal role in deciding which individuals will end up being targeted for assassination by the CIA based on Obama's secret, unchecked decree that they are "terrorists" and deserve to die.
Based on interviews with "three dozen of his current and former advisers", the Times' Jo Becker and Scott Shane provided extraordinary detail about Obama's actions, including how he "por[es] over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards'" and how he "insist[s] on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list'". At a weekly White House meeting dubbed "Terror Tuesdays", Obama then decides who will die without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight. It was this process that resulted in the death of US citizen Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, and then two weeks later, the killing of his 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, by drone.
The Times "kill list" story made a huge impact and was widely discussed and condemned by media figures, politicians, analysts, and commentators. Among other outlets, the New York Times itself harshly editorialized against Obama's program in an editorial entitled "Too Much Power For a President", denouncing the revelations as "very troubling" and argued: "No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield - depriving Americans of their due-process rights - without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle."
That Obama has a "kill list" has been known since January, 2010, and has been widely reported and discussed in every major American newspaper since April 2010. A major controversy over chronic White House leaks often featured complaints about this article (New York Times, 5 June 2012: "Senators to Open Inquiry Into 'Kill List' and Iran Security Leaks"). The Attorney General, Eric Holder, gave a major speech defending it.
But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congresswoman from Florida and the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, does not know about any of this. She has never heard of any of it. She has managed to remain completely ignorant about the fact that President Obama has asserted and exercised the power to secretly place human beings, including US citizens, on his "kill list" and then order the CIA to extinguish their lives.
Just marvel at this stunning, completely inexcusable two-minute display of wholesale ignorance by this elected official and DNC chair. Here she is after the second presidential debate being asked by Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change about the "kill list" and whether Romney should be trusted with this power. She doesn't defend the "kill list". She doesn't criticize it. She makes clear that she has never heard of it and then contemptuously treats Rudkowski like he is some sort of frivolous joke for thinking that it is real:
Anyone who observes politics closely has a very low bar of expectations. It's almost inevitable to become cynical - even jaded - about just how inept and inane top Washington officials are. Still, even processing this through those lowly standards, I just find this staggering. Staggering and repellent. This is an elected official in Congress, the body that the Constitution designed to impose checks on the president's abuses of power, and she does not have the foggiest idea what is happening in the White House, and obviously does not care in the slightest, because the person doing it is part of the party she leads.
One expects corrupt partisan loyalty from people like Wasserman Schultz, eager to excuse anything and everything a Democratic president does. That's a total abdication of her duty as a member of Congress, but that's par for the course. But one does not expect this level of ignorance, the ability to stay entirely unaware of one of the most extremist powers a president has claimed in US history, trumpeted on the front-page of the New York Times and virtually everywhere else.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/20/wasserman-schultz-kill-listOn 29 May 2012, the New York Times published a remarkable 6,000-word story on its... more
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By David Edwards
Sunday, April 8, 2012 11:27 EDT
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) on Sunday ripped the Republican Party for “turning back the clock for women.”
During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked asked the congresswoman from Florida if it was unfair to call GOP policies a “war on women.”
“The policies that have come out of the Republican Party, saying that we should have a debate again over contraception and whether we should have access to it and it should be affordable, saying that — like Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, you know, he tried to quietly repeal the Equal Pay Act,” Wasserman Schultz noted. “Women aren’t going to stand for that. Governor Walker just signed a bill that repeals the equal pay law they had in Wisconsin for years.”
She continued: “You have Republicans who have engaged themselves for the entire Congress trying to redefine rape as only being forcible rape, defunding Planned Parenthood and family planning programs. The Lilly Ledbetter Act — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act put teeth behind the notion that women deserve equal pay for equal work. That was the first bill the President Obama signed into law. The overwhelming majority of Republicans serving in Congress voted against it.”
“So, the focus of the Republican Party on turning back the clock for women really is something that is unacceptable and shows how callous and insensitive they are towards women’s priorities.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/08/dnc-chair-gop-callous-and-insensitive-towards-women/
Watch the video from CNN’s State of the Union, broadcast on April 8, 2012.
"Shame on Candy Crowley, 'The Democrats favorite subjects these days' maybe she is not a woman??? I think the first sentence from her mouth was very right wing biased, but that could just be me... Hmmm what do you folks think???"By David Edwards
Sunday, April 8, 2012 11:27 EDT
Democratic National Committee... more
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Senate Democrats block Boehner debt ceiling plan after House approval
By Alan Silverleib and Tom Cohen, CNN
July 29, 2011 8:31 p.m. EDT
PART ONE...
Washington (CNN) -- Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the nation's the debt ceiling and slash government spending narrowly passed the House on Friday and then was blocked by Senate Democrats, setting up a weekend of negotiations to seek a deal that would avoid a potential federal default next week.
The Senate vote was 59-41 to table the measure, which effectively kills it unless Democrats decide to bring it up again.
Earlier, Boehner's proposal was approved by the House in a sharply polarized 218-210 vote that was delayed by a day while the speaker rounded up support from wary tea party conservatives. No Democrats supported the measure, and 22 of the 240 members of the Republican majority also opposed it.
Even though it was blocked in the Senate, the Boehner plan now is the Republican negotiating position for hammering out a deal with congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama to avert a possible government default next week.
Friday's House vote was a critical test of Boehner's control over his tea party-infused GOP caucus. The speaker was forced to quell a right-wing revolt over the measure after a number of members complained that it doesn't do enough to shrink the size of government and stem the tide of Washington's red ink.
Boehner, R-Ohio, managed to sway several of those members by including a provision requiring congressional passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt ceiling can be extended through the end of 2012.
In his floor speech before the vote, Boehner called the proposal imperfect but necessary, and he criticized Obama and congressional Democrats for rejecting all deficit reduction measures passed by the House so far.
"We've tried to do our level best ... but some people continue to say no," Boehner said, adding: "I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States."
His voice rising to a shout, Boehner continued to cheers and applause from fellow Republicans: "It is time for this administration and the other party across the aisle -- put something on the table. Tell us where you are."
Democratic leaders vehemently object both to the balanced budget amendment and the requirement of a second debt ceiling vote before the next election. They argue that reaching bipartisan agreement on another debt ceiling hike during an election year could be nearly impossible, and that short-term extensions of the limit could further destabilize the economy.
Earlier in the day, Obama urged Senate Democrats and Republicans to take the lead in the congressional deliberations.
Boehner's plan "has no chance of becoming law," Obama said. "The time for putting party first is over. The time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now. ... It's important for everybody to step up and show the leadership that the American people expect."
"This is not a situation where the two parties are miles apart," the president insisted. But "we are almost out of time."
Obama -- sleepless in recent nights due to the crisis, according to a senior administration official -- urged Americans to contact their members of Congress "to keep the pressure on Washington." Phone lines on Capitol Hill were jammed Friday as people from coast to coast tried to weigh in on the debate.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has been pushing his own plan to raise the debt limit, though he will need to win over at least seven Senate Republicans to win the 60 votes necessary to overcome a certain filibuster.
Reid announced Friday morning that he intended to "take action" on a Senate bill by the end of the day. Later, he complained on the Senate floor that Republicans would effectively filibuster his proposal by requiring a 60-vote super-majority in the 100-member chamber to support the start of debate on it. It was unclear when Reid would attempt to hold that vote.
Reid also blasted Boehner's decision to include a mandatory balanced budget amendment provision in the GOP plan, calling the addition of "even more stuff in this right-wing leaning bill. ... It's really hard to comprehend."
CONTINUED...Senate Democrats block Boehner debt ceiling plan after House approval
By Alan... more
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