kpete
kpete's JournalBREAKING: Pete Sessions Drops Bid-House GOP Taunts Tea Party with non-crazy Cantor Replacement
As the national Tea Party exalts over not-conservative-enough carcass of Eric Cantor's political career, the House GOP prepares to replace him with new Majority Leader who is either identical to Cantor in his politics or slightly less conservative. "Guardians of tea party purity rank McCarthy as about as conservative, or slightly less, than Cantor."
WASHINGTON — Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions abruptly dropped his bid for House majority leader tonight, after less than 48 hours. That leaves the path open to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy to replace Virginian Eric Cantor, who was toppled unexpectedly in a primary Tuesday night by a tea party-backed economics professor.
“After thoughtful consideration and discussion with my colleagues, I have made the decision to not continue my run for House Majority Leader,” Sessions said in a statement. “Today, it became obvious to me that the measures necessary to run a successful campaign would have created unnecessary and painful division within our party. At this critical time, we must remain unified as a Republican Conference. As always, I stand ready and willing to work with our team to advance the conservative agenda that the American people demand and deserve.”
Sessions, a nine-term lawmaker who chairs the Rules Committee, had consolidated support from the large Texas GOP delegation earlier today, when fellow Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling dropped out. But signs were already showing that McCarthy would be hard to beat.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/sessions-drops-bid-for-majority-leader.html/
......a good strategy to stay out of the Iraqi mess
Conservatives–listen closely: President Obama needs a blank check to conduct military operations in the Iraqi homeland. Please, conservatives, support President Obama in making the hard decisions about sacrificing American lives in a predominately Muslim land. Obama really needs your support to bolster his foreign policy legacy.
That should do it. If they believe Obama’s for it, they’re agin’ it. Next week we’ll roll out the “Don’t drink bleach” initiative.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/06/12/the-syriairaq-situation-not-only-stranger-than-we-imagine/#comment-5017581
New Study: "FOX "News" Is Demonstrably Harmful To Republican Party"
Does Fox News Cause Ignorance, or Do Ignorant Viewers Prefer Fox News?
A new study reveals the gap between the channel's fans and the rest of America
There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?
Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). [...] The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.
By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.
The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds.
MORE:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118066/brookings-survey-fox-news-home-most-conservative-republicans
This is sort of a big deal: Target Bends to Labor, Tells Contractors to Meet With Unions
Small Victories
[ 5 ] June 12, 2014 | Erik Loomis
This is sort of a big deal:
Target is introducing a potentially precedent-setting policy imposing new rules on companies it hires to clean its stores in the Twin Cities, the retail giant’s hometown. It’s a step forward for union-backed efforts to force major corporations to raise standards for workers they don’t directly employ.
Most significantly, the document instructs each vendor—unless released from the obligation at Target’s discretion—to reach deals with labor groups that want to represent their workers. According to the memo, such deals should dictate “terms and conditions of employment” (making life easier for workers) but they must prohibit “economic interference with Target’s operations” by labor groups (making life easier for management).
In other words, Target—whose U.S. store workforce is 100 percent union free—is telling companies that want to clean its Twin Cities buildings to make nice with unions.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-12/target-bends-to-labor-tells-contractors-to-meet-with-unions
We shouldn’t overplay this–Target is not becoming a union shop overnight and it’s a very limited agreement where Target still has most of the power. But the precedent matters. Target has been forced to retreat in an era when we rarely see corporations do anything but crush organized labor.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/06/small-victories
Resigning House Leader Cantor Reflects On All The Accomplishments He Thwarted
Resigning House Leader Cantor Reflects On All The Accomplishments He Thwarted
WASHINGTON—Looking back on his 13-year tenure in the House of Representatives with reverence, resigning House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) reflected on the long list of accomplishments he had thwarted during his time in office, sources confirmed Thursday. “From obstructing a jobs bill to put Americans back to work in 2011, to derailing gun control measures any time they reached my desk, I feel blessed to have had such an incredible run of preventing productive policies, and even a few pieces of landmark legislation, from ever passing,” said Cantor, explaining that as a young man, he “never would have dreamed” that some day he would be in a position to hinder the entire American lawmaking process and completely neuter dozens of bills. “Of course, I’m disappointed because I thought I had many more years of impeding accomplishments ahead of me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I never quite managed to stall environmental policies as much as I would have liked. But at the end of the day, I’m very proud of how I helped Congress accomplish so little during my time in office.” Cantor added that he took solace that his legacy of hampering federal policy was secure, and trusted that “many, many more” in his party would be inspired to follow in his footsteps.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/resigning-house-leader-cantor-reflects-on-all-the,36268/
We've seen this movie before: HOW IRAQ TURNS INTO VIETNAM BEFORE OUR VERY EYES-By Charles P. Pierce
HOW IRAQ TURNS INTO VIETNAM BEFORE OUR VERY EYES
By Charles P. Pierce on June 12, 2014
..................................
........of course, the perennial warmongers of the Republican Party have decided that our involvement in this clusterfvck must’ve begun on January 21, 2009. Per Mr. Charles P. Pierce:
I have a terrible feeling, based on the McClatchy report, and the reports from the field, that many of the members of the national legislature are presently finding themselves on the Kissinger side in the war for national memory, and that Who-Lost-Iraq? sadly will become an issue in the midterm elections that are upcoming in the fall, and that it will do so before the country has been honest with itself in answering the question, “Why Iraq At All?”
It has been almost 40 years since the North Vietnamese Army marched into Saigon, and we haven’t truly coped with that development, even though Vietnam is now open for tourism and its peasantry is now making blue jeans and high-definition television. I can’t imagine how long it will take for this country to be honest with itself about the fall of Tikrit, or Mosul, or Baghdad.
.......................................
MORE:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_National_Forgetting
One Chart That Shows Why The Middle East Is Now One Giant Warzone
One Chart That Shows Why The Middle East Is Now One Giant Warzone
http://thkpr.gs/1q7iixR pic.twitter.com/NVeCVpojw5
MORE:
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/06/12/3447800/iraq-syria-chart/
as always,
peace,
kp
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNTwr4wI5McIudA7jIdbxJ-kEQ18_mkc7AdSO-grL29ATqWngj
Luckovich: Open Carry
Mike Luckovich
Open Carry
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/open_carry_20140611
A Woman’s Purse Was Stolen Along With Her Dead Son’s Pictures. Then Something Extraordinary Happened
A Woman’s Purse Was Stolen Along With Her Dead Son’s Pictures. Then Something Extraordinary Happened!
June 8, 2014
Patricia Harris discovered that her purse had been stolen while returning home with her children on Friday afternoon. Along with her credit cards and money, her purse contained a memory card containing the priceless photos of her dead baby son Cole, which the mother just couldn’t bear. The 500 images of Cole were the only copies she had.
So Patricia decided to do something about it. She and her fiancé Michael began taping up fliers all around their neighborhood with a picture of Cole begging the thief to return the memory card. As the distressed mother put it:
And then I just lost it. I wrote a note with black crayon that said “keep the tablet and phone but please return the memory card. It has pictures of my son. He died on February 22. He was two and a half months old.”
And it worked. On the following Monday, while at work, Patricia got a text from her fiancé telling her the memory card had been returned to the car. The thief, however, kept the rest and is still at large.
Read more at http://www.viralspell.com/womans-purse-stolen-along-dead-sons-pictures-something-extraordinary-happened/#VTlpt6urSAJxXGdT.99
"I get Bergdahl- been there." Words from a young Iraq/Afghan Vet
His dad tells me that he does not talk about his war experience but "I know he saw a lot of action because he was in a special combat unit and stationed in the hot spots. He was usually in the front lines."
He is supposed to be getting counseling from the VA but that is not going well. They are understaffed and it is a long drive into the city. His dad says he worries about him driving because he cannot concentrate.
I saw him tonight. The young man was with his dad at a meeting of our coop. After the meeting he came up to me and said that he knew I did a lot of writing on line. He told me: "I get Bergdahl- been there. I don't think it was right for him to leave his post and walk away from his buddies- really bad things can happen when your guard is let down. But, I think I know how he felt. There were a lot of nights, out in the field, when I would have given anything to be almost anywhere else. What is really hard is that so much of it didn't make any sense to me. Who were we fighting and why? The native people- all they ever looked was scared when we were nearby. Hated it."
And then he walked away. I had, and still do not have, any idea what to say.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/12/1306361/--I-get-Bergdahl-been-there-Words-from-a-young-Iraq-Afghan-Vet#http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/11/bergdahl-writing-facebook/10356075/
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