DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalJoe Biden: 'I Could Make A Good President'
CAITLIN MACNEAL – JANUARY 29, 2014, 11:01 AM EST
Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke about his presidential prospects in 2016, but wouldn't say whether he would indeed through his hat into the ring.
"In my heart I'm confident that I could make a good president. It's a very different decision to decide whether or not to run for president," he said during an interview on NBC's "The Today Show." "I've not made a decision to run; I've not made a decision not to run."
Biden also defended his record on foreign policy when asked about former Defense Secretary Bob Gates' claim that Biden was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue" in the past forty years. In his book, Gates also called Biden "a man of integrity," which the Vice President said was the part he focused on.
"The fundamental problem here is Bob Gates and I have disagreed on almost every major foreign policy since Vietnam," Biden said. "I'm very comfortable with my position. I let the American public judge who's been right or wrong, Bob Gates or me, and history will judge ultimately who of us was right or wrong, but he's a fine man."
Watch the interview via NBC:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/biden-in-heart-confident-good-president
###
This Year's Fake Nobel Prize Story: Edward Snowden
By David Weigel-snip-
...Agence France-Presse broke the news that two Norwegian parliamentarians had nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. "A country's legitimate need for reliable intelligence to preserve its own security must always be balanced against the people's individual freedoms -- and the global need for trust -- as an integral condition for stability and peace," wrote Bård Vegard Solhjell and Snorre Valen. This became top-of-page, trending news on nearly every website, from NPR to CNET. The race is on to tell readers what this means.
Here's what it means: Two Norwegian parliamentarians got publicity for themselves and for Edward Snowden. The Nobel Prize "nominee" is a bogus story that gets recycled every year, with new celebrities rotated in the headline. I see my friend Michael Moynihan has beaten me to the wire on this, so I'll just quote him:
Moynihan follows these fake news explosions more regularly than I do, but I was turned on to them nine years ago. This was when Dr. William Hammesfahr appeared in Florida, describing himself (and allowing news organizations to describe him) as a Nobel Prize nominee as he argued against pulling Terri Schiavo's plug. A Florida congressman had written a letter recommending him for the prize, and Hammesfahr didn't possess the self-awareness that usually prevents people from saying they were merely nominated for things. (You can safely ignore any reporter or TED speaker whose bio leads with how he made the short list for something but didn't win.)
Snowden may indeed win the prize. What does it mean if he doesn't? Not too much. What does the whole story mean? That the media can't resist a publicity stunt even if it's seen the same trick a hundred times before.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/01/30/this_year_s_fake_nobel_prize_story_edward_snowden.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=f2102e4ff3&mc_eid=7a8b58c8c3
The Brutal, Bloody Horror of Gay Life in Putin’s Russia
By Mark Joseph SternEver since virulently homophobic Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed through a law effectively outlawing openly gay people, the country’s LGBTQ community has, predictably, been plagued by violence. Now a study published in Harvard University’s Health and Human Rights journal confirms what myriad horrific anecdotes suggest: Gay people in Russia are being beaten, raped, and murdered at record rates—and the government is doing little to stop it.
The issue of violence against gays in Russia is, of course, nothing new. Before the passage of the new federal measure, several regional governments passed identical laws, stripping gay citizens of legal rights and human dignity. More than half of Russian gays reported psychological abuse, while 16 percent experienced physical assault, and 7 percent were raped. Yet 77 percent also reported complete distrust of the police, leaving most anti-gay crimes unreported.
Putin’s law has only darkened this already bleak picture. By putting the government’s stamp of approval on rampant Russian homophobia, Putin effectively declared opened season on gay people. As the Harvard study notes, violence against gays in Russia isn’t considered violence at all; rather, it’s thought of as a way for young males to prove their own heterosexuality—while simultaneously cleansing society of an aberrant, pedophilic community.
That’s the motivation behind groups like Occupy Pedophilia, which lure in gay teens through social media in order to publicly humiliate them by beating them with sex toys or forcing them to drink urine. The guerrilla group claims that its ultimate goal is to “cure” gay people of their orientation—echoing the Russian health minister’s statement that homosexuality is often a mental illness. Concerned by the violence, one Russian citizen sent 70 appeals to law enforcement agencies, asking them to investigate the attacks. Every request was refused.
more
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/01/30/gay_russia_under_putin_brutal_bloody_and_horrifying.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=f2102e4ff3&mc_eid=7a8b58c8c3
Lawyer Suggests Suit Against Hoboken Mayor Is Retaliation By Christie Pals
ERIC LACH – JANUARY 30, 2014, 10:41 AM EST
A recently filed lawsuit claims Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer threatened to fire the director of the local housing authority unless he hired politically connected contractors, according to The Newark Star-Ledger.
The lawsuit was filed last week in Superior Court in Jersey City, N.J., days after Zimmer publicly accused Gov. Chris Christie's (R) administration of pressuring her to fast-track a development project by threatening to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief aid. Zimmer's lawyer told the Star-Ledger that the lawsuit's claims are baseless, and he suggested that they were retaliation orchestrated by Christie's allies.
In the lawsuit, Hoboken Housing Authority Executive Director Carmelo Garcia, who is also now a Democratic state assemblyman, alleges that Zimmer pressured him to give contracts to her political allies, according to the Star-Ledger. When he pushed back, the suit claims, Zimmer and her husband, Stanley Grossbard, “began to subject Director Garcia to an unlawful pattern of harassment, threats, intimidation and extortion."
The lawsuit was filed by attorney Louis Zayas, the same attorney who recently raised questions about Zimmer's claims about keeping a diary. Zayas has also represented Hoboken's former public safety director in a wrongful termination suit.
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/zimmer-lawsuit-retaliation
Republicans Brace For Surrender On The Debt Ceiling
SAHIL KAPUR – JANUARY 30, 2014, 6:00 AM EST
Republicans are looking for ways to defuse the fight they've threatened to pick over the debt ceiling, having concluded that they're likely destined for defeat.
The fatalism reflects the fact that House GOP leaders are boxed in both by Democrats who'll refuse to vote for a debt limit hike with policy add-ons, and by a significant faction of conservatives who aren't interested in voting for any increase in the federal borrowing limit.
"We don't want to have a government crisis. That's one of the reasons why we had a budget agreement, which prevented two possible shutdowns from occurring this year," Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Tuesday night on CBS News. After taking some shots at President Barack Obama, he signaled that Republicans won't follow through with the fight.
"We will not default," Ryan said. "I will not -- no. I don't think the full (faith and credit of the United States) -- no, it will not be in jeopardy again."
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republicans-debt-limit-surrender
House GOP Leaders Call For Bipartisan Action In Letter To Obama
DYLAN SCOTT – JANUARY 30, 2014, 10:16 AM EST
House Republican leadership said they've identified four areas where they believe they can work with President Barack Obama based on principles he laid out in his State of the Union address this week.
The four areas are: skills training, natural gas, workplace rules and federally-funded research. The Republican leadership points to bills in each area that the House has passed, but either the Senate has not taken up the legislation or the White House has threatened to veto it.
The full letter is below.
GOP SOTU Letter to Obama
###
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/house-gop-letter-obama-sotu
Note: Full letter may be viewed at the link to TPM, above, or via the link in the sentence "GOP SOTU Letter to Obama," also above -- Don
Fox News contributor busted again for pushing fake story about persecution of Christians
By Travis Gettys
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 12:52 EST
A Fox News correspondent has been busted again for pushing a one-sided story claiming religious persecution of Christians.
Todd Starnes helped promote a story about a California first-grader who allegedly was not allowed to give a one-minute presentation about her family’s Christmas tradition because it included religious references.
As Right Wing Watch has reported, this is not the first time Starnes has been caught pushing poorly sourced stories claiming religious discrimination.
The girl had planned to tell classmates at a Temecula elementary school about her family placing an ornament to represent the Star of Bethlehem atop their Christmas tree, as many families do, and recite a short Bible verse about its meaning, Starnes reported.
He quoted an Advocates for Faith and Family attorney who claimed the girl’s teacher ordered her to take a seat Dec. 19 and wouldn’t allow her to finish.
“The disapproval and hostility that Christian students have come to experience in our nation’s public schools has become epidemic,” said attorney Robert Tyler, warning the family might sue if the school district didn’t apologize and change its policies on religious expression.
The article included a statement from the school district, which confirmed it was investigating the claim, and statements by the principal paraphrased by the girl’s mother.
Starnes did not, however, include any statements from the teacher or the principal, who were compelled to release their own after the story was picked up by religious groups and publications.
“Over the past week, I have received countless phone calls and 126 mean-spirited emails from across the country as a result of the claims that the Advocates of Faith and Freedom have made against one of my teachers, the school district, and myself,” said Principal Ami Paradise. “These claims are simply not true.”
Other targets of Starnes’ poorly sourced reporting have reported similar harassment.
The girl was the only student who read from a prepared statement during a brief sharing exercise intended to improve students’ public speaking skills, the teacher said, and she asked her to cut short the statement due to limited time.
The teacher denies telling the girl to sit down, instead allowing her to take one question from another student.
“At no time did I ever tell the student that she could not read the bottom section [of her statement] because it was a Bible verse nor did she ask if she could finish,” said teacher Tammy Williams. “I never told her to ‘Stop right there!’ or ‘Go take your seat!’ or reprimand her in front of the class for sharing from the Bible. It just did not happen.”
Paradise said she met with the following day with the girl’s parents, who were upset because they thought she was unable to finish her presentation because of its biblical content.
The principal said neither parent claimed bullying or humiliation by teachers, which she said was made up by the religious legal group, and she has not heard from the parents since presenting her findings about the incident Dec. 24 to the school board.
Paradise said she stood behind the teacher, and both she and Williams complained that Tyler and his group had misrepresented the incident and damaged their reputations.
“What saddens me is that this story was twisted into lies and brought to the media,” Williams said. “I have never sat down and discussed this directly with the family or the student. I am instead being used to push an agenda for the Advocates for Faith and Freedom.”
Update: Advocates for Faith and Freedom did not responded to a request seeking comment on the educators’ statements.
###
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/29/fox-news-contributor-busted-again-for-pushing-fake-story-about-persecution-of-christians/
Full article posted with permission
Ted Cruz Runs Against His Own Government Shutdown
Joe McLeanThe senator boldly claims he “didn’t try to shut down the government,” despite strategizing to do just that. Having satisfied the lunatic right, he’s trying to move back to the middle for 2016.
Sunday, on CBS’ Face the Nation, the junior senator from the State of Oblivion said—and I’m not making this up—“I didn’t threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don’t think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted… to fund the federal government.”
What? More than any other actor in last year’s budget debacle, Ted Cruz is responsible. Just a cursory glance at the record puts the lie to his blatant blame-shifting. Beginning with his “not-really-a-filibuster” publicity stunt, Cruz whipped up the national Tea Party base, emboldened House GOP radicals, and cowed the Republican leadership. After his Green Eggs and Ham soliloquy, sanity left the building and a shutdown was almost inevitable.
Even in the face of crushing poll numbers and Wall Street panic, his constant rants bolstered the Tea Party radicals’ resolve to force a budget Armageddon. In the midst of the maelstrom, he congratulated Tea Party wing nuts for their obstructionism, telling the Values Voters Summit, “It is because of you that the House of Representatives has been standing strong.”
Not content to simply sabotage sanity in the Senate, Cruz convened a semi-secret conclave of Tea Party House members to craft a counter-attack on to any potential Senate compromise. Imagine that—a junior senator directing strategy for the back-bench insurgents in the House—a strategy every Republican leader now admits was a political and economic disaster.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/ted-cruz-runs-against-his-own-government-shutdown.html
Nobel Nomination Nonsense - Edward Snowden’s nod should be ignored.
Michael MoynihanThousands of officials are allowed to nominate Peace Prize laureates. Just like Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange's nominations, Edward Snowden’s nod should be ignored.
If you have a paper thin skin (as I do) and are paid to comment on the news (this, for some mysterious reason, also applies to me), it’s advisable to fully disengage from writing about the Edward Snowden saga. After the initial leaks, I offered a cautious piece, urging against the instant beatification of the former NSA contractor. We knew little about him, I argued, so let’s wait for it to play out, and we’ll be better situated to determine if he was more Pentagon Papers than Pumpkin Papers. But it's one of those stories allergic to nuance: you're either a lackey of empire (the Snowden skeptic) or a fulminating anti-American trying to undermine Obama’s foreign policy (the Snowden supporter). In a debate without shades of grey, I'd rather leave the whole business to those with more anger, passion, and energy.
But allow me to wade into one tiny aspect of the Snowden affair without wading into the debate: across Twitter and cluttering my inbox; in stories from Time, Bloomberg, The Verge, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Reuters, and dozens of others; and in breathless dispatches from the universe of Facebook, I have been repeatedly informed within that last twenty-four hours that Edward Snowden has been “nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.” Take that previous Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama!
Well, almost. Because all of the media outlets listed above, and all my Snowdenite friends on Facebook and Twitter, have fallen for the perennial person whose politics I share was nominated for the most meaningless prize on the planet story. But what, dear reader, does it actually mean to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? The short answer: not much.
Remember that flurry of reports in October that “Russian President Vladimir Putin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by an advocacy group that credits him with bringing about a peaceful resolution to the Syrian-U.S. dispute over chemical weapons?” In 2012, hundreds of news organizations reported on Bradley Manning’s nomination (one of those Norwegian parliamentarians who nominated Snowden also nominated Manning). In 2011, the wires were clogged with stories of a potential Peace Prize gong for Julian Assange. And my personal favorite, courtesy of a former Swedish deputy prime minister and parliamentarian, the 2006 nominations of former U.N. ambassador John Bolton and right-wing polemicist Kenneth Timmerman, author of books on Jesse Jackson, the Iran nuclear program, and how the French “betrayed” America. (" target="_blank">On the cover of Timmerman’s book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, potential readers are told the book is written by “a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.”)
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/nobel-nomination-nonsense.html
Why the GOP’s civil war is only going to get uglier
Again, they misunderstand Econ 101 -- and the ride they're being taken on by the Tea Party and religious rightCJ WERLEMAN, ALTERNET
This article originally appeared on Alternet.
When it comes to explaining complex political dynamics, the media tends to adopt simple narratives rather than sophisticated commentary. This has been particularly evident when examining coverage of the Republican Party’s ongoing civil war.
The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP is more than social conservatives parrying with establishment Republicans. It is a pantomime that has many actors performing on a number of stages, but with only one clown: libertarians.
Libertarians are a funny bunch. By funny I mean ignorant not only of basic economics but also the ride they’ve been taken on by the Christian Right and the neo-Confederates within the Republican Party.
Nullification is the common cause that drives this anti-establishment triumvirate. Nullification of the federal government is now the weapon of choice for theocrats, libertarians and white supremacists. Since 2010, state legislatures have put forward nearly 200 bills challenging federal laws its sponsors deem unconstitutional. Typically, laws the nullifiers believe challenge “religious liberty,” the Affordable Care Act and gun control.
Recently, Kansas signed into law the Second Amendment Protection Act, which prohibits the enforcement of federal laws regulating guns manufactured and used within the state. Missouri put forward a bill that would have allowed for the arrest of federal agents enforcing gun laws. Similar bills have been introduced in 37 other states.
more
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/30/the_gop_unrest_will_continue_as_long_as_its_bankrolled_by_the_libertarian_koch_brothers_partner/
Profile Information
Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
