March 25, 2015

The New Yorker Removes 'Uppity' From A Description Of Ted Cruz

The New Yorker magazine struck the word "uppity" from a description of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a recent article about the presidential candidate, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple reported Wednesday.

The Monday article, titled "Can You 'Imagine' Ted Cruz as President?" originally described Cruz as an "uppity loudmouth" who helped to bring about a government shutdown, according to Wemple. That line now refers to Cruz merely as a "loudmouth."

Contributor John Cassidy, who wrote the piece, appended an explanation at the bottom of the story:

In describing Senator Cruz’s aggressive actions during his first year in the Senate, I originally used the word “uppity,” which means, according to Webster’s, “acting as if you are more important than you really are, do not have to do what you are told to do, etc.” However, the word also has some disturbing historical connotations that I overlooked, and in applying it to a Latino politician, I goofed. If I gave any offense, however inadvertently, I am sorry.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-new-yorker-uppity

March 25, 2015

Jindal: WH Shouldn't Use FEMA To Push Climate Change Ideology

Source: TPM


Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Tuesday slammed a new FEMA rule that could force states to recognize climate change in order to receive disaster preparedness funds.

"This preparation saves lives," Jindal said in a statement to the Washington Times. "The White House should not use it for political leverage to force acquiescence to their left-wing ideology."

FEMA recently updated its standards for the Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants to require that states address how climate change may impact their states.

"The risk assessment must provide a summary of the probability of future hazard events," the new guidelines state. "Probability must include considerations of changing future conditions, including the effects of long-term changes in weather patterns and climate."

-snip-

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jindal-fema-climate-change

March 25, 2015

How Bush-Appointed Ivy Leaguer Ted Cruz Became A Tea Party Darling

Ted Cruz, who has become one of the Tea Party's most prominent voices, has officially announced his bid for president. But how is it that a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, a Bush appointee, can pass muster as the standard-bearer for a movement that is supposed to represent anti-elitist, anti-establishment, “real America”?

To understand Cruz’s role in 2016, one must recognize that the Tea Party in Washington today is a not an insurgency from below. It is a realignment within the Republican establishment that has committed the party to a position of extreme non-compromise. As Megyn Kelly pointed out yesterday, Ted Cruz has put himself at the vanguard of that strategy. The willingness to naysay, more than any policy position or connection to the conservative grassroots, is what distinguishes him from other Republican presidential hopefuls.

Let’s remember: The Tea Party, more than an organization or even a movement, was a political moment. In early 2009, the person and the policy proposals of President Barack Obama galvanized grassroots conservatives. But, after the exceptionally unpopular President Bush left office, the Republican brand was toxic and the party leadership was in disarray. Encouraged by conservative media, rank-and-file Republicans built ad hoc local “Tea Party” groups to oppose the new president’s agenda. There was plenty of room at the top for any Republican who could seize the “Tea Party” momentum.

At the national level, those who profited were rarely actual newcomers. Instead, longtime conservative insiders like Dick Armey and Jim DeMint became “Tea Party” leaders. Although the adoption of the Tea Party name and symbolism gave a sense of novelty to this intra-party realignment, there is nothing new about the rightmost wing of the Republican Party except its ever-increasing authority.

Today, we are reaping the candidates the Tea Party has sown. One of these is Ted Cruz, whose 2012 campaign received support from several major players in the Tea Party field, including Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund and Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, as well as other longtime funders of the far right, like the Club for Growth. These players aren’t new, but their degree of power is; the Republican Party has been growing more conservative for decades, and the Tea Party was only the latest step in that direction.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/how-did-ted-cruz-become-a-tea-party-darling

March 25, 2015

Clinton Camp Welcomes Ted Cruz to the Race

Those closest to Hillary Clinton “have counseled patience, arguing that a core element of Clinton’s plan was to get out of the way and let the dueling wings of the Republican Party savage each other while she floats above it all,” Politico reports.

“People close to Clinton smiled at the sight of the first-term senator wandering alone on stage at Liberty University, implicitly threatening a civil war with the ‘mushy’ establishment of his party that he loves to decry — while at the exact same time Clinton sat comfortably alongside heavyweights from her own party’s progressive and labor elements, who have thus far entirely declined to challenge her.”

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http://p.feedblitz.com/r3.asp?l=103474179&f=17571&u=37190363&c=4916387

March 25, 2015

What If Sarah Palin Were a Brain Surgeon?

Until two years ago, Ben Carson was a mild-mannered neurosurgeon—a hero to black America, the subject of a tender made-for-TV movie. Then he started raving about Nazis and America's demise. Now he's the Tea Party's great White House hope—and the GOP's worst nightmare. Never mind that he's never been elected to anything: Being president, Carson says, ain't exactly brain surgery

BY JASON ZENGERLE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN

On the night earlier this year that Barack Obama stepped before the nation to deliver his sixth State of the Union address, Ben Carson—a political newcomer who harbors dreams of soon giving his first—settled into a sofa just a few blocks away. He was eager to hate everything the president was about to say.

Carson had come to the Capitol Hill home of Armstrong Williams, a conservative media impresario who officially serves as Carson's business manager and who lately has functioned as Carson's unofficial image-maker and political adviser as well. As the two men turned to the TV, they began dissecting Obama's performance.

"He looks good," Williams said. "He looks clean. Shirt's white. The tie. He looks elegant."

"Like most psychopaths," Carson grumbled. "That's why they're successful. That's the way they look. They all look great."

For those unfamiliar with the mood of America's far right, casually branding the president a psychopath is exactly the sort of talk that strikes a chord—and just the thing that has made Carson a sensation in the GOP. Today the former pediatric neurosurgeon—who's never run for elected office—is suddenly besting candidates like Jeb, Marco, and Rand in some 2016 polls and preparing to announce his campaign for the White House. As for the current resident, well, Carson is sometimes encouraged to cut him just a little slack before he hands over the keys.

more
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201504/ben-carson-tea-party

March 25, 2015

No Clear Leader in New Hampshire GOP Primary

Source: PoliticalWire

A new Gravis Marketing poll in New Hampshire shows Scott Walker just ahead in the GOP presidential primary with 19%, followed by Jeb Bush at 18%, Chris Christie at 10%, Rand Paul at 10%, Marco Rubio at 7%, Ted Cruz at 6% and Ben Carson at 6%.

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Read more: http://p.feedblitz.com/r3.asp?l=103474178&f=17571&u=37190363&c=4916387

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March 25, 2015

Jeb’s brazen cash grab: His “I’m my own man” campaign crumbles in face of big fundraiser with W.

Forced to choose between establishing his independence and cashing in on family ties? Bush will take the dollars

JOAN WALSH

It’s not surprising that Jeb Bush is raising money off the political ties of his brother, former president George W. Bush. It’s a little surprising he’s doing it this early. But on Wednesday night, the brothers will come together at a Dallas fundraiser hosted by a longtime W. pal. Invitations asked $100,000 per couple, in personal donations or commitments to bundle, according to Politico.

That’s a little brazen. After all, Bush is said to believe a central challenge for his 2016 candidacy will be to differentiate himself from his brother, the former president, and to a lesser extent his father. There are lots of reasons: Many voters don’t like the idea of a Bush dynasty. And specifically, many voters don’t like George W. Bush. Although his approval rating has climbed since he left office – voters also don’t like disliking their former presidents – the economic and foreign policy legacy of Bush 43 still represent potential baggage for his brother’s campaign.

Bush got high marks for facing down that challenge early and often, including in his first big speech on foreign policy last month. Though it wasn’t included in prepared text distributed to reporters, Bush apparently free-styled a riff about loving his father and brother while declaring “I’m my own man.” The Fix’s Chris Cilizza, among others, loved it: “Assuming the Bush folks did this on purpose — and I am very strongly suspicious that they did — then it’s a very smart strategic move.”

He’d said something similar in his economic speech in Detroit two weeks before:

If I have any degree of self-awareness, this would be the place where it might want to be applied. I love my brother. I think he’s been a great president. It doesn’t bother me a bit to be proud of them and love them, but I know for a fact that if I’m going to be successful … then I’m going to have to do it on my own.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/25/jeb%E2%80%99s_brazen_cash_grab_his_%E2%80%9Ci%E2%80%99m_my_own_man%E2%80%9D_campaign_crumbles_in_face_of_big_fundraiser_with_w/

March 25, 2015

Jeb’s “James Baker” problem: Why hawks are turning on the “anti-Israel” Bush

Neocons have determined that Jeb Bush hates Israel, because he talks to James Baker sometimes

JIM NEWELL

Aren’t GOP presidential politics just great? You wake up one morning and suddenly Jeb Bush is the “anti-Israel candidate” in the Republican presidential primary field.

How did this happen? Last we checked, Jeb Bush loved the dickens out of Israel. He’s been very clear about his deep affection for any and everything that (the right wing of) Israel does. “Governor Bush’s support for Israel and its Prime Minister is clear,” Bush’s spokesperson, Kristy Campbell said Monday night. This is perfectly in line with his support for the dumb Tom Cotton letter, and his insistence that the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran is “bad” and should be rejected because Israel. Et cetera et cetera, SO ON, AND SO ON. Jeb Bush has no interest in straying from the prevailing party line on Israel, which is that American foreign policy should be conducted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But why, pray tell, was Kristy Campbell issuing this reassurance of Jeb Bush’s deep, unwavering, total love for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel late on a Monday night? Because James Baker, the former White House chief of staff, Treasury Secretary, and Secretary of State under Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr., had just addressed the annual J Street conference.

J Street is the advocacy group founded as a more liberal counterpart to AIPAC. It is critical of the Israeli right wing and does not see it as helping the prospects for peace in the Middle East. So naturally conservatives see J Street as a radical extremist left-wing terrorist organization in bed with the mullahs of Iran and hellbent on securing the total annihilation of Israel. (The views of American Jews at large, meanwhile, tend to align with J Street’s.)

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/25/jebs_james_baker_problem_why_hawks_are_turning_on_the_anti_israel_bush/

March 25, 2015

Ted Cruz’s “country music” drivel: What’s really behind his musical conversion

After 9/11, the 2016 contender explains, he ditched classic rock for country music. Here's why he's full of it

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

So Texas firebrand Ted Cruz explained that 9/11 changed him so much that he lost his former taste in music and found another He said:

Music is interesting. I grew up listening to classic rock. And I’ll tell you sort of an odd story: My music tastes changed on 9/11. I actually intellectually find this very curious, but on 9/11, I didn’t like how rock music responded. And country music — collectively — the way they responded, it resonated with me. And I have to say just at a gut level, I had an emotional reaction that says, ‘These are my people. And ever since 2001, I listen to country music. But I’m an odd country music fan because I didn’t listen to it prior to 2001.

I’m going to guess he figures Mike Huckabee has the Nugent vote all sewn up.

He “intellectually finds it very curious” that on 9/11 he didn’t like how rock responded? What is that supposed to mean? Apparently when they held all those concerts and fundraisers like the Concert for New York City he thought they were trashing America. Sure, the Dixie Chicks were famous for saying that they were ashamed George Bush was from Texas during the run up to the Iraq war, but they’re as country as they come. (And I think we can be fairly confident that Cruz endorsed the abusive treatment they received from radio stations for saying it. President Bush certainly did.)

But I’m hard-pressed to think of any rockers, classic or otherwise, who were disrespectful in the aftermath of 9/11. Certainly it wasn’t Bruce Springsteen or Paul McCartney or Neil Young or Fleetwood Mac or literally dozens of other rock and pop artists who penned heartfelt songs about the event. But then Cruz undoubtedly didn’t want to hear poetic songs about loss and pain. He wanted songs of revenge and killing, like Toby Keith’s famous anthem, “The Angry American” which featured the kind of language that gets Cruz and his voters very, very excited:

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/25/ted_cruzs_country_music_drivel_whats_really_behind_his_musical_conversion/

March 25, 2015

Supreme Court revives pregnant worker’s discrimination case against UPS

Source: Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday revived a woman driver’s pregnancy discrimination claim against package delivery company UPS Incby sending the case back to a lower court.

On a 6-3 vote, the court said worker Peggy Young would have another chance to litigate whether the company should have granted her request for temporary changes in work duties after she became pregnant in 2006. The case focused on whether employers must provide accommodations for pregnant workers who may have physical limitations on tasks they can perform.

Writing on behalf of the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said that the lower court is required to determine if the employer had “legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonpretextual justification” for treating employees differently.

Breyer said there is a “genuine dispute as to whether UPS provided more favorable treatment to at least some employees whose situation cannot reasonably be distinguished from Young’s.”

-snip-

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/supreme-court-revives-pregnant-workers-discrimination-case-against-ups/