July 27, 2015

Sarah Palin Tries To Compare Planned Parenthood To The Confederate Flag

Former Republican vice president nominee Sarah Palin waded into the fights over Planned Parenthood and the Confederate flag with a single Facebook post on Sunday.

The former Alaska governor posted this photograph with the hashtag #DefundPlannedParenthood‬ on her page:



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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sarah-palin-planned-parenthood-facebook-post

July 27, 2015

John Boehner Cries During Interview With The Golf Channel

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) brought the Golf Channel to Capitol Hill and it brought the Republican to tears.

The Republican lawmaker brought Golf Channel's host David Feherty to his offices in Washington, D.C. to talk about his daily work for Congress, how he wants to help children, and how easily some lawmakers are moved to tears.

The interview is set to air Aug. 3. Check out the preview, from the Golf Channel, below:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/boehner-golf-channel-interview-crying

July 27, 2015

Rand Paul: Those deceptive videos show why Planned Parenthood should be defunded

Source: Reuters

U.S. Republican presidential contender Rand Paul said on Sunday he plans to push Congress to cut federal funding for the non-profit reproductive healthcare organization Planned Parenthood in a debate over its treatment of aborted fetal tissue.

“I think the time is now to discuss whether taxpayer dollars should be going to such a gruesome procedure,” Paul, a Kentucky senator, said on Fox News Sunday. “People are outraged by this and I think the American people deserve to have a vote on it.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has started a fast-track process to bring Paul’s legislation for a vote soon, McConnell’s spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.

Republicans have rallied around secretly recorded videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing ways to perform abortions to preserve fetal tissue for research, as well as the costs involved. The videos were filmed by anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress.

Paul has urged cutting the nearly $500 million in annual taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in the latest Republican effort to limit government support of the group over its abortion services.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/rand-paul-those-deceptive-videos-show-why-planned-parenthood-should-be-defunded/

July 27, 2015

Watch Mika Brzezinski’s amazing emotional takedown of Mike Huckabee over his Nazi ‘oven’ comment

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski choked up on Monday as she declared that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was not fit to run the country because he had compared President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran to ovens that were used by Nazis in the Holocaust.

During an interview with the conservative media outlet Breitbart News over the weekend, Huckabee had accused the Obama administration of being “naive” on foreign policy.

“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians,” the former Arkansas governor charged. “By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

Brzezinski could not contain her shock as she read the comments for the first time on the Monday edition of Morning Joe.

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Full article:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/watch-mika-brzezinskis-amazing-emotional-takedown-of-mike-huckabee-over-his-nazi-oven-comment/

July 27, 2015

Mitch McConnell and GOP leadership humiliate Ted Cruz on the Senate floor

Other junior senators wanting to grandstand on issues relevant to their presidential campaigns should take note

SCOTT ERIC KAUFMAN

All Ted Cruz wanted to do was abuse his position in the Senate to grandstand on issues that would help bolster his faltering bid for the White House, but his decision to call Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “flat-out” liar on Friday had dire consequences for the Texas senator, whose Republican colleagues turned their back on him when he tried to perform a simple roll call on Sunday.

As Politico’s Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report, McConnell’s decision to move ahead with an effort to extend the Export-Import bank’s charter by attaching it to a highway bill infuriated Cruz, who characterized the procedural move as a “flat-out lie” in direct contradiction with how McConnell assured Republican senators the bank would be handled.

That he said that isn’t the issue — that he said it on the Senate floor, which has rules governing how senators address each other, is. “I think it was a violation of the rules,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said. “It’s not how you treat a colleague regardless of how you feel.”

Maine’s Susan Collins (R) agreed, saying that “I know emotions run high on issues in the Senate, and those are the times when I think we have to take special care to abide by the rules of the Senate, particularly Rule 19, which is very clear that no senator is to impugn the integrity of another senator.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/mitch_mcconnell_and_gop_leadership_humiliate_ted_cruz_on_the_senate_floor/

July 27, 2015

36 Unidentified Marines Killed In WWII Return Home After 70 Years

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) — The military and a private organization have brought home the remains of 36 Marines killed in one of World War II's bloodiest battles.

A group called History Flight recovered the remains from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa, the U.S. Marine Corps said. A ceremony was held Sunday in Pearl Harbor to mark their return.

History Flight has started identifying the remains, and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency will complete the effort, the Marines said. The Marines plan to return the remains to their families after they've been identified.

More than 990 U.S. Marines and 30 sailors died during the three-day Battle of Tarawa in 1943. Japanese machine gun fire killed scores of Marines when their boats got stuck on the reef at low tide during the U.S. amphibious assault. Americans who made it to the beach faced brutal hand-to-hand combat.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/history-flight-marines-return-home-tarawa-world-war-two

July 27, 2015

The Francis Factor: How Will The Pope Influence The 2016 Election?

When Pope Francis visits the United States in two months and becomes the first pontiff to address Congress, his speech will be a seminal moment in American history. A pope who pumps fresh energy into the world’s most influential religious institution and humanizes the papacy will likely find his toughest audience in this country. Several polls released last week show both the challenges and opportunities that await a pope who denounces an “economy of exclusion” and in bracing language prods political leaders to wake up to the reality of climate change.

After enjoying sky-high approval ratings for the past two years, a new Gallup poll shows a swift decline in support for Pope Francis in the United States, driven largely by conservative angst. The pope’s overall favorability rating is now 59 percent, a significant dip from 76 percent early last year. Forty-five percent of conservatives now view the pope favorably, a stark decline from 72 percent who did a year ago.

Don’t quote me on this, but I think Jesus also took a hit in his poll numbers when he kicked the money changers out of the Temple, broke bread with prostitutes and reminded the religious elite that their obsession with the letter of the law missed the big picture. I doubt a pope who is focused on bringing those on the peripheries to the center of global debates is losing sleep over the finer points of Washington punditry or polling. This is a pope who still remains enormously popular and is arguably the most compelling moral leader in the world today. Coveting thy fellow leaders’ polling numbers is likely a sin, but most politicians would do anything to have the pope’s widespread appeal.

Pope Francis has put U.S. conservatives on the defensive by insisting that climate change and economic inequality are urgent moral issues that can’t be ignored. When the first pope from Latin America probes the underbelly of global capitalism—what he calls “an idolatrous system which excludes, debases and kills”—that drives a stake through the heart of conservative economic dogma and challenges a blind faith in free-market fundamentalism.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/pop-francis-2016-election

July 27, 2015

There May Be More Legal Trouble On The Horizon For Dennis Hastert

We haven't heard a peep out of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) since June, when he appeared in court to be arraigned on criminal charges stemming from his alleged agreement to pay millions in hush money to an individual he reportedly sexually abused. But that doesn't mean his legal troubles are out of sight and out of mind.

A U.S. district judge on Thursday reopened a civil case alleging Hastert misappropriated public funds from his post-speakership transition office for private business. The civil suit was originally filed in 2013 by a former business associate of Hastert's, J. David John, and had been dismissed twice previously by the same district judge, Charles Kocoras.

But Kocoras wrote in a new filing that John has established that he told the FBI in 2011 of his "knowledge that Hastert was using federally funded offices, staff, office supplies and vehicles for personal business ventures," allowing the suit to move forward.

A 2012 investigation by The Chicago Tribune spelled out how employees in Hastert's Yorkville, Illinois transition office coordinated travel and meetings and conducted research on business ventures the former speaker worked on with John. One employee also accompanied Hastert and John on trips to Southern California to discuss a proposal for a Formula One racetrack. The newspaper investigation was shored up in part by documentation John produced in a separate lawsuit against Wheaton College, where he and Hastert both attended school.

Politico reported last week that the movement in John's case could be a headache for the team defending Hastert against criminal charges. John's legal team plans to press for further testimony to support the case, likely from the FBI and Hastert himself, according to Politico.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/dennis-hastert-civil-suit-revived

July 27, 2015

Obama: GOPers Like Huck, Trump Would Be 'Ridiculous' If They Weren't So Sad

Source: TPM

President Barack Obama on Monday chided the Republican presidential field, in particular Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, for cheapening the political debate with what he said were "outrageous attacks."

During a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Obama was asked to respond to a remark that Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, made over the weekend comparing a landmark nuclear deal with Iran to the Holocaust. Huckabee said that in sealing the deal, the President "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."

Obama said Huckabee's remark was "part of just a general pattern that we've seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad."

He then suggested Huckabee may have made the comment in an effort to steal headlines away from real estate mogul Donald Trump, who's dominated the news in recent weeks for his disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants and Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) war record, according to CBS News.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-slams-huckabee-trump-iran

July 27, 2015

Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion

John McWhorter

Opposition to racism used to be a political stance. Now it has every marking of a religion, with both good and deleterious affects on American society.

An anthropology article from 1956 used to get around more than it does now, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” Because my mother gave it to me to read when I was 13, of course what I remember most from it is that among the Nacirema, women with especially large breasts get paid to travel and display them. Nacirema was “American” spelled backwards—get it?—and the idea was to show how revealing, and even peculiar, our society is if described from a clinical distance.

These days, there is something else about the Nacirema—they have developed a new religion. That religion is antiracism. Of course, most consider antiracism a position, or evidence of morality. However, in 2015, among educated Americans especially, Antiracism—it seriously merits capitalization at this point—is now what any naïve, unbiased anthropologist would describe as a new and increasingly dominant religion. It is what we worship, as sincerely and fervently as many worship God and Jesus and, among most Blue State Americans, more so.

To someone today making sense of the Nacirema, the category of person who, roughly, reads the New York Times and the New Yorker and listens to NPR would be a deeply religious person indeed, but as an Antiracist. This is good in some ways—better than most are in a position to realize. This is also bad in other ways—worse than most are in a position to realize.

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For example, Ta-Nehisi Coates, now anointed as James Baldwin’s heir by Toni Morrison, is formally classified as a celebrated writer. However, the particulars of his reception in our moment reveal that Coates is, in the Naciremian sense, a priest. Coates is “revered,” as New York magazine aptly puts it, as someone gifted at phrasing, repeating, and crafting artful variations upon points that are considered crucial—that is, scripture. Specifically, Coates is celebrated as the writer who most aptly expresses the scripture that America’s past was built on racism and that racism still permeates the national fabric.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/antiracism-our-flawed-new-religion.html