August 31, 2016

ABC/WAPO POLL: Hillary’s Popularity Soars Among Democrats, Minorities

The national media desperately want to convince the American public that Hillary is unloved and unpopular. It is a pervasive and pernicious narrative that marginalizes the millions of people who like, admire and support her. The reality is very different from the media spin.

Source: Peter Daou at Blue Nation Review



Read it at: http://bluenationreview.com/hillary-clintons-popularity-soars-among-democrats-minorities/

August 31, 2016

Grassley hints at Supreme Court confirmation hearing in lame duck

The notorious 'lame duck' session is getting interesting!

Source: Politico, by

Senate Republicans could relent on their hard-line stance in opposition to granting Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing this year, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said Monday.

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While unlikely, he added that Senate Republicans could change their position if enough senators push for a hearing after the November election, leaving the door open for Garland’s confirmation before the new Congress takes office should Donald Trump lose to Hillary Clinton.

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Read it at: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/senate-merrick-garland-confirmation-grassley-227543

August 31, 2016

Pro-trade Democrats call Labor’s bluff

Dem lawmakers who gave Obama fast-track sail through labor-challenged primaries.

Source: Politico, by Edward-Isaac Dovere

Organized labor made a lot of political threats on trade. So far, they’ve flaked on them all.

Just ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who Tuesday clocked an easy win in Florida over the most Bernie Sanders-identified primary challenger in the country — even after her booting as Democratic National Committee chair. She voted to give the president fast-track authority to negotiate trade deals as a precursor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and despite all the noise in Washington, every union in her district still endorsed her.

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“The reality is that this is not as devastating a trade deal as some of the others have been, and ultimately card check, Fight for $15 and immigration reform are a lot more important than biologics — and the unions know that too,” said a Democratic consultant working on several House races where trade has become an issue.

Many Democrats see a harsher reality for these advocates: The anti-trade energy that Trump and Sanders got credit for tapping is less about a sudden leftward or isolationist lurch and more about overall results camouflaging ignorance about TPP outside of Washington and the reality that younger, more educated voters across parties favor open trade by wide margins.

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As far as political consequences, Kind said he’s got a clearer message to any House Democrat who’s agonizing over joining the coalition to provide enough votes along with the Republicans to put TPP on Obama’s desk before he leaves.

“This is survivable,” Kind said. “Definitely survivable.”

Read it all at: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/pro-trade-democrats-call-labors-bluff-227566

August 29, 2016

Trump Accuses Hillary Clinton Of Leaking Classified Info Via Anthony Weiner’s Sexting

I declare Jason Easley an official 'Hillary Bro'!

Source: PoliticusUSA, by Jason Easley

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Donald Trump doesn’t know how to behave like a human being. He always has to dive in head first and go straight for the crazy.

Trump also appears to be oblivious to his own hypocrisy. The Republican nominee is currently employing a campaign CEO who was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife. Trump’s first campaign manager assaulted a reporter, and his second campaign manager was a bag man for Putin. The icing on the cake is that Donald Trump is getting help with debate prep against the first female major party nominee from Roger Ailes, who is at the center of the biggest sexual harassment scandal in media history.

Trump has some of the worst judgment ever seen in a presidential nominee. In fact, the only people with judgment worse than Trump are the millions of Republican primary voters who made him the party’s nominee.

With each passing day, Donald Trump shows why he is not fit to be president.

Read it at: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/08/29/trump-accuses-hillary-clinton-leaking-classified-info-anthony-weiners-sexting.html

August 26, 2016

Obama's judges leave liberal imprint on U.S. law

File under "Elections DO matter!"

Source: Reuters, by Lawrence Hurley

When President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, the federal appeals court based in Virginia was known as one of the most conservative benches in the country.

Two Obama terms later, Democratic appointees hold a 10-5 majority on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a panel of which issued a groundbreaking ruling this April backing transgender rights.

The shift to the left on the court, which hears cases from Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina, highlights a widely overlooked aspect of Obama's legacy.

His appointments of dozens of judges to the country's influential federal appeals courts have tilted the judiciary in a liberal direction that will influence rulings for years to come and be further entrenched if Democrat Hillary Clinton wins this November's presidential election.

Read the rest at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-obama-idUSKCN1110BC

August 25, 2016

Alabama's most-asked Donald Trump question is Rated X

We know the most important qualities in a candidate we want for president.

Source:al.com, Leada Gore




More at: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/alabamas_most-asked_question_a.html#incart_river_index

August 24, 2016

Commerce Secretary Pritzker on Trade and TPP

August 24, 2016

As Hillary Clinton’s Lead Grows To 12 Points, Media Creates Clinton Foundation Scandal

The predictable response from the media to Hillary Clinton's growing lead over Donald Trump is to drum up a Clinton scandal in the hopes that the polls will get closer.

Source: PoliticusUSA, by Jason Easley



Read it at: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/08/23/hillary-clintons-lead-grows-12-points-media-pushes-clinton-foundation-scandal.html

August 24, 2016

A Basic Income Would Upend America’s Work Ethic—and That’s a Good Thing

Freedom to control our time should lie at the heart of any struggle.

Source: The Nation, by Fred Block and Frances Fox Piven

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Simply put, wage work has become one of the most elemental pillars of our civic religion. It is not just an American religion, although Americans tend to be especially fierce devotees, but virtually a world religion. Remember the myth of the Garden of Eden, shared by all the Abrahamic creeds, Christian and Muslim and Jewish traditions alike. Once upon a time, the story goes, God was generous. He created Adam and Eve and gave them a garden of plenty in which to live. But although there were many trees with many fruits, they were tempted by the serpent and disobeyed God’s warning not to bite into the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For this sin they were cast out of the garden and made to struggle for their subsistence. They had sinned, and so ever after they were made to work for their livelihood. Work is our punishment, the story goes, and our redemption.

The myth explained the harsh reality of life for people who struggled over the millennia to survive in a subsistence economy. But the myth was also put to the service of dominant groups who wrested control of the fields, the forests, and the streams on which subsistence depended and then blamed the ensuing poverty on the poor themselves. Over time, many of the world’s people were not only cursed by the need to work; they also had to work for those who controlled the resources that turned labor into subsistence. They became workers for hire by the propertied, and the drudgery and the abuses of wage work now became the fate to which humankind was consigned for the sin in the Garden of Eden.

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Could it be that people are afraid of being freed from wage work, even from a portion of wage work? What would they do with their newfound free time? Watch television or play with their iPhone? A shorter work week, or no work week would make a rich leisure life possible, and it would make a dense social life possible. There would be time to invest in our communities, and time to care for one another, and especially to care for the young, the old, and the sick. But if the patterns of that leisure, the elements of that community, have become invisible to us, well, maybe everyone might as well go to work for whatever camaraderie the workplace provides.

These fears are another reason that the debate over basic income has such extraordinary political potential. It is not just another reform; it is a proposal that makes us think about what it is we are here on earth to do. Both our civic religion and harsh economic necessity dictates that we must work in order to live—how else are we going to pay off those student loans? But when a tiny population of farmers can feed many millions and highly automated factories can churn out more cars and more consumer goods than people can afford to buy, what is the point of the tyranny of wage labor? And what precisely is the justification for the huge gap between the ostentatious wealth of the billionaires and the misery of those who can find only the most degraded forms of work? Basic income raises the big questions—what is an economy for, and why can’t we have one that serves the needs of everyone?

Read it at:https://www.thenation.com/article/a-basic-income-would-upend-americas-work-ethic-and-thats-a-good-thing/

August 24, 2016

MSNBC tops CNN for third straight week in August

What are they doing different now?

Source: The Hill, by Joe Concha

MSNBC is on a ratings roll in August.

The Comcast-owned cable news network, beat CNN in both total viewers and in the key 25-54 demographic for the third straight week in the 6 a.m. to 9 am ET morning time-slot. MSNBC also beat CNN in the prime-time slot from 8 p.m to 11 p.m. for the week of Aug. 15-19, finishing second in the cable news ratings race, behind Fox News.

Over the first three weeks of August, MSNBC has topped CNN among total viewers with both its morning show “Morning Joe” and in prime-time via "All In with Chris Hayes," "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."

The MSNBC victories over CNN are notable, given how well the Time Warner-owned outlet performed from a ratings perspective during the Democratic National Convention in the last week of July. During that coverage out of Philadelphia, CNN beat all broadcast (NBC, ABC, CBS) and cable news competition, including Fox News.

Read it at: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/292411-msnbc-on-ratings-roll-in-august