Putting aside the Civil War era, what else in American history matches the remorseless nullification doctrine dished out by today’s grandstanding, right wing diehards? Could this pattern of reckless disruption by extremists, aghast they don’t control all three branches, be any more transparent? Can’t win the White House? Scapegoat both president and executive authority. As usual, Democrats seem powerless to resist in kind.
Dardanelle, AR — Adding fire to the controversy of Senator Tom Cotton’s letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, evidence has surfaced that in addition to treason, the senator may also be guilty of self-plagiarism. Spanky Walton, retired principal of Dardanelle High School, read the text of the Senator’s letter yesterday and was beset by an uncomfortable feeling that he had read the letter before.
Republican Doug Ducey is Arizona’s 23rd and current governor. The governor is perhaps best known for having been CEO of Cold Stone Creamery until he and his partner sold the ice cream chain in 2007. He also served as the state’s treasurer, and he is Arizona’s first male governor to hold office since Fife Symington in the 1990s. Ducey is once again making the Arizona news thanks to his budget plan. He is also sounding the alarm that Republican politics are purely self-interested, and that they are anachronistic and detrimental to the public interest at best.
News item: California’s Right to Rest Act would give homeless people the right to use public space without discrimination. It also describes the right to rest in public, to protect oneself from the elements in public, to eat in public and to occupy a legally parked car.
*****
Only in America could memories be so short that we quickly forget one presidential dynasty’s lack of dedication to nurturing our people and our country. Realistically, the underlying fault lies not with the family. It’s more in the realm of plutocratic exploitation. The lessons of history have shown us that power and control is driven by one basic concept, “The end justifies the means.” In other words, oligarchic forces have always achieved their goals of power over governable civilizations by using any means for that goal, or that end.
Conservatives in Congress have once again proven they are un-American and unpatriotic. This time, it’s because of their fierce approval for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The pipeline, being built and run by TransCanada, will bring tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. All the oil will be exported. Major beneficiaries, including House Speaker John Boehner, are those who invest in a Canadian company.
Has the 2015 center-right Democratic Party transmuted literally overnight into its old center-left visage of the mid-1960s — the party of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, poverty programs, voting rights, desegregation and more?
Since the President’s State of the Union message where he announced his plan to push corporate trade agreements and seek Fast Track trade promotion authority, the movement against Fast Track, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and globalized trade has grown. Instead of the bump in support that Obama expected after the State of the Union, opposition has increased inside Congress and in the grass roots.
Can there be doubt that CBS News, in effect, promotes a bias that favors the Republican Party? Anyone who follows politics and watched the Scott Pelley interview of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell last night on Sixty Minutes had to be dumbfounded when Scott Pelley failed to utter any challenge to both Boehner and McConnell’s hubris about the Democrats obstructing legislation, something the GOP promoted as policy. You would expect Fox News to misinform on that count but not a major network.
There is bi-partisan opposition in Congress to Fast Track and a large movement of movements mobilized to stop it.
The corporate media is reporting that since the Republican leadership and President Obama support Fast Track trade authority, it is a done deal. And that message, also heard by countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is driving the race to finalize that agreement.
The truth is: Fast Track is not a done deal. There is bi-partisan opposition in Congress and a large movement of movements organized to stop it.
