This is what happens when an entire party sells it soul for a guy like Trump...and they so deserve it.
So after all the horrifying comments made by Trump, one finally stuck? Check out the uncensored version of his comments:
Trump's apology wasn't really, shifting the blame to Bill and Hillary, a pathetic and desperate misdirection play:
Trump is not coming to the much anticipated rally in Elkhorn Wisconsin Saturday...so he can study for the debate on Sunday, or maybe help keep Scott Walker, Ron Johnson and Paul Ryan from being in the same photographs with the presidential scumbag.
Kinda saw that coming after this high and mighty tweet from Walker:
Make no mistake, Walker, Ryan and Johnson jumped on board the Trump train knowing just what they were getting.
Here's audio from Elizabeth Warren's great speech Saturday tying Wisconsin Republicans tightly to Trump, just before the latest news broke:
In another part of Warren's speech, she went after Trump's "smart" tax free lifestyle:
Chris Hayes talked to the retiring Charlie Sykes about what it all means in Wisconsin.
Samantha Bee released her own 'locker room" style conversation:
BREAKING: Samantha Bee recorded having extremely lewd conversation about men in 2016. pic.twitter.com/UBYUJFGayy
Since there's no right wing principle that can't be reversed (because Republicans have different rules when they're in power), trolls who are easily convinced that something is true if it's repeated enough, are sticking to the fabrication that there is precedent for not nominating a supreme court justice in a presidents final year. I feel a little dumber just typing that. This suddenly got tweets:
Still clinging to their guns, god and lies, who cares about the truth. First, PolitiFact already decided this one:
False, but who cares. Liberal media right?
But as it turns out, "precedent" isn't the real reason, as if most of us didn't already know that. Here's Dumb Ron Johnson with the bubble bursting truth:
TPM: Johnson was asked on Wisconsin radio show "Morning Mess" about Senate Republicans' refusal to consider President Obama's forthcoming nomination to the Supreme Court. The host hypothesized that things would be different if Mitt Romney were in the White House.
"It’s a different situation. Generally, and this is the way it works out politically, if you’re replacing — if a conservative president’s replacing a conservative justice, there’s a little more accommodation to it."
Oops, and for added measure, why not freely admit the court is a partisan right wing arm of the Republican Party too:
"But when you're talking about a conservative justice now being replaced by a liberal president who would literally flip the court — you know, let's face it, I don't think anybody's under any illusion — President Obama's nominee would flip the court from a 5-4 conservative to a 5-4 liberal controlled court. And that's the concern is that our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, our First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty, will be threatened."
The great American truth teller Sen. Elizabeth Warren was just as stunned as I was:
Warren: "I mean, what's it gonna take for these guys. Ron Johnson today said 'well, if it were a Republican president, yea, we'd feel differently about doing that vote.' I mean, can you be any more naked about what's going on? That there is no point of principle here for those guys. This is naked politics."
Remember when justices were supposed to impartial? Not a lot of people do today. The same reasoning went into eliminating the Government Accountability Board overseeing elections in Wisconsin; it was replaced by partisan political hacks because basically no one is really ever impartial anymore, so screw it.
WaPo:Richard A. Posner is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit: The decision of the Republican Senate majority to consider no nominee of President Obama to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court ... is significant, but not for the usual reasons given ... the Senate’s action lies in reminding us that the Supreme Court is not an ordinary court but a political court, or more precisely a politicized court, which is to say a court strongly influenced in making its decisions by the political beliefs of the judges. Most of what the Supreme Court does — or says it does — is “interpret” the Constitution and federal statutes, but I put the word in scare quotes because interpretation implies understanding a writer’s or speaker’s meaning, and most of the issues that the court takes up cannot be resolved by interpretation because the drafters and ratifiers of the constitutional or statutory provision in question had not foreseen the issue that has arisen. This is notoriously the case with respect to the Constitution ... Eighteenth- and 19th-century politicians, and many 20th-century ones as well, did not foresee or make provision for regulating electronic surveillance, sound trucks, flash-bang grenades, gerrymandering, child pornography, flag-burning or corporate donations to political candidates. When judges are not interpreting, they’re creating, and to understand judicial creation one must understand first of all the concept of “priors.” Priors are attitudes, presuppositions derived from upbringing, from training, from personal and career experience, from religion and national origin and character and ideology and politics ... they are impervious to evidence ... their priors will tug them this way or that, and the tug may be decisive ... bowing to the inevitable is not misconduct, however much it deviates from the “official” — the self-protective “the law made me do it” — conception of judicial decision-making. The Republican senators’ behavior is proof (were any needed) of the Supreme Court’s politicization.
My conservative friend in Milwaukee had this response to Posner's opinion...I wish I was kidding, or at least he was:
For the record, never forget how every Republican presidential candidate went along with an attempt to sabotage the country for their own selfish political gain, offering up second grade excuses for the delay:
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivered a scathing critique of
trickle-down economics in which she cited former President George H.W. Bush:
"Since the 1980s, too many of the people running this
country have followed one form or another of supply side — or trickle-down —
economic theory. Many in Washington still support it. When all the varnish is
removed, trickle-down just means helping the biggest corporations and the
richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and
rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone
else. Trickle-down was popular with big corporations and their lobbyists, but
it never really made much sense."
She noted that the senior president Bush called it
"voodoo economics."
"He was right, and let’s call it out for what it is:
Trickle-down was nothing more than the politics of helping the rich-and-powerful
get richer and more powerful, and it cut the legs out from under America’s
middle class. Pretty much the whole Republican Party – and, if we’re going to
be honest, too many Democrats – talked about the evils of 'big government' and
called for deregulation. It sounded good, but it was really about tying the
hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international
corporations to do whatever they wanted to do—turning them loose to rig the
markets and reduce competition, to outsource more jobs, to load up on more
risks and hide behind taxpayer guarantees, to sell more mortgages and credit
cards that cheated people. In short, to do whatever juiced short term profits
even if it came at the expense of working families. The trickle-down experiment
that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich
are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great.
But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing
great!"
Let's face it, Elizabeth Warren has an amazing ability to talk just like us.
As I mentioned before, Republicans in the house and senate have successfully stopped the implementation of the Democratic Party's agenda nationwide, which means the public will never really know whether our agenda really works. It's not being given a chance. At the same time, on a state level, the GOP is showing people just how dysfunctional their policies are. Despite low job growth, their failure isn't bad enough to shake the conservative voters determination to vote them back in.
Lawrence O'Donnell provided this wonderful Warren moment, where she outright asked for the removal of the filibuster. And isn't it about time?
"So far they have shut down the government, they have filibustered people [President Obama] has nominated to fill out his administration, and they are now filibustering judges to block him from filling any of the vacancies with highly qualified people. We need to call out these filibusters for what they are: Naked attempts to nullify the results of the last election. If Republicans continue to filibuster these highly qualified nominees for no reason other than to nullify the president's constitutional authority, then senators not only have the right to change the filibuster, senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules. We cannot turn our backs on the Constitution. We cannot abdicate our oath of office."
They're gone. The 4h of July holiday started a week in advance for our freeloading do nothing Republican politicians.
They're scaring families across America with their free market stunt to rake in interest profits for banks by tying the percentage to the market. Hey, somebody should make something off our future business owners and employees.
I should also note that our own state Republicans froze tuition in the state due to recent UW surpluses in an attempt to portraying themselves as the great protectors of family budgets, when if fact it was just another way to cut funding to the UW. If they're honestly concerned, why allow the doubling of interest rates? This really is all just a troubling game to them.
Rep. Ron Kind has been on this for some time, releasing this call to action today:
Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) called on House majority leaders to
cancel the upcoming holiday recess and take action to prevent the doubling of
student loan interest rates. If Congress does not act this week, interest
rates on federally subsidized Stafford student loans will jump from 3.4% to
6.8% on July 1st. “It’s no wonder that Americans across the
country have such a low opinion of Congress, if some members can’t even agree
that affordable education is good for the economy and good for the future
prosperity of our country. Congress should not leave town for recess and allow
more students to fall into a financial bind,” continued Kind. “Even worse, the
Republican plan to address this issue would have made our students pay even
higher interest rates, putting them deeper in debt. I voted against that plan
because it’s just not fair to use our students’ money to pay down our national
debt.” Earlier this month, Rep. Kind signed a discharge petition—a
procedural motion that frees up a bill that has been blocked in a Congressional
committee—to force an up or down vote on the Student Loan Relief Act, a bill
that would extend the 3.4% interest rate on Stafford loans until July 1, 2015.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren had the best idea, that never got any traction:
Huffington Post: Legislation from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to reform
the federal college loan program has garnered more support than any other
proposal, with six more college presidents now endorsing her plan to
dramatically lower interest rates for students. Warren's bill, the first she's authored as a senator,
would tie the interest rate on federal Stafford loans to the rate banks receive
from the Federal Reserve, lowering student loan rates from as high as 6.8
percent to 0.75 percent, and saving students thousands of dollars. A recent poll conducted by Public Policy Poling showed
widespread support for lowering federal student loan rates, with 60 percent
of respondents saying they back
Warren's idea, including 56 percent of Republicans. Despite this
popularity, Warren's bill has not come up for a vote in Congress.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren just started the push to offer a low .75% student loan interest rate as an investment in our economic future. How crazy is that?
Meant to be a one year fix, Warren may have come up with a permanent fix to the problem of crushing student loans that end up stifling our economy. Here are two email press releases I received this morning:
Joan McCarter, Daily Kos: Sen. Elizabeth Warren has
introduced her first bill, and
naturally it's a stroke of genius. Called the
"Bank on Student Loan Fairness Act," the bill would give students the
same low rates on loans which the nation's biggest banks currently receive. Students
are the ones that are going to be responsible for rebuilding this country, and
they shouldn't be saddled with crippling debt before they even get a chance to
start doing that. Here's what Warren said about her bill when she introduced
it on the Senate floor.
"Some people say that we can’t afford to help our kids
through school by keeping student loan interest rates low. But right now, as I
speak, the federal government offers far lower interest rates on loans, every
single day–they just don’t do it for everyone. Right now, a big bank can get a
loan through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate of about 0.75%. But
this summer a student who is trying to get a loan to go to college will pay
almost 7%. In other words, the federal government is going to charge students
interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest
banks–the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this
economy. That isn’t right."
Arshad Hasan, Executive Director-Democracy for America: Congress
is set to double the cost of student loans from 3.4% to 6.8% --while offering
huge corporate banks the low rate of 0.75%.You read that right. Congress
punishing young men and women looking to start their careers and families,
while offering the biggest banks a 900% discount. Here's what Sen. Elizabeth
Warren had to say about that:
"As a country, every time we advance money to the big
banks at low interest rates, we invest in those banks. We should be making at
least that same kind of investment in our students."
She's right -- and she just introduced her first bill to the
Senate to fix this absurdity.
Why is Sen. Scott Brown focusing on Elizabeth Warren's heritage? It's so bizarre that it's hard not to notice. John Nichols tweeted the following about the current state of that campaign:
Rachel Maddow has the "tomahawk chop" video and Brown's odd obsession against Warren, that steers clear of any relevant issues.
It's hard to understand how Elizabeth Warren is still trailing a low information politician like Sen. Scott Brown. Maybe her speech last night will light a fire under a majority of Massachusetts Democratic voters.
Warren's best line slapped back at Romney's "corporations are people, my friend" declaration:
After watching the propagandist video below, showing distorted images with blatant fear mongering, you'd think we were in a third world country. More sick political psychedelia from Karl Rove:
Warren not only handled the situation quickly, kindly and professionally, but felt sorry for the two year unemployed victim of his own ideology. Great stuff:
If you’ve ever read the condescending comments of conservatives at any web site, you would think they were the adults in the room, begging for an intellectual conversation. That would be another lie.
Let's start with this quote by Elizabeth Warren:
Warren: “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.”
Here's what Michael Laprarie posted in response:
He went on to write this:
Huh? By making an obviously spurious claim that “the rest of us” (i.e. everyone but the wealthy) were the ones who paid for our public services, is Prof. Warren trying to claim that wealthy Americans are resentful about paying for roads, schools, and emergency services, things that virtually all of us have depended on — and supported — for well over a century? I think so.
No, she wasn’t imply the wealthy are resentful of paying for roads etc., just that they can afford to help even more. So strike one. Here's strike two:
And she is doing it because she is trying to manipulate her audience into being angry at “the rich” because they don’t appear to feel guilty, when they damn well should be.
Gulp! I didn’t detect any “guilt” from “the rich” that time either. Which shows the writer, ironically, is not getting it again. And strike three:
Her manipulation cleverly avoids the real reason why many Americans are truly concerned about the taxes we pay. As the size and cost of the Federal government increases beyond what was originally outlined in our national social contract (The Constitution), the mutual consent of the people diminishes proportionately.
Dumb line, not in the constitution. We can debate the size of government, but we have a choice. That choice was left up to the states and to the people.
