Comments by "freein2339" (@freein2339) on "Roland S. Martin"
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retsea1 Here's a little history lesson for your stupid "step-n-fetch-it" dumb ass.....
Remember the GOP "predictions" of how Obama was going to destroy the country.....?????
It’s now 2015, nearly two years after Obama took the oath of office for the second time. A few years ago, prognosticators were very confident about what would happen to America by now because of Obama’s reelection. Let’s check in and see how their predictions turned out:
1. Gas was supposed to cost $5.45 per gallon.
In March 2012, on the floor of the United States Senate, Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted that if Obama was reelected gas would cost $5.45 per gallon by the start 2015. Lee said that gas prices would rise 5 cents for every month Obama was in office, ultimately reaching $6.60 per gallon.
Lee was not alone. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, predicted that if Obama was reelected he would push gas to “$10 a gallon.” Gingrich said he would reduce gas prices dramatically by reversing Obama’s energy policies. Gingrich flanked himself with campaign signs promising $2.50 gas if he was elected.
Today, the nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.24.
A lot of the reasons for the decline in gas prices are well beyond Obama’s control — including weak international demand and OPEC’s failure to reduce supply. But the policies that Lee, Gingrich and others criticized — the failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation and limiting drilling on public land — have not gotten in the way of historically low prices.
2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%
In September 2012, Mitt Romney predicted that if Obama is reelected “you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or longer.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 8.1% and had been between 8.1% and 8.3% for the entire year.
What would breaking out of “chronic high unemployment” look like in a Romney presidency? Romney pledged that, if elected, he could bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by January 2017.
The unemployment rate currently stands at 5.8% and has been under 6% since September 2014. Since January 2013, the economy has created nearly 5 million new jobs.
3. The stock market was supposed to crash
Immediately after Obama won reelection in November 2012, many commenters predicted that the stock market was toast.
Charles Bilderman, the author of the “Intelligent Investing” column at Forbes, wrote that the “market selloff after Obama’s re-election [was] no accident,” predicting “stocks are dropping with no bottom in sight.” Bilderman said that the policies the Obama administration would pursue in his second term would “crash stocks.”
On Bloomberg TV, investor Marc Faber predicted that, because of Obama’s reelection, the stock market would drop at least 20%. According to Faber, “Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn’t care about piling up debt.” Faber joked that investors seeking to protect their assets should “buy themselves a machine gun.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average currently stands at 17,823 and is up over 35% since Obama was reelected.
4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse
Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”
The economic freefall would begin, according to Limbaugh, because “California is going to declare bankruptcy” and Obama would force states like Texas to “bail them out.” California currently has a $4 billion budget surplus.
Limbaugh added, “I know mathematics, and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”
He did fudge, however, on the exact timing of the economic apocolypse. Limbaugh said it could take “a year and a half, two years, three years.” It’s been two years and two months since Limbaugh’s prediction, so he still technically has another 10 months to be proven right.
The U.S. economy grew at a robust 5% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, following 4.6% growth in the second quarter.
Although these dire economic predictions have proven false, it doesn’t mean there aren’t real, persistent problems with the U.S. economy. Most critically, wage growth for American workers remains stagnant. That’s why, although many economic indicators are strong, a lot of Americans aren’t yet feeling the impact. But the economy is much better than it was before Obama got elected...
A better question is...
What has the GOP done for the country in the last 15 years....????
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trump's father was in the KKK.....
The [Queens County Evening News] mentions Fred Trump as having been
"discharged" and gives the Devonshire Road address, along with the names
and addresses of the other six men who faced charges. Yet another
account in another defunct local newspaper, the Richmond Hill Record,
published on June 3, 1927, lists Fred Trump as one of the "Klan
Arrests," and also lists the Devonshire Road address.
Another article about the rally, published by the Long Island Daily
Press on June 2, 1927, mentions that there were seven arrestees without
listing names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested were
wearing Klan attire. ... While the Long Island Daily Press doesn't
mention Fred Trump specifically, the number of arrestees cited in the
report is consistent with the other accounts of the rally.
Significantly, the article refers to all of the arrestees as "berobed
marchers."
THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT WERE ARRESTED AT THAT RALLY WERE KLANSMAN...AND
FRED PUNK ASS TRUMP WAS AMONG THOSE ARRESTED....FUCK HIM AND HE PUNK ASS
SON DONALD...
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@keithbell9348 Yes you ignorant asshole the subject is voting...that's why you should shut the fuck up if you don;t vote...Now I suggest you take a good look at the supreme court , your local politics , the rise of hate crimes , the rising debt , the ignorance toward climate change , the blind eye toward police brutality , the love affair with dictators , the overall attack on people of color , the lack of common sense concerning healthcare , the racist judicial system , the racist education system etc etc...are you getting all this you little dumb ass...Voting is a tool that your relatives fought and died for and if voting was not important , why has there been such great pains to oppress it....wake up son...the view from the inside of your ass is limited....Sorry if I hurt your feelings but you are not looking at the big picture...
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@gbenay trump's father was in the KKK..... The [Queens County Evening News] mentions Fred Trump as having been "discharged" and gives the Devonshire Road address, along with the names and addresses of the other six men who faced charges. Yet another account in another defunct local newspaper, the Richmond Hill Record, published on June 3, 1927, lists Fred Trump as one of the "Klan Arrests," and also lists the Devonshire Road address. Another article about the rally, published by the Long Island Daily Press on June 2, 1927, mentions that there were seven arrestees without listing names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested were wearing Klan attire. ... While the Long Island Daily Press doesn't mention Fred Trump specifically, the number of arrestees cited in the report is consistent with the other accounts of the rally. Significantly, the article refers to all of the arrestees as "berobed marchers." THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT WERE ARRESTED AT THAT RALLY WERE KLANSMAN...AND FRED PUNK ASS TRUMP WAS AMONG THOSE ARRESTED....FUCK HIM AND HE PUNK ASS SON DONALD
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“Through an objective assessment, we have seen no evidence that your
Administration acted on our calls for action, and we have in fact
witnessed steps that will affirmatively hurt Black communities,” Rep.
Richmond wrote. While we agreed to explore possible future discussions
when we first met, it has become abundantly clear that a conversation
with the entire CBC would not be entirely productive, given the actions
taken by your Administration since our first meeting.”
The caucus is also refusing to meet with Trump because of the “lack
of response” to at least eight letters of concern written to Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and other
officials.
“Based on the actions taken by you and your
Administration since that meeting, it appears that our concerns, and
your stated receptiveness to them, fell on deaf ears,” the letter said.
fuck adolf trump
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andrew1970able Nice try Adolf but you seem to forget a lot of facts here....so let's try this again...
Republicans admit voter suppression...
Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday blasted his own party for making it tougher for minorities to vote.
The Kentucky Republican, a likely presidential candidate, has long argued that drug laws disproportionately affect minorities and has also championed restoring voting rights for some non-violent felons. He laid out those views in a speech at the Liberty PAC conference, a gathering tied to his father, libertarian icon Ron Paul.
“So many times, Republicans are seen as this party of, ‘We don’t want black people to vote because they’re voting Democrat, we don’t want Hispanic people to vote because they’re voting Democrat,’” he said. “We wonder why the Republican Party is so small. Why don’t we be the party that’s for people voting, for voting rights?”
Kiara Pesante, the Democratic National Committee’s director of African-American media, replied to the speech in a statement, saying: “While Rand Paul chides the GOP for outreach to people of color, Paul supports voter ID laws that make voting harder, dismissed the need for the Voting Rights Act and voiced opposition to the Civil Rights Act. If Rand Paul wants [to] criticize Republicans, he should start by looking in the mirror.”
--------
7th District Court of Appeals Conservative Judge Richard Posner last month called voter fraud “essentially nonexistent.”
There are indeed correlations between Republican governors and the “voting mechanism,” the conservative judge found. Specifically, new voter identification laws are “highly correlated with a state’s having a Republican governor and Republican control of the legislature.” Unfortunately, Posner went on to say, “such laws appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.” He continued: “There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”
----------------
As his own party pushed through the Wisconsin Senate the latest in a series of measures to make it harder to vote in the state, Sen. Dale Schultz (R) blasted the efforts as “trying to suppress the vote” last week.
Schultz, who is not seeking re-election and was the lone Republican to oppose a bill last week to limit the hours of early voting in every jurisdiction in the state, was a guest on The Devil’s Advocates radio program on Madison’s 92.1 FM last Wednesday. Asked why his party pushed the bill, Schultz responded, “I am not willing to defend them anymore. I’m just not and I’m embarrassed by this.”
Schultz argued that this and dozens of similar bills before the Senate this were based on “mythology” that voter fraud is a serious concern: “I began this session thinking that there was some lack of faith in our voting process and we maybe needed to address it. But I have come to the conclusion that this is far less noble.”
Noting that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower championed the 1957 civil rights law, Schultz said that he could not “find any real reason” for his party’s effort to make it harder to vote:
SCHULTZ: It’s just, I think, sad when a political party — my political party — has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics. And again, I’m a guy who understands and appreciates what we should be doing in order to make sure every vote counts, every vote is legitimate. But that fact is, it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted. And that we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future, rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote.
Schultz added that the suppression was “just plain wrong,” adding, “It is all predicated on some belief there is a massive fraud or irregularities, something my colleagues have been hot on the trail for three years and have failed miserably at demonstrating.” The GOP-controlled Assembly has already passed a similar bill.
A 2011 study by the non-partisan Brennan Center found just seven cases of voter fraud in Wisconsin’s 2004 election, out of three million votes cast — a fraud rate of just 0.0002 percent.
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andrew1970able Next time do your homework Adolf....
WASHINGTON, DC – Sources confirmed today that hundreds of thousands of military absentee ballots were delivered hours after the deadline for them to be counted, with preliminary counts showing that they would have overturned the vote in several states and brought a victory for Governor Mitt Romney.
Officials say the ballots were delivered late due to problems within the military mail system. Tracking invoices show the ballots sat in a warehouse for a month, then they were accidentally labeled as ammunition and shipped to Afghanistan. At Camp Dwyer, Marine Sergeant John Davis signed for them and was surprised at the contents.
“I told Gunny we got a bunch of ballots instead of ammo,” Davis told investigators earlier today. “He told me to file a report of improper delivery and that the chain of command would take care of it. We didn’t hear anything for three weeks. While we were waiting we came under fire so we dumped a bunch of them in the Hescoes. We didn’t dig those ones back out.”
The first clue that this may not have been real news might be the author’s name, simply listed as “Drew.” Past contributions from Drew to the Duffel blog include “Blasting Shrill Whistle Throughout Ship Great For Morale, Navy Study Finds” and “Army Launches ‘Eat Right, Don’t Eat At The Chow Hall’ Campaign.’” The military absentee ballot story is peppered with over-the-top lines that should also have served as red flags, particularly a cavalier kicker at the end about care packages. But comments attached below the story — and emails we received – suggest there were a number of people who didn’t get the joke.
Just to be clear, here’s how The Duffel Blog describes itself on its “About Us” page:
The Duffel Blog serves the men and women of the US Military with a daily dose of military humor, funny military pictures, and faux news. We take an interesting and funny look at military life. We focus on veterans, military stories, defense, politics (sometimes) and life on base — with a comedic twist. We are in no way, shape, or form, a real news outlet. Just about everything on this website is satirical in nature.
The folks at Duffel Blog kept the joke going on Twitter, including this tweet:
Obama: “We will not allow these military votes to count. It does not matter, now that I am supreme Ayatollah of America.” #MilitaryForRomney
For the record, we got this official response from the Department of Defense, which as you can imagine takes this stuff awfully seriously.
“The Military Postal Service Agency dispatched to the U.S. Postal Service all military absentee ballots,” Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan told us via email. “We are not aware of any lost ballots at DoD [Department of Defense] overseas military locations.”
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bokdol A smart conservative....
There’s no shortage of high-profile Republicans gearing up for the 2016 presidential race, but there’s one name that probably should be in the mix, but isn’t.
Imagine a popular Republican governor, easily elected twice in a battleground state President Obama won twice. Imagine he’s Hispanic, young, won re-election last year by a ridiculous 46 points, and has seen his state’s unemployment rate drop quickly in recent years.
I’m referring to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), who seems like an almost-perfect presidential candidate for his party, but who hasn’t even considered testing the White House waters.
To understand why, consider Sandoval’s perspective on the pending Supreme Court case that may gut the Affordable Care Act.
“I made a decision early on that we would be a state-based exchange because I felt it was in Nevadans’ best interest to run their own,” Sandoval said, even boasting that twice as many Nevadans enrolled this year over the first round. “I’m just pleased,” he added, “that we don’t have the anxiety of the outcome King v. Burwell.”
At first blush, this may not seem striking at all – a governor embraced a sensible policy that helped his constituents have access to basic medical care. It’s the sort of thing most Americans might expect every well-intentioned governor to do as a matter of course.
But in political terms, we’re talking about a Republican governor who embraced the dreaded “Obamacare” – including Medicaid expansion – and is “pleased” he implemented the Affordable Care Act in a way that may help protect his state from his party’s Supreme Court justices.
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Republicans punk ass reprisal...Ok you "step-n-fetch-it" useless asshole...Here's some facts about voter suppression...
Wayne
Bertsch, a veteran GOP consultant told the Tampa Bay Times that
targeting Democrats was always the goal in curbing early voting. "In the
races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of
turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in
early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines."
Another
tactic, favored in Texas and Florida, is to target nonprofit groups
that conduct voter-registration drives (the League of Women Voters, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). This is
achieved by imposing onerous new training, registration and/or liability
burdens on the groups' volunteers. The proportion of African-American
and Latino voters who register through third-party drives is about twice
what it is for whites.
Republican campaign consultant Scott Tranter
"A lot of us are campaign officials -- or campaign professionals -- and
we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think
that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it
may be," Tranter said with a laugh.
Franklin
County (Columbus) GOP Chair Doug Preisse.. "I guess I really actually
feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the
urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine." Preisse is not some
rogue operative but the chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio's
second-largest county and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Pa House majority leader Mike Turzai, said his state's voter ID law "is
gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,"
U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy ordered Michigan election
officials to immediately halt and attempt to rectify one of the two
practices -- canceling voter registrations for those whose voter
identification card is returned as undeliverable. Murphy ordered the
state to remove the "rejected" marking in the qualified voter file for
all persons whose original voter ID cards have been returned to the
state as undeliverable since Jan. 1, 2006. About 1,500 people have been
removed from the voter list in that manner this year, according to
evidence presented in the case.
Voter hours were extended in white distrcits of Ohio while voting hours were cut in the Black districts....
In
September 2014 , Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp expressed concern that
too many minority voters were registering to vote for the November
midterms and so he found it necessary to subpoena the records of at
least one group working to register more Black and Latino voters.
Now he has gone and "lost" 40,000 voter registration forms handed in by one group.
it’s a sentiment that the staffers at Third
Sector Development are expressing. The nonprofit organization was on a
mission to register as many black and Hispanic people in the state of
Georgia as possible so that voter turnout for the upcoming midterm
elections in November would be high. And they were successful at it,
until they received word that about half of the applications they
submitted for processing have gone missing in action.
“Over
the last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter-registration
forms to the Georgia secretary of state’s office—but as of last week,
about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still
not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of
those 40,000-plus applications, according to state Rep. Stacey Adams, a
Democrat,” Al-Jazeera explained.
But Secretary Kemp says, hey, we're not doing anything differently. Sure they're not.
Georgia
Secretary of State Brain Kemp explained that his office is not doing
anything differently from how it usually processes applications. But
some people aren’t buying his story, seeing as how he’s a Republican,
and black and Hispanic people tend to vote for Democrats.
Georgia
Republicans have been raising eyebrows for some time now with regard to
early voting and voter-ID issues. One state Republican didn’t like how
black and Hispanic voters had easy access to early-voting opportunities.
They
cut early voting, they've got horrible Voter ID laws, and now the
Secretary of State has 40,000 less voter registration forms than were
submitted. Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia and surrounds, isn't
it?
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republicans "uncle tom who better get back on time for plantation roll call"
The environment inside the Republican Party today is a treacherous moral
swamp for African-Americans. No black conservative figure has yet
managed to remain in a position of influence inside the GOP while
speaking honestly about racial questions.When an NAACP chairman derided
Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott recently as a "ventriloquist's
dummy" he touched a deep nerve. Going all the way back to
Reconstruction, black conservatives have fought to justify their emphasis
on economic progress against those who sought more direct resistance to
injustice.That is a fine line to walk and it has never been easy. When
black leaders allow themselves be used as tokens, they will deserve the
suspicion they retain in the black community no matter what other
sincere goals or opinions they may hold. This is an unfair dilemma that
white political figures seldom face, but history has made it
unavoidable.Black leaders cannot expect to be taken seriously so long as
they quietly acquiesce to rhetoric and policies openly hostile to
minority communities. For black conservatives, the price of credibility
is courage.Standing in front of a white audience and validating their
racist assumptions is a fast track to popularity and political
opportunity. Few things thrill a white nationalist more than a black man
who agrees with him. Every racist has ‘lots of black friends’ and
being one of those black friends offers benefits.With the GP in thrall
to an ugly Neo-Confederate resurgence the 2012 Republican Convention
featured its lowest percentage of black delegates in modern history.
Interestingly, while there were only 46 black delegates, the convention
featured eight minority speakers on the main stage alone. Being a black
Republican willing to toe the line without question is an outstanding
way to gain access to a platform.It is entirely reasonable to expect
that Sen. Scott’s position as a Senator was paid for by his willingness
to be used. He has done nothing yet in his career that would be
inconsistent with that characterization. Recite the party’s talking
points and he gets to be a Senator. Acknowledge the existence of racism
in any credible matter and he will be escorted to the exit, where he
will be greeted by Colin Powell and Michael Steele.One of the GOP’s
other black friends, former Rep. Allen West, learned that lesson the
hard way when he accidentally said something positive about Trayvon
Martin case. He quickly backed down, explained that Martin had it coming
because he wasn’t a “respectful young man.” West recognized the value
of being a “respectful young man” in the GOP and now he has a nice gig
with Fox News.This dilemma complicates the appeal of black
conservatives, making it extremely difficult to communicate a credible,
persuasive message without losing access to the political process. To
speak honestly about race means being ostracized from the Republican
Party. To speak honestly about the role of values and culture in the
plight of the black community means being ostracized from the Democratic
Party. Black conservatives can accept a humiliatingly subservient role
in a Republican Party that wants them to perform like circus animals or
sit outside the process, alienated and disempowered.Not everyone in the
black community sees this dilemma. In particular, many black religious
fundamentalists do not perceive this problem at all. It is from their
ranks that figures like Tim Scott and former Rep. Allen West have
emerged. If you believe in a 6000-year-old universe it isn’t so hard to
believe that Obama is a Socialist Anti-Christ or that he cheered the
attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi.Black religious
fundamentalists feel comfortable walking shoulder to shoulder with Tea
Party activists bent on destroying minority voting rights and ending
“income redistribution” to black urban moochers in hoodies. They are
marching with the far-right far-white in pursuit of higher, apocalyptic
goals. If gay marriage is the single greatest threat to civilization
then perhaps an alignment with the GOP’s farthest ideological fringe
makes sense.For non-white conservatives with their feet planted firmly
in the reality-based community the rhetoric being spewed by Republicans
in recent years is more than a little frightening. Some hard-right black
evangelicals may have made peace with the Tea Party, but their numbers
are very small. That’s why most if not all of the African-Americans at
your local Tea Party rally will be speaking onstage.Whether he likes it
or not, Sen. Scott is becoming a national mascot for the efforts of Tea
Party Republicans to whitewash the movement’s glaring racism. The
dilemma he faces may be unique to black political figures, but as the
Republican Party becomes more and more an enigma for white
nationalism that burden spreads more broadly to all conservatives,
regardless of race.The same credibility problem faced by black
conservatives is becoming a dangerous threat to conservatism at large.
If Sen. Scott is a token set up to distract us all from the GOP’s
racism, then what is Karl Rove? At what point should all conservatives
face the same duty to speak about racism that we justly place on Sen.
Scott’s shoulders?If conservatism is going to survive, conservatives
should all take a close look at the dilemma faced by Sen. Scott. The
movement badly needs an update to avoid atrophying into a tool of racial
and political anachronisms. Conservatism will not survive if it fails
to represent something more compelling than the stubborn preservation of
white cultural supremacy. A handful of well-placed black friends may
obscure the party’s problems, but they are not going to save
conservatism from itself........
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Hispanic republicans are tired of GOP racism....
Former state Rep. Aaron Peña, chairman of the Hispanic Republican Conference of Texas
“As conservatives grounded in principles of decency and respect for all people, it is our responsibility to openly denounce demeaning statements,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published in the San Antonio Express-News.
“Our state is changing in many ways, demographically and otherwise,” Peña added. “If we are to move forward cohesively and productively as the great state we are, we must put these ugly vestiges of our past behind us.”
What upsets him most is that — though no political party has a monopoly on racism — most bigoted comments are from Republicans or conservatives, Peña told me. And Iowa’s U.S. Rep. Steve King epitomizes the party’s problems reaching out to Hispanics.
The Republican lawmaker told an interviewer for every undocumented immigrant who becomes a high school valedictorian there are 100 “re-hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
Over the years, King has also compared immigrants to dogs and proposed an electrified fence along the border with Mexico.
Back in Texas, Dallas tea party leader Ken Emanuelson said recently Republicans don’t want blacks to vote because they overwhelmingly support Democrats.
“Our party doesn’t need those people and we should denounce them as strongly as we can when they make or post those ugly comments,” Peña said.
Other Hispanic Republicans share his frustration.
“The problem is that those at the top, the leaders, don’t know how to deal with these people (the bigots),” said former Rep. Raul Torres of Corpus Christi.
“They have failed us miserably, hoping the problem will go away.” Torres said of GOP leaders who say little or nothing when a racist remark triggers a public uproar. “The frustration Aaron expressed is what many of us feel when we read or hear those ugly comments,”
For Peña, Torres and other Hispanic Republicans the party must be more proactive not only in denouncing racist comments but reaching out to minorities.
Their biggest concern is what happened to Republicans in last year’s presidential election could happen in Texas as early as 2018. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received only 29 percent of the Hispanic vote, a poor showing largely attributed to his controversial proposal for self-deportation of illegal immigrants and the secretly videotaped “47 percent” comments.
Due to rapidly changing demographics, Hispanics are projected to become the majority group in Texas as early as the next decade and if they keep voting mostly Democratic, the GOP will be the minority party again, just like it was for 135 years, experts predict.
This is why Peña, Torres and others are sounding off the alarm and it is a question I intend to ask again to Republican Party of Texas chairman Steve Munisteri for a future column.
Earlier this year Munisteri told me, “there is no debate that we need to reach out to Latinos.”
But Peña, Torres and other Hispanic Republicans wonder if their party is trying hard enough.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his autobiography:
"The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism."
That was his description of the 1964 Republican National Convention. He also referred to the Republican convention as "the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right."
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@echo5226 Trump lied about covid.....When: Thursday, February 27
The claim: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
The truth: Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned days later that he was concerned that “as the next week or two or three go by, we’re going to see a lot more community-related cases.” He was right—the virus has not disappeared.
When: Multiple times
The claim: “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” and cases are “coming way down.”
The truth: When Trump made these claims in May, coronavirus cases were either increasing or plateauing in the majority of American states. Over the summer, the country saw a second surge even greater than its first in the spring
When: Wednesday, June 17
The claim: The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
The truth: Trump made this claim ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the country was still seeing at least 20,000 new daily cases and a second spike in infections was beginning.
When: Thursday, July 2
The claim: The pandemic is “getting under control.”
The truth: Trump’s claim came as the country’s daily cases doubled to about 50,000, a higher count than was seen at the beginning of the pandemic, and as the number continued to rise, fueled by infections in the South and the West.
When: Saturday, July 4
The claim: “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
The truth: The virus can still cause tremendous suffering if it doesn’t kill a patient, and the WHO has said that about 15 percent of COVID-19 cases can be severe, with 5 percent being critical. Fauci has rejected Trump’s claim, saying the evidence shows that the virus “can make you seriously ill” even if it doesn’t kill you.
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@echo5226 More lies from adolf trump concerning covid....When: Monday, July 6
The claim: “We now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.”
The truth: The U.S. had neither the lowest mortality rate nor the lowest case-fatality rate when Trump made this claim. As of July 13, the case-fatality rate—the ratio of deaths to confirmed COVID-19 cases—was 4.1 percent, which placed the U.S. solidly in the middle of global rankings. At the time, it had the world’s ninth-worst mortality rate, with 41.33 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Mexico is partly to blame for COVID-19 surges in the Southwest.
The truth: Even before Latin America’s COVID-19 cases began to rise, the U.S. and Mexico had jointly agreed in March to restrict nonessential land travel between the two countries, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection says illegal border crossings are down compared with last year. Health experts say blaming Mexican immigrants for surges is misguided, especially when most of the individuals crossing the border are U.S. citizens who live nearby.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Children are “virtually immune” to COVID-19.
The truth: The science is not definitive, but that doesn’t mean children are immune. Studies in the U.S. and China have suggested that kids are less likely than adults to be infected, and more likely to have mild symptoms, but can still spread the virus to their family members and others. The CDC has said that about 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in children.
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@echo5226 When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”
The truth: These claims are incorrect and misleading. The federal government’s coronavirus response has been roundly criticized as a failure because of flawed and delayed testing, entrenched inequality that has amplified the virus’s effects, and chaotic federal leadership that’s left much of the country’s response up to the states to handle. Trump vacillated on fully invoking the Defense Production Act in March, set off international panic when he mistakenly said he was banning all travel from European nations, and was slow to support social-distancing measures nationwide. Widespread use of the DPA was still rare in July, despite continued shortages of medical supplies.
When: Multiple times
The claim: America is “rounding the corner” and “rounding the final turn” of the pandemic.
The truth: Trump made these claims before and after the country registered 200,000 coronavirus deaths. As the winter approaches, the number of coronavirus cases is increasing in almost every state; in the last week of October, cases rose faster than reported tests in 47 of the 50 states, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
When: Multiple times
The claim: The media is overblowing fears about the virus ahead of Election Day.
The truth: There is no media conspiracy to hype up the virus threat. Cases and hospitalizations are rising across the country, and America set and broke multiple daily case records during the last week of October, nearing 100,000 cases in a single day on Friday.
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@echo5226 adolf trump was a failure....In the absence of a vaccine, experts agree that widespread testing is a crucial means to control the spread of the coronavirus, but the Trump administration has undercut and politicized efforts to make enough tests available.
The president has repeatedly expressed a desire to suppress reported coronavirus infection numbers, even declaring at a Tulsa rally that testing should be slowed to stop new cases from being discovered. Although a White House adviser later claimed the president was joking, the administration has worked to block legislation that would fund testing and contact tracing. One of the president’s top advisers on the coronavirus, Dr. Scott Atlas, who lacks expertise in infection diseases or epidemiology—he is a radiologist by training—also advocated against widespread testing. Some government experts have accused him of peddling junk science. Dr. Atlas resigned as Trump’s pandemic adviser after feuding with health experts and repeatedly promoting various unproven theories related to the pandemic.
Additionally, in August 2020, Trump administration officials from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop recommending coronavirus testing for people without symptoms, despite scientific research showing that asymptomatic people can infect others with the virus. The news broke later that HHS and White House staffers wrote the recommendation, rather than CDC scientists; it bypassed the CDC’s standard scientific review process and was published despite objections from CDC staff. Local health departments and experts condemned the change, and some CDC scientists told health officials to ignore the agency’s official guidance. The CDC ultimately reversed the guidance and again recommended that asymptomatic people who might have come into contact with the coronavirus should seek testing.
The administration has also failed to spend billions of dollars Congress allocated for expanded testing and contact tracing. Lawmakers have been unable to obtain a clear explanation from the administration as to why.
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@echo5226 The Trump administration has repeatedly censored and attacked preeminent government scientists, whose research and analysis would normally be leading the national response to a public health crisis like Covid-19.
The administration has implemented new policies to block government scientists from communicating with the public. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped holding media briefings and instituted a restrictive media policy for agency scientists receiving inquiries for information about Covid-19 — even though these scientists have traditionally been allowed to speak to the press. The Trump administration also prevented National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and other senior health officials from communicating with the public, instead requiring that all communications be controlled by Vice President Mike Pence (who was accused of politicizing another public health crisis as governor of Indiana). A top political aide at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instructed Dr. Fauci’s press team that Fauci was to refrain from advising that children wear masks. The White House also prevented Fauci from testifying before the House of Representatives, because (in the president’s words) the chamber was full of “Trump haters.” He blocked other experts from testifying before Congress at all, including the CDC director, who was invited to testify about how to reopen schools safely. (Fauci and others eventually testified before a House committee.)
Officials who do speak out have faced retaliation. In February 2020, for instance, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, warned that the coronavirus would be severely disruptive to daily life. Her comments reportedly infuriated the president; she was sidelined from further coronavirus briefings and nearly fired. Dr. Rick Bright, a federal health official with many years of experience at HHS, was reassigned after suggesting that the Trump-touted drug hydroxychloroquine should be tested before being used to treat Covid-19 patients. He maintains that he continues to face retaliation in his new role.
In July 2020, the White House embarked on what appears to be a new and disturbing campaign to sideline Dr. Fauci. A White House official characterized as “concern[ing]” assessments and guidance that Dr. Fauci provided early in the pandemic that were later revised after experts developed a better understanding of Covid-19. In an unusual move, White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro published an op-ed — which the White House denies clearing — claiming that Fauci had been “wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.” The president stated publicly that Fauci was an "alarmist” and had “made a lot of mistakes.” When Trump resumed public briefings on the coronavirus in late July, he did not include Dr. Fauci.
President Trump also attacked Dr. Deborah Birx, the government’s coronavirus response coordinator, as “pathetic” and made a baseless accusation that she changed her scientific assessment due to political pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when Dr. Birx accurately noted that the United States faced broad community spread of Covid-19 in August 2020.
President Trump claimed that the “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was intentionally delaying research on Covid-19 treatments until after election day, and a politically-appointed HHS spokesperson accused career government scientists of “sedition” in their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming without evidence that the CDC was operating a left-wing “resistance unit” dedicated to undermining President Trump. In September 2020, Trump directly contradicted the director of the C.D.C. by promising that a vaccine would be developed in a matter of weeks and “go to the public immediately” while also casting doubts on the value of wearing masks.
At the height of the presidential election campaign in October 2020, Trump attacked Dr. Fauci as a “disaster” and complained that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots.” He also suggested that he would have fired Dr. Fauci were it not for the negative press coverage that would result. (At the time, Trump lacked the power to fire Dr. Fauci, although he recently issued an executive order that may allow him to do so.) Even as Trump was attacking Dr. Fauci, however, his campaign used a misleading clip of Dr. Fauci — without his permission —in a campaign advertisement, falsely suggesting that Fauci had praised Trump’s response to the coronavirus.
These abuses are only the latest in a long history of Trump administration efforts to ignore, censor, and punish government scientists who contradict its political messaging. These attacks on science deprive lawmakers, healthcare workers, and the American public of critical information about Covid-19, undermine trust in government, and ultimately hamper the administration’s ability to effectively manage this public health crisis.
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@echo5226 Complete failure....Throughout the pandemic, President Trump has made repeated false and unsupported statements about Covid-19, contradicting scientific research and the advice of government experts. His statements have caused confusion, sown distrust of government, and politicized commonsense public health measures, making it difficult to control the spread of the coronavirus and stabilize the economy.
As the first coronavirus cases were reported in the United States and top government health officials expressed concern that the virus would spread throughout the country for months, President Trump claimed that the number of infections would soon "be down to close to zero" and that the virus would disappear "like a miracle." He has also falsely claimed that the mortality rate for Covid-19 is like that for the flu, that 99 percent of cases are “totally harmless,” and that the United States has “one of the lowest mortality rates [for the disease] in the world.” The Trump administration has encouraged state officials to disseminate false information. Vice President Mike Pence told governors to spread the president’s misleading claim that the uptick in coronavirus cases is due to an increase in testing.
Trump reportedly acknowledged that he had intentionally downplayed the threat of the virus during interviews with journalist Bob Woodward in February and March 2020, stating that although he recognized the deadly nature of the disease, “I wanted to always play it down . . . I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
In late March 2020, with cases growing exponentially, and less than two weeks after many states and localities instituted lockdowns, Trump called for the reopening of the American economy by Easter based on the advice of business associates, and contrary to the counsel of health officials. Skeptical of models created by public health experts to predict the spread of the coronavirus, the president and his advisers instead relied on an econometric “cubic model” created by former Council of Economic Advisers Chair Kevin Hassett, who has no background in infectious diseases. Hassett’s model, which projected that Covid-19 deaths would stop completely by mid-May, was a preset Microsoft Excel curve-fitting function rather than a science-based analysis of coronavirus infection data.
The president has also misled the American public about preventative measures, cures, and treatments for the disease. He made the baseless projection that a vaccine would be available within three to four months after the outbreak began, which Dr. Fauci later explained was not possible. President Trump has pressured health officials to expedite the timeline for development and told reporters that a vaccine may become available before the November presidential election. The president has also repeatedly promoted the use of the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 — going so far as to announce that he was taking the latter as a preventative measure — despite a lack of scientific evidence of their effectiveness and against the advice of government experts. And most notoriously, President Trump suggested that Covid-19 could be cured by injecting disinfectants or by "hit[ting] the body with a tremendous" light, a patently unscientific — and dangerous — claim that led to an uptick in calls to poison control centers due to exposure to cleaning agents.
In September 2020, as the death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 200,000 in the United States, Trump again claimed that the coronavirus would “go away” and that the United States was “rounding the corner” — statements contradicted by Dr. Fauci. Trump also falsely claimed that Covid-19 affects “virtually nobody” younger than 18, despite reports from the CDC and the WHO that young people play a significant role in spreading the virus and reports of children being hospitalized in rising numbers. He later continued to mock others for wearing masks and, just hours before announcing his own diagnosis, claimed that "the end of the pandemic is in sight, and next year will be one of the greatest years in the history of our country." Trump later repeated at a rally, held at the White House, that the pandemic would “disappear.” In October 2020, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a press release that listed “ending the Covid-19 pandemic” as one of President Trump’s greatest accomplishments during his first term in office.
President Trump’s false and unsupported statements regarding the spread of and treatments for the disease have contributed to the United States’ failure to manage the crisis effectively. The president’s comments, as well of those of his allies in government and the media, have an impact on how seriously Americans view the threat of Covid-19 and the degree to which they adhere to guidance from public health experts. Opinion polls show a large and growing partisan gap in beliefs regarding the health threat of Covid-19. Consequently, public health measures like wearing masks and maintaining social distance have become divisive partisan issues, notwithstanding their grounding in scientific research. A Cornell University study of global English-language media found that President Trump was by far the most important single source of coronavirus misinformation — linked to almost 38 percent of misinformation.
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@echo5226 The cause of tens of thousands to die .....President Trump’s promotion of the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatments, despite scientific studies showing their ineffectiveness, has extended to federal agencies spending money on and officially recommending the drugs.
The president pressured government officials to push for use of the drugs as treatment. Dr. Rick Bright, an expert at the Department of Health and Human Services, was reassigned after he objected to the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 patients without first testing its effectiveness. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) purchased $208,000 worth of hydroxychloroquine to treat veterans, despite VA hospital data showing that veterans treated with the drug died at a 17 percent higher rate than others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance promoting the prescription of hydroxychloroquine, citing only anecdotal evidence. The CDC later removed the guidance, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew its emergency authorization for use of the drug to treat Covid-19, based on studies showing that hydroxychloroquine does not improve health outcomes. Political officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) delayed the publication of a subsequent CDC report showing the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.
Additionally, in defiance of the emergency FDA authorization limiting the use of hydroxychloroquine to hospitals and clinical trials, the White House ordered the distribution of 23 million tablets of the drug from a federal stockpile, including to retail pharmacies. Although FDA guidance dictated that stockpile supplies should only have been released at the request of state governments, the Trump administration did not notify state officials about the large-scale distribution of hydroxychloroquine in their jurisdictions. The administration also provided a $765 million loan to Kodak to produce precursor ingredients for hydroxychloroquine, although it later put the deal on hold following criticism of Kodak’s suitability for a loan and allegations of associated insider trading.
In the meantime, however, the administration’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine and similar drugs as an appropriate Covid-19 treatment resulted in prescriptions increasing by a factor of 46, leaving patients who needed the drugs to treat other conditions unable to find supplies.
In a similar fashion, President Trump created confusion about another potential Covid-19 treatment, convalescent blood plasma, when he made misleading statements about its effectiveness and accused the FDA of delaying access to therapeutics shortly before the start of the Republican National Convention. Immediately thereafter, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for plasma, even though senior government scientists had cautioned against doing so. As part of the rushed rollout, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn exaggerated the demonstrated benefits of blood plasma treatment, for which he later apologized. FDA spokeswoman Emily Miller, a conservative media personality filling a role that normally goes to a career agency staffer, also circulated the inaccurate information about blood plasma before Dr. Hahn fired her.
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@echo5226 Complete failure...adolf trump..
President Trump’s defenders are expressing anguish that his convulsive exit has tarnished his supposedly respectable record. Here is another oft-repeated deception demanding correction. Trumpism failed as much as Trump did. Not only was the now-former president a threat to the norms necessary for healthy democratic governance, his incompetent management of the federal government produced a remarkably thin legacy—and for that the country should be grateful.
Trump’s failures on policy are wide and varied. Much focus is, for understandable reasons, on the administration’s bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But to appreciate the failure of Trumpism as a political program, the former president should be assessed on what he did to address the two issues central to his political ascent: immigration and trade.
His two immediate predecessors tried to fix the nation’s immigration laws, which have long needed reform. They failed to secure reform legislation largely because of the growing, and misguided, determination among some Republicans to embrace the most restrictive immigration stance possible, as evidenced in their refusal to support a humane and realistic resolution for persons already residing in the United States unlawfully. There are millions of people in this circumstance, and yet the implication of the hardline Republican position—which Trump amplified to great political effect in his 2015-2016 campaign—is that all of them should be deported.
That was never a realistic option, for good reason. The vast majority of people who would be affected by a mass deportation policy are law-abiding, have jobs and families, and pay taxes. Americans have no stomach for seeing millions of their neighbors deported to countries that the affected immigrants left long ago, or had never even seen before.
Podcast episode cover image
PODCAST · JULY 23 2021
Laura K. Field: What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?
On today's podcast Charlie Sykes talks with Laura K. Field about her recent Bulwark article: "What The Hell Happened To ...
And yet, even after embracing such an absolutist and unrealistic policy, Trump was still in a strong position to deliver a legislative resolution if he played his cards right. Both the House and Senate were under Republican control in 2017 and 2018. He campaigned on “fixing” immigration, and won. But getting a bill through Congress would have required compromising with congressional Democrats, and jettisoning “no amnesty” as a battle cry for political rallies and cable television. Cutting a deal, and embracing some version of a realistic resolution, would have enraged a small portion of the president’s political coalition, but it also would have produced a defining and lasting shift in immigration policy for which the president could have claimed credit.
So the opportunity was there for the taking—and Trump whiffed. He and his allies decided it was too politically risky—or substantively unattractive because at least some immigrants would receive legal status—to walk back his many ill-advised hardline statements committing themselves to no compromises. They preferred to implement what they could through administrative action.
And where did that get them? Nowhere. Led by his aides, Trump was able to implement harsh revisions to some policies, and in the process cause much harm to immigrant families and to desperate refugees. That should not be minimized or forgotten. He also modestly accelerated the replacement of a portion of the structure on the southern border—with construction of a grand total of 47 miles of entirely new barrier occurring since 2017—but he never built the entirety of his promised 2,000-mile “wall” and he certainly never got Mexico to pay for any of it, as he claimed he would.
Legal immigration has fallen during Trump’s term, but that is due mainly to the deep downturn in the U.S. economy that coincided with mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite all the talk, illegal immigration has not stopped or changed appreciably over the past four years. That Trump never implemented a “round them up” plan is a relief, but it also means the immigration revolution he promised his supporters never took place.
And because none of Trump’s immigration policies were passed as laws, most will be reversed by the Biden team, although some may take longer to unwind than others. In one prominent instance, the decision to overturn President Obama’s DACA program, the Trump administration’s actions have already been rejected by the Supreme Court.
The images associated with Trump’s immigration policies—especially the images of children separated from their parents and placed in cages—will remain in the public mind long beyond the policies themselves. By sometime in mid-2021, it will be hard to detect what effect Trump had on national immigration policy.
On trade, Trump was just as ineffectual. He misled his supporters by claiming, falsely, that his predecessors had purposefully agreed to unbalanced trade deals that favored foreign goods over American products. In particular, he railed against America’s trade deficit, and promised to eliminate it. He said the new deals he would negotiate would bring back millions of manufacturing jobs to America.
The trade deficit is not a meaningful metric of effective trade policy, but it is what Trump highlighted when inciting populist resentment toward previous agreements and thus is relevant for assessing his policies. Three years into Trump’s term, the trade deficit had barely changed, and it widened in 2020 as the economy fell into recession. The bilateral trade deficit with Mexico also widened under Trump’s watch, and, as of 2019, the trade deficit with China was essentially unchanged. At the end of 2020, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States was level with where it was when President Obama left office.
President Trump’s defenders counter that he reset the conversation with China by imposing large tariffs—something his predecessors were too timid to do. That’s true. So give him credit for blowing past the ill-advised caution that led others to be overly soft with China.
Unfortunately, Trump reduced U.S. leverage by more than what was gained through the tariffs by unilaterally withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) at the beginning of his term. TPP would have further isolated China economically by bringing the United States and eleven trading partners closer together. Instead, Trump has tried to go it alone and take on China without any meaningful coordination with our traditional allies. The result is that China has been able to slow-walk its commitments, such as they were, in the bilateral deal struck with Trump, even as it has cut a more meaningful agreement with the European Union, and thus further undermined U.S. leverage.
On trade deals more generally, Trump and his team railed against the multilateral system that the United States built over seven decades, and yet they never articulated an alternative vision. Displacing current global rules with exclusively bilateral agreements is a nonstarter; there are no takers for such an approach, even among U.S. allies. Which is why the overall global trading system operates today much as it did before Trump took office..
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@echo5226 Trump’s failures on policy extend to many other spheres:
He never produced the oft-promised replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.
He never implemented a sustainable policy for lowering the costs of prescription drugs (his last-minute gambit to tie some pricing to international benchmarks is highly likely to be blocked in court, and he abandoned the idea of $200 discount cards in his final days in office).
He never proposed, much less secured, an infrastructure plan.
And he ran up federal spending and left the country more vulnerable than ever to a debt crisis—this after promising in his 2016 campaign to pay off the entire national debt by 2024.
The president’s defenders contend his tax and regulatory policies jumpstarted economic growth. As with immigration, most of the cited regulatory changes are reversible, and thus fleeting, and will be changed quickly by the new administration. And the tax cuts were passed in 2017 despite the government’s growing fiscal problems and the GOP’s abandonment of spending restraint. Lower taxation is a fine idea if it can be implemented in the context of a sustainable fiscal plan. But Trump cut taxes in a way that has only strengthened the case for a countervailing tax hike to head off fiscal calamity. Significant parts of the 2017 law are set to expire automatically, and it would not be a surprise if its centerpiece, the reduction in the corporate tax, were partially reversed within the next two years.
And then, of course, there is the pandemic, and Trump’s catastrophic response to it. Trump’s positive policy legacy was nearly nonexistent even before the country was hit with the worst public health emergency in a century. It was a moment that called out for steady national leadership, and thus was an opportunity for the president to rise to the occasion and navigate an unforeseen and serious threat to human health and the nation’s economic well-being. He failed this test in every possible way. In a matter of months, he lost interest in trying to manage the immense fallout. The calamity he partially caused is still unfolding.
Trump’s apologists and defenders want the media and the public to focus on what they say were his policy achievements. There were some, of course. But they do not come close to outweighing the damage the president inflicted on the country. Trump was a failure in every way, substantively and morally.
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@echo5226 The evidence is clear: identification requirements for voting reduce turnout among low-income and minority voters. And the particular restrictions imposed by Republican lawmakers—limiting the acceptable forms of identification, ending opportunities for student voting, reducing hours for early voting—certainly do appear aimed at Democratic voters...Indeed, in a column for right-wing clearinghouse WorldNetDaily, longtime conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly acknowledged as much with a defense of North Carolina’s new voting law, which has been criticized for its restrictions on access, among other things. Here’s Schlafly:..“The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama’s national field director admitted, shortly before last year’s election, that ‘early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election.’
“The Obama technocrats have developed an efficient system of identifying prospective Obama voters and then nagging them (some might say harassing them) until they actually vote. It may take several days to accomplish this, so early voting is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign.”
She later adds that early voting “violates the spirit of the Constitution” and facilitates “illegal votes” that “cancel out the votes of honest Americans.” I’m not sure what she means by “illegal votes,” but it sounds an awful lot like voting by Democratic constituencies: students, low-income people, and minorities.
Schlafly, it should be noted, isn’t the first Republican to confess the true reason for voter-identification laws. Among friendly audiences, they can’t seem to help it.
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@echo5226 Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai told a gathering of Republicans that their voter identification law would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That summer, at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, former Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund conceded that Democrats had a point about the GOP’s focus on voter ID, as opposed to those measures—such as absentee balloting—that are vulnerable to tampering. “I think it is a fair argument of some liberals that there are some people who emphasize the voter ID part more than the absentee ballot part because supposedly Republicans like absentee ballots more and they don’t want to restrict that,” he said.
After the election, former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer told The Palm Beach Post that the explicit goal of the state’s voter-ID law was Democratic suppression. “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only ... ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’” he said. Indeed, the Florida Republican Party imposed a host of policies, from longer ballots to fewer precincts in minority areas, meant to discourage voting. And it worked. According to one study, as many as 49,000 people were discouraged from voting in November 2012 as a result of long lines and other obstacles.
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@echo5226 Republicans and the broader conservative movement have been trashing democracy and pushing voter suppression for decades — because they know that their oligarchic project is unpopular and they can’t win fair and square.....While it’s become commonplace since 2016 to cast Trump and his disregard for democracy as “unprecedented,” the conviction that the “wrong” people should not be allowed to vote — and, crucially, that Republicans cannot win if they do — has been central to the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement for decades.
As Bill Kristol, one of the many conservatives to attempt a late-in-life “never Trump” reinvention, admitted recently, “We [Republicans] lost faith in democracy. We lost faith that we could compete for votes and win elections. Therefore, you’ve got to start restricting the electorate, and that’s very bad for democratic principles and very bad for a political party.”
But, despite Kristol’s insistence otherwise, this “loss of faith” was no recent occurrence.
From civil rights opponents in the 1950s to the participants in the Miami-Dade protest to Trump Republicans sitting on the Supreme Court today, the GOP has been represented for decades by a parade of well-dressed, superficially respectable conservatives dismissing voter disenfranchisement with the absurd refrain of “We’re a republic, not a democracy.”
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@earlofmar7987 Wake up....grow up...then shut up.
Twice-impeached former President Donald Trump on Sunday praised his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“These were peaceful people, these were great people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
Recalling the events of Jan. 6, Trump claimed “there was love in the air” at his rally earlier that day at the White House, and falsely said there was a “lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”
“They are military people, and police officers and construction workers,” he added. “They are tremendous. In many cases, tremendous people.”
The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a shocking and horrifying event, as captured by countless testimonials from lawmakers who fled the scene and Capitol Police officers who faced off with the insurrectionists in hand-to-hand combat. Trump supporters assaulted Capitol Police officers and hurled racist insults at them as they forced their way into the building.
Approximately 140 police officers were injured during the attack. Dozens of people have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
“Is this America? They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags. They fought us, they had Confederate flags in the U.S. Capitol,” Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn later recalled in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
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