Maddow Looks At The Republican Presidential Contenders

LicentiaThe8th

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow looks at the list of viable contenders for the Republican nominee for President of the U.S.

Maddow also discusses Lar Daly. Who was Lar Daly?

Wikipedia:

“Lawrence Joseph Sarsfield Daly (January 22, 1912 – April 18, 1979), aka Lar ‘America First’ Daly, was a fringe American politician who ran unsuccessfully for a variety of political offices (including President of the United States), often campaigning wearing an Uncle Sam suit.

“Daly was a Republican primary candidate for Governor of Illinois in both 1956 and 1964. He was also a primary candidate for Mayor of Chicago in 1959, for both the Democratic and Republican parties, and also ran in the Republican primary in the 1963 and 1967 Chicago mayoral elections. He was the ‘Tax Cut’ and ‘America First’ candidate in the 1960 elections for President of the United States. He stood in primaries for United States Senator from Illinois, as a Democrat in 1962 and as a Republican in 1966, 1970, and 1978. He also ran for United States Representative from Illinois, in a special election in the 7th District in 1973, as a Republican.”

Maddow also looks at the 2008 scenario where Ron Paul was excluded from a Fox News debate even though he received 10% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. Rudy Giuliani got only 3% of the vote at the Iowa caucuses, but was allowed on stage for the debate at Fox.

(Video from May 6th.)

(Updated post)

The Young Turks Network Looks At Hillary’s Announcement To Run For President

The Young Turks

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the presidency for a second time, establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee, according to The New York Times.

“I’m running for president,” she said with a smile near the end of a two-minute video released just after 3 p.m. Sunday.

“Everyday Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion,” Mrs. Clinton said. “So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote — because it’s your time. And I hope you’ll join me on this journey.”

Where does Hillary fit on the political spectrum?

(Updated article)

What Does Boehner’s Visit To Netanyahu Mean?

TYT Network

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, who invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress this month, will visit Israel in the coming weeks, his spokesman said Friday.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz calls Speaker Boehner “U.S. President Barack Obama’s arch rival and the man who invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make his controversial speech in Congress.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress on March 3rd seemed oriented towards undermining peace negotiations with Iran. Why – because he wants war? The terms of the deal have not even been released yet? Why the rush? A letter from 47 opposition senators directly to Iranian leadership in regards to the peace deal also made the situation more complex – and “two-faced.”

Senior Israeli officials who asked to remain anonymous said Boehner will begin his visit – which has not yet been announced publicly – on March 31st, states Haaretz. He will be heading a delegation of Republican Congress members.

Does Clinton Have Issues With Unions And The TPP?

The likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has yet to show her feelings towards the latest effort to pass “fast track” trade promotion authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

However, that could happen as soon as Monday morning when she takes the stage with prominent labor leaders at a Washington event put on by a liberal-leaning political think tank.

What she says could improve or worsen her position with unions, Democratic colleagues in Congress, the business community, and/or the sitting president, Barack Obama.

Liberal Democrats urging Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to get in the presidential race want Clinton to clarify her position as early as possible, given the fact that there is pending action in Congress on a “fast track” trade promotion authority bill, said Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America.

Sroka said that some of the first questions she is asked as a presidential candidate could be about TPP and fast track.

“There’s lots of reasons that people are excited about getting Elizabeth Warren into the presidential race, but her outspokenness in the battle against TPP … is something that speaks to the progressive base’s concerns and is attracting people to this campaign.”

Union groups, including the AFL-CIO labor federation, also have deep concerns about the prospective trade pact with Japan and 10 other countries in the Asia-Pacific that, along with the United States, represent more than 40 percent of world gross domestic product.

“Every single thing in our trade deals should be openly discussed and subject to public oversight and the full legislative process,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a recent speech. “There should be no question about that. Fast track is wrong and undemocratic. It’s a rotten process, and the American labor movement intends to kill it.”

The labor federation fears the deal will encourage companies to move more jobs overseas, suppressing wages in the United States.

Obama wants Congress to approve the legislation quickly so he can wrap up the TPP pact and submit it to Congress for a vote later this year.

Trade promotion authority would allow him to submit trade agreements, like the proposed TPP, to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote without any amendments.

The next president – whoever it is – could also use the authority to negotiate a deal bringing China into the pact.

Trade promotion authority is also known as “fast track” because of its expedited voting procedures that union groups and many progressive Democrats don’t like.

Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, used the “fast track” procedure to win approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute blames for hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.

Clinton voted against the fast-track legislation the last time it was approved in 2002, although her husband repeatedly pushed for the same authority when he was president.

However, as Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton was closely associated with the agreement.

More:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillarys-trade-dilemma-116278.html#ixzz3V2nFC1LX

(Updated article)

Washington’s New Rule Is ‘No Rules’

CNN

Secretary of State John Kerry called the open letter penned by 47 Republican senators to Iran’s leaders over negotiations on that country’s nuclear program “absolutely calculated,” “unprecedented” and “unthought-out,” states the Washington Post.

“It’s false information and directly calculated to interfere and basically say, ‘Don’t negotiate with them, you’ve got to negotiate with 535 members of Congress.’ That’s unprecedented. Unprecedented,” Kerry said in an interview Sunday with CBS News.

Congressional Republicans have thrown rules out the window.

Will the strategy yield rewards?  CNN looks at some of Washington’s “rules.”

Some Republicans Speak Out Against Senator Tom Cotton’s Letter To Iran

A number of Republican senators are souring on the open letter 47 Republicans sent condemning the nuclear negotiations with Iran, according to MSNBC.

Democrats, of course, were angry over the letter, and roundly criticized it.  They argued that it undermined the president and hurt the negotiations with Iran.

Slate called the letter “borderline unconstitutional.”

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain said on Tuesday night he wasn’t sure it was the best way to handle the situation.

“Maybe that wasn’t the best way to do that, but I think the Iranians should know that the Congress of the United States has to play a role in whether an agreement of this magnitude,” he said of the letter, according to MSNBC.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee pushed back against the letter in an interview with The Daily Beast.

“I didn’t think it was going to further our efforts to get to a place where Congress would play the appropriate role that it should on Iran,” he said. “I did not think that the letter was something that was going to help get us to an outcome that we’re all seeking, and that is Congress playing that appropriate role.”

Arizona’s Republican Senator Jeff Flake said: “I just didn’t feel that it was appropriate or productive at this point. These are tough enough negotiations as it stands, and introducing this kind of letter, I didn’t think would be helpful,” he said.

New York’s Rep. Peter King, a hawkish Republican, said Tuesday he didn’t “know if I would have signed the letter. I don’t trust the president on this, quite frankly, though I don’t know if I’d go public with it to a foreign government,” he said.

Washington D.C. Legalizes Marijuana, House Republicans Promise A Fight

The new mayor of the nation’s capital was hoping to get along with Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Instead, they’ve threatened her with prison and she has accused them of acting like bullies in a showdown over legal pot that could end up costing District of Columbia residents.

Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser defied threats from Congress by implementing a voter-approved marijuana initiative on Thursday, making the city the only place east of the Mississippi River where people can legally grow and share marijuana in private.

More here:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/399185/washington-d-c-legalizes-marijuana-republicans-vow-fight

Strange: Cuomo Government Has Mass E-mail Purge During Corruption Probe

Newsflash:  Democrats are not always clean.

The New York state government ordered e-mails to be deleted during corruption probe.

The IB Times reports, in a memo obtained by Capital New York, state officials announced that the mass purging of email records is beginning across several state government agencies.

The timing of the announcement, which is following through on a 2013 proposal, is worth noting: The large-scale destruction of state documents will be happening in the middle of a federal investigation of public corruption in New York.

As IB Times reports, earlier this month in New York, a fire tore through a warehouse full of old government records from the bygone paper era.

Many probably felt relief in thinking that such records are now often digitized and therefore not at risk of being accidentally incinerated. Yet as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is showing this week, many records are vulnerable to another form of destruction: deliberate deletion.

“The Cuomo administration has now fully implemented a policy of automatically deleting emails of rank-and-file state workers that are more than three months old, resulting in an effective purge of thousands of messages in recent days, according to Capital.

“According to memos obtained by Capital, mass deletions began Monday at several state agencies after officials finished consolidating 27 separate email platforms to a single, cloud-based system called Office 365. It lets I.T. administrators purge any older messages, and can be set up to do so each day.”

Sam Seder

Limbaugh Says Republicans ‘Are Caving’

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh discussed the idea that Republicans “are caving.”

He was referring to a Breitbart.com article titled, “McConnell Caves, But Reid Wants Full Surrender From Boehner As Well” when he discussed his views.

Limbaugh:

“The Republicans are caving on amnesty.  They’re caving on the whole Department of Homeland Security thing, which is a separate thing from amnesty in part, and they’re all ready to cave on net neutrality.  They’re caving on everything.  The excuse that we’re given is, in an indirect way, ‘Well, this is what the donors want.” And to a certain extent that’s true, but come on.  Is the donor class of the Republican Party actually attempting to achieve the erasure of the Republican Party?

“Am I being a bit too extreme here, Mr. Snerdley?  It just doesn’t appear that we have any opposition to the Democrat Party in Washington.  We got plenty opposition to the Democrat Party out in the states, and among some of our presidential contenders, but even some of those, you ask yourself, why are they running as Republicans?  I don’t have to name names.  Everybody knows who I’m talking about.  So let’s just get to this.”

GOP Launches Full Assault On Reproductive Rights: Are Democrats The Underdogs?

31 of the 50 governors are Republicans. 69 out of the 99 state legislative bodies (Houses and Senates) are Republican dominated.

The state legislators have been able to expedite one of their top policy priorities – restricting access to abortion – given the historic gains they made in last year’s midterm elections, according to the Huffington Post.

State lawmakers have raced to file bills concerning all aspects of the procedure. As of last week, lawmakers have introduced more than 100 bills regulating abortion in more than half of all states, according to data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.”

TYT Network