Rand Paul Dismisses His Supporters’ Assault On MoveOn Activist As ‘Jockeying Back And Forth’
Rand Paul Dismisses His Supporters’ Assault On MoveOn Activist As ‘Jockeying Back And Forth’
Last night before a debate, supporters of Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul tackled a MoveOn.Org member to the ground and “stomped on her head” within feet of the candidate. Activist Lauren Valle suffered a concussion and spent the night in the hospital, and is now “leaning toward pressing charges” on the unidentified attacker wearing Rand Paul gear.
Predictably, Paul took to Fox News to defend himself this morning. The friendly news outlet significantly downgraded the severity of the head stomping, saying the woman’s “shoulder [was] stepped on.” For his part, Paul — whose treatment of a woman during his college years has become a campaign issue — dismissed the incident as mere “jockeying back and forth,” as if the woman had also attacked the men who tackled her:
HOST: Political banter inside and now we have a brawl outside. As a female protester getting roughed up during demonstrations in the parking lot while Rand Paul and Jack Conway were debating on the inside in Kentucky. Her shoulder Stepped on after being stepped on after being heckled by two men there. [...]
PAUL: And there was a bit of a crowd control problem. I don’t want anybody though to be involved in things that aren’t civil. I think this should always be about the issues. And it is an unusual situation to have so many people so passionate on both sides jockeying back and forth. And it wasn’t something that I liked or anybody liked about that situation. So I hope in the future it is going to be better.
Watch it:
Likewise, Paul’s campaign put out a statement last night referencing the “altercation…between supporters of both sides.” “We are relieved to hear that the woman in question was not injured,” it read, despite the fact that woman was indeed injured and in hospital at the time the statement was released.
This attempt to suggest there was a back-and-forth does not square with the facts. Video of the incident clearly shows at least two large men bringing Valle to the ground, while another rips her blonde wig off and a fourth steps on her knee. One of the first two men then stomps on her shoulder, with his heel clearly making contact with her head. A woman and a man in the crowd then seem to try to stop the attackers, with the man shouting “no, no, no, come on” after the head stomping, and the woman pushing one of the attacker off of Valle.
MoveOn has called on Paul to condemn the attacker, but he avoided doing so during the interview.
- Comments
- View Comments
GOP Senate Candidate Ken Buck: ‘I Disagree Strongly With The Concept Of Separation Of Church And State’
GOP Senate Candidate Ken Buck: ‘I Disagree Strongly With The Concept Of Separation Of Church And State’
During a debate last week, Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (R-DE) repeatedly questioned whether the First Amendment laid out a separation between church and state. “That’s in the First Amendment…?” she asked her Democratic opponent, sending the crowd into fits of laughter.
GOP Senate candidate in Colorado Ken Buck is less equivocal about his view. At a forum for GOP Senate candidates late last year, Buck said that he “disagree[d] strongly with the concept of separation of church and state,” and that “it was not written into the Constitution,” and then went on to rip President Obama for supposedly getting rid of the White House Christmas tree:
I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution. While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that’s sanctioned by the government, it doesn’t mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion. And so that, that concerns me a great deal. So I think there are cultural differences, I think there, we are as strong as we, our culture, our culture gives us our strength, I guess is the best way to put that. And, and I am worried about the fact that we seem to be walking away from culture. And, and one thing that President Obama has done that I would certainly speak about is calling the Christmas tree, which has historically been called a Christmas tree in Washington DC, a holiday tree. It’s just flat wrong in my mind.
Watch it:
Needless to say, while the Constitution doesn’t contain the exact words “separation of church and state,” legal scholars and the courts agree it does prohibit the establishment or endorsement of religion, and that the involvement Buck wants is dangerous. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in a concurring opinion in 1984, the government is prohibited from “making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community.” In 1801, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God,” and argued the Constitution required “building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Also, Buck’s charge about Obama and the White House Christmas tree doesn’t rise above the level of a crude viral e-mail hoax: or in the words of FactCheck.org, “hooey.”
Rand Paul Supporters Drag MoveOn Supporter To Ground And Stomp on Her Head
Supporters of Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul dragged a woman, MoveOn.org member Lauren Valle, to the ground and stomped on her head outside of today’s debate between Paul and his Democratic opponent Jack Conway:
Outside the Conway-Paul debate, a Rand Paul supporter pulled the woman’s blonde wig off and stomped on her head. She was representing the liberal organization MoveOn.org and claimed to be presenting Paul with an award from RepubliCorp. That’s a group created by MoveOn.org that focuses on what it calls the merger between corporate America and the Republican Party.
Watch it:
Valle was taken to a hospital, complaining of “injury to the temple area.” Police are describing her injuries as “minor.” A spokesman for the Lexington Police Department told the Huffington Post have not yet identified the man who assaulted Valle. The police department is reviewing news footage of the incident and “hoping someone can identify who the person is.” Until then, the spokesman said, it is a “pending investigation.”
MoveOn Executive Director Justin Ruben released this statement earlier today:
We’re appalled at the violent incident that occurred at the Kentucky Senate debate last night. Numerous news reports clearly show that the young woman–a MoveOn supporter–was assaulted and pushed to the ground by Rand Paul supporters, where one man held her down while another stomped on her head. This kind of violence has no place in American society, much less at a peaceful political rally.
Our first concern is obviously Lauren’s health and well being. She is recovering, and we will release more details as we have them. We are concerned that no arrests have yet been made, and we hope those responsible will be brought to justice quickly, and that Rand Paul will join us in condemning this horrible act.
This incident marks the second time in less than two weeks that supporters of a Tea Party candidate physically restrained a person to prevent them from confronting their preferred candidate — although Joe Miller’s (R-AK) private security force did not engage in such a brutal display of violence in order to prevent their candidate from being asked an embarrassing question.
ThinkFast: October 26, 2010
ThinkFast: October 26, 2010
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) broke with many GOP leaders and said he was against a government shutdown because it would endanger U.S. troops. “Well, I think as long as you’ve got men and women deployed in harm’s way in Afghanistan, the last thing in the world is you shut down the support system for those men and women,” he said.
Independent groups have so far spent $257.7 million to influence political campaigns this year, “nearly quadrupling such interest groups’ total spending in the last midterm election.” Conservative groups are outspending progressive ones by 2 to 1. The “2010 spending spree is shattering records” largely because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last January.
BP CEO Bob Dudley defended potentially dangerous deepwater drilling yesterday, claiming that BP is “one of only a handful of companies with the financial and technological strengths” able to perform such operations. It was Dudley’s first address since taking over the company, though he has once again declined to testify before a key House energy subcommittee.
The Iraq High Tribunal sentenced Saddam Hussein’s longtime foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to death by hanging today “for persecuting members of Shiite religious parties under the former regime.” Already imprisoned for his role in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants and the forced displacement of Kurds in Iraq, the 74-year old has 30 days to appeal because the law dictates execution within 30 days of the final decision.
Jury selection will begin today in the money laundering trial of former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay was charged with laundering and conspiracy in 2005 for allegedly illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate money through the Republican National Committee to help elect GOP Texas legislative candidates in 2002.
The Obama administration announced new rules yesterday “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants by requiring greater fuel efficiency for big trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles starting with 2014 models.” The new regulations call for a 20 percent reduction in heavy-vehicle emissions by 2018. Such vehicles make up 4 percent of the U.S. fleet, but consume 20 percent of all vehicle fuel.
At her rally yesterday, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R-CA) said she would only appoint judges who support the death penalty. While politicians “rarely commit to litmus tests,” Whitman said she’d “treat the death penalty as a litmus test” for all judicial nominations after criticizing her opponent Jerry Brown (D) for his “long history of judges that were very liberal.”
And finally: Vuvuzelas around the world will play in solemn remembrance of Paul the Octopus, who passed away today after accurately predicting the result of every German soccer match as well as the final in this year’s World Cup in South Africa. “Paul inspired people of all continents,” Paul’s owner Stefan Porwoll said in the statement. “He won all our hearts, and we will sorely miss him.”
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
Despite Saying Government Intervention Puts Industry In A ‘Coma,’ Raese’s Biz Takes Millions In Taxpayer Funds
Despite Saying Government Intervention Puts Industry In A ‘Coma,’ Raese’s Biz Takes Millions In Taxpayer Funds
West Virginia industrial magnate and perennial GOP candidate John Raese has been campaigning on fiercely anti-government message for the Senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Robert Byrd. Raese is adamantly opposed to any form of government intervention into private sector, telling ABC News that he “absolutely” thinks the minimum wage should be abolished. He’s also claimed a New Deal program was declared unconstitutional because it involved the “government micromanaging an intervention into the private sector.”
And earlier this month, he told the AP that “America is in ‘an industrial coma‘ because of the adversarial relationship between corporations and a bloated federal government,” calling the government a “restrictor plate” on capitalism, especially for the manufacturing and mining industries. And Raese is proud of his own independence from the government, saying he “can’t think of very many times when a government agency has helped me.”
But apparently Raese’s memory is mistaken and his own business empire is immune to the coma-inducing power of the government “restrictor plate.” As the Charleston Gazettte reports today, Raese’s Greer Industries — which is incidentally involved in manufacturing and mining — has “made millions from taxpayer-funded contracts over the past decade”:
According to reports from the state auditor’s office, Greer Industries has made West Virginia’s list of the top 200 state government vendors every year between 2000 and 2009. Records show the state has paid Greer Industries about $31.7 million in that time.
Greer Lime and Greer Limestone also received a combined $709,000 in state work during those years.
Greer Industries has been awarded about $2.4 million in contracts from the federal government between 2000 and 2009. That’s according to the website FedSpending.org, a database run by the nonprofit government watchdog group OMB Watch.
Raese has infamously said that he “made my money the old-fashioned way — I inherited it.” But apparently he’s also made his money from the taxpayer largess that he’s now claiming to oppose.
Of course, Raese is not the only ant-government spending candidate to profit from government spending. For example, Alaska GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller took Medicaid benefits that he thinks are unconstitutional, while Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul has called for reducing nearly every bit of federal spending except for Medicare payments because “physicians” — like Paul — “should be allowed to make a comfortable living.” (HT: Jesse Zwick)
Sharron Angle Pits Brown Against White In Anti-Immigrant Attack Ad
Sharron Angle Pits Brown Against White In Anti-Immigrant Attack Ad
First, Republican senatorial candidate Sharron Angle ran offensive images of menacing Latino men with flashlights walking along a fence alongside a snapshot of an innocent looking white family in order to make the point that her opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” Then her campaign released a second commercial with a new image of scowling Latino men juxtaposed against a photo of white college graduates. Despite the fact that her ads have sparked outrage in the Latino community, Angle has decided to continue with her anti-Latino campaign theme.
In her newest attack ad, Angle pits brown against white in order to make the case that Reid is a friend of dark-skinned, scary looking “illegal aliens” and an enemy of white Nevadans like her:
Watch it:
Angle’s third ad is especially surprising considering the fact that many outlets are reporting that Latinos may decide the tight Nevada senatorial race. “Angle has made few friends among Latinos after she supported neighboring Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 law, the strictest in the nation to curb illegal immigrants. And as polling day gets closer, her gaffes and missteps are helping to bring the Latino vote out for Reid,” reported Reuters last week.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Web Ad: Pledging Allegiance To Secret Corporate Donors (Updated)
Web Ad: Pledging Allegiance To Secret Corporate Donors (Updated)
Editor’s Note: Lawyers have asked us to pull down the video. We did so, but are working on a solution to re-post the video shortly.
Editor’s Note 2: The web ad has now been re-posted.
After reading our ThinkProgress reports on the Chamber of Commerce’s secret corporate funding, an entrepreneurial fan of our blog passed us this web ad he conceived. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments section:
Kasich Ducks Out Of NPR Interview Because He Didn’t Want To Take Questions From Callers
Kasich Ducks Out Of NPR Interview Because He Didn’t Want To Take Questions From Callers
NPR was set to launch its “mini-Political Junkie” segment today with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and his Republican challenger — and Fox News favorite — John Kasich. However, NPR reported that Kasich backed out because he didn’t want to take caller questions:
With about 15 minutes before we went on the air, Kasich canceled; his campaign said they did not want to field questions, but from the beginning the Talk of the Nation staff made it clear that there would be questions from listeners.
“I’m stunned about the Kasich decision,” NPR host Ken Rudin said. “And again, as all of us feel, we’d rather have both candidates. Both candidates were scheduled. Both candidates agreed to this format until 10 minutes ago…John Kasich said, ‘No.’ So we will continue the story on the Ohio gubernatorial race.”
Perhaps Kasich doesn’t want to be confronted with the fact that he is a climate change denier, that he has no idea how much his budget-busting tax plan costs, or that his jobs plans won’t create jobs. Or maybe Kasich had a date on-air with Fox News’ Sean Hannity so he could raise money for his campaign. (HT: Ohio Daily)
GOP House Nominee Keith Rothfus Defends Unlimited Corporate Spending In Elections As Free Speech
GOP House Nominee Keith Rothfus Defends Unlimited Corporate Spending In Elections As Free Speech
ThinkProgress filed this report from Cranberry Township, PA.
In the wake of ThinkProgress’s report detailing how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is accepting foreign money into the same general account that it uses to fund partisan attack ads, candidates from across the political spectrum are stepping out and calling on the business lobby to disclose its funding. An increasing number of politicians are also calling for an FEC investigation into the Chamber’s actions.
However, for the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district, those calls for transparency are falling on deaf ears. ThinkProgress spoke with Keith Rothfus, a Tea Party favorite, during a meet-and-greet in western Pennsylvania last week. We asked him if he would like to see groups like the U.S. Chamber forced to disclose where their funding comes from. He refused to endorse the idea, arguing instead that such requirements would likely breach the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech:
TP: I know you’d mentioned that you were opposed to the DISCLOSE Act, but would you like to see outside groups like the Chamber be forced to disclose where their money’s coming from?
ROTHFUS: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. When Congress starts to tinker with free speech rights of Americans and starts to make laws that abridge the freedom of speech. Our representatives to Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution. When the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech,” and they pass a law like McCain-Feingold, I’m wondering if they read the First Amendment. I’m going to be very exacting when it comes to defending the right of people to speak.
TP: Would you like to see current campaign finance restrictions rolled back in terms of limits on people’s speech and money?
ROTHFUS: As somebody who has learned how difficult it is to raise money, there is a problem. There is a problem with the way we fund campaigns in this country. [...]
TP: Do you think that the current campaign finance laws are contributing to that incumbent-challenger disparity in terms of fundraising?
ROTHFUS: This is a little different year because it’s a wave year that’s building out there, but I think in the normal sense, yeah, there is an incredible disadvantage that challengers have.
TP: So you might like to see those [campaign finance laws] kind of altered or rolled back?
ROTHFUS: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. That is the major premise. And I will operate under that major premise.
Watch here:
REPORT: 49 GOP Congressional Candidates Join Ginni Thomas-Led Assault On Education
REPORT: 49 GOP Congressional Candidates Join Ginni Thomas-Led Assault On Education
Senate candidates Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sharron Angle (R-NV) have both received significant attention for their absurd claim the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional, but because House races generally receive much less media attention than the higher-profile Senate contests, it’s unclear just how common this radical position is among the GOP’s full slate of candidates.
A questionnaire circulated by Liberty Central, the right-wing group led by Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas, sheds a great deal of light on this question — and the answer is not pretty. Of the 60 candidate questionnaires submitted by current GOP nominees for a House or Senate seat that ThinkProgress reviewed for this report, at least 49 adopt a view that would declare much — if not all — of federal education policy unconstitutional.
The Liberty Central questionnaire includes the following question:
The overwhelming majority of GOP candidates who submitted this questionnaire answered “no” to this question, a position that would drastically limit the federal government’s ability to help struggling schools, and which could also threaten Medicaid and other essential programs. Several of these candidates offered ahistorical, ideological and occasionally paranoid constitutional theories:
- Robyn Hamlin (R-MS) explicitly calls for most of the 20th Century to be repealed, expressly listing “Aid to Dependent Children, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, unemployment compensation; federally subsidized housing or any of the other federal ‘Welfare’ projects” as constitutionally invalid.
- Joel Demos (R-MN) touts the “tenther” line that “[t]he original purpose of the ‘general welfare’ clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was to connect Congress’s taxing and spending authority to already enumerated powers – such as regulating interstate commerce or building and sustaining a military.” This false view of the Constitution, which was rejected by President George Washington in the earliest days of the republic, would also lead to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and countless other programs being declared unconstitutional.
- Merlin Froyd (R-CA) also sounds a dog whistle to the most extreme tenthers, railing against federal spending on subjects that aren’t “actually written in the Constitution.”
- Liz Carter (R-GA) calls for the federal government to “get OUT of education” altogether. That means no federal student loan assistance or Pell Grants for middle class students struggling to pay for college, and no education funds providing opportunities to students desperately trying to break into the middle class.
- Dan Sebring (R-WI) offers his own unique theory about what the Constitution allows, claiming that the “general welfare” is limited to programs that “promote personal responsiblity and enhance one’s ability to take care of one’s self.” Needless to say, Sebring does not point to a single word in the Constitution suggesting that this limit exists.
- Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) also invents a new constitutional theory out of whole cloth, claiming that general welfare does not include “social or collective welfare as currently utilized.”
- Bill Huizenga (R-MI) serves up a Glenn Beck-like rant, blaming nineteenth and twentieth century “Hegelian Progressives” who “successfully undermined the American Constitution using an organic interpretation of the document.”
- Eddie Zamora (R-TX) rails against an elusive enemy who acts “with no Fear of The LORD.”
In other words, just like the many GOP Senate candidates who believe that the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean, much of the Republican slate of House candidates have no compunctions about inventing new and incoherent ways of reading the document in order to undermine laws they don’t like. For more on the implications of Ginni Thomas’ positions on essential programs such as Medicaid, and for a full list of the 49 Republican Congressional candidates endorsing her group’s vision of the Constitution, visit the Wonk Room.
Center for American Progress Action Fund Intern Salvatore Colleluori contributed valuable research assistance to this report.
European Polluters Funding Senate Candidates Who Oppose Action On Global Warming
European Polluters Funding Senate Candidates Who Oppose Action On Global Warming
As the Wonk Room has extensively documented, nearly all of the Republican candidates for Senate — both incumbents and challengers — dispute that the United States must take action to fight global warming pollution, while many of them deny that global warming exists in the first place. “There is much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming,” claims Pat Toomey, the GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania. “Global warming is ‘the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,’” says Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK).
It remains to be seen if that stance will pay off at the polls, but for many of these global warming deniers, it already has paid off in the form of sizeable donations from overseas polluters. A new analysis by Climate Action Network Europe has found that large European companies that are among the continent’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters have been dumping large amounts of money into U.S. Senate races, almost exclusively to candidates that oppose the idea of taking action to stop global warming.
ThinkProgress has already documented how money from foreign oil companies is being directed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is running a $75 million ad campaign against Democratic candidates, and these direct candidate contributions from European polluters exceed the amount that oil billionaires Charles and David Koch have donated to Senate campaigns.
Through U.S. subsidiaries and employees, large European polluters like BP, BASF, Bayer and Solvay have donated $240,200 to candidates who have either voiced opposition to addressing global warming, or who have actively blocked legislation that would do so. For example, Bayer — which emitted 2 million metric tons of CO2 in Europe last year — gave almost 73 percent of its donations to such candidates, like the $5,000 it gave to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who opposes the EPA finding that greenhouse gases are pollution and opposes a cap-and-trade market to limit global warming pollution. The donations largely favored Republicans, but — demonstrating that stopping progress on addressing global warming was the key goal of these companies — select Democrats were given donations as well. Bayer gave even more money to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), who has been a key swing vote in the Senate and also opposes EPA action on global warming pollution.
Many of these companies are involved in the debate over controlling global warming in Europe, and perversely, often cite inaction in the United States as a reason that serious efforts shouldn’t be made in Europe. Most of these companies are members of Business Europe, an influential trade group that recently release a position paper saying the group was “convinced that at this point in time, i.e. in the absence of an international deal securing equally strong action from other economies, any further increase of the EU’s unilateral 20% emission reduction target would be premature and even counterproductive.”
The strategy for these companies is clear: stop progress on global warming in the United States by supporting these candidates, and then blame that inaction when arguing that nothing should be done in the rest of the world to address global warming.
Rep. Bachus’ Message To Banks: Give Your Money To GOP And Make Me Chairman Of Financial Reform
Rep. Bachus’ Message To Banks: Give Your Money To GOP And Make Me Chairman Of Financial Reform
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
The GOP’s zeal for repeal has led to an influx of money from the financial services industry. And according to Politico, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who is slated to take over the House Financial Service Committee should Republicans gain a majority, told a crowd of 100 financial services lobbyists that they should be donating to Republicans, since Dodd-Frank “hammered them”:
When Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama stepped in front of 100 financial services lobbyists at the Capitol Hill Club last month, he asked for an equal chunk of their campaign cash — and made clear he was watching closely. It is hard to believe, he told the crowd, that some in their industry were still giving more to Democrats than Republicans after, he said, Democrats hammered them with over-reaching Wall Street reform legislation, people familiar with the presentation said. Bachus told the group, for instance, that the Independent Community Bankers of America had given 68 percent of its contributions to Democrats, according to a lobbyist who was present.
And evidently Bachus’ spiel worked, as Independent Community Bankers of America Executive Vice President Steve Verdier said that “his group has started giving more heavily to Republicans and will end up giving 55 percent of its money to Democrats, down from the nearly 70 percent mark.”
But even if the ICBA gives a majority of its money to Democrats, it will be the exception in this cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, “Republican candidates received 34 million dollars in donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since January compared to 23 million dollars given to Democrats.”
And when it comes to America’s “too big to fail” banks, as The Wonk Room explained, donations are all skewing towards the Republicans. For instance, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs are all giving a majority of their donations this cycle to the GOP.
TV Station Refuses To Run ‘Pull The Plug On Grandma’ Ad Against Grassley, Ignoring Context Of The Remark
TV Station Refuses To Run ‘Pull The Plug On Grandma’ Ad Against Grassley, Ignoring Context Of The Remark
Last week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy For America (DFA) rolled out a new campaign ad targeting Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), which features several videos produced by ThinkProgress, including one of Grassley infamously warning that Democrats’ health care reform bill may “pull the plug on grandma.”
PCCC and DFA planned to run the ad on broadcast and cable stations in the Des Moines market through this week, but NBC affiliate WHO-TV is refusing to run the ad, calling it misleading. “[T]he quotes have been very clearly edited to be completely taken out of context. So, the decision was made not to allow it to air,” the station’s general manager told the Iowa Independent. He even compared the ad to right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart’s deceptively-edited video of former USDA offical Shirley Sherrod, and expressed particular concern about the “grandma” line:
Dale Woods, WHO-TV’s general manager, told You Report: Election 2010 that while “95 percent of the ad is perfectly okay,” he takes issue with the editing of a clip of Grassley saying, “They’re gonna pull the plug on grandma,” while the caption “Pull the plug on grandma” appears on the screen. Grassley’s full quote during the Congressional health care reform debate was “we should not have a government program that determines they’re gonna pull the plug on grandma.”
Of course, the “grandma” line was in reference to the mythical “death panels,” PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year,” which conservative politicians and pundits used to smear the Affordable Care Act.
As DFA’s Jeffrey Goetz said in response to WHO, “How can you take that out of context?” The full context of the remark — recorded by ThinkProgress — makes it explicitly clear that Grassley was indeed fear mongering about “end of life” care in the health bill:
GRASSLEY: I won’t name people in Congress, or people in Washington, but there’s some people that think it’s a terrible problem that grandma is laying in a hospital bed with tubes in her, and think there ought to be some government policy that enters into that. [...]
In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before you’re going to die. You know, I don’t have any problems with living wills, but that should be done within the family. We should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.
Ironically, in claiming that the comments were taken out of context, Woods cited only the final sentence of Grassley’s statement, ignoring the context where the senator tells the crowd they should “fear” provisions in the bill providing “counseling at the end of life.”
The PCCC has now released a line-by-line citation explaining the full context of every Grassley snippet played in the ad, making it clear that Grassley is no victim of a Breitbart-like editing. Considering the low bar for truth in most attack ads, it’s astonishing that WHO would object to this ad — the only ad they’ve rejected this year — which fairly uses nothing more than Grassley’s own words against him.
Inhofe Guarantees GOP Takeover Of Senate
Inhofe Guarantees GOP Takeover Of Senate
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), right-wing conspiracy theorist and oil-industry apologist, has promised that Republicans are “certainties” to win at least the ten seats necessary to regain control of the U.S. Senate on November 2. In an interview while stumping for Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck on Thursday, Inhofe told the National Review Online that extremist candidates such as Buck, John Raese (WV), Dino Rossi (WA), Pat Toomey (PA), and Carly Fiorina (CA) are guaranteed to win. Inhofe even said that Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell (DE) has a shot:
We’ll take over the following seats where there are Democratic incumbents: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Washington state, West Virginia — where I’ll be Monday — North Dakota, and I think California. Now that’s Barbara Boxer. She’s the one that’s been sitting next to me on the armed services, uh, the environment and public works committee . We can win in Connecticut, Delaware, certainly in Nevada. But the ones I named first, in my opinion, are certainties that Republicans will win, and that’s what it will take for us to take control.
Watch it:
“I came out here because I’m lonely,” Inhofe said while stumping for fellow global warming denier Buck. “Ranked the most conservative senator? That’s right. But we’ve got a lot more coming in, more than any other election in the history of this country.”
Mitch McConnell: I Want To Be Senate Majority Leader In Order To Make Obama A One-Term President
Mitch McConnell: I Want To Be Senate Majority Leader In Order To Make Obama A One-Term President
From the moment Obama entered office, right-wing conservatives embraced the posture of hell-bent opposition. Recall, in Jan. 2009, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh expressed his hope that Obama fails. One month later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proudly embraced Limbaugh at a conservative conference. The fringe rhetoric of far right activists had quickly become the de facto governing strategy of the Republican leadership, as they adopted a posture of obstructionism.
Believing that the Republican strategy of opposition has played to his political benefit, McConnell is pledging to do more of the same if Republicans win back the Senate. In an interview with the National Journal’s Major Garrett, McConnell candidly acknowledged that he feels his “single most important” job is to defeat President Obama in 2012:
MCCONNELL: We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, “Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.”
NATIONAL JOURNAL: What’s the job?
MCCONNELL: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.
McConnell added, “Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful. … We need to work smarter than we did [in 1995], and not become the foil off which [President Obama] pivots.” In 1995, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich led a shutdown of the government, which many Republicans now acknowledge was a “serious mistake, tactically and substantively.”
This morning, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was floored by McConnell’s open admission that his single most important goal is to defeat Obama. “Mitch McConnell said that?!? … He admitted that on the record?!? That is embarrassing,” he said. “Can I just say for the record – that is pathetic.” Watch it:
ThinkFast: October 25, 2010
ThinkFast: October 25, 2010
The Washington Post reports that companies that received federal bailout money, including some that still owe money to the government, are giving generously to political candidates with vigor. “Most of those donations are going to Republican candidates.”
Conservative groups with anonymous wealthy donors “are starting a carefully coordinated final push to deliver control of Congress to Republicans, shifting money among some 80 House races they are monitoring day by day.” The effort is being led “by a core subset of the largest outside conservative groups” which have millions of dollars left to spend on ads.
NPR’s chief executive has apologized for how she handled Juan Williams’ firing, but did not apologize for the firing itself. Vivian Schiller released a statement to her colleagues, saying “While we stand firmly behind that decision, I regret that we did not take the time to prepare our program partners and provide you with the tools to cope with the fallout from this episode.”
Despite previously stating that he was for health reform that was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, West Virginia Democratic senate candidate Joe Manchin now says he would have voted against it. “I’m totally behind health care reform,” Manchin said last year. Now, he tells Fox News there are a number of problems with the legislation.
Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey is putting distance between himself and Christine O’Donnell, his party’s Senate nominee from the neighboring state of Delaware. Specifically, Toomey spoke against O’Donnell’s idea that states should not be bound by the First Amendment’s prohibition on establishing a religion: “This is nothing that I’ve ever spoken about or agreed with,” he said.
Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg yesterday called for an inquiry into the trove of leaked U.S. military files from the Iraq war that document prisoner abuses by Iraqi forces, insurgent and sectarian violence and civilians shot at checkpoints by U.S. troops. Clegg said that allegations of British misconduct “are extremely serious and need to be looked at.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee slammed former Bush adviser Karl Rove and “elitism within the Republican establishment” yesterday. On a WABC radio show, Huckabee said Rove exudes a “country club attitude” and exploits grassroots activists’ energy but doesn’t “want them dining with us in the main dining room.”
And finally: 30 Rock creator Tina Fey helped define former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign with her spot-on impression, and now it’s paying off as Comedy Central auctions off a copy of Palin’s memoir Going Rogue signed by Fey to raise money for charity. Currently bidding at $2,512 on eBay, Fey inscribed the book by noting, “I didn’t write this.”
ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.
2010 Rove Dismisses 2004 Rove’s Deep Concerns About Secret Money In Elections
2010 Rove Dismisses 2004 Rove’s Deep Concerns About Secret Money In Elections
Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation today, former Bush advisor Karl Rove defended “flooding our politics with money from people who don’t want people to know they’ve contributed,” as host Bob Schieffer put it, saying his Crossroads GPS group and other conservative organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have a right to spend unlimited amounts of money on this year’s elections without disclosing their donors. The network of special interest groups led by Rove is expecting to raise $250 million to influence this years’ elections, almost all of it from millionaires and billionaires.
But as ThinkProgress reported last week, Rove sang a different tune in 2004 when he said, “I’m against all the 527 ads and activities,” referring to a tax designation of some outside political groups, including his own American Crossroads. “I don’t think they’re fair. I don’t think it’s appropriate. They’re misusing the law. They all ought to stop,” he said at the time. Today, Schieffer confronted Rove with the video ThinkProgress highlighted, asking him, “so why is it that if they were so bad back then that they’re so wholesome now?” Watch it:
Rove responded by saying “I wish we had a different system,” but that his group and the others were merely a response to the “liberal groups” which “have been using undisclosed money for years and years and years and years,” he said, pointing to unions. But as Schieffer and others have noted, unions’ memberships and agendas are well known and public, while the agenda and motives of Rove’s wealthy donors are unclear and hidden. Moreover, Rove ignored the fact that President Obama took a strong stance against secretive outside groups supporting his 2008 campaign, marginalizing Democrat-aligned groups.
But when Scheiffer asked Rove — who at that point had stated that we need “a different system” at least three times — whether he would commit to working towards a stronger campaign finance regime, Rove dodged, declining to commit to anything or say what a “new system” might entail:
SCHEIFFER: If you feel so strongly about it would you pledge this morning that you’ll work to have new campaign laws where we make all of these contributions transparent and we’ll know who is giving them?
ROVE: I’m for a new system, Bob. I’m focused on 2010. Right now I’m focused on trying to level the playing field. When you have an organization that spends $87 million. It’s announced it’s spending $87 million. We’re the big player but we don’t like to boast about it. That’s the amount of disclosure. We’ve tolerated this for decades. The system may need something else.
Rove did pledge, however, that his groups will act as a conduit for billionaires to secretly funnel money into American politics for years to come, saying his Crossroads groups will “serve as a permanent counterweight to the activities of the labor unions and these liberal groups.”
Rubio Suggests Undocumented Should Leave U.S. And ‘Try To Enter’ Under Fixed Immigration System
Rubio Suggests Undocumented Should Leave U.S. And ‘Try To Enter’ Under Fixed Immigration System
This morning, Florida senatorial candidates debated on CNN’s State of the Union. When the state’s Republican candidate, Marco Rubio, was specifically asked about what he thinks should be done about the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country, he initially dodged the answer. When pressed, Rubio explained that he supports fixing the legal immigration system so that undocumented immigrants can go back to their home countries and reenter the country legally:
RUBIO: First, I don’t believe we can grant amnesty because I think it’s unfair to people who have entered legally.
MODERATOR: You would send them out of the country?
RUBIO: Well, it’s not that simple. I’ve never advocated that we round people up. I don’t know anyone who’s seriously talking about that. What I said needs to have happen is a legal immigration system that functions. [...]
MODERATOR: You’re still going to have the difficulty of 12 million people here, they don’t have papers. What other than amnesty — call it anything you want — just call it a plan.
RUBIO: You have to have a legal immigration system that works. [...]
MODERATOR: Your plan is that you’re going close the borders, get the electronic system, fix the legal system and then do what?
RUBIO: And then you’ll have a legal immigration system that works and you’ll have people in this country without documents that will be able to return — will be able to leave this country, return to their homeland and try to enter through a system that now functions.
Watch it:
Rubio often reminds his audience that he is a son of immigrants. So it’s surprising that his answer doesn’t take into account what will happen to the millions of U.S.-born children of immigrants who would have to drop their lives in the U.S. and return to their home countries for an unspecified amount of time. He also doesn’t consider the vacant jobs and homes that would be left behind. And though Rubio doesn’t support “rounding people up,” he doesn’t explain how the U.S. government would convince millions of undocumented immigrants to abandon their homes and families and return to their impoverished homeland for an undetermined number of years.
Curiously, Rubio provided a much more tepid answer when he was asked a similar question on the DREAM Act during a debate for Spanish-speaking voters which aired on Univision a few weeks ago. “I want to work on something that allows us in a limited way to accommodate those who are in this country in that predicament through no fault of their own, but have a lot to contribute to our country,” Rubio told Univision’s audience.
The Department of Homeland Security estimated that Florida is home to 720,000 undocumented immigrants as of 2009.
Toomey: ‘It’s Not Clear’ That Extending Bush’s Tax Cuts Would Increase The Deficit
Toomey: ‘It’s Not Clear’ That Extending Bush’s Tax Cuts Would Increase The Deficit
Some Republican Senate candidates have suggested that extending the Bush tax cuts — which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year — will actually be good for the country’s bottom line, as the economic growth that results will more than offset the trillions of dollars in lost revenue. “By extending tax cuts you pay down the deficit, you grow the economy by giving people more money,” said Colorado Republican Ken Buck.
Today, on Fox News Sunday, Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate nominee Pat Toomey joined this club, telling Fox’s Chris Wallace that “it’s not clear” that extending the Bush tax cuts — while also lowering the corporate tax rate — would increase the deficit:
WALLACE: If you extend all the Bush tax cuts, if you were to cut, not eliminate, but cut the corporate tax rate — although that would produce some economic growth and therefore some increased revenues — there no question that would add trillions of dollars to the deficit. The question becomes, what are you going to cut? What are you going to cut in spending, what are you going to cut in entitlements, and I’d ask you to be specific sir.
TOOMEY: Sure. But first of all, it’s not clear that that would add trillions to the deficit, because I really believe that if we expand the base of the economy, which we could do by selectively lowering some taxes, you have a broader base on which to apply the tax.
Watch it:
As American Action Forum president Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was formerly the Congressional Budget Office director and an adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, said, “there is no serious research evidence to suggest” that tax cuts pay for themselves. Extending the Bush tax cuts costs more than $3 trillion over ten years, while extending the cuts just for the wealthiest two percent of Americans costs $830 billion over that period.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Bush-era tax cuts are one of the largest drivers of the country’s long-term structural deficit. And, contrary to Toomey’s assertion, simply lowering taxes doesn’t broaden the tax base (which is accomplished by removing subsidies, loopholes, and giveaways in the tax code).
Toomey was also wrong to suggest that the Bush tax cuts increased revenue: in 2000, the government collected 10 percent of GDP in personal income taxes, a percentage that has never been collected since the Bush tax cuts. Plus, the historical record of the Bush tax cuts suggests that they won’t create the sort of economic growth that Toomey is counting on. In fact, following the Bush tax cuts, the country “registered the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period”:
Overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967. Women reversed employment gains of previous cycles. And for African Americans, the worst job growth on record was matched by an unprecedented increase in poverty.
On a final note, Toomey never did identify anything he would cut from the budget to offset the cost of his budget-busting tax cuts.
Rubio And Crist Say The Iraq War Made America And The World ‘Safer And Better Off’
Rubio And Crist Say The Iraq War Made America And The World ‘Safer And Better Off’
This morning, CNN hosted a debate with Republican, Democratic, and Independent candidates for Florida’s Senate seat, Marco Rubio, Rep. Kendrick Meek, and Gov. Charlie Crist. The three candidates debated a variety of current issues, and highlights included Crist and Rubio stating that they felt that all of the Bush tax cuts should be extended, even those for the wealthiest Americans.
At one point, a CNN moderator asked the candidates if “America is safer and better off for having gone to war in Iraq?” Rubio responded, “I think ultimately yes. First of all, the world is better off because Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge….The world is a safer place not to mention the Iraqi people are better off than they were under Saddam Hussein.”
Meek went next, saying that the “war was based on falsehoods and not on fact” and refused to give a “blanket yes” to the question of whether the world was safer thanks to the war. The congressman continued, “I think we would’ve been better off if we had looked at diplomatic solutions and hadn’t been lied to by the Bush administration.”
Crist then gave the last answer. “I think the world is a safer place because of the action we took in Iraq,” he concluded:
MODERATOR: Mr. Rubio, is America safer and better off for having gone to war in Iraq?
RUBIO: I think ultimately, yes. First of all, the world is better off because Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge. He is no longer in charge of that country. Let’s understand one thing. Right now we’re worrying about Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. If Saddam Hussein was still there you’d have a full-blown arms war the way you’ve seen between Pakistan and India. So the world is a safer place not to mention the Iraqi people are better off than they were under Saddam Hussein. [...]
MODERATOR: Mr. Meek, same question.
MEEK: Well I would tell you this. There was a no-fly zone prior to going to war in Iraq. It was a war based on falsehood and not on fact. And also there are a number of American lives that have been lost. Saying that, those sacrifices that have been made, it’s important to note that the international community needs to continued to be engaged in Iraq. The largest U.S. embassy in the world is in Iraq because of the Bush doctrine. I understand the situation as to the world being safer because we went into Iraq, I couldn’t give you an overall blanket yes on that.
MODERATOR: Do you think we would’ve been better off if we hadn’t gone in?
MEEK: I think we would’ve been better off if we would’ve looked at diplomatic solutions and wouldn’t have been lied to by the Bush administration. I think a number of American lives would’ve been saved and this would be a different world if we would’ve given diplomacy an opportunity.
CRIST: I think the world is a safer place because of the action we took in Iraq.
Watch it:
It is an oddity of American political life that, more than seven years after the Bush administration launched its illegal and disastrous war in Iraq that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily, that major political players are still debating whether or not the war made our country and the world “safer and better off.” Nevertheless, it is important to dismantle the claims put forward by Rubio and Crist.
Rubio displays a hefty ignorance history by claiming that an Iraq under Saddam Hussein would’ve engaged in an arms war like that between India and Pakistan. Ever since the Gulf War, Iraq was under draconian sanctions that reduced its military to levels where it was completely unable to threaten any of its neighbors — and, unfortunately, exacted an enormous human cost on its civilian population. There could have been no arms race because Iraq did not have access to the materials to make them.
Rubio and Crist both claim that the world is a safer place thanks to the war in Iraq. The facts tell very a different story. In 2007, terrorism experts and research fellows at Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank conducted a survey of terrorism incidents worldwide since the Bush administration-led U.S. war in Iraq. Their study found that terrorism incidents worldwide increased by seven times, or six hundred percent, since the Bush administration invaded Iraq.
More recently, researchers Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and James Feldman of Air Force Institute of Technology found that, “from 1980-2003, there were 350 suicide attacks in the world, only 15% of which were anti-American.” Yet after the Bush-led war in Iraq, “there have been 1,833 suicide attacks, 92% of which were anti-American.”
Whether is Iraq is “better off” is more of a subjective question, but the level of suffering borne by the Iraqi people suggests they are not. In 2004, a year after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and well-before the spike in levels of violence that started with the sectarian warfare in 2005, Iraqis were 58 times more likely to die a violent death than they were before the invasion. Sectarian tensions and a fragile political system led to Iraq breaking the world’s record for the longest time without a government. Damage to the country’s infrastructure limits Iraqis to an average of five hours of electricity a day, and a recent document dump by the whistleblower organization Wikileaks has uncovered tens of thousands of previously unreported civilian deaths and the widespread use of torture and other brutal military techniques by the Iraqi government. All of this is without noting that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives, entire generations of children have grown under occupation or in sectarian warfare, and millions fled the country. All for the cost of $4-$6 trillion dollars, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
Inhofe is banking on a Republican win in Florida as a takeover. But the seat up for grabs in that state is a Republican seat, originally held by Mel Martinez, who resigned, now held by interim Senator George LeMieux.