Tag Archives: 2016 elections

Look At the Stuff You Can Buy in Rand Paul’s Online Store

by JurgenCisco Posted on April 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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While GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has a tough road to the nomination, in one area, he may already be the winner: campaign merchandise. Today, the Paul campaign unveiled an expansive online store with a variety of items, ranging from the goofy to the inspired to the downright hideous. There is no denying it: Rand Paul means business. Here’s the best of what he has to offer:

Eye Chart

Rand Paul Store

Rand Paul is an eye doctor by training, and he’s continued to practice since becoming a senator. This sign, retailing for $20.16, should be a hit with Rand fans. “Professionally, he has corrected the vision of thousands and now will do the same thing in the White House,” the page says. “And we’re not talking about a new prescription for President Obama.” (Burn!)

Bag Toss Game

Rand Paul Store

“Bag toss game,” also known as cornhole, is a treasured past-time among the collar-popping College Republicans who are some of Paul’s most enthusiastic supporters. Look for this soon on a college campus near you. Boat shoes apparently not included, though you can score Rand beer koozies to go with it—six for $25!

Ladies Constitution Burnout Tee

Rand Paul Store

“Every fashionable Constitutional conservative needs this ladies fashion burnout tee,” the site proclaims. Good luck getting burned out on the Constitution if you’re wearing it. Unless you burn the shirt. But you shouldn’t do that. (It’s $40.)

Rand Paul Beats Headphone Skins

Rand Paul Store

Beats by Rand: No need to know what the kids are listening to when you are what the kids are listening to. With these $20 headphone “skins,” Paul may have just won the vote of every conservative with a $300 pair of headphones.

The Real Rand Woven Blanket

Rand Paul Store

This could be perceived as a craven play to stake out the GOP’s cuddle caucus. “It might be fun to have Rand in your living room at night engaging in deep discussions about objectivism, libertarianism, conservatism and a few other isms,” the site says. (Easy now, tiger.) For $75, you’ll have to settle for this.

NSA Spy Cam Blocker

Rand Paul Store

Admittedly, this is an extremely on-brand item for Rand. He will literally shield you from the prying eyes of the NSA while you “browse Facebook.” Of course, there is a very low chance the NSA is using your webcam to spy on you, unless you’ve ordered an Islamic State travel guide or have a few too many Yemeni passport stamps. Also to consider: the “spy cam blocker” has already been endorsed by InfoWars.

Rand Macbook Skin

Rand Paul Store

So you have a MacBook—congratulations. You are very cool. For $20, though, you can be even cooler. With this.

Stand With Rand Car Mats

Rand Paul Store

Stand With Rand is all over the Rand store, and this is a nice application of the clever slogan. But the suggestion that one stand with both feet on the mat, while driving, is a dangerous one. If you must, you should Sit with Rand.

Whether or not anyone actually buys any of these things, it’s pretty clear the Rand Paul merchandise team’s launch was a slam dunk compared to the Rand Paul digital strategy team’s launch. Check out some of the banners they made for people to use as avatars on Facebook:

Get those guys a bag toss set, stat.

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Look At the Stuff You Can Buy in Rand Paul’s Online Store

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How Elizabeth Warren Made Expanding Social Security Cool

by MarianneTejada Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

For years, Washington politicians and policymakers been talking about cutting Social Security benefits. The Beltway consensus, unduly shaped by deficit hawks and Wall Streeters, has been that the system is broken and must be pared back, and progressives who support Social Security have often had to play defense.

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How Elizabeth Warren Made Expanding Social Security Cool

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Yes, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker Are Different Kinds of Conservatives

by MurrayMeredith Posted on March 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush may project a warmer, fuzzier, less hardnosed conservatism than Scott Walker, but is there really much difference between them? Greg Sargent isn’t so sure:

Here’s what I’ll be watching: How will this basic underlying difference, if it is real, manifest itself in actual policy terms? On immigration…both support eventual legalization only after the border is secured. Will their very real tonal difference show up in real policy differences?

On inequality, Walker may employ harsher rhetoric about the safety net than Bush does, but the evidence suggests that both are animated by the underlying worldview that one of the primary problems in American life is that we have too much government-engineered downward redistribution of wealth….Will Walker and Bush differentiate themselves from one another in economic policy terms in the least?

Ed Kilgore agrees:

The important thing is not assuming Bush and Walker represent anything new or different from each other just because they offer different theories of electability and different ways of talking to swing and base voters. Much of what has characterized all the recent intra-party “fights” within the GOP has reflected arguments over strategy and tactics rather than ideology and goals. I’d say there is a rebuttable presumption that will continue into the 2016 presidential contest.

You’d think that the way to get a grip on this question would be to look at the 2000 election. Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, ran as a “compassionate conservative,” and during the campaign he even made good on that. Remember his criticism of a Republican proposal regarding the EITC: “I don’t think they ought to be balancing their budget on the backs of the poor”? Compassionate!

So how did that work out? Well, that’s the funny thing: it’s hard to say. Liberals tend to see Bush as a hardline conservative, but that’s mainly because of the Iraq War and Karl Rove’s hardball electoral tactics, which drove us crazy. Conservatives, by contrast, don’t believe he was really all that conservative at all. And I think they have a point. In fact, I made that case myself way back in 2006 in a review of Bruce Bartlett’s Imposter:

Bush may be a Republican—boy howdy, is he a Republican—but he’s not the fire-breathing ideologue of liberal legend.

Don’t believe it? Consider Bartlett’s review of Bush’s major domestic legislative accomplishments. He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased education spending by over $20 billion and legislated a massive new federal intrusion into local schools. He co-opted Joe Lieberman’s proposal to create a gigantic new federal bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security. He has mostly abandoned free trade in favor of a hodgepodge of interest-group-pleasing tariffs. And after initially opposing it, Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill with almost pathetic eagerness in the wake of the Enron debacle, putting in place a phonebook-sized stack of new business regulations.

Want more? He signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, a bête noir of conservatives for years. His Medicare prescription-drug bill was the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society. He initially put a hold on a wide range of last-minute executive orders from the Clinton administration, but after a few months of “study” allowed nearly all of them to stand. And he has increased domestic discretionary spending at a higher rate than any president since LBJ.

Obviously there’s more to Bush’s record than this—tax cuts, judicial appointments, the Iraq War, etc.—and he certainly counts as a conservative when you look at his entire tenure in office. The question is whether there’s a difference between his brand of conservatism and, say, Scott Walker’s or Ted Cruz’s. I’d say there is, and that there’s probably also a difference between Jeb Bush’s brand of conservatism and the harder-line folks represented by Walker, Cruz, Santorum, and others. Tonal shifts and tactical choices often turn into real differences in who gets appointed to various cabinet positions and which priorities a new president will set. Jeb Bush is obviously no liberal. But would he govern differently than Scott Walker? My guess is that he would.

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Yes, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker Are Different Kinds of Conservatives

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When Jeb Met Jeb: The Tragic True Story of a Governor and a Manatee

by AYZShantell Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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It was the kind of feel-good photo op that campaigns love: A manatee nursed back to health from the brink of death and now set to be released back into the wild. And a GOP gubernatorial candidate seeking to show voters his softer side. As if in some made-for-TV movie, the manatee and the politician even shared the same name: Jeb.

Jeb the manatee was rescued on March 23, 1998, having ventured too far north from the temperate waters of South Florida where these mammals thrive. The nine-foot-long, half-ton manatee was scarred with lesions comparable to severe frostbite injuries in humans, and he appeared to have sustained injuries from watercraft. He was quickly transported to SeaWorld Orlando to recover.

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When Jeb Met Jeb: The Tragic True Story of a Governor and a Manatee

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The Boston Globe Really, Really Wants Elizabeth Warren to Run for President

by Wilhemi98W Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Sunday, the editorial board of the Boston Globe published a four-part argument urging Senator Elizabeth Warren to run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president. The editorial, which touted Warren’s commitment to reducing income inequality, warned Democrats that allowing “Clinton to coast to the presidential nomination without real opposition” would be a big mistake.

“Unlike Clinton, or any of the prospective Republican candidates, Warren has made closing the economic gaps in America her main political priority, in a career that has included standing up for homeowners facing illegal foreclosures and calling for more bankruptcy protections,” the Globe‘s editorial board argued. “If she runs, it’ll ensure that those issues take their rightful place at the center of the national political debate.”

The paper went onto argue that even on issues, such as strengthening financial regulations, on which Clinton and Warren agree, it was difficult to imagine a “President Clinton enforcing the Dodd-Frank legislation with as much vigor as a President Warren” at a time when income inequality remains a high priority for many Americans.

Although Warren has repeatedly said she is not interested in running for president, Sunday’s editorial comes at somewhat of a vulnerable moment for Clinton, who’s still dealing with the controversy surrounding her exclusive use of a personal email account while serving as secretary of state. Although the controversy doesn’t appear to have damaged Clinton’s popularity with top Democratic donors, it has further underscored the serious lack of viable challengers to her nomination.

“Fairly or not, many Americans already view Clinton skeptically, and waltzing to the nomination may actually hurt her in the November election against the Republican nominee,” the Globe argued.

If Warren were to remain uninterested in a run, the editorial board said she should continue her efforts to reduce income inequality and “help recruit candidates” to advance her signature cause.

To read the editorial in its entirety, visit the Boston Globe.

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The Boston Globe Really, Really Wants Elizabeth Warren to Run for President

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Ted Cruz’s First Campaign Stop: the Birthplace of the "Clinton Body Count"

by DelorisEumarrah Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) launched his presidential campaign on Monday at Virginia’s Liberty University, a private Christian college founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Liberty has become a mandatory stop for aspiring Republican candidates—and it’s not just for the campus museum exhibit of the taxidermied bear that Falwell’s father once wrestled. Liberty is perhaps the premier academic institution of the religious right, and Cruz’s choice of venue sends a clear message that he’s trying to position himself in 2016 Republican field as a social conservative crusader—and that he’s counting on evangelicals for support.

But Liberty University and its controversial founder have additional significance to the 2016 presidential race. During the 1990s, the anti-gay pastor did more than anyone to popularize the so-called “Clinton Body Count“—the notion that Bill and Hillary Clinton had been responsible for dozens of murders during and after their time in Arkansas. This conspiracy theory was the centerpiece of a 1994 film called the Clinton Chronicles, which Falwell helped distribute to hundreds of thousands of conservatives across the country.

Despite Falwell’s best efforts, though, President Bill Clinton won his 1996 re-election campaign, and the episode helped reinforce the pastor’s reputation as a bigoted crank. Republican candidates will find it hard to avoid Falwell’s institution as the 2016 campaign heats up. We’ll see if they’ve learned from his mistakes, too, when it comes to taking on the Clinton political machine.

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Ted Cruz’s First Campaign Stop: the Birthplace of the "Clinton Body Count"

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Ted Cruz Is Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know About Him.

by KarolynThibodea Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) officially launched his presidential campaign today, making him the first contender in either party to officially enter the race. At midnight Monday morning, Cruz tweeted, “I’m running for President and I hope to earn your support!” He made a more formal announcement later in the morning at Liberty University in Virginia, the Christian university founded by Jerry Falwell—where he drew loud applause when he told the crowd about his father finding Jesus Christ. His speech was, not surprisingly, designed for social conservatives: He blasted gay marriage, gun safety laws, and Common Core education standards. And he bemoaned the fact that half of born-again Christians do not vote. “Imagine millions of people of faith coming out to the polls and voting our values,” he declared.

So far, the young 2016 GOP contest has been dominated by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Thanks to his early announcement, the spotlight will be on Cruz. Here’s the best of Mother Jones‘ coverage on the combative Texas senator:

Meet Ted Cruz, “the Republican Barack Obama.”
Also, meet Ted Cruz’s firebrand preacher father, Rafael, who as a surrogate speaker for his son said President Obama should “go back to Kenya.”
As a high-priced private lawyer, Cruz defended huge jury awards against corporate wrongdoers, but as a tea party politician he calls for tort reform that would prohibit such accountability.
As a politician, he has championed the death penalty, but while he was in private practice, he argued in a Supreme Court case that the criminal-justice system could not be trusted to implement capital punishment.
Cruz the lawyer also argued that Obama’s 2009 stimulus was a good thing.
His theory on why Romney lost in 2012? 47 percent.
Cruz has some interesting theories on climate.

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Ted Cruz Is Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know About Him.

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Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment

by CyrilLackvyfr Posted on March 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Scott Walker is killing it with Republicans. The Wisconsin governor is one of his party’s rising stars—thanks to his ongoing and largely successful war against his state’s labor unions, a fight that culminated Monday with the signing of a controversial “right-to-work” bill.

How the 2016 contenders will deal with climate change


Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment


Jeb Bush on Climate Change: “I’m a Skeptic”


How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World


Jim Webb Wants to Be President. Too Bad He’s Awful on Climate Change.


Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio Will Now Supervise the Nation’s Climate Science


Attention GOP Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

Now (for the moment, anyway), he’s a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple weeks ago, he polled a close second to three-time winner Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by a significant margin.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that none of the prospective GOP presidential candidates are exactly champions of the environment. Probably the least bad is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who at least acknowledges that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Walker just might be the worst. He hasn’t said much about the science of global warming. (In the video above, you can watch him tell a little kid that his solution to the problem will center on keeping campsites clean, or something.) But his track record of actively undermining pro-environment programs and policies while supporting the fossil fuel industry is arguably lengthier and more substantive than that of his likely rivals.

“He really has gone after every single piece of environmental protection: Land, air, water—he’s left no stone unturned,” said Kerry Schumann, executive director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. “It’s hard to imagine anyone has done worse.”

Here’s a rundown of Walker’s inglorious history of anti-environmentalism.

Attacking Obama’s climate agenda: Walker is a key figure in the GOP’s battle against President Barack Obama’s flagship climate policy—the proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules that are designed to reduce the carbon footprint of the nation’s electricity sector 30 percent by 2030. The rules will likely require states to retrofit or shutter some of their coal-fired power plants. That could be a big deal in Wisconsin, which gets 62 percent of its power from coal.

In a letter to the EPA in December, Walker said the plan would be “a blow to Wisconsin residents and business owners.” He cited an analysis from his state’s Public Service Commission that predicted household electric bills would skyrocket. They won’t, necessarily, since the state has a lot of options—including boosting renewables and energy efficiency—that it could use to meet its EPA carbon target without jeopardizing the power grid. But rather than preparing for the new rules, Walker seems bent on stonewalling them. In January he announced that his new attorney general was already preparing a lawsuit against the EPA, a move that was lauded by the Wisconsin director of the Koch Brothers-backed group Americans for Prosperity. Walker has also signed a pledge, devised by Americans for Prosperity, that he will oppose any legislation relating to climate change—presumably a cap-and-trade plan or a carbon tax—that would result in a “net increase in government revenue.”

Indeed, Walker has close ties to Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who made a fortune in fossil fuels and who for years poured money into groups that cast doubt on the science of climate change. They own paper factories and a network of gasoline supply terminals in Wisconsin, and they have an interest in the state’s trove of “frac sand” (more on that below). Koch Industries gave $43,000 to Walker’s 2010 election campaign, and just after he took office, the Kochs doubled their lobbying force in Madison. In 2011 and 2012, David Koch and Americans for Prosperity spent $11 million backing Walker’s agenda and his successful effort to avoid being recalled.

Turning off clean energy: As much as he apparently supports fossil fuel development, Walker has taken steps to put the brakes on clean energy. Last month, he released a budget proposal that would drain $8.1 million from a leading renewable energy research center in the state. That same budget, however, would pump $250,000 into a study on the potential health impacts of wind turbines. (Wind energy opponents have long suggested that inaudible sound waves from turbines can cause insomnia, anxiety, and other disorders, although independent research has repeatedly found these claims are more connected to NIMBYism than legitimate medical concerns.) Walker’s budget would also cut $4 million in state subsidies for municipal recycling programs. That, at least, is an improvement over his first budget as governor, which proposed to eliminate recycling subsidies altogether.

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Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

by ShoshanBeavers Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is, unfortunately, an old and all-too familiar story. A Clinton, meaning Bill or Hillary, does something wrong (or possibly wrong). The media pounces; the Clinton antagonists of the right hit the warpath. Immediately, the Clinton camp and its supporters accuse the media and the conservative Clinton Hate Machine of trumping up a story to thwart the noble Clintons. Clinton spokespeople go into war-room mode. Resentful reporters grouse (privately and publicly) about the heavy-handed operators and obfuscators of Clintonland. And the right claims this latest fuss is a scandal that surpasses Watergate. Rinse, repeat.

The latest iteration of this Clinton-media dysfunctional spin cycle was triggered by the Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle that exploded last week. The Clinton camp’s handling of the controversy was a sign that Hillary and her gang are stuck in the Whitewaterish 1990s when it comes to communications strategy, relying on always-be-combating tactics predicated on self-perceived persecution. It’s bad news for anyone hoping that Hillary 2016 has learned from the miscalculations of the past.

Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct secretary of state business and, just as important, her failure to preserve her messages in real-time within the department’s own record-keeping system were not, as Clintonites claimed, no biggie. Yes, Scott Walker had his own secret email scandal. And Jeb Bush, who tried to score political points by slamming Clinton, vetted his gubernatorial emails before releasing them to the public, while congratulating himself on his supposed devotion to transparency. (I’ve combed the Bush email archive for names and topics that ought to be there—and found obvious subjects absent.) So the Clinton defenders have a point when they gripe that the media is only obsessed with her email problem. But it is a small point. She was a Cabinet official. She had a duty to ensure that her records—which belong to the public, not her—would be controlled by the department, not by her private aides who operate her private server.

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

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Scott Walker Just Blatantly Pandered to Iowa’s Corn Farmers

by JudeSlater Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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As the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker has resisted the federal government’s support of the biofuel industry. But last weekend, within the borders of corn-rich Iowa—the state upon which Walker appears most intensely focused for his all-but-announced presidential bid—he sang a different tune. Joining other potential candidates at the Iowa Ag Summit, Walker said he was “willing to go forward on continuing the Renewable Fuel Standard,” a federal policy that requires fuel used in the US to contain at least 10 percent “renewable fuel,” usually ethanol and other biofuel.

As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel noted, this represents a complete about-face for Walker, who made enemies in Wisconsin for his long resistance to robust ethanol subsidies. Corn is Wisconsin’s most important crop, and in 2012, the state was the nation’s second-biggest ethanol exporter. In January 2014, Walker stayed quiet on a federal proposal to cut ethanol use by three billion gallons. That silence angered biofuel producers in the state, according to the Journal-Sentinel, as well as the governors of nearly every other Midwestern state, including Iowa’s Terry Branstad.

Walker’s opposition to the federal ethanol mandate stretches back to 2006, when he was the Milwaukee county executive running for governor. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was a year old, and it was considered a viable way to reduce US use of foreign oil, improve the environment, and help out American farmers. However, Walker said, “it is clear to me that a big government mandate is not the way to support the farmers of this state.” Bruce Pfaff, Walker’s then-campaign manager, told Wisconsin’s Daily Reporter, “How can you justify the mandate when it is not proven whether or not it will help gas prices, the economy or the environment?”

Indeed, studies have found that ethanol is worse for the climate than fossil fuel. Though the mandate has been a boon to corn producers—40 percent of American corn is now used for biofuel—it also caused food prices to rise in the United States and abroad. Beyond that, given the recent increase in fossil fuel production in the US, environmental groups and taxpayer organizations are arguing that continued federal support of ethanol production—once considered an important alternative to foreign oil—is unnecessary.

But in Iowa, which produces nearly a third of US ethanol, the industry is far from unnecessary. The RFS will expire in 2022. This past weekend, Walker said that he’d continue the mandate, but he added that he hoped the United States will eventually not need it.

Walker’s evolution on the issue is already handing his critics and opponents ammunition. The conservative blog Hot Air called Walker’s stance a “big let down.” It praised the lone conservative who opposed RFS last weekend: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks where the answer you’d like me to give is ‘I’m for the RFS, darnit.’ That’d be the easy thing to do,” Cruz said. “I’ll tell you, people are pretty fed up, I think, with politicians who run around and tell one group one thing, tell another group another thing.”

Walker’s enemies in the Democratic Party let loose too. DNC spokesman Jason Pitt told the Wisconsin State Journal, “If Scott Walker thinks pandering on ethanol is going to convince people he’s anything but backwards on energy and the environment he can think again.”

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Scott Walker Just Blatantly Pandered to Iowa’s Corn Farmers

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