Tag Archives: fiorina

87-Year-Old Billionaire Endorses Trump: "Just in Case It’s a Mistake, I’ll Be Gone."

by BarbraHamm65 Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Of all the reasons to endorse Donald Trump for president, betting on one’s own imminent death in case all the most dire predictions of a Trump presidency come true may be the worst. Nevertheless, that appears to be at least part of the so-called reasoning behind 87-year-old oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens’ announcement on Wednesday that he was backing the real estate magnate.

“I’m ready to take a chance on it,” Pickens said at the SALT economic conference in Las Vegas. “And just in case it’s a mistake, I’ll be gone.”

The billionaire, who previously supported Trump’s rivals Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina, declined to offer an alternative for the hundreds of millions, and future generations, of Americans who will outlive him.

At the same conference, Pickens also said that he approved of Trump’s call to bar all Muslims from entering the country, at least temporarily, until “we can vet these people.” His support for the ban came on the same day Trump made his first comments walking back the controversial plan, calling it “just a suggestion.”

“Yes, I’m for Donald Trump,” Pickens said. “I’m tired of having politicians as president of the U.S. Let’s try something different.”

Continue at source:  

87-Year-Old Billionaire Endorses Trump: "Just in Case It’s a Mistake, I’ll Be Gone."

Posted in Anchor, bigo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 87-Year-Old Billionaire Endorses Trump: "Just in Case It’s a Mistake, I’ll Be Gone."

Six Embarrassing Things Republicans Said About Cybersecurity Last Night

by Melodee5461 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Huge hacks, Internet-savvy terrorists, and controversial legislation has made cybersecurity big news this year, but candidates from both parties barely mentioned the topic until Tuesday night’s Republican debate in Las Vegas. That’s when Republican candidates finally addressed cybersecurity and Internet privacy at length, but the results weren’t always pretty. Here are some of the lowlights:

1. Candidates demand encryption “backdoors.” Again: “There is a big problem. It’s called encryption,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who delivered the night’s sharpest attack on encrypted Internet tools that allegedly help terrorists evade US law enforcement and intelligence services. Kasich, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and former New York Gov. George Pataki, called for “backdoors,” or methods of decrypting message that would allow the government a way to read them. It was the latest episode in a debate that’s grown louder since the shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, California; there have been claims that both sets of attackers used encrypted messages to evade detection, though none of those claims have been proven. Nevertheless, key members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have said they’re working on a bill mandating backdoors in the wake of the attacks.

But encryption is also a vital part of the Internet’s basic infrastructure, and millions of people now use encrypted apps and programs to protect the privacy of their emails and messages. And giving the government access to encryption means allowing anyone else, including criminals, hackers, and foreign governments, access into those messages as well, according to cryptography experts.

2. Santorum thinks metadata isn’t personal information: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was one of several candidates who wanted to undo the USA Freedom Act, the law passed in May that ended the National Security Agency’s ability to engage in a mass collection of the phone records of Americans. Santorum brushed the law aside, arguing the program didn’t impinge on people’s privacy. “This metadata collection is not collecting people’s phone calls, their voices, they’re not collecting information that’s personal,” he said at the undercard debate.

The first part is true, but the second isn’t even close. Metadata includes phone numbers, location data, call times, and other information that intelligence agencies use to create create extensive, detailed profiles of a target—or anyone else.

3. Donald Trump doesn’t understand how the Internet works: Trump again called for shutting down at least parts of the Internet to try and stop ISIS from using online tools to recruit and plan attacks. “I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody,” he said. Whether or not that’s possible—and it’s probably not, given that many people in Syria rely on satellite connections after years of war—it would likely be horrible for Syrians and Iraqis, whose countries’ communications’ infrastructures have been heavily damaged by war. Many Syrians rely on Internet connections to maintain contact with family and the outside world, and human rights activists rely on the web to document atrocities by the Assad regime and ISIS.

4. Fiorina comes up short on the tech test: Fiorina is trying to cast herself as the field’s technology expert thanks to her years leading Hewlett-Packard, one of the country’s biggest tech companies. “A lifetime of politics is not necessarily the right kind of experience anymore. It matters that you understand technology,” she told the conservative website Breitbart in a pre-debate interview on Tuesday. But her evidence of tech-savvy during the debate was nothing more than a story about helping the NSA in the days after 9/11 by sending them a large shipment of servers. Fiorina’s other big suggestion was to ask the private sector for help in improving cybersecurity, something that already routinely happens.

Fiorina also seemed clueless about the state of cybersecurity laws during the Breitbart interview. She claimed the Obama administration had ignored critical legislation that would let private companies share information on cyberattacks with the government. But at the same time the Republicans were debating on stage on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was wedging that same legislation, which Congress debated for months, into the trillion-dollar spending deal approved later that night.

5. Bush cheers China’s hacking of journalists: The Washington Post reported on Monday that when China stole millions of US government personnel records, it also got the information of journalists who had applied for government credentials—and Jeb Bush seemed pretty happy about it. “Maybe that’s the only part that’s good news, so you guys can get a feel for what it’s like now to see this type of attack,” said the former Florida governor, breaking briefly into an awkward half-smile.

6. Lindsay Graham says to get a flip phone: “This is why I own a flip phone, you don’t have to worry about all this stuff,” Graham quipped. Actually, your flip phone, in addition to being terrible, would still leave its records all over your cell carrier’s network for the government to access. Please do not listen to this awful advice. Also, Lindsey Graham now has an iPhone.

To be fair, cybersecurity also prompted the night’s most substantive exchange. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio attacked Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz along with others who voted for the USA Freedom Act, which prevents the NSA from accessing or collecting records in bulk without a ruling from a federal judge. It’s proponents say the Act protects Americans from unconstitutional surveillance while making intelligence more effective, because investigators must target specific data and not drown in huge amounts of records. Both men hit back hard supporting the case for NSA reform. Cruz defended the law—and its national security benefits—so well that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Senate’s most outspoken privacy advocate, backed him up in a press release issued during the debate.

Continue reading: 

Six Embarrassing Things Republicans Said About Cybersecurity Last Night

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Six Embarrassing Things Republicans Said About Cybersecurity Last Night

We Are Live-Blogging the Final GOP Debate of 2015

by Enrique8184 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This debate was a mess. I seriously wonder whether ordinary viewers were able to follow much of it at all. It left me with the impression of a bunch of super macho monks angrily arguing about angels on the head of a pin. The candidates went down a rabbit hole early on and never really came up for air.

My strongest impression is that Ben Carson was terrible. He really needed to show that he wasn’t a complete nitwit on national security, and he failed spectacularly. He was obviously out of his depth and had no clue how to answer even the simplest questions. He literally froze when Wolf Blitzer asked him his view of the USA Freedom Act. It was almost painful to watch. Later on he burbled about not being able to fix the Middle East, sending Syrian refugees back to Syria with a few defensive weapons, and then became completely incoherent when asked about North Korea. Carson did so badly that I think his campaign is over.

Donald Trump took a step backward to his persona from the first debate: lots of mugging for the camera and no apparent policy knowledge at all. He doubled down on killing the families of terrorists; he answered three or four different questions by saying he opposed the invasion of Iraq; and then produced one of the night’s most fatuous lines: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” That’s his position on the nuclear triad? It’s hard to believe this isn’t going to hurt him in the polls, but this is not a normal world we live in these days. I’d say he’s going to lose a few points, but I won’t pretend to be confident about that.

Jeb Bush tried manfully to needle Trump, but the poor guy just can’t pull it off. All Trump had to do was make a face at him. As for substance, he was one of the most reasonable guys on the stage, but he seems incapable of stating his views in any kind of memorable way. He did nothing to help himself tonight.

Marco Rubio did his usual thing: he produced tight little canned responses to every question. I don’t like this approach, but I suppose it sounds coherent and forceful to some people. He did OK, and might pick up a few points. However, I would like to hear more about whether he thinks Ted Cruz exposed national secrets on live TV.

Ted Cruz probably did well, though he struggled with several questions. Does he really think we can carpet bomb only “the bad guys” and no one else? Does he really think arming the Kurds is the key to defeating ISIS? They aren’t going to fight ISIS anywhere outside Kurdistan. But I doubt this kind of stuff does him much harm. His tedious manhood fight with Wolf Blitzer over being allowed to speak when it wasn’t his turn didn’t make him look especially presidential, but maybe that doesn’t matter either. My sense is that he came out about even tonight.

Chris Christie said nothing except that he’s tough. Carly Fiorina just spouted her usual one-liners. John Kasich desperately wants people to pay attention to him and just can’t pull it off. And Rand Paul, bless his heart, didn’t try to out-macho everyone. But he also probably didn’t appeal to anyone either.

It’s hard to know how to react to this stuff. Kasich apparently wants a full-on re-invasion of Iraq. Trump wants to kill terrorist families. Cruz wants to carpet bomb ISIS but has no idea what that actually means. Rubio thinks our Middle Eastern allies will all magically provide lots of ground troops just as soon as the lily-livered Obama is out of office. Carson is just plain scary in his lack of knowledge of anything. The only thing they all agree on is that America needs a testosterone injection. It’s pretty depressing to watch.

But maybe I can cheer you up. Earlier today I told you that the latest issue of Mother Jones features a scarily-near-life-size picture of me, suitable for putting on your refrigerator if you buy a copy of the magazine. Did you think I was joking? I wasn’t, and I have photographic proof on the right. But I tell you what: If enough of you make a donation to MoJo tonight, I think I can convince them never to do this again. Deal?

Full debate transcript here.

Here we are for the….what is this? The fifth Republican debate? They fly by so fast! It seems like just yesterday that Carly Fiorina was a toddler in the undercard debate, but now look at her. Proudly up on the main stage and polling at 2.2 percent.

11:06 – And that’s a wrap.

11:04 – Trump: Our health care system is going to implode in 2017.

11:02 – Jeb mentions his “detailed plans” yet again. He probably ought to cool it on that.

10:55 – Commercial break! Then closing statements. While we wait with bated breath, how about making a donation to the hardworking bloggers here at Mother Jones? Just click here.

10:54 – Trump says he won’t run as an independent. At least, it seems like he said it. You never know with Trump.

10:52 – Trump and Rubio are now mugging together.

10:51 – Rubio wants to upgrade everything.

10:48 – Hugh Hewitt asks Trump what he’d upgrade first: missiles, subs, or bombers. Trump’s stream of conscious reply is on a whole new level. Hugh asks again. Trump: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” OMG.

10:47 – Jeb continues the mindless China bashing. This is everyone’s favorite sport every four years.

10:46 – Christie wants us to dig up Chinese corruption and then tell the Chinese people about it. How? Leaflets?

10:44 – Carson is now literally babbling about national security. I can’t watch. It’s too embarrassing.

10:42 – What would Fiorina do about North Korea? Answer: we have to beat up on China. This will convince them to help us get rid of Kim Jong-un. What?

10:38 – Commercial break! And I’m working hard here, folks. How about a donation? Show us that you get it.

10:35 – Hmmm. I wonder what Chris Christie’s job used to be? I wish he’d let us know.

10:31 – Carson: We should settle Syrian refugees in…northwest Syria. All we need is a few weapons to defend it. But why do we send Kurdish arms through Baghdad? Does Carson really not know? This is almost painful to watch.

10:26 – FFS, will everyone stop griping about not getting called on?

10:20 – Bush once again needles Trump for getting his information from “the shows.” Sadly, he can’t really pull it off. It does seem to get under Trump’s skin, though.

10:18 – Trump has been mugging for the camera all night. Much like the first debate.

10:12 – Carly trying to sound tough. They’re all trying to sound tough. They’re the toughest toughs of all time. They’re all tougher than anyone else on the stage. I wonder if even conservatives get weary of this endless bluster?

10:09 – The overall impression of this debate is total chaos, despite the fact that everyone on stage except Rand Paul has pretty much the same foreign policy.

10:07 – Wolf desperately trying to shut up Ted Cruz. Finally succeeds. Cruz looks like an idiot.

10:05 – I’m losing the plot here. Who’s in favor of what these days?

10:03 – Carson: Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years. We’re not going to fix it. Huh? Does he even listen to his own words?

10:02 – Now it’s $3 trillion.

10:01 – Trump: We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple dictators. Now the Middle East is a mess. Not totally clear what he means by this, but he’s certainly opened himself up for attack.

9:56 – Cruz manfully tries to defend teaming up with dictators as long as they’re our dictators.

9:52 – Commercial break! Why not take the time to make a donation to Mother Jones? All you have to do is click here. It only takes a few seconds.

9:51 – Carson: we have to destroy the caliphate. We have to “take their energy.” We have to cut off Raqqa. That’s his strategy?

9:48 – Um, no, Carly, Petraeus wasn’t “retired early” because he told Obama something he didn’t want to hear. You remember the real reason, don’t you?

9:47 – Rubio seems to think the only reason that Middle Eastern countries aren’t providing ground troops is because they don’t trust Obama. I hope he doesn’t actually believe that.

9:45 – Kasich appears to be proposing a massive re-invasion of Iraq.

9:44 – Now Trump doesn’t want to close down parts of the internet, he just wants to get a bunch of “smart guys” to infiltrate them. I wonder why no one has thought of that before?

9:37 – Should we kill the families of terrorists? Trump says he would be “very, very firm with families,” whatever that means.

9:35 – Cruz will destroy ISIS by “targeting the bad guys.” Okey dokey.

9:33 – Rubio says we need ground troops to defeat ISIS. This isn’t rocket science, but props to Rubio for actually saying it.

9:31 – Wolf asks Cruz again: would he carpet bomb cities? Cruz says he’d carpet bomb the places where ISIS is. This is, of course, in the cities.

9:30 – Cruz yet again seems to think the Kurds will fight outside Kurdistan if we arm them. This is pitiful.

9:28 – Trump desperately tries to tap dance around his idea of closing down parts of the internet. Eventually, he says yes, by God, he would shut down parts of the internet.

9:25 – Fiorina thinks we missed the San Bernardino shooters because we used the wrong algorithms. Also: we don’t need to force Silicon Valley companies to cooperate with NSA. We just need to ask them. Has she paid attention to anything at all over the past three years?

9:23 – Who’s right about the USA Freedom Act, Rubio or Bush? Carson looks like a deer in headlights and says Wolf should ask them. He doesn’t want to get in the middle of this. WTF? This is the new, well-briefed Carson?

9:20 – Christie just flat-out said that policy is boring. All we need is a guy who’s tough on terrorism. This legislation mumbo jumbo from the junior senators is for wimps.

9:18 – Rubio implies that NSA can’t access phone records with a warrant. But he didn’t quite come right out and say that, which means he can deny it later.

9:16 – This is great. Rubio has just implicitly accused Cruz of blabbing classified information on national TV.

9:15 – Rubio giving another one of his mini canned speeches. Do people really respond well to this?

9:13 – Cruz can’t abide the thought that he voted for a bill that Obama signed.

9:11 – So far, there’s been zero substance in this debate. Obama is horrible, ISIS must be destroyed, I’ll keep you safe, blah blah blah.

9:07 – These folks are still obsessed about whether Obama will say radical Islamic terror. Can someone please ask why they’re so fixated on this? Do they really think that saying this over and over actually makes a difference?

9:03 – Shouldn’t Obama get 30 seconds every time someone mentions him?

9:01 – Cell phones with ISIS flags on them? Have I missed something?

8:59 – Well, they’re all going to keep us safe.

8:51 – Chris Christie blaming LA school closure on Barack Obama.

8:49 – Rand Paul going after Trump and Rubio in his opening statement. OK then.

8:48 – And we’re off!

8:39 – Ben Carson has apparently been studying up on foreign policy. I so can’t wait for that. Do you think he’s figured out how to pronounce Hamas yet?

8:30 – Three minutes away from Reince Priebus! Then we get to see whatever ridiculous opening video CNN has concocted for us tonight.

8:22 – So how was the opening act? Did Lindsey Graham declare war on anyone?

8:13 – We have a few minutes while the CNN folks burble away, so why not donate some money to Mother Jones while we wait? I plan to harass you all evening about this, so you might as well do it now. Come on. What do you say?

Read this article: 

We Are Live-Blogging the Final GOP Debate of 2015

Posted in Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Are Live-Blogging the Final GOP Debate of 2015

Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

by RoseanneGourgaud Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

People For the American Way emails to highlight something from last Friday’s pre-Thanksgiving celebration of Christian virtue in Iowa. Here is Carly Fiorina:

“I do think it’s worth saying,” Fiorina declared, “that people of faith make better leaders because faith gives us humility, faith teaches us that no one of us is greater than any other one of us, that each of us are gifted by God. Faith gives us empathy; we know that all of us can fall and every one of us can be redeemed. And faith gives us optimism, it gives us the belief that there is something better, that there is someone bigger than all of us.”

PFAW is doing the Lord’s work here—so to speak—but I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s annoying, but what do you expect at a big gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa? But then there’s this from omnipresent messaging guru Frank Luntz:

Luntz then followed up on Fiorina’s statement by declaring that “I can back that up statistically,” asserting that “every single positive factor that you can describe is directly correlated to someone’s relationship with faith, with God, and all the pathologies that you would criticize are directly related to a rejection of God.”

You know, I’ve got nothing against organized religion. It provides an important part of life for a lot of people and does a lot of good charitable work. It also does some harm, but what human organization doesn’t?

<rant volume=7>

But it sure does get tiresome to hear Christians like Fiorina constantly preening about how great they are and then in their next breath boasting about their humility. Fiorina also explicitly suggests that nonbelievers are second-rate leaders and then immediately congratulates believers like herself for their empathy. As for optimism, I have rarely come across a community more convinced that the entire country has become a grim and ghastly abomination than evangelical Christians. Generally speaking, I’d say that evangelical Christians—the ones who blather in public anyway—are among the least humble, least empathetic, and least optimistic people in the country.

Still, you can just chalk all this up to political hyperbole and let it go. But then Luntz steps in to bring the Science™. It’s not just Fiorina’s opinion that believers are better than nonbelievers. By God, Luntz can prove that every single bad thing in the world is due to unbelievers. Who needs faith when you have dial tests? So there you have it: Revel in your overwhelming superiority, Christians. What better way to win sympathy for your views?

</rant>

Have a nice Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat with a few sinners and publicans this year, OK?

Source: 

Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

Some Presidential Campaigns Are Running Out of Cash, New Filings Show

by ElijahHislop Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When the presidential candidates reported their third-quarter fundraising totals this week, the number to watch wasn’t the size of their hauls but their overall burn rate—how quickly they were spending the cash they raised. The quarterly filings revealed some campaigns that were living within their means and building war chests for the long slog to come, and others that will be lucky to sputter into the early primaries.

On the Democratic side, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton raised an extraordinary amount of money—$26.2 million and $29.1 million, respectively—and they each ended the third quarter of 2015 with more money in the bank than they started with. That’s something that many of their Republican rivals candidates can’t say.

Continue Reading »

Source:  

Some Presidential Campaigns Are Running Out of Cash, New Filings Show

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Some Presidential Campaigns Are Running Out of Cash, New Filings Show

Rubio, Fiorina Declared Winners of Last Night’s Media Bowl

by DaniloPoirier Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I didn’t get a chance to hear any of the post-game commentary after last night’s debate. After blogging continuously since 2 pm (Pacific time) I just collapsed in the living room with the pizza Marian had gotten and watched whatever it was she had on TV. So I never got a chance to see who had been anointed the winner.

This morning I see that apparently the answer is Marco Rubio, which makes Marian two for two picking winners. Maybe she should be the one writing this blog. Ed Kilgore had about the same reaction to this that I did:

As for the “winners” and “losers” bit, there’s no question Carly Fiorina is being deliberately promoted to the Big Stage where GOPers wanted her all along to supply low-gender-politics-risk attacks on Hillary Clinton. I watched her yesterday and saw a former CEO used to doing power-point presentations for stockholders doing her standard speech, amplified by a very lucky question she got about Donald Trump. And for all the (justified) talk about the Fox moderators being tough on candidates, nobody’s asking Fiorina the obvious question about her extremely limited qualifications for the presidency.

….I’m also a bit mystified by all the wild praise today for Marco Rubio, but maybe I’ve just seen his earnest Second-Generation-American routine one time too many to be impressed any more. He got reasonably lucky in his questioning; the only heat he drew was over his alleged support for a rape exception to an abortion ban; he denied it, and used the question to position himself as a real RTL ultra, which is apparently what he wanted to do.

Yeah, my sense is that both Fiorina and Rubio did fine, and since no one else did spectacularly, maybe that’s enough to make them winners. But big winners? I don’t see it either.

Interestingly, I also see this morning that the commentariat is quickly converging around the idea that Fox News manipulated the debate pretty blatantly. The GOP wanted Fiorina on the main stage because they wanted a woman there, and Fox obliged by giving her easy questions and then praising her to the skies after the debate was over. Likewise, the GOP really wants Trump gone, and Fox obliged by asking him lots of awkward questions. Trump himself certainly played along, claiming afterward that he had been ambushed and treated badly by the moderators, especially Megyn Kelly.

Maybe. I didn’t notice Fiorina getting off any easier than the other candidates, but I did notice the over-the-top effusive praise she received in the post-game shows on Fox. Something sure seemed to be going on there. Fiorina wasn’t that good.

As for Trump, I think he was bound to have trouble in a debate forum, where he has less opportunity to duck questions he doesn’t want to answer. Also, as I said last night, his schtick gets old when you see it over and over in the space of two hours. If, at some point, you don’t seem to take any of the questions seriously, even your supporters are going to start thinking that maybe you don’t belong in the White House.

In any case, this seems to be a pretty good example of the media having a bigger impact than the debates themselves. Fiorina and Rubio were the winners of last night’s media bowl and Trump was the loser. In the future, everyone will know to stay on Megyn Kelly’s good side.

Originally posted here:  

Rubio, Fiorina Declared Winners of Last Night’s Media Bowl

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rubio, Fiorina Declared Winners of Last Night’s Media Bowl

Jeb Bush Stiffs Christian Group on Poverty Video

by FranciscoErickso Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

More than 100 Christian leaders from the right and the left working under the umbrella group Circle of Protection recently asked all of the presidential candidates to make a three-minute video answering this question: “What would you do as president to offer help and opportunity to hungry and poor people in the United States and around the world?” Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina each responded with videos specifically produced for this project that to varying degrees answer the question. Jeb Bush replied by sending the group a stock campaign ad.

The non-Bush videos are mostly mediocre in production value and content. The Republican candidates couch most of their rhetoric in religious terms, suggesting that they would encourage families and churches take care of their own, with no help from the government. Cruz, in an awkward video, talks directly to the camera to declare the War on Poverty an abject failure. He promises to “reward” Americans who give money to Christian ministries. Fiorina barely manages to eke out a whole minute talking about the subject, but she works in lots of references to God. Carson suggests that big US agricultural companies working in Cameroon hold the key to helping the hungry. Sanders’ video is low-budget but at least presents specific proposals, including funding infrastructure improvements to put people to work. Huckabee’s video shows his childhood home in Hope, Arkansas. He vows to protect Medicare and Social Security.

Jeb Bush didn’t bother to cut a video for the Circle of Protection, which includes the National Association of Evangelicals. Instead, he sent in the “Making a Difference” video he released last month to “introduce himself to the nation” before officially announcing his presidential campaign. The spot has high production values, music, and lots of other people talking: the mother of a developmentally disabled child; a formerly battered woman; a kid who got a private school voucher. It’s easier to watch than Cruz’s. But it’s just a campaign ad.

Chris Ford, media relations manager for Bread for the World, one of the founders of the Circle of Protection, says that the group is not commenting on the individual videos and is “letting the voters decide” what to think. More videos, which will be circulated to churches across the country, are expected in the next week or so from Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Martin O’Malley and Rand Paul. Ford says that the group has reached out to Donald Trump, but he hasn’t responded to its requests.

You can watch the Bush video here:

View original article – 

Jeb Bush Stiffs Christian Group on Poverty Video

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jeb Bush Stiffs Christian Group on Poverty Video

GOP Candidates and Other Pols React to Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling

by JoeannTobias Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a historic five-to-four ruling Friday, the US Supreme Court ruled that bans on same sex marriage are unconstitutional. Reaction across Twitter was swift, with opinion ranging from pure joy to pure anger.

The White House:

Hillary Clinton:

Jeb Bush:

Bill Kristol:

Donald Trump:

Rick Santorum:

Dave Weigel (on Santorum):

Bernie Sanders:

Mike Huckabee:

Scott Walker (via Ben Jacobs):

Carly Fiorina:

Red State:

Excerpt from: 

GOP Candidates and Other Pols React to Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on GOP Candidates and Other Pols React to Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling