Tag Archives: political

We May Have Bill Clinton to Thank for Donald Trump’s Presidential Run

by ChaseLeventhal Posted on August 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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As Americans eagerly await the circus that will be tomorrow’s first Republican presidential debate—almost entirely generated by the presence of front-runner Donald Trump—a new report offers a surprising connection that led the real estate mogul to throw his hat in the ring: Bill Clinton.

The Washington Post reports Clinton and Trump had a private phone call shortly before the GOP’s newest star officially announced his candidacy. During the call, the former president—and spouse of the likely democratic nominee—stopped short of outright pushing him to run for president. Instead, Clinton reportedly prodded Trump to seek a “larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape.”

Clearly flattered by the words of his favorite president ever, Trump got the hint, entered the race. The rest is viral history. Clinton’s office confirmed the phone call.

Despite the recent exchange over Trump’s controversial “rapist” characterization of Mexican immigrants—Hillary said she was “very disappointed” by the comments; Trump fired back, calling her the “worst Secretary of State” in history—the new report highlights the unusual friendship shared between the Clintons and Trump.

Back in 2012, Clinton noted that Trump has been “uncommonly nice” to him and Hillary. “We’re all New Yorkers,” Clinton said. “I like him. And I love playing golf with him.”

With that kind of praise, Clinton has clearly been playing the long game.

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We May Have Bill Clinton to Thank for Donald Trump’s Presidential Run

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Oregon Sensibly Votes to Make Oral Contraceptives Available Without a Prescription

by Alycia4448 Posted on July 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Good news from Oregon:

Oregonians will be able to buy birth control at a pharmacy without a doctor’s prescription beginning next year, potentially making the state the first in the nation to allow the practice. The bill was overwhelmingly approved in the state House and Senate and was signed by Gov. Kate Brown last week. It will go into effect at the start of next year.

….A second Oregon law, which passed the 90-member Legislature in a near-unanimous vote Thursday, allows women to obtain a yearlong supply of birth control instead of refilling their prescription every 30 or 90 days.

I know there’s some disagreement about this among progressives these days, since prescription birth control is covered by Obamacare and OTC birth control isn’t. But I assume Oregonians who want a prescription can still get one, and allowing contraceptives to be sold OTC as well is the right thing to do. That decision should be made solely on safety grounds, not on grounds of political convenience. This is the same argument we make against things like forced ultrasounds for abortion patients, and it’s the right one.

The one-year supply is a nice bonus too, based on evidence that women are more likely to use contraceptives regularly if they don’t have to make a special trip for a refill every 30 days. All in all, good for Oregon, working hard to retain its spot as one of the sanest states in the Union.

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Oregon Sensibly Votes to Make Oral Contraceptives Available Without a Prescription

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Chris Christie Really Wants Republicans to Forget his Bromance With Obama

by EmmanueGoff Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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After a somewhat lackluster response to his announcement that he was entering the presidential race, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appears to be revving up his brusque, straight-talking persona in a big attempt to garner the attention of the GOP base. Christie angered many on the right when in the final months of the 2012 election he gushed about President Barack Obama’s leadership skills during Superstorm Sandy. He was, after all, a top surrogate for Mitt Romney. During a visit to New Hampshire this week, Christie went out of his way to take a swipe at the president.

According to Washington Post’s National Political Correspondent Philip Rucker, Christie said the following during a town hall meeting Thursday:

Christie certainly didn’t seem to feel this way in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, when he praised Obama’s “great” response to the natural disaster. “The president has been all over this and he deserves great credit,” he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, before going on to brag about their late night phone calls, saying that Obama, “told me to call him if I needed anything and he absolutely means it, and it’s been very good working with the President and his administration.”

And it was a two way street. “I want to let you know your governor is working overtime,” Obama remarked after the duo finished up a tour of the damage.

By March 2014, having learned his lesson from the GOP base who shamed him, Christie was back to dissing the president, calling him a weak leader at a Conservative Political Action Conference. Expect plenty more Obama-bashing from Christie as he elbows his way into the crowded primary field.

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Chris Christie Really Wants Republicans to Forget his Bromance With Obama

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Why Chris Christie Is Fighting the Release of His Media List

by CarriWinning Posted on June 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years, the news media has been battling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for access to a host of ostensibly public records. In February, Mother Jones’ Molly Redden reported that Christie’s administration was fighting 23 open-records requests in court, on everything from Bridgegate to Christie’s out-of-state travel and contracts awarded in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. These fights over records aren’t just minor squabbles between pesky reporters and a prickly governor—they are costing New Jersey taxpayers serious money. As of September 2014, the Christie administration had shelled out $441,000 reimbursing lawyers for plaintiffs who successfully sued for records (and that doesn’t include other costs, such as government lawyers’ time).

Even when the Christie administration loses, it doesn’t go down without a fight. The New Jersey Watchdog, an independent investigative reporting outlet, reported Monday that the Christie administration is challenging a court’s order to release a comprehensive media list that was created by the governor’s communications office. The communications office is staffed by 16 people who earned more than $1.3 million in taxpayer-funded salaries last year.

The list, requested by the New Jersey Watchdog, includes “contact information for roughly 2,500 reporters, producers and editors, subdivided into categories, which enables Christie and his staff to selectively target efforts to promote their political ambitions,” according to the outlet. The Christie administration is arguing that providing the list would give the New Jersey Watchdog an unfair competitive advantage over other media outlets and is refusing to release it under a law that allows the government to withhold records that include trade secrets or proprietary information of government contractors.

“New Jersey Watchdog does not bid on government contracts,” Mark Lagerkvist, the site’s reporter and editor, wrote Monday. “It is a non-profit investigative news site that freely shares its content with other news outlets.… The governor’s argument suggests the governor has a proprietary, or ownership interest in the list. But the governor’s office is not a private business. And while the media list may be a valuable asset for his political future, it is not Christie’s property.”

Lagerkvist told Mother Jones that his attorney will file a response to the administration’s challenge and the judge in the case will likely schedule a hearing to decide the matter.

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Why Chris Christie Is Fighting the Release of His Media List

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The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

by RosieDPFDpn Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Koch brothers and their political machine have long been key allies of Wisconsin governor and presumptive 2016 hopeful Scott Walker. With the GOP presidential field getting more crowded by the day and political observers wondering who will with the Koch Primary—and the financial backing of these billionaires and their donor network—Walker has sparked a controversy in his home state in which and he and Team Koch are on opposite sides.

When Walker announced a plan last week to spend $250 million in taxpayer money for a proposed $500 million basketball arena in downtown Milwaukee, the local chapter of the Koch-founded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity joined the chorus of detractors who condemned the project. The National Basketball Association is demanding the new venue and is threatening that the Milwaukee Bucks franchise may have to move if the arena isn’t built by 2017. This has put Walker in a tough spot. The failure to retain the team would be an ugly black eye for Walker, but the plan to spend taxpayer funds propping up a highly lucrative private business is irritating Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats alike.

While Walker’s forays into union-busting had strong conservative backing, the political dynamics involved in the public financing of sports arenas and stadiums are much different. Across the nation in recent years, conservatives and progressive groups and activists have questioned the notion that financing arenas for lucrative sports franchises with taxpayer funds will spur the local economy. And Walker is feeling the backlash.

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The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

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Obama Finally Joins Twitter

by SilkeMUXAcj Posted on May 18, 2015

Mother Jones

After years of being bound to the occasional “-bo” sign-offs on the official @barackobama Twitter account (run by his political group Organizing for Action), President Barack Obama finally got his own personal account today!

The official word from the White House informs us the new account will serve as a way for the president to “engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him.”

The shiny new @POTUS handle describes Obama as a “Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States.” One probable mistake, though: He left his DM’s wide open.

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Obama Finally Joins Twitter

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Lunatic Conspiracy Theories Aren’t What They Used to Be

by Florencepb7 Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago there was a minor hoorah over a military training exercise called Jade Helm, scheduled to take place this summer in various states in the southwest. A few lunatics in Texas got wind of this, along with a map or two, and decided that Jade Helm was really just a pretense for President Obama to take over Texas.

Sadly for me, this all happened while I was near the bottom of my chemotherapy regimen and I barely had enough energy to make an occasional run to the bathroom, let alone write blog posts about stuff like this. Today, however, the fine folks at PPP have given me a second bite at the apple. They polled a bunch of Republicans about Jade Helm, and then broke down the answers by which candidate they currently support. Here are the results:

Apparently a full third of the Republican base believes that President Obama plans to order the military to take over Texas. Booyah! And supporters of Ted Cruz and Rick Perry—who are probably mostly from Texas—believe this idiocy by 60-70 percent.

So what do we take from this? I think there are two main interpretations:

Fox and Rush and the rest of the conservative media have driven conservatives into such a frenzy that a third of them really, truly do believe that President Obama plans a military takeover of Texas.
Poll questions like this no longer have any real meaning. This is basically little more than a survey of mood affiliation that tests how much you hate and distrust President Obama. That is to say, a yes answer has little or nothing to with Jade Helm. It just means you really hate and distrust Obama.

I’m inclined to the second interpretation myself. It’s all good fun, but no, I don’t think that a third of Republicans really believe this nonsense. It’s just their way of showing that they’re members in good standing of the political faction that believes Obama is capable of anything in his power-mad struggle to turn the United States into a socialist hellhole. The rest is just fluff.

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Lunatic Conspiracy Theories Aren’t What They Used to Be

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The Scandal That Could Blow Up Rand Paul’s Machine

by MikkiDjrtbodb Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Illustration by Mark Hammermeister

On December 26, 2011, a week before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, an influential Republican state senator named Kent Sorenson and his wife, Shawnee, arrived at a steak house in Altoona, a suburb of Des Moines. A goateed Mr. Clean look-alike, Sorenson was a hot commodity. His deep ties to the state’s evangelical leaders and home-schooling activists made his endorsement highly sought after by GOP presidential hopefuls, particularly the second-tier contenders who had staked their campaigns on a strong Iowa showing. Sorenson had picked his horse early, signing on as Michele Bachmann’s Iowa chairman in June 2011—a coup for the Minnesota congresswoman’s upstart campaign.

Joining the Sorensons was a bespectacled political operative named Dimitri Kesari, the deputy campaign manager of Rep. Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential bid. As caucus day neared, Ron Paul’s campaign was surging in the polls but needed a late boost if he wanted to meet his goal of finishing in the top three.

That’s where Sorenson came in.

When the state senator left to use the restroom, Kesari produced a $25,000 check—drawn from the account of Designer Goldsmiths, a jewelry store run by his wife—and gave it to Shawnee Sorenson. Two days later, Kent Sorenson left a Bachmann campaign event, drove straight to a Ron Paul rally, and declared that he had defected.

As it turned out, Paul’s inner circle had been secretly negotiating for months to lure Sorenson away from the Bachmann campaign. In an October memo to Paul campaign manager John Tate, a Sorenson ally outlined the state senator’s demands, which included an $8,000-a-month payment for nearly a year, another $5,000-a-month check for a colleague of Sorenson’s, and a $100,000 donation to Sorenson’s political action committee. The memo explained that these payments would not only secure Sorenson’s support in the near term but also help to “build a major state-based movement that will involve far more people into a future Rand Paul presidential run.” Kesari’s $25,000 check, in other words, amounted to more than a down payment on an endorsement for Ron Paul; it was an investment in Rand Paul 2016.

The Kentucky senator officially declared his candidacy on Tuesday. With the 2016 Iowa caucuses nine months away, this scheme could become a liability for the latest Paul presidential enterprise. The Sorenson deal exploded into public view in 2013, thanks to a pair of whistleblowers from the Ron Paul and Bachmann campaigns, and the episode now hangs over Rand Paul and his inner circle like a dark cloud.

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The Scandal That Could Blow Up Rand Paul’s Machine

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Ex-State Supreme Court Justice: Judicial Elections Are Like "Legalized Extortion"

by AnnelieseHXW Posted on April 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Though they usually don’t get much attention, judicial elections have become just as cutthroat and cash-driven as other political races. To win a judgeship, many candidates must slime their opponents and win the financial backing of often unaccountable interests that may have business before them in court. (Read more in this Mother Jones investigation.)

The amount of money flowing into these races is staggering: State judicial candidates raised $83 million in the 1990s. Yet during the two years 2012 election cycle, they raised more than $110 million—and that doesn’t include outside spending. Altogether, more than $250 million has been spent on judicial races since 2000.

Judges themselves often hate the process of fundraising and mudslinging, but view it as a necessary evil. Sue Bell Cobb, a career judge and the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, just wrote about her experience for Politico. Her story is worth a full read, but here’s a taste:

While I was proud of the work I did for the next 4 1/2 years, I never quite got over the feeling of being trapped inside a system whose very structure left me feeling disgusted. I assure you: I’ve never made a decision in a case in which I sided with a party because of a campaign donation. But those of us seeking judicial office sometimes find ourselves doing things that feel awfully unsavory.

…

When a judge asks a lawyer who appears in his or her court for a campaign check, it’s about as close as you can get to legalized extortion. Lawyers who appear in your court, whose cases are in your hands, are the ones most interested in giving. It’s human nature: Who would want to risk offending the judge presiding over your case by refusing to donate to her campaign? They almost never say no—even when they can’t afford it.

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Ex-State Supreme Court Justice: Judicial Elections Are Like "Legalized Extortion"

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced his candidacy for President on Monday via Twitter, is expected to speak at the Young America’s Foundation’s “New England Freedom Conference” in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.

Also on the lineup is Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and director of the Jihad Watch blog. He is notorious for his attacks on Islam. “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He has compared all Muslims to Nazis and demanded that Muslims take a loyalty test before being appointed to public office in America. He has told reporters that Islam is here to take over America, and that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. His book opens with the rallying cry of the Crusades, “God wills it,” and he calls for a second crusade against Islam.

The conference, to be hosted at the Radisson in southeast New Hampshire, bills itself as a conservative gathering on “why big government policies are a problem” and “ways to effectively push back against leftist, big government threats to your freedoms.” It’s hosted by The Young America’s Foundation, which has previously been linked to extremists. Young Americans for Freedom, which merged with The Young America’s Foundation in 2011, hosted an event in 2007 in which Nick Griffin— who was the chairman of the British National Party, a white supremacist group, and a Holocaust denier—spoke. Two board members of Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor, also ran a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, the Charles Martel Society.

The Council on American Islamic Relations criticized Cruz for agreeing to speak at a conference that is providing a platform to Spencer. “If Senator Cruz believes that he can campaign for president while sharing center stage with a professional hate monger like Robert Spencer, I seriously doubt his ability to win the U.S. minority vote or unite the country as president,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

“Senator Cruz has been invited to speak to Young America’s Foundation,” says Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign. “He intends to keep that commitment.”

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

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