Tag Archives: race

Why Rand Paul Was the Only Kentucky Republican to Lose on Tuesday

by WilburnQMM Posted on November 10, 2014

Mother Jones

Republicans had a pretty good night last Tuesday. They won control of the Senate and added to their already-sizable House majority. They now hold 33 governors’ mansions and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. But even as they solidified their grip on state governments, they came up short in one red state they’d trained their sights on—Kentucky. And that’s bad news for Sen. Rand Paul.

While the national GOP’s resources primarily targeted the state’s Senate race, Paul focused his attention on winning control of the Democratic-controlled Legislature in Frankfort. His reasons went beyond mere party loyalty—he wanted a GOP statehouse majority to pass a bill, written with him in mind, that would allow a politician to run for Senate and president in the same year. He’s up for reelection in 2016, and is also seriously considering a White House bid. But given the depth of the GOP presidential field that year, he doesn’t want to bet the house on winning the nomination.

For Paul, a.k.a. the best-dressed man in Washington, this is hardly a deal-breaker. He got some good news on Wednesday, when Sen. Mitch McConnell, whom Paul dutifully backed in the face of a tea party primary challenge, all but endorsed his presidential bid. And if Paul were to drop out of the race early (say, in the face of an unstoppable Mitt Romney wave), there’d be plenty of time to get back into Senate reelection mode. But the longer he stays in the hunt, the more difficult things will become on the home front.

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Why Rand Paul Was the Only Kentucky Republican to Lose on Tuesday

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Elizabeth Warren Was on Fire This Weekend. Here Were Her 5 Best Lines.

by ReneCogburn Posted on October 20, 2014

Mother Jones

It’s good to be Elizabeth Warren. The senior senator from Massachusetts spent her weekend campaigning for Democrats in Minnesota, Colorado, and Iowa, and by all accounts, she tore it up, and got more than a few calls to run for president. (Breaking: she still insists she isn’t going to.) These were some of her biggest red-meat lines from the campaign trail:

1. “The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it. We can whine, we can whimper or we can fight back, and we’re here to fight back. We know what we’re fighting for and what we’re up against. We’ve got our voices, or votes and our willingness to fight. This is about democracy, about your future, and about the kind of country we want to build.”

2. “Who does this government work for?…Does it work just for the millionaires, just for the billionaires, just for those who have armies of lobbyists and lawyers or does it work for the people? That’s the question in this race.”

3. “Republicans believe this country should work for those who are rich, those who are powerful, those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers.”

4. When conservatives came to power in the 1980s, the first thing they did was “fire the cops on Wall Street. They called it deregulation. But what it really meant was have at ’em boys. They were saying in effect to the biggest financial institutions: Any way you can trick or trap or fool anybody into signing anything, man, you can just rake in the profits.”

5. “They ought to be wearing a T-shirt that says…’I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.’ We can hang back, we can whine about what the Republicans have done…or we can fight back. Me, I’m fighting back!”

Contrast Warren’s rock star treatment with the President’s reception this weekend: he spoke at a campaign event in Maryland, and attendees filed out as soon as he started speaking. Obama is being kept at arms’ length in close races—Warren, on the other hand, will head to New Hampshire this weekend to campaign for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who’s running against Warren’s old nemesis, Scott Brown.

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Elizabeth Warren Was on Fire This Weekend. Here Were Her 5 Best Lines.

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President Obama Plans To Do Something For LGBT Workers That No President Has Ever Done

by KourtneLoughman Posted on June 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama is planning on signing a new executive order preventing federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees, a White House official told the Associated Press on Monday. The order is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks and is an extension of previous orders banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin among federal contractors and subcontractors.

“The protections will reach over one million LGBT workers across the country, making it the single largest expansion of LGBT workplace protections in our country’s history,” ThinkProgress reports.

The White House official would not say when Obama plans to sign the order, but confirmed that the president told his staff to prepare a measure for his signature. On Tuesday, the president will travel to New York for an LGBT fundraising gala with the Democratic National Committee.

Monday’s announcement comes after years of pressure from gay rights groups calling for broader action on the issue. Last November, the Senate passed legislation banning workplace discrimination against LGBT workers, but the bill has since gone nowhere in the House.

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President Obama Plans To Do Something For LGBT Workers That No President Has Ever Done

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Illinois becomes first state to ban lake-fouling microbeads

by DanutaSievwrigh Posted on June 10, 2014

The beading edge

Illinois becomes first state to ban lake-fouling microbeads

By

The plastic microbeads found in many facewash, toothpaste, and other personal-care products are making a real mess. The exfoliating beads wash down bathroom drains, into sewers, through water treatment plants, into lakes and oceans, and into the food chain. Underwater layers of microbeads are particularly prevalent in the Great Lakes, which helps explain why New York state lawmakers moved to ban the beads this past winter, prompting Californian politicians to follow suit.

But New York and California have been bested in the race to pinch out the microbead problem by Illinois, which rings the southwestern portion of Lake Michigan. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation Sunday banning the manufacture and sale of personal care products containing synthetic plastic microbeads.

“Banning microbeads will help ensure clean waters across Illinois and set an example for our nation to follow,” Quinn said. “Lake Michigan and the many rivers and lakes across our state are among our most important natural resources. We must do everything necessary to safeguard them.”

The new law bans the manufacture of personal care products containing microbeads by the end of 2017, the sale of personal care products and the manufacture of over the counter drugs by the end of 2018, and the sale of over the counter drugs by the end of 2019.

Similar bills in New York and California are still pending, and lawmakers in Minnesota and Ohio have introduced versions as well.


Source
Governor signs bill making Illinois first state to ban microbeads, The Chicago Tribune

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Illinois becomes first state to ban lake-fouling microbeads

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Ohio Gubernatorial Candidate’s Group Compared Obama to Hitler, Stalin

by Vladyslava7u1 Posted on January 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Ohio businessman Ted Stevenot will announce he would challenge Gov. John Kasich in May’s Republican primary. Stevenot is, by his own admission, a relative newcomer to state politics and has not run for a major office before. His main credential prior to entering the race was his 10-month stint as president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, a statewide network of tea party groups. The OLC’s agenda tracks closely with similar tea party groups in other states: It opposes the Common Core natural curriculum standard, it worries that the state’s elected Republicans are too soft on President Obama, and it likes guns.

But the group has a habit of expressing its views in inflammatory ways. A photo posted to its Facebook page (see above) last January, shortly before Stevenot took over, compares Obama to a collection of notorious dictators, including Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler, because of their shared habit of occasionally appearing in photos with children. Another image recommends using assault rifles against “the people who try to take them away”—in this case, the federal government:

Ohio Liberty Coalition/Facebook

And here’s the president of the United States, after being punched in the face:

Ohio Liberty Coalition/Facebook

Stevenot has accused Kasich of being too close to Obama, because the governor used federal funding to expand the state’s Medicaid program. He’s not leaving himself open to a similar charge.

Update: Stevenot has dropped out of the race, leaving Ohio tea partiers without a candidate.

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Ohio Gubernatorial Candidate’s Group Compared Obama to Hitler, Stalin

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Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

by Myrna Posted on December 4, 2012

Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

By Susie Cagle

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher, who was locked up for 15 months for disrupting an auction of oil and gas leases on public land, is now out of prison and trying to put his life back together. As part of that effort, DeChristopher secured a job at a First Unitarian Church — that is, until the Federal Bureau of Prisons stepped in.

Cliff LyonTim DeChristopher.

DeChristopher wasn’t seeking a job in oil leasing or even environmental activism — fields related to his “crime.” But the feds, in their infinite wisdom, put their feet down. “You know what, we’ve been too easy on these hippies and their subversive jobs at churches.”

From the Deseret News:

DeChristopher had been offered a job with the church’s social justice ministry, which would include working with cases of race discrimination, sex discrimination or other injustices that fall contrary to Unitarian beliefs.

“The Bureau of Prisons official who interviewed Tim indicated he would not be allowed to work at the Unitarian church because it involved social justice and that was what part of what his crime was,” [DeChristopher’s attorney Patrick] Shea said.

Ken Sanders, proprietor of a downtown rare books store, instead offered DeChristopher a job as a clerk. That employment has been deemed “safe,” Shea confirmed.

Oh god, but what’s in the books? Science, economics, politics? What’s in the books???

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