Tag Archives: tpm

Commerce Secretary Amazed At How Friendly Saudi Arabia Is

by CarleyFreehill Posted on May 22, 2017

Mother Jones

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was in Saudi Arabia with President Trump this weekend, and today he appeared on CNBC to chat about it. This comes via TPM:

Ross: I think the other thing that was fascinating to me … there was not a single hint of a protestor anywhere there during the whole time we were there, not one guy with a bad placard, instead …

Host: But Secretary Ross, that may be but not necessarily because they don’t have those feelings there but because they control people and don’t allow them to to come and express their feelings quite the same as we do here.

Ross: In theory that could be true. But boy there was certainly no sign of it, there was not a single effort at any incursion. There wasn’t anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood. And at the end of the trip, as I was getting back on the plane the security guards from the Saudi side who’d been helping us over the weekend all wanted to pose for a big photo-op. And then they gave me two gigantic bushels of dates, as a present, as a thank you for the trip that we had had. That was a pretty from the heart, very genuine gesture. It really touched me.

Is everyone in the Trump administration a senile old man? The alternatives here are: (a) Ross is an idiot, (b) he’s just spinning but doing an epically bad job of it, or (c) he’s losing his mind. What the hell is it with this administration?

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Commerce Secretary Amazed At How Friendly Saudi Arabia Is

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John Cornyn Promised . . . Absolutely Nothing Today

by AgustinGosling Posted on January 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Sen. John Cornyn, the #2 Republican leader in the Senate, took some questions today about the GOP replacement for Obamacare. TPM’s Lauren Fox reports:

When Cornyn was asked if he was concerned about people who’ve benefited from Medicaid expansion losing coverage, he said it was a shared concern. “We’re all concerned, but it ain’t going to happen,” Cornyn said. “Will you write that down… It ain’t gonna happen.”

Reporters followed up. “You’re saying nobody’s going to lose coverage?” one asked. “Nobody’s going to lose coverage,” Cornyn said. “Obviously, people covered today will continue to be covered. And, the hope is we’ll expand access. Right now 30 million people are not covered under Obamacare.”

When you’re dealing with Republicans and health care, you have to be mighty careful. Cornyn didn’t say that people covered by Medicaid would continue to be covered by Medicaid. He just said they’d be “covered.” This could mean anything. It could mean giving the poor a $1,000 refundable tax credit they can use toward buying coverage on the open market, which would be useless. It could mean giving the poor access to tax-favored HSAs and catastrophic coverage, which would also be useless. It could mean keeping them on Medicaid but instituting a 50 percent copay to make sure they have “skin in the game.”

Reporters need to step up their game. If they’re going to ask about stuff like this, they have to demand enough detail for the answer to mean something. Cornyn may sound like he promised something here, but he didn’t. And I assure you he chose his words very carefully.

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John Cornyn Promised . . . Absolutely Nothing Today

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Fox News Host Sees No Racial Factor in South Carolina Killing

by CandiceKuefer Posted on April 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld is not racist. How not racist is Greg Gutfeld? Very not racist! You’re a racist. (You’re a racist.) But Gutfield doesn’t even see race. What’s race? A race? Are we running a race? The word “race” for Greg Gutfeld only has one definition: a competition of speed.

White cop guns down unarmed black man in cold blood: a thing that happens unbelievably often in the United States. Almost always the cop gets to walk away scot-free. But this time the cop is actually charged with murder! Not because South Carolina is so evolved (haha), but because a video emerges that puts on display the undeniable reality of the cop’s crime.

The Fox News chyron even calls it straight: “Video shows white police officer shooting black man in back.” But apparently the Fox News chyron is less evolved than Fox News host Greg Gutfeld. Because Greg Gutfeld saw something else:

“I didn’t see a black man killed by a white cop. I saw a man shoot another man in the back.”

If Greg Gutfeld were at Wounded Knee, he’d say he didn’t see white soldiers massacring Native-Americans.

If he were at Stonewall, he’d say he didn’t see straight cops beating gay men.

And if he were in Pleasantville, he’d say he never saw color.

(via TPM)

Excerpt from – 

Fox News Host Sees No Racial Factor in South Carolina Killing

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This Is the Democratic Plan to Reverse the Hobby Lobby Decision

by MiloTQBHoozqo Posted on July 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised “to do something” about the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision. Now two members of his caucus say they are preparing a bill that would reverse some of the controversial aspects of last week’s decision.

Take it away, TPM:

The legislation will be sponsored by Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Udall (D-CO). According to a summary reviewed by TPM, it prohibits employers from refusing to provide health services, including contraception, to their employees if required by federal law. It clarifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the basis for the Supreme Court’s ruling against the mandate, and all other federal laws don’t permit businesses to opt out of the Obamacare requirement.
…

This bill will restore the original legal guarantee that women have access to contraceptive coverage through their employment-based insurance plans and will protect coverage of other health services from employer objections as well, according to the summary.

This is all well and good, but unfortunately this bill will never survive a cloture vote in the Senate; even if it did, it would be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. The only way that Hobby Lobby stands even a chance of being overturned legislatively is if John Boehner is forced to hand over the Speaker’s gavel to a Democrat. That’s probably something someone at the DCCC should remind people of as we head into the midterms.

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This Is the Democratic Plan to Reverse the Hobby Lobby Decision

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