MARCO RUBIO PROVES WHY HE ISN’T POTUS MATERIAL

Marco Rubio said Sunday that people on the U.S. government’s No-Fly list should still be able to purchase guns, because the list is full of “everyday Americans” who are on the list by accident.

“The majority of the people on the No-Fly list are often times people that just basically have the same name as somebody else, who doesn’t belong on the No-Fly list,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Former Senator Ted Kennedy once said he was on a no-fly list. There are journalists on the No-Fly list.”

Rubio’s comments were in response to host Jake Tapper referencing a statement by President Obama, who said Saturday that he thought it was “insane” that people who aren’t allowed to board commercial airplanes can purchase guns. Obama is also set to address the nation in the wake of attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, on Sunday night.

“Right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That is insane,” Obama said Saturday. “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun. And so I’m calling on Congress to close this loophole, now.”

Rubio, however, doesn’t agree with the president’s sentiment.

“These are everyday Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism, they wind up on the No-Fly list, there’s no due process or any way to get your name removed from it in a timely fashion, and now they’re having their Second Amendment rights being impeded upon,” he said.

And, when Tapper said he didn’t think it was accurate that a majority of people on the No-Fly list were there by mistake, Rubio said he thought it was a “very significant number.” That’s why, he said, he joined colleagues in the Senate in blocking a bill last week that would have prevented people on the Justice Department’s Terrorist Watch List from buying guns. Every Senate Republican except Sen. Mark Kirk voted against the bill.

Rubio’s fellow Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, however, disagrees with Senate Republicans.

“Well, on the No-Fly list, we probably could keep them from getting guns and ought to ban them,” Kasich told Tapper on Sunday.

But he also noted that the U.S. needed to be careful not to tip off people on watch lists.


“We want to make sure that we can exploit all the information that we possibly can get. So if all of a sudden you tell everybody who’s on the watch list that you can’t do this or that, then guess what happens?” he said. “Then we lose our ability to track, we lose our ability to gather information, so I think we have to be careful.”

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Roger West

WHY THE KOCH’S WANT THE KOCH WHORE TO BE PRESIDENT

The billionaire Koch brothers indicated during an event on Monday that they will likely support the Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to be the Republican presidential nominee. According to two New York Times sources who attended the New York State Republican Party fundraiser, David Koch told the crowd that Walker should be the Republican nominee.

David Koch’s statement was later disputed by his spokesperson who said the brothers plan to remain neutral during the primaries. “But Mr. Koch’s remark left little doubt among attendees of where his heart is, and could effectively end one of the most closely watched contests in the ‘invisible primary,’ a period where candidates crisscross the country seeking not the support of voters but the blessing of their party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers,” the Times reported.

The Koch brothers have said they plan to spend almost $1 billion in the 2016 campaign cycle, so their support could go a long way to helping a candidate like Walker to secure the Republican nomination. An endorsement would also follow the big-spending political donors’ history of lending support to Walker, even when the Republican governor’s policies sometimes contradict their intentions.

Walker has enjoyed the Kochs’ enthusiastic support for much of his political career. Koch Industries was one of the largest contributors to Walker’s first gubernatorial campaign, giving him $43,000, his largest out-of-state contribution. And Walker’s 2014 reelection campaign was one of the top recipients of Koch Industries cash. Tim Phillips, president of Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, has also heaped praise on Walker. “The difference Scott Walker has made with his policy achievements is as transformative as any governor anywhere in a generation,” Phillips said in an interview.

After Walker was elected governor and took office in 2011, he almost immediately set out his plan to cut pay and eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin — he claimed the cuts were necessary to close a budget gap he created by enacting tax cuts for businesses. As protests against Walker escalated, groups associated with Koch Industries including Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity helped to bus in Tea Party protesters to support Walker and his union-busting campaign.

Club For Growth also ran an attack ad against Wisconsin unions as a way to support Walker. “In the face of a grass roots labor movement, millionaires and billionaires are doing the governor’s dirty work for him,” MSNBC’s Ed Schultz reported in 2011. “This isn’t Governor Walker all by himself.”

During the heat of the protests, Americans For Prosperity went as far as launching a website, www.standwithwalker.com, which attacked collective bargaining and urged every state to adopt Walker’s “common sense reforms.”

The Koch brothers openly supported Walker during the 2012 recall election, which Walker eventually won. The financial backing from the Kochs led to reports that David Koch’s willingness to discuss his family’s efforts to support Walker may have crossed the line into illegally coordinating with a political campaign.

“We’re helping him, as we should,” David Koch told the Palm Beach Post in early 2012. “What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He’s an impressive guy, and he’s very courageous.”

The governor also embodied the Kochs’ profit-driven goals when he began cutting environmental regulations when he took office, to the benefit of Koch businesses which are known to emit thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants in the state. Walker also quietly worked to allow Kochs’ many Georgia Pacific paper plants to pollute Wisconsin by pouring thousands of pounds of phosphorus into the water.

Yet there is one major policy area in which Walker and the Kochs disagree. The Koch brothers have said they support an overhaul of the country’s criminal justice system and have partnered with other organizations working toward criminal justice reform. But Walker is one of a number of candidates who continue to receive Koch money, despite his tough on crime record.

During his nine years in the Wisconsin state house, Walker sponsored dozens of bills to make more activities crimes, increase mandatory minimum sentences and curb the possibility of parole for many offenders, among other actions that contradict the Kochs’ criminal justice agenda. Under Walker’s governorship, spending on prisons eclipsed the dollars allocated for higher education for the first time in state history.

Cross posted from thinkprogress

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SOMEWHERE IN TEXAS A VILLAGE IS MISSING ITS IDIOT

TEXAS VILLAGE IDIOT TED CRUZ

Sen. Ted Cruz who launched his presidential campaign on Monday, was one of the key architects of the Republican opposition to raising the country’s debt ceiling. He’s now touting that effort as part of his jobs plan.

Under the “Jobs & Opportunity” section of his website, which says that “Ted Cruz has led the way to bring back jobs, growth, and opportunity to America,” one bullet relates to his key role in getting Republicans to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, which has been routinely raised for decades to allow the government to borrow more money so that it can meet all of its obligations. It says he “set an early, high standard for meaningful Republican opposition to increasing the debt ceiling,” including his opposition to a simple majority vote to lift it in 2013 and refusal to let an increase be part of a budget deal.

Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee originally teamed up to get 14 other senators to sign on to a letter demanding that Obamacare be defunded in return for raising the debt ceiling and keeping the government open. That strategy led to the eventual government shutdown at the end of 2013 and a near default on U.S. federal debt that was only avoided with the passage of an eleventh hour deal.

Cruz may want to claim this moment as part of his economic plan, but economists agree that this strategy hurt, not helped, the economy. A report from the Peterson Institute on International Economics found that the threat of default on American debt and other ways that Congress has governed crisis to crisis meant the loss of 750,000 jobs and sliced 1 percent off of GDP economic growth. The shutdown itself cost the economy an estimated $24 billion and 120,000 jobs in just two weeks. Another report found that uncertainty created by Congress’s manufactured crises over short-term spending bills, the fiscal cliff, and debt ceiling battles had already cost 900,000 jobs before the government shutdown.

Some Republicans have since distanced themselves from the shutdown and debt ceiling tactics. But some used the tactic again to nearly shut the government down a second time at the end of last year over Obamacare funding. Cruz himself has refused to rule these tactics out in his crusade against the Affordable Care Act.

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Roger West

A Billionaire Buyers Guide To The 2016 Election

ELEPHANT MEN FOR 2016

Bill Maher in his New Rules segment last night roasted the wing nut corporate ass lickers - I mean the GOP 2016 Presidential hopefuls. Maher took time to dissect each of the top ten potential candidates who are courting the Billionaire boys club.

Video Courtesy of HBO

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Roger West

WHATS IN A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE?

In his show-ending New Rules Friday night, Bill Maher revealed the secret to presidential campaign success: run as soon as you can, because the longer you wait, the more baggage you have, and the more sick and tired people are of you. Maher said this is why President Obama won in 2008, because he was a “blank canvas” upon which people could project their hopes and dreams.

Why? Because parties that nominate the “older guy who’s waited his turn,” like Al Gore or Mitt Romney, they lose, because there’s no “romance” or “mystery.” Or in the case of John McCain, “a pulse.”

Maher brought up Hillary Clinton‘s baggage, though mostly to mock how Republicans are making Monicagate a big deal, as if Hillary was “in on it.” He also took a few swipes at Chris Christie, who was a shining and well-respected candidate in 2012, but is now “350 pounds of toast.”

Maher concluded, “Politicians are like suede jackets. There are cheap ones and expensive ones, but once they get rain on them, they all look like shit.”

Watch the video below, via HBO:

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Roger West