Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

hue

hue's Journal
hue's Journal
June 30, 2015

10 Commandments statue must be removed from state Capitol, Oklahoma Supreme Court rules

Source: KOCO.com Oklahoma City

OKLAHOMA CITY —The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the 10 Commandments statue must be removed from the state Capitol grounds.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed and remanded a previous district court decision.

Stay with KOCO.com for breaking news updates.

Read more: http://www.koco.com/news/10-commandments-statue-must-be-removed-from-state-capitol-oklahoma-supreme-court-rules/33849476?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_campaign=KOCO%205%20News&Content%20Type=Story

June 25, 2015

ANA Lauds Supreme Court Decision Upholding Affordable Care Act Tax Credit Subsidies (6/25/15)

Source: American Nurses Association

SILVER SPRING, MD – The American Nurses Association (ANA) lauds the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by preserving tax credit subsidies that have allowed more than 10 million Americans to obtain health insurance coverage.

“We are gratified that the Supreme Court ruling will avoid the loss of subsidies that have allowed millions of people to get healthy and stay healthy,” said ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN. “The Supreme Court has spoken. Now it’s time to finish the work of ensuring Americans get the health care they need by expanding Medicaid.”

Read more: http://www.nursingworld.org/FunctionalMenuCategories/MediaResources/PressReleases/ANA-Lauds-Supreme-Court-Upholding-ACA-Tax-Credit-Subsidies.html



June 25, 2015

2016 GOP Presidential Hopefuls: Now It's Up To Us To Repeal Obamacare

Source: HUFFPOST

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential hopefuls on Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision that upheld subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act. The decision neutralizes what was likely the last serious effort to cripple the law through the courts and represents a major victory for President Barack Obama.

A decision against the health care law would have put the Republicans eyeing the presidency in a bind by forcing them to spell out what they proposed to do for millions of Americans without crucial subsidies. Now, however, they can continue to rail against the law rhetorically, promising to deal with the matter once they are in the White House. The fate of the law now depends on whether one of the following Republicans makes it there:

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)

I disagree with the Court’s ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing Obamacare on the American people."

“Despite the Court’s decision, ObamaCare is still a bad law that is having a negative impact on our country and on millions of Americans. I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it with my consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions. We need Consumer Care, not ObamaCare.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/25/gop-obamacare-reaction_n_7662928.html



OK Repukes, you get right on it...
June 21, 2015

Wife of Israel's interior minister tweets, and deletes, racist joke about President Obama

Source: BUSINESS INSIDER

Judy Mozes, an Israeli talk-show host and the wife of the country’s Interior Minister, tweeted a racist joke about President Barack Obama on Sunday morning.

She then quickly deleted it and apologized.

Mozes, who is married Silvan Shalom, a Likud party member and currently vice prime minister and head of the Ministry of the Interior, tweeted a joke she said she heard that compared Obama's skin color to a weak cup of coffee.

She has nearly 75,000 followers.




Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wife-of-israeli-minister-tweets-racist-joke-about-president-obama-2015-6

June 18, 2015

The Stakes: Koch & Co. Aim for a Revolution in 2016

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-rosenthal/the-stakes-koch-co-aim-fo_b_7606050.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

The 2016 election ambitions of the Koch brothers and what they represent on the Republican right wing, free-market absolutism, are nothing short of breathtaking. They feel within their grasp a historical opportunity they have been dreaming about for decades to turn back liberal institutions and customs. Things have lined up their way. Congress is in Republican hands. Big money, insurmountable money, can swing the party's presidential nomination their way as never before. And they have battle tested at the state level their legislative game plan to roll back settled elements of environmental protections, workers' rights, progressive taxation, voting rights, criminal justice policy and a host of social issues including abortion rights and gay rights, as well as to play fast and loose with separation of church and state.

What the Kochs represent is a continuous line of corporate reaction to the welfare state and the legitimation of unions that goes back to the New Deal. Their forerunners are the people who called FDR a Nazi and a Communist (as the Tea Partiers are fond of calling Obama--though with the Muslim kicker these days) and in private would call the president Franklin Delano Rosenberg. The continuity is actually amazing over time, with a history of notable triumphs (Taft-Hartley) and defeats (Medicare), but with the single-minded goal of taking over the Republican Party.

The Tea Party was a particular triumph in that these free-market absolutists were able to paper over their tensions with the Republican Party's largest voting bloc, right-wing populists (social conservatives and evangelicals) in the face of the twinned whammies of 2008, the financial crisis and the election of Obama. On the first signature issue of the Tea Party, opposition to Obamacare, the free-market absolutists and the populists each developed ferocious anger, but for different reasons. For the free-market absolutists, who have never renounced their goal of reversing Social Security and Medicare, this was viewed as a potentially irreversible victory of the welfare state. For the populists, it was a threat to their security which depended on the likes of Social Security and Medicare--Obamacare was going to take these things away from them, as they saw it, and give it to the 'undeserving.' The confusion in this on rational grounds was never better formulated than in the famous and oft-carried banner, 'Government hands off my Medicare.'...

...Commentators have recognized the 'Republican civil war' for years: the Tea Party versus the ever rightward-moving Republican 'establishment'. But now, that tension has a parallel within the Tea Party: the interests of the people's party and the oligarchs' party don't quite line up once again. This recognition, by the way, is the unique virtue of the Huckabee campaign--he's making his case for the presidency on behalf of the populist wing--and it bears watching how he fares when the primary voting begins.

**********************
The 2016 elections cannot be underestimated!
June 13, 2015

Congressman tongue lashed Paul Ryan for another silly Obamacare hearing

Published on Jun 12, 2015

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Congressman Paul Ryan had one of his unscheduled Obamacare bashing hearings this week. He continued to misinform with an opening speech that showed that the congressman and his ilk continue to put politics over the well-being of Americans.


June 9, 2015

Only One Person Showed Up to a Rick Santorum Rally

http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/06/only-one-person-showed-up-to-a-rick-santorum-rally/

At a recent campaign event, Rick Santorum managed to keep his chin up despite only one voter turning out to his event. Seeing the small turnout, Santorum decided to take the opportunity to eat lunch.

“I haven’t eaten, actually, all day,” Santorum said, reported the Des Moines Register.

As his food arrived, about three more people showed up.

Those in attendance were the local Republican Party Chair Peggy Toft and Pastor Glen Meyers. Santorum decided to discuss gay marriage with them.

********************************

Bwaahaahaa!
June 4, 2015

Missouri Gov. Nixon vetoes right-to-work legislation

Source: abcNEWS

Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a measure Thursday that would have made Missouri the 26th right-to-work state, and it's unclear whether proponents will be able to muster enough support in the Republican-led Legislature to override the veto.

The governor, a longtime opponent of the effort, traveled to the Kansas City area to announce the veto among local United Auto Workers union members near a Ford assembly plant. The bill would have barred workplace contracts that require all employees— even those who aren't union members — to pay union fees.

Most of the Missouri's eight neighboring states already have right-to-work laws; the only two that don't are Illinois and Kentucky. Republican legislators and governors in the Midwestern states Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin all enacted right-to-work laws in the past three years.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/missouri-gov-nixon-vetoes-work-legislation-31527689

June 4, 2015

“We are in a revolutionary moment”: Chris Hedges explains why an uprising is coming — and soon

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/04/we_are_in_a_revolutionary_moment_chris_hedges_explains_why_an_uprising_is_coming_%E2%80%94_and_soon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

The status quo is doomed but whether the future will be progressive or reactionary is uncertain, Hedges tells Salon

In recent years, there’s been a small genre of left-of-center journalism that, following President Obama’s lead, endeavors to prove that things on Planet Earth are not just going well, but have, in fact, never been better. This is an inherently subjective claim, of course; it requires that one buy into the idea of human progress, for one thing. But no matter how it was framed, there’s at least one celebrated leftist activist, author and journalist who’d disagree: Chris Hedges.

In fact, in his latest book, “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” Hedges argues that the world is currently at a crisis point the likes of which we’ve never really seen. There are similarities between our time and the era of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe — or the French Revolutionary era that preceded them — he says. But in many ways, climate change least among them, the stakes this time are much higher. According to Hedges, a revolution is coming; we just don’t yet know when, where, how — or on whose behalf.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Hedges to discuss his book, why he thinks our world is in for some massive disruptions, and why we need revolutionaries now more than ever. A transcript of our conversation which has been edited for clarity and length can be found below.
June 2, 2015

Wisconsin’s laundry list of voter suppression laws challenged in court

http://americablog.com/2015/06/wisconsin-laundry-list-voter-suppression-laws-challenged-court.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog+News+%29&utm_content=FeedBurner

A group of voting rights advocates, along with Hillary Clinton’s general counsel, Marc Elias, have filed a lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin, claiming that the state’s recently-passed electoral reforms are blatantly racist. While Hillary Clinton’s campaign is not officially behind the lawsuit, they said in a statement that they “are aware of it and strongly support its goal of ensuring the right to vote is not unduly burdened.”

Last month, Elias filed a similar lawsuit in Ohio, challenging similar voting restrictions on identical grounds.

Following Scott Walker’s election in 2010, Wisconsin Republicans enacted what amounted to an entire voter suppression platform. The state has passed practically every 21st Century voting restriction we thought Republicans were capable of and then some:

Photo ID requirement for voting

Reducing early voting from 30 days to 12, while eliminating it entirely on evenings and weekends

Require proof of residence when registering to vote

Eliminated the certification of statewide voter registrars, meaning that anyone who registers others to vote can only do so in the county in which they’re certified

Increased the residency requirement for voting from 10 days to 28 (excepting presidential elections)

Require that citizens who move within the state less than four weeks prior to an election vote in their old locality

Eliminated faxing and emailing of absentee ballots to anyone other than military or overseas voters

Prohibited municipal clerks from returning absentee ballots to citizens to fix mistakes on their forms

Required an area for poll monitors be set up between three and eight feet from the table where voters sign in

Eliminated straight-ticket voting for all but military or overseas voters, increasing wait times at polling locations

Made it harder to use a student ID as proof of residence when registering to vote

Profile Information

Member since: Thu Dec 23, 2004, 12:30 PM
Number of posts: 4,949
Latest Discussions»hue's Journal