Biden Cartoon

With lead dipping in early states, Trump touts overall dominance, unconventional foreign policy

Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, on Sunday steam-rolled a new poll showing his lead slipping in early-voting states, while touting his overall lead and his own brand of foreign policy.
Trump holds a 5-point lead in Iowa and New Hampshire among Republican voters, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll released Sunday.
However, his 24-percent support in first-in-the-nation Iowa among Republican caucus-goers is five percentage points less than it was last month. And his 21-percent support among New Hampshire Republicans is down from 28 percent.
“I'm winning everything,” Trump told ABC’s “This Week,” adding that a new poll in Florida shows he’s leading GOP primary rivals Jeb Bush, the state’s former governor, and Marco Rubio, a Florida senator.
“It’s been amazing. Texas, winning. Winning everything. Winning every state. Winning every national poll and big lead,” the provocative, billionaire businessman continued.
Trump said in a pre-taped interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’s “leading by a lot in every poll” including those in Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina.
He also continued to put forth his unconventional approach to solving Middle East problems after suggesting last week that Russia, now overtly launching airstrikes in Syria, will destroy Islamic State fighters in that country.
“This is usually not me talking because I’m very proactive. I’d sit back and see what’s going on,” Trump told NBC, arguing the mix of terror groups, supporters for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and rebel forces is now too complicated to decipher.
When pressed during the NBC interview, Trump suggested that the world would be better off had dictators Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein not been removed from Libya and Iraq, respectively.
“Of course it would be,” said Trump, calling Libya “a disaster” and Iraq “a mess.”
In sharp contrast to his repeated criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy, Trump appeared Sunday to agree with the president that Russian President Vladimir Putin is making a mistake by getting increasingly involved in Syria.
“He’ll get bogged down,” Trump said, arguing that the former Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan sent the communist nation into bankruptcy.
On Friday, Obama predicted Putin’s heightened involvement would get Russia stuck in a "quagmire."
However, Obama suggested he was willing to work with Putin, while Trump said, “I don’t trust him at all.”

Biden suggests GOP and other presidential candidates are 'homophobes'

Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering a 2016 presidential run, on Saturday pledged his full support for gay and transgender equality while suggesting Republican and other White House candidates are “homophobes.”
Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala in Washington, Biden said gays and lesbians shouldn’t fear Americans trying to undo gay marriage and other advances because the country has moved beyond homophobia.
"There's homophobes still left,” he continued to laughter and applause, in his keynote address. “Most of them are running for president, I think."
His speech followed a morning address by front-running Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who warned hundreds of activists and others in attendance about the potential danger of electing Ben Carson or other GOP candidates.
“We’re going to face some ridiculousness especially from our friends in the GOP,” she said. “In fact it’s already begun. Ben Carson says that marriage equality is what caused the fall of the Roman Empire.”
She also said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, another 2016 GOP candidate, “slammed a political opponent for marching in a (gay) pride parade.”
The so-called LGBT community and the Human Rights Campaign will be an important voting bloc in the 2016 White House race, particularly in the Democratic primary.
The group contributed roughly $1.17 million in the 2014 election cycle, mostly to the Democratic Party and its candidates, committees and leadership PACs and to Democratic-leaning outside spending groups, according to OpenSecrets.org.
“If any one of them heaven forbid were ever to be elected president, they will do their best to threaten you and their families. Every single Republican candidate for president is against marriage equality,” said Clinton, who vows to make gay rights a key part of her presidency.
Her statements mark a clear political evolution, considering she opposed same-sex marriage for more than two decades in public life as first lady, senator and presidential candidate.
As recently as this year, Clinton said she personally supported gay marriage but that the issue was best left for states to decide -- a position held by most of the Republican presidential field.
Since then, she has placed equal rights at the forefront of her campaign, in part a reflection of the growing political and financial strength of the gay community in Democratic politics.
Biden also threw his unequivocal support behind letting transgender people serve openly in the U.S. military, as the Obama administration considers whether and when to lift the longstanding ban.
His declaration goes further than anything the Obama administration has said before, evoking memories of when Biden outpaced President Obama in endorsing gay marriage. Although the White House says Obama supports a Pentagon review aimed at ending the transgender ban, neither Obama nor the military has said definitively that the policy will be changed.
Biden also declared transgender rights to be "the civil rights issue of our time."
He reportedly could make his decision by this week about whether to run.
Transgender rights were a commanding focus at the group's gathering this year.
With gay marriage now law of the land nationwide, many gay rights activists have turned their attention to transgender issues, which have burst into the public spotlight only recently.
Biden won praise for endorsing gay marriage in 2012 ahead of Obama and Clinton, becoming the highest elected official to support the politically charged issue.
Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Democratic candidate, is also aggressively courting LGBT voters' support and working.
Clinton had been the Human Rights Campaign's first choice to keynote the dinner, but she turned it down when she was booked on "Saturday Night Live" for the same evening. The group also asked Obama to speak, then invited Biden when Obama was unavailable.
Although Biden has enjoyed strong support from gay groups, many prominent gay Democrats have committed to Clinton, who drew loud cheers whenever her face appeared in videos played before Biden's speech.

Asian-American rock band fights to trademark 'disparaging' name

                                           Politically Correct Changing of America.

An Asian-American rock band called The Slants asked a federal appeals court last week to trademark its name even though the government says it disparages Asians.
The group argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Friday that it has a First Amendment right to trademark the name because offensive speech or ethnic slurs cannot be censored by the government, Reuters reported. The case is being watched closely because it could affect an appeal brought by the NFL’s Washington Redskins after its trademarks were canceled by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the grounds that the team’s name disparaged Native Americans.
The Slants frontman Simon Tam told Reuters that while most people today believe “Redskins” is offensive, few Asian Americans believe “Slants” is. He said the band, which plays "Chinatown" dance rock, named itself The Slants as a way to reclaim the racial slur.
The band sued after they tried to register the name with the patent agency and it was rejected. Federal law prohibits trademarks which may be considered disparaging.
Their appeal was dismissed by a three-judge appellate panel, leading to a rare “en banc” review by the circuit’s full slate of 12 judges.
During Friday’s oral arguments, the judges appeared evenly divided, with several expressing skepticism of the patent office’s powers to determine what is offensive, Reuters reported.
Judge Kimberly Moore asked what would happen if the government started rejecting copyrights for controversial art or other expressive works as it is doing with trademarks.
Would there be “no more porn? No more crucifixes in urine?” she asked alluding to a controversial photo many Christians found offensive.
The band’s lawyer Ronald Coleman told the judges the First Amendment “requires all speech, no matter how offensive, not be restricted or gate-kept in any way,” according to Reuters.
Justice Department attorney Daniel Terry countered that the law governing trademark registrations does not violate the First Amendment, Reuters said. Its purpose is not “to help people to make a political statement or prevent people from making political statements,” he said.

Hillary Clinton to push new gun control proposals, executive action expanding background checks

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will propose new gun control measures, including a vow to employ executive action to expand background checks for firearms sellers at gun shows and online.
Clinton will unveil her plans Monday during a campaign swing through New Hampshire. Her campaign says her proposals include a repeal of legislation shielding gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers from most liability suits, even in the case of mass shootings like the one that killed nine students and teachers at a community college on Thursday.

The proposals mark an attempt by Clinton to make up ground among the liberal wing of the Democratic party against her closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues like income inequality and college debt, he's struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation--a reflection, he says, of his rural, gun-friendly home-state. Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed the 2005 legislation granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called "gun show loophole" that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background checks.
Clinton, meanwhile, has made strict gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. Clinton has emerged as one of the fiercest proponents of tougher gun control after a series of shootings over the past several months has reignited debate over gun laws on the presidential campaign

"What is wrong with us, that we cannot stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby, and the gun manufacturers they represent?" Clinton said on Friday in Florida. "This is not just tragic. We don't just need to pray for people. We need to act and we need to build a movement. It's infuriating."
Clinton also used the event to slam Republican lawmakers, who, she said, "refuse to do anything" about mass shootings.
"We need to make every politician who sides with [the NRA] to look in the eyes of parents whose kids have been murdered," she said. "The GOP counts on a dedicated group that scares politicians and says 'We will vote against you' ... So we will take them on. We took them on in 90s and we will do again."

The proposals mark an attempt by Clinton to make up ground among the liberal wing of the Democratic party against her closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues like income inequality and college debt, he's struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation--a reflection, he says, of his rural, gun-friendly home-state. Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed the 2005 legislation granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called "gun show loophole" that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background checks.
Clinton, meanwhile, has made strict gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. Clinton has emerged as one of the fiercest proponents of tougher gun control after a series of shootings over the past several months has reignited debate over gun laws on the presidential campaign