Sunday, September 20, 2015

Muslim Cartoon


Poll: Guy Who Asked Trump Muslim Question Leads G.O.P. Race


ROCHESTER, N.H. Two days after asserting that President Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, a guy who asked Donald Trump a provocative question at a New Hampshire rally is now the front-runner in the Republican race for President, according to a new poll.
The poll, which was conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, shows Muslim Question Guy leading the G.O.P. field with thirty-four per cent as opposed to nineteen per cent for Trump.
In interviews with poll respondents, Republicans gave Muslim Question Guy high marks for stating that President Obama was neither Christian nor American and criticized Trump for not being more vocal in his agreement on those points.
Minutes after the poll was released, however, Trump was on the offensive, attacking Muslim Question Guy during an appearance on CNN.
“People who are supporting this guy haven’t done their homework,” the businessman said. “If you look back over the past seven years, no one has called Obama a foreign-born Muslim more often than I have.”
Trump’s comments did little to slow the momentum of Muslim Question Guy, who drew four thousand people at his first official campaign rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where he vowed to take back the country from Muslim clockmakers.

House GOP mum on defund Planned Parenthood plan, hints about waiting, skipping shutdown


A horde of reporters pursued Rep. Adam Kinzinger down a basement corridor of the U.S. Capitol Tuesday night. The Illinois lawmaker had just emerged from a rare, evening, closed-door confab of the House Republican Conference on government funding and efforts to slash money for Planned Parenthood.
The scribes hoped to learn from Kinzinger what approach Republican leaders would select to avoid a political calamity when the federal government’s operating authority expires October 1.
“There is no plan,” Kinzinger declared.
Which is kind of right because, well, no one in the Republican leadership ranks has officially endorsed a plan and probably won’t for a while, even though everyone technically knows what the plan is.
For now.
Got it?
GOP leaders didn’t announce a plan in that twilight assemblage because they’re still listening to members and letting them have their say. Allowing them to voice their views and ponder consequences of perusing one legislative avenue or the other. Nobody wants to get too far out in front and commit to a plan until they absolutely have to.
That’s because the plan will be the plan -- until it isn’t the plan.
Take a look at how House Republicans championed a seven-week-old “etched-in-stone” strategy on the Iran nuclear agreement -- only to hastily backpedal just moments from initiating a procedural debate on the floor last week.
Or consider the multiple and sundry tactics GOP leaders laid out in September, 2013 to keep the government funded or deal with the debt ceiling in 2011 -- only to dash them at the last second because of a lack of political support from rank-and-file Republicans.
In the GOP’s defense, some of that is just the bi-product of trying operate Congress and advance sticky legislative issues. But is there any reason to expect why this might go any differently on funding the government? Especially with an unprecedented level of internal volatility rattling the Republican ranks?
On Friday afternoon, North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, the GOP’s chief deputy whip, hustled into the House chamber for a vote series to defund Planned Parenthood for a year and impose prison time on physicians who don’t assist babies who survive amid failed abortions.
Paul Kane of The Washington Post asked McHenry: “When will we get to see the plan?” McHenry paused and just nodded.
“I can’t quote a nod,” Kane protested.
But there is a plan for the time being. Maybe McHenry’s nod was telling because at this stage, it’s all done with a wink and a nod.
House Republican leaders called those two votes for Friday to isolate the Planned Parenthood issue from an interim spending bill they hope to advance in the next week-and-a-half.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is teeing up a procedural vote on a bill next week that asserts that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. Then the Pope visits Capitol Hill to deliver an historic address to a Joint Meeting of Congress. By then, there’s only a few of days left to fund the government.
Republicans are expected to then push what’s called a “Continuing Resolution” or “CR” in Congress-ese. A CR is a stopgap spending bill to fund the government for a temporary period -- perhaps until mid-December. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., says the CR is ready to go except an end-date. But Rogers and other Republican leaders are trying to convince their members they can’t completely slash Planned Parenthood money in a CR or any other appropriations bill.
“Only about ten percent of what (Planned Parenthood gets) comes from appropriated monies,” Rogers said. “The balance of some $550 million is in an entitlement.”
Entitlements are federal programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Planned Parenthood receives the bulk of its funding through those payments.
That’s why Republican leaders might angle to kill the rest of the Planned Parenthood funding through a measure later this year known as a “budget reconciliation” package. “Reconciliation” is a special budgetary process that sidesteps potential Senate filibusters and requires only a simple majority, not a supermajority, to pass.
In other words, if the GOP can convince its members to go the reconciliation route, it can at least pass a bill later that would do more to defund Planned Parenthood than an appropriations bill.
Such a measure would undoubtedly trigger a veto threat from President Obama. But this gambit removes the melee from the effort to fund the government and takes a more direct legislative route toward the Planned Parenthood funding.
“We are not going to engage in exercises in futility,” said McConnell of efforts to cut Planned Parenthood money via a CR, potentially prompting a government shutdown.
Republicans are walking a fine line here. Few Republicans support Planned Parenthood. Most oppose abortion. But Planned Parenthood scores wide overall support from the public at large for the health services it provides, particularly among female voters. Stumbling into a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood is a political loser for the GOP.
“If you don't know what to do, distract them with women's health care,” posited Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat.
Politically, it may help Republican leaders to abstain from announcing the definitive approach. Put it out now and conservative talk radio would rip it to shreds. That would also amp up a simmering movement among some conservatives to try to topple House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
This interregnum serves as a political steam release. It allows those who want to lay into Boehner to have their say. It also presses Congress right up against the October 1 deadline. With the Pope coming next week, the House is scheduled to conduct virtually no legislative business until Friday. The Senate has a procedural vote Tuesday. That punts any action on government funding until the week after next -- right at the deadline.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, voted “present” Friday in the House on a bill to suspend funding for Planned Parenthood. King argued that he voted that way instead of voting “aye” because he thinks the bill didn’t truly defund Planned Parenthood. And King’s skeptical of pushing off the entire government funding debate until the following week.
“Boehner has known the Pope is coming to town for a long time,” he said. “If it’s not a tactic to bring in the Pope in the third week of September with the deck stacked to get it all done by the fourth week of September, then it’s a huge overlook.”
With the calendar pressures, is McConnell losing sleep over the approaching deadline?

“No, I’m not,” he replied emphatically. “We’re going to fund the government. Hopefully into late fall.”
But how is McConnell so confident a shutdown isn’t looming?
“I just am,” he intoned.
The majority leader’s Alfred E. Neuman “What? Me worry?” stance didn’t impress White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
“We’ve been seeking to find a way to get Republicans in Congress to accept an invitation from Democrats for months to engage in bipartisan talks on the budget,” Earnest said. “Republicans put it off for so long that it’s difficult to imagine a bipartisan budget agreement before the deadline.”
Rogers knows it’s a bear of a public relations campaign to explain to the public why Congress simply can’t defund Planned Parenthood via an appropriations bill and could use reconciliation to get at it from the entitlement side of the ledger, sometimes referred to as “mandatory” spending.
“Most people don’t have any understanding between appropriated spending and mandatory spending,” he said. “This issue is so explosive and emotional and has been so publicly discussed across the country that it is difficult to come to a conclusion.”
Even while House Republicans met Tuesday night in the Capitol basement to consider various scenarios, several GOPers relayed that some of their colleagues already carried a sense of dread. Dejection. Defeat.
The abortion and Planned Parenthood bills approved by the House weren’t going anywhere. The Senate probably can’t break a filibuster on its abortion bill Tuesday. The gig is already up. They’ll have to wait for budget reconciliation to truly cut Planned Parenthood money. And then Obama will veto that bill this fall.
“We need a president who has a similar view,” said McConnell about prospects for really slashing Planned Parenthood’s money.
And so this is the plan for now. Which, at least officially, really isn’t the plan. Until it is the plan. And then isn’t the plan.

Obama administration urged by police, GOP candidates to be more outspoken on cop killings


Obama administration officials are being urged by law enforcement and Republican presidential hopefuls to be more outspoken about police officers being targeted and shot, amid a recent series of fatal attacks. 
"This is the president's problem because he has not shown law and order to be the rule of the day," Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recent told Fox News.
He specifically pointed to the estimated 200 or more so-called "sanctuary cities" that do not enforce federal immigration law and Colorado and Washington where the Justice Department essentially does not enforce federal marijuana laws.
"And … the president says little or nothing about these issues where police officers are being hunted," Christie said. In just the past three weeks, two officers were ambushed and another was shot in a police chase, resulting in two deaths.
On Aug. 28, Texas sheriff deputy Darren Goforth was ambushed while filling up his cruiser at a suburban Houston gas station, after responding to a traffic accident. He left behind a wife and two children.
Obama called Goforth's widow two days later, offering condolences and prayers and saying the 10-year veteran was “contemptibly shot and killed," according to the White House.
"Targeting police officers is completely unacceptable -- an affront to civilized society," the president also said in a statement. "We've got to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the wife who won't rest until the police officer she married walks through the door at the end of his shift. That comfort has been taken from Mrs. Goforth."
However, another 2016 GOP presidential candidate, firebrand Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, suggested Goforth's death was in part the result of efforts by the president and others in his administration to "vilify law enforcement."
Other administration critics argue officials were more outspoken over roughly the past 12 months when several black males died in police custody. They also argue that a lack of support following those incidents has made police more of a target.
About two weeks after Goforth's death, Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder was killed by a suspect in a car chase. And later that day, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, another 2016 GOP presidential candidate, also suggested Obama needed to do more.
"He has been silent on this. And that's an outrage," Walker told CNN.
In between Goforth and Cameroon's deaths, Attorney General Loretta Lynch condemned the fatal shootings, saying, "This violence against all of us, regardless of what uniform any of us wear, has to end. … The Department of Justice stands ready to support law enforcement around this country as they continue to fight every day."
She also announced a summit later this month in Detroit with law enforcement officials on the issue of violence.
A total 30 officers have so far this year been killed while on duty by gunfire or another form of assault, according to the online Officer Down Memorial Page.
Some people argued the recent police deaths have been exaggerated and over-politicized, considering the number killed by gunfire is down by about 26 percent, compared to the FBI number of 51 killed in 2014.
However, others point out that last year’s number was an 89 percent increase compared to 2013 and that one slain officer is too many. 
An average 64 law-enforcement officers a year were intentional killed from 1980 to 2014, according to the FBI.
The debate about whether the administration has said enough essentially started in August 2014 when unarmed black teen Michael Brown died when in contact with an officer in Ferguson, Mo.
The incident sparked protests and rioting in which officers were injured and property, including businesses, was damaged or destroyed.
Within days, Obama issued a statement calling Brown’s death “heartbreaking” and said that he and first lady Michelle Obama sent their “deepest condolences.”
In the weeks after, then-Attorney General Eric Holder went to Ferguson to talk with civil right leaders and Brown’s family. He also said the Justice Department would use “all the power” it has to reform the Ferguson police department, if needed.
And in April, the death of 25-year-old black male Freddy Gray while in police custody in Baltimore sparked protests, looting and rioting, resulting in dozens of arrests, stores torched and at least 15 police officers being injured.
Police were purportedly told to stand-down during the violent protests. And six city police officers are now on trial in connection with Gray’s death, which has law enforcement officials saying officers are afraid to do their job.
Obama said there was “no excuse” for “criminals and thugs” tearing up the city. And Lynch visited Baltimore in the aftermath.
A third high-profile death of a black make while in police custody over roughly the past year also sparked anger at officers.
In July 2014, Eric Garner died in New York City after he resisted arrest for a nuisance crime and was put in a chokehold.
The deaths of Brown, Gray and Garner gave rise to the group BlackLivesMatter, which has tried to push the issue to the forefront of the 2016 presidential race.
However, the group and its affiliates were sharply criticized and accused of fueling attacks on police offices when some members chanted at the Minnesota State Fair in late-August: “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ’em like bacon.”
"Stop trying to fix the police, fix the ghetto,” Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who is black, recently told Fox News. "We don’t have any support from the political class."

Crowd at Democratic event shouts over Wasserman Schultz 'more debates'


Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was heckled at an event Saturday in New Hampshire by crowd members calling for “more debates” for their party’s presidential candidates.
Crowd members shouted "more debates" and "we want debates" throughout Wasserman Schultz's remarks. Signs that spelled out "more debates" also were spotted in the crowd.
The event was the Democratic state party’s annual convention. And the incident was the latest in series in which the committee has been called on to have more than six sanctioned debates.
Critics of the debates, which begin October 3, suggest the schedule was conceived when Hillary Clinton was the clear frontrunner and by Clinton supporters who didn't think subjecting her to challengers was a good idea.
Wasserman Schultz has been criticized before, perhaps most notably by Democratic challenger Martin O’Malley. The former Maryland governor's polls numbers are in the single digits, and he needs the exposure of the debates, considering he has little campaign money and name recognition.
Wasserman Schultz has steadfastly said the committee, not her alone, has decided on the number of debates.
Clinton has said the debate scheduled is a matter for the DNC, not her, to decide. Her closest primary challenger, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, has also called for more debates.
Clinton, O'Malley and Sanders are all scheduled to speak at the convention in Manchester, N.H.
The GOP has 11 sanctioned primary debates.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a Los Angeles Times interview published Friday that she thought her party should have more primary debates this election cycle.

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