Saturday, September 26, 2015

Trump stays on top in first post-debate Fox News poll


Businessman Donald Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination following his last debate performance, a new poll says.
 
Trump remains 8 points above his nearest competition following last week’s contest in Simi Valley, Calif., according to a Fox News survey.
 
 
Trump commands 26 percent support. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, meanwhile, ranks second, with 18 percent.
 
Trump led an August version of the poll with 25 percent, followed by Carson at 12 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 10 percent.
 
Fox News’s latest results follow Trump’s boycott against the media outlet earlier Wednesday following repeated spats with its various personalities.
 
“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly and I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” Trump tweeted.
 
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tied for third place in Fox's poll with 9 percent apiece.
 
Cruz took fifth place with 8 percent, and former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) took sixth with 7 percent.
 
Trump, Carson, Fiorina and Rubio have all gone up in polling since the August version of the poll. Trump had 25 percent then, while Carson had 12 percent, Fiorina had 5 percent and Rubio 4 percent.
 
Bush and Cruz, meanwhile, have slid since August. Bush had 15 percent in that survey, and Cruz 10 percent.
 
The media outlet’s new samplings come as Republicans gravitate toward political outsiders during the 2016 election cycle.
 
Carson, Fiorina and Trump are all receiving significant interest for their campaigns despite the fact they each lack public service experience.
 
Fox News’s latest sampling said its results stem from a deep dissatisfaction among Republican voters with their party’s political establishment.
 
It found 62 percent of GOP primary voters feel “betrayed” by members of their political party serving in public office. Another 66 percent said the Republican-led Congress had not done enough to counter President Obama’s agenda.
 
Fox News conducted its sampling with 1,013 random cellphone and landline interviews conducted by Shaw & Co. Research Sept. 20-22 nationwide. It has a 4.5 percent margin of error among GOP primary voters.

Welfare Queen Cartoon


Maine mayor pushing bill to post welfare recipients’ addresses online

What's New?  Half the people in America sucks off of Welfare.

A Maine mayor is proposing a controversial name-and-shame strategy for welfare recipients, saying he plans to push a bill requiring the state to publish the names and addresses and other details for “every individual on the dole.”
Robert Macdonald, mayor of Lewiston, Maine, pitched the plan in his regular column for the Twin City Times. He noted that a website already lists information on state pensioners, and complained that “liberal, progressive legislators” think similar information on welfare recipients should be private.
“Well, the days of being quiet are gone,” he wrote. “We will be submitting a bill to the next legislative session asking that a website be created containing the names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected by every individual on the dole.
“After all, the public has a right to know how its money is being spent,” Macdonald said.
As Macdonald is a local official, he would need to get a state lawmaker to introduce the plan in the legislature. He told the Portland Press Herald he has discussed the plan with two state lawmakers.
The idea, though, quickly drew criticism in the state and beyond – including from his opponent in November’s election.
"Mayor MacDonald is wasting everyone's time,” Democratic candidate Ben Chin told FoxNews.com in an email. “He's never passed a single policy at the local level, let alone in the state legislature. Resorting to publicly shaming poor people is a sad, desperate act.”
Maine, though, is no stranger to controversial restrictions on welfare. Though the program commonly known as “welfare” uses federal dollars, states have the authority to set conditions on the funding, and Maine Gov. Paul LePage has pursued such reforms including drug-testing some recipients.
Macdonald defended his plan in an interview with the Press Herald.
“Go into a grocery store. They flaunt it,” he said of welfare recipients. “I’m not sorry. I hope this makes people think twice about applying for welfare.”
In his column, Macdonald also said he’d introduce a bill limiting assistance to 60 months total.



Washington (CNN)John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who steered his party to an overwhelming House majority in 2010, said in a news conference Friday afternoon he had decided only that morning to announce his plans to resign from Congress.
"Last night I started thinking about this and this morning I woke up and I said my prayers -- as I always do -- and I decided today's the day I'm going to do this. As simple as that," Boehner said during an emotional Capitol Hill press conference a day after he had a moving encounter with Pope Francis.
He will step down as Speaker and leave Congress at the end of October.
The Ohio Republican's tenure as Speaker has been marked by clashes with conservatives -- especially when it comes to fiscal policy. He's struggled to push through legislation to increase the debt ceiling and was facing another showdown next week to keep the government open. The Speaker has often relied on Democratic votes during these moments -- a strategy that has infuriated conservatives.
Boehner, who turns 65 in November, said Friday that he had planned to step down at the end of the year but turmoil within his caucus prompted him to resign earlier than planned.
"I got plenty of people following me but this turmoil that's been churning now for a couple of months, it's not good for the members and it's not good for the institution. If I was not planning on leaving here soon, I can tell you I would not have done it," Boehner said.
The abrupt decision comes amid heavy pressure from conservatives for Boehner to take a harder line on their causes, most recently over defunding Planned Parenthood as part of a package that would keep the government open. Boehner said he didn't want to put his fellow members through another vote to challenge his leadership.
Boehner, who has presided over the House since 2011, explained during a closed-door meeting with Republicans Friday morning that he had only planned to serve two terms as Speaker but decided to hold onto his post after then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat during a primary last year.
Boehner also told the lawmakers that Pope Francis' visit to Congress the day before was a crystallizing moment, according to the lawmaker. Boehner then read the prayer of St. Francis to the conference after announcing his decision.

Why now

Boehner said the main driver behind his resignation was concern for his conference, he also recalled emotionally when he and the Pope found themselves alone during the visit Thursday -- something Boehner, a devout Catholic, had sought since taking the helm of the House GOP caucus.
"The Pope puts his arm around me and kind of pulls me to him and says please pray for me. Who am I to pray for the Pope? But I did," Boehner said, struggling to hold back tears.
Boehner also drew on the Pope's words during his address to Congress on Thursday and said he hoped "we will all heed his call to live by the Golden Rule." He also stressed the importance for leaders to "find common ground to get things done."
He said he will not partake in the vote to choose his successor but said his deputy, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy "would make an excellent Speaker."
President Barack Obama said Friday at a previously scheduled news conference alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping that he called Boehner after learning of his resignation.
He did not say what he told Boehner, but praised him as "a good man" and "a patriot" who "cares deeply" about the country and always kept his word.
"We have obviously had a lot of disagreements and politically we're at different ends of the spectrum," Obama said. "He has always conducted himself with courtesy and civility with me. He has kept his word when he made a commitment. He is somebody who has been gracious. Most importantly he's somebody who understands that in government and in governance you don't get 100% of what you want."
Obama said he hoped Boehner's successor would recognize that political differences should not come at the risk of shutting down the government.
"There's no weakness in that. That's what government is in our democracy. You don't get what you want 100% of the time. So sometimes you take half a loaf, sometimes you take a quarter loaf and that's certainly something I've learned here in this office," Obama said.

Congressional leaders respond

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Boehner's resignation "seismic for the House" and called it evidence of the far right's "hijacking" of the Republican Party. And she said the squabble to succeed Boehner will be "more than a distraction" to efforts to resolve the latest funding battle roiling the Hill.
"That resignation of the Speaker is a stark indication of the disarray of the House Republicans," Pelosi said during a Friday morning press conference.
Pelosi said she had not yet spoken with Boehner, but affirmed that she planned to continue negotiating directly with him to achieve her goal of funding Planned Parenthood.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid tweeted similarly that the ouster of "a good man like Speaker Boehner -- someone who understood the art of compromise" showed that "the party of Eisenhower and Reagan is no more."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also lamented Boehner's resignation, saying it is "very, very sad" that the tea party has "taken over control of the party."
"John Boehner, he ... is a conservative Republican, but his problem is that John Boehner has been pragmatic. He realizes that there come times when you have to make a deal," McConnell said, before pointing out that Reagan also "understood the art of compromise."
Boehner and McConnell have not always seen eye to eye as Boehner wrestled with hardline conservatives in his caucus, but McConnell said that throughout those disagreements, Boehner "never, ever misled me.
"His word was always good," McConnell said.

Syrian commander gives equipment to Al Qaeda affiliate, US military says


A U.S.-trained Syrian rebel commander has told the U.S. military that he surrendered six coalition-provided trucks and ammunition to an intermediary linked to the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front.
U.S. Central Command said late Friday that roughly a quarter of the equipment assigned to that unit was apparently turned over earlier this week in exchange for safe passage within the region. U.S. officials said Syrians continue to insist they haven’t relinquished actual weapons to the terror group and that all of their personnel are still accounted for.
A military official told the Washington Post that assurances regarding the trade had come from the deputy commander of the group. It was the unit leader who surrendered the equipment and who contacted U.S. officials correcting the information on Friday, the official told the Post.
The command is still looking into the matter, said Air Force Co. Pat Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman. However, the report contradicts information the Defense Department provided earlier Friday, which said reports of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels defecting and missing equipment going to the Nusra Front was incorrect.
"In light of this new information, we wanted to ensure the public was informed as quickly as possible about the facts as we know them at this time," Ryder said. "We are using all means at our disposal to look into what exactly happened and determine the appropriate response."
The report underscores persistent problems with the U.S.-led coalition’s effort to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in the embattled region. The Washington Post report White House and Pentagon officials are considering providing more weapons to a wider range of rebel groups in Syria, but now it could come in question in light of the recent incident.
Ryder said the Syrians told the U.S. earlier Friday that no equipment or people were missing, but the U.S. found out later on that some of those assertions were wrong. He said providing equipment to the Nusra Front is a violation of the training and equipping program.
The commander who turned the equipment over to the Nusra Front was one of about 70 rebel fighters who were in the second U.S. training course. He had only recently returned to Syria to fight the Islamic State militants.
The training program has been criticized as offering too little too late and failing to provide enough protection for those trained rebels once back inside Syria. The selected rebels are said to undergo a thorough vetting process to ensure they focus on the fight against the IS.
U.S. officials have begun an overhaul of the effort, including suggesting that the newly trained fighters operate as the New Syrian Forces, or NSF, alongside Syrian Kurds, Sunni Arab and other anti-Islamic State forces.
The first batch of about 54 trainees has largely disbanded. Of the 54, one was killed; one is being held captive; nine are back in the fight; 11 are available but not in Syria; 14 returned to Syria but quit the U.S. program; and 18 are unaccounted for.

Officials: More work emails from Clinton's private account


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials said Friday, adding to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner's unusual usage of a private email account and server while in government.
The messages were exchanged with retired Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military's U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began before Clinton entered office and continued into her first days at the State Department. They largely pertained to personnel matters and don't appear to deal with highly classified material, officials said, but their existence challenges Clinton's claim that she has handed over the entirety of her work emails from the account. Republicans have raised questions about thousands of emails that she has deleted on grounds that they were private in nature, as well as other messages that have surfaced independently of Clinton and the State Department. Speaking of her emails on CBS' "Face the Nation" this week, Clinton said: "We provided all of them." But the FBI and several congressional committees are investigating. The State Department's record of Clinton emails begins on March 18, 2009 — almost two months after she entered office. Before then, Clinton has said she used an old AT&T Blackberry email account, the contents of which she no longer can access.
The Petraeus emails, first discovered by the Defense Department and then passed to the State Department's inspector general, challenge that claim. They start on Jan. 10, 2009, with Clinton using the older email account. But by Jan. 28 — a week after her swearing in — she switched to using the private email address on a homebrew server that she would rely on for the rest of her tenure. There are less than 10 emails back and forth in total, officials said, and the chain ends on Feb. 1.
The officials weren't authorized to speak on the matter and demanded anonymity. But State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed that the agency received the emails in the "last several days" and that they "were not previously in the possession of the department."
Kirby said they would be subject to a Freedom of Information Act review like the rest of Clinton's emails. She gave the department some 30,000 emails last year that she sent or received while in office, and officials plan to finish releasing all of them by the end of January, after sensitive or classified information is censored. A quarter has been made public so far.
Additionally, Kirby said the agency will incorporate the newly discovered emails into a review of record retention practices that Clinton's successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, initiated in March. "We have also informed Congress of this matter," he added.
These steps are unlikely to satisfy Clinton's Republican critics.
The House Benghazi Committee plans to hold a public hearing with Clinton next month to hear specifically about what the emails might say about the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Senate Judiciary Committee's GOP chairman said he wants the Justice Department to tell him if a criminal investigation is underway into Clinton's use of private email amid reports this week that the FBI recovered deleted emails from her server. The Senate Homeland Security Committee also is looking into the matter.
Clinton has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. "When I did it, it was allowed, it was above board. And now I'm being as transparent as possible, more than anybody else ever has been," she said earlier this week.
In August, Clinton submitted a sworn statement to a U.S. District Court saying she had directed all her work emails to be provided to the State Department. "On information and belief, this has been done," she said in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit with Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group.
The Clinton campaign didn't respond immediately to a request from The Associated Press for comment, but on Twitter, Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign's press secretary, wrote Friday: "We always said the emails given to State dated back only to March 09. That was when she started using http://clintonemail.com."
Clinton has been dogged for months by questions about her email practices. She initially described her choice as a matter of convenience, but later took responsibility for making a wrong decision.
Separately Friday, State Department officials said they were providing the Benghazi-focused probe more email exchanges from senior officials pertaining to Libya. The committee broadened its scope after examining tens of thousands of documents more specifically focused on the Benghazi attack.

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