Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Obama Says Dems have some new ideas: “Medicare for All is a Good Idea”. I was in a clinic listening.

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President Obama visited my town today in Central Illinois as he was receiving a meritorious award on ethics from an institute at the University of Illinois. I was not among the 1300 who drew from a lottery and got to see him in person, but I did watch parts of the livestream. He started out with broad themes of the political climate, such as civil rights, women’s and LGBT rights. But what I didn’t expect was this: From the Hill: “Democrats aren’t just running on good, old ideas like a higher minimum wage. They’re running on good, new ideas like … Continue reading →

Republicans and Democrats: A Play in Three Acts.

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

ACT 1: Washington DC, United States Senate early 2016 Merrick Garland, an eminently qualified judge, was nominated by Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. For weeks afterwards, Republican senators responsible for considering the nomination refused to meet with him. Some of them slink out of their offices in the Senate to avoid the visiting judge. Several eventually do meet him after being shamed, but refuse to discuss confirmation hearings and restrict conversations to pleasantries. They work in lock step to deny Garland a hearing, and deny him the nomination. For the first time in the Republic’s history, a President’s judicial nominee is denied … Continue reading →

Most “Conservatives” will protect Trump. No Matter What.

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This week, Hannity and Hume rushed to tell us that colluding with Putin to subvert the results of an American election is entirely legal. The National Review thinks evidence of collusion would be “an enormous calamity” for Trump and lead to impeachment if Democrats win Congress. But, they don’t think there’s anything wrong about collusion, they just think it’s a “dead-end” argument to talk about legality. Let’s set aside, for a moment, all the state, federal or campaign finance laws that might have been broken. Or even the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Let’s set aside the fact that Trump asked for help from “Russia, if … Continue reading →

Democrats fail to pick up any seats in special elections for Congress

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We’ve had four House special elections this year. Democrats have lost all four. All four were tough races to replace Republicans from very safe districts who were appointed to posts within the Trump administration. In 2016, the Republicans were all incumbents, and their Democratic challengers were: Mike Pompeo (60.7%) won against Daniel Giroux (29.6%) in KS-4 Ryan Zinke (56.2%) won against Denise Juneau (40.5%) in MT-AL Tom Price (61.7%) won against Rodney Stooksbury (38.3%) in GA-06 Mick Mulvaney (59.2%) won against Fran Person (38.7%) in SC-05 In KS-04, an Independent and a Libertarian won almost 10% of the vote in 2016. First for the good news, … Continue reading →

ISIS has captured Tora-Bora as Trump ignores US commanders in Iraq/Afghanistan.

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  We have been at war in Afghanistan for almost 16 years now, and for much of that time, it’s been two steps forward and three steps back. This week, we went three steps back as ISIS captured the mountain fortress of Tora Bora. The ISIS forces in Afghanistan include the remnants of Al-Qaeda. Tora Bora is where Bin-Laden went immediately after 9/11. It’s a large complex with miles of tunnels, roads and caves dug into granite mountains. If you think this is only two steps back, recall that Tora Bora was originally built with funding from the CIA. The CIA helped build this … Continue reading →