Second Life commemorates the Paris attacks the next day
The terrorist attack perpetrated in Paris on Friday night was shocking. Also shocking, however, was the speed in which Republicans and conservatives made ugly public statements to score political points. For example, a number of the Republican presidential candidates, not surprisingly, blamed President Obama. Donald Trump, doubling down on a statement he made last January after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, said the problem was too many gun laws in France. Ann Coulter tweeted that “Donald Trump was elected tonight.” Coulter explained in other tweets that Trump’s anti-immigration policies for America somehow would prevent the type of terrorist attack that occurred in Paris. Newt Gingrich, like Trump, suggested that the Paris attacks could have been thwarted by “10 to 15 citizens with concealed carry permits.” And conservative writer Judith Miller (who is infamous for cheerleading George W. Bush‘s Iraq War in the New York Times) almost incoherently tried to use the Paris attack to argue why black American college students should have no problem with racial discrimination against them.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Donald Trump, France, French, Iraq War, ISIS, Paris, Paris attack, Paris terror attack, Republicans, terrorism, Twitter
Dick Cheney, CNN’s go-to right wing apologist
In 2015, the traditional news media — what we call the Corporate Mainstream Media — have continued to move to the right, in some cases sharply so. These television and newspaper media outlets are no longer reliable conveyors of facts that Americans need to make decisions at the voting booth and elsewhere. We should ditch these corporate mainstream media. Instead, we need to become our own news aggregators.
Here are some of the many examples of the mainstream news media’s rightward drift:
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President George W. Bush’s “Brownie” moment, Sept. 2, 2005
The anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina (landfall in Louisiana August 29, 2005) and Hurricane (Superstorm) Sandy (landfall in New Jersey August 29, 2012) represent a perfect storm that continues to damage the Republican Party. Katrina showed President George W. Bush‘s detachment, and the criminally negligent incompetence behind his administration’s hands-off conservative Republican governing philosophy (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”) Sandy is said to have helped President Barack Obama win and the Democrats do well in the 2012 elections, but that’s only true if one rejects the Republicans’ “government is bad” frame and accepts the Democrats’ “good government” philosophy. Apparently, many Americans have done just that.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2012 election, Barack Obama, Bridgegate, Chris Christie, George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Republican National Convention, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Superstorm Sandy, Tropical Storm Isaac
Time magazine’s latest Donald Trump cover
It seems like there are two Donald Trumps. New Yorkers came to know Trump beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Trump took on massive building projects, as well as massive city and state bureaucracies, and usually succeeded. This includes building the Trump Tower; renovating the old Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central Station and turning it into the black-glassed Grand Hyatt; and rebuilding the Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park after New York City officials failed for years to accomplish the task. Trump also navigated strict New Jersey licensing requirements to build casinos in Atlantic City. Moreover, long before Donald Trump became a politician, in taking on all the challenges of these building projects, Trump loved to criticize politicians.
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Trump helicopter
One advantage of America’s long presidential campaign is that, eventually, each candidate’s character, intelligence and fitness to be president (or lack thereof) emerges. That process is currently on display at the Iowa State Fair. Thanks to C-SPAN, we can see and hear the candidates in Iowa, in long form.
Donald Trump showed up in his TRUMP-badged helicopter. No stranger to branding, Trump spoke with his helicopter in the background, a symbol of power and status similar to a president standing in front of Air Force One. In a bright red hat with his slogan “Make America Great Again,” Trump aggressively addressed or swatted away reporters’ questions, attacking his rivals, especially John Ellis Bush, in the process. Then Trump handed out helicopter rides to local kids and their moms, posing for selfies. Trump may know more about what the American people want than anybody in this presidential race.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 election, Bernie Sanders, C-SPAN, Chris Christie, Democrats, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iowa State Fair, Jeb Bush, Republicans
Republican Clown Town
In years past, the parade of Republicans running for higher speaking fees, book sales and Fox News contracts a/k/a running for the Republican nomination for president, has been referred to as the Clown Car. This year, there are so many potential GOP candidates that they need a bigger vehicle. Say hello to Clown Town!
High speed trains in London
The recent Amtrak derailment in Pennsylvania has once again exposed America’s embarrassing train transportation system. Parts of this system are up to 150 years old, and it’s falling apart. Yet, when Democrats, including President Barack Obama, propose to modernize our train system and build high-speed trains, Republicans oppose these plans.
Predictably, after the Amtrak accident, in addition to the horrible optics of simultaneous Republican budget cuts, we are hearing the usual Republican talking points about America’s train transportation system. Here are the main GOP talking points, along with some possible responses:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 9/11, Amtrak, conservatives, Democrats, infrastructure, liberals, Postal Service, Republicans, Shock Doctrine, Trains, transporation
“Birther” protesters, St. Cloud, MN, 2013
Anyone who pays attention to the arguments made by conservatives (and Republicans, same thing nowadays) versus those made by liberals and Democrats knows that their respective ways of thinking and speaking is entirely different. Researchers have even found that conservative and liberal brains work very differently. But what the scientists haven’t mentioned is that you can usually identify whether someone is a liberal or a conservative by listening for one word.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Barack Obama, climate change, conservatives, Democrats, framing, gay marriage, George Lakoff, George W. Bush, liberals, Republicans, tobacco
German measles (rubella) vaccination, Nagpur, India
Last Tuesday, MomsRising.org held a conference call featuring U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who spoke about measles vaccines. The call also featured Dr. Bruce Gellen, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Amanda Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
MomsRising.org focuses on children’s and family health issues, including working for common-sense gun safety laws. Thus, the group formed a natural pairing with Gen. Murthy, whose nomination for Surgeon General was delayed for more than a year by pressure from the National Rifle Association, after Murthy stated that “guns are a health care issue.” Indeed, it took an ebola outbreak and the beginning of a measles outbreak traced to Disneyland in California to focus attention on the contradiction between Republican fear-mongering and the lack of a U.S. Surgeon General. The U.S. Senate finally confirmed Murthy, along with other Executive Branch nominees last December, during the lame duck session of Congress, and only as a result of the Democrats having changed Senate rules in November 2013 to prevent filibustering Executive Branch nominees.
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Disneyland crowd
“I went to Disneyland and all I got was this t-shirt” is now a good thing, given that Disneyland in Anaheim, California is considered Ground Zero for the current U.S. measles outbreak. This outbreak of measles has now spread to 14 states with 102 reported cases as of January 30, which is double the pace of reported cases from last year. Experts agree that the measles outbreak at Disneyland and across the United States is a result of people who have not been vaccinated. In California alone, scores of parents at some schools have refused to vaccinate their children by signing a “personal belief exemption,” which is also available in a number of other U.S. states. Some of these so-called “anti-vaxxers” unfortunately have fallen prey to thoroughly debunked false information alleging that vaccines cause autism and other scary problems.
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Leave a comment! Tags: anti-vaxxers, Barack Obama, Democrats, Disneyland, government, law, measles, outbreak, Republicans, science, vaccinations
