O'Malley: 'I'm Pissed'

Democratic presidential candidate responds to the Charleston shooting with an email saying, "I'm pissed."

"I'm pissed that after an unthinkable tragedy like the one in South Carolina yesterday, instead of jumping to act, we sit back and wait for the appropriate moment to say what we're all thinking: that this is not the America we want to be living in," O'Malley writes.

I'm pissed that we’re actually asking ourselves the horrific question of, what will it take? How many senseless acts of violence in our streets or tragedies in our communities will it take to get our nation to stop caving to special interests like the NRA when people are dying?

I'm pissed that after working hard in the state of Maryland to pass real gun control—laws that banned high-magazine weapons, increased licensing standards, and required fingerprinting for handgun purchasers—Congress continues to drop the ball.

It's time we called this what it is: a national crisis.

I proudly hold an F rating from the NRA, and when I worked to pass gun control in Maryland, the NRA threatened me with legal action, but I never backed down.

So now, I'm doubling down, and I need your help. What we did in Maryland should be the first step of what we do as a nation. The NRA is already blaming the victims of yesterday's shooting for their own deaths, saying they too should have been armed. Let's put an end to this madness and finally stand up to them. Here are some steps we should be taking:

1. A national assault weapons ban.

2. Stricter background checks.

3. Efforts to reduce straw-buying, like fingerprint requirements.

Via: The Weekly Standard

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Huckabee: If Somebody in That Prayer Meeting Had a Conceal Carry…By Todd Starnes, Fox Nation

President Obama had a moment to bring healing to the nation, but he chose to play politics instead, using the terrible massacre in Charleston to call for a crackdown on guns.

Everything with this administration is about politics. Everything.

Gov. Mike Huckabee told me he was disappointed with President Obama’s “grandstanding.”

“All the proposals this president has put forward on gun control would not have stopped this shooting,” he said.

According to the GOP presidential candidate, one thing might have stopped the tragedy: A pistol-packing church-goer.

“The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or (if) there had been an off duty policeman somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter," Huckabee said.

Our nation is wounded. And in these coming days, words and deeds matter.

For the sake of unity, I urge the White House to choose civility over rhetoric. We cannot allow people like President Obama to divide our nation. Nor can we allow politicians to score cheap political points on the graves of the innocent.

Now is the time for decency. And should our elected leaders be unable to muster such values, maybe they should just be quiet.

After all, silence is a virtue.

Via: Fox News

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[Editorial] Trump Delivers a Message Republicans Need

Donald TrumpPhoto: Reuters

With humor, pride and two populist fists, Donald Trump on Tuesday entered the GOP race for the White House. However his campaign turns out, he’s already improved the field.

Above all, he spoke to the voters Republicans have to win over if they’re to retake the White House — to the Americans who believe in hard work and fair play, to the folks who show up every day to make this country work.

“We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, can take care of our vets. . . We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again.” Trump pretty well summed up the appeal the GOP needs to make.

He rained contempt on the political class and all its recent works, from ObamaCare to the pending Iran nuclear deal to “Third World” airports like LAX and La Guardia. He spoke up for people “tired of spending more money on education than any nation in the world per capita . . . and we are 26th in the world.”

He hit hard on the state of the economy — negative growth in the first quarter, joblessness far worse than the official rate, “a stock market that is so bloated” — and promised to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

He’s proud of making himself rich (“I’ve done an amazing job”), and rightly so. He didn’t even have to mention that he’s a guy who gets things done, because everybody already knows it. More, he knows his success is an asset, “the kind of thinking you need for this country . . . because we’ve got to make the country rich.”

With a dose of that attitude, Mitt Romney might be living in the White House right now.

Does candidate Trump have big problems? You bet; full-bore populists always do.

He’s got weird asides about how “we should’ve taken” Iraq’s oil “when we left”; silly stuff about a trade threat from Mexico; long anecdotes the fact-checkers will chew to pieces; bluster on trade and immigration that will turn lots of folks off.

And he’s viewed unfavorably by over half of GOP voters. No one’s ever turned around numbers like those.

Then again, “no one’s ever” are fighting words for Donald Trump.

This will be fun to watch.

Via: New York Post

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Trump Jumps Into the Race: 'I Am Officially Running for President of the United States and We're Going to Make Our Country Great Again'

Real-estate mogul and television personality Donald Trump announced his 2016 presidential campaign Tuesday morning.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again!" Trump said.

The Republican businessman made the announcement at the namesake Trump Tower in New York City.

In his wide-ranging and, lasting about 45 minutes, lengthy speech, Trump railed against President Barack Obama and the potential Pacific trade deal — the Trans-Pacific Partnership — while repeatedly touting his own negotiating skills.

"Our country is in serious trouble," he said. "We don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a trade deal? I beat China all the time. All the time."

Via: Business Insider

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5 Things You May Not Know About Donald Trump

Donald Trump has become one of the most well-known Americans through his business dealings, television shows including "The Apprentice," and frequent appearances in the media, and he plans to announce on Tuesday if he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

But there are still a number of things about "The Donald" that are not widely known. Here are five of them:

1. Trump's grandparents anglicized their name from Drumpf. His grandfather Friedrich and grandmother Elisabeth were born in Germany and emigrated to the United States. Their son Fred Trump married Donald Trump's mother Mary Ann MacLeod, who was born in Scotland and met Donald Trump's father during a vacation trip to New York.

2. While Donald Trump did inherit wealth from his father, he is personally responsible for accumulating the great bulk of his fortune. Trump's father built affordable rental housing, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. He had a net wealth estimated at between $250 million and $400 million at the time of his death, but his four surviving children were heirs.

By 2011, Donald Trump's business dealings had boosted his fortune to $2.4 billion, according to Forbes. One estimate now places his worth at $4.1 billion, although another maintains that it is as high as $7 billion.

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3. Trump's parents sent him to a military school, New York Military Academy, when he was 13 years old. While there he played varsity football, varsity soccer, and was captain of his varsity baseball team.

4. Trump's oldest sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, served as a federal appeals court judge. She was nominated for the post by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Prior to that, she had a seat on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

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5. Trump prefers cherry-vanilla ice cream. He also loves hamburgers and meat loaf, he once told Us Weekly, but he doesn't drink coffee, tea, or alcohol, and eats only the toppings on pizza, discarding the dough. And he eats lunch at his desk.

Via: Newsmax

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Extreme makeover Republican edition

The recently announced Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum may be an unremarkable politician whose appeal has been strongest among social conservatives, but he’s right about one thing: The Republican Party needs to stop thinking of itself as an “establishment” party. Santorum, author of “Blue Collar Conservative,” suggests that the GOP seek out a new class base from among the vast majority of voters who feel the economic system is stacked against them. These voters could be persuaded by a demonstrably populist program to support Republicans.

To make such a transformations, the Republicans must somehow deprogram themselves from their Pavlovian support for the agenda of big money, a platform, as Mitt Romney learned, unpalatable to the vast majority of Americans. This shift may be eased by the fact that so much of the country’s wealth – including the super-rich on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and among Big Media – has aligned with the Democrats. The movement of former Obama administration officials into these industries shows the durability of these linkages.

Geographical Imperative

Ultimately, politics is a ground game played over the geography of the nation. Political philosophy may animate activists, but economic realities define voter self-interest. Republican regions tend to be those with strong energy, agricultural and manufacturing industries. In contrast, the Democrats derive their support from the new “progressive” economy – based on entertainment, media, software and finance as well as a burgeoning nonprofit sector – concentrated along the ocean coasts. These interests have thrived under Barack Obama, and the prospect of eight more years of progressive rule means more subsidies and greater opportunities for everything from green energy to urban real estate speculation, as well as a satisfying blend of social and environmental liberalism widely embraced in these industries.

Via: Orange County Register

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[VIDEO] Jeb Bush prepares to launch candidacy, regain lost momentum|

The best political campaign logos convey a feeling or a message, a memorable bit of information about the candidate running for office.

Jeb Bush is going with his old standard — “Jeb!” — to harken back to his tenure as Florida governor (and to avoid spelling out “Bush”).

But will his campaign be worthy of an exclamation point?

Bush will try to energize his supporters Monday when he formally launches his 2016 campaign in Miami, after spending six months exploring a candidacy but failing to position himself comfortably ahead of a crowded and ambitious Republican field that so far boasts 10 candidates, without counting Bush.

“I thought Jeb would take up all the oxygen,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a potential candidate, said in New Hampshire earlier this month. “He hasn’t.”

To be sure, Bush has scored big political donors. But he hasn’t scared off other challengers. He’s stumbled trying to distance himself from his brother’s unpopular Iraq war. And he’s struggled to reintroduce himself to GOP voters in a party much changed since his last time on the ballot 12 years ago.

“It will take time. It always does,” Bush told CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview aired Sunday.

Monday at Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus, Bush will portray himself as a doer, a politician who put conservative ideas into action in a diverse state and who seeks public office to govern rather than pontificate. He will then take his pitch on the road, visiting New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina between Tuesday and Thursday.

“This is what leadership is about — it’s not just about yapping about things,” he said in a campaign video unveiled Sunday. “There are a lot of people talking, and they’re pretty good at it. We need to start fixing things. I said I was going to do these things and I did them, and the result was Florida is a lot better off.”

Via: Miami Herald

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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/jeb-bush/article24259312.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/jeb-bush/article24259312.html#storylink=cpy

Opinion: GOP targets Latinos’ ability to vote

Even as a diverse coalition of Americans unite around the principle that voting rights are an essential American principle that needs to be protected, the Republican Party remains firmly committed to doing the opposite. Their continued push for policies that make it more difficult for people to vote disproportionately affects minority and young voters.

Republicans – including leading Presidential candidates – have for years been pushing initiatives that make it harder to vote. Jeb Bush supports states’ efforts to enact voter ID laws, and as governor, he restricted early voting and infamously purged 12,000 eligible voters before the 2000 presidential election. Marco Rubio asked, “What’s the big deal?” with voter ID laws. Scott Walker enacted what has been described as “one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country.”

Voter ID laws systematically target Latinos’ and other minorities’ ability to vote. In 2012, measures to restrict voting could have affected over 10 million Latino voters. A Brennan Center for Justice study reported, “In Colorado, Florida, and Virginia, the number of eligible Latino citizens that could be affected by these barriers exceeds the margin of victory in each of those states during the 2008 presidential election.”

And it’s no accident that these laws disproportionately affect Latinos. A separate study from last year found “a solid link between legislator support for voter ID laws and bias toward Latino voters, as measured in their responses to constituent e-mails.” And yet another study that was released earlier this year found that even in states without voter ID laws, Latinos were targeted: “Election officials themselves also appear to be biased against minority voters, and Latinos in particular. For example, poll workers are more likely to ask minority voters to show identification, including in states without voter identification laws.”

Some Republicans have explicitly made known their intentions of suppressing Latino and African-American voters in order to win elections. Over 30 years ago, ALEC-founder and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation Paul Weyrich spoke plainly:  “I don’t want everybody to vote…As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Republican after Republican has continued in his footsteps: An Ohio GOP County Chair stated he supports limits on early voting because, “I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban – read African-American – voter-turnout machine.” Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzaibelieved voter ID laws would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” Former GOP Precinct Chair Don Yeltonused the “n” word as he tried to deny that a voter ID law in North Carolina was racist (and he explained that “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt”). Conservative activist and notoriouslyanti-immigrant Phyllis Schlafly said, “The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game.” Schlafly’s Eagle Forum endorsed Marco Rubio in his run for Senate (here’s a lovely picture of the two of them) and applauded Scott Walker for his opposition to legal immigration.

Via: Fox News Latino

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Lincoln Chafee May Be Hillary's Biggest Problem

In a field of Democratic presidential long shots, former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday, may be the longest shot of all. As an authentic, uncompromising progressive, Bernie Sanders is poised to grab the bulk of those Elizabeth Warren enthusiasts who can’t reconcile themselves to Hillary Clinton. As the handsome, articulate, two-term governor of a mid-size state, Martin O’Malley at least looks like a plausible contender one day. Chafee, by contrast, in the words of Quinnipiac University’s Monica Bauer, “has the charisma of Walter Mondale wrapped in the political instincts of a small town city councilman, which he once was, and perhaps would have remained, if he hadn’t been the son of a famous political dynasty. He is George W. Bush with more intelligence but far less political talent.” And like Bush, Chafee was, until very recently, a Republican.

But Chafee could prove Hillary’s most intriguing challenger. It’s not because he’ll garner enough support to give her a scare. If anyone does that, it will likely beSanders, who according to the New York Times is already “gain[ing] momentum in Iowa.” What makes Chafee’s candidacy intriguing is that he’s attacking Hillary on the issue on which she may be most vulnerable: her vote to authorize war with Iraq.

“I don’t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake,” Chafee told The Washington Post in April. “It’s a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today—of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility.”

A version of this attack helped Barack Obama topple Hillary in 2008. That’s not likely to happen again, since Democrats care far less about Iraq this time.

But Republicans do. While foreign policy has been largely absent from the Democratic presidential campaign thus far, it’s been central to the Republican debate. And this reflects a divide in the country as a whole. A May Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that “national security/terrorism,” which was the top concern of only eight percent of likely GOP primary voters three years ago, now ranks first, at 27 percent. Among likely Democratic primary voters, by contrast, it’s less than half that.

Via: The Atlantic

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EXCLUSIVE — GOV. SCOTT WALKER: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ‘TOO BIG TO FAIL,’ NEXT PRESIDENT MUST SHRINK IT SO IT’S ‘SMALL ENOUGH TO SUCCEED’

by MATTHEW BOYLE25 May 2015Washington, DC51

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview over Memorial Day weekend that he’s getting much closer to a decision on whether he’ll pursue a presidential campaign in 2016, a decision he expects will come in early July.

“My state budget is done at the end of June, and so obviously my number one responsibility over that period is to complete a state budget—and so I’ve said in state and publicly that I won’t make any declaration about my intentions until after that,” Walker said when asked where he’s at in his decision-making process. “It will be shortly thereafter, not too far after the first of July, but I owe it to the people of Wisconsin first and foremost to be focused on that and to make sure we pass and I sign a budget that continues to lower property taxes and is a reasonable and responsible budget.”

Walker is currently the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary in 2016 according to most polls—in many early state polls he’s got a double digit lead—and when asked why he thinks that’s the case, Walker said it’s because he’s someone who delivers results.

“Back in January remember when I was one of the speakers at the Citizens United-

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

79%

 jointly sponsored events in Iowa?” Walker said.

It was something some called a breakout speech. I think all it was was me just talking as I’ve done many times before on the stump the last four years when we won three elections for governor. The last two were obviously pretty intense. I think what happened was once there was all that big coverage by many in the media about this being a big deal, my personal belief and I think of many who are supporters, is there were a whole bunch of right-leaning Republican primary voters who had watched what we’ve done in Wisconsin the last four years but didn’t know if we were credible in terms of a potential campaign.

I think once word got out about that speech—at least there was attention given—then I think there was a whole wave of voters who said, ‘yeah. I like that guy. He doesn’t just talk about it.’ As one Tweet said in Iowa, ‘I like Scott Walker because he fights without caving.’ I think there’s this incredible sense, particularly amongst our base and primary voters is they don’t want someone who just talks about it. They want someone who can do it. Due to God’s grace and circumstances, we’ve been able to show time and again that we can fight and win on issues that matter to everyday conservatives.

Walker also told Breitbart News about his recent trip to Washington, D.C.—the belly of the big government beast–where he met with and dazzled more than a hundred Republican lawmakers as well as with conservative movement leaders.

Via: Breitbart

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