First on CNN: Biden meets with Warren in Washington

Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden met privately with Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday in his residence at the Naval Observatory, CNN has learned, another sign he is seriously deciding whether to jump into the Democratic presidential race.

The meeting between Biden and Warren, confirmed by two people familiar with the session, is the biggest indication yet that Biden is feeling out influential Democrats before announcing his intentions.

Beloved by liberal Democrats, Warren decided to sit out a campaign of her own, but she has yet to formally endorse a candidate. In an interview on Friday, she told WBZ in Boston: "I don't think anyone has been anointed."

The vice president arrived in Washington shortly before lunchtime, even though his official schedule said he was planning to spend the weekend at his home in Delaware.

Kendra Barkoff, a Biden spokeswoman, declined to comment on the meeting. But an aide to Biden confirmed a meeting, telling CNN: "The vice president traveled last minute to Washington, D.C. for a private meeting and will be returning to Delaware."

Biden is increasingly weighing whether to challenge Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates for the party's presidential nomination. A small team of advisers has spent weeks quietly putting together a campaign strategy and fundraising plan in case Biden decides to run. He had at least one meeting with them this week in Wilmington, one person familiar with the session told CNN.

He has told his associates he intends to make his decision in the next month, an announcement that could upend the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary six months away, Biden is the leading figure Democrats believe they could turn to if they needed to find an alternative to Clinton, whose favorability ratings have taken a deep hit as her email use while secretary of state is drawing deeper controversy.

Biden, 72, has a large and loyal collection of friends and advisers from more than four decades in Washington. Yet even inside his sprawling constellation, affectionately known as "Biden World," deep divisions exist over the wisdom of him making another bid for the presidency.

Via: CNN

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POLL: CLINTON TRAILS THREE REPUBLICAN CONTENDERS IN KEY STATES

If this news doesn’t have Joe Biden, Al Gore, or Elizabeth Warren seriously considering entering the presidential race — and serious Democrats urging them to do so — then nothing will. According to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll, Hillary Clinton trails Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker in Colorado, Iowa and Virginia.

Two of the three Republicans Clinton trails are neither well known nor in possession of a well known name. Thus, the poll results should be viewed mostly as a referendum on Hillary.

This assessment is confirmed by Clinton’s favorability ratings. In Virginia, they are 41-50. In Colorado, they are 35-56. In Iowa, where Clinton has been a fairly constant presence, they are 33-56 — a tribute to her skill as campaigner.

Clinton runs ahead of these numbers against the three GOP hopefuls, but behind all three. Against Rubio, she trails by 8 points in Colorado and Iowa and 2 in Virginia. Against, Walker she is down 9 points in Colorado, 8 in Iowa, and 3 in Virginia. As for Bush, he of the burdensome family name, Clinton is 5 points down in Colorado, 6 down in Iowa, and 3 down in Virginia.

Clinton is losing ground. In April Quinnipiac, Clinton didn’t trail in of these match-ups against the three Republicans, and she was ahead in five of the nine.

Naturally, Clinton is suffering as a result of the various revelations and scandals of the past several months. According to Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll, she has lost ground on the question of her honesty.

In addition, she has lost ground on the question of being a strong leader. It’s difficult to look like a strong leader when you’re unwilling to face the press or answer other than softball questions.

Ominously, perhaps, for Clinton, Quinnipiac’s Brown points out that “Vice President Joseph Biden, who is considering a 2016 run, does better than Clinton on honesty and on caring about voter needs, always a key Democratic strong point.”

Donald Trump fares even worse than Clinton among those polled in the three swing states. But the GOP won’t be saddled with Trump as its nominee. And the poll tends to confirm what common sense tells us — voters aren’t holding Trump against Rubio, Walker, or Bush.

The real Trump problem lies in the possibility that he will run as a third candidate. As poorly as she’s faring, Clinton might well carry the three states polled by Quinnipiac pretty handily in a three-way race involving Trump.

Via: Powerline

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Democrats Want To Outlaw ‘Unfair’ Work Schedules

In the name of fairness, congressional Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday that would put significant restrictions on how employers schedule their employees.

“This bill is about basic fairness,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. “A single mom should know if her hours are being canceled before she arranges for daycare and drives halfway across town to show up at work.”

Nearly 80 lawmakers out of the House and Senate introduced the measure. The Schedules That Work Act will add restrictions on how employers can schedule their employees. If passed, it would ban employers from putting their employees on call, splitting their shifts, sending workers home with no pay, or punishing them for requesting schedule changes.

“Someone who wants to go to school to get an education should not be able to get fired just for asking for a more predictable schedule,” Warren continued. “A worker who is told to wait around on-call for hours with no guarantee of work hours should get something for his time. It’s time to end unfair scheduling practices that hurt workers and families.”

“This bill is extraordinarily intrusive in how it would direct employers to run their operations,” Marc Freedman, an executive director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said according to law firm Seyfarth Shaw’s Employment Law Lookout.

“It will not create new jobs, open up opportunities, nor spur economic growth,” he continued. “In fact, one potential consequence is that employers will cut back on the number of part time and other non-full time employees they carry.”

 The measure is backed by a variety of labor unions, like the Communications Workers of America and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

“Too many hardworking Americans face difficult situations due to erratic employer scheduling,” AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler said in a statement. “Especially women and low-wage workers.”

Democrats have tried to pass similar measures in the past. Just last year, former Democratic Rep. George Miller tried to pass his version of the bill but it failed to make it out of the Republican-controlled House. At the time, business leaders argued the policy would be unfair to employers and could have adverse consequences for employees.

Via: Daily Caller

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[COMMENTARY] The Creepy Consequences of Oppression Chic by Michelle Malkin

Why was America so shocked by homegirl hoaxer Rachel Dolezal?

The spray-tanned con artist, who resigned this week as head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of (Artificially) Colored People, is the inevitable outcome of academia's cult of manufactured victimhood.

College campuses have been grooming a cadre of professional minority fakers and fraudsters for decades.

The notorious pretendians Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren faked their Native American status to bolster their faculty credentials at the University of Colorado and Harvard, respectively. It was a mutually beneficial racket for all poseur parties involved. Churchill and Warren basked in their tenured glory. The schools racked up politically correct points for adding the right flavors to their employment rolls.

Churchill was specifically granted a "special opportunity" position that his school created to increase "diversity" on the teaching staff. Warren falsely listed herself as a minority professor in a law school directory. Harvard officials eagerly touted Warren's bogus background, the Boston Herald reported, to "bolster their diversity hiring record in the '90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male." Based solely on what Warren later admitted was unsubstantiated "family lore," the Fordham Law Review called her the "first woman of color" at Harvard Law.

The pressure to conform and cash in on the cult of oppression chic is even more virulent among the student body. Race-based affirmative action is a primary catalyst.

Take Vijay Chokal-Ingam, brother of TV star Vera Mindy Chokalingam. He pretended to be black in 1998-99 in order to gain admission to St. Louis University School of Medicine.

"In my junior year of college, I realized that I didn't have the grades or test scores to get into medical school, at least not as an Indian-American," he wrote. "So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes and applied to medical school as a black man. ... Vijay the Indian-American frat boy become Jojo the African-American Affirmative Action applicant to medical school."

Via: CNS News

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The Great Pretenders

Before the nation had a chance to digest the spectacle of former Olympic star Bruce Jenner transitioning into a female by the name of “Caitlyn,” another pretender has emerged. It seems that the NAACP President of Spokane, Washington is actually, heaven forbid, white. For years, Rachel Dolezal claimed to be an African American, but now her cover has been blown by her own mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, who informed the media that her daughter is indeed white.

In an interview with the Spokesman-Review, Ruthanne Dolezal lamented “It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself. Her effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community would have been so much more viable, and she would have been more effective if she had just been honest with everybody.”

Rachel Dolezal has been estranged from her real white parents for years. She claims to have been abused by her parents, although they deny the accusations. Their real crime is their skin color and any self-respecting African American NAACP leader cannot be seen with white parents!

This fraudulent civil rights leader was just following the example set by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Prior to being elected to the U.S. Senate, Professor Elizabeth Warren claimed that she was a Native American. This “minority” status allowed her to garner positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. When confronted by his use of the minority label, Warren claimed that she used it to meet other Native Americans. Of course, it was really used to advance her career. She parlayed her academic positions into a powerful political office. Of course, it was all built on a deception, but since Warren is a liberal, everything has been forgiven.

Via: Canada Free Press

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The Myth that Republicans are Growing More Extreme

There is an insidious meme afoot that in the Obama era Democrats have been heroically restraining themselves by clinging to moderate policies while ideologically extreme Republicans have gone hog-wild in the pursuit of conservative purity.

Today’s Democratic Party makes common cause with the criminals who burn down poor people’s neighborhoods in American cities. And yet the Right is somehow alleged to be more susceptible to “extremism.”

Sharpening her class-warfare guillotine, Hillary Clinton calls for the “toppling” of the one percent. She copycats her potential rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), claiming that “the deck is stacked” in favor of the wealthy and powerful.

“My job is to reshuffle the cards,” Clinton says.

Yet Republicans, who haven’t singled out identifiable social groups for destruction, somehow get tagged as the radicals.

This alleged so-called asymmetric polarization by the GOP is just the latest iteration of the hoary media myth that Republicans are dangerous extremists and Democrats are reasonable moderates. It is popping up now because the two parties’ primary contests are heating up. The benighted masses need to be reminded by their betters what to think and how to vote.

In a May 31 Financial Times column titled “American socialism’s day in the sun,” garden-variety left-winger Edward Luce hails the recent entry of self-described socialist Bernie Sanders into the Democratic presidential race because, he claims, it is “dragging” frontrunner Hillary Clinton “leftward.”

“At 15 per cent in the Democratic polls, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, is riding higher than any US socialist since Eugene Debs ran for the White House a century ago,” writes Luce, who is the son of a British peer and was speechwriter to Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers from 1999 to 2001.

“The fact that Mr. Sanders has very little chance of unseating Hillary Clinton is beside the point. His popularity is dragging her leftward. If he flames out, other left-wingers, such as Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland who entered the race at the weekend, are ready to pick up the baton. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Massachusetts senator, will continue to prod Mrs. Clinton from outside the field. The more Mrs. Clinton adopts their language, the harder it will be for her to reclaim the centre ground next year. Yet she is only following the crowd. A surprisingly large chunk of Democrats are happy to break the US taboo against socialism.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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HILLARY HAS PICKED THE PLACE WHERE SHE WILL EXPLAIN HER SOCIALIST AGENDA TO KILL THE UNITED STATES

So Hillary has finally picked out a place where she will give a big speech laying out her socialist agenda that will kill the United States:

POLITICO – The solemn memorial park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, Four Freedoms Park, will serve as the backdrop for Hillary Clinton’s first significant speech as a presidential candidate on June 13, when she is expected to lay out her vision for the future of the country and explain to voters why she is the right person to lead it there.

The park, designed by architect Louis Kahn and dedicated in 2012, honors the “four freedoms” Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined in his 1941 State of the Union address — freedom of speech, religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The symbolic backdrop won out over other potential sites for Clinton’s “vision” speech that were floated to the campaign by supporters, such as Seneca Falls, N.Y., the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848.

In announcing the venue for the much-anticipated speech, the campaign emphasized Clinton’s long admiration of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Clinton is expected to be joined at the kick-off speech by her family, Chelsea and Bill Clinton. It won’t mark their first time there: Bill Clinton was one of the speakers at the 2012 dedication ceremony of the park.

Freedom from want? Yeah, this should be a great speech on how to kill a nation. After all, she has to try and become Elizabeth Warren so she’ll stay out of the race and she also has to compete with Bernie Sanders drawing huge overflow crowds at his latest campaign speeches:

Via: The Right Scoop

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ORRIN HATCH ON TRADE BILL: ‘I DON’T KNOW FULLY WHAT’S IN TPP MYSELF’

Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)(MA) went to the Senate floor to push for immediate consideration of a bill that would make the Obamatrade text public — right now Congress has to go to a secured room to review the text and can’t take notes out or discuss what is in it with the public. That motion failed when Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) objected, since it required unanimous consent.

The two Democrats even praised President George W. Bush, who released his free trade text in 2001. Today, President Obama, who promised to have the most transparent administration in history, is not releasing his deal.

“We’re just asking for some transparency before we have this crucial vote,” said Warren.

She said people have heard a lot about the trade bill, but haven’t seen it. The press hasn’t seen it, neither have economists or legal experts because the Administration making it impossible any of those people to read it.

“We should keep the deal secret because if the details were made public now, the public would oppose it,” mocked Warren. “Well, that’s not how our democracy is supposed to work.

Warren went on to introduce her legislation with Manchin in order to make the bill public and transparent.

Via: Breitbart

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I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned.

You need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago,” a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He’s right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That’s by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can’t share my criticisms with you.

I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what's hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice.

So-called “cleared advisors” like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we’ve lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don’t exist.

What I can tell you is that the administration is being unfair to those who are raising proper questions about the harms the TPP would do. To the administration, everyone who questions their approach is branded as a protectionist—or worse—dishonest. They broadly criticize organized labor, despite the fact that unions have been the primary force in America pushing for strong rules to promote opportunity and jobs. And they dismiss individuals like me who believe that, first and foremost, a trade agreement should promote the interests of domestic producers and their employees.

Via: Politico

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Why Not Martin O’Malley? (One can think of a thousand reasons)

On April 10, Elizabeth Warren joined Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and declared, “Powerful corporations [and] rich people have figured out that if you can bend the government to help you just a little bit, it’s a tremendous payoff, and if you can bend it to help you just a little bit more and a little bit more, the playing field just gets more and more tilted, and the rich and the powerful just do better and better.” A week later, Martin O’Malley stood before a packed crowd at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and proclaimed, “Concentrated wealth has accumulated concentrated political power in the halls of our Congress, and also in many, many, many of our state houses, making it harder than ever to get things done.”

Both of these quotes are emblematic of a nascent populist movement in the Democratic Party. Both reflect a deep concern that all Americans don’t have an equal shot at prosperity. Both demonstrate a growing opposition to the centrist Democratic policies of the Clinton era—the trade policies and the welfare reform—that seemed to mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Yet it is Martin O’Malley, not Elizabeth Warren, who has a proven record of accomplishing real progress on these issues on a state level. It is Martin O’Malley, not Elizabeth Warren, who became the first major Democratic politician to endorse a national $15 minimum wage at the Institute of Politics on Thursday. And it is Martin O’Malley, not Elizabeth Warren, who is seriously considering challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

So why have political pundits come to the consensus that Elizabeth Warren is the only one who could give Hillary a run for her money in the Democratic primary? Perhaps it is O’Malley’s lack of name recognition. He is currently polling at around 0.3 percent in the Iowa Democratic Caucus, compared to Clinton’s 58 percent, and Warren’s 17 percent. But that number is increasing, and O’Malley received a warm reception in recent trips to New Hampshire and Iowa.

Via: Harvard Political Review

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Warren to Raise Money for Merkley in Oregon

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren is bringing her name and fundraising prowess to Oregon next week to help her fellow Democrat, Jeff Merkley. Politico Playbook reports:

Elizabeth Warren heading to Oregon to help Sen. Jeff Merkley fend off an unexpectedly tough challenge: The senator is flying to Portland next Wednesday for a "grassroots fundraiser." Republicans nominated pediatric neurosurgeon Monica Wehby in Tuesday's primary, who they think can put the state on the map. Democrats have sent Andrew Zucker to be Merkley's deputy campaign manager, reassigning him from Louisiana - where he's been assisting Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelect. He ran communications for Ed Markey in the Massachusetts special election last June to fill the seat opened by John Kerry's elevation to State.

Merkley appears weaker than expected for reelection. One recent NPR poll found a third of registered voters in Oregon had no opinion or did not know of him, while other polls showed him below 50 percent support. The new Republican nominee, Monica Wehby, is considered even by GOP strategists to be a dark horse to win. Oregon remains a strongly Democratic state, but two factors give Republicans some hope in pulling off a surprise win.

The first is that Merkley might be considered an "accidental" senator. In 2008, incumbent Republican Gordon Smith had a moderately conservative record with some libertarian tendencies, but his party affiliation cost him in a year dominated by George W. Bush fatigue and high Democratic turnout to support Barack Obama for president. Still, Merkley, then the speaker of the state house, only beat Smith by three percentage points. Merkley was also didn't win a majority, winning just under 49 percent of the vote. Oregon may look and feel like a Democratic lock, but in 2008, that Senate race was one of the most watched and competitive of the cycle.

The second is that the politics of Obamacare in Oregon do not favor anyone who supports it. The implementation of the law has been a disaster, with the state-run health insurance exchange having so many problems that the program's been shut down and rolled into the federal exchange. (The FBI has been investigating the exchange, called Cover Oregon, for malfeasance, and just yesterday the state's U.S. attorney subpoenaed records from Cover Oregon.) Merkley voted for Obamacare in 2010 and continues to support the law, saying as recently as this month that it has "a lot that's going right in Oregon." As a medical doctor and former board member at the American Medical Association, Wehby has an added benefit of authority on the subject of health care, which may dominate the campaign.

Via: Weekly Standard

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ELIZABETH WARREN: ALLOW POST OFFICE TO OFFER SMALL LOANS

 THEY CAN'T MAKE MONEY AT DELIVERING MAIL.  WHAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT THIS WILL SUCCEED.  IT'S THINKING LIKE THIS THAT THE USPS IS ON THE BRINK OF DISINTEGRATING BEFORE OUR EYES.

In November, the U.S. Postal Service reported it had a $5 billion loss for Fiscal Year 2013, its seventh consecutive year with loss. At the time, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe blamed Congress for the loss, citing an “inflexible business model.”

“We’ve achieved some excellent results for the year in terms of innovations, revenue gains, and cost reductions, but without major legislative changes we cannot overcome the limitations of our inflexible business model,” Donahoe said. “Congress is moving forward with legislation that has the potential to give us greater flexibility and put us back on a firm financial footing, and we strongly encourage that they continue moving forward.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), however, supports an idea that would expand the role of the U.S. Postal Service from just mail delivery to financial services as well. In an op-ed for the Huffington Post published Saturday, Warren cited an Office of the Inspector General report pointing out that 68 million Americans have no checking or savings account and rely on non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing to the tune of $89 billion in 2012.

Warren sees this as an area for the Postal Service to get a foothold in order to see some have access “to affordable and fair financial services.”

“[T]he OIG explored the possibility of the USPS offering basic banking services—bill paying, check cashing, small loans—to its customers,” Warren wrote. “With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don't have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.”

The senior Massachusetts senator argued for “nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing, and small dollar loans.” She says that countries that have instituted a similar system with the postal services have “seen their earnings increase dramatically.”

Via: Breitbart

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Populist wave, push from left keeps alive talk about Warren, not Clinton, in 2016

The widespread speculation this week on whether Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could upstage Hillary Clinton’s “coronation” as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee has rankled fellow party members but appears just fine with Republicans.

Republicans suggest that Warren, among the Senate’s most liberal or progressive members, could ride the recent populist wave and force Clinton further to the left -- or at least slow her juggernaut and improve their chances in 2016.

“We’d welcome Elizabeth Warren to the race,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski tells FoxNews.com. “It’s just another example of how Hillary will have a hard time making the sale within her own party, let alone the country.”

The election is three years away. And Clinton, widely popular in nearly all factions of the Democrat Party, already leads in practically every general election poll, resulting in widespread talk about the 2016 Democratic nomination essentially being a Clinton coronation, with no apparent unity among Republicans on who might emerge as their nominee.

The only outlier poll appears to be a Quinnipiac survey showing New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie leading the former first lady by 1 percentage point. But that was released in the immediate aftermath of Christie’s 20-point re-election victory. And he still faces questions about his conservative credentials in a primary expected -- like last year’s -- to be a conservative-vetting factory.

Via: Fox News Politics

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Hillary's Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren

We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.

Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.

Via: New Republic

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