Tag: GOP

Why climate change deniers mistrust hurricane forecasts too

The following article by Dino Grandoni was posted on the Washington Post website September 7, 2017:

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh speaking during a ceremony inducting him into the Hall of Famous Missourians in 2012. Credit: AP, Julie Smith, File

This week, one of the most popular radio hosts in the country issued a dire warning about Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm barreling its way through Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Though it could diverge from its predicted path, modeling from meteorologists says the storm will most likely crash into South Florida over the weekend.

The ominous warning from conservative fire starter Rush Limbaugh was this: Don’t trust those meteorologists.

On his daily syndicated radio show Tuesday, Limbaugh claimedthat forecasters and the media alike were overhyping the hurricane in a bid to juice retail sales at stores in South Florida.

“The reason that I am leery of forecasts this far out, folks,” Limbaugh said, “is because I see how the system works.”

Limbaugh went on to explain that this is a “symbiotic relationship.”

“The media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales,” he said, “and the TV companies benefit because they’re getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers.” Continue reading “Why climate change deniers mistrust hurricane forecasts too”

Why Republicans can’t govern

The following opinion column by syndicated columnist David Brooks was posted on the Seattle Times website July 23, 2017:

Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill. At a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline, Republicans offer nothing but negativity.

This artwork by Mark Weber refers to the GOP trying to pick up the pieces of their failed health care plan.

There are many different flavors of freedom. For example, there is freedom as capacity and freedom as detachment.

Freedom as capacity means supporting people so they have the ability to take advantage of life’s opportunities. You encourage your friend to stick with piano practice so he will have the freedom to really play. You support your child during high school so she will have the liberty to pick her favorite college.

Freedom as detachment is giving people space to do their own thing. It’s based on the belief that people flourish best when they are unimpeded as much as possible. Freedom as detachment is marked by absence — the absence of coercion, interference and obstacles. Continue reading “Why Republicans can’t govern”

Trump and GOP have it in for their own voters: Jason Sattler

The following article by James Sattler was posted on the USA Today website March 15, 2017:

Democrats can either wait their turn to punish them, or win some back with empathy.

Liberals who want to punish Trump voters need to get in line behind President Trump and the GOP.

The American Health Care Act introduced by House Republicans last week and swiftly endorsed by the White House appears to have been designed to hurt Trump voters — at least the vast majority of them who are older, live in rural areas and take in less than $250,000 a year in investment income. Continue reading “Trump and GOP have it in for their own voters: Jason Sattler”

Future cloudy for state parental leave benefit

The following article by Tim Pugmire was posted on the MPR website March 7, 2017:

State employees are urging Minnesota lawmakers to preserve their newly-acquired benefit of paid parental leave.

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton took administrative steps last year to grant six weeks of paid leave to about 32,000 state workers. But the benefit will soon go away unless the Republican-controlled Legislature approves it this session.

Minnesota Department of Health employee Blair Sevcik, who is currently on a paid leave, praised the benefit Tuesday during a state Capitol news conference organized by the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees. Continue reading “Future cloudy for state parental leave benefit”

5 Things The GOP Won’t Tell You About Obamacare

The following article by @LOLGOP was posted on the National Memo website February 1, 2017:

This article originally appeared in USA Today.

When it comes to repealing and replacing Obamacare, many have compared the GOP to the dog that caught the car, or the ambulance.

Republicans know better than anyone that Democrats paid a steep price for insuring millions of people. Now, after televised scenes of furious Americans rallying against repeal even before the new president took office, they’re beginning to see that uninsuring millions won’t be as much fun as slamming snout first into a bumper at full speed.

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Donald Trump told The Washington Post a few days before he was sworn in. Continue reading “5 Things The GOP Won’t Tell You About Obamacare”

From Nixon To Trump: Democracy and Indecency

The following article by Rick Perlstein was posted on the National Memo website December 2, 2016:

shutterstock_364331684-668x501This January marks my 20th anniversary writing about the American right wing as a historian and a journalist. Wearing my historian’s hat, I’ve documented lunatic John Birch Society members convinced that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”; underground militias stockpiling guns against imminent Communist invasion, threatening death to congressmen who dared abet the evil socialist agenda; drunken louts in a Queens, New York, bar describing Richard Nixon’s impeachment as a liberal coup, opining, “If I was Nixon, that’s what I’d do—I’d shoot every one of them.” I stroked my chin, and explained how such maniacal, anti-democratic, and violently anarchic rage had always been part of the story, though really only at the margins of the American conservative movement.

At the same time, as a citizen and as a journalist, I documented that margin encroaching on the center, until, with Donald Trump’s apotheosis, it seems now to have consumed the entire damned thing.

Let’s look at the score. Continue reading “From Nixon To Trump: Democracy and Indecency”

‘Browning Of America’ Is Tearing The GOP Apart

The following article by Cynthia Tucker Haynes appears on the National Memo website February 20, 2016:

Pope_Francis_1_at_the_Wednesday_General_Audience_in_St_Peters_Square_on_June_24_2015_Credit_Daniel_Ibanez_CNA_6_24_15Before Pope Francis spoke a single word at the Mexican border, Donald Trump had — quite predictably — denounced the pontiff’s message. The real estate mogul and former reality-TV star has built his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination on an ugly nativism, so the moment was tailor-made for him.

The counter-messaging only escalated after the pontiff told reporters that anyone who wants to build a border wall, as Trump has infamously proposed, “is not Christian.” That prompted a retort from Trump, of course: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said.
(If the pontiff’s remarks were recorded correctly, he didn’t say Trump isn’t “a” Christian. In other words, he didn’t question the faith to which Trump ascribes; rather, the pope described Trump’s behavior as failing to follow Christian principles.) Continue reading “‘Browning Of America’ Is Tearing The GOP Apart”