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Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina told a packed audience that a huge, complex and sometimes corrupt government was “crushing the potential” of Americans.
“That is not hyperbole,” she said. “That is fact.”…
By Kyle Smith
May 30, 2015 | 2:05pm
Big news coming from Donald Trump. Big. Uuuuge. I have the news before anyone else. Donald Trump is running for president.
When Trump declared to the Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner that he is going to make an announcement in June that’s “going to surprise a lot of people,” he wasn’t preparing to launch his long-awaited candidacy. He was simply doing what he always does: Promote the Donald. Generate headlines. Get people talking.
His June announcement is guaranteed to raise all of the excitement of such previous bids for publicity as “Donald Trump Announces Men’s Fragrance” (March 24), “Donald Trump Announces Phil Mickelson Villa at Trump National Doral” (March 5), “Donald Trump Announces Florida International University as new Home for Miss Universe” (Dec. 11) and the game-changing, envelope-pushing, earth’s-orbit-reversing, “Donald Trump Announces Partnership with Prestwick Airport” (Nov. 14).
By H.A. Goodman
There’s a myth among Hillary Clinton supporters that decades of experience has made the former secretary of state the most pragmatic choice for president in 2016. And like most fairy tales, it conveniently glosses over the heroine’s flaws: her 31,000-plus missing emails (the subject of a lawsuit by the Associated Press), questions about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, and direct donations to Ms. Clinton from big banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.
But there is an alternative. Rather than rallying around someone who can’t seem to elude perpetual media scrutiny, the person all Democrats should pay close attention to is former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley who is poised to officially join the race Saturday. The former Baltimore mayor and two-term governor offers a genuine alternative to the status quo within Washington and a real threat to any GOP challenger — especially Jeb Bush.
Mr. O’Malley, unlike Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, isn’t linked to perpetual scandal and criticism, nor is he beholden to foreign donors, investment banks or a family surname. He rightfully stated that the presidency isn’t “some crown to be passed between two families” and compared to Ms. Clinton, Mr. O’Malley offers a genuinely progressive outlook on American politics. When both candidates are analyzed, it’s apparent that one caters to poll-driven centrism while the other is far more confident in a progressive vision for America.
Who is running for president in 2016?
While Ms. Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq, Mr. O’Malley has been a longtime critic of the Iraq War. As governor, Mr. O’Malley sponsored and signed a same-sex marriage bill when Hillary Clinton was overtly against gay marriage. He also signed a marijuana decriminalization bill, while Ms. Clinton has said she was against the decriminalization of marijuana. Martin O’Malley wants to bring back Glass-Steagall, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership a “bad trade deal,” and urged the Senate in 2014 to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, once referred to TPP as “the gold standard in trade agreements,”and she still hasn’t taken a stance on the Keystone XL pipeline.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-choose-omalley-20150529-story.html
Posted by admin On May 28, 2015 1 Comment
By The Staff | The Save Jersey Blog
No more than mere weeks away from an anticipated presidential campaign launch, Governor Chris Christie’s long retreat from Common Core just reached the next level Thursday afternoon during remarks on New Jersey academic standards at the Burlington County College’s Geraldine Clinton Little Theatre in Pemberton.
“It’s now been five years since Common Core was adopted,” the Governor declared in prepared remarks. “And the truth is that it’s simply not working. It has brought only confusion and frustration to our parents. And has brought distance between our teachers and the communities where they work. Instead of solving problems in our classrooms, it is creating new ones. And when we aren’t getting the job done for our children, we need to do something different.”
https://savejersey.com/2015/05/christie-abandons-common-core-its-simply-not-working/
by IAN HANCHETT
27 May 2015395
Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina argued that “titles are just titles” and Hillary Clinton’s “track record” includes the collapse of the Middle East and the failed Russian reset on Wednesday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC.
Fiorina said, “I come from a world where titles are just titles, and talk is just talk. It’s only in politics where titles and words mean a lot. In the rest of the world, it’s actually about what have you done, actions speak louder than words. People want to know are your words and your actions consistent and are they consistent over time. And so, I think when 82% of the American people now believe that there is a professional political class more interested in preserving its own power and privilege than it is in serving the American people, people expect basic questions to be asked of anyone running for president. ‘What have you done, are you trustworthy, are you transparent, will you answer questions?’”
Fiorina said that while Hillary Clinton has said some “wonderful things” as Secretary of State, “it’s also true that as Secretary of State she took women’s rights and human rights off the table for discussion with China. It’s also true as Secretary of State that she called Bashar al-Assad a positive reformer. It’s also true that in 2011, when she was Secretary of State, she said that Iraq was a free, stable, sovereign nation. And now we have a nation falling apart, Iranian influence growing, ISIS growing. It’s true that she said that she could reset our Russia — our relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin is on the march. So, I think all of those things I just named go fundamentally to what is her track record.”
MAY 27, 2015
Peter Wehner
AMONG liberals, it’s almost universally assumed that of the two major parties, it’s the Republicans who have become more extreme over the years. That’s a self-flattering but false narrative.
This is not to say the Republican Party hasn’t become a more conservative party. It has. But in the last two decades the Democratic Party has moved substantially further to the left than the Republican Party has shifted to the right. On most major issues the Republican Party hasn’t moved very much from where it was during the Gingrich era in the mid-1990s.
To see just how far the Democratic Party has moved to the left, compare Barack Obama with Bill Clinton. In 1992, Mr. Clinton ran as a centrist New Democrat. In several respects he governed as one as well. He endorsed a sentencing policy of “three strikes and you’re out,” and he proposed adding 100,000 police officers to the streets.
In contrast, President Obama’s former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., criticized what he called “widespread incarceration” and championed the first decrease in the federal prison population in more than three decades. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has chosen to focus on police abuses.
One of the crowning legislative achievements under Mr. Clinton was welfare reform. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, loosened welfare-to-work requirements. Mr. Obama is more liberal than Mr. Clinton was on gay rights, religious liberties, abortion rights, drug legalization and climate change. He has focused far more attention on income inequality than did Mr. Clinton, who stressed opportunity and mobility. While Mr. Clinton ended one entitlement program (Aid to Families With Dependent Children), Mr. Obama is responsible for creating the Affordable Care Act, the largest new entitlement since the Great Society. He is the first president to essentially nationalize health care.
Mr. Clinton lowered the capital-gains tax rate; Mr. Obama has proposed raising it. Mr. Clinton cut spending and produced a surplus. Under Mr. Obama, spending and the deficit reached record levels. In foreign policy, Mr. Obama has shown himself to be far more critical of traditional allies and more supine toward our adversaries than Mr. Clinton was. Mr. Obama has often acted as if American strength is a problem to which the solution is retrenchment, or even retreat.
Another bellwether: Hillary Rodham Clinton, in positioning herself for the 2016 election, is decidedly more liberal than she and her husband once were on illegal immigration, gay marriage and incarceration. She has called to “end the era of mass incarceration” and spoken about the importance of “toppling” the wealthiest 1 percent. She has remained noncommittal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that has drawn ire from the left.
The Democratic Party, then, has moved steadily to the left since the Clinton presidency. In fact, since his re-election, Mr. Obama’s inner progressive has been liberated. (An exception is the administration’s conditional approval of oil drilling off the Alaskan coast, starting this summer.) Other examples are his executive action granting temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, his claim that gay marriage is a constitutional right, and his veto of legislation authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger May 21 at 9:53 PM
The Clinton Foundation reported Thursday that it has received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups.
The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign.
The money was paid as fees for speeches by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Foundation officials said the funds were tallied internally as “revenue” rather than donations, which is why they had not been included in the public listings of its contributors published as part of the 2008 agreement.
According to the new information, the Clintons have delivered 97 speeches to benefit the charity since 2002. Colleges and universities sponsored more than two dozen of these speeches, along with U.S. and overseas corporations and at least one foreign government, Thailand.
The payments were disclosed late Thursday on the organization’s Web site, with speech payments listed in ranges rather than specific amounts. In total, the payments ranged between $12 million and $26.4 million.
By Mark Preston, CNN
Updated 3:41 PM ET, Wed May 20, 2015
Washington (CNN)Martin O’Malley is expected to emphasize his “youthfulness,” and a less scripted, more accessible presidential campaign, as a way to help contrast his candidacy with Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, an O’Malley confidante tells CNN.
“We do think there is a real generational argument to make and that he can seize upon it,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
O’Malley, 52, announced Tuesday on two social media platforms, Snapchat and Twitter, that he would make a “special announcement” on May 30 in Baltimore — when he is widely believed to formally enter the 2016 contest. Clinton, the former Secretary of State and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are already in the race for the Democratic nomination.
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTMAY 18, 2015
When the Clintons last occupied the White House, Sidney Blumenthal cast himself in varied roles: speechwriter, in-house intellectual and press corps whisperer. Republicans added another, accusing Mr. Blumenthal of spreading gossip to discredit Republican investigators, and forced him to testify during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton embarks on her second presidential bid, Mr. Blumenthal’s service to the Clintons is again under the spotlight. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.
Mr. Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a series of memos that Mr. Blumenthal — who was not an employee of the State Department — wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. According to emails obtained by The New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.
But an examination by The Times suggests that Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement was more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known, embodying the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for years.
By Bernie Quigley, contributor
It must be said that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) had a not-so-good week there toward the end, waffling on Iraq. “Jell-O,” said The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank (and “afraid of his shadow and nakedly calculating”). “GOP lawmakers flabbergasted,” said The Hill. “Does Jeb Bush even really want to be US president?” asked The Telegraph.
Possibly not. But coincidentally, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney had a very good day on Friday, there in the ring bare-chested — his shirt ripped off him — going mano-a-mano, as Ernest Hemingway liked to say, against the great and good former undisputed world champion Evander Holyfield. And was there ever a better sport than Romney for accepting that challenge?
Holyfield and Romney’s Charity Vision fight may have suddenly jogged a collective shift away from a long, painful conservative brain freeze. Conservatives, said Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), are experiencing Bush fatigue. But this is the question which will now be quietly, surreptitiously asked, and asked with increased anxiety: If we are finally tiring of Bushes and Clintons and the old irrelevant families, are we not still just getting used to Romney? Does America maybe just need Mitt Romney?
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/242400-does-america-need-mitt-romney
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Jets Flight Crew Cheerleaders watch a Jets game from owner Woody Johnson’s private box in December 2014.Photo: Michael Simon/startraksphoto.com
Sorry I missed the party !
By Chris Perez
May 11, 2015 | 12:16pm
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Jets Flight Crew Cheerleaders watch a Jets game from owner Woody Johnson’s private box in December 2014.Photo: Michael Simon/startraksphoto.com
Chris Christie shelled out $300,000 on food, alcohol and desserts during his five years as New Jersey governor — more than 80 percent of his state allowance, a report said.
The 52-year-old’s most noteworthy spending sprees came during Giants and Jets games at MetLife Stadium in 2010 and 2011, according to a New Jersey Watchdog analysis of records released by the governor’s office on Monday.
Christie racked up $82,594 in concessions, which were paid for by debit card to Delaware North Sportservice. But the menu remains a mystery because the governor’s office did not provide any receipts, business reasons or names of individuals who were joining in on the feast, Watchdog reports.
“The official nature and business purpose of the event remains the case regardless of whether the event is at the State House, Drumthwacket or a sporting venue,” Christie press secretary Kevin Roberts explained in a prepared statement.
In the attempt to avoid a potential scandal which could shatter Christie’s dreams of becoming president, the New Jersey Republican State Committee chose to reimburse purchases from “DNS Sports” to the state Treasury in March 2012. The governor has stopped using his expense account at MetLife ever since.
On Monday, Christie’s camp was quick to explain the alleged spending — claiming he never made any purchases for his own use.
A federal judge has agreed to reopen a lawsuit that seeks access to emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server.
The federal judge’s decision marks the first time a court has taken action in the email scandal.
Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the particulars behind the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this morning.
Judicial Watch and the State Department – usually on opposite sides in these types of cases – are actually in agreement, with both asking Judge Reggie B. Walton for the documents to be turned over.
Napolitano called Walton a “tough cookie” and “probably the last judge in Washington, D.C., [Clinton] wanted this issue to be in front of.”
He said that the State Department consented to the request because they have been “embarrassed” by their lack of access to Clinton’s emails.
The court had previously dismissed Judicial Watch’s request, thinking the documents did not exist.
BY LESLEY CLARK
McClatchy Washington BureauMay 9, 2015 Updated 15 minutes ago
LYNCHBURG, VA. — Looking to win over skeptical evangelical voters, Jeb Bush pushed back Saturday against what he said are modern intrusions on religion as he lauded graduates and their families at Liberty University, a Christian college popular on the path to the Republican presidential nomination.
“Fashionable ideas and opinions – which these days can be a religion all by itself – have got a problem with Christians and their right of conscience,” Bush told an audience of 34,000 in the school’s football stadium.
“That makes it our problem, and the proper response is a forthright defense of the first freedom in our Constitution.”
Some evangelicals view Bush warily, questioning whether the former Florida governor and likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination would provide a suitable bulwark against gay marriage, illegal immigration and other issues key to conservatives.
Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/05/09/266130/bush-courts-evangelicals-defends.html#storylink=cpy
May 7, 2015 11:00 AM EDT
Republican donors are counting on the 21-year-old to energize voters.
Charlie Kirk was just about to leave the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa when he spotted the multimillionaire investor Foster Friess in a stairwell. Kirk, who was 18 and fresh out of high school, had spent weeks memorizing the names and faces of the top 25 Republican political donors in case he found himself in just such a situation. He grabbed Friess into a handshake, took a nervous breath, and began his elevator pitch. Instead of going to college, he wanted to start a grass-roots organization to rival liberal groups such as MoveOn.org, which offer Democratic candidates a standing army of volunteer activists. All he needed, Kirk told Friess, was cash. Friess, who’d just blown $2.1 million on a failed quest to help Rick Santorum win the GOP presidential nomination, handed over his business card. Three weeks later, Kirk had a five-figure check. “He impressed me with his capacity to lead, intelligence, and love for America,” Friess says. “I instantly knew I wanted to support him.”
In the three years since, Kirk—who still sleeps in his childhood bedroom in Wheeling, Ill.—has built his organization, Turning Point USA, into the go-to group for reaching young conservatives. It has a presence on 800 college campuses, where fieldworkers hand out posters and collect e-mail addresses. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February, the group hosted an event featuring Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, who have each since announced they’re running for president. On May 8, Paul was scheduled to speak at a Turning Point rally at Arizona State University, and Carly Fiorina is on deck to speak in June at a Turning Point conference for women in Chicago. Kirk says he’s met candidate Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is considering a presidential run.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/conservative-boy-wonder
By Mario Trujillo – 05/05/15 03:43 PM EDT
The next U.S. president needs a fundamental understanding of technology and a vision to use it, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday.
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO said the next inhabitant of the White House also needs to know when to take a hands-off approach.
“It’s important to have someone in the White House who has a fundamental understanding of technology, a fundamental vision for how technology can be used,” she said at Tech Crunch Disrupt in New York.
“One of the things I think government shouldn’t be doing is trying to regulate in some bureaucracy how innovation progresses in the technology industry,” she added.
Fiorina announced her bid for the White House on Monday with low poll numbers in what appears will be a crowded Republican field. She previously ran for the U.S. Senate in California but has never held elected office.
