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Doomed to Deja Vu

Ruben Bolling
© Ruben Bolling

Will we ever learn?

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Late Night Political Humor

“We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in New York City, and temperatures are supposed to be in the 90s for the next several days. In fact Donald Trump was so mad about the weather, he actually gave away Al Roker’s personal phone number.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump is still leading all Republican candidates for president. A new Quinnipiac University poll, which of all the major polls is the hardest to say, has Donald Trump ahead.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“While Donald Trump leads the Republican field by a wide margin right now, he seems to be unelectable. The same poll shows him losing to Hillary Clinton by 12 points. Losing to Joe Biden by 12 points. Losing by 8 points to Bernie Sanders. He’s 5 points behind Bill Cosby.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Trump said if his presidential campaign fails, he will ‘ride into the sunset’. And if Donald Trump WINS the presidency, Hillary says she’s gonna ride off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.” – Jimmy Fallon

“You hear less about Hillary Clinton, she’s not giving a lot of interviews because I think she’s looking at everyone else who’s running for president, and she’s thinking, ‘If I keep my mouth shut, I think I’ve got this thing.'” – Seth Meyers

“Hillary Clinton revealed today she thinks her biggest weakness is her impatience. Said the interviewer, ‘Mrs. Clinton, I haven’t asked you anything yet.'” – Seth Meyers

“Hillary also said today that her greatest strength is her passionate commitment to helping people. For instance, there was that time in 2008 when she helped a young black man from Chicago become president.” – Seth Meyers

“I saw that the D.C. newspaper The Hill published its annual list of the 50 most beautiful people in politics yesterday. And once again, it only had five people on it.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore officially announced his campaign yesterday, bringing the total number of Republican candidates to 17. Here’s how I know that’s too many: If I saw 17 people in line for the BATHROOM, I’d be like, ‘NOPE! I’ll hold it until 2020.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“This isn’t good. Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania could face up to 100 years in jail, after he was charged with several counts of corruption. Which would explain Chaka’s new name: Chaka Con.” – Jimmy Fallon

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The Cold War is Over

Today, three former Marines, the same men who lowered the American flag for the last time in Havana in 1961, raised the flag for the first time in 54 years in Cuba. The final remnant of the Cold War is gone, and good riddance.

Now we just have to end the stupid US embargo, which has never worked and just made things worse. But with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio attacking the normalization of relations with Cuba using their best Cold War rhetoric, I’m not holding my breath that the Republican-controlled Congress will end the embargo any time soon.

My belief is that if we had given up the embargo a long time ago, the Castro brothers would have been out of power soon afterward.

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Well Oiled

The price of oil just dropped to a 6 year low, $43.08 a barrel. This was caused by a surge in output. Much of the added output was from Iran, and was made possible by the expected approval of the proposed nuclear deal.

Sanctions have long restricted Iran’s allowed oil output. So Republicans opposing the Iran nuclear deal will directly hurt your pocketbook. And these are the same Republicans who want the US to drill drill drill for oil – whether it is shale oil that is polluting our water sources, or offshore causing massive oil spills – to keep oil prices low.

One hopes that even if the US doesn’t approve the deal, virtually every other country will. So Iran will be able to pump even more oil, keeping energy prices down.

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Late Night Political Humor

“It seems like every day, another candidate comes out of the woodwork. In fact this week, a man from Iowa whose actual legal name is Deez Nuts, announced that he is running for president. Then Americans looked at the other candidates and said, ‘He can’t be worse than DOZE nuts.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump said yesterday that he would love to have Sarah Palin in his administration because she is somebody who knows what’s happening. Said Sarah Palin, ‘Trump’s running for president? When did that happen?'” – Seth Meyers

“Donald Trump — there are still 15 months to go in this election, he was all over the news again today. He’s on everything all the time. I don’t know how he’s going to keep up this pace. Donald Trump has reached a saturation level that is nothing short of Kardashian-esque.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Chris Christie said yesterday if he’s elected, he’ll fight against legalized marijuana, so Colorado and Washington residents had better, quote, ‘Smoke that pot now.’ Colorado and Washington residents said, ‘OK. That was the plan all along. Are you guys trying to trick us? Hey, if you’re a cop, you have to tell us. You’re eating doughnuts.'” – Seth Meyers

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Haters Gotta Monger

Who are the people arguing against the Iran nuclear deal? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton. US Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer.

What do all these people have in common? They all passionately supported the US invasion of Iraq. At least they are consistent, even if it is consistently wrong.

Oh, and former Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman. Lieberman just took a job with United Against Nuclear Iran. The job is to “educate and inform the American public regarding the serious shortcomings of the Iran nuclear deal.” Lieberman got the job because Gary Samore had to step down. Why? According to the group’s CEO “While concerned with many provisions of the Iran deal, Gary ultimately supports the agreement and is stepping down to avoid any conflict with UANI’s work in opposition to the agreement.”

Bonus points if anyone can come up with any US politician who is against the Iran deal, who did not vote for or was vocally against the invasion of Iraq.

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Sporting Chance

John Oliver on corporate welfare of the worst kind:

And the biggest hypocrite of all is presidential candidate Scott Walker, who claims to be a fiscal conservative (he’s famous for his union busting tactics and for deep cuts to the state university system). Walker just gave away $450 million of taxpayer money to build a new stadium for the Milwaukee Bucks, a team owned by a pair of billionaire hedge fund managers who don’t even live in Wisconsin (they are from NY). And the state won’t retain any ownership or income rights for the stadium, so this is outright corporate welfare. Even worse, Walker joined the push to fund the stadium after an investor in the Bucks made a $150,000 donation to Walker’s presidential PAC.

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Fraud

Kansas wants you to know that they are really really concerned about election fraud. After all, they want to make sure that only the white right people vote.

If you have been following along, Kansas first passed a law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. But federal law requires states to accept the federal voter registration form for federal elections, and the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require proof of citizenship to vote using the federal form.

Kansas weaseled around this requirement by accepting the federal form, but only for federal elections. If the voter wants to vote in state elections, then they have to use a separate form (which of course requires proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate).

Then things got hypocritical. Kansas filed a lawsuit claiming that their registration system with two different forms – the state one requiring proof of citizenship and the federal one not – which they themselves had created, was too complicated, and the federal government should allow them to require proof of citizenship for all elections. This went all the way to the Supreme Court, which turned them down.

Kansas then created a website that allows anyone (you don’t have to be a resident of Kansas, or even the US) to report incidents of voter fraud. The website has a long list of the kinds of voter fraud that anyone can report, except that it doesn’t have a way to report the only kind of voter fraud that has actually happened on a regular basis in Kansas. Like the time in 2010 when voters in Kansas received an automated phone call telling them that they needed proof of home ownership in order to vote, and then reminded them to vote — on the day after the actual election. Other similar schemes have used official looking forms that tell people where to vote, and send them to the wrong place.

But here’s the punchline. Not too long ago, mathematician Beth Clarkson at Wichita State University found significant evidence that actual vote results had been tampered with in the last state election. You could be excused if you thought the state would want to investigate this. Luckily for Clarkson, one county had voting machines that print a paper trail of the votes (without identifying the voter). These could easily be used to verify whether fraud had been committed, but the county (and state) blocked her. So she filed a lawsuit to allow her to conduct an audit. Under state law, election officials have 30 days to respond to such a lawsuit, but neither the county election commissioner nor the secretary of state responded, later saying that they weren’t aware that they had received any summons.

And that’s how Kansas protects the sanctity of the vote. Laws that make it harder for minorities to vote, they fight like crazy to enforce those. Actual and extremely likely widespread election fraud, they fight like crazy to avoid any investigation.

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Late Night Political Humor

“I saw that Donald Trump is selling his penthouse suite at the Trump Park Avenue building here in New York City for $21 million. When asked why he’s selling it now, Trump said ‘Hey, Americans seem to be buying everything else I’m selling, so why not strike while the iron’s hot.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Three of Donald Trump’s kids have come forward to defend him, and called him ‘an incredible dad and role model’. Donald was so moved that he wrote one of them back into his will. ‘I’m not gonna tell you which one … it’s Donald Jr.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“In several speeches and interviews, Donald Trump has brought up his book ‘The Art of the Deal’, and said that Obama would have negotiated a better deal with Iran if he had read it. It got even more awkward for Obama when Iran was like, ‘It worked for us — you guys got screwed!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“A New York man was arrested Friday for driving an ice cream truck intoxicated wearing only underwear and yelling at children. So on the down side, he was arrested. But, on the up side, he is the Republican front-runner.” – Seth Meyers

“Yesterday, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced they’re withdrawing Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. We have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic Games. The only thing they support is throwing beer bottles at Yankees fans.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“The USOC has to come up with another city from the United States to bid against Paris, Rome, and Toronto, and most people think that city will be Los Angeles — which is exciting. The summer Olympics could bring some much-needed traffic to the L.A. area.” – Jimmy Kimmel

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Out of Step with the World

It is not ironic that the Republicans oppose Obama’s deal with Iran – the deal that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions against them. After all, not only do Republicans automatically oppose virtually everything Obama does, they seem to really like starting wars in the Middle East.

What is ironic about it is how virtually the entire rest of the world is strongly in favor of this deal, with the notable exception of Israel.

This is not just a deal between the US and Iran. It was negotiated by the US, France, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and China. Getting those countries to agree to anything is pretty amazing, and their support of the deal is very strong.

Germany in particular says that if Congress derails the Iran nuclear deal, “It would be a nightmare… a catastrophe.” A top German official says that rejection would empower hardliners in Tehran who insist the US cannot be trusted. “These people will say it’s useless to negotiate.”

But wait, there’s more! The ambassadors from China and Russia have lobbied Congress on behalf of the agreement, which is notable given poor US relations with those countries. Officials from the five negotiating partners of the US met with 25 Democratic senators to promote the deal.

What about the rest of the world?

Advancing the administration’s argument that virtually the entire world supports the deal, fifteen Asian countries — including Japan, India, Indonesian, Australia and South Korea — issued a statement this week calling the deal an “important resolution” of the Iran nuclear issue that will “ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”

I can’t help but wonder why Israel is so against this agreement. Do they just have some crazy siege mentality? Are they just uninterested in peace? Or does the current Israeli government think that having perpetual war will keep them in power?

Unfortunately, Israel and the GOP just seem to be pissing off the rest of the world, including their best friends.

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Don’t Do As I Do, Part 3

After Donald Trumps offensive comments toward Megyn Kelly during and after the GOP debate, Erick Erickson (editor of RedState and a Fox News contributor) uninvited Trump to the upcoming RedState Gathering, where Trump was scheduled to be the keynote speaker.

Erickson said that “there are even lines blunt talkers and unprofessional politicians should not cross. Decency is one of those lines.” and “As much as I do personally like Donald Trump, his comment about Megyn Kelly on CNN is a bridge too far for me.”

There’s just one problem with this. Erickson himself is a prominent sexist who has publicly said many things just as bad as what he is angry at Trump for saying. Heck, Erickson has even taunted men who defend women, so shouldn’t he be tweeting some disparaging remarks about himself. I won’t repeat the sexist things Erickson has said, because there are so many of them, but Vox Politics has collected a number of them from various sources.

So if overt sexism is not the reason Trump was uninvited, I can only speculate what the real reasons are.

One last thought. Does anyone else find it suspicious that all of the people involved in this controversy are either current or former Fox News employees? I would be suspicious if I could see any benefit to them to create this controversy.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Tom Cruise is here to promote the new ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie, which I believe is all about Donald Trump’s PR team.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump said this weekend that he is self-financing his campaign and is not beholden to donors and special interests. Or other nations. Or his party. Or the wealthy, or middle class, poor people, citizens or voters, humans, plants, animals…” – Seth Meyers

“According to multiple new polls, Donald Trump is still leading the field of Republican candidates for president, which I have to say is all going to be very funny until the White House is covered in gold paint.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“In a speech in Texas, Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton ‘easily the worst Secretary of State in the history of our country.’ When asked what he based that on, Trump said, ‘I heard ME say it just now. So it’s gotta be true.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“A CNN poll has Trump with 18 percent, ahead of Jeb Bush in second place with 15 percent. This is how we do things now. We find our spouses on ‘The Bachelorette’ and our presidents on ‘The Apprentice’.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Chris Christie attended the Italian-American Heritage Festival street fair in Iowa this weekend, where they celebrated Italian culture and Italian food. The street fair involved two of Christie’s favorite pastimes – eating, and shutting down traffic. It’s a combo platter.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Chris Christie attended an Italian-American Heritage Festival where vendors served him a lot of Italian food, including bacon-wrapped dates. Which was also Christie’s prom fantasy in high school. ‘Want to go to prom with me? Can I wrap you in bacon?'” – Jimmy Fallon

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo today announced a new plan to improve LaGuardia Airport. That’s right, they’re going to burn it down.” – Seth Meyers

“Time magazine interviewed Bill Clinton about the current presidential campaign, and he claimed he had to ask Hillary to marry him three times before she said yes. Then Hillary was like, ‘Yeah. That wasn’t me.'” – Jimmy Fallon

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Don’t Do As I Do, Part 2

On Thursday, 80 CEOs of big corporations published a statement pushing Congress to reduce the deficit. Unfortunately, they published it in the Wall Street Journal, so you have to be someone with a subscription in order to read it (how apropos!). To their credit, they encourage not just more spending cuts, but also higher tax revenue, however their letter is short on specifics other than saying that we need to “reform” Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, with both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans who abhor tax increases, it is hard to imagine seeing any tax increases in our near future.

So what’s the purpose of this letter? I don’t know. To pretend to care?

The really hypocritical part – pointed out by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – is that the list of CEOs who published the statement includes people who helped create the current deficit by wrecking the economy, and continue to do so by lobbying for tax loopholes for big corporations.

This includes CEOs of corporations that used offshore tax havens to avoid US taxes: Bank of America – $2.6 billion; Goldman Sachs – $2.7 billion; JP Morgan Chase – $4.9 billion; Microsoft – $19.4 billion; Qualcomm – $4.7 billion; Tenneco – $269 million; and others.

Others moved jobs overseas (like GE – 25,000 jobs; Boeing – 57,000 jobs; Verizon – 13,000 jobs), not only reducing tax revenues from displaced US workers, but forcing workers to receive unemployment insurance and other federal benefits.

Still others managed to pay zero in taxes in 2010: Bank of America, which received a $1.9 billion tax refund; GE, which received a refund of $3.3 billion; Verizon, which received $705 million; Boeing, $124 million; and others.

A few even received massive taxpayer bailouts: Bank of America – $1.9 billion; Goldman Sachs – $824 billion; JP Morgan Chase – $416 billion; GE – $16 billion.

All told, since 2008 these 80 companies evaded at least $34 billion in taxes by setting up more than 600 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, a dozen of them avoided paying any corporate taxes at all and instead received $6.4 billion in tax refunds, and received taxpayer bailouts of over $2.5 trillion (yes, that’s Trillion).

As Sanders puts it:

There really is no shame. The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.

Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax havens and outsourcing provisions that their lobbyists have littered throughout the tax code – contributing greatly to our deficit.

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Don’t Do As I Do

I know we all have a short attention span, but surely you remember two years ago when Republicans claimed that Obama was using the IRS as a political weapon against conservative groups. That “scandal” lasted about a week, and an investigation by the IRS Inspector General turned up absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing, and certainly no pressure from the White House to investigate conservative groups.

Personally, I feel like the GOP outrage was so strong because there are conservative groups that really had been abusing their tax exempt status. So they were just preemptively accusing any potential investigations of being political witch hunts.

But it doesn’t end there.

First, let me remind you that there is solid evidence that Richard Nixon used the IRS as a political weapon against his enemies. That’s one of the main reasons he would have been impeached if he had not resigned. This may be “old” news, but I just want to establish that this is an impeachable offense.

Which brings us to yesterday’s Republican debate. No, not the one with Trump in it. The one before that, where Governor Bobby Jindal said the following:

Planned Parenthood had better hope that Hillary Clinton wins this election, because I guarantee under President Jindal, January 2017, the Department of Justice and the IRS and everybody else that we can send from the federal government will be going in to Planned Parenthood.

That’s right, a Republican candidate for president just promised to commit an illegal and impeachable offense – using the IRS to target Planned Parenthood because he doesn’t like them – one that Republicans hypocritically accused the Obama administration of committing and which a Republican president actually did commit.

And Jindal is supposedly one of the smarter GOP candidates.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Donald Trump has been all over the news this week, but he’s still struggling to be seen as a legitimate candidate by Republicans. In fact, now Trump is threatening to start campaigning as a third-party candidate if the Republican Party doesn’t become more supportive. Of course, a lot of Republicans say you need to give respect to get respect. To which Trump says, ‘Whatever, LOSERS!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Today Trump went to Texas to visit the border between the U.S. and Mexico. And when he got there, other Republicans pushed him over the border and went, ‘Your problem now! You gotta deal with this guy! He’s on your side!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“The FEC released Donald Trump’s financial disclosure yesterday, and it revealed that he received royalties of less than 200 dollars for most of his books. The bad news is, the books aren’t selling; but the GOOD news is – looks like he’s got something to build that Mexican fence with! ‘It’s a very classy book-fence!'” – Jimmy Fallon

“One GOP Congressman named Carlos Curbelo actually suggested that Donald Trump may be a ‘phantom candidate’ that has been planted by the Democrats. The DNC strongly denied this – while Hillary said, ‘Crap, they figured it out! Take off the wig, Bill.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Presidential hopeful Rick Perry yesterday accused Donald Trump of ‘demagoguery,’ and said that he must be ‘excised and discarded.’ So one thing is clear: somebody got Rick Perry a word-of-the-day calendar.” – Seth Meyers

“Republican candidate George Pataki said his dogs would give him the best endorsement for becoming our next president. Until they hear Chris Christie always carries bacon in his pockets. (Joke’s on them, though, he’s never going to give them any of that pocket bacon. It’s what gets him through long meetings!)” – Jimmy Fallon

“Republican candidate Ben Carson told reporters he thinks American prisons might be too comfortable. As opposed to Mexican prisons that have personal showers with $5 million escape tunnels. “– Jimmy Fallon

“A new poll also shows that a majority of people in Colorado think Hillary Clinton is not trustworthy. Although, that’s not saying much coming from the most paranoid state in America. ‘Hillary Clinton? She’s a cop?'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Sources say the Obama administration is in the ‘final stages’ of planning the closing of Guantanamo Bay. The way it’s gonna work is, they’re going to put a Radio Shack sign out front and let nature take its course.” – Jimmy Fallon

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