Watch this video and see how ridiculous it is, to oppose a wall. Democrat’s are not on your side, rise up and oppose. You need to keep your borders safe.
Category: Politics
-
Just Build The Damn WALL!
-
Police have killed at least 2,611 people since Ferguson
Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and Freddie Gray are just three of at least 2,611 people killed by police since August 9, 2014, the day of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.
Fatal Encounters, a nonprofit, has tracked these killings by collecting reports from the media, public, and law enforcement and verifying them through news reports. Some of the data is incomplete, with details about a victim’s race, age, and other factors sometimes missing. It also includes killings that were potentially legally justified, and is likely missing some killings entirely.
Vox’s Soo Oh created an interactive map with data from Fatal Encounters. It shows some of the killings by law enforcement since the Brown shooting:
A huge majority of the 2,611 deaths on the map are from gunshots, which is hardly surprising given that guns are so deadly compared with other tools used by police. There are also a lot of noticeable fatalities from vehicle crashes, stun guns, and asphyxiations. In some cases, people died from stab wounds, medical emergencies, and what’s called “suicide by cop,” when people kill themselves by baiting a police officer into using deadly force.
The FBI already collects some of this data from local and state agencies, but as Vox’s Dara Lind explained, that data is very limited. Reporting homicides for participating agencies is mandatory, but reporting the circumstances of homicides is not. So we might know that thousands of people die in a certain state, but we won’t always know why those homicides happened and whether they involved police. Participation in the FBI reporting programs is also voluntary, making the number of reported homicides in the federal data at best a minimum of what’s going on across the country.
Since the historical data is so bad, it’s hard to gauge whether these types of killings are becoming more common. But the Fatal Encounters database is much more complete than the FBI figures, giving perhaps the best context we have for the wide range of police use of force — especially as the issue continues to capture national attention in the aftermath of Brown’s death.
via : Vox – Policy & Politics
-
Adele reprimands Donald Trump campaign for using her music without permission
It’s been a rough couple of days for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. In addition to that whole Iowa caucus thing, Trump has continued having difficulty finding a theme song for his campaign, with countless musicians having pulled their music, reports BBC.Trump had recently taken to playing Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” as his “warm-up” music. But not any longer.
“Adele has not given permission for her music to be used for any political campaigning,” her spokesman confirmed.
Mike Huckabee was also using Adele’s music in a “Hello” parody, which has since been removed from YouTube. New Jersey Governor and fellow presidential candidate Chris Christie had also used the popular song to attack competing candidate Marco Rubio.
Just last year, lawyers for Steven Tyler sent Trump’s campaign a cease-and-desist letter after the politician played the band’s hit “Dream On” at rallies around the country.
The letter said Trump’s use of the song gave the “false impression” that the Aerosmith frontman endorsed the candidate’s presidential bid.
Trump fired shots on Twitter, saying he had the legal right to use the song, but had found “a better one to take its place.”
“Steven Tyler got more publicity on his song request than he’s gotten in 10 years. Good for him!” he added.
Meanwhile, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe told the campaign to “go f–k (them)selves” after demanding Trump stop using “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Neil Young chose to simply express his preference for Bernie Sanders when asking Trump to stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
U.S. copyright laws give politicians the opportunity to use recorded music at their rallies if the venue has a public performance license issued through a songwriters’ association, such as ASCAP or BMI.
That being said, there’s always room for an artist to complain that their image and reputation is being damaged by the repeated use of a song without their permission.
Ouch. Maybe Trump should stick to jingles.
via : Donald Trump – National Post
-
Marco Rubio’s very big night in Iowa, with a third place that was very nearly second over Trump
Sure, his rival won the first-in-the-nation nominating contest. And he didn’t even come in second place. In fact, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., came in third, exactly where we predicted he would.But it’s how Rubio came in third that makes all the difference. Polling indicated Rubio would be a distant third, trailing by perhaps double digits in the socially conservative state — an afterthought behind the two candidates expected to duke it out for first: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Donald Trump.
Instead, Rubio came in a very strong third — a third that was very nearly second, as he crept up on Trump’s vote total. In Monday’s Iowa GOP caucuses, Cruz got 27.7 per cent of the vote, Trump 24.3 per cent and Rubio 23.1 per cent.
Rubio came within a couple hundred supporters of piercing the impenetrable bubble thought to be around Cruz and Trump — and on the two leaders’ own political turf, no less. He over-performed expectations, and for that, Rubio perhaps almost as much as Cruz can call Monday a win.
A few minutes after the Associated Press called the race for Cruz, Rubio took the stage in Iowa, flanked by his family. But if you were listening to Rubio’s speech in a news vacuum, you would have thought AP called the race for him.
“For months, they said we had no chance,” he said. “. . . They told me I had no chance because my hair wasn’t gray enough and my boots were too high.”
Then, he pivoted to what can only be described as a general election stump speech — sharing his Cuban immigrant parents’ story of making it in America, knocking Democrat Hillary Clinton for her emails and warning that “everything that makes this nation great now hangs in the balance” of this presidential election.
We are going to unify this party, and we are going to unify the conservative movement
Rubio’s impressive results in the Iowa caucus — and his speech afterward — were tailored to one simple message: He is the GOP candidate with the broadest appeal to win in a general election, and Iowa proves it.
“We are going to unify this party, and we are going to unify the conservative movement,” he said Monday, a subtle dig at both Cruz’s and Trump’s reputation for divisiveness.
Rubio is arguing that Iowa is proof that his strategy, to be many things to many different people, is working. He was never expected to win among such a conservative electorate, so the fact he got so close to the two who were — even after going on the defense for supporting immigration reform in 2013 — suggests he has staying power among the social conservative community while he carries the mantle of leader of the establishment pack. (The next establishment candidate, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, came in sixth place Monday with 3 per cent of the vote.)
Still, one great night does not a nomination make.
There are some holes in his argument, like Rubio’s support in Iowa may not be as widespread as he indicates. He won support in Iowa’s metropolitan areas, where voters tend to be more moderate, and didn’t appear to win a single other.
And Rubio is going to need whatever momentum Iowa gives him for the next contest, New Hampshire’s primary. There, a more moderate state that should be more in Rubio’s wheelhouse, he is fifth and has been criticized for not campaigning very hard.
Daring to look even further ahead, Rubio is in a familiar position in South Carolina: Third behind Trump and Cruz. But we’ll note that, as Iowa votes were being tallied, Politico reported the well-liked Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is expected to endorse Rubio in his state’s primary. And there, Rubio’s good night became even better.
Time will tell whether Rubio’s strong Monday night will be a turning point for his campaign. But for now, he’s the candidate whose showing was probably the biggest surprise of the Iowa caucuses.
via : Donald Trump – National Post
-
Everyone is underestimating Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz won last week’s Iowa caucuses, exceeding expectations and capturing an impressive 27 percent of the vote. Donald Trump took second place, while Marco Rubio took third.
What happened next? There was a massive wave of media coverage about how “Marco Rubio was the real winner in Iowa.” By exceeding expectations, the argument goes, Rubio generated positive buzz that will help him raise money, recruit volunteers, and win later primary contests. That, in turn, could consolidate his status as the choice of the party’s mainstream.
The betting markets mirror this conventional wisdom. Before Iowa, markets thought Trump was most likely to win, followed by Rubio and then Cruz. After Cruz won Iowa, Rubio’s odds on one market surged from 34 percent to 61 percent. But Cruz remained mired in third place — with the same market giving him a 12 percent chance of capturing the nomination.
Then in Saturday’s Republican debates, Rubio had his “glitch,” repeating the exact same two sentences three times in five minutes. Rubio’s odds fell from 60 percent to 44 percent, while Trump’s rose from 22 to 32 percent. But Cruz’s odds remained stuck at 12 percent.
This is ridiculous. Getting third place in Iowa is pretty good, but getting first place is better. And there’s no good reason to simply assume Cruz is going to be a one-state wonder. Cruz is in a dead heat with Rubio in national polls taken since Iowa. And he’s only about 2 percentage points behind Rubio in New Hampshire polls, a state whose Republican voters are known for supporting more centrist candidates.
Of course, nothing is certain in a race as chaotic as this one. But elite pessimism about Cruz says more about the biases of media and Beltway insiders than it does about the Republican primary itself.
Elites hate Ted Cruz. Republican voters aren’t going to care.
Ted Cruz gets underestimated because elites — both Washington insiders and pundits — can’t stand him.
Republican power brokers dislike him because he hasn’t been a team player during his time in the Senate. He has spent the past four years portraying his fellow Senate Republicans as mendacious sellouts, which might be why not a single senator has endorsed him. (Marco Rubio has seven Senate endorsements; Jeb Bush has five, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker.)
As a result, many commentators — particularly believers in the “party decides” theory of presidential nominations — have long assumed that because Cruz is so despised by elites, he can’t win. In contrast, Rubio is a much more palatable choice to party elites.
But for many Republican voters, being hated by media elites and Beltway insiders is an argument for Cruz. During the debates, Cruz has taken every opportunity to denounce the media — and every time he did it, the audience applauded. And political consultant Steve Schmidt told my colleague Andrew Prokop last fall that more than half of GOP voters felt “complete and utter and absolute contempt for the party establishment.”
Perhaps the party will somehow corral its voters back into line. But in a year when so many Republican voters are disgusted with their party’s leaders, the fact that those leaders love Rubio and despise Cruz seems like a reason to be bullish on Cruz.
Ted Cruz isn’t another Rick Santorum
The strongest case for skepticism about Ted Cruz is that Iowa has a record of picking evangelical-friendly candidates who go on to lose the nomination. In 2008, that was Mike Huckabee, who went on to lose New Hampshire and the nomination to John McCain. In 2012, it was Rick Santorum, who went on to lose New Hampshire and the election to Mitt Romney.
According to entrance polls, 64 percent of Iowa Republican primary voters described themselves as evangelical Christians, and Cruz won 34 percent of this group. Among the remaining 36 percent of Iowa Republican voters, Trump and Rubio both beat Cruz, with 29 and 26 percent of the vote, respectively, to Cruz’s 18 percent.
Of course, evangelicals are a lot less common in New Hampshire than in Iowa, so it’s not a surprise that Cruz is doing worse there. But Cruz has two advantages that should allow him to do significantly better in later states than Santorum and Huckabee did.
While Cruz has worked hard to win evangelical votes, his campaign — and his political persona more broadly — has been much less focused on social issues than the Huckabee and Santorum campaigns were. Not only did Huckabee and Santorum both focus heavily on same-sex marriage and abortion, they also eschewed some aspects of conservative orthodoxy on economic issues, campaigning instead as more populist “Sam’s Club Republicans.”
Huckabee “is not a conservative who is an evangelical, he’s an evangelical populist,” said David Keene, an influential conservative activist, in 2007. “It’s not the evangelical part that conservatives worry about. It’s the populism. It’s his economic views.”
Huckabee and Santorum weren’t exactly left-wing on economic issues, but they were less enthusiastic about deregulation and tax cuts than most other Republicans. That made it harder for either to attract the support of wealthy businessmen or libertarian-minded voters, both important parts of the Republican coalition.
By contrast, Cruz has hewed closely to conservative orthodoxy on a wide range of issues. Prior to the 2016 campaign, he was best known for his opposition to illegal immigration and Obamacare, neither of which is a pet issue of evangelicals. That means Cruz has a better chance of appealing to the various factions that make up the Republican Party: social conservatives, free market and business groups, anti-immigration activists, foreign policy hawks, and so forth.
Ted Cruz has plenty of money
The other big difference between Cruz and previous Iowa winners is money.
In 2007, Mike Huckabee raised just $9 million, far behind John McCain with $37 million and Mitt Romney with $53 million. Rick Santorum was even weaker, raising only about $2.2 million in 2011 before losing to Mitt Romney, who raised $56 million. (Both Huckabee and Santorum raised more money after winning Iowa in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but that didn’t leave them much time to build a nationwide campaign organization.)
By contrast, Cruz has been a star fundraiser. According to a New York Times tally, the Cruz campaign has raised $47 million, putting him second only to Ben Carson among Republicans (Jeb Bush raised a lot of money for his Super PAC before launching his campaign). And Cruz raised most of those funds in 2015, giving him time to build infrastructure across the country.
Donald Trump is vulnerable
So far I’ve barely mentioned Donald Trump, who is currently leading in the polls both nationally and in New Hampshire. Trump’s candidacy is so unusual that it would be foolish to confidently predict an outcome. But there are a couple of reasons to think Trump is vulnerable.
One is that Trump is far less organized than Cruz and other leading candidates. That helps to explain his underperformance in Iowa and suggests he will probably underperform the polls in future states as well.
Second, Trump may have a harder cap on his support than other candidates. Normally, primary voters fall in line behind a winner in the interest of party unity. But there’s ample evidence that Trump wasn’t a conservative until he started thinking about running for president in 2011.
So while Trump may be able to persuade 25 or 30 percent of the vote, that might still leave room for another candidate to rally a majority of the party against him. And as one of the best-funded and most consistently conservative candidates in the race, Cruz has as good a chance of becoming the Trump alternative as anyone.
via : Vox – Policy & Politics