Final Presidential Debate Between Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton. Watch Video.

Sorry, I Forgot To Post A Video Of The Second Presidential Debate Between Gonald Trump And Hillary Clinton. Well, Here It Is. Enjoy.

If You Are Like Me Ane And You Did Not Watch The Presidential Debate, Feel Free To Punish Yourself By Viewing It Below.

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If You Are Like Me Ane And You Did Not Watch The Presidential Debate, Feel Free To Punish Yourself By Viewing It Below.

update:

Did You Miss Donald Trump's Speech To Republicans Last Night? Here It Is Below.

WHY I RENOUNCED ISLAM, ALLAH, AND MUHAMMAD.

WHY I RENOUNCED ISLAM, ALLAH, AND MUHAMMAD.

And my challenge to every muslim.

I never thought I would have the courage to publicly announce that I have left Islam. I have been hesitating to openly declare this; according to many Muslim leaders, I am now an “infidel,” the worst thing I can possibly be in their eyes. I was mostly concerned about the repercussions and risks to my family and relatives. But, in the face of the horrors that have spread throughout the world, I have finally made the decision to write my life story in “The Muslim Renegade: A Memoir of Struggle, Defiance, Enlightenment, and Hope.”

A Muslim believes that the Qur’an contains the verbatim words of Allah and should be implemented without reservation, regardless of time and geographical location. The Islamic reward for killing an unbeliever or apostate, someone who departs from Islam and renounces Allah and Muhammad, is receiving the best place in heaven, according to some Islamic teachings. The penalty for renouncing Islam is execution, legally administered in Islamic societies by governments, Islamic courts, or some religious groups and individual Muslims who desire to fulfill their duty prescribed by God (Allah), Muhammad, and the Qur’an. These Islamic and Sharia laws did create some concerns, fear and caution in me to tell my story.

If you are born into, or become a follower of Islam, abandoning it is not an easy task. A Muslim is indoctrinated from the early childhood. I believe the indoctrination evolves and transforms into deep-seated fear about questioning, let alone rejecting, Allah, Islam, and Muhammad’s rules. Deciding to be free and independent, liberating oneself from being the slave of Islam, become inconceivable and out of question. Once one becomes the slave of Islam, it kills his/her courage and will to leave it. As was also mentioned, Islam and Muslim leaders also punish abandonment of Islam, Allah, and Muhammad with death.

I grew up in a religious family in Islamic societies until a few years ago. I was one of the few who genuinely read the whole Qur'an word by word. I read it several times, and attempted to follow the rules meticulously, line by line. I didn't just see my religion as a title; I wanted to live it as a devout Muslim. To do that, I had to be a strict follower of Islamic rules. I was the "good" Muslim according to many imams I spoke with.

But who is this "good" Muslim, according to Islamic teaching? A good Muslim follows Allah's verses word by word. You cannot cherry pick the rules that you like or that you want to apply in certain situations. You must follow every legal, social, and spiritual rule. Not just anyone can be a good Muslim; a good Muslim feels a deep-down belief that they have been "chosen." Only you are on the right path, and everyone else from other religions, even other Muslims, is not on this sacred path that leads to salvation. A good Muslim must also be a follower of his imam or ayatollah in addition to Allah, Muhammad and the Qur'an. Socially and legally speaking, according to Allah’s words in the Qur'an, you must accept “Allah’s rules” that a man can marry more than one wife simultaneously without asking for their permission (as my father did), that the testimony of a woman is not equal to that of a man in the court of law, that women inherit much less than men (half of what their brothers inherit), that you can have as many temporary marriages as you want, that having slaves is not an issue, that you should not be a passive Muslim, but you should be a jihadist who is willing to impose Allah’s rules in any society by following three steps: telling those who are not following Islam the correct path, if they do not listen, warn them, and if they still defy, punish them (resort to violence). A good Muslim believes in the superstitions that the Qur'an details such as the “evil eye.” A good Muslim hides some of his/her true feelings, avoids having normal fun, and views other religions as incomplete since Allah states in the Qur'an that Islam is the last religion that completes all the deficiencies of other religions, and so on.

When I came to the United States a few years ago -- before the Paris, Orlando, San Bernardino, London and other recent terrorist attacks -- I attempted to raise awareness and warn about the inevitable terrorist attacks that were going to happen in the name of Islam. Islam can provide a powerful language and tool to commit some of the worst crimes against humanity, while simultaneously the perpetrators of those attacks feel blessed, privileged, rewarded, and on the winning side.

Unless we gain a better understanding of the nature of Islam, its transformation and reliance on Qur'anic verses, as well as its norms, values, principles, and ideology in the modern world, we will not be capable of addressing this threat. It will only to continue to increase in intensity and spread further than most can imagine.

I am not suggesting this based solely on an academic and epistemological view of world cultures, but on my first-hand experience of growing up, studying, and working in predominantly Muslim societies for most of my life. I was born in the Islamic Republic of Iran and grew up in both Arab and Persian cultures.

It is my opinion that those who try to convert people into Islam first begin with some appealing notions from Islam. Once you sign up to the religion (by pronouncing two sentences: Ash hadu an la ilaha ill Allah wa ash hadu anna Muhammadar Rasul Allah; "I declare there is no god but Allah and I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger"), then gradually the restrictions, discriminatory rules against women, etc. will slowly follow. Without the new convert noticing, he/she becomes the slave of the Islamic ideology as well as the imam. Your freedom will be taken, and a new world, new God (Allah), and new set of rules will be created for you. Once you submit to Islam, there is no way to return, because if you leave this ideology, you are an infidel, an apostate who deserves to be killed, according to Allah’s words in the Qur'an.

In my book I share my own experiences in part because I believe deeply that as people become more interconnected, the most dire challenge to the current world order—to Western democratic values, universal human rights, the rule of law, social justice, gender equality, civilized society and all of humanity—is not nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, or other military capabilities, but it is modern Islamic ideology. For how long will the mainstream media and politicians remain “politically correct” on this issue? My intent is to raise awareness of what is happening in the very shielded and silent corners of fundamental Islam. To me it is imperative that the American people be educated about extremist Islamists who view them with such intense hatred.

Is the Islamic ideology an ideology of peace as many Muslims and imams argue? There are some verses and ideas in the Qur'an (likely plagiarized from the ideas of Christianity and Judaism) that do promote positive things.

But the violent and discriminatory rules in the Qur'an overshadow any hint of peace.

Would you consider an ideology or a leader peaceful if that leader tells you one good thing, but, at the same time, tells you that you can kill in the name of this ideology (as stated by Allah in the Qur'an)? Will you follow someone who tells you one good thing, but then tells you that women should not be considered equal to men in the legal system?

The Islamic ideology, its harsh teachings, and impossible rules, created contradictions inside me. I began soul-searching, which led to my inner transformation and revolution. I was born as a slave into this ideology, and finally I had to be free to make my own life choice (when I was in Iran few years ago) to liberate myself from the chains of this ideology. Doing so, leaving everything I had been taught for more than two decades, was not an easy task.

If you are born into a Muslim family and live in a Muslim society, where Sharia and Islamic laws are being legally implemented by the system, it is heartbreaking and dangerous. The fear of violence and death has permeated my life from the moment I was born -- up to this very moment. Despite the risks, I feel I must speak my truth. The chains and cruel threats of this ideology will haunt you wherever you are. Knowing that I would become a target, along with my family and friends, knowing that I would lose everything I ever held dear (including many of my family and friends), I could have given in to my fear. Instead, I decided not to. It was a decision I had no choice but to make.

ABOUT DR. MAJID RAFIZADEH

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American political scientist, author, business advisor and public speaker, is president of the International American Council and serves on the board of the Harvard International Review (Harvard University).  Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh grew up most of his life in Muslim countries (both Sunni and Shiites nations). He is the author of the memoir “A God Who Hates Women” and the upcoming memoir “The Renegade.” Dr. Rafizadeh can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu. Follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh.

The Political Rise Of America's Donald Trump.

Randy Blaser: How did American politics get to where we are today?

In this Tuesday, March 15, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (Gerald Herbert / AP)


As I watch this presidential election year unfold, I'm beginning to know how Theodore H. White felt covering the 1976 campaign in preparation for his next book in his still classic series "The Making of the President."

He had written of four previous campaigns, and after 20 years felt he didn't understand what had happened in America. "I suddenly realized the politics I had been covering all my life had nothing to do with the real or underlying politics of today."

White went back to the beginning and wrote his classic book, "In Search of History: A Personal Adventure."

I started covering local politics during the rise of President Ronald Reagan. As I watch this campaign unfold, I see a disconnect between the politics of the past and the underlying politics that affects everyday life.

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Of course, I'm talking about the rise of Donald Trump, who last week won the Illinois Republican primary on his steadfast march to be the GOP nominee for president.

I initially speculated that Trump would burn out. I still think he is a buffoon and in the American tradition of the Know-Nothings of the mid-19th century. But the prospect of him being the nominee for president of a major American political party is mind-boggling.

Trump is an empty suit – no policy, no plans and no knowledge. He is neither conservative nor liberal. He has supported policies that would enrich him.

At best he is an empty suit. At worst a blowhard whose main argument is that the game is fixed, the rules that enriched him hurt regular Americans. His solution? Elect him. Both parties should find that familiar.

Why are so many Americans responding to him? The best answer I've found was given by British journalist Tim Stanley writing in the Telegraph.

Trump, he says, is the symptom of a republic in decline, of institutional failure. He is the result of the angry nihilism of the right – think Tea-Party and Congressional obstructionists – and the authoritarianism of the left – think campus mob action to deny speakers with whom they disagree – combined with the corruption of the political class, where politicians do and say anything to get elected.

Trump, Stanley writes, "did not take America to war in Iraq on flimsy evidence, establish Guantanamo in contravention of human rights law, license the torture of enemy combatants, oversee the gargantuan NSA data-gathering operation, launch a dirty war of drone strikes against both terrorists and those unfortunate enough to live near them, undermine the religious freedoms of employers who do not want to subsidize the sex lives of their workers, overrule the states' wishes on marriage, compel citizens to buy healthcare products or deport thousands of illegals through aggressive round-ups."

Who wanted all that? Yet that has been our policy of the last 16 years, backed by the political establishment of both stripes.

Getting back to White ...

History, he said, is the intersection of forces and ideas. It is where one man can take an idea and ride it through to his desire to impose their will on those around them.

Is Trump that man? Are we at the intersection of time in history that makes Trump possible?

It is frightening to ponder the possibilities.

Randy Blaser is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.

Kentucky's Kim Davis, And Her Enablers, Need To Read, And Re-read, The Whole Bible.

Kim Davis Needs to Read the Bible Again
BY GREGG EASTERBROOK

Kim Davis and her supporters lash out against homosexuality by calling on ancient divine pronouncements of anger, rather than upon the serene divinity who, in the New Testament, offered unconditional forgiveness.
Kim Davis and her supporters lash out against homosexuality by calling on ancient divine pronouncements of anger, rather than upon the serene divinity who, in the New Testament, offered unconditional forgiveness.

Kim Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, returns to her post soon, after spending five nights in jail and then a few more days recovering at home. A Pentecostal Christian, Davis says “God’s authority” instructs her not to issue licenses for gay marriage, even though the law compels her to. Presidential contenders, including Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, both fundamentalists, have praised her stance.

It’s undeniable that the earliest scripture books, the ones Christians call the Pentateuch and Jews call the Torah, don’t like same-sex relations. At the Garden of Eden, God decrees that a man will be the husband and a woman the wife. (See the second and third chapters of Genesis, ideally a scholarly translation such as the New Revised Standard; this article cites the N.R.S.V.) In Leviticus 18:22, the text states, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” In 20:13, Leviticus specifies that both parties in male-male sex shall “be put to death.”


That seems open-and-shut, though one might wonder why Davis, Cruz, Huckabee and the like seek only to deny gays marriage, rather than execute them as God decreed.

But here’s the thing. Christian theology says the New Testament amends the Old: what happened in the days of the apostles amends what came long before. Acts 13:39: “By this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” (Acts is the founding text of Pentecostalism.) Jesus overturned existing law about sin, the Sabbath, the afterlife and many other matters. His ministry proclaimed “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6.) “Letter” in this context means archaic law—that is, the law Davis, Cruz, and Huckabee want applied today.

When conservative Christians justify opposition to gay relations by citing ancient scripture, by the most amazing coincidence they don’t mention the other stuff there. The ancient passages that denounce same-sex relations also denounce eating shellfish and trimming one’s beard. The Christian who says God forbids homosexuality – then shaves before going out for dinner at Red Lobster – is speaking from both sides of his mouth.

In Leviticus, the Old Testament book that calls homosexuality an abomination, God not only sanctions but encourages slavery. Leviticus 25:44–46 , spells out rules for seizing, holding, and selling slaves. And there’s no estate tax: slaves may be kept “as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.” In Deuteronomy 21:18–21, near the passages on the abomination of same-sex relations, ancient scripture directs that a disobedient child be taken by his parents to the city gate and stoned to death.

If banning homosexuality is “God’s authority” to a modern Christian, ritual murder of children ought to be as well. So why don’t today’s Judeo-Christians believe in slavery and filicide? For mainstream Jews, some ancient doctrine has been reinterpreted by rabbinical commentary or civil law; for Christians, premises of ancient scripture have been amended. This happened first via the middle prophets Isaiah and Hosea, who came centuries after ancient scripture—biblical tip: the key that unlocks the beauty of Abrahamic faith is the seldom read Book of Hosea—and then through the ministry of the Redeemer.

What does the New Testament say about homosexuality and gay marriage? Silence on the latter; on the former, there’s one reference. In his Letter to the Romans, verses 1:26-27, Paul observes of idol worshippers, “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Conservatives prefer translations, such as the God’s Word Bible, that substitute “perversion” for “error.” Yet many church-married, monogamous, man-woman, devout Christian couples engage in acts once thought perversion. Beyond this, Paul frowned on all sexual interaction, including by men and women married to each other. (I Corinthians 7:29.) The apostles evinced no interest in any form of carnality. Jesus never wed, and if he experienced erotic longing, the specifics are lost to history. The Old Testament is chock-full with lust and rape: by the New Testament, it’s as if sex has gone out of style. Those who beheld Jesus bathed in the glory of the resurrection believed the long-dreamt golden age about to arrive. Sex just didn’t seem terribly important compared to that.

At any rate, the key word in Romans is not “perversion;” rather, “natural.” The science of the question of what a person’s natural sexual preferences are is unsettled, but tends toward the idea that people are born that way. If we are born with our sexuality, either it is a gift from God or evolved naturally. And if same-sex attraction is natural, then it is in concord with the New Testament.


Of course, believers of all stripes pick and choose. Liberal Christians avert their eyes from Christ’s near-absolute ban on divorce, in Matthew 5:32. Wealthy Christians ignore their Redeemer’s warning that the rich are barred from heaven, in Matthew 19:24. Most Christians would rather not know that Jesus said to give to panhandlers, in Luke 6:30. Right now, the mainly Christian leaders of the European Union don’t seem concerned that Jesus said that only helping the destitute counts in the eyes of God. (Christ says, in Luke 6:33, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”) Republican candidates thumping their chests about how admirably Christian they are skip the fact that Christ banned exactly such puffery. (Matthew 6:1 reads, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”) The Israeli right pounds the table about ancient scripture, but skips Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

In the eight hundred thousand words of the Bible, one can find a verse to support just about anything. Even so, it’s disturbing that contemporary Christian conservatives lash out against homosexuality by calling on ancient divine pronouncements of anger, rather than upon the serene divinity who offered the world unconditional forgiveness.

Voicing the thoughts of the serene God in John 15:12, Jesus summed up Christian theology in one sentence: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Once, God was full of anger; ultimately, the Maker cared solely about love. Why don’t today’s Christian conservatives understand that the second part amends the first part?

Watch The #GOP Presidential Debate, At Ronald Reagan Library In Simi Valley, California.

Larry Webster On Political Gridlock Im Washington, DC.

Everyone is always asking how gridlock got started and who started it, so I thought I would just go ahead and tell you. 

It all started when a bunch of Republican elders got together before the election of George W. Bush and decided that, instead of reaching out and trying to draw in voters who were moderates or Democrats, that they would try to solidify and expand their base of conservatives and win the presidency that way. 

Prior to that, both parties tried to reach out. In 1999, the Republicans decided not to, and the first thing they did was to nominate Dick Cheney as the vice president, because he appealed to their base: rich warmongers.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/28/3451723/larry-webster-on-kys-willie-horton.html?sp=/99/349/#storylink=cpy

The selection of Cheney was the second-worst mistake ever made, with the election of "W" being the worst.

Well, the grand new plan worked in 2000, when Bush beat Gore by about six votes. So, from that time on, for that strategy to succeed, the Republicans had to do two things, one of which was to cater to their conservative base by doing such thoughtful things as giving the rich a big tax cut while we were fighting a stupid $2 trillion war on a credit card and taking the risk out of investing. By that I mean that we privatized the benefits of owning stock, but made the public pay if investments went wrong. 

The other thing they did was to try to make the country fail if a Democrat was in, something Sen. Mitch McConnell announced with great pride. Doing this included filibustering every single nomination, every single spending bill and every single idea of the Democratic president, even the ideas Republicans used to promote, such as a carbon tax, which used to be their tar baby.

Gridlock was aided by an Australian media magnate whose loyalty was not to the country, but to his pocket, and whose talking heads so abused the president as to convince half or more of the country that he was a Muslim socialist.

After a season of gridlock, Republicans now hope to take such control of government that things will move quickly, backwards. Aided and abetted by the Supreme Court, which turned elections into auctions, McConnell, one of the original architects of the strategy, now turns the president his side has made unpopular into Willie Horton. He suggests that Obama and Senate hopeful Alison Lundergan Grimes are in cahoots to stop coal, when there has been more coal mined under Obama than anyone else, and to stop guns, when there has been more guns sold the last six years than probably were sold during the last 25 previous presidencies.

But along came the junior senator from Texas and Kentucky, Rand Paul, and starts going back to the old ways, trying to reach out to minorities and wondering in public about the war on drugs. Is this possible?

I'll bet when they look up the surveillance film of that guy climbing the fence to the White House they will find him standing on the back of a diminutive senator from Alabama and Kentucky.

Reach Larry Webster at websterlawrencer@bellsouth.net.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/28/3451723/larry-webster-on-kys-willie-horton.html?sp=/99/349/#storylin

Republicans Narrowly Favored To Capture Senate In November. Watch.

Keep Politics Out Of The Courthouse.

Keep politics out of the courthouse

By Ruth McGregor and Randall Shepard

The chaos surrounding the execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett was not just a wake-up call on capital punishment and how it is administered. The final hours also saw political efforts to bully and weaken Oklahoma’s courts. Similar battles are playing out around the country, threatening the ability of our courts to be fair and impartial.

When Lockett’s attorneys filed a lawsuit seeking information about the drug mixture that ultimately failed, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a stay to grant more time for review. But the governor announced that she would disregard the court’s ruling. A legislator introduced a resolution to impeach the five justices who had voted for the stay, alleging “a willful neglect of duty and incompetence.” The Supreme Court ultimately dissolved its stay and allowed Lockett’s execution to proceed.

The constitutional crisis may have been brief, but it was profoundly disturbing. As lifetime jurists and former chief justices of the supreme courts of Arizona and Indiana, we believe our treasured American system of checks and balances is harmed when our courts are threatened with intimidation. Our courts were designed to be the branch of government most insulated from politics.

This is especially critical when it comes to our criminal courts, which must be allowed to work properly and deliberately in order to protect the innocent, convict the guilty and provide just punishment. If judges cannot make life-or-death decisions based on the law without looking over their shoulders for threats of retaliation, they cannot uphold the Constitution and protect Americans’ rights.

The Oklahoma case is bad enough. But in state capitals across the nation, there are disturbing efforts by partisans, politicians and special interests to intimidate our courts.

For example, a vigously debated bill in the Missouri legislature would have permitted lawsuits against state officials, including judges, for enforcing federal gun laws. In retaliation for court decisions, Kansas lawmakers removed the Supreme Court’s authority to pick chief district court judges and weakened its authority over the judiciary’s budget.

This atmosphere of bullying is reminiscent of an anti-court spasm a decade ago, when cable TV hosts and “Justice Sunday” rallies demanded the impeachment of state and federal judges over controversial decisions. Congress even bowed to interest-group pressure by tampering with a state court dispute between family members of Terri Schiavo during her end-of-life ordeal.

Courts are also under growing pressure from the increasing amounts of money being spent in judicial elections. Interest groups spent more than $1.3 million in a North Carolina primary this month involving a single Supreme Court seat. In Tennessee, because the Supreme Court selects the state’s attorney general, a multi-million dollar effort is being discussed to unseat three justices. These kinds of big-money judicial elections threaten to turn judges into politicians in black robes.

These threats imperil our constitutional traditions, our heritage of rule of law and the strength of our democracy. If our courts are going to be fair and impartial, in Oklahoma and across the country, Americans need to stand up for them when politicians cross the line — especially during an election year, when political posturing will be even greater.

Editor's note:

Ruth McGregor is a retired chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court and Randall Shepard is a retired chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. They are members of the board of directors of Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan network working to keep courts fair and impartial.

Why I Plan To Vote For Mitch McConnell Come May.

I know the Kentucky Republican primary elections is not until May, but I have not been convinced not to cast my vote for Mitch McConnell for Senate!

Yes, I am for term limits but the term MUST first appear in our U. A. Constitution in order that I may be assured all the other states of the Union will abide by it also!!

#Kentucky. #USSenate. #MitchMcConnell

New York City's Newly Elected Mayor Bill De Blasio Has A Black Wife. He's Already My Kind Of White Guy! Watch Video.

Republicans Can't Depend On White Voters Alone To Win. Well .... Duh!

Republicans Can't Win With White Voters Alone

An influential set of conservatives argues changing demographics won't doom the GOP, but the smart money -- and the math -- are not on their side.

This much is undisputed: In 2012, President Obama lost white voters by a larger margin than any winning presidential candidate in U.S. history. In his reelection, Obama lost ground from 2008 with almost every conceivable segment of the white electorate. With several key groups of whites, he recorded the weakest national performance for any Democratic nominee since the Republican landslides of the 1980s.

In 2012, Obama won a smaller share of white Catholics than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1980; lost groups ranging from white seniors to white women to white married and blue-collar men by the widest margin of any Democrat since Ronald Reagan routed Walter Mondale in 1984; and even lost among Democratic-leaning college-educated women by the widest margin since Michael Dukakis in 1988, according to the latest National Journal analysis of the trends that shape the allegiances of American voters.

And yet, behind rousing support from minorities everywhere, and often much more competitive showings among whites in both Democratic-leaning and battleground states, Obama not only won reelection but won fairly comfortably.

Few decisions may carry greater consequences for the Republican Party in 2016 than how it interprets these facts. The key question facing the GOP is whether Obama's 2012 performance represents a structural Democratic decline among whites that could deepen even further in the years ahead -- or a floor from which the next Democratic nominee is likely to improve.

In recent months, a chorus of conservative analysts has bet on the first option. They insist that Republicans, by improving both turnout and already-gaping margins among whites, can recapture the White House in 2016 without reformulating their agenda to attract more minority voters -- most prominently by passing immigration-reform legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for those here illegally. On the other side is an array of Republican strategists who view minority outreach and immigration reform as critical to restoring the party's competitiveness -- and consider it suicidal for the GOP to bet its future on the prospect that it can squeeze even larger advantages out of the diminishing pool of white voters. Karl Rove, the chief strategist for George W. Bush's two presidential victories, has noted that relying entirely on whites would soon require Republicans to regularly match the towering advantage Reagan recorded among them when he lost only a single state in his 1984 reelection. "It's unreasonable to expect Republicans to routinely pull numbers that last occurred in a 49-state sweep," Rove said at the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer.

The results of previous elections can't forecast how voters will divide next time. But they do show clear trends in both the electorate's composition and the preferences that will shape the competition between the parties in 2016 and beyond. To better understand these dynamics, National Journal has updated a project we conducted in 2008 and 2012 that analyzed, in unusual detail, the fault lines among American voters. In those initial reports, titled "The Hidden History of the American Electorate," we examined the results from the general-election exit polls conducted by news organizations in every presidential campaign from 1980 through 2008. In this latest report, we expand the analysis to include the results of the national and state 2012 National Election Pool exit poll conducted for a consortium of media organizations by Edison Research. The poll surveyed 26,565 voters at 350 polling places on Election Day, and another 4,408 absentee and early voters through a telephone survey.

Because the exit poll includes so many more voters than a typical survey, this effort allows us to explore much more finely grained shifts among voters than are usually available -- the evolving preferences, for instance, not only of Hispanics overall but of those with and without college degrees, or the (substantial) differences between college-educated white women who are single and those who are married. The result is a uniquely panoramic look at the fluctuating boundaries of change and the insistent currents of stability over the past nine presidential elections. And that prism offers a unique perspective on the choices facing the two parties as they begin contemplating their strategies for 2016.

Who Votes?

Initially most Republican leaders viewed Obama's reelection as a demographic wake-up call for their party. They did so with good reason. Despite the lackluster economy, Obama surprised many observers by winning 51 percent of the popular vote, garnering 332 Electoral College votes, and outpolling Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million ballots. The president's victory meant that Democrats had carried the popular vote in five of the previous six presidential elections, matching the Republican record from 1968 to 1988. Obama notched striking gains among both Hispanics and Asian-Americans, equaled the overall 80 percent of nonwhite voters that he carried in 2008, and amassed a solid 60 percent majority among voters under 30 (who are themselves heavily diverse).

Although many Republican analysts predicted Obama could not replicate the enthusiasm he generated in 2008, minorities and young people both increased their share of the overall vote, as whites fell to 72 percent of the electorate, the lowest level ever. All of this allowed Obama to win his unexpectedly comfortable victory, even though his performance among white voters deteriorated from 43 percent in 2008 to just 39 percent in 2012. Romney, by winning 59 percent of whites, roughly equaled the best performances ever among them by a Republican challenger (essentially matching Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and George H.W. Bush in 1988) and actually exceeded the 56 percent of whites that Reagan won in 1980 (although not the 64 percent peak the Gipper reached during his reelection tsunami).

Numbers such as these prompted the "Growth and Opportunity" internal review commission, which Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appointed after the 2012 election, to conclude: "The nation's demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become…. Unless the RNC gets serious about tackling this problem, we will lose future elections; the data demonstrates this." That same concern about regaining ground among minority voters, particularly Hispanics, encouraged the participation of four Republican senators (led by Florida's Marco Rubio) in the bipartisan Senate "Gang of Eight" that began negotiating immigration reform.

But through 2013, the sense of demographic urgency inside the GOP has palpably dissipated. Instead, an array of conservative analysts has advanced a competing theory for Romney's defeat: He failed to generate a big enough margin among whites. Sean Trende, a writer for the conservative-leaning website RealClearPolitics, has promulgated the most comprehensive version of this argument. Using census figures, Trende insists that Romney failed to turn out about 5 million to 6.5 million white voters who should have voted, most of them "downscale, Northern, rural whites" demographically similar to voters who flocked to Ross Perot in 1992.

Though Trende heavily cross-stitched his pieces with caveats and qualifications, at bottom he argued that Republicans were less likely to recapture the White House by gaining among minorities than by improving both turnout and vote-share among whites -- which he suggested could reach as high as 70 percent. "It seems a bit touchy to assume that Republicans will max out at around 60 percent of the white vote," he wrote. "This might be the case, but ... it's entirely possible that as our nation becomes more diverse, our political coalitions will increasingly fracture along racial/ethnic lines rather than ideological ones .... I don't see any compelling reason why these trends can't continue, and why a Republican couldn't begin to approach Ronald Reagan's 30-point win with whites from 1984 in a more neutral environment than Reagan enjoyed."

Trende's piece has inspired fierce and increasingly Talmudic exchanges with Democratic electoral analysts (who mostly have argued that he confused an overall decline in turnout rates from 2008 to 2012 with a particular Republican problem among whites). But his analysis has become a rallying cry for conservative activists who reject the view that the 2012 result proved that the party must adjust its message to appeal to more minority and young voters by, among other things, enacting immigration reform.

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, and William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, crystallized that argument in July when they penned an unusual joint editorial opposing the Senate immigration bill. "At the presidential level in 2016, it would be better if Republicans won more Hispanic voters than they have in the past -- but it's most important that the party perform better among working-class and younger voters concerned about economic opportunity and upward mobility," they wrote. "Passing this unworkable, ramshackle bill is counterproductive or irrelevant to that task." Talk-show host Steve Deace, a leading Iowa conservative, observed that "the real reason" Romney lost was not his meager performance with minorities but that he "did so poorly turning out the GOP base." The ascent of this view inside the GOP helps explain why most House Republicans have so firmly resisted immigration reform -- and why, after all of the Senate's bipartisan negotiation, just 14 of the 45 GOP senators ultimately backed the immigration legislation, nine fewer than supported a similar comprehensive plan under Bush in 2006.

The Great White Hope

Can Republicans bet their future primarily on the notion that the party can amass even bigger advantages with whites? The answer depends on two distinct factors: turnout and vote-share.

The past two elections have offered Republicans many encouraging signs about their standing with whites. In 2010, exit polls showed that Republicans carried 60 percent of white voters in congressional races -- their best showing ever, in both exit polls since the 1970s and in the University of Michigan's American National Election Studies tracing back to 1948. In 2012, while winning a comparable 59 percent among whites, Romney displayed dominant strength with groups that usually tilt toward the GOP, particularly married, noncollege, and older whites. With some of these groups, the NJ analysis shows, Obama sank to depths Democrats haven't experienced since the Reagan and George H.W. Bush landslides.

Obama, for instance, lost noncollege white men -- once the brawny backbone of the New Deal-era Democratic coalition -- by a crushing 31 percentage points, the widest deficit since 1984. He lost married white men and married white women by the largest margins for his party since 1984. He lost whites nearing retirement by the widest margin since 1988, and white seniors by the most since 1984. 
Among older working-class whites (those without college degrees age 45 or older), he faced even larger deficits than Mondale did against Reagan. Likewise, the analysis shows, Obama lost white Catholics, once considered perhaps the single most decisive swing group, by a larger margin (19 points) than Mondale did. Obama didn't sink to record deficits among two other GOP-leaning groups -- college-educated white men and noncollege white women -- but he lost each by around 20 percentage points.

Even among the portions of the white community generally open to Democrats, Obama's performance flagged. After running essentially even among single white men in 2008, he lost them by 8 points in 2012 -- the party's weakest showing since 2000. His margin among white single women (ordinarily one of the Democrats' best groups) fell from 19 percentage points in 2008 to just 6 in 2012, the party's smallest advantage since 1988. Likewise, after carrying college-educated white women his first time, Obama lost them in 2012 by 6 percentage points, the party's biggest deficit since 1988. His overall deficit among white women spiked to 14 percentage points, double the level in 2008 and the biggest shortfall the party has faced since Mondale. Among whites younger than 30, Obama fell from a 10-point advantage in 2008 to a 7-point loss in 2012. Among whites in households with a union member, the exit poll found, Obama edged Romney by just 2 percentage points.

Some of these results look like hardening patterns. Romney's performance slightly stretched, but largely continued, trends in which recent Republican nominees have averaged huge advantages among married white men (almost 31 percentage points since 2000); married white women (more than 21 percentage points since 2004); noncollege white men (over 27 points since 2000); college white men (almost 20 points since 2000); and noncollege white women, the so-called waitress moms (19 points since 2004). As the Silent Generation that came of age under Harry Truman and Dwight 

Eisenhower succeeds the "GI Generation" forged under Franklin Roosevelt, the political orientation of white seniors has also clearly transformed: Although Bill Clinton carried white seniors in each of his two campaigns, a majority of them have voted Republican in all four elections since then, each time by a wider margin. Romney became the first GOP nominee since Reagan in 1984 to cross the 60 percent threshold with this group. Republicans look as well positioned with the older baby boomers near retirement.

Yet these advantages, while commanding, can also provide Republicans an exaggerated sense of comfort. On both the turnout and margin fronts, a whites-first strategy would face entrenched, structural challenges. For Republicans to increase the white share of the electorate in 2016 or beyond would require them to reverse the virtually uninterrupted trajectory of the past three decades. 

According to the NJ exit-poll analysis, the white share of the total vote has declined in every election since 1980, except in 1992, when it ticked up to 88 percent (from 85 percent in 1988) amid the interest in Perot's quirky third-party bid. Otherwise, this decline has persisted through years of both high and low overall turnout. Even in 2004, when George W. Bush's state-of-the-art microtargeting and turnout operation allowed Republicans to equal Democrats as a share of the total vote for the only time in the history of polling, whites' share dropped 4 percentage points from 2000. Throughout 2012, many Republicans anticipated that the white proportion of the vote would increase from 2008 and even quietly based their polling on that assumption; but, ultimately, the white share of the vote followed the long-term trend and fell to 72 percent -- exactly the level that Obama campaign manager 

Jim Messina projected early in the year. In a mirrored development, the minority share of the vote rose to 28 percent, 2 percentage points above 2008 and more than double the 12 percent level for Bill Clinton's first victory in 1992.

The challenge for Republicans hoping to reverse these voting trends is that they reflect tectonic shifts in the overall population. Although the change in the electorate has trailed the change in the total population, the two lines have moved in parallel. From 1996 to 2012, according to census figures, the white share of the eligible voting population (citizens who are older than 18) has dropped about 2 percentage points every four years, from 79.2 percent to 71.1 percent; over that same period, whites have declined as a share of actual voters from 83 percent to 74 percent (according to census figures) or even 72 percent (according to the exit polls). With minorities expected to make up a majority of America's 18 and younger population in this decade, all signs point toward a continued decline in the white share of the eligible voter population -- which suggests the GOP would have to marshal heroic turnout efforts to avoid further decline in the white vote-share. If the electorate's composition follows the trend over the past two decades, minorities would likely constitute 30 percent of the vote in 2016.

With one exception, Republican nominees since the 1970s have shown only modest appeal to that growing population. In both 2008 and 2012, Obama won a combined 80 percent of minority voters. In fact, as ABC pollster Gary Langer notes, the Democratic nominee has won between 78 percent and 82 percent of the two-party vote among nonwhites in every election since 1976, except in 2004, when Bush's strong minority appeal held John Kerry to just 71 percent.

The "Hidden History" analysis shows very few cracks in the Democratic dominance among both African-American and Hispanic voters in 2012. Even among groups in the African-American community in which Republicans had displayed at least some presence from 1980 through 2004 -- men, those with a college education, and those who are married -- the GOP registered little more than trace support in each of the two contests against Obama. In each of his two races, Obama won an astounding 96 percent among African-American women, but the Democratic nominee has reached at least 90 percent among these voters in every election since 2000.

Likewise, Romney faced broad repudiation from Hispanics. Obama won nearly two-thirds of Hispanic men and more than three-fourths of Hispanic women. Each of those numbers represented the Democrats' best performance since 1996. Obama slipped somewhat from 2008 among married Hispanics, but he still exceeded the Democrats' two showings against George W. Bush. The only signs of encouragement for Republicans: During the rout, Romney gained ground from 2008 with college-educated Hispanic men (falling just short of Bush's level with them in 2004) and also attracted just over 40 percent of Hispanic Protestants, many of them evangelical social conservatives.

Still, Catholics remain the largest group among Hispanics, and among them Romney drew only 21 percent, less than any GOP nominee since 1980 (except for Bob Dole in the three-way race of 1996).

All of these results map the depth of the minority-voter hole confronting Republicans -- and the daunting math they will face if they can't recover at least somewhat. If minorities reach 30 percent of the vote next time, and the 2016 Democratic nominee again attracts support from roughly 80 percent of them, he or she would need to capture only 37 percent of whites to win a majority of the popular vote. In that scenario, to win a national majority, the GOP would need almost 63 percent of whites. Since 1976, the only Republican who has reached even 60 percent among whites was Reagan (with his 64 percent in 1984). Since Reagan's peak, the Democratic share of the white vote has varied only between 39 percent (Obama in 2012 and Clinton in the three-way election of 1992), and 43 percent (Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 1996).

Changes Among Whites

To shatter that band, and return to the margins among whites they enjoyed under Reagan, Republicans would need to overcome another set of demographic changes. Just as the overall composition of the country is changing, so is the nature of the white electorate. These changes are generally displacing white groups that vote overwhelmingly Republican with white groups in which Democrats run more competitively. That dynamic makes the recent GOP performance among whites even more impressive -- but also shows the difficulty of climbing still further. The shifts are visible across several dimensions. Republicans now reliably run better among whites without a college education than those with at least a four-year degree. In 1984, those noncollege whites represented 62 percent of the total vote, while college-educated whites constituted just 27 percent. That meant working-class whites represented more than two-thirds of all white voters. But since then, according to the exit polls, the share of the vote cast by those working-class whites has declined in every election except 2000, hitting a low of 36 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, the share of college-educated whites grew through the 1990s and has fluctuated in a narrow range since. In 2012, the exit poll found, college-educated whites also cast 36 percent of the vote, marking the first time they have equaled working-class whites.

Similarly, every Democratic nominee since 1980 has run better among white women than white men. While white men and women represented equal shares of the vote in 1984, in 2012 the women (at 38 percent) outvoted the men (at 34 percent). Combining education and gender underscores the point. Men without a college education have become the most reliably Republican component of the white electorate; women with a college degree are the most receptive to Democrats. In 1984, those blue-collar men cast nearly three times as many votes as the white-collar women; in 2012, for the first time, the college women (at 19 percent) outvoted the noncollege men (at 17 percent). Given that the share of white adults with at least a four-year degree has increased in every year since 1981 except two, and that women are garnering nearly three-fifths of those degrees, this gap is likely to widen.

Marital status pushes in the same direction less dramatically. Every Democratic nominee since 1980 has run better among single than married whites. In 1984, married couples represented 70 percent of all white voters; by 2012, that number slipped to 65 percent. (The decline has been especially sharp among married white men, who have voted more Republican than married women in each election since 1984.) Another trend steepening the grade for the GOP is growing secularization. Since 2000, Democrats have averaged a 32-point advantage among whites who identify with no religious tradition, and the share of them has increased from 15 percent in 2007 to 20 percent by 2012, according to studies by the Pew Research Center.

These shifts in the white electorate change each election almost imperceptibly, like the slow melting of an iceberg. But over time they add up. "Every structural change you are talking about is moving in the direction of whites improving their votes for Democrats," says Stanley B. Greenberg, the veteran Democratic pollster. "Big trends in the country -- what's happening in education, marriage, in the religious sphere -- all point to an upward trend among whites." Consider this hypothetical. If Romney had matched his 2012 performance among white men and women with and without a college degree, but those four groups still constituted the same share of the white electorate as they did in 1984, 

Romney's total vote among whites would have edged up to around 61 percent. That was just about the level he needed to win the popular vote.

The major countervailing force is that the share of whites in union households has steadily declined, and that white population is aging even as Republicans have widened their advantages with older whites. On the other hand, with the Democratic-leaning GI Generation dwindling, the older white voters passing out of the electorate every four years are concentrated in the Silent Generation that has voted reliably Republican in recent years. Through 2020, the younger voters replacing them will be members of the Millennial Generation (generally regarded as those born between 1981 and 2002), which has shown much more openness to Democrats. Since 2000, when the first millennials became eligible, Democrats have averaged 45 percent among whites under age 30, far more than the 36 percent they averaged with young whites during the 1980s (and much more than what they are attracting from older whites now).

This suggests that one critical variable is whether today's young white millennials will move toward the GOP as they age. Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center, which has extensively studied generational voting patterns, says there is some precedent for such a shift: Older baby boomers who came of age from the Kennedy to Nixon presidencies have shifted toward the GOP in recent elections (the youngest boomers, who reached adulthood under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, have voted more consistently Republican). And as young people struggled in the economy, Obama's showing among younger whites did drop sharply from 2008 to 2012.

But, Dimock says, the evidence from other generations doesn't support the notion that voters "inherently [drift] Republican as they age." Moreover, he says, the liberal-leaning positions the millennial generation expresses on social issues remain a barrier to further Republican inroads with them. "Young people are not off-the-scale liberal when it comes to the social safety net or government programs, but there is a really strong pull from those social issues," he says. Dimock notes that the generation following the millennials, which is reaching awareness amid the political stalemate and economic struggles of the Obama years, may not replicate their older siblings' Democratic leanings -- but they can't vote at all until after 2020 and won't participate in large numbers until after that.

Geography poses another complication for a whites-first GOP strategy: Even if the Republican Party can further expand its overall national advantage among whites, its another thing to do so in the states critical to the Democratic presidential victories over the past two decades. Romney's national margins among the various groups of white voters are inflated by Obama's utter collapse in the country's most conservative regions, particularly the South (where the president won fewer than one in six whites in Alabama and only one in nine in Mississippi, exit polls found). In most of the places where Obama needed to do better among whites to win, he did. "Some of this you have to look at regionally, because this is exaggerated in the Appalachian parts of the country and the South," Greenberg says.

"The white numbers in the industrial Midwest and on the East and West Coast are different."

Indeed, analysis conducted for National Journal by Edison Research shows that Obama equaled or exceeded his national share of the vote among noncollege whites in 22 of the 31 states in which exit polls were conducted last year—and won each of them except Indiana. Likewise, he equaled or exceeded his national share of the vote among college-educated whites in 22 states, and won all of them except Montana. North Carolina was the only one of the nine battleground states that both sides actively contested in which Obama did not match or better his national showing among either noncollege whites (Ohio and Florida), whites with college degrees (Virginia), or both (New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada). Obama carried each of those states beyond North Carolina.

The Next Elections

Weighing all these factors, most political professionals in both parties who have expressed an opinion are somewhere between dubious and scornful of the notion that Republicans can rely almost entirely on further gains with whites to recapture the presidency without meaningfully improving among minorities. "This is an anti-mathematical position," says longtime Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. "Electoral reality is not the product of somebody's ideological wishes. It's arithmetic. And the arithmetic is working badly against the Republicans."

Similarly, Greenberg, who polled for Bill Clinton, says Obama faces unique problems among whites both because of his race and the gruelingly slow economic recovery. "Those things together make me think these white numbers [for Democrats] are not the new baseline -- that they are much more likely to go up than down," he says.

Veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres is no less dismissive. "Any strategy that is predicated on [consistently] getting a higher percentage of the white vote than Ronald Reagan got in 1980 is a losing strategy," he says. "It's the same thing Democrats would talk about in the late 1980s after they had lost five of the previous six presidential elections in the popular vote. What they would say is, we need to get the nonvoters to vote; the nonvoters are with us. It never happened."

The whites-first argument, Ayres adds, "is not getting much penetration among people who are serious about winning presidential elections. It is getting traction among people who are trying to justify voting against immigration reform or making any of the other changes that are necessary to be nationally competitive in the 21st century."

Republican strategist Rich Beeson, the national field director for Romney's 2012 campaign, takes a more nuanced view. In theory, he says, the next GOP nominee might achieve enough white gains to win without improving among minorities. But as the minority population continues to increase, Beeson adds, "is it a recipe for long-term success? Absolutely not."

All four consultants, like others in both parties, agree that Republicans would face additional challenges expanding or even maintaining their white margins in 2016 if Democrats nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not only would her status as the first female major-party nominee give her an obvious calling card with white women, but during the 2008 nomination fight against Obama she also appealed effectively to some voters whom Obama has always struggled with. "Working-class whites connect with her and President Clinton in a way they don't with President Obama," says Garin, who served as the senior strategist in her 2008 campaign's final stages.

That doesn't mean Hillary Clinton would be a favorite to win most white women (no Democrat has since Bill Clinton in 1996), and she has almost no chance of carrying most working-class whites. But absent big GOP gains with minorities, she could win, even comfortably, just by maintaining Obama's showing with whites; Republicans would face the burden of pushing her below Obama's performance. Though it's very early, the first 2016 polling instead has generally shown her trimming 

Obama's deficit among whites both nationally and in key states. Ayres says that rather than hoping to increase their showing with whites, Republicans must prepare for "the likelihood that the Democratic nominee, particularly one who doesn't come from the far left wing of the party, will get [a] higher proportion of the white vote" than Obama did in 2012. "That means," Ayres adds, "Republicans have simply got to rethink the formula of how you get to 50-plus-1 percent."

Kristol, the GOP thinker, doesn't concede that Republicans are unlikely to expand their white margin against Clinton if she runs. "It's true that Republicans have not done much better [than in 2012], but if Romney-McCain becomes the high-water mark for the Republican Party with any group of voters, they are in trouble," he says. And while Kristol believes Republicans will alienate conservatives for little gain with Hispanics if they pass immigration reform, he says the party next time should intensify its pursuit of minority voters on other grounds. "I very much hope the Republican Party by 2016 will have a conservative reform agenda especially speaking to working- and middle-class Americans," he says. "I still think there's a problem [with Hispanics], but I don't think it's inevitable that you can never get above the 27 percent [Romney won with them] if immigration doesn't pass."

In some ways, the very existence of this debate encapsulates the GOP's challenge. It's unlikely that a party with more diversity in its coalition would be debating whether it could respond to those voters without sacrificing its principles. But even in a rapidly diversifying nation, Republicans remain almost entirely dependent on the votes of whites, who supplied Romney with nearly 90 percent of his total support and cast over 90 percent of the ballots in almost all of the party's 2012 presidential primaries. Nearly four-fifths of House Republicans represent districts that are more white than the national average. This means that minorities who might be drawn to the party by a different mix of policies, such as comprehensive immigration reform, have minimal influence in shaping the party's agenda now. For those seeking a more inclusive and diverse GOP coalition, the first hurdle is that the future doesn't have a seat at the table today.

New York Post Says Elliot Spitzer Should Be Indicted Not Get Office, As The Newspaper Endorses His Opponent Scott Stringer.

Vote Scott & give ‘Client 9’ the hook

In a few short weeks, New Yorkers will choose between two candidates for city comptroller in the Democratic primary. One is Scott Stringer, a conventional Manhattan liberal. The other is a completely unhinged Manhattan liberal.

His name is Eliot Spitzer, and for a man who styles himself the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” his real expertise is operating outside the law. As attorney general, he acted like some hick-town bully with a badge and a speed trap. But where it counted — in the courtroom — this sheriff seldom got his man.

Then again, Spitzer’s goals in office have always been less about serving the people’s interest and more about feeding his insatiable ego, his giant ambitions and his basest appetites. This fundamental character flaw, and the dysfunction it bred, brought down his governorship. And these failures, notably his meltdown in office, started long before the public learned of Ashley Dupre or the Emperors Club escort agency.

Spitzer came to office with an approval rating in the 70s — only to see the numbers completely flip in scarcely a year. It was entirely self-inflicted. His governorship read like a script for FX’s “Anger Management,” with Spitzer unable to get along with anyone: not Republicans, not Democrats, not even members of his own staff.

Now he’s seeking to be put in charge of city contracts and $140 billion in pension funds. It is a job that requires a working relationship with the mayor, the City Council and many stakeholders — not to mention the 58 trustees, who are unlikely to react well to a “steamroller.”
But once again, he’s made clear the normal work of that office — say, negotiating better management fees — is beneath him.
“Office is ripe for greater and more exciting use,” he tweets. Translation: Putting me in charge is like going away for the weekend and leaving your teenage son an open liquor cabinet and the keys to a Ferrari.

We would not trust Eliot Spitzer to manage our 401(k), much less take our teenage daughter to the movies — so why should the city trust him with its entire pension fund? If he uses the funds to target Wall Street and punish companies he doesn’t like, the likelihood is that the funds’ returns will suffer.

And guess who is on the hook to make up the shortfall? You, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
In an election year where Carlos Danger is competing for mayor, Client 9 felt empowered to jump back in and turn New York into the laughingstock of America — thanks for that, Anthony!

But Anthony Weiner’s weird psychosexual thrill from public humiliation seems honest in comparison to Spitzer, whose version of “contrition” gives off a distinctly Charlie Sheen vibe.

The Obama Administration Continues To Play Politics With #Obamacare, Postpones Major Implementation Until Well After The Midterm Elections Have Passed.

Obamacare ‘employer mandate’ delayed until 2015

WASHINGTON — After months of conferring with fretful employers, the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will delay enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “employer mandate” until 2015.

A signature provision of the federal health care overhaul, the contentious measure would have required firms with more than 50 full-time employees to provide affordable health insurance or face a penalty of $2,000 per employee in 2014, when the law was set to be fully implemented.

Ninety-six percent of U.S. businesses have fewer than 50 employees and are already exempt from the mandate. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 94 percent of firms with 50 to 199 employees already provide coverage – as do 98 percent of firms with 200 or more workers.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Employees who work 30 or more hours per week are considered “full time” under the law. But one-third of nearly 900 employers surveyed last month by the health care consulting firm Mercer don’t offer coverage to those employees.

These businesses and those with workforces hovering near the 50-employee threshold faced a host of important financial decisions about their health plan enrollment that had to be made by October, when employees begin choosing their coverage for 2014.

The deadlines have left firms large and small scrambling for answers and somewhat bewildered by the red tape, potential costs and tax implications of the new provision. Hamstrung by funding shortages that have limited its outreach efforts, the Obama administration has not done a good job of explaining the legislation to employers.

In announcing the delayed enforcement of the employer mandate, White House special adviser Valerie Jarrett said employers needed more time to comply with the new rules, which require extensive reporting about the specifics of employees’ coverage in order to assess the penalties.
“As we implement this law, we have and will continue to make changes as needed,” Jarrett said in a statement. “In our ongoing discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this right. We are listening.”

The delay is the latest and most significant move by the Obama administration to slow enactment of the sprawling health care overhaul, which is seen as the major legislative achievement of the Obama presidency.

Although born of conservative ideology, the law has been opposed from the outset by Republicans and has only survived thanks to a surprising 2012 Supreme Court decision that upheld the law’s “individual mandate,” which requires that most Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty for noncompliance.

News of the decision to delay the employer mandate sparked unanimous praise from the business community.
“The administration has finally recognized the obvious – employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate. . . . We applaud the administration’s step to delay this provision,” said Randy Johnson, senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The National Retail Federation, which has called for the regulations to be delayed, was equally appreciative.
“The one-year delay will provide employers and businesses more time to update their health care coverage without threat of arbitrary punishment,” said Neil Trautwein, the federation’s vice president and employee benefits policy counsel. “We appreciate the administration’s recognition of employer concerns and hope it will allow for greater flexibility in the future.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill weren’t nearly as gracious about the administration’s concession. House Speaker John Boehner called the law a “train wreck” that should be repealed.
“I hope the administration recognizes the need to release American families from the mandates of this law as well,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. “This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable, and it underscores the need to repeal the law and replace it with effective patient-centered reforms.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., also called for the law’s repeal “before any more damage is done to our economy or the health care families depend on. The best delay for Obamacare is a permanent one.”
“Rather than continuing to delay the predictable pain until another election day has passed, we should scrap this entire law,” Cantor said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/02/195634/obamacare-employer-mandate-delayed.html#storylink=cpy

GOP Must Work For Black Vote.

Leonard Pitts | GOP must work for black vote

Written by Leonard Pitts

Rand Paul did just fine at Howard University, thank you very much. Or at least, that’s how he remembers it.
Paul, GOP senator from Kentucky, told the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday that his recent visit to Howard didn’t go so badly at all. He said any perception to the contrary was created by — all together now — the “left-wing media.”

Knowing what we do about the political right’s capacity for self-deception, we may trust that he’s telling it like it is — or at least, telling it like he believes it to be.
But reality-based Americans know it wasn’t left-wing media that insulted students at the historically black school by acting as if a visit to their campus was like a visit with headhunters. “Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here,” Paul said, somehow resisting the urge to add, “Me come-um in peace.”

And it wasn’t left-wing media that lied to those students. “I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act,” claimed Paul who, in fact, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2010 that the act overreached in telling private businesses they could not discriminate against black people.
It wasn’t left-wing media that told those students, “I want a government that leaves you alone,” somehow neglecting the fact that, had government left their grandparents alone, those kids would still be legally required to feed their money into the colored-only slot of the Coca-Cola machine.

Finally, it wasn’t left-wing media that condescended to those students, at one point telling them, “If I were to have said, ‘Who do you think the founders of the NAACP are?’ would everyone in here know they were all Republicans?”
“Of course they would,” one woman grumbled.

Indeed. Any first-year history student would know that. But they’d also know the Republicans are not the same party now that they were prior to 1968, when they essentially traded ideologies with the Democrats and inherited from them all those disaffected white Southern voters who were mortally offended by the aforementioned Civil Rights Act and its sequel, the Voting Rights Act.

 And would someone please tell Paul and any other Republicans planning “outreach” to African-Americans that if you must go back 104 years (the NAACP was founded in 1909) for examples of solidarity with black folks, it kind of illustrates the problem?

For decades, the Democratic Party has commanded the African-American vote. Yet, the Obama phenomenon aside, this dominance seems not to reflect love for the party so much as the fact that the Democrats are all that is left once the GOP has effectively removed itself from contention.

But let the record show that, as Paul had to reach back to 1909 to show solidarity with black folks, the Democrats themselves are still living on the 50-year-old fumes of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy. So there is no reason the GOP cannot command a portion of the black vote.

To do that, it must repudiate its own recent legacy of bigotry. Stop acting as if going to Howard University is like traveling into the rain forest. Stop trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act. Stop trying to repeal the 20th century. Stop expecting a ticker-tape parade for things that happened before movies had sound.
And begin to provide much-needed leadership on issues urgent to African-American voters in the here and now. For instance, mass incarceration, the failed drug war, the achievement gap and job discrimination.

In a word: compete.

That, after all, is how the Democrats broke the Republican stranglehold on the African-American vote in the first place. It would be nice — it would create a healthier nation — if Republicans returned the favor.

Unfortunately, Paul’s performance at Howard suggests that we ought not hold our breath while we wait.

AS I CORRECTLY PREDICTED HERE AND EVERYWHERE, POTUS BARACK OBAMA SPANKS PHONY MITT ROMNEY IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. WATCH POTUS' VICTORY SPEECH AND THE PHONY'S DEFEAT SPEECH. RACISTS CAN NOW CRAWL BACK IN THEIR CAVES!

POTUS: PHONY: MAYBE, NEXT TIME THE GOP WILL NOMINATE A CANDIDATE WE CAN'T CHOKE ON! THE ELECTORAL MAP:

Eugene Robinson: Election Is A Struggle For National Meaning, Identity.

Eugene Robinson | Election is a struggle for national meaning, identity

WASHINGTON — This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason why voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.

President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 15 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African-Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-1 advantage among white men.

It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.

When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.

Issues of race, power and privilege are less explicit this year than in 2008, but in some ways they are even stronger.

Four years ago, we asked ourselves whether the nation would ever elect a black president. The question was front and center. Every time we see the President and his family walk across the White House lawn to board Marine One, we’re reminded of the answer.

The intensity of the opposition to Obama has less to do with who he is than with the changes in American society he not only represents but incarnates. Citing his race as a factor in the way some of his opponents have bitterly resisted his policies immediately draws an outraged cry: “You’re saying that just because I oppose Obama, I’m a racist.” No, I’m not saying that at all.

What I’m saying is that Obama’s racial identity is a constant reminder of how much the nation has changed in a relatively short period of time. In my lifetime, we’ve experienced the civil rights movement, the countercultural explosion of the 1960s, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and an unprecedented wave of Latino immigration. Within a few decades, there will be no white majority in this country — no majority of any kind, in fact. We will be a nation of racial and ethnic minorities, and we will only prosper if everyone learns to give and take.

Our place in the world has changed as well. The United States remains the dominant economic and military power; our ideals remain a beacon for those around the globe still yearning to breathe free. But our capacity for unilateral action is diminished; we can assert but not dictate, and we must learn to persuade.

Obama’s great sin, for some who oppose him, is to make it impossible to ignore these domestic and international megatrends. Take one look at Obama and the phenomenon of demographic change is inescapable. Observe his approach to international crises in places such as Libya or Syria and the reality of America’s place in the world is unavoidable.

I’m deliberately leaving aside what should be the biggest factor in the election: Obama’s policies. It happens that I have supported most of them, but of course there are legitimate reasons to favor Romney’s proposals, insofar as we know what they really are — and the extent to which they really differ from Obama’s.

In foreign affairs, judging by the most recent debate, the differences are too small to discern; Romney promises to speak in a louder voice and perhaps deploy more battleships, but that’s about it. Domestically, however, I see a clear choice. I consider the Affordable Care Act a great achievement, and Romney’s promise to repeal it would alone be reason enough for me to oppose him. Add in the tax cuts for the wealthy, the plan to “voucherize” Medicare and the appointments Romney would likely make to the Supreme Court, and the implications of this election become even weightier.

Issues may explain our sharp political divisions, but they can’t be the cause of our demographic polarization. White men need medical care, too. African Americans and Latinos understand the need to get our fiscal house in order. The recession and the slow recovery have taken a toll across the board.

Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.