Tag Archives: Mother Jones

April 25, 2013 · 6:47 PM

Mother Jones: Frank Luntz Calls Right-Wing Talk Radio ‘Problematic’ For GOP

I would agree that right-wing talk radio is an Achilles heel for the GOP but they have bigger problems than that.  

They have an immigration problem, a gun problem, a people of color problem and a “stupid party” problem.  Not to mention their anti-abortion legislation problems.  Also the fact that the Tea Party won’t allow the GOP any amount of compromise not only stifles our government, it stifles the party as well.

Yep, what the GOP has…is a bad image problem.

TPM Livewire

GOP strategist Frank Luntz went off the record before a group of college Republicans earlier this month at the University of Pennsylvania to discuss the negative impact he believes right-walk talk radio has had on the GOP, Mother Jones reported Thursday.

“And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it’s really problematic,” Luntz said of right-wing talk-radio programs, according to a recording of the event. Luntz added that talk radio has been especially damaging to Sen. Marco Rubio’s immigration reform efforts.

“He’s getting destroyed,” Luntz said, “by Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He’s trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn’t the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That’s what’s causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy.”

According to Mother Jones’ piece, written by David Corn, Luntz asked the audience to allow him to speak off the record, prompting one college newspaper reporter to switch off his device. But another student, Aakash Abbi, captured the sound bite on his iPhone.

Corn has built a reputation reporting on surreptitious recordings, starting with Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments and continuing with a secretly recorded Mitch McConnell campaign strategy meeting.

Listen to the audio and read Corn’s full piece here.

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April 10, 2013 · 9:08 AM

Mitch McConnell’s Claim That Democrats Watergate Style Bugged Him Is Falling Apart

Of course it’s falling apart.  McConnell was lying like he always does…

PoliticusUSA

Hours after urging the FBI to investigate what he called a Watergate style Democratic bugging, Mitch McConnell’s blame the Democrats for the secret audio tape strategy is falling apart.

After the publication of a secret audio tape where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) detailed some of the sleazy tactics he planned to use to get reelected, his campaign called for an FBI investigation.

Mitch McConnell

McConnell’s campaign manager Jesse Benton said, “Senator McConnell’s campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings. Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.” Benton continued, “We’ve always said the Left would stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters are above and beyond.”

“We are still waiting for Sen. Mitch McConnell to comment on the substance of the article. Before posting, we contacted his Senate office and his campaign office—in particular, his campaign manager, Jesse Benton—and no one responded. As the story makes clear, we were recently provided with the tape by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. We published the article on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness. We were not involved in the making of the tape, but it is our understanding that the tape was not the product of any kind of bugging operation. We cannot comment beyond that, except to say that under the circumstances, our publication of the article is both legal and protected by the First Amendment.”

According to Kentucky state law, if the person who made the recording was a part of the conversation, the taping was legal. In order words, Mitch McConnell did not have to be notified that he was being recorded. It only takes one party’s consent for the taping to legal, so Mitch McConnell doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

The real purpose of this “FBI investigation” is to uncover the mole in McConnell’s reelection campaign. Mitch McConnell’s campaign has sprung a leak, and they are desperate to know who it is. The claims of a Democratic bugging are nothing more than a shameless attempt to distract Kentucky voters from the fact that McConnell is the least popular senator in the country. McConnell is hoping that the paranoid sympathy Republican vote will carry him to reelection.

Mitch McConnell’s story is crumbling quickly, and his hopes for another term may be fading before his own eyes.

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· 9:01 AM

Here’s The Secret Recording Of Mitch McConnell’s Meeting On Discrediting Ashley Judd

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland

And here’s the transcript from Mother Jones, including how they planned to bring up her mental health issues.

Presenter: Ah, and again. She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it’s been documented. Jesse [a researcher] can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s. Phil Maxson found this, which sort of I think is a pretty revealing interview.

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December 20, 2012 · 12:29 AM

Man Behind “47 Percent” Video Opens His Own Research Firm

BuzzFeed

Jimmy Carter’s grandson turns his big scoop into a career. He’s already taken down another Republican with a hidden-camera video.

The freelance researcher who became a minor campaign celebrity after unearthing the now-infamous video of Mitt Romney railing against 47 percent of Americans at a private fundraiser has used his political fame to start his own opposition research firm.

When the researcher, James Carter IV, first saw the secretly recorded footage of Romney in August, he immediately identified it as a bombshell, and sent it to David Corn, a Mother Jones reporter with whom he had worked in the past. When the magazine published the scoop — headline: SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters” — Corn received a solo byline, with Carter getting a modest mention at the foot of the post: “Research assistance: James Carter.”

Corn would later turn what his magazine called “the scoop of the decade” into a HarperCollins e-book, which he titled, 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video That Rocked the 2012 Election. Carter is thanked in the acknowledgements for “his diligent pursuit of the source for the Romney fundraising video and for introducing the two of us,” writes Corn. “It was a consequential hook-up.”

It was, in fact, Carter who found the video, researched Romney fundraisers, identified the likely location and date of the one featured in the video, and convinced the source of the footage through a series of Twitter direct messages to hand it over to Corn.

“[Corn] got a lot of the credit for it, and that’s fine — that’s the way it had always worked,” Carter told BuzzFeed, adding, “I was perfectly fine with it. I’m the research guy, and he was the reporter and publicist.”

Continue reading…

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September 17, 2012 · 6:46 PM

Romney Tells Wealthy Donors That 47% Of Americans Are Lazy Moochers

Not surprised, but speechless nonetheless…

Think Progress

It’s only September, but Mitt Romney has already written off almost half the country’s voters.

A hidden-camera recording obtained by Mother Jones captures Romney at a private fundraiser telling donors that, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

Watch it:

Publicly, Romney claims that he aims to help middle-class Americans. As he told CNN’s Gloria Borger last month, “I know the very wealthy are going to do just fine whoever is elected. The middle class is the people that is the group of people that I am most concerned about, they need our – and the poor – they need our help. They need our help with good jobs. That is only going to come if we encourage this economy by keeping the burdens on small business down.”

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September 6, 2011 · 7:12 PM

Charles Koch compares Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein

 

These people are dangerous…being rich and powerful with malignant intent to destroy the middle class  in America is extremely harmful to our Democracy.

The Raw Story

The BRAD BLOG and Mother Jones have uncovered audio of billionaire Charles Koch comparing President Barack Obama to Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein.

At a conference in June, Charles Koch encouraged wealthy conservative donors to help defeat Obama.

“But we’ve been talking about — we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months,” Koch said, referring to Obama and the 2012 presidential election. “For the life or death of this country. So, I’m not going to do this to put any pressure on anyone here, mind you. This is not pressure. But if this makes your heart feel glad and you want to be more forthcoming, then so be it.”

“What I want to do is recognize not all of our great partners, but those partners who have given more than a billion – a mill-, no, billion,” the billionaire said before correcting himself.

“Well, I was thinking of Obama and his billion dollar campaign, so I thought we gotta do better than that… No, I’m not, I’m gonna go easy on you. More than a million over the last 12 months. If you want to kick in a billion, believe me, we’ll have a special seminar just for you.”

Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen has published a list of many of the donors in Koch’s so-called “Million-Dollar Club.”

Charles and his brother David, who are thought to be worth about $22 billion each, have themselves reportedly spent $100 million supporting conservative causes.

This audio is from The Brad Blog, recorded June 26, 2011.

Listen to the audio here…

 Don’t miss Gavin Aronsen’s breakdown of the Kochs’ million-dollar donor club.

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June 10, 2011 · 8:15 AM

The Right’s Favorite Historian: Founding Fathers Opposed Darwin

You just can’t make this stuff up!

Remember when Michele Bachmann said that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?   Well, it appears self-styled GOP historian, David Barton may have been her influence for that statement.

Mother Jones

Talk to a prominent social conservative these day and the odds are pretty good that he or she is a fan of David Barton. Perhaps more than any other person, the Texas-based amateur historian has provided grist for the idea of American Exceptionalism—the argument that America’s unique success in the world is divinely caused and due to its committment to core Judeo-Christian principles. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, the tea party champion and likely 2012 presidential contender, invited him to teach members of Congress about the Constitution; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he learns something new every time he listens to Barton.

He’s a pretty influential guy. So what, exactly, does he teach? On Wednesday, Right Wing Watch flagged a recent interview Barton gave with an evangelcial talk show, in which he argues that the Founding Fathers had explicitly rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yes, that Darwin. The one whose seminal work, On the Origin of Species, wasn’t even published until 1859. Barton declared, “As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they’d already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you’ve got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!” Paine died in 1809, the same year Darwin was born.

Here’s the clip:

Continue reading here…

 

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May 12, 2011 · 4:43 AM

The Eleven Craziest Things Newt Gingrich Has Ever Said

They only came up with eleven?

The Nation

Over his long and checkered career, Newt has said some wild and crazy things—most are deeply offensive, while some are outright bizarre. Here’s the most unhinged Newt-isms, 1989-present. 

(1) “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [my grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.” [Address to Cornerstone Church in Texas, March 2011]

(2) “The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.” [To Mother Jones magazine, October 1989]

(3)  “All I would say is, why did it take so long? The whole thing is strange.” [Speaking to TPM about the recent release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate, April 2011]

(4) “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.” [To the National Review, September 2010]

(5) “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.” – [Newt’s explanation for why his multiple affairs won’t damage his political fortunes, as told to his jilted wife.]

(6) “The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” [In his book To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine, May 2010.]

(7) “This is one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger…. It’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.” [At a book talk in Huntington, NY, April 2008]

(8) “A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.” [At the Republican National Convention, August 1996]

(9) “I want to say to the elite of this country—the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton… of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.” [Speaking about the Columbine shootings, May 1999]

(10) “How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.” [Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 2007]

(11) “I’m running for President.” [5/11/2011]

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May 9, 2011 · 7:31 AM

Pawlenty: “I’m Sorry” I Once Cared About Climate

Most pundits will claim that politicians like Tim Pawlenty are kowtowing to the “tea party” types when they reverse their positions in favor of tea party ideology. 

I believe the tea party is the middle man for corporations. 

This is all about pleasing the corporations and reaping the corporate benefits that their lobbyists are tasked to give out in the form of  “campaign contributions”.

Mother Jones

Thursday night’s Republican debate was worth watching if only to see Tim Pawlenty try to talk his way around his previous support for efforts to cut planet-warming emissions. As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty not only acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but also endorsed a cap-and-trade plan to deal with it. That makes him something of a pariah among other Republicans these days.

In a very “This is Your Life” moment, the Fox debate hosts replayed a 2007 ad that Pawlenty recorded for the Environmental Defense Fund in which he argues for cap and trade as a solution for climate change. When asked to discuss the ad, Pawlenty abashedly replied, “Do we have to?”

After trying to explain that he didn’t actually support cap and trade policy as governor—he just supported the “study” of it—Pawlenty decided to try apologizing:

“I’ve said I was wrong. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry,” Mr. Pawlenty told the Fox television audience, presumably filled with potential Republican primary voters. “You’re going to have a few clunkers in your record, and we all do, and that’s one of mine. I just admit it. I don’t try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I’m just telling you, I made a mistake.”

Pawlenty has apologized for this before. In March, he told conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham that his support for cap-and-trade was a mistake and pointed to other Republican 2012 hopefuls who made similar “mistakes.”

Pawlenty’s flip-flop on climate is probably the most damning among the viable contenders for 2012. He formed the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group as governor to study the impacts of global warming and make policy recommendations. (He later ignored those recommendations.) He was also at the forefront of the effort to get the Midwest Governors Association to sign onto the Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. He was even best buddies with a famed Arctic explorer and climate activist.

Pawlenty has been trying to talk his way out of all this ever since he signaled he is running for the Republican nomination. Last night probably didn’t do much to end the questions. Pawlenty will be dealing with this for some time to come.

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