She was sent to the man’s apartment to check up on him after he failed to report for work. But when officer Umaccula Pierre arrived at his residence, she met 65-year-old Kenneth Sanden, dead in his home. The allegation against officer Pierre states that she stole the man’s credit card and placed a $3200 order for a ring at Zales.com
Pierre – an officer working in the 6th Precinct – is charged with identity theft and official misconduct.
The Vice President of the United States just suffered another one of life’s tragedies with the loss of his 46-year-old son Beau Biden to a brain tumor. And while the rest of the country respectfully allowed the Bidens to mourn their loss, Republican Ted Cruz, a current presidential candidate for 2016, jumped at the opportunity to tell a cruel “joke” about the Vice President.
Cruz, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of roughly 650 Republicans at a Livingston County GOP dinner, told a series of jokes about Democrats, including the poorly timed jab at the vice president.
“You know, Vice President Joe Biden,” he said as a few chuckles emerged from the crowd, setting up the joke for him.
“You know the nice thing. You don’t need a punchline. I promise you it works. At the next party you’re at, just walk up to someone and say, ‘Vice President Joe Biden,’ and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing.”
A little later, a reporter asked Cruz why he would do such a horrible thing as joke about the vice president while he is getting ready to bury his son. Instead of using the time to realize his mistake and offer a sincere apology, Cruz is caught on camera running away from the reporter like the classless fool his truly is.
Call it pure Insanity or just American stupidity. The man whose policies erased a surplus and dragged this country into the second great depression while losing 700,000 jobs a month, is seen more favorably than the man whose policies added over 11 million jobs to the economy so far, brought the unemployment rate to the lowest it’s been in years and brought health care to millions of Americans… just to name a few.
I’ll call this the true definition of pure, unadulterated American stupidity.
A new CNN/ORC poll reveals that 52 percent of Americans see Mr. Bush positively, while 43 percent do not. In contrast, 49 percent view Mr. Obama favorably, while 49 percent do not. That makes Obama the least-popular president among all his predecessors today.
“The second term doldrums do exist, but time does seem to heal all,” Douglas Astolfi, a professor of history at Saint Leo University, summed up CNN’s findings.
Presidents and the economy: Who was best, worst? Take our quiz.
Obama’s numbers are down as dramatically as Bush’s are up. In January 2009, shortly after Bush left and Obama entered office, only 35 percent of Americans viewed Bush favorably, while Obama enjoyed stratospheric approval ratings of 78 percent
Republicans are in full control. They now control the House of Representatives and the Senate, and have promised their base to expect fast, sweeping changes to Obamacare when the new legislative session began in January. Much was said and many anticipated seeing a glimpse of the Republican healthcare plan, but so far, nothing. And from the looks of it, nothing will happen in the near future.
A piece written on Salon looked at this Republican quagmire and correctly called it a “massive deception” by congressional Republicans. The piece dug deep and uncovered the reason Republicans promised their version of the ‘Obamacare replacement,’ but failed to deliver. And according to Salon, the reason of course, is Politics.
Speaker John Boehner went on Fox News and promised that his party would agree on an Obamacare replacement plan and that it would come up for a vote before the year was out. “There will be an alternative,” he said, “and you’re going to get to see it.” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also got in on the act, announcing the creation of “a new working group” consisting of Reps. Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, and John Kline that would “continue to build on patient-centered health care solutions with which to replace Obamacare.”
In keeping with the tired conventions of official Washington, these statements and actions were directed at the “hardworking taxpayers” who were at risk from “the fallout of Obamacare.” But the real intended audience was far smaller: the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The high court had, at that point, already agreed to hear arguments in King v. Burwell, the case that threatens to invalidate health insurance subsidies to the majority of states. Republicans obviously wanted the court to endorse the dodgy, bad-faith arguments brought by the plaintiffs, but they also had to consider the implications of a ruling against the ACA. If the subsidies were struck down, the insurance markets in those states would descend into chaos and put people’s lives at risk, and that might give the conservative justices pause.
So, they started sending every signal they could that the Republicans in Congress would be ready to cope with the pandemonium of a ruling against the ACA. McCarthy’s statement announcing the healthcare working group said that it would “develop a contingency plan… to enact in case the Supreme Court rules in King v. Burwell that Obamacare subsidies offered on the federal exchange are illegal.” The message was perfectly clear for those inclined to listen: don’t worry, pull the trigger, we got this.
The day before oral arguments in the case began in March, the three working group members published an op-ed laying out in determinedly vague terms the principles for their Obamacare “off-ramp” proposal. After the oral arguments, the working group released a statement saying “we will be ready to act” if the court rules for the plaintiffs. That was three months ago. The court’s ruling is expected to be released very soon. So where is the “contingency plan” majority leader McCarthy said would be forthcoming back in January?
Well, apparently he’s of a different mind now over whether it’s right and proper for the House working group to weigh in before the Supreme Court has actually released its ruling. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. McCarthy told reporters Monday that Republicans would be prepared regardless of what the court decides, but that they would not unveil a proposal before a ruling.
“Don’t expect us to pre-determine the Supreme Court. We have to first see what their decision is and what we have to solve,” Mr. McCarthy said. Republicans still might release outlines of their response, but not a formal bill, an aide said.
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told USA Today that Clinton, who has so far refused to say where she stands on the deal, will have to say where she is – and warned if she doesn’t stand with them on the issue, she may lose out on their endorsement.
“She’s going to have to answer that,” he said. “I think she won’t be able to go through a campaign without answering that and people will take it seriously and it will affect whether they vote for her or don’t vote for her.”
Trumka warned that if Clinton does back the 13-country deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership “it will be tougher to mobilize working people.”
He also said it’s “conceivable” that the 12 million-member AFL-CIO might not endorse a presidential candidate “if both candidates weren’t interested in raising wages and creating jobs.”
