In a scene reminiscent of the Hunger Games, Stephen Colbert paid tribute to Wisconsin governor, former GOP presidential candidate, and current loser, Scott Walker.
Walker, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, was the latest Republican, the latest casualty of Donald Trump to drop out of the 2016 race for the Republican nomination to be president of the United States. And fittingly, the Hungry Games as done by Stephen Cobert was the perfect tribute for the Wisconsin loser.
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With a close to zero ratings in the polls, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker bowed out of the Republican race for the 2016 presidential nomination.
The Wisconsin governor entered the primary in July as a front-runner in Iowa and a darling of both the conservative base and powerful donors after winning battles against public unions in his left-leaning home state. But that promising start was quickly dashed after poor debate performances dried up support from donors.
“Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field. With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately,” Walker said at a news conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
He encouraged other trailing Republican candidates to follow his path.
“I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner,” said Walker, referencing businessman Donald Trump. “This is fundamentally important to the future of our party, and, more important, the future of the country.”
It’s August and the Back to School sales are ramping up in earnest, at least here in the nor’east. The sales started in July for the more southerly US climes, but that’s because they’re already back in the classrooms. In any event, it’s time once again to be thinking about education, and the issue is now near the top in this presidential election.
One of the more popular articles making its way around electronica is this one that essentially summarizes the findings of John Hattie, an educational researcher who’s written a slew of books on best practices. He suggests that achievement standards, focusing on smaller class sizes, and pouring more money into the educational system are not the answers and have little effect on student performance. He also questions school choice as a viable public policy. Of course, politicians on the right and left will pick and choose what they want from his message, with Democrats wanting more money and Republicans wanting more accountability, as if the two were completely opposite.
Educational access, attainment and benefits have been tied to the relative wealth of families and communities for the better part of United States’ history, so it should be no surprise to anyone that we are presently confronted with a system that’s as fractured as our income gap. Schools in wealthy communities tend to perform better than those in less wealthy and poor communities and the willingness of politicians to spend money where it should be spent (key concept) lends itself to schools where teachers can teach and students have every opportunity to learn.
Most of the Republican candidates for president support the free-market, pro-corporate model for schools, and the results have been disappointing at best to demoralizing at worst. Governors Scott Walker (falling in the polls) and Chris Christie (can you fall below zero in you polls?), have done more to demonize public school teachers than the other candidates and promise to do the same to the rest of the country if they are elected. Jeb Bush supports the Common Core standards, which really isn’t going to endear him to any particularly large constituency, but he’s also against public unions. The other candidates want local and state standards, which have not worked in the past and will not help student performance in the future.
The Democrats want more money for universal pre-school and aid to schools in poor and depressed areas of the country. Hillary Clinton has also recently unveiled a higher education policy that focuses on student debt. She would probably never get $350 billion over ten years from a Republican Congress, but her plan would put pressure on the right to relieve millions of students from crushing loans that are sapping their economic prospects. The Republican candidates have joined her in trying to address the debt issue, but right now the best we can say about them is that they’re market-oriented, including Marco Rubio’s plan to have wealthy investors essentially buy an interest in your future earnings in return for their investment in your education. I wonder if he’s also going to provide students with a free saddle so that your investor can sit on your back.
Given the years of blame and economic hardship that teachers have had to endure, it’s no wonder that there’s a shortage. And given the attitude that many national and state leaders have about teachers, it’s no wonder that qualified students are looking at other fields of endeavor. The truth is that we pay a great deal of lip service to wanting a highly qualified, well-trained teaching staff at every school, but the best and brightest are not stupid; they see what’s going on in education and are increasingly turned off to it. And since we don’t have the best and brightest going into government, the solutions will be doubly difficult to come by.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
Talking to a Republican armed with talking-points is like talking to a wall. No matter what you say, no matter what you ask, you will be hit with the same talking-points the Republican said before, because, that’s all they have… talking-points.
Watch as this immigrant family confronts Walker and experienced first hand the effects of a Republican armed with talking-points.
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ABC US News | World News
What did Rudy Giuliani say this time that got his name plastered all over the internet? Based on absolutely nothing, the former mayor of New York and current September 11th fame-seeker said, that the president of the United States does not love America.
Yea, he said that.
This of course, is based on Giuliani’s expert expertise on all things Islam and his uncanny ability to associate Islam with terrorism. As far as Giuliani and the rest of the Republican party are concerned, Islam and terrorism are the same, and with this association made and the fact that President Obama fails to see the connection, well, Giuliani figures that the president just don’t love America.
He was addressing a group of supporters at a private event when he came to the conclusion that the president hates this country. And present at this private gathering was none other than Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 Republican candidate.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
With Walker sitting just a few seats away, Giuliani continued by saying that “with all our flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the world. I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”
“And if it’s you Scott, I’ll endorse you,” he added. “And if it’s somebody else, I’ll support somebody else.”
After the event, Giuliani then explained and doubled down on why he made the remark. Apparently, when George Bush invaded Iraq on false pretense and sanctioned thousands of troops to die needlessly, Giuliani now thinks their deaths should have been justified with America “taking land.” Who knows? Maybe we were supposed to take over Iraq or something.
“What country has left so many young men and women dead abroad to save other countries without taking land? This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W. [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.”
Scott Walker – the man who went on a mission to dismantle the unions in his state of Wisconsin, a state with a dismal economic outlook due to weak job growth since Walker became governor – now has his eyes set in the White House, and according to this new poll, Walker is leading all the potential Republican wannabes for the 2016 presidential election.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is surging, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is an also-ran and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is dominating in a new poll of Iowans likely to vote in the nation’s first presidential nominating contest.
The Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, taken Monday through Thursday, shows Walker leading a wide-open Republican race with 15 percent, up from just 4 percent in the same poll in October. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was at 14 percent and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, stood at 10 percent.
Bush trailed with 8 percent and increasingly is viewed negatively by likely Republican caucus-goers. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in even worse shape, with support from just 4 percent. More troubling for Christie: He’s viewed unfavorably by 54 percent, among the highest negative ratings in the potential field. At 9 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson pulls more support than either Bush or Christie.
The tweet from Dropkick Murphys was directed to Republican governor, Scott Walker – “Please stop using our music in any way…we literally hate you !!! Love, Dropkick Murphys.”
When the Celtic punk rock band tweeted those words at Wisconsin governor Scott Walker over the weekend, it wasn’t the first time they’d expressed their displeasure with the Republican governor’s policies. The band (whose left-leaning members have a tight relationship with workers’ rights activists) has previously slammed the governor as ”anti-union.”
This time, they were pissed that Walker had used their song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” as entrance music at the Iowa Freedom Summit on Saturday.
“I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which uses lyrics originally penned by Woody Guthrie, is Dropkick Murphys’ biggest hit, and was prominently featured in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning drama The Departed.
Dropkick Murphys’ tweet is one of many examples of liberal recording artists telling conservative politicians to quit using their music. John Mellencamp knocked Gov. Walker for playing his song “Small Town” out on the campaign trail. Tom Petty sent a cease-and-desist to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, asking the then-Texas governor to quit playing “I Won’t Back Down” at rallies. And Newt Gingrich was accused of violating copyright laws for blasting the Heavy’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” at an event in Tampa, Florida.
It’s election time again folks, a time when people say things they really don’t mean and take positions they really can’t stand.
Take Wisconsin’s Scott Walker for example. Two years ago when Scott Walker was the beloved of the Republican Party, he secretly signed a bill repealing the state’s Equal Pay law. Before the repeal, the law provided women more opportunities to get compensation for their work, including lawsuits. But Walker’s repeal went practically unnoticed, although his fellow Republicans applauded his efforts.
The Huffington Post quotes another Republican, Senator Glenn Grothman, who showered praise on Walker’s repeal, saying Wisconsin’s Equal Pay law was “an underreported problem,” because “a huge number of discrimination claims are baseless.”
But that was then, this is now. Recent polling in Wisconsin suggests that Walker is losing the women’s vote to his Democratic challenger, Mary Burke. So what does Walker do? He puts out a new ad praising women’s equal pay laws, the very law he repealed.
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Ron Kaufman writes: “I am a Republican, and I will not be voting for Gov. Scott Walker this November. He does not deserve my vote or another four years in office.
“I voted for Walker four years ago with high hopes, but he has turned out to be one of the worst governors Wisconsin has ever had.
“Walker has no respect for the hard-working people of Wisconsin. He believes people can live off of minimum wage, which has not been increased for years.
“Walker has no respect for women. He thinks they are incapable of making their own health decisions. If the Republican Party tried to tell men what to do with their own bodies, there would be a revolution in this country.
“Walker has waisted millions of dollars on voucher schools, some of which closed, while failing to properly support our public schools.”
This is the ad that’s causing a stir in Republican circles in Wisconsin and nationwide. Mary Burke (D) and her campaign put together an ad using Scott Walker’s own words, showing things he promised then and how they are now.
That ad can run against any Republican by simply replacing the names. There are many areas where they said one thing, then did another.
Ah Republicans. You claim Democrats were guilty of voter fraud and you create laws to keep them from going to the polls to vote. But as it turns out, the people committing these frauds are members of your party.
A Wisconsin insurance executive and Republican donor was charged with voting illegally more than a dozen times in four elections.
The Journal-Sentinel reported that 50-year-old Robert Monroe was caught as a result of an investigation into a possible illegal voting by his son in Waukesha County. But after his son denied requesting an absentee ballot from his father’s address in Shorewood, suspicion turned to Monroe.
A complaint claimed that Monroe voted five times in Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) recalled election. He also was accused of voting illegally in a 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, a 2012 primary, and the 2012 presidential election.
Although the complaint did not state who Monroe voted for, WISN determined that he had donated money to Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling.
Just another Republican doing what he does best… lying.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) talked to Right Wing News about voting for Ronald Reagan:
“I remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for Ronald Reagan — limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense. You knew what you were getting. You knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you.”
One problem: Blogging Blue notes Walker wasn’t old enough to vote in either 1980 or 1984 when Reagan ran for president.
