Liz Cheney has no idea what the word “disgrace” means

Liz Cheney has no idea what the word “disgrace” means

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The Cheney family is a pestilence. A curse on America.
Liz Cheney bashed President Obama Friday night for the way he characterized CIA interrogation practices after Sept. 11, 2001 as “torture.” “Even before I came into office, I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks,” Obama said during a Friday press conference. We did some things that were contrary to our values.” Cheney said this was unacceptable.
Governor Markell on NPR Talking About Common Core

Governor Markell on NPR Talking About Common Core

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Yesterday morning, I heard the Governor on NPR in a quick (4 minutes) interview on Common Core and the fact that there is some movement in a few states to disown the curriculum/process/name. I can't really tell what is being walked away from really. But it looks like Governor Markell is not expecting the standards to go away entirely, just the name:
SIMON: So if a lot of states pull out of the Common Core, is there really a Common Core? MARKELL: Well, it depends what they replace it with. I mean, I think a lot of states, you know, who are talking about getting rid of the Common Core are quite likely to replace it with something that looks quite similar. If they call it something else, that's up to them. If they want to, you know, tweak the standards somewhat, that's up to them as well. I can tell you, in Delaware we're going forward because we really think it makes the most sense for our students.
Weekend Open Thread [8.3.14]

Weekend Open Thread [8.3.14]

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Dana Milbank on the logic of the House Republicans, such as it is:
After conservatives on Thursday brought down House Speaker John Boehner’s bill to address the border crisis, the new House Republican leadership team issued a joint statement declaring that President Obama should fix the problem himself. “There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action,” the leadership quartet proclaimed, “to secure our borders and ensure these children are returned swiftly and safely to their countries.” Just the day before, House Republicans had voted to sue Obama for using his executive authority. They called him lawless, a usurper, a monarch, a tyrant — all for postponing deadlines in the implementation of Obamacare. Now they were begging him to take executive action to compensate for their own inability to act — even though, in this case, accelerating the deportation of thousands of unaccompanied children coming from Central America would likely require Obama to ignore a 2008 law.
I personally guarantee that whatever Obama does in his executive authority with respect to immigration will be the basis for impeachment. It is just so fracking predictable.
Flowers winning the twitter primary?

Flowers winning the twitter primary?

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From reformed GOPer, Mike Stafford's FB Page:
Is the size of a candidate's Twitter following a good gauge of their electability? If so, as of right now Flowers has more than 800, Barney just passed 400, and Ken Simpler, well, at 73 I'm not really feeling the whole populist groundswell thing. Meanwhile, Sher Valenzuela's Twitter strategy is to be invisible- I guess that makes her the stealth candidate.
Obviously an incumbent is going to have a built in twitter base. So this isn't exactly scientific, but primaries are all about turnout, so if a candidate is having trouble attracting people to their twitter account, how much harder will it be to attract them to the polls?
USDA Approves Poultry Industry Self Inspections – Get ready for the diarrhea

USDA Approves Poultry Industry Self Inspections – Get ready for the diarrhea

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Diarrhea will actually be one of the milder outcomes, because all of the evidence provided by the history of capitalism says that this is going to fail, and fail catastrophically.
Poultry inspection, prepare to modernized. Or, if you prefer, privatized. The USDA late Thursday released its revamped poultry inspection rules, an overhaul to the 60-year-old system which, by allowing plants to self-inspect, it claims will simultaneously reduce the number of federal inspectors on site and incidences of foodborne illness.
No Tax revenue, no problem. Ultimately, you'll pay one way or another.

Thursday Open Thread [7.31.14]

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So conservatives who simply cannot live in the Reality Based Community created their own version of Facebook.  It is called Reaganbook -- the "Facebook for Patriots".  Somehow these conservatives feel that they are being censored and hounded off of Facebook and they need their own social network.  (There is nothing more appalling or more hysterical than conservatives who think they are being persecuted.) That site was recently pre-launched and that failed launch was subject to serious take-backs: