The Young Turks: Cenk Uygur: ‘President Obama Sets Bear Trap, Republicans Walk Right Into It’

Source:FOX News– Fox News, talking about President Barack Obama.

Source:The New Democrat

“Following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, where he called on Congress to end discriminatory workplace practices that “belong in a Mad Men episode” Fox News host Martha MacCallum proclaimed on the program American’s Newsroom that women did not want special laws ensuring equal for equal work because they already were compensated “exactly what they’re worth.” On the Fox program, two men, liberal radio host Alan Colmes and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, debated equal pay for women. Carlson assertedthat women actually made more than men if the time they “voluntarily” took off work to raise children was factored in. “The numbers don’t lie,” he insisted…”.* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.”

From The Young Turks

The current Republican governing policy is, “if Democrats are for it, we are against it, even if we are for it, or were once in favor of it”. And even offered it in health care reform a perfect example of that where the Affordable Care Act actually has a lot of good conservative ideas like the health care mandate and the health care market place in it. Which is the main reason why there hasn’t been much compromise in Congress between the House and Senate because when Democrats say okay we’ll agree to that, the House GOP just moves the ball further to get more compromises.

Then instead of Republicans saying okay let’s do that, Republicans just move the ball and say well, “if Democrats are willing to give us this, we can get them to give us this as well and hold off on a deal”. The deficit reduction negotiations are a perfect example of this where Democrats have put entitlement reform on the table and what Republicans is do is to say well, “if they will do that, then they’ll take exactly what type of entitlement reform we are interested in”. Like cutting Social Security benefits to future retirees or cutting benefits to current beneficiaries.

The only goal Republicans have right now is absolute power. And to accomplish this, they need to hold onto the House and 2014 and retake the Senate in 2014. To give them a united Republican Congress and to win back the White House in 2016 as well. While hanging onto Congress and the hard right partisan Republicans in the House and Senate have one clear strategy. “If Democrats are for it, it must be a bad idea even if it is our idea. So we are only going to put policies that are as far to the right as possible to get our partisan right-wing base behind us to avoid primary challenges”.

Which leaves us with gridlock when you have the Republican Leadership saying no to anything that the Democratic Leadership especially in the Senate and White House say yes to. Because now Democrats are in a position where they are only negotiating with themselves. Trying to find more moderate members in Congress to go along with some of these more conservative ideas in broader packages, while not losing any of their more, well lets say progressive members. Instead of negotiating with their own caucus’ in the House and Senate, along with Congressional Republicans.

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NBC Sports: MLB 1984- Detroit Tigers @ Chicago White Sox: Jack Morris No-Hitter

Source:NBC Sports– Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson.

Source:The New Democrat 

“1984 04 07 NBC GOW Tigers at White Sox Morris no hitter”

From Classic MLB

Floyd Bannister and the Chicago White Sox taking on the Detroit Tigers in April, 1984 in Chicago. During the early and mid 1980s, Bannister was one of the better pitchers in Major League Baseball, at least in the American League and then he wore out and became a mediocre pitcher.

Source:NBC Sports– The Detroit Tigers vs the Chicago White Sox, from 1984.

Here’s one example of why Jack Morris should be in the MLB Hall of Fame, because when he was on, he could be very dominant, because he threw hard and then throw in his devastating forkball and he could fool you. One of the last pitchers especially of his era that you wanted to fall behind, because of his forkball and he wouldn’t need to throw strikes to get you out.

The 1984 Detroit Tigers are about as a complete and great baseball team that MLB has had, at least since 1969 when divisional play started. They were very good defensively, had a very good, deep and all around lineup offensively. And had very good pitching, both starting and in the bullpen. And Jack Morris was a big part of that and should get more credit for it.

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Chicago White Sox TV: MLB 1980-10-05-80-Anaheim Angels @ Chicago White Sox: Full Game

Source:WGN Sports covering the Chicago White Sox.

“1980 MLB California Angels vs Chicago White Sox”

From Mercerr 22

Source:Baseball Classics

Not a good way to end a Major League Baseball season other than to see a game at the great Comiskey Park, than to have the 65-95 Anaheim Angels vs the 70-90 Chicago White Sox. Which is what the records of these two clubs would be after this game no matter who won or loss.

The White Sox of the 1970s were like their brothers from the National League the Chicago Cubs in the 1970s. You knew basically when the season would start that they would probably have a losing record. The question would be whether they would finish in last place or not.

The Angels were very different especially in the late 1970s after requiring star players like pitchers Nolan Ryan, Frank Tannana, hitters like Don Baylor, Brian Downing and several others, Rod Carew would be another one. They won the AL West in 1979 and at least going in the 1980 season were probably thinking they would at least contend for the AL West if not win the American League all together. Interesting that they would go from being a first place team in the AL West, to sixth place team in just one season.

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NBC Sports: MLB 1985- NBC GOW- Detroit Tigers @ Chicago White Sox: Full Game

Source:NBC Sports– Detroit Tigers OF Kirk Gibson, perhaps the most talented, all around MLB player in the 1980s. And that’s not a Sparky Anderson promo. It’s simply the truth.

“1985 05 11 NBC GOW Tigers at White Sox”

From Classic MLB

A very good matchup here with both the Tigers and White Sox being in contention for their division titles going into September that season. And with Bob Costas and Tony Kubek calling this game for NBC Sports, you can’t ask for more when it comes to broadcast network sports.

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Chicago White Sox TV: MLB 1981- Baltimore Orioles @ Chicago White Sox: Full Game

Source:Classic MLB– I think that’s Chicago White Sox catcher Carlton Fix at the plate.

“Wild game; poor video quality but worth a look anyway IMHO. A lot of runs scored here.”

From Classic MLB

1981 Carlton Fisk’s first season in Chicago.

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Russia Today: Barack Obama- A Socialist in Disguise?

Source:FreeState MD

“Obama: Socialist in disguise?

From Russia Today

“RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya (Russian: Россия Сегодня))[9] is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the Russian government.[16][17] It operates pay television or free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an autonomous non-profit organization founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[8][18] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO “TV-Novosti” on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[19][20][21] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (2010–2022),[22][23] RT UK (2014–2022) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[6][7]

RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[58] and conspiracy theories.[65] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast “materially misleading” content.[72]

In 2012, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence.[73] Referring to the Russo-Georgian War, she stated that it was “waging an information war, and with the entire Western world”.[17][74] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[75]

RT was banned in Ukraine in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea;[76] Latvia and Lithuania implemented similar bans in 2020.[77][78] Germany banned RT DE in February 2022.[79] After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland and then the entire European Union announced they were formally banning RT as well, while independent service providers in over 10 countries suspended broadcasts of RT.[80][81] Social media websites followed by blocking external links to RT’s website and restricting access to RT’s content.[82][83] Microsoft removed RT from their app store and de-ranked their search results on Bing,[84][85] while Apple removed the RT app from all countries except for Russia.”

From Wikipedia

I agree Barack Obama may be the worst Socialist ever for the simple reason he’s not a Socialist. And the same thing could be said about George W. Bush being the worst Conservative ever because he wasn’t very conservative, if you look at his record when it came to fiscal policy, especially spending and civil liberties.

To be a Socialist you, you must be a Socialist. I know that sounds crazy, but to be tall, you actually have to be tall. A man can’t just say one day: “Now dammit (or something stronger) I’m tired of being 5’7 and short. So today I declare myself as 6’1 and tall.” Why, because that man will still be 5’7. Calling yourself something doesn’t make you that. A patrol officer can’t just make themselves a sergeant and call themselves that. They have to be promoted to sergeant first.

Calling yourself something or calling someone else something, doesn’t make them what you’re calling them or yourself that, if you or they aren’t actually that. If I’ve lost you on that, I’m not surprised, I’m feeling dizzy from just writing that.

To be a Socialist, you must have a socialist record and socialist policies and ideas. Which is just not there in Barack Obama’s case. Unless you want to play guilt by association (In other words: Joe McCarthy) Meaning people Barry has been associated with in the past, Bill Ayers comes to mind, the guy hosting this show, Al Sharpton, now here’s someone you could make a serious case about being a Socialist.

But the charges against President Obama are just Tea Party propaganda trying to make a man they hate, seen as Un-American as not one of them and must be defeated and stopped at all costs. So they use one of the most unpopular words in the American-English dictionary which is socialist and socialism and so-forth, trying to make Barack Obama seem as worst then he is to scare people. Thats the modern GOP divide and conquer when you don’t have a popular message of your own.

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Mitch: Chicago 1968: The Democratic Convention

Source:Mitch– I guess this couple was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hopefully they survived the experience.

Source:FreeState MD

“As delegates arrived in Chicago the last week of August 1968 for the 35th Democratic National Convention, they found that Mayor Richard J. Daley, second only to President Lyndon B. Johnson in political influence, had lined the avenues leading to the convention center with posters of trilling birds and blooming flowers. Along with these pleasing pictures, he had ordered new redwood fences installed to screen the squalid lots of the aromatic stockyards adjoining the convention site. At the International Amphitheatre, conventioneers found that the main doors, modeled after a White House portico, had been bulletproofed. The hall itself was surrounded by a steel fence topped with barbed wire. Inside the fence, clusters of armed and helmeted police mingled with security guards and dark-suited agents of the Secret Service. At the apex of the stone gates through which all had to enter was a huge sign bearing the unintentionally ironic words, “HELLO DEMOCRATS! WELCOME TO CHICAGO.”

Source:The Chicago Blog– welcome to Chicago, Illinois.

From Smithsonian Magazine

1968 is when the Democratic Party changed and no longer became a Northeastern progressive party with a Southern coalition, made up of people who basically make up the Religious-Right and Neo-Confederate wing of the Republican Party today. By 1968, the Democratic Party was moving away from the South and becoming the party of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, as well as the Mid Atlantic.

With the emergence of what I call the Green Party wing of the Democratic Party, that is represented by the so-called Progressive Caucus in Congress that you see today in the Green Party, but also in Occupy Wall Street, the Democratic Party now had a major, left-wing in it. And this is how the Democratic Party lost the White House in 1968 because Classical Liberals on their Right and Progressives on the Center-Left in the party were now divided between the New-Left in the party made up of Socialists-Anarchists, as well as Communists. The group called Students For a Democratic Society then was what Occupy Wall Street is of today.

The Democratic Party lost in 1968 because they were divided by their two wings on the Left: The FDR/LBJ Progressive coalition, with this new coalition that’s called the New-Left, people who are against war (at all costs) but are in favor of using violence to get their message across. Who are against American capitalism and corporate America, but in favor of the New Deal and Great Society, but would expand into what’s known in Europe as the welfare state. What the Green Party today calls the Green New Deal.

The Green Deal would be a whole host of new Federal Government social programs to finish off of what the New Deal and Great Society didn’t accomplish.

The New-Left then made up of Students For a Democratic Society and Occupy Wall Street today, are not Pacifists in the sense that they are against violence and would never use violence. They just don’t want violence coming from their government, but are more than willing to use it against government or people in society. That represent what they do not like about America, like private corporations.

1968 is basically when the Democratic Party basically became three political parties: New Democrat Liberals, the center-right, (where I am) the FDR Progressives or what’s left of them, and Occupy Wall Street today or the Green Party. That sees the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as the same party, but with different names.

And even as split as the Democratic Party was back then, they still came within a state or two of winning the 1968 presidential election. But they would’ve done much better without the split happening all in one party.

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Vice President Hubert Humphrey: 1968 Democratic National Convention Acceptance Speech

Source: EFan– Vice President Humbert H. Humphrey (Democrat, Minnesota) accepting the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, in Chicago, Illinois.  

Source:FreeState MD

“Here is Vice President Humphrey’s acceptance speech from that turbulent and wild convention in August 1968.

He was very much the establishment candidate in ’68, and was the favorite through the race after President Johnson quit. He might not have been the most popular choice in ’68 but he did come close to winning, which might have been the closest anyone could have come that year, but it depends on which history expert you ask. Humphrey does seem like a nice guy however.”

From EFAN 2011

Hubert Humphrey, didn’t lose the 1968 presidential election because he was a bad candidate or ran a bad campaign or wasn’t qualified to be President of the United States. The opposites are true and even though as it turns out 1968 was his best shot at being elected President of the United States, something he had been thinking about at least since 1957 after Dwight Eisenhower was reelected President in a landslide. Vice President Humphrey was caught in a perfect political storm for both the Democratic Party because of how much damaged it did to the party that lasted at least until 1976 and came back again in 1980 the same political divisions that reemerged again in the late 1970s.

But it was also a perfect political storm for the Republican Party because it not only brought them back to power with Richard Nixon, but made them a real competitive conservative national party again. Where the Republican Party represented the center-right in the country. And the Democratic Party now representing the center-left in the country.

1964 and 1968, even though only one of those elections resulted in short-term success and if you count 1966 and that would be two elections for the Republican Party which they won made them a conservative, national, competitive, party, that would fight communism and other authoritarianism. That would promote economic freedom and business and be a fiscally conservative party. These were the positive aspects of the GOP merging with the South.

What these elections did to the Democratic Party, was create chaos for them. Because it meant they could no longer count on the South for votes and to win elections with them. Plus, they had this emerging young more social-democratic, anti-military New-Left, coming into the party. That pushed the Democratic Party to the Far-Left on many national issues through the 1970s and even into the 1980s. Which they didn’t recover from until 1992 when the Democrats nominated Bill Clinton for president and of course he wins that election and Democrats keep control of Congress as well. But what 1968 along with 66 and even 64 did, was realign both the Republican Party and Democratic Party.

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The Daily Beast: John Avlon, Meghan McCain & Mike Moynahan- ‘Real Housewives of the CIA’

Source:The Daily Beast– John Avlon, Meghan McCain & Mike Moynihan.

Source:The Daily Journal

“As new details emerge about Gen. David Petraeus’ affair with Paula Broadwell, Meghan McCain, Michael Moynihan, and John Avlon debate the scandal’s potential repercussions, on today’s NewsBeast.”

From The Daily Beast

Sounds like a real reality TV show in the works, perhaps Meghan McCain will produce it. You heard that here first. As far as David Petraeus and his sex scandal, I guess this is the clincher that American politics and government is never boring and why we have a political junky industry. And for so-called Progressives today ( I’m being too nice with the word Progressives ) I guess who believe that America should be more like France, well we are when it comes to our public officials and how they live their personal lives.

Political junky, is no longer just a hobby for unemployed politicians who can’t seem to win another public office and keep losing. And spend all of their free time, which is really all of their time, especially if they have a Congressional pension, watching C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and FNC. But a way for writers and pundits to make their living. To tell Americans how much they don’t know about American politics and government.

As far as Benghazi, if it wasn’t for that story, what would House Republicans do? At least some of them like Speaker John Boehner, are smart enough to know they can’t repeal ObamaCare in this Congress with a Democratic Senate and Democratic President, that the law is named after. Most of them probably never have any attention of leaving Congress, at least the House of Representatives. So they don’t want to work with Senate Democrats to pass anything constructive that President Obama might actually sign. And risk being primaried and having to go home and work for a living. Like washing cars, or hosting radio talk shows, teaching gym in high school, or whatever they were doing in 2009 before they decided to run for the House. So all they have left in their one page playbook that a five-year could read is a bogus (to be too nice) Benghazi investigation.

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My Footage: ‘This is Adlai Stevenson- 1956 Presidential Bid’

Source:My Footage– Governor Adlai Stevenson, running for President in 1956.

Source:The Daily Journal

“THIS IS ADLAI STEVENSON – 1959 Shots: Stevenson addressing crowds; Stevenson walking through streets, shaking hands, talking to supporters; Interview with Stevenson\\\’s three sons; CU Stevenson addressing camera.”

From My Footage

Adlai Stevenson running on what would later be known as the Great Society in the LBJ Administration. He wanted to expand the safety net in America and perhaps even go further than the Great Society and social insurance and even create America’s first welfare state. Where the Federal Government would become primarily responsible for taking care of the welfare and well-being of the people. Which is what the New-Left of the late 1960s and early 1970s wanted to create in America.

But when Adlai ran for president in 1952 and 56, he was basically running on what would be called the Great Society. Government guaranteed health insurance for the elderly and the poor. And more Welfare for people who were struggling in America.

There wasn’t ever any real shot of Adlai defeating a very popular Army General in Dwight Eisenhower who commanded allied forces in Europe and defeat General Eisenhower for president in 1952. Or much of an opportunity for Adlai to defeat a popular president in Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.

What I believe was the real motivation for Adlai running for president in 1952 was to expand the progressive movement and to give Progressives real issues and policies to run on against then Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960. And in that case Adlai’s 1956 presidential campaign was pretty successful. Because then Senator Jack Kennedy ran on those social insurance and economic issues when he ran for president in 1960 and defeated Vice President Nixon.

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