Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party |
- Tea party dilemma: What to do about Mitt Romney
- Van Jones Returns, Launches Liberal Alternative to The Tea Party
- Google to End Health Records Service After It Fails to Attract Users
- DeMint Warns Republicans They May Be ‘Gone’ if They Support Debt Ceiling Increase
- Texas Lawmakers AWOL For Vote On TSA Groping Bill
| Tea party dilemma: What to do about Mitt Romney Posted: 25 Jun 2011 10:08 AM PDT By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico.com The anybody-but-Mitt Romney faction developing within the tea party may pose a problem for the former Massachusetts governor's presidential ambitions, but some tea party organizers worry it could also backfire against the movement itself. Romney, the current Republican front-runner, is viewed skeptically — at best — by many tea partiers. And disagreement over whether to actively oppose him threatens to undo the uneasy truces forged in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and undermine the fledgling movement's influence in the GOP. The possibility of Romney winning the nomination is even reviving debate about whether activists should embrace, or even form, a third party — an idea that until recently had been dismissed as harmful to both the movement and the GOP. "I honestly don't know whether the movement will perform well" in the presidential election, said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, a national coalition of local groups. "I don't think anybody is looking for a third-party candidate, but anybody who would count out that possibility, I just think is ignorant." Another tea party leader, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, describes the presidential election as a potential "Achilles heel" for the movement, which arose in 2009 in opposition to what its activists saw as unchecked government spending and expansion under President Barack Obama. "Our power comes from the fact that we're not dependent on anybody to be the leader," Kibbe told POLITICO, conceding the tea party's diffuse and decentralized nature may be better suited to congressional races than presidential politics. To read more, visit: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57674.html |
| Van Jones Returns, Launches Liberal Alternative to The Tea Party Posted: 25 Jun 2011 10:04 AM PDT By: Ari Melber, TheNation.com Over one thousand liberal activists gathered in Manhattan on Thursday night, in a bid to counter the Tea Party and elevate a progressive who can tangle with the Becks and Bachmanns that dominate today's outraged populism. The event launched “Rebuild the Dream,” a MoveOn-backed effort to organize around economic issues. The crowd that filed into Town Hall in midtown Manhattan was a mix of progressives old and young, in work clothes and casual attire. While they mingled and waited for music by The Roots, a second event was staged in a nearby press room. There reporters and bloggers heard from the would-be leader of a liberal Tea Party — the attorney, author and former Obama official Van Jones. Bowing to the lexicon of today's Left, however, it was clear that Jones was not announcing a "campaign," (despite the flashy website, social media strategy and PR campaign). He was not launching a lobbying "coalition," either, (even though the effort was backed by MoveOn, labor unions, USAction, TrueMajority and “many others to be announced”). The event promised the beginning of a movement. According to Jones and MoveOn, the driving forces behind the launch, “Rebuild The Dream” is the Left's collective effort to use grassroots organizing and new media to challenge the rhetoric coming out of Washington and strengthen the middle class. Jones is a natural fit to lead the effort. For many Democrats and liberals, he is viewed as a rare pol who can leverage authority, celebrity and purity. His professional and ideological credentials are in good order; he led up Green Jobs for the Obama administration, and was infamously run out of that job after a misleading and race-baiting campaign by Glenn Beck. Jones never sold out — he blew up. "He's a great communicator," says MoveOn head Justin Ruben, "and we need more great communicators." Ruben and Jones say they are following the Tea Party’s strategy. "The thing that we've been doing a terrible job of is telling our story," says Ruben. Highlighting how conservatives managed to unite Birthers, tax-phobes, and social conservatives under one ideological and—perhaps more importantly—rhetorical brand, Ruben said “Rebuild The Dream” could play a similar role for multi-faceted liberalism. It will be a "movement service organization," he said, with Jones as a visionary — not director — and an opportunity for activists to unite under a "common banner, both literally and figuratively." There will be “American Dream House Meetings” in mid-July, convened through MoveOn, to gather input on the effort’s goals. Some major principles, however, have been predetermined. To read more, visit: http://www.thenation.com/blog/161640/van-jones-returns-launches-liberal-alternative-tea-party |
| Google to End Health Records Service After It Fails to Attract Users Posted: 25 Jun 2011 10:00 AM PDT By: Steve Lohr, NYTimes.com Google is giving up on its vision of helping people live healthier lives with online personal health records. When Google Health was introduced in 2008, Marissa Mayer, a Google executive, said it would be a "large ongoing initiative" that the company hoped would attract millions of regular users. But Google Health never really caught on. In a posting on the company's blog on Friday, Aaron Brown, senior product manager for Google Health, wrote that the goal was to "translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to health care and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users." Yet, after three years, Mr. Brown said, "Google Health is not having the broad impact we had hoped it would." In the drive to apply information technology to health care, personalized health records are the element that relies most heavily on individual motivation and efforts. They are controlled by the consumer, and require individuals to put in, update and edit their health data. By contrast, the federal government has begun a five-year campaign to accelerate the adoption of electronic patient records by hospitals and doctors, with the incentive payments to physicians topping $40,000. Personal health records, analysts say, are a new concept to most people, and early users have found them difficult to use. "Personal health records have been a technology in search of a market," said Lynne A. Dunbrack, an analyst at IDC Health Insights, a research firm. To read more, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/technology/25health.html?_r=2&partner=yahoofinance |
| DeMint Warns Republicans They May Be ‘Gone’ if They Support Debt Ceiling Increase Posted: 25 Jun 2011 09:54 AM PDT By JONATHAN KARL, ABCNews.com Conservative firebrand Sen. Jim DeMint has a message to fellow Republicans in Congress: If you support increasing the debt ceiling without first passing a balanced budget amendment and massive across-the-board spending cuts, you’re gone — destined to be swept out of Congress by a wave of voter anger. “Based on what I can see around the country,” DeMint, R-S.C., said in an interview for the ABC News Subway Series, “not only are those individuals gone, but I would suspect the Republican Party would be set back many years. “It would be the most toxic vote,” DeMint said. “I can tell you if you look at the polls, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they do not think we should increase the debt limit.” DeMint is not just talking political analysis here. He has a significant fundraising base and has shown a willingness to use his campaign money to support or oppose fellow Republicans. DeMint will use that political muscle to oppose fellow Republicans who don’t stand firm on the debt ceiling issue. He said he will not support any candidate for Congress — incumbent or challenger — who does not sign a pledge promising not to vote for a debt limit increase without first passing a balanced budget amendment, making deep spending cuts and putting strict limits on future government spending. The same rule applies to presidential candidates. “I don’t have many litmus tests, but this is one: Any candidate who doesn’t understand that we need to balance the budget should not be president of the United States,” DeMint said. “So, I’m looking for candidates to sign the pledge.” To read more, visit: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senator-jim-demint-warns-republicans-debt-ceiling-vote/story?id=13916811 |
| Texas Lawmakers AWOL For Vote On TSA Groping Bill Posted: 25 Jun 2011 09:44 AM PDT By: Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars.com 5:21PM CST UPDATE: It's now apparent that the primary culprit behind the fact that lawmakers failed to show up for the vote was none other than Republican Speaker of the House Joe Straus, who labeled the bill "nothing more than an ill-advised publicity stunt," despite the fact that it merely sought to reinforce language already present in the 4th amendment. The Texas Tribune reports that Straus approached the bill's primary sponsor Rep. David Simpson earlier this week and insisted that language pertaining to "private parts" be removed from the legislation altogether, which would have completely gutted the bill. As Simpson has emphasized, this bill is far from symbolic, it's specific in its remit to "expand the federal definition of "official oppression" to prohibit federal employees from improperly touching a person' s private areas". Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who to his credit doesn't appear to be acting as a roadblock for the bill this time around, released a statement this afternoon saying that the Senate would try to pass the bill out of committee on Monday. Despite a massive lobbying effort on behalf of public pressure groups that forced Governor Rick Perry to reverse his position and resurrect a bill that would ban TSA groping in Texas and place it on the special session of the Texas state legislature, lawmakers set to give the bill a hearing today bizarrely went AWOL, and the session was adjourned. "The author of the bill that would restrict the ability of federal airport security agents from patting down the intimate body parts of travelers said Friday that he doubts the measure will pass during the current special session," reports KXAN. "This is not going to happen," state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, said after the Texas House adjourned without acting on any legislation." To read more, visit: http://www.infowars.com/texas-lawmakers-go-awol-for-vote-on-tsa-groping-bill/ |
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