Mediaboss Marketing

Former Vice President Joe Biden will join Mitt Romney and other prominent Republicans at an annual summit in Utah this week.

Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, will interview Biden, on Friday as part of the three-day summit, the Associated Press reported .

"Biden is attending because he believes in bipartisanship and the importance of keeping good lines of communication open across the aisle," Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield told the AP.

The event comes about a week after Biden launched a political action committee (PAC) called "American Possibilities," dedicated to encouraging and aiding Democratic candidates to run for office.

The invitation-only Experts and Enthusiasts (E2) Summit in Park City, Utah, will feature a number of prominent Republicans, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain , both vocal GOP critics of President Donald Trump , and House Speaker Paul Ryan , who was Romney's running mate in 2012.

The event will also feature former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former CIA Director Mike Morell and Microsoft Chairman John Thompson, Politico reported.

Trump declined the invitation, according to the AP.

Biden is not the first Democrat to attend Romney's annual summit. Democratic strategist David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, participated in the discussion.

At the summit last year, Romney, then a "Never Trump" Republican, told the crowd that Trump's nomination as the Republican candidate "is breaking my heart for the party."

Biden, a longtime politician who is now 74 years old, spurred speculation in recent months that he would run for president in 2020, though he has not officially announced any intention to do so.

See the original post:
Joe Biden Will Speak At Republican Summit Hosted by Mitt Romney - Fortune

One GOP politician is facing renewed scrutiny after calling for violence in the wake of last weekends deadly terror attack on London Bridge.

In a controversial Facebook post, Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins wrote on June 4, The free world all of Christendom is at war with Islamic horror.

Continued Higgins, Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied.

Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.

Though many were critical of Higgins statement, he told the Washington Post that it was being interpreted incorrectly. Higgins maintained that he was only calling for the death of Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims.

Many Muslims are American citizens and Id give my last lifes blood for any one of them, but that doesnt mean Im not going to speak out boldly and from my heart about the threat we face as a nation and as a world, the 55-year-old told the newspaper.

Higgins also maintained to the Post that hes a compassionate, loving human being, but that he has no love for people who blow up children at a concert, referencing last months terror attack on Manchester Arena.

In a different statement to CNN, Higgins further defended his stance, asserting, We are a world at war.

FROM PEN:People at the White House: The Final Interview with The Obamas

The enemy is radicalized Islamic jihadists. The terrorists certainly take advantage of the politically correct madness that consumes the West. They revel, that many in the western world are frightened to speak freely. Ive never been accused of being politically correct. I call things the way I see them, he said.

Higgins has been mired in controversy before prior to being elected to Congress, he was the St. Landry Paris Sheriffs Offices captain and PIO in Louisiana. His intense Crime Stoppers videos related to the sheriffs office eventually lead to his resignation from the position, according to CNN.

Visit link:
Louisiana Republican Rep. on Radicalized Islamic Suspects: 'Hunt Them, Identify Them, and Kill Them' - PEOPLE.com

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

As he insults NATO, jails immigrants and pulls out of the Paris Agreement, many American politicians cling to the idea that Donald Trump is an aberration, a new disease in American politics that both the party and the country as a whole are just beginning to grapple with. As anyone who remembers the actual fake news that led the country into the Iraq War, or who has followed the careers of operatives like Roger Stone (or just watched Get me Roger Stone) can tell you, Trumps rise has been decades in the making.

What happened on climate change, Paul Krugman writes in his Monday column, isnt an unusual caseand Trump isnt especially unusual for a modern Republican.

Facts and expertise went out of style years ago, andtodays G.O.P. doesnt do substance; it doesnt assemble evidence, or do analysis to formulate or even to justify its policy positions. Facts and hard thinking arent wanted, and anyone who tries to bring such things into the discussion is the enemy. When Trumpcare was assembled, Krugman asks, Did the administration and its allies consult with experts, study previous experience with health reform, and try to devise a plan that made sense? Of course not. In fact, House leaders made a point of ramming a bill through before the Congressional Budget Office, or for that matter anyone else, could assess its likely impact.

When the CBO analyzed the latest version of the bill, it estimated a whopping 23 million Americans would lose healthcare. Instead of making any attempt to defend the bill, Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, decided to discredit the CBO, claiming the office did a miserablejob of predicting the effects of the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and accused an office headed by a former Bush administration official of being biased toward Democrats. Never mind that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price helped select the offices current director. Never mind that, as Krugman notes, the White House did do an internal analysis of an earlier version of Trumpcare, which was leaked to Politico. Its predictions were even more dire than those from the C.B.O.

These facts are politically inconvenient, and now, Truth as something that exists apart from and in possible opposition to political convenience, is no longer part of their philosophical universe, Krugman writes. He continues:

Influential conservatives have for years clung to what is basically a crazy conspiracy theory that the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is warming due to greenhouse-gas emissions is a hoax, somehow coordinated by thousands of researchers around the world. And at this point this is effectively the mainstream Republican position.

They continue to say its a hoax partly to protect the companies that profit from pollution, claiming that without regulation, the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems, while at the same time swearing that these magical markets would roll over and die if we put a modest price on carbon emissions, which is basically what climate policy would do. This is nonsense, Krugman contends, but its not supposed to be true, its supposed to be convenient: Republicans want to keep burning coal, and theyll say whatever helps produce that outcome.

Read the entire column.

The rest is here:
Paul Krugman: The Republican Party is destroying America's credibility by the day - Salon

Daily Kos

Democrats target Paul Ryan, 11 other GOP lawmakers Wichita Eagle A coalition of well-heeled Democratic groups is launching a grassroots-oriented effort targeting a dozen House Republican incumbents, as party operatives prepare for a midterm election cycle they increasingly think will yield big gains for Democrats. Democrats hold their fire on House races as Republicans pump money into preventing disasterDaily Kos Democrat Jon Ossoff will not debate Republican Karen Handell in nationally televised broadcastChattanooga Times Free Press all 39 news articles »

Read the original:
Democrats target Paul Ryan, 11 other GOP lawmakers - Wichita Eagle

Kevin McGill/AP

In response to the London terror attack, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) had an extreme proposal: kill anyone suspected of being an Islamic radical.

On his campaign Faceboook page, Higgins, a former police officer, posted this message:

The free worldall of Christendomis at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.

The post went up early on Sunday morning. On Saturday evening, suspected terrorists killed seven people during an attack on London Bridge. ISIS has claimed credit for these murders.

With his declaration that Christendom is "at war with Islamic horror," Higgins was embracing a theme of the far right: the fight against extremist jihadists is part of a fundamental clash between Christian society and Islam. And in this Facebook post, he was calling for killing not just terrorists found guilty of heinous actions, but anyone suspected of such an act. He did not explain how the United States could determine how to identify radicalized Islamists in order to deny them entry to the United States. It was unclear whether his proposal to deny any assistance to any nation that harbors "these heathen animals" would apply to England, France, Indonesia, Spain, and other nations where jihadist cells have committed horrific acts of violence.

Higgins office refused to allow a Mother Jones reporter to speak to a spokesman for the congressman. But in an email, his spokesman confirmed the Facebook post was authentic.

In late January, Higgins delivered a fiery floor speech attacking Democrats and the "liberal media" for opposing President Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban. He declared that "radical Islamic horror has gripped the world andunbelievablybeen allowed into our own nation with wanton disregard."

Shortly before running for Congress, Higgins resigned from his post as the public information officer of the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office, where he had earned a reputation as the "Cajun John Wayne" for his tough-talking CrimeStopper videos. Higgins abruptly quit after his boss, the sheriff, ordered him to tone down his unprofessional comments. "I repeatedly told him to stop saying things like, 'You have no brain cells,' or making comments that were totally disrespectful and demeaning," the sheriff said.

"I don't do well reined in," Higgins noted at the time. "Although I love and respect my sheriff, I must resign."

Update: Higgins' campaign spokesman, Chris Comeaux, told Mother Jones in an email: "Rep. Higgins is referring to terrorists. He's advocating for hunting down and killing all of the terrorists. This is an idea all of America & Britain should be united behind."

Read the original post:
Republican Congressman on Suspected Islamic Radicals: "Kill Them All" - Mother Jones