The main stage debate of the Republican party Presidential wannabes will showcase seven candidates. Four candidates were sent to the kiddie table but Rand Paul has decided to stay home since this time he couldn’t whine himself out of his basement level poll numbers . The main debates starts at 9 pm eastern. It’s on the Fox Business News Network so be prepared to hunt for it or to stream it. (EWWWWWWWWWW)
Seven Republican candidates are set to clash in the sixth GOP presidential debate Thursday night, hosted by FOX Business in Charleston, SC. The debate, slated to begin at 9pm ET, will feature Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich.
Another four candidates who did not meet the network’s public polling requirements qualified for an undercard debate at 6pm ET: Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. But Paul has announced that he will boycott the event, accusing the network and the RNC of picking winners and losers in the GOP field.
Fiorina already said something completely objectionable in the currently running kiddie debate.
Unlike another woman in this race, I WAS actually spending time with my husband.”
“Unlike another woman in this race, I actually like spending time with my husband.” Thus did former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina open the sixth Republican primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday. It was a barb aimed squarely at Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, whom pundits and analysts expect to be a popular topic of discussion throughout the evening. Fiorina also criticized Clinton’s response to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead—an event recently immortalized in a factually dubious film directed by Michael Bay, of Transformers fame.
“We should stop letting refugees into this country,” Fiorina continued. A similar proposal to refuse refugees, floated by Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, earned him a bump in the polls, but has garnered widespread criticism from the political class.
As the night went on, Fiorina did not let up on Clinton. “Mrs. Clinton, you cannot wipe a server with a towel,” she said, referring to the Democratic candidate’s ongoing private email server scandal.
As this state prepared to host GOP primary debates on Thursday and next month, many Republicans are rooting for South Carolina to reclaim its kingmaker role in 2016.
Polls currently show celebrity businessman Donald Trump with a commanding lead, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. But voters here are widely considered up for grabs, likely to be influenced by earlier contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and the unpredictable 11 days of the campaign after those votes and before the Feb. 20 GOP primary.
Candidates who are struggling in Iowa—such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose father and brother won victories in South Carolina that helped them clinch the nomination—are jockeying for better-than-expected showings in New Hampshire, hopefully followed by a strong finish in South Carolina.
“It’s a chance to reset the race,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who quit running for president last month and has questioned Mr. Trump’s ability to build a winning national coalition in the general election. “My goal for South Carolina Republicans is get back to our roots. Let’s pick a conservative who can actually win the race because winning matters.”
South Carolina Republicans say they have had better luck picking candidates who end up winning the GOP nomination because the electorate is broader and more representative of the country than in the smaller states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
There are evangelical Christians in the northwestern part of the state near Bob Jones University in Greenville; affluent, more moderate professionals and retirees around the capital in Columbia and along the Atlantic coast in Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach, and foreign policy hawks concentrated around the military bases in the central and southern parts of the state.
“South Carolina is a test for every facet of a campaign,” Mr. Moore said. “It’s not just about organization. It’s not just about message. It’s about winning a state with a broad and diverse electorate, so really it’s a test if you can win beyond South Carolina.”
In particular, South Carolina looks like a gateway to a potentially pivotal cluster of nearby southern states that will vote on March 1.
So, pull up a seat and join us for a lively discussion!!
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The President’s final State of the Union Address is tonight. We will also get good look at the scowling face of Speaker Paul Ryan–undoubtedly clutching ball bearings and muttering about strawberries–followed by the rebuttal by South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley. There will be no more crying orange man on the dais so Haley will get to represent Republican “diversity” tonight.
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama plans to talk about the need to “fix our politics” in order to ensure that opportunity and security in America are strong.
A White House official says this is slated to be President Obama’s shortest State of the Union speech. His shortest State of the Union address to this point clocked in at 52 minutes in 2009.
Below are excerpts of the speech as released by the White House.
“We live in a time of extraordinary change – change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and our place in the world. It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families. It promises education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists plotting an ocean away. It’s change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.
America has been through big changes before – wars and depression, the influx of immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, and movements to expand civil rights. Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the “dogmas of the quiet past.” Instead we thought anew, and acted anew. We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more and more people. And because we did – because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril – we emerged stronger and better than before.”
—
“The future we want – opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids – all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates.
President Barack Obama is set to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone in his final State of the Union address.
The president will focus on cementing his legacy rather than unveiling new policies, officials have said.
Mr Obama is expected to frame some of the key issues in a way that fellow Democrats can embrace during campaigning for the upcoming election.
However, recent polls suggest that seven in 10 people in the US do not share their leader’s optimism.
A response by the Republican party will be delivered by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
In excepts from the speech released in advance, Mr Obama urges Americans to make world changes work for them and overcome fears.
He will say the future the US wants is only possible if the country “fixes its politics” and works together.
“A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything… But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens,” the speech reads.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is urging lawmakers to bring Muslim Americans as their guests to President Obama’s last State of the Union address. (Photo by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post)
Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Keith Ellison are urging colleagues to invite Muslim Americans as guests to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. So far, more than a dozen lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have heeded their call.
It’s not uncommon for lawmakers to choose State of the Union guests that make a political statement. Several Democrats are planning to bring guests who have been victims of gun violence, while two members of a Catholic religious order challenging the 2010 Affordable Care Act will attend after invitations from Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).
The appeal from Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, comes at a time of rising anti-Muslim rhetoric from politicians like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and a wave of incidents targeting people of Muslim faith.
“This rhetoric and these actions are simply un-American,” Wasserman Schultz and Ellison wrote in a letter to colleagues last week. “They undermine our values and weaken our ability to be a force for good around the world.”
Ellison is one of two Muslim members of Congress. The Minneapolis Democrat, who converted to Islam at age 19, said it’s important for public officials to extend a hand to the Muslim community, in part to counteract rhetoric from the Islamic State, or ISIS.
“Each of these people are going to go back to their community and talk about the fact that they came here at the invitation of a member of Congress, were treated with honor and respect, and they’ll directly counteract the ISIS message, which is that America hates Muslims,” Ellison said in an interview last week.
Meanwhile, the Republicans will troll the President and the Democrats by bringing religious extremists and screaming WE’RE THE OPPRESSED WHITE MAJORITY! The nuns challenging the Affordable Healthcare Act on the grounds that every one should be denied birth control because of their strict religious beliefs will be there. Kentucky is bringing the Dread Clerk Kim Davis who all of us had hoped would be relegated to 2015’s 15 minutes of infamous bigot waste bin in 2016. Republicans continue to confuse denying others civil liberties with being judgmental and uncivil. What better way to demonstrate it than to let all that freakishness fly? I guess we get to see dueling definitions of religious liberty. My guess is there will also be a staged wrestling match of bald men where the winner gets a prized comb on Fox. Red State Republicans will undoubtedly be all aplomb.
The Kentucky county clerk who went to jail over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples will attend President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, a group supporting her announced.
“While the President will be extolling his ‘accomplishments’ of the last seven years, Kim Davis and Mat Staver will be a visible reminder of the Administration’s attack on religious liberty and an encouragement for people of faith to stand,” the Liberty Counsel wrote in a press release. Staver is Davis’ attorney and the founder of the group.
“For seven years, people of faith have been in the crosshairs of the Obama Administration. The state of religious liberty is dire, but we cannot give up.”
Yes, yes! They’re so persecuted that none of us can have a reasonable end of the year without their railroaded version of ancient pagan holidays let alone be allowed to follow our own consciousness and creeds. Nothing like looking out at the smug faces of religious fanatics for a jolt back in time to the Iron Age.
Last week, the President took a series of commonsense steps to help reduce gun violence in America and make our communities safer.
We leave one seat empty in the First Lady’s State of the Union Guest Box for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice – because they need the rest of us to speak for them. To tell their stories. To honor their memory. To support the Americans whose lives have been forever changed by the terrible ripple effect of gun violence – survivors who’ve had to learn to live with a disability, or without the love of their life. To remind every single one of our representatives that it’s their responsibility to do something about this.
I wonder what Clint Eastwood will say to the chair? Will he be Fox’s guest commentator on the topic?
Tonight, the three Democratic candidates for president will face off in a debate that has now been adjusted to reflect the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris. This is obviously former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bailiwick. CBS experienced some push back from the Sanders campaign for this move. The debate will be held at my sister’s alma mater Drake University and should prove interesting.
A top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., one of the three candidates, got into a lengthy dispute with executives from CBS, the network hosting the debate, during a conference call on Saturday morning. A staffer for one of the other campaigns who was also on the call described the exchange to Yahoo News as “heated” and even “bizarre,” and a second source on the call confirmed the nature of the exchange.
The dispute centered on CBS’s decision to increase the emphasis on terrorism, foreign policy, and national security in the wake of the attacks that left more than 100 people dead in Paris on Friday night. According to the rival staffer, Sanders strategist Mark Longabaugh lit into CBS vice president and Washington bureau chief Christopher Isham when the changes to the debate were detailed on the call.
“It was a little bit of a bizarre scene. The Sanders representative, you know, really laid into CBS and basically … kind of threw, like, a little bit of a fit and said, ‘You are trying to turn this into a foreign policy debate. That’s not what any of us agreed to. How can you change the terms of the debate, you know, on the day of the debate. That’s not right,’” the staffer recounted.
Another person who was on the call confirmed to Yahoo News that Longabaugh had a lengthy dispute about the changed plans for the debate format during the call with CBS. The Sanders campaign declined to comment.
The second Democratic debate will be held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 14. It will air from 9pm to 11pm ET on the CBS Television Network. Pre-debate coverage will begin at 8pm ET.
Pre-debate coverage: Join Senior Political Editor Steve Chaggaris and White House correspondent Major Garrett for CBSN’s livestream coverage of debate preparations will air online at CBSnews.com/live starting at 6pm ET.
CBS News is hosting the debate in conjunction with CBS’ Des Moines affiliate, KCCI, and the Des Moines Register. “Face the Nation” anchor John Dickerson will be the principal moderator, and he will be joined by CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, KCCI anchor Kevin Cooney and the Des Moines Register’s political columnist, Kathie Obradovich.
With Friday’s attacks in Paris, the debate will also focus on foreign policy differences among the candidates and strategies to fight extremist groups abroad.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on a hot streak since the first Democratic presidential debate last month. The main question heading into Saturday’s second encounter: Can her two challengers slow down her Big Mo’?
National security will play a prominent role in the debate in the aftermath of deadly terror attacks in Paris that killed more than 125 people and left about 350 injured. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, a development that will bring terror and the U.S. response to the jihadist group to the forefront.
Heading into the debate, Clinton expects to face a more direct challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in their first debate since the Democratic field has winnowed down to three candidates.
Both Sanders and O’Malley have taken steps to point out their differences and the underdog ex-governor is also trying to undercut Sanders as Clinton’s main alternative. But the debate could take a more somber tone following the Paris attacks.
Questions on foreign policy and national security are generally believed to advantage Clinton. Beyond her years as head of the State Department, she has an international presence dating back to her time as first lady and extending through her work with the Clinton Foundation, a non-profit organization she started with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, focused on “global interdependence.”
But with great experience also comes great responsibility. Clinton’s time in the Obama White House ties her to the policies of an administration that has come under attack for its handling of conflicts in Iraq and Syria, specifically for its strategies to counter the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The armed group has claimed responsibility for the violence in Paris.
Clinton’s role in U.S. policy on Libya has proven one of her biggest potential tripwires, at least in the eyes of Republicans. The deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi in 2012, has spawned countless Congressional investigations and near-constant conversation in conservative media. Clinton, an advocate for military intervention in the conflict that ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has defended her beliefs, going so far as to praise the recent Libyan elections during the last presidential debate.
The debate’s shift from the economy to national security would appear to be a setback for Sanders, especially at a time when many feel he needs to communicate his core message to a broad electorate. His focus on income disparity and an under-regulated financial sector fit well with the original focus of tonight’s event, and recent polling shows voters think Sanders is as good or better than Clinton on those issues.
But economic worries and questions of national security are far from mutually exclusive. The debate over economic austerity and its effect on domestic security, for example, has been revived in the last 24 hours. In the wake of the January killings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, French authorities said that, even though some of the attackers were known to the government, they hadn’t had the resources to track all of them.
Tonight’s debate is also likely to include questions on immigration, especially in light of the European refugee crisis and the intense focus of GOP presidential hopefuls on deporting undocumented immigrants from the United States.
Watch along with the rest of the Sky Dancers as the Democratic candidates take the stage in Des Moines.
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MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is set to moderate the network’s only event in the Presidential primary season, a forum from Winthrop University in South Carolina. Deemed the “First in the South Presidential Forum”, tonight’s event will feature frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
The event in Rock Hill, SC is scheduled to air from 8-10 p.m. EST on MSNBC. Although the event is primarily sponsored by the South Carolina Democratic Party, the event is also being co-sponsored by twelve other southern states.
Maddow was careful to make the distinction that tonight’s event is a “forum” and not a formal DNC-sanctioned “debate”. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has continued to be under fire for limiting the official number of debates to only six.
The debate is being held in Rock Hill, South Carolina. There are many questions that loom. Will Bernie go negative? Will any one notice Martin O’Malley? Another question Alex-Seid Waltz wants to know is can Hillary maintain her monopoly on the black vote?
Clinton is likely to use the forum to focus on reaching out to people of color, who make up the majority of South Carolina’s Democratic primary electorate. In an op-ed published in Ebony magazine Friday morning, Clinton called for “a new and comprehensive commitment to equity and opportunity for communities of color,” that includes better investment in under-served communities.
The former secretary of state has a huge advantage among nonwhite voters over Sanders, capturing support from 8 out of 10 black voters in the Palmetto State. She lost the state handily to Barack Obama in 2008 in a bitter and racially charged primary.
Rep. James Clyburn, the most powerful Democrat in the state, said that’s been forgiven. “I have talked to a lot of people and they are not holding any of that against Hillary today,” he told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki.
But Sanders will have a big chance to introduce himself for the first time to South Carolina black Democrats for the first time Friday night, and he’ll roll out a campaign leadership team in the state that includes Black Lives Matter activists and others.
Join us to watch the forum and get answers to these and more questions!!
The event from Rock Hill, SC will air live on MSNBC at 8 p.m. For viewers who are eager to watch the forum through their computers, the option to use the MSNBC TV app is available as well. The app is a free download from NBC News Digital. Additionally, a cable or satellite subscription with an active log-in account can access the content through http://www.msnbc.com/now as it airs.
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DENVER, Colo. — Just hours before GOP candidates take the stage here Wednesday night, tensions over the Republican National Committee’s handling of the debates are flaring anew.
At issue this time: greenrooms.
During a tense 30-minute meeting at the Coors Event Center, which was described by three sources present, several lower-polling campaigns lashed out at the RNC. They accused the committee of allotting them less-than-hospitable greenroom spaces while unfairly giving lavish ones to higher-polling candidates, such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
The drama began Tuesday afternoon as RNC officials led campaigns on a walk-through of the debate site. After touring the stage, candidates got a peek at what their greenrooms looked like.
Trump was granted a spacious room, complete with plush chairs and a flat-screen TV. Marco Rubio got a theater-type room, packed with leather seats for him and his team of aides. Carly Fiorina’s room had a Jacuzzi along with the best bathroom heater I ever played with, it had settings I didn’t know existed.
Then there was Chris Christie, whose small space was dominated by a toilet. So was Rand Paul’s.
Bwaaaahahahahahaha!!
Here are some links for you to peruse before the debate begins at 8PM or if you just can’t stand to watch.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Good Evening!
Meanwhile, the Republicans will troll the President and the Democrats by bringing religious extremists and screaming WE’RE THE OPPRESSED WHITE MAJORITY! The nuns challenging the Affordable Healthcare Act on the grounds that every one should be denied birth control because of their strict religious beliefs will be there. Kentucky is bringing the Dread Clerk Kim Davis who all of us had hoped would be relegated to 2015’s 15 minutes of infamous bigot waste bin in 2016. Republicans continue to confuse denying others civil liberties with being judgmental and uncivil. What better way to demonstrate it than to let all that freakishness fly? I guess we get to see dueling definitions of religious liberty. My guess is there will also be a staged wrestling match of bald men where the winner gets a prized comb on Fox. Red State Republicans will undoubtedly be all aplomb.
Tonight, the three Democratic candidates for president will face off in a debate that has now been adjusted to reflect the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris. This is obviously former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bailiwick. CBS experienced some push back from the Sanders campaign for this move. The debate will be held at my sister’s alma mater Drake University and should prove interesting.
Many folks believe that Sanders will go on the attack and that Clinton will deflect. Oh, and Martin O’Malley will still be looking to make an impression. ABC has made a list of things to look for during the debate tonight.
Good Evening!
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