Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/334897780?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, October 20, 2013
Tea Party Activist: It Was Worth 'Getting In The Ring'
Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express speaks at the National Press Club in 2011. Russo predicts the Tea Party will be re-energized for the 2014 midterm elections.
Alex Brandon/AP
Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express speaks at the National Press Club in 2011. Russo predicts the Tea Party will be re-energized for the 2014 midterm elections.
Alex Brandon/AP
It's been a tough week for the Tea Party and its supporters in Congress. The Affordable Care Act survived the Capitol Hill standoff largely untouched. President Obama and the Democrats stared them down and won. And fights with establishment Republicans revealed the depth of division within the GOP.
Public opinion polls show support for the Tea Party has fallen dramatically — to its lowest point ever. But Tea Party activists say that the movement isn't going away.
Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express, one of largest such groups in the nation, was philosophical about what many say was a losing battle to begin with.
"You fight every fight, you know, ideally to win," he says. "But sometimes, you know you have a long shot at it, but it's worth getting in the ring and giving it a shot, and that's what we did."
Russo also predicts that you'll see a re-energized and motivated Tea Party in the year leading up to 2014's midterm elections.
"I don't think you're ever going to repeat the huge wave of 2010, but I think it's going to be stronger than 2012," he says. "I think people are ginned up and saying, 'Look, we can't just keep spending money like drunken sailors.' "
Asked about falling public support for the Tea Party, Russo says polls go up and down.
But Tom Zawistowski, who heads the Portage County Tea Party group in Ohio, says such polls aren't to be believed because of the way the president, the Democrats and the media portray them.
Tom Zawistowski of the Portage County Tea Party in Ohio says his group is now focused on local elections next month.
Tony Dejak/AP
Tom Zawistowski of the Portage County Tea Party in Ohio says his group is now focused on local elections next month.
Tony Dejak/AP
"We don't have horns — you know, we're not from another planet," he says. "We're just like all the other people listening to your show. And we have our own life experiences and we see things in a certain way."
When asked what comes next for them, he points to elections coming up on Nov. 5. And he's talking 2013, not 2014.
"We're engaged with school boards, and we're out interviewing school board candidates, and we're talking to township trustees and city council members," he says. "Those are important people. They serve us as much as the guys in D.C., if not more so."
A major force behind the Tea Party has been the Washington, D.C.-based organization FreedomWorks. Matt Kibbe, the group's CEO, said on C-SPAN on Friday that it's the Republican Party — not the Tea Party — that needs to learn from this week's events in Washington.
"Everything's more democratized," he says. "And Republicans should come to terms with that. They still want to control things from the top down, and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. But my prediction would be that we take over the Republican Party, and they go the way of the Whigs."
The Whig Party, of course, dissolved in the mid-1800s.
But there are also plenty of questions ahead for the Tea Party: Will it be able to recruit good candidates? Will it be able to raise money as it has? And how will the events of this week affect how general-election voters view the organization?
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Betty Buckley On Piano Jazz
Courtesy of the artist
Betty Buckley.
Courtesy of the artist
- "Stardust" (Carmichael, Parish)
- "Blame It On My Youth" (Heyman, Levant)
- "My Funny Valentine" (Hart, Rodgers)
- "Twilight World" (McPartland)
- "Fire and Rain" (James Taylor)
- "So Many Stars" (Bergman, Berman, Mendes)
- "Angel Eyes" (Matt Dennis)
- "What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life" (Bergman, Bergman, LeGrand)
- "It Might As Well Be Spring" (Hammerstein, Rodgers)
On this episode of Piano Jazz, vocalist Betty Buckley and her musical director, Kenny Werner, join Marian McPartland in a session recorded in 2007.
Betty Lynn Buckley was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1947. Her singing career began at age 2 in church and dance lessons soon followed. She was raised on the music of Judy Garland and Della Reese, and became a musical theater devotee after seeing The Pajama Game. As a teenager, Buckley performed regularly — her first professional gig was a local production of Gypsy when she was 15. She continued to cut her musical teeth in summer theater groups and musical revues at the Six Flags Over Texas theme park.
In college, Buckley was runner-up in the Miss Texas competition, where she was spotted by a talent agent who convinced the 22-year-old to come to New York. Buckley landed her first gig almost immediately upon arriving. She played the role of Martha Jefferson in the musical 1776, which led her to other productions on and off Broadway.
Her most popular role came as Grizabella in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats, in which she sang the enduring number "Memory." The performance earned her a Tony in 1982. Buckley went on to perform in Sunset Boulevard, Carrie: The Musical, and Triumph of Love to name a few.
Her success on the stage has led to appearances in several films, including Woody Allen's Another Woman, Roman Polanski's Frantic and Brian De Palma's 1976 Carrie.
Buckley has also starred on the small screen as Abby in the television series Eight Is Enough. Buckley had a recurring role on HBO's gritty prison drama Oz and guest starred in episodes of Monk, Law & Order: SVU, Melrose Place and Pretty Little Liars.
She has recorded 15 solo albums and appears on several original cast recordings. Her forthcoming album Ghostlight, produced by T-Bone Burnett, will be released in 2014.
Originally recorded April 10, 2007.
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Saturday, October 19, 2013
After Budget Fight, No Sign Of Cease-Fire
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks to reporters following a meeting with President Obama at the White House on Oct. 2.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks to reporters following a meeting with President Obama at the White House on Oct. 2.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
As it dragged on in recent weeks, the debate about the budget, the debt ceiling and Obamacare felt like an epic battle.
But now that it's over, there's reason to think it was actually only another skirmish during the long period of partisan warfare Americans have become accustomed to.
The polls, the pundits and certainly Democrats all suggest that the GOP's Tea Party wing got its clock cleaned. After shutting down parts of the government for more than two weeks, Congress on Wednesday approved a spending bill that included essentially nothing from the Tea Party's wish list.
But conservatives sounded anything but resigned in defeat.
"While the political debate has ended for the moment, like any prizefight there are many rounds," Republican Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana wrote in USA Today. "We must continue to fight on."
Congress has set itself new deadlines for dealing with both the budget and the debt ceiling early in the coming year. And the new law calls for high-level budget negotiations to take place between the House and Senate in the coming weeks. But no one seems terribly optimistic that they'll come up with a package that will please all sides.
"I view this as another skirmish, and there will probably continue to be more," says Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a news and opinion site. "What it shows, especially [at the moment], is there's a wide split among the Republican Party."
A Fractured Party
One reason to think there willl be more rancor ahead: festering Republican divisions. Conservatives who wanted more out of the budget deal did nothing to conceal their unhappiness. A clear majority of the House GOP conference — 144, to be exact — voted Wednesday night against legislation that reopened the government and averted a debt default.
Many continued to sound warnings about the dangers of a national debt that will soon exceed $17 trillion, while putting the blame on President Obama for being intransigent.
"With this ... deal, Washington Establishment wins, rest of America loses," tweeted GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.
Republicans have also turned their fire on one another, using terms such as "lunacy" and "no intelligence" in describing their colleagues.
Those were comments from California Rep. Devin Nunes of California and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, respectively, who were critical of their own party's confrontational strategy. Republicans who favored taking a harder line have loudly complained that they were undermined by such commentary coming from their own ranks.
"It'd be a good idea if they stopped referring to other Republicans as Hitler appeasers because they opposed the strategy they put forward, which failed," Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a longtime GOP activist, told National Review.
How To Reach Agreement
In theory, Republicans should be able to put this ill will behind them. Debate will turn from the shutdown strategy to questions of tax and spending levels — ground on which nearly all Republicans will be able to find agreement.
But the GOP argument has never been about numbers so much as about tactics. Republicans agree that the Affordable Care Act is a bad law and that the federal government should spend less money.
The question has been how far to push those beliefs when faced with a Democratic Senate and president. "Compromise is not treason," GOP Rep. Richard Hanna of New York, who supported the latest budget deal, said in a statement.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is already saying that another government shutdown is off the table. Meanwhile, more pragmatic Republicans still want their Tea Party colleagues to wake up and count the votes and realize they picked a battle they couldn't win.
As yet there's no sign, despite the plunge the party has taken in the polls, that harder-line conservatives are feeling very much tempered.
"Their emotional and electoral sustenance is coming from people who agree with them," says Andrew Rudalevige, a government professor at Bowdoin College in Maine.
"They can read the [national] polls, sure, but those are not their people," he says, referring to their generally conservative districts. "I don't think there's any reason to think the Tea Party folks are ever going to change."
Calling And Climbing Bluffs
Even assuming Boehner wants to take his party in some different direction, he has less leverage than leaders of the past. He doesn't have as many earmarks to give, and the threat of booting recalcitrant members off committees only seems to rile up their like-minded peers.
"The question is, can you have any negotiation here if you have, even on the debt thing, 144 members voting no, a clear majority of your caucus?" says Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas.
For their part, Democrats appear emboldened by having taken a "no ransom" line against the GOP and its demands. President Obama has said repeatedly he's "happy" to negotiate anything with Republicans, but it's not at all clear that Democrats will want to give Republicans much more of what they want.
"Every time we contrast our priorities with Republican priorities, voters side with our priorities," Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told NPR's Renee Montagne Thursday.
Democrats will be further emboldened by the fact that they were ultimately able to block the GOP, says Lewis Gould, author of Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans.
The Tea Party Republicans may have an even greater desire to come away with something to show from the next confrontation, he says, but they've already overplayed their hand.
"They've sort of had their bluffs called," he says. "The next time would have to be, 'We are going over the edge no matter what — no business community and nothing else is going to stop us from going over.' "
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Cruz: Senate won't make same mistake in next fight
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said Saturday that the GOP lost the government shutdown budget battle because some congressional Republicans turned on others, but that he doesn't think they will make the same mistake during the next political impasse.
"I am hopeful that in the future the Senate will listen," Cruz, the tea party favorite and freshman senator from Texas, told a convention in Austin of the Texas Medical Association.
Cruz staged a more than 21-hour quasi-filibuster in the Senate late last month, helping spark a budget fight in the Republican-led House that partially shuttered the government in an attempt to sever funding for the nation's new health care law.
Then, with the country facing a debt default, leaders in the Democratic-led Senate brokered a deal to end the standoff — which Cruz dismissed as "selling the American people down the river."
"You don't win a fight when your own team is firing cannons at the people who are standing up and leading, which are the House Republicans," he said.
The deal sets up the potential for another budget showdown in January. Senate GOP leaders, however, have suggested that there won't be a repeat of the shutdown or a potential default crisis like in recent weeks.
But addressing reporters after his speech, Cruz would not say that another fight won't be coming.
"There will be plenty of time to consider the particular practical or strategic decisions," he said.
Asked if he was worried about retaliation from more-senior Republican leaders in the Senate, Cruz said, "I try very hard not to worry about the politics and the internal back-and-forth in Washington."
Many attendees gave Cruz a standing ovation at the end of his speech.
Some political observers now see Cruz as Texas' most popular Republican. But his approval ratings across the country may be slipping.
National polls have shown that while Americans in general don't love the health care law, they oppose defunding it — especially if it means shutting down the government. And many of Cruz's Senate colleagues have bemoaned the shutdown for tarnishing the GOP's image.
Cruz also took questions from the audience and was asked if ideology driving Washington could outweigh political pragmatism.
"The arguments I have laid out today have not been ideological," Cruz said. "These were the essence of practical."
- Politics & Government
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- Ted Cruz
- government shutdown
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'Pulp Fiction' Castmembers Reunite for Quentin Tarantino's Prix Lumiere Award
LYON, France – Quentin Tarantino brought out the big guns – including Harvey Weinstein, Uma Thurman and Harvey Keitel – when he received the Prix Lumiere at the film festival here Friday night.
The Prix Lumiere, which has been awarded to Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman, Gerard Depardieu, and Ken Loach in the five years since its inception, was envisioned by Cannes and Lumiere film festivals head Thierry Fremaux to become the Nobel prize of filmmakers to honor their bodies of work.
At an exceptionally emotional tribute and award ceremony, which preceded a brief backstage government ceremony in which he was awarded the Commander of Arts and Letters by French culture minister Aurelie Filippetti, the director was honored by his longtime friends and creative collaborators.
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Tim Roth got the evening off to a bawdy start with a few well-placed swears, but the mood soon turned more sweet and serious as producers Lawrence Bender and Weinstein took the stage. The famously demanding Weinstein credited Tarantino for both of his businesses success.
"My first company, Miramax, was the house that Quentin built, and my second company, The Weinstein Company, is the house that Quentin saved," he said, showing an uncharacteristic soft spot when adding that Tarantino is "tough minded and tough, but really one of the most compassionate human beings I know."
Keitel, who took the stage next, was moved by Weinstein's words and grew teary as he began to talk about the director. "Damn, I'm not going to make it through this," he said when composing himself, before comparing his relationship with Tarantino to a great romance. "I always felt we were meant for each other and nothing could keep us apart. Maybe if he had been a woman we could have gotten married, had kids," he joked. "Working with Quentin is like reading a great novel or hearing a great symphony or piece of music -- it changes you. You don't know how, but it has."
With a barrage of superlatives that required Fremaux to translate from her "terribly" hand-written speech on the back of the day's program, Thurman declared: "For all your wildness, your work always has aspirations for justice, freedom from oppression, courage, and most of all love and passion."
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"You have been an explosion of dynamite in the art of cinema itself," she said, comparing him to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the namesake of the Nobel Prize. "You invented your own dynamite, your 'cinemite.' May your legacy be your fearlessness and the flicker of light projected through the darkness of a movie house forever be your fuse."
"I don't have words for how I feel -- probably one of the first times that has happened to me," said Tarantino. He credited the actors onstage for bringing his characters to life, and Bender and Weinstein for backing him and his dreams throughout his career.
"I have always thought of myself as a lone wolf, but always because I never really had a family, but these people are my family. Their affection and respect is all I ever want," he said, just before Thurman presented him with the award.
He thanked the roaring crowd, the city of Lyon - where film was invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 - and France as well. "Cinema is my religion and France is my Vatican," he said, causing much confusion in the crowd. "I probably just insulted you a little bit with that but it was the best example I could come up with."
"I don't know where I would be if the Lumiere brothers' mother and father had never met," he said. "Probably somewhere selling 'Royale with Cheese.' "
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Bomb attack near Afghan capital kills influential governor
By Ahmad Sultan
PUL-I-ALAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A bomb attack on a mosque in Afghanistan killed the governor of a province south of Kabul, a friend of the country's president, on Tuesday as he was making an address on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, officials said.
Arsala Jamal was governor of Logar province, a strategically important province on the southern approaches to Kabul and home to one of Afghanistan's richest mines.
He had previously been governor of violence-plagued Khost province on the Pakistani border and the killing of such a senior official will raise new fears for Afghanistan's security as foreign troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.
"When the governor was giving a speech it detonated. He is martyred," said Jamal's spokesman, Din Mohammad Darwish. He said one other person had been killed.
No one claimed responsibility.
Jamal was a close friend of President Hamid Karzai and served as his campaign manager during his successful bid for re-election in 2009.
He had already survived at least one attempt on his life, when a suicide bomber in a car attacked him, killing his guards and a local official in 2007.
Darwish said the bomb had been planted inside the mosque and detonated remotely. Police initially said a suicide bomber had been responsible.
A group supporting Afghanistan's administrative development said it suspected Jamal's work to get the Aynak copper mine in Logar province up and running was the reason he was killed.
"Jamal... had done considerable work for the excavation of copper at the Aynak mine," the Independent Directorate of Local Governance agency said in a statement.
"These activities were not acceptable to the enemies of the country and that is why they martyred him on the first day of Eid al-Adha," it said. It did not elaborate on who it thought was behind the attack.
Jamal spent part of his life in Canada, where his wife and two children continue to live.
Taliban insurgents fighting to expel foreign forces have stepped up attacks on government targets ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
The Taliban have rejected government calls for peace talks and have denounced a presidential election due in April as illegitimate.
A Chinese consortium is running the Aynak mine under a $3 billion deal agreed in 2007.
It is Afghanistan's largest foreign investment project but Taliban attacks on the site have prevented work from getting going.
The Chinese investors in August demanded a review of the deal, putting the project at risk. Production was originally scheduled to start this year, but now is seen as unlikely before 2019.
The Taliban's elusive leader, in a message to mark the Eid holiday, urged his fighters to step up their fight against the government.
"My advice to all mujahideen is to stand up to the enemy firmer than before," Mullah Omar said in the message, distributed via email, referring to Muslim holy fighters.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Ron Popeski and Robert Birsel)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bomb-attack-south-afghan-capital-kills-governor-064608942.html
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