Morning Joe Recap: Good morning everyone! Happy Friday to you! We/I hope you have a great weekend planned.
Joining today's show are Mark Halperin, Eugene Robinson, Kasie Hunt, Hugo Gurdon, Hugh Hewitt, David Ignaitus, Jeremy Peters, Chuck Todd, Gov. Scott Walker, Bob Beckel, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Alex Wagner, Jonathan Capehart, Jeff Greenfield, Bianna Golodryga, Sara Eisen and more.
A couple things that I forgot to mention about the content in that marathon debate the other night that lasted more than three hours is when Jeb Bush mentioned that his brother kept America safe. These people are so linear in their thought process and they are all so guilty of it but they say anything positive, right up to the point where affects them or contradicts what they just said. For instance, did Jeb Bush forget about 9/11? No Jeb, Your Brother Did Not Keep Us ‘Safe’. Jeb doubled down by making that statement into an ad yesterday.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush doubled down on the idea that his brother “kept us safe” as president on Thursday — making an even more explicit connection to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center — the day after he made the claim during the second Republican presidential debate on CNN.
During the debate Bush seemed to indicate that George W. Bush ensured American safety after the terrorist attacks. But the photo in the tweet, with his brother standing on the ruins of the World Trade Center as president, is a explicit connection to his brother keeping “us safe” during Sept. 11. It’s a whitewashed version of history.
Much of the analysis following the World Trade Center attacks revealed that the Bush administration ignored warnings that such a plot could be in the works. Declassified documents indicate that Osama bin Laden had been planning the attacks for years. But rather than preparing for potential terrorist attacks, reports indicated that the Bush administration was more focused on missile defense.
Furthermore, even if Bush is trying to argue that it was his brother’s post-9/11 counter terrorism strategy that kept America “safe,” most evidence indicates that the war in Iraq was dangerously misguided. The Iraq war wasn’t linked to the attacks on U.S. soil, and a 2006 intelligence report indicated that the U.S. presence in Iraq actually worsened the threat of terrorism. Ultimately, nearly 5,000 American troops and other allied troops gave their lives during the war in Iraq.
And, how about the guy with the weird voice that asked Donald trump about the Muslims in America? He said something about their being camps here in the USA. What the hell is he talking about and why didn't Trump shoot it down McCain style? Trump doesn't challenge anti-Muslim questioner at event? Donald Trump came under fire Thursday night for his handling of a question at a town hall about when the U.S. can "get rid" of Muslims, for failing to take issue with that premise and an assertion that President Barack Obama is Muslim.
"We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims," an unidentified man who spoke at a question-and-answer town hall event in Rochester, New Hampshire asked the mogul. "You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American."
A seemingly bewildered Trump interrupted the man, chuckling, "We need this question. This is the first question."
"Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us," the man, wearing a "Trump" T-shirt, continued. "That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"
"We're going to be looking at a lot of different things," Trump replied. "You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and many other things."
The real estate mogul did not correct the questioner about his claims about Obama before moving on to another audience member.
His comments were quickly denounced by Democrats. Hillary Clinton, the party's front-runner for president, personally tweeted late Thursday that Trump's remarks were "just plain wrong."
"Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H"
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz flatly called Trump a racist in a statement.
"GOP front-runner Donald Trump's racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous, but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already. The vile rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates is appalling," Schultz said. "(Republicans) should be ashamed, and all Republican presidential candidates must denounce Trump's comments immediately or will be tacitly agreeing with him."
After the event, several reporters asked Trump why he didn't challenge the questioner's assertions. Trump did not answer.
But Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, later told CNN that the candidate did not hear the question about Obama being a Muslim.
"All he heard was a question about training camps, which he said we have to look into," Lewandowski said. "The media want to make this an issue about Obama, but it's about him waging a war on Christianity."
Misperceptions persist about Obama's faith, but aren't so widespread.
Falsehoods persist about Obama's background
Obama, who has spoken openly about his Christian faith, was born to an American mother and Kenyan father in Hawaii. But Trump has been one of the leading skeptics of Obama's birthplace, saying he did not know where Obama was born as recently as July.
A recent CNN/ORC poll found 29% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans.
Trump is not the first Republican candidate to raise eyebrows over comments involving Obama and his ethnic and religious background. In February, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became embroiled in a brief controversy when he told The Washington Post that he didn't know if Obama was a Christian.
"I've never asked him that," Walker said. A spokeswoman later clarified that he did believe Obama was Christian, but disagreed with the media's obsession with "gotcha" questions.
And in 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain was booed after he famously told an audience member at a campaign event that Obama was a "good family man."
"He's a decent family man ... (a) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," McCain said then. "That's what this campaign is all about."
Regarding the exchange about whether Donald Trump tried to get casinos into Florida. It is half true or not even half because it is mostly true. Trump did not ask Jeb Bush about it personally, but he did lobby for it to happen. Michael Daly wrote the following story, 'The True Story of Donald Trump’s Florida Casino Fail' in the Daily beast today:
The Donald insisted during the CNN debate he never tried to bring casino gambling to Florida. Not only did he try—he failed spectacularly as his ex-protégé reaped more than $1 billion.
No wonder Donald Trump lied so vehemently during the Republican debate about not trying to introduce casino gambling to Florida.
The truth is he tried and failed.
Worse if you are The Donald, he was then bested by a one-time real-life apprentice whose firm went on to make more than $1 billion on gambling while Trump’s own gaming enterprise ended in bankruptcy.
Maybe Donald Chump, or rather Trump, was still trying to convince himself otherwise on Wednesday night when he declared at the debate, “I promise, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.”
He also could have been seeking to protect the value of the Trump name. He had been asked during a 2010 bankruptcy proceeding what the Trump brand was worth.
“Over $3 billion,” he testified, that being a third of his supposed fortune.
The Trump name was prominently displayed on the private plane that landed in a Seminole Indian reservation back in 1996. Trump had not long before declared himself “the biggest enemy of Indian gaming.”
But he seems to have experienced a change of heart when it became apparent that somebody else might come along and form a lucrative partnership with the Seminoles should they secure permission to go into the casino business.
Trump arrived at the Big Cypress reservation airport with Richard Fields, a former talent agent who had once managed Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples. Fields was now viewed as a kind of business apprentice to The Donald. Trump and Fields watched a demonstration of alligator wrestling, sampled tribal fare at the Swamp Water Café, and met with Seminole chairman James Billie.
Billie—who is said to have been in danger of being killed at birth for being biracial—had become a recording artist as well as the tribe’s leader. Trump arranged for Billie to open for the Beach Boys at a charity concert at The Donald’s estate in Palm Beach. Billie reportedly brought along an alligator.
Trump also flew Billie and other Seminole eminences to his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, where they were given front row seats at a Rod Stewart concert. Trump made Billie a judge in the Miss Universe contest in Miami.
With his new pals the Seminoles, Trump retained lobbyist Mallory Horne, former speaker of the House and president of the Senate in the Florida state legislature, as well as a close friend of Florida’s then governor, Democrat Lawton Chiles.
Trump flew Billie and other Seminole eminences to his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, where they were given front row seats at a Rod Stewart concert.
Despite his pal’s lobbying, Chiles remained staunchly opposed to casino gambling. Trump figured he might do better with a leading Republican candidate to become the next governor, Jeb Bush. Trump held a $500,000 fundraiser for Bush at Trump Tower in New York and donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party.
Bush was elected in 1998, but any hope Trump may have had for a quid pro quo was dashed by a declaration the new governor made shortly after assuming office.
“I am opposed to casino gambling in this state, and I am opposed whether it is on Indian property or otherwise,” Bush said.
Fields had remained part of the casino gambling fight, and he continued on his own after Trump decided enough was enough. The lobbyist Horne would later recall in a sworn affidavit that Trump gave Fields his blessing.
“That’s the end of it,” Trump said of his own effort, as recounted in the affidavit. “If you want to try this on your own, Richard, that’s fine, but I’m through with it.”
Bush and the state legislature remained anti-casino, but the Seminoles and Fields eventually prevailed thanks to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the federal Indian Gaming Regulation Act. Fields and a Baltimore real estate development firm he had taken on as a partner were subsequently bought out by the Seminoles for more than $1 billion.
On learning of Fields’s success, Trump filed suit. Trump claimed that his former protégé had fraudulently used his name, leading people to believe he was still connected with The Donald.
No doubt Trump’s displeasure was intensified by his troubles in Atlantic City. The gambling venture he had begun in the early 1980s had gone through bankruptcy twice before Trump ended all financial or managerial involvement. He retained a particular personal stake as the company went broke yet again.
“My name is on the company and that’s very important to me,” he testified during the third bankruptcy proceeding.
In an unusual arrangement, Trump’s suit against Fields was tentatively settled as part of a $320 million deal by Fields’s firm to buy the Trump Marina and Casino in Atlantic City. Fields intended to turn the property into a Margaritaville-themed resort.
But the deal unraveled, with Fields reportedly dropping his offer down to $70 million. Fields continued to prosper, operating out of an office that is just a block up Fifth Avenue from Trump’s headquarters at Trump Tower.
If Fields is not quite The Richard, he was proof that The Donald had been just Donald Chump when it came to bringing casino gambling to Florida. That truth threatened to assert itself during the Republican debate.
“He wanted casino gambling in Florida…” Bush said.
“I didn’t,” Trump said.
“Yes, you did,” Bush insisted.
“Totally false,” Trump declared.
And the man with the $3 billion name almost seemed to believe his own cheap lie.
Is it time for the U.S. to consider intervention in Syria? As the war in Syria wears on, it has scattered millions of refugees into other countries, with many trying to find safe harbor in an overwhelmed Europe. It's part of the rising pressure on the U.S. and its European allies to re-evaluate what has been a hands-off policy in Syria.
"There's no question that you have to take a look at our policy," said CBS News Senior National Security Analyst Juan Zarate. "This is not a crisis that is episodic. It's not going to go away. You're going to see a flow of these refugees continue to come out of Syria as well as other places like Libya and Afghanistan and Iraq."
Instability in Syria is driving the mass exodus. Syrians are squeezed between the regime of their president, Bashar al-Assad, who has committed atrocities against civilians, and the militant Islamic groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which are destroying cities and communities.
"You're going to see more and more refugees leaving Syria unless there's a solution on the ground," Zarate said. There is no simple answer, though.
Countries have been wary of taking action that might help the Assad regime stay in power. But Assad presents far less of a threat to the West than to ISIS.
"Though the president says he wants to do certain things, the administration is really hedging here. They don't want to get caught in the quagmire of Syria," Zarate said. "They realize that the Assad regime has to go, but if the Assad regime goes, you've got Islamic marauders and extremists potentially taking advantage. And so we're at a loss for what our strategy is, and that's reflected on the ground."
Though Australia is insulated from the migrant flow, it's offered help, launching airstrikes that started earlier this week against ISIS targets. In Britain, lawmakers appear to be rethinking a 2013 vote blocking Prime Minister David Cameron's request for military action in Syria. France is also set to begin airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, a practice it had previously avoided because it would benefit Assad's regime.
"Nothing should be done to consolidate or keep Assad in power in Syria," French President Francois Hollande said Monday.
For the past year, the U.S. and five Arab allies have been bombing ISIS positions in Syria, but the insurgency has proven difficult to disrupt. Mr. Obama also signed legislation to arm and train 12,000 Syrian rebels to fight ISIS on the ground, but the program has been strikingly ineffective.
A top U.S. commander in the Middle East admitted Wednesday that only four or five moderate Syrian fighters the U.S. trained still remained on the battlefield.
"At the pace we're going we won't reach the goal that we had initially established for ourselves," Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of the war in Iraq and Syria, told a Senate panel.
After the first group of 54 fighters went into Syria in late July, they came under attack by a Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda which killed or captured several of the fighters.
"That is unbelievably paltry, and to a certain extent, ridiculous and embarrassing," Zarate said. "Obviously this is difficult. It's difficult to find the right allies on the ground who we're going to train. But I think it's endemic of a broader problem, the vagaries of what U.S. policy really is in Syria."
How will the U.S. react to Russian forces in Syria?
"Frankly that's embarrassing for the world's superpower and the president of the United States having committed to this to say that's where we are three plus almost four years after this conflict has begun," he added.
The Obama administration has also said it will not send ground troops into Syria.
And with Russia, which supports Assad, building up its military presence in Syria, the U.S. and Europe risk ceding their leading role on the international stage.
'Don't come here anymore,' Croatia tells migrants.
Croatian leaders put the army on alert when chaos erupted Thursday on the border with Serbia, where thousands of asylum seekers poured into the country, some trampling one another in a rush to get on the few available buses and trains. Dozens were injured in the mayhem.
The masses descended on Croatia after Hungary erected a barbed wire fence and took other tough measures to stop them from using it as a gateway to Western Europe.
As Hungarian officials hailed their success in putting a halt to the influx and moved ahead with plans to build more border fences, leaders in Croatia pleaded that their country was at full capacity and unable to cope with waves of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said he had a message for migrants: Don't try to go to Western Europe through his country.
“Don't come here anymore. Stay in refugee centers in Serbia and Macedonia and Greece,” Ostojic told reporters. “This is not the road to Europe. Buses can't take you there. It's a lie.”
Hungary sealed off its border with Serbia this week with a razor-wire fence and began arresting people who tried to cross. Police used tear gas, batons and water cannons on those who tried to push open a border gate Wednesday.
Croatia represents a longer and more difficult route into Europe. By late Thursday, a total of 9,200 people had entered the country in just 48 hours, police said, and other groups were trying to cross into neighboring Slovenia and Hungary.
Slovenia, like Hungary, appeared unwilling to take in the inflow, with police saying those arriving from Croatia would be sent back there, according to the country's state news agency.
Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic called on the military to be on higher alert and to act if needed to protect the border. Ostojic, the interior minister, meanwhile, suggested Croatia might close its borders if faced with thousands more newcomers.
After bus trips through Serbia, many migrants crossed fields on foot to enter Croatia, where dozens of police at first directed them to trains and buses heading to refugee centers. Authorities warned them to avoid walking in areas along the Serbian border, where there are mines left over from Balkan wars.
Soon matters got out of control.
Hundreds of angry asylum seekers pushed through police lines in the eastern Croatian town of Tovarnik after waiting for hours in the sun, demanding to be allowed to move on toward Western Europe. An Associated Press photographer saw one man collapse on the ground and dozens injured.
More than 2,000 men, women and children had been stuck at the local train station for hours. When buses arrived, groups charged toward them, overwhelming Croatian police.
The situation calmed, but some migrants moved off on foot, with police unable to stop them.
In Croatia's north, police in the town of Batina struggled to cope as hundreds of other asylum seekers came over a Danube River bridge after being bused there by Serbian authorities. Some families were separated as dozens of police officers tried to establish order.
As a European Union member state, Croatia is required to register the asylum seekers. But almost all are trying to reach Germany or elsewhere in Western Europe and want to move through quickly without a paper trail.
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said his country could do little to prevent the migrants from moving on.
“Our resources are limited,” he said. “I will not and cannot stop those people, and they will pass through Croatia.”
Some opted for a detour, trying to cross from Croatia into Hungary along a stretch of open border that has no fence.
That move did not prove very successful: Dozens were detained near the Hungarian village of Illocska, across from the Croatian town of Beli Manastir, Hungarian state media reproted.
By nightfall hundreds were approaching the border with Slovenia, one of several countries on the migration route calling for urgent action by the EU to manage the crisis.
While many refugees quickly decided to switch routes and try their luck through Croatia, others found themselves stranded in Serbia.
“We've run out of money, and we only know the way through Hungary,” said Mohamed Jabar, from the Iraqi town of Diyala, who was traveling with a son in a wheelchair and other family members. “All the other ways are unknown to us. They say ... there is a way through Croatia, but who will welcome me there?
“Are there humanitarian organizations? I have no clue!”
Mohamed Bader sold his father's shop in Aleppo, Syria, to raise $10,000 for the journey with other family members, including women and children. He said he is now quickly running out of money and was afraid of spending the little he has left for an uncertain end.
“If anyone cares about us, let them let us in. From the beginning they could have stopped us by blocking our way in Turkey or Greece,” Bader said. “Instead of having us come all this way with great difficulty only to be told at the end of the road that's it, we can't enter, stay here. I don't know what to do.”
Hungary has faced strong international condemnation for its handling of the migrant crisis. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Hungary's use of water cannons, tear gas and baton-wielding riot police unacceptable.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto lashed out Thursday against the criticism.
“I find it bizarre and shocking that certain esteemed international figures have stood on the side of people who for hours were throwing stones and pieces of cement at the Hungarian police,” Szijjarto said. “And I'd also like to make it very clear, no matter what criticism I receive, that we will never allow such aggressive people to enter Hungary. Not even for transit purposes.”
Hungarian police said they detained 22 people, including one Syrian man suspected of terrorism.
The EU migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, declared Thursday that walls and violence are no solution and urged Hungary to work with the 28-nation bloc to alleviate the continent's migration crisis.
“The majority of people arriving in Europe are Syrians,” Avramopoulos said at a news conference in Budapest. “They are people in genuine need of our protection. There is no wall you would not climb, no sea you wouldn't cross if you are fleeing violence and terror. I believe we have a moral duty (to) offer them protection.”
Hungary, in contrast, has been insisting that most are simply economic migrants seeking better jobs. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also said that by keeping out Muslims, Hungary is defending “Europe's Christian culture.”
His government celebrated its sealed border on Thursday as a success.
“The assertive, uncompromising defense of the border has visibly held back human trafficking and forces them to change direction,” said Janos Lazar, Orban's chief of staff. “That was the aim of the entire action.”
US Senate Democrats block last bid to kill Iran nuclear deal. By vote of 56-42, Republican-majority Senate falls short of 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to advance the legislation.
US Senate Democrats blocked legislation meant to kill the Iran nuclear deal for a third time on Thursday, securing a major diplomatic victory for President Barack Obama.
By a vote of 56-42, the Republican-majority Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to advance the legislation as all but four of Obama's fellow Democrats backed the nuclear pact announced in July.
With no more Senate votes planned this week, the result ensured that Congress will not pass before a midnight deadline a resolution of disapproval that would have crippled the agreement by eliminating Obama's ability to waive many US sanctions.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced an amendment to the measure that would bar the president from lifting sanctions on Iran unless it recognized Israel's right to exist and released American prisoners. Democrats have argued for months that the agreement should not be tied to non-nuclear issues.
Ex-Nobel committee exec regrets Obama Peace Prize.
Former Secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Geir Lundestad reportedly notes in his new book that the body “didn't achieve what it had hoped for” when it gave Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and conferred the prestigious award on him in 2009.
While it is quite rare for Nobel officials to openly discuss the nuts and bolts of their secretive committee, the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has apparently owned up in his memoir ‘Secretary of Peace’, to be released on Thursday, that the panel had expected the award to somewhat challenge Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize during his first term.
The Norwegian historian told AP that the committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect." The five members of the Nobel Committee, often former politicians, are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The coveted award was met with an avalanche of criticism instead. An army of opponents noted that Obama had made no foreign policy achievements worthy of the prize in less than nine months in office. On top of this, he received the award while the US was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book, read by AP.
"In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for," Lundestad, who stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the secretive committee, added.
Lundestad has also reportedly noted that Obama was taken aback by the award and that his staff investigated whether other winners had skipped the prize ceremony in Oslo.
"In the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo," Lundestad wrote.
At that point "his cabinet had already asked whether anyone had previously refused to travel to Oslo to receive the prize," Lundestad wrote, according to AFP.
"In broad strokes, the answer was no.
"No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Lundestad wrote, AFP reported.
He reportedly recalled that then-Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store tried the following year to dissuade the panel from awarding the prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for fear it would sour Norway's relations with Beijing.
"During my 25 years [on the committee], I don't ever recall seeing anything like that," Lundestad said.
Ignoring the minister's warnings, the Nobel committee honored the human rights activist in 2010, leaving Oslo's ties with Beijing frozen ever since.
Japan: Brawl erupts in parliament over approval of controversial security bills. A brawl broke out in Japan's parliament on 17 September after the upper house approved legislation for the controversial security bills that would allow the country to send troops to fight abroad for the first time since the Second World War.
The chaotic scenes showed opposition lawmakers try to physically prevent the vote from taking place. Broadcast live on national television, politicians can be seen pushing and shoving one another, in a rare show of physical anger, as members of the opposition tried to grab the microphone and stop Masahisa Sato, acting chairman of the upper house special committee, from carrying out the vote in parliament.
The legislation has sparked huge protests from ordinary voters, with thousands of people demonstrating outside parliament in opposition to the bills.
A poll carried out over the weekend and published on 14 September by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun showed 54% of the public opposed the legislation against 29% who backed it, with 68% in the survey saying they saw no need to enact the bills during the current session.
The government says the changes to the law are vital to meet new challenges, such as that presented by rising neighbour China, whose recent assertiveness in the South China Sea has upset countries in the region.
But opponents say the revisions, which the government aims to get voted into law by the entire upper house this week, violate the pacifist constitution and could embroil Japan in US-led conflicts around the globe.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc has an upper house majority, but opposition parties have vowed to prevent a vote by the full chamber before parliament disperses on 27 September even if they have to use delaying tactics, such as no-confidence and censure motions. The legislation has already been approved by the lower house.
Japanese media speculate that the bill will now head for a full session of the upper house as early as 18 September where the opposition has vowed to use more delaying tactics.
Hugh Hewett is on the show now and they are discussing what i was psyched about that he did in that debate (http://donlichterman.blogspot.com/2015/09/morning-joe-recap-good-morning-everyone_17.html). Here is what i wrote precisely because I wrote alot after that debate:
Guess what? Even though it was finally brought up by the media last night, (which also BTW, I was psyched that Hewitt finally asked everyone if that Syrian refugee issue had anything to do with us drawing that line in the sand by us not intervening 5 years ago because I said that sentence to my friend at the 830PM hour, and he asked it later on in the evening), there was other news happening around the world. And, it looks like 'we can field a starting basketball squad' using the amount of US-Trained soldiers we have over in Syria. Jeff Sessions calls it a 'Total failure' as again and I am NOT exaggerating it but only '4 or 5' US-trained rebels are fighting in Syria, according to the US general in that hearing yesterday.
Speaking of what i said in that recap writing, Scott Walker is on the show today. Joe will ask him how he felt about getting no time to say anything two nights ago.
OK. So Walker did talk and what he says is such a lie. For instance and with regard to the 16th fleet. It is at the largest level it has ever been in the history of the USA. That talking point on that GOP side is stupid. Carly used it the other night i the debate too.
Next, Planned Parenthood. I want to see in those videos where it says anything about selling organs or fetuses or any body part. Because it does not. That is another made up thing so they can try to control a female body even though conservatives and Libertarians especially, want full freedom. Except when it comes to women though. I hate that argument. it has got to end already. And, why Planned Parenthood? Abortions they back or provide make up like 4% of what the entire organization does for women. I know they help people with cancer prevention, etc. That never gets brought up by anyone.
Please read the Cherry Hill natives' Jeremy Peters article here at the New York Times. It is on the front page of it and it is about Carly Fiorina.
That’s an unprecedented response in such a short amount of time, according ActBlue, the non-profit that processes online donations for many Democratic campaigns, including Sanders.
“We’ve never seen an immediate donor response like what the Sanders’ campaign received on Tuesday,” said ActBlue Executive Director Erin Hill. “At one point, it drove 180 contributions through our platform per minute. Over its 11-year history ActBlue has sent money to over 11,000 campaigns and committees – and the Bernie Sanders campaign holds the record for the two biggest donor days ever for a campaign on our platform.”
The attack came from Correct the Record, which, unlike most super PACs, coordinates directly with Clinton’s campaign. The group has been sending trackers to Sanders campaign events and plying reporters with so-called opposition research about the Vermonter for months, but never with the intention of its work being made public.
But after The Huffington Post reported on a particularly controversial line of attack from Correct the Record earlier this week, the Sanders campaign took offense and saw an opportunity. They sent not one but two fundraising emails to supporters in response, and were astonished by the response.
“It was the kind of onslaught I expected to see from the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson, and it’s the second time a billionaire Super PAC has tried to stop the momentum of the political revolution we’re building together,” Sanders said in one email.
The exchange of fire between forces loyal to the leading Democratic candidates comes as both are dropping the awkward congeniality of the earlier months of the campaign as they head of the first Democratic debate next month. And the haul underscores the difficulty Clinton will have in attacking Sanders, who can turn any attacks around on Clinton as evidence she is nervous and as an attempt by the establishment to silence them.
Hillary Clinton’s Explanation for Controversial Bankruptcy Vote? Joe Biden.
Hillary Clinton defended her vote for a controversial bankruptcy bill reviled by the left on Thursday, and said she did so at the insistence of then-Sen. Joe Biden, who just happens to be considering challenging her for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Her comments suggest how the Clinton campaign might respond if Mr. Biden decides to run, and highlights the challenges the vice president would have in appealing to liberals in the party. His record includes many of the centrist policies and compromises that progressives reject.
Mrs. Clinton made her comments in a conversation at a diner here. She sat down with a trio of women and one of them, Jo Smith, 43, asked her about that vote, noting that Elizabeth Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts, opposed it. Ms. Smith said the vote was in 2009, but she was likely referring to a vote from 2001, when Mrs. Clinton was in the Senate.
The overhaul was promoted by the credit-card and banking industries and would have made it more difficult for people to get relief from debts through bankruptcy. As first lady, Mrs. Clinton had opposed a similar proposal. She said the bill she later supported had been improved.
On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said that the bill was pending when she arrived in the Senate in 2001 and wanted some changes to protect alimony and child support payments.
“So I negotiated those changes and then the people who had been handling the bill said, ‘Well if we take your changes you have to support it.’ That’s the way the Senate works,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And so I said ‘It’s really important to me that we don’t hurt women and children, so I will support it even though there are other things I don’t like in it.’”
She then pointedly added this: “And it was Vice President Biden who was the senator from Delaware and the Republican co-sponsor that I was talking with, so I said I’d support it even though I’d opposed it before.”
The bill failed, but a similar measure passed in 2005. Mrs. Clinton missed that vote, she said, because her husband had been hospitalized for a heart ailment. She said she would have voted no.
During a presidential-primary debate in 2008, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she regretted her 2001 yes vote. “Sure I do, but it never became law,” she said.
Hillary Clinton ‘Putting the White House on Notice’ About Keystone Pipeline. Hillary Clinton is changing her tune on Keystone (sort-of).
The democratic presidential candidate on Thursday expressed frustration over the Obama administration's delay on making a decision on Keystone XL pipeline, and said that she is “putting the White House on notice” and will make her position known “soon” —- something she so far refused to do.
“I have been waiting for the administration to make a decision. I thought I owed them that,” Clinton said during a town hall at the Concord Boys and Girls Club, when asked by a female voter about the multi-billion dollar pipeline that runs from Canada to the Gulf Coast. "I can’t wait too much longer. I am putting the White House on notice. I am going to tell you what I think soon.”
Clinton, of course, did not give a direct answer -– and her position is still unknown. However, this is the farthest she has gone yet to suggest that she might bypass the President and take a stance.
(While campaigning in New Hampshire in July, Clinton told a voter, who asked for her position, this: "If it is undecided when I become president, I will answer your question.”)
Clinton has come under fire by environmentalists for not taking any stance at all on the Keystone pipeline, which she repeatedly has said she will not do as a candidate due to her past role as secretary of state.
Clinton’s Democratic presidential rivals Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have both been on the record in opposition to the Keystone pipeline for months, and often bring it up as a point of contrast with Clinton.
Clinton's decision to take a position on the pipeline could be a sign that things are heating up in the race.
Her remark comes the same day Sanders’s campaign announced that they raised $1 million off of revelations that Clinton’s super PAC, Correct the Record, was peddling opposition research on the Vermont senator.
Sanders is leading Clinton by 9 points in New Hampshire according to a recent NBC News/Marist poll.
Clinton is currently in New Hampshire for a three-day campaign swing.
During her prepared remarks in Concord, Clinton also reacted to the GOP debate, which she was full of "bickering, lots of personal insults…all kinds of claims without any basis.”
“It may be entertaining for some,” she said, “But it is not going to be good for America.”
Bush addresses just a handful of people at Las Vegas rally. Jeb Bush did not have to stand on his tiptoes to see over the crowd at his most recent rally.
Appearing in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon - just one day after the Republican debate during which he was caught standing on his toes during the photocall with the other candidates - Bush addressed a very sparse crowd of supporters.
When asked to comment on the low attendance, Bush remarked that it was to be expected given that the rally happened in the middle of the afternoon.
Not great: Jeb Bush addressed a half-empty rec center (above) whose capacity was just 200 people in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon
Not great: Jeb Bush addressed a half-empty rec center (above) whose capacity was just 200 people in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon
Reason: When asked to comment on the low attendance, Bush (above) remarked that it was to be expected given that the rally happened in the middle of the afternoon
Reason: When asked to comment on the low attendance, Bush (above) remarked that it was to be expected given that the rally happened in the middle of the afternoon
The Washington Post reports that Bush appeared in a rec center room that could hold 200 people but had only half that.
'I hope that I am so brilliant and so eloquent and so high-energy that you feel compelled to caucus for me,' Bush told the crowd.
He also made a joke about Trump, without naming him, and the fact that he could fill a basketball arena with people for his rallies.
GOP leaders scramble to avoid government shutdown over Planned Parenthood money. House Republican leaders scrambled Thursday to head off a politically damaging government shutdown in two weeks over rebellious conservatives' demand that any stopgap spending bill block federal funds for Planned Parenthood.
Leadership sought an outlet for GOP lawmakers' outrage after this summer's release of videos secretly recorded by abortion foes, who contend they show that Planned Parenthood illegally profits from selling tissue from aborted fetuses to medical researchers.
Unclear is whether a vote Friday to defund Planned Parenthood and other steps will be enough to placate conservatives, emboldened by widespread criticism of the organization at Wednesday's GOP presidential debate.
Temporary funding legislation is needed to give the chronically dysfunctional Congress more time to sort through huge differences over a full-year spending bill that could ease a budget freeze facing the Pentagon and domestic agencies. Top congressional Democrats exiting a meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday said any temporary funding measure should have a short time-span and that Democrats would demand increases for domestic agencies.
"We want to make sure we have equal money for defense and non-defense," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
In the final months of the year, another possible shutdown looms over Obama's demand that the GOP-led Congress to increase the nation's borrowing authority.
What is clear is that the once-routine job of advancing a short-term spending bill to keep the government open past an Oct. 1 deadline remains a major headache for House GOP leaders, chiefly Speaker John Boehner. Some hard-right lawmakers and tea partyers are threatening to try to topple the Ohio Republican, a fierce foe of abortion who has held the speakership since January 2011.
"We've seen promises to fight tooth and nail on things in the past and it hasn't really materialized," said tea party-backed Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz. "I think there will be a point where the thin ice breaks."
The ice could be breaking between Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who met for 20 minutes after she returned from meeting with Obama. Aides declined to characterize the session.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused Boehner of "subverting our republic," and working for lobbyists rather than "what the constituents of our district want."
Boehner's clear but unstated preference is to pass a temporary funding bill that's free of the Planned Parenthood controversy. Democrats are sure to filibuster any bill defunding Planned Parenthood should it come to a vote in the Senate, and Obama has promised a veto regardless.
The organization, which provides birth control, abortions and various women's health services, says it's done nothing wrong.
"If you're pro-life, the last thing you want to do is have the focus changed to the government shutdown ... rather than the activities of Planned Parenthood," said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, a Boehner ally. "At some point in time you've got to face reality."
The White House, in a statement released Thursday evening, said Obama called the shutdown threat "a game of chicken with our economy that we cannot accept."
At a closed-door GOP meeting Thursday, Republicans were shown party polling data that showed most Americans haven't seen the videos and that more Americans associate Planned Parenthood with women's health than with abortions. The numbers also showed that most Americans don't want a government shutdown, lawmakers at the meeting said.
A significant majority of Republicans would support Boehner if he were to press for a temporary bill disentangled from the dispute over Planned Parenthood. But a few dozen of the most conservative Republicans have vowed to oppose any such effort, and some are weighing a challenge to Boehner's leadership.
Asked how confident he was that he could defeat an effort to remove him from the post, Boehner said, "Very."
Other GOP members say tea party lawmakers have repeatedly driven GOP leaders into unwinnable fights. They highlight the 16-day partial government shutdown over health care two years ago and a failed attempt this year to use a Department of Homeland Security funding bill to reverse Obama's moves easing the threat of deportation for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
"They're kind of like their own party," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. "You can't really do anything about it because they're right-wing Marxists. It's unpredictable what they're going to do."
Hillary Clinton went on the offensive Thursday, the day after the attack on Planned Parenthood was front and center in a debate of GOP presidential candidates.
"It's bad enough to see hateful rhetoric and lies in a presidential debate. But just like the candidates on stage last night, Republicans in Congress want to defund Planned Parenthood. And they're willing to shut down the federal government to do it, no matter how bad that is for our country," said the Democratic front runner.
So for now, GOP leaders are pushing free-standing bills blocking Planned Parenthood's money and curbing abortion that are not tied to money to keep the government functioning. In addition, four congressional committees are investigating Planned Parenthood.
Right to Life's leaders released a statement this week endorsing a bill by Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year. The House plans to approve that bill on Friday, along with another by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., setting criminal penalties for medical providers who don't try to save babies born live during abortions. - Associated Press reporters Andrew Taylor and Alan Fram, Stephen Ohlemacher and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
Kelly Ayotte is on the show to discuss how she against it.
Last, Mika's Know Your Values event in Chicago is one week away.
Know Your Value: http://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value
Welcome to Know Your Value. The live events are coming to Chicago, Boston, and Orlando in 2015 (Already held in Philadelphia, Washington DC this year) - select your city here to purchase tickets and find out more about the movement.
Regardless of it all this long week, please stay in touch and let's go Rams (vs. the Redskins in DC).
A couple things that I forgot to mention about the content in that marathon debate the other night that lasted more than three hours is when Jeb Bush mentioned that his brother kept America safe. These people are so linear in their thought process and they are all so guilty of it but they say anything positive, right up to the point where affects them or contradicts what they just said. For instance, did Jeb Bush forget about 9/11? No Jeb, Your Brother Did Not Keep Us ‘Safe’. Jeb doubled down by making that statement into an ad yesterday.
During the debate Bush seemed to indicate that George W. Bush ensured American safety after the terrorist attacks. But the photo in the tweet, with his brother standing on the ruins of the World Trade Center as president, is a explicit connection to his brother keeping “us safe” during Sept. 11. It’s a whitewashed version of history.
Much of the analysis following the World Trade Center attacks revealed that the Bush administration ignored warnings that such a plot could be in the works. Declassified documents indicate that Osama bin Laden had been planning the attacks for years. But rather than preparing for potential terrorist attacks, reports indicated that the Bush administration was more focused on missile defense.
And, how about the guy with the weird voice that asked Donald trump about the Muslims in America? He said something about their being camps here in the USA. What the hell is he talking about and why didn't Trump shoot it down McCain style? Trump doesn't challenge anti-Muslim questioner at event? Donald Trump came under fire Thursday night for his handling of a question at a town hall about when the U.S. can "get rid" of Muslims, for failing to take issue with that premise and an assertion that President Barack Obama is Muslim.
"We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims," an unidentified man who spoke at a question-and-answer town hall event in Rochester, New Hampshire asked the mogul. "You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American."
A seemingly bewildered Trump interrupted the man, chuckling, "We need this question. This is the first question."
"Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us," the man, wearing a "Trump" T-shirt, continued. "That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"
"We're going to be looking at a lot of different things," Trump replied. "You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and many other things."
The real estate mogul did not correct the questioner about his claims about Obama before moving on to another audience member.
His comments were quickly denounced by Democrats. Hillary Clinton, the party's front-runner for president, personally tweeted late Thursday that Trump's remarks were "just plain wrong."
"Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H"
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz flatly called Trump a racist in a statement.
"GOP front-runner Donald Trump's racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous, but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already. The vile rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates is appalling," Schultz said. "(Republicans) should be ashamed, and all Republican presidential candidates must denounce Trump's comments immediately or will be tacitly agreeing with him."
After the event, several reporters asked Trump why he didn't challenge the questioner's assertions. Trump did not answer.
But Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, later told CNN that the candidate did not hear the question about Obama being a Muslim.
"All he heard was a question about training camps, which he said we have to look into," Lewandowski said. "The media want to make this an issue about Obama, but it's about him waging a war on Christianity."
Misperceptions persist about Obama's faith, but aren't so widespread.
Falsehoods persist about Obama's background
Obama, who has spoken openly about his Christian faith, was born to an American mother and Kenyan father in Hawaii. But Trump has been one of the leading skeptics of Obama's birthplace, saying he did not know where Obama was born as recently as July.
A recent CNN/ORC poll found 29% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans.
Trump is not the first Republican candidate to raise eyebrows over comments involving Obama and his ethnic and religious background. In February, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became embroiled in a brief controversy when he told The Washington Post that he didn't know if Obama was a Christian.
"I've never asked him that," Walker said. A spokeswoman later clarified that he did believe Obama was Christian, but disagreed with the media's obsession with "gotcha" questions.
And in 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain was booed after he famously told an audience member at a campaign event that Obama was a "good family man."
"He's a decent family man ... (a) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," McCain said then. "That's what this campaign is all about."
Regarding the exchange about whether Donald Trump tried to get casinos into Florida. It is half true or not even half because it is mostly true. Trump did not ask Jeb Bush about it personally, but he did lobby for it to happen. Michael Daly wrote the following story, 'The True Story of Donald Trump’s Florida Casino Fail' in the Daily beast today:
The Donald insisted during the CNN debate he never tried to bring casino gambling to Florida. Not only did he try—he failed spectacularly as his ex-protégé reaped more than $1 billion.
No wonder Donald Trump lied so vehemently during the Republican debate about not trying to introduce casino gambling to Florida.
The truth is he tried and failed.
Worse if you are The Donald, he was then bested by a one-time real-life apprentice whose firm went on to make more than $1 billion on gambling while Trump’s own gaming enterprise ended in bankruptcy.
Maybe Donald Chump, or rather Trump, was still trying to convince himself otherwise on Wednesday night when he declared at the debate, “I promise, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.”
He also could have been seeking to protect the value of the Trump name. He had been asked during a 2010 bankruptcy proceeding what the Trump brand was worth.
“Over $3 billion,” he testified, that being a third of his supposed fortune.
The Trump name was prominently displayed on the private plane that landed in a Seminole Indian reservation back in 1996. Trump had not long before declared himself “the biggest enemy of Indian gaming.”
But he seems to have experienced a change of heart when it became apparent that somebody else might come along and form a lucrative partnership with the Seminoles should they secure permission to go into the casino business.
Trump arrived at the Big Cypress reservation airport with Richard Fields, a former talent agent who had once managed Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples. Fields was now viewed as a kind of business apprentice to The Donald. Trump and Fields watched a demonstration of alligator wrestling, sampled tribal fare at the Swamp Water Café, and met with Seminole chairman James Billie.
Billie—who is said to have been in danger of being killed at birth for being biracial—had become a recording artist as well as the tribe’s leader. Trump arranged for Billie to open for the Beach Boys at a charity concert at The Donald’s estate in Palm Beach. Billie reportedly brought along an alligator.
Trump also flew Billie and other Seminole eminences to his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, where they were given front row seats at a Rod Stewart concert. Trump made Billie a judge in the Miss Universe contest in Miami.
With his new pals the Seminoles, Trump retained lobbyist Mallory Horne, former speaker of the House and president of the Senate in the Florida state legislature, as well as a close friend of Florida’s then governor, Democrat Lawton Chiles.
Trump flew Billie and other Seminole eminences to his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, where they were given front row seats at a Rod Stewart concert.
Despite his pal’s lobbying, Chiles remained staunchly opposed to casino gambling. Trump figured he might do better with a leading Republican candidate to become the next governor, Jeb Bush. Trump held a $500,000 fundraiser for Bush at Trump Tower in New York and donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party.
Bush was elected in 1998, but any hope Trump may have had for a quid pro quo was dashed by a declaration the new governor made shortly after assuming office.
“I am opposed to casino gambling in this state, and I am opposed whether it is on Indian property or otherwise,” Bush said.
Fields had remained part of the casino gambling fight, and he continued on his own after Trump decided enough was enough. The lobbyist Horne would later recall in a sworn affidavit that Trump gave Fields his blessing.
“That’s the end of it,” Trump said of his own effort, as recounted in the affidavit. “If you want to try this on your own, Richard, that’s fine, but I’m through with it.”
Bush and the state legislature remained anti-casino, but the Seminoles and Fields eventually prevailed thanks to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the federal Indian Gaming Regulation Act. Fields and a Baltimore real estate development firm he had taken on as a partner were subsequently bought out by the Seminoles for more than $1 billion.
On learning of Fields’s success, Trump filed suit. Trump claimed that his former protégé had fraudulently used his name, leading people to believe he was still connected with The Donald.
No doubt Trump’s displeasure was intensified by his troubles in Atlantic City. The gambling venture he had begun in the early 1980s had gone through bankruptcy twice before Trump ended all financial or managerial involvement. He retained a particular personal stake as the company went broke yet again.
“My name is on the company and that’s very important to me,” he testified during the third bankruptcy proceeding.
In an unusual arrangement, Trump’s suit against Fields was tentatively settled as part of a $320 million deal by Fields’s firm to buy the Trump Marina and Casino in Atlantic City. Fields intended to turn the property into a Margaritaville-themed resort.
But the deal unraveled, with Fields reportedly dropping his offer down to $70 million. Fields continued to prosper, operating out of an office that is just a block up Fifth Avenue from Trump’s headquarters at Trump Tower.
If Fields is not quite The Richard, he was proof that The Donald had been just Donald Chump when it came to bringing casino gambling to Florida. That truth threatened to assert itself during the Republican debate.
“He wanted casino gambling in Florida…” Bush said.
“I didn’t,” Trump said.
“Yes, you did,” Bush insisted.
“Totally false,” Trump declared.
And the man with the $3 billion name almost seemed to believe his own cheap lie.
Is it time for the U.S. to consider intervention in Syria? As the war in Syria wears on, it has scattered millions of refugees into other countries, with many trying to find safe harbor in an overwhelmed Europe. It's part of the rising pressure on the U.S. and its European allies to re-evaluate what has been a hands-off policy in Syria.
"There's no question that you have to take a look at our policy," said CBS News Senior National Security Analyst Juan Zarate. "This is not a crisis that is episodic. It's not going to go away. You're going to see a flow of these refugees continue to come out of Syria as well as other places like Libya and Afghanistan and Iraq."
Instability in Syria is driving the mass exodus. Syrians are squeezed between the regime of their president, Bashar al-Assad, who has committed atrocities against civilians, and the militant Islamic groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which are destroying cities and communities.
"You're going to see more and more refugees leaving Syria unless there's a solution on the ground," Zarate said. There is no simple answer, though.
Countries have been wary of taking action that might help the Assad regime stay in power. But Assad presents far less of a threat to the West than to ISIS.
"Though the president says he wants to do certain things, the administration is really hedging here. They don't want to get caught in the quagmire of Syria," Zarate said. "They realize that the Assad regime has to go, but if the Assad regime goes, you've got Islamic marauders and extremists potentially taking advantage. And so we're at a loss for what our strategy is, and that's reflected on the ground."
Though Australia is insulated from the migrant flow, it's offered help, launching airstrikes that started earlier this week against ISIS targets. In Britain, lawmakers appear to be rethinking a 2013 vote blocking Prime Minister David Cameron's request for military action in Syria. France is also set to begin airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, a practice it had previously avoided because it would benefit Assad's regime.
"Nothing should be done to consolidate or keep Assad in power in Syria," French President Francois Hollande said Monday.
For the past year, the U.S. and five Arab allies have been bombing ISIS positions in Syria, but the insurgency has proven difficult to disrupt. Mr. Obama also signed legislation to arm and train 12,000 Syrian rebels to fight ISIS on the ground, but the program has been strikingly ineffective.
A top U.S. commander in the Middle East admitted Wednesday that only four or five moderate Syrian fighters the U.S. trained still remained on the battlefield.
"At the pace we're going we won't reach the goal that we had initially established for ourselves," Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of the war in Iraq and Syria, told a Senate panel.
After the first group of 54 fighters went into Syria in late July, they came under attack by a Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda which killed or captured several of the fighters.
"That is unbelievably paltry, and to a certain extent, ridiculous and embarrassing," Zarate said. "Obviously this is difficult. It's difficult to find the right allies on the ground who we're going to train. But I think it's endemic of a broader problem, the vagaries of what U.S. policy really is in Syria."
How will the U.S. react to Russian forces in Syria?
"Frankly that's embarrassing for the world's superpower and the president of the United States having committed to this to say that's where we are three plus almost four years after this conflict has begun," he added.
The Obama administration has also said it will not send ground troops into Syria.
And with Russia, which supports Assad, building up its military presence in Syria, the U.S. and Europe risk ceding their leading role on the international stage.
'Don't come here anymore,' Croatia tells migrants.
The masses descended on Croatia after Hungary erected a barbed wire fence and took other tough measures to stop them from using it as a gateway to Western Europe.
As Hungarian officials hailed their success in putting a halt to the influx and moved ahead with plans to build more border fences, leaders in Croatia pleaded that their country was at full capacity and unable to cope with waves of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said he had a message for migrants: Don't try to go to Western Europe through his country.
“Don't come here anymore. Stay in refugee centers in Serbia and Macedonia and Greece,” Ostojic told reporters. “This is not the road to Europe. Buses can't take you there. It's a lie.”
Hungary sealed off its border with Serbia this week with a razor-wire fence and began arresting people who tried to cross. Police used tear gas, batons and water cannons on those who tried to push open a border gate Wednesday.
Croatia represents a longer and more difficult route into Europe. By late Thursday, a total of 9,200 people had entered the country in just 48 hours, police said, and other groups were trying to cross into neighboring Slovenia and Hungary.
Slovenia, like Hungary, appeared unwilling to take in the inflow, with police saying those arriving from Croatia would be sent back there, according to the country's state news agency.
Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic called on the military to be on higher alert and to act if needed to protect the border. Ostojic, the interior minister, meanwhile, suggested Croatia might close its borders if faced with thousands more newcomers.
After bus trips through Serbia, many migrants crossed fields on foot to enter Croatia, where dozens of police at first directed them to trains and buses heading to refugee centers. Authorities warned them to avoid walking in areas along the Serbian border, where there are mines left over from Balkan wars.
Soon matters got out of control.
Hundreds of angry asylum seekers pushed through police lines in the eastern Croatian town of Tovarnik after waiting for hours in the sun, demanding to be allowed to move on toward Western Europe. An Associated Press photographer saw one man collapse on the ground and dozens injured.
More than 2,000 men, women and children had been stuck at the local train station for hours. When buses arrived, groups charged toward them, overwhelming Croatian police.
The situation calmed, but some migrants moved off on foot, with police unable to stop them.
In Croatia's north, police in the town of Batina struggled to cope as hundreds of other asylum seekers came over a Danube River bridge after being bused there by Serbian authorities. Some families were separated as dozens of police officers tried to establish order.
As a European Union member state, Croatia is required to register the asylum seekers. But almost all are trying to reach Germany or elsewhere in Western Europe and want to move through quickly without a paper trail.
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said his country could do little to prevent the migrants from moving on.
“Our resources are limited,” he said. “I will not and cannot stop those people, and they will pass through Croatia.”
Some opted for a detour, trying to cross from Croatia into Hungary along a stretch of open border that has no fence.
That move did not prove very successful: Dozens were detained near the Hungarian village of Illocska, across from the Croatian town of Beli Manastir, Hungarian state media reproted.
By nightfall hundreds were approaching the border with Slovenia, one of several countries on the migration route calling for urgent action by the EU to manage the crisis.
While many refugees quickly decided to switch routes and try their luck through Croatia, others found themselves stranded in Serbia.
“We've run out of money, and we only know the way through Hungary,” said Mohamed Jabar, from the Iraqi town of Diyala, who was traveling with a son in a wheelchair and other family members. “All the other ways are unknown to us. They say ... there is a way through Croatia, but who will welcome me there?
“Are there humanitarian organizations? I have no clue!”
Mohamed Bader sold his father's shop in Aleppo, Syria, to raise $10,000 for the journey with other family members, including women and children. He said he is now quickly running out of money and was afraid of spending the little he has left for an uncertain end.
“If anyone cares about us, let them let us in. From the beginning they could have stopped us by blocking our way in Turkey or Greece,” Bader said. “Instead of having us come all this way with great difficulty only to be told at the end of the road that's it, we can't enter, stay here. I don't know what to do.”
Hungary has faced strong international condemnation for its handling of the migrant crisis. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Hungary's use of water cannons, tear gas and baton-wielding riot police unacceptable.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto lashed out Thursday against the criticism.
“I find it bizarre and shocking that certain esteemed international figures have stood on the side of people who for hours were throwing stones and pieces of cement at the Hungarian police,” Szijjarto said. “And I'd also like to make it very clear, no matter what criticism I receive, that we will never allow such aggressive people to enter Hungary. Not even for transit purposes.”
Hungarian police said they detained 22 people, including one Syrian man suspected of terrorism.
The EU migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, declared Thursday that walls and violence are no solution and urged Hungary to work with the 28-nation bloc to alleviate the continent's migration crisis.
“The majority of people arriving in Europe are Syrians,” Avramopoulos said at a news conference in Budapest. “They are people in genuine need of our protection. There is no wall you would not climb, no sea you wouldn't cross if you are fleeing violence and terror. I believe we have a moral duty (to) offer them protection.”
Hungary, in contrast, has been insisting that most are simply economic migrants seeking better jobs. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also said that by keeping out Muslims, Hungary is defending “Europe's Christian culture.”
His government celebrated its sealed border on Thursday as a success.
“The assertive, uncompromising defense of the border has visibly held back human trafficking and forces them to change direction,” said Janos Lazar, Orban's chief of staff. “That was the aim of the entire action.”
US Senate Democrats block last bid to kill Iran nuclear deal. By vote of 56-42, Republican-majority Senate falls short of 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to advance the legislation.
By a vote of 56-42, the Republican-majority Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to advance the legislation as all but four of Obama's fellow Democrats backed the nuclear pact announced in July.
With no more Senate votes planned this week, the result ensured that Congress will not pass before a midnight deadline a resolution of disapproval that would have crippled the agreement by eliminating Obama's ability to waive many US sanctions.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced an amendment to the measure that would bar the president from lifting sanctions on Iran unless it recognized Israel's right to exist and released American prisoners. Democrats have argued for months that the agreement should not be tied to non-nuclear issues.
Ex-Nobel committee exec regrets Obama Peace Prize.
While it is quite rare for Nobel officials to openly discuss the nuts and bolts of their secretive committee, the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has apparently owned up in his memoir ‘Secretary of Peace’, to be released on Thursday, that the panel had expected the award to somewhat challenge Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize during his first term.
The Norwegian historian told AP that the committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect." The five members of the Nobel Committee, often former politicians, are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The coveted award was met with an avalanche of criticism instead. An army of opponents noted that Obama had made no foreign policy achievements worthy of the prize in less than nine months in office. On top of this, he received the award while the US was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book, read by AP.
"In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for," Lundestad, who stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the secretive committee, added.
Lundestad has also reportedly noted that Obama was taken aback by the award and that his staff investigated whether other winners had skipped the prize ceremony in Oslo.
"In the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo," Lundestad wrote.
At that point "his cabinet had already asked whether anyone had previously refused to travel to Oslo to receive the prize," Lundestad wrote, according to AFP.
"In broad strokes, the answer was no.
"No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Lundestad wrote, AFP reported.
He reportedly recalled that then-Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store tried the following year to dissuade the panel from awarding the prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for fear it would sour Norway's relations with Beijing.
"During my 25 years [on the committee], I don't ever recall seeing anything like that," Lundestad said.
Ignoring the minister's warnings, the Nobel committee honored the human rights activist in 2010, leaving Oslo's ties with Beijing frozen ever since.
Japan: Brawl erupts in parliament over approval of controversial security bills. A brawl broke out in Japan's parliament on 17 September after the upper house approved legislation for the controversial security bills that would allow the country to send troops to fight abroad for the first time since the Second World War.
The legislation has sparked huge protests from ordinary voters, with thousands of people demonstrating outside parliament in opposition to the bills.
A poll carried out over the weekend and published on 14 September by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun showed 54% of the public opposed the legislation against 29% who backed it, with 68% in the survey saying they saw no need to enact the bills during the current session.
The government says the changes to the law are vital to meet new challenges, such as that presented by rising neighbour China, whose recent assertiveness in the South China Sea has upset countries in the region.
But opponents say the revisions, which the government aims to get voted into law by the entire upper house this week, violate the pacifist constitution and could embroil Japan in US-led conflicts around the globe.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc has an upper house majority, but opposition parties have vowed to prevent a vote by the full chamber before parliament disperses on 27 September even if they have to use delaying tactics, such as no-confidence and censure motions. The legislation has already been approved by the lower house.
Japanese media speculate that the bill will now head for a full session of the upper house as early as 18 September where the opposition has vowed to use more delaying tactics.
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Hugh Hewett is on the show now and they are discussing what i was psyched about that he did in that debate (http://donlichterman.blogspot.com/2015/09/morning-joe-recap-good-morning-everyone_17.html). Here is what i wrote precisely because I wrote alot after that debate:
Guess what? Even though it was finally brought up by the media last night, (which also BTW, I was psyched that Hewitt finally asked everyone if that Syrian refugee issue had anything to do with us drawing that line in the sand by us not intervening 5 years ago because I said that sentence to my friend at the 830PM hour, and he asked it later on in the evening), there was other news happening around the world. And, it looks like 'we can field a starting basketball squad' using the amount of US-Trained soldiers we have over in Syria. Jeff Sessions calls it a 'Total failure' as again and I am NOT exaggerating it but only '4 or 5' US-trained rebels are fighting in Syria, according to the US general in that hearing yesterday.
Speaking of what i said in that recap writing, Scott Walker is on the show today. Joe will ask him how he felt about getting no time to say anything two nights ago.
OK. So Walker did talk and what he says is such a lie. For instance and with regard to the 16th fleet. It is at the largest level it has ever been in the history of the USA. That talking point on that GOP side is stupid. Carly used it the other night i the debate too.
Next, Planned Parenthood. I want to see in those videos where it says anything about selling organs or fetuses or any body part. Because it does not. That is another made up thing so they can try to control a female body even though conservatives and Libertarians especially, want full freedom. Except when it comes to women though. I hate that argument. it has got to end already. And, why Planned Parenthood? Abortions they back or provide make up like 4% of what the entire organization does for women. I know they help people with cancer prevention, etc. That never gets brought up by anyone.
Please read the Cherry Hill natives' Jeremy Peters article here at the New York Times. It is on the front page of it and it is about Carly Fiorina.
Bernie Sanders raises $1 million off Clinton super PAC attack. Bernie Sanders raised more than $1.2 million in less than 48 hours off a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC’s attack on the Vermont senator, his presidential campaign said Thursday.
That’s an unprecedented response in such a short amount of time, according ActBlue, the non-profit that processes online donations for many Democratic campaigns, including Sanders.
“We’ve never seen an immediate donor response like what the Sanders’ campaign received on Tuesday,” said ActBlue Executive Director Erin Hill. “At one point, it drove 180 contributions through our platform per minute. Over its 11-year history ActBlue has sent money to over 11,000 campaigns and committees – and the Bernie Sanders campaign holds the record for the two biggest donor days ever for a campaign on our platform.”
The attack came from Correct the Record, which, unlike most super PACs, coordinates directly with Clinton’s campaign. The group has been sending trackers to Sanders campaign events and plying reporters with so-called opposition research about the Vermonter for months, but never with the intention of its work being made public.
But after The Huffington Post reported on a particularly controversial line of attack from Correct the Record earlier this week, the Sanders campaign took offense and saw an opportunity. They sent not one but two fundraising emails to supporters in response, and were astonished by the response.
“It was the kind of onslaught I expected to see from the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson, and it’s the second time a billionaire Super PAC has tried to stop the momentum of the political revolution we’re building together,” Sanders said in one email.
The exchange of fire between forces loyal to the leading Democratic candidates comes as both are dropping the awkward congeniality of the earlier months of the campaign as they head of the first Democratic debate next month. And the haul underscores the difficulty Clinton will have in attacking Sanders, who can turn any attacks around on Clinton as evidence she is nervous and as an attempt by the establishment to silence them.
Hillary Clinton’s Explanation for Controversial Bankruptcy Vote? Joe Biden.
Her comments suggest how the Clinton campaign might respond if Mr. Biden decides to run, and highlights the challenges the vice president would have in appealing to liberals in the party. His record includes many of the centrist policies and compromises that progressives reject.
Mrs. Clinton made her comments in a conversation at a diner here. She sat down with a trio of women and one of them, Jo Smith, 43, asked her about that vote, noting that Elizabeth Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts, opposed it. Ms. Smith said the vote was in 2009, but she was likely referring to a vote from 2001, when Mrs. Clinton was in the Senate.
The overhaul was promoted by the credit-card and banking industries and would have made it more difficult for people to get relief from debts through bankruptcy. As first lady, Mrs. Clinton had opposed a similar proposal. She said the bill she later supported had been improved.
On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said that the bill was pending when she arrived in the Senate in 2001 and wanted some changes to protect alimony and child support payments.
“So I negotiated those changes and then the people who had been handling the bill said, ‘Well if we take your changes you have to support it.’ That’s the way the Senate works,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And so I said ‘It’s really important to me that we don’t hurt women and children, so I will support it even though there are other things I don’t like in it.’”
She then pointedly added this: “And it was Vice President Biden who was the senator from Delaware and the Republican co-sponsor that I was talking with, so I said I’d support it even though I’d opposed it before.”
The bill failed, but a similar measure passed in 2005. Mrs. Clinton missed that vote, she said, because her husband had been hospitalized for a heart ailment. She said she would have voted no.
During a presidential-primary debate in 2008, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she regretted her 2001 yes vote. “Sure I do, but it never became law,” she said.
Hillary Clinton ‘Putting the White House on Notice’ About Keystone Pipeline. Hillary Clinton is changing her tune on Keystone (sort-of).
The democratic presidential candidate on Thursday expressed frustration over the Obama administration's delay on making a decision on Keystone XL pipeline, and said that she is “putting the White House on notice” and will make her position known “soon” —- something she so far refused to do.
“I have been waiting for the administration to make a decision. I thought I owed them that,” Clinton said during a town hall at the Concord Boys and Girls Club, when asked by a female voter about the multi-billion dollar pipeline that runs from Canada to the Gulf Coast. "I can’t wait too much longer. I am putting the White House on notice. I am going to tell you what I think soon.”
Clinton, of course, did not give a direct answer -– and her position is still unknown. However, this is the farthest she has gone yet to suggest that she might bypass the President and take a stance.
(While campaigning in New Hampshire in July, Clinton told a voter, who asked for her position, this: "If it is undecided when I become president, I will answer your question.”)
Clinton has come under fire by environmentalists for not taking any stance at all on the Keystone pipeline, which she repeatedly has said she will not do as a candidate due to her past role as secretary of state.
Clinton’s Democratic presidential rivals Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have both been on the record in opposition to the Keystone pipeline for months, and often bring it up as a point of contrast with Clinton.
Clinton's decision to take a position on the pipeline could be a sign that things are heating up in the race.
Her remark comes the same day Sanders’s campaign announced that they raised $1 million off of revelations that Clinton’s super PAC, Correct the Record, was peddling opposition research on the Vermont senator.
Sanders is leading Clinton by 9 points in New Hampshire according to a recent NBC News/Marist poll.
Clinton is currently in New Hampshire for a three-day campaign swing.
During her prepared remarks in Concord, Clinton also reacted to the GOP debate, which she was full of "bickering, lots of personal insults…all kinds of claims without any basis.”
“It may be entertaining for some,” she said, “But it is not going to be good for America.”
Bush addresses just a handful of people at Las Vegas rally. Jeb Bush did not have to stand on his tiptoes to see over the crowd at his most recent rally.
Appearing in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon - just one day after the Republican debate during which he was caught standing on his toes during the photocall with the other candidates - Bush addressed a very sparse crowd of supporters.
When asked to comment on the low attendance, Bush remarked that it was to be expected given that the rally happened in the middle of the afternoon.
Reason: When asked to comment on the low attendance, Bush (above) remarked that it was to be expected given that the rally happened in the middle of the afternoon
Fan: The rally came the day after he was spotted standing on his tiptoes during the photocall at the Republic an debate
'I hope that I am so brilliant and so eloquent and so high-energy that you feel compelled to caucus for me,' Bush told the crowd.
He also made a joke about Trump, without naming him, and the fact that he could fill a basketball arena with people for his rallies.
GOP leaders scramble to avoid government shutdown over Planned Parenthood money. House Republican leaders scrambled Thursday to head off a politically damaging government shutdown in two weeks over rebellious conservatives' demand that any stopgap spending bill block federal funds for Planned Parenthood.
Leadership sought an outlet for GOP lawmakers' outrage after this summer's release of videos secretly recorded by abortion foes, who contend they show that Planned Parenthood illegally profits from selling tissue from aborted fetuses to medical researchers.
Unclear is whether a vote Friday to defund Planned Parenthood and other steps will be enough to placate conservatives, emboldened by widespread criticism of the organization at Wednesday's GOP presidential debate.
Temporary funding legislation is needed to give the chronically dysfunctional Congress more time to sort through huge differences over a full-year spending bill that could ease a budget freeze facing the Pentagon and domestic agencies. Top congressional Democrats exiting a meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday said any temporary funding measure should have a short time-span and that Democrats would demand increases for domestic agencies.
"We want to make sure we have equal money for defense and non-defense," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
In the final months of the year, another possible shutdown looms over Obama's demand that the GOP-led Congress to increase the nation's borrowing authority.
What is clear is that the once-routine job of advancing a short-term spending bill to keep the government open past an Oct. 1 deadline remains a major headache for House GOP leaders, chiefly Speaker John Boehner. Some hard-right lawmakers and tea partyers are threatening to try to topple the Ohio Republican, a fierce foe of abortion who has held the speakership since January 2011.
"We've seen promises to fight tooth and nail on things in the past and it hasn't really materialized," said tea party-backed Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz. "I think there will be a point where the thin ice breaks."
The ice could be breaking between Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who met for 20 minutes after she returned from meeting with Obama. Aides declined to characterize the session.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused Boehner of "subverting our republic," and working for lobbyists rather than "what the constituents of our district want."
Boehner's clear but unstated preference is to pass a temporary funding bill that's free of the Planned Parenthood controversy. Democrats are sure to filibuster any bill defunding Planned Parenthood should it come to a vote in the Senate, and Obama has promised a veto regardless.
The organization, which provides birth control, abortions and various women's health services, says it's done nothing wrong.
"If you're pro-life, the last thing you want to do is have the focus changed to the government shutdown ... rather than the activities of Planned Parenthood," said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, a Boehner ally. "At some point in time you've got to face reality."
The White House, in a statement released Thursday evening, said Obama called the shutdown threat "a game of chicken with our economy that we cannot accept."
At a closed-door GOP meeting Thursday, Republicans were shown party polling data that showed most Americans haven't seen the videos and that more Americans associate Planned Parenthood with women's health than with abortions. The numbers also showed that most Americans don't want a government shutdown, lawmakers at the meeting said.
A significant majority of Republicans would support Boehner if he were to press for a temporary bill disentangled from the dispute over Planned Parenthood. But a few dozen of the most conservative Republicans have vowed to oppose any such effort, and some are weighing a challenge to Boehner's leadership.
Asked how confident he was that he could defeat an effort to remove him from the post, Boehner said, "Very."
Other GOP members say tea party lawmakers have repeatedly driven GOP leaders into unwinnable fights. They highlight the 16-day partial government shutdown over health care two years ago and a failed attempt this year to use a Department of Homeland Security funding bill to reverse Obama's moves easing the threat of deportation for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
"They're kind of like their own party," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. "You can't really do anything about it because they're right-wing Marxists. It's unpredictable what they're going to do."
Hillary Clinton went on the offensive Thursday, the day after the attack on Planned Parenthood was front and center in a debate of GOP presidential candidates.
"It's bad enough to see hateful rhetoric and lies in a presidential debate. But just like the candidates on stage last night, Republicans in Congress want to defund Planned Parenthood. And they're willing to shut down the federal government to do it, no matter how bad that is for our country," said the Democratic front runner.
So for now, GOP leaders are pushing free-standing bills blocking Planned Parenthood's money and curbing abortion that are not tied to money to keep the government functioning. In addition, four congressional committees are investigating Planned Parenthood.
Right to Life's leaders released a statement this week endorsing a bill by Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year. The House plans to approve that bill on Friday, along with another by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., setting criminal penalties for medical providers who don't try to save babies born live during abortions. - Associated Press reporters Andrew Taylor and Alan Fram, Stephen Ohlemacher and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
Kelly Ayotte is on the show to discuss how she against it.
Last, Mika's Know Your Values event in Chicago is one week away.
Know Your Value: http://www.msnbc.com/know-your-value
Welcome to Know Your Value. The live events are coming to Chicago, Boston, and Orlando in 2015 (Already held in Philadelphia, Washington DC this year) - select your city here to purchase tickets and find out more about the movement.
