 |
|
Right now, a young indigenous U’wa lawyer, Aura Tegria Cristancho, is traveling from Colombia to the United States. Over the next week, she will be representing her people before the United Nations and the human rights commission of the Organization of American States. This will be Aura’s first trip to the U.S. |
 |
|
“We intend to continue defending mother nature and our survival as an ancient people. Later today I’ll be at LaGuardia Airport to welcome her. Will you join me? Aura is the latest in a distinguished line of U’wa leaders and community members have visited the U.S. and many other countries. For over two decades, they have been fighting oil extraction in their sacred territory and have always sought international solidarity to back them up. With the new Magallanes gas exploration project threatening their lands and rivers, they are once again looking for our support. We have launched a grassroots fundraising drive to support this visit and the broader U’wa campaign to defend their territory. To date, we have raised over $4K, and with your help we will meet our goal of $10K. These funds directly support U’wa activities, starting with this week’s advocacy delegation. Learn more about Aura by reading her brief profile on her Causes page. where you can also easily follow her progress and share her story. Thanks!
|
Tag Archives: Marco Rubio
Senator Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio tea party member or flip flopper
Marco Rubio: Medicare, Social Security ‘Weakened Us As People’, Made Us Lazy
SenatorMarcoRubioon May 25, 2011
Senator Marco Rubio penned an op-ed in Thursday’s Miami Herald called “Why We Must Save Medicare.” In this video, Senator Rubio details that op-ed further and elaborates on his goals for the program.
Share this:
A Deal With Iran
Global Powers Reach Interim Agreement on Iran’s Nuclear Program
After months of previously secret high-level meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials and years of international diplomacy, global powers reached a signifcant interim agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
ThinkProgress has the details of the deal, which is meant to provide six months for negotiators to hammer out a final, comprehensive agreement:
According to the terms of the deal, Iran has agreed to open itself up to more and greater sanctions from the International Atomic Energy Agency, while halting the installation of any further centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Tehran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent will be diluted, and construction at the heavy water reactor in Arak will be halted. Progress at Arak, which will be able to produce plutonium when fully operational, was a key concern left unresolved at the last round of talks.
In exchange, according to the White House fact sheet on the interim deal, the so-called P5+1 — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia — will provide “limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible” relief from sanctions to Iran. This will include the release approximately $4.2 billion of Iranian funds currently being held and suspending sanctions on “gold and precious metals, Iran’s auto sector, and Iran’s petro-chemical exports” to the tune of approximately $1.5 billion. Embargoes against Iranian oil, banking institutions, and other financial sanctions will remain in place during the six month period the deal covers.
Polling out last week indicated that Americans overwhelmingly support an agreement along the lines of the deal reached on Saturday.
Nevertheless, Republicans and some Democrats almost immediately criticized the deal and threatened to pass additional sanctions when Congress returns next month, something which would violate the agreement and blow up the deal. Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) explained her opposition to a new round of sanctions:
“If you want a war, that is the thing to do. I don’t want a war. The American people don’t want a war. We’ve had years in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is an opportunity to move in a different path, and we ought to try it.”
Others, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), likened the deal to the unsuccessful effort to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. Here’s five reasons why they are wrong.
Still other critics of the deal, including Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), made the bizarre and utterly ridiculous suggestion that the years-in-the-making, high-profile international diplomatic effort was really just a plot to distract from the rollout of HealthCare.gov.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been sharply critical of what he called “a historic mistake,” an Israeli military official said a deal could increase regional stability.
(ThinkProgress explains how the deal would look compared to the cartoon bomb that Netanyahu famously displayed during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly last year.)
BOTTOM LINE: The first-step deal announced yesterday in Geneva represents a major achievement by the Obama administration, addressing a top U.S. security challenge. By marshaling all the elements of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—the United States and its partners haven taken a significant step toward addressing one of the most pressing concerns in the Middle East: the Iranian nuclear program.
Share this:
Doubling Down
The GOP’s Anti-Obamacare Dead-Enders
The American people are not happy with the GOP for inflicting a government shutdown that cost $24 BILLION on the country in a failed and mean-spirited attempt to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. A new memo from former Obama campaign pollster Joel Benenson presents an “array of public polling from a wide variety of outlets” demonstrating that the GOP’s effort to undermine Obamacare has hurt the party “on every front”:
– A Quinnipiac poll shows that 58% oppose Congress cutting off funding for the health care law to stop its implementation.
– Kaiser’s tracking poll has consistently found strong opposition to scrapping the health care law. In late September, 56% disapproved of cutting off funding to the ACA.
– CBS / NY Times pollsters found 56% of voters want Congress to uphold the law and make it work as well as possible, compared to just 38% who want to stop it by defunding it.
– According to NBC/WSJ, only 39% support eliminating federal funding for the law while 50% oppose.
– In Gallup’s recent polling, just 29% want the law repealed, while 64% want it kept as it is, or kept with some changes.
– Even Tea Party supporters knew the Republican strategy was doomed, with a Fox News poll showing that 54% believed that the ACA would remain the law in spite of attempts to defund it.
In view of the unpopularity of their strategy and complete and total failure of the GOP to accomplish anything with their 16-day shutdown (other than sabotaging the economy and causing pain for millions of Americans) and more than 40 Obamacare repeal votes, one would think they’d shift gears.
One would be wrong. Even after the disastrous shutdown, the most prominent Obamacare opponents are simply doubling down on their failed campaign against the law:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): The Tea Party lawmaker was the primary architect of the GOP’s shutdown strategy. But now that it’s failed, Cruz won’t admit defeat. “I would do anything, and I will continue to do anything, to stop the train wreck that is Obamacare,” he said on Thursday. He has also hinted that he hasn’t ruled out pushing for another government shutdown over Obamacare.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA): Vitter tried to use the funding negotiations to push through an Obamacare-related amendment that would ultimately force Congress members and their staff to pay more for their health plans under the law. He was unsuccessful, and the final agreement didn’t include his amendment. But Vitter isn’t fazed and promises to keep pushing to amend the law anyway. “I’m not going away, and this issue is certainly not going away,” Vitter said on Fox News this week.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL): Speaking on the Senate floor over the summer, Rubio told his colleagues that shutting down the government represented “our last chance and our last best chance” to undermine Obamacare. Now, the senator is saying that Republicans will keep fighting anyway. This week, he told Fox News that there is going to an “all-out revolt” next year, once the rest of Obamacare’s major provisions take root. “And that is, I think, the moment to absolutely act and say we are going to get rid of this law and then look for opportunities in the future to replace it,” Rubio said.
The Heritage Foundation: During the shutdown battle, Heritage’s political arm told its supporters that it needed their support because “we only have one more chance to repeal Obamacare.” The group didn’t deliver. Now, Heritage is simply assuring its supporters that it won’t stop fighting the law. The group’s president, Jim DeMint, published an op-ed this week claiming that most Americans’ lives “are not dominated by the electoral cycle,” so those people “shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law.”
FreedomWorks: The right-wing group recently claimed that shutting down the government “may be the last best chance to defund Obamacare before it goes into effect.” Rather than adjusting their strategy, the group is now planning rallies to discourage young Americans from signing up for health coverage. The group says that Obamacare will still be a losing issue for Democrats up for re-election in red states — although outside polling has shown that the shutdown fiasco has made more than a dozen House seats more winnable for Democrats.
BOTTOM LINE: Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The American people are sending Republicans a message loud and clear: stop the insanity on Obamacare.
Share this:
Dumb And Dumber
The federal government is hurtling toward two critical deadlines where a failure to act will be extraordinarily damaging to the US economy. But Republicans think it’s okay to play political games even if it means sabotaging our economy.
Deadline 1: To avoid government shutdown, Congress needs to pass a spending bill to fund the federal government by September 30. Republicans have been engaged in a civil war for weeks over how best to use this deadline to manufacture a crisis. Those on the far right, led by Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, insist they shut down the government unless the budget fully defunds Obamacare, even touring the country to promote a shutdown. And now there are reports that House Republican leadership is following their lead in allowing such a bill to come to a vote.
The consequences of a government shutdown are severe: social security checks might not go out, our troops might not get paid, and the economy would take a huge hit. Indeed, some fearful Republicans have warned their constituents as much.
A majority of Americans will blame Republicans if the government shuts down. But Republicans are still unable to let go of their obsession with repealing Obamacare, and are now barreling towards shutdown. That’s just dumb.
Deadline 2: The U.S. government will default on its obligations sometime in mid-to-late October unless Congress extends its borrowing limit. This would have catastrophic consequences for not just the United States economy; it could cause a worldwide crash even worse than we faced in 2008. But House Republican leadership — that’s right, not just some of their crazier members — want to use the debt limit to force Congress to delay Obamacare for one year. Speaker John Boehner, who previously insisted he would not use the debt ceiling for political leverage, has promised “a whale of a fight.”
We’ve been down this road before. Paying our bills on time is non-negotiable. Congress needs to pay the bills Congress itself racked up. Period.
Even among those that oppose the health care law, more than half want their elected officials to make it work as well as possible. So if Republicans truly think the American people support their threats of default instead of doing the hard work of governing, well…that’s dumber.
BOTTOM LINE: Americans are tired of the fighting and of having their economic security put on the line time and time again. Harming the economy to refight old political battles won’t help middle class families.
Be a Seed for Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.