Tag: Cuba

Scott Walker compares immigration reform to union busting, has no immigration reform plan of his own

Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who will likely run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, attacked President Barack Obama, who is legally prohibited from seeking a third term in the White House, over, among other things, Obama issuing a lawful executive order on immigration:

Gov. Scott Walker criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of a range of national and international issues, including immigration and foreign policy, in his annual end-of-the-year interview with the Wisconsin State Journal at the Governor’s Mansion Monday.

Walker, who is mulling a run for president in 2016, joined a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block Obama’s executive action sparing as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation. Obama announced the action in November, saying it was an important step to fix the nation’s broken immigration system.

Perhaps the most moronic comment that Walker made in his interview with the Madison, Wisconsin-based Wisconsin State Journal newspaper was his bizarre comparison of immigration reform and union busting:

Citing his controversial 2011 measure to all but end collective bargaining for most of the state’s public workers, Walker likened Obama’s executive action on immigration to trying to “invoke Act 10 without the Legislature.”

For those of you who are not familiar with Wisconsin politics, “Act 10” refers to 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, a state law that was enacted by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature in violation of the state’s open meetings law, signed into law by Walker, upheld by courts controlled by far-right supporters of Walker and his destructive agenda, and stripped Wisconsin’s public employee unions (except for what few public employee unions supported Walker in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign) of nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. Walker is a total moron for comparing immigration reform to stripping collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Furthermore, Walker has no plan whatsoever to reform the broken immigration system in this country:

On how he would resolve the problem of the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, he said he’d “leave that up to the people who are running for federal office or in federal office to decipher.”

I find it hypocritical and downright asinine that Walker, who is considering running for federal office, has no plan to reform the immigration system in this country, and then turns around and says that he’d leave the issue of immigration to those “who are running for federal office or in federal office”. He’s already passing the buck on immigration, and he hasn’t even officially entered the presidential race yet!

In addition to immigration, Walker also criticized Obama over the fact that Obama hasn’t (yet) started a full-scale war with the Islamic fundamentalist terror group ISIS and over Obama’s plans to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. In other words, Walker wants to return to the failed George W. Bush-era hawkish/neoconservative foreign policy of fighting multiple full-scale wars at the same time that drive up the national debt and is whining about a lack of democracy in Cuba while, at the same time, he’s trying to destroy democracy in Wisconsin and the rest of America.

Make no mistake about it, America can’t afford four years of the Hillary Clinton-Jeb Bush-Scott Walker police, surveillance, and military state. America needs Bernie Sanders to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, because he’ll bring real progressive leadership to the White House.

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George W. Bush-era CIA torture program violated human rights and made America less secure

The report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s program of torturing enemy combatants who were captured by the U.S. in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, which was active during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush, has been declassified, and here is the executive summary of the report.

According to the report, the George W. Bush-era CIA’s detention and torture program, among other things:

  • Didn’t help the CIA get intelligence from detainees
  • Violated the human rights of detainees
  • Put American national security at an even greater risk by impeding national security efforts at other federal agencies
  • Wasted American taxpayers’ money
  • Detained individuals who didn’t meet the legal standard for detention
  • Was badly mismanaged and unaccountable
  • Hurt our country’s standing in the world

Additionally, the George W. Bush-era CIA lied to Congress and the media about the detention and torture program’s activities, and had repeatedly impeded oversight by various government entities, including the Office of the CIA Inspector General.

Long story short, the CIA’s program of torturing enemy combatants in U.S. custody was one of the most disgusting things that the U.S. federal government has ever done and served no purpose whatsoever. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other officials involved in the program should be charged with perjury, war crimes, and other applicable offenses.