George W. Bush Running for 3rd Term (and other news)

President George W. Bush (played by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live) announced he's entering the 2016 presidential race — and assesses the current crop of lame GOP candidates.

In real news...(a collection of tid-bits)

In a recent post by Paul Krugman, he writes: "Somehow there seems to be a pattern in this chart from the editor of PolitiFact, but I can’t quite put my finger on it." I'm guessing the pattern he refers to shows that most Republicans lie more than most Democrats. But what I found to be the most odd about PolitiFact's chart was 1) It shows Hillary Clinton essentially tied with Bernie Sanders for truth-telling, and 2) It shows both Obama and Bill Clinton to be more truthful than either Hillary or Bernie. IMHO, maybe PolitiFact's "fact-checkers" should also be fact-checked.)

I really miss the "news" on TV. While "monitoring" the 3 major cable TV stations (Fox, CNN and MSNBC, who spend most of their time on either ISIS or Donald Trump), I'm usually browsing the internet and reading newsletters that I subscribe to. So far, this is what I read today (maybe I'll add some updates in the comments section later, like I usually do).

The Nation reports Bernie Sanders has just as much support as Donald Trump, and would even beat Trump in a general election. But With 234 total network minutes for Trump compared to just 10 minutes for Bernie Sanders, the media’s obsession with Donald Trump has real consequences for our Democracy. Desperate for ratings, the cable news networks have decided to broadcast nearly-continuous coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign at the expense of giving real issues the coverage they deserve. Republican Jeb Bush received only 56 of network news coverage, but far outpacing Bernie Sanders — even though Bush is currently wallowing in fifth place in the polls among Republicans. The Washington Post reports that TV still isn’t feeling the Bern. The Democratic race for president continues to look very different on social media than it is on television. Whereas the Republican race is dominated by Trump across all forms of media, Hillary Clinton dominates the number of mentions of television, while Bernie Sanders receives more attention on Twitter. This bolsters the Vermont senator’s complaint, which he voiced in his stump speech this weekend, that the corporate media is ignoring him. (It's either Trump or ISIS.)

Democracy for America's endorsement vote ends at 11:59pm EST on Tuesday, December 15 (Tomorrow). Sign their poll here.

Naomi Klein (regarding the Paris climate talks) said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where countries are being negotiated to accept the terms of their own annihilation." But even if everyone plays by the rules, the standards and goals set out by the Paris agreement may not be enough to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change. New science suggests that forces already set in motion — the melting of glaciers, the release of carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost — could unleash considerable impacts that this new deal is unable to prevent.

Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, writes: "It's easier to find a denier of global warming than of rising inequality." Technology and globalization, he argues, are drivers of inequality, but they're not the only factors. Other suspects include: trade imbalances that drain domestic manufacturing jobs; a boom and bust economy that, since 1979, has only seen full employment 30 percent of the time; the decline in union power; weak labor and employment laws and increased misclassification; the "financialization" of the economy; and regressive taxes.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz unveiled a new H-1B reform bill that would make hiring guest workers more expensive for employers. That's a bit of a flip-flop for the Texas senator who once supported the H-1B program. "With this bill, Cruz joins program critics who say the H-1B visa is being used displace U.S. workers." Cruz's bill sets a minimum wage of $110,000 for H-1B workers, who currently can be paid well less than half that amount in some U.S. regions under prevailing wage rules. This base salary will adjust annually for inflation.

GOP Sen. Bob Corker failed to properly disclose millions of dollars in income from real estate, hedge funds and other investments since entering the Senate in 2007, according to new financial reports filed by the Tennessee Republican. Corker had failed to properly disclose at least $2 million in income from investments in three hedge funds. He also didn’t properly report millions of dollars in income from commercial real-estate investments. And he didn’t disclose millions of dollars in other assets and income from other financial transactions.

A Tennessee woman has been charged with attempted murder after she unsuccessfully tried to give herself an abortion with a clothes hanger.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review state laws that make it a crime to refuse to take a blood alcohol test if the officer does not have a warrant. The court took cases from North Dakota and Minnesota to consider whether laws that criminalize the refusal to take a test are constitutional. Those are among 13 — including Virginia — in the country with such a requirement. The challengers say such laws violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and do not fit within the Supreme Court’s requirements about what police may do without a warrant.”