Political Truth.
Whether you like it or not.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  
 
The Truth Be Told is read in 203 countries around the world.
 
Make a wingnut mad - remind them this is Cesar Chavez's day ... !

Today is - Cesar Chavez Day
 
Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina
Jequie, Manaus, Rio de Janeiro and Vitoria da Conquista, Brazil
London, Ottawa and Quebec, Canada
Quito, Ecuador
Bogota, Colombia
San Benito, Guatemala
Kingston, Jamaica
Ecatepec, Mexico City, Navojoa, Tlalnepantla and Toluca, Mexico
Boaco, Nicaragua
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Alamagordo, Conejos, Des Moines, Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Wapakoneta, United States
Europe
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Brno, Karlin, Prague and Stare Mesto, Czech Republic
London, Maidenhead and Milton Keynes, England
Cerny, Montpellier, Paris and Roubaix, France
Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Hurth, Jena, Kerpen, Reutlingen and Verl, Germany
Athens, Marousi and Piraeus, Greece
Szeged, Hungary
Reykjavik, Iceland
Milan, Naples, Palermo, Ravenna and Rome, Italy
Riga, Latvia
Steinsel, Luxembourg
Skopje, Macedonia
Chisinau, Moldova
Amsterdam and Den Haag, Netherlands
Warsaw, Poland
Costa de Caparica, Covilha and Lisbon, Portugal
Iasi, Romania
Ryazan and Vladimir, Russia
Belgrade, Serbia
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Madrid and Valencia, Spain
Kista and Stockholm, Sweden
Baar and Zurich, Switzerland
Ankara, Turkey
Dnipropetrovsk, Kamianka and Kiev, Ukraine
Asia
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Bokaro, Calicut, Mumbai and Trichur, India
Bandung, Jakarta, Kebon and Malang, Indonesia
Tehran, Iran
Nehalim and Tel Aviv, Israel
Amman, Jordan
Alor Setar, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching and Sandakan, Malaysia
Karachi, Pakistan
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Bangkok, Thailand
Hanoi, Vietnam
Africa
Damietta, Egypt
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Rabat, Morocco
Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa
The Pacific
Kyogle, Perth, Surry Hills and Sydney, Australia
Quezon City, Philippines

Humiliated Republicans Get Lesson In Treating Kids Like Dicks

image credit: video screen capture WMUR TV, editing, Randa Morris
Maybe the New Hampshire legislature should consider making crow the official state bird, since that what many lawmakers are eating this week.

The Wingnut March Toward a Society of Sociopaths

by Allen Clifton
Last night I spent some time with a close friend (let’s call him Jake) and as we often do when we get together, we discussed politics. You see, he’s a fantastic source for political insight because he doesn’t really follow politics or have any kind of political affiliation. Hell, I don’t know if he’s ever even voted.
But Jake is a great source because he has another close friend, let’s call him Stan, who’s a lunatic fringe wingnut. Therefore he hears my side and Stan’s side, watches the news, reads the paper and based on only what he sees as logical and rational he molds his opinion. Which to this point he often tells me most of the stuff Stan says to him just doesn’t make any sense.
Last night when discussing Stan and some of what I refer to as his asinine political beliefs, it occurred to me—Stan is exactly how Republicans want Americans to behave.
Then, and I kid you not, he apparently followed his “only worry about your own self interest” speech by pressing my friend on why he’s not more involved in church.
See, Stan is exactly the kind of person Republicans want to create.
A society of people who only worry about themselves. People who ostracize everyone that’s not like them. Humans that value possessions over people, and while they might give money to their cult, it’s only because their cult is filled with people just like them. And while these people go to cult and call themselves “christians,” they’ve somehow convinced themselves that jesus christ was some selfish, hateful, judgmental person who valued his own self interest over the betterment of others less fortunate than himself.
And Stan is a perfect example of this. Somehow in one discussion he preached to my friend Jake on why he should only worry about himself, while also questioning why he isn’t more involved in church—a place that’s supposed to emphasize generosity and helping others.
Stan will talk about jesus and how he himself is a christian—then follow that by calling African Americans derogatory names, claim as humans we only need to worry about ourselves, thinks muslims should leave the country (and would prefer they didn’t exist at all) and shows no sign of any kind of moral obligation to those in society who are less fortunate than he is.
Because see, in a society of sociopaths, greed is good. Greed is the driving force behind their existence. It’s acceptable in a society of sociopaths for people like the Koch brothers to oppose minimum wage and health care, while being worth tens of billions of dollars, because a sociopath doesn’t feel they owe anything to anyone.
If their workers are underpaid, overworked, lack benefits or safe working conditions, in the mind of a sociopath—who cares? Quit and get another job or stop complaining because they don’t owe workers anything. They only have an obligation to themselves and their own self interests. If workers want better pay, safer working conditions or benefits—find another job. If you can’t find a job which offers any of that—too bad.
That’s not for the sociopath to worry about. The sociopath is only concerned about themselves and what makes them feel good.
Which is where cult comes in. These wingnut sociopaths go to cult, and largely excuse their hypocrisy and lack of morality by citing cult attendance as why they’re not horrible people.
After all, they go to cult 2-3 times a week, that makes them a christian, right? They’re not morally bankrupt individuals suffering from a psychological disorder—they’re “good American christians.”
Because that’s exactly what their leaders tell them that they are. Which of course is another sign of a sociopath. The ability to charm and manipulate people into getting what they want.
Kind of like a political cabal that’s convinced millions of low-income and middle class Americans that their economic salvation is found by giving people worth billions tax breaks, while eliminating the minimum wage and cutting programs which the poor and middle class benefit from.
And that’s exactly what Republicans advocate—policies which benefit 2% of the richest people at the expense of the other 98%. Because they’ve somehow convinced these people that if they just “work hard enough” they can become part of that elite 2%.
Which of course, 98% of us will never be a part of.
But Republicans enforce this belief that we must only concern ourselves with what we need, and any regulations or laws which seek to help others are the enemy. It’s these programs that help others which cause 98% of Americans to flounder outside of that illustrious 2%.
It’s not the greed of the 2%, it’s the laziness of the poor.
Which leads us to the rapidly de-evolving Republican cabal. A cabal that doesn’t care about the environment, health care access for Americans, children, education, the well-being of our military or the poor.
They only care about themselves and how much they can possess. People who place value on inanimate objects like guns or money before human beings. Then nothing you can tell these people will convince them of anything, because your opinion doesn’t matter.
Because the sociopath isn’t concerned about what you, I or anyone else thinks of them—only what they think of themselves. Which is why any type of disgusting behavior they exhibit is perfectly acceptable. That behavior got them something that they wanted—and to a sociopath their own self interests are all that really matter.
And that’s exactly the type of society conservatives are trying to march us toward.

America's Oligarchs Want It All, And They Want It Now

America's Oligarchs Want It All, And They Want It Now
Jeb Bush would seem to be the near-ideal presidential candidate for the billionaires who own American democracy -- he wants what they want and believes what they believe. But now they're making it clear that he's not sufficiently deferential on one particular issue.

Boehner Blames Obama For His Treasonous Conspiracy To Sabotage The President

On CNN’s State Of The Union, Speaker of the House John Boehner had the nerve to attempt to blame Obama for his own actions and attempts to sabotage the president.
Video:
john boehner cnn state of the unionBoehner said, “I think the animosity exhibited by our administration towards the Prime Minister of Israel is reprehensible, and I think that the pressure they’ve put on him over the last four or five years has pushed him to the point where he has to speak up. I don’t blame him at all for speaking up.”
Speaker Boehner was asked his being blamed for making the rift deeper by inviting Netanyahu to address Congress without notifying the President. Boehner answered, “I had one goal. I had one goal, and that goal was to make sure that the American people heard, and the Congress heard about the serious threat that Iran poses, not only to the Middle East, but for the rest of the world, including the United States, and there’s nobody who can talk more clearly about this.”
If Boehner only wanted Netanyahu to address Congress, why wouldn’t notify President Obama? As is the norm with Speaker Boehner, when he is in political trouble the first card he plays is to blame President Obama. In Boehner’s warped view, it is Obama’s fault that Boehner conspired with Netanyahu to humiliate him. Boehner’s excuse was that Obama made them do it.
The weak excuses never stop with Boehner and his fellow Congressional Republicans. The truth is that Boehner and McConnell tried to pull off a power play against the President that backfired miserably. The failure of the Netanyahu speech led to the letter to Iran by 47 Republican Senators, which has led to Boehner going to Israel during the deadline for a deal with Iran on the nuclear program to be announced.
A clear pattern of Republican sabotage has been established. Speaker Boehner is trying to hide his failures behind Obama hate, but his campaign to undercut and discredit the President Of The United States is obvious and clearly visible for all to see.

Tom Cotton Accuses President Obama of Trying to Undermine Israel’s Foreign Policies – Really

by Allen Clifton
While Tom Cotton (R-AR) still has a long way to go before he reaches the level of absurdity that somebody like Senator Ted Cruz has proudly shown off these last couple of years, if his first two months in the Senate are any indication of what we should expect in the future, he’s well on his way.
As most people know, he was the “mastermind” behind the infamous letter to Iran that was clearly meant to try to undermine the president’s ongoing negotiations with Iranian leaders – although ultimately it just ended up completely embarrassing the Republican party.
This all came on the heels of newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving a speech in front of Congress that was completely set up behind the back of the Obama administration and was a clear slap in the face to the president.
Well, in news that I thought certainly had to be satire when I first came across it, apparently the very same Tom Cotton who came up with the idea of sending the letter is very upset with President Obama – for allegedly trying to undermine parts of Netanyahu’s foreign policy.
Oh, the irony… and hypocrisy.
“While Prime Minister Netanyahu won a decisive victory,” Cotton said, “he still has just started assembling a governing majority coalition. These kinds of quotes from Israel’s most important ally could very well startle some of the smaller parties and their leaders with whom Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently in negotiations.”
“This raises the question,” he continued, “if the administration intends to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts to assemble a coalition by suggesting a change to our longstanding policy of supporting Israel’s position with the United Nations.”
So, the guy who orchestrated a letter that essentially told the Iranian government that they shouldn’t trust any deal they might possibly make with President Obama, in a direct attempt to undermine years worth of negotiations concerning Iran’s nuclear program, is angry because this president’s policies might not be conducive for the policies of a foreign government?
A foreign government whose leader, by the way, just showed this president absolutely no respect when he accepted an invite to speak in front of Congress behind the Obama administration’s back - in a clear attempt to undermine his foreign policy.
That is “Onion-worthy” right there – wow.
It’s appalling to me how the Republican party seems to believe that they’re suddenly beholden to the Israel’s leader more so than they are our own. The way they gush over him and defend him at every turn, while showing nothing but disdain and disrespect toward our own president, is an absolute embarrassment.
While I’ve never been proud that the GOP is a part of this country, I’ve never been more ashamed that these people represent this country more so than I have been lately. They’re not only embarrassing themselves globally, but their antics are weakening this country abroad by putting the petty partisan dysfunction of our government on an international stage.
I’d suggest that maybe if Sen. Cotton is so concerned about Israeli politics and unconcerned with undermining our own president, he should offer his services up to Israel and resign from our United States Congress.

President Obama Takes On The Payday Lenders

Photo of Obama making his case for cracking down on payday loans at Lawson State Community College in Birmingham, Ala.: Video screen grab/WhiteHouse.Gov via AL.Com.Congratulations, President Obama, for yet another brilliant speech. Watch him attack payday lenders and the GOP’s horribly cruel budget.

Wisconsin Eliminating Weekends Is Another Koch Idea For A Nation of Slave Labor

scott walker emails
Despite what Republicans tend to advertize ad nauseum, American workers are extremely productive, work longer hours for less wages, and are fortunate if they receive a week off work for a vacation. Workers do, however, have an advantage over indentured slaves and workers prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that enacted most of what the Koch brothers, Chamber of  Commerce, and Republicans claim are unnecessary “perks” labor does not deserve; lunch breaks, worker safety laws, overtime pay, and one day off each week. Republicans have opposed all of the New Deal worker provisions since their inception and with funding from the Koch brothers are getting closer to fulfilling their 80-year goal of gutting workplace laws.
The Koch brothers were not satisfied with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker imposing Act 10, the law that abolished collective bargaining, fair compensation, retirement, health insurance, and sick leave of public sector employees, or the so-called ‘right to work’ law he recently signed. Many Democrats expected Walker to eliminate the state’s ‘prevailing wage’ law requiring workers on public projects to be paid the established going rate for their labor. Instead of eliminating prevailing wage laws, Koch-Republicans’ decided to eliminate weekends and impose a ‘voluntary’ 7-day work week.
Abolishing the day-off law is another Koch machination to further cut Wisconsin workers’ pay, kill jobs, and increase profits for business. Republicans re-introduced a Koch-manufacturing industry law to eliminate weekends  and impose 7-day work weeks as another step toward the Koch’s plan to eliminate all labor laws in the nation.  Eliminating New Deal workplace protections is an 80-year goal they now have an unlimited funding machine to finally see to completion.
The latest Koch assault on workers’ rights is nearing fruition in Wisconsin with an anti-worker atrocity that eliminates weekends, or as the law’s sponsor likes to call it;  a ‘paperwork reduction’ act. The legislation is a repeat of an attempt last year to wipe out weekends after Wisconsin’s largest business organization, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, introduced a version that the Republican legislature failed to pass because they ran out of time to enact it before the end of the session. The new law will give factory and retail employers the right to keep workers on the job for 7 straight days, and more, if the workers are “pressured” into “voluntarily agreeing” to give up their day(s) off.
As Wisconsin law stands now, an employer has to petition the Department of Workforce Development for a waiver to suspend the ‘weekend off’ law if workers “choose” to work without a day off; if that is what the employer “requests.” As a law professor at Marquette University, Paul Secunda, said, the new law and the term “voluntary completely ignores the power dynamic in the workplace, where workers have a proverbial gun to their head and understand that if the boss demands they work 7 or more days without rest, they’ll be volunteering or else.” Eliminating a guaranteed weekend is just another step in Walker’s anti-worker crusade that includes eliminating collective bargaining rights and enacting the Koch (ALEC) written “right to work” law guaranteeing Draconian workplace conditions and lower pay.
The Koch surrogates who introduced the ‘abolish weekend’ law said the idea was brought to them by the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce organization after they discovered that as long as minimum wage requirements were met, employers could ‘request’ that workers ‘volunteer’ to work without a day off. As an aside, Scott Walker hates the idea of a minimum wage he thinks serves no useful purpose because his funding machine the Koch brothers hate it. The two Republicans who introduced the weekend abolition bill said they asked several businesses with employees about the law and were told that the workers wanted to work without any days off. Likely they were the same businesses that supported, and won, elimination of child labor laws in Wisconsin the Koch brothers believe are an abomination and unfair to business.
All of the anti-worker laws being enacted in Wisconsin are part and parcel of the Koch-Republican crusade to repeal all state and federal labor laws including minimum wage, overtime pay, weekends off, abolition of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and Workers’ Compensation protection for workers injured on the job. In Oklahoma, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Koch brothers legislative arm ALEC, succeeded in fulfilling one of the Koch’s wishes and repealed workers’ compensation in the state because the Kochs and the Chamber of  Commerce claim that employers should not be penalized for imposing dangerous working conditions on their employees.
These attacks on labor are not reserved to Republican states, but that is where they originated thanks to the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council. In many Republican-controlled states sick pay is under heavy assault with some even banning localities from passing a law requiring  it.  Last April in Oklahoma the governor, Mary Fallin, signed a law into effect banning cities from democratically voting to pass minimum wage increases, enact paid sick days and paid vacation requirements. Also last year at the national level, former House majority leader Eric Cantor pushed through federal legislation eliminating overtime pay that means tens-of-millions of hourly-wage workers would have had to work overtime during scheduled days off, during vacations, or after their regular shift ends without the benefit of extra pay. Republicans promoted the Draconian legislation as one of their storied “job creation bills.” Fortunately it was panned in the Democratically-controlled Senate; it will likely pass easily now that the Kochs bought control of the upper chamber for Republicans.
There is no end to the assault on American workers that goes far beyond just refusing to raise the minimum wage. The experiments being conducted in Wisconsin are gifts to the Koch brothers that Republicans in Congress will begin passing as part of their free market crusade to effectively wipe out the middle class. Since 2010, Republicans have ratcheted up their claim that eliminating the minimum wage will induce industry into a hiring frenzy, but with accompanying legislation eliminating overtime pay and weekends off, not only will job creation suffer drastically, the entire workforce will become little more than slave labor which is, after all, what the New Deal put an end to for 80 years. However, for 80 years Republicans longingly sought a means to eliminate New Deal workforce protections that Ronald Reagan claimed were Fascist. Now that the Koch brothers own Congress, the real fascists are a step closer to realizing their vision of an America with no workplace protections and an entire population of slave labor.

Ohio Republicans Sneak A Vote Suppression Rider Into State’s Transportation Budget

Jon Husted OhioEvery time a Republican sneaks an unrelated rider into a law, it’s a guarantee that someone will get screwed. Art Pope’s Republicans in North Carolina included last minute anti-choice provisions in a motorcycle safety bill.  Often, but not always, these riders come in at the last possible moment.  It’s the political version of the frowned upon court room tactic of unfair surprise.  Unfair because opponents don’t have a chance to research the provision and the public doesn’t have a chance to comment at all.
This was one of those riders. This time, the targets are college students who Republicans clearly want to disenfranchise because they tend to vote Democrat.
This time, Republicans in Ohio snuck a vote suppression rider into a transportation budget bill in an effort to disenfranchise out of state students.
Plunderbund explains,
The new language in the bill will have these students convert to an Ohio driver’s license, register their cars with Ohio plates and assume a few other costs that would raise their out-of-pocket expenses to an estimated $100.
This amounts to pricing young, mostly Democratic voters, out of the franchise. According to Cleveland, 116,000 college students will have to pay what amounts to a poll tax.
Of course, the rider’s sponsor claims there is nothing to see here. It’s all about regulating vehicle registration laws.  The fact that this will also make it harder to vote for college students (who tend to vote Democrat) is just the cherry on top.
That’s not how state Representative Kathleen Clyde (D)  saw it.
“It’s very concerning the message we’re sending to young people and to people moving to our great state about their fundamental right to vote.”
Anyone with a brain can see this was brought in at the last minute to avoid scrutiny be it from lawmakers or the general public.
On puzzling thing lies in the fact that this rider made it through the State Senate with unanimous support.
Again, according to Plunderbund, Akron Sen. Tom Sawyer says the Democrats who voted for it did so because there was “more good in the bill” even than just that little vote suppression rider and besides they signed a petition asking Governor Jon Kasich for a line-item veto.
Vote suppression has been an obsession of Jon Husted, Ohio’s Secretary of State, who claims there’s a “widespread” problem of non-citizens voting across the state.  Yet, his own investigation proved this “widespread” problem is non-existent.
That investigation uncovered 145 non-citizens who were registered to vote in the state in 2014.  That’s .0002 percent of Ohio’s 7.7 million voters.
In the end, Husted’s efforts are proving to be an effective form of suppressing the vote. Between 2010 and 2014, voter participation in Ohio dropped by a whopping 22 percent.
Only 36.2 of eligible voter in Ohio cast ballots in the November 2014 general election.
According to Nonprofit Vote, Ohio ranked 34th in voter turnout.

Fiorina's Pretender Plan To Save The Economy: Stop Lazy Workers From 'Watching Porn All Day Long'

Fiorina's Presidential Plan To Save The Economy: Stop Lazy Workers From 'Watching Porn All Day Long' Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a wingnut, who is expected to announce a campaign for pretender, said over the weekend that she could improve the economy by cutting federal worker pay because they were "watching porn all day long."

Anti-Obamacare Sheriff Now Says He Needs $60,000 For Medical Bills, Still Refuses To Get Insurance

Karma gets you every time ... 
Anti-Obamacare Sheriff Now Says He Needs $60,000 For Medical Bills, Still Refuses To Get Insurance
You have got to be kidding me. . .

Tucker Carlson: I Am Against Whipping People Up Into A Frenzy Of Fear And Hatred Based On Lies

Tucker Carlson: I Am Against Whipping People Up Into A Frenzy Of Fear And Hatred Based On Lies
Pot, meet kettle. You're not the only one who's speechless.

Rush Limbaugh's Fixer Uses His $900/Hour PR Firm To Smear Activists

Rush Limbaugh's Fixer Uses His $900/Hour PR Firm To Smear Activists
The smaller the fish, the harder he hits.
Rush Limbaugh is a insane stupid drug-addled misogynist

Republican Jerk Actually Laughed While A Lawmaker Revealed Story Of Her Own Rape

A Jerk Actually Laughed While A Lawmaker Revealed Story Of Her Own Rape
If you doubt the frat boy mentality of these jerks, this will convince you.
Republican Jerk Actually Laughed While A Lawmaker Revealed Story Of Her Own Rape

‘Family Values’ teabagger Republican Threatens His Wife

Cough Syrup - Yeah, that's the ticket!
 ‘Family Values’ Tea Party Republican Accused Of Threatening His Wife
Why do wingnuts allow this guy to be the voice of “family values?”

Nebraska Farmer Makes Fracking Supporters Go Silent With Just A Glass Of Water

Nebraska Farmer Makes Fracking Supporters Go Silent With Just A Glass Of Water (VIDEO)
“So would you drink it? Yes or no?”
Read more

Sheets

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/_pFGCnAWmVSLYIbWggYLwA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM2NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01MDA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/crmlu150321.gif

Montana House Refuses To Follow Other Red States Down The “Religious Freedom” Rabbit Hole

Helena_capitol
After a heated floor debate, the Montana House failed to pass a “religious freedom” bill, deadlocking on a 50-50 vote, effectively defeating House Bill 615 on Friday. H.B. 615, sponsored by Rep. Karl Glimm (R-Kila), would have placed a legislative referendum on the November 2016 ballot that, if approved by voters, would have legalized discrimination, if it was based on a person’s religious beliefs.
Similar to a law that was recently passed in the state of Indiana, H.B. 615 would have allowed for religious-based discrimination, such as allowing business owners to deny services to gay and lesbian customers. It also could have opened up a myriad of other opportunities for bigots to discriminate against people, under the cover of religion. For example, the law could have made it possible for a pharmacist to refuse to provide birth control to a woman, or for a doctor to deny treatment to a HIV patient who happened to be gay.
The vote fell mostly on party lines, with all 41 Democrats voting NAY, compared to 50 Republicans who voted YEA, with 9 Republicans joining the Democrats, in voting against the measure.
The debate on the House Floor was impassioned, with Democrats raising a number of objections to the legislation. Rep. Margie MacDonald (D-Billings) hoisted up a copy of The White Man’s Bible, a White Nationalist religious text, for the racist Church of the Creator (COTC), arguing that the language in the bill would essentially legalize anything done in the name of a religious belief system.
Crow tribal member Carolyn Peace-Lopez (D-Hardin) argued that the law could empower the nine active hate groups in the state, by granting them legal protection to discriminate against American Indians. She remarked:
American Indians are the walking dead because of how they’re treated by people who discriminate. And now we’re going to license it. We’re going to elevate it.
Rep. Bryce Bennett (D-Missoula), a gay lawmaker, noted that the law could be used to discriminate against him. Bennett stated:
I am a religious person, I believe in religious freedom, but this isn’t about that. This is about legalized discrimination of our neighbors and our friends and it’s about discrimination against people like me.
Following the debate, the House deadlocked on a 50-50 vote, preventing the measure from moving forward. The Democrats stayed unified in opposition, and with 9 Republicans defecting from GOP orthodoxy, they had the votes to stymie the measure.
By killing this ill-chosen piece of legislation, Montana has avoided traveling down the “religious freedom” rabbit hole that has legalized discrimination in so many other red states across the country. Laws that sanction bigotry, not only violate the rights of individuals, but they also invite the backlash of economic boycotts. Democrats and sensible Republicans need to unite in every state, to defeat measures designed to empower bigots to discriminate against people, based on “religious beliefs”.
Discrimination is no less ugly just because the person doing it says a prayer before or after they discriminate. “Religious freedom” laws that give legal cover for bigotry should be rejected throughout the country. Luckily Montana had just enough Democrats and sane Republicans to stop the law from moving forward. Just barely.

Angie’s List Halts Indiana HQ Expansion in Response to Religious Tyranny Act

Angie's List is the latest to stand up in opposition to Indiana's discriminatory RFRA, and this one could cost Indiana 1,000 jobs…
angie-hicks
The cesspool state of Indiana is becoming a fly-over state, as freedom-loving Americans flee Hoosier theocracy for saner climes. We have already seen the reactions of the NCAA, GenCon, The Disciples of Christ, and Salesforce. Yelp and Eli Lilly have also expressed disappointment in the law.
We can now add to the list Angie’s List – you may have seen their commercials.
They are a word-of-mouth business rating network. And this one is going to cost Indiana more than just hurt feelings. It is going to cost Hoosiers some money – and about 1,000 jobs.
Apparently, word-of-mouth is that Indiana is not the place to be. So in the spirit of the free marketplace so touted by Republicans, Angie’s List has announced that they’re going to delay going forward with a $40 million expansion to their Indiana headquarters.
Angies-list-hq
Of course, the egregiously misnamed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is touted as a protection for businesses, but this is one business that is not amused.
This is what co-founder and Chief Executive Bill Oesterle had to say:
“We are putting the ‘Ford Building Project’ on hold until we fully understand the implications of the Freedom Restoration Act on our employees, both current and future. Angie’s List is open to all and discriminates against none and we are hugely disappointed in what this bill represents.”
And what timing. Turning the old Ford assembly plant into a new office space was to have had its groundbreaking in a few days.
Ironically, Oesterle, a Republican supported Pence for governor.
On Saturday he had this to say:
Look, I’m very proud to be a Republican. I’m concerned about the direction that the legislature and governor have chosen to go here. … I’m concerned that very valid input around this type of legislation is not being heard in the Statehouse.
Of course it’s not being heard. Did you hear the one about the Republican Congresswoman who asked her constituents to post their “Obamacare horror stories” on Facebook and was swamped with success stories praising the president’s healthcare law instead? Did she change her mind about the law? Her answer: because she got only success stories, she used recycled stories from a GOP website to denounce Obamacare anyway.
They don’t want to hear the truth. Until Oesterle and other Republicans realize the full extent of the problem, it is going to continue to be a problem, and the people of states like Indiana are going to suffer for it. Pence’s corporate owners will fly him to basketball games, an option not open to most Hoosiers.
Oesterle seems to understand the source of the hate, at least, pointing to a photograph of Pence signing the RFRA into law:
That photograph told me everything I needed to know. I’ve been on the other side of this issue with them for a long time, going back to the governor’s (Daniels’) campaign. That’s when I first became exposed to those people. The most prominent three figures standing directly behind the governor were those three individuals.
He was speaking of Micah Clark of the homophobic and anti-Semitic American Family Association of Indiana (see some of his hateful quotes at GLAAD), Eric Miller of the ironically-named Advance America (whom NUVO calls the “most powerful man in the Indiana statehouse”), and Curt Smith of the Indiana Family Institute (see some of his hateful quotes at GLAAD) – all vocal supporters of religious tyranny and discrimination in the state of Indiana.
Maybe we should thank Pence for pulling these people out of the shadows in a way we can only dream of doing here. By all means, let’s have some more photo ops. As many of us have observed, the GOP is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a pity the mainstream media refuses to receive.
The worst of it is – and I know this as a fact because I have family there – Republican Hoosiers will blame Obama for their economic woes, not the fact that they live in a Red State. They haven’t, and they steadfastly refuse, to learn a thing.
Even as the denunciations continue:
You may have noticed on Friday that Apple CEO Tim Cook, of the company that the phones that many of those Hoosier Republican bigots no doubt use – and who also just happens to be gay – has also come out against the law, tweeting,
On Saturday, there came a joint statement from the NBA, WNBA, and the Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever joining the NCAA in denouncing the RFRA:
The game of basketball is grounded in long established principles of inclusion and mutual respect. We will continue to ensure that all fans, players and employees feel welcome at all NBA and WNBA events in Indiana and elsewhere.
Pacers and Fever owner Herb Simon had this to say, and it is not something Mike Pence wanted to hear:
The Indiana Pacers, Indiana Fever and Bankers Life Fieldhouse have the strongest possible commitment to inclusion and non-discrimination on any basis. Everyone is always welcome at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. That has always been the policy from the very beginning of the Simon family’s involvement and it always will be.
You have to wonder at what point enough will be enough. It is up to the people of Indiana – Hoosiers – to affect change in the next election. The people they voted into office are taking Indiana down a dark and troubling path, to a place America thought it had escaped from two hundred years ago, when bigotry was commonplace.
We have slowly, if imperfectly, and in fits and starts, but sometimes with glorious success like the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act, and other shining deeds, continued to crawl out of that gutter. We might never reach our exceptions and our hopes, but we continue to try.
In a single act, the state of Indiana has committed itself to 13th century-style bigotry and persecution of minorities in the name of religion. It is illegal, un-American, and it is wrong, and if it is to end, Hoosiers will have to wake up and realize they’ve put fascists in charge of their state. All we can do meanwhile, is fly over the accursed place, or if you have to stop, enter only places that bear this sign:
open-for-service

Indiana Is A Great Place To Be A Bigot

Indiana Is A Great Place To Be A Bigot
Upped to YouTube a couple of days ago by the Internet Action Force. https://youtu.be/5LH2FVxrj4k

Monday, March 30, 2015

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  
 
The Truth Be Told is read in 203 countries around the world.
 
The Left side is always better ... !

Today is - Grass Is Always Browner On The Other Side Of The Fence Day
 
Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, Brazil
Quebec, Canada
Bogota, Colombia
San Benito, Guatemala
Kingston, Jamaica
Navojoa and Tlalnepantla, Mexico
San Juan, Puerto Rico
The Bottom, Sint Eustatius-Saba
Alpharetta, Empire, Ferndale, Garrison, Gilbert, Manti, Ocala, Ontario, Paducah, Pasadena, Pullman, Whittier, Woodstock and Yarmouth, United States
Merida, Venezuela
Europe
Brussels, Belgium
Glavinitsa and Sofia, Bulgaria
Hradec, Prague and Stare Mesto, Czech Republic
London, Manchester and Pool, England
Kruessaare, Estonia
Aalen, Berlin, Eschborn and Reutlingen, Germany
Athens and Piraeus, Greece
Reykjavik, Iceland
Milan, Palermo, Ravenna and Rome, Italy
Riga, Latvia
Chisinau, Moldova
Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Netherlands
Lisbon, Portugal
Iasi, Romania
Krasnodar, Moscow, Ryazan and Saint Petersburg, Russia
Ljubjana, Slovenia
Madrid and Valencia, Spain
Kista, Sweden
Baar, Switzerland
Ankara, Turkey
Kiev, Ukraine
Swansea, Wales
Asia
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Beijing, China
Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Calicut, Mumbai, Pitampura and Trichur, India
Jakarta and Malang, Indonesia
Esfahan and Tehran, Iran
Bayan Lepas, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Kulim and Tawau, Malaysia
Karachi, Pakistan
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Hanoi, Vietnam
Africa
Damietta, Egypt
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Cape Town and Durban, South Africa
The Pacific
Brisbane, Perth and Surry Hills, Australia

Editor's Note

Editor's Note:
We have quite a backlog of links and editorial illustrations in the files so we decided to post a few today.

Obama Gashes Republicans For Trying to Give 4,000 Millionaires A $4 Million Tax Cut

obama protect middle class weekly address
President Obama exposed the Republican agenda by calling out the morally repugnant GOP budget plan to give 4,000 of the wealthiest Americans a $4 million tax cut while passing the bill on to every other citizen.
Video:
In his weekly address, the President said:
Five years ago, after the worst financial crisis in decades, we passed historic Wall Street reform to end the era of bailouts and too big to fail.

As part that reform, we created an independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with one mission: to protect American consumers from some of the worst practices of the financial industry.

They’ve already put $5 billion back in the pockets of more than 15 million families. And this week, they took an important first step towards cracking down on some of the most abusive practices involving payday loans.

Millions of Americans take out these loans every year. In Alabama, where I visited this week, there are four times as many payday lending stores as there are McDonald’s. But while payday loans might seem like easy money, folks often end up trapped in a cycle of debt. If you take out a $500 loan, it’s easy to wind up paying more than $1,000 in interest and fees.
The step the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced this week is designed to change that. The idea is pretty common sense: if you’re a payday lender preparing to give a loan, you should make sure that the borrower can afford to pay it back first.
As Americans, we believe there’s nothing wrong with making a profit. But there is something wrong with making that profit by trapping hard-working men and women in a vicious cycle of debt.
Protecting working Americans’ paychecks shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But the budget Republicans unveiled last week would make it harder, not easier, to crack down on financial fraud and abuse. And this week, when Republicans rolled out their next economic idea, it had nothing to do with the middle class. It was a new, more-than-$250 billion tax cut for the top one-tenth of the top one percent of Americans. That would mean handing out an average tax cut of $4 million a year to just 4,000 Americans per year, and leaving the rest of the country to pay for it.
I don’t think our top economic priority should be helping a tiny number of Americans who are already doing extraordinarily well, and asking everybody else to foot the bill. I think our top priority should be helping everybody who works hard get ahead. This country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

That’s what middle-class economics is all about, and as long as I’m your President, that’s what I’ll keep on fighting to do.
The reason the budget process is always a bad time for Republicans is because it is the one moment where the true GOP agenda gets exposed. Republicans want to cut taxes for the super wealthy while passing the bill on to the non-rich. The Republican budget isn’t just bad economics. It’s morally wrong. Since 2011, President Obama and his fellow Democrats have repeatedly stung Republicans on their agenda to shift all wealth upwards to the top.
It could be argued that President Obama won reelection in 2012 based on his middle-class economics campaign. What Republicans are trying to do with their budget is a form ideological illness that refuses to see reality. The nation tried the tax cuts for the wealthy grow the economy approach under George W. Bush, and the result was a historic failure.
The role of government should never be to make the rich richer and life more difficult for everyone else. The budgets paint a clear picture of the contrast in priorities between the two parties. Democrats have got your back while Republicans are trying to pick your pocket.

Orwellian Pigs ...

Or as they are more commonly known - Republicans

Big Banks Are So Scared Of Elizabeth Warren, They’ll Resort To Petty Scheming To Stop Her

Featured image by Ben Wikler. Licensed under CC BY-2.0 via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bnwklr/16037332480/The big banks that helped send the world’s economy into the tank in 2008 are pondering a new strategy to combat Elizabeth Warren: Stop donations...

2016 GOP Contenders Declare Themselves the Anti-Family Party

GOPSenFrom the "Public Enemies" Department


The Senate blasted through votes on amendments to the Republican budget Thursday, and against all odds, two major amendments proposed by Democrats passed. Sen. Patty Murray’s measure would…

This is what happens when Republicans work together ...

The People Get Fucked Over ... of course the people get fucked over when republicans don't work together either

TPP leak: states give companies the right to repeal nations' laws

A new Wikileaks-published leak from the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty reveals a January 2015 draft "Investment Chapter" of the agreement, where the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms are set out. They allow companies to repeal nations' environmental, health and labor laws. The ISDS work is led by the USA. Under its terms, a treaty-established tribunal would have the power to overrule national courts, and to award millions from tax-coffers to companies who believe that laws undermine their future profits.
The US Congress is preparing to hand Obama's trade rep fast-track authority to enter into TPP, though the terms of the deal can't be disclosed for at least four years (Congress only just got its first look at the TPP, and the USTR threatened to jail Members if they disclosed its contents to voters).

Ted Cruz Is Trying To Gut The Clean Air Act And Repeal All Climate Regulation

The bill seeks to prevent the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions through any of its executive agencies.

Ted Cruz is Trying and Failing to Weasel Out of His Obamacare Duplicity

Ted Cruz (R-TX) is now apparently undecided how he'll buy insurance, backing away from his Obamacare announcement earlier in the week.


Taliban or Republican

Here's a hint for you ....They're all Republican

Voter Suppression

Vote via ShutterstockVoter registration deadlines suppressed up to 4 million votes in 2012
New analysis shows that voter registration would increase turnout by millions.

Israeli Spying

Religio-wingnts are all the same ...

Rand Paul is an Idiot

Michigan Republican Says Schools Should be a Cult Ministries

When Pink Floyd sang that "we don't need no education," I don't think cult ministries are what they had in mind.…
constitution-burning
Indiana has gotten a lot of attention lately for their religious tyranny law, but let’s not forget that teabagger gulag-in-the-making, Michigan. Republican anti-education efforts don’t get much worse than the teabaggers’s own Michigan State Rep. Gary Glenn’s (R-Larkin Township) House Bill 4394.
As Michigan-based Eclectablog explains,
If Glenn’s bill – House Bill 4394 – becomes law, schools can hire anyone they want. The criteria currently used would be tossed out the window. The bill literally strikes out all of the criteria. In addition, it removes the words grades “9 through 12″ meaning that schools could hire anyone they wish, with or without a teaching certificate, for any grade level. No training as an educator required.
Can you imagine being a parent in a state where suddenly your children’s competent, trained teachers are fired and replaced with any Tom, Dick, or Harry, whose sole qualification is that he or she is willing to work for a fraction of what a teacher would be paid?
Can you imagine the effect on the state’s educational standards? Can you imagine the effect on your children when they go to school and are told that the earth is flat and only 6000 years old?
As the father of a fourth-grader, I can imagine the effect on my blood pressure.
Bad as this seems, it could get worse, believe it or not. And as these things go, it does: Glenn’s fellow Representative, Todd Courser, an attorney in real life, who represents the 82nd District, posted his own brilliant idea on Facebook. Courser later deleted the post, but Electablog was able to capture it (below):
CourserOnEducation
As you can see, Courser opposes “Soviet-style” central planning, and like most Republicans, he seems to think Common Core standards are federally imposed standards (they are not). Courser is an attorney, mind you. He should know better. But then a lot of Republicans, Ted Cruz included, should know better.
So instead of the public schools our Founding Fathers envisioned, education should return to being a cult ministries. Excuse me, but I think that’s what the Founding Fathers wanted to move away from.
When Pink Floyd sang that “we don’t need no education,” I don’t think cult ministries are what they had in mind.
Look, I know Ted Cruz has said, “This country remains a country, I believe, grounded in values, grounded in faith, but far too many Christians have ceded the public arena to people who aren’t believers,” but come on.
And while we’re talking about the lunatics representative the Republican Party in state after state, I can’t leave out Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake. It know it’s a whole other state, but trust me, it’s relevant: Allen actually told the state’s appropriations committee on Tuesday that corrupt souls are at the root of our nation’s problems (as opposed to whack-a-doodle’s like her) and that therefore,
We are slowly eroding religion at every opportunity that we have. We should probably be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday to see if we can get back to having a moral rebirth.
Yes, because that jibes so well with the First Amendment!
In case you don’t believe it, here’s the video:
I guess while we’re forced to sit in cult it would be a good time to be forced (at gunpoint) to listen to David Barton. Then Mike Huckabee could get his wish too. I guess this would be a sort of jobs bill, because then the GOP could give all those open-carry wackos jobs pointing guns at us, because that’s the only thing that could get many of us into a cult.
On Wednesday, Allen told the Arizona Capitol Times that while it was a “flippant” comment, she would not apologize for the comment. What the Times carefully did not mention is that, as Right Wing Watch reveals,
Allen is the very same lawmaker who defended uranium mining in her state by insisting that the earth is a mere 6,000-years-old…She also proposed that the state enable the creation of a volunteer border militia and pushed for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, warning that gay marriage would harm children and destroy Social Security.
Yes, gay people – not the Republican Party – are going to destroy social security.
That seems bad enough, but she also “Allen even offered a bill to protect her son-in-law who was under investigation for harassing female inmates while working in a country prison.” The young Republican was apparently forcing female inmates to give him oral sex.
I’m sorry, but as a metaphor of the Republican War on Women, I can’t think of a more apt metaphor.
If only the mainstream media would tell people the truth about their elected representatives. You have to wonder how many of them would get elected again, if they only knew.
It is interesting how Republicans think if only we “put the bible back in school” and force people to go to cult, our “free” society can be saved. But what’s free about coercion?
Of course, our young people won’t know what “coercion” means if Michigan’s Courser and Glenn get their way. After all, it doesn’t matter who teaches the scriptures. Anyone can do that, and the bible’s the only textbook kids really need.
It’s much easier for the elites to lead them around by the nose that way. And really, it does put them a step above Europe’s serfs in that those poor unfortunates had to have the bible read to them.
See how progressive the Republican Party is! If you want to know just how progressive, check out with Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser have been up to in Michigan with their “contract for liberty,” which would dismantle the Constitution just the way the Founding Fathers intended, and their “life at conception” legislation to do away with that pesky freedom women have to control their own reproductive functions, and finally, their plans to turn Michigan into a theocracy, yay!
Fortunately, Eclectablog explains that they “have heard from multiple sources that the Republicans in the state legislature are doing everything in their power to make sure these two, along with [Cindy] Gamrat, are not seen as representing the Republicans as a whole and that they are neutralized and unable to have an impact that would harm their brand.”
Let’s hope this is true..

Wingnuts Refuse To Believe Germanwings Pilot Wasn’t Muslim Terrorist With Laughable Results

Conservatives Refuse To Believe Germanwings Pilot Wasn’t Muslim Terrorist With Laughable Results
Wingnuts are struggling to prove Germanwings pilot suspected of intentionally flying plane into ground was “secret” muslim and the results are really, really sad.