The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you, this is the true 'symbol' of you cabal ...!  

 

The Truth Be Told is read in 203 countries around the world.

 
It's way past time do some pest control and get the Republicans (Oops, we mean the diseased rats, wait, no, we had it correct the first time) out of Congress ... !

Today is - World Rat Day
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally

Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Sao Paolo, Brazil

Henry Farm, Moose Jaw and Quebec, Canada

Bogota, Colombia

Willemstad, Curaco

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Medway, Menlo Park, Menomonee Falls, Miami Beach, Milledgeville, Millington, Minneapolis, Monroe, Monticello, Mooresville, Mount Laurel, Mount Vernon and Mountain View, United States

Europe

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Glavinitsa, Bulgaria

Zagreb, Croatia

Brno, Karlin, Mala Strana, Prague and Stare Mesto, Czech Republic

Hvidovre, Denmark

Gosport, London, Manchester and Staines, England

Tallinn, Estonia

Roubaix and Salon-de-Provence, France

Meria, Georgia

Aalen, Germany

Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece

Dublin and Waterford, Ireland

Eboli, Milan, Prato, Racconigi and Settimo San Pedro, Italy

Riga, Latvia

Skopje, Macedonia

Chisinau, Moldova

Amsterdam, Dronten, Roosendaal and Woensdrecht,  Netherlands

Oslo, Norway

Costa de Caparica and Porto, Portugal

Bucharest, Romania

Krasnoznamensk and Vladivostok, Russia

Edinburgh, Scotland

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Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, Spain

Stockholm, Sweden

Swansea, Wales

Asia

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Colombo. Sri Lanka

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Africa

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The Pacific

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Makati, Philippines

Editorial Comment

Just a cursory read on several wingnut sites and we find that we are getting under their scales.

The Truth is an itch you can't scratch away no matter how hard you try and the wingnuts are too stupid to know this so they keep trying - of course failing utterly while doing so - it only makes the itch worse.

We want to thank our readers from around the globe for spreading the word about The Truth Be Told and increasing our daily readership (and doing so even faster then the word is spreading among the wingnuts that someone is telling the truth and exposing their lies so they must 'stop' them grapevine).

After only a month we have quite a loyal following, thank you for that.

As you may have noticed on the right column - April is National Humor Month, so expect some humor herein ... of course with wingnuts, the humor will be easy to find - they are all jokes, bad jokes we grant you but jokes nonetheless.

So to kick things off we're posting this prime example of wingnut stupidity:

First off the 'Mullet' was never a hairdo it has always been a hair-don't
Second - If the big red lettering and arrow do not highlight it for you (yes, wingnuts we're talking to you) then you should know the idiot couldn't even spell the word that quite aptly befits him.
Third - Just forget number 3, we'll let the stupidity speak for itself ...

Oh, and as an aside:
For the troll(s) trying to link this blog to the homophobic pizza parlor's 'wingnut fear mongering/fund raising'  - WalMart, NASCAR, SalesForce and Angie’s List have all come out against the new law.

So while it may be true (and IT'S NOT*) that winguts are raising money for the bigoted pizzeria that stated on air that they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding (with pizza?), the real big money has spoken: You have lost the culture war against gays.

And yes, you read that correctly even that Paragon of wingnut masturbatory fantasies NASCAR and that Bastion of Liberalism, Walmart have come down on Indiana's throat.

*The GoFundMe campaign is a wingnut media scam. .. so that makes the very stupid troll(s) attempting to link the bogus 'fundraiser' to this blog look even more stupid

Face it, wingnuts, you have lost and lost badly as you have and will forever do on everything and anything every time.

Robert Reich: The Wealthy Are The Real Lazy People In Our Society

We hear it from Republicans every day. They constantly tell us that poor people are poor because they are lazy and rich people are wealthy because they work. But as Robert Reich explained in a new op-ed, the rich are the real lazy people in our society.

Read more

Republican Takeover Of Congress Backfires and Makes Democrats More Popular

According to a new poll, from ABC News/The Washington Post, the American people are noticing Boehner and McConnell’s failures. Since Republicans took complete control of Congress, congressional Democrats have become even more popular than Republicans.

Via: The Washington Post:

Congressional Democrats get higher approval ratings than congressional Republicans, and the gap has widened since last fall. In October, 30 percent said they approved of congressional Democrats compared with 25 percent who approved of congressional Republicans. In the new survey, approval of congressional Democrats has risen to 38 percent while congressional Republicans are up a slight 2 points, to 27 percent.

Boehner and McConnell are also making President Obama more popular. The President has gained five points in approval of his leadership. He now has a seven-point (45%-38% lead over congressional Republicans on the question of who has taken a stronger leadership role in Washington.

Seventy-three percent of those who believe that Obama is taking a stronger leadership role than Republicans view this development as a good thing. Those who view Republicans as taking the stronger leadership role are more divided (58%-32%) on whether or not this is a good thing.

It might appear to be counter-intuitive, but the Republican control of Congress ahead of the 2016 election is serving a helpful purpose to Democrats. Potential voters are getting an eyeful of the Republican agenda, and so far, they aren’t liking what they are seeing.

Congressional Republicans can no longer sit on the sidelines and blame President Obama or Harry Reid to for their failure to govern. They are the majority in the House and Senate, so it is their agenda, and their jobs on the line. The gerrymandered House is obvious to this reality, but the foreboding sense of looming failure is the key to Mitch McConnell’s desperation to prove that he can pass legislation in the Senate.

The Republican agenda is helping many Americans appreciate what President Obama and Congressional Democrats stand for, which is definitely not what Boehner and McConnell had in mind on Election Night last November.

Obama Tells Republicans to Stop Screwing with Unions

President Obama warned them, and then on Tuesday, made good on his promise to veto a Republican attempt to block a government labor agency’s rules aimed at speeding…

Stop Screwing Around

Supreme Court Justices Serve for Life

Why Supreme Court Justices Serve for Life

Once you become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, you have a gig for life. Why is it different for these nine men and women, when presidents and congress persons have to be re-elected to continue serving?

Link Dump

how civil forfeiture enriches  u.s. law enforcement

the typical black household has 6% of the wealth of white households

political liberals display greater happiness

the top u.s. cities for douchebags

melting sea ice will hit the u.s. harder than anywhere else

seaworld twitter campaign backfires terribly
capitalism destroying our planet?

it is time to say goodbye to america's fraternities?

someone at the NYPD has been editing wikipedia to make the cops look good
wind could be the main source of electricity by 2050
people on foodstamps make healthier grocery decisions than most of us

stop calling children's gun deaths 'accidental'

father of the 401(k) says he 'created a monster'

the war on drugs is a racist class war

Republicans Write Letter To U.N. Encouraging Countries To Ignore Obama

Sound Familiar?

Bravo Republicans, thanks to your tireless efforts, shame is now America’s number one export.

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Four Anti-Obamacare Republican Governors Took $352 Million In Health Care Grants

A review of records has found that Republican governors Scott Walker (WI), Bobby Jindal (LA), Rick Perry (TX), and Chris Christie (NJ) took $400 million in federal health care money for their states while opposing the Affordable Care Act.

Reuters reported:

Governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, all staunch opponents of President Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act, have collectively applied for and won at least $352 million through grant programs set up by the law, federal records show.

The action is at odds with the public stance of all four potential candidates, who have blasted the law as an unprecedented expansion of government and called for its repeal.

These governors are each trying to run for president based on in part publicly opposing the Affordable Care Act, but privately they are hypocritically gobbling up millions of federal dollars to fund the law that they have sworn to destroy. The behavior of the governors illustrates that Obamacare has become a buzzword for rallying Republican voters, but the reality is that repealing the ACA would cause absolute chaos at multiple levels of government.

Walker, Perry, Jindal, and Christie all claim that they hate the healthcare law, but that hatred hasn’t stopped them from putting their hands out and taking hundreds of millions of federal dollars. The key is that the governors were not forced to take the money. They had to apply for the funds. It wasn’t a mistake that they took the loot. Walker and the others intentionally asked for it.

The last two Republican presidential primary contests have quickly devolved into who hissy fights over who is the most conservative candidate. It is going to be difficult for the Obamacare hypocrite governors to wear the crown of real conservative while they were mooching hundreds of millions of dollars in Obamacare cash.

Republicans hate Obamacare, but not as much as they love free money.

KKK Cowards

Florida chef fires back at KKK threats over his interracial marriage: ‘You’re a coward, brother’

Founding Fathers Wanted Civil Rights For All Protected From Religious Persecution

“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience, be in any manner, nor on any pretext, infringed.” – Original draft of the 1st Amendment, 1789.
Had that text been included in the Constitution, imagine how vastly different this country would be. No RFRA laws. No Hobby Lobby decisions in the Supreme Court. No elections based on which candidate supports abortion rights or not.

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How 'Religious Freedom' Works ...

A religio-wingnut 'explains' how 'Religious Freedom' works - in their perverted mentally ill deluded minds

Hobby Lobby Ruling Opened Floodgates For Indiana Discrimination Law

Americans are witnessing the profound and dangerous impact of the High Court's Hobby Lobby decision to dismantle the 1st Amendment's religious clauses and exempt religious devotee's from adhering to the law…

Nearly all parents attempt to teach their children from a young age that every one of their decisions in life will have consequences; no matter how inconsequential they may seem at the time. It is no different for politicians and, more importantly to Americans, Supreme Court justices. In fact, Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that Supreme Court decisions “exercise a kind of hydraulic effect.” He meant that even if the decision’s authors assert that their rulings will have limited impact, the cases will invariably have a profound influence on American society sometime in the future.

Americans are witnessing the profound and dangerous impact of the High Court’s Hobby Lobby decision to dismantle the 1st Amendment’s religious clauses and exempt religious devotee’s from adhering to state and federal laws. In writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling was ‘very narrow in scope‘ and would have a very limited impact on Americans other than empowering religious employers to force their religion on their employees. However, within two weeks the Vatican-5 expanded that ruling as a portent that the Hobby Lobby decision would soon have a very profound impact on Americans’ lives; something Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned was going to happen.

In writing the dissenting opinion in Hobby Lobby, Ginsburg put the so-called “limited impact” ruling nonsense into proper perspective and said that the Vatican-5 effectively ruled that religion trumps all other laws. The Jurist said that the Hobby Lobby ruling was a “decision of startling breadth, ventured into a minefield” and argued strongly that “the majority turned the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into a protean tool for all sorts of evasions;” many pundits and legal experts distilled her entire dissent into “the conservative Court opened the floodgates of religious imposition on  America.” Republicans in Indiana quickly made use of the “protean tool” to give religious bigots legal license to discriminate at will against, according to the law, “any person” they believe are sinners and violate their religious freedom. There is no mention of gays, LGBT, or same-sex couples in Indiana’s law; any person of any religion, race, or gender can be discriminated against with the full legal protection of religious freedom law.

The Hobby Lobby ruling answered the question conscience clause advocates have asked since the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was signed in 1993; “when do religious convictions allow individuals or businesses to excuse themselves from legal obligations like adhering to equal and civil rights laws or providing medical care?” That question was answered last year in the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision and it is the driving force behind the rash of legal discrimination laws about to sweep 23 Republican states across the nation. Remember, the crux of the Vatican-5’s ruling was that the faithful are exempt from following any laws on religious grounds whether they are ensconced in the nation’s founding document or federal and state legal statutes.

That horrendous Hobby Lobby decision began opening the gate for the religiously observant to claim privileges that are unavailable to anyone else, and it started within a week of the ruling being handed down. Now the floodgates are wide open and there is no recourse except for decent Americans and businesses to wage economic warfare on bigoted Republican states with extreme prejudice. Even though Justice Alito claimed the scope of the ruling was very narrow, the Papal-5 effectively dismantled the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the 1st Amendment that puts the guilt of the flood of license to discriminate laws solely on the High  Court’s conservatives. Why? Because there are no longer any Constitutional equal rights protections that are not subordinate to a person of faith’s religious exemption to disregard the law. It may be why, a year after the Hobby Lobby ruling, the lawmaker behind the Arkansas license to discriminate measure, Republican Bob Ballinger, said that “The reality is what we’re doing here is really not that remarkable;” or illegal or unconstitutional because religion.

The Indiana law, like the recently passed Arkansas law and those proceeding through 23 other state legislatures, is likely the product of religious Republicans’ attempt to thwart same-sex marriage and rally their religious base around “the issue” god hates going into the 2016 election cycle. It is why several Republican presidential hopefuls have come out in support of the Indiana law and defended Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s signing a clearly religious law aimed at legalizing discrimination against a wide range of Americans; a law that was unlikely to pass constitutional muster prior to Hobby Lobby.

Last year when Arizona passed ‘license to discriminate’ legislation, the overriding opinion was that it would be struck down as unconstitutional if it ever became law. The Indiana law is a mirror image of the Arizona legislation that passed the legislature only to be vetoed by then-governor Jan Brewer over a budget dispute. Like the Arizona legislation, Indiana’s law explicitly exempts “a partnership, a limited liability company, a corporation, a company, a firm, a society, a joint-stock company, an unincorporated association, or any other entity” from legal ramifications associated with discriminating against “any person” they believe violates their religious freedom. It is important to remember the word gay is not a part of the Indiana law; anyone can be the target of discrimination with absolute legal protections as long as religious freedom is cited. The High Court made those kinds of laws constitutionally protected.

That protection was an overriding question before Hobby Lobby, and one opponents and supporters of Arizona’s law asked before the Supreme Court ruling. Since Arizona’s legislation, like Indiana’s and now Arkansas’, do not cite a specific group as a target of discrimination, many people asked “what about religious individuals who say that they have objections to conducting business with gay people or immigrants? Will they be excused from honoring the nation’s anti-discrimination laws?” Although that issue appeared to be unresolved prior to the Hobby Lobby ruling, it is resolved now and it is why 23 states have religious laws making their way through Republican legislatures.

In no small part the expansion effects of Hobby Lobby are due to the efforts of several evangelical and catholic cabals; particularly a so-called 'conservative' legal cabal, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. It began dedicating itself to expanding the reach of the Hobby Lobby decision immediately after the ruling was announced. Obviously, with Indiana’s law, Arkansas’ recently passed legislation, and similar laws progressing in a couple of dozen other states, the Becket Fund is seeing the fruits of its labor realized in a very big religious way. And for all the people that continue shouting the license to discriminate laws are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling says otherwise; religious liberty trumps all constitutional protections.

Americans do not get to vote on Supreme Court jurors, but they do elect the religious Republicans pushing the laws legalizing discrimination as a result of the High Court’s ruling. The people of Indiana, Arkansas, and twenty-plus other Republican states knew they were voting for ‘socially-conservative’ Republicans that made no secret their intent was enacting laws to punish residents that did not fit their bible-thumping real American mold. Frankly, the people of Indiana who will suffer the economic consequences of their bigoted legislature and governor deserve what they get. Because if they had listened to their parents warning that their decisions have consequences, they would have voted differently, if they even bothered to vote.

Arkansas Rejects Religious Freedom Bill

Arkansas Rejects Religious Freedom Bill and Exposes Mike Pence’s Deception

Republicans In Turmoil After Asa Hutchinson Caves On Arkansas Religious Freedom Bill

The Republican Party is falling apart, and factions are at each other’s throats over the self-inflicted wound of pushing religious freedom bills that would legalize discrimination.

Hutchinson explained why he reversed course and decided not to sign the bill unless it is changed, “The bill that is on my desk at the present time does not mirror the federal law. It doesn’t mirror it in a couple of ways, particularly allowing the First Amendment to be asserted in the private litigation between parties or reliance on the state law in those claims. Therefore, I asked that changes be made in the legislation and I’ve asked that the leaders in the General Assembly to recall the bill so that it can be amended.”

The divide between Republicans is between the business community and social conservatives. There is also a generational divide between younger and older Republicans that is typified by the fact that Hutchinson’s own son signed a petition asking him to veto the bill, “My son Seth, signed the petition asking me, Dad, the governor, to veto this bill.”

All of the potential 2016 Republican pretender candidates with the exceptions of Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul have come out in support of the religious freedom bills. What is happening is the now traditional process of the Republican rank and file pulling their presidential candidates too far to the right to be electable.

In Arkansas, Gov. Hutchinson isn’t looking for a way out because he had an overnight epiphany. Hutchinson is trying to escape a brewing political firestorm that has spread outwards from Indiana and is engulfing the Republican Party.

History is repeating itself. This time the discussions aren’t centered around “legitimate rape,” but an attempt to legalize discrimination behind a thin disguise of religious freedom. The same old divides that have undone the Republican Party in previous election cycles are alive and well, but the GOP’s biggest problem is that their economic, social, and political agenda remains wildly unpopular and out of step with modern times.

Mike Pence lied

Are you surprised? He's a Republican, isn't he?

On ABC's Sunday program "This Week," Indiana Gov. Mike Pence gave a career-ending performance in which he repeatedly refused to answer whether Indiana's new "religious freedom" law, SB 101, allows discrimination against gays and lesbians (#NotReadyForPrimeTime). Pence also likened SB 101 to the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) signed into law in the '90s and those adopted by about 19 states since. Then he added:

And after last year's Hobby Lobby case, Indiana properly brought the same version that then state senator Barack Obama voted for in Illinois before our legislature. And I was proud to sign it into law last week.

Lies. All of it. Indiana's new law is substantially different than both the 90s-era RFRAs and there is no parallel to be drawn between Indiana and the Illinois bill Barack Obama voted for 17 years ago.
First, these new RFRAs aren't even close to the same as those that have been passed by other states over the last couple decades. The new ones are RFRAs on steroids. The old RFRAs were meant to keep the government from infringing on the religious beliefs of individuals. The new ones vary, but they almost all apply to private disputes. That is new and will allow people to use their religious beliefs as a defense if they are sued for discrimination by another individual.
Here's more from a real lawyer, Jenny Pizer at Lambda Legal:

SB 101 is substantially broader than the federal law. It extends religious rights to all businesses, no matter how large and completely secular they are. In addition, the federal law can only be invoked against government action. SB 101 goes much further, inviting discrimination by allowing religious beliefs to be raised as a defense in lawsuits and administrative proceedings brought by workers, tenants and customers who have suffered discrimination in a business transaction based on someone else's religious beliefs.

Pence lied

The Big Lie The Media Tells About Indiana's New 'Religious Freedom' Law

by Judd Legum

On Friday, the Washington Post published an article titled "19 states that have 'religious freedom' laws like Indiana's that no one is boycotting." The article snarks about organizations like the NCAA that have protested Indiana's law, noting "the NCAA didn't say it was concerned over how athletes and employees would be affected by Kentucky's RFRA when games were played there last week." The piece concludes "Indiana might be treated as if it's the only state with a bill like this, but it's not." The piece has been shared over 75,000 times on Facebook.
The Washington Post article largely mirrors the argument advanced by Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Appearing on ABC's This Week, Pence claimed "Then state-Sen. Barack Obama voted for [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act]. The very same language."
The same argument is parroted on Fox News and elsewhere.
It's not true.
The Indiana law differs substantially from the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed by President Clinton in 1993, and all other state RFRAs.
There are several important differences in the Indiana bill but the most striking is Section 9. Under that section, a "person" (which under the law includes not only an individual but also any organization, partnership, LLC, corporation, company, firm, church, religious society, or other entity) whose "exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened" can use the law as "a claim or defense… regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding."
Every other Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to disputes between a person or entity and a government. Indiana's is the only law that explicitly applies to disputes between private citizens.* This means it could be used as a cudgel by corporations to justify discrimination against individuals that might otherwise be protected under law. Indiana trial lawyer Matt Anderson, discussing this difference, writes that the Indiana law is "more broadly written than its federal and state predecessors" and opens up "the path of least resistance among its species to have a court adjudicate it in a manner that could ultimately be used to discriminate…"
This is not a trivial distinction. Arizona enacted an RFRA that applied to actions involving the government in 2012. When the state legislature tried to expand it to purely private disputes in 2014, nationwide protests erupted and Jan Brewer, Arizona's Republican governor, vetoed the measure.

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Scientology And The Religio-Wingnuts: Two Peas In A Deranged Pod

Persecution complex, denial of reality, fear of the “other”, enriching a few at the expense of others…where have I heard this before?

Read more

Michele Bachmann Is Still Bonkers ...

Minnesota's Ex Michele Bachmann (R) compared President Obama to Andreas Lubitz, the deranged German co-pilot who crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, on her Facebook page Tuesday. Bachmann posted:

With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings flight – a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks. After the fact, among the smoldering remains of American cities, the shocked survivors will ask, why did he do it?

The delusional lunatic has a long history of fear-mongering about Iran being a dire and imminent threat to the United States and to other nations. As a freshman member of Congress, Bachmann concocted wild fantasies about Iran’s sinister intentions and relayed them as true stories. In 2006, Bachmann stated:

Iran is the trouble maker, trying to tip over apple carts all over Baghdad right now because they want America to pull out. And do you know why? It’s because they’ve already decided that they’re going to partition Iraq.

And half of Iraq, the western, northern portion of Iraq, is going to be called the Iraq State of Islam, something like that. And I’m sorry, I don’t have the official name, but it’s meant to be the training ground for the terrorists. There’s already an agreement made.

They are going to get half of Iraq and that is going to be a terrorist safe haven zone where they can go ahead and bring about more terrorist attacks in the Middle East region and then to come against the United States because we are their avowed enemy.

Her bizarre scenario was completely fabricated, but that didn’t stop the moron from spreading her lies to gin up fear about the Iranian threat. In 2014, at the White House Xtmas Party, Bachmann told the President he needed to bomb Iran. She warned that if he didn’t, Iran would acquire nuclear weapons on Obama’s watch, and change the course of world history.

Fortunately, the lunatic fringe wingnut retired from her House seat and did not seek re-election in 2014. Unfortunately, she still has a large following on social media, so her delusional comments still carry sway with folks on the far right end of the American political spectrum.

Bachmann’s incessant fear-mongering about Iran is disturbing enough. Her offensive comparison between Obama and a demented airline pilot who intentionally crashed a plane and killed 149 innocent people is beyond the pale. President Obama bears no similarity to the disturbed co-pilot. Furthermore, given her own flirtations with the frayed ends of sanity, Michele Bachmann is in no position to judge which elected officials she considers deranged.

I’m Sorry, But You Actually Have to See This Horrible Thing Michele Bachmann Said

From the "Public Enemies" Department:

Look, the last thing I want to do with my life is give attention to Michele Bachmann. Her retirement from Congress was a gift bestowed upon the nation…

Michele Bachmann Is Insane