The Daily Drift

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The Republican Hatred Of President Obama Loses More Ground As President Obama Is Named ‘Most Admired Man In The World’

They call him a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Marxist Communist Dictator.  The lies and disrespect they’ve spread about him are unprecedented of any other President in history.

All the while, his approval ratings grow.  He smirks and shrugs it off while his policies and actions continue to help our country out of the hole created by his predecessor.
He is the President of the United States of America, and whether they like it or not, he is admired and respected by more people in this country than any other man, for the seventh year in a row.
Gallup released its annual poll of who Americans admire most, and President Obama topped the list.  While the sitting President typically gets the nod for the most admired man, Obama’s reign in the top spot is especially significant when you consider how far the right has gone to discredit his every move, obstruct his entire agenda and disrespect him and his family over the dumbest of non-issues.
According to Gallup:

Obama has appeared on the top 10 list each year since 2006, including ranking No. 1 in each of the last seven years, all by healthy margins over the second-place finisher. The incumbent president is nearly always the winner of the most admired distinction, having placed first in all but 12 of the 68 years the question has been asked.

Democrats and Democratic leaners widely choose Hillary Clinton (20%) and Barack Obama (33%) as the most admired woman and man, respectively. Not unexpectedly, Republicans and Republican leaners are much less likely to name either as their most admired. In fact, former Secretary of State Rice edges out Winfrey and Clinton as the most admired woman among Republicans. Obama and Pope Francis tie as the most admired man among Republicans, at 8%.

Republicans’ and Democrats’ top five most admired women include both Clinton and Winfrey, and their top five most admired men include both the president and the pope. Beyond these, their choices differ.

You can clearly see that the ignorant base of the GOP weren’t excluded from the poll as Bill O’Reilly, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin each received 1% of the vote.

Despite claims that she personally murdered 4 people in Benghazi and has some super-secret squirrel emails confirming it, Hillary Clinton topped the list of most admired woman for seventeen of the last eighteen years.
The news doesn’t bode well for Republican Presidential candidates, since Clinton currently holds no public office.  Her popularity continues to rise as Americans tire of Republican policy failures.

President Obama Runs Up Big Wins In His Crackdown On Mitt Romneyesque Tax Cheats

The mainstream press has ignored it, but President Obama has racked up a series of major victories against the wealthiest Americans who try to hide money overseas in order to avoid paying taxes.

The Hill’s Bernie Becker and Peter Schroeder reported:

President Obama’s battle against offshore tax evaders hasn’t gotten the publicity of some of his other priorities but under his tenure the IRS has amassed a string of victories — perhaps none larger than undercutting the Swiss banking sector’s status as the gold standard for secrecy.
….

Taken altogether, the crackdown appears to be having an impact, according to experts.

“The risk calculus for an American to hide money somewhere has changed dramatically from where it was 10 years ago. Dramatically,” said Scott Michel, an expert on offshore tax issues with Caplin & Drysdale.

The President’s efforts aren’t getting the media attention that deserve, but Obama has cracked down on wealthy tax cheats who are trying to hide their money overseas in order to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

In 2012, it was estimated that the wealthiest Americans were hiding $70 billion overseas. Globally it was estimated that as much as $32 trillion was being hidden overseas. For the first time in recent history, a U.S. president is going after those who are breaking the law in order to hide paying their fair share.

As a presidential candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney refused to release his tax returns. Speculation as to why was centered around the complicated financial overseas maze that Romney had set up in order to avoid paying his fair share of taxes. While experts caution that the IRS might only be catching the small fish right now, the fact that anyone is being caught is a major victory for people who have unfairly had more of the tax burden placed on their shoulders because they are honest and play by the rules.

President Obama is bringing about positive change in both ways both big and small, seen and unseen, on a regular basis.

This is the type of new direction that millions of Americans voted for twice when they elected Barack Obama, and it represents change that they really can believe in.

Connecticut proposes fining large companies that pay workers so little they depend on welfare

Connecticut gained widespread attention in recent years as a national leader in Democratic circles by increasing the minimum wage and passing a first-in-the-nation statewide mandate for paid sick days for some service employees.Business lobbyists battled against those measures as job-killers, while liberal lawmakers hailed Connecticut as a progressive leader for workers.
Now, union members are trying to take a third step with another first-in-the-nation bill that would place fines on large employers with more than 500 workers who fail to pay wages of at least $15 per hour. The fine would be $1 per hour per employee and could raise as much as $305 million for the state in the 2017 fiscal year that could then be used for child care and for home care for the elderly.

More

Bank Workers Tell Their Bosses: Stop Making Us Sell Shady Products To Poor People

The call for reform is coming from inside the bank!

Liberal Democrats Mount A Furious Offensive To Protect Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal

Senate and House liberals are going on offense and making progress in protecting President Obama’s deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

The Hill reported:

Liberal Democrats have mounted a furious offensive to convince Senate Democrats to oppose legislation the White House warns could kill a nuclear deal with Iran.In moves that appeared coordinated, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced her opposition to a bill that would give Congress a vote on the emerging deal. Minutes later, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone a planned vote next week.

….

But now several of the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors won’t say whether they’ll vote to approve it on Tuesday at a panel markup. They are demanding that Republicans tone down provisions opposed by the White House.

….

A Senate aide said some Democrats are beginning to second-guess their support for the bill in the wake of the administration’s announcement last week that it had reached a preliminary deal.

The Democrats who were thinking that they could support the Republican bill without political consequences have gotten a rude awakening. It is important to note that the debate isn’t about whether or not Congress should have the ability to review the agreement. Questions are centered around the fact that Republicans have crafted a bill that would give them the power to kill the deal.

The message being sent is that liberal Democrats are not going to allow Republicans to squash the President’s diplomatic efforts. Democrats and liberals are fighting back. Liberal and progressive groups sent a letter to Senate Democratic leaders that warned them that they will be held accountable if they help Republicans kill the Iran deal.

Liberals and Democrats know that popular support is on their side. The Republican rhetoric about a good deal versus a bad deal is not working. A war-fatigued American public is treating the Republican objections to diplomacy with well-deserved skepticism. The last time Republicans were allowed to ignore diplomacy in the Middle East; the U.S. ended up invading Iraq.

Liberals, Democrats, and a majority of the American people are fighting for diplomacy because they aren’t about to be fooled in a new American war in the Middle East.

Liberal Groups Vow To Hold Democrats Accountable If They Help Republicans Kill Obama Iran Deal

Liberal groups Credo, Daily Kos, Democracy for America, MoveOn.org Political Action and USAction sent a letter to Senate Democratic leadership warning them that they will be held accountable if they vote to help Republicans kill the deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

The groups wrote:

Senate Democrats are now faced with a choice: Support President Obama’s diplomacy or vote with Republicans to potentially start a war with Iran. There is no third option. A historic vote on a nuclear deal with Iran is coming. Like the 2002 vote to give President George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq, Democrats who end up on the wrong side of it will have to answer for their decision for the rest of their careers.

….

We urge you to support the diplomatic process, and ensure that Democrats don’t deliver the Republicans the votes they need to override a presidential veto of diplomacy-killing legislation and begin yet another war of choice in the Middle East.

It is time for Democrats, liberals, progressives, and all supporters of peace to step up and pressure Senate Democrats to make sure that they sustain any veto issued by President Obama in response to Republican attempts to kill the deal that the international community has negotiated with Iran.

As The President has pointed out, the choice is between war and peace. Republicans like Tom Cotton (R-AR) are arguing that Iran’s nuclear facilities could be destroyed with a short bombing campaign. What Cotton doesn’t say is that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities will result in a new war in the Middle East.

The left is firmly united in their support of President Obama’s diplomatic efforts, and if Senate Democrats refuse to listen to what their supporters want, they will pay at the ballot box for years to come.

Fifth Circuit’s Use of Precedent Dooms Republican Lawsuit on Obama Immigration Action

No matter how Republicans try to spin the President’s Executive Actions on Immigration, their attempt to sue the President into submission will fail.  The latest indicator of that is a unanimous ruling by the Fifth Circuit.  That ruling was made by 2 Republican judges and one Democratic judge.

Conservative Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas will  not have the last word about President Obama’s Executive actions on Immigration.

A panel of judges (2 Republicans and a Democrat) at the fifth circuit unanimously dismissed a similar suit brought by Mississippi, on two grounds.  First, the court ruled that the states which brought the suit do not have standing.  Second, the court’s interpretation of DACA and DAPA recognizes that deferred action is a form of prosecutorial discretion.  This completely contradicts the reasoning that Judge Hanen used to support his ruling.  This is significant because it goes to show that legal minds across the political spectrum recognize the deferred action is a form of allowing prosecutors to prioritize which immigration cases to pursue.

In plain English, the fifth circuit said Mississippi failed to prove it was damaged by the President’s executive actions, one of the things a party has to prove to have standing in a case.

Even if Mississippi had proved it had standing, the fifth circuit relied on precedent to reject the sort of reasoning Andrew Hanen used to substantiate his ruling.  In simple terms,  The fifth circuit said the President’s Executive Actions were deferred actions and deferred actions are a form of prosecutorial discretion.

As Sahil Kapur of TPM reported, experts on immigration law say this ruling destroys the Republican Party’s effort to use the courts to circumvent President Obama’s Executive Actions.

“I think DACA and DAPA will really turn on the same decision. I can’t see any meaningful distinction other than DAPA involves more people then DACA,” said Stephen Legomsky, a professor of immigration law at Washington University.

There is a lot of precedent, including from the Supreme Court of the United States to support this interpretation.

Since there are conflicting rulings this case is headed to the Supreme Court of the United States.  In likelihood, it will rule in favor of the Obama Administration given, the Court’s take on deferred action in a 2012 ruling.  Even Justice Scalia, who dissented in that case, didn’t claim that Executive Actions, such as the ones at issue now, are unconstitutional.

As noted by Immigration Impact‘s analysis of that case, Conservative Justices on the Supreme Court would have a serious problem in trying to rule against Obama’s executive actions.

But while Scalia clearly thought the administration’s policy was unwise, nowhere did he claim it to be unconstitutional. Nor could he, for as Scalia himself recognized in a 1999 opinion, the decision to grant a deferred action request neither requires statutory authorization nor is subject to review by federal courts.

No doubt, Republicans will try to take this case to the Supreme Court. However, the Arizona case shows that even the staunchest conservative Justices are unwilling to unravel previous rulings they made on the question of deferred action as a form of prosecutorial discretion. But then, it isn’t like there are better ways to use government resources than on frivolous law suits.

Sorry Wingnuts – Appeals Court Sides With Obama On First Immigration Order

A three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that neither Mississippi, nor immigration officials, could show how the Deferred...

So Sorry Wingnuts

Tom Delay’s Republican Crusade to Establish Theocracy Is Doomed To Fail

The Crusades were christian military campaigns sanctioned by the catholic cult during the High and Late Middle Ages with the stated goal of ‘restoring’ christianity in the Middle East that was never a christian region. After a 200-year struggle to impose  christianity and control the “Holy Land,” the conflict ended in failure leading the catholic cult to abandon its attempt at imposing christianity on the Middle East. Fast forward to 21st Century America and with the United States coven of catholic bishops and their Republican onward christian soldiers among the religio-wingnut leading the charge, a new Crusade is underway and it will face the same fate as over a millennia ago. The difference this time around is that the so-called “holy land” is America that like 10th Century Middle East was never a christian nation. Still, the religious Republican and neo-christian movement intends on restoring this country to a make-believe land that has never existed.

Over the past week christian fanatics have ramped up their war rhetoric over the outrage of decent Americans who are appalled Republicans are passing theocratic edicts subverting the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal and civil rights for all Americans. The christian wingnuts have been big on claiming they are being persecuted each time they are prohibited from forcing christianity on all Americans, but the furor surrounding the Indiana “license to discriminate” law has incited them to declare war on Americans who adhere to common decency and the  Constitution instead of a couple of verses in an archaic book of hebrew mythology.

We reported that the christian wingnuts were prepared to ‘rise up’ against their oppressors because they cannot legally discriminate against gays. However, their crusade is far and away much more than just eliminating gay rights, and gays, from America; more on that later. The latest indication that Republicans will enjoin the catholic bishops’ and religious right’s war against the Constitution, was disgraced former speaker of the house Tom Delay who said unapologetically that “gays undermine his religious liberty.” That’s right, what Delay is saying, and the religious right concurs, is that what subverts the evangelical wingnut’s religious freedom and persecutes christians is that gays exist and are allowed to live in America. It is a very telling statement about the direction Republicans intend on taking the nation on behalf of their most reliable voting bloc.

Delay followed up where Rick Santorum and his ilk started and called for christians to “fight this battle to the bitter end because when you let the government dictate what you believe and what your values are, this county is finished.” Now, no-one, much less the government, has dictated to the hate-infested religious right what they believe or what their values are. The Constitution guarantees they can believe whatever they want and no American cares what their values are or how they conduct their personal lives; that is the difference between the christian wingnuts and the rest of America. What Americans do not condone is the religio-wingnuts imposing their beliefs on and forcing Americans to embrace their values under color of Republican theocratic legislation.

DeLay wasted little time assailing the governors of Indiana and Arkansas for changing so-called “religious liberty” laws to adhere to the U.S. Constitution and prevent discrimination against LGBT people. According to  Delay, “This is the result of the gay agenda. We’re now seeing what the gay agenda is all about; our religious liberty.” According to Delay, “our religious liberty, as it’s described in the Declaration of Independence, is that we get our rights from our creator, and from that we get that we’re the good people that can govern through the Constitution. What they’re trying to do is undermine religious liberty so that they become accepted. We have got to fight this battle to the bitter end or this county is finished.” Delay also said that if a gay person “asks me to undermine my values, what I believe in, undermine my religious liberty, then I have the right to stand up for what I believe in.”

First, no gay person is going to ask an evangelical to undermine their values; they just do not care about their ‘values’ until they become oppressive. Second, standing up for what they believe in might include imposing theocratic edicts on the entire population in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, but this is America and the religious right would do well to remember that in a real war, anti-religious tyranny Americans crushed the Taliban in short order. That is precisely what awaits Delay and his religious right cohort’s “battle to the bitter end” according to a recent poll.

Results of a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) last week revealed that 80% of Americans oppose allowing christians to discriminate against gay or lesbians for any reason, much less because as Delay contends gays exist. In fact, greater majorities opposed religiously-grounded businesses discriminating against any group over anything because it is inherently un-American and patently unconstitutional. Likely, the great majority of Americans are cognizant that regardless what evangelicals claim, America is not a christian theocracy and the christian bible is not the law of the land; much less an obscure verse or two claiming god is mad at gays. As an aside, Old Testament god, the bible, christianity, or opposition to gays is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution any more than there is an Article establishing America as a christian theocracy.

There is still, sadly, a misconception among Americans that these religious freedom advocates and their Crusade against the Constitution is solely about gays. Since this war has been sanctioned and started by the United States coven of catholic bishops, it is also about restricting women’s reproductive rights the Supreme Court’s papal-5 ruled was the USCCB and evangelicals’ legal right when they attempted to establish the Vatican’s Humanae Vitae as law of the land for theocracy-minded Republicans.

If Americans think for a second this religious crusade to impose theocracy on the nation is only about gays or women, they seriously need to think again. The fundamentalists’ crusade is for the right to discriminate in public accommodations and hiring practices, to interfere with every American’s  family formation, sexual intimacy, and childbearing decisions. The christian fanatics also want the right to use public funds and buildings to propagate biblical values and priorities in schools, and all while freeloading on taxpayer-funded infrastructure without contributing because they are tax-exempt. The religio-wingnut Republicans also demand to legislate their biblical right to withhold medical care for women and children as exemplary followers of christ exercising religious liberty. On that account, President Obama finally broke the unwritten law against uttering an unkind word against christian barbarism during Tuesday’s Easter prayer breakfast. He is the first politician to recognize that America’s neo-christian movement is as a far afield from christ’s teachings as the Sun is from the Earth and it was a welcomed and praiseworthy acknowledgment.

If the religio-wingnuts want a war, they are damn sure going to get one because the overwhelming majority of Americans are finally getting a real-time look at what American neo-christianity’s version of religious liberty entails and how it will ultimately affect their lives. If nothing else, the firestorm over Indiana’s so-called religious freedom law exposed the evangelical and religious Republican movement’s intent to use religion to subvert every other Americans’ equal and civil rights.

It is likely that most Americans comprehend that not only will the 21st Century American Crusade be against the gay community and women, but any American that fails to comply with whatever religious edict Republicans legislate on behalf of evangelical extremists. Make no mistake, today it is legislation legalizing discrimination against gays and restricting women’s access to reproductive care and next it will be legislation mandating cult attendance, forced prayer in public schools, and limiting voting to white christians; all ideas that have been proposed by religio-wingnut Republicans.

Republicans Hope To Turn Nevada Into A Playground For Voter Suppression

Republicans Hope To Turn Nevada Into A Playground For Voter Suppression

Colorado Republicans kill bill that would ban 'conversion therapy' for LGBT minors

Colorado Republicans Are Idiots

Wisconsin bans state officials from discussing climate change

From the "Following in the footsteps of idiots" Department:

Wisconsin bans state officials from discussing climate change

Bernie Sanders Shreds Rand Paul By Unmasking His Great Libertarian Fraud

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dropped the hammer on Rand Paul by exposing why the 2016 presidential candidate is no different from his fellow Republicans. …

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dropped the hammer on Rand Paul by exposing why the 2016 presidential candidate is no different from his fellow Republicans.

Video:

Video Link

Sen. Sanders was speaking about Rand Paul on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show when he said:

He’s a legitimate candidate, certainly. Basically, after you get through the nuances of a Rand Paul, or a Ted Cruz, or a Jeb Bush, kind of their views are pretty much the same. That is tax breaks for millionaires, more spending for the military, cuts in Social Security/Medicare, and Medicaid, taking as much money as you can from billionaires. It’s kind of their agenda.

Host Larry Wilmore asked if Paul was legitimate by being different from that. Sanders answered, “No. His difference that is the Republican DNA. It’s to make the rich richer while everyone else becomes poorer…His nuances are civil liberties, where he has taken some good positions, and I agree with him on that.”

After other panelists suggested that Paul should reach out to women and gays in the same way that he has reached out to African-Americans, Sanders explained why that will never happen, “The problem he has is that it is hard to reach out to women when you are anti-choice. It’s hard to reach out to the gay community when you don’t support gay marriage.”

Wilmore asked how Paul can be a Libertarian and anti-choice, when Roe vs. Wade was decided based on the privacy issue.

Bernie Sanders exposed Sen. Paul as being the same old kind of Republican. Beneath Paul’s rhetoric about liberty and freedom is a candidate who is a pro-billionaire corporatist who believes that the wealthy are entitled to more freedom, and that the same freedoms that he talks about with such reverence don’t apply to women and gays.

Sen. Sanders hit on all of the major contradictions that make Rand Paul an unelectable fraud. Paul may hold a few good positions, but the core of his ideology is solidly Republican, and not any different from his fellow GOP candidates.

Rand Paul And The Nasty Campaign To Turn Pro-Choice Women Into Monsters

Focusing on late-term abortions provokes emotions, but it misses some fundamental realities about how abortion restrictions actually work.

Rand Paul Loses More Votes By Calling Women’s Rights ‘Details’

Rand Paul kept his day of disaster rolling along by referring to women's rights as a "detail" in an interview

Shortly after Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) humiliated himself on national TV by attacking Savannah Guthrie on the Today show, Phillip Elliot at the Associated Press (AP) published an interview with the Senator and newly announced presidential hopeful in which he refused to say where a pregnant woman’s rights begin and those of the fetus end.

The Senator referred to such rights as “details”.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Paul would not say where, in his view, a pregnant woman’s rights begin and those of the fetus end.

“The thing is about abortion — and about a lot of things — is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you’re this or this or that, or you’re hard and fast (on) one thing or the other,” Paul said.

In the past, Paul has supported legislation that would ban abortion except in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life. At other times, he has backed bills seeking a broader abortion ban without those exceptions.

Campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Paul told the AP that people get too tied up in these details and it’s his conviction that “life is special and deserves protection.”

But whose life is special and deserves protection? Not women’s lives, given Paul’s history on the subject.

Senator Paul must not have thought he could get away with accusing Elliot of “editorializing” (aka, reading his past positions out loud), but he still managed to dodge any specifics on policy, yet again. He came off as “testy” to the reporter who pushed for a definitive answer. Paul kept nattering on about the “sanctity of life”, in which is it is presumed he is discussing the “sanctity” of a fetus, not the pregnant woman carrying the fetus. Again, answering nothing but paying homage to empty right wing talking points.

The Republican Senator also managed to frighten women, again.

Two years ago, Paul sponsored a bill called “The Life at Conception Act of 2013″, which declared that its purpose was “to implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life… to life of each born and preborn human person.” The problem with this position is that sadly, this is an imperfect and sometimes cruel world and there is sometimes a choice to be made between the pregnant woman and the fetus.

The other problem for Senator Paul is if life begins at conception (his bill is a variation of the Personhood Amendments Republicans have been trying to push), then how can exceptions be made for rape or incest or life of the mother? The Personhood Amendment could also render some birth control illegal.

If we went with Paul’s bill, then the fetus would have more rights than the pregnant woman. How is that Libertarian? This can’t be disguised as anything other than a theft of rights to life from women. This is part of the biological design. Women get pregnant and carry the babies. Thus, women should be trusted to make the tough decisions about their own bodies and families. If Republicans like Paul really want to support life, they should start supporting programs for single mothers and children in poverty instead of attacking food programs for poor children.

Some of us don’t see our right to live as a “detail”. We’d like a definite answer confirming that a presidential candidate believes that we have the right to live and to make our own medical choices.

If Rand Paul is really running for president and not just playing spit in the eye of the media to raise money à la Sarah Palin, it’s going to be hard to get votes from women who fear that if Senator Paul were to win, they might be killed off. That’s just not a great way to recruit support.

Ted Cruz Says Factchecking Him Is The 'Yellow Journalism' Of 'Politi-fact'

Caught in his lies, Cruz deflects answering the question by saying fact-checking politicians is now yellow journalism

Ted Cruz Does Not Like Us Fact-Checking Him 

Bigotry Is Pretty Much All That Republicans Have Left

by Allen Clifton

Recently I wrote an article expressing my opinion that Republicans have officially become “the party of stupid.” To clarify, I didn’t write that piece as some kind of trolling effort to get conservatives worked up; it is my honest opinion that when we’re looking at the modern day Republican cabal, we’re looking at one of the few examples humanity has ever seen of human beings actually devolving.
Maybe that’s why so many of them doubt the theory of evolution.
As it stands now, we’re in a day and age where information is literally at our fingertips. We are at a point where the amount of information we’re given is almost a hindrance considering the vast amounts of misinformation that have become readily available.
The Republican party is a prime example. Like I’ve said previously, we’re no longer having discussions about what we need to do about the problems that science, math, history and reality tell us we need to solve; instead, we’re debating people who don’t believe in science, math, history or reality.
But it’s also occurred to me that the Republican cabal is just about out of “things” to turn to in order to defend their warped ideology.
It’s easy to deny science – at least for now. While the human race might one day not be able to inhabit this planet, there will come a day where climate change is undeniable even to those who vehemently deny its existence. As the saying goes, the great thing about reality is that it’s real whether or not you want to believe in it. Simply denying the existence of something that’s 100 percent real doesn’t negate the fact that it is, in fact, real.
The current push for these “religious freedom” laws are another prime example of Republicans ignoring reality to suit their own warped agenda.
The fact is, these laws make absolutely no sense – and Republicans know it. These people are actually trying to argue that their rights are being infringed upon because they can’t deny millions of Americans their Constitutional rights. It is easily one of the most asinine arguments I’ve ever heard. There’s no realm of logic, rational thought or reality where that train of thought makes even the slightest bit of sense.
That is, unless you realize that bigotry is really all the Republican cabal has left.
We’re at a point where the rallying cry of the Republican cabl is built around hate, fear, paranoia and anger. The cornerstone on which conservatives build their ideology in the year 2015 is based upon the judgment of others.
That’s how far they’ve devolved.
But the truth is, these tactics work. There are millions of Americans who constantly vote against their own interests based upon these bigoted stances supported by the Republican cabal; people who vote for politicians who want to cut – or flat-out do away with – the benefits they rely on to survive, all because they have some odd obsession with the private lives of homosexuals.
When you break it all down, the root of much of what drives the Republican party is bigotry:
Anti-abortion: Opposition to women’s rights Pro-war: Anti-Muslim Against immigration reform: Anti-immigrant Opposition to marriage equality: Anti-gay Stances against social programs: Anti-poor
When you take away everything else, the only things Republicans actually “support” are guns and the Bible – and they only use those two things so that they can manipulate people into supporting economic policies that favor the rich, while screwing over 99% of Americans.
So when you get right down to it, since the majority of Republicans reject science, math, history and reality all because their political ideology tells them to, bigotry is just about all they really have left.

Fox News Hack Desperately Tries To Defend Cop Who Killed Unarmed Black Man

Sadly, Rosen’s comments do exactly what they are intended to do: Distract us from the very real fact that the only person who didn’t get due process, who didn’t get a fair trial was Walter Scott.

Read more

A Bridge Too Far

Crowdfunding For Killer Cop Michael Slager Falls Flat

The crowdfunding site GoFundMe rejected a campaign to raise money for Michael Slager, the police officer charged with murdering Walter Scott in South Carolina. A fundraising effort set up on a competing site, Indiegogo.com was in operation on Thursday, but money was being raised at an anemic pace. As of 2 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, the Indiegogo site had raised just 546 dollars from 24 contributors.

The pathetic 500 dollar haul, pales in comparison to the over $400,000 Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson was able to raise through GoFundMe after he shot and killed Michael Brown. Although the cases aren’t exactly identical, the disparity in fundraising is stark. As noted here the tide is turning in favor of “black lives matter,” as evidenced by Time featuring the theme on its cover.

The egregious nature of the South Carolina shooting, captured on videotape, combined with the power of public protest, has apparently convinced GoFundMe to avoid being tainted by association with Officer Slager. While Indiegogo apparently couldn’t be persuaded not to participate in the circulation of blood money, the inability of Officer Slager to draw in the legions of wingnut contributors who flocked to support Darren Wilson is telling.

Perhaps the Slager killing was just so blatant and horrific that even wingnut defenders of police who shoot black men, couldn’t bring themselves to his defense. Or perhaps the murder of Walter Scott was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”, and represents a true tipping point in American public opinion towards police shootings of unarmed black men.

Crowdfunding sites raised over $200,000 for vigilante George Zimmerman after he killed Trayvon Martin.  Darren Wilson received nearly half a million dollars in contributions after killing Michael Brown. As of Thursday afternoon, Michael Slager hadn’t even reached his first 1000 dollars from crowd-funding sites. One site refused to operate a page on his behalf, and another site allowed a page to be put up for him, but it wasn’t attracting many contributors.