The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  

 

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France Just Made A Law Forcing Grocery Stores To Give Unsold Food To Charity

What France is doing is really cool.

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Obama Has Priceless Reaction To Little Girl’s White House Meltdown

After dealing with wingnuts, this is child’s play for the President!

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LOOK WINGNUTS: Grateful Immigrant Couple Leaves Entire $847k+ Estate To U.S. Government

For all the folks who believe immigrants need to hit the star-spangled road and stop rolling Uncle Sam, meet Peter and Joan Petrasek of Seattle, Washington.

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Republicans Have Passed 0 Jobs Bills During Their First 138 Days Running Congress

In their first 138 days in control of Congress, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have passed zero jobs bill. Instead, Republicans passed budgets that would give big tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

The numbers, as compiled by Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, reveal the truth about the Republican Party.

0: GOP jobs bills passed in the 114th Congress.

5: Additional times the House GOP has voted in the past 135 days to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act (2015 Vote #14, 2015 Vote #45, 2015 Vote #58, 2015 Vote #142, 2015 Vote #183).

58: Times so far House Republicans have voted to repeal or undermine the ACA since 2011.

100: Percent of House Republicans who voted against bringing up the student loan refinancing bill.

2.9 million: Number of jobs that would be destroyed under the House GOP FY 2016 Budget.

$2,000: More in taxes for middle-class American families with children greenlighted by the final FY 2016 Republican Budget.

$200,000: Average tax break for the wealthiest Americans making $1,000,000 or more greenlighted by the final FY 2016 Republican Budget.

99: Percent of House Republicans who voted against allowing a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act – a bill to ensure equal pay for equal work.

The only Republican attempt at a “jobs” bill was the Keystone XL legislation, which won’t create more than a handful of permanent jobs, and it isn’t a jobs bill. The Republican-run Congress has lived down to expectations. If you are a corporation in need of some regulatory rollback, or a wealthy person who wants a tax cut, the Republican Congress is your new best friend.

For working people, women, the poor, the disabled, veterans, and everyone else, Republicans are only interested in cutting what you have to give more to the wealthy.

The Republican Congress does not represent the majority of the American people. The congressional majority is being controlled by corporations and billionaires. Republicans are more interested in taking away your health care than creating an economic environment where people have good paying jobs.

The numbers don’t lie. Republicans are working against the interests of the majority in this country, which is why the American people must stand up and take their Congress back.

Fact Checkers Obliterate Republican ‘Proof’ That Hillary Clinton Had Secret Email Addresses

Fact checkers have dropped a bomb on Republicans by telling them that they do not have proof that Hillary Clinton had secret email addresses.…

No, Republicans, you don’t have your huffing, smoking gun.

We don’t get to live in a world where reality matters to one of the two political parties running our country. And so, it is left to fact-checkers to sift their way through the endless barrage of conspiracies breathlessly shared by “concerned” Republicans like  John Boehner‘s office, the Republican National Committee, Fox News, Breitbart, the Blaze et al after former Secretary of State and Democratic 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails were released.

FactCheck.Org drowned Republicans’ flaming hopes on Friday, announcing, “The Republican National Committee thinks it has the smoking gun that proves Hillary Clinton used “multiple secret email addresses” as secretary of state. It doesn’t.”

Oh, dear.

Here’s the story. The Republican National Committee histrionically announced to the world on May 18 that they had Hillary Clinton now because her published emails (New York Times) showed two accounts (hdr22@clintonemail.com and hrod17@clintonemail.com.) and she said she only had one while in office!

You see, they cried, she had “hrod17@clintonemail.com” while she was Secretary of State! GOTCHA!!!! We win 2016 even without a good candidate!!!

But wait. Clinton has an explanation that sorta makes a lot of sense, at least to the guy who invented email, and let’s face it, he’s probably better at email technology than the RNC or Speaker Boehenr’s office, if history is any indicator.

But the Clinton campaign says there is a simple explanation for this apparent discrepancy: The emails published by the Times were printed out in 2014 after Clinton had left the State Department and after she had changed her email address, so the printed copies of emails she sent while in office display her new address (hrod17@clintonemail.com), even though they were originally sent under her old address (hdr22@clintonemail.com). We agree that this is possible.
…

The Clinton explanation passed two tests — including one conducted for us by Ray Tomlinson, the man who is widely credited with inventing email.

The results of the test Tomlinson ran were consistent with the Clinton campaign’s explanation. Score a big one for reality and a large negative for the Republican claims. And FactCheck did their own test which also confirmed the Clinton campaign’s explanation:

We at FactCheck.org also tested Clinton’s explanation. Our IT staff created originaluser@asc.upenn.edu and renamed it newuser@asc.upenn.edu. An email sent by originaluser@asc.upenn.edu printed out as if it had come from newuser@asc.upenn.edu after we changed the name of the email account.

And so, at long last, there is no smoking gun for the Republicans’ conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton having secret email accounts (like many of their candidates and indeed politicians of both parties – kind of bizarre that they want to go here with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker on their side).

So while it is possible that there is a smoking gun about secret emails hiding out on Mars or wherever it is that Republicans get their wild ideas, they haven’t found it yet.

What we do know, however, is that the emails posted by the Times do not support the RNC’s claim that Clinton had “multiple secret email addresses” as secretary of state, and there is no evidence to contradict Clinton’s claim that she created hrod17@clintonemail.com after she left office.

No proof of multiple secret emails.

Sigh.

If this were not coming a party driven by and for conspiracy nuts, this would be the end of the exhausting and diligent effort to bust former Secretary Hillary Clinton for something. Anything. Especially related to Republicans’ favorite conspiracy, Benghazi.

FEC Can’t Enforce Federal Election Law, Thanks To Republicans

The FEC’s chairwoman has virtually given up trying to get any agreement on anything. Republicans are perfectly fine with this.

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Wingnuts Badly Photoshop Posters To Fake Anti-Clinton Sentiment

PATHETIC: Simply Pathetic

Wingnut outlets are reporting that anti-Hillary posters are taking New York City by storm. But there’s a small problem…

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Republicans who cut science budgets are stupid and they're malicious

Their Goal: Official Ignorance

Somebody needs to wipe the climate-change-denying smile off Lamar Smith's mug.
The story about Republicans in committee axing big hunks of government science budgets sparked a deluge of social media and other commentary last week. Here's Elizabeth Kolbert at The New Yorker:

Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA’s earth-science budget. “Earth science, of course, includes climate science,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is also on the committee, noted. (Smith said that the White House’s NASA budget request favored the earth sciences “at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration.”) Johnson tried to get the cuts eliminated from the bill, but her proposed amendment was rejected. Defunding NASA’s earth-science program takes willed ignorance one giant leap further. It means that not only will climate studies be ignored; some potentially useful data won’t even be collected.

The vote brought howls of protest from NASA itself and from wider earth-science circles. The agency’s administrator, Charles Bolden, issued a statement saying that the bill “guts our Earth science program and threatens to set back generations worth of progress in better understanding our changing climate.”
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia and the former president of the American Meteorological Association, said that he could not sleep after hearing about the vote. “None of us has a ‘vacation planet’ we can go to for the weekend, so I argue that NASA’s mission to study planet Earth should be a ‘no-brainer,’ ” he wrote.

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Wall Street Remains Unoccupied By Ethics

Nearly seven years after the American economy foundered under the worst global recession since World War II, it seems nothing much has changed with regard to the behavior…

What Great Recession?

Hillary Makes Hedge Funders Cry

Hillary Clinton's remarks on the stark difference between hedge funders' compensation and kindergarten teachers hit hedgies where it hurt.

Boo Hoo 

Republican Donor Adelson Tied To Organized Crime

A U.S. court will hear accusations that Sheldon Adelson, a major Republican donor, has ties to organized crime in China.

Adelson and Organized Crime

Fox Attacks Media For Not Blaming Turmoil In Middle East On Obama

Fox News wonders why people on the TV don't blame Obama for ISIL, like they do.

Fox doesn't do well with reality

Fox’s Gutfeld Exploits Quadruple Murder Arrest To Smear Almost Everyone Fox Hates

If you thought the arrest of Darron Dellon Dennis Wint for the quadruple murder of a Washington, D.C. family and their housekeeper was something Fox News would avoid politicizing, think again.

Fox Exploits Quadruple Murder 

Fox Hack Calls Young Female Journalists 'Fucking Morons'

The Fox hack was leading a panel on what he described as "bitter boomers" while he inadvertently portrayed himself as a bitter man.

Fox hack is a moron

Link found between anti-abortion attitudes and sexism

Do anti-abortion stances correlate with sexist attitudes toward women? Let's find out, with science!

"The results showed that as people increasingly endorsed hostile sexist views, they were statistically significantly more likely to hold anti-choice abortion attitudes," [researcher Stephanie Begun] told The Huffington Post. "The same was true for people who endorse benevolent sexist views of women -- and to the exact same degree as those who endorsed hostile sexist views."

Well, duh. How fascinating, from a purely scientific point of view.

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What Is Quiverfull?

Vyckie Garrison was once a minor celebrity in the Quiverfull Movement, made famous by TV’s Duggar family. Here she explains the movement's basic tenets.

Here’s a look inside the Duggars’ dangerous 'christian' cult

Moronic 'christian hack': Molestation-hiding Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar aren’t hypocrites — liberals are

A 'christian' hack who spews on Glenn Beck’s website has joined with former Governor Mike Huckabee, defending Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar for hiding the fact that their eldest son had been molesting his sisters, while at the same time they were using their soapbox to lecture on sexual morality.

Molestation-hiding Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar ARE hypocrites

Arkansas Police Destroy Josh Duggar’s Record After Mike Huckabee-Appointed Judge Orders It

One day before Mike Huckabee defended child molester Josh Duggar on Facebook, a judge he appointed while Governor of Arkansas ordered police to destroy...

Arkansas Police Destroy Josh Duggar’s Record

Republicans, Family Research Council and Josh Duggar Are A Match Made In Heaven

Most people have a person or thing they regard as a representative symbol of something they consider an ideal worth emulating, even if only in secret. For most Republicans Ronald Reagan is their paragon of choice, and for real 'christians', jesus christ is the idol they most revere. However, since both Reagan and jesus are long dead, America’s 'neo-christians' and Republicans consolidated a wingnut demigod and evangelical icon into one ideal to worship and regard as “a family that is the epitome of wingnut values” and something all evangelicals and Republicans can easily “connect with.” At least that is what Republican hero, ‘Quiverfull’ product, biblical spokesman, reality television star, and child molester Josh Duggar claimed in his role as executive director of the Family Research Council’s (FRC) political arm last year.

It is curious that so many Americans were surprised over the revelations that a religio-wingnut idol is guilty of molesting his sisters, or that Republicans embraced the FRC’s icon they must have at least suspected was a fraud. In fact, the close relationship between Republicans, the FRC, and Josh Duggar was a match made in heaven. The idea of being a rank hypocrite guilty of heinous acts and yet free of guilt due to the ‘saving grace of jesus christ‘ informs what it means to be a socially wingnut 'neo-christian' Republican. One of the reasons Republicans can cheat on their wives and disappear while governor, launder money as House speaker, or pressure their wife and mistress to get an abortion and still be revered in wingnut religious circles is because 'christians' are “blessed to have a jesus who forgives and forgets.” Americans are expected to do the same and there is little doubt that Duggar will be back in the Republican spotlight sooner than most Americans would like to believe.

Republicans are silent now because Duggar’s value as an evangelical electoral asset has not been lost according to some seriously sick and revealing statements of support from the religio-wingnuts that agree with Mike Huckabee that criticism of Duggar is unwarranted because jesus forgave him. After all, evangelicals contend that “boys are just curious. This story shouldn’t even be in the news. Its (sic) not current. Its (sic) done, over, and has been forgiven. None of us have any need to say anything. It was reported, and its (sic) been handeled (sic). Its (sic) over.” And, “everyone makes mistakes but our dog is a forgiving dog. He died on the cross not only for sins of that time but for future sins as well.”

Sadly, many Americans embrace that whole biblical forgiveness concept and there is little doubt Josh Duggar, his Quiverfull mother, and criminally-complicit father will be embraced with open arms by an adoring public once the molestation furor dies down; and like it or not it will die down. Americans are loath to remember even the worst sins committed by Republicans because jesus forgives all Republican transgressions. It is why Republican politicians, particularly those running for president, who embraced Josh Duggar are remaining silent because as they depended on his close relationship with the Family Research Council for electoral and legislative support before the molestation revelation, they will need his support again. In fact, except for baptist preacher and perennial presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, only the Family Research Council has made a statement about Josh Duggar’s announcement he is stepping away from his job as FRC’s legislative advisor. An important advisor to Republican presidential candidates, Republicans in Congress, and Republicans in state legislatures who are opposed to women’s reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and marriage equality.

Actually, although FRC commented on Duggar’s resignation, it did not issue a dedicated press release. Instead FRC chose to remark on Duggar’s “personal issue” on the front page of its website. It simply says, “Today Josh Duggar made the decision to resign his position as a result of previously unknown information becoming public concerning events that occurred during his teenage years. Josh believes that the situation will make it difficult for him to be effective in his current work. We believe this is the best decision for Josh and his family at this time. We will be praying for everyone involved.” The organization’s claim to fame, besides demonizing the LGBT community for what it claims are violations of biblical law, is allegedly as a devout and fierce protector of children and families. However, the ‘family values‘ organization never identified the “concerning events” leading to Duggar’s resignation. In fact, based on the claim that FRC’s primary motivation for all of its political and religious activism, its silence on Duggar’s actions is revealing as to its hypocritical inclinations; but then again the evangelical organization is praying for the Duggars and acknowledges that jesus forgave him so obviously jesus forgives FRC’s hypocrisy as well.

One of the ‘issues‘ that the Family Research Council harps on consistently, and is specifically belabored publicly by Josh Duggar is “the evil done to children in one of its worst forms;” something the forgiven molester knows well.  Over the years FRC’s well-documented history of lies and deceit include demonizing the LGBT community as an existential threat to America’s children. In a document FRC released in 2002 about the time Duggar was dealing with his “personal issue” titled “Homosexuality and Child Abuse,” (still on FRC’s website) claims “The evidence indicates that homosexual men molest boys at rates grossly disproportionate to the rates at which heterosexual men molest girls.”

FRC knows that pedophilia is not motivated by sexual orientation, and if they had taken the time to ask their executive director Josh Duggar, his birth-machine mother Michelle Duggar, or his Quiverfull patriarch dad Jim Bob Duggar, they would have understood that sexuality in no way informs the particularly heinous behavior. In 2010, FRC leader Tony Perkins and Senior Fellow Peter Sprigg complained loudly that scientists refuse to accept the evangelical assertion that there is a “direct correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia,” a claim Perkins repeated again just a year ago. And something Josh Duggar claimed restricting the rights of LGBT Americans was crucial to “protecting the well-being of children in our cities.”

There is a movement afoot to pressure The Learning Channel (TLC) to cancel the Duggar’s reality show, and although Josh Duggar’s actions are unforgivable, and his Quiverfull parent’s concealing his “personal issue” are criminal, the Duggars still have millions and millions of ardent supporters. Likely included in those supporters are Republicans who depend on the evangelical vote like most humans depend on air to survive. Based on the outrage among evangelicals that decent Americans are appalled that the “family that is the epitome of conservative values” is under fire and faces being taken off the air, it is doubtful that Josh Duggar will be out of commission for long.

If evangelicals wonder why the christian religion is losing favor among Americans, they should take a long hard look at how they easily forget truly despicable acts by their heroes in Republican ranks and religious activist movement just because their jesus forgives them. What they fail to acknowledge is that most Americans are not jesus and cannot forgive, much less forget, something as vile and twisted as an entire family covering up child molestation while preaching to Americans to hold them up as family values’ icons.

***

Editor's Note: TLC has pulled the plug on the Druggar's 'reality' show ... for now. Whether or not it is cancelled permanently is another question.