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Monday, June 8, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Editorial Comment

It was a busy week this past week.

We started off with a delay in our departure for our lecture at the Psychology Seminar due to a student find at the Archaeological site first thing Monday morning. (We did make the lecture, but it was close).
One of the students uncovered Spanish pottery where no one had thought the Spanish had been to prior to this find. While this may only be something traded for and not actually left by the Spaniards at this location, it does raise more than a few questions. It is known that the Spanish built and occupied forts/trading posts in the Southeastern US but how many and all their locations are not fully known especially when it comes to the mountain regions of the Great Smokies and Blue Ridge of NC and TN.

Speaking of our lecture - It was well received by the attendees who came to the conference on abnormal psychosis and it's effects on society. Our lecture dealt with the extraordinary delusions that cloud the regressive individual's mind and how those warped perceptions are a detriment to everyone and everything that individual comes in contact with. In plain English, our lecture was an wholesale indictment of the 'right wing' and received a standing ovation from an audience filled with people of science and intelligence (and the few regressive types in attendance were easy to spot before, during and after the lecture - to a man, they all had pinched faces and looked like someone urinated in their cornflakes that morning ... but the lecture on their anger problems was given by another lecturer (they did not like that lecture or lecturer either)

In great news this past week: Every poll, yes every poll and not those fantasy numbers pulled out of Roger Ailes' ass at Fox, shows Americans have had enough of the regressives and are returning to this nation's radical left and socialist roots. After seeing the total destruction of entire sections of America (the so called 'red states') and the drive to totally destroy the nation as a whole by the regressives, real Americans are rejecting them to save the nation from their tyranny which they like to call (and want us to call) 'freedom'. The only thing is, it is THEIR 'freedom' and not yours they are seeking - they want the 'freedom' to do what they want and you to have the 'freedom' to do what you are told ... it is as simple as that.

This nation was founded on Progressive Ideas and Ideals and has always been governed as such until the end of WW2 when the regressives stuck their bloated toes in the door and have been on a tear to destroy this nation ever since. The political cabal responsible for this does not need named (you all know which one it is whether you want to admit it or not) was founded in the early-mid 19th century for just that purpose. The reason the regressives began acting in earnest at that time was that WW1 had opened a generations eyes to their early shenanigans but most Americans were still nominally literate and could be still herded more readily although the regressives still could not carry out their schemes to fruition because of ingrained distrust of them among the American population. Then came WW2 and the explosion of literacy among American citizens freaked out the regressives and that is when they began their reign of terror because the more literate a society the less regressive it it is, so they began attacking everything America stood and stands for in the name of 'Murica'. To put it another way - they began saying Day is Night and Night is Day. A favorite tactic to this day ... accuse everyone else of what you are doing when in fact the opposite of everything they say is true. Going back to the Psychology Seminar - this is called transference and the regressive have mastered it ... the only thing they have mastered.
You can check out our posting on the WW2 connection to American literacy at our sister blog Carolina Naturally on the June 8, 2015 edition.

Thanks for reading The Truth Be Told.
Enjoy and Have Fun

Reject the Absolute Moral Corruption of the Republican Cult

The GOP is nothing more than a modern, reactionary cult designed to give religious justification for willful ignorance,bigotry, and bad behavior …
Duggar GOP
The Duggar affair has put the Republican Cabal’s false righteousness and moral corruption on display like nothing else in the past few decades. Every attempt to whitewash the scandal only exposes the bottomless abyss separating morality from the religio-wingnutst and their pet politicians.
Because there is no defense of the indefensible, this should be enough, you would think, to sink their cause – their claim to a moral high ground – forever.
When you see Mike Huckabee attack President Obama’s parenting while defending molester Josh Duggar, don’t you have to question Wingnut standards of morality? Add to this Huckabee’s condemnation of Beyonce while defending Ted Nugent’s lurid lyrics.
Supposedly the champions of an inflexible and monolithic morality, the religio-wingnuts have instead proven themselves to be champions of the most elastic moral relativism anyone could have imagined: anything they do – no matter how morally and ethically reprehensible – can somehow be reconciled to the Bible and forgiven. If all else fails, the guilty party need only play the ultimate Get Out of Hell Free card, “I found Jesus!” to walk away, reputation intact.
True crusaders against immorality would not hesitate to condemn their own. Indeed, would they not hold their own up to a higher moral standard? You would think.
Sarah Palin, whose daughter has had a child out of wedlock while she preaches a morality that condemns sex outside of marriage, still found it possible to accuse the left wing of hypocrisy in the Duggar case. She did not so much as bat an eye.
Worse yet, Sarah Palin supports abstinence education, and Bristol herself, despite being living evidence of abstinence’s failure, earned $262,000 as the Candie’s Foundation’s abstinence spokeswoman, reported the Associated Press in 2011.
The bible says of Bristol’s child, “Those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the lord” (Deuteronomy 23:2). Funny how the religio-wingnuts, while condemning America’s moral decay, didn’t notice the decay in their own midst.
Bristol Palin, without batting an eye, joined her mother in accusing liberals of hypocrisy.
Time and again we have watched these champions of “family values” exposed as hypocrites and frauds, with addictions to porn, even to child porn, to prostitutes, same and opposite sex, to mistresses on the side (sometimes in other countries), not to mention corruption – from Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Chris Christie to Jeb Bush – all Republican pretender hopefuls who have more claim to a cell than to the Oval Office.
The varied and repeated displays of immorality by Republican candidates, however egregious, hardly compares to their view of women as nothing more than fertile chattel, who, amusingly, think they’re actual people.
Not only do Republicans ignore biblical injunctions against their own behavior, but civil injunctions as well, even those set firmly in the United State Constitution. Somehow, everybody is guilty but them. If they are caught, they are not guilty, but persecuted. Victims of witch hunts, like those poor Duggars.
Nearly twenty centuries of destroying every alternative to itself under its belt, and even while they try to strip rights from women, gays, lesbians, and transgenders, to listen to these self-appointed representatives of the world’s largest religion, they are the ones being persecuted.
The persecutors are not the victims, no matter how often they try to play that card.
christianity has been persecuting all alternatives to itself for seventeen hundred years, almost without let up until the Enlightenment. Even then, laws designed to uphold some imaginary ideas of christian morality have repressed various minorities, religious and ethnic.
No one can forget that the bible was held up as justification for the enslavement of blacks, and that the same arguments once used against blacks are now used against gays. Every biblical injunction against a variety of equally egregious sins is ignored, except that pronouncement against “homosexuality” and that passage may not mean what the religio-wingnuts say it means.
All the other pronouncements of the Law of Moses, however explicit, are ignored. The bible hasn’t so much been cherry-picked as ignored. If “dog’s own party” has forgotten about Jesus, they have also barely scraped the surface of the old testament, from which they draw their fire and brimstone.
Displaying the ten commandments, which they do not even intend to follow, is the ultimate act of hypocrisy for the morally bankrupt Republican Cabal.
Those tablets are more an ancient billboard advertising all the ways in which Republicans violate the Law of Moses: they serve other dogs (jesus’ mammon, Matthew 6:24), they steal, they bear false witness, they commit adultery, and they covet just about anything you care to mention.
This is no longer christianity we are talking about, folks, because let’s face it, you can’t have christianity without christ, and the white guy with the AR-15 is not a jesus anyone recognizes.
RNC Chairwimp Reince Priebus has admitted the Republican Cabal is a religion. But they have no real claim to christianity. They are in fact nothing more than a modern cult based on a bizarre admixture of judaism and christianity, designed to give religious justification for willful ignorance, bigotry, and bad behavior, made worse by the same ugly ethnic nationalism that was the core of Hitler’s National Socialism.
The Republican Cabal, if any actual Republicans remain in its ranks, has two choices. Extract itself from the evil represented by the religio-wingnuts, and return to civil governance, or, like the religio-wingnuts, cease to be relevant and accept being replaced by a more viable political movement. With the nation moving left, they might want to decide soon.
2016 looms, and America won’t wait forever if they decide at last to catch up from the thirteenth century.

Definitions

72 Percent Of Americans Support Allowing Undocumented Immigrants To Stay in US

Almost 3 in 4 Americans think undocumented immigrants should be able to remain in the country legally if they meet certain requirements.…

Republican Heads Explode As Obama Vows To Keep Fighting For Undocumented Immigrants

obama-immigrants-weekly-address
As Republicans become more anti-immigrant, President Obama repeated his pledge to fight to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows during his weekly address.
In his weekly address, President Obama said:
Of course, we can’t just celebrate this heritage, we have to defend it – by fixing our broken immigration system. Nearly two years ago, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate came together to do that. They passed a commonsense bill to secure our border, get rid of backlogs, and give undocumented immigrants who are already living here a pathway to citizenship if they paid a fine, paid their taxes, and went to the back of the line. But for nearly two years, Republican leaders in the House have refused to even allow a vote on it.

That’s why, in the meantime, I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system more just and more fair. Last fall, I took action to provide more resources for border security; focus enforcement on the real threats to our security; modernize the legal immigration system for workers, employers, and students; and bring more undocumented immigrants out of the shadows so they can get right with the law. Some folks are still fighting against these actions. I’m going to keep fighting for them. Because the law is on our side. It’s the right thing to do. And it will make America stronger.

I want us to remember people like Ann Dermody from Alexandria, Virginia. She’s originally from Ireland and has lived in America legally for years. She worked hard, played by the rules and dreamed of becoming a citizen. In March, her dream came true. And before taking the oath, she wrote me a letter. “The papers we receive…will not change our different accents [or] skin tones,” Ann said. “But for that day, at least, we’ll feel like we have arrived.”
Well, to Ann and immigrants like her who have come to our shores seeking a better life – yes, you have arrived. And by sharing our stories, and staying true to our heritage as a nation of immigrants, we can keep that dream alive for generations to come.
Obama’s remarks are likely to send Republicans into ear-splitting fitful screams of amnesty. Last month, Ted Cruz summed up the Republican position, “Well, but if you grant in-state tuition to students who are here illegally, that comes at the expense of American citizens or it comes at the expense of legal immigrants who follow the rules to come here, you know, there’s a finite number of slots, and a finite number of dollars. And often the people that get left behind in this immigration debate are legal immigrants, are people like my dad who in 1957 fled Cuba, he came on a student visa, came here legally, and I think most American people outside of Washington agree that we need to secure the borders, we need to stop illegal immigration. Amnesty is wrong.”
Scott Walker has completely flipped-flopped on immigration, and now suggests that legal immigration should be reduced, “The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages. It is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today, is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that to be at the forefront of our discussion going forward.”
Being that many Republicans are taking hard-line stances against legal immigration, President Obama’s statements about getting undocumented immigrants right with the law should make their heads explode.
The Republican Party has become firmly anti-immigrant, which is why immigrant support for Democrats continues to grow even as President Obama’s time in office is winding down.

Mitch McConnell Admits That Obama Will Veto Any Obamacare Repeal That Republicans Pass

obama-mcconnell
During a radio interview, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted that Republicans are wasting their time with trying to repeal Obamacare because President Obama will veto any bill that they pass.
Transcript via Hugh Hewitt:
HH: Now I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the President to go along with a repeal of Obamacare, so I am one of those that urge getting as much as is possible and playing some poker, and you’re the guy to be playing poker with him. Is part of that poker package that would get the President’s signature, in your opinion, Mitch McConnell, repeal of the medical device tax?
MM: We certainly think it’s a terrible tax that’s offshored a great number of American jobs to other countries. I don’t think he’s going to sign anything, frankly.
HH: Oh, really?
MM: No, I don’t think he will. What I think he’ll probably do is veto anything we send him, and put the pressure on the states to cave and turn established state exchanges in place of federal exchanges, thereby making them eligible for subsidies. I think he’s going to put the heat on the governors who have, in my view, wisely decided not to go along with this new game plan, either with the Medicaid expansion or with establishing a state exchange.
In other words, McConnell admitted that Republicans in Congress are wasting their time, and your money on efforts to repeal the ACA. President Obama is never going to sign any bill that repeals any part of Obamacare, and Congressional Democrats have more than enough votes to uphold any presidential veto.
McConnell knows that any legislation that would repeal the law is dead on arrival, but he has promised to hold a vote on repealing Obamacare. In December 2014, McConnell said, “We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare… it was a very large issue in the campaign. And, the reconciliation process does present an opportunity and we’re reviewing that to see what’s possible through reconciliation. So, we’re certainly gonna keep our commitment to the American people to make every effort we can to repeal it.”
Mitch McConnell has promised something that he has no intentions of being able to deliver on, so Senate Republicans will waste time and money grandstanding against a health care law that is working. The whole repeal Obamacare charade is a sham, and exactly why Mitch McConnell has become the bookend to John Boehner’s failed House leadership.

Republican Nightmare Bernie Sanders Exposes Republican Social Security Killing Dreams on National TV

bernie sanders cnn wolf
Bernie Sanders is becoming a daily nightmare for Republicans. Sen. Sanders went on CNN today and cut through the Republican double talk by letting the entire country know the GOP plan for killing Social Security.
On CNN’s Wolf, Sanders said, Look, what Perry and these other guys are talking about, this is the decade-long attack on Social Security by the Republican Party. They want to privatize it eventually. They want to make cuts. We have millions of seniors struggling twelve, thirteen, fourteen thousand dollars a year. I will not accepting cutting Social Security.”
Blitzer asked Sanders about means testing and if millionaires and benefits deserve to get benefits. The Democratic presidential candidate answered, “They’re not talking about millionaires and billionaires. They’re talking about lowering it to forty thousand dollars a year…It’s a universal program. Everybody deserves to put into it. Everybody deserves to get a benefit out of it. We can extend that program by not asking anybody more than the top two percent to contribute into it.”
Republicans love to talk about “saving Social Security” and entitlement reform. What they don’t tell the American people is that they plan to save the program by killing it. Republicans oppose raising the earnings cap so that wealthy Americans pay more into the fund. What they support is imposing means testing requirements that will take Social Security away from anyone earning a middle-class income. In short, Republicans want to kill Social Security.
Bernie Sanders has become an even bigger nightmare for Republicans because, as a presidential candidate with growing support, he can get on national television and speak the truth to more Americans than ever before. Sanders is shaping more than the 2016 presidential campaign. The Senator from Vermont is also shifting the national political conversation.
Republicans are trying to stop Bernie Sanders because he is exposing their agenda speaking the truth to a media that has been most often too content to pass along talking points and lies.

The Obama Economy Sets A New Record: 63rd Consecutive Month of Private Sector Job Growth

ObamaSmile
May marks a new record for President Obama’s private sector job growth record, with the private sector adding 12.6 million jobs over 63 straight months of job growth. The Department of Labor announced Friday morning that the economy added 280,000 jobs. With businesses adding 262,000 jobs, this represents the 63rd consecutive month of private sector job growth.
Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, broke down the employment situation in May:
The private sector has added 12.6 million jobs over 63 straight months of job growth, extending the longest streak on record. Today we learned that private-sector employment rose by 262,000 in May. Our businesses created more than 200,000 jobs in fourteen of the past fifteen months—the first time that has happened since 1995. On the whole, our economy has added 3.1 million new jobs over the past twelve months, just off the fifteen-year high achieved in February.
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Other key points in Furman’s report were: “1. Manufacturing employment is up strongly as compared with the previous business cycle, while construction employment still has not recovered.” 2. “More highly educated Americans participate more in the labor force at all ages, and, compared with less educated workers, their participation does not drop off until much older ages.” 3. “The distribution of job growth across industries in May was highly consistent with the pattern observed over the past year.” 4. “The majority of industries experienced stronger job growth in May than they have on average over the past year.” (Read details here.)
Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi remarked in a statement that she was pleased with the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job growth, but the “Republicans’ constant culture of crisis continues to cast a shadow over our economy and the future of hard-working families.”
Pelosi urged Republicans to get to work, especially noting that the Highway and Transit Trust fund will be expiring in the middle of summer construction season but Republicans still have no plans to act and are endangering 700,000 jobs across the country, “With only 12 legislative days remaining before the Export-Import Bank’s charter expires, Republicans still refuse to reauthorize the bank that supports thousands of American businesses and hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Time is also swiftly running out before the Highway and Transit Trust fund expires in the middle of the summer construction season, but Republicans still have no plan to act – endangering thousands of vital construction projects and nearly 700,000 jobs across the country.”
Jason Furman summed it up with a statement making the case for raising the minimum wage and getting rid of the sequester, among other administration pushes::
The economy added 280,000 jobs in May—the strongest month of the year so far—as wages continued to rise and the participation rate ticked upward. We have now added 5.6 million jobs over the past two years, the best two-year job growth since 2000. Although the job market has made considerable progress throughout this recovery, challenges remain for our economy and there is more work to do. The President is committed to extending the positive underlying trends through a comprehensive agenda to boost employment and wages for the middle class, including opening new markets for U.S. goods and services through expanded trade, increasing investments in infrastructure, providing relief from the sequester, and raising the minimum wage.
President Obama, the alleged “socialist” president, has presided over the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job growth on record. Private sector.
Meanwhile, back in Congress, Republicans can’t even extend or pass the most basic of legislation let alone take care of the people with any attempt to create decent jobs.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon Smacks Down Anti-Union ‘Right To Work’ Bill With His Veto Pen

Jay Nixon
Missouri Democratic Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a controversial right to work bill (House Bill No. 116) last Thursday. In rejecting the legislation, Governor Nixon argued that “right to work” is a misnomer. He noted that:
Right-to-work laws create a less skilled workforce, drive down wages and directly interfere with a business owner’s right to contract.
The Governor went on to outline three specific objections to the legislation. He argued that House Bill 116 was bad for the economy, that it constituted unwarranted government interference into the operations of Missouri businesses, and that it needlessly exposed businesses to criminal prosecution and unlimited civil liability.
He concluded by stating:
I stand with the workers of Missouri and reject this wrongheaded legislation that will hurt our economy, our families and our businesses.
Had Nixon signed the bill, Missouri would have become the 26th right to work state in the country. Missouri borders six right to work states — Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee.
The conservative Missouri legislature does not appear to have the votes to override Governor Nixon’s veto. 109 votes in the House and 23 votes in the Senate are necessary to override the veto. The legislation that reached Nixon’s desk fell short of those vote thresholds in each chamber. House Bill 116 cleared the lower chamber 92-66 and it passed in the Senate 21-13.
Some Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the anti-union legislation, including most notably, Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey (SD 23- St. Charles).
Governor Nixon’s veto of the right to work legislation serves as a reminder to union members and working-class voters that elections matter. The ostensibly more liberal Midwest states of Wisconsin and Michigan recently pushed right to work laws through their Republican legislatures where the GOP governors dutifully signed them.
By contrast, conservative red-leaning Missouri was unable to enact right to work legislation. The Show Me State had the presence of mind to vote in a Democratic Governor who would stand up for the working people of Missouri in the face of a hostile GOP legislature. On Thursday, Governor Nixon did just that, protecting Missouri workers and smacking down the GOP legislature with the authoritative power wielded by his veto pen.

Voter Fraud

Hillary Clinton Terrifies Republicans By Calling For Automatic Voter Registration

hillary-clinton-voting
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did more than call out Republicans for trying to suppress the vote. She offered a proposal that would terrify Republicans to their very core. Hillary Clinton wants every American to be automatically registered to vote at age 18.
Clinton stood up for students who have to wait for hours for their right to vote, grandmothers who get turned away from the polls due to voter ID laws, and people who are being disenfranchised by laws that take away their right to vote due to felony convictions.
Former Sec. Clinton specifically called out North Carolina for passing a law that went after anything that made voting more accessible. She said, “We should be doing everything we can to get our young people more engaged in democracy, not less.”
Clinton hit Texas Republicans for allowed a concealed weapons permit for voting identification, but not a student ID. Clinton said most offenses against voting rights occur below the radar, like changing polling place locations and stripping polling places of language assistance.
The Democratic frontrunner cited studies that showed that minorities voters are more likely to wait in line and have to vote in places with an inadequate number of voting machines. Clinton said, “This kind of disparity does not happen by accident.” She said that it is just wrong to try to prevent, prohibit and undermine Americans right to vote, “We should be clearing the way for more people to vote, not putting up every roadblock that anyone can imagine.”
Clinton called out Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush for each taking action in their states that tried to stop citizens from voting. She asked Republicans why they were afraid of people voting, and said that she believes every citizen should have the right to vote, and it should be made easier to vote.
Hillary Clinton called on Congress to restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, the implementation of the recommendations of the bipartisan presidential commission on voting including online absentee voting and no one should have to wait more than thirty minutes to cast a vote, 20 days of early voting, including weekend and evening early voting.
Clinton went beyond any other proposal by calling for universal automatic voter registration. She called for every young man and woman to be automatically registered to vote, unless they opt out. Clinton also wants people’s voter registration to move with them.
She was realistic by stating that none of these reforms will come easily. Clinton stressed the need for more citizens voting, and activists, and grassroots mobilization efforts, more justices on the Supreme Court, who will protect voting rights. She said, “We need a Supreme Court that cares more about protecting the right to vote of a person that protecting the right of a corporation to buy an election.”
Clinton’s speech revealed why millennials are overwhelmingly supporting Democrats. Hillary Clinton didn’t just fight back against Republican efforts to suppress the vote. She proposed a game-changing idea that should terrify Republicans, who are doing everything in their power to shrink the size of the electorate.
If Clinton’s proposal became a reality, Republican voter suppression efforts would instantly vanish. Every American should be automatically registered to vote. Whether or not they vote is their choice, but the idea that voting should be made more difficult is un-American.
Be afraid Republicans. Be very afraid, because Hillary Clinton is not only the most experienced candidate in either party, she is also demonstrating a forward thinking vision that is completely absent on the Republican side.

Voter Fraud Part Deux

Why Rick Perry Is More Likely To End Up In Prison Than Be Elected President

perry-campaign-launchRick Perry announced his 2016 presidential candidacy as he is currently facing 109 years in prison for abusing his power as governor. Perry is more likely to end up in prison than be elected president.
Rick Perry’s campaign announcement was straight out of 2012, with the exception of Perry stealing Elizabeth Warren’s line about the game being rigged. Perry said, “Capitalism is not about the gains of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.” Perry followed this statement up by calling for the immediate repeal of Dodd-Frank and the rollback of regulations.
Perry also promised to approve the Keystone pipeline and launch an energy war against Putin and Russia by exporting U.S. natural gas to Europe. Everything Perry said during his announcement was fantasy because Rick Perry is never going to win the Republican nomination. His oops moment during the 2012 Republican debate defined him. Former Gov. Perry can put on his smart boy glasses and try to look the part, but he will never win because he is a buffoon in the eyes of most voters. Rick Perry is currently polling at 2%, and he is clinging on to the final spot in the first Republican debate in tenth place in the current Real Clear Politics average of polls.
In fact, it is more likely that Perry ends up in prison than ever gets elected president. Rick Perry has been indicted on two felony charges of abuse of official capacity and coercion of public servant. The charges carry a maximum of 109 years in prison and involve Perry abusing his executive power as governor to try to force a district attorney to resign.
Republican judges in Texas have twice denied Perry’s attempts to have the charges dismissed. Perry has called the indictment frivolous and partisan, but the legal system has not agreed with his characterization. Perry has about a one in twenty shot of winning the Republican nomination, but if his case goes to trial, he has a 50/50 chance of being sent to prison.
Gov. Perry’s odds of ending up in prison are better than his odds of winning the Republican nomination. In a 2016 Republican field that is a total circus, Rick Perry has added a criminal element to round out the GOP race.

With His Mocking of Joe Biden, Ted Cruz Proves That He Isn’t Fit to Govern

Our politics are centered on policy, but there is a line that should not be crossed and Ted Cruz has officially crossed it.
Ted Cruz CNN State Of The Union
Voters should be asking themselves what kind of person doesn’t know that this is inappropriate?
The Biden family grieved as Former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden lay in honor in the Delaware Senate Chamber, with a receiving line that began past Beau’s flag draped casket and led to the Biden family.
Meanwhile, back at the GOP circus, Ted Cruz (R-TX) has his eyes set on the White House in 2016. On the way there, he does things like this. Last night, the Republican 2016 hopeful was speaking to Republicans in Howell, Michigan when he dredged up one of his popular lines, “Joe Biden. You know the nice thing? You don’t need a punch line.”
There is never a moment when it doesn’t pay to be vicious and cruel for Ted Cruz type Republicans.
The Vice President was mourning the death of his son Beau, who was beloved by everyone pretty much and an all around great son, father, and husband to boot. Delaware Governor Jack Markell said of him today at the service that because of Beau Biden, “the children of Delaware are safer for generations to come.” Markell called Beau a model husband, father and son, at which point Joe Biden teared up.
Beau Biden served his country to great acclaim. He died after a two-year fight against brain cancer at the young age of 46.
Joe Biden has already buried his first wife and a young daughter after a tragic accident in 1972, and now he is burying his son Beau. There aren’t words to express the emotional pain the Biden family must be facing right now.
This is not a moment to make fun of the Vice President. That is obvious to pretty much everyone but Ted Cruz.
Cruz has apologized for this on his Facebook page (never in public, or else he would risk losing the support of the frothing ragers who donate to his cult of cruelty). Wednesday evening, he wrote, “It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief.” It’s as if Cruz didn’t realize that he shouldn’t have said that until the backlash heat burned him.
It’s noted that he apologized, but as a presidential candidate and a Senator, he never should have made this “joke”.
Pundits were busy justifying Cruz’s comment by saying Joe Biden would forgive because that is who Joe is. Yes, maybe he will. But that is not the point. The point is that Ted Cruz has almost no soul.
That Joe Biden is a magnanimous man full of grace and forgiveness for others is not a surprise.
There is no apology that can make up for this kind of failure of judgment. We do not see other Republicans saying such awful things. There is a level of decorum and behavior that is expected from people no matter what side of the aisle they take. This is not it.
Our politics are centered on policy, but there is a line that should not be crossed and Ted Cruz has officially crossed it. He is not only not fit to be president, he isn’t fit to be a sitting senator.

Kochsuckers


Sister of Victim Steps Forward And Reveals Her Brother Was Sexually Abused By Hastert

dennis-hastertIn an exclusive interview for ABC News, the sister of one of Dennis Hastert’s sex abuse victims, came forward and publicly identified her brother, Steve Reinboldt, as having been sexually abused by the former GOP Speaker of the House.
The abuse occurred while Reinboldt was a High School student and equipment manager for the Yorkville wrestling team. Dennis Hastert was the wrestling coach at the time. Hastert referred to Reinboldt as his “great right hand man” in a 1970 High School Yearbook entry.
Reinboldt, who passed away in 1995 from AIDS, becomes the first publicly named alleged victim of Hastert’s abuse. Reinboldt’s sister Jolene, had tried to expose Hastert’s sexual abuse against her brother in 2006, after the Rep. Mark Foley sex scandal broke, but news organizations were unable to corroborate her story at the time.
Recent revelations that Hastert had lied to the FBI and violated federal banking laws, in order to conceal 3.5 million dollars worth of planned hush money payments to another sex abuse victim, gave Jolene a new opportunity to share Steve’s story.
Jolene gave a compelling interview before ABC News, emotionally recounting how she learned from her brother that Hastert had sexually abused him repeatedly during his High School years. She also noted that Hastert had the audacity to come to Steve’s funeral. Jolene claims she confronted Hastert about the abuse there, but he did nothing but return an icy stare.
Jolene hopes by coming forward, more of Hastert’s victims will know that they are not alone. She noted that Steve hid the abuse, because like so many young victims of sexual abuse at the hands of a “respected” authority figure, he felt nobody would believe him.
Now, however, as Hastert’s secret world of sexually abusing boys begins to unravel, more names may come forward. In addition to the still unidentified “Individual A”, and the now identified late Steve Reinboldt, how many other boys were sexually assaulted by Dennis Hastert?
The former GOP House Speaker was prepared to spend millions of dollars to hide his sexual abuse of minors. Now that his sexual abuse of teenage boys is no longer a secret, Hastert may soon find more victims and their families coming forward to share accounts of his crimes against boys.
If that happens, it may bring some measure of closure to his victims and their families. In addition, if the allegations continue to surface and if they are substantiated in a court of law, J. Dennis Hastert, who once served as Speaker of the U.S. House, will end up serving most of his remaining days in a prison cell.

Duggar Defense Falls Apart As City Attorney Says Josh Duggar’s Police Report Release Was Legal

josh duggar police report
During their interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar claimed that the release of their son’s police report was illegal, but City of Springdale City Attorney explained why the release was completely legal.
During their Fox News interview, Jim Bob Duggar claimed that Josh Duggar’s police report was illegally released, “You know, at this point our family is just trying to regroup from these attacks. When you’re in every newspaper and everything throughout the world, it’s been an unprecedented attack on our family. And it was actually — this information was released illegally, so I wonder why all this press isn’t going after the system for releasing juvenile records. That is a huge story. Now, what our son did 12 years ago, I’m sure it’s a major story to them too, but yet, hopefully, justice will be served on the ones that released juvenile records to protect other juveniles’ from their records from being released.”
Michelle Duggar said that the family’s trust was violated by the police, “What’s devastating as a mom for me is we took our children to the children safety center. We trusted them. We trusted the police department. Our children poured out their hearts. They shared everything. And then to have their trust betrayed? And for all of their information and everything they share to be turned over to a tabloid, for those things to be twisted and shared in a slanderous way, story after story, tabloid after tabloid.”
Springdale City Attorney Ernest Cate knocked down the Duggar defense, “On 5/20/15, in full compliance with Arkansas Law, the Springdale Police Department responded to a records request under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. The requested record was not sealed or expunged, and at the time the report was filed, the person listed in the report was an adult. Any names of minors included in the report, as well as pronouns, were redacted from the report by the Springdale Police Department in compliance with Arkansas law prior to release.”
The court order that the record by destroyed did not come until the following day, May 21, so this means that the release of Josh Duggar’s police report was completely legal. The Duggars claims of police misconduct don’t have a legal leg to stand on. What the police misconduct defense was designed to was to distract from the Duggars role in covering up and enabling their son’s crimes.
Because of the death of Freddie Gray and other incidents, police misconduct has become a topic that is frequently in the news. The Duggars tried to play the victim by crying police misconduct, but their accusations are nothing more than a cynical attempt to drum up sympathy and get their television show back on the air.

Mike Huckabee Cuts Bait, Removes Duggar Endorsement From Campaign Website

Huckabee has pulled the Duggar endorsements from his website, but he cannot undo the damage done from his connection to the Duggars.…

Rush Limbaugh In Free Fall As His Show Gets Demoted To A Low Rated Station

no-rush-limbaugh
Things have gone from bad to worse for Rush Limbaugh. Not only are radio stations looking to dump him, but his show is being forced to move to smaller lower-rated stations in an attempt to prevent a mass exodus of stations that carry his show.
Indianapolis Business Journal reported on Limbaugh getting demoted way down the (ratings) dial:
The Rush Limbaugh Show—set to be dropped by WIBC-FM 93.1 next month—will continue to be heard on Indianapolis radio airwaves without interruption after being picked up by iHeartMedia Inc.
iHeartMedia Indianapolis announced Wednesday that it will begin airing Limbaugh live on weekdays on a new local station, 97.5 FM, beginning Monday, July 6, from noon to 3 p.m. It will air the same time on iHeartMedia’s WNDE-AM 1260.
Limbaugh is going from being on a top ten station in the city to a station in the bottom three.
It is widely rumored that Limbaugh is about to get the boot off of his station in Chicago after his ratings have fallen to 24th place in the city with an audience of 121,000 listeners. Limbaugh has already lost his stations in major markets Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Radio stations don’t want Limbaugh’s show because of the combination of low ratings, poor advertising revenue, and declining audience.
Things have gotten so bad that Cumulus had to scramble shove Limbaugh’s show on to a low rated Indianapolis sports station because they feared a mass exodus of affiliates. According to RadioInsight, “There’s no way iHeartMedia would’ve placed Limbaugh on an owned Sports station if the company had any other affiliation options in the market. You can bet iHeart’s local management would much rather utilize their new translator for something other than a mish-mosh of Sports and Limbaugh. But when everyone one else says no and you need to save face, options become limited. This way iHeart can spin it that they were able to find a strong affiliate for Limbaugh in Indianapolis to potentially keep other affiliates from bailing.”
Rush Limbaugh is being dropped from stations that he has been on for decades because his show is a big money loser for the stations who carry it. More stations would love to dump Limbaugh, but Premiere and Clear Channel are shoving him down the throats of the stations that they own, and the former cash cow of conservative talk radio is being demoted to second and third tier stations in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters argued that Limbaugh’s political influence has declined, but that is a potential chicken and egg argument. Did Limbaugh’s political decline lead to his show’s decline, or did the advertising boycott cause his empire to crumble and his political influence to wither?
The timeline of events suggests that the advertiser boycott and the negative publicity from the Sandra Fluke scandal made Limbaugh toxic. Rush Limbaugh is slowly fading into obscurity. Conservative talk radio is going extinct, and its biggest dinosaur is vanishing.