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Thursday, June 11, 2015

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  
 
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U.S. Economy Created Six Times As Many Jobs Under Obama Than Under the shrub

U.S. Economy Created Six Times As Many Jobs Under Obama Than Bush
Sorry, Jeb Bush. President Obama has created six times as many jobs as your brother did.

The Truth Hurts

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Senate Democrats Have The Upper Hand And They Are About To Make McConnell Pay

mitchmcconnellSenate Democrats are getting ready to fire up the filibuster and make Mitch McConnell’s life miserable, as they are determined to make the Senate Majority Leader pay for trying to bully them into accepting the unpopular Republican agenda.
Minority Leader Harry Reid foreshadowed the shift recently with vows to essentially shut down the appropriations process and block highway and defense bills unless Republicans move markedly to the left. With deadlines looming on several must-pass bills, the stage is set for brinkmanship that could last through the summer and into the thick of the 2016 presidential primary season.
Democrats believe they have the upper hand after Republicans allowed government surveillance authorities to temporarily expire last week, stoking criticism of McConnell’s stewardship of the Senate. The mood in the chamber has turned more antagonistic over the past week, as Reid and McConnell have mixed it up on the Senate floor over who controls the agenda and which party is being more obstructionist.
….
Now, the big-ticket accomplishments of 2015 may soon give way to a similar paralysis, as Congress cruises into a series of fights in which congressional Democrats’ leverage lies mainly in their power to filibuster. Reid has called a national defense authorization bill that Republicans are pushing a “waste of time” because the White House has promised to veto it and pledged to block Republican spending bills and an extension of highway funding unless Republicans agree to fund Democratic spending programs and provide long-term certainty in the transportation budget.
Read more on Poltitco
Part of Mitch McConnell’s plan for running the Senate has always involved using the budget process to force Democrats, including President Obama, to accept the Republican agenda. The first sign that his plan was not working was Democratic opposition to the Republican passed budget. A more concrete omen of trouble ahead for McConnell was the President’s threat to veto every appropriations bill that used sequester cuts to set funding levels.
Sen. McConnell is boxed in. If President Obama vetoes the appropriations bills, Senate Democrats have more than enough votes to sustain his vetoes. The battle over funding the government is expected to grind the Senate to a halt, and consume the entire summer.
On the Senate floor last week, Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) accused McConnell of governing crisis to crisis, “How many more of these manufactured crises must the American people endure? How many more times will the Majority Leader is let another vital program lapse, regardless of the harm it does? It is imperative that Republicans not continue their assault on job creation in America.”
Mitch McConnell is trying to set the stage for a Republican president while making the argument for Republicans keeping the Senate in the 2016 election. McConnell is under intense pressure to pass major legislation, but so far, the legislation that McConnell has passed means more inside the Beltway than it does to the rest of the country.
The result of the McConnell caused chaos could be a government shutdown. Senate Democrats and the President are demanding that McConnell and Republicans move left on the appropriations bills. If Republicans provoke a shutdown by refusing to compromise, it could signal the end of Republican control of the Senate.
A major battle that will shape the landscape of the 2016 election future control of the Senate is taking shape, and Democrats are determined to make Mitch McConnell pay.

The Truth Be Told

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Republican Misled Kansas Senate Passes Largest Tax Increase In State’s History

Kansas budget squeezeOn Sunday evening, the Republican-misled Kansas Senate passed a 471 million dollar tax increase. If the measure passes the Kansas House on Monday and is then signed into law by Sam Brownback, it will become the largest tax increase in Kansas’ history.
Senate support for the tax increase is a clear sign that the Brownback tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy, have failed so miserably, that even teabagger Republicans have resigned themselves to supporting a massive tax increase. However, the Senate did not opt to restore higher income tax rates for the wealthy, but instead they decided to fill the state’s gaping budget hole by raising regressive taxes which pass the burden onto the poor.
The Senate bill, which passed on a close 21-17 vote, would raise the state sales tax from 6.15 percent to 6.55 percent. The cigarette tax would jump from .79 cents a pack to a 1.29 a pack. The measure would also lower deductions for property taxes, charitable contributions and home mortgage interest.
The bill protects the zero income tax rate for many owners of limited-liability companies, corporate farms and large corporations. However, it eliminates sales tax rebates on food for poor families, the elderly and people with disabilities.
So while Senate Republicans have finally come to grips with the failure of the Brownback tax cuts, their solution is not to make billionaires like Charles Koch, who still claims residency in Wichita, pay a higher tax rate. Instead they have decided to tackle the state’s budget crisis by raising the price of food for the poor, disabled and elderly.
What voters in Kansas, and across the nation, need to recognize is that the Republican Party is not so much committed to cutting taxes, as they are to protecting the wealth and privilege for the people at the top of the income pyramid. Republican rhetoric about cutting taxes is often interpreted by voters as a signal that GOP politicians will cut their taxes. However, when tax cuts fail to stimulate the growth that was promised, Republicans will try to plug the gap by squeezing every last penny from the people without money, before they dare ask rich people to pay their fair share.
If the Senate bill becomes law, low and middle-income Republican voters in Kansas will become the proud owners of an “anti-tax Governor and anti-tax legislature” that passed the largest tax increase in the state’s history. To add insult to injury, they will also have the dubious honor of paying for that tax increase so that the state’s aristocracy can keep their precious tax cuts. If not for the fact that some of those people will endure real suffering, the whole charade would be almost comical.

Funny thing about that ...

Ann Coulter Says Immigrants Will Rape and Impregnate Your Little Girls

Apparently, women are not already sexually abused in Ann Coulter's America. 
Maybe she needs to get out more.…
Ann CoulterAnn Coulter, still busy selling her new book, Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (as opposed to the hellhole Republicans have turned it into), says immigrants will rape your children.
And here I thought it was the Duggars. Republicans like Coulter are the ones defending rape and rapists. They’re the ones making excuses for child molestation, even of the incestuous sort. We haven’t had so many brothers feeling up sisters since Adam and Eve’s kids.
But the English-Irish-German-Dutch Coulter, who appeared Friday on “The Eric Metaxas Show,” told the Greek-German Metaxas that non-European immigrants were a bunch of “Third World” low-lifes:
Reagan got, I think it was 54 percent of the white vote, Romney got 59 percent of the white vote; the country in 1980 was about 90 percent white, now it’s about 62 percent white though still only 72 who can vote. If something drastic isn’t done right away, it is going to be George McGovern’s America, it is going to be La Raza’s America, it is going to be Uganda, basically.
McGovern, a well-known liberal and ideological successor to RFK, was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, and in Coulter’s mind, is seemingly used as a stand-in for liberalism. She also managed to go after not only blacks there, but Hispanics with her dig at La Raza (Spanish: “The Race”), signifying Hispanic or Latino identity.
But her racist screed did not end there:
And get used to having segregated buses and subways, as they have in India and Mexico, because of the way women are treated and sexually abused there; get used to your little girls being raped and being pregnant; get used to not being able to go to your national parks because they are being burnt down, pot farms are being grown there, pesticides dumped all over.
Wait a second! Impregnate? What happened to women’s magical body processes that just say no to rapist-sperm??? Was that all the lie? Ann, tell us what’s going on.
Seriously, I’d be more worried about some creepy old white Republican – or even a creepy young one like Scott Walker – getting into my little girl’s vagina.
Apparently, women are not already sexually abused in Ann Coulter’s America. Maybe she needs to get out more.
And then she fear-mongers over our national parks as though her rich Republican buddies don’t plan to sell them to foreign mining conglomerates along with the latest patch of sacred Native American lands in an orgasm-inducing BOGO.
Add to that, pesticides too are a conservative thing. It’s not the GOP worrying about the environment. It’s us nasty McGovern liberals. Or are immigrants using their powerful calves to lug pesticides over the border to protect their portable marijuana crops?
Don’t you love how these right-wing demagogues can cash in through the use of monster lies and hypocrisy? I remember when these were character flaws. Now, if you don’t engage in them, you’re not a Republican.
Oh wait. Republicanism is a character flaw these days, isn’t it?
This bubble reality Republicans have created for themselves is a bizarre place when people like Ann Coulter can sound like a liberal complaining about widespread and unregulated use of pesticides in order to condemn liberals.
The saddest part is thinking about all the teabaggers at home, huddled beneath their swastika flags with AR-15s across their knees, as Grandpa Billy Bob reads from Coulter’s book and tears for their lost white paradise slide down their cheeks to pool on the covers of their unread bibles.
Norman Rockwell, where are you? Your America is passing, and only the fascists mourn its loss.

Ann Coulter: Liberals Are 'Going Gay' So They Need Immigrants To Outbreed 'christian America'


Ann Coulter whined to The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s network, last week about the “demographic war” between wingnuts and normal people, who she says need the support of immigrants to take power since they are “aborting and going gay.”  MORE

Obama Bluntly Calls Out Republicans For Trying To Take Healthcare Away From Millions

Obama ACA Catholics
President Obama delivered a blunt message to Republicans. If they cynically mess with Obamacare, they will be harming he lives of millions of Americans.
The President accused Republicans of ignoring reality, “While we were told again and again that Obamacare would be a job killer, amazingly enough, some critics still peddle this notion, it turns out in reality America’s experienced 63 straight months of private sector job growth, a streak that started the month we passed the Affordable Care Act. The longest streak of private sector job growth on record that adds up to 12.6 million new jobs, so the critics stubbornly ignore reality.”
Obama used examples of ordinary Americans who could afford healthcare before the ACA to highlight reality.
President Obama added, “So five years in what we are talking about is no longer a law, it’s no longer just a theory. This isn’t even just about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. This isn’t about myths or rumors that folks try to sustain. There is a reality that people on the ground day to day are experiencing. Their lives are better. This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another. This is now healthcare in America, which is why when you get outside of Washington and leave behind the Beltway chatter and the politics, Americans support this new reality when you talk to people who are actually enrolled in a new marketplace plan. The vast majority of them like their coverage.”
Obama vowed not to go backward, and said, “There’s something deeply cynical about the ceaseless, endless partisan attempts to roll back progress. I mean I understood folks being skeptical or worried before the law passed, and there wasn’t a reality there to examine. Once you see millions of people having health care. Once you see all the bad things that were predicted didn’t happen, you’d think that it would time to move on, let’s figure out how to make it better. It seems so cynical to want to take coverage away from millions of people. To take care away from the people who need it the most.”
The message to Congressional Republicans was blunt. It is time to move forward and stop playing cynical partisan games. Although the President never mentioned them, this speech was clearly also aimed at the Supreme Court.
President Obama was arguing to the Court that if they rule against the subsidies, they will damaging the lives of millions of Americans.
Obama’s point was crystal clear. Whether Republicans like it or not, the Affordable Care Act is now a woven into the very fabric of the American health care system.

Free Market Ideology Doesn't Work For Health Care

Free Market Ideology Doesn't Work For Health Care
Costs imposed by 'medical industrial complex' defy reason.
Free Market Ideology Doesn't Work For Health Care

Report Shows The Oil Industry Benefits From $5.3 Trillion in Subsidies Annually

In a new and disturbing report from researchers at the International Monetary Fund, the world's governments are providing subsidies to the highly profitable oil industry to the tune of trillions…
oil subsidies2
Most Americans should know by now that Republicans despise ‘entitlements’ that they errantly consider is anything Americans receive; even if it is theirs to begin with. They hate the idea of retired Americans receiving their Social Security and Medicare after paying into them their entire working lives, and they hate Americans working at slave-wage jobs receiving nutrition assistance because they earn too little to survive. What they do not hate, and indeed fight ferociously for, are taxpayer-funded entitlements that go to corporations in the form of tax loopholes and particularly entitlements for the oil industry in the form of subsidies.
According to the oil industry, the very idea of ending billions-of-dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the profitable industry is un-American; a position that Republicans embrace with religious passion. However, it is not just Republicans that believe the oil industry deserves to be paid for being a highly-profitable business; the world’s governments are handing outlandish amounts of the population’s money to the industry that is driving the Earth’s climate catastrophe.
In a new and disturbing report from researchers at the International Monetary Fund, the world’s governments are providing subsidies to the highly profitable oil industry to the tune of an astonishing $5.3 trillion in benefits per year.  Another way of looking at just how much the world pays the oil industry that bears responsibility for decimating the Earth’s environment; imagine they receive $10 million per minute. That is $10 million every minute, every day, of every month, of every year. Those mind-boggling entitlements have grown over the past couple of decades and are increasing every year.
What that also means is that every minute the world’s population is paying $10 million to help the fossil fuel industry pump climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All the while, in America Republicans are either denying that the Earth’s climate is warming, or debating whether global warming is caused by man’s propensity to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. If that is not bad enough, Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to preserve America’s billions in oil industry subsidies while crusading to abolish any and all environmental regulations and eliminate efforts to find new and less costly clean energy alternatives. It is true the world’s population will continue depending on fossil fuels for their energy needs long into the future, but that does not mean seeking and developing existing clean and renewable energy sources needs to be put off; particularly when the intent is to create more wealth for the oil industry.
What most Americans may be surprised to learn, if they even care, is that the IMF report revealed that besides the obvious cash “subsidies” being regularly “gifted” to the oil industry of a collective $88 billion from the G-20 nations alone, are the horrific  consequences of burning fossil fuels that very few nations, including the Koch-American government, are even willing to address. These are consequences such as the permanent and prohibitively costly health and environmental impacts affecting both local regions such as air and water pollution, and the more dangerous global consequences such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events wreaking havoc on the entire world.
Actually, it is the effects of pouring billions of tons of climate changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that accounts for nearly three-quarters of the final $5.3 trillion annual figure arrived at by IMF researchers. According to a statement from  Benedict Clements representing the IMF’s fiscal affairs department; “While the large size of our new estimates may be surprising, it is important to put in perspective just how many health problems are linked to energy consumption and air quality.” According to conservative estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO), “One in eight global deaths are attributable just to air pollution.” Obviously it does not included the deaths from drought-related food shortages, lack of water, extreme and deadly weather events, or any of the other consequences of anthropogenic global climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. The WHO strongly suggests that even beyond the global climate benefits of the entire world working in concert to eliminate the highly-profitable oil industry’s entitlements, any one nation’s efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground and out of the atmosphere “will carry very significant health and economic benefits at the local level.”
The IMF’s report revealed that ending oil industry entitlements would cut by half the number of deaths attributed to outdoor air pollution alone and save about 1.6 million human lives each year. Besides, the level of money being paid to the oil industry for nothing would be better spent on healthcare, education, and infrastructure improvements and relieve the crushing poverty plaguing third world nations like America and drive robust economic growth. Part of that spending naturally includes investing in more cost-effective and money-saving projects like clean and renewable energy and research and development of more energy-efficient uses for oil and gas.
To his credit, President Obama has made efforts to scale back America’s contribution to destroying the Earth’s climate, and in fact joined Democrats’ one attempt at putting an end to taxpayer-funded entitlements to the oil industry. But this is the Koch brothers’ America and although Republicans will never allow the entitlements to stop flowing to their favorite campaign donors, the President could do much more to alert Americans that while their roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools are crumbling around them, Republicans continue spending taxpayer dollars to bolster the profitable oil industry’s bottom line.
It is noteworthy that although the President did veto the Republican attempt to circumvent his Constitutional authority over the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline, he made peace, at least temporarily, with the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industry by granting them permission to start drilling for oil in the Arctic. Obviously President Obama had a good reason to give big oil more opportunities to wipe out the climate and destroy the pristine Arctic environment, but it is a secret he felt was too dangerous for the American people to learn. He said it was because “we can’t prevent oil exploration completely in the region, so we’re setting the highest possible standards.” However, Americans have witnessed, for far too long, exactly how effective those “highest possible standards” are; especially since the Koch brothers own the federal government.
The President sent a mixed message about his commitment to combat global climate change and committed America to adding to the $5.3 trillion in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry; likely to keep up with other world governments that, like America, will not bother to invest even a fraction of that astounding amount in protecting their population’s health or the environment. If nothing else, it appears that to maintain its status as “exceptional,” America will not be outspent by other governments in providing big oil’s entitlements any more than it will make any significant attempt to combat anthropogenic climate change; not while the Kochs own the government. And make no mistake, the Kochs and big oil do own the government lock, stock, and barrel.
It is a sad state of affairs, but the rest of the world’s population, like the American people, are going to have to come to grips with the tragic fact that they are contributing to the $5.3 trillion annual oil subsidies to destroy the environment and the Earth’s climate whether they like it or not. The lack of outrage in the population informs that obviously, most Americans do like it and that, in itself, is incredibly discouraging.

Court Throws Out Challenge To Obama’s Climate Change Rule

This Republican’s Tweet Calling Out Obama Is This Week’s SMDH Moment To Remember

This GOP Senator’s Tweet Calling Out Obama Is This Week’s SMDH Moment To Remember (TWEETS)
A Tweet so stupid it could only belong to a Republican.
Read more 

Rick Santorum finds only one voter waiting at Iowa campaign event

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Republican pretender candidate Rick Santorum showed up at a campaign stop in Iowa to find only one voter waiting for him, but he called the event a success anyway.

Republican Unveils New Obamacare Attack, Immediately Becomes A Laughingstock

John Thune (R-SD) probably wishes that he'd thought twice before debuting a new attack on the Affordable Care Act on Twitter.

A Republican Radio Hack Finally Actually Admitted It – He Wants To Bring Back Jim Crow Voting Laws

A Republican Radio Host Actually Admitted It – He Wants To Bring Back Jim Crow Voting Laws (AUDIO)
As frightening as the idea is, this man actually wants to bring back Jim Crow voting.


Rush Limbaugh Is Toast In Major Radio Markets

Rush Limbaugh Is Toast In Major Radio Markets
Chicago is now trying to drop him, and Indiana just sent him to the tall cornfields.
Limbaugh Is Toast In Major Radio Markets

Pastor on probation for sex assault caught molesting another child while wearing ankle monitor

A former Pennsylvania bishop who was sentenced to probation for sexually assaulting a child had his probation revoked this week after he was caught molesting another child.

Armed Couple Planned To Shoot Teachers, Children At NC School 'If It Was dog's Will'

Armed Couple Planned To Shoot Teachers, Children At NC School 'If It Was God's Will'
These whack jobs never seem to have a problem getting guns. Because freedom!