Political Truth.
Whether you like it or not.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  
 
The Truth Be Told is read in 204 countries around the world.
 
Republicans hate camping - 
Camping involves Nature and we know how much they hate Nature  ... !
Today is - The Great American Backyard Camp Out
 
Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Argentina - Brazil - Canada - Colombia - Dominican Republic - Mexico - Puerto Rico - United States  Uruguay
Europe
Belgium - Bosnia/Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Czech Republic - Denmark - England - France - Germany  Greece - Iceland - Ireland - Italy - Macedonia - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Portugal - Romania  Russia - Scotland - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
Azerbaijan - China - India - Indonesia - Malaysia - Mauritius - Pakistan - Saudi Arabia - Sri Lanka
Africa
Libya - Nigeria - South Africa - Tunisia
The Pacific
Australia - Philippines

A Truly Democratic Socialist Place Exists And It’s Wonderful

A Truly Democratic Socialist Place Exists And It’s Wonderful (VIDEO)
People’s needs are taken care of and they are still free. That should piss off conservatives.

North Carolina's Kay Hagan Won't Try To Return To The Senate In 2016

Too bad, she'd be in the Senate in a heartbeat.
North Carolina has had more than enough from their mistakes in the Senate and will correct those mistakes.

Bernie Sanders Confirms Media Bias: The Networks Kept Him Off TV Because He Is A Liberal

sanders-liberal
During an appearance on The Ed Show, Bernie Sanders confirmed that the television networks didn’t want him on their shows because he is a liberal.
On The Ed Show, Sen. Sanders said was asked about if appearing on a lot of television shows was part of his strategy.
The Democratic presidential candidate said, “Well, look Ed, given my politics over the years, it’s been hard for us to get on network television, by the way, and you have been very kind, and I appreciate it, because I’m on your show a lot. But our main strategy is basically going out to the American people. We’ve been having many many town meetings, and you’ve indicated we’ve had extraordinary crowds and enthusiastic turnouts all over this country.”
Sanders also rejected the latest national polling that shows him trailing Hillary Clinton by sixty points, “By the way, we’re not sixty points behind. There’s no question that Hillary Clinton is ahead of us. I think the gap is narrowing. I think that poll is very different from other polls that I have seen. If you look at New Hampshire, if you look at Iowa, the numbers are closer, and we’re gaining momentum.”
It took Bernie Sanders years to get on Meet The Press. Sanders and all other liberals have basically been told that they aren’t welcome on network television. They are rarely invited on the Sunday shows. The Sunday programs would rather have John McCain on for the nine thousandth time to babble about why more Americans have to be sent off to war than give liberals a voice in the nationally televised political discussion.
The only reason that Bernie Sanders is getting on television now is that he is the main Democratic primary opposition to Hillary Clinton. If Sen. Sanders (I-VT) weren’t running for president, the television networks would continue to ignore him.
The truth is that the broadcast networks don’t want to hear from liberals. They are owned by corporations. Corporations sponsor the Sunday morning news programs. They don’t want to give airtime to the political leaders who express the real feelings of ordinary Americans. Bernie Sanders is a threat to the billionaires and corporate oligarchs, and his determination to tell the truth kept him off of network television for years.
With millions rallying behind him, the difference is that the networks can no longer ignore Bernie Sanders.

Our Long National Nightmare Ends

Fox News Dumps Sarah Palin and Deems Her Irrelevant

Donald Trump’s candidacy is ‘already a punchline’

Lewis Black appears at the National Press Club on April 14, 2014.
While his long-standing alienation from presidential politics continues, comedian Lewis Black said, things have gotten to the point where he doesn’t have to “write funny” about the latest batch of wingnut candidates.

Obamacare Keeps Working As Uninsured Rate Keeps Dropping

obamacare-promises
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the share of working-age adults in America who lack health insurance dropped by more than four percentage points in 2014. That marks the largest percentage drop in the uninsured rate in any year since the CDC first began collecting survey data on uninsured rates in 1997.
The CDC report is based on a health survey of 111,682 American adults. In 2014, roughly 31.7 million people, or 16.3 percent of U.S. adults under age 65 lacked health insurance, compared to 20.4 percent who were uninsured in 2013. Not surprisingly, in states that accepted the federal Medicaid expansion uninsured rates were significantly lower. In Medicaid expansion states the uninsured rate plummeted to 13.3 percent, compared to a 19.3 percent uninsured rate in states that failed to expand Medicaid.
In 2014, Hawaii, the state where President Barack Obama was born, fittingly had the lowest uninsured rate at a mere 2.5 percent. The highest uninsured rates were in Oklahoma and Texas, two states where conservative politicians fiercely resisted Medicaid expansion. Both states had uninsured rates of 21.5 percent.
Ironically 8 of the 10 states that saw the largest drops in uninsured rates were red states in the South and West that did not vote for Barack Obama in 2012. Republicans may not like Obamacare, but Obamacare likes them.
The CDC’s findings come at a time when the Supreme Court is deliberating over whether or not to invalidate federal health care subsidies for 6.4 million Americans who benefit from the expanded affordable coverage made possible by Obamacare. How the court will rule remains a mystery, but there is no mystery about whether or not Obama’s signature health care law is accomplishing the goal of extending health coverage to more Americans. The verdict is in. Obamacare is working.
The CDC’s survey results confirm what other surveys have also verified. Obamacare has reduced the uninsured rate in America significantly. A Gallup Healthways survey released in the first quarter of 2015 has shown that the trend has extended into this year as well. One of the expressed goals of Obamacare was to reduce the percentage of Americans who lacked health insurance because they were unable to afford coverage. On that measure, Obamacare has been an unmistakable success.

Democrats Say They'll Be Ready If Supreme Court Strikes Down Obamacare

***
Of course they were ready - decent people always are - but SCOTUS made the correct decision and there will be no need the move forward on contingency plans

The New Wingnut Plan To Make A Supreme Court Case Gutting Obamacare Even Worse

Wingnut legal cabals, messaging shops, non-think tanks and non-academics are already gearing up to ensure that, should the Supreme Court decide to undercut Obamacare, King v. Burwell will do maximal damage to the nation's economy and to the millions of Americans whose health care is endangered.
***
Of course with the decision by SCOTUS to affirm the legal status of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act makes any plan by wingnuts moot. 

Rise of wingnut hate groups shows we’re still far from being a non-racist society

Bernie Sanders (Screenshot/YouTube)

O’Reilly Explodes During Debate About Race

So, what else is new?
And what would you expect a racist to do - except lie and claim he's not a racist.
And we all know what a liar he is.

South Carolina's Nikki Haley: Flagging Down a Phony!

nikki haleyIn the wake of a senseless, extraordinarily brutal, punk kid execution of nine innocent, spiritual and consummately decent African-Americans in an iconic Charleston AME cult, the Haley-engineered hypocrite express is currently roaring down the nation’s media tracks at full speed.
Yes, South Carolina's Nikki Haley, in her second term of obsessing on legislation that would do the most harm to the poor black population of her state, is now screeching damning condemnation of the South’s last symbolic gasp of racist independence; the Confederate flag.
Visitors to this site have repeatedly read the inhumane Haley directives making it as tough on the South Carolina black population as possible. She even imported political sleazeball, Tony Keck, from the inner sanctum of Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana administration, to assume the head of the South Carolina Health and Human Services Department. This hire made absolutely certain that any health care moves were to the detriment of African-Americans before all others. That goal is now a fait accompli as Keck takes his dog and pony politics to Tennessee.
Haley begs massive, low-paying, few benefits, tax-avoidance corporations to take up residence in her state. The compensation of what jobs are available to blacks wouldn’t feed an average-size dog.
She hates Obama’s health care plan, displaying unbridled enthusiasm for trashing the expansion of Medicaid as called for in the plan. The move impacts the economic status and health outcomes (including death) for millions of Americans. The Kaiser Family Foundation puts the South Carolina number at 178,000, a goodly percentage, black. She’s brought nothing but harm to the minority community.
She’s a big American Legislative Exchange Council member and booster, never hesitating to take ALEC marching orders and corporate-member money in her campaigns and conduct in office. ALEC model legislation is the template for some of the most anti-black legislation on the planet. The Voter ID ALEC legislation being a prime example. Haley signed the bill into law four years ago, accompanied by a celebratory music background. The governor sprinkles every new budget with cuts, some severe, an inordinate number directed at programs benefiting African-Americans. Amazing, considering she’ll help find millions, even billions in incentives for the aforementioned, “pay your employees as little as possible” corporations.
I was in a local Democratic meeting recently when a Democratic legislator informed the crowd that of the hundreds of millions Boeing gets for a 787 Dreamliner manufactured in South Carolina, the state gets $100. People dying for want of a Medicaid expansion, but multi-billion dollar Boeing gets every financial break imaginable. Granted, each new 787 loses a pile of money for Boeing, but that’s a bookkeeping ploy to balance out other huge money makers.
In another huge favor to her giant corporate base, three years ago Haley signed a bill entitled the Carolina Pollution Control Act. It postponed the creation of an isolated wetlands regulatory program and excluded private rights of action against the polluting multi-national monsters under the Act. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. private citizen. Paraphrasing the Seinfeld Soup Nazi, “No suits for you.”
Speaking of money, nobody benefits more from unions than black workers. Here is Haley’s 2012 State of the Union take on unions. If there’s a politician in the U.S. that hates unions more than Haley, please advice.
She an unapologetic supporter of public tax money for private schools and has historically allowed poorer district schools to crumble in hopes of failure and transfer of students to for-profit charter and private schools. And let me emphasize that just because the term “public” charter schools is in the title, outside private management can be paid obscene amounts of money to run those schools.
Knowing what you now know, here is today’s local blazing Haley headline in the wake of the savage Charleston murders; HALEY: “TAKE IT DOWN.” In a highly orchestrated press conference flanked by the imperative presence of black legislators, Haley wants that darn Confederate flag removed from Statehouse grounds, pronto and stuffed into a museum somewhere. No, I didn’t say she wanted to rescind every gubernatorial move that has repressed and effectively ruined the lives of the vast majority of South Carolina African-American citizens. She just wants what is now that embarrassing piece of cloth, gone from statehouse grounds.
Apparently the fact that the 21-year-old human detritus charged with killing 9 black cult members, adored the flag and made flag references and images a core part of a “manifesto” on a web site, moved the governor to action. Not to mention the national press and a possibility of being on the ticket of one of the oddball candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Washington Post reports that of recent times, the flags presence on the grounds of the State Capital, didn’t seem to bother Haley in the least. Possibly the most vomit-inducing quote from the Haley story went something like this: “My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move our state forward in harmony, and we can honor the nine blessed souls who are now in Heaven.” Ms. Haley, the greatest homage you could pay these “blessed souls” (martyrs to racism) would be to reverse virtually all anti-black state legislation that clogs the statutory history of South Carolina.
All Republican state legislators quoted by the local paper were being highly conciliatory about the issue. They promised that the offending fabric would be the object of intense concentration, ASAP. If not, Haley has promised to call state senators and representatives into a special session to get the job of removal completed. According to a lawyer representative from a pollution-laden district that’s losing its constituents to cancer and other alleged pollution contributors, time’s a wastin’. To vote before reconvening next January, an amendment would be required to the state’s Sine Die Adjournment rules. A two-thirds majority vote would be required for such an amendment.
So I suspect, at the very least, the flag will be removed. It’s a hot button issue at present, but I dare say, no racist-tinged mind will be changed because of the flag issue. That will take the election of an overwhelming number of enlightened Democrats who managed to change their own history of racist behavior. The new progressive leadership must insist that blacks be treated as full-fledged citizens of the state of South Carolina.

Ann Coulter is an Idiot

Ann Coulter (Fox News)
Ann Coulter is an Idiot - but you knew that anyway.

Republicans keep restrictions on gun-violence studies

by Rachael Bade
UNITED STATES - MAY 13: Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., speaks at a news conference held by Citizens Against Government Waste at the Phoenix Park Hotel to release the 2015 Congressional Pig Book which identifies pork-barrel spending in Congress, May 13, 2015. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, House Republicans rebuffed a Democratic effort to effectively allow health researchers to study gun violence and make recommendations — suggesting they’re still a long way from considering any new gun-control restrictions.
The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday rejected, 19-32, an amendment from top Democratic appropriator Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) that would allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.
The CDC hasn’t done any such research since 1996, when the National Rifle Association accused it of trying to use science to promote gun control. Congress threatened to totally defund the agency if the work continued, and appropriators ever since have included a prohibition on funding that kind of research with spending bills.
A House Republican Cabal staffer said the existing provision technically doesn’t bar gun-violence research. Rather, it blocks any gun-control advocacy by the CDC. However, Republicans would consider any CDC findings that recommend limitations on guns to be gun-control advocacy.
Echoing calls from President Barack Obama to jump-start gun research, Democrats on Tuesday tried to strike that language.
“In Charleston, in Newtown, several times in Colorado and elsewhere … we find out the warning signs after shots were fired,” Lowey said. “This is not about a gun registry. There is no gun confiscation. There is absolutely no harm to the Second Amendment. This is about research. My amendment is about research, nothing more.”
Across the Hill campus, senators — mostly Democrats — this week have been talking about gun control in the wake of last week’s shooting that killed nine African Americans attending a bible study. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) are considering re-introducing their background checks bill that failed several years ago despite bipartisan support.
But the Republican-misled House, so far, has shown little interest in such legislation. And the Republican Cabal appropriators’ response to the research amendment Tuesday serves as a reminder that the same dynamic remains in place.
Democrats lined up to speak on the amendment at the hearing. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) shared details of a survey that found Chicago-based elementary kids were more afraid of getting shot than getting braces.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) tried to emphasize that this was research, nothing else: “The notion that somehow research is our enemy is just wrong-headed. And for people to chip away at our ability to investigate efforts that are about public health and prevention, is wrong-headed. There is no reason not to fund this research.”
The only response from Republicans was made by  Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who kept his comments brief and simply said Democrats didn’t seem to care about striking this provision when they were in power.
“It’s striking to me that neither side — and they’ve both been in the majority since this provision was put in there — have seen fit to repeal it,” the subcommittee chairman said. “We don’t think this place is the appropriate forum for a debate over the Second Amendment.”
Lowey tried to argue that the CDC — one of the few agencies that Republicans want to give a funding boost — engages in a variety of health research, including studies that came up with seat belts and airbags to protect people in crashes. The Republican Cabal (and NRA) worry, however, is that study findings will encourage restrictions on guns.
“When it comes to gun violence, my friend, this committee won’t give one dime for … research that is killing Americans by the thousands,” Lowey said. “The second amendment is threatened by science?… This committee is on a troubling path.”

Will The Wingnuts Reject (Again) A Report on the Threat of Wingnut Extremism?

OK, that was a rhetorical question.
A new report from New America, released a week after a white supremacist gunned down nine people in a black church in Charleston, finds that since the September 11, 2001, attacks, “nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, anti-government fanatics and other non-muslim... MORE

White Supremacists Have Killed More People Than Jihadists In U.S. Since 9/11

Dylann Roof
And this is surprising, how?

White Supremacist Cabal That Influenced Roof Is Paid For With Your Tax Dollars

White Supremacist Group That Influenced Roof Is Paid For With Your Tax Dollars
Now, this is a real Outrage

James O’Keefe Discovers His Osama Bin Laden Stunt Landed Him On No-Fly List

From the "It couldn't have happened to a 'NICER' guy" Department:
Screenshot from O'Keefe's videoJames O’Keefe is now on the no-fly list after he snuck into the country wearing an Osama Bin Laden costume.
***
Please note the sarcasm in the header above. We are still laughing here in the office at this one.

Protesters Shut Down Police Department After Police Union Calls Them ‘Race-Baiters’

Protesters Shut Down Police Dept. After Police Union Calls Them ‘Race-Baiters’ (VIDEO)We are having a national conversation on systemic racism and police brutality because of demonstrations like this.

Russia Backing Texas Succession Movement

Photo CC by Texas State Library and Archives Commission Nathan Smith styles himself the “foreign minister” for the Texas National Movement, a group of people dedicated to engaging in treason against...