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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Republican idea of what a humanitarian is - whipping the poor and defenseless... !
Today is - World Humanitarian Day
 
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The Drive to Drill

Public Enemies 
Pat McCrory
North Carolina's Moron McCrory Goes To Bat For Big Energy 
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White House To Launch Program Aimed At Combating Rise In Heroin Deaths

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A Tree Named Sanders Fell on 2016, So Why Don’t Republicans Hear It?

If Republicans fear another four (or eight years) of Executive Branch banishment at the hands of Hillary Clinton, they're downright panicked at the idea of President Sanders.…
Bernie
History is littered with the names of once promising, supposedly viable nominees for the nation’s highest office who had their hopes dashed under the weight of scandal and/or unreasonably high personal and public expectations. This is true of both parties from all relevant American epochs. A few examples include William Henry Seward, Gary Hart, Howard Dean, John McCain and current 2016 favorite Hillary Clinton. All these names and more have known the sting of presumed favorite status, turned bridesmaid humiliation, a sense of inevitability deflated.
Such is not the case with one Bernard Sanders, who announced his candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination on April 30, 2015. While providing the progressive electoral jolt predicted by amateur pundits everywhere, even liberal media outlets such as NPR refused to take the Vermont senator seriously. Labeling his bid a “long shot,” conventional wisdom had Sanders as either (depending upon your side of the aisle) a fun variable forcing Clinton to move left, or an old, hippie, single-issue crank.
But a funny thing has happened over the course of the last three and a half months. Despite many fewer resources of all campaign kinds, Bernie Sanders is gaining steam. Earlier this week, the Boston Herald‘s Joe Battenfeld published an interpretation of the Brooklyn, New York native’s recent swell, Poll: Bernie Sanders surges ahead of Hillary Clinton in N.H., 44-37. Within the piece he characterizes Sanders’ popular momentum as “a stunning turn in a race once considered a lock for the former secretary of state.” In March the same poll in question, conducted by the Herald in conjunction with Franklin Pierce University, showed Sanders trailing Clinton in a big way at 44-8.
The Clinton campaign must be worried. It’s only natural. But my question this week: why don’t Republicans seem concerned about anyone but the former New York senator as a potential opponent? This is another in a long series of miscalculations from the Republican cabal machine.
In fact, though we reported that Bernie Sanders Was The Most Retweeted Candidate During The Republican Debate, the cabal’s representatives paid him no attention at all. While  Trump fought with Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly and anyone else who pressed him for actual policy positions, Sanders captured the social media zeitgeist by taking his trademark blunt ax to the foolishness: “It’s over. Not one word about economic inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt. That’s why the Rs are so out of touch.”
Trump, who has disparaged nearly every American in some outrageous fashion since announcing his own run, only got around to lambasting Sanders’ “weakness” a few days ago. On August 8, the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump wrote the somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Losers: A List by  Trump and Bernie wasn’t even mentioned. He couldn’t secure the same rhetorical ire as Glenfiddich Scotch, which isn’t even a sentient being.
So what gives? Why the rhetorical quiet from the wingnuts in the face of Sanders’ increasingly mighty roar? The answer is probably fairly simple. If Republicans fear another four (or eight years) of Executive Branch banishment at the hands of Hillary Clinton, they’re downright panicked at the idea of President Sanders. And the underpinnings of that fear are offered by Bernie’s now-ubiquitous Republican cabal debate tweet.
With characteristic real-talk he identified four wingnut untouchables that he’d have no problem confronting from the White House: economic inequality, climate change, the flood of money in politics and the crushing debt load of our country’s students. Though one man can only do so much without the active participation of Congress (just ask President Obama), Sanders as POTUS means the absolute end of business as usual. Even those who dislike the man know he’s authentic. He can’t be bought. Sanders’ refreshing lack of scripted phoniness, combined with a platform that promotes true democratic opportunity, is what’s warming public perception. That should scare the backward-looking, cynical cabal of Koch.
As they have in response to many of the country’s challenges, Republicans are choosing the fingers in ears approach to the threat of Bernie Sanders. If like the disparity of class and racial opportunity, environmental decay and gun violence, they ignore it, well then it doesn’t exist. And the cabal methodology is failing. Again.

Hillary Clinton Wants To Improve Social Security Benefits For Women, Low-Income Seniors

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Iran deal foes reach new low in fear mongering, claim Iran will nuke US, kill millions

by Ian Reifowitz
Trinity, the first nuclear detonation.
This is how you scare people.
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse than a full-page newspaper advertisement that opposed the Iran deal by conflating Barack Obama with Neville Chamberlain, and thus contemporary Iran with Hitler's Germany. The newest full-page ad from The World Values Network, led by Executive Director Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, breaks new ground in fear-mongering:
We implore you to kill the deal with Iran. Before Iranian nukes kill millions of Americans.
Back up a second. It's one thing to claim that Iran will cheat and attempt to build nuclear weapons after signing this treaty, and that they will succeed. It's another to claim that they will use those weapons against Israel—despite Israel having more than enough of a nuclear arsenal to respond in a devastating fashion, not to mention the response from the U.S. that would almost certainly follow a nuclear attack on its ally. But here we have a claim that Iran will not only make and use nuclear weapons, but will use them against the United States. I'm just going to let the extremeness of that claim sink in. Never mind that the Iran deal was endorsed by leading U.S. scientists, including "some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control," as well as three dozen retired admirals and generals, and someone who as late as this spring argued that no deal worth doing could be had with Iran and who was, until a few days ago, the president of an cabal called, wait for it, United Against a Nuclear Iran. Here's what UANI's former president, Gary Samore, says now in endorsing the deal: "I'm skeptical that we can reject this agreement and negotiate a substantially better deal within any kind of reasonable time frame."
The only way the opponents of this deal can win is through fear. They certainly can't do it through reason. They offer no feasible alternative to the deal, no path to a better one, no way around the fact that the other five countries who negotiated this deal alongside us will abandon the sanctions if we walk away from it, leaving Iran 100 percent free to proceed however it wishes when it comes to its nuclear program. How exactly would that make things better?
Who would you trust on whether to vote yes: someone who says Iran is not only suicidal, but, I don't know, suicidal squared, or someone who said he couldn't be convinced that the world and Iran could reach a fair agreement—until he saw the agreement now before Congress. The ad under discussion here targeted Sen. Cory Booker. I urge you to tell him and/or your senators and representatives to choose reason over fear, expertise over propaganda, and leadership over demagoguery.

The Wingnuts' love-hate relationship with the 14th Amendment

The Supreme Court building in Washington DC
Of all of the Republican-manufactured controversies during the Obama presidency, a less-remembered episode may be the most telling of all. Unable to prevent three-fifths of the Senate from voting to confirm Elena Kagan as the newest Supreme Court justice, Republicans in May 2010 denounced Obama's nominee—for declaring that the Founding Fathers' three-fifths of a person standard for counting African-American slaves was a "defect" in the U.S. Constitution.

What Trump Believes About Education

Trump Taunts Roger Ailes

It doesn’t look like the Donald Trump/Fox News heavyweight fight for Republican domination is over yet.

Trump Releases Batshit Crazy Xenophobic Immigration 'Policy Position' And The Wingnuts Love It

Trump wants to repeal birthright citizenship, deport parents of U.S. citizens, but tells Chuck Todd he's going to keep families together. Go figure.

Birthers Say These 4 Republicans Are Ineligible To Be Pretender

Mbe3ax9nao4vttiryvccBirthers Say These 4 Republicans Are Ineligible To Be Pretender
In some “strict constitutionalist” circles, people question whether  Cruz, Jindal, Rubio and even Santorum really qualify as “natural born citizens” who are eligible to be Pretender.
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Damn, the birthers are correct about something - who thought it was even possible?
But as they say ... even a blind hog will find an acorn or two laying about on the ground.

These Dark Money Groups Shed Some Light On Secretive Megadonors

Horizontaleconomybusiness And Financecrimelaw And

‘Get off our land!'

Image: Navajo Nation protesters anti-McCain banner (Facebook.com)
John McCain (R-AZ) was chased off of Navajo land by a group of activists who are angry over the Gold King Mine spill, which has contaminated river water in the Animas and San Juan Rivers.

Last Week In Police Brutality And Corruption

No Video, No Justice 
Featured image credit: video screen shot via News10
These five cases of cops caught on video last week serve to remind us how important it is that every police officer, in every police department in the U.S., be equipped with a mandatory body camera.

Last Week In Wingnut Racism

Racist Jokes About Michael Brown, Lying About #BlackLivesMatter
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2725535/Times-Square-SHUT-DOWN-thousands-marching-Ferguson-protests-spin-country-fifth-night-tensions-gunned-teen.html
There’s never any shortage of racism from the wingnuts.
Here’s last week’s round-up.
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Weekly Tin Foil

Obama Murders SEAL Team Six To Cover Up ‘Fake’ Bin Laden Op
Weekly Tinfoil: Obama Murders SEAL Team Six To Cover Up ‘Fake’ Bin Laden OpEveryone knows Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2003. Or maybe he’s still alive. One thing is for certain to these nutjobs: The operation Obama claims killed him was a fake.
You really CAN'T make this shit up even if you tried!

Last Week In Bad Christianity

Carson, Cruz, And Walker
Image created by Rika Christensen/LiberalisticsThe 'christian' pretender candidates aren’t the best examples of christianity, but they do hold themselves up as absolute bastions of morality in their fear-mongering, hateful crusades.

Top 5 Stupid Things Pseudo-Christians Said Last Week

Top 5 Stupid Things Pseudo-Christians Said This Week
The top 5 ridiculous, nonsensical and asinine things pseudo-christians said last week.

jesus Versus White Republican jesus

Public domain image, "Healing of the Paralytic" via wikipedia
Was jesus a white man?
I don’t see how he possibly could have been.
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Ho Ho Huh?

Ho Ho Huh? Fox News Starts Early With ‘War On Christmas’ Bulls**t (VIDEO)Fox News Starts Early With Its ‘War On Xmas’ Bullshit
It has been requested that the nativity scene in Belen, New Mexico be removed from public property. To Fox, this means the fictional “War on Xmas” is starting early.