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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Daily Drift

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In A Fiery Speech, Bernie Sanders Calls On Men To Join With Women To Fight For Equal Pay

bernie sanders equal pay greenville, sc
In the first stop of his campaign swing through South Carolina, Senator Bernie Sanders called out the disgrace of women earning less money than men, and called on men to join with women to fight for equal pay.
At a rally in Greenville, SC, Sanders said:
It is not a radical idea. It is an American idea that if somebody works 40 hours a week that person should not be living in poverty.
Brothers and sisters when we talk about fair wages, I hope every man in this room will stand with the women and fight for pay equity for women workers.
There is no rational economic reason why women should earn seventy-eight cents on the dollar compared to men, and that has got to change.
The senator from Vermont made an important point. President Obama has spent his entire presidency fighting for pay equity. Equal pay is not just a “women’s issue,” as wingnuts suggest.
Equal pay is a moral issue. There is no good reason why women are paid less than men. This sexist practice harms the US economy.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, closing the gender wage gap would grow the US economy by 3%-4%. For the sake of comparison, the stimulus package that President Obama signed in 2009 grew the economy by 1.5%. Eliminating the gender pay gap would produce a stimulus that would be at least twice as big as the one that President Obama signed into law.
President Obama has spent years discussing the issue of equal pay, and the call for action by Senator Bernie Sanders is a solid reminder that men can’t sit on their backsides and tune out the equal pay issue, because they think it is a “women’s issue.”
The gender gap is a disgraceful stain on America’s image that citizens of genders should unite together to fight.

Non Sequitur

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The Republican’s Favorite Socialist Program Lost $8.5 Trillion And Will Bankrupt America

It is a common Pentagon practice to "regularly cheat on its accounting books" by submitting a falsely balanced budget to the Treasury…
The-Pentagon-Doesnt-Know-What-it-Spent-8.5-Trillion-Dollars-on
For several years, if not decades, Republicans have, and still do, claim that any American who is not anti-government, anti-taxation, anti-women’s rights, anti-immigration, anti-theocracy, and anti-democracy is a raving socialist. Cruz accused Hillary Clinton of being a “wild-eyed socialist” who will do serious damage to America, and it is so typical for a Republican to use that term because they know most Americans are ignorant of what socialism entails. Socialism is simply “an economic and political system where all major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual companies or people, or a societal system in which there is no private property.” Obviously, neither Hillary Clinton, nor any Democrat supports or advocates for socialism, including Senator Bernie Sanders who claims to be a democratic socialist. In fact, democratic socialism isa political ideology involving a combination of political democracy with government ownership and control of all major industries.” Bernie Sanders is not any kind of socialist; not even a democratic socialist.
What most Americans are woefully ignorant of is that there is a socialistic program that Republicans not only advocate for, they are never at a loss for investing more taxpayer dollars into it with no return except for a growing deficit; one that will eventually break America like the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. To make matters that much worse, and it is that much worse, the Republican’s favorite socialist program has completely lost track of where $8.5 trillion in taxpayer and borrowed money because the Department of Defense has no accountability to the American people or apparently the government that owns and operates it. The worst part is that despite this country’s only wasteful, unaccountable, and out-of-control socialistic program, Republicans want to sink more of Americans’ tax dollars into the defense budget.
It was barely reported again last January that after Congress had just allotted well over half the entire annual federal budget for the military, that the Department of Defense could not account for over $8.5 trillion between 2000 and 2012. In 2005, for example, the Department of Defense had contracts worth a bit over $3 trillion with various businesses, but the United States Treasury Department could not find any record of how those trillions of dollars, both taxpayer money and trillions borrowed, was actually spent. Apparently, it is a common Pentagon practice to “regularly cheat on its accounting books” by submitting a falsely balanced budget to the Treasury; in 2012 the Pentagon falsely reported “$9.22 billion to reconcile its spending with its budget.” And Republicans want to give the Defense Department even more money than over half the nation’s spending.
It is not that the Defense Department (DoD) is not required to do a full accounting of where every single penny of borrowed and taxpayer money goes. In 1990, Congress passed a then-new federal law requiring all government agencies to be audited, but the Pentagon, the only American socialist entity, is the only government agency that has failed to comply with the law because it is the military, national defense, support the troops, patriotism and war on terror. In fact, for the very same reason the DoD is allowed to lose $8.5 trillion without a national outcry is why Republicans constantly demand more money for the military.
What should be astonishing is that despite “reckless accounting” and “consistently fraudulent reporting,” there has been no investigations into where trillions-of-dollars of both borrowed and taxpayer dollars have disappeared, or who is responsible for increasing the deficit. There was a pathetic attempt to curb the Defense Department’s waste and bring some transparency to the nation’s only socialist program by mandating a reduction in weapons programs if the DoD fails to meet its budget, but socialist or not it is the military and Republicans want more funding despite the waste and fraud. The Government Accountability Office as well as the Department of Defense’s own inspector general admit that the lack of accountability makes it incredibly easy to conceal “outright fraud and inappropriate purchases” that also “affects military personnel’s salaries.”
There has been an effort to revamp the Department of Defense’s accounting system within two years, by 2017, but because it is a government owned and operated socialist “industry” there are absolutely no legal consequences or mechanisms in place to hold anyone responsible. Some leading officials claim that the only way to force the Pentagon to “straighten out” and “be accountable” like every other agency is if there was a means to bring “outside pressure to bear” from Washington, but with Republicans in control of Congress and the nation’s purse-strings, and crusading to increase defense spending, that is never going to happen; their campaign donors in the oil industry and military industrial complex will not allow it.
Republicans demand accountability from every government agency to devise new and devious means to cut spending under the guise of deficit reduction. However, the one and only socialist entity in the nation is not only unaccountable to the people, including losing $8.5 trillion over ten years, it is piling on debt like there is no tomorrow. It is important to remember, that Bush-Republicans started two completely unnecessary wars of aggression against Muslims for regime change without regard for funding or the deficit.
It is an abomination that while Republicans refuse to spend one penny for infrastructure, domestic programs, education, or renewable energy due to “America being broke,” they easily hand over half of the nation’s spending to a socialist program without any accountability. And it is pathetic that there is no major media outcry that literally trillions of dollars have gone missing while the Defense Department refuses to say where that borrowed and taxpayer money went. Something that every American should consider is that the $8.5 trillion the Pentagon “lost” represents over a third of the entire national debt, but that is just the money they will not, or cannot, account for. Trillions more, like “known waste such as $1.5 trillion for the F35,” of the deficit has been reported accurately and went to Republican military industrial complex donors and the national deficit.
Over the next sixteen months of an already incredibly long presidential campaign, every Republican seeking the nomination and candidate for Congress will scream that defense spending is woefully inadequate and call for a monumental increase; all while decrying that Democrats are socialists and call for domestic spending cuts. Democrats, no matter the office they seek, have to start explaining to voters exactly what socialism means, and point out that the one and only program that Republicans want more borrowed and taxpayer money for is the socialist Department of Defense despite it cannot account for $8.5 trillion that is gone forever but still has to be repaid.

The Cabal Of White Identity Politics

Hasn't The Republican Cabal Been That For Years?
The Party Of White Identity Politics? Hasn't The GOP Been That For Years? Ben Domenech of the Federalist is worried that a surrender to Trumpism by the Republican cabal would be a surrender to the sort of identity politics common to many European far-right cabals.

O’Reilly Tells Cornel West: You And #BlackLivesMatter ‘Want To Take My Stuff And Give It To Other People!’

Bill O’Reilly Tells Cornel West: You And #BlackLivesMatter ‘Want To Take My Stuff And Give It To Other People!’

The Truth Be Told

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For Texans Perry and Cruz, Iowa polls are the end of the trail and Trump is to blame

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Texas Gov. Rick PerryThe unexpected appeal of billionaire developer Trump has thwarted the efforts of everyone in the 17-candidate Republican primary field — and Cruz in particular — to tap into the vein of voter anger with political business-as-usual and the desire for a fresh face that the Trump campaign has uncovered.

Trump won’t win the Republican cabal pretender nomination and here are the reasons why

Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/ Flickr)
Trump’s authoritative lead in early polling in the 2016 Republican race for the pretender nomination has left Americans nauseated, focused and angry.

Trump: Media Should Pay Me For My Time

Media Should Pay Me For My Time: Donald Trump

Trump Says U.S. Is Only Country ‘Stupid Enough’ To Guarantee Birthright Citizenship

Everything You Need To Know About Republicans’ Latest Crusade Against Immigrants

Lunatic Gohmert: Trust Iran's Leaders Over US Officials, Who Are Inciting dog's Wrath


Lunatic Gohmert seized on a debunked report that alleged that Iranians will be allowed to inspect their own nuclear sites under the recent nuclear accord, telling anti-family research cabal pervert Tony Perkins on his hate speech radio spew that he’d “tend to believe the Iranian leaders... MORE

Tennessee Wingnut Wants Taco Bell Shut Down For ‘Being Too Mexican’

From the "Cuckoo's Nest called and said your suite is ready" Department:
Tennessee Republican Wants Taco Bell Shut Down For ‘Being Too Mexican’  
***
And here we were under the impression that  actual Mexicans thought the offal offered by Taco bell was 'American' food (and bad tasting at that), when Taco Bell opened its first location in Old Mexico.
But, hey, what do they know, they're just Mexicans, so they don't know what 'real' Mexican foods is, anyway.

The Truth Hurts

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Federal appeals court upholds HHS’s Hobby Lobby workaround - Again

IUD, via Shutterstock
Federal appeals court upholds HHS’s Hobby Lobby workaround - Again.
Once again, just because you won’t provide contraception doesn’t mean the government can’t.

Court Orders Home Care Workers To Get Minimum Wage Protections

Medical researchers increasingly fear domestic terrorism in Planned Parenthood attack

Fetal tissue research has been a staple of medical progress since the 1930s, including back in the 1950s in the development of the polio vaccine, as well as vaccines for diseases like chicken pox, rubella, and shingles. That's the part of the highly edited, deceptive "sting" videos attacking Planned Parenthood that's not getting a whole lot of media attention. But the backlash against the organization—with fetal tissue research at its center—has not gone unnoticed by the scientists. Having witnessed the reign of terror anti-abortion extremists have unleashed on the medical provider community, they're terrified they'll be the next targets.Over the past week, BuzzFeed News has written to more than 70 scientists who have received federal funding — ranging from around $50,000 to nearly $5 million — for research that involves human fetal tissue. They work on a diverse range of projects: understanding human blindness, developing vaccines, making better models of HIV, and creating therapies for liver failure, just to name a few. Most of these scientists have run their own labs for years, if not decades, and would normally be happy to talk to the press.
But just six agreed to talk about their use of fetal cells, and only under the condition of anonymity.
“What a chilling effect, you know?” one stem cell biologist working at a large public university told BuzzFeed News.
She requested to be anonymous for two reasons. “There’s crazy people out there and I have young children,” she said, adding that, so far, she has not received any specific threats. […]
Another scientist agreed to be on the record, then changed his mind two hours later, after talking to someone from his institution’s communications office.
Yet another researcher panicked because he didn’t get an email confirmation that BuzzFeed News wouldn’t use his name. Given the “toxic environment” to abortion in the U.S., he explained in a follow-up message, “[W]e scientists fantasize various kinds of horrible worst-case scenarios that could derail our research and family life.”
There's very good reason, apart from the murder of abortion doctors. Research clinics, too, have been the targets of bomb threats. The companies working with researchers to get the tissue aren't immune from threat, either. StemExpress, one of the companies targeted in the videos is losing contracts and one of its leader's home address was posted online, along with a message that she "should be strangled with a piano wire."
That's what terrorism does. That's what every elected Republican and every Republican candidate to be elected is bolstering: an environment of terror. That's institutional fear that they will become the target of either political or physical attacks and very real fear on the part of individual researchers for their safety. Because they are conducting perfectly legal and very important medical research that could save even more lives.

Josh Duggar posts apology for infidelity ...

Josh Duggar, screenshot via YouTube... then edits it to remove references to porn and molestation
After blaming his infidelity on the corrosive, addictive power of porn, Duggar changed (and shortened) his story.

The Puritanical Glee Over the Ashley Madison Hack

We love to think of ourselves as so progressive and advanced, yet so often leap at the opportunity to intervene and wallow in, and pass judgment on, the private sexual choices of other adults.