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Monday, September 7, 2015

The Daily Drfit

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Caitlyn Jenner – A True Republican

by John DeProspo
2BF8E27200000578-3222563-image-m-15_1441380767913A lot of things about the former Bruce Jenner may be fake, but not her wingnut political views. She is a 100%, dyed-in-the-wool Republican. And as a true Republican, she is 100% a hypocrite.
Speaking about marriage equality to Ellen DeGeneres, Jenner admits, “I was not for it. I’m a traditionalist.” In an interview Jenner explains, “But as time has gone on, I think, like a lot of people on the issue, I’ve really changed my thinking.”
The hallmark of wingnut Republicanism is the total lack of empathy. Republican minds only change when an issue personally affects them. They will abandon a firmly held belief when it is in their self-interest to do so.
Another trait of wingnut Republicans is their lack of appreciation for the word “irony.” Caitlyn Jenner is a traditionalist? I dare say there is nothing remotely traditional about her. That she could still think of herself as a Republican is mind-boggling. A cabal that can’t see beyond black and white, both literally and figuratively, will never accept such a person as one of their own. How rich!
No one really knows if the person who has been married to three different women is still interested in women; whether this ongoing sexual preference has brought about the change in her thinking on “traditional marriage.” In her interview with DeGeneres, Jenner admits she is looking to find love again but was coy on whether that love will come from a woman or a man. What a tease! Keep watching this most fascinating transgender Republican, folks. Lets hear it for ratings!

Here’s How The 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidates Stack Up On Labor Issues

Labor union members gather at a rally for Tom Barrett
Here’s a handy guide to the Democratic candidates; their positions and votes about labor.

How The Republican Cabal’s Top 5 Pretender Candidates Really Feel About American Workers

v=Featured image by Democracy Chronicles. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/democracychronicles/14817110049Trump, Carson, Jeb, Cruz and Rubio are the Republican cabal’s top 5 candidates. What do they plan to do for American workers if they steal the office?

The collapse in US workers’ wages can be directly attributed to the junta of the shrub

Former US President George W. Bush (AFP Photo/Ronald Martinez)
The only response of the shrub’s team and the Federal Reserve was to protect the rich with tax cuts and cheer workers with ultra low interest rates that, as we know, underpinned the sub-prime mortgage scandal.

Obama Stands Up For Working People With Promise To Veto The Republican Budget

obama veto Republican budget
President Obama celebrated Labor Day weekend with a promise to veto the Republican budget if it harms the middle-class.
The President spoke about the country’s economic success, then discussed the Republican budget:
This month, Congress has an opportunity to continue that progress. As always, the deadline for Congress to pass a budget is the end of September. Every year. This is not new. And if they don’t, they’ll shut down the government for the second time in two years. At a time when the global economy faces headwinds and America’s economy is a relative bright spot in the world, a shutdown of our government would be wildly irresponsible. It would be an unforced error that saps the momentum we’ve worked so hard to build. Plain and simple, a shutdown would hurt working Americans.

It doesn’t have to happen. If Congress wants to support working Americans and strengthen our middle class, they can pass a budget that invests in, not makes cuts to, the middle class. If they pass a budget with shortsighted sequester cuts that harm our military and our economy, I’ll veto it. If they make smart investments in our military readiness, our infrastructure, our schools, public health, and research, I’ll sign that budget – and they know that.

So let’s get it done. Our economy doesn’t need another round of threats and brinksmanship. Nobody gets to play games with our economy – or the middle class I grew up in, and that you grew up in. So tell Congress to pass a budget that reflects the values we honor on Labor Day. Rewarding hard work. Giving everybody a fair shot. And working together to give all of our kids a better life.
In the United States, when most people discuss the middle class, they are referring to workers. It isn’t a coincidence that President Obama promised to veto a budget that would harm the middle class on Labor Day weekend.
The budget showdown that Republicans have staged is playing into the hands of President Obama and the Democrats. The President has become an expert at framing budgetary issues in moral terms. For Democrats, the budget is about fairness. Republican economic ideology benefits those at the top. It takes away from those who have the least to reward those who have the most. By pointing out the unfair flaw in conservative economic ideology, Democrats have found a silver bullet that slays the trickle down beast.
President Obama is laying the groundwork for another victory over his Republican opponents. Republicans are going to rely on the same strategy that has been failing them for years. They will pass a budget, Obama will veto it, Boehner will hold a press conference and say his usual line that, “the House has done its job,” and Obama will wait for Republicans to cave.
None of this is necessary, but it would be shocking if Congressional Republican drama queens didn’t force the nation to sit through their dance of doom before they gave in.

Washington state Supreme Court rules that charter schools are unconstitutional

The ruling overturns the law voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.

Obama Slowly Tortures Republicans By Giving Planned Parenthood $1M Obamacare Grant

Obama Slowly Tortures Republicans By Giving Planned Parenthood $1M Obamacare Grant (VIDEO)
And the Republican pearl clutching begins now.

Hillary Clinton Hits Back At Trump: Don’t ‘Cherish’ Women, Respect Them

Hillary Clinton Hits Back At Trump: Don’t ‘Cherish’ Women, Respect Them (VIDEO)
The former Secretary of State isn’t afraid to take the gloves off.

Trump Knows Jack About Iran Deal, But The Wingnut Blogosphere Eats It Up Anyway

Featured image by Michael Vadon. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/17029800149 A couple of months ago, Marco Rubio embarrassed himself by saying that the Iran nuclear deal will require us to defend Iran against attacks, even if those...

Reality Check

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Jorge Ramos Hammers O’Reilly For Daring To Lecture Him About Journalistic Ethics

via Dangerous Minds
When Fox News hack O’Reilly attempted to lecture Jorge Ramos about ethics in journalism, Ramos took him down.

Barton’s Appalling Lie that the Constitution Puts Dog’s Law Above Man’s Law

Barton says the Founding Fathers were all about dog's law trumping man's. The problem is, the idea is nowhere found in the U.S. Constitution…
barton-gods-law
From the religio-wingnuts’ response to Kim Davis’ arrest, you would think none of them had ever heard of the United States Constitution. David Barton, the religio-wingnuts’ premier fake historian, in Houston to attend Deputy Darren Goforth’s funeral, proclaimed that “the Founding Fathers made it real clear that the laws of dog are higher than the laws of man.” According to Barton, “This is a law of dog. Man’s law is not allowed to contradict dog’s law.”
In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The United States Constitution was written by those same Founding Fathers to put humans, not deities, in the driver’s seat, that political power derives from the hands of the people and the consent of the governed. You could not tell a bigger lie than David Barton just did if you tried.
Barton must have a special copy of the Constitution, one nobody else has ever seen, because nowhere did the Founding Fathers say dog’s law was the law of the land. It would be difficult to do when the Constitution doesn’t even mention dog – or the bible, or the ten commandments. Thomas Jefferson, with his low opinion of the cult and its bloody history, didn’t give them a mention in the Declaration of Independence either.
Seems pretty cut and dried, doesn’t it? And yet this is more than just trumping the Constitution with dog’s law it is implying the Constitution itself puts dog’s law first.
The Founding Fathers gave us a new nation, with the best institutions the Enlightenment had to offer. They had their pick when using models out of ancient history. But it wasn’t monotheistic ancient Israel that interested these men. It was ancient Pagan Greece with its democratic ideal, and Pagan Rome with its republic and its senate. It was the Pagan Anglo-Saxons and their common law.
Barton added, “That’s why we’re a Republic, not a democracy.” A republic puts the law of dog above the law of man and a democracy doesn’t? When, exactly, did this transformation in political science take place?
In fact, the United States is a democracy, in that political power derives from the consent of the governed. It is also a republic. When, in the Federalist Papers No. 10, James Madison contrasted republics and democracies, he did so according to the 18th century definition of a democracy being a “direct democracy,” like that found in ancient Athens, which not only led to chaos, but which did not give adequate protections to minorities.
David Barton claims here that what sets republics and democracies apart is a “higher power” – i.e. dog. It is not of course.
In the Federalist Papers No. 39, Madison explained that a republic “is a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people; and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.”
He is describing, in modern terms, a representative form of government. The government, in fact, given us by the United States Constitution. He is not describing anything found in the bible, which offers us a choice between a monarch ruling by divine right, or an outright theocracy with priests calling the shots on behalf of dog. Nothing in the Federalist Papers suggest that dog’s law trumps man’s law. As with the Constitution, rather the contrary, in fact.
The word “republic” itself comes from the Latin, res publica, or “public thing,” and all it means is that the people govern for their own benefit, rather than for the benefit of, say, a king. Rome was a Republic. It drove out its last king and hated the very idea of monarchy as a form of tyranny.
The Roman idea of a republic had nothing to do with dog, or with dogs, and everything to do with the people and how those people viewed the role of their government; the difference between Rome and Athens is that the Athenians embraced the idea of one man, one vote, whereas the Romans elected representatives to rule over them.
Thus we find Article IV, Section 4, of the United States Constitution, which states “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
Only a mental defective would understand this to mean imposition of theocracy, which is what David Barton is proposing. Barton may or may not actually believe it, but disbelief only means he is the most audacious liar in American history.
For the Romans, who so inspired Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, the idea of Republic was found in the acronym SPQR – Senatus Populusque Romanus – the Senate and the People of Rome. Not the dogs and Rome. Not even the dogs and the people and the senate. Just the senate and the people as a single voice.
What all this goes to prove is that David Barton is a liar, and a rather bad liar at that. You cannot expect to just invent things out of whole cloth that are contradicted by the facts and not be challenged. Of course, scholars have been challenging Barton’s lies for years, as have the folks at Right Wing Watch, and as we have here.
The extent to which he still finds welcome has a lot to do with the company he keeps. Glenn Beck is Barton’s BFF, as is Mike Huckabee, who said years ago he wants us all to listen to Barton at gunpoint – which, let’s face it, is about the only way that’s going to happen.
It is no surprise that Republicans prefer made up history, given their preference for made up facts. Fake facts demand fake history to back them up, with the result that they are living not in the real world, cognizant of real world facts and our shared reality, but in a fantasy novel they are making up as they go along.
Only subscribers to this fake reality will subscribe to Barton’s monstrous lies. Of course, pretty much everything that comes out of Barton’s mouth is a monstrous lie, this not least among them.

Wingnut Terrorists Strike Again: Planned Parenthood Fire Ruled An Arson

Planned Parenthood purposefully set on fire
This is how far the the lunatic fringe will go to terrorize women.

Paul on Natives: If They Were ‘Assimilated’ They’d be ‘Doing as Well as the Rest of Us’

Paul needs a history lesson, and he owes the Native American community a massive apology.

Fiorina: U.S. Has 'Done Its Fair Share' On Syrian Refugees

Republicans are always happy to get the United States into more wars. Dealing with the aftermath... not so much.

Fox Hack Erickson: Drowned Syrian Boy Was Obama’s Fault

Erick Erickson "blame Obama" failThat didn’t take long.
It’s already Obama’s fault that the little Syrian boy drowned, if you listen to Fox’s Erick Erickson’s troll logic.

Palin Livid Over Obama’s Trip To Alaska

Aw, ain't she sweet ...
Reality Star Sarah Palin Livid Over Obama’s Trip To Alaska, Should’ve Looked At Russia
This woman is a few sandwiches short of a picnic…
Read more 

Jindal's Cure for New Orleans Syphilis Outbreak: Defund Planned Parenthood

The Louisiana idiot and pretender candidate wants to defund Planned Parenthood, including his home state's two clinics—which don't even provide abortions.It is an article of delusion in the Republican pretender derby, even among the guys in the single-digit club, like Louisiana's ramblin' idiot Jindal, that it's time to defund Planned Parenthood. This is because they are all pretending to believe a bunch of phony videos, and it is also because it is in the area of lady-parts, and the ladies who have them, that the prion disease afflicting the cabal's brain is particularly acute.
As is relentlessly pointed out to these meatheads, PP does a lot more than give women a place to exercise their constitutional right to choose. A good example is what's happened in Louisiana since "Bobby" yanked the state's money away from the organization.

Connecticut made it harder to get guns — and suicides fell significantly

In 1995, Connecticut established a "permit to purchase" law, which required a background check and eight hours of safety training for those seeking to buy a handgun.
Missouri used to have a law like that, too, but repealed it in 2007.
New research shows what happened afterward. Firearm suicide rates fell 15.4 percent in Connecticut — but rose 16.1 percent in Missouri. The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, only confirms what other papers have found: Making it harder to access guns correlates with fewer suicides.
Most gun deaths in the United States are suicides
There were 33,636 gun deaths in the United States in 2013. While homicides and mass shootings dominate the headlines, nearly two-thirds of those deaths — 21,175 — were suicides.