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Wednesday, September 9, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Bernie Sanders Rocks The Political World By Skyrocketing Up New Iowa And NH Polls

bernie-sanders-campaign-launch
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders is sending an earthquake through politics as usual by skyrocketing up two new polls of Iowa and New Hampshire.
To say that Bernie Sanders is skyrocketing in the latest NBC News/Marist polls of Iowa and New Hampshire might be an understatement. In Iowa, Sanders has gone from trailing Hillary Clinton by 29 points in July (55%-26%) to trailing by 11 points (48%-37%).
In New Hampshire, Senator Sanders has gone from trailing former Sec. of State Clinton by thirteen points (47%-34%) to leading Clinton by eleven points (49%-38%). Sanders has a higher approval rating than Clinton among New Hampshire Democrats (79%-69%).
Bernie Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs summed up why voters are reacting well to Sen. Sanders, “Bernie is leading the fight to rebuild the disappearing American middle class and take on the greed of the billionaire class. These new polls confirm that the more voters get to know Bernie the better they like him and what he stands for.”
Briggs hit the nail on the head. Democratic voters like Bernie Sanders and his message. The more Democratic voters get to know Senator Sanders, the more that they like him. It isn’t that Democrats have stopped liking Hillary Clinton, but that Bernie Sanders has seen his popularity surge.
To anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the last few years, the Sanders message of fighting the billionaires and standing up for the working people of this country is nothing new.
The idea that millions of Americans could rally around a 73-year-old Independent Senator to take back the U.S. government from the billionaires is sending a message to the media and political leaders.
The Sanders campaign isn’t just about an election. It is a popular movement against politicians who have been bought by billionaires and elected representatives who ignore the will of those that they have taken an oath to represent.
The people are fueling the rise of Bernie Sanders, by unifying to take their country back from the billionaires and corporations.

Ann Coulter "feels the Bern"

Republican support for Bernie Sanders is not quite the counterpart of Democrats cheering on Trump.  The latter phenomenon is readily understandable as a desire to see Trump wreak havoc in the Republican primary process.
Republicans for Bernie Sanders apparently are quite different - they seem to actually like him.
"Despite its reputation as a place filled with liberal hippies, Vermont, like most of rural northern New England, is home to a lot of conservatives... Anyone running for statewide office there needs to win these conservatives’ votes, and Bernie is great at doing that... And as NPR’s “Morning Edition” found out last year, some of Bernie’s biggest fans are in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the poorest and most wingnut part of the state.  It’s people from the Northeast Kingdom who’ve overwhelmingly elected Bernie to almost 20 years in Congress and two straight terms as senator..."
On a recent appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Ann Coulder expressed the situation this way:
I wish Fox News would go a little easier on Hillary Clinton. She’s the one we want to run against. Could you guys just back off? Because I feel like I’m living through this, I feel like this is déjà vu again. We used to say, ‘Oh, the next president isn’t going to be a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.’ Our next president could be Senator Bernie Sanders, if you people keep this up.


Colin Powell Guts Republicans By Supporting And Praising Obama’s Iran Deal

The former Secretary of State strongly supported the Iran Deal, saying the agreement limits Iran's centrifuges and stockpiles. Powell called these "remarkable" changes …
Colin Powell, screen capture NBC
Republican Colin Powell called the Iran Deal a “good deal” this morning on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying that the Iranians “have been on a superhighway for the last ten years to create a nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons program with no speed limit.”
The former Secretary of State strongly supported the Iran Deal, saying the agreement limits Iran’s centrifuges and stockpiles. Powell called these “remarkable” changes, saying “We have stopped this highway race” the Iranians were on.
“It’s a pretty good deal… I know there are objections to it, but here’s why I think it’s a good deal,” the former Secretary of State said. He continued, “One of the great concerns that the opposition has that we are leaving open a ‘lane’ for the Iranians to go back to creating a nuclear weapon in 10-15 years are forgetting the reality that they have been on a superhighway for the last ten years to create a nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons program with no speed limit.”
“In the last ten years they’ve gone from 136 centrifuges up to something like 19,000 centrifuges.” That is something Republicans never talk about. Powell pointed out, “This agreement will take them down to 5,000 cent all of this will be under IAEA supervision and I think this is a good outcome.”
“They had stockpiled something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms,” Powell said. “It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this this but they have done it.”
Putting a finely honed knife to the back of Republican fear-mongering about the Iran deal, Powell said, “These are remarkable changes. We have stopped this highway race that they were going down and I think this is very, very important.”
For the finishing blow, Powell took out the Republican argument that we just gave them everything and got nothing, “Will they comply with it? Well, they get nothing until they comply and that’s the important part of the arrangement.”
Powell served under the shrub from 2001 to 2005, during the Iraq war debacle. During his military career, has also served as National Security Adviser and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In other words, his opinion is worth more than many in the Republican cabal, whose first job it has been to avoid military service while sending others to fight for them.

The Rise Of Trump Signals The Fall Of The Republican Cabal

by John DeProspo
ID-100215280Today’s Republican cabal leaders (whoever they may be) are stumped by Trump. The deeper the billionaire sticks his foot into his mouth, the higher his approval ratings. The more the mainstream, “real” Republican candidates try to go toe to toe with Trump, the more they get their teeth smashed in. Is there any stopping the Trump Express?
What is happening to the Republican cabal is nothing more than karmic payback. To the eternal delight of Democrats and many Independents, the party that sold its soul a few short years ago to the teabagger crazies, is now reaping what it sowed. Since 2008, the Republican cabal has succumbed to its basest voices for short-term political gain; where compromise became a dirty word; were Barack Obama was the anti-christ-muslim-Kenyan set to destroy all that wingnuts held near and dear. It’s as if the children started running the house … both figuratively and literally!
Whether or not Trump wins the Republican nomination is irrelevant. The damage has been done. The dirty laundry is being aired and that gaggle of mainstream Republican candidates looks weak and pathetic. If Trump becomes the cabal’s pretender nominee, the Republican cabal is cooked. If Trump does not get the nomination, and makes good on his third-party threat, the Democrats win in a landslide … no matter whether the Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton or SpongeBob Square Pants.
The political pendulum has always swung back and forth; from right to left; from retrenchment to progress. It looks as if the backward arc may have reached its apex and the pendulum is slowing, but surely, moving forward. It is not only the Republican cabal’s bad deal with the devil that is doing them in, however. It’s shear demographics.
Now let’s see. Republicans have alienated gays, blacks, women, Hispanics, Asians, the poor, immigrants, and anyone who believes in science, education, justice, fairness and equality. Who’s left? Basically the very rich; those feeble-minded Fox fans and religio-wingnuts. The problem is there simply aren’t enough of those folks for them to win a national election.
Trump … every liberal, progressive Democrat’s wish come true. RIP Republican cabal.

Students say Trump University was money-sucking scam run by ‘frauds’

Former students of Republican pretender candidate Trump’s Trump University say that the millionaire real estate mogul’s college program was a money-sucking scam run by “a bunch of frauds.”

Ohio's Idiot Kasich’s Corrupt Corporate Charter Schools Are A National Joke

Although Republicans have not had as much success transferring taxpayer funding for public education to corporations at the federal level, Republican governors have made raiding public education…
John-Kasich-mtp-2It surprises no-one, not even the racist and religious Republican base that the Republican cabal exists first and foremost to advance the interests of the rich and corporations at the expense of the American people; including the Republican racist and religious base. Over the past decade Americans have learned that there is no program or agency Republicans will not steal funding from to enrich their corporate masters. Although Republicans have not had as much success transferring taxpayer funding for public education to corporations at the federal level, Republican governors have made raiding public education a bonanza for corporate charter and private religious schools.
It is true that Republican governors such as Brownback, Christie, and Walker were giddy appropriating public school money for tax breaks for corporations and the rich, but their robbery pales in comparison to Republicans like Jindal and Kasich. Now, it appears that pretender candidate and Ohio's idiot John “corporate” Kasich’s lust for corporate-run charter schools is not only the nation’s leading privatization failure, its “beyond belief” corruption prompted mass evacuations of Ohio education officials fleeing Kasich’s corporate education corruption.
In the four years that corporate agitator Kasich has been in office, funding for traditional public schools has been slashed as far too costly and a burden on the rich and corporations. All while corporate charter schools have seen a very significant funding increase as a result of the public school funding cuts. In what has to be an epic understatement, many education advocates in Ohio and nationally have remarked that the public school funding being transferred to corporate charter schools in Ohio not only “appears to have been misspent,” it is a scam to enrich a corporation loyal to Kasich and Ohio Republicans. It is also a plot to make predominately poor minority students uneducated because nothing on Earth guarantees Republican electoral success than an uneducated populace.
This corporate corruption sweeping through Republican states’ education sectors is happening all across America, but particularly so in Ohio. Kasich has been heavily promoting the primary components of corporate school reform that include primarily increasing the number of vouchers that use public money to pay for private religious schools, and heavily expanding corporate “managed” charter schools. Kasich is so enamored with, and driven to expand, charter schools that he has protected a blatantly corrupt corporate privatization scheme that produce the greatest charter school system failure in America. Instead of scrapping the school corporatization agenda, Kasich’s devotion to his corporate cohort drooling to take over all education has driven him to pledge more funding and support for corporate-controlled charter schools at the expense of impoverished minority students and public education.
The level of corruption in Kasich’s corporate charter school scam became exposed nationally this winter after a report from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes revealed that achievement in Ohio’s charter schools was significantly below Ohio’s regular public schools. Anyone familiar with Republicans’ love affair with charter schools would not be surprised that yet another study found one of the largest and “most successful” charter schools in America underperformed even underperforming public schools. However, in Ohio’s case besides achieving performance grades of “F” across the board, Kasich’s corporate charters are robbing the state blind and Kasich’s “education experts” are rigging performance results and attendance reports to steal more Ohio taxpayer money. In fact, the corporate corruption is so abominable and achievement scores are so bad that an education policy analyst rightly noted that, “Our charter schools have become a national joke.” They have also become a money laundering enterprise for the corporation running Kasich’s charter school program.
When a Kasich education appointee, Leon Sinoff was asked to sign off on a building lease for Imagine Columbus Primary Academy, he was unaware that the corporate-run school received an F grade for achievement on the 2013-14 state report card, only three teachers returned after summer break, and two principals and one vice principal had stepped down. Sinoff then discovered that the school served a predominately high-poverty, low-income community and lacked arts, music, and foreign language classes. When he inquired about the poor performance and lack of adequate teachers and classes, the corporation running the charters, Imagine Schools, complained there was not enough funding due to the high expense of the building lease agreement. Sinoff soon discovered that the $58,000-a-month lease negotiated and entered into by Imagine Schools consumed half the school’s operating budget for a building that was owned by Imagine Schools Finance LLC.
To understand the corruption of a corporate charter school renting a building from itself, the national standard for school building leases is between 8 and 15 percent of operational budgets, not 50 percent. The corporate rigging is just one reason an epic failure like Imagine Schools is one of the largest for-profit charter school management corporations in America. After finding the corruption, Sinofff promptly resigned, along with other stunned board members, and announced, “This is self-dealing. That’s why we are massively overpaying for the lease. Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out low-quality schools and profiting off them. They don’t care about the quality of the kids’ education.”
That was only a small part of the corporate Kasich’s corruption. When Ohio State Auditor, David Yost, made unannounced visits to 30 charter schools around the state, he found that the real attendance was drastically lower than what the schools reported to the Department of Education. Inflating classroom numbers meant extra taxpayer dollars for the corporate charter schools because states dispense education funds based on the number of students enrolled. It still gets worse.
After one of Imagine’s corporate charters was forced to close due to being caught paying Imagine enormous sums for rent while languishing on the state’s “academic emergency” list reserved for F-rated schools, Kasich appointed one of its failed corporate board members, David Hansen, as “executive director” of the entire state’s Office of Quality School Choice and Charter Funding.
Kasich assigned Hansen to oversee the expansion of Imagine’s failed charter and virtual schools; virtual schools are online charters used by homeschoolers to produce uneducated citizens as crucial to Republicans’ electoral survival as racists and religious fanatics. In July Kasich’s hand-picked corporate education executive resigned after admitting he regularly rigged evaluations of charter school sponsors that authorize and oversee the schools in exchange for a handsome taxpayer-provided fee. Hansen also admitted he deliberately concealed the failing grades of F-rated schools operated by for-profit corporations because they are owned by major Republican donors in the state. Kasich’s response to the deception and corporate fraud is expanding corporate-run charters with more money appropriated from the state’s public schools.
One would like to say that what is happening to education in Ohio under Republicans is a cautionary tale, or a portent of the coming disaster for education if Republicans are allowed to fulfill the Koch brothers’ dream of corporate control of the education system in America. Sadly, not only is it not a cautionary tale, the disaster is unfolding in every Republican state across the nation to the detriment of students, public education, and taxpayers who are seeing even more of their tax dollars funneled directly into corporate coffers under the guise of school choice.
Most Americans are completely unaware that charter schools typically underperform public schools, and they are not beholden to report to any agency how they spend money stolen from public education. They are also not required to teach students anything, or follow national or state standards, and they regularly insert religion as science and prayer as part of the corporate charter school day. It is precisely that lack of oversight and accountability that allowed Kasich’s charter schools to successfully misspend taxpayer dollars, rig attendance reports, and conceal drastically underperforming corporate charters.
This country owes its children a decent education; something President Obama has advocated since his tenure in the White House began. However, charter schools, particularly corporate-run charters, are not providing even a basic education and there are myriad studies revealing that they typically underperform even underfunded public schools. In Ohio’s case, instead of scrapping the corporate charter catastrophe and restoring funding to public schools, John “corporate” Kasich is promising more charters and running for president; like every Republican he wants to impart his corporate corruption on the entire nation and he will not stop at education.

Fox News Demands Obama Condemn Violence Against Police Days After He Did Just That

Fox News Demands Obama Condemn Violence Against Police Days After He Did Just That

Arkansas Republican says he’ll shoot you if you ask him about his job in public

Image: Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert, R (Twitter.com)
A Republican wingnut from Arkansas boasted on Twitter that he is prepared to shoot to kill if people do not approach him with proper amount of respect as he goes about his daily business.
***
You can kiss my ass and blow it out your ass - is that the 'proper' amount of respect you sack of shit!? I'll ask you about your job any way I see fit.

The Truth Be Told

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Media Ignores Walker’s Campaign Collapse While Obsessing Over Hillary Clinton

Walker: A Pander Too Far

Scott Walker: A Pander Too Far
Walker knows no loyalty to even the home team

Canada Also Thinks Scott Walker Is A Idiot

Fresh off his disgraceful appearance on “Meet the Press,” during which Walker claimed discussions about the 14th Amendment are mere distraction from legitimate issues, like whether we should build a Mexican fence on the Canadian border, the United States of Canada has responded by saying that Walker guy is one stupid fuck, eh? Christine Constantin, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC, responded by rolling her eyes for about 13 hours, ...

'Shocking' New Polls Show Republicans Are Still Morons

Yes America is that dumbAfter all these years, is our Republicans learning? Nope. We’ve seen the president’s birth certificate, we’ve read endless PolitiFacting, and even the team of private investigators Trump sent to Hawaii four years ago has yet to make any earth-shattering announcements about finding the definitive proof that Obama was not born there. And yet: The new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll asked: “Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States or ...

Wingnuts Outraged At New Program That Tries To End Homelessness Efficiently

The Religio-Wingnuts’ New Cash Cow – 'Religious Persecution'

by John DeProspo
6a00d8354c0d2669e201901daf823f970b-piKentucky county clerk Kim Davis, the three-time divorcee, is still refusing to issue marriage licenses because her dog does not want gays to marry. In her mind, doing the job she is being paid to do, would violate her conscience. It doesn’t matter that a state judge has ordered her to issue licenses, or that the Supreme Court has denied her appeal. The woman is simply acting on “dog’s authority.”
Haven’t we seen this act before? Remember that Indiana pizzeria owner who said he would refuse to serve his pizza at a gay wedding? After being forced to close because of the backlash that erupted, the shop raised nearly $1 million dollars from supporters of bigotry. Not a bad payday!
Who knew pandering to wingnut 'christians' could be so lucrative? Of course, I use the word “christians” very loosely. These pious persecuted souls are not followers of christ but CINO, christian in name only. They couldn’t be more separated from the message their idol and savior preached.
If it hasn’t happened already, it won’t be long before Kim Davis’ camp starts cashing in by fundraising for this new 'christian' martyr, now on her fourth marriage. Could a book deal be far behind? And won’t this make a great, new Republican wedge issue?
Davis, in jail, remains resolute. “My beliefs cannot be separated from me,” said Davis. “”I’m willing to face my consequences.”
While Davis cannot be fired from her job, as she is an elected official, she can, and must, be held in contempt for failing to honor a court order. Perhaps a little jail time might make her realize that, according to her holy book, it’s no more of a sin for two gays to marry, than for two divorced adulterers to remarry (Matthew 19:3.9.) If issuing a marriage license to a same-sex couple would banish them to hell, as Davis has claimed, then the serial bride would not be too far behind.
One thing’s for certain. The more fines and jail time for Kim Davis, the more lucre flowing into her coffer. You can guess her thinking right now… bring it on!

Still Bitter About Gay Marriage, Republicans Refuse To Support Gay Rights Bill … For No Reason

Still Bitter About Gay Marriage, Republicans Refuse To Support Gay Rights Bill… For No ReasonI would say Republicans are behaving like a bunch of babies, but that would be unfair to babies.

Fox Calls Black Lives Matter A Hate Group After Repeatedly Lauding Actual Hate Groups

Limbaugh Claims Syrian Refugees Are Seeking "Big Welfare Benefits"