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Friday, September 25, 2015

The Daily Drift

Welcome to the Friday Edition of The Truth Be Told.
Our latest comment:
Hammering without let up.
~ Henry Gilliam
Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!  
 
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Republicans are NO-Hit wonders ... !
Today is - National One-Hit Wonder Day
 
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Editorial Comment

It has been a week around here.
The first really cool day  began with a record low temperature and another day set the record for the high temperature for that day - the only thing we didn't have was any form of precipitation.
Just an average early "Fall" week around these parts.
Speaking of pleasant things ...
The wingnuts are infighting more and imploding faster, making for a pleasant start to the Fall.
(Of course it would be even better if along with their closed minds can closed mouths.)
Liberals are winning special elections to replace corrupt wingnuts in every part of the country.
The wingnut trolls have lost their desire to pervert this blog as the most vile of the vile have been incarcerated for some very serious crimes against humanity and were caught due to our reporting their slimy activities when they attempted to pervert this blog - the world is always a better place when wingnuts are removed from it and it has always been so throughout history ... the removal of each era's wingnuts has lead to growth and prosperity for everyone and it is happening again now.

Thank you for reading The Truth Be Told!

Be Happy and Have Fun

President Obama Makes History With Record-Setting Economic Turn-Around

Image via Flickr
Thanks to President Obama, the US economy has experienced a record-breaking economic turn-around just six years after the shrub's economic crash. Here’s why that’s monumental.

Obama Takes 'A Sledgehammer' To Cuba Embargo

Obama Takes 'A Sledgehammer' To Cuba Embargo

Bernie Sanders Explains Why He's Not Insulted When People Call Him A Socialist

Athena Image

Sanders tells Colbert why he doesn’t take SuperPAC money

Bernie Sanders appears with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show (CBS)

Bernie Sanders Gives Brilliant Reason Why He Won’t Take Billionaires’ Money

Bernie Sanders Gives Brilliant Reason Why He Won’t Take Billionaires’ Money (VIDEO)
Sanders’ interview on The Late Show left everyone feeling the Bern.
Read more 

Bring Undocumented People Out of the Shadows

Republicans Prove Once Again That Facts Are Meaningless To Them

Republicans Prove Once Again That Facts Are Meaningless To Them

Shoe

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/p2UMlqQXUgiEE7061cDETQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NDQ1O2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTYwMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/tmsho150920.jpg

The Republican cabal’s bullshit campaign: Why they’re drowning the country in an ocean of lies

Republicans are spending so much of their time misleading and lying to the public. 
How will the media keep up?
by Elias Isquith
The GOP's bullsh*t campaign: Why they're drowning the country in an ocean of lies
If you’re searching for advice on using the Internet without losing your mind, the classic xkcd web comic “Duty Calls” remains the gold standard. After all, no matter how much technology changes, as long as there are humans using it, the Internet will be full of people; and many of them will be wrong. So unless you figure out a way to log-off — and, more important, stay logged off — you’re just going to have to find a way to deal.
In terms of usefulness, however, there is a close second to xkcd’s masterpiece: the “Bullshit Asymmetry Principle.” Coined by Italian software developer Alberto Brandolini, the BAP is a newer member of the canon, first appearing in a January 2013 tweet. But if you’ve already come across the BAP, it was probably through the now-iconic picture taken during the “lightning talk” Brandolini delivered last year in Rome:
For those of you who can’t see embedded tweets and aren’t familiar with the BAP already, it goes like this: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of a magnitude bigger than to produce it.” And if you’ve ever been on the Internet before — or had a conversation with a 9/11 Truther — it’s likely that you don’t need me to explain the BAP to you, because its truth is utterly (and painfully) self-evident.
But if you want a more specific example, look no further than the grotesque and meaningless postmodern spectacle broadcast by CNN and the Republican cabal and called it a 'debate'. Because with three hours and 11 candidates at its disposal, the former “most trusted name in news” unleashed a Pacific Ocean-size amount of bullshit. It was so voluminous, in fact, that even those in the media who wanted to refute it couldn’t.
“We could literally spend the entire show fact-checking the debate,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said on Thursday, explaining why he was going to focus instead on the night’s “three biggest lies.” (Note: Without commercials, “All In” runs about 45 minutes.) And while that sounds hyperbolic, it’s not. In perfect honesty, I could easily spend this whole column doing the same. But I’ll follow Hayes’ lead and limit myself to three examples.
I’ll concentrate on (in ascending order of awfulness): Fiorina’s bullshit about Planned Parenthood, Jeb’s bullshit about his older brother’s national security record, and Rubio’s bullshit about climate change. In each case, the candidates made statements that were either blatant lies or grossly misleading; and in each case, mainstream media held its nose, kept walking, and left others to clean up the mess.
Of the three, Fiorina’s bullshit was the least harmful; but it was possibly the most shameless. Speaking of the deceptively edited anti-Planned Parenthood video that the deceptively named Center for Medical Progress recorded through deception, Fiorina described “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
Clearly, viewers were supposed to infer that this grisly scene was recorded by the CMP’s moles. It was not. As best as Vox’s Sarah Kliff — who watched all 12 hours of the CMP’s footage, and described Fiorina’s claim as “pure fiction” — can tell, Fiorina is describing a mix of stock footage, which was not shot inside a Planned Parenthood, and the unsubstantiated claims of a former fetal tissue procurement. Both come from other CMP releases.
So the footage Fiorina described was part of the CMP’s video. But that’s because it was edited into it, not because that’s what the people who snuck into Planned Parenthood actually witnessed. In the most rigid and literal sense of the word, therefore, Fiorina’s claim was not a lie; it was bullshit. Yet we only know that because of pro-choice journalists; “objective” media has focused on the post-debate horserace instead.
Jeb’s bullshit, on the other hand, is much easier to identify. Speaking in defense of his older brother the shrub, Jeb claimed that dumbya at least “kept us safe.” This earned him his biggest round of applause of the night, and Jeb’s campaign was evidently proud enough of the moment to further immortalize it on Twitter. And the tweet’s been shared nearly 1,000 times, despite the fact that it is objectively untrue:
In this instance, perhaps because of the sheer brazenness, the media’s been less hesitant to interrogate the claim. But although there isn’t a single metric by which the statement can be justified — even if we take out 9/11, Obama’s record is superior — the publications willing to call Jeb on his bullshit have, overwhelmingly, been liberal. Mainstream ones have opted instead to let left-of-center figures make the point for them, as if they were ventriloquists.
If it went unchallenged, Jeb’s bullshit could lead to the U.S. once again adopting his brother’s policies of preemptive war, and occupation. Both necessary, he would argue, in order to “keep us safe.” Maybe he’d reinstate his brother’s global torture regime, too. He’s said he’s open to the idea, although he prefers the term “enhanced interrogation.” (I suppose we could call that something of a bullshit throwback.)
Such an outcome would be an unmitigated disaster. But if Rubio’s bullshit were allowed to reach the Oval Office, the outcome would quite possibly — and remarkably — be even worse. Because according to Rubio, “nothing” that the U.S. can do will “change our climate” or “change our weather.” Any kind of climate policy, he said, would “destroy our economy” and “make America a harder place to create jobs.”
Rubio’s statement is so broad, so extreme, and so absurd, it’s hard to know where to start. But as Mother Jones’ James West wrote, even a generous interpretation of his argument — “America can’t act alone to solve climate change” — relies on an utterly false choice. As Rubio himself is often fond of saying, the U.S. can provide global leadership like no other nation. To suggest this is true when it comes to warfare, but false when it comes to climate change, is — you guessed it — bullshit.
Again: There are merely three instances from a debate that went on for three hours. Moreover, the debunking here is cursory, and largely reliant on linking to other people’s hard work. So imagine how much time and energy it would take to not only expose this mendaciousness for what it is in greater detail, but to do so for every single example of bullshit. And this is from just a single debate!
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of a magnitude bigger than to produce it.” When a distant family member posts conspiracy theories about vaccines — which also made an appearance in the 'debate', by the way — these are words to live by. But they shouldn’t decide the next president.

Republican Leadership?

Face It, That's an Oxymoron!
by William Boardman 
Making fun of the assortment of Republican candidates for pretender as some sort of clown show is easy enough to do, which is probably one reason so many people do it. But that sort of ridicule is so insubstantial, so irrelevant, that it ends up serving as a form of endorsement of the motley crew, as if, underneath it all, these are actually serious people. This implied endorsement is reinforced by the tepid questions they are asked in conjunction with media coverage of their mostly foolish answers to pointless questions, as if this charade were somehow a meaningful and sober way to choose a leader.
Actually, it’s all a big joke. The participants must know it’s a big joke, but it works for them, it protects them from answering hard questions with possibly dangerous, relevant answers, AND it lets them throw verbal cream pies in each others’ faces – what’s to hate? And the media know it’s all a big joke, which works for them, pandering to ugly prejudices, treating truth and lie as equals, and getting good ratings from pie-in-the-face lovers of almost all opinions.

Aging California teabaggers looking for hot ‘female college students’ to help recruit younger followers

Attractive women posing - Shutterstock
“You bring in some 25- and 30-year-old good looking college students, men and women, and watch how fast you get young people to stop by the booth,” Michael Emerson told the crowd. “Usually attractive female college students.”

Wingnut Senator Against Minimum Wage Says His $700,000 Salary Is ‘Pretty Reasonable’

Republican Senator Against Minimum Wage Says His $700,000 Salary Is ‘Pretty Reasonable’
Once again, a rich white wingnut doesn’t care about anyone else.

The Koch Brothers Are Helping The Poor?

We hear a lot from conservatives about how the poor don’t need handouts, they need job training and better life skills, so they can pull themselves...

Nugent Finally Admits To Being The ‘Gay Vegetarian Pirate’ We Always Knew He Was

Ted Nugent Finally Admits To Being The ‘Gay Vegetarian Pirate’ We Always Knew He Was
Congrats on coming out, Ted!
Read more 

Huckabee Suggests CNN Gave Him Less Debate Time As Payback For His Fox News Ratings

Living in a land of delusion ...
Republican pretender candidate Huckabee was not just miffed at the lack of time he got during the CNN Republican 'debate', he came up with a crazy conspiracy theory to justify it.

Maher and Matthews rip Jeb

'Real Time' host Bill Maher during the panel discussion on Sept. 18, 2015. [YouTube]

Beck Concocts Conspiracy Theory For Conspiracy Theorists

As if the teabaggers don't already have enough reasons to be paranoid?

5 Jaw-Dropping Wingnut Idiocies

Opponents must ‘prove to me’ they watched my non-existent fetus videos

The rise of Fiorina and what it means for the Republican cabal

Carly Fiorina speaks to Fox News on March 29, 2015. [Fox News]As un-political as Fiorina can sound, her broader rhetorical approach is an exercise in textbook wingnut messaging, said George Lakoff, whose influential 1996 book, Moral Politics, argues that the wingnuts and liberals are informed by radically different conceptions of morality, captured in their language.

Cruz Gets His Ass Handed To Him By Republican Cabal Senator For Egging On Another Costly Government Shutdown

Image via CNNCruz REALLY wants another government shutdown, and Kelly Ayotte REALLY wants Cruz to explain how this time will be any different.

The myth of Ronald Reagan: Pragmatic moderate or radical wingnut?

Republican candidates have been quoting the horrid fifth rate actor lately but his 'legacy' is filled with garbage.

Sewer Slime

Where you find Republicans!

Wingnuts In South Carolina Defend Trump’s ‘Muslim Problem’ Response

Wingnuts In South Carolina Defend Trump’s ‘Muslim Problem’ Response


Trump On A Muslim President: 'Some People Say It Already Happened'

Trump Claims Voters Don’t Care That He Knows Nothing Because He Can Buy The Presidency

Donald Trump tantrumThis would be awkward for the Republican cabal if they held consistent values, but since they don’t, they’re not feeling the sting from a know-nothing bigot who is polling first in the 2016 Republican cabal pretender primary.
It’s Donald Trump, touting his power to buy the presidency as a rich celebrity, in an interview with the New York Times:
“Expressing confidence that American voters do not care if he lacks specifics, Trump says he has yet to fully exploit his personal advantages over his Republican pretender rivals — chiefly his enormous wealth and celebrity — and that both will matter more to his political fate than debate performances like his shaky one this week.
“Mr. Trump said in an interview that he was prepared to spend $100 million or more to become the Republican nominee and that most of it would go to galvanizing voter support in states with early nominating contests.”
Remember when Republicans tried to accuse then sitting Senator Barack Obama of being a “celebrity”? LOL. They are getting that handed back to them on a big old plate of payback.
People (and by people, Trump is referring to Republican primary voters) don’t care about his policies; they just want to hear him be angry according to Trump.
“He said he did not give many specific answers at the debate because he believed that most people cared more about seeing his pugnacious leadership style than hearing detailed policy plans. He denied that he was unprepared for foreign policy questions, saying that he had received briefings from national security officials (whom he would not name), but that he preferred to speak in “broad strokes” about his views,” the New York Times reported.
Trump’s “views”, like his birtherism, his hatred of immigrants, his belief that Mexicans are all rapists, the nasty things he says about professional women with whom he is interacting… Yes, those views are the views that the Republican base loves to see on display.
Ironically, those views are also the carefully cultivated views that Republican establishment plants in their base in order to avoid discussing actual policies with them, so the horror of Trump’s popularity is simply the natural evolution of the Republican cabal’s Southern Strategy. This is what it takes to sell a debunked economic policy that is designed specifically to benefit the top 2% at the expense of the very people whose votes they need.
Palin was a 2008 warning shot to Republicans to get it together, but they decided to blame her and carry on in deep denial, pretending all was well. Then in 2012 they took refuge in establishment pedigree with Romney, who hates half the country. But even he couldn’t sell the people the knife with which to stab themselves in the back. So now here they are, eight years later, caught between Trump and Jeb – or Palin with less knowledge of government (dog help us all) and Romney with the shrub’s last name and the foreign policy posse to back up all that the shrub name stands for.
To make it rain trickle down, Trump will just have to keep insulting everyone but white, hetero 'christian' males and those who identify with them.

Trump’s Second Amendment Position Papers Are a White Gun Nut’s Wet Dream

Trump neither read nor understood the Second Amendment but uses it as just an excuse for "law-abiding" folks to lock and load…
Trump tweeted that he had released his position papers on the Second Amendment:
trump at iowa state fair
The position paper, PROTECTING OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Trump on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms tells us:
The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.
The problem is, that is not what the Second Amendment says at all and Trump proves again and again he did not actually read the Second Amendment before he wrote his position papers on it.
There, the rest of us can plainly read:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Trump forgot about the “well regulated militia” being the reason for bearing arms. And forgetting about the militia means Trump misunderstands what those arms are for. He goes on to claim:
The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.
Plain and simple…no, not really plain and simple at all.
What is a militia Trump has ignored, you ask? Rather than going to a modern dictionary to see why they needed guns (in case the Second Amendment isn’t clear enough on that), let’s open up Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1768):
MILITIA. F. [Latin] The trainbands; the standing force of a nation
TRAINBANDS. F. The militia; the part of a community trained to martial exercise.
So the militia is the standing force of the nation. And in the absence of the Continental Army during the Revolution, the militia was precisely that, sometimes standing up to the British, sometimes melting away, taking their guns with them.
It is important to note here that the Founding Fathers were suspicious of standing armies, so after the Revolution, we had a “well regulated militia” instead. This militia had its backsides handed to them by a Native American force at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791.
The United States Constitution, of course, was drafted in 1787 during the primacy of the militia, and ratified in 1788, both events occurring before President George Washington decided we needed an actual, professional army in 1792. So strictly speaking, the Second Amendment speaks to an era that had ceased to exist by 1792 with the establishment of Mad Anthony Wayne’s “Legion of the United States” (not renamed the United States Army until 1796).
It is a shame the Founding Fathers did not bother to change the Second Amendment to reflect the new reality, that Americans no longer needed to be armed like an army because they no longer were an army. Today, of course, we not only have a standing, active-duty army, but we have the Army Reserve and a new sort of militia, the National Guard.
Needless to say, unlike 1776, we no longer have to carry our own weapons to National Guard training. The Army provides the weapons these days. Technically speaking, the Second Amendment describes a reality that no longer prevails.
The problem Trump has here is that he sees guns as a means of defending our homes against intruders, and that is not how guns are written into the United States Constitution. Communities in the 18th century would muster the able-bodied men with their weapons on the village green and drill like soldiers.
And they had to: they were the closet thing to Samuel Johnson’s standing army. But armies were never intended to control our own people, but to ward off outside enemies.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, wants to use guns to control crime. Bernie Sanders wants fewer prisons, and to eliminate private prisons. Donald Trump wants to throw more people into prison. And he makes a careful distinction between white folks with guns, who are okay in his book, and “other” people with guns, or “drug dealers and gang members” as he calls them.
We need to get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal. Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control. Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street. This needs to stop.
Then there are the “okay” people:
Why does that matter to law-abiding gun owners? Because they’re the ones who anti-gun politicians and the media blame when criminals misuse guns.
Like the Oath Keepers aiming guns at federal officers? That sort of non-violent? Or offering to “protect” Kim Davis from re-arrest? Or trying to intimidate a judge at his home by gathering outside, armed? Or entering into government offices, armed, to intimidate lawmakers? Those were all actions carried out by white people with guns.
Yet Trump believes no white man with a gun can be wrong, proposes:
[E]mpower law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves. Law enforcement is great, they do a tremendous job, but they can’t be everywhere all of the time. Our personal protection is ultimately up to us. That’s why I’m a gun owner, that’s why I have a concealed carry permit, and that’s why tens of millions of Americans have concealed carry permits as well. It’s just common sense. To make America great again, we’re going to go after criminals and put the law back on the side of the law-abiding.
Common sense tells Trump to turn a bunch of untrained yokels with guns, who as often as not shoot themselves or each other by accident, or are shot by their wives or children by accident because they leave their loaded weapons lying around, loose on criminals. Trump thinks this is the answer to crime.
Trump complains in his papers that “law-abiding gun owners…get blamed by anti-gun politicians, gun control groups and the media for the acts of deranged madmen,” but has no problem assigning group guilt to blacks or Mexicans or Muslims for the actions of a violent few.
It’s just that in Trump’s white supremacist world, white folks with guns can do no wrong. And Trump doesn’t want to confuse people with terms like “assault weapon” or “high capacity magazine”: he says “Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice.”
The old adage Keeping up with the Joneses just assumed a terrifying new dimension.
Trump neither read nor understood the Second Amendment, but uses it as just an excuse for “law-abiding” (read: white) folks to lock and load while we clear everyone else off the streets, and oh, by the way, that concealed carry permit should be valid in your neighborhood too, even if your community says no, because, you know, it’s a “right.”
Never mind the Second Amendment’s failure to mention “concealed carry,” because why would a militia conceal its weapons?
We need to thank Trump for releasing his position papers on the Second Amendment. They are very…illuminating, to say the least. We now have a fuller understanding of Trump’s “us vs. them” world and how he intends to “manage” it. White folks with guns are just protecting themselves and maintaining law and order. Other folks…well, there are always those prisons Republicans love so much.
Let’s see – Ãœbermensch on the streets with guns. Untermenschen in the prisons. That’s Trump’s America.
Does that sound at all familiar to you? It should. Welcome to Germany, 1933.

Be Afraid ,,, Be Very Afraid

Be Very Afraid: Trump’s Support Among Republicans May Run Deeper Than His Poll Numbers ShowTrump’s Support Among Wingnuts May Run Deeper Than His Poll Numbers Show
Are Trump supporters afraid to tell live pollsters that they back the moron?