Bernie Sanders Is Terrifying Wall Street By Pushing Hillary Clinton To The Left

Wall Street is openly worrying that Bernie Sanders is pushing Hillary Clinton to the left by calling for the biggest banks in America to be broken up.

The Hill reported:

Wall Street is worried that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s vigorous calls for banking industry reform will pull Hillary Clinton to the left, as the two presidential candidates battle for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

….

Despite the vocal opposition from the business community, Sanders’s ability to activate progressive outside groups could mean he may be able to move Clinton to the left — even if, as conventional wisdom says, he poses no real threat to the former secretary of State’s eventual nomination.

Wall Street should be worried. Former Sec. of State Clinton has already adopted the positions held by a majority in her party on issues like immigration, Citizens United, and gay marriage. Wall Street’s persistent suggestions that Sen. Sanders’s new bill that would break up the big banks does not scare them sound more like they are trying to talk themselves down off of the ledge.

Before Sanders entered the race, Clinton was already moving left, but the difference is that she now has an opponent that will hold her accountable if she tries to run a centrist general election-style campaign during the Democratic primary.

Bernie Sanders is having a large impact on the race for the Democratic nomination. The Senator from Vermont is shaping the debate. He has shown that he is not afraid to up the ante by taking solidly liberal policy positions.

Bernie Sanders is the embodiment, but what Wall Street should really be worried about is the movement within the Democratic Party to the left. It isn’t just Bernie Sanders who is pulling Hillary Clinton to the left. The Democratic Party has moved left. Even if Sanders were not in the race, Clinton would still be moving left.

Bernie Sanders has been a game changer, but the wave he is riding is being powered by millions and millions of individuals whose daily economic pain remind them of the Wall Street caused Great Recession.

Voters want overtime pay expanded - By a lot.

by Laura Clawson

Hear that, Mr. President? It's good to be bold.

We don't yet know how high President Obama will raise the salary threshold for workers to get overtime pay. A new poll finds significant public support for him to raise it to the very highest end of what had been discussed. Public Policy Polling conducted a survey for Americans United for Change and found 73 percent support for an increase in the overtime threshold, but what's most striking is this:

65% of voters think workers making up to $75,000 a year should be allowed to receive overtime pay when working more than 40 hours in a week regardless of job classification, compared to only 23% opposed to a change to that level. This is a pocketbook issue that creates little division across party lines- 68% of Democrats, 66% of Republicans, and 58% of independents favor moving the overtime pay threshold to that level.

That's if people are just asked "Would you support or oppose allowing people to receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week if they make $75,000 a year or less regardless of their job classification?" Given a choice of different salary levels for overtime to kick in, 44 percent still chose $75,000 a year, while an additional nine percent chose $60,000 and 10 percent chose $50,000. Even a modest increase like the $42,000 rumored to be the level the Obama administration was considering would mean that an additional 3.5 million workers would be eligible for overtime pay

President Obama Calls Out The Republican Empty Talk About Caring For The Poor

While taking part in a discussion on overcoming poverty, President Obama exposed the empty language that Republicans are using to pretend that they care about the poor.

Video:

The President said:

I think if you talk to any of my Republican friends they will say number one, they care about the poor, and I believe them. Number two, they’ll say there are some public goods that have to be made, and I believe them, but when it comes to actually establishing budgets, making choices, prioritizing, that’s when it all starts breaking down.

….

But ultimately, there are going to have to be some choices made. When I, for example, make an argument about closing the carried interest loophole that exists whereby hedge fund managers are paying fifteen percent on the fees and income they collect I’ve been called Hitler for doing this, or at least this is like Hitler going to Poland. That’s an actual quote from a hedge fund manager when I made that recommendation.

The top twenty-five hedge managers made more than all of the kindergarten teachers in the country. So when I say that, I’m not saying that because I dislike hedge fund managers, or I think they’re evil. I’m saying that you’re paying a lower rate than a lot of folks who making $300,000 a year. You pretty much have more than you’ll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use. There’s a fairness issue involved here, and by the way, if we were able to close that loophole I can now invest in early childhood education that would really make a difference.

….

If we can’t ask from society’s lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then this conversation is for show.

The President blew the Republican faux concern about poverty out of the water by challenging them to make rich people who are exploiting loopholes in the tax code to pay their fair share.

Obama was correct this is an issue of fairness, and Republicans aren’t interested in going beyond empty words. Republicans have no desire to make those who are cheating the system do the right thing that would help to make our society stronger.

President Obama wasn’t floating any radical ideas. He simply suggested that people who have more money than they will ever be able to spend in their lifetimes have a portion of their income taxed at a rate that is more reflective of their earnings.

President Obama and the Democrats are going to continue to win this argument because it is a matter of fairness, and there is undeniable sense among the American people that the rungs of the ladder of economic opportunity have been sawed off, and the system is extremely unfair.

Obama Rips Fox News For Spreading Class Warfare Propaganda

President Obama is ripping Fox News and calling the network out by name while debunking their class warfare propaganda.

While speaking at Georgetown University, the President called out Fox News by name:

But part of it has also been — there’s always been a strain in American politics where you’ve got the middle class, and the question has been, who are you mad at, if you’re struggling; if you’re working, but you don’t seem to be getting ahead. And over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leaches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction.

And, look, it’s still being propagated. I mean, I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu — they will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re like, I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obama phone — or whatever. And that becomes an entire narrative — right? — that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress — which is much more typical — who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills.

And so if we’re going to change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think, we’re going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media reports on these issues and how people’s impressions of what it’s like to struggle in this economy looks like, and how budgets connect to that. And that’s a hard process because that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news.

The President’s remarks came two days after Fox News’s Chris Wallace whined on the air that the Obama White House will not send officials to be guests on his show unless they appear on all five Sunday shows.

Obama was correct. Fox News has spent years mining the class and racial divides in American society for financial and partisan political gain. You will hardly ever see an interview with an ordinary American on Fox that doesn’t contain an attack on Democrats and President Obama.

The “average American” on Fox News looks exactly like the silent majority that Richard Nixon appealed to when Roger Ailes worked on his presidential campaign decades ago. Fox News reaffirms all of the stereotypes about poor people on a regular basis. In Fox world, people are poor because they don’t want to work, or they aren’t working hard enough.

Fox News never features the person who has to work two minimum wage jobs in the service sector just pay rent and keep food on the table. The people that Fox News likes to pretend don’t exist are who the president was talking about. Obama was speaking for those people who Fox News has demonized while become the nation’s top Fox News propaganda buster.

Scott Walker’s Koch Economics Is Decimating Wisconsin

It is shameful that the media, or conservatives for that matter, will not admit that Republicans are not deluded in thinking that turning over the wealth of the nation to the rich, Wall Street, and corporations will ever create economic prosperity for the masses. By now only a fool is unaware that Republicans exist to serve the very rich and detest the masses, and yet millions still believe in and trust that allowing Republicans to eliminate domestic spending and abolish taxes for the rich will create wealth for the entire population.

It is always stunning that Republicans have any support for their economic agenda among the population, at any level. Even in states with Republican legislatures and governors suffering monumental economic failures from pro-corporate policies advanced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that keep wages low, slash safety nets, cut education, and impose socially conservative policies, voters dependably flock to conservative candidates. If the 2014 midterms were any indication, it appears that residents in failed Republican states are either dirt stupid, or truly believe that revenue-killing tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy driving spending cuts and debt are the population’s path to prosperity.

Kansas has received its share of attention for its epic trickle down failure typical of conservative economics, and it is duly warranted. However, the governor of Kansas has not been tapped by the Koch brothers as their preferred Republican presidential candidate for 2016. That distinction goes to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who has his state’s financial demise keeping pace with Kansas for the top Republican economic failure. Hopefully Americans are paying attention to the portent of another massive national economic failure if Republicans control Congress and the White House according to the disaster in Wisconsin.

Last week Scott Walker wrote an op-ed touting his economic bona fides in a piece titled “Small Business is Serious Business.” In it, Walker asserts that he has fostered outrageous success and prosperity for small businesses, including acknowledging the necessity of education despite slashing Wisconsin’s education budget to the bone. Specifically, Walker claims to have put, at the state level, policies in place that if expanded nationally will support entrepreneurs and their enterprises and create an economic Utopia. However, it is important to note that Scott Walker has drawn a government paycheck since 1993 disputing the claim that he knows anything whatsoever about the private sector. His epic tax cuts have, however, enriched large corporations and the wealthy, but they have not created success and prosperity for “small businesses, created jobs, or helped the state’s residents.

Walker writes that “we know that creating a low-tax environment is essential for growth, and we’ve taken bold action to ensure Wisconsin follows that model. We’ve lowered taxes by $2 billion for individuals, business, and on property.” That is true, wealthy individuals, giant corporations, and corporate property taxes were cut drastically.  In fact, as he claims it is largest round of tax cuts in Wisconsin in 14 years, but they only benefited the rich and corporations and exploded Wisconsin’s deficit over the $2 billion mark.

According to a man without a shred of experience in the private business sector, Walker claimed he knows that “qualified workers lie at the heart of each and every good business; last year, we added grants for technical colleges to train thousands of workers in Wisconsin’s high-demand fields.” It is curious that Walker touts adding grants for technical colleges when as soon as he took office he slashed Wisconsin’s Technical College System by over 30 percent. He has also enacted monumental cuts to education every year to “fund” his tax breaks for the rich that amount to the greatest public education cuts in Wisconsin history.

In fact, Walker’s education cuts produced the second largest per-pupil cut of any state in the nation including technical colleges, K-12 public schools, and Wisconsin’s once-respected university system that has suffered over $650 million in cuts. Walker also denied over 41,000 eligible university and technical students state financial aid. Walker is uninterested in a highly-trained and qualified workforce and it shows in Wisconsin ranking last in the Midwest in job creation.

Every one of the economic problems in Wisconsin, like Kansas and Louisiana for example, are due to the Republican ideology and fixation on serving the rich at the expense of everyone else in their states. Republicans may operate publicly under the guise of creating jobs and a path to economic prosperity for the masses, but they deny reality openly and refuse to acknowledge their state finances are in jeopardy because of serving the rich.

Just last week, for example, with a fast approaching deadline to pass a budget, Walker who pretended that increased tax revenue from massive tax cuts would save more drastic education cuts learned there is no new revenue. In fact, Walker’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations cost the state twice as much in revenue losses than he calculated leading him to slash at least $275 million more from education to keep the debt at the $2 billion.  As Alice Ollstein noted, Walker’s typically Republican “singular focus on slashing taxes for corporations and the rich has taken the state from a billion dollar surplus to a  $2 billion deficit” in a few short years. Walker’s plan to address the crushing deficit is more tax cuts and a new taxpayer-funded sports complex while still cutting hundreds of millions more from education.

Every bit of economic disaster plaguing Republican states like Kansas and Wisconsin, whether drastic spending cuts, massive revenue shortfalls, or mounting deficits are due to tax cuts for the rich and corporations. And yet Republicans continue devastating their states’ economies with their ideological bent to serve the interests of the very rich. What is astonishing, really, is that these Republican economic woes were well under way prior to the 2014 midterms and still, voters re-elected the likes of Sam Brownback and Scott Walker. There is a very good reason the Koch brothers candidate of choice for the Republican presidential nomination is Scott Walker and it is not because he has business acumen or noteworthy economic bona fides; but because he will unabashedly serve the interests of very rich and corporations and destroy the economy in the process.

TPP Suffers A Major Defeat As Senate Democrats Block Fast Track Trade Authority

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) handed a big win to the opponents of TPP by getting Senate Democrats to block fast track trade authority from moving forward.

The final vote was 52-45 with all Democrats voting no.

Before the vote, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) announced that he was opposing moving the bill forward because the package that Mitch McConnell put on the floor for a vote only contained two of the four trade bills and did not contain a level playing field for American workers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders ran down the litany of bogus claims made by supporters of free trade in the past and said, “And now … the administration says trust us. Forget about those other trade agreements. The TPP is special. This time it will be different. This one really will create jobs, despite the fact that every major organization representing the working people of this country says the exact opposite. The TPP would force American workers to compete against desperate workers in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour. We have got to do better than that‎.”

The vote was a setback for John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and President Obama. The bill is expected to pass the Senate eventually, but it remains dozens of votes short of the number needed in the House.

Today’s vote was a major victory for TPP opponents because it gives them another month to organize opposition to the bill. Trying to convince Democrats who have seen the damage done by NAFTA and other agreements that TPP will different has been an impossible task for President Obama.

Democrats are never going to support TPP, and dozens of House Republicans will never support anything that gives President Obama more executive authority.

Senate Democrats have demonstrated once again that Republicans may have the majority, but they hold the power.

Obstructionist Hypocrite McConnell Throws A Tantrum After Democrats Block TPP

After Senate Democrats successfully blocked the TPP from advancing, Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to throw a hypocritical tantrum where he lectured Democrats that blocking bills was not the answer.

After Senate Democrats blocked the trade bill from advancing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said:

What we just saw here is pretty shocking. There are always limits to what can be accomplished when the American people choose divided government. But it doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t work toward bipartisan solutions that make sense for our country. Trade offers a perfect opportunity to do just that.

….

The Senate has historically been the place where our country debates and considers big issues. This is an issue worthy of our consideration. It doesn’t mean we can predetermine outcomes. It doesn’t mean we can even guarantee the successful passage of legislation once we proceed to debate it.

But blocking the Senate from even debating such an important issue is not the answer.

Senators who do so are choosing to stand with special interests and against the American jobs that knocking down more unfair trade barriers could support.

This the same Mitch McConnell who as Minority Leader in 2012, blocked his own debt ceiling bill. The Mitch McConnell, who is decrying obstruction as Majority Leader, openly, and gleefully shunned bipartisanship since President Obama took office.

How did McConnell explain his years of obstruction?

He blamed Democrats for everything.

Majority Leader McConnell’s desperation is growing by leaps and bounds. McConnell needs to pass a major piece of legislation. The vote to advance the trade bill demonstrated that the Kentucky Republican can’t govern. Democrats blocked the bill from advancing because the Majority Leader continues to insist on playing by his own rules.

The bottom line is that McConnell is not only an obstructionist hypocrite. He is also quickly becoming a failed Majority Leader.

The Oldest Working Nurse In America Has A Lesson To Teach The Republicans On Her 90th Birthday

This is why the modern Republican Party deserves to lose the support of working and middle class Americans.

Read more

Wingnut spurns Obamacare and insurance

The 49-year-old Lang, a self-employed handyman and Republican who works with banks and the federal government to maintain foreclosed properties, has never purchased insurance and always prided himself on paying his own medical bills.

... but blames Obama now that he’s going broke and blind

Man Saves Dog From Sweltering Car, Police Arrest Him For Hurting Owner’s Ford Mustang

As an animal lover, this infuriates me.
Read more

Outrage After Pilot Makes Emergency Landing To Kick Child Off Plane For Being Autistic

Juliette was sat in her seat watching Pocahontas when police boarded the plane and forcibly removed her and her family.

Read more

Radical Wingnut 'Nationalism' Destroying American Patriotism

America, Land of the Free has been twisted into America the Empire and the world is worse off for it.

Read more

Marriage Equality Is Coming, So Texas Prepares As Many Bigoted Anti-Gay Laws As Possible

Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the douchebag bills used to purposefully hate gay people.

Read more

The Dire Consequences of Texas' Stupidity

The Family Planning Cuts That The Texas Legislature Forced Through Are Having Dire Consequences

Religio-Wingnuts 'Feel' Persecuted But They’re Not the Ones Found Hanging from Trees

We need to call out the appalling in our midst. And we should never, ever, apologize for telling the truth about them…

It seems we’re surrounded by idiots. I’m sure you have had that same sensation in certain situations, the feeling that, “Everyone else is an idiot!”

I mean, it’s great that conservative blogger Michelle Malkin recognizes that Mike Huckabee is “a lying crapweasel,” but this is only because she doesn’t think he is conservative enough. And isn’t this really just a case of one crapweasel calling out another crapweasel?

And Richard Cohen may be right when he writes in an op-ed for The Washington Post that “Rush Limbaugh is the dumbest man in America.” I am certain he would find many who agree. I might put forward other candidates, but I don’t know how hard I would argue the point.

George F. Will, who has his own way with words, wrote of Huckabee that, “There Is One Word For Huckabee’s Stances: Appalling.” And I agree. But why does it have to be George F. Will who makes this observation? Why don’t Democrats use terms like “appalling” when referencing their Republican counterparts? It has the virtue of being accurate.

We should say “appalling” more. And apologize less.

Republicans, and their policies both – Huckabee being only the tip of the iceberg – ARE appalling. Ted Cruz is appalling. Rick Santorum is appalling. Rand Paul is appalling. Ben Carson is appalling. Marco Rubio is appalling. I cannot think of one of them that is not. Any one of them would gladly run for president of the Confederate States of America.

America is as racist as can be and this fact becomes daily more evident, and when Michelle Obama dares point to what is an irrefutable fact, she is subject to a conservative freakout that provides ample proof that she is right. How is it that they don’t see this? How does the mainstream media not see this? YOU see it, right? I see it.

Glenn Beck, who is pretty sure he is going to be murdered in his bed (the question is, “when, already?”) because “Anyone that people would rally around and follow, they were killed — day one,” despite the fact that nobody would rally around him, says white religious wingnuts are the real victims, not black people like Michelle Obama:

“The religious that are mocked on a daily basis and belittled. Yeah, we’ve never felt that. We don’t know what it’s like.”

Right. And when was the last time we found a white religious conservative hanging from a tree?

And, well…you say appallingly stupid things, Glenn. Michelle Obama only has to be black. You can keep your tongue behind your teeth. She can’t change her skin color.

Even your own George F. Will is calling Huckabee “appalling” after all. But believe it or not, Beck – the guy who claims Republicans are “today’s civil rights leaders” while they busily take away everybody’s civil rights – is actually accusing the First Lady of dragging us back to the Civil Rights Era:

“We are not the country of Martin Luther King’s time anymore. We are being dragged back to those days.”

Arguably, we never left. MLK would still be a busy man today were he alive. Because Republicans. It is not white religious conservatives being kicked in the face by black men that trouble our nation’s streets.

Michelle Obama, it is safe to say, as a result of pointing to a racism that is clearly still endemic in this country, has been called everything but white.

As Cohen pointed out, “This is hardly the first time Michelle Obama has come under attack from white critics who infer — think about it — that she has no right being black.”

That was the deranged and semi-official white people conclusion of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity on Monday:

Beck (and Coulter and Hannity) has surely seen all the black folks in Ferguson and Baltimore and elsewhere, actually taking Billy clubs to the head, and worse. But he worries that he and his fellow “new civil rights leaders” will be taking Billy clubs to the head.

Hello. There are people already taking Billy clubs to the head, and they’re not white bread like you, Glenn.

And then we have Carrol Mitchem, who is the chairman of the Lincoln County, North Carolina, board of commissioners, who shows he doesn’t understand the concept of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” when he says religious minorities don’t get to pray at government meetings:

“A Muslim? He comes in here to say a prayer, I’m going to tell him to leave. I have no use for (those) people. They don’t need to be here praying to Allah or whoever the hell they pray to. I’m not going to listen to (a) Muslim pray.”

Oh those nasty people who think they have the same rights you do, just because the Constitution says so. How dare they!

This is why Thomas Jefferson said of his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination” were meant to be included in “the mantle of its protection.”

It was from people like Mitchem – and Huckabee and Beck and Coulter and Hannity – that the Constitution was meant to protect us, from the tyranny of the majority who trample the rights of the minority, a phenomenon the Founding Fathers watched with horror after our defeat of Great Britain.

So if you feel like you are surrounded by idiots (And maybe Malkin’s “crapweasels” is the better term here) it is because you are. We are.

We few. We sane, rational few.

Allen West Claims Underage Walmart Cashier Not Selling Alcohol Is Sharia Law

Loopy lunatic wingnut Allen West posted an anti-sharia law rant on his web page Monday because he saw a Walmart aisle where the cashier was not selling alcohol.  The idiot, immediately interpreted the “No alcohol products in this lane” sign as evidence of creeping Sharia law, because the cashier apparently had an ominous foreign sounding name, not a comforting American christian sounding name like “Steve”.

West relays the story of his Walmart experience as follows:

There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes — glasses — to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”

I pointed the sign out to Aubrey [West’s daughter] and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs?

Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.

Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage — and that is acceptable. A christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event — a gay wedding — which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.

However, it turns out that West and his daughter are not nearly as astute as they fancy themselves to be. While he was patting himself and his daughter on the back for their keen observation that Sharia law has invaded the sacred checkout aisles of Walmart, it turns out a much less sinister motive was at work. The reason the young man wasn’t serving alcohol in his lane, is not because he a stealth jihadist trying to rain misery upon American christians, but because he was under 21 years of age, and therefore not permitted by store policy to sell alcohol.

West’s post is still online, but it now includes an editor’s update stating: “We spoke to the Walmart store, and apparently employees under 21 years old are prohibited from selling cigarettes and alcohol. ” Duh. That is a policy most American consumers are familiar with. In West’s case, the Dallas Walmart was complying with company policy that prohibits people under age 21 from selling alcohol. Not Sharia law, Walmart policy.

The problem for Allen West is that he, like Bill O’Reilly and many others on the lunatic fringe, has a persecution complex. He believes christians are under attack to the point where he sees persecution where it is not happening. West has become a professional victim, who is so obsessed with the notion that wingnuts and christians are being oppressed that he has lost touch with reality.

West has so thoroughly internalized his feelings of victimization, which he somehow views a 20-year-old checkout guy not selling him a bottle of liquor, as an assault upon christianity. Yes, there is something ironic about a wingnut 'christian' arguing that not forcing a minor to sell him a bottle of liquor is persecution, but in his desperation, West is unable to find any more compelling examples of anti-christian oppression than that.

West will continue to whine about being a victim because it’s a lucrative enterprise for him. However, despite his angry protestations, just because the 19 or 20-year old with the foreign sound name won’t sell him a bottle of booze, doesn’t mean Texas is under the grips of Sharia law. Allen West should stop jumping to false conclusions. If he has an issue with the rule he should take it up with Walmart, rather than the religion of Islam. Also, maybe he should consider laying off the drinks a little, because clearly his thinking isn’t sober.

Author’s correction: In the original draft, I made reference to Texas state law prohibiting underage clerks from selling alcohol. That would apply if the clerk was under 18 years of age, but in some circumstances clerks under age 21, but at least 18 years of age, are allowed to handle alcohol products in Texas. For a full list of TABC alcohol regulations click here…TABC laws, rules and regulations.

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The amazing news about rape statistics

by Margaret Wente

Earlier this month, a well-known female Mountie alleged that she’d been sexually harassed by a number of her fellow officers for years. Whatever the truth turns out to be, the story was a reminder (as if we needed one) that some men still behave badly.
But how are women faring overall? By some accounts, the news is grim. The American Association of University Women, which is deeply involved in anti-violence campaigns, reports that 62 per cent of women at university say they have been sexually harassed. A quarter of all university women say they’ve been victims of rape or attempted rape. Some reports of the rate of wife abuse are equally shocking.
But Steven Pinker tells a different story. Mr. Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, is the author of a remarkable new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which documents the steep decline of violence through human history. His is the best account yet of what has really happened to violence against women. Like other crimes of violence, it has hit historic lows. Over the past 35 years, for example, the rate of rape in the U.S. has fallen by an astonishing 80 per cent.
Rape statistics are never perfect, because many rapes aren’t reported. But Mr. Pinker’s data come from the U.S. Bureau of Justice National Crime Victimization Survey, and are the best there are. Even if the numbers aren’t exact, the general trend is clear. The incidence of rape has fallen faster than every other major crime, including homicide. (As Mr. Pinker points out, the rate of rape is now 50 per 100,000 people, which is several magnitudes removed from one in four.) Domestic abuse has plunged as well. Since 1993, the rate of reported violence against women by their intimate partners has fallen by almost two-thirds.
Yet, this good news has been virtually ignored. Progressive people are right to deplore the supreme illogic of the Harper government for cracking down on crime at a time when every type of major crime has hit historic lows. Yet other progressives insist that violence against women remains a serious problem. “Rather than celebrating their success, anti-rape organizations convey an impression that women are in more danger than ever,” Mr. Pinker comments.
It’s easy to forget how dramatically attitudes toward rape and wife abuse have changed. As recently as the 1950s, light-hearted magazine ads depicted husbands spanking their wives for buying the wrong kind of coffee. Police treated rape as a joke, too, and the victim and her reputation were routinely put on trial.
The great rights revolutions that gathered steam in the second half of the 20th century put an end to all that. Today, jokes about smacking your wife are reprehensible, and in many jurisdictions it is mandatory for police to lay charges of spousal assault even if the woman objects. Even symbolic assaults against women are condemned. Last week, the marching band at Queen’s University got into serious trouble for raunchy lyrics in its songbook. And the owner of a baseball team in London, Ont., came under fire for naming his team the Rippers. London’s mayor, Joe Fontana, said he has “serious concerns” about the name “in light of our focus on ending women abuse.”
The evidence is overwhelming. We are more enlightened now, and men – most men, anyway – behave much better. That is bad news for the grievance industry, which must stretch its definitions of assault and abuse to ridiculous extremes to keep its numbers up. It can’t acknowledge the good news, because it has too much at stake.

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The Romans Had Them, but There are no Republican Edicts of Toleration

Compare this list of Roman edicts of toleration to a current Republican list - oh wait, there isn't one…

Syrian currency celebrates Roman Emperor Philip the Arab. 
Think Republicans would ever celebrate Barack Obama?

I find myself wondering more and more what has happened to this country, to America. At the hands of Republican legislatures we’ve seen tyranny unimagined by colonial Americans at the hands of King George and his parliament. Compared to what we’re getting from Republicans, the Founding Fathers and their generation rebelled over trifles.

We are experiencing not just a lack of representation (though we have that too) but an unrelenting war on women, on children, on working Americans, on ethnic and religious minorities, on science, on the environment, on the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

Each day we see headlines that are more terrible than any we have seen previously, like recent Wisconsin legislation that would allow in-laws to make reproductive health choices for you. Imagine your mother-in-law deciding you can’t have an abortion. If that’s the case, maybe you should get to trump her bypass surgery.

And you wonder: where’s the tolerance? Where is the so-called freedom Republicans are always talking about? Where is the small government that stays out of your business? It’s nowhere to be seen. It’s tyranny. Endless, unrelenting, often horrifying – as when a woman goes to prison for having a miscarriage, or is forced to carry a dead fetus to term – tyranny.

Meanwhile, the Romans, so reviled in christian memory, managed to make all sorts of concessions to strange foreign customs. After all, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry Christianity could never have been introduced.” Be damned if we can get free inquiry from this bunch. Their minds are closed.

I am not going to advance the claim here that the Romans were the most tolerant people who ever lived. They engaged in their fair share of genocide (as have we). But let us take a look here at some of the concessions and privileges granted by the Romans to the Jews by the Roman state (and feel free to compare and contrast, if you will, American treatment of the Native Americans in the 19th century – a supposedly enlightened “Christian” century). Take special note of the third point:

• No Quartering of Troops on the Native Population (Ant. 14.10.2 § 195). Nor did the Jews have to generally even see Roman troops, except on holidays such as Passover, when they were present in Jerusalem to keep the peace. The Roman garrison appears to have been stationed largely in Caesarea, a Greek-speaking area.[1] One might think back to the situation in the American Colonies in the days leading up to the revolt and the role quartering played on American sensibilities. This was one annoyance spared the Jewish population of Palestine.
• Tax allowances (Jews allowed to deduct out of their tribute every second year the land is let (in the Sabbatic period), a corus of that tribute (Ant. 14.10.5 §201)
• The Jews allowed to live “according to their own customs” (Ant. 14.10.8 § 214).
• Jews excused from military service by Prefect of Asia (Ant. 14.10.11-12 §§ 223-228) “on account of the superstition they are under” (Ant. 14.10.14 § 232) in other words, Sabbath restrictions on travel and fighting, etc. Note that this does not mean that Jews could not, if they wished, serve in the military, and also that it is a far cry from excluding Jews from military ranks by the Christian Roman Empire (C. Th. XVI.8.24).[2]
• Roman acquiescence of Jewish ban on images customarily observed by procurators (Ant. 18.3.1 §§ 55-56). This included the re-routing of Roman troops (no doubt at great expense) due to the Jews finding the images on the standards offensive when paraded anywhere on “Jewish” soil, as shown by the incident with Vitellius described by Josephus (Ant. 18.121-122). The Romans went so far as to omit from coins struck in Judaea “any sign or symbol that might be offensive to the religious feelings of the Jews…”[3] It is interesting to compare the coins of Herod, which while also observing the ban on images, do bear Pagan religious symbols, for example a coin of 37 BCE which portrays the tripod of Apollo and on the reverse, the Dioscuri cap topped with a star.[4]
• Augustus confirmed Jewish privileges conferred originally by Julius Caesar (Ant. 16.6.1 §§ 160-165) “that the Jews have liberty to make use of their own customs, according to the law of their forefathers” See also Philo, Leg. ad Gaium 309-319.
• The Sacred Money was not to be touched (Ant. 16.6.2 § 163) – This was violated on several occasions, including, allegedly, by Pontius Pilate (Ant. 18.3.2 § 60) and on one occasion the proconsul of Asia, L. Flaccus in 62/1 BCE confiscated the temple contributions from his province (Cicero, Flacc. 66-9) but his action was not repeated.[5] See also Ant. 16.6.3 § 166, where Augustus commands the recipient, the proconsul of Sardinia, to let the Jews “send their sacred money to Jerusalem” freely and a similar letter from Herod Agrippa to the Ephesians (Ant. 16.6.4 §§ 167-168). There is also an example from Berenice in Cyrenaica, where the local Jewish community commemorated a Roman official for his part in seeing that the sacred money was not diverted from the Temple to pay the tax levied on resident aliens.[6]
• Anyone stealing the Jewish holy books will be deemed a “sacrilegious person” and his property confiscated (Ant. 16.6.2 § 164). We should note the punishment meted out to a Roman soldier (by Roman authorities) for profaning the Torah: The procurator, Josephus tells us (Ant. 20.5.4 113-117), “took care that the soldier who had offered the affront to the laws should be beheaded; and thereby put a stop to the sedition which was ready to be kindled a second time.” By way of contrast, the United States is continually being accused of mishandling the Qu’ran but the US Government pretends it never happens and so far, no American soldiers have been punished.
• Exempted from participation in the imperial cult and allowed to make prayers in their own temple on behalf of the emperor (War 2.10.4 §197; Against Apion 2.7 §77) instead of to the gods in Pagan temples.[7] Philo tells us that the cost of these sacrifices was born by the Roman government and not the Jewish people (Spec. Leg. 157).
• Gentiles were not allowed into the sacred precincts of the temple (Tacitus, Histories 5.8; Josephus, War 5.193; Ant. 12.145, 15.417; cf. Philo, Leg. 212). This prohibition (of which Paul runs afoul Acts 21.28-29) has been proven by archaeological findings.[8]
• Far from persecuting the Jews, the Roman government served as their advocate: “The Romans appear at times to have chosen to put their influence behind Jewish communities in dispute with their neighbors…and did not even cease after A.D. 70.”[9] For examples, see Josephus, Ant. 14.10.12-26).
• Jews exempted from court on the Sabbath.[10]
• Claudius renewed the edict of tolerance issued by Caesar and renewed by Augustus, making it empire-wide (Ant. 19.5.3 §§286-291). The edict is not specific; Rajak argues “that Claudius is not doing much more than expressing his good will towards the practice of the Jewish cult and establishing a lead for Greek cities to follow.”[11] If, as Rajak argues, this falls short of a Jewish Magna Carta, it still illustrates the extent to which Rome permitted self-rule and represents a general good will not mirrored in Europe for the fifteen centuries following the end of Pagan rule.

All right. Now show me even a fraction of this level of tolerance from any Republican legislative body in the past 15 years. It can’t be done.

I should note here that these sorts of edicts of toleration were not general and empire wide, but seem to have been issued on a city by city basis. Though these senatus consulta were ad hoc in nature, they also served as legal precedents to which future governors and emperors could appeal.

Leonard Rutgers makes an important point when he notes that “Rome did not have a standard policy toward the Jews: Roman magistrates responded to situations.”[12] Which, if nothing else, shows the ability of the Roman administration to think on its feet, rather than along strict ideological lines. There is a nuance and a responsiveness lacking in modern-day Republican thinking – about anything.

Arnaldo Momigliano, not alone among scholars, takes note of the fact that “the members of the ruling class of Rome were ready to transact business with people who worshiped different gods and were used to different political traditions. Roman polytheism could adapt itself to, and indeed merge with, what we may call the provincial traditions.”[13]

That is not possible under today’s Republicanism. The only religious freedom Americans have under Republican ideology is to be Christians, or at least, what they imagine to be Christians, and it is already more than apparent that Republicans, unlike the ancient Romans, are not ready to transact business with people who worship different gods.

The Romans even had an emperor, Philip the Arab, who got far less grief from his people than Obama does from Republicans. Philip was born in Shahba, just south of Damascus. Philip had an easier time pursuing his dream in ancient Rome than he’d have trying to pursue it in modern America.

I would suggest that the Republicans could learn from history, but let’s face it, at this point, I’d look silly making that suggestion to these charlatans. So I’ll just make the point to those of you who have open minds, and you can make the point to them next time you vote.

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Texas Senate OKs bill allowing clergy to refuse gay marriage

The Texas Senate voted overwhelmingly on Monday to allow clergy members to refuse performing marriages that violate their religious beliefs, as top Republicans move to further shield the nation's largest wingnut state from a possible U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing gay couples to wed. The bill, approved 21-10, requires a final, largely procedural Senate vote before heading to the state House.
Democrats were quick to point out that existing constitutional guarantees separating cult and state already allow houses of worship to set their own religious policies regarding marriage ceremonies and all other aspects of faith.
The measure raises some of the same issues as so-called "religious objections" proposals that sparked strong criticism nationally after being approved in Indiana and Arkansas this spring. Supporters say such measures protect religious freedoms from government intrusion, but advocacy groups argue they allow businesses to refuse service to or otherwise discriminate against gay people.

The proposal in Texas is less divisive than ones elsewhere, applying only to religious wedding ceremonies and largely restating existing law. Gay marriage has been banned in the state since voters approved a 2005 amendment to the Texas Constitution.

Still, the bill comes after the nation's high court heard arguments about the constitutionality of gay marriage for couples nationwide, and a ruling allowing same-sex weddings by its justices would supersede the state constitutional prohibition.

"It is not my intention to discriminate against anyone with this bill," Craig Estes, a Wichita Falls Republican and the bill's sponsor, said during Monday's short Senate floor debate. "My intention is to protect pastors, ministers and clergy First Amendment rights."

Supporters of what Estes is proposing haven't been shy about openly decrying gay marriage, with some pastors even traveling to the state Capitol last week to declare that it violates natural law and offends dog.

A series of religious objections bills have been filed in the Texas Legislature, but those had stalled. That was until teabagger-backed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, allowed Estes to file his proposal weeks after the deadline and fast-tracked it through committee, setting up Monday's preliminary approval vote in record time.

"Is it a problem today? Same-sex marriages are not allowed," said Sen. John Whitmire, a veteran Houston Democrat. "Who forces a clergy to marry someone they don't want to? It's unheard of."

Estes countered that pastors have received threatening phone calls for not agreeing to marry gay couples. He said he wants to ensure pastors can't be sued for refusing to perform weddings they don't believe in.

All of the Senate's Republicans and one blue dog, Eddie Lucio of Brownsville, sided with Estes. The vote came a day before the House is scheduled to consider its own hot-button proposal that would prohibit state, county and local officials from issuing or enforcing same-sex marriage licenses, and prevent recognition of gay marriages performed in other states.

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