Public Enemies
Every Republican pretender campaign tells a story, and every story has a villain.
For Donald Trump, that villain is ...
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Ordinary Americans Are the Villains in Scott Walker’s Failed Journey to the White House
Every Republican pretender campaign tells a story, and every story has a villain.
For Donald Trump, that villain is ...
Ted Cruz Cancels Press Conference In Order To Avoid Answering Questions About Trump
Republican pretender candidate Ted Cruz never showed up for a press conference after his speech at the 'Family' Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa because he didn’t want to answer questions about Donald Trump.
Less than a week ago, Ted Cruz was supporting Donald Trump on Meet The Press.
Today, Cruz cut off a scrum with reporters when the questions turned to
Trump, ditched his scheduled press conference, and now his former
spokesperson is saying that Cruz wanted no part of the “Trump circus.”
The other Republican candidates were quick to pounce on Trump after he
attacked John McCain’s military service record and specifically
criticized McCain for getting shot down during the Vietnam War. The
hypocrisy of the draft dodging Trump criticizing a former POW provided
the opening that the Republican cabal has been looking for to rid
themselves of the reality television star.
When asked about Trump’s comments, Cruz praised
McCain’s heroism but did not denounce Trump. Ted Cruz is firmly in the
middle of the Trump circus. He didn’t seem to mind buddying up to Trump
when he thought that it would help to revive his struggling campaign.
Cruz is showing the kind of leader that he really
is. When the questions get tough, Ted cuts off the media and runs for
cover. Ted Cruz doesn’t want to talk about Donald Trump, and he does not
want to have to answer questions about his support for Trump.
If Cruz can’t handle a few media questions about Donald Trump, he definitely doesn’t have what it takes to be president.
Huffington Post Moves Coverage of Donald Trump from Politics to Entertainment
We have been talking about the Republican clown car for years, but Huffington Post has actually decided to “fire” Donald Trump and his “campaign,” as they refer to it in A Note About Our Coverage Of Donald Trump’s ‘Campaign’ yesterday, from news to entertainment.
This is their reasoning:
After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for pretender, we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of the Huffington Post’s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.
This was posted to Huffington Politics. If they are
serious, this should be the last mention we should see there of Donald
Trump.
Donald Trump posted his response on Facebook, in the third person of course:
Donald J. Trump Response to Huffington PostMr. Trump is number one in the unimportant Huffington Post poll, along with all other recently released polls including Reuters, FOX, USA Today/Suffolk University and The Economist.Mr. Trump is in first place in Nevada, where he is also number one, by a wide margin, with Hispanics. He is number one in North Carolina and expects to win Iowa and New Hampshire.Mr. Trump singlehandedly raised the issue of illegal immigration and started a national conversation about what has turned out to be one of the most important topics of this election cycle.Likewise, Mr. Trump is the leader on issues such as the terrible United States trade deals, strengthening our military, taking care of our great Vets and the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.If you read previously written Tweets, Mr. Trump has never been a fan of Arianna Huffington or the money-losing Huffington Post.The only clown show in this scenario is the Huffington Post pretending to be a legitimate news source. Mr. Trump is not focused on being covered by a glorified blog. He is focused on Making America Great Again.
The Donald is typically full of himself, giving
himself credit where it is not due – he can hardly claim to have begun
the immigration debate, the discourse on bad trade deals, or,
alternatives to Obamacare – but this is how the man is. He is not the
first politician of either party to be full of himself. He’s just the
most obnoxious.
And this is how HuffPo responded to Trump’s response:
So Trump is right up there with a sparkling Britney.
While this development is amusing, how is it that
Huffington Post can separate Trump’s campaign from those of other
Republican candidates who are equally “sideshows”? They won’t take the
bait where Trump is concerned, but they take Ted Cruz seriously? Or Jeb
Bush? Rick Santorum, for all his craziness, has never been relegated to
the Entertainment section.
Even Sarah Palin, perhaps the ultimate in Republican clown shows, was never put in the Entertainment section – not even when she praised Donald Trump in June. That news also appeared in Huffington Politics.
If Trump is Entertainment, then all Republican
politics for years has been Entertainment. After all, his extremism is
merely the culmination of years of work by various Republican
demagogues. Where do we draw the line?
There are various other reasons to object to what
Huffington Post has done. For one thing, Trump is polling at the top,
not the bottom of the polls. It seems to be a very serious campaign
indeed. Whatever Trump really believes, the Republican base believes in
him, and it is the Republican base who will be voting in the primaries,
not news organizations.
Fox News cites
“Rich Noyes, research director at the wingnut Media Research
Center,” who “said the decision on a candidate’s legitimacy should be up
to voters, not the media.”
And however much a joke we might consider him because of his loud, buffoonish behavior, Trump scares the bejeesus
out of the Republican cabal. And we liberals and independents must
avoid the temptation, like Republicans, to dump reality when we don’t
find it lining up with our preconceptions.
David Corn at Mother Jones has voiced another valid objection. He says that “to exile Trump to the realm of the Kardashians is to let the Republican cabal off the hook too easily”:
Trump poses a crisis for his party. It may be entertaining for the Democrats to watch. But this crisis is not transpiring in TMZ-land. It’s what the Republican cabal has brought upon itself. Here is the ROI on the Republican cabal’s extreme politics.
Then too, if Trump can be sent to the Entertainment
section, how about other candidates a media outlet might not like? The
corporate media could as easily decide Democratic candidates are not to
be taken seriously.
As moves go, HuffPo’s is not the most sensible one.
Humans have shaped their reality for thousands of
years in various ways, but anyone serious about understanding it has
taken the task of cataloging and defining that reality very seriously.
Charles Darwin had to deal with the inconvenient reality of the platypus
and we have to deal with Donald Trump. The platypus turned out to be a
mammal, once we were able to sequence its genes, and is hardly the terror to evolutionists creationists might claim.
The creationists pretend the platypus’ genome has
not been sequenced to make their argument against evolution. Huffington
Post also rejects evolution – the evolution of Republican politics. It
can, but refuses to, sequence Trump’s ideological genes in order to find
his evolutionary niche.
Huffington Post says it will not take
@realDonaldTrump seriously, but at this point, is there any reason to
take Arianna Huffington seriously? Even Fox News, which I think we all
agree is not real news, has not relegated candidates it does not approve
of to the Entertainment section.
Marco Rubio Forgot About Osama Bin Laden
While fielding a question about torture
from a member of the crowd, Rubio said President Obama “was not
arresting terrorists.” Interviewer Frank Lunz asked Rubio if he thought
the president was soft on terrorism and Rubio hedged, opting instead to
talk about the war on terror.
Rubio spoke out against enhanced
interrogation techniques, but said the United States should not
publicize those methods because it would give terrorists chance to
practice for them. He also said the United States should do what it
takes to terrorists out of circulation.
Stay tuned for more from Iowa.
‘Medical Group’ Behind Planned Parenthood ‘Sting’ Is A Fake Front Group
And They Lied To The IRS
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!”
Read more
Read more
Birth of A Scandal ...
You Won’t Believe How Easily This Bull Shit Becomes Wingnut ‘Truth’
Take a 1/4 teaspoon of truth, add 3 pieces of misinformation, 1
unrelated topic and a bushel of lies and you have this ridiculous wingnut “scandal.”
Reddit Fail
***
Reddit fails miserably to curb bigotry for all their haughty speeches about doing just that
Mass Graves Discovered In Texas
Bad Cops
According to a search warrant issued in Ellis County, Texas, Maypearl
Police Chief Kevin Coffey used the power of his office to solicit,
stalk and harass...
Religio-Wingnut Shrieking Heads Long For The Days When People Were Too Poor To Be Gay
Iowa hate speech radio hack Steve
Deace invited Florida religio-wingnut agitator John Stemberger onto his
hate speech spew-fest to push back against wingnuts who are arguing
that the government should just get out of marriage altogether after the
Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, which Ste... MORE
More of the snakes eating themselves
Monday, July 20, 2015
The Daily Drift
Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!
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Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s?
Nope and here's why...
by Harry J Enten
Civil rights protestors are attacked with a water cannon.
Civil rights protestors are attacked with a water cannon.
With Republicans having trouble with minorities, some like to point out that the party has a long history of standing up for civil rights compared to Democrats. Democrats, for example, were less likely to vote for the civil rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s.
Democrats were more likely to filibuster. Yet, a closer look at the
voting coalitions suggests a more complicated picture that ultimately
explains why Republicans are not viewed as the party of civil rights.
Let's use the 1964 Civil Rights Act
as our focal point. It was arguably the most important of the many
civil rights bills passed in the middle part of the 20th century. It
outlawed many types of racial and sexual discrimination, including
access to hotels, restaurants, and theaters. In the words of Vice
President Biden, it was a big "f-ing deal".
When we look at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill:
80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster. Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through
the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it
into law. The bill wouldn't have passed without the support of Majority
Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey,
who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948
Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all,
kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to
overcome the filibuster.
Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive,
but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting
voting?
You don't need to know too much history to understand that the South
from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed
to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification
or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the
voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that
were not.
You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting
coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked
Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren't from the south. In
fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were
part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of
members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This
80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference
between parties. But what happens when we control for both party affiliation and region? As Sean Trende noted earlier this year, "sometimes relationships become apparent only after you control for other factors".
In this case, it becomes clear that Democrats in the north and the
south were more likely to vote for the bill than Republicans in the
north and south respectively. This difference in both houses is statistically significant
with over 95% confidence. It just so happened southerners made up a
larger percentage of the Democratic than Republican caucus, which
created the initial impression than Republicans were more in favor of
the act.Nearly
100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act
compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted
for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did.
The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at Voteview.com, who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators,
found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more
likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one
controlled for a factor closely linked to geography.
That's why Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party
soon after the Civil Right Act passed. He recognized that of the two
parties, it was the Republican party that was more hospitable to his
message. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill. He carried his home state of Arizona and swept the deep southern states – a first for a Republican ever.
Now, it wasn't that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South
against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans. Those patterns, as Trende showed,
had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of
these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the
conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party.
Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried
only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of
non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union.
Thus, it seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what
they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that
the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the
Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil
Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked
it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans.
Maine Legislature Rejects 65 Botched Vetoes From Asshat LePage Forcing Likely Court Showdown
The Maine House and Senate each rejected 65 vetoes
sent to them from Republican moron Paul LePage on Thursday, forcing a
probable showdown in the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. House Speaker
Mark Eves, a Democrat, and Senate President Michael Thibodeau, a
Republican, both refused to consider the vetoes, because LePage held the
bills for over ten days without acting on them. LePage initially was attempting to “pocket veto” much of the legislation, but the law only allows pocket vetoes when the legislature adjourns.
However, LePage was unwilling to admit his
procedural error and instead double downed insisting that lawmakers
should bend to his imperial dictates rather than follow Maine law. Now
LePage will have to hope the courts agree with his twisted
interpretation of the governor’s powers, because the legislature clearly
does not.
House Speaker Mark Eves declared the moron’s behavior as out of order, and flatly rejected the vetoes, stating:
You cannot veto a law. This legislation is already law, in accordance with the Constitution, history and precedent. The governor’s veto attempts are out of order and in error. He missed the deadline to veto the bills.
If the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sides with the
legislature, LePage’s strategy will backfire as one of the most
cataclysmic blunders in government history. 65 pieces of legislation
that LePage opposes may have become law, because the teabagger moron
can’t abide by the correct process for vetoing legislation he is
against.
LePage
has proven time and again that he is either too arrogant or too foolish
to serve as governor of his state. He has repeatedly attempted to bully
lawmakers, but on July 16th they may have exacted their payback. Dozens
of bills that LePage opposed are now law, unless Maine’s Supreme
Judicial Court decides to side with the moron by choosing to overturn
those laws. Unless the court is unusually partisan, there is no reason
to expect that they will rule in the moron’s favor.
Liberals Roar As Bernie Sanders Joins Elizabeth Warren On Bill To Reinstate Glass-Steagall
Two of the most prominent liberals in the Senate
have joined forces to take on the big banks as Senator Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) has announced that he is teaming up with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-MA) to co-sponsor her bill that would reinstate the Glass-Steagall
Act.
In a statement, Sanders said:
I strongly support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s bill to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.
On July 1, 1999, while Congress was voting on
the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to permit commercial banks, investment banks
and insurance companies to merge, then-Rep. Sanders said: “I believe
this legislation, in its current form, will do more harm than good. It
will lead to fewer banks and financial service providers; increased
charges and fees for individual consumers and small businesses;
diminished credit for rural America; and taxpayer exposure to potential
losses should a financial conglomerate fail. It will lead to more
mega-mergers; a small number of corporations dominating the financial
service industry; and further concentration of economic power in our
country.”
Allowing commercial banks to merge with investment
banks and insurance companies in 1999 was a huge mistake. It
precipitated the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world.
It caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, life savings
and ability to send their kids to college. It substantially increased
wealth and income inequality and it led to the enormous concentration of
economic power in this country.
I am proud to have led the fight in the House
against repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Sixteen years ago, I
predicted that such a massive deregulation of the financial services
industry would seriously harm the economy. I would give anything to
have been proven wrong about this but unfortunately what happened seven
years ago was even worse than I predicted.
Today, not only must we reinstate this
important law, but if we are truly serious about ending too big to fail,
we have got to break up the largest financial institutions in this
country. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
The legislation to reinstate Glass-Steagall was
introduced by Democratic Senators Warren and Cantwell (D-WA) along with
Republican John McCain earlier this month. At the time, Warren said,
“Despite the progress we’ve made since 2008, the biggest banks continue
to threaten our economy. The biggest banks are collectively much
larger than they were before the crisis, and they continue to engage in
dangerous practices that could once again crash our economy. The 21st
Century Glass-Steagall Act will rebuild the wall between commercial and
investment banking and make our financial system more stable and
secure.”
It is at this point that the obvious must be stated.
Despite the support of McCain, Senate Republicans are going to squash
this bill. However, the point of this legislation isn’t passage.
Congressional liberals have quickly become experts as using their
minority status to introduce publicly popular legislation that raises
the profile of important issues while putting Republicans on the hot
seat by forcing them to defend positions that place them in opposition
to a majority of the public.
The judging of proposed legislation based on odds of
passage promotes a myopic view that ignores long-term goals and the big
picture. Liberals are trying to change the public discussion on issues
like the big banks and financial reform, but to begin that conversation
the public must have the opportunity to become aware and informed.
Republicans thrive when voters and constituents are uninformed.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was signed into law by President Clinton, who has continued to defend his deregulation.
Glass-Steagall could be a thorny issue for Hillary Clinton on the
Democratic primary campaign trail. The post-Great Recession era is not
the go-go 90s. Senate liberals are fighting to keep the country from
repeating the economic mistakes of the recent past.
Republicans Terrified As Texas Demand For Bernie Sanders Forces Rally To A Bigger Venue
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has
a message that is so popular that he was forced to move a rally in
Texas to a larger venue to accommodate the growing crowd.
The Sanders campaign announced the change in venue
for the Democratic candidate’s Houston, TX rally on July 19, “With
turnout projections mounting, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign has
shifted the location of Sunday’s town meeting in Houston, Texas, to the
Hofheinz Pavilion.”
These events were intended to be town hall meetings,
but demand is so high that format has been getting changed to a
campaign rally. I anticipate that the Houston event will also be more of
a rally than a town hall.
Demand has also forced the campaign to move a Saturday rally in Phoenix to a larger venue, as the big crowds are showing no signs of diminishing for Bernie Sanders.
Republicans should be terrified of Bernie Sanders’
popularity because Texas is the heart of the Republican cabal. The state
is demographically changing, but the reason Republicans should be
worried about Sanders is that he is demonstrating the power of a liberal
populist economic message in red states.
Bernie Sanders, the candidate, isn’t what
Republicans should be concerned about. The message that Sanders is
bringing is what should strike fear into the Republican cabal. Sanders talks about
creating jobs, repealing Citizens United, raising wages for working
people, equal pay for women. The Sanders message is that it is time to
stand up to the billionaires and corporations and return the government
back to the people.
If this message can find support in red states like Arizona and Texas, it can be successful all across the country.
Bernie Sanders is demonstrating that there is and
huge demand among red state liberals for their candidates. Democrats and
liberals in red states are often unfairly forgotten and lumped in with
Republicans. Senator Sanders is making an effort to campaign in front of
these voters and ask for their support.
Be
afraid Republicans, because Bernie Sanders is showing the country the
potential power of liberal populist ideas in red states.
Jeb’s Message To Working Americans Is Work Longer, Harder, and For Less
Jeb wants to abolish the federal minimum wage, deny workers
overtime pay, and raise the retirement age for social security.…
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax…”[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
After Romney’s ignoble defeat in November 2012, one
would think the 2016 Republican field would exercise more caution when
talking about working class Americans this cycle. However, multimillionaire Jeb is
taking up where Romney left off, as yet another wealthy Republican cabal scold who
shames the poor and asks them to work harder, work longer and work for
less.
On Tuesday, in Iowa, Jeb attacked Barack Obama’s plan
to require employers to pay overtime to salaried employees who earn as
little as 23,660 dollars a year. In Jeb’s view paying a fast food
manager who works 70 hours a week less than 2,000 dollars a month is
fine, because of course he is more concerned about the profits of CEOs
and shareholders than he is about the well-being of the American worker
pulling 12 hours shifts, 6 days a week, to make ends meet.
On July 9th in New Hampshire, Jeb insisted that Americans need to work longer hours. He told the editors at the New Hampshire Union Leader:
It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.
Jeb wants workers to work longer hours, but he
doesn’t want employers to provide them with extra compensation if they
put in over 40 hour work weeks. Not only does Jeb want employees
working longer hours every week, but he also wants them to retire from
the workforce later. Jeb is a strong proponent of raising the retirement age before workers can be eligible to collect social security.
Jeb has also argued in favor of eliminating the federal minimum wage.
Not just freezing it, or refusing to raise it – he has expressed his
desire to outright abolish the federal minimum wage. If you cobble all
of Jeb’s economic plans together, he wants employers to have the right
to pay employees less than 7.25 an hour, deny them overtime pay, and
force them to worker longer work weeks and to retire later in life.
Jeb wants American workers to work longer, work harder and work for
less. His contempt for working class Americans is quiet obvious.
Republicans Want To Take Money From The Elderly And Injured To Pay For Roads
Just when you think Republicans can’t get any more loathsome. 
Boehner Tries To Hide His Failure By Launching A Bogus Attack On Women’s Rights
Republicans have no ideas or plans for real problems, so they’ve
invented a new problem in order to look like they’re doing something and
naturally that new “problem” is women’s liberty.
You may have noticed that this Congress is even
worse than the last Congress, which made history for doing almost
nothing. Now that Republicans control the Senate, we are seeing the same
sort of unbelievable dysfunction that runs the House. So we can’t pass
infrastructure or jobs bills. The House even let the 81-year-old
institution of the Export-Import Bank charter expire on July 1st, causing the business community to blast Republicans for not knowing what they were doing. Indeed.
Let’s not even go near their stunning failure to
even come up with an immigration plan, an Iran plan, an alternative to
Obamacare, or any of the things they shout about the most.
There are no plans. Republicans have no plans. So,
left holding the bag on numerous grown up issues, Republicans have
decided to double down on the one thing they know they can agree on–
restricting freedom from women.
Sure, they’ve had “missteps” in the past when it
comes to women, but they are sure that this time, oh sweet misunderstood
video, this time you are on their side.
This was a job tailor made for them! Investigations
and witch hunts into a cultural issue they are sure they can squeeze for
votes? Yes, please. A way to distract from their inability to get
anything related to their jobs done? Yes please! Gruesome video they can
get hysterical about and preach down to us all about? YES PLEASE!
Politico
reported that Republicans see an up for them in yet another wingnut-funded, secretly filmed video, in that they can now show
you this video and you won’t mind so much when they take women’s rights
away:
Republicans on Capitol Hill are betting the secretly filmed Planned Parenthood video — depicting an executive allegedly discussing the sale of fetal organs from terminated pregnancies — will give them cover to more aggressively push abortion issues without the political ramifications that have haunted the cabal in the past.
As soon as the Planned Parenthood video was released
publicly days ago, Republicans pounced. For some reason that they
haven’t explained, they waited until the video was public, but several Republicans admitted to having seen the video weeks or a even a month before it’s public debut.
That sort of reeks of coordination, and if Democrats weren’t busy
trying to save the country from Republicans, maybe they could call for
an investigation, but no matter — Democrats aren’t in charge so that
won’t be happening. But at any rate, starting with Bobby Jindal
(R-LA, reptile) and then John Boehner (R-OH, reptile), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA, reptile) and
Steve Scalise (R-LA, reptile) called for Congressional investigations to
investigate if Planned Parenthood was selling body parts.
This is probably a good time to remind everyone that Planned Parenthood never said they were selling body parts in the video.
That didn’t stop Republicans from claiming they did, or now from
investigating something that was never suggested. But hey, if you had
free access to taxpayer money and you couldn’t get anything real done
and needed to impress voters for an election, why not stage yet another
“investigation” and use it to show that you were busy– so busy. You’ve
been working!
Also, harvesting body parts is not illegal, it’s
called medical science in fact and it might be gross to some but it
saves lives.
Politco noted that Republicans see a window here:
McCarthy is already talking about defunding the organization through the appropriations process. And in the Senate, Republican cabal leaders who have been eying a vote on legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks of gestation say this will give them momentum to clear the bill later this session.
So. Expect Republicans to do nothing else but make a
big show of their Benghazi investigation (years in and nothing yet) and
now this- an investigation into a video that showed nothing they are
investigating. The only reason they are “investigating” the video is
because they had their activists point at it and accuse Planned
Parenthood of something that is not even in the video, but guess what?
It gives them a chance to show you how “gruesome” an abortion is.
And delving into blood and making a horror show of
it is what Republicans do best. They don’t solve actual problems like a
lack of affordable healthcare, but they were super good at trolling the
people who were trying to solve that problem with horror and blood –
“death panels” and “socialized medicine killing babies!” and literal
coffins being left on lawns. This is what Republicans have come to- they
are a horror show. An endless horror show of reactionaries with no
ideas.
I’m betting a lot of us wouldn’t like to see a video
listening to a heart surgeon describe their bloody work or what they do
with body parts. But maybe Republicans should leave medicine to the
folks who specialize in it, especially since Republicans can’t even seem
to do their own jobs. The jobs we are paying them to do. Maybe they
should just focus on the basics, things that were done routinely for 80
years until this Congress.
Republicans can’t do their job so they’re coming for women’s liberty. Again.
Is it just me, or did the Republican cabal coordinate an anti-abortion push based on a doctored video?
House Republicans knew about the (doctored) video for weeks, and are now planning a legislative response.
Desperate To Excite Voters, The Cabal Of No Ideas Return To Abortion Politics
Republicans have painted themselves into a corner and this is all they have left. Good luck with that!
Crumbling roads and bridges cost drivers $67 billion a year
by Laura Clawson
Here's an interesting angle on the impact of those 61,000 structurally deficient bridges
in the United States: they're not just unsafe, they're costing drivers
money every day. Going over potholes is not good for your car, and the
resulting repairs can really add up:We're talking about added annual repair or operating costs of $601 per motorist in New Jersey, $586 per motorist in California, $467 in Rhode Island and $425 in Oklahoma. In more than 30 states, the added costs are $250 or more per motorist. Paying to fix a flat or realign your car is not the same kind of problem as being on a bridge when it collapses, but it's a reminder that the costs of failing to maintain, repair, and replace infrastructure are with us every day. That's because Republicans in Congress steadfastly refuse to invest in America, even though doing so would create jobs and improve conditions not just for individual drivers but for businesses that rely on roads.Twenty-four percent of bridges nationwide are functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, and roads in need of repair are costing vehicle owners about $67 billion annually, according to the DOT figures. [...] The state of roadways, measured by the proportion of roads deemed by the American Society of Civil Engineers to be in poor or mediocre condition, also ranged widely, reaching as high as 73 percent in Connecticut and as low as 17 percent in Indiana.
EEOC Rules Workplace Sexual Orientation Discrimination Already Illegal Under Federal Law
On Thursday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
unanimously ruled that sexual orientation discrimination is already
illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner reports,
the EEOC's groundbreaking decision effectively declares that employment
discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers is unlawful
in all 50 states. The commission already found that Title VII bars
discrimination on the basis of gender identity, protecting trans
employees.
As I've explained before,
the EEOC’s theory here is really quite straightforward. Title VII
prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, including, the Surpeme
Court has ruled,
irrational sex stereotyping. The EEOC has already found that when an
employer discriminates a gay employee for being effeminate—or a lesbian
employee for being butch—that qualifies as illegal sex stereotyping. Now
the commission has taken that logic one step farther. When an employer
disapproves of a lesbian employee's orientation, he’s really objecting
to the fact that a woman is romantically attracted to another woman.
This objection is based on irrational, stereotyped views of
femininity and womanhood. Thus, when the employer discriminates against
his lesbian employee, that discrimination is based in large part on her sex, and on his anger that she does not fit into her gender role.
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The EEOC also presents a simpler secondary theory: Sexual
orientation discrimination is “associational discrimination on the basis
of sex.” When a homophobic employer mistreats a gay male employee, he
does so because he dislikes the fact that his employee dates other man.
In other words, the employer took that employee's sex into account while
making the decision to treat him unequally. Such discrimination is
obviously sex-based—and therefore forbidden by Title VII.
For now, the EEOC's decision applies only to federal
employees' claims. But the EEOC represents private employees, as well,
and helps employers and employees settle discrimination claims without a
lawsuit. Last year, the EEOC resolved nearly half its cases
through this process. And under the new guidelines, all sexual
orientation discrimination will be considered illegal, empowering gay
private employees to lodge discrimination complaints. Until the Supreme
Court weighs in, lower courts may choose to accept or reject the EEOC's
reading of Title VII. But the commission's rulings are respected by the
judiciary, and could tip more courts to rule that sexual orientation
discrimination is, indeed, already forbidden in the United States.
Republicans In Congress Push A Federal Evangelical License To Discriminate Law
So what evangelical Republicans in Congress came up with this week is
a "novel" piece of federal legislation that mirrors the rash of
religious Republican state schemes …
In the real world, especially the criminal justice
system real world, when a person concludes that the law does not apply
to them and acts accordingly they are a criminal. In America,
specifically in religious Republican America, when a person decides that
the law, the U.S. Constitution, and a ruling by the nation’s highest
court does not apply to them and acts accordingly they are just
persecuted 'christians' exercising their religious freedom. Of course, if
evangelical Republicans had their way, America would be governed by a christian theocracy and despite the Founding Fathers’ best efforts to
forbid a theocratic government, Republicans are pushing legislation to
impose evangelical laws on the nation.
Even before the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the
U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal, civil, and due process rights
applies to all Americans, evangelical fanatics and Republicans claimed
they would never accept the High Court ruling according to the
Constitution as law of the land; according to their special “religious
freedom.” After the High Court’s ruling, the same evangelical fanatics
and many religious Republicans lambasted the Court for adhering to the
Constitution as judicial tyranny, and still claimed they would never
accept that the 14th Amendment prevented them from discriminating
against gays. Republicans and christian fanatics were intent on
exercising their religious liberty to discriminate against gays with
impunity one way or the other, and they were very serious.
So what evangelical Republicans in Congress came up with this week is a “novel”
piece of federal legislation that mirrors the rash of religious
Republican state schemes to legalize discrimination against the LGBT
community. The new legislation is a religious measure with one of those
clever Republican titles, “The First Amendment Defense Act;” because calling it a christian ‘license to discriminate” against LGBT Americans likely would not go over too well with anyone outside of their theocratic cabal.
The legislation originating in the House protects
bigoted Americans who oppose same-sex marriage according to their
religion’s dictates, and according to language in the religious
legislation, that license to discriminate also allows evangelical
bigots, including for-profit corporations, to fire any woman who gets
pregnant without being married…to a man. The law specifically prohibits
the federal government from enforcing the Constitution, or
anti-discrimination laws, against any religious fanatic, including
for-profit corporations, who cites immunity from the law based on
religious grounds.
There is also a little section that forbids the
federal government from revoking a non-profit’s tax exemption, or
terminating any company’s federal contract for discrimination based on
religious liberty. The specific language in the bill is written to
protect evangelical bigots “who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman,” and that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
Simply put, religious Republicans are Hell-bent on forcing the federal
government to toe the theocratic line and legalize evangelical
discrimination. The oath of office they took to support the Constitution
as the law of the land be damned.
A legislative representative with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Ian Thompson, said that “in
addition to targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,
the bill clearly encompasses discrimination against single mothers.”
As Thompson noted, the Republicans’ religious legislation specifically
forbids the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from
protecting women from sex-based religious discrimination.
Thompson said the Republican bill is also a theocratic maneuver to “eviscerate anti-discrimination protections” for LGBT federal contractors that President Obama signed into law just last year, and “allows federally-funded grantees to turn away LGBT people from (taxpayer-funded) homeless shelter services or drug treatment programs.” According to Thomson who stated the glaringly obvious, “This bill is ‘Indiana’ on steroids” in reference to the so-called “religious freedom” bill in Indiana that incited a national and corporate backlash.
The 'christian' extremist who authored the House
version of the theocratic edict, Raul Labrador (R-ID, reptile),
denied that the legislation has anything whatsoever to do with giving
evangelical fanatics a license to discriminate against gays or unwed
mothers. He lied like evangelical Republicans are wont to do and said oh heavens no, “It’s just allowing people to continue to believe the way they do.” One of his evangelical cohorts, Bill Flores (R-Texas, reptile), said “We’re not going to try to dance on the head of a pin here. This legislation protects an institution (or for-profit corporation) based on its sincerely held religious beliefs from persecution.” It is, no matter how theocratic Republicans spin it, a religious license to violate the 14th Amendment.
Senator Mike Lee, another theocratic Republican from mormon Utah, introduced a companion bill in the Senate and said that if
a business or university fires an unmarried woman for having sexual
relations out of wedlock, “they ought to be protected in their religious freedom.” Lee also said that there are plenty of businesses, colleges, and universities “that have a religious delusion that sexual relations are to be reserved for marriage,”
and Lee understands that as good 'christians' it is their religious right
to punish any employee who fails to adhere to the employers’ religious delusions.
The theocratic legislation is gaining momentum among Republicans who are mounting
pressure on Republican leaders in Congress to call a vote on the
evangelical bill this month; before Republicans have to face religious
fanatics at home during their recess. Speaker of the House, opponent of
same-sex marriage, and ‘devout catholic, John Boehner said that “The
Supreme Court’s decision on marriage raises a lot of questions and a
number of members have concerns about the issues it raises. No decision
has been made on how best to address these.” Boehner is a liar; the
decision has been made to address the High Court decision with
legislation to prohibit government from enforcing Constitutional
anti-discrimination laws. The bill has been referred to the Oversight
and Government Reform committee that should be a red flag to any
American that “reforming government” into a theocracy is the primary goal of evangelical Republicans.
It
is really unclear where in the christian bible, or the U.S.
Constitution, evangelicals find an edict authorizing them to punish
Americans who fail to conform to their religious extremism. They are adopting practices of muslim extremists in the
Taliban and ISIL who cite their “religious freedom” to punish
non-compliant people. It is fortunate that Americans have a secret
weapon to thwart evangelical extremists in Congress in President Obama’s
veto pen, because it is apparent that they believe the U.S.
Constitution does not apply to them and they are acting accordingly.
Judge Flat Out Asks Arizona If State Is Racist
A federal appellate court on Thursday asked the lawyers representing
Arizona flat out whether the state was motivated by racism in its
refusal to give driver’s licenses and ID cards to young, undocumented
immigrants.
Sandra Bland’s Jailhouse Death Is Being Investigated By A Racist Sheriff AND A Racist Prosecutor
WTF?! How are these two even employed?
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