The Truth Be Told

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders Gets Major Environmental Endorsement

The campaign of Bernie Sanders scored a major coup Saturday, earning the first endorsement of any candidate by a national environmental group, Friends of the Earth.

Granted, the field is limited to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, given that no living Republican candidate will ever earn the endorsement of any environmental group, local, state, or national. But with the narrowing gap between Clinton and Sanders, this endorsement is no small thing.

Donald Trump, of course, currently the leading Republican candidate, announced back in January of 2014 that “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”

Now, with 2014 behind us, the studies are in, and according to NOAA, 2014 was the warmest year on record:

Reporting Climate @Reportingclimat

“NOAA's State Of The Climate report says four datasets confirm 2014 was warmest year pic.twitter.com/ABlCxHUEt3” http://ow.ly/Qmp3K

The Sanders campaign released a statement from Concord, New Hampshire:

“I am very honored to receive the endorsement of one of the great environmental organizations not only in America but in the world,” Sanders said at the news conference at a park here along the banks of the Merrimack River.

The endorsement was announced by Michael Herz, a former chairman and current Friends of the Earth board member. Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth Action, said in a statement that the endorsement means his group’s 2 million activists will promote Sanders’ bid to become the Democratic Party nominee for president.

“He has proven himself a bold and fearless voice for the planet,” Pica said of Sanders in a prepared statement. “Sen. Sanders’ bold ideas and real solutions to addressing climate change, inequality and promoting a transformative economy that prioritizes public health and the environment over corporate profits, have earned him an enthusiastic endorsement from Friends of the Earth Action.”

In the audience at the news conference was Jerry Curran, the chairman of the New Hampshire chapter of the Sierra Club. Another leading environmentalist and best-selling author, Bill McKibben, took part in the May 26 kickoff of Sanders’ presidential campaign at a Lake Champlain shoreline park in Burlington, Vermont.

In accepting the Friends of the Earth endorsement, Sanders focused on the most serious environmental issue confronting the planet: global warming. “We need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into sustainable energy,” Sanders said.

The endorsement capped a week during which Sanders welcomed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for solar power and energy efficiency, but questioned her refusal to take a stand on construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean.

“If you’re concerned about climate change, say no to the Keystone XL pipeline,” Sanders said at the news conference. He said the pipeline would ship some of the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada’s tar sands region across the United States to refineries in Texas.

Sanders’ clear stand on the pipeline was among the factors Friends of the Earth cited in its endorsement.

Sanders said he would tax emissions from burning oil and coal to discourage the use of fossil fuels responsible for climate change. He has proposed eliminating $135 billion in tax breaks for fossil fuel companies which turn enormous profits. He introduced legislation Congress passed to create an energy efficiency block grant program. His measure was folded into a broader energy bill that Congress passed in 2007. He later secured $3.2 billion for the initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. And his 10 Million Solar Roofs Act would make solar power more affordable and make it simpler for homeowners and businesses to get local permits.

The environment gets far too little attention. Republicans don’t care about it. Ann Coulter, for example, echoing what many Republicans seem to believe, says immigration is the important issue, not the fact that sea levels are rising along with global temperatures, year after year.

It is important that going forward, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders address this important issue, because it is the only issue being talked about in this campaign cycle that affects every living person on this planet. And without a habitable planet, all other issues, no matter how dear to your heart, become non-issues.

While Other Candidates Tap Millionaires, Sanders Campaign Is Fueled By Small Donations

Bernie Sanders' campaign is a grassroots movement, while most of the other campaigns are backed by millionaires and billionaires.…

On Friday, campaign super PACs filed financial reports with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), giving the public a more complete picture of which candidates are doing well and which ones are doing poorly in the fundraising race. The August 1st edition of The New York Times ran a piece showing how much money each candidate has raised, and it also included how much cash has been raised by super PACs supporting each candidate.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has raised 13.7 million dollars in total contributions, with 80. 7 percent of that money coming from donations of 200 dollars or less. For comparison, 19 percent of Hillary Clinton’s donations have been 200 dollars or less. Just 3.3 percent of Jeb Bush’s contributions have come from small donations.

Only retired neurosurgeon Carson comes close to matching Sanders in his reliance on small donors to power his campaign. 80.2 percent of Carson’s money has come from donations of 200 dollars or less.

While those figures are from the actual campaigns themselves, the race for dollars among super PACs might be even more revealing. For example, over 95 percent of contributions to super PACs that support Cruz have come from donations of one million dollars or more. Over 75 percent of super PAC funds in support of Huckabee, Perry and Rubio have also come from contributions of a million dollars or greater.

For Hillary Clinton super PACs, the figure is 51.1 percent. By contrast, no pro-Sanders super PAC has received any donations exceeding a million dollars.

Thirty-one wealthy donors have given 1.1 million dollars or more to fund presidential candidates or pro-candidate super PACs. Each of those donors has funneled their money to Republicans, with Cruz bootlickers Mercer and Neugebauer leading the charge. Each has donated more than ten million to support Cruz’s pretender bid.

While no individual has given over a million dollars to back any Democrat running for president, a handful of individuals have contributed exactly one million to help elect Hillary Clinton. Philanthropist George Soros and film director Steven Spielberg have each contributed a million dollars to help elect Hillary Clinton.

Since Bernie Sanders is explicitly taking on the “billionaire class”, it makes sense that his campaign would resonate with ordinary citizens, while failing to catch hold with the super wealthy. The fundraising reports released so far bear out what it probably obvious. Bernie Sanders campaign is a grassroots, people-powered movement, while most of the other campaigns are being backed by millionaires and billionaires.

The 1 Percent Are Spending Millions To Buy This Election, No Voting Required

This is really scary.
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Remember When Louis Black Talked About Trump? It Was Hilarious And Dead On

Remember When Louis Black Talked About Donald Trump? It Was Hilarious And Dead On (VIDEO)

Louis Black endorsed Donald Trump in 2012, sort of. He says he would be a ‘President who’s not afraid of telling the truth…about being a lying asshole.’

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Trump Becomes The Face Of The Republican Cabal As He Surges To Huge Lead In Iowa

Trump's 16 point lead in the Republican cabal field in Iowa, has made him the de facto face of the Republican cabal.…

A Gravis Marketing poll released on July 31st confirms that Trump has become the face of the Republican cabal. Sure, cabal insiders and shrieking headss are still trying to distance themselves from Trump’s toxic rhetoric, but much to their chagrin, Republican voters are embracing Trump’s politics of derision and division.

The Gravis Marketing poll found Trump surging to a huge lead in Iowa. Trump polled at 31 percent in the Republican cabal field, followed by Wisconsin moron Walker at 15 percent, and Jeb at 10 percent. Several other Republican candidates were mired in the single digits.

Republican leaders are slow to accept an inconvenient truth. After years of ginning up their base with hateful, fear-mongering rhetoric, cabal leaders have now lost control of the monster they created. Trump is not only the cabal’s Id, but he is also now the Republican cabal’s most identifiable leader.

To the average Iowa Republican idiot, the cabal is not led by congressional leaders like McConnell or Boehner, nor is it led by faces of the past, like the shrub or Mitt Romney. Furthermore, legacy candidate Jeb and Koch brothers’ sycophant Walker, while popular with cabal bosses, do not command the loyalty of the Republican cabal rank and file the way Trump does.

Trump has tapped into the fear and anger of aging white folks in Middle America who feel their way of life is being threatened by people who don’t look like them. Whether it be illegal immigrants or “the Kenyan usurper” in the White House, Trump’s attacks on people of color are striking a chord in Middle America during this summer of discontent.

Republican cabal leaders and the wingnut media have been fanning the flames of discontent since Barack Obama became president, but now their controlled burn has morphed into a fire they can no longer contain. Trump has ascended to the top of the republican cabal field, and in this season of rage, his momentum is spiraling out of control.

For better or worse, Trump’s large lead in Iowa has made him the new face of the Republican cabal.

Trump Would Be The Republican Cabal Nominee if Vote Were Held Today

Trump's play to misery, that "We are really far down" and "We are in big trouble" have found resonance among the Republican base…

The Trump “Bubble” continues. He is leading in Iowa. The McCain imbroglio only made him more popular. Fox News’ Eric Bolling tweeted that if the vote were held today, Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for pretender:

Bolling says “Many in the party are still not sold,” which is an understatement at best. “I think the establishment is afraid of Trump, and I asked him why.”

Trump: I don’t understand it. I say what I say, which is something, make America great…Basically what I want to do, is make our country great again. We’re going in such a wrong direction and it’s not going to be turned around easily.”

Makes you wonder where Trump has been since the shrub junta. What he is saying is exactly what liberals were saying, and it is certainly true of the country as Obama found it when he entered office after the 2008 elections. It was in terrible shape, and it has been a long and difficult road even restoring some semblance of normalcy.

Now Trump and his fellow Republicans want to have another go at it. We can call it Ruination 2.0. Or Ruination Redux. Whatever you call it, it will be more of what we got from 2000 to 2008. But because recovery is not complete – thanks to nullification efforts in Congress and red Ssates, the consequences of another Republican junta will be even more catastrophic.

“We are really far down,” Trump told Bolling. “We are in big trouble.” Gone unsaid was Trump’s secret motto: BOHICA. Bend over, here it comes again.

Been there. Done that. Not doing it again. We didn’t even get t-shirts last time, and we don’t want to lose the ones we have.

Yet Trump says, “I”m doing the right thing. I’m saying the right things in terms of the country, but the level of animosity and the level of hatred from some people who I think are good people, is incredible.”

But hey, you still have the teabaggers, Mr. Trump. In fact, he says “The level of support is beyond incredible.”

According to Trump, his popularity is not being driven by a ethnic nationalist (read that white supremacist) Republican base, but rather a mysterious “silent majority” reminiscent of all those teabagger “we want our country back” types. Who, coincidentally, were funded by corporations owned by rich “people” like Trump. I say “people” because many corporations are owned by other corporations. It is impossible to figure out who really owns them. Trump is the very public face of an essentially faceless corporatism.

It may be, as Bernie Sanders says, that he is forcing Hillary Clinton to deal with reality. Sadly, nobody can force Trump – or the Republican cabal as a whole – to deal with reality. And if anything, as we have seen, Trump’s vocal extremism is only driving other Republican candidates to adopt a more strident tone themselves.

Two Kinds

IRS Surrenders To The Koch Brothers’ Dark Money, Gives Up On Regulating PACs

by Shannon Argueta

Any hope that the I.R.S. would crack down on “dark money” donors who have created tax exempt nonprofit groups for political purposes before the 2016 election is gone. The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, told a House committee meeting on Thursday that there were no plans in the works for new regulations before the upcoming elections.
Donors use these tax-exempt organizations because there is no accountability and little paper trail that reveals who is donating to them; the perfect way to funnel money to causes without leaving any fingerprints. Koskinen later gave reporters an unbelievable explanation as to why the I.R.S. was not going to do its job and change the tax code:
“I don’t want people thinking we are trying to get these regs done so we can influence the election.”
His announcement comes on the heels of another decision earlier this year in which the commissioner said he would allow the political organizations who have disguised themselves as nonprofit “social welfare” groups to keep their tax exempt status as long as they only spend up to 49 percent of their revenue on political activity.
The IRS has been under attack from the Republican cabal ever since they began investigating just where the teabagger covens came from, and where the war-chests that toppled mainstream Republicans from their seats and began rapidly radicalizing American politics. The Republican cabal erupted in self-righteous fury, accusing the IRS of bias and that wingnut ‘nonprofits’ were being unfairly targeted by the I.R.S. Even though it was quickly discovered the left-leaning groups were given the same scrutiny that teabagger covens were given, but that didn’t stop the hysterical cries of victimization and government overreach that fulfilled their purpose- to draw attention away from the puppet masters- the Koch Brothers. Since then, the Republican cabal has been steadily cutting away funding from the I.R.S, hindering them from fulfilling their most basic functions..
Now, they are backing down from the Kochs and their dirty dollars once again. It is absolutely infuriating that Koskinen is not going to crack down on these cabals, especially when you find out just how much money they are illegally spending on political activities. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org) these nonprofit organizations exploded after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. In 2006, spending from these dark money fueled nonprofits was just under $5.2 million in 2006, but in 2012, just two years after the SCOTUS ruling, it was over $300 million. This next cycle, they are planning to shell out a jaw-dropping $900 million to tilt the odds in their favor.
This is horrendous news for the fate of our elections. Not only do we have the I.R.S. not taking any action to punish illegal activities, but we have the Federal Election Commission completely unable to enact any kind of reform because of the Republicans on the board. With both the I.R.S. and F.E.C. paralyzed by Republican cabal obstructionism, big money has been given a free pass to take over our elections, potentially drowning out the rest of America. This is why it is so important that a Democrat wins the upcoming election; after four more years, the damage to our democracy might be irreversible.

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Cheney’s Halliburton Suing The Cancer-Stricken Iraq War Vets They Poisoned

Halliburton, the colossal oil field services company that was formerly run by Black Prince of Darkness, Dick Cheney, was one of the biggest profiteers off of the atrocious bloodshed during the War in Iraq. Cheney arranged for his former company and its subsidiaries to get massive government contracts, and used American servicemen to guard the sites. The toxic nature of oil work has resulted in the poisoning of untold numbers of our soldiers and Iraqis alike without their knowledge, even though the company was certainly aware of it.In 2012, a federal court in Portland, OR, awarded $85 million in damages to twelve Oregon National Guardsmen who had been exposed and fallen ill from the cancer-causing toxin sodium dichromate at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant, Iraq, a site operated by the Halliburton subsidiary KBR. The 9th Circuit Court threw out the judgement on appeal, ruling that they had to sue the company in their own state of Texas.
The case against KBR is being filed again in Houston, but KBR has retaliated by suing the veterans for $850,000 in legal fees from the first case, in a retaliatory and deeply immoral attempt to punish the veterans and silence their efforts to bring the company to justice.
By burying these veterans in litigation and possibly crushing debt if the court sides with KBR again, they will have poisoned US veterans, on the US government’s dime, and have gotten away with it. It is absolutely reprehensible. The ghosts of Iraq still haunt our soldiers and our conscience, eight years later. Corporate privilege in our nation extends much far too far if shocking travesties like this are allowed to occur in our nation. Cheney, Halliburton, and KBR have done enough damage and stolen enough money to our nation as it is. We can’t let them do this to our vets again.

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Wingnut Says Liberals Hate 'christians', ‘As Much As The Nazis Hated The jews

He also has an interesting theory about weather patterns.
And, if you’re going to listen to anyone about such matters – it should be this guy.

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The Law is catching up to the Texas Republican's Corruption

Florida police laundered millions in drug money overseas and enjoyed lavish lifestyle

‘It was off the wall'

An investigative report by the Miami Herald reveals that two local Florida police agencies engaged in a slick money laundering scheme ripped from a Hollywood movie.

South Carolina Cop Never Reported Killing 19-Year-Old

Featured image credit: video screen capture, Fox Carolina

There better be an investigation into this.
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A Thousand Points of Hate ...

Couple Plans Massive Series of Anti–Gay Marriage Billboards

by Samantha Cowan

Some highway billboards are the same wherever you go across this great land of ours: McDonald’s, Target, Walmart. Others are more regional (where is the line at which Carl’s Jr. becomes Hardee’s, anyway?). Some are particular to states, and those road-tripping through Oklahoma will likely see billboards directing them to visit online adult toy shops and to alert law enforcement about any methamphetamine use they come across. And in one small part of the state—the town of Durant, in the southeast corner—visitors and residents may now feast their eyes upon a message against marriage equality.

The plea comes from Betty and Richard Odgaard, an Iowa couple who say they recently closed their wedding business rather than perform same-sex marriages. Iowa legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, but the Odgaards and their Görtz Haus Gallery came under fire in 2013 when they refused to assist two men with their upcoming nuptials, citing their 'christian' delusions, The Blaze spews. A small payout from the lawsuit, followed by boycotts and a decline in their accompanying flower and restaurant businesses, led the couple to close their doors at the end of July.

After their wedding business was shuttered, the couple established a nonprofit called dog’s original design cult. They plan to place up to 1,000 anti–gay marriage billboards around the country. dog’s original design cult is listed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which means it doesn’t have to pay taxes on the money people send in.

The Odgaards have previously warned that people of similar delusion will be unable to run their own businesses as they see fit due to anti-discrimination laws. Their website notes that their billboards “give a voice to the ‘silent minority’ ” who mistakenly think marriage should be between a man and a woman. Although polling figures showed that 61 percent of Americans supported marriage equality even before the Supreme Court ruling, the billboards—funded entirely by donations—indicate that intolerance is alive and well.

Advertising homophobia on massive street signs is nothing new, and counter billboard campaigns are ready to help.

“dog Loves Gays” also shouts from the mouth of highway signs. These billboards feature an image of a smiling old man under a rainbow. Last month, the group behind the project erected its third billboard in Dearborn Heights, Michigan—in the same location where an antigay billboard previously stood. Oklahoma might be next, as dog Loves Gays lists it among potential locations for its next sign.

Finding "Evidence"

The White House Gets Fox News To STFU Over Biased Planned Parenthood Coverage

Well this is certainly entertaining…

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Erick Erickson Threatens 'Violence In The Polling Booths' If The Republican Cabal Doesn't Shutdown Govt Over Planned Parenthood

From the "What a Dick" Department:

Erick Erickson Threatens 'Violence In The Polling Booths' If GOP Doesn't Shutdown Govt Over Planned Parenthood

Erick Erickson is demanding the Republican cabal to shut down the government over the Planned Parenthood videos or they will face harsh retribution.

Nice Try, Republicans!

After wingnuts released a series of four highly controversial videos attacking women’s health organization Planned Parenthood for making profits...

Smear Videos Helped RAISE Money For Planned Parenthood

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah we're talking to you ...!

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Bill Maher on running for office: Americans would ‘probably elect a pedophile before an atheist’

Americans would ‘probably elect a pedophile before an atheist’

President Obama Tears Boehner And McConnell A New One At Highway Bill Signing

While he signed the three-month transportation funding bill, President Obama delivered a stern lecture to Congress in general and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell specifically about their total inability to govern.

The President said:

Well, I am about to sign a three-month extension of our highway funding, and that’s a good thing because if this wasn’t in front of me and ready for signature we would end up having projects all across the country be frozen after midnight.

On the other hand, we have now made it a habit where instead of five-year funding plans for transportation instead of long-term approaches, instead we operate as if we’re hand to mouth three months at a time, which freezes a lot of construction, which makes people uncertain, which leads to businesses not being willing to hire because they don’t have any long-term certainty. It’s a bad way for the U.S. government to do business.

….

We can’t have bridges collapsing and potholes not being filled because Congress can’t come up with an adequate plan to fund our infrastructure budget for more than three or five or six months at a time.

….

So I want to make sure that before I sign this Congress gets a clear message, and that is we should not be leaving all the business of the U.S. government until the last minute.

That little lecture was directed at two people whose names the President did not mention. Obama was talking about the dysfunction between Boehner and McConnell. The Senate did their job. They negotiated a bipartisan multi-year agreement on transportation funding that House Republicans immediately refused to pass.

Republicans promised the American people that the governing from crisis to crisis behavior would stop if they were given control of both the House and Senate. Well, Republicans control Congress, and the dysfunction and chaos have grown worse.

President Obama has been forced into the role of the national parent who has to scold and reprimand Republicans who refuse to carry out their basic duties. The spoiled Republican children are taking millions of dollars in salary and benefits from the taxpayers while providing little in return.

The drama over the highway bill is nothing compared to the potential government shutdown that is looming after Congress returns from its August break. As the stakes get higher, it is expected that President Obama’s language will get even tougher as Boehner and McConnell appear to have no idea how to make this Congress work.

President Obama Calls Out The Republican Lies On Medicare

President Obama is pushing back against the Republican lies about Medicare while celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid.

The President said:

This week, there was a big birthday you might have missed. Medicare and Medicaid turned 50 years old. And that’s something worth celebrating.

If one of the best measures of a country is how it treats its more vulnerable citizens – seniors, the poor, the sick – then America has a lot to be proud of. Think about it. Before Social Security, too many seniors lived in poverty. Before Medicare, only half had some form of health insurance. Before Medicaid, parents often had no help covering the cost of care for a child with a disability.

But as Americans, we declared that our citizens deserve a basic measure of security and dignity. And today, the poverty rate for seniors is less than half of what it was fifty years ago. Every American over 65 has access to affordable health care. And today, we’re finally finishing the job – since I signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the uninsured rate for all Americans has fallen by about one-third.

These promises we made as a nation have saved millions of our own people from poverty and hardship, allowing us new freedom, new independence, and the chance to live longer, better lives. That’s something to be proud of. It’s heroic. These endeavors – these American endeavors – they didn’t just make us a better country. They reaffirmed that we are a great country.

And a great country keeps the promises it makes. Today, we’re often told that Medicare and Medicaid are in crisis. But that’s usually a political excuse to cut their funding, privatize them, or phase them out entirely – all of which would undermine their core guarantee. The truth is, these programs aren’t in crisis. Nor have they kept us from cutting our deficits by two-thirds since I took office. What is true is that every month, another 250,000 Americans turn 65 years old, and become eligible for Medicare. And we all deserve a health care system that delivers efficient, high-quality care. So to keep these programs strong, we’ll have to make smart changes over time, just like we always have.

Today, we’re actually proving that’s possible. The Affordable Care Act has already helped secure Medicare’s funding for another 13 years. The Affordable Care Act has saved more than nine million folks on Medicare 15 billion dollars on their prescription medicine. It has expanded Medicaid to help cover 12.8 million more Americans, and to help more seniors live independently. And we’re moving our health care system toward models that reward the quality of the care you receive, not the quantity of care you receive. That means healthier Americans and a healthier federal budget.

Today, these programs are so fundamental to our way of life that it’s easy to forget how hard people fought against them at the time. When FDR created Social Security, critics called it socialism. When JFK and LBJ worked to create Medicare, the cynics said it would take away our freedom. But ultimately, we came to see these programs for what they truly are – a promise that if we work hard, and play by the rules, we’ll be rewarded with a basic measure of dignity, security, and the freedom to live our lives as we want.

It’s a promise that previous generations made to us, and a promise that our generation has to keep.

As usual, the President didn’t mention anyone by name but it was clear who he was talking about. Jeb Bush has made phasing out the beloved program that help the poor, seniors, and the disabled a key piece of his campaign. Republicans routinely misinform in an attempt to provide justification for their ideological goal of destroying Medicare/Medicaid.

Republicans are still claiming that Obamacare is destroying Medicare when the reality is that the ACA has added to Medicare funding. As we move into campaign season, the Republican lies about the stability and future of Medicare will return to the surface. The truth is that the Republican goal has been, is, and will continue to be to get rid of Medicare.

Obama nailed it. Republicans are wrong about the ACA, Medicare, and Social Security. The President is standing tall and not letting the right’s ideological fallacies go unchallenged.

White House Promises Obama Will Veto Republican Bill To Defund Planned Parenthood

President Obama is standing by Planned Parenthood as the White House confirmed that he will veto the Republican bill to defund the organization.

According to The Hill:

The White House on Friday threatened a veto on any bill that defunds Planned Parenthood.

A budget measure that strips funding from the organization “is certainly something that would draw a presidential veto,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“We have routinely opposed the inclusion of ideologically driven riders” in budget bills, Earnest added.

This veto threat is larger than most because Ted Cruz and House Republicans are threatening to shut down the government if Planned Parenthood is not defunded. Cruz is set to deploy the same tactics that he used in 2013 to shut down the government when he attempted to defund Obamacare.

The 2013 shutdown was a complete disaster, and House and Senate Republicans will be under the same kind of pressure to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood. The Obama veto threat is the first shot in what could be an ugly showdown in September. This White House is opposed to ideological add-ons in budget bills. That means that when Cruz and his House wingnut allies pressure Boehner and McConnell into adding a provision that defunds Planned Parenthood to the budget bills, Republicans will be putting the wheels in motion for a government shutdown.

Republicans in Congress have been trying this same failed stunt for years. Republicans always convince themselves that they have found the golden ticket to make Obama blink, but the President has stood his ground and not batted an eye. In the end, Republicans always cave under the pressure of the crisis that they created bring down the President.

Nothing has changed. Republicans are going to fail again because the White House has made it clear that President Obama is not going to be intimidated.

Obama Draws Bright Red Line In The Sand Over Planned Parenthood, Dares Republicans To Cross It

This is what a president who stands up for women’s rights looks like.
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Hillary Clinton Just Obliterated Jeb In Front Of Jeb

Hillary Clinton Just Obliterated Jeb Bush In Front Of Jeb Bush

This. Was. Epic.
Read more

Republicans Tell Their Own Media: You’re Destroying Our Chance To 'Govern' With Your Idiocy

Republicans are concerned with what Liberals have been saying for years: the wingnut media’s push to extremism is harming the Republican cabal’s ability to 'govern'.

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Fox News Says Don’t Worry if Times’ Clinton Email Story Wrong, Keep Talking About it

Judith Miller says don't worry about facts, we need more coverage. This is Fox-speak for "We've got nothing, so let's keep talking about it"…

A classic Fox News response to the botched, re-botched and botched again New York Times Hillary Clinton email story:

On Fox News’ Happening Now, Judith Miller said we need more coverage of the Clinton emails “Whether or not The Times got certain facts about the story wrong.” This is Fox-speak for “We’ve got nothing, so let’s keep talking about it.”

They don’t have to prove a thing. They just have to keep doubt alive, just as they’ve tried to do with global warming, and before that, smoking. Throw enough dirt, and some will stick. And after all, where they’ve invented one lie, they can invent another, and keep inventing them.

Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:

Sure, some of what the Times said was wrong, claims Miller, but, she says,

What we’re missing here is the bigger picture, and that is that Hillary Clinton, whether or not the Times got certain facts about the story wrong, has huge potential legal and certainly political problems because of her handling of the email, and if I were Hillary Clinton’s press secretary, I would want to divert attention too to what The New York Times did or didn’t do and how fast it did it. Look, we already know she had 60,000 emails, only 30,000 of which were turned over to the State Department. The other 30,000 she destroyed. We know there was at least five emails which contained classified information. We don’t know how many more did. We don’t know when that information was classified. We also know there was that mysterious disappearance of two months of emails just around the Benghazi attack. I mean, there are so many issues here and problems.

Miller says the question is why the media did not “get on this story sooner. Why did it take until The New York Times’ original story about the existence of a private server in her private home to prompt others to begin to look at this issue.”

Hillary Clinton is lining up Republican pretender candidates and knocking them down like dominoes. At this rate, she will have all 16 down even before the first debates. Fox News, like the Republican cabal, is frantically looking for ways to stop her. Expect more Benghazi, expect more emails and more emails + Benghazi and anything else they can invent to throw at her.

What is funny is that The New York Times can call out the campaign being engineered against Planned Parenthood without noticing their own deceptive campaign against Hillary Clinton. As The Atlantic‘s Norm Ornstein so succinctly put it, The New York Times‘ handling of Clinton email story is “a direct challenge to its fundamental credibility.”

We could say a lot more about Fox News, but they never had any credibility to begin with.

House Republican Says President Obama’s Iran Deal ‘Makes Hitler Look Like A Minor Player’

A House Republican said that the Iran deal makes President Obama more evil than Hitler and weaker than Neville Chamberlain.

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Not To Be Outdone ...

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/.RqpI0.daorTTLGzLCa0Fg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM2MztweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01MDA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/crmlu150731.gif

Trump Exposes Koch Republicans As Glaring Fascists

Republicans have tapped into the religious and wingnut negative reaction to 21st Century modernity, or social progress as it is called…

It is a sad situation that, for the most part, Americans are completely ignorant of two terms used pejoratively to describe the opposing sides of the American political spectrum. It is true that most Americans understand that Republicans are wingnuts and inherently terrified of, and violently resistant to change to maintain the power structure favoring the privileged few, and that Democrats are liberals and promote progress to advance the general welfare of all Americans.

Political pundits often go a bit farther and use “big confusing” words like “fascists” and “socialists” to describe each political extreme, but very few Americans comprehend those words’ meanings. In their most basic sense, socialism is when government owns and operates all businesses, financial institutions and property with no input of private individuals, and fascism is when corporations own, operate, and control all facets of a nation’s government without any input from the people.

Wingnuts are infatuated with criticizing everything unrelated to corporatism and extremism as “socialism” because it resonates with their base’s inherent stupidity and horror due to having no idea what socialism entails. If wingnuts understood what socialism is, they would understand that the United States military is the only socialistic entity in America. Conversely, the left often criticizes wingnuts and the policies championed by Republicans as being fascist. Unlike the ‘socialist’ label, fascist is an apt description of Republican tactics and policies and an ideology that their clueless base ardently supports and falls victim to.

Regardless of what any American thinks of Trump, he has performed a valuable service to America if for no other reason than highlighting, in grand fashion, his own fascist inclination that drives the Republican cabal’s policies, practices, and allegiance to the rich and corporations. More than just his policies, Trump is unafraid to publicly practice fascist tactics and is having a great measure of success due to the past six years of Republicans’ conditioning their base.

It is no coincidence that the fascist zeal of today’s Republican cabal and its racist, religious extremist base, is precisely the same as the fervent fascism of the early and mid-20th century; and Trump has exposed the Republican cabal as a fascist movement. In a recent article worth reading, Jeffrey Tucker argued brilliantly that Trump is as much a fascist as Mussolini and Hitler for inciting wingnuts “with race baiting, traditionalism, and ‘ugly American’ strongman tough talk; typically Republican.

It is true that Trump is not saying anything Republicans and their base do not ardently believe and support; he is just unafraid to say it loudly and it informs his growing popularity among conservative. As Tucker explains, Trump’s success is founded on saying exactly what wingnuts believe and desperately want a wingnut 'hero' to say. Tucker argues that “Trump has tapped into it, absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable wingnut resentment; race, class, sex, religion, and economics. And he promises a new order of things under his mighty hand.” It is what every Republican candidate for pretender promises, except Trump is unafraid to say it in any venue.

Everything about Trump’s style, the blatant race baiting, xenophobia, and confrontational nationalism is not unique to Trump by any means; he is simply the most blatant and vocal about it. Republicans, on the other hand, reserve their fascist tactics for private fundraisers, town hall speeches, and special interests’ conference meetings. The only reason Trump is leading in some Republican cabal polls is because he says what the base believes. For example, the wingnut base is furious that immigrants are in “their country,” are violently angry that homosexuals are destroying 'christian’s tradition' of marriage, and that America not at war is a sign of weakness. In fact, in the same way that fascism reacted to modernity in the early 20th century, wingnuts are reacting angrily to social progress of the new century.

Today’s Republican cabal, like its base of support, is twisted sick with dangerously unwavering and dogmatic traditionalism, religious extremism, and blatant intolerance of anything they define as “other.” In fact, except for the people twice electing an African American man as President, Republicans and their wingnut base are reacting violently to the “social progress” the nation has experienced over the past twenty years. Like the early 20th Century fascists’ violently reacted to modernity and people’s flirtation with democratic values, Republicans have tapped into the religious and wingnut negative reaction to America’s 21st Century modernity, or as it is called “social progress” and tolerance.

As any American who has been conscious over the past six years can attest, Republicans preach, promote, and practice intolerance, xenophobia, passion over reason, racial and religious purity, and nationalism, and they openly crusade against democratic values. An example is Republicans’ dangerous and successful denial of climate change and science that originates with “the corrupt alliance of anti-intellectual traditionalism, religious fundamentalism, and corporate influence; the ultimate expression of fascism pushed and paid for by the Koch brothers.

For a prescient comparison between today’s Republican cabal and 20th Century fascism, it is worth considering Benito Mussolini’s ghostwriter and “philosopher of fascism,” Giovanni Gentile’s definition of fascism. Gentile writes that, “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” If that one statement does not accurately describe the Republican cabal, and all its iterations, then the Sun rises in the West. It is nearing the point that although large corporations do not yet have ultimate control and power over government, Republicans have brought the nation precariously close to government by corporation and achieved their fascist goals by closely following 20th Century fascist tactics of spewing hateful and religious intolerant ideology based on “traditional values;” values they claim the left have destroyed.

Those traditional values of guns, dog, and racial purity predominate the official Republican cabal platform that corporate interests fund to 'elect' wingnuts to serve those corporate interests; not the people. There is a reason the Republican establishment, or the Koch brothers, have not yet brought their considerable power to bear on Trump to end to his campaign; he is conditioning the base for a “kinder gentler” Republican fascist to appeal to more mainstream voters. It is why fascists like Walker, Paul, and Jeb are being labeled “moderate” when they are just as vicious, just as fascist, and just as much a Koch-Republican as Trump.

Trump is a predatory businessman who, like Koch Republicans, wants to run America like his personal corporation. He, like Koch Republicans, fully understands that the voters, including the Republican base, would not be amenable to living under a government run by a corporation, so he appeals to the base’s intolerance, xenophobia, passion over reason, racial and religious purity, nationalism and the idea that America’s 236 year-old liberal democracy is why wingnuts are losing their precious traditions. Most Americans likely have no real idea what fascism is, but if they listen to Trump and peruse wingnuts’ agenda, they will realize that officially, Koch Republicans are fascists.

Iowa State Fair Gives Trump The Finger Over A Proposal To Flaunt His Wealth

Featured image by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5440993294/

This is Trump trying to show off his wealth for the good people of Iowa, and look like he cares about children while doing so. Good luck with that, sir.

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