Obama White House Hammers McConnell For Lying About Loretta Lynch Vote

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for lying about why he is delaying the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the next Attorney General.

Video:

Video Link

Press Secretary Josh Earnest said:

Now, I’ve gotten asked a number of times since November about whether or not the president trusts Senator McConnell. Whether or not Sen. McConnell and other members of the Republican leadership, whether their word is good with the president. So, Sen. McConnell back in November was saying that her nomination should be considered in the new Congress. But yesterday when Sen. McConnell was asked on CNN about whether or not he was going to act quickly to confirm her, and to explain the delay, he said the nomination hasn’t taken that long when you consider when it was taken up which was this year. He went on to say, “The Democrat majority back in December had a chance to work on the nomination earlier, decided to delay it until this year.”

He failed to point out that, that delay was at his request, and now he’s in the position of delaying it even further. Despite the fact, and I’ll say it again, no legitimate question has been raised about her aptitude for this office. Despite the fact that submitted to more than eight hours of testimony, and despite the fact she’s answered more than six hundred written questions. So there is no question that Republicans are playing politics with the nomination of the nation’s top law enforcement officer, and it should come to an end.

Earnest’s answer about whether or not Obama trusts McConnell spoke volumes. Instead of saying yes or no, the White House Press Secretary gave the perfect example of why the White House can’t trust McConnell. McConnell has gone back on his word on the Lynch nomination, and has demonstrated that he is completely untrustworthy.

Sen. McConnell is holding the final vote on the Lynch nomination hostage, because Senate Democrats are blocking a human trafficking bill due to the Republican insertion of language about restriction abortion. Sen. McConnell is making his own problems worse by blocking a vote on Loretta Lynch.

Senate Republicans are desperate to prove that they can pass legislation over Democratic objections. The problem is that they can’t pass legislation without working with Democrats. By blocking a vote on Lynch, McConnell is compounding his problems by denying the Senate at least one accomplishment.

McConnell is denying the nation a new attorney general because he needs to pass a bill and get a “win.” Mitch McConnell is getting desperate, and the Obama White House is calling out the Senate Majority Leader’s lie on the Lynch nomination.

Obama’s Biggest Victory: 16.4 Million Uninsured Americans Have Gained Health Coverage Via ACA

Millions of Americans have gained health insurance coverage, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law on March 23, 2010.…

16.4 million Americans who were previously uninsured, have gained health insurance coverage, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law on March 23, 2010. Over 14 million uninsured adults acquired insurance following the first open enrollment period in October 2013. An additional 2.3 million young adults between the ages of 19 and 25, gained coverage between 2010 and October 2013, because of the ACA provision allowing children under the age of 26 to remain on their parent’s plan.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index estimates that the national uninsured rate has plummeted from 20.3 percent, prior to the 2013 open enrollment period, to just 13.2 percent in early 2015. Predictably, the decline in the uninsured rate was most dramatic in states that expanded Medicaid coverage.

The uninsured rate for Latinos dropped the sharpest from a baseline uninsured rate of 41.8 percent, when open enrollment began, to 29.5 percent in 2015. The African-American uninsured rate fell from 22.4 percent to 13.2 percent during the same time span. The white uninsured rate tumbled from 14.3 percent to a mere 9.0 percent over the same period.

In raw numbers, 6.6 million additional White Americans, 4.2 million Latinos, and 2.3 million African-Americans who were previously uninsured gained health care coverage under the provisions of the ACA. While no figures are calculated for Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders, or American Indians, presumably they add up, to account for the remaining 1 million Americans who gained insurance over the same time frame.

The Supreme Court may choose to gut Obamacare in June. However, if they do so, they will be stripping away health care coverage for millions of Americans who have benefited from the ACA. Republicans like to attack Obamacare at every turn, but the bottom line is the ACA has brought affordable health care coverage to millions of Americans. 16.1 million Americans who did not have health coverage prior to the ACA, now have affordable care. There is no rational or humane reason for the Supreme Court, or the GOP Congress,  to turn their backs on millions of Americans. However, out of sheer spite for the President’s landmark accomplishment, they will probably do just that.

Why The Obamacare Doomsday Cult Can't Admit It's Wrong

Doomsday Cult

President’s Executive Action Would Lift 40,000 Children Out Of Poverty

Allowing undocumented immigrant beneficiaries of the president's executive action to work would generally boost their individual wages by six to ten percent.

Elections

The GOP wants to change the rules to win the elections their candidates can't

by Bob Geary

Chad Barefoot (R-Wake) says the bill would end "outrageously expensive" campaigns. The irony: The GOP sank $1 million into his legislative bids.

What an embarrassment for Boss Art Pope. In Wake County, his home base, his Republicans lost their short-lived grip on the school board. Their control of the Wake Board of County Commissioners isn't just gone, it's evaporated—the hated Democrats now hold all seven seats. In 2014, the countywide margin in commissioners' races was a solid 55–45 percent for the four Democratic victors.
Yes, the voters have spoken.
So now, my Wake Republican friends, you have two choices. You can change your message, broaden your appeal and stop bowing to Pope. I know: What a laugh!
Or, you can do what Republicans do best, which is change the election rules to rig 'em so you "win" even if the Democrats get more votes.
In 2011, this is what the Republicans did at the state level, where with breathtaking disregard for basic notions of fairness, they rigged the General Assembly elections by massively gerrymandering election-district lines.
That dirty work done, they were able last year—by they, I mean Republican legislators—to throw out the law governing school board elections in Wake County and replace it with a new one, complete with artfully gerrymandered school-board districts.
Thus the Wake Republicans, unpopular as they are, now have a very good chance of recapturing the school board in 2016. (Oh, I'm sorry, did you think we were due for school board elections this year in Wake? We were. But the Republicans canceled them.)
And with the sudden appearance of Senate Bill 181, the drunk-with-power Republican legislators are about to chuck out the law governing Wake Commissioners elections. Their replacement would deploy the same gerrymandered districts as in the school board races, meaning the Republicans could be in total charge of Wake by 2018—voters be damned.
Two words explain why the Republicans believe that the ends justify whatever means they use: Public schools.
Public schools require taxes. Half of Wake County's budget is for the school system—32 percent for operations and 19 percent for debt service on the buildings. And that's for an underfunded system. Imagine if we were generous.
But it isn't just the cost. It's the idea that all students must be treated equally, even if their families haven't "earned" it. This goes against the entire Pope-GOP philosophy of extra privileges for those who can afford them.
Worse, public school teachers are a band of equal-treatment believers, which is why so many, working through the N.C. Association of Educators, are soldiers in the enemy camp, i.e., the Democratic Party.
Private-school vouchers, charter schools, test mania—the Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine the public school system as the foundation for an equitable society. And nothing will crash it faster than budget cuts.
For 12 of the last 20 years, Republicans controlled the Wake Commissioners, with the result that spending for Wake schools was slashed in 1995–96 and, after a Democratic respite, reduced again from 2002 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2014.
Only in 2009–11 did the Republicans control the Wake school board, which is nominally nonpartisan but fell to a Pope-engineered putsch in the '09 elections. When the GOP ran both boards, the commissioners not only held the purse strings tight, the school board cheered them on.
In practical terms, though, the Republicans can whittle the Wake schools by winning either board, because while the final decision about county taxes is up to the commissioners, the school board can simply refuse to spend money.
Back to those gerrymandered districts. They get their first test in 2016, when the nine school board members will be elected. If all goes according to the Republican plan, GOP candidates will win at least five seats and take control.
Then, if SB 181 is enacted, seven county commissioners' seats will be filled in the 2018 elections using gerrymandered districts, which, to repeat, are designed to elect five Republicans by packing Democratic voters into two of the seven districts.
Every two years, the Republicans can try to win a board and stiff the schools.
Since 1982, the seven Wake commissioners have been elected at-large. They "run from" one of seven existing districts, assuring a geographic spread of the members. But every Wake voter gets a vote in each district. The winners represent the whole county.
SB 181 would replace the at-large system with seven district representatives and add two additional seats to be elected from super-districts, each covering half the county. Voters would be limited to two votes, one in a district and the second in a super-district.
That second vote is a throwaway, though. The way the super-districts are drawn, one—based in Raleigh—is virtually guaranteed to elect a Democrat, while the other—which encircles the first—heavily favors the Republicans. According to Sen. Chad Barefoot, the Art Pope minion whose name is on the bill, one super-district is urban, the other is—well, his word is rural.
For years, Republicans vied for control of the Wake Commissioners by winning in off-year elections, when turnouts were lower and when, by happenstance, four of the seven commissioners' seats were chosen. Typically, Democrats won in the presidential election years, when turnouts shot up, but that often left them a seat or two short. The rules were somewhere between fair and tilted the Republicans' way.
But the combination of Wake's growth and stingy Republican budgets brought a sea-change in the 2014 elections, when Democrats swept to victory in an off-year election by pledging to support the schools and public transit.
It was a clear sign that, barring a shift in philosophy, anything approximating a fair election in Wake could doom the Republicans to irrelevance for years to come. That's why they're now calling for unfair elections.

GOP Cries Appeasement. But Up Until Now, We’ve Been Appeasing the Wrong People

Republicans accuse President Obama of appeasement - and he has appeased Israel before Netanyahu's attempted coup - but those days gone …

We have watched a joint Republican-Likud Party coup attempt to take over President Obama’s negotiations with Iran completely backfire, with the result that through his own actions, Benjamin Netanyahu has seen his popularity crash both here and at home. This in turn has prompted a complete right-wing meltdown in Israel, with Netanyahu seeing plots everywhere.

In all, it was a classic, textbook case of cause-and-effect.

Republicans, however, tend to be like the ideologically-blinkered actor Jon Voight, father of Angelina Jolie, who is buying into Benjamin Netanyahu’s paranoia about a leftist plot to unseat him.

On Sunday morning, Voight released a video of support for the embattled prime minister and to the people of Israel, claiming that President Obama “doesn’t want Bibi Netanyahu to win this upcoming election,” and that “America has not been the same since his presidency.”

Hasn’t been the same? You got that right: Thank you Change We Can Believe In!

Seriously, could you blame Obama if he didn’t want Netanyahu to win? Not only on a personal level – The Israeli prime minister just came here and dissed our president at the invitation of his enemies in the GOP, the men who have done everything in their power for six years to bring his presidency to a screeching halt.

But a defeated Netanyahu would serve Obama’s interests on a professional level as well – an Israel governed by a more level-headed, pragmatic leader, would be less likely to draw the U.S. into a war it does not want, and cannot afford. That sort of Israel would be less of a strain on Obama’s pragmatic approach to diplomacy.

Voight, meanwhile, wasn’t talking to a chair, but his address was strange enough regardless.

“I love Israel. I want to see Israel survive and not be overtaken by the madmen of this world,” he begins.

Great. Power to you, Jon. I don’t want Israel to be destroyed either. Neither do I want to see Iran destroyed. Or, more critically, the country I am actually citizen of, the United States of America.

It’s a shame Voight doesn’t feel the same concern for his own country, which has a Congress controlled by madmen eager to dismantle the world’s first modern liberal democracy and fight a few more destructive wars along the way.

Well, to be fair start a few wars other people will have to fight before they are denied treatment for their wounds, physical and psychological, and cast, discarded as of no further use, into the streets.

Voight presents the same tired appeasement spiel we have heard from so many others who want other people to die in their wars so the demands of ideology can be satisfied:

I beg everyone, all of you, to understand the truth: those – like Yitzhak Herzog – who believe that deal-making is the solution to what Israel faces are as wrong as Neville Chamberlain believing he made a peace deal with Hitler. We must learn from history where the true danger lies.

Reversing the facts, and thus failing to understand the truth himself, he then claims, “President Obama does not love Israel and his whole agenda is to control Israel, and this way he can be friends with all of Israel’s enemies.”

Of course, the truth is, Republicans are more than happy to hand control of U.S. foreign policy over to their fellow right-winger Netanyahu.

Yet Voight, somehow with a straight face (credit his acting experience here, I suppose), claims that Obama “in this way…can be friends with all of Israel’s enemies.” Which is a bizarre claim to make because the United States is all on its own Israel’s best and most loyal friend, and no president more so than Barack Obama.

There is nothing – no treaty or agreement – saying the United States is not allowed its own list of friends and enemies, that our foreign policy must align itself completely and totally with Israel’s own. Again, this is giving Israel control of U.S. foreign policy, not the other way around.

Given that the U.S. will be expected to back up any action Israel takes, the United States has a vested interest in who Israel attacks. We’ve already destabilized the region by attacking Iraq. Attacking Iran, the Islamic State’s staunchest foe, would give the entire Middle East to ISIL on a platter.

And ISIL, not Iran, is Israel’s real enemy.

Voight, like John Bolton, Todd Starnes, and many other Republicans, talks about appeasement.

Honestly, listening to the Republicans and Netanyahu, and now Voight, I think up until now we’ve been appeasing the wrong people, and Benjamin Netanyahu is at the head of that list.

Everyone Signing or Supporting the Cotton Letter Is 'Disqualified' From Being President - Right, Chuck Todd?

by Paul Abrams

Remember when Meet the Press's Chuck Todd declared that senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes was disqualified from being in the Senate because she refused to declare for whom she voted in 2008 and 2012?
Forty-seven Republican Senators tried to usurp the authority of the presidency and aid a foreign country in making a decision contrary to the stated policy of the government of the United States. Although Senator Cornyn (R-TX) declared that it is not only the president who speaks for the country in foreign affairs, he is completely wrong (except, perhaps, when the president is a black man, then the rest of the world needs to hear separately from white males).
Add to that number Republican presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush (R-FL), Scott Walker (R-WI) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA).
There are many questions these so-called hopefuls can be asked, but one can start with this: How can you be president if you applaud an unprecedented act interfering with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy by writing to our adversary encouraging it not to enter into an agreement with the U.S. and others?
Moreover, the letter clearly aids-and-abets Iran as against the United States and its allies in the middle east. Iran can now refuse a deal, claim that members of the U.S. government have told them that the deal will not be honored anyhow, and know that the other members of the P5+1 negotiating for the rest of the world are far less likely to support further crippling sanctions if they walk away.
Remember, it was only President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who were able to gain the support of Russia and China so that economic sanctions would be strong enough to convince Iran to come to the bargaining table.
The President's strategy has always been clear: Tighten the sanctions' noose to bring them to the negotiating table for a deal. If it is unsuccessful, the U.S. would have great moral authority as it would have been clear it went the extra mile to find a peaceful solution.
Now, it is not only less likely will can get a deal, but the letter eroded the U.S.' moral authority, a key element in taking further actions, together, to force Iran back to the negotiating table.
Which of the remaining P5+1 countries will agree, now, to much tougher sanctions?
If this deal crumbles, the Congress can pass all the stronger sanctions it wishes, but it will be ineffective if the other members do not participate.
What, then, is left? Letting Iran get a nuclear weapon that they will then be able to do quickly. It would not be the first time Republican presidents let dangerous nations acquire nuclear weapons: W in North Korea and Reagan in Pakistan.
But, this really isn't, or shouldn't be, about domestic politics, it is about a nuclear arms race in the middle east. That is a national security threat worse than ISIS and al-Qaeda combined. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, then other mid-eastern countries will too. (Note: None of them felt they needed one when Israel developed its nuclear arsenal.)
Not only have all the Republican "hopefuls" disqualified themselves for the presidency by usurping authority from that office, not only have they irreparably undermined the threat of future sanctions to bring Iran to the table, they have also increased the likelihood that war is the only option to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
For Republicans, this is all in a days' work.

Bob Schieffer To Sen. Tom Cotton: Who Gets A Letter Next? North Korea?

pwned

Watch Bob Schieffer grill Sen. Tom Cotton over that treasonous letter he and 46 GOP colleagues sent to Iran.

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Ted Cruz Makes Impassioned Plea For Repeal Of Federal Legislation That Does Not Exist

From the "Public Enemies" and the 'Things Idiots say" Departments:

More about this idiot here

Watch Ted Cruz Proudly Declare Corporations Should Control Elections With Money

From the "Public Enemies" Department

Corporate cash is the only thing holding up the Republican Party these days.

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Ted Talks…And Tells 3-Year-Old Girl the ‘World Is On Fire’

From the "Public Enemies" Department:

If Ted Cruz were not a senator running for president, he would be one fantastic televangelist. Ol’ Ted is not a stand-behind-the-lectern kinda fella. No, that’s for people…

Ted talks and idiocy spews forth

The Race To The Bottom

Koch-Congress Preparing To Starve the Poor With Drastic Food Stamp Cuts

The big plan the new Koch Senate is due to propose this week is cutting food stamps substantially and giving the reduced amounts directly to states …

One of the reasons the Koch brothers invested so heavily in the midterm elections was to put a stop to domestic spending that a Democratic controlled Senate held in abeyance and never allowed to reach President Obama’s desk.  Now that Republicans hold majorities in both houses of Congress, it was just a short matter of time before they could do the real the damage they have intended since Barack Obama was elected. It is likely they would have cut government down to size by drastically slashing social programs when Obama took office just out of spite, but their devastating Great Recession has proven to be the ideal vehicle to slash domestic spending under the guise of debt and deficit reduction. That is except where spending on tax cuts for the rich and the military, particularly Israel’s military, are concerned; then there are never enough spending increases. It is just how Republicans operate.

Two areas that are particularly offensive to, and primary targets of, the Koch brothers are any kind of spending to help Americans in poverty or  barely subsisting eat and have access to healthcare. Throughout his tenure as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan proposed Heritage Foundation austerity budgets that all but eliminated spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, food stamps), and changed Medicare into a coupon.

Ryan’s plan for Medicare privatization entails retired Americans producing their GOP-issued “coupon” for an alleged discount when purchasing pathetically underserving and overpriced private health insurance plans instead of using traditional Medicare; the Medicare they paid for their entire working lives. That money they paid into Medicare, according to conservative ideology, belongs to the rich in the form of tax cuts. The good news is that Ryan is no longer in charge of the Republicans’ budget process. But the bad news is the Koch brothers own both the House and Senate, and austerity-mad Republicans are emboldened to do more Heritage budget damage than even Ryan could imagine and targeting food stamps and Medicare is just the first in a long line of austerity cuts to make room for more defense spending and tax cuts for the rich.

The big plan the new Koch Senate is due to propose this week is cutting food stamps substantially and giving the reduced amounts directly to states in the form of “block grants.” Republicans say it makes more sense to let states parse out the reduced amounts in food stamps to the working poor, children, Veterans, the disabled, and elderly because state organizations are “there on the ground” and know what the people really need. What Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham say the states do not need, particularly Republican-controlled states, is federal bureaucracy telling them how to spend federal money. As is always the case, Republicans claim the federal government has no place telling states how to issue food assistance any more than they have any business regulating toxins poured into the air and water.

Republicans have been pushing ‘block grants’ since 2009 as part of  their storied, and failed, austerity measures that not only drastically cut the amount allotted for food assistance, it allows Republican-controlled states to use and abuse the federal funds without any federal oversight whatsoever. The block grants are also “set in stone” amounts that make no provision now, or in the future, for adjustments for inflation or another GOP recession borne of financial deregulation, unfunded tax cuts for the rich, or the next Middle East regime change war put on the nation’s credit card. All the things the Koch Congress intends to enact are precisely what Bush Republicans did to increase the number of Americans in need of nutrition assistance in the first place. However, since the Obama economy has grown and millions more Americans have found jobs, the number of food stamp recipients has been on nearly a yearlong decline; but that is not the reason Republicans are proposing major cuts to SNAP. Thy just hate the idea of spending one red cent to help  poor children, Veterans, low-wage workers, disabled people, or senior citizens have access to adequate food when that money could go to enrich the elite one-percent and the military industrial complex.

There are some statistics that Republicans are certainly aware of, but just could not care less because they and their funding machine the Koch brothers take great delight in depriving poor children, low-wage workers, Veterans, many active-duty military families, disabled Americans, and the elderly of adequate nutrition when the money can go to those least in need; the wealthiest Americans and military industrial complex. For one thing, the people who use food stamps today bear absolutely no responsibility for crashing the economy in 2008. In fact, a great number of Americans of all ages and demographics still have not recovered from that GOP-created catastrophe that cost them their jobs, homes, or middle class incomes that keep them struggling just to make ends meet.

Republicans are wont to claim food stamps are some kind of luxury giveaway for the lazy, and yet the average income of recipients, including families is only $788 per month; an amount far below the federal poverty line. There is also a myth that food stamps go primarily to people of color, and yet white people make up over 43% of recipients to 25% of African Americans. There is also a Fox News conservative myth that food stamp fraud is rampant and yet the most recent report from the Agriculture Department is that SNAP recorded historically-low levels of fraud and error. One reason to prevent any kind of block grants, much less drastic cuts to SNAP is a recent tactic in Republican states to force recipients to show personal photo ID when they use government-issued SNAP debit cards even though the benefits are issued and distributed to households, not individuals; anything to keep poor Americans hungry.

The number of applications for food stamps has recently fallen drastically due to economic growth and an increase in jobs, and the reason many recipients still qualify is their wages are too low. In an action that makes little sense, Republicans in some states are beginning to demand that recipients “work to receive welfare food” even if they are children, disabled, active duty military families, or senior citizens barely surviving on meager Social Security retirement benefits. A great deal of recipients already work, but Republicans will use any means, and fabricate any excuse, to deny the neediest Americans adequate nourishment. It informs Republicans’ loathing of Americans in need and not about budget savings or debt reduction; particularly when they can spend on the rich.

There is also an economic upside to preventing food stamp cuts that even some, although very few, Republicans are prone to admit. For every dollar spent on providing nutrition assistance from SNAP, $1.70 is returned to local economies that benefit local businesses, state revenue, and most importantly creating and sustaining jobs. However, Republicans have not only shown no predilection to support any measure to grow the economy and create jobs, they have used austerity measures to kill jobs as a matter of course and say “so be it.”

Coupled with their devotion to failed austerity, cutting economically beneficial and job creating food stamps is just par for the course and part of their continued assault on poor and hungry Americans; including children (47%), one million Veterans, disabled people, 25% of active-duty military personnel, and elderly Americans (20%). Republican austerity measures were bad enough when they did not have control of Congress, and based on their proposals due out this week, the Koch-controlled congressional Republicans are going to show Americans a level of damage the nation has not seen since before the New Deal. Americans will finally see precisely what the Koch brothers’ vision for America looks like in real terms, and it begins by denying hungry Americans access to adequate food by using block grants and SNAP cuts; anything to fund more tax cuts for the rich and increased spending for war. It is, after all, exactly what Americans voted, or failed to vote, for just five months ago.

Texas Repulican: Texas anti-gay sodomy law needed for ‘public health’ and to stop ‘bestiality’

Texas Republican state Rep. James White has said that the state’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex sodomy should not be repealed for “public health” reasons

GOP moron Texas anti-gay sodomy law needed for 'public health' and to stop 'bestiality'

Liz Cheney Is Terrified Peace Will Break Out If Bibi Loses

From the "Idiots say stupid things" Department:

The daughter of the Dark Lord accuses Democrats of meddling in Bibi's election, while ignoring the EXACT SAME Republican interference.

Terrified of Peace

Fox News hack Andrea Tantaros: Snow days are a liberal plot to strip schools of religious holidays

From the "What did that idiot just say?!" Department:

"Don’t let any good crisis go to waste, and if you want to take religion out of the public square, look at Boston and look at all the snow."

Fox News hack is an idiot

The Daily Drift

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

 

The Truth Be Told is read in 201 countries around the world.

 
OK, so that's not all that awkward - it's normal for wingnuts ... !

Today is - Awkward Moments Day
 

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Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill To Strengthen And Expand Social Security

Boxes and boxes of petitions, signed by more than two million US citizens, were hauled into the nation’s capital on March 12. The petitions were in support of the Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

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Democratic Congressman Plans To Introduce Bill That Will End ‘Policing For Profit’

“The time has come to end the practice of using law enforcement as a cash register, a practice that has impacted too many Americans and has disproportionately affected minority and low-income communities.”

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Republican Hate List

Republican Tom Cotton Warns America: Iran Now Controls Tehran … the Capital Of Iran

Tom Cotton has been a United States Senator for just two months and he already went from conservative shooting star with sights set on the White House...

Another Geographically Impaired Republican

*** 

It goes without saying they are politically impaired, bu they prove time and time again they are just simply impaired, period.

The Horrible Truth About Today’s Republicans In One Perfect Hashtag: #GOPWantsWar

After 40 long years, the truth about the GOP is finally out of the bag, thanks to the 47 traitors and Twitter’s trending #GOPWantsWar hashtag.

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Wall Street Bonuses Were How Much?!

Times are really hard, right?
People across America are struggling.
Struggling to pay the bills, put food on the table, clothe themselves and their children, pay for an…

Bonuses

How do you hide money from a Republican?

Obama Jokes About Republicans’ ‘Poorly-Written Letter To Iran’ – Hateful Wingnuts Go Nuts

Wingnuts unleashed a torrent of racism after the President told a few jokes.

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President Obama Guts Republican Scandal With One Hillary Clinton Email Joke

President Obama made a joke at the Gridiron Dinner that gutted the Republican dreams of a Hillary Clinton email scandal.

The Gridiron dinner is closed to the press. There are no TV cameras allowed, and only a few pool reporters are allowed inside to cover a portion of the dinner, but a joke that President Obama made spoke volumes about the Clinton email “scandal.”

The president joked that he was once the young tech savvy candidate, but, “Hillary has a server in her house! I didn’t even know you could have one of those. I am so far behind.”

If the Clinton email scandal were thought to be a serious matter, President Obama would not have been joking about it. The Republicans are going to be working overtime in an attempt to turn Hillary Clinton’s emails into something that they can use in 2016, but the reality is that the White House knows that the Republican hysteria is a waste of time. Most of the media, even if they refuse to admit it publicly, are aware that the Clinton emails are a space filler until they have a presidential campaign to write about.

No one, except for the Republican Party, is taking this story very seriously. Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush were not in attendance at the dinner, but on a night that was full of Washington insider jokes, the truth that the Hillary Clinton emails are a scandal about nothing managed to sneak into the closed door party.

President Obama gutted the latest Republican attempt to generate a Hillary Clinton scandal that will stick with voters as a joke, as it looks like Democrats will be getting the last laugh in 2016 if Republicans continue to chase the political equivalent of fool’s gold in 2016.

Secretary of State John Kerry Slams Republicans For Violating The Constitution With Iran Letter

Secretary of State John Kerry ripped Senate Republicans for spreading false information via their unconstitutional letter to Iran.

Video:

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On Face The Nation, Sec. Kerry said:

What I do know is that this letter was absolutely calculated to interfere directly with these negotiations. It specifically inserts itself directly to the leader of another country saying don’t negotiate with these guys because we’re going to change this. Which by the way, is not only contrary to the Constitution with respect to the Executive’s right to negotiate, but it is incorrect. Because they can not change an executive agreement. So it’s false information, and directly calculated to interfere, and basically saying don’t negotiate with them. You’ve got to negotiate with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress. That’s unprecedented. Unprecedented.

Kerry was asked if he was going to apologize for the letter. He answered, “Not on your life. I’m not going to apologize for an unconstitutional and unthought out action from somebody who has been in the Senate for sixty some days.”

Kerry was correct. Senate Republicans are ignoring the Constitution and making up their own rules as far as rewriting any agreement with Iran is concerned. Any agreement that is reached will have been reached with multiple governments. The Senate simply does not have the constitutional authority to approve and/or rewrite agreements.

The main Republican argument against Kerry is that he went to Nicaragua as a new U.S. Senator in the 1980s and met with the communist dictator Daniel Ortega. The problem with the Republican telling of the tale is that they are leaving out some key facts.

Original news accounts at the time state, “Within weeks of taking office in 1985, he was off to Nicaragua, accompanied by reporters on a 36-hour, self-appointed fact-finding mission with another freshman, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Congressional Democrats had accused the White House of exaggerating the communist threat posed by the Sandinista regime. So the two senators were publicly castigated when — just days after meeting with Daniel Ortega and other leaders of the regime — the Sandinistas climbed aboard a plane to Moscow to cement their Soviet ties.”

In 1985, John Kerry went to Nicaragua as an individual senator. He wasn’t speaking for the Senate. Kerry was on a fact-finding mission related to allegations about the Reagan administration’s behavior in Nicaragua. There is a difference between what Kerry did in the 1980s, and a group of Republican senators approaching a foreign government for the express purpose of undermining the President Of The United States.

Editorial boards across the country agree with Kerry that Republicans got the Constitution wrong in their letter to Iran.

Sec. Kerry will have to go back to the negotiating table and explain to the Iranians and our allies who are taking part in the negotiations that the Senate Republicans are idiots who don’t understand their own Constitution.

The Sec. of State made it clear that he will not tolerate Republican attacks of sabotage that are designed to destroy American foreign policy.

McConnell Acts Like A Criminal By Offering Lie Filled Alibi For Iran Letter On CNN

Mitch McConnell offered up a lie filled defense of the act of sabotage that he committed against President Obama, but no amount of lies can quell the growing rage of millions of Americans.
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McConnell said:

I think this is a good case of selective outrage. I remember reading about Sen. Robert Byrd when he was the Senate Majority Leader flying to Moscow during the negotiations over the Salt II treaty explaining to the Russians the Senate’s role in treaty ratification, and John Kerry when he was a senator flew to Managua there and met with a communist dictator, Daniel Ortega, and accused the Reagan administration of engaging in terrorism. So look, members of Congress expressing themselves about important matters, not only at home, but around the world is not unprecedented. So the main point here that I think everybody needs to understand is the president is about to make a very bad deal. He clearly doesn’t want Congress involved in it at all, and we’re worried about it. We don’t think he ought to make a bad deal with one of the worst regimes in the world.”

Later, the Senate Majority Leader defended signing the letter, “I signed the letter. I don’t think it was a mistake. It was no more unusual than Robert Byrd going to Moscow or John Kerry going to Managua. I thought it was entirely appropriate. It explained that the process is going to include Congress at some point.”

Media reports from the 1980s don’t back up McConnell’s historical claims.

Here is how the Chicago Tribune described Byrd’s Moscow trip, ” Eight U.S. senators arrived in Moscow on Saturday to “lay any groundwork“ for improved superpower relations, relations that one of their Soviet greeters called “very bad.“ Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.), the Senate Democratic leader, said the delegation he heads is here “to promote the cause of peace and contribute to a better understanding“ between Moscow and Washington….But he said the Senate wants to work with President Reagan “and we want to try to be helpful in reaching arms-control agreements that will. . . promote peace between these two great countries.“ He said he will deliver a letter from Reagan to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Tuesday. The senators, he said, want to help the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting, set for November in Geneva, “in every way we can.`”

The congressional delegation that went to Moscow was bipartisan. Senate Republicans also went on the trip. The trip to Moscow wasn’t designed to sabotage a president. The Senators delivered a letter from President Reagan to Soviet leaders.

The Senators were trying to help the White House, not sabotage a president.

On the Kerry example, the Boston Globe reported, Within weeks of taking office in 1985, he was off to Nicaragua, accompanied by reporters on a 36-hour, self-appointed fact-finding mission with another freshman, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Congressional Democrats had accused the White House of exaggerating the communist threat posed by the Sandinista regime. So the two senators were publicly castigated when — just days after meeting with Daniel Ortega and other leaders of the regime — the Sandinistas climbed aboard a plane to Moscow to cement their Soviet ties.”

The Kerry trip was more controversial, but it different from what the 47 Republicans did because Kerry was engaged in a self-appointed fact-finding mission. He wasn’t speaking for the Senate or threatening to undermine the president.

What is different about the Iran letter is that it was a blatant attempt to undermine the foreign policy of the United States government. The letter states that any agreement that does not have Senate approval will only be considered an executive agreement, and, “the next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Mitch McConnell is obviously proud of his act of sabotage, but his historical claims of precedence, don’t match the objective media accounts of the time.

Boehner Set To Waste Of Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars Investigating Clinton Emails

John Boehner will announce this week that he is going to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on a House investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

ABC’s Jon (Benghazi Emails) Karl reported, “Top House Republicans tell ABC News they expect Speaker John Boehner to announce a new House investigation next week into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices as Secretary of State, including her admitted destruction of some 30,000 e-mails that she determined to be purely personal.”

Here is what House Republicans never tell the taxpayers. These investigations aren’t cheap. From January 2013-January 2014, the House spent $5,657,142. The House budgeted the cost of the Benghazi Select Committee at $3.3 million in 2014. House Republicans were proud of themselves for only spending $1.5 million by December 2014 on a committee that didn’t do much of anything publicly during the year.

The IRS estimated that they had to spend $14 million to cover costs associated with document requests from House Republicans. House Republicans have wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars investigating the IRS, Obamacare, and Benghazi.

Republicans won’t tell the taxpayers exactly how much they are spending on each of these investigations, but if the Benghazi and IRS investigations are a measuring stick, the Clinton email investigation will cost millions of dollars.

House Republicans are set to throw this money down the drain in a completely partisan attempt to get some dirt that they can use on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. Speaker Boehner is also looking for anything that will serve as a distraction from his record of failure. The Republicans are off to chase another conspiracy theory.

When the estimated costs of the Benghazi, Clinton, and the lawsuit against President Obama are put together, it is clear that Republicans are wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan witch hunts.

Speaker Boehner refuses to tell the American people how much of their money that he plans to waste, so it is up to voters to demand to know what Boehner is doing with their money.

It isn’t enough for John Boehner to be wasting time; now he is wasting your hard earned money.

McConnell Says He'll Delay Loretta Lynch Confirmation Until Senate Votes On Bill With Anti-Abortion Language

by Sam Levine

Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that the Senate would delay the confirmation of Loretta Lynch to succeed Attorney General Eric Holder until it resolved a bill that Democrats object to because it contains anti-abortion language.
Before the Senate considers Lynch's nomination, McConnell wants the Senate to pass the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. The bill, which would establish a fund for victims of human trafficking, had bipartisan support until Democrats learned it contained language that restricted federal funds for abortion. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said the bill will not pass as long as it contains the language.
"I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can't finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again," McConnell said, referring to Lynch, on CNN's "State of the Union."
McConnell had previously said Lynch's nomination would come to the floor this week.
McConnell claims Democrats supported the trafficking legislation when they voted to pass it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Democrats say they did not know the bill contained anti-abortion language. McConnell is refusing to pull the language.
"A majority of the Senate does not want to take the language out, and all of the Democrats voted for the very same language three months ago," McConnell said. "Now if they want to have time to turn to the attorney general next week, we need to finish up this human trafficking bill. It's extremely important to the country."
Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson said on Twitter that there was no reason the Senate couldn't consider the trafficking bill and Lynch's nomination at the same time.
Lynch appears to have enough support to earn confirmation in the Senate, and Democrats have been pushing Republicans to bring up her nomination.

Scott Walker's Wisconsin Falls To 49th In Economic Outlook

Scott Walker (R-WI) is a conservative hero with a record of taking progressives and unions in a state that went for Obama and beating them twice. He's cut government, taken away worker protections, supported government-mandated ultrasounds and empowered the private sector, making him the Republican insiders' favorite for the 2016 GOP nomination.His only problem is, his economic policies continue to fail - miserably.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has ranked the Badger State 49th in its 50-state Leading Index report for April. With an index rank of -0.74 percent, Wisconsin was one of only five states to show contraction.
Experts do not read much into one month's data. This index - which factors in average manufacturing hours, unemployment, wage trends and building permits - often shows a wide margin of error. The state has been especially rocked by the national decline in manufacturing.
However, Walker doesn't really have any positive economic data to point to. Since he took office, his state has fallen from 11th to 44th in job creation. Wisconsin's wages are also declining at twice the national level..
Walker's new budget - which reads more like a campaign document than a plan to create jobs - offers a tax cut that mostly benefits the rich and sucks public funds into private ventures, in the form of school vouchers.
The governor is also rejecting Medicaid expansion and using the Affordable Care Act exchanges to kick 87,000 Wisconsinites off his state's Badgercare program.
Meanwhile, his promise of creating 250,000 jobs looks less and less likely to happen.
Austerity seems to work about as well in America as it does in Greece. Maybe losing the recall was the best thing that could have happened for Wisconsin's progressive movement. Walker's job creation record is speaking volumes about attacking the institutions that helped create America's middle class.

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