Voter Suppression

Voter registration deadlines suppressed up to 4 million votes in 2012

New analysis shows that voter registration would increase turnout by millions.

Israeli Spying

Secret NSA documents reveal scope of Israeli spying on US

Religio-wingnts are all the same ...

Rand Paul is an Idiot

Rand Paul calls for 'tent revivals' to resolve the 'moral crisis' of gay marriage

Michigan Republican Says Schools Should be a Cult Ministries

When Pink Floyd sang that "we don't need no education," I don't think cult ministries are what they had in mind.…

Indiana has gotten a lot of attention lately for their religious tyranny law, but let’s not forget that teabagger gulag-in-the-making, Michigan. Republican anti-education efforts don’t get much worse than the teabaggers’s own Michigan State Rep. Gary Glenn’s (R-Larkin Township) House Bill 4394.

As Michigan-based Eclectablog explains,

If Glenn’s bill – House Bill 4394 – becomes law, schools can hire anyone they want. The criteria currently used would be tossed out the window. The bill literally strikes out all of the criteria. In addition, it removes the words grades “9 through 12″ meaning that schools could hire anyone they wish, with or without a teaching certificate, for any grade level. No training as an educator required.

Can you imagine being a parent in a state where suddenly your children’s competent, trained teachers are fired and replaced with any Tom, Dick, or Harry, whose sole qualification is that he or she is willing to work for a fraction of what a teacher would be paid?

Can you imagine the effect on the state’s educational standards? Can you imagine the effect on your children when they go to school and are told that the earth is flat and only 6000 years old?

As the father of a fourth-grader, I can imagine the effect on my blood pressure.

Bad as this seems, it could get worse, believe it or not. And as these things go, it does: Glenn’s fellow Representative, Todd Courser, an attorney in real life, who represents the 82nd District, posted his own brilliant idea on Facebook. Courser later deleted the post, but Electablog was able to capture it (below):

As you can see, Courser opposes “Soviet-style” central planning, and like most Republicans, he seems to think Common Core standards are federally imposed standards (they are not). Courser is an attorney, mind you. He should know better. But then a lot of Republicans, Ted Cruz included, should know better.

So instead of the public schools our Founding Fathers envisioned, education should return to being a cult ministries. Excuse me, but I think that’s what the Founding Fathers wanted to move away from.

When Pink Floyd sang that “we don’t need no education,” I don’t think cult ministries are what they had in mind.

Look, I know Ted Cruz has said, “This country remains a country, I believe, grounded in values, grounded in faith, but far too many Christians have ceded the public arena to people who aren’t believers,” but come on.

And while we’re talking about the lunatics representative the Republican Party in state after state, I can’t leave out Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake. It know it’s a whole other state, but trust me, it’s relevant: Allen actually told the state’s appropriations committee on Tuesday that corrupt souls are at the root of our nation’s problems (as opposed to whack-a-doodle’s like her) and that therefore,

We are slowly eroding religion at every opportunity that we have. We should probably be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday to see if we can get back to having a moral rebirth.

Yes, because that jibes so well with the First Amendment!

In case you don’t believe it, here’s the video:

Video Link

I guess while we’re forced to sit in cult it would be a good time to be forced (at gunpoint) to listen to David Barton. Then Mike Huckabee could get his wish too. I guess this would be a sort of jobs bill, because then the GOP could give all those open-carry wackos jobs pointing guns at us, because that’s the only thing that could get many of us into a cult.

On Wednesday, Allen told the Arizona Capitol Times that while it was a “flippant” comment, she would not apologize for the comment. What the Times carefully did not mention is that, as Right Wing Watch reveals,

Allen is the very same lawmaker who defended uranium mining in her state by insisting that the earth is a mere 6,000-years-old…She also proposed that the state enable the creation of a volunteer border militia and pushed for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, warning that gay marriage would harm children and destroy Social Security.

Yes, gay people – not the Republican Party – are going to destroy social security.

That seems bad enough, but she also “Allen even offered a bill to protect her son-in-law who was under investigation for harassing female inmates while working in a country prison.” The young Republican was apparently forcing female inmates to give him oral sex.

I’m sorry, but as a metaphor of the Republican War on Women, I can’t think of a more apt metaphor.

If only the mainstream media would tell people the truth about their elected representatives. You have to wonder how many of them would get elected again, if they only knew.

It is interesting how Republicans think if only we “put the bible back in school” and force people to go to cult, our “free” society can be saved. But what’s free about coercion?

Of course, our young people won’t know what “coercion” means if Michigan’s Courser and Glenn get their way. After all, it doesn’t matter who teaches the scriptures. Anyone can do that, and the bible’s the only textbook kids really need.

It’s much easier for the elites to lead them around by the nose that way. And really, it does put them a step above Europe’s serfs in that those poor unfortunates had to have the bible read to them.

See how progressive the Republican Party is! If you want to know just how progressive, check out with Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser have been up to in Michigan with their “contract for liberty,” which would dismantle the Constitution just the way the Founding Fathers intended, and their “life at conception” legislation to do away with that pesky freedom women have to control their own reproductive functions, and finally, their plans to turn Michigan into a theocracy, yay!

Fortunately, Eclectablog explains that they “have heard from multiple sources that the Republicans in the state legislature are doing everything in their power to make sure these two, along with [Cindy] Gamrat, are not seen as representing the Republicans as a whole and that they are neutralized and unable to have an impact that would harm their brand.”

Let’s hope this is true..

Wingnuts Refuse To Believe Germanwings Pilot Wasn’t Muslim Terrorist With Laughable Results

Wingnuts are struggling to prove Germanwings pilot suspected of intentionally flying plane into ground was “secret” muslim and the results are really, really sad.

Read more 

Back from the dead ...

Fox News Outraged That A Lawmaker Compares Police Brutality To ISIL

From the "Someone spoke the truth and Fox went ape-shit. OK, so now tell us something we didn't already know" Department:

On Fox News, it's okay to compare unionized teachers to ISIL, but don't label racist police a bigger threat to safety than the terror group half a world away.

Fox News Lies

Mega Dump

secrets of the conservative war on truth

you get paid less because corporate shareholders make more

the states are quietly beginning to expand abortion rights

Dallas-Fort Worth is on track to get full net metering for solar power

taking the train is better for your health than deiving to work

consent and sympathy 

Iraqi forces = more war crimes
why unions are the seeds of democracy

the media is stupid

6 myths about welfare recipients debunked
the entrepreneur profiting off the anti-vaxxer movement

Donald Trump steals famous Ronald Reagan line; has apparently never heard of google

Koch brothers proxy openly calls for less democracy

politics is now about worship of money
4 million demand Obama protect bees from toxic pesticides
the water California that is now pumping is prehistoric

10 disappearing middle class jobs

American exceptionalism and white history
from prison to your dinner table
how to die of dumb

white christians are no longer the majority in 19 states

trickle down economics: the rich get all the money
counties with kkk activity in the 60's consistantly vote republican thereafter
farming insurance fraud runs rampant in this country
drone pilots quitting the program
a different justice system for the rich and powerful
it wasn't the prison boom that led to the drop in crime 

refrigerator caught sending spam

10 things you can do now to help the oceans

how new york activists banned fracking
racism is not backed by science
papa john's franchisee ordered to pay workers over $2 million for wage theft

how  the nra hacked the second amendment

whites have 12 times the wealth as blacks
when religious liberty justified racism instead of homophobia
right-to-work's racist roots

NYT Sunday magazine:  for the 1%

study: rich get richer with fewer labor unions
why not worker ownership?
study: men are more narcissistic than women

we waste enough food to feed the world's hungry

why libertarianism is a childish sham
blue states have more people in colleges; red states have more people in prison
dear gun owners: we still live in a democracy

austerity kills: economic distress blamed for ise in middle-aged suicides

you can actually only see about 30 shades of gray
police find marijuana in container labeled 'not weed'
monopoly's inventor: the progressive who didn't pass 'go'

is the junk food era drawing to a close?

leading medical groups call for measures to reduce gun deaths
air marshals' flights rearranged for sexual trysts
less than 6% of domestic terrorism is perpetrated by muslims
china overtook the u.s. as the world's largest economy
the republicans that did exactly what Hillary did
the rocky mountains are the safest spot to hide from a zombie outbreak

office workers will soon have less space than supermax prisoners

the u.s. is 45th in electoral integrity
why companies reward investors instead of investing in the real economy
study finds strong genetic component to obesity
nypd officers call retraining program a waste of time

the conservative attempt to rewrite u.s. history
most pediatricians will turn away patients who refuse ro vaccinate their children
the alaskan village that needs to be relocated due to climate change

gun deaths are expected to surpass automobile deaths this year

marijuana may be safer than previously thought
poll finds huge support for tax on the rich
the researcher who found undiscovered fairy tales even darker than the Grimms
a map of which disease will probably kill you depending on where you live
a secret stash of moon artifacts found in Neil Armstrong's closet
college students prefer dead tree books

this could be relevant to the upcoming California governor's race: the 2004 San Francisco mayoral candidates were asked the questions from the Voight-Kampff test

why don't we tax the 1% as much as we tax the poor?

everything you know about addiction is wrong

Ferguson's government was run like a racket
death of unions = decline of marriage

white people aren't considered terrorists unless they liberate animals

the town where everyone got free money
basic personality changes linked to unemployment
you heard about Pluto?  that's messed up, right?

each American produced $140,000 in goods, but median wage is $28,000

and half a million people with college degrees are making minimum wage
female lawmakers are more productive than their male counterparts

America's poorest 11 cities

Ringling brothers is ending its use of elephants in the circus
life after a minimum wage increase
our nation's love of guns is killing our children

Goldman Sachs doesn't care what you think

conservatives sent $50 million to scam pacs
Ferguson is not the only city to get a bad report
climate change progress is possible

autism rates aren't actually increasing

woman arrested for beating someone to make them convert to jesus
the crime rate is going down, but the number of people in jail is going up
hospitals fail to protect nursing staff from becoming patients

study: low IQ correlates with bigotry
study: mass incarceration is costly and doesn't work
feel trapped in your job?  that's because you are
Canadians told to stop Spocking the 5 dollar bill

mega-droughts could last 30 years

Iceland convicts bad bankers
studies suggests raising children without religion may be good for them

japan has more car chargers than gas stations

is Alaska losing its snow?
bBack and Latino scientists are routinely mistaken for janitors

women received $1.5 million after brain injury makes her become a dominatrix

the u.s. faces greater threat from lone wolf terrorists than jihadists

lower the drinking age to 19 

Brianna Uu is risking her life standing up to gamergate
science deniers are not skeptics

most common type of American terrorist is a white man with a grudge and a gun
u.s. faces worst drought in 1,000 years
s.c. senator says women are a lesser cut of meat
when in Tokyo, be sure to stop by the owl cafe
stock buybacks are killing the American economy

vaccines: facts vs. myth

girls score better on math tests if teachers don't know they're girls

research shows dinosaurs be trippin'!

The Daily Drift

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

 

The Truth Be Told is read in 203 countries around the world.

 
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Today is - Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
 

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Quezon City, Philippines

Meet The 6 Year Old Who Is Smarter Than Jim Inhofe

From the "Heroes" Department:

Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, doesn’t believe climate change is real. He thinks that a snowball in Washington D.C. in winter disproves…

Smarter Than Jim Inhofe

***

Not to take anything away from this brilliant kid, but a hunk of granite is smarter that Jim Inhofe

Lewis Black: Not Even LSD Prepared Me For Ted Cruz

"This is someone who should never have made it to color television."

Not Even LSD Prepared Me For Ted Cruz

US House Is Functional For A Day, Passes Bipartisan Bill, Extends CHIP Funding

In a rare moment of bipartisan cooperation, the US House overwhelmingly passed a Medicare payment overhaul bill on Thursday. The bill also included a two-year extension to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), authorizing 5.6 billion dollars in funding for the program.

The measure overhauls the way doctors are reimbursed for their Medicare patients, eliminating the annual “doc fix” formula used to reimburse physicians. The “doc fix’ formula involves Congress calculating the sustainable growth rate and reimbursing doctors accordingly.

The “doc fix” has been in use since 1997, but it has been criticized by members of both parties as being a flawed way of paying doctors. Without Congressional action, doctors could face a 21 percent pay cut, for treating Medicare patients after March 31st.

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 sailed through the House on a 392-37 vote, with Republican Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, working in rare cooperation to pass the bill through the House. 212 Republicans and 180 Democrats supported the bill, with 33 Republicans and 4 Democrats voting against the bill for various reasons.

Most of the Republican opponents of the bill objected to the 214 billion price tag over ten years. Some of the costs of the measure will be offset by raising premiums and prescription drug costs, for high-income Medicare recipients.

Some liberal groups also found fault with provisions of the bill. While the bill approves more funding for community health centers, that funding cannot be used to provide abortion services. In addition, the Republicans agreed to extend funding for CHIP for two years, instead of the four years Democrats had hoped for.

Nevertheless, nearly every Democrat in the House, including progressive leaders like Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, John Lewis, Mark Takano and Jackie Speier, voted for the bill. With the Republican-controlled U.S. House usually being so dysfunctional that nothing positive can be accomplished, liberals and moderates seized upon the GOP’s willingness to compromise, by steering the significant piece of legislation through the chamber, against only muted opposition.

President Obama has already voiced his support for the bill, and he is likely to sign it into law should it pass the U.S. Senate and reach his desk. While the bill, like any compromise piece of legislation, is far from perfect, it does address a long overdue reform that was needed in calculating Medicare reimbursements, and it does provide needed funding for community health centers and children’s health. More importantly for the legislative process, it also demonstrated that at least for one surreal day, Washington wasn’t broken. The U.S. House was actually able to govern. For one day, anyway.

President Obama Vows To Veto Any Republican Bill That Unravels Wall Street Reform

President Obama issued his most direct threat to veto the Republican budget while speaking in Birmingham, AL. The President warned Congressional Republicans that he would veto any bill that unravels Wall Street reform.

The President discussed how the CFPB is cracking down on payday lenders, and then dropped his veto threat on Republicans.

The President said:

This is just one more way that Wall Street reform, what we passed five years ago, is protecting working families and taxpayers, and that strengthens the economy, and that’s one more why it makes no sense that the Republican budget would make it harder for the CFPB to do its job. And would allow Wall Street to go back to the kind of recklessness that led to the crisis in the first place, and would allow these kinds of lenders who are not doing the right thing to keep at it.

I have to be clear. If Republicans in Congress send me a bill that unravels the reforms we put in place, if they send me a bill that unravels Wall Street reform, I will veto it.

This is not about politics. It’s is about basic values of honesty and fair play. It’s about the basic bargain that says here in America hard work should pay off and responsibility should be rewarded.

Republicans are trying to gut the CFPB and Wall Street reform through their budget. Congressional Republicans are trying to strip the CFPB of its regulatory power, and hand that oversight over to the Republicans in Congress. This was the most direct statement yet that the President is considering vetoing the Republican budget.

There are numerous reasons why President Obama could, and some would argue, should veto the budget. However, Obama went a step beyond the budget. He said that if Republicans send him a bill, which could mean any bill, which unravels Wall Street reform, he will veto it. Senate Democrats will have the President’s back by sustaining any Obama veto of a bill, budget or otherwise, that targets Wall Street reform.

The last card that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner had left to play was the budget. If Congressional Republicans can’t get their agenda enacted through the budgetary process, they will be left with a choice of moving to the middle or passing nothing.

President Obama made it clear in Birmingham that Congressional Republicans aren’t going to get their way.

Long Dead Economist’s Theories Proven Right

In 1944, Karl Polanyi published what became his most notable work, The Great Transformation. Now, 50 years after his death, his work is being re-analyzed...

The New Utopians

Oh Look, Turns Out A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepreneurs

Why is this a shock to anyone?

Entrepreneurs

Republican moron seeks to save us from coins

From the "Really Screwy Priorities" Department:

Republican moron seeks to protect America from fancy, European-style dollar coins

Obama White House Shreds The Republican Senate Budget That McConnell Passed

The White House is sending the message to McConnell (R-KY) that the Republican budget he just passed will be rejected by President Obama unless serious changes are made.

In a statement, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said:

Following in the footsteps of their House colleagues, Senate Republicans today voted in favor of a budget that relies on top-down economics and gimmicks. The Senate Republican budget refuses to ask the wealthy to contribute a single dollar to deficit reduction, putting the entire burden on the middle-class, seniors, low-income children and families, and national security. Senate Republicans voted in favor of locking in draconian sequestration cuts to investments in the middle class like education, job training and manufacturing and also failed to responsibly fund our national security, opting instead for budget gimmicks, an approach that now faces procedural hurdles put in place by their own party.

Meanwhile, the President has a plan to bring middle class economics into the 21st Century. The President’s Budget builds on the progress we’ve made and shows what we can do if we invest in America’s future, and end sequestration, by cutting inefficient spending and reforming our broken tax code to make sure everyone pays their fair share. It lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class with investments in research, education, training, and infrastructure, while also fulfilling our most basic responsibility to keep Americans safe.

In 2013 Republicans came to the negotiating table and ultimately chose the responsible path by supporting the Murray-Ryan agreement, which reversed harmful sequestration cuts to both defense and non-defense equally, dollar for dollar. Last night, Senators from both parties came together to call for building on that approach this year and to support paying for sequester relief with both spending and tax reforms. The President has been clear that he will not accept a budget that locks in sequestration or one that increases funding for our national security without providing matching increases in funding for our economic security. The Administration will continue to abide by these principles moving forward.

The tone of the White House statement makes it clear that if Republicans stick to their guns and give the President a budget like the ones that passed the House and Senate, Obama will veto it. By making reference to 2013 and the Ryan-Murray agreement, the White House is suggesting that McConnell and Boehner are not going to be allowed to ram their agenda down the throats of the American people via the budget process.

The Republican budgets rely on the gimmick of keeping the savings generated by the Affordable Care Act while promising to repeal “Obamacare.” The House and Senate budgets are nothing more than Republican wishlists and dream journals that should never become law.

President Obama is isn’t going to sign the Republican budget unless some serious changes are made. Without changes, the prospect of a presidential veto is growing by the day.

The Republican 'Budget' is a Dead On Arrival Joke

Senate passes Republican budget with deep safety net cuts

The Republican Budget: Every Tax Loophole Is Sacred

The wealthier you are and the more you care about yourself over your neighbor or your country, the more you'll like this Republican budget. It achieves balance entirely on the backs of middle-class families and our most vulnerable citizens, without asking billionaires or big corporations to pay -- forget a fair share -- one penny more toward our nation's prosperity.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Democratic Senator from Rhode Island

More

As Religious Tyranny Arrives, Religious Freedom Lovers Flee Indiana

Indiana is the latest state to proclaim religious tyranny, and the reaction (no NCAA?) is anything but what Hoosier bigots expected…

Hobby Lobby-style religious discrimination has come to the Hoosier State, and Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, has let the cat out of the bag about the purpose of Indiana’s religious tyranny bill, posting on Facebook on March 25 that,

Indiana’s got the right idea! The Indiana House voted this week to approve a religious freedom bill that would protect business owners who want to decline to provide services for same-sex marriages. After the 63 to 31 House vote in approval of the legislation, The Washington Post says Governor Mike Pence plans to sign it as soon as it lands on his desk. Thanks to those in government who are standing up for the freedom and protection of Christians to live out their faith. I hope more states will be quick to follow suit.

Indiana has landed itself in a boatload of trouble with their new bill, the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, which doesn’t restore religious freedom, but does create religious tyranny.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence says this is all a big “misunderstanding.” Less eloquently and far less convincingly than George Washington defending the Constitution in his letter to the united baptist cults in Virginia, Pence says “This bill is not about discrimination, and if I thought it legalized discrimination I would have vetoed it.”

But Pence knows it is religious discrimination. And that is why he signed it. Listen to Pence try to sell the idea that freedom is tyranny and tyranny is freedom:

This bill was supposed to be a big deal for Indiana bigots. The idea that icky people they don’t like are equal to them is something they can’t tolerate, and now they won’t have to. Red State, the political rag that represents moochers and economic parasites, actually said yesterday,

It is really a freakin shame when the nation has deteriorated to the point where it is a) necessary to pass a law guaranteeing free exercise of religion and b) where it is controversial to do so.

That would be true if, a) the RFRA guaranteed the free exercise of religion and, b) it was necessary to do so. That’s already covered by the United States Constitution.

Such was the immediate outrage sparked by this new law from far and wide, including the National College Athletic Association (NCAA), the yearly gaming convention GenCon, the mainline Protestant denomination, the Disciples of christ, and technology giant Salesforce, that Indiana has set businesses and organizations looking for places where actual religious freedom reigns (and those probably won’t be red states, Red State).

NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a statement,

The NCAA national office and our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees.

“We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill.

Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.

This is huge in a state so closely associated with college basketball as Indiana.

Adrian Swartout, owner and CEO of Gen Con LLC, sent a letter to Pence in the wake of the bill being sent to the governor for signing, writing that,

Legislation that could allow for refusal of service or discrimination against our attendees will have a direct negative impact on the state’s economy, and will factor into our decision-making on hosting the convention in the state of Indiana in future years.

According to Swartout, that’s an economic impact of $50 million a year (added to the $5.9 million impact of the Disciples of Christ) heading somewhere everybody gets treated like a human being. A place with actual religious freedom. In other words, one of the 30 states without laws like the RFRA.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff went on the Twitter warpath in response to the RFRA, tweeting:

Later, he tweeted, showing he’s serious:

And he continued to tweet:

While it’s doubtful the NFL will listen to Keith Olbermann of all people, he did score a solid extra point when he tweeted,

This medieval measure was supposed to be a moment of triumph for bigots throughout Indiana, for men and women who hate Jews, who hate Muslims and atheists and gays and lesbians and transgenders. Instead, Governor Mike Spence slunk away and signed it in private like the shameful act it was.

You see, an actual religious freedom bill has to protect all people. Indiana’s RFRA, by Graham’s own admission, only protects the rights of fake christians like him to persecute everybody they don’t like.

I can think of a very prominent episode when it was legal to refuse to serve Jews: Nazi Germany. Stay classy, Indiana.

The RFRA is religious tyranny, the act of one religion saying it’s better than all others and deciding it will get to make all the rules for everybody else, regardless of their own beliefs. That’s pretty much the history of christianity for the better part of the last 2000 years. People came to this country to get away from that.

We were bequeathed a secular Constitution to protect us from religious tyranny. The RFRA is the very thing the Founding Fathers were trying to prevent when they wrote Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, and later, the First Amendment.

Like Mike Pence and Republicans everywhere, Graham doesn’t get that. He doesn’t “get” America at all. On March 23 he posted something that says more about his skewed views than about the people he hates:

One of the greatest threats to America is the progressives (a new name for liberals) led by President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder who are trying to impose a new morality—which is really no morality at all—jamming it down the throats of the American people. America has been blessed by dog more than any nation on the face of this earth. When our country was birthed, its foundations and laws were based on biblical laws and principles. We used to be “one nation under dog,” now we’re a nation that has turned its back on God. History shows that when nations do this, their end is near.

Miley Cyrus may have said it best, when she said Mike Pence is an “asshole,” posting on Instagram:

You’re an asshole @govpenceIN -1 cc: the only place that has more idiots tha[n] Instagram is in politics.

And as a little correction to Franklin Graham, we were one nation under dog only since 1954. Before we became “one nation under dog,” we were just “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

For all. Not just fake christians who need an excuse to persecute minorities.

Graham, Pence, and their ilk, don’t understand their own bibles, the U.S. Constitution, or American history.

I have an idea: Maybe Republicans should be required to pass a citizenship test. I bet Franklin Graham and Mike Pence would fail. But I bet they could find gainful employment in a terrorist organization somewhere.

#BoycottIndiana: Big Names React To Passage Of Anti-LGBT ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill

#BoycottIndiana has been trending since Gov. Pence signed an anti-LGBT law on Thursday. Big companies, major celebrities, athletes and religious organizations are boycotting the state. See article for tweets!

Read full story  

Republican Solicits Obamacare “Horror Stories” But Gets Bombarded With Positive ACA Testimonials

Cathy McMorris Rodgers solicited Obamacare "horror stories" on Facebook, but instead got bombarded with positive ACA testimonials.…

Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) used her Facebook page to solicit Obamacare “horror stories”, but instead got bombarded with positive testimonials from people who have benefited from Obamacare. On Monday, the Republican posted:

This week marks the 5th anniversary of #Obamacare being signed into law. Whether it’s turned your tax filing into a nightmare, you’re facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer has reduced your work hours, I want to hear about it.

Please share your story with me so that I can better understand the challenges you’re facing
http://mcmorris.house.gov/your-story/

However, instead of getting the response she was hoping for, her Facebook page was barraged with positive Affordable Care Act (ACA) stories.

The testimonials were compelling. A sample of some of the responses appears below:

I am so grateful to have affordable insurance. I am self-employed and I have a preexisting condition, so I was priced out of the system in 2010, even though I’ve paid into the system all of my adult life. My age (51), my sex (female), and my heart murmur made me a high risk. My self-employed status prevented me from getting a group rate. The ACA allowed me to get the coverage I need, so if I need to see a doctor I can! Thank you so much for caring and thank you, all who worked hard to make this law happen! Thanks, Obama! You really do care!! –Catherine Yvonne–

I lost my job in 2010. I got health insurance for $600/mo, but I take two medications. My insurance company excluded my meds by giving me a sky high deductible. That meant that I was paying roughly $1000/mo+ for healthcare. That put healthcare at the top of my monthly expense list. Enter “Obamacare.” My healthcare costs through ACA dropped from $1000/mo to… Wait for it.. ZERO. I have no income. I am living off of savings. For the first time in my life I feel like all those taxes I paid are actually doing something for me. –Paul Daw–

5 years of not waking up in the middle of the might panicked that my child won’t ever be able to get health insurance thanks to a brain tumor at the age of 2. Thank God for Obamacare. Anyone who ever fought an insurance company for pediatric neurosurgery coverage knows there was NEVER a hassle-free system in place and Obamacare is light years better than what we had. –Melissa Kelly–

Thanks to the ACA, I could no longer be discriminated against as a person with Type 1 diabetes and as a small business owner in getting insurance. Prior to the act, no insurance company would even give me a quote on health insurance save for 1 policy that I had been grandfathered into due to a prior job. I was forced to take this policy, with no other options, and it was getting prohibitively expensive. The ACA opened doors for me and improved the quality my life tremendously. –Andrea Deutsch–

And to sum it all up, a simple comment by Facebook user Chuck Larsen:

Looks like you’re getting your answers, Cathy…just not the ones you wanted.

Now the question is will Cathy McMorris Rodgers actually listen to her constituents, and the American people, and end her ridiculous crusade against the Affordable Care Act? Will she wake up to the voices of the American people, or will she go back to hosting her by-invite only “Coffees with Cathy” events , where she can crawl back into her right-wing bubble and surround herself with only people who agree with her? The fact that her quest for horror stories ended so badly, should serve as a rude awakening for the Republican, but more likely than not she will continue to do what she does best, which is ignore the needs of her constituents, because their needs don’t conform to her rigid partisan ideology.

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