Walmart makes over $600 for every $1 they spend on drought-stricken California water

Walmart makes over $600 for every $1 they spend on drought-stricken California water — and it’s legal

Pit PAC

Pit Bulls Now Have Their Own Political Action Committee

And no, “pit bulls” is not a euphemism. This PAC is for dogs.

Read full story

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Who was the first woman to run for president?

Most American women didn’t win the right to vote until the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, but the first female candidate for president came nearly 50 years earlier. In 1872, Ohio native Victoria Woodhull made history when she ran as the Equal Rights Party candidate against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant. Her platform included such progressive reforms as an eight-hour workday, women’s suffrage and an end to the death penalty, and she rounded out the groundbreaking ticket by selecting abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate (though apparently without his permission). Woodhull was something of a pioneer even before she launched her bid to shatter the political glass ceiling. She’d spoken before Congress regarding equal voting rights, and had opened the first woman-owned brokerage firm on Wall Street. Woodhull failed to score any electoral votes on Election Day, and there’s no record of how she fared in the popular vote. Even if she had won, she would have been barred from taking up residence in the White House—though not because of her gender. The Constitution requires that presidents be at least 35 years old upon their inauguration. Woodhull would have been just 34.
In the years since Woodhull’s trailblazing campaign, dozens of other women have made bids for the presidency. Despite not being able to vote for herself, suffragette Belva Ann Lockwood garnered 4,149 votes in 1884. Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith later won 227,007 votes in the 1964 Republican primary, but fell short of the getting the nomination. Eight years later, Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm was the first woman—and the first African American—to seek the Democratic nomination. Lenora Fulani became the first woman to get on the ballot in all 50 states when she ran as a third party candidate in 1988, and Hillary Clinton later achieved the best ever showing by a woman in a primary in 2008. To date, the most successful female candidate in the general election is the Green Party’s Jill Stein, who netted over 450,000 votes in 2012.

Top 10 Ways Liberal Moms Make The World A Better Place

Liberal moms rock!
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Most Americans Are Now Socialist

Take That, Wingnuts!

by Tige Richardson

Vox reported recently on a new Gallup poll that says most Americans now prefer to spread wealth throughout our economy by mostly taxing the rich. What’s more intriguing is that the change in attitude has increased significantly in the past four or five years. Don’t believe me? Look at this graph:

See, told you. The study also found that many younger people favored taxing the rich by a much wider margin than older people. So not only does Grandpa not like you smoking pot, he also doesn’t like that you are a soft-hearted socialist.

Respondents ages 18 to 34 are supportive of redistributive taxation by a 59-38 margin, while those over 55 are much more skeptical — 47 percent say tax the rich, and 50 percent disagree. – Vox

The shift in attitude comes at a time when wealth and income inequality are central themes for both Republican and Democratic candidates. As many pundits dismiss Bernie Sanders as being too “radical” or “fringe” to win the nomination, much less the White House, this study suggests that Sen. Sanders is in fact on par with a majority of citizens when it comes to wealth distribution.
Check out the full Vox article here.

Reality Check

JFK Perfectly Understood The Separation Of Cult And State

This is a must see speech. It is, by far, the best explanation ever made.

Read more 

President Obama Is Getting Revenge On Fox News For Their Years Of Lies

After years of putting up with their attacks, President Obama is getting his revenge on Fox News by freezing them out of access and denying them exclusive interviews.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace went into full whine mode because the Obama White House refuses to send guests on to his show, “We wanted to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson about the terror threat while the White House put him on another Sunday show. They declined to make him available to Fox viewers. The White House has made a number of guests available to other networks this year while excluding us and you. We did get to interview Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and DHS Secretary Johnson once this year, but only when they appeared on all five networks.”

Fox News nuked their bridges with the Obama administration a long time ago. Before the President first took office, Fox News was pushing racism and birtherism. Fox’s behavior has only gotten worse over the years. Fox News has openly tried to get this removed from office with their constant conspiracy theories and propagandizing.

President Obama’s White House would be rewarding bad behavior and inaccurate reporting if they allowed administration officials to appear exclusively on Fox News. The Obama administration is paying back Fox News for their years of biased and inaccurate reporting.

Fox doesn’t get to have it both ways. They can’t be baselessly accusing the President of illegal behavior on a regular basis and expect to be rewarded with exclusive interviews.

The problem with Fox News isn’t that they are critical of President Obama. The problem with Fox News is that they are deeply partisan, and ignore facts and reality. Fox News doesn’t practice journalism. They practice partisan warfare disguised as journalism. For this reason, they should not be surprised that the White House has no interest in sending officials to appear on their network.

Fox News needs access to White House officials. The White House does not need Fox News for anything.

President Obama is getting his revenge by freezing out Fox News.

As Wingnuts Lose the Culture War, ‘Their Rhetoric…Is Absolutely Awash In Delusional Nostalgia’

by Tom Johnson

Edmund Burke wrote that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” To American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, “change” for conservatives means living to fight another day by conceding battle after battle to liberals.
“Much of the history of the United States,” wrote Waldman in a Friday post, “is a slow but inexorable movement in a progressive direction, as one issue after another is eventually settled in favor of the position liberals had been advocating, from slavery to women's suffrage to Jim Crow to the legalization of contraception to sex discrimination and up to gay rights today. You can find exceptions…but the fundamental trend in social relations moves in only one direction.”
Waldman stated that right-wing “rhetoric…is absolutely awash in nostalgia” but added that some conservatives seem to be making their peace with an America no longer ruled by older men of northern European ancestry. For example, the Marco Rubio presidential boomlet: “To some Republicans, [Rubio is] attractive not so much because he's what they would want in a president in their perfect world, but because they think he might be attractive to other people. It's an acknowledgement of and accommodation to the fact that America has indeed changed, and their party needs to change in response. And if the conservative Republican with the best chance of winning the White House is a 43-year-old Latino, well so be it.”
From Waldman’s post (bolding added):

If you take a broad view, much of the history of the United States is a slow but inexorable movement in a progressive direction, as one issue after another is eventually settled in favor of the position liberals had been advocating, from slavery to women's suffrage to Jim Crow to the legalization of contraception to sex discrimination and up to gay rights today. You can find exceptions, some of which are extremely consequential, but the fundamental trend in social relations moves in only one direction…
As long as society is changing—i.e., forever—conservatism will find its purpose in resisting that change, because that's what it means to be a conservative. Conservatism seeks to conserve, and in many cases return to a previous order. And like liberalism, it adapts. For instance, conservatives lost the argument on most of the things that made up the culture war of the 1960s and 1970s—Vietnam, the sexual revolution, the principle (if not the reality) of equality for women—so they approached those issues in ways that accommodated the new reality, or moved on to other issues entirely. The culture war is infinitely renewable…
…[L]iberals were so excited about Barack Obama in [2008] because he embodied a certain kind of cultural change. He was the person they wanted to be, or at least be friends with: multiracial, educated, cosmopolitan, urban, and urbane. Conservatives' rage against Obama comes from the same place: he represents a change in American society that they find intolerable.
If you spend any time listening to conservatives, you quickly realize that their rhetoric, whether it's coming from politicians or media figures like Bill O'Reilly, is absolutely awash in nostalgia, a yearning for the supposedly simpler time of their youth, when, among other things, everything they saw was theirs. It was their kind of people who ran things, their kind of music that came from the radio, their priorities and values that were accepted as right and true. They look around now and see so much of American culture shifting away from them, and it's profoundly unsettling, few things more so than the fact that the president of the United States is a liberal black guy with a foreign-sounding name.
But what about Marco Rubio? I think that to some Republicans, he's attractive not so much because he's what they would want in a president in their perfect world, but because they think he might be attractive to other people. It's an acknowledgement of and accommodation to the fact that America has indeed changed, and their party needs to change in response. And if the conservative Republican with the best chance of winning the White House is a 43-year-old Latino, well so be it.
This could be a fascinating dynamic within the primaries, the tension between voters like…the older white guy who grudgingly acknowledges that "the day of the older white guy is kind of out," and the many other Republicans who want to stand athwart history, yelling 'Stop.'

Congress Tells Court That Congress Can’t Be Investigated for Insider Trading

by Lee Fang 

In a little-noticed brief filed last summer, lawyers for the House of Representatives claimed that an SEC investigation of congressional insider trading should be blocked on principle, because lawmakers and their staff are constitutionally protected from such inquiries given the nature of their work.
The legal team led by Kerry W. Kircher, who was appointed House General Counsel by Speaker John Boehner in 2011, claimed that the insider trading probe violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch.
In 2012, members of Congress patted themselves on the back for passing the STOCK Act, a bill meant to curb insider trading for lawmakers and their staff. “We all know that Washington is broken and today members of both parties took a big step forward to fix it,” said Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, upon passage of the law.
But as the Securities and Exchange Commission made news with the first major investigation of political insider trading, Congress moved to block the inquiry.
The SEC investigation focused on how Brian Sutter, then a staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an upcoming Medicare decision to a lobbyist, who then shared the tip with other firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.
Calling the SEC’s inquiry a “remarkable fishing expedition for congressional records,” Kircher and his team claimed that the SEC had no business issuing a subpoena to Sutter. “Communications with lobbyists, of course, are a normal and routine part of Committee information-gathering,” the brief continued, arguing that there “is no room for the SEC to inquire into the Committee’s or Mr. Sutter’s purpose or motives.”
Wall Street investors routinely hire specialized “political intelligence” lobbyists in Washington to get insider knowledge of major government decisions so that they may make trades using the information. But little is known about the mechanics of political intelligence lobbying, which falls outside the scope of traditional lobbying law, and therefore does not show up in mandatory lobbying disclosure reports.
There are occasional hints, though.
Personal finance forms reveal that from July of 2011 through May of 2013, David Berteau served as a consultant to Height Analytics, the political intelligence firm at the center of the SEC’s current probe. At the time of his work for Height Analytics, Berteau simultaneously worked as a vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a prominent think tank in Washington. Berteau is now the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness.
Congressional travel forms show that on December 12, 2012, Emily Porter, at the time an employee of Boehner’s office, traveled to New York on a sponsored trip to meet with JNK Securities for a group lunch with business clients. According to the Wall Street Journal, JNK “has emerged as one of the most aggressive” political intelligence firms on Capitol Hill.
This is hardly the first time Congress has moved to undermine its own ethics rules. In 2011, congressional Republicans quickly abandoned their promise to post the text of bills online “for at least three days” before voting on them.

Muck Wallow

NC wingnut republican Commissioner: Non-christian Prayers Forbidden At County Meetings

In a case of the exact opposite being true ...

by Manny Schewitz

To hear people like North Carolina’s Lincoln County Board of Commissioners chairman Carrol Mitchem tell it, wingnut christians are a persecuted class here in the United States. It’s as if they can’t come together to worship jesus in a house of prayer without police there to protect their service from armed gunmen coming to attack them.
(Oh wait, that was notorious anti-muslim bigot Pamela Geller and her convention of fellow idiots gathering to celebrate inflammatory rhetoric against the equally stupid idea that you cannot draw a picture of the prophet mohammed, because that’s hateful and disrespectful to a religion started by a guy who married a six-year-old girl.)
“Oh no, we’re persecuted by those liberals and dogless atheists who want to cram their beliefs down our throats!” That’s the rhetoric of hundreds of religio-wingnuts and their politicians who have done things like add “In dog We Trust” to displays in city halls, which was just approved here in Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s silly, it’s petty, and it goes a long way politically when you’ve got a whole bunch of people convinced that there’s a war going on against your religion.
You know, if you want to put “In dog We Trust” in your city council chambers, it really doesn’t bother me that much – and I’m an atheist. However, it’s still a violation of cult and state – and then you have people like Carrol Mitchem who really just want their specific brand of delusion to be endorsed, and nobody else’s.
If you want proof of this, just read the following story from Lincoln County, North Carolina and their Board of Commissioners which had a fit over the fact that a neighboring county was ordered to stop having prayers before their meetings.
In response to a question concerning Rowan County, which was recently ordered by a federal court judge to cease its pre-meeting prayers, Lincoln County Board of Commissioners chairman Carrol Mitchem said that not only will invocations remain in Lincoln County, but that he would see to it that no non-christian prayers are delivered on his watch.
“A muslim? He comes in here to say a prayer, I’m going to tell him to leave,” Mitchem said. “I have no use for (those) people. They don’t need to be here praying to allah or whoever the hell they pray to. I’m not going to listen to (a) muslim pray.”
In a ruling filed on Monday, Judge James A. Beaty ruled that Rowan County violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. According to the court document, commissioners there started each meeting with phrases such as “let us pray” or “please pray with me” before delivering the prayer. Those prayers normally included references to “jesus” and “the savior.”
Religion has no place in government, and folks like Carrol Mitchem prove why.
It would be nice if people in government made decisions that benefited the poor, the elderly and the sick in the way that most religious teachings direct them to, but that’s not what’s going on here. Carrol Mitchem and others of his ilk are using their warped interpretation of christianity and their political power to further hatred and exclusion of others, rather than promote the common good.
Wingnut christians aren’t being persecuted, they’re simply being forced to give up centuries of control over government, which they were using to force their beliefs on the rest of us. Besides, does it really make a difference if you can’t say a prayer specifically invoking your version of a dog before having a county commission meeting? Is it really that big of a threat for someone who is muslim or wiccan or anything else to say their own prayer, especially if your dog is supposed to be the most powerful one of all and the other religions are false?
Send Carrol Mitchem an email, and politely let him know that freedom of religion applies to all religions, not just his.

Republican objections effectively neutered a bill to care for military war dogs

by Mark E Andersen

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Mark Bush, 386th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron military working dog handler, gets affectionately licked by his dog, Xarius, June 3, 2014 at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia. Two years ago when I attended a reunion of my old Desert Storm-era Army unit, Co. B 326th Engineer Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, we were looking at where our old barracks once stood. The old cockroach-infested buildings had been torn down to make way for the new buildings now under construction. One of my fellow veterans who worked in construction on post told us the story that did not leave a dry eye amongst us, even with our hardened veteran hearts. The story goes like this: The day demolition was to start, the military police (MPs) received a man at the front gate. He was in tears, and he had driven all night to get to Ft. Campbell before demolition of the 326th barracks began. He had to find the remains of the dog he went to Vietnam with, came home with, and buried at Ft. Campbell, before the demolition began. The MPs got him to the site of the barracks, the civilian construction workers stopped working, and they searched the battalion area for the remains of his dog. They never did find the remains—either his memory was faulty about where the remains were or too much earth had already been moved during construction.

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Every last Republican primary candidate: Vote for me, because I hate the government

by Hunter

2012 will look like Candy Mountain compared to 2016 primary rhetoric

This really will be the dynamic of the entire Republican primary season: Elect me, because I hate the government. Vote for me, because the government I am a very prominent member of has veered into new depths of incompetence since you last voted for me.

Mr. Cruz’s diagnosis can vary slightly: Sometimes Washington is “profoundly broken”; other times it is “fundamentally broken.” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky prefers “horribly broken.” But he does not stop there. His campaign slogan for president is “Defeat the Washington Machine.”

Rand Paul is, of course, neck-deep in the Washington machine. Whatever bad thing you might say about the Washington Machine, from nepotism to substanceless, pandering rhetoric to obsessive fundraising to a truly profound inability to accomplish anything, Rand Paul is a poster child for all of it. Ted Cruz came to Washington with the official mission to break it, has spent nearly all of his time encouraging ridiculous plots in his party to break it (see: the shutdown, the single most incompetently planned and pointlessly premised act of legislative sabotage in a generation), and remains stumped as to why nothing is getting done.

Mr. Paul even recently cleansed his Twitter handle: What was @SenRandPaul is now just @RandPaul.

You know what would really distance yourself from the Senate? Not running for the damn Senate again. Since Kentucky doesn't allow you to run for Senate and president both, it would be a far simpler solution than the current churning (again, almost self-parodyingly Machine-like) efforts to change your state's laws to insert the required "except Rand Paul, who is awesome" clause. But they're far from the only candidates running as inside-the-system "outsiders." You know who else is doing it? Every last one of them. Below the fold we go.

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Scott Walker: Doctors Can Lie To Pregnant Women So They Won’t Get Abortions

Wisconsin's Scott Walker hasn’t made an official announcement that he’ll run for president yet, but he’s been traveling to early...

Scott Walker is Insane and a Sadist

B.C.

Where wingnut 'talking points' come from

Dear wingnuts: It Was Only TODAY That You Realized Mark Halperin Is An Idiot?

So it just dawned on wingnuts that Mark Halperin is an obnoxious and ridiculous human being?

Mark Halperin Is An Idiot

Carly Fiorina Running A Fifth Grade, 'No Boys Allowed' Campaign

 

Alicia Menendez: Carly Fiorina Running A Fifth Grade, 'No Boys Allowed' Campaign

The Ultimate Political Cockroach

Chris Christie: The Ultimate Political Cockroach

Wingnut Hero News

Vladimir Putin defends notorious Nazi-Soviet pact

Climate Science Deniers Unable To Comprehend Scientific Study

A new study finds that the Arctic sea may go ice free in the summer faster than previous models had projected. Climate science deniers get the story wrong. Go figure!

The Daily Drift

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

 

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

 
Republicans true blood comes out at night ... !

Today is - National Night Shift Workers Day

 

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North Carolina To Teachers: No Free Speech For You!

Don't "wear red for Ed" in North Carolina!

Prosecutor Admits To Discriminating Against Latino Abuse Victims In Visa Applications

by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee

A North Carolina county prosecutor won’t certify visa applications for Latino domestic violence victims if their assailants are also Latino. In an interview with the Charlotte Observer, Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell said that he would only certify U visa applications, designated for victims of domestic abuse or violence, for Latinos if their abusers are non-Latino.

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Non Sequitur

There's an American named Jade Helm. And yes, she's a little pissed right now.

"I promise the entire Texas military will watch this woman until we know what she's up to."

If three months from now this poor person decided to move to Vanuatu, you really couldn't blame her.

Three months ago, being that one American named Jade Helm would have been a curiosity of the oh-that's-an-interesting-name sort. With the advent of Jade Helm '15, the miltary-exercise-turned-massive-conspiracy-theory, however, being Jade Helm has taken a turn for the annoying. [...] "The lowest point was when I saw a Mr. Rogers meme about Jade Helm — of course posted on my Facebook timeline by one of my helpful friends," Helm said. "This was not how I hoped to be associated with Mr. Rogers."

Pin this one up as a reminder that all things considered, you probably have a pretty good life. At least you don't share your name with the single stupidest conspiracy theory to ever grace an actual sitting governor's synapses.

Republicans Crushed As Obamacare Transforms Into A Winning Issue For Democrats

A new poll shows Republican hate sowing the seeds of future failure as Obamacare is a winning national issue for Democrats.

Three findings within the AP/GfK poll are devastating for Republicans:

Fifty-six percent said the court should keep the subsidies without restriction while 39 percent said the financial aid should be limited to residents of states that set up their own health insurance markets.

….

The poll found that a bare majority, 51 percent, wants Congress to amend the law to make it clear that people are entitled to help regardless of what their state leaders do.

But 44 percent prefer that Congress leave the law as is and let states decide whether they want to create insurance exchanges that would allow their residents to receive subsidies.

….

The poll found 27 percent of Americans support the law while 38 percent oppose it, and 34 percent say they neither support nor oppose it.

These statistics present an impossible problem for Republicans. By a nearly two to one margin, the those polled either support the law or don’t have an opinion either way. The level of opposition to the law has shrunk to the same level as the percentage of self-identified Republicans and conservatives in polls. This means that the opposition to the ACA is shrinking, but firmly located within the Republican Party.

The fact that a seventeen point majority want the subsidies to continue without restriction, while 69% of Republicans want the subsidies to go away means that Republicans are guaranteed to pay a heavy political price no matter what they do. Republicans are being crushed beneath the weight of their ginned up hatred for the ACA.

Obamacare is now a winning issue for Democrats. The more Republicans that nationally discuss repealing the law, the stronger the Democratic position becomes. Democrats could have a huge victory in 2016 because Republican voters are forcing to their candidates to stick to repealing the health care law.

The ACA turned into a winning issue because people like having health insurance. Republicans are sowing the seeds for future Democratic victories by continuing to fight battles that they’ve already lost.

Republicans: Always Wrong - About Everything

Bernie Sanders Explained Why Voters Aren’t Voting Ten Years Ago

It seems like hardly a month passes without yet another international or national study or survey revealing how America, as the “shining light” of democracy and unlimited economic possibilities, is revealed as lagging the rest of the civilized world in any and every possible category. If America is not at the bottom of the list for dependable infrastructure, access to healthcare, or the number of people in the middle class, it is a world leader in the number of children living in dire poverty, most gun-related homicides, most incarcerations, and a humiliatingly ignorant religious and racist population.

Now another survey reveals that as the one-time exemplar of democracy, America is near the very bottom of industrialized nations with a truly pathetic voter turnout record. Of all the recent sad reports about America, this one can be laid at the feet of Republicans and their moneyed supporters who, with valuable assistance from a conservative Supreme Court, work tirelessly and spend unlimited amounts of cash to prevent Americans from participating in the electoral process.

Before perusing the one-time ” world’s leading democracy” and its truly pathetic voter turnout record, it is worth looking back at comments from Senator Bernie Sanders that he recorded for posterity nearly ten years ago in the 2006 documentary “American Blackout.” In the documentary, the filmmakers recounted the then-astonishing voter suppression tactics being employed to prevent a large percentage of the population from participating in America’s storied representative democracy. Even though it has been nearly ten years since the film’s release, if then-Representative Bernie Sanders knew what the Koch brothers intended in funding outright voter suppression efforts, he certainly would have called them and their legislative arm the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) out by name. Instead, Sanders talked about voter apathy and cited “the people who control politics” as the media, large corporations, and the wealthy people as those most invested in keeping Americans from participating in the election process.

Bernie Sanders explained that the rich and corporations do not want all Americans to vote. He said, “The truth of the matter is that the media, large corporations, the people who control politically our country today do not want you to participate. That’s only bad for them. They want a low turnout of primarily upper middle class people, they want big money to dominate the political process. Their nightmare is that young people, lower income people, working people jump into the political process. They do not want that.” As everyone now understands in retrospect, corporations and the wealthy Koch-types’ worst nightmare came true in 2008 when young people, people of color, working and low income people did jump into the political process electing Democrats to control both houses of Congress and the White House that elicited a ferocious response from the Koch brothers as archetypes of the corporate and wealthy elite Sanders described.

Since now-Senator Sanders’ short comment on voting has been manifest a hundred fold, everything he said ten years ago has morphed into more than the wealthy elite just “not wanting people to participate” in the voting process or “wanting big money to dominate the political process.” In fact, after the 2008 election of Barack Obama with larger numbers of Americans heading to the polls, including more young people, more lower income people (code for people of color), and working people, the wealthy and their corporations went to the Supreme Court to win the right to inject unlimited amounts of money in politics, and paid ALEC to write and pass outright voter restriction and suppression laws in Republican controlled states across the nation; particularly in the racist former-Confederate states. So, exactly what was the result of the Koch’s investment in ALEC and the Supreme Court?

According to a new Pew survey released recently, among all developed nations on Earth, America lagged every nation in voter turnout than three; Japan, Chile, and Switzerland. Americans voter turnout was less than all of the other 37 member nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Pew measured voter turnout by comparing the number of votes cast as a percentage of eligible voting-age population. According to that measure, America landing 31st among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development whose member nations are mostly highly developed democratic states.

America’s turnout in 2012 was 53% and the three highest ranking nations were Belgium (87%), Turkey (86%), and Sweden (83%). America’s low voter turnout has predictable consequences as the last midterm election confirms; lower voter turnout always benefits Republicans because not surprisingly, the people that do not turn out to vote generally have “more progressive views.”

This does not necessarily mean that registered Democratic voters are not showing up, although in the last midterm election that appeared to be the case, it just means that Americans who generally support progressive agendas like fair wages, income equality, worker protections, social programs, and domestic spending on infrastructure and education have been systematically shut out of the electoral process. Why? Because as Bernie Sanders said in 2006; it is a nightmare for the wealthy and corporations if those people turn out and vote because they dependably vote for Democrats.

Republicans have made no secret they prefer smaller voter turnouts and it goes back to 1991 when Mitch McConnell said that not only is he “not particularly disturbed by lower voter turnout,” he thought it was “healthy if less people participated in the political process.” Recently, more Republicans have openly commented that they think any effort to get more Americans to participate in the voting process is “shocking and underhanded.” In Republican states voter ID laws, restrictions on voter registration efforts, fewer polling places, and outright voter suppression laws have contributed to the low voter turnouts.

Senator Bernie Sanders is no prophet by any means, but his remarks nearly ten years ago about corporations and the rich not wanting all Americans to vote were not only accurate; they were grossly understated as the results of the Pew poll certainly revealed. Of all the surveys and research results portraying America as a second-rate nation have borne out over the past few years, this recent survey is particularly humiliating because this country is alleged to be the world’s leading democracy; a distinction  Republicans and the Kochs have spent six years and no small amount of corporate cash flushing down the oligarch’s toilet.

Support For Sanders With Democrats Grows By 10 Points In Iowa

The latest polling revealed that support for Bernie Sanders has increased by ten points among Democrats in Iowa after the Senator from Vermont officially announced his bid for the Democratic nomination.

According to the most recent Quinnipiac University poll of Iowa, Sen. Sanders has gone from 5% in February to 15% in May. The poll had Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 19% in February, but after she has repeatedly ruled out a run for the nomination, she was not included in the current round of polling.

Logically, it appears that Warren supporters should be a target for the Sanders campaign, but Hillary Clinton was the most popular first and second choice of Iowa Democratic caucus goers. When her first and second choice support was combined, Clinton received 79% support. The first and second favorite support for Sanders was 25%. (Note: percentages add up to more than one hundred.) Clinton’s 2016 is looking like a reversal of her 2008 Iowa caucus experience while Sanders is in a position to be a legitimate second.

Hillary Clinton had a jaw-dropping 83% approval rating with Iowa Democrats. The former Sec. of State’s approval rating with very liberal Democrats was 88%. Sen. Sanders is largely unknown in Iowa. His favorability split was 44%-6%, but 50% of those polled did not know enough about him. Sanders had a favorability rating of 68% among those who considered themselves to be very liberal.

What this polling illustrates is that Hillary Clinton is a historically strong candidate. Not since Dwight D. Eisenhower has a non-incumbent presidential candidate had this much support for his/her campaign. The data also hints that there may be room for only one more legitimate Democratic candidate in the race. At this very early stage, it looks like that candidate will be Sen. Bernie Sanders.

One issue with the Quinnipiac Poll is that Vice President Biden was included in the polling. The numbers will shift after Biden is dropped from the poll. It is safe to assume that some if not most of the Biden support will shift to Hillary Clinton, but there will be an opening there for Sanders to pick up some additional support.

Bernie Sanders has gotten a bigger bounce from announcing his campaign than many expected. Sanders is not a fringe candidate. He will likely be the top challenger to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic field, as the Democratic primary looks like it will feature two strong voices debating the issues in 2016.

Republican Map Shrinking As Hillary Clinton Puts Red State Arizona In Play

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey released on May 6th finds Hillary Clinton is competitive in the traditional red state of Arizona. The poll tested Hillary Clinton against nine GOP candidates. In each hypothetical contest, Clinton was competitive, with her range varying from a 3-point lead (44-41) over Texas Governor Rick Perry to a 7-point deficit against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (46-39).

Given Chris Christie’s poor showing in other recent polls conducted in other states, he seems unlikely to secure the GOP nomination. Clinton is evenly matched against the two most likely Republican candidates, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Clinton trailed Walker in the poll 44-43. She managed a 41-41 tie against Jeb Bush.

A Democratic presidential candidate has not carried Arizona since 1996, when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole in the state by a narrow 46.5 to 44.3 percent margin, with Independent Ross Perot picking up 8 percent of the vote. Barack Obama lost the state by over 8 percentage points in both 2008 and 2012.

Arizona’s red tilt makes it a difficult state for Democrats to target, but Hillary Clinton has the potential to put Republicans on the defensive in the Grand Canyon State. If the Clinton campaign can expand the competitive playing field into Arizona, she could conceivably force the GOP to divert resources away from other swing states to shore up their position in the traditionally Republican stronghold.

Whichever Republican becomes the GOP candidate for President, will also have to overcome any damage to the party brand, created by Arizona’s duplicitous Governor Doug Ducey and the states Tea Party flavored legislature. Arizona Republicans have passed a budget that contained savage cuts to education and Medicaid, creating the potential for an anti-GOP backlash up and down the ticket, in a high-turnout presidential election.

While it is too early to gauge whether Arizona will remain competitive by November of next year, Hillary Clinton is in a strong position to put the state in play. If Arizona Republicans continue to mismanage the state budget, Hillary will be poised to capitalize on their failure. She can easily paint her presidential opponent as a Republican who plays for the same team as Arizona ‘s budget slashing Governor Doug Ducey. If she does that successfully, she would be the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, since her husband accomplished the feat in 1996.

Republican Clown Car

Grab The Popcorn – Rick *Don’t Google* Santorum Is Promising To Maybe Enter The Race

I love this guy. Well, I love covering this guy. He’s a never ending source of amusement.

Read more

Scott Walker Channels the shrub At SC Wingnut Summit

Wisconsin's Scott Walker did his best imitation of George W. Bush at this Saturday's South Carolina "Freedom" Summit. 

Wingnut Summit

Propaganda

Nazi Propaganda, oh, excuse us, Republican Propaganda, you can see it's easy mistake to make

This Exposé of NYC Nail Salons Destroys the Republican Worldview Once and for All

In the free-market utopia imagined by the Ayn Rand acolytes in the Republican party, everyone is paid what he or she deserves according to his or her value. There’s no need for government to step in and regulate businesses because the market will punish anyone who engages in unfair or destructive practices.
Then there’s the real world.
A New York Times investigation into working conditions in NYC-area nail salons exposed horrific conditions for the mostly immigrant women who do cheap manicures and pedicures.
They’re paid little to nothing. What meager wages they get from salon owners are often docked for minor infractions. Minimum wage? Overtime? These basic rights most Americans take for granted are as fantastical to salon employees as Narnia.

Most of the women interviewed by the Times were undocumented and spoke little English, meaning they don’t have access to the resources to improve their working conditions or to demand the pay they deserve.
The salon’s customers aren’t going to police the wages of the women doing their nails. The only hope these workers have is that the government steps in and forces salons to pay their workers fair and legal wages.
Republicans, especially the Rand Paul-libertarian wing of the party, would have you believe government regulation of business is a universal evil. They’d like to forget the years before we had child labor laws, weekends, and guaranteed overtime pay.
They’d like you to ignore the woman at the end of your pedicure chair and continue to assume that all business owners do what’s right. They’d like to pretend that workers aren’t often desperate enough to take any work they can get, even if it means working ungodly hours and working in deplorable conditions.
But the real world doesn’t work the way they want. Business owners exploit workers to maximize profit. They always have. They always will. And without regulation and enforcement, that GOP libertarian utopia is a very, very ugly place.

Texas House Eases Airport Laws For Gun Owners, Sponsored By Republican Caught With Gun In Airport

The Texas House seems determined to allow guns in every place imaginable even if it poses a threat to the safety of others.

Texas House Eases Airport Laws For Guns In Airport

Sheldon Adelson’s ties to Chinese crime boss under scrutiny after new testimony

The wingnut casino magnate and key Republican party donor, spent four combative days in a Las Vegas court this week defending his gambling empire from accusations of bribery and ties to organized crime.

Sheldon Adelson and the crime boss

Republican Proposes $300 Million Cut To NASA's Earth Science Budget

We can't have them researching the effects of man-made climate change, after all.

Cutting To NASA's Earth Science Budget

Denial

Student Suspended for Speaking Native American Language

After a 12-year-old Menominee student spoke her Native language during class, she was suspended from playing in that night’s basketball game, and memories of past boarding school atrocities surfaced.
Miranda Washinawatok attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin. According to Native News Network, the school is more than 60 percent Native American and is about six miles from the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.
When Miranda was teaching a classmate to say “posoh” and “ketapanen” on January 19, her teacher scolded her. Native News Network reported her saying “You are not to speak like that! How do I know you’re not saying something bad? How would you like it if I spoke in Polish and you didn’t understand?”
The words Miranda was chastised for translate to “hello” and “I love you” in Menominee.
“Miranda kept saying she was only told by her assistant coach she was being benched because two teachers said she had a bad attitude,” Tanaes Washinawatok, Miranda’s mother, told Native News Network. “I wanted to know what she did to make them say she had a bad attitude.”
There is dispute over who actually did the suspending, but the school has admitted it “failed miserably in its handling of the matter.” Deacon Ray DuBois, the communication director for the Diocese of Green Bay, which operates the school, also told Native News Network that the school does not prohibit the use of any language and that “the number one priority is to help this girl.”
Miranda isn’t a troublemaker. Her mother told Native News that she is mature and respectful. Miranda plays basketball and is the team captain of a volleyball team.
“When it comes to Native language, Miranda should be proud she learned and can speak her Native language,” wrote Levi Rickert in a February 4 post on Native News Network.
Tara McGregor, a commenter at Nativenewsnetwork.com, says “As a teacher you have a responsibility to be culturally aware of your students and encourage diversity. This is a reminder to all of us that this type of oppression still exists. I hope that this example of ignorance is not forgotten, and we continue to move forward while creating a world that fosters children who embrace their heritage.”
Rhonda LeValdo, of the Acoma Pueblo and president of the Native American Journalists Association, wrote a piece for Native Connection stating Indian country's support for Miranda. She says: "All Americans need to know about the boarding schools. They need to know how the language was beaten out of many of our elders, so much that their children never learned the language for that fear of them being hurt. This all happened in this country and so many deny the abuses, but it happened."