CNN Busts Fox News For Lying About President Obama’s Remarks On Poverty

CNN called out a major lie of omission that Fox News tried to pull off by editing out key comments from remarks made by President Obama.

After playing a clip of Fox News’ outrage, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter showed viewers what Fox News left out.

Transcript via CNN:

STELTER: Here’s what almost everybody missed about the panel discussion. The president was talking about what he called a 40-year effort to stir up class divisions. FOX, of course, has only been around 15 years. Let’s go back to the original video, but let’s let it keep playing, so Obama finishes his thought.

FOX only played this part of the clip once. It was in a news report by Howie Kurtz. Notice that Obama is talking about the whole news media’s responsibility to make sure the middle class and poor Americans know — I’m sorry — what middle class and rich Americans know what it’s like to be poor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: And that becomes an entire narrative, right, that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical, who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right, but still can’t pay the bills.

And so if we’re going to change how John Boehner and Mitch McConnell think, we’re going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media reports on these issues and how people’s impressions of what it’s like to struggle in this economy looks like and how budgets connect to that.

And that’s a — it’s a hard process, because that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: He called for a broader conversation, but FOX ended up having a very small conversation.

Anyway, that’s “Red News/Blue News” for this week.

It would be nice to think that the media is finally catching on to Fox News’ selective editing tricks, but outside of the cable news competition at CNN and MSNBC, most of the mainstream press doesn’t bother to call out their lies.

If more members of the media would stand up to the Fox News propaganda machine, not only would the news be more trustworthy, viewers would be better informed. The bulk of the press is terrified of Fox News, so they will never directly criticize, debunk, or call out the Republican talking point network.

Brian Stelter of CNN took a few minutes of his show to debunk a major Fox News lie of omission, and if more members of his profession did the same, the Fox News blight could be removed from journalism.

The Real Reason Republicans Hate Welfare And Food Stamps

by Ben Madison

These days, it seems that the majority of wingnuts tend to view the world through a very simplistic scope that allows little room for discussion, interpretation, or compromise. We have reached a point where any questioning of unregulated capitalism automatically gets you labeled as a socialist, communist, Marxist, or Fascist because those are all interchangeable right?
When President Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008, conservatives unleashed a vicious tornado of attacks labeling him a Kenyan born dictator who supported redistribution of wealth, taking from those who have, and giving it to those who do not. They were right about part of that. He does believe in redistribution of wealth but guess what? So do most Americans.
If your children go to a public school, if your streets are patrolled by the city or county law enforcement, if your garbage is picked up by city workers, if you have ever dialed 911, if you or anyone in your family has worked in the public sector, if you’ve ever claimed deductions on your taxes, and if you’ve ever driven on a public road, not only have you condoned redistribution, you have supported it.
The modern day wingnuts are led to believe that all government is bad, and that they don’t need government in their everyday lives. We have reached a point of insanity where an average Joe making 30,000 a year drives on a public road, to drop his kids off at a public school, all while listening to wingnut hate speech radio tell him how evil every aspect of government is. This disconnect from reality is unreal.
The truth is, many of the services that Americans rely on are rooted in redistribution. Social Security, Medicaid, public safety services, and emergency services are just a few of the redistributive services that all Americans enjoy, while never even realizing that they are a form of democratic socialism.
Why then do wingnut Americans freak out when a family needs food stamps to eat, or when a young mother needs WIC, or TANF to survive? The answer is racism.
I’ve had friends over the years that took advantage of public assistance services for their families such as WIC or Food stamps. The truth of the matter was, they really didn’t need them, but in their minds, they earned the right to use these public services since they worked and paid taxes. The problem was, they were all white, and they all shared a disdain for minorities that receive public assistance. You see, when white people use public assistance, they are getting back what they’ve paid in – but when black people or other minorities use public assistance, they are lazy and entitled. Sadly, that’s how wingnuts think.
The Republican Party has done a wonderful job of getting everyday, white Americans to look down upon, and demonize minorities for doing the same thing that they do, all while being oblivious to the fact that they are being robbed blind by the billionaires behind the Republican party money machine. In the South, there is an understood but subtle racism among many white people that is rarely talked about, but always present. Just delve into any comment section of a local news story on virtually any city in a southern state that involves the subject of an African American, and those dog whistles turn into sirens very quickly.
You see, it all goes back to looking at a very complex world through a very simplistic lens. It doesn’t work. Modern day wingnuts truly believe that everyone is given the same exact opportunity to succeed regardless of their race or where they come from, and that is just not true. Study upon study proves that African Americans and minorities have a much harder path to success than their white counterparts, yet when they look to take advantage of the same public assistance services that many white people enjoy, they are demonized, they are called lazy freeloaders, they are made into the punch lines of jokes, and they are ridiculed beyond belief – all because of an obvious double standard that is rooted in white privilege.

Kansas Republicans Attempt To Set $25 ATM Limit For Poor Backfires; May Cost State $100 Million

Brownback’s fanatical war on the poor backfires yet again, this time to the tune of $100 million. How much longer will Kansas voters keep supporting him?

Read more

How Ronald Reagan Started The Hysteria Against Obamacare

Reagan, not Obama, is why we don’t have single payer.
Read more

This Republican wants doctors to narc on pregnant women they suspect of using drugs — without any proof

Mack Butler (R-AL) introduced legislation this week requiring medical professionals to notify police within two hours if they suspect a pregnant woman of having consumed illegal substances — regardless of whether she tests positive for drugs or not.

Narc on pregnant women they suspect of using drugs — without any proof

Republican To Ex-Cons On SNAP: You Made A Mistake, Your Kids Should Starve

Paul LePage wants to kick drug offenders, and their children, off of welfare and food stamps, even if they’ve turned their lives around.

Read full story 

Wyoming Republicans Ban Scientists From Reporting Water Pollution At Request of Cattle Lobby

According to the State of Wyoming, ignorance is a civic virtue and investigation and free thought a crime. The state’s conservative government has pulled ahead of the pack in the Republican-led campaign against science when Governor Matt Mead (R) signed into law a bill that criminalizes collecting information about the state of the environment “with the intent” to share it with the state or federal government.The law is incredibly broad in scope, making it a crime to “collect resource data” or “preserve information in any form” from any “open land,” whether publicly or privately owned. Thus it is now a crime in Wyoming to engage in any form of citizen science – even taking a photograph of the environment – if it is shared with government in any way. Coming hot on the heels of efforts in Wisconsin and Florida to ban any research into or even discussion of climate change, the new Wyoming law is only the latest and most extreme example of a wide-reaching Republican crusade against science and knowledge.
From where, however, did Wyoming’s Republican overlords get the idea that citizens taking pictures of the state’s natural beauty were a threat? The answer, as is so often the case with abusive and totalitarian laws, is big business and lobbying groups. And in Wyoming, where cattle ranching is a multi-billion dollar industry, big business means Big Cattle.
The problem for Big Cattle is that not only has overgrazing led to land degradation throughout the state, but inadequate regulation has led to pollution of numerous Wyoming streams and rivers with a dangerous and potentially-fatal strand of the E. coli bacteria, which is found largely in cow excrement.
The Western Watersheds Project and several recent studies have confirmed the presence of E. coli concentrations in Wyoming waterways far in excess of what is considered safe, and have of course traced the source to cattle ranchers. The sensible solution would be to implement regulations and controls to assure that ranchers manage their herds properly, but Wyoming and its Big Cattle business would rather pretend the problem doesn’t exist to maintain their bottom lines.
The Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association, a cattle ranching lobby that is one of the most influential groups in the state and once launched a war on the state government, took its case to Cheyene. And, sure enough, the Republican-dominated government quickly bowed before the interests of big agribusiness, even if that meant contaminating the environment and endangering public safety.
Wyoming is not the first state to prioritize its big agriculture over decency and democracy – Idaho made it a crime to film animal abuse last year – but the scope of the new law, and all the ways it violates the Constitution Republican’s claim to swear by, is unprecedented. First of all, the new law is a blatant violation of the supremacy clause, which states that federal laws are the highest laws in the land.
A certain federal law called the Clean Water Act mandates that efforts be made to reduce contamination in surface water and encourages citizens to share information about unsafe conditions with their government, the latter of which is now punishable in Wyoming by a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. More fundamentally, the law makes a mockery of the First Amendment, not only criminalizing certain forms of speech and expression that are inconvenient to cattle ranchers, but also removing citizens’ right to petition and present information to their government.
It is an increasing trend among Republicans to ignore science when it doesn’t support their world view (which is almost all of the time) and to pretend that problems don’t exist if fixing them would be inconvenient. The new Wyoming law breaks new ground in this field by literally making it impossible to bring any case against the dangerous polluting cattle herders. According to the law, “no resource or data collected in violation of this section is admissible in any civil, criminal, or administrative proceeding” and such data “shall not be used in determining any agency action.”
There is clearly something drastically wrong in America when willed ignorance at the expense of public safety is the norm in Republican states nationwide and the Big Cow Manure lobby can determine state environmental policy.

More

The catholic cult Won’t Sack Child Abusers, But Fires Priest For Gay-Friendly Facebook Post

Truly a dismal state of affairs for a cult which claims moral authority across the globe.

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No Charges For Pastor Who Raped Mentally Disabled Woman, Thanks To Louisiana Law

Thanks to Louisiana’s ‘it’s not rape if she doesn’t resist’ law, a pastor can’t be charged for having sex with a 20-year-old woman, even though she has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old child.

Read more 

White christian Former Congressional Candidate Arrested For Massive Plot To Kill muslims

This is terrorism, but  because Doggart is a white christian, law enforcement isn’t calling it terrorism.

Read more 

The Daily Drift

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

 

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

 
Yesterday was INTERNATIONAL Museum Day, it's National's turn - not that Republicans would know  ... !

Today is - National Museum Day

 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally

Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Argentina - Brazil - Canada - Chile - Guatemala - Nicaragua - Peru - Puerto Rico - Sint Eustatius/Saba Trinidad/Tobago - United States

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Bosnia/Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Czech Republic - England - Estonia - France - Germany -

Greece  Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Italy - Latvia - Luxembourg - Malta - Netherlands - Northern Ireland - Poland Portugal - Romania - Russia - Scotland - Serbia - Spain - Switzerland - Turkey - Ukraine - Wales

Asia

China - Hong Kong, India - Indonesia - Korea, Malaysia - Mongolia - Saudi Arabia - Thailand

Africa

Djibouti - Egypt - Morocco - South Africa - Zambia

The Pacific

Australia - Philippines

Non Sequitur

Bernie Sanders’ Koch Killing Movement Grows To $4 Million Raised and 100,000 Contributors

On CNN’s State Of The Union, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced that his presidential campaign against corporate greed, the attempted Koch hostile takeover of the government, and income inequality has now raised over $4 million from 100,000 contributors.

Sanders was asked if he really had a pathway to victory.

Sen. Sanders answered:

I think there is more discontent with establishment politics, with the greed of corporate America than many people perceive. I think we have a good shot. I am not going to deny for one moment that I go into this race an underdog. Hillary Clinton will have a lot more money than we have. But let me say this, even in terms of money, we’ve been in this race for a couple of weeks, and we’ve raised over $4 million, because people are sending on average, not a million dollars, not ten thousand dollars. Forty-three dollars per contributor to berniesanders.com. We have now 100,000 contributions.

Sen. Sanders promised to hold a civil debate with former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, but he openly questioned whether the media would give them coverage if they focused on issues instead of tearing each other apart.

Bernie Sanders is not running a vanity campaign. Unlike many of those who are running for the Republican nomination, his candidacy is not a stunt that is being done for personal financial gain and publicity. Sanders is running because there is no other candidate that is expressing hardcore liberal positions.

Hillary Clinton has done a great job of getting in touch with where the majority of Democrats are on several key issues. Despite the grumbling from both media and Democratic circles, Hillary Clinton has run a really good early campaign, but Democrats deserve to have their choice of candidates for the party’s nomination.

At one level, Sanders is offering voters another option. As one looks deeper, it is clear that Sen. Sanders is effectively tapping a deep well of discontent among voters. Voters are outraged about the Citizens United enabled billionaire takeover of the federal government. People are feeling and seeing the impact of income inequality in their daily lives. The ladder of economic advancement has been taken away from most Americans.

The media is focused on Sanders versus Clinton, but the real people who should be worried about the success of the Bernie Sanders campaign are the Koch brothers and other billionaires. What Sanders has launched is a populist Koch killing campaign, and forces are mobilizing behind the Senator from Vermont to take their country back from the billionaire class.

Sanders Smacks Down CNN Host For Demanding Food Fight Between Him And Clinton

Senator Bernie Sanders let CNN's Brianna Keilar have it for her continual demands that Sanders throw some "sharp elbows" at his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

Sanders Smacks Down CNN Host

Republicans In Retreat As Wingnuts Donated Millions To The Clinton Foundation

Republicans made a big deal out of George Stephanopoulos’s donations to the Clinton Foundation, but an examination of the list of donors reveals that wingnuts have donated millions of dollars to the charitable organization.

An examination of the Clinton Foundation’s donations from media companies by Politico revealed that wingnut media donated millions to the charity.

Newsmax Media was listed as a donor in the 1,000,000-$5,000,000 range. News Corporation Foundation, the arm of Fox News’s former parent company, has donated $500,000-$1,000,000. Conservative billionaire and Clinton political enemy, Richard Mellon-Scaife has donated $250,000-$500,000.

George Stephanopoulos should have disclosed his donations to the Clinton Foundation on the air, but if Republicans are hoping to parlay the ABC anchor’s mistake into a revival of a scandal involving the Foundation, they are going to be sorely disappointed.

The Republican attempt to turn the Clinton Foundation into some shady pay to play scandal was undercut by the fact that conservative media also donated to the organization. In fact, The Washington Post investigated the claims in Clinton Cash even though they also have given to the Foundation.

The idea that the Clinton Foundation can be turned into a major partisan scandal has been dealt a death blow. Fox News continues to try to build something out of nothing even though their former parent company has made large donations, and their owner’s liberal son (James Murdoch) has also donated millions of dollars.

There is no smoke, no fire, and no scandal. The Clinton Foundation is a non-partisan NGO, not a political organization. The Republican attempts to bring down a global charity for partisan political gain have been undone by their own wingnuts.

DNC Chair Hits Jeb On Apple Watch ...

‘I Had Cancer. There’s No App For That’

Scott Walker Dissolves Into Gibberish When Asked About His Foreign Policy Credentials

Scott Walker melted down into a pile of nonsensical gibberish when asked about his foreign policy credentials ...

One sentence is all it took for Scott Walker to reveal himself as the next in a long line of failed Republicans.

Face The Nation’s Bob Schieffer asked Walker what his foreign policy credentials are, and the answer was revealing.

Walker said:

Well, I think as a governor, it’s really ultimately about leadership. To me, in my lifetime, one of the best presidents when it comes to foreign policy was a governor from California. My lifetime, one of the worst presidents when it comes to foreign policy, was a freshman senator from Illinois. So I think it’s not just about past experience. It’s about leadership. As a governor, you have to put a cabinet in place. Hopefully, you pick people who are as smart or smarter than you on any given topic.

I think that’s something that’s required of a successful president is putting people in place, be it Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State and others, and then having the good sense to listen to them and to others, chain of command in the military, consulting with the Congress. All of those sorts of things I think are important to the president, and I think a successful governors in either party have to do that every day.

Walker’s answer was a pile of gibberish. His answer listed no foreign policy credentials. Walker’s answer bears a striking resemblance to the answer George H.W. Bush gave reporters when asked about George W. Bush’s lack of foreign policy experience in 1999, “My predecessor, for whom I have great love, affection and respect, Ronald Reagan, had come in having been governor of a state and not having had the various jobs.”

George W. Bush’s administration was a foreign policy disaster for the country. Scott Walker is promising a return to the bad old days of Bush if he is elected. It is also ironic Walker would call President Obama the worst foreign policy president of his lifetime at the same time that Obama is receiving bipartisan praise for the successful raid on ISIL in Syria.

Scott Walker has no foreign policy experience. He is an empty suit who does what he is told. That’s why the Koch brothers love him.

The bottom line is that when Scott Walkers opens his mouth about foreign policy, he shows voters why he is unfit to be president.

The Truth Be Told

There's Reality ...

There's Reality ...

Cory Booker: Amtrak crash shows US needs more infrastructure spending

... And then there's this clown

Paul Ryan says Amtrak spending cuts not to blame in Philadelphia crash

Paul Ryan Lies About Amtrak While Pledging No Republican Infrastructure Funding

Sometimes an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally and results in damage and injury may technically be considered an accident unless the incident could have been prevented. By now it is relatively certain that the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia that claimed the lives of eight passengers could have been avoided if Congress had provided the necessary funding to rail carriers commiserate with the mandate to install the Positive Train Control (PTC) feature that would have saved eight lives. Congressional Republicans have not taken any responsibility for their contribution to the deadly derailment or taken any steps to adequately provide funding to ensure the safety of other American travelers whether it is on trains, planes, or automobiles. According to Republicans,  America’s transportation infrastructure just does not warrant investment any more than schools, hospitals, electrical grids, or waterways because as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan claims Republican focus is on saving more money and lying about providing safe rail service for Americans.

Exactly a day after Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee voted in concert to cut about one-fifth of Amtrak’s budget from $1.4 to $1.1 billion for 2016, Paul Ryan did what Republicans do according to their shared party pathology; he lied. Ryan emphatically told Fox News on Wednesday after the Amtrak derailment that, yes, Republicans in Congress had already fully funded implementation of the Positive Train Control safety system it mandated in 2008. Instead of acknowledging that as an austerity-minded Republican his only priority and primary goal for serving in the House is cutting infrastructure spending, Ryan warned that Congress is in no way going to “rush to judgment and try doubling the size of government programs” just because some people died in an accident he said was caused by “human error.”

Ryan asserted that Republicans had already “authorized and mandated the sort of speed control systems to be put in place,” even though he admitted “it wasn’t put in place here at this time” or that it was not in place due to Republican austerity. When Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Ryan whether Congress had actually funded those systems, Ryan lied and responded, “Yes! Yeah, we already passed Amtrak funding, and the appropriations process is working its way through right now.” What Ryan failed to mention is that Republicans passed cuts to Amtrak’s funding for next year and that the appropriation was well below Amtrak’s request which specifically included an allotment to fully implement PTC.  In fact, the Republicans’ latest Amtrak funding cuts are well below the past several years’ funding levels. If at any time over the past few years Congress had appropriated the necessary funds to install PTC across the country, there would have been no necessity for the Senate bill filed a couple of weeks ago authorizing a five year delay of the mandatory PTC implementation deadline from December 2015 to 2020.

Not only did Congress not appropriate funding to complete the PTC implementation by this year or by 2020, according to Ryan Republicans have no intent to fund any infrastructure improvements either now or in the future. The Ayn Rand devotee said he hoped “cooler heads can prevail and that people won’t seize on political opportunities out of tragedies like this to spend any more money.” It was an incredibly telling statement, and a portent of more Republican-made disasters, that when Ryan was asked whether he thought rebuilding America’s infrastructure should be a priority he said no. In fact, he acknowledged that yes, the Highway Trust Fund will be bankrupt later this month, but that he will not back increases for infrastructure improvement to “save more money and be more efficient.”

Now Amtrak is reporting that the train that derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday was equipped with the automatic speed control system (PTC) that would have prevented the deadly derailment. However, although rail officials said the system “was tantalizingly close to being operational,” they admitted that implementation was delayed by budgetary shortfalls, technical hurdles, and bureaucratic rules in dealing with private airwave carriers. Republicans have failed to report that the day after the fatal crash congressional staff members were briefed and learned that “The transponders were on the tracks, but they weren’t operational because of this ongoing spectrum issue.”

Republicans in Congress have consistently failed to provide the railroads with crucial funding or access to the wireless frequencies required to make the PTC system operational. The Republicans’ loyalty to privatization of the airwaves forced Amtrak to spend years negotiating for access to airwaves owned by private corporations that has resulted in a four-year losing battle to pay for the right to access the necessary airwaves in the Northeast Corridor that would allow them to turn the system on. Rail officials confirmed that Amtrak had made installation of the congressionally-mandated safety system a top priority and was ahead of most other railroads around the country. Like everything with Republicans, it is always a lack of adequate funding and in the case of the deadly derailment, it was funding and access to airwaves from private broadband carriers Republicans protect.

As noted above, Republicans are opposed to appropriating any funding for infrastructure while they demand tax cuts for the rich according to Ryan and Republicans’ plan to “save more money and be more efficient” and it is not a new policy.  In 2011 “every Senate Republican voted to filibuster and blocked President Obama’s American Jobs Act (AJA) that included appropriating $2 billion to fund repairs and renovation for Amtrak.” The President’s $447 billion jobs act proposed creating hundreds-of-thousands of new jobs, and particular to this topic was the desperately-needed “large scale investment” in rebuilding and repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. In truth, the $447 billion is really a small-scale investment according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ estimate that about $3 trillion is required to get America’s infrastructure close to a point where the United States can be competitive with the rest of the industrialized world.

As commented on Thursday, “Under Subtitle E, Section 241 titled “Immediate Transportation Infrastructure Investments,” the American Jobs Act featured this nugget for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, also known as Amtrak. In Subsection (e) the AJA makes available $2 billion to Amtrak for the repair, rehabilitation, and upgrade of Amtrak’s assets and infrastructure, including rolling stock.” That $2 billion would have went a long way toward implementing the 2008 Train Safety Act’s mandate that ‘Positive Train Control’ be installed and operational on all passenger and freight trains by the end of 2015; including buying access to private corporations’ wireless networks. The Senate just voted to extend the deadline for PTC implementation about two weeks prior to the Philadelphia derailment and prior to Republicans slashing Amtrak funding by about one-fifth.

Regardless the number of lies from Republicans or Paul Ryan that they have provided funding to complete PTC, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has twice sought extra funding from Congress to finance the PTC technology for Amtrak and other commuter rails. The FRA’s first request for $825 million was ignored, and a second request for extra funding was made just this year for the 2016 budget as part of the Department of Transportation’s Grow America budget. House Republicans not only ignored the second request again this past week, they cut total Amtrak funding guaranteeing Amtrak will not be able to implement the train safety feature in the next fiscal year.

The former administrator for the FRA, Joseph C. Szabo, said; “Clearly, one of the hurdles that Amtrak has and the commuter rail industry has is that this very expensive technology was never funded. The failure to invest in Amtrak’s capital program clearly has been a hindrance in more timely deployment. The way to make public rail a priority would be with public funding.” However, part and parcel of the Republican withholding adequately funding for Amtrak, or any public transportation, is to bankrupt it into oblivion for privatization. There is little doubt the impending wrongful death lawsuits will hasten the financial demise of Amtrak. That human beings perished to achieve their privatization goal is as inconsequential to Republicans as withholding healthcare and food from hungry Americans that according to Republicans like Paul Ryan is crucial to “saving more money” for tax cuts for the rich.

America, Home Of The Brave

Texas Democrats Stall, Run Out The Clock On Republican Anti-Gay Marriage Bill

A Republican effort to pass a bill that would prohibit government employees from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Texas failed to come to a vote, as Texas Democrats successfully ran out the clock on Friday. Republicans had until midnight Friday to pass the bill, which had nearly unanimous GOP support in the Republican-controlled chamber. However, Democrats stalled by engaging in long debates over noncontroversial pieces of legislation, and by introducing measures sure to be voted down, like raising the state’s minimum wage.

The anti-gay marriage bill’s sponsor Cecil Bell (R-Montgomery County) expressed frustration that the GOP had been outmaneuvered by the Democratic minority. Bell complained, ”there was a bunch of folks who don’t think that state sovereignty is a high priority”. Democratic Rep. Celia Israel (North Austin/Pflugerville) offered a different perspective from Bell’s. She exclaimed:

We’re sending a message to Texas that this is worth fighting for. We’re not in the majority. We don’t control the ship. But we can help to steer it in the right direction.

This is not the first time Texas Republicans have been defeated by a passionate Democratic minority in the Lone Star State.  In June 2013, State Senator Wendy Davis (Fort Worth) led a successful Democratic filibuster of anti-abortion legislation in the state’s upper chamber, running out the Senate clock, and forcing Republicans to regroup in order to push through anti-abortion legislation in a later session. Davis’ long floor speech captured national attention and caused the GOP some embarrassment.

As time expired on the anti-gay marriage bill Friday, more than 20 pieces of legislation were still stacked ahead of Bell’s bill. The Democrats had placed enough procedural hurdles in the way to prevent the GOP bill from coming to a floor vote.

Although the Texas legislature is dominated by Republicans, Lone Star state Democrats continue to fight for the rights of everyday Texans. Those Democrats are determined to stand up and fight, using whatever legal means possible to ensure that LGBT Texans are not denied the right to marry the person they love.

Republicans Rally Behind State ‘Religious Freedom’ Laws

The Republican National Committee has endorsed state legislation that has been used to justify anti-LGBT discrimination.

'LGBT rights are human rights'

'LGBT rights are human rights,' Obama says

Neil Cavuto Lashes Out At President Obama For Telling The Truth About Fox

Someone needs to tell Fox's Neil Cavuto he should leave the comedy to the comedians.

Telling The Truth About Fox

Republicans Forced To Admit That Obama Approved Raid On ISIL Was Successful

Republicans like McConnell (R-KY) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have been forced to admit on the Sunday shows that the Obama approved raid on ISIL in Syria has been successful.

On ABC’s This Week, McConnell said, “Well, the president has done a good job with these special operations type missions. Where I think the administration has fallen down is they tend not to favor, generally speaking, capture and interrogation. Although it’s good that the wife of this terrorist was captured and will be interrogated. I’ve been distressed, for example, about the willingness to release prisoners at Guantanamo. Look, this is not a criminal type matter. This is a defense matter. What you want to do is you want to capture people, you want to interrogate them, and you want to try to prevent the next atrocity. I wish we’d had, you know, frankly, more emphasis on capturing, detaining and interrogation than on strikes. Although the strikes are important, and I congratulate those who carried it out. It sounds like it was a very successful mission.”

Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on Fox News Sunday, “For now, let’s just say it was a successful raid, and it’s good news. Obviously, anytime you can take away and degrade top leadership of an organization it’s a positive step forward….It remains a risk, but obviously we want to congratulate the men and women in uniform who carried it out and the President for undertaking the mission.”

McConnell and Rubio are two of the Republicans who tried to sabotage President Obama’s foreign policy with their letter to Iran, so for Republicans to not only admit the mission was a success, but also praise the president is something that has been virtually unseen during the Obama presidency.

Reports are that the US raid in Syria has killed 32 ISIS members including four leaders. The symbolic message that the raid sends is that terrorists are not safe anywhere on this Earth. It takes an unspeakable amount of leadership for the President to authorize a mission where special operations forces are going into a territory where they have no allies on the ground.

The courage showed by those who carried out the mission is immeasurable, but they wouldn’t have been there if Obama would not have approved the mission. As much as it must drive Republicans crazy, even they are admitting that President Obama has been successful.

Idiot Republican: Obama Must Officially 'Declare War On The Concept Of Terror'

Last month, Ohio Republican Bill Johnson stopped by “The Tom Roten Morning Show,” where he said that just as many did not grasp the Nazi threat in the run-up to World War II, the Obama administration is ignoring the dangers posed by terrorist groups today. The idiot’s so... MORE

Jeb Bush’s Brother Created ISIL

The responsibility of who fomented the rise of the Islamic State therefore falls on the shoulders of many actors, both American and Middle Eastern. 

Sorry. Iraq Wasn’t a Good Faith Mistake ...

It Was Based on Lies.

Guns, Guns, Guns: How States Like Georgia Make Cop Killing Easy

by Cliff Schecter

The felon who killed NYPD officer Brian Moore got his illegal gun from a state that has become a de facto exporter of crime weapons.
Last week, our society once again paid the price in blood for a government run by the galactically stupid and ideologically inept.
In New York, a police officer died. While a tragedy, that is not the story here. It's why this 25-year old member of the NYPD, Brian Moore, lost his life in a hail of bullets a week ago. It is once again a story about those of us living in the 21st century, suffering due to the actions of those bathing in a sea of branded myth and intellectual decay. Or as it's known in common parlance: Georgia.
Last year, when I first started writing this column, I covered the many foibles, distortions and atavistic tics of those who would seek to put guns in nursery schools, bars and cults, and give Stand Your Ground rights to felons. But you gotta give credit to Georgia legislators, for whom it takes a lot more than legal precedent, common sense and the opposition of constituents and law enforcement to prevail upon them to do something rash, like preventing people from getting shot. As dog is their witness, they'll never go hungry for bullets again!
The problem is that decisions made by pencil-dick provincial legislators in one state affect the health and safety of those living in every other contiguous state, which is where we now find ourselves. In New York City, a city in a state that chooses not to hand over policy to those with the cognitive capacity of a worn-out whoopee cushion, 90 percent of guns recovered from crimes come from out of state..
New York, you see, is among the states that have common-sense background checks to prevent felons, domestic abusers and the mentally incapable from getting guns—states that don't think it should be harder to get birth control than an assault rifle. Georgia, on the other hand, exported two times the national average of guns used in crimes. Guess which of these models for gun regulation leads to 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers killed?
We know that the firearm that led to Moore's murder, a .38-caliber revolver, was stolen from a gun store in Georgia in 2011.
I'll give you some time, especially if your name is John Lott.
So what do we know? We know Officer Moore was killed by a violent felon (attempted murder charge and nine arrests, two for assaulting police officers) not allowed to possess a firearm. We know that the firearm that led to Moore's murder, a .38-caliber revolver, was stolen from a gun store in Georgia in 2011. We know that it was one of 23 guns stolen overall, nine of which ended up on the streets of New York in crime scenes. We know that in 2006 and 2009, Georgia was the leading exporter of crime guns to other states.
We know that Georgia is so concerned about the welfare of its citizens, that it not only doesn't require one to report lost or stolen guns, but it prohibits localities in the state from doing so (so much for right-wing talking points about "local control!"). We know the effect of this is to allow a vibrant gun-smuggling operation of "straw purchases" for people who can't have guns, very lucrative for dealers or others who lack a conscience but love to charge a premium. And we know that Georgia lacks universal background checks by design, so any loon, terrorist or person with an axe to grind can walk into a gun show or go online, and buy guns that possess military firepower.
Let your kids walk alone to a playground a mile away, we'll swoop in like jacked-up Kal-El and threaten to take them away. That also goes for people who say there are positive benefits from smoking pot. Clearly, the only response is to have someone resembling a Terminator T-800 Cyberdine Systems Model 101 with a badge kick through your door through your window and deprive you of a child. Wanna sell a gun to a psychopath and serial killer? Or kill someone else's kid by "accidentally" shooting through a wall? No worries! it's just how we roll.
So right around the time we celebrate the 15-year anniversary of the The Brady Campaign's Million Mom March on Washington, D.C., an officer died. He didn't have to die. It was a choice that legislators made. To make it that much easier for this to happen. In the words of a dolt of a Tennessee legislator, while adding guns to their state parks as a sop to the National Rifle Association, "an act of dog."
Dog seems to get a lot of help from pretzel-logic, bullshit wranglers, if you ask me.

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Bernie Sanders and 17 Senate Democrats Urge Obama To Use The Presidency To Help Workers

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and 17 Senate Democrats are urging President Obama to use his executive powers to help American workers.

In a letter, Sanders wrote to the President:

The federal government continues to be America’s largest low-wage job creator, subsidizing poverty-level wages through taxpayer-funded contracts. We urge you to harness the power of the presidency to help workers.

Now is the time to declare that the federal government will invest our taxpayer dollars to incentivize model employers that commit to creating good jobs and to rebuilding America’s ailing middle class,” wrote the senators. The letter was sent to the president today.

Sen. Sanders and the Senate Democrats urged President Obama to boost the wages of federal contract worker to a living wage. The letter didn’t specify what wage they were seeking, but liberals, including Sen. Sanders, have suggested a living wage of $15/hour.

Seventeen Democratic senators signed on to the letter including Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), and Martin Heinrich (N.M.).

The issue has the potential to be a big winner for President Obama and the Democratic Party. With this letter, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) reminded Democrats that he is an outspoken advocate for low-wage workers. Since the odds of the Republican-controlled Congress passing a minimum wage increase are exactly zero, Democrats are going to have to action where they can to help the country’s underpaid workers.

The contrast between Democrats and Republicans could not be clearer. While Republicans are trying to cut taxes for the wealthy, Democrats are pushing for higher wages. President Obama has an opportunity to do something important for a group of low-wage workers, and something tells me that his executive action pen will be wielded again.

Democrats Threaten To Kill The Patriot Act’s Domestic Spying Programs With Filibuster

Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans have unified around the common goal of killing some of the Patriot Act’s worst domestic spying programs with a filibuster.

Politico reported on the fact that key parts of the Patriot Act are set to expire with no deal in sight:

The prospects of a deal look grim: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday night proposed just a two-month extension of expiring PATRIOT Act provisions to give the two sides more time to negotiate, but even that was immediately dismissed by critics of the program.

….

The Senate is stalemated. McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) want to prolong the authorities for 5½ years untouched. But libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats are threatening to let the authorities expire. Just extending them a few months faces long odds of clearing Congress before the break.

“I’m going to filibuster. I’m going to do everything it takes to block a short-term extension,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). He and Paul (R-Ky.) have threatened to filibuster any attempt to prolong the bulk collection program.

There is broad support for the USA Freedom Act, which is a bill of modest reforms, but McConnell and other spying hawks want a five and a half year extension of the full Patriot Act that is unlikely to happen.

Democrats and their Republican allies on this issue can win by doing nothing. They are never going to pass a two-month extension of the program, and they are definitely not going to pass McConnell’s plan.

The Patriot Act is one of the ugly living legacies of the post-9/11 Bush years. It is a horrible piece of civil liberties violating legislation that was hurriedly passed in the panic after 9/11. Some Republicans have already started to trot out the scare rhetoric of the terrorists coming to kill us all if the NSA loses its illegal data collection programs, but the tide has finally turned.

Most Americans are ready to put their liberties ahead of fear. Getting rid of some of the most egregious programs in the Patriot Act would not only restore freedom. It would also be the first steps towards removing another ugly stain that was left behind by the shrub.

Ziggy

Quick Hits

Rapper 'Killer Mike' To Bill Maher: O'Reilly's More Full Of Shit Than An Outhouse

Maher: Americans Won't Take Anything Seriously Unless It's Delivered With A British Accent

Jon Stewart Takes Fox, Scarborough To Task For Whining About Obama Saying Fox Demonizes The Poor

The match game: Connect the oligarch to the GOP politician he owns

“Whether it’s the Koch brothers or Soros on the left or Sheldon,” former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently said, “if you’re going to have an election process that radically favors billionaires and is discriminating against the middle class—which we now have—then billionaires are going to get a lot of attention.”

The Match Game

Paul Ryan Lies Through His Shiny White Teeth To Deny Republicans Gutted Amtrak

Last Thursday, Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) went on Fox News to lie through his shiny white teeth about the Republicans’ role in the fatal Amtrak crash. And of course,...

Paul Ryan Lies

Marco Rubio struggles to explain Iraq position

 THIS SHOULD BE EASY

Dumber than Dubya

Wisconsin Republicans Pass Bill Banning Poor People From Buying Shellfish, Potatoes And Ketchup

From the "OK, now this is just plain silly" Department:

Wisconsin Republicans are following through with their plan to be the cruelest state in the nation when it comes to the way poor people are treated.

Read more 

Scott’s Dire Shutdown Warnings Prove Republicans Will Stop At NOTHING To Block Access To Healthcare

Florida's Rick Scott proves the Republicans are doomed, as he tries to screw poor people out of health coverage, while balancing his state’s budget.

Read full story 

Judge blasts Pennsylvania Republican sentenced to register as a sex offender

A Pennsylvania judge denounced a former local Republican Party leader on Friday while sentencing him to regularly register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

‘A sexually violent predator'