... The Party’s Over And Everyone Who’s Not Hallucinating Knows
Goodbye Republicans. We wish we could say, “It’s been nice knowing you,” but that would be a lie.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
The NRA’s Desperation Grows As Obama Is Winning the PR War on Gun Laws
President Obama is talking about why we need gun safety measures and
reasonable, responsible gun laws on a daily basis lately. People are
listening …
The NRA can’t afford to allow people and certainly not our representatives to even have that discussion. So they’re doubling down on the lies about the boogeyman Obama coming for everyone’s guns.
To wit:
Yes, Obama really does want to confiscate legally owned firearms… https://www.nraila.org/articles/20151009/president-obama-shows-his-true-gun-control-agenda … #2A
A taste of the pathetic and desperate lies the NRA Institute for Legislative Action is peddling:
Clearly, the president is infuriated with Congress and the American people for failing to adopt his gun control agenda, but what is he actually promoting by way of solutions? His recent speeches have been long on vitriol, but short on specifics.Vitriol? Obama is vitriolic? This can only work on someone who doesn’t listen to his speeches or is already biased beyond help. The President might be a lot of things, but vitriolic is not one of them. Not even once has he actually come across that way, even when it was justified.
…
What Obama is really proposing, despite some platitudes to the contrary, is the end of private firearm ownership for self-defense – which is essentially what happened in Australia and the U.K.
They are actually claiming Obama is calling for an end to private firearm ownership. LOL.
Of course, that claim bears no relationship to the truth. Here’s a list of the actions the President has called for. Wouldn’t such intentions have been clear in his executive actions? Instead, we have things that any reasonable person who is not a felon wanting a gun would agree to. They do not infringe on responsible gun owners (I am a gun owner, FYI).
Things like:
Closing a Loophole to Keep Some of the Most Dangerous Guns Out of the Wrong HandsYeah, almost an end to private gun ownership! But not. But just in case anyone is trembling in fear that mean old President Obama is going to knock on their door and demand their gun, here’s his entire plan for keeping our communities safer by reducing gun violence.
Keeping Surplus Military Weapons Off Our Streets
It’s not just mass shootings, either. Every day there are murders in our country via guns. Everytown found that background check laws make women safer, “Controlling for population, there are 46 percent fewer intimate partner gun homicides of women in states that require background checks for private handgun sales than in states that do not.”
If a party were really “pro-life” they’d certainly be for background check laws in order to protect women, since an average of three women per day are murdered in this country by an intimate or ex intimate partner.
What about law enforcement? They are put into the line of fire by these irresponsible laws as well. Everytown reports, “The NRA has fought to prevent Congress from providing any funding for research on gun violence; it has blocked law enforcement from being able to share analyses of crime gun trace data; and it has tried to pass laws prohibiting doctors and military leaders from talking to patients and service members about responsible gun ownership and suicide prevention.”
What to do when there are two school shootings on a single day and gun violence is clearly out of control, but you represent the manufacturers of guns? Double down on fear-mongering. Anything to troll the dialogue so that citizens can’t have a real conversation about the need for reasonable gun control measures – a thing that most NRA members actually also want. FYI.
But of course, the NRA doesn’t actually represent its members anymore.
Obama Explains Why A Congress Still Investigating Benghazi Refuses to Pass Gun Laws
This issue has the President more than irritated. Think of what we could have done, he told a crowd Saturday night at a DNC event in Los Angeles.
The President talked about going to Oregon to visit with the families of the people who’d been shot at the community college. “And it seems like I have to do this every two months or so,” Obama said. “And while I was there, there were actually two more shootings at two other schools, one in Arizona, one in Texas — while I was visiting the families of these victims.”
Noting that some people protested him on behalf of their understanding of their Second Amendment rights, Obama continued, “But I came away feeling just as strongly as I did the day it happened when I went to that podium in the White House to say, this is a choice we make. This is not a natural disaster. This is not inevitable. This doesn’t happen in other countries.”
“We’re not more violent than other developed countries in the world; it’s just that when we commit violence we’re more deadly. It’s a decision that we make. And it’s not just mass shootings, but it’s the same decision that leads us to have, in neighborhoods all across this country — in big cities, and sometimes in smaller ones — young people shot every day on the streets,” the President said.
Obama pointed out, “It’s easier to buy a gun than buy a book.”
How did we get here?
“My favorite statistic in 2012 was that among people who don’t vote I beat Mitt Romney by 25 percent,” President Obama said to laughter. “Now, I did fine. I ended up getting over 50 percent in two consecutive elections, which hasn’t been done since Mr. Eisenhower.”
“But think about it — 40 percent — more than 40 percent of people still didn’t vote. And if they had, I would have had a Congress that would have cooperated with me… and we would have been making so much more progress,” Obama said. “But they didn’t. They didn’t participate because they had listened to the cynics who told them that nothing changes and nothing is going to work.”
Cynicism and complacency, he told the audience, is what we are fighting the most.
President Obama said we’ve made a lot of progress but we have a Congress that’s broken so we can’t get a lot of work done. He condemned money in politics for part of this, “And part of the reason it’s broken is because money has come to dominate too much of the political agenda in Washington, that lobbyists have too much influence.” But another part is those ideologues who are willing “burn down the house” unless they get “100 percent of what they want”. (Waving hello to the Tea Party and House of Representatives.)
The bottom line is that if more people who supported President Obama had voted in 2012 (and 2014), we might very well have passed or at least debated gun safety measures. Instead, we have a Congress wasting money on the ongoing political investigations into a made-up conspiracy about Benghazi, which have proven to be illegal.
Republican Whistleblower Was Fired For Refusing to Target Clinton Benghazi Investigation
Republican Benghazi woes mount as it is reported that Republicans
fired their own investigator in part because he refused to target
Clinton …
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, issued the following statement in response to a New York Times report that a Republican investigator was fired in part because he would not go along with Republican plans to target Secretary Clinton:
These are extremely serious whistleblower charges by one of Chairman Gowdy’s own handpicked investigators who reports that he was fired in part for not going along with the Republican leadership’s plan to use the Select Committee to target Hillary Clinton, and they show – from the inside – that Kevin McCarthy’s stark admission was true: Republicans have been abusing millions of taxpayer dollars for the illegitimate purpose of damaging Hillary Clinton’s bid for president.The New York Times reports that,
A former investigator for the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi plans to file a complaint in federal court next month alleging that he was fired unlawfully in part because his superiors opposed his efforts to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in the Libyan city rather than focus primarily on the role of the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.The investigator in question, Bradley F. Podliska, is a major in the Air Force Reserve, and he claims in part that his firing was due to the refusal of Repulbicans to take his reserve commitment seriously when he was sent to Germany for 39 days.
He began working for the Benghazi committee in September 2014. He is no slouch. The Times details that he is “a lifelong Republican, holds a doctorate in political science from Texas A&M University.” According to the committee, he was “terminated for cause…in part, because he himself manifested improper partiality and animus in his investigative work.”
Of course we can expect Republicans to do their utmost to discredit Podliska. Their investigation is crumbling around them following the admission by Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that the entire purpose of the investigation was to discredit Hillary Clinton in an effort to block her way to the presidency.
Of course, this only adds to Republican woes:
@HouseBenghazi Will u be refunding the taxpayers for this political campaign? Or just illegally firing more active-duty #veterans? #Podliska
Republican Whistleblower Confirms Benghazi Investigation Is Illegally Targeting Clinton
A Republican, who formerly served as an investigator for the House Select Committee on Benghazi, confirmed that his republican cabal bosses are conducting an illegal investigation for partisan political purposes that is targeting Hillary Clinton
The New York Times reported:
A former investigator for the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi plans to file a complaint in federal court next month alleging that he was fired unlawfully in part because his superiors opposed his efforts to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in the Libyan city rather than focus primarily on the role of the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
….
Despite the change in focus, Major Podliska continued to work on his examination of the response in Washington to the attack, only to meet escalating resistance from his superiors, according to his complaint. In his view, they felt he was not focusing enough on Mrs. Clinton’s alleged mistakes, a criticism he considered odd given that his findings were far from favorable to her.
The resolution that authorized the Select Committee does not give Republicans the power to investigate Hillary Clinton’s email server. The Select Committee is authorized to examine, “internal and public executive branch communications about the attacks on United States facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.”
The Select Committee is not authorized to investigate Hillary Clinton or her use of a private email server. By redirecting the investigation to focus on Clinton, House wingnuts are illegally misusing taxpayer funds for partisan political purposes.
The ranking member of the Select Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said in a statement, “These are extremely serious whistleblower charges by one of Chairwimp Gowdy’s own handpicked investigators who reports that he was fired in part for not going along with the Republican leadership’s plan to use the Select Committee to target Hillary Clinton, and they show—from the inside—that Kevin McCarthy’s stark admission was true: Republicans have been abusing millions of taxpayer dollars for the illegitimate purpose of damaging Hillary Clinton’s bid for president.”
Benghazi Select Committee member, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) called for the committee to be shut down, “Even before Kevin McCarthy’s comments laid bare the true intent of the committee, it’s been clear that Secretary Clinton has been the true target of this investigation, and the Republican whistleblower who has come forward only provides further evidence of what has been long evident. It’s time to shut down the Benghazi Select Committee. Only by ending this expensive and politicized investigation can we begin to undo the damage already done through this unprecedented use of Congress’s power for nakedly political purposes.”
It is time for an investigation into the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Even committee chairwimp Gowdy’s own former investigator is exposing the partisan intent of the investigation.
House Republicans have abused their power, and they must be held accountable for their corruption.
House Wingnuts Meltdown And Admit Defeat By Blaming Obama For Benghazi Probe
When two House wingnuts were asked about the Benghazi Select
Committee, they melted down and threw up the white flag of defeat by
blaming President Obama for their own Benghazi investigation.Transcript via CNN:
LABRADOR: Let’s be clear what he said. He said the investigation turned political, according to his opinion.
And when he was asked specifically if the investigation was political, he said no. He said, in fact, that the investigation started properly, that they were investigating what happened in Benghazi, and that he felt that it had changed. So, let’s not mix this up, because…
BASH: But, regardless, he’s saying that the reason why he was upset is because it turned political.
LABRADOR: Yes, but…
BASH: No matter, no matter where it started.
LABRADOR: But he just had a disagreement with the people who are doing the investigation.
Remember what Watergate — Watergate started with an investigation about whether the Nixon junta actually had anything to do with the break-in at Watergate. It ended up being about some missing tapes.
BASH: So, you think it’s OK to have turned…
(CROSSTALK) LABRADOR: No, I don’t — I don’t think it…
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: … Hillary Clinton?
LABRADOR: Well, that’s what they found out.
They been asking questions about what Hillary Clinton did. They asked her for her e-mails. She wouldn’t deliver the e-mails. And they didn’t know why they deliver the e-mails. They didn’t know if there was a smoking gun in there or anything. So, they turned their attention to that.
And, in fact, the only reason there’s any politics or we even have an investigation is because the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton decided a few months before an election that they were going to lie about what happened at Benghazi.
Let’s — let’s be clear about that. If they hadn’t told different stories about what happened in Benghazi, we wouldn’t — we wouldn’t even have an investigation.
BASH: Cole, let me just read what the Clinton campaign said in response to this.
A spokesman said: “These are explosive allegations. This Republican whistle-blower’s account from inside the Benghazi Committee may provide the most definitive proof to date that this taxpayer-funded investigation has been a partisan sham from the start.”
You know what? Regardless, it gives them some ammunition.
COLE (R), OKLAHOMA: It does.
But it’s worth noting that, until the last couple of weeks, most of the attacks on this committee have come from the right, because it was seen as being too judicious and not being partisan.
Frankly, I — this is one where you have to look at the committee chairman and look at what he’s done and make a judgment. Gowdy is a person of absolute personal integrity. The fact that he’s not here, and Raul and I are, is a pretty good indication he’s not trying to exploit this for — to advance himself in any way.
This interview was nothing short of a disaster. The two House wingnts could not defend the existence of the Benghazi Special Committee. Labrador compared Benghazi to Watergate, even though the tapes were directly related to the Watergate break-in, whereas Clinton’s use of a private email server had nothing to do with Benghazi.
Cole admitted that Hillary Clinton now has been gifted political ammo to use against the committee, but that shouldn’t matter because Select Committee Chairwimp Gowdy is a good guy who would never abuse his power to advance a political agenda.
At the end of the day, according to these two House wingnuts, the Benghazi investigation is President Obama’s fault. When House wingnuts break out the blame Obama excuse, it means that they have lost. The blame Obama excuse is used when they have nothing else. Blaming President Obama is the House wingnut last ditch Hail Mary that never works.
Republicans have been caught, and blaming Obama is a sure sign of the Republican cabal defeat.
Republicans Create 5th Committee To Destroy Planned Parenthood After Last Four Fail
Endless Planned Parenthood investigations to go along with endless
“Repeal Obamacare” votes and endless Benghazi investigations. This
amounts to fraud.
A Woman Should Be Her Husband’s Sex Slave–Whether She Wants To Or Not
Or So, Michelle Duggar Says
Not only can you get advice from Michelle Duggar on how to raise a
pervert and a scam artist or two, you can also learn to be the perfect
submissive wife.Monday, October 12, 2015
The Daily Drift
Welcome to the Monday Edition of The Truth Be Told.
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Positive and Progressive.
~ Mike and Janis Everson
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Republican Nightmare - People Thinking For Themselves... !
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Obama Rips Republicans While Calling Out Their Lies And Total Denial Of Reality
Obama proceeded to bust Republicans on their denial of reality,
saying of the shrub years, "To hear them tell it, those were the good old
days …
Obama said listening to Republicans is really depressing and it doesn’t match up with the truth. After listing a lot of positive changes including cutting our deficits by 2/3s, Obama proceeded to bust Republicans on their denial of reality. Saying of the shrub years, “To hear them tell it, those were the good old days. The golden years.” The President grinned as the audience laughed. “And then me and Patty, we messed it up.”
The audience went wild as that line settled in.
This is a must-watch if you like watching President Obama bust Republicans:
“Which makes you wonder– why are all these Republican politicians so down on America?”
“I mean, I know it’s political season, but listening to them is really depressing. And it kind of doesn’t match up with the truth. In the reality that they create, everything was terrific in 2008 — in the middle of the worst recession in our lifetimes,” Obama said. The President reminded everyone of the reality, “Unemployment, uninsured rates going up; we were in two wars, hopelessly addicted to foreign oil, bin Laden still at large. To hear them tell it, those were the good old days. The golden years. And then me and Patty, we messed it up.”
The President acknowledged that people are still struggling, “But this is important because folks are — look, folks are struggling in communities around the country sometimes; they are trying to figure out how they can see their wages go up, and they’re still struggling to afford a college education. So there are reasons why people want to see more improvement.”
But then brought it back to the historical reality, “But they don’t remember where we were.”
Obama busted Republicans for trolling despair, “And sometimes they may feel like there’s no hope. And that’s what the other side is counting on — is folks forgetting what happened the last time they were in charge.”
“You’ve got to give them credit for chutzpah,” Obama said. “You’ve got to feel bad for the fact-checkers who just cannot keep up with some of the stuff they say.” (The audience loved this.)
“They’re saying, wait, wait, wait, what he just said about climate change — that’s not true. But before that’s happened, suddenly they’re saying something else about immigration that’s not true. Or they’re saying something about the deficit that’s not true.”
Why are they denying reality? Because, as I write often in these pages, they have nothing else – or as the President put it, “Now, part of the reason that they have to do this is because they keep running on the so many policies that caused so many problems in the first place.”
This is what happens when a party refuses to admit its mistakes and adapt its policies according to historical realities. They are left denying reality and selling lies.
A gander at the list of failed policies Republicans continue to run on, courtesy of the President, “More tax breaks for folks at the very top. Cutting investments in things like education. Repealing the Affordable Care Act and kicking millions off health insurance. Gutting Wall Street reform, risking another crisis by letting the biggest banks run wild. Denying that our planet is getting warmer, and thereby unraveling new rules on power plants to protect the air our kids breathe.”
Yep. Nothing to see here.
And on a sobering note, the President said, “We know we’ve got to do something to prevent the kind of massacres we saw last week, and two months before that and two months before that, — and two months before that…It’s not normal. It is not inevitable. It doesn’t just happen.” This got a passionate round of applause that continued through the next paragraph.
“It is a choice that we make, and it is a choice that we can change,” Obama said, calling out the “politics of fear” used by politicians who refuse to do anything to pass reasonable gun safety laws. “There are ways to protect our children and protect our rights. Don’t pretend that they’re aren’t.”
“And, look, it’s comfortable to just say Washington doesn’t work anymore, everything is dysfunctional, just to turn away. Or to start looking for false prophets who spout things that, under examination, don’t really make any sense, but feed your biases and your fears. But we can’t afford that. We’ve got too much work to do,” Obama said, reminding Democrats that our government is part of us and that all citizens need to be engaged in order to enact change.
The fundraising event drew a crowd of about 1,450 people and raised more than $500,000 for Murray’s campaign according to a pool report.
The Truth Leaks Out Of Fox News As O’Reilly Admits Benghazi Panel Is A Fraud
Jeb has yet another coordination malfunction
“We just started to advertise — actually the Right to Rise PAC started to advertise, not our campaign.”
Jeb opposes Voting Rights Act restoration
Not only did he misunderstand the issue, his answer was wrong on his own terms.
Republican Cabal Governor Finally Admits His Hand-Picked Emergency Manager Poisoned Children
Michigan’s power-hungry lunatic fringe wingnut teabagger Snyder must be held
accountable for the children poisoned by his hand-picked emergency
manager. Republican cabal candidate Kasich pushes cuts to Social Security
![Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). [CNN]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_trL5w-uKxMkRCqFk8V2L12sJ-cvXLzqbnSL6Ve67pFo6t5knVvAjJJrIv1S4Gy5HRZ7aIRqsBTDyb8sV0Teb7PvYKY_SSDS8cwREi0viC2hkEmK_ljOaBisrJzLtU7UglRPKKfy-9CxX5oWhJnFc0esbObjw=s0-d)
Carson keeps digging, calls Anti-Defamation League’s Holocaust history “foolishness”
When the Anti-Defamation League tells you that your Holocaust history is wrong, your Holocaust history is wrong.
What Does The Speaker Of The House Do, Other Than Adultery?
Republicans are avoiding the race for speaker of the House
like how Santorum avoids post-coital eye contact with goats. The
job that is second in line for the presidency is only attracting
whackjobs, arsonists, and tin foil hat-wearers. Why does no one want
this job? For chrissakes, it’s the only job ever created by
Boehner, and no one wants it. What is so horrible about it? Let’s explain. The job of speaker of the House is written into the
Constitution (Article 1, Section 2). ...
Arizona Teabagger 'Hero' Thinks All This Congressional Chaos Is A Blast!
With the Republican cabal in COMPLETE DISARRAY, it’s nice to
know that at least one guy is having himself a ball! Arizona idiot
Schweikert sponsored that whackadoodle Secret Science Reform Act of
2014, to allow tinfoil hat-wearing internet trolls their constitutional
right to “peer review” the government’s scientific studies. So, ya know,
nuts. But he’s also a co-founder of the
uber wingnutty extra special insane lunatic fringe House Freedom Caucus — those nihilists
...
Colbert Makes A Mockery Of Chaos Being Caused By House 'Freedom Caucus'
The Freedom Caucus has made the job of Speaker of the House very undesirable.
Meet The Anti-Choice Agitator Behind McCarthy's Demise
Steven Baer is a slimeball and he's emailing people with rumors and innuendo.
Tennessee Wingnuts Try Drug Testing Welfare Applicants, It Fails Spectacularly
Tennessee’s “fiscal conservatives” tried to save money by screwing the poor — and guess how that turned out?Kentucky Wingnut Calls For Drug Testing Senior Citizens Who Use Medicare
The Republican obsession with drug testing American citizens has
reached a brand new low, and this time the targets are senior citizens
who use Medicare ...
O'Reilly Calls Media Matters A 'Hate Group'
This from a vile hate-group of one?!
Sunday, October 11, 2015
The Daily Drift
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Typical Republican Food Truck - Broken down and burned up ... !
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Republicans Were Wrong in South Carolina Flood Disaster and 17 People Died
The torrential rains started falling, the 400 million looked like a
bargain. Infrastructures began collapsing like proverbial dominoes. Just
like the Democrats predicted it would …
But his final years were mostly filled with hatred of liberals. After Ted Kennedy died, Breitbart almost immediately described the venerated Kennedy to the Harrisburg ‘Patriot-News, as a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard,” a “special pile of human excrement” and a word I can’t figure out how to censor without losing its meaning. Suffice to say, his reaction was beyond critical and mean-spirited.
Given the successor Breitbart hole by the same name, it is, therefore, mighty surprising to find an account of the devastating South Carolina floods as being informative, objective and highly critical of the state’s Republican power structure. Here are some observations from a recent story from the site mixed in with other observations, demonstrating how “the cabal of no” lived up to its name, even in the most dire and deadly of circumstances.
Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the matter, you should know that at latest count, 17 people have perished in South Carolina in a natural disaster described as a “thousand-year storm.” Sadly, the first victim lost her life in my county, October 1st. Silvia Trejo Arteaga drove into an underpass and apparently misjudged the depth of the water. As her car sank, she couldn’t escape. Most of the victims drowned; at least a half-dozen were killed in auto accidents related to the weather.
My informal measuring from a ‘can in the yard’ rain gauge, yielded a total of about 8½ inches in a period of just over two days. It turns out my readings were downright benign. State Capitol, Columbia, registered 17 inches of rain in 17 hours. That’s well beyond average monsoon levels.
At a news conference, reporters asked Haley and other officials repeatedly about whether state spending had fallen short on dam and infrastructure maintenance. Her demeanor was described as “testy” as she evaded the question by saying “I think the analysis of this can be done after the danger of the floods passes.” Does this governor pay the least bit of attention to the actions of her state’s legislature and transportation, infrastructure and water-oriented departments? These numbers have been gathered and analyzed for years. They just haven’t been acted upon. Most area pundits have damn near got them memorized.
Continuing on the ‘Duh’ path are these words from Lindsey Graham. He estimates damage totals as high as one billion dollars and he wants federal aid to kick in right away. Of course he’s on record as having voted against such aid for a horrific disaster, Hurricane Sandy.
In order to keep his flagging, no-chance, race for the Republican pretender nomination viable, Graham patronizingly added that “the federal lifeline must be treated with care to avoid a “pork-laden monstrosity” like the feds aid package to the Northeast Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The real reason for Graham’s vote? It was a Democratic-sponsored bill and Republicans delayed its passage by 91 days. Graham was also following the lead of Cruz, who in 2013, renounced “Sandy” for its pork; and yet his state of Texas has siphoned off more Federal Emergency Management Agency funds than any other state since the beginning of 2009.
The Low country region of the state, located along the coast, is still facing potentially severe weather. That will surely add to the tragic statistics gathered to this point. All 375,000 water customers from Columbia, were told to boil their water at least a minute before drinking it. Statewide swift-water rescues will number well into the hundreds, probably exceeding a thousand, before things calm down.
An Emergency Management official pointed out that a car can be swept away in as little as a foot of water and stalled in two feet of water.
In a recent session, the state general assembly voted down a request of $400 million (Georgia just passed a similar bill at $900 million) for desperately needed infrastructure that had largely gone ignored for decades. Could Haley’s promised veto of any bill that didn’t include a reduction in the state income tax been an influence to vote no?
Then the torrential rains started falling, the 400 million looked like a bargain. Infrastructures began collapsing like proverbial dominoes. Just like the Democrats predicted it would in such a circumstance.
Republicans refused to approve the expenditures out of fear of a Haley veto and because they didn’t want to raise taxes. Their reasoning was especially ironic since the business community was pushing the hardest for the upgrades and new construction. They’d figure their way around a tax increase, later. An oil company cited the extensive travel by their trucks on potholed highways. Yes, I realize a bill passed this year would not have had much, if any, impact on the flooding, but it’s still an imperative for the safety of the population.
Nobody can deny that the state was pitifully ill-prepared for Mother Nature’s tantrum of rainfall. Time ran out before adjournment, as the house and senate even failed to reach a compromise on respective gas tax increase bills that were two cents apart. South Carolina roads are basically funded by the state’s gas tax. It hasn’t been raised since 1987. My abacus calculates that’s 28 years.
About the amount of time it’ll take to clean this mess up.
Bernie Sanders Busts Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO For Not Lowering Price Of Lifesaving Drug
In a statement Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) blasted the CEO for breaking his promise to roll back his price gouging:
Two months ago, former hedge fund manager and Turing CEO Martin Shkreli purchased Daraprim—a drug taken by cancer and AIDS patients—and increased the price 5,000 percent overnight, to $750 per pill.
After we sent a letter condemning his blatant profiteering, Mr. Shkreli promised the American people that he would lower the price of this drug. However, instead of lowering the price as he promised, Mr. Shkreli hired an army of new Washington lobbyists and lawyers to stem the massive fallout from his actions and to stymie congressional oversight.
On behalf of the American people, we are sickened by these actions. Mr. Shkreli is holding hostage the patients who rely on this lifesaving medication, as well as the hospitals that administer it, by charging unconscionable prices for a drug on which he has a monopoly—just because he can.
Shkreli made an empty promise publicly to lower the price while privately deploying lobbyists and lawyer to make sure that Congress does not investigate his business practices. The media forgot about the story as soon as the promise was made that the price would be lowered.
The reality is that it is going to take dedicated oversight from leaders like Sen. Sanders and Rep. Cummings to make sure that Shkreli follows through and lowers the price. The behavior of Turing Pharmaceuticals is a perfect example of why the Big Pharma monopoly must be broken.
The Affordable Care Act was a big step forward for healthcare in the United States, but Americans continue to die because they can’t afford the medications that they need. Big Pharma is ruled by greed. They will never do what is right, which is liberals like Sanders and Cummings must keep fighting because this really is a matter of life and death.
Republicans Try To Distract From Their Meltdown By Releasing Edited Clinton Emails
Yahoo News reported, “Hillary Clinton used her private email account to pass along the identity of one of the CIA’s top Libyan intelligence sources, raising new questions about her handling of classified information, according to excerpts from previously undisclosed emails released Thursday by Gowdy, the Republican chairwimp of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon responded, “Gowdy continues to release selective and misleading information about emails sent to Hillary Clinton, even as he refuses to make public any of the transcripts from the closed-door witness interviews that actually relate to Benghazi. This letter is one more example of the partisan approach taken throughout his thoroughly discredited investigation.”
It isn’t a coincidence that House Republicans are trying to distract from the fact that they are in total collapse by releasing more selectively edited information to make it appear as if Hillary Clinton broke the law.
Today’s release of edited information confirms the truth that Kevin McCarthy let slip out. The Select Committee on Benghazi is all about politics. Republicans are trying to use the committee as political cover to hide the fact that they are in complete chaos.
This sad and pathetic waste of taxpayer money must stop now.
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