Paul Becomes A National Joke After Budget Deal “Filibuster” Lasts For 18 Minutes

Paul (R-KY) told viewers of the CNBC Republican cabal 'debate' to watch him filibuster and fight the budget deal on the Senate floor, but his filibuster consisted of an eighteen and a half minute speech that was really only 15 minutes long.
This is not what Rand Paul promised viewers during the Republican 'debate' when he said, “I will stand firm. I will spend every ounce of energy to stop it. I will begin tomorrow to filibuster it.” When Paul made that statement, he knew he couldn’t filibuster the bill because McConnell had already filed a cloture motion.
His Senate colleagues, who have grown tired of the Republican senators who are running for president using the floor of the Senate as a tool for publicity, largely ignored Paul and did not join with him.

What Sen. Paul was trying to call a filibuster was time that  McConnell had already set aside for such dramatics. McConnell fully intended not to hold the final vote until after midnight. A filibuster is intended to slow down or halt the Senate. What Paul was doing was not a filibuster.
Paul’s filibuster was as lifeless as his pretender campaign.
His filibuster was a joke, and this time, people were not fooled. The budget deal passed as scheduled. Paul didn’t get the media attention, or the donor dollars that he desperately needed.
Paul has seemed disinterested in his pretender campaign since the rise of Trump and Carson buried him in the Republican field, and his attempt to sell a speech as a “filibuster” was as lazy and halfhearted as the candidate himself.

Here’s why Jeb is struggling

‘People don’t care about him’

In 1994, when a voter asked gubernatorial candidate Jeb what he would do for black Floridians if elected governor, the young politician replied, “Probably nothing.”

Rubio Argues That The Immigration System That Got His Parents Here Should Be Changed

At the Republican cabal 'debate', Rubio argued that the policy that brought his parents here should be changed to meet the realities of the 21st century.…

Wednesday evening's Republican cabal 'debate' will probably be best remembered for the Republican candidates tearing apart the CNBC moderators, or for Rubio getting the best of his mentor Jeb in a memorable exchange over Rubio’s Senate voting record. Yet, one of the most significant moments of the debate may have been Rubio’s mostly unnoticed attack on the immigration policy that brought his parents to America.

Given a chance to expound upon his position on immigration, Rubio took the opportunity to argue that the policy that brought his parents here should be changed to meet the realities of the 21st century. Rubio explained:

Look, in addition to what Trump was saying is we also need to talk about the legal immigration system for permanent residents. Today, we have a legal immigration system for permanent residency that is largely based on whether or not you have a relative living here. And that’s the way my parents came legally in 1956.
But in 2015, we have a very different economy. Our legal immigration system from now on has to be merit-based. It has to be based on what skills you have, what you can contribute economically, and most important of all, on whether or not you’re coming here to become an American, not just live in America, but be an American.

Keep in mind that Rubio’s father was a bartender and his mother was a housekeeper at a hotel after they emigrated from Cuba. They came to the United States before the Cuban Revolution so they weren’t political refugees either.
By arguing that the United States needs to shifts from a system that is based on whether a person has a relative living in the United States, to a merit system based on economic contribution, Rubio is essentially arguing that America should no longer admit people like his parents.

Merit-based immigration systems award points based on the expected economic contribution of the immigrants. In other words, high tech workers, doctors and other people with highly specialized skill sets are awarded high point scores and admitted, whereas workers in less specialized, lower paying occupations like bartenders and housekeepers are usually denied legal immigration status.
Rubio’s parents made it here under a legal immigration system that isn’t rigidly merit-based. Now that he has reaped the benefits of that legal immigration policy, Rubio wants to slam the door on other families who could benefit from the same policy. Like Carson wanting to gut the programs that helped him rise out of poverty and become a successful surgeon, Rubio wants to end the immigration policy that helped his family build the American dream from the bottom up.
Rubio’s immigration policy perfectly encapsulates the Republican cabal’s hypocrisy. Now that he has benefited from our nation’s legal immigration policy, he wants to slam the door shut behind him, so others do not have the same opportunity as he and his family were given.
Rubio could learn empathy from the Democrats. As Michelle Obama said of her husband at the 2012 Democratic Convention:

And he [President Obama] believes that when you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity…you do not slam it shut behind you…you reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

Rubio however wants to slam the door behind him, preventing other immigrants from the opportunities that were given to his family. Rubio wants to be pretender after all, and helping working class immigrants come to America won’t further his personal ambitions, so he has no use for them.

Major Florida Newspaper Releases Editorial Calling For Rubio To Resign

Do you think Rubio should resign if he hates his job so much?
Read more 

Not Good Enough

The Xenophobia Of Some Republican Cabal Candidates Is Making Latino Voters More

At the Republican cabal pretender 'debate', Latino voters will have a chance to register to vote.

Cruz' daddy warns that the next fight for the LGBT movement will be legalized pedophilia

Cruz' daddy warns that the next fight for the LGBT movement will be legalized pedophilia

That’s news to sane people.

Cruz Says ‘Climate Change Is Not Science, It’s Religion’

Drowning in evidence, Cruz denies there is evidence, and then claims if we say he "denies" it we're proving climate change is a religion…

“Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”
– Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Cruz (R-TX) attacks climate change as religion, which is kind of funny, because while attacking science as religion, he doesn’t attack religion for being religion. Cruz told  Beck that “climate change is not science, it’s religion,” and then told a big, whopping lie, saying that people who “believe” in climate change do not cite any facts in support of their position. Watch Ted Cruz spin his lies care of Right Wing Watch:

Look at the language where they call you a ‘denier.'” “Denier is not the language of science. Look, I’m the child of two scientists … The essence of the scientific method is to start with a hypothesis, then look to the evidence to disprove the hypothesis; you’re not trying to prove it, you’re trying to disprove it. Any good scientist is a skeptic; if he’s not, he or she should not be a scientist. But yet the language of the global warming alarmists, ‘denier’ is the language of religion, it’s heretic, you are a blasphemer. The response from the Sierra Club, ‘We have decreed this is the answer, you must accept it.’ And so he didn’t know his facts because he just knew his religion.

Notice how Cruz starts talking about evidence, but then shifts to the language of the debate? He skips right over all that evidence.

And if we’re on the subject of language as a determinant (and it’s not) Cruz’s own language is the language of religion. Science isn’t something you “believe in” or not, and if Cruz is, as he claims, the child of two scientists, he would know this. You don’t get to choose to believe in facts or not. You can argue against them and provide evidence of your own to support your position, but you don’t get to “believe.”
Cruz lamented that his fellow debaters were afraid to answer a question from Jake Tapper about whether or not they are “climate change skeptic.” He proudly asserted to Beck that he himself is one. He said that the satellite data for the last 18 years does not show any significant warming, even though the data does in fact show that it gets warmer every year, and that every year is the new warmest year on record.
In fact, after NASA and NOAA both determined that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880, both NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said in June that the first five months of 2015 topped 2010 as the warmest first five months of any year.
There is plenty of evidence that it’s getting warmer. Cruz simply rejects all evidence and then claims there is none.
As the Environmental Defense Fund points out,

Though natural amounts of carbon dioxide have varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today’s levels are around 400 ppm. That’s 40% more than the highest natural levels over the past 800,000 years.

NASA has a nifty graph illustrating the evidence so that even Cruz could understand it, if we could get him to look at it:

That’s pretty convincing evidence, even if rising sea levels (17 centimeters or 6.7 inches in the last century*) and increasing global temperatures aren’t enough for you.
So sure, you can be a “skeptic”: all you have to do is reject facts. Easy for a Republican, who loses his party card if he accepts facts.
The bottom line is that Cruz is a big old liar. Climate change is real, and there is plenty of evidence for it, whatever yarns he wants to spin for the base and his rich, polluting owners in the fossil fuel industry.
And it’s not religion. It’s science.
* See Church, J. A. and N.J. White (2006), A 20th century acceleration in global sea level rise, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.

House Republicans vs. The Weather

House Republicans vs. The Weather: Part 845742

Smith is mad that climate data doesn’t say what he wants it to say.

Billionaire-Backed IUD Is Fighting the republican Cabal War on Women's Bodies

How a Billionaire-Backed IUD Is Fighting the republican Cabal War on Women's Bodies 

Anti-Choice Republicans Crusading To Ban Life-Saving Research

The Republican cabal is jumping on the Dark Age bandwagon to stop scientists from finding cures to myriad infirmities and debilitating and deadly diseases…

The term “pro-life” should be self-evident, and indeed if a person is pro-life, one might tend to think they would support any agenda protecting and sustaining the life of all human beings; especially those already breathing. The American pro-life movement is not the least bit concerned about existing citizens’ lives, but they are laser-focused on single-celled zygotes and fetuses and will go to any length to protect what their bible says are clearly not living beings. Now there is a movement in several Republican states and the United States Congress to ban medical and scientific research that saves existing lives to demonstrate just how pro-life the anti-Planned Parenthood Republican movement really is.

One of the primary obstacles that Republicans and evangelicals faced when they sought to destroy Planned Parenthood based on heavily-edited and despicably fraudulent videos was that it is not against any law for the organization to donate fetal tissue for scientific research. In fact, as this column continually states, the most ardent opposition to Planned Parenthood’s tissue donation activities is from Republicans in Congress who voted for 1993 legislation allowing tissue donations and research as a means of saving existing life. As is their wont, since Republicans cannot impose their will and destroy Planned Parenthood for donating tissue for research, they are pushing legislation to make donating and researching human tissue illegal.
It is stunning, but there are already some states that ban any scientific or medical research using fetal tissue, and now several others are jumping on the Dark Age bandwagon to prevent scientists from finding cures to myriad infirmities and debilitating and deadly diseases; all to push a Catholic-inspired “pro-life” religious dogma. Of course, the hypocrisy of the ‘pro-life’ movement is well-documented since they have either murdered medical professionals, called for their assassination, or closed abortion clinics to return to a time when thousands of women died because they did not want to give birth and chose a dangerous option. But the life of the woman, as always, is insignificant to the hypocritical “pro-life” movement that only cares about the fetus that their bible, and their dog, says is not a living being.
In Wisconsin, where scientists in the 1990s pioneered research with human embryonic stem cells‚ religious Republican lawmakers are pushing a ban on the using fetal tissue that will certainly hinder cutting-edge and life-saving research; including major ongoing efforts to find new antibiotics as existing ones grow ineffective. The bill’s lead sponsor, Jacque (R), proposed the legislation that would make it a felony to sell, donate, or even experiment with fetal tissue in any capacity.
When one researcher learned about the legislation banning her life-saving medical research she said, “Oh, I’m going to have to move the lab. Because you can’t stop—you really want to do the research.” However, if Republicans in Congress are successful there may be no place in America to locate a lab doing research using human tissue. After the congressional Republican assault on Planned Parenthood for adhering to the fetal tissue law, Republicans in nine other states are proposing bans similar to the one in Wisconsin, and more are expected to follow suit. That is the opinion of a state policy expert at the Guttmacher Institute, Elizabeth Nash, who noted that a prominent anti-women’s choice group, Americans United for Life, already issued a tissue research ban in its model legislation for Republicans to take up and pass in 2016.
However, the evangelical states’ proposed bans on tissue research may be redundant if the Republican Congress has its way. There is a House bill sponsored by Sensenbrenner (R-WI) Republicans will take up very early next year that outlaws all fetal-tissue research across the nation. This is despite the 1993 legislation that made it legal to donate fetal tissue for the sole purpose of finding cures to save lives; what any sane person would regard as “pro-life.”

One of the veteran researchers at the University of Wisconsin who uses cell lines derived from donated fetal tissue as an important part of her work, Gail Robertson, said the proposed bans are anti-progress. She said,
“We’re in a fight for the future of cures to the diseases that will affect us all. I would ask the public to reflect on family members, people you care about who have been saved by this technology. Think about the unanticipated implications of supporting these kinds of legislation.”
Robertson’s primary focus is preventing the greatest natural threat to life in the United States; sudden cardiac death. These “kinds of legislation” will also undermine potentially life-saving research on diseases including diabetes, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. But those pro-life efforts do not fit into the evangelical pro-life movement that has already celebrating shutting down fetal-tissue donation programs essential to such pro-life saving research. Their machinations have been successful in shutting down supplies of the tissue to labs and has already “hindered cutting-edge scientific studies.”
Another scientist at Birth Defects Research Lab at the University of Washington, Theresa Naluai-Cecchini, said that pro-life activism has already “hurt the work at her lab” which is funded by the National Institutes of Health and supplies other medical researchers with fetal tissue. She said:
“We are in the last year of funding, and if we are unable to supply tissue to the research community we would have to close. We may be able to obtain an extension, but the climate in DC does not look favorable in an election cycle. If that trend continues, promising research to save lives would stop and new findings would take considerably longer.”
Whatever it is that drives these phony pro-life fanatics, it has nothing to do with protecting or preserving life. Placing state or nation-wide bans on using fetal tissue will not, in any conceivable way, put Planned Parenthood out of business or stop women from seeking elective abortions. If there is a law against donating fetal tissue, as a legal entity religiously following the law, Planned Parenthood and any other provider will just stop donating. Subsequently, these Dark Age religious laws will put scientific and medical researchers at a distinct disadvantage to do real “pro-life” work and the phony pro-life evangelicals will have to revert to their other pro-life activities like murdering abortion doctors and burning Planned Parenthood clinics.

Alabama admits it has never been in compliance with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act

Alabama admits it has never been in compliance with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act

Better 22 years late than never, I guess.

O'Reilly Wants All You Lazy Moochers To Vote For A Tax Cutting Republican, Or Else

Fox's O'Reilly continued to pretend that history began on the day that President Obama got elected during his Talking Points Memo this Tuesday night.

Hannity Throws Massive Tantrum On Air After Earning Yet Another ‘Pants On Fire’ Rating

Watching Sean Hannity frantically try to cover up his lies is must-see TV.

Read more 

ESPN Host Calls Out Teabaggers For Being Like ISIL

It didn’t take long for ESPN host, Tony Kornheiser, to note how similar the Teabaggers are to ISIL after Howard Fineman described the “Freedom” Caucus of 40 House Republicans.

Read more 

The Daily Drift

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We're dis-investing in infrastructure, and it's going to hurt us big-time

From Robert Reich
Today I talked to a friend who just moved into a rental unit that's eating 40 percent of his paycheck. He says he has no choice. It's the smallest apartment he could find within ten miles of where he works.
My friend isn't alone. Since 2001, the median monthly rental price in the US has climbed much faster than inflation, while the typical renter’s pretax income has fallen 11 percent. Result: The typical renter is now paying way more than 30 percent of his or her income for rent, and that percentage is rising. In some cities – San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York – it’s 40 to 50 percent. What’s the solution? Part of it is better public transportation – so people can live further away from where they work, in affordable housing. But rather than invest more in public transportation, America is disinvesting. We're spending a smaller percentage of our GDP on public transit now than at any time since World War II. Why? Ask Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures.

More

Republicans Hold Debate On Colorado Campus, Shut Out Students

The debate was missing some obvious attendees.

Bernie Marches With Verizon Workers As Its Execs And Lobbyists Give Big To Hillary

Bernie Marches With Verizon Workers As Its Execs And Lobbyists Give Big To Hillary

Hell Experiences Cold Day As Teabagger Endorses Obama’s Climate Change Plan

A member of the cabal of ‘No’ is saying yes to President Obama’s Clean Energy Plan, making Hell cold as the rest of the world deals with rising temperatures.

Read more 

After Lois Lerner Cleared, Republicans Move To Impeach IRS Commissioner

Never mind that he wasn't even in office when the so-called "scandal" broke.

President Obama Blasts Fox News For Lying About His Position On Guns

President Obama pulled no punches when he called out Fox News and other conservative media outlets for spreading the lie that he is out to take away guns.
The President said:
So, look, I understand we won’t all agree on this issue. But it’s time to be honest — fewer gun safety laws don’t mean more freedom, they mean more danger. Certainly more danger to police, more fallen officers, more grieving families, more Americans terrified that they or their loved ones could be next. So I’m going to keep calling on the folks in Congress to change the way that they think about gun safety. And if they don’t, I’m going to keep on calling on Americans to change the folks in Congress until they get it right

And please do not — some of you watching certain television stations or listening to certain radio programs, please do not believe this notion that somehow I’m out to take everybody’s guns away. Every time a mass shooting happens, one of the saddest ironies is that suddenly the purchase of firearms and ammunition jumps up because folks are scared into thinking that Obama is going to use this as an excuse to take away our Second Amendment rights. Nobody is doing that. We’re talking about common-sense measures to make sure criminals don’t get them; to make sure background checks work; to make sure that to make sure that we’re protecting ourselves.
So supporting law enforcement and having a budget that backs it up, not just — because talk is cheap, but actually following through to make sure you’ve got the resources you need. Reforming our criminal justice system so it is smarter and we can reduce crime while still reducing the incarceration rate. Restoring trust between communities. Refusing to give up on gun safety. We can take those steps. That’s within our reach.
When Obama referred to certain television stations, he was talking about Fox News.
Obama is right. The gun industry’s favorite propaganda tool is to warn that the President is coming for their guns, but when pressed they can’t name a single gun that Obama has confiscated.
The myth that Democrats are out to take away guns has been around for decades. Fox News has spread this lie all through the Obama presidency. It is great to see Obama pushing back, and highlighting the hypocrisy of Republicans who claim to be pro-law enforcement, but oppose common sense steps that could make it safer for cops to do their jobs.
The issue is about gun safety, not gun confiscation, and the President realizes to gain support to change the law, he must first debunk the Fox News lies.

Strong In Victory, Obama Warns Republicans Not To Play Games With Budget Deal

President Obama has a message for Republicans in Congress. The President warned the Republican cabal not to play ideological games with the budget deal.
The President spoke about the budget agreement while addressing the 122nd Annual IACP Conference and Exposition in Chicago.
President Obama said:
I am pretty happy about that because it reflects our values, growing the economy and the middle-class by investing in things like education and job training that are needed and it keeps us safe by investing in our national security. It’s paid for responsibly in part with a measure to make sure hedge funds and private equity firms pay what they owe in taxes. It’s the right thing to do.
…..

I hope both parties come together to pass this agreement without delay. They’ve got a few days to do it. And I hope Congress gets right to work on spending bills to advance America’s priorities, and they don’t get sidetracked by ideological provisions that have no place in America’s budget process.

Republicans who oppose the deal will no doubt try to attach attacks on Planned Parenthood to the spending bills, but they have been warned. The country may have a budget deal, but if Republicans start playing games this president will veto their spending bills.
The President was cutting Republicans off at the pass. He isn’t about to let the dysfunction in the House sink a two-year deal that will finally end the chaos of crisis governing. The majority of Republicans in Congress hate the deal, but they have few options.
President Obama is at the height of his presidential powers, and there is little that the extremist elements in the Republican Congressional majority can do in the face of his latest overwhelming victory.

Liberal Support For The Budget Deal Signals A Big Democratic Victory

An indicator of the size of the Democratic victory on the budget deal is the speed with which liberal members of Congress are coming out in support of the deal.
Republican members of Congress were outraged as soon as the deal was announced, but the reaction on the Democratic side has been much more supportive.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and serves as co-Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said, “My biggest concern was how it was going to treat Social Security disability, and the questions I got answered so far have allayed some of my concerns. So I’m going to keep studying it, but at this point I don’t have any fire alarms going off.”
House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) said that Democrats avoided the worst case scenario on the disability program, “We avoided the worst proposal on disability to eliminate the availability of UI to those who are on disability” Levin pointed out that the changes to the disability program that Republicans are trying to sell as reform are nothing more than the closing of a loophole.
Republicans appear to have only gotten some symbolic face-saving gestures out of the deal. There is nothing in the major points of the agreement that is at the top of the Congressional Republican wishlist.

In the past, when these sorts of agreements were in the discussion stage, liberal Democrats were quick to voice their opposition to any cuts to programs or entitlements. The fact that Congressional Democrats are so quick to support the deal indicates that the agreement is a sweeping victory for Democrats.
The agreement is going to pass Congress with a coalition of Democratic voters and votes from the Republican leadership. The Republican extremists in the House and Senate who specialize in making sure that government doesn’t work have been comprehensively defeated by an agreement that is good for the country.
No matter what perspective this agreement is viewed from, it is clear that Democrats have won big.

Boehner Makes A Budget Deal With Obama, Screws The 'Freedom Caucus' On His Way Out

Boehner Makes A Budget Deal With Obama, Screws The 'Freedom Caucus' On His Way Out

Boehner is set to tell the 'Freedom Caucus' where to go as he is working a deal with other congressional Republican leadership groups, the Democrats...

'Freedom Caucus' Nut Loses His Mind Over Budget Deal, Takes Ryan Hostage

'Freedom Caucus' Nut Loses His Mind Over Budget Deal, Takes Ryan Hostage

Of course, that assumes he had one to begin with.

Ryan Caves In To The 'Freedom Caucus' Before He’s Even Sworn In

Ryan has decided that being second in line to the most powerful seat in the world is worth his soul.

Read more 

The Truth Be Told

Wingnut Morons: FOX’s Hannity Cites Hoax Website, Trump Cites Hannity

Where did Trump get his outlandish “facts” about Syrian refugees? From Hannity, who got them from a hoax internet site.

Read more 

Carson Leads In National Poll, Trump Decides Polls Are ‘Not Very Scientific’

Trump changes his tune now that he’s losing.
Read more 

Jeb's Advisers Pretend Rubio Is The 'Republican Cabal's Obama'

Desperate to distract the media from Trump and Carson ...

Busted ... Again

BUSTED AGAIN: Here are 6 ‘presidential’ quotes Paul totally made up

Paul (R-KY) may be lashing out at his critics, but he continues to display a penchant for falsely attributing statements to former US presidents.

Republicans oppose immigration reform because “it changes the voter pool”

Brooks: Republicans oppose immigration reform because “it changes the voter pool”

Yet another case of a Republican Congressman being too honest for their own good.

This Time, Vitter Has Finally Gone Too Far

The candidate with 100% name recognition was rejected by 77% of the voters.

Vitter Sets His Investigator On Blogger Who Broke Recent Prostitute Story

Vitter Sets His Investigator On Blogger Who Broke Recent Prostitute Story

The Truth Hurts

Hobby Lobby’s 'christian' owners under federal investigation for importing looted bible artifacts from Iraq

Hobby Lobby’s 'christian' owners under federal investigation for importing looted bible artifacts from Iraq

U.S. Customs agents seized up to 300 small clay tablets shipped from Israel in 2011 to the 'christian' business owners’ headquarters in Oklahoma City.

The ‘war on women’ is not a war — it’s an assault

The ‘war on women’ is not a war — it’s an assault

It is wingnut men, drunk on power, calling women sluts and then rolling up their sleeves and knocking us back into place.

Fox News Ratings Plunge As Rachel Maddow’s Viewership Grows By 31%

Rachel Maddow and MSNBC are experiencing double-digit ratings growth with younger viewers while Fox News has seen their viewership decline by 11% with persons age 25-54.
According to MSNBC, “The Rachel Maddow Show tops CNN for regularly scheduled shows in total viewers (953,000 vs. 547,000) and the A25-54 demo (171,000 vs. 159,000) for the month of October 2015….MSNBC continues to gain momentum in the ratings over last year. MSNBC is up in the key A25-54 demo over October 2014 including “Morning Joe” (+16%), “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (+8%), “All In with Chris Hayes” (+28%), “The Rachel Maddow Show” (+31%), and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” (25%). For M-F Prime 8-11pm, MSNBC is up (+29%) in the A25-54 demo over last year.”
As MSNBC is growing, and CNN’s audience is up an amazing 101%, Fox News has seen a ratings decline, “But unlike CNN and MSNBC, Fox News was down in the A25-54 demo vs. Oct. 2014: down -11 percent in total day and down -1 percent in prime time. Among total viewers, the network saw growth: up +3 percent in both total day and in primetime.”
MSNBC is up by double digits. CNN is up by triple digits, and Fox News has flatlined. Much of CNN’s growth came from the record-setting Democratic debate, but MSNBC is the only cable network not to have aired a debate yet, and they are growing over eight times faster than Fox.
As much as NBC News brass appear to want Joe Scarborough to be the face of MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is the franchise. She is the star that primetime is built around. Maddow has scored recent interviews with Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley.

Maddow’s ratings grew nearly eight times faster than those of Megyn Kelly on Fox News, because Maddow does something that Fox News doesn’t. Rachel Maddow attracts younger viewers. Fox News has struggled for years to attract younger viewers, and the fact that they barely hung on to defeat CNN in October suggests that Fox’s reign of ratings dominance could be weakening.
While Fox is sliding, Maddow has one of the fastest growing programs on cable news. After spending years being bogged down by poor MSNBC management, the audience for The Rachel Maddow Show is growing again.

Hacktivist Group Anonymous Promises To De-Hood 1,000 KKK Members

Hacktivist Group Anonymous Promises To De-Hood 1,000 KKK Members

Last year, Anonymous responded to the Ku Klux Klan’s threats toward peaceful Ferguson protesters by “de-hooding” a sizeable portion of...

Anti-gay Republican politician outed on gay hookup site ... Again.

Anti-gay Republican politician outed on gay hookup site. Again.

This is getting to be routine.

Justice Kennedy: Kim Davis should resign

Justice Kennedy: Kim Davis should resign

“[As] a public official in performing your legal duties, you are bound to enforce the law.”

Judge who let confessed child rapist go after he ran out the clock could face impeachment

Judge who let confessed child rapist go after he ran out the clock could face impeachment

The judge who freed the Missouri man who confessed to raping his 5-month-old daughter is coming under heavy scrutiny, with one lawmaker calling for her impeachment.

Why Wingnut Lawmakers are Deeply Threatened by Women Comfortable with Their Sexuality

Why Wingnut Lawmakers are Deeply Threatened by Women Comfortable with Their Sexuality

The Daily Drift

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Bernie Sanders Brings Liberalism To The Mainstream And Drops A Truth Bomb On The View

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shook up network morning television by exposing the truth about the Republican cabal on The View.
While on The View, Senator Sanders (I-VT) exposed the real face of the Republican cabal.
Sanders said, “I’m not happy to say this. We have a very lunatic fringe wingnut extremist Republican cabal. This is not the cabal of Dwight David Eisenhower.”

Joy Behar replied, “Well, they’re not all like that.”
Sanders continued, “Too many of them are. Too many of them really are now. You just heard Carson’s statement.”
Behar weighed in, “He’s on the fringe I think.”
Sanders said, “I’m afraid not. Really. Joy, I wish I could tell you that….You haven’t been around Congress too long. These are guys who basically believe. This is their agenda more or less. Huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, huge cuts to education. Virtually all of them are against a woman’s right to choose. Very few of them support gay rights. The right of gay people to marry. That is their agenda.”
Joy Behar is a very liberal person, but her questions represented some commonly held misperceptions about the current state of the Republican cabal that are likely to exist among many audience members of a show like The View.
People who don’t pay close attention to politics are likely to hold a view of the Republican cabal that is outdated and inaccurate. This is not the Republican cabal of Eisenhower. Today’s Republican cabal is not even the cabal of Reagan.
One of the real upsides of the Bernie Sanders campaign is that the Senator from Vermont has taken the liberal message national. Whether or not Senator Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, he has brought mainstream media attention to the liberal message.
Senator Sanders is exposing the Republican cabal for what it is, and he is opening the eyes of millions of Americans to what the Republican cabal has become.
It is easy for people who closely follow politics to treat what Sanders said on The View as common sense, but to the vast majority of the country what Sen. Sanders is saying is a revelation.

Obama And Democrats Close To Huge Victory As Republicans Cave On Budget and Debt Ceiling

President Obama and Congressional Democrats are close to a big win as progress is being made on a two-year budget deal that would raise the debt limit and force a major cave from Congressional Republicans.
Politico reported:
House Republicans will meet in closed session Monday night, as congressional negotiators and the White House near a two-year budget deal that would boost defense and domestic spending by tens of billions of dollars, and lift the debt ceiling until March 2017.
The ambitious accord, which is being negotiated by top House, Senate and White House officials, would boost defense and non-defense spending by $50 billion next year, and $30 billion the year after, split evenly between defense and non-defense programs. Negotiations are fluid, however, and details might change before legislation is filed. House Republicans are expected to discuss the proposal at their evening meeting.

The deal would give President Obama and Congressional Democrats everything that they wanted. The sequester cuts would be removed. Spending would increase. The debt ceiling would be raised for two years, and there would be no government shutdowns for the next two years.
Boehner and McConnell want this deal because they can’t trust their own cabal not to screw up and cost the Republican cabal any chances that they might have of winning in 2016. By taking the debt limit crisis and government shutdown threats off of the table, the Republican leaders hope to clear the decks for both likely new Speaker of the House Ryan, and the party’s 2016 pretender nominee.

Boehner and McConnell already know that a majority of Republicans will not support the deal, so they are going to have to rely on the crisis-busting coalition of Republican leadership and Democrats to get the agreement passed in both the House and the Senate.
If this agreement becomes a reality, it will represent a major victory both for President Obama and Congressional Democrats.
For years, Republicans have been living in a fantasy world where they believed that if they created a big enough crisis, President Obama would cave. However, when Obama vetoed the NDAA last week, he forced Republicans to blink.
A two-year budget agreement that raises the debt ceiling would end the crisis politics in DC, and give President Obama one of the biggest wins of his presidency. The deal isn’t done yet, but when it happens it will be the ultimate Republican cave.