Paul Says You Don’t Have a Right to Pants

If that's true, what Paul is saying is that I DO have the right to pursue happiness without my pants. …

And then “poof!” officer, my pants were gone!

Speaking to the “Students for Rand” group Monday at the University of Minnesota, Rand Paul told them they “don’t have a right to pants.” I would venture to say that if Paul is trying to increase his viability as a candidate, he is going about it the wrong way.

“Government was instituted among men to protect your rights, not to create rights. So you don’t have a right to a chair, you don’t have a right to shoes, you don’t have a right to pants, you don’t have a right to health care, you don’t have a right to water — you have a right to be free.”
“And then you have a right to pursue happiness, but nobody guarantees you happiness,” Paul added.
Oh, yeah, we hadn’t figured that out yet. Thanks, Paul.
Ah, but I do have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”! That’s in our nation’s other founding document, the Declaration of Independence. It calls these inalienable rights. It does not say they are the only inalienable rights but it gives us these three examples.
If that’s true, what Paul is saying is that I do have the right to pursue happiness without my pants.

Now, I don’t mean to be crass, but I can really only think of one happiness I can pursue without my pants.
Is Paul saying you do have the right to sex? (Or at the very least the joys of exhibitionism?)
And come on, let’s face it, if certain other people are running around pursuing their happiness without pants, that might reduce my own happiness. There are people I don’t want to see without pants, let alone pursuing their happiness without pants.
And if I don’t have a right to pants, why do I get kicked out of stores and restaurants if I don’t wear them? Paul says I have no right to shoes but damned if I can get into a restaurant without shoes. “No shoes, no shirt, no service,” unless you’re Kenny Chesney.
Seriously, if I don’t have the right to pants, doesn’t that imply at the very least a right to no pants?
A bigger problem is this whole “no right to water” deal because the human animal needs water to survive. You don’t last more than three days without it. So how is it I have a right to pursue happiness if I don’t have the right to the one thing I need more than any other to stay alive?
I’d say without some of these other rights – including pants in a Wisconsin winter (you come try it, Rand), I don’t get to live and it turns out I have no rights after all. Which is, I’m pretty sure, not what the Founding Fathers were telling us.
I mean, they all had pants, right? I’m pretty sure they felt the rest of us ought to have pants as well. Let’s remember that in France, where another revolution took hold, the sans-culottes (without-culottes) were lower class people who didn’t have the fancy knee-length breeches the nobility wore under the Ancien Regime.
But even they had pants. They just didn’t have much else. The French nobility didn’t think they had any right to food, for example. And you know what happened to them.
Yet Rand Paul stood up there and said again that he was going to link Bernie Sanders to mass murderers like Pol Pot:
“People say: ‘Oh, you’re saying that Bernie Sanders is Pol Pot.’ No, I’m saying that he’s embracing the same philosophy of socialism that lead ultimately to the extermination of people.”
Which prompted Ann Merlan to joke at Jezebel’s The Slot, “It’s a slippery slope: one second you’re calling for single-payer healthcare, the next you’re rearranging the skulls on your killing field.”
Sounds to me, though, all joking aside, that in denying we have a right to food and water, nihilist Rand Paul is the one embracing the philosophy that leads to the extermination of people.
Paul claimed to his Minnesota fanboys and fangirls that “There are certain rights that are yours, that come to you from your creator, and no majority should take them away.”
Which is pretty funny, when you think about it, because by this logic, we don’t need any laws at all, when obviously we do, as the Founding Fathers recognized. Otherwise, the Constitution would just say, “Do your own thing,” or quote Bill & Ted: “Be excellent!”
Because I’m not a welder, I’m going to lay some philosophy on you now: As Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) recognized in a century before the Founding Fathers, life in the state of nature, without laws and government (“the war of all against all”), is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
And without a right to food, water, pants and shoes, with winter coming, I’d say that about covers it. Of course, we can always pursue happiness without our pants until the snow covers our twigs and branches with frost.
One of his Minnesota student supports said “I like the little tinges of libertarian that he has in his beliefs,” but without pants, I think what she is really saying is that she likes the “little tinges of libertarian” that he has in his briefs.
I’m not sayin’. Just sayin’.

The Daily Drift

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Why Bernie Sanders Was Right To Link Climate Change To National Security

The Democratic Presidential candidate's remarks were criticized by people who apparently don't understand the existential nature the climate threat poses to this country and the world.

Cornel West gives rip-roaring parking lot speech supporting Sanders and blasting Fox News 'propaganda'

Cornel West gives rip-roaring parking lot speech supporting Sanders and blasting Fox News 'propaganda'

President Obama Defends Freedom Of Religion From Republicans Who Want To Destroy It

Since Republicans are calling for religious tests for refugees, President Obama took it upon himself to remind them what freedom of religion means in America.

Read more 

President Obama Rips and Humiliates Trump And Carson In Front Of The Entire World

President Obama took apart top Republican pretender candidates Trump and Carson in front of the entire world during his press conference in Turkey.
Obama threw down on Carson’s claim that he has better advisers and info than the White House, “I think it is entirely appropriate in a democracy to have a serious debate about these issues, Folks want to pop off and have opinions on what they think they would do, present a specific plan,” Obama said. “If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff or the folks on the ground, I want to meet them and we can have that debate.”
The President also took down Trump, “What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership, or America winning or whatever slogans they come up with, that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and protect people in the region who are getting killed, and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.”

Obama is not putting up with the usual empty talk coming out of the Republican cabal. Trump and Carson are both at the top of the Republican cabal pretender polls because they are selling a style that appeals to Republican primary voters. What is missing in both candidates is substance. Neither leading Republican candidate has been able to explain in any detail how they would combat ISIL and terrorism.
When Carson was asked for details during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, he unleashed a crazy worldview that somehow ended in the United States involved in a shooting war with Russia in Syria. For his part, Trump thinks that defeating ISIL is like a business deal. Trump has repeatedly stated that he will defeat ISIL by sitting down and talking tough with them.
The only other Republican “plan” belongs to Jeb and the neo-cons who want to return to the failed Middle East policy of the shrub years. As usual, the Republicans are long on criticism, but short on real solutions. While Trump and Carson pander to an increasingly delusional Republican primary electorate for votes, President Obama is trying to work the global community to defeat ISIL.
Obama’s message to Carson and Trump was to put up or shut up. President Obama showed Trump and Carson the difference between pretending to be president and actually being president.

Obama Tears Into Republican Cabal Candidates Who Only Want To Take In 'Christian' Refugees From Syria

"That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion."

Fact Checkers Confirm That What President Obama Said About ISIL Being Contained Is True

PolitiFact concluded, "References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIL no longer presents an active threat are incorrect."…

Republicans are trying to make hay out of a sound bite of President Obama saying ISIL is contained. But as I explained yesterday, the full context of his quote made it quite clear that anyone doing this is being dishonest. He was asked specifically about Iraq and Syria and he was correct in his response. Today I learned that PolitiFact agrees.

Looking back at Obama’s interview where he made this comment, it is quite clear that it’s within a narrowly defined scope: ISIL’s territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria. He did not rule out the potential for a terrorist attack, and he also made it clear that the United States’ anti-ISIS efforts are a work in progress.
References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIL no longer presents an active threat are incorrect.

Experts agree that the President was correct, though his choice of words wasn’t great, given some people’s inability to understand stateless terrorism.
Perhaps the problem is that the people jumping to conclusions aren’t able to keep up with the President’s nuanced, in-depth understanding of fighting stateless terrorism, and only understand delusional bumper sticker slogans that make them feel better, in spite of not actually addressing the problem at all.

Speaking today at a press conference at the Kaya Palazzo Resort in Antalya, Turkey, President Obama demonstrated a remarkable grasp of how to fight ISIL (aka, ISIS). But it wasn’t just his prepared remarks, it was the agile, nuanced answers he gave to complex questions.
In fact, President Obama’s answers were so long that I can only fit one full response in this post. Read it in full and compare it to every single Republican pretender candidate’s “solution”. For that matter, compare it to each Democratic presidential candidate’s.
The following transcript is from the White House Press Secretary:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. One hundred and twenty-nine people were killed in Paris on Friday night. ISIL claimed responsibility for the massacre, sending the message that they could now target civilians all over the world. The equation has clearly changed. Isn’t it time for your strategy to change?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, keep in mind what we have been doing. We have a military strategy that is putting enormous pressure on ISIL through airstrikes; that has put assistance and training on the ground with Iraqi forces; we’re now working with Syrian forces as well to squeeze ISIL, cut off their supply lines. We’ve been coordinating internationally to reduce their financing capabilities, the oil that they’re trying to ship outside. We are taking strikes against high-value targets — including, most recently, against the individual who was on the video executing civilians who had already been captured, as well as the head of ISIL in Libya. So it’s not just in Iraq and Syria.
And so, on the military front, we are continuing to accelerate what we do. As we find additional partners on the ground that are effective, we work with them more closely. I’ve already authorized additional Special Forces on the ground who are going to be able to improve that coordination.
On the counterterrorism front, keep in mind that since I came into office, we have been worried about these kinds of attacks. The vigilance that the United States government maintains and the cooperation that we’re consistently expanding with our European and other partners in going after every single terrorist network is robust and constant. And every few weeks, I meet with my entire national security team and we go over every single threat stream that is presented, and where we have relevant information, we share it immediately with our counterparts around the world, including our European partners.
On aviation security, we have, over the last several years, been working so that at various airports sites — not just in the United States, but overseas — we are strengthening our mechanisms to screen and discover passengers who should not be boarding flights, and improving the matters in which we are screening luggage that is going onboard.
And on the diplomatic front, we’ve been consistently working to try to get all the parties together to recognize that there is a moderate opposition inside of Syria that can form the basis for a transition government, and to reach out not only to our friends but also to the Russians and the Iranians who are on the other side of this equation to explain to them that ultimately an organization like ISIL is the greatest danger to them, as well as to us.
So there will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward, but the strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work. But as I said from the start, it’s going to take time.
And what’s been interesting is, in the aftermath of Paris, as I listen to those who suggest something else needs to be done, typically the things they suggest need to be done are things we are already doing. The one exception is that there have been a few who suggested that we should put large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground.
And keep in mind that we have the finest military in the world and we have the finest military minds in the world, and I’ve been meeting with them intensively for years now, discussing these various options, and it is not just my view but the view of my closest military and civilian advisors that that would be a mistake — not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL, but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before, which is, if you do not have local populations that are committed to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremes, that they resurface — unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.
And let’s assume that we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria. What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send more troops into there? Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else — in North Africa, or in Southeast Asia?
So a strategy has to be one that can be sustained. And the strategy that we’re pursuing, which focuses on going after targets, limiting wherever possible the capabilities of ISIL on the ground — systematically going after their leadership, their infrastructure, strengthening Shia — or strengthening Syrian and Iraqi forces and Kurdish forces that are prepared to fight them, cutting off their borders and squeezing the space in which they can operate until ultimately we’re able to defeat them — that’s the strategy we’re going to have to pursue.
And we will continue to generate more partners for that strategy. And there are going to be some things that we try that don’t work; there will be some strategies we try that do work. And when we find strategies that work, we will double down on those.
Oh, okay, then. That sounds like a pretty thorough strategy. Hard to criticize unless one is suggesting endless occupation.
We all want to believe what the Republicans sell: That there’s a big daddy in the White House who will fix everything with his tough words and a big hat, but this is real life. The United States can’t fix this problem alone, we aren’t all powerful, and our President is brilliant and using the best minds in the business but he also can’t deliver a world in which zero military activity is required. Targeting ISIL means collateral damage as well, due to the way they hide among civilians. The real world is brutal sometimes.
It would be instructive to have the press ask the 2016 presidential candidates the same question President Obama was just asked, and to compare the answers side by side.

McCaul (R-TX) Wants To Ban Refugees And Keep Gitmo Open

President Obama can't be doing enough to secure the U.S. because Paris, France was hit. McCaul fearmongers over refugees and Gitmo once again.

‘I will bomb your fucking location’

‘I will bomb your fucking location’: Muslims face violent threats as Trump urges ban on mosques

Republican front runner Trump helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of last week’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris.

Taking the bait: How Republicans help ISIL spread their propaganda about the ‘war against Muslims’

Taking the bait: How Republicans help ISIL spread their propaganda about the ‘war against Muslims’

ISIL says we’re waging a war against innocent Muslims, and, the Republican candidates for pretender seem determined to send the same message.

McConnell’s Bill To Repeal ObamaCare Is Collapsing In A Heap Of Failure

Mitch McConnell is so bad at his job that his attempt to repeal parts of ObamaCare is turning into a total failure.

The Hill reported:
Senate Republicans are in danger of not being able to bring an ObamaCare repeal bill to the floor.
Senate Republican cabal leaders had hoped to move a House-passed package repealing parts of the controversial healthcare reform law before Thanksgiving. But that plan has been shelved amid party turmoil.
Senate Republican sources say the measure, which has encountered opposition from conservatives and moderates, albeit for different reasons, will have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Some say it could slide into next year.
The problem is that five wingnut Republicans refuse to vote for Mitch McConnell’s reconciliation bill that repeals parts of ObamaCare. Three moderate Republicans won’t vote for the reconciliation bill if it contains language that defunds Planned Parenthood. Even after lowering the threshold of votes he needs for passage to 51 votes, McConnell remains five votes short.
Senate Republicans are so divided that they can’t muster a majority to pass a piece of legislation that in one of the few areas that they all supposedly agree on.

McConnell complains about Democratic obstruction on a near daily basis, but the real problem in Congress isn’t the Democrats. The biggest problem with the nation’s Legislative Branch is that the Republican cabal is fundamentally broken. Republicans are incapable of governing, and when they try to govern, they fail.
The Republicans are desperate to trigger a veto fight with President Obama on the ACA. However, time is running out. Congress has an extremely light election year schedule for 2016. McConnell is proving to be so inept as Majority Leader that he is well on his way to screwing up an ObamaCare repeal bill.
Forget winning the White House, Republicans can’t keep control of their own people in the House and Senate.

Republicans Demand America’s 1920s Government Be Put Back In Place

Republicans want a government like that of the 1920s when the rich were given free rein to economically rape the American people…

Many Americans are unaware of the many programs and policies put in place by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his New Deal, but even if they did it is certain that a fair number of Americans would demand its elimination immediately. Republicans have been chomping at the bit, and plotting behind the scenes, over the past five years in particular to abolish all of the New Deal programs and send Americans back to an era where wealthy industrialists dominated the population and kept them in poverty fighting for survival.

It is no secret that Republicans hate the government with religious passion, and the current crop of candidates for the Republican pretender nomination are jockeying for supremacy in who can promise to change America; for the worse. Thus far, the Republican candidates demonstrating a fierce hatred for, and ignorance of, the federal government have garnered the greatest support among Republican voters.
Despite President Obama creating over 12 million jobs in five-and a-half years and presiding over economic recovery and solid growth, typical Koch Republican Cruz has the key to help the economy recover: by recreating the government of a century ago in the process. Cruz pledged to return the government to the 1920’s and according to his estimation create 4.9 million jobs by the end of the next decade or so. Cruz said,
“If you look at the history of America, there are three levers that government has to facilitate economic growth. The first is tax reform. I have rolled out a bold and simple ten percent flat tax for every American. The second element is regulatory reform, pulling back regulations. The third element is sound money. When we pursued those in the 1920s with Calvin Coolidge the result was incredible economic growth. We have done it before and with Republican leadership we can do it again.”
Now it is true daddy Cruz is a Cuban-Canadian immigrant to America, but it is likely that at some juncture during his tenure in his adopted country he has at least heard about “The Great Depression” that was caused by the very policies he lusts to revisit. In fact, Cruz’s economic policy recommendations are regularly cited as the three primary reasons there was a Great Depression in the 1920s; namely a lack of regulatory oversight, gross income inequality, and the gold standard.
What Cruz is proposing, and the Koch brothers pant to see realized, is eliminating each and every one of FDR’s New Deal provisions that economists assert caused and accelerated America’s economic recovery out of the Great Depression. Still, there are a significant number of Republican voters who want, as Slate’s Digby explains, an apocalypse with a Republican pretender leading America to economic ruin.

Actually, the reason extremist Republicans with no experience are faring well in the Republican cabal primary is because the base wants a “tough guy” who does not understand, or care, how America’s system of government works. As an ardent Cruz supporter, Republican strategist, and wingnut shrieking head said,
“Republicans don’t want reform, they want revolution. They don’t want a better government, they want a new government.”
They want a government like that of the 1920s when the rich were given free rein to economically rape the people and send the world into another, more intense economic crash. A crash, by the way, that increased the wealth of the very richest industrialists beyond their wildest dream; not unlike today when the wealthiest Americans have taken the lion’s share of wealth in the current recovery.
The Republican base wants a dictatorial pretender willing to challenge the Constitution and pledge that the system of government created by the Founders, the system with legislative checks and balances and regulations, is abolished and replaced with a theocratic libertarian “no government.” The wingnut base demands a Trump, Carson or Cruz who will assure them that the federal government “will no longer be a hindrance to wingnuts who are Hell-bent on achieving their agenda” no matter what it takes or how many Americans are adversely impacted.
It really is a sad and pathetic commentary on wingnut Americans who are sick and tired of waiting for the promised “revolution” to create a new government to replace the one Republican demigod Reagan told them thirty years ago is the source of all their misery. To add to their angst, the base have heard Koch Republicans and extremist “TeaPublicans” promise for five years they will remove Obama from the White House and send him to prison, close the borders, criminalize homosexuality and gay marriage, end political correctness, ban public education, abolish women’s reproductive rights, eliminate all federal regulations, “christianize” all aspects of American society, repeal workplace laws and social programs, and put a quick and permanent end to the idea that all Americans “are created equal.”
Oh, and they really demand their new 'christian' government be created solely to engage America in several wars against Muslims around the world and severely punish any “traitor” who dares suggest that diplomacy should ever be a part of the nation’s foreign policy. If one looks back over the past five years that President Obama has been in office, it is much more than just Republican pretender candidates panting for war against Muslims; it is a hard and fast rule to qualify as a Republican politician.
There is a serious state of affairs in America when one segment of society is frustrated that Republicans have successfully prevented the government from doing what it was created for to protect or provide for the welfare of the American people, while the right is furious that the government does anything whatsoever for Americans. Republicans have claimed they want to take America back, but this is likely the first time a Republican had the audacity to admit “taking America back” is going back to an era and the exact same conditions that created the Great Depression; and claim in public that it was a time of “incredible economic growth.”
It is looking more and more like Republican voters do want “an apocalypse” that will certainly eviscerate them as much as the rest of the population. There is nothing wrong with the government; Republicans just hate that it exists in any form except to make war, enforce religious edicts, and create incredible wealth for a select few. There are likely several reasons for why so many Republicans have a death wish for America, and even considering that they are incredibly stupid does not completely explain their mindset. It is more likely they are just angry and full of hate which informs why they support equally angry and hate-filled candidates who promise to fulfill their wildest dreams and “make America great again;” by taking it back to conditions that nearly accomplished today’s Republican’ goals of creating a nation of peasants serving a few wealthy industrialists.

Republicans Really Could End Up Nominating a Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Loon Like Carson or Cruz

Republicans Really Could End Up Nominating a Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Loon Like Carson or Cruz

King Endorses Cruz

“I hope this endorsement does add clarity to Cruz’s position on immigration and any of his competitors blurring his position," King said.

10 reasons why Rubio is the most dangerous Republican in the race

Here are 10 reasons why Rubio is the most dangerous Republican in the race

With a successful few debates under his belt and the Republican establishment desperate for a replacement for Jeb, it seems like Rubio is stacking up to be the new golden boy. Only, there is nothing golden about him.

Fox News: Obama Needs To Start Taking Advice From TV Show ‘Homeland’

Yes, they actually said this.

Read full story

The Little-Noticed Wingnut Plan To Permanently Lock Democrats Out Of Policymaking

The Little-Noticed Wingnut Plan To Permanently Lock Democrats Out Of Policymaking

Republicans want to destroy women’s access to abortions — and the right to study them

Republicans want to destroy women’s access to abortions — and the right to study them

More on the Koch Brothers

In addition to the billions they’re spending to elect wingnuts who will cut their taxes and deregulate, the Koch brothers have also been on a spending spree at colleges and universities. According to a new report from the Center for Public Integrity (below) the brothers Koch invested more than $19.3 million across 210 college campuses in 46 states in 2013 alone. That money comes with strings, of course. At the College of Charleston, the Charles Koch Foundation sought names and email addresses of any student participating in a Koch-sponsored class, and to be notified in advance of media outreach related to the school. And as I’ve previously noted, the Foundation’s pledge of $1.5 million to Florida State University’s economics department stipulated that a Koch-appointed advisory committee would select professors and undertake annual evaluations.In other words, the Koch brothers aren't just trying to buy American democracy. They're also seeking to buy American minds.

More

Savage Threatens To Leave America For Russia Because It's 'The Best Country Left On The Planet'

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Jumping on a report that actor Robert De Niro may take Russian citizenship, Savage said on his hate speech “Savage Nation” program last week that he’d consider leaving the U.S. for Russia as well in order to flee America before it turns into the Soviet Union.  MORE

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of The Truth Be Told.

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

 

The Truth Be Told is read in 205 countries around the world.

Republicans - Here's your bread  ... !

Today is - Homemade Bread Day
 

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The Horrifying Terror Attack Last Week that You Aren't Hearing About

The Horrifying Terror Attack Last Week that You Aren't Hearing About

While Republicans Screech, The Obama Administration Just Killed Two ISIL Leaders

While Republicans Screech, The Obama Administration Just Killed Two ISIL Leaders

One of the most insidious myths about terrorism that many Americans still believe is that Republicans are better at keeping the country “safe,”...

Paris Massacre, Obama’s Fault … As Usual

by John DeProspo

It didn’t take long. While paramedics were still attending to the dead and injured in the Paris massacre, the word was out: it’s all Obama’s fault.
The lunatic fringe radical wingnuts, in essence, blamed President Obama for failing to thwart the Paris terrorist attacks. In fact, some commenters on the blogosphere suggested our Muslim, terrorist- loving president was glad to see the carnage take place! The usual suspects labeled our Commander-in-Chief weak and detached. A modern day Neville Chamberlain, if you will. As one writer observed, “We should have nuked Syria when Assad crossed over Obama’s red line.”
In an ironic juxtaposition, many blog sites today carried the story of ex-CIA George Tenet and Cofer Black’s blistering critique of the shrub junta’s failure to heed warnings, in the spring of 2001, of an impending Al Qaeda attack within the U.S.
In a bombshell interview with Politico, the former CIA director during the shrub’s junta claimed his department informed White House officials over imminent Al Qaeda attacks months before the president received the infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” presidential briefing.
But the shrub-Cheney team didn’t seem to care much about the intelligence the CIA chief was making known them.
“To me it remains incomprehensible still,” said Black, the CIA’s chief of counterterrorism. “I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone.”
What many Obama-blamers do not comprehend is that the world is the mess that it is due directly to the actions (inaction) of the Bush administration. They do not see the link between the shrub’s destabilization of the Middle East with a war of choice against Iraq and the hell that is the Middle East today. They do not understand that in reality, the shrub, not Obama, is responsible for the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Whether the shrub and his gang of neocons willfully ignored the pre-9/11 warnings or were grossly negligent in responding to those warnings needs to be determined once and for all. Whether the shrub and Company fabricated the WMD story as a pretext for war, we as Americans deserve to know. And if war crimes were committed, those responsible need to held to account so that justice can prevail.
A Cheney behind bars and the shrub committed to a mental institution would send a powerful message to the world about American values.

Fox Hack Calls French Muslims ‘Welfare Queens’

When terror attacks struck Paris this Friday, Fox hack Ralph Peters reached for the inflammatory rhetoric.

Wingnuts Lose Their Shit On Twitter Because Democrats Won’t Condemn All Muslims After Paris

Wingnut candidates, leaders and media can’t understand why not everyone hates as much as they do.

Read more 

Wingnut media does ghoulish victory dance over Paris attacks

Wingnut media does ghoulish victory dance over Paris attacks

Wingnuts across the American media landscape are speaking with one voice after the attacks that left scores of French civilians dead and hundreds maimed Friday: Terrorism has a religion, and it is Islam. The messaging has not been subtle.

Ziggy

Fox Hack Calls Jennifer Lawrence an “Idiot” For Telling the Truth About its War on Women

The Republican cabal just went to war against the top-paid actress in Hollywood, the star of the Hunger Games trilogy as Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence told Vogue in an interview published Wednesday that she was brought up as a Republican but that the GOP’s treatment of women was difficult for her:
“I was raised a Republican but I just can’t imagine supporting a cabal that doesn’t support women’s basic rights.”
At this point you can say good for her! She called out the Republican cabal for its War on Women. Women’s Reproductive Rights are under attack everywhere Republicans hold sway, not only abortion rights, but the right to contraceptives and even to health care through attacks on Planned Parenthood.
She told the magazine,
“It’s 2015 and gay people can get married and we think that we’ve come so far, so, yay! But have we? I don’t want to stay quiet about that stuff.”
Lawrence has a reputation for speaking what’s on her mind, and she did not hold back, and cemented her place as a tough, intelligent young woman, going after both Trump and Kim Davis:
“My view on the election is pretty cut-and-dried,” she told the magazine. “If  Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”
And Kentucky clerk Kim Davis?
“Kim Davis? Don’t even say her name in this house.”
“[She is a] lady who makes me embarrassed to be from Kentucky. All those people holding their crucifixes, which may as well be pitchforks, thinking they’re fighting the good fight.”
“I grew up in Kentucky. I know how they are.”
Needless to say, Republicans are not amused at being called out for their medieval attitudes. The crew at Fox News’ Outnumbered for example, had their usual idiotic pablum to say.
Tantaros reacted to Lawrence’s words by saying, “Wow, I’m embarrassed for Jennifer Lawrence, I’m embarrassed to be a woman, Harris, to listen to a female spout some idiocy.”
Seeing his cue, Harris Faulkner spouted, “I just — I don’t believe it’s reality.” This is the network, mind, that hosts the Republican cabal’s completely invented reality.
Tantaros answered, “These are pretty dumb remarks.” She then went on to question Lawrence’s First Amendment rights:
“She insulted quite a few people in that rant that she did, Stephen. I just want to know what rights does Jennifer Lawrence not have?”
Stephen Hayes allowed that she had the right to say what she wanted, but said, “If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, you’re better off remaining quiet.”
If Fox News took his advice, you would hear nothing but silence on that channel. Certainly, Andrea Tantaros would be easier to watch. The same holds true over at Red State, which characterized Lawrence’s fight for equal pay for women as a “bratty display from a wealthy youngster.”
Right. Because if you’re a woman and you want to get paid the same as a man for doing the same job, you’re a brat. At every opportunity Republicans seem eager to prove Lawrence’s point, don’t they?
Hilariously – since we say the exact same thing about Tantaros and her crew here at PoliticusUSA, Tantaros concluded that “as long as liberals keep saying dumb stuff, we’re gonna cover it right here on this program.”
Dumb stuff – as in facts. CNS News predictably rant with the headline “Jennifer Lawrence attacks 'christians',” which she did not. She attacked medieval attitudes. There are plenty of christians – most in fact – who agree with Lawrence, as polls demonstrate.
That doesn’t stop the misinformed and vile haters who read this stuff from coming to the fore:

electric123 • 

What this Hollywood Slit says, doesn’t hold a pile of beans to the working class, and she will find out on her own judgment day.

RM • 

Ah yes, another actress who’s whored herself to the devil for the fame and pleasures of this world. Hollyweird is full of those who have sold their souls for this earths fame and pleasures. What a shallow/vapid person, who threw her immortal soul away for a bowl of gruel.

The fact is that Tantaros and the rest of her ilk at Fox News lie regularly as part of their jobs at Fox News, making being offensive a career. They regularly say dumb things yet call Jennifer Lawrence stupid for telling the simple, undeniable truth that the Republican cabal does not support women’s basic rights.
Tantaros, for example, is the one who, apparently eager to vie with the vapid intellect of Hasselbeck asked during the Rachel Dolezal imbroglio, “If I self-identify as a cat, a feline, do I have to pay income taxes? I mean, I’m just wondering.”
Even Trump has admitted Kim Davis has to obey the law of the land, and recognized that the law of the land happens to be the United States Constitution, not the bible.
Facts, Tantaros. In response to facts, all Fox News has are insults. Tantaros made no attempt to prove Lawrence was wrong in any particular. She couldn’t. So she mocked her instead.
Jennifer Lawrence is right. The Republican cabal doesn’t respect women’s basic rights. And how could they when they don’t respect women?

Here are the Republican pretender candidates’ top 7 distortions, disconnects and outright lies — so far

Here are the Republican pretender candidates’ top 7 distortions, disconnects and outright lies — so far

The rnc’s plan to keep the 2016 Republican primaries from being a clown show hasn’t worked out very well.

President Obama Completely Destroys Trump’s Campaign Platform In Just Over 1 Minute

President Obama Completely Destroys Trump’s Campaign Platform In Just Over 1 Minute

It’s no secret that Trump has built his campaign on a platform of racism and bigotry of massive proportions. “We’re gonna build...

Clinton Says Taxpayers Shouldn't Be Paying To Send Trump's Kids To College

 Well, amen to that!

We’re missing the real Rubio scandal: The problem isn’t his financial trouble, it’s that he’s a corruptible sneak

Focusing on Rubio's poor money management obscures the much larger problems with his finances and policy record

Now that Rubio has vaulted himself into a front-running distant third place in the poll for the 2016 Republican nomination, he’s starting to come under harsher scrutiny from the press and his opponents in the Republican cabal field. For the moment, the focal point of that criticism is Rubio’s personal finances, as the New York Times reported this morning:
A decade after he began using a Republican cabal credit card for personal purchases like paving stones at his home, Rubio on Wednesday pledged to disclose new spending records from that account as he sought to inoculate himself against what could be his biggest liability as a pretender candidate: how he manages his finances.
The paper goes on to note that Rubio’s fellow aspirants for the Republican nomination “are rushing to resurrect the matter in an attempt to portray him as a careless money manager.” Donald Trump is “suggesting that the senator struggled to live within his means,” the Times writes, adding that the “risk” for Rubio is that this credit card issue “may become a symbol of a larger pattern of financial challenges in his recent past.”
Come on. The problem revealed by Rubio’s shady history with state party credit cards isn’t that Rubio is bad at “managing his finances” – it’s that he’s a weasel who cashed in on his position of (limited) authority. The image of Rubio as a poor money manager with massive debt isn’t as damaging as his opponents and the press might think. Pretty much everyone in the country has trouble handling debt, and far too many people are carrying way too high a balance on their credit cards. Framing it in these terms just allows Rubio to make the point that he’s not wealthy and he copes with the same financial difficulties as everyone else. The damning part of all this is that he abused resources made available to him as Speaker. I’m not especially bothered that Rubio can’t balance his checkbook, but I do care that he’s a corruptible sneak.
(However, if reporters and Rubio’s opponents are looking for a way to make his personal financial troubles relevant, try bringing them up the next time Rubio justifies a balanced budget amendment by saying the government must balance its books just like American families do.)
But that’s still not Rubio’s “biggest liability as a presidential candidate.” I tend to think it’s a little more significant that much of Rubio’s policy platform is based on lies and discredited economic theories. Just today he released his plan for exploding the military budget well beyond its current levels as part of his neoconservative foreign policy vision to pick fights and spread freedom at gunpoint. He’s going to provoke international conflicts and preside over a vast expansion of defense spending while also blowing a hole in the budget by slashing tax rates, eliminating taxes on investments, and creating new tax credits for the middle class. The last Republican president implemented a more modest version of this policy agenda, and the results – intractable military quagmires, exploding inequality, huge deficits – left him so widely reviled that he put himself in political exile, where he remains to this day.
And, of course, Rubio is still moving to the right on immigration in an attempt to mollify conservatives who disowned him for his past heresies on “amnesty.” He’s running to be the nominee of a party in desperate need of support from minority voters, and to secure that nomination he’s inching closer and closer to the immigration position of the party’s nativist wing. Seems like a pretty serious problem!
So if you want to focus on Rubio’s credit card shenanigans and his past life as a small-time charlatan, go right ahead. Just don’t do him the favor of believing that’s his biggest weakness as a would-be president.

More

He was the worst ...

He was the worst pretender until he was deposed by the shrub as the absolute worst in history

Carson: Anyone With 'Big Frontal Lobes' Knows That Syrian Refugees Should Be Banned

Republican cabal pretender hopeful Carson argued on Sunday that anyone with "big frontal lobes" could see that the U.S. must not accept refugees from Syria. 

Carson Can't Name Any Of Our Allies For His International Coalition

Chris Wallace had to repeatedly ask Carson who would be part of his own international military coalition to fight ISIL. 

Carson Runs To Fox 'News' To Complain About The Media Lying

Republican cabal pretender front runner Carson wants us to believe that Politico, CNN and the Wall Street Journal are all in the bag for Hillary Clinton.

Carson responded to charges that he’s politically inexperienced by writing in a Facebook post late yesterday that “every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience.”

From Robert Reich:
Wrong. Most signers – including Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock -- had been elected to their colonial assemblies prior to signing the Declaration.
After being notified of his error, Carson changed his post to say the signers had no “federal” elected office experience. True, but neither did anyone else because at the time the Declaration was signed there wasn’t yet a federal government.
Carson thereby proves he’s not just inexperienced. He also doesn’t know American history, doesn’t know about the federal government, and doesn’t know the limits of his own ignorance.

More

Carson Fumbles BIG TIME, Admits Hillary Has The Experience To Be POTUS

There you have it! Case closed. You know Carson’s campaign manager busted a blood vessel on this one.

Read full story 

Carson breaks with Trump on immigration, but his plan is no less insane

Carson breaks with Trump on immigration, but his plan is no less insane

This policy is Pyramids-built-to-store-grain-level crazy.

The Daily Drift

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