The final blow: Americans think Republicans don't care about them:Good going, dude!
Over two years ago, I penned a piece here calling for a direct challenge to the intentions of the Republican Party. It espoused the theory that the failures of conservative governance and policies were being masked by an existing narrative in the minds of voters that the Republican Party was that of patriotism, tradition, and small-town American values.
It's an image that the conservative movement had done an excellent job of cultivating since the September 11 terrorist attacks. In the narrative they promoted, they were the true American patriots who would preserve the country's values and keep it safe from harm, while the Democratic faction that opposed them was at best feckless, and at worst bent on surrendering and letting the terrorists win. And even as corruption, a failed occupation, incompetence and financial collapse swept Democrats back into power in 2006 and 2008, many Republicans still campaigned continuously on the narrative of putting America first, especially in contrast to supporters of Barack Hussein Obama.That story, however, may now be at the end of its arc. More below.
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Bill Maher’s Rant On The Minimum Wage Is Something You Do NOT Want To Miss:
AUTHOR: EGBERTO WILLIES Bill Maher says he is a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers. Raise the minimum wage. Image: EW Addicting Info
Bill Maher’s New Rules on the plea to raise the minimum wage is on point. It is hard to understand anyone’s objection to it. A country cannot frown on citizen’s using public assistance if it does not create an economy that pays a living wage to all of its citizens that are working.The following snippet with the most relevant bullets from his New Rules segment on the minimum wage is on point.Bill Maher’s New Rules Snippet On The Minimum Wage
When it comes to raising the minimum wage Conservatives always say it is a non-starter because it cuts into profits. … You might think that paying people enough to live is so self-evident that even crazy people could understand it. But you would be wrong. Michele Bachmann is not only against raising the minimum wage, she is against having one at all. She wants said “… if we took away the minimum wage … we could … virtually wipe out unemployment … because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.And naturally Ted Cruz agrees. Ted Cruz thinks it’s a good thing that when his Cuban father came to America he was paid fifty cents an hour to work as a dishwasher. …When did the American dream become this pathway to indentured servitude, this economic death spiral where workers get paid next to nothing, so they can only afford to buy next to nothing, so businesses are forced to sell cheaper and cheaper shit?Consider the fact that most fast food workers whose average age by the way is 29 … are on some form of public assistance which is not surprising. When even working people can’t make enough to live they take money from the government.This is the question the Right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts or do you want do you want a low minimum wage because you cannot have both. If Coronel Sanders isn’t going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I for one is getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers. Bill Maher makes a very important statement. Average American citizens are subsidizing McDonald’s. Americans are subsidizing all companies that are paying below subsistence level wages.The viral story of a McDonald’s employee calling a McDonald’s help line is probative. McDonald’s gave her information necessary to get government assistance and charity. This was a full time worker. What she really needs is an increase in the minimum wage. What she needs is the dignity of a wage she can live on.Bill Maher is late to the party. George Carlin figured out long time ago that the American Dream had become a pathway to indentured servitude. He laid it out in his “The American Dream” standup skit. The minimum wage is part of the problem. However, the problem of the poor and working middle class is much deeper.The problem is income and wealth disparity that is getting worse. Income and growth is extracted from the poor and the middle class with policies to ensure the incessant steady growth of the wealth and income of a very few.
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How One Guy Stood Up to the Koch Brothers and Won!Derek Cressman lit the match that led to a $1 million fine.It’s rare that campaign finance reformers win in our era of billionaires bankrolling elections and political campaigns. But that’s exactly what happened this week as the California Fair Political Practices Commission announced $16 million in penalties, including a $1 million fine for secretive groups funded by the right-wing Koch brothers.During the 2012 presidential election, California political circles were shocked to learn that two Arizona-based non-profits were poised to spend $15 million to try to defeat Gov. Jerry Brown’s ultimately successful tax hike, Proposition 30, and to support an ultimately unsuccessful measure, Proposition 32, which would have crippled labor union organizing.At the time, the big mystery was who bankrolling the secretive Arizona groups and the California political committees receiving the windfall? This week, a lot of praise went to the FPPC’s Chairwoman, Ann Ravel, who announced a legal settlement naming some of the donors and the fines. She soon heads to Washington as one of two new Federal Election Commission members.But the penalties—the largest in California history—only came because public-interest advocates led by Derek Cressman at Common Cause’s Sacramento office filed the complaint with the FPPC to require the groups to disclose their donors. Cressman is one of three Democrats running for California secretary of state. On Friday, he recounted how he and others followed hints and ended up with a multi-million dollar fine against some the country’s richest Republicans. The quest began by seizing a flagrant violation of state campaign law—unknown operators who refused to identify their donors."I was the vice-president for states for Common Cause and based in California. We were in the final weeks before the 2012 elections and we started seeing press accounts of this $11 million that flew in out of nowhere—into two California ballot measures. The source that was reported was that it came from this Arizona organization. So we started poking around a bit and found that this organization had zero track record of having any interest or activity in California politics. And more significantly, the size and scale of its operations had been much smaller in the past. It was inconceivable that this group could have been sitting on $11 million that it decided to spend in the last weeks of an election in Arizona."The secretive Arizona groups, Americans for Responsible Leadership and the Center to Protect Patient Rights, were tight-lipped. But their filings did offer some clues, Cressman said, which led to David and Charles Koch, the billionaire Republican donors."We dug a little bit more and noticed that some of the attorneys that had been involved had done legal work for the Kochs. There was this individual, Sean Noble, involved, who had a track record of being involved in the Kochs. We didn’t know back them, for certain, that it was the Kochs, but it had all the hallmarks of a Koch operation—a highly sophisticated Virginia law firm whose expertise was creating shell organizations and hiding the money. Their basic trademark, or operating mode, was going to great lengths to conceal who they are—not just Charles and David Koch—but who these 300 or so billionaires who they invite to their conferences twice a year are. I think they know that if people were aware of their identities, they’d be much more skeptical of their messaging."In many states, filing a complaint with regulators to enforce campaign finance rules is often a futile task. Oversight panels almost never act before Election Day, and reform groups often grouse that whatever rebuke follows is too little, too late. But Cressman and Common Cause went ahead anyway at California’s FPPC."We filed a complaint and to my pleasant surprise, the Commission acted on it almost immediately. They said at the time that it wasn’t initially an enforcement action; it was an audit so they could discern where this money had come from. And they said in court, and in the press, it wasn’t like they were on a witch hunt or going after them. They were simply responding to a complaint. It was clear that had we not filed the complaint, nothing would have happened."That complaint gave others in state government an opening to step up, Cressman said. Attorney General, Kamala Harris “provided additional legal resources and clout to the Political Practices Commission,” he said. “And literally the day before Election Day, we were all in court and the judge rules that the first front group from Arizona needed to disclose where it had gotten its funds from. It was on the front page of the newspapers on Election Day—that they had received money from two other shell organizations that they had failed to disclose.”Then, this week, almost a year after the FPPC complaint was filed, California’s regulators announced the multi-million settlement. Two Koch-backed groups will pay $1 million in fines. And two campaign committees in California will pay $15 million to the state, what they received in donations from well-known Republicans like Charles Schwab, the Fisher family that own Gap clothes, Los Angeles businessman Eli Broad and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Needless to say, Thursday was a good day for Cressman.“Yesterday was certainly a gratifying day. It’s nice to see that when you take an action that it can succeed and that people can be brought to justice. And it’s particularly gratifying in that for my whole career, I’ve had to deal with cynics and skeptics who basically say, “Campaign finance laws never work.” “They can always find a way around them.” “They’re never enforced.” Well, here’s cases where they did work and they were enforced. So that’s gratifying."But in politics, nobody gets everything they want. The Koch’s non-profits may be paying big fines, but the settlement still keeps their donors’ names secret. That was discouraging, Cressman said, adding that were it not for the brazen tactic of appearing out of nowhere before Election Day with millions to spend—the secretive groups might have gotten away with it."On the flip side, it appears to me, based on what the Commission released yesterday, that they almost got away with it. And had they been slightly less clever, or pushed the envelope a little bit less than they did, that they would have succeeded. So, while it’s gratifying, it’s clear that we need to continue to push to tighten up these [campaign] disclosure laws in California."There is little doubt that the Koch brothers are not going away and will be more careful—and secretive—next time. But for now, in an era where elections have become an extreme sport for the richest Americans, this is a public-interest victory worth savoring. And it happened because camoaign finance advocates stood up and state regulators took notice.   
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Texas Hunters Will Kill Endangered Rhino In Attempt To Save Them AllNow this just doesn't make any damn sense: A hunting group based in Dallas will be auctioning off a permit to kill an endangered black rhinoceros, to raise money to save the endangered black rhinoceros."First and foremost, this is about saving the black rhino," Ben Carter, executive director of the Dallas Safari Club, told the Agence France Presse. Namibia has the right to kill five endangered rhinoceros, and it just so happened that the Dallas Safari Club won the right to do the deed this year. But at least they're trying to do good!The permit is expected "to sell for at least $250,000, possibly up to $1 million," at the club's convention next year. The black rhinoceros population in Africa has been decimated by hunters looking to sell its valuable horn, which many believe possess special healing powers. The money would go to The Conservation Trust Fund, which protects black rhinos.But not everyone is so enthusiastic about the plan."The world is seeing a concerted effort to preserve the very few black rhinos and other rhinos who are dodging poachers' bullets and habitat destruction," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told Al Jazeera. "The last thing they need are wealthy elites from foreign lands coming in to kill them for their heads."But it would saaaave them. C'mon!
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Fox Guest Betsy McCaughey Hypes Myth That Obamacare Will Harm Medicare Recipients:
SAMANTHA WYATT,
Fox News guest and serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey falsely claimed that the Affordable Care Act will harm the elderly "by eviscerating Medicare." In reality, the ACA does not cut Medicare benefits, and the law actually strengthens aspects of the program.On the October 25 edition of Fox News' The Kelly File, McCaughey claimed that the ACA "is designed to vastly expand Medicaid and pay for it by eviscerating Medicare," which she likened to "robbing Grandma to spread the wealth":MCCAUGHEY: This law, as written, is designed to vastly expand Medicaid and pay for it by eviscerating Medicare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare and moving it over to fund this expansion of this entitlement. It's  like robbing Grandma to spread the wealth.KELLY: Why would they want to vastly expand Medicaid?MCCAUGHEY: Because they believe in a single payer system, and Medicaid is a single payer system. This is a way of vastly shifting resources in this country from one group of people, the elderly, to another group of people.However, the ACA actually strengthens Medicare without cutting benefits. The Washington Post's Wonkblog explained that the majority of cuts to Medicare "come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies," but made clear that "there's one area these cuts don't touch: Medicare benefits. The Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not, however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to."In addition to ensuring that Medicare benefits will not be reduced, the health care law includes additional benefits. According to FactCheck.org, the health care law "stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won't be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals": As we have written many times, the law does not slash the current Medicare budget by $500 billion. Rather, that's a $500 billion reduction in the future growth of Medicare over 10 years, or about a 7 percent reduction in growth over the decade. In other words, Medicare spending would continue to rise, just not as much. The law stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won't be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals.Most of those savings come from a reduction in the future growth of payments to hospitals and other providers (not physicians), and a reduction in payments to private Medicare Advantage plans to bring those payments in line with traditional Medicare. (MA plans have been paid more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.)And it assumes they actually happen. There's good reason to think that some of those reductions won't be implemented. The law calls for cuts in the future growth of reimbursement payments to hospitals and other health care providers -- that accounts for $219 billion of the Medicare savings in the law. But Congress has consistently overridden similar scheduled cuts in payments to doctors.This effort to push a debunked ACA falsehood is the latest in McCaughey's long history of attempting to undermine the health care law. 
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More Than 15 Million Americans Now Live Within One Mile Of A Fracking Well:
BY KATIE VALENTINE

The natural gas boom has led to an “unprecedented industrialization” of many Americans’ backyards, an analysis from the Wall Street Journal has found.
The WSJ looked at census and natural gas well data from more than 700 counties in 11 major natural-gas producing states, and found that at least 15.3 million Americans have a natural gas well within one mile of their home that has been drilled since 2000. That’s more than the population of Michigan or New York.
The boom has left some towns inundated with natural gas operations. In suburban Johnson County, Texas, 99.5 percent of the area’s 150,000 residents now live within a mile of the county’s 3,900 wells — in 2000, there were fewer than 20 oil and gas wells.
And the construction of natural gas wells isn’t letting up anytime soon. Production of the Marcellus Shale region is growing faster than expected, reaching 12 billion cubic feet a day — enough that, if it were a country, the Marcellus Shale would be the eighth-largest producer of natural gas in the world. America will have “a million new oil and gas wells drilled over the next few decades,” a Duke professor told the WSJ. And it’s likely many of those wells could end up in Americans’ backyards — a recent Reuters analysis uncovered the unsettling trend of home developers keeping the rights to oil and gas reserves under the houses they sell, in many cases without notifying the homes’ buyers outright. That way, the home developer can lease the land of an entire neighborhood to a natural gas company — with or without the residents’ consent.
This boom of backyard wells, however, has driven many Americans to action. More and more cities are voting to ban fracking; Pittsburgh was the first municipality in 2010 to ban the practice, and since then Highland Park, N.J., and multiple cities in Pennsylvania have banned fracking. In 2011, Dryden, N.Y. banned fracking after a fierce and successful lobbying effort from town citizens. Now, that ban is being taken to New York’s highest court, and the court’s decision could set precedent for the legality of other local fracking bans.
It’s not surprising that many towns and cities are concerned about the dangers of fracking. Fracking has been tied to a range of health effects in people and livestock, and it also greatly increases truck traffic around wellsites, leading to an increase of noise and fumes. It’s largely up to states to enact their own regulations on fracking, and several are — California is requiring oil and gas companies to list the chemicals they use in fracking online and monitor the air and water quality around well sites, and New York state enacted a moratorium on fracking six years ago, in order to give the state time to determine the potential environmental and health impacts of the practice.
But right now, there are few federal regulations on the practice, something House Democrats want to change. They’re calling on the Obama administration to speed up Environmental Protection Agency guidance on fracking — guidance which they say is long overdue.
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Invoking Rosa Parks, Dozens Of Saudi Women Openly Defy Ban On Driving:
BY JUDD LEGUM
ON Brushing off threats from the government, more than 60 Saudi women got behind the wheel on Saturday in a bold protest of the nation’s de facto ban on women driving.
Sara Hussein, a Saudi woman involved in the effort, drew parallels to the U.S. civil rights movement: “Think back in history — Rosa Parks was the only person who sat down on the bus, wasn’t she? And then it started to happen gradually. It does have to start with the few brave people who are willing to risk whatever there is to risk.”
Many women documented the act of civil disobedience on social media, even posting videos to YouTube. The most popular video, which has already been viewed nearly 100,000 times, was posted by May al-Sawyan, a 32-year-old economics researcher. She drove to the grocery store:Many other videos are posted to the movement’s YouTube channel, October 26 Driving.
On Friday, the Interior Ministry threatened to punish anyone involved in the protest. So far, however, there are no reports of arrests or tickets issued.
Last month, a prominent Saudi cleric claimed that driving would damage women’s ovaries and cause birth defects.
Saudi Arabia does not formally prohibit women from driving, but effectively bans them from doing so by refusing to issue licenses to women.
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Republican 'outreach efforts' doomedTed Cruz, reaching out to offend, as he protests a shutdown he helped make possible.
There's a popular slogan in Twelve Step programs: "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." We can apply it easily to the Teapublican Party, with members who persist in thinking that simply selecting people with Latino surnames, black faces, those who have ovaries, or those who ostensibly champion marijuana reform (the perpetual Pauls) will change their "fail" in communities of color, among women and with young people across the United States.  
It's pretty funny when you think about it. But since they persist in thinking that we are terminally stupid and are unable to separate style from substance—and are easily tricked by visuals—I stand to the side laughing, watching further futile efforts on their part to stem their shrinking demographics. Here's the truth:It's your platform—stupid.
It's your policies—stupid.
It's your racism, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia—stupid.And to make it even more clear, I'll explain below the fold.
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10 Jaw-dropping Absurdities Brought to You By the Right Wing:From lesbian cookies to nuking Iran, this ridiculousness will blow you away.1.  Kevin Swanson is begging you not to buy those lesbian Girl Scout cookiesHow, you might ask, can a cookie be lesbian? And which one is the most lesbian? Is it the famous chocolate covered Thin Mints, or those scrumptious Do-si-dos Peanut Butter Sandwiches?Right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson is not buying sweets from his local Girl Scouts. And he doesn’t want you to, either. Because if you do, you are helping them to promote this oh-so-harmless-seeming, but secrety dastardly organization’s lesbian agenda and also its baby-killing agenda. Also, they’re commies.  “I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies,” he neatly summed up on his radio show this week.Where does he get these ideas about what is truly behind the Girl Scouts?  We don’t know. Perhaps they come from the little voices in his head, which are also telling him the Girl Scouts of the USA is “a wicked organization,” that doesn’t promote “godly womanhood.”“The vision of the Girl Scouts of America is antithetical to a biblical vision for womanhood,” he said. “It’s antithetical to it.” Because Girl Scouts encourage girls to be independent, or dependent on other girls and women, which is very, very wicked indeed.And nothing screams independent woman more than Do-si-do.2. Men’s Righter, Paul Elam: It’s okay not to care about female rape victimsMen’s rights. What could be bad? Sounds so innocuous. Men should have rights. Everyone should have rights. Wait, who is taking away men’s rights? Why, feminists of course. And also rape victims. Whaaa…?Men’s Rights Movement rockstar Paul Elam, famous for, among other statements, “while beautiful women may fear rape, fat, ugly ones might secretly covet it” shockingly defended his successor, John Hembling, for saying he didn’t “give a fuck about rape victims anymore,” in a video quoted by the Daily Beast. Meaning, of course, female rape victims, because he does give a fuck about male rape victims, as we all should.“I don’t find it particularly hyperbolic for a man to say, ‘I’m not gonna give a damn about female rape victims anymore,’” Elam, founder of the website A Voice for Men, said in a video posted Sunday on YouTube. “They have tons of money, of law enforcement, of special programs funded by the government, of social consciousness – schools have Take Back The Night rallies, everything you can possibly think of.” Later he said, “I stand behind John for making that video.”Oddly, Hembling, the editor-in-chief for A Voice for Men, didn’t quite stand behind the video because he took it down from his own Youtube channel, although he’s left plenty of clues indicative of his mindset towards women. At one point he said he was attracted to the intellectual underpinnings of the men’s rights movement because women are “without the capacity for moral agency.”‘Nuff said.3. N.C. Republican official doesn’t want those lazy blacks votingDon Yelton, the now-former N.C. voting official, made a splash this week when he told Jon Stewart that his state’s new stringent voter I.D. law is sound, because “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” He assured the "Daily Show" host that he is not racist, though, and by way of illustration, pointed out that, N*** say n**** all the time so what’s really racist is not letting white people say n****. Especially when they just really love saying that word.Predictably, he lost his job as precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party the next day, and in the wake of that kept right on going with the same kinds of statements, ‘cause why not at that point? And he really loves saying that word.The Huffington Post dubbed him the “most racist Republican” around, but we think that’s a pretty deep bench. He is, however, still in the running for the stupidest Republican around, but that, too, is a very competitive race.4. N.C. (yes, again) State Rep. Larry Pittman: Obama not a traitor (to Kenya, where he was born, of course)Let it not be said that Republicans are exaggerating President Obama’s crimes in, say, a lame attempt to impeach him. This week, Pittman made a funny birther joke to a sympathetic town hall audience, and just cracked the house up. It was really very clever. Apparently Pittman had recently seen an image of the President with the word “traitor” stamped across it. An eminently reasonable man, Pittman told the Concord, N.C. crowd: “I don’t always agree with the guy, I certainly didn’t vote for him, but I gotta defend him on this one. I just don’t think it’s right at all to call Barack Obama a traitor. You know a lot of things he’s done wrong, but he is not a traitor. At least not as far as I can tell, because I’ve not come across any evidence yet that he has done one thing to harm Kenya.And they laughed and laughed.Pittman, also a Presbyterian minister, is such a card. Some of his other kneeslappers include endorsing public hangings of doctors who perform abortions, and saying “the only thing illegal aliens have the right to do in North Carolina is to leave.”So funny we forgot to laugh.5. Sherman Adelson: Nuke IranCasino mogul, GOP mega-donor, and funder of hawkish, rabidly pro-Israel think tanks, Sherman Adleson is still finding ways to make his voice heard after donating and wasting vast sums to Romney and other Republicans in 2012.At a panel called “Will Jews Exist? Iran, Assimilation and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival,” at Yeshiva University in New York this week, he helpfully suggested giving Iran a little warning nuke to speed along the process of convincing them to get rid of their nukes . . . because, in his view, what’s the good of diplomacy? He has it all thought out, explaining that if you nuke some nearby desert, all you hurt is a “few rattlesnakes and scorpions, or whatever,” (definitely not true). Then you say to those holocaust-denying mullahs in charge, “See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.”Please tell us that despite his mountains of cash, no one is really listening to Sherman Adelson.6. Joe the former Plumber: Democrats are the lynchersJoe Wurzelbacher, famous for being trotted out by the McCain campaign to state his opposition to a tax hike on the wealthy that would not have affected him, is still trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame. (It beats fixing people’s pipes, we suppose.)After outspoken Florida Democrat Alan Grayson provocatively used a burning cross for the “T” in Tea Party, Wurzelbacher, still trying to kickstart a career in conservative politics, tweeted that it is the Democrats who have the racist history, and included an image with that burning “T” in the word “Democrat.”Grayson refused to take back his comments about the Tea Party being no more popular than the KKK. He said his comparison comes from the group’s "relentless racist attacks against our African-American president.""[T]here is overwhelming evidence that the tea party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation," Grayson said in a statement provided to HuffPost. "If the hood fits, wear it."7. Coach Daubenmire: Christians are being bullied into not bullying gaysDave Daubenmire, number 607 in the “Dictionary of American Loons” is an expert on bullying. His high school coaching career ran aground after he coerced students into praying in school. Now he has parlayed his fame into anti-gay rants and being a general loudmouth liar for Jesus. This week he went on a kind of circular rant about bullying, saying in a Youtube video: “The whole bullying idea is built around the homosexual agenda. It’s an effort to try to get people not to criticize or make fun of homosexuals.”He does not agree with that. In fact, he thinks it is Christians who are being bullied because they’re not being allowed to express their hatred of homosexuals, or to bully them.But he has some deeper thoughts about the whole bullying thing.“I don’t like bullying,” he said. “But bullying is a part of life. If we want to make Americans tough again, we are raising some of the softest children in the world. My father’s generation would be ashamed of how sissified our kids have become.”So, bullying can be a good thing. And following that logic, it could be good that Christians are being bullied into not bullying gay people, because it’ll toughen up those lily-livered Christians.Right?8. Bradlee Dean, President Obama is both secretly pushing Shariah law, and secretly gayIt is so liberating to be freed of any semblance of logic in thought. Bradlee Dean, who is too-crazy-even-for-many-Republicans (but not for Michelle Bachmann) was at it again this week. The “Sons of Liberty” radio host and fundamentalist Christian rocker, and all-around nutjob, noted in a column for WorldNetDaily that “President Barrack Hussein Obama” has appointed “225 homosexuals” to key positions in the government.Obama, Dean thinks, is simultaneously practicing “discrimination against heterosexuals,” and “advocating Shariah law.”There are things Dean likes about Shariah law, and radical Muslims, like executing gay people, a practice which he says makes them “more moral than American Christians,” according to Rightwingwatch.We’re just a little unclear as to why “secretly gay” Obama would want to implement laws that would have himself executed.But maybe we’re slow.9. Group of Christians refuse to tip waiter, but are nice enough to leave a note explaining his “homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God”So, a group of Christians walk into a bar. Well, it was a restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas. And they ate and made merry, then left. The joke ends there. When 20-year-old server, according to KCTV Fox 19, went to clear the table, he found a note instead of a tip.“Thank you for your service, it was excellent,” it read. “That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to GOD. Queers do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your queer choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’s love, but none shall be spared for queers. May GOD have mercy on you.”This is what passes for Christianity these days? Jesus is rolling over in his grave.10. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman: Ted Cruz is a brilliant, heroic, visionary leaderAgainst all evidence—but then again what does persnickety evidence have to do with a right-wing argument?—Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) is hailing his home-state senator Ted Cruz as a heroic visionary for leading the Republican push to shut down the government.Forget all those post-shutdown polls showing both the Republican and Tea Party’s approval ratings taking a serious hit. Cruz’s ploy “was brilliant,” Stockman told WorldNetDaily.He compared Cruz’s efforts to the Battle of the Alamo, a story dear to every Texan’s heart, because the takeaway is, “In every loss, there can be a victory.”Stockman later opined that Obamacare is secretly a plot to drive everyone into a single payer system. Well, not that secret, he wrongly quoted Obama as saying single payer was his goal (if only).The congressman also said he’s against any additional government funding to fix problems with the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. “It is like saying my house is burning so we need more gasoline to put the fire out. It doesn’t make sense.”No, congressman, and neither do you.
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The Lies That Will Kill America
yesterday Ideology and self-interest trump the facts or even caring about the facts, whether it’s banking, Obamacare or global warming.Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it — the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “US robs bank of $13 billion.”Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch’s minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors — those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. If anybody’s been robbed it’s not JPMorgan Chase, which can absorb the loss and probably take a tax write-off for at least part of it. No, it’s the American public. In addition to financial heartache we still have been denied the satisfaction of seeing jail time for any of the banksters who put our feet in cement and pushed us off the cliff.This isn’t the only scandal JPMorgan Chase is juggling. A $6 billion settlement with institutional investors is in the works and criminal charges may still be filed in California. The bank is under investigation on so many fronts it’s hard to keep them sorted out – everything from deceptive sales in its credit card unit to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to the criminal manipulation of energy markets and bribing Chinese officials by offering jobs to their kids.Nor is JPMorgan Chase the only culprit under scrutiny. Bank of America was found guilty just this week of civil fraud, and a gaggle of other banks is being investigated by the government for mortgage fraud. No wonder the camp followers at Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and other cheerleaders have ganged up to whitewash the banks. If justice is somehow served, this could be the biggest egg yet across the smug face of unfettered, unchecked, unaccountable capitalism.One face in particular: Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. One of Murdoch’s Fox Business News hosts, Charlie Gasparino, claims the Feds are on a witch hunt against Dimon for criticizing President Obama, whose administration, we are told, “is brutally determined and efficient when it comes to squashing those who oppose their policies.” But hold on: Dimon is a Democrat, said to be Obama’s favorite banker, with so much entree he’s been doing his own negotiating with the attorney general of the United States.But that’s crony capitalism for you, bipartisan to a fault. Rupert Murdoch has been defending Dimon in his media for a long time. Last spring, when it looked like there might be a stockholders revolt against Dimon, Murdoch was one of many bigwigs who rushed to his defense. He tweeted that JPMorgan would be “up a creek” without Dimon. “One of the smartest, toughest guys around,” Murdoch insisted. Whether Murdoch’s exaltation had an effect or not, Dimon was handily reelected.Over the last few days, The Wall Street Journal, both Bible and supplicant of high finance as well as one of Murdoch’s more reputable publications — at least in its reporting — echoed the “UNCLE SCAM” indignation of the more lowbrow Post. The government just wants “to appease their left-wing populist allies,” its editorial writers raged, with a “political shakedown and wealth-redistribution scheme.” Perhaps, the paper suggested, the White House will distribute some of the JPMorgan Chase penalty to consumers and advocacy groups and “have the checks arrive in swing congressional districts right before the 2014 election.” We can hear the closet Bolsheviks panting for their handouts now and getting ready to use their phony ID’s to stuff the box on Election Day with multiple illegal ballots.Such fantasies are all part of the Murdoch News Corp. pattern, an unending flow of falsehood and phony populism that in reality serves only the wealthy elite. Fox News is its ministry of misinformation, the fake jewel of the News Corp. crown, a 24/7 purveyor of flimflam and the occasional selective truth. Look at the pounding they’ve given Obama’s healthcare reform right from the very start, whether the non-existent death panels or claims that it would cause the highest tax increase in history.While it’s true that the startup of Obamacare has been plagued by its website nightmare and other problems, Fox News consistently has failed to mention Republican roadblocks that prevented the program from getting proper funding or the fact that so many states ruled by Republican governors and legislatures — more than 30 — have deliberately failed to set up the insurance marketplaces critical to making the new system work. Just the other day, Eric Stern at Salon.com fact-checked a segment on Sean Hannity’s show. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity declared, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.”Eric Stern tracked down each of the Hannity Six and found that while their questions about health reform may have been valid, the answers they received from Hannity or had decided for themselves were not. “I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster,” Stern reported. “But none of them had even visited the insurance exchange.”And there you have the problem: ideology and self-interest trump the facts or even caring about the facts, whether it’s banking, Obamacare or global warming. Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists say that climate change is happening and that humans have made it so, but only four in ten Americans realize it’s true. According to a new study in the journal Public Understanding of Science, written by a team that includes Yale University’s Anthony Leiserowitz, the more that people listen to conservative media like Fox News or Limbaugh, the less sure they are that global warming is real. And even worse, the less they trust science.Such ignorance will kill democracy as surely as the big money that funds and encourages the media outlets, parties and individuals who spew the lies and hate. The ground is all too fertile for those who will only believe whatever best fits their resentment or particular brand of paranoia. It is, as an old song lyric goes, “the self-deception that believes the lie.” The truth will set us free; the lie will make prisoners of us all.
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