McCain vs. NSA

John McCain: Keith Alexander Should Resign As NSA Head:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is calling on Keith Alexander to resign as director of the National Security Agency...

The UnDoing Of Democracy

'Dollarocracy': How Special Interests Undermine Our Democracy | Money & Politics, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com:

...The United States has experienced fundamental changes that are dramatically detrimental to democracy. Voters’ ability to define political discourse has been so diminished that even decisive election results like Barack Obama’s in 2012 have little impact. That’s because powerful interests — freed to, in effect, buy elections, unhindered by downsized and diffused media that must rely on revenue from campaign ads — now set the rules of engagement. Those interests so dominate politics that the squabbling of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, is a sideshow to the great theater of plutocracy and plunder. This is not democracy. This is dollarocracy...

States Rights For Reefer

Bipartisan Marijuana Bill Appears To Have One More Big Supporter In Its Corner: The NAACP:

A bipartisan bill advocating for states rights on marijuana appears to have one more big supporter in its corner.

Marijuana Majority said Saturday in an email that the NAACP's Board of Directors passed a resolution last month in support of H.R. 1523 -- the Respect States Marijuana Laws Act. Introduced in April by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the legislation is designed to protect both medical and recreational pot users from federal prosecution for following state laws...

The Daily Flashback: Skippy Church Edition

USATODAY.com - Democrats voted out of church because of their politics, members say:

Democrats voted out of church because of their politics, members say

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Some in Pastor Chan Chandler's flock wish he had a little less zeal for the GOP.

Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn't support President Bush. Nine members were voted out at a Monday church meeting in this mountain town, about 120 miles west of Charlotte...

Weiner Rehab Begins

Anthony Weiner Comes Out Strong On Bill Maher | Firebrand Progressives:

...But on Friday night, during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, an all but forgotten articulate, confident, and poised Anthony Weiner—the same Anthony Weiner many of us so fondly remember from his days in congress— sparred with fellow panelists GOPAC president David Avella and political scientistDr. Victoria DeFransceco Soto on the topic of Obamacare.

While I could use this space to quote and summarize the discussion and ensuing argument that took place during the exchange, nothing I say will paint as vivid of an image as simply watching the video. What I will say instead is that as I watched this, I realized two things: I am now even more saddened that Anthony Weiner fell so far from grace, and I’m not sure I would ever count him out. Time has a funny way of healing things, and in spite of all the bizarre comments and behavior that we saw and heard from him during the past year, he still has that fire that immediately endeared him in the hearts of so many progressives when he was in congress...

Tea Learning

Four years later, the Tea Party has learned nothing - Salon.com:

The Tea Party is no longer a brand-new movement in American politics. So, more than four years in, what do they appear to have learned? How about: nothing. And they seem to want it that way...

The Nut Didn't Fall Far From The Cruz Tree

Ted Cruz's Dad Declares God Is Pro Death Penalty:

Evangelical pastor Rafael Cruz, father of shutdown dramatist Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), served up a stemwinder this week, laying out God’s positions on the death penalty, guns in schools, gay marriage, communism and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), all in an impassioned 45 minutes...

The Daily Flashback: Skippy Vet Edition

Dan Rather is right | Research | Media Matters for America:

...Now, I realize the accepted Beltway media takeaway from CBS' National Guard controversy is supposed to be that the network was guilty of a colossal, historic newsroom blunder from which there is no possible defense or redemption. (Personally, I'll leave that category to the Judy Millers of the world.) But the dirty little secret that bloggers and mainstream journalists don't want to discuss is that Rather is right -- the National Guard story was true...

Will Benghazi Retraction Be Rather-Level?

CBS’ erroneous Benghazi debacle explodes - Salon.com:

...We initially covered the questions about the 60 Minutes report last week, after Media Matters for America’s David Brock, author of the book, The Benghazi Hoax, penned a letter to CBS demanding a retraction of the story and a full investigation into what appeared to be a fabricated story by Davies.

Brock cited CBS’ response to questions about 60 Minutes‘ 2004 story on questions about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service (which turned out to be true, though the provenance of one of the documents used in the report was never able to be verified as authentic.) Following that report by Dan Rather, CBS quickly launched a full investigation into the matter. “Similar standards must be applied in this case,” Brock said in his letter last week to CBS News chairman Jeff Fager and its president David Rhodes...

Lying Benghazi Liars Lying Lies Exposed

CBS Admits Error in Benghazi '60 Minutes' Story - ABC News:

CBS News said Friday that it was misled by a "60 Minutes" source who claimed he was on the on the scene of a 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya when it now turns out there are serious doubts about whether he was...

Ask The Headhunter Hits E$con Homer

Ask The Headhunter: Unemployment -- Made in America by Employers | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS:

... Human resources executives run around in their corporate offices with their eyes closed, throwing billions of dollars at applicant tracking systems (ATSes) and job boards like Taleo, Monster.com and LinkedIn, and they pretend no one can see they are dancing in circles buck naked. HR keeps talking about a talent shortage, but the only talent shortage is in the HR offices. HR executives need to learn how to match up the 3.9 million vacancies with some of the 25 million under-employed.

What's going on? The economy is certainly one factor, but businesses, the media and the federal government continue to ignore the structural problems in our employment system. I'll tell you what I think the main problems are...

Another highlight (but read the post, too):

On A Lighter Note

Who We Are

Tufts Magazine / fall 2013:

THE BATTLE LINES OF TODAY’S DEBATES OVER GUN CONTROL, STAND-YOUR-GROUND LAWS, AND OTHER VIOLENCE-RELATED ISSUES WERE DRAWN CENTURIES AGO BY AMERICA’S EARLY SETTLERS

Cruz Doesn't Want President In Texas

Cruz To Obama: Don't Promote Obamacare In Texas:

Cruz added, “President Obama should take his broken promises tour elsewhere so Texans can continue focusing on the solutions that have allowed our state to become and remain the nation’s economic and job creation powerhouse."

In a kinder, gentler time, one NC bigot opined:

...In 1994, Helms created a sensation when he told broadcasters Rowland Evans and Robert Novak that Clinton was "not up" to the tasks of being commander-in-chief, and suggested two days later, on the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, that Clinton "better not show up around here [Fort Bragg] without a bodyguard".^[233] Helms said Clinton was so unpopular and said he had not meant it as a threat...

Another Police Execution

Cop Caught On Tape Shooting Unarmed Man Won't Be Charged With A Crime | ThinkProgress:

...In the prosecutors’ defense, putting a cop in prison is remarkably difficult. Police officers are allowed to shoot if they fear for their lives, and proving that use of force was “unreasonable” sets a very high bar. Few police who have used force under suspicious circumstances ever face a judge. A 2007 study by UChicago law professor Craig Futterman found that just 19 of 10,149 complains of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and false arrests led to a police suspension of a week or more. Individual police officers are also largely protected from damages claims in civil court through “qualified immunity...”

Good Labor News For A Change

Cincinnati Pension Overhaul Voted Down - Organized Labor Was The Real Winner This Election - Esquire:

All right, so I've been the skunk at the garden party long enough today. If you want to find a clear -- if largely unacknowledged -- winner in last night's electoral shindig, take a look at organized labor. In Boston, where John Connolly attached himself to the Rhee-ite school "reform" movement and criticized Martin Walsh for being a tool of big labor -- In other words, this was a race between Democrats in which union support was an actually an issue. Never thought I'd live to see that in Boston. -- Walsh beat Connolly fairly handily. And in Cincinnati, a bastion of hard-bar Republicanism in Ohio, a really remarkable thing happened...

The Most Amazing Abuse Of Authority Ever

David Eckert: Colonoscopy, Enema, X-Ray By Cops For Drugs (VIDEO):

David Eckert went shopping at a Wal-Mart in Deming NM on January 2nd, 2013. He then got into his car to leave the parking lot. David Eckert was then stopped by Officer Chavez for allegedly not yielding at a stop sign. Officer Chavez ordered David Eckert out of his car. Things went downhill after that...

VA Gov Race Analysis

Why Did the Polls Miss McAuliffe's Margin of Victory? | Kristen Soltis Anderson

With public polling averages indicating Terry McAuliffe would win yesterday's gubernatorial election in Virginia by at least a touchdown, many were surprised to see his Republican challenger Ken Cuccinelli come within three points of the win.

So... what happened? Twitter is abuzz with theories on what went wrong, ranging from a late-breaking Cuccinelli surge fueled by the rocky rollout of Obamacare's exchanges, to complications stemming from polling with a third-party candidate, to the difficulty of nailing the makeup of an off-year electorate...

Finally, A Good Idea On SS

Dem Senators: We're Doing It Wrong, Let's Expand Social Security:

In a town consumed by how quickly and how deeply to cut Social Security, a handful of Democratic senators have a different idea: expand it.

Their pitch is to grow Social Security benefits by attaching it to a new formula, known as CPI-E (Consumer Price Index for the Elderly), which is based on the theory that seniors face higher-than-average price increases, such as on health care and housing. It would be paid for by phasing out the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, which is currently $113,700. Supporters say this would raise Social Security compensation for all beneficiaries by $70 per month.

Legislation to this effect was introduced earlier this spring by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 has since been co-sponsored by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Mark Begich (D-AK) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who added his name this week...

No Tea GOP

Business interests line up against Tea Party candidate in Alabama - chicagotribune.com:

A tight primary election in an Alabama Republican stronghold has pitted a business-backed former state senator against a Tea Party movement favorite in a race highlighting tensions between the party's pragmatic and ideological wings over the recent government shutdown...

Voter Suppression, Texas Style

Former House Speaker denied voter ID card in Texas after voting since 1944 | FreakOutNation:

Former House Speaker Jim Wright was denied a voter ID card Saturday at a Texas Department of Public Safety office and says, “Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn’t give me an ID.” Wright has voted in every election since 1944.

About ten days ago, a Texas district judge was almost barred from the polls. She has voted for the past 49 years without issue until now, courtesy of the state’s new voter ID law...

Rand The Swordsman

Move over, Ted Cruz: Rand Paul’s wacko public meltdown - Salon.com:

...Just when Sen. Ted Cruz’s self-promoting extremism seemed to create room for a far-right 2016 rival who wouldn’t scare children (and the donor class), Sen. Rand Paul is blowing his big chance.

Last week the New York Times reported that in the wake of Cruz’s implosion, Paul’s aides had taken to calling Cruz “the chief of the wacko birds,” using John McCain’s memorable epithet for the junior Texas senator. Paul himself, Jonathan Martin reported, “has quietly been reaching out to more establishment forces within the Republican Party, trying to prove to big donors and mainline Republican organizations that he is more than a Tea Party figure or a rerun of his father’s failed candidacies.” And establishment Republicans were beginning to use the word “grown” and “matured” to describe Paul.

That’s not the word they’re using today, on the heels of a crazy appearance on ABC’s “This Week” where he wished he could challenge the journalists who’ve accused him of plagiarism to a duel...

 Especially since she's a girl! Ewww!

Comment Of The Day: Benghazi Edition,3

David Brock to call on '60 Minutes' to retract Benghazi report - POLITICO.com

jaxas4

• 9 hours ago

Benghazi resonates with a very narrow slice of the American people primarily on the far right of the republican party. The vast majority of the public has rendered the correct verdict that Benghazi was a CIA-Military FUBAR project. Efforts to tie President Obama and Hillary Clinton to some sinister coverup are not very much different than the Vince Foster affair in the 1990s when investigation after investigation was executed at considerable cost in dollars and wasted time only to reach the same conclusion time after time. That is what is going on here. It is only being kept in the news by a mainstream media that wants to ingratiate itself to the far right and convince them that they are not all liberals in the tank for Obama and Clinton. The truth is most of the media carry water for the republican party.

Bad Words In The Airport

There's only one way to wipe out racism and that is to wipe out all racism. Please join me and remind people that bigotry extends beyond pigmentation.

When no one said anything: How racism goes unquestioned - Salon.com:

...Not one person said anything; I was surrounded by people...

Nor did you.

I've been called disparaging names to my face many times and routinely see offensively enraging terms used casually in the media. The Oneida don't like "Redskin" and I don't like: hick, hillbilly, cracker, or any of the other names used to insult rural Appalachian mountaineers. Every time I see or hear those racist insults I call the person out. If it's in my face, I usually say something like "I don't like being referred to that way." If it's on the Internet, I typically leave and an opinion that it is racist to refer to any group stereotypically, which sometimes sets off long and often vulgar retorts that nearly always contain the reminder that "we whipped your ass in the Civil War."

One of these days I'm really going to wind the stem on that watch. 

Crazy In NC: Getting Sane Through GOPer Switches Edition

Jason Thigpen, GOP Veteran Switches Party, A trickle Becoming A Stream:

...This is likely a difficult decision for Mr. Jason Thigpen. He must be applauded for the courage it took. He will be accepted into the Democratic Party with open arms. One can only hope that moderate Republicans take back their Party. America needs a multi-party system to force all politicians of every stripe to earn the votes of every American. The trickle of Republicans switching is bound to become a stream as the extremist continue to hold their party and the country hostage.

Elections Shall Have No Juducal Consequences, GOPers Think

The Politics of Petulance - NYTimes.com:

...The problem, as Senate Republicans now claim, is that the court’s workload is too light to justify filling its three vacant seats. This is a transparently bogus argument, and the Republicans know it. The D.C. Circuit’s caseload is essentially unchanged from 2005, when Senate Republicans voted to confirm two of President George Bush’s nominees to the court. But now they accuse President Obama of trying to “pack the court.”

Putting aside the flatly dishonest use of that term, the Republicans’ real concern, as the Senate minority whip, John Cornyn, told reporters this week, is that nominees like Ms. Millett will “tilt the court ideologically in a way that favors the big-government agenda of the Obama administration.” Many are responding to business lobbyists who do not want important commerce cases decided by a judge appointed by Mr. Obama...

GOP And ACA Sabotage

The Obamacare sabotage campaign - Todd S. Purdum - POLITICO.com:

...To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step...

Bill Gives Political Lesson

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Prof. Clinton explains the far right - The Washington Post:

...Yet those inspired by passionate belief — people, Clinton says, with “steam coming out of their ears” — do have one important virtue: “They will show up and vote.” Offering a quick political science lecture about who votes when, Clinton explained that “in the non-presidential years, a whole different America shows up than in the presidential years.” The lesson to moderates and progressives: “You’ve got to care as much about this election as you did about the election in 2012...”

Shredding The Poor

REPORT: The Food Stamp Cuts The Media Won't Tell You About | Research | Media Matters for America:

Cable and broadcast nightly news programs have remained completely silent on pending automatic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- formerly known as food stamps -- which will have negative impacts on the economy and low-income groups...

Murdoch Hacking Returns

Major Phone Hacking Bombshell Drops | Crooks and Liars:

Prosecutors told a London court today that Murdoch’s top deputies Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson carried on a six-year affair while running the News of the World, and that they colluded together to hack celebrities’ phones.

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, the two biggest names in the ongoing trial over phone hacking, had an affair for at least six years, the jury in the trial was told on Thursday...

Fox Does Good

Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Out-Journalisms CBS News on Florida Woman’s Junk Insurance | Mediaite:

...Earlier today, Newsbusters outclassed most of the mainstream media by being honest about Obamacare, and now, The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple points out that Fox News has actually outclassed CBS News by partially correcting Jan Crawford‘s misleading report about a Florida woman who is unhappy about the new plan she’s being offered under Obamacare, at ten times the price of her old plan. Slow clap for conservative media today...

Warren Disputes Financial Myth

Elizabeth Warren Destroys Financial Crisis Myth:

...The study Warren was referring to refuted a common conservative argument blaming the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act for forcing Fannie and Freddie to buy shoddy mortgages in poor neighborhoods. "It was the federal government that pushed the subprime loans … that pushed the Community Reinvestment Act," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in a GOP primary debate during her presidential campaign, when asked who was to blame for the financial crisis.

However, the St. Louis Federal Reserve analyzed data in California and Florida -- two states hard-hit by the mortgage crisis -- and found that "the extensive purchases of risky private-label mortgage-backed securities by the GSEs were not due to affordable housing mandates..."

Issa And ACA Website

Report: 'Company Behind Troubled Obamacare Website Donated Heavily To Republicans In 2012' - CNN iReport:

...So.
Issa, who took donations from CGI is investigating CGI and Obamacare? Hummm
Did the CGI, company that created the Obamacare web site, intentionally create problems to make the Healthcare.gov site look bad? And for what reason? Hummm
And now the GOP point to the web site and claim it's Obama's HHS Secretary's fault? Hummm
The GOP got more campaign contributions than did Democrats. Hummm
Besides, CGI has run way over in costs and will stand to make a lot more money should the web site 'problems persist'.
Is there any incentive to get the website fixed?
This looks a little suspicious to me.
It also looks like more hypocrisy from the GOP and Issa.
Hey, who's going to investigate Issa and the GOP?

Another GOPer Heads To The Slam

Former Oklahoma state Rep. Randy Terrill convicted of political bribery | News OK:

...Terrill, a Republican, is accused of offering then-Sen. Debbe Leftwich, a Democrat, an $80,000-a-year state job at the medical examiner's office in 2010. Prosecutors allege he bribed her so she would not run for re-election in 2010...

Best ACA Rant Yet

Valid points. Right on the money.

Old Racist Gets New Job

Embattled IQ Scholar Reemerges As National Review Writer | ThinkProgress:

Jason Richwine, who parted ways with the Heritage Foundation over his research arguing Hispanics are intellectually inferior to whites, has quietly begun writing semi-regularly for the flagship conservative publication National Review...

PlagiRand

Rachel Maddow: Rand Paul ripped off Wikipedia - POLITICO.com:

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is accusing Sen. Rand Paul of lifting some material from Wikipedia for a speech he gave at Liberty University in Virginia.

The passages in question are descriptions of the movie “Gattaca,” about genetic discrimination in a dystopian future. Monday night, Maddow noted the similarities in Paul’s speech and the Wikipedia page...

Why Cons Hate The Gov Except When They Love It

Wisconsin Frac Sands Bill - Watching Scotty Blow, Continued - Esquire:

... If you're keeping score at home, Republicans hate federal land use policy, and the EPA, and the Endangered Species Act, and the entire Interior Department because they violate the sacred principles of "federalism" by taking away local controls and depriving the extraction industries of their god-given right to eat the Earth. They also hate local regulations because local control can deprive the extraction industries of their god-given right to eat the Earth. Conservatism is not opposed to the tyranny of faceless, distant power over the lives of ordinary people as long as the facelessm distant tyranny turns a buck.

Got it.

Rumbles In Tiananmen

Tiananmen Square attack sows terror in spiritual heart of China - latimes.com:

It could hardly have been a more audacious attack or one that was aimed more directly at the bull's-eye that is the spiritual heart of China.

At 12:05 p.m. Monday, a white sport utility vehicle entered a sidewalk and drove nearly 500 yards, plowing through tourists and police, until it stopped near the iconic portrait of Mao Tse-tung that hangs over the main gate in front of Tiananmen Square...

Somebody Needs To Talk To Somebody

My Confederate town - Salon.com

Killing Their Own: GOPer ACA

The Democrat's Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular (So Why Did We Enact the Republican Version and Why Are They So Upset?) | Robert Reich: While

...Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, it's easy to forget that for years they've been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all...

The Foreign Born Candidate

Ted Cruz in Iowa: Has he sown the seeds of a 2016 GOP presidential candidacy? - NBC Politics:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the hottest thing in tea party politics this year -- and the favored son of some activists -- almost overnight.

But after two days of events across Iowa, it is clear that using the state as a springboard to the White House in 2016 won’t come nearly as easily as his national fame...

O Ain't Perfect, People

The strange silence | The Confluence:

... It is pointless to tell these “fans” that there is nothing wrong with criticizing the president and his policies. It doesn’t make you the grand master of the local KKK or mean that you’ve failed Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, I might even go out on a limb to suggest that the reason Bill Clinton gets so much negative attention from these “fans”, in spite of the fact that his record is more liberal than Obama’s, is because these “fans” are projecting their pent up frustration on a legitimate white target as a proxy. They simply cannot overcome their fear of ostracism if they criticize the president in the strong terms they would like to use. Just thinking about it makes them feel uncomfortable and oogy.

This is ridiculous but it appears to be useless to point out that if people on the left don’t get over this conditioned Pavlovian response (courtesy of Obama’s campaign strategists) they are condemning their side to complete and utter fecklessness and continued perceptions of ineptitude. But I might suggest that this is exactly what the bad guys want. If you don’t raise a fuss, no effective regulation gets implemented and ideas that benefit most of the people in America never see the light of day and are considered politically impractical by the savvy people...

Banksters And The Lapdog Media

The lies that will kill America - Salon.com:

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. “U.S. 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...

Warren's Letter About Bank Criminals

Read Letter From Awesome Senator Warren Calling for Crooked Bank CEOs To Be Jailed (Video)

GOPer Doomed List

Meet The 37 House Republicans Who Could Lose Their Jobs For Shutting Down The Government:

...Democrats only need to lock up 17 additional seats in the November 2014 midterm elections to secure a House majority. The new polls show the recent government shutdown may cause as many as 37 Republicans to lose their House seats next year.

PPP pollsters surveyed 61 Republican-held congressional districts around the country from Oct. 1 through Oct. 18. They concluded that “Democrats not only have an opportunity to take back the House of Representatives next year, but that they could win a sizable majority if voter anger over the shutdown carries into 2014..."

Middle Class Revolt Coming

FreedomWorks Does Not Get It. Middle Class Is About To Revolt. - EgbertoWillies.com:

FreedomWorks simply does not get it. They actually believe that the American middle class will continue its path to self-destruction by maintaining a path of indentured servitude to the top two percent of the population. They continue to push the country to the right, a direction that is nothing more than a wealth transfer vector to corporations and plutocrats...

Klan Tea

Alan Grayson compares Tea Party to KKK: ‘If the hood fits, wear it’ | The Raw Story:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is not backing down about a flippant remark comparing Tea Party Republicans to the Ku Klux Klan into a fundraising message despite criticism from at least one opponent.

“Members of the Tea Party have engaged in relentless racist attacks against our African-American President,” Grayson said in a statement to WKMG-TV published on Tuesday. “There 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. If the hood fits, wear it...”

Local Pol Goes Honky On Daily Show

"Daily Show" Sparks Local Controversy - WLOS News13 - Top Stories:

It's the interview heard around the state and the nation. Don Yelton, a Buncombe County GOP activist was interviewed by a reporter from The Daily Show about North Carolina's new voting law several weeks ago. The episode aired Wednesday night on Comedy Central...

And the poor guy has been asked to resign his GOPer position. Go to the link to jump to the Daily Show clip.

Obama Opens Second Front

Obama pushes for immigration bill this year:

With the partial government shutdown in the past, President Obama renewed his call Thursday for an immigration bill.

"It's good for our economy, it's good for our national security," Obama said in remarks at the White House. "It's good for our people, and we should do it this year..."

Sowin' 'n Reapin'

Comment Of The Day: Daily Flashback Edition

Brian Williams Tom Foley Obit - Please Stop Hurting History - Esquire
Laurence Glavin · Top Commenter

BTW, today (Wednesday) is the 30th Anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing over 240 American military personnel. I don't recall any media obsession over this event or demands for a Congressional investigation (Darrell Issa was nine going on ten). Reagan withdrew any personnel from Lebanon shortly thereafter without being accused of cutting and running. It was a truly different time.

Boo Hoo In VA

Fearing a lost governor’s race, Virginia Republicans confront party divide - The Washington Post:

With just three weeks remaining before the election, Republican leaders in Virginia fear that their nominee, Ken Cuccinelli II, is on his way to losing the governor’s race and that the party will squander command of a state that is key to their quest to dominate next year’s midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race...

America Finds Its (Pot) Mind

Poll: Majority Of Americans In Favor Of Legalizing Marijuana � CBS DC:

For the first time in history, a clear majority of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana a new poll shows...

Biting The Feeding Hand

Where did pro-default lawmakers get donations? From companies - The Washington Post:

The lawmakers who voted against raising the debt ceiling last week count among their biggest donors the country’s most powerful banking lobby and companies such as Honeywell and AT&T — not just the activist conservative groups that have roiled the Republican Party...

Rand Reveals His True Self

Can Rand Paul Learn to Tell the Truth? - Jill Lawrence - The Atlantic:

...He went on to describe studying for a pathology test with friends in the library. "We spread the rumor that we knew what was on the test and it was definitely going to be all about the liver," he said. "We tried to trick all of our competing students into over-studying for the liver" and not studying much else.

"So, that's my advice," he concluded. "Misinformation works..."

Ruining O And Us

Conspiracy theories explain the right - Salon.com:
... If I were to tell you that a cabal of Congressional Republicans had been quietly working with a roster of little-known political organizations since the last election, many of them funded by a pair of shadowy billionaire brothers, to bring the country to the brink of financial ruin, I’d understand it if you thought I was talking about a conspiracy theory. But really I’d be describing the sausage making that goes on in politics today and the blurry lines between lobbying and influence peddling—and even more than that, about the behavior of people who are so blinded by rage, so driven by their own fever dreams about Obama’s plot to turn the U.S. into a Third-World, multi-racial, socialist, Muslim, atheist paradise, that they would pay any cost to ruin his presidency...

What We Need

My bold.

Winning the Peace: The Post-Shutdown Challenge | Crooks and Liars:

...Elected officials will need to hear from a mobilized public if we are to escape the grim and destructive debate they've planned for us. Our political discourse needs to shift away deficit mania and toward those policies the public wants and needs. They include:

truly progressive tax reform, in which the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share;

investment in jobs, growth, education, and our crumbling infrastructure;

a more just economy, with improved social mobility, wage growth for the middle class, and opportunities for every American to better themselves through education and hard work;

a line in the sand which protects Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and strengthens them for future generations;

a commitment to protect and defend the programs which care for the most vulnerable among us - children, families, and those who are most in need; and,

an end to any tax break which encourages American companies to send jobs overseas...

Teabagging Ain't Southern

Thank Yanks for the Tea Party! - Salon.com:

...The South’s 1964 protest vote against Lyndon Johnson was undoubtedly a result of the Civil Rights Act. But over the next decades, as the Republican Party advanced through a rapidly modernizing South, it was the white-collar, affluent, and suburban districts – i.e. those that were the most “modern”, “American,” and populated with northern transplants – that led the way toward GOP dominance, while those that were most traditionally “Southern” lagged behind. Likewise, the old post-Civil War pattern of poorer whites being more likely to vote Republican, which survived well into the 1950s, sharply reversed, so that by the end of the Reagan era the South had joined the national pattern of “normal” class voting alignments...

Peter Pan GOPers

Opinion: GOP isn’t learning from its mistakes - Joe Scarborough - POLITICO.com:

My children and I love watching Peter Pan. In fact, we’ve seen the Disney classic so often through the years that we could probably recite most of the movie from memory. Maybe that’s why the opening lines came so easily to my mind earlier this week while watching a far less joyful tale unfold on Capitol Hill.

“This has all happened before and it will happen again” are the first words to that sweet movie about eternal youth. Unfortunately, those lines also fit a bit too snugly on the carcass of a political movement that seems incapable of learning from past mistakes. Chances are good that Republicans will continue getting blindsided by political events until Republican leaders stop cowering to public figures who insist on filtering out all realities that are in conflict with their preexisting worldviews...

Police Shooting-- Again

Dallas police shoot mentally ill man standing in the street - Salon.com:

Another day, another story of police trigger-happines; another mentally ill person struck by police gunfire.

In Dallas this week, as Gawker noted, a 59-year-old man was behaving erratically and holding a knife when his mother called the cops. When the police arrived, as surveillance footage shows, they immediately draw there weapons. Bobby Gerald Bennett was shot four times while his hands were down by his sides. He is currently in intensive care. The Dallas Police Department is now conducting an internal review....

When is this rampage going to end?

The Lying Liars Of Fox News

A reporter looks at three ACA interviews done by Hannity. It's ugly.

Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare - Salon.com:

...I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.

First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.

Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.

There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all...

Democratic Heat

“They’re fools — and work for fools!”: Grayson on GOP staffers (and much more) - Salon.com:

On the first day of the government shutdown, firebrand Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson told Salon that Republicans’ on-the-job drinking was partially to blame. Now he says the current showdown will end the party – for good.

In an interview late Tuesday afternoon, Grayson accused Republicans of pushing “health suppression” and measures “torturing” congressional staffers, and repeatedly “dragging America into heavy traffic.” The Florida Democrat also defended the effectiveness of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, predicted the demise of any “Great Betrayal” targeting Social Security or Medicare, and said voters will soon send the Republican Party “to the ash heap of history.” A condensed version of our conversation follows...

GOPer Tea Fever Continues

Finally! The Republican Fever Is Broken - The Daily Beast:

...By holding firm and refusing to bend to Republican demands for capitulation, Obama has broken the Republican Party. Neither Ted Cruz—the ringleader of this entire effort—nor his allies have much to say. According to my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Texas senator will not filibuster the deal when it comes for a vote on the Senate floor. (This hasn’t been a complete wash for Cruz: his joint fundraising committee earned nearly $800,000 from this gambit, and he’s established himself as the leader of the radical Right.) And when asked about the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Heritage Action—which pushed the shutdown as a strategy—declared that it was a nonstarter until the next presidential administration. “Well everybody, understands that we’ll not be able to repeal this law until 2017,” said the conservative think tank’s CEO said this morning in an interview with Fox News...

Shutdown Results

Republicans Shut Down the Government for Nothing - Molly Ball - The Atlantic:

... Democrats will get the government funded at levels they (grudgingly) sought in the first place, for longer than they originally sought, and without the looming threat of default.

So what did Republicans get for shutting down the government for 17 days? Their poll numbers tanked. Their gubernatorial candidate in Virginia appears headed for defeat in next month's election. The business community is rethinking its support. Veterans and the elderly are ticked off. And any leverage they ever had to push their goals of reducing the size of government and chipping away at health-care reform is gone.

All in all, it's been a worthwhile exercise for the GOP.

We Can Only Hope, Rush

Rush Limbaugh On GOP: 'One Of The Greatest Political Disasters I've Ever Seen':

..."I was trying to think if ever in my life, I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant. I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican party has been doing. There has not been any serious opposition...against what's happening in this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them and what they've ended up doing is creating one of the greatest political disasters I've ever seen in my lifetime...I was pondering if I could ever remember...a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist, for all intents and purposes."

Hutchison Flames GOPer Crazies

Kay Bailey Hutchison blasts GOP ‘outliers’ who ‘hijacked’ debt, deficit debate | Dallas Morning News:

On Wednesday former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison never mentioned her successor – Ted Cruz – by name, but she blasted his attempts to derail the U.S. government by attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“I think that most Republicans wanted to negotiate on the issue of spending and the debt and the deficit,” she said during a brief interview at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, where we ran into the former senator having lunch. “I think a few people threw in an issue that you could not win. It was absolutely clear you could not win it. And as I’ve said, I was voting on Christmas Eve two years ago against that bill. I did everything I could, and so did all the Republicans in Congress — every single one.”

She went on to call the fight against Obamacare “a mistaken strategy,” and blamed Republican leadership for not getting the party back on track...

GOPers Refuse To Own Park Closures

'Despicable': Park Service chief dragged before House panel, ripped over closures | Fox News:

...Democrats, meanwhile, took turns lambasting the GOP majority for holding the hearing in the first place, claiming their party was responsible for the partial government shutdown which triggered the parks cuts.

"You can't create something and then pretend you're outraged by the result," Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said Republicans are living in an "alternative universe" and "can't cope with reality."

Evil Doers And Fast Food

Fast-Food Giants Make Billions While Their Workers Use Billions In Welfare Benefits | Alternet:

Wages at America’s fast-food chains are so low that millions of employees have been receiving at least $7 billion a year in welfare benefits between 2007 and 2011, according to a new study by University of California and University of Illinois labor economists...

The Coultergeist Eats Her Own

How Bad Is It? Even Ann Coulter Has Turned On Conservatives - The Daily Beast:

...That said, Coulter’s scatter-shot attack was telling, as was Hannity’s half-hearted pushback. A master of exploiting the political zeitgeist, Coulter understands that smacking fellow Republicans is the hot trend, and she is too savvy a (cough) huckster to miss such an opportunity. But, as the chaos spirals, Republicans seem to be having an ever-harder time figuring out where it is they want to point fingers or lob bombs. Everyone in the party is fed up with everyone else, and no one seems to have any idea how to stop the madness. Even folks like Coulter and Hannity, who have done so much to create the contemporary climate of over-the-top GOP crazy, can’t agree on how to deal with what they have created. How do you get Frankenstein’s monster back under control when no one can even agree on who the monster is?

That said, you have to give Coulter props for knowing how to hawk a book.

The Hate Of The Phony Xians

The religious right is a fraud: Nothing Christian about Michele Bachmann’s values - Salon.com:

...The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle. Quite the contrary: Just as public morality is an arena fit for intervention by a Christian-informed government, so too is welfare. Consider the British Christian People’s Alliance 2010 election manifesto, a document intended to explain the imminently Christian party’s policy goals:...

Carney Only Nods To Journalists

Faux News should get the treatment it dishes out.

Ed Henry Addresses His White House Walkout:

Fox News' Ed Henry addressed his sudden exit from a Friday White House press briefing in a Monday interview.

A visibly angry Henry walked out of the briefing after press secretary Jay Carney ignored his repeated questions.

Anonymous vs. Rape Enablers

Anonymous targets Missouri town for refusing to prosecute man who confessed to having sex with 14-year-old and leaving her to die | The Raw Story:

On Sunday morning, the Kansas City Star published a horrific account of the rape and subsequent harassment of 14-year-old Daisy Coleman and her family. By early Monday morning, the hacktivist group Anonymous had taken up the cause on the Coleman’s behalf...

Comment Of The Day: Fury Edition

Republicans Using WWII Vets For Political Agenda - The Grave Robbers In Washington - Esquire
Bob Kincaid · Follow · Top Commenter · Works at Head-On Radio Network (The H.O.R.N.) · 125 subscribers

 

Mr. Pierce,

I write formally and at some length because I hope to formally acknowledge both your grief and your fury as manifested in this post. I share it. I have two uncles I never met who are buried on separate hillsides here in West Virginia. I never met them because one died in the Siege of Bastogne and the other in a pre-Normandy diversion in the South of France. My father died six years ago, and spent his war years in the belly of an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. As I type, another uncle, a Pacific fighter ace, lays dying in a hospital room. For all of them, I am so past furious at their reduction to hand props for the right wing that the light from Furious won't reach me for a million years.

So now, to have these teabaggin' grifters wrap themselves in my family's, your family's, and other families' blood-stained shrouds, to see them flog our beloved, if in some cases never-known, corpses, to watch helplessly as they manhandle both history and heritage, is to finally know the all-the-way-down burn of unadulterated, 200 proof Hate. I sensed similar sentiment in your words and merely want to let you know, as is sometimes helpful, you are not alone.

The Day The GOP Died

The Day the Mad Dogs Took Over the Republican Party - The Daily Beast:

...Indeed, historically so. This is one of those turning points in American political history, the kind you’ll tell your grandkids you were around to see: a once-respectable party that finally was eaten alive by the cultural rage it had so long used to its advantage but held in check in order to win elections. It was a long time coming and it’s a grand thing to watch, provided they don’t wreck the country along with themselves...

On Creativity

TED talks are lying to you - Salon.com:

...What was really sick-making, though, was Florida’s easy assumption that creativity was a thing our society valued. Our correspondent had been hearing this all his life, since his childhood in the creativity-worshipping 1970s. He had even believed it once, in the way other generations had believed in the beneficence of government or the blessings of Providence. And yet his creative friends, when considered as a group, were obviously on their way down, not up. The institutions that made their lives possible — chiefly newspapers, magazines, universities and record labels — were then entering a period of disastrous decline. The creative world as he knew it was not flowering, but dying.

When he considered his creative friends as individuals, the literature of creativity began to seem even worse — more like a straight-up insult. Our writer-to-be was old enough to know that, for all its reverential talk about the rebel and the box breaker, society had no interest in new ideas at all unless they reinforced favorite theories or could be monetized in some obvious way. The method of every triumphant intellectual movement had been to quash dissent and cordon off truly inventive voices. This was simply how debate was conducted. Authors rejoiced at the discrediting of their rivals (as poor Jonah Lehrer would find in 2012). Academic professions excluded those who didn’t toe the party line. Leftist cliques excommunicated one another. Liberals ignored any suggestion that didn’t encourage or vindicate their move to the center. Conservatives seemed to be at war with the very idea of human intelligence. And business thinkers were the worst of all, with their perennial conviction that criticism of any kind would lead straight to slumps and stock market crashes...

In my life, in my bitter experience, the above quote is exactly correct.

Is The Straight Talk Express Rolling Again?

John McCain With the Straight Talk To Fox News: Republicans Shut Down Government (Video):

John McCain got all “mavericky” when he went against Fox News protocol by appropriately blaming Republicans for the government shutdown, appearing to catch Fox News blonde bimbo host Martha MacCallum off-guard...

The Ghost Of A Drunk Talks Clinton

Here we go again-- the Clinton haters oozing from their toxic hidey-holes. The only candidate I would consider supporing over SOS Clinton is Sen. Warren, and I'll bet I have plenty of company there. I would love to see a whole raft of reform implemented, including such things as the end of the Drug War and the legalization of marijuana, a reining in of the quasi military police forces operating in urban areas, full and increasing funding for all reasonable social programs and etc. In other words, improving the quality of life for everyone, not just the rich. I can trust that Clinton could at least get some of that through what will still be a Congress, if not controlled by, certainly heavily influenced by Little Kochs and their paid teabagging whores. She can politick. Who else do the Democrats have that is that capable?

To defeat the Tea Party, the left needs bolder leader than Hillary - Salon.com:

...I’ll conclude with the words of the always blunt Christopher Hitchens, “Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.”

A Warning To Big Business

Terrified Tea Party reviving slaveholder ideology: notorious sociologist talks to Salon - Salon.com:

...Business is acting like an interest group, a series of interest groups. I read a comparison between the attempt of American business leaders to use the Tea Party and the way the big German cartel owners thought they could use the Nazi movement. There are a lot of strains between interest groups, electoral politics, and movement politics...

Just ask the Krupps how that worked out.

Tea Bagging In Fantasy Land

Polls Show the GOP Is Now Losing Their Faithful - The Daily Beast:

As poll after poll after poll shows Americans angry with the GOP over the government shutdown, Tea Party Republicans are still trying to spin this disaster as a win for the GOP. This epic denial brings back memories of Election 2012, when Republicans believed right up to the last minute that the reelection of Barack Obama was a scientific impossibility...

Hypocrite Of The Day (At Least)

Former Tea Party Candidate Against Government Healthcare Has 10 Kids on Medicaid (Video):

A former Republican anti-government Tea Party candidate for Congress from Idaho who opposes Obamacare because the “government should not be involved in health care” apparently excludes his Medicare-receiving kids from that sentiment....

GOP Concrete Cracking

Congressional Republicans rush to develop plan to reopen government - The Washington Post:

... Before Carney spoke, Obama telephoned Boehner and the two men agreed to keep talking, aides said. Afterward, GOP senators marched into Boehner’s office and counseled him to adopt an approach they had presented to Obama earlier in the day, during their own meeting at the White House.

With Republicans getting battered in public opinion polls over the shutdown, Senate GOP leaders urged Boehner to join them in supporting a single, big-bang measure that would open the government and raise the debt limit in one fell swoop...

The Tea Monster Within

A Republican Party no one could control – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs:

What’s happening today is quite unlike the “Contract With America” movement of the 1990s. The tea party is a grass-roots movement of people deeply dissatisfied with the United States’ social, cultural and economic evolution over several decades. It’s crucial to understand that they blame both parties for this degeneration. In a recent Gallup survey, an astounding 43 percent of tea party activists had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party; only 55 percent had a favorable view. They see themselves as insurgents within the GOP, not loyal members. The breakdown of party discipline coupled with the rise of an extreme ideology are the twin forces propelling the current crisis...

Another GOPer Calls For a DeBoner

GOP Governor To Congressional Republicans: Stop Trying To Defund Obamacare | ThinkProgress:

A prominent Republican governor is calling on congressional Republicans to end their efforts to defund Obamacare, arguing that her state needs the money included in the law.

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) — who raised eyebrows for pushing her party into expanding Medicaid in June — told the Arizona Daily Star, “the bottom line is we need that money in our economy to save rural hospitals and jobs in the rural areas.” “It’s all about jobs and getting back federal dollars that our taxpayers have paid to the federal government, to bring them home,” she added...

Wolf-- GOPer Stooge

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Blasts CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for ‘Spitting Out Republican Garbage’ | Mediaite:

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer got some pushback for saying on Wednesday’s Situation Room that President Obama should “accept the advice that a lot of Republicans are giving them” and delay Obamacare over the program’s web glitches. On Thursday, Ed Schultz called out Blitzer for turning the Situation Room into an “Opinion Room” by parroting a conservative talking point in his role as a serious newsman...

Koch Zombies Behind Shutdown

Dana Milbank: The shutdown’s enforcer in chief - The Washington Post:

...But the ones feeling the pain from Needham right now are Republicans. His group, funded by the Koch brothers and anonymous donors, is the one that joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to rally opposition to Obamacare this summer. Together, Cruz and Heritage Action deserve much of the credit for forcing the government shutdown — and Heritage is threatening to use its considerable war chest against Republicans who waver in the effort to abolish the nation’s health-care law...

A Gasp Of Reality From The Right

Suicide of the Right | New York Post:

...This is what my fellow conservatives who are acting as the enablers for irresponsible GOP politicians seem not to understand. They like this fight, because they think they’re helping to hold the line on ObamaCare and government spending. They think that they’re supported by a vast silent majority of Americans who dislike what they dislike and want what they want.

I dislike what they dislike. I want what they want. But I fear they are very, very wrong about the existence of this silent majority, and that their misperception is leading them to do significant damage to the already damaged Republican “brand.” (Forgive me for making use of that horribly overused term, but it’s the only one that fits.)...

Who The Tea Be

Christian delusions are driving the GOP insane - Salon.com:

...White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to approve of the Tea Party. Looking over the data, it becomes evident that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the same old white fundamentalists who would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with everyone else, and this latest power play from the Republicans is, in essence, a move from that demographic to assert their “right” to control the country, even if their politicians aren’t in power...

GOPers Want To Kick The Can

House GOP pushes plan to raise debt ceiling; Jack Lew warns against default - The Washington Post:

House Republican leaders are pushing a short-term increase in the debt limit, without any conservative strings attached, to calm jittery financial markets, according to senior GOP advisers...

Comment Of The Day: My Edition

To a poster talking about the Tea Party as Confederates.
 

I'm not a fan of anything Tea Party or GOP but to conflate them with the Civil War is ignorant beyond belief. You apparently know little about the Civil War and very little about the modern South. FYI a good many Southern soldiers were conscripted into the war-- they saw it for what it was-- a battle of the super rich with the little guys caught in the middle.

As Warned, SS Is The Target

Dumb Republicans are depriving the right of victory - Salon.com:

...Which brings us to the Op-Eds from the two top conservative “brains” in the House. As Jonathan Chait says: “The subtext of op-eds today by Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan is a promise to ratchet down their ransom terms.” Ryan, in particular, annoyed conservatives by not mentioning Obamacare in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. Only in the incoherent and self-contradictory world of the modern conservative movement can permanent cuts to retirement programs be considered a “ratcheting down” of terms from the (ostensibly) temporary delay of the Affordable Care Act. Ryan’s proposal is “structural reforms to entitlement programs” in exchange for “relief” from sequestration — they’ll trade ending a purposefully destructive policy for slashing social insurance programs...

Kochs Send Orders To Congress

Kochs to Congress: Focus on spending, not Obamacare - NBC Politics:

In a move that highlights a growing rift in conservative ranks, Koch Industries -- the privately held energy conglomerate owned by billionaires Charles and David Koch -- today distanced the firm from allied political groups lobbying to keep the government shut down unless Obamacare is defunded.

A letter, signed by the company's chief lobbyist and sent to members of Congress, says that Koch Industries has taken no position on the shutdown dispute in Congress "nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defending Obamacare..."

Another Paper Weighs In

D.C. must ban the brinkmanship - latimes.com:

...To recap for those who tuned in late to this fiasco, federal agencies ran out of money Oct. 1 after House Republicans refused to pass a stopgap funding bill unless it defunded or delayed the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Never mind that they don't have the votes in the Senate for that, let alone the two-thirds majority in both houses needed to override a certain presidential veto. Since then, Republicans in the House have argued that Democrats are to blame for the shutdown because, rather than negotiating over Obamacare, they insist on a short-term funding bill free of controversial riders...

Another Police Execution

Woman calls 911 for diabetic fianc�, cops arrive, shoot him dead - Salon.com:

When Alcia Herron of Georgia called 9/11 to get emergency medical help for her diabetic fianc�, Jack Lamar Roberson, she did not expect the police to show up. And she certainly did not expect them to shoot Roberson dead as he held his hands up...

Crazy In NC: Lying GOPer Edition

McCrory Administration Officials Suppressed Insight Into Medicaid | North Carolina Health News:

For months, members of the McCrory administration have maintained that the state’s Medicaid program is “broken.” But in the first of a two-part investigation, North Carolina Health News shows McCrory officials sat on information that would have depicted the state’s much-lauded Medicaid program in a better light...

On Patriotism

Why Many Americans Are Averse to Unironic Expressions of Patriotism - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic:

...Says Sajak, "Why do so many seem blissfully unaware of the opportunities America has provided to countless millions?" In fact, there is widespread awareness of those opportunities, but celebrating them in no way requires draping oneself in politicized patriotic symbols, nor does it imply that Americans ought to be blind to the country's flaws or unwary of invocations of patriotism. In my opinion, America does more good than bad in the world, but the proportions, whatever they are, don't change the fact that we have many specific things of which to be proud and many of which to be outraged and ashamed.

Crazier Gets Crazier

Michele Bachmann: Obama supports al-Qaida and “end times” are near - Salon.com:

According to a new report from Right Wing Watch, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed in a radio interview with Jan Markell on Saturday that President Obama is supporting al-Qaida and that this was proof “end times” were near...

GOP To Lose House?

2014 poll: GOP could lose the House - Lucy McCalmont - POLITICO.com:

The Republican Party could be in danger of losing control of the House in 2014, new polls on Sunday show...

GOPer Flogging GOPer

Republican says GOP Is An Insurrectionist Neo-Confederate Party(VIDEO):

Over the last 30 plus years apathy by Americas have allowed a party to manhandle the majority. Many claim that the major reasons for this are the corruption of politics by money and corporate personhood.

After-all, is it not true that money can purchase an inordinate amount of false advertising to create a false reality? After-all, if a corporation is given the rights of a person, does it not get free speech and all the protections of the Bill of Rights and in effect a vote? While both of these are true, ultimately it breaks down to an individual deciding to be learned or willfully ignorant...

No Justification For Shooting

I'm glad someone else besides me noticed this little fact.

The smearing of Miriam Carey: How the media bungled the Capitol Hill shooting - Salon.com:

...For one thing, at least one part of the chaotic series of events was clarified: Carey was unarmed and shot after having gotten out of her car.

Ms. Carey managed to get out of the car, and was shot by several officers. According to a law enforcement official, she was not armed, and it was not known whether she presented an immediate danger.

Yet, with few exceptions, the media had little interest in exploring those two tiny details. In fact, they unquestioningly repeated the police narratives which—no surprise there—were intended to justify the shooting...