Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Ah, that image. Such a representative sample of humanity that everyone can find someone to vote for, where everyone can find a candidate who has closely lived their life and experienced what they have experienced. Who understands them. Who knows what it is to be them, and can be trusted to implement policies which will help not just them but the majority of their fellow citizens, without fear or favour.
Some of the candidates even have the courage to wear red ties, which here in the UK would be interpreted as the sign of an unrepentant Communist. Some may even sport the vaguest hint of a beard, and we all know to what depravities that leads…
Trump apparently thinks that by whining a lot, he’ll make a good president.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/11/politics/donald-trump-refutes-third-party-run-report/index.html
@Rich Woods #1
In the US the concern is lapel pin patriotism. At the second debate, three of the candidates actually committed the thoughtcrime of not wearing one at all.
Rich Woods @1:
In Canada, blue is Tory, red is Liberal. There’s a dying breed of decent Conservatives labelled “Red Tories”. Maggie T would’ve called them “wets”, I suppose.
I’d like to recommend Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican Brain – The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality. The conservative mind is a curious place; this book references myriad studies and essays on conservative and liberal thinking processes and contrasts the differences and compares the results of such thinking.
While the tea bag wing, the far religious right and the “angry old white men” of the Republican Party seems to be driving the clown car now, these opinions have been present since FDR’s administration and before. The R’s have been trying to destroy Social Security, have fought Medicare with a scorched-earth approach, and in general have used every questionable tactic in their dirty tricks books to scuttle public programs which actually help people.
This book will help to understand this kind of conservative thinking, and may even provide some readers with a way to
effectively oppose such ideas.
Nice to know that JEBby is taller than the Donald
And Carson is the bluest
Trump’s rise in the polls after the premiere GOP de
batebacle, is curious. Maybe the conservs are waking up and grasping at someone who is pretty much their ilk, yet says the most ludicrous nonsense, as a camouflage of leaving the party without doing so. While the libs call Trump “a clown” to mock him, the conservs are embracing it as the perfect disguise and running with it.I expect the Trump to bite them in the ‘where ever’, eventually. When remains to be seen. Salut.
Watching this travesty was enough for me, thanks. At least our giant group enriched a local bar.
@Rich Woods #1
Exactly. With today’s economy, who doesn’t have $75 just lying around, collecting dust, when it can so easily go towards a plastic bowl specifically for guacamole?
My hope is that the rise of Trump could be that the paranoid base of the GOP has finally come full circle. If every thing out there “the world at large” hates your Jesus eventually even your own self proclaimed proponents must be part of the war on x-mas. I’m waiting for one of them to proclaim Trump the anti-Christ / abortion MD… then the party starts!
Men in suits always look silly to me.
When I see a red tie, I think preacher. They used to be very popular among Southern Baptist preachers.
That would be Carson, of course, and it’s hardly a hint. It’s OK for him because, you know, it’s a black thing. If he were to win the nomination and election (and Jesus didn’t immediately return), it would be the first time since Taft left office in 1913 that a president sported facial hair. Taft’s stash had actual handle bars.
Someone’s suit doesn’t fit well. I think it’s Ted Cruz.
Rubio looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja ready to attack something, and then have pizza.
Christie should probably wear a lighter color.
Did someone try to Trump Ron Paul’s hair?
Interesting how Fox put Trump and Bush side-by-side in the middle of the stage. These placements are no accident. Trump had to be there because he’s the acknowledge leader (spit, gag, cough). I have a feeling that Fox put Bush there because Rupie wants Bush, which might also explain Megyn Kelly’s uncharacteristic aggressiveness toward Trump and some others.
I’m glad we’re discussing their appearances. It seems fitting. We should go on about how elegant and chic they look in their blue suits. We could go on about their positions but that’s just crazy talk.
@robro
How many of them had to purge there wardrobes of all that over priced Trump attire? I bet more than one to avoid Trumps complement of dress.
robro@11
I think this counts as “political madness”.
The NYPD union wants to highlight how their cops aren’t being allowed to arrest all the people they want to arrest committing crimes in the city, so are having their officers and family members take pictures of these “crimes” to post and shame the officials who have made them restrict policing.
And what is the first crime they want to highlight? Being homeless!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33872595
What kind of monster thinks being homeless is a crime? That needs a police force to arrest the perpetrators?
I understand being arrested for being homeless is nothing new, but I always kind of assumed it was something officials did and tried to hide. I didn’t realize American police think arresting people for being homeless is something they should be proud of, and should actively campaign to do on social media.
@9.
I can get that bowl down at my local H. E. B. (big Texas grocery chain) for about $3. In a selection of colors.
I think Trump softened in NH after the debate. Looks like Kasich had strong gains.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_republican_presidential_primary-3350.html
My first thought about that photo was ” We are the Borg. Prepare to be assimilated”. I’m sure the TV powers that be issued apparel color guidelines to the candidates. The photo of the other contenders is almost interchangeable, except for Carly Fiorinas bright pink suit.
Jonathan Haidt has interesting things to say about the conservative mind and viewpoint. I enjoyed his The Righteous Mind. Haidt postulates a number of morality dimensions and places both liberals and conservatives along them, to illustrate how they differ.
Something someone pointed out to me once encapsulates a lot of conservative thought and behavior, and it’s that conservatives believe implicitly in karma, although they would never call it that. One must never disturb the inherent, implacable justice working in the universe. The poor are in that sorry state due to their own lack of ambition. Criminals deserve maximum punishment, if possible accompanied by humiliation. Giving people things reduces their willingness to work. Anyone who rattles a saber at you should be cut to pieces. People with money have it because they deserve it. And abortion is awful not because it kills an unborn person (as they so often maintain) but because it encourages penalty-free sex. Conservatives hate, more than anything else, the get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s why they are all staunch religiosi.
This isn’t Haidt’s more nuanced view, but it’s a handy shorthand way to comprehend why they sound and think alike. Authority is to be respected, and even revered. Tradition should trump progress. The universe should not be challenged. The result is a homogeneous array of like-minded droids that truly believe they are on a mission to restore balance to the universe.
Australia: Our PM, Abbot, wants the Adani super mine to go forward despite environment concerns, that they lied about it creating 10,000 jobs, that the hundreds of thousands of Indians we were going to supply power to wont be getting any and the price of coal has made the enterprise unsustainable.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/07/tony-abbotts-defence-of-the-carmichael-coalmine-is-passionate-but-baseless
Adding insult to injury yesterday he pushed the members of his party to agree not to vote their conscience on same sex marriage legislation.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-33864342
@ HolyPinkUnicorn #3
What? The Republican second debates? Republicans went out in public without their little enameled flag pin?
Well, fuck me sideways.
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/hs-inc-nhs1008-4-oz-charcoal-polypropylene-chico-molcajete-24-case/300NHS1008BK.html
The identical thing pictured on Jeb’s site, 36 dollars for a case of 24.
Kengi #14: Here’s what I finally figured out the difference between a rational human and a person lost to conservatism was:
Human: “Oh, look, there’s a person who doesn’t have a home. Let’s find them a home.”
Conservative: “What? No, no, we can’t do that. Anything but that. Only people who already have homes deserve to have homes.”
Sometimes living next door to you guys terrifies the hell out of me.
What? I’m on the other side of the Atlantic and I’m scared like hell!
Welcome, one and all.
I enjoyed the fashion discussion up-thread. I’m reminded of all the wailing from the rightwing when President Obama wore a tan suit. So many doofuses complained that it wasn’t presidential, that the suit showed the weakness of the USA, etc., that White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest made a statement: “The President stands squarely behind the decision he made yesterday to wear his summer suit.”
NY Daily News link
Well that was fun. I’ll make an effort to post more serious comments — maybe something about good looking Donald Trump is. “When I was attacked viciously by those women, of course, it’s very hard for them to attack me on looks, because I’m so good looking.”
Trump’s statement about his looks is serious in one way, it shows the startling tendency he has to indulge in self-deception. Delusional — Yooouuughly delusional.
HidariMak @9.
That must be Jeb’s attempt to appeal to the Latino’s. Maybe they can use them as shovels when they finally get around to building that wall.
In Republican economic voodoo news, we have Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, and presidential candidate, presenting a perfect picture of corporate welfare.
Walker is infamous for undercutting public education, and anyone who is not in the top 1% of Wisconsin. Some of the money he swiped from programs that provide a public good is going to build the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks a new stadium.
Sports team indulges in blackmail (we’ll leave if you don’t come before us bearing new stadiums); politicians cave and give them tax breaks, land, and wads of cash.
Not a fiscally conservative move, though Walker and his ilk always spin the corporate welfare as if it were a fiscally conservative move.
The economic upside for new sports venues is wildly exaggerated.
John Oliver discusses the “massive amounts of public money on privately-owned stadiums. Cities issue tax-exempt municipal bonds that — wait, don’t fall asleep!” Oliver nails it in this video.
Meanwhile, what are politicians from the Democratic Party recommending? They propose an end to ““the issuance of tax-free government bonds for professional sports facilities.” President Obama, the basketball-playing leader of the free world, is backing this legislative end to the madness of having taxpayers waste millions on sport complexes.
The international nuclear agreement with Iran … okay, that’s über serious. Tops suit color choices, and even ties.
A scary group of rightwing politicians is trying to scuttle the deal. Mike Huckabee (he’s between Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz in the photo accompanying this thread) said, “The Iran nuclear deal is marching the Israelis to the door of the oven.” Earlier, Huckabee had released an ad that featured a child being blown up by nukes, and he also nuked characters from “The Lion King.”
I’ll let Huckabee’s hyperbole, and his singular failure to offer a credible alternative to the Iran deal, stand for all of the Hitler-infected blather flooding from rightwing sources.
Luckily, the rightwing is paddling upstream against what is also a flood of support from more serious (i.e., fact-based) sources:
– 36 retired generals and admirals signed an open letter supporting the Iran deal yesterday. They urged Congress to support “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” The signatures on that letter represented retired generals and flag officers from every branch of the military, including the rightwing-leaning Air Force.
– 29 top scientists sent a similar endorsement. The letter was signed by Nobel laureates, manufacturers of arms, and former White House science advisors.
– The two letters above follow endorsements from dozens of former national security officials, and from 100 former ambassadors.
Informative links:
Washington Post
NY Times
Our problem here is not really a lack of support for the Iran deal. The problem is an entire subset of Republicans who reject legitimate arguments, do not respect advice from intellectual authorities, and do not accept the guidance of impartial experts.
President Obama’s Letter to the Editor about voting rights.
I’m pleased to see voting rights becoming a major issue in the presidential campaign. What could be more fundamental?
The letter is difficult to excerpt or summarize. I suggest reading the original. It’s not long. Here’s an excerpt anyway:
@Lynna #27:
Indeed. Even the home of football itself is in trouble, after being rebuilt at a cost of £798m eight years ago. They thought it would break even by this year.
Still, from what I recall of the shops nearby, they sell a hell of a lot of fish and chips on match days. At least something goes to the community, though probably not as much as the government contributed to the stadium’s construction.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, talked about faith and religion in a way that makes more sense that did the “Jesus Christ saved me with his blood” answers that Republican candidates gave at end of the recent debate.
Rich Woods @30, one of the points you made, that the immediate neighborhood benefits, is a good one. The larger region around an active stadium also benefits.
The impact of a sports venue on small business owners (fish and chips, etc.) can be very good. I think the financing of stadiums is what has to change. Enough money is being made that corporate welfare is not required.
Also, Scott Walker and his ilk are all too willing to take from poor Peter to pay rich Paul. A scam is being run, and politicians (mostly on the right) are abetting the scam.
@Lynna #28:
OK, you’re making me feel guilty about the cultural-differences tie joke now. Sorry!
So what might be a plausible way of changing this? What could be the root cause of this attitude? Are these high-profile individuals so entrenched in what they’ve previously said that they fear they cannot backtrack in the slightest degree without their base denouncing them as weaklings, RINOs or as not True Americans? Are they simply playing to the crowd for their own personal ends, cynically trusting that the future won’t hand them a greater resultant problem if they should achieve high office?
Do they even believe that it doesn’t matter what they say about Iran, because God would never allow the Greatest Nation On Earth to come to harm at the hands of a jumped-up little country on the other side of the planet? After all, it worked with the godless Reds, didn’t it? Look at all the nukes the Soviets had, and not a single one ever used in war.
Rich Woods, I notice that Bruce Springsteen failed to save Wembley Stadium. But I also notice that “operating profits” are down from £13million to £8million.
Well, I guess that is sad, and is still a problem when £270million is owed, and £12million in interest charges on the debt is being paid (approximately annually?), but that still doesn’t look like a bankruptcy situation to me. It’s likely that management changes can rescue Wembley.
As someone noted in the comments section: “As usual. Built in an expensive area with no thought of the economics.” So, they built more than they needed. Did you see that John Oliver video in which stadiums with huge aquariums, indoor pools from which you can watch a game, etc. added to the costs?
There’s also the question of location. Isn’t Wembley in gridlocked London?
What I always ask is: what politicians benefited? What friends of politicians benefited? What contractors benefited? It’s likely that just building a good stadium was not the priority.
@Lynna #32:
Very true. It’s all part of the right-wing’s primary mission, to concentrate money in the hands of the few. Once a politician has contributed to that, they’re set for a post-politics life of comfy directorships and cushy appointments advising or speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries of their scams. Just look at Tony Blair.
@27
Look, I’m with you on the dubious economic value of professional sports arenas, but to suggest that Scott Walker did this all by himself is simply lying. First of all – who’s the mayor of Milwaukee?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Barrett_(politician)
Who twice ran for Governor of Wisconsin against, and twice lost to, Scott Walker? That would be the same man.
Who approves of the stadium deal?
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/assembly-today-is-expected-to-pass-arena-deal-b99545942z1-318870361.html
One other tidbit of information – the vote to approve the stadium was bipartisan:
Also – the only people he “swiped” money from in Wisconsin were the public sector teachers’ unions. That fight and this financing deal have nothing to do with each other.
I used to live in the state and as a general rule I dislike publicly financed stadium deals like this, but in all fairness unless you’re prepared to demonize Tom Barrett and the rest of the Democrats who voted in favor of this deal (which was less generous to the Bucks than it could have been), then you’re a hypocrite for singling out Walker.
Rich Woods, don’t worry about the tie jokes — everything is fair game. It was actually refreshing to look at men’s fashion instead of Hillary Clinton’s pants suits.
Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, and close friend of Donald Trump, has been going on and on about the looks and dress of his stable of female reporters for ages. His misogyny played a part in his surrender to Trump following the Megyn Kelly v. Trump contretemps — after Trump made blatantly misogynist comments. Misogyny that includes men commenting on and controlling what females wear and how they look is actually affecting our political discourse.
Link
Comment 33:
Good questions. I can’t really answer. I don’t have a solution.
Some actions that would help:
– Repeal Citizens United ruling. Put the billionaires out of business when it comes to buying politicians.
– Jon Stewart has retired. Someone else needs to take on Fox News.
– The cult of celebrity, cults of religion, and Koch-like cults need to be ridiculed and defunded.
@Lynna 34:
I couldn’t watch the John Oliver video (it’s blocked outside the US, and the plugin I used to use to get round these sort of blocks is in need of an update to keep up). There will be other ways to watch it, when I’ve got time.
Wembley is in North London, but it’s pretty well served by transport connections. Public transport is easy to use, including for people coming from outside town, but the car park is still huge. It was rebuilt on the site of the beautiful old 1920s stadium, so to some degree London has expanded around it.
I think the architects are still in the middle of legal disputes with various contractors. The cost came in at something like £200m more than the initial budget. This may be an example of a case where government guarantees would have allowed the project to continue: the actual cost to the taxpayer would only become apparent if several companies went under. The government wouldn’t be able to walk away from such a nationally important project, which makes you wonder exactly how the project’s costs were so badly underestimated.
@Lynna #38:
Won’t they just find a more underhand way of getting what they want? After all, they’re used to buying laws so they’d be pretty pissed off if their shiny new toy was taken away from them. The odds of them ever getting caught and doing jail time have to be very low, and they know it.
Is anyone else getting CloudFlare errors when posting?
Yes, I’m getting all kinds of CloudFlare errors. I’m going to duck out for now — too time consuming to deal with the errors. Be back later.
BTW, I think I’d didn’t make my “repeal Citizens United ruling” point clearly. I should have said that PACS, SuperPACs, and hidden or unlimited spending on political campaigns insulates dunderheaded candidates. They can say all kinds of stupid, ignorant, and wildly inaccurate stuff and still remain viable candidates. We need to remove the money buffer.
Margaret Talbot made some interesting points about Donald Trump’s campaign in The New Yorker. (Bolding is mine.):
The swollen ego of Trump will harass us for some time. He is spending some of his own billions on his campaign. Must be kind of cushy to ride around in that private plane, descend to make pronouncements that are anti-factual and/or not backed up by policy details, and then to board the plane again to enjoy one’s sycophants chanting praise.
Growing out of comments by Lynna and then Rich Woods:
bayes,
It’s called the Just World Fallacy (or hypothesis, but as rationalists, I think we can reject that absurd notion).
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cruz-accidentally-gives-away-the-game
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/cruz-vows-prosecute-and-defund-planned-parenthood-new-video
So, yeah, Ted Cruz is one of the most vehement critics of Planned Parenthood, and he is also one of the most ignorant, and most deceptive in his messaging.
Crip Dyke @44, thanks for those comments. Made me think some more about this.
There’s one problem with letting Republicans crash and burn while they crash and burn various levels of the economy, social services, infrastructure, etc. That problem is this: whatever happens, Republicans will blame Democrats. Fox News will back the Republicans up, and a new era of spin will ensue.
Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s latest attempt to blame Hillary Clinton and President Obama for the current mess in Iraq. Jeb refuses to place any blame on W. Link
Republicans and their fucking demons! Holy Crap.
Republicans and their self-serving award ceremonies. Sheesh.
Link
Press releases for the award ceremony include a claim that Representative Justin Harris and another Republican representative “are consistently models of their Christian values in their homes, their communities, and their churches.” Uh-huh. Yeah, well that is sort of true.
The press release goes on to commend Harris for his work on anti-abortion legislation.
Here’s more on this creep to whom Ted Cruz is giving an award:
I think this falls into the category of “the company you keep”: Ted Nugent admires Donald Trump, and he has been defending Trump repeatedly. Nugget’s latest comments read more like a Saturday Night Live Sketch, but apparently Nugget remains a star with the far right wing. Mr. Trump, these are the kind of friends who defend you.
Salon link
Media Matters link
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/12/the_latest_donald_trump_garbage_fire_crudely_insulting_caroline_kennedy_and_bernie_sanders/
Yeah, Trump just insulted Caroline Kennedy, and then he went after Bernie Sanders because, in Trump’s view, Sanders wasn’t man enough to stand up to female Black Lives Matter protestors.
Not to mention sports teams lie and hide their profits and claim they are too poor to pay for stadiums on their own
Whoa i forgot to refresh, my comment was in reply to post 32
Here’s some good political news: a Democrat just picked up a Republican seat by fighting anti-gay discrimination … and Taylor Bennett won that seat in Georgia, a red state (Mitt Romney carried the state). The Democrat was outspent 2-1, but his opposition to a “religious freedom restoration act” won him a lot of votes and a lot of press coverage.
Bennett’s win means that, although the Dems are still a minority in the state legislature, Republicans don’t have enough votes to get super-majorities. Republicans will have a hard time doing things like amending the state constitution to enshrine anti-gay legislation.
Small victory, but important.
Yay for California! This is a progressive move on their part, a move that will ensure that real justice is more likely in cases where police use lethal force. Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed the law that will force prosecutions of police to be transparent, to be out in the open. Prosecutors can no longer present their cases in such a way as to lead a grand jury to not indict.
The bill was authored by a Democrat. It makes a difference at the local or state level when we elect progressive politicians.
Link
Ben Carson, the only black guy in the photo that heads this thread, connected Hillary Clinton to Nazi Germany and to eugenics (via Planned Parenthood).
Carson is polling second, behind Trump, in Iowa polls.
You think politics in the USA is weird? Well, yes, it is, but a segment from The Rachel Maddow show tonight ended with an über loopy ad from a candidate for Canadian Parliament. Ari Melber hosted the segment.
Link. The video is 4:52 long, and it’s really entertaining.
Yes, RedState is a misogynist sinkhole. I don’t know why their editor objected to Donald Trump’s sexist attack on Megyn Kelly. It must have been the veiled reference to menstruation, which is, as we all know, super icky and never to be mentioned lest it summon Satan. (And, no, Mr. Trump, no one believes you were referring to Megyn Kelly having a nose bleed.)
Media Matters link
Some time ago Grover Norquist introduced to politics in the USA a pernicious idea: pressuring candidates to pledge never to raise taxes for any reason. No new taxes on anyone for any reason.
Most Republican candidates sign the pledge. Without it, they can’t win, especially in primary elections when the most likely voters are also those most extreme in their views.
The pledge makes bipartisan legislation almost impossible. It also increases income inequality, and makes it hard to govern at all.
This stupid pledge is still with us, and Republican candidates are signing it. Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina have all signed. Most of the other candidates are likely to follow suit.
Jeb Bush is an exception: “I ran for office three times. The pledge was presented to me three times. I never signed the pledge. I cut taxes every year I was governor. I don’t believe you outsource your principles and convictions to people. I respect Grover’s political involvement. He has it every right to do it, but I never signed any pledge.”
The wording of the pledge has more to do with economic/tax policy than just refusing to raise taxes, it requires signees to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes,” and also to find an offset (a cut of an equal amount) if they are going to approve any government spending of any kind.
You would be hard pressed to find any attitude/pledge more likely to guarantee bad, knee-jerk governance.
Here’s some good governance news:
Link
We also got new reports showing that the Affordable Care Act has not undermined job growth. Link
Opponents have no reason to continue to beat the “Repeal Obamacare” dead horse.
We’ll file this under “U.S. politicians who can’t speak English”: “I think what’s resonating about Donald Trump, I’d like to think, some things is appealing about my candidacy here in Wisconsin.”
That’s Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaking. I think he’s trying to say that he’s like Trump and that that is a good thing.
Ron Johnson has said lots of stupid and incoherent things before, maybe he’s looking for a catch-all that would justify his incompetence.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made specific suggestions for policy changes that would restore the rights of former inmates who have paid their debt to society.
Clinton recently mentioned the difficulty that former inmates encounter when seeking jobs and housing. She supports the “Ban the Box” movement which seeks to remove the box on job applications and other documents that former inmates have to check. “[…] you shouldn’t be automatically disqualified,” Clinton said. She added that former felons should have voting rights, a point that Sanders also made.
A sitting president could “ban the box” for federal contractors and agencies with an executive order, that would be a start.
In the past, some researchers have made the point that we lock up so many black men that we reduce that voting block. Even when these men are released, they are not allowed to vote.
Related links:
Los Angeles Times link
Salon link
The Root link
The Hill link
@Crip Dyke #44:
It is bloody depressing, isn’t it? I can understand the urge to give up in disgust. Trying to tell people that if they vote that way even in the light of past experience, they’ll be fucked over time and again until they have no functioning orifices left, has diminishing returns. Too many people think they’ll be alright, until of course they’re not: “Nooo, I voted to take money away from immigrants, not from my own children!!”
The problem with letting things melt down is the number of people who are first up against the wall when the revolution doesn’t come.
Ha! Moment of schadenfreude: Donald Trump has often repeated his claim that Mexico will pay to build the bigger border wall that is part of his immigration policy (more of a non-policy, but we’ll let that go). What’s funny is that Donald Trump’s braggadocio is so blatantly off the rails that international leaders have started to call him on it, including Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s spokesman Eduardo Sanchez.
Trump said:
Eduardo Sanchez said:
Bloomberg link
Ben Carson, former neurosurgeon, presidential candidate and all-around rightwing dunderhead has been a leading voice in the defund-Planned-Parenthood movement. He’s such a vocal critic that he has racked up some big headlines, and some applause from his fellow right-wingers.
The problem? Carson used tissue from aborted fetuses in his research. Hypocrisy, thy name is Ben Carson.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/virginiahughes/ben-carson-used-fetal-tissue
Carson did nothing illegal, and nothing unethical … unless you count railing against the use of fetal tissue for research when he as done exactly that. At least he proved the usefulness of using fetal tissue in research projects.
Rand Paul criticized Donald Trump on the basis of Trump’s past policy positions. So what did Trump do? He criticized Rand Paul’s golf game.
Yes, there’s more to Trump’s rant, but I don’t think we need to read it.
Washington Post link
But has he ever said how? Will Mexico volunteer the money? If so, why haven’t they already? Since they’ve not, how is Trump going to persuade them? I doubt it’s going to be through a charm offensive.
Well. That’s a plan.
Complete knobhead. How does this person still have supporters? No, no, don’t tell me…
Gah, CloudFlare again! Sorry, Lynna, I’m giving up and going to find a film to watch instead. I did watch the John Oliver segment you recommended: thankfully nothing quite so extreme has hit UK shores just yet. But give it time. They say particularly bad ideas take 20 years to cross the Atlantic, don’t they? Happy face…
Rich Woods, I feel your pain. I get an immediate “timed out” window with every comment, and then I get the CloudFlare crap on a second or third try at posting.
I am giving up for today. There’s more political news, including something about Trump and a cow sculpted out of butter at the Iowa State Fair, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.
Glad you got to watch the John Oliver video. Boy did he nail the decadent excesses and the lies. Here’s the link again in case anyone needs it.
I laughed when I read that! And then I got to wondering. And then, well, I thought maybe you weren’t just making a joke. So I googled it.
Feck.
Still, at least I now know what happened to Def Leppard. Trump and Iowa State Fair, you’ve stolen my childhood!
Is Trump running a false flag to help Hilary?
I don’t think so. Just rephrase it a little to express something I could agree with. IE “Is Trump’s false flag campaign helping Hilary?”
as in:
1) is Trump’s campaign a false flag? — Yes
2) is that helping Hilary’s campaign? — probably, given that Trump is abhorrent, even ant-Hilary’s might consider voting for her out of desperation.
Trump is so “out there”, I can only say “out there” to avoid descending into rude epithets. His “false flag” strategy is to inflate his ego. He wants to make himself uber-famous by being more offensive than even the worst of the Rethuglicans.
I am beginning to think I finally managed to make a political prediction that actually came true (and am unduly proud of it). I said that once the GOP had wedded the ACA indelibly to Pres. Obama with the name “Obamacare”, they have to make it something negative, regardless of the real world. For their purposes, is simply must be a disaster.
When that all started up, I thought it was risky for them, betting the farm on the ACA’s failure. I rather suspect that they might very well have secured the ACA as Pres. Obama’s legacy.
That won’t stop them from claiming it as their own brilliant idea some time down the line, of course, but it will make it more difficult.
(For the record, I think the ACA is both a massive improvement and a fairly poor solution. Kinda like using a tourniquet on a self-inflicted gunshot wound: way better then bleeding to death, but a damn site worse then just not shooting yourself in the first place.)
Lynna, OM wrote:
You think politics in the USA is weird? Well, yes, it is, but a segment from The Rachel Maddow show tonight ended with an über loopy ad from a candidate for Canadian Parliament.
Is it bad that I kinda want to vote for Wyatt Scott now? Alas, I do not live in his riding.
Since the last presidential election, I’ve conjectured that Romney fulfilled the White Horse prophesy by setting up the destruction of the Tea Party, thus preserving the constitution… Maybe, just maybe, the GOTP will wage sufficient war upon itself to do that.
Maybe I’m late to the party, yet again: The Gruaniad reported yesterday on the hot new pejorative of the week among RWNJs:
[Meta: preview is not responding, so my tentacles are crossed.]
Rabid rightwing radio host, Bradlee Dean, continues to call for the death of President Obama.
Right Wing Watch link
“When in doubt, it must always be the parent’s choice,” Fiorina responded, adding “We must protect religious liberty and someone’s ability to practice their religion.”
That’s Republican candidate Carly Fiorina talking about vaccination of children.
@72 and @73, I wrote what I imagined was a witty reply to your comments, then the malfunctioning freethoughtblogs server ate the comment, threw up a “timed out” window, and refused to let me go back to the comment page to try again.
I am really frustrated. se habla espol should cross tentacles for all of us.
Chris Hayes hosted an interesting interview last night. A Republican talked about his fellow Republicans, the GOP in general, and Donald Trump in particular. Bruce Bartlett was a senior policy analyst for George HW Bush, and he’s still a Republican, just an unhappy one.
Associated links:
Daily Kos link
News Busters link (some rightwing nonsense on this page)
Another source for the Chris Hayes video
Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American who is also a Republican candidate for President of the USA, was really ticked off by the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana today.
Rubio’s rant included a plethora of pseudo-facts, including this one: ““the Cuban people have a standard of living well below that of virtually every other nation in the hemisphere.”
Nope. Not correct. The Human Development Index maintained by the United Nations ranks Cuba above Mexico, above other Caribbean nations, above all Central American countries, and above most South American Countries.
Think Progress link
Yes, Cuba is known for its human rights violations, and improvements are needed in other areas, but Rubio’s decision to oppose normalization of US/Cuba relations is not going to turn out well. Rubio did not offer other solutions, just criticism of Secretary Kerry and of President Obama.
Rubio wants to block Senate confirmation of a U.S. ambassador to Cuba. Waste of Senate time. More living-in-the-past from Republicans.
The Jeb Bush campaign for President lied, blatantly lied about meeting with Black Lives Matter activists. Yes, there was a meeting, but no activists from Black Lives Matter were there.
Huff Po link
And that’s not all: the Black Lives Matter campaign was not discussed during the meeting. Some people have postulated that Jeb Bush and his staffers can’t tell the difference between representatives from Black Lives Matter and any other group of people that includes at least one African-American.
Little kids reenact the Republican Debate
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-kids-debate-funny-or-die
Jeb Bush refuses to rule out use of torture if he becomes US president
It’s the ticking bomb scenario all over again. “Go ahead, Jack, it’s OK to shoot him in the kneecap. Just as long as he tells us where the WMD is kept. Kneecapping not worked? Get out the electrodes. Batteries ran out of juice sooner than you expected? Waterboard him. Waterboard him 137 times, because waterboarding is so effective. OK, you’re now six days beyond your 24 hours, but dammit Jack! We need that information for me to feel like I’ve kept the country safe. No, no, take a break. You’ve earned it. Anyway, I need to go out and make a speech about how we’re upholding liberty and decency, and equality for all, and the rule of law. Won’t take me a second.”
From the same article as #81:
Dubya to Jeb: “Bro, you’re my wingman. I even feel safe turning up at a courthouse, knowing you’ve got my back.”
Rich Woods, 81 and 82: yeah, I think Jeb will start another war, and he will torture people at “black sites” — all bad. In addition, he doesn’t understand climate change or cyber security. Not fit for the presidency.
Last night, Rachel Maddow covered the back story of every Democratic candidate, including bravery of Hillary Clinton. Nice coverage of Bernie Sanders and the other candidates as well.
Link
There’s some awful misogynistic comments from the time during which Hillary Clinton was First Lady.
Tonight, Rachel is going to cover the back story of Republican candidates.
I’m still getting “timed out” windows every time I try to post a comment. Does anybody else have this problem?
We have all kinds of legislation that’s supposed to guide the Securities and Exchange Commission when they police/regulate markets in the USA. But, damnit, the SEC is not doing its job.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/13/sec-admits-monitoring-stock-buybacks-prevent-market-manipulation/
I hope both Clinton and Sanders take a hard look at this issue and propose new regulations that would help the SEC to do their job — they claim they lack the tools to properly evaluate the issue. Sounds like a copout to me, but I’ll have to look into this some more.
Test.
I’ve gotten a lot of timed outs in the last two days.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I know that Hillary Clinton’s emails are currently the main act in the Republican conspiracy circus, but do Republicans and their propaganda machine, Fox News, have to keep making shit up?
Media Matters link
And there’s a lot more where that came from. The following Fox News dunderheads propagated the false information:
Brian Kilmeade
Steve Doocy
Andrew Napolitano
Ed Klein, discredited conspiracy theorist
Peter Doocy
Karl Rove
Bill Hemmer
Bret Baier
Sandra Smith
Mike Emanuel
In other words, Fox News spent the better part of two days reporting pseudo-facts as real facts. They threw everything they had into this smear. Disgusting. Also, repetitious — so repetitious that I got a headache watching this shit and researching the various sources.
Thanks, raven. I’m going to report this.
We also have complaints that “preview” isn’t working.
I received a reply from PZ regarding our difficulty posting comments:
Michele Bachmann talks about the Iran deal:
Right Wing Watch link
After bogus, deceptively edited videos about Planned Parenthood were released by rightwing minions of the anti-abortion movement, many Republican politicians (and a few Democrats) were all gleefully grabbing this latest opportunity to push for defunding the organization.
In some states, regulatory legislation is being considered in addition to defunding efforts.
Investigations into Planned Parenthood are so numerous that I can’t keep track of them, but one thing is clear: the investigations are turning up NO EVIDENCE of wrong-doing on the part of Planned Parenthood. In fact, there’s been such a dearth of negative results that some politicians, including Idaho’s rightwing governor, have refused to open their own investigation. Those investigations do cost taxpayers money after all.
Think Progress link
Jeb Bush is somewhat confused when it comes to “Common Core” standards for education in the USA … and he wants his base of supporters to be even more confused. The more confusion, the better. Why? He’s afraid he’ll loss votes thanks to a rightwing conspiracy theory that Common Core is the deceptive plan of the Big Bad Federal Wolf Government to take over education.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/15/3692060/jeb-bush-decries-policy-he-definitely-supports/
Here’s an interesting comparison of Bernie Sanders to Jeremy Corbyn. Corby is a socialist politician and a member of Britain’s Labour Party. It seems Corbyn is enjoying a surge in popularity.
And, oh joy, there’s even a note about fashion — not Bernie’s fashion, but Corbyn’s.
Meanwhile in my neck of the woods, the craziness continues:
http://wiat.com/2015/08/12/church-opens-gun-range-ministry-in-the-name-of-jesus-christ/
These are the people that the Republican candidates for president are pursuing.
opus @96, thanks for the link. That was fun to read, but also, holy shit, alarming.
And now the gully is full of another kind of vermin, including rabidly religious elderly women who are learning the shoot guns.
Alabama church members taking advantage of lax gun laws. A ministry of guns. They actually called it a “ministry.”
I see from the article that the local police are thrilled, and are using the range for training exercises. We need more religion in our policing. Not.
From the photo that accompanies the article, the gun range looks like an ideal place for a flash flood to wash everything away. It also still looks like a nice environment for snakes to me.
What the ever loving …?
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems desperate to go to war, and he wants Republican Congress critters in the USA to help him.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4690949,00.html
Netanyahu is probably posturing for political gain, but he also has to be taken seriously. Der Spiegel reported that Defense Minister Ya’alon hinted at Israeli attacks on five Iranian scientists.
And in 2014, several media outlets reported that President Obama’s administration had exerted pressure to stop targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists.
So, now we see Netanyahu basically blackmailing the Obama administration with threats to begin targeting killings again if the Iran Nuclear Deal passes.
In one tiny bit of good news, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) put out a “Strategic Outlook” that did not mention the Iranian nuclear operations as a security threat to Israel. This is an indication that the IDF is no longer backing Netanyahu.
Unfortunately, we have lots of Republicans in Congress who will gleefully back Netanyahu. Those Republicans would love to see the Iran deal fail, if only to stick it to Obama.
I guess the big question is: will the Republicans in Congress who think that the Iran deal is a sign of the End Times try to oppose them?
http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2015/8/16
A Doonesbury comic strip nails the problem with the revised history textbooks that Texas is using. Republican and Tea Party doofuses forced these revisions. It was, more or less, local/state politics that is now affecting education all over the U.S.
Texas is such a big market for textbooks that publishers tend to make the changes that state requires, and then they sell the same textbooks to most public school systems.
FTFY.
And let me say that I’m glad that the new regime has a dedicated space for Lynna’s reporting.
Thanks, What a Maroon, @102 for the correction. [insert smiley face stuff]
We have some lovely Moments of Political Madness to report today (with “lovely” meaning “mind-fuckingly awful”).
First up, Mike Huckabee:
Link
Another presidential candidate on the Republican side, Marco Rubio, also supports the no-exceptions position. No girl or woman on his watch would be able to get an abortion.
Scott Walker, the nemesis of education and working people in Wisconsin, and also a Republican presidential hopeful, said he would rather let a mother die than to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy with an abortion.
Republicans used to support some exceptions to their anti-abortion stance. Now they do not.
Donald Trump and his campaign staff are incapable of issuing really detailed policy statements, but they did come out with what they are calling an “Immigration Plan.” It is six pages long and it marries bombast and unworkable plans.
The summary sounds okay, sort of: build a wall, enforce laws, ensure jobs, more security, etc. It’s in the details, such as they are, that things get messy:
– If Mexico refuses to pay for the wall, Trump will increase fees on all temporary visas; and he will increase fees at ports of entry.
– Trump plans to triple the number of ICE officers
– Trump plans to deport all undocumented immigrants, all of them, all 11 million or so. In order to “keep families together,” he will also send their U.S. citizen children “home” or “back” with their parents. “They have to go.” “We will work with them.”
– He will use an executive order to rescind the Dream Act. He will revoke any and all of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
– Trump wants and end to birthright citizenship, remove that part of the 14th amendment.
– He will also “win the Latino vote.”
Related links:
MSNBC
MSNBC link with video
Talking Points Memo
More on the Republican push to revoke the 14th amendment:
Think Progress link
Behind all this is a very old, racist idea, namely that the blood of black and brown immigrants will dilute the extra-special awesomeness of the blood of white folks.
Lynna, OM
Small quibble, he might want to achieve this, but on his watch they will still be able to get abortions (current restrictions making it more difficult notwithstanding) since the president has squat to decide on this. In the long term (eg after his watch) this might become the case if he elects SCOTUS judges who share his abhorant worldview, which will probably be the case. As always, it’s the long term which is in play here.
Quite a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge the enormous shift to the right of US politics, but these viewpoints were quite radical not 10 years ago, and now they are mainstream republican. Far what it is worth (not much), I don’t believe someone like Walker actually gives one fuck about abortions, he just knows this is what he needs to say now to get the nomination in the republican party.
Trump said some reasonable stuff:
– the Iraq war was stupid
– no, he does not want to cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security
Mostly, Trump said, “I am the best builder in the world,” and similar comments that are supposed to lead you to believe that he can:
– Improve the miserable record of for-profit colleges by building his own, like Trump University (2005) that was never accredited. It is now “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative,” an entity which has been sued and is till in legal battles (classes were misrepresented).
– Improve education by cutting the U.S. Department of Education “way, way, way down.”
Voter outreach cartoon
The GOP promises Trump a Mexican-free life it he just quits the damn race in this hilarious parody:
Video at the link.
zenlike @106, yes, my statement about Marco Rubio’s anti-abortion views was hyperbole. I should be more careful. If he had his way, no one would get an abortion on Macho Rubio’s watch. But even if he were elected president, he would not be able to eliminate legal abortion altogether. Good point, as well, about the Supreme Court Justices. Thanks.
Patrick Stewart made fun of Fox News and conservatives in general (in addition to other issues) in the first episode of his new show, “Blunt Talk.” Link.
If the GOP cannot come up with a way to bribe Trump to drop out of the presidential race, maybe this will do it-
White supremacist Craig Cobb wants to name latest all-white enclave after Donald Trump:
I think Cobb’s community would have to be NOT welcoming to Mexican-Americans for this to appeal to Trump.
He needn’t worry. I’m sure Trump is already planning to rename the GOP “The Trump Party” after he gets the nomination.
Tony @111, that’s kind of amusing in an awful way. At least the white supremacist was temporarily shut down. On the other hand, I am reminded of the John Oliver segment that PZ posted today. No doubt White Supremacist Creationist Church would be tax exempt.
Some of the past “Birther” blather than sprang up during President Obama’s first campaign for office is now blowing back onto Republican candidates. Birthers are saying that Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz may not be eligible for the office of President of the USA.
The rabid fringe of the rightwing has been nurtured by Republicans, and now it is big enough to bite the hand that fed it. We’ve seen it in the House of Congress, where the fringe has even refused to cooperate with Republican leaders like John Boehner. The fringe has made Mitch McConnell fail several times in the Senate. It’s hard to make Boehner and McConnell look like the moderates in the room, but the rabid rightwing has done so.
And now they are going after some of the presidential candidates on the basis of their birth certificates.
Oh, yeah, “pure.” That’s not what I would call the Birther arguments.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/rubio-jindal-cruz-santorum-birthers
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson had a “legitimate rape” moment when discussing abortion. Carson is a retired neurosurgeon who sometimes reveals remarkable ignorance when it comes to medical issues.
Carson is particularly opposed to abortion services for women of color.
Slate link
One should note that black women have a higher rate of unwanted pregnancy thanks, in part, to inadequate access to reproductive health care. And that includes contraception services.
Hillary Clinton replies to Jeb Bush’s attempt to blame her and President Obama for the mess in Iraq:
Link
Jeb Bush is scarily ignorant when it comes to foreign policy. Most of Jebs advisors used to work for George W. Bush.
Most of the Republican candidates are attacking Social Security:
Public Policy link
Paul Krugman on why Republican candidates are attacking Social Security:
New York Times link
Republican candidates depend on the top one-tenth percent of wealthy people, namely their donors. Billionaires are über conservative, for the most part.
http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf
Eighty percent of voters in the USA oppose raising the retirement age. And even more telling, the financial doomsday being sold by the Republicans is false.
In 1980, the platform of David Koch’s Libertarian Party called for “the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system.” Thirty-four years ago, that was an extreme view of a fringe party that had the support of 1 percent of the American people. Today, the mainstream view of the Republican Party is that “entitlement reform” is absolutely necessary. Link
Ann Coulter called Trump’s plan to deport all of the undocumented immigrants in the USA, and to rescind part of the 14th Amendment, the “Greatest Political Document Since The Magna Carta.”
Todd Starnes of Fox News said,
Rush Limbaugh also supports Trump’s immigration plan. See comment 104 for a summary of Trump’s plan.
Some of Carly Fiorina’s far-right conservative views:
– vaccination should always be “parents’ choice”
– the federal minimum wage should be abolished
– climate change is about “ideology, it is not about science”
Washington Examiner link
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/633330856006975488 (link to climate change comment)
This is a follow up to comments 117. That comment presented the views of Republican candidates. Here is Hillary Clinton’s take on Social Security:
http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-points-social-security-changes-afl-cio-questionnaire-050441631–business.html
Senator Martin Heinrich is a Democrat from New Mexico. He is a soft-spoken member of the Senate’s Intelligence and Armed Services committees. Heinrich researches each issue on which he votes, and he is articulate, which seems to be a rarity in the debate over the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Henrich’s defense of, and explanation of, the Iran deal is exceptionally well-written. I advise reading the entire essay. Albuquerque Journal link
Excerpt below:
Oh, FFS, Texas conservatives! Do you have to push the rabid religious rightwing further off the cliff? Rhetorical question, because, yes, you have done that.
A conservative guy named Sten Hotze runs a “Faith, Family, Freedom Tour.” You know from the name that the tour is bad news, but it is even worse news for the LGBT community. That doofus Hotze picked up a satirical essay titled “The Gay Manifesto” and ran with it as truth. The 1987 essay was a satire, a satire Mr. Hotze.
Political leaders like former House Majority leader Tom Delay joined Hotze in presenting this circus of stupid — all in an effort to fight a civil rights ordinance that will be on the ballot in November (Texas is trying to vote on civil rights, again).
Hotze postured with swords and bibles:
BTW, at the same meeting Tom Delay told the audience that the judiciary can be overruled by the people. Uh, no.
http://www.texasobserver.org/conservative-texas-steve-hotze-gay-nazis/
Meanwhile, in good political news for transgender people, the Obama administration hired a transgender woman to fill a senior staff position.
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/08/18/in-first-white-house-hires-openly-trans-staffer/
More examples are given in the article of transgender people hired by the Obama Administration.
According to a new CNN poll, Donald Trump is now both the first and the second choice of Republican voters from sea to shining sea.
Trump said that he wants to bomb the oil fields in Syria and Iraq to take away a source of funding for ISIS. Next, Trump says, he would send in Exxon to rebuild the oil field infrastructure so fast it would make your head spin. Then the oil would be ours.
Despite such statements, Republicans that were polled by CNN said that Trump is the best candidate to handle ISIS.
[head meet desk] I think the only part of that with which I agree is the head-spinning part.
Talking Points Memo link
Gun control news, or rather, anti-gun-control news. This news comes with a side of prejudice against Muslims, and of Confederate flag promotion. It’s a heady mixture.
George Zimmerman hosted a raffle of a Confederate flag painting in order to raise funds for his defense (lawyers being paid in several recent disputes); and in order to raise funds for Florida Gun Supply, a self-described “Muslim-free” gun store, whose owner is also being sued.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george-zimmerman-florida-gun-store-muslim-free
The self-described “so handsome” Donald Trump decided to tell Heidi Klum that “she’s no longer a 10.”
Heidi Klum responded with a sweet little Instagram video that showed her looking fabulous and being downgraded to a 9.99.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/heidi-klum-donald-trump-10
Rick Perry is wrong … again.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rick-perry-women-equal-pay
The 14th Amendment, and the ways in which conservatives hate this amendment is still in the news. Some journalists are pointing out how misplaced, how stupid, the movement to repeal the 14th Amendment is:
http://prospect.org/article/what-ever-happened-maverick-south-carolina
Republican candidates that want to repeal or amend the 14th Amendment:
Lindsay Graham, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie
So, a bunch of armed white supremacists are proposing that they arm black protestors in Ferguson. WTF? The Oath Keepers group has been flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. They should be flagged as also having a very thin skin, as well as a lot, a LOT, of guns.
Right Wing Watch link
Rand Paul wrote a piece for Huff Po in which he pitched his “Students for Rand” initiative.
Paul claimed to be “socially tolerant” as part of his appeal to students. Really? He is anti-abortion, and he came out against marriage equality. He’s one of the Republicans that wants to defund Planned Parenthood. He co-sponsored a fill to make anti-gay discrimination easier. He claims the USA is going through a “moral crisis,” and that “We need another Great Awakening with tent revivals.”
Dear students, Rand Paul is not socially tolerant.
Republicans are all hot and bothered over Hillary Clinton’s emails. They might want to take a closer look at their fellow GOP members.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article30417807.html
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is still fighting the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, they’re just trying to do so in backdoor and sneaky ways.
The RNC crafted a resolution that endorses the rabid rightwing position, a resolution that they didn’t announce to the press, nor did they make sure it was reported anywhere. Nevertheless, this very bad idea finally came to light:
Think Progress link
The “First Amendment Defense Act” has 144 Republican co-sponsors in the House, and it has 36 co-sponsors in the Senate, including Rand Paul (see comment 130 regarding Rand Paul). Other Republican presidential candidates who are co-sponsors include Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz.
The RNC endorses anti-gay discrimination.
Some facts about the Birthright Citizenship (14th Amendment) arguments being made by Donald Trump and other Republicans (see also, comments 104 and 105):
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/immigration-lawyer-birthright-citizenship
This is a follow up to comment #125:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/oktaha-oklahoma-muslim-free-gun-shooting
Trump hemed and hawed, and then he lied when asked about military advisors for his campaign:
Mother Jones link
Salon link
I’d give Huckabee a Clueless award were it not for the fact that most of his fellow candidates for president are equally clueless.
President Salva Kiir of South Sudan has threatened to kill all journalists reporting in a way that Kiir considers to be “against the country.”
Think Progress link
In the halls of state government, various legislators are blaming the victims of sexual harassment. The legislators want to require more modest, conservative dress for interns — yeah, that’ll solve the problem. Not.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/08/18/3692835/missouri-dress-code-interns/
Yes, it is possible to be more outrageous than Trump is on immigration issues. One conservative radio host in Iowa is a good example:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/08/19/ia-radio-host-jan-mickelson-enslave-undocumente/205020
It looks like no one but me is reading and commenting in this thread. If PZ would like to see more active discussions, we may have to move the “Discuss …” threads to the top of the left hand navigation column.
In political news, we see what looks like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and his assistant, Eric Rucker, sinking to even lower no-ethical-center depths. Courtney Canfield claims she was fired from her job as a business-filing specialist because she did not attend prayer services which were held in the office:
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article31536053.html
Lynna, I’m subscribed and reading, I just don’t have anything to say. I agree, these threads should be given more prominence. Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing here.
Some of the Republican candidates for president have named their advisors. Trouble is, the advisors weren’t actually consulted, and/or they disagree with the policies of the candidates.
Donald Trump named a military advisor who then went public with the news that he hadn’t advised Trump on military matters.
Now we have Scott Walker naming an education advocate who can’t run away from Scott Walker fast enough.
I’m reading every post.
The “Discuss” threads already have links on the sidebar, in the box above PZ’s picture.
Maybe a bigger font?
Anne @141, thanks. I really can’t tell if there is a significant readership of subscribers, or not.
In other political news related to U.S. presidential candidates, Rick Santorum parsed his own words, and then had comprehension and memory problems.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rick-santorum-gay-marriage-dred-scott
more detail at the link
Thanks for the work you do posting these, Lynna.
I’m reading, and just haven’t anything substantial to post/reply. Except for too-frequent :headdesk: or :facepalm:.
I just don’t understand the thought processes behind many of the things I’m reading. I feel in a constant state of :boggle:.
The Center for Medical Progress is anything but, as PZ has noted before. We’ve all seen the media and political firestorm prompted by the Center’s deceptively edited videos that are being used to promote a defund-Planned-Parenthood movement.
In their latest video, the doofuses not only engaged in the usual deceptive editing, they even used photos from other sources. The photos purported to be aborted fetuses, but were actually photos of a stillborn fetus. The source is RH Reality Check reports, and the recycled photo was taken by Alexis Fretz, a woman who was grieving her stillborn son. Fretz noted in a Facebook post that she did not give the Center for Medical Progress permission to use her son’s photo.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/08/20/3693340/planned-parenthood-video-photos/
Some states are already cutting Planned Parenthood funding based on these deceptive videos.
Thanks for letting me know, jimb and chigau.
It’s not news that Donald Trump says lots of stupid and/or ignorant things. It’s only news when he comes up with a new stupid and/or ignorant thing to say. His latest is about the Keystone XL pipeline:
That quote is from Trump’s Twitter feed.
The pipeline is a 1,179-mile extension of an existing pipeline. It is designed to carry tar sands crude oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of the USA. Tar sands spills are harder to clean up than other crude oil spills. We don’t have any pipelines that can claim no spills ever. There will be spills.
Trump sunk about $250,000 of his own money in TransCanada Pipelines, so he has a conflict of interest. The amount of money may be much larger, but we don’t know because he reported the investment in a non-detailed way, and on a form that allowed him to check boxes for “$50,000 or more.” How much more?
Trump also has stock holdings in several other fossil fuel companies. As usual, he’s just looking to make a deal that will end with more money in his pocket, and damn the environment.
The number of jobs associated with the Keystone pipeline has been greatly exaggerated. Most of those jobs are fewer in number, and are short-lived (two years, construction phase).
David Barton is a rightwing activist with a big audience, especially for his radio and TV programs. Donald Barton is also a pathological liar.
Right Wing Watch link
Barton is an evangelical christian based in Texas. He graduated from Oral Roberts University, and he founded “WallBuilders,” an organization that puts out propaganda denying separation of church and state. In politics, Barton is the former vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas. He is a christian nationalist. He claims to be an expert historian, but he is not. His degree is in Christian Education.
Mike Huckabee and other Republican candidates have appeared on Barton’s program. Barton was listed in the “25 most influential evangelicals” by Time magazine. Barton acts as a political consultant to the Republican National Committee.
Lynna, OM, I’m here, too, as well as at The Speakeasy. I’m also on the lookout for stuff from sources you might not see, even with all your tater eyes ;-}: I’ve only found one contribution, so far.
Joe Scarborough is one of the few avowedly conservative hosts on MSNBC news programs — he co-hosts “Morning Joe.” He is often an embarrassment to MSNBC. Marco Rubio loves him, and has praised Scarborough publicly. Here’s Joe’s latest failure:
Scarborough got his bit of pseudo-information from an August 18 article in the Daily Mail. The New York Post repeated the pseudo-information:
TownHall.com and other untrustworthy media outlets also reported the lie as truth.
And that’s how pseudo-information is substituted for real information, and is then believed by rightwingers. Expect more pseudo-details to emerge as Republicans do their best to tear down Hillary Clinton.
Media Matters link
[Waves to se habla espol]
Jeb Bush has decided to see if he can’t join bottom-feeder Donald Trump on the immigration issue.
See comments 104, 105, 128, and especially 133 for some clarity on this predilection to see babies as “anchors” and what it all means.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeb-bush-birthright-citizenship-enforcement-abuse
Trump’s tough talk has a horrible effect on some people:
Apparently, pissing on a homeless man’s face is a way to express your passionate political convictions.
The quote is from the Boston Globe, but they require a login and/or they have a pay wall — so no link.
Lynna, I am reading here, too! I just don’t really have much time to comment now, so I’m mostly in lurk mode.
Clown car. Pulls up to a stop and about 15 or 16 people come piling out.
Presidential hopeful John Kasich wants to ban teacher’s lounges. Most of the Republican candidates seem to have a gut-level hatred of teachers, but Kasich took this a step further:
The desire to be King of America is also common. Maybe that’s why they keep claiming that President Obama thinks he is King of America?
Politico link
Okay, with Nightjar and feralboy to add, we have half a dozen readers (sounds better than “six readers”) of this thread. There are probably more lurkers, so let’s just say we have a dozen, (Donald Trump’s audience-counting method is employed).
Let’s have some international news. Hamas says they captured a dolphin that was spying for the Israelis off the coast of Gaza.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/08/20/3693544/spy-dolphins/
Well, all right then, that’s settled.
Sarah Palin gave Trumps entire immigration plan a thumbs up during an interview on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News program (Tuesday night).
Donald Trump said some more stupid stuff. He’s said stupid stuff about the “real unemployment rate” before, but now he has come up with new pseudo statistics that add up to an unemployment rate of 42%.
Where does Trump get this pseudo information (other than from his ass?), and where do other Republican candidates get their delusional rejection of the Obama administration’s low unemployment figures?
Slate link
Holy crap.
King of America?
But… but… weren’t… the original colonlialists… fleeing a monarchy? Eh…?
Not that, you know, the current situation is all that different from yer usual dynastic order, what with the Bushes and all…
re @158:
I too read that Trumpshit about real unemployment being actually 42%. And how he based it on the Stockmaniac who fudges the numbers by loading the denominator with the number of adults ; regardless of whether they are actually seeking employment. He also throws into the numerator people who are temporarily between positions (e.g. resigned April, next one starts November, so technically unemployed June thru October). Trump likes to throw these horrific numbers around without ever giving any proposed remedies, other than,
Wilmore (Nightly Show) did a good riff, last night, off Trump’s “anchor baby” gibberfabbling. Noting, in passing, that of ALL illegal immigrants, only 2% were pregnant women at the time of importation. Went without saying, “Is that a big enough problem to repeal the 14th completely?” Is that 2% so burdensome?
The Rethugs are always telling the indigent to move to charities rather than the guvmint; so I’d like to bounce it back: can’t the guvmint also be a charity to support the needy who are so, through no fault of their own, especially infants that Repubs are so enamoured with producing.
That would require the Rethugs to display some logical consistency in their positions. I don’t think that will be forthcoming anytime soon.
Lynna:
I follow this thread as well.
*Waves*
I’m still here. Being quiet.
I’m reading and lurking. I simply can’t believe that any of these people believe they have a shot at the nomination. Every time Trump opens his mouth, I hear Archie Bunker. It is the nomination process as political farce meets reality TV.
Reading and lurking as well. Thank you for all of this!
I’m here too. I was the first one who held FTB at spoonpoint and demanded you get your own news channel when PZ pulled the plug on the virtual gatherings of unwashed masses that ultimately pissed him off. I would like to comment on your posts, but I’m usually so incredulous and/or outraged that I’m beyond posting anything other than a long sequence of what my wife calls “Canadian Language” (all my rellies are notorious expletive-ites, wife from California). Basically, just here to show you a thumbs up and use the stage-director sign for “We love your work, keep going!”
tl/dr: YAY LYNNA!
One another who has no idea where Lynna got the idea no-one was reading or commenting. Just looking at the comments before that remark, we can see other commentators, and not just an odd hand-full.
And now for some Paul Krugman on far more dangerous myths, Debt Is Good:
He then goes on to argue that “part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt”:
It’s a far more plausible concept than, as an example, Merkel’s insistence on paying reparations to irresponsible banks.
Rachel Maddow apparently made an interesting comment on Fallon last night, re Trump. [2nd hand, btw] She said she thinks Trump isn’t serious about running for POTUS given the extreme workload. EG “Obama is 40years older than he was 7 years ago, and W went from frat boy to old burned out retiree in his 8 yrs. That Trump might be interested in assuming the title if he could outsource all the work to hirees.”
Aside from all the satire she’s throwing in that, it seems reasonable that Trump is uninterested in actually acquiring the position. He seems like a blowhard that just makes noise to stay famous (eg he plasters his name in huge bold letters on every building he acquires, and always talks of himself in the 3rd person).
Unfortunately, I can’t imagine him refusing the position IFFF elected, even it would increase his fame, to be the first POTUS to abdicate pre-inauguration.
Intersting to have an actual person embody a satirical characterization of the Rethuglican faux-no-it-all <pun> ugh, yes I side with DailyShow Stewart (ret) that Trump is comedy gold. The scary thing is that so many people take him seriously, thinking he’s an actual candidate rather than (hopefully) a mock-candidate [a “mockdidate”?].
Count me as another avid reader of this thread.
————
slithey tove @ 168,
When I look at Trump I see Berlusconi. Another filthy rich non-politician spouting outrageous misogyny, xenophobia, and all-around despicable views. Unfortunately USAian voters are no smarter than Italian voters, and so there’s a very good chance that he’ll get the election. And even more unfortunately, Clinton seems eminently beatable next year. So President Trump of the United States of Trump isn’t as far-fetched as I’d like.
I guess the best-case scenario is that he loses the nomination, runs as a third-party candidate, and draws some of the lunatic fringe votes away from Bush, thus leading to a Clinton landslide (and ideally a Dem-controlled Congress).
But even that scenario is depressing.
Okay, I take back my “no one is reading/commenting” whine. Hi, everyone.
Regarding the Jon Stewart mention @168, there’s a petition at change.org to have Stewart moderate a presidential debate. I’m all for that.
The Hill link
Petition link
re 169:
ahhhh. agreed.
…
ever consider USA will become if Trump becomes POTUS, as his first presidential order?
*shudder*
John Kasich made a few moves that make him look like a moderate, but when asked, “”In Ohio, I know half of the abortion centers closed. Can you do that in the country if I vote for you?” The Republican governor replied, “We’ll do our best.”
Family quirks? (Sort of a followup to rq’s comment 159 in reference to the Bush dynasty, King of the Country, etc.): Jeb Bush said that if he is elected president, he will be a “decider.”
Carly Fiorina thinks she can solve problems with a poll done via smart phone:
This is a followup to comment 139.
Ted Cruz is going to appear on Jan Mickelson’s radio show. Mickelson is the guy who proposed enslaving undocumented immigrants who refuse to leave Iowa.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/08/20/ted-cruz-to-appear-on-ia-radio-show-days-after/205070
Regarding Trump’s claim of 42% unemployment: when he said that, he actually went from 21% unemployment to 42% unemployment within the same paragraph. He was talking quickly, blustering at top speed, so he took the USA from 21% to 42% unemployment in a matter of about two seconds.
Head spinning. Of course, neither rate is correct. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Labor Department have official data that shows a rate of 5.3%.
Wall Street Jounal link
Trump’s unemployment numbers must include “unborn persons” as well.
The tax plans of Republican candidates vary from wildly stupid (Rand Paul, do away with most government functions) to fiscally irresponsible in more normal ways (Marco Rubio, welfare for the rich). Marco Rubio put out a plan that was authored by Mike Lee of Utah. Mike Lee is a mormon and a Republican Senator, and his mormonism is like a steroid injection into his conservative rightwingism. The result is not pretty.
According to the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, the Rubio/Lee tax proposal “outrageously” favors the “country’s highest-income people.” The CBPP flags “big losers” as the “working-poor people who feed and bathe the elderly, care for preschoolers, clean offices, and perform other essential tasks. The big winners would be the country’s highest-income 400 filers, at a cost of much higher deficits.”
It’s worth noting that Mike Lee’s tax plan is to the right of, is more radical than, that of his fellow mormon, Mitt Romney. Rubio’s response is to repeat his tale of growing up poor.
NY magazine link
A reference for the comment about mormonism adding to Mike Lee’s fiscal framework:
http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Wealth,_Attitudes_Toward
The US Chamber of Commerce is a big player in politics. The Chamber is entering politics for the 2016 election earlier than usual, as in now.
The Chamber was stung, stiffed by some Republican nominees it supported in the past, candidates who then went on prevent Chamber-promoted legislation from being passed. The Chamber as always been pro business, and some right-wingers are so rabid that they actually interfere with business.
For 2016, the Chamber is targeting some of the most rabid doofuses, hoping to defeat them if they are up for reelection, but they are also performing their usual dirty deeds to defeat Democratic Party candidates.
I don’t think the Chamber realizes that a Republican majority in the Senate will not benefit them, will not get them to their goals.
In the primary races, the Chamber will support Democrats who are less likely to win a general election, thus tipping the scales to favor a Republican in the general election. This powerful, bags-of-money organization will support Democrats that it deems easy to beat.
Last time, the Chamber spent tens of millions of dollars to guarantee a Republican Congress, and it got its business-suited ass handed to it when it came to legislation. Right-wingers voted against the Chamber on issues like the Export-Import Bank, infrastructure projects, and more (debt ceiling crisis they didn’t want, etc.)
The Chamber has decided to roll the dice and to help elect dunderheaded Republicans again. It’s another “they never learn” situation.
Columbus Dispatch link
Rightwing politicians are desperate to derail the Iran Nuclear deal. Now they think they have another bullet in the chamber.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is especially good at going off the rails to attack President Obama, said this:
Uh, no. Fuck no.
The Associated Press published an article containing multiple errors, some of which were subsequently deleted without explanation. Tom Cotton ran with the original AP story, without checking his facts. It is not true that Iran “will be permitted to inspect its own nuclear facilities.”
One facility is the issue, the Parchin facility, which has been dormant for a long time. The IAEA will monitor the samples that the Iranians take from this facility.
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9182185/ap-iran-inspections-parchin
Lots of Republican dunderheads have jumped on Tom Cotton’s bandwagon. None of them has acknowledged errors or flaws in their accusations.
Rachel Maddow presented a humorous look at Main governor Paul LePage.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/governor-offers-to-quit-if-enough-people-ask-509931075580
So, yeah, lots of people want this criminal to resign.
Rachel Maddow nicely summarized how bad Jeb Bush is at running for President. Litany of gaffes, misstatements and other not-fit-for-office missteps.
Scott Walker totally flubbed a chance to meet with Black Lives Matter activists:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206161/Scott-Walker-says-Black-Lives-Matter-doesn-t-matter-mocks-ridiculous-question-meet-civil-rights-group-s-organizers.html
Ridiculous enough to make international news.
A Republican in Louisiana comes up with a novel excuse for his name appearing on the client list of the adultery hub, ashley Madison. Josh Duggar wishes he had Jason Dore’s way with words:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/08/louisiana_gop_ashley_madison.html
Just what we don’t need, another loophole through which millionaires and billionaires can secretly funnel money to political candidates:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-21/another-way-to-mask-super-rich-donors
School boards in red states have caused all kinds of problems. Look at the Texas school board’s rewrites of history, science, etc.
In Missouri, the school board in the town of Perryville added misogyny to its misrule:
Daily Kos link
Some fun and games in politics — kind of a relief after chronicling the exploits of Donald Trump:
A video supercut of news anchors saying “Deez Nuts” can be viewed at the link.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/deez-nuts-donald-trump-2016
#140: I don’t have much control over where the links go. There’s a box called “Profile” on the left sidebar, and I get to fill that with whatever I want, and I’ve put the Discuss links at the top of that. Everything else is defined by FtB, not me.
I’ve given it a bigger font, but that’s going to have limited impact.
One thing to keep in mind is that when I go on vacation and stop posting regularly, traffic overall drops precipitously — we’re down to a third of what I usually see this week. It’ll climb back up after this weekend, when I’m back in the saddle again.
Good news: home care workers are now guaranteed minimum wage.
Republican candidates for president would be well advised to take this decision as final, but they are marching in the opposite direction. (See comment #176 for the description of the tax plan proposed by Marco Rubio and Mike Lee.) Other Republicans have hinted that they will expand the legal battle. They don’t want to pay home workers a living wage.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/08/21/3693794/omalley-social-security-plan/
In international news, we have yet another religion v. religion fight being fought in Myanmar’s parliament:
We have enough anti-tolerance problems without introducing religion into the mix.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/08/21/3693846/myanmar-bills/
PZ @186, thanks for the explanation. I’ll stop whining.
Fox News has picked up Donald Trump’s war on the 14th Amendment and is running with it.
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/21/fox_news_uses_donald_trumps_immigration_policy_to_wage_total_war_on_14th_amendment/
piling on @191:
As in say it says
And FauxNoise is running with that kind of arrogance bluster as actual newsworthy truthtelling, [*shrug*]
Thanks, slithery tove @192.
More on the birthright citizenship issue, from the Scott Walker corner of crazy. First, Walker was quick to support Trump’s citizenship-ending proposal, a stance on which he doubled down when questioned by a reporter.
Next, Walker decided he just doesn’t want to talk about it at all:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/21/scott-walker-talks-birthright-citizenship.html
Walker has previously said, “Pass,” on questions he doesn’t like.
Walker’s poll numbers are dropping, especially among the people who know him best, the voters in Wisconsin.
Simply refusing to have a policy position may not be a good policy. Flip-flopping and then having no policy position is even worse.
Whoops. Autocorrect screwed me. “slithey” not “slithery.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/21/black_lives_matter_coalition_police_brutality_policy_proposals_campaign.html
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/21/protesters-unveil-police-policy-proposals
Lynna,
I too am reading.
After reading your comments about Trump, Bush, Walker, Cruz et al, I am definitely considering supporting Deez Nuts with a contribution.
That’s not whining. It’s constructive criticism.
Some LGBT activists are not letting Republican presidential candidates get away with vague answers when it comes to equal rights.
Video at the link, but the video is not high quality.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-ellen-page-iowa-state-fair
More transcript text here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ellen-page-ted-cruz-gay-rights-iowa-state-fair-2015-8
PZ @197, thanks. I like the larger font in the lefthand navigation column.
In more birthright citizenship news, some rightwing religious leaders have come with a novel approach: accept only immigrants who are christians.
Right Wing Watch link
Titus went on to decry the “modern-day Tower of Babel,” and to insist that the U.S. has an obligation to God to maintain our borders. The integrity of the border is, in Titus’s view, essential to the integrity of American Christians.
Al Dente @196, you are not alone in your support for Deez Nuts.
This is a followup to comments 139 and 173.
On Jan Mickelson’s rightwing radio show, Ted Cruz not only defended the use of the term “anchor babies,” but he also held forth on the “atheist Taliban.” I think he means us.
Right Wing Watch link.
Call me optimistic, but I think Republicans are going to have to give up on their defund-Planned-Parenthood campaign. (For earlier comments on Planned Parenthood, see 46, 55, 64, 93, 130, and 146.)
Five states have conducted investigations prompted by those deceptive videos, and all five have found that Planned Parenthood didn’t break any laws. Georgia, South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, and now, Pennsylvania, have all concluded their investigations (waste of taxpayer’s money).
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is considering filing a lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion, anti-progress rightwing organization that produced and edited the bogus videos.
What the hell is up with this big push from right-wingers to prove that Black Lives Matter activists are not black? It’s weird.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/08/21/3693786/shaun-king-multiracial-identity/
This is a followup to comment 137.
We didn’t have to wait long for the threats uttered by the South Sudanese President to have disastrous effects. A journalist has been killed.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/08/21/3694100/journalist-killed-days-after-president/
This might be a sign that Martin O’Malley’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president is making some headway: the NRA noticed O’Malley and condemned him.
The National Rifle Association says that O’Malley is a friend to criminals.
Media Matters link
This is a followup to comment #202.
Unfortunately, CNN and some other news outlets picked up the bogus Shaun-King-is-white story and gave it significant air time.
Salon link
I just got to congratulate a co-worker on her upcoming nuptials. I said that I had met her fiancée, where she worked, and that I wished them both the best. I hadn’t spoken to the co-worker much, before, as I am a temp, and she seemed a bit startled to be getting good wishes. She even said that it meant a lot to her.
This is in Missouri, where the recent Supreme Court decision was needed. It was the first wedding of people that I knew (I am not very social), so it meant a lot to me, too. It now seems madness that that couple were not allowed to marry, and sad that some folks still oppose them.
Yesterday, Donald Trump gave a campaign speech in Alabama. He made a big deal at the beginning of the speech about the size of the venue and the size of the crowd. His team had moved the event to a football stadium to accommodate the crowd … however, the crowd filled less than half of the 44,000-seat stadium. A generous estimate would put the crowd at 20,000. Yooouuuuge crowd in Trump’s mind. Still a big crowd …. but ….
Bernie Sanders recently attracted crowds exceeding 30,000 for two days in a row, two separate events. Is Bernie more yooouuuugge than the Donald?
In other interesting developments, some people in the Trump crowd shouted “White Power!” Not too surprised to find white supremacists as part of the Trump base.
Before Trump arrived, some neb-confederate activists passed out racist literature.
There were people carrying signs that said, “Thank you, Lord Jesus, for President Trump.”
Trump repeated his new line about the bible; his favorite book is the Bible, his second favorite is “The Art of the Deal.”
Policy statements included:
“Women’s health issues. We’re gonna fix it.”
“Oreos. Oreos. I love Oreos, but I’ll never eat them again.”
“I was—hopefully still am—really smart.”
“I swear to you I will never ever ride a bicycle.”
In his speech yesterday, The Donald made a statement that is easily proven incorrect: he said the U.S. is the only country “stupid enough” to have a birthright citizenship policy.
Link
It looks like Jeb Bush’s Super PAC, Right to Rise, send out a flier with a photoshopped image of Jeb’s head and one of his hands on a black man’s body. They forgot to hide the left hand of the black man — so there it is on Jeb’s hip.
Link
Gilbert, Arizona is heavily salted with mormons and evangelical christians. The area is really conservative and saddled with a school board that does stupid stuff.
Photo of the obnoxious sticker, which also promotes abstinence as the best birth control, at the link:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arizona-gilbert-school-district-abortion-sticker
I hear that automobile manufacturers are going to do away with the back of car cams and just install a republican in each car since the only thing GOP are good at is looking backwards.
@212, McC2lhu, that was laugh-worthy.
Here’s some good news for same-sex couples, courtesy of your Federal Government.
The Social Security Administration will retroactively offer spousal benefits to same-sex couples that legally wed in one state, but lived in a state that did not recognize their marriage.
http://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20150820_ssa-apply-obergefell-retroactively-spousal-benefits
Donald Trump plans to scare the bejeezus out of the Pope.
Washington Post link
Part of the video of Trump’s speech in Alabama picked up the “White Power!” slogan being shouted out from the audience. This is not something that foes of Trump made up, it’s for real.
Scroll down for the video.
Slate link
This sounds like more of the white-power attitude — it’s a record of a conversation with a Trump supporter:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/08/he_came_to_mobile_to_put_on_a.html
More quotes from Trump supporters:
“All he’s doing is saying what a lot of Americans are afraid to say,” Ward said. “Third world countries are running over us left and right and the reason they’re getting away with it is because Obama doesn’t have the balls to do anything about it.”
“It’s not right that they are just coming in free will and having babies and they stay here. It’s not right.”
“Obama You Are Fired.”
“Basically, anybody who has any kind of a social issue as far as Michael Brown shooting, Trayvon Martin and all that, he comes on and speaks about it, he talks about it, he lets the criminal community know that he’s on their side. However, when another kid dies, when it’s not a black child, it’s crickets. Nothing at all.”
This is a followup to comment #152.
The two men who beat up a Latino homeless man, then pissed on the man, and then claimed they were inspired by Donald Trump — those guys may have been living illegally in public housing.
The Mexican man they beat up had been living in the USA since 1980.
Slate link
Lynna, I was rather amazed by this quote from a Trump supporter (from this piece on Raw Story covering the same ground).
Really? Because I’ve lived in So Cal pretty much my entire life, and if we’ve turned into some kind of international lawless Mad Max thingy, I think I might’ve noticed.
Anne @218, you can certainly tell what kind of mind set is attracted to Trump. If one or two undocumented immigrants rape and beat a woman, of course that is cause to condemn all undocumented immigrants. Not.
Donald Trump has repeated this story, and one similar story, so often that it now seems like thousands of undocumented immigrants are raping and murdering people.
It does look like authorities messed up big time in not detaining and/or deporting Victor Aurelian Martinez and Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez properly. Nevertheless, it’s not a sign that we should make a blanket judgement of immigrants.
Link
Meanwhile, rightwing “news” sources like Breitbart repeatedly report statistics like these:
The Breitbart crap is debunked in several places. Here’s one:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/immigration-and-crime
Breitbart and others claim that if you only look at “illegal immigrants” you will find a much higher rate of crime. The Economist (link above) discusses some of the issues that are being ignored when right-wingers make that claim, and the big problem that crops up when one tries to verify the rightwing stats.
Re 218/219 – You can always trust in phobic xenophobe cracker batshittery to bust through the lowest envelope of insane hyperbole. I have lived in OC since 97 and can safely say I would trust my Latino friends and aquantances with my life. You couldn’t even trust the spoiled precious “real” housewives, Newport Yacht Club Teabaggers, and newly permitted concealed gun carriers with a bag of rocks and an already dead chicken. They’ve cloistered themselves in their not-so ivory towers for so long they can’t perceive that THEY are the dangerous assholes, not some impoverished family just up from Baja.
McC2lhu, we moved to the OC in ’95 (really, it’s been that long?). We live in the northerly part of the county, so things are a bit more mixed up here. Still, my experiences with some (not all) of the people here sounds similar.
@221, Anne, lady, cats, crankiness: At least you’re further removed from the snowblinded (from the whiteness) & privileged set. The seacoast housewives run ambivalent to crassly ignorant of the plight of anyone not in their “Fascist Island” shopping circle (you know where I’m talkin’ ’bout). The Yachters mostly run type A captains of jerkery and industry who would shank their mother for an extra nickel on the corporate bottom line.
These type of voting blocs put in place the kind of greedy, self centered dirtbags who can’t conceive of their own overall safety being expanded by improving the socioeconomic status of poor and minority people by not fucking blocking every social program, subsidized training and infrastructure improvement program to give lower and middle class people jobs. As long as their buddies get their tax decrease so they can stuff their Cayman accounts. The ones from this group who claim to be so all about Jesus are the worst kind of hypocrites. Utterly oblivious to “I am my brother’s keeper” and “What you do to the least you also do to me”.
Now those who have just newly received their concealed carry licenses guarantee yet more instances of phobic white people blustering their way into trouble, then ‘feeling threatened’ when someone questions what the fuck their problem is. Without this kind of gun asshole, Trayvon would likely have been questioned by cops and driven home, the texter at the theater would have been escorted out by management (rather than dead, with his wife bleeding also), and the teen at the 7-11 with the loud music would have wondered what bug was up the butt of that old Elric-toned codger who thinks that convenience store parking lots are his private property. Instead they’re all dead. But boy those phobic white people sure didn’t mind waltzing into the situation sane people would have handled without bloodshed, as long as they’re carrying that concealed weapon, because, you know…”Colerds r so dangerus!”.
I’m Nordic/Slavic and these cranium2anus stuffers make ME hate white people. Certainly at least the uber-weiss of Das County. I never formerly encountered this level of greedy, frightened, superstitious crackery, and I’m from FREAKIN’ ALBERTA!!!
True fact: Many people don’t realize the name of Orange County didn’t come about from fruit, but from a racist asshat.
Anyhoo, if I rant any further I’m likely to rend a garment.
& Lynna @212: How are today’s entire GOP like Rich Little? They think that one cheezy impression of a republican criminal constitutes an entire career arc.
I was largely raised and educated in California, in several locations ranging from approximately the Mexican border, Smog Hades (LA), Big Oil Baronetcy (south end of the central valley), and Beserkly-by-the-Sea (Santa Cruz). Whilst I left multiple decades ago, and have not been back for over a decade, I nonetheless simply do not recognise the “Cheryl Burns” rubbish quoted in @218, albeit that person does sound similar to one of my relatives, who was spouting similar gibberish before the moon landings, with roughly the same John Birch-er overtones and broadly directed at the same set of people she “thought” different from her.
B.t.w., is it just me, or does teh trum-prat remind anyone else of the John Birch-ers, albeit replacing their “commie” war/fear-mongering with “moolsin” war- and/or “illegal [sic] immigrant” fear-mongering?
In addition to bush III’s mysteriously very dark-toned left hand (see @209), there is the exceptionally odd “shadow” on his right hand, which defies all known optics and looks for all the world like another mysteriously dark-toned hand beneath it.
Plus the wonderfully clewless title, “Why Jeb?”
Why, indeed…
(I look forward to the forthcoming series of joke manipulated photographs showing bush III at a series of improbable locations (he’s apparently never been to Cedar Rapids), unusual optics, unlikely features (the Eye of Sauron, perhaps?), and creative titles (“Release the Jeb!”, or should that be “Release the Sméagol!”?).)
Ben Carson wants to use drone strikes on caves near the U.S. border
Ted Cruz talks scripture and presidential crusade at Koch brothers-funded event:
The “sic?” is because I am unconvinced that was really a “joke”. Cruzay is bugfeck nuts (an accurate description of all those in the thug’s Kandidate Klown Kar, as far as I know), and it’s not implausible he “thinks” that is a useful or realistic idea. Plus, it attacks at least two groups not very popular (probably) with both his controllers and supplicants: The IRS, and so-called “illegal immigrants”.
There were apparently a fair number of trum-prat loonies present. Perhaps the most frightening quote in the article is from one of those trum-prat cultists:
Ok, Mr Parham, a point for not wanting to invade and kill people, but you are still not even wrong.
Though rose-tinted Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses: Everything behind you looks perfect until there is the least hint of danger or unpleasantness, then you can’t see anything (and so have no reason to worry or do anything) until the imperfection is gone.
(With apologies to both Garry Trudeau and Douglas Adams.)
This is a followup of sorts to blf’s comment 223 in which the eerie resemblance of current Republican candidates to John Birchers of the past was noted. Going even further back, you will find racism and sometimes pro-christians-only prejudices at the core of anti-immigrant political debates.
A lot of people are starting to notice the similarities to historical anti-immigrant movements, and some have commented on the the anti-immigrant fuckery showing up in other countries now.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/23/1413138/-Right-wing-attacks-on-birthright-citizenship-have-a-long-and-sordid-history?showAll=yes
At the link, there’s a lot more information, including the exclusion of Native Americans in the 14th Amendment; the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 (many did not have full citizenship rights until 1948); the use of Native American exclusions to deprive Mexican Americans of citizenship rights in 1848 in the territory affected by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; the Chinese Exclusion, etc. It just goes on and on.
The results are still be felt today, even in populations like the Mexican Americans affected in 1848. Many of those families lost their land and well as their citizenship rights. They were reduced to poverty.
Now that Trump trumpeted his lie about the USA being the only country stupid enough to offer birthright citizenship, lots of right-wingers who are too lazy to do any research are repeating the lie:
Hispanic Vista link
And so the misinformation metastasizes.
Republicans think if your data is encrypted, the terrorists win (as a number of the comments point out, it’s not just thugs pushing this nonsense, but (far too many) politicians and goons (“police”); And not limited to USArseholierthanthouistan, the UK, as an example, is also pushing this shite):
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by several highly-placed goons (FBI, someone in Britain, and a third I don’t recall now) made clear “They” are also targeting storage (e.g., whole-disc) encryption. The letters section has been filled with replies taking apart their “arguments”, outright lies, and deceptions / misunderstandings.
It is worth reminding that “criminals” includes rogue elements inside “The” government, the companies providing the various services, and so on, in addition to the outside attacker. In some of the discussions I’ve seen, this point is sometimes overlooked, yet the “Insider Attack” is one of the most difficult to detect or defend against.
(Disclosure: My day-to-day job is closely related-to strong encryption, both of communications (including, but not limited to, end-to-end) and storage (including, but not limited to, whole-media), for protection against theft and sabotage, and (to a perhaps lessor extent) against invalid and denial-of-valid access).)
Following-up to @228, there’s an interesting history of at Birthright citizenship: a history of futile conservative attempts to repeal law. One quibble, it doesn’t seem to mention the plight of the First Nations peoples.
At the end, however, it does make the quite valid point this is mostly sturm und drang, and nothing particularly serious (that is, likely to happen):
I myself am affected by this nonsense, albeit in a reverse-ish sense. I was indisputably born to USAian citizens, but also indisputably in a foreign country. The county I was born in, at that time, had brithright citizenship (not sure what the current situation is); As a result, I am a dual-national, carry both passports, and, in fact, am a “natural-born” USAian citizen. It’s in safekeeping so I can’t check the exact title, but I have a document issued by the State Department shortly after my birth entitled something like Certificate of Natural-Born US Citizen Born Aboard.
However, some of the anti-birthright nutters would deny I am a USAian citizen (let’s not even get into that “natural born” thing) simply because my mother was not resident in the USA at the time. For example, from the article: “[In 1991] former California representative Elton Gallegly introduced HR 3605, a bill declaring that only children born in the US to mothers who are legal residents shall be given citizenship.” Taking that at face value, and assuming it passed and was enacted, and then passed constitutional muster (precedent says it wouldn’t), I wouldn’t be considered a USA citizen(especially if born afterwards).
And these nutters think I am supposed to take them seriously? Seriously? Geesh!
Lynna, OM @228
Birthright citizenship was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898 in their decision United States v. Wong Kim Ark (169 U.S. 649). Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco of Chinese national parents in 1873 and in 1896 made a visit to China. On his return he was denied reentry into the US. He sued and the case went to the SCOTUS. Justice Gray, writing for the majority, argued among other things that the 14th Amendment said all persons born in the US were automatically American citizens regardless of the citizenship of their parents. He also noted in British common law that all persons born in Britain or British territories were automatically British citizens, from a case decided by the Lord Chancellor in 1608. This common law mandate was made applicable in the US by an 1804 SCOTUS case with the pleasant name of The Charming Betsy (2 Cranch 64). Chief Justice Marshall said that all persons born in the United States before, during or after the Revolution were American citizens unless they specifically repudiated their citizenship.
Justice Gray’s opinion can be read here.
Excuse me, I apologize for being reiterative. I’ll just leave this here to get it out of my keyboard.
Why are so many against 14th amendment, “natural born” citizenship, without thinking though all the possible implications, that without the 14th, the only citizens would be the Native Americans who have a long ancestry of residence. ooops maybe they’ll amend it to “only people born in the country to legal visitors … , or the children of such citizens”, thus disqualifying the indigenous.
Do they really want to invalidate that big statue we got there in our eastern harbor (give us your poor …)?
yeah, I agree we don’t want to welcome in criminals to sanctuary from prosecution, yet it is pointless to deny immigration to the vast majority of valid immigrants to exclude the few criminals. Me thinks Trump has a little problem with risk-assessment and is thus luring everyone with such issues to ~whahdeveh~.
Scott Walker says some stupid stuff:
Scott Walker says what he thinks, and then the peons on his campaign staff have to walk it back:
Okay, but dear AshLee Strong, your statements clash, strongly, with those of the candidate you support.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-walker-islam-followers
Lindsey Graham said some stupid stuff and doubled down on his plan to start multiple wars if he is elected president. Graham may be trying to top Scott Walker when it comes to anti-Muslimism.
Link
The louder facist, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been expelled from the french nazi party, France’s National Front party expels founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. If this seems like déjà vu — wasn’t he expelled earlier this year? — it is, he successfully challenged that previous expulsion in court.
This is arguably quite bad news, since it means his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who is also quite nasty but not as vocal, has a clear(er) field in which to spread her and her father’s (ex-)party’s nastiness. Their styles are different, but not the hate, bile, and odiousness. She doesn’t say (publicly) all the stupid things her father does and so, some say, almost sounds plausible. That’s part of what the feud is about, his tendency to disrupt her misinformation with reminders of what is really meant. I presume he will continue to do so, but now she can argue that he isn’t speaking for the french nazis.
However, Marine’s niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who was(? still is?) the leader of the french nazi youth, I mean Le Pen Youth, is said to be even more vicious and nasty than either: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen: the young face of France’s far right: “Even more rightwing and socially conservative than her aunt Marine, Maréchal-Le Pen’s ferocity has shocked rivals and won her legions of admirers”. The younger kook doesn’t shoot herself in the foot like her grandführer does and so might not be seriously feuding with her aunt, but the old bogeyman has recently endorsed his granddaughter…
(That article claims the younger kook now heads the french nazis in, or very nearby, the area where I live in France. She has never visited the village where I live, as far as I know, but her aunt, Marine certainly has.)
This is a followup to comment 148.
Here’s some background on the pseudo-historian, David Barton, the guy that shapes a lot of political policy on the right, and who has also had a big effect on the most popular homeschooling curriculum in the USA.
Link
Here is that completely ridiculous opinion piece in the New York Times, written by four goons (not three, as I had recalled, and none from the FBI, as I had also recalled), When Phone Encryption Blocks Justice. The goon authors are “Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is the Manhattan district attorney. François Molins is the Paris chief prosecutor. Adrian Leppard is the commissioner of the City of London Police. Javier Zaragoza is the chief prosecutor of the High Court of Spain.”
They are specifically arguing against strong full-disc encryption, but as one example of misleading claims, totally fail to mention the primary driving force behind the trend: So that if/when the computer/phone/tablet is stolen, the thief (or whoever it is sold to) cannot access / retrieve what’s stored, which is very very likely to include personal informations and may result in “identify theft” (I am aware of claims that “identify theft” is not as common as some may believe (I have no idea)).
Instead, these lying goons claims full-disc encryption is all about “mak[ing] devices generally more secure from cybercrime”. (Without, of course, defining what they mean by “cybercrime”.) The examples given of what are, presumably, “cybercrimes”, include interception of communications and “use of malware”. They are correct in saying full-disc encryption has bugger-all to do with either of those examples — no-one who understands the words “communication” and “storage” would think that it does (barring a total misunderstanding the contents of the communications).
They also, as I noted earlier, fail to address the problem of a corrupt “Insider”, and all but assert that by magic there won’t be any problems if the device is not encrypted (or only weakly-encrypted), or there is a “master key”. (The master key idea is utter bollocks for numerous additional reasons.)
As I noted earlier, the letters (at least in the dead-paper editions (I haven’t looked on-line)) has been ripping these fecking lying dipshites multiple new ones. And these eejits are some of the top goons in their respective countries!
I’ve been watching the new HBO series, “Show Me a Hero,” and the spotlight that show has placed on “hyper-segregation,” specifically, housing discrimination, is educational and alarming.
Not that much has changed in Yonkers, NY, so this show which is set in the Yonkers of 25 years ago, still applies today.
Salon link
http://www.hbo.com/show-me-a-hero
This show, and the issues it highlights, is rooted in politics. This is politics at the local level, city council level, local politics that is affected by national politics/culture.
A good summary, excerpted from the Salon link in #239, that gives you an overview of the politics of racism that “Show Me a Hero” exposes:
Donald Trump said a few things that almost make sense, and then he failed to follow up with some much-needed detail:
Slate link
I’m looking at Trump’s excuse for accepting donations to his campaign and it makes me wonder if even the Trumpster is feeling a money pinch. He lost some business opportunities lately, thanks to his characterization of Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” and he always has exaggerated his wealth and downplayed his financial failures.
blf @238: The “top goons” from several countries showing their ignorance when it comes to the issue of encryption alarms me. Those goons will push for legislation that does more harm than good.
This is a follow up to comment #95.
Jeremy Corbyn is getting kudos from some economists for his anti-austerity policies. This is great. Corbyn is looking more and more like an electable candidate for Britain’s Labour party.
The Guardian link
Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and Rick Perry are beginning to look like the candidates who will most likely drop out of the race for presidents.
In other news that has drawn my attention, politics is playing a big role in fighting forest fires in the western USA. I’m currently stuck in my stuffy house, with the windows closed, thanks to the smoke from forest fires. It’s a health hazard for me, and not a life-threatening situation like it is for others who live closer to the disaster areas.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article30095910.html
It’s all about money and climate change. To solve budgeting problems, Republicans in the House of Congress want to allow emergency funding, but only if they can also allow more timber cutting and fewer regulations. They are blaming environmentalists for the current situation. Short sighted and ignorant.
Speaking of wildfires, I found this photo amusing.
Yep, with lower taxes and less government he’d now be free from the chains of home ownership.
Interesting perspective on Trump here, from Donald Cay Johnston:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump/
Johnston is well worth reading, if you haven’t done so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cay_Johnston
Re. 235: He’s not entitely wrong, at least in one aspect. The Iraq region’s power vacuum was entirely manufactured by the US cowboy administration’s lies and greed. The German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who incredibly was allowed to follow Daesh fighters for 10 days, reported they gleefully looked forward to executing millions of people. Swaths of people are being executed, tortured and enslaved by Daesh, history and art obliterated and its defenders mutilated. Surely the US has a moral obligation to do much more than it has, especially considering what the Kurds are doing now on their own after being let down in all sorts of ways by Americans already. The Kurds have been remarkably cooperative (although for their own safety, they have to be) considering the CIA yanked the rug out from under them when they planned their own insurrection against Saddam Hussein. This country has war fatigue, but a large part of it is self-inflicted and now it stands idle while others pay the cost in the most horrifying ways. As insane as it is to describe a scenario, hundreds of thousands of people were far safer under a brutal Hussein dictatorship.
blf @ 238
Is it the the best we can hope that the business community would be against restrictions on encryption? Seems like this thing has to be fought again and again, so that we won’t be back in the bad old days in the 1990s and key escrow/weak encryption in Netscape.
At least the U.S. restrictions on the export of encryption technologies enabled some information security companies here in Finland (SSH) and other places with liberal encryption laws to compete with American giants some time.
opus @245, thanks for that link. Excellent questions. And the writer knows his stuff.
Yes, Trump does exaggerate his net worth. I think his change of heart about accepting donations for his campaign also indicates a cash flow problem.
Another excerpt from the article:
Ah, yes, corporate welfare Trump style, and immigration Trump style.
Repeat of National Memo link
Rand Paul just bought himself an election in Kentucky:
Kentucky Herald link
If Rand Paul wasn’t given the special caucus option, his name would have appeared twice on the primary ballot, once as a senate candidate and once as a presidential candidate. That’s against Kentucky’s election rule. I’m sort of surprised that his Republican cohorts provided a way for Paul to run for the senate and the presidency at the same time — but then he is paying for it. He has to pay $250,000 up front and another $250,000 later.
Ted Cruz has decided to double down on his version of the war on women:
I think Cruz sees the evangelical christian voting block as his only chance to win the Republican nomination.
Washington Post link
Ice Swimmer@247 asks “Is it the the best we can hope that the business community would be against restrictions on encryption?”
Shouldn’t think so, albeit that community, which is extremely large and (too-)powerful, are, in this instance, useful allies. For example, that community includes pretty much the entire “financial” industry (banking & credit cards being two quite obvious examples) and also the entire on-line commerce at all levels (retail, wholesale, specialist, p0rn, …). In principle it also includes most of the telecommunication industries, albeit that community has a dubious record of extralegal co-operation.
And “the business community” is not the only ones up-in-arms. An important example is the heavyweight security/encryption specialists who succeeded in killing the Clipper chip (remember that disaster?) have weighted in again on the current stupidity. Those are people such as Matt Blaze, Peter G. Neumann, and Bruce Schneier, who know their stuff. (Admittedly, what finally killed the Clipper stone-dead was the discovery of a design flaw — by Matt Blaze — that meant it was basically useless for its intended purpose, but that didn’t happen until Clipper was already out for the count.) The EFF, as another example, is also pushing back.
Another historical thing from the Clipper fiasco was that proposal is the reason we have such things as PGP and a variety of other strong, and free (as in beer) encryption tools. The intention was to provide better, stronger, encryption at lower cost, without any deliberate backdoors. (For that matter, I think the EFF was formed originally because of the Clipper proposal.)
For those who don’t know, the Clipper chip was an early-1990s chip designed by the NSA which used a then-secret encryption algorithm (Skipjack), and had a deliberate, intentional, backdoor. The claim was that the backdoor could only be opened by court order, but that (especially the technical and conceptual details) is what the before-mentioned heavyweights throughly rubbished.
Clipper, and the “only export weak encryption” example mentioned, are not the only examples of this déjà vu. Another example, which I don’t know the history of, is that, for a time, here in France, you were not allowed to use encryption (all all?). Encryption was strictly(?) for “the government”. That nonsense was abolished some time ago, and — guessing — one result is the part of the industry I work in, where France is a major center and strong backdoor-less encryption is absolutely critical.
(Oh bloody hell, for some reason
Previewisn’t working. Again. Hope this isn’t too messed-up…)Well, except for an obvious emphasis feck-up, that seems Ok…
(And now
Previewworks. Geesh…)High-speed trading fueled by computer algorithms may be part of the cause for the rather dramatic downturn on the stock exchange yesterday and today.
Mother Jones link
Oh, look! Someone is spending money on infrastructure, (not that it will do you, dear reader, any good):
I really wish Elizabeth Warren could spur some regulatory action on this difficult high-speed trading issue.
I should point out that, in @251, when I said (parapharsing) “the business community can be useful allies”, I was specifically talking about the fight for strong, backdoor-less, encryption. On other, somewhat related issues, such as privacy, that community is mostly not-helpful. I was reminded of this by a Grauniad interview with the UN’s new special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, Digital surveillance ‘worse than Orwell’ says new UN privacy chief:
Speaking of Trump’s financial situation, and of his decision to accept donations, it is somehow fitting that he just nabbed a big donor who is also an ex-con, and a close relative.
Kushner is now supporting Trump, the guy who is pushing Chris Christie out of the Republican race. Trump does not seem to care about the ex-con backgrounds of his donors.
Link
I must admit I have no recollection of this situation, but this is appalling, Mauritania accused of ‘parody of justice’ as jailing of anti-slavery activists upheld:
According to Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge, quoting the Global Slavery Index:
Also, apparently, “laws […] place the burden of proof on the slave, require that a victim file a complaint before an investigation is launched, and that human rights organisations may not file a case on behalf of a victim, despite the fact that most slaves are illiterate.”
blf @256, Yikes! Horrible laws, horrible situation.
This sounds bad. Cheney is going to interfere with the Iran Nuclear deal:
In good news, Hillary Clinton proposed an expansion of AmeriCorps. This is just one part of her plan to make college affordable:
Think Progress link
If Trump calls you a “disgusting little weak pathetic baby” you must be doing something right.
Link
Carly Fiorina decided to blame liberals for the drought in California.
I think that’s a great idea, Governor Brown. Let’s require all of the Republican candidates to take eighth grade science.
Also rebutting Carly Fiorina, Andrew Fahlund, deputy director of the California Water Foundation:
Link
This comment includes some background on Trump, examples of his appeal to white supremacists, and a discussion of the Trumpian method of appealing to doofuses [emphasis added]:
I know this comment is one big wall-of-text, but it’s worth it for the depth of the discussion. The article by Evan Osnos is worth reading in its entirety.
Well, it looks like North Korea won’t be waging war on South Korea after all … at least not right away.
The two sides agreed to a compromise. Pyongyang expressed regret for a land mine attack that injured two South Korean soldiers. Seoul agreed to turn off the loudspeakers it had been using to broadcast, among other things, pop (K-pop) music into North Korea.
Propaganda was also broadcast:
North Korea also agreed to resume the meetings in had previously allowed between divided families.
Meet another member of Donald Trump’s white supremacist base: Craig Cobb is a self-described white supremacist.
Cobb wants to establish an all-white enclave in North Dakota, a town he’ll call “Trump Creativity” or “Creativity Trump”. He first attempted to take over the town of Leith, North Dakota, and failing there, he has moved on to Antler, North Dakota.
Trump needs to build a wall between Canada and the USA, a wall with a beautiful, yuge door that automatically rejects white supremacists. /sarcasm Actually, we have plenty of white supremacists already, we don’t need the Canadian dunderheads.
Grand Forks Herald link
Cobb’s backup plan is to import a bunch of Trump supporters to outvote the citizens of Antler — that would be about 20+ people.
In case you want to know the real reason for the dip in the stock market: Pat Robertson says it is God’s punishment.
Politico link
According to Robertson, God is punishing the Obama administration for funding Planned Parenthood.
Lynna, OM @263
Considering that Robertson blamed the 2010 Haitian earthquake on a pact between Haitian rebels and Satan in 1803, then if God caused the latest dip in the Dow it’s probably for the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton duel in 1804.
The teaching of world languages in elementary schools has been declining precipitously in the US. The bright spot in this rather dismal picture has been the growth of immersion programs. There are many different models for immersion programs, and at least three different (though not mutually exclusive) goals: to preserve heritage languages, to ease the transition to English for English language learners, and to promote language learning for native speakers of English. The desired outcome is students who are not just bilingual but also biliterate in academic language and bicultural. Kids who go through these programs successfully know a lot more than just verb conjugations or how to ask where the bathroom is.
To its credit, the Houston Independent School District opened up an immersion school in Mandarin in 2012, and to the city’s credit, it seems that that school was both popular and uncontroversial. Further plans are in the works for immersion schools in Hindi and French.
However, the most recent immersion school to open in Houston has drawn protests that may bring back some not so fond memories of school protests in the ’60s.
The protesters tapped into their inner Borgs:
I could go into the benefits of bilingualism, or the need for learning languages in an increasingly interconnected world, or hell, even national security reasons, but really the racism speaks for itself.
Source.
A sex scandal involving rightwing Republican politicians is nearing resolution.
Link
The stock market rose dramatically this morning. Yesterday the stock market dropped dramatically. (See comments 253 and 263.)
Yesterday, Chris Christie blamed the stock market drop on President Obama:
New Jersey, nj.com, link
I wonder if he will blame today’s rise in the market on President Obama.
Jeb Bush said something stupid:
YouTube link to excerpt from speech.
So, according to presidential wannabe, Jeb Bush, these are not women’s health issues:
– 4.4 million STD tests or treatments by Planned Parenthood
– 2.1 million contraception services by Planned Parenthood
– almost half a million Pap smears by Planned Parenthood
– half a million breast exams
etc.
Despite the debunking of the deceptively edited videos (see comment 93), Republican politicians are still determined to go after Planned Parenthood. Here’s an update on those plans:
Politico link
This is a tweet from Donald Trump.
Trump hotels and golf courses are gun-free zones. None of them allow firearms on the premises. Even concealed-carry permit holders cannot bring their firearms into a Trump hotel or onto a Trump golf course.
Republican conventions, NRA events, Republican Town Hall events, etc. are all places where guns are not allowed. Attendees to gun shows may not bring loaded weapons into the venues.
A Trump supporter explains her reason for supporting him:
[head meet desk]
The quote above comes from a focus group of Trump supporters.
In other news, Bobby Jindal said some stupid stuff:
Right Wing Watch link
Ted Cruz said some stupid stuff:
Link
In other Cruz news, he has been cozying up to Donald Trump. The plan is for the Trump campaign to eventually implode, after which Cruz will pick up his supporters. Ditto for Rand Paul supporters.
This is a followup to comment 270:
Sounds like a good idea to me. Naturally, the National Rifle Association is livid, and they are in a lawsuit-filing mood.
Link
Megyn Kelly is back at Fox News after a brief vacation. So, of course, Donald Trump has resumed his flood of harassment via Twitter:
A surprising result is that Trump’s buddy, Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, has finally had enough.
Link
This story has an underlying anti-voter-rights aspect.
Alabama local media link
In 2011, Alabama passed a voter-ID law that requires a photo ID. They’ve just made securing that photo ID much more difficult, especially for low-income and poor people.
This should really, probably, be in the new RoW thread (Discuss: World Politics) since it affects the entire planet, but as the main named players are all USAian, I’ll put it here: Barack Obama singles out Koch brothers over fossil fuel lobbying:
Lindsey Graham says some stuff that is not stupid:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-dark-side-gop
This is a followup to comment 274. Donald Trump cannot, apparently, let Roger Ailes have the last word:
Just like Jesus, Trump’s face has to begun to appear on inanimate objects, including a tub of butter
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/butter-donald-trump-woman
Why does the only black presidential candidate insist the US is post-racial?:
The last sentence also hits at another possible reason Dr Carson, who is not stupid even though he says stupid things, is pushing this nonsense: USAian blacks have a historical tendency, as a group, to vote for (in the thug’s eyes) the “wrong” party. That is, not the thugs. So discourage those not prevented from voting (by criminal records, disenfranchising laws and ID (e.g.) requirements, and other tricks) from voting.
More blathering from the religious rightwing about the supposedly god-given purpose of the USA:
Okay. Well, let’s ignore the fact that if immigrants are right here in Bryan Fischer’s backyard, they will be easier for him to preach to — or more in danger of him preaching to them, depending on your point of view.
The other scary bit is true, christians in the U.S. do invest inordinate amounts of financial resources to harass people in other countries. Anti-gay propaganda in Uganda, for example. Anything that slows this harassment down has got to be a good thing.
Link
I see that Fischer snuck in a reason to ignore women’s rights, ignore gay rights and ignore Black Lives Matter activists, etc. because we have more important things to do. We all need to have one common purpose, spreading christianity. Plus, there’s a big fuck-you to immigrants via Bryan Fischer’s muddled logic. Bleh.
This isn’t “political”, but it is about a USAlien abomination, which is approximately the same thing: Just Mayo is just not mayo: FDA says eggless mayonnaise must change name:
(Actually, I now suspect I am confusing this stuff which something else and older. This stuff is fairly new, whilst the “abomination” I vaguely recall is much much older…)
Unfortunately, this is a video on The Grauniad’s site — which means, at least for me, it is unwatchable (that site does not video-stream in any watchable manner (to me) in France) — so I’ve no real idea of the content. But it sounds intriguing, Gold King mine spill threatens crops of Navajo Nation farmers — video:
There is a Ye Pfffft! of All Knowledge entry on this on-going incident.
blf @283, That’s a good video. It includes shots of Navajo farmers tending their land, and talking about the impact of the spill from the mine.
It always seems like Native Americans are the last group to get some respect when it comes to environmental issues. ABC News covered the story. The Navajo Nation will also find it difficult to get compensation for their losses.
The Navajo Times also covered the story. Notice that the lack of trust the Navajo Nation has for Federal Government agencies shows up in this coverage.
More white supremacist support is pouring in for Donald Trump.
For previously posted details of Trump’s white supremacist supporters, see comments 111 (from Tony), 112 (from What a Maroon), 207, 260, and 262 (same story as covered in Tony’s post 111).
BuzzFeed News link
Category of “endorsements you don’t want?”
Part of me wonders what Trump thinks of all these bigots supporting him. But then I remember that they only support him because he made openly racist comments in the first place, so I don’t wonder any more.
Jamelle Bouie of Slate took a close look at Scott Walker, at why he looks good on paper (to conservatives), but his campaign for president is imploding.
Scott Walker also doesn’t know what to say about abortion and other cultural issues. He consistently sidesteps questions with a meaningless word salad. People are starting to notice.
There are a lot of things wrong with the ways in which lobbyists affect legislation in the USA, but we might have to give a Boneheaded Moves prize to Lockheed Martin. The company used government funds to lobby government officials.
Link
The company paid a fine that is minuscule when compared to their profits. And there were no criminal prosecutions.
Tony @286, I think Trump already told us what he thinks of his supporters, (including the ones that beat up a homeless Latino man and then pissed on the man’s face), he told us his supporters are “passionate.”
Trump answered a question about racist comments by citing his poll numbers.
Trump answered a question about a Univision poll showing that 75% of Latinos are not going to vote for him by saying that he is suing Univision for $500 million, and that Univision is very worried about it.
In the same press conference Trump said that some of the gang members in Baltimore and in Ferguson are illegal immigrants. Link
Good news. Planned Parenthood has filed suit against Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
Jindal’s plan was to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/planned-parenthood-sues-over-bobby-jindals-medicaid-move/
(Cross-post from racism thread)
Ben Ferguson: Hispanics don’t under English
You never really know about eels until you see them on a documentary. The endless parade of contemptible ignorant conservajerks in this country wouldn’t even be on my radar unless I read sites like this. So tally yet another eel lurking under the proverbial national reef ledge. It’s moments like this that I momentarily wish I was back on Twitter just to read all the lovely Spanish words that Ben Ferguson is getting stuffed in his eely-inbox. I’d like to see the end tally for things along the lines of ‘cabeza de mierda’ (probably horrible spanish grammar on my part, but I got stuck with French in school, which I also spectacularly suck at).
Marco Rubio doubled down on his anti-Planned-Parenthood, anti-science policy.
Rubio agreed, when asked by an interviewer, that fetal-tissue research is wrong, and that the scientific research itself is “wrong and immoral.” Rubio added that the scientific research is a “byproduct of the death of an unborn child.”
Republicans certainly have changed. When this research was authorized by Congress decades ago, the vote was 93 to 4 in favor (in the Senate).
CNBC link
Cross posted from the World Politics page:
Taking a look at the Iran Nuclear deal from the European point of view:
Camile Grand also said, “In Europe, you don’t have a constituency against the deal. In France, I can’t think of a single politician or member of the expert community who has spoken against it, including some of us who were critical during the negotiations.”
When questioned about the quality of deal, Camille Grand said he was “surprised by the depth and the quality of the deal, the hawks are satisfied, and the doves don’t have an argument.”
Who opposes the deal? Some, not all, of the officials in Israel; Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate; and Iranian hardliners.
Republican politicians in the USA are extremely radical, even more radical than their conservative counterparts on the international stage.
NY Times link
This is a followup to comment 290, and to Saad’s comment @292.
Donald Trump was bested by Univision Anchor Jorge Ramos yesterday (Tuesday night). Trump’s “go back to Univision” line will be remembered by Latinos. Ramos is a star at Univision, a guy who had been trying to get an interview with Trump for some time.
Trump often refuses to talk to reporters/anchors with whom he disagrees. He dislikes the Des Moines Register newspaper so much that he banned their reporters from his press conference on Tuesday night. He actually had Ramos ejected at one point, and then later let him back in.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jorge-ramos-donald-trump-kicked-out
Watch the video. It is fascinating. You can see Trump summon his “body man” (body guard) to oust Ramos. Clearly, Trump did have something to do with it. You can also see Trump getting flustered.
Donald Trump lied about the encounter with Ramos in two ways: he said he had nothing to do with escorting Ramos out, but he did. You can see him order his bodyguard to eject Ramos. He also now claims that Ramos was “ranting and screaming when I kicked him out.”
No. Ramos was not ranting and screaming. He was trying to get Trump to answer questions about the immigration plan Trump released earlier. Trump tried to evade one of the questions by asking Ramos if he knew how much money the Univision lawsuit filed by Trump entailed. Just disgusting.
At least two other journalists asked Trump about having Ramos removed, and that was when Trump seemed to realize he had gone overboard. He let Ramos back into the press conference.
Now, the morning after, Trump is back in full on attack mode, blaming Ramos entirely, and denigrating Ramos.
Ramos did stand up, with the audience mike that staff had given him, and he started asking questions before Trump called on him. Trump claims he would have called on him anyway, but I doubt that. Ramos may have thought that the mike was permission, who knows. Anyway, Trump is handling questions from Univision reporters very badly.
I’m having some connection problems again, so I won’t excerpt, but this is an interesting read, Trump’s flawed policies would threaten the global economy, say analysts: “The Trump campaign has not issued an economic policy paper, but from what experts can tell, his flawed proposals could threaten a trade war with China”.
Rightwing media is, predictably, attacking Jorge Ramos. Ramos is pushing back, as are a few other journalists:
It’s a telling detail that rightwing media doesn’t know how respected Ramos is as an anchor, nor how big the Ramos audience is.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/16/media/jorge-ramos-time/index.html
Baltimore Sun link
There was no pretense. Watch the video.
Think Progress link
OMG, the reporter tries to arrange for an interview, and then Trump publishes the reporter’s cell phone number? Childish.
blf @298, thanks for that link. It’s an interesting article. I’ll post excerpts [emphasis added]:
What would happen if we actually ended birthright citizenship, as Trump suggests? For starters, we would create a tidal wave of newly stateless children. And, from other countries, we see examples of what the results might be:
Mother Jones link
Ann Coulter introduced Donald Trump in Dubuque, Iowa (the place where Trump had Univision anchor Jorge Ramos ejected from a press conference). Coulter said a lot of stupid stuff:
Right Wing Watch link
Simon Maloy of Salon summarized the contretemps between Trump and Ramos really well:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/fox-news-battles-monster-it-helped-create-513068099606
That’s a link to a video from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show. In the video, Maddow takes a closer look at the feud between Donald Trump and Fox News. She highlights the fact that Fox News and Trump share a tactic: They both answer legitimate questions by pointing to their poll numbers and/or market share. Absurd.
Media Matters source for the Maddow video
Trump expounds on Fox News:
It’s not just Trump: Latinos should boycott the Republican party en masse:
Indeed. From a slightly different perspective, in my own case, the thugs are saying I am not a USAian citizen because I wasn’t born in the hallowed mythological grounds of the USA(stolen from the First Nations, but somehow that seems to be “Ok”, or “doesn’t matter”, or “necessary”, or “not-relevant”, or…).
That was incoherent even by Coulter’s standards.
Donald trump does racist impersonation of east Asian people (YouTube video)
Gee, I have no idea why white supremacists like him so much…
Cross posted from the “If you aren’t an advocate for the truth …” thread.
Both Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow showed segments that also covered what happened after Jorge Ramos was ejected from the Trump press conference. Some hateful, ignorant man told Ramos, “Get out of my country!” To which, Ramos replied, “I am an American citizen too.”
Maddow also covered the way that Trump mocks Asians as well as Latinos. The 6:59 video covers the history of Latino and Asian voting blocs as well as the current situation. The latter part of the video covers the contretemps with Jorge Ramos, including what happened to him after he was escorted out of the room.
Ted Cruz evaded questions about birthright citizenship, and he did it in a slimy way:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/megyn-kelly-ted-cruz-immigration-question-121756.html
Let’s get ourselves up to date on the non-scandal of Hillary Clinton’s email.
AP link
Here’s what Clinton had to say yesterday:
The practice of sending emails through unclassified channels was ordinary in the Bush/Cheney State Department. Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who specializes in security clearance disputes and in classified information dispersal, sail that classified information appearing in regular email is “very common, actually.”
Clinton never sent any classified material via her regular email, nor did she receive any email marked classified. Some of her email traffic is being considered for classified status later, after the fact, after Clinton left the office of Secretary of State.
One could make the case that an investigation of the Bush/Cheney administration would turn up actual breaches of security through email use.
As some reporters have pointed out, Clinton’s private email server wasn’t hacked, while government servers were hacked. None of these facts add up to the conclusion that it is a good idea for government officials to use private email servers, but the problem is really not Hillary Clinton, it is instead a ramshackle construction of technologically incompetent and make-do arrangements on the part of our federal government.
Just for fun.
Lots of people have filed the necessary paperwork to run for president:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/deez-nuts-sparks-2016-fake-candidate-epidemic.html
Trump-ward, Christian Soldiers?:
Donald Trump wants to deport 11 million migrants: is that even possible?:
According to Trump, it is not his fault that racists are flocking to his campaign, or at least it is irrelevant that they are racists:
Note that, once again, Donald Trump thinks that high poll numbers equal virtue. Doesn’t matter how you get there. See comment 285 for the endorsement from David Duke.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-david-duke-bloomberg-politics-interview-taxes
A county clerk in Kentucky is still refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, despite the fact that her case has been adjudicated in the courts.
Kim Davis may not “decline to act in conformity with the United States Constitution as interpreted by a dispositive holding of the United States Supreme Court.”
That woman is certainly holding on to her despicable attitude.
AP link
Rand Paul tells Black Lives Matter: change your name — and your tactics: “Republican presidential candidate suggests All or Innocent Lives Matter while responding on Fox News to claims he has been ‘talking down’ the movement”.
Oh, good. This is good news. The bigoted, anti-voting-rights Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, has been slapped down by the courts again.
Daily Kos link. The article includes a photo of Kobach with Ted Nugent.
The Wichita Eagle link
Hillary Clinton criticized Kobach’s attempts to disenfranchise Kansas voters, so Kobach tweeted that Clinton was “getting her pantsuit in a twist over nothing.” Clinton’s proposal that she laid out in June was that all Americans automatically be registered to vote on the day that they turn 18.
Walmart to stop selling AR-15 rifles due to ‘decreased demand’:
Nothing (in the article) on how they plan to dispose of the machine guns (Yes, I know they aren’t technically machine guns…).
Gerrymandering voting districts is a ploy often used to make sure some voter’s rights are respected while other voters are effectively neutered. Some dunderheads in Missouri took gerrymandering too far … and, hilariously, they got caught.
Link
blf @319, “due to decreased demand” eh? Does this mean that every person in the USA who wanted an AR-15 now has one, mostly thanks to Walmart?
I saw coverage of the shooting of the reporter and cameraman in Virginia that said the father of Alison is going to dedicate his life to stricter gun controls. ABC News link
Hillary Clinton likens GOP candidates to terrorists for ‘extreme’ views on women:
No thugs, she didn’t. She should have, but didn’t.
This seems encouraging, at least as a start and despite a severe limitation, California lawmakers pass Fair Pay Act in win for equal pay protections:
However, I suspect a lot of fudging. I do not know what the situation is now, but back when I was living and working in California, there was a law(? (probably federal)) to the effect that if you wanted to sponsor an employee from overseas, you first had to “prove” you could not hire a suitable person in USAlienstani. The commonly-used way around that was to draw up the list of requirements and whatnot for the position so “tightly” that it would be highly improbable any person in the States would precisely meet them. Advertise the position in non-obvious manner, for the shortest time possible, and reject any applications which did not meet all the requirements (even for trivial differences), possibly doing a few show interviews just for the look of the thing. The lack of any suitable applications / candidates, despite the “extensive” efforts made, would then be used as “proof” that the person you had already decided on should get the necessary visa / whatever.
It was very much a scam (and for all I know, it is still happening), and I would not be too surprised if a broadly analogous scam is devised to avoid changing pay rates. Exactly what form the scam(s?) will take I obviously don’t know, but presume the ability to withhold comparative information will play an important part. And note that equivalent(?) “skill sets” are apparently part of what has to be proven (not sure by who), which seems open to rather similar abuse: Draw up the skill set needed for such-and-such a level of pay so “tightly” that it is improbable any two employees would both… etc etc etc…
Not a big surprise: an analysis of the deceptively-edited videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts for profit reveals that the videos are not only deceptively edited, but that transcriptions by the anti-abortion group of the uncut videos were also deceptive.
A comparison of transcripts done by an objective transcription service showed “substantive omissions” were made by the Center for Medical Progress propagandists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/us/abortion-planned-parenthood-videos.html
In addition to the deceptive editing and the inaccurate transcripts, the analysis also showed that even the long, supposedly uncut versions of the videos had been altered, manipulated. By now, you would think that all of the rightwing politicians hyping this anti-Planned-Parenthood crap would be feeling manipulated by the Center for Medical Progress.
How much manipulation was done to the supposedly unaltered versions of the videos?
– 30 minutes of video is cut from each one of the longer videos
– the bogus transcript released by CMP omits as many as 4,000 words
Oh, FFS. Rightwing pseudo-intellectual Dinesh D’Souza said some really, really stupid stuff.
The following quotes are excerpts from D’Souza’s Twitter feed [all caps nonsense is in the original tweets]:
Vile.
blf @323, like you, I would be wary when it comes to application and enforcement of this new equal-pay law. Expect all kinds of “fudging” as you put it.
In other news, just like Dinesh D’Souza, the rightwing online powerhouse Breitbart has taken a “race murder” and a homophobic stance toward the shooting in Virginia.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/breitbart-virginia-shooting
Breitbart calls the rainbow flag a “Hate-Flag” and the site posted a lot of other execrable “news” — I’m not going to repeat any more of their headlines or text. It is just too sickening.
Bobby Jindal said some stupid stuff. He doesn’t want anyone to make their coverage of the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina about climate change. Why not?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jindal-letter-obama-katrina-climate-change
An excerpt from Jindal’s letter to President Obama:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jindal-letter-obama-katrina-climate-change
Um, no. Just no. Racist online groups demand sympathy after Virginia TV shooting:
What has Mr Obama got to do with this apparent murder? Geesh…
The Grauniad has a rundown on what many of the thugs and dummies have said, Surprise: 2016 hopefuls’ response to the Virginia shooting was totally predictable: “Republicans generally refused to offer up any solutions to address gun control and mental health reforms while Democrats insisted on stronger laws”.
blf, that emphasis on black-on-white crime has deep roots. Lots of white supremacists and other online sites are chock full of that shit. They all sound more or less like Dinesh D’Souza. (Comment 325.)
In other news, lawmakers in Alaska, (Republican doofuses, of course), are trying to deny health care to low-income people. They purport to have an economic reason, a smaller government reason, for doing this. Meanwhile, the bill for their lawyerly assholiness will be sent to the taxpayers. $450,000 in public money.
Think Progress link.
Native Americans will be especially hard hit if the Republicans in Alaska have their way.
One thing is guaranteed, Alaskan taxpayers will be required to shower Paul Clement with cash.
ACLU sues to block sweeping Nevada education funding program:
Yes, we do need more regulation of hedge funds. Here’s just one example of the evil tactics in which hedge funds engage:
Well that will keep those uppity African Americans who have been successful enough to own a home from passing that wealth on to their children. Keep them in poverty for generations. /sarcasm
<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/08/27/3695753/how-hedge-funds-are-exploiting-baltimores-poorest-residents/"
Damn straight, Hillary. Maybe you should take Trump's advice in this situation. Take the money from the big donors and then refuse to support legislation the donors push.
Whoops. I screwed up the link in comment 332.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/08/27/3695753/how-hedge-funds-are-exploiting-baltimores-poorest-residents/
blf @331, the Nevada education funding program sounds like a religious scam. Yet another way to funnel public funds to schools that indoctrinate children in some form of religion.
In other religious scam news, every time Donald Trump trumpets his love for the Bible, it just comes off as a lie. Doesn’t ring true. Somebody finally asked The Donald to name one or two of his favorite Bible verses. Ha. For your amusement:
Fox News is still pushing debunked myths about Clinton’s email server. Here are some myths that Fox News served up today:
No, you dunderheads. Get your facts straight, and stop relying on the debunked myths.
– FACT: Clinton Voluntarily Handed Over Email Server To The FBI
– FACT: Clinton’s Server Was Not Kept In A Bathroom Closet
– FACT: Emails Were Flagged For Review And May Not Contain Classified Information
– FACT: Clinton’s Lawyer Has “Top Secret” Security Clearance
More detail at the link:
Media Matters link
Onion headline: “Female Trump Supporters Just Feel More Comfortable With GOP Candidate Who’s Openly Horrible to Them.”
“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” Trump said that in a 1991 Esquire interview
“Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye — or perhaps another body part.” Trump wrote that in his 1997 book “The Art of the Comeback.”
A gallup poll taken after the first debate and after Trump’s war-of-words with Megyn Kelly, showed his support among Republican women went up a notch, from 29% to 30%.
[head meet desk]
Incredible? Talking snakes and donkeys, a tower that would have reached heaven only God knocked it down, a universal flood, a 40-year journey to get from Egypt to Palestine, a census requiring everyone to return to their ancestral home, a man walking on water, raising the dead, being raised from ther dead himself – yup, for once I think Trump nailed it!
Senator Marco Rubio wants to be President, and from that seat of power he wants to push a tax plan that eliminates taxes on estates, capital gains and dividends. Give to the rich and depend on trickle-down economics to take care of the poor — that’s his plan. Sheesh.
CNBC link to interview video.
“I hereby affirm that I generally believe in and intend to support the nominees and platform of the Republican Party in the November 8, 2016 general election.”
That’s the loyalty oath that Republican candidates are required to sign in order to be placed on the primary ballot by the GOP in South Carolina. Looks like wiggle room for Trumpish candidates to me.
Some states, like Virginia and North Carolina, are considering instituting stricter loyalty oaths, oaths that would require the candidate to swear he/she would not run as a third party candidate. Running scared thanks to Trump’s “leverage” (or blackmail), I’d say.
Walker and Rubio roll out foreign policy with tough talk on Isis and China:
“Evil” is not a thing, so confronting it is rather easy, if you like to watch Klowns Klimbing out of the Kar and running about the place to the sounds of Yakety Sax. On the other hand, he could mean terminating the oil industry’s subsidies, but somehow I doubt it.
In other words, Faux & Kochroache Bros., Unlimited haven’t told him what to say or do.
This is the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, so we’re seeing lots of historical coverage of the storm, stories about progress toward recovery, and coverage of President Obama’s visit to New Orleans, etc.
For the most part, we’re not seeing in-depth coverage of one side of the corruption that contributed to the damages and that ripped people off during the recovery. A report from American Bridge Project is an exception. It nails the Koch brothers.
The Koch brothers played a major role in destroying one million acres of marshlands, and in damaging millions more. The damaged marshlands are still in the process of dying.
The Koch brothers worked to drive longtime residents out of flood-prone areas through their influence with insurers. They made flood insurance unaffordable. They opposed legislation to reform the flood insurance industry.
Climate change legislation approaches pivotal showdown with oil industry:
The other bill is a cap-and-trade measure.
Teh Dump Dead Dinosaurs in Da air nutters are apparently whining that because SB 350 does not say precisely how to accomplish the above, the UN’s Black Helicopters will, well, do something. Bomb the state with peas, probably.
I just encountered this headline, at The Slot (sorrrrry, no linky from me):
Needless to say, I am not surprised, nor appalled. *mic drop*
blf @342, the Republican doomsday predictions are just so … predictable.
In other news, Ben Carson said some stupid stuff:
First of all, what the fuck? Secondly, a war on what is inside women is a war on women.
Ben Carson went on to say more stupid stuff:
Raw Story link
Ben Carson is running second in many polls, behind Trump.
Jimmy Kimmel made a campaign video for Donald Trump. [still laughing]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-jimmy-kimmel-campaign-ad
Scroll down for the video.
slithey tove @343, Sarah Palin is perfect for Donald Trump.
In other news, Donald Trump attracts more supporters that are racist and bonkers, but racist and bonkers in ways that are different from his white supremacist supporters. Yes, it’s the Sharia Law conspiracy group. [emphasis added]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/frank-gaffney-cruz-trump-iran-rally
As you all know by now, Donald Trump has referred to “the best legal minds,” or “top legal scholars,” or “very good lawyers” to back up his claim that birthright citizenship is not what the 14th Amendment intended to establish. Who are these top legal scholars?
Ted Cruz is neck deep in the Trump sewer and he also backs those “serious legal scholars,” although in 2011 he said those arguments were “not very good.” Now Cruz is on board to end birthright citizenship based on those same not-very-good arguments.
And … it gets worse. House Republicans invited Eastman and Graglia to testify in April. The two made quite an impression on the doofuses in the House of Congress.
Mother Jones link
I cannot recall right now what I was reading at the time, but it finally “pinged” on me who teh trump-prat reminds me of, even more so than the john brich-ers: lyndon larouche. Both were supposedly leftish in earlier days, both then became far-right fanatics with many absurd beliefs (often(?) self- and/or mutually-contradictory), both have oblivious supplicants, both are considered jokes who couldn’t see reality with a telescope, both lie persistently but the lies are not self-/mutally-consistent, both are bigots with multiple xenophobias, and on and on…
Let’s take a closer look at Graglia and Eastman, the two “top legal scholars” that Republicans are using to make the argument that the USA should put an end to birthright citizenship.
Eastman is also the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). You remember NOM, that virulent bastion of no-same-sex-marriage-ever! NOM equates homosexuality with “barbarism.”
Gaglia opposes affirmative action and busing programs. In 1997, he said black and Hispanic students “are not academically competitive with whites.”
Doofuses unite behind a thin veil of legal chicanery, thinking that their racist attitudes are hidden.
Regarding Ben Carson-
I find his views on abortion to have an extra layer of odiousness. He treats women as non-entities. To him, abortion is a thing that other people (men) do to women. Abortion is not a procedure that women seek to have for reasons of their own. They aren’t agents who are making decisions about their bodies. It’s like they’re nothing more than walking incubators going about their day and WHAMMO! an abortion drops from the sky and hits them. The fact that he refuses to see the agency of women who choose to have abortions is just disgustingly misogynistic IMO.
Writing in The Washington Post, David Ignatius makes a case for the fact that the brouhaha over Hillary Clinton’s emails is overblown.
Here’s yet another explanation for Trump’s high poll numbers, and for his popularity with the ragged edge of rightwing bonkerdom.
BuzzFeed link
Rachel Maddow did a good job of bluntly and thoroughly covering the ways in which the Bush administration was incompetent in handling the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Salon link.
Scroll down for video at the link above, or visit the Rachel Maddow Blog.
Ah, Texas. Thank you for always providing us with fresh examples of the criminality and venality of your rightwing officials. This time it is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who has been booked for his crimes.
Link
The booking photo of Ken Paxton sneering/smiling is classic.
Ann Coulter said some more stupid stuff.
Right Wing Watch link
Might be just me, but Coulter seems to be revealing a more disordered mind than she has before. She’s has always been off-the-reality-track, but that bit about training Latinos to recognize the symbol of the Democratic Party, is just way off. Then there’s the reality-based problem: undocumented immigrants can’t vote.
Ted Cruz is pandering to the evangelical rightwing harder than ever, and he is now acting on his own pandering propaganda.
Link
The mind boggling sermon is reproduced at the link. It should come with a neuron-frying warning. Here’s an excerpt:
Donald Trump has joined the fight to end the “War on Christmas.”
Link
Oh, joy. Sarah Palin is going to interview Donald Trump tonight:
https://www.facebook.com/OneAmericaNewsNetwork
Here is the Talking Points Memo link to coverage of Sarah Palin’s planned interview of The Donald.
Digging into big coal’s climate connections:
blff @360, the harassment of scientists is deplorable. Glad to see the details of this harassment covered. Ken Cuccinelli is unethical.
In other news, Evan Osnos has written about Donald Trump again. Osnos is the guy who wrote the most thorough article about Trump’s white supremacist supporters. Now Osnos is covering Trump’s obsession with Asians. Excerpt below:
I’m morbidly curious to see the Palin ::snicker:: interview ::snicker:: with Trump.
I’m getting a mild headache trying to wrap my head around this woman’s thinking.
Kentucky’s Rowan County clerk and resilient bigot Kim Davis wants the Supreme Court itself to give her permission to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
LOL @ her attorney’s analogy. Bigots + attempt at analogies = guaranteed comedy.
Sounds like it’s time for someone to start a recall against her.
Well, there’s this:
‘Official misconduct charge’ against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis referred to attorney general
I have been wondering for a while if the Republican party will disintegrate over this election cycle. Here is a piece supporting that view, from one of the leading right-wingers:
http://www.redstate.com/2015/08/28/republican-party-r-i-p-1854-2016/?
“The repeated betrayals of Republican leaders have led to the rise of Donald Trump. The petulance of the party’s congressional leaders who have spent more energy fighting conservative attempts to hold them to their word than fighting Barack Obama now have to fight to wrest control from Trump. Trump, at least presently, is immune from establishment attacks because the party leaders have lost all their credibility. A party that will not stand up to stop tax payer funds going to an organization that pulls whole children out of freezers to sell as scrap is not a party with the moral clarity to tell Donald Trump he is fired.”
Of course Erickson is still spreading the right’s organic fertilizer. He talks about ‘unedited’ tapes of Planned Parenthood and the Republican failure to use constitutional powers to stop Obamacare, as if the dozens of votes to repeal it didn’t exist.
The Grauniad’s report on the putridnimwit–trum-prat “interview”, Sarah Palin showers Donald Trump with adoration in ‘interview of the year’:
The Grauniad is just warming up. You ain’t read snarky yet…
How perfectly-placed can you place an ad…?
Some of comments continue the snark. An example:
Another:
A reply: “If they form a Trump/Palin ticket for 2016… That should move the doomsday clock at least 30 seconds closer to midnight.”
(The doomsday clock is currently at 3 minutes to midnight.)
(There are also comments from the deluded, which I will not excerpt to save the electrons the trauma of being misused, abused, and wasted (not to mention my forehead, desk, keyboard, remaining neutrons, and dislike of the pea)…)
would be horrific, IFF one actually existed in reality as opposed to your fevered nightmares.
Oh for feck’s sake, West Point professor calls on US military to target legal critics of war on terror (my boldfacing):
At this point I am too sick to read the article any further. Here we have an exceptionally extreme nutter advocating nuclear war against people different from him simply because he “thinks” they are different from him.
(The elucidated parts in the above excerpts refer to, among other things, a history of this fascist USApproved Military “Professor” misrepresenting his credentials, and West Point trying to dissociate itself from the National Security Law Journal article.)
New Mexico attorney general charges secretary of state with embezzlement:
Duran is apparently the first thug to hold the position in decades. However, the agency(?) Duran now heads was quite renown for corruption / scandals. I am therefore more-than-the-usual-extremely suspicious of both
politicianslawyers, and would not be too surprised if this is really a fight over whether the thugs or the dummies get to retain the bribes.blf @367, many thanks for excerpting that coverage of Palin interviewing Trump. Vaudeville. Sheesh. The Guardian is right to point and laugh. Leaders of other countries will also, unfortunately, be pointing and laughing. It’s an embarrassment.
I think The Guardian could have aimed even more snark at the Trumpian answer to the “gotcha” questions about the bible.
The quote above is from Steve Benen’s take on The Maddow Blog.
Blatant disregard for the separation of church and state in Arkansas:
Link
The Republican war on women extends to their efforts to cut social security:
Democratic Party candidates for president recognize this part of the Republican war on women. O’Malley proposed that we give work credits for caregiving. Hillary Clinton said that she is looking into the issue. She wants to strengthen and expand Social Security, as does Bernie Sanders.
Republicans are all about keeping women, especially elderly women, living below the poverty line.
Related links:
Slate, the excerpt above is from the Slate article, which also notes that the wealthiest Americans are the least likely to support Social Security.
National Women’s Law Center
Social Security website, benefits paid by type of beneficiary.
Speaking of blatant disregard for separation of church and state: Ted Cruz instructs thousands of pastors to violate federal law by reading Sunday sermon he wrote
That’s tomorrow. I fully expect to see some local bible belt churches change their signs.
Yet another way in which Republicans are working hard to screw poor people: they plan take away or increase the cost of their healthcare. Yes, they have voted more than 40 times to repeal Obamacare, but beyond that, they have come up with plans to replace Obamacare, and those plans all screw poor and low-income people.
Republicans have also nurtured court battles designed to weaken Obamacare, and now they have come up with a new one.
The Vox article goes on to explain the Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies.
Pteryxx @374, thanks for that note. The point that Cruz is encouraging church pastors to promote political campaigns/issues from the pulpit is bad news.
In more Republican religious news, Trump’s big push to lay claims to church attendance and to heaps o’ love for the Bible hit a snag. The church he claims to attend says Trump is “not an active member.”
More bad news—Republicans finding more ways to restrict reproductive health care for women:
Link
Yes, that’s right, the anti-Planned-Parenthood movement is also sneakily trying to make it much more difficult for women to access contraception. Anti-contraception propaganda has always been around, but lately it has been significantly ramped up.
This is a followup to comment 377:
Some of these anti-contraception doofuses even have the gall to label their plans “New Feminism.”
http://theguidingstarproject.com/faq-3/#newfeminism
Another followup to comment 377:
Bill Maher interviewed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Maher nailed Santorum fairly well on the issue of climate change.
Link
Scroll down for video.
Chris Christie thinks we should handle immigrants like FedEx packages. We can put Christies stupid comments in the “out-trump Trump” category.
Think Progress link
Europeans are obsessed with Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton responds to the Trump plan to deport more than 11 million people:
When we see crowds of people supporting Donald Trump’s plan to deport all undocumented immigrants (and their children), are we really seeing a boisterous minority of Republicans and Tea Partiers?
The political divide on birthright citizenship is a little closer to even on the Republican/rightwing side:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/24/what-americans-want-to-do-about-illegal-immigration/
Tea party and Trump supporters can’t accept people like Jorge Ramos and Barack Obama as Americans
Scroll down at the link to see a photo of an alarming compilation of racist signs from Tea Party rallies. The Colbert Report put the compilation together.
Here’s an amusing video, a compilation of Trump saying “China” over and over again, 234 times to be exact. Editors at Talking Points Memo put the compilation together, and never repeated a clip. These are all separate instances of Trump’s “China” boogeyman obsession.
Bobby Jindal says stupid stuff:
Link
Scott Walker wants to top Trump, he wants to build two walls, one between the USA and Mexico, and one between the USA and Canada.
Link
Officials in Russia just canceled the one and only film festival that celebrates films by members of the LGBT community:
Link
On the “proposed” wall between Teh USAlienstan and Harperville: A lot like the E.German “anti-facist wall”, you need to do something to stop people from leaving.
And the proposed wall between Teh USAlienstan and most of the the rest of the Americas is to prevent flooding when the Rio Grande overflows ‘cuz, y’all knows, there ain’t no such fing as “gloil warming”.
The existing wall between the thugs and reality is working so well these other walls must, MUST!, also work. QED (that’s a furrin saying meaning “we is korrect!”).
blf @390, yeah that same thought occurred to me. How else is Scott Walker going to keep all of those disgruntled Wisconsinites from sneaking across the border into Canada? Walker is ruining Wisconsin for a lot of the residents. They’d better emigrate now before he builds the wall.
In other news, Martha Raddatz (a journalist who is also a lackey for most militaristic industries and politicians) is feeling the Bern:
Link
About 20 million women fall under the purview of the Hyde Amendment, which was first passed in 1976, and which has been reauthorized every year since then. More restrictions were added to the Hyde Amendment in the 1980s. ACLU link
The Hyde Amendment restricts the use of federal funds to provide abortion services. Its effects are broader than you might think. It restricts access to abortion for dependents of federal employees and of military service members. Women in federal prisons and immigration detention centers do not have access to abortions. Peace Corps volunteers, women covered by Medicare and the Children’s Healthcare Insurance program — no abortion coverage for them either.
Some women in the House of Congress introduced a bill to correct this situation: H.R. 2972, “Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH Woman) Act of 2015. The representatives who wrote the bill are Barbara Lee (CA), Jan Schakowsky (IL), and Diana Delete (CO).
The Hyde Amendment affects poor and low-income women the most. Forced birth negatively affects the lives of poor or low-income mothers and their children. Anti-abortion politicians should think of the children … and they should think about all the money they’ll have to spend supporting those children who may be born into poverty.
But the doofuses never think about the facts. As the guy whose name is on the bill said in 1977, “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the Medicaid bill.”
Thurgood Marshall dissented when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment: “The Hyde Amendment is designed to deprive poor and minority women of the constitutional right to choose abortion.”
The USA has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the world. Link
From my previous comment: “The USA has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the world.” I meant to write, “The USA has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world.”
The USA ranks 34th among developed nations on the well-being of children.
Christie is asking Fedex for ideas of how to track ferrinners like fedex packages. So feds can know instantly, and precisely, where every ferrinner is in the country. So that just tuck int some out-of-the-way hole-in-de-wall and stay here furevah sucking down all the welfare, we rain down on all the taxpayin poor people who were legally born here by legal residents, etc, etc. etc.
while some of that was wild exaggeration of his motivation; the first sentence, above, about him asking Fedex about how to track people like fedex packages, is the actual political madness bit.
I could see this as possible and going in unintended directions. EG, slap an RFID chip on everyone entering through the Immigration line at every airport. Making the chip irremovable can get very ‘violating bodily integrity’ etc.
Nevermind the expense of tracking so many chips and installing trackers everywhere and the computers to monitor those tracking stations,
and so on and on and on.
Christie is just trying to match The Donald’s bloviations by equally dehumanizing mere visitors to the USA as packages (of criminals, and moochers, etc.)…
The tallest peak in North America is now called Denali, thanks to Obama. Let the political correctness ravings begin.
re 395:
ummm, does that qualify?
*ugh* “over the top”, “out in left field”, etc
Nerd, #395
Bigot eyes are already welling up.
I enjoyed The Daily Show reporting of the McKinley potential outrage, focused on the McKinley Historical Society of Ohio. Even the docent there, agreed that “while not The Greatest, he was ~okay~”.
<snark:> I guess that’s why they want a mountain named after him to be way out in Seward’s Folly.</snark>
I would just tell them to name a mountain in Ohio after their revered President. *oh wait…(Ohio is FLAT)*
why am I not surprised????
from Facebook, a comment re Denali affirmation:
I know it is wrong to cross-post, and attempt to refute someone in a different blog than the original posting. I’ll rage here anyway. I’d rather rage here (behind his back), rather than get ensconced in some “online debate” with this Face
bookbigot.= the reason to disrespect them and disregard the name they’ve called that mountain for thousands of years???
and of course: . Mr. Non-Climatologist says.
once again: to respect Pres. McKinley, why put his name on a mountain way out in Alaska where 99.999% of Americans will never see it????
The Grauniad’s snark is cranking, With so many Republicans vying for the wingnut vote, it was only a matter of time before one solved immigration:
One of the comments corrected this: “Not quite. They’d be delivered to your neighbour’s house one evening while you’re eating your tea, and the card would be pushed through the letterbox of your other neighbour’s house.”
The columnist (Stuart Heritage) then suggests a series of snarky “improvements” on the idea, ending with this suggestion:
I have a vague memory of something along these lines being seriously suggested before, Required gun insurance would put two powerful lobbies at odds. We’d benefit:
continuing the Christie nonsensical:
Rather than treating immigrants as FedEx pkgs, how about rather as household pets? IE pets have RFID chips implanted in their flesh, so why not immigrants? Why not everyone? Embed SSID#, so even Driver’s License can be instantly verified by the LEO using the ubiquitous Internetz. I think it would be really kewl to just wave my wrist over the Checkout at the zoopermarkit and the WalMartz. Rather than that pesky piece of plastic I gots to carry with me everywheres. And that other piece of plastic; to wave at LEOs to prove I passed their test, to drive without violating those pesky safetyfirst laws.Save me the worry of tracking that pesky leathery thing to hold those bits of plastic and that paper stuff we sometimes still use to pay for stuff. (So easy to misplace that wallet thingy)
uhhhh (leave the “unintended consequences” discussion, over there, leave then unintended. thankx)
blf @400, I love that level of snark. And the final amendment to the plan makes use of a lot of new technology. What’s not to like.
As for the “Denali” name change, I like that too. I used to live in Alaska. A lot of us called the mountain “Denali” anyway.
In other news, Trump said some stupid stuff … again. That man has an irony deficiency.
Washington Post link
I view this latest spew of stupidity as Trump following up on his previous comment that the worst of the gang members in Baltimore and Ferguson were illegal immigrants.
Trump is repeatedly harking back to Richard Nixon, sometimes repeating word for word a Nixon speech from 1968. Nixon delivered his “Silent Majority” speech to an electorate made up of about 80% white voters, and those voters lacked college degrees for the most part. So there’s your historical context. Trump needs a time machine to whisk him back to a time when he would have been relevant.
In reference to the “Denali” and “Mount McKinley” brouhaha, McKinley never climbed Denali. Another point, President Obama is responding the a state’s wishes. Alaskans have been pushing to change the name, so this should be an opportunity for Republicans to praise Obama for bowing to state/local rights.
In other news, Republican Representative Pete Sessions said some stupid stuff that connected gun violence to diversity. Say what?
Oh FFS. So, if we were all like Jeff Sessions nobody in the U.S. would shoot anybody? Diversity breeds mistrust? Sessions is one of those doofuses that makes one despair. These are the guys that run for office in the U.S.?
Link for text quoted in comment 404:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/08/31/3696894/pete-sessions-gun-violence-diversity/
This is a followup to comment 404, in which we see Jeff Sessions, a congress critter from Texas, saying stupid stuff. He said some more stupid stuff, this time about anti-discrimination laws and the Boy Scouts.
Link
re 404 Sessions(R):
so let’s just go the DMV way and have gov demand every gun owner, when applying for a gun hold license, be required to show he holds gun-liability insurance? We demand even the least dangerous things to have insurance, so why not guns as well? Don’t the gun owners want the insurance to protect their assets from confiscation after some random accident where the gun performed “unintentionally”?
I think we need MetLife to talk with NRA for a bit.
Oh, FFS. Some Fox News anchors are now pushing for the Black Lives Matter movement to be classified as a hate group.
Faux News has even rounded up an African American writer, Kevin Jackson, to parrot the rightwing swill:
Let’s label Fox News a hate group.
As I pointed out in comment 404, President Obama was assenting to the State of Alaska’s wishes when changing “Mt. McKinley” to “Denali.”
Predictably, dunderheads from the rightwing don’t see it that way (as others noted up-thread). I’m just adding one more dunderheaded comment to our collection:
That’s former Representative Ralph Regula of Ohio speaking.
On the Japan & guns example@404, Japan has some of the strictest gun control laws in the “developed” world.
On the Japan & trust/distrust@404, Japan is often said to be intolerant of non-consensus or non-conformity, and is sometimes claimed to be alarmingly xenophobic. Assuming the eejit isn’t babbling completely incoherently, and that there is some truth to claims of intolerance and xenophobia, then the eejit may be confusing “trust” for “obedience” or similar — which would seem to fit the authoritarian mind-set (which I assume the eejit is suffering from).
Our Japanese friends can correct or clarify the above hand-waving. One published example is Japan’s own report on Fukushima, which is reported as “[blaming] blames Japanese culture for the fundamental causes of the disaster.”
Screwing poor people, always a tradition honored by U.S. legislators. This time, we’re looking at the way in which corporate lobbyists convinced congress critters and senate schemers to screw low-income people with … paperwork.
Mother Jones link
Yet more debunking of a favorite rightwing argument slamming Hilary Clinton over her use of private email and a private server:
Link
Fox News pushes the Petraeus comparison repeatedly, as does Donald Trump.
Link
Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz teamed up to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Dick and his daughter said a bunch of predictable and stupid stuff about the Iran nuclear deal, including:
The Cheney team expounded on “American exceptionalism,” on how good it would be if all present-day politicians were more Reaganesque, on how the Iran deal is just like the 1938 Munich Pact (obligatory shout out to Hitler), and on how the Obama administration is not negotiating from a position of strength. Etc. fucking etc.
Wall Street Journal link
At the MTV Music Awards, Kanye West announced that he is going to run for president of the USA:
Kanye also announced that he had smoked something before coming on stage. His campaign is off to a good, if very early start.
Link
More bullpucky from rightwing media about Denali:
The gold standard? Really? Shades of Glenn Beck.
Not linking to Breitbart on purpose.
Teh USApproved Military “Professor” who, in @369, called for nuclear strikes on Islamic sites, and for people who are not anti-Muslim to be treated as “enemy combatants”, has resigned, West Point law professor who called for attacks on ‘Islamic holy sites’ resigns:
Some of the better comments:
● He’ll be hired by Fox News any day now.
● Donald Trump, I found your secretary of state.
● Why do I have a feeling that John Bolton will speak out in defense of this bizarro?
● Just because some members of the religion are crazy fanatical monsters doesn’t mean we get to be fascist crusaders. To let go of your own humanity in protest of others’ lack of is foolishness at its extreme.
Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, acted as a campaign surrogate for his son at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies meeting that was held over the weekend. The elder Cruz said all kinds of stupid stuff, and was wildly cheered:
Continuing, from another source:
Cross posted from PZ’s “My plan to get elected … ” thread. This comment is a reference to Scott Walker’s statement that a wall along the Canada/USA border is a “legitimate issue.”
Security along the Canadian/USA border has already been stepped up … and the effects are awful. Unintended consequences anyone? Harassment of Latinos or Latino-looking citizens who live near the Canadian border — are you kidding? Nope, not kidding.
Think Progress link.
Also cross posted from the “My plan to get elected … ” thread.
This is a followup to comment 418, providing more detail about the already-beefed-up border patrol along the Canadian border, and how things have gone drastically wrong.
Rick Perry opted for full-blown evangelical christian preacher mode during a speech on Saturday.
Link
Bryan Fischer, rightwing religious whacko, knows why President Obama backed the “Denali” name change:
Link
Here’s another entry for our “screwing the poor” category. It comes from Texas, which is no surprise.
This new budget rider will negatively affect the health care of about 240,000 Texans. Speech, physical and occupational therapy will be lost for many.
More on that Hilary Clinton email issue that has been blown out of proportion:
Link
This is good news. More than 75 former members of Congress signed a letter to current members of Congress asking them to support the Iran nuclear deal, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Comments from the letter-writers below:
http://nowarwithiran.org/wp-content/uploads/Members-Letter-Iran.pdf
SCOTUS rules against anti-gay bigot Kentucky clerk Kim Davis
Kim Davis continues to use up taxpayers’ dollars while refusing to perform the job they’re paying her for despite of the SCOTUS’ decision
Cross posted from the “Gotta go” thread.
Lawyers for that clerk in Kentucky may be using Davis for their own ends. The lawyers are unethical, religious doofuses.
Link
Lawyers who are also a nonprofit, tax-exempt ministry? WTF?
Rick Perry’s campaign for the presidency is sinking. He is down to one volunteer staffer in Iowa.
Mike Huckabee flip flopped between being for birthright citizenship and against it. Now he has declared that he is open to ending that part of the 14th Amendment. An example, perhaps, of being so “open” that his brains fell out.
In other news, yes, the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement is the number one terrorist threat in the USA.
The list of terrorist threats goes like this:
1. sovereign citizens
2. Islamic extremists
3. anti-government militias
4. skinheads
5. Neo-Nazis
6. animal rights extremists
7. environmental extremists
8. KKK
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/31/9208015/terrorism-chart-ranked
This news falls into the “company you keep” category. Does it look good for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to be buddying up to Glenn Beck? [rhetorical question]
This is actually good news, in a way. Nobody in their half-right mind wants to be associated with Glenn Beck. When fence-sitters see Beck, Trump, and Cruz pushing to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, they will quickly jump to the pro-deal side.
On the pro-deal side we have the White House, a boatload of U.S. allies, nuclear experts, current diplomats, former diplomats, retired-from-office Republicans, etc.
First some history, a bit of the backstory:
That’s Steve Benen, writing for the Maddow Blog, providing an historical context for Senator Tom Cotton’s latest stunt.
Cotton flew to Israel to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, Cotton proclaims himself to be more against the Iran nuclear deal than ever: “I will stand with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel and work with my colleagues in Congress to stop this deal and to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself against Iran and its terrorist surrogates.”
Um, yeah, not a good idea to sabotage U.S. foreign policy deliberately. Cotton is the same doofus who, along with 46 other Senate Republicans, sent a letter to Iranian officials telling them not to trust the Obama administration. Cotton sent that letter in the midst of the negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.
Kentucky county clerk Davis and her staff ordered to appear in federal court again.
To quote comedian Flip Wilson, “here comes the judge.”
I think she’s comfortable in the knowledge that any fines she is charged with will be easily paid off by the monetary support that will come pouring in for her.
I think that’s a main reason why she’s pushing on with this. That and the ACLU attorneys are not asking for a prison sentence, but just fines.
Also, isn’t it illegal for an attorney to advise their client to go against the law? Isn’t that what her attorneys are doing?
The clerk’s attorneys are total idiots. (See 427.) I should think that all of the stupidity on display from the attorneys, let alone the clerk, will have thoroughly pissed off the judge by now.
In other justice/not-justice news, Jeff Mizanskey has been released from prison.
Yes, we do need to reform our correctional/justice systems. I was pleased to see President Obama, and the current Democratic candidates for the presidency, highlighting the problems in the system.
James O’Keefe, rightwing flea-brain and producer of deceptive videos, stepped off the cliff and dived right into a cesspool today.
So, this entire thing was a joke at the $70 claimed in the video, but O’Keefe had to lie about the amount as well?!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/james-okeefe-hillary-video
Misinformation replaces information … again. Only 29% of Republicans think that President Obama was born in the USA.
Link
This is a followup to comment 429.
Glenn Beck explained why he is joining Donald Trump and Ted Cruz at a rally to defeat the Iran nuclear deal:
Link
Mike Huckabee said some stupid stuff again.
Link
Real journalists, as opposed to the faux “journalist” fielded by James O’Keefe (comment 434), are having fun reporting on the latest O’Keefe sting video.
Link
Donald Trump says that as soon as he is elected president he will restore the “Mount McKinley” name in Alaska. Trump seemed to mistakenly believe, before he was corrected, that McKinley was born in Alaska. He also thinks we shouldn’t insult Ohio, but it is okay to insult Native American tribes.
Trump has a history of adversarial relationships with Native Americans. In 2000 he dissed Native Americans using language similar to that he now uses for Mexican immigrants.
Ah, yes, Trump is never wrong, he says so himself. That’s why he doesn’t ask God for forgiveness.
Link
We already knew this, but now we have another study to prove it: gun suicides are reduced when stricter gun licensing laws are introduced.
Link
Rachel Maddow presented an exclusive last night in which she was the first journalist to discuss the poll numbers showing that most Republicans do not believe that President Obama was born in the USA. They also believe Obama is a Muslim.
The segment also covers the current rankings for Republican candidates, including the fact that Carly Fiorina is polling ahead of many guys considered to be major, viable candidates — and,yet, CNN is not going to have Carly Fiorina in the main debate they will hold soon, CNN will relegate her to the “kid’s table” debate.
The segment is 21 minutes long and covers a lot of subjects.
Alaska Natives ‘happy’ with Denali after name change push that began in 1975, by “Julie Kitka[,] the President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest statewide Native organization in Alaska. Its membership includes 165 federally recognized tribes, 146 village corporations, 12 regional corporations, and 12 regional nonprofit and tribal consortiums that contract and compact to run federal and state programs.” I’ve quoted the short article in full, sans the lead-in teaser paragraph:
If ever you had a doubt that mormon leaders support the most retrograde, anti-gay organizations on the planet, doubt no more.
Salt Lake Tribune link
The World Congress of Families coordinates and exports anti-LBGT bigotry. Mormon leaders love the WCF and they funnel lots of money into WCF coffers.
http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/exposed-the-world-congress-of-families
This is a followup to comment 443.
In Utah it looks like there is no separation between church and state when it comes to supporting anti-LGBT organizations. The governor of Utah (mormon man) made a statement in support of the World Congress of Families.
LGBT Weekly link
Latino business group denounces ‘ignorant’ Trump campaign, cancels contract:
Tony @445, yes, it seems likely that Trump will sue the LBA … and then he’ll brag about suing them.
The spread of Trump-itis, as Steve Benen called it, is affecting politics in Nevada:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/politics/government/heck-immigration-reform-talks-should-include-birthright-citizenship“>Las Vegas Review Journal link
Not a #1 ranking you want to brag about: Louisiana ranks first in the USA for cases of gonorrhea. The state is only second in chlamydia and third for syphilis and H.I.V. cases.
I guess Governor Bobby Jindal thinks the state’s residents should try harder to be #1 in all categories, so he is working to deprive Planned Parenthood in Louisiana of all funding.
Dr. Stephanie Taylor oversees the department in the State Office of Public Health that treats and prevents STDs.
NY Times link
Two police officers have recently been shot in the line of duty, Deputy Darren Goforth in Texas, and Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz in Illinois. So what does Ted Cruz do? He blames President Obama, and while placing blame where it doesn’t belong, he also tells a few lies.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ted-cruz-goes-after-obama-gun-crime
For the record, President Obama has not been hostile to law enforcement. Obama has not been “silent” either, as Cruz also claimed. President Obama issued a statement calling anti-police violence “completely unacceptable,” and he called Darren Goforth’s wife to offer his condolences.
Other right-wingers have blamed the Black Lives Matter movement. Bill O’Reilly called BLM a “hate group” on Faux News. Megyn Kelly characterized BLM as anti-police. On a “Fox & Friends” segment, Faux News went on to call BLM a “murder movement.” Katie Pavlich called BLM “a movement that promotes execution of police officers” (also on a Faux News segment).
Investigation of the Goforth murder does not reveal any link to BLM. But a CNN report described BLM’s advocacy as “anti-police rhetoric.” Advocating for fairness does not equate to anti-anything.
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/1/9239643/black-lives-matter-fox-news
Up-thread I mentioned that the whacky CNN rules for the next Republican debate would keep Carly Fiorina at the “kid’s table” even though the polls show her to be solidly in the top ten of the seventeen candidates.
Well, lo and behold, CNN adjusted their criteria so that Fiorina, the only female Republican candidate for president, will be allowed to debate on the main stage with Donald Trump and all of those other doofuses.
The idea that Fox News, CNN, or any media outlet gets to decide which candidates debate on the main stage is pretty weird. Not exactly democratic.
Senator Lindsey Graham said something intelligent. Concerning Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, he said, “As a public official, comply with the law or resign.”
Link
Rand Paul said something stupid. Concerning Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, he said, “I think people who do stand up and are making a stand to say that they believe in something is an important part of the American way.”
Link
A followup to comment 451: Rand Paul also said that people who want to get married shouldn’t have to go to county clerks for a license. They should go to “a church” and get a “contract” signed there. Totally incoherent, Mr. Paul.
Oh, good, a sign that some rightwing religious extremists will NOT support Kim Davis, the elected county clerk who is refusing to issue marriage licenses:
Talking Points Memo link
It looks like President Obama can breathe a little easier. The Iran nuclear deal will not be scuttled by Congress. It’s still a close call, but the Senate no longer has enough votes to overturn an Obama veto. They can pass their scuttle-the-deal bill if they like, but Obama will veto that.
Link
The way things stand now, 34 Senators support the deal and 32 oppose it.
This is a followup to comment 454.
I should have also added that if the number of Senators supporting the bill goes up to 41, then the Senate will not be able to reject the Iran nuclear deal, and Present Obama will not have to wield the veto pen. So, this situation may improve even more before the vote near the end of this month.
Oh, FFS, Bryan Fischer is one rightwing commentator who loves Kim Davis.
Let’s take another look at how strongly some Republican politicians are tied to the ultra extremist christian rightwing. Pat McCrory, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley — they have all hopped into bed with christians who also dominionists.
Link
Teh trum-prat is not the only prattling clown with a defective ego and lack of anything desirable. There is also Emomali Rahmon. Who? Well, his latest antic… Tajikistan names ‘planet’ after… Tajikistan (quoted in full):
Teh trum-prat will clearly have to top that one. Planet
TrumPrat? Nah, Supernova Prat! Big, Spectacular, and, um, LOUD!, with lots of Energy, makes Gold and other valuable elements, and is even bigger than Tajikistan!re KimDavis kefuffle:
I know this is the wrong venue to address this, but…
To those Davis fans who claim the libs are not supporting gay marriage but using it as one attack on the war on christians. That libs don’t demand Islams to marry gays, nor Jews, nor Buddhists, etc.
I rebuttal; libs just want Davis to do her job. If her Religious Beliefs are so strongly opposed, then resign. Libs are not forcing Davis to violate her beliefs, just to do the job she got herself elected to do. (were any promises involved there?).
Bryan Fischer (see 456), comparing her refusal to issue a License To Marry, as equivalent to a Death Warrant is a bit unfair, not a proper analogy, me thinks.
Fat cat pay at fossil fuel companies drives climate crisis — report:
Another bad behaviour, it would not surprise me to learn, is groupthink: As an example, all the CEOs and CEO-types I’ve met (none in the fossil fuels industry) were surrounded by “yes”-men (almost always men). I once made a snarky comment about one of his company’s main products to a visiting and well-known CEO, and the three(? four? don’t recall now) yes-men surrounding him all started speaking at once. Loudly. Since they were all talking, I never did follow what any one of them was saying.
(Disclaimer: I’m still fuming over my latest encounter with one of these types and his/their bogus interpretation of the point I was trying to make, and then cutting me off with “jokes” as I tried to clarify.)
CEOs of fossil fuel companies have something in common with Donald Trump, or so it seems from reading blf’s comment @460.
They surround themselves with insiders who agree with them. They are magnificently arrogant, and yuuuuge even. The ends (making money or winning) justify any means.
Sociopaths.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: This is the difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders
Excerpt below:
Florida governor Rick Scott has been caught committing the sin of dubious editing before, (he tried to eliminate the phrase “climate change” from his administration). Now he seems to have a major problem when it comes to Planned Parenthood.
WTF, Governor Scott?
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/florida/2015/09/8575790/scotts-office-scrubbed-release-cleared-planned-parenthood
Oh, boy, this is fun. And I bet Trump will be so angry that the head-explode will blow that hair right off his head. Trump cheats at golf. Trump has told us many times that he is very good at golf, and he has reminded us that he beat other, lesser beings at golf.
Talking Points Memo link
Washington Post link
You will have no doubt noted that when Trump wanted to diss Mulvey, he claimed not to know him. Same thing he did to Jorge Ramos. “I don’t know the guy.” The facts prove otherwise.
Trump disses Jeb Bush over Jeb’s use of Spanish:
Paid maternity leave is championed by Hillary Clinton and by Bernie Sanders, but the Republican candidates are not on the same page. Take, for instance, Ted Cruz:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/09/02/3697995/ted-cruz-family-leave/
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said some stupid stuff:
Link
A poll conducted by the Des Moines Register reveals, yet again, that the people supporting Donald Trump are the worst of the worst:
Des Moines Register link
More polling details at the link.
Glenn Beck and some cohorts held a rally in Birmingham, Alabama last Saturday. About 20,000 people showed up. Brian Barrett wrote an article covering “A Day Inside Glenn Beck’s America” for The New Yorker.
The entire article is well worth reading, but I’ll excerpt some memorable bits here:
Beck had arranged for a blimp bearing an “All Lives Matter” banner to fly above the crowd.
Is this a contender for the winner of the “moments of political madness” contest?
“76 percent of Tea Party supporters believe that they face anti-white discrimination at least equal to that faced by minorities.”
source:
http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/09/02/the-rosetta-stone-to-modern-american-politics-in-one-chart/
opus @470, yes, that is further proof that the supporters of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, etc. are the worst of the worst. See comments 435 and 468.
Other news pushed this news out of the headlines, but I think it is important. Hillary Clinton outlined her $10 billion plan to combat substance abuse.
Link
That sounds to me like a plan that would work. And it would certainly take a big bite out of the over-incarceration problem in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Rand Paul sounds like he is dog-whistling to the rightwing when he commented on his plan to combat substance abuse:
Link
Rand Paul is a medical doctor. He should know that from rich to poor, from black to white, from employed to unemployed, there is a crisis of substance abuse. Four out of five heroin addicts in the U.S. started on prescription drugs. The problem of heroin overdoses is particularly bad in New Hampshire, where unemployment is quite low, and where Rand Paul made his stupid comments.
Link for DEA confirmation that heroin abuse follows prescription opioid painkiller abuse.
Two Republican legislators have come up with a new euphemism for having sex in a car. They were “exchanging documents.”
Minnesota State Representatives Tim Kelly and Tara Mack had parked at Lebanon Hills Regional Park when a park ranger happened upon them. The ranger’s report includes this:
KARE local news link
These Republican legislators are both married, and have come up with the “exchanging documents” explanation. Maybe the documents were in Tara Mack’s pants?
The Grauniad snarks Scott Walker, which, admittedly, is about as easy as fishing by using dynamite in the goldfish bowl, or in Walker’s case, his own bowel, When you’re as bad at campaigns as Scott Walker, you should just give up:
On paid maternity leave (@466), there is a recent article in the New York Times about some companies starting to try to catching up to more enlightened policies (such as the quite generous rules here in France), and then having to convince the eligible staff to use the leave, Big Leaps for Parental Leave, if Workers Actually Take It: “Some corners of corporate America have a new message for new parents: Put down that laptop and pick up your baby instead.”
And a follow-up to my @475 (paid maternity leave)…
One of the problems discussed are “mixed messages” where the company may offer and encourage extended leave, but the executives / managers then do something which seems to undermine the effort. One example is Marissa Mayer (Yahoo’s CEO) who is pregnant (with identical twins) and has said she will take only two weeks off. Yahoo’s policy is 16 weeks for mothers and 8 week for fathers, plus other benefits. In addition, she has also said she will be “working throughout” (despite Yahoo banning work-from-home).
The New York Times article briefly discusses this dubious example, and The Grauniad has an entire article on it, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s minimal maternity leave plan prompts dismay.
Another report on Ms Clinton’s substance abuse proposal (@472), Hillary Clinton proposes $10bn plan to combat substance abuse ‘epidemic’: “The Democratic frontrunner’s proposal shifts emphasis toward treatment and would reward states that produce comprehensive plans with grant money”.
More smoke! More smog! More GHGs! More money for Faux & Kochroach Bros., UnLimited! Warmer planet! Feck the polar bears! Marco Rubio attacks EPA and pledges to reverse key Obama climate moves:
blf @474, thanks for posting that. What a nice, snarky roundup of Scott Walker’s flaws.
I especially liked the way The Guardian nailed Walker for campaigning one way, and then acting completely differently once in office. To add my own coffin nail for Walker. Under Walker’s regime, Wisconsin’s private sector job growth was 5.7%, compared to 9.3% nationwide — that’s during Walker’s first year as Governor, when, contrary to his promises, he did not create more jobs than god. (My wording, but you get the idea.)
In other news, just a heads-up, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be a guest on The Rachel Maddow show tonight. See comment 462 for political relevance.
Let’s do what works when it comes to dealing with substance abuse.
USA Today link
The argument from opponents reminds me of the people that say sex education will encourage teenagers to have sex.
We’re now well past the minimum number (34) of pro-deal Senators needed to make sure the Iran nuclear deal is not scuttled by Congress.
Now that these Senators have decided to support the deal, we have 37 siding with President Obama:
Cory Booker, New Jersey
Mark Warner, Virginia
Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota
All of the supporters are Democrats. All of the naysayers are Republicans.
Chris Hayes attended the Trump show (can’t really call it a press conference, it is a show) today, and he reported on the fact that Trump signed the GOP loyalty pledge. The entire segment is excellent.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-goes-to-the-trump-show-519155779758
The funniest part of the segment may have been where Trump used the Indonesian Speaker of the House as a prop: “Do they like me in Indonesia?”
There was also a funny bit where Trump claimed to be the most popular with the Hispanics. He referred the attendees to a press kit he had handed out, a folder containing nothing but a lot of polls and screen shots of polls. The poll showing the Latino response to Republican candidates was actually a poll showing favorability ratings, the poll showed that about 2/3 of Latinos don’t like Trump (a little more than 30% do like Trump), nor do the majority of Latinos like any of the other Republican candidates.
Trump is continuing his feud with Univision, but the poll he referred to was taken from Univision. That poll does not show what Donald Trump thinks it shows.
A hospital in Texas supports Medicaid expansion in that state. Governor Gregg Abbott doesn’t like that, so he ordered a financial investigation. Vindictive, immature, and sneaky.
The Texas Tribune link
Jimmy Kimmel covers the fact that a majority of Republicans think President Obama is a Muslim. Scroll down for video. Funny and horrifying.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jimmy-kimmel-obama-muslim
State of Idaho officials have decided to take a baby step toward treating prisoners humanely.
Think Progress link.
WTF? I didn’t know that in Idaho solitary confinement included “dry cells.” Awful.
Slate covered the Trump show during which he signed the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge.
In a patented Trumpish move, The Donald made Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, come to meet him at a Trump building.
Donald Trump is now in the Palin camp when it comes to complaining about “gotcha questions,” only Trump’s downfall came during an interview with a conservative radio host, and not from the “liberal mainstream media.”
Link
Transcript link
Excerpt:
As most of you know, the guy who set up Clinton’s email server has been called to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. His lawyer says he will plead the fifth.
Okay. What is not being covered as well is that the State Department Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, did testify. And now the Republican doofus who runs the committee won’t release a transcript of the testimony. Why? Because it shows Trey Gowdy to be the doofus that he is, while also exonerating Hilary Clinton (for the umpteenth time).
Gowdy leaked cherry-picked and misleading information from previous investigations. He is notorious for misleading reporters at the NY Times, for example. Gowdy needs to be forced to be transparent and someone needs to stop him from leading information in a partisan way. Representative Elijah Cummings is holding Gowdy’s feet to the fire. Thank you, Elijah Cummings.
Gowdy is actually subverting the democratic process here.
More (probable) wingnut terrorism, Two alleged arsons at Planned Parenthood clinics reported in wake of ‘sting’ videos (the square-[bracketed] text is in the original, my edits are curly-{bracketed}):
This isn’t necessarily “mad”, but it is “political” for certain values, ‘Necrophilia legislator’ on a crusade to outlaw loophole of arcane era:
A conference on death and related in Transylvania — someone has a puckish sense of humour!
blf @489, those deceptively edited videos (and the conservative spin on them) is having an effect. Not good in any way. Also, “lone wolf” types are seldom “lone,” they have connections to the anti-abortion organizations.
In other news, Ashley Callingbull Burnham is a First Nations Cree woman from Alberta, Canada. She won an international beauty pageant and used that opportunity to speak out about government-fostered injustice.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mrs-universe-conservatives-ashley-callingbull-1.3214214
A parody Twitter account is pretending to give voice to Kim Davis’s coworkers. Here are a few of the funniest posts:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nexttokimdavis-parody-account-kim-davis
Various right-wingers are telling Kim Davis what to do, and how to do it.
Link
The quy quoted above, Barber, is Matt Barber. He supposedly left Liberty Counsel to run BarbWire, an über rightwing website. But Barber still participates in Liberty Counsel’s propaganda efforts. The lawyers of Liberty Counsel run a so-called “ministry” which includes a daily radio show. Barber participates regularly on the radio show.
Can Bernie Sanders really beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa?:
Rethink that, please, Mr Uhlenhopp, that’s called the Faux & Kochroach Bros., UnLimited–Komissioned Klown Kandidate wins.
(Oh feck,
Previewis broken, again…)There are now 38 Democrats in the Senate backing the Iran nuclear deal. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado added his support today.
In other news, here is another case of deceptive editing from the rightwing, the Morning Joe program. Joe Scarborough is the most rightwing anchor on MSNBC. MSNBC is not the usual venue for rightwing propaganda, but Morning Joe sometimes sneaks it in.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/04/msnbcs-morning-joe-edits-out-david-ignatius-deb/205376
More problems with separation of church and state. A school in Georgia hosted a mass baptism of a bunch of football players. The baptisms took place on school property, right before a football practice session.
http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/09/01/school-district-investigating-mass-baptism-football-practice/71515306/
ooohhhh,
Arcane laws. (check)
Massachusetts: the home of arcana. (check)
There could be a whole quasiSnopes sub-blog discussing all the weird arcana laws with open loopholes here in Mass. [pun].
The reason they still exist cuz there’s no reason to remove them, cuz most are so irrelevant that ~no words~.
Weird, is speculation about the motive behind wanting to close this particular loophole. ->
ack. sorry for the derail attempt. just tryin to escape reality.
From the #TrumpBible Twitter feed:
This is a followup to comments 316, 363 (Saad), 365 (se habla espol), 425/426 (Saad), 450, 451, 453, 456, 492, and especially 493.
About those doofus lawyers from Liberty Counsel: Jerry Falwell created that group. Davis is not just receiving dubious legal advice, she is receiving a sort anti-legal-counsel that makes her situation a lot worse.
Predictable consequences of the Alabama legislators ignoring the separation of church and state:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/satanists-vegans-and-atheists-seek-equal-opportunity-in-little-rock/