Too many Republicans prefer bigots

Trump, and the other Republican candidates are playing the scapegoat game once again, this time with Muslims.

During the 2004 Bush campaign, gays and intellectuals were scapegoated, Gay marriage and abortion were held up as serious threats to the American way of life, and unless you voted for Bush, the terrorists gays and abortionists would win.

This is the same bullshit, just with more targeted racism.

Trump is not just capturing the discontent of Americans who are sick of D.C. He's stirring the hatred that lies just beneath the surface of so many of our communities. The kind of hatred that many people want to pretend does not exist. The kind of irrational hatred that inspired Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina; Chris Harper-Mercer in Roseburg, Oregon; and Robert Dear in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In the past several months, Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and suggested building a wall akin to the Great Wall of China to keep them out of the United States.

In mid-November, he pronounced as fact completely made up statistics suggesting that most white people are killed by black people.

When a black protester was assaulted when disrupting one of his political rallies, he stated on national TV that "maybe he should have been roughed up."

Last month, he suggested a mandatory Muslim registry.

This week, he called for a "total and complete" ban on all Muslims entering the United States.

Words matter. Proposals matter. This man is ahead in every national poll. People are flocking to attend his events. People that cheer and applaud his racism enthusiastically!

If this is not proof positive that Republicans are frightened, ignorant bigots that need to be led like sheep, I do not know if there is proof enough to convince you.

Fat cats pay $45000 for a single Thanksgiving meal

The vast majority of working Americans haven’t seen a real raise in 35 years. 

Meanwhile, every year, their health care, education, insurance and household costs rise. Their employers eliminate pensions. And their kids struggle with rising college or technical school tuition and debt. 

Workers worry whether they will ever be able to pay the bills.

By contrast, on the other side of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the richest 1 percent are supersizing their feasts. For example, three families will spend $45,000 – each – for Marie Antoinette-style meals, gold flakes and all, at the Old Homestead Steakhouse in New York City. That’s up by $10,000 from the restaurant’s Thanksgiving fare for eight last year. It’s more, for one meal, than the average American worker earns in a year.

The Marie Antoinette $45,000 Thanksgiving includes two turkeys. Because when would one, 20-pound free-range, organically raised bird at $75 a pound ever be enough?

The 1 percent can spend $45,000 for a Thanksgiving supper because they’re gobbling up virtually all of the income from workers’ productivity increases. And now they’ve launched a new assault on workers. It’s a lawsuit called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA). The 1 percent hopes it will prevent public service workers like teachers from joining together to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

The Marie Antoinette $45,000 Thanksgiving includes gravy made with Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, which goes for $4,900 a bottle. Because when would $9 worth of cooking sherry ever be good enough?

If the $45,000-Thanksgiving-dinner crew wins the case, they’ll go after private-sector labor organizations next. They do not intend to stop until there’s nothing left for the other 99%.

The Friedrichs case is about power. 

Individual workers don’t bargain for raises with gigantic multinational corporations and government agencies. 

They beg.

But when workers band together and seek raises as a group, they gain for themselves the power necessary to negotiate. A fact that is intolerable to 1 percenters. And that’s why they’re backing the Friedrichs case – to prevent workers from ever gaining that negotiating power.

Defending their right to collectively bargain are public service workers ­– the likes of firemen, teachers, social workers and public health nurses. The labor organizations these workers belong to try to ensure that they receive living wages and decent retirement benefits.

But just as importantly, public service workers also use their collective voice to negotiate in the public interest, including improving response times for paramedics and lowering social worker caseloads to allow adequate time to investigate child abuse allegations. 

Public school teachers, who spend an average of $500 a year out of their own pockets for classroom supplies, routinely bargain to secure the smaller class sizes that parents want, to protect the recess breaks that elementary students need and to preserve arts and music education.

Sigh... 88 Dems bow to pressure from uninformed voters.

Most dealerships are authorized to sell cars and make loans to finance the purchase. They send their customers' financial information to a bank, which then sends the dealer an appropriate interest rate for a borrower with that particular credit profile. But banks also permit dealers to "mark up" the interest rate on the loan to a higher level, and allow the dealership to pocket some of the additional charge.

That, of course, creates incentives for the dealer to charge people higher interest rates. But data dating back to the 1990's have shown that people of color are more likely to have their interest rates marked up than white borrowers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued regulatory guidance in 2013 instructing companies on how to cope with this phenomenon.

Since issuing the guidance, the CFPB has taken action against Honda and Ally Bank for overcharging borrowers of color, forcing them to return more than $100 million to their customers. This was apparently too much for banks and auto dealers to handle. They lobbied for a bill that would nullify the CFPB's regulatory move.

None of the opposition was enough to counter two interest groups that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill. Not a single Republicans voted against the bill to curb the CFPB's enforcement of anti-discrimination law this week, while 88 Democrats voted in favor. The legislation cleared by a vote of 332 to 96.

The 88 House Democrats who voted to enable racial discrimination in the automobile market:

Pete Aguilar (Calif.)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.)
Brad Ashford (Neb.)
Joyce Beatty (Ohio)
Amerish Babulal "Ami" Bera (Calif.)
Don Beyer (Va.)
Sanford Dixon Bishop Jr. (Ga.)
Brendan Boyle (Pa.)
Robert Brady (Pa.)
Julia Brownley (Calif.)
Cheryl "Cheri" Bustos (Ill.)
Matt Cartwright (Pa.)
James "Jim" Clyburn (S.C.)
Gerald "Gerry" Connolly (Va.)
Jim Cooper (Tenn.)
James "Jim" Costa (Calif.)
Joseph "Joe" Courtney (Conn.)
Joseph Crowley (N.Y.)
Henry Cuellar (Texas)
John K. Delaney (Md.)
Suzan DelBene (Wash.)
Debbie Dingell (Mich.)
Mike Doyle (Pa.)
Tammy Duckworth (Ill.)
Elizabeth Esty (Conn.)
Bill Foster (Ill.)
Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii)
Ruben Gallego (Ariz.)
Gwen Graham (Fla.)
Alan Grayson (Fla.)
Eugene "Gene" Green (Texas)
Janice Hahn (Calif.)
Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.)
Dennis "Denny" Heck (Wash.)
Brian Higgins (N.Y.)
Rubén Hinojosa (Texas)
Jared Huffman (Calif.)
Steve Israel (N.Y.)
Marcy Kaptur (Ohio)
William "Bill" Keating (Mass.)
Dan Kildee (Mich.)
Derek Kilmer (Wash.)
Ron Kind (Wis.)
Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.)
Ann Kuster (N.H.)
Rick Larsen (Wash.)
Brenda Lawrence (Mich.)
Ted Lieu (Calif.)
Dan Lipinski (Ill.)
Dave Loebsack (Iowa)
Michelle Lujan Grisham (N.M.)
Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.)
Jim McDermott (Wash.)
Grace Meng (N.Y.)
Patrick Murphy (Fla.)
Rick Nolan (Minn.)
Donald Norcross (N.J.)
Beto O'Rourke (Texas)
Bill Pascrell (N.J.)
Ed Perlmutter (Colo.)
Scott Peters (Calif.)
Collin Peterson (Minn.)
Mike Quigley (Ind.)
Kathleen Rice (N.Y.)
Raul Ruiz (Calif.)
Tim Ryan (Ohio)
Loretta Sanchez (Calif.)
Adam Schiff (Calif.)
Kurt Schrader (Ore.)
David Scott (Ga.)
Terri Sewell (Ala.)
Brad Sherman (Calif.)
Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)
Albio Sires (N.J.)
Louise Slaughter (N.Y.)
Adam Smith (Wash.)
Jackie Speier (Calif.)
Eric Swalwell (Calif.)
Mike Thompson (Calif.)
Dina Titus (Nev.)
Paul Tonko (N.Y.)
Norma Torres (Calif.)
Nikki Tsongas (Mass.)
Juan Vargas (Calif.)
Marc Veasey (Texas)
Filemon Vela (Texas)
Tim Walz (Neb.)
Peter Welch (Vt.)

A brilliant article!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/dr-ben-carson-the-most-da_b_8573398.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Conservatives are a danger to themselves and others.

Conservatives, even in the 1950s and 1960s, were creating a cult-like political system that prized orthodoxy over critical thought, alternative evidence, or empirical reality. This is the shadow under which the politics of disorientation operates for movement conservatives. On this point, historian Robert Toplin explains at the History News Network how:

Individuals who seek a broader understanding of the present political standoff in Washington may find Hofstadter’s thoughts on these matters poignant.

Richard Hofstadter recognized that evangelical leaders were playing a significant role in right-wing movements of his time, but he noticed that a “fundamentalist” style of mind was not confined to matters of religious doctrine. It affected opinions about secular affairs, especially political battles. 

Hofstadter associated that mentality with a “Manichean and apocalyptic” mode of thought. He noticed that right-wing spokesmen applied the methods and messages of evangelical revivalists to U.S. politics. Agitated partisans on the right talked about epic clashes between good and evil, and they recommended extraordinary measures to resist liberalism. 

The American way of life was at stake, they argued. Compromise was unsatisfactory; the situation required militancy. Nothing but complete victory would do..... 

Sound familiar?

Movement conservatism is compelling for so many people because of its visceral emotional appeal, and how the mindsets of conservative authoritarians are oriented toward accepting a binary, good or evil, fear-centered, and dominance-oriented view of the world.
Moreover, movement conservatism is obsessed with protecting “real America” and "real Americans".

This functions both as salvation and as something at risk by “liberals,” “progressives,” people of color, immigrants, gays, or whatever other group is viewed as a threat to the status quo of the “good old days.” Alas, this “real America” never truly existed.

Nevertheless, this illusory world must be protected at all costs because it is central to the “politics of disorientation,” a highly theatrical and Spectacular driven political belief system that today’s conservatism uses to make sense of the world.

The culture of illusion and distraction, wherein entertainment is a stand-in for full and authentic human experiences, enables the Reality TV-esque popularity of demagogues like Donald Trump, and the litany of ridiculous policy positions — again divorced from empirical fact or reality — offered by the leading Republican candidates. Here, Fox News, a “news” operation that has made right-wing talking points interchangeable with “facts,” represents the culture of illusion in full operation. That Fox News is America’s highest rated “news station” and actually has the most ignorant and uninformed viewership of any major news media outlet, signals to how entertainment is confused with substance in the culture of illusion and distraction. The masses are asses in such a system, not because such behavior is “natural,” but because such behavior is normalized and encouraged.

The right-wing media is one of the most effective propaganda operations in modern history!

Lies and Deception: The Right-wing media, the elites in the Republican Party, and its various interest groups, are engaged in a systematic campaign of deception toward the American people. This is philosopher Leo Strauss’s theories on truth and leadership in action.

As explained by political writer Jim Lobe:

…Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that “those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.”

This dichotomy requires “perpetual deception” between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury; while Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,”The people are told what they need to know and no more.” While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of ‘Leo Strauss and the American Right'

Movement conservatives, and Republican voters, en masse, are utterly confused about the nature of reality, and respond with rage and anger when confronted by facts — a version of the Dunning-Krueger effect, in which where people are ignorant but do not have the expertise or awareness even to know just how ignorant they are — because they have been systematically misled.

Current conservative propaganda pushes an hallucinatory ideology. This is a dangerous system of belief wherein people are unencumbered by reality and embrace distorted views of the world and the people around them, often driven by stereotypes or other types of hatred, which then works to legitimize destructive behavior.

Hallucinatory ideology helps to create the recalcitrance and hostility to the very idea of political compromise and the open authoritarianism that form the brand name of conservatism and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama. 
Thus we find ourselves. And the question-- one that has lingered over American politics since the election of a Black and Democratic president drove the right wing et all into mouth-frothing derangement still remains: 

Will normal politics on display in last week’s Democratic debate be able to defeat the willful ignorance and insanity of the Republican Party in November of 2016?

Who are these asshats really working for?

Yesterday the Senate-- and then the House-- voted to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open at least until December 11. Every Democrat in the Senate and every Democrat in the House voted yes, of course. And in the Senate, where it passed 78-20, all but 20 extreme right and intellectually challenged Republicans voted in favor, despite Ted Cruz's lament about shutting the whole thing down. These were the 20 who voted to shut the government down:

• Roy Blunt (R-MO)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Richard Burr (R-MC)
• Dan Coats (R-IN)
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Dean Heller (R-NV)
• James Inhofe (R-OK)
• James Lankford (R-OK)
• Mike Lee (R-UT)
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)
• Rand Paul (R-KY)
• James Risch (R-ID)
• Ben Sasse (R-NE)
• Tim Scott (R-SC)
• Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (KKK-AL)
• Richard Shelby (R-AL)
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)
• David Vitter (R-LA)

As Alan Grayson pointed out earlier this week, the last time the Republicans, the party of “Fiscal Responsibility”, forced the government to stop doing business, "Standard & Poor’s estimated that the 16-day federal shutdown in 2013 cost us $24 billion, and reduced fourth quarter 2013 Gross National Product growth by about 0.6%."

This time most Senate Republicans were feeling more like responsible adults. Alas, not so in the House, where the rot has spread to the majority of the GOP. The CR passed 277-151 because Boehner made a deal with Pelosi and she had every single Democrat, all 186 of them, on board. Only 91 Republicans voted yes; 151 Republicans voted to shut down the government, and not just the Terminally stupid ones like Steve King, Louie Gohmert, Daniel Webster, Jim Jordan, Jody Hice, Ted Yoho, Tim Huelskamp and Glenn Grothman, but also conservatives who try usually around election time to pass themselves off as  vaguely in touch with reality

How can you elect someone that ignores observable reality?

The Republican presidential candidates who failed to make the cut for the Aug. 6 prime-time debate repeated a number of past false and misleading claims, while adding some new ones that we hadn’t heard before:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the U.S. sends “$300 billion overseas to buy oil from people who hate our guts.” But that’s spending on all oil imports, including from Canada and Mexico.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal claimed a study proved “expanding Medicaid does not improve health care outcomes.” The study he cited measured only three health indicators over a two-year period, and even then found some positive benefits.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki said when he left office, “there were over 1 million fewer people on welfare in New York state than when I took office.” True, but that decrease was part of a national trend after President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare overhaul legislation.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum claimed that “almost all” immigrants in the past 20 years “are unskilled workers.” Not so. In 2010, 30 percent of working-age immigrants had a college degree while 28 percent lacked a high school diploma.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry claimed that under his tenure, and since the recession, Texas gained jobs while the rest of the country lost them. According to the job-growth measure used by most economists, the rest of the country gained 1.2 million jobs, while Texas gained the same.
Santorum also exaggerated in saying 74 percent of Americans lack a college degree. The number for those age 18 and older is 65 percent.
Jindal claimed President Obama said that “we don’t have leverage with China to get a better deal on Iran,” because the U.S. borrows money from China. Not exactly. Obama said economically cutting off the world’s largest banks, China and other countries would have consequences for the U.S.
The debate was held in Cleveland a few hours before the top 10 candidates took the stage.


Oil and Facts Don’t Mix

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the U.S. sends “$300 billion overseas to buy oil from people who hate our guts.” But that amount represents all spending on oil imports, including huge amounts from countries such as Canada and Mexico, which, according to polls, do not “hate our guts.”

Graham: When it comes to fossil fuels, we’re going to find more here and use less. Over time, we’re going to become energy independent. I am tired of sending $300 billion overseas to buy oil from people who hate our guts.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. imported a total of 3.37 billion barrels of oil in 2014. The average cost of all that oil was $89.56 per barrel, again according to the EIA. That means that the total import cost in 2014 was just under $302 billion, close to the figure Graham cited.

But that oil comes from a variety of countries, and some of them do not appear to hate the United States. In fact, the U.S. imported the most oil — about 1.24 billion barrels — from Canada. Our neighbor to the north is generally not considered an American enemy, and polling bears that out: The Pew Research Center found in its most recent survey that the U.S. has a 68 percent favorability rating in Canada. (It is also, of course, not “overseas.”)

Saudi Arabia is the second biggest provider of oil to the United States, sending 425 million barrels in 2014; Pew does not have data on favorability in this country. Mexico is third with 307 million barrels, and 66 percent of that country sees the U.S. in a positive light. Venezuela is next, at 287 million barrels; according to Pew, 51 percent of Venezuela has a favorable opinion of the U.S. In fifth place is Iraq at 132 million barrels, again with no data from Pew on favorability.

In sixth place is Russia, at 119 million barrels of oil. At last count, only 15 percent of Russians surveyed see the U.S. favorably. Even if we allow that Russia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia may “hate our guts,” that represents less than $61 billion in oil imports. The other three countries in the top six represent about $164 billion of the total expenditures, meaning the U.S. spends more money importing fossil fuels from countries that do not actually hate our guts.

Jindal Overplays Medicaid Study
Explaining his opposition to Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said a study in Oregon showed that “simply expanding Medicaid does not improve health care outcomes.” But the Oregon study wasn’t as sweeping as Jindal claimed — for one, the study found that Medicaid expansion lowered rates of depression. And other studies have shown more positive health outcomes from Medicaid expansion.

We looked at this issue in depth in a story we wrote in July titled, “Is Medicaid Bad for Your Health?” At the heart of the issue is a study called the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 2, 2013. The study took advantage of a Medicaid expansion in Oregon that was based on lottery drawings and compared data from 6,387 adults who were able to apply for Medicaid coverage with 5,842 adults who were not selected.

The authors of the study concluded that, “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.”

The first part of that conclusion provides the basis for Jindal’s statement, “There is a better way to provide health care. The Oregon study showed this. Simply expanding Medicaid does not improve health care outcomes.” But he leaves out the second part that talks about lowering rates of depression, for example.

And as we noted in an article about the study in 2013, it had some limitations. For example, the study measured only three physical health indicators — blood pressure, cholesterol and glycated hemoglobin levels (which measure diabetic blood sugar control) — and only over a two-year period. There could be other improvements that the study didn’t attempt to measure, or that could show up once patients are covered for longer than two years.

In addition, other studies have shown more positive results for Medicaid expansion. For example, a study published on May 6, 2014, in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that after a health care overhaul in Massachusetts, mortality rates were improved compared with those in other states. Another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012 compared several states that substantially expanded Medicaid (before the ACA) to neighboring states that did not expand Medicaid and concluded, “State Medicaid expansions to cover low-income adults were significantly associated with reduced mortality as well as improved coverage, access to care, and self-reported health.”

A 2013 report from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation looking at the breadth of academic study concluded that “[h]aving Medicaid is much better than being uninsured.”

Pataki’s Welfare Boast, in Context
Former New York Gov. George Pataki credited his policies as governor for a “cultural change” in New York, boasting that when he left office “there were over 1 million fewer people on welfare in New York state than when I took office.”

That’s true, but he failed to mention that the drop was part of a national trend after Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

Pataki twice mentioned that he cut the welfare rolls by more than 1 million. The first time was when one of the debate moderators, Bill Hemmer, asked Pataki whether it was a mistake for states to expand Medicaid as permitted under the Affordable Care Act.

Pataki, Aug. 6: But getting back to Martha’s question about how we end dependency, do we have to have a cultural change? The answer is no. And I know this, because when I ran for governor of New York, 1 in 11 of every man, woman, and child in the state of New York was on welfare. On welfare. Think about that.
And people said “you can’t win, you can’t change the culture.” But I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn’t work were better.
I changed that. We put in place mandatory workfare. But we allowed people to keep health care. We put in place child care support.
Hemmer: Yes or no, would you have expanded Obamacare in the state of New York, had you been governor at that time?
Pataki: No, it should be repealed. And by the way, when I left, there were over 1 million fewer people on welfare in New York state than when I took office.
Pataki was a three-term governor who served from Jan. 1, 1995, to Jan. 1, 2007. And, as we wrote when he entered the race, the average monthly number of welfare recipients in New York dropped 76 percent, from 1,264,063 in 1994 to 297,574 in 2006. That’s nearly 1 million fewer New Yorkers on welfare.

During that same time, however, the total number of welfare recipients in the U.S. dropped from 14,160,920 in calendar year 1994 to 4,148,498 in calendar year 2006, a decline of more than 10 million or 71 percent.

It’s true that the governor was an early supporter of overhauling the welfare laws, and he did make some changes as governor — including to Home Relief, a state welfare program for childless adults. But the far more sweeping changes that he proposed were rejected by the state Legislature and didn’t occur until the federal law passed.

Santorum’s Immigrant Claim
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also claimed that “almost all” immigrants in the past 20 years “are unskilled workers.” Not so.

Santorum: [A]fter 35 million people have come here over the last 20 years, almost all of whom are unskilled workers, flattening wages, creating horrible opportunity — a lack of opportunities for unskilled workers, we’re going to do something about reducing the level of immigration by 25 percent.
Santorum’s claim is contradicted by a 2011 study by the Brookings Institution, which found more immigrants of working age held college degrees than immigrants who never finished high school.

The study focused on the foreign-born ages 25 to 64 in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Neither the study nor Santorum made any distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and in fact Santorum spoke of reducing “immigration” in general by 25 percent.

The fact is, recent arrivals have been better educated than those who arrived here in earlier decades. The study, which was based on Census data in areas containing 85 percent of the immigrant population, stated:

Brookings, “The Geography of Immigrant Skills”: In 1980, just 19 percent of immigrants aged 25 to 64 held a bachelor’s degree, and nearly 40 percent had not completed high school. By 2010, 30 percent of working-age immigrants had at least a college degree and 28 percent lacked a high school diploma.
Perry’s Jobs Boast
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once again puffed up his state’s record on job creation, claiming that Texas had created 1.5 million jobs “during the worst economic time this country’s had since the great depression, while the rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs.” Actually, according to the job-growth measure used by most economists, and the appropriate time frame for Perry’s tenure, the rest of the country gained 1.2 million jobs, while Texas also gained 1.2 million.

Perry has used this statistic before, citing December 2007, the beginning of the Great Recession, as his starting point. But instead of using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ nonfarm payroll data  — the data BLS itself uses to calculate the monthly job growth figures it releases— Perry relies on BLS’ household survey data, a monthly survey of 60,000 households that’s used to calculate the unemployment rate. The nonfarm payroll data, meanwhile, is a monthly survey of about 550,000 business establishments that include millions of employees.

That’s the survey most economists prefer for job growth. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco called it “the more accurate employment indicator.”

Besides being smaller, the household survey counts as “employed” people who aren’t on a payroll, including unpaid family workers, the self-employed including day laborers, and those who are absent from work and not receiving pay.

Perry can only get a loss of jobs for the rest of the country by using the household survey data for December 2007 and December 2014. But Perry left office on Jan. 20, 2015, and both of BLS’ surveys are taken during the week or payroll period that includes the 12th of the month. So January 2015 is the correct end point for Perry’s time in office. Using that month, the rest of the country gained 325,000 jobs, not lost them, even using the household survey.

Texas certainly created a lot of jobs, using either measure. But using the preferred job growth measure, the state created 1.2 million jobs from December 2007 through January 2015. The rest of the country gained 1.2 million jobs in the same time period.

Perry could accurately say that his state created about the same number of jobs as the rest of the country under his governorship since the start of the recession.

Santorum’s College Degree Figure
Santorum exaggerated the number of Americans who lack a college degree.

Santorum: Americans are … looking for someone who’s going to grow the manufacturing sector of our economy, so those 74 percent of Americans who don’t have a college degree have a chance to rise again.
Actually, the country is better educated than Santorum lets on. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 the number of Americans 18 and older who lacked “a college degree” of any sort was 65 percent.

That counts those with two-year academic associate degrees, but not those with occupational associate degrees.

Those who lack at least a four-year bachelor’s degree or better totaled 71 percent, still less than Santorum’s figure. But of course that 18-and-over group includes a lot of students who are still in college and soon will have degrees.

Limiting the count to those 25 and older, Census puts the number who lack a bachelor’s degree or better at 68 percent, and those who don’t have any sort of college degree at just 62.5 percent.

Jindal on Obama on China
Jindal claimed President Obama said that “we don’t have leverage with China to get a better deal on Iran,” because the U.S. borrows money from China. But that is not exactly what Obama said.

Jindal: Yesterday, the president stunningly admitted this. He said, “We don’t have leverage with China to get a better deal on Iran because we need them to lend us money to continue operating our government.”
Here is Obama’s full comment from an Aug. 5 speech on the Iran nuclear deal at American University.

Obama, Aug. 5: As a result, those who say we can just walk away from this deal and maintain sanctions are selling a fantasy. Instead of strengthening our position as some have suggested, Congress’s rejection would almost certainly result in multilateral sanctions unraveling. If, as has also been suggested, we tried to maintain unilateral sanctions, beefen them up, we would be standing alone. We cannot dictate the foreign, economic and energy policies of every major power in the world.
In order to even try to do that, we would have to sanction, for example, some of the world’s largest banks. We’d have to cut off countries like China from the American financial system. And since they happen to be major purchasers of our debt, such actions could trigger severe disruptions in our own economy and, by the way, raise questions internationally about the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.
Obama was making the point that the U.S. cannot force China’s hand on the Iran nuclear deal simply by cutting China off economically. That would have consequences for the U.S. economy as well, he noted.

By the numbers

THE FIRST 170 DAYS OF THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS:
BY THE NUMBERS

170: June 24th was the 170th day of the 114th Congress

87:   Days the GOP House has been in session, including 18 pro-forma days in which the House gaveled in & out in a matter of minutes & no legislative business was completed

1.5 million: Number of private-sector jobs created or sustained by Export-Import Bank since 2007

4:   Times House Republicans voted against renewing the job-creating Export-Import Bank charter before it expires on June 30 (2015 Vote #116, 2015 Vote #126, 2015 Vote #371, 2015 Vote #379)

ZERO: GOP jobs bills passed in the 114th Congress

Just 25: Bills signed into law by President, including 2 that were unfinished business from the 113th Congress and 15 noncontroversial modest suspension bills

 $610.7 billion: Amount the deficit is increased by the 11 GOP permanent tax cut bills the GOP has already passed in the 114th Congress so far

100: Percent of House Republicans who voted against bringing up the student loan refinancing bill

7:   Additional times the House GOP has voted in the past 170 days to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act (2015 Vote #14, 2015 Vote #45, 2015 Vote #58, 2015 Vote #142, 2015 Vote #183, 2015 Vote #375, 2015 Vote #376)

60: Times House Republicans have voted to repeal or undermine the ACA since 2011

241: Republicans voted against bringing the Help Hire Our Heroes Act – a bill to provide training resources for veterans seeking good-paying jobs – to the floor for a vote.

99: Percent of House Republicans who voted to allow predatory lenders on military bases

$251 million: Cut to Amtrak funding passed by House Republican members of the Appropriations Committee one day after a deadly train accident in Philadelphia.

 100: Percent of Republicans twice voted against authorizing & funding the Positive Train Control Program which would have prevented the Amtrak derailment, one week after the accident.

 6: Times GOP voted against bringing a clean bill to fund DHS to a vote even as a shutdown loomed (2015 Vote #34, 2015 Vote #71, 2015 Vote #77, 2015 Vote #86, 2015 Vote #92, 2015 Vote #100)

 2:   Times GOP has blocked bigger paychecks and better infrastructure so far in the 114th Congress (2015 Vote #4, 2015 Vote #5)

2.9 million: Number of jobs that would be destroyed under the House GOP FY 2016 Budget

$2,000: More in taxes for middle-class American families with children greenlighted by the final FY 2016 Republican Budget

 $200,000: Average tax break for the wealthiest Americans making $1,000,000 or more greenlighted by the final FY 2016 Republican Budget

 $269 billion: Tax breaks House Republicans have passed for the wealthiest 5,400 estates - 0.2 percent of Americans - in the country.

99: Percent of House Republicans who voted against allowing a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act – a bill to ensure equal pay for equal work


You can’t make this stuff up. This is a big old middle finger to everyone but the top 2%. It’s a middle finger to families with kids, veterans, students, women… It’s a middle finger to America.

This is what a Republican-controlled Congress looks like. If anyone asks you what Republicans believe in, show them this. Policy is king.

So Mr. Bush has an uptick in approval ratings.....

George W. Bush is trending on the Internet for a surprising reason.
A CNN/ORC Poll that recently hit yielded some very good news for the former president; for the first time since the months after his reelection in 2004, more Americans have a favorable opinion of him (52 percent) than an unfavorable one (43 percent).

Before you guys start celebrating, it would be wise to remember that most former presidents become more popular in the years after their administrations have ended.
Both Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were widely disliked when their presidencies ended but are held in much higher regard today. More important, though, there is the simple fact that a president’s legacy is ultimately determined by whether Americans were doing worse or better after he left office.

How does Bush measure up?

1) He failed on September 11 2001
Who will disagree that the September 11 terrorist attacks were a defining moment of Bush’s presidency? As president, his foremost responsibility was bringing the mastermind behind those attacks—al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—to justice.

Bush failed in this mission. Instead of prioritizing hunting bin Laden down inPakistan, where he was suspected of hiding (and where Obama promised to get him during the 2008 presidential election), In Dec. of 2001, OBL was hiding in Tora Bora, when orders came doewn to Secial Forces troops to let OBL's former allies the Mujageddin guard the passes into Pakistan... Somehow he escaped. So to make up for it, we invaded Iraq, a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with September 11.
In the process,  He then went on to tell the press just six months after 9/11 that Bin Laden was not a top priority for his administration.
He significantly damaged America's credibility and standing overseas, and needlessly destabilized the Middle East in ways that we’re still seeing today. Including the creation and evolution of ISIS.

2) His policies caused the Great Recession
When Bush took office, he inherited a strong economy built by President Bill Clinton: unemployment had fallen from 7.3% to 4.2%, creating more than 22 million jobs in the process, and the median family income had increased by more than $6,000.
By comparison, the Bush presidency only managed to oversee the creation of  1.1 million jobs, by far the lowest of any president since Harry Truman, while income inequality expanded at staggering levels. The top 10 percent of American earners pulled in almost half of total wages, the most lopsided wealth distribution since 1917.
Although the economic stagnation became apparent very early in his first term, it didn’t turn into a full-fledged recession until the collapse of America’s financial industry in 2008, after which unemployment shot up from 6.2 percent in September (the month of the crash) to 7.7 percent in January (the end of Bush’s presidency). This was an average increase of 0.3% per month, finally ending in 2009 with a rate of over 10%!
When you Consider that Bush’s policy of Wall Street deregulation and hands off oversight was largely responsible for the reckless practices of the banks that brought the economy to its knees, it’s fair to say that this was one of the two most significant fiscal failures of his administration.
The other, of course, was his squandering of the Clinton budget surplus. When Clinton left office in January 2001, he bequeathed America with a projected $1.9 trillion surplus. By the time Bush handed the economy off to Obama in 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projected $1.9 trillion in debt, due largely to Bush’s $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, as well as the additional trillions spent on the aforementioned wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

3) His administration regressed American civil liberties to an unprecedented degree.
Peeling back the Bill of rights, creating "Free Speech zones" sometimes miles from the events being protested, brutally arresting journalists, vets and anyone not "Cleared" by th eparty attending speeches....
From torturing suspected terrorists in clear violation of the Geneva Convention to laying the groundwork for the NSA’s unprecedented domestic spying program, Bush’s post-9/11 legislative initiatives ultimately threatened American freedom more than Osama bin Laden’s schemes ever managed to do.

4) He bungled his response to Hurricane Katrina
Believe it or not, it isn’t that difficult for a president to effectively manage disaster relief after a hurricane: Lyndon Johnson famously mastered the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, while Barack Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy was so effective that it was erroneously credited for his reelection in 2012.
By contrast, Bush utterly failed when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast in 2005—a subsequent report by the House of Representatives found that his administration disregarded numerous warnings of the threat to New Orleans, did not execute emergency plans, and neglected to share information between different departments that could have saved lives.

5) When it came to one of the biggest civil rights issue of his time, he placed himself on the wrong side of history
When future historians look back at the early 21st century, there is little question that they will view the campaign for LGBT equality as one of the major civil rights movements of the era. Yet not only did Bush fail to advocate on behalf of the LGBT community (despite his vice president having a lesbian daughter and his party being chaired by a closeted gay man, Ken Mehlman, during his second term), but he actively exploited anti-gay bigotry during his reelection campaign in 2004. This was particularly the case in states like Ohio, where its pull among so-called “value voters” played a considerable role (alongside racially based voter suppression, caging and outright fraud) in Bush’s winning that state—and with it, the general election.

None of this means that George W. Bush is a terrible or evil human being, or even that he set out to cause harm to the nation he professes to love. At the same time, no bounce in his approval rating can overshadow the damage that he did while in office. More Americans may like Bush than dislike him right now, but when his legacy is ultimately appraised, the final verdict will not be a kind one.

Creationist still thinks World is 6000 Years old, even after finding 60 million year old fossil

Ahhh, nothing like dyed in the wool willful stupidity!

Imagine the situation of a confirmed creationist, secure enough in his comical delusions to put his money where his mouth is, actively supporting a "creation science museum" -- Canada's first, in Big Valley, Alberta (it opened in 2007), devoted to the "science" of the proposition that the earth is 6000 years old -- who while digging in a basement in Calgary stumbles across the fossilized remains of five fish a mere 60 million years old.


Calgary Sun caption: "An assemblage of fossilized fish was recently found during the excavation of a basement in a new development in northwest Calgary, Alta. Five fish were found in a block of sandstone in the Paskapoo Formation -- a roughly 60 million-year-old rock formation that underlies Calgary and much of the surrounding area. The discovery was made by Edgar Nernberg. Photo provided by the University of Calgary"

Actually, for Edgar Nernberg there doesn't appear to be any problem. The discovery "hasn't changed my mind," he's told the Calgary Sun. "We all have the same evidence, and it's just a matter of how you interpret it. There's no dates stamped on these things."

Which prompted this from the Washington Post's Rachel Feltman:
No sir, no dates. Just, you know, isotopic dating, basic geology, really shoddy stuff like that. To be fair, I'm not any more capable of figuring out when a particular fossil is from than Nernberg is. I'd be one sorry paleontologist, given the opportunity. I've never even found a fossil, so he's got me there. But the science of dating fossils is not shaky -- at least not on the order of tens of millions of years of error -- so this fossil and the rocks around it really do give new earth creationism the boot.

But this can go down as one of the best examples ever of why it's downright impossible to convince someone who's "opposed" to evolution that it's a basic fact: If you think the very tenets of science are misguided, pretty much any evidence presented to you can be written off as fabricated or misinterpreted.

Even if you dig that evidence up with your own hands.

Robert's proves that Citizens United is just wrong.

Chief Justice Roberts Accidentally Reveals Everything That’s Wrong With Citizens United In Four Sentences

A 5-4 Supreme Court held in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar that states may “prohibit judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting funds for their campaigns.

It was a small but symbolically important victory for supporters of campaign finance laws, as it showed that there was actually some limit on the Roberts Court’s willingness to strike down laws limiting the influence of money in politics.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion for the Court in Williams-Yulee is certainly better for campaign finance regulation than a decision striking down this limit on judicial candidates — had the case gone the other way, judges could have been given the right to solicit money from the very lawyers who practice before them. Yet Roberts also describes judges as if they are special snowflakes who must behave in a neutral and unbiased way that would simply be inappropriate for legislators, governors and presidents:

States may regulate judicial elections differently than they regulate political elections, because the role of judges differs from the role of politicians. Politicians are expected to be appropriately responsive to the preferences of their supporters. Indeed, such “responsiveness is key to the very concept of self-governance through elected officials.” The same is not true of judges. In deciding cases, a judge is not to follow the preferences of his supporters, or provide any special consideration to his campaign donors. A judge instead must “observe the utmost fairness,” striving to be “perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience.” As in White, therefore, our precedents applying the First Amendment to political elections have little bearing on the issues here.

Most Americans would undoubtedly agree that judges should not “follow the preferences” of their political supporters, as they would agree that judges should not “provide any special consideration to his campaign donors.” But the implication of the passage quoted above is that members of Congress, state lawmakers, governors and presidents should provide such consideration to their supporters and to their donors.

The President of the United States is the president of the entire United States. A member of Congress represents their entire constituency. Yet Roberts appears to believe that they should “follow the preferences” of their supporters and give “special consideration” to the disproportionately wealthy individuals who fund their election.


Seems legit.... :-/

The conservative lie and wealth protection

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excuses in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith nailed it. This rapaciousness is at the heart of everything a right-winger holds sacred. Just listen to Republican mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh ranting about how Obama's stimulus package is ruining initiative and punishing producers. He sees America as a place where it's every man for himself. We are not our brother's keepers (even though the Bible says we are and fundamentalist preachers pound the Bible at their congregations every week). And if businesses fail, workers get fired, families are foreclosed, people go bankrupt, and the nation falls into financial ruin...so what. It doesn't affect Rush and other wealthy Americans.
They have theirs; let others fend for themselves.

Who are these people Limbaugh calls "producers"?
 They're not the rank-and-file workers because he hates blue collar laborers, especially unionists.
They're not the middle class which nearly got legislated into oblivion by Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.
They're not the richest of the rich...most have inherited their wealth...or got lucky or have simply used their existing wealth to buy and sell enterprises and workers as if they were cattle; enriching themselves further at the expense of those workers, they have in fact produced nothing.

"Producers" is just an empty phrase used by the wealthy and their mouth pieces obfuscating the fact that all they are doing is trying to protect their own wealth.
 In fact, that is the central motivation of all conservatives--protect what I have--.
That's why the wealthy want those who do not posess wealth to remain uninformed, divided, without representation, diverted by gadgetry, and sedated by religion. It makes the masses more pliable. And the idea that conservatives have convinced themselves that they are in fact, temporarily embarrassed millionaires makes the delusion complete.

Yet in their heart of hearts, conservatives are evolutionists. They know it's a jungle out there and only the wealthy survive. It's always been dog-eat-dog and every man for himself in American conservative dogma.
That's its ultimate hypocrisy. The conservatives who claim God is at the center of the American dream are the same conservatives who practice Darwinism in their daily lives.

All while ignoring or simply refusing to acknowledge the help, the support and the infrastructure they enjoy from the community and the society they are pretending not to be a part of.