The 9 Stupidest Things Americans Believe

Obama's A Muslim

According to the Pew Research Center, 18% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Most likely, the same people also hate Muslims. Put it together, and there's a chance that one in five Americans hate our President because of his supposed religion.

Moon Landing Was A Hoax

A huge number of Americans believe that the moon landing was staged. Aside from the sheer stupidity of that, it raises a bigger question: If it was faked, how would Buzz Aldrin be bedding lady space groupie after space groupie if he hadn't actually been on the moon? He would not. Thus, real.

Sun Revolves Around The Earth

I know Americans have a tendency to be a bit self-involved, but this is a bit much. According to a Gallup poll in 1999, 18% believed that the earth was the center of the universe. On a side note, 3% said "no opinion." Those folks could not be bothered with such pedestrian quandaries.

Oh, and for those 18% who believe this, that picture is Galileo. That guy knew his shit.

Ghosts Are The Real Deal

One in three Americans believe in Ghosts. All Americans believe in Ghost. Both have no business existing.

Dinosaurs and Humans, BFFs

As of a couple years ago, nearly one-third of Texans believed that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth at the same time. Yup. Oh, and at least one Alaskan, as well.

Evolution? That's A Bit Of A Stretch

A 2004 study showed that 51% of Americans believed in Creationism. Over half of the people in this country thought humans just showed up one day and were ready for homeschooling.

Environmentalists Intentionally Caused The Oil Spill

So you know that oil spill that ruined the ocean, killed thousands of animals, and pretty much brought the country to a standstill? Environmentalists fault. It's so obvious, I can't believe only 10% believe this. To save what you love, you must sacrifice it. Those sick bastards.

The Existence of Aliens

It's an old study, but not much has changed since 1999 in regard our nation's knowledge of Alien life forms. And that's unfortunate, as 80% of Americans believe the country's keeping something under wraps in Roswell. Actually puts the rest of the list in perspective, doesn't it?

Fox News Most Trusted Channel In News

Over half are convinced of this. Well, after that aliens stat, you can't be that shocked.

Dana Loesch Speaks, Remarkably Does Not Shatter All Glass In Thousand-Mile Radius

Sometime back in the early 1990s, CNN left its standards at one of Ted Turner’s sheep ranches and has never bothered to so much as send out a couple of interns to bring them back. We can think of no other reason why the network ever employed fetid compost pile Dana Loesch as a commentator and still allows her the occasional guest spot. Your Wonkette has a history of falling for self-absorbed and somewhat dimwitted women, and even we would not go anywhere near Dana Loesch, who projects a cloud of toxic dimwittedness so severe we imagine entire fields of grass withering as she walks across them. Loesch is so unlikable that even the tragic orphans at Dead Breitbart’s Embalming Fluid Emporium fell out with her, and those dipshits love anyone to the right of your average banana republic commandante.
 
But there she was on Thursday, booked on Piers Morgan’s show to discuss gun control with, we shit you not, Grover Norquist and Van Jones. Why Van Jones keeps subjecting himself to debates with conservatives on CNN is a mystery that will perhaps one day be solved by a good psychiatrist or a swift kick to the nuts. Really, he can’t do better than this? And Grover “The Tax Man Cometh and His Right Early” Norquist is known for one thing, and that is the dogmatic enforcement of an anti-tax creed he thought up when he was twelve years old. He should not be given access to so much as a box of crayons, because he would eat them while complaining about stupid liberals who want to make him share his crayons with starving poor people. And yet there he was, in a broadcast studio, in front of a television camera, which someone had deliberately pointed in his direction in the hope of eliciting his opinion on issues affecting real live humans. READ MORE »

New Pope Already Pissing Off The Santorum Wing Of The Catholic Church

How is New Pope being different from Old Pope today? Well, a) he is neither a vampire nor a nazi. B) He’s refusing to live in the papal palace or wear the ruby slippers or have his chair above anybody else’s chair or even refer to himself as “pope.” And c) he is already pissing off the “traditionalists” in the Church who are stroking out because when he went to a youth prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of the poor (instead of washing priests‘ feet in the basilica, like a normal pope), he washed girl feet. (And Muslim feet.)
NEW POPE!!!! READ MORE »

Palin Rails Against Consultants, But Spent Millions On Them In 2012

TPM

Sarah Palin's super PAC released a web video earlier this week, drawing heavily from her speech at CPAC during which she took jabs at “the big consultants, the big money men, and the big bad media.” But over at The Daily Beast, columnist John Avlon points to SarahPAC's spending record during the last election cycle, which saw the former GOP vice presidential nominee's group shower consultants with millions.

"Seen through the lens of the invaluable Center for Responsive Politics, PalinPAC spent $5.1 million in the last election cycle (more than it raised in that time period, raising some questions about Palin’s claims of fiscal responsibility)," Avlon wrote. "But the real news comes when you look at how donors’ money was actually doled out: just $298,500 to candidates. The bulk of the rest of it, more than $4.8 million, went to—you guessed it—consultants."

GOP congressman uses slur to describe Sen. Ted Cruz

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska says he "meant no disrespect" by a term he used to describe Sen, Ted Cruz during a wide-ranging interview. 

In a statement Thursday, Young said that during an interview this week with KRBD Radio in Ketchikan, he used a term that was commonly used during his days growing up on a farm in Central California. The congressman says, in his words, "I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect."
Young used the term "wetback" to describe Sen Ted Cruz from Texas.

The congressman says he has "compassion and understanding" for Sen Ted Cruz and  "the hurdles he faced in obtaining citizenship." the country must tackle the issue of immigration reform.

Malicious Obstruction in the Senate

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Earlier this month, during one of his new across-the-aisle good-will tours, President Obama pleaded with Senate Republicans to ease up on their record number of filibusters of his nominees. He might as well have been talking to one of the statues in the Capitol. Republicans have made it clear that erecting hurdles for Mr. Obama is, if anything, their overriding legislative goal.

There is no historical precedent for the number of cabinet-level nominees that Republicans have blocked or delayed in the Obama administration. Chuck Hagel became the first defense secretary nominee ever filibustered. John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, was the subject of an epic filibuster by Senator Rand Paul. Kathleen Sebelius and John Bryson, the secretaries of health and human services and commerce, were subjected to 60-vote confirmation margins instead of simple majorities. Susan Rice surely would have been filibustered and thus was not nominated to be secretary of state.

Jacob Lew, the Treasury secretary, was barraged with 444 written questions, mostly from Republicans, more than the previous seven nominees for that position combined. Many were ridiculous and had nothing to do with Mr. Lew’s fitness for office, such as a demand to explain the Treasury’s social media policies, or questioning an infographic on the department’s blog eight months ago.

Gina McCarthy, the nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is being blocked by Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri until he gets the answers he wants on a local levee project. And Thomas Perez, nominated to be labor secretary, is being held up by Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, who is angry about the Justice Department’s enforcement of voting rights laws. By comparison, there were four filibusters of cabinet-level positions during George W. Bush’s two terms, and one under President Ronald Reagan.

There have also been several impediments to executive-branch nominees beneath the cabinet level, the most troubling being that of Richard Cordray, whom Mr. Obama has renominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Because the bureau cannot properly run without a full-time director, Republicans intend to nullify many of its powers by blocking Mr. Cordray for the second time.

Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees are also waiting for exceptionally long periods to be confirmed. The average wait for circuit and district judges under Mr. Obama has been 227 days, compared with 175 days under Mr. Bush. Last week, the Senate confirmed Richard Taranto as an appellate judge 484 days after his first nomination. (Republicans refused to confirm him in an election year.) The next appellate judge to come up, Patty Shwartz, has been waiting a year for a vote.

Last week, Caitlin Halligan, another appeals court nominee, had to withdraw from consideration after Republicans filibustered her for the second time, on the flimsy pretext that she was a legal activist. Republicans clearly don’t want any of Mr. Obama’s judges on the important United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to which she was nominated, and the president needs to be more aggressive about filling the four vacancies on the court.

Republicans clearly have no interest in dropping their favorite pastime, but Democrats could put a stop to this malicious behavior by changing the Senate rules and prohibiting, at long last, all filibusters on nominations.

 

Is That Sarah Palin’s Hand In Your Pocket Or Is She Just Happy To See You?

SarahPAC has a shiny new ad out about blah blah blah Sarah Palin is the warmest kindest most generous most important rogue the world has ever known, she and only she is in charge of deciding which lunatics will join the United States Senate, please send muneez. 

This is hilarious, because SarahPAC spent more than twice as much on consultants in the 2012 election cycle as it did on candidates. (Candidates received less than $300k of the $5 mill SarahPAC grifted from the doubtless aged and infirm.) You guys, that buys SO MUCH NORDSTROM. READ MORE »

Bill O’Reilly’s Gay-Marriage Evolution in 10 Quotes

New York Magazine

It seems to have surprised a lot of people that conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly doesn't think that arguments in favor of "traditional marriage" are very compelling. But as the following timeline shows, O'Reilly's views on gay marriage have been shifting, in fits and starts, for years now. Bill O'Reilly is America.

October 27, 2004: “I've been saying that all along, that if you open the door for gay marriage, then you have to have the polygamists and the triads and the commune people and everybody else, right?”

April 14, 2005: "We told you this would happen, if gay marriage is legalized, then much chaos would follow.”

June 5, 2006: “Traditionalists like me believe the USA has become strong because of its core values, the freedom, individual responsibility and institutions like traditional marriage, which foster common goals.”

July 10, 2006: “The gay marriage thing to me, I don't understand why it's so important for the secular progressives in this country, the people who want to change America fundamentally and every way, why this is the lead issue. The L.A. Times, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe. These people are going, 'Oh, my God, what are you doing? How can you not see the civil rights aspect of this?'"

September 25, 2006: “To this culture warrior, gay marriage is not a vital issue. I don't believe the republic will collapse if Larry marries Brendan. However, it is clear that most Americans want heterosexual marriage to maintain its special place in American society. And as long as gays are not penalized in the civil arena, I think the folks should make the call at the ballot box. Traditional marriage is widely seen as a social stabilizer, and I believe that is true."

January 18, 2009: “My tact is that you don't change the definition of marriage for one group, homosexuals, because you have to change it for all the groups. So you don't do it, particularly if people in California vote on it, don't want it, they think that the heterosexuality is a societal stabilizer.”

May 10, 2012: “Unlike abortion nobody gets hurt when gays marry but it does have deep implications for what kind of society we want to be. Therefore, individual states should decide the question.”

August 2, 2012: “It is not wrong or bigoted to believe American society is stronger and that the family unit is better served when marriage is between a man and a woman. It is also not wrong for homosexual Americans to want to get as much parity as they can.”

December 3, 2012: “I've got nothing against gay marriage, it's not my issue. All right, I want homosexual Americans to be happy and to pursue happiness.”

March 26, 2013: “The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That's where the compelling argument is. We're Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else. That is a compelling argument. And to deny that, you've got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn't been able to do anything but thump the bible .... I support civil unions I always have. All right, the gay marriage thing, I don't feel that strongly about it one way or the other."

Fox News Contributors Say Marriage Equality Would Criminalize Christianity

THINK PROGRESS

As the Supreme Court weighs the merits of allowing gay and lesbian Americans the freedom to marry, right-wing anti-equality advocates are cranking the fearmongering up to 11, claiming that a world of marriage equality is one that would functionally ban Christians from practicing their religion.
Two Fox News contributors, independently and in other outlets, made dire predictions along these lines. Todd Starnes, speaking on American Family Radio, argued that “persecution [of Christians] like we have never seen it” had “already started” as a consequence of the marriage equality movement:

STARNES: You know, it’s as if we’re second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage, or perhaps we are pro-life, and that means we’re somehow second-class citizens who don’t deserve to be in the public marketplace of ideas.
RIOS (HOST): Absolutely. In fact, it’ll be worse than that. You know there’s going to be punishment. There will be tremendous punishment. If gay marriage is embraced by the country, if the Supreme Court goes south this week in its hearings, we are in for – of course, we’re not going to hear about it until June – but we are in for persecution like we have never seen it.
STARNES: Well, it’s already started.

In reality, every piece of marriage equality legislation that’s been passed around country has included legal exemptions preventing clergymembers and religious institutions from being forced to provide marriage-related services to LGBT Americans. Indeed, as a recent a CAP report shows, these exemptions have become increasingly broad as marriage equality advances, suggesting more, not less, sensitivity to the views of religious opponents of same-sex marriage.
Another Fox News contributor, Erick Erickson, went further. Writing on RedState, a conservative blog that’s commonly read by Republican legislators, Erickson fantasized about a world where the United States government — with a Congress that is roughly 80 percent Christian — began terrorizing Christian institutions, shuttering Christian businesses for opposing marriage equality, and labeling Christians themselves criminals:

Any Christian who refuses to recognize that man wants to upend God’s order will have to be driven from the national conversation. They will be labeled bigots and ultimately criminals…Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.
Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening.

Erickson here is arguing for a broad-based license to discriminate against LGBT Americans. Other than the wedding case addressed above, Erickson’s examples aren’t situations where freedom of conscience or freedom to worship in the way your religion dictates are at stake. Rather, he’s asking that schools and businesses, two of society’s most basic institutions, be given carte blanche to discriminate against gay parents or patrons merely because they’re gay. It’s the difference between the freedom to be racist and the freedom to kick black people out of your store for being black — and there’s a reason why society protects the former but punishes the latter.

Scottish government ignores Donald Trump’s threats and approves windfarm

RAW STORY


Scottish ministers have given the go-ahead to an experimental offshore windfarm site near Aberdeen after ignoring Donald Trump’s angry threats of legal action to block the project.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the European offshore wind deployment centre (EOWDC) proposal, alleging the turbines will ruin the view from his £750m golf resort, which overlooks the North Sea and sits several kilometres north of the site’s boundary.

The billionaire property magnate again threatened to use his financial muscle to oppose the 11-turbine project in the courts using “every legal means” to defeat it. Despite recently announcing plans to build a second 18-hole golf course at his resort, he repeated his threat to put his entire project on hold because the windfarm threatened the financial viability of his resort.

In a statement, the developer attacked his former friend and ally Alex Salmond, the first minister. “This was a purely political decision,” Trump said.
“As dictated by Alex Salmond, a man whose obsession with obsolete wind technology will destroy the magnificence and beauty of Scotland. Likewise, tourism, Scotland’s biggest industry, will be ruined. We will spend whatever monies are necessary to see to it that these huge and unsightly industrial wind turbines are never constructed.

“All over the world they are being abandoned, but in Scotland they are being built. We will put our future plans in Aberdeen on hold, as will many others, until this ridiculous proposal is defeated. Likewise, we will be bringing a lawsuit within the allocated period of time to stop what will definitely be the destruction of Aberdeen and Scotland itself.”
Fergus Ewing, the Scottish energy minister, said the £230m project would be capable of generating up to 100MW of power, enough for nearly half of Aberdeen’s homes.

But he added that the project was chiefly designed to test and evaluate advanced new offshore wind power designs, potentially helping to find new breakthrough technologies. Scottish and UK ministers, who also support the project, believe it could be crucial to helping the UK exploit the £100bn offshore wind industry.
The 11 turbines, which have been reduced in number and location after objections from fisheries and aviation interests, are expected to be of different heights and designs. The project, owned by the Swedish power giant Vattenfall and a local business and university consortium, still needs marine consents and planning consent for an onshore sub-station.

Ewing said: “Offshore renewables represent a huge opportunity for Scotland; an opportunity to build up new industries and to deliver on our ambitious renewable energy and carbon reduction targets.
“The proposed European offshore wind deployment centre will give the industry the ability to test and demonstrate new technologies in order to accelerate its growth. [It] secures Aberdeen’s place as the energy capital of Europe.”

The scheme has been made subject to a series of fresh conditions, to protect defence and civil aviation radar systems, avoid a military firing range at Black Dog, on environmental management and on protecting shipping and fishing in the area.
Trump’s opposition to the project led to open hostilities between him and Salmond, who had originally been a prominent cheerleader for Trump’s golf resort and hotel development and played a crucial role in it securing planning approval.

Trump’s attacks on Salmond’s vigorous support for wind power have put the two men in direct conflict and also soured Trump’s relationships with some of his most influential supporters in Aberdeen.
Several major figures and institutions who supported Trump’s resort – the North Sea engineering millionaire Sir Ian Wood, Robert Gordon University and Aberdeenshire council – are also directly involved in the EOWDC project.

They believe it could substantially support Aberdeen’s attempts to benefit from the billions of pounds being spent on renewable energy investment, particularly as an alternative to North Sea oil and gas.
Iain Todd, a spokesman for the project, made this clear, stating: “The Scottish government’s most welcome approval for the EOWDC is extremely positive news for both Scotland and the UK’s offshore wind industry as it helps position Scotland, the UK and Europe at the global vanguard of the sector.

“The decision also confirms Aberdeen city and shire’s status as a world-class energy hub, bringing with it significant economic benefits which will be pivotal to ensuring the region’s long-term prosperity.”
Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “Offshore wind will be a huge part of our energy future and this scheme is a big step forward.
“Well done to the Scottish government for standing up to Donald Trump’s threats and bluster.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013

Fox Ignores Collapse Of Daily Caller's Menendez Smear

Media Matters for America

Fox News continues to ignore reports that undermine the Daily Caller smear -- promoted by Fox News -- that Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) patronized prostitutes on a trip to the Dominican Republic. On March 22, media outlets reported that the Daily Caller's original named source, Melanio Figueroa, alleged that the Daily Caller and other media outlets paid and pressured him to fabricate the accusations -- an allegation that Fox News has not covered.
The Washington Post's latest story on the allegations against Menendez reported:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

The lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as "Carlos," had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.
The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.

These revelations demonstrate Figueroa's lack of credibility and thus cast even more doubt on the Daily Caller's already-shaky story, as Figueroa was the only named source in their original story outlining the allegations. Responding to this latest Post story, along with other reports from the Post throwing doubt on the Caller's reporting, CNN media critic Howard Kurtz called the story "discredited" and said that the Daily Caller "owes the senators and its readers an apology."

A transcript search, including a search of the Nexis database, of Fox News programming on March 22 and of Fox's media criticism show Fox News Watch on March 23 shows no mention of Menendez. This continues a pattern of Fox covering the Daily Caller's allegations less and less as the credibility of the story continues to implode, even though the network covered the allegations in at least 20 segments after the initial report was made in November.

Tucker Carlson, who is a Fox contributor and editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller, has not defended his publication's smear of Menendez on the network since March 5, when he appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and called the Daily Caller reporting "straightforward, traditional journalism." He also said that his website's sources "received no money from anyone." Carlson has appeared on Fox News at least three times in the past two weeks -- as a guest on Special Report on March 11 and on America's Newsroom on March 13, and as guest host of Hannity on March 15. The Daily Caller's discredited allegations against Sen. Menendez were never mentioned during those appearances.

Fox's effort to cover up its contributor's floundering story, which Fox was previously happy to promote, raises new questions about Carlson's future relationship with the network.

The Time For Watered-Down And Effectively Meaningless Gun Laws Is Now

By Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)

Yesterday, I took immediate action in the ongoing gun control debate by removing from a proposed firearms bill a provision banning assault weapons, all but ensuring that such a restriction will not be signed into law. In taking this bold step, I have effectively ensured that millions of deadly, military-grade firearms—much like the type used in recent mass shootings in Tucson, Aurora, and Sandy Hook—will remain legal and easily accessible to all Americans.

But it isn’t enough. In spite of these bold measures, there is far more work to do if we are to enact regulations that achieve marginal, virtually nonexistent progress on gun control. And so today I say to my fellow senators: We must pass through a watered-down and ultimately meaningless package of so-called gun law reforms, and we must do so now.

The challenge, as it stands, is clear. Under our current laws, there exist virtually no rules preventing assault rifles and other deadly weapons that serve no legitimate purpose except to kill human beings from falling into the hands of anyone who wants them. And while it may not be politically convenient for them to do so, lawmakers must be willing to step up, band together, and go to work on a diluted, insubstantial bill that will do essentially nothing to address this problem. Moreover, once they’ve drafted such a bill, they must ensure it is torturously wrung through the Congressional legislative process until it bears virtually no resemblance to the law that was initially envisioned.
Now, ratifying such a useless piece of legislation will not be easy. With the NRA and other special interest groups standing in stark opposition to gun control reforms, it will be up to Congress to stick to its convictions and draft a comprehensive bill designed to put a stop to the sales of assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and other killing implements, and then completely neuter that draft into an insubstantial husk that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

After all, a majority of Americans—not to mention the President of the United States himself—have voiced their support of comprehensive gun reform measures, and so it is up to our elected officials to take the most hesitant measures possible, provided such measures won’t risk angering these lawmakers’ constituents and won’t possibly diminish their reelection prospects or, you know, alienate corporate America in any way whatsoever.
The people of this country deserve no less.

Remember that the stakes here could not be any higher. It was only three months ago that we learned of the senseless murders of dozens of Americans—including 20 children—in Newtown, Connecticut, a massacre made possible by the shooter’s free access to the very same weapons we today must make a half-hearted effort to ban before ultimately doing nothing of any lasting value. We owe it to these children, and all other children, to immediately pass through a futile law that does nothing to remove them from danger, so that we can look them in the eye and say, “We barely sort of fought for you.”
And once we do pass such a weak, impotent, piece-of-shit, garbage, why-did-we-even-bother law, further challenges await for us to buckle at the first sight of. Our gun regulations today contain numerous flaws and oversights that make deadly weapons available to some of society’s most dangerous and mentally unhinged individuals. Until comprehensive background checks, mandatory mental health screenings, and an end to the gun show loophole are half-heartedly proposed and then immediately discarded at the merest glimpse of a political obstacle, our laughably ineffective work will not be done.

But such future challenges are talk for another day. Today, it is up to us, as duly elected representatives of the American people, to put forth a historically insignificant bill that accomplishes nothing and makes the people of this country no safer, while also conclusively demonstrating to the NRA that even Congress is incapable of stopping them. That’s the kind of legislation we must pass through into law.
Assuming it even makes it out of the Senate, that is.  

Magic Johnson: ‘ObamaCare is working’

The Hill

Hall of Fame basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson spoke out on behalf of President Obama’s healthcare law on Monday.
“ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals. It is working,” he said on MSNBC.

Johnson was speaking on "NOW with Alex Wagner" about the NCAA basketball tournament, but he veered into politics at the end of the segment, lauding conservative Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) decision to accept the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

“I’m glad that Gov. Scott down in Florida accepted ObamaCare because it will work,” he said.

In the early '90s, Johnson retired from the NBA after announcing he tested positive for HIV. He has since worked to raise awareness of the disease and partnered with a number of healthcare groups on the issue.

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey

The New Pope Reinforces Obama Doctrine And Politics For The Most Part While Putting The Republicans On Notice To Fundamentally Change Their Policies Or Face Marginalization

By Dr Wumi Akintide

 

The Republicans, much to their own peril, continuously thrash and denigrate President Obama because they are just too dumb to appreciate that God is clearly on the man’s side. The more they try to humiliate the President, the more they rubbish themselves and their future. Like the new Pope President Obama has recorded many a first in his life as a child of Destiny.


  He became the first American President to receive a Nobel Peace award within his very first year in office. He became the first President to sign into Law the first affordable Health Care Reform Law that many of his predecessors in that office have tried to pass but failed. On his very first visit to the State of Israel he has earned the highest honor the country could offer to any one for his leadership and commitment to Israel while at the same time speaking the truth to power in Israel and Palestine like no other President before him.


I will be the first to admit that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are both good at blackmailing each other for political advantage. They both have a history of misleading the nation for their own comfort but the Republicans are particularly good at it if you remember how they tried to impeach Bill Clinton who has now turned out in retrospect to be one of the greatest and smartest Presidents of the 21st century, given his track record in office. If the man is allowed by the Constitution to run for office a third time, he would win. He is looming larger than life everyday as Americans look back on his time in office and what he was up against. Like Obama and the new Pope Bill Clinton was in office to make a difference and he did without any question.


The same Republican Party that had led America and arguably the whole world to a very costly but needless war in Iraq based on cheap propaganda and false pretenses are again pressurizing Obama to intervene in Syria. They forget that it is easier to start a war than to end it. If America must learn the right lessons from this cold truth, they would have realized by now that the Republicans have been doing their worse to rubbish Obama despite his performance in office. I take off my hat for American voters for rejecting McCain or Romney both of whom would surely have led America to another  war because of their  conviction that America has to remain the police man of the world, even if it means fighting a dumb war that has a potential to ruin the American economy while sending American soldiers to die for nothing. With close to 4,500 American soldiers lost in Iraq, more than 108,000 Iraqis dead and 2.2 trillion Dollars squandered. It was time for America to put the Republicans on notice to desist from their war mongering inclinations and leave Obama alone.


If the Republicans have been following Obama’s rise to power as carefully as many of us do, they would have realized by now that they are fighting God like I said before. That is why they are jumping from frying pan to fire, so to speak, in all of their calculated efforts to  rubbish Obama as illegitimate and undeserving of the highest office in the country because he is black.  Obama was so underrated and written off as a fluke in American Politics who would fade away or just unravel within his first 2 years in office. Some of the Republicans led by their ranking member in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell actually predicted his highest priority was to make Obama a one term President. He forgot that man proposes but God disposes Mitch could end up becoming the ultimate victim of his own prediction when he gets deflated, humiliated and defeated in the next election. 

The Republicans have learnt nothing from their losses in 2 consecutive presidential elections and they totally misunderstand their slight majority in the lower House in 2011 as a mandate. Their draconian approach to building Rome in a day was rejected by the voters who chose Obama’s more gradual and balanced approach to solving the problems of America because the nation cannot stand still.
The Republicans have fumbled by believing they could paralyze Obama’s presidency by just saying no to everything Obama supports even when it is far superior to their own position.  It has become their past time to continuously and relentlessly block Obama using their small majority in the lower House of Congress even though they lost the popular vote by over a million votes to the Democrats in the last congressional election. 

Their flawed candidate, Mitt Romney had lost to Obama by several millions of votes in the popular vote and by what I call a landslide in the Electoral College computation despite all of the efforts made by some Republican Governors in states like Florida and Wisconsin to suppress and subvert Democracy by making it that much harder for Blacks, Hispanics and Latinos to vote. Obama’s margin of victory in that election would have been predictably higher, If the Republicans had maintained a level playing field.


Mitt Romney was so naïve to believe he was going to win because he was counting on false and self-serving opinions polls put out by their evil genius named Karl Rove and Dick Morris to give the Republicans and Mr. Romney a false sense of victory on the night of the elections. They got Donald Trump who has become the butt of every joke across to start fooling himself by questioning the legitimacy of Obama as President and by claiming Obama was not born in America. 

It was disingenuous of Donald Trump, a filthy rich half illiterate to start suggesting to anyone who will listen that Obama gained admission to Columbia and Harvard by default. He deliberately chose to overlook the fact that Obama’s father was a Ph.D holder in Economics from Harvard while his mother had a Ph.D in Anthropology. Obama himself was the first black President of the reputable Harvard Review and he got married to Michelle one of the smartest first ladies who is also a product of Princeton and Harvard.


We told the Republicans they were going to lose the last election but they dismissed our predictions with the wave of the hands believing that monetary advantage was going to put Obama and the Democrats at a huge disadvantage when the rubber meets the road but they miscalculated very badly as Obama succeeded in raising more money from individual donations across the country to remain competitive with Romney. The Republicans got everything wrong in their preparations for that election and their analysis of what went wrong and how those mistakes could be corrected before the next mid- term election. They recently organized a C-PAC summit to do an autopsy of their mistakes. 

 One can tell from most of their guest speakers at that gathering and what they all said that the party is still out of touch and pretty much in total disarray. Their failure to invite the great Governor of New Jersey clearly tells me they are deceiving themselves.
They totally forgot that America of today is totally different from the America they thought they knew. The Republicans are still on the wrong side of all the issues that would determine the outcome of future elections nation-wide and more so in states in the South which used to be the exclusive preserve of the Republicans in years gone by. The demographics have totally changed turning the minorities into the silent majority. 


The Republican party has become the proverbial Tower of Babel where the builders were so confused that they totally misunderstood themselves and public sentiments of the great majority of voters in America.  With some help from the Democrats, the Republicans have boxed them into a corner projecting themselves as advocates for the filthy- rich and the well-to-do in America. It is a stigma they cannot easily shake regardless of how much they try. Their claim to helping the poor, the elderly and the underprivileged and the middle class in the American society clearly sound hollow when you break down the Ryan budget they have endorsed, and how it plans to cut off all the safety-net programs for the poor in America.


Their ultimate goal to repeal the affordable health care reform Law speaks volumes on how much they really care about the poor in America. Their reluctance to reform the gun control laws and their support for the NRA position on that law has totally exposed their hypocrisy and their refusal to recognize the civil rights of gays and lesbians may have put them on the opposite side to the hope and aspirations of the new Pope whose position is far much closer to the position canvassed by President Obama for the most part.


The most stunning development I wish to underscore in this article is the unfolding gravitas of Obama as he continues to make history in America.  His endorsement as a strong leader by the most credible Republican Governor in the country following Obama’s masterful handling of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath has put the Republicans in a double bind. I am talking of Chris Christie of New Jersey. It was an endorsement that totally debunked the projection by the Republicans that Obama was a weak leader and the development seems to have provided  a contrast in the minds of voters across the board on the stark differences between Obama and George Bush in the way and manner the two leaders responded to crisis and emergencies such as Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.


The new Pope’s position on the poor in the society and his definition of justice and fair play around the world has more or less amplified or reinforced the Obama doctrine in a way that should give the Republicans a pause as they try to rebrand their party and whitewash their lousy image and central message. The recent trip of Obama to Israel has finally put to rest the indictment by the Republicans that Obama was not a dependable friend of Israel. 


Natanyahu, in a final press conference with President Obama following the state visit, had very nice things to say about Obama declaring his confidence in the President and describing his support for Israel as rock-solid and second to none.
Even though the new Pope and Obama may not agree on everything, I strongly believe they are natural allies in their central message and quest for justice and peace around the world.
    I rest my case.

 

Pink Floyd - Welcome To The Machine

Pink Floyd - Money

Tea Party group boycotting Fox News for becoming ‘too liberal’

RAW STORY

A number of Tea Party activists are turning their back on Fox News, claiming the news network is becoming too liberal. According to The Daily Beast, disgruntled conservatives are boycotting the right-leaning news network, their second such action.

“Particularly after the election, Fox keeps turning to the left,” said 70-year-old Stan Hjerlied to the Beast. After the network dropped its obsessive focus on the raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes gave an interview in which he said the Republican Party needs to retool its message on immigration, Hjerlied believes that “we are really losing our only conservative network.”

The current boycott was in its third day Saturday, the second such action by the Tea Party this month. Organizers claim that by tuning out, they were able to cost the network 20 percent of its audience in the previous boycott, a claim the Daily Beast dismissed.

According to the Beast’s David Freedlander, “A Daily Beast analysis of the same data showed that the boycott had little effect.”

Nonetheless, the boycotters, led by Kathy Amidon of Nashville, TN, insist that they are having an effect on Fox’s coverage.

“We have seen FOX suddenly get very loud about Benghazi after the 1st boycott, but conservatives are conservative because they are not stupid,” reads the boycott website, Benghazi-Truth. “We recognize, easily, loud noise which is low on substance. In other words, by whining loudly about Benghazi without the kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting that brought down Nixon over Watergate, what we are seeing from FOX IMO is smoke and mirrors; a trick, to fool us into dutifully genuflecting at their alter [sic] of their arrogant hosts who throw us crumbs with one hand while insulting us with the other. If we want FOX to get serious, we’re going to have to keep hitting them hard. And that is just exactly what we’re going to do.”

One boycotter, former New Hampshire state legislator Kevin Avard, said that he finds it difficult to go without his daily dose of right-wing commentary. “I am having withdrawal. I do like Fox News. I have been going to CNN, and to Headline News just to get some kind of fix. I usually probably only watch them once or twice a year.”

Hjerlied, on the other hand, is staying within familiar ideological waters during the 4-day boycott, which began Thursday and ends on Sunday morning.

“If I want news, I go to Breitbart News and Drudge and I can find all the news I need, very quickly,” he said, noting that since the first boycott, he has all but “kicked” the Fox News “habit” for good. “I used to have it on all day long, and I probably watched maybe six hours last week,” he said. “The more I looked at it, I have come to the conclusion that Fox is not as fair and balanced as I thought. They shade the truth also.”

Boycotters have listed their agenda, that Fox become “the right-wing CBS News: to break stories, to break information, and to do what news organizations have always done with such stories: break politicians.” They have also demanded that the network feature ”at least one segment on Benghazi every night on two of its prime-time shows; that Fox similarly devote investigative resources to discovering the truth of Obama’s birth certificate; and that the network cease striving to be ‘fair and balanced.’”

“We need Fox to turn right,” Hjerlied said. “We think this is a coverup and Fox is aiding and abetting it. This is the way Hitler started taking over Germany, by managing and manipulating the news media.”

Dominican Lawyer Alleges Daily Caller Offered Money For Menendez Story

TPM

After claims from anonymous escorts and then their apparently sudden retractions — plus mysterious websites, secret tipsters, and political partisans — you’d think the Robert Menendez prostitution allegations story couldn’t possibly get any weirder. And yet it just has.

A Dominican lawyer who has been at the center of the story all along is now saying that four media outlets, including conservative website The Daily Caller, asked him to help find women to lie and say they had been paid to have sex with the Democratic senator from New Jersey. This comes just weeks after the same lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, denied orchestrating the prostitution allegations. 

According to Jose Antonio Polanco, the district attorney for the La Romana region in the Dominican Republic, Figueroa told investigators this week that Telemundo, Univision, CNN Espanol, and The Daily Caller enlisted him to help make the video with the young women who made the claims. Polanco’s remarks were broadcast in a Univision news segment put online early Friday. 

Furthermore, Polanco said, Figueroa claimed a man named “Carlos,” who said he worked for The Daily Caller, went to the Dominican Republic and offered Figueroa $5,000 for his assistance. Figueroa then claimed to have contacted a second lawyer, Miguel Galvan, who served as a middleman between Figueroa and the women who appeared in the video interviews. (Earlier this month, Galvan said in a affidavit that he had been deceived by Figueroa.) In its original story about the allegations in November, The Daily Caller reported that Figueroa was the women’s attorney, and that he was present during the interviews with the young women.

Every outlet named by Figueroa has denied the accusations. Asked on camera by Univision who from that network had contacted him, Figueroa said he could not remember. The Daily Caller, for its part, published a story reporting Figueroa’s claims, and then refuting them.
“It seems clear to me Figueroa is under pressure to change his story,” Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson said in a statement to his own website. “What I know for certain is this claim is a lie. The Daily Caller never paid anyone, was never asked to pay anyone and of course never would pay anyone for this story.”

The Daily Caller said no one by the name “Carlos” ever went to the Dominican Republic on the website’s behalf.

Pat Robertson warns of ‘scamsters in religious garb quoting the Bible’

RAW STORY

Just two days after Pat Robertson encouraged bankrupt families to give him “just $20 a month,” the televangelist is now alerting viewers to beware of “scamsters in religious garb quoting the Bible.”
Robertson offered the warning on Tuesday after a 700 Club report about the Profitable Sunrise pyramid investment scheme that lured people in with references to religious scriptures.

“Beware of these scamsters, especially scamsters in religious garb quoting the Bible,” the TV preacher said. “I mean, run from them. They’re all over the place.”
Right Wing Watch noted that the CBN ministry could be in “deep trouble” if “viewers actually followed Robertson’s advice.”

During his Monday broadcast, the network had aired a segment about a couple who continued to donate money to CBN even after declaring bankruptcy and selling their house.
“They were faithful,” Robertson opined at the conclusion of the report. “Listen, there is no way you can out give God. You can’t do it. And that which is given to him will come back 30, 60 and 100 fold.”

“We encourage you to join the 700 Club… It’s just $20 a month. And if all of us do it together, it gets to be millions and millions and millions of dollars!”

Drivers endure high gas prices despite U.S. oil boom

Associated Press

The U.S. is increasing its oil production faster than ever, and American drivers are guzzling less gas. But you'd never know it from the price at the pump.

The national average price of gasoline is $3.69 per gallon and forecast to creep higher, possibly approaching $4 by May.

"I just don't get it," says Steve Laffoon, a part-time mental health worker, who recently paid $3.59 per gallon to fill up in St. Louis.

U.S. oil output rose 14 percent to 6.5 million barrels per day last year - a record increase. By 2020, the nation is forecast to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest crude oil producer. At the same time, U.S. gasoline demand has fallen to 8.7 million barrels a day, its lowest level since 2001, as people switch to more fuel-efficient cars...............

Today's New York Daily News cover

Republicans can’t tell fact from fiction

RAW STORY

In the hyper-fast modern media world, it is easy to make a mistake. Social media platforms like Twitter are full of fake accounts, rumours and outright lies. Emails, Facebook and the emergence of a million blogs mean news, or more often “news”, travels fast and demands quick decisions and little verification.

When it comes to failing to tell the difference between reality and fiction, it seems the Republican party has a particular problem. Take what happened over the weekend when Young Republican national policy chairman Jason Whitman took umbrage that Will McAvoy, the news anchor for top cable channel ACN, appeared to be displaying a double standard about conservative icon Sarah Palin. McAvoy had tweeted:

“When will the media stop talking about the politically irrelevant Sarah Palin at CPAC? I’m devoting the hour to that topic tonight!” — Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoy_ACN) March 16, 2013
Whitman was outraged and fired back: “It’s odd that @WillMcAvoy_ACN is dedicating an entire hour of his show to “politically irrelevant” @SarahPalinUSA”.

Of course, as any avid viewer of HBO’s The Newsroom understands neither McAvoy nor ACN exists because they are fictional creations of Aaron Sorkin’s hit television show and the Twitter account was a parody. Oops! But that mistake pales with what happened when Daily News reporter Dan Friedman joked with a Republican contact about CIA nominee Chuck Hagel. Friedman had asked his source if groups like “Friends of Hamas” or “The Junior League of Hezbollah” had been paying Hagel speaking fees. Both names were invented jokes and Friedman was being sarcastic. But later he was stunned when a story about Friends of Hamas – citing Republican sources – popped up on conservative website Breitbart.com.

Soon enough former GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee opined that: “…rumors of Chuck Hagel’s having received funds from Friends of Hamas,” would, if true, “disqualify him”. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul called it “concerning”.

Oh dear. Of course, no political movement or ideology or newspaper is immune from this. I do it. This newspaper has done it. All sides can make mistakes, believe the unbelievable out of a simple desire for to it to be true and only search out information that reinforces opinions already held. But the GOP has more form than most and it goes way back. After all, in 2004, a senior Republican source – widely assumed to be Karl Rove – told New York Times magazine of a lack of respect for the “reality-based community”. The source explained: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

That attitude explains a lot about the disconnect between the extremes of the GOP and the world as experienced by most Americans. It is an attitude reinforced by a vast ecosystem of conservative media in the form of blogs, books and radio shows – and, of course Fox News – that allows the right-wing to create its own alternative world where outlandish opinions are common place.

At the conservative gathering CPAC last week the enormity of this media world was remarkable. The hall was packed with talk radio shows, conservative publishers and authors signing their latest books, many of which were bestsellers. This is a world where it is seriously believed that the United Nations is trying to take over the US, and Obama is a Kenyan socialist, an Islamist, a Marxist or the biological son of communist-sympathiser Frank Marshall Davis. This is a world where Obama wants to take away all guns, where he has dictatorial powers worthy of an emperor and where the US media is a liberal conspiracy pushing abortions and being gay. This is the world where Glenn Beck, former Fox TV host turned popular publisher of The Blaze website, is hugely powerful and shock jock Rush Limbaugh is king.

Nothing of its kind exists to the same degree on the left, despite the recent best propagandistic efforts of MSNBC. Limbaugh is a man who can bring GOP politicians down if he wants. If they stray from orthodoxy, he can bring them back into line with some vitriol on his show. The words of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, or even New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, do not carry anything near the same weight with Democrats.

No wonder some GOP members cannot tell fact from fiction. This is a party whose right-wing is gripped in the embrace of its own media and vice versa. They feed off each other, like a snake eternally eating its own tail. For them the centrist Obama, who takes huge donations from Goldman Sachs and is a national security hardliner, is a radical socialist. America’s booming stock market is in fact a state-run economy barely worthy of being called a Soviet Republic. It is where the mainstream media is a vast leftist conspiracy, rather than a bland purveyor of “he said, she said” news stories. It is an America on the verge of being forced to surrender all its guns, rather than actually owning 300m of them.

The every day reality of America, a country with very real problems (none of which involve a Marxist in the White House), does not intrude into the right’s self-reinforcing symbiotic relationship. It does not need to. No wonder some in the GOP think Will McAvoy is real. Or that Friends of Hamas pays cash to Chuck Hagel. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013

monty python - fish dance

No charges filed against man who punched Fox News contributor on video

RAW STORY

Prosecutors in Michigan will not pursue assault charges stemming from the December 2012 encounter between Fox News contributor Stephen Crowder and union demonstrators.
The Lansing State Journal reported on Tuesday that Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III decided not to pursue a case after watching unedited video of Crowder’s appearance at a protest against right-to-work legislation, which culminated in Crowder getting punched in the face.

Crowder filed a police report and claimed he was assaulted, saying in interviews that he was “beat down” and that protesters “literally would have killed me where I stood if I defended myself.” He also published an edited version of the confrontation online.

But after watching both that video and a longer, unedited account of the incident as aired on Current TV, Dunnings said, “It’s pretty clear the person that they wanted to charge was acting in self-defense.” In the longer video, the man who punched Crowder was pushed by an unseen person before striking him, giving the encounter a different context.

“I’m not holding that against him, but why would they provide the edited video?” Dunnings said. “The longer video clearly shows the guy got pushed down and came up swinging.”