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Saturday, May 31, 2014

"Let’s get politics out of potatoes, and potatoes on the plates of Americans ..."

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The politics of potatoes is nonsensical
May 30, 2014

In the past, tomatoes (a vegetable-like fruit) — played a role in American politics. They were tossed, usually when rotten, at politicians who had fallen out of favor.

Those days are long gone, but fruits and vegetables are yet again involved with politics. In this case, it’s America’s most consumed vegetable — the potato — that’s at the center of a political skirmish.

Four years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture removed white potatoes from its list of foods approved in the WIC program, which provides nutrition for low-income pregnant women, infants and children under the age of 5. The reason given for the banning of potatoes was that kids already eat enough starch and need other fruits and vegetables.

Well, Big Potato (seriously, that’s the term used by potato haters) is not standing for it. The potato industry has rallied support in Congress to make it possible for potatoes to be on the menu for families in the WIC program.

Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Washington state Democrats, have sided with spud lovers. They aren’t alone. Big Potato has support from a bipartisan group of 20 senators. The lawmakers want to see white potatoes included in the list of approved WIC foods.

While these senators are all from spud-producing states, their stand make sense.

Potatoes provide needed nutrition and are not unhealthy when they are consumed in moderation. Frankly, it’s generally not the potatoes responsible for unhealthy meals — it’s being deep-fat-fried or being slathered with butter, sour cream or bacon bits.

And even then, eating potatoes isn’t necessarily unhealthy in moderation.

Oddly, WIC policy does allow some white potatoes, those purchased from farmers’ markets.

“For whatever reason, over the last several years potatoes have been demonized by some folks that should really know better,” said Frank Muir, the president of the Idaho Potato Commission. “When they make a conclusion saying that people are already eating enough potatoes, that’s not science-based, that’s opinion.”

And it’s the politics of fruits and vegetables that’s behind this nonsense. States that have stakes in other fruits and vegetables are looking to boost sales. Government programs, funded with approval of politicians, are a great place to make inroads.

It’s not much different from pushing the airplane industry, which Washington’s two senators do — and do well.

Let’s get politics out of potatoes, and potatoes on the plates of Americans with the topping of their choice (in moderation, of course).
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"... the Koch brothers and the utility monopolies HATE ..." solar panels!

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Koch brothers demand more
By Jim Hightower, May 29, 2014

Hypothetical conundrums can provide some valuable learning experiences for students of corporate management and ethics, so let’s study one.

Suppose you’re a corporate chieftain who’s an adamant acolyte of Ayn Randian, free-enterprise fundamentalism, despising government regulation, compulsory taxation and government intervention in the purity of the holy marketplace. But – whoopsie daisy – suddenly a new competitor to your old-line product pops up, and more and more of your customers are switching to the new alternative. 

Conundrum! You’re being out-competed, so do you try to compete better, just fall on the sword of your free enterprise principles ... or what? If you’re the reigning multibillionaire princes of anti-government extremism, you jettison your silly principles and go straight to “what.”

This is not just a hypothetical conundrum, you see, but a real one faced by the notorious Koch brothers, the dirty fossil fuel duo that feels threatened by the steady increase in the number of middle-class families who’re putting solar panels on their roofs. Not only is this free, non-polluting sun energy slashing families’ utility bills, but these families can also make a little money from it. Today’s efficient solar cells can produce more electricity than a home needs, and 43 states allow these rooftop energy producers to sell their excess production back to the grid. It’s free enterprise at its most free and enterprising best! So, naturally, the Koch brothers and the utility monopolies HATE it. 

Thus we see these old-power behemoths are tossing their Ayn Rand books and Libertarian purity overboard, and – here comes the “what” – they want states to tax homeowners as punishment for becoming innovative energy producers. 

Lest you think that state legislators couldn’t possibly sink so low as to punish their citizens for doing the right thing by participating in these sellback programs that the states themselves are promoting, think again. In April, the good folks of Oklahoma were socked with a surprise from their supposedly conservative state officials.

It seems that thousands of Sooners have been putting solar panels on their homes and taking part in sellback programs. To reward such common sense and socially beneficial energy innovation, the state’s Republican-controlled government slapped a new “fee” – actually, a tax – on the bills of those who convert from grid takers to grid producers in the future.

This crude slap in the face came with no advance notice, no public hearings and no legislative debate. “It just appeared out of nowhere,” said one local solar business owner.

But this was not from “nowhere.” It came from the inside pocket of a secretive corporate front group called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. In exchange for getting millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, utilities and other dirty-energy interests, ALEC is peddling a cookie-cutter bill from state-to-state that stops responsible homeowners from switching to solar by taxing the energy they produce. ALEC even adds insult to the injury its Koch-headed backers are doing by calling such homeowners “freeriders on the system.”

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who was in on this despicable sneak attack from the start, had her ego stroked by the Koch-financed front group last year. ALEC presented its “Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award” to Fallin for her “record of advancing ... free markets ... and individual liberty.”

Now we know what the Koch-ALEC complex means by “free markets” and “liberty.” They mean that corporate energy interests should be free to stifle our individual liberty. That’s not the American way, but it is the corporate way. Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed to have his name attached to anything that this cabal of corporate and governmental Kleptocrats come up with. As Lily Tomlin tells us, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”
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The foundations of religion are shaky. The religious "tell us that we need religion to be moral, but then ask us, openly and explicitly and without any apparent shame, to lie." But, but, but.... isn't lying immoral?

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Comment on article: It is interesting to me how fragile the whole structure of religion seems to be in most of these exchanges.  In spite of repeated mantras of the strength of religion and belief in God a lot of religious people seem to respond with anger and aggression in response to those who express their unbelief.  Real strength and stability would not feel the need to defend itself by a mere refusal to participate.  As I have heard more than once, people are never so dangerous as when they are defending their God.  This has been proven true continually in human history.
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Christianity’s faith-based freakout: Why atheism makes believers so uncomfortable

Rather than respecting the right of atheists to disbelieve, christians are constantly forcing them to fake it

By Greta Christina, April 28, 2014

Why do so many religious believers want atheists to lie about our atheism?

It seems backward. Believers are always telling atheists that we need religion for morality; that we have to believe because without religion, people would have no reason not to murder and steal and lie. And yet, all too often, they ask us to lie. When atheists come out of the closet and tell the people in our lives that we don’t believe in God, all too often the reaction is to try to shove us back in.

In some cases, they simply want us to keep our mouths shut: when the topic of religion comes up, they want us to tell the lie of omission. But much of the time, they actually ask us to lie outright. They ask us to lie to other family members. They ask us to attend church or other religious services. They sometimes even ask us to perform important religious rituals, like funerals or confirmations, where we’re not just lying to the people around us, but to the god they supposedly believe in.

Why would they do this?

When I was doing research for my new guidebook, “Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why,” I was shocked at how often this happens. I read over 400 “coming out atheist” stories to write this book, and in the stories I read, this theme came up again and again and again.

You see it a lot with parents and children. When kids and teenagers tell their parents that they’re atheists, parents often respond by insisting that their kids keep up a religious charade. [snipped]

Parents don’t just pressure their atheist kids to keep up the facade, either. They often force them into it. [snipped]

This doesn’t just mean making kids sit through church, either. Stories of kids and teenagers being forced to go through confirmations and other important religious rituals are ridiculously common.   [snipped]  Now, here’s the thing: Confirmation is one of the most serious rituals in religion. It’s the ritual in which children accept adult responsibility for their purported soul, and declare their adult commitment to their religion. The whole point is that they’re finally making a free choice about participating in religion, instead of just going along with their family. Yet parents and clergy still pressure kids into this ritual, or even force them into it. Even when they know it’s a lie.

But this isn’t just a parent/kid dynamic. It happens with adults as well. It happens between spouses; in the workplace; in adult families and communities; between parents and adult children. [snipped]

And pressure to pray in the U.S. military abounds. Including official orders to pray. [snipped]

If believers were sincerely concerned about atheists’ immortal souls, I’d understand why they might argue with us, show us their concerns and fears, even try with all their might to convince us that we’re wrong. But why would they ask us to lie? Why would they ask us to pretend to be religious? And why would they ask us to lie, not only in small ways to our friends and families and communities, but in important rituals to the god they believe in?

I’ve been thinking about these stories for a long time. Ever since I started working on my guide, this phenomenon has troubled me. It’s troubled me morally — it’s such a messed-up thing to do. And it’s troubled me intellectually. It’s such backward, self-contradictory behavior. Why would people do it?

I think a few factors play into this. As I wrote in the book: “For many families, being religious is less about spiritual beliefs, and more about family identity. More than anything else, going to religious services is a family togetherness activity, or even a family duty.  [snipped]  And some believers may think that participating in religious rituals will somehow draw atheists back into belief.

But I think there’s something else going on here, something more powerful than either of these.

They don’t want to hear that the emperor has no clothes.

And if too many people start saying that the emperor has no clothes, they’ll have a harder time convincing themselves that he does.

Religion relies on social consent to perpetuate itself. It’s a bad idea, and can’t stand up on its own. But it can, and does, perpetuate itself through social consent. It perpetuates itself through dogma saying that asking questions about religion is sinful, and that trusting religion without evidence is virtuous. It perpetuates itself through dogma saying that joy and meaning and morality can only be found in religion, and that leaving religion will automatically result in a desperate, amoral, pointless life. It perpetuates itself through religious communities and support systems that make believing in religion — or pretending to believe in religion — a necessity to function and indeed survive. It perpetuates itself through parents and other authority figures teaching it to children, whose brains are hard-wired to believe what they’re told.

Religion relies on social consent to perpetuate itself. But the simple act of coming out as an atheist denies it this consent. Even if atheists never debate believers or try to persuade them out of their beliefs; even if all we ever do is say out loud, “Actually, I’m an atheist,” we’re still denying our consent. And that throws a monkey wrench into religion’s engine.

There’s a reason that rates of atheism have been going up as use of the Internet goes up. (According to the MIT Technology Review, the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use — and while correlation certainly doesn’t prove causation, this analysis factors out pretty much every other possible causation.) The Internet has created a massive worldwide forum for atheists to argue about religion, to give evidence against religion, to ask for evidence and arguments supporting religion and point out how ridiculously weak they are. But the Internet has also created a massive, worldwide forum for atheists to simply, you know, exist.

In my research for “Coming Out Atheist,” I read numerous stories of atheists who had stayed religious for years — simply because everyone around them was religious, and they never considered the possibility that someone could be non-religious. But this is becoming less and less common. It’s getting harder and harder to keep atheism a secret. If you’re a teenager in a tiny town in the Bible Belt, you can now find out about atheists. You can talk with atheists. You can argue with atheists. You can learn what atheists think and why they think it. And you can simply learn that atheists exist, and are basically good people who love life and find great meaning in it. And that, just by itself, just by denying consent to your religion, stands a good chance of putting a serious dent in it.

What’s more, this denial of consent has a snowball effect. As more atheists come out of the closet, more people will question religion and eventually leave it. And as they leave religion and come out about their atheism, another wave of people will question and abandon religion … and so on, and so on, and so on.

It’s easy to ignore one person saying that the emperor has no clothes. It’s a lot harder to ignore 10 people saying it — and it’s harder still to ignore a hundred, or a thousand.

So if you want to ignore the emperor’s nakedness, it’s not enough to just ignore it. You have to get other people to shut up about it. If you want religion to keep perpetuating itself, you have to get people to go along with it. You have to get people to fake it.

You have to get people to lie.

And that’s what explains this weird phenomenon, this phenomenon of religious believers telling atheists, openly and explicitly, to lie about our atheism. This phenomenon is Exhibit A in just how essential social consent is to keeping religion propped up. It shows just how shaky the foundations of religion are — when people openly state that they would rather have us pretend to believe than be honest. It shows just how shaky believers’ hold on religion is, when they tell us that we need religion to be moral, but then ask us, openly and explicitly and without any apparent shame, to lie.
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"The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun"

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How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment
The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.

By Michael Waldman, May 19, 2014

“A fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.

Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.

Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.

So how does legal change happen in America? We’ve seen some remarkably successful drives in recent years—think of the push for marriage equality, or to undo campaign finance laws. Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. The pro-gun movement may have started with scholarship, but then it targeted public opinion and shifted the organs of government. By the time the issue reached the Supreme Court, the desired new doctrine fell like a ripe apple from a tree.

***

The Second Amendment consists of just one sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today, scholars debate its bizarre comma placement, trying to make sense of the various clauses, and politicians routinely declare themselves to be its “strong supporters.” But in the grand sweep of American history, this sentence has never been among the most prominent constitutional provisions. In fact, for two centuries it was largely ignored.

The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

“Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison—an ardent Federalist who had won election to Congress only after agreeing to push for changes to the newly ratified Constitution—proposed 17 amendments on topics ranging from the size of congressional districts to legislative pay to the right to religious freedom. One addressed the “well regulated militia” and the right “to keep and bear arms.” We don’t really know what he meant by it. At the time, Americans expected to be able to own guns, a legacy of English common law and rights. But the overwhelming use of the phrase “bear arms” in those days referred to military activities.

There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weapon—and courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

***

Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organization’s considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, “The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.” Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.

What is less known—and perhaps more significant—is its rising sway over constitutional law.

The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws. In the late 1950s, it opened a new headquarters to house its hundreds of employees. Metal letters on the facade spelled out its purpose: firearms safety education, marksmanship training, shooting for recreation.

Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.

The NRA’s new leadership was dramatic, dogmatic and overtly ideological. For the first time, the organization formally embraced the idea that the sacred Second Amendment was at the heart of its concerns.

The gun lobby’s lurch rightward was part of a larger conservative backlash that took place across the Republican coalition in the 1970s. One after another, once-sleepy traditional organizations galvanized as conservative activists wrested control.

Conservatives tossed around the language of insurrection with the ardor of a Berkeley Weatherman. The “Revolt at Cincinnati” was followed by the “tax revolt,” which began in California in 1979, and the “sagebrush rebellion” against Interior Department land policies. All these groups shared a deep distrust of the federal government and spoke in the language of libertarianism. They formed a potent new partisan coalition.

Politicians adjusted in turn. The 1972 Republican platform had supported gun control, with a focus on restricting the sale of “cheap handguns.” Just three years later in 1975, preparing to challenge Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination, Reagan wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine, “The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate.” By 1980 the GOP platform proclaimed, “We believe the right of citizens to keep and bear arms must be preserved. Accordingly, we oppose federal registration of firearms.” That year the NRA gave Reagan its first-ever presidential endorsement.

Today at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, oversized letters on the facade no longer refer to “marksmanship” and “safety.” Instead, the Second Amendment is emblazoned on a wall of the building’s lobby. Visitors might not notice that the text is incomplete. It reads:
“.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The first half—the part about the well regulated militia—has been edited out.

***

From 1888, when law review articles first were indexed, through 1959, every single one on the Second Amendment concluded it did not guarantee an individual right to a gun. The first to argue otherwise, written by a William and Mary law student named Stuart R. Hays, appeared in 1960. He began by citing an article in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine and argued that the amendment enforced a “right of revolution,” of which the Southern states availed themselves during what the author called “The War Between the States.”

[Major snippage.  It is recommended that you go to the site and read the rest.]
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Friday, May 30, 2014

Hmmmm, the GOP is playing dumb.... is this a statement from Captain Obvious?

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Comment made on this article:  "How can you tell when the GOP is playing dumb, as compared to just being dumb?"
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Republicans confirm they don’t know squat about science
By John Upton, May 30, 2014

GOP politicians are using a new tactic when they talk about climate change: playing dumb.

As the Huffington Post reports, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told journalists on Thursday that he’s “not qualified to debate the science over climate change” — but he does know that Obama’s “prescription for dealing with changes in our climate” involves hurting the economy and “killing” American jobs.

This isn’t a wholly new approach, as Climate Progress point out:
“I’m not a scientist,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2009, his first in a long line of statements denying climate change. “I’m not sure, I’m not a scientist,” Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) said of climate change in 2010 (Grimm changed his mind on the issue this past April).

The tactic is an interesting (and seemingly effective) way for politicians to avoid acknowledging or denying the reality of climate change while still getting to fight against any regulation to stop it.
Politico has more recent examples:
Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott has offered the response “I am not a scientist” on multiple occasions when the topic has come up lately. Even the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have put big money into fighting President Barack Obama’s energy and climate policies, disclaimed any pretense at scientific know-how when wealthy climate activist Tom Steyer challenged them to a debate on climate change.

“We are not experts on climate change,” Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia said in an email to The Wichita Eagle this month. She added, “The debate should take place among the scientific community, examining all points of view and void of politics, personal attacks and partisan agendas.”
While some Republican politicians and their fossil-fuel overlords might be shying away from public attacks on climate science, they’re not shying away from public attacks on climate action. They are already attacking the new climate rules that President Obama plans to announce on Monday. They would rather doom us all to climate chaos than help the nation switch over to renewable energy — and that really is dumb.
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Hatch "didn't mean to offend anyone".... hell's bells, he likely wouldn't recognize anything he says as being offensive

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Senator apologizes for Memorial Day political remarks
May 30, 3014

Sen. Orrin Hatch has apologized for making political comments during a Memorial Day ceremony earlier this week.

The Utah Republican senator said in an interview that he didn't mean to offend anyone when he made comments about the federal health care law and religious freedom during the Monday event in Woods Cross.

"If I offended anybody, I certainly apologize because it would make me feel really badly that I did," Hatch told KUTV-TV on Wednesday.

The apology comes after veterans advocates said it's inappropriate to inject politics into a day that commemorates those who've died while serving in the armed forces.

Hatch said his remarks were "off the cuff." There was applause from the crowd during his remarks on protecting religious freedom.

"I certainly didn't mean to be political," he said.

Most of Hatch's 18-minute speech focused on military members and their families, but the remarks turned political at the end, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Hatch brought up a pending Supreme Court case in which Hobby Lobby is challenging a requirement for birth control coverage under President Obama's health care law. The company and the family that owns it argues that their religious beliefs prohibit them from offering health coverage for contraceptive drugs.

"I hope the Supreme Court doesn't screw that up is all I can say," Hatch said.

Hatch also spoke about liberal judges and the importance of 2014 and 2016 elections, where Republicans hope to take control of the Senate and the White House.

Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis and Terry Schow, former longtime director of the Utah Department of Veterans Affairs, both said this week that it was inappropriate to make political points on Memorial Day.

Democrats also criticized the remarks.

"With all the proud things there are to say about Utah's military men and women, it's a shame Orrin Hatch missed that opportunity," Utah Democratic Party spokeswoman Anna Thompson said.

Woods Cross Mayor Rick Earnshaw also said he regrets the politically-lace introduction he gave for Hatch at the Memorial Day community event.

Hatch "continues to lead in the fight to repeal the unconstitutional individual mandate and other provisions in the $2.6 trillion health law called Obamacare," Earnshaw said when introducing Hatch. "He is on the front lines of legislative battles to secure the nation's borders, stop the forced unionization of American workers and to bring fiscal restraint back to Washington by ending the reckless spending that threatens to bankrupt the nation."

Earnshaw told The Tribune on Thursday that he was reading a biographical summary provided by Hatch's office. He said he hadn't read the material in advance and didn't realize it was political until it was too late.

"I've learned a lot from this experience," Earnshaw said. "I'm not going to not invite key figures or politicians — but I am going to ask them to keep their comments to the issue at hand."
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"So you wonder why the country has so many problems? ... It's because our elected officials are spending their time raising money instead of solving the country's problems."

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Dominant political parties losing voters in California

'No Party Preference' continues to grow

By Mike Luery, May 30, 2014

Video

Both major political parties in California are investing heavily in Tuesday's primary election, at a time when their registration numbers are shrinking.

Republicans took the biggest hit, as their registration figures dropped down to 28 percent of all voters, according to figures released Friday by the California Secretary of State's Office.

The new figure is a loss of 2 percentage points in just four years.

Democrats increased their raw numbers, but their overall percentage of registered voters declined to 43 percent, a 1 percent drop from 2010.

The fastest growing force is voters with "No Party Preference."

They now comprise 21 percent of the electorate, a 1 percent jump from 2010.

Voters may be increasingly frustrated by partisan politics.

They don't like the constant barrage off attack ads on television and the radio, or the vicious mailers that come to their door. And there's no way to avoid them because the cost of winning those elections is getting more expensive than ever.

"When you see a lot of hit pieces, you have to see who's paying for this," Kim Alexander said.

Alexander has received dozens of mailers in recent days at her Sacramento home.

"This costs a lot of money," she told KCRA 3.

Alexander monitors campaign literature closely as the founder and president of the nonpartisan group, California Voter Foundation.

She's looking for ways to improve the voting process, but one of the biggest challenges is the high cost of campaigning, something the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled on.

"The law of the land is that money is free speech," Alexander said. "You cannot restrict any particular entity from giving money. You can't restrict unions from giving money. You can't restrict corporations from giving money."

The cost of capturing a seat in the California State Assembly is so expensive that average voters have little influence, according to Daniel Newman, president of MapLight in Berkeley, a nonpartisan group that serves as a money tracker.

"You have to raise a lot of money," Newman said. "It's about $700,000 to win the average Assembly election. That's raising about $1,000 a day. So that means every day, (including) Thanksgiving and weekends, you have to be out there raising money."

To win a state Senate seat is even more costly.

MapLight's research indicates the average Senate seat costs about $1 million for the winning candidate -- about $1,400 a day, every day.

And to win a congressional seat in Washington, D.C. requires deep pockets.

MapLight found the average cost is $1.7 million to win a seat to the U.S. House of Representatives, or roughly $2,300 a day.

"So you wonder why the country has so many problems?" Newman asked. "It's because our elected officials are spending their time raising money instead of solving the country's problems."

Equally frustrating for voters is the length of the ballot.

"I have 19 contests on my ballot," Alexander said. "There's eight statewide contests, including the Board of Equalization."

And with so many names and issues to process, voters can easily feel intimidated by just how much homework they have to do to make an informed choice.

And even if their candidate wins, voters may still feel squeezed out by the powerful special interests who contribute the big bucks.

"You have to keep your donors happy," Alexander said. "You have to make sure they're going to keep giving time and time again." 
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"Canonizing the men who founded the nation doesn’t help discourse, it just sanctifies history."

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Our Religion of The Founding Fathers
By Tina Dupuy, May 30, 2014

The Founding Fathers are all things to all Americans.

“The American people having healthier life that ['s what] our founders wanted for them,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said last month about Obamacare. Other self-described patriots sneered, “George Washington wanted Obamacare, Pelosi says.” And “No, Nancy, the Founding Fathers Would Not Have Supported Obamacare.” Senators Rand Paul and Chris Coons penned a bipartisan op/ed for Politico Magazine titled: “The Founding Fathers Would Have Protected Your Smartphone.”

Last year a series of polls came out asking Americans if the Founding Fathers would be happy with the country today. A majority of Americans told pollsters these Framers would be disappointed.

Even as we continue to debate what religion meant to the people who christened the country—they now themselves have become a religion. And like all stern paternal deities, our Liberty Lords are frowning down on us because they know we can do better.

No one ever brings up Jesus’ name when the 2000-year-old prophet would disagree with them. As in: “Jesus drank wine with hookers and outcasts, but as a Christian, I find that reprehensible.” Jesus only gets used to corroborate personal conviction.

As an appeal to what we imagine to be our better selves we ask, “What would Jesus do?” And as Americans we’re expected to ponder, “What would the Founding Father’s [sic] think?”

The first thing worth pointing out: there were a lot of Founding Fathers. It wasn’t just guys with monuments in DC. Over 50 men signed the Articles of Association in 1774; another 56 men put their John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence (including John Hancock); and there were 40 signers of the Constitution. We’ve never heard of most of these venerated sages.

Pop quiz: Gunning Bedford – punk band or Founding Father?

There are more than 140 men who meet the qualifications to be called a Founding Father in an era spanning 15 years (1774-1789). The framers were not a monolith then and certainly would never have a collective opinion about health care let alone about a smart phone. Our current Congress doesn’t have a collective opinion about which day of the week it is, and our Supreme Court is uneasy about the 100-year-old technology of cameras filming them at work.

The Constitutional Convention was not a utopian Garden of Eden where demigods gathered to shape a nation that would become the best in the world. They were politicians and leaders in their community (read: mortals). They lived in a different time with different mores. They were not exactly for freedom (they owned slaves). They weren’t exactly for democracy (women couldn’t vote). They weren’t exactly arbiters of human rights (Native Americans).

They also weren’t exactly against the fiendish Big Government; they were Big Government. In 1791, George Washington quashed the Nation’s first tax revolt, The Whiskey Rebellion, ended with four rebels killed by government troops. He’s a hero to the modern tea party? Why?

President number two, John Adams, also a Founding Father, joined the Federalists in Congress gleefully passing the Sedition Act which criminalized speech against the federal government. What Nazis.

If we were contemporaries of these mystical Founding Freedom Priests, we’d have more complicated feelings about them. Just like we have about our modern presidents. No matter how much you like President Bill Clinton at this moment—you were kind of sick of him in 1999. Dubya said history would judge him. Turns out he’s not The Decider—it’s history. And history did wonders for Adams.

The Founding Fathers don’t reside on Mount Olympus and, no, Independence Hall isn’t in Valhalla (unless you think that’s Philly).

These Fathers were just rebellious products of their era who had no idea if this experiment at self-governing would ever last.

To summon the thought of these men to give us pause in public discourse is to subscribe to the logical fallacy known as appeal to tradition. The Founders were into dueling (look on a $10 bill; the guy on it died in a duel as Founding Fathers Richard Dobbs Spaight and Button Gwinnett did). Why not bring back dueling? The Founding Fathers would be proud. Some of them at least. The Founding Fathers didn’t believe in antibiotics! Or General Motors’ safety! Or air travel! Or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution!

Where does it stop? It really doesn’t. Canonizing the men who founded the nation doesn’t help discourse, it just sanctifies history.

We’re better off humanizing than worshipping.
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Thursday, May 29, 2014

"Polar opposite"? But of course, because the Koch brothers don't know what "moral" means!

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Koch Brothers Group Holds Polar Opposite Of Moral Monday Protest
By Samantha Lachman, May 29, 2014

Local conservatives defended the actions of the Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly with a "tax reform rally" on Wednesday touting the legislature's accomplishments.

The North Carolina chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit advocacy group backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, held an event in Raleigh billed as a celebration of legislation passed by the assembly last year that overhauled the state's tax regime.

The tax reform bill deprived North Carolina of an estimated $600 million in annual revenue by giving an income tax break of $2,434 to a family of four making $250,000 a year -- a similar family making just $20,000 saves only $3 a year, according to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The bill, which also eliminated the state's Earned Income Tax Credit and raised sales taxes, meant that the estimated 80 percent of North Carolina families with annual incomes below $84,000 would see higher taxes.

Americans for Prosperity may have hoped to demonstrate that there is grassroots support for the legislature's actions. The event Wednesday looked like anything but an equivalent of a Moral Monday protest, however: there was no civil disobedience as a few dozen attendees sat, subdued. And there were no fiery speeches by the state's NAACP leader -- attendees enjoyed speakers like conservative commenter and journalist Tucker Carlson.

State Republicans had been dismissive of the Moral Monday protests, but may have thought that an event to push back on the movement's policy criticisms was necessary.

In the same week, 14 protesters affiliated with the state's Moral Monday movement were arrested for staging a sit-in at Speaker Thom Tillis' office to draw attention to the legislature's refusal to expand Medicaid, support for hydraulic fracking, cuts to unemployment benefits, freezes to teacher pay, cuts to public education and laws implementing voter identification and restricting abortion access.

Last year's Moral Monday protests led to more than 900 total arrests, with some events drawing more than 10,000 people to the State Capitol.

Americans for Prosperity's announcement that it will also run television ads promoting the tax law may indicate a desire to prop up Tillis, the GOP's Senate nominee, by influencing how voters judge the law's impact as he works to unseat Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.).
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Dare we hope that the right wingers are coming to their senses?

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Fox News Sees 12-Year Low In Key Demo During May
By Katherine Fung, May 29, 2014

Fox News' ratings took a hit in the key demo for the month of May.

The network drew 264,000 viewers ages 25-54 during primetime — the lowest it has had in over 12 years, since August 2001. Its entire primetime lineup — hosted by Greta Van Susteren, Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity — hit 12-year lows in the demo. Still, Fox News maintained its cable news dominance over competing networks in both the demo and in total viewers.

MSNBC and CNN battled it out for second place. MSNBC beat its rival in weekday primetime in both total viewers (593,000 vs. CNN's 384,000) and in the demo (145,000 vs. CNN's 131,000). The network reversed its fortunes since last month, when CNN was flying high from its coverage of missing Flight 370. MSNBC also beat CNN in both total viewers and the demo for total day ratings for the first week in May.

Fox News has suffered woes in the demo in the past. The network, for example, lost 30 percent of its viewers ages 25-54 in 2013 compared to 2012. It was up in the demo, however, during the first quarter of 2014, compared to the final quarter in 2013.
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"There was a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote ... and 41 senators chose the wrong way. ..."

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41 Republican Senators Voted Against a Landmark Veterans Bill in February, Today They Blame the VA
By H.A. Goodman, May 27, 2014

Earlier this year, the GOP had a chance to prove that it could fund veterans' health care as eagerly as it borrowed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Long before the current VA crisis, an event described as "a gift from God" by Dr. Ben Carson, Senate Republicans had a chance to vote on a landmark bill. Before the Senate vote, organizations devoted to the needs of veterans and their families offered widespread support to the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014.

On January 21, 2014 the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) wrote a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing the legislation. The IAVA believed, "This legislation would accomplish many of the goals for which veterans and military service organizations have been advocating for years, including strengthening the Post-9/11 GI Bill, expanding advance appropriations for more of the VA's budget... and much more." The Veterans of Foreign Wars was just as enthusiastic in its support, and wrote a similar letter explaining how S.1982 would help veterans:
If signed into law, this sweeping legislation would expand and improve health care and benefit services to all generations of veterans and their families. Most notably, it would expand the current caregiver law to include all generations of veterans and provide advance appropriations to ensure monthly compensation and pension as well as education payments are protected from future budget battles. The bill also offers in-state tuition protection for recently transitioned veterans, improves access to mental health and treatment for victims of sexual assault in the military, and authorizes construction of more than 20 Community Bases Outpatient Clinics to serve veterans in rural and remote communities.
Echoing the IAVA and VFW, The Paralyzed Veterans of America stated that "This legislation marks one of the most comprehensive bills to ever be considered in the Senate or House." The PVA went on to state that, "If enacted, S. 1982 would accomplish some of the highest priorities for Paralyzed Veterans and its members." VetsFirst, another group devoted to disabled veterans, also explained "this legislation goes a long way toward fulfilling many of the current and future needs of our disabled veterans."

Furthermore, The American Legion lent "its full support" to the bill since it "addresses several high priority issues for The American Legion, like repealing the 1 percent retiree COLA provision, funding the stalled CBOCs for the VA, increasing access to health care for veterans at VA, employment and education fixes, and other programs that are important to us." In addition, The American Legion explained that the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 was essential to veterans in other ways:
The American Legion also appreciates the many areas in which this bill addresses needed attention regarding Military Sexual Trauma counseling, additional training and assistance for Traumatic Brain Injury victims, improvements and much-needed updates to the Dependency and Indemnification Compensation program, VA's Work-Study program, and its On-the-Job Training program.
Therefore, with so much positive feedback from veterans groups about the bill, it's only logical to assume that Senate Republicans would do everything possible to ensure it became law. 

Unfortunately, S.1982 was killed by Senate Republicans, with a vote of 56-41 -- only Republicans Senators voting nay and with only two Republicans voting for the bill. The logic behind every vote against the bill being Republican rests in the following statement from North Carolina Senator Richard M. Burr:
With $17 trillion in debt and massive annual deficits, our country faces a fiscal crisis of unparalleled scope. Now is not the time, in any federal department, to spend money we don't have. To be sure, there's much to like in the Sanders bill. And if those components were presented as separate, smaller bills, as part of a carefully considered long-term strategy to reform the VA, hold leadership accountable and improve services to veterans, we would have no problem extending enthusiastic support.
Also, Republicans called for sanctions on Iran to be included within the veterans' bill, and since it wasn't included within the bill, they voted against the landmark legislation. As stated by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell regarding the Iran sanctions, "There is no excuse for muzzling the Congress on an issue of this importance to our own national security."

So how did veterans feel about the February 26, 2014 vote where 41 Republicans voted against a sweeping bill to help veterans? American Legion National Commander Daniel M. Dellinger expressed his frustration with the outcome by stating, "There was a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote today, and 41 senators chose the wrong way. That's inexcusable."

As for Senator Richard Burr, he recently received a scathing letter from the Veterans of Foreign Wars pertaining to his open letter to veterans groups about the VA crisis. In addition, Burr received another response letter from the Paralyzed Veterans of America stating that, "Rest assured, you do not speak for or represent the interests of Paralyzed Veterans' members-veterans with spinal cord injury or dysfunction or any other VSO."

It should not be overlooked that veterans have been committing suicide, enduring long wait times for disability benefits, and dealing with a wide array of others issues ignored by Congress for the past decade. Also, the most indignant Republicans like Sen. Burr of North Carolina have also voted against S.1982 and now blame bureaucratic issues, rather than funding problems, as the cause of the VA crisis. Therefore, it's safe to say that the latest VA crisis and the deaths of veterans in Arizona served as convenient opportunity for the GOP to feign indignation over issues veterans have faced for years.

What better way to circumvent responsibility for underfunding the VA and voting against veteran's legislation than blaming big government? Somebody should tell Sen. Burr and the GOP that we funded both wars with "money we didn't have" and we should fund veterans health care as enthusiastically as we paid (borrowed) for two war[s].
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"Reality TV stars [such as Sarah Palin] who say bombastic things simply to sell books are counterproductive to the [Republican] cause.”

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Sarah Palin Tries To Sway Garden State Republicans In A Primary
In a close GOP primary in a swing congressional district, is Sarah Palin’s endorsement a help or a hinderance?
By Olivia Nuzzi, May 28, 2014

Former reality television star Sarah Palin made her 17th endorsement of the primary season on Tuesday, when the former Alaska governor threw her support and credibility behind Steve Lonegan, a staunchly anti-immigration Tea Partier, who is running in the June 3 primary for the Republican nomination in New Jersey’s competitive 3rd Congressional District.

“Steve is the type of conservative leader we need. He believes in the free market principles this country was founded on because he has seen first hand how they can lead to success,” Palin said in a Facebook post.

It is unclear how much a Palin endorsement helps a candidate. In 2010, Palin endorsed 64 candidates, 10 of whom lost their primaries and 20 of whom lost in the general election. Remember Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell? Palin helped build that.

In 2012, Palin took a different approach, endorsing only a smaller number of candidates, including winners Ted Cruz, an outsider Tea Party candidate and Orrin Hatch, a longtime incumbent facing a primary challenge on his right. Still, nearly half of her picks lost.

In the six 2014 primaries already held where Palin had picked a candidatefour of her picks (including Karen Handel in Georgia’s open Senate race and Taylor Griffin, who was attempting to take down dovish GOP incumbent Walter Jones in North Carolina) lost. On June 3, the outcome of Lonegan’s race might determine whether or not Palin’s blessing is actually a kiss of death.

Lonegan ran for the Senate last year, following the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, when a special election was held to fill the vacant seat. Lonegan won the Republican nomination, but lost by 11 points in the general to Cory Booker, the Democratic Mayor of Newark. Palin backed Lonegan in that campaign as well.

Conveniently, following Lonegan’s loss, Republican Rep. Jon Runyan announced that he would not seek reelection after two terms in office. Lonegan began eyeing his South Jersey seat, telling the Star-Ledger in January that “yup,” he was running, and that he was about to buy a house in Lavallette, a town 77 miles away from Bogota, where Lonegan served as mayor from 1995-2007. Lonegan told the publication that he had won his soon-to-be-new district with 54 percent of the vote in 2013’s election.

However, Lonegan has failed to gain the support of local Republican leaders, who seem to favor his primary opponent, Tom MacArthur. And according to a recent poll, Lonegan is trailing MacArthur by 13 points.

Matt Rooney, editor of the conservative Save Jersey blog, said that Palin’s endorsement was more likely to hurt than help Lonegan. “A growing majority of Republican base voters, regardless of how they feel about Sarah Palin personally, increasingly view her as an entertainer as opposed to a serious political leader,” Rooney told the Daily Beast.

Seeking an endorsement from Palin, he said, “clues us into the type of leaders that [the candidate] believes the GOP should promote…Reality TV stars who say bombastic things simply to sell books are counterproductive to the [Republican] cause.”
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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

"... in politics, [Rand Paul] remains a lightning rod, frequently dinged for odd conspiratorial theories or, quite frequently, for getting facts wrong"

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Note to Rand Paul: Accuracy matters in medicine and in politics
By Jennifer Rubin, May 28, 2014

It is fitting, I suppose, that at the same time Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) lets on that he wants to go back to medicine at some point, he scores another four Pinocchios for his false assertion that we had no planes to rescue our people in Benghazi, Libya.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference in National Harbor, Md., Friday, March 7, 2014. Friday marks the second day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which brings together prospective presidential candidates, conservative opinion leaders and tea party activists from coast to coast.

You certainly can understand the attraction of medicine for Paul. As a doctor, he is competent, doing good, receiving praise and in command of his facts when treating patients. But in politics, he remains a lightning rod, frequently dinged for odd conspiratorial theories or, quite frequently, for getting facts wrong. He bristles at criticism and, not unlike President Obama, accuses critics (even on the right) of bad faith.

The irony is that Paul need not exaggerate or misstate facts to make some of his points. Without falsely asserting there was “no plane” to rescue our people in Libya, he certainly could have made the point that we were caught unaware or that we foolishly ignored signs of al-Qaeda’s influx into Libya or that the Ben Rhodes memo suggests an instantaneous obsession with politics over accuracy and good policy. In the case of the Iraq war, Paul, as liberals did, could have reiterated the CIA’s failure to determine there were no longer WMDs in Iraq or criticized the rosy expectations; instead he went around the bend, insinuating that the vice president dragged us into a war for pecuniary gains. In the case of the National Security Agency, he simply could make the argument (although I disagree with it) that the data mining was excessive and prone to abuse; instead, he repeatedly and falsely asserts that the NSA is listening to your phone calls.

It is one thing to utter such things to get applause at the University of California at Berkeley, but presidential candidates — even senators — are held to a higher standard. One can speculate that Paul does what he does because he wants to stand out or that he is prone to fantastical theories, as was his father. Or one can surmise that he really doesn’t have a good grasp of details and hasn’t assembled a staff to keep him out of trouble. But it really doesn’t matter what the reason is. You wouldn’t hire an eye doctor who continually exaggerated and got his facts wrong. Nor would Paul have gotten to be a successful eye doctor had he been prone to such habits in his practice. And so it is that mainstream Republicans, evangelical Christians, business people and big donors remain stubbornly resistant to his candidacy.

Now, many politicians exaggerate and get their facts wrong. But the frequency with which Paul does so, and the absence of some quality control in his office is, I would suggest, rather unique in the U.S. Senate. And if his supporters and staff complain that he is criticized more than his peers and subject to disproportionate scrutiny, they surely must know that an all-but-declared presidential candidate routinely gets this. One’s overt ambition invites it. An actual candidate gets even more scrutiny every day.

In selecting the presidential nominee, Republicans are talking about the person the party will trust to keep the White House from Hillary Clinton and who, if elected, will be charged with matters of life and death and the most difficult domestic policy calls. For that august responsibility, many Republicans will want someone as sober, detail-oriented and accurate as Dr. Paul, not Sen. Paul. And that remains his overriding problem should he, as we fully expect, run for president.
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You know it's bad when even a Fox analyst is yelling about it!

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‘Congress, You’re a Disgrace!’ Fox Analyst Rips Political Sniping over VA
By Josh Feldman, May 28, 2014

Fox News military analyst Ralph Peters went on an angry rant Wednesday night about Democrats and Republicans using the VA scandal to score cheap political points instead of putting that crap aside just for once and actually serving America’s veterans. Peters, who offered a mild defense of President Obama and a strong one of Eric Shinseki recently, called out Senator Richard Burr for his bizarre decision to go after veterans groups for being insufficiently outraged.

On The O’Reilly Factor, Peters cried, “Stop playing politics with this issue! It’s about our vets! It’s not about your reelection or election campaigns.”

He said Congress has no moral high ground from which to decry Shinseki, because they control the purse strings and are supposed to conduct oversight. Peters shamed Burr, going out of his way to point out that he never served in the military.

“Congress, you’re a disgrace!” he concluded.

Watch the video ..., via Fox News.
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"The point of this lawsuit is to let the Koch brothers, and other right wing billionaires, directly buy the RNC"

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Republicans Are Suing The FEC to Give The Koch Brothers More Power To Steal Your Vote
By Jason Easley and Sarah Jones, May 23, 2014

To take another axe to the nearly non-existent campaign finance rules in a post Citizens United world, the Republican National Committee sued the Federal Election Commission on Friday according to the AP, because they want to be able to raise unlimited money, like their buddies the Super PACs. “Republican officials emphasized the move was to seek parity with super PACs, which have grown in influence since 2010 and can help a few deep-pocketed donors exercise incredible influence.”

Now that the court has given Super PACs so much “freedom” with “speech”, the RNC feels it’s being treated unfairly and requests the same alleged freedoms of speech. Here’s how to keep moving that goal post, per the AP:
The central committee, chairman Reince Priebus and Louisiana Republicans filed a joint lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for permission to set up an independent account that could raise and spend potentially enormous sums of money to help federal candidates. Under the current rules, the RNC may only accept $32,400 each year from donors, and local-level parties are capped at $10,000. 
“The patchwork of limits on political speech undermines the First Amendment and puts high transparency, full-disclosure groups like the RNC on an unequal footing with other political entities,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “We are asking that political parties be treated equally under the law.”
For the “both sides do it” chorus, once again Republicans are trying to steal elections from the people and hand them over to the wealthy. They do this by taking an ice pick to campaign finance laws in every way possible.
The RNC has helped to chip away at campaign finance rules in recent years, most recently joining a lawsuit that ended a two-year, $123,200 aggregate limit on donations. Now, donors can give the maximum amount to as many candidates as they want. The caps on how much a donor can give to each candidate, however, remain.
Republicans also fight legislatively to keep these dark money donations secret, voting against bills like the DISCLOSE Act (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act), which was created in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The Act would have banned campaign spending by corporations that have significant foreign ownerships and corporations that have received federal bailout money and forced disclosure of corporate money behind groups Freedom Works.

As Harry Reid said recently, the Koch brothers are trying to remake the Republican Party. The point of this lawsuit is to let the Koch brothers, and other right wing billionaires, directly buy the RNC. Of course, Republicans don’t want the world to know that they are owned by a few billionaires, so they are opposed to any actual transparency, but they definitely want those Koch dollars.

Republicans haven’t learned anything from their wasted money in 2012. They still think that if they mess around with the rules enough, they can find the magic formula to buy the White House. Instead of fighting the Koch brothers for control of the Republican Party, the RNC has decided to hang a for sale sign on the front door.

This all part of the Republican plot to equate democracy with dollars, and to make money more powerful than votes. As long as the people continue to vote, the Koch brothers and the Republican Party will fail. The Koch brothers can buy almost anything, but they can’t buy your vote.
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"How have we gotten to a point where ideologists and partisans are so imprinted that they can’t even let a parent grieve but must immediately lash out and try to discredit him?"

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The Imprinting of Elliot Rodger and Us
By Joe Gandelman, May 28, 2014

When the news first hit that 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six students in Santa Barbara, it didn’t foreshadow the horrific details yet to come.

Six promising young lives knifed and shot dead. Families instantly plunged into grief. Rodger’s film industry parents getting his 137-page biographical manifesto and seeing his threatening YouTube videos racing from Los Angeles to try and stop him, then learning of the crime and their son’s role and death on the car radio.

It immediately raised larger questions about imprinting.

His manifesto detailed his life, evolution, racism, obsession with blondness, and why he planned to murder innocent people — from his little brother (who he didn’t kill), to his roommates (who he stabbed to death), to the women he felt could reject him and the guys who he felt might get women (he did some of that). His YouTube videos were peppered with rage, envy and threats voiced with script-like phrases and a wannabe laugh seemingly modeled after a stereotypical movie villain.

He was obsessed with being a virgin and filled with fury towards women and taller guys. Could a Hollywood culture grinding out movies such as “The 40 Year Old Virgin” have contributed to the word “virgin” being seen by him as tantamount to utter failure and rejection? Some on the left immediately pointed to his prolific internet trail of postings in misogynistic internet groups. Did these groups encourage violence towards women? Were they to blame? Do they pose a continuing threat to women’s lives?

Meanwhile, on the right, a Fox News analyst suggested Rodger may have killed due to “homosexual impulses” (to heck with proof). Todd Kincannon, former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, tweeted: “No idea how my son will die, but I know it won’t be cowering like a bitch at UC Santa Barbara. Any son of mine would have been shooting back.”

Samuel Wurzelbacher, the “Joe the Plumber” mascot of Republican Sen. John McCain’s failed 2008 Presidential bid, offered ostensible condolences to the grieving families, but just couldn’t help himself from swiping at devastated parent Richard Martinez. Shortly after learning that his 20-year-old son Christopher was shot dead by Rodger at a convenience store, Martinez blasted the National Rifle Association and called Congress’ politicians “rudderless idiots” for not acting on gun control after the December 12, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, in which  20 children and six adult staffers died.

“Joe the Plumber” apparently fell into a septic tank, because the stench of Wurzelbacher’s words could be smelled for miles: “I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now, ” he said to cushion his coming blow. “But: As harsh as this sounds — your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

Wurzelbacher thus joined the parade of Republicans seemingly racing to distance themselves from anything resembling “compassionate” conservatism — even when faced with the unspeakable grief of a father who suddenly lost his son and best friend. How have we gotten to a point where ideologists and partisans are so imprinted that they can’t even let a parent grieve but must immediately lash out and try to discredit him? FYI: Martinez never called for a total BAN on guns. Just safeguards.

“Guns don’t kill people,” the oft-quoted slogan goes. “People kill people.” Actually, guns don’t kill people.  Politicians who are paid political escorts for lobbyists, pressure groups and ideological activists who block serious legislative attempts to genuinely keep guns and ammunition from easily falling into the hands of nutcases kill people.

They’re doing to the country what escorts do with their clients. And they will continue to do so. People will continue to die because they want money, are experts in carrying out their politically kinky business, and seemingly only want to service their voting partisan and contributing lobbyist clients.

So, yes, Elliot Rodger was imprinted. But, in our knee-jerk (with the emphasis on the second word) responses, so are we.

And both of these facts are so — SO — scary.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

"... resistance to the welfare state is essentially the core belief of modern Republicans", and that is at the core of the gender gap

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How Not to Close the Gender Gap in Politics
By Seth Masket, May 27, 2014

Colorado Republicans, concerned about their string of statewide losses in recent years, have been making some efforts to reach out to demographic groups that have not historically backed their party. The most recent effort was a gubernatorial debate hosted by Colorado Christian University on “Women and Colorado’s Future.” Three leading Republican candidates seeking to unseat Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper attended, with former Representative Tom Tancredo declining.

The resulting debate most likely failed to move many undecided women to the Republican side. No, not because the debate moderator invited several female questioners up to the stage because it would look more “ornamental,” or because they did so to the theme from The Dating Game, or because they were encouraged to think of the candidates as bachelors #1, #2, and #3, or anything like that.

Rather, the debate likely failed to achieve its desired outreach for two main reasons. First, these sorts of events almost never have any meaningful impact on partisan voting patterns. Keep in mind what this was—a local, non-televised debate between gubernatorial primary competitors. If not for the ham-fisted gender appeals, it likely wouldn’t have received much press at all. The number of people paying attention to state politics is pretty modest right now, and this kind of event just isn’t going to reach very many people. And those who are reached likely already have pretty firm views on the candidates and the parties.

Second, you’re not going to change the gender dynamics of the party system based on a few weeks or even a few months of campaigning. As political scientist Christina Wolbrecht noted in this post at Mischiefs of Faction, the gender gap—the tendency for women to be more supportive of Democratic candidates than men are—has been basically a hard-wired aspect of American politics for about half a century. It didn’t change much when abortion became legal across the country in 1973, when Democrats nominated a female vice presidential candidate in 1984, or when Republicans did the same in 2008—all events that many political observers assumed would either broaden or narrow the gender gap. If those sorts of events don’t change the gender split, then it’s hard to imagine the language or tone used at a debate would.

Why is the gender gap so durable? As Wolbrecht explains, it doesn’t seem to be a function of political personalities or even stances on so-called “women’s issues.” (There actually isn’t a gender gap on abortion, notably, with roughly equal numbers of men and women taking pro-choice stances.) Rather, the issues that divide the sexes tend to be associated with the welfare state: aid to the poor and elderly, health care provisions, and so forth. Women consistently take a more liberal position on these issues than men do, and especially since the Great Society programs of the 1960s, Democrats have taken a more liberal position on these issues than Republicans.

So what could Republicans do to diminish the gender gap and move more female voters toward their party? Well, they could be more embracing of social welfare services, for one thing. But that’s not a small thing! Indeed, resistance to the welfare state is essentially the core belief of modern Republicans. The ideological activists who sustain the party through their labor and donations would not remotely stand for that. It would be tantamount to the Democrats giving up on civil rights to win over male voters.

Given that what would be necessary to end the gender gap would likely be far too costly for the party to seriously consider, more cosmetic maneuvers are pretty much all that are realistically available. That’s not necessarily nothing. A concerted effort to at least not actively alienate female voters isn’t a bad idea and could potentially yield modest dividends, or at least avoid a few costly mistakes.

Beyond that, though, we shouldn’t expect the gender gap to shrink—or grow—much in the near future. It’s an enduring feature of our party system, and our parties appear more set in their ways than ever before.
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"... I don’t give a s--- that you feel sorry for me ... Get to work and do something."

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Shooting victim’s father tells politicians to ‘get to work’

Richard Martinez wants new gun regulations after his son died in a California mass shooting.

By Kimberly Kindy, May 28, 2014

Richard Martinez grew up around guns, shooting birds out of the fruit trees on his family’s farm. He later served as a military police officer in the U.S. Army before going on to become a criminal defense lawyer, at times representing the young and the violent.

Now, Martinez is a grieving father.

He’s asking members of Congress to stop calling him to offer condolences but nothing more for the death of his only child, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, who was killed in the rampage Friday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s--- that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down his face. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

Saying “we are all to blame” for the death of his 20-year-old son, Martinez urged the public to join him in demanding “immediate action” from members of Congress and President Barack Obama to curb gun violence by passing stricter gun-control laws.

“Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: Not one more,” he said Tuesday. “People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.”

Martinez is the latest tragic figure to raise the mantle of gun control. Previous massacres and spasms of violence have produced urgent calls for new restrictions.

But these poignant appeals – most recently from former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a 2011 assassination attempt, and the Sandy Hook families whose 20 children were gunned down in their Newtown, Conn. elementary school in late 2012 – have failed to translate into action by Washington. Nor have they significantly changed public opinion about further regulation of weapons.

Martinez vowed that he’s not going away. He said his training as a lawyer explains, in part, why he has not retreated from public view as many parents do after such a tragedy.

“We are tough people,” Martinez said of himself and Christopher’s mother, Caryn Johnson Michaels, a deputy district attorney in San Luis Obispo. (The couple separated when Christopher was young.) “Caryn was in charge of the sex crime unit. We fight.”

The families of the other victims remained largely out of public view ahead of the memorial service Tuesday afternoon at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Two of the victims, Veronika Weiss and Katie Cooper, were members of UCSB’s Tri Delta sorority, and on Tuesday, the sorority issued a statement in response to their deaths.

Martinez, 60, vaulted into the spotlight Saturday when he crashed a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office news conference at which deputies spelled out the details of the knifing and shooting attacks by Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who killed six people before shooting himself.

Martinez said he is consulting with experts to help develop a clear message and a specific course of action that the public can undertake with the aim of preventing similar tragedies in the future.

“There’s no playbook for this. We don’t know what we are doing,” he said. “I just know I have to keep fighting until something changes. The most precious thing in the world has been taken from me. What else can I do?”
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The Koch brothers are "... perfectly willing to put their own thumbs on the scales of other people's freedom"

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Koch Brothers Revealed In Damning Film Exposé
By Michael McAuliff, May 20, 2014



The billionaire Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars because they don't want the government messing with Americans' lives or businesses. But a film coming out this week aims to show that they're perfectly willing to put their own thumbs on the scales of other people's freedom, often with heartbreaking consequences.

"Koch Brothers Exposed" lays out in one easily understood narrative a lot of previously reported stories about the political machinations of Charles and David Koch. To show why their actions matter, it adds the human touch -- the people who have been hurt as the fabulously rich brothers from Kansas pursued their ideological goals.

The hour-long documentary is an updated version of a Robert Greenwald film originally released in 2012.

With a premier in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night, "Koch Brothers Exposed" is one in a series of left jabs aimed at the Kochs this week. A new book, Sons of Wichita, is also being released Tuesday, and activists are ramping up their efforts to disseminate news about the brothers, who are currently tied for fourth on the Forbes 400 list.

Perhaps the documentary's most powerful moments come in showing how the Kochs' activism, generally advanced under the cloak of libertarianism, harms real people even as it boosts the bottom line of Koch Industries.

One segment looks at the town of Crossett, Ark., and a particular road where at least 11 people from 15 homes have died of cancer, according to residents quoted in the film. They happen to live just downstream from a Georgia Pacific plant run by Koch Industries. The film shows steaming, sludge-filled water flowing toward their homes. Residents complain of the smell and of breathing problems, and point to non-smoking relatives who have died of lung cancer.

Meanwhile, Koch-founded groups have poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of politicians who aggressively target the Environmental Protection Agency, and Koch Industries has paid massive fines for polluting.

In one segment revived from the original version, filmmaker Greenwald focuses on North Carolina's Wake County school board elections in 2009, a hyper-local event that would seem to be too small to draw the attention of a couple of billionaires. Yet that year, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity backed enough candidates to take control of the board and then vote to end the school district's long-running, successful desegregation plan.

The film demonstrates how the candidates' platform of ending "forced busing" and promoting "neighborhood schools" closely echoed the words and arguments of segregation's defenders decades earlier. And it shows a family struggling with the end of desegregation: Teenager Quinton White explains what it's like to be forced to switch schools and lose the ties to his former teachers, all because two billionaires opposed busing.

"I strongly feel that it's racism, I strongly feel that it's segregation, and it was all by surprise," says White. "The school board's decision to do segregation has really made it difficult for students like me to adjust and kind of grow," he adds.

The documentary is loaded with irony. It notes that the Kochs, two extreme anti-communists, owe their massive head start in life to a father who made his initial fortune working for Stalin's Soviet Union. It details how two men who claim their highest ideal is freedom try to restrict it for others by limiting access to voting and pushing to keep wages low.

A Koch Industries spokesman did not answer HuffPost's request for comment, but in the past the company has pointed reporters to its own web page responding to attacks. When asked about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hosting this week's premiere, the company's counsel told Politico that it was an abuse of taxpayer resources.

"It is disappointing, but not surprising, that Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi have teamed up with Robert Greenwald, a failed Hollywood producer who now makes obscure partisan attack videos," Mark Holden said to Politico. "Mr. Greenwald made a series of videos about Koch back in 2012 which were filled with lies, distortions, and misrepresentations about Koch."

Perhaps the key point of the movie is to show how successful the Koch brothers have been in engineering laws and court rulings that benefit their cause. For instance, the Kochs helped fund 12 different organizations that wrote amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United ruling of 2010, which lifted restrictions on contributions to independent political groups. The film also notes that both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas have attended the Kochs' closed-door retreats. (Watch the clip, above.)

With the Citizens United ruling, outside groups began pouring cash into elections. The Kochs' Americans for Prosperity alone is expected to spend at least $125 million in the 2014 campaigns.

"After Citizens United, we had a feeling the Kochs were going to escalate, but we had no idea at this level," Greenwald told HuffPost. "So we decided to do a 'Koch Brothers Exposed' 2014 edition.

"We wanted people to understand the Kochs were part of the reason that we have Citizens United, how they were part of it, and different ways they are taking on different battles and increasing the money into existing battles," he said.

The Kochs' efforts to undercut the minimum wage are especially galling to Greenwald, who devoted a section of the film to the issue, featuring a young mom trying to raise her son on a bottom-dollar income.

"Take a guess on minimum wage -- they're fighting minimum wage increases -- on how long it would take a minimum wage worker to make what the Koch brothers earn in an hour. Working full time, 76 years," Greenwald said. "For a minimum wage worker to make what they make in a day? 546 years."

But the point is not just to tear down the Kochs, the filmmaker said. The point is to get people to push for their own version of change, even if they don't have billions to spend.

That's why the film also highlights some progressive wins against the Kochs' goals. In that North Carolina school district, residents were so outraged at the resegregation of their schools that they mobilized, protested in the face of arrest threats, and voted out the candidates backed by Americans for Prosperity after just one term.

In the case of the Keystone XL pipeline that oil interests, like Koch Industries, would like to see built from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf coast, the movie credits public pressure with the fact that the Obama administration still has not approved the construction, years after it was scheduled to do so.

While "Koch Brothers Exposed" is not entirely new, its latest release is likely to draw greater attention than its first go-round. In large part, Greenwald can thank Reid for that, since the Senate majority leader has taken to launching near-daily broadsides against the Kochs on the Senate floor.

"Senator Reid is quite a fighter, so that's been quite something to see him go at them," Greenwald said. "I'm pleased to see that he is taking a very strong stance, and the importance is that we have to change the system."

Greenwald said the film will be made available for free on the Internet and optimized for easy sharing, down to Instagram clips.

"It's the only way to go, honestly, if you want to have impact," he said, adding that progressive advocates have to reach out to "people who disagree with you, who don't have information, who aren't sure what they think, any of those people. You must find ways to meet them."

When more Americans meet the Kochs, Greenwald thinks, the days of their political power will be numbered.

"This is something that can be fixed," he said. "It can be fixed by legislation, and it needs to be."
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