The Republi-CON 'Mini Ice Age" Myth

Sunspot activity  have been observed and recorded for at least 400 year.

"Yes, numbers of sunspots can vary by that much [60%] or even more on an 11-year cycle, but the sun’s output—the total amount of energy we get—is extremely stable and only changes by about 0.1 percent, even in extreme sunspot cycles like the one [recently predicted in 2030] . . .

Past research suggests that an extreme decline in solar activity would lead to a shift of just 0.16 degrees Celsius globally—and even that is erased once a more typical solar cycle resumes in a few decades. . .

No matter what the sun does over the next century, we are not heading in to a new ice age. Why am I so sure about that? It may have something to do with the 110 million tons of carbon dioxide humanity is pumping into the atmosphere every single day. The resulting change to our global climate system is so huge, it overwhelms all natural atmospheric forces, including the sun. There is no other plausible explanation for global warming except us."

Read Slate, No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a "Mini Ice Age".

Read also, the Washington Post, News about an imminent 'mini ice age' is trending — but it’s not true.

Obama the Moderate and Republi-CON Extremism

UPDATE IV:  "One of the administration’s closest allies was Clarence Thomas."

Read Slate, Is the Supreme Court More Liberal Than Obama?  

UPDATE III:  "Obama has governed as a moderate conservative—essentially as what used to be called a liberal Republican before all such people disappeared from the GOP. He has been conservative to exactly the same degree that Richard Nixon basically governed as a moderate liberal, something no conservative would deny today. (Ultra-leftist Noam Chomsky recently called Nixon 'the last liberal president.')

Here’s the proof: . .

Cornell West nailed it when he recently charged that Obama has never been a real progressive in the first place. 'He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit,' West said. 'We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency.'

I don’t expect any conservatives to recognize the truth of Obama’s fundamental conservatism for at least a couple of decades—perhaps only after a real progressive presidency. In any case, today they are too invested in painting him as the devil incarnate in order to frighten grassroots Republicans into voting to keep Obama from confiscating all their guns, throwing them into FEMA re-education camps, and other nonsense that is believed by many Republicans. But just as they eventually came to appreciate Bill Clinton’s core conservatism, Republicans will someday see that Obama was no less conservative."

Read The American Conservative, Obama Is a Republican. 

UPDATE II:  The problem says another political scientist "is radicalism and irresponsible behavior, not ideological extremism." 

Read the Washington Post, 'The Republican Party is severely dysfunctional, not severely conservative'.

UPDATE:  "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges. . .

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.

On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.

Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations. . .

No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking. . .

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site."

Read the Washington Post, Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

Remember, stupidity in the case of partisan extremism is no virtue.

"Placing blame equally on Democrats and Republicans for the stalemate over the debt crisis only encourages more bad behavior." Read The New York Times, The Centrist Cop-Out, which notes:

"Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

Mr. Bartlett has a point. The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.

True, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama is a leftist seeking a government takeover of the economy, but they would, wouldn’t they? The facts, should anyone choose to report them, say otherwise."

And the way to prove it is to call the Republi-CON bluff.

Admit It, It Was a Good Speech

"The president delivers his single most accomplished rhetorical performance, and it’s one you should watch rather than read."

Read the Atlantic, Obama’s Grace. 

More Unbelievable Palin Family Hypocrisy

UPDATE:  "Bristol Palin . . . is too busy giving lectures to hear yours."

So read Slate, A Short History Of Bristol Palin’s Lectures.  

Remember Bristol Palin, a high school drop out, unwed mother, and paid 'abstinence ambassador.'

(The abstinence 'charity' (a term used loosely as you will see) "took in about $1.7 million in donations and only gave $35,000 to groups trying to lower teen pregnancy rates.

Forty-six percent of Candie’s total expenses — $573,000 — went to Palin.

Only 6 percent went to anti-teen pregnancy programs.About $165,000 was paid to ABC for TV advertising."

Even for the Palins, this con strikes me as immoral.)

Well guess what.

"Bristol Palin, the eldest daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, announced today that she is pregnant for the second time, less than a month after calling off her marriage to Marine veteran Dakota Meyer."

Read the Daily Mail, Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol announces she's pregnant again just a month after cancelling wedding to Marine veteran.

 The article notes that "Bristol did not say who the father of the child is in her statement."

Which Political Party Do the Racist Support?

UPDATE:  Working-class whites "vote against their own interests by the right’s exploitation of cultural issues. But Mr. Bartels showed that the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy.

And this party-switching, in turn, was what drove the rightward swing of American politics after 1980. Race made Reaganism possible. And to this day Southern whites overwhelmingly vote Republican, to the tune of 85 or even 90 percent in the deep South. . .

[Most recently, this is reflected in support for Obamacare, AKA the Affordable Care Act,"a plan drafted by the conservative Heritage Foundation, on whose board Bush once served".]

For those who haven’t been following this issue, in 2012 the Supreme Court gave individual states the option, if they so chose, of blocking the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, a key part of the plan to provide health insurance to lower-income Americans. But why would any state choose to exercise that option? After all, states were being offered a federally-funded program that would provide major benefits to millions of their citizens, pour billions into their economies, and help support their health-care providers. Who would turn down such an offer?

The answer is, 22 states at this point, although some may eventually change their minds. And what do these states have in common? Mainly, a history of slaveholding: Only one former member of the Confederacy has expanded Medicaid, and while a few Northern states are also part of the movement, more than 80 percent of the population in Medicaid-refusing America lives in states that practiced slavery before the Civil War.

And it’s not just health reform: a history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy."

Read The New York Times, Slavery’s Long Shadow. 

"The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum."

Read the Guardian, Leader of group cited in 'Dylann Roof manifesto' donated to top Republicans.

The Cult of Carl, Was He a FL Law Enforcement Officer?

UPDATE VI:  There has been little talk of the shooter's specific comment that "you’re taking over our country" as he shoots black people.

How did he develop such an attitude and belief?  Talk radio perhaps??

UPDATE V:  Now we see why the Pastor is no longer in law enforcement.

The site of the murders was a Charleston church, "a historic symbol of black resistance to slavery and racism". 

The shooter was just an everyday racist, who shouted "You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go."  He posted pictures online "wearing a jacket bearing flags from apartheid-era South Africa and what was once white-rule Rhodesia".  He also drove a car with a bumper proudly displaying "a novelty plate in celebration of the slave-holding Confederate states".

Read the Daily Mail, The suspected race-hate gunman, 21, who got a gun for his birthday and proudly wears clothing with the flags of apartheid.  

Of course, the Pastor's ignorance would come as no surprise to anyone who has heard his birther comments, often followed by claims to be 'a former Florida law enforcement officer', as he tries to to bolster his credibility on legal issues.

As noted below, there is no proof that The Cult of Carl was ever a law enforcement officer.

And his hideous, bitter radio sermons that promote fear, anger and hatred make it clear he is no Christian that Jesus would understand.

UPDATE IV:  The Pastor and Satan were in their usual good form this morning, twisting the little known facts after a church shooting (eerily like the The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963) to advance their favorite topic -- hate.

Among other things, the Pastor speculated that the man might have thought he was black, so that he could comment on stories about Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal.

Let's see how well the Pastor's finely tuned law-enforcement instincts are.

UPDATE III:   The cult that is Carl admitted this morning (06/11/15) that he works with Satan when he hunts.

He apparently uses the demonic influence of bait to gain an advantage while hunting deer.  He seems to believe that the deer deserves what happens for sinfully partaking of the bait corn 'it thinks it miraculously found' in the forest, but that deer thought is just the Devil at work.

I'd call to ask him to explain, but he refuses to take my calls, so I'll just have to accept him at his word, Pastor Carl and Satan are huntin' buddies.

(BTW, link updated 06/2015, still no Pastor in the LEO database.)

P.S. Pastor Carl and Satan are also talkshow buddies.  His comments regarding sexual orientation are clear false. "Evidence points toward the existence of a complex interaction between genes and environment, which are responsible for the heritable nature of sexual orientation. . .

[And a]lthough homosexuality can be inherited, this does not occur according to the rules of classical genetics. Rather, it occurs through another mechanism, known as epigenetics.

Epigenetics relates to the influence of environmental factors on genes, either in the uterus or after birth. . .

The academy found that a multitude of scientific studies have shown sexual orientation is biologically determined. There is not a single gene or environmental factor that is responsible for this—but rather a set of complex interactions between the two that determines one’s sexual orientation."

Read Slate, Here’s What We Know About the Science of Sexual Orientation. 

Pastor Carl may have a hard time understanding the science (the article was written by the director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at University of Pretoria in South Africa and another). 

Whereas, anyone who has listen to him knows, Pastor Carl's beliefs and pseudo-knowledge are based on myths and voices he hears in his head (in his case it seems to be Satan).

UPDATE II:  The database now has 214,306 names, still no Pastor.

UPDATE:  Stay tuned, I hear this is a developing story.

In an attempt to bolster his credibility on legal issues, the cult that is Carl likes to says frequently on his radio shows that he is 'a former Florida law enforcement officer.'

Did you know that the Herald-Tribune has compiled a database of 210,348 past and present Florida law enforcement officers.

Let me know if you find his name. (Here is the current page where you would expect his name to be listed.)  (Link updated 06/2013, still no Pastor.)

BTW, the database is pretty comprehensive and does include former law enforcement officers. Our current congressman was a Florida law enforcement officer, and his name is listed.

In the meantime, based upon the Pastor's self professed 10-year law enforcement background and experience, I'm waiting for the arrests that he claims are imminent.

The Answer Is: Zero, No One, LOL

UPDATE IV:  AIG "was made a political scapegoat by Fed and Treasury officials and a backdoor vehicle for bailing out the world’s biggest banks, whose bailout came with much sweeter terms."

Read the Washington Post, Court tells government it was wrong to seize AIG, but awards no money to billionaire ex-CEO.

You may remember, the bank's were paid 100 cents on the dollar for worthless CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), resulting in a $14 billion payment to the Treasury Secretary's former company. 

The worthless CDOs were then dumped in a special fund named Maiden Lane III, an inside joke on the American people.  ("The name Maiden Lane was taken from a street which runs beside New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan.")  (The NY Federal reserve keeps a backdoor that opens on the street, "through which it can sneak people" into and out of the fed building.) 

UPDATE III:  "Instead of embracing the orthodoxy of bank bailouts, austerity, and low inflation, Iceland did just the opposite. And even though its economy was hammered by the banking crisis perhaps harder than any other in the world, its labor didn't deteriorate all that much, and it had a great recovery. . .

[C]ompare it with the United States:



How did Iceland pull it off?

Let the banks go bust . . .

Executives of the country's most important bank were prosecuted as criminals. . .

Reject austerity . . .

Devalue and accept inflation . . .

Impose temporary capital controls . . ."

Read Vox, Iceland put bankers in jail rather than bailing them out — and it worked.

While in the U.S., we bailed out the Banksters, and now they are suing us.

"Americans were angry when Wall Street’s greedy and risky behavior triggered a global financial crisis in 2008. They were angrier still when the government had to borrow and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest banks and the insurance company AIG. They were outraged when they found out that executives at those enterprises were continuing to receive big salaries and bonuses.

So just imagine how outrageous it would be if some Wall Street sharpies went to court to argue that they didn’t benefit enough from the bailouts and that taxpayers should pay them tens of billions of dollars more.

In fact, they did. And, according to legal observers, they just might prevail."

Read the Washington Post, We bailed you out, and now you want what!?!

UPDATE II:  In 2006, securities lawyer warned JPMorgan Chase of "'massive criminal securities fraud' in the bank's mortgage operations. . .

[Since then, the bank and the U.S. government have tried to silence her.  She has been prevented from talking] "by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up."

Read Rolling Stone, The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare.

UPDATE:  "Have you heard the latest about how bad the richest of the rich have it these days? It is reason to fear the wrath of the .01 percent!"

Read The New York Times, Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted, which discusses "the rise of a small but powerful group of what can only be called sociopaths."  

The question:  How many Banksters were prosecuted?

Read the Washington Post, This is a complete list of Wall Street CEOs prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis. 

Test Your News Knowledge

"Test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news by taking our short 12-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with a nationally representative group of 3,147 randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online and by mail between March 10-April 6 as members of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.

When you finish, you will be able to compare your News IQ with the average American and compare responses across demographic groups."


Take The News IQ Quiz by the Pew Research Center.

The Republi-CON 'Creationism' Myth

UPDATE:  For "a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans", read the Washington Post, How a history of eating human brains protected this tribe from brain disease.  

It is also interesting if you have any interest in religion and societal development.

UPDATE:  A new video from science advocates Stated Clearly provides an 11-minute examination of the evidence behind the theory of evolution that should come in handy for anyone debating the issue with creationists.

"Thousands of observable facts from completely independent fields of study have come together to tell us the exact same story: all living things on Earth are related," the group’s founder, Jon Perry, states.

Read Raw Story, Next time your creationist friends reject evolution, show them this video:

"Evolution is nothing more than a fairly simple way of understanding what is unquestionably happening. You don't believe in it — you either understand it or you don't. But pretending evolution is a matter of faith can be a clever way to hijack the conversation, and pit it in a false duality against religion. And that's how we end up with people decrying evolution, even as they eat their strawberries and pet their dogs, because they've been led to believe faith can only be held in one or the other.

But there's no reason for people of faith to reject the mountains of data and the evidence of their own senses. Reconciling is easy: Believe, if you want to, that God set up the rules of evolution among His wonders, along with the laws of physics, and probability, and everything else we can see and measure for ourselves. But don't deny evolution itself, or gravity, or the roundness of Earth. That's just covering your eyes and ears. And only monkeys would do that."

Read The Week, Why you should stop believing in evolution.  

Read also National Geographic, Was Darwin Wrong?

For less technical detail, read George Johnson, The Evidence for Evolution.

For more technical detail, read The TalkOrigins Archive, 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, The Scientific Case for Common Descent.

Republi-CON Family Values, All In the Family Edition

UPDATE VI:  "[J]ust before he ascended in 1999 to the most powerful position in the lower house of Congress, Hastert pushed hard for a law [saying} . . .

'This bill sends a strong message to the most heinous of criminals who prey upon our children – you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law'".

Read the Daily Mail, Hypocrite Hastert called for tough action against pedophiles, kept a file called 'homosexuals' and was praised by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.  

UPDATE V:  There is no comparing Lena "Dunham’s 'admission' of non-incidents of non-abuse to Josh Duggar's conduct, to begin with, he was twice her age.  But it highlight's the nature of Republi-con celebrity. 

"Duggars are essentially famous for the same reason the Kardashians are: their sex lives.

Conservatives take their celebrities where they can get them. Sure, there are actors and country music stars, snatched up quickly for pro-troop specials and benefits, but the Duggars are the rare example of a true conservative folk hero crossovers, individuals whose fame is not dependent on a celebrity-generating skill (acting, singing) but on a set of beliefs. They share that slim slice of Venn diagram (general popular recognition and genuine conservative activism) with the Duck Dynasty clan and a smattering of lesser lights: Joe the Plumber, the owners of Memories Pizza, Cliven Bundy, and Pam Geller. Military heroes are adopted quickly, and territorially. Ben Carson was raised up immediately after his one-sided “confrontation” with the president. . .

Conservatives might argue—and they have a point—that liberals don’t need a separate celebrity culture. Liberal media darlings are, pretty much, media darlings. Their path to celebrity isn’t political because it doesn’t need to be political. Lena Dunham isn’t famous because she’s the victim of a right-wing pile-on, she’s the victim of right-wing pile-on because she’s famous.

The Left doesn’t have anything quite like the conservative folk hero, people who are neither politicians nor activists nor professional performers but simply famous for being liberals. Sandra Fluke, perhaps. Cindy Sheehan (Remember her?) And when they do pop up, the liberal political ecosystem doesn’t have the same network of conferences, straw polls and candidate cattle-calls that prop up the Duggars and their brethren.

Even more than the conferences, however, conservative folk heroes find their credibility increases not via leadership but through victimhood. All criticism by mainstream voices becomes proof of worthiness—and the case of Josh Duggar exposes just how self-defeating the raising up these folk heroes via victimhood can be.

Not that the Palins would realize this. What does Sarah Palin’s own fame stand on now these days, anyway? A caps-lock key and a sense of grievance. It’s not much, but these days, it’s all any conservative celebrity needs. Ironically, it’s their grievance that makes them worthy of attention from the mainstream media as well. The Duggars’ and Palins’ off-the-map political and world views are what draw attention. Outsiders want to stare at the spectacle.

Maybe the cruelest trick that liberal elites ever pulled was luring so many camera-starved conservatives into the limelight—and out of the reality distortion field of their own devising."

Read The Daily Beast, Sarah Palin’s Bitter Cry for Attention.

UPDATE IV:  What goes around comes around, continued.

"Should the former House speaker be prosecuted? The Dennis Hastert who impeached President Clinton thinks so."

Read Slate, Hastert’s Hypocrisy. 

UPDATE III:  Gotta love that Republi-con hypocrisy.

Read Salon, Candidate Jim Bob Duggar in 2002: Those who commit incest should be executed.

UPDATE II:  Are the Duggars part of a 'fundamentalist' Christian sex abuse ring?

"Doug Phillips of the far-right group Vision Forum was forced to step down after admitting to 'a lengthy, inappropriate relationship with a woman.' The woman in question, Lourdes Torres-Manteufel, claims it was more than "inappropriate," noting that they met when she was 15 and that he "methodically groomed" by moving her into the house as a nanny and becoming "the pastor of her church, her boss, her landlord, and the controller of all aspects of her life" before pushing for sex. The Duggars were tight with Phillips and Vision Forum, which promoted a lot of Duggar-related material.

Another hardcore fundamentalist leader who had a mentorship relationship with the Duggars, Bill Gothard, was also caught up in a sex abuse scandal last year. Gothard was the leader of Institute in Basic Life Principles, an organization that promotes the 'quiverfull' philosophy—particularly its emphasis on forsaking contraception and having as many children as possible. Gothard resigned after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment and abuse. Prior to this, Wire reports, the Duggars were "devotees of Gothard's Advanced Training Institute seminars. Until recently, the Duggars' official website called Gothard's Embassy Institute (which he also founded) their '#1 recommended resource' for families (that page now displays as blank)."

Vision Forum, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, and the Duggar family are arguably the three most influential groups promoting the 'Christian patriarchy' movement, which promotes homeschooling, wifely submission, extreme pre-martial chastity (no hand-hugging or kissing), no contraception, and the idea that women's only real role in life is as wives and mothers. Having all your major leadership eaten up by sex abuse scandals is no small thing."

Read Slate, Duggar Revelations Are Just the Latest Sex Abuse Scandal to Rock Far-Right Fundamentalism.

 

UPDATE:  "The Duggars have previously promoted the teachings of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a conservative organization that was once popular among the Christian homeschooling movement. Gothard resigned from the institute he founded in 2014, after allegations of sexual harassment, molestation and failing to report child abuse."

Read he Washington Post, Josh Duggar apologizes amid molestation allegations, quits Family Research Council.

"The police report of Josh Duggar's alleged molestation reveals that incidents happened multiple times between the then teenager and several girls, almost always while the minors were sleeping. . .

'Josh Duggar was investigated for multiple sex offenses, including forcible fondling, against five minors. Some of the alleged offenses investigated were felonies.'

According to the police report, in March 2002, Jim Bob was told by a female minor that his son, then 14, had been 'touching her breasts and genitals while she slept' on numerous occasions.

Josh allegedly admitted to this according to the report, and Jim Bob says he was 'disciplined.'

He was accused again however in March 2003 of allegedly touching the breasts and genitals of 'several woman,' both while they were sleeping and even when they were awake.

The police report says the alleged victims 'live with their parents Jim Bob and Michelle.'

At that point Jim Bob reportedly informed the elders at his church of the situation, but no one notified law enforcement.

The family did send Josh to a 'program [that] consisted of hard physical work and counseling' according to the police report for four months. . .

After he returned home from his program, Jim Bob did take his son to Arkansas State Trooper Jim Hutchens, a family friend.

Hutchens had a stern talk with Josh, but did not take any official action.

He is now serving 60 years in prison after he being caught with child pornography shortly after being released from prison on a previous child pornography charge. . .

Josh currently works for the Family Research Council, and frequently posts photos of himself with [Republi-con] politicians."

Read the Daily Mail, Unsealed police report reveals 'Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar covered up after eldest son Josh confessed to repeatedly fondling girls when he was a teen - and case only went to police in 2006 because of Oprah concerns'.

In 2016, It's Either Sound Like Obama, or Sound Crazy

"The moment a GOP 2016 contender stops sounding like an uber-hawk on foreign policy, they sound very much like Barack Obama."

Read the Washington Post, The trouble with Jeb Bush not sounding crazy on foreign policy.

No one proves this better than the Donald.

And it's not just true on foreign policy, think healthcare.

A Supreme Court Decision Gutting Obamacare Subsidies Will Highlight Republi-CON Hypocrisy

UPDATE:  "Republican leaders in Congress have been promising to craft a detailed Affordable Care Act alternative ever since President Barack Obama signed the law in March 2010. But while Republicans have found time to vote on repealing the health care law more than 50 times -- and have worked hard, as they did on Tuesday, to pass modifications that would benefit powerful special interests like the medical device industry -- they’ve yet to move a single Obamacare alternative through committee and to the floor. Nor has any committee with relevant jurisdiction held even a single hearing on how to handle the aftermath of a potential Supreme Court ruling that wipes out tax credits in two-thirds of the states. . .

Republicans' history of promising and then not delivering comprehensive health care legislation -- a history, after all, that goes back decades -- hints at a deep, fundamental disagreement with the entire idea. Republicans will talk up the importance of helping people with pre-existing conditions or providing financial assistance to people for whom insurance is too expensive. But creating a truly universal coverage system -- in which everybody has access, regardless of income or health -- requires taking steps that many conservatives simply can’t abide.

Specifically, universal coverage requires some combination of regulation, taxes and redistribution (from healthy to sick, and from rich to poor) that Republicans tend to find economically destructive, morally noxious or both. That's true of wholly nationalized, single-payer systems like you find in France or Taiwan. It's true of universal schemes of regulated private insurance, like they have in the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland. It's even true of programs in the U.S. that have existed for a long time -- not just Medicare but also, to some extent, employer-sponsored insurance."

Read The Huffington Post, The Real Reason Republicans Don't Have A Contingency Plan For Obamacare.

"Prepare to be shocked, shocked, shocked! It’s increasingly looking like Republicans won’t have any contingency plan in place if the Supreme Court guts subsidies for millions in three dozen federal exchange states. . .

Some 6.4 million people are now at risk of losing subsidies nationally. . .

It shows that the greatest numbers of people who stand to lose subsidies live in states that are key presidential battlegrounds and home to some of the most contested Senate races of the [2016 election] cycle". 

Read the Washington Post, The stakes in Obamacare lawsuit just got a whole lot higher.  

Words to Live By

From an email:

Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not. -- Henry James

Compassion is language the deaf can hear and the blind can see. -- Mark Twain

Carry a heart that never hates , a smile that never fades and a touch that never hurts.

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. -- Robert Brault

Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you, not because they are nice but because you are.

Never look down on anyone unless you are helping them up.

A good character is the best tombstone.

Those who loved you will remember. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles, it might be the only sunshine he sees all day.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble. -- Rudyard Kipling

Don't be yourself — be someone nicer.

Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it.

Love your enemies - it will confuse them greatly.

There is one word which may serve as a rule for all one's life — reciprocity. -- Confucius

Grownups know that little things matter and that relationships are based on respect.

Don't wait for people to be friendly, show them how. -- Henry James

The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. -- Henry Boyle

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -- Abraham Heschel

If we should deal out justice only in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous for it gains us gratitude. -- Mark Twain

Be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, tolerant of the weak, because someday in your life you will be all of these. -- George Washington Carver

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -- John Wooden

If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be. -- Antonio Porchia

You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how soon it will be too late. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach. -- Winston Churchill

Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out. -- Frank A. Clark

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. -- Epictetus

Don’t let those who take advantage of your generosity stop you from being generous. -- Author Unknown

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud. -- Maya Angelou

In a world full of people who couldn't care less, be someone who care s more. -- Author Unknown

Love thy neighbor and if requires that you bend the truth, the truth will understand. -- Robert Brault

Was It Worth It?

UPDATE XI:  "Washington can provide aid, training, arms, air power — even troops. But it cannot hold together a nation that is falling apart."

Read the Washington Post, Iraq exists only as an idea, not a nation.

UPDATE X:  "The [Iraq] WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around. Paul Krugman is exactly right when he says:

'The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that.'

Read The Atlantic, The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War.

Read also Bloomberg, The Iraq Invasion: What We Knew Then, which notes that 2004 and 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee reports outline the numerous lies, not mistakes but lies, of Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice and others to promote the war.

UPDATE IX:  Some people never learn, or admit error.

Read Vox, Jeb Bush learned the wrong lessons from the Iraq War and the Washington Post, Jeb Bush’s Iraq quagmire is just getting started.

Remember what I said, many times before and during the war: what is the objective, what will be the cost, and are Americans willing to pay the cost to achieve the objective.

Pretty prophetic I must say.

UPDATE VIII:  "Iraq’s army looked good on paper when the Americans left [in 2011], after one of the biggest training missions carried out under wartime conditions. But after that, senior Iraqi officers began buying their own commissions, paying for them out of the supply, food and payroll money of their troops. Corruption ran up and down the ranks; desertion was rife.

The army did little more than staff checkpoints. Then, last year, four divisions collapsed overnight in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq under the determined assault of Islamic State fighters numbering in the hundreds or at most the low thousands, and the extremists’ advance came as far as this base [Camp Taji, only a few miles from Baghdad, the Iraqi capitol]."

Read The New York Times, U.S. Soldiers, Back in Iraq, Find Security Forces in Disrepair.  

UPDATE VII:  "'There is no state left. It is a state of militias.'

The state of Iraq has indeed failed. It no longer has the legitimacy or the power to extend control over its whole territory, and the power vacuum is being filled by a multitude of non-state actors, increasingly extreme and sectarian, who will likely continue to fight each other for years to come, supported by regional powers. Whether a new kind of order will finally emerge, with more local legitimacy, remains to be seen."

Read The Atlantic, 'Iraq Is Finished'.

UPDATE VI:  "The proximate cause of Iraq’s unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011.  The actions of the Iraqi prime minister undid the major accomplishment of the Surge. (They) alienated the Iraqi Sunnis and once again created in the Sunni areas fertile fields for the planting of the seeds of extremism, essentially opening the door to the takeover of the Islamic State. Some may contend that all of this was inevitable. Iraq was bound to fail, they will argue, because of the inherently sectarian character of the Iraqi people. I don’t agree with that assessment." [Of course he can't agree it was inevitable, that would be admitting the war was a mistake to begin with.]

Read the Washington Post, Petraeus: The Islamic State isn’t our biggest problem in Iraq. 

The article notes how in 2008 Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commander, taunted Petraeus that Iran controlled Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. 

UPDATE V:  "Last year saw the highest number of terrorist incidents since 2000, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Worldwide, the number of terrorist incidents increased from less than 1,500 in 2000 to nearly 10,000 in 2013. Sixty percent of attacks last year occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The report suggests that U.S. foreign policy has played a big role in making the problem worse: 'The rise in terrorist activity coincided with the US invasion of Iraq,' it concludes. 'This created large power vacuums in the country allowing different factions to surface and become violent.' Indeed, among the five countries accounting for the bulk of attacks, the U.S. has prosecuted lengthy ground wars in two (Iraq and Afghanistan), a drone campaign in one (Pakistan), and airstrikes in a fourth (Syria)."

Read the Washington Post, After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply.

UPDATE IV:  "During the reconstruction of Iraq, the United States spent about $20.2 billion to train and equip Iraqi security forces, about a third of the total funds spent on reconstruction.Today, those same security forces lost control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. . .

Iraqi security forces still haven’t ousted ISIS from Fallujah, which it captured at the beginning of this year, but Mosul is a much larger and more strategically important city."

Read Slate, The Fall of Mosul and Is the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” a Real Country Now?

UPDATE III:  "It’s been nearly eleven years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which, almost since it began, proved to be the historically fatal element in the war on terror launched by George W. Bush’s White House. His Administration, and its sundry neoconservative wingmen, went so far as to tout the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy across the Muslim lands. At the same time, there was a growing unease that things might not turn out well. In a 2005 conversation I had with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad, he spoke of his fears: 'I shudder to think what we could face if we don’t fix Iraq.' He foresaw the possibility that an Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shiites could infect the entire Middle East.

Where are we today? It seems a good time to take stock."

Read The New Yorker, What the War in Iraq Wrought. 

UPDATE II:  "The proof of how pointless the entire [Iraq war] was—if you even needed more—came Friday morning, with a report . . . in the Washington Post.

'At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,' a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety told Sly. 'The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.'

Fallujah has fallen, and the same scenario is about to happen in the even-larger city of Ramadi."

Read Slate, Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die in Iraq?

UPDATE: "President Obama’s announcement Friday of the withdrawal of nearly all troops from Iraq by Dec. 31 and an end to the U.S. war in Iraq marks a bittersweet moment for many of the families of the more than 4,400 American service members who lost their lives in the conflict.

The organization Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors . . . estimates that 2,465 people lost their spouses and that 3,137 children lost a parent. Some 8,964 parents lost a child, while 13,446 lost a grandchild and 3,675 lost a brother or sister." Read the Washington Post, For families of fallen, a bittersweet day.

As first asked below three years ago, and again in 2010, was it worth the price in blood and treasure?

Robert Kaplan, an early supporter of the war in Iraq, asks "Was the invasion worth it?"

His conclusion, no.

Clever Signs

From an email:

Sign on a gynecologist's office:  "Dr. Jones, at your cervix."

In a podiatrist's office:  "Time wounds all heels."

On a septic tank truck:  Yesterday's Meals on Wheels

At an optometrist's office:  "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

On a plumber's truck:  "We repair what your husband fixed."

On another plumber's truck:  "Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."

At a tire shop in Milwaukee:  "Invite us to your next blowout."

At a towing company:  "We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows."

On an electrician's truck:  "Let us remove your shorts."

In a non-smoking area:  "If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

On a maternity room door:  "Push. Push. Push."

At a car dealership:  "The best way to get back on your feet, miss a car payment."

Outside a muffler shop:  "No appointment necessary. We hear you coming."

In a veterinarian's waiting room:  "Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"

At the electric company:  "We would be delighted if you send in your payment. However, if you don't, you will be."

In a restaurant window:  "Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up."

In the front yard of a funeral home:  "Drive carefully. We'll wait."

At a propane filling station:  "Thank heaven for little grills."

At a Chicago radiator shop:  "Best place in town to take a leak."

On a septic tank truck:  "Caution - This truck is full of political promises."

The Big Republi-CON Lie

"For the entirety of Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans have taken an awkward, cynical, schizophrenic view of entitlements. They have voted with near unanimity for a budget that would radically overhaul Medicare, but have promised (unworkably) to isolate the old and nearly old from any disruptions. They have largely sidelined their preferred Social Security reforms, but salivated over the prospect of voting for a cut to Social Security benefits when they thought Obama might sign it. They have railed against the Affordable Care Act for reducing spending on Medicare while voting for budgets that preserve those very cuts.

The only way to make sense of this mishmash is to remember that the GOP owes its political livelihood to the elderly. To pursue conservative goals, without obliterating their coalition, Republicans must twist themselves into pretzels. They must detest spending, but only on those other people. Their rhetorical commitments are impossible to square with their ideological and substantive ones, though, and the agenda they’ve promised to pursue when they control the government again would not exempt retirees and near retirees in any meaningful way. At the end of the day they can only keep their promises to one interest group, and it’s not going to be the elderly."

Read The New Republic, Mike Huckabee Is Prepared to Blow Up Republicans' Big Ruse.

The Republi-CON Obamacare Hypocrite(s)

UPDATE:  "Senate Republican leaders are seriously considering legislation that would extend health insurance tax credits through the 2016 election even if the Supreme Court invalidates them later this year."

Read Bloomberg, GOP Leaders Consider Preserving Obamacare Subsidies Until After the 2016 Election.

Remember, it was their idea to begin with, as I first noted in 2011.  Just ask Romney. 

"Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who announced his run for president on Monday . . . the right’s champion of 'no compromise' assault on Obamacare and much of the rest of the federal government admitted that, yes, he would be going on Obamacare. . . 

The law does not require Cruz to get health insurance on the exchanges. Instead of going through the exchanges, he could have paid the tax penalty for not having insurance, 'likely cheaper than buying an insurance plan,' but at the cost of being uninsured. Or his wife could have applied to COBRA and extended her benefits from Goldman Sachs for up to 18 months, though she would have to pay all of the premium. Or he could bypass the exchanges and buy insurance directly from a private insurer. Sure, he’d have to spend time navigating the market himself, but I’m sure the Princeton graduate can figure it out. . .

Cruz is not just anyone. He wants us to vote for him for president. He has consistently demanded that his Republican colleagues never compromise. He not only thinks that Obamacare, which he says puts the government 'between you and your doctor,' is a bad policy; he thinks that it is such an existential threat to the United States and its health-care system that it was worth shutting down the government in an attempt to undermine the law. But suddenly the law and the health system it created is not scary enough for his family? If Cruz really wants to run as the candidate of righteous convictions, he’ll have to do a better job of following his own."

Read the Washington Post, Yes, Ted Cruz is a hypocrite for going on Obamacare. 

The Republi-CON "We Love Our Nazi Gestapo Military" Hypocrites

The latest Republi-con conspriacy, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command is planning "an attempt to institute martial law, possibly in collusion with Wal-Mart. . .

'It’s the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany: You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police.'"

Read the Washington Post, Jade Helm 15, a military exercise, brings wild speculation in Texas about 'martial law'.

Luther For President in 2016

"The White House Correspondents' Dinner has become a strange event. It is, ostensibly, an evening when the president and the press can come together to share a few lighthearted laughs. But it's evolved into a recital of brutal truths — albeit one neither side ever really admits happened.

The joke of President Obama's performance on Saturday was that he wasn't joking. Everyone just had to pretend he was. Take this section, from the official White House transcript:

After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, "Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?" And I said, "Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’" (Laughter and applause.)

Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. (Laughter.) New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do. (Laughter and applause.)

The tip-off there is, "It's the right thing to do." That's not a joke. That's Obama's actual justification for the aggressive executive actions of his second term — "fuck it, it's the right thing to do." But the norms of politics are such that he typically has to frame his actions as routine, dull, even necessary. He has to search for precedent and downplay the consequences.

It's only on the evening of the White House Correspondents' Dinner when he can say what everyone already knows: his actions are huge, they are controversial, they push the norms of American politics, but fuck it, at a moment when American politics seems increasingly broken, Obama has decided to just go ahead and do what he thinks is right.

Then there was this line:

A few weeks ago, Dick Cheney says he thinks I’m the worst President of his lifetime. Which is interesting, because I think Dick Cheney is the worst President of my lifetime. (Laughter and applause.) It’s quite a coincidence.

It's funny, sure. But he's not kidding. It's just the thing Obama can't usually say. The humor is in the shock of him actually saying it.

But the place where Obama stopped being polite and started getting real was when he brought out Luther, his personal anger translator. This was, itself, a way of giving up the game. The Luther joke comes from the Comedy Central sketch show Key and Peele, and the point of it is that Obama, as the first black president, is not allowed to express his anger, as America is terrified of angry black men. And so he's got Luther — the angry black man who can say what he can't. . .

There are no jokes there. There's just Obama saying what he has to say and Luther saying what Obama actually believes.

And what Obama believes is that the press is often sensational, trivial, and fearmongering. He thinks they hype negative stories for weeks on end and then refuse to admit their mistake when the horror fizzles. He thinks he gets the blame for catastrophes but little credit for solutions. He thinks the media has a deep bias toward negative stories (which, of course, we do).

But if Obama is annoyed at the press, he is appalled at Republicans who deny climate change — and are trying to block him from taking action to stop climate change. Obama believes global warming a generational threat, and so when he sees James Inhofe, the chair of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, throwing snowballs on the chamber's floor, well, his thoughts on that would likely be seen as unpresidential if he gave them voice."

Read Vox, The joke was that Obama wasn’t joking. 

Thank God We Saved the Banksters, But Why?, Cont.

UPDATE:  Get a job at the U.S. Treasury, use the treasury to bailout the Banksters, and then retire from government and the Banksters hire you for an obscene salary. 

And they call it 'public service'.

Read the Washington Post, Ben Bernanke scores another Wall Street payday, which notes that this is "yet another example of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Just to name a few, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has joined the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, former Fed governor Jeremy Stein has enlisted with the hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management, and former Office of Management and Budget chief Peter Orszag has jumped on board with Citigroup." 

"The Federal Reserve lent billions to rescue banks during the financial crisis, but it has done little to help American taxpayers." Read The New York Times, The Rescue That Missed Main Street.

The 'low-down, no-good godawful' bailout worked (for the banksters).