Monday, October 28, 2013

Those Nasty Hateful Sexist Homophobic Fascist Right Wing Posts in the Comments...Hired Trolls

We knew this was happening but we didn't think it was Fox News leading the charge.
In ‘Murdoch’s World,’ Folkenflik confirms what many social media users have known for a long time. Many right-wing commenters are using fake profiles and they are getting paid for spewing their filth around the web. Folkenflik reveals that these paid commenters use a wide range of deceptive tactics to hide their true identities... The right-wing agenda being pushed by these paid commenters, hired by Fox and other sources, doesn’t just include tax breaks for the rich and the myth of corporate person-hood. It includes racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred of the poor and much more...
I keep a tight reign on my commenters, not to weed out dissenting opinions but to weed out false information and personal attacks. That pretty much takes care of the hired trolls. It would be really nice if every information source did the same thing. Let's note for the record that nearly all conservative sites censor differing opinions from their comments.


  The article is here

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Quote of the Day...Conservative Pundit Edition

“These hucksters tell you things that are false. They lie to you. Ted Cruz lies to you. Heritage Action lies to you. Everybody lies to you. There is a whole cottage industry before the election to tell you, you are winning the election, they are losing. They tell you, your ideas are popular when they are not. They tell you your party is winning when it is not. They tell you the president is losing this and he looks terrible because people are storming the WWII memorial -- At what point do grass roots conservatives stop allowing their leadership to lie to them?”
Exactly! Ben Domenech of the Heartland Institute

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Quote of the Day...Distinguished Alumni Edition

No regular person in the middle of a federal investigation gets called up by his alma mater and offered an important award. So, what's this nonsense? It looks like Jimmy's brother and some of his buddies decided Jimmy needed a little pick-me-up. So, here it is. They've arranged it.
Betsey

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Discussing With Conservatives as Deprogramming

I do not think that agents of a malevolent foreign power could jeopardize the United States of America more than Republicans are at this very moment. The very life of our country is at stake right now. I believe this. I think this. The two are not the same. Yet, when we try to have this crucial discussion, some folks either spout things as facts that are obviously false or they turn away from the discussion altogether. It is very difficult to have any sort of discussion with a lot of people when they come to the discussion with sloganeering sound bites and otherwise ignorance. It is the same as discussing science with a creationist. There is something cowardly about refusing to question your own beliefs and statements, but that is the norm with these folks. Why is this? Well there is a strong and entrenched coalition of people and entities who hang on to power and enrich themselves by stroking the creationist/conservative/republican mind. It is a fear and ignorance driven process but a very purposeful process. In this piece, by Donald Prothero, you can substitute conservative for creationist for cultist and have perfect parity. Here is a snippet but I hope you'll read the whole piece. What we need to do now is deprogram these people... Our country's survival as a democracy is at stake.
Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi, in his 2009 book The Great Derangement, describes going undercover in an evangelical church for many months. He found that creationists live in a very cloistered cultish subculture, where they read only what their church elders tell them to read, attend many church meetings and intensive weekend retreats to receive constant reinforcement, and avoid listening to or reading any outside sources that might challenge their worldview. No wonder they never bother to learn about the actual facts of science or evolution, but instead they get a distorted view of science from their creationist leaders. And such cult-like isolation from the real world explains why no amount of presenting science to them in an appealing manner will ever reach them. As long as the conclusions of science threaten their cherished worldview, they are not going to change their minds or learn to distinguish real science from creationist bunk. Instead, as Rosenhouse details again and again, they are easily swayed by shallow intuitive arguments that sound good when you don’t think hard about them.

 Donald Prothero in eSkeptic

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

No Fair! Texas Has Louie Gomert and All We Have Is Marsha Blackburn

Much like football basketball, Tennessee is so outmatched in the crazy elected official contest. They have Louie and we have Marsha.

Well it's close and getting closer, but not yet. Our governor is goofy fer sure but he's not f*****g goofy like theirs is.

Texas... You win!

And then there's this...

Quote of the Day...Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Begs Dems to Bail Out Republicans on Shutdown

We won't be the last political party to overplay our hand. It might happen one day on the Democratic side. And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kinda give a little? We really did go too far. We screwed up. But their response is making things worse, not better.

That is just cute as it can be. Hey, we all know the GOP would give the Dems a little just to help them save face. In my dreams and your nightmares, Lindsey!

Friday, October 11, 2013

Quote of the Day

After years of cruel jackassery in the legislature, tormenting gays and lesbians and children and women — just to mention a few population segments — state Sen. Stacey Campfield is having trouble finding a public place willing to host a fundraiser for his reelection campaign. Imagine that. Pol Pot would have an easier time of it.

Tennessee Republicans give way too many writers way many opportunities to use "cruel jackassery" in a sentence. 

Pith

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Blackburn One of 50 GOP Congressional Members On Letter to Cut Social Security to Fix Debt

This letter should be held up as proof that the GOP is emphatically driven by greed and fealty to a corrupt financial industry and not good sense or one whit of love for the American people. There are several false statements in the letter, such as the claim that Social Security is an entitlement program that is driving our national debt. That's a flat out lie, as SS is solvent for a generation and has contributed not one penny to our national debt. We should realize that when TN Rep. Marsha Blackburn joins Senator Bob Corker in making noises about cutting Social Security we are seeing several things in action.  Corker and Blackburn are not dumb and they know full well that what they are doing is trying to get the Social Security lockbox out of the safe hands of the federal government and into the clutches of the financial industry they serve so well. They area also willing to repeatedly lie to us in the process.

Here's the letter if you are interested in a well written piece of crap.

Just for fun let's remember who actually crashed our national economy. Was it Social Security or the recently deregulated financial industry? Who cost us a trillion and a half dollars in a bailout and then gave their people 130 million dollars in bonuses, Social Security or the financial industry?

Now let's look at who a recent AARP study says pumps a Trillion dollars INTO our economy each year instead of sucking it out? Why it's Social Security! The financial industry won't even cover the cost of its own government book keeping, thanks to Blackburn and Corker opposing any attempts at imposing fees to pay for the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeping up with stock trades and financial regulations.

Any elected politician who cares about Tennesseans would act immediately to regulate the financial industry and protect Social Security. We're just not seeing that.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Let me see if I have this right...

So GOP, you lost the Presidential election, you lost the vote in Congress 42 times, you lost the Supreme Court decision with your own political operative now Chief Justice voting against you, and Obamacare, a grand compromise in the first place, is the law of the land but somehow you demand MORE compromise. You know that once it fully kicks in and 30 million preciously uninsured Americans get health insurance (that they'll pay for) and everybody sees that it's a major benefit for All Americans, except maybe insurance companies, everyone will see that the GOP is nothing more than the Koch Brother lackey in Congress and has been lying, lying, lying about... well... everything.

At some point all those people who were listening to you scream "Freedom" and "socialism" every time we tried to make things better for all Americans, all those people are going to realize that you don't WANT to make things better for ALL Americans. In fact, all you want to do, GOP, is tear America apart, so much so that when you hit a dribble of an infield hit and got thrown out at first base, you grabbed the ball and are now threatening the umpire with your bat that if he doesn't "compromise" and give you a home run you are going to blow up the stadium with all the American people inside it.

Why do you hate America?

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

EPA Adminstrators for Nixon, Reagan, G H W Bush, G W Bush "We Must Address Climate Change"

Here's a little jewel form the TCWP Newsletter:

Republican former EPA heads endorse climate action

On August 1, The New York Times carried an OpEd by four former EPA administrators who had served during Republican administrations: William Ruckelshaus (Nixon; Reagan), Lee Thomas (Reagan), Bill Reilly (Bush, Sr.), and Christine Todd Whitman (Bush, Jr,). Their message: “The United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.”
There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts, they say, and the costs of inaction are undeniable. Because the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, a carbon tax, is unachievable in the current political gridlock, they recommend the achievable actions laid out in Pres. Obama’s June climate action plan (NL310 ¶6A). “Rather than argue against his proposals, our leaders in Congress should endorse them and start the overdue debate about what bigger steps are needed and how to achieve them — domestically and internationally.”

They remind us that “conservative principles” that guided their actions under four Republican presidents helped them tackle major environmental challenges to the nation and the world, e.g., major water pollution, the ozone hole, and acid rain. “And despite critics’ warnings, our economy has continued to grow. … We can have both a strong economy and a livable climate.”

Their conclusion: “The only uncertainty about our warming world is how bad the changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to waste.”

Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Affordable Care Act In Plain English

Look, the ACA contains over 400 amendments put in there by Republicans. It has flaws. That said it's a huge step in the right direction. 

Here you go.

Friday, October 4, 2013

If Health Insurance is an Open Question As GOP Claims...

So we completely compromised (caved) to Republicans and enacted a Republican Plan (Obamacare) and left Single Payer and Public Option health insurance on the cutting room floor and THIS is how they act? The GOP has shut down the government (except for their salaries) in a childish snit over an act that passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by the President. If this is how they want to abdicate their responsibility for civil governance I say we put Single Payer and Public Options right back on the table and do this again...Along with Gerrymandering reform, which would eliminate their illegitimate majority in Congress and give this nation some relief from these creeps.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

GOP Shutdown

We have an idiot GOP congressman in Tennessee who says we'll never even notice the shutdown of the United States of America. It appears that the Tea Party has accomplished what the Nazis, Communists, fascists, anarchists, militant theocratists, and libertarians have been unable to do, even with bombs and armies. Now that fake news person, Chuck Todd, has explained that his job is to help catapult the propaganda rather than call balls and strike and ask tough questions of both sides rather than just Democrats, we are for clarity and enlightenment left to the last bastion of truth justice and the American way, comedians.

Some of then have potty mouths or rather potty fingers but they have facts and truth, as in this case...

Wonkette


Talking Points Memo

But hey, you'll probably never notice that the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, one of the greatest drivers of the economy in East Tennessee, has been shut down.


There are good pundits and there are bad pundits. Bad pundits lead with with claims that "gridlock" in Washington caused the first federal government shutdown in 17 years. They claim that the shutdown is a "pox on both your houses" type of deal, and use phrases like the White House and Congress "trading blame" or "pointing fingers" for shutting down the government.  
Good pundits write about the fact that the shutdown is the result of House Republican behavior. Specifically, House Republicans, led by the nose by the Tea Party, are throwing a tantrum because, boo hoo, they didn't win a presidential election in 2008 and 2012.
Daily Kos