It's Robert's Fault

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Senator Denies Climate Change On Senate Floor And Gets A Science Lesson From His Colleague | ThinkProgress

Here at ClimateProgress, we spend a lot of time debunking politicians who deny climate change based on scientifically murky grounds. On Thursday, it looked as though we’d have to do it again, after Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) blocked a Senate resolution that would have simply stated that climate change is real. Inhofe said he objected to the resolution because the earth had experienced “no warming for the last 15 years;” and because 9,000 scientists had signed a petition expressing doubt that greenhouse gases cause global warming.
Fortunately, however, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) did the debunking for us, just seconds after Inhofe finished his tirade against the Obama administration for having his federal agencies “collude” together to promote a “global warming agenda.”
“I appreciate very much having had the opportunity to hear those words, from what I can only describe as an alternate reality,” Whitehouse began, before getting into detailed specifics rebutting each one of Inhofe’s points.

see the video at the linked source.

Congressman Calls On Darrell Issa To Build 'Truth Pool' To Discover Witches | Liberals Unite

“Voting by members has reached the limit of its usefulness,” said Cárdenas. “We are picking winners and losers, when it is clearly obvious that witches can only be found by dunking them in water. If they float they’re a witch. If they don’t, installing a pool will allow us to retrieve the non-witch before he or she drowns. Like the Chairman, I am interested in effective government oversight and reform. This pool will allow that to take place, wasting far fewer taxpayer dollars in the process.”

BOR: Conservatives Resort To Lying About Child Refugees' Vaccination Rates To Justify Their Deportation

Conservatives are coming up with multiple kinds of excuses in order to deport the Central American child refugees, all while trying to hide their true prejudice against them. Case in point: "Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don't even know what all diseases they have. Our health care systems can't withstand this influx," recently said U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, trying to make a healthy safety case for deportation and "war" against these children.

Yeah, you can pretty much stop at Conservatives resort to lying.

The Injustice of Marijuana Arrests - NYTimes.com

America’s four-decade war on drugs is responsible for many casualties, but the criminalization of marijuana has been perhaps the most destructive part of that war. The toll can be measured in dollars — billions of which are thrown away each year in the aggressive enforcement of pointless laws. It can be measured in years — whether wasted behind bars or stolen from a child who grows up fatherless. And it can be measured in lives — those damaged if not destroyed by the shockingly harsh consequences that can follow even the most minor offenses.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Gov. Rick Perry's statistics on crime by immigrants questioned - El Paso Times

"642,000 crimes committed by illegals since 2008," state Rep. Steve Toth, a Woodlands Republican who is running for the state Senate, tweeted after Perry's news conference. "Does that sound like a problem? Keep your TX Nat Guard in your prayers as they're deployed."

An examination of the statistic used by Perry shows that it doesn't make the claim expressed in Toth's tweet — although state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, said it's designed to leave that impression.

"This is a deliberate misrepresentation," Rodríguez said. "It's about promoting the big lie."

Asked to document Perry's claim, the Department of Public Safety provided a document that unpacked the statistic — and showed that it has little relevance to the current situation on the South Texas border, Rodríguez said.

Toth did not respond to a call to his office last week seeking comment about his tweet. After Perry's news conference, his office referred questions about the statistics the governor used to the Department of Public Safety.

GOP Governor Who Won't Expand Medicaid Blames Obama For High Uninsured Rate In State

In an effort to see Obamacare fail, Bryant and other Republicans in Mississippi are going out of their way to deliberately hurt the poorest people in their state. In a state that has proven time and time again that pushing an extreme conservative ideology only makes things worse, Mississippi Republicans continue to insist that everything is the fault of liberals and Democrats. If they aren’t blaming Obama for their ills, they are claiming that not having insurance isn’t all that bad anyway. That it is really just about having a choice. Mississippi’s Speaker of the House Philip Gunn had the following to say when asked if it was good that more people in Mississippi are now uninsured.

“I don’t know if it is good or not. That is their call to make.”

The Tea Party is Nothing More Than a Bunch of Cowards and Hypocrites

Which begs the question, why doesn’t the tea party run candidates as their own party? If “the Republican establishment” is so awful, why do they run candidates as Republicans? Hell, they call themselves “the tea party,” why not create their own actual political party if they think that they represent the “voice of the American people”? Oh, I know why! Because they’re cowards and hypocrites. See, they know if they ran their own candidates as a third party, they’d split the conservative vote between the two resulting in quite a few gains for Democrats. I guess when it comes to these tea party supporters “standing up for their values,” that doesn’t extend out to having the courage to stand on their own and let the American people decide who they want. - See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/tea-party-nothing-bunch-cowards-hypocrites/#sthash.tbig8fdN.dpuf

A Liberal's Handy Guide to the Bible's Exaltation of the Poor

But it is the undeniable case that the Bible abounds with concern for the poor. So without further ado, here is your handy list of poor-oriented Bible passages. Feel free to spread the Gospel with your godless Religious Right neighbors.

First a quick overview of Jesus on the subject, just to provide some context, since these are the passages studiously avoided by Republican politicians and their Religious Right puppet-masters like David Barton and Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins and Ralph Reed, etc, etc.

This comment by Joeseph P. Uhlat the linked source receives Robert's thumbs up,

Years back I did a painting inspired by Enigma's "Cross of Changes". It depicts a native American Indian chief crucified on a hill and in the backround is a village being destryoyed, Indians being murdered and buffalo being slaughtered wholesale. And waiting in the wings are Locomotives and wagon trains. Only a few of the board of the local arts festival liked it, the majority not only hated it but asked and even demanded that I never display it. But things have changed in the last ten years here and one day it will go up for display. All those who voted it down are Reich Wing Conservative Christians who called me a blasphemer, my reply was that blasphemy is a victimless crime.

Satanists want to use Hobby Lobby decision to exempt women from anti-abortion laws

In a statement, the Satanic Temple said that it will use the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision to exempt its believers from state-mandated informed consent laws that require women considering abortions to read pro-life material.

Informed consent or “right to know” laws state that women seeking elective abortions be provided with information about alternatives to the procedure, often couched in language that attempts to personify the fetus. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 35 states currently have informed consent laws, and of those, 33 require that the woman be told the gestational age of the fetus.

Psychotic Birther ‘Baggers Hold Pro-Gun Rally on Grassy Knoll Where Kennedy Was Assassinated | Americans Against the Tea Party

Most birther protests are nothing to really pay attention to – as the government could probably falsify any document they really wanted to were they so inclined. In this day and age they would just need to type it into a computer and press “print”…not fabricate it after it’s already been printed.
Nonetheless, the birthers seem intent to forget that we are in the digital age and want to scrutinize a piece of paper printed out of a hospital in Hawaii.
This time, however, they’ve decided to go ahead and push it one step further. This group of ammosexual birther conspiracy-theorists threw a protest in honor of President Obama on none other than the grassy knoll – the same spot where it is believed one of the fatal shooters who took out President Kennedy fired from.
Whether or not there was an actual shooter at the grassy knoll is insignificant in this instance. It is the symbolization that matters. We’ve had a congresswoman who was shot in the head during this hyper-partisan time in our nation’s history. At the same time we are standing at the height of unprecedented mass killings and gun violence that is deadlier than the American Wild West.

This comment from John at the linked source receives Robert's thumbs up,

They should be thankful Obama is president. If that would have happened when Bush was President they would have been locked up idefinatly for a terrorist act of threatening the president. Locked up with no charges no council, the patriot act probably would have sent them to Guantanamo.