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[ProblemAgain]

GOP Lawmaker Says Climate Change Is 'The Greatest Deception In The History Of Mankind'

The Huffington Post  | By Shadee Ashtari

Posted: 06/30/2014 7:17 pm EDT Updated: 4 hours ago

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Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney (R) is accusing liberals, such as former Vice President Al Gore, of advancing "the greatest deception in the history of mankind" -- man-made climate change -- in a scheme to empower the executive branch and increase taxes.

“A specter is haunting America,” Whitney, who is running for Congress in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, warned in a campaign video released Wednesday. “It is perhaps the greatest deception in the history of mankind.”

Mocking Gore’s 2006 Academy Award–winning climate change documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth,” Whitney claimed that the planet "has done nothing but get colder each year since the film’s release.”

“Quite inconveniently for Al Gore, and for the rest of the politicians who continue to advance this delusion, any 10-year-old can invalidate their thesis with one of the simplest scientific devices known to man: a thermometer,” Whitney said, citing record sea ice in the Antarctic sector.

Numerous GOP lawmakers and climate change contrarians have pointed to below-zero temperatures and seasonal snowfall as evidence against the legitimacy of human-induced climate change, despite numerous scientific reports debunking their claims.

Although many parts of the U.S. witnessed record-low temperatures this past winter, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are still rising, winters have become increasingly warmer over the past century and Arctic sea ice is still melting.

Whitney’s own state is one of the most vulnerable regions in the country to climate change, with rising coastal sea levels estimated to submerge the Louisiana coastline by 2100.

[LoveLife&Laughter]

Teabagger 101:  Deny Global Warming; It excites the base.

[ProblemAgain]

Fox News Reporter Refers to Single Ladies as ‘Beyoncé Voters’ Who Depend on Gov't Checks

By Travis Reilly 7 hours ago

Fox News reporter Jesse Watters has some explaining to do — at least to single ladies.

Watters referred to single women as “Beyoncé Voters” Tuesday and then argued that they are forced to depend on government checks because they're unable to “depend on their husbands.”

Watters made the statement after the network's daytime news show “Outnumbered” played a clip from a speech that Hillary Clinton gave Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The speech was extremely critical of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling and Watters chimed in with an interpretation of his own.

“Having access to contraception is not in the Constitution. [Clinton] is dead wrong about that,” he says in the clip. “And Hillary Clinton, I'm not surprised, this is her bread and butter, this is how she's going to try to win the White House.”

While Watters’ take on the situation is open for debate, it's hardly incendiary. He then made a comment about single women in general, however, which might land him in hotter water with some women.

“She needs the single ladies vote — I call them the Beyonce voters, the ‘Single Ladies’ — Obama won the single ladies by 76 percent last time. And they made up about a quarter of the electorate,” Watters says. “They depend on government because they're not depending on their husbands.”

Watters hasn't yet clarified his stance via social media, but the TV commentator did proudly retweet a story about how police kicked him out of a National Organization for Women's Conference on Monday, after allegedly asking a female attendee to feel his bicep.

[LoveLife&Laughter]

They keep forgetting here are more dependent white trash Coulter voters than Beyonce voters.

[ProblemAgain]

Rick Perry stands by Obama immigration conspiracy theory

By Eric Pfeiffer 5 hours ago Yahoo News

Texas Gov. Rick Perry repeated an accusation that undocumented children coming to the U.S. from Latin American countries might be a result of “ulterior motives” from President Obama.

“I have to believe that when you don’t respond in any way that you are either inept or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from,” Perry said during an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I don’t believe he particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure,” Perry said when asked by host Martha Raddatz if he stood by comments made in a June 17 interview with “Fox and Friends.”

“This president, I will suggest, is either totally and absolutely either inept, or making some decisions that are not in the best interests of American citizens,” Perry said during that interview with Fox News.

Perry also suggested that non-Mexicans crossing the U.S.-Mexican border are coming from Middle Eastern countries such as Syria.

“We also have a record high of other than Mexicans being apprehended at the border,” Perry said. “These are people that are coming from states like Syria that have substantial connections back to terrorist regimes.”

Politifact Texas referred to Perry’s Syria claim as “ridiculous” and “not accurate.”

Perry is considering a second presidential run in 2016 and has decided to not seek another term as Texas governor. During the 2012 Republican primary, some primary voters saw Perry’s stance on immigration as too liberal after he questioned the compassion of those opposed to providing tuition for the children of illegal immigrants.

Perry said his criticism of federal immigration policy precedes the Obama administration, noting that he has sent requests for more federal border security to the White House for the past decade. However, his recent comments have taken on a more personal tone suggesting that Obama is willfully allowing the current immigration crisis to unfold.

After Raddatz asked if Perry was engaging in “conspiracy” talk, Perry stood by his views and said the number of undocumented children currently being housed in facilities along the border could hurt American citizens in case of a natural disaster or other unforeseen crisis.

“If we have a major event, a hurricane, that comes into the Gulf Coast, I don’t have a place to be housing people who have been displaced because this administration has been housing them,” Perry said.

[ProblemAgain]

from Esquire

The State Republican Party in Texas Is Now the Craziest in America

It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented.

By Charles P. Pierce on July 7, 2014

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If you want to see the clearest symptoms of the prion disease that has devoured the brain of the Republican party, the state Republican party is your Patient Zero. And, before a whole bunch of people in the Beltway media playpen  begin minimizing this craziness because it pretty much shatters the whole idea of Both Sides Doing It without which most of those people can't get out of bed in the morning. This isn't four guys in camo in Idaho. This isn't a guy broadcasting on a short-wave from upper Michigan, or receiving the truth about chemtrails and the Illuminati through his teeth. This is the Republican party representing the state from which he got our last Republican president, and one of the biggest states in the Union. This is what it believes, as summed up with realit-based parentheticals by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:

Let's proceed to policy. In the next of its forty pages, the platform demands, among other things: That the Texas Legislature should nullify-indeed, "ignore, oppose, refuse, and nullify"-federal laws it doesn't like. (Unmentioned is the fact that, beginning in 1809, the Supreme Court has steadfastedly rejected state nullification of federal laws.); That when it comes to "unelected bureaucrats"-i.e., pretty much the entire federal work force above the janitorial level-Congress should "defund and abolish these positions."; That the Seventeenth Amendment, which was adopted in 1913, be repealed, so that "the appointment of United States Senators" can again be made by state legislators, not by voters. (Admittedly, the Texas Legislature could hardly do worse.), That all federal "enforcement activities" within the borders of Texas-including, presumably, the activities of F.B.I. agents, Justice Department prosecutors, air marshals, immigration officers, agricultural inspectors, and tax auditors-"must be conducted under the auspices of the county sheriff with jurisdiction in that county."

Keep an eye on that last sentence. The Republican party of the state of Texas, a state which has 38 electoral votes and which will send 153 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention, has endorsed the exact theory of government that was promulgated by the gun-toting yahoos at the Bundy Ranch. And there's more.

...there are plenty of things that Texas Republicans plan to do away with entirely-or, to use their preferred word, things they would subject to "abolishment." (For Calhoun conservatives, I suppose, "abolition" has regrettable overtones.) A partial list: Personal-income taxes; Property taxes; Estate taxes;  Capital-gains taxes; Franchise and business-income taxes; The gift tax; Minimum-wage laws; Social Security ("We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions"); The Environmental Protection Agency;The Department of Education and all its functions; "Unelected bureaucrats"; "Any and all federal agencies not based on an enumerated power granted by the United States Federal Constitution"; Congressional pensions; Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, religious freedom, and the Bill of Rights; The Federal Reserve; "Foreign aid, except in cases of national defense or catastrophic disasters, with Congressional approval," Obamacare (but you knew that already).

The Republican party of the state of  Texas, a state that went for Mitt Romney by over two million votes, would like to do away with the Federal Reserve, and any Supreme Court jurisdiction in any case involving the Bill Of Rights. And, yes, there's more.

Things that the Texas Republicans support: Withdrawal from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank; "Traditional methods of discipline, including corporal punishment;" "Reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education institutions," Returning to "the time-tested precious metal standard for the United States dollar."

The Republican Party of the state of Texas, a state in which north of 45 percent of the voters identify as Republicans, would like to bring back spanking.

It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented. This is the Republican Party. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru are not. In fact, I think all those bold conservative thinkers of whom the New York Times thinks so much should bring their Big Ideas down to the next Texas state Republican convention and see how far they get. John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, and especially obvious anagram Reince Priebus, who nominally presides over Bedlam, need to be asked every day which parts of the Texas Republican platform they support and which parts they don't. They don't get to use the crazies to get elected and then hide behind fake Washington politesse when the howls from the hinterlands get too loud. We allow ourselves only two major political parties. One of them is completely out of its fcking mind. This is a national problem.

[ProblemAgain]

let's see what was that accusation about liberals? that they will say anything to get elected? so does that make todd akin a liberal?

Todd Akin Takes Back Apology Over 'Legitimate Rape' Theory

By Arit John 7 hours ago

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Todd Akin and the rest of America agree on one thing: his odds of beating Sen. Claire McCaskill in his 2012 Missouri Senate race would have been better if not for the whole "legitimate rape" incident. In his new book Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom, Akin defends the "science" behind his comments and lists all the establishment Republicans who did him wrong.

In this new excerpt from Politico, Akin writes that wishes he'd done more to "end this evil (that) easily trumps slavery as the greatest moral evil in history." More importantly, he regrets apologizing. "By asking the public at large for forgiveness, I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said," he wrote.

What he said in 2012 was that women rarely get pregnant from "legitimate rape" because "the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down. His defense of "legitimate rape" comes down to this: if a woman isn't lying about being raped ...

RELATED: Rick Perry Really Really Wants the Border Crisis to Be Obama's Katrina

When a woman claims to have been raped, the police determine if the evidence supports the legal definition of 'rape.' Is it a legitimate claim of rape of an excuse to avoid an unwanted pregnancy?

... then the stress of the attack will stop conception, because non-rape related stress sometimes contributes to a couples struggles to conceive. Akin argues that fertility doctors "debate and discuss" the impact of stress fertilization, and you should "google" it if you don't believe him. 

Rep. Todd Akin apologizes but won't abandon race Play Video

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There are a lot of people on the right who didn't believe him, or at least weren't willing to defend him, and Akin makes a point of naming them: Karl Rove, GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, John McCain, Roy Blunt (also from Missouri), Lindsey Graham and Rep. John Boehner. He argues that the "Beltway RINOs" have abandoned the conservative wing of the party, a sentiment Gov. Mike Huckabee echoes in his forward: "we can sit on the bus (in the back!), but they don't want us to drive the bus!" Huckabee stops short of calling Todd Akin the Rosa Parks of the GOP.

Again, something we can all agree on. In 2012, anatomically confused candidates like Akin were largely credited with derailing the GOP's attempts to take the Senate. The New York Times reported after the election that several representatives admitted to marginalizing Akin because, as one strategist put it, his comments “did not seem like outliers.” That's something the party is trying to change this time around, and Akin coming back bolder than ever isn't going to help. If, in 2012, they wanted him to sit in the back, this time they hope to leave him at the bus stop.

[ProblemAgain]

oh another asschapping for the  teaparty

Major New Study Says Obamacare Is Working — Even For Republicans

By Brett LoGiurato 5 hours ago

The Affordable Care Act has been successful at achieving some major goals in the first year of its full implementation, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund.

There are three important findings from the study: The uninsured rate is dropping, most people like their new insurance plans (even Republicans!), and most people are finding it easy to visit a doctor.

The study found the uninsured rate in the U.S. declined by one-quarter over the last nine months, which included the law's first, six-month open-enrollment period in which individuals could sign up for private insurance plans through exchanges established by the law.

From the July-to-September 2013 period to the April-to-June 2014 period, the uninsured rate of people between the ages of 19-64 dropped from 20% to 15%, according to the study. The research found 9.5 million people gained insurance, either through the exchanges or through the law's expansion of the federal Medicaid program.

The decline in uninsured was seen across different age groups and races, though the drop was disproportionately high among the young (-10%) and Latinos (-13%). It was disproportionately low among African-Americans — the decline was only 1%.

The findings show the law has been successful at reducing the uninsured rate among the poor — which was, of course, one of its main goals.

Expectedly, there is a significant difference in the reduction of uninsured between states that have expanded Medicaid and those that have not. According to the study, the uninsured rate among residents who make up to 100% of the federal poverty level fell from 28% to 17% in the 25 states that have expanded Medicaid (plus the District of Columbia). In the 25 states that haven't, the rate only fell from 38% to 36%. 

Among those who have become newly insured, the vast majority say they are "better off" and like their plans. In total, 58% of respondents with new plans said they are "better off" than before — including 61% who were previously uninsured. Seventy-nine percent of those who were previously uninsured said they were either "somewhat" or "very satisfied" with their new plans.

Even 74% of Republicans say they're at least somewhat satisfied with their new plans.

Significantly, most people who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act said they couldn't have accessed care they have received since obtaining insurance:

Finally: About one-fifth of people who have signed up for a new plan have attempted to find a new primary care or general doctor, and most — 75% — have said the process is at least "somewhat easy." Two-thirds of those who found a primary-care doctor got an appointment within two weeks. Thirty-seven percent of people said their new plans included "most" of the doctors they wanted (about 39% don't yet know).

[ProblemAgain]

Republican Calls Climate Change A Hoax Because Earth And Mars Have 'Exactly' Same Temperature

The Huffington Post  | By Shadee Ashtari

Posted: 07/08/2014 6:25 pm EDT Updated: 07/09/2014 6:59 pm EDT

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In a condemnatory speech last week against the Obama administration’s new Environmental Protection Agency carbon emission regulations, Kentucky state Sen. Brandon Smith (R) claimed that man-made climate change is scientifically implausible because Mars and Earth share “exactly” the same temperature.

Smith, the owner of a mining company called Mohawk Energy, argued that despite the fact that the red planet doesn’t have any coal mines, Mars and Earth share a temperature. Therefore, Smith reasoned, coal companies on Earth should be exempt from emission regulations.

During a Natural Resources and Environment Committee meeting Thursday, Smith, the Senate majority whip, said:

As you [Energy & Environment Cabinet official] sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I won’t get into the debate about climate change but I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.

According to NASA, the average temperature on Earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit -- 138 degrees above Mars' average of -81 degrees.

Although the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet has stated that the new EPA rules will not cause Kentucky to shut down any additional coal-fired power plants, state lawmakers Thursday blamed federal environmental regulations for shuttering the state’s coal mines.

Thursday’s committee meeting was dominated by a slew of outlandish scientific claims from both Republican and Democratic climate change deniers.

State Rep. Kevin Sinnette (D) dismissed the threat of man-made global warming by pointing out that dinosaurs survived climate change.

“The dinosaurs died, and we don’t know why, but the world adjusted,” Sinnette said. “And to say that this is what’s going to cause detriment to people, I just don’t think it’s out there.”

State Rep. Stan Lee (R) claimed that climate-warming trends caused by human activities -- a phenomenon backed by 97 percent of climate scientists -- are nothing more than calculated scare tactics.

“All this stems, this carbon capture, all this other stuff, it stems back to a scare, generated years ago about global warming,” the Fayette County lawmaker said on Thursday. “Finally it turned out there hasn’t been global warming in 15 or 20 years, then they changed the name to climate change.”

Even the committee's chairman, state Rep. Jim Gooch Jr. (D), is one of the state’s leading opponents of federal environmental regulations, going as far as to suggest in 2011 that Kentucky would secede from the union to avoid the EPA’s crackdown on mining pollution.

[LoveLife&Laughter]

It's absolutely amazing what they make up.  Or, are ignorant.

But then again, a Party Platform of "Make This President Fail At Any Cost" is ignorant to begin with.

[ProblemAgain]

Ted Cruz: Abortion Access Law Is Part of 'Real' War on Women

Tuesday, 15 Jul 2014 11:12 PM

By Cathy Burke

A proposed bill to protect access to abortion services is a "manifestation of a war on women," Sen. Ted Cruz charged Tuesday.

Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Texas Republican questioned the Women's Health Protection Act, which would prevent states from implementing restrictions—such as doctors' admitting privileges at local hospitals, structural requirements for clinics, mandated waiting periods, and mandated ultrasounds—that make abortion services more difficult to get.

The bill is aimed at actions like those in Texas, which last summer passed a set of restrictive laws that has already closed about a third of the abortion clinics in the state, the National Journal reported. 

Urgent: Do you support Ted Cruz for the Republican nomination for President? Vote Now

There were 40 clinics operating in 2011; 20 are still open, the National Journal notes, and all but six are expected to close.

"This legislation is a very real manifestation of a war on women, given the health consequences that unlimited abortion access has had on many woman," Cruz said of the proposed bill.

Though Democrats say the bill would prevent states from singling out abortions and protect women’s reproductive rights, with no Republican support, the bill has little chance of passing the House and critics dismissed the measure as a political tactic aimed at the midterm election.

"This bill is a weak political ploy," said Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. "It’s unfortunate that the [Senate] majority is using this issue to appear compassionate and concerned about women's rights when, in reality, the bill disregards popular and common sense laws enacted by various states aimed at protecting women and children across the country."

Breitbart News wrote Tuesday the proposed bill is "so far-reaching in its deregulation of the abortion industry, pro-life advocates have named it the 'Gosnell Prerogative Act,'" referring to Philadelphia physician Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murder. 

"This legislation being considered is extreme legislation," Cruz said at the hearing.

"It is legislation designed to eliminate reasonable restrictions on abortion that states have put in place. It is designed to force a radical view from Democrats in the Senate: that abortions should be universally available, without limits, and paid for by the taxpayers."

The National Journal notes states are currently allowed to set abortion regulations, as long as they do not impose an "undue burden" on women seeking the procedure. Republicans argue the new bill is broad enough that it would eliminate any state regulation at all.

"The bill is really about just one thing: It seeks to strip away from elected lawmakers the ability to provide even the most minimal protections for unborn children, at any stage of their prenatal development," Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told the National Journal.

"While the proposal is so sweeping and extreme that it would be difficult to capture its full scope in any short title, calling the bill the 'Abortion Without Limits Until Birth Act' would be more in line with truth-in-advertising standards."

Republican lawmakers said the Democrat-backed bill was overreaching and interfered with state rights.

"I don’t recall Congress ever passing a law that prohibited states from enacting certain categories of laws simply because Congress says so," said Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

"I can’t imagine why any state legislature would support this no matter their position on abortion."

At the start of Tuesday's hearing, Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn held up a photo of her grandson's ultrasound, saying: "I could tell, three months before he was born, that he had my eyes and nose. For a grandmother, that's a really big deal," the National Journal reported.

"We all want what's best for women," she said. "We differ on what that is, and we differ how to get there."

[P.A.]

Marsha Blackburn is one of the most ignorant people ever to be elected to congress. She is from a district next to mine so I get to hear all of the truly stupid things she says. Her district is so gerrymandered that at some points it is less than a mile wide and it runs from south Memphis to the counties north of Nasville. I am amazed that she can get elected even with that advantage.

[LoveLife&Laughter]

I'd be too embarrassed to live there and have normal folks believe I actually voted for that brick.  I'd have to move.