WASHINGTON — Democrats controlling the Senate rejected for the second year in a row Wednesday a budget plan passed by House Republicans.

The 58-41 vote against the GOP budget came after a daylong debate in which Democrats blasted Republicans for refusing to consider tax increases as part of a solution to trillion-dollar deficits, and Republicans in turn attacked Democrats for not offering a budget at all.

Republicans launched the debate, which was aimed less at successfully passing a bill than highlighting the failure of Senate Democrats to deal with a budget deficit expected to top $1 trillion for the fourth consecutive year.

Just in case you had been suffering delusions that the Republicans have improved on basic arithmetic or responsible governance, House Speaker John Boehner and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney on Tuesday made sure to disabuse you of that notion. As both men pandered to the base on deficit reduction while foreswearing tax increases, they reinforced the central Republican narrative of our age: Somebody else can pay for the mess we made. Somebody -- as in those losers who can't afford memberships at our golf club.

Boehner delivered that message in a warning that he would again engage in brinksmanship later this year when Congress and the White House return to negotiations over lifting the debt ceiling and extending the tax cuts George W. Bush bestowed on wealthy Americans. You will surely recall how the last such negotiations went down: Boehner and his fellow Republicans held to threats not to go along without draconian spending cuts -- a line they maintained so rigidly that they convinced much of the planet that we Americans had lost our minds along with our calculators, leading to Uncle Sam's credit rating getting dinged.

Reporters covering Mitt Romney's campaign sent out a volley of tweets on Wednesday, complaining that they had been prevented from asking the presumptive Republican nominee questions at an event in Florida.

Trouble between the campaign and the press apparently started at the beginning of the day. Sara Murray, a Wall Street Journal reporter, tweeted that journalists had been told they would not be asking any questions of Romney. "Isn't that our decision?" a reporter asked.

Lots of people agree that our government is currently bogged down in a morass of dysfunction that's so disastrous that it's basically criminal. And I do not use that word lightly.

People who hold other people hostage are criminals, and the elected criminals came very close to murdering the entire global economy when they took the debt ceiling hostage. And if you recall, the deal that was crafted to avoid that mess involved the creation of a Super Committee that was tasked with creating a package of spending cuts and revenue adds to bring budgetary discipline to Congress. They needed a supermajority to agree on a plan. And they failed.

Republican Mississippi state Rep. Bubba Carpenter recently gave a callous assessment of a state anti-abortion law that critics have cautioned could close down the state's only abortion clinic.

Abortion rights advocates have protested the measure, claiming that the shuttering of the facility -- brought on by potentially overwhelming certification requirements for practicing physicians -- could force women to turn to dangerous alternatives. This prospect didn't seem to concern Carpenter.

Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio, has decided to drop its entire student health insurance plan as of the fall semester 2012 because of the new federal rule requiring contraception coverage under most employee and student health policies. While a number of religious colleges http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/catholic-colleges-file-lawsuit-feds_n_1293814.html">have filed lawsuits over the birth control requirement, Franciscan is the first to get rid of its student health plan.

One day after President Barack Obama's reelection campaign launched videos and a website attacking Mitt Romney's record at private equity firm Bain Capital, a pro-Obama super PAC is launching a $4 million ad campaign and a website attacking Romney on the same issue.

Priorities USA Action released a 30-second ad Tuesday morning on the closure of the Kansas City plant of GST Steel, which Bain Capital acquired in 1993. The ad features steelworker Pat Wells, who lost his job at the plant.

WASHINGTON -- New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R), whose named has been floated as a possible Republican vice presidential pick, slammed Mitt Romney on Monday for his immigration strategy.

Martinez took aim at Romney's support for a policy of "self-deportation," whereby conditions in the U.S. would be made so uncomfortable for undocumented immigrants that they would voluntarily leave the country.

"Self-deport? What the heck does that mean?" Martinez said in a Monday interview with Newsweek. "I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign. But now there's an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why."

You may wonder how the Tea Party and Religious Right have gained and currently wield so much power. First you need to look at how they have gained this power. Just by saying "No" to anything that is not part of their agenda they were able to assure the Republican Party had no power except what they were willing to give them. The Tea Party usurped the Republican Party and replaced our two party system with a Parliamentary system of government.  It is clear why the Tea Party wishes to ignore the President and wants Congress to have all the power. The goal is and has always been to create a Parliamentary Government environment. The real goal of the Tea Party was to create a voting block within the Congress and Senate that must be dealt with in order to advance their agenda by forming a coalition. This is why the Republican Party has had to shift so far right to accommodate this coalition. If you take a look at the government in the UK, the supreme legislative power is vested in the Queen-in-Parliament; although in practice in modern times, real power is vested in the House of Commons. The house of commons in the UK (equal to our Congress) wields the most power even over the House of Lords (equal to our senate).

Now let's look at how they are maintaining and wielding this power. The easiest way to explain this that I can come up with is the "Monkey Experiment".

Experiment:

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done.

Look at Senator Richard Luger and Senator Oympia Snowe and how they were treated by the Tea Party. Can you not see how the Tea Party is attacking the other monkeys?

Are you going to let them get away with getting rid of our Democracy and just handing over the power to them or are you going to put a fight?

T1Truth

The bipartisan efforts of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on a range of issues have attracted grumblings from the right.

Cantor recently has played a leading role in moving legislation on jobs, banning congressional insider trading, and reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.

As Washington’s tea party class endeavors to rekindle the movement’s magic, this month’s Texas Republican Senate primary stands as a crucial test of its strength and influence.

The effort might backfire in Nebraska, where GOP Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) and conservative organizations including the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks have been stumping for state Treasurer Don Stenberg in Tuesday’s three-way GOP Senate primary. Stenberg could finish dead last, his standing with voters diminished by the barrage of negative television ads that the supportive, Washington-based tea-party-affiliated groups and Members have run against his opponents. 

CICERO, N.Y. —Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.) is exasperated as she concludes her opening remarks and reaches for a piece of paper on the podium.

“I don’t know who was handing out this literature,” she says, “but I think we’ve got to talk about this a little bit.”

Elizabeth Warren called on JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to resign from his post on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's board, citing the need for "responsibility and accountability" in the financial industry.

Dimon, who disclosed a $2 billion loss by the banking giant last week, should "send a signal to the American people that Wall Street bankers get it and to show that they understand the need for responsibility and accountability," Warren said in a statement following Dimon's Sunday appearance on "Meet the Press."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott's chief of staff has abruptly resigned amid news stories examining his job performance and handling of contracts.

Steve MacNamara wrote in a resignation letter Saturday that he would step down July 1. He wrote that "recent media attention I have been receiving has begun to interfere with the day-to-day operations of this office."

The Associated Press recently reported that while working for the state Senate, MacNamara helped steer a $360,000 no-bid consulting contract to a friend who now leads a task force rooting out state government waste.

PHOENIX, May 13 (UPI) -- Diehard Ron Paul  supporters were having none of the Mitt  Romney campaigns calls for party unity at the Arizona Republican Convention  this weekend.

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney’s recent declaration that Russia is America’s top geopolitical adversary drew raised eyebrows and worse from many Democrats, some Republicans and the Russians themselves, all of whom suggested that Mr. Romney was misguidedly stuck in a cold war mind-set.       

Newt Gingrich will campaign for Mitt Romney at next week's Georgia state GOP convention, CNN reports.

After dragging out the final days of his 2012 bid, Gingrich finally suspended his presidential campaign May 2. Though it was reported he would embrace Romney's candidacy as he suspended his campaign, Gingrich delayed making an outright endorsement.

The Republican Party has alway been a party with a lot of bravado masking the fears that underline much of our society. This party has always been afraid to negotiate on the world stage preferring to force our nations will upon others, they have always been afraid to accept social change as they feared their power and way of life may be jeopardized, and they have always feared the future through science as it may be at odds with their religious beliefs. With that said, most Republicans of the past would at some point accept that change was inevitable and aqueous to reality. Nixon created the EPA, Reagan did negotiate strategic missile reductions and actually considered proposing all nuclear missle be eliminated, George Wallace in his later life even acknowledged he was wrong on civil rights and worked to rid his party of intolerance.

With the emergence of the Tea Party, the Religious Right of the party has formed an unholy marriage with them to try to consolidate a coalition to take over the Republican Party and so far are succeeding. The real question to be asked is why. The answer is simple, if you look at the root of their agenda, that answer is fear and cowardice.

There is a good reason why the religious right wish to deny science and promote GOD. This is because they are cowards. It is not being religious to hide behind GOD. Instead it is the fear of moving our society forward to where they may become irrlevant. Recent statements by many on the religious right to the effect they believe that the church should have the right to intervene in the state and that education is elitist is like hiding under the sheets. By denying science and using GOD as an excuse they can blame everything on GOD's will without ever having to accept responsibility. They do not want to be responsible for anyone other than themselves and are are afraid to take responsibility for the future let alone facing the future.

The whole premise of the Republican Party went from conservative to reactionary. Republicans need to face up, accept it, the world will not stand still or go backwards and like it or not, becoming innovative and moving forward is the only way to succeed. Republicans, especially the Tea Party wish to rewrite history to fit their needs. They are now denying the old testament, fighting against science, protecting the corporations and their own pockets to assure they can still wield power and influence because their belief systems in the world today can not stand up against reality.

The Republican Party has declared war on courage. The courage of those in our society to fight for the rights of all, believe in religious freedom, wish us to innovate and move forward, understand that we are a global community, and believe that change can be a good thing are all under assault from the Republican Party. My question is are there no longer any Republicans with an ounce of courage to tell the American People what is truly happening. Is there not one Republican willing to denounce the positions that the far right are forcing their party to take. Is there not one Republican who has not sold their soul to the far right? No matter how extreme the statements being made by the far right, not one Republican will come out and just say what we all know that those statements are just plain wrong and do not reflect what we are as a nation. Could just one Republican show a little courage? Guess not because they are all cowards.

When you have T. Boone Pickens calling the Koch Brothers evil, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and others warning us of the inequalities that the Republicans are pushing, do you not think it is time to sit up and listen? When womens rights are being assaulted in just about every state, do you not think a battle is being waged? When voting ID laws akin to Jim Crow laws are being pressed, do you not think that white males are trying to hold on to power? When Newt Gingrich and others in the Republican Party are saying that the Supreme Court needs to be pistol whipped if they do not like their decisions, do you not think the far right is not trying to take control of our government? When the far right cannot tolerate gays even in the Romney campaign staff, call our President a Muslim, call our democratic colleagues communists, do you not think they are at war with us? When the far right is having our text books re-written eliminating anything that does not match their religious views and adding in Christian beliefs instead of science, do you not believe that this is not the same as burning books like in Nazi Germany to hide the truth? When the GOP is pushing gun rights and the right to carry guns even in our schools, do you not think they are arming themselves for a revolution? When the right declares that corporations are people and are giving tax cuts to the rich while trying to have you pay more, do you not think they are not trying to disarm you in this war? When the right is saying that the states should be deciding our fate, do you not see they are trying to get rid of the Federal Governments ability to control their reactionary agenda? When Republicans like Olympia Snow and others that are being pushed out of the Republican Party because they are considered to moderate, do you not think a purge of any voices of reason within the Republican Party are being systematically eliminated?

Does not all of the above indicate that the GOP is just plain cowards when it comes to facing the future? The Republican Party has declared war on anyone with the courage to stand up for what is right. So to the Republican Party I only have this to say: "Let's Get It On." It is time for you to find a hole to crawl into because America, our America, is ready to burry you in this fight and assure until you can find that one ounce of courage to do the right thing, that you are irrelevant.

T1Truth

Madison - A filmmaker released a video Thursday that shows Gov. Scott Walker saying he would use "divide and conquer" as a strategy against unions.

Walker made the comments to Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has since given $510,000 to the governor's campaign - making her Walker's single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history.

The filmmaker has done work on Democratic campaigns and gave $100 in 2010 to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker's challenger in the June 5 recall election.

In the video shot on Jan. 18, 2011 - shortly before Walker's controversial budget-repair bill was introduced and spawned mass protests - Hendricks asked the governor whether he could make Wisconsin a "completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work" state. The Republican donor was referring to right-to-work laws, which prohibit private-sector unions from compelling workers to pay union dues if the workers choose not to belong to the union.

Even before he announced his support for same-sex
marriage, President Obama was badly trailing Republican Mitt Romney
among evangelical Christians, the group most committed to traditional forms of
marriage, according to a new poll about the attitudes of religious voters.

 

Romney led Obama by 68% to 19% among evangelicals
in the poll released Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute
and the Religion News Service. The nationwide poll was conducted over four days
ending Sunday, well before Obama's remarks about same-sex marriage. (And no
questions were asked on that topic.)

 

The good news for the Obama campaign is that
Romney doesn't have as much support yet among evangelicals as Republican John
McCain did in the 2008 election, when exit
polls showed that he had captured 73% of the evangelical vote. George W.
Bush did even better in 2004, when he claimed 79% of evangelicals.

For anyone has read any of my previous articles you will know that I fully support the Democratic Party at this point in our history. After yesterdays statement by the President I still support the Democratic Party 100% in this election year although the statement from the President makes absolutely no difference in my opinion. I know that many will take this statement that they finally have a President of the United States affirming that what they believe is extremely important. I also know that many will take this  statement to mean that the President is a heathen and looking to destroy every fabric of the universe. To this, I say what.

The fact of the matter is the President gave a personal opinion. There are approximately 300,000,000 people in the US and approximately 140,000,000 registered voters, each of who have an opinion also. There is not one of these opinions any more important than anyone else. We all form opinions based upon our experiences, education, and beliefs. Not one of these are any more important to the individual than their own.

The Presidents statement does not change a law, it does not change the status of one single individual in the nation, and it is not bringing about the end of the universe. The President has many opinions that have not become law, created new legislation, or became policies that have been enacted. All the President indicated was that we the people should have the right to form our own opinion and manage our state laws accordingly. So forgive me if I do not even find this news worthy.

Now if the President uses his office to legislate new laws, backs specific proposals, or signs an executive order to enforce this point of view I will sit up and take notice. Until then, my opinion is that this is just another citizen telling us what he thinks.

With all of that said, last week we published an article indicating that we at war with the far right of the Republican Party and we stick by that article 100%. There is no doubt that with this statement the religious right will use it for their war propoganda and the war will escalate. Below is the link to the article we posted last week regarding this war and we suggest that if you did not read it before that you take this opportunity to do so, if you did read it, we suggest that you read it once again and keep it mind over the next several months as we move toward the election because that is what is news worthy.

This is War - My Liberal Friends are Pissing Me Off

T1Truth

Reuters) - President Barack Obama threatened on Wednesday to veto a Republican bill that would partially replace looming automatic budget cuts and protect military spending at the expense of food stamps and other social programs. 

The White House said in a statement that the cuts proposed by Republicans would "cost jobs and hurt middle-class and vulnerable Americans - especially seniors, veterans and children."

 

"The bill's unbalanced provisions fail the test of fairness and shared responsibility," the White House added.

 

The veto threat escalates one of several new budget battles that have broken out this spring in Washington.

The automatic cuts, about $1.2 trillion over 10 years, were set in motion by last summer's debt-limit deal, after a congressional panel failed to specify further deficit-reduction measures. Unless Congress takes action to stop them, the across-the-board cuts are scheduled to hit in January.

This afternoon in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, President Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage.

“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” the president said.

But then he was interrupted by the Kraken rising from the deep and swallowing Alaska.

We were warned, after all, that this would happen.

The president went on to say that his change of heart had been brewing for some time, from talking to servicemen and women to dinner table discussions with his daughters Malia and Sasha to Vice President Biden’s recent remarks on “Meet the Press.”

But I could not really hear him over the sound of frogs falling from the sky and all the rivers turning to blood. Darkness covered the earth. Joe Biden was set upon by sea-serpents.

Even Ken Jennings was affected. “MY DAUGHTER IS GAY MARRYING ALL HER KEN DOLLS THEY LOOK AMAZING BUT WHERE WILL THIS END,” he tweeted.

Jesse Lee Peterson, the controversial conservative preacher and regular guest of Sean Hannity, said in a recent video it was a mistake to allow women the right to vote.

In a video uploaded in March but publicized this Monday by Raw Story, Peterson, who runs an organization calling for Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), said that allowing women to vote puts the United States "on a pathway to destruction."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has a theory about the super-rich: They just want to be loved.

"If you're really, really rich, an additional dollar, an additional hundred million dollars doesn't matter too much for you. But feeling that you are being respected -- it matters a lot," the Princeton professor and New York Times columnist, said in an interview with Reuters on Monday.

WASHINGTON — The battle over President Obama's plan to keep interest rates low on federal student loans escalated Tuesday as Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to tax higher-income individuals to pay for it.

Jihad is a term meaning: "A religious war with those who are unbelievers of your faith to advance the agenda of your religion. Last week we published and article outlining our case that the Right Wing of the Republican Party had declared war on the rest of the nation. (This is War - My Liberal Friends Are Pissing Me Off) If you read that article or not, we thought we would provide some statements from the far right to back up our assertion that the far right has declared an all out war or Jihad on the rest of America.

The quotes below are just a small sampling of thousands of quotes available from the right wing. I would dare anyone to read these and other quotes and come to any other conclusion than the far right has declared all out war for this coming election year.

Gary North of the Institute for Christian Economics

"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."

"This is God's world, not Satan's. Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians."

"So let us be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a
generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will be get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Gary Potter of Catholics for Christian Political Action

"When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no atanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no
more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil."

Pat Robertson (Founder of The Christian Coalition)

”Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same
thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.

Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

"There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore."

Rick Santorum

It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion and now we're just extending it out."

Anne Coulter (Conservative Author)

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building"

Robert T. Lee (Society for the Practical Establishment of the Ten Commandments)

"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America."

AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION PRODUCES HOMOSEXUALITY!"

David Barton of Wallbuilders

"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America."

Gary Bauer (President of American Values)

"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe."

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin

“George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”

Rev. Jerry Falwell

"We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself."

Dr. D. James Kennedy (Founder of The Center for Reclaiming America)

"Democracy originated in the mind of a rational being who has the deepest hatred for God."

"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ."

"The best way to insure the earth is never over populated is for sensible and righteous governments to clear all forms of atheism and heresy."

"Raising your children under Americanism or any other principles other than true Christianity is child abuse."

Joseph McCarthy

"Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity."

Henry Morris of the Institute
for Creation Research”

“The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis
1-11 is the actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or
chronologic problems thereby entailed."

Kay O'Connor (State Senator, R-Kansas)

"I'm an old-fashioned woman. Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women today, we wouldn't have to vote."y O'Connor (State Senator, R-Kansas)

Star Parker of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education

"Anybody that believes in separation of church and state needs to leave right now."

Now do you believe this is War?

T1Truth

WASHINGTON -- Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the political ad-buying organization cofounded by Republican strategist Karl Rove in 2010, has officially submitted its first tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service, and as expected, the group is formally requesting that the IRS treat it as a nonprofit operating under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

As a political observer and participant over the last thirty years I have come to the conclusion that there are four types of Republicans. This view has been developed over the years from countless observations and years of studying the psychology of people. (From those in public life, family, and those that have worked for me.) I am sure many will disagree with this assessment and challenge those that do to give us a better explanation. Why is it important to understand these four groups? Because as you view this political campaign, read articles, listen to interviews, and see how this campaign plays out, we think that you will see all points of view from Republican Party will fall into one of these categories. Understanding your opponents motivations will also help expose their weaknesses.

1) Rich Republicans: I think this is the most understandable group. This group has already either inherited a fortune or made a fortune and wish to protect it. An economist I once knew told me many years ago that once you have money it is hard to loose it under our system. His argument was that the tax laws including potential deductions were set up to protect money that has already been earned or inherited to the point that even if you tried to give it away or lost money that you could in many cases just deduct it. He indicated the system was so biased that once wealth was achieved you had to work hard or just be plain stupid to loose it. This group has greed at their core and believe that the more they make the better off the country is because they have shown by making their fortune that they are the most fit in our society to have it. This group supports those that support them and use their power and influence to perpetuate and increase power and influence.

2) Duped Republicans: This group are those that have been sold a bill of goods from the rich Republicans and believe it. This group believes that they need to be self-sufficient. Not that it is a bad trait in anyone, however they do not understand that the game is rigged against them. This is the group that has a frontier spirit. Again, this is not a bad trait but they have been lead to believe there is still a frontier when in fact they are locked into a compound surrounded by the fences the rich have erected. They do not realize they are on fenced in range and will never get a pass out of that pasture. The rich Republicans have duped them by telling them if they just work hard they too can become rich when in fact they may just as well play the lotto. The rich Republicans tell them that democrats are socialists and trying to take away their rights when in fact if they could understand the big picture they would realize it is just the rich preying on their desires to be like their grandparents, and those opportunities do not exist anymore. This is the group that hold up signs at Tea Party rally saying: "Keep the Government Out of My Medicare". This group is just oblivious to the truth and cannot understand they are being preyed upon.

3) Intolerant Republicans: This is the group of Republicans that believe their religion allows them to tell everyone else how to live. They believe that God selected them to dictate to the rest of the nation how they should believe, how they should live, what is acceptable, what the truth they need to accept is, can ignore science to fit their beliefs, and believe that God will guide them through every decision so they can never be wrong. This group also includes the racists, fearful, and those that believe in manifest destiny. This part of this group have no tolerance for anyone they feel do not meet their litmus test for being an American. They fear a future that will leave them behind where they will not be allowed to keep their views without being persecuted, so they would rather persecute others. This part of the group would do anything to keep their way of life as having to accept anything new terrifies them. They are so afraid of losing the rights that they think they have they are willing to be abused by the rich rather than give up their ability to live in denial.

4) The Want To Be Republicans: The want to be Republicans are those that really think they are going somewhere and will one day have their piece of the pie. This group normally starts out with great aspirations and believe their hard work will be rewarded and that they will have a vacation home, live in an upscale community, and have all the toys they ever dreamed of. Most of these are younger members of the party, work hard to get their candidates elected, work hard to excel in their place of work, use their purchasing power to the maximum, rack up more debt than they can handle while trying to emulate their hero's in the party, and later in life actually figure out the system was rigged against them to begin with. Once they have a tremendous amount of debt, find that paying for their kids college and other expenses of life are becoming unmanageable, they finally switch allegiance to the Democratic Party.

We could break each of these four groups into several other smaller groups although we believe these four are sufficient. Groups one and three will always be Republican. Groups two and three are the ones that most independents that would vote Republican will fall into. These are the groups that need to be targeted in the upcoming election in order to make sure as few independents as possible will vote Republican.

Read more about the war that the Republican Party has declared for this election here:

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/05/03/11510204-this-is-war-my-liberal-friends-are-pissing-me-off

R = Reactionary (opposed to progressive social or political change)

E = Evangelical (enthusiastic or zealous in support of a particular cause and very eager to make other people share its beliefs or ideals)

P = Pious (characterized by a hypocritical concern with virtue or religious devotion; sanctimonious.)

U = Unyielding (not giving in to persuasion, pressure, or force)

B = Brazen (expressing boldness and a complete lack of shame)

L = Listless (lacking energy, interest or the willingness to make an effort)

I= Ideologists (a person advocating a particular ideology)

C = Chauvinistic (militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism)

A = Angry (feeling or showing anger or strong resentment)

N= Narcissists (a person who is overly self-involved, and often vain and selfish)

T1Truth

What could put so much fear into the republican party that it allowed the Religious Right and the Tea Party to take over the party? It all comes down to the fear of change. Once the Democratic Party won the last presidential election with a Black Candidate running on a message of "Change" the fear from the right wing of the party was so intense they only had two choices. "Fight or Flight"

This fear has made rewriting history acceptable, out right lies to become common place, ignoring the needs of the American people to block the presidents agenda justifiable, trying to exclude our citizens from voting by denying their right to vote and imperative, trying to dissolve long ago won rights of women acceptable, ignoring science in the class room and trying to replace it with religious teachings a priority, and renewing hatred and bigotry essential.

The Republican party has sold their soul (so to say) to the extreme elements of their party that now uses their new found blackmail capabilities as tool to implement a litmus test within their party. The money that these groups have poured into this party and their ability to hold the nation hostage to advance their agenda took the party by surprise, but like any cancerous growth without a cure it will just continue to grow.

This portion of the party decided upon election day 2008 that they were ready to fight, as choosing flight would mean they would have to give up some of their prejudices, greed, and long standing special interests that they were not ready to do. It is now all out war. Democrats must understand this war and acknowledge that the Republican Party is in a life and death fight for holding onto these old beliefs. The far right of the Republican Party so fear the future where they will be acknowledged as the dinosaurs that they are, they have no choice but to fight.

The fight or flight response is the most basic of mankind's instincts and this election shows it in glaring clarity. The Republican Party is trying to re-establish what they feel they have lost and move our nation backwards to a time where they felt comfortable. To them it is trying to reclaim their perception of the Norman Rockwell America. Well Norman is dead and their party will soon follow if they stay this course. America will move forward with or without them as it has always done.

The president, as much as possible, has tried to warn you about what is in the wind. He tells you we must move forward, that this is a turning point in American history, and that our ability to remain a nation of hope are at stake. Are you really listening to what he is saying and do you believe him? He knows this is a war for our nation to continue to lead the world, he knows this a war to be a compassionate people, he knows this is war for fairness and equality, he knows this is war for us not to be owned by special interests and religious fanatics.

This is a war of two stark potential futures for our country and we hope that everyone realizes that and will make the decision to give our nation the chance to move forward as has always been when we were at our best.

To understand more about this war we invite you to read this article if you have not already done so:

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/05/03/11510204-this-is-war-my-liberal-friends-are-pissing-me-off

T1Truth

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday morning that American national security wouldn’t be as strong if
Republican Mitt Romney were president, based on his recent assertion that Russia is the country’s “No.
1 geopolitical foe.”

“If that’s his prism through which he views our national security interests, I would say it would not be as strong,” Biden told David Gregory on “Meet the
Press.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Obama's top political adviser insisted on Sunday that they were not overtly politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden for purposes of benefiting the re-election campaign.

Huzzah! Following in the footsteps of Avenging Angel, who has done yeoman's work in exposing the stinking pile of mendacious horse manure that is Mitt Romney, I have been working to gather all of Willard's grotesque falsehoods into one central blog. I don't carry advertising on it, and I have not "monetized" it in any way. It's strictly a labor of love/hate. It can be found here. You see, I loathe and despise liars. I'm  60. I've been following politics since I was 12 (yes, a misspent youth).  I vividly remember such world-class prevaricators as Richard Nixon. But for the life of me, I have never seen a more brazen liar than Romney running for president in my entire life. By God, I won't stand for it, not without a fight. Hey, I'm just one little person. But just as a few hundred thousand small fires can make a conflagration, a few hundred thousand dedicated truth-tellers can out Mitt Romney for the lying, unprincipled, morally bankrupt sociopath that he is. So, with this conviction in mind, here are Romney's lies all exposed:

President Obama officially launched his
re-election campaign with public rallies in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond,
Virginia, on Saturday.With that launch came a re-tooled stump speech which both
defended his record in office and laid out the contrast with Republican nominee
Mitt
Romney.

 

The speeches in both cities were largely the same. Here's a full transcript
of his remarks in Columbus, following the acknowledgement of local leaders.

 

OBAMA: "I want to thank so many of our
Neighborhood Team Leaders for being here today.  You guys will be the backbone
of this campaign.  And I want the rest of you to join a team or become a leader
yourself, because we are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way -- door
by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

"Ohio, four years
ago, you and I began a journey together.

"I didn't run, and you didn't
work your hearts out, just to win an election.  We came together to reclaim the
basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation
on Earth.

Below we are asking if you could support a pledge that we have outlined below. We ask that you take this seriously and understand that a pledge is: (a solemn undertaking: a solemn promise or undertaking). If you are not sure about taking this pledge, we ask that you take the time to read the following three articles before making your decision if you have not already: (1) Tea Party - Dangerous in 1962 and Dangerous Now 2) Americans For Tax Reform Pledge - Treasonous? 3) This is War - My Liberal Friends Are Pissing Me Off.

After fully understanding our reasoning for asking that you support this pledge, please indicate in the poll above if you could support this pledge or not. Please feel free in the comments section to tell us why you either do support this pledge or cannot support this pledge.

Americans For Republican Reform Pledge

By voting yes in the attached pole, I pledge to the American People and myself that I will: ONE, Would sign a pledge to do the following; TWO, not vote for any Republican for the President of the United States, Congress, or the Senate that has either signed the Americans For Tax Reform Pledge or Has Not Renounced Their Pledge; and THREE, will vote in the 2012 election and make every effort to assist one other citizen to vote in the 2012 elections that may not otherwise do so.

Note: The third part of the pledge is indicating that you will either try to assist someone to get registered to vote that may not do so, assist someone with transportation to their polling station that may not have the means of going or would not go without your help, assisting someone to obtain an absentee ballot, assisting someone by babysitting while they go vote, or by some other means assisting someone to vote they may not without your help.

T1Truth

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Obama administration tightened rules on hydraulic fracturing Friday, requiring the disclosure of chemicals used in the process when done on federal and American Indian lands.

The new rules will also require additional testing of oil and gas well construction and require the industry to have a management plan for the water used in the process.

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican version of the new Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would dramatically rollback confidentiality protections for abused immigrant women, make it more difficult for undocumented witnesses to work with law enforcement officials, and eliminate a pathway to citizenship for witnesses who cooperate with police on criminal cases.

The provisions are tucked into a bill that reauthorizes the act, and have received scant media attention. But the legislation is picking up steam in the House. The bill, officially sponsored by freshman Rep. Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), has the backing of the full House leadership, and is headed for a vote in the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is typically a bipartisan affair lacking in contention. This year, however, Republicans are pressing for significant changes that would weaken protections for victims of domestic violence, arguing that the current law is being taken advantage of by undocumented immigrants looking for legal citizenship.

I am sure this article will make some feel uncomfortable on both sides of the isle much like the article we published yesterday. (This is War - My Libral Friends are Pissing Me Off) If it does make you uncomfortable, it should as these stakes are high and should not be taken lightly. There is much at stake here and our government is at siege. The question this article poses is if the Americans For Tax Reform Pledge could be forcing our Law Makers to commit Treason from their blind obedience to the pledge. Please remember as you read the following that our nation is at war and has been so for over a decade, that these wars were unfunded, that the near financial collapse of our nation could have compromised our ability to effectively protect our citizens from both military and financial acts that could have weakened our nation, and that many things such as the Buffet Rule which has over a 70% approval rating of our citizens are being blocked. Remember that the Republicans held up the debt ceiling increase as has been done for many decades without question that resulted in a downgrade of Americas credit rating. And remember that the Republicans are continue to put their pledge ahead of their oath, citizens, and best interest of the country.

The primary question here is if your lawmaker puts the Taxpayer Protection Pledge ahead of their oath of office, ahead of their citizens wishes, jeopardize our financial standings, put our citizens at undue peril, risk, and well being, while we are at war, are they or are they not committing a treasonous act. Even if the answer is no at this time we believe the Tax Pledge could in fact cause them to do so and that all of our politicians in order to garner another single vote should be forced to renounce their pledge.

Below are some definitions that you may find useful and a list of all the current members of the Senate and House who have taken the pledge. (Listed by state) Please let us know in the poll above if you would vote for anyone who have signed this pledge without disavowing it.

Here is the oath that your legislators take upon taking office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Here is the pledge that many have taken in order to get elected or to maintain their office:

Taxpayer Protection Pledge

I, _____, pledge to the taxpayers of the (____district of the) state of _____— and to the American people that I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Definition of Treason Under the Constitution:

Under Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution, any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them Aid and Comfot has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.

Definition of Subversive:

Seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.

236* Representatives and 41 Senators Have Signed the Pledge. Their Names and States Are Listeded Below 

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge Signers 112th Congressional List

ALABAMA

AL-Sen Jeff Sessions (R)

AL-Sen Richard Shelby (R)

AL-01 Jo Bonner (R)

AL-02 Martha Roby (R)

AL-03 Mike Rogers (R)

AL-04 Robert Aderholt (R)

AL-05 Mo Brooks (R)

AL-06 Spencer Bachus (R)

ALASKA

AK-Sen Lisa Murkowski (I)*

AK-AL Don Young (R)

ARIZONA

AZ-Sen Jon Kyl (R)

AZ-Sen John McCain (R)

AZ-01 Paul Gosar (R)

AZ-02 Trent Franks (R)

AZ-03 Ben Quayle (R)

AZ-05 David Schweikert (R)

AZ-06 Jeff Flake (R)

ARKANSAS

AR-Sen John Boozman (R)

AR-01 Rick Crawford (R)

AR-02 Tim Griffin (R)

AR-03 Steve Womack (R)

CALIFORNIA

CA-02 Wally Herger (R)

CA-03 Dan Lungren (R)

CA-04 Tom McClintock (R)

CA-19 Jeff Denham (R)

CA-21 Devin Nunes (R)

CA-22 Kevin McCarthy (R)

CA-24 Elton Gallegly (R)

CA-25 Buck McKeon (R)

CA-26 David Dreier (R)

CA-40 Ed Royce (R)

CA-41 Jerry Lewis (R)

CA-42 Gary Miller (R)

CA-44 Ken Calvert (R)

CA-45 Mary Bono Mack (R)

CA-46 Dana Rohrabacher (R)

CA-48 John Campbell (R)

CA-49 Darrell Issa (R)

CA-50 Brian Bilbray (R)

CA-52 Duncan L. Hunter (R)

COLORADO

CO-03 Scott Tipton (R)

CO-04 Corey Gardner (R)

CO-05 Doug Lamborn (R)

CO-06 Mike Coffman (R)

FLORIDA

FL-Sen Marco Rubio (R)

FL-01 Jeff Miller (R)

FL-02 Steve Southerland (R)

FL-04 Ander Crenshaw (R)

FL-05 Richard Nugent (R)

FL-06 Cliff Stearns (R)

FL-07 John Mica (R)

FL-08 Daniel Webster (R)

FL-09 Gus Bilirakis (R)

FL-10 Bill Young (R)

FL-12 Dennis Ross (R)

FL-13 Vern Buchanan (R)

FL-14 Connie Mack (R)

FL-15 Bill Posey (R)

FL-16 Tom Rooney (R)

FL-18 Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R)

FL-21 Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R)

FL-22 Allen West (R)

FL-24 Sandy Adams (R)

FL-25 David Rivera (R)

GEORGIA

GA-Sen Johnny Isakson (R)

GA-Sen Saxby Chambliss (R)

GA-01 Jack Kingston (R)

GA-03 Lynn Westmoreland (R)

GA-06 Tom Price (R)

GA-08 Austin Scott (R)

GA-09 Tom Graves (R)

GA-10 Paul Broun (R)

GA-11 Phil Gingrey (R)

IDAHO

ID-Sen Mike Crapo (R)

ID-Sen James Risch (R)

ID-01 Raul Labrador (R)

ID-02 Michael Simpson (R)

ILLINOIS

IL-Sen Mark Kirk (R)

IL-06 Peter Roskam (R)

IL-08 Joe Walsh (R)

IL-10 Robert Dold (R)

IL-11 Adam Kinzinger (R)

IL-13 Judy Biggert (R)

IL-14 Randy Hultgren (R)

IL-15 Tim Johnson (R)

IL-16 Don Manzullo (R)

IL-17 Bobby Schilling (R)

IL-18 Aaron Schock (R)

IL-19 John Shimkus (R)

INDIANA

IN-Sen Dan Coats (R)

IN-03 Marlin Stutzman (R)

IN-04 Todd Rokita (R)

IN-05 Dan Burton (R)

IN-06 Mike Pence (R)

IN-08 Larry Buschon (R)

IN-09 Todd Young (R)

IOWA

IA-04 Tom Latham (R)

IA-05 Steve King (R)

KANSAS

KS-Sen Jerry Moran (R)

KS-Sen Pat Roberts (R)

KS-01 Tim Huelskamp (R)

KS-02 Lynn Jenkins (R)

KS-04 Michael Pompeo (R)

KENTUCKY

KY-Sen Mitch McConnell (R)

KY-Sen Rand Paul (R)

KY-01 Ed Whitfield (R)

KY-02 Brett Guthrie (R)

KY-04 Geoff Davis (R)

KY-05 Hal Rogers (R)

KY-06 Ben Chandler (D)*

LOUISIANA

LA-Sen David Vitter (R)

LA-01 Steve Scalise (R)

LA-03 Jeffery Landry (R)

LA-04 John Fleming (R)

LA-05 Rodney Alexander (R)

LA-06 Bill Cassidy (R)

LA-07 Charles Boustany (R)

MARYLAND

MD-01 Andy Harris (R)

MD-06 Roscoe Bartlett (R)

MASSACHUSETTS

MA-Sen Scott Brown (R)

MICHIGAN

MI-01 Dan Benishek (R)

MI-02 Bill Huizenga (R)

MI-03 Justin Amash (R)

MI-04 Dave Camp (R)

MI-06 Fred Upton (R)

MI-07 Tim Walberg (R)

MI-08 Mike Rogers (R)

MI-10 Candice Miller (R)

MI-11 Thad McCotter (R)

MINNESOTA

MN-02 John Kline (R)

MN-03 Erik Paulsen (R)

MN-06 Michele Bachmann (R)

MN-08 Chip Cravaack (R)

MISSISSIPPI

MS-Sen Roger Wicker (R)

MS-01 Alan Nunnelee (R)

MS-03 Gregg Harper (R)

MS-04 Steven Palazzo (R)

MISSOURI

MO-Sen Roy Blunt (R)

MO-02 Todd Akin (R)

MO-04 Vicky Hartzler (R)

MO-06 Sam Graves (R)

MO-07 Billy Long (R)

MO-08 Jo Ann Emerson (R)

MO-09 Blaine Luetkemeyer (R)

MONTANA

MT-AL Dennis Rehberg (R)

NEBRASKA

NE-Sen Mike Johanns (R)

NE-Sen Ben Nelson (D)

NE-01 Jeff Fortenberry (R)

NE-02 Lee Terry (R)

NE-03 Adrian Smith (R)

NEVADA

NV-Sen Dean Heller (R)

NV-03 Joe Heck (R)

NEW HAMPSHIRE

NH-Sen Kelly Ayotte (R)

NH-01 Frank Guinta (R)

NH-02 Charlie Bass (R)

NEW JERSEY

NJ-01 Robert Andrews (D)

NJ-02 Frank LoBiondo (R)

NJ-03 Jon Runyan (R)

NJ-04 Chris Smith (R)

NJ-05 Scott Garrett (R)

NJ-07 Leonard Lance (R)

NJ-11 Rodney Frelinghuysen (R)

NEW MEXICO

NM-02 Steve Pearce (R)

NEW YORK

NY-03 Peter King (R)

NY-13 Michael Grimm (R)

NY-19 Nan Hayworth (R)

NY-20 Chris Gibson (R)

NY-25 Ann Marie Buerkle (R)

NY-29 Tom Reed (R)

NORTH CAROLINA

NC-Sen Richard Burr (R)

NC-02 Renee Ellmers (R)

NC-03 Walter Jones Jr. (R)

NC-05 Virginia Foxx (R)

NC-06 Howard Coble (R)

NC-09 Sue Myrick (R)

NC-10 Patrick McHenry (R)

NORTH DAKOTA

ND-AL Rick Berg (R)

OHIO

OH-Sen Rob Portman (R)

OH-01 Steve Chabot (R)

OH-02 Jean Schmidt (R)

OH-03 Mike Turner (R)

OH-04 Jim Jordan (R)

OH-05 Bob Latta (R)

OH-06 Bill Johnson (R)

OH-07 Steve Austria (R)

OH-08 John Boehner (R)

OH-12 Pat Tiberi (R)

OH-14 Steve LaTourette (R)

OH-15 Steve Stivers (R)

OH-16 James Renacci (R)

OH-18 Bob Gibbs (R)

OKLAHOMA

OK-Sen Tom Coburn (R)

OK-Sen Jim Inhofe (R)

OK-01 John Sullivan (R)

OK-03 Frank Lucas (R)

OK-04 Tom Cole (R)

OK-05 James Lankford (R)

OREGON

OR-02 Greg Walden (R)

PENNSYLVANIA

PA-Sen Pat Toomey (R)

PA-03 Mike Kelly (R)

PA-05 Glenn Thompson (R)

PA-06 Jim Gerlach (R)

PA-07 Pat Meehan (R)

PA-08 Michael Fitzpatrick (R)

PA-09 Bill Shuster (R)

PA-10 Thomas Marino (R)

PA-11 Lou Barletta (R)

PA-15 Charlie Dent (R)

PA-16 Joseph Pitts (R)

PA-18 Tim Murphy (R)

SOUTH CAROLINA

SC-Sen Jim DeMint (R)

SC-Sen Lindsey Graham (R)

SC-01 Tim Scott (R)

SC-02 Joe Wilson (R)

SC-03 Jeff Duncan (R)

SC-04 Trey Gowdy (R)

SC-05 Mick Mulvaney (R)

SOUTH DAKOTA

SD-Sen John Thune (R)

SD-AL Kristi Noem (R)

TENNESSEE

TN-Sen Bob Corker (R)

TN-Sen Lamar Alexander (R)

TN-01 Phil Roe (R)

TN-02 John Duncan (R)

TN-03 Chuck Fleischman (R)

TN-04 Scott DesJarlais (R)

TN-06 Diane Black (R)

TN-07 Marsha Blackburn (R)

TN-08 Stephen Fincher (R)

TEXAS

TX-Sen John Cornyn (R)

TX-Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)

TX-01 Louie Gohmert (R)

TX-02 Ted Poe (R)

TX-03 Sam Johnson (R)

TX-04 Ralph Hall (R)

TX-05 Jeb Hensarling (R)

TX-06 Joe Barton (R)

TX-07 John Culberson (R)

TX-08 Kevin Brady (R)

TX-10 Michael McCaul (R)

TX-11 Mike Conaway (R)

TX-12 Kay Granger (R)

TX-13 Mac Thornberry (R)

TX-14 Ron Paul (R)

TX-17 Bill Flores (R)

TX-19 Randy Neugebauer (R)

TX-21 Lamar Smith (R)

TX-22 Pete Olson (R)

TX-23 Francisco Canseco (R)

TX-24 Kenny Marchant (R)

TX-26 Michael Burgess (R)

TX-27 Blake Farenthold (R)

TX-31 John Carter (R)

TX-32 Pete Sessions (R)

UTAH

UT-Sen Michael Lee (R)

UT-Sen Orrin Hatch (R)

UT-01 Rob Bishop (R)

UT-03 Jason Chaffetz (R)

VIRGINIA

VA-02 Scott Rigell (R)

VA-04 Randy Forbes (R)

VA-05 Robert Hurt (R)

VA-06 Bob Goodlatte (R)

VA-07 Eric Cantor (R)

VA-09 H. Morgan Griffith (R)

WASHINGTON

WA-03 Jaime Herrera (R)

WA-04 Doc Hastings (R)

WA-05 Cathy McMorris (R)

WA-08 Dave Reichert (R)

WEST VIRGINIA

WV-01 David McKinley (R)

WV-02 Shelley Moore Capito (R)

WISCONSIN

WI-Sen Ron Johnson (R)

WI-01 Paul Ryan (R)

WI-05 Jim Sensenbrenner (R)

WI-06 Tom Petri (R)

WI-07 Sean Duffy (R)

WI-08 Reid Ribble (R)

WYOMING

WY-Sen Mike Enzi (R)

WY-AL Cynthia Lummis (R)

6 GOP U.S. House Non-Pledge Signers:

GA-07 Rob Woodall

PA-19 Todd Russell Platts

VA-01 Rob Wittman

VA-10 Frank Wolf

KS-03 Kevin Yoder

7 GOP U.S. Senate Pledge Non-Signers:

IN-Sen Richard Lugar

IA-Sen Charles Grassley

ME- Sen Olympia Snowe

ME- Sen Susan Collins

MS-Sen Thad Cochran

WY- Sen John Barrasso

ND-Sen John Hoeven

* One vacancy by Pledge signer in 112^th  

 NY-24 Richard Hanna

T1Truth

Three days before President Barack Obama holds his first “official” campaign rallies, 200 supporters snacked on cupcakes at an opening of the re-election committee’s Tampa-area office -- its 25th in Florida.

After posing for pictures with life-sized cutouts of the president and first lady at the May 2 event, they inked their names on posters requesting volunteers to conduct phone banks, register voters and staff the offices.

Tomorrow, Obama will travel to college campuses in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia, to mark the start of his general election bid, yet much of the groundwork for the contest already has been quietly put in place.

“In 2012, we have had the benefit of time to put an unprecedented effort on the ground in all 50 states that is registering voters and making sure that voters know what is at stake in this election,” said Katie Hogan, an Obama campaign spokeswoman.

As the Presidential election is getting under way in earnest it is really starting to piss me off that Democrats do not, or cannot find a voice to just tell the truth. The truth is ugly, scary, and it is becoming bloody. It is however the truth and we need to start speaking in the stark and unfiltered truth to expose exactly what is going on, and the reasons for it.

From my perspective this is the real truth. The Republican Party has always been conservative in it's views, however it has moved from conservative to reactionary over the last 5 years. Why is this and what does it really mean?

In blatant terms it means that the Koch Brothers, the Religious Right, and other ultra conservatives have decided it is time to go all in. Just like in a poker game when you think you are either holding the winning hand or that you find yourself in a corner that demands that you bluff with all that you have to win the game, the Republican Party has put all their chips on the table and are playing to win or go bankrupt. What caused this? It is the fact that we elected a Black President and began to push an agenda of social fairness. They are so afraid that their domination of the nation by white males and corporations could be coming to an end that they feel they must fight a winner take all battle.

Make no mistake about this, this is a war that they are fully committed to winning at all costs. My liberal friends continue to skirt this ugly truth in article after article and news cast after news cast. They call out the obvious statements and policies that the far right are pushing as unjust or not being within the main stream view but they do not call out the sinister reason behind this, nor do they call out the fact that we are at war in this country with the radical right and why. Rush Limbaugh and others on the right have no issue calling out what they think is the war that the left is waging on them. Where are the voices on the left that have the guts to tell the American people in no uncertain terms why the real war was started by the right, the methods they are using, exactly what their agenda is, and their real motivations? This is really starting to Piss Me Off.

When you have T. Boone Pickens calling the Koch Brothers evil, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and others warning us of the inequalities that the Republicans are pushing, do you not think it is time to sit up and listen? When womens rights are being assaulted in just about every state, do you not think a battle is being waged? When voting ID laws akin to Jim Crow laws are being pressed, do you not think that white males are trying to hold on to power? When Newt Gingrich and others in the Republican Party are saying that the Supreme Court needs to be pistol whipped if they do not like their decisions, do you not think the far right is not trying to take control of our government? When the far right cannot tolerate gays even in the Romney campaign staff, call our President a Muslim, call our democratic colleagues communists, do you not think they are at war with us? When the far right is having our text books re-written eliminating anything that does not match their religious views and adding in Christian beliefs instead of science, do you not believe that this is not the same as burning books like in Nazi Germany to hide the truth? When the GOP is pushing gun rights and the right to carry guns even in our schools, do you not think they are arming themselves for a revolution? When the right declares that corporations are people and are giving tax cuts to the rich while trying to have you pay more, do you not think they are not trying to disarm you in this war? When the right is saying that the states should be deciding our fate, do you not see they are trying to get rid of the Federal Governments ability to control their reactionary agenda? When Republicans like Olympia Snow and others that are being pushed out of the Republican Party because they are considered to moderate, do you not think a purge of any voices of reason within the Republican Party are being systematically eliminated?

This along with many other policies that are being pushed by the far right is an all out war to take control of our government and our citizens to shape this country into what it was in the 1800's before the Civil War, all the time while saying they are fighting for our rights.

This is war, the Republicans, once we elected a Black President got so afraid that they went all in. Where are the voices on the Democratic side calling this war out for what it actually is? Where are the guts from our party to specifically and categorically define the war that has been brought upon us? Where are the guts on the right to stand up to this group by just declaring they have morals and will not be a part of this?

If you do not believe that this a war then you are sadly mistaken. If you sit idly by and do not call this out for what it is then you are helping them to win this war. The Republican Party has been taken over by the extreme elements of their party and they intend to win. They have decided that if they do not win now they may never have another opportunity and this is a life and death match to them. I am very disappointed and pissed off that we cannot seem to find the guts to tell the American people exactly what is going on, and what the outcome will be if they succeed.

Please read the following if you would like to see some of the details to back up my concerns. (You know the rest if you just stop to think and look at what is going on.)

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/05/01/11492228-tea-party-dangerous-in-1962-and-dangerous-today

If the Democratic Party does not wake up the war may be over before you know it. The Germans burried their heads too when an extreme element was taking over their country. How well did that work out for them?

T1Truth

A group of congressional Republicans are pushing a bill to put key health care decisions in the hands of the states, rather than the federal government. But language buried in the legislation would do the opposite on one key issue: abortion.

Rep. Todd Rokita's (R-Ind.) State Health Flexibility Act, also known as HR 4160, contains a provision that would force 17 states, including California, Massachusetts, and New York, to either discontinue programs that help low-income women pay for abortions, or spend a lot more money to purchase new insurance plans for those women. Thirty House Republicans have signed onto Rokita's proposal since it was introduced in March*, and the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservatives that includes over 70 percent of the GOP caucus, made HR 4160 part of its official budget plan.

Some actual reporting from yours truly. It seems clear from sources close to Grenell and reporters on the foreign policy beat that his turning point came last week. He'd been part of organizing a conference call to respond to Vice President Biden's foreign policy speech, now known best for the "big stick" remark. So some reporters were puzzled as to why Grenell, a week into his job as Romney's national security spokesman, was not introduced by name as part of the Romney team at the beginning of the call, and his voice completely absent from the conversation. Some even called and questioned him afterwards as to why he was absent. He wasn't absent. He was simply muzzled. For a job where you are supposed to maintain good relations with reporters, being silenced on a key conference call on your area of expertise is pretty damaging. Especially when you helped set it up.

TAMPA, Fla., May 2 (UPI) -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott turned down Tampa's request to ban concealed weapons outside of the Republican National Convention in August.

Mayor Bob Buckhorn wrote to Scott Tuesday, asking that the governor issue an executive order to bar the carrying of firearms in downtown Tampa during the convention, the Tampa Bay Times reported Wednesday.

In a response, also on Tuesday, Scott suggests that Tampa mayor was overreaching in his request because the U.S. Secret Service will ban firearms inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum and inside a security perimeter immediately around the convention site.

"You are now requesting that citizens be disarmed in all of downtown Tampa, including in areas across the river, and distant, from the convention center and Secret Service safe zone," Scott wrote.

Tampa officials plan to ban many weapons and items that could be a weapon from outside the Aug. 27-30 convention, but can't ban guns carried with a concealed weapons permit, the Times said.

Bronx Pentecostal minister and New York State Senator Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) compared abortion to the Holocaust Tuesday during a rant against a piece of pro-choice legislation.

According to The New York Observer, Diaz wrote in an email to his supporters that, "[Hitler] chose to send the Jews to Auschwitz," adding, "That was not their choice, that was Hitler’s choice. Murderers, assassins and criminals are pro-choice. They choose to put a gun to your head and take your life. That is not your choice. That is their choice.”

"What God says here is, that if you hurt a pregnant woman and she loses the baby you have to pay a penalty not because it was a blob of tissue that you killed, but because it was a life."

The Onion News Network is poking fun at Mitt Romney's campaign for their recent attempts to reach out to Hispanic voters.

Some believe Romney's stance on various immigration-related issues has alienated Latino voters, and the GOP candidate is doing his best to win them back. In real life, Romney's campaign has released Spanish language ads and garnered the endorsement of prominent Latino Republicans, including Marco Rubio. But The Onion News network, a fake parody site, invented a stereotype parrot called "Paco" that they describe as Romney's new "sidekick."

Watch the video above to watch Paco in action.

If anyone would like to better understand what the real goals of the Tea Party are and the tactics that they are deploying to obtain these objectives you need to review an article written by Thomas B. Morgan in December of 1963. The title of this article is: "Seventeen States Vote to Destroy Democracy as We Know It" and was published in Look Magazine in that month. Morgan chronicles the fight that took place between July 1962 and August of 1963.

Look Magazine: Dec. 1963

This is a story of 13 months in the sixties - July, 1962 - August 1963 - 13 months of struggle over the substance of American democracy. In this period, a concerted effort was launched which, if successful, could destroy the power and authority of the Government of the United States. The immediate goal is a constitutional convention to propose three amendments to the Federal Constitution that would destroy democracy here as we know it. These are the critical revisions:

Amendment 1: State Legislatures would win the power to amend the Constitution undeterred by the Congress.

Ammendment 2: State courts could get full and final jurisdiction over the apportionment of state legislative districts.

Amendment 3: A court, composed of the 50 states chief justices, would get the authority to overrule certaqin decisions of the United States Supreme Court.

How did these radical amendments come to be the spearheads of a dead-serious political movement? How would they affect our way of life? Will they succeed? The answers to these questions are urgent because, surprisingly, the legislatures of 17 states of the Union now endorse one, two, or all three of the amendments.

The amendment movement begain in Biloxi, Mississippi, at a routine conference of Southern state officials and legislators organized by the Council of State Governments. The Council is a highly respected joint agency sponsored by the 50 states.

When the conference met, the talk ranged over the Kennedys, desegregation and Cuba, but the chief topic was Baker v. Carr, the historic case decided by the US Supreme Court four months earlier.

In a stunning leap beyond previous decisions, the Court held that apportionment of state legislative districts could be scrutinized by Federal courts. Clearly, many rural legislators, long dominate in state governments, would be reapportioned out of their seats. Even as the Southerns talked, courts in Florida, Oklahoma, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia pressed the Baker v. Carr point.

Thomas B. Morgan

An additional monthly chronicle of the events that staved off this effort will be published in an upcoming article along with the article from a Yale professor that helped shoot it down. We will include statements from the Warren Court.

In many ways you could say the current Tea Party are the evangelicals of this original movement. In their zeal to place all the power back to the states they forget that some of us do not where their most recent fude with America started. They forget that some of see through their efforts, and know their tactics. Below are excerpts from two articles that we previously released that define these points.

Goal:

The Republican Small Government Conspiracy

T1Truth - 02.20.2012

First of all I will let everyone know that I have been the General Manager of more than one company in my career and I do believe that the private sector "can" be much more efficient than most government agencies. I also believe that many government agencies should be privatized so that the public may have services provided that must put customer service first and deliver these services at a competitive price for the tax payer. With that said, the Republican reasoning for doing this is just greed and has nothing to do with doing the right thing.

The Republican part or as I like to call it the "Tea-publican Party" espouses the virtues of reducing the federal government and turning control of everything back to the states and local government and not for the reasons you may think. Their argument goes that they wish every individual to have less government in their life and that local communities can do a better job than the federal government. Has anyone noticed that there is never an example given as to the success achieved by doing this for anything of great importance to the masses. Although this sounds like a good idea in some respects as many would believe their communities should chose how to spend their own money, why do we not speak about the reality of this?

In the 20's, Upton Sinclair felt the need to write about the appalling practices of the meat packaging industry. Why, because left uncontrolled companies were not worried about the workers or their consumers and only profits. In the 60's when I grew up in an industrial city where the river was so polluted the fish were dying off, the river contaminated the drinking water and caused illness, and the smell was horrible. Why, because the factories in this city were not controlled and did not care for the community, only their profits. In this decade the federal government and states have turned control of the mental health of our children to the local Community Mental Health departments which funnel the children that need the help the most into the criminal justice system to avoid their responsibility. Why, so they can take the Medicaid dollars allocated for these children and do as they wish with it and lesson their own burdens.

The fact is we cannot trust our states or local governments to protect our citizens as someone will always find a way around the intent of acts to protect our citizens to pocket the money for their own purposes without federal controls. As citizens, we decide what is important to our society and the Tea-publicans are trying to sell everyone a bill of goods that if given the ability to do this at the local level it will be done better. The facts of our past and the facts of our present do not show this to be true. The Real Argument for Small Government is being sold so the rich and powerful can and will get richer and more powerful at all of our expense.

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/02/20/10460294-the-republican-small-government-conspiracy

Method:

Tea Party Goal of Parliamentary Government Realized

T1Truth 03.10.2012

Why do we pretend that we still have the Congress and the Senate of a two party system, and why does not the Tea Party own up to the fact that their goal was to turn these two bodies into Upper and Lower Parliamentary bodies? It is clear why the Tea Party wishes to ignore the President and wants Congress to have all the power. The goal is and has always been to create a Parliamentary Government environment.

The real goal of the Tea Party was to create a voting block within the Congress and Senate that must be dealt with in order to advance their agenda by forming a coalition. This is why the Republican Party has had to shift so far right to accommodate this coalition. In the UK many political parties exist and once elections take place, the parties must form a governing coalition by obtaining support of enough groups in order to form a majority government. (This is done by promising their agenda items will be included in their agenda or granting favors.) Tell me how this is different from what the Tea Party has done to our political system. By standing their ground under the guise of being Tea Party members and still being registered as Republicans, they could hold their ground and still obtain funds from the RNC. (Cake and eat it too.)

If you take a look at the government in the UK, the supreme legislative power is vested in the Queen-in-Parliament; although in practice in modern times, real power is vested in the House of Commons. The house of commons in the UK (equal to our Congress) wields the most power even over the House of Lords (equal to our senate).

The truth of the matter is that the Tea Party acknowledges that they are a party and have a set of core beliefs. They have members, meetings, agenda items, and solicit donors for their members to get them elected. They have members in both the house and in the senate and have taken specific stances to not vote for specific issues. (Raising taxes under any circumstances, increasing the size of government, and reducing the power of government.)

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/10/10635732-tea-party-goal-of-parliamentary-government-realized

Our fathers and grandfathers fought this fight once before. We are now forced to fight it again because we have forgotten. Make no mistake about it, the reasoning for smaller government is to increase the power of special interests and not to protect us from them. This is a plain and simple fact.

You have been warned, again!

T1Truth

Under FCC regulations, broadcast frequencies can only be handed to firms run by people of good "character" who serve the "public interest" and speak with "candor". In making that judgment, the FCC is entitled to consider past conduct of media owners, including conduct that does not relate directly to their broadcasting interests, as well as any patterns of alleged misbehaviour.

Republicans are waging the most concerted campaign to prevent or discourage citizens from exercising their legitimate voting rights since the Jim Crow days of poll taxes and literacy tests.

Four years ago, Democrats expanded American democracy by registering millions of new voters — mostly young people and minorities — and persuading them to show up at the polls. Apparently, the GOP is determined not to let any such thing happen again.

According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which keeps track of changes in voting laws, 22 statutes and two executive actions aimed at restricting the franchise have been approved in 17 states since the beginning of 2011. By the center’s count, an additional 74 such bills are pending.

The most popular means of discouraging those young and minority voters — who, coincidentally, tend to vote for Democrats — is legislation requiring citizens to show government-issued photo identification before they are allowed to cast a ballot. Photo ID bills have been approved by Republican-controlled legislatures in Alabama, Kansas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, and by referendum in Mississippi. Only one state with a Democratic-controlled legislature — Rhode Island — passed a law requiring voters to produce identification, and it does not mandate a government ID with a photo. In Virginia, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has not decided whether to sign a voter ID bill the legislature sent to his desk.

Believe it or not, it is as easy as which party understands and uses the English language correctly. No crap, just the truth.

Republican: "Mission Accomplished"

Democrat: "Mission Accomplished"

If you believe this is partisan, you are right, and we will not apolgize for it.

Game Over! Let them Whine!

T1Truth

WASHINGTON -- Harry Reid, as majority leader of the United States Senate, has done "a terrific job," according to the most celebrated historian of the institution in a generation. Robert Caro, author of "Master of the Senate," the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, said that Reid's opposition and its abuse of the filibuster have made running the upper chamber "near impossible."

Caro sat down for an interview with The Huffington Post in conjunction with the release of the fourth volume of his biography, "The Passage of Power," which covers Johnson's vice presidency and some of his presidency.

"Harry Reid as a majority leader operated in near impossible circumstances," Caro said. "The other side is intractable and it has the votes to stop legislation. That he has been able to get as much as he has -- as little as it is -- through the Senate is a tribute to him as majority leader. I think he's in near-impossible circumstances. I think he's done a terrific job."

Remember those crazy Republican primaries in 2010 that produced terrible general election candidates such as Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada? Candidates who may have cost Republicans control of the Senate?

Guess what: The process that produced them has barely slowed down, and it may cost Republicans again in 2012 — and into the future.

Republicans are having problems recruiting strong candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. Apparently the national party is reluctant to get involved in primary elections, after getting burned by the losses of credible, party-backed candidates like Bob Bennett, Mike Castle and Charlie Crist in 2010. Now, two more solid mainstream conservatives may be in trouble. In Indiana, challenger Richard Mourdock is closing on veteran Senator Dick Lugar, with one poll (by a Mourdock-supporting group) actually showing the challenger in front. And in Nebraska, the Club for Growth is hitting hard against Attorney General Jon Bruning, who is widely seen as the strongest general election candidate there.

Will either of these states cost Republicans a Senate seat? Probably not, at least not directly. Democrats did recruit the candidate they wanted in both, but in my view former Senator Bob Kerrey is still a pretty weak candidate (and one who hasn’t faced a Nebraska electorate since 1994), and both states are solidly Republican. Still, if Lugar and Bruning lose their primaries, a general election upset would at least be possible — and Republicans would need to devote more resources than they would if they have better candidates.

But there’s a larger point here, and one that could resonate long after 2012: This trend could lead more mainstream conservative candidates to ask themselves whether it’s worth running at all if they can’t be nominated by an increasingly extreme Republican Party. And if mainstream conservatives don’t run, how many winnable seats are Republicans going to lose over time?

MCLEAN, Va., April 30 (UPI) -- Electing Mitt Romney would bring retro U.S. Republican policies "on steroids," Bill Clinton said with Barack Obama in their first joint campaign fundraiser.

"This is crazy -- he's got an opponent who basically wants to do what they did before, on steroids, which will get you the same consequences you got before, on steroids," Clinton said Sunday night at the Virginia home of Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton fundraiser, former Democratic National Committee chairman and chairman of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential primary campaign four years ago.

Bill Clinton, who has had a fraught relationship with Obama over the years, credited Obama's policies with helping to create "4 million jobs since the recession bottomed out," keeping the unemployment rate "1 1/2 to 2 points lower than it would have been" if the 2009 economic stimulus package had not been enacted, and restructuring the U.S. auto industry, "which saved a million and a half jobs and created 84,000 more."

The implosion of the Newt Gingrich presidential campaign—the first implosion, before the weird resurrection and inevitable second implosion—came because he used four words: right-wing social engineering. He used the phrase, last May, to describe the Republican budget designed by GOP icon Paul Ryan. It was as if he had urinated on Ronald Reagan’s grave. Party leaders rounded on him. In Iowa, an angry voter cornered him and fumed, in a video captured by Fox News that quickly went viral, “What you did to Paul Ryan was unforgivable … You’re an embarrassment.” Gingrich quickly apologized to Ryan, pledged his fealty to the document, and then, lending his confession an extracted-at-NKVD-gunpoint ­flavor, announced, “Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.” It was no use: Despite years of diligent service, his support among Republicans collapsed, his fellow partisans holding him in the low regard ordinarily reserved for liberals.

 

Ryan’s rise occurred so rapidly that an old hand like Gingrich hadn’t yet fully grasped the fact that he had become unassailable, though most (and, by now, virtually all) of his fellow Republicans had. Ryan’s prestige explains, among other things, the equanimity with which movement conservatives have reluctantly accepted the heresies of Mitt Romney. They may not have an ideal candidate, but they believe Romney could not challenge Ryan even if he so desired.

This week I have participated in more than one discussion related to climate change, environmentalism, and world governments responsibility to try to help protect our planet. Some of the disturbing things that came out of these discussions was the ability of the right to just dismiss facts, foster arguments of conspiracy, and portray the worst corporate offenders as the protectors of democracy. We have all heard the claims by the right that coal is clean, Mrs. Obama has declared war on the right of our children to be fat, and that the only thing standing between us and dooms day is big oil. For that reason I started searching some web sites to see what was fueling some of these comments when I ran across this video that pretty much hit home to me the disinformation that is being gobbled up by the right. I hope this brings home to you as much as it to me the propaganda that big business is hitting many of our citizens with, and just how many eat this stuff up.

This is less than a 5 minute video that I think you must see. The video shows dramatically the fear the right is using to advance their agenda. I have also included a couple quotes below from the right wing related to this topic. Please feel free to add your own favorite right wing quotes in the comments. 

''Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.'' Michelle Bachman

 "The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is."—Rush Limbaugh, on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, May 3, 2010

T1Truth

Paul Krugman doubled down on criticism of Ben Bernanke on Sunday, telling ABC's "This Week" that the Fed Chairman has "been assimilated by the Borg."

“I think what’s happened to Bernanke, as they say, he’s been assimilated by the Borg," he said. "He’s become more concerned, probably unconsciously, with defending the Fed’s institutional safety, because it’s the apostle of price stability, than with doing whatever he can to get this economy moving. Which if he’d listened to Professor Bernanke, himself 10 years ago, he would know that he was supposed to be doing more.”

It is dangerous to challenge the funnel cloud of corporate and right-wing political advertising this year, but Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, has decided to fight back. She is running commercials that talk directly about the ads trying to prevent her re-election.

"They’re not from around here, spending millions to attack and attack,” said one of her recent commercials, showing clips from the opposing ads that have become ubiquitous in her state. “But what they’re doing to Claire McCaskill is nothing compared to what their special-interest agenda will do to you.”

It will be an uphill fight. Republican interest groups are outspending Ms. McCaskill and other Missouri Democrats by a 7-to-1 ratio; Ms. McCaskill herself is being outspent by 3 to 1. Though she has raised nearly $10 million, the amount could be dwarfed by the unlimited money at the disposal of Republican-oriented groups.

Is President Obama trying to wedge his way to a second term?

The economy will doubtless be the overriding issue in November's presidential contest, and Obama is hardly ignoring it. But a successful candidate appeals to all sorts of voters harboring all sorts of concerns, and the president and his backers appear to be using a pair of wedge issues to target two groups, Latinos and women, with messages grounded more in emotionalism than economics.

The issues — immigration and contraception — are hardly top-of-the-mind for most people, but each fits the mold of those typically used to pry voters away from a party or a candidate they might otherwise be inclined to support.

For Richard Nixon, the wedge issue was busing, as he tapped the racial resentment of working-class whites, particularly Southern Democrats, to help him win the presidency in 1968.

For Ronald Reagan it was abortion, used in 1980 as a way to attract social conservatives, who have been an important part of the Republican base ever since.

A couple of months ago we published a piece with our definition of Republican as a bit of fun. Since then it has become even more apparent that our definition is more pertinent than maybe we even realized at that time. For that reason, we have taken that definition and added a few examples to the original to validate our assumptions. Please feel free to add your favorite quotes from these Republicans in the comment section. With your help we can add a number of quotes and bookmark this page to come back to and to whenever another stupid quote is uttered by the right. (Could be multiple times a day.)  

The Republican Party gives us such great material and we can only hope this web site can contain enough room for all the stupid quotes that are readily available from each. Here are a few of my favorites to get you started. I am sure you can see where they fit without any problem in the definition below.

Mitt Romney: "I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed."

Newt Gingrich: "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

Michelle Bachman: ''Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.''

Rick Santorum: ''George W. Bush did a incredible job in the presidency, defending us from freedom.''

Newt Gingrich: ''She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer.'''

Michelle Bachman: ''The president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa.''

Mitt Romney: ''I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much.''

Rick Santorum: ''I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. ...If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. .... That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.''

R = Reactionary (opposed to progressive social or political change)

      Ron Paul, Rick Santorum

E = Evangelical (enthusiastic or zealous in support of a particular cause and very eager to make other people share its beliefs or ideals)

     Rick Santorum

P = Pious (characterized by a hypocritical concern with virtue or religious devotion; sanctimonious.)

      Newt Gingrich

U = Unyielding (not giving in to persuasion, pressure, or force)

      Tea Party

B = Brazen (expressing boldness and a complete lack of shame)

      Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney - "I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed."

L = Listless (lacking energy, interest or the willingness to make an effort)

      John Boehner

I= Ideologists (a person advocating a particular ideology)

     Rick Santorum

C = Chauvinistic (militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism)

      Mitt Romney

A = Angry (feeling or showing anger or strong resentment)

      Eric Cantor

N= Narcissists (a person who is overly self-involved, and often vain and selfish)

      Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, ...

Please remember this definition as you cast your vote this fall and remember if we get complacent, we could end up with someone in the White House that embodies this definition. We could also end up with a Congress and Senate that would match.

Please vote.

T1Truth

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) notified the Capitol Police Thursday after receiving threatening phone calls, after a video of her appearing to criticize the Tea Party was posted on several conservative websites, according to a release from her office.

The video was first posted to Breitbart TV, created by the late conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, and then picked up by Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze.

The video shows Clarke speaking at a candidate forum organized by Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform.

"When I say dealing with the Tea Party, they came up in the hundreds of thousands. So we couldn’t walk outside of our office without tripping over Tea Party members. And these are individuals that had no problems with racial epithets, they had no problem with cursing, spitting and everything else, they came to intimidate members out of passing the Affordable Care Act," says Clarke in the video.

WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) -- John Boehner accused Barack Obama of cheapening the U.S. presidency over student-loan rates as the House was to vote Friday on keeping the rates from doubling.

"This week the president traveled across the country on taxpayers' dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting the Congress fix a problem that we were already working on. Frankly, I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House," the House speaker said at a press briefing.

"For the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers' money to try to make this a political issue is pathetic," said Boehner, R-Ohio.

"This is the biggest job in the world, and I've never seen the president make it smaller," Boehner said.

Super PACs and presidential campaigns are legally prohibited from coordinating with one another. But it's not hard to echo and amplify one another's message in the frantic pace of presidential elections. And on Friday morning, Mitt Romney's campaign released a memo that played off of the attack line offered the day before by American Crossroads, accusing President Barack Obama of being a popularity-obsessed, absentee president.

Political arithmetic is always suspect, and one should always examine carefully the claims of those seeking votes. Smart observers have learned to distinguish between the claims of political candidates and their advisers and proposals that have been evaluated by independent scorekeepers such as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

This principle was aptly illustrated by the “budget analysis” Mitt Romney’s chief economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, recently put forward. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Hubbard constructs a budget plan that he imagines President Obama might propose someday, engages in a set of his own extrapolations and then makes assertions about it. He does not discuss the actual Obama plan or how it has been evaluated by the CBO. Nor does Hubbard invest his credibility in defending the claims that Romney has made about his own fiscal plans. He simply states that “Yes, President Obama and Mitt Romney have budgets with competing visions. But Gov. Romney’s budget makes tough choices” — without delving into the specifics or trade-offs that Romney’s “tough choices” entail.

WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.

Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.

They are doing so because the Super Committee, which was supposed to find $1.2 trillion in cuts on which everyone could agree, failed, leaving the slashing up to a pre-agreed sequestration plan that extracts half the savings from the military.

Unless Congress acts, the sequestration begins at the start of 2013. Democrats in the Senate are arguing that the Budget Control Act counts as a budget, and therefore they won't take up debate on a spending plan for 2013, much less address Rep. Paul Ryan's House budget resolution.

Less than a year before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Bros. plunged the global economy into a terrifying free fall, the Wall Street firm awarded nearly $700 million to 50 of its highest-paid employees, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.

The documents, which were among the millions of pages submitted in Lehman's bankruptcy, show the list of top earners each were pledged $8 million to $51 million in cash, stock and other compensation. How much, if any, of the stock was cashed in before the bankruptcy wiped out its value couldn't be determined.

Still, the rich pay packages for so many people raised eyebrows even among compensation experts and provided fresh evidence of the money-driven Wall Street culture that was blamed for triggering the financial crisis.

"Many people are going to be stunned at how well some people were being paid," said Brian Foley, an executive compensation expert in White Plains, N.Y. "This wasn't a matter of five or six people being paid a lot."

Yesterday I noticed a poll where it appears that the favorite television shows of the far right are the Barret Jackson Auction, Fox News, The Apprentice, and Dooms Day Preppers. (Not necessarily in that order.) I have been, and probably always will be, totally confused by the far right and their ability to just choose what they wish is fact, without any basis in reality. The more I thought about this poll the more confused I became on just how a marriage in the belief systems of those that watch Trump, million dollar car auctions, fake news, and those that hide underground with shot guns and watch fake news was formed.

Here is my explanation and you may feel free to add yours. The rich have figured out that if they just say they have a belief in God and your right to keep your guns then the poor and fearful in the party can relate to them. The rich on the right then solidify this comittment from the fearful on the right by keeping fear alive by telling them their way of life is being threatened and any movement in our society into the future will mean disaster. They tell them that the left is the enemy comitted to taking away their rights, give the country to foriegn powers, telling them their belief systems are being threatened, and that they are the only ones standing up for them and protecting them from the left.

In reality, the rich on the right are using these fears to fill their pockets, garner votes, and in every other way using the fearful on the right for their own gain. They find this group as an easy target and exploit them daily. The rich on the right are not concerned about religion except in how it can be exploited, they are the ones living in gated communities protected from those with guns, gain from military spending, own the companies that produce the dooms day bunkers, and do everything imaginable to exploit this group without providing them anything in return. In fact their policies are the ones that would bring about the financial collapse that so many fear, their policies create poverty and promote social hatred, their policies assure future wars that could destroy the planet,  and their policies destroy the environment all of which are designed to perpetuate the fears of the far right and assure their profits.

At the same time they sit in the corporate board rooms and rake in the dollars while laughing at those they exploit. You have to wonder how the right that are not rich do not see what is in plain sight. Well the poll said the right gets most all their news from Fox. I guess that says it all. The far right, expecially those that are not rich need to wake up and smell the gun powder. They are just being used. Living in denial will just assure they will always live in fear, continue to feed their keepers, and be pawns in this game without any way out.

I wonder how the left has gotten to the point that they are feared more than those on the right and what they should be doing to expose the real truth to this group. How has the left lost many of the poor in this nation to fear?

T1Truth

The war of words between Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke continues.

Fluke responded to Limbaugh's latest attack during an appearance on MSNBC, telling Lawrence O'Donnell that the radio host has become "confused by his own propaganda." She was referring to remarks Limbaugh made Tuesday after she tweeted about interest rates on student loans.

"Sandra Fluke is just a poor, uh, isolated, alone little college student worried about her contraception at Georgetown," he said. "But now she's represented by the flacks in the White House—Hilary Rosen, Anita Dunn—and they're coordinating with Obama, scaring students about the interest rates on their student loans."

WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- Budget cuts may make the U.S. Army lay off 29,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, a Pentagon official said as GOP lawmakers sought to restore defense funding.

"I hate to throw out numbers, but I have seen numbers that will approach the enlisted category perhaps as high as the mid-20s -- 23, 24,000," Thomas R. Lamont, the Army's top personnel official, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's personnel subcommittee Wednesday.

"And on the officer contingent -- again these are very rough numbers and all based again on assumptions and attrition rates -- officers may go up to 4,500, maybe 5,000," said Lamont, assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs.

"There will be some officers -- and there will be some very good non-commissioned officers -- that will want to stay in the Army and will probably not," added Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Army deputy chief of staff.

Lamont and Bostick were among military officials testifying a day before House Armed Services Committee panels were to begin marking up the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill.

NOTRE DAME, Ind., April 25 (UPI) -- Faculty members at the University of Notre Dame have demanded an apology from the Peoria, Ill., Catholic bishop for comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler.

Bishop Daniel Jenky, a member of the university's board of fellows, gave a homily April 15 criticizing Obama's policies -- particularly those on healthcare -- and urging Catholics to vote against Obama in the November presidential election.

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and healthcare," Jenky said.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama -- with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda -- now seems intent on following a similar path," Jenky said.

Republican West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese came to Ted Nugent's defense at a campaign event, calling the rocker a "patriot" and saying that "it's a concern" that the Secret Service investigated after Nugent's inflammatory speech threatening President Barack Obama.

Nugent, said Raese, according to video of the candidate's recent speech, argued that Nugent's words were merely "a figure of speech."

It was an unusually specific figure of speech, if that was the case. At the National Rifle Association convention, Nugent told fellow gun enthusiasts that "if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

Rush Limbaugh went after Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke again on Tuesday for what he called "coordinating" with President Obama to "scare students about the interest rates on their loans."

During his Tuesday radio show, Limbaugh read a tweet Fluke sent, which said, "#DontDoubleMyRate. Many students will see the interest rate on Fed #StudentLoans increase if Congress doesn't act by 7/1."

Limbaugh called Fluke's tweet a coincidence since she allegedly sent it thirty minutes before Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that their federal student loans will double if Congress doesn't act by July 1.

After reading a few articles yesterday and some of the comments to these articles, it ocurred to me that I may have a different perception of our responsibility as citizens than others. One of the comments that stuck out to me, was that they believed a law should be passed to make voting mandatory. I understood the concept of wishing everyone to participate in their government and credit that author with pursuing a noble cause. At the same time I do not believe that is what our nation is all about. This also made me wonder exactly how most view their responsibility to their nation.

In my opinion, America is a child. Not just any child, but my child. Remember in the scheme of things Egypt, Rome, and other nations stood for thousands of years and we are only working toward a few hundred. We are, what I hope, is a nation in our infancy with a bright future ahead.

Like any child this child needs to be loved, taught, praised, cherished, and sometimes disciplined. If your child was hungry you would feed them, that is what our taxes are for. If we are wealthy we can afford better food for her, and most likely you would say of your own children nothing is too good for them. We teach our children values at home and send them to school to learn to provide a better future than we had. With our votes and our ability to speak out, we teach our country. When our child mis-behaves we use it as learning opportunity and discipline when needed. Once again, with America we have a responsibility to do the same. We try to change those behaviors that are unjust through our activism and votes. When our child accomplishes something good we praise them, as we should prasie our country for all the great acheivements we have accomplished and when our nation embarks on new and great endeavors that help our citizens and the world. We cherish our children as we should cherish our nation.

Remember, we are all the parents of this great nation as long as we are on the journey with her. It is our responsibility to be a responsible parent and be involved with the growth of this child no differently than our own children. My belief is that we do not need to be told what to do to help our nation, but we need to take personal responsibility to do so. My opinion is that if we fail to participate, take an interest in our nations future, use our vote to direct, provide our fair share, and work to make this nation the best it can be, we are doing nothing more than neglecting your own children. We put up with a lot of crap from our kids but we never give up on them, why would we do that with our child America?

If you think about it in these terms then how are taking care of this child?

T1Truth

Now that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, contraception no longer rules the national conversation.

But over the past year, many Republican lawmakers have made remarks that show either shocking cluelessness or open hostility to the idea of accessible, affordable birth control for women.

Here at HuffPost we've compiled a short video of the six worst examples from the past year.

As we enter into this election season and as it always seems small groups of special interests are taking over, we think it is time to take a look at what we were warned of in 1787. Their money floods the campaigns, their lobbyists sit daily in the halls of power, and we as citizens feel there is nothing we can do. We tend to think this is a new phenomenon although it is not. This has been a problem with our system of government since day one. In 1787 James Madison being a forward thinker published this paper in regards to many of the problems that he foresaw with our fledgling society. In 1787 Mr. Madison used the term "Factions" to describe special interest groups. What may be surprising to many is that within this paper, he did provide the solutions available for controlling these special interests, how it was to be accomplished, and who was responsible to do it.

We have included the complete paper below and have highlighted some specific areas that may be of interest. We have also included some commentary that is our opinion only. We do not profess to be Constitutional Scholars or experts on interpreting the Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers are fairly plainly written and we are only providing our opinion based upon common sense. After that it is up to you for how you wish to read this document and apply it to our society today.

I will warn you that it is a fairly long read and at the same time we challenge you to read and comprehend what Mr. Madison was warning us over 200 years ago. Sometimes being a citizen means that we have a responsibility to take the time to understand those things that affect us. Please pay special interest to his comment about how the federal government is better to address special interests over state government and then ask yourself the question why the Republicans wish to push much of their agenda back to the states.

James Madison, Jr.(March 16, 1751 (O.S. March 5) – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman and political theorist. He is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the United States Bill of Rights. He was the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817). He served as a politician much of his adult life. (Wikipedia) 

From the New York Packet.
Friday, November 23, 1787.
James Madison

Madison warns us of special interests (factions) taking advantage of our democracy.

AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

Madison spells out how special interests need to be controlled.

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

Above it seems as though Madison is saying that either of the two remedies would not be effective and below he acknowledges the causes for this being in our human failure of greed. He also describes exactly what we see today with the 99% and the 1%.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

Below, Madison expected special interests to act in a way contrary to the public good. Please pay special attention to the last line.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

Madison also realizes we cannot expect our politicians to do anything about this problem unless we as citizens stay engaged.

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

Now he acknowleges we cannot stop the problem from occurring but we must focus on the effects of what the special interests will do.

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:

In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.

In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.

It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.

The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.

Below Madison makes a great revelation that should make the GOP shudder. He is implying that a local government is less effective for the common good than a state government and that a state government is less equipped to keep the common good of the nation at hand than the federal government.

Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic,--is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.

In summary, Madison is telling us that special interests will always exist and that it is our responsibility to be vigilant about those that wish to push those agenda's. It is our responsibility to recognize when we are being played by them. And it is our responsibility to use our vote to contain them.

T1Truth

If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're
the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any
congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape,
or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their
profits. 

But no need to invent – Charles and David Koch are the real
deal. Over the past 30-some years, they've poured more than 100 million dollars
into a sprawling
network of foundations, think tanks, front groups, advocacy organizations,
lobbyists and GOP lawmakers, all to the glory of their hard-core libertarian
agenda. They don't oppose big government so much as government – taxes,
environmental protections, safety-net programs, public education: the whole bit.
(By all accounts, the Kochs are true believers; they really buy that road-to-serfdom
stuff about the the holiness of free markets. Still, you can't help but notice
how neatly their philosophy lines up with their business interests.) They like
to think of elected politicians as merely "actors playing out a script," and
themselves as supplying "the
themes and words for the scripts." Imagine Karl Rove’s strategic
cunning, crossed with Ron Paul’s screw-the-poor ideology, and hooked up to
Warren Buffett's checking account, and you’re halfway there.

Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, is the denomination's outsized presence in Washington, D.C. He is often quoted as a representative not just of Southern Baptists but of evangelicals more broadly, and is a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows. Just before Rick Santorum dropped out of the Republican primary, Land was widely quoted urging the conservative favorite to step aside for Mitt Romney.

Now he's under investigation by his own denomination for plagiarism, which was discovered after an outcry over his racist comments about the Trayvon Martin murder on his radio program, Richard Land Live...

The discovery of the plagiarism was made by Aaron Weaver, a doctoral candidate in religion and politics at Baylor University, and revealed on his blog The Big Daddy Weave.

Weaver first published his discovery on April 14. In that post, "Richard Land The Plagiarist: Top SBC Ethicist Stirs Up Controversy With Someone Else’s Rant...

The ERLC's statement on the investigation noted there could be more instances of plagiarism. In response to the charges, Land said in a statement, "On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize." He added, "I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled. That was not my intent nor has it ever been."

Although Land wrote a letter of apology to SBC president Bryant Wright over the racial comments, Weaver said it was a "a non-apology apology." In the letter, Land claimed, "I have been committed to the cause of racial reconciliation my entire ministry." But Weaver said, "I'm not sure what that means," noting that Land was involved in a 1995 resolution on racial reconciliation on the 150th anniversary of the SBC, but not much more.

The SBC is poised to elect its first African-American president, the Rev. Fred Luter, later this year.

The SBC's investigation of Land, said Weaver, "is unprecedented. You don't get bigger than Richard Land." Land has been the SBC's presence in Washington for decades, and was a key player in the conservative resurgence within the denomination as the religious right began its ascendance.

Still, though, he's more of a Washington insider than a representative of the pews. "He plays TV consultant," said Weaver. "He's the go-to expert and supposedly has his finger on the pulse on Southern Baptists, but if you're around Southern Baptists, you know that's not true," he added. Many younger Southern Baptists, he added, are wary of the ERLC's close ties with the GOP, and are skeptical of the value of a Washington presence at all.

 

“In Section 63, in verse 17 of the Doctrine and Covenants of the Mormon Church we find this: ‘All liars, and whosoever loveth and and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death,'" Bashir said. "And from the Book of Mormon to Nephi, Chapter 2, Verse 34 we find this: ‘Woe unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.'"

A full year after Obama released his birth certificate, a significant number of Republican officials across the country still are unable to disavow themselves of the notion that the president was not born in this country.

This week, a leading Republican candidate in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country revealed himself as the newest member of the birther club. Richard Hudson, a former congressional chief of staff, told a Tea Party in Salisbury on Tuesday that "there's no question President Obama's hiding something on his citizenship." Hudson, "the frontrunner for the GOP nomination" in North Carolina's 8th congressional district according to Roll Call, also pledged that if elected he would introduce legislation "that requires any candidate for president or vice president to be certified by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as being a citizen."

HUDSON: There's no question President Obama's hiding something on his citizenship. If you elect me to Congress to represent you, I'll introduce legislation that requires any candidate for president or vice president to be certified by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as being a citizen. Whether that's a birth certificate or whatever it means, I'm going to make real simple from now on if you want to run for president, you're need to know you're going to have to prove you're a citizen.

Very candid look at how Israel may be trying to influence the 2012 elections and why.

BRICK, N.J., April 16 (UPI) -- The decision to  place one or the other of the candidates in the Oval Office this election will  have immense, perhaps dire consequence. The wrong choice can send us off to a  great conflagration that could decide the ruination of the Middle East, Israel  and perhaps the West.

Israel's existence may well be decided and movement has begun in anticipation  of this cataclysm. Israel understood that the United States lost the war in Iraq  to Iran when the Bush administration handed the leadership of the country to the  Shiites by the willfully obtuse decision to order premature elections.

In secrecy, Israel began to establish military bases in the semi-autonomous  Kurdish territories of Iraq. Israel has used those bases to gather intelligence  and conduct in force reconnaissance raids into Iran.

The letters recently sent out by the Santorum campaign that ripped into Mitt Romney were ordered before he suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign manager said.

“It truly frightens me to think what’ll happen if Romney is the nominee,” reads the letter, which the Des Moines Register reported showed up in Iowa mailboxes on Monday – almost a week after Santorum announced he would abandon his bid for the White House.

The two-page appeal for money repeats the most frequently used attacks Santorum leveled against his rival on the trail, mainly that Romney is "a moderate from Massachusetts" who will not be able to mount a real challenge to President Barack Obama on issues like health care.

Investigators at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement identified "possible criminal and ethical violations" by freshman Rep. David Rivera (R-FL). Among these were filing erroneous personal financial reports while a member of the Florida House of Representatives, falsely amending those disclosures after media criticism, and using campaign and government accounts to reimburse his own personal expenses...

In 2010, now-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised that if his party won the majority in the midterm elections, he (as majority leader) 'institute a zero-tolerance policy' on ethics violations. In light of these serious charges, the Republican leadership could show its commitment to this policy by beginning an Ethics Committee investigation, stripping him of his committee assignments, calling for his resignation or even moving to remove him from Congress. It has done none of these things. Even with these apparent ethical breaches, they continue to let Rivera serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and, ironically, its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee) and the Committee on Natural Resources.

 

March and April Results:

In March we published the first Newsvine Presidential Voting Poll to see what the most important reasons were to us for selecting a president. In the last month several things have changed. The Republican Party now pretty much has a single candidate, several issues between the parties have been elevated, the Supreme Court has heard a major case, and several things have changed throughout the world. (Quite a month!)

Our intention is to publish this poll once a month through October. We have created a spreadsheet with some comparisons we may make from month to month. Last month we had 116 respondents to the poll and we would like to thank all those that participated  in the poll and provided their feedback as this how we understand how others think.

This poll will run through Monday, April 23rd, 2012 and on the 24th we will attach the spreadsheet results with the comparisons to this article so that you may compare April to May. Each month we will continue to update the results for you so that you may see how our opinions stay the same or change throughout the election cycle.

We know that everyone has several factors that they use in the decision making process. Most of us though have one issue a little more important to us than the rest and we are asking if everything else were equal, which one may be your deciding factor over the rest.

Please feel free to tell us why you voted for a specific issue or if a reason that is not listed is your primary reason for voting for president.

Results from the March 2012 Newsvine Presidential Voting Poll:

http://ttruth3829683.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/18/10743043-newsvine-presidential-voting-poll

T1Truth

Tennessee’s elementary and middle school teachers could face more pressure not to talk about homosexuality with their students next year after the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill cleared a House education committee Tuesday.

Some Republican leaders have questioned the need for House Bill 229, which prevents the teaching of alternative lifestyles, noting that it is already illegal under state law to teach sex education in grades K-8.

House Education Chairman Richard Montgomery, R-Sevierville, voted against the measure, but it passed on an 8-7 vote and goes to the calendar committee before a floor vote.

Bill sponsor Rep. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, and others argued that outside groups and some teachers slip those conversations in, and the bill serves as an accountability reminder.

Although we all know the Tea Party is forcing the Republican Party to accept their agenda through blackmail for their votes, where did they go. I read through several articles from the last month, watched countless hours of news interviews, and listened to almost as many hours on the radio and have only seen or heard a few references to the Tea Party. During the run up to the 2008 elections I could not drive over 50 miles without seeing signs in someones yard about a Tea Party meeting. So where did they go? Have we gotten so lucky they are disappearing? Has the Republican Party put them in their place?

Unfortunately, I do not believe any of these to be true. I believe the Tea Party has been absorbed by the religious right and the Republican Party has made a conscious decision to not speak of it much. I believe the power they wield within the party is even more than it was before the 2008 election and even more than what it was when they called it their great victories in the 2010 elections. We know that Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and others are a part of this group although you do not hear them speak of it at this point.

This is just a reminder to everyone that the Tea Party is still out there. Until after the 2012 elections I believe they are going to be like moles in your garden. Always wreaking havoc and seldom seen.

Below is an excerpt from an article we published a while back and I ask everyone to watch carefully what is going on in Congress during this election cycle to see if you can see the footprints of these moles on those actions.

Why do we pretend that we still have the Congress and the Senate of a two party system, and why does not the Tea Party own up to the fact that their goal was to turn these two bodies into Upper and Lower Parliamentary bodies? It is clear why the Tea Party wishes to ignore the President and wants Congress to have all the power. The goal is and has always been to create a Parliamentary Government environment.

The real goal of the Tea Party was to create a voting block within the Congress and Senate that must be dealt with in order to advance their agenda by forming a coalition. This is why the Republican Party has had to shift so far right to accommodate this coalition. In the UK many political parties exist and once elections take place, the parties must form a governing coalition by obtaining support of enough groups in order to form a majority government. (This is done by promising their agenda items will be included in their agenda or granting favors.) Tell me how this is different from what the Tea Party has done to our political system. By standing their ground under the guise of being Tea Party members and still being registered as Republicans, they could hold their ground and still obtain funds from the RNC. (Cake and eat it too.) From a T1Truth article on 03.10.2012

As the transportation bill and other legislation are being held hostage, watch for the moles.

T1Truth

WASHINGTON, April 17 (UPI) -- The White House  Tuesday said provisions for the Keystone XL pipeline in the surface  transportation bill are a deal breaker.

In a statement, the White House threatened a veto if the pipeline is included  in the measure reauthorizing funding for programs through the Highway Trust  Fund.

Simply passing a short-term extension again also is unacceptable because it  would "miss a critical opportunity to provide more certainty to states and  localities as they undertake the long-term planning and execution of projects  and programs that are essential to creating and keeping American workers in good  paying jobs, improving the nation's surface transportation infrastructure, and  ensuring roadway safety."

WASHINGTON, April 17 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack  Obama announced an initiative Tuesday to strike at manipulation in the oil  market.

"We can't afford a situation where some speculators makes millions while  millions of Americans get the short end of the stick," Obama told reporters in  the White House Rose Garden.

Among the steps in the administration's proposal, "more cops on the beat to  monitor activity in energy markets," an increase in civil and criminal penalties  for manipulation and a requirement to have a greater margin -- more money -- to  back up trading in oil futures, Obama said.

We all know the GOP has a problem with minorities and women. 

Most of us know that the policies of the Republican Party, the beliefs of the Religious Right, and the wish to protect the hierarchy of white males is rampant within the party. I started to write an extensive article related to this when I ran into the graph below. It portrays very well how far behind the Republican Party is behind in their thought process and actions this party really is.

So I thought I would save all of us a lot of time and just post the graph below and say ENOUGH SAID:

As I told you on Friday, the Huffington Post and The Dylan Ratigan Show got some significant internal documents from the Federal Reserve.  We'll be releasing them at 4 p.m. on my show, on the Huffington Post, and at DylanRatigan.com. They gave us the transcripts of certain internal meetings from 2007-2010, the meetings where their top officials planned their response to the gathering crisis (these are known as Federal Open Market Committee meetings, or FOMC).  Willingly giving away documents isn't how the Fed typically operates, especially documents that might point to serious management problems within the central bank.  They are known as a tight-knit, bank-friendly, super-secret agency.

In a closed-door speech to donors at a private home in Florida on Sunday, Mitt Romney was unusually candid about his policy plans, offering details about what he expects to implement if elected president in November.

According to NBC News, the former Massachusetts governor said he may decide to eliminate several government agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which was once led by his father, George Romney.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican Party is coming face to face with what could, for it, be a demographic calamity. Currently, just 12 percent of Latino registered voters believe the GOP serves them best, compared with 45 percent who prefer the Democratic party, according to a December 2011 poll by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center. With Latinos expected to make up nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, electoral reality is setting in: the party's future will be in jeopardy if it doesn't fare better with Latino voters.

Each week I try to brave the "Dark Side" and read articles from Fox News or some other conservative publications to see just what is being printed for those that wish to drink in the right leaning so called news. Today, I found a poll on Fox News where they indicated that Romney was leading Obama in a national poll. What is great about Fox News is they understand just how uninformed many of their readers are and sometimes they print some truth in such polls. I think they just sit back and laugh and say I bet you they buy this one. In this poll they actually put the numbers in. Of the 900 and some participants over 300 were Republicans, and nearly same number were Democrats, and then another 300 were those that voted in the Republican primaries. OK, this is not rocket science if you take the time to read the make up of the poll. With this make up you would expect Romney to be ahead of the president by over 60%. In actuality, they reported that Romney was leading 46% to 44%. Now is just me, or did Fox News just say that even if we give Romney a 66% advantage going in, he can still only poll 2% better.

After this laugh I felt so emboldened that I held up my shield, made sure my virus protection was up to date, and then braved the web site for the Institute of Legislative Action. (The ILA is the lobbying arm of the NRA.) Although I did not have the guts to sign up for the web site I did find this gem.

In an article about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her extraorinary perpencedy to rule for the left in their opinion, I found this:

Those who hold this view would be happy see our Constitution abandoned in favor of a more “modern” document that grants “rights” such as health care, housing and employment, while eliminating protections for the right to keep and bear arms and restrictions on the powers of the central government.  What these visionaries see as deficiencies in our Constitution are exactly the things that make it work so well. Its purpose is to guarantee fundamental rights and to protect liberty by restricting government power. (http://nraila.org/news-issues/articles/2012/diminishing-the-constitution.aspx)

Again, I will ask, did they just say that health care, housing, and employment cannot be compared to the right to carry a firearm anywhere you wish because you are so paranoid that you feel it is your right to carry a gun into a school or anyother public building?

Just saying.....

T1Truth

It has been 100 years since the Titanic sank and we are now facing another possible disaster by electing a GOP candidate as president. We hope this comparison may bring some clarity on the similarities of this one disaster and the potential disaster that we may face. As you look at these similarities just remember your vote can steer the ship slightly away from that impending collision that we may be headed for.

Let's start with the life boats. The Board of Trade at the time required all vessels over 10,000 tons to carry 16 life boats. The Titanic was designed to carry 64 life boats. The Board of Trade had written those laws before any ship exceeded 10,000 tons and failed to update their regulations after larger ships were produced. Sixty four life boats would have given the Titanic the capacity to rescue over 4,000 passengers and crew as the designers wished. Instead the White Star Line reduced the number to the sixteen required by law which was well under what the number of passengers and crew would require. After arguing profusely the designers finally got White Star to install four additional collapsible life boats. This was still far below the required number of boats necessary to provide adequate life saving capacity for the number of passengers and crew.

The GOP wishes to eliminate several oversight agencies of the federal government. (EPA, Commerce, Education, and others.) How is this different from the Board of Trade which was ill equipped to update laws to protect the passengers and crew of the Titanic? The White Star Line choosing not to do the right thing and just skating by with the minimal requirements of the law is no different than how corporations operate today by neglecting to keep our citizens safe, if they are not forced to.

The Titanic was constructed to provide the best accomodations for the rich and wealthy and to place the poorest of the passengers in the most dangerous part of the ship. The poorest passengers did not have the same status as the wealthy and were not allowed onto the decks where the wealthy resided. The ship exposed the classes of the times in stark terms.

The GOP believes that tax laws should favor the rich, that they have an elite status and should form the laws for the rest of us behind closed doors as Mitt Romney has communicated, and that they are not concerned about the poor as there are safety nets in place. How well did these safety nets work for the poor on the Titanic?

If you were a child in 1st or 2nd class you had a 96% chance of surviving.

If you were a child in 3rd class you had a 34% chance of surviving.

If you were a woman in 1st or 2nd class you had a 93% chance of surviving.

If you were a woman in 3rd class you had a 46% chance of surviving.

Is there any difference between the Titanic and how the GOP wishes to treat those in the most need of help in our society who do not have the voice to have more life boats installed?

There are a hundred more comparisons we can make as to how the GOP and Titanic are similar. We will however leave those to you. The question is are you going to allow the the GOP to keep steering toward the Tea Party ice-berg that we all can clearly see ahead of us, or are we going to vote to steer the GOP ship away from this obstacle.

T1Truth

Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I've got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve's easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.

During the course of the 2012 election cycle we have heard the Republican Party slam the president for not believing in American Exceptionalism. I think it is time to look at exactly what they are talking about and why this means so much to them. The term was actually coined in the 1800's and referred to the fact that American Exceptionalism was the right of the United States to consider itself over every nation as the country was divinely inspired and documented as such in the Constitution. From this point of view the Constitution might as well be an amendment to the bible.
 
The statement from the president that gets the Republicans all up in arms was this:

"I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," he said, before reiterating that his belief came from the values enshrined in the Constitution, including free speech and equality. "I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world."

The republican party has taken this first line as an assault on their basic beliefs and disregarded the rest of what the president said.

The real question is, do we as a nation believe that we were divinely inspired, that the Constitution as written should be taken the same as the word of God, and if we can put ourselves above all nations for all time because of this. This is the view of the Republican Party.

I would challenge that belief. I too have a deep love for my country and wish it to lead the world in every aspect of society. (Human Rights, Science, Technology, Health Care, Conservation, Judicial Fairness, Manufacturing, and every other category of life and liberty.) My fundamental difference with the Republicans is that I believe this should be earned and not inherited.

Believing our nation was divinely inspired and that nothing we do supersedes this brought us manifest destiny, slavery, inequality for women and so much more that we needed to prove we could overcome. Each time we did not, the rest of the world looked at us a backwards. When the rest of the world perceives us as backwards, and our actions show we are not deserving, how can we claim American Exceptionalism.

By claiming the president does not believe in American Exceptionalism as he challenges us each day to achieve this lofty goal is absurd. Their belief in the Constitution as a bibical text is also absurd. If anything, the policies being advocated by the Republican Party will only assure we will lose any chance at American Exceptionalism. This is something we must earn each day and it cannot be inherited from the great things our fore fathers achieved. We must achieve this on our own each and every day. This is a dangerous view the Republicans hold as it will only assure our descending into obscurity.

T1Truth
 
 

John Bowles, 55, told US media he wanted to address political rights and ballot access and he expected lawmakers would accept meetings with him.

Lobbying was something the party would "try out for the first time and see if it flies," Mr Bowles told ABC News. He registered as a lobbyist this week.

Lobbying is a common practice in US politics and lobby groups are required to disclose their interests in detail.

Mr Bowles' Capitol Hill registration also listed his lobbying interests as agriculture, clean air and water, civil rights, the constitution, healthcare, immigration, manufacturing, and retirement.

The Pentagon plans to roll out a new slate of clean- and renewable-energy initiatives on Wednesday as part of its long-term "Operational Energy Strategy" aimed at reducing the military's dependence on fossil fuels while increasing its front-line fighting power.

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumed Republican candidate, it's fair to ask how he made so much money ($21 million in 2010 alone) and paid such a low rate of taxes (only 13.9 percent).

Not only fair to ask, but instructive to know. Because the magic of private equity reveals a lot about how and why our economic system has become so distorted and lopsided -- why all the gains are going to the very top while the rest of us aren't going anywhere.

The magic of private equity isn't really magic at all. It's a magic trick -- and it's played on you and me.

Jake Kornbluth and I have made this 2 minute video that explains it all in eight simple steps. (Thanks to MoveOn.org for staking us.)

Hey Yall,

I am Mitt Gumby and I want to be your president. I promise to be the most flexible president that you have ever had. And more than that I like Green. You know the color of the trees in summer. Especially those perfect trees in MI that are just the right height. As your president you can bend me, shape me, and twist me into all kinds of contorted positions on just about anything.

Imagine the possibilities if I am your president:

I can be both for banning assault rifles and then join the NRA.

I can institute Health Care for All in one state and fundamentally disagree with the principle on the national level.

I can oppose an auto bailout although the money would have never been available in the private sector to keep this industry going and be proud to own a Mustang, Pickup Truck, and a couple of Caddies because I was right that auto industry is vital to our nation.

I can be for Roe v. Wade and then support that this can only applies before conception.

I can be against paligomy and be proud of my church.

I can agree that man is responsible for part of climate change and oppose doing anything about it.

I can be for imigration reform and try to make people so uncomfortable that they will self deport.

I believe that government is for the people as long as it is behind closed doors.

I can disagree with Regan initiatives and keep him as my hero.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on, about this attribute of mine of being the most flexible candidate ever but I do not think I need to at this point. I am sure you could never name another candidate as twisty as me. If you are tired of politicians with rigid belief systems that have a vision for America rooted in truth, then I am your man.

Please give up some of that green that I am so fond of and support me. I promise I will flex in the wind for you. I promise to contort myself into positions you never thought possible. I promise to shape myself to whatever others tell me to do. And I promise to bring uncertainty to the presidency like no other before.

Remember I am Mitt Gumby and I want to be your Contortionist and Chief.
 
This message has been brought to you by the FlexPac Super PAC for Mitt Gumby for President.
 
T1Truth

After reading this article I think you will understand why Mitt may be Mormon. The Mormon church appears to mirror the 99% vs 1% model with much of it's financial and other dealing concluded behind closed doors as Mitt suggests should be done in government as well. Additionally the Mormon Church invests heavily into businesses.

The Mormon Church which functions as a Corporate Sole, under the direction of the Corporation of the First Presidency of the Church and the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric reportedly pays its top officials quite generously. Because of its failure to disclose its financial dealings to its members, the Church has come under immense criticism. Financial reporting to the General Membership stopped in the 1950s. According to one anonymous report:

    The church consists of at least 400 separate legal entities in 130+ countries...all with different taxation laws. The Church itself in USA is mostly tax exempt. There are some countries that the Church pays property tax, etc., but for the most part the Church itself is tax exempt in most of the world. It doesn't even report its financial standing to its own members, much less the US government.

    "The Church owns stock in many other companies that are well known like Bonneville International, Deseret Book, etc. These companies are not tax exempt because they are not the Church per se even if they are wholly owned by the Church. The Church owns or owned more secretive stock in other conglomerates or holding companies like Times Mirror or the Chandler Fund which owns many big newspapers like The LA Times, Chicago Sun, etc.