The Biggest Welfare Queen at WalMart
is not this Woman
IT IS WALMART!!!
IT IS WALMART!!!
The Latest in Progressive Politics with a Healthy Dose of Humor
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Baby Boomers define retirement as still working
It’s a new world for retirees, reports TIME Magazine’s Dan Kadlec, as the baby boom generation is trading in its idealized vision of retirement for something that looks like: “I’m 67 years old and suddenly I’m taking crap from a 29-year-old manager again?”Once common and easily defined, the idealized retirement is now highly individualized based on:
How fucked did you get in the Bush crash of September, 2008?
How much money did you lose by taking Glenn Beck’s advice and putting all your money into that Goldline scam?
Did you listen to Donald Trump and sell all your stocks in 2009–only to watch the S&P 500 soar 100% under Obama?
How concerned are you that Paul Ryan will realize his dream of killing Medicare during your lifetime?
Most important: instead of retiring to the beach or golf course, would you rather work the next 25 years in telemarketing or as a Walmart greeter?
Thirty years ago, tens of millions of hard-working Americans bought into Reagan’s promise that “trickle-down economics” would create a brighter future for us all. Instead the top 1% have $32 TRILLION stashed in offshore accounts and the rest of us are trying to remember to keep smiling as we squeeze into our Walmart uniform or read from that hard-sell telemarketing script.
Happy Labor Day!
Full story: http://business.time.com/2013/08/29/redefining-the-ideal-retirement/?iid=biz-main-lead
WHY OBAMA IS TO BLAME FOR THE KATRINA RESPONSE
WHY OBAMA IS TO BLAME FOR THE KATRINA RESPONSE
Liberal BiasThe lefty pinko socialists at the Being Liberal Facebook page have posted this meme in response to the new storythat 29% of Louisiana Republicans blame Obama for the federal government’s response to Katrina:
To liberals, this seems like some kind of “contradiction” or “nonsense” or “stupidity”, just because Obama wasn’t President yet when Katrina happened–President Bush was. As a result, they are touting this meme as a way to make fun of Louisiana Republicans.
However, we good-hearted folks at LiberalBias.com have actually long been aware of this kind of poll result, and it is not an indication that Louisiana Republicans are out-of-touch or crazy… as long as you know how to interpret the poll results correctly.
As we reported several months ago, in our article “GOP TIP: How to answer opinion polls“, the correct conservative way to answer a poll IS NOT to merely answer the question that is asked. Instead, it is to find a way to use the poll to simply express your complete outrage with and hatred of President Obama.
Therefore, the correct way to answer any poll question is to find out which answer most closely corresponds to “OBAMA SUCKS!!!!”, and choose that answer.
In a poll about whether you think the stock market is higher or lower now than it was under Bush, the correct answer is “lower” because that answer translates into OBAMA SUCKS!!!
In a poll about whether you think the deficit is higher or lower, the correct answer is higher, because OBAMA SUCKS.
And in a poll about who is to blame for the federal government’s response to Katrina, well isn’t it obvious? The correct answer is: OBAMA SUCKS!!!! …..or whatever answer is available that matches that as closely as possible.
So as it turns out, when Louisiana Republicans say that Obama is to blame for…. well, just about anything… it isn’t because they don’t understand politics, or history, or causality. The answer is much simpler: they think that Obama sucks.
WinkProgress: Why Obama is to blame for the Katrina response http://t.co/XcvmEjiKmc #Articles #Memes
DEFUND OBAMACARE … OR ELSE! (UPDATED)
DEFUND OBAMACARE … OR ELSE! (UPDATED)
Tea Party Cat
Guest post by Rancid Pissant (Reince Priebus)
Stopping Obamacare is the primary mission of the GOP today, but since it’s already law, we must be creative to find ways to keep it from happening. And we don’t have forever– on October 1st people can start buying policies, and in January they’ll have coverage.
So far having the House vote to repeal Obamacare hasn’t had any effect. Whether the first or the 40th time, the law just marches on, indifferent to the hurt feelings of Republicans.
Now at the latest Republican leadership meeting, the main ideas for were threatening a government shutdown or destroying the country’s credit. These are both good ideas, but it turns out the business community isn’t thrilled about them, so I’ve been tasked with finding other options.
So, I ask you, what else should we threaten to get Obama and Senate Democrats to accede to our demands to kill Obamacare?
So far we’ve got:
- Steal a US missile and threaten to blow up the San Andreas Fault
- Put Gotham City under ice
- Refuse to do nothing about climate change
- Get a rare orchid deadly to humans but harmless to other life forms and threaten to wipe out mankind
- Refuse to pass jobs bill to hurt the economy and instead focus on bills to harass women that can’t pass
- Let Monsanto destroy the world’s food chain with genetically modified crops
- Trick the elite assassins in The Fraternity into thinking that the Loom of Fate is saying to kill anyone who supports Obamacare
- Pass laws designed to discourage and suppress voting
- Borrow Ming The Merciless’s ship to pull the Moon out of orbit to cause climate change
- Put a giant laser on the Moon and blow up the Earth
- Poison the water water so much that it’s flammable
- Block all bills, all nominees, to stop the government from working
- Take hostages in a new skyscraper in Los Angeles
- Hijack a plane
- Strap a bomb to our chests and blow up the Capitol building
- Put a bomb in a school somewhere in New York City
- the GOP will blot out the Sun in Springfield
- Rand Paul will lecture black people on why they should be Republicans
- Ted Cruz will use his tesseract to release the Chitauri army on Manhattan
- John Boehner will pull this car over right now. He’ll do it!
Please add your suggestions to the comments below, or use the hashtag #DefundObamacareOrElse. Remember, as Ted Cruz says, “This is a fight we can win.”
UPDATE: Suggestions from Twitter
I asked conservatives on Twitter to use the hashtag #DefundObamacareOrElse to suggest more things for the GOP to threaten, and the loyal faithful came through. If these suggestions don’t put fear in Obama and the Senate Democrats, then nothing will!
Lenny @DimeStoreNinja
Ben Affleck will play every cartoon superhero in every movie.
Shermaclay @Shermaclay
My elderly father-in-law will keep yelling at the television.
Nutcrack a'lackin' @Nutcracker_man
they'll vote to repeal it again
DC @Skuuterz
the poors will live long enough to elect king Obama again.
WinkProgress: Defund Obamacare...OR ELSE!!! Now updated with the #DefundObamacareOrElse suggestions from Twitter: http://t.co/wBCtlevpXK
GOP Bullshit to English: Tort Reform:
GOP Bullshit to English: Tort Reform: Corporations have the right to rob, cheat, steal, and kill!
#p2
#p2
Friday, August 30, 2013
RAND PAUL DECIDES TO EDUCATE THOSE POOR, IGNORANT IMMIGRANT FOLKS
RAND PAUL DECIDES TO EDUCATE THOSE POOR, IGNORANT IMMIGRANT FOLKS
Liberal Bias
Rand Paul knows that the GOP desperately needs a way to win over minority voters. He can’t get on board with things like a social safety net, or immigration reform, so he asks himself: “What do those foreign illegal non-white people really need?”
Education, of course. So he’s now pushing charter schools. In order to win over minorities for the GOP.
Of course, when Rand Paul thinks “charter schools” he’s not really thinking about the same things that Democrats think when they think “charter schools”. In fact, he’s not thinking of the same types of things that Democrats think when they think “schools”.
For years, Republicans have been ramping up efforts to shift public school funding to charter schools owned and operated by conservative and religious crusaders, bypassing publicly elected school boards and national standards and practices for education.
But hey, Rand Paul probably figures that immigrants and racial minorities won’t even realize that the “schools” he is offering are basically conservative Christian Sunday-schools.
I mean… it’s not like “those people” are smart enough to know the difference, right Rand?
READ THE STORY AT HUFFINGTON POST: Rand Paul Teaming Up With Dems? For This Cause, He Thinks It’s Worth It
WinkProgress: Rand Paul decides to educate those poor, ignorant immigrant folks http://t.co/JMx7RN4tnh
“GLENN BECK” TO BE RELEASED AS GOOGLE TRANSLATE’S NEWEST LANGUAGE OPTION
Liberal Bias
Google Translate has released a new language to its list to translatable languages: Glenn Beck.
You can now translate from Glenn Beck into English, German, French, Swahili, or any of the other available options.
Please make sure that you use this new Google Translate feature when reading articles such as this one: Glenn Beck: U.S. identified in Bible
WinkProgress: Google Translate new feature: translate from Glenn Beck into any language!Google Translate new feature: translate from Glenn Beck into any language! http://t.co/hlbHaZ1Qzf SAMPLE SCREENSHOT: pic.twitter.com/OAk9HGrBlxSAMPLE SCREENSHOT: http://t.co/OAk9HGrBlx
— WinkProgress.com (@WinkProgress) August 30, 2013
Alabama Residents Panic After Radio Station's Joke Alien Invasion
Alabama Residents Panic After Radio Station's Joke Alien Invasion
The Huffington Post | By Amanda ScherkerPosted: 08/30/2013 4:40 pm EDT
When it comes to media, the line between truth and fiction is sometimes hazier than the Milky Way. Just ask Star 94.9, the Alabama radio station that aired a mock warning of an extra-terrestrial invasion on Aug. 27 and subsequently sent the town of Tuscumbia into a spiral of panic about an impending bomb attack.
It was all a misunderstanding, or perhaps an initial miscalculation by the local Schols Radio Group's station, according to the Times Daily. The broadcast's joke about aliens taking over the station was only meant to publicize a programming change.
But Star 94.9 got more of a promotional boost than they had bargained for when residents took the aliens' threats seriously. Apparently, the broadcast, which included an alien reading Goodnight Moon, spiraled into an elaborate rumor of a bomb threat at a local school. (A recording of the broadcast is available on Star 94.9's Soundcloud.)
Have you heard ‘Alien Audio ALIEN INVASION
Panicked calls from listeners began flooding the lines of the radio station and local authorities, alike. The panic didn't subside over night either; some children were apparently too afraid to go to school, the newspaper reports.
This left the jokesters behind the alien fake-out astronomically befuddled. Brian Rickman, regional director of programming for Schols Radio group, told the Times Daily: “We certainly apologize, but we had no intention to cause any problems or create concerns about schools. We could not have foreseen this happening.”
The station took to their Facebook page, posting:"'Like' if you understand that aliens and radio 'hackerz' are NOT a real thing but that Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster totally are. 'Like' also if you want us to continue our little piece of radio theater." Nearly 150 fans gave the post a thumbs-up.
One Facebook user wasn't laughing, though: "Having kids, including my OWN, thinking it wouldn't be safe to go to school today isn't humorous or cute."
At least Star 94.9 now gets the unique opportunity to join an elite group of media that have carried out alien invasion hoaxes. Their most famous peer? Orson Welles, who orchestrated a joke radio broadcast, entitled "Invasion from Mars," and terrified the country in 1938. Thousands fled their homes in the broadcast's aftermath.
Across the globe, Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad's April Fools' joke also failed to amuse when the paper's front page announced a "giant alien landing" in Jafr, according to the BBC. The town's mayor, Mohammed Mleihan, told the outlet that "Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents."
Rick Scott Administration Accused Of Not Enforcing Environment Protection Standards
.
Rick Scott Administration Accused Of Not Enforcing Environment Protection Standards
Polluters are getting away scot-free in Florida, quite literally, according to one group that alleges Gov. Rick Scott and his slimmed-down Department of Environmental Protection are not doing their jobs.
Thursday Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a statement that the DEP collected 70 percent less fines from violators in 2012 and opened half as many environmental investigations than the year before.
“These latest figures document a jaw-dropping abdication of pollution protections in Florida,” wrote PEER Director Jerry Phillips, a former DEP enforcement attorney, who conducted the analysis. “If Florida is in a race to the bottom, it has reached the basement.”
The group says Scott advised DEP staff to restrain from pursuing enforcement as well as laid off staff formerly in charge of enforcing the state's environmental standards.
PEER also released an internal DEP memo in which the deputy secretary Jeff Littlejohn advises directors to focus on compliance without enforcement.
Meanwhile the DEP says the lower enforcement numbers are merely a consequence of more Florida industries operating within safe environmental standards.
Littlejohn reasoned in a July editorial that ran in several Florida newspapers that the lower penalties collected this year are the result of not only higher compliance rates, but also catching problems before they officially exceed standards.
"DEP is not in the business of collecting money, but helping Floridians preserve and protect our resources," he writes.
Yet Phillips says that DEP is unable to back up this claim with specifics and that lower penalty revenue means the department has less financial resources to actually track whether industries are in fact adhering to set environmental standards.
And one of the 58 DEP employees laid off by Scott's cuts told the Tampa Bay Times, "I've seen the way politics has influenced that agency in the past, but never like this. It's not about compliance [with the rules]. It's about making things look like they're compliant."
2013 looks to be as just as quiet for the DEP.
As of May, the department has found only 145 incidents in which the state's environmental codes were violated, reports the Orlando Sentinel. Compare that to 2,289, the amount of "enforcement actions" in 2010, the year before Scott was in office.
Under Scott's reign, the DEP has also repealed over 300 environmental rules in order to cut down on "red tape," according to the governor's Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform as cited by the Orlando Sentinel.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Reince Priebus announces new broadcast rules for 2016 GOP debates
REINCE PRIEBUS ANNOUNCES NEW BROADCAST RULES FOR 2016 GOP DEBATES
@WinkProgress: Reince Priebus announces new broadcast rules for 2016 GOP debates http://t.co/1VRoW1gbTa
Support to impeach Obama skyrockets to 0.01% of the population!
Support to impeach Obama skyrockets to 0.01% of the population!
Should Obama be impeached? It depends on who you ask (of course) and what standard you use to decide.
For example: If you Google “impeach Obama” and look at the results, you will think that there is overwhelming support for impeaching President Obama. You will see over 1 million search results, including headlines like, “Movement to impeach Obama snowballing!”
Of course, that article notes that the support for the “Impeach Obama movement” has “mushroomed” to 40,000 members, which is a whopping 0.01% of the population. But still, when you use words like “snowball” and “mushroom” it makes it all sound very impressive.
Other articles promise to be more informative and educational, with titles like “Should Obama be Impeached?” Unfortunately, however, this doesn’t so much answer the question as simply provide another poll, which asks the completely neutral and not-biased-in-any-way question: “After 4.5 years of doing everything possible to destroy America, is it time to impeach Emperor Obama?”
That poll is a little interesting, however, because it breaks down responses by a number of demographic factors. The most interesting demographic result is that 100% of the pagans who responded to the survey said that they are “not sure” whether Obama should be impeached. That’s got to tell you something.
But when scouring the internet, the news, and the politicians for actual reasons to impeach Obama, the results come up surprisingly thin. Apart from, of course, the fact that “Emperor Obama” has spent “4.5 years doing everything possible to destroy America.”
Some of the more specific accusations include:
1) He did things like Obamacare that we think are unconstitutional
2) He appointed people to positions without asking permission first
3) He didn’t completely fix all immigration problems immediately
4) Kenyan
5) Socialist
6) Hitler
The thing is, though, that none of these so-called “reasons” matter, if you are a true conservative. What matter is how angry you are able to get people.
So as long as 0.01% of the population thinks that Obama should really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really-times-ten-thousand …. be impeached….
…well, then, mathematically that’s basically the same as though everyone wanted him to be impeached, now isn’t it?
TEApublican Hypocrites Receive Obamacare Dollars With Open Arms (Video)
TEApublican Hypocrites Receive Obamacare Dollars With Open Arms (Video)
Posted by: Bob Cull in Economic Issues, TEApublican Hypocrites Receive Obamacare Dollars With Open Arms (Vide in Action, Videos August 26, 2013
After three years of raging against the ACA/Obamacare, some Republican governors who have vowed to do nothing to aid in its institution and to resist any attempt to implement it in their states have begun to turn on their fellows and accept parts of the plan. Of course they are, for the most part, still trying to maintain their distance by simply renaming the parts they are accepting and claiming that they are their ideas and have nothing to do with Obamacare.
Chris Christie is one of the least hypocritical of them and a Republican who has reached out to work with the President in the past. In accepting the Medicaid expansion provision of the plan he said, “Accepting these federal resources will provide health insurance to tens of thousands of low-income New Jerseyans, help keep our hospitals financially healthy and actually save money for New Jersey taxpayers.” He estimates that it will save the state $227 million in the next fiscal year. He called it, “ the smart thing to do for our fiscal and public health.” He said that he arrived at this decision after considerable research and that it would extend health coverage to an estimated 300,000 currently uninsured state residents.
Rick Perry, the Texas governor, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the law saying on the campaign trail last year that it’s repeal would be at the top of his to do list should he be elected President. He has done all he can to block implementation of any part of the plan, yet now he has found an inventive way to take part without actually taking part. He has decided to implement the Community First Choice program, the part of the plan that Peggy Noonan did not like. Unlike Christie, however, he says that while he is going to accept funds to implement the program which are available only through the ACA, that it “has nothing to do with Obamacare.”
Jan Brewer of Arizona has been another adamant opponent to anything in the law has embraced the “it isn’t Obamacare” argument as well as she formed a coalition with Democrats in the state legislature to ram through her own version of the Medicaid expansion provision while claiming that it has nothing to do with Obamacare. Brewer said, “While I remain opposed to the Affordable Care Act, it has become increasingly clear to me that the status quo is not an option,” describing it as her own plan and saying, “With my Medicaid Restoration Plan, we can continue providing cost-effective care to these individuals — Arizona’s working poor.”
Then we have Rick Scott in Florida who caved to the idea of accepting Medicaid expansion when the healthcare industry in Florida began to pressure him to do it because of the positive impact it will have on their bottom line. Carlos A. Migoya, president and CEO of Jackson Health Systems said, “Anything that provides coverage for our currently uninsured residents certainly advances our community and Jackson Health System’s mission.” The governor, who said soon after taking office that he would not lift a finger to assist in the implementation of any part of the law now says, “While the federal government is committed to pay 100 percent of the cost, I cannot, in good conscience, deny Floridians the needed access to health care,”
You will never catch any of these darlings of the Tea Party admitting that, while the plan is flawed it is the right idea and worthy of being repaired rather than replaced, but they will continue to find inventive ways to accept it while insisting that they would never do so.
Watch the video, courtesy of The Young Turks:
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2012 was a huge year for CREDO. We launched the CREDO SuperPAC, playing a major role in defeating five of the worst Tea Party Republicans in Congress. In the process, we rewrote the book on superPACs, raising $2.5 million from 70,000 small donors for a volunteer-driven campaign that went toe-to-toe with big money and corporate interests—and won. We also helped win 24 key state initiative fights for marriage equality, the environment, human rights and sanity in election spending.
Besides our electoral work, we launched more than 500 advocacy campaigns in 2012, redoubling our efforts to hold the line as the strongest voice for uncompromised progressive positions. We knew from the start we wouldn’t always win. But we fought for what we believed in, rather than concede from the start in the face of Republican obstructionism and hostage-taking. We took on Democrats and Republicans alike in our fight for progressive values
Our 2012 Activism Report gives the size and scope of the change and impact that CREDO and our 3.3 million members made in the past year. We look forward to many more fights and victories in the year ahead.
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521ACTION CAMPAIGNS LAUNCHED
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Civil Rights
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Economic & Social Justice
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
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- Mayors Against Illegal Guns
- Ms. Foundation for Women
- National Domestic Workers Alliance
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Voting Rights & Civic Participation
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