Maine GOP gov. applauds ‘global warming’ for opening ice-free oil shipping routes

Maine GOP gov. applauds ‘global warming’ for opening ice-free oil shipping routes (via Raw Story )

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday encouraged people to look on the bright side of global warming. At the 64rd annual Maine Transportation Conference, the governor bucked the thinking of many Republicans and admitted that the planet was getting…

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Rush Limbaugh: Obama is ‘having an orgasm’ because the pope is ‘ripping America’

Rush Limbaugh: Obama is ‘having an orgasm’ because the pope is ‘ripping America’ (via Raw Story )

Rush Limbaugh suggested on Wednesday that President Barack Obama was “having an orgasm” after Pope Francis called unfettered capitalism the “new tyranny,” which the radio host said was the same as “ripping America.” After the president mentioned…

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Is Obama the anti-Christ? It’s irresponsible not to speculate, birther pastor says

Is Obama the anti-Christ? It’s irresponsible not to speculate, birther pastor says (via Raw Story )

A birther minister who gained Internet notoriety for his claim that the Bible foretold Barack Obama as the anti-Christ says he doesn’t deserve the mockery. Carl Gallups advanced the theory, based on Aramaic translations of biblical texts, that Jesus…

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Video mash-up shows Republicans citing the Bible to oppose climate change action

Video mash-up shows Republicans citing the Bible to oppose climate change action (via Raw Story )

Researchers have found that belief in the biblical end-times can explain some the resistance to curbing climate change. A new video released by climate activists illustrates that finding. The video, uploaded to YouTube by Climate Desk, features Sen.…

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Former KKK leader and his mother indicted in Alabama cross-burning and cover-up

Former KKK leader and his mother indicted in Alabama cross-burning and cover-up (via Raw Story )

An Alabama grand jury indicted a former Grand Cyclops in the racist vigilante group the Ku Klux Klan in the town of Ozark on Wednesday. The man was charged with burning a cross at the entrance to an African-American neighborhood. According to the U.…

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Rafael Cruz: God told me to wake up the pastors so they will warn the people

Rafael Cruz: God told me to wake up the pastors so they will warn the people (via Raw Story )

The father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) says that pastors in the United States who refuse to stand up for Christian values are to blame for the country’s misfortunes. “Political correctness is killing us,” Rafael Cruz said at an event in Texas hosted…

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Palin: Half-Term Half-Wit God ‘blessed’ with me a platform on Fox News to defend myself

Palin: God ‘blessed’ with me a platform on Fox News to defend myself (via Raw Story )

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday defended colleague Sarah Palin said that he found comparisons between federal debt to human slavery to be “fairly unobjectionable.” Earlier this month, MSNBC host Martin Bashir had blasted Palin after a speech…

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Conservatives flip out after Obama reads original Gettysburg Address without ‘under God’ (via Raw Story )

Conservative websites on Tuesday expressed outraged after President Barack Obama read an original version of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which did not include the words “under God.” In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg…

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Conservatives flip out after Obama reads original Gettysburg Address without ‘under God’

By David Edwards

Conservative websites on Tuesday expressed outraged after President Barack Obama read an original version of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which did not include the words “under God.”

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, filmmaker Ken Burns asked dozens of public figures to read the speech.

According to Media Matters, Burns specifically asked the president to read from the “Nicolay Version,” which was written before the phrase “under God” was added:

“It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The phrase, however, was changed slightly by the time the speech was delivered by Lincoln: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

By Tuesday morning, the news had become one of the top stories on conservative websites like the Drudge Report, The Daily Caller, the National Review Online and WMAL. The Daily Caller did eventually correct their report to note that Burns had requested the “Nicolay Version” of the speech.

For weeks, conservatives have both been attacking the president for not attending a commemoration ceremony at Gettysburg and saying that he shouldn’t attend at all.

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday that Lincoln had set out to unify the country and Obama should not attend the commemoration because he was dividing the country.

“The thing that Lincoln said at the Gettysburg Address is that they were gathered there for what he called unfinished business, and the unfinished business was the Civil War, the liberation of the slaves,” Henninger explained. “And I remarked that the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 was in many ways completing the circle of Lincoln’s unfinished business. But at the same time that Gettysburg Address was about unifying the country, the Civil War he had fought to bring the country together.”

“It seemed to me if Obama came under those circumstances and spoke about unifying the country, it would not sit well with half the country, who so disagrees with him,” he added.

But Henninger also seemed unsatisfied with Obama’s decision not to speak because he said it was “unconceivable that the president would not have taken the opportunity to talk about a president he so admired on this special day.”

Watch this video from Fox News, broadcast Nov. 19, 2013.

Georgia governor gets paid through secret PAC to obstruct Obamacare

By David Ferguson
Tuesday, September 3, 2013 10:01 EST

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According to investigative reporter Jim Walls of Atlanta Unfiltered, the PAC hasn’t filed taxes or the required financial disclosures in two years, and the information it did file for 2011 was incorrect.
Contributors to Real PAC include Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross, United Health care and other interests that want to keep health insurance premiums and other costs as high as possible. Bryan Long of activist group Better Georgia told Raw Story that the list of donors shows who Gov. Deal really works for.
“He goes out and he does their bidding,” Long said, “He’s working for them instead of working for the 650,000 Georgians who don’t have insurance at all or access to the Medicaid expansion.”
“What’s remarkable about this isn’t that there’s money in politics,” he continued. “We all know there’s money in politics. He knew that this was so wrong that he didn’t want to tell anyone. He tried to keep it a secret for two years.”
Deal’s office made financial records publicly available on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, hoping, Long said, that no one would pay attention. The AP reported Friday that among its outgoing costs, the PAC “paid $30,000 to Southern Magnolia Capital, a fundraising firm founded by Deal’s daughter-in-law, Denise Deal. It also paid Ken Cronan, who co-owned a Gainesville salvage yard with Deal, more than $10,000 in December for pilot and plane expenses.”
All of the companies that pay into the PAC are doing business with the state of Georgia on some level. The PAC’s treasurer, former state ethics chairman Rick Thompson, protested that the PAC money is not just for Deal’s re-election, but for “Republican causes.”
Last week, state insurance commissioner Ralph Hudgens was caught on tape boasting to a crowd of supporters that his office is deliberately obstructing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. As Floyd County Republicans called out “Amen!” and applauded, Hudgens said that his office is interfering with the certification of the ACA’s insurance policy “navigators,” individuals hired to help consumers choose policies on the open market.
“Let me tell you what we’re doing (about Obamacare),” he said. “Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”

David Ferguson

David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.