Trump's 60 Minutes interview exempts Pence, not Hillary, from backing Iraq war!

I am so tired of lazy reporting. Never once has the media mentioned the unrelenting negative smear campaign Hillary Clinton has had to endure since the early 1990's, when she tried to put together health care reform. Gee, I wonder why her negative numbers are so high today, anyone venture a guess?  

And Democrats have bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as usual.

Now thanks to the 60 Minutes interview with Trump and VP pick Mike Pence, I now have a few other complaints to get to, like the built in Republican double standards no one seems to care about. 

First, Republicans have never admitted out loud that going into Iraq was a historical disaster. No criticism of Bush, no anger directed at Cheney or Rumsfeld for lying this nation into that war. In fact, ISIS grew out of one of those lies (check out Frontline). But now that Trump is saying it was "badly handled" and a mistake, every Republican voter is quietly admitting it too. 

Of course vocal Democratic opponents, politicians and voters alike, were cowards and weak on national security at the time. They were mocked by eye rolling conservatives who simply wrote it off as just more "Bush bashing" rhetoric. 

But that's all forgotten now. Like Trump, they were always against the Iraq war:  

Donald Trump: Yeah, you went to Iraq, but that was handled so badly. And that was a war-- by the way, that was a war that we shouldn't have entered because Iraq did not knock down--excuse me

Lesley Stahl: Your running mate--voted for it.

Donald Trump: I don't care.

"I don't care?"

What follows is another frustration; a persons past only counts against them if they're a Democrat. Obama's college papers, his pastor, his community organizing...etc., horrific stuff? State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley's comments bashing "totally stupid or entirely evil" Democratic voters, the gay community, abortion is murder, feminism...etc., that's all too far in the past to count against her ability to be impartial today. 

But Hillary's support of the Iraq war? 

Lesley Stahl: What do you mean you don't care that he voted for?

Donald Trump: It's a long time ago. And he voted that way and they were also misled. A lot of information was given to people.

Lesley Stahl: But you've harped on this.

Donald Trump: But I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but you've used that vote of Hillary's that was the same as Governor Pence as the example of her bad judgment.

Donald Trump: Many people have, and frankly, I'm one of the few that was right on Iraq.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but what about he--

Donald Trump: He's entitled to make a mistake every once in a while.

Lesley Stahl: But she's not? OK, come on--

Donald Trump: But she's not--

Lesley Stahl: She's not?

Donald Trump: No. She's not.

Lesley Stahl: Got it.

Just this morning, the author of Trump's "Art of the Deal" Tony Schwartz was so troubled by the thought of a Trump presidency that he made these amazing comments:



And this racist presidential wannabe had this to say about Obama's body language of all things, because Trump couldn't find anything in to criticize in his speech about the Baton Rouge shooting:

“I watched the president. Sometimes the words are OK. But you just look at the body language — there’s something going on. There’s something going on. There’s just bad feeling. It’s probably something that we really don’t know and maybe we can’t feel it unless we’re black.”

Justice Blocking Republicans hoping to appoint Right Winger to Court, whine Ginsburg too Partisan in recent comments - Part 2

I thought this detailed look at the right wing hypocrisy and intended politicization of our nations courts touched on all the right points when it came to the phony outrage over Justice Ginsburg's Trump comments. This piggybacks off my first piece.  Huffington Post:

While Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg apologized for her remarks on Donald Trump last week, politicians and the media who did backflips to criticize her are rewriting history. Strong, opinionated women, like “The Notorious RBG,” are always criticized. Her comments deserve a deeper analysis beyond subjective punditry or sanctimonious Tweets. 

It is worth watching Lawrence O’Donnell’s piece taking the issue out of the headlines and putting it in context. There has been clear precedent for Supreme Court involvement in elections prior to Justice Ginsburg’s opining.

The first justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, ran for Governor of New York twice during his service. Three other Supreme Court justices ran for presidential nominations while serving and continued to serve after they lost their campaigns. 

As O’Donnell points out, a surprisingly erroneous Washington Post piece said, “Supreme Court experts I’ve spoken to were unaware of any justices getting so directly and vocally involved — or involved at all, really — in a presidential campaign.”

In 2000, Justice Antonin Scalia was the justice who stopped the recount in Florida with an unprecedented injunction favoring George Bush. He then was one of the five Republicans on the Court who overruled the Florida Supreme Court and installed George Bush in the White House. 

The vast majority of the 5-4 decisions since the Justice Rehnquist era, when Republicans had the Court majority, have not deviated from GOP orthodoxy and favoritism. For instance, the Citizens United decision overwhelmingly results in more financial support on behalf of Republican candidates.

In 2004, it was public knowledge that Justice Scalia had a friendly and personal relationship with Dick Cheney, and yet would not recuse himself on a case involving the then-vice president. “In a 21-page memorandum filled with scorn and with lessons in the ways of Washington, Justice Scalia wrote that if people assumed a duck hunting trip would be enough to swing his vote, ‘the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined,’”(New York Times).

The media states again and again that the Supreme Court stays out of politics, but actions speak louder than words. Justice Samuel Alito has not attended a State of the Union since President Obama critiqued the Citizens United decision in 2010.

Gary Legum writing for Salon says, "For us to continue pretending that the third co-equal branch of our government can somehow remain immune to the highly polarized atmosphere of the other two is to infantilize the American public.

If we are comfortable enough labeling our Supreme Court justices as either “liberal” or “conservative”... If we are so comfortable with assuming that an established and accomplished judge such as Merrick Garland, for instance, with a long resume of impartiality on the bench is nothing more than a political football to be tossed around by Republicans... If we are truly happy to accept these labels and partisan plays with the Supreme Court, is it actually surprising or so wrong that a distinguished, 23-year-serving justice should hold a personal opinion? 

The actions of Justice Scalia are lauded and Justice Ginsburg is immediately criticized. There is one big difference — Ginsburg is a woman.

Republicans "smaller government" lie exposed!

Trump’s VP pick Mike Pence once wrote in defense of cigarettes, “A government big enough to go after smokers, is big enough to go after you.”

Scary stuff that plays to the paranoia of an overreaching government we all know can’t be trusted.

Of course it’s an odd way to make your case, bashing government for saving people’s lives, and then defending cancer causing cigarettes and second hand smoke. But Pence did just that.

Republicans have a convoluted way of defining “big government.”

The GOP is really talking about big liberal government. Government doesn’t get smaller under Republicans. If anything it gets a lot bigger, adding piles of rules and regulations meant to reverse laws designed to protect Americans.

Laws protecting drinking water are reversed with stacks of new regulations that only protect polluters and high capacity wells. The same is true of health care and tort reform, where insurer profits take precedent over public health and medical errors aren’t reduced but instead are shielded from punishment.

This perfect example shines a light on Paul Ryan's recent take on "small government." Salon:

The Supreme Court released its 5-3 decision blocking unfair and unconstitutional abortion regulations in Texas: “The plurality added that ‘[u]nnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on that right.’”

One might ask, “Unnecessary regulations? Where have I heard that before?” If one scrolls up just few tweets on Ryan’s Twitter page, the answer appears: “We need to take a smart approach that cuts down on needless regulations while making the rules we do need more efficient and effective … That’s from Ryan’s economic portion of “A Better Way,” the recently released policy platform.

The speaker never intended women to have safer abortions … He did not want there to be abortions at all … the GOP-led Texas legislature imposed regulations so severe on clinics that many were forced to close.

Imagine even briefly that these regulations were on businesses that, say, sold crutches and wheelchairs. Imagine that they forced many of those businesses to close. It isn’t difficult to imagine how different the post-decision tweet would have been then.

They claim in one breath to be opposed to government intervention and regulation and then, in the next, decry the removal of regulations. This isn’t principled governing, and it is a glaring inconsistency that must be addressed.

But not so small government Republicans aren’t shy about where government needs to be much, much bigger; national security.

While Americans will have limited access to their small government at home, Republicans will expand an American global government throughout the world with preemptive invasions and a military presence everywhere. Republicans haven’t kept this part of their plan a secret either, they want to expand the military budget and take out potential global threats on a whim.

Reince dreams up word salad twist on Trumps Muslim Ban.

Wisconsin's own embarrassing RNC Chair Reince Priebus must have spent hours constructing just the right wording that obscures Trump's outright ban of Muslims coming into the U.S..

Reince: "A temporary ban on countries that harbor and train terrorists, until we get a better vetting system...that's really where 75% of the people are at...it is not a religious test...that's what I believe in, and that's what 80% of the American people believe in..."

...from Muslim countries? What this odd freak of nature came up with is classic Reince. Notice how Reince up the percentage of Americans who supposedly "agree" with the ban. Heck, I think I was just included. From the theater of the absurd...take it away Jake Tapper:

Trump recently indicated a change––only Muslims from terror states––but his team indicated there was never any pivot. Jake Tapper challenged him as that being just his “interpretation.”

Reince's anecdotal response....

"It's what I've seen him say in person, at events..."  

Here are a few tweets:

Wisconsin leading Authoritarian Anti-American Movement, with "Center for Competitive Federalism"

Republicans hate America!!! You know the routine: Blah, blah, blah, nothing is working, and everything is getting worse. Yet they always get away with ripping the nation a new one. Remember this phony Republican moment of outrage:

But Trump:

Because America isn't great, right? With something so intentional, and a campaign slogan too boot, you'd think he would be roundly criticized...but that's the magic of Trump.
                                                                                                                                                               

Next Step - Statist "Center for Competitive Federalism:" Secession is out, so what comes close? Something called "Competitive Federalism," another whiny tantrum from arrogant and entitled freeloading conservatives too cheap to pay forward, like previous generations did building roads, schools and infrastructure.

As "small government" regulations pile up from overzealous Republican legislators hoping to legally block Wisconsinites from getting in the way of business, supply side blunders are pushing more people into many of our social safety nets, the same programs targeted for elimination. Scott Walker calls it a "hand up" and not a hand out.

With nasally arrogance, founder of CCF Rick Esenberg serves up word salad nonanswers he thinks people will never understand or care to dissect. Wrong.

On WPR's Central Time, Esenberg's ego spilled out for everyone to hear, suggesting life long Wisconsinites should just "vote with their feet" and leave the dairy state if we didn't like the policies. Seriously?

Esenberg: "There would be certain things the states could not do. But, in that the states themselves would be disciplined not only by their own Constitutions, but by the ability of the persons who live within them, to vote with their feet, and go someplace else if they didn't like the policies their particular state was adopting." 

Esenberg is another "why can't Wisconsin be like Texas" Republicans. Since I grew up in the state, I never felt it needed saving or a face lift. Not Esenberg:

Wisconsin should look to Texas … However, as a purple state, Wisconsin's path towards a more independent and robust statehood might require different strategies … like creating a commission on competitiveness to identify regulatory reform, reviewing all federal funding requests and prohibiting state regulatory agencies from working with federal regulators if certain programs are deemed coercive.

Additionally, expanding Walker’s Blueprint for Prosperity initiative, eliminating the "over-criminalization of commercial activity."

Esenberg piles on the bullshit saying even Democrats will jump on board:  

The report concluded that the Midwest is becoming the birthplace of a new conservatism that can appeal to people of all political persuasions, including Democrats, by eliminating the one-size-fits-all solutions imposed by the federal government.  "(A system) in which the states would function as laboratories of democracy, which they would be able to engage in trial and error with respect to policy."

What Mike Pence brings to America...

Let's take a look at what Gov. Mike Pence brings to the Trump ticket:

Was Pence Trump's pick after-all? 

Or this from Reason.com, where radical conservatives like Trump and Pence won't rein in constitutional chaos:

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: "This is another example of let's not preserve and protect and defend the Constitution, let's find ways around it to achieve our ends." 

The Trump/Pence oh-no Logo.

The Trump/Pence campaign logo hit the fan with some amazing commentary from Twitter today.

If it looks familiar...seriously, has the monolithic Republican Party done anything original...ever?

After Scott Walker pummeled his Democratic gubernatorial challenger for supposed plagiarism, he ironically and blatantly committed plagiarism himself lifting America's Best's logo:

Marching in lockstep from one plagiarized idea to another, the Borg-like Republican "idea" machine put this Walker ripoff out, desecrating the flag all over again:

Getting back to the Twitter reaction, it was pretty obvious what the usually bumbling knuckleheads at Trump headquarters did to inadvertently stay in the spotlight:

Someone got artistically creative:

Is the Trump campaign still spending too much time scouring the white supremacist sites?

Ryan's Desperate Support of Trump is just the beginning.

So where do I start? Paul Ryan has finally been exposed at the "wonky" poser many of us have been writing about for years. His annual repackaged "roads to prosperity" list is just the same old failed supply side mumbo-jumbo deep red states like Louisianna, Kansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Indiana have been convulsing from for the last few years.

Exposed!

Add Wisconsin to that list. Following that same formula, Scott Walker's Wisconsin avoided the other states huge deficits by doing what they couldn't do; stop funding state parks; slash funding for their state university system; stop construction and road maintenance while letting 5 foot high overgrowth consume our medians...you get the idea.

Let's start with Paul Ryan's rationalization for supporting his party's racist, bigoted authoritarian candidate for president. The following concerned student has all the values and moral judgement Ryan threw out door long ago. He simply can't understand how Ryan could support a guy like this...uh, tax cuts and special interest money kid. Liberal leaning naive students like this maybe shouldn't be allowed to vote yet:

“I cannot and will not support Trump,” one audience member at Tuesday’s CNN Town Hall event said. “It concerns me when the Republican leadership is supporting somebody who’s blatantly racist and has said Islamophobic statements, want to shut down our borders. How can you morally justify your support for this kind of candidate, somebody who could be very destructive?”

Ryan first scolded the young man, a Republican student named Zachary Marcone.

“You’re going to help elect Hillary Clinton,” he said.

Ryan's answer clear; he'll do anything to get a few tax cuts and kill Obamacare.

Ryan also states unequivocally justices who aren't like Scalia won't be faithful to the Constitution, backing his party's partisan block of Obama's not so conservative justice nominee. I think Dumb Ron Johnson said it best:

“America needs Supreme Court justices who share Justice Scalia’s commitment to applying the Constitution as written and to the freedom it secures.”

Hypocritically, Ryan sees no irony in blocking Obama's pick so a possible Republican president would nominate an activist conservative "impartial" justice. That would shore up for decades a Republican dominated the court.



But even conservatives are tired of this condescending jerk. Lou Dobbs doesn't hold back in the following commentary, hitting all of Ryan's the low points. He even gives a little airtime to Ryan's opponent, Paul Nehlen, backed by Tea Party Forward:



Remember, these are his fellow conservatives taking politically damaging shots at wonder boy. Like the fact Ryan keeps playing the race card...yea:



Cognitive Dissidence had a nice feature article on Ryan as well. The Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice wrote about ousting Ryan too.

Kansas Republicans protect vote by rejecting nearly 50,000 voters for state electoral offices.

Republicans can try desperately to make their case they're only trying to protect the integrity of elections and that "one fraudulent vote is one too many," but that all flies out the window with this startling action and admission that they are the party of suppression, no matter how you deny it.

Not real American like is it, in a representative democracy?

County election officials will count their votes for president, U.S. Senate and Congress but not their votes in state and local races or local ballot questions.

What could be wrong with that? That's not all, Kansas Republicans can pretty much game the political system in any way they want with this rather broad law:

Kansas law allows the regulations board to approve a temporary rule without a formal public hearing if an agency sees quick action as necessary to preserve “the public peace, health, safety or welfare.”

This is what happens when the Constitution leaves our right to vote up to the states.

About 17,000 people were in that category as of last week, but as many as 50,000 prospective voters could be affected in the November election.

No Nonsense, Dystopian GOP War against everyone else coming...

In how many ways can "constitutional conservative" Republicans redefine the First Amendment, and turn it inside-out to fit their twisted down-the-rabbit-hole agenda? We see soon.

The Republican Party platform is taking shape, just in time for their glorious convention featuring speakers who don't like or support their "not a Republican" candidate. This is way too surreal to believe:

Justice Blocking Republicans hoping to appoint Right Winger to Court, whine Ginsburg too Partisan in recent comments.

The moment Republicans promised, as a party, to nominate a conservative justice to the Supreme Court was the day they gave up the right to complain about liberal judges and any suggested expectation of impartiality.

Republicans individually have demanded activist judges and justices before, even allowing judge shopping here in Wisconsin, but this latest example of faux outrage takes the cake.

The Republican point of no return came when they blocked Obama's nominee to replace Justice Scalia, hoping a Republican president would insert an activist believer in "originalism," a wildly conservative concept pushed by all the diehard Birch Society loyalists now comfortably at home in the Federalist Society.

So cry me a river guys....

Gulp, Ginsburg truthfulness and sense of humor is a troubling issue to Republicans who have troubling issues with Trump as their nominee:

The Supreme Court justice told the AP she couldn't imagine what the country would be like under Trump and joked to the New York Times about moving to New Zealand ... could end up forcing her to recuse herself from future cases involving a President Trump—or election cases like a potential Clinton vs. Trump recount.

Conservative justices and judges have already argued that comments, personal appearances at groups appearing before them and monied special interests backing elections and appointments is no reason for recusal...so what's their beef?  

As for Trump's reaction? Wouldn't it be nice if she quit?

"It only energizes my base even more. And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible.”

Here are more links provided by a comment to a NY Times editorial bashing Ginsburg:

Where was their outrage over the MANY, MANY partisan events and partisan tropes attended by and headlined by conservative justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito?  
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/26/14065... 
 http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/20/13986... 
 http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/20/scotus.conf...  
All the raging of the right wing noise machine don't set aside the FACT that the court is as politically divided as the rest of the country and that the downfall BEGAN with the likes of Scalia and Thomas. 
 http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/co...  

Hillary's emails not so Controversial?

A real head scratcher. With all the former Secretaries of State, politicians and reporters, you’d think someone would have brought up the point made below by “Jay Hatheway is a professor of history and chairs the Department of History at Edgewood College in Madison. He previously served in the military as a Special Forces top secret control officer in Europe.”

Hatheway’s comment isn’t exactly a defense of Hillary Clinton’s use of emails, but explains that it may not be as careless, or as flippant about secret or confidential government information as many have been led to believe. She could classify or declassify at will. The thing is, he brings up some very good points:

The partisan attacks against Hillary Clinton and her alleged misuse of classified documents is fundamentally flawed.

For the most part, journalists and politicians have avoided any discussion about the actual process of classification: Documents do not simply appear as classified on a server; someone must be the classifier. In the case at hand, Secretary Clinton was an original classification authority.

She was given this authority by Executive Order 13526, signed into law Dec. 29, 2009, by President Barack Obama. It allowed the secretary a free hand to classify or declassify at will as long as classification guidelines were followed. All Cabinet members have this authority.

What is missing in the current discussion is precisely an acknowledgement of this authority. While one may disagree with what is or is not classified, many of Clinton’s critics assume documents are self-classified. Who exactly do the critics believe assigned a classification level in the first place?Absent a discussion about this process, it is obvious that the attacks on Clinton have no real merit. That the FBI could judge certain email chains classified is obfuscation. How can anyone second guess an original classification authority or designate except to argue that there is a disagreement over what ought to be classified?

But that is the point: the classification level was not the FBI’s to determine. It was exclusively the business of the secretary of state in virtually all of her electronic communications.

In a similar vein, how can members of the House claim to know what the proper classification level was or wasn’t. They couldn’t know unless they were inside of Clinton’s head. Should the secretary determine that her communications were in fact not to be classified, then they are not, all objections aside.

The intent of designating a person as an original classification authority is to give that

person the specific ability to classify as she or he sees fit. The issue then boils down to whether or not something should be classified or not classified in the first place, and the guidelines give original authorities wide latitude depending on the subject matter in question.

As if to confound the issue, critics also challenge the secretary on her use of a private server, something which even our current Wisconsin governor seems to have done.

In short, this endless saga seems to be a misdirection, and since most Americans do not know about the classification process, they can be manipulated when they hear “top secret.” The entire affair is political theater at its worst, and the real losers are the American people.

Wanggaard prays for God's wisdom in "time of increased tension between police and "certain communities." You know who we're talking about...

Republicans like State Sen. Van Wanggaard know who to blame, and it sure ain't racists....

All this from the guy who wants to keep "all lives safe" by repealing the 48 hour cooling off period for gun purchases. Numskull idiots like this ignore the cause and effect of purely ideologically driven laws that run counter to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   

So is it really "certain communities?"  

Walker Mind-blower: Low unemployment, high participation rate now hurting businesses - not enough workers!!!

Wisconsin is a wonderful four season recreational wonderland for tourists. 

But tourism is now on the back-bench, playing third string to factory farms and mining. More on that below, but first…

...Walker's efforts to get government out of the way of business has made Wisconsin too successful!!!

That’s right, despite being in the middle of the pack on job creation, to being last when it comes to business startups, Walker is faced with a unique problem. This will blow your mind…:

Figures, a guy from Minn.

Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said … other factors contribute to (job) vacancies (at the DNR).

“State agencies actively seek to fill needed positions. Wisconsin’s low unemployment rate and high labor force participation are not only making it difficult to hire for the state, but many employers as well.”

No wonder Walker still hasn’t fulfilled his failed campaign promise of creating 250,000 jobs…a low ball number he said was just a starting point.

So the message to business: Stay away from Wisconsin, we don’t have the labor force? Big and bold admission.

Back to the original story, where Walker is dismantling another of Wisconsin’s biggest money makers (besides the UW); tourism. Eliminating taxpayer support of our state parks was outrageous enough, but..:

From 2005 to 2011, the water program dedicated most of its staff time inspections and enforcement, auditors said. After Walker took office, more time was spent on writing permits that spell out legal limits on discharges.

State job vacancies (at the DNR) have been linked to weak regulation of pollution … began climbing again last year … after Gov. Scott Walker took office … the DNR had held off on filling enough positions for the rate to rise to 14.2 percent, surpassing the average for the 14-year period.

It started with a huge wave of retirements that swept through state government after the 2010 election and into 2011 as elected officials eliminated most public sector union rights. The 246 retirements at the DNR in 2011 left the department a vacancy rate exceeding 20 percent.

Walker had proposed reducing the DNR’s authorized workforce of 2,647 full-time equivalent positions by 67. The Legislature increased the cut to 92 positions. The agency wrote notices of violation to municipal and industrial polluters in only 33 of the 558 cases. 

Anti-Trump Wisconsin Republicans Hatch Plot?

While Wisconsin may be considered a purple state, it's managed like it has only one legitimate ruling authority. The rise of the right wing authoritarian movement in Wisconsin has hatched a rogues gallery of "pricibled" leaders intent on cleansing the country of any and all of its socialist inclinations.

Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and the ever reliable loonie tunes RNC chair Reince Priebus, after successfully pillaging the state, may now be turning their attention to the presidential election:

Inside the plot to ‘save’ the GOP from Trump — with Paul Ryan’s help if a group of renegade delegates from the speaker’s home state of Wisconsin gets its way, Ryan’s duties won’t stop there.

He will also, they hope, allow his fellow Wisconsinites to block Trump from winning the nomination.

Can these Cheeseheads really overthrow Trump at the convention? And will Ryan, who officially supports the presumptive nominee, actually wade into a civil war on the convention floor and deliver the Donald’s deathblow?

“I personally believe there are enough delegates who will abstain to keep Trump from getting the nomination on the first ballot,” Dane Waters, an official with Delegates Unbound, tells Yahoo News. “And I think that will open up a lot of options for the delegates.” 

Will Delegates Unbound be able to pull any of this off? They are, at the very least, a serious group. Their leader is Eric O’Keefe, a respected political activist in Wisconsin who worked aggressively to bolster Gov. Scott Walker during the 2012 recall campaign, and they are “rumored to be better organized than the more publicized efforts focused on the Rules Committee.”

Washington Times Headline Lied, reporter Lied, saying Matt Damon called for Gun "Ban and Confiscation."

Right wing media is doing everything it can to not just continue the gun carnage, but make it worse.

I just ran across this amazing example of media lying that is clearly meant to incite violence from frightened gun owners. Just so you know, Australia did not "confiscate" or "ban" guns, a ridiculous fiction. They have registration, a need to own provision, etc.:

 ‘Jason Bourne’ star Matt Damon calls for U.S. to ban guns ‘in one fell swoop’ By Douglas Ernst -The Washington Times - Tuesday, July 5, 2016: Hollywood actor Matt Damon used a press conference in Australia over the Fourth of July weekend to discuss his desire for a massive confiscation of U.S. guns.

Matt Damon did not discuss confiscation either, see for yourself:

“You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. We just can’t.

Obviously mass shootings aren’t going to do it. There have been so many of them at this point. Sandy Hook, when those children were murdered, if that didn’t do it, you know, I just don’t know. Maybe we just need to evolve further before we can have that conversation, I don’t know.”

And this is the kind of message gun happy protectors of the 2nd Amendment drool over. And none of it is true. But as we all know, Black Lives Matter is really to blame.

The issue has always been "regulation," not confiscation. The fact that slightly fewer people are killed every year doesn't make the 10,000 plus that die, okay. But if that's your attitude, than maybe you should be on the list Republicans want to make targeting the mentally ill, because you fit the profile. Note: The mentally ill are being unfairly targeted, since their percentage of gun crimes is fractionally small. They're a scapegoat for NRA fire breathing conservatives. Big surprise.   

Walker - Twitter Troll.

Another real sign of maturity from career politician Scott Walker, throwing a little "quit early" tantrum in the twitter-sphere:

Ah, I've got one: "No, Walker's secret illegal email system issues aren't resolved"

When you see more and more of these surreal headlines....

...remember Walker's own remarkable words:

Paul Ryan to someday repeal Nations Legal System? It's not meeting up to Republicans Expected Standards!!!

Because we've seen it so many times before, I'm surprised not much is being made of the Republican ploy to first politicize, then delegitimize our legal system. Law decided in the court of public opinion will someday replace big bad government agencies like the FBI. Everything must strictly conform to the party's predetermined outcome, like perp walking Hillary Clinton.

Paul Ryan said the FBI's decision on Clinton's emails "defies explanation:"

So, Ryan is calling into question the FBI's conclusion that didn't meet the Republican authority's call to charge Hillary Clinton, just before the presidential election. Well that's inconvenient. It just proves government is bad, see...

"But based upon the director's own statement, it appears damage is being done to the rule of law," Ryan said. He added that declining to prosecute Clinton for her handling of classified information "will set a terrible precedent."

I'm pretty sure our legal system would be quite different under our right wing authoritarian Republicans, as they cleanse the nations legal system of interpretations that don't meet party objectives.

You might remember when Scott Walker got a pass from John Doe prosecutors who said the exact same thing about Walker, who appeared to have known about the illegal and secret wireless router in his office. There wasn't enough strong evidence to show it was intentional to get a conviction...like Clinton. That didn't stop Walker from doing away with John Doe's completely when it comes to politicians.

One thing leads to the next and next and next....

Here's FBI director James Comey, Republican, defending himself and his bad government agency from political buffoons like Ryan and Walker:

"We did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information...there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

This kind of explains it all:

Dumb Ron Johnson: "freedom and limited government” = letting businesses deny insurance to employees with Cancer!!!

I thought Republicans were cruel when 1. they tried to maximize insurance company profits off of sick people by dumping them into the free market; 2. put susceptible seniors at the mercy of insurer tricks and scams; and 3. blocked all kinds of health care treatments based on someone else's "conscience," not to mention repealing ObamaCare.

They were bound to step over that line someday, but who would they get to take that leap?

Enter Dumb Ron Johnson. He values business over "we the people," the very voters he's supposed to represent, protect, and be the advocate for.

In making his argument, Johnson quickly eliminated the more liberal sounding "life" and "pursuit of happiness" points that would negate any Declaration of Independence promise:

SCOTT KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.

JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.

Just the idea that a person would be allowed to die just to save a business money and promote the tea party cartoon version of "freedom and limited government" is so...grotesque:



Here's one trolls reaction to my "incoherent" common sense humane point. He not surprisingly supports employers refusing health care coverage for anyone with a preexisting condition. Of course, he will never need health care...another ER freeloader.

I wonder too, what right is Johnson talking about, I didn't see it there in the Constitution. A better example: When someones religious belief interferes with my own rights and freedoms...oh, that different?

Trump backer Ryan can't back away fast enough...

Continuing our weekly feature, Reason's Paul Ryan Backs Trump, we have this newly discovered gem in the JS:

In no uncertain terms, Ryan's only complaint about Trump is that he's really a bad racist guy with a love for tax cuts. Other than that....

"Anti-Semitic images, they've got no place in a presidential campaign. Candidates should know that," Ryan said. "I really believe he's got to clean up the way his new media works," Ryan responded. "One of the few times I spoke out against him during the primary, very forcefully, was in this area -- when he failed to disavow white supremacists."

Ryan called out Trump earlier this year when he initially declined to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, one of many prominent white supremacists backing Trump.

Ryan also panned Trump's plan to block all Muslims from entering the U.S., saying it's “not what this party stands for and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Many other voters are getting to know the real Paul Ryan too, discovering just what makes him the party's wonder kid: