Resident Demagogue must act alone

Always willing to create/exploit a manufactured crisis.

Obama again insists he must act alone to counter the balance of powers. Again, he makes out like he is perfectly reasonable, and that the "Republicans" are "obstructionist" failing to acknowledge that this is how our Republic is supposed to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL8QyqsZXIk

“I’m going to have to act alone,” Obama said, because the government is running out of money to deal with it.

Continuing to play the victim card, when the race card won't do, the demagoguery of the Obama administration continues. The truth of the matter somehow escapes most Americans, it's NOT the House Republicans who kill everything, it's Harry Reid's US Senate, and has been the case almost from day one of Obama's first term.

As reported by The Hill

By J. Taylor Rushing - 02/23/10 11:00 AM EST
Exasperated House Democratic leaders have compiled a list showing that they have passed 290 bills that have stalled in the Senate. 

The list is the latest sign that Democrats in the lower chamber are frustrated with their Senate counterparts. 

An aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the list is put together during each Congress, but that this year’s number is likely the largest ever. However, he said Pelosi blames GOP senators, not Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). 

“The Speaker believes that the filibuster has its place, but clearly Senate Republicans are taking what was once a rare procedural move and abusing it to the detriment of progress for America’s working families,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill. 

But some House Democrats and their aides have shown no reticence in blaming Senate Democrats, who enjoyed a supermajority until Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was sworn in earlier this month. 

In January, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) suggested the Senate was out of touch with Americans, and did not differentiate between the two parties. 

“[Senators] tend to see themselves as a House of Lords and they don’t seem to understand that those of us that go out there every two years stay in touch with the American people,” Clyburn said in an interview with Fox News Radio. “We tend to respond to them a little better.”

And again by The Hill

By Jasmine Sachar - 03/08/14 04:45 PM EST
House Democrats are urging their Senate counterparts to move their bills in the upper chamber this year. 

Out of the 195 House-passed bills that are now stalled in the Senate, 31 were written by Democrats, and many have been awaiting Senate approval for close to a year.
Most of these Democratic bills are non-controversial. But House Democrats are stressing the importance of passing them. 

GOP House leaders and Senate Democrats have engaged in a back-and-forth blame game on the gridlock in Washington. 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has set up a website showcasing all bills “stuck in the Senate." President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), meanwhile, have criticized the House for not acting on immigration reform, which passed the Senate last year. 

But the fact that House Democratic bills are sitting in the Senate gives GOP leaders political ammunition. 

“Democratic bills, Republican bills, bipartisan bills — the House has moved scores of legislation to help hard-working families and build an America that works,” Cantor Deputy Chief of Staff Doug Heye said. “Harry Reid's do-nothing Senate must not have gotten the memo that President Obama declared 2014 a year of action.” 

Reid's office did not respond to requests for comment. 

Only half of the stalled Democratic bills have a companion measure in the Senate. All but one are being sponsored by Democratic senators. The exception is Rep. George Miller’s (D-Calif.) Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predator’s Act, which has a companion bill crafted by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). 

Three of the stalled Democratic bills deal with veterans and the military.

And then there is Pete Kasperowicz at The Blaze

Guess How Many Bills the Senate Has Actually Voted on This Year
An analysis of votes held this year shows the Senate is doing very little legislative work, and on average is holding a major vote on a bill every nine days. 

It also shows that Senate Democratic leaders don’t get anywhere on legislation when they choose to ignore their Republican colleagues, something they do often by insisting that no amendments can be considered. 

Aside from the several resolutions and less-critical bills that the Senate passes by unanimous consent at the end of the day, the Senate has held roll call votes to advance or pass legislation just 21 times in 27 weeks — less than one a week. And a full one-third of those votes have failed amid GOP complaints that they have no input into the process. 

Of the 14 votes that succeeded, most were on major “must pass” bills on issues that required House-Senate coordination — like the budget and spending deals and the so-called Medicare “doc fix” — or on issues that generated easy bipartisan cooperation, like eliminating a cut to cost-of-living adjustments for U.S. soldiers. 

Most of those 14 bills originated in the House, or at least were the product of significant House-Senate cooperation. 

The Senate has managed to pass just a handful of bills under its own power. In March, senators managed to pass two Senate-origin bills on child care and sexual assault in the military, but those were non-controversial and the House has not acted on them yet. 

It also passed a bill in June to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs that represents compromise between Senate Republicans and Democrats. But even this bill is now the subject of House-Senate negotiations that will likely see the House insist on changes. 

Aside from those 14 bills, the Senate has adopted a seemingly backward strategy of seeking less input from Republicans the more controversial the issues get. The seven other votes were on bills that have so far failed, in large part because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has told Republicans he will not allow any amendment votes.

It should be obvious what is truly going on, but the lunatic parade of steady obstructionism and partisanship is 100% in the court of Obama and his feckless administration of demagoguery through his allies in both bodies of the US Congress, a press all too willing to report the latest lie in the form of the "obstructionist Republicans". Again his answer to the crisis he is responsible for is to USURP the authority which is that of the US Congress and act ulilaterally, while playing the victim again, and if you say a word about it, you are a racist.

The Constitutional Balance of Powers is tilted, bent and broken almost beyond all reason or capacity to reverse.

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

Melissa Harris Perry calls you a racist !

That's right the tampon lady herself overlooks the facts of the illegal alien invasion, insisting that they are all "children" and equating it with the racist 1960's!

She piles on the rhetoric in a style typical of a reckless, infantile demagogue with a story to fabricate on air, an ax to grind and a sick demented agenda to push at all cost. Of course it's hostile to all who disagree with her, equating Governor Rick Perry's calling upon the National Guard to assist in protecting our border with racist suppression of segregation in the 1960's calling upon the "full might" of the National Guard to attack children.

Harris Perry seems to have all kinds of problems with Texas and Texans, recall her donning of tampon earrings "in protest for women's reproductive rights".

What Perry wouldn't tell you, because she had to make it all about the "war on women and their reproductive rights" is that women were carrying 1000's of tampons and even attempted jars of urine and bags of feces to throw at Texas Law Makers. Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst "claimed to have seen bottles of urine and bags of feces". But please don't let that stop you Melissa, you are such a class act, so devoted to "journalism" that you'll exaggerate anything to create a story out of thin air, or wildly distorted facts, especially if you can kill the unborn or throw the race card in the process.  We're very used to your garbage paraded as "news".

This same vile creature attacked Mitt Romney's family and their adopted grandson, I guess the inference from their banter back and forth is that ONLY a black family should adopt a black child. They yucked it up and "Dean Obeidallah then attacks the child as token, “I think this picture is great. It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person.”

Oh sure, she went on air the next day and gave a glorious tear-filled apology for her behavior, about as genuine in my opinion as her hair. She of course has an extra special "sixth sense" about when everyone else, or at least those who might disagree with her being "racist". She seems focused upon getting this message out with the wildest of stretches, turning Michelle Obama’s 50th birthday into an opportunity to regurgitate civil rights from an African-American perspective

Even the word Obamacare is racist, made up by "white people".

Then there is this little ditty, Melissa Harris-Perry declares Chechnyan Muslim terrorists to be literally Caucasian.

Then of course you will remember the flap when Harris Perry decided Justice Clarence Thomas didn't represent blacks and then defended her remarks a couple of days later, all while defending Obama's lack of women and minorities in high ranking positions in his second term Cabinet. She even "calls out" Justice Thomas on affirmative action.

I wonder what her mother thinks of all this?  Oh never mind, the important thing to know about Harris Perry is that IS BLACK ... um errr, she like Obama is half white, but never talks about it, and everyone who might disagree with her is a "racist". At least she's not a fake "Native American".

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

Obama's undocumented immigrant invasion

Yeah, that's the latest progressive socialist euphemism for them, "illegal immigrant" we've wised up too

So now they are "undocumented", as though that changes the fact that they are CRIMINAL invaders. Never mind, Newspeak rules as Time reported Thrusday

The President may be preparing to provide temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants 

When President Obama issues executive orders on immigration in coming weeks, pro-reform activists are expecting something dramatic: temporary relief from deportation and work authorization for perhaps several million undocumented immigrants. If the activists are right, the sweeping move would upend a contentious policy fight and carry broad political consequences. 

The activists met privately with the President and his aides June 30 at the White House, and say in that meeting Obama suggested he will act before the November midterm elections. They hope his decision will offer relief to a significant percentage of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. “He seems resolute that he’s going to go big and go soon,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-reform group America’s Voice. 

Exactly what Obama plans to do is a closely held secret. But following the meeting with the activists, Obama declared his intention to use his executive authority to reform parts of a broken immigration system that has cleaved families and hobbled the economy. After being informed by Speaker John Boehner that the Republican-controlled House would not vote on a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration law this year, the President announced in a fiery speech that he was preparing “to do what Congress refuses to do, and fix as much of our immigration system as we can.” 

Obama has been cautious about preempting Congress. But its failure to act has changed his thinking. The recent meeting “was really the first time we had heard from the administration that they are looking at” expanding a program to provide temporary relief from deportations and work authorization for undocumented immigrants, says Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. 

The White House won’t comment on how many undocumented immigrants could be affected. “I don’t want to put a number on it,” says a senior White House official, who says Obama’s timeline to act before the mid-term elections remains in place.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions is furious

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the American public today to rally Congress against the President’s openly declared threat to implement, by executive order, the amnesty that Congress has rejected: 

“How Congress chooses to act in the coming hours and days will determine whether the President succeeds in his plan to nullify the immigration laws of the United States.
Just yesterday, TIME magazine reported that the President is considering a grant of ‘work authorization for perhaps several million undocumented immigrants.’ Permitting those illegally present in the U.S. to work and take jobs is contrary to plain law, which the President has no power to change. Yet Democratic members of Congress have openly crowed about these planned executive actions. 

It has now been extensively reported that these executive actions will likely expand his Deferred Action program (DACA) to apply to an additional 5–6 million adult illegal immigrants. The existing DACA program has been widely misunderstood. The executive action did not, as The Hill writes today, only result in ‘deferred deportations for young undocumented immigrants.’ Illegal immigrants in the interior of the U.S. have already, as a practical matter, been immune from enforcement under this Administration. DACA applies to individuals up to 30 years of age and provides actual amnesty papers, photo ID, and work permits to illegal immigrants—who can then take any job in America.

As Breitbart and Fox are reporting:

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is putting a call out to the American people: He needs help to kill President Barack Obama’s plans to grant executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. 

Sessions wants Americans to melt Congress’ phone lines, demanding their members make a precondition of any border crisis bill that Obama’s executive order amnesty via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and any future plans be stopped. 

“The American people have begged and pleaded for years for our laws to be enforced,” Sessions said in his statement. “We have people in our own country living in violence, fear and poverty every single day. They have demanded an immigration policy that puts their jobs, wages and communities first. Every citizen should pick up the phone and ask of their congressional representative: where do you stand?” 

Sessions said that it would be wrong for any member of the House or Senate to support any border crisis bill that doesn’t end DACA and block the president from expanding it.
“No Member—House or Senate, Democrat of Republican—should support any bill with respect to the border crisis that does not include language explicitly prohibiting the Administration from taking such action,” Sessions said. “Congress must foreclose any possibility of these unlawful executive actions before congressional funding is granted. This is an essential precondition.”

Representative Luis Gutiérrez (D., Ill.) predicted that the administration could legalize as many as 5 million people.

Appearing on Morning Joe on Friday, Gutiérrez said he will meet with White House officials later in the day “to negotiate additional terms and avenues the president can use” through executive action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXgb7u6F2p4

The full Morning Joe piece

No matter what they WANT us to call them, they are illegal criminal aliens.

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

It's time for a straw-man campaign and we will fight for it

National Journal reveals Senator Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments of Progressivism

As reported by The National Journal otherwise intelligent people are falling left and right for her rubbish which mostly fall under the Red Herring, and Straw-man varieties of Informal Fallacy. Let's examine the most egregious fallacies shall we?

- "We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it."
- "We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth."
- "We believe that the Internet shouldn't be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality."
- "We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage."
- "We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them."
- "We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt."
- "We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions."
- "We believe—I can't believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work."
- "We believe that equal means equal, and that's true in marriage, it's true in the workplace, it's true in all of America."
- "We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform."
- "And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!"
And the main tenet of conservatives' philosophy, according to Warren? "I got mine. The rest of you are on your own."

"We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it." Let's look at history shall we? If the Democrats weren't directly responsible for this it might even fly. Who REALLY worked to gradually repeal the Glass Steagall Act leading to the financial crisis of 2008? Yeah, we thought so, nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth." The implication of course is that her opposition rejects science, an irresponsible combination of Logical Fallacies mostly a vague form of Argumentum ad Hominem without even the courage to name a specific individual, just lump all her opponents into a single "science fearing" pile. Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage." The implication of course is that her opposition believes that a certain "class" of individual deserves to live in poverty, and works actively to assure this is always the case, that raising the minimum wage will actually improve the situation. I doubt that Warren is really so stupid that she doesn't know that exact opposite will result from such a move, but it sure resonates well with the ignorant. Again an irresponsible combination of Logical Fallacies, or just plain old lying to willingly ignorant constituents and potential voters.

Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics
Jonathan Meer†
Texas A&M University and NBER
Jeremy West
Texas A&M University
December 2013
Abstract
The voluminous literature on minimum wages offers little consensus on the extent to which a wage floor impacts employment. For both theoretical and econometric
reasons, we argue that the effect of the minimum wage should be more apparent in new employment growth than in employment levels. In addition, we conduct a simulation
showing that the common practice of including state-specific time trends will attenuate the measured effects of the minimum wage on employment if the true effect is in fact on
the rate of job growth. Using three separate state panels of administrative employment data, we find that the minimum wage reduces net job growth, primarily through its
effect on job creation by expanding establishments. These effects are most pronounced for younger workers and in industries with a higher proportion of low-wage workers.

Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them." Again a Straw-Man but several other fallacies including argumentum ad populum and bandwagon fallacy and a big loaded question about what "fast food workers deserve". The appeal of course is guilty of many things, and establishing a basic argument that the opposition of the progressive socialists want to keep "the poor working class" poor and working. It is at the very core of the wealth envy, class warfare argument we've seen many times before, and heavily popular recently. Fast-food workers do not have job skills worthy of a higher wage.  It's NOT that they aren't good people, they just don't offer anything any employer in their right mind would pay more money for. Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt." More of the same Logical Fallacies and motives, I'd add this though, no one has FORCED students to go into debt to get an education, and surely part of that education would have prepared them FOR this reality. Get an education you CAN afford, improve upon it as you are able to manage that debt, instead of demanding largess to finance your education.  Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions." Oh very nice, one of my favorites of all this hypocrisy. Again a Straw-Man but several other fallacies including argumentum ad populum and really a vague form of Argumentum ad Hominem without even the courage to name a specific individual. Who stole from Social Security and Medicare to pay for Obamacare? Oh yeah, that's right, it just slipped our minds - if only we had "free healthcare" to pay for those memory pills. Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe—I can't believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work." I can't believe it either Fauxcahontas, damn the bad luck and those pesky misogynist opponents of your's. Nearly six years into Obama's Residency and he STILL isn't paying his staff equally, neither are many of your colleagues (I can quote many such articles so don't get your feathers in a ruffle). Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform." Well if it was really REFORM we were talking about we might indeed get something done. The trouble with this Straw-Man is it's also a variation of the Scope Fallacy and Argumentum ad Hominem, again, without the moral courage to name your opponent or accuse them directly. Just paint on the "war paint" with a big wide brush, targeting and inferring that your opponents are "anti-immigration" by keeping the argument itself dishonest. The argument being two-fold; a formal fallacy "Commutation of Conditionals" the first assertion being that your opponent is "anti-immigration" without establishing that illegal aliens are "immigrants" therefore they are "anti-immigrant"; and that your opponents haven't also proposed "immigration reforms" I'm betting two progressive socialist sources should be enough to disprove your own flawed argument. Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!"

I've already beat this one to death here and won't belabor the point further. Nice try Fauxcahontas, but by all means fight for it !

"And the main tenet of conservatives' philosophy, according to Warren? "I got mine. The rest of you are on your own." Where do I even begin? We could start with University of North Carolina School of Law pays Professor Gene Nichol $205,400 Or maybe Hillary Clinton: “We Came Out Of The White House Dead Broke”. Or maybe, like you, we could pretend we are some ethnic minority for advantages all across the board. Nice try Fauxcahontas, you sanctimonious BITCH, but by all means fight for it !

It's time for a straw-man campaign and we will fight for it.

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

So now we're cavemen according to "science"

"A large body of political scientists and political psychologists  ... Twenty-six different scholars or groups of scholars" have apparently concluded that "Conservatives" would have faired better and are throw backs to The Pleistocene epoch

In a stunning display of exaggerated pseudoscience, Cambridge University Press Cambridge Journal has published an article entitled "Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology"

Mother Jones summarizes the article and it's "history" and implications:

Behavioral and Brain Sciences employs a rather unique practice called "Open Peer Commentary": An article of major significance is published, a large number of fellow scholars comment on it, and then the original author responds to all of them. The approach has many virtues, one of which being that it lets you see where a community of scholars and thinkers stand with respect to a controversial or provocative scientific idea. And in the latest issue of the journal, this process reveals the following conclusion: A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics. 

... The occasion of this revelation is a paper by John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska and his colleagues, arguing that political conservatives have a "negativity bias," meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments. (The paper can be read for free here.) In the process, Hibbing et al. marshal a large body of evidence, including their own experiments using eye trackers and other devices to measure the involuntary responses of political partisans to different types of images. One finding? That conservatives respond much more rapidly to threatening and aversive stimuli (for instance, images of "a very large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face, and an open wound with maggots in it," as one of their papers put it). 

In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.
The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed.

The Mother Jones piece of course gets even sillier, and was republished by Moyers & Company

Hibbing and his colleagues make an intriguing argument in their latest paper, but what's truly fascinating is what happened next. Twenty-six different scholars or groups of scholars then got an opportunity to tee off on the paper, firing off a variety of responses. But as Hibbing and colleagues note in their final reply, out of those responses, "22 or 23 accept the general idea" of a conservative negativity bias, and simply add commentary to aid in the process of "modifying it, expanding on it, specifying where it does and does not work," and so on. Only about three scholars or groups of scholars seem to reject the idea entirely. 

... That's pretty extraordinary, when you think about it. After all, one of the teams of commenters includes New York University social psychologist John Jost, who drew considerable political ire in 2003 when he and his colleagues published a synthesis of existing psychological studies on ideology, suggesting that conservatives are characterized by traits such as a need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Now, writing in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in response to Hibbing roughly a decade later, Jost and fellow scholars note that
There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety. [Italics added]

Finally there is this illogical conclusion

All of this matters, of course, because we still operate in politics and in media as if minds can be changed by the best honed arguments, the most compelling facts. And yet if our political opponents are simply perceiving the world differently, that idea starts to crumble. Out of the rubble just might arise a better way of acting in politics that leads to less dysfunction and less gridlock…thanks to science.

The Cambridge Journal piece itself is largely as ludicrous

6. Negativity bias and politics
As is apparent, the list of empirically demonstrated psychological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives is long and diverse. Additional studies are needed, however, because much of the extant physiological work is based on small, geographically constrained samples and much of the psychological work relies on college undergraduates who may have yet to form stable political attitudes. Perhaps an even greater need is for theoretical integration of this burgeoning empirical literature and that is what we hope to provide in this section, though we recognize that any effort to provide a theoretical undergirding for the findings summarized will be unavoidably speculative. 

Liberals and conservatives vary in their tolerance of social equality and change, their moral foundations, their values, and even their perceptions of the nature and perfectibility of the human condition (Graham et al. 2009; Jost et al. 2003; Pinker 2002, Ch. 16; Schwartz et al. 2010; see also Sowell 1987; Tomkins 1963). As valuable as these efforts are, questions immediately arise regarding the precursors of these differences. Why do some people say they value security and some self-expression? Why do some more than others rest their moral judgments on purity and authority? Why do some have a tragic and some a utopian vision of humankind? Why do some embrace change and others avoid it? To answer these questions, it may be useful to incorporate deeper physiological and psychological differences. After all, people’s answers to the survey items used to assess moral foundations, personal values, and personality traits must come from somewhere and given the important role of subthreshold forces in political orientations, variations in physiology and deep psychology are likely to play an important role. We believe a key factor in accounting for people’s political predispositions is their orientation to negatively valenced events and stimuli. Negativity bias is the principle that “negative events are more salient, potent, dominant in combinations, and generally efficacious than positive events” (Rozin & Royzman 2001, p. 297; see also Baumeister et al. 2001). Essentially, this principle reflects the fact that humans generally tend to respond more strongly, to be more attentive, and to give more weight to negative elements of their environment. This tendency shows up in a wide variety of socially-relevant characteristics – everything from loss aversion (Kahneman & Tversky 1984) to quick recognition of angry versus happy faces in a crowd (Hansen & Hansen 1988). People generally tend to be more attuned to negative faces, words, and social information, and both the autonomic and central nervous systems tend to have measurably higher levels of activation in response to negative than positive stimuli (Rozin & Royzman 2001). Good evolutionary reasons exist for negativity bias given that negative events can be much more costly in fitness terms than positive events are beneficial; to state the obvious, infection, injury, and death curtail reproductive opportunities. 

... Documented differences in response patterns extend beyond overtly threatening situations and into those that are more broadly negative. Environmental stimuli that are unexpected, ambiguous, uncertain, or disorderly also appear to generate more response and attention from conservatives than liberals at a variety of levels, including brain activation patterns, sympathetic nervous system response, cognitive behaviors, and self-reports. In many respects, compared with liberals, conservatives tend to be more psychologically and physiologically sensitive to environmental stimuli generally but in particular to stimuli that are negatively valenced, whether threatening or merely unexpected and unstructured. The consistency of these patterns across diverse research designs with diverse samples in different countries is difficult to miss. In fact, we know of no published study pointing in the opposite direction (i.e., that liberals respond more to negative stimuli or are more bothered by ambiguous or unexpected stimuli). What could explain this connection? It is not surprising that those attuned to the negative in life might take steps to avoid it, perhaps by refraining from taking chances with the unknown, by following instructions, and by sticking to the tried and true. As an illustration, an adult subject in one of psychologist Jerome Kagan’s longitudinal studies who was classified as “highly reactive” to novel, unfamiliar stimuli as a result of behavioral patterns detected when she was just four months old, summed up her approach to life by saying “I don’t stray from the rules too much” (quoted in Henig 2009). This is exactly the pattern we see in the personality data: Conservatives are less open to new experiences and are more conscientious. As a result, conservatives are less likely both to solicit new, potentially harmful information and to retain positive information concerning an object or perhaps a person or group (Castelli & Carraro 2011; Shook & Fazio 2009). Consequently, not only do political positions favoring defense spending, roadblocks to immigration, and harsh treatment of criminals seem naturally to mesh with heightened response to threatening stimuli but those fostering conforming unity (school children reciting the pledge of allegiance), traditional lifestyles (opposition to gay marriage), enforced personal responsibility (opposition to welfare programs and government provided healthcare), longstanding sources of authority (Biblical inerrancy; literal, unchanging interpretations of the Constitution), and clarity and closure (abstinence-only sex education; signed pledges to never raise taxes; aversion to compromise) do, as well. Heightened response to the general category of negative stimuli fits comfortably with a great many of the typical tenets of political conservatism.

So now I guess it's not enough to steal an ideology you have no historical connection too - Liberalism, the progressive socialists spread all kinds of filthy accusations, slanders, lies, distortions about anyone opposed to you, they now must invent a "science" to prove that your opponents are "cavemen"

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

Newspeak and Global Tranquility

In a recent article, I made the case for the deliberate corruption of English to serve a political motive. On Monday July 14, 2014 White House press secretary Josh Earnest stepped further down this dubious road inventing a completely new phrase about Obama Administration's foreign policy ... I want some of what he is smoking.

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary, that we are concerned here. 

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. 

Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly-created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C vocabulary. It will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories. 

George Orwell, 1984
"The Principles of Newspeak,"

From CNSNews:

More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.” 

“How does the White House react to the notion that the president is a bystander to all these crises?” asked Fox News’ Ed Henry, citing the widening gaps between the sides in the Iranian nuclear talks, the conflict in and around Gaza, and the Syrian civil war. 

“I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way, that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the, uh, you know, the – the tranquility of the global community,” Earnest replied. 

... ABC News’ Jon Karl quoted Attorney General Eric Holder’s assessment in an interview aired Sunday that the terrorist potential arising from Westerners returning home after fighting in Syria was “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.”
Karl then pointed to “what’s looking like an all-out war” between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Sunni jihadist successes in “taking over vast territory in Iraq and in Syria,” Russian aggression in Ukraine, and concerns about Chinese handling of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

“It doesn’t seem like a time to be touting tranquility on the international scene,” he told Earnest. “Do you think the president’s foreign policy bears any responsibility for any of this, or is there anything he can do about any of this?” 

Earnest said President Obama’s thinking about foreign policy was guided by one core principle – “the national security interests of the United States of America.”

IN his recent piece writing for The Washington Post Dana Milbank also citing the Wall Street Journal piece wonders:

The Journal’s catalogue of woes — civil wars in Iraq and Syria, hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians, an electoral crisis in Afghanistan, tension with Russia over Ukraine, floundering nuclear negotiations with Iran and renewed Chinese expansionism — didn’t include the current crisis on the United States’ Southern border. 

Could things get any worse? Well, maybe if the president’s chief spokesman claimed that Obama was bringing “tranquility” to the globe — which is what White House press secretary Josh Earnest did at his daily briefing Monday afternoon. 

Fox News’s Ed Henry, citing the Journal report, asked for a reaction to “the notion that the president is a bystander in all these crises.” 

... Earnest, mentioning the disposal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry’s mediation of Afghanistan’s electoral dispute and progress in recent negotiations with China, argued that “there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way that has . . . substantially improved the — you know, the tranquility of the — of the global community.” 

Tranquility? Where, in Iceland?

Mike Miller writing for Independent Journal Review takes it a step further with the following list:

1. Obama Draws Red Line On Syrian Use Of Chemical Weapons; Does Nothing When Assad Gases His Own People
2. Russia Annexes Crimea; Obama Slaps Sanctions On Putin’s Pals
3. U.S. Border Out of Control As Thousands Pour Into Country; Obama Asks For Billions To House Them
4. North Korea Tests Nuclear Weapon, Rockets; Responds To Obama’s Threats By Calling Him Names
5. Obama Unilaterally Lifts Sanctions On Iran; Mullahs Continue Pursuit Of Nuclear Weapons
6. Terrorists ‘On The Run’ In Libya Kill U.S. Ambassador, Three Other Americans In Benghazi
7. Obama Suspends U.S. Aid To Egypt After Ouster Of Muslim Brotherhood; Russia Now Supplying Military Hardware To Egypt
8. Obama Releases ‘Taliban-5′ Dream Team In Exchange For Army Deserter Bowe Bergdahl
9. Germany Expels Top U.S. Intel Official Over NSA Spying Scandal
10. Obama’s Abrupt Withdrawal From Iraq Leads To Rise Of Muslim Extremism, Creation Of Islamic State

Tranquility must have taken on a completely NEW meaning while I slept this past weekend.

Or have I been eating paint chips again?

Are we really a Cracker Nation ?

Or as Eric Holder opined a "nation of cowards"

It's a rhetorical question, and I don't think either is the case, though to listen to the progressive socialists you would think BOTH are true. Yes Mr. Holder, we should be having a frank discussion about race, racial issues, racism and the growing popularity of throwing the race card as a sign of defeat, or lack of other evidence in the National Narrative these days. When you run out of constructive argument, or are otherwise defeated in debate, logic or argument, throw the race card. It's sure to garner a 72 hour news cycle for you, and the pile on of other progressive socialists will be on every talk show, spewing the same filth for as long as they are given an audience.

Take for example your recent remarks on ABC:

Attorney General Eric Holder is challenging Republicans who are calling for his and President Obama's impeachment, and denouncing what he calls a "gridlocked Washington" stalled by what he says is a Republican Party bent on blocking any of the administration's efforts. 

“For whatever reason, [some] Republicans decided early on that this was a president they were just simply not going to cooperate with,” Holder said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas. "And over the past five-and-a-half years, we have seen demonstrations of that, where the president has reached out his hand, offered compromises that have simply not been met [in the way] they have been in the past by a Republican Party willing to do the appropriate things." 

Administration efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example, have failed. Asked about calls by Sarah Palin to impeach Obama over the administration’s immigration policies, Holder said: “She wasn't a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She's an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.” 

Holder similarly dismissed calls for himself to be impeached for declining to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal. Holder insisted that a special prosecutor isn’t necessary, with “career people” and FBI agents “doing a good, professional job” investigating the matter. 

... Holder said that he and President Obama are treated differently than their predecessors.
“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder said. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus.” 

... In addition, Holder took Republicans to task for efforts to, among other things, enact voter ID laws in some states. He called such moves “political efforts” aimed at making it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.” 

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, noting that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”Holder said the Justice Department is expected to soon file challenges to restrictive voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, as the department already did in Texas and North Carolina.

There is a lot of material there, most of it is utterly false, but George Stephanopoulos did little (as usual) to call Holder to task. A study of his claims of "restrictive voting laws" by the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA actually proves just the opposite happened as reported in the findings of the North Carolina court and by The Blaze

If there was a hidden agenda behind North Carolina’s voter ID law to suppress minority turnout – as the law’s opponents claim – it hasn’t worked, based on a study showing not only more voters overall, but an increase in black voter turnout especially, after the law’s implementation. 

Study on North Carolina Voter ID Law Shows Increase in Minority Turnout
AP
The findings came before a scheduled hearing next week where the U.S. Justice Department will ask a U.S. District Court for an injunction against the law going into the November midterms. The Obama administration has argued that such a law will make it more difficult for minorities to vote. 

Comparing May 4, 2010 North Carolina primary election data with the May 14, 2014 primary data, the study found that voter turnout increased across the board, but particularly among black voters, where it increased by 29.5 percent, compared to an increase of white voter turnout of 13.7 percent. The findings were based on Census Bureau data and public names who signed the voter rolls. 

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, commissioned the study and included the findings in an amicus brief for the July 7 hearing. Judicial Watch was joined in its legal brief by the Allied Educational Foundation and by former Buncombe County commissioner candidate Christina Kelley Gallegos-Merrill. 

... North Carolina adopted a law in line with 37 other states that don’t allow same-day voter registration, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. 

“The recent election in North Carolina shows that the Obama administration is engaged in a race-baiting canard when it suggests that voting integrity measures suppress minority votes,” Fitton said. “It is high time that the Obama administration comes into line with the majority of the American people who want to strengthen rather than weaken ballot box integrity.”

It makes no difference to the progressive socialists, the race card and accusations are STILL flying:

Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August. 

Lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NAACP and the civil rights group the Advancement Project will argue that the main pillars of the law should be temporarily halted ahead of a full trial next year. Otherwise, they say, tens of thousands of largely poor black voters could find themselves turned away at the polls at the midterm elections in November. 

“This is the worst voter suppression law we have seen since the days of Jim Crow. It is a full-on assault on the voting rights of minorities,” said Reverend William Barber, president of the North Carolina state conference of the NAACP.

Not to be outdone in the slime game New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel "suggested in an interview that aired Monday that the level of Republican opposition to President Barack Obama is partly due to race."

When asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt whether GOP opposition to the president is “based on race,” Rangel paused and said, “You know, that’s a subjective question. But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?” 

When asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt whether GOP opposition to the president is “based on race,” Rangel paused and said, “You know, that’s a subjective question. But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?”

The Politico piece goes further quoting Sen. Jay Rockefeller "The retiring West Virginia Democrat said that some in the GOP don’t want the implementation of the health law to succeed because they don’t personally like the president and maybe he’s of the wrong color." Another Politico recent article highlighted the dual between Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Ron Johnson and direct (and denied) accusations of racism. You may read the whole piece here

Rockefeller’s remarks about Republican opposition to Obamacare amounted to implying that Johnson is “a racist.” 

As he chaired a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat accused the GOP of opposing President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act because he’s the “wrong color,” eliciting an emotional reaction from Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, that the Democratic senator “would basically imply that I’m a racist.” 

... “That you would say that opposition to Obamacare necessarily must stream from some inherent racism? Very offensive. Listen, my opposition to health care has nothing to do with the race of President Obama,” Johnson said. “It is the greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime.

And of course who could forget Obama's own ridiculous comments following the Trayvon Martin shooting and the public calls for bounties on George Zimmerman's head!

But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn’t go away. 

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.
And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. 

There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. 

And, you know, I -- I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.
And it's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.

So what has been the position of the "right" in response to all this false narrative? Very little actually, I guess few have the cajones to take it on. In 2010 Republican National Committee, Michael Steele appearing on ABC with Jake Tapper offered "our party has always had a strong view on this issue. We fought very hard in the '60s to get the civil rights bill passed as well as the voting rights bill. So I think that, you know, any -- any, you know, attempted look backwards, it's not in the best interests of our country, certainly, and certainly not in the best interests of the party." As it turns out he is correct:

The Civil Rights Act -- which is best known for barring discrimination in public accommodations -- passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964 by a margin of 290-130. When broken down by party, 61 percent of Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill (152 yeas and 96 nays), and a full 80 percent of the Republican caucus supported it (138 yeas and 34 nays).
When the Senate passed the measure on June 19, 1964, -- nine days after supporters mustered enough votes to end the longest filibuster in Senate history -- the margin was 73-27. Better than two-thirds of Senate Democrats supported the measure on final passage (46 yeas, 21 nays), but an even stronger 82 percent of Republicans supported it (27 yeas, 6 nays). 

The primary reason that Republican support was higher than Democratic support -- even though the legislation was pushed hard by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson -- is that the opposition to the bill primarily came from Southern lawmakers. In the mid 1960s, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic -- a legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when the Republican Party was the leading force against slavery and its legacy. Because of this history, the Democratic Party in the 1960s was divided between Southern Democrats, most of whom opposed civil rights legislation, and Democrats from outside the South who more often than not supported it. 

This pattern showed clearly in the House vote. Northern Democrats backed the Civil Rights Act by a margin even larger than that of Republicans -- 141 for, just four against -- while Southern Democrats were strongly opposed, by a margin of 11 yeas to 92 nays. 

When the Voting Rights Act hit the floor in 1965, the vote results mirrored those of the Civil Rights Act. In the House, the measure passed by a 333-85 margin, with 78 percent of Democrats backing it (221 yeas and 61 nays) and 82 percent of Republicans backing it (112 yeas to 24 nays). 

In the Senate, the measure passed by a 77-19 vote, with 73 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans supporting the bill. 

So it's clear that Republican support for both bills was deep. But to make sure we weren't missing something, we contacted a number of scholars who have studied that period, asking whether Republicans were dragged into supporting the bills reluctantly, or whether they took frontline roles in advancing them.

And if that quote from Politifact isn't enough, there is always the Congressional record itself. We should remember Senator Robert Byrd led the then longest filibuster in US Senate history AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964

e longest continuous debate in Senate history took place in 1964 over the Civil Rights Act. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who had proposed the legislation, it was strongly advocated by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Addressing a joint session of Congress just after Kennedy’s death, Johnson urged members of Congress to honor Kennedy’s memory by passing a civil rights bill to end racial discrimination and segregation in public accommodations, public education, and federally assisted programs. In his address, Johnson declared, “we have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.” 

On February 10, 1964, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill, HR 7152. When the House-passed bill arrived in the Senate on February 26, 1964, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield placed it directly on the Senate calendar rather than refer it to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by civil rights opponent James Eastland of Mississippi. On March 9, when Mansfield moved to take up the measure, southern senators launched a filibuster against the bill. The Senate debated the bill for sixty days, including seven Saturdays. 

At the time, a two-thirds vote, or sixty-seven senators, was required to invoke cloture and cut off debate in the Senate. Since southern Democrats opposed the legislation, votes from a substantial number of senators in the Republican minority would be needed to end the filibuster. Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic whip who managed the bill on the Senate floor, enlisted the aid of Republican Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois. Dirksen, although a longtime supporter of civil rights, had opposed the bill because he objected to certain provisions. Humphrey therefore worked with him to redraft the controversial language and make the bill more acceptable to Republicans. Once the changes were made, Dirksen gained key votes for cloture from his party colleagues with a powerful speech calling racial integration "an idea whose time has come."

So are we really a Cracker Nation ? Or as Eric Holder opined a "nation of cowards" ...

Or have I been eating paint chips again?