Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition used the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in order to bolster her campaign against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act over the bill’s protections for LGBT employees. While speaking to Janet Mefferd yesterday about the Orange County, Florida, school system’s new non-discrimination policy that is similar to ENDA, Laffery said that just as parents are upset about the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and are concerned about keeping their children safe, they should also be worried about ENDA’s “devastating effects” as schools will have “people with some real issues playing out their personal problems in the classroom.”

Lafferty warned that Chick-fil-A restaurants may soon be “forced” to hire “weirdos” seeking to undermine Christian businesses, warning that transgender people are committing “the ultimate act of self-hatred” and need “special medical treatment” rather than job protections.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/andrea-lafferty-cites-ct-school-shooting-rally-opposition-non-discrimination-policies

REALLY? You use a shooting in which a guy murders his mother, murders over two dozen innocent people (And remember children INCLUDED), and then blows his own head off... And you call a person who feels as though they have the wrong gender “the ultimate act of self-hatred”?

Uh... What?

The very common Republican/Tea Party talking point is that people use unemployment insurance and just wait out their 99 weeks or that it's a luxury they get rich off of. Really.

Outside of talking points, and into actual research, the opposite seems to be true.

* People on unemployment still feel like they are a valued part of the economy
* They are required to look for a job and they do more job searches than a person who does not use unemployment insurance
* They apply to jobs that they are qualified doing instead of the first job they find

Here's a new study pointing to some evidence of those very things:
http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2012/Fact-Sheet-Unemployment-Insurance-Back-to-Work.pdf?nocdn=1

The safety net is not just some thing for the 'filthy and unwashed 47%', it's for our whole country. Republicans need to realize that.

Spending vast sums of money to donate to SuperPACS:
Hundreds of thousands of dollars

Having mountains of executive pay for the people at the top:
People at the top getting paid 400 times more than entry level employees

Traveling to wine and dine with legislators to make you keep your tax cuts and deregulations:
Whatever a private jet costs and more, plus lobbyists

Spending a fraction of the above on a safety net and health care on your employees:
Priceless... as in "I'm not paying for it! We're closed! You're all fired!"

Well, the Republicans haven't learned their lesson from the election. One's back at the game, blaming unemployment on the vast wealth one can get from unemployment benefits and on food stamps, because you know, crazy liberals and their ludicrous belief that people need to eat. Weird, right?

http://boldprogressives.org/republican-congressman-says-jobless-americans-are-simply-too-lazy-to-find-work/

No, the unemployed do not get incentives to not find work; they get obstruction, roadblocks, delays, excuses, checks, tests, filters, catch-22's, and hoops to jump through to get them what? The crumbs, and that's if they beat the four other applicants who also wanted the job? Oh wow.

You'll find very few people who don't think people on unemployment benefits should be looking for work, but YOU sit on your thumbs when...

The pay rate of the people at the top is four hundred times more than the people at the bottom. Don't you think that they might be able to hire just a couple more people if it was a little less exponential?

Reports come out of employers telling the unemployed to not even bother applying. There you go, pretend the unemployed don't need to find work. Then there is the matter of credit checks in hiring. Just a little hard to pay your bills to get your credit up when you can't get a job to pay your bills. Also it's the modern day phrenology. Should consider regulating it, just for sanity's sake.

People suggest that we could use a new CCC or WPA. No, wait, you don't sit on your thumbs. You scream and run out of the room. Unemployment is a problem, but not big enough to have an employer of last resort?

Our infrastructure and public transportation systems are crumbling. Could not only create jobs directly in those fields, but not every person has a Mercedes Benz in their car elevator, more buses could help them out.

Remove the roadblocks and hoops to employment before claiming a person can get a mortgage on a mansion through unemployment benefits and food stamps. 'Kay?

Romney is running around saying that this election is about the economy and not about social issues, but here comes the self-proclaimed 'ethicist' of the Christian Right, Richard Land, saying that a Romney presidency will strike back against TEH GAY, those uppity women who actually think they are people too, and making sure vegetables get guaranteed health care while a safety net for an unemployed person is 'European style socialism'.

Richard Land is a real gem in another way, he made appalling comments about the Trayvon Martin tragedy that cost him a lot, from his own Church organization at that. All in all, a real sweet guy. If you think gangrene is sweet.

So something I can't find is Mitt's acknowledgment of this endorsement from this prominent leader of the Christian Right, this is something that Mitt really wants, right? Let's make this an issue, what does Mitt think about this great endorsement?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/top-southern-baptist-official-breaks-pledge-endorses-romney/2012/10/30/06e615e2-22c4-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/06/02/richard-land-loses-radio-show-after-trayvon-martin-comments/

I think that Republicans and conservatives actually know that there is class warfare against the poor and the middle class going on, but they want to deny that it exists, they refuse to acknowledge that the American dream is being strangled, so they play the enabler and they just stick their fingers in their ears and shout "socialism!"

The quote about about 47 percent is a good example of just how defensive they are. OK, let's assume 47 percent are mooches, the unemployment rate is nowhere near that. Why aren't around 40 percent of the population satisfied, why do they think they are entitled to housing and food as Romney says... but they are getting paid? Quite a leap of logic right there.

Hopefully this can not go on much longer, maybe there are plenty of Republicans already waking up to this plutocratic siege of the United States going on. Maybe.

That's what it should be called. They have 'moving the goalposts' down to a science.

Some examples...

2000: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2004: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2008: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2012: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time... and some deregulation too.

Person 1: Being gay is unnatural, you don't see any animals doing it.
Person 2: Plenty of animals have displayed homosexuality (Shows plethora of evidence)
Person 1: Oh yeah, well... uh... many animals also eat their young. So there.

"This tactic is extremely common in debates with creationists, who will often say "show me an example of something evolving today," or "show me an example of information increasing through random processes." When either of these are shown to the creationist, they will suddenly change the standards of what they meant by "evolving" or "information" to try and avoid losing an argument they clearly lost. The definition between "micro" and "macro" evolution is often left exceptionally vague by creationists and intelligent design proponents just for this purpose."

"The manufactroversy surrounding the release of Barack Obama's birth certificate has seen plenty of goalpost moving - often to a greater degree than any other conspiracy. First, the Birther movement demanded a birth certificate and Obama duly released one. Next they demanded that this wasn't good enough, and sort out a long protracted campaign to have the original, "long form", version released. After getting a special exception made by the state of Hawaii, Obama released this "long form" version. However, the cognitive dissonance was too great for the conspiracy theorists, who had invested a lot of emotional involvement in their denial of his citizenship, and they shifted the goal posts again to demand college and school records, and even proof that his mother was in the hospital at the time. What is particularly galling about the affair is the amount of focus given by the birther movement onto the "long form" certificate - and their constant goalpost moving proves that they will never be convinced." (Now it's reached to the point where they want Obama to prove that his real father was not Frank Marshall Davis!)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Call it out as it is. Righties are the masters of goalpost physics.

1. You've ever wondered what the Iron Age would look like if everyone had nukes and assault rifles? Vote Republican.

2. You think women are just incubators for fetuses? Vote Republican.

3. Come on, it's called the JUST-WORLD HYPOTHESIS, women don't get pregnant unless they are legitimately raped and nobody lost a job through no fault of their own, you either agree with that or you are a socialist, right? vote Republican.

4. BURN THE SAFETY NET! CUT IT TO RIBBONS! SLASH IT! KILL IT! EAT IT! Oh, and vote Republican.

5. You've seen the future and you KNOW that you will never need social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, etc. The psychic hotline called you and told you this, just like how they told you to vote Republican.

6. God what is with these liberals and their support for food stamps? It's like they think people need to eat or something. What next? Are they going to think food grows on trees? Ha! Vote Republican.

7. Oh my God, it's the Atheists/Feminists/Gays/Muslims/etc. We need to vote against them or... or... one of them could become your neighbors or even... your boss! Vote Republican.

8. Save pre-existing conditions! Vote Republican.

9. Obama's coming to take your guns. Remember how we told you that four years ago? Well, he is. Vote Republican.

10. Tax cuts and deregulation will work this time. We promise. Vote Republican.

It was a contentious day of heated testimony in the civil trial over the jail death of a diabetic Valley mother with two important witnesses, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his former Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott taking the stand.

Deborah Braillard, 46, died after being denied insulin and medical care during three days at a Maricopa County jail.

Time after time, lawyers for both sides had to huddle with the judge because of dozens of objections raised by Arpaio’s lawyers in response to questions asked by Braillard’s daughter’s attorney, Michael Manning.

The Braillard case could end up costing Maricopa County taxpayers millions.

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/Sheriff-Joe-Arpaio-and-Dave-Hendershot-testify-in-Deborah-Braillard-case

Things include:

Former Deputy Chief Bill Williams who claimed he could not remember the answers to most of the questions posed to him by Braillard’s attorney.

Arpaio took the stand and he claimed to know very little about what happened to Deborah Braillard and he admitted that after she died, he didn’t order an investigation or ask any questions about her death. Arpaio acknowledged that there was no formal internal investigation launched into why detention officers never sought medical assistance for Braillard. Arpaio also confessed to the jury that he had not actually read a book that he co-authored in which he suggested that he wanted his jails to punish inmates.

Former Maricopa County Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott told the jury that he hoped detention officers would summon medical assistance for anybody as sick as Braillard was while in custody. But he admitted the jail went through periods of being dangerously understaffed.

Pay attention to that last part. How does a law enforcement system that gets national attention and the spotlight from the whole nation and especially tough on crime types be understaffed. What is really going on here?

Mat Staver was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today as he, Rick Green, and David Barton discussed the importance of the issue of judges in this upcoming election by highlighting various recent Supreme Court decisions that had been decided by 5-4 margins.

After Staver rattled off several cases that were decided by close votes, Barton piped up to declare that the Lawrence v. Texas case was also a 5-4 decision. Barton was wrong, as usual; it was a 6-3 decision.

But then again what do you expect from someone who absurdly claims that in this case the Supreme Court ruled that everything that is consensual is constitutional ... even eleven year old girls having sex with ninety-five year old men.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/once-again-david-barton-puts-his-ignorance-display