Tag: Conservative Agenda

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Manchin Not Afraid to Shoot It Out with the NRA

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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is gunning for the NRA, which recently urged West Virginians to pressure their elected official to get in line. Manchin, who supports extending background checks to buyers at gun shows and online, was previously supported by the NRA because of his voting record on their issues. Now he is on their public enemy list.

Manchin: ‘What other purpose do we have here? Why do we ask to be policy makers when we’re afraid to engage?’

On the Morning Joe show, Manchin debuted his own new ad, and explained he didn’t go to Washington to serve the NRA.

“What other purpose do we have here?” Manchin asked. “Why do we ask to be policy makers and be involved in the public process when we’re afraid to engage? I’m not. I’m not afraid to engage. The worst they can do is defeat me and send me home to my family and the state I love, West Virginia. That’s a pretty good consolation. What are we afraid of?”

Manchin added that the strategy of the NRA and Gun Owners of America is to use lies and innuendo to work up the gullible and keep those donations flowing in.

“The only thing they use against me is: ‘we just don’t trust government,” Manchin said. “Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it. Get involved and make it better. Don’t just sit and curse the wind. But they don’t want to get involved, they just want to keep this paranoia going on.”

Town Where Once a Man Was Killed for Being Gay Now Shields Its Residents from Westboro Baptist Hate

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Photo taken by Calvin Knight of the Lakeland Ledger

Somewhere, Ryan Skipper is smiling.

No, Ryan Skipper is laughing, high-fiving, and doing the chicken dance. Or maybe that’s just us, upon hearing the recent state of affairs in Lakeland, Fla.

One person who might not have gotten the anti-homophobia message is Sheriff Grady Judd

The same place where, in 2007, 25-year-old Ryan Skipper was bound and brutally stabbed, leaving his car so bloodied that the his murderers, who planned to steal it, drove it off a dock instead — all because, as they told investigators, Ryan was gay — the very same Lakeland citizenry has now massed together to fight off the Westboro Baptist Church, known for its nonsensical hate-mongering against homosexuals.

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The Most Important Issue in America Today Is Not What They Tell You It Is

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Forget the nonexistent “crisis” surrounding budget deficits and — as you’ll hear again soon — raising the debt ceiling. Let’s talk about what’s really threatening to end America as we know it, and that’s income inequality. When Congress starts unraveling the policies they have put in place to help the rich get richer, like taxing income from work at a much higher rate than income from Wall St. wheeling and dealing, then we’ll be doing something to solve the real problem. Keep your eye on the ball, folks, because they constantly try to distract us.

FOX’s Lou Dobbs and Other Males Astounded, Outraged That 40% of Women Out-Earn Men

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You’ve probably heard about it but you have to see it to believe it. Watch for yourself the spectacle of Republicans coming to the realization that they live in a new world — if you consider all the years of most of our lifetimes “new.”

Stuff You Really Don’t Want to Be Right About

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I hope NY and NJ senators tell Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe to suck a donkey dick on disaster relief.

@rudepundit on Twitter, no doubt recalling that most Republicans, even those from the tornado-prone Midwest and prairie states, voted against providing disaster relief to the areas worst affected by super storm Sandy.

The Case for the IRS Targeting the Tea Party

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It seemed to come as a great shock when it was recently revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) examines some taxpayers more closely than others.

Really? Because no one has ever objected to the IRS targeting some tax returns for audit. Among them:

  • Millionaires (in fiscal 2011, the IRS audited 12.5% of them)
  • People reporting more than $200,000 in income
  • People claiming confusing tax breaks like the first-time homebuyer credit
  • Home office workers
  • Small business and self-employed people generally
  • Very low income filers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
I’m not saying the IRS should target according to ideology. I’m saying it should target according to likelihood that tax laws are being flouted and circumvented.

So why, in the wild west of the first election years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling allowing political action groups, many with questionable funding, to mushroom and proliferate…why should anyone be surprised the IRS would exercise scrutiny on these here today, gone tomorrow groups? Why, in fact, would they not demand that the IRS do precisely that before granting tax-exempt status to whoever applies for it?

And why not specifically take a hard, cold look at tea party groups?

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Rush’s Boss to Limbaugh: Don’t Let the Door Hit You

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Rush Limbaugh’s big fat feelings might be hurt, and he is considering leaving the distributor of his show over it. Cumulus Media, which contracts with Limbaugh, is blaming reduced company revenues on last year’s boycott of advertisers on Rush’s show. The boycott was called after Limbaugh labled a “slut” the lone female who provided testimony to a Congressional committee examining insurance company coverage of birth control.

Although several dozen advertisers either permanently left the show or suspended their ads until the dust settled, Rush at the time described the situation this way.

“That’s like losing a couple of French fries in the container when it’s delivered to you at the drive-through,” Limbaugh said. “You don’t even notice it.”

But to Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey, the advertiser stampede must have been more like more being shorted the fries AND the burger, being left with the ketchup packets and the soft drink.

In an August 2012 earnings call, Dickey said Cumulus’s top three stations had lost $5.5 million, in part because of the boycott. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company’s talk radio side had “been challenged… due to some of the issues that happened a year ago.”

Rush could actually be right that Cumulus Media’s losses aren’t all his fault. In addition to his show, the company carries The Mike Huckabee Show and The Huckabee Report, Focus on the Family “Commentary,” and The Savage Nation. I don’t know about you but I sure wouldn’t want to advertise on any of those shows.

Gun Company Stocks Nosedive After Its Lobbyists Prevail in Washington

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Without the gun industry whipping them into a frenzy by telling them Obama’s going to take their guns away, people are less interested in buying more guns.

Gosh, whodda thunk?

Alliant’s (ATK, Fortune 500) stock price dropped 1.5% Thursday, after seeing its shares surge 38% over the last year. Ammunition maker Olin Corp. (OLN) fell 1.2%, after climbing more than 13% over the last year. Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. (SWHC) managed a 1.7% gain Thursday, while Sturm, Ruger (RGR) slipped 1.5%.

The stock price for Cabela’s (CAB), a retailer dependent on gun sales, dropped nearly 5%…

Brian Rafn, a gun industry analyst and director of research at Morgan Dempsey Capital Management, said gun companies are going to have to figure out how to remain profitable now that the “visceral political craziness is removed from the equation.”

Don’t worry, the NRA and Gun Owners of America will come up with new lies tomorrow, and the people they’re counting on to believe them will dump more money on guns and ammo.

The Rightwing’s Obsession with Obama and Terror

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Did we forget what the story is here?

Somewhere aliens are watching us from outer space and scratching their headlike appendages. Because before all the blood had even dried on the sidewalks, the rightwing dropped the subject of what happened at the 2013 Boston Marathon and got back to the subject they seem to care most about: hating Pres. Obama.

This tweet hints at the problem.

Fort Hood? Wait. What? Wasn’t Fort Hood a case of a wacko with a gun shooting up his fellow service members, like James Holmes shooting up fellow Batman fans, and Adam Lanza shooting up his fellow Newtown youth? What distinguishes Fort Hood from the other mass shootings that have become part of the landscape? Could it be that the gunman in Fort Hood was a Muslim? Now we’re getting somewhere, because any time you have a Muslim person involved, it’s de facto terrorism. Right?

But why are we slamming Obama for not labeling all three of those events as terrorism, straight out of the gate? Here, this tweet should clear it right up.

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