World News Korner

Courtesy of TPM:

A substantial majority of Americans believe Obamacare should remain law, either exactly as it is or with small changes, according to a new poll.

Bloomberg News found that a combined 64 percent of Americans said they support keeping the law in place. That includes 51 percent who said it should be kept but may need some small changes and 13 percent who said it should be left alone. Only 34 percent said it should be repealed.

That flies directly in the face of every talking point spewed by the conservative mouthpieces, from Rush Limbaugh, to Ted Cruz, to Sarah Palin, who has made repealing the law the central criteria for her recent political endorsements.

The problem for the Republicans is that as 2014 marches forward the numbers who have signed up for the Affordable Care Act are only going to grow, and positive stories about how it is actually affecting the lives of Americans (Many of which can be found here.) are going to continue to pile up.

It will be interesting to see if running against Obamacare still benefits candidates in red states, and then what happens to that rhetoric once they are elected and find themselves marginalized by the more rational Republicans who are currently working to improve the law rather than repeal it.

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More pearls of wis-dumb from the Wasilla Wendigo's Facebook page:

Chris McDaniel has a proven record of fighting for conservative principles in the Mississippi State Senate. He has been a champion of limited government, free enterprise, civic participation, reduced tax rates, a strong national defense, and a return to the original checks and balances of the Constitution. He’s a proven fighter for the rights of We the People. (Who the people?) For example, he’s taken on special interests in defense of our private property rights against the abuse of eminent domain, and he’s introduced legislation to protect our 2nd Amendment rights against federal government overreach. (Ahh, a gun nut. That explains it.)

The Mississippi Senate race is a clear fight for the future of the Republican Party against the entrenched interests of the permanent political class in D.C. We desperately need new conservative leaders in the U.S. Senate who will serve with passion, intelligence, and integrity. Chris McDaniel is just such a leader. He is in this race not for career, but for conservative change. (Funny how she equates government sabotage with "conservative change." I believe that was the same kind of change once embraced by John Wilkes Booth.)

-Sarah Palin

Interestingly enough McDaniel is challenging Republican stalwart Senator Thad Cochran, who has been serving the state since 1978.

From all accounts the race has split the state between the brash Tea party upstarts and the traditional conservatives who value longevity and experience in their politicians.

Many think that McDaniel has a real shot, thought one GOP strategist was quoted as saying:

"Senator McDaniel is ineffective in the state senate and not really able to get much accomplished in the state senate. So it's hard to think why he deserves to be promoted."

Still, he continues to hold his own against Cochran.

So if McDaniel's fortunes take a turn for the worse, and he finds himself suddenly plummeting in the polls, we will know exactly where to lay the blame.




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Courtesy of HuffPo and written by Diane Ravitch:

A few years ago, when I was blogging at Education Week with Deborah Meier, a reader introduced the term FUD. I had never heard of it. It is a marketing technique used in business and politics to harm your competition. The term and its history can be found on Wikipedia. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The reader said that those who were trying to create a market-based system to replace public education were using FUD to undermine public confidence in public education. They were selling the false narrative that our public schools are obsolete and failing.

This insight inspired me to write Reign of Error to show that the "reform" narrative is a fraud. Test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history for white students, black students, Hispanic students, and Asian students. Graduation rates are the highest in history for these groups. The dropout rate is at an historic low point.

Why the FUD campaign against one of our nation's most treasured democratic institutions? It helps the competition. It makes people so desperate that they will seek out unproven alternatives. It makes the public gullible when they hear phony claims about miracle schools, where everyone graduates and everyone gets high test scores, and everyone goes to a four-year college. No such school exists. The "miracle school" usually has a high suspension rate, a high expulsion rate, a high attrition rate, and such schools usually do not replace the kids they somehow got rid of. Some "miracle schools" have never graduated anyone because they have only elementary schools, but that doesn't stop the claims and boasting.

There is no evidence from any other nation that replacing a public system with a privatized choice system produces anything but social, economic, and racial segregation.

There is nothing that angers me quite as much as watching this undermining of our education system and the attacks on our teachers.

The assault has come from numerous points of attack. Reducing taxes that fund education, promoting charter schools, insults leveled at the teaching profession, and of course NCLB and standardized testing, which has nothing to do with improving education, and everything to do with sabotaging and ultimately ending government run public education.

The only thing that will stop this, and it has been going on for decades now, is to provide our teachers with the freedom to actually teach. We need to provide the materials, and the training, and then sit back and watch the magic.

Some of the best teaching I have every witnessed was provided by teachers who were excited about their jobs, and could perform it without the administration breathing down their necks, and without the pendulum of constant, unnecessary testing hanging over their heads.

Public education was not broken, until those who claimed to be trying to fix it, broke it.

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This from Princess Political Pundit's Facebook page:

Ben Sasse is the clear conservative choice in the Nebraska Senate race. National Review calls him “Nebraska’s Obamacare Nemesis.”

Of course that is not the ONLY reason that Palin likes this particular candidate:

Ben is a leader we need in D.C. now. He won’t forget who sent him there because his life is firmly grounded in his small town Nebraska roots. His family goes to a church where his great-great grandpa carved the altarpiece that is still there today. Ben has his cornhusker common sense and his lovely wife Melissa and their three kids to remind him of what’s important. Melissa is a fellow “hockey mom” to both of Ben’s daughters who play hockey as the only girls on the boy teams. They’ll be able to remind their papa to “Fight like a girl!” in defense of We the People.

Yep he goes to church, has common sense, and his wife is a fellow "hockey mom" (Though one hopefully more involved than Palin turned out to be.), so of course Sarah Palin will endorse him.

According to The Hill Sasse is one of two front runners in a field of four Republicans competing to win the primary for the Senate seat left open by the retiring Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb).

Since Nebraska is a deeply red state having a Republican hold onto the Senate seat is not exactly earth shattering. However if Sasse wins it will be touted as a victory for those opposed to Obamacare, and will give critics of the Affordable Care Act new false hope that they can repeal the law.

Of course that will never happen, and already there is bipartisan support to improve the law rather than repeal the law.

So essentially, if elected, Sasse will arrive in Washington as a saboteur and will do his part to obstruct and cripple any progress.

Yet another reason that Sarah Palin, who has time and time again demonstrated that she is a traitor to this country, would want to endorse this man.

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Isn't it nice that Granny Grifter gets work for her layabout husband as well?

Hey maybe I'm just being mean and the Sportsman channel, much like John McCain, actually believed that Todd Palin was man enough to run the Iditarod.

Speaking of man enough, the second place finisher this year was a woman.

And believe me she is more man than Todd Palin will ever be, and more woman than he will ever get.

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Courtesy of The Freethinker:

Tyler Johnson runs a ministry called the Dead Raising Team in the US. He claims to have brought 11 people back to life. He says he even persuaded the authorities in his state to issue him with an official photocard which lets him through police lines at car accident sites.

Johnson, according to this BBC report, appears in a new documentary film called Deadraisers, which follows enthusiasts as they trail round hospitals and mortuaries trying to bring people back to life.

Sadly, those they pray for in the film remain resolutely dead.

Johnson is unwilling to provide successful case studies. And in general, the proof that believers cite is a bit unconvincing ­– for example, there is an American heart surgeon who allegedly brought a heart attack patient back from the dead with prayer … oh, and a defibrillator.

Other doctors find the story entirely unremarkable. One wonders why.

Well I have seen faith healers at work, and kind of know how they pull that flim flam off, but bringing people back from the dead? Who is ignorant to believe that?

And the fact that this Tyler Johnson fellow's state supposedly lets him enter crime scenes so that he can resurrect corpses is incredibly troubling.

I can only imagine the anguish that a loved one would go through after losing a loved one to be told that they would be brought back to life, only to have those hopes dashed against the rocks of reality.

I went on the internet to look for this so-called documentary and I found the trailer with little trouble.

) On the Kickstarter page started back in 2013, the film was described in this way:

DEADRAISER, a pivotal new documentary film, explores resurrection stories from around the world and offers an exciting view into the authentic Christian culture of miracles. This cutting-edge film follows a lively group of supernaturally empowered men from different backgrounds, theologies and geographic locations as they release kingdom power in love and live out the words of Jesus Christ from Matthew 10:8.

As many of you may, or may not know, certain Evangelical Christians do not believe that death was not in the original plan and that it was created by God in response to the sin that took place in the Garden of Eden. Apparently due to that frame of mind an even smaller minority also believe that with enough prayer they can override that fate and bring people back from the dead. Literally.

You know it is one thing to delude yourself, but to attempt this horseshit to grieving relatives is indefensible. Especially if you have no data to support your claims.

When will people learn to stop being so fucking gullible?

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Two-thousand years ago, God raped an engaged Palestinian woman so He could impregnate her with Himself so He could sacrifice Himself to Himself so He could forgive us because our ancestors ate an apple He gave them because they were tricked by a snake He created.

This is not original to me as I stumbled across it on Reddit the other day.

However it does reflect much of my interpretation of Christianity.

There are many who would take offense at the charge of rape, but since Mary was supposed to be around fourteen to fifteen years old at the time it meets the definition of statutory rape by modern standards. And since an all knowing God would be aware of that fact, it is hard to argue that he did not knowingly violate a child who was unable to consent.

In fact according to the Bible God did not even bother to request her consent, and simply impregnated her with nary a word of warning.

Try as I might I can never figure out the morality that Christians claim is found within the pages of their holy book. Murder, genocide, oppression, rape, infanticide, yes and in abundance.

But morality?

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