Rush Limbaugh: “This Is Just Pure Marxism Coming Out Of The Mouth Of The Pope”

Rush Limbaugh: “This Is Just Pure Marxism Coming Out Of The Mouth Of The Pope”

FreakOutNation

opinionated politics | we inform, you decide.

November 27, 2013

By Anomaly

 We knew this would happen after Pope Francis called for renewal of the Roman Catholic Church and attacked unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny”, while writing of income inequality, and urging global leaders to fight poverty. One by one Republican talkers will trickle in, to voice their negative opinions of the Pope.
Infamous bigot, Pamela Geller asked when the Pope became an Imam.
And now here’s Rush Limbaugh declaring,”This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”

Listen to Rush’s objections as he mentions the Pope’s fight against poverty.

Rush Limbaugh would call Jesus Christ a CINO.
Courtesy of Media Matters. 

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7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution

What science can tell us about our not-so-scientific minds.

By Chris Mooney

Tue Nov. 26, 2013 8:31 AM GMT

 

The ascent of man? José-manuel Benitos/Wikimedia Commons. Photoillustration by Matt Connolly.

Late last week, the Texas Board of Education failed to approve a leading high school biology textbook—whose authors include the Roman Catholic biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University—because of its treatment of evolution. According to The New York Times, critiques from a textbook reviewer identified as a "Darwin Skeptic" were a principal cause.
Yet even as creationists keep trying to undermine modern science, modern science is beginning to explain creationism scientifically. And it looks like evolution—the scientifically uncontested explanation for the diversity and interrelatedness of life on Earth, emphatically including human life—will be a major part of the story. Our brains are a stunning product of evolution; and yet ironically, they may naturally pre-dispose us against its acceptance.

1871 satirical image depicting Charles Darwin as an ape. The Hornet/Wikimedia Commons

"I don't think there's any question that a variety of our mental dispositions are ones that discourage us from taking evolutionary theory as seriously as it should be taken," explains Robert N. McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University and author of the book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not.
So what can science tell us about our not-so-scientific minds? Here's a list of cognitive traits, thinking styles, and psychological factors identified in recent research that seem to thwart evolution acceptance:
Biological Essentialism. First, we seem to have a deep tendency to think about biology in a way that is "essentialist"—in other words, assuming that each separate kind of animal species has a fundamental, unique nature that unites all members of that species, and that is inviolate. Fish have gills, birds have wings, fish make more fish, birds make more birds, and that's how it all works. Essentialist thinking has been demonstrated in young children. "Little kids as young as my 2 and a half year old granddaughter are quite clear that puppies don't have ponies for mommies and daddies," explains McCauley.
If essentialism is a default style of thinking, as much research suggests, then that puts evolution at a major disadvantage. Charles Darwin and his many scientific disciples have shown that essentialism is just plain wrong: Given enough time, biological kinds are not fixed but actually change. Species are connected through intermediate types to other species—and all are ultimately related to one another.

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Teleological Thinking. Essentialism is just one basic cognitive trait, observed in young children, that seems to hinder evolutionary thinking. Another is "teleology," or the tendency to ascribe purposes to things and objects so as to assume they exist to serve some goal.
Recent research suggests that 4 and 5 year old children are highly teleological in their thinking, tending to opine, for instance, that clouds are "for raining" and that the purpose of lions is "to go in the zoo." The same tendency has been observed in 7 and 8 year olds who, when asked why "prehistoric rocks are pointy," offered answers like "so that animals could scratch on them when they got itchy" and "so that animals wouldn't sit on them and smash them."

Title page of the Reverend William Paley's 1802 work Natural Theology, which famously propounded an argument for God's existence based on the appearance of design in nature. Wikimedia Commons

Why do children think like this? One study speculates that this teleological disposition may be a "side [effect] of a socially intelligent mind that is naturally inclined to privilege intentional explanation." In other words, our brains developed for thinking about what people are thinking, and people have intentions and goals. If that's right, the playing field may be naturally tilted toward anti-evolutionist doctrines like "intelligent design," which postulates an intelligent agent (God) as the cause of the diversity of life on Earth, and seeks  to uncover evidence of purposeful design in biological organisms.
Overactive Agency Detection. But how do you know the designer is "God"? That too may be the result of a default brain setting.
Another trait, closely related to teleological thinking, is our tendency to treat any number of inanimate objects as if they have minds and intentions. Examples of faulty agency detection, explains University of British Columbia origins of religion scholar Ara Norenzayan, range from seeing "faces in the clouds" to "getting really angry at your computer when it starts to malfunction." People engage in such "anthropomorphizing" all the time; it seems to come naturally. And it's a short step to religion: "When people anthropomorphize gods, they are inferring mental states," says Norenzayan.
There has been much speculation about the evolutionary origin of our anthropomorphizing tendency. One idea is that our brains developed to rapidly assume that objects in the world are alive and may pose a threat, simply because while wrongly mistaking a rustle of leaves for a bear won't get you killed, failing to detect a bear early (when the leaves rustle) most certainly will. "Supernatural agents are readily conjured up because natural selection has trip-wired cognitive schema for agency detection in the face of uncertainty," write Norenzayan and fellow origin of religion scholar Scott Atran.

Illustration by Rene Descartes of the pineal gland, which he believed to be the location of the soul within the brain. Wikimedia Commons

Dualism. Yet another apparent feature of our cognitive architecture is the tendency to think that minds (or the "self" and the "soul") are somehow separate from brains. Once again, this inclination has been found in young children, suggesting that it emerges early in human development. "Preschool children will claim that the brain is responsible for some aspects of mental life, typically those involving deliberative mental work, such as solving math problems," write Yale psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. "But preschoolers will also claim that the brain is not involved in a host of other activities, such as pretending to be a kangaroo, loving one's brother, or brushing one's teeth."
Dualistic thinking is closely related to belief in phenomena like spirits and ghosts. But in a recent study, it was also the cognitive factor most strongly associated with believing in God. As for evolutionary science? Dualism is pretty clearly implicated in resistance to the idea that human beings could have developed from purely natural processes—for if they did, how could there ever be a soul or self beyond the body, to say nothing of an afterlife?
Inability to Comprehend Vast Time Scales. According to Norenzayan, there's one more basic cognitive factor that prevents us from easily understanding evolution. Evolution occurred due to the accumulation of many small changes over vast time periods—which means that it is unlike anything we've experienced. So even thinking about it isn't very easy. "The only way you can appreciate the process of evolution is in an abstract way," says Norenzayan. "Over millions of years, small changes accumulate, but it's not intuitive. There's nothing in our brain that says that's true. We have to override our incredulity."
Group Morality and Tribalism. All of these cognitive factors seem to make evolution hard to grasp, even as they render religion (or creationist ideas) simpler and more natural to us. But beyond these cognitive factors, there are also emotional reasons why a lot of people don't want to believe in evolution. When we see resistance to its teaching, after all, it is usually because a religious community fears that this body of science will undermine a belief system—in the US, usually fundamentalist Christianity—deemed to serve as the foundation for shared values and understanding. In other words, evolution is resisted because it is perceived as a threat to the group.
So how appropriate that one current scientific theory about religion is that it exists (and, maybe, that it evolved) to bind groups together and keep them cohesive. In his recent book The Righteous Mind, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that religions provide a shared set of beliefs and practices that, in effect, serve as social glue. "Gods and religions," writes Haidt, "are group-level adaptations for producing cohesiveness and trust." The upside is unity; the downside, Haidt continues, is "groupishness, tribalism, and nationalism." Ideas and beliefs that threaten the group or the beliefs that hold it together—ideas like evolution—are bound to fare badly in this context.

Everett Collection/Shutterstock

Fear and the Need for Certainty. Finally, there appears to be something about fear and doubt that impels religiosity and dispels acceptance of evolution. "People seem to take more comfort from a stance that says, someone designed the world with good intentions, instead of that the world is just an intention-less, random place," says Norenzayan. "This is especially true when we feel a sense of threat, or a feeling of not being in control."
Indeed, in one amazing study, New Zealanders who had just suffered through a severe earthquake showed stronger religiosity, but only if they had been directly affected by the quake. Other research suggests that making people think about death increases their religiosity and also decreases evolution acceptance. It's not just death: It's also randomness, disorder. In one telling study, research participants who were asked to think of a situation in which they had lacked control and then to "provide three reasons supporting the notion that the future is (un-) controllable," showed a marked decline in their acceptance of evolution, opting instead for an intelligent design-style explanation. (Another study found that anti-evolutionists displayed higher fear sensitivity and a trait called the "need for cognitive closure," which describes a psychological need to find an answer that can resolve uncertainty and dispel doubt.)
Such is the research, and it's important to point out a few caveats. First, this doesn't mean science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. The conflict may run very deep indeed, but nevertheless, some individuals can and do find a way to retain their religious beliefs and also accept evolution—including the aforementioned biology textbook author Kenneth Miller of Brown University, a Catholic.
Second, while there are many reasons to think that the traits above comprise a core part of who we are, it doesn't automatically follow that religion is the direct result of evolution by natural selection. It is also possible that religion arises as a byproduct of more basic traits that were, in turn, selected for because they conferred greater fitness (such as agency detection). This "byproduct" view is defended by Steven Pinker here.
In any event, the evidence is clear that both our cognitive architecture, and also our emotional dispositions, make it difficult or unnatural for many people to accept evolution. "Natural selection is like quantum physics...we might intellectually grasp it, with considerable effort, but it will never feel right to us," writes the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. Often, people express surprise that in an age so suffused with science, science causes so much angst and resistance.
Perhaps more surprising would be if it didn't.
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Chris Mooney

CorrespondentChris Mooney is a science and political journalist, podcaster, and the host of Climate Desk Live. He is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science 

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Ted Cruz Quite Possibly Just Made His Most Ridiculous Statement — Ever

November 26, 2013

By Allen Clifton


It’s no secret that I absolutely cannot stand Texas Senator Ted Cruz.  I still go back and forth between him and Sarah Palin when trying to figure out who I loathe more.  Currently the edge goes to Cruz simply because he’s actually a senator, whereas Sarah Palin is nothing more than a failed vice presidential candidate and the Alaska governor who quit before her first term was up.
That being said, it’s not difficult at all to find ample quotes from Ted Cruz that are completely absurd.
But while there are plenty of quotes proving Ted Cruz is an idiot, the context of his recent comments about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid using the “nuclear option” to change the rules of the Senate might just be his most ridiculous ever.
During an exchange with Bloomberg News’ Al Hunt, Hunt asked Cruz about the change in the rules made by Senator Reid:

Hunt: Will it complicate passing budgets or debt ceilings or anything?
Cruz: Of course it will. I mean, it will poison the atmosphere of the Senate.

Yes, that’s Ted Cruz accusing Harry Reid and Democrats of poisoning the atmosphere of the Senate.  The guy who many within his own party can’t stand.  The man who staged a fake 21-hour filibuster where he tried to compare “Obamacare” to Darth Vader and misconstrued the meaning of Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor.  The same Senator who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to force a government shutdown, knowing that it stood absolutely zero chance at accomplishing his ridiculous “goal.”
The same Senator Cruz who, in his very brief time in the United States Senate, has done absolutely nothing except use his position as senator to set himself up for a 2016 presidential bid – at the cost of the taxpayers, of course.
Ted Cruz epitomizes “poison” in the Senate.  It’s clear to anyone with any kind of common sense that Cruz only ran for the Senate because he had presidential ambitions for 2016 and needed a way to get his name known to voters.  And since his election he’s taken up the strategy that the only thing he’ll do is pander to the tea party, hoping that if he builds enough support with far-right Republicans, he’ll set himself up to claim the GOP nomination in 2016.
But like I said, you don’t have to believe me – many within his own party can’t even stand him.  Look at how quickly many leading Republicans emphatically denounced the idea of shutting down the government again once another vote on the budget will have to be held in a couple of months.
So while what he said wasn’t the most asinine thing he’s ever said, the context behind what he expressed might just be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard him say.
Of all people, for Ted Cruz to accuse anyone of introducing poisonous behavior in the Senate could be a definition for hypocrisy.  And while this just might rank at the top of my list for ridiculous comments from the Texas senator, I’m sure it won’t be long before he says something else outrageous to trump its stupidity.

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20 Clues that you not a Progressive

by Grace Kelly on November 26, 2013 

 

Just like “Jesus” has become a label to pin on without bothering to help the poor, “progressive” has also become a label to pin on for popularity. These personal thoughts would be clues that you not a Progressive candidate.

1) When I run for office, I will have a focus group decide my stances on issues.
2) I am a nice person, why would I want to disagree with someone?
3) Education on issues is for lobbyists not elected officials.
4) Do I look good?
5) I won. Now my job is keeping my job.
6) In public I recycle, in private I won’t bother.
7) I think climate change will not significantly impact my personal life.
8) On issues, I will look for big media win possibilities and ignore incremental media-invisible win possibilities.
9) Smiling and smoozing are my important assets.
9) Hanging out with the 1% is proving one has made it in life.
10) What’s all the hype about people having to work on Thanksgiving?
11) Those long documents on issues that everyone sends are so boring.
12) I will let my assistant handle the correspondence on all the non-important people.
13) Republicans get to drive the more fun cars.
14) I wonder what office I could run for next?
15) I love that audience when I speak. It is good to be loved back.
16) I wonder if I can get one of those free nifty trips.
17) Isn’t great how neat and clean my desk is?
18) Enough on issues, can we talk about the Vikings now?
19) I have wait to the end of the vote, to see what is my best strategic move.
20) Someone at my door, another opportunity to get something.

Feel free to add in the comments, what you have heard from non-progressive candidates.

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The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians 

 

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Tuesday, November, 26th, 2013, 7:28 am

It is instructive that Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin (retired), who now works as the Family Research Council’s executive vice president, cares more about what Jesus looked like than what Jesus taught.
Boykin, another one of those who says Islam is not entitled to First Amendment protections, and thinks God, not the American people, chooses our presidents, told the audience of a Men’s Prayer Breakfast at William Jessup University, that,

[Jesus] was a man. He was a man’s man, but we feminized him in the church…he was a tough guy and that’s the Jesus that I want to be like. That’s the side that I want to be like. But we’ve feminized Jesus in the church and the men can’t identify with him anymore; not the kind of men that I want to hang out with, they can’t identify with this effeminate Jesus that we’ve tried to portray. He was a tough guy. He was a man’s man.

For Boykin it was bromance at first sight and perhaps a wee bit of latent homosexuality as he waxed over Jesus’ “big, bulging biceps…thin waist” and “strong shoulders” (Who knew Jesus was the Marlboro man?)
Boykin’s accidental outing of himself aside, we don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. But we do know that he was not the strangely Germanic blond guy of popular imagination. He was a dark-skinned Semite:

There is also no doubt that Jesus smelled bad. They didn’t have deodorant in the first century of the Common Era so Jesus smelled bad, Peter smelled bad, Pontius Pilate smelled bad, Caiaphas smelled bad, the guys who nailed Jesus to the cross smelled bad, and so did the two rebels he was executed with and the people who watched, including Jesus’ mother. We get that. But smelling bad doesn’t make you a man when everyone – women included – smells bad. This sort of reasoning is why Boykin is working for the FRC.
We get that too.
But it’s a shame Boykin and the FRC care more about what Jesus smelled and looked like than they do the important things, like what Jesus taught about the poor coming first and the rich, having sold their souls to the dark powers that ruled the age to become rich, coming last. That would be swell, but people like Boykin prefer the Weaponized Jesus of the twenty first century to the apocalyptic prophet of the first.
Jesus is often portrayed as a carpenter but he might well have been, like Socrates, a stone mason, since the word used, in Mark 6:3, τέκτων (tekton), means only that he made things with his hands; it does not specify which craft he practiced. So yes, he would have been a hardy, no doubt muscular fellow, though Geza Vermes, whom I often cite here, points out that the language used – “son of a carpenter” – is used in the Talmud to mean somebody who is “learned” and therefore might have simply signified that Jesus was wise. Of course, we already figured that out, given what he said about rich people chances of getting into heaven (Matthew 19:24).
He might have been big, strapping, smelly AND wise. We’ll just never know. And it really doesn’t matter.
And that is because most of us would agree that what Jesus said was more important than what he looked like. Think about the Beatitudes and Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) and think about them particularly in terms of what President Barack Obama has accomplished with regards Iran and its nuclear program.
Because it is Obama the Republican response was automatically negative but their response should have been to remember Jesus’ words, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
What we get instead is Bryan Fischer proclaiming that God will curse America for making a deal with Iran. Fischer forgets Jesus entirely and goes all Old Testament on us:

What he cursed us with are people like Bryan Fischer and Jerry Boykin and groups like the Christian America Patriots Militia, who have been claiming that Jesus and the Second Amendment together gives them the right to assassinate the president.
If Republicans really cared about Jesus, and what Jesus taught, they would be talking less about their Savior’s manly odor, flip open the New Testament that supposedly informs their beliefs, and realize that having done what Jesus wanted, Obama is blessed, not cursed, and that even if he does something you don’t like, you forgive him, not kill him.
It is too much to say that Jesus would say he wants his religion back. It was never his religion to begin with, after all. It is beyond contestation that Jesus was a Jew who preached an apocalyptic message to the Jews, that he ignored the Gentiles (Pagans) and not only ignored them, but told his disciples to avoid them, referring to Gentiles in true Jewish fashion as “dogs” and “swine” (Matthew 7:6).
Jesus did not invent Christianity. Christianity is a religion that was invented about Jesus, based, allegedly, on his teachings and not his appearance. But Jesus would certainly want those teachings heeded. He did not walk all over a Galilee infested with bandits, rebels, Herodians, and Romans, just for yucks. It was hot, dangerous – and smelly, after all.
We have to assume (assuming a historical Jesus in the first place) that he was serious about what he said.
He died for it, after all.
Whether Jesus was right or wrong about what he taught, whether he was an illiterate Galilean craftsman or divine, he died miserably and in great agony on the cross. And in at least one of the mutually contradictory versions of his death, he told his Father to “forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He did not say “nuke ‘em till they glow” or “bomb them into the Stone Age,” like would a Republican.
We should respect that, Christian or otherwise.
But Jerry Boykin and his ilk have no genuine respect for Jesus. Jesus has become “weaponized” – a club used to bludgeon enemies. This is not at all what Jesus would have wanted, since he said to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) and that if somebody steals your shirt to give them your cloak as well (Matthew 5:40) and to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).
The only weapon here is love.
But conservatives hate that Jesus. Hate is more their speed. Old Testament wrath. A god who tosses nukes with his fingertips. That god profits them and their friends in the military industrial complex. That’s a Jesus they can get behind. That’s the Jesus Boykin really loves with all his manly man’s heart.
Unfortunately, that’s not the Jesus in the gospels, which is, after all, supposed to be a good message, not a bad.
The thing is, if Christianity is a religion about what Jesus taught, then these people on the Religious Right are not Christians at all. How much greater their crime if they claim Jesus actually created Christianity.
Yes, I do think Jesus would want his gospel heeded if he put in an appearance today. And I suspect he would have a few words for the dogs and swine on the Religious Right who have been masquerading as followers of the rabbi from Galilee.

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Tue, Nov 26th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

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Palin: Half-Term Half-Wit God ‘blessed’ with me a platform on Fox News to defend myself

Palin: God ‘blessed’ with me a platform on Fox News to defend myself (via Raw Story )

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday defended colleague Sarah Palin said that he found comparisons between federal debt to human slavery to be “fairly unobjectionable.” Earlier this month, MSNBC host Martin Bashir had blasted Palin after a speech…

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Heart of Darkness: Criminal Investigation of WI Recall $

Heart of Darkness: Criminal Investigation of WI Recall $

Posted by Mary Bottari on November 25, 2013

 

 

The post-Citizens United dark money showdown is underway in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin makes sense. In November 2010, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker swept to power at a time of economic turmoil with a promise to create 250,000 jobs. Instead, with Republican control of both houses, he passed a bill knee-capping public-sector unions, sparking an 18-day occupation of the Capitol and weeks of mass protests, regularly topping 100,000.
The controversy immediately kicked off a struggle for control of the Wisconsin Senate. Between 2011 and 2012 Wisconsin voters across the state knocked on doors, circulated recall petitions, and put an unprecedented number of state officials up for recall. Thirteen state senators eventually faced recall elections. Close to one million people signed recall petitions for the Governor and Lt. Governor, and even before an election was certified, outside money began to saturate the state.  $137.5 million is estimated to have been spent on the recalls in total, the vast majority from out-of-state players.
The source of much of that spending remains unknown. Millions were spent in by "dark money" nonprofits -- most of them organized under 501(c)(4) of the tax code -- that allow deep pocketed donors to hide their identity. These groups spent boatloads, but attempted to evaded state disclosure laws by running phony issue ads that do not expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. These nonprofits are supposed to be social welfare groups, and cannot exist for the "primary purpose" of participating in political activity. Many have interpreted this to mean that no more than 49 percent of their funds can be spent on "issue" advertising.
Dozens of 501(c)(4)s spent huge sums in defense of Team Walker. Not only did they not disclose their donors, they engaged in a dizzying array of fund transfers, spelled out by my colleague Brendan Fischer at the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch, perhaps in an effort to stay under the 49 percent line.
These groups played big in the election along with Walker's own campaign committee and the Republican Governors Association, which dropped $9 million on what are called "independent expenditures." Independent expenditure groups are required to register with the state and swear an oath not to coordinate with candidates under Wisconsin law 11.06 (7).
As the funds flooded the state, no one was checking to see if the diversity of groups were playing by the rules. But now someone may be doing just that. In the past few months, a special prosecutor with Republican credentials has issued dozens of subpoenas reportedly related to the recall spending. Because of Wisconsin's unusual "John Doe" statute and its secrecy rules, little is known about the grounds of the investigation, although some reports say prosecutors are looking at illegal coordination between candidates and purportedly "independent" groups.

News Breaks of Criminal Probe into Recall Spending

A John Doe investigation is Wisconsin's version of a grand jury, where subpoenas can be issued and testimony can be compelled behind closed doors. There is no jury, just a judge overseeing proceedings under strict secrecy rules. According to news reports, a high-powered special prosecutor Francis Schmitz (who spent many years as a counter terrorism investigator) is in charge. The right-wing press fails to admit it, but Schmitz has bona fide Republican credentials having once been a finalist for appointment as the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee during President George W. Bush's administration.
News reports indicate that Schmitz could be delving into "illegal coordination" between the groups based on evidence that came out of an earlier John Doe probe into Scott Walker 2010 race for governor. But because of the secrecy of the proceedings few know the exact nature of the probe and other laws, outside of campaign finance laws could be implicated.
Although the right-wing media likes to portray the previous John Doe probe as a witch hunt that came to naught, in fact six people were found guilty of felony and misdemeanor crimes and many -- including two top aides of then-County Executive Scott Walker -- will be spending quite a bit of time in the pokey. The convictions included various charges, but the allegation that county employees set up and operated a secret Wi-Fi system to raise campaign funds while on the taxpayer payroll, netted two convictions. (See our history of the case, revelatory Walker emails, and the stunning charging documents.) This aspect of the investigation closed in March with no charges against Walker himself or his political campaign committee.
While rumors of a new John Doe had been circulating for weeks, Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel nailed it on October 24, breaking the story and confirming a five-county investigation. Why five counties? Bice cites a new Wisconsin law that allows legislators to be tried in their own counties, away from "liberal" Madison judges. The law was passed after the last Speaker of the Assembly, Scott Jensen, was charged with felony crimes and wanted to be tried in conservative Waukesha, a move that ultimately worked out well for him.
The right-wing site the Wisconsin Reporter, quickly picked up the story, citing unnamed sources to report that three groups were implicated in the investigation, including the Republican Governors Association, the Club for Growth, and David Koch's Americans for Prosperity. But the Wall Street Journal editorial board later expanded that list, naming some 29 groups (all Republican, mostly 501(c)(4)s), and the Walker campaign itself.
The Wall Street Journal put Wisconsin's Eric O'Keefe on the record as saying he received a subpoena in the John Doe. O'Keefe is an old Koch buddy going back to the days when David Koch ran for Vice President of the United States, bankrolling the Libertarian ticket in 1980. He helped create the Sam Adams Alliance, which trains Tea Party activists, and he is a co-founder of the SuperPac called the Campaign for Primary Accountability and is on the board of directors of Wisconsin's Club for Growth. He was spotted jetting around with Walker as the governor traveled the country raising funds for his recall fight.
O'Keefe's comments put Wisconsin Club for Growth at the center of the controversy. RJ Johnson, a longtime Republican operative, often cited in the press as "an official" at Wisconsin Club for Growth, is a close friend of Walker's -- named as his "chief political strategist" in Walker's new book Unintimidated. Club for Growth also spent an estimated $9 million on the recalls, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Just days after Walker "dropped the bomb" and unveiled his union-busting budget repair bill, Club for Growth was up on air with TV and radio ads praising Walker and attacking public employees. When Walker's popularity plummeted, RJ Johnson advised Walker to get the bill passed "as soon as possible," Walker writes in Unintimidated.
The Wall Street Journal has spun the John Doe as an attack on free speech, a line that was immediately picked up by the echo-chamber on the right. Wall Street Journal board member and political operative Stephen Moore is a founder of Club for Growth and also served on the board of Donors Capital's dark money machine. He is also an ALEC "scholar" who helps to write and produce ALEC's debunked "Rich States, Poor States" report.
O'Keefe's move to break the story with friends at the Journal seemed foolish to some, as he could face sanctions under the John Doe, but he no doubt has the confidence of a man with a lot of money and quite a few lawyers ready to go to the wall on the all "money is free speech" theory.

Dark Money Hires Powerhouse Lawyers

The whole John Doe became much more interesting when the roster of high-powered defense attorneys moved to kill it. Madison's Dean Strang asked the Court of Appeals to halt the investigation on a number of grounds, but the appellate court rejected some of his claims out of hand and asked for more information on others. The Court of Appeals made the unusual decision to unseal its ruling in the case, bringing a welcome degree of transparency to the proceedings.
Strang is a highly respected criminal defense attorney. His most recent high-profile client was Steven Avery, who was jailed for murdering a young photographer shortly after being released from prison and declared innocent in another crime. Strang is also credited with setting up Wisconsin's Federal Defenders program. This is not his first foray into the world of campaign finance, he also represented railroad magnate William Gardner, who was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to Walker in the first John Doe case. Gardner hid his identity by funneling funds to friends and employees asking them to hand over fat checks to Walker, thereby exceeding the state's campaign contribution limits. It's possible that more of this type of activity has been uncovered in the John Doe.
Joining Strang in representing the posse of groups under investigation are Todd P. Graves and Edward D. Greim, Tea Party attorneys from Kansas (home of Koch Industries). Grime and Graves are representing Tea Party groups and the Texas Public Policy Institute that are angry at the IRS for their clunky targeting of groups with political sounding names during their application process for tax-free status in the 2012 election cycle. Todd Graves was one of the six U.S. Attorneys improperly fired by the Bush White House in 2006 in order to pave the way for more political appointees.
Another prominent attorney with clients in the case is Michael Bresnick, a Washington, DC, lawyer who was the head of President Barack Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force that netted the $13 billion dollar settlement against JP Morgan Chase.
James Bopp, Jr., the Dean of Darkness who has spent 30 years challenging federal and state campaign finance laws, has joined the fray. Bopp is the mastermind behind the Citizens United case, which likened non-profit group spending on issues ads to free speech and opened the flood gates for undisclosed corporate spending in elections. He is also behind the latest Supreme Court case on election spending, McCutcheon, which could erase limits on individual campaign donations. As the primary proponent of the "money is speech theory" to challenging clean election laws, Bopp thinks that anyone should be able to spend any amount they want in any election and that there is no reason for disclosure because "the vast majority of people don't care," he says.
Bopp may think he has his finger on the pulse, but he neglects to mention that every time the issue is put on the ballot, citizen's vote overwhelmingly for disclosure, for an end to big money politics and even for overturning his Citizens United case. So far, more than 16 states and more than 500 communities have taken a stand against Bopp's "money is speech" theory.

Dark Money Press Ramps Up the Intimidation

Dan Bice, the 20-year veteran of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who broke the news of both John Does, is being slammed by right-wing media spinning the probe as a "witch hunt" and a "vendetta." His report of a major investigation underway in the state was called as "low point in the history of modern journalism," on the Journal's right-wing news site called RightWisconsin. Notably, RightWisconsin was launched with a handout from Club for Growth. Fortunately, the Journal Sentinel is unlikely to toss overboard the award-winning reporter who is one of the only people left in the state who actually breaks news.
Initially led by Milwaukee County prosecutors, the investigation is now being headed up by another big gun, former federal prosecutor Schmitz. Because he prosecuted terrorists for a living, Schmitz snapshot is not easily available online, prompting one reporter to hand draw a goofy portrait of him. Schmidt should be ready to have his house staked out and photos of him picking up the newspaper in his jammies published. During the last John Doe, the right-wing press made a big deal of the yard signs posted by one of the prosecutor's wives.
So far there have been no reports of any Democratic groups being investigated, which is not conclusive. The Democrats had a number of independent expenditure groups on their side, but spent very little through any of the controversial 501(c)(4)s. This chart by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign shows the players and how much they spent or were estimated to have spent.
Illegal coordination is rarely charged in Wisconsin. Common Cause state director Jay Heck points to a 1997 case that netted big fines for the players. In 1997, former state Supreme Court Justice John Wilcox settled a suit that charged that his campaign had illegally coordinated with an independent expenditure group. He and his campaign manager, Mark Block, were fined and Block was barred from working on any state campaigns for seven years. Block went on to work for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity and run the Herman Cain presidential campaign in 2011 (the Center for Media and Democracy initiated a request with the IRS to investigate Block's use of a separate charity to help fund Cain campaign trips).
With regard to Bopp, Heck has this to say. In all of his years as an advocate for clean and open government, Heck says he has "never come across a Wisconsinite who said they wanted to know less about money in politics, they always want to know more" about the forces shaping their democracy.
For his part, Walker is staying mum. This week Walker told Bice, "To me, I'm leaving it up to the people who are authorized to talk about it." Walker said: "If you know anything about it, then you are legally prohibited from talking about it. If you don't know anything about it, you shouldn't be talking about it."
"So either way, I'm not going to talk about it."

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10 Weirdest Fundamentalist Christian Conspiracy Theories

The world of fundamentalist Christians is crawling with conspiracy theories, urban legends, and just plain bizarre beliefs.

AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte

 

For the Christian right, having a “faith-based” worldview extends far beyond claims about demons and angels. Unsurprisingly, the world of fundamentalist Christians is absolutely crawling with conspiracy theories, urban legends, and just plain bizarre beliefs about how the world works. Here’s a list of 10 of the weirder ones are currently in circulation.
1) Same-sex marriage is an elaborate scheme concocted by lesbians to entrap men. David Usher of the Center for Marriage Policy managed to cough up a theory that is an outstanding blend of homophobia, misogynist myths about the mendacity of women, and paranoia about the supposed gravy train that is child support. He argues that women will marry each other and conscript men into supporting them by “pretending they are using birth control when they are not.” The men will then “become economically conscripted third parties to these marriages, but get nothing in return,” presumably because the only reason a man would want to care for his own children would be in exchange for sex and housework. He also assumes that the only sources of income women have access to are child support and welfare; the possibility that women hold jobs doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Usher is trying to find a way to justify the increasingly ridiculous right-wing claim that same-sex marriage is somehow undermining “traditional” heterosexual marriage. He has zero-evidence for his claim outside of his belief that women are generally sleazy liars, and will “cheat” men out of the straight marriages they’re entitled to by sneaking off with women.
2) Planned Parenthood is trying to get kids “hooked” on sex. The anti-choice organization American Life League has been peddling the idea for a long time now that Planned Parenthood works like a mythical drug dealer, but with sex. The theory, summarized in this amazing video, goes like this: Planned Parenthood lures otherwise asexual young people into thinking sex is fun (something they are dead certain that you would never, ever think if not for Planned Parenthood). They then trick them into having sex by telling them contraception works, but (evil laugh), the contraception doesn’t work and the young people get pregnant and have to have abortions. Which means profit for Planned Parenthood! This neat little theory requires ignoring both the fact that Planned Parenthood is a non-profit and that the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that contraception does work, but ignoring facts and evidence is what the Christian right does best.
3) Gay men wear special rings for the sole purpose of giving innocent straights HIV. This one was trotted out recently by everyone’s favorite disseminator of Christian right urban legends, Pat Robertson. “You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there they want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” he explained, suggesting there’s a serial killing ring of gay men who kill with HIV for reasons undetermined. Robertson backpedaled, but as Anderson Cooper suggested, only because he got caught.
4) The abortion-mad Chinese eat human fetuses. This one is popular in anti-choice circles, because it hits both the abortion-obsessed and racist sweet spots. The claim is sometimes that the Chinese eat “fetus soup” as an aphrodisiac, because concern that other people are enjoying sex too much is always part and parcel of any anti-choice urban legend. This obviously false bit of racist propaganda is spread mostly through email, though prominent anti-choice activists like Jill Stanek have also perpetuated it.
5) Crazed liberals in Illinois want to teach 5-year-olds how to have sex.A Chicago school district has implemented a mandatory sex education program for each grade level, leading Christian right publications to accuse the district of practicing “pedophilia” by trying to get kindergartners to think about “sex and sexual acts.” While it’s no surprise that fundamentalists love the opportunity to titillate and outrage themselves by imagining kids getting blow job lessons, the reality is much more mundane….and pedophilia-preventive. Lessons for kindergarten and first grade will simply be about anatomy, with an emphasis on learning the difference between “good touch vs. bad touch,” specifically so children who are targeted by pedophiles know to report what’s happened. But perpetuating the belief that evil pervert liberals are targeting innocent children clearly matters more to the Christian right than stopping real-life perverts who are actually targeting children.
6) Obama is the Antichrist and plans to rule America by sharia law. Even though you’d think Obama would be getting on with this plan already instead of wasting time talking about bombing Syria, the belief that any day now a combination of sharia law and the apocalypse will be brought on by Obama still rules in Christian right circles. Public Policy Polling found that an alarming 13 percent of Americans are sure Obama is the Antichrist and another 13 percent entertained the possibility. Christian right-wingers are always on the lookout for “evidence” that Obama’s secret sharia plan is about to take off, leading to headlines likes this one from Breitbart.com: “Obama administration paves the way for sharia law.”
7) Charles Darwin took it all back the day he died. This one has been around since the 19th century, but still has a significant amount of play on the Christian right, as part of the ur-conspiracy theory which holds that scientists are just making up evolutionary theory as part of a grand atheist conspiracy conducted for reasons unknown. Interestingly, this is one legend leaders in the Christian right have been trying to put to bed recently, with even the group Answers In Genesis—which believes that dinosaurs and humans lived in harmony together—denying that Darwin recanted his atheistic views on his deathbed.
8) JK Rowling is trying to lure your children into Satanism with her Harry Potter books. Hardline Christian conservatives have always been afraid pop culture is a conspiracy of Satan’s to attract impressionable young people, so it’s unsurprising that Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with its portrayal of fantasy magic, made the top of the list of products to be feared. The hysteria hit a peak in 2001, with fundamentalist activists accusing the books of trying to “desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult” and “trafficking in evil spirits.” Things were made worse when the Onion published a satirical article Christian conservatives didn’t realize was satire, causing them to literally believe young kids told the Onion things like, “But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies.” The furor has died down somewhat, but plenty of evangelical leaders still routinely claim demons can possess your body if you read Harry Potter.
9) Pro-choicers in Texas were planning to pelt the state senate with jars of feces. This one rose up and was debunked within the space of six weeks over this summer of 2013. The claim, which unfortunately was given credence by the Texas Department of Public Safety back in July, was that evil pro-choicers were planning to sneak jars of poop into the debate and were only stopped by brave, poop-confiscating lawmakers. Eventually, the TX DPS reluctantly handed its actual documents regarding the protests over and sure enough, there is no evidence outside of urban legend-mongering from conservatives that there were any jars of any human waste whatsoever. Unfortunately, the legend was already out and circulating.
Humorless fundies are also perpetuating the claim that there was Satan-worshipping from pro-choicers at the protests, even though a cursory perusal of the evidence shows that the shouts of “hail Satan” were not a prayer so much as a joke aimed squarely at the Christian right protesters.
10) Birth control pill turns your uterus into a grave littered with teeny-weeny corpses of fully formed babies.Kevin Swanson, Christian right talk show host, expelled this one recently, claiming that “certain doctors and certain scientists” are finding that women on the pill have, “these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb.” An evocative image, albeit one that requires not only falsely believing the pill “kills” embryos (it works by suppressing ovulation), but also simply refusing to believe that menstruation actually exists.
These are just a sampling of the stories you’ll hear in hushed, can-you-believe-it tones in Christian right circles, where the urban legend is a primary form of communication.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

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Fox News host: Obamacare ‘touches so many people’s lives’ unlike ‘Katrina or the Iraq war’

Fox News host: Obamacare ‘touches so many people’s lives’ unlike ‘Katrina or the Iraq war’ (via Raw Story )

Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Monday suggested that President Barack Obama’s health care law was even worse than devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina or the Iraq War because it “touches so many people’s lives.” In a segment on America…

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High-powered attorneys line up in John Doe case

Todd Graves

 DEE J. HALL | Wisconsin State Journal | dhall@madison.com | 608-252-6132



The identities of the three people seeking to stop the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and more than two dozen conservative political groups remain a secret.

But the names of their seven attorneys are public, and it’s an impressive list. It includes a former U.S. attorney in Missouri, one of Madison’s top criminal defense lawyers and the former head of the federal task force investigating financial fraud by the nation’s major banks.

Five petitions were filed last week seeking to halt the secret investigation launched in February 2012 in Milwaukee County that has spread to Dane, Iowa, Dodge and Columbia counties. The petitions were filed in the 4th District Court of Appeals against Reserve Judge Gregory Peterson, who is overseeing the probe.

Investigators are looking into recall-related activities by Walker’s campaign, unnamed legislative leaders and 29 Republican and local and national conservative groups, including the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Unnamed petitioner No. 1

The attorney for the first unnamed petitioner is Dean Strang, a well-known Madison criminal defense lawyer who represented William Gardner, then-owner of Wisconsin and Southern Railroad, in the first John Doe investigation covering activities when Walker was the Milwaukee County executive. Gardner pleaded guilty to evading campaign finance laws by laundering his contributions to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign and others through Wisconsin and Southern employees.

Strang also has represented Steven Avery, who was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault who was freed but then later convicted of murder; and Eugene Zapata, who confessed to killing his wife 31 years after she disappeared in Madison. Strang also was co-counsel on the landmark 2005 case, United States vs. Booker, that declared mandatory federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional.

Unnamed petitioner No. 2

Representing unnamed petitioner No. 2 is Milwaukee attorney Matthew O’Neill, who was part of the legal team that helped former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen overturn his 2006 felony convictions related to illegal campaign activity. Jensen got the case transferred to Waukesha County, where District Attorney Brad Schimel, a candidate for attorney general, agreed to dismiss the case in exchange for a $5,000 fine and a $67,000 repayment to the state for legal fees. Among O’Neill’s specialties listed on the Fox O’Neill Shannon law firm website are campaign and election law.

Other attorneys representing unnamed petitioner No. 2 are Todd Graves and Edward Greim, who practice with the firm of Graves Garrett in Kansas City, Mo. Greim specializes in free speech and election law, including launching “numerous” constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws, according to the firm’s website. Greim also oversaw the internal investigation into the handling of clergy sexual abuse by the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Graves is the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Graves lists expertise including white-collar criminal defense, political speech and election law. Graves was among a group of nine U.S. attorneys fired by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in what was seen as political retribution.

A U.S. Department of Justice investigation later concluded that Graves’ 2006 ouster stemmed from a spat between staff members for Graves’ brother, a Republican congressman from Missouri, and the staff of Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

In May, after his firm landed a contract to investigate Missouri’s handing of personal information of gun permit holders, Graves told the Kansas City Business Journal, “We’ve become the go-to Republican firm.”

Unnamed petitioner No. 3

Three attorneys -- Edward H. Meyers, Philip O'Beirne and Michael Bresnick -- are listed as representing the second unnamed petitioner, all from the Washington, D.C., law firm of Stein Mitchell Muse & Cippollone.

Meyers is a civil attorney whose biography lists him as counsel for “an international construction company in an arbitration of the largest construction project in the history of Wisconsin.”

Bechtel Power Corp. had filed a claim for $515 million with We Energies, saying labor- and weather-related factors had increased the cost of building two coal-fired power plants in Oak Creek.

The $2.2 billion behemoth was described as the most expensive construction project in state history. The companies reached settlement in 2009 following arbitration, with We Energies agreeing to pay Bechtel $72 million more to compensate for the added costs.

O’Beirne’s specialties include handling complex litigation, including white-collar criminal defense. He also worked as a military prosecutor in the high-profile 2010 case of an Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States and thus eligible to be commander in chief. Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to six months’ incarceration.

Also representing the third unnamed petitioner is former top U.S. Department of Justice attorney Michael Bresnick. Bresnick joined the Stein Mitchell firm in Washington, D.C., in August after serving as the executive director of Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.

That organization last week reached a $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase for misrepresenting the value and security of mortgage-backed securities, actions that helped plunge the U.S. economy into recession.

The task force describes the deal as “the largest settlement with a single entity in American history.”

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to accurately reflect the lawyers representing each petitioner. Online court records used for the original version of this story were incorrect.

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Fox: We’ve ‘Gone Six Years With Almost No Criticism Of The President.’

November 22, 2013 | Filed under: Fox News,Racial Issues | Posted by: Miranda Burbank

 

The brain trust known as Fox & Friends had a scintillating conversation on the topic of racism on Thursday when they complained that calling people’s response to President Obama “racist,” is unfair. they also claimed that while we’ve been free to criticize all previous presidents, because of accusations of racism, Obama’s gone almost without criticism.
The topic was prompted by a claim Oprah made with the BBC, saying that, “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even in many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that, and it’s the kind of thing that nobody ever says but everybody is thinking it.”
That, of course, resulted in the usual chorus of the newest conservative mantra, which is, to point out racism is the most racist thing of all.

“Do you see racism when Harry Reid called President Bush a loser? Is that respect for the office?” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked. “Bill Clinton was impeached for his actions in the office? Is that racist?”
“I don’t know that Barack Obama could have been elected president if he was living in a racist nation,” co-host Steve Doocy opined. “Are there racists out there? Absolutely. Is it a majority of people? No. A majority of the people, according to the polls, simply don’t like his policies.”
“And certainly throwing around racist accusations, calling someone a racist certainly for disagreeing when they are indeed not, would undermine racism when it does occur,” Hasselbeck chimed in.
“That’s right,” Doocy agreed.
“There’s so much rude stuff toward 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in my lifetime,” Kilmeade said. “Reagan was dumb, remember. George Bush was incompetent and illegitimate. Bill Clinton, we know where he ended up with the Monica Lewinski stuff. Where was the racism there? This, to me, is a situation where you’ve gone six years with almost no criticism of the president.”
“But this is someone as powerful as Oprah instilling fear in those that may come to critique policy under a cloak of racism when it may not be there,” Hasselbeck declared. “So again, it undermines racism when it does occur.”
Transcript and video thanks to Raw Story. Emphasis added.

Okay, I’ll throw Fox & Friends a bone here. Some of the criticism of Obama is clearly not racist, but to say that anyone has held back on criticism for fear of being called racist is, well, ridiculous. In fact, Media Matters gave us this list by Fox News alone. Of course, there’s the rise of the New Confederacy. There’s the new popularity of the ‘n’ word. There’s the birtherism. There’s the unprecedented lack of decorum around the office of the Presidency. There are images like these.
Yes, Bill Clinton was treated like dog doo by the GOP and yes, those of us on the left thought George W. Bush was incompetent, wildly dangerous and that he wasn’t actually elected, but neither of them faced the level of obstructionism that Obama faces. No one questioned their nation of birth.

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Wisconsin Governor Defends Ban On Same-Sex Marriage As ‘Healthy Balance’ Of LGBT Rights

By Zack Ford on November 25, 2013 at 9:17 am

 

"Wisconsin Governor Defends Ban On Same-Sex Marriage As ‘Healthy Balance’ Of LGBT Rights"

This weekend, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) talked to Bloomberg TV’s Al Hunt about the mix of protections and limitations on LGBT rights his state offers, telling the host that the Wisconsin has struck a “healthy balance.” He lauded the state’s nondiscrimination protections for LGBT workers, suggesting the U.S. House should consider the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), because there have only been “limited problems” with it in Wisconsin. He simultaneously, however, defended its ban on same-sex marriage:

WALKER: In Wisconsin, we’ve had anti-discriminatory laws that are very similar to [ENDA] for more than 30 years and they work quite effectively. We’re also a state that has a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as one man and one woman…
HUNT: So, similar to the Wisconsin bill, the House bill should be something that…
WALKER: Yeah, I mean, we’ve not had problems. We’ve had no problems — I should say, limited problems — with that. At the same time, we still have a constitutional amendment that defines marriage. There’s a healthy balance there.

Watch it (via Raw Story):


In 1982, Wisconsin was the first state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, education, credit, and all public accommodations — a law signed by Republican Gov. Lee S. Dreyfus. Upon signing it, Dreyfus remarked, “It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love.” Despite these protections, one of Walker’s appointees to the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission ruled that an employee who’d repeatedly been called “fag,” “maricon,” and “my little bitch” in the workplace was not protected from such harassment under law.
In 2004, the state legislature followed Republican precedent across the country to advance a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which eventually passed in 2006. That amendment banned recognition of any “identical or substantially similar” legal status for same-sex couples, but Wisconsin maintains a domestic partner registry and provides some benefits to same-sex partners of state employees. Walker suggested in March that conservatives have lost the fight against marriage equality.

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Survey: Low IQ Leads To Racism And Extreme Conservatism

By Maeby Gever on November 24, 2013

 Studies correlate low IQ with rabidly racist and right-wing views.

Studies correlate low IQ with rabidly racist and right-wing views

Does talking to a Teabully leave you asking: What’s wrong with this person? Do Teabully posts and memes make you wonder if people, who believe those things, could be cray-cray?   Take heart! A 2012 Canadian study suggests conservatives with racist and extreme views just might be born that way.

Psychology Today featured psychologists Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri’s findings in its April 22 issue. Hodson and Busseri work at Borck University in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada. They concluded the following:

Lower intelligence in childhood  is predictive of greater racism in adulthood, with this effect being mediated (partially explained) through conservative ideology.

and

Poor abstract reasoning skills were related to homophobic attitudes which was mediated through authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact.

and

For those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.” and “people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.

According to University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek:

Reality is complicated and messy…Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.

And the studies making the connections to low IQ and to the racists and far right wing views–that seem to be at the root of the views expressed by the GOP/Teabully party of today–go back to 1970 and to 1958. Psychological studies have also linked a Conservative political point of view to an authoritarian upbringing.


Psychological studies have longed linked the appeal to political points of view, such as Fascism, to an authoritarian upbringing.  For a refresher course on “Isms,” grab the free downloadable primer available at LiberalAmerica.org.

The current rise of the Christian Right embedding itself into the present GOP/Teabully Party is proof that there’s a link between authoritarianism and these political points of view. The “Christian Fundamentalist Nation,” of which Teabullies dream, has been referred to as an ideology that is:

A form of debilitating shortsightedness. It replaces reality with an idealized version that usually has too little to do with the real world to be workable.

We should be careful not to conclude all liberals are smart and all right-wing conservative/Teabully types are stupid.  And, we must also be careful not take IQ tests at face value. They’ve long been suspected of being culturally biased. But, the studies connecting low IQs to racist, homophobic, bigoted, and conservative thinking are there.

Conservative Teabully types will no doubt scream and stomp, yelling, “Liberal bias!” That, of course, wouldn’t be surprising. They deny facts and have very little interest in science. But, like the Affordable Care Act and other legislation about which John Boehner’s GOP/Teabully House of Representatives whines, why bother?  It’s too hard, and reading is for Liberals.
About the Author:
Maeby Gever (45 Articles)I am the voice of my human parents. Dad, 58, mom 56, both retired lawyers. Dad worked privately as a personal injury lawyer in the Philadelphia, PA area before retirement. He has a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education and he did some public school teaching before retiring again. Mom also has a BA in Political Science and she spent her entire 33 year career working as an attorney for a US Defense Department Agency located in Philadelphia, PA. She spent the last four years of her career as the Chief Counsel. She retired in April of this year. I have two human brothers, both Graduates of the George Washington University. My older human brother is working his way up in Airport Management at the Philadelphia International Airport. My younger human brother is a Peace Corps veteran.

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John Cornyn, Texas Senator, Says Iran Deal Is Obamacare Distraction

By Benjamin Hart Posted: 11/23/2013 11:51 pm EST  |  Updated: 11/25/2013 12:19 pm EST 

It was predictable that GOP hawks like Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) wouldn't love the historic deal the Obama administration reached with Iran on Saturday night.
But Texas Senator John Cornyn had a unique, if completely bizarre, take on the agreement:
 

Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O-care
— JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) November 24, 2013

 Among the many politicians and journalists to counter Cornyn's wacky assertion was David Plouffe, Senior Advisor to President Obama:

No, a real distraction would be war. Like Iraq. RT@JohnCornyn: Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O-care”
— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) November 24, 2013

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