Female Tea Party Leader Says Women Are Too 'Diabolical' to Vote

The remarks against women voting came from Janis Lane, the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party.

October 16, 2012  |  
We are not diabolical, we are educated, thinking humans who have the same rights as the men. Maybe as republican women you are whipped, wimps, and only speak when spoken to or when your handlers let you talk. I pity you because you have brains, but you can not use them, The men folk have their brands on you, get off your duffs and think about what your handlers are really talking about. Do you want your girls, grand daughters, great grand daughters, neices, any girls who look up to you  believe that you turned your back on them, that you let the right winged Tea Partiers decide what women can and can not do with their own bodies, for the sake of their families, their health, economy of the family.

Photo Credit: Sage Ross (Own work) 

A female Tea Party leader came out against women having the right to vote in an interview with the Jackson Free Press.
Journalist R.L. Nave decided to take a look at the Tea Party in Mississippi, given the movement’s influence on Republican politics. Nave interviewed Janis Lane, a former marketing manager who is now the Central Mississippi Tea Party president. Nave also sat down with Kim Wade, a Nation of Islam member-turned conservative radio talk host, and another Tea Party activist named Mark Mayfield.
Nave asked about men getting involved in the reproductive decisions of women. Part of Lane’s response was to say that “probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote.”
Questioned by Nave on what exactly she means, the Tea Party leader doubled down.

“Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how [they] can skewer a person,” said Lane. “I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.”

While that quote was the headline-grabbing exchange, the interview ranged from discussions of reproductive rights to the Tea Party’s minority outreach.
Asked about what part of the Tea Party platform would appeal to minorities, Wade said, “Our position on charter schools is incoherent as black people. We're sitting up here watching our kids be destroyed because our leadership says we're supposed to dislike private schools because they were born out of segregation.”
Lane, the female Tea Party leader, came out strongly against reproductive rights as well.

 “I do not agree with the federal government supporting killing a preborn human. A child is a child from the moment of conception,” she said.

How Mitt Romney's Libya Narrative is Collapsing Under the Weight of Reality

New information has emerged that bears little resemblance to the narrative the GOP has written.

October 16, 2012  |  

Paul Ryan at an August 2012 event in High Point, N.C.
Photo Credit: © Jenny Warburg

When news of the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that killed four Americans reached the Republican Party, they smelled blood. With Mitt Romney leading the rabid right out of the gate, the GOP concocted a self-serving narrative of American fecklessness and weakness under the Obama administration--a far cry from the reality of the aggressive foreign policy undertaken by President Obama. The right’s narrative has only escalated over the past month, but it is beginning to crumble under the weight of the complicated truth.

The right’s main charge has been to accuse the Obama administration of apologizing for American values and lying about the nature of the attack--essentially, “covering up” the Benghazi assault. But new information emerging paints a much more complicated picture--one that bears little resemblance to the narrative the GOP has written.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come out  and said that she “take[s] responsibility” for the security of diplomatic outposts around the world. “I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals,” said Clinton, who blamed the “fog of war” for the government's shifting explanations for the attack.

The Obama administration reacted to the attacks in Libya which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and fthree consular officers by initially pointing to the anti-Muslim video that had sparked protests across the Middle East. The video, the “Innocence of Muslims,” led to the U.S. embassy in Cairo being overrun and angry protests in Tunisia that culminated in the looting of an American school.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, pushed this narrative during her September 16 appearances on major news shows. Rice claimed that , “based on the information we have at present,” the attack on the embassy was a “spontaneous” reaction to the anti-Muslim video. Rice also said that there were protests in Libya which were “hijacked” by “extremists who came with heavier weapons.”

But when a government official acknowledged that the attack may have been a terrorist attack and CBS reported that there were no protests in Libya over the video , the right went into high gear.

Various GOP officials and Romney campaign surrogates have pushed the line that the Obama administration has “covered up” the real nature of what happened in Benghazi. One of Paul Ryan’s main line of attacks during the vice presidential debate last week concerned Libya.

“They sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video,” said Ryan , implying that the attack had nothing to do with the video.

But now, the New York Times  reporting has knocked down some of the right’s key arguments. An article in the Times  reports that Libyans who witnessed the assault say that they “struck without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video.”

While there is no definitive account of what exactly happened yet, this report points to the fact that Libyans on the ground also believed the attack was related to the video.

Another line of attack was that the administration didn’t focus on the terrorist angle of it, and downplayed Al Qaeda’s involvement in the attacks. But President Obama did call the assault an “act of terror” the day after the attack . As for the Al Qaeda claims, the definition of who counts as a member of the terrorist group is hazy.

The New York Times reporting on this question leaves more questions than answers--but again, the right-wing’s black-and-white narrative on this question is not holding up. Libyan witnesses suspect that Ansar al-Shariah, a Libyan militant group, was behind the attack. The Times notes that “whether the attackers are labeled ‘Al Qaeda cells’...depends on whether that label can be used as a generic term for a broad spectrum of Islamist militants.”

The Washington Post’s Max Fisher further expounds on this issue. “The question of whether these Libyans are part of al-Qaeda is a remarkably sticky one, in part because we don’t seem to yet have a rigorous definition for who counts as al-Qaeda in the first place,” writes Fisher.

Yet another right-wing claim is that the U.S. government ignored requests for more security in Libya due to the threat of Islamist extremists in the country, a threat that has proliferated after the U.S.-backed removal of Muammar Gaddafi.

During the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden said, “we weren't told they wanted more security there.” The Romney campaign pounced on this statement  and accused the vice president of misleading the American people.

But it is true that Biden wouldn’t have personally known about requests for security at an embassy in Libya. And the requests that did come in were focused on Tripoli--not Benghazi.

The requests “were largely focused on extending the tours of security guards at the American Embassy in Tripoli — not at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, 400 miles away,” according to the New York Times.

Koch to Employees: Vote Romney or Bad Things Will Happen (Maybe to Your Job)

The boss wants you to know he thinks it's a very bad idea for you to vote for Barack Obama.

October 15, 2012  |  

David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, mingling with guests at a party arranged in his honor by Americans for Prosperity in Tampa, Fla., on the final day of the 2012 Republican National Convention.
Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

Leaving no stone unturned in foraging votes for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Charles and David Koch, the sole principals of the privately-held Koch Industries, are making sure that their employees and retirees know who the bosses are supporting in this year’s presidential election.
AlterNet obtained a packet sent to a retiree of a plant owned by Koch Industries in Virginia that is introduced by a letter from Dave Robertson, president and chief operating officer of Koch Industries, that warns of dire consequences should readers elect the wrong candidate. Accompanying the letter, on a separate page, is a checklist of Koch-endorsed candidates.

The dark but unstated implication of the letter, sent on Koch Industries letterhead, is that a vote for a candidate other than those recommended by Koch could lead to job losses at the company. At the bottom of the letter a tagline notes that “This is a paid political advertisement by Koch Industries, Inc.” From Robertson’s letter:

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation and other ills.

Which is not to say that Robertson is instructing Koch workers and retirees who they should vote for. He’s just making a helpful suggestion. From the letter:

I want to emphasize two things about these lists: First and foremost, we believe that any decision about which candidate to support is -- as always -- yours and yours alone, based on factors that are most important to you. Second, we do not support candidates based on their political affiliation. We evaluate them on who is the most market-based and willing to support economic freedom for the benefit of society as a whole.

All of the candidates endorsed on the Virgina checklist enclosed with the letter are Republicans.
At In These Times, Mike Elk reports that the same letter, with accompanying checklists, “arrived in the mailboxes of all 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month.” Georgia Pacific is a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

• Koch Brothers Pressuring Thousands Of Employees To Vote For Mitt Romney
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• Barack Obama: The $1 Billion Candidate
• Mitt Romney’s Pro-torture Gang of Puppet-Masters

Powerful Court Quietly Takes Marijuana Case That Could Shatter Federal Prohibition Laws

For the first time in two decades federal courts will consider the science behind medical marijuana -- and today there is more evidence than ever.

October 11, 2012  |  

AlterNet  / By Steven Wishnia

 

Once again, medical-marijuana advocates are taking to the courts to eliminate the biggest barrier to legal use—the federal law that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug with no valid medical use. 

 

 On Oct. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the federal appeals court that usually handles cases involving government regulations, will hear oral arguments on Americans for Safe Access v. DEA. It will be the first time in almost 20 years that federal courts have considered the science of medical marijuana, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes.

Specifically, ASA, a California-based patient-advocacy group, is trying to get the Drug Enforcement Administration to move marijuana out of Schedule I, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970s category for drugs with “a high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” and no “accepted level of safety for use under medical supervision.” Heroin, LSD, and PCP are also in Schedule I. Cocaine, methamphetamine and OxyContin are in Schedule II, legal for medical use but strongly restricted.

Two previous attempts to get the DEA to reschedule marijuana failed, but advocates believe there is enough new evidence to convince the courts. “There’s simply more science now,” says ASA chief counsel Joseph D. Elford. Since 2000, says Igor Grant of the University of California at San Diego’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, the center has done six studies that showed “efficacy for marijuana over a placebo” in relieving pain caused by peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage).

This current attempt began in 2002, when a coalition of medical-marijuana and legalization advocates filed a petition with the DEA. It contended that cannabis “has an accepted medical use in the United States, is safe for use under medical supervision, has an abuse potential lower than Schedule I or II drugs, and has a dependence liability that is also lower than Schedule I or II drugs.” It requested that marijuana be moved to Schedule III (Vicodin, acetaminophen with codeine), Schedule IV (Valium, Xanax), or Schedule V (codeine cough syrup).

“Based on evidence currently available, the Schedule I classification is not tenable,” Grant wrote in the 2012 issue of the Open Neurology Journal. “It is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. It is true cannabis has some abuse potential, but its profile more closely resembles drugs in Schedule III.”

The DEA rejected the petition in June 2011. Administrator Michelle Leonhart declared that marijuana had no accepted medical use, because no form of it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The Department of Health and Human Services had previously concurred that it had a high potential for abuse, because an estimated more than 14 million people get high illegally at least once a month.

“They only responded to the petition after we filed a lawsuit alleging unreasonable delay,” says Elford. “Delay, delay, and then delay some more. The government doesn’t want to take on whether marijuana has medical use.”

The DEA refused to comment on the lawsuit. It referred calls to the Justice Department, which did not return phone calls.

The DEA has consistently refused to reclassify marijuana. It did move Marinol, synthetic THC capsules, from Schedule II to Schedule III in 1999. It insists that is a viable alternative for anyone who claims they need medical marijuana. (Marinol’s manufacturer was then advertising it to AIDS patients with the slogan “This is your appetite… This is your appetite on Marinol.”) Most medical-marijuana users, however, prefer real cannabis, because smoking it or inhaling vaporized THC provides much faster relief than taking capsules orally, and as with eating marijuana, oral doses are much harder to control.

“It’s just not as effective,” says William Brent, a 52-year-old California man who is a plaintiff in the ASA suit. Brent, who suffers from seizures, depression and chronic pain cause by bone abnormalities, has sought relief from prescription painkillers, muscle relaxers, antiseizure, antianxiety, and antinausea drugs—but says “cannabis is the one that works best for me.”

Donald Abrams, director of clinical programs at San Francisco General Hospital—where he worked in the nation’s first AIDS clinic—finds it “a bit ironic” that cannabis is in Schedule I, completely illegal, when its main active ingredient is in Schedule III.

History

The DEA rejected two previous petitions to reclassify cannabis. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws first challenged the Schedule I classification in 1972, on the grounds that marijuana had valid medical use. The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, a medical-marijuana group founded by pioneering patient Robert Randall, joined later.

It took years of litigation to get the DEA to consider that petition. When it did, in 1988, DEA administrative law judge Francis Young recommended the change, writing, in a quote often cited by medical-cannabis advocates, that marijuana was “the safest therapeutically active subject known to man.” The DEA rejected his recommendation, and in 1994 the D.C. Circuit upheld that decision.

In 1995, cannabis-policy researcher Jon Gettman and High Times magazine filed another petition, arguing that marijuana did not belong in Schedule I because it did not have a high potential for abuse. The DEA rejected it in 2001, and a federal appeals court ruled a year later that Gettman and High Times did not have legal standing to contest that decision.

This time will be different, advocates say. Scientific knowledge of marijuana has advanced dramatically in the past 20 years. The brain’s naturally occurring cannabinoids were first identified in 1992.

“There are numerous peer-reviewed studies establishing that marijuana is effective in treating AIDS wasting syndrome, muscle spasticity, emesis, appetite loss, negative side effects of chemotherapy, and chronic pain… The government, however, simply ignores these well-controlled studies,” ASA’s appeal brief says. “It is only by failing to apply the appropriate standards and make the required comparisons that the federal government could conclude that marijuana is as harmful as heroin and PCP and even more harmful than methamphetamine, cocaine and opium.”

The federal government acknowledged the medical potential of cannabis in 1999, Abrams notes, in the Institute of Medicine’s “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base” report. That report said cannabis-based drugs held promise for treating pain, nausea from chemotherapy, and the “wasting syndrome” from AIDS and cancer, and that “there are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief.” It also said that marijuana had a very low addiction potential, comparable to that of caffeine, Abrams adds.

Because the petition was filed in 2002, however, the court may decide not to consider more recent research. This weakens the case, says Elford—but it also denies the DEA an excuse to delay its response by saying it has to evaluate that research.

The plaintiffs will also have to overcome the argument that smoking a drug is not legitimate medicine. The DEA and prohibitionists hammer this point, and many, if not most, doctors, don’t like the idea of sick people inhaling smoke. “We see little future in smoked marijuana as a medicine,” IOM principal investigator Dr. John A. Benson said in 1999, although the report conceded that it could help in extreme cases.

Some medicines are inhaled, Abrams responds, such as those for asthma, and vaporization, in which the cannabis is heated so that the THC can be inhaled without smoke, decreases the health risk. He also cites research by Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, who in a 2006 study found that even people who had smoked more than 20,000 joints in their lives did not have a higher rate of lung cancer. The main respiratory risk for heavy marijuana smokers Tashkin found was bronchitis.

“Is the risk-benefit ratio favorable? Every drug has problems,” says Grant. But the evidence, he adds, suggests that marijuana could be added to the “armamentarium” with “adequate safeguards.”

Herbal Catch-22?

The DEA’s insistence that marijuana has no valid medical use because it has not been approved by the FDA would seem to imply that the only valid medicines are those produced by pharmaceutical companies. That contrasts sharply with the FDA’s virtually nonexistent regulation of herbal “dietary supplements” that are often sold with implied medical benefits.

“There is no provision under any law or regulation that FDA enforces that requires a firm to disclose to FDA or consumers the information they have about the safety or purported benefits of their dietary supplement products,” the FDA’s Web site states.

Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, it adds, the manufacturer is responsible for determining that its herbal products are safe and not falsely advertised. If it claims that an herb will prevent, treat, or cure an illness, then the product is classified as a drug and needs FDA approval.

Manufacturers can make thinly disguised claims, however, as long as the product’s label cautions that “this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA.” St. John’s wort, often taken as an herbal antidepressant, is advertised as promoting a “positive mood balance.” Black cohosh “helps to support menopause.” Walmart sells echinacea as an “immune health supplement… used for treating various health disorders like high blood pressure, boosting energy, preventing diseases and regulating vital body functions.”

The not-approved-by-the-FDA argument is “a bit of a straw man,” says Grant. The “single, well-characterized chemical” model for medicine, he explains, is a good one, but it’s not the only one. The FDA has approved extracts and tinctures of other herbs, and is now evaluating Sativex, a cannabis extract. For marijuana, he says, “we haven’t fully figured out what combination of cannabinoids” and which methods or administration are optimal.

The federal National Institute on Drug Abuse, the only legal source of cannabis for research, has also discouraged research on its medical uses, Abrams says. When he began investigating its use in treating AIDS in 1996, NIDA told him it would not fund research on the effectiveness of cannabis, only on its abuse. He sidestepped that restriction by doing a 21-day study of whether smoking marijuana three times a day interfered with protease inhibitors in AIDS patients—and found that it didn’t, and they had better appetites and more T cells.

Meanwhile, Michael Krawitz, another plaintiff in the suit, says that the best relief for his chronic pain is a combination of cannabis and opioid painkillers—but the current laws deny him that. Krawitz, a 49-year-old Air Force veteran, has had 13 surgeries, including having part of his intestines removed, since he was seriously injured in a car accident in 1984. But the Veterans Administration refused to prescribe him any more painkillers after he refused to take a drug test. And because he lives in Virginia, where medical marijuana is not legal under state law, he can’t get a doctor’s recommendation and has to buy it on the black market, where it’s expensive and not always available. The last time he went without cannabis, he says, he almost lost the sight in his right eye.

Moving cannabis to a less restrictive schedule would enable doctors to prescribe it, and also make doing research on it easier. If the D.C. Circuit directly orders the DEA to reschedule cannabis, says Elford, that would be the most favorable result. The court could also order the DEA to hold hearings on the petition, which is what happened in the 1980s. It could also uphold the DEA’s denial.

Whatever the outcome, says Elford, the loser will likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

WATCH: Eddie Huang Kills A Fluffy White Rabbit On New Vice Show (GRAPHIC) if a queezy stomach, don't watch.

The Internet

by Tina Nguyen 6:00 pm, October 15th

It gets dark quickly in part one of the first episode of Fresh Off The Boat. Apparently, this is not the show where Eddie Huang eats street food, gets drunk and plays underground hip-hop with a bunch of tattooed cooks. This is the show where he has an existential crisis over a rabbit whose skin is being peeled off like a condom.
It was funnier when Huang and the crew of his VICE show were chanting “Kill Whitey!” (“Whitey” being the name of the rabbit that they select for slaughter at an Oakland shooting range with the East Bay Rats, of course. Huang’s not race-baiting on this show.) Heck, he loved making fun of “mouthbreathing” hipsters shooting guns. But when Huang is confronted with the sight of the rabbit, squirming helplessly under the knee of its butcher, bleeding out the neck, he’s repulsed — surprising himself.
“We knew for weeks that we were gonna come and watch Trevor [Latham] either shoot a rabbit, or slaughter a rabbit,” he mused in the car to the camera. “And still, our crew was not emotionally prepared for it and did not know how they were going to feel…we’re so cut off from the images of slaughter.”



What Eddie says in the car at the end of the video, is something we really should be thinking about.

Press Barred from Paul Ryan Event with Wingnut Birther Donald Trump

Why would they exclude the media?

Tell me all the reasons, secret bedding of the right winged Tea Party, multi-billionaires and the scummy anti-voter, anti-abortionist, anti-contraceptive, anti-welfare, pro war machine, pro-ultra state rights(where everything is sent back to the states - medicaid, education, social security, food stamps, voting rights and I am sure I have missed some) Gives me the creeps, that Ryan-Trump who is a birther, working together on Billionaires, while Romney will be head bashed by our brilliant President.
October 16, 2012  |  

 Good news, bad news, everyone. Good news is, Donald Trump is doing a Mitt Romney campaign event  tonight in New York,  at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, with Romney running mate Rep. Paul Ryan. Bad news is, it is completely closed to the press. The fact that it is closed to the press seems to indicate that the Romney campaign doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that a beloved and renowned businessman like Donald Trump is endorsing their campaign, for some strange reason. 

The event is not technically a fundraiser, because,  as Zeke Miller explains,  the funds have already been raised. It is a special “finance event” for mega-donors who enjoy being spoken to condescendingly by a ridiculous fraud. Not making it a real fundraiser also gives the Romney campaign an excuse to exclude the press corps, despite the campaign having agreed months ago to allow pool reporters to attend most fundraisers .

So, sadly, unless some person is taping it, secretly, we  may never know the content of the “brief remarks” Trump is expected to give tonight. Will he talk about his many bankrupt casinos, or will he simply babble racist nonsense about the  president’s college transcripts ? Actually, judging by Twitter these last couple of days, Trump’s remarks could cover any number of subjects, from  how only fat people drink diet soda  to the role living in a Trump-branded building plays in the performance of star baseball players.
 
Trump is still America’s most prominent birther, and the Romney campaign is perfectly OK with that, I guess. But not quite OK enough with it to allow outsiders to hear anything he says tonight while speaking with the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

No GED? Some undocumented immigrants hit barriers in quest for legal status

Chris Langer / for NBC News

HOLA tutor Nancy Roberts helps out Maria Leonello complete an exercise on English capitalization at the HOLA GED tutoring in Painesville, Oh.

By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News

The government’s new program offering young undocumented immigrants a reprieve from deportation presents an opportunity but also many challenges for an estimated 350,000 youths who didn’t finish high school, many of whom may not be able to qualify because the barriers are too high, experts say.

The key hurdle is the educational requirement of the deferred action program. Immigrants must be enrolled in school, graduated from high school or have served in the military, and if they haven’t, they’ll need to get a GED, the equivalent of a high school degree, or enroll in an education, literacy, or career training program

Some of those trying the GED route are hitting roadblocks. Gabriela de Jesus Diaz Bocardo, 23-year-old immigrant from Mexico living in Phoenix, Ariz., is one of them. She has spent two months trying to find a prep class she could afford since a state law effectively prohibits undocumented immigrants from taking the free courses. One school told her a one-year program would cost her $4,000, which was way beyond her means.

“I want to be enrolled in school, but I can’t find a way … I’m trying my hardest,” said Diaz, who was unable to finish school after giving birth to her son and wants to return. “I would be so happy. … Everyday waking up in the morning going to school, proving to my teachers that I am here early, trying to have a dream.”

As Diaz and others have learned, merely getting into a GED prep course -- let alone taking the test -- won’t be easy: Adult education serves about 2 million people nationwide though nearly 35 million don’t have a high school diploma or its equivalent. This is mostly because the availability of services can’t meet the demand, the Department of Education said in a statement.

Some 72 percent of adult education programs had waiting lists in 2010, according to a national surveyby the National Council of State Directors for Adult Education.

“The federal funding for these kinds of services has been stagnant for years, and … the states have been reducing their funding,” said Lennox McClendon, the council’s senior advisor. “So the opportunities for adult education in general have been waning.”

Between 320,000 and 350,000 of the 1.7 million undocumented immigrants who are potentially eligible for deferred action are impacted by the education requirement, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute and the Pew Hispanic Center. They are 16 and older and do not have a high school diploma or GED, and are not currently enrolled in school.

Overall, the government had received some 180,000 applications for deferred action as of Oct. 12, with nearly 4,600 of them approved, according to the latest data.

“I think it’s fair to say that the immigrant rights movement is discovering the education reform movement … and that they’re really coming to understand, first of all, how hard it is to get a GED and secondly, how limited the capacity of adult education programs is,” said Margie McHugh, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. “Certainly this 350,000 or so young people are the most immediate concern and the most vulnerable for not making it through the process, and that’s very much related to both the difficulty of pursuing a GED or completing a GED … and also the lack of availability of programs.”

Chris Langer / for NBC News

Ricardo Zopez works with HOLA tutor Alan Brown on math problems during the HOLA GED classes in Painesville, Oh.

Some take exception to undocumented immigrants accessing such programs. 

“I think it's perfectly legitimate to bar access to them because there are waiting lists,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center of Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls. “I mean, there's obviously limited resources and in an environment of limited resources, allowing illegal immigrants to enroll would mean that legal immigrants or American citizens would not be able to get classes ... that's just math. There's no way to avoid that.”  

Others feel it is unfair to set a requirement for some in the group that could be insurmountable.

“It offends me as someone who comes from poverty that they have set a system up where -- people, you know, that are more likely probably the poorest of the poor -- would never be able to take advantage of it. They give a break to people that are going to college or people that are in the military,” said Carol Swain, a professor of politics and law at Vanderbilt University who writes about immigration and did the GED after dropping out of high school. “If you’re going to give mercy to the group they should set up the criteria in a way that it takes in everybody and not exclude the people that are the poorest of the poor or the ones that would never qualify based on their standards.”

'No documents, no fear': Undocumented immigrants declare themselvesArizona governor's ban on licenses for undocumented likely headed to court
 Chasing a 'dream': Immigrant youth seek legal status
Young undocumented immigrants line up for chance to stay in USUndocumented mom risks life in US to join immigration fight

Spike in requests in some states
The GED consists of five tests covering math, reading, science, language arts and social studies. It takes about seven hours to complete.  

Some GED state testing centers are seeing a spike in requests to take the test or a course, as well as an uptick in calls with questions about the exam since the government began accepting applications for the deferred action program on Aug. 15, according to an informal survey of state GED test program administrators conducted by the GED Testing Service, the official creator of the exam.

In Iowa, centers have experienced a 20 percent rise in English as a Second Language attendance for GED prep, while Massachusetts has seen a 25 percent to 50 percent surge in registration for the test through Spanish. In North Carolina, there has been a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in testing requests, including to take it in Spanish, prompting adminstrators to order more such tests for next year.

McLendon, who reviewed the GED Testing Service survey and conducted his own of state directors, said it’s been “a mixed bag” so far.

“In some states there seems to be an impact. In other states there doesn’t seem to be very much,” he said. “It’s going to be spotty. In some areas they will … have easy access and some areas they won’t. They will just have to wait for months, perhaps.”

In Painesville, a community of 18,000 outside Cleveland, an immigrant rights’ group knew the educational requirements would be a problem for those youth who were not the undocumented college graduates often seen leading the campaign for getting legal status.

“We’ve always known that the Latino dropout is very high here in northeast Ohio,” said Veronica Dahlberg, executive director of HOLA, a grassroots group focusing on Latino advocacy and community organizing. “We immediately knew this was going to be an issue and started raising the money right away. We knew there was no way the local (adult education) program would meet the need in our town and I’m sure this is true in other areas as well.”

Chris Langer / for NBC News

Juan Maldonado works on the math section of a GED practice worksheet in Ohio.

Dahlberg contacted the local Adult Basic and Literary Education (ABLE) program, which told them they’d be happy to partner but had already allocated their annual budget. So HOLA began a fundraising drive, which included raffling off a car donated by a local pastor. The group raised about $6,000 to pay for two ABLE teachers and four tutors, some of whom are bilingual.

On Sept. 10, they began with eight students in makeshift classrooms in the HOLA center. Today, they have 29. Some students are proficient in English and completed a lot of school, but a majority will have to take the test in Spanish.

“I never thought this would be as big as it’s become. It’s really great that the students … want to learn, want to do better, want to get a better job,” said Carol Darr, ABLE coordinator in Painesville.

Juan Maldonado, 20, and the oldest of six brothers who dropped out of high school after his dad was deported to Mexico two years ago, said many of the students were excited about having another option to get their diploma.

“You feel like now there are no limits to what you can do,” he said.

Maldonado, who likes math but has trouble with grammar, said returning to school has taken on a whole different meaning since his first go-around.

“It actually feels really good knowing that I am doing something good for myself,” he said. “It is really important for me because I would like to be able to go back to some kind of career, so I could start my life.”

"Put the White Back in the White House": How Will Conservatives Spin This Photo from Mitt Romney's Rally on Friday?

Posted by Chauncey DeVega  at 5:01 pm
October 15, 2012
 Once more, conservatives show you who they always have been  and are. I couldn't care less about one data point swimming about in a sea of information. But given Romney's naked appeals to white racism , how white supremacists have heard his "dog whistles"  loud and clear, Romney and Ryan's repeated assertions that Obama, the country's first black President, does not understand "American" values , and the Right's use of some of the worst and most racist stereotypes about black people in the Age of Obama, this photo which was taken at a Mitt Romney rally on Friday  should come as no surprise.

Together, white racism and racial resentment are the brand name  of the Tea Party GOP. Consequently, Romey's public knows exactly what they are buying coming November 2012 when they vote against Barack Obama.
Conservatives and the Right-wing echo chamber have a great gift for reframing reality. In the post-truth era, if you think a thing is true, and you believe it to be so (and say it enough) said fiction must be therefore be real. The New Right are also conspiranoids who believe in rigged public opinion polls, white victimology, birtherism, phantom buses full of "illegal" minority voters , and that the most recent unemployment numbers have been manipulated in a grand ploy to defeat Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. As such, conservatives are capable of believing whatever the echo chamber births from its mania-state of perpetual epistemic closure, and a befouled womb.
They will excuse away and make excuses for the white nationalist who supports the Tea Party GOP, what is the country's de facto White Political Party. Let's get ahead of the curve and use our imaginations to figure out how conservatives will frame the following photo as its circulates throughout the Internet and other media this weekend.

Here a few suggestions:

1. No Republican or conservative can ever be racist! Only the Democrats and liberals see race because they founded the KKK! This man must be an Obama supporter!

2. Agent provocateur! He must be a member of the SEIU  and a supporter of Saul Alinsky [10] and a fascist Marxist. Liberals will do anything to make Mitt Romney and the Tea Party look bad.

3. The Romney logo on his t-shirt is a sticker. Just like the Democrats did when they infiltrated the Tea Party rallies a few years ago, the liberals are making their own t-shirts, sending out fake protesters, and doing whatever they can to make us look bad! If he was a real racist the Romney supporters would have kicked him out!

4. Scratch a liberal and you get a racist. He must be a libtard who supports Obama!

5. Okay, let's just use our imaginations and say the guy showed up uninvited to the Romney rally. Why blame all the good conservatives there? Reverse racists, anti-white bigots on TV, black liberal bigots, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Internet, all hate conservatives. We have black conservatives at all of our rallies.

6. If Republicans hated the blacks why they be so prominently featured by us at our  meetings? We are the party of Abe Lincoln. The liberals are race obsessed and sick and they keep the blacks on the liberal plantation. Dems don't believe in what Dr. King said about being color blind.

7. If Obama and his supporters really cared about racism they would put the New Black Panthers in jail, prosecute Fast and Furious, impeach Eric Holder, and stop the cover-up about the embassy attack in Libya!
What would you add to this list? How would you help the Tea Party GOP spin and excuse-make for the white nationalists and other racists in their midst?

Forget Red vs. Blue -- It's Slave States vs. Free States in 2012

A century and a half later, we've come full circle: The red-blue state divide falls along Confederate-Union lines.

 
October 10, 2012  |  

Salon.com / By Michael Lind  

Every now and then someone highlights the overlap between today’s Republican states and the slave states of the former Confederacy.   As clichéd as the point may be, it remains indispensable to understanding what is happening in American politics today:

 

 

 

Confederate (red) and Union (blue) states

Republican (red) and Democratic (blue) states, 2008 election

The core of today’s Democratic party consists of the states of New England and the Great Lakes/Midatlantic region that were the heart of the Union effort during the  Civil War.   

The core of today’s Republican party consists of the states that seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. Don’t be misled by the contemporary red state-blue state map which makes the mostly-red Prairie/Mountain states look as important in the Republican coalition as the South.  A cartogram which shows states by population is far more accurate:

 Red and blue states, 2008, with states proportional to their number of electoral votes

As the cartogram shows, in terms of population and votes the South vastly outweighs the thinly-populated Prairie/Mountain states, even though the latter get disproportionate representation in the U.S. Senate and the electoral college.   

• The cartogram provides a pretty good reflection of the situation perceived by conservative white  Southerners, by depicting a besieged South encircled and on the verge of being crushed by multiracial, polyglot, immigrant-friendly, secular humanist, progressive Blue America.

Now that they dominate the Republican party, Southern conservatives are using it to carry out the same strategies that they promoted during the generations when they controlled the Democratic Party, from the days of Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren to the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.  From the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, the oligarchs of the American South have sought to defend the Southern system, what used to be known as the Southern Way of Life.

• Notwithstanding slavery, segregation and today’s covert racism, the Southern system has always been based on economics, not race.  

Its rulers have always seen the comparative advantage of the South as arising from the South’s character as a low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation site in the U.S. and world economy.  The Southern strategy of attracting foreign investment from New York, London and other centers of capital depends on having a local Southern work force that is forced to work at low wages by the absence of bargaining power.

• Anything that increases the bargaining power of Southern workers vs. Southern employers must be opposed, in the interest of the South’s regional economic development model.  

• Unions, federal wage and workplace regulations, and a generous, national welfare state all increase the bargaining power of Southern workers, by reducing their economic desperation.  

• Anti-union right-to-work laws, state control of wages and workplace regulations, and an inadequate welfare state all make Southern workers more helpless, pliant and dependent on the mercy of their employers.  

• A weak welfare state also maximizes the dependence of ordinary Southerrners on the tax-favored clerical allies of the local Southern ruling class, the Protestant megachurches, whose own lucrative business model is to perform welfare functions that are performed by public agencies elsewhere, like child care.

• The Southern system is essentially about class and only incidentally about race.  That is why, following the abolition of slavery, the Southern landlord elite exploited black and white tenant farmers and child workers indifferently.  

Immigrant workers without rights to vote or organize unions have always appealed to the Southern employer elite.  After the Civil War some Southern landlords experimented with bringing in indentured servants or “coolies” from  Asia, until that form of unfree labor was banned by Congress in the 1880s.  

• White supremacy was never an end in itself, but a tactic used by the Southern oligarchs to divide white workers from nonwhite workers.  But the Southern elite can dispense with racism, because it has never cared what color its serfs are. 

Today many business-class conservatives from Texas and other Southern states such as former Texas Senator Phil Gramm champion “guest-worker programs” which would bring in Mexican nationals and others to work as indentured servants in the South, while forbidding them to become U.S. citizens with legal and voting rights.
Indeed, in the seventeenth century Southern planters initially experimented with white British and European indentured servants as farm workers, before trying black slaves, who were easier to identify if they ran away.  In theory, in a truly post-racist South, a multiracial Southern oligarchy could lord it over an underpaid, vulnerable and equally multiracial Southern regional majority.

The traditional Southern regional economic strategy, then, depends on the control by Southern employers of a huge pool of low-wage workers with little or no bargaining power in their dealings with their local bosses or the foreign (that is, extra-Southern) investors and corporations who are invited in to exploit their labor.

•  This regional economic strategy can succeed only if the power of the Southern employer class over Southern urban and rural workers is protected from political and legal interference from outside the South and within.

Protecting the prerogatives of the Southern economic elite and the politicians it owns from external interference is the rationale for the defense of states’ rights, in the twenty-first century as in the nineteenth and twentieth. 

• While they demonize “the federal government” as though it were some external force, Southern conservatives are actually afraid of democracy—national democracy.  

1. They are afraid of their fellow Americans outside of the region they control.  
2. They are afraid that national majorities will impose unwelcome reform on the South, at the expense of their profits and privileges, as national majorities did during Reconstruction, the New Deal and the Civil Rights revolution.
3. The Southern system is also threatened by internal democracy.  The Populist movement of the late 1800s, which in some cases united white and black Southerners in the cause of reform, terrified the white Southern establishment.  

• ****By World War I many Southern states had adopted variants of the “Mississippi system” of disfranchising all of the black and up to half of the white population, by means of poll taxes, means tests, and other devices, ensuring that elections in the South would be dominated by upper-income voters.  The purpose of the “voter ID” laws pushed by today’s Dixified Republican party is similarly to prevent lower-income citizens from voting.****

Southern conservatives are sometimes accused of being hypocritical in denouncing the federal government even as their states take a disproportionate amount of federal military and civilian subsidies.

But that isn’t hypocrisy; it’s cunning.

As long as the local Southern oligarchs control how the federal money is spent in their region, they have no objection to massive restribution from Yankeeland to Dixie.

• Plans like Romney’s and Ryan’s for block-granting federal subsidies support the self-serving strategy of the Southern elite:  federal funding but regional control.

Note that throughout this essay I have used the phrases “Southern establishment,” “Southern oligarchy,” and “Southern elite.”   
All too often outsiders treat the victims of the Southern oligarchy—the majority of white and black and Latino Southerners—as though they are to be blamed for their misfortune. 

Unfortunately, many northern progressives are snobs who would rather sneer at the manners and lifestyle of the Southern white working class than mobilize to defeat the Southern elite, which tends to be well-educated, well-spoken and well-traveled.

What about the future?  Theorists of a “new majority” at the national level may be vindicated, if this year the Democrats win the popular vote for the five times in six consecutive elections.   
If Texas, the powerhouse of Southern electoral votes, shifts from red to blue in the next generation or two because of demographic change, that would further ghettoize Dixie conservatives.

• Gerrymandering can delay the inevitable decline of influence of white Southern conservatives in the House of Representatives, but cannot stop it.  As before the Civil War, the Senate may be the last redoubt of the Southern right, but only as long as it can find enough allies among the low-population states of the prairie and mountain regions.

But the former slave states could triumph even as they went down, if the demise of the traditional South were to be accompanied by the Southernization of the American economy and political system.

Does this scenerio sound all too familiar, close your eyes and have a friend read this aloud. The last sentence is what Romney-Ryan presidency would put into effect.
It is all too easy to imagine a United States which combines anti-racist, feminist and pro-gay attitudes with an economic strategy based on luring foreign investment with the help of low voter turn-out, low wages, weak unions, and foreign guest-worker programs, together with an inadequate welfare state dominated by state governments, private vouchers and tax-favored religious charities. 

 A nationalized Confederacy with progressive trappings would be all too reminiscent of today’s America.

The Romney Men: 6 Filthy Rich Moguls Who Will Do Anything to Elect Mitt

AlterNet  / By Lynn Stuart Parramore 
October 10, 2012  |  

The following 1 percent wonders are doing just fine under Obama, but since their worldview is largely restricted to an obsession with their marginal tax rate, they can’t refrain from denouncing the president and thinking of new ways to thwart his re-election bid. The Romney men desperately want to see the first financier president, a man after their own cold hearts.

Las Vegas casino boss Sheldon Adelson (pictured in April) on Thursday unveiled plans to build a scaled down replica of the Eiffel Tower as part of a new $3 billion gambling resort in Macau.

1. David Siegel, the Bitching Billionaire
Thanks to folks over at Gawker , we’ve gotten a look at the noxious activities of David Siegel, founder and CEO of national timeshare giant Westgate Resorts. Siegel is filthy rich and wants you to know it, building himself the largest (and possibly the tackiest) house in America. The documentary The Queen of Versailles  follows Siegel and his wife Jackie in pursuit of obscene excess in the form of a 90,000-square-foot homage to bad taste, complete with a 20-car garage, a two-story wine cellar, and a 30-foot stained glass dome.
Though he brags that his company is more profitable than ever, Siegel, an avid Republican, recently sent an email to his thousands of employees suggesting that they would lose their jobs if Barack Obama is re-elected. In addition to dispensing voting advice, Siegel wallows in 1 percent self-pity:

“They want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. They label us the ‘1%’ and imply that we are somehow immune to the challenges that face our country. This could not be further from the truth. Sure, you may have heard about the big home that I'm building. I'm sure many people think that I live a privileged life.”

Three swimming pools? Privileged? Perish the thought.
In high narcissistic style, Siegel goes on to praise himself for the “hard work, discipline, and sacrifice” that built a company “which by the way, would eventually employ you.” He laments the sacrifices he has endured since the Recession for the good of his workers: “Over the past four years I have had to stop building my dream house, cut back on all of my expenses, and take my kids out of private schools simply to keep this company strong and to keep you employed.” Siegel spends most of the rest of the letter bitching that shiftless Americans expecting a “bailout” in the form of higher taxes on fatcats will drive him to the Caribbean, where he will ensconce himself under a palm tree and cease to worry about the little people.
Edward Ericson Jr., formerly a reporter for the Orlando Weekly, has a different take  on how the slimy Siegel made his money, a tale of running scams and ripping off customers.

2. “Neutron” Jack Welch
The former head of General Electric and big-time Romney fan has been making quite a spectacle of himself since last Friday. Incensed by the favorable jobs report, he went on a conspiracy theory rampage, accusing the Obama administration of manipulating the report in order to secure the election. After receiving a barrage of criticism, he told MSNBC host Chris Matthews  that he had no evidence to prove such claims. Then he went on to make them anyway. Why should a gazillionaire bother with evidence?
He has since left Fortune magazine in a huff -- the very publication that once named him Manager of the Century -- after managing editor Andy Serwer suggested that his claims were absurd.
Ironically, the man levying charges of cooking the books is the one who wrote the cookbook. Barry Ritholtz of the Big Picture reminds us  that Welch had a nasty habit of manipulating GE's earnings while he was CEO of the company. In his article “You Don’t Know Jack, ” Jonathan R. Laing describes how Welch committed epic misdeeds at GE while enjoying such perks as an $80,000-a-month New York pad, a corporate jet, payment for country-club fees, and a host of other luxuries.
A funny one to be going on about jobs, Jack Welch is a key architect of the business style focused on short-run profits, over
speculation, and obsession with stock prices, which, in addition to killing innovation and helping to blow up the world economy in 2008, has caused untold hardship for workers. Welch is a long-time champion of increasing profits by laying off employees, destroying so many jobs at GE that he earned the nickname “Neutron Jack.” When he wasn’t thinking of new ways to deliver pink slips, he was busy denying the health threats of PCBs that GE was dumping into New York’s Hudson River.
“You can't just call me old and senile,” complained Welch in the wake of the jobs report flap. Okay, that would be mean. How about crooked and despicable?

3. Casino King Sheldon Adelson
Sheldon Adelson likes to go big. He heads up possibly the largest gambling and casino operation on the planet. And he spends big-time bucks trying to manipulate the American political system.
Adelson is unhappy with President Obama's policies on Israel, and claims that's why he supports Mitt Romney for president. But according to the New York Times , his company is also under investigation  by the Obama Justice Department for foreign bribery and money laundering. Could the gambling honcho be hoping a Romney victory would make the pesky investigation disappear?
Annoucing that beating President Obama "isn't everything, it's the only thing," Adelson has unleashed $70 million trying to influence the outcome of the 2012 elections -- more than any individual has spent in any U.S. election to date. He has vowed to spend up to $100 million in total by election day.
Adelson also has a special knack  for helping the new class of Asian elites enjoy ridiculous luxuries, such as a drink that comes with a one-carat diamond available at his nightclub in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands casino. The drink sells for $26,000.

4. Donald Trump: Plutocratic Personality Disorder
When it comes to stratospheric greed and arrogance, it’s hard to beat the Donald. How could a man famous for the phrase, “You’re fired!” not love a man who claimed to enjoy putting people out of work ? Naturally Trump just can’t say enough good things about Romney. And he fully has Mitt’s back on those repugnant remarks made at a Florida fundraiser that characterized nearly half the country as freeloading losers. Trump announced that not only should Romney not apologize, but that “what he said is probably what he means.” Much obliged for the clarification.
When Obama’s name comes up, the words “birth certificate” are never far from Trump's lips. That and frequent questions about the president’s academic credentials.
The poster child for plutocratic personality disorder, Trump is obsessed with talking about himself, naming things after himself, and surrounding himself with pictures of – you guessed it -- himself. Maybe that’s to compensate for the fact that he’s actually a pretty crappy businessman and perpetually in need of money. After spending time with Trump and discussing his various luxury properties, the New Yorker’s Mark Singer concluded that the man “had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”

5. and 6. Koch Brothers, Unlimited
No list of Romney men would be complete without the billionaire brothers who made their fortune in the oil and gas industries. Over three decades, Charles and David Koch have spent more than $100 million pushing their freaky libertarian agenda, which for years they did on the QT until the Obama presidency horrified them to such a degree that they could no longer hide in the shadows. There is no tax they don’t abhor, no environmental protection they don’t wish to kill, and no safety net they don’t ardently desire to shred. Romney, who aims to shield the rich from paying their fair share of taxes and offers an energy plan tailored to the needs of the oil, coal and gas industries, is their man for Washington.
The damage that these tycoons do to our natural world, our democracy and our sense of public trust would be difficult to overestimate. Whether they’re trying to resegregate schools (they tried to do this to my very own public school district in Wake County, North Carolina), repress votes, privatize Social Security, or dump toxic waste into rivers that sicken whole communities, the Koch brothers are indefatigable in their efforts and inexhaustible in their check-writing. (Check out the documentary The Koch Brothers Exposed , featuring AlterNet’s political writer Adele Stan.)
As AlterNet executive editor Don Hazen has noted , Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan is the Koch brothers’ hand-picked darling, a perfect vehicle for their twisted, cult-of-selfishness Ayn Rand philosophy. Ryan serves his masters by repeating Koch falsehoods on Medicare , scheming to steal your retirement , denying climate change and cutting taxes on the rich and corporations.