Benjamin Ernest "Ben" Linder (July 7, 1959 – April 28, 1987), was an American engineer who was working on a small hydroelectric dam in rural northern Nicaragua when he was killed by the Contras, an affiliation of rebel groups funded by the U.S. government/CIA. Coming at a time when U.S. support for the Contras was already highly controversial, Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and further polarized opinion in the United States.

On 28 April 1987, Linder and two Nicaraguans were killed in a Contra ambush while working at the construction site for a new dam for the nearby village of San José de Bocay. The autopsy showed that Linder had been wounded by a grenade, then shot at point-blank range in the head. The two Nicaraguans — Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales — were also killed at close range. He was posthumously awarded the Courage of Conscience award September 26, 1992.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Linder

This wasn't a guy who was fighting the contras, he was providing electricity to Nicaragua's poorest people. The contras didn't like the poor getting access to electricity, education, and medicine, and they blocked it with guns and money supplied by the Reagan Administration.

If Obama and Clinton truly have any responsibility for what happened in Benghazi, then doesn't mean that Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, and the other players in the Iran-Contra scandal have responsibility for his death? Doesn't that make the conservative man-god Ronald Reagan a murderer?

Come on, let's hear what the difference between Ben Linder and Benghazi is.

Michigan GOP National Committeeman Dave Agema’s doggedly stubborn refusal to back down from his decision to post the essay “Everyone Should Know These Statistics on Homosexuals” on his Facebook page has created a furious debate about the accuracy of the claims made by the essay’s author,“Frank Joseph, M.D.”

But now it’s time to scrutinize the source of those claims. In one case, it looks quite ugly.

Consider this dubious bullet-point from the essay: “The median age of death of lesbians is 45 (only 24% live past age 65). The median age of death of a married heterosexual woman is 79 (8)."

That “(8)” is footnote #8. It refers to a pamphlet entitled “Is Homosexual Activity Normal?” by Dr. Edward R. Fields of Marietta, Ga. Fields is cited as the source for eight bullet points in the essay that Agema circulated.

From the Jewish Anti-Defamation League on the very same man:

“Edward Fields has been active in white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups since he was a teenager in the late 1940s ... Fields was a significant force in the racist world ...”

“In 1991 he organized a Klan rally in Montgomery, Alabama, along with Thom Robb of the Knights of the KKK.”

“In February 2001 he attended the funeral of Byron de la Beckwith, murderer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers ...”

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/04/ken_braun_dave_agemas_facebook.html

Two people go shopping at the same store and they buy the same things, the only difference is their economic status, one is a rich person and has worked himself out of paying any taxes via tax cuts and tax shelters, and the other person is in poverty and is in the safety net with food stamps.

Now let's see the reactions of the fellow shoppers and the store employees if if they knew of their statuses and the things they receive from the government, be it tax cuts or food stamps:

The rich shopper:
"We better be nice to him and give him discounts or else he'll take his business elsewhere."
"It's like he's injecting new blood into the economy."
"Think of all the jobs he created by buying that one shirt."

The poor shopper:
"Ugh... Do I really have to serve this guy?"
"Does he really need a new shirt? The one he has on looks just fine."
"Is he buying candy... for his kids? *RAGE*"

The root of the problem isn't the rich and it's not the poor, it's the ideological mindset that it's acceptable to make life easier on the rich and they'll work harder in this economy while make life harder on the poor and thinking they'll also work harder in this economy. Sure, a lot of this thinking can be seen in the Tea Party, but it can be seen in other places as well, and liberals and progressives could be the first group that sees this thinking in the Tea Party, in the media, in the government, and more; and step up and oppose it.

Rich people may not be rich forever and poor people may not be poor forever, but as long as this mindset remains, we will all be hurting because of it.

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

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

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

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

Uh... What?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some examples...

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

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

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

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

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

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