Brian Beutler says the Republicans have no answer to a key 2016 question:

[T]he most revealing question of the first half of the debate, addressed to Carly Fiorina, posited that Democrats will point out, accurately, that the labor market has performed better in modern times under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones, and that it performed particularly poorly under the previous Republican president. "The Democrats will inevitably ask you and voters to compare the recent presidents' jobs performance," said moderator Gerard Baker. "In seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs per month. Under Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 per month, under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you will probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?" Fiorina, quite tellingly, had no answer. [...] “When Hillary Clinton runs, she’s going to say, ‘The Republicans gave us a crappy economy twice, and we fixed it twice. Why would you ever trust them again?’” Kevin Hassett, a Republican economist at the American Enterprise Institute, said earlier this year. “The objective for the people in the Republican Party who want to defeat her is to come up with a story about what’s not great.”

What's not great is income inequality, but Republican policies of tax cuts, union busting and deregulation have created income inequality, not lessened it. So the GOP cannot campaign on that either.

Last March the US Department of Education’s civil rights survey examined all 97,000 public schools in the US, representing 49 million students. They study found that...

Black students accounted for 18 percent of the country’s pre-K enrollment, but made up 48 percent of preschoolers with multiple out-of-school suspensions. Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students. Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. Black students were more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.

That's only 4 of the study's 14 key findings, and that is only looking at race and justice through the lens of public education. What does that say about us as a country? What does it mean for the lives of these young people who get caught in the gears of a criminal justice system so early in their lives? The town hall meeting on November 17th is set to address these and other pressing questions raised by the glaring racial inequities of our criminal justice system.

The virulence of the anti-gay hate on the right is now officially out of control. If you can stomach it, click on this video and skip to minute 6 to listen to the "Christian" "Pastor" who organized the Gay Hate Fest in Iowa attended by Ted Cruz. Merely being within 500 yards of this guy should disqualify a person from becoming the GOP nominee, but Ted Cruz ACTUALLY SPOKE AT HIS CONFERENCE. Cruz, naturally, used the conference to get his victimhood on:

“These threats are not imagined,” Cruz said. “There is a war on faith in America today. In our lifetimes, did we ever imagine that in the land of the free and home of the brave we would be witnessing our government persecute its citizens for their faith?”

Persecution of Christians apparently means making them bake cakes for gay weddings. Meanwhile, and unironically, the "Pastor" hosting the event demands the "religious liberty" to kill homosexuals in accordance with the teachings of the book of Leviticus.

Washington Post: “As Trump has become the defining character of this Republican presidential primary contest, the race itself has seemed to take on elements of his personality — in particular, his aggressive, seemingly shameless rejection of the idea that he has ever been wrong.” “The influence is especially strong in Fiorina and Carson, the two other political outsiders, who have risen in Trump’s slipstream. All three will be onstage Tuesday evening in Milwaukee for the fourth televised GOP debate.” “As with Trump, some of these outsiders’ most memorable debate moments have come when they uttered statements that turned out to be exaggerated or untrue. And, like Trump, they have played to a distrustful electorate by criticizing the fact-checkers and refusing to acknowledge that any facts were wrong.” Reality has a liberal bias. Not the media.

Based on the polling, Secretary Clinton should crush Ted Cruz. But polls don't vote, people do. And right now, the Cruz voters are fired up - and the Clinton voters aren't. But that isn't surprising. Democrats have spent 25 years honing a simple, yet wholly uninspiring message - "We are a little less crappy than them!" IT IS A HORRIBLE MESSAGE THAT HAS FAILED, AND FAILED, AND FAILED. Yet, with that terrible track record, the Beltway geniuses who run the Democratic Party are about to run that play one more time.

the Democrats’ problem is social capital

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Peter

Ben Carson is crying about media scrutiny, saying it is unfair and that is because secular progressives fear him. LOL. Dr. Carson, as a secular progressive, let me tell you that I do not fear you. I pity you. You are a pathological liar with a clear psychological problem and a mental illness. I find you laughable as well. If you were to be your party's nominee, Hillary Clinton would win nearly 50 states and all Republicans everywhere would be swept out of office. So I am actually rooting for you.

This is the latest in a series of on again off again ICarly style podcasts I'm doing with Donviti. This iteration is going to keep to under 30 minutes and is going to deal with, being 50, Eagles Football, some politics and Game of Thrones (if that show ever comes back on. [Note to my fellow DL contributors - I'm only putting it here for now, so don't worry.]