BTW, JOSH DUGGAR IS NOT A BIT PLAYER IN CONSERVATIVE POLITICS

(h/t Doctor RJ and others)
Here are some pictures that show he was plugged in to the hierarchy:

THE DECEPTIVE DUGGARS HAVE JUST BEGUN TO PAY

Their bullshit TV show has been take off the air after we learned that one of the Duggar's Jeebus children was a child molester.   There's a chance that Mike Huckabee will really tarnish himself by very strongly supporting the Duggars.

UPDATE: This site seems to be a good source of information about child sexual abusers.

WARREN & SANDERS ARE PUSHING UPHILL

Despite the enormous FAILs of American free market capitalism in this century alone, too many Americans still support conservative economics:

ANOTHER BRUCE ASH FAIL

Ash is a Tucsonan & rightwing wacko who often appears on Emil Franzi's agit-prop radio show and always has some sort of stupid ad that promotes one or more of his conservative obsessions.  One of these ads falsely claimed that most Tucsonans rejected the current method of electing the city council so he and a few others took the city to court. The result: FAIL.

Tucson's unusual ward-only elections survive challenge

1 hour ago • By Becky Pallack
Arizona Daily Star

The city’s longstanding election system may be weird, but it’s not unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.

A lawsuit filed by the Public Integrity Alliance and a group of Tucson Republicans claimed the system, which uses ward-only primary elections and at-large general elections to choose City Council members, violated the Constitution.

They said Tucson’s system deprives or dilutes their right to vote under the Equal Protection Clause — the “one man, one vote” protection.

But U.S. District Judge Cindy Jorgenson ruled in favor of the city Wednesday and said the city’s system is reasonable.

“The City has broad power to establish the procedure and provide conditions for the nomination and election process for city offices,” the judge wrote in her decision.

“The procedure established by the Tucson City Charter does not employ a system in which districts of unequal population could result in unequal representation and does not involve unequal weighting of votes.”

The judge also denied the Public Integrity Alliance’s request for an injunction to block the city from holding this year’s City Council elections under the current rules.

Plaintiff Bruce Ash, a national Republican committeeman, said he is disappointed in the outcome and will file an appeal.

“I’m still hoping the City Council will come to their senses and put ward-only elections on the ballot this year,” he said.

The city’s election system, established with the 1929 city charter, is unusual. Only a few other cities in California and Kentucky have elections like it.

This is an election year for Wards 1, 2 and 4, and for the mayor. Notices will start arriving in mailboxes this week notifying voters of the Aug. 25 primary and asking independent voters to choose either a Republican or a Democratic ballot.

BAN WILLIAM "THE BLOODY" KRISTOL FOR LIFE

In a better America, this would be enough to remove Kristol from all news media forever:

William Kristol: We were right to fight in Iraq
William Kristol 8:18 p.m. EDT May 20, 2015
Obama threw away hard-earned gains.

USA TODAY

We were right to invade Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein, and to complete the job we should have finished in 1991.

Even with the absence of caches of weapons of mass destruction, and the mistakes we made in failing to send enough troops at first and to provide security from the beginning for the Iraqi people, we were right to persevere through several difficult years. We were able to bring the war to a reasonably successful conclusion in 2008.

WHY ISN'T THIS NEWS ALL OVER THE MEDIA?

I happened to click on the Reuters feed in Yahoo News and found this:

Netanyahu renews support for two-state solution with Palestinians
JERUSALEM
Wed May 20, 2015 3:16pm EDT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renewed his commitment on Wednesday to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after backtracking on that pledge during a heated campaign for a March election.

Speaking as he met with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on her first visit to the region, and a week after his new government took office, Netanyahu said:

"We want a peace that would end the conflict once and for all ... I don't support a one-state solution, I don't believe that's a solution at all, I support the vision of two states for two peoples."

This is also reported by the Jerusalem Post and that seems to be about it for now.

THE BANKSTERS HAVEN'T LEARNED A THING

They still think they are Masters of the Universe.  From Memeorandum -

U.S. Department of Justice:

Five Major Banks Agree to Parent-Level Guilty Pleas  —  Five major banks - Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc and UBS AG - have agreed to plead guilty to felony charges.  Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, and The Royal Bank of Scotland plc …

Discussion: US News, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View, New York Times, NPR, Associated Press and PoliticusUSA

RELATED:

Bloomberg Business:
Six Banks Pay $5.8 Billion, Five Guilty of Market Rigging

Discussion: The Huffington Post and The Week

New York Times:
5 Banks to Pay Billions and Plead Guilty in Currency and Interest Rate Cases

Discussion: U.S. Department of Justice, Wall Street Journal, Firedoglake, CNNMoney, Common Dreams and The Week

THE GREAT CANDIDATE PURGE BEGINS

It may have started before this but it is pretty unusual to have 2 mainstream conservative writers attack 2 mainstream conservative presidential candidates:

Chris Christie on the NSA: “You can’t enjoy your civil liberties if you’re in a coffin”

posted at 2:41 pm on May 19, 2015 by Allahpundit

Exit question: Is Christie the kookiest, most unhinged hawk in the field? Nah, of course not. 

Lindsey Graham Is An Unhinged Kook Who Shouldn’t Be Taken Seriously

May 19, 2015 By Ben Domenech

VON MISES IS STILL A FACTOR IN ARIZONA

His ass-backwards notions of social causality is reflected in the GOP's decision to eliminate some from the welfare rolls:

Facing $1 billion deficit, Arizona sharply limits welfare
By RYAN VAN VELZER

PHOENIX (AP) — Facing a $1 billion budget deficit, Arizona's Republican-led Legislature has reduced the lifetime limit for welfare recipients to the shortest window in the nation.

Low-income families on welfare will now have their benefits cut off after just 12 months.

"I tell my kids all the time that the decisions we make have rewards or consequences, and if I don't ever let them face those consequences, they can't get back on the path to rewards," Republican Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, said during debate on the budget. "As a society, we are encouraging people at times to make poor decisions and then we reward them."

YEAH, IRAQ WAS A HUGE FAIL

Many sane people realized that in the summer of 2003 but conservatives are a tad slower than most people so it's only now that we have some prominent Republicans stating the obvious:

Iraq War Judged a Mistake by Today's White House Hopefuls
WASHINGTON — May 17, 2015, 2:31 PM ET
By CONNIE CASS Associated Press

A dozen years later, American politics has reached a rough consensus about the Iraq War: It was a mistake.

The fact that Jeb Bush, a likely candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016, was pressured this past week into rejecting, in hindsight, his brother's war "is an indication that the received wisdom, that which we work from right now, is that this was a mistake," said Evan Cornog, a historian and dean of the Hofstra University school of communication.

Or, as Rick Santorum, another potential Republican candidate, put it: "Everybody accepts that now."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz weren't in Congress in 2002 and so didn't have to make a real-time decision with imperfect knowledge. Neither was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who served an earlier stint in Congress.

All these Republicans said last week that, in hindsight, they would not have invaded Iraq with what's now known about the faulty intelligence that wrongly indicated Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," summed up that sentiment: "Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe for many of us, myself included, to say, we probably wouldn't have taken" that approach.

UPDATE: Here's Rubio playing the fool on FOX News.

SO DIE ALREADY!

I've been reading about the aging of part of the GOP"s base for years so this new story in POLITICO leads me to one question: When are we going see the results of the great wingnut die-off, especially at the state level?