Author: Papa Giorgio

Awesome! Ranchers & Cowboys Stood Off Federal Agents

Published by Papa Giorgio

“Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely…. The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite…”

~ R.J. Rummel — from the classic book, Death by Government

Right or wrong, this militarized action is getting worrisome. Even how the Bureau of Land and Management (BLM) retreated, as if this group of citizens were a military force poised to attack. All they wanted was to retrieve Cliven Bundy’s cattle. The government is making wise choices here… to back off. But this is better handled in court. Remember, Ruby Ridge led to (in part) the Oklahoma City Bombing:

Unfortunately, when the Attorney General, as the highest law enforcement official in the country, does not vigorously pursue justice in cases where government clearly employed improper force, a cancerous suspicion metastasizes in the body of society with potentially devastating effects. Not least of all, it encourages dangerous extremists like those in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Dean Koontz ~ horror/fiction author ~ in the foreword of Ambush at Ruby Ridge, by Alan Bock.

In an epic standoff that, supporters of Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy advanced on a position held by BLM agents despite threats that they would be shot at, eventually forcing BLM feds to release 100 cattle that had been stolen from Bundy as part of a land grab dispute that threatened to escalate into a Waco-style confrontation.

When Losing a Debate, Call Your Opponent Racist

Published by Papa Giorgio

  • Candy Crowley: Do you think your Republican colleagues are racist?
  • DCCC Chairl Steve Israel: Not all of them, no. Of course not. But to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism.

(Gateway Pundit) Disgraceful. It is this type of sloppy thinking that may be fueling the ethos in the young black community to knock out white people,

(Daily Caller) The “game” involves young teens attacking a victim, without provocation, and seeking to knock them out with one punch. If one punch doesn’t knock the victim out, more beatings sometimes follow. Nearly all of the attackers are black, while almost all of the victims are all non-black. In the Huffington Post, Al Sharpton wrote that the attacks are “racist, period.”

Through educators, the “zeitgeist” in the liberal Democratic circles, and leading Democrats — like above… you get action on such expressions. And it will only get more dangerous for conservatives. I fear it is not as much as a joke as George Will likes to think it is (Gateway Pundit):

George Will commented on the Eric Holder’s latest suggestion that the criticism against the Obama administration was racist in nature.

“Liberalism has a kind of Tourette Syndrome these days. It’s constantly saying the words racism and racist. There’s an old saying , if you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s, except Obamacare, and the country doesn’t like it.

“Foreign policy is a shambles from Russia to Iran to Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And, the recovery is unprecedentedly bad. So, what do you do? You say anyone who criticizes us is a racist. It’s become a joke among young people. You go to a campus where this kind of political correctness reigns and some young person says, ‘It looks like it’s going to rain.’ And, the person next to him looks and says, ‘You’re a racist.’ It’s so inappropriate. The constant invocation of this that it is becoming a national mirth.

When Preachers Wade Into Constitutional Matters (Franklin Graham)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Shall Not Be Questioned… unless your a preacher?

I’ve noticed anti-gun folks jumping on the fact that Franklin Graham is leading the NRA Annual Meeting Prayer Breakfast, and they hope that he’ll publicly challenge NRA at their own event to accept the President’s background check agenda since Graham endorsed the White House’s private transfer ban proposals last year.

Nightmare

“As ministers, we agreed together that we could stand on a united front for universal background checks…”

(Guns.com)

First, as much experience as I have with NRA Annual Meetings, I couldn’t tell you which office puts on the prayer breakfast because I have no idea which office is responsible for booking those speakers. I’m 99.99999% sure it’s not ILA, the office that actually keeps up with politics and pays attentions to such important policy details. This is an event that has never been a big deal before, really just an opportunity for people who don’t want to miss church or miss out on the giant three day gun show.

The anti-gunners highlight this interview with Time that Franklin Graham did in early March of last year. The key section:

Graham…told TIME [he and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention] have agreed to back universal background check legislation put forward by the administration in the wake of last year’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

By specifically citing the administration-backed proposal at the time of the interview, it’s kind of important to look at the details of the legislation anti-gunners want Graham to bring up at the Prayer Breakfast. The language in the Senate that the White House was backing at the time of Graham’s interview came from Chuck Schumer. That language would have made teaching someone to shoot on your own land a felony, as well as loaning your hunting rifle to a friend for a hunting trip. The record keeping requirements would have created a registration system, and spouses would have faced possible felony prosecution if their spouse who bought the gun left home for more than 7 days without officially designating the “transfer” of said firearms as a gift. As Sebastian said in his summary after reading the language:

This bill has nothing to do with ensuring people who are getting guns are law-abiding, and everything to do with getting backdoor registration, and creating a patchwork of rules and laws that will land anyone who uses guns, and isn’t a lawyer, in federal prison for a long time.

The bill that Graham was backing at the time he talked to Time was not Toomey-Manchin, the somewhat less extreme bill that was later voted down in the Senate.

Now, his views on that terrible bill from Schumer aren’t directly related to his ability to preach a sermon. But, given the venue and host group, I don’t think most attendees who paid for tickets really expect a preacher who publicly backed the White House’s bill that would leave many of them open to felony prosecutions for simply passing on their traditions or going on a long business trip.

At this late date, I wouldn’t really put money on a bet that we’ll see any changes to the speakers, but it will be interesting to see if Graham decides to act on the encouragement of the gun control groups. He certainly didn’t come out and condemn the White House-backed Senate bill once the language and summaries became widely available, so presumably he maintains his support of the policies. That certainly could be a very big problem if he does decide to go along with the gun control groups and use NRA’s event as a venue to promote the bill again.

…read more…

If anything, Graham should be preaching to arm our soldiers:

On April 6th, Lynda Voyles-Konecny said concealed carry allows her to be better armed than her son who was 100 feet from the Fort Hood shooter on April 2nd. She is asking Congress to change this.

According to Huntsville, Alabama’s WHNT 19, Voyles-Konecny said military personnel “defend us overseas, but they’re defenseless at bases.”

She continued, “They’re trained. They know the rules of engagement, we send them off to war, they have their guns, they come home, and then [their guns are] taken away from them on their home bases.”

“Building the Machine” ~ A Common Core Serious Saturday

Published by Papa Giorgio

Video Description:

“Building the Machine” introduces the public to the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and its effects on our children’s education. The documentary compiles interviews from leading educational experts, including members of the Common Core Validation Committee. Parents, officials, and the American public should be involved in this national decision regardless of their political persuasion.

WHAT IS THE COMMON CORE?

The Common Core is the largest systemic reform of American public education in recent history. What started as a collaboration between the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to reevaluate and nationalize America’s education standards has become one of the most controversial—and yet, unheard of—issues in the American public.

In 2010, 45 states adopted the Common Core, but according to a May 2013 Gallup Poll, 62% of Americans said they had never heard of the Common Core. Prominent groups and public figures have broken traditional party lines over the issue, leaving many wondering where they should stand.

Find out more about the Common Core: http://www.hslda.org/CommonCore

The Legacy Media’s Shoe-Horn of a Double-Standard (Dub v. Hill)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Remember when President Bush had a show thrown at him by a “journalist” in the Middle East? The media covered that as “more bad news for Bush” and the unpopularity of the war on terrorism. CBS even compared Bush to Saddam Hussein.

  • “Sock and awe. How the Iraqi shoe-thrower is now being hailed as a hero and drawing thousands of supporters….It’s being referred to as the ‘toss heard around the world.’ In fact, many Iraqis are showering accolades on the journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush.”  — CBS’s Harry Smith on The Early Show, December 16, 2008.
  • “In the Middle East, there’s no bigger insult than hitting someone with a shoe, a dirty object worn on the lowest part of the body. By showing the kind of contempt formerly reserved for Saddam Hussein to President Bush, [Muntathar] al-Zaidi’s become an instant hero….Al-Zaidi should do jail time, said the Iraqi bloggers – because he missed.” — CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer on the December 15, 2008 Evening News.

(NewsBusters)

(Kyle Drennen, via FoxNation) On Friday, all three network morning shows fretted over a woman throwing a shoe at Hillary Clinton during a speaking event in Las Vegas. NBC Today co-host Tamron Hall was particularly melodramatic: “I mean, but how scary is that?…Had it hit her, that would have been awful. It would have been awful.” Weatherman Al Roker added: “Jeez, that’s frightening.” Hall declared: “It’s hard for me to watch, actually.”

The shoe was on the other foot in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at then-President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference. At that time, ABC and CBS referred to the shoe-thrower as a “celebrity” and “folk hero” who “thrilled the Arab world.” In 2009, then-MSNBC host David Shuster actually cheered the release of the footwear assailant from prison. Tamron Hall happened to be on the show at the time and observed that people would have been “more outraged” if someone threw a shoe at President Obama. Here are some reactions to the shoe throw at Hillary:

  • On CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose observed that Clinton “handled that quite well” before noting that the thrower was “facing federal charges.” Fellow co-host Norah O’Donnell gushed: “You know, it was amazing to see how calm she [Hillary Clinton] was….she didn’t really react much at all and had a great retort, you know?” Rose agreed: “It was amazing.” O’Donnell concluded: “Incredible, indeed.”
  • By contrast, on Friday’s ABC Good Morning America, White House correspondent Jon Karl reported: “Hillary Clinton took that with good humor. But it was a scary moment.” Co-host George Stephanopoulos remarked: “Yeah, Hillary Clinton, quick with the quip. But that was a scary moment there for a second.”
  • On CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose observed that Clinton “handled that quite well” before noting that the thrower was “facing federal charges.” Fellow co-host Norah O’Donnell gushed: “You know, it was amazing to see how calm she [Hillary Clinton] was….she didn’t really react much at all and had a great retort, you know?” Rose agreed: “It was amazing.” O’Donnell concluded: “Incredible, indeed.”

(NewsBusters)

Here is CNN covering Bush’s “Shoe Debacle,” take note of the public dislike of Bush in this report… from mentioning “disliking” him, to marveling that Bush would try and turn this into a positive:

  • “You may not like President [George W.] Bush‘s politics, but one thing you can say for sure is that the man has great reflexes,” then-CNN anchor Alina Cho told foreign correspondent Michael Ware in the wake of the December, 2008 incident in Iraq.
  • Ware marveled at the fact that Bush joked about the situation and attempted to “turn the incident to his advantage,” as opposed to dwelling ruefully on his shoe-administered repudiation.
  • “Bare in mind that, in Iraqi culture, throwing a shoe is close to the ultimate insult,” Ware noted. Unlike in the United States, where shoe-throwing is a traditional feature of weddings and christenings.
  • “This may become the press conference of the Iraq War that everyone will remember,” Ware later reported. He noted that this insult is “reserved only for the most hated.”

(Media’ite)

This blatant double-standard should be embarrassing to the legacy media. Alas, it is probably a badge of honor to them – unfortunately. Sad.

Fly At Your Own Risk: “Angry Birds” for Real!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Breitbart brings this “turkey roast” to bare:

In February, Secretary of Energy dedicated the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System in southeastern California, calling it a “shining example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy” [no pun intended, apparently]. 

However, the project–funded by $1.6 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees from the 2009 stimulus–is killing wildlife as it concentrates heat on reflecting towers to maximize output.

The Ivanpah array (seen from the air in a Breitbart News photograph above) is cited in a new report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that describes it as a “mega-trap” for wildlife, according to the Palm Spring Desert Sun. 

In one section of the report, law enforcement officers from the agency describe visiting Ivanpah and witnessing “birds entering the solar flux and igniting,” each becoming a “streamer” of fire and smoke…

And the Washington Times (Via Lonely Conservative) points out some of the issues at hand:

1. Solar flux: Exposure to temperatures over 800 degrees F.

2. Impact (or blunt force) trauma: The birds’ wings are rendered inoperable while flying, causing them to crash into the ground. Birds that do not die are often injured badly enough to make them vulnerable to predators.

3. Predators: When a bird’s wings are singed and it can not fly, it loses its primary means of defense against animals like foxes and coyotes.

The study found that besides the intense heat, birds may be mistaking large solar panels for bodies of water. The injured birds then attract insects and other predators to the area. They, too, are then vulnerable to injury or death.

In one instance, researchers found “hundreds upon hundreds” of butterfly carcasses (including Monarchs). The insects were attracted to the light from the solar farms, which in turn attracted birds and perpetuated a cycle of death and injury.

Other issues with alternative energy:

But there is a “hidden” cost behind powering a plant not producing enough power:

…But Ivanpah uses natural gas as a supplementary fuel, and data from the California Energy Commission show the plant burned enough of it in 2014 – its first year of operation – to emit more than 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

That’s nearly twice the pollution threshold at which power plants and factories in California are required to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions.

The same amount of natural gas burned at a conventional power plant would have produced enough electricity to meet the annual needs of 17,000 California homes – roughly a quarter of the Ivanpah plant’s total electricity projection for 2014….

See MORE

The Media Matrix: “I Barely Began to Scratch the Surface”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Appearing on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson claimed that CBS “had barely begun to scratch the surface” of the “Fast and Furious” scandal before the network moved on from the story. She noted that the network showed similar reluctance for its coverage of Benghazi and the ObamaCare rollout.

RPT Project ~ Categorizing My Quotes (Patience Requested)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I will be working on separating my collection of quotes into somewhat similar categories. As you can see [above], I have already started. I think I will included a “Historical” section as well as an “Economic” section. I was limited in my old theme to how many “PAGES” I could have, but no longer. And it dawned on me that I can expand this section/resource of my blog.

What this will do — pro: it will allow visitors to better find relevant quotes or insights if they so choose. The posts with the loosely classified quotes/excerpts will not be quite as long! More manageable.

What it will do — con: Since many of these quotes span multiple topics, for instance, religious AND political, or Theological AND historical*, they will be hard to categorize. So some will seem out of place — except in my mind of course. For this, I apologize.

* This will end up in the “Historical,” even though it could be in “Theology”

The Christian faith often served as a prelude to political reform. Just as it appeared that the reforming light was about to be extinguished” in early medieval Europe, missionaries from Ulster sailed and transplanted the faith. Democracy’s growth centuries later would come from the soil nourished by the Christian ethos. St. Patrick’s Ulster faith would blos­som as much in Switzerland as anywhere else at the time. During the early sixteenth century, that same faith, greatly matured, would both fuel and be charged by Calvinism. Calvinism, in turn, contributed to revolu­tionizing the politics of England and eventually returned to Irish soil, from which many of the second wave of American settlers sailed. The faith that would transform Western political institutions spread conta­giously—not always predictably or systematically, but irrepressibly. As it was recycled from Bangor to Geneva, then back to Donegal, it gath­ered force again in the massive Ulster Scot migration during the eight­eenth century to America—still preserving the improvements of Genevan polity—through Scots-Irish missionaries like Francis Makemie.

David W. Hall, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 37

Street Fighter II ~ The WOF Church Edition (Reposted)

Published by Papa Giorgio

My FaceBook comment:

…too funny. As a guy who came from a house that accepted the “word of faith” teachings (and it was the cause of my fathers early death: http://tinyurl.com/qe46zg4 ~ see also: http://tinyurl.com/d4omv4), I know what a reasonable, healthy/well-balanced faith should look like — hint: not like the above. So I can laugh at this but am always amazed and saddened at how gullible we as humans are (religiously AND politically) — and why Scripture asks us to “check” our faith often (http://tinyurl.com/kt8tbkj). A funny find… I needed that laugh this morning.

Another Failed Origin of Life Prediction for Evolutionary Naturalists

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above video is the “perhaps” of modern science, that the below refutes with more updated information.

This is with a h-t to Fazale Rana. Fazal wrote on the matter here, “Sea Vents Closed as Life-Origin Site.” Below are some excerpts from the Science Daily article:

One of the greatest mysteries facing humans is how life originated on Earth. Scientists have determined approximately when life began (roughly 3.8 billion years ago), but there is still intense debate about exactly how life began. One possibility — that simple metabolic reactions emerged near ancient seafloor hot springs, enabling the leap from a non-living to a living world — has grown in popularity in the last two decades.

Recent research by geochemists Eoghan Reeves, Jeff Seewald, and Jill McDermott at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the first to test a fundamental assumption of this ‘metabolism first’ hypothesis, and finds that it may not have been as easy as previously assumed. Instead, their findings could provide a focus for the search for life on other planets. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1977, scientists discovered biological communities unexpectedly living around seafloor hydrothermal vents, far from sunlight and thriving on a chemical soup rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and sulfur, spewing from the geysers. Inspired by these findings, scientists later proposed that hydrothermal vents provided an ideal environment with all the ingredients needed for microbial life to emerge on early Earth. A central figure in this hypothesis is a simple sulfur-containing carbon compound called “methanethiol” — a supposed geologic precursor of the Acetyl-CoA enzyme present in many organisms, including humans. Scientists suspected methanethiol could have been the “starter dough” from which all life emerged.

The question Reeves and his colleagues set out to test was whether methanethiol — a critical precursor of life — could form at modern day vent sites by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. Could methanethiol be the bridge between a chemical, non-living world and the first microbial life on the planet?

Carbon dioxide, hydrogen and sulfide are the common ingredients present in hydrothermal black smoker fluids. “The thought was that making methanethiol from these basic ingredients at seafloor hydrothermal vents should therefore have been an easy process,” adds Reeves.

The theory was appealing, and solved many of the basic problems with existing ideas that life may have been carried to Earth on a comet or asteroid….

[….]

“What we essentially found in our survey is that we don’t think methanethiol is forming by purely chemical means without the involvement of life. This might be disappointing news for anyone assuming an easy start for hydrothermal proto-metabolism,” says Reeves. “However, our finding that methanethiol may be readily forming as a breakdown product of microbial life provides further indication that life is present and widespread below the seafloor and is very exciting.”

The researchers believe this new understanding could change how we think about searching for life on other planets.

Uncommon Descent notes the following after quoting the above Science Daily article:

As noted earlier, origin of life is a problem in the origin of huge amount of information and looking for a way it happened due to some fluke has always been a waste of time.

Software engineer Arminius Mignea’s specifications for a simplest self-replicator in Engineering and the Ultimate would be a useful read on that score. It advances the discussion by setting out what origin of life (by human or other hands) models should look like, to merit consideration.

Too often, people play rhetorical games that sound like: “Life happened, so my ‘stink world’ is plausible” or “The prevailing consensus says Stink World is plausible, therefore life.”

It’s a form of homage to philosophical materialism, not science really, and it suck in lots of well-meaning people. They don’t realize that when we are asked to accept an inherently implausible idea because it is materialist, we are invited to put materialism above every other consideration, including logic, reason, and evidence.

 

Obama’s Bizarro Facts About the Gender Pay Gap ~ and His Family

Published by Papa Giorgio

Below, Michael Medved deals with two issues from President Obama’s recent Executive Order “Payment Fairness Act” push through. He [Medved] deals first with the continuing distortion of Obama’s family history by Obama himself. Then he gets to the meat of the issue (followed by some of the WSJ article mentioned in the clip):

Here are excerpts from the WSJ article:

…In its annual report, “Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2012,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854).” Give or take a few percentage points, the BLS appears to support the president’s claim.

But every “full-time” worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children. The BLS reports that single women who have never married earned 96% of men’s earnings in 2012.

The supposed pay gap appears when marriage and children enter the picture. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Many working mothers seek jobs that provide greater flexibility, such as telecommuting or flexible hours. Not all jobs can be flexible, and all other things being equal, those which are will pay less than those that do not.

Education also matters. Even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering. And as the American Association of University Women reports, men are four times more likely to bargain over salaries once they enter the job market.

Risk is another factor. Nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as loggers or iron workers, are majority male and 92% of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Dangerous jobs tend to pay higher salaries to attract workers. Also: Males are more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as law and finance. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for that risk.

While the BLS reports that full-time female workers earned 81% of full-time males, that is very different than saying that women earned 81% of what men earned for doing the same jobs, while working the same hours, with the same level of risk, with the same educational background and the same years of continuous, uninterrupted work experience, and assuming no gender differences in family roles like child care. In a more comprehensive study that controlled for most of these relevant variables simultaneously—such as that from economists June and Dave O’Neill for the American Enterprise Institute in 2012—nearly all of the 23% raw gender pay gap cited by Mr. Obama can be attributed to factors other than discrimination. The O’Neills conclude that, “labor market discrimination is unlikely to account for more than 5% but may not be present at all.”…

Again, and again, the Dems from the President on-down spread this lie! While I deal with this quite well here… I will now add another post dealing with this myth, lie, political tactic. Below will be a few video/audio clips as well as The Wall Street Journal and Powerline posts/articles on the matter.

Professor Christiana Hoff Sommers was recently interviewed by Larry Elder explains this nonsense in an erudite and concise manner::

Powerline says that the President is in trouble when it can’t even fool CNN: AEI’s Mark Perry sets out the “analysis” proving pay discrimination at the White House here in a form even the folks at CNN can understand. If Obama can’t fool those who want to believe at CNN with this line, who ya gonna fool? Again, Powerline posts (10-20, 2012)Thomas Sowell’s response to the matter:

At the Hofstra University presidential debate this past Tuesday (I’m working from the WaPo transcript here), Candy Crowley called on Katherine Fenton to ask this groaner of a question: “In what new ways to you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?”

This is such an old canard I thought that Governor Romney might challenge the premise of the question. Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land, Katherine. The proposition that the statistical disparity in pay you mention results from employment discrimination has been examined and disproved many times over. The great Thomas Sowell addressed it in chapter 3 of Economic Facts and Fallacies (summarized in the video below). Katherine, the premise of your question falls into the category of “fallacy.”

What is truly scary is that everyone may know your pay at some point… this may be no-longer private:

The first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, but five years later, the White House is still talking about the gender wage-gap.

At a White House briefing on Wednesday, Betsey Stevenson, one of President Obama’s economic advisers, said female employees need to know how much their male colleagues earn, so they can tell if they’re being paid equally.

(read it all)

(Via The Lonely Conservative) …The Washington Post slammed [the above] graphic put out by the White House as being sexist.

It pictures two women, one in a pink dress carrying a handbag, the other in an orange dress, and both are wearing oh-so-practical stilettos. This is exactly what working women wear to work every day, right? All those women who are lawyers, and doctors, and cashiers, and investment bankers, and biochemists, and nursing assistants and architects and engineers and cashiers at the Piggly Wiggly? Perhaps this is why Obama was so focused on dry-cleaning bills at the White House signing ceremony? This is just not great messaging or symbolism for a White House that wants to also focus on women in minimum wage jobs. It screams “Sex and the City,” not “9 to 5.”

Ouch!

It didn’t get much better for Senate Democrats. Republicans took a look at their payroll records and found they also have a wage inequality problem.

It turns out President Obama isn’t the only hypocritical Democrat, in fact Senate Democrats have their own problems when it comes to equal pay. We pulled the official payroll records of various offices and calculated the average pay for men and women in each office for the most recent 6 month period available. Since some employees only worked a portion of the six month period, we calculated how much each person was paid per day in order to give an accurate representation. Here’s what we found:

  • Mark Udall pays women 85 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mary Landrieu pays women 88 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Begich pays women 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Warner pays women 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Gary Peters pays women 67 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

That means on average, these five Democrats on the ballot in battleground states pay women in their office 79 cents for every dollar made by a male employee.