Primary season is just warming up, and already the Teabaggers have scored a major victory against Republican incumbents, snuffing out Bob Bennett (R-UT), one of the most conservative members of the Senate, for not being conservative enough.
Bennett told the Associated Press he has not ruled out a write-in campaign.
Split votes, here we come.
Party on, Tea People!
The Maine Republican Party has just embraced the batshit brigade. At their convention last night, they adopted a platform straight out of Alice in Wonderland:
An overwhelming majority of delegates to the Maine Republican convention tonight voted to scrap the the proposed party platform and replace it with a document created by a group of Tea Party activists.
The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.
The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion’” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”
Hoo boy.
The whole document, which is written in a hamfisted style intended to mimic the Declaration of Independence, is here if your head hasn’t already exploded.
Conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have chosen to bet the farm on the idea that government in and of itself is a bad thing. And every time they are voted into power, they do everything within their means to make that abstraction a reality.
Government is inefficient, they say, and then create odious budget deficits to prove their point.
Government cannot support itself, they say, and then explode the national debt to prove their point.
Government is bad for the economy, they say, and then destroy American jobs to prove their point.
For Chrissakes, they famously declared their intent to “drown government in a bathtub.” Why on earth would you ever choose them to run your government?
And yet we do. And are invariably surprised to reap the whirlwind.
In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman illustrates how the BP oil spill exemplifies this phenomenon. The jury is still out on a comprehensive picture of the causes of the spill. But it’s clear even now that the destruction of common sense regulation during the Bush administration played a huge role.
[T]here is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.
The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken.
For years, the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Interior Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, minimized the environmental risks of drilling. It failed to require a backup shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world, even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.
Surely, however, none of this — except, possibly, that last exemption, granted early in the Obama administration — surprises anyone who followed the history of the Interior Department during the Bush years.
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries — and I’m not just talking about Dick Cheney’s energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it’s not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds.
…
In any case, now is the time to make that break — and I don’t just mean by cleaning house at the Minerals Management Service. What really needs to change is our whole attitude toward government. For the troubles at Interior weren’t unique: they were part of a broader pattern that includes the failure of banking regulation and the transformation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a much-admired organization during the Clinton years, into a cruel joke. And the common theme in all these stories is the degradation of effective government by antigovernment ideology.
Conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have no interest in the success of our government. Knowing that, we should never allow them to be in charge of it.
Never again.
Now that two of the three branches of the Federal Government have fallen under the depraved spell of the New American Socialist Regime, it’s up to the states – and their spunky conservative residents – to take things into their own patriotic hands.
And boy have they ever.
Here’s a patriot’s grab-bag from the last couple of weeks:
Louisiana
While the elephant in the room is busy wading ashore, it’s good to see my home state is still able to conduct business as usual:
Persons who have have been qualified to carry concealed weapons should be able to keep them strapped on in a church or temple as a way to enhance security, a House committee said today.
The Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice voted 8-3 for House Bill 68 by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Shreveport, sending it to more debate on the House floor.
Praise god and pass the ammunition.
Oh, and side note? Even Fox News is now calling bullshit on the Obama-acted-slowly-on-the-oil-spill-so-it’s-just-like-Katrina meme. So I think it’s safe for the rest of us to drop it now, too. That didn’t take long.
Tennessee
…and no, the Nashville flood wasn’t his Katrina either.
In other Tennessee news:
Right-wing extremists who question the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency tried to take on local law enforcement recently — and they seem to have come out on the losing end.
First, a Tennessee man was arrested after walking into his local county courthouse to try to effect a citizen’s arrest of a grand jury foreman who had refused to investigate President Obama’s legitimacy to serve — an encounter partially caught on video. That enraged one Georgia-based member of the far-right OathKeepers group. Responding to a call from an extremist leader, he drove to Tennessee with an AK-47 in a bid to get his comrade released — only to wind up getting arrested himself.
Luckily these “citizen’s” [sic] are working “in mass” [sic]. Otherwise you might mistake them for yokels who’ve never actually read the Constitution and, I dunno, arrest them or something.
Ohio
Samuel Joe the Plumber wins a seat on his county’s Republican committee.
Oklahoma
It’s official: it’s now illegal to be a woman in Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma Legislature voted Tuesday to override the governor’s vetoes of two abortion measures, one of which requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting an abortion.
Though other states have passed similar measures requiring women to have ultrasounds, Oklahoma’s law goes further, mandating that a doctor or technician set up the monitor so the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. No exceptions are made for rape and incest victims.
A second measure passed into law on Tuesday prevents women who have had a disabled baby from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects while the child was in the womb [read: it's okay for doctors to not tell expectant mothers about birth defects if they think it would cause them to abort].
…
[Governor] Henry has signed two [other provisions] into law: a measure requiring clinics to post signs stating that a woman cannot be forced to have an abortion, and another making it illegal to have an abortion because of the sex of a child.Two other anti-abortion bills are still working their way through the Legislature and are expected to pass. One would force women to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about their reasons for seeking an abortion; statistics based on the answers would then be posted online. The other restricts insurance coverage for the procedures.
Taken together, the various pieces of legislation would make Oklahoma one of the most prohibitive environments in the United States for women seeking to end a pregnancy, advocates for women and family planning said.
Virginia
Speaking of outlawing women, Virginia Attorney General and End Times warrior Ken Cuccinelli, not content with legalizing sexual profiling in his state, is now on a crusade to ban breasts from his DOJ:
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli apparently isn’t fond of wardrobe malfunctions, even when Virginia’s state seal is involved.
The seal depicts the Roman goddess Virtus, or virtue, wearing a blue tunic draped over one shoulder, her left breast exposed. But on the new lapel pins Cuccinelli recently handed out to his staff, Virtus’ bosom is covered by an armored breastplate.
When the new design came up at a staff meeting, workers in attendance said Cuccinelli joked that it converts a risqué image into a PG one.
The joke might be on him, said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.
“When you ask to be ridiculed, it usually happens. And it will happen here, nationally,” he said. “This is classical art, for goodness’ sake.”
As turned off as he is by tits, though, it’s nothing compared to how he feels about science:
An investigation by Ken Cuccinelli of a climate scientist who was caught up in last year’s “Climate-Gate” flap is being likened to a “witch hunt” — even by global warming skeptics.
South Carolina
Thankfully, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is focusing on larger questions, such as what rights should be afforded to terrorist suspects:
There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms.
“I think you’re going too far here,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. He was speaking in opposition to a bill that would keep people on the F.B.I. terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives.
Say what?
Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.”
…
Graham wanted to make it clear that just because he doesn’t want to stop gun purchases by possible terrorists, that doesn’t mean he’s not tough on terror.“I am all into national security. … I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights,” he said.
To sum up: right to remain silent not okay for terrorists; right to buy guns and explosives okay for terrorists.
And last but not least, Arizona
Oy. Where to begin?
The newly-minted Arizona Gestapo is already asking brown citizens for their papers:
A Valley man says he was pulled over Wednesday morning and questioned when he arrived at a weigh station for his commercial vehicle along Val Vista and the 202 freeway.
…
Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver’s license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.An agent called his wife and she had to leave work to drive home and grab other documents like his birth certificate.
Is it any surprise that one of the Republican State Senate backers of the bill subscribes to the twitter feeds of two white nationalist organizations?
Don Black is a Florida-based white supremacist who is banned from the UK for inciting hatred. Arizona State Senate Majority leader Chuck Gray—a proponent of the recent immigration bill—follows him, and another white power feed, on Twitter.
…
[The] Twitter account [of white nationalist organization Stormfront], and another neo-Nazi feed linked to it, are among 4,819 that Arizona State Senate Majority Leader Chuck Gray follows. Stormfront does not reciprocate, however—the group follows no one. Which means that Gray, or whoever is responsible for his Twitter account, sought out the racist organization specifically and decided its tweets were essential reading.
Knowing that, would it further surprise you to hear that the bill’s author is also really into white nationalism? From the New York Times:
The state senator who wrote the law, Russell Pearce, had long been considered a politically incorrect embarrassment by more moderate members of his party — often to the delight of his supporters. There was the time in 2007 when he appeared in a widely circulated photograph with a man who was a featured speaker at a neo-Nazi conference. (Mr. Pearce said later he did not know of the man’s affiliation with the group.)
In 2006, he came under fire for speaking admirably of a 1950s federal deportation program called Operation Wetback, and for sending an e-mail message to supporters that included an attachment — inadvertently, he said — from a white supremacist group.
The “papers, please” law is so popular among flyover conservatives that Arizona may find it’s started a trend. Minnesota wants it and Florida teabagger favorite Marco Rubio is all for it now that he’s realized he was pandering to the wrong constituency when he said he was against it.
Truly, Arizona is flying off a cliff on rollerskates and crapping its pants all the way down. But there’s a certain freedom in that kind of release, and once the shit starts flying it’s hard to get it back in the old bottle:
Just a week after signing the country’s toughest immigration bill into law, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer now must decide whether to endorse another bill passed by her state legislature — one that outlaws ethnic-studies programs in public schools.
Just in case that doesn’t make school time trauma-free for Jim-Bob and Cindy-Lou, this ought to do the trick:
The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.
Does the list of unacceptable accents include “Inbred Redneck?”
Posted in abortion, birthers, conservatism, domestic terrorism, education, FOX News, funny, libertarianism, militia movement, Obama administration, oil, racism, Republican Party, Tea Party, the conservative psychosis
Tagged Chuck Gray, Don Black, flood, gun control, Jan Brewer, Joe the Plumber, Ken Cuccinelli, lindsey graham, Louisiana, Marco Rubio, Miranda, Nashville, OathKeepers, Oklahoma, Russell Pearce, Tennessee
Pat Buchanan is ebullient at the thought of the coming White Uprising:
Why are the Tea Partiers not intimidated the way Republicans often are? Why is the charge of racism not working?
First, they do not feel the guilt of country-club Republicans.
Second, they know it to be untrue. While Tea Partiers are anti-Obama, they are also anti-Pelosi, anti-Martha Coakley and anti-Charlie Christ. The coming conflict is not so much racial as it is cultural, political and tribal.
Black America seems united. White America is the house divided, for it is in the womb of white America that this new people is gestating and fighting to be born.
And Pat’s standing ready with the forceps.
In addition to not understanding the Constitution – a profound political document that they have cheapened by fetishizing – Sarah Palin and her Tea People also have a poor grasp on the colonial history that they idolize. Far from embodying the spirit of the original Tea Party, they resemble nothing more than King George himself.
House Democrats are tired of waiting for President Obama to slow-walk the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell until after the November elections. Looks like they’re going to try it without him.
Not content with codifying racial profiling as its police officers’ solemn duty, the Arizona legislature has now officially demanded to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
Reason for cautious optimism regarding Obama’s SCOTUS pick – maybe:
President Obama thinks Republicans will engage in a full battle over his Supreme Court nominee regardless of the person’s ideological leanings, and in some ways “that realization is liberating for the president” to choose whomever he pleases, an administration official told TPMDC.
…
“It doesn’t matter who he chooses, there is going to be a big ‘ol fight over it. So he doesn’t have to get sidetracked by those sorts of concerns,” the official told me. The GOP has attempted to obstruct “anything of consequence” put forth by the Obama administration since he took office, the official said. “The president is making this decision with a pretty clear view that whoever he chooses is going to provoke a strong reaction on the right,” the official added.
It’s one thing to be a total pussy. It’s another thing to be a big, fat, lying pussy.
More evidence that the Tea People don’t really believe their own propaganda:
Congress will not consider legislation to give the District of Columbia voting rights this year because the bill was clogged with “issues” such as gun ownership, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced this morning.
The “gun rights” issue Hoyer is referring to is a “poison pill” amendment that Republicans attached to the D.C. voting rights bill, requiring D.C. to scrap its gun restrictions before its citizens are allowed to have the vote. I guess taxation without representation is okay with conservatives, as long as it’s in a Democratic district.
Holy shit! The gummint wants to put a microchip in your “vaginal-rectum area“!
Poor Mitt Romney. He’s going to be reading ledes like this one every day between now and the day that he concedes the 2012 Republican primary race:
Mitt Romney on RomneyCare: The former Massachusetts governor talks about the subtle differences between his state’s health care reform and that signed by President Obama.
And Poor John McCain.
Yes, it’s still true: Republicans are despicable. Even to their own people.
Did you know that promiscuous women cause earthquakes?
I can’t think of a better argument for drug legalization than this one.
Lucy gets her football ready – again:
“I’m optimistic that maybe the Democrats won’t go forward with the [Financial Reform] bill as it is,” [Sen. Olympia] Snowe [R-Maine] told reporters outside her office. “Over the next few days, hopefully, something will change to make that possible. I don’t see why it would be impossible because frankly I think that there isn’t that much of a gap.”
Would such an agreement be possible within the week, to keep within the Democrats’ preferred timeframe?
“I think it certainly could be, absolutely,” Snowe said. “I’m always willing to be the only Republican if it’s the right thing, and it’s important to do the right thing on this.“
As she’s said before, when history calls, history calls.
Governor Rick Perry (R-Texastan) thinks W was the Best. President. Evah.
At the end of the day, when the history books are written, I think George W. Bush will go down as a very, very good President. Approaching great? I don’t know yet because I don’t know if we’ve seen the –
A year and a half since he’s been out of office, this may be a little bit early to write George’s history. But here’s why he was an incredibly good President: because this man kept America safe. […]
Anyone who is not a rank political hack, who has an agenda, and looks at this President’s efforts — I mean, there are two things that I think people judge Presidents on: their safety and the economy.
No doubt. One of the most epic terrorist attacks in world history, a soaring deficit, and a near-economic collapse later, George’s posterity is sitting pretty.
Speaking of keeping America safe:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and US officials say two leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq have been killed in a joint Iraqi-US operation.
Mr Maliki said on national TV that the Iraqi al-Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who led an affiliate group, were dead.
US Vice-President Joe Biden said their deaths were “potentially devastating blows” to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
You know – the “al-Qaeda in Iraq” that didn’t even exist until Rick Perry’s BFF invaded the country.
Ah, chastity:
When Pat Bond told her lover Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, that she was pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion.
Bond, who was 28, had a miscarriage and then became pregnant again. This time Willenborg’s superiors urged her to give up the child for adoption.
Bond, from Missouri, kept the child but agreed to a vow of silence. In a signed contract with the Catholic Church, she undertook to keep the priest’s identity secret in exchange for financial support for her son, Nathan.
In America, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Austria,women made pregnant by priests have signed such pledges in exchange for hush money from the church.
Deus vult, and all that.
Looks like Jews for Sarah Palin may have launched their web site a little too soon:
“Hearing any leader declare that America isn’t a Christian nation and poking at allies like Israel in the eye — it is mind-boggling to see some of our nation’s actions recently, but politics truly is a topic for another day,” Palin said.
In some ways the really noteworthy thing here is that Palin specifically combined her denunciation of religious minority groups with an attack on Barack Obama’s insufficient fealty to Israeli government policies. The two themes were in the very same sentence.
Jim Crow is alive and well in Arizona. Thanks to the Arizona legislature, having brown skin is the only probable cause police now need to pull you over and ask for your papers. Jawohl!
This is pretty much all you need to know about the Republicans’ loyalties when it comes to passing meaningful financial reform.
The Douchebag Council at Pat Robertson’s Liberty University argue that unless employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual preference, deviant sex offenders are going to rape the bloody stumps of paraplegic veterans.
For Mitch McConnell, telling lies is like breathing:
CANDY CROWLEY (CNN, Sunday): The president says you are being deceptive in describing this bill.
MCCONNELL: Well, Candy … there is a bailout fund in the bill that was reported out of the Banking Committee, the partisan bill that came out of committee on a party-line vote.
CROWLEY: But that still does not–
MCCONNELL: I don’t think that’s in dispute.
CROWLEY: But that bailout is funded by the banks themselves, is it not? It is not a taxpayer bailout?
MCCONNELL: Well, Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor, says it is a bailout fund.
***
When Mitch McConnell has to misquote me to find evidence he’s telling the truth, he is desperate. No, Senator, I never said Dodd’s finance reform bill contains a bailout fund. The fund in the Dodd bill is a $50 billion liquidation fund designed to keep the creditors of distressed banks from jumping ship so fast they’d cause widespread financial panic before the bank’s operations could be wound down. And the cost of that liquidation fund would be paid entirely by Wall Street’s biggest banks. So it’s not, I repeat not, a bailout fund.
As always, Eugene Robinson nails it:
The overhyped Tea Party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A “movement” that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, “constitutionalists” who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy “birthers” who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists (come on, people, let’s be real) and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be “outsiders” is not a coherent intellectual or political force.
Speaking of the incoherence of the Tea People:
Tea party activists are divided roughly into two camps, according to a new POLITICO/TargetPoint poll: one that’s libertarian-minded and largely indifferent to hot-button values issues and another that’s culturally conservative and equally concerned about social and fiscal issues.
…
The results, however, suggest a distinct fault line that runs through the tea party activist base, characterized by two wings led by the politicians who ranked highest when respondents were asked who “best exemplifies the goals of the tea party movement” — former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former GOP presidential candidate.
Call it the Dingbat/Wingnut split.
Finally, there is much to criticize about the Obama administration. Thinking that America’s success is measured by how much the rest of the world hates us is not one of them.
Posted in al-Qaeda, Bush administration, Catholic church, drugs, financial reform, health care, Iran, Iraq war, Obama administration, Tea Party, Uncategorized
Tagged Candy Crowley, celibacy, Eugene Robinson, Jim Crow, Joe Biden, John McCain, Liberty University, lindsey graham, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Olympia Snowe, Pat Robertson, Rick Perry, Robert Reich, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, SEC
Happy Monday! The crazy continues, even when we’re busy. Here’s a taste of what I’ve missed over the past few days:
The big news, of course, is Goldman Sachs getting caught selling its customers securities they knew would fail, and then betting against them. But you already knew that. And is this really surprising to anyone at this point?
Here’s some stuff you might have missed:
Notorious bigot and former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo wants to “send Obama back to Kenya.”
Celebrated bigot and erstwhile Sheriff Joe Arpaio kills an epileptic man:
A man died from a brain hemorrhage after Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers refused to give him his anti-seizure medication and put him in a cell with a concrete floor and walls, his daughters say.
The family says the Sheriff’s Department knew of Joseph Phillippi’s medical history because he had suffered multiple seizures when he was denied his medication during a previous incarceration.
The Oklahoma legislature wants to create a State Militia – using taxpayer money of course – to protect itself against Federal tyranny:
[State Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso], who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, said in an AP story Monday that a citizen militia is authorized by state law and the U.S. Constitution and that the Second Amendment “deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government.”
At the time, Brogdon and some local tea party leaders indicated a militia could be used to stop federal encroachment into state’s rights. Brogdon has since said he spoke only of a new National Guard-type unit to aid the state during civil emergencies. In a number of media appearances this week he said he never used the term “militia” in his AP interview.
Brogdon used it five times.
“Is a state militia a good idea? It probably is. Because it, again, it would just reinforce the, the attitude and the belief that you and I have the right to keep and bear arms and to provide and protect our families from an overreaching federal government. I think it’s a great idea,” Brogdon said in the interview conducted last week.
Don’t like the Federal government? Think it’s “tyranny” any time your party is out of power? Why not declare yourself a sovereign citizen:
Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or “sovereign” from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.
This causes all kinds of problems—and crimes. For example, many sovereign citizens don’t pay their taxes. They hold illegal courts that issue warrants for judges and police officers. They clog up the court system with frivolous lawsuits and liens against public officials to harass them. And they use fake money orders, personal checks, and the like at government agencies, banks, and businesses.
Sounds like fun!
Shocker: Americans hate Sarah Palin and her teabagger army:
In a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, the ephemeral nature of the Tea Party movement is once again revealed. When asked for their opinion of Tea Parties, respondents were decidedly unenthusiastic.
While the total numbers for support and opposition are tied at 27%, the support numbers have declined since January and those strongly opposed have doubled.
…
A mere 4% reported having attended a Tea Party rally or meeting.
…
These numbers confirm previous polling that shows the Tea Party to be a much smaller phenomenon than the impression given to it by the media. It incorporates a tiny percentage of the population and is widely disliked.
…
The Tea Bag sag coincides with the plummeting popularity of the Tea Bag Hag, Sarah Palin. The CNN poll showed Palin’s favorability rating at 39% (55% unfavorable). 69% of respondents said that she is not qualified to be president.
Maybe when she finally manages to reunite church and state, her followers’ “prayer shields” will be able to protect her from those kind of numbers.
Speaking of the Tea Bag Hag, this story is priceless:
A couple of weeks before the Alaska legislature began this year’s session, a bipartisan group of state senators on a retreat a few hours from here invited Gov. Sarah Palin to join them. Accompanied by a retinue of advisers, she took a seat at one end of a conference table and listened passively as Gary Stevens, the president of the Alaska Senate, a former college history professor and a low-key Republican with a reputation for congeniality, expressed delight at her presence.
Would the governor, a smiling Stevens asked, like to share some of her plans and proposals for the coming legislative session?
Palin looked around the room and paused, according to several senators present. “I feel like you guys are always trying to put me on the spot,” she said finally, as the room became silent.
And speaking of being put on the spot:
With partisan charges over financial regulation legislation sharpening and intensifying, Senator Scott Brown said yesterday that he would follow GOP leaders and vote against the current version of the bill.
…
Brown, whose vote could be critical as Democrats seek to find a GOP member to avoid a filibuster, assiduously avoided talking about specifics.When asked what areas he thought should be fixed, he replied: “Well, what areas do you think should be fixed? I mean, you know, tell me. And then I’ll get a team and go fix it.’’
When you want the American public to believe you’re fighting the big banks instead of fellating them, who you gonna call? Why, Frank Luntz, of course:
The crux of [Mitch McConnell's] criticism is that the bill “institutionalizes… taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks.” He knocked the expansion of power at the Fed and Treasury, while sounding the alarm on Wall Street accountability. If the outline of his speech sounds familiar, it’s because it is the exact argument pollster Frank Luntz urged Republicans to make earlier this year in a widely publicized memo. Compare the excerpts below (emphasis mine):
Luntz: “The single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.”
McConnell: “We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks. And that’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor.”
Luntz: “Taxpayers should not be held responsible for the failure of big business any longer. If a business is going to fail, not matter how big, let it fail.”
McConnell: “[The Dodd bill] gives the government a new backdoor mechanism for propping up failing or failed institutions…. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”
Luntz: “Government policies caused the bubble and its ultimate crash. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, and the Community Reinvestment Act all had a role in the catastrophe. The government inflated economic bubbles with easy credit policies.”
McConnell: “It also directs the Fed to oversee 35 to 50 of the biggest firms, replicating on an even larger scale the same distortions that plagued the housing market and helped trigger a massive bubble we’ll be suffering from for years. If you thought Fannie and Freddie were dangerous, how about 35 to 50 of them?”
Have you heard the new one that Republicans are pushing? Outrage that 47% of American households don’t even pay taxes. It’s bullshit, of course. 47% of Americans receive enough tax credits to wipe out their federal income tax burden. But they still pay payroll taxes and state income taxes, which disproportionately impact lower-income taxpayers (when was the last time you heard a rich guy bitching about his payroll tax?). Of course the hilarious element of all of this is watching Republicans complain about people not paying enough taxes. Take it away, John Stewart.
On that note, if you’re bummed out that rich people didn’t get a tax break this year like the other 98% of us, why not make a donation to help them out?
Carl Paladino is the Tea Party candidate for Governor of New York. WNY Media today posted a piece on Paladino that is getting some attention.
Last week, we received a deluge of emails that Carl Paladino had sent to a veritable who’s who of Buffalo-area politicians, media types, hangers-on, hacks, and appointees. Mostly, these are chain emails with a long provenance, including hundreds of email addresses of current and past recipients.
The piece then goes on to give a sampler of the emails, many of which are sexually explicit, and some of which are downright weird (one video he forwarded was of a woman having sex with a horse). But the most telling are emails like these:
1. In December 2008, Paladino forwarded a message entitled “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal” including a video clip showing African tribesmen dancing in a village. This video is very popular in the white supremacist community and has been posted at the Neo-Nazi Stormfront website.
…
4. Here’s a cute email from October 4, 2009, which portrays President Obama and the First Lady dressed in 70s pimp/prostitute/blaxploitation garb.
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7. One email entitled “demotivated” included several phony “motivational” posters, along with this one: [an image with the title "run niggers, run!"]
Predictably, Paladino’s campaign is trying its best to ignore the emails. But they did issue this little gem of a statement:
Carl Paladino has forwarded close friends hundreds of email messages he received [sic]. Many of these emails he received were off color [sic], some were politically incorrect, few represented his own opinion, and almost none of them were worth remembering.
We’re not surprised the political establishment feels threatened by Carl’s drive the [sic] take Albany back for taxpayers. Our campaign won’t be wading through the details of what is just another liberal Democrat [sic] blog smear. It figures that members of the Party [sic] who brought us record taxes, record spending and record debt would want to change the topic from reform to having sex with horses and S&M parlors.
Yeah, right? Because liberals are always thinking about things like bestiality.
Oh, wait…
I’d rather not post the images here – they just give me the creeps. But you can see them here if you’re so inclined.
Tagged bestiality, Buffalo, Carl Paladino, Nazi, New York, Stormfront, WNY Media
Sarah Palin recalls her first meeting with Michele Bachmann:
I knew that we’d be buddies when I met her when she said, Drill here, drill now. And then I replied, Drill, baby, drill and then we both said, You betcha!
Bachmann was equally taken with Palin’s charms:
[A]s absolutely drop dead gorgeous this woman is (sic) on the outside, I’m here to testify that she is 20 times more beautiful on the inside.
Palin/Bachmann 2012: Don’t ask, baby, don’t tell
Posted in campaign, Palin Bachmann 2012, Republican Party, Tea Party
Tagged Michelle Bachmann, sapphic, Sarah Palin, wingnut
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will be welcoming a very special guest to Minnesota today: Sarah Palin, for a rally together in Minneapolis.
The much-anticipated rally will begin at 3 p.m. ET, and will be streamed online by Bachmann’s campaign. Other guests will include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential presidential candidate, as well as right-wing talk show host and Bachmann ally Sean Hannity.
And poor Tim Pawlenty. Talk about holding your manhood cheap.
Ouch:
Back in February, a CNN survey found that on the first party question, 44% of Tea Party activists identified as Republicans, 4% as Democrats and 52% as independents. However, as I reported in a column last month, when CNN asked the traditional follow-up, nearly all the independents leaned Republican. Thus, with leaners included, 88% of CNN’s Tea Party activists were Republican, 6% were Democrats and only 5% fell into the pure independent category.
As GWU Political Scientists John Sides often reminds us, independent leaners typically “act like partisans.” Leaners vote for their party’s candidate about as often as those who initially identify with the party (see my column and Sides’ post for more).
So those reports you’ve been seeing saying that the Winston Group poll shows that Tea People are largely made up of independents?
Yeah, that’s pretty much bullshit.
There are two takeaways here:
1. Despite their protestations to the contrary, Tea People are almost uniformly Republican
2. You should never take news networks’ word when they interpret polls. They’re terrible at it. Instead turn to people who know what they’re talking about, like Nate Silver and Mark Blumenthal.
Posted in poll, Republican Party, Tea Party
Tagged 538.com, CNN, John Sides, Nate Silver, Pollster.com
We’ve seen quite a list of flip-flops from John McCain ever since he found himself saddled with a Tea Party challenger in his primary this year. Always tacking to the right, he has been quick to chuck any number of his previous cornerstone beliefs overboard to appeal to the slavering Tea People.
But this takes the cake.
“Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”
Um…
That’s sort of like a “liberal Ku Klux Klan rally.” Right?
Posted in Tea Party
Tagged Andrew Breitbart, Harry Reid, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Victoria Jackson, wingnut, Woodstock
Michelle Bachmann (R-Schizophrennisota):
“And what we saw this Tuesday, once the president signed the health care bill at the 11th hour in the morning on Tuesday, that effected 51% government takeover of the private economy,” Bachmann said on Wednesday, during an interview with North Dakota talk radio host Scott Hennen. “It is really quite sobering what has happened. From 100% of our economy was private prior to September of 2008, but as of Tuesday, the federal government has now taken ownership or control of 51% of the private economy.”
Breathtaking.
Posted in conservatism, health care, Tea Party
Tagged health care reform, Michelle Bachmann, Obama derangement syndrome, socialism, takeover, wingnut
