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How to save the Republican party from itself

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A terrific older essay by Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce on how fucking insane Republican Party has become (it appeared in the magazine’s May 2012 issue) has been resurrected on reddit/r/politics. I must have missed this one when it went around the first time, but it has not dated in the least since then (if anything it’s more true with each passing day). A gem, courtesy of one of the very best political writers in America today:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing.

In Washington, there is no leadership anymore, no “Republican establishment” to which anyone can appeal. The ferocious strength of faith-based know-nothingism in the party’s base has resulted in a stubborn refusal to adopt even those ideas — like an individual mandate for health care, or cap-and-trade as an energy policy — that began as Republican ideas.

In the states, we have seen a staggering overreach on the part of Republican governors in the Midwest regarding labor rights, wildly restrictive voter-ID laws aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exist, immigration statutes that are leaving lettuce to rot in the fields because nobody’s left to pick it, and a welter of preposterous antiabortion statutes. And behind all of that, a party base that has constructed its own private history, its own private language, its own private logic, and its own wholly rounded private universe.

That’s how Sarah Palin can tell people that Barack Obama wants to bring us “back to days before the Civil War” because Obama once hugged Derrick Bell, a law professor at Harvard. That’s how an insurance-friendly health-care bill can be declared to be socialism when it’s not being called the first step toward fascism. That’s how Mitt Romney came to tie himself in a bowline trying to run for president, even though he was the only real candidate in a field of crackpot poseurs, and even though he was running the only real campaign as opposed to tent revivals, exercises in brand maintenance, and extended book tours. Too late did Romney realize that the path to the nomination led through an alternate reality.

This was a development long in the making, and one of which we may well never see the end. It began with the vicious, truthless campaigns run by the National Conservative Political Action Committee in the late 1970s. This initiated the creation of a conservative network that was outside the formal party structure. To this was added independently financed think tanks, Christian colleges and (later) Christian academies and organized home schooling, and conservative boot camps that produced young people, and young candidates, whose primary allegiance was to conservative ideology and not to the Republican party. Eventually, as was proven by the failed candidacies of Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, which helped lose the Republicans a golden chance at controlling the Senate as well in 2010, these people cared less about whether the party succeeded than they did that their ideology was kept pure and their private universe invulnerable. In trying to control the uncontrollable and to appease the insatiable, forcibly locked in with itself, like the Beales in Grey Gardens, the party gradually lost its mind.

That last sentence is quite simply… prose perfection. Pierce deserves a Pulitzer prize based on that line alone*.

He concludes:

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone.

The whole thing is most definitely worth your time. While you are there, you should bookmark the Esquire Politics blog, it’s an essential daily read for political junkies.

His post this morning about Harry Reid and why he’s letting it rip so hard on Mitt Romney is also a must read.

Let’s Stop Being Upset with Harry Reid Already (Esquire Politics)

(*If it were up to me, I’d award a Pulitzer to Charles P. Pierce, if for no other reason, his snarling use of an all-purpose, southern-fried epithet my grandmother used to employ with great disdain: “dipshit doodlebug.”)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.07.2012
11:13 am
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Witch-hunt: Hillary Clinton should swat the gnat named Michele Bachmann

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UPDATE: Respect to Senator John McCain for denouncing Bachmann’s fact-less, pointless, unintelligent attacks on Huma Abedin on the Senate floor today.

And to Anderson Cooper, as well, for his full-throated ridicule of Bachmann (and Louie Gohmert, too). Her nonsense should not and cannot be tolerated by a good society. Bachmann and her idiotic ilk are a cancer on the Republican Party and America itself.


Should there be a minimum IQ test for members of Congress?

Think of it as a prophylactic against idiocy. The type of idiocy perhaps best exemplified by the blinkered queen of the Tea party caucus, MN’s Michele Bachmann. Bachmann’s back in the news for her latest round of pig ignorant neo-McCarthyism, and this time her confused, brain-addled conspiracy theories are directed towards the US State Department.

Bachmann’s latest affront to intelligence, expands on her initial charges against Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin (wife of disgraced former Brooklyn Congressman Anthony Weiner) and others of harboring terrorist sympathy. Last Friday, Bachmann publicized her new 16-page conspiracy theory, written after she was challenged by MN’s Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, to put up or shut up with her vaguely worded accusations of alleged Muslim Brotherhood “infiltration” in the ranks of the State Department and national security agencies.

What’s on your tiny mind, Congresswoman?

Via Salon:

In the new letter, Bachmann questions why (Huma) Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, was able to receive a security clearance despite having family members that Bachmann believes are connected to the Brotherhood. “I am particularly interested in exactly how, given what we know from the international media about Ms. Abedin’s documented family connections with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, she was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance,” the congresswoman wrote.

As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.

The next paragraph of the law review article she cites quotes Syed Abedin concluding that the Koran calls for, “multiple ways of life … i.e. religious and cultural plurality among mankind.” Pretty scary Islamo-fascist stuff. It’s also worth nothing that Weiner, Huma Abedin’s husband, is one of the most unquestionably pro-Israeli politicians in America. But Bachmann would have us believe that the security clearance process somehow missed Abedin’s nefarious connections, and thus she knows more than, say, the CIA and FBI, who are involved in the background-check process.

As Jason Linkins quipped on Huffington Post:

“And from there, all connections lead to the obvious Islamofascist puppetmaster: Kevin Bacon, star of Footloose.”

Pretty much…

This shit is getting ridiculous. At what point will intelligent and morally responsible Washington power-players tell this racist, xenophobic, homophobic shithead to get stuffed? Maybe a censure vote? The longer it goes on, well, drats, the longer it goes on. I realize you can’t legislate against stupidity, but for fuck’s sake does this infuriatingly stupid nincompoop drag American politics down to a low, low, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging level.

To call Rep. Michele Bachmann a fucking moron is to demean fucking morons, everywhere. With this latest affront to intelligence, Bachmann needs to be put in her place.

If congressional weenies won’t do it, I sincerely hope that Hillary Clinton decides to take her dumb ass down over this.

Demonstrably stupid people like Michele Bachmann—that’s not a controversial assessment, she’s got shit for brains and everyone except for the dumbest people in the country know it and have known it for years—are ruining life in America.

Why let them get away with it? Someone should have told Senator Joseph McCarthy to stick a cork up his ass in 1950 and someone needs to tell Michele Bachmann to do the same in 2012.

Responsible people in Washington need to call this Bachmann for exactly what she is, an IDIOT. Why mince words? She’s an idiot, a fucking idiot. That is what she is, her defining characteristic is her STUPIDITY. Her district should be ashamed that an assat like Bachmann wastes their tax dollars like this. It’s shameful.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.17.2012
04:29 pm
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‘The Boehner Bunch’: New video mocks Republican opposition to healthcare reform
07.11.2012
02:49 pm
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The AFSCME union, representing 1.6 million public service workers, have posted a new video mocking the Republican opposition to healthcare reform.

“Even though the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), Speaker John Boehner and Republican leaders refuse to let go,” the union’s statement read. “This week the U.S. House is set to vote — for the 31st time — on a bill to repeal the law. Enough is enough. It’s time to stop re-fighting political battles of the past and get to work on the economy.”

It’s time for these assholes to be put out to pasture for good is what time it is…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.11.2012
02:49 pm
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Shit Rich People Say: Actual quotes from Mitt Romney donors
07.09.2012
03:03 pm
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Some of the misguided lines that have emerged in the reporting on Sunday’s Mitt Romney fundraiser held at the Hamptons estate of Revlon heir Ron Perelman have been bust-a-gut funny.

LA Times reporter Maeve Reston asked one Romney donor, who wouldn’t reveal her name, her take on the presidential race:

I don’t think the common person is getting it…my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.

The Romney event she attended had a $50,000 per couple suggested donation. As the wealthy tossers inside nibbled on prosciutto-rolled melon balls and mint chocolate cupcakes, a group of protesters, kept at bay by a line of police shouted things like “It took my father a lifetime to save $50,000” and “Mitt Romney has a Koch problem.” (That evening there was a second Romney fundraiser at the home of Julia and David Koch in Southampton, the suggested contribution at that event was $75,000 per couple.)

A truck bearing Citigroup and Wells Fargo logos with a plastic dog strapped to the roof, circled the neighborhood. Planes streaming banners with anti-Romney insults flew over the heads of the rich Republican revelers.

Overheard at the fundraiser:

“Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.”

“Tell them who’s on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!”

“It’s not helping the economy to pit the people who are the engine of the economy against the people who rely on that engine.”

Oooohh snap! “Take that poor people!” says a would-be “John Galt” who probably inherited his fortune!

Romney’s tax plan would give the richest 0.1% of Americans an average tax cut of $264,000? No wonder he’s so popular with TEH BILLIONAIRZ.

As the Libor conspiracy scandal has proven, beyond the shadow of a doubt, bankers around the globe have been stealing money from every American with a mortgage or a credit card without any of us ever being the wiser. But that’s changed, rather dramatically in the past week, don’t cha think?

And now an investment banker wants to be President… A banker who stashes his secrets in offshore banks.

Do we really want to entrust America to a banker with something to hide?

An essential Bill Moyers essay: “The High Price of ‘Free’ Speech” (AKA ‘Poor People Haven’t Lost Their Voice — They Can’t Afford A Voice’)
 

 
Thank you MorpheusLA!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.09.2012
03:03 pm
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Mitt Slip: Romney thinks Americans should get ‘as much education as they can AFFORD’!
06.30.2012
06:58 pm
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Some people accuse Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney of infuriating vagueness. 

I’m not one of them.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.30.2012
06:58 pm
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Poor LOSERS: Republicans organize temper tantrum ‘repeal vote’ for July 11

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I love watching Republicans playing the absolute WORST possible hand they could have been dealt. There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude. Those assholes were caught so off guard, and it has been bust-a-gut hilarious to watch them scramble. Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney and “Team Backwards” are royally fucked, so what’s their plan? ANOTHER “symbolic” repeal vote!

You lost, GOP clown boys… Now move on, you pathetic dickheads.

NOPE, that’s not gonna happen!

The Hill: 120 Republicans Introduce Bill To Repeal The Health Care Mandate
Just hours after the Supreme Court upheld the requirement to buy health care insurance or face a penalty, 120 House Republicans proposed legislation to eliminate the mandate. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), called the mandate a tax, since that is how the court justified keeping it around. The Supreme Court said the government had no right to require the purchase of health insurance under the Commerce Clause, but said the mandate and its penalties could stand as a tax on people who choose not to buy health insurance.

Politico: The Republican Recipe For Repeal
Republican hopes to repeal the health care law may come down to a bank shot: A GOP sweep in November and a simple Senate majority—along with some arcane budget procedures—could kill the individual mandate in 2013. The House will hold a symbolic vote to repeal the law on July 11, but the real long-term strategy for rolling back the law is already under way. Republicans are stoking voter anger over the law until Election Day, which they hope will produce a Mitt Romney presidency and an all-Republican Congress. And it ends by employing budget rules that would allow a fast-track repeal with a 51-vote majority in the Senate, circumventing a Democratic minority and potential filibuster.

CBS News: Cantor: Health Care Repeal Vote Coming July 11
The Supreme Court gave some validation to the Affordable Care Act on Thursday when it declared the law constitutional, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is ready to move forward with yet another House vote to repeal the controversial law. “We know that most of the American people don’t like this law,” Cantor said on CBS’ This Morning Friday. The House, he said will “look towards the kind of health care people want,” which he said is “patient-centered.” Cantor said that the Republican-led House will take up a repeal vote on July 11th, after Congress comes back from its July 4th recess. The House first voted to repeal the law in January 2011, soon after Republicans took control. The move, however, was essentially symbolic .

Exactly HOW MANY American families with dependent children under the age of 26 do they really think are going to vote for them this year? Even some of the staunchest older Republican voters are going to rethink their commitment to the “party of Reagan” between now and November, if only so their young adult grandchildren won’t be thrown off their parents’ health insurance. Many of them won’t go to the polls at all, preferring not to vote against their party, but not wanting to vote against the benefits their own families will be receiving as a result of healthcare reform.

It might surprise the Republican leadership, that for many red state voters, standing up to the black guy isn’t their highest priority. Their families are.

Methinks, the comically flailing GOP might want to do some “internal polling” on the matter! Having to watch their leadership and their glass-jawed nominee dig an even deeper hole for themselves must be very depwessing for old school Republicans to witness. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place and none of them saw this coming! Liberals and conservatives alike were shocked by yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, there is no denying it, but it’s plain for all to see that the GOP had no “Plan B” by their flat-footed response and scheduling of a July 11 public hissy fit! They must want to be mocked by late-night comedians, judging from their behavior.

It’s fun to watch the Republican Party engaging in a Mexican standoff with itself. This quagmire will be very difficult for them to wiggle out of before November. Casting yourself as the party who wants to pull the rug of healthcare out from under a public who is only too well aware that the guarantee of employer-provided insurance is a thing of the past, is a difficult position to be put in, but they did it to themselves, plain and simple. And now they have to deal with the consequences of that.

If you look at the incredible zig-zag trajectory of the political landscape after just 3 1/2 years of an Obama presidency, it’s striking to see how how truly “transformative” of a figure he’s been, just NOT in the way it looked like he would be on January 20th, 2009…

Below, hapless-looking lick-spittle waterboy to the rich and powerful, Eric Cantor, lets the American people know which side of the class war he and his party are on. God, I hate this guy’s fucking face….
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.29.2012
04:22 pm
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Goofball Michigan Republican advocates armed rebellion over SCOTUS decision

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Behold the face of a fuckin’ dummy

Matthew Davis, an attorney in Lansing, Michigan—and the former spokesperson for the Michigan Republican Party—sent out an email this morning that posed the question “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?” now that the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Obamacare.

Davis sent the email just moments after the Court’s decision was announced to conservative activists and he even sent it off to several media outlets.

Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?

Implicit in Benjamin Franklin’s fabled response at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was a dire warning: That the Republic would one day devolve into tyranny unless we the people prevented it.

In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson’s election was complete. It cannot be said too many times — for the purposes of emphasis and clarity — that the Constitution was possible ONLY AFTER the American Revolution; and that the war itself would not have been possible without the collective agreement, as so eloquently articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that the course of human events will sometimes justify one group of people to sever themselves from their oppressors.

In other words, America itself was possible only after its people summoned the will to risk their lives and their futures — as well as those of their children — for a freedom they did not enjoy but knew was their gift from God. Along with their desire to be free came their willingness to engaged in armed rebellion for their freedom.

If government can mandate that I pay for something I don’t want, then what is beyond its power? If the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified?

God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired.

Davis added his own personal note saying, “… here’s my response. And yes, I mean it.”

Ohhhhhh big man talkin’

Clearly Davis wanted the attention this will bring him. Let’s hope he gets what he so richly deserves!

Via Michigan Capital Confidential

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.28.2012
04:43 pm
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Go read your Bible, kid and SHUT UP: Texas Republicans (literally) want to ban critical thinking

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The Texas Republican Party has published its 2012 platform online and scanning through it, it appears to be gleeful manifesto of pig ignorance and backwards, country bumpkin fear of progress in any form. Whatever it is, they’re agin it!

It contains the following sentence which is going to see them mocked mercilessly for the next week or so:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Well, they’ve finally come right out and said it. In plain English. They want the population to STAY STUPID. That way they don’t question things like why poor people don’t have health insurance, why billionaires need to pay less in taxes and the middle class pay more, how fracking might poison the water table and you know, shit like that.

Wonkette’s Doctor Zoom encountered a fifth-grade Language Arts lesson on “Fact and Opinion” while doing graduate studies in the mid-80s. Zoom recalls from memory how the lesson explained the critical thinking task:

A fact is an observable reality, something that can be quantified or measured, or God’s Inerrant Truth as revealed through the Bible.

Examples:

* The table is made of wood.
* Washington DC is the capital of the USA.
* Water freezes at 32 degrees F.
* Jesus died to take away all our sins.
* God created the world and all life in seven 24-hour days, less than 10 thousand years ago.

An opinion is a matter of taste, a view or judgement about which people might reasonably disagree, or a “scientific” claim that contradicts Biblical truth.

Examples:

* Blue is prettier than yellow.
* My mom bakes the best chocolate chip cookies in town.
* Mr. Jones is a better candidate for Mayor than Mr. Smith.
* The Universe is several billion years old.
* Humans evolved from apes.

Red state public schools are teaching an organized system of ignorance, nothing more, and nothing less. How much longer can the center of this country hold when folks who believe that the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution hold sway over the education of so many of the nation’s children?

Doctor Zoom concludes by bringing up the very question that caused my wife to question what she was being taught in Sunday school as a young girl when she began to suspect that the whole Noah’s Ark thing was nothing more than mythological bullshit:

So, yes, think critically, kids, but don’t think so critically that you ask any inconvenient questions, like “wouldn’t two of every animal species on Earth produce so much shit that the Ark would be full to the top within a matter of days?” (Beyond the obvious Biblical nonsense, there’s also some empirical evidence that the particular methods in ACE’s curriculum leaves students less well prepared for college entrance exams than conventional high schools.)

Let us be clear about this: Texas is only against the wrong kind of critical thinking — the dirty librul kind, which isn’t even really thinking at all, but indoctrination, you see. As college-degree owner Rick Santorum knows, too much education will only turn you into a commie and an atheist. Texas Republicans promise they’ll nip that thinky-learny shit right in the bud.

Once those kids start pulling on the thread of KNOWLEDGE the whole sweater becomes unraveled. We can’t have this, can we?

And while we’re on the subject of Republicans being more, um, straightforward on things, did you catch the clip of this asshole from Pennsylvania stating the obvious about the state’s voter ID law?
 

 
Legal election fraud to prevent voter fraud. NICE WORK GOP!!

If you can’t get elected because of your ideas, it’s because your ideas SUCK.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.27.2012
02:10 pm
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Gay Rights: What Mitt Romney ACTUALLY said when he was running against Ted Kennedy

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How does this buffoon keep track of his own “convictions”?

“There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation.”

“Convictions” are confusing things!

Slippery too, like greased eels.

Via reddit/r/politcs

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.26.2012
11:09 am
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I voted Republican for the very first time in my life today
06.05.2012
09:01 pm
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Oh no you dit-ten…

Oh yes I did!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.05.2012
09:01 pm
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Democrats vs. Republicans: An idiot’s perspective
06.05.2012
04:02 pm
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Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

As seen in Wisconsin today. Photo by Daily Kos’s Jesse LaGreca.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.05.2012
04:02 pm
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The Republicans open a dangerous new front in American Class War
06.05.2012
01:27 pm
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After a year and a half of heated debate, many brutally cold winter days and plenty of heroic, hard work, it’s judgement day in Wisconsin.

I hope for the best (a Tom Barrett win) but expect the worst (polls are tight, but favor Scott Walker), so first a little levity:

A CEO, a Tea Partier and a union organizer sit down at a table, on which there is a dish of 12 cookies.The CEO takes 11 of the cookies and says to the Tea Partier, “That union guy wants part of your cookie.”

Remember that joke, it’s going to come in hand—quite a bit, probably—in the coming years…

In the final stretch of the recall election, it cannot be denied, the Republicans did what they do best: They divided and now they look set to conquer. Who would have thought that even a $30 million dollar war chest would have been enough to turn the tide that saw well over a million signatures on Walker recall petitions?

Not me, to be honest. I should stop underestimating the GOP, I really should.

Why Scott Walker could be the new Nixon.

Walker himself said the other day that he’s meeting people all over the state who tell him how RESENTFUL they are that public sector employees have better benefits than they do.

So hey, lets cut ‘em down to size, and give some tax breaks to the Koch brothers and that billionaire plastic surgery disaster who is Walker’s single biggest donor?

Woo-hoo! Now THAT is a plan!

A plan for DUMMIES and people who’ve had 30 million dollars worth of cynical propaganda and bullshit fill their mental space for months now… 

Obviously there IS a class war going on in America today, but in Wisconsin, the GOP has (brilliantly) hit upon a new recipe for (probable) electoral success: Pit working class people vs OTHER working class people.

If Walker does manage to hold onto his job today, expect much more of this exact same strategy in the future, in other states and even on a national, presidential level. Wisconsin was a laboratory of how to subvert democracy and a popular uprising with lies, cynicism and lots and lots of money.

Whether or not it’s Walker or Tom Barrett who wins when the votes are counted tonight, the GOP has learned a seriously fucked up new trick that has grave implications for American democracy.

Pit the middle class against each other! It’s a genius move. The politics of resentment are in full flower in Wisconsin today.

The GOP will hold the red states until the end of time with that strategy.

This, I think is the biggest take-away lesson of the entire process, especially for the Republicans. A certain segment of Wisconsin’s population has been successfully “moronized” (in the sense that “father of the New Left” Herbert Marcuse used the term in the 1960s). They’ve got a working blueprint for doing it. Win or lose this one, the implications are fucking enormous for well-funded, state-of-the art Republican political campaigns moving forward.

If Walker wins today, as expected, team GOP will have pulled off an election miracle (albeit a very well-funded miracle). When you consider how the palpable anti-Walker tidal-wave that saw over one million signatures gathered on the recall petitions and compare that with where we are today, when the polls are all telling us that Walker will squeak by and get to hold his job… I mean fuck it, it must be said WELL DONE REPUBLICANS.

They might be evil geniuses, but they are geniuses, nevertheless.

Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce summed up, very eloquently, the, I suppose, existential reality on the ground in Wisconsin this morning in a piece called “Beyond the Money, the Great Wisconsin Recall Election of 2012 Has Been the Fight Our Democracy Deserves.” His pre-vote observations about what has happened in the deeply divided state of Wisconsin—ironically a state known, until recently, for the geniality of its residents—were striking, indeed,:

Later, as night fell over Milwaukee, Walker rocked the Serb Hall, presenting himself as a man of courage and big ideas who is trying to move Wisconsin forward, only to be stymied by backward-thinking Democrats and out-of-state “special interests.” (We pause here for a moment to laugh loudly enough that the Koch Brothers to hear us.) The governor’s speech was just as spirited as Barrett’s was, but oddly disjointed. “Isn’t it amazing,” he asked the crowd, “that politics is the only business where you get credit for courage just for keeping your word?” He also deplored the recall for what he said was the uncertainty it had created among the “job creators” and the small-business community in the state. “Truth,” he told the crowd, “is on our side.”

Out in the parking lot, I fell into conversation with Phil Waseleski, who was wearing a T-shirt celebrating the U.S. Postal Service that was festooned with Scott Walker buttons. Phil was a letter carrier in the neighborhoods around the Serb Hall for nearly 40 years, but he retired last year when his days were cut back to three a week as part of the fiscal crisis forced upon the USPS by Republican legislators who would like to see it go away entirely.

“A friend once told me, ‘Well, we only need mail three or four days a week,’” Phil told me. “I politely told him, ‘Dave, we’re gonna have to agree to disagree.’ I could have told him, ‘Dave, you know, maybe at that engineering place where you work, they only need you three days a week, and then you could come help us.’

“The politicians, I think, it’s a tough call, because if you don’t keep the postal service in business — you and I will both agree that there’s nothing more personal than taking pen in hand to write to your mother, sister, or brother. Until June of last year, I gave my heart and soul to my job. I worked right through lunch most days.”

Eventually, I asked him why he was here, at the Serb Hall, supporting Scott Walker, whose politics were far more in tune with the people who are trying to strangle the postal service than they are with the people who still work there. Phil told me that it was about his sister-in-law. “The problem is that, when you start handing out free health care out to teachers, that annoys me to no end,” he said. “I never got free health care. My brother’s wife is a teacher and I once asked her, when I was getting my teeth worked on, what it cost her and she said, ‘Nothing.’ It should never get to that point where somebody’s getting free health care. Something’s way out of whack there.”

Something IS, of course, out of whack, but it’s not what Phil Waseleski—a man who was himself a GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE—perceives it to be. Why on earth would one working person who himself saw his work days cut back support a union-busting asshole like Scott Walker in order to see that the hard fought gains of other middle-class people LIKE HIMSELF will get erased???

The answer, of course, is that Phil Waseleski and other fucking idiots like him have been cynically manipulated to essentially cast a vote AGAINST other working people so that billionaire “job creators” like the Koch brothers can move on to breaking the backs of the private sector unions, too, and rape and pillage the state of Wisconsin without much further ado.

Phil, that’s what you voted for, buddy. Do you realize how stupid you—a former GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE with a chest full of Scott Walker buttons—appear to someone who is (there is no delicate way to put this) smarter than you are? You don’t quite get it, do you, Phil?

It’s sheer idiocy for the working man to support Scott Walker and the Republicans. Nothing but sheer blinkered, uncut idiocy… and you, Phil, with a USPS tee-shirt and Walker badges could be the idiot’s poster boy…

Phil Waseleski, are you really the kind of man who wants to cast your vote in a democracy to cut other working people down to size and take what was theirs and give that to people like the Kochs and Diane Hendricks who make more in ONE HOUR than you did in your best year ever?

Charles Pierce must’ve puked in his mouth a little when he heard you speak this nonsense, you old coot!

If you find yourself reading this, Phil, can you please explain to the people who read your comments to Charles Pierce (in the comments either here or at Esquire), how you came to think this way. I cannot for the life of me understand how Walker and his billionaire reichwing patrons were able to convince one working person to resent other middle-class wage-earners, wish to see them economically punished and to reward two billionaires who inherited their money in the first place? It all makes zero sense to me. I need your help.

It’s not exactly a secret that the Republican party’s natural constituency is obscenely wealthy people and older, easily-manipulated idiots, especially Fox News watchers. Phil, as an obvious older idiot, would you mind, please, explaining to Dangerous Minds readers what happened in Wisconsin, from your perspective as an easily manipulated fool?

PS Phil, have you ever seen this clip? Which one of these guys is you? This is not a trick question, I promise:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.05.2012
01:27 pm
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Credit where credit is due: Jon Stewart admires Mitt Romney’s bold political strategy
05.09.2012
10:39 am
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Available at Typotees

Too, too good.

In the last few sentences, Stewart connects the dots in a way that even logic-leaping Glenn Beck himself (remember him?) would admire… and perhaps wholeheartedly agree with!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.09.2012
10:39 am
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Major Republican donor arrested in $100 million veterans charity scam by US Marshals
05.03.2012
10:30 am
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It was announced in a press conference yesterday that US Marshals have crossed another name off the “America’s Most Wanted” list, a man known variously as “Bobby Thompson,” “Anderson Yazzie” and “Ronnie Brittain,” who is accused of creating a fake veterans charity that funneled money to state and national Republican candidates, including President George Bush, Senator John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner

U.S. Marshals captured “Thompson” late Monday evening in Portland, OR. outside of Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub with a backpack full of cash and fake IDs. Authorities say that they still don’t know what their captive’s real name is—he signed the booking sheet at the jail with an “X”—and the former fugitive is refusing to talk. Investigators tracked “Thompson” across eight states before he was apprehended. 99% of the $100 million is unaccounted for.
 
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Via Raw Story:

Between the early 2000s and 2010, a man using the alias “Bobby Thompson” collected millions from unsuspecting donors for the charity U.S. Navy Veterans Association (USNVA), which claimed to provide support for members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Officials believe that very little, if any, of the money was ever used as intended, according to the U.S. Marshal Service.

To help legitimize his charity, Thompson allegedly donated part of the ill-gotten funds to Republican candidates like former President George W. Bush, former Republican presidential candidate John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner.

Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli reportedly personally pleaded with Thompson for donations and received $55,000 for his effort, making Thompson Cuccinelli’s second-largest donor. Cuccinelli was eventually forced to turn over the tainted money to veterans support groups.

Over the years, Thompson also attended the 2008 Republican National Convention and numerous fundraisers. The Roanoke Times obtained photos of Thompson posing with Bush, Boehner and McCain — as well as Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL), former Bush adviser Karl Rove and former Republican New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Thompson fled in 2010 after learning of a criminal investigation in several states. He was later charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, identity theft, fraud and money laundering.

“Thompson” is currently being held in the Multnomah County Jail and is expected to be extradited shortly to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where he was first indicted.
 
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Below, an ABC News story about the scam from last Fall:
 

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Via Raw Story

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.03.2012
10:30 am
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Kill Romney? Dark, paranoid wingnut fantasy paid for by Mitt Romney himself!
04.18.2012
02:09 pm
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How did this not exactly subtle wingnut dog whistle escape national attention and widespread mockery? It’s been around since the end of February!

Unfucking believable. I won’t describe this, you just have to hit play and let it wash all over you. The cynicism is epic. Breath-taking, even.

Wow! Just.. wow. If this isn’t a flat -out admission by Romney and the Republicans that they are courting the DUMBEST SHITHEADS IN AMERICA to vote for him, I don’t know what would be…

An endorsement from Ted Nugent, perhaps?

He’s Mitt Romney and he EVEN ADMITS to paying for this paranoid fantasy…

Who the fuck came up with this? Alex Jones?
 

 
Via Daily Kos

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.18.2012
02:09 pm
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