Judging from this, rather, er, vocal reception at the Wisconsin State Fair, when hapless Republican Scott Walker gets recalled out of office next year, he’ll probably have to go into some sort of witness protection program…
Texas governor Rick Perry seems to really go out of his way to associate himself with complete fruitcakes. There’s a curious item at Right Wing Watch today about zany churchlady Alice Patterson, one of Perry’s “church mobilizers” for his “The Response” prayer rally. Patterson works on getting African-Americans interested in the Republican party (good luck!) and is the author of a book about her career titled Bridging the Racial and Political Divide: How Godly Politics Can Transform a Nation.
Kyle Mantyla, the author of the post, is reading Patterson’s book and found this astonishing tidbit about how she came to believe that the Democratic Party is “an invisible network of evil comprising an unholy structure,”(i.e. controlled by demons) when she was listening to a sermon by Charles D. Pierce. (Pierce author of Prayers That Outwit the Enemy and the recent book, Time to Defeat the Devil).
As Chuck described ‘Saul Structures,’ my thoughts raced to politics. “Oh my God, Chuck is describing the Democratic Party!” This was the first time I’d ever considered that an evil structure could be connected to and empowered by a political party ... One strong fallen angel cannot wreak havoc on an entire nation by himself. He needs a network of wicked forces to restrain the Church and to deceive the masses. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere at once and can speak to millions of people simultaneously, the devil can only be in one place at a time. By himself Satan would be totally ineffective, but in cooperation with other powers of darkness he erects structures to deceive and manipulate entire nations ... At the time I was listening to Chuck Pierce in Louisiana, I hadn’t given any thought at all to strongholds in political parties. If I had ever thought about it, of course, it would have made sense, but it was new information. As Chuck’s words began to sink in, I asked the “Lord, Father, what is the demonic structure behind the Democratic Party?”
Incidentally, it doesn’t look like Perry’s day of prayer and “atonement” for America is getting much traction: According to Wonkette:
“[O]nly 8,000 tragic souls have signed up for Perry’s “The Response” rally on Saturday, which is mathematically many less than the 71,000 or so people that fit in the gigantic football stadium where he’s holding it. Has America suddenly lost its appetite for asking God to solve its problems? Did an entire day of Rick Perry weeping and speaking in tongues while a cabal of hate-mongering evangelical pastors grown in jars under Pat Buchanan’s bed fling spittle full of damnation and hellfire at everyone just sound like a little too much fun?”
Above Rep. Eric Cantor and Pamela Geller in a photo I’ll bet Cantor seriously wishes didn’t exist!
Anti-Islam blogger Pamela Getter is a marginal, hateful freak who would have stayed that way had not Fox News and MSNBC decided to give her credibility a boost during that whole stupid “Ground Zero Mosque” debate/nonsense. Remember that? Me neither.
This hateful harpie should be shunned from civil society, anyway, but shouldn’t her clumsy editing of her alleged communication with Anders Breivik make her a seriously untrustworthy, not to mention undesirable TV talking head?
Why aren’t the FBI all over this woman???
Even Roger Ailes must be giving Geller second thoughts after this latest matter. I really hope that the Norwegian government calls her in as a witness in Brevik’s trial. It would be her just desserts, truly.
Geller’s latest toxic idiocy is an actual JUSTIFICATION of the mass murder in Norway. If this shit doesn’t disqualify her as a credible TV pundit—or even as one of Andrew Breitbart’s top bloggers at his Big Government site—I don’t know what would, because this will be pretty hard to top, even for an shithead of Geller’s caliber. Via Think Progress:
Popular hate blogger Pam Geller has received scrutiny in recent days as the public became aware that the right-wing terrorist in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, had praised her blog and thoroughly cited her writing in his political manifesto. After a number of blogs made the connection, as well as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets, Geller became incensed and began lashing out at her critics.
In a post defending herself yesterday, Geller — who has called Obama “President Jihad” and claimed that Arab language classes are a plot to subvert the United States — reached a new low. Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”
To get her point across, Geller posts a picture of the youth camp children Breivik targeted. The picture was taken on the Utøya island camp about 24 hours before Breivik killed over 30 children, so it is likely Geller is mocking many of the victims. Under the picture, Geller writes: “Note the faces which are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”
Could Geller’s outburst of smears be a distraction against mounting evidence that she might have communicated with Breivik in the past? A post from Geller in 2007 reprints a reader-submitted letter in which an anonymous Norwegian complains of Muslim immigration and boasts that he is “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment.” In the comment section, Geller claims that she provided anonymity to the reader to protect him from being prosecuted. Although Geller recently deleted the ammunition line from her post, a cached version is available. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “If this were an attack by a Muslim group, and a Muslim had something like this on his/her website, the FBI and multiple other groups would be swarming.”
Yep. So where are they?
She’s such a mean person that she thought it was okay to post that?!? She thought about this, she typed it our and she published it. Incredible. What is wrong with this woman’s mind? Below, a screenshot of Geller’s blog post, with her original repulsive caption, which she edited.
Kudos to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his stellar reporting on Geller’s embarrassing folly.
Now having said that I never want to see her on television ever again, I will admit to getting a good laugh from seeing her put on the defensive and lose her cool on Russia Today recently. RT’s Lauren Lyster really, really let her have it. I laughed out loud several times. Humiliating and hilarious. THIS is the way this woman SHOULD be treated, with utter contempt. If you love to hate Geller, this is a bit of a laff-fest.
With with the unusual volume of noise in the media lately, one major story that’s getting crowded out is the hotly contested recall election in Wisconsin, which is just a little more than a week away.
A look at the polls show a mixed slate slightly, if not mostly, favoring Democrats. So what can the Republican party do if they can’t win the election fair and square?
Here’s a plan: How about sending absentee ballots to Democrats with instructions to return the paperwork AFTER the election date? That’s exactly what Americans for Prosperity, a conservative front group for the goals of the rightwing billionaire Koch brothers did.
Is there no low these creeps won’t stoop to? Apparently not!
Politico broke the story this morning:
Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.
The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk “before Aug. 11.”
A Democrat on the ground in Wisconsin said the fliers were discovered to be hitting doors in District 2 and District 10 over the weekend.
“These are people who are our 1’s in the voterfile who we already knew. They ain’t AFP members, that’s for damn sure,” the source said.
The “1s” referred to above are extremely likely Democratic voters. Along with this lowdown trickery—did they REALLY think this would not get found out? Do they not even care??—Americans for Prosperity have spent another $150,000 of the Koch’s money to buy pro-Republican television airtime in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison.
And here’s another item of interest. Not saying this IS suspicious until the fire department have had a proper look, but the timing for this is fortuitous for the GOP isn’t it, when their opponents’s headquarters burn to the ground just a little over a week before an election? Well, that’s what happened to the pro-labor We Are Wisconsin PAC in LaCrosse. From Crooks and Liars:
Fire officials in La Crosse are continuing to investigate a Saturday blaze that destroyed the regional offices of We Are Wisconsin, a union political action committee (PAC) that has pumped millions of dollars into supporting Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections.
The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cause of the fire, which started at about 9:30 a.m., remains unknown. Firefighters thought they had the blaze under control in the afternoon, however, that wasn’t the case and it continued into the evening, the newspaper reported.
We Are Wisconsin used the building at 432 Jay St. to oversee its efforts in the 32nd Senate District recall election, which will be held Aug. 9. Incumbent Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke is being challenged by Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling in that district.
A spokesman for the group told the La Crosse Tribune that the group’s office was a total loss.
Just sayin…
A final word: Don’t look on this as merely a statewide election, What happens in Wisconsin is one of the most important turning points in American life for decades to come. If the left can’t win the state where the labor movement was arguably birthed, this country is fucked.
You can help get the Democratic vote out from your own home by making canvassing calls for the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s phone bank. They could use your help
Help beat back the Reichwing in Wisconsin. If not, your state—and your job—might be next.
A) Hilarious? B) Tragic? C) Who gives a flying fuck anymore? D) All of the above.
The saddest thing about the whole debt ceiling spectacle is that the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House during the worst economic downtown since the Depression and we’re actually hearing talk about the death of Keynesian economics? Unfuckingbelievable, but there you go.
Bruce Bartlett writing at The Fiscal Times wonders if Barack Obama is “the Democrats’ Richard Nixon?” He makes some good points
By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.
And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.
Thus Obama took office under roughly the same political and economic circumstances that Nixon did in 1968 except in a mirror opposite way. Instead of being forced to manage a slew of new liberal spending programs, as Nixon did, Obama had to cope with a revenue structure that had been decimated by Republicans.
Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.
Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:
His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.Further evidence can be found in the writings of outspoken liberals such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has condemned Obama’s conservatism ever since he took office.
I’m with Krugman myself. I simply can’t believe Obama is negotiating with these assholes (see below) and losing! It’s incredible to watch.
What would Obama do in a fist fight, you know? He should have told the House GOP to do their worst but that he’d veto anything too aggressive and make sure the bills were paid under the 14th Amendment. He should have started there!
Then what would have happened?
It would have been a different story altogether. He should have listened to Bill Clinton.
Instead we’re getting a deal that the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, called “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”
With fuckin’ Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans, anyway?
This country is doomed…
Via Think Progress
Click here to see the full chart on the New York Times website.
A timely and handy chart for the understanding what’s going on with the deficit negotiations in Washington.
Remember that during the Clinton administration there was actually a SURPLUS coming in that went towards paying down the national debt. George Bush thought this was a bad thing—that the government shouldn’t be bagging surpluses—then promptly gave the average person the cost of a can of soda a day while giving billionaires major tax cuts and starting two costly wars. I think this chart makes it pretty obvious who fucked up this country. Who could deny otherwise? There’s no competition!
No wonder there’s nothing left for schools, roads, seniors, universal healthcare, the out of work and the sick… Isn’t this just infuriating?
H/T Joe.My.God.
Graphic via New York Times, text below from James Fallows at The Atlantic:
It’s based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who’s “to blame” for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.
An additional significance of the chart: it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks—like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama’s first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.
The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That’s why we call them “shocks.” Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it (“deficits don’t matter” etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.
After the jump, from a previous “The Chart That Should…” positing, an illustration of the respective roles of external shock and deliberate policy change in creating the deficit.
Obama is a fucking idiot the way he’s played his hand on the debt ceiling. He appears to be an ineffectual fool trying to broker peace with a bunch of schoolyard bullies. The whole thing is so Planet of the Apes. When Mitch McConnell (sensibly, for all parties) tried to offer him the political cover to raise it on his own, he should have jumped at the chance. Now look at the mess he’s in. When is the guy going to act like a Democrat (at the very least!)? It’s becoming harder and harder to support him or even give a shit what happens to his presidency anymore (I’m sure I’ll change my tune closer to November 2012, but voting for Obama with the same “passion” I felt for John Kerry is not something I imagined happening a couple of years ago…)
How the Deficit Got This Big (New York Times)
Idiot redneck “preacher” Damon Thompson is ignorant, bigoted and proud of it. He makes his living spewing mono-syllabic hatred towards a group of people (gays) who he personally, has probably never had any direct experience with (unless, of course, what they say about the most vocal homophobes is true. I hadn’t considered that).
Thompson’s “flock” are the people for whom the Tea Party movement—or the Ku Klux Klan—is a step beyond them intellectually. As one YouTube commenter quipped “This is Christianity for meth-heads!”
Well put. If advanced beings from the future ever arrive on Earth, you can bet Damon Thompson would be the first one to want to burn them at the stake. What this hillbilly ignoramous doesn’t realize is that when “the queers” are re-broadcasting his message to hundreds of thousands of people across the Internet, the people watching are just laughing at him. Pointing and laughing at the dumb hick.
To the average person watching his YouTube clips, Damon Thompson just appears to be a brainless hillbilly moron. No more, no less. He’s as compelling as a drunk racist and possessing half the charisma. There is nothing, not one thing, that is even remotely interesting about him. His “message” is trite and inconsequential. People are just laughing at him. Eventually we’ll never hear his name again and no one will even remember him. He doesn’t even distinguish himself as a decent enough gay-basher to achieve any real prominence in the field. Not with the likes of Bryan Fischer around. Thompson is an inarticulate dud by comparison.
(A note to Damon: You look like a smelly hobo, dude. I could have sworn I saw flies buzzing around your head in the video clip. Have you ever considered going on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? I think they could really help you. I know they could. Your personal grooming and hygiene is deplorable, m’fren…)
Is there even one single member of Congress less sincere-seeming than House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia? If there is, I can’t think of who that might be.
Cantor’s the most transparently phony and least-charming politician on the national stage today. Everything that comes out of his mouth sounds like he doesn’t believe it himself. I have to turn the channel when I see his face. Yuck. How did a punk like him get to be so powerful? He’s been elected six times. Is the field so shitty in Virginia that Eric Cantor is the best the state can muster? That’s pathetic.
Via Daily Kos
Yes, Sister Sunshine, I think you’re on to something. The next step IS for the California school system to educate our children about folks who like to have sex with chickens. Good grief.
(via BuzzFeed)