Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts

  • You gotta feel bad for ol' Jeb. In an ideal world (at least one that's ideal for the conservative world of the Bush clan), Jeb would have been an absolute shoe-in for the GOP nomination, thus continuing a presidential legacy that started with Papa Bush (George H.W.) and continued with big bro George W.

    Instead, poor Jeb became one of several casualties in the face of Trumpmania™ running wild, with each debate devolving into a middle school reality show. And there's The Donald, in rare form, treating Jeb like a weedy little pipsqueak of a nerd by shoving the guy's head into the nearest toilet, slamming him against lockers and generally taking his lunch money every chance he got.

    And why not? The Donald knows what the people really want and what they want to see is The Donald giving these political dorks a high-powered wedgie and a hoist up the ol' flagpole. Which is how our "low energy" nerd wound up being pushed around by a businessman/entertainer who understands how to captivate a crowd fed up with seeing the same old batch of political dorks being their typically dorky selves. Even the one guy who everyone thought was the biggest bully up to that point (Chris Christie) wound up backing out of the 3:00 after-bell fight The Donald had set up during 5th period.

    With Jeb out of the running, The Donald's now free to focus on Canadian exchange student Ted Cruz, whose lunch tray he's been knocking out of his hand while mockingly saying "tough luck, eh?" every time he does it. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio's praying the GOP administrators will step in and slap The Donald with a suspension or at least haul him off to detention for a while. Poor Marco might have the money, but he has neither the muscle nor a mob of onlookers that'll back him up. Stalking around in the background is spoiled rich kid Mikey Bloomberg, whose chances of jumping into a fight with The Donald seem slim. Those two other guys (John Kasich and Ben Carson) are too busy digging out remnants of the last wedgie.

    So let's pay our respects to ol' Jeb!, a guy who would have made a somewhat palatable GOP candidate if Hollywood Trump hadn't brought a folding chair over the poor guy's head.



  • Like Newton Leroy Gingrich, Donald Trump (who will now be known henceforth as "the Donald") knows that the fastest way to a conservative's heart is by tickling that particular portion of the brain that loves dog whistles and coded rhetoric. By throwing those big, juicy slabs of "straight talk" at the GOP masses, the Donald has managed to become the GOP's Flavor of the Month™ for the 2016 elections. The big question now is "will he manage to nab the nomination?"

    The answer is a pretty definite "no." While the GOP masses adore a guy who "finally tells it like it is" on hot-button issues like immigration, the GOP establishment prefers its candidates to have a bit more...discretion. Unfortunately, the Donald's bombastic star power and deep pockets make the rest of the GOP field look absolutely hapless in comparison.

    So will the GOP establishment manage to temper the Donald's presidential ambitions before things get out of hand? That remains to be seen. A few prominent pundits and writers (including one of my favorites, Chauncey DeVega) have compared the Donald's presidential run to a wrestling match. Judd Legum sums it up thusly:

    In the current campaign, Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair.

    The Donald is the heel that everyone's supposed to hate, but has a massive cult following. His fans love how he throws his weight around in the ring and hate how boring and inept all of the babyfaces seem in comparison. He has the showmanship and stage presence, plus his refusal to play by the established rules is what his fans love most about him.

    With a beloved heel like the Donald, the GOP establishment will have to pull its own Montreal Screwjob if it has any hope of getting the controllable candidate it wants.



  • We all know how tone-deaf Republicans tend to get when it comes to women's issues. Par for the course for those folks. In an effort to go against type and score those sweet, precious political points, Mike Huckabee crafted what Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post describes as a "three-coil steamer." Well, she's being extraordinarily polite here:

    I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a war on women. Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war FOR women. For them to be empowered; to be something other than victims of their gender. Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war ON them, it’s a war FOR them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing or them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it, let’s take that discussion all across America because women are far more than Democrats have made them to be. And women across America have to stand up and say, Enough of that nonsense.

    This, from the same folks who brought to you mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds and cockneyed theories about rape, birth control and pregnancy.

    But even if Huckabee's "Uncle Sugar" speech went over like a lead balloon with women everywhere, at least it resonated with the base. A recent poll shows Huckabee in the top spot for the GOP presidential primary for 2016:

    Following the controversy over his 'Uncle Sugar' speech Mike Huckabee has...taken the lead in the Republican primary race for 2016. He's at 16% to 14% for Jeb Bush, 13% for Chris Christie, 11% for Rand Paul, 8% each for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan, 6% for Scott Walker, and 5% for Bobby Jindal.

    There's been more movement than usual over the last month, with Huckabee and Bush each gaining 3-4 points, and Chris Christie and Ted Cruz each falling by 6 points. Cruz had been leading the field among 'very conservative' voters for months but in the wake of Huckabee's press attention last week he's taken the top spot with that group. He's at 20% to 15% for Paul, 11% for Cruz, and 10% for Bush. In the wake of Bridgegate Christie's supremacy with moderate voters is being challenged- a month ago he led Bush by 23 points with them, but now his advantage is down to 3 points at 28/25.

    The same poll also shows Sarah Palin winning the "Ms. Congeniality" prize of "best liked person."



  • Today marks week two of the ongoing government shutdown, brought to you by the House GOP's refusal to sign off on a congressional budget that included funding for the Affordable Care Act, a legislative act that was already passed and signed into law way back in 2010. For some reason, the idea of mandated private health insurance with subsidies for the poor (which itself was downgraded from a far-superior publicly funded single-payer system) sends most conservatives into epileptic seizures. So much so that it's resulted in a crisis that's only gonna get worse, by all indications.

    Everyone has a stake in this shutdown. For the political parties, this whole ordeal can end one of two ways: if the Democrats blink, that means the Tea Party element of the GOP can cherry-tap their way towards favorable legislative action through constant hostage-taking. The Democrat party ends up getting its electoral chains snatched and reverts to being the perpetual weak sister of the two parties.* If the Republicans blink, it'll cause an already-burgeoning schism between the moderate and extremist ends of the GOP to fully break open. It won't kill the party, but it will be a deservedly swift kick in the electoral jewels. Oh, and John Boehner faces the possibility of having his position snatched from under him by a vengeful Tea Party.

    For President Obama, the stakes are much higher. If he doesn't bend and the GOP refuses to bend, the shutdown keeps on trucking towards yet another fiscal cliff and the president's own image gets tarnished. There'll also be plenty of fuel for an impeachment hearing, if the GOP so desires (a far-gone conclusion). If he bends, the GOP gains victory, adds cherry-tapping to its repertoire of effective legislative strategies and the president's own image gets tarnished. That means the president somehow has to force the extremist and moderate sides of the Republican party to have their own "come to Jesus" moment and pass a clean continuing resolution, preferably before October 17 rolls around.

    For the average Joe working for various government agencies, the consequences of maintaining a government shutdown hit home and hit hard. Example? The United States Antarctic Research Program is the latest casualty of the shutdown, which not only affects the livelihoods and aspirations of the 500 or so people stationed at McMurdo, but also the integrity of various other international Antarctic programs that rely on the U.S. for various logistics and support. Meanwhile, NASA's down for the count, along with the Congressional Budget Office and countless other federal agencies. If things keep up beyond October 17, there's no guarantee of whether people will continue receiving their Social Security benefits.

    For everyone else, it's a prime example of how a few actors within the government, led on by a large contingent of people who thinks that hamstringing the government's ability to function properly is the best way to make themselves and their agenda known. It's also an example of what happens when a small group of people with the government's worst interests in mind are able to hijack a party and force it to do its bidding or face total destruction.

    Or when a party attempts to use a bunch of rabid extremists as its enforcer wing to effect legislative changes without getting their hair mussed.

    Or perhaps when a party gerrymanders the living daylights out of its districts to hold on to as many seats and as much power as possible, only to watch that power slip into the hands of ideological fundamentalists with a hankering for a threadbare federal government and a possible subconscious desire to revive the concept of "state's rights," all with the relative consent of their constituents, most of whom regard "Obamacare" and other federal programs as a giveaway for blacks, illegals and the undeserving poor.

    Either way it goes, current events are clearly showing folks around the world how not to run a country, because this way just ain't cutting it.

    *But at least the perpetual underdogs will still be welcome in every cocktail party in D.C.
  • Below, VC3 of Cultured State explains why no one should expect the GOP's death based on the current government shutdown:



    Speaking of false equivalency, that's something I haven't seen much of in the press in light of the shutdown. In most media outlets, the blame is squarely placed on the House GOP's shoulders. Call it a "false equivalency timeout," since if anyone who keeps claiming that both sides are to blame somehow will just look dumb.

  • Yesterday's government shutdown is the end result of what happens when one group of politicians play a game of chicken with a telephone pole. Things tend to get messy real quick and in this case, the engine of government was the first to go.

    In the vigorous pursuit to defund what very well could be the stepping stones towards universal healthcare in the U.S., 30 caucus members representing the GOP's "tea party" faction in the House saw fit to double down on the rhetoric and attempt to push through a measure to delay and otherwise attempt to strangle the Affordable Care Act in its crib - something that the Senate predictably rejected.

    Which brings us to where we are today, with national parks closed, most veterans services shut down and hundreds of thousands of government workers either furloughed or working without pay as essential employees. The Tea Party contingent are doing a remarkable job of showing the people that government does not work...by making sure it doesn't work.

    At this point, you have to feel for House Speaker John Boehner. If he tells the Teabaggers to go forth and engage in a vigorous round of auto-fornication by passing a "clean" continuing resolution, he risks the likelihood of losing the remaining shreds of his authority and his seat to a more Teabagger-friendly Republican, most likely wannabe House Speaker and current Tea Party ringleader Ted Cruz. After all, he's demonstrated time and again that he's the one calling the shots.

    If he decides to play to the baser instincts of the Teabaggers and maintain the congressional stalemate, the shutdown continues. Too bad neither the Senate nor the president has any intention of capitulating to GOP demands. That means piecemeal solutions like reopening parts of government here and there are out of the question. Either way it goes, the orange one comes out looking like a complete chump.

    An increasing number of moderate Republicans now fear having their legislative asses handed to them by a beyond-pissed electorate, which explains why folks like Michael Grimm and 11 other House Republicans have indicated their support for a "clean" CR - one that's stripped of the poison-pill provision that hamstrings ACA funding. The longer this goes on, the worse the pain gets for the GOP in general.


    Meanwhile, the American people have to put up with some of the inconveniences of a government gone fishing:

    • All of America's national parks and monuments are now closed. So don't bother packing your bags for that trip to Yosemite National Park.
    • Don't bother sending in your application for a small business loan or loan guarantee, either. The government's not taking those while the shutdown's in effect.
    • If you're a veteran with questions about your benefits, good luck. No one's around to answer your questions.
    • The National Institutes of Health is also shuttered for the duration of the shutdown, so no further research into life-threatening diseases will be conducted and ongoing clinical trials are closed to new patients.
    • Government workers tasked with border patrol, food inspection and air traffic control will work through the shutdown sans pay. Hundreds of thousands of other non-essential govt. workers are now on furlough. Figuring out how to pay the house note is going to be a bitch, but at least they won't have to worry about their car notes.
    • No more non-essential inspections of drinking water systems and chemical facilities by the EPA until further notice. 
    • Some services for seniors and young children may run out of money in the event of an extended shutdown.
    • Even the president isn't immune to the effects of the shutdown. Teabaggers are no doubt pleased that he has to cut his Asia "vacation" short to tend to matters closer to home.

    But it's not the shutdown that should have people worried. The debt ceiling deadline is just 15 days away and unless there's a bump in the $17.5 trillion debt limit, the ramifications could very well kick the legs out of the country's current attempts at economic recovery. Without a debt ceiling increase, the U.S. government loses its ability to borrow and defaults on some of its debts, which could set off a chain of events that could eventually lead to sky-high interest rates, frozen credit and investors backing away from U.S. currency and assets as quickly as possible.

    Having the government lurch from crisis to manufactured crisis is precisely what the GOP quack doctors prescribed in the first place. A close look at the "Williamsburg Accord" lays out the current stratagem to reorient the national budget towards the general direction of the Ryan Plan, by any means necessary:

    In January, demoralized House Republicans retreated to Williamsburg, Virginia, to plot out their legislative strategy for President Obama’s second term. Conservatives were angry that their leaders had been unable to stop the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on high incomes, and sought assurances from their leaders that no further compromises would be forthcoming. The agreement that followed, which Republicans called “The Williamsburg Accord,” received obsessive coverage in the conservative media but scant attention in the mainstream press. (The phrase “Williamsburg Accord” has appeared once in the Washington Post and not at all in the New York Times.) But the decision House Republicans made in January has set the party on the course it has followed since.

    If you want to grasp why Republicans are careening toward a potential federal government shutdown, and possibly toward provoking a sovereign debt crisis after that, you need to understand that this is the inevitable product of a conscious party strategy. Just as Republicans responded to their 2008 defeat by moving farther right, they responded to the 2012 defeat by moving right yet again. Since they had begun from a position of total opposition to the entire Obama agenda, the newer rightward lurch took the form of trying to wrest concessions from Obama by provoking a series of crises.

    Heritage Action for America's Michael Needham drove home the push for a "balanced budget" through an open letter to conservative congressmen:

    Dear Congressman,

    In the coming months, you will face tremendous pressure to accept a deal to raise our nation’s debt ceiling. Conservatives around the country will insist the debt ceiling not be raised unless our nation gets on a path to a balanced budget within 10 years and stays balanced. This is not an arbitrary marker; rather, it is the marker laid out by the entire House Republican Conference in what has become known as the Williamsburg Accord.

    Conservatives cannot enter into the debt ceiling debate without understanding the promise of the Williamsburg Accord.

    On January 18, four current and former chairmen of the Republican Study Committee announced an agreement to re-sequence the 2013 fiscal fights. In exchange for holding the line on the sequester and producing a budget that balanced in ten years, conservatives agreed to postpone the debt ceiling debate for several months. In turn, the debate on the debt ceiling would revolve around enacting the policies that put the federal budget on the path to 10-year balance.

    A few days later, Speaker Boehner declared, “It’s time for us to come to a plan that will in fact balance the budget over the next 10 years.” He said it was the GOP’s “commitment to the American people.”

    As the proverbial ink dried on the Williamsburg Accord, the House Republican Conference marched in unison. Lawmakers focused on laying the groundwork to enact the policies necessary to achieve a 10-year balance, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and attach them to any future increases in the debt ceiling.

    At the same time, the National Republican Congressional Committee quietly poll-tested the message in key districts. Balancing the budget was a winning political argument in swing districts. The NRCC poll found that 45 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Independents and 76 percent of Republicans thought balancing the federal budget would “significantly increase economic growth and create millions of American jobs.”

    Good policy is good politics, and we know from recent history a coherent, principled message on the debt ceiling can shift public opinion. Before landing on the Budget Control Act in August 2011, Republicans consistently said America had a spending problem and spending reductions must accompany any increase in the debt ceiling.

    Not surprisingly, the accepted narrative of that showdown is wrong. Many forget Republicans were winning the generic congressional vote the entire month of July. President Obama’s disapproval rating stood at 52% by the end of August. In September, Mitt Romney was leading in head-to-head polling.

    The path to balance is the path to victory.

    Conservatives should not raise our nation’s statutory debt limit unless Congress passes and the President signs into law real reforms and immediate spending reductions that place America on a path to balance within 10 years without raising taxes and keeping the budget in balance.

    Regardless of how many concessions the Democrats offer to conservatives, the GOP in its current state is bound to go with the Assad option and obliterate everything within reach, just because. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation's getting pretty sick of playing hostages to a bunch of legislative psychotics.


  • While the president's citizenship eligibility has always been a bone of contention among conservatives throughout his term, there's not much ado about Ted Cruz's Canadian heritage:

    When Democrat Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Republican voter Christina Katok of Walden said she believed he was ineligible for the job.

    She reasoned that he was born in Kenya and therefore wasn’t a “natural born” American — one of a handful of constitutional requirements for the job. (Obama's birth certificate shows that he was born in Hawaii, but some critics do not accept that as fact.)

    Fast forward six years and another freshman U.S. senator, Canadian-born Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz of Texas, is being mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. But Katok, who would vote for Cruz in a heartbeat, doesn’t have any concerns about his eligibility.

    “As far as I’m concerned, Canada is not really foreign soil,” she said. Katok said she was more disturbed by Obama's "strong ties to Kenya," the African country where his father was born. She also said she didn’t like the fact that Obama did not release his long-form birth certificate during the 2008 race.

    Cruz, who recently released his Canadian birth certificate, is at least “up front about it,” she said.

    No wonder the alternative spelling for "hypocrisy" involves the letters G, O and P.

    What's being left out of the conversation is the real reason why the so-called "birthers" were up in arms over the president's alleged Kenyan origin, despite his fulfillment of all the constitutional requirements for presidential eligibility. Cruz's Canadian birth certificate is of as little issue to conservatives as his heritage or his appearance, both which are sufficiently American enough to pass muster with birthers and Teabaggers who are chafing under Barack Obama's leadership.

    Canada isn't as foreign as Hawaii, nor is it as "dark" or "exotic," if you get my drift. Also, Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson Darragh didn't commit the cardinal sin of cavorting with black men or giving birth to a "half-breed," as Stanley Ann Dunham had done. As for his father, Rafael, he managed to bribe his way into the U.S. after realizing that a post-revolution existence in Cuba wasn't as appealing as he previously thought. After his student visa evaporated, so did the elder Cruz's residency in the U.S. Only in 2005 did he remember that his Canadian citizenship would pose problems for his son's political ambitions.

    Which should make the younger Cruz's views on immigration a bit softer than those of his contemporaries:

    "The 11 million who are here illegally would be granted legal status once the border was secured — not before — but after the border was secured, they would be granted legal status," he says. "And indeed, they would be eligible for permanent legal residency. But they would not be eligible for citizenship."

    Or maybe not. The above would turn today's illegal immigrant into an ersatz version of Japan's Zainichi Koreans - able to live in the U.S. as permanent residents, but not able to vote or otherwise participate in politics. It's fortunate for the younger Cruz that such a policy didn't exist during his younger days, otherwise his political ambitions would have been as limited as the average illegal immigrant's hopes of getting U.S. citizenship the safe and legal way.

    Out of consideration for the birthers, the younger Cruz not only released a copy of his birth certificated, but he also announced that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship - he has yet to visit a Canadian Embassy and get it all done in writing, for good.

    Being the antithesis of Barack Obama in some respects is Cruz's strongest appeal among conservatives. He's neither a "Negroid half-breed" nor was he born in some seemingly exotic locale. Unlike Mitt Romney, he's not some neo-aristocratic nitwit whom conservatives of all stripes had to hold their nose to support, nor is he a visibly batshit insane wet dream for the teabagger types. As long as there aren't any skeletons flying out of his closet, he's a shoe-in as a 2016 GOP candidate.

  • If there's only one admirable quality to pick out from the GOP, it's persistence. When the GOP has a goal, it hones on that goal and resists deviation from the path they've set out on as much as possible. When said deviation becomes all but inevitable, they switch paths and continue onward until that goal is achieved. Or until miserable failure becomes so certain that even Stevie Wonder could read the writing on the wall.

    Unfortunately, the GOP's unique brand of persistence easily devolves into an unhealthy fixation on already-accomplished goals, For instance, the above dead horse represents the belated Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Off-screen are several House representatives, bat in hand, standing victorious after yet another posthumous equine assault:

    The House GOP quietly blocked funding for ACORN last week, even though the anti-poverty organization has long since been both defunded and disbanded.

    The legislative assault on ACORN, which shut down in 2010, was included in a Department of Defense appropriations bill that cleared the House on Thursday. Although the bill passed by a broad, bipartisan margin of 315-97, it garnered attention for an amendment proposed by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have stopped the government from collecting masses of phone call metadata without reasonable suspicion.

    Amash's amendment failed, but language to bar ACORN from receiving any money made the final cut. Section 8097 of the bill reads, "None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries."

    Not that any of this matters, considering how ACORN and its subsidiaries have been dearly departed since juvenile delinquent James O’Keefe found his dad's old pimp suit and decided to play dress-up*.

    Between this, the GOP's constant attempts in resurrecting Benghazi as the president's Watergate analogue and its repeated attempts at obstructionist legislation, it's little wonder the GOP doesn't have the time or energy to use its persistence for the actual good of the nation.

    *According to the linked source, Jimmy didn't actually wear his pimp garb to the offices.
  • - Detroit is officially bankrupt. Or at least it would be hadn't a judge ruled the city's Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing unconstitutional:

    Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie E. Aquilina issued the orders Thursday and Friday, including a temporary restraining order, in an attempt to halt the Chapter 9 filing by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. The judge says the bankruptcy filing “…will cause irreparable injury” to the pensioners.

    “In order to rectify his unauthorized and unconstitutional actions described above,” wrote Judge Aquilina, the Governor must (1) direct the Emergency Manager to immediately withdraw the Chapter 9 petition filed on July 18, and (2) not authorize any further Chapter 9 filing which threatens to diminish or impair accrued pension benefits.”

    - Fiery White House journalist and former correspondent Helen Thomas has died at the age of 92. Being a mainstay of the White House press pool through 10 presidencies is no small feat.

    - A man walks into a bank and gets swindled:

    (Philip L. Ramatlhware, an immigrant from Botswana) was 48 years old at the time and disabled, after being hurt in an accident as a passenger on a Greyhound bus. His English wasn’t good, he had no college education and his last job had been at a fast-food kiosk at the Philadelphia airport. In April 2008, he received $225,000 in a settlement for his injuries, part of which went to pay legal fees. He was holding the settlement check when he walked into the branch.

    Immediately he was referred to a broker for a “financial consultation,” according to an arbitration claim he filed against Citigroup. The broker assured him the money would be invested in “guaranteed” funds and that he could have access to them whenever the need arose, the complaint said. Ramatlhware gave him $150,000 to invest. The broker put $5,000 into a bank certificate of deposit, bought a $133,000 variable annuity and invested the rest in a series of mutual funds.

    Less than six months later, Ramatlhware had lost $40,000, according to the complaint. Citigroup settled the case in 2010 for $22,500, without admitting liability, according to a report on the case by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

    - Scottie Nell Hughes, Director of the Tea Party News Network and unabashed ultra-conservative*, thinks that rape victims who abort their pregnancies should be locked up and serve the same amount of prison time as their rapists:

    FUGELSANG: “Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion becomes illegal. If a woman is raped and she goes to a doctor, and the doctor terminates the pregnancy – Please tell me who deserves the longest jail sentence? The rapist,the doctor or the woman? In order.”

    HUGHES: “Across the board.”

    FUGELSANG: “All three of them?”

    HUGHES: “Go for it!”

    Let's just say if Scottie Nell Hughes found herself in that position, she'd find any and every excuse that makes her exempt from the above. That's just what conservatives do.

    - George Zimmerman won't be getting his gun back thanks to the DOJ. However, a Florida gun store has kindly stepped in to give him another one, free of charge. Now if someone would be so kind as to give Trayvon Martin his life back...

    - Rush Limbaugh doesn't think the N-word is racist anymore. Neither does David Sirota. Hans von Spakovsky, John Nolte, Ben Shapiro, Dan Riehl, Joe Walsh and Todd Starnes all think that racism is "dead" and the president is a "race baiter" of the highest order. All deserve the DDSS Award for Excellence in Rank Stupidity, lovingly crafted out of pigeon droppings, old Klansman robe cloth and discarded anti-abortion bill clippings.

    By the way, if you can turn your sink faucet into a flamethrower, thank your local gas-drilling operation for giving you a neat party trick to impress friends. It's not like you actually drink tap water...

    *Considering you have to be ultra-conservative for that gig, a bit of an oxymoron there.
  • - One day, Glendon Scott Crawford came up with an idea straight from 1950s-era Sci-fi: build a "death ray" that would silently kill its targets with massive amounts of radiation. First, he tried to hock his wares to a local Jewish synagogue in hopes it would be used in defense of the Israelis. When the Ku Klux Klan came calling, Crawford thought he finally hit paydirt.

    What he hit was a FBI sting operation and a possible 15-year stint for himself and accomplice Eric J. Feight:

    The suspects had successfully tested the remote triggering system that could work from a little less than a half mile away from the weapon, the complaint states. On June 12, they planned to have a dinner where Crawford would be provided with the radiation system, which was not finished. When the men were meeting, the FBI was monitoring their activities, including using undercover informants who posed as members of a South Carolina Ku Klux Klan group interested in purchasing the device and financing the project.

    On Tuesday, the FBI seized a vehicle of Crawford's at Shorty's, an out-of-business auto body shop Schaghticoke, where Crawford had allegedly planned to conduct a test-run of the triggering system. A law enforcement official said the auto business had nothing to do with the plot.

    Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan said Crawford was arrested at 3 p.m. Tuesday as he was "in the process of attempting to assemble various components of this device. Again, the entire operation was under very close control of the JTTF and, as a result he did not have the opportunity to do that. This device was never going to be capable the way it was set up of emitting any dangerous X-ray radiation."

    Any chance of these guys getting sent down to Gitmo as "enemy combatants"? Not a chance.

    - Paula Deen's been outed as a racist and an all-around terrible human being:

    Paula, 66, admitted to using the N-word and wanting black waiters to play the role of slaves at a wedding party she was putting together, a new bombshell report from the National Enquirer claims.

    “The personal disclosures uncovered have stunned Paula’s family and could mark the collapse of her entire empire,” a source told the tabloid.

    When asked by Lisa’s Atlanta-based attorney if she’d ever used the N-word, Paula responded, “Yes, of course,” and gave examples of times she used the offensive term.

    In terms of telling racist jokes, Paula said, “It’s just what they are — they’re jokes…most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks…I can’t determine what offends another person.”

    And when asked if she wanted black men to play the role of slaves at a wedding she explained she got the idea from a restaurant her husband and her had dined at saying, “The whole entire waiter staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie.

    “I mean, it was really impressive. That restaurant represented a certain era in America…after the Civil War, during the Civil War, before the Civil War…It was not only black men, it was black women…I would say they were slaves.”

    There's nothing new here. The idea of guilt-free indulgence in a romanticized variant of the antebellum experience has always been with us in one form or another. For example, Aunt Fanny's Cabin.

    - The Farm Bill died an ignoble death in the House, 195-234. And good thing it did, too - Republicans added provisions within the bill that would have stripped $20 billion from the food stamp program and added  work requirements for eligibility. Considering how it's low-income women, children and the elderly who benefit most the food stamp program, it's easy to see how well this would turn out.

    Thanks to the bill's defeat, John Boehner looks less like a leader and more like stir-fried shit in a suit. Fingers are pointing everywhere - the GOP's accusing the Dems of sandbagging the bill by withdrawing votes at the last second, while the Dems accuse the GOP of loading the bill with several petty bullshit amendments that wound up fracturing Republican support. Throwing in things like an amendment to ax a dairy supply management program just to fuck over legislators from dairy-producing states will do that to a bill.

    - To prove a point about the food stamp cuts in the recently-defeated Farm Bill, 26 House Democrats tried their hand at keeping themselves fed on $1.50/day, or $31.50/week:

    Rep. Johnson explained how little $31.50 actually bought. He detailed his diet for the week. Johnson said that he would only be eating two meals a day. His meat for the day will be bacon. He got lucky, and found a buy one get one free sale. He also will subsist on oatmeal, Ramen noodles, hot dogs, waffles, syrup, bananas, and he “splurged” on some tea.

    Rep. Johnson said that Republicans would never pass these cuts if they had to live on $31.50 a week, but, “The problem is that we have so many millionaires on the other side of the aisle that they will never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or trying to stretch dollars so that they can eat for the period of time that they have the finances to pay for.”

    Last up:



    It starts out with doors. Then doors with knobs. Next thing you know, they'll master crude hand tools and simple machinery.

  • "Fetus" and "masturbation" are two words you normally wouldn't see together in a sentence. Thank the GOP for making the seemingly impossible...possible:

    The House's proposed ban on late-term abortions is justified because fetuses masturbate as early as 15 weeks, proving they experience physical feeling, according to a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus.

    Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a former OB/GYN, suggested Monday that he has witnessed "movements that are purposeful" in fetuses entering the second trimester.

    “Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby," Burgess said. "They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

    Burgess made the comment during debate in the House Rules Committee over Rep. Trent Franks's (R-Ariz.) abortion bill, which is due for a floor vote Tuesday.

    The measure would ban nearly all abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy on the disputed premise that fetuses can feel pain at that stage of development.

    According to Burgess, if a fetus entering the second trimester is capable of masturbating, then it's capable of feeling pleasure. Ergo, it's also capable of feeling pain. Therefore, it would be wrong and immoral to subject the fetus to the pain that abortion would cause.

    According to research from the Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, evidence that a fetus is capable of such stimuli is fleeting, at best:

    Most endocrinological, behavioral and electrophysiological studies of fetal pain are performed in the third trimester, and they seem to agree that the fetus in the 3rd trimester can experience pain. But the presence of fetal pain in the 2nd trimester is less evident. In favor of a 2nd trimester perception of pain is the early development of spino-thalamic pathways (approximately from the 20th week), and the connections of the thalamus with the subplate (approximately from the 23rd week). Against this possibility, some authors report the immaturity of the cortex with the consequent lack of awareness, and the almost continuous state of sleep of the fetus.

    Conclusions: Most studies disclose the possibility of fetal pain in the third trimester of gestation. This evidence becomes weaker before this date, though we cannot exclude its increasing presence since the beginning of the second half of the gestation.

    Normally, I'd be surprised that the moral fundamentalists within the GOP aren't calling for fetuses to be fitted with tiny little anti-masturbation devices. But this is different. Convincing the public that fetuses are already going on dates with Rosy Palms is merely a means to an end, with the end being that of abortion. Baby steps, literally.

    The bill, officially known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, passed the House 228-196 but it's destined to die an ignoble death in the Senate. President Obama promises to veto the bill and others like it if they ever come across his desk.

    The irony is that while the GOP does all it can to "protect" the life of the unborn, all bets are off once the unborn become born. With massive cuts to federal education funding and the WIC program due to Sequestration and 13 GOP-led states opting out of the Affordable Care Act, seems the GOP has no interest in investing in the future of the already-born, unless there was something in it for them.
  • In the ongoing IRS debacle and Benghazi, the GOP figures it hit a home run, or at least a triple with all bases covered. Something tells me the GOP hit a couple of fouls and is well and truly on its way to striking out.

    First, the specter of the Obama administration being responsible for targeting conservative groups through the IRS was swiftly snuffed with the following:

    Over two years, IRS field office agents repeatedly changed their criteria while sifting through thousands of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status to select ones for possible closer examination, the findings showed.

    At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making "America a better place to live."

    Exactly who at the IRS made the decisions to start applying extra scrutiny was not clear from the findings, which were contained in portions of an investigative report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
    After brewing for months, the IRS effort exploded into wider view on Friday when Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations for the IRS, apologized for what she called the "inappropriate" targeting of conservative groups for closer scrutiny, something the agency had long denied.

    At a legal conference in Washington, while taking questions from the audience, Lerner said the agency was sorry.

    She said the screening practice was confined to an IRS office in Cincinnati; that it was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration; and that none of the targeted groups was denied tax-free status.
    By July 2011, the IRS was no longer targeting just groups with certain key words in their names. Rather, the screening criteria had changed to "organizations involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy."

    But then it changed again in January 2012 to cover "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement," according to the findings contained in a Treasury Department watchdog report.

    In March 2012, after Tea Party groups complained about delays in processing of their applications, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was called to testify by a congressional committee. He denied that the IRS was targeting tax-exempt groups based on their politics.

    The IRS said on Saturday that senior IRS executives were not aware of the screening process. The documents reviewed by Reuters do not show that Shulman had any role.

    In May 2012, the criteria for scrutiny were revised again to cover a variety of tax-exempt groups "with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit)," according to a TIGTA timeline included in the findings.

    The happy scandal balloon deflated even more when two salient facts came to light: that a Bush administration appointee was in charge of the IRS at the time this happened and that the IRS has been without a commissioner since he stepped down. In spite of the presence of an acting commissioner, the big chair remains empty due to the usual GOP obstructionism:

    Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

    Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

    If the GOP still wants to place the blame on the Obama administration since this "happened on his watch," let the investigative processes commence.

    Not only is the IRS "scandal" proving to be anything but, so is Benghazi. Courtesy of PoliticusUSA:

    After CNN’s Jake Tapper exposed ABC’s report was based on information that was edited in order to make the Obama administration look bad, ABC tried to explain away their lies by claiming that their inaccurate story, and the actual emails are the same thing, “Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.”

    In the process of trying to defend himself, Karl exposed his own lies, “This is how I reported the contents of that e-mail, quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” (In his original story, Karl claimed that ABC News had obtained the emails. This obviously wasn’t true.)

    Karl also explained that he and ABC News never reviewed the emails, “The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.”

    For the sake of getting the scoop first, ABC News managed to trip all over its own shoelaces and get shown up by the folks at CNN. But that's beside the point. What matters is the lengths Republican leaders have gone to paint Benghazi as the next Watergate. It didn't hurt that they had a little help along the way:

    Jon Karl wrote that nobody could get copies the emails. If this was true, how did Jake Tapper get them?

    The truth is that Karl’s source was likely someone within the Republican House, because these emails were made available to the Republicans investigating Benghazi months ago. (Before Karl came to ABC he was a congressional correspondent at CNN, so connect the dots. Plus, it wasn’t a coincidence that this story broke days before House Republicans held another Benghazi hearing.)

    Jon Karl thought he found his "Deep Throat" and well...nah. Had a pretty good metaphor for this one, but it would be a bit uncouth even for DDSS standards. Jake Tapper saw an opening to make himself look good for once at Karl's expense. It's gonna make for a rather awkward meet when they run into each other at the next cocktail dinner.

  • My conversations with Senator Rubio, he happened to share with me that Disney World uses a biometric system to ensure people do not commit ticket fraud. If they are that easy, affordable and good enough for the Magic Kingdom, they ought to be good enough for the United States. Senator Sessions’ amendment would guarantee they would not be eligible for lawful citizenship until there is a biometric entry/exit system.

    I do not know how leadership will ever do what Congress mandates them to do unless we use this trigger. It is that simple. I believe this is a constructed — constructive amendment that reaches the stated goals of protecting the United States system and making sure it is fair and workable. If we choose to ignore the 40 percent of immigration where we create a system that can be evaded, we have ignored our constituents concerns and failed to fix the problem.

    The above comes from Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, as he explains how Walt Disney World's biometric entry and exit systems can be easily adapted to solve the nation's illegal immigration woes. This comes after fellow Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama proposed an amendment that would do just that.

    With nearly 2000 miles of U.S.-Mexico border to look after and hundreds of border crossings along the way, insuring that no illegal immigrant manages to get through is a daunting, if effectively impossible task. Too many places where people and goods can slip through unnoticed and the will of those wanting to get into U.S. is powerful enough to overcome whatever setbacks the GOP throws in their way.

    A Disney World security system won't solve any of those problems, but at least it will keep a few contractors well-fed and the GOP's core constituency satiated until the next moral or political crisis rattles their cages. Which leads me to wonder how they plan on paying for it all. With the sequester in full swing and government agencies scrambling to do more with less, it seems a bit foolish to fund something that even by Disney's own admission wouldn't work so well:

    “It is true that Disney World used a fingerprint, and then when Disney Land went ahead to use their system they used a picture because it was better,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said.

    Still, the GOP would rather focus their energies on this than figure out a way to keep American children safe from gun violence and accidental gun discharges. Or a way to unfuck the legal immigration process. Or a way to promote economic growth throughout the continent and put a damper on drug cartel violence so people in Mexico and other countries south won't have a reason to risk life and limb to live and work in the U.S.

    By the way, Sessions' Disneyland bill wound up dead at the hands of the Senate Judicial Committee in a 12 to 6 vote.
  • President Obama’s latest cabinet-level nominees are running into deep resistance in the Senate, pitching Democrats and Republicans into another tense standoff over White House appointments.

    Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent.

    If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies.

    Republicans have objected to the nomination of Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, citing what they said were her insufficient responses to their questions. They have also sought to block the labor secretary nominee, Thomas E. Perez, a lawyer in the Justice Department, on the grounds that he is too political.

    A third nominee, Penny Pritzker, a wealthy hotel heiress and a top Obama fund-raiser who has more than two decades of corporate experience, has run into resistance since Mr. Obama put her name forward this month to be the next commerce secretary. Republicans are promising to scrutinize her family’s financial dealings, including their use of offshore accounts to reduce their taxes.

    Nominees at all levels of Washington’s bureaucracy — 117 of them in all, including cabinet secretaries, judges and members of obscure oversight boards — are facing delays. Just last week, the Senate confirmed David Medine, the president’s choice to lead the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The time between his nomination and confirmation was 510 days. Every Republican voted no.

    The true scandal isn't at the abandoned consulate compound in Benghazi or at the various IRS offices where selective investigations of 501(c)(4) organizations originated. The true scandal lies deep within the hallowed halls of Congress, where GOP legislators are intent on blocking just about every cabinet and agency appointment possible. It's not just to spite the president and roadblock as much of his agenda as possible, but also in an attempt to fulfill their insistence that "big government doesn't work" by making it stop work:

    In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate. They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government. As with all legislative chambers, and in fact all democratic institutions, the Senate runs on a combination of formal rules and informal norms. But Republicans, by refusing to accept those norms, make it impossible for the normal machinery of government to function.

    And remember that this is entirely unprecedented. Until very recently, simple majority confirmation was the norm on executive branch nominations with only a handful of exceptions. Not only that, but both Democrats and Republicans agreed that in almost all cases presidents were entitled to their choices when it came to these posts.

    Unprecedented, but the GOP's made an exception for President Obama since his first day in office. No surprise here.

    The surprise is how this story is getting buried underneath the Benghazi and IRS narrative. Well, maybe that's not a surprise, either. At any rate, you can bet your bottom dollar that those two stories will continue to be pushed hard and often by conservative news mavens. This one, on the other hand, won't rate any greater than typical Capitol Hill background banter.

    Smartypants has the GOP pegged:

    I suspect that any African American who has had success in this country will be able to relate to what is happening to the President right now. Every single move he makes is scrutinized and if he ever shows his humanity by making a mistake, he is likely to face impeachment.

    We should all think about that and let it sink in. I'm sure the President is very aware of that fact. He is cautious by nature and that is probably one of the reasons he was able to become our first African American president.

    But in this context, caution is called for. He's carrying a lot on his shoulders...more than is possible for me to even imagine. What he needs from us now is to keeps our heads together, focus on the long game, and remember that "no drama Obama" has always been the winning ticket.

    Let the Republicans be the party of hysteria. That's what a beast in its death throes does. And to paraphrase what the President said to Mitt Romney..."Please proceed, Republicans."

    So far, President Obama has done a marvelous job of letting the Republicans expose themselves as an obstinate, capricious and hysterical bunch. As long as the president continues on this track, he'll remain untouchable and the GOP will hopefully see itself as the Whigs saw themselves in their twilight years.
  • If Benghazi didn't provide enough fodder for conservatives' sense of victimhood, the following definitely will:

    Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

    IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

    Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

    In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

    “For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

    Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

    It's one thing to investigate 501(c)(4)s to make sure they stay within the legal boundaries of their status. It's another to laser target 501(c)(4)s based on their political affiliation:

    Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, noted that the number of 501(c)(4) group applications doubled between 2010 and 2012. As a result of this influx, she explained, low-level workers at the agency’s Cincinnati office had flagged about 300 applications for additional review based on a keyword search. None had their status revoked or denied and the IRS apologized for the mistake.

    While it unclear whether the IRS workers intentionally targeted conservative groups — an agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for the complete list of keywords used — the office revealed that two of the terms on the list were “Tea Party” and “patriot.” As such, about 75 Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny.

    The spike in 501(c)(4) groups comes after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that outside groups may make unlimited political expenditures. Since then, some 501(c)(4) organizations have begun abusing the system. Though groups engaged in some political activity may qualify as “social welfare groups” and receive tax-exempt status under this section of the tax code, electioneering cannot be their predominant activity.
    It remains seen whether this all was deliberate or unintentional, not that it matters much to conservative Tea Party-types. This only validates their claims of victimization by the Obama administration and chances are they'll milk it for all it's worth. That includes getting yet another round of "Impeach the Socialist Negro"...ahem..."Take Back the White House."

    Where were these guys when the IRS decided to take a peek at the NAACP's books during the Bush administration?


  • The above video (sadly dead as of 2014) serves as a recap of the events surrounding the five-hour attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Criticisms surrounding the attack included the claimed lack of sufficient security at the compound, as well as why additional Army forces were nowhere to be found when the consulate needed help most.* Some claimed that not only did the White House delay their response to the attack, officials also seemed reluctant to immediately pin responsibility on the usual suspect in the region (Al Qaeda). Republicans attempted to parlay these criticisms into a scandal that would hopefully leave the Obama administration tarred and feathered.

    This was supposed to be an impeachable moment for the president. In Benghazi, the GOP saw Barack Obama finally meeting his very own Watergate or better still, Iran Hostage Crisis. So far, that seems about as likely as New Coke being reintroduced on the soft drink market. So Republicans simply changed targets - instead of striking at a lame duck with a seemingly unimpeachable image, they're focused on scuttling Hillary Clinton's possible 2016 presidential candidacy, notably by returning a favor:

    The brief period of bipartisan peace initiated by 9/11 ended for good in May 2002. CBS News reported that the president had received an intelligence briefing in early Aug. 2001 that "specifically alerted him of a possible airliner attack in the US."

    Th CBS report left much open to question, but that mattered little to Democratic leaders in Congress. They saw an opportunity to attack the president's strong suit--his leadership in the war on terrorism.

    The Democrat who most aroused the ire of the White House was Hillary Clinton. She declared, "Bush had been informed last year, before 9/11, of a possible al Qaeda plot to hijack a US airliner." She held up a newspaper headline, "BUSH KNEW." "The president knew what?" Clinton asked.

    To the White House, Clinton's remarks seemed calculated to manipulate the narrative concerning who should be blamed for 9/11, trying to shield the legacy of her husband's presidency by shifting blame for overlooking available intelligence away from him & onto his successor.

    GOP talking heads suggest that the president had prior knowledge of an impending attack and, for whatever reason, decided to sit on that intel and let the chips fall where they did. Of course, few people asked the magic question: exactly how would the Obama administration profit by allowing such an attack to happen? Even the talking heads over at Fox & Friends are backing away from the conspiratorial mayhem surrounding Benghazi:

    On Monday, the morning show hosted cable news all-star Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), for his latest in a long string of attempts to prove that the U.S. government engaged in a massive cover-up of the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Although hosts Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade are normally happy to promote a good conspiracy theory — for example, they recently seriously questioned whether or not NBC is replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show because he made a joke about President Obama — even they’re fed up with Chaffetz’s unsupported claims that “we were certainly misled every step of the way.”

    “Are you saying that admirals Pickering and Mullen are complicit because they did the review board?” Kilmeade asked of Chaffetz’s suggestion that the government manipulated the findings of the Accountability Review Board report on the attack. “Are you saying that the CIA is complicit because they allowed their talking points to be edited?”

    “What were they trying to cover up?” Doocy asked.

    “You had the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta — who was revered by both sides of the fence — coming out and saying, ‘Hey, we couldn’t have gotten anybody there.’ So you have him on the line. You have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, President Obama, Admiral Mullen. Would all of these people go to bat just to get President Obama re-elected?” Carlson asked.

  • Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

    James 3:5, King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)

    Right about now, Alabama State Rep. Joe Mitchell of Mobile probably wishes he had exercised a bit of decorum, now that a comment of his has turned into kindling for opportunistic GOPers and the idiot masses. So what happened? I'll leave that to Redeye:

    Let's recap. Retired coal miner and Jefferson County resident Eddie Maxwell sent a mass email to all Alabama Legislators "warning them that even attempting to introduce a gun control bill was, in his opinion, a violation of state law." Oh really?

    Instead of ignoring Maxwell's email, or, sending out the standard thank your for contacting my office blah, blah, blab, blab auto reply, Rep. Mitchell chose to respond in the following manner;

    "Your folk never used all this sheit (sic) to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed (sic), imported criminal-minded kin folk."

    He's speaking truth to power, no matter how many people would admit otherwise. Lots of people would dismiss the above as a wild, crazy outburst from a race card-waving black guy who needs to sit hisself down somewheres. But Rep. Mitchell's entitled to be as pissed as he wants - as far as I'm concerned, given the history of the Great State of Alabama and elsewhere in the Deep South and its collective track record for racial discrimination and wanton violence, he's earned that right and then some.

    However, in an age where saying the wrong things could have a team of Breitbart's best ratfuckers gnaw through your image and reputation like field mice through Australian farmland, something like the above could cost you dearly. I imagine Rep. Mitchell's from the old school, where he's never had to deal with that kind of crap. Until now. He's already being cast as "eccentric," which is about a step and a half away from "crazy" and two from "insane."

    Already is his outburst being equated with that of State Senator Scott Beason's "aborigine" remarks. Just part and parcel of the ongoing drive to prove that blacks can be just as racist as white folk. For a brief moment, whites can take refuge from the burning spotlight and show those blacks how it feels to be under scrutiny for racism, for once.

    Saying the wrong things at the wrong time has its consequences, as an unnamed commissioner and then-manager Thomas Andrews of the Fulton County Department of Human Services shortly realized during a discrimination lawsuit launched by a former employee. Having fellow colleagues say that there were "too many white boys" on the staff was one of the things that cinched a settlement for the white ex-employee.

    I doubt Rep. Mitchell will step down from his position, although state GOPers wouldn't mind one bit if he does. Just another slot for the Grand Old Party to slide a conservative candidate into. I also doubt his constituents would throw him under the bus like his own party is doing. It seems the Alabama Democratic Party is doing more than its fair share to ensure that Alabama remains a defacto one-party state under GOP dominance for decades to come.

    H/T to Redeye for his continuing reports on the shenanigans going down back in my home state.
  • Yesterday was "Gun Appreciation Day" as gun lovers across the U.S. flocked to ranges, gun shows and exhibitions to show that awful socialist Negro in the White House what for show their appreciation for firearms. Well, the day was capped off by a few events definitely worth noting.

    To start things off, I wouldn't want to be in Dr. Charles Bizilj's shoes right now. He has to deal with the loss of his son, something that happened largely of his own carelessness:

    The teenager who worked at a gun show where 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj accidentally killed himself while shooting an Uzi testified today he twice suggested the boy's father pick a less powerful weapon for the boy to shoot.

    But Christopher's father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, insisted that his son be allowed to fire the automatic weapon, Michael Spano told the court. Spano was 15 at the time of the 2008 Massachusetts gun expo and was put in charge of allowing people to fire the 9 mm Micro Uzi, a submachine gun that fires 20 rounds a second.

    Former Pelham, Mass., police chief Edward Fleury is on trial for the boy's death because he organized the gun expo. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty.

    The most dramatic moment of the trial came Thursday when the court watched video recorded by Charles Bizilj of the boy handling the gun. The father, who was on the stand at the time, closed his eyes as the video showed the boy struggling to handle the gun's recoil. The barrel reared up and shot the boy in the head. The court room gasped and the boy's mother left the courtroom in tears.

    The family may have to relive that moment again in painstaking detail. The prosecution has asked that the video be played again, this time frame by frame. The judge has not yet ruled on that request.

    It's one thing to teach a young boy how to safely handle and shoot a low-powered .22 long rifle in a safe environment. It's another to let a boy fire a submachine gun known for being a handful in the hands of a full-grown adult.

    But that's not all. With the gun control debate raging, accidental discharges seem to be getting more play in the news:

    A 4-year-old child was injured when hit by bullet fragments Saturday morning after a gun accidentally discharges at a Tupelo gun show.

    The child was hit by fragments from a bullet that went through a wall. Also, a man was grazed in the leg in the same accident.

    Tupelo Police say both were treated at North Mississippi Medical Center. Neither suffered life threatening injuries.

    A preliminary investigation indicated it was an accident and no charges are expected.

    And yet another accidental discharge:

    At least four people -- three in North Carolina and one in Indiana -- were injured after weapons went off at gun shows Saturday, officials said, at a time when there's been renewed discussion about private gun sales at such shows.
    Dixie Gun and Knife Show attendees bolted, with at least one woman wiping out in the frenetic scene, after gunfire rang out around 1 p.m., as seen on video captured by CNN affiliate WRAL.

    Police later explained that a a 36-year-old man from Wilmington, North Carolina, was unfastening the case of his 12-gauge shotgun on a table near the show entrance when it accidentally discharged. The man planned to sell the shotgun at the show.
    The bird shot ended up injuring three people. One was a sheriff's deputy, who suffered a slight injury to his hand and was treated and released at a local hospital before returning immediately to work, said Joel Keith, chief of police of the North Carolina State Fair.

    A 54-year-old woman from Benson, North Carolina, was being treated a wound to her right torso at a local hospital, and a 50-year-old man from Durham, North Carolina, was treated for an injured left hand, Keith told reporters.

    Even gun dealers are getting in on the accidental discharges:

    Police in Medina say a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he'd bought Saturday when he accidentally pulled the trigger.

    Police Chief Pat Berarducci says it appears the bullet struck the floor, then a longtime friend of the gun dealer. The man was wounded in the arm and leg.

    Berarducci says the man was taken by helicopter to a Cleveland hospital. His condition isn't known.

    Police say the gun's magazine had been removed from the firearm but one round remained in the chamber.

    These incidents all happened at gun expos, places that offer a smorgasbord of firearms and relatively loose controls on purchases. In contrast to gun store purchases, gun expo sales are considered private transactions between individuals and thus aren't subject to background checks. Therefore, there's no Form 4473 to fill out. Making guns harder to purchase is something the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups are dead set against happening.

    Meanwhile, it's easy to dismiss the above as simple accidents made by careless individuals, events that don't reflect on guns and gun ownership in a larger light. Too bad there are millions of careless individuals out there who choose to exercise their right to bear arms without knowing how to properly bear those arms. According to research performed by Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense.

    Kellerman's statistics were seen as a sneaky end-run around the gun control issue by having it reclassified as a health concern and subsequently squashed thanks to the efforts of NRA lobbyists. For their efforts, the Centers for Disease Control, which was responsible for funding Kellerman's findings, was fiscally cut off at the knees and told, in so many words, to stick with contagious diseases and brain injuries.

    On a lighter note:

    House Republicans gathering to discuss minority outreach picked an odd venue for the retreat — a former slave plantation.

    Weary GOPers left Washington Wednesday for the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va., where they’re recuperating and focusing on unity after last year’s rough-and-tumble fiscal cliff fight with Democrats.

    Panels will take place in the resort’s “Burwell Plantation” room, named after the family that once owned the plantation. The luxury resort is now owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a conservative political donor.

    [...]

    On tap for Friday morning is a forum to discuss “successful communication with minorities and women.”

    Republican lawmakers also hope to address the looming battle against the Obama administration over a debt limit extension and budget cuts.

    I'm not surprised. The trappings of a genteel antebellum establishment that once represented the pinnacle of Southern economic power is the perfect place for Republicans to discuss “successful communication with minorities and women.” It's a lot like the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, except instead of divvying up a continent, the GOP gets to feign cluelessness about those dangblasted minorities and womenfolk.

  • This is Mary Matalin. She is what the Republican Party looks like after it lost to President Barack Obama. Distraught, dismayed, full of grief, fear and hatred. Take a good, long look at this face - the last time any "real" American looked this way was when the slaves were freed.

    On top of Mitt Romney's presumed reign over the American people being repudiated in real time, this is what she had to deal with:


    Look at that smug negro Van Jones, holding up poor Mary as the example of what the Republican Party is today. Worst of all for her? He's right.

    This election should be the wake-up call that finally causes the party to get its collective shit together, but it's too easy to wallow in a well-worn puddle of hate and fear.
  • America has always had a distinct problem with its ethnic relations vis-a-vis blacks and whites, from the moment the first dark-skinned person set foot on this nation's soil for the sole purpose of bonded labor to today, as a descendant of once-removed relations of those people now sits in command of the most powerful nation on the planet. It never had to be this way, but once the founding fathers chose to ignore the issue of granting liberty to only a narrow subset of individuals that mainly included themselves and others like them, the die was cast. The fact that a large swath of Americans were happily indoctrinated to see their darker relations as inherently inferior beings and encouraged to uphold institutions that religiously enforced their lowered status in addition to their own was merely icing on the cake.

    As much as I hate saying it, "racism," or America's inability to cope with "clearly inferior" human beings in positions of power and influence is thoroughly baked into the core of this nation. Bringing attention to this fact  is a dangerous endeavor, as is bringing attention to how many American individuals would sooner destroy certain institutions rather than see them occupied by those of certain skin hues. It's an irrational and frightening feeling brought on by a staggering combination of fear and a certain loss of power or personal standing. The last thing certain people want to experience is having their own personal status drop or stay stagnant as the star of the nation's punching-bag and draft-mule classes rise over their own.

    Entire political wings have, in various guises, cultivated, promoted and endorsed acts that kept those of a certain hue embedded firmly in their assigned roles as expendable labor for the wealthy, an easily accessible whipping boy for the well-to-do and emotional vent and distraction for the lower classes. From the 1940s to today, the safe harbor for politicians and their supporters who sought to maintain this "status quo"  shifted from the Democrats (the former home of the Dixiecrats) to today's Republican party, an evolution that accelerated in pace after the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Democrat president Lyndon Baines Johnson and soon-to-be Republican president Richard Nixon's use of the infamous Southern Strategy.

    Which brings us to the following clip of MSNBC's "The ED Show," featuring United States Army Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson as a guest. Wilkerson, an older white man with considerable military experience and credentials, makes the obvious known. It's a fact that would face scathing amounts of disputation if the below words were to have been uttered, as they have before, by people of a certain hue.


    My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House, has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as Commander-In-Chief and President, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable.

    Wilkerson was former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, who himself has lent his reasoned support to current U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election efforts. Wilkerson's comment came in response to New Hampshire Governor John Sununu's opinion of Powell's presidential endorsement:

    "Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama," Sununu said.

    When Morgan asked him what that reason is, Sununu said, "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

    Suggesting that a person of color's support for another person of color is based solely on their solidarity via skin hue isn't just ignorance squared on its face - it's also one of the oldest methods used by white Americans to discount and discredit people of color in high positions. To suggest that someone got where they are in life solely on their skin color is supposed to call their actual abilities and skills into question. It also quietly reinforces the incredulousness of black Americans being capable of high-level work -- according to prescribed beliefs reinforced over and over again throughout time, they're only suited to physical labor, menial servitude and occasional entertainment.

    The funny thing about Sununu's comment would be its absence had Powell simply endorsed Mitt Romney. Not only would that had been in keeping with Powell's political affiliation, it also would have kept him firmly in the "one of the good ones" column as far as many of the unreconstructed were concerned. Having "one of their boys" (in more ways than one) stray off the plantation (in more ways than one) to support "one of their kind" is an unforgivable breech that must be responded to. In lieu of whips and foot amputations, Sununu's cutting remark served as the verbal whip to quickly but obliquely put Powell back in his preassigned place.

    Meanwhile, a recent Associated Press survey highlights the remarkable levels of racial antagonism that remains against people of color, most notably black Americans. As it turns out, a constant "anti-black" narrative running in the background of the nation's consciousness for centuries on end takes great difficulty to shut down:

    In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

    "As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

    Experts on race said they were not surprised by the findings.

    "We have this false idea that there is uniformity in progress and that things change in one big step. That is not the way history has worked," said Jelani Cobb, professor of history and director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut. "When we've seen progress, we've also seen backlash."

    Obama has tread cautiously on the subject of race, but many African-Americans have talked openly about perceived antagonism toward them since Obama took office. As evidence, they point to events involving police brutality or cite bumper stickers, cartoons and protest posters that mock the president as a lion or a monkey, or lynch him in effigy.

    Wilkerson's correct and so are countless others who've said the same thing but without the added gravitas of being an older white male of prestige and authority - there are scores of people out there who, by their own sheer ignorance and embedded programming, simply cannot and will not abide by the presence of Barack Obama or any other black American as their leader. It simply goes against the embedded programming that declares him and his kind to be inherently inferior in mind and morals to ordinary, upstanding white Americans, causing them to overlook the moral deficiencies in their own people as long as it means keeping the blacks in their prescribed social roles, in turn keeping themselves a rung or two above them in regards to social standing.

    This is the sort of attitude that had people courting a collection of political caricatures during the primaries and afterwards, throwing their lot in with a capricious, dishonest individual of thin moral character who finds far more comfort among his fellow landed gentry than with ordinary American citizens. Unfortunately, a significant portion of white Americans would rather cast their lot with wealthy people who at least look like them (with the hope of receiving whatever crumbs fall off their table) than to stand with others of similar socioeconomic stature due to these preconceived notions. It's helpful to note that the average poor white southerner kept throwing his lot in with the wealthy planters who saw them just as they saw their black counterparts: as labor and resources to be exploited as needed.

    The fact that many people are busy psyching themselves up to defend the social status quo and, at the same time, relieve themselves of the triggers to Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), is a scary and depressing sign of the lengths we'll have to go towards ensuring anything resembling ethnic equality. It'll have to start with several hard and long rounds of mental deprogramming, a task that this nation never seems to be up to.
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