There’s a lot of listening, clapping and jumping up and down at a Democratic state convention. Other than that, very little for delegates to except try to mobilize voters for Elizabeth Colbert Busch.
In all likelihood the 2014 South Carolina Governor’s race is going to be a replay of the 2010 race, not good news for incumbent Nikki Haley
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and presidential hopeful has been casting himself as a jolly moderate. I invite you to check the record.
Will Republicans use the redistricting advantages they achieved after their 2010 sweep to change the way electoral votes are apportioned?
Bryan Fischer introduces Barack the Destroyer, the man who wants to destroy America and make Americans suffer because of their racism
In Florida, in 2008 8.4 million people voted; in 2010 only 5.3 million did. Margin of victory for Rick Scott? 1.2%.
An South Carolina Democratic Luncheon meeting attendee challenging the presence of a Republican spy, triggers a DINO defense of Republicans.
So what we have is a majority republican committee and a republican house holding the Attorney General in Contempt of Congress under false pretenses.
Today marks a new format in the Dirty Thirty, which will now include only updates (the entire updated list will be posted on its own page)
Theocracy is coming to with a GOP win in 2012: they have made their position clear enough and it becomes more pronounced with each new bill
Look at all the things wrong in America right now and then look at the GOP solutions since 2010. You will see they have no intention of fixing any real problems
A misleading headline about Harry Reid provides the perfect demonstration of just how far right wing newspapers or conservative editors are willing to go to poison the well.
Recent polls show Obama’s popularity on the rise, even among Independents and Republicans, while enthusiasm among the GOP base is falling.
Rick Santorum has something in common with the base: shared idiocy about an America that never was, and the culture war cred to go with it
The Dirty Thirty Year-End edition is a recap of legislation, local, state and federal, the GOP is using to destroy America
Anti-choice advocates in Mississippi have begun to advance so-called Personhood Amendments to attack birth-control, abortion, cloning, and stem-cell research.
Miller lost his federal case – the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out his lawsuit on Tuesday, just a week after the Alaska Supreme Court did the same.
Joe Miller will not try to perform a citizens arrest on Lisa Murkowski but he will take her to federal court for having the audacity to defeat him in 2010.
Republicans have tried every possible delaying tactic: an amendment by John McCain, failed Saturday on a 59-37 vote; on Sunday, a second by Jim Risch, 32-60.
GOP opposition to big federal government and support of states’ rights is a reaction to loss of control and does not extend to their socially conservative agenda
It is obvious that moderation has no place in modern Republican discourse, whose rhetoric is based on confrontational and inflammatory statements, the more outrageous the better.
They blame healthcare reform but if any physicians drop their patients, it won’t be because of “Obamacare.” It will be because of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.
You can search and search; you can look high and low, but you won’t find much. Right now, the closest thing the Republicans seem to have to a real policy is orchestrating a win for Bristol on DWTS.
Republicans claim we need an anti-missile defense system [cue to them rubbing their hands greedily together in anticipation]. But isn’t the best way to get rid of a missile threat to get rid of the missiles themselves? Oh wait, a missile defense system is another way to spend money and ratchet up the U.S. deficit. Getting rid of missiles gives Republicans less to spend money on.
This morning on Fox News, the erstwhile “news” people at the GOP PAC are pretending that President Obama is the earmark bogey man and that they will be the driving force in getting him to support banning earmarks. This would be a great sale of baloney if only reading people the country wide didn’t already know that the President has been attempting to get earmarks killed for oh, ever since he was a Senator.
Here’s Bill on the November 14 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, finally figuring out how to solve the national crisis his party created. His solution? The President should bang his head against the same brick wall of failed ideas that the Republicans refuse to give up, regardless of reality! Who can say Bill doesn’t love America?
All the rage, all the buzz, is how Obama screwed us all and no one, and I mean no one, likes him anymore! Hey, Obama, you suck! Give us the permanent tax cuts or else, and do not give them to anyone else. We mean it! Cut to the quiet clarification in the afternoon that all of the hysteria was for naught. No need to kill ourselves yet. Oh, is it too late? Gee, sorry. It was for a good cause.
For Bush, war became THE political instrument. No longer does war pick up where politics leave off; war becomes a substitution for politics.
In the wake of the 2010 midterm elections it is important to know who John Boehner is and what it will mean to have him as Speaker of the House. Obviously,there are some concerns with Boehner’s very old-fashioned, shall we say…conservative…positions. One might say ULTRA conservative.
Emboldened by their midterm victories, Republicans are already back to warmongering. Having invaded and conquered Iraq (where 50,000 U.S. troops remain to buttress the new government) and mired down in an endless war in Afghanistan, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) now wants to attack Iran.
Sarah Palin has another Tweeter moment. It’s ironic really, that she is the star of a reality show but reality is not a friend to her. She seems to be saying to reality (shrieking really), “Reality, you’re not the boss of me!â€
These ideologically-motivated refusals are perhaps not such a bright idea when you stop to think about it. The problem being of course, that not many people stopped to do any thinking leading up to these midterms and Republicans seem to be doing less thinking than most. It all became about rage and ideology. Nobody was thinking in practical terms. So they all decided to have a group foot shoot instead.
Many Americans are asking, “What happened?” In a wonderfully titled article, “What the #!%*?: The U.S. mid-term elections?†the National Post’s Peter Goodspeed asks and answers some very important questions about the midterms.
It was surprising to read the despair and shock from the left this morning. But what hurts more than all of this, my liberal friends, is how the liberal base stabbed themselves in the back while complaining about how the Democrats never handle power well.
The rich and powerful together with the GOP, the bigoted, the racists and the misguided have waged a consumptive and gigantic battle against Obama, the Democratic Party, main stream America, and the very concept of Democracy.
Today is the day we go to vote in the 2010 midterm elections. The results of this election will reverberate far beyond our localities; they will affect the entire country and indeed, the entire world.
As we head to the polls tomorrow, ignorant, confused citizens are intending to vote against their own self-interests. Knowing Republicans have done nothing, and campaign on doing nothing for the next two years; why are people willing to vote for them? Republicans promise to help corporations by getting rid of regulations, but that only helps the wealthy.
Conservative Christians fear for this country and its future (that should be read as their privileged position in this country). They seem uncertain as to what the answer is. Do they vote? Do they pray? Do they just scream a lot and stomp their little feet?
Phillips wants Keith Ellison (D) U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, out of office because he is a Muslim.
Apparently, pride is an issue with Meek and he must think he is making a statement. He is making a statement; he’s saying it’s acceptable to give Rubio a six year stint in the Senate just to say, “I didn’t give up.â€
Words and actions have consequences, sometimes to the person who speaks, sometimes to the people spoken of. In an environment of hate and xenophobia, the consequences can be deadly and widespread.
In developing countries and dictatorships it’s not unusual or unexpected for the judicial system to be corrupt and biased. In America, it used to be a source of pride that our judicial system was fair and followed the letter of the law. Apparently, those days are gone and we are seeing the result of biased court decisions in this election cycle with unprecedented corporate donations to Republican candidates.
The American Revolution ended British rule; the Constitution created the United States of America, and that creation did not all happen at once. It was a process; the United States is the result of political compromise and evolution, not violent overthrow.
The Indiana midterms offer little for liberal and progressive voters. Evan Bayh’s retirement opens up an opportunity for an extremist Republican to replace him.
The Republicans and the Tea Party are treating our government like a corporation folks, and they are preparing for a corporate takeover. And don’t think for a minute while they’re taking away your pensions and your social security that they won’t have golden parachutes of their own.
The Republicans talk a lot about prayer, a natural off-shoot of their tendency to talk about God. If there was any lingering doubt about the Grand Old Party having become God’s Own Party, the 2008 elections should have dispelled it, and the lead-up to the 2010 midterms have only cemented the new Republican focus. Sharron…
You don’t understand Sarah Palin if you think that her not acquiescing to requests of an important political figure indicate she is not serious about running for President. While many Republican campaigns are now seeing Palin as the “self-centered†“chaotic†person the McCain campaign aides saw (not to mention Alaskans who know her best), many of them still don’t understand her.
There is a trend here, and it is unmistakable: free speech is a tool, or more accurately, a weapon, to the Republicans. It is not a freedom at all, because they don’t think anyone else should share in it.
Regardless the teabag rhetoric, at the core is a hatred of gays, immigrants, Jews, people of color, and non-Christians, which is exactly the same philosophy of the KKK.
The Republicans intend to take us to a place from which there is no return. You see, their fantasy America, the mythic America that was founded as a Christian nation in their re-written text books, is about to come to fruition. They are that close.
Oh, didn’t they tell you? When they said “grass roots movement†of the people, by the people…yada yada, they meant elitist oligarchs should be in power, either through ignorant puppets who don’t know better like Christine O’Donnell or the real live bona fide Oligarch types like we have here in John Raese of West Virginia, cuz nothing says populism like inheriting somewhere around 79 million dollars.
This is a blatant and misleading attempt by the GOP to steal the election. Trick the voters not to vote. Yes, trick. The conservatives have tried to co-opt the Latino vote by getting their token Latino to urge his fellow voters to stand on the sidelines.
The Republican Party must sign its own death warrant in the general elections. The Grand Old Party, by selling out first to the Religious Right and then trying to co-opt the Tea Party, has found itself between a rock and a hard place.
Ideological purity may sound great on the drawing board, but it’s not so good when you need votes – lots of votes. Obviously, the ideas then are mutually incompatible. You can’t have the one because you won’t allow the other.
Tea Party darling Joe Miller has just about toasted his 2010 Senate hopes. After a bad few weeks during which reporters have sought information regarding his military discharge, his previous employment history and reason for termination of said employment, the truth about his many uses of federal government money for his own family and then the now infamous hand cuffing of a journalist, Joe should be toast.
What’s a family values anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-commie conservative to do when he needs to make a buck? I mean, no one cares if Georgian State Representative (R-Canton) Calvin Hill earns his living selling dildos and gay pride buttons made in China, where he proudly announces “We have 3 sourcing offices in China to help source any product your customer requires.” Oh, any product, Mr Hill? Really? ANY product? Say it ain’t so!
When questioned, Republican candidates adopt the role of victims, pretending that a liberal media elite is engaging in a witch hunt. They are creating a narrative in which the asking of questions is demonized. Even asking a question of them is wrong, an attack.
Nathan Deal doesn’t want to disclose his tax returns to y’all….now why would that be? Maybe because in 2006 and 2007 he paid a scant 1% in taxes. According to the Associated Press: “In 2006: Deal paid 2.95 percent or $5,575 in federal taxes on $188,904 in adjusted gross income. In 2007: Deal paid 1 percent or $2,068 on $205,433 in income.â€
Unregulated capitalism gave us the evils of the Gilded Age. Unregulated capitalism gave us the crash of 2008 that has left not just America, but much of the world, reeling.
“These two elections, 2010 and 2012, go hand-in-hand. The theme of 2010 has got to be rebuke their errors, reject, repeal; and then the theme of 2012, it’s renew, revive and restore.”
Carl Paladino, New York’s GOP candidate for governor, did something surprising for a Republican politician Sunday; he went after gays.
Money numbers are in and it looks like our ladies of the far Right are being amply rewarded for their sublimely obtuse renditions of Poujadist Puppetry as candidate routines. Tea Party candidates Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell both pulled in a ton of cash in the last few months. And you were wondering what those Brawny paper towels were good for.
Someday, future Americans will look back on the end of the 21st century’s first decade and feel shame, and perhaps a sense of wonder that such an advanced nation, one of the most free to have ever existed, could be home to such petty prejudice and superstition.
Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly fired off a letter to Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, saying she is “misled” about his city. O’Reilly invited Angle to visit Dearborn, where there has been a Muslim mosque for 90 years and they are nowhere near under “Sharia law” or a situation of “militant terrorism”. They mayor explained that people in his community by and large try to work together and Angle might want to visit the city before she slanders again.
You can see him there with his SS pals, smiling for the camera, just like all those photos of SS guys and their pals from the 30s and 40s, smiling for the camera. It was guys in those uniforms, you see, who upheld another, earlier form of purity standard, killing millions of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals and other “deviants†as designated by their ultra-conservative leadership.
How did American politics come to be about taking rights away from people when the founding of our country was centered on the giving of rights? And how is it that the group that rants the most about lost rights turns out to be the one most in favor of denying them to anyone else?
The clock is ticking. Joe Miller has until tomorrow to respond to the Fairbanks Borough’s lawyer’s request that he release his personnel records for the purpose of correcting the misrepresentations Joe’s been making regarding why he won’t release the documents. Uh-oh. Looks like what we have here, boys, is another Palin pick gone bad.
The little shifty devil running for Governor in Georgia, Nathan Deal, has one more scandal to add to his seemingly endless fiscal scandal rap sheet. Nathan is running as a fiscal conservative. Naturally, this means he is good at grifting money from you and me and the government and manipulating the system to take advantage of loopholes and get no bid contracts for companies in which he has an interest.
It’s a conundrum when you are running as a DC outsider as you have no record to prove you walk your talk. How are voters supposed to know what you stand for? Well, they can always look at your life, right? Um, that is, unless your life is the opposite of the values you’re campaigning on. It is, after all, hard for the people to trust that you will somehow govern differently than you live.
Republican Senatorial candidate Sharron Angle is fear-mongering in her incoherent way again. This time she’s hitting on Dearborn, Michigan, suggesting there is a “militant terrorist” situation in Dearborn as they are under Sharia law. This, of course, is patently ridiculous. Dearborn Michigan is a city outlying the larger city of Detroit and the hometown of Henry Ford, as well as headquarters of the Ford Motor Company. It’s also home to our current Miss America, who happens to be a Muslim. Dearborn has a large, thriving Muslim community. Shiver me timbers.
It is past time, as the Midterm Elections approach, that American voters look at exactly what sort of country the Tea Partiers, conservative Republicans and the Religious Right, want to give us. If you think it is in any great respect different from a country governed by Sharia law, you are wrong.
Sharron Angle proved herself another FOX News-ready Constitutional expert when she said, “Government isn’t what our founding fathers put into the Constitution. This is different,” Angle said.
While claiming to be an agent of change, an outsider determined to make changes, Angle is at once claiming the Republican Party has not supported her and at the same time claiming she has “juice†in Washington.
No, I kid, I kid. The Republicans have come a long way. Sure, according to Rachel Maddow, “…the Republican Party is, without actually talking about it, this year, nominating a group of candidates for top of the ticket races that are more extreme on the issue of abortion than any other slate of top-of-the-ticket candidates in any year.â€
It’s not Democrats, after all, who marginalize and disenfranchise black or other minority voters. It’s not Democrats who are accusing America’s first black president of being a watermelon-picking white-hating racist and a Muslim. It’s not Democrats who go to Tea Party rallies and wave Confederate flags all over the place. That would be the Republicans.
Blind folds, hidden cameras, boats, a sex tape machine, pornographic magazines, champagne and strawberries….sounds like one of those cheesy porns they consume in the Bible Belt on Sundays, but no…..this is a the “CNN Caper”, a Right Wing Activist Plan. It’s politics, Tea Party Style.
What we have here is, in a way, the ultimate candidate for the Republican Party: a fake candidate to represent a fake nation, a woman touting a past that doesn’t exist wishing to represent a United States that doesn’t exist.
It used to be that Republicans were considered the “adultsâ€, but this is the year when counterfeit conservatives jumped the meretricious shark and the Democrats appear to be the only responsible adult in the room. A perfect example of the tatty, mangy grunge of insincerity and graft permanently adhered to the former glory of the Republican brand is the Georgia gubernatorial race.
I thought I’d best just head on over to the Institute to see what old Dan Webster does believe in, since he claims he does not believe women should submit to their husbands. When the Tea Party says they want to take their country back, they mean you, too. You. Mama Grizzly. Submit to me. On your knees, woman and keep that mouth closed unless you can keep it meek and subservient.
Liberty stands for human rights and freedoms. It was appreciation of America’s embrace of liberty that brought Lady Liberty to these shores. If we won’t defend her now, we might as well send her back, because we will have proven ourselves unworthy of her.
Oklahoma is hosting a referendum on Islam – State Question 755 the “Save Our State†amendment, which will ban Sharia Law in the state.
Why do we have a two-party system? It is not enshrined in the Constitution. In reality, the Founding Fathers viewed the creation of political parties with horror. Is changing the system un-American? What are the possible benefits?
Running against Joe You Lie Wilson in South Carolina is Democrat Rob Miller. Miller belies the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. In his case, the more people get to know him, the more they think Miller is right for South Carolina, and this was evident on the several days I spent with Miller again this year as he met with citizens of the Second District.
Cognitive dissonance seems to run through the Republican narrative. Since it is impossible that 9/11 could have happened on the Republican watch, it must have happened under a Democrat. In layman’s terms, the Republican narrative is divorced from reality.
Culture warrior Dan Coats is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Brad Ellsworth, 8th District, Indiana. Coats claim is that he is for Hoosier values and this seems to be his clarion call. However, upon examination Coats’ values appeal more to the pro-business, Christian conservative, anti-LGBT and anti-choice crowd than they do to average Joes.
This time they will be competent, faithful, and have integrity. This time it will be different. He said so. And after all, look at the picture! There they are standing in front of a small business as they make their pledge to us, so they must care, even though they voted against small businesses. Lie to me, I promise, I’ll believe.
Out of the madness in a world gone crazy, stepped Ed Buck – straight from central casting as an American citizen standing up for the right to question our candidates. Buck showed up on The Ed Show to take a stand against Republican bully Governor Chris Christie who tried to intimidate him into not asking a question during a Meg Whitman forum in California.
I’m tellin’ ya’, you’re going to be hearing a lot about how lame ducks shouldn’t be doing anything – because, well, if they were to do something, it would be more liberal legislation than the Republicans want. In order to avoid this, Republicans are attempting the preemptive strike against lame duck legislation. This is, of course, the opposite of what the Republicans thought when they were the lame ducks and they did small things like impeach a president.
The morality police will continue to argue that the reverse is true but in a fact-based world this cannot be the case. Prayer does not reduce crime. Those who pray are more likely to be criminals than those who do not.
Today, Palin must have been high on her Tea Party video release, and full of that dangerous combination of arrogance and incompetence, took to twitter to tell the Left off. However, I don’t need to tell you that in the process of this she revealed her utter ignorance — a fact which Keith Olbermann was kind enough to point out to the Tea Party leader.
Last night, Rachel Maddow applied her razor-like intellect to expose the inherent hypocrisy in the modern GOP, hiding beneath a thin veneer of cowardly double-talk. One of her examples was Bob Corker, R-TN. Corker fought to kill the US auto industry. He filibustered the auto bailout, holding it hostage until he could be promised that the auto workers would be paid less and ultimately voted no on it.
Christian and Islamic extremists drink from the same wellspring of authoritarianism – the desire to impose authority, to force submission to dogma, and to compel obedience. Choice is not an option. Submission precludes choice.
On today’s (September 17) edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Geraldo points out O’Donnell has no qualifications for office. This moment of sanity doesn’t go over well with the Fox game show hosts and the infomercial hostesses, who are super busy trying to sell the oldsters some Christine O’Donnell as a “common sense conservativeâ€.
Christine O’Donnell is an extremist who believes that a wife should be subservient to her husband. What I find most hypocritical about this, however, isn’t the fact that she and Palin are trying to sell women being subservient as the “new feminismâ€, but that at the very same time they are touting this kind of good girl routine, sucking up to the patriarchs with their winks and cheerleader smiles, they are also engaging in highly emasculating behavior.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest to my new pals in the Tea Party that we start pushing Christine O’Donnell for President!
After all, Christine has never quit her job. She’s hotter than Palin, younger than Palin, and she puts the cute in cute. Plus, while she doesn’t know anything, at least she has no ethics violations under her belt. Sure, she’s using campaign funds to pay rent and that ain’t legal, but really, who cares? She hasn’t been busted yet, and even if she is, we can just lie and say she hasn’t been.
During election season arguments fly fast and furious. It can be hard to keep up; it can be hard to know what/who to believe. But if you listen carefully, you will find that the Republican narrative has made clear that Republicans don’t know what an argument is.
The National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) held its annual fall Board of Directors meeting in Charleston, S.C. last weekend and naturally, trouble ensued. Of the Confederate kind. And the tax-payers paid for this little shindig. Nothing like celebratin’ slavery to say “freedom and libertyâ€, eh?
Having trouble talking sense to your Republican neighbors and friends? Have no fear, Yuri is here.
Yuri Hertzberg of the San Fransisco Chronicle was fed up trying to talk about the facts behind the issues with his conservative friends, so he came up with a rather ingenious way of forcing an open mind. The trick is making an analogy to purchasing something innocuous like dish soap and then secondly, hiding the party names and just presenting the record.
More and more, Republicans insist on creating a fantasy world that has nothing in common with the reality in which we all operate. They invent something, and then invent “facts†to support the fantasy tale. It’s all as true as a prince rescuing the princess in her tower from a dragon.
