Come on, Tommy…is none of this registering?

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Excellent.

The backlash against Komen has been tremendous announcing that enough is enough with senseless conservative crap of this kind which does nothing more than satisfy the narrow-minded while endangering the lives of people.

You can contribute to Planned Parenthood here and voice your thoughts via email to Komen here. As well, you might want to send a message to Komen’s corporate sponsors and let them know your intention to boycott their products.

Hopefully, this politically motivated move by Komen will be the line in the sand many dare to cross.

UPDATE

This is what happens when enough people stand up and shout, “ENOUGH!”

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities”

Here’s a shorter version of the Komen reversal. “We heard your reasoned and passionate pleas to not allow low income women to needlessly die.  That and you were making us look really, really bad.”

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“In Florida, Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential primary election. He beat Newt Gingrich handily. Political analysts believe that elderly voters in Florida rejected Newt Gingrich because of fears that he would eventually leave them for a younger state.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“Newt Gingrich wants to build a colony on the Moon. OK, you say, but why? Well, he wants to be the first American to get divorced on the Moon.” –David Letterman

“Mitt is the guy you think you look like. Newt is the guy you actually look like.” –David Letterman

“Not a great day for Mitt Romney. He put his foot in his mouth. He said in an interview, quote, ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor.’ Is anybody even trying to win this thing?” –Craig Ferguson

“Mitt didn’t just beat Newt Gingrich, he stomped him by a devastating 14 percent margin. Fourteen percent! That is higher than Mitt’s tax rate.” –Stephen Colbert

“Mitt Romney’s campaign will start getting Secret Service protection this week. That’s just to protect him from Newt Gingrich.” –Jay Leno

 “Despite his big loss in Florida Newt Gingrich vows to stay in the GOP race. And we all know when Newt takes a vow he really sticks with it.” –Jay Leno

“After he wowed the crowd at the Apollo Theater with his singing voice, producers at ‘American Idol’ have invited President Obama to sing on their show this season. Not to be outdone, Ron Paul’s book will be appraised on the next edition of ‘Antiques Roadshow.’” –Jay Leno

“Mitt Romney went to a McDonald’s and ordered burgers and fries and apparently everything was going well until Romney asked the cashier if she could break a $1 million bill.” –Conan O’Brien

“The agriculture department says we now have the smallest cattle population in 60 years. That shows you how fat we’re getting. We’re close to putting cows on the endangered species list.” –Jay Leno

“Studies are showing that Republican candidates are buying a lot of their ad time on the Weather Channel. You can tell because last night, the weatherman blamed the cold front on immigration and gay marriage.” –Conan O’Brien

“The government may be legally required to release the video of Osama bin Laden’s killing. President Obama said this would be unhelpful, inflammatory, and ‘Could you please release it two days before the election?’” –Conan O’Brien

“Obama goes for the youth vote answering young peoples’ questions on YouTube today. As result, Obama’s new poll numbers are 55% ‘LOL’ and 45% ‘Totally Gay.’” –Conan O’Brien

“Rick Santorum says Newt Gingrich is too hot, Mitt Romney is too cold, but he’s the ‘Goldilocks candidate.’ Yes, nothing gets voters excited like comparing yourself to tepid porridge.” –Craig Ferguson

“Ron Paul was not in Florida, he was campaigning up in Maine. They think he was afraid that if he went to Florida, they’d grab him and put him in an old folks home.” –Jay Leno

“Newt Gingrich picked up an endorsement from Herman Cain. It’s not unlike getting Carrot Top’s endorsement for an Academy Award.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“Mitt Romney said he loves Florida. All the sunshine and sandy beaches reminds him of the country where he keeps hi money.” –Bill Maher

“Newt may be toast already. The Republican establishment have the knives out for him. Tom Delay said Newt Gingrich was the most despicable human being he has seen since shaving this morning.” –Bill Maher

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Celebrity business magnate Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney for president Thursday, telling reporters he will not mount an independent campaign if Romney is the Republican nominee.

“It’s my honor, real honor, to endorse Mitt Romney,” Trump said, with Romney and his wife standing nearby. Calling Romney “tough” and “smart,” Trump said, “he’s not going to continue to allow bad things to happen to this country.”

“Bad things” will be outlawed under a Romney presidency – no doubt by an executive order signed on his first day in office right after he signs that executive order killing ObamaCares. Long live the king.

Now that he has the Trump endorsement, how long before Romney goes birther?

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(The Romney source image for this illustration is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)
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I thought this interesting but not surprising. It goes along well with my belief that her contrived altercation with President Obama was about book sales.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) launched a special fundraising political action committee in October, pledging to use the money to fight illegal immigration and take on other issues she believes in. But based on financial disclosures filed this week, she has so far used it to do little more than buy copies of her own book.

The governor had raised only about $22,000 for Jan PAC by the end of 2011 and spent nearly a quarter of the cash buying books from Amazon and paying a bill at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in Orlando, Fla.

And that’s how scum roll.

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The Planned Parenthood/Susan G. Komen story is another clear example of how right-wing ideology has forced its way into just about every aspect of American life. Pushing conservative social policies involves demonizing organizations like Planned Parenthood which provides vital breast cancer screenings to low-income and uninsured women.

Komen’s choosing to cease funding to Planned Parenthood because the organization is under investigation by Congress is simply another attack on women’s rights. The real reason PP is being defunded by Komen is because the latter is controlled by right-wing ideologues who have allowed politics to guide their decision making.  They have given in to anti-abortion zealots who have been running a boycott campaign against Komen.

Komen has been under pressure from anti-abortion groups to drop its funding for Planned Parenthood, which received $680,000 from the anti-cancer group in 2011. Most recently, abortion foes forced a Christian publisher to stop printing pink Komen bibles and pressured bookstores to take them off shelves. Groups have also called on supporters to boycott Komen entirely, and decried the group as a “lie from the pit of Hell.”

As for those right-wing ideologues controlling Komen…

Breast cancer charity giant Susan G. Komen for the Cure on Tuesday did not renew a grant to Planned Parenthood to fund breast exams. The move comes less than a year after Komen hired a new vice president, who has publicly stated her opposition to abortion, a service provided at some Planned Parenthood facilities.

Komen’s new vice president, Karen Handel, had run for governor of Georgia in 2010 on an aggressively anti-abortion and anti-Planned Parenthood platform and was endorsed by Sarah Palin because of her opposition to reproductive choice. Handel wrote in her campaign blog that she “do[es] not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”

and…

Komen’s founder is pretty conservative, too. Komen CEO Nancy G. Brinker, who founded the foundation in memory of a sister who died from breast cancer, was the chief protocol officer for the United States from 2007 to 2009 under the George W. Bush administration, and before that served as his ambassador to Hungary.

Brinker is also a major Republican donor, and has given more than $175,000 to Republican candidates and the Republican National Committee since 1990…

and…

sitting on Komen’s Advocacy Alliance Board is Jane Abraham, the General Chairman of the virulently anti-choice and anti-science Susan B. Anthony List and of its Political Action Committee.  Among other involvements, Abraham helps direct the Nuturing Network, a global network of crisis pregnancy centers, organizations widely  known for spreading ideology, misinformation and lies to women facing unintended pregnancy and to use both intimidation and coercion in the course of doing so.

Here’s the bottom line: given a choice between their personal agendas and helping low-income Americans deal with vital health issues, the Susan G. Komen charity made the decision to go with the former.

That Komen–an organization ostensibly dedicated to scientific exploration of cures for breast cancer–has invited on its advocacy board women so closely allied with organizations that so blatantly ignore science and medicine and spread outright lies to other women about their health and welfare speaks volumes about Komen’s ethical principles as an organization.

And as a result of Komen’s decision, women will needlessly die.

Petition here.
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In a perfect world, the Republican contest to find a nominee to face Barack Obama would go on forever…or at least until August. You cannot attach a number to the entertainment value of a Newt Gingrich and the thought that he might leave the race anytime soon is a sad one.

His non-concession speech in Florida was a perfect mix of Gingrich hubris, bullshit and nonsense.

We’re going to put together a package. You’re going to see, this is what a serious conservative president is like, who is bold and is prepared to change Washington, despite the screams of the establishment of both parties.

So a couple more steps. We will on that day sign an executive order that will instruct the State Department that day to open the embassy in Jerusalem and recognize Israel.

Give you just two more examples. I will sign on that day an executive order reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy. No U.S. money will go anywhere in the world to pay for abortion, period.

And finally, many of you may have noticed that the Obama administration has declared war on the Catholic Church and other religious institutions. I want you to know that, on the very first day, I will sign an executive order repealing every anti-religious act of the Obama administration as of that moment.

There you go. In the middle of the worst economic crisis of the last 80 years, Gingrich is going to spend his first 24 hours as President moving the Israeli embassy, battling abortion and working to make the U.S. a theocracy. Exactly the issues the people want their President to focus on, no doubt.

And should you wonder how Gingrich can get so much done so quickly, he provides the answer.  He’s been working on this stuff for a long time – actually, since the age of 15.

The reason I’m comfortable telling you all this is I have been studying what America needs to do, since the fall of 1958, when my dad was stationed in Europe in the Army.

See? It’s stuff like that which makes Newt so special.

Gingrich will not be the Republican nominee. That’s a certainty which I believe even he understands. But it does appear that before he calls it quits, Gingrich is determined to dig deeper under the skin of Mitt Romney and the GOP establishment than has ever been done before and in the process, piss off the last seven Republican politicians who don’t already hate his guts.

Long live the Gingrich campaign!
(The source images for this illustration are Creative Commons licensed images from photographer Gage Skidmore.)
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I suspect there are a ton of conservatives secretly agreeing with Begala and while it’s too early in the game for Dems to get cocky, it’s difficult to not smile while watching the Florida mud-slinging, super PAC, primary. Romney and Gingrich are doing a serious number on each other and Republicans are going to have one hell of a healing process to go through when this thing is over.

Smile while it lasts.

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So you take a year to write a book on your heroic life and few people are interested in reading it. It’s at 343,222 on the Amazon ranking and sinking fast. What to do?

Easy. Take a page out of Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer’s playbook and start a confrontation with the President of the United States the next time he comes by for a visit. Make sure photographers get a good pic of you wagging your finger at the President in a manner which suggests he’s getting a well deserved scolding. And should the President not take the bait and instead remains cool and calm, follow Jan’s lead: spin the hell out of the story and tell the world how tense and awful it all was.

If you do all that, here’s what can happen to that book of yours.

…the governor has used her version of the encounter to get plenty of air time, seeing an increase in sales of her book which she has called a “truth telling” tome. Amazon ranked “Scorpions for Breakfast” at No. 7 on its best sellers list on Friday. The day of the event, the book had been at No. 343,222.

It’s that easy.  So go out there and put together that book you’ve always dreamed of writing. Worry little about the writing style and even less about making it truthful. It matters not. Brewer has been going around saying that her dad died fighting Nazis in WWII even though he died from lung cancer in California in 1955. So don’t get caught up in thinking your book has to be factual. It doesn’t. All that counts is that the book makes you look good and everyone else comes off as a putz.

Once the book is published, practice your ‘ooh, the big black man is scaring me’ look in the mirror. Do all that and you’re ready to invite Barack Obama for Sunday brunch and watch your book sales soar.

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One of our readers sent me an email with an idea for an illustration – Mitt Romney as Romney Hood. I thought it was brilliant and came up with the above composition. Thank you, Sean.

If asked to assign a tagline to the Republican party of the last 30 years, here’s what I would use: ‘they take from the poor and middle class to give to the rich‘ – a tradition which is being adhered to religiously by each of the Republicans running in the GOP primary.

Romney Hood indeed – a Robin Hood for the rich.

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