You almost want to call their bluff.
Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah
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Cartoon of the Day
February 24, 2013 By
Allan West Finally Gives It Up
November 20, 2012 By
The guy who once said to Democratic leaders…
Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.
…is now history. After dragging out his election loss for two weeks, West finally came to grips with reality…sort of. This is what he wrote on his Facebook page yesterday.
While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election.
I’m not sure what made me happier on election night – President Obama’s win or Allen West’s loss. It might very well have been the latter. If there was one Republican who embodied the complete tea-bagging, partisan, obstructionist, narrow-minded idiocy of the last two years, it was West.
And so, to the man who once said that he believed that 78 to 81 members of Democrats in Congress were members of the Communist Party, here is my own little farewell message to Mr. West.
Take your message of ignorance and hate, take your message of economic favoritism for the wealthy, take your message of enslaving the middle class somewhere else. You can take it to Fox, you can take it to talk radio, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, but get the hell out of Congress.
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Ryan, Romney and The Insanely Idiotic Right
October 23, 2012 By
If Paul Ryan is one of the leading intellectuals and “young guns” of the Republican Party, then the GOP is in bigger trouble than anyone imagined. Here’s the brains of the right talking about the President’s ‘horses and bayonets‘ putdown at the third debate.
To compare modern American battleships and Navy with bayonets, I just don’t understand that comparison.
Look, we have to have a strong Navy to keep peace and prosperity and sea lanes open. The president’s— all these defense cuts, if all these defense cuts go through, our Navy will be smaller than it was before World War I. That’s not acceptable. And, yes, the ocean hasn’t shrunk. You still have to have enough ships to have a footprint that you need to keep sea lanes open, to keep our strength abroad where it needs to be.
Damn, these people are clueless. It’s as if the entire GOP has undergone a 30 year long lobotomy and we have now reached the point where there is not a single functioning brain cell left in their little heads.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus addressed the point of a smaller fleet back in April.
We’ve all heard the quote that this is the smallest fleet we’ve had since 1917. But comparing our fleet today to the one in 1917 is like comparing the telegraph to the smart phone. It’s just not comparable. The technology we have today…is astoundingly different from what it was 100 years ago, but also from what it was 20 years ago.
How could that not be crystal clear to everyone? And yet the the right is trying to make the argument that Romney was right on this point and Obama is the fool. Allow me to quote a passage from the Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison.
Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Replace the words ‘Mr. Madison’ with any of these - ‘Mitt Romney’, ‘Paul Ryan’, ‘Newt Gingrich’, ‘Michele Bachmann’, ‘Rick Santorum’, ‘Rick Perry’, ‘George Bush’, ‘Herman Cain’, ‘Allan West’, ‘Rick Scott’, ‘John Boehner’, ‘Mitch McConnell’, ‘Sarah Palin’, ‘Rand Paul’, ‘Steve King’ or ‘Louis Gohmert’ – and that quote would still be 100 percent accurate. Actually you could use the name of almost every Republican member in Congress, every teabagging moron, 90 percent of the conservative media and that quote is just as accurate.
To think that these people have any political influence at all is a frightening thought. And yes, we all get a little dumber any time we subject ourselves to the insanely idiotic thoughts of any of the fools listed above.
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Phones, Racism and The Tea Party
October 16, 2012 By
There’s political desperation and then there’s political sleaze…this next one serves up both in equal measure.
Unless you consume a lot of conservative media, you might not have seen the “Obama phone” video that led the Drudge Report in September. An Ohio voter, a black woman, thanked the president for giving her a phone. Some quick follow-up reporting revealed the bland truth that this free phone program began decades ago.
At issue here is Lifeline, a government program which provides low cost and free telephones to the poor. The program gives low-income consumers access to emergency services as well as allowing them to stay in touch with family and jobs. “Obama phone”? Nope. It’s actually a ‘Reagan phone’. The program was begun by the former president in 1984, but that bit of information hasn’t stopped a Tea Party group from putting together the following attack ad slated to play in predominately white ridings in Ohio.
Here’s the letter the group sent out soliciting donations.
This is it — this is the October surprise. We just need to get this ad on television today. Will you help us?
This commercial is a microcosm of the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want to create an environment where free people make their own choices and pursue their dreams. President Obama and the Democrats want to create a dependency on Government that ensures that Americans will continue to rely on Washington from cradle to grave.
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If swing voters in this state see this ad, they simply will not support President Obama, and he will lose Ohio.
Lies, desperation and sleaze directed at white folk who are too fucking ignorant to know any better.
Yeah, tell me again how the Tea Party isn’t a racist organization.
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Joe Biden Fact-Checks Ryan in Real Time at Veep Debate
October 12, 2012 By
The title of this post (tweeted by Dan Froomkin) sums up the VP debate perfectly. Every Ryan lie, distortion and evasive response was immediately pounced upon by Joe Biden and logically ripped to shreds. Ryan quickly discovered that he wasn’t at a Fox interview where conservative BS routinely goes unchallenged.
Ryan got killed on Afghanistan, Iran and foreign policy where he was in way over his head trying to get Romney’s know-nothing policy ideas (or lack of ideas) passed Biden. Thirty years in Congress counts for something.
Ryan got killed on tax cuts for the wealthy where his lack of specificity on how it would not increase the debt opened the door for Biden to simply say, “Not mathematically possible.”
Ryan got killed on Medicare where he could not effectively sell the notion that Republicans would better protect Medicare and Social Security than Democrats. Ryan’s promise to turn Medicare into a voucher program and decades of Republicans trying to poke holes in the social safety net makes it a hard sell for anyone on the right to claim that they’re actually concerned about seniors’ needs.
But most of all, Ryan got killed on the abortion issue. When Martha Raddatz (who put in a solid performance as moderator), asked Ryan if he could guarantee that abortion rights would not be infringed upon during a Romney presidency, Little Eddie hesitated and then hemmed and hawed his way through a response that basically said he could not give that guarantee.
Biden’s response on abortion was perfect in tone and content. As a practicing Catholic, he said, he believes that life begins at conception but that he also believes that every woman should be free to make that decision on her own without government interference. Furthermore, Biden pointed out that the person who sits in the White House for the next four years gets to choose the next Supreme Court justice. Perhaps the next two. When you know that Robert Bork is advising Romney on judicial matters, the fate of Roe v. Wade really does hinge on who wins the presidential election.
If the VP debate was a 10 round championship fight, I’d give the victory to Biden on points. There was no TKO but Joe definitely won at least seven of the ten rounds. We’ll get the Ryan lie count tomorrow but it won’t be easy beating Romney’s 27 lies in the first presidential debate last week. If you care to hear them again, here they are.
The Paul Ryan source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.
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