If Romney Were President...

...we'd be at war with North Korea tomorrow. (Boston Globe)

P.S. the label has nothing to do with this post, but Rush Limbaugh is a BFEI.

Post-Election Insight

This is how Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone nailed the confusion and anguish that will trip the Republican Party for months to come:

There's been a lot of hand-wringing among conservatives of the Rush/Hannity school in the last few days, a lot of concern about this outreach question, and honestly, the tone of the discussion is beginning to sound like the last days of a failed 1950s marriage. The husband who's gone all day at work comes home and throws his hands up in the air in mock frustration: what do you want from me, another Cadillac? Another fur coat? I just got you new shoes last week! And the wife, who's loved this man for 20 years despite his abject stupidity, just sighs. All she wants her husband to do is listen to her, or take a day off work sometime and take her for a drive in the country, or make some spontaneous show of affection, maybe popping home for lunch like in the old days – just some evidence that he's even faintly aware of what's going on in her head. But when they try to talk it out, things just get worse, because in his very manner of asking her what's wrong, all hubby does is reveal that he thinks of his wife entirely as a nagging, financial parasite who's always on his ass about something. Similarly, the fact that so many Republicans this week think that all Hispanics care about is amnesty, all women want is abortions (and lots of them) and all teenagers want is to sit on their couches and smoke tons of weed legally, that tells you everything you need to know about the hopeless, anachronistic cluelessness of the modern Republican Party.

(Emphasis added.)

The Media's Liberal Bias = Facts

Every time you hear a Romney surrogate speak these days you are likely to hear a complain about how the media has a liberal bias. If by media you mean people who report facts, then yes: the media has a liberal bias because they report facts. Facts are something that Republicans have little regard for. For Republicans facts are something you tweak until they match their fantasy of how things are or should be.

If your campaign strategy is that you will say whatever suits you, contrary to all empirical evidence, and if you openly state that you will not let fact-checkers dictate your campaign, then everything the media reports will look like it's biased against you. It's really that simple.

I Am Starting To Think Obama Will Win

President Obama botched policy and communication in the first term. He was too timid on policy and failed to adequately communicate his accomplishments to the nation. You'd think he'd be in a hole too deep to dig himself out and win re-election. Unless... Unless his opponent dug an even deeper hole for himself every time he opens his mouth.

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Ryan: The Anus and the Rant

Those are not exactly Paul Ryan's words. His exact words (about the absence of the word God from the Democratic Party Platform) were:

It’s not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision. I’d guess you’d have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform. There sure is a lot of mention of government. I guess I would just put the onus and the burden on them to explain why they did all this, these purges of God.

Kaili Joy Gray of the Daily Kos does a bang-up job of dissecting the latest (but not last) bit of pandering to the fringe by Paul Ryan, a man who truly has nothing to teach about god. To anyone.

No One Touches Hunter

Hunter of the Daily Kos is my favorite writer, and here's why (from "The Chronicles of Mitt"):

Today is apparently "Labor Day," according to my advisers. I had never heard of it, but from what I understand it is a day in which all the people of America cease their activities and live only on the earnings in their stock portfolios. I have done that with frequency, but I was never aware there was a special day to honor the practice.

Happy Labor Day!

OSHA budget goes up, number of fatal work injuries goes down. Republicans, of course, want to roll back regulations. I forget, what was that about the government being the problem, not the solution?

Everything You Need To Know About the Republican Convention and Repuglycans

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Oh, Hunter! You Are So Eloquent!

Hunter writes better than anybody I read. Here's a gem: "Well, here ya go, Steve King's press person. Knit a silk purse out of this pile of crap". If you want to know what the pile of crap is, read the latest installment of Ugly Republicans, a.k.a. Repuglycans.

Rape and Repuglycans

Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Missouri, said last week that legitimate rape rarely causes pregnancy and that "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

This is what happens when you run a party to appeal to the basest instincts of human nature, to ignorance, and to prejudice: the candidates that make it through the primary process end up representing the bases instincts, the ignorance and the prejudice of the majority of that party's voters.

If your platform seeks to draw such lines as the "fact" that humans have no significant impact on the climate change process, that women who get raped should be punished by being forced to save the "innocent baby", that anyone who seeks to put some limits on the availability of mass-killing weapons is in cahoots with the United Nations to strip all Americans of their Second Amendment rights, or that seeking to protect Medicare from being voucherized is communism, then you get people like Todd Akin elected; and when you do, you have to live with the consequences of their ignorance, prejudice, and vile lack of intelligence, and their clumsy attempts at retracting their "mis-statements".

As Kaili Joy Gray at the Daily Kos, and many others, have correctly pointed out, the fact is not that Todd Akin is out of step with the Republican Party: He is in perfect alignment with the majority of primary voters and with the people who funded his campaign, including the majority of the Republican establishment and its talking heads.

It's like former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett recently said in an interview on The Daily Show: one of our parties is insane, and we know which one it is.

Repuglycans

There is one party in today's America which understands that the key to gaining and holding power is to limit people's ability to cast a ballot. Republicans know that--short of rigging the counting process, which they have done in the past--the key to winning elections is to suppress the number of ballots cast in an election. The higher the turnout, the lower the chance of their regressive candidates and policies to pass. And so it is that the new Jim Crow laws are with us: Republican judge upholds restrictive voter ID law in spite of no evidence being given that it addresses any problem at all.

The G.O.P. is truly America's biggest enemy right now, bigger than any foreign enemy. For all its talk of upholding America's tradition of democracy, the G.O.P. and its agents behave like a totalitarian government. It must be stopped.

Mike Huckabee is a Liar. Period.

Some Republican Super-Pac is now running an ad in which Mike Huckabee utters this lie: ObamaCare has been defined as the largest tax increase in American history. This is not a difference of opinion: It's a lie, plain and simple.

The media needs to call a lie a lie and a liar a liar. It's not a subjective matter. The facts are out there, they can be measured and evaluated. Not doing it is lazy, and doing it and not reporting it is cowardice.

Mike Huckabee is a liar and an idiot. He deserves no respect. He is a shill. He has stooped to the level of Rush Limbaugh's idiocy and deceit Proof of this? He has his own show on Fox News Channel. And this article.

I rest my case.

Vomit

Hearing Mitt Romney extol his pick for VP, Paul Ryan, for having a plan that will save Medicaid and Medicare is enough to make one want to puke: The man has presented a plan that would cut back both programs so much that a circumcised penis wears a hoodie by comparison. Add a sprinkle of "we will restore welfare to work" (another lie, since there is nothing to replace) and the heaving is non-stop.

The next 3 months are going to be very hard to stomach.

Romney and His Tax Returns

If Romney does not release his tax returns people will think that what's in the returns is much more damaging than the continued criticism he gets for not releasing them. My guess: It would show how hypocritical his tax plan is, which lowers taxes on rich people like him and raises them for most other Americans. What kind of rationale, other than sheer greed--can you offer in favor of lowering taxes for people who already--legally--skirt most of what they are supposed to pay?

Releasing the tax returns would only serve to expose the limitless greed of wealthy robber barons like Romney, and would lay bare the false rhetoric according to which lower taxes would spur job creation. In fact, empirically, we know the reverse to be true: higher taxes--with job credits for keeping and creating jobs in America--would create jobs. Nothing else will.

And a Good Weekend To All

Thanks For Pointing That Out

"By the way, they would not have a show if it there was no Fox News. Between 'The Daily Show' and 'Colbert Report,' they don't even write anything. They just watch TV up until 3 o'clock".

This revelation was made by Faux News's Brian Kilmeade during an episode of some show he co-hosts.

Indeed, Faux News Channel provides an endless supply of comedic fodder to the creator of many late-night shows. The fact that it does should be an indication to Kilmeade that the network he works for is so incredibly biased and ridiculous beyond all likelihood that comedy writers have to change little when they cut a segment for their shows. Chances are Kilmeade is completely oblivious to the irony of his statement.

The Sikh and the Sick

The Sikh are the poor victims of the assault that a white supremacist killed in Wisconsin yesterday.

The sick are those who refuse to admit that the United States of America has a gun problem that needs to be at least discussed. There is never a good time or a good place to even discuss gun regulation in this country, and both parties are guilty for the impasse (not that there is no difference between the two parties, but this is truly a case of bipartisan idiocy.)

How Not To Worry About Sick Leave

If you are an asshole zillionaire who owns a media empire that spreads misinfotainment every second of every minute of every hour of every day... (you know where this is going), then you don't see how paid sick leave adds anything worthwhile to the lives of the minions who work for you, and even less to the lives of the lucky bastards who don't.

If, however, you are not Rupert Murdoch, it is easy to see how providing paid sick leave to employees is not only a humane step to take in an increasingly inhumane country, but it is also a way to reduce on-the-job injuries (or deaths), to avoid the preventable spread of disease at work, not to the mention in the population at large, and how it would make the United States a little more worthy to listen to and a little less assholey to the rest of the world (not that any Repuglycans should care.)

And did I mention that the country that Rupert "Asshole" Murdoch hails from has paid sick leave laws, or that "The United States is the only rich country in the world that does not mandate any form of paid sick days or leave"?

And if you are a small business owner who thinks that the cost of providing sick leave to your employees would put you out of business, and therefore you oppose any sick paid leave proposal, then perhaps you should not own a small business.

Bill Moyers on Medicare for Everyone

Republican Politicians and Republican Voters

Among the conclusions I have drawn in life is this pair:

To be a Republican politician you must have a firm belief that people are stupid and do not possess a functioning, critical mind.

To be a Republican voter you must either be a zillionaire, or be living proof that Republican politicians are right about at least some people.

And since Hunter exists, and he can track down imbecilic irony wherever it exists, I have proof that my conclusion about Republican politicians is right. At least as far as John "Agent Orange" Boehner, Speaker of the House (divided) goes.