The Commentariat -- Nov. 15, 2012
Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama said in his victory speech last week that 'elections matter.' On Wednesday, he made clear how much the election matters to him -- and to the way he intends to govern in his second term. Appearing in his first post-victory news conference, the customarily cautious Obama spoke like a politician with nothing to lose after winning the last race of his life. Over the course of an hour, he struck an unabashedly populist tone in characterizing his second-term 'mandate' to help the poor and the middle class, and he warned his partisan rivals that voters had sided with his approach to the economy during the long campaign."
Ezra Klein: "The White House is saying, clearly, that they won't permit the top tax rates to remains where they are. They're taking House Speaker John A. Boehner's proposed deal and rejecting it."
President Obama responds to a question from Jonathan Karl of ABC News re: Senators John McCain & Lindsey Graham's criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice:
... I'm happy to say NBC News made this their lede story for awhile: "President Barack Obama on Wednesday spiritedly defended U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over her response to the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, assailing Republican criticism of her as 'outrageous.'" ...
... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "McCain mischaracterizes [Susan] Rice's words and then assumes she should have all the information that is known now about the Benghazi attack. Her claim that there was a protest is clearly wrong, but within the context of that week, it was not off base, since it appeared in news reports quoting witnesses and even in the president's daily briefing.... Susan Rice's remarks five days after the attack appear to be a sideshow, especially because she had virtually no role in the key issues surrounding the Libyan mission.... Given that McCain was so quick to excuse [former Secretary of State] Condi Rice for making remarks of much greater import, it seems rather unsporting to quickly rush to judgment and mischaracterization in the case of Susan Rice."
Here's the President's full news conference:
John Parkinson of ABC News: "... the House Republican Conference voted [John] Boehner [R-Ohio] in to another two-year term as speaker. Boehner rejected the president's call earlier Wednesday for Republicans to quickly pass Senate legislation that would extend middle class tax cuts, and he alternatively called on the Senate to take up House-passed legislation to extend all of the current tax rates for one year." ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "In order to overcome Republican obstructionism, Obama must indeed be willing to go over the [fiscal] cliff, allowing the tax cuts to expire and the automatic spending cuts, which were agreed upon during the last go-around with the Republicans, in the summer of 2011, to go into effect."
... "What we don't need to do is cut benefits." -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
GOP Excuse 127: Professors. Blowhard William Bennett, Bush Pere Secretary of Education & Drug Czar, in a CNN opinion piece: Obama won because Marxist professors are teaching our young people to be socialists. ...
... GOP Excuse 128: Blackmail/Cover-up. "Betty Cracker" of Balloon Juice: Obama blackmailed Petraeus into going along with his phony explanation of the response to the Benghazi attack. Betty details how this excuse, posited by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post & Fox "News," works. Here's a sample of the "logic" behind this excuse: "The only way Obama could cover his ass in the Benghazi affair was to orchestrate a scandal to compromise the country's most prominent general, and he fiendishly used a wingnut ... GOP Excuse 129: Obama Gifts. Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times: "Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a 'superb' campaign with 'no drama,' and attributed his rival's victory to 'the gifts' the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama's first term." CW: if this is the GOP's idea of "outreach" to minorities & young Americans, I don't think it will work out too well. Romney's unremitting disdain of "the 47 percent" is pathological. ... ... Ashley Parker of the New York Times has more of Romney's remarks about all the "gifts" Obama gave to the moocher classes. ... ... Oh, look. #ObamaGifts is already a Twitter meme. ... ... ** Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "Now we know that Mitt Romney did not 'misspeak' when he whined to a big-money crowd that 47 percent of Americans mooch off government and 'believe they are victims.' He meant precisely what he said.... I guess Mr. Romney would not consider oil subsidies a gift. Or a tax system that allows him to pay a 14 percent tax rate. Or his proposal to build warships and warplanes and other fancy hardware that the military doesn't want or need.... It seems like no one in his party has figured out that it wasn't 'gifts' or bad luck that caused him to lose. It was his ideas." CW: Bobby Jindel seems to get it. ... ... ** Paul Waldman of American Prospect: Mitt Romney takes one last opportunity to be a jerk.... Romney seems appalled that Obama would be so diabolical as to pursue policies that were beneficial to people who then went to the polls to vote for him." ... ... Markos Moulitsas: "Romney rides off into the sunset, as big a dick as always." ... ... GOP Excuse 130: Obama Attacked Romney. President Obama's "whole campaign was a fear-and-smear attack to make Romney unacceptable and to blame George Bush for anything that happened while Obama was president. This was all personal: that Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn't care about people like you, ships jobs overseas, is a quintessential plutocrat and is married to a known equestrian. An attack unanswered is an attack admitted to. -- Haley Barbour ... ... Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "A week after Mitt Romney fell short in his bid for the White House, Republican leaders offered tepid praise of his candidacy. But they quickly moved on and called for a new approach to the party's rebuilding efforts." Haley Barbour took an up-the-ass tack, suggesting the party needed to undergo "a proctological exam." Bobby Jindal rejected Romney's Obama Gifts excuse: "'I absolutely reject that notion. I don't think that represents where we are as a party,' Mr. Jindal said. He added, 'We have got to stop dividing the American voters.'" ... ... Philip Elliott of the AP: "Top Republicans meeting for the first time since Election Day say the party lost its bid to unseat President Barack Obama because nominee Mitt Romney did not respond to criticism strongly enough or outline a specific agenda with a broad appeal. In conversations at the Republican Governors Association confab in Las Vegas, a half dozen party leaders predicted the GOP will lose again if it keeps running the same playbook based on platitudes in place of detailed policies. Instead, they asserted, the party needs to learn the lessons from its loss, respect voters' savvy and put forward an agenda that appeals beyond the while [sic., white], male voters who are its base." ... ... Andy Borowitz: "Opting for a bold 'big tent' strategy to rebuild the party, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, told reporters today, 'We need to welcome people who believe in different things than we do, like math and science.'" ** Linda Greenhouse: "... the vote in four states in support of same-sex marriage, and the run-up to Election Day that saw both Democrats and federal judges pushing back against Republican strategies devised to selectively minimize voter turnout ... are directly relevant to cases on the Supreme Court's current docket...." ... ... BUT law professor Nathaniel Persily, also writing in the New York Times, suggests that "a perverse outcome of the 2012 campaign may be that President Obama's victory spells doom for the civil rights law most responsible for African-American enfranchisement" even though "a campaign marred by charges of voter suppression and Election Day mishaps also makes the need for federal protection of voting rights clearer than ever.... Congress needs to enact national rules governing voter registration, provisional and absentee ballots, and voter verification and access in a new Voting Rights Act tailored to the problems confronting American democracy today." Here's Nancy Pelosi responding to a question yesterday from NBC News legacy Luke Russert: Barton Gellman of Time has the cover story on the Petraeus Affair that puts all the principals -- especially Petraeus -- in a bad light. ... Greg Miller & Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "The FBI’s handling of the investigation that forced CIA Director David H. Petraeus to resign came under new scrutiny Wednesday as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller faced questions on Capitol Hill and President Obama alluded to lingering questions about the course of the inquiry...." ... ... Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "A computer used by Paula Broadwell ... contained substantial classified information that should have been stored under more secure conditions, law enforcement and national security officials said on Wednesday. The contents and amount of the classified material -- and questions about how Broadwell got it -- are significant enough to warrant a continuing investigation, the officials said." ... ... Robert Burns of the AP: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday he knows of no other senior U.S. military officers being linked to the David Petraeus investigation that has ensnared the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen. Speaking at a Bangkok news conference, Panetta said he retains 'tremendous confidence' in Allen." ... ... Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. agent who helped start the investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director is a 'hard-charging' veteran counterterrorism investigator.... The agent, Frederick W. Humphries II, 47, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley.... Mr. Humphries passed on Ms. Kelley's complaint to the cybersquad in the Tampa field office but was not assigned to the case. He was later admonished by supervisors who thought he was trying to insert himself improperly into the investigation.... Mr. Humphries in late October contacted Representative Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington State.... [A Federal Law Enforcement Officer Association lawyer] took issue with news media reports that have said his client sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.... The photo was sent as a 'joke' and was ... not sexual in nature." ... ... Lolita Baldor of the AP: "A U.S. official says the Army has suspended the security clearance of ... Paula Broadwell [who] ... held a high security clearance. Because her clearance was issued through the Army, it was the service's move to suspend it." ... ... Luis Martinez of ABC News: "Jill Kelley ... has lost the privilege of visiting MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa< without an escort.... Kelley ... had been granted unescorted access to the base under a program initiated by the Air Force unit that runs operations at the base.... [A] Defense official said Kelley's privileges ... have been taken away 'as she is involved in an ongoing investigation.'" Douglas Dalby of the New York Times: "The death of a woman who was reportedly denied a potentially lifesaving abortion even while she was having a miscarriage has revived debate over Ireland's almost total ban on abortions." CW: this needless, unconscionable death -- multiplied thousands of times over -- would have been/still could be in our future if the anti-abortion lobby gets its way. Right Wing World Over and above Excuses such as Nos. 127-129-130 above, et al., here's why the GOP will never, ever get right. Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as 'Delphi' to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That's according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month." CW: the Republican party is a party whose candidates not only have to be "severely conservative," they have to be severely unhinged. To Form a More Perfect Union. Dana Milbank: "... a large number of patriotic Americans, mostly from states won by Mitt Romney last week, have petitioned the White House to let them secede.... It would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish 'to withdraw from the United States and create [their] own NEW government' (the petitions emphasize 'new' by capitalizing it). Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. The balance is the opposite in blue states. The secession petitions, therefore, give the opportunity to create what would be, in a fiscal sense, a far more perfect union." ... ... Looks like students at UNC are putting their Marxist educations to good use. This map, which shows the density of signatories to the secession petitions, was plotted (and I use that term in its narrowest sense, my conspiracy theorist friends) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Current as of noon Wednesday, Nov. 14. Via John Sides of the Monkey Cage: Local News America's Worst Governor Sees the Light. Maybe. AP: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott, one of the most vocal critics of the federal health care overhaul, is dropping his staunch opposition to the law. Scott said in an interview Tuesday with the Associated Press that he now wants to negotiate with the federal government. He said it's time for Republicans to offer solutions to help families after they lost their bid to defeat President Barack Obama." Thanks to James S. for the link. News Ledes AP: "In the midst of a political tempest that has engulfed his former CIA director and his top military commander in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama is traveling to New York City to view recovery efforts from the massive East Coast storm Sandy.While there Thursday, Obama will meet with affected families, local officials and first responders who have been dealing with the deadly storm...." ... ... New York Times Update: "President Obama got a look on Thursday at the muddy wreckage that Hurricane Sandy left in its wake, flying over ravaged neighborhoods in Queens, consoling devastated homeowners under tents and in the streets on Staten Island, and promising a strong and continuing federal role in the recovery." ... Politico Update: "BP will pay a record $4.5 billion in fines and plead guilty to a dozen felony counts under a deal with the U.S. government to settle criminal charges stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that killed 11 workers and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Federal prosecutors also announced new indictments against two BP supervisors for manslaughter and a former BP executive for hiding information from Congress and lying to law-enforcement officials." New York Times: "Israeli warplanes struck dozens of militant sites in Gaza< early on Thursday, the second day of Israel's deadly offensive against Hamas and other militant groups, and rockets fired from the enclave reached far into Israel, killing three civilians when one struck an apartment block in this small southern town." New York Times: "Completing only its second orderly hand-over of power in more than six decades of rule, the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday unveiled a new leadership slate headed by Xi Jinping, the son of a revered revolutionary leader and economic reformer, who will face the task of guiding China to a more sustainable model of growth and managing the country's rise as a global power." AP: "The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies. And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the debt crisis even more difficult to handle." Washington Post: "An investigation into misconduct by Air Force trainers at a Texas base found that at least 48 female students were victims of sexual assault or other transgressions by their instructors, according to a report released Wednesday that dissected the culture that enabled the worst military sex-abuse scandal in recent history." ABC News: Rita Crundwell, "a former comptroller for a small town in Illinois, pleaded guilty to embezzling $53 million from city accounts to feed a lavish lifestyle that included a nationally known horse-breeding operation. All of Crundwell's items are up for auction by the U.S. Marshals, including 400 horses. Only $7 million has been recovered so far."
Reuters: "BP Plc is expected to pay a record U.S. criminal penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster through a plea deal reached with the Department of Justice (DoJ) that may be announced as soon as Thursday, according to sources familiar with discussions." ...
Share Article
Reader Comments (28)
There he goes again: Romney blaming his loss on the fact that the President gave out all kinds of "stuff" to the young, blacks and hispanics----including FREE!!!! health care:
“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge,” he said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus."
So those of you (not including me) who had any doubt about it, Romney turned out to be "severely conservative" after all.
Sadly, more signs that the word is getting out. Hard to disguise now that over half of the voters in the Presidential election actually cast their ballots based on facts. Like arithmetic, and reality.
And to no surprise, the Repugnants don't like it. As well as wishing to keep the little lady barefoot and pregnant (and preferably away from the ballot box), they continue to do all they can to create as much ignorance as possible. Just as the electorate has begun to show it can distinguish reality from the rightwing spin, the Right has launched its next assault on the nation's IQ. If fear and resentment are no longer enough, they apparently trust ignorance to do the trick.
To promote that ignorance, Clear Channel this last week has transmuted Portland, Oregon's progressive talk KPOJ format to yet another sports talk station, and the word in Seattle has KPTK, the station which carries Thom Hartmann, Norman Goldman and all, moving to sports only in January. Can't stand all that information getting out, I guess.
Or maybe they just want to punish two very blue cities...
Now I'm even more grateful for Reality Chex.
BTW, for those who like conspiracies, I believe Bain has an interest in Clear Channel. I said I believe because I'm too lazy to Google it.
With Scott, bluster ends in a whimper.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/governor-drops-opposition-obamacare-says-hes-ready-have-conversation-feds
Ken,
Bain doesn't have just an interest in Clear(ly right-wing) Channel Communications, they own it.
Interesting Op-Ed piece on US chemical policy and our role as collective guinea pigs
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/2012111464048827244.html
According to the Secession Map, it looks like Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama are most anxious to be rid of the rest of us socialist bastards. I believe that we should take their request seriously and, if possible, enable the secession movements, but we should also insist that if they leave the Union they have to take Mississippi with them. It's only fair.
I was shocked that Bobby Jindal was the one to question whether insanity and paranoia were the best core principles for the Republican party. Does this mean that Louisiana, should it remain in the Union, will back off on spending taxpayer money to send children to schools in which the Bible is more important than Isaac Newton? Probably just empty words.
Bill Maher said a couple of weeks ago that no matter who won the election, there would be benefit: "If Obama, the nation wins; if Romney, comedy wins." It looks like Bill is getting a two-fer, for it doesn't look like the lunatics will return quietly to the asylum anytime soon.
I'm looking forward to the "liberal" media cooperating in The Rehabilitation of Paul Ryan, in which the fiscal genius is described more precisely than the policies he would visit on us.
Great give and take the last few days.
Re: recipe for disaster; Yesterday I alluded to the cake of the MIC and made AK toss his cookies. Around here yesterday is a life time ago so I had planned on letting the allusion die. Mitt to the rescue! He mentioned the gifts Obama lovingly passed out to brown and black people everywhere. So with little or no regard to AK's sensitive synopsis's I'm carrying the cake forward.
The MIC cake is a wedding cake made in hell, shaped like a coffin with black frosting. Alternating layers of angels food and devils food cake are separated by blood red creme filling. Atop the cake surrounded by little red, white and blue flags interspersed with tiny white crosses are the bride and groom. Mars and Minerva hand in hand looking into a future filled with the profit of war.
Want a piece? Hell, why not? You all paid for it. Oh, look the devil has got his fiddle out, let's dance.
Thanks, Marie, for staying on the job. There may be no free lunch, but this blog is darn close for us fans.
A quote from Bill Bennet (CNN piece linked today:
"We must counter the discourse and speak and educate in terms of family, faith, freedom, principle, values, work, country, community, improvement, growth, and equality of opportunity. No longer can the Republican Party be solely the party of business. Who controls the terms of discussion, dialogue, and education controls the country and, therefore, the election."
OK - when I was educated, in the 50's and 60's, by the Dominican nuns (elementary) and the Christian Brothers (high school), they taught that ("family, faith, freedom, principle, values, work, country, community, improvement, growth, and equality of opportunity") in addition to reading, geography, history, math, Latin, French, biology, physics, etc. And it was good stuff, from the heart and the brain. Despite the stereotypes and jokes (Sister Mary Elephant? The Penguin? Brother Bugs?), those dedicated people worked full time to turn their charges into good, educated, citizens and Catholics. And to them, a class of forty urban kids, of all ethnicities, religions and capabilities, was no problem.
So my point and rebuttal to Mr. Bennett is that I cannot conceive of voting Republican as long as they peddle the "values" they have been selling for the past 50 years (Goldwater+), even though I was steeped in the precepts Mr. Bennett says is key to educative redemption of the Republican Party. I have not abandoned those precepts with which I was raised (OK, I haven't been to Mass in the past few years) -- but I have never perceived that the Republicans have really represented those precepts. And I have perceived that liberal values have made our society better and saved a lot of people from ignorance, poverty, even death. As someone recently said of his Democratic Party (VP Biden?), "We may not be perfect, but they're NUTS!" And, I am sure Mr. Bennett is right when he says many college educated youth have positive views of socialism -- knowledge of history and current events shows that socialism, in certain societies, can be an appropriate and democratically chosen political system, and not necessarily a step on the road to Stalinism. Further proof that education is important ... it gives you a real worldview rather than ignorant acceptance of crap spewed by charlatans and demagogues.
Finally, speaking of education, when we lost that large cohort of teaching nuns as a key part of our elementary education system, we really lost a huge social asset. They really did a great job, cheap (they were religious socialists, you know, not in it for the bucks.) I will always be personally grateful for their giving and their example.
Just wanted to remind all that Texas's oil windfall is due to a national deal made for the oil producers. They will have to give that up, which makes them takers in the NEW nation. However, we would have to invade, based on treatment of their minorities.
About secession. In addition to the 3rd (or 4th) world status of their fiscal health I wonder if there has been any thought about the original owners returning in the form of drug cartels. Replay of the Alamo with better weapons on one side. I also suspect the drug cartel guys could figure out how to exploit all those oil wells too. I think a better idea would be to move all of somewhere they can't do too much damage to the rest of us. Afghanistan comes to mind.....never did like Karzai.
The jury is most definitely in on the 47% gaffe. It was Lord SB's core value. We already knew that but we can no longer say he had no values with which he would not part ways. I predict that history will name the Lord the most clueless asswipe of the century and asswipery will forever reign in his kingdom.
@Patrick. "We may not be perfect, but they're NUTS." -- the incomparable Barney Frank
Marie
Nuts, delusional, idiots, unhinged and more. The real problem is that while none of these descriptions are official diagnoses, they are truly reflective of minds of millions. The only thing that makes it possible is the mandate for ignorance. Just think of all the assholes from Texas and Alabama who want to secede from the USA so they can save money.
As I have said repeatedly, we are the land of the free and the home of the dumb.
@JJG: your Devil's food cake sounds divine––does this mean we can have our cake and eat it too? Will Mitt's furry friends indulge, get sick and barf all over the pretty tablecloth? Will someone grab Mars and Minerva off the top and stuff it in their pocket for safe keeping or maybe eat them whole on the way home? Whatever happens the horned master of the underground, always one to pat himself on the back, is mighty pleased with his cake of many layers albeit poo-poos the angel layers––they only get in the way––goodness and mercy have no business trying to get between the dark richness of this demonic dessert. And there will be dancing for sure.
Where can I sign a petition to encourage the Confederate States (and Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, Idaho and South Dakota) to secede?
JJG,
Your post today, as much as it embraces and expands the MIC cake metaphor also calls to mind the image of Mars and Minerva. And that image (although deserving of pages and pages of commentary by itself), combined with the horror of a Romney Ryan administration which we escaped due in no small part to savvy voters who turned out to turn down the R&R offer of permanent second and third class citizenship and slavery to the oligarchs, recalls an earlier reference in the works of GF Hegel.
Hegel, in Philosophy of Right, writes about the uses of philosophy for determining historical significance (among many other things). He reduces the metaphorical essence of this enterprise to the image of the Owl of Minerva, which takes flight only in the growing darkness, the idea being that history can only be properly understood as that historical moment is waning.
In the case of a Romney redux of the economic and foreign policy horrors of the Bush years, along with the detrimental additions of the personal and highly offensive stylings of Ryan the Teabagger, the Owl wouldn't need to wait for dusk to report back to Minerva of the imminent implosion of much of American society that wasn't already wealthy and connected.
And for an idea of what Minerva's Owl would have seen, looking back four years hence, we have Romney's graceless, utterly un-selfaware, whining as he stomps away, stopping only to spit on the sidewalk and blame everyone and everything but his own failed ideas, as he makes his long walk to irrelevancy.
Just imagine this fucking cry-baby as president.
A narcissist and a pretender in charge with the Kochs, Roves, Norquists, and fundamentalists pulling their puppet strings.
We would have been fucked. I'm sure Minerva wouldn't even need that translated into Greek.
Wait a minute. Some of we liberals live in some of these places,e.g.,my wife and I live in Georgia. Sherman showed them the folly of secession almost 150 years ago.
Also the South is rife with fedeeral military bases, which I'm sure contribute to their economy. These people ARE nuts to even dream of leaving the union. Federal and state are too intertwined nowadays.
Sorry, Barbarossa: the UN will probably set up refugee camps near Gettysburg.
Barbarossa, I share your anxiety.
Douglas County in Kansas is a commie enclave heavily influenced by the Marxist public university, so the Brownbackistanis will surely cordon us of from the rest of the newly established dictatorship. Can't have free-thinkers mingling with the sheep unaccounted for. Hopefully the Federal government will negotiate for us and annex us back into the Union. I'm thinking some type of Berlin Airlift operation until the territory disputes can be settled.
Re: Ak; money for blood. It's hard to recognize our part on stage when we are the players. I guess we'll let history fill out the correct forms. Strong, responsible, honorable; my ideal of a military unfettered by industry. Owls will fly by day.
OK Everybody: Here's the URL to my petition:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/work-congress-create-mechanism-encourage-former-confederate-states-secede/gwcKNsfc
Please let me know if you sign: we need 150 signatures before it becomes viewable
Signed and shared, Cal.
Just when you thought it was safe to back in the water, Tommy Freedom comes up with another crazy op ed. (This one is beyond crazy.) But Matt Taiibi has an answer for him in Rolling Stone. His article is:
REWRITE TOM FRIEDMAN, WIN A FREE HAND
GRENADE!
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/14548-focus-rewrite-tom-friedman-win-a-free-hand-grenade
The Rat's whiny baby excuses are more than just ridiculously laughable, they're examples of just how out of touch this moron is and how badly in need of an emergency injection of reality is a party which has been mainlining on "White Rich Conservative Men in Charge" Kool-Aid.
So Mittens thinks Obama won by handing out free shit to undeserving blah people? First, aside from how incredibly insulting it is to depict any group of being shallow and stupid enough as to be swayed by promises of "free stuff". Voters are not one dimensional. They care about many things, and not just food stamps or college loans. Others have taken care of the natural comeback to such a stupid statement (what about all the REALLY expensive free shit the Rat promised? And we're not talking about a loaf of bread and a trip to the doctor.), but again, this is just more evidence of how Romney's view of non-wealthy, non-whites plays into a broader wave of ugly racism and hatred that drives much of the GOP.
They couldn't even keep it out of their national convention. The NATIONAL CONVENTION ON FUCKING TEE-VEE fer crissakes. Remember those credentialed wingnuts who threw peanuts in the face of a black woman working a camera for CNN saying "This is how we feed the animals"?
That's the Modern GOP.
That's just one more reason so many people of all races who despise an ideology that promotes--and tolerates--such insulting behavior, showed up to kick the Rat and the Fraud in the ass.
Not free stuff.
Moron.
He can't even lose well. And you think he'd be good at it by now.
Update: There are many competing secession petitions on the White House Petition site. One is within about 4000 votes of the threshold to earn a White House response:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-everyone-signed-petition-withdraw-their-state-united-states-america/dmQl1bXL
@Patrick, thanks for your comments on your Catholic education that taught you about "family, faith, freedom, principle, values, work, country, community, improvement, growth, and equality of opportunity" along with reading, math etc.. I have long marveled at the gravitation of so many Christians to the republican ideology. I also had a Catholic education and I was never encouraged to have that sneering attitude toward the less fortunate. Very well said, Patrick.
@Akhilleus, love ya, man. Keep on posting--you make my day.
@Tommy Bones, re "gravitation of so many Christians to the republican ideology," I honestly believe the progressive/Republican divide among Christians (and religious folk in general) is happening, like everywhere else, along generational--and, to a certain extent, class and ethnic--lines. Younger folks are more culturally tolerance and simply much more used to what we call diversity--i.e., aren't as terrified of ethnic, ideological, etc. variety. The Republicans have taken advantage of a very natural (and normal) fear of change among many non-young citizens--they've shamelessly exploited it, really. But their window for doing so is getting smaller by the day, and they know it. (They're not as stupid as we think. They're too cunning to be truly stupid.) The big and important change we're witnessing is an electorate not nearly as fearful, hence not nearly as usable. Evolution, and the good kind.
Re immediate post-election analysis paralysis--The most frustrating thing to me at this point is that we would 1) expect Obama, of all people, to change his behavior and 2) that we would expect the GOP to alter its behavior in the light of anything, including mass planetary collision in our solar system. We may as well line up a row of bathroom sponges and wait for them to dance the Polka. When I voted for Obama, I knew I was voting for either same ol', or for change for the worse/worst--one or the other. I chose the former. Things are not changing in precisely the way I predicted they would not change. I try to be a cheerful cynic like the great Rachel Maddow, but a cynic, nonetheless. In real time, change happens in spurts, but in the long haul, it's slower than hell.
Then again, how slow IS hell, anyway?
I'm typing on caffeine, by the way, so apologies in advance.
Fur Christ sakes. McCain is quickly reverting to stomping his feet and holding his breath until he turns blue. Asked by a CNN producer why he missed the closed door Benghazi briefing yesterday ( he was railing about Susan Rice in a presser) "McCain would not offer comment to CNN. When pressed by CNN’s Ted Barrett reporter to explain his absence, the Senator responded angrily: “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?” (CNN) Oh and "get off my damn lawn!"
Why does the media use the term "gaffes" when quoting Romney? His more controversial statements aren't misstatements--they're from the heart. That's the problem.