Stories That Write Themselves... Mississippi Family Values Mayor Bills Taxpayer For Gay Porn

Daddy's got some 'xplainin' to do...

Receipts show Southaven Mayor Greg Davis, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008 on a family-values platform, charged the city $67 for a purchase at a gay sex shop in Canada. (Canada no less...)

Being a Black Conservative

Michael Williams, Texas Republican candidate, bemoans the double-edged sword that is being a black conservative. Conservatives may be non-racist enough to let black guys into their big tent, but Williams complains that he's sometimes mistaken for Herman Cain.

TPM asks if that happens a lot. "Not really," he told me. "A lot of people think I'm a waiter."

Sedition Tantrum: Time Out Stephen Broden!

Pastor Stephen Broden: tea baggin' for Jeebus.

There's a lot of good people down here in Texas (really, there are). But there's also a hell of a lot of tiny-dicked rage-oholics with Commodore 64-sized chips on their shoulders. Take Stephen Broden for instance. He's a Republican running for Congress in Texas' 30th District. He's been talking all tough about "violent overthrow of the government" if the midterms don't go the GOP's way.

"If the government is not producing the results or has become destructive to the ends of our liberties, we have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary," he continued.

Most parents of small children are familiar with this kind of frustrated self-entitlement crap... all that kicking and yelling "no fair!" Not usually from a grown man though.

Oh, I Wish I Was In The Land of Cotton...

"...look away, look away, look away Dixie Land." Please.

Whenever the subject of the Confederacy raises its ugly, toothless head, I always take comfort in knowing that Texas is officially classed as a Southwestern state not a Southern state. I also think fondly of Sam Houston, staunch unionist and leader of the Texas revolution, and his principled stand against secession that got him run out of office by those 19th century wingnuts who wanted Texas to side with Davis not Lincoln. So, in short, I feel justifiably smug that I'm not stuck in a sh*thole like Alabama or Mississippi desperately clutching at even smaller straws to find ways of defending those states' unredeemable histories.

I felt smug again today seeing this picture of a recent country club party in South Carolina where Senate president pro-tempore Glenn McConnell and other Repub luminaries dressed up in period costume to mix it up with jolly antebellum characters like... errm... slaves. The shindig, put on by the National Federation of Republican Women's Board of Directors, was billed "A Southern Experience".

Yes.

That's right.

Republicans whooping it up at a swank southern country club with black folks paid to dress up as slaves. It sounds like a dream Newt Gingrich would wake up from with a raging hard-on.

Credit Where Credit's Due

I wouldn't go that far but...

Mark Potok of The Southern Poverty Law Center has been talking about a recent SPLC report on how anti-Muslim hate crimes have spiked as Islamophobic hysteria metastasizes into the mainstream. Potok places the blame not only on the fringe wackjobs themselves but fairly and squarely on a Republican establishment that obsequiously refuses to condemn bigotry because they're too busy pandering to the hate vote.

It's pretty disgusting watching c*nts like Boehner, for example, downplay Terry Jones' Koran burning by equating it with the Park 51 Islamic Center 'controversy'. And it's pitiful to see Newt Gingrich cashing in on hate by releasing DVDs and scoring lucrative speaking gigs warning us about the 'evils of Islam'. They are a disgrace to America and the concept of civilization itself.

But one Republican who does deserve praise, albeit retroactively, is George W. Bush. As the SPLC points out, Bush worked hard to stop us turning against Muslim Americans and Islam in general after 9-11. Whether it was all motivated by his ulterior motive of keeping the oil-rich sultans he had business dealings with happy, who can say. But the truth stands: current Republican attitudes to Islam would not have been tolerated under Bush. As Potok says:

One of the more interesting things [the report] shows is not only this massive spike in 2001, a 1,700 percent spike up, but then subsequently, a very rapid decline by about two-thirds the following year, just three and a half months later. I would attribute that very largely to the speeches that were given by President Bush at the time which called very proactively for people not to regard our enemies as Muslims or as Arabs, but as a very specific terrorist network al Qaida.

So there you have it. I never thought I'd live to see the day I almost miss Bush. It may be relative... kinda like missing the pain in your balls when someone stops kicking you there and starts punching you in the face instead... but it's there all the same.

Will The Last One Out Please Turn Off The Lights..?

I hear Canada's nice this time of year. Mexico too if you can speak Spanish and don't mind a little dry heat. But, wherever you may be headed, please could the last non-idiot out of America please turn off the lights?

It's starting to feel like the time has come for people with functioning brains to quit the country and leave the cretins to it. It's too much hard work and, frankly, too embarrassing to stay here... It's time for the dumb to inherit the earth. Or at least our bit of it. Here's why:

A new national poll from Newsweek finds that a majority of Republicans believe Obama wants to impose Shariah law.

Bye... or should I say es salaam alaikum?

Pricking Republican Reality

Republicans are awesomely skilled at taking lies and seeding them as 'facts' to serve their agenda. This is how Republicans frame the debate. This is how Republicans beat reality into shapes to fit their narrative. This is how these lying pr*cks retain a John Boehner tan-like patina of credibility.

But Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has done an impressive job of dissecting current Republican 'facts' about the popularity or otherwise of Obama's policies. The GOP claims the public does not support these policies and, therefore, the GOP have a popular mandate to justify their campaign of obstruction. But, as Silver demonstrates, they're talking out of their asses.

Here's a list of Obama policies the majority favor despite Republican assertions to the contrary:

54% favor troop escalation in Afghanistan.
57% favor the bank tax proposal.
74% favor raising taxes on salaries more than $250,000 per year.
49% favor letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.
53% oppose the recent corporate campaign finance ruling by the Supreme Court
51% favor cap-and-trade
44% approved of the Cash For Clunkers' program
77% favor the Credit Card Protection Act
59% favor regulation of Wall Street
58% favor the repeal of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'
68% favor expanding hate crimes protection
74% favor the Obama jobs bill
60% favor mortgage relief

Of course, the big missing item is healthcare. Republicans correctly say the public opposes the current bill.

But a majority do favor a public option; favor insurance co-ops to compete with insurance companies and favor banning preexisting condition discrimination.

So, in this case, the Republican lie is one of omission. Are we against reform and on-side with the GOP? Nope. The only reason we disapprove of 'Obamacare' is that it wouldn't do enough.

Using Climate Change To Screw Dems

When Republicans speak, that which is spoken will be untrue.

This is not so much a slur as an immutable rule of nature these days. The only area of uncertainty: Are Republicans consciously lying? Or are they just way too stupid to know better? Case in point:

"Showing images of cars stuck in giant snow banks, ominous weather reports and a ruler showing more than a foot of the white fluffy stuff, the Virginia GOP attempts to exploit the storm for political gain. The ad, called "12 inches of Global Warming" is specifically targeting Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Perriello (D-VA) in advance of the fall midterm elections."

So are the Virginia GOP stupid? Or do they just think screwing over Democrats is more important than averting a possible global catastrophe?

Just for starters, maybe someone should remind them that 'weather' and 'climate' are two different things. If you went through eighth grade, chances are you already know this. Unlike the Virginia GOP.

Quote of the Day (So Far...)

John Ensign, the oversexed Republican doofus who had Mom and Dad bail him out of a sex scandal last year, is still polling well in Nevada and hypothetically beating three Dem challengers. Says Public Policy Polling communications director Tom Jensen:

"Cheating on your wife is a deal breaker for Republican voters- but only if you're a Democrat."

GOP Strategist Fail

In a moment reminiscent of Sarah Palin's brain failure with Katie Couric, Republican strategist Todd Harris busted when asked by Chris Matthews "What has the Republican Party done for the country in the last 10-20 years?"

Harris drew a blank and couldn't cite one example. Fascinating that even one of the GOP's leading strategists himself can't see the point in the GOP.

Republican Nazi Wanted For Murder

Police in Houston are searching for a Neo-Nazi in Houston who killed an Indian storekeeper during a robbery. Says The Houston Chronicle:

"Walder is described as 6 feet 2, about 250 pounds, with a shaved head. He has many tattoos, including a skull on the left side of his neck, a Nazi SS symbol on the right side of his neck and tear drop under his right eye. He is known to drive a green Chevy truck with Texas plate AB1-7183. He also drives a 1998 dark green Dodge pickup with an extended cab, Texas plate 92L-RW3, and has a Republican Party sticker on the back window."

It might be a trite political snark, but can you imagine the wingnut meltdown that would be taking place if the murderer was, say, a bow-tied Nation of Islam guy with an 'Obama '08' sticker on his truck? Again, I'm just sayin'...

Preelection Panic

How did we come to this? Obama comes in riding a wave of popularity, the Democrats sporting a supermajority. Now it's gone to hell thanks to the majority party's unwillingness to quit sucking corporate dick and Obama's reluctance to stand by his promises and capitalize on the grassroots momentum that got him elected. Stats to bear in mind:

Obama's approval rating is at 46% with 43% opposed and 11% undecided.
(Quinnipiac University poll, December 23)

Only 42% favor the current healthcare bill while 56% oppose it.
(CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, December 16-20)

Now the wagons have circled in anticipation of 2010 and 2012 and both the Dems and the Reps are making it all about the healthcare bill. The GOP are selling a promise to repeal it. The Democrats are selling the same promise: that the GOP will do exactly that.

This would auger well for Dems if only the bill was worth a sh*t and could be sold as something worth saving. But as it stands, the Republicans have the stronger hand.

Unless the dysfunctional abortion of a bill that staggered out of the Senate to assume such a pivotal role in the Democrats' fortunes doesn't get a major overhaul before final passage, they'll deserve to lose. Shame for 'We The People' who certainly don't deserve another punishing round of Republican misrule.

Republican Fun Fact

Late on Thursday night, the Senate voted 63-33 to break a Republican filibuster of the defense appropriations bill. The three Republicans who voted against this delay of military spending: Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME). The filibuster was part of the Republican effort to delay the health care bill.

Interesting that their hatred for healthcare reform actually supersedes their love for defense spending - the only thing Republicans never oppose. Ever.

Republican Defects

A rare instance of the word 'defects' (as in 'Republican defects') being a verb not a noun...

Rep. Jim Campbell, a Republican from Newfield, Maine, is leaving the GOP and going independent. Apparently, he's the only Rep sick of the GOP "blocking progress in the hope of partisan gain." They have a high tolerance for pro-party, anti-American BS those folks.

Teabagging The GOP

Matt Kibbe, teabagger nabob, was on Chris Matthews' show last night. Matthews asked him if the Teabaggers intended on going 'third party'. Kibbe said:

"The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is."

I'm tempted to go with the 'lunatics taking over the asylum' metaphor. But in reality, the GOP loony bin was overrun by lunatics long ago. Maybe 'Republican party death-spiraling into a black hole of cosmic lunacy' would be more accurate?

Republican Oops of The Day

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Fat & Broke? You Might Just Be a Red Stater

Here's the top 10 conspicuously red fattest and poorest states. (Sources: 1 2)


And the top ten skinniest and wealthiest states...


Spin it, conservatives, spin it...

Short Memory Syndrome

George W. Who..?

According to a new survey by the Washington Post:

"Only 1% of Republicans name George W. Bush as the person who epitomizes Republican values."

So where were the other 99% of Republicans during the past 8 years? All I remember is lock-step fealty to the Bush regime coupled with blind, unquestioning faith in everything his dumbship did. If anyone was doubting Bush's Republican cred during his entire two terms, they sure as hell kept quiet about it.

Then there were the yells from self-confessed Republicans against liberals with the temerity to doubt the awesomeness of the Dear Leader, the anger against anyone who said what they themselves now appear to be saying. So what gives? Could this be further proof that conservatives are full of sh*t? Or should I be expecting 'OK, you were right' emails from the wingnuts who used to berate me for bad-mouthing Bush and pointing out his non-Republican Neocon-ness?

Republicans Fail To Block Democracy

"A 60-39 vote backed by all 58 Democrats and two independents - overcame a Republican-led filibuster designed to block consideration of the bill and it kept up momentum behind President Obama's top legislative priority."

So the healthcare bill struggles on... The real issue is that not one Republican voted in favor. They weren't asked to vote in favor of the bill, just to vote in favor of it being discussed. Republicans? Democracy? Two words that are fast becoming mutually exclusive.

If, as the wingnuts would have us believe, "Obamacare" is demonstrably flawed, wouldn't it be good if it came up for debate so they can shoot it down and look like heroes? Nope. They know that even this half-dead compromise is infinitely preferable to either the status quo or their own own crappy bill. The debate will only make them look full of sh*t - hence the lock-step opposition to letting the democratic process continue.

Screwed Again: How Local Republicans Intend to Steal the Next Election

The state legislature in Tennessee passed the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA) which required the state to dump its suspect touch-screen voting machines. But the law has not yet been implemented due to legal challenges from Tennessee Republicans. Why do Tennessee Republicans want to stand in the way of the law?

"In November of 2008, as the state was still using its completely faith-based electronic voting systems, it somehow managed to buck the national trend as the only state in the nation to see legislative gains for the Republican Party."

Makes sense now.

Then there's Florida where in 2006 "18,000 electronic ballots in Democratic-leaning Sarasota disappeared from the county's ES&S touch-screen systems, in a race decided in favor of the Republican by just 369 votes."

Florida has also been forced to stop using touch-screen voting machines. But Republican election supervisor Kathy Dent is encouraging voters to use "a blue or black pen" for marking their paper ballots in the upcoming midterms. This is handy as the optical scanner which tallies paper votes cannot read blue pen. The Florida polling rules would then allow for helpful polling staff to re-mark unreadable ballots with black ink. Can't see anything untoward with that plan.