Why We Fight

Teabaggers mock and jeer at a protester with Parkinson's disease:




I particularly liked the guy throwing money at him with such obvious rage and contempt.

The card at the end says it all: "If They Win, We Lose."

But don't ever forget, it's the liberals who are filled with hate.

Why We Fight

Rep. Louise Slaughter during the Health care Summit:

“I have a constituent that you won’t believe and I know you won’t, but her sister died, this poor woman had no dentures,” Slaughter, D-Fairport, said. “She wore her dead sister's teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you believe that in America that’s where we would be?”

Rush Limbaugh, overfed rich white drug addict, commenting on the story:

“If you don’t have any teeth, so what? What’s applesauce for?”

Remember folks: at one point, assholes like Limbaugh ran the country. Now, the chicken-livered Democratic Congressional Delegation acts like they still do.

Enough is enough.

Fight.

Bipartisanship In Action

The Washington Monthly

Two thousand federal transportation workers will be furloughed without pay on Monday, and the Obama administration said they have a Kentucky senator to blame for it.

Federal reimbursements to states for highway programs will also be halted, the Transportation Department said in a statement late Sunday. The reimbursements amount to about $190 million a day, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The furloughs and freeze on payments were the result of a decision last week by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to block passage of legislation that would have extended federal highway and transit programs, the department said. Those programs expired at midnight Sunday.

The extension of transportation programs was part of a larger package of government programs that also expired Sunday, including unemployment benefits for about 400,000 Americans.

Bunning's reaction, when pressed on the issue:

"Tough shit."

But Lamar Alexander claims that if the Democrats pass the health care bill through reconciliation, it will "end the Senate as a protector of minority rights, the place where you have to get consensus, instead of just a partisan majority."

Of course, reconciliation wasn't a problem for Senator Alexander the times he voted for it.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warns of a "severe reaction" if reconciliation is used.

Of course, he didn't have a problem when it was used 19 other times to pass bills the Republicans liked, like the Bush tax cuts.

You know what, Senator Alexander, Senator McConnell? You've had plenty of chances to have a say in this, and your reaction has always been to whine that anything less than total capitulation isn't being "bipartisan."

Well, tough shit. Pass the damn bill.

No Principles Whatsoever

Talking Points Memo

...every Senate Republican today voted against reestablishing "pay-as-you-go" budgeting rules that mandate that any new spending must be paid for. The rule passed on a 60-40 party line vote.

So when Senate republicans talk about being worried about the deficit, they don't really mean it.

Why We Fight

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Poor to 'Stray Animals' - Sphere News

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," he told an audience in the town of Fountain Inn on Friday. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."

You want to know why I'm so hard on Republicans? It's shit like this. Comparing poor people to stray animals who shouldn't be fed, lest they breed.

These people are vicious, thuggish assholes, and they want to rule the country again.

Jesus, is every SC politician out of his damn mind?

Hysteria

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch Pat Buchanan in this bit, and I think you'll understand, if you didn't already, how insane the wingnuts really are. Watch as Buchanan, supposedly some kind of right wing elder statesman, gets more and more hysterical, his voice climbing almost into a range only dogs can hear, as he demands that the Undiebomber be tortured, even though the reports are that he's already cooperating. Then he demands that we kill his entire family.

Then contrast that with the commentary from Washington Independent reporter Spencer Ackerman, who sounds like an adult. I particularly like the bit about "Muslim supermen with Muslim heat vision". A tip of the hat to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who's rapidly becoming one of my favorite bloggers, for cluing me in on this one.

I certainly hope the adults win this conversation. I wish, however, that more Democrats would grow a spine and push back against this hysteria and fearmongering, not to mention calling these assholes out for politicizing this failed attack to raise funds and get votes.

They Never Learn

You would have thought that the recent craziness in the stock market, where a lot of folks lost their shirts, would have thoroughly buried the whole Bushian idea of privatizing Social Security. But you'd be underestimating the sheer blockheadedness of the American Right. In a recent interview,  SC's own wingnut Senator Jim DeMint

 talks of reviving President George W. Bush’s failed plan to partially privatize Social Security by having workers put a small percentage of the current levy in a personal savings account...But let’s review. As a Center for American Progress Action Fund report found, under a Bush-style privatization plan, a October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in the market plunge. If the U.S. stock market had behaved like the Japanese market during the duration of that retiree’s work life, “a private account would have experienced sharp negative returns, losing $70,000 — an effective -3.3 percent net annual rate of return.” And this doesn’t take into account the full plunge of the stock market, which dipped below 7,000 in March 2009.

Fail? They don't know the meaning of the word. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

The Thuggery Starts Early

Mary Matalin "slaps" one on Sarah Palin | Crooks and Liars

Time is the most valuable commodity on a campaign and you just can't waste it thinking about how to choose your words carefully or get your job done more diplomatically. If someone isn't in tears every day, that day wasn't all it could be advancing the campaign. I once witnessed an experienced (big) man slap a professional female colleague across the face over an ad buy... and no one thought anything of it, starting with the woman. In fact, she would have been insulted if anyone told her she should have been insulted.

So violent criminal assault is no big deal in a Republican campaign, huh? This explains a lot.

Beyond Parody, Part II

Glenn Beck:

Celebrities are coming together to make it cool to volunteer. Disney gives you a free day at the park. This is all fine, but doesn't it seem a little bit convenient that all of this comes out now at the same time the Obama administration is calling for it? Obama controls the message through the media he holds in his pocket. Or in his little hand. And soon if you disobey, he'll just go [Beck slaps his hand]. Now the message will be embedded in television shows. Isn't this great? Aren't you proud of what we're doing? Oh, this certainly is change.

So let me get this straight. Encouraging people to volunteer to help their community or their country is now a bad thing because Barack Obama and "celebrities" are doing it? Click through and watch the Beck video, if you can stand it. Listen to the tone of Beck's voice. You'll see a conservative spokesman actually sneering at the idea of volunteerism, before claiming that "this is like living in Mao's China" and comparing Ashton Kutcher to Karl Marx for encouraging it.

This is what conservatism has come to. They only have two principles: IBIODI and IOKIYAR. (It's Bad If Obama Does It and It's Okay If You're a Republican).

Brand Pollution

Over at Murderati, Tess Gerritsen tells a story that's scarier than her fiction:

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

"I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me," Sydney said solemnly. "It will never be the same without the people you fired."

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn't stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine "Connie" Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

"Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is," Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children's librarian) and two part-timers to stop "whining" and raise the money themselves.

"I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books," Xinos told them.

The story she references goes on to say:

"I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night," a grinning Xinos says Wednesday, as he invites me for a nearly two-hour interview in his Mercedes-Benz in the gated Oak Brook community where he lives. "This is the real world and the lesson, you folks who brought your kids here, is if you want something, pay for it."

"I understand that my philosophy is conservative," Xinos says.

Ah, no, Connie, your philosophy is "I got mine, Jack, fuck you." You are, in short, less of a conservative than you are a complete prick.

At what point are actual conservatives going to try and take their name back from these assholes? For years, Republicans managed to successfully brand "liberals" as weak, foolish and ineffectual, to the point where they ran from the term with euphemisms like "progressive." Is a similar branding going to happen with "conservative," to the point where so many people associate the philosophy with meanness, selfishness and spite that no one wants to be called that any more? We're not there yet, but it seems they're well on their way, and actual principled conservatives don't seem to be doing anything to stop it.

Just When You Think They Can't Go Any Lower

By now, most of you have heard about Bill Sparkman, the census worker who was killed and hanged from a tree in Kentucky with the word "FED" scrawled on his chest. Right wingers, apparently fearing that the crime will be traced to hatemongers stirring up fear of the government, particularly the census, are struggling frantically to pre-emptively blame the grisly killing on someone or something else. So you have this guy, saying it must have been illegal Mexicans, because sometimes gangs grow weed in National Parks, and Mexican gangs grow weed, so there you have it.

But for sheer vileness, it's hard to beat Dan Riehl,* who theorizes that the murder victim may have been a child predator. His evidence? "No teaching degree, no full-time means of employment and no wife or kids so far as I am aware. But he certainly did gravitate towards children."

And we know this because....Sparkman was a Boy Scout leader and a substitute teacher.

Turns out, however, that Sparkman DID have a teaching degree, and a son, who we was raising as a single parent. But in the perverted minds of someone like Riehl, that's probably just more evidence he was a nasty child molester who deserved to be killed and hung from a tree.

The thing is, it's all so unnecessary. It would have been easy for a sane person to simply go, "wait a minute, we don't really know that much about the crime yet, including whether or not it was actually a homicide. Not to mention the fact that anti-federal government sentiment in that area far predates Glenn Beck, teabaggers, or Michelle Bachmann. In fact, a state trooper who worked in the schools with Sparkman warned him: "when you go into those counties, be careful because people are going to perceive you different than they do elsewhere.'"

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/census-worker-hanged-with_n_297114.html

But nooooooooo...these sick fucks think everything is the fault of the Meskins or the Gays, and they're willing to smear a murder victim to make that "point."

Don't ever forget, though: it's the liberals who are filled with hate.

*(I did not, as is my normal practice, link directly to Riehl's blog. I'm not giving that asshole another web-hit if I can help it).

Wake up, Democrats. Bipartisanship Is Dead and Joe Wilson Signed the Death Certificate

Latest Newspaper Column:

I had originally planned to compare Joe Wilson, the Republican representative from South Carolina who hollered "you lie!" at President Obama during his address on health care, to Kanye West.

In case you missed it, West is the rapper who disgraced himself during the MTV Video Music Awards by running on stage, taking the mike from award winner Taylor Swift and insisting that Beyonce should have won the award. Both have apologized: West to Swift, and Wilson to President Obama.

Wilson's apology, however, might have seemed a little more sincere had he not immediately started using his outburst as a fundraising tool. He began posting on his Web site that those nasty liberals were trying to "muzzle the American people who have been outspoken against their risky plan" and pleaded, "Will you please make a donation to help me fight back against these partisan attacks?"

I guess I missed the meeting where acting like trailer trash on the floor of the U.S. Congress was declared to be a conservative principle.

In contrast to Wilson, Kanye is apologizing every chance he gets, including a tearful scene on Jay Leno's new show when Leno asked Kanye what his mother might have said about his behavior. He's not using the fuss to tell people they should buy his records because he's being persecuted.

Good Lord. How low have you sunk when a world-class twit like Kanye West is showing more class than you?

The "partisan attacks" that Hollerin' Joe was whining about referred to a resolution introduced in the House for the lowest possible sanction for someone who committed a serious breach of decorum: a "resolution of disapproval."

The idea of even this mild a rebuke set off the usual fits of the vapors from the usual gang of right-wing pundits. Commentator Bill Kristol, for example, warned that if the Democratic leadership pursued a reprimand, they'd be "leading the party off the cliff."

Let me get this straight: The idiot who hollers out during a presidential address like a drunk redneck at a cockfight isn't "leading his party over a cliff," but the people pushing for the mildest reprimand of his boorish behavior are? But, hey, thanks for your concern, Bill. I'm sure you only have the best interest of the Democratic Party at heart.

I want to make one thing clear: I don't think it should be forbidden to call the president a liar. I did it myself during the Bush years, quite a bit, back when it was still considered the Worst Thing In The World. I just didn't do it on the floor of the House during a presidential address.

If a Democratic representative had yelled, "Bush lied, soldiers died!" during, say, the 2006 State of the Union address, the same people lining up behind Hollerin' Joe right now would be demanding he be impeached, at least those who weren't demanding he be sent to Guantanamo.

In any event, the resolution passed upon nearly a straight party vote, and I dearly hope that the tally serves as a wake-up call to the Democrats. Bipartisanship in the House is dead, Wilson's outburst was its obituary, and this vote buried it. President Obama is to be commended for trying to bring the Republicans into the tent, but the GOP has slapped away his hand every time it's been extended.

You want to look at the face of Republican "bipartisanship," look at the face of Joe Wilson captured at the moment when he's yelling at the president of the United States: red-faced, finger pointed in indignation, his pig-eyed, slack-jawed fury a chilling echo of those awful photographs from the early '60s of people shouting at civil rights protesters. Lucky thing Joe Wilson didn't have access to a police dog or a fire hose.

Fact is, when a Republican these days talks about bipartisanship, what he's really demanding is minority rule. He's demanding that his party still set the agenda and make policy for the nation after being soundly defeated in the last two elections.

Sorry, guys, it doesn't work that way. And it's time the Democrats started acting like it.

Suckers.

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over this birther thing...but these idiots are, like PETA, a gift that just keeps on giving. The latest twist comes in an e-mail from wingnut reader Russell (who, as you may remember, calls the President "part joo [sic] and part nigger--a mongrel hybrid"). The e-mail begins:

I SUSPECT THAT THIS WILL BE THE MOST HEAVILY FORWARDED E-MAIL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. I AM SURE THAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW. HERE WE HAVE INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET THAT WOULD NEVER BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE NEWSPAPERS. RUSS

This "bombshell" destined to become "the most heavily forwarded e-mail in the history of the world:" is a link to a story at the right wing online scandal sheet WorldNut...Sorry, WorldNet daily. This story claims that Barack Obama's "real" birth certificate has now been found in Kenya:

California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.

Good luck with that there motion, Orly. As several people with working brain cells almost immediately noticed, the Kenyan certificate is not just a fake, but a clumsy one:

First, the hospital is Coast Provincial General Hospital (sometimes said to be Coast Province General Hospital), not Coast General Hospital.

Second, Kenya was a Dominion the date this certificate was allegedly issued and would not become a republic for 8 months.

Third, Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.

Fourth, Obama's father's village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.

Fifth, the number 47O44-- 47 is Obama's age when he became president, followed by the letter O (not a zero) followed by 44--he is the 44th president.

Sixth, EF Lavender is a laundry detergent.

Seventh, would a nation with a large number of Muslims actually say "Christian name" (as opposed to name) on the birth certificate?

Eighth, his father (born in 1936) would have been 24 or 25 when he was born and not 26.

Ninth, it was called the "Central Nyanza District," not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.

I still predict, however, that a year from now I'll still be getting e-mails from these brain dead racist idiots about the "Kenyan birth certificate" that's being suppressed by the forces of evil. You know, the one from the "Republic of Kenya" dated from before Kenya was a Republic and signed by a laundry detergent.

There truly is one born every minute. Wonder if Orly and Co fall for the DEAR FRIEND e-mails from Nigeria, too?

UPDATE: More here, where a commenter also points out:

The price is shown as 7s. 6d. This is not valid Kenyan currency. The forger must have assumed that Kenya used British currency, but Kenya never used pennies, they used cents. It should say 7s. 50c. if it were authentic.

The Good Americans at FreeRepublic

Racial slurs directed at Obama children:

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."

These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds."

Though this may sound like the sort of thing one might read on an Aryan Nation or white power website, they actually appeared on what is commonly considered one of the prime online locations for U.S. Conservative grassroots political discussion and organizing - and for a short time, the comments seemed to have the okay of site administrators.

Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.

"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.

"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another.

But it's okay, don't you see? It's okay to call an 11 year old girl "ghetto trash" and "street whore" because David Letterman made a lame joke about 18 year old Bristol Palin.

But, of course, it's still not acceptable to say what Letterman said, which was still the WORST THING EVER SAID ABOUT ANYONE EVER (and a perfectly good reason for Palin to resign).

Likewise, it's okay to publish racist comments about "monkey sounds" because Sonia Sotomayor admits that being Latina had an effect on her life. But it's still not okay for Sotomayor to say that because that makes her THE WORST BIGOT EVER.

Wingnut logic.

The Torch is Passed to a New Generation

On Facebook, Young Republicans argue about whether or not it's okay to call black people "coons."

I wonder which side will win.

Y'know, most of us figured the answer to that question a while ago, but y'know, baby steps.

Stay Classy, GOP.

Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) Mocks Crying Child

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama was openly disdainful of a12-year-old boy who wept throughout a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week on the Uniting American Families Act, which would give equal citizenship rights to the foreign-born same-sex partners of American citizens. Sessions opposes the bill.

The committee was hearing from Shirley Tan, a Filipino woman who had fled her country after being physically attacked by a man who had killed her mother and sister. Tan and her American partner of 23 years are raising 12-year-old twin sons here, but she was almost deported in April, and has been granted only a temporary reprieve.

As Tan began to speak, one of her sons, who was seated behind her, began to cry, and Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy stopped the hearing to inquire whether the child was alright, and whether he might not prefer to sit in a private room. But according to the New Republic, the 12-year-old's tears only annoyed Sessions, who "leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, "Enough with the histrionics."

Which was a little out there even for Sessions, who enlivens most of the hearings he takes part in by refusing to hide his temper or temper his impatience; no one can say he's not authentic.

No one can say he's not an asshole, either.

Of course, this shouldn't be surprising from the party who thinks it's perfectly okay to demonize and even stalk a 12 year old and his family, if that family doesn't think like them.