February 27, 2009
The Party of No
More from Americans United for Change.
Posted by jnfr at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2009
Jindal
Secretary of Casting Out Demons?
After listening to him last night, I don't think he's likely to be President.
Posted by jnfr at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2009
Not One Vote
In this time of great crisis, not one Republican voted for the economic stimulus bill. Not one, even after multiple changes made to address their concerns.
I'm listening to MSNBC, and the Republicans think this is a clear victory. ("We held together and changed the bill. Our leadership is more effective than anyone thought. We made the Democrats back down on things they wanted.") Shameless.
Posted by jnfr at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2009
Tax Cuts = Failure
Krugman's response today to the Republican Congressional obstructionism:
The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.
The Republican answer to this turmoil?
Tax cuts.
They need to go into rehab.
The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.
Krugman goes on to give some examples, if you're not convinced. I've understood for years that the Republicans were waging class warfare. They have no real concern for the middle class and the poor. The state of our economy today is the direct result of their efforts. No one on the Democratic side should be afraid to state that truth front and center throughout this stimulus discussion.
There is no reason to accommodate the failed policies of the Republican Party. That's another truth we need to state out loud, over and over again.
Posted by jnfr at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2008
Tubez
Let's take a moment to remember Ted Stevens' finest moment.
Posted by jnfr at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2008
"I'm Not Bush"
Granted. But you may as well be.
Posted by jnfr at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2008
Ugly Ohio
I grew up partly in Ohio, and partly in Mississippi. The thinking on display here doesn't surprise me at all.
Posted by jnfr at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2008
Rage
Like many people, I've been surprised and disturbed by the anger shown in the McCain/Palin rallies this week. But maybe the crowds are taking their cue from the Presidential candidate. He has a history of temper and even violence.
Posted by jnfr at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2008
Jest Sayin'
I don't really want a Vice President who winks at me.
Posted by jnfr at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2008
Who Leads?
Rachel Maddow asks a pertinent question. Who is the leader of the Republican Party now?
Poor puppies.
Posted by jnfr at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2008
Tell the Truth
And they'll think it's hell. This is a great, and honest, ad.
Posted by jnfr at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2008
Why?
Why doesn't John McCain want to protect our kids from predators?
Posted by jnfr at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2008
Amused and Bemused
So, I've been following all the stories today, and it seems that the Republicans have found their inner sensitivity, their deep belief in feminism, their softer side. Really, as someone who has fought for women's rights her whole life, mostly against the same assholes who are whining today, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
So instead, I'm helping other folks in my neighborhood organize voters for Obama. Here in Colorado, a major swing state this year, that's important work. And it keeps me from throwing things at the TV.
Posted by jnfr at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2008
Same Old Pitbull
Look what I made!
Feel free to pass it around.
Posted by jnfr at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2008
Chelsea Clinton
Over at dailyKos, brownsox makes a clear refutation to Mike Huckabee's claim that the right never said terrible things about Chelsea Clinton. Hannity claimed it recently too, saying he could not remember any thing rude being said about Clinton then.
But brownsox missed the column that angered and disgusted me most of all, written in 2001 by John Derbyshire at NRO, who, after admitting he hated Chelsea Clinton, said this:
Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet — "let God sort 'em out".)
Let's be very clear about this, whatever statements have been made about Sarah Palin and her family, no one on the left has even come close to wishing to have them murdered, as Derbyshire said about Chelsea.
Posted by jnfr at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2008
Where's Palin Now?
Haven't seen her at the convention yet. This round-up by CBS is pretty thorough.
Posted by jnfr at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2008
And Then They End Up Pregnant
Without further comment, I present this bit from MSNBC's First Read.
Palin backed abstinence-only education
By the way, as has been pointed out, Palin backed abstinence-only education during her 2006 gubernatorial race. In an Eagle Forum Alaska questionnaire, Palin gave this response to the following question:
Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?
Palin: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.
Posted by jnfr at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2008
Insulting
I think Gail Collins is exactly right, in her aptly titled column, "McCain's Baked Alaska". Palin was chosen for no other reason than that she is a woman, and other women are supposed to be so impressed by that fact that we'll fall in line without a thought. Hillary Clinton was well-qualified to be our first female President, and it's an insult to her, and to all woman, to nominate such a lightweight to supposedly stand in Clinton's shoes.
As Collins says:
This year, Hillary Clinton took things to a whole new level. She didn’t run for president as a symbol but as the best-prepared candidate in the Democratic pack. Whether you liked her or not, she convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief. That was an enormous breakthrough, and Palin’s nomination feels, in comparison, like a step back.
If she’s only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over, it’s a bad choice. Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate: “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton.”
Posted by jnfr at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2008
Waaahh???
Clearly in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain has successfully rounded up the WTF? vote.
I don't think many pro-choice women are going to go for a fully anti-Roe ticket, but I've never understood the Clinton supporters who turned to McCain.
Update: Ah, nevermind. That was 'shopped.
Posted by jnfr at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2008
The Fabulous Life
Of John and Cindy McCain. No wonder he wants all those tax cuts for the wealthy.
Posted by jnfr at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2008
"So I bought another one"
That's Cindy McCain talking about the two condos the McCains own in California. Seems the kids used the first one so much she didn't get to use it as much as she wanted, so she bought a second one nearby. That's taken from an interview in Vogue that she gave last spring, dug out by Talking Point Memo's Election Central. I've been sitting here all afternoon trying to remember where I'd read that quote, so I appreciate that they found it.
"When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go.' Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one."
If you're wondering about the McCain houses that have been in the news so much today, you can visit them via Google Earth, in this video put together by Jed Lewison at the Jed Report.
Posted by jnfr at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2008
Who Loves Bush?
John McCain does.
Posted by jnfr at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2008
Would a Former POW Lie?
Of course he would. It's what Republicans do when they desperately want to win and they've got nothing else to run on.
Posted by jnfr at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2008
No Maverick
Obama nails McSame Old Thing.
Posted by jnfr at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2008
Start Your Week Right
A nice hug always makes a guy feel better.
Posted by jnfr at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2008
Desperation Politics
From Robert Greenwald.
Don't forget to sign the petition urging John McCain to stop his sleazy campaign ads.
Posted by jnfr at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2008
Dogwhistling
The Spin Cycle blog at Newsday does some research, after talking with McCain's campaign about their latest "Celebrity" ad:
Sex celebs: Why Britney and Paris?
...They said they thought the ad was legitimate because Obama is a big celebrity...and Britney and Paris were Number 2 and 3.
The problem: Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday's news. Here's a link to Forbes' Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don't even make the list any more.
...So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.
What they picked was two sexually available white women.
And that's exactly the image the McCain camp wanted you to see, with the undertones of miscegenation beneath the obvious theme of fame.
The media ran with it yesterday, of course, giving the ad much greater reach by playing it over and over again. And even though Harold Ford on MSNBC said he didn't think it was racism in play, it was, just as it was with the "Call Me, Harold" ad which was used against Ford himself.
The Obama campaign's response ad is pretty good, but they have to move faster on this stuff. While they spent a couple of days meeting with experts in economics, we lost several news cycles to repetitions of McCain talking points. Of course economics is more important in the larger scheme of things, but we still have an election to win, and no time to waste in responding to these smears.
BagNewsNotes has more detailed analysis of the images in the "Celebrity" ad.
If you're uncertain about the exact meaning of "dogwhistle", see this post by Digby. She understands it all.
Posted by jnfr at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2008
Good Question
Posted by jnfr at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2008
McCain's Buddy
Pastor John Hagee longs for Armageddon.
More from the Christians United for Israel tour:
Posted by jnfr at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
Not Gonna Happen
From today's Washington Post, in an article titled Evangelicals Lukewarm Towards GOP Field:
"There is a great deal of angst about who will come forward and be electable, and also close to the social views and moral views we believe in," Page said.
This is why they haven't yet settled behind Huckabee, or a main reason anyway. They want their values, but they want even more to win, to believe that they can force their values on the rest of us.
The problem they face is that the majority of this country simply doesn't agree with the extreme views of the Christianist right. Bush was a fluke and a failure. They're not going to find a candidate they agree with who can also win the election.
Posted by jnfr at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2007
Great Moments on Hardball
Today I'm remembering this choice bit of TV.
Posted by jnfr at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2007
On Giuliani
From Talking Points Memo reader DC:Giuliani combines Bush's foreign policy genius with Clinton's sexual impulse control.
And that's all that needs to be said about Giuliani.
Posted by jnfr at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2007
Generation Chickenhawk
Max Blumenthal does it again.
Posted by jnfr at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)