Politics Blog

Category: Republicans

Stand Off in Standish

Liz Cheney's new political advocacy group, Keep America Safe, whose only purpose appears to be to attack President Obama's national-security policies, has posted a short video featuring a few citizens of Standish who are opposed to potentially housing some Gitmo detainees in their local prison. These people claim to be speaking for the majority of the town, but the City Manager says that's not true. In fact, the "Standish city council recently passed a unanimous resolution expressing support for bringing Gitmo detainees," as a way to bring much needed employment to the town. He accuses Cheney's group of fearmongering and says the people on the video represent a tiny minority of naysayers. The video is available at the link above.

To put this bit of propaganda into further context, a major funder of "Keep America Safe" is long time GOP operative Mel Sembler, who was awarded a couple of different ambassador positions during GOP administrations and was a co-founder of Straight, Inc., a controversial chain of drug-treatment centers that were shut down after numerous complaints of physical and psychological abuse of its clients, some of which was attributed to Sembler personally. Hard to believe this makes for a non-partisan organization.

In any event, these citizens of Standish should worry more about losing the opportunity to reactivate their prison than about who might be housed in it. They have some strong competition. Thomson, Illinois " is reportedly pushing hard for the administration to send Guantanamo prisoners there." If Standish goes broke, they may be sorry they weren't a bit more courageous.

Category: Republicans

GOP Endorses War Against Our Government

This is so over the top. Someone put up this billboard in Missouri and a local county GOP Committee is applauding it on its webpage.



I know they say politics isn't beanbag, but I never thought I'd see the day when a major political party effectively endorsed overthrowing our legitimately elected government. Sure sounds like sedition to me. And it makes me wonder why people are so afraid of foreign terrorists. Looks to me like we should be more worried about Republicans who apparently want to destroy our centuries old system, simply to regain political power for themselves.

Category: Republicans

GOP Loses Big Business Backing

This is interesting. The Business Roundtable (BRT), an organization that represents more than 50 of the nation's biggest corporations, has long been a GOP ally in pushing the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill. But the relationship has soured in recent weeks. The GOPers are mad that the "Roundtable continues to work with Democrats in the White House and on the Hill to advance healthcare reform." Republicans are particularly put out by the BRT's recent release of a report praising President Obama's health care reform initiative noting their "future healthcare costs could fall by $3,000 per employee with passage of the legislation."

The GOPers are said to be "disappointed and perplexed" that the Roundtable is siding with the Democrats instead of helping them kill the bill. Traditionally the group, which includes AT&T, Chrysler Group, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, have fought side by side with Republicans against tax regulations. Not sure why the Republicans are surprised. Isn't this a classic aspect of the whole "parties will act solely in their self-interest" in a capitalistic system? Seems even Big Business can see that the current GOP agenda benefits no one but the power brokers of the party.

Category: Republicans

The man who would be governor

Saw this last night and found it interesting. Passing it on without commentary other than to say I'm thinking it might be worth it to see Hoekstra win the governor's race, if only to get him out of DC before he does some really serious damage to our national security.

Category: Republicans

Obstructing Governance

President Obama's critics often accuse him of failing to accomplish enough and sneer at the Democratic party's inability to move legislation through the Congress when they hold a majority on paper. But governance can only happen if the minority party acts in good faith to keep the gears of our government turning. Unfortunately the GOP would rather abuse the parliamentary process for political ends than allow anyone to legislate on behalf of the people.

No where is that more apparent than in the GOP's abuse of the anonymous hold. Take for example the confirmation of Tom Shannon as ambassador to Brazil. Everyone agrees he is well qualified for the position. His nomination sailed through committee but a floor vote has been held up since May by the perverse machinations of the GOP.

First it was Sen. Jim DeMint who put an anonymous hold on the vote preventing it from reaching the floor. He kept that hold on until just last week. Almost immediately after DeMint released it, Sen. George LeMieux, recently appointed by Florida's Gov. Crist, put another hold on it. Even his fellow Republican Sen. Dick Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes this is undermining the best interests of our national security.

"I am concerned that unnecessary delays in confirming this outstanding and highly regarded career diplomat are beginning to impede our ability to work with Brazil on pressing regional issues, such as the resolution of the crisis in Honduras," Lugar said yesterday. "Coordination on regional matters is in the interests of our two countries and the region."

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the Charleston County Republican Party censured Sen. Lindsey Graham "for stepping across the GOP party line" and working with Democrats in our national interests. This, against a Senator who has a "lifetime conservative voting record of 90% and last year was rated the 15th most conservative senator by National Journal." I don't know how it could be any more clear that the GOP has been hijacked by ideologues who have lost sight of the purpose of public service. They're apparently willing to destroy this country as punishment for voting them out of power.

Category: Republicans

Bachmann to lead assault on Congress today - UPDATED 3X

Just when you think the woman couldn't possibly get more unhinged, Michelle Bachmann ups the ante on craziness. For today's PR show, she intends to assemble a mob of Tea Party protesters and storm the halls of Congress in "one last stand" to attempt to kill health care reform.

Although the event was hastily conceived, thousands have pledged to be there. The present plan is to meet on the Capitol steps at 1:00 today and then invade the hallowed halls en masse to confront targeted Congressmen. Bachmann held a series of conference calls last night with the tea party people, to plot her strategy.

Bachmann told organizers on one of the calls that her goal for the day was a simple one. "Don't forget -- the purpose of this is to kill the bill," she said.

"I think if we stop it, it could be dead for 10 years," Bachmann added.

No doubt and so will millions of Americans who have no meaningful access to health insurance die right along with it. What a plan.

Update: Here's a shocker. Fox "News" has been actively promoting this Republican sponsored riot protest.

Update two: Hearing crowd estimated at 3000-3500. Bachmann due to speak shortly.

Last update: CSPAN covered it live. Assume they'll have archived footage later. About a dozen GOP Reps and one Freedom Works organizer spoke. It appears Bachmann did not lead the crowd in, but TPM reports long lines forming to get into the building. Blocking traffic and some chanting "Kill the Bill." Hearing someone arrested. Cause unknown. TPM is updating regularly at the last link so I'll close here.

Category: Republicans

GOP alive and well, voters say

Given Tuesday's GOP election wins, reports of the death of the GOP are greatly exaggerated. Akin to years ago, when the Democrats were declared dead after the GOP swept Congress.

Last night's results suggest the obvious: Since they took over in January, Dems haven't done squat except double down on George Bush's expensive bailout -- which isn't working. There will never be proof that it worked because there's no way to know what would have happened had there been no bailout. Some economists say the country would have been stronger after a natural recession followed by steady growth.

But it's the perfect Bush-Obama political ploy -- make assertions that cannot be verified.

Meanwhile, the overseers who helped wreck the economy -- Geithner, Bernanke, and others -- are still in charge. And the banks are healthy enough to finance big bonuses yet unemployment and housing are wrecked, not to mention a lot of Joe Sixpack lives.

If you're feeling screwed by the Bush-Obama recovery strategy, you might be on to something.

As Yakov Smirnoff says, "What-a-county!"

Here for health care reform: Do you have $10,000 to buy in. You might have to pony up.

And here for GOP.

Category: Republicans

Who's Lying Now?

It's not often that my co-bloggers accuse me of lying, so indulge me while I spend a little more bandwidth responding to John's disingenuous accusations. John is a smart guy. He knows full well that thousands of bills are introduced in any given session of Congress and a handful of scattered proposals are basically meaningless. Furthermore, if my mentioning the absence of a realistic alternative plan from the GOP is a lie, then I'm not the only one lying. So are the House Republicans.

By all means, please read the whole article, but here's some excerpts from a news report published today:

Some House Republicans are growing frustrated that their leaders have not yet introduced a healthcare reform alternative. For months, the message from House GOP leaders on a healthcare bill has been similar to ads for yet-to-be-released movies: Coming soon. [...]

Prior to the August recess, Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.) the head of the GOP Healthcare Solutions Group, admitted that his party didn't need to offer a unified plan, noting that Democrats were taking so much heat for the proposals moving through the lower chamber at that time. [...]

GOP lawmakers pressing leaders to endorse one bill acknowledge that their leaders would face a tough task of convincing centrists and conservatives in the 177-member conference to agree on anything more than the principles put forward by Blunt's group earlier in the year. [...]

Senate Republicans have not unveiled an alternative healthcare reform bill, saying they plan to change the Democratic bill with amendments during the floor debate.

John is of course, free to characterize the paltry feints of individual low level Republicans any way he wants to, but I think most serious observers agree that the GOP leadership has simply failed to offer a realistic alternative to the Democratic party's plan.

Category: Republicans

This Is Your GOP

I keep reading these stories about how the GOP is catching up to the Democratic party on the use of the internet and social media. Well, it may be true that the GOP is increasing their presence on the internet, but bigger doesn't necessarily mean smarter. It seems the "Republican National Committee shelled out $1.4 million dollars over the last six months for Web sites and services" while the Democratic National Party managed to handle about the same level of traffic and bandwidth usage for a mere $203,000.

Maybe, the extra money can be explained by all the fake twitter accounts and websites created by GOPers under the names of their Democratic rivals. Twitter shut down 33 of the fake accounts, but last I heard, the phony internet pages were still running. Meanwhile, the official RNC Facebook page was running this photo for six days before they took it down this morning.



The small print on the photo describes "miscegenation" as "a crime against American values." Miscegenation, by the way, is defined as "a mixture of races." This was just one out of many offensive photos that were on the FB page. The photos were only removed after they were the subject of discussion on internet sites. Maybe the RNC could have spent some of that million plus on hiring a monitor for their websites to prevent these hateful postings.

Meanwhile, in other GOP trickery, a local news station reported the "Georgia Republican Party is sending out a political mailer disguised to look like an official U.S. Census survey." I can't believe that faking a census survey is even legal but it seems to me that if the Republicans would only spend as much time and energy coming up with some fresh ideas, instead of endlessly inventing deceitful dirty tricks designed to sabotage the Democrats for political gain, our country would be a lot better off right now.

Category: Republicans

GOP jokes

PWire flags this as quote of the day and it's a doozy. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), in an interview with Politico, when asked about his participation in the Congressional Sportsmen Caucus said, "We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition."

If you read the all the quotes at the Politico article, it's obvious that Harper is trying to be clever and it's meant as a joke. But I wonder if John Kerry made a joke like, "We hunt conservative, tea bag waving Republicans, but it seems like a waste of good bullets," how many conservatives would find it funny?

It reminds me of the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Idaho who "joshed" about issuing hunting tags to shoot at Obama. Considering that there are so many death threats against our president and other leading political figures that the Secret Service is strained to the limit, I don't really see the humor. In fact, they strike me as mean and irresponsible "jokes."