Send in the Clowns

Posted: December 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 38 Comments

For decades, the GOP has been courting racists, anti-women’s rights activists
, anti-gay bigots, and fundamentalist christian extremists, in an effort to become the majority party in the U.S. At this point, they may have succeeded, but at what cost?

As Dakinikat has said frequently, this isn’t the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, or even Reagan. Today’s GOP has become a job without a punch line. Anyone with any basic intelligence is laughing at the party’s presidential candidates! Even Karl Rove has been arguing that most of them are too far right to win a national election. From Fox News on August 15, 2011:

This is the guy who famously encouraged the christian right to believe the Bush administration would fight to enact their most extreme policies, while calling them “nuts” behind their backs.

But it just doesn’t work to invite crazy, intolerant people into your inner circle and then try to remain apart from them. An organization takes on the character of its members. In the years since Nixon’s won the presidency in 1968 with the Southern Strategy, the GOP has consciously chosen to welcome the most hateful, bigoted, and even demented people into the party power structure and now they are reaping what they sowed.

Today Rove lamented the “debate” that Donald Trump is supposedly organizing. (So far the only candidate who has confirmed he’ll attend is Newt Gingrich). Rove wants the RNC to discourage GOP candidates from attending the debate.

Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said Monday that the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) should step in to “discourage” presidential candidates from attending the upcoming debate moderated by Donald Trump.

“Here’s a guy who is saying, ‘I’m going to endorse one of you,’ ” Rove said, criticizing the choice on “Fox & Friends.”

“More importantly, what the heck are the Republican candidates doing showing up at a debate [whose moderator] says, ‘I may run for president next year as an Independent’? I think the Republican National [Committee] chairman [Reince Priebus] should step in and say, ‘We strongly discourage every candidate from appearing in a debate moderated by somebody who’s gonna run for president,’ ” he said.

Trump, promoting his new book, released this week, confirmed earlier on the show that he is planning to endorse and that if the candidate he prefers does not win the GOP nomination, he might consider an Independent bid following the conclusion of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”

But’s it’s too late. If Karl Rove wants to get back in control of the Republican Party, he’ll have to start over from scratch. The party of Bush has already moved so far to the right that Bush now looks like a moderate, semi-reasonable guy.

Donald Trump as powerbroker? Today a new poll was released showing that New Hampshire voters would be less likely to vote for any candidate endorsed by Trump. Trump was on MSNBC this morning to talk about the poll.

Yesterday, I was rereading Chris Hedges terrific book about the christian right, American Fascists; and I came across this famous quote by Karl Popper:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

That seems very relevant not only to the GOP, but also to today’s Democratic Party, which is once again welcoming in misogynists, anti-choicers, supporters of torture and anti-constitutional uses of executive power. When you “tolerate the intolerant,” you head down a slippy slope toward a hateful and uncivilized society. It’s seems to me that we are already quite a way down that slippery slope. Send in the clowns indeed.

Late Night: Can We Survive Another “Change” Campaign?

Posted: August 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 31 Comments

Via Politico, here is a portion of the speech Rick Perry will give tomorrow in Charleston, South Carolina. As everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows by now, Perry will be announcing that he’s running for President of the U.S.

“The change we seek will never emanate out of Washington. It will come from the windswept prairies of middle America; the farms and factories across this great land; the hearts and minds of God-fearing Americans — who will not accept a future that is less than our past, who will not be consigned a fate of LESS freedom in exchange for MORE government. We do not have to accept our current circumstances. We will change them. We’re Americans. That’s what we do. WE roll up our sleeves, WE get to work, WE make things better.”

Perry’s announcement will also feature a film made by an atheist, conservative filmmaker Michael Wilson, who hails from the “windswept prairies” of Minnesota.

In the video, a man, woman and two tow-headed children, eyes closed, fold their hands and pray around a table as a narrator says, “No matter what they’re raised to believe, my children should know that faith is none of the government’s business.”

The video, with an Independence Day theme, also talks of financial prosperity, limited government, health care choice and the “simple beauty of free markets.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel a little bit queasy from all this sappy, down-home, cornball talk.

Terrific Texas writer James C. Moore, author of Bush’s Brain, is convinced that Perry will be our next President.

His Saturday speech in South Carolina will make clear that he is entering the race for the White House and will spawn the ugliest and most expensive presidential race in U.S. history, and he will win. A C and D student, who hates to govern, loves to campaign, and barely has a sixth grader’s understanding of economics, will lead our nation into oblivion….

The big brains gathered east of the Hudson and Potomac Rivers believe that Mitt Romney is the candidate to beat. But they are unable to hear what Rick Perry is saying. The Christian prayer rally in Houston was a very loud proclamation to fundamentalists and Teavangelicals, which said, “I am not a Mormon.” The far right and Christian fundamentalists have an inordinate amount of influence in the GOP primary process and, regardless of messages of inclusion, very few of them will vote for a Mormon.

“We think a them Mormons as bein’ in kind of a cult,” one of the Houston rally attendees told me. “I couldn’t vote for one a them when we got a real Christian like Governor Perry runnin’.”

In other words, we’re doomed. And if Perry win, that will be the final proof that there is no god. Would a merciful god allow this man to become President?

House Republicans Want to Change the Definition of Rape

Posted: January 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: legislation, Reproductive Rights, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , | 25 Comments

OK, this is too much. If you need any more convincing that Republicans are just plain evil, check out this story at Mother Jones on the GOP’s new plan to limit funds for abortion.

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith’s spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old’s parents wouldn’t be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn’t be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

Unbelievable!! Don’t these people have any human decency? Are they so brainwashed by their fundamentalist religions that they are incapable of empathizing with a young girl who has been impregnated by her own father and could die if forced to give birth?

And get this, there is no definition of “forcible rape” in the bill. So who decides what “forcible” means? Many states do not have an official definition of “forcible rape,” so it could be that no woman in those states could qualify.

It sounds like overt violence has to be involved in order for the House GOPers to certify that the woman or little girl can get funding for an abortion. Under this policy, according to Mother Jones, women who have been date raped, women who have been drugged and raped, and women who are taken advantage of because they are drunk or have cognitive disabilities would not meet the requirements.

If this bill passed, what would it do to public perceptions about rape. Before the women’s movement rapes were hardly ever successfully prosecuted. It was assumed that women “asked for it”–they were wearing the wrong clothing, or they acted in provocative ways. If the police thought the women didn’t fight hard enough, her case might not even get to court. For years a battle has been waged to change public perceptions around rape. But now we may be taken back to square one.

It’s really hard to believe that so many of these right wing Republicans claim to follow Jesus’ teachings. This bill is the product of heartless, cruel people with sick minds.