Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Republicans don’t trust women.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

So many bastards, so little time.

This blog will pay for itself.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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Republican Stupidity

Gay-Bashing as Electoral Strategy

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If you needed any evidence of what I was talking about in the post just below this, here it is:

The divisive debate over gay marriage, which played a prominent role in 2004 campaigns but this year largely faded from view, erupted anew on Thursday as President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Wednesday’s ruling, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, had immediate ripple effects, especially in Senate races in some of the eight states where voters are considering constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.

President Bush put a spotlight on the issue while campaigning in Iowa, which does not have a proposal on the ballot. With the Republican House candidate, Jeff Lamberti, by his side, Mr. Bush — who has not been talking about gay marriage in recent weeks — took pains to insert a reference into his stump speech warning that Democrats would raise taxes and make America less safe.

“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Mr. Bush said at a luncheon at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that raised $400,000 for Mr. Lamberti.

The president drew applause when he reiterated his long-held stance that marriage was “a union between a man and a woman,” adding, “I believe it’s a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended.”

If you ask most honest conservatives off the record, they will tell you that the war over gay marriage is over, and gay marriage has won. Why then, is the President inserting this sort of rhetoric, setting the stage for more gay-bashing, more acrimony, more divisiveness?

For political gain- because it will whip up the base and they will come out and vote Republican.

All this bullshit about ‘activist judges’ or marriage being under ‘assault’ is just that- bullshit. Civil unions are here and they are not going anywhere, and nationwide gay marriage is right around the corner- perhaps another generation. Conservatives know this- Republicans know this- just like they know that two men getting hitched in no way threatens or cheapens traditional marriage in any way. It is all a charade, albeit a mean-spirited one. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were the reaction of the Republican party:

But, despite my reservations about courts going too far and the possibility of bad second-order effects, it’s hard not to be a little happy for thousands of gay couples who’ve just had a door opened to them.

That sort of attitude would, unfortunately, run contrary to the offical election strategy of villifying teh gay, and would drive away the Republican base- scumbags like Dan Riehl.

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Onward Christian Voters

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The church as political pulpit, yet again:

A nonprofit group has filed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the role that two churches may have played in the re-election campaign of Kansas’ attorney general.

The complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan legal watchdog organization, cited a memorandum from the attorney general, Phill Kline, a Republican, directing members of his campaign staff to recruit churches to distribute campaign literature and serve as the sites for events.

“This is the top law enforcement official in the state who is encouraging everyone to break the law,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group. “He’s either abysmally unfamiliar with the law, or he’s deliberately violating it.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Kline, Sherriene Jones, did not return calls to her office.

In his memorandum, Mr. Kline identified two Topeka churches, the Light of the World Christian Center and the Wanamaker Woods Church of the Nazarene, which he said had participated in “lit drops” by handing out campaign literature. A woman who answered the telephone at Wanamaker Woods Church said the church had no comment.

Who exactly is Phill Kline? This fellow:

Phill Kline, Republican attorney general of Kansas, is determined not to be defensive. Making headlines with his subpoena of abortion records and his closed-door discussions of evolution with State Board of Education members, the former scholarship wrestler comes across as well satisfied with what he has wrought.

He has a job to do, Kline explained during a break at a meeting of attorneys general in Washington. Principles are at stake, he said, and liberals who dismiss the conservative values agenda as a political stratagem really do not know what they are talking about.

Kline is the man who wanted to fish through abortion records to find evidence ofcrimes. Fortunately, the courts (damned activist judges) told him to go pound salt. Modern Republicans don’t want a society in which they are free to worship as they choose- they want a society in which you are free to worship as they choose. They wish to replace the laws of man with the laws of God, and then enforce those laws with the full power of the state. And they intend to do whatever they can to make sure that happens, laws and the Constitution be damned.

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As Each Day Passes

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I wonder more and more how I voted for this party, and gather more and more evidence that I really was just drinking Kool-Aid. Red State, today:

There have now been three polls in Missouri taken during or after Michael J. Fox appeared on St. Louis television screens. One was taken in its entirety yesterday.

The result?

Jim Talent is ahead for three polls in a row by three points in two polls and by two points in another, something that he hasn’t seen in some time.

Maybe Michael J. Fox trying to convince Missourians of facts that are actually lies played as effectively as Alec Baldwin threatening to leave the country if George Bush were re-elected.

This is the same Red State that yesterday featured a video of a talking fetus explaining why you should be against embryonic stem cell research while proclaiming Rush was right to smear Michael J. Fox. Because, as we all know, a fetus is the same as a stem cell.

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It Isn’t The First Time

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Something was bothering me about the right-wing reaction to the Michael J. Fox commercials (other than the obivous revulsion to what they said about him), and I couldn’t figure out what it was that was bothering me. And then it came to me- this isn;t the first time the GOP and their enablers have attacked a sick man in the defense of embryos. Remember this:

Senator Specter apparently wants a place on your wall. Here’s why he shouldn’t get the chance.

Pick your poster child: Arlen Specter, bald from chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin’s disease, saying that he is Exhibit A for embryonic stem-cell research … or those cute little kids in the AP photo with this caption: “President Bush appeared at the White House with babies and toddlers born of test-tube embryos, some wearing shirts that read ‘former embryo.’”

“I look in the mirror every day,” says Specter, “barely recognize myself. And not to have the availability of the best of medical care is simply atrocious.”

Meanwhile, President Bush was busy praising a Christian agency that helps couples adopt frozen embryos. Amidst 21 babies and toddlers who began their lives as frozen embryos left over after fertility treatments, the president said, “there is no such thing as a spare embryo.”

So, again, pick your poster child. The man with a disease who thinks there is vast medical potential in destroying babies described as embryos, or the children who developed from their embryonic state to roll around on White House carpet.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the viciousness from the compassionate conservatives who make up the right. They can’t help themselves- this is who they are. Smearing people is what they do. Vicious gutter politics is in their genes. It is what the Republican party has become.

It is why they have to go.

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You Might as Well Vote For The Democrats

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Since the folks at Powerline are pre-emptively blaming them for a loss in Iraq (via the Belgravia Dispatch):

We haven’t lost in Iraq, and we probably won’t if we remain determined to prevail. The situation today is not good in some parts of Iraq, but the implicit suggestion that it can’t get worse is absurd. As I wrote here, the current murder rate in Baghdad is around four times the murder rate in Washington, D.C. in 1991. The murder rate for Iraq as a whole is not quite double the 1991 Washington D.C. rate. This is a high level of violence, to be sure. But it is nothing compared to an actual civil war. It is nothing compared to genocide. If the Democrats win in November, they are likely to have, before long, a great deal of blood on their hands.

Just to get you up to speed on future talking points, even though it was a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate that sold, planned (sort of) and implemented the war, it was the Democrats who are to blame for losing it.

I can’t believe I ever voted for these people.

***Update***

From Bush’s presser:

QUESTION: Mr. President, the war in Iraq has lasted almost as long as World War II for the United States.

And as you mentioned, October was the deadliest month for American forces this year — in a year. Do you think we’re winning, and why?

BUSH: First of all, this is a different kind of war than a war against the fascists in World War II. We were facing a nation state — two nation states — three nation states in World War II. We were able to find an enemy by locating its ships or aircraft or soldiers on the ground.

This is a war against extremists and radicals who kill innocent people to achieve political objectives. It has a multiple of fronts.

Afghanistan was a front in this war against the terrorists. Iraq is now the central front in the war against the terrorists.

This war is more than just finding people and bringing them to justice. This war is an ideological conflict between a radical ideology that can’t stand freedom and moderate, reasonable people that hope to live in a peaceful society.

And so it’s going to take a long time. I am confident we will succeed. I am confident we’ll succeed in Iraq. And the reason I’m confident we’ll succeed in Iraq is because the Iraqis want to succeed in Iraq.

The ultimate victory in Iraq, which is a government that can sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself, depends upon the Iraqi citizens and the Iraqi government doing the hard work necessary to protect their country. And our job is to help them achieve that objective.

As a matter of fact, my view is: The only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.

And I’m confident we can succeed in the broader war on terror, this ideological conflict.

So while Powerline describes our status in the war in Iraq as “We haven’t lost in Iraq…,” Bush claims we are winning and we only lose if we leave.

To make sure we are clear, we aren’t winning, but if we do, the Republicans deserve credit. If we lose the elections and withdraw, it is the Democrats fault. Stay tuned for the talking points for what happens if the Republicans maintain control of the Congress and we lose in Iraq. I blame Michael J. Fox (he is an actor AND Canadian).

Thank goodness the adults are in charge.

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The “Jerky” Boy

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Here is Ray Preston’s interview with Michael J. Fox. Watch them:

In the second clip, Fox exhibits a level of maturity, and, given his condition, a deal of courage that eludes my friends on the right:

“For those who still have thought about it, considered it, and prayed on it, and put a lot of emotion into it and they still come up on the side where they are not in favor of it, that’s America, I love that, I respect that, that is sort of what Democracy is all about, and those people are going to vote for Senator Talent.”

His life and career devastated by the illness, he is willing to submit to the democratic process. For that willingness to work within the system, he is met by sneers, jeers, and accusations. Here is Dan Riehl (I am not sending him any traffic, so no link):

Shake, Rattle and Rolling Into November

Yes, one of the Jerky Boyz, Michael J. Fox supports McCaskill. Allah has the video and Dean Barnett weighs in here. Hell, I’m not even opposed to stem cell research, however I am against public funding because I respect people who see it as a valid moral issue. What I can’t respect is displacing science with emotion on issues of national import, something Fox deliberately set out to do – so I don’t feel a need to worship at his scientifically shaky position, just now.

Rush Limbaugh:

“This is really shameless, folks. This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting, one of the two,” Limbaugh said.

“He is an actor, after all,” Rush said later.

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act.”

“This is the only time I’ve ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has,” Limbaugh said. “He can barely control himself.”

Here is National Review’s K-LO, defending Rush:

Rush said what doctors and other experts were saying off the record on Monday when the news of the Michael J. Fox ads were fresh to the election buzzlines: That it looked like he must have laid off his medication to make sure viewers would have a worse-day kinda look at life with Parkinson’s. As Limbaugh has pointed out, Fox admitted he does such things (like when testifying before a congressional committee) in his memoir. I knew this because I watched the E True Hollywood Story on Fox (true story, alas). That’s not to say that he doesn’t suffer — he obviously does. But the hard-to-watch Fox ads we’ve seen this week were, like most political ads, made in Spin City.

Michael J. Fox is advocating for his cause, and, even though it is slowly killing him, is willing to work within the political process to try to achieve an end which will never help him, but might help others. His opponents find that threatening, and have chosen to attack him, smearing him as a fake and a fraud, poking fun at the symptoms of the disease that is killing him and questioning his honesty and integrity, solely so they can retain political power.

Which side of this do you choose to be associated with? Is this a question decent people even need to think about?

*** Update ***

Even the Superficial has decided it is necessary to take a break from posting semi-nude pics of Lindsay Lohan to call Limbaugh an asshole:

And then he drove down to the local hospital and yelled at a bunch of patients for being liars. That guy with cerebral palsy who keeps twitching? Liar! That guy who got shot three times in the stomach who keeps bleeding? Liar! They’re all liars. And there’s only one man brave enough to stand up for truth and justice and all that is right: Batman! But he was off fighting a giant mechanical spider or something so they called in Rush Limbaugh.

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The Boy President

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Politics and profit, it appears, is still more important than a few dead miners:

Ah, the magic of the presidency. The Senate has refused to confirm former coal company executive Richard Stickler as the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). So, while they were out, Bush gave him a recess appointment to the post.

MSHA exists to protect miners’ well-being. Once a miner himself, Stickler spent most of his career above ground, much of it as an executive for companies like coal giant Massey Energy. According to the Charleston Gazette, Stickler’s mines had accident rates of twice the national average.

At a Senate hearing in March, Stickler explained that if U.S. mines were unsafe, it wasn’t an “enforcement problem,” merely a “compliance problem.” His nomination was opposed by the United Mine Workers of America and the AFL-CIO, among others.

Apply that ‘logic’ to the war on drugs- the reason we are failing isn’t because we aren’t catching the drug dealers, it is because the drug dealers refuse to comply with drug laws.

Oh, and guess what happened over the week-end just down the road from me:

A man is dead after an accident at a coal mine Friday in Fellowsville, Preston County. Officials are not releasing the man’s name.

Caryn Gresham, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training said the accident involved a rib-roll. A rib-roll occurs when the wooden rib of a mine comes loose from the wall or roof of the mine. Gresham said once the rib is loose, it usually causes rocks to fall.

The miner was taken to Preston Memorial Hospital, where he later died.

Someone commented the other day that if the Democrats win in 2006, nothing much will change. The President will just find his veto pen and continue to appoint who he wants through recess appointments. In this case, the boy President, the great decider, had his man and he was sticking to him- even if the the Senate and everyone in the mining industry with a reason to be concerned about safety opposed him. But, as always with this administration and this GOP, it isn’t about what is right or what is good with this country. It is about political power, rewarding those who have been loyal, and, at the core, simply getting what you want at the expense of everyone else- in this case, the widows and orphans of future dead miners.

Thank goodness the adults are in charge. I am really looking forward to voting for the Democrats.

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