The GOP Now Stands for Nothing

According to the Dallas Morning News anyway.

What does it mean to be a Republican?

For generations, the answer had been clear: A belief in individual liberty. Free markets. Strong national defense.

But what does it mean to be a Republican today? With Donald Trump as the party's new standard-bearer, it's impossible to say.

Yes, the Republicans are on their way to losing Texas. Not this year, but soon they will start presidential elections without the electoral votes of NY, California, Florida and Texas. 

Biden Wins Sartorial Debate

Joe Biden wins in the all important how-to-wear-a-fuckin'-baseball-cap debate:

vs.

It's no contest folks.



Bubble Boys

The Romney campaign seems to be illustrating the dangers of believing your own propagandists.

It may just be that (Romney) and those around him don’t grasp how the politics of foreign policy have changed in the Obama era – that the rhetoric Republicans routinely deployed against Democrats for the last decade doesn’t resonate anymore. There’s also the profound disconnect between the Obama caricature that the right has embraced – a weak, constantly vacillating leader who travels the world apologizing to other countries on America’s behalf – and the leader that the rest of the country sees. As Jonathan Chait theorized on Wednesday:

The miscalculation at work here is that Romney believed his “Apology Tour” method would neatly fit the events at hand — take an event that sort of vaguely resembled an Obama apology to Muslims who don’t like us, twist it around, and call it a day. But Romney had grown accustomed to spinning fantasies cobbled together from months-old Obama speeches and nurtured into legend by extensive repetition and exaggeration in the conservative subculture. What he failed to realize from the outset was that the embassy attack was an immediate, high-profile event that he could not hope to rewrite so brazenly.

Keep listening to Rush there Willard.

What if Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaida leaders gave up Osama Bin Laden for the express purpose of making Obama look good? Giving Obama stature, political capital. Obama got Osama! I mean really, do you think al-Qaida depends on Osama Bin Laden any more, like it did?… So they give him him, they give away his location. We go in, SEAL Team 6, Obama puffs up… Keep him in power, furthers the cause… Do you think the militant Islamists will be as hopeful of getting rid of Israel with a Republican president or with a Democrat president? Just throwing it out there.

The Republicans need to be beaten so badly that they come to their senses. It would be great to live in a country with two sane political parties.

Paul Ryan Suspended

It was announced today that the FEC has suspended Paul Ryan for 50 days for testing positive for an illegal substance. A Ryan spokesman explained that he didn't know how this could have happened unless it was the veep nominee's bull semen power drinks. While Ryan will miss the Republican convention his chiseled physique will return in time for the stretch drive to election day.

The White House released this statement, “Anytime you hear about something like that, with someone that’s had success against you, it’s disappointing.” He added, "the president wants to reassure all Americans that he will be sticking to the suds and avoiding performance and revenue enhancers."

Et Tu Stockman

It's one thing for Romney and Ryan to have Paul Krugman telling them they're full of shit.

 Ryan has a completely undeserved reputation in the media as a bluff, honest guy, in Ryan’s case supplemented by a reputation as a serious policy wonk. None of this has any basis in reality; Ryan’s much-touted plan, far from being a real solution, relies crucially on stuff that is just pulled out of thin air — huge revenue increases from closing unspecified loopholes, huge spending cuts achieved in ways not mentioned. See Matt Miller for more.

It seems like quite another to have David Stockman doing so.

Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.

And this from the Matt Miller link.

Ryan’s revised plan, passed by the House in 2011, wouldn’t reach balance until the 2030s while adding $14 trillion in debt. It adds $6 trillion in debt over the next decade alone — yet Republicans had the chutzpah to say they wouldn’t raise the debt limit!

 Over time, Ryan’s “vision” would decimate most federal activities beyond Social Security, Medicare and defense.

So, I Was Feeling All Sad and Blue

I had gone over to faux professor Donald's place and he was all happy about the Ryan pick. No links cause he hates the traffic especially from Nazi progressives. And I went and read Roy's Voice column about how it's the Second Coming of Saint Ronnie now that Willard and Paul have hooked up. BTW, go visit Roy, he loves the company. The Reagan loving is laid on very thick, though.

So I was feeling very down until I went and visited my second favorite wingnut. Bob Lonsberry is kind of a local boy made, well not much. He's on the radio out Rochester way and writes a web column. When I saw the title of his column,  RYAN WAS THE WRONG CHOICE, my spirits were immediately elevated.

He has decided to throw the race and he has decided not to be subtle about it. Here’s the bottom line: Paul Ryan doesn’t bring a vote to the ticket.

Now Bob's a fellow Mormon so he probably has the inside scoop from himself. And I'd been thinking for awhile that Romney was taking a dive. To have it confirmed is some really good news, though.

 In a race where the fight is for the flakes in the middle, Paul Ryan absolutely does not move the needle.

We see here that Bob himself is not much the politician or he doesn't think "the flakes in the middle" are going to read his web musings. And not that I would want Paul Ryan in charge of anything, but from the point of view of the opposition this makes sense.

Having Paul Ryan’s knowledge and intellect guide the restructuring of the federal budget in a Romney administration is a good idea. To do that, you make him Treasury secretary, or director of the budget, or create some czar position. Almost never has a vice president been selected on the basis of some specialized skill which he would use in the administration. That’s what cabinet secretaries are for.

Fortunately Bob and I agree that Ryan is not going to get to do that either.

And, incredibly, by his choice, Mitt Romney has ended the congressional career of the only guy with the brains and the guts to say what needs to be said about the budget.

Say it loud, proud and often you zombie eyed granny starver!

And Mitt Romney has played directly into it. The Democrats have invested a year in making Paul Ryan’s last name a cuss word in American politics, and Mitt Romney has made sure that that Democrat investment doesn’t go to waste. We have agreed to argue their issue, and that is almost never a smart move.

Thanks Bob.

UPDATE: My hopes are confirmed after coming back from viewing the stock markets' nearly half a percent nosedive on the first open since the Ryan pick. I know how the Right likes to put so much weight on every little movement up or down. Obviously this is a slam dunk.

Or Maybe Ron Paul

The White House is offering to help expand Willard's Veep choices.

Pick Paul Ryan! Bobby Jindal! Rob Portman! Tim Pawlenty! When it comes to advising Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on choosing a running mate, it seems as though everyone inside the Beltway is getting in on the act—including, now, the Obama campaign.


"Newt Gingrich or Michele Bachmann would be an excellent choice for Mitt Romney to choose," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One.

I understand Dr. Paul is not on the scheduled speaker's list yet so maybe he is on their RADAR.

ROMNEY/PAUL 2012 - Rich and Crazy!

UPDATE: Looks like it's Paul Ryan.

Romney/Ryan 2012 - Rich and Zombie Eyed Granny Starver

Out Drudging Drudge

This Just In:

From our top secret source inside the Romney campaign comes word of a change in the Veep pick. Apparently Bain Capital was too contentious a choice. Playing it safe, Willard is going with Kelsey Grammar. But since Mr. Grammar is currently busy with his hit TV program his role will be played by Fred Thompson. I'm sure this announcement will prove to be as accurate as the "scoop" on Condi Rice.

Optimistic Much?

Admittedly that title could refer to me. I am the eternal optimist. But it, in this case, refers to Jennifer Rubin.


Obama is now committed to a strategy that isn’t working. He’s left to unleash his attack dogs and to pray for a miracle. Maybe the economy will rebound. Perhaps Romney will implode or pick a Sarah-Palin-type for vice president.

As evidence of the coming Willard landslide she points to the Obama campaign asking for contributions and running attack ads.

Why has the Obama team been publicly wailing about losing out to Mitt Romney in the money race? Why would the president accuse his opponent of not merely being wrong or unqualified but criminal? After all, the polls are tied, so why so much worry in Obamaland?

And the ads the Obama campaign ran were not just negative.

Virtually all of the ads were viciously negative, and judging from the number of Pinocchios they’ve racked up, continually and materially false.


But it didn’t work. Romney and Obama are still deadlocked. (The AP quoted Republican operative Carl Forti: “I don’t think . . . [Obama’s] got a choice. He has to try to change the dynamic now, but the polling indicates it’s not working. He doesn’t appear to be making any headway in the polls.”)

Just how bad does it look for the president?

“President Barack Obama’s campaign has spent nearly $100 million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far, unleashing a sustained early barrage designed to create lasting, negative impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the fall.” Think of it like the Confederacy’s artillery barrage on the third day of Gettysburg before Pickett’s charge — you have to in essence disable the other side before the charge begins or its curtains.

Somehow it seems ironic to be comparing the re-election campaign of a black president to a military campaign conducted by the losing side in a war to sustain slavery in this country. But that could be just me. Maybe Ms. Rubin is one of those right wing folks who think the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Anyway I was getting all despondent about the coming Romney regime so I went over to the folks at Gallup and guess what.




And it almost looks like they're moving in opposite directions.

I like being contrarian too. But not just for the sake of being contrarian.








He doesn't look worried.

In Case You Forgot Him

Willard is bring back into the daylight one of the most beloved Republican politicians ever. No, he didn't dig up Ronald Reagan.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will host a high-priced fundraiser for Mitt Romney at his Wyoming home Thursday night.

Think you might like to go?

The $30,000-a-couple dinner at Cheney's home outside of Jackson Hole will follow a reception at the fancy Teton Pines country club nearby.

Eh, maybe not.

Together, the two events are expected to raise more than $2 million for the Romney campaign.

Is it worth the 2 million to put the Penguin back in the minds of voters?

The Associated Press says Romney rarely appears in public with Cheney or with former President George W. Bush, and even goes out of his way at times to avoid saying Bush's name out loud, simply calling him President Obama's "predecessor."

Apparently worth it with Cheney but not Bush President Obama's "predecessor."

Back in September 2011, Romney said that when it comes time to choose a vice president, he'd pick someone like Cheney.

Well just don't let him lead the search for one anyway.

"That's the kind of person I'd like to have--a person of wisdom and judgment," Romney told a crowd in Arizona.

What more can you say after that?

How Much is in Your IRA?

Bet it's not as much as Willard has in his.

(Q)uestions have persisted for months about an individual retirement account held by the Romneys valued at upwards of $100 million — a stunning amount for a savings vehicle designed to provide middle class retirees comfortable, but non-lavish retirement.

I'm not hating on the rich here. And I'm really not even envious since I'm a man of simple tastes. Keep the caviar and I'll just have sardines and crackers please. But:

His IRA raises two key questions, both of which his campaign has consistently declined to answer: How, despite a $6000 legal limit on annual contributions to an IRA, did Romney’s IRA grow to over $100 million? And did he avoid any U.S. taxes on its enormous returns?

Just call me curious. It's only recently that the limit has gone up to $6000. I'm 55 years old and have been relatively diligent about funding my IRA and Willard has me by a thousandfold.

Anyway, if there is a God in Heaven and Romney loses in November he can always do the latenight TV infomercials and explain to us po'folk how to get as rich as he is. But then I'm lower income and not that edumacated:

"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."


So, I'll probably never be able to say, “Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.”

We'll always have gruel or maybe soylent green.

Fiddling With Mitt

     It will come as a surprise to learn that htis blog has a mole in the Romney camp. Our source is an associate of Willard Augustus' known only to us as Deep Kibble. He has let us have a sneak preview of things to come if Romney attains the crown.

     Mitt has vowed to slash the "federal firefighter, police and teacher budgets" once elected. He is backed in this by the Cato Koch Institute. Spokeperson Ayn Rand IV stated, "home schooling, guns and fire extinguishers made this country great along with free enterprise, freedom from taxation and buy one get one free sales."

     Willard has retained the Bush playbook on Katrina and pledges to do the same heckuva job on national disasters (his presidency excluded). Brownie will be coming back to head FEMA until it's outsourced to China. Outsourcing will come within the purview of his vice- president, Bain Capital. Since corporations are treated as individuals under the law, the GOP has decided to just go ahead and run them for office. Since they're controlling us anyway. It's refreshing to be given this small bit of honesty.

     Bain Capital narrowly beat out Mitt's first choice, the ghost of Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately for Gipper fans the planchette kept moving to "NO."

     Those who feared the imposition of Sharia law under Barack Obama can rest easy. Willard I is set to make the US the first country to be ruled by Mormon law. States which have grown fat and happy off the taxes imposed on cigarettes, alcohol and caffeine drinks will have to look elsewhere for easy money. Since there will be no cops or regulations addicts of these once legal substances will easily be able to find them on the black market.

     With the election of Willard Romney the devolution of the US is nearly complete. The declaration of war against Iran should increase our debt to the point of inevitable collapse. The Chinese will foreclose and continue to run our country via the departments of government we have outsoured to them. Our military will be dissolved since we can no longer finance it. And it ends happily with a whimper not a bang.

Should Assange Hunt Down Palin?

 

Sarah Palin on the Egyptian crisis:

Sarah Palin says the Obama administration must tell Americans what it knows about who will be Egypt's next leader.

In a Christian Broadcasting Network interview released Saturday, the 2008 vice presidential candidate says the administration should level with the American people on what it knows about the Egyptian crisis.

Sarah Palin on Julian Assange:

Sarah Palin, who is widely tipped as a possible Republican candidate for president in 2012, has said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

We can only hope she finds the information the Obama Administration possesses, releases it and calls for the armed forces to hunt herself down.

I’m Mad Too, Carl

OK, not really. I’ll be a little disappointed in a week when the big top comes down on Carl “Clownshoes” Paladino. In the meantime, here’s some Rachel Maddow:

 

 

Mad does mean crazy as a loon, right?

Bloomberg Refudiates Palin

In a welcome display of Republican sanity, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has told Sarah Palin to piss off.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg "could not disagree more" with Sarah Palin's criticisms of the Ground Zero mosque, he said Monday.

Bloomberg said the $100 million mosque and community center is " a great message for the world that, unlike in other places where they might actually ban people from wearing burquas or building a building, that's not what America was founded on nor is it what America should become."

It’s alright Sarah, even Shakespeare in his prime had detractors. If those slings and arrows ever bug you and you’re wondering whether to be or not to be, please come down on the side of the latter.

Mark Williams chimed in with bits of insanity which can only be interpreted as attempts to make Palin look reasonable.

In other Ground Zero mosque news, Mark Williams, a Tea Party leader who called Borough President Stringer a "Jewish Uncle Tom" for supporting the project, has been kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation for making separate racially charged comments.

The Tea Party Federation also booted Williams’ Tea Party Express group after Williams wrote a mock letter from "the Colored People" to President Lincoln saying emancipation was a mistake.

Williams wrote an anti-mosque blog post in May saying that Muslims worship a "monkey god."

More Bloombergs, Fewer Palins!

Happy 4th to the Left from Johnny Pod

No, I’m just kidding! BTW,  the column is called “Patriotic Opposition.” Just trying to remember if John would have called any dissent against George Bush, “patriotic opposition.”

How are those of us who stand in opposition to the domestic agenda and foreign-policy views of President Obama and his administration to think about this country in 2010 as we approach the nation's birthday on Sunday?

Or, to put it another way: How should a self-described patriot think, act and talk about the United States if that self-described patriot believes the elected leadership of the United States has led the country into a ditch that threatens to expand into a bottomless chasm?

You could just STFU. I believe that was the message to all who disagreed with the marvelous adventure in Mesopotamia.

Does the fault lie with the president and his party, or does it reside in the electorate that installed them? If it resides in the electorate, what does that say about the condition of the United States?

The third option, of course, is that it lies within you and the other idiots whom the GOP has yet to see fit to send to a desert island somewhere.

Conveniently, this kind of focus on Obama personally exempts the rest of the country from any blame, except for being so foolish as to fall for Obama's patter: The fault lies not in ourselves but in our leaders.

But for those who are unsatisfied with this, the blame attaches not to Obama himself -- after all, he really did tell us what he intended to do, by telling Joe the Plumber he wanted to redistribute wealth.

Rather, the blame attaches to the electorate for its foolishness in believing the hype, or for falling for the siren song of the European social democracy that Obama is eager to impose. So the root question here is: Have the American people changed?

So, we the American people are to blame for Obama? Even if his premise is correct and we are suffering buyer’s remorse, he never mentions John McCain in this column. Obama wasn’t elected in a vacuum. Maybe Pod thinks we should have all written in Joe the Plumber.

The body politic is not panicking, even though the news is dire -- because it knows, somehow, that this too shall pass. America has faced worse times and weathered them. Even within our memory, it has had other leaders who also misunderstood their mandates and offered solutions to the nation's problems that only exacerbated them.

The body politic learns from its mistakes and uses its power to correct them. Taken as a whole, this bunch of rubes and dupes and boobs shows a remarkably commonsensical approach to these things by saying, in essence:

Nothing is irreversible. Change is possible.

Once again, this requires that the right actually put up a candidate that a majority of the United States citizenry will vote for. Don’t see that right now.

Thank You, Mr. President

The Tea Party folks aren’t going to do it, so I will. Thank you Barack Obama for cutting my taxes. I could afford to pay more, but who really wants to if they don’t have to. The Tea Party folks think they are paying more, but they are quite possibly cretin idiots.

"In all, we passed 25 different tax cuts last year. And one thing we haven't done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year -- another promise that we kept," he told supporters at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you."

The president argued that America is on the road to recovery and headed in the right direction -- something an overwhelming number of Tea Partiers disagree with.

The Tea Partiers don’t want to see us on the road to recovery. Fuck them and their willful ignorance.

Seeking a Fat, Boring, Albino Adulterer

The Republican Party having decided they hate everything about Barack Obama has gone in search of his antithesis.

Southern Republicans wrapped up a three-day meeting in New Orleans on Saturday unified in fervent opposition to President Barack Obama, but wide open at this early stage about whom they want to challenge him in 2012.

They have yet to find a candidate who combines all the qualities they feel will be needed to successfully challenge his Obamaship in 2012.

But they also readily volunteered objections to the same names: Gingrich has personal baggage, Palin's too inexperienced, Romney pushed Obama-like health care while governor of Massachusetts and Pawlenty lacks charisma.

If only they could find someone who combines the serial adultery of Gingrich with the tedium of Pawlenty and the pasty whiteness of Romney along with that deer in the headlights vacuousness of Sarah Palin.

I’m going to go out on a limb and give a big thumb up and Hometown boost to Haley Barbour. He’s white enough, he’s sleazy enough, he’s boring enough and with the endorsement of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s incredibly tone deaf proclamation: he’s proved he’s stupid enough to be the Republican nominee.

This is not Haley Barbour:

Accept no imitations!

 

And yes, carrying the concept out, I realize they would be looking for a fat, boring, albino, adulterous, woman since Obama is a man. But, this is not a serious blog. Please see LGM, Balloon Juice, Duck of Minerva or elsewhere for serious discussions. It’s seat of the pants all the way here.

Happy Days Are Here Again…

Well we can hope anyway. And it’s hard to write that as I sit looking at the rain come down. Recessions make us pessimistic and always doubtful that the end will come. And of course are particularly hard on those who are out of work. But, they do end.

The American economy appears to be in a cyclical recovery that is gaining strength. Firms have begun to hire and consumer spending seems to be accelerating.

That is what usually happens after particularly sharp recessions, so it is surprising that many commentators, whether economists or politicians, seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening.

If I had the time to waste I’d go over to AmPow and see how the polymath from Long Beach College is applying his great knowledge of economics to this to determine that it is bad news for Obama.

it is normal for recessions to make people pessimistic. “Go back and read what people were saying in 1982 or 1975,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG. “Nobody was saying, ‘Deep recession, big recovery.’ It is quite normal to expect an abnormally weak recovery. It is also normal for that expectation to be wrong.”

I’m perfectly happy to hear the wingers keep saying we’re on the road to ruin. They can keep saying it right through the next few elections and look even more foolish.

In 1982, Democrats scoffed at a surging stock market and thought a severe recession would last for a very long time. They were confident that the economy would doom Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. All they had to do was make clear they offered a stark alternative to the failing policies of the incumbent

Change a few words (Reagan to Obama, Democrats to Republicans, 1984 to 2012) and you have an accurate description of the current political climate. Could the Republicans be as wrong now as the Democrats were then?

That’s the secret, get the recession out of the way early in your presidency. Dubya fucked up. He had one early and one at the end.

Mel Brooks, Prophet?

What did you expect? "Welcome sonny," "Make yourself at home," "Marry my daughter." You've got to remember, that these are just simple farmers, these are people of the land, the common clay of the new west. You know . . . morons.

The only way Obama is going to win over these people is if Mongo comes to town. And I hope that doesn’t metaphorically happen.

President Barack Obama says he believes the Tea Party is built around a "core group" of people who question whether he is a U.S. citizen and believe he is a socialist.

 

Apparently he feels there are some in the Tea Party who are sane. We can only hope.

But beyond that, Obama tells NBC he recognizes the movement involves "folks who have legitimate concerns" about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously.

 

Please excuse all the verboten cut and paste.