Howard Dean would like to be the new head of the DNC. I'm down with that.

Howard Dean, back when just one yell could end you candidacy.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said he is running for his old job atop the Democratic Party. 

"The dems need organization and focus on the young," Dean tweeted Thursday. "Need a fifty State strategy and tech rehab. I am in for chairman again."

Dean served as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2005 to 2009. Donna Brazile is currently serving as interim chairwoman after Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down shortly before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Bernie Sanders has endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison for the job, and while I have nothing against that choice I think Dean is a better way to go. 

For one thing he had the job once before and by all accounts did a very good job.

He is also pragmatic and thinks carefully before making a move.

And when it comes to the Millennials he has a plan for bringing them to the table.

Which I think he can do since in many ways he WAS Bernie Sanders before Bernie Sanders.

During his 2004 presidential run Howard Dean was also packing venues with young people who were excited by his message, so in many ways he understands what they are thinking, even this newer group twelve years later.

That plus his experience makes him the best fit.

In my humble opinion.

Perhaps the inspiration for the Immoral Minority?

Somebody sent this Bloom County cartoon from 1981 to me the other day, and said they had stumbled upon it and were amused by the fact that it mentioned an Immoral Minority.

Well coincidentally this was one of my favorite strips back then as well.

However I forgot about this particular strip until I saw it again.

I have said many times in the past that the inspiration for the name of this blog was always in response to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and that's true. 

That being said it is also possible that this cartoon stuck in my subconscious for twenty three years and in 2004 when I started IM, there it was.

Well I can only hope to have the same positive impact on all of you, that Bloom County had on me way back when I was a fresh faced 21 year old kid.

Elizabeth Warren talking about Hillary Clinton in 2004 interview is something I think we all should watch.

Now if you will notice Warren really stresses how intelligent and formidable Hillary Clinton was back when she was First Lady. And she also kind of gives Hillary a pass, to some degree, for her vote later which ultimately undid all of the work she did previously.

As grownups of course we understand how politics works.

However we also know that the main criticism against Hillary is that her positions change with the polls, and that she is not a person of substance.

I do not agree with that completely, but I would be lying if I did not admit that it was reason for concern.

Now this does not mean that I will not vote for Hillary.

I will.

It also does not mean that I think she cannot win against any of the Republican choices.

She can. And most likely will.

However it does mean that we need to be aware that Hillary Clinton is a political animal, and that the issues she supports so strongly right now, such as gun control and her stance against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, might not be the issues she supports once she sits behind that desk in the Oval Office.

Which is yet another reason that she would be well served by a Vice President Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in my opinion.

Garrison Keillor had the Republicans number way back in 2004.

(Source.)

George W. Bush says that he has "no regrets" about starting the Iraq War. Sadly there are thousands of American families who cannot say the same.

This morning former President George W. Bush went on Face the Nation to promote his book, and answered a few questions from Bob Schieffer. Including if he still thought going into Iraq was the right decision.

This courtesy of Mediaite:  

Bush was on to discuss his new book praising his father (and to honor Face The Nation’ss sixtieth anniversary). 43 insisted he did not invade Iraq to finish what his father started, and said he was surprised when Saddam Hussein called his bluff over the invasion, but didn’t regret the decision to go in. 

“I think it was the right decision,” Bush said. “My regret is that a violent group of people has risen up again. This is al Qaeda plus. I put in the book that they need to be defeated. And I hope they are. I hope the strategy works.”

After all of this time, all of those American and Iraqi deaths, and this asshole still gets to walk free among us as if he were not the biggest war criminal in American history. We can never call ourselves a "Nation of laws" so long as George W. Bush walks free.

Pisses me off every time I think about it.

During the Bush administration, especially after his reelection, I walked around in such a state of agitation that my family was on pins and needles in my presence.

All I could think was that when I was in the grocery store checkout line that I was surrounded by people who helped to elect this mass murderer, this war criminal, this traitor to his country, and it made me want to grab each and every one of them and shake them until they told me why.

That is why I started this blog. So that I could use my words to express the rage that ate me up inside.

I have to say that after ten years of doing this very little of that rage has dissipated.  And I'm not sure if I could respect myself if it ever did.

Is the influence of Evangelicals on American politics coming to an end? Oh please let this be true!

Courtesy of The American Prospect:  

George W. Bush was the last Republican candidate who was considered sufficiently socially conservative to garner approval from evangelical leaders like Robertson and Jerry Falwell and still win a general election. In January 2012, faced with the prospect of Mitt Romney—a moderate and a Mormon—as the presumptive Republican nominee, 150 members of the evangelical old guard gathered on a ranch in Texas to reach a consensus on the best alternative to Romney. After mulling their alternatives in the motley GOP field, which included Bachmann, Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich, the leaders endorsed Santorum, a Catholic with a strong emphasis on social issues and a sharp contrast to Romney the business maven. 

Their followers’ response, in the primaries that followed, was mixed. Romney’s eventual nomination remained almost certain; conservative evangelicals’ support for Santorum only helped delay the inevitable until May. But in the general election, nearly eight in ten evangelicals voted for Romney. 

“The days of evangelical leaders crowning political princes are well behind us,” says Robert P. Jones, the CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit public opinion research organization. “Evangelicals are still a huge part of the GOP base, but they’re no longer taking their cues from a handful of well-known leaders.” 

Keeping the spotlight on Iowa is one of the best ways for Christian conservative leaders to retain some influence over the nomination process. But preserving their foothold will be an uphill battle. To Vander Plaats’ chagrin, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican, is threatening to do away with the Ames Straw Poll, an event that’s traditionally been important for party fundraising, saying that it has “outlived its usefulness.” The Straw Poll, which was first held in 1979, has been a crucial way for the Christian Right to advance their agenda in the presidential race since 1988, when Pat Robertson pulled off a spectacular first-place finish, setting the tone for the rest of the primary. If the Iowa Republican Party scraps the event, Vander Plaats says, his group is ready to fill the gap with another Family Leadership Summit in 2015. But it wouldn’t be the same kind of media magnet as the Ames Straw Poll, which offers fried butter on a stick as well as GOP candidates.

If we are indeed witnessing the end of the Evangelical strangle hold on the GOP, and therefore the end of their influence in American politics, essentially my work here is done.

This blog was started in response to my rage over the fact that the religious fundamentalists had foisted upon this country an unfit leader, while also hijacking morality as something that could ONLY be achieved through attendance at THEIR churches or adherence to THEIR religion.

That was when I set out to point out their hypocrisy, undermine their claim to a higher morality, and hopefully help usher in the day when the least rational people in the nation would no longer hold sway over our political process.

To be honest I am not at all convinced that such a day is upon us, but I will say that every time even one finger from their choke hold relaxes it is a day to be celebrated.

I am in this for the long haul and hope to still be typing away when the majority of politicians no longer have to do their swearing in to office on the Bible, when our leaders can openly embrace atheism without fear of losing all support, and when science is taught in our schools based on research and unmolested by those who fear that its influence will impact church attendance.

I don't want to tell people what to believe or how to worship, I just want them to keep their religious influence out of my politics. That may seem fairly reasonable, but until recently that position marginalized me and made me the enemy of people whose ability to interpret ethics and morality is based solely on a belief in a higher power.

Good point Twitter.

Only a Democrat could prevent a depression, end a war, get bin Laden and double the Dow then be told he can't run on his record.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) October 19, 2012

 This is SO true.

Hell George Bush declared victory in Iraq before the real fighting had even started and then ran on that in the midst of a hemorrhaging economy.

However OUR President who has spent four years repairing an economy the GOP broke, killing the terrorists Bush couldn't (or wouldn't) catch, and bringing honor back to this country after W made us the laughingstock of the world, is a failure?
 
Well that is the kind of "failure" that we need to do everything in our power to keep in office.

Sarah Palin claims that last night's debate reminded her of "watching a musk ox run across the tundra with somebody underfoot."

Click cold sore to play video.

Courtesy of Politico:

“Really tough format, Sean, for someone like a Paul Ryan or anybody else up against Joe Biden, when the moderator allowed one candidate to absolutely run roughshod over the conversation, over the opponent,” Palin told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity on Thursday night. “That’s a tough format. It reminded me … of watching a musk ox run across the tundra with somebody underfoot. And in this case, when it came to style, it was Paul Ryan underfoot because of the moderator allowing Biden to do the interrupting, to kind of take control of the conversation.” 

Yeah, look there is no way that Palin EVER saw anybody trampled by a Musk Ox.

But hey, she needed to sound Alaskan so she figured she would just make shit up!

However she IS right in that Ryan got trampled. He was trampled under an unrelenting stampede of truth. And about damn time too!

Palin was quite the bell of the Fox News ball yesterday, and went on several of their shows. You know because of her vast experience "debating" Joe Biden. (Who actually treated her like a mentally deficient child instead of a real opponent.)

On The Factor with Bill O'Reilly, Palin, who for all the world appeared to be high as a kite, said the following when asked about Joe Biden:

"My buddy Joe Biden? You mean, besides his penchant for just making shhhhh- stuff up?" she told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, making a noticeably awkward rescue. "I think he's kind of known for some of that." (I am not sure if she slurred her speech, or attempted to be cute by pretending to start off saying the word "shit" instead of "stuff." Either one makes her look like an unprofessional idiot.)

Yeah well that may be a nice sound bite on Fox News, the place where truth goes to die, but the rest of America knows that the misstatements were coming, NOT from Joe Biden, but from Lyin Ryan instead, twenty four of them in forty minutes to be exact.

You know rather than to show her inebriated, bewigged ass all over cable television last night, perhaps instead Palin should have spent her time thanking her lucky stars that SHE did not have to face off against the same Joe Biden four years ago that handed Paul Ryan his ass last night.

I can only imagine the fear induced flop sweat that would have oozed from HER pores if indeed she had.

"Holy crap! How did that idiot Sarah Palin survive this?"

She survived only because Joe Biden LET her survive. And somebody needs to remind her of that every single day.

Voting machines being used in swing states owned by Bain Capital controlled company.

Here is more from the Daily Dolt:

Hart InterCivic is a national provider of election voting systems that are used in swing-states Ohio and Colorado, as well as in states we don’t really care about so much because we already know how they’ll turn out (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC bought out a “significant” portion of Hart in July of 2011, and now the majority of Hart’s board directors are employees of H.I.G. (It’s not entirely clear how much of the voting machine company H.I.G. owns, but the financial advisors responsible for the transaction state that “Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital.”) 

H.I.G., in turn, has ties to Bain & Co. and Mitt Romney directly: 

H.I.G. was founded by Tony Tamer, a former Bain employee and bundler for Mitt Romney’s campaign. 

Of H.I.G.’s 22 American directors, 21 donated to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. One person made no political donations at all; one person donated to both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama; the remaining 20 directors donated exclusively to Mitt Romney in 2012. (See below for links to donations.) 

Of these 22 American directors, seven of them (nearly one-third) are former Bain employees. Now, we should note (as a reader helpfully pointed out), this is Bain & Co., which Mitt Romney left in order to start the affiliated Bain Capital. The connection is therefore a little more tenuous, but we still find H.I.G.’s overwhelming allegiance and financial support of the Romney campaign surprising (not that it’s surprising that a private equity company would lean Republican, but this level of support is pretty unusual). 

Four of H.I.G.’s directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman, and Brian D. Schwartz, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve. 

Two of H.I.G.’s managing directors, Douglas F. Berman and Brian D. Schwartz, were present at the $50,000 per plate fundraiser where Mitt Romney made his notorious ”47%” comments. 

H.I.G. employees currently make up the majority of the Hart InterCivic’s five-member board of directors. Two of these three directors of the voting machine company, Neil Tuch and Jeff Bohl, have donated directly to Mitt Romney’s campaign. 

H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign. H.I.G. employees have given $338,000 to the Romney campaign, outpacing even Bain Capital itself, which gave $268,000.

Republicans of course will call us paranoid and conspiracy theorists for being troubled by this, but we have already seen that the Republican party and Mitt Romney will do ANYTHING to win, so why would we NOT consider this a serious problem?

After all we do remember what happened in the 2004 election, don't we?

Let's face it folks our very democracy has been under attack for the last twelve years and if we are not extremely vigilant the Republicans will essentially make voting in this country an exercise in futility for ALL Americans. And we are already almost there.

The ONLY thing that beats this kind of cheating is a HUGE voter turnout for the Democrats.  So whatever else you do to help, make damn sure you VOTE!

Politically for Democrats it is a beautiful day and the sun is shining bright, however there are dark clouds on the horizon.

Ricky Watson hugs President Obama in gratitude for the repeal of DADT. Watson is a gay man who was kicked out of the Air Force 25 years ago

Currently there is nothing but good news concerning the 2012 presidential election.

Just look at these numbers courtesy of Esquire:

Not only that but the President's premier policy decision, the Affordable Care Act, is having a very positive impact and becoming more and more acceptable to the people of America. Especially the young people of America:

In all, over 3 million young adults age 19-25 now have health insurance thanks to a provision in Obamacare that lets parents keep their young adult children on their plans up to age 26.

Essentially if the election were held tomorrow, the President would DESTROY Mitt Romney.

That is of course, if the Republicans were planning to let the people decide this election.  And as we have seen time and time again, the Republicans have NO interest in the will of the American people.

This from Greg Palast, the man who discovered Karl Rove's "voter caging" strategy:  

Karl Rove - "Turdblossom" as Bush called him - has a computer-data-mining system called DataTrust, which he's joining up with a data-mining computer system set up the Koch brothers called Themis. These are voter-eating machines, designed to juice the attack on voter rolls by GOP secretaries of state. Ready for this? Over 22 million names were purged from voter rolls in the last two years. Those figures are from the US Election Assistance Commission - hidden in plain sight. And who gets purged? 

Black voters, Latinos, Native Americans. In Colorado, the Republican secretary of state purged 19.4 percent of voters - that's one in five! In the book, she's the Purge'n General. Obama took Colorado in '08. He can kiss it goodbye. 

My co-investigator and I, Bobby Kennedy, called the secretary of state of California, a Dem, who told us her GOP predecessor blocked 42 percent of new voter registrations because they had "suspicious" names - like Mohammed. For this reason, despite massive voter drives and the increase in Latino citizenship, Hispanic registration has dropped by 1 million since 2008. Caramba! 

In all, 5,901,814 legitimate votes and voters were tossed out of the count in 2008. In '12 it will be worse. Way worse.

This is why it is imperative that we are EXTREMELY vigilant and make sure that not only do WE vote but that we help others, such as minorities and the elderly, get the opportunity to vote as well. And that includes Romney voters as well. We should not discriminate.

We are in a war my friends, and stakes are to protect the foundations on which our nation was built.

The Republicans are constantly pimping their version of "freedom" and "values" but they care about none of that, virtually every decision they make is to retain power. And if they cannot hold onto it legitimately, well then they will use every dirty trick at their disposal.

In 2000 they used the Supreme Court, in 2004 they used Diebold machines, and now they are trotting out aggressive voter suppression. All to retain power and block the implementation of laws that would keep their corporate overlords from making obscene amounts of money.  Money that is then spent willingly on THEIR reelection campaigns.

And the cycle continues.

Remember "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. and then you're a Republican."

Just a reminder from 2004 of who the Republicans are, and what they are capable of doing to gain, or hold on to, power.

Karl Rove and George Bush patting each other on the back for fucking over the American people.

Courtesy of Truthout:

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell's company, GovTech Solutions. Also included that contract a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State's election night server layout system. 

Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: "Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not."

Spoonamore explained that "they [SmarTech] have full access and could change things when and if they want."

Arnebeck specifically asked "Could this be done using whatever bypass techniques Connell developed for the web hosting function." Spoonamore replied "Yes."

This is the kind of thing to keep in mind when you are hearing the Teabaggers talk about "taking their country back."

The GOP are the ones who rigged not one, but TWO, elections and took the choice away from the voters.  It was the Republicans who lied to the American people in order to start an unnecessary war in Iraq. And it was the Republicans who put this economy into the tailspin that we are still trying to recover from today.

So exactly WHICH party is the one that stole this country away from its people?

And our President is supposed to negotiate with these unscrupulous bastards?

Previously undisclosed documents show how the Republicans stole the 2004 election.

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.

The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin.

Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.

One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter reg fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.

Nothing that anybody can say about George Bush can be considered unpatriotic, because this man is not our President. So every single thing he has done has been a criminal act.

He does not even need to be impeached, he simply needs to be arrested.