Want to make a Republican go batshit crazy(er)? Start talking about a second term for Barack Obama.
Case in point, Madison County Republican Executive Committee member and former GOP congressional candidate Hugh McInnish who is scared spitless by the prospect Obama might be re-elected in November. More on McInnish here. Below are excerpts from McInnish's latest newsletter, cleverly titled Nuke Obama.
None of us is Paul Tibbett, nor do we have anyone at the controls of a B-29 named Enola Gay with Little Man loaded in the bomb bay. And we are many years past that fateful day in August 1945. Nevertheless, there is a strong analogy that links that far-away day with today. …
Paul Tibbett and his crew deleted the city of Hiroshima in the bat of an eye, and, followed by the A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki a few days later, it ended the war.
Now consider our predicament today. We are in a fight for our national life. But the war being waged on us by Obama is insidious. There has been no Pearl Harbor, only the gradual conquest of our country through stealth by the tripartite axis of Barack Obama, the liberal politicians, and the media. Many patriots fear that Obama will be reelected in November, and that after another four years of his waging his anti-American war from the White House, hope would be gone.
…
We have swarms of loyal citizens plinking at Obama with BB guns, when we have the A-bomb ominously waiting in our arsenal.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Barack Hussein Obama is a criminal! He has submitted to America, and to all the world, two forged birth certificates. Not to know this you must be either woefully uninformed or really, really, dumb. …
If responsible persons would simply stand up and speak the truth we could annihilate Obama. ...
We have the A-bomb in our arsenal. But where is the gutsy Truman who will order it dropped? Where is the Paul Tibbett who will take it to the target?
Hugh McInnish is what passes for mainstream in the Alabama Republican party. Please forward his diatribe far and wide, especially to any independent voters you know, so they will understand that to vote Republican is to vote for crazy.
And don't hesitate to send McInnish's newsletter to your Republican contacts, on the off chance they aren't already on his email list. It's important for them to get this sage Republican's message that making phone calls, contributing to the GOP coffers, working campaign events and all that other grunt work of an election year is wasted.All they need to do this year is talk about Obama's birth certificate. Please.
Perfectly fair. Also deaf when Democrats ask to speak. Further, according to Marsh ...
"Racial talk is silly."
Yep. Racial talk is so silly when white folks Republicans hold all the power in the Legislature ... and are redistricting to make sure it stays that way. In fact, they're redistricting to push white Democrats out, concentrate black voters, and make the GOP the official party of white folks in Alabama.
See, right now the white Democrats in the Leg. typically have significant numbers of black voters (30% or so) in their districts, so they not only have to listen to the concerns of those voters, they tend to work with -- and vote with -- black legislators because their districts have similar concerns & priorities. The Republican plan would end all that cooperation between white folks and black folks.
Here's the GOP gameplan: Pack as many minority voters as possible into minority-majority districts. It doesn't matter if you have to add a minority-majority district because the minority voters (in Alabama, that means African-Americans) will never be able to elect anything close to a majority in either house of the Legislature. This provides the desireable optics of a small group of black legislators amid all those white GOP men, but guarantees they will have no political power. Packing of black voters also lets Republicans keep the other districts as white as possible. 97% or more, for preference.
“Part of our job during redistricting is to try to make the folks that come to Montgomery a reflection of the people they represent.”
Black people get represented by other blacks, white people get represented by other white people.White people hold all the power.
Just like it used to be back in the good old days before anybody got uppity. Back then they called it segregation ... or maybe "separate but equal" (which was only half a lie) in polite society.
What does it say about the rank & file GOP in Arizona when Gov. Jan Brewer is the voice of reason? There's this - and more - in the last week's round-up of amazing GOP craziness from around the country. If they're not hunting unicorns... they're still on the prowl for President Obama's "real" birth certificate.
The bill was Arizona's far-right-wing response to the continuously debunked conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama is not an American citizen. It required that presidential candidates prove to Arizona election officials that they were born in the United States before their name's allowed on the ballot in the Grand Canyon State -- despite it's already being a federal requirement to land the job.
Sounds ridiculous, we know -- but it gets worse.
The original bill called for a long-form birth certificate to prove a candidate is a natural-born citizen, which was a little too much for some GOP lawmakers. So they made some amendments: if you can't find your birth certificate, and you have a penis, a document describing your lack of foreskin will suffice.
After Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, renounced his US citizenship to avoid paying US taxes when FB went public, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a bill that would require these sort of "expats" to prove that they did NOT renounce citizenship "for tax reasons." Grover (No Taxes) Norquist quickly denounced the bill:
Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, said the targeting people that turn in their passports reminded him of regimes that had driven people out of the country, only to confiscate their wealth at the door.
“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” said Norquist. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”
That's right: in GOP land, renouncing your US citizenship to avoid paying taxes in patriotic, while asking citizens who have achieved success using the US educational system, taxpayer-financed Internet, and other benefits to pay it forward is... some sort of "Nazi Communist" conspiracy.
In the good news segment... the right wing is in a tizzy over the news that non-white births have overtaken white births in the US. It seems these brown-like babies "won't share our values..."
Roger Schlafly, son of Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, today mourned on the Eagle Forum Blog a Census Bureau report showing that non-white births have now exceeded white births in the U.S. “It is not a good thing,” Schlafly said, warning that “immigrants do not share American values” and therefore “will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.” He went on to claim that “NY Times liberals seek to destroy the American family of the 1950s,” saying that immigrants “do not share” American values like working hard and self-sufficiency, and instead “will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.”
You have to almost admire someone so willing to spew the crazy all out for anyone to see - even if he's a total butthead. And I have to chuckle at the fact that Mr. Schlafly doesn't seem to realize that even all whites in this country "don't share" his particular twisted values.
Demographics are a ticking time bomb for the right wing GOP and I, for one, totally can't wait until it explodes...
When Mrs. Alan Greenspan notices the Republican candidate for president is not only lying about his record as job creating CEO, but running from his record as governor of Massachusetts ... well, you know the Romney campaign is headed to hell in a handbasket.
Andrea Mitchell: Many people believe that what Mitt Romney has done in claiming he is a job creator and that is his record from Bain Capital is as you point out, silly and contradictorybecause Bain Capital was not in business to create jobs, they were in business to make money for investors. At the same time, was he that eager, so eager, to avoid being tagged as the former Massachusetts governor? ...
Steve Rattner: Well that liberal Massachusetts record and, of course, there's the point that Massachusetts was 47th in job creation when he was governor…. he seems to much prefer to be thought of as a business guy. ... It’s when he reweaves history and tries to turn a perfectly respectable business career into some idea he was the world's greatest job creator that I think he is misleading people.
Andrea Mitchell: The Republicans ... claim that Mitt Romney has created more net jobs in his role as a governor and as a Bain Capital executive than President Obama has for the entire nation. And it just seems like that's really false accounting because he's counting every job that Bain Capital ever created before or after he even left the company and every job that was lost in the national economy during that first month or two when President Obama took it over when it was still recording the results .. of the Bush record.
Steve Rattner: That's exactly right. You know the old joke about “lies, damn lies and statistics.” You can do whatever you want with numbers. To start with Romney's numbers, you're correct that most of those 100,000 jobs actually are Staples. 90,000 of those 100,000 jobs are a small investment that Bain Capital made in the late 1980s in Staples. Staples went public a few years later when it had 1,100 employees. when Romney left it had 40,000 employees but he's taking credit for all 90,000. The flipside is when president Obama runs an ad talking about jobs that were lost at a steel company that Bain invested in, Romney says well I wasn’t there then, I was gone already.
Romney is trying to have it both ways on his Bain record, not to mention completely expunging his record in Massachusetts. It's incredibly refreshing when an inside-the-beltway journalist like Andrea Mitchell publicly notices the Republican noise machine is sounding more like a broken garbage disposal than the old Mighty Wurlitzer.
Good government advocates in Randolph County have been vocal in opposition to the Dial-Laird slush fund, and now Chambers County is also getting involved. The Chambers County Democratic Executive Committee wants their Democratic State Rep., Richard Laird, to just go ahead and switch parties. Monday's Valley Times-News said the efforts of Laird, Sen. Gerald Dial (R) and other members of the local delegation to divert tobacco tax revenues to a personal slush fund dominated discussion at the May 14 CCDEC meeting.
The article quotes chairperson Katie Walton:
"The Democratic Committee voted to condemn this action as a gross dereliction of their legislative duty," Walton said. "It was felt that a recent newspaper editorial depicting Sen. Gerald Dial (R-Lineville), Rep. DuWayne Bridges (R-Valley) and Rep. Richard Laird (D-Roanoke) as the 'Three Little Pigs' was entirely correct," she said. "The Democratic Committee was especially embarrassed and humiliated by the action of Rep. Laird, who ran as a Democrat," she continued. "The general consensus of opinion was that Laird should do the only decent thing and consider resigning from the party. Then all three should do the only decent thing and consider resigning from the legislature in total disgrace."
Good for the Chambers County Democrats for holding Laird to a high standard! What Laird, Dial and their cohorts did, with aid from their colleagues in the Legislature, is nothing short of robbery. Such shenanigans shouldn't be welcome in either party.
TVA said Tuesday it is investigating the discovery of a noose found at the Browns Ferry Nuclear plant by a crane operator a source said is an African American.
The old, ugly attitudes are still with us in the South, even at high tech places like nuclear plants. They've gone underground a little, they're a little more subtle. The nooses (yes, the noose is a racist symbol) are smaller and the hate messages are more coded, but they're still there.
For instance, conservatives like this bumper sticker, which I saw on a fancy (white) SUV just a couple of weeks ago in Huntsville, otherwise known as the Rocket City:
Look it up. "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."
The next verse is "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
Guess the well dressed white lady driver didn't want to put that ugly wish out there on the bumper of her shiny white ride, so she settled for code.
Yes, you can train the racists to work at rocket plants and nuclear plants, but the racism is still there. Scientists say racism is not hardwired into humans, it is learned behavior. Along with rocket science and nuclear physics, we need to be teaching tolerance. I believe (hope!) that with each generation the racism grows less, but it is definitely still with us in the here and now, here in the heart of Dixie.
How can it possibly controversial when a public school superintendent for a North Alabama school system looks for community volunteers to help students? Well, when 62% of the students live in poverty, some in the community think that it's the kids' on fault - a "self-inflicted" wound if you can believe it:
Ed Nichols has a strategy for confronting one of the greatest threats to the community.
A major hurdle for Decatur City Schools — where he will become superintendent July 1 — and for the city’s future comes in a grim statistic: 62 percent of the system’s students live in poverty.
Poverty is defined as a lack of income, but its reality is more extensive. Students living in impoverished households must deal with unique stresses, like availability of food, housing and electricity. Poverty makes it more difficult for parents to expend the needed time and energy with their children. The stigma associated with poverty leaves many students feeling failure is inevitable. Nichols recognizes the severity of the problem. More important, he recognizes that the community has a role to play in solving it.
His goal of rounding up 1,000 volunteers in his first year as superintendent is a recognition that poverty is a community problem that demands a community solution.
Read the comments, if you can stand it.
This news item reminds me of an article I read in "The Economist" a few weeks ago. It discussed the importance of hope among poverty-stricken communities. "Hope Springs A Trap:"
Development economists have long surmised that some very poor people may remain trapped in poverty because even the largest investments they are able to make, whether eating a few more calories or working a bit harder on their minuscule businesses, are too small to make a big difference. So getting out of poverty seems to require a quantum leap—vastly more food, a modern machine, or an employee to mind the shop. As a result, they often forgo even the small incremental investments of which they are capable: a bit more fertiliser, some more schooling or a small amount of saving. [...] Surprising things can often act as a spur to hope. A law in India set aside for women the elected post of head of the village council in a third of villages. Following up several years later, Ms Duflo found a clear effect on the education of girls. Previously parents and children had far more modest education and career goals for girls than for boys. Girls were expected to get much less schooling, stay at home and do the bidding of their in-laws. But a few years of exposure to a female village head had led to a striking degree of convergence between goals for sons and daughters. Their very existence seems to have expanded the girls’ sense of the possible beyond a life of domestic drudgery. An unexpected consequence, perhaps, but a profoundly hopeful one.
It's been almost 30 years since I watched a popular TV show called "LA Law." I've never forgotten one of the episodes where an attorney was defending a single mother who was having trouble with the local police. They had accidentally raided her apartment and killed one of her kids. The police were trying to cover it up & had gotten her other child placed in foster care. The lawyer was trying to get her to sue instead of taking the settlement that would have done nothing more than return her remaining child to her custody.
He pushed her to "make them accountable" because "we can win this one!" And the mother just gave him a resigned look and explained that he was willing to fight that battle because "you feel lucky." She continued that very few good things had ever happened to her, but if she could get her kid back, that's the best she could hope for.
I've never forgotten that episode because it's the first time I realized that - without knowing it - I had been raised to "feel lucky" in that I thought nothing of confronting authority figures if I thought they weren't doing their job. And I never even considered there would be blowback from doing so.
Way too many people don't "feel lucky" and are trapped in poverty in part by that attitude. If 1,000 - or ever 100 - volunteers can show kids that they can be winners and they do have a chance to have a better life... well... how the ever-living Hell can anybody criticize that?
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley pulled a complete reversal on HB 658 last weekend, caving in and signing a bill that makes the state's already harsh anti-immigrant policies even worse--after he had initially expressed reservations and a wish to see the bill revised. Since then, leading editorial writers in Alabama and across the nation have been scathing in their criticism.
For a few minutes, Gov. Robert Bentley sounded strong and encouraging. He sounded like he was going to lead on an important issue. Alas, it didn't last long. The governor reverted to pushover and went ahead and signed a terrible rewrite of the state's harsh immigration law. Bentley could have killed it. He could have forced the Legislature to make real improvements in the special session under way right now. But when lawmakers balked at dealing with more immigration law revisions in the special session, Bentley folded like a card table. It's understandable why lawmakers would want this issue to just go away. The harsh immigration law, HB 56, that passed last year wrecked Alabama's reputation as a place to locate a business or visit. National and international attention focused on how intolerant Alabama was, and ugly images of the state's past resurfaced. The revised immigration law passed last week, HB 658, is far from what was originally written. State Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, took over the bill when it got to the Senate and rewrote it. Bentley and Republican leaders agreed HB 56 needed clarification and simplification. What passed last week is an even more complex law… Bentley missed a chance to stand tall and stop this immigration madness. For Alabama, that's too bad.
New York Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes echoes:
After all that talk about wanting to ‘simplify and clarify’ last year’s radically awful immigration law, Alabama’s legislature doubled down last week. It passed a bill, H.B. 658, to make things worse. One new provision requires schools to collect immigration data from students — even though a federal court has blocked a similar section in last year’s law. Another requires the state to publish online the names of all undocumented immigrants who appear in court. It’s a scarlet-letter database to accomplish — what, exactly, beyond public shaming? It’s hard to know, though immigrant advocates fear, plausibly, that it will heighten the risk of vigilantism…It was up to Gov. Robert Bentley last week to save his state from another round of self-destruction. He had previously signaled that he didn’t like the new provisions in the bill and might veto it. In the end, what did he do? Why, he signed it, of course, and called it progress.
Pollster John Anzalone nails Artur Davis' political career ...
“Promise turned into sour grapes,” said Davis’ former pollster, John Anzalone.
The comment was inspired by the latest Davis rumor, that he will launch another forlorn hope campaign, this time as a Republican in a Democratic congressional district in Virginia.
If Artur is going to switch, I wish he'd do it ASAP and stop being the media's go-to "Democrat" for Dem bashing quotes.
Income inequality is rampant in America, fed by huge pay packages for corporate execs.
The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500 Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011 from 343 times in 2010.[2] Back in 1980, the average large company CEO only received 42 times the average worker's pay.[3]
There is no rational justification for CEOs making, on average, 380 times as much as the typical employee -- and the gap is much wider in some places. I was alive and working in 1980 and am here to tell you: corporations were not suffering great hardships back when their CEOs only got 42 times as much as an average worker. Corporations were fine then ... the big difference is that the rest of us were also doing fine in 1980. Nowadays the upper crust is awash in caviar and the rest of us are sucking wind -- see the blue line above.
The conventional (conservative) wisdom is that it takes huge salaries to attract the top talent, without which corporations can't make big profits.
JP Morgan's total loss, including the drop in stock price, is estimated at about $30 billion. Yep, JP Morgan investors are paying Dimon $23 million a year to bring home a $30 billion loss.
Excuse me, the only talent on display here is the ability to hang onto his job after a huge screw up. A predictable screw up, too. The WSJ reports ...
An executive who oversaw risk management at the unit responsible for trading blunders that cost J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. at least $2 billion this year earlier lost millions while trading for the same unit, according to people familiar with the bank.
Irv Goldman, the chief risk officer, got his job back in February ... on Dimon's watch.
In spite of Dimon's assertion that "the buck always stops with me," he still has his job. He must be talking about those $23 million bucks which definitely do stop in his pocket, no matter how many billion dollar mistakes were made on his watch.
Congress needs to enact real financial reform to stop the wild speculation on Wall Street and the corporate world needs to return to more reasonable pay scales. CEOs do not walk on water -- examples abound -- and there is no way they deserve to make 300 or 400 times as much as actual workers.
The Sunlight Foundation released a study this week that analyzes the speech patters of members of Congress. Mirror, mirror on the wall... who's the dumbest of them all? GOP freshman. Yep. We're looking at YOU Mo Brooks & Martha Roby....
Today’s Congress collectively speaks at a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. All these analyses use the Flesch-Kincaid test, which equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences. [...] Controlling for other factors, it is generally the most moderate members of both parties who speak at the highest grade levels, and the most extreme members who speak at the lowest grade levels. This pattern is most pronounced among freshmen and sophomore members.
What would truly be humiliating - as if having this GOP super-majority running Alabama right now isn't bad enough - would be for someone to study the Alabama Legislature.
No wonder these jokers aren't worried about funding public education. A totally disengaged, dumbed-down electorate is the only possible way they can stay in office.
Wow... this "special session to deal with redistricting" has expanded to include everything from mandatory drug testing to immigration. And now Scott Beason has a new cause: party registration & closed primaries. Wonder if his primary election loss to Rep. Spencer Bachus has anything to do with his new cause....
Under existing law, an elector may choose which party's primary to vote in.
This bill would require an elector to register a party affiliation in order to receive the party's ballot in the primary election.
This bill would allow an elector who remains unaffiliated to vote only in non-partisan races in a primary.
Now, there appears to be a flaw with Beason's bill - aren't you surprised? There could be a Constitutional issues here. Surprised? In Tashijan v Republican Party of Connecticut:
the United States Supreme Court determined that Connecticut’s closed primary law was unconstitutional. The Connecticut closed primary law “[required] voters in any political party primary to be registered members of that party.”
The Republican Party of Connecticut, however, wanted to allow independents to vote in the Republican primary if they so chose. The problem with this closed primary law was that it prevented the Republican Party from allowing independent “registered voters not affiliated with any party to vote in Republican primaries for federal and statewide offices.”
Since the Republican Party of Connecticut was not able to choose who it wanted to vote in the primary, the United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, stated that the closed primary law in Connecticut “impermissibly burdens the right of the Party and its members protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Since this bill is in no way related to redistricting or any other issues in Gov. Bentley's call for a special session, it's my understanding that Beason had to have "unanimous consent" to present this bill.
Does that mean that the party registration bill has wide support in the Legislature? Or is it simply a way for them to keep Beason occupied with a loser bill while the rest of the Legislature gets some real work done?
The GOP War on Women is nothing if not tenacious. Even though the Governor's Proclamation calling the Legislature into "extraordinary session" does not mention abortion, a Republican State Senator is still prosecuting the War on Women, even into the special session. GOPers didn't pass all the reproductive restrictions they wanted in the regular session, so they're back in the special session -- which the citizens of Alabama are paying for by the day.
Notice, abortion is not on this list. Because of that absence, by law, Beason's bill to impose new regulations on abortion clinics and reproductive health centers in Alabama would have to pass with a 2/3rds majority. SB27 is a Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or "TRAP" bill:
"TRAP" laws single out the medical practices of doctors who provide abortions, and impose on them requirements that are different and more burdensome than those imposed on other medical practices. For example, such regulations may require that abortions be performed in far more sophisticated and expensive facilities than are necessary to ensure the provision of safe procedures. Compliance with these physical plant requirements may require extensive renovations or be physically impossible in existing facilities. TRAP laws may also allow unannounced state inspections, even when patients are present. These excessive and unnecessary government regulations increase the cost and scarcity of abortion services, harming women's health and inhibiting their reproductive choices.
Beason's SB27 is a close copy of Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin's (also R) HB223 TRAP bill which passed the State House in the regular session but died in the Senate. Let's hope this one dies in the special session as well.
Sorry, conservatives, there was never a time when the Black man knew his place. He lay low to avoid your violence. He organized. And he beat you.
Conservatives believe morality comes from obedience. That's why liberals have rich patrons and conservatives have rich masters.
Conservies, when you were younger you thought change was good. Now you don't like change at all. You've changed.
Christians, you're assured eternal life in grace. But you won't speak out against homophobia in your own church because you're afraid people will be mean to you.
Like most of us, I wear many "hats" in my online as well as my offline life. One of those is as an officer in my county DEC. As part of that responsibility, I tend to check the county committee's Facebook group.
I often read stories or get pointed to interesting articles, photos or points of view I'd missed. I know there's room for respectful discussion among Democrats on many issues and I support such conversation.
This morning I logged in and went to check the Mobile County Democrats group and found a post asking me to sign a petition supporting "[T]he Big Tent of the Democratic Party". I consider myself an open-minded Democrat, so I clicked the link and read the petition.
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Want to make a Republican go batshit crazy(er)? Start talking about a second term for Barack Obama. 
Good government advocates in Randolph County have been vocal in 
