Tea Party groups jokes about beating Obama, who of course is a socialist and Muslim

From Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

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Romney Sista Souljah's Israel, suggests Israeli Jews are socialists like Obama

Mind you, these are the same Israeli Jews who Romney was crowing about just a few days ago during his visit to Israel. You'll recall that during the trip, after embarrassing himself in London, Romney praised what he claimed was Jews' innate ability to succeed at business (he apparently also liked their horns).

And now, after all that gushing, Romney takes a potshot at Israel.

And, it's only days after Romney comes out with an ad accusing President Obama of not being a true friend of Israel.  Romney then Sista Souljah's Israel in order to win over conservatives in America, who supposedly like Israel.

Is this guy on meds or something? Because this is downright erratic behavior.

And don't let anyone claim that Romney didn't just accuse Israel Jews of being socialists, aka communists, aka Soviets.  He tied Israel to his standard attack on President Obama in which he insinuates that the President is a socialist, aka a communist, aka a Soviet.  From Buzzfeed:

At a fundraiser today in Chicago — barely a week after visiting the Holy Land — Romney took a shot at the Israeli Kibbutz movement, a product of the early socialist zionist movement and integral to the story of the founding of the State of Israel.

“It’s individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America," Romney said. "What America is not a collective where we all work in a Kibbutz or we all in some little entity, instead it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.”

Yeah, I mean what do those commie Israelis know about people pursuing their dreams?

But again, what's even odder is that Romney was just there. He was just criticizing President Obama for not being friend enough to Israel. And now Romney's taking potshots at Israel, saying they're just like Obama in not understanding how freedom enterprise, how America, how freedom works.

So Israel doesn't understand freedom, Mitt?

This will of course tick off Israel - bringing Romney's disastrous foreign trip to a perfect trifecta of ruined relations.

Either the man isn't entirely well, or he's intentionally alienating all of America's top allies because of some bizarre notion that it will help him in the election. It's not entirely clearly how attacking Israel and the UK helps Romney win votes at home. If anything, the erratic and contradictory nature of the attack makes one wonder whether Romney isn't completely all there.

What if his tax returns somehow aren't hiding a lack of payment of taxes, but rather hiding some kind of health problem? Read the rest of this post...

Did Mitt Romney kill this man's wife?

In America, you know that closing down plants means workers lose their health insurance. It's a fact. And you know that it's going to be very tough for most folks who aren't 22 years old to get insurance on their own.  More from the Nation, and the ad is below.

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NRA fundraises for semi-automatic weapons right after they're used to mow down CO moviegoers

Businessweek:

Three days after a gunman calling himself the Joker from the Batman series shot dead 12 people in a suburban Denver movie theater, the National Rifle Association sent out a letter asking for money.

“The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” the letter said. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.”

The letter dated July 23, which was sent to NRA supporters including to people in Colorado, doesn’t mention the gunfire during the showing of the new Batman movie July 20 in Aurora, Colorado.

The solicitation letter says that Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms” and potentially a “ban on semi-automatic weapons.” The suspect in the Aurora, Colorado killings, 24-year-old James Holmes, had four semi- automatic weapons at the theater, police said.

Funny they don't mention the Aurora massacre. Read the rest of this post...

Fox News analyst calls Senate Majority Leader "kook," "congenital liar"

On Fox, you're only biased if you criticize a conservative.

She's referring to the head of the RNC, Reince Priebus, calling Harry Reid a "dirty liar" for saying that a well-placed Bain source told him that Mitt Romney had paid taxes in ten years. Romney still refuses to release his taxes, which all other presidential candidates before him have done.

What's particularly interesting about Priebus calling Reid a liar is that just yesterday, Priebus tweeted this outright lie that has already been debunked by Politifact, among others:

Actually, Obama is trying to open up voting for everyone, including military - but that particular truth would be inconvenient for the Republicans, so Priebus and Romney simply lie (which is something that apparently the Mormons in particular embrace as a part of their faith, it's called "lying for the lord" - and it's something the Mormons have used to confuse people about their ongoing attempts to forcibly convert the souls of dead Jewish Holocaust victims, among others).

Independent fact-checker Politifact calls Priebus' claim "simply dishonest." But that hasn't stopped Romney and Priebus from repeating the claim over and over again in the hopes to trick our members of the military into voting Republican.  Because at their core, Romney and Priebus think our service members are stupid, gullible, and easily misled.  Heck of a way to treat Americans in combat.

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GOP forced DHS to stop studying white supremacist terror threat

Oops.  From ThinkProgress:

The gunman in the shooting at a Sikh temple over the weekend has been labeled a potential domestic terrorist — defined as one who incites politically-motivated violence against his or her own country. In Wade Michael Page’s case, that political motivation was likely white supremacy, a growing problem in the United States.

But when, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security reported that white supremacy is the US’s biggest threat for domestic terror, it was met with harsh criticism. Conservatives blasted the department for defining terror threats too broadly, instead of focusing on potential Islamic terrorists. Then-House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was one of those who berated DHS, saying that they weren’t focusing on the real threats the US faces.

One Democrat's "terrorist" is a Republican's "freedom fighter."

What's even worse, I reported last year that Homeland Security gutted the department looking into domestic terror, particularly white supremacists, after the Republicans complained:

Daryl Johnson, who headed the DHS unit responsible for analyzing security threats from non-Islamic domestic extremists, was the principal author of the April 7, 2009, report "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

Johnson, who was interviewed for the upcoming summer issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, said that following the controversy, the DHS dismantled the intelligence team that studied the threat from right-wing extremists and that the department no longer produces its own analytical reports on that subject. When the 2009 report was written, there were six analysts in the unit, including Johnson. Today, he said, there is one.

"DHS stopped all of our work and instituted restrictive policies," said Johnson, who has since left the department. "Eventually, they ended up gutting my unit. All of this happened within six to nine months after the furor over the report. Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism – whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, 'sovereign citizens,' eco-terrorists, the whole gamut."

Not unlike how George W. Bush gutted the CIA office in charge of hunting down bin Laden so that Bush could instead those resources to force an invasion of Iraq (note: It took a Democrat to finally have the balls to actually catch America's biggest mass murderer, the Republicans simply weren't interested - remember, the GOP talks tough about national security and love of country, but they don't really care about either when it comes to actually doing something about it).

The Republican party, with the help of religious extremists and gun nuts who now control the GOP, stopped Homeland Security from investigating the domestic terror threat.  And now people are dead, again.

So, we let the Republicans, the religious right and the gun nuts yet have their way, and they proved themselves yet again incapable of stopping nutjobs from getting access to guns and killing innocent Americans.  How long do we have to keep doing this the GOP/NRA way before people simply admit that the Republicans and the NRA have failed to keep America safe?

And what's Mitt Romney, who just held a fundraiser three days ago with the head of the NRA, have to say about all of this? Read the rest of this post...

Today is election day for Darcy Burner in WA-01 primary

Darcy Burner is a progressive and a candidate for Congress in Washington state's new 1st district.

(Are you in Washington's 1st congressional district? Click here to find out. Or use this searchable map.)

Darcy needs your help. She has a real shot at this one. She lost by just 20,000 votes (out of nearly 400,000 cast) the last time she ran. Your help, either financial or physical, could put her over the top.

She's a true progressive, aggressive and dynamic. That's her in the video below, talking at Netroots Nation 2012. Do listen; it gives a great sense of who she is and her level of commitment to progressive action.



As I wrote at the time:

I was lucky enough to spend over an hour with Ms. Burner one-on-one [at Netroots Nation], just two people talking. She's entirely sincere. This is not a sham.

Darcy's opponent is Suzan DelBene, a classic hyper-rich, self-funded, faux-centrist, Blue-Dog-at-heart "Democrat." DelBene also appears to be guilty of felony violation of election law.

From David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars (my emphasis and paragraphing):

I began looking around recently for the federal Financial Disclosure Statements for the Democratic candidates involved in Washington's 1st Congressional District primary race, the election for which will be next week (but for which mail-in voting is currently under way).

I was particularly interested in digging up the information on Suzan DelBene, the Microsoft gazillionaire who is almost entirely self-financing her campaign this year. Indeed, she just wrote her campaign another $900,000 in checks to pay for all the TV-ad time she's bought and is now blanketing our local media airwaves with here in the Seattle area.

But when I contacted the office the Clerk of the U.S. House, where these statements are filed, I was told that DelBene had not filed any Financial Disclosure Statement for 2011.

This is most peculiar. These statements are in fact required by law -- the Ethics in Government Act of 1978[.]

Neiwert has more, of course.

Will you help out?

• Donations are always welcome and appreciated.
  
  
• You can vote if you live in the district (see here or here).
  
  
• You can volunteer to help. Do you live anywhere near Seattle? Today is your Get Out The Vote Day.
  
  
• This is her campaign website.

You can't win if you don't try. Will you help a sister? She's doing her best to help you.

Thanks!

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius Read the rest of this post...

Fox News is concerned that America's (black) Olympians aren't patriotic enough

Because nothing says love of country like meaningless bling.

You have to keep in mind that Fox News is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party. It's the GOP's Pravda.  So you always have to look deeper whenever you see any story on Fox, and look to the motivation - what made them put this story on?  Being "news" is not an option.

In this case, rather than use any of the white American medalists as a poster girl for un-patriotism, Fox chose the black one, Gabby Douglas, who just happens to be the first African-American woman to win an all-around gold medal in the Olympics.  Racism isn't always subtle.

Fox also artfully chose a black Tea Party loyalist to be the one delivering the hate, so as to cover their behind.  Fox does this a lot.  I'd been called numerous times to go on Fox in order to debate someone else gay about some topic blasting gays.  You see, so long as they get someone gay, or black, to deliver the bigotry, it doesn't count as hateful, in their eyes.

Back to the bling.

Fox News is concerned that America's athletes aren't wearing enough American flags, or piercing their noses with copies of the Constitution, or something.  Republicans have a bit of a fetish for patriotic bling, but less so for patriotism itself.  They love the flag, but don't particularly love what the flag stands for (they can't stand our system of government, particularly the judiciary, but really any branch that stands in their way).  They claim to "love" the troops, but then when a service member runs for president they mock him for having received a purple heart (a medal he got for being wounded in battle and saving his fellow service members).

In other words, Republicans are much more into objects of democracy than democracy itself.  It's why they're far more concerned about kids saying prayers in school than they are the same kid getting a school lunch, or keeping the kid away from automatic rifles (lest that interfere with the child's constitutional right to die in a meaningless blaze of gunfire at the movies).

So, to Fox, it doesn't matter that these athletes have given their all, since childhood, for this one chance to represent their country at the Olympics.  That's not patriotism.  What's patriotic is stopping by the local gun shop and buying a $2.00 flag pin along with an uzi, before heading home to beat your wife, and disown your kid for being gay. Read the rest of this post...

Video of Mars landing

Kind of. It's video of the JPL control center as they wait for confirmation of the landing. It's a neat video.  The fun starts around 59 minutes in, or so.

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