Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican. Show all posts

8/3/10

Even Republicans Love The Pork

Just a quick picture, from a Pew Research poll conducted from July 29 to August 1, of where the Republican party, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin have failed even more than Barack Obama in their messaging:


Americans love pork. Even the GOP voters.

The sound you just heard in the back of your mind was an entire line of right wing gobbledygook talking points extremism thought being flushed down the toilet.

[update]
Jed Lewison provides a little more insight in to how this really is more likely to play out in elections:

Sorry, tea party: Voters prefer government project

If you look at the net impact of each hypothetical on a liklihood of support (in other words, subtracting the less likely number from the more likely number), you get, in order:
  1. Government projects: +39%
  1. Barack Obama: -1%
  1. Candidate is neither Dem nor GOP: -6%
  1. Tea party: -9%
  1. Sarah Palin: -20%
So it turns out that the tea party's austerity message is a lead balloon for the GOP. Instead, voters want somebody representing them who will deliver the goods for their district. Even among Republicans, voters are just as likely to support a candidate who delivers government projects and money to their district as one who has the backing of the tea party.

Moreover, it turns out the election really isn't about any one national figure, but if it were, it would be Sarah Palin that was a detriment -- not President Obama.
[update deux] And, yes, no doubt that Pork has more political pull across the spectrum than Sarah Palin does. But none of this should come as a surprise given that we already knew that Socialism is as popular as the Tea Party. < smirk >

11/10/09

KWIN-uh-pe-ack Poll is up - And so am I...

It is way too early in the morning but I figured I'd check for the latest Quinnipiac poll results for the Connecticut Governor's race:
In an early look at the 2010 election for Connecticut Governor, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz runs best among possible Democratic challengers, trailing Republican incumbent Jodi Rell 46 - 40 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Gov. Rell leads 91 - 5 percent among Republicans and 56 - 26 percent among independent voters, while Bysiewicz leads 74 - 12 percent among Democrats.

Businessman Ned Lamont trails Rell 53 - 33 percent and Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy loses 52 - 33 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

In a Democratic primary matchup, Bysiewicz gets 26 percent to 23 percent for Lamont, with 9 percent for Malloy. No other contender tops 3 percent.
With no candidate on the right to compare, all I can say is that it looks like Susan Bysiewicz is the early front runner in the race for the Democratic party nomination.

And it looks like Rell may still be able to squeak out on a bit of a high note barring anymore news of the scandal involving Dautrich - AKA: Rell's Brain - and Quinnipiac leaking out. Of course, this poll was, I believe, taken before the news of subpoenas going out in that scandal.

Voters are starting to trend towards a lower opinion of Connecticut political ethics during the Rell years... Quite punch to the gut when you consider Rowland was the previous Governor.



Why this trend? Might just be because of information:



The more information they have, the lower their opinion goes.

9/21/09

Boehner at CPAC calling all of Obama's Policies Socialist

Flushing out Boehner's lie on Meet the Press and a David Gregory that doesn't follow politics well enough to be able to call him out on the obvious:



Boehner is no different then any other Bircher whackjob.

2/13/09

Is Gregg Just a Chicken?

When Gregg took the job he said that he would have supported the stimulus package but would not vote on it. Will he tuck tail and run from that position too?

Time for Gregg to own up to what he said.

Will Gregg chicken out when he has to face the ironic ridicule and egging on of the equally ridiculous wingnuts. What would you expect from anyone in the GOP? Seriously? Their track record says they will refuse to take responsibility for their votes, actions and statements even after the majority of voters have tossed them out of office for their blatant incompetence and brazened corruption. Can you think of any reason for Gregg to be any different? Now.

Also, the fact that Gregg now says he will not be running for office again tells me...

Time to wait for the scandal.

Any "bankers/gambling addicts" willing to set the odds on that for the credit derivatives market?

[update] The waiting may be over.
Judd Gregg has a Jack Abramoff problem.

At the very least, Abramoff and his team had easy access to Gregg’s Senate staff and were able to use that access to help their clients by stopping unfavorable legislation while getting earmarks and favorable legislation passed into law.

As it stands right now, Gregg’s best defense is that he is a terrible manager and that "bad apples" joined his staff, went "rogue" and traded favors in his name. And to be fair, Gregg may be that dense. After all, look at the sloppy and moronic way he withdrew himself from consideration as Obama’s Commerce Secretary: it was not the actions of a competent man. On the other hand, it was the actions of a man distracted other things. Gregg strikes me as a nervous man deeply worried about another shoe dropping.

Perhaps he is clean of scandal, but I suspect that Gregg had a fair understanding of what his staffers were doing in his name. After all, Kevin Koonce is not the only link between Senator Judd Gregg and Jack Abramoff.

Like most Republicans since 2005, Judd Gregg denies that he ever knew or had anything to do with Jack Abramoff. The money he returned from Abramoff’s clients was just a coincidence. In fact—to hear Gregg or one of his fellow Republicans explain it—any of the growing list of links between Abramoff and Gregg or Abramoff and the Republican Party are just random points of unrelated data. Yeah, right.

They are tap dancing in the graveyard.

Perhaps it was Jack Abramoff who best explained why this line of BS is so hard to believe when he told Vanity Fair in 2006:

"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn’t know me is almost certainly lying," he says. Such lies are not just, well, lies, but dumb to boot, he adds, for, as his own humiliations suggest, old e-mails never die; they just sit on hard drives, waiting to be subpoenaed and then to be leaked to the press. "This is not an age when you can run away from facts," he declares. "I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."

It is looking like Judd Gregg will have to deal with his Abramoff record. Perhaps this is why he withdrew as the Commerce Secretary and why he has decided to retire from the Senate at the end of this term.

2/4/09

Republican strategy summed up...

Republicans are crapping in one hand and wishing in the other. Over here on the reality side, we really want you Republicans to get back to us on which hand fills up first?

Nevermind... You still don't get it. Obviously, you never did.

Here is an interesting post on soldiers, suicide and some health care issues that is well worth the read. The post is not all doom and gloom as The Political Cat also offers some humor to lighten up your day.

1/30/09

McConnell Exits Stage Right...

When he says this:
"We're all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us. And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one," McConnell told the gathering.
And this is part of why you are not only a regional party, now, but your regional party is in serious jeopardy of becoming the 3rd party in this two party country. A country that no longer needs nor wants neoconservatives, far right wing authoritarians, obstructionists, childish name calling mud slingers, warmongers, haters, the criminals and the corrupt. We are done with all of the epic failures and political theatrics that the GOP brings to the political stage.

The problem is not that people stopped listening to you.

It is that they started listening to what you say and comparing it to what you do. And it is because they started looking at those actions and matched them up to the actual results that they are living through right now.

The real problem with your party is that people actually started paying attention. And it will continue to be the problem with the GOP as long as the the GOP continues to do what they have already done before. And, so far, they are.

Take a bow Mitch McConnell...

This could very well be the GOP's final curtain call on the national stage. And you, Mitch McConnell, had a grand part in it all...

[update] The Existentialist Cowboy gives a great rundown of some of the many reasons for the GOP's problems. But, as you can see, the GOP just does not get it..

1/28/09

The Still Shifting Political Landscape

Gallup has the longer explanation of this map. Red no more has the shorter one:

you could call this "What will a 50-state strategy buy?"

Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska and Nebraska. That's it. And even Nebraska gave one of its electoral votes to Barack Obama.

According to the Gallup poll out today, only these 5 states have a statistically significant majority who self-identify as Republicans. Stunning, just stunning. As a former Republican myself, I could certainly see this coming as every rational, intelligent and moral person was pretty much driven screaming from the party.

Ten more states are toss-ups. So much for the permanent Republican majority, I guess!

All told, 29 states and the District of Columbia had Democratic party affiliation advantages of 10 points or greater last year. This includes all of the states in the Northeast, and all but Indiana in the Great Lakes region. There are even several Southern states in this grouping, including Arkansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

What does that leave our Republican friends?

In contrast, only five states had solid or leaning Republican orientations in 2008, with Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska in the former group, and Nebraska in the latter.

The most balanced political states in 2008 were Texas (+2 Democratic), South Dakota (+1), Mississippi (+1), North Dakota (+1), South Carolina (even), Arizona (even), Alabama (+1 Republican), and Kansas (+2 Republican).

Welcome to liberal America...

And remember that the political landscape is still shifting further and further left.

1/13/09

The Tennessee GOP is stunned and freaking out!

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

No one saw this coming!

The Republicans -- who had just finally won control of the State House for the first time in 40+ years – were suppose to elect their Speaker of the House today. And failed!

Anaxamander has the details in his/her diary. The Tennessee State House has 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats. Well, Rep. Kent Williams (R-TN) got the support of all 49 Democrats plus his own vote to put himself in the Speaker’s chair.

The TNGOP is freaking stunned and freaking out!

Sorry... Couldn't help myself. :D

1/12/09

Nancy Johnson Deserves a Donut Hole

Not a high paying lobbying job working for Hartford. We can't get rid of these corrupt GOP cling ons in Connecticut. The voters flush them and they recycle as lobbyists or in other places of influence that they do not deserve given their complete and utter failure to represent the people while in office.

10/24/08

Something I thought I'd never see...

And NOPE! I am not talking about the millions of people supporting a black man for president - even though there are some seriously bigoted people still out there screeching in America, times have changed enough that I figured that it could very likely happen in my lifetime... Just a matter of the right candidate to answer the call - and I am not talking about the many conservatives I know - Republican, Indy and unaffiliated - voting for a Democratic candidate. That happens all the time. It happened even more so in the last few years as people have watched the "Conservative party": bring in huge deficits; fail in one war and in one illegal invasion and occupation; admit to illegally spying on Americans; tear down an economy with deregulated bank failures, a mortgage crisis brought on by the "ownership society" they extol, unemployment surges from companies shutting down and made even Joe and Suzy Sixpack's income shrink faster than choice for women and civil rights.

Nope. I am not talking about that.
I am talking about this:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

10/16/08

Bigoted Republicans Passing the Buck

And the bigoted Republican that passed it around says "I didn't see it ..." Sure you didn't.

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

More of the The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

snip

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.
And she didn't see it was racist BUT she did it because Obama drew attention to his own race?

Just remember that this is what passes as fun humor in Republican emails these days. And she tries to blame Obama for her sick actions? There is a lot to be said about Republicans passing the buck on personal responsibility.

10/15/08

Acorn Droppings

Aldon Hynes over at Orient Lodge has been on top of sorting out the issues from the non-issues involved with the GOP's assault on Acorn in Connecticut.

This is problematic in many different aspects. Perhaps most troubling is that it shows a disregard for due process and the American belief that people, and organizations are innocent until proven guilty. Yes, two complaints have been filed. As noted above, there is good reason to question these complaints, and I believe that the SEEC will do an appropriate job in investigating the complaint and taking proper action.

The other concern is that instead of trying to make sure that “Everyone who is eligible has the right to register and vote”, Mr. Healy is calling for an end of a very successful and at least by every indication I’ve seen, properly run, voter registration effort.

Brad Blog has a whole bunch of it too:
So, Where's That ACORN 'Voter Fraud'?!
So far, nobody's been able to offer us a single instance of voter fraud as committed by ACORN, or even by any of the 1.3 million registered by them over the past two years. You sure wouldn't know it if you listened to the crazed rightwingers...

My suggestion when it comes to Acorn?

Grab a beer, read those sources... And then tell the GOP to go fuck themselves and their attempts at short cutting Republican voter caging efforts to its source based on the fact that Americans are registering to vote en masse because they are so pissed at Republicans and they can't wait to vote for candidates like Barack Obama and Jim Himes.

Heck... With the mob tied Cappiello running in CT-05, some Nutmeggers are probably even excited about voting for Chris Murphy.

Chris Healy is DWI if he thinks anyone is going to help him suppress the legitimate rights of people to vote just because he is tired of having to drink away the daily hangover of working for the GOP. Nobody in Connecticut is fat, drunk and stupid enough to take Chris Healy's low road on this issue.

Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote?

Whoopde-fuckingdoo!
The GOP can grow up and get back to me when Mickey Mouse actually shows up on election day and tries to vote.

Does anyone discount the probability that Republicans filled out some of the fake cards to try and fabricate an Acorn scandal? And it really is a non-issue from the get go as long as the people paid to process the forwarded registration cards and the poll workers do their jobs.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 5

Wick Allison hits the entire McCain campaign problem upside the head with a brutal dose of reality from a real and honest conservative point of view:
But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don't work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his "conservative" credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world "safe for democracy." It is John McCain who says America's job is to "defeat evil," a theological expansion of the nation's mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
The faux brand of warmongering conservatism coupled with a total lack of fiscal restraint and big brother government practiced by the neoconservatives controlling the GOP and their supportive cast of Christianists has been a bitter lesson for real conservatives that have watched their party's hijacking destroy any credibility and sense of decency it once had.

The Christianist Now Own The GOP

Packer sees what the GOP has now become:

[McCain] gambled, all right, but it was in the direction of orthodoxy—for Palin is a creature and an icon of the Republicans’ evangelical base, which came into full possession of the Party this week and completed the G.O.P.’s conversion to identity politics...No wonder Pat Buchanan was so fired up on MSNBC, while Mike Huckabee wore the look of a man who missed his train because he was given the wrong departure time.

Part of the GOP base is in a Christian trance... The rest of what is left of conservatives from previous defections is jumping ship. This could one day be called "The McCain/Palin Bailout of 08" in history books.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 4

After the economy was hit with the credit derivatives disaster, he showed his utter lack of understanding about how McCain's own career of championing of deregulation was at fault for it and tried to shovel blame onto anyone or anything but himself and his party's ideologies. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal mocked McCain's incompetent knee-jerk reaction:
To give readers a flavor of Mr. McCain untethered, we'll quote at length: "Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

"The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him."

Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.

After praising the fundamentals of the economy in the morning, after disaster had already struck and following up with a series of incomprehensible statements begging for more of the same, McCain's erratic reactions finally turned McCain into a scapegoating Cox-sacker.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 3

Senator Chuck Hagel was one of the first Republicans to take a hard look at what McCain had done when he picked Palin as his running mate:
In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) suggested that Palin doesn't have the foreign-policy experience to be president. "'She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials,' Hagel said in an interview. 'You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything.'"

Check out this other Hagel line: "'I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, "I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,"' he said. 'That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.'"
Yep... This is a heartbeat away from reality and McCain still thinks this is just fine and dandy. The American public are a little more conscious of the harsh realities of this erratic and impulsive decision by McCain.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 2

Via HuffPo, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy let the truth slip out about McCain's choice of Sarah Palin:
Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and former John McCain adviser, Time columnist, and MSNBC contributor Mike Murphy were caught on tape disparaging John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate.

"It's over," Noonan said.

When Chuck Todd asked her if this was the most qualified woman the Republicans could nominate, Noonan responded, "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and that's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Murphy characterized the choices as "cynical" and "gimmicky."

Can you blame them for saying that after a few days of Palin being exposed for amateur politician and major league scandalized piece of republican failure that she really was? Even many in the neoconservative wet set are repulsed by McCain's sheer, utter and irrefutable incompetence in running his campaign.

There is little doubt as to what turned the misfiring John McCain campaign into a comedy of errors.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain?

We're glad you asked...



Their patron Saint (Ronnie Raygun) has been exposed for the sham that his his free market trickle down vooddo really was with the complete collapse of their deregulated market run amok. Now they are ashamed of their Republican presidential candidate, their separatist VP candidate and their own damned party... What's a poor GOPeeon to do?

10/9/08

Will Wachovia's Flood of Money End Up Financing Shays?

Teetering on the edge of failure, Wachovia manages to scrape up 8 million bucks to give to the RNCC:

Wachovia Corp., a once-thriving financial giant now teetering on the brink of collapse, confirmed today that it was extending an $8 million loan to the cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee for last-minute activites to support GOP House candidates.

Wachovia's decision to lend money to the NRCC -- itself reeling from a damaging financial scandal earlier this year -- is sure to draw charges of favoritism, as Wachovia denies credit and freezes assets for thousands of other customers.

Allegations of favoritism are especially delicate for Wachovia, given the company's disproportionate support of Republican campaigns and organizations.

Should be interesting to watch which campaigns the RNCC dumps money into over the next little while...

Considering how the Republicans are about to get the beating of their political lives in November, and putting aside the ethics and morality of Wall Street and the GOP, would you consider this to be a good investment by Wachovia? And people wonder how the economy could have tanked so badly with all of that conservative deregulation stuff coupled with the GOP/'lobbyists revolving door on K Street in an incestuous marriage of money and Republican politics.

9/22/08

I bet Spitzer Isn't Surprised by the Market Crash

Too bad something got in the way of Spitzer exposing all of that nasty predatory lending stuff way back when bush was fighting like a mad dog to keep this from being pursued by state AGs.

Sure, Spitzer should have de-socked before his career-ending indiscretion. But we should revisit the prophetic message that was lost to the tsunami of Spitzer's scandalization two weeks later.

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers,
Feb. 14, 2008. Washington Post.

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders...These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Spitzer's omen went further to note that not only did the White House do nothing, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye after 50 state Attorneys General and many legislative attempts failed to halt the worst of the predatory lending excesses.

The AGs and their banking superintendents fought the Bush Administration's use of a Civil War era banking provision which established federal preemption of all state predatory lending laws and the new rules which emasculated state consumer protections from national banks.

Shortly before Stone's November tip finally mobilized national law enforcement to rescue Americans from the perverse activities of Spitzer and his calf-length socks, he left a final warning:

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

We're now to let Industry's insider dictate the terms under which we'll spend the heritage of our grandchildren to repurchase the bloody bag of instruments of our rape?

Because, ya know, it wouldn't be such a nice gift for the republicans - to be able to turn against the bush admin. - at such an opportune time (by voting against a bail out) and the election coming up n' all.
  1. Dems vote for the bail out and they are damned by the "fiscal conservatives" as "big spenders."

  2. Vote against a bail out and the Dems are "do nothingers."
One of those two memes that will have to be beaten. Pick yer poison well.

You would think it might even have been why Spitzer was brought down in the first place. Because they might have wanted to wait until now to unleash the chaos. Not that the bushies have ever said anything that might suggest they would pull shit like this...
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
You don't think the bushies are playing ya? They are playing you all in the hopes of giving the republicans an edge to cut the Dems lead with... And no matter what way this all goes - the big spenders or the do nothings - in the end the shitpile will be shoveled higher and deeper onto the next administration.

McCain will be left with a great reason to cut programs and benefits if, god forbid, he wins. And if Obama wins... He will be saddled with too much debt to make a real dent in change.

The rich will be rewarded for failure and the poor will be stuck with the bill for generations to come.