Dem Dems are Dumb Dumbs

Yep - the local New Milford Democrats are lead by dumb dumbs. Their entire leadership team is continually outmaneuvered and outsmarted by the Republican Town Committee (RTC). Why they seek leadership positions year after year - and why they're re-elected by the membership - is beyond me.

John Lillis and Liba Furhman are so pathetic they claim they couldn't find anyone to take a seat on the Board of Finance. Really? You couldn't find ONE person, among a few thousand registered Dems, who would take a seat on the BOF?

Let's take a look at the record of recent failures to see what the real story is for these dumb dumbs.

The Park and Rec Board has ZERO Dems. 5 R's and 2 U's, but no Dems. The last time an appointment was open, the wife of a Dem elected official asked repeatedly to serve. Because the leadership did nothing, the Mayor put forth another "R." Is this just being lazy - or dumb?

The Board of Ed had an opening in February '10, due to the resignation of Dr. Lisa Diamond. She gave the Dems ample time to find and put up a qualified nominee. In a stroke of unethical genius, the RTC Mayor put up a registered Dem to fill the void. The Dem, Rodney Weinberg, had asked da Dems repeatedly to serve on the BOE or other commission, but his name - or that of any other Dem - was never put up. As usual, Lillis showed up late to the party, and the right-leaning Weinberg was confirmed. Is this just lazy - or dumb?

After months and months of a Dem seat being open on the BOF, the Mayor could wait no more. She put up a "U," Beth Falder, at the last TC meeting (6/28/10). Mrs. Falder might as well be an "R," or a "T" for Tea Party, as she lead the public charge of the anti-school crowd this year. According to a party insider, Liba Furhman claimed there was not one person's name they could bring forward for that seat. Again - lazy or dumb?

If da Dems could lift a finger and type out an email to their membership, maybe they'd get a response from "one or more" volunteers. Or, if da Dems put a two paragraph note in the local papers (just like the RTC does all the time), asking for volunteers for boards and commissions, maybe they'd get a response. Or, if they asked their members to ask their friends and neighbors, I bet dem Dems could get one, sole, single, solitary person to volunteer.

Am I way off base here? Would any of you reading this be willing to step up and take a seat on the BOF, BOE, Park and Rec, or any of the other boards and commissions in town? Let me know.

We don't need to remind everyone of da Dems recent general election success to take a shot at the leadership. They lost control of every board in town, and only by the grace of the Town Charter were they able to cling to a few paltry seats of importance. But, when you run a campaign consisting of nothing, that's what you get. Nice leadership Lillis and Liba!

What do I think is the real problem? Lillis and Furhman are overly controlling, and unwilling to give new people an opportunity. If they don't know you - forget it. If they don't like you - forget it even more. If you have any new ideas... I think you get the point.

If you want a leadership position, then lead. Do something - ANYTHING - to show New Milford da Dems aren't dead.

Let's Take a Shot at the Media

How can I possibly top that introduction? I'm so happy - I'm tearing up! Actually, if I can add just a dash of local flavor to this bubbling cauldron of intellectual give and take, Connecticut Man1 can add a micro-brew to his menu of libations. Cheers!

Let's Take a Shot at the Media

While I'd love to start off with the usual suspects (Town Council, Mayor, Republicans, Democrats, Board of Ed), today an editorial appeared in the Danbury News-Times that deserves attention. After multiple editorials calling for support of education, that education was the most important responsibility of a community, they rip the New Milford BOE for instituting Pay-to-Play instead of cutting more teaching positions. Can you say hypocritical? Worse than flip-flopping, however, is the "fact" they use regarding the fees. Does each student have to pay $150 for each sport? NO. Each family would pay one time - only $150 - to play sports at the high school. If you play 3 sports, your fee is only $150 for the entire year. Didn't your reporters pass this up to the corner office? Or do you trust Roger Szendy to do your reporting?

The News-Times also forgot to mention that the BOE voted 8-0 to accept Pay-to-Play. 5 Republicans, 3 Democrats. Unanimous. Bipartisan. Buh-bye now...

Why doesn't the News-Times mention their disdain for other districts that have Pay-to-Play? How about a comparison?

Did you notice the editorial called the Town Council's $1.8 million cut unreasonable? Let's face it: the TC is the real problem.

We are not losing out in the world economy because of lack of atheltic opportunities. We could play Singapore in any sport (other than ping pong) and crush them - but will that get these kids jobs in the future? Will that pay for Grandma's social security? Will we have to pay to incarcerate these kids for a lot more $$ in the future?

Stop the flip-floping, News-Times. Take your responsibility seriously.

Read the editorial, and let me know what you think. Was I fair and balanced?


ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Connecticut Man1 asked: Is this now a movement or a drinking game? LOL! I loved quarters in college, and playing "Bob" was always fun. But, sadly, some of the locals view our lives as part of a game, and they'll screw any of us in order to win. So, I hope it's a movement (but I'll be sipping on a cold one in the back yard tonight, enjoying the sunset over the hills of New Milford).

Welcome News on Ramping up Blog Production in New Milford

As the next big election season starts to heat up... I just wanted to note that this place will start getting a little more interesting. There a lot of great races on the radar, with the Governor's race, a Senate seat and the endless campaign campaigns on the House side, of course.

But, even better, IMHO, is that if you look over at the sidebar in the drunk tank you might notice that there are now two authors for this Blog.

CT Fair and Balanced is local to New Milford and I believe has an even better handle on the local politics than I do. I've always been so busy on national politics that I've never had the time to focus on it, myself, and with any of the depth that it probably should be explored. But CT Fair and Balanced will be posting on whomever or whatever is at the tips of the typing fingers.

I will still be brewing up my regular stuff here but now you may even find some breaks from the monotony of my own personal opinions on subjects and campaigns of local and national importance.

Now there remains but one question to be answered:

With two people on this Blog, does this officially make it a movement or a drinking game?



I may be slightly nuts but since I can't dance I know I have my own opinion on that... Cheers! :)

What subversive literature is that?

My daughter is up to something today.... First step to conquering the world?

Premature Ejaculatory Praise Of Tiny Comical Release

I think TPM's Megan Carpentier may have captured the essence of this funny and tiny problem for teabagger redux - "Microman" - in her last paragraph:

Wurzelbacher describes Microman as "frustrated" and "one of us" in the same press release. One wonders how many other Tea Party members, already frustrated with being called teabaggers, would get behind a movement to rebrand them as "Micromen" with as much enthusiasm as Wurzelbacher.

And so their own witless self-parody continues needing very little help from the opposition...

Two Polls and Two Really Bad Jokes

Poll 1.


Research 2000 just pretty much confirmed the state of the Connecticut Senate race between Blumenthal and McMahon:

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 5/24-26. Likely voters. MoE 4% (1/11-13 results)

Dick Blumenthal (D) 52 (56)
Linda McMahon (R) 33 (34)

It'd been a while since we polled Connecticut, and quite frankly, I didn't expect to ever come back to this Senate race (the governor's race is another story, and a race for another day to poll).

Poll 2.

These numbers are pretty darn close to where Quinnipiac had them yesterday:

May 27, 2010 - Blumenthal Pins McMahon By 25 Points In Connecticut, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Most Voters Say Vietnam Issue Doesn't Impact Vote


Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal leads former wrestling executive Linda McMahon 56 - 31 percent in the U.S. Senate race and tops the Republican candidate by large margins on every character measure, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Joke 1.

I blogged about that Vietnam issue being a pile of hooey, having been planted in the media by McMahon and hopelessly being flung around like poop in the right wing blogosphere and media in a desperate attempt to make a non-story into anything they can over at Connecticut Political Reporter. Probably because the joke of a corporatist media would really love to turn this smackdown of a Senate race into a horse race that they want and need to sell papers:

Despite "supposedly" putting his own foot in his mouth last week, Dick Blumenthal still manages to put a good old fashioned WWE Smackdown on Linda McMahon, where Blumenthal keeps a formidable lead, 56-31, over McMahon in the most recent Quinnipiac polling.

Proving that this was the non-story that it really should have been from the start, regardless of the GOP's McMahon planting it, the NY Times doing a bang up job of corporatist stenography for the GOP and right wing Bloggers desperately trying to make more of it than was ever going to be worth.

When McMahon tries to float one we will flush it...

 In the media you will find that they repeat the same thing about this story yet is a taken from a video that is purposely taken out of context by McMahon and the media can't even bother to fact check it a bit before they go with it....

Joke 2. (And this is a long running joke)

Rasmussen does its nuttiest best to give the right wing something to latch onto:

18 MAY 2010
CT-SEN
Blumenthal D 48.0%, McMahon R 45.0%
Sample:
MoE: 500
4.5
Population: Likely Voters

What planet are they polling likely voters on? Is there some hidden Republican Connecticut on a propaganda producing Perelandra that we don't know about?

This is expected of Rasmussen as they are purely a propaganda arm of the GOP and they always produce polls that are so far out of whack with reality for months leading up to primaries and elections, which the corporate media slurps up like a Jeff Gannon kneeling in front of George W Bush passing this disease (and others) off to readers as "news",  and then suddenly, magically, weeks before an election their numbers start to reflect the real numbers of a race.

Rasmussen followed their typical propaganda pattern when they were constatntly predicting that there would be a "President McCain" coupled with a "GOP gaining in the House"... Right up until a few weeks before the election when it became clear they would be so far out of touch with reality at the end of it. And it is like they don't think people will notice this?

For example, from February to April of 2008, Rasmussen showed John McCain leading by an average of 2.6%. Meanwhile, every other poll of likely voters during that time period showed Barack Obama with a 2.6% lead. So from February to April, there was a 5.2% gap between Rasmussen and everybody else.


From September through election day, however, the gap was significantly smaller. The average Rasmussen poll taken during that time showed Obama leading by 3.8% while the average of all other polls of likely voters showed Obama leading by 5.8%, resulting in a gap of 2%.

So in the early months of 2008, the gap between Rasmussen and everybody else was 5.6% compared with 2% late in the cycle. Another important point here is that early in the cycle, Rasmussen's polling accounted for a far larger share of overall polling, meaning that their results played a more important role in shaping horse race narratives in the early stages of the campaign than they did in the latter stages of the campaign.

They are clearly trying to drive a republican narrative and it shows. Some earlier Rasmussen jokes being compiled by Nate Silver:

Here are the results of statewide polling in the 2000 Presidential Election. Although the pollster ratings will eventually involve some fancier math, the numbers you see below are as simple as it gets: I've simply looked at the average error of the last poll issued by each pollster in each state in terms of projecting the margin between Bush and Gore. (A cut-off is established 21 days prior to the election.)





While 2000 was generally a fairly rough year for pollsters, who had to deal with an unenthusiastic electorate, some third-party challengers, and some late-breaking developments like Bush's DUI charge, Rasmussen was the worst of the lot, missing by an average of 5.7 points. They also called 7 states wrong.** Some of this was the result of bias, as they were 3.5 points too high on Bush's margin in the states they surveyed, on average.

If I were a betting man, and I am not, I could see setting up a pool picking the date when Rasmussen starts to reflect reality in the CT-SEN race OR any other race for that matter. They really are that predictable.

An old empty bottle brewed in New Milford showing how out of touch Rasmussen was (looks like pure propaganda to me) during the healthcare reform debate. Just look at the pic to see clearly how out of whack their numbers are:

All you need to know about healthcare polls:

For now...

The right wing keeps trying to push a Rasmussen poll with bad numbers in it for Obama, the public option and for single payer. I dealt with the single payer numbers and public option numbers a little bit (and other interesting things, to me, at least?) at ePluribus Media a couple of days ago and most of the Blogosphere has seen the numbers for Obama start to rise again. Much of these numbers have all been noted to follow the start of of pressure from teabagging. Briefly numbers across the board dropped... But as people began to realize all of the things the birthers/.deathers/teabaggers were saying were as crazy as the things many of them were doing the numbers for those issues and Obama re-solidified. While pollster.com dealt with many of the numbers in a different way, I just want to show you the picture they put together of what I am talking about:


Yes, this one picture deals with the public option but is easily applicable across the board on almost any issue. And I am not even going to get in to the well known right wing bias of Rasmussen, nor their incredibly ridiculous outlier numbers in previous polls. Just remember that they are the one polling outfit that was predicting major leads for the GOP House early into the last election cycle and have, over time, taken a serious beating from many poll savvy people over many of their crazy outliers and polls bordering on the edge of push polls.

Anyways... Some in the media and the right wing are ignoring recent polls and quoting old stuff and even taking stuff out way out of context in order to fit their talking points and narratives. How the heck can any person call Obama and his policies in trouble when he has approval ratings over 50% in 48 of the 50 states? And an Obama 63% approval rate across the entire country?

6 months in we are talking uber popular, both in Obama's leadership and in many of his policies. If anything, the numbers inside the polls, overall and IMHO, show that the solutions they are seeing are not liberal enough for them.
And we can thank the raging, lying loonies on the right wing for helping to solidify those numbers.

While I am certain that many of the people with more experience in reading into polls will have more important things to say about it all, people like the number crunchers at dKos or Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com, but really, and let us be honest here: If a picture is worth a thousand words, that one up there speaks volumes.

Movin' On!

Just to the other side of town. :)

I am at the point where I can choose to live in a half empty house with only a computer and a lot of furniture (minus the drawers of "stuff" that are already moved) or live in a house with a TV and no furniture inside (though we do have our patio furniture moved so we can sit outside). We load up the van and take it over every night and so far we have moved most of the small things we have. We rented a small moving truck to move the big things figuring on doing it in two loads but with so much already done we may just get everything left to fit in that one small truck for one last load.

McMahon Gushes Over Deregulating Oil

McMahon Campaign Literature
From TheDay.com

According to The Day and at the same time that we are witnessing the results of the typical Republican deregulation-run-amok of anything that moves money to these Multinational Oil Corporations wash in ashore as tar balls and dead dolphins on American shorelines, GOP Senate candidate wannabe Linda McMahon spews about further deregulation of the oil industry?

I can think of better ways to solve our energy problems than coating the country from coast to coast along with our food sources with more oil slicks.

The Root Of The Problem: Education

From former New Milford raised a glass and brewed Todd Umbarger and without further comment since it says enough on its own (and I could add an essay to this BUT...) :

click on this for larger

With previous permission from Todd Umbarger.

Todd is a New York-based illustrator and draws the political cartoon "National Concern."

Image of a word bomb

If a picture is worth a thousand words than this one speaks volumes about where a pretty darn liberal America is right now:

Though I embrace many of the progressive ideas that those who have embraced the name "progressive" espouse, I have always preferred to stick to the name liberal. For the most part liberal is progressive and progressive is liberal. Somebody can correct me if I am wrong on this but about the only difference between them is those that embrace the name progressive tend to be more closely associated with the Democratic party and those that have stuck with liberal tend to be more independent of a political party affiliation. Not always, but for the most part.

I can not see tossing out the word liberal simply because a synonym has shown some level of popularity across the board in American's eyes. The fact is that it is the ideas that count regardless of what you want to call it.

Besides that? DLinNM sounds pretty safe and if I take on the popular word and change my Blog's name to Drinking Progressively in New Milford shortening it in comments, etc., would sound too much like an adult sex classified ad:  "DPinNM"

- Uh, no thanks. :)

Not that we should Wonder about McMahon's 5$ bounty...

But it kind of has to make ya wonder what McMahons' real intentions were when she put a bounty on college students' registration:

DA to team with Secretary of State on voter registration probe

A Register investigation published Friday online and in Sunday’s newspaper exposed how signature gatherers circulating petitions had tricked young Orange County voters into registering to vote as Republicans. Since mid-March, at least 99 written complaints have been submitted to state elections officials by Orange County residents who say they were registered to vote Republican without their consent.

An independent Register investigation found an additional 74 voters who say they were tricked or coerced into registering to vote as Republican by signature gatherers who initially asked them to sign petitions to legalize marijuana, fight cancer or clean up beaches.

All of the voters identified by the Register are listed as under 28 years old and live in the 34th State Senate District, where the Republicans hope to oust incumbent Democrat Lou Correa in the fall. Unlike the Democrats, the California Republican Party has a policy of paying signature gatherers who send them new GOP voter registration cards and the Republicans are offering as much as $8 for each new GOP registration in that district.

Many believe this $8 bounty creates an incentive for signature gatherers to commit fraud.

 HMMMM?

When we have a fire...

The flames are going about twenty five feet in the air right now. If there is one thing every Boy Scout knows how to do? Start a really BIG FIRE.

The view from here

My perspective as we wrap up the Bloggers meet up with Rep. Rosa DeLauro. Video coming soon.

Boston Tea Party Punked

Buzzfeed has a whole bunch of signs from the Boston Common Tea Party getting punked but here are a few for your viewing pleasure:

Support The Troops - Pay Your Taxes

Connecticut Man1

It is the tax deadline and this stuff is pretty self explanatory.

You pay taxes and they get beans, bullets and valuable training that might just save their lives. When you want tax cut after tax cut? The active duty soldiers serving overseas, in training here or elsewhere and the veterans that have served are the ones that pay the price. You may not want to believe that but it is true.

Connecticut State Capitol Police Dumps Cold Water On Radical Tea Party

The Connecticut State Capitol Police reverses their previous decision and revokes the Tea Party's flag raising ceremony when they figured out it was nothing more than a political pity party stunt from a bunch of fringe wingnuts:

Tea Party activists won't be permitted to fly the Gadsden Flag over the state Capitol after all.

State Capitol police today reversed an earlier decision to allow the bright yellow "Don't Tread On Me" banner to flutter from the highly visible flagpole after learning that activists had planned a political rally following the flag-raising ceremony.

"It went from being a flag-raising ceremony to a political event,'' Acting Capitol police Chief Walter Lee said. "They are using it as a launching pad for [candidates for] public office."

Tea Party activists view the flag as a historic symbol of American defiance, but critics say the familiar flag with the image of a coiled rattlesnake is now associated with the controversial political movement.

Why they would consider allowing a political stunt from a bunch of far right wing radical retreads of the John Birch Society ilk with no more political weight than socialists in the United States of America have is beyond reason in the first place?

It would be funny if Socialism was as popular as the Tea Party

Bwahahahaha!

The numbers don’t lie.


The Percentage of Americans viewing “The Tea Party movement” favorably: 37 percent. The Percentage of Americans with a positive image of “socialism”: 36 percent. (Both sources, Gallup).

Yes... The thing the far right wingnut Teabaggers mock as being radical and fringe in America is just as popular as they are.

Kudos to the Connecticut State Capitol Police for recognizing this political stunt for what it is before it happened.

[update] Connecticut Bob and My Left Nutmeg are all over this, as well. Too much serious funny and reality hilariousness not to notice this story.

Dudchik: News Aggregator or the Big CON?

Most "news aggregators" are meant to misinform. This is even truer when they are run by ideologues and propagandists more interested in hyper-partisan talking points than reality.

In order to be shocked by this I would need to be licking the inside of a light-bulb socket. If anyone else is shocked by this perhaps they should be licking the inside of light-bulb socket? This kind of stupid should hurt. Might just realign their synapses in a functioning manner so they can begin using the basic skill of critical thinking.

Sadly, aggregators like that are the first bastion of the lazy journalists as evidenced by the fact that too many of them seem to think Drudge is a legitimate source, as well, and repeat the same mistake of leaving their browser open on it all day long waiting for their next big news story and expecting a different result than the last time they did that.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel Maddow's piece continues on and expands on the brigade of right wing GOP talking pointy heads concerning their fake "ACORN" and "Climategate" scandals and a litany of stupid regardless of the issues below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"Fashion Show"

A little something from Lauren Greenfield, whose documentary looks at an ad and money driven culture and its effects on adults, kids and especially women and girls, have been noted by myself at ePluribus Media before:

Greenfield's video "Fashion Show" mixes filmed footage with still photography from over 50 runway shows in New York, Milan and Paris. Cut to the pulsating beat of Fol Chen's latest musical single, "The Longer You Wait", the multimedia piece is an experiential journey through the life of the definitive fashion show.

Lauren Greenfield's "Fashion Show" from Lauren Greenfield on Vimeo.


At first view of that little trailer, and having seen a couple of her pieces before, I might think this one would seem to be the closest to a frivolous piece beyond being arsty photog's view of the behind the scene's of what it takes to build the artsy world of Fashion Shows. Reading a little further at the vimeo link:

In her photographs for New York Magazine’s Special Issue, “Look”, Lauren Greenfield documents a face of fashion where grit and glamour coexist fabulously. The body of empathetic photographs teases open the seams of an oft-airbrushed world to reveal detailed stitching, elaborate machinations, and delicate incisions. Her signature investigative style captures the gorgeous collections alongside the pathos and process, creating a critically sympathetic portrait of powerful posturing, vulnerable moments, and striking beauty.

At the New York, Milan and Paris Spring 2010 Collections, Greenfield pairs photographs of models emerging in runway perfection, with various stages of the assembly line: plying, prodding, bleaching, cutting, crying, bleeding. A full visual deconstruction of the industry includes headless hair extensions and stoic grimaces, toxic products and imperfect choreography, and exacting beauty and immaculate performances. Photographs show the industry’s sacrifices: stumbling models, injured reporters, anxious dressers; but also the reward: frenzied flashes, preeminent designers, and applauding critics. By including the methodical process and the stunning show, the essay’s gestalt is in the intoxicating power held by fashion, and the very human participants that perform on its stage.

Well? "HMM?" When you put it that way...

Is Our Children Learned Yet?

Clearly our town is hellbent on turning out thousands of uneducated kids in the future as New Milford has frozen the school budget for the second year straight. This is from an email that is circulating around and was forwarded to myself by more than one person:

Dear Friends,


Below is a letter I sent to NBC 30 today.


According to emails circulating from the New Milford Town Wide PTO; "The School Board [for the town of New Milford] requested for 2010-2011 school year a budget of 58.73 million. The Town Council only approved 56.945 million -a 0% increase- cutting nearly 1.8 million. This is the second 0% budget increase in a row! The Town Council's cut will have a deep negative impact on the quality of education of our children not only this year, but in future years as well."


As we are all aware, we are in the middle of an economic recession, which has affected not only the economy, but has also changed the job market. Those fields that once insured you a job with security no longer exist. Children need a different set of skills/knowledge to compete in college and in the real world. Skills and knowledge that children will not completely be able to absorb and reapply if they are crowded in classrooms with teachers, administrators, and support staff that are overworked, underappreciated, concerned with meeting standards, and worried about keeping their jobs.


With this budget cut, New Milford stands to lose excellent, highly qualified, talented teachers to not only other districts but other states. Passing this budget will result in the demise of the academics within this town, further increasing the gap of achievement. This lack of increase in the budget will result in larger classes, more stress on Special Ed and ELL students and teachers, as well as a lack of support staff within the buildings.

It is extremely important for the public to know about the possible cuts (38 teachers) to the New Milford Education system. There are two meetings to discuss these issues: March 30, 7:30 at Sarah Noble Intermediate School and April 1, 7:00 at Sarah Noble Intermediate School in New Milford.

The fact that the state of Connecticut has already served up one idiot extremist who we had the great misfortune of watching go on to higher office in this nation is disgraceful enough. Do we really want to be producing thousands more semi-epsilon-moron-minuses' to lead this nation into the future?

My daughter actually mentioned this to me when she got home today and said that "hundreds of students" planned to show up to the meeting tomorrow night. I suspect there may not be enough room for them all to get in there if their taxpaying parents form both sides of the political dance are there, as well. We shall see...

Typically I don't cover local town politics that much. For this meeting? I plan on being there myself. I know that my Blog covers mostly national politics so for most of my readers this post is meaningless but for those of you that are from this town that read this place?

Please do yourself a favor and show up.

There is a Facebook group to help show support for keeping our schools functional and for stopping the right wing from destroying our future while using the present disaster they created and we are going through right now as a reason for it.

And for those of you don't get it... This is all about taking advantage of their free market failures and using it as an excuse to starve Public Education. Then once they have made a Public Education bad enough they will propose privatizing it with vouchers and other free market stupidity. And don't think your kids will benefit from the good private schools unless you are obscenely rich.

You are witnessing - first hand, up-close and personal-like - disaster capitalism at its worst.

Offshore Drilling? WTF OBAMA???

And before any negotiations on a bill for the milk starts some dumbasses have already given away the entire cow. Good luck with that.



We have already seen what your administration's extraordinary leadership skill got us in enhancement of health insurance for profit reform.

A little reading lesson to enhance your political skills since your administration seems to be just a little wet behind the ears when it comes to dealing with the GOP.

Recruiting Young Republicans and Off to the Sex Club...

There was quite a bit of talk yesterday concerning the RNC's interesting expense account... Obviously spending the money people donate to the Republican National Committee on a night out at an expensive Hollywood bondage and lesbian themed sex club was not exactly what the donors would hope for, never mind the $17,000 on private jets and the other booze as well...

But relax folks! It is just the good old fashioned way that Republican leadership wants to help raise your kids:

One California blog, Red County, reports that Brown isn't the staffer. Instead, they say, Brown paid the bill (and submitted it to the RNC as an expense) after a staffer's credit card was declined, according to anonymous sources.


The blog also reports that the excursion took place after a recruiting event for the RNC Young Eagles at the Beverly Hills hotel.

This makes it all OK, right?

From BarbinMD:

A group of RNC "Young Eagles" were escorted to a bondage-themed nightclub by an RNC official to blow off a little steam after a rough night of partying in Beverly Hills, the RNC accidentally picked up the tab but they're getting their money back. It could happen to anyone.

Young Eagles, by the way, are the next generation of big money donors to the Republican party ... and it should be noted that the GOP defines "young" as anyone under 45, a sad little attempt to lay claim to the youth vote ... whose mission statement is to:

Define the future leaders of tomorrow by creating a vibrant base of young, conservative oriented members that can and will take an active role in shaping the party's message, as well as that of the country, well into the future.

Well, mission accomplished, Young Eagles.
 

And what lessons can we all take away from this? First, that it's a good day when you can write a headline that says, "RNC to investigate spending at bondage-themed nightclub featuring lesbian sex acts," and second, that the RNC's explanation that the brain trust in their financial department accidentally paid out $2000 for a night out for the "boys" at a strip club isn't going to inspire their donors. That they had to put out a statement assuring those donors that Michael Steele doesn't go to bondage-themed strip clubs was just a bonus.

Not sure that Rob Simmons' Wife and Chris Healy's Wife Qualifies as a Coalition?

The bigger news is that Connecticut Republican's have mastered the science of cloning AstroTurf garbage...

"SIMMONS CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCES WOMEN FOR SIMMONS COALITION"

IOW: This ain't news at all. Same old same old.

When reality tells you that only 28% of Republican women support your candidacy, never mind what the vast majority of Nutmeg women think of your candidacy, considering 68% of Connecticut women would vote for Blumenthal and 18% would vote for Simmons in a direct match-up...  

Just make garbage up, throw it out there into the media ditch and hope no one looks at what's in there. Why not? Works for the Tea Party arm of the GOP...

I am starting the "Nutmeggers for Connecticut Man1 being better than any dumbass Republican coalition." Join up  with a "fuckin' eh!" (or a "Fuckin', eh?") in comments.

Next thing you know they'll be calling it a movement...



"And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar in "Fuckin' eh!" and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Connecticut Man1 Anti-Dumbass-Republican-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar."

An Arizona Minutemen Group Folds

Apparently, either they were shocked that people answered their calls to violence or they are broke from their profiteering leaderships' greed.

The only question in my mind is "how will they reincarnate their particular brand of crazy?" Because as long as there are crazy people around there will always be someone around willing to take advantage of them for political advancement and/or personal profit.

Welcome Back To The New and Improved New Milford Brewery

This is just a switch over to the new Blogger In Draft Templates... But I plan on overhauling the place more, installing some better vats, dusting off the mugs and shot glasses. Be careful as you wander around and try not to knock over the cases of empties over on the side bar because recycling broken glass is a real pain.

And don't be shy to let me know if you think the fonts are darned near impossible to read or something. That is, if you can even read this? :)

Eric Cantor: "Dem Thugs Did This To Me!"

From Jed Lewison:

It's clear from the Richmond police statement that Cantor's office was not directly targeted. Rather, an office that he has used in the past (but not his main campaign office) was randomly struck by a bullet that had been fired into the sky.


I'm not minimizing the dangers of randomly shooting bullets into the air, but for Eric Cantor to describe this as an attack targeting his campaign office is supremely dishonest, an obvious attempt to deflect attention from Republican Party's violent and extreme rhetoric in recent days.


Next thing you know, Cantor will be claiming a backwards B was carved in his face.

Shorter Eric Cantor:  

"Dem Thugs Did This To Me!"

Actually, Mr. No, I am a little "i" indy. :)