One Hundred Fifty Years Ago This Week...

170 vile traitors in South Carolina declared that their state was leaving the Union, the start of the most monstrous and devastating act of treason in American history, one which eventually left over 620,000 military dead and tens of thousands of civilian dead. This treason left an additional 400,000 Americans wounded, many permanently disabled. And on what grounds were the vile traitors acting? The suspicion that the conciliatory Abraham Lincoln, who was bending over backward to compromise with the vicious slave owning class of the South, would act to crush the South's "peculiar institution" as it was once known.

And this was the "noble cause" the South Carolina traitors were defending:

And the outcome of the mass treason they started?

And the political party that celebrates the Confederate treason and honors the Confederate traitors?

Take one guess:

Hitchens Hits a Home Run

I have often bitterly disagreed with Christopher Hitchens, but here he and I are in complete agreement--and he says it better than I could. Hitchens' target is the Tea Party and the vile people who have inspired it. A sample:

Glenn Beck has not even been encouraging his audiences to reread [John Birch Society founder] Robert Welch. No, he has been inciting them to read the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a man more insane and nasty than Welch and a figure so extreme that ultimately even the Birch-supporting leadership of the Mormon Church had to distance itself from him. It’s from Skousen’s demented screed The Five Thousand Year Leap (to a new edition of which Beck wrote a foreword, and which he shoved to the position of No. 1 on Amazon) that he takes all his fantasies about a divinely written Constitution, a conspiratorial secret government, and a future apocalypse. To give you a further idea of the man: Skousen’s posthumously published book on the “end times” and the coming day of rapture was charmingly called The Cleansing of America. A book of his with a less repulsive title, The Making of America, turned out to justify slavery and to refer to slave children as “pickaninnies.” And, writing at a time when the Mormon Church was under attack for denying full membership to black people, Skousen defended it from what he described as this “Communist” assault.


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Most epochs are defined by one or another anxiety. More important, though, is the form which that anxiety takes. Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority in this country, and the second is that the United States will be just one among many world powers. This is by no means purely a “racial” matter. (In my experience, black Americans are quite concerned that “Hispanic” immigration will relegate them, too.) Having an honest and open discussion about all this is not just a high priority. It’s more like a matter of social and political survival. But the Beck-Skousen faction want to make such a debate impossible. They need and want to sublimate the anxiety into hysteria and paranoia. The president is a Kenyan. The president is a secret Muslim. The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X. And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this development, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there’s nothing racial in their attitude …


Wow. Read the whole thing, and then be reminded of just what we're really up against in the Radical Right.

Hear Hear!

Illinois State Senator Ricky Hendon on the Illinois Civil Unions law:



My only objection to the law is that it didn't go far enough. Illinois--and every other state--should have laws guaranteeing full marriage rights for all adults, regardles of sexual orientation.

RIP Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, and an accomplishd woman in her own right, has died of cancer.

My condolences go out to her family, her friends, and her many, many admirers.

No, We CAN'T Work With the Republicans

Steve Benen explains why not in detail here. It's simple: the Republicans want total victory 100% of the time on 100% of all issues. They will not cooperate, they will not compromise, and their counter-proposals are right-wing lunatic garbage, from  which they will not budge one inch. I am in total despair because our President doesn't seem to grasp this.

Oh, and one other thing:

THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS  DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT AMERICA AND THEY WANT CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY TO GET WORSE SO THEY CAN SEIZE POWER AGAIN. THEY WANT TO SEIZE POWER SO THEY CAN LINE THEIR OWN POCKETS AND THE POCKETS OF THEIR FRIENDS, AND IMPOSE THEIR SO-CALLED, FRAUDULENT  "VALUES" ON EVERYONE ELSE.

Is that clear enough?

Radical REPUBLICAN Right Winger Steve King: VILE RACIST BASTARD

I know the accusation of racist gets thrown around too often, but in this case, it's justified. Check out the details here. The controversy surrounds the USDA compensating black farmers for discrimination against them by the government in previous years. King calls these payments "slavery reparations". Reparations is one of the radical Right's favorite buzzwords, one of their racist dogwhistles. Limbaugh uses it all the time in his streams of non-stop lies against President Obama and the Democrats. It's all part of the tired, sickening Right-wing mindset: The lazy ni**ers are taking my money. It never, never, never lets up with these people. Never.

King speaks for the millions of hate-filled, often elderly whites who feel 24/7 resentment against anyone who doesn't look like they do. You would think in this day and age this bilge would no longer be acceptable.

You'd be wrong.

Welcome to the Republicans, the Party of Jefferson Davis.

Birther Idiots STILL at Work

The racist Birthers are still at work, as noted here. It really is no different than a bigoted white cop stopping a black driver for no reason at all and saying, "Show me your license, boy." As Angry Black Lady says:

At some point, somebody’s going to Joe Wilson on everybody’s asses; somebody is going to call Obama a nigger before these next two years are over. Count on it. That’s what they’re calling him in their Stupid Ass White People meetings. It’s only a matter of time before someone forgets that they’re only supposed to talk that talky talk in their smoke-filled backroom.


This country is full of idiots, and it’s reaching critical mass.

Man, she's got that right.

Goodbye, Leslie Nielsen, and Thanks for the Laughs

The Republicans Are Deliberately Sabotaging the Economy. Why? To Regain Power.

Steve Benen chronciles the anti-American economic policies of our "patriotic" Congressional Republicans and comes to a jarring conclusion:

The Republicans are actively opposed to an economic recovery, and are doing everything they can to stop it--or even to make the economy worse.

Excerpts:

Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?


You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You'd also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You'd no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.


You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You'd also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default.


You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic plan that would help -- a tax policy that's already been tried -- but you'd do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.


Does any of this sound familiar?

It sounds familiar because the Republicans have been actively pushing or threatening ALL of these things. The Republican Party leadership DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT AMERICA, AND IT DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE SUFFERING OF AMERICANS.

It just wants POWER. It wants power in order to shovel money into their own pockets and the pockets of their friends, and to impose their radical Right Wing so-called "Values" on everyone else. And if they have to destroy all efforts at pulling the economy out of the mud, they'll do it--HAPPILY.

Anti-American hate radio ranter Rush Limbaugh has been calling for Republicans to root for Obama's failure from Day 1. His view has now not only become prevalent, it has been "improved" on: The Republicans are actively working to DESTROY the recovery for political reasons.

And the major media in the U.S. are letting them get away with this.

It's time for that to change.

SEDITION. Cantor Works Against HIS OWN GOVERNMENT in Foreign Policy

Remember when Republicans threw a hissy fit about Nancy Pelosi supposedly "undermining" President Bush in a visit to Syria in 2007 (an out-and out lie)? The House Minority Whip, Eric Cantor, is ACTUALLY acting to undermine President Obama's foreign policy by ILLEGALLY and SEDITIOUSLY negotiating with Israel's government behind Obama's back. Amanda Terkel has the story here:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday during a meeting in New York that the new GOP majority in the House will "serve as a check" on the Obama administration, a statement unusual for its blunt disagreement with U.S. policy delivered directly to a foreign leader.


"Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington," read a statement from Cantor's office on the one-on-one meeting. "He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other."


Cantor also took issue with Obama administration policies in other areas, including Iran, with the statement from his office saying the congressman "believes that it is time for the administration to fully and aggressively implement the Iran Sanctions Act passed by Congress earlier this year."


Ron Kampeas from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency news agency found Cantor's comments extremely surprising, writing, "I can't remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president. Certainly, in statements on one specific issue or another -- building in Jerusalem, or somesuch -- lawmakers have taken the sides of other nations. But to have-a-face to face and say, in general, we will take your side against the White House -- that sounds to me extraordinary."


It IS extraordinary. It's called sedition to actively work against your own government by illegally negotiating with or making promises to a foreign government. Cantor should be prosecuted, but of course, he won't be. He's a powerful conservative. They can do anything they damned well want to with impunity.


Oh, and the person who complained the loudest about Nancy Pelosi in 2007, and even went so far as to suggest that she had broken the law?


Eric Cantor

On Veterans Day, Let's Give Our Gratitude

There are so many millions of men (and women) who gave and sacrificed in the service of their country. Thank you, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I will NEVER forget you, and I will always be a small (but real) voice in your support.

Sad But True

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(Thanks, Pablo!!)

The Conservative "Good Old Days" Were HELL

This post at Consortium News is a stunning summation of what life was REALLY like in the America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the rich and powerful owned our nation's government from top to bottom. Some highlights:

Politicians often evoke warm and fuzzy feelings for “the good old days,” but this nostalgia is usually for a past that never was. Some pols make up the history while others “misremember” it.


...in this election year, pro-corporate politicians felt free to offer their cuddly fictions of a time – a century ago – that, in reality, produced happiness for only a few. Still, many American voters seem to have been sold.


But when the rosy tales of a Rand Paul persuade voters that this was the best of times, we are in trouble.


People need to look back clearly at this past to understand where these politicians want to take the nation now. The free enterprise system that arrived at the dawn of the 20th Century brought with it a grim and gloomy inequality.


One per cent of the population owned as much as the other 99 percent. A small elite, sitting on the boards of dozens of companies, controlled 40 percent of U.S. industry and their monopolies and trusts dominated economic life.


The media surrendered early. In 1900, the New York Times proclaimed “Millionaires will be commonplace and the country will be better for them, better for their wealth, better for the good they will do in giving employment to labor in the industries which produce their fortunes.”


“We accept and welcome great inequality of wealth and environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial in the hands of the few, as not only being beneficial, but essential for the human race,” Andrew Carnegie declared.


In Chicago, retail store magnate Marshall Field made $600 an hour and paid his clerks $3 to $5 a week, after they had put in three years of satisfactory service.


Chauncey Depew’s steel mill laborers worked from six in the morning to six in the evening, seven days a week, in 115-degree heat for $1.25 a day.


Tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt boasted he could “buy up any politician” and claimed reformers “the most purchasable.”


“We hire the law by the year,” claimed a railroad magnate.


The 14th Amendment, designed to protect the citizenship rights of former slaves, was altered by the Supreme Court to mainly protect corporations as “persons.” This was just the high court’s first twist of the 14th Amendment to serve the powerful.


Similarly, laws intended to limit the powers of business were turned to the advantage of the wealthy. The Sherman Act of 1890, passed to curb monopolies, instead was used to stop strikes and jail union leaders.


Government officials dutifully identified corporations with the public good. When choking industrial smog blanked Chicago, a leading politician said smoke was beneficial to children’s lungs.


Governments saw no need to protect workers from unsafe working conditions despite shocking numbers of deaths and injuries every year.


President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill to hand seed grain to Texas farmers stricken by a drought, saying “it weakens the sturdiness of our national character.” Instead, he gave rich bondholders $45 million more than the value of their bonds.


Republican and Democratic presidents used the Army to crush nationwide strikes.


Government concern for the upper class and neglect for everyone else had these consequences: widespread poverty, child labor, and homeless families. Homeless children (100,000 in New York alone) scrounged for food, searched for shelter, and begged.


Employers at mills and mines preferred to hire children since at 50 cents a week, they were the cheapest. Ministers and other influential opinion leaders stepped forth to proclaim that work kept children out of trouble.


“The most beautiful sight that we see is the child at labor; as early as he may be at labor the more beautiful, and the most useful does his life get to be,” said Asa G. Candlers, founder of Coca Cola.


Working children suffered an accident rate in factories double the adult rate and saw their plight less favorably than did the silver-tongued apologists for industry.


The painful truth is that the start of the 20th Century was not a golden age, except for those with the gold. It was a dark and desperate time for much of the American population.

This is the "glorious past" that the right-wing Republicans want to return America to. The nostalgia for a "simpler time" is based on historical illiteracy and ignorance. With the acceleration of the wealth concentration in America and the constant lies flooding from the right-wing media, America is again being pushed into the darkness. PLEASE HELP US STOP THEM!

America the Banana Republic

This is what comes from over 30 years of continuous right-wing attacks on government, constant tax breaks for the richest, and the smashing of labor unions. Nick Kristof has it right here.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.


C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.


That’s the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans. Both parties agree on extending tax cuts on the first $250,000 of incomes, even for billionaires. Republicans would also cut taxes above that.

I'd just like to add that the United States is the ONLY developed nation without universal health care, and yet we pay TWICE per capita what citizens of other advanced nations do for our care.

PROGRESSIVE AND LIBERAL POLICIES ARE WHAT AMERICA NEEDS NOW, NOT THIS INSANE SHIFTING OF WEALTH FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS TO THE RICH. THE CONSERVATIVE PROGRAM TO TURN THIS COUNTRY INTO A PLUTOCRACY/THEOCRACY HAS TO BE STOPPED. PERIOD.

More Pathetic Lies from Bachmann

This time the lying psychopath is claiming that President Obama's trip to India will cost $200 million a day. Politifact has the truth right here.

James Gerstenzang, a former reporter who covered numerous foreign trips by presidents for the Los Angeles Times, laughed at the $200 million a day figure, which he guessed was probably "inflated by a factor of 10." And the claim about the entourage of 3,000 also seems grossly inflated, he said. He noted that any members of the press traveling with the president pay their own way, so that's not a cost borne by taxpayers.


"It really bothers me when numbers like that get thrown around by both sides for political reasons, without it being backed up," Gerstenzang said.


Veteran reporter David Jackson, who has traveled on a number of foreign trips by presidents, wrote for the USA Today, "No, President Obama's trip is not going to cost $200 million a day."


"That figure -- first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio -- is wildly, wildly off the mark."

Repeat: Bachmann and the vast majority of other conservative leaders and media figures, will tell ANY lie, spread ANY falsehood in order to gain power. Their sick, demented hatred of President Obama is so intense that they would do or say anything to destroy him. These are the "patriots" that prevailed this past week.

God help America!

I'm starting the 2012 campaign TONIGHT.

This minute.

RIGHT NOW.

I am personally pledging $20 a month to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee  TONIGHT. 

I want to see 20,000,000 PROUD DEMOCRATS giving $20 a month to a Democratic committee. That's almost TEN BILLION DOLLARS  between now and November 2012 to fight back against the tide of right-wing corporate money and right-wing lies that did so much damage to us this year. $10 BILLION. We can DO IT, if you help. Will you? Will you viralize this appeal?

I DON'T STAY ON THE FLOOR. I GET UP AND I FIGHT BACK.

WE'RE GOING TO RETAKE THE HOUSE.

WE'RE GOING TO KEEP THE SENATE.

AND MOST OF ALL, WE'RE GOING TO RE-ELECT PRESIDENT OBAMA.

No time for regrets or recriminations.

LET'S GET TO WORK!

VIRALIZE, PEOPLE!

The "Grass Roots" Tea Party

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Folks, the name "Tea Party" is just the name for the same radical right-wing extremists who have been a millstone around America's neck for so many decades. And they're being financed by wealthy right-wing radicals intent on establishing Government by the Rich at the top. Period.

You GOTTA Read This!

Keith Olbermann has done a FANTASTIC job right here of assembling the truly terrifying array of Tea Bagger/Idiot Nut Job/Right Wing Fanatic lunacy that our country is being theatened by this coming Tuesday. Want a real Hallowe'en horror show? Check it out. Excerpts:

You do not think your freedom is at stake next Tuesday?


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate-for Senator from Nevada, Sharron Angle, has decried divorce and Social Security as some of this nation's quote "wicked ways." Mrs. Angle also compared rape to "a lemon situation in lemonade." She would deny an abortion even to a teenaged girl who had been raped by her own father.


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate to be the only Congressman in Delaware, Glen Urquhart, said "there is no problem that abortion can't make worse. I know good friends who are the product of rape." Mr. Urquhart also does not believe the phrase "separation of church and state" was said by Thomas Jefferson.


He thinks it was Hitler: "The next time your liberal friends ask you about the 'separation of church and state', ask them why they are Nazis."


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The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for the Senate in West Virginia, John Raese, explained quote: "I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. I think that's a great thing to do. I hope more people in this country have that opportunity as soon as we abolish inheritance tax in this country."


The inheritance tax applies only to estates larger than three-and-a-half million dollars. For the 99.8% of Americans not affected by the estate tax, there is the Minimum Wage, which Mr. Raese also wants abolished.


Or there is Social Security. The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate in the Indiana 9th, Todd Young, says "Social Security, as so many of you know is a Ponzi scheme." The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate in the Wisconsin 8th, Reid Ribble, disagrees. Social Security "is, in **fact**, a Ponzi scheme."




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If you are not employed, Mrs. Angle of Nevada says unemployment benefits can neither be increased nor extended because that "has caused us to have a spoilage with our ability to go out and get a job… There are jobs that do exist. That's what we're saying, is that there are jobs."


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senator in Alaska, Joe Miller, says this is academic, because Unemployment Insurance is unconstitutional. His own wife received unemployment insurance after losing a temp job he got for her. Mr. Miller also called Medicaid unconstitutional. It [has been] proved his entire family had received Medicaid funds.


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senator in Colorado, Ken Buck, would not stop at butchering just Social Security. "Would a Veterans Administration hospital that is run by the private sector be better run then by the public sector? In my view, yes."


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Back in Nevada Mrs. Angle decries health care - not reform, but health care itself. "Everything that they want to throw at us now is covered under quote 'autism'," she said.


As to educating those children Mrs. Angle won't pay for, Mr. Buck of Colorado, waxes nostalgic. "In the 1950's, we had the best schools in the world, and the United States government decided to get more involved in federal education…well since we've made education worse, we're gonna even get more involved." In Ken Buck's America of 1957, fewer than one in five Black children graduated high school. Fewer than half of White children did.


To the Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate in the California 11th, David Harmer, Mr. Buck must seem like a wild-eyed liberal. Mr. Harmer once advocated eliminating public schools altogether, and returning education in this country to where it was before 1876. "People acting in a free market found a variety of ways to pay for a variety of schools serving a variety of students, all without central command or control." And without girls, blacks, or even the slightest chance you could go to college.


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And while one of the few threads uniting the ragamuffins who constitute the slate of Tea Party candidates is so-called 'strict interpretation' of that Constitution, Mr. Miller of Alaska wants, in fact, to change the Constitution. He wants to repeal the 17th Amendment. The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, called the 17th Amendment "a mistake." Last year, Mr. Buck of Colorado said the 17th Amendment "took us down the wrong path."


The 17th Amendment, of course, permits the direct election by the voters of U.S. Senators. Buck and Lee and Miller not only demand you elect them to the Senate; they hope to then deny you the right to elect somebody else, next time.


The ubiquitous Mrs. Angle, meanwhile, wants to repeal the 16th Amendment. It provided for a federal income tax. Mrs. Angle does not explain how, without it, the federal government would pay for keeping out the Mexicans she specifically attacks in her newest commercial.


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul wishes to repeal the 14th Amendment because it interferes with a private business's right to ban black people from its premises, and also because it allows anyone born here in America to be American.


Mr. Paul is worried about anchor babies. The Republican candidate for the 1st District of Texas, Louie Gohmert, fears not anchor babies but terror babies -- unborn infants brought to this country in the womb, ready for American citizenship and pre-programmed to blow things up fifteen or twenty years from now. Curiously, he has not been asked if he is in favor of aborting them.


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[F]ear of the Chinese clearly does not extend to the Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senate from Illinois, Mark Kirk. One day he held a fundraiser with American businessmen in China. The next day, he voted against closing tax incentives for outsourcing American jobs to places like China.


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Senate from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson is also in favor of re-locating employees. He testified against toughening laws on pedophiles and employers who shield them. He argued this could damage a business. A business like the local Catholic Church, on whose board he served (a fact he never revealed during his testimony).


[Rand Paul] is also opposed to Federal Mine Safety regulations: "The bottom line is: I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules. You are here, and you have to work in the mines. You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs."


Mr. Paul's admission that "I'm not an expert" does provide one of the few dovetails of the campaign. It matches nicely with Mr. Johnson of Wisconsin, who refuses to offer any specifics about his plan to deal with homeless veterans. He says, quote: "This election is not about details."


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The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate in the Missouri 4th, Vicky Hartzler, says she and her husband are just small business owners. "We just want the government to leave us alone," she said. Hartzler and her husband have a farm. In the last fourteen years, that government they want to leave them alone, has given them subsidies totaling $774,000


Mr. Raese of West Virginia told the Associated Press that "America is in an industrial coma" and blamed the "restrictor plate" that is "a bloated federal government." "I can't think," he added, "of very many times when a government agency has helped me." The companies Mr. Raese owns have received $2,400,000 in contracts from the federal government since 2000, and $32,000,000 in contracts from the state government since 2000.


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Mr. Miller's private security guards in Alaska detained and handcuffed one reporter, and threatened to handcuff two more, without any legal right to do so, at an event at a public school. The security company was operating with an expired license; its chief, has links to extremist organizations; and the defense was that the guards didn't know the individual was a reporter, which implies it would be just dandy to handcuff an ordinary citizen.




Mrs. Angle of Nevada, pressed by a television station for a statement about her national security and national defense policies about the two wars we are in, replied with a tautological answer and the suggestion that the reporter consult her website. He found that her security and defense policy statements were each one sentence long. She then banned all television from the last four days of her campaign.


The person they [the Tea Party radicals] all love the least is, of course, the President.


The Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for Congress from the Florida 22nd, Allen West, had to leave our military after threatening to kill an Iraqi he was interrogating. Now he claims to have a higher security clearance than does the President. Mr. West also told his supporters that they could defeat his Democratic opponent by making the man afraid to leave his own home.


And the Tea-Party-and-Republican-candidate for the House from the Michigan 7th, the ex-Congressman Tim Walberg, wants to blackmail the President into showing his birth certificate to Rush Limbaugh. He figures he can extort this from President Obama by threatening to impeach him.


**********


And if no other fact convinces you of your obligation to vote and canvass and phone and even drag to the polls the most disheartened moderate or Democrat or Liberal or abandoned Republican or political neutral, to vote for the most tepid of the non-Insane candidates, if no other detail hands you that spark of argument with which to invigorate the apathetic, you need only commit to memory the words of Stephen Broden and Sharron Angle.


Mrs. Angle can run from reporters but she cannot run from this quote from January, and all the horror and insurrection it implies: "Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that's not where we're going. But, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies."


Is Sharron Angle too subtle for you? "Second Amendment remedies” - guns instead of elections - too implicit?


Fortunately, to our rescue, to the speeding of the falling of the scales from our eyes, comes the Tea-Party-and-Republican nominee for the 30th Congressional District of Texas, "Pastor" Stephan Broden. "Our nation was founded on violence," said the man who also just accused Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg of being a eugenicist because he heard it on Glenn Beck.


As a Dallas TV camera continued to roll, he was asked: was armed insurrection, revolution, an option in 2010? "The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table… However, it is not the first option."


Read the whole thing, folks. And then:


CALL EVERY DEMOCRATIC VOTER YOU KNOW WHO'S PLANNING TO SIT THIS ONE OUT


FORWARD THIS POST TO EVERYONE ON YOUR E-MAIL LIST


GET EVERY DEMOCRAT YOU KNOW--INCLUDING YOURSELF--TO THE POLLS TUESDAY.


Your country's future is at stake.

ACT NOW! VOTE DEMOCRATIC ON TUESDAY!

And for the love of God keep these right-wing lunatics from ruining our beloved country.

TAXES HAVE GONE DOWN UNDER OBAMA!

And two-thirds of the people DON'T KNOW IT! Bloomberg has the story here:

The Obama administration has cut taxes -- largely for the middle class -- by $240 billion since taking office on Jan. 20, 2009. A program aimed at families earning less than $150,000 that was contained in the stimulus package lowered the burden for 95 percent of working Americans by $116 billion, or about $400 per year for individuals and $800 for married couples. Other measures include breaks for college education, moderate- income families and the unemployed and incentives to promote renewable energy.

But the right-wing campaign of CONSTANT BS LIES has convinced many people otherwise.

GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE NEXT TUESDAY!!

EVERY DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IN AMERICA SHOULD BE PUSHING THIS KIND OF MESSAGE

Republican Criminal (and Candidate for Florida Governor) Pleaded the Fifth SEVENTY-FIVE TIMES!

There are many horrible Republican candidates for public office this year. They include failed business executive Carly Fiorina and utterly unqualified Meg Whitman in California, secessionist/Confederate Rick Perry in Texas, ultra-right wing fanatic Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, attacker of the rights of child sexual abuse victims Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, demented pathological liar Sharron Angle in Nevada, military fraud Mark Kirk in Illinois, frightening right-wing lunatic Michele Bachmann in Minnesota, and on and on and on. But for sheer bottom-of-the-barrel wretchedness, you have to go some to beat Rick Scott, the vile Republican candidate for governor of Florida. Scott was instrumental in crippling the desperately needed public option in health care reform this past year. This is completely in line with Scott's despicable record from his time as a health care executive. His company was up to its neck in wrongdoing. And during the investigation of this criminality, Scott invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination SEVENTY-FIVE times. We see the details here:

Normally, folks deposed in civil suits can't hunker down behind their right against self incrimination. But the hospital chain, Columbia/HCA, [of which Scott was CEO] had been the object of a years-long federal criminal investigation that eventually brought the company 14 felony charges and $1.7 billion in fines for Medicare fraud. There was good reason why the chain's former president sounded a lot like [a major crime figure], even in an innocuous lawsuit growing out of a software dispute. (Voters might note that the U.S. Supreme Court suggested that witnesses who invoke the Fifth in civil cases can legally be regarded with ``adverse inferences.'')

And this is who the Republican voters of Florida decided to go with for their party's gubernatorial candidate. There is a solid Democrat running against Scott. Her name is ALEX SINK. She deserves your support.

And she never even took the Fifth once.

The Flood of Damned Lies Coming From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

It's bad enough that The Chamber of Commerce, led by an ultra-right wing sociopath named Tom Donahue, is brutally anti-American worker, cheering the outsourcing of jobs to Asia and demanding tax breaks for doing it. It's bad enough that the Chamber endorses crushing every protection American workers enjoy. It's bad enough that the Chamber is all for destroying labor unions. It's bad enough that the Chamber endorses every economic position of the Lunatic Right, and that the Chamber is simply the political arm of the Corporatocracy that almost crashed the world economy in 2007-2008.

But now the Chamber is smearing and sliming Democrats with thousands of TV ads. Yes, there is substantial evidence that foreign money is behind this to a degree. But the major issue, as we see in this post here is this:

THE ADS THEMSELVES ARE DAMNED, STINKING LIES.

That's the part that gets overlooked in the foreign money controversy. The sheer dishonesty of the Chamber's ads should be the issue.

Specifically, among MANY lies (as stated in the linked article:)

(1) The Chamber is running or has run a cookie-cutter ad attacking Dems in many districts that contain core claims that have been cleanly debunked. There are versions of this ad targeting Dem Reps. Tom Perriello of Virginia, John Boccieri of Ohio, Earl Pomery of North Dakota, and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, as well as candidate Stephene Moore of Kansas.


All these ads claim that the Democrat in question supported "gutting Medicare by $500 billion," a reference to their support for health reform. But Politifact found that in reality, "the law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget." FactCheck.org thoroughly debunked this claim, too.


(2) All of the above ads hammer the Dem by claiming that seniors in their states face "reduced benefits," thanks to the Dem in question, another reference to health reform. Each ad gives a different number of "reduced benefits," based on which state they're in, and each ad sources the Kaiser Family Foundation for the claim.


But Tricia Neuman, a vice president with Kaiser, flatly denies that her group found what these ads claim it did. The claim is based on this Kaiser chart that only details the state-by state enrollees to Medicare advantage plans -- and does not predict any reduced benefits under health reform. "That statement does not come directly from anything we've written," Neuman tells me. "It may mislead seniors enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans into thinking their benefits will be cut -- which, at this point, is not clear." Indeed, Neuman notes, some benefits could go up.

And it goes on and on. Through the flood of lying, deceptive ads, the right-wing economic RADICALS AND FANATICS who run the Chamber are simply trying to buy the Government. This has been made possible by the corrupt Citizens United decision, made by the corrupt, pro-Republican conservative Supreme Court majority. We need to fight this open sewer of right-wing, Big Business Lies as best we can. What can we do?

A. GIVE TO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES MAKING LAST-MINUTE PUSHES IN KEY RACES. Sestak in Pennsylvania, Giannoulias in Illinois, Sink in Florida, Reid in Nevada, McAdams in Alaska, Bennet in Colorado, Carnahan in Missouri, and any others you can help.

B. SPREAD THIS POST AROUND TO YOUR E-MAIL LIST.

C. GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE! We're closing in on the Republicans all over the country. Many of the undecideds are Democrats. Get them out to vote!!

D. VOTE DEMOCRATIC, either in Early Voting or on 2 November.

DON'T LET THE CORPORATE RIGHT-WING BUY THIS COUNTRY. IT'S NOT THEIR PROPERTY--IT'S YOURS!!

SHARRON ANGLE IN NEVADA DEBATE: ONE INSULTING LIE AFTER ANOTHER

You can read all about it here.

Social Security, her plan to privatize the Veterans Administration, you name it--she'll lie her ass off about it.

Sharron Angle's PATHETIC LIES

Watch this lying, radical Right-Wing clown in action:

The Tea Bagger Candidates: the Worst of the Worst

Mitchell Bard at HuffPo serves up the damning evidence here.  Bard likens them to the batting line-up of a particularly noxious baseball team. This line-up is probably the most appallingly bad the Radical Right has ever served up, and for the sake of our beloved country, MUST be stopped.. Highlights:

To be clear, I'm not talking about one-off scandals here. This has nothing to do with David Vitter consorting with prostitutes or Ohio Republican House of Representatives candidate Rich Iott glorifying Nazi S.S. officers by engaging in reenactments. And I'm not talking about innuendo or gossip. What I am arguing is that if you look at the words and positions associated with many members of this year's GOP slate, they are either far out of the American mainstream or patently unqualified for office (or both).



1. Leading off is the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate from Delaware, Christine O'Donnell. We know she confessed to dabbling in witchcraft and only decided not to become a Hare Krishna because she didn't want to give up meatballs, but these silly (and entertaining) stories are the least of it. Far more important are her delusions (like that the Chinese government was plotting to take over the United States or that scientists are developing "mice with fully functioning human brains"), as well as her far-out-of-the-mainstream policies and beliefs (ranging from the near comical, like her idea that masturbation is adultery, to the deadly dangerous, like her statements that homosexuals engage in an "unhealthy life style" and that AIDS education is "a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents," to the extreme, like her lies about the president's student loan program and her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape).




2. For the number two position in the lineup, we turn to Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson...


Johnson has called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," blamed climate change on sunspots, called dismantling Social Security and Medicare a "starting point," and is "open" to abolishing the Federal Reserve.


Johnson's extreme business-first, the-people-last approach to the world was on display in his decision to testify against a state child abuse protection bill in January. Why would anyone have a problem with legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations for civil actions related to child abuse? Well, Johnson wasn't happy with the provision that included corporations. Johnson's first concern wasn't the victims of abuse, but how it would affect businesses. He testified, "I think it is extremely important to consider the economic havoc." Johnson proposes massive federal spending cuts, but he refuses to identify which programs he would cut: "I'm not going to get in the game here and, you know, start naming specific things to be attacked about, quite honestly." And if you want some good old-fashioned hypocrisy to go with his extreme, out-of-the-mainstream policy positions, how about this: Johnson has campaigned against subsidies for businesses, but he has used prison labor at his factories, with the state picking up the health care costs of the prisoners.




3. A team's best hitter usually hits third, so for the GOP Tea Party All-Stars, that position has to be filled by Nevada Republican U.S. senate candidate Sharron Angle.


Like the best number-three hitters, Angle is consistent and dependable, in that you know another out-of-the-mainstream and possibly-crazy pronouncement is just around the corner. Sometimes, she appears truly delusional, like when she said Muslim law is taking hold in American cities, or that there are "domestic enemies" in Congress, or that Harry Reid helped child molesters get Viagra, or when she campaigned against black football jerseys (because the color was "evil"). Other times, she is heartless, like when she made fun of health coverage for autism (using air quotes to describe the condition), or when she said she would have voted against federal aid for those affected by Hurrican Katrina (a measure that unanimously passed the Senate).


Angle is so extreme that a Nevada Republican, Bill Raggio, who has served 38 years in the state senate, endorsed Harry Reid over Angle, the first time he has ever supported a Democrat. 




4. The clean-up hitter is Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Paul got in the game early when he had to backtrack after criticizing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many Tea Partiers, he supports the elimination of the Department of Education. He called Medicare "intergenerational welfare," and even after high-profile mining accidents, he accused President Obama of "forcing the EPA down our throats." Paul polished his rich-focused bona fides by defending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, saying you can't "punish the rich."


5. Giving solid protection to Paul in the GOP Tea Party All-Stars lineup is Alaska extremist and (former?) friend of Sarah Palin Joe Miller, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate. Miller's views are far out of the American mainstream, and his lack of understanding of the U.S. Constitution (he seems to think that virtually everything is unconstitutional, contrary to well-settled law in these areas) must, I can only guess, leave his former professors at Yale Law School shaking their heads in disbelief. He thinks that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional (but that didn't stop his wife from collecting them several years ago), and he also believes that the minimum wage, hate crime laws, and the health care reform legislation (even as he admits benefiting from Medicaid and other state programs ... see a trend here?) are unconstitutional, too. He wants to shut down the Department of Education and "transition" out of Social Security, and he doesn't believe in man-made global warming. He is also so rabidly anti-choice, he doesn't even support a woman's right to an abortion in cases of rape and incest.




6. [T]he GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, [Ken Buck]. Buck's specialty is taking out-of-the-mainstream positions, and then backtracking on them in an effort to look less extreme to his state's voters. Since securing the Republican nomination, he flip-flopped on his support of repealing the 17th Amendment (which allows citizens to elect U.S. senators, rather than have them appointed by state legislatures), as well as on his promise to introduce anti-abortion legislation and vote against confirming pro-choice judges. Buck has also done a 180-degree turn on his support of privatizing Social Security and Medicare (as well as questioning Social Security's constitutionality), banning IUDs and birth control pills, and shutting down the Department of Education (a Tea Party favorite).

Read the rest, and in the last three weeks--

VOLUNTEER TO MAKE PHONE CALLS AND KNOCK ON DOORS


SEND MONEY TO THE WORTHY DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS OF THESE SOCIOPATHS (HIT THE ACT BLUE LINK IN MY BLOGROLL)


CONTACT TEN OF YOUR DEMOCRATIC-LEANING FRIENDS AND MAKE SURE THEY VOTE


VOTE DEMOCRATIC, EITHER IN EARLY VOTING IN YOUR STATE, OR ON 2 NOVEMBER.


We have to strike out this line-up. Our nation's future depends on it.